Gateway Church's Podcast
Laying The Foundation
Shalom you all, it's a combination of Hebrew and Texan for those of you who didn't know. So if you'll just open your Bibles to two major scriptures that I'm going to focus on, Psalm 22 and Jeremiah 31, we're going to turn to those in a few minutes, but first I'm going to share my testimony for a while. And the scripture that has meant so much to me over the years, of course there's many, but one that really stands out is John 1516 that says you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you might go and bear fruit. And that means so much to me because although with all of us God chose us, now the fact that God chose us doesn't mean that we are robots and that you are either sort of destined for one way or the other, but what it means is that God draws us and then we respond to that drawing, but in my case especially God chose me because I didn't believe in him. I believed in God but I didn't believe in Jesus. And so God's hand was on me and so as I share my testimony you're going to see basically what a Jewish person has to go through and all the obstacles that we have to overcome in order to receive Jesus as our Messiah. And I know this might be hard for you to believe, but I don't know if you've ever heard a preacher condenses testimony into six words, but I can actually condense my testimony into six words and then I'm going to elaborate a little bit. And here's the six words, I'm a Jewish Christian African American. I'll give it a while. I can tell you very intelligent because you know you laugh pretty quickly, I'm very impressed. First of all I'm Jewish because both my parents are Jewish. I'm a Christian or a messianic Jew because I believe in Jesus. I'm an African because I was born and raised in Africa and I lived there twenty-five years and I'm an American because I live in America. And so I can reach almost any people group because I've got something in every people group in me. And another thing I was kind of thinking the other day, I could probably qualify for about every welfare check that's available to mankind, but I'm not going to take advantage of that I'll leave that for somebody else. You know there's certain words that we are used to as Christians that Jewish people wouldn't see the same way as us, for example the word Christ. You know sometimes whether it's a Jewish or a Gentile person maybe they'll use the name Christ and we'll say that's blasphemy, but whether Jewish person it's really not blasphemy because they don't know what Christ means. Because when I was raised I always believed that Jesus Christ was simply His family name. I thought He was Jesus Christ and that His parents were Joseph and Mary Christ. And that's what I always believed. But you see I had no idea and most Jewish people have no idea that Christ actually means Messiah. And you're not going to hear a Jewish person use Messiah in a moment of frustration as a word of exclamation. And so I think that's a good witnessing tool. If you explain to your Jewish friends that Christ means Messiah because every Jew knows something about the Messiah and there's some kind of expectation of the coming of the Messiah. You know I attended private Jewish schools for 13 years when I was growing up I learned to read and write Hebrew at the same time that I learned to read and write English. And we used to say prayers five mornings a week and we'd say the prayers in Hebrew and I would later fill in it. It's what the Bible calls phylactories when Jesus speaks to the Pharisees and He talks about their phylactories. And really what phylactories are is you know in Deuteronomy I believe it is, it says that you should take the word of God and place it as frontlets between your eyes and then you should bind it to your forearms. Now as Jews are very literal people. And do you think that fundamentalist Christians are literalists we are even more so because we literally take the box with the word of God in it and place the box on our forehead with the word of God in and we take the actual box and put it on our forearms and we bind it to our arms. The only problem was I never knew what was in the box but I guess the word was there. It hadn't quite gotten into here yet you know which is the real idea. And so now God has internalized His law that really that's what the new covenant is. God has taken the law and internalized it and put it in our minds and our hearts. You know just to help you understand how Jewish people think when it comes to Christianity and how they see it you know my grandparents grew up in Lithuania in Eastern Europe. And when they grew up pogroms were a way of life. Let me tell you what a pogrom is. Many of the smaller cities were sometimes half Jewish, sometimes 40% Jewish and what would happen whenever Easter time comes we're all very excited because we're celebrating the resurrection of our Messiah. But Easter was a very scary time for my grandparents. It was a very scary time because what would happen is that the Orthodox priests in the church during Easter would preach fiery sermons to the people basically blaming the Jews for killing Christ and saying that they need to get revenge on the Jews for killing their Lord. And then what would happen very often with the priests in the front usually with a big cross around his neck or in his hand followed by the Russian cossacks that would raise, they would raid the Jewish villages. And the woman would be raped, men would be murdered, my grandfather would tell me stories of having to hide in a haystack or in a barn in order to not be killed or to be seriously injured. And so Easter was a very scary time for them and in their minds because these people claimed to be Christians and they had a big cross and the priest was dressed in his priestly God etc. and so in their minds those were Christians. And so one needs to understand when you need to speak about Christianity to a Jewish person they're thinking persecution and hatred of Jews. In fact what I thought is weird is this might seem to you but growing up in South Africa there was a lot