STILL JEWS, ONLY MORE  (Acts 18:18-28))

While they were leaving an event at the Jewish Museum in Washington DC Wednesday, two staff members from the Israeli embassy were shot dead by a gunman shouting “Free Palestine!” They were Jews. They were Israelis. So in that man’s mind, they were valid targets.

Two topics that have made their way onto the news just about every day over the last couple of years are the modern nation of Israel and the ancient reality of antisemitism. That nation was founded in 1948 as a homeland for the Jews. Anti-Semitism is the settled dislike or even hatred of the Jews as a people. It has been a reality in the world ever since the pogroms in Egypt we read about in Genesis and in Persia recounted in Esther. The most horrific example of anti-Semitism in modern times was what Hitlers Germany did about eighty years ago, what is usually known as the Holocaust when people talk about it today. The founding of the nation of Israel was a direct response to that disaster. Some people believed that the world would learn its lesson, and anti-Semitism would go away. It hasn’t. Rivers of blood have been shed over the issue, especially since October 7 of 2023. Anti-Semitism is a reality that shows up in headlines and even in legislation repeatedly these days. I say all that just to let you know that our society hasn’t escaped the issue of who the Jews are and what should be done about them, and is not likely to settle the matter any time soon.

What we can do here today is notice the Jewishness of the apostle Paul and his missionary helpers in the book of Acts, and let their Jewishness teach us some things about who we are and how we should live in Dundalk today. Specifically, we are listening for three lessons from four Jews in Acts 18:18-28. And if you’re thinking that the issue has nothing to do with you because you’re not Jewish, just give me a few minutes. You’ll see that it has everything to do with you if you are a Christian today. Even if you’re not a Christian, the reality is that you’ll have a hard time understanding what you’re reading when you read the news unless you grasp these key lessons.

S&R Acts 18:18-28

3 lessons from four new, true Jews

Maybe the first thing I need to do is explain what I mean by new, true Jews. So here it is. Jesus was a Jew. All of his first disciples were Jews. All of them went on considering themselves Jews after deciding to follow Jesus. In fact, they believed that they were following Jesus precisely because he was the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews. They believed that when they went to the local synagogues to announce that the Messiah had come, they were telling their fellow Jews the best news imaginable: Judaism had succeeded in its mission and reached its consummation. Because they believed the Torah and were fully aware that God’s ancient covenant with Abraham included a blessing to all the families of the earth, they believed that the kingdom, the covenant, and the family of God were now open to anyone from any of the nations, anyone who became a follower of Jesus the Messiah. And they believed that these new gentile followers of the Jewish Messiah Jesus became as genuinely Jewish as those who had grown up as Jews. Even when those Gentile Jews no longer observed of the precepts of the Law of Moses, things like circumcision and kosher and such, they were still fully accepted within the covenant community of the people of God. This was the fulfillment of the entire purpose and all the promises of the Old Testament. This was good news for Jews!

However… in almost every synagogue where this gospel was ever preached, the solid majority of each congregation firmly rejected the message. They did not consider it to be good news at all. To the most well instructed among them it probably sounded like a rejection of God’s covenant with Israel through Moses. To the less well-educated I’m sure it just sounded new and weird and wrong. They routinely reacted to Paul’s gospel the same way that he had reacted to it when he was still a lost man: violent rejection.

Yet when we just read this passage, it identified Paul and Aquila and Priscilla and Apollos as Jews. They would not have understood our modern way of insisting that someone must be either a Christian or a Jew. Like I’ve been telling you for some time now, they just think that they are more truly Jews than they have ever been. They are new, true Jews. By the way, so are you, if you’re a follower of Jesus today.

3 lessons from four new, true Jews

PAUL CAN TEACH US SOMETHING ABOUT JEWISHNESS

¹⁸ After this, Paul stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila. At Cenchreae he had cut his hair, for he was under a vow. ¹⁹ And they came to Ephesus, and he left them there, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. ²⁰ When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined. ²¹ But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills,” and he set sail from Ephesus.

²² When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and then went down to Antioch. ²³ After spending some time there, he departed and went from one place to the next through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.

There are a couple of little details that need to be looked at here. In verse 18, Paul is just finishing his time in Corinth. He decides to go back to Antioch in Syria—what we would call his sending church—and take Priscilla and Aquila with him. He hops on a boat at Cenchreae, which was the port for the city of Corinth. He’s going to sail back to Antioch, rather than walking. He also gets his hair cut while he’s at that port city, which will actually be a key piece of the lesson we’re about to learn. He stops at the next major city, Ephesus, and drops his friends off there. Ephesus was one of the biggest cities in the Roman Empire at that point, and Paul had been itching to get there for well over a year. However, he could only go to the synagogue and just begin to explain the gospel. He does, and the people there are intrigued, and want to hear more. It must have driven Paul crazy that he couldn’t stay. But he had to go. Let’s see why.

