The Meaning of Messiah
If we are going to follow him faithfully, then our understanding of Jesus must be shaped by who he says he is, not merely by who we say he is.
The following essay is adapted from a message I shared at Friends Community Church.
When I was growing up, my poor mom was almost never introduced by her own name. She was "Brianna's mom," or "Ray's wife," or somebody's whatever-she-happened-to-be. To this day, people will still introduce her that way: "This is Brianna's mom." It's actually kind of funny. People know who she is primarily by her relationship to someone else.
As people, we do this all the time. When we introduce others, we instinctively describe them by their relationship to us. "This is my husband, Mike." "This is my mom, Carolyn." "This is my friend..." We define people through the categories that make the most sense to us, but those categories are rarely how people introduce themselves. My mom doesn't walk up to strangers and lead with, "Hi, I'm Brianna's mom." Eventually that relationship may come up, but it isn't the foundation of her identity. It is the foundation of how I know her, but not the foundation of how she knows herself.
I think we often do this very same thing with Jesus.
When we talk about him, we tend to begin introducing him to others in the ways that have meant the most to us personally. We call him Savior, Friend, Teacher, or Rescuer. Every one of those titles is true. They are beautiful, biblical descriptions of who Jesus is.
But are those the categories Jesus would have chosen to introduce himself?
When Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" he wasn't asking strangers. The question was directed at the people who had spent the most time with him, probing whether they truly understood his identity. It is a question that still confronts every one of us today.
If Jesus were introducing himself to us, what title would he place first? How did he understand his own mission? Who is Jesus?
I have a friend who wrestles searches for answers to this question constantly. Over the years, he has heard liturgy that now feels empty to him. He has listened to passionate sermons. He's encountered cultural ideas about Jesus—billboards, commercials, along with familiar phrases like, "Jesus loves you," "Jesus died for you," and "Make Jesus Lord of your life." The problem is that every person seems to describe Jesus a little differently. Each one gives him a slightly different version, and it has left him with the impression that Jesus is simply whoever someone says he is—whoever someone wants him to be.
Our personal testimonies matter. They’re important. They are evidence of God’s faithfulness in our lives. To the addict, Jesus is the one who breaks chains. To the lonely, he is a faithful friend. To the brokenhearted, he is a healer. To the desperate, he is a rescuer. Those stories are real, and they deserve to be told.
But alone, they are not enough.
If we are going to follow Jesus faithfully, there comes a point where we must mature beyond simply talking about what Jesus has done for us and begin asking who Jesus understood himself to be. Our witness may begin with our story, but it must ultimately grow into Jesus' story about himself.
Otherwise, we are left to worship a Jesus of our own making.
If we are going to follow him faithfully, then our understanding of Jesus must be shaped by who he says he is, not merely by who we say he is.
The Question—Who did Jesus believe himself to be?
In John 4, Jesus has a remarkable conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. As they speak about worship, she tells him, "I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will teach us all things." Jesus responds with an astonishing declaration: "I who speak to you am he."
Jesus openly identifies himself as the Messiah she’s waiting for. But that answer only leads to another question: What exactly is a Messiah?
When the woman says the Messiah will "teach us all things," what are those "all things" she has in mind?
She had a very defined expectation of the Messiah, but do we?
Is there a way to outline the role, the mission, and the responsibilities of the one God promised to send?
Jesus certainly thought so. He learned about the Messiah from the Scriptures. They shaped his understanding of who he was, why he came, and what God was doing in the world.
That is why, when Jesus stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth and read from Isaiah,
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor... to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor..." (Luke 4:18–19)
he knew exactly what he was claiming about himself.
The real question is whether we do.
Who were the captives Isaiah was talking about? What is "the year of the Lord's favor" and when does it arrive? What office was Jesus claiming to occupy when he declared that he was the anointed one?
Those are the types of questions that will guide this series.
Over the next several weeks, my goal is to help us learn to see Jesus the way Jesus saw himself. We are going to understand the Messiah through the very Scriptures that shaped his own understanding of his mission. More than that, we're going to ask what it actually means to confess that Jesus is the Messiah.
To do that, we're going to begin where Jesus himself directed his followers after the resurrection: Luke 24.
The Scriptures—Jesus Learned About His Mission
After his resurrection, Jesus encountered two discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus. They knew the events of the crucifixion. They knew the reports of the empty tomb. They were hoping this man who had been killed at Passover was the one who would “redeem Israel.”
Jesus' response is striking.
He does not begin by appealing to their personal experience, telling them about the death he suffered. He does not perform a miracle. Instead, Luke tells us that, "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27).
To appreciate what Jesus is doing, it helps to understand the structure of the Bible he was reading.
The Hebrew Scriptures—what Jewish people often call the Tanakh—are traditionally divided into three sections:
the Torah (the books of Moses),
the Prophets,
and the Writings.
The Torah includes Genesis through Deuteronomy. The Prophets include not only Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, but also Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. The final section, the Writings, includes books like Psalms, Proverbs, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
Sometimes Jesus refers to these three sections as "Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms," using Psalms—the largest book in the Writings—as a shorthand for the entire final section. “Moses” works the same way—it means the Torah. In other words, Jesus points these discouraged disciples to the whole Hebrew Bible.
Why? Because that is where the Messiah is defined.
A few verses earlier, Jesus asks, "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" (Luke 24:26).
Notice the language carefully. Jesus doesn't begin by saying, "I had to suffer," speaking in the first person. He says, "The Messiah had to suffer." Jesus is thinking of his own death and resurrection not as something that happened to him personally, but in terms of an office—a role, a vocation, a mission.
An illustration can help. The President of the United States is an office. Today, Donald Trump occupies that office. Before him, others occupied it. Long after him, others will as well. The office itself exists independently of the individual. It carries defined responsibilities, authority, expectations, and duties because the Constitution of the United States establishes what a president is supposed to do as well as the credientials one must have to occupy the office.
The same is true of the Messiah. Jesus is a person. Messiah is an office.
Long before Jesus was born, the Hebrew Scriptures had already described that office. They define what qualifies someone to be the Messiah, what the Messiah is expected to accomplish, why the Messiah suffers, what he inherits, how he reigns, the length of his term, and what God's purposes for him are.
Jesus understood himself as stepping into an existing role. He did not invent the office; he inherited it. That is why he continually returned to the Scriptures. His point was not simply, "Look what happened to me." His point was, "Surely you know—this is what the Messiah must do!"
Once the disciples began to see that pattern in the Scriptures, the identity of Jesus became unmistakable. That is why I think we need to begin here as well. Before we ask what Jesus means to us, or even what he has done for us, we should first ask a more fundamental question: What did Jesus think it meant to be the Messiah?
Because if Jesus understood himself through the office of Messiah, then we need to understand that office too.
What is a Messiah?
The word Messiah comes from the Hebrew word Mashiach. The word Christ comes from the Greek Christos. They are not two different titles. Christos is simply the Greek translation of the Hebrew Mashiach.
Messiah. Christ. Same title. Different languages.
The Hebrew word Mashiach means "anointed one." More literally, it refers to someone who has been anointed with oil.
Throughout the Scriptures, anointing was the act of setting a person or object apart for God's purposes. It marked something as belonging to God and being commissioned for a holy task. People were anointed. Sacred objects were anointed. Even altars and stones could be anointed. Anointing was God's way of publicly designating something for his service.
One of the most surprising discoveries for many Christians is that the Bible doesn't contain only one messiah. It contains many.
Aaron was an anointed priest. David was an anointed king. Solomon was an anointed king. Even Cyrus, the Persian ruler, is called God's anointed in Isaiah 45.