of anti-Semitism as well. Whenever you have any kind of racism like in South Africa there was apartheid it's not only towards black people. You see a spirit of racism, it's racist towards Jewish people, Hispanics, any minority group, it's the same spirit that makes no difference. And so when I was raised in that country under that system we never knew what was going to happen. The school that I went to we used to have bomb scares about once a week, at least once a week where they were threatened to blow up the school and then we all had to evacuate the classes and go and stand in the field. The police dogs would come and sniff and make sure there was no bombs and then eventually we'd go back and we just expected it and we thought oh well that's the Christians. We always just thought that was the Christians. And so it's very sad but that was a way of life when I was raised. So anyway I finished my school life and I had to go into the military because it was mandatory. And what happened then is during boot camp I was no longer in a protected environment where it was just Jewish people but I was exposed to the big world out there kind of thing and there was a lot of anti-Semitism during boot camp. And there are about 22 Jewish guys and over 800 what I would have called Christians ready who were Gentiles who occasionally went into a church building, I don't really know the difference in those days. All I knew is that on Saturday we had a big parade and the Jewish guys would go we'd already be gone for the Jewish Sabbath and then on Sunday all of the Christians would go to their churches. So we'd stand God duty for them on Sunday and they'd stand God duty for us on Saturday. But there was a lot of violence even during boot camp a lot of I didn't want to get into fights every day even though I pretty much knew how to fight. I didn't want them to know that because when there's 800 guys and they want to fight you until someone can beat you up so that's not a very pleasant way to live. And so God gives us Jews wisdom when it comes to survival sometimes and there was a particular guy there he was probably one of the biggest guys in our camp and the only difference between him and the incredible Hulk is that the incredible Hulk was green. And fortunately he didn't have terribly much else apart from bone and muscle but he loved condensed milk. And so he said if I'll give him one can of condensed milk a week he'll protect me. And so where does that seems? You just drink the whole thing in one shot and so he protected me and so for the whole six months if any major threats came my friend would just stand behind me and they would just back off. Anyway, something happened during that time that God used in a path away in my life. There was actually a Greek guy and when he wasn't a Christian but he knew the scriptures he belonged to some weird cult group but I wouldn't have known the difference between a Christian cult and any other Christian in those days. But he knew the scriptures and he kept on talking to me about Jesus and finally I got frustrated and I said look I said all that's all very nice but I'm a Jew and Jews don't believe in Jesus. So he takes out his Bible and he opens it up and he says here read this. So if you'll just go to Psalm 22 I want to show you what I read Psalm 22 in your Bibles and it starts off saying this it says my God my God why have you forsaken me? So immediately I read that I think okay I thought I was reading the Gospel the New Testament and then I kept on reading and it came up to verse 16 and it says this it says for dogs have surrounded me the congregation of the wicked has enclosed me they pierced my hands and my feet I can count all my bones they look and stare at me they divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cost lots by the way cost is cast in case you're wondering what that means. And so I'm busy reading this I didn't know much about Jesus but you know doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this is the Gospel you know and I said to him well thanks very much that's very nice but this is the New Testament and I gave it back to him. He said that's not the New Testament he said this is Psalm 22 written by King David I said please give me a break I was asking David to write about the crucifixion in case you didn't know this when David wrote this around 700 years before Jesus came it was about 700 years before such a form of punishment as crucifixion had even been invented and King David's writing down to every the smallest detail even the finest details of the crucifixion. So I thought okay I know what this is this is a Christian plot to try and convert Jews I thought okay Gentiles you know Christians don't know any Hebrew so they got some random guy who knew very little Hebrew and he just twisted it to try and make it sound like Jesus. I thought okay this is what I'm going to do I'm going to go to my grandmother's house she's got a Tanaq which is a Hebrew Old Testament and I'm going to read it in the Hebrew and then I'm going to read the rabbis translation so I read it in the Hebrew and when I came to that pierced my hands and my feet it says it says that in the Hebrew but then the English translation on the other side instead of they pierced it says they like a lion my hands and my feet and apparently it actually can mean either but it's always been accepted that it's they pierced and so what bothered me the most is if it can be either why do the rabbis deliberately take it and put there they like a lie on my hands and feet because chromatically it doesn't flow very smoothly does it if you say they like a lie in my hands and feet although even if it did say that even though it doesn't even if it said that it still describes history fiction perfectly and so really it really backfired really on on what they were trying to hide because it really convinced me even more if they try to hide something if they'd be a sounds like as Jesus why not why change it what's the motive behind it so anyway I still had 18 months of army lift and the incredible hulk was transferred