Church Fanatics
“You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law;” Acts 21:20
Zealous – There’s a lot of discussion these days about the impact, power and outreach of the early church. There are a lot of books, programs, videos and training tools that try to recapture all that energy for our struggling congregations. We read the accounts of the demonstration of God in power and we wonder why we don’t see the same things happening today. Of course, we could listen to the theologians who tell us that God only managed such demonstrations for the grand opening celebration. However, those pronouncements seem like rationalizations of our ineptitude rather than explanations of a God who has been shaking up things for a long, long time. There’s another problem that makes all the New Testament evidence even more difficult to explain. Since God opened the doors on His grand plan way back at Sinai, it hardly seems likely that He shut them when the last apostle died. Maybe we need to read a bit more carefully.
When Paul shows up in Jerusalem, recounting his work visiting synagogues and preaching the truth of the Messiah, he is greeted enthusiastically with this comment, “You see, brother . . .” What are these fellow believers anxious for Paul to see? That there are thousands of believers and that they are all zealous for the Law? Let’s re-read this from a Hebrew perspective (which was, of course, how it was originally expressed). The Jerusalem counsel tells Paul that thousands of Jews have come to believe that Yeshua is the Messiah. They are still Jewish, but now they are what we would call Messianic Jews. Notice the next part of this eager announcement. Every one of these believers is zealous for the Torah. They haven’t stopped being Jewish in their outlook on life. In fact, they are more enthusiastic than ever about practicing Torah observance. Actually, the Greek text doesn’t use the word as a verb. It’s a noun. They are zelotai. They are zealots. It’s not just what they do. It’s who they are. They are walking, talking examples of Torah-living. They aren’t just a few left-overs from prior Jewish rituals. All of the new converts to Messianic Judaism are living affirmations of the central place of the Torah.
Do you suppose that this had anything to do with the outpouring of God’s Spirit in their community? Do you think that God found these believers incredibly useful to Him since they were living in obedience to His ways? The rather amazing fact, subsequently ignored, is that when the lives of men and women find grace in God and become followers of His way of doing things, His Spirit floods them with demonstrations of His desire to reach the rest of the world. They become the channels of God’s majesty, power and compassion. Suddenly those tiny restricted pipelines that couldn’t accommodate God’s greatness are opened wide and He comes pouring through.
I wonder if we haven’t missed the obvious. Maybe we don’t experience the same kind of amazing church growth, transformed lives and cultural impact because we are no longer zelotai for the Torah. We’ve put those books on the shelf under “Interesting History but No Longer Applicable.” We’ve closed down the pipeline to the smallest possible opening and allowed only grace to squeeze its way through. Consequently, the excited announcement of the Jerusalem council doesn’t gush from our lips – and neither do the signs and wonders that accompany it.
Topical Index: church, Acts 21:20