The Scriptures are filled with mashiachs—anointed ones. Priests, kings, prophets, judges, leaders, and deliverers all carry this designation in one way or another. When Jesus spoke about "the Messiah," he wasn't introducing a brand-new concept. He was stepping into a category the Scriptures had been developing for centuries. And this is where things become fascinating.
Each of these anointed figures reveals something about the work of the coming ultimate Messiah. Aaron teaches us about priesthood. David teaches us about kingship. Moses reveals what it means to lead God's people and mediate between God and Israel. The prophets demonstrate what it looks like to speak God's word faithfully. Each one contributes another brushstroke to an unfinished portrait. Together, they create the expectation of an anointed one who would accomplish everything God's earlier servants could accomplish only in part.
When Jesus read the Scriptures, these were the portraits he encountered. These were the categories that shaped his understanding of his own mission. The title "Messiah" was never a label that Jesus was free to define however he wished. Long before he was born, the Scriptures had already begun filling that title with concrete meaning.
That is why the opening verse of Matthew's Gospel is so significant.
The Messiah is Jewish
"The book of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham."
Most of us are eager to skip over the long list of unfamiliar names and get to the "important" parts. Matthew has other ideas. He is introducing us to Jesus's messianic credentials. The first thing Matthew wants us to understand is that the office of Messiah is thoroughly Jewish.
In order to be the Messiah, one must be Jewish.
Christianity did not invent Christ. Jesus did not invent Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah, Christians are disciples of the Messiah, but the Messiah belongs to Israel's story before he belongs to Christianity. To be Messiah, you must belong to the covenant family and story that produced Messiah.
You must belong to Abraham's family. You must stand within Israel's covenant. You must inherit the promises God made to his people.
“Christ” (or Messiah) is not a generic title for a heroic or savior-like figure. It is a covenantal office rooted in the history of Israel.
That is why Matthew begins where he does. He first calls Jesus "the son of Abraham” because in Genesis 12, God chose Abraham and established a covenant with him. Through Abraham's family, God promised blessing, a covenant relationship, and ultimately blessing for all the nations of the earth. From that moment forward, God's redemptive plan for the world would unfold through Abraham's family.
That has never changed.
Jesus is the heir of those promises. Without Abraham, there is no Messiah.
Matthew then identifies Jesus as "the son of David." In 2 Samuel 7, God promised David an everlasting throne, an enduring kingdom, and a descendant who would reign forever. "Son of David" became one of the great messianic titles in Israel because it pointed to God's promise that the coming king would arise from David's royal line. We'll spend much more time exploring that promise in the next message.
But for now, notice what Matthew has done. With a single verse, he places Jesus at the intersection of two great covenant promises.
Abraham points us to the family through whom blessing would come to the nations.
David points us to the King whose kingdom would never end.
Matthew wants us to see that Jesus stands at the convergence of both.
No Abraham, no Messiah.
No David, no Messiah.
No Israel, no Messiah.
No Judaism, no Messiah.
The Mission
When Jesus enters the synagogue in Luke 4, he is handed the scroll of Isaiah, and reads the appointed Haftarah portion for that shabbat. Today we know that as Isaiah 61. I encourage you to go read it in full.
When he finishes reading, he makes an astonishing claim:
"Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
With those words, Jesus publicly announces that he is the one who will bring Isaiah's vision to fullness.
Isaiah 61 is, in many ways, a summary of the Messiah's mission. It describes the work God's Anointed One will accomplish. By reading that passage and declaring its promises underway, Jesus was telling everyone in the synagogue exactly who he believed himself to be.
Most of us, however, were not introduced to Jesus through Isaiah 61. We know the Jesus who forgave us, comforted us, rescued us, who carried us through grief, loss, or uncertainty. Every one of those experiences is real, and every one of them is precious.
But a mature disciple will ask if are they the whole picture?
When Jesus introduced himself, he didn't begin with other people's experiences. He opened Isaiah 61.
Is Isaiah 61 the Jesus you follow?
Do we recognize him as the one who proclaims liberty to captives? The one who comforts those who mourn in Zion? The one who restores ancient ruins and rebuilds ruined cities? The one who causes righteousness to spring up before the nations? The priestly King clothed in righteousness? The one who proclaims both the year of the Lord's favor and the day of God's justice?
Every one of us carries a picture of Jesus. The question is where that picture came from. Was it shaped by the Hebrew Scriptures? By Jesus's own understanding of his mission? Or has it been assembled primarily from our experiences, our traditions, or the fragments of Jesus we've collected along the way?
That is the question I hope this series will, over time, help us answer.
If Jesus learned who he was from the Scriptures, then perhaps we should understand who he is from those same Scriptures too.
Take a few moments to pause and spend some time with two passages: Isaiah 61 and Psalm 110. As you read them, ask yourself a simple question: What did these passages teach Jesus about the meaning of his calling as the Messiah?
The goal of discipleship is to become students of our Teacher. If we call ourselves followers of Jesus, then we are following the Jewish Messiah described by the Hebrew Scriptures. We are disciples of a rabbi from Nazareth.
And if, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we want to see the risen Jesus in all his glory and become like him, we must learn to sit at the feet of our Master. We must be covered in the dust of our rabbi.
Jesus's question still stands before us: "Who do you say that I am?"
If we are going to follow Jesus faithfully, we must understand the Messiah he claimed to be.
Gnats, Frogs, Camels
Gnats. Frogs. Camels. Unclean things have a way of deceiving and defiling God's people.
Days before his death, Jesus pronounced woe upon the religious leaders of his generation:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the Torah: justice and mercy and faithfulness...You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” (Matthew 23:23–24)
Years later, John of Patmos would describe another unclean creature appearing before the Day of the Lord: the frog, coming from the mouth of a false prophet. (Revelation 16:13–14)
Gnats. Frogs. Camels.
Unclean things have a way of deceiving and defiling God's people. Some buzz around our ears demanding attention. Others leap around, spreading lies wherever they go. But sometimes a massive beast strolls right into the middle of the camp, and no one seems to notice.
Over the past week, several stories have caught my eye.
The Southern Baptist Convention's debate over women in church leadership has generated an astonishing amount of attention. National newspapers are covering it. Christian media is covering it. Social media overflows with opinions.
A steady stream of articles has also trickled across my desk. In them, Christian authors urge believers to reject Jewish interpretations of Scripture in favor of supposedly superior Christian readings.
Meanwhile, tensions once again reignite the Middle East, fueling a regional conflict that could affect millions of lives.
What fascinates me is the disproportionate amount of attention these items receive in the church. Like perpetual gnats, certain controversies buzz constantly within Christianity. Like frogs, opinions leap from one conference to another, consuming our energy and dominating our conversations, convincing us these are the most important issues our churches face.
But with all the gnats buzzing and all the frogs leaping, I believe we have, tragically, overlooked the camel.
The Camel in the Sanctuary
If you had asked me a few years ago whether Christians on a whole were antisemitic, I would have answered with a quick and confident no. Today, I am no longer quite so quick or confident.
Most Christians know antisemitism is evil. Faithful believers would never dream of hating Jewish people, and most would be offended at the mere suggestion. Yet I have become increasingly reluctant to defend the church from the charge altogether because I have noticed a different expression of Jew-hostility raging right inside it.
Many Christians who appear to have no problem with Jewish people are deeply suspicious of Jewish things.
The moment something is labeled Jewish, many believers instinctively reach for the brakes. A Jewish interpretation of Scripture? Suspicious. A Jewish practice in a church? Proceed with caution. A Jewish understanding of the kingdom of God? The Messiah? The New Testament? Better run it through a Christian filter first.