to another army base as I was in trouble so I thought well one of two things either I'm going to be fighting for my survival for the next 18 months so I've got to become the incredible hulk myself I didn't know how to do that but I actually joined a boxing gym and started training very hard and actually became very good at it so much so that by the end of the 18 months they asked me about turn professional but I said well nice Jewish boys don't box but the good thing is that nobody would mess with me so that kind of helped so people look at me sometimes and they say well you don't look like a boxer you know your nose isn't broken your face looks normal you know so well if my face looks like it's been hit by a meteor I shouldn't be boxing right the whole idea is not to get hit well these Jewish boxes feel that way anyway so so what I did then is when I finished the army I went to Israel and I was living on a kibbutz called phyim which is beautiful kibbutz on the coast between Tel Aviv and the Tanya for those of you who don't know a kibbutz is a kind of a farming community kind of cooperative farming sort of thing and really Israel in the early years was actually built on kibbutzim and this was a beautiful one and so anyway I went there then eventually I went to America and I was studying in New York and I went back again to Israel in the summer of 1984 and while I was there there were actually three guys sharing a room and one of the guys who moved in his name was Frank who is a born-again Christian from Washington DC and I think he was the first born-again Christian that I'd ever met that I know of and I just knew he was different even though I didn't understand him very well but I knew he was different there was something different there's something I liked about him even though he didn't know that because I didn't make up like it at all in fact I played the devil's advocate with him a lot but one day he began to speak about Jesus in Jerusalem and I thought that's really strange what on earth would Jesus have been doing in Jerusalem because I thought that Jesus was a Catholic and so I could understand Jesus being in the Vatican or in Rome but Jerusalem I don't know what he was doing there and as weird as that seems I never dreamed he was Jewish because most of the Christians I knew hated the Jews so I thought well there's no way he could be Jewish because then they wouldn't hate the Jews obviously I was wrong but anyway and so I used to always go to the Arab market in Jerusalem for those of you being to Israel if you go to the old city there's one of the one of the entrances it's called Jaffa Gates and I'd go through Jaffa Gates and I used to go to the Arab market and so I was traveling with a friend of mine from Zimbabwe who was a rugby player and very good friend of mine really big guy and as we walking through Jaffa Gates about to go to the Arab markets just as real as my brother sitting here in the front row Jesus appears to me standing in front of me about ten feet in front of me looking at me you say how do you know this Jesus I just want to tell you something if Jesus appears to you'll know it no one's going to have to tell you and there's two major things that instantly hit me in a really powerful way the first thing is that I was amazed how Jewish he looked and how in context he looked in Jerusalem and a little bit darker than me just a little more about olive skin but more than that I didn't know the theology of who Jesus was but when I looked in his eyes I saw perfect and unconditional love like I'd never ever seen in my life before anyway and somehow I knew that he knew everything I'd ever done or ever would do and yet he loved me perfectly and with unconditional love and I knew in that moment that I was complete and that he was all that I needed isn't that amazing that was all my revelation I mean that's what the Bible says and I didn't know what the Bible said and he spoke one word to me without opening his mouth you say hardly do that well I can't explain it but he's God I guess he can do what he wants and the word he spoke to me was the word he nanny which in Hebrew means here am I in other words I am the one that you've been looking for and then as soon as he had appeared he disappeared again and I was just really upset because I thought well he's just disappeared everything I ever wanted was in front of me everything I ever needed was in front of me and now he's gone and a few seconds later he reappeared about ten feet to the right looking at me with that same incredible love and I felt so fulfilled and accepted and so complete once again and then of course you guessed it he disappeared again and again I was fancy looking around and maybe you think well what about my friend with me what about everybody around me it is like time was frozen I can't explain it it's like everybody around me was just frozen and I was like in this bubble was just me and God anyway I looked around and then the third time I saw him walking along the wall of the old city the walls very wide it's about 15 feet wide and he was walking there's the citadel or the tower of David and then then it goes towards Jaffa gate for those of you who know Jerusalem and he was walking along the wall but this time he wasn't looking at me this time he was just looking straight in front of him and I didn't know how to pray except for road prayers and Hebrew like I told you but I just thought in my heart if only he would look at me just one more time I just thought that and I believe in God's eyes in God's heart that was the first real prayer that I ever prayed from my heart even in my mouth didn't open and the very second I thought that he turned and looked me straight in the eyes just like that as if to say the very second you thought that I heard and I'm answering your prayer and so the scripture is very real to me a particular scripture that says before they call upon me I will answer them and I want you to know that before you ever call upon the Lord he's already heard you before you ever call upon him he's heard your prayer you see prayer