Now Things Have Changed
. . . remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel,
Excluded From – Paul likes to use opposites to capture important ideas. We do the same thing, contrasting opposites in order to make our ideas clear. But Paul’s use of opposites isn’t quite the same as ours. Sha’ul thinks like a rabbi, so his idea of opposites isn’t quite like the Greek idea of contrasting pairs. Sha’ul uses opposite the way that Hebrew poetry uses antithetical parallelism, that is, one idea is elaborated by showing how it is disconnected from another idea. While we tend to think of opposites in terms of distance from each other, Sha’ul often expresses opposites in terms of their distance from the center. For him, Yeshua HaMashiach is the center. So, he views everything in terms of its distance from Yeshua. To be opposite is to be further away.
Think about this verse. Sha’ul says that once we who are Gentiles were far away from peace with God. We were separated from Yeshua and, as a consequence, we were excluded from Israel. The Greek verb is apallotrioo. Here it is a passive perfect participle. Yes, I know. Who can remember what those grammatical designations really mean? But in this case, the grammar is very important. The passive means that the action happens to us, not that we did it. Sha’ul is saying that some other force or circumstances caused us to be separated. That external force is sin. Sin did something to us. Furthermore, the verb is a perfect tense participle. That means it describes an action in the past that has continuing consequences in the present. Something happened that continues to keep us out.
The opposite of being in the commonwealth of Israel is to be a victim of sin. Sin takes us far off, away from God, away from Israel, away from the covenants of promise. Yeshua brings us close, back to Israel, back to peace with God, back to the covenants. When sin attacks us and we fall into its clutches, we are without hope. But Yeshua delivers us. He restores us to Israel by removing the separation. We are no longer opposite. We are now near.
Behind all this is the Hebrew word zur. You will find its connection to this Greek verb in the LXX translations of Job 21:29, Psalm 58:3 (57:4 LXX), Psalm 69:8 (68:9 LXX) and Jeremiah 19:4. It basically means “to turn aside.” It is the word used for strangers and aliens. This is important. It implies that once you are part of Israel, you are no longer zur. Now you belong. Sha’ul says that same thing in this verse. Notice what he does not say (we will be Greek for a moment). He does not say that once Yeshua brings you near, you will be a Christian. He says that once Yeshua removes the separation, you will come back to Israel.You won’t be a stranger to the household of God.
Accompanying the translation “excluded from” is the possible nuance that we did something to push us out. Sha’ul is more compassionate here. We were thrust out by an alien force. Since it is an alien force, it spawns offspring of the same nature – alienation. God intends fellowship and citizenship, the opposite of being a stranger.
Once more we see that Sha’ul sees Yeshua at the center of Israel. Not the “new” Israel that so many Christian theologians suggest, but rather the same Israel established at Sinai. Sha’ul uses a very Hebraic expression to help us see we were once aliens and strangers. Sin made us that way. But now things are different. Now we belong to the people of God. The gap is gone. Praise His name, He brought us home.
Topical Index: excluded, alien, stranger, zur, apallotrioo, Ephesians 2:12
For today’s photo, click here – Antigua, Guatemala
Shalom shabbat-Shana Tova
Yeshua is the “ha makom” of God’s reconciliation of the opposites that started with the knowledge of the good and evil. With Yeshua the dualistic reasoning is over and we, as his disciples must learn this wonderful and marvelous truth: How God’s reconciliation reach every sphere of creation. No more dual reasoning, no more good and bad, no more distiction between humans beings, no more of the segregation cause by this type of knowledge. Praise be Hashem.
IGS
“The gap is gone.”
Hi Ismael,
Two things come to my mind with your expression “The gap is gone.”
On a personal note, I worked in “the GAP building” at Foundry Networks for three years, not so long ago.
It was called the GAP building because it was on Great America Parkway (GAP) and Old Ironsides Road in Santa Clara, CA.
The night before I started working there, my wife brought a DVD of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino into our bedroom and told me to watch it.
It was getting late, and I didn’t want to, but she said it was overdue so I did.
The funny thing was that in the middle of the rather long movie, Al Pacino mentions that he must go back to the “foundry” where he lives.
Say what?
As it turns out, a foundry is also a word for Jewish “ghetto” as well as a place where they forge “ironworks.”
At Fuondry, I worked on the ServerIron Layer 4 – 7 networking hardware and software; it was the “foundation” of my life for three years.
The “gap” is gone now; Foundry was sold to Brocade.
Ironically, the Foundry logo on the building was replaced with a big red “B” in the form of a heart with a gap in the middle and a sign that says Extraordinary Networks.
The second thing, speaking of returning home to the Jewish commonwealth and Skip’s message for today, is the final scene in the Odyessy.
Not exactly a historicist reading of the text, where Odysseus achieves his goal of returning home to family and country after being exiled by the gods for 20 years.
But the “olive tree” in his courtyard at the center of his house does make me think of the “grafting” of gentiles onto their Jewish foundation.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/homer/aoo/aoo39.htm
Said Penelope, ‘In no stranger’s bed wilt thou lie, my lord. Come, Eurycleia. Set up for him his own bedstead outside his bed-chamber.’
Then Odysseus said to her, speaking in anger: ‘How comes it that my bed can be moved to this place and that? Not a bed of that kind was the bed I built for myself. Knowest thou not how I built my bed?
First, there grew up in the courtyard an olive tree. Round that olive tree I built a chamber, and I roofed it well and I set doors to it. Then I sheared off all the light wood on the growing olive tree, and I rough-hewed the trunk with the adze, and I made the tree into a bed post. Beginning with this bed post I wrought a bedstead, and when I finished it, I inlaid it with silver and ivory. Such was the bed I built for myself, and such a bed could not be moved to this place or that.’