The specifics and vocabulary vary, but the pattern remains consistent. The more Jewish something appears, the more likely Christians are to view it with suspicion.
That should alarm us. Hostility toward Jewish people is not the only way Jew-hate manifests itself.
Sometimes it appears in a far more respectable form, sitting comfortably in church pews, mesmerizing us from the pulpits on our stages and lecterns in our classrooms. It publishes sophisticated books and records engaging podcasts that sound Jesus-centered. It speaks fluent Christian vernacular and regularly quotes Bible verses. And it’s very good at assuring believers that they are honoring Jesus while teaching them to distrust anything and everything from the texts, traditions, people, and world from which Jesus emerged.
We may wonder, how did generations of Christians become so wary of Jewish things while simultaneously believing they were honoring a Jewish Messiah?
The answer, I believe, is that a camel has been sitting in the sanctuary for a very long time.
While Christians continue debating questions that rest on a handful of disputed texts, few seem willing to confront the theological framework that has shaped how much of the church reads the entire Bible. And that framework has been doing far more damage than all the gnats and frogs combined.
The Platform Beneath the Camel
The theological term for this camel is supersessionism.
Supersessionism is often reduced to mean that the church has replaced Israel. Many Christians reject that quickly, but I believe that is far too narrow of a definition.
At its core, supersessionism is the belief that Christianity supersedes Judaism—that Christian beliefs and teachings replace Jewish ones. Once that assumption is accepted, replacement theology spreads quickly through nearly every corner of Scripture and faith-practice.
Israel is replaced by the church—or sometimes by Jesus himself.
The wisdom of Torah is replaced with grace.
The earthly temple is replaced by Jesus' body, the church, the individual believer—or some combination of the three.
Levitical sacrifices are replaced by Christ's sacrifice.
The promises made to Israel are reinterpreted through the church.
The Davidic kingdom is replaced by a spiritual kingdom.
The land of Israel is replaced by the new creation.
A restored Jerusalem is replaced by heaven.
Notice the pattern. Concrete Jewish expectations become spiritual, Christian truths. What God promised to do in history becomes something he is presumed to have fulfilled symbolically through Christ.
Whether Christians recognize it or not, many of us practice this hermeneutic every day. We quote the prophets' promises and apply them to ourselves. We print them on coffee mugs, write them in journals, and preach them as take-away points.
Yet when those same prophets speak of Israel's restoration, her land, kingdom, Messiah, or Torah instruction flowing to the nations, suddenly we become experts in symbolism. God’s positive promises are universalized, but his warnings remain stubbornly aimed at the Jew. It is an astonishingly inconsistent way to read Scripture.
More importantly, it has trained generations of Christians to view Jewish expectations as inferior versions of misunderstood truths rather than as the hope the biblical authors proclaimed.
Replacement theology is not merely a theological debate, but a respectable false prophet in the church—a camel sitting in the sanctuary. Christians have grown so accustomed to its presence, most no longer notice it at all.
The Camel Breeds Anti-Judaism
There are different expressions of hostility towards Jews and Jewish things. The church confuses them, straining out one while swallowing another.
· Antisemitism is hostility toward Jewish people. It is hatred, prejudice, discrimination, or violence directed at Jews because they are Jews. Christians should reject it unequivocally. Most do.
· Anti-Zionism is opposition to Jewish national restoration and Jewish self-determination in the land of Israel. Today it’s common to hear: "I'm not antisemitic. I'm just anti-Zionist,” as though anti-Zionism is the morally superior ground on which to stand. But for millions of Jews, Israel is not a political project. It is the only Jewish country in the world, and increasingly, the only place a Jew can exist without being persecuted. Nevertheless, anti-Zionism is socially rewarded, and often, quite welcome in the church.
The form of hostility that concerns me most, however, is anti-Judaism.
· Anti-Judaism is hostility and opposition toward Judaism itself—its Scriptures (what Christians commonly know as the Old Testament), its worldview, traditions, expectations, and engagement within the story of God.
Unlike its cousins, anti-Judaism rarely announces itself. It does not march down crowded streets or shout slurs. It does not usually hate Jews. That is precisely what makes it dangerous.
Anti-Judaism often disguises itself as Christian orthodoxy. It fools sincere believers into thinking they are honoring Jesus while teaching them to distrust the texts, practices, and interpretations Jesus embraced.
Anti-Judaism says...
Jewish interpretations of the Bible should give way to Christian ones.
Jewish hopes for the Messiah and his kingdom were misguided.
Jewish covenants have been surpassed.
Jewish practices and teachings are suspect.
Jewish identity is ultimately irrelevant.
The Jewish story and its gospel finds its true fulfillment only after it ceases to be recognizably Jewish.
In anti-Judaism, the Jew may be welcomed, Israel may be admired, the Old Testament may be respected. But Jewishness is not.
Anti-Judaism is where the camel of replacement theology leads.
The Deception Facing the American Church
I find this camel so troubling because it deceives Christians about what matters most.
Jesus said remarkably little about many of the issues that dominate modern Christian discourse. He said nothing that prohibited women from leadership positions within the messianic community he left behind. He certainly did not spend his ministry debating whether future Christian interpretations of Scripture should replace Jewish ones. The apostles did not spend their time defending Christianity against Judaism, nor were they trying to persuade anyone to abandon Jewish identity or practice in order to follow Israel's Messiah.
What occupied their attention instead were themes much of the modern church has little interest in: the restoration of Israel, the coming kingdom, the ingathering of Jewish exiles, the repentance of the nations, the judgment of the world, and the renewal of creation under Israel's Messiah. These topics saturate the Old Testament. They dominate the preaching of John the Baptist, stand behind Jesus' announcement that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, fill the disciples' questions, and remain the urgent expectation of the apostles.
Yet the church often treats these subjects as curiosities—interesting but secondary. Instead, we devote enormous amounts of time to debates built upon a handful of verses while neglecting themes that appear thousands of times throughout Scripture.
“You neglect the weightier matters of the Torah...You strain out the gnat but leave the camel!”
The American church appears largely unbothered by the magnificent unclean beast that has wandered into our sanctuaries, stinking up our understanding of Israel and blocking our vision of our Messiah’s kingdom, land, and people.
Perhaps those are the conversations demanding our attention. Perhaps that is the weightier matter.
Following the Rabbi
Long ago, a crafty beast of the field snuck his way in asking, "Has God really said?" The question has echoed through the human imagination ever since.
“Has God really chosen the Jews?” asks antisemitism.
“Has God really set apart the land of Israel?” asks anti-Zionism.
“Has God really instructed all these things?” asks anti-Judaism.
The forms and voices change. The pattern doesn’t.
Attack the Jewish people.
Question the legitimacy of the land.
Teach people to distrust the Jewishness of Scripture, remains of a failed faith rather than the fabric of God's redemptive plan—a fabric Gentile believers entered the moment they pledged their allegiance to Jesus.
I am a disciple of a Jewish rabbi from Nazareth. I believe Jesus is Israel's Messiah, David's Son, and the King of the Jews. Because of that, I defend the Scriptures he taught, the people and land he loves, and the kingdom promised by the prophets that he proclaimed. And I believe he is returning to those people and land to complete everything Israel’s Scriptures teach.
Because I follow a Jewish Messiah, I cannot afford to become suspicious of Jewish things.
I do not idolize Judaism, accept every rabbinic tradition, abandon every Christian one, or throw critical thinking and discernment out the window. The antidote to supersessionism is not converting to Judaism, but knowing and honoring the God of the Jews, who remains faithful to what he said.
I pray, earnestly, that the American church will repent. I pray for eyes to be opened and hearts to be soft. But I fear the woe awaiting us if we continue straining the gnats and chasing the frogs.