is more for our benefit than God's benefit because God already knows our need and so I want to encourage you that God is so real that he's just a prayer away all you got to do is make your request known and God instantly hears you and he will answer your prayers and so because of that experience I've never struggled with faith because really it's easy to believe God when you know how real he is. So it was about a month after that that I was actually saved and received the Lord and the guy who led me to the Lord his name was Avi Schneider Jewish believe a wonderful man of God and he led me in the sinners prayer and then he was so excited because I just knew that I prayed this by faith I believe Jesus was the Messiah didn't know much else and he was so excited and he said brother I'm so excited he said he said I want you to know that if you go outside and the truck hits you you're going to go straight to heaven so I thought what a strange little man but I'm always very careful when I cross the road you know whenever I see trucks I avoid them at every expense that I can think of but of course in his mind he was saying that I'm saved but you see I had no idea that I wouldn't have gone to heaven I thought that I was to save because I was Jewish I thought well Gentiles have to go through Jesus but us Jews go direct you know we do UPS next day air you know I've caused God straighten out my theology since then and I realized that everybody needs Jesus in fact in the first century one of the biggest arguments amongst Jewish believers was can Gentiles also believe in Jesus and now it's almost become the opposite two thousand years later and you know it excited as I was to be saved I must confess something to you and be honest with you I think church is a good place to be honest don't you that at the same time as being excited I was kind of angry for a while and I'm over it now so just relax okay but I was angry I thought you mean all this time these Gentiles have known that Jesus the Messiah of Israel and no one ever bothered to tell me that's why I feel so strongly about Gateway's mission and Gateway Church because I wish that there was a Gateway Church where I lived in Johannesburg I wish there was a church like this in every major city of the world where there's a Jewish population that believes in going to the Jew first are you all following me because that is what you know in the first century when they believed in going to the Jew first because it's what the scripture teaches the whole world was evangelized in less than a hundred years the whole known world with no television no media no advertising nothing why just because they followed God's pattern can you imagine if the whole church comes back to the paradigm of going to the Jew first and I want you to know something it's not just one or two scriptures in fact it's one of the central themes of the New Testament is going to the Jew first and I believe that God blesses his pattern and that's why Gateway is so blessed as Pastor Roberts so clearly and eloquently explained last week so I believe this is the time of bringing the gospel back to the Jews if you'll just turn me with me to the second scripture that I spoke to you about Jeremiah 31 first I want to say who did God make the new covenant with you know there is there is a teaching that is very dangerous is not only dangerous but I believe that the devil has designed this teaching to hinder God's end time plan being fulfilled for the nations and there's a teaching called replacement theology which basically says that God has replaced Israel with a church that he's replaced the Jews with Gentiles basically and he's rejected Israel the reason that it's very dangerous is because it actually prevents people from sharing the gospel with the Jews so not only is to the Jew first not practiced but not it's not to the Jew at all period or you're following me and so it says in Jeremiah 31 31 the whole the days are coming says the law that I'll make a new covenant with who with the house of Israel and the house of Judah and so the both covenants are made with the Jews both old and you but God has grafted in the Gentiles so we are all one family the Bible says rafted into the commonwealth of Israel then Jeremiah 31 verse 35 through 37 says this it says that says the Lord who gives the sun for a light by day the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night who disturbs the sea and its waves roar the Lord of hosts is his name if those ordinances depart from me says the Lord then the seat of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me forever you know God feels so strongly about the Jews and about his covenant with Israel that he goes to all the trouble to say that basically the only way the Jews can stop to exist as a nation and as a people is if the sun if the sun stopped shining every day and we know what happened if that happened if the stars stopped coming out in the evening if you go out one night into the beautiful Texas sky and there's no stars if all of the ocean suddenly becomes a lake and there's no waves if that happens then they'll they won't be in Jews anymore and then just in case it wasn't enough to emphasize God's points he thought let me he feels so strongly about he goes to verse 37 and says let me emphasize this even more and then he says this that says the Lord if heaven above can be measured so now God has made it absolutely impossible because there's no ways anybody can measure all the galaxies even with all the technology we have today they can never be measured and the foundations of the earth search start beneath then our cost off the seat of Israel you think God feels strongly about this I think he feels pretty strongly about it so I and I'm comforted because you know they've been trying to kill me for two thousand years you know not only me but you know I'm saying my people and so it's comforting to know because really if you look in the natural there's no ways there is no ways that the Jews should have survived what we've gone through over these years unless it was the hand of