He sailed to the next port city, Caesarea Maritima, just up the Mediterranean coast from where Tel Aviv now sits. When it says in verse 22 that he went up and greeted the church, it means that he went south and inland and uphill into Judea to visit the mother church, Jerusalem. That is another key piece in the lesson we’re about to learn. I’ll show you what I mean in just a moment. After that he returns to Antioch, his own church, the sendibng church, to report about the mission trip he just finished—what we call Paul’s second missionary journey. Then, in verse 23 he goes back over some cities he has already visited to check on churches he has already planted. Here he’s actually beginning his third missionary journey.

All right. Why did he get his hair cut in verse 18? What does it mean that he was under a vow? And what does that have to do with Jerusalem? It means that he had vowed a vow to God according to the teachings of the law of Moses, and therefore did not cut his hair until the vow was complete. Probably he went to Jerusalem to sacrifice an animal at the Temple, and also to burn up all the hair that he had cut off. That was standard practice according to the law of the Nazirite—the same law that had dictated why Samson was not allowed to cut his hair many centuries earlier.

What all that means is that, the whole time Paul was traveling from one Gentile city to another, introducing the gospel of Jesus to one Jewish synagogue after another and letting them all know that the new Gentile believers did not need to keep the law of Moses to be saved, so long as they just believed in Jesus, he was still himself, privately, gladly and faithfully living by the Law of Moses.

And what that means for us today is that modern Jews can embrace Jesus as savior and Messiah and still go on living faithfully under the law of Moses to maintain their basic ethnic identity as Jews. Almost all mainstream Jews in the modern world believe that they must choose between being Jewish and being Christian. They don’t think there’s any conceivable way you could be both. Yet Paul was both. He was a new, true Jew, free to either observe the Mosaic code or not—whatever the needs of the gospel might dictate in any situation. But he did live by it habitually, devotedly, because it was what he had known since childhood. It felt far more natural and right to him, far more at home in his basic identity, than saying the Pledge of Allegiance or celebrating Memorial Day feels to you and me. We do those things because we love our country and we value its customs and traditions. We don’t worship our country, and if there is ever a conflict between what our country demands and what our God demands, God wins, hands down, no questions asked. Look around you. Standard summer patriotic decorations are up. We love this stuff.

If you read Moses’ writings carefully, he loved the Law of Moses, and loved living by the Law of Moses—well, all of it except the parts about sacrificing animals to atone for sins. That part was done for everyone, forever. Jesus offered himself up as the last and only truly atoning sacrifice.

I’m telling you all of this because I don’t want you to think that, because the Old Covenant is gone, therefore there’s no place for Torah-observant Jews in the Kingdom of God. There are some Christians these days who are saying that, in a kind of modern American conservative Christian anti-Semitism. But it absolutely is not true.

I also realize that some things I have said in our study of the Acts of the Holy Spirit, beginning with our working definition of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and reaching even to the idea that Christians are the new, true Jews, might have sounded like a kind of anti-Semitism, but it’s not the same thing at all. I stand 100% behind what I have said. What I’ve never said is Christians aren’t free to keep Torah and identify with the Judaism of their ancestors—if in fact they were raised to eat kosher and keep Passover and have their baby boys circumcised. We are free to keep as much of Moses’ Law as we want—except the sacrifice codes. In fact, many aspects of Torah-observance are positively healthy and helpful. In particular, the right kind of Sabbath-keeping is still incumbent upon every one of us.

What I’m saying is that our brother Paul’s practice of loving the Law and keeping much of the Law can teach us a lot about valid Jewishness to this very day. If you’re thinking, “I’m a New Covenant Christian, so I’m free from the Law of Moses,” well and good. You should think that, and you should jealously guard that freedom. Paul teaches us that, more than any other Bible writer. But we also see him exercising his freedom to keep the Law, almost like a spiritual discipline that you and I might keep, such as daily Bible reading. We should learn a lesson from Paul here.

PRISCILLA AND AQUILA CAN TEACH US SOMETHING ABOUT DISCIPLESHIP

• remember who this couple are
• T&R&E Acts 18:1-4, 18, 26
• solid blue-collar businessman, tradesman, & his wife
• new, true Jews
• not intimidated by Apollos’ prodigious gifts and qualifications
• rather, insight to notice an area of weakness and immaturity

initiative to take him aside

investment

• growing disciples growing a disciple
• T&R 1Cor 16:19

APOLLOS CAN TEACH US SOMETHING ABOUT ZEAL

²⁴ Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. ²⁵ He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. ²⁶ He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. ²⁷ And when he wished to cross to Achaia, (Corinth) the brothers (in Ephesus) encouraged him and wrote to the disciples (in Corinth) to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, ²⁸ for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus.

• “fervent in spirit”

Zeal to speak the gospel

• infatuated with Jesus
• T&R&E 1Co 1:11; half a dozen other mentions in 1Co; Tit 3:13

Zeal to keep learning

• instructed, but still learning… curious about everything

Zeal to listen to other Christians

• humble and teachable, especially by Aquila & Priscilla

what God wants them to do

• all four clearly identified as Jews
• are you a new, true Jew?
• how do you think about mainstream Jews?
• love them
• pray for them
• invite them to Jesus