I believe we ought to start in the sanctuary, and get to work shooing out the camel.
NOTES
I am indebted to author Daniel Lancaster for helping make the distinctions between antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Judaism so clear. I refer my reader’s to his article The Three Frogs: Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and Anti-Judaism. https://www.theemmaustable.world/inkwell/three-frogs
For a further discussion on the faith-practices of the earliest believers, see chapter seven of my book, The Forgotten Gospel.
Following the Fire of Shavu’ot, Part 2
One of the things I have learned from hiking mountains is that they can play tricks on you. The first time you encounter a false summit, it feels almost unfair. You spend hours climbing toward what appears to be the peak.
The following essay is adapted from part two of a message I recently shared at Friends Community Church. It has been revised here for readers beyond that setting, though the heart of the teaching remains the same.
One of the things I have learned from hiking mountains is that they can play tricks on you.
The first time you encounter a false summit, it feels almost unfair.
You spend hours climbing toward what appears to be the peak. Your legs ache. Your lungs burn. The trail grows steeper beneath your feet. Every switchback feels like it must surely be the last one. Then, at long last, the trees begin to thin out, the grade softens, and the landscape opens up. Suddenly, there is a view.
You can see valleys below and ridgelines stretching into the distance. You stop to catch your breath. You take a drink of water. You let yourself believe that you've made it.
Then the trail bends. You realize what looked like the summit was only a ridge.
The view was real. The progress was real. The climb was real. Yet something greater still lay ahead.
Hikers call this a false summit, though the term is somewhat misleading. There is nothing false about it. A false summit is beautiful, significant, and worth celebrating. Its only limitation is that it is not the final destination.
Acts 2 can often function like a false summit within the biblical story.
That may sound strange at first. After all, Pentecost is one of the most breathtaking moments in Scripture. The Spirit descends from heaven. Tongues of fire appear. Languages break open. Three thousand people respond to Peter's message. The gospel begins moving outward toward the nations. Entire traditions have been built around this chapter, and rightly so. Acts 2 matters. But the mistake is assuming the trail of Shavu’ot ends there.
In the previous essay, I traced the trail of Shavu'ot backward through Scripture. We began in Eden, where fire first appeared at the gate of the garden, guarding the way back into God's presence. From there we followed the fire to Sinai, where God descended upon the mountain and invited His people to draw near. We walked through the tabernacle and its sacred calendar, where Israel learned to rehearse redemption through appointed times and holy rhythms. Finally, we listened to the prophets, who spoke of a coming day when God's Spirit would once again dwell among His people. Every mountain, every feast, every sacrifice, and every prophetic promise pushed the story in that direction.
The prophets, however, left us standing in a place of tension. They spoke of a coming harvest. They envisioned a day when God's Spirit would be poured out upon His people. They saw restoration, renewal, and life breaking into places long marked by death. Yet the vision remained future. The fullness had not yet arrived.
Then we arrive in Jerusalem.
For many Christians, Acts 2 feels like the moment every previous thread finally comes together. In many ways, it is. Yet we often read Pentecost so quickly that we miss the larger story unfolding beneath the surface.
In the Temple | Acts 2
Imagine stepping into the world of Acts 2 that Luke describes. The setting itself matters. Pentecost is not a random day on the Jewish calendar. It is Shavu'ot, the Feast of Weeks. Pilgrims have traveled to Jerusalem from every direction. The city is crowded. The temple is alive with worship. Priests are preparing the morning offerings. Bread representing the firstfruits of the wheat harvest is being presented before the Lord.
And while bread is being lifted toward heaven in the temple, heaven breathes again.
Luke tells us that a sound like a rushing wind filled the House of the Lord. Fire appeared. The Spirit descended. Devout Jews from every nation under heaven assembled at the temple that Shavu’ot morning heard the mighty works of God proclaimed in their own languages, right there in the courts of his earthly dwelling.
The imagery is impossible to miss if we have spent time walking the trail.
In Eden, humanity heard the sound of God and hid among the trees. At Sinai, Israel heard the trumpet and trembled at the foot of the mountain. Now another sound arrives from heaven, not to drive people away but to draw them into God's purposes.
In Eden, fire guarded the way back to God. At Sinai, fire descended upon a mountain. In Acts, fire rests upon people.
Even the gathering of nations echoes themes that have been present since the beginning. Humanity was scattered outward from sacred space. Israel was gathered at Sinai. Now Jews from every nation under heaven are gathered once again in Jerusalem, not merely to witness a miracle, but to become participants in a mission that will carry the knowledge of Israel's God back into the world.
Something extraordinary is happening. The fire has returned to the House of the Lord.
More than that, the fire is beginning to fill people.
Yet Luke's imagery points us toward something else as well. At the same time the loaves of firstfruits bread are being lifted before God in the temple, faithful Jewish believers gathered at the temple are becoming firstfruits. The Spirit that raised Messiah from the dead is beginning to awaken a harvest.
And that word—firstfruits—is where I think many modern readers accidentally leave the trail.
Firstfruits are not the full harvest—they are the promise—the first sign—that the harvest is real. The first sheaf gathered from the field matters precisely because it points beyond itself. It is evidence that something larger is coming. The firstfruits are cause for celebration, but they are never mistaken for fullness.
Remarkably, that is exactly how the apostles themselves describe their experience.
Years after Pentecost, Paul writes that creation is still groaning. Humanity is still groaning. Even believers, who possess what he calls the "firstfruits of the Spirit," continue waiting for the redemption of their bodies. Elsewhere he describes the Spirit as a pledge, a guarantee, a down payment of what is yet to come.
Paul does not write like a man standing at the summit.
He writes like a man who has finally reached a ridge from which he can see it.
The Promise of the Prophets
The prophets never separated the outpouring of God's Spirit from the restoration of Israel. When they envisioned the fullness of God's promises, they did not describe a private spiritual experience detached from the world. They described Jewish exiles returning home to the land. They described Jerusalem restored. They described nations streaming toward the mountain of God; resurrection, renewal, and creation itself coming alive again.
The prophets saw a world transformed by the presence of God. Acts 2 continues that story. But it does not finish it. We must keep walking the trail and following the fire.
The apostlic community understood this.
The fire had truly returned.
The Spirit had truly been poured out.
The nations had truly begun gathering.
Yet they continued speaking of a future hope with anticipation and longing. This is why Peter can stand in the temple complex on Shavu’ot and proclaim, “This is what was spoken of by the prophets!” and also later write “fix your hope completely on the grace that is still yet to be brought to you.”
Like the prophets, the apostles knew more awaited humanity. At Sinai the Torah came forth and the Israelites feared ascent. But Isaiah sees the nations running toward the mountain (Is. 2). The summit the prophets saw was not empty. It was crowded with people from every tribe and tongue ascending the mountain of God.
Isaiah saw so much more than a moment. From atop the mountain summit, he beheld a healed world. He writes in ch. 35:
“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus…”
The place of exile begins to bloom again.
“Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees…”
Because the climb is not forever.
“Say to those who have an anxious heart:
‘Be strong; fear not.
Behold, your God will come…’”
And when He comes:
“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.”
Creation itself begins waking up.
“For waters break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert…”
And then Isaiah says something remarkable:
“And a highway shall be there…
and it shall be called the Way of Holiness.”
A trail through the wilderness. A path leading home—to a summit.
“And the redeemed of the LORD shall return
and come to Zion with singing…
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
That’s the view from the summit. That’s the future that awaits us.
The Summit Yet to Come
“The time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory…” Is. 66
On this day God says: “I will set a sign among them…” From Jerusalem, survivors go outward to the distant coastlands—declaring the glory of God among the nations. Does that sound familiar? It sounds like Acts 2. But Isaiah keeps going.