God you know as a Jewish believer Jewish believers are kind of caught between a rock and a hard place because in the Jewish community they say well you know you're not a Jew anymore you're a Christian now so you're not one of us anymore then in much of the church world they say well you're not a Jew anymore because the Bible says there's neither Jew nor Gentile and so you I'm just kind of the sort of blob that's in Christ you know I'm not I'm not I'm not Jewish I'm not Christian well whatever I'm just a blob you know but if you turn to Romans 3 28 that's the scripture that's that they use it says there's neither Jew nor Greeks slave nor free male nor female that's interesting so the same scripture so how many in here are female and you believe in Jesus put up your hands wow that's amazing you can be both wow okay how many in here are males and you believe in Jesus okay 90% of you the other 10% you need to go to freedom ministries that haven't put up your hand okay so I think you catch the drift you can be a Jew and believe in Jesus you don't give up your national heritage you don't give up who God has made you to be because the Bible says that each man remain in the states that he was in when God called him that doesn't mean any sin but as far as your your natural disposition and your your cultural background and you know Paul the Apostles was speaking to the Jews in Jerusalem the same Paul the Apostle that penned there's neither Jew nor Greek slave nor free etc male nor female the very same Paul the Apostles addressing Jewish leaders in Jerusalem and Acts 22 3 and you can read it in your own time and he starts off the address saying I am a Jew the same Paul they possibly said there's not you understand so it doesn't mean he just became a blob now in Christ basically what that saying is is that when when push comes to shove the bottom line when the rubber meets the road what really matters is that you in Christ I mean all agree on that but it doesn't mean you understand and so that is important because if you think they have to stop being Jewish to believe in Jesus then many of them won't receive the Lord and so really you know I became a completed Jew when I came to faith in my Messiah just as a guy becomes a completed guy or a woman becomes a completed or a whole woman in the same way and you know one thing I must say here as I'm beginning to close up here is that the Bible says in Acts 4 12 that there is salvation and no other name and by the way Peter was speaking to a Jewish audience when he said that but you know I I unashamedly share the gospel with my people I unashamedly say that Jesus is the promised Messiah of Israel that he fulfilled the law and the prophets and we are seeing more Jews saved today every month virtually we seeing Jews saved right here at the Messianic service here at Gateway and I encourage you all to come just to experience it to stand with us and support us in that but you know the DNA of Gateway is God's DNA to reach his chosen people and I just want to share a story and closing as to why I'm even here why I even exist because it's a real miraculous story my grandparents as I mentioned grew up in Lithuania and many of the towns that the Jews lived in was sometimes forty percent Jewish sometimes fifty percent Jewish and the town that my great grandfather grew up in in Lithuania was almost 40 percent Jewish about 36 percent the population was around 16,000 there were almost 7,000 Jews and he was in the Russian army because Lithuania was part of Russia until 1918 and he contracted a form of tuberculosis and he was very worried about his health went to the doctor and said doctor how can I live a long life and I'm not a medical person but the doctor said to him that if you live at a higher altitude where the air is thinner you live longer and so he said where can I go and he said well there's a place in South Africa called South Africa where you can make a good living and there's a sudden tip of Africa and there's a big gold rush there and there's gold mines there and you could open up a store among of those mines and the altitude is very high Johannesburg is very high I think it's about 6,000 meters which was around 18,000, 20,000 feet above sea level something like that and so he went to do that left his family behind they didn't see him for a long time but they came after Russian revolution in the first world war they came to join him in South Africa and I'm saying all of that to say this from 1941 to 1943 especially in 1943 when the Nazis came through Lithuania and through that village the Jewish population went from as I said 36% down to 0 in a few months and they would take all the rest of the Jews that were left in that city make them take off their clothes they would either dig deep pits or they would be pits that were already there didn't matter if they were babies young old doesn't really matter they would just line them all up and they would just mow them down like they were dogs and if there was a few hundred they would just hold their machine guns but if there was a few thousand there was one that actually read about there was over 5,000 and when that would happen because the Nazis didn't want to hurt their biceps by holding their machine guns so long god forbid you know what they did is they put their machine guns on tripods and they would just sit there casually smoking a cigarette and just gun them down and mow them down but you know this really touched my heart even when I began to read more about it recently that God wants to save the Jewish people and you know if my great grandfather didn't have tuberculosis if he hadn't left I wouldn't be here today and what I want to say through that is that when God's hand is upon somebody and God's hand is upon every one of you whether you know it or not when God has a destiny on your life there is nothing that any person can do to stop it because God will literally if necessary move heaven and earth to make sure that your calling is fulfilled in this life and God will preserve you. 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