Then did Penelope know assuredly that the man who stood before her was indeed her husband, the steadfast Odysseus–none other knew of where the bed was placed, and how it had been built. Penelope fell a-weeping and she put her arms round his neck
So many years ago, this was read. Long forgotten now.
Such a beautiful picture is painted with these words, thank you for it, Michael!
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(Ephesians 2.12)
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians has been called “the Switzerland of the New Testament” and I believe this to be so. I hope I haven’t “stole your thunder” in including the “rest of the story”- “without hope and without G-d in the world”, but those who are not yet “in Christ”, are located here. “Without”. (outside) We are either “in” or “out”. And to be without hope! Tragic! and to be without G-d! Lost like a ping-pong ball in a blizzard.. I am remembering the story brother Skip of the prodigal Father welcoming home the repentant son and the lavish welcome he received. What a Savior we serve! Behold, what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called, “the sons of G-d”. Amazing! Yes, we do need to remember our lives.. (b.c.) “before Christ”. What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought..(Since Jesus came into my heart!)..http://www.hymnal.net/hymn.php/h/309
“God intends fellowship and citizenship, the opposite of being a stranger.
Once more we see that Sha’ul sees Yeshua at the center of Israel. ”
When reading this I was struck to my core…isn’t it interesting that today, in our cities and our world, we are lacking fellowship and citizenship. We are strangers. God is NOT at the center.
Once again, Lord, please bring us home!
Shalom Skip,
Such a truth …. such a light that needs to be shone to all mankind …. there is only one Israel!
The posting of this message Skip is as the sound of the shofar to my heart …. certainly Yeshua will REMEMBER you hayom!
Off to gather with mishpocha now …. be blessed one and all!
L’Shana Tova! to all that will read this.— My husband golfed this morning, watched sports on TV this afternoon, and tonight is watching U of TX (Austin), and TX Tech-(Lubbock) play on TV. His golfing buddy twenty years his age, teaches at the later, and graduated from U of TX. So he has much interest in all of that. I have been working on a baby quilt for several days, when I could. The mother to be, that I had not met until today, drove down from Dallas, and came to see her mother, and they came to see the quilt for a baby boy to be born in Dec. God had ordained “that gift” about three years ago, when I first heard that this secretary at the H.S. here, was also working another job at Wal-Mart, in order to provide and care for her own elderly ill mother.– I knew I was to reach out to her, but the doors were not opened until Spring of 2009, when I learned that she was expecting her first grandbaby. The Lord quickened my spirit that I was to make the baby a quilt. So I have been doing that. But the night lights in this 81 year old house, and my old eyes do not allow me to sew at night. But I can use the computer or read in my utility room with lower ceilings and a florescence light.
Therefore, I came in here and read Skip’s DD, and all of the comments, and appreciated each one for their totally different information.
I recalled that a week ago yesterday, Ed and I had gone to see a DVD on large professional screen at a church here. Our son had given us a copy of the author’s signed book, his first non-fiction, and Ed wanted to see this one:” Inside the Revolution” by Joel C. Rosenberg. I had barely read the first book about 2002 or so. Recalled that he was a Jew— one that believed in Jesus– that was about it. After we saw the DVD last week that was suppose to be seen by 650,000 people that night across the nation.
I got on his web site and think that many of you will be interested in his “Spiritual Journey” found on the web site under “About Joel”. His father & mother were Jewish, came from Russia, Europe, to U.S. He married a Gentile – ( a Methodist), they began to search for a living God. He is open and candid about what he saw in his Jewish family, and what he desired for his own life. All of you studying the Hebrew/ Greek words-translations–will certainly be joyous over his testimony.—- Joel’s part in the DVD: “Inside the Revolution”, shows him as a sincere honest seeker, even if the one book I read of his, is not necessarily equal to that. The DVD is worth your time, because of a few excellent testimonies given by a Coptic Priest–truly born of God’s Holy Spirit, with a price on his head several times the one on Bin Laden, and one of a man without his picture shown, is from a real terrorist, that became a Christian. —the web site: http://www.joelrosenberg.com
Also on the web site, and under, About Joel: “Spiritual Journey”, are some interesting statics about how many Messanic Christians are actually in Israel today. I think they are multiplying very rapidly here in the U.S. too. As I mentioned previously, they seem to be coming out of the woodwork here in TX, and I know they are in Ok. and AZ, too, from my own family.
According to the Harper’s Bible Dictionary by Miller, Fall feasts, festivals, reminders all the way back 4000 years ago, at Succoth, an ancient city E. of the Jordan on a magnificent highland site, Jacob, the Hebrew Patriarch, built shelters for his family and booths for his animals after his happy reconciliation with estranged brother, Esau. (Gen. 33:16).
—— Spelling becomes Sukkoth ( booths) the feast of Tabernacles, also known as the harvest celebration of the “feast of the ingathering- (Ex. 34:22) celebratated in the 7th Hebrew month ( corresponding to the latter part of September and the first of October).—-I think Skip is on schedule to speak this year at the one near Ft. Worth, at Joe Pool’s Lake. – Texans got the information on it, interesting to read the information. http://www.moedintexas.com L.B.
Yeshua fathomed the breach! Yes, the gap is gone Amein! Now we may find ourselves standing in a breach within the house of Yisrael even today. We must take the same position and posture of the Messiah, we must stand in the breaches and cry out for the reconciliation of His house.