““And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations… to my holy mountain Jerusalem… as an offering to the LORD… even as a grain offering in a pure vessel…”
Suddenly the imagery becomes unmistakable. The nations themselves become part of the Shavu’ot procession—from every direction. Just like the flame in Eden, just like the bread waved in every direction. The exiles are carried home like firstfruits. Like grain offerings—fully risen loaves, alive with the breath of Messiah—they are lifted before the Lord. The mountain of God fills with worshippers—people from all nations and tribes—and the harvest of souls finally comes in.
Every year the festival of Shavu’ot invites us back onto the trail, to rehearse that hope again, to take it all the way to the summit so we can practice longing for that view.
To strength our legs so that when the appointed time comes, we can offer ourselves.
Because every glimpse of the Spirit—
every softened heart,
every opened eye,
every act of worship,
every movement toward obedience,
every loaf lifted toward heaven—
is a sign that the harvest is real.
But we cannot stop walking because we reached a ridge.
One day:
the wilderness will bloom,
we from the nations will stream up God’s mountain with his people in strength, song, and joy,
our sorrow and sighing will flee away,
and the Spirit of God will fill the earth like breath filling living lungs.
Until then—we keep walking. We count the days. We lift the bread. It is not our job to measure the fruit. It’s our job to follow the fire—for as long as it takes—trusting God will bring the full harvest in it’s appointed time.
May we become the kind of people who know how to live as the firstfruits while still longing for the fullness of the harvest to come.
Following the Fire of Shavu’ot, Part 1
There is a trail in Utah called Catherine’s Pass that my husband and I love to hike. It begins near the Alta Ski Area. At about 8,500 ft in elevation, the trailhead begins already high in the mountains.
The following essay is adapted from part one of a two part message series I recently shared at Friends Community Church. It has been revised here for readers beyond that setting, though the heart of the teaching remains the same.
There is a trail in Utah called Catherine’s Pass that my husband and I love to hike. It begins near the Alta Ski Area. At about 8,500 ft in elevation, the trailhead begins already high in the mountains. At first, the trail is mostly switchbacks and loose rock. Your lungs burn quickly in the elevation, and you cannot yet see where you are going. The mountain does not reveal itself all at once. You simply keep walking, trusting that if you remain on the trail long enough, eventually it will open into something beautiful.
And it does.
A bend in the path suddenly reveals a valley scattered with wildflowers. Meltwater streams through the rocks. Snow often still clings to the mountain in July.
A couple miles in, you crest a ridge into what I have always called Buttercup Valley, one of the most breathtaking places on the hike. Yellow wildflowers dot the valley floor. Indian paintbrush and lupine paint the slopes with color. Sometimes you see bighorn sheep or moose moving quietly in the distance. It’s a breathtaking part of the trail, and a needed meander through a meadow before the trail climbs again.
Eventually Catherine’s Pass opens before you, and suddenly the whole landscape stretches out in every direction.
But here’s the thing about hiking: someone could be dropped there by helicopter and still see the view. They would still witness the beauty of the mountains. But they’d miss the trail.
And the trail is the whole point.
They would miss the exhaustion of the climb, the anticipation around every bend, and the strange way suffering and beauty begin to intertwine after enough miles on the mountain. The trail changes your relationship to the summit.
Without the trail, you miss the story that makes the summit mean something.
I think this has happened for many Christians with Pentecost.
Most believers know Acts 2. We know about the rushing wind, the divided tongues of fire, the Spirit descending upon the disciples, and the proclamation of the gospel in many languages. It is one of the most dramatic scenes in the New Testament. But many of us encounter Acts 2 as though we were dropped there by helicopter. We arrive at the summit often without ever learning the trail that leads to it.
But Pentecost—Shavu’ot—is not merely an event in Acts. It is a trail of holy fire that climbs through Scripture. The story begins long before the disciples gather in Jerusalem.
Shavu’ot begin with a fire at a gate. The trail of Shavu’ot begins in Eden.
Eden
In the opening pages of Genesis, humanity lives openly in the presence of God. Heaven and earth overlap. The Spirit of God moves among humanity in the garden in the windy time of the day, and there is no barrier between divine holiness and human life. But one day, something fractures. The ruach shows up and realizes right away, something’s broken. The presence that once sustained humanity becomes dangerous to those no longer fit to dwell within it. Humanity is driven east of Eden, and at the entrance to the garden God places cherubim and a flaming sword turning in every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.
The fire at Eden is a holy boundary is being maintained. A broken humanity cannot simply casually reunite with God. And so the fire remains at the gate, guarding the way back into the presence of God.
It’s a loss.
From that moment onward, the biblical story begins asking a single question: How do we get back through the fire?
Sinai
For a long time, the answer to that question appears to be you don’t. You do not go back through the fire. You do not ascend the mountain of God.
For generations, humanity remains, wandering, east of Eden. The world continues spiraling outward into violence, exile, and death. Yet eventually God calls Abraham, raises up Israel, and rescues his people from Egypt through judgment and deliverance. Then he brings them into the wilderness, to the foot of a mountain wrapped in smoke and flame.
At Sinai, something astonishing happens: the fire comes down.
The imagery deliberately echoes Eden. Once again there is a holy mountain. Once again there are boundaries around sacred space. Once again humanity stands before the terrifying presence of God. But this time the story changes in an important way. At Eden, humanity is driven away from the mountain of God. At Sinai, God invites humanity toward it.
“Adonai said to Moses, “Go to the people, and sanctify them today and tomorrow. Let them wash their clothing. 11 Be ready for the third day. For on the third day Adonai will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. 12 You are to set boundaries for the people all around, saying, ‘Be very careful not to go up onto the mountain, or touch the border of it....But when the shofar sounds, they may ascend the mountain.” Exodus 19:10-13
Notice that the people were to:
consecrate themselves, set themselves apart for something very special
count the days—today, tomorrow, be ready for the third day, and on the third day
prepare themselves
listen for the shofar sound… then ascend
At Sinai, God invites them to ascend through the fire. The God who once guarded the mountain now calls a people toward it.
“So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud shofar sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently.” Exodus 19:16-18
When the mountain begins to quake and burn, the people recoil in fear. They tremble at the thunder and stand at a distance, begging Moses to mediate instead. “Do not let God speak to us,” they say, “lest we die.”
And so they . . .
see the fire
count the days
hear the shofar
but they refuse to draw near to God. Moses alone enters the thick cloud. One man ascends the mountain while the people remain at a distance.
This occurs roughly fifty days after leaving Egypt. Fire descends from heaven. The covenant is cut, God forms a people, but they are not so sure they want to be formed. What is God to do with a people who he wants to be near, but are not sure they want to be near him?
The answer: he teaches them how to approach.
Tent
Alongside the tent in the wilderness, God gives Israel something remarkable: a sanctuary in time.
The appointed times of Leviticus 23 are not random holidays. They are holy meeting times—moedim—when God invites his people to enter into a sanctuary in time and be near him. They are rehearsals—sacred rhythms teaching Israel how to live within the story of redemption before its fullness arrives. Every feast becomes a kind of embodied prophecy. Shabbat, Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Shavu’ot, Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Sukkot—each one teaches Israel how to remember, anticipate, and move toward the presence of God and join him in what he is doing in the world.
At Shavu’ot, Israel is commanded to count seven weeks from Firstfruits. Fifty days. Then they are to bring before the Lord two great loaves of leavened bread made from the firstfruits of the wheat harvest.
The imagery here is extraordinary.
At Passover, leaven is removed from Israel’s homes as they remember deliverance from Egypt. Later, they will start a new culture of leaven, trusting it will become strong enough to raise the bread. And in the meantime, they count. They prepare. They eat the barley grain and trust that the choice grain—the wheat harvest—will soon come. Then, about two months later, it arrives. At Shavu’ot, fully baked, beautiful loaves of leavened, golden bread are lifted before God..
Jewish tradition holds that the bread was waved forward and backward, upward and downward, declaring that the God of Israel rules over all creation. Can you hear the echoes of Eden? At the gates of the garden, the flaming sword flashed in every direction guarding the way back into the presence of God. But now, bread from the thorny ground is lifted in every direction before him in worship.
The God who once guarded Eden with fire now invites humanity to approach the fire at the altar, at the door of the tent, waving the fruit of the earth itself before him.
Into this story, Jesus steps. “I am the bread of life!” He declares that even outside of Eden, the wheat still grows. Bread still rises and through these sacred rhythms, God teaches his people to recognize every firstfruit as a sign that exile will not last forever. That is what firstfruits are throughout Scripture: signs that more is coming.
The bread matters because it reminds us the harvest is real. Much more fruit is surely on the way.
Exile
The tabernacle eventually becomes a temple. The fiery glory of God fills his house. Jerusalem becomes the center of worship and sacrifice. But the human hear is still fractured. Violence, oppression, idolatry, and injustice continue poisoning the land until eventually the prophets begin warning that exile is coming once again.
Then the unthinkable happens. In Ezekiel’s vision, the glory of God rises from the temple and departs from Jerusalem. The divine fire leaves God’s house. The story circles painfully back the gate outside of Eden again. Once again humanity stands outside sacred space.
The people of God find themselves scattered, exiled, and the land that once provided the harvest of the firstfruits to be celebrated in the sancturary in time lies desolate and forsaken.
But the prophets refuse to despair.
Ezekiel promises that God will give his people a new heart and place his Spirit within them (Eze. 36:26-27). Isaiah declares that the Spirit of God will not depart forever (Is. 59:21). Joel envisions a day when the Spirit will be poured out lavishly upon all flesh (Joel 2:28-29). What starts in Israel will renew the whole world.
These promises are not abstract spirituality or private religious experiences. They are covenant promises. They are the restoration of the bride God married at Sinai, under that veil of thick cloud and fiery glory. The prophets foresee a day when the breath that moved through Eden will once again fill all creation with life.
The restoration of Israel becomes the beginning of something larger, where those among the nations streaming upward toward the mountain of God. Gentiles willingly ascending saying “Come on! Let’s go! Let’s ascend the mountain of God so that we can learn his instructions.”
Learning to Walk the Trail
We may wonder, when does this happen? When will God pour out his Spirit? When do we reach the summit of this trail?
Shavu’ot is a trail of holy fire moving steadily toward restoration. From Eden, to Sinai, to the tabernacle and temple, to the prophets longing for the Spirit to return, the fire keeps drawing near.
And all along the trail, there are signs of the harvest. Little glimpses. Firstfruits. Pockets of golden buttercups at the foot of the long grind to the summit we can’t yet see. Moments where creation seems to whisper:
There is more coming.
Keep walking.
Stay on the trail.
The story is not over yet.
That’s what Shavu’ot is. It is a rehearsal of hope.
Shavu’ot is a trail of holy fire that awakens us to the firstfruits of a coming harvest.
Walking this trail strengthens our bodies, our souls. It’s training us how to follow the cloud by day, the fire by nigh—until the harvest yet to come arrives in full. We can continue to follow the fire into the New Testament. We’ll look at Acts 2, and keeping following the fire even from there. Because even Acts 2 isn’t the full harvest—it’s just the beginning of what God is doing for Israel and for the nations. And we are invited by God to join him in that work.
Until then, may we become a people who learn how to walk the trail, who learn how to count the days.
To lift the bread. To keep following the fire and practicing hope.
Because every Shabbat, every festival, every act of worship, every small movement toward the presence of God is training us for the kingdom and the world that is coming.
A world where:
the exile ends,
the tent is filled,
the mountain is ascended,
the gate of Eden is wide open,
and the Spirit of God fills the earth like breath in living lungs.
Until then—we must to learn to live as people of the firstfruits. People who are disciplined enough turn towards this story and ask God tohelp us follow the fire that fills his house and opens our eyes to all he is doing.
The Light of Torah
Most Christians have never been told that the word Torah doesn't mean "law." It means instruction. Direction. The kind of teaching a father gives a child he loves — not to burden them, but to form them.
The words below belong to my friend Sergio DeSoto—a Jewish believer, and author and editor of SergioDesoto.com, an incredible blog dedicated to serious conversations about faith. Sergio carries a deep love for the Torah and a thoughtful, lived perspective on how it shapes his life as a follower of Yeshua. I asked him to speak directly to Christians about a question that has shaped so much of my own work: What is the Christian relationship to the Torah?
I have learned a great deal from Sergio, and I’m honored to share his words here. Read them with an open heart—and a willingness to see what you may have missed.
Most Christians have never been told that the word Torah doesn't mean "law."
It means instruction. Direction. The kind of teaching a father gives a child he loves — not to burden them, but to form them. When God gave Israel His Torah at Sinai, He wasn't handing down a penal code. He was giving a rescued people the shape of life with Him. Holiness. Justice. Worship. Covenant. The categories that hold everything else together.
But somewhere along the way, the church began treating Torah as the thing Jesus came to fix.
That is a serious mistake. And it has cost the church more than most believers realize.
What Yeshua Was Actually Confronting
Read the Gospels again — slowly, without the filter of what you were taught He was doing — and something becomes obvious. Yeshua never once rebuked obedience to God's commandments. Not once.
He rebuked hypocrisy. He confronted religious theater — leaders who loved the appearance of holiness but neglected justice, mercy, and faithfulness. He went after systems that crushed ordinary people under the weight of man-made traditions while the leaders who built those systems exempted themselves.
When He clashed with the religious establishment, He did not say, "Stop obeying the Father." He said something far more dangerous:
You have abandoned the commandment of God and are holding to human tradition (Mark 7:8, paraphrased).
Catch that. The problem was not that people were following God's instruction. The problem was that religious leaders had buried God's instruction under layers of their own authority — and then called the whole pile sacred.
Yeshua did not come to liberate people from God's word. He came to expose those who had made God's word unrecognizable.
The Uncomfortable Paradox
Here is where it gets uncomfortable for a lot of sincere believers.
What many Christians now dismiss as outdated or irrelevant — the Torah, the commandments, the covenant framework of the Hebrew Scriptures — is exactly what Yeshua upheld, lived inside, and taught from. He kept Shabbat. He observed the feasts. He taught from Moses and the Prophets. He quoted Deuteronomy to the adversary in the wilderness.
He did not treat Torah as a rough draft that needed correcting. He treated it as His Father's voice — and He walked in it perfectly.
So when the church says Torah is finished, they are not following Yeshua's example. They are contradicting it. Not out of malice, usually. Out of inheritance. Generations of teaching have framed Torah as the failed first attempt and grace as the real answer, as though God needed two tries to get it right.
But that framing does not come from Scripture. It comes from centuries of theology that slowly — and sometimes deliberately — severed Jesus from His Jewish world.
My Own Turning Point
I used to think the same way.
When I heard the word "law," my mind went straight to bondage. Old covenant. Something heavy that Jesus lifted. I had inherited an entire story where Torah was the problem and the cross was the solution to Torah. Grace meant freedom from God's instructions, and obedience sounded suspiciously like earning something you were supposed to receive for free.
Then I stopped reading the Bible as a religion book and started reading it as covenant history. Not a collection of spiritual principles organized by topic. Not a devotional resource. A record of God binding Himself to a people, speaking to them in real time, forming them through instruction, warning them through prophets, and relentlessly holding the door open for return.
That single shift changed everything. I stopped asking, "What does my tradition say this means?" and started asking, "What did this mean to the people who first received it?" And the moment I asked that question honestly, the categories I had inherited started collapsing.
Torah was not bondage. It was the marriage covenant between God and His people. The "New Covenant" in Jeremiah 31 was not a replacement — it was a promise to write the same Torah on their hearts. Paul was not arguing against obedience — he was arguing against the idea that Gentiles had to become ethnically Jewish to enter the covenant. The entire story was one story, and I had been reading it as two.
The lights didn't go off. They came on.
What Gets Lost
When Yeshua is disconnected from Torah, the church doesn't just lose a theological category. It loses the ability to understand its own Scriptures.
"Kingdom of God" loses its covenant texture — it becomes a vague spiritual destination instead of the reign of Israel's promised King. "Lamb of God" becomes a metaphor instead of the fulfillment of a sacrificial system that God Himself designed. "Repentance" gets reduced to feeling sorry instead of what the Hebrew concept actually means: return — covenantal turning back to the God you walked away from.
And "grace" — the word Christians love most — gets pitted against obedience, as though God's kindness and God's instruction are enemies. That split is completely foreign to the biblical world. Torah is grace. It was the gift of a faithful God to a people He had already rescued. He didn't give them instructions to earn His love. He gave them instructions because He loved them. Deuteronomy 6 is not a contract. It is a father telling His children how to stay close.
Even the New Testament becomes harder to read honestly. Paul gets cast as anti-Torah — the apostle who finally set people free from all those rules. But Paul kept the feasts. Paul took a Nazirite vow in Acts 21. Paul told Timothy that all Scripture — which at that point meant the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible — is God-breathed and useful for instruction. He was not dismantling Torah. He was arguing that Gentiles enter the covenant through Messiah, not through ethnic conversion. That is a radically different claim than "Torah is over."
When you strip all of that away, you don't get a cleaner gospel. You get a Christ who floats above His own story — still beloved, still quoted, but severed from the world that gave His words their meaning.
A Word About What This Feels Like
I need to say this plainly, because it rarely gets said in Christian spaces.
Torah was not a burden inflicted on Israel. It was a gift entrusted to them. When Christians speak of it as bondage, as failure, as something expired — it lands hard on those of us for whom this is not abstract theology. It is our story. Our covenant. The revelation God entrusted to our fathers.
It can feel like the church wants the Jewish Messiah but not the Jewish story that gave Him context. It can sound — even when no one intends it — like contempt dressed in theological language.
I am not saying this to guilt anyone. I am saying it because if the body of Messiah is going to mature, it has to reckon with this. You cannot claim to honor the root while dismissing what the root produced. Romans 11 is not a footnote. It is a warning: do not be arrogant toward the branches. The Gentile church was grafted into Israel's olive tree — not planted in its own garden.
Read Again — But Read Honestly
I am not asking anyone to become Jewish. I am not asking anyone to abandon their church or torch their theology overnight.
I am asking something simpler and harder: read again.
Read the Bible as one story — not two Testaments in tension, but one covenant unfolding. Read Torah not as the thing Jesus replaced, but as the foundation He built on. Read the apostles not as founders of a new religion, but as Jewish witnesses to the fulfillment of promises that were Jewish from the beginning. Stop assuming Torah is the villain. Stop calling legalism what God called instruction. Let the text challenge the system you inherited, and see whether the roots have something to say that your tradition trained you not to hear.
Because if the Torah was good enough for Yeshua to live by, to teach from, and to die fulfilling — then maybe the question is not why some of us take it seriously. Maybe the question is why so many were taught not to.
The Torah was never the darkness. In many ways, it is the lamp most Christians were taught not to look at.
When you read Scripture as covenant history instead of inherited religion, the lights do not go off.
They come on.
Selah.
When you hear the word "Torah," what is your first instinct — and who taught you to react that way? If Yeshua lived inside Torah and never spoke against it, what does it mean that His church treats it as obsolete? What would change in your faith if you stopped reading the Bible as two books and started reading it as one?
Shalom v'shalvah. Your brother in the Way,
Sergio
I’m grateful for voices like Sergio’s in this conversation. If his words have resonated with you as deeply as they have with me, you explore more of his work and support what he’s building here: www.sergiodesoto.com.
Copyright © Sergio DeSoto. All rights reserved. You are welcome to share this essay freely with proper attribution. Do not reproduce, alter, or monetize without written permission.
The Irrevocable Calling
Why Israel still matters—and the Church must care.
“Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.”
— Isaiah 49:16
Every Christian has an answer to the question of Israel—even if they’ve never thought about it.
Silence is an answer.
Indifference is an answer.
The erasure, absorption, or recategorization of Israel are all answers.
And history shows us that the Church’s answers, regardless of how begign or “Christian” they appear, have never been neutral.
The question of Israel is not a political problem or a modern distraction that will fade away. I believe it will be the issue that decides the future of the American Church. Israel is a test case—the proof of God’s faithfulness. As the physician to Frederick the Great of Prussia once observed, “the proof that God exists is that the Jews exist.” What we believe about Israel reveals what we truly believe about God: whether he keeps his word when it costs him something—or whether he pivots on a whim, reallocating his promises and rewriting his definition of fidelity.
Zion is the central conflict of a story that runs from Abraham’s tent to David’s throne to the day the Son of Man rides the clouds. If we lose this thread, we do not merely misread a few passages. We mislocate the gospel itself.
The year 2026 will prove pivotal for the Church and the world. I write this piece with both trembling and hope: to call us back to the root that supports us, to the promises God swore by himself, to the humility apostles demanded of the nations, and to the awe that rises when we finally understand: the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Rom. 11:29).
What is the Controversy of Zion?
The controversy of Zion is Gentile strife over—and divine jealousy for—the land and people of Israel, and the city of Jerusalem.
Isaiah names it bluntly:
“The LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the controversy of Zion” (Isa. 34:8).
Jeremiah says Jerusalem will be “a cup that makes all the nations stagger,” a heavy stone that injures those who try to lift it (Jer. 25; Zech. 12).
Why such disproportionate fury over such a small strip of earth? Because God attached his name there.
From the beginning, the nations have resisted this divine attachment. Scripture records a long history of rulers and empires who sought, by force or by strategy, to pry God’s promises from this people and this land: Pharaoh, the Canaanite kings, Assyria and Babylon, Antiochus in the days remembered at Hanukkah, Caesar and Herod under Rome.
History has not outgrown this pattern. The names change; the aim does not.
Whatever the language—empire, security, progress, resistance—the goal of the hostility is always the same: to erase the Jewish people or to evacuate Jerusalem and the land itself of any future promised by God.
Many of us inherited a theology that prizes people while sidelining land, but Scripture does not make that move. In the Bible, land is not neutral backdrop—it is holy space. God set apart a specific strip of earth and a specific city as the stage on which he would reveal his character, enact his covenant purposes, and ultimately display his victory over the powers of evil.
That land is Zion, and that city is Jerusalem.
Scripture is not sentimental about this conflict. It does not predict a painless path to peace, nor does it imagine that diplomacy alone can resolve a hatred rooted deeper than politics. Instead, it promises something better—and far more unsettling: a divine-human king who will settle the controversy himself.
Election: The Offense and the Glory
The controversy over Zion is not a random accident of modern geopolitics that we simply happen to be alive to witness. It exists precisely because God’s choice of Israel still stands. He elected a people and a place through which he would reveal himself to the world.
The rage of the nations is the evidence of that choice.
We often stumble at the word election because we personalize it before letting Scripture define it. Biblically, election is not God playing favorites with isolated souls—it is God choosing one out of the many for the sake of the many. He chose Abraham’s family to bless all the families of the earth (Gen. 12:1–3). He attached land, Torah, worship, and promises to Israel so that his mercy and blessing could spill into the nations. And he raised up Israel’s Messiah—Jesus of Nazareth—to embody, represent, and secure those promises.
Paul feels the strain of this mystery in his bones:
“I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish… I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Messiah for the sake of my brothers… They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises… and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Messiah” (Rom. 9:2–5).
Tradition has often treated Romans 9–11 as a prelude to erasing Israel—or, more commonly in dispensational theology, temporarily setting her aside. Paul says nothing of the sort. These are the words of a man gripped by the conviction that God has not abandoned—nor postponed—what he swore.
Paul’s thunderclap about Israel comes in Romans 11:
“As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake; but as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (vv. 28–29).
Irrevocable—not canceled, not fulfilled in Christ, transferred to another, and certainly not spiritualized away. Paul believes Israel’s present hardness is partial and temporary for the sake of God’s mercy toward the Gentiles, and that their future mercy is guaranteed by God’s fidelity (Rom. 11:25–26). If God can discard Israel, none of us are safe. But he cannot—and he will not.
Paul trusts that mercy that grafted Gentiles in will graft God’s people in again. Grace joins our story with the Israels’; it doesn’t erase her.
This is why Paul’s “no distinction” texts level the ground of access to salvation (Rom. 10:12; Gal. 3:28). The nations are to find life in Israel’s story while retaining the ethnic distinctions God has creatively ordained. Gentiles enter the covenant family by faith in its mediator, the Messiah, just as Jews trust the promises he upholds. But God’s mercy does not erase the distinct identities he has woven into his human creations. Male and female remain. Jew and Gentile remain. The ecclesia of the nations does not become “the new Israel.”
We have Jesus, we tell ourselves—we do not need Israel. We have heaven—we do not need the land. We have grace—we do not need the Torah. These errors, by whatever names they travel under, have haunted the Church for centuries. Their fruit is bitter: arrogance toward all things Jewish, contempt for God’s firstborn, disregard for the land, city, and people he set apart for himself, and fertile soil in which antisemitism has repeatedly taken root—even in the Christian West.
Paul’s warning could not be sharper: “Do not be arrogant toward the branches… remember: it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you” (Rom. 11:18).
Sadly, Paul’s fears about Gentile pride have come true. Even among loving Christians, the belief that Israel still matters—that the land and people are chosen, and the fulfillment of God’s promises through them central to our hope in Jesus—receives almost no attention. And so, whether by our outright rejection or silent complacency, we join the controversy of Zion ourselves.
The Timeline of Mercy—and the Cost
Scripture names a season when the controversy of Zion crests like a black wave: “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer. 30:7).
The texts are not evasive. The Jewish people are the “you” in Jesus’s Mount of Olives discourse; Jerusalem is the epicenter; the nations rage with wrath against her, and God, like a mighty warrior, arises.
I do not write this lightly. After the centuries of European violence and the horrors of our own day, the claim that more trouble lies ahead is an unbearable one to admit. I struggle with the ethics of such a message. But faithfulness to Scripture need not end in despair. It produces watchfulness and compassion.
The same passages that speak of Jacob’s trouble also promise ultimate deliverance:
“At that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book” (Dan. 12:1).
And Jesus anchors his warnings of this time with great hope:
“When these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28).
As believers in God’s promises, we should not be surprised if we come under fire for this confession. God will redeem the land of Israel and the Jewish people, vindicate his covenant, and reign from Zion through his Messiah. Persecution will not come to Christians because we love Jesus abstractly—no one is killed for being nice to their neighbor. It will come because of our identification with Israel, our belief in her vindication, and our allegiance to her Messiah.
Revelation 12 portrays this conflict with unsettling clarity. When the dragon cannot destroy the Messiah, he turns his fury on the woman—a clear allusion to Israel—and then on “the rest of her offspring,” those “who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 12:17). These are the Jewish people, set apart by Torah and covenant, and also are those who bear witness to the gospel Jesus proclaimed—the reign of God’s kingdom and the restoration of his land and people.
To confess that gospel publicly puts our lives where our theology is. Faithfulness means loving what God loves and standing with the people and land at the heart of his Messiah’s mission.
It’s easy to believe in God’s irrevocable calling of Israel when your heart is anchored in his Word. But standing by that same calling when you have a lukewarm knowledge of the Bible and have kneeled to the spirit of the age is impossible.
When we know what Scripture says about Israel and the covenant Jesus sealed with his own blood, we can love both the Jewish people and their enemies rightly. With our prayers, our resources, and actions, we can live as though God meant what he said—and endure without surprise when that love costs us something.
Why Israel Still Matters—And Why the Church Must Care
Israel still matters because God’s choice of them is irrevocable. The survival of the Jewish people is a living testimony to God’s ongoing covenant fidelity. Paul dares to say that Israel’s reconciliation will mean “life from the dead” (Rom. 11:15). The resurrection that began in one Jewish body will blossom into a resurrection that fills the earth. The land of Israel and the Jewish people remain the undeniable linchpin of God’s redemptive plan—a plan that graciously, includes us all.
If the Church is to stand in the days ahead, she must recalibrate to this message.
We must recover our roots—not as a sentimental return, but as an act of obedience. Left in our current apathy, we are easily discipled by the age, carried along by every persuasive current of respectable-sounding doctrine we’ve never actually held against the standard of God’s irrecovable promises. We become Cain—resentful of God’s favor toward our brother, offended by the Father’s feast for the son who returns. Or we become Jacob, scheming and grasping for a blessing we were never excluded from.
God’s choice of Israel not about us; it is for us. It is about the God who keeps his word—to Abraham and his descendants, to Israel and the nations, to Zion and the ends of the earth—through Jesus the Messiah, the crucified and risen Son who will rule from Zion with a rod of iron (Ps. 2; 110).
I believe a great sifting is upon us. It will not be decided by theological debates or peace treaties in the Middle East, but by the question of Zion. Will we in the Church yawn with the nations—“It’s just Zion; no one cares” (Jer. 30:17)—or will we become watchmen who do not keep silent until he establishes Jerusalem and makes her a praise in the earth (Isa. 62:6–7)?
Jesus’s words in Revelation are a sharp warning to his followers in a generation on the brink of the redemption:
To Ephesus: return to first love—and remember from where you have come.
To Smyrna: be faithful unto death.
To Pergamum and Thyatira: refuse the seductive speech that normalizes covenant infidelity and takes what belongs to someone else for greedy gain.
To Sardis: wake up; strengthen what remains while it’s still there.
To Philadelphia: hold fast to the messianic confession.
To Laodicea: repent of indifference—choose who Jesus is. Know him, or he will not know you.
Our Master does not call his followers to activism but to faithful allegiance to the God he represents—the God of Abraham. Our posture toward Israel must end not in Christian pride or political zeal, but in praise to God. The kind of worship that steadies our hands to pray, to stand, to suffer if necessary, and to hope without shame.
Israel still matters because God is faithful.
He has engraved them on his hands; he will not forsake them. Until then, we love our neighbor and hold to the testimony of Jesus—the Jewish Messiah, the Cloud-Rider and king whose scepter goes out from Zion.
And we whisper the oldest Christian prayer, which is also Israel’s greatest longing: