Category: Teaching

Messianic Education Trust Launches New Guided Bible Study Package

Spreading the Word Online is a ministry of Tikkun International, fufilling the mandate given by the prophets Micah and Isaiah: Kiy miTzion teytzey Torah ud’var Adonai miy Yerushalayim – For the Torah shall go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Micah 4:2, Isaiah 2:3). In these days, the words of Amos are to be seen everywhere:

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “When I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the LORD. And people will stagger from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they will go to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, but they will not find it. (Amos 8:11-12)

Our response is to make the Word available in the most effective and convenient way for the culture in which we now live – via the Internet. Spreading The Word Online exists to do just that: spread the word using on-line media – by email, facebook, twitter and other platforms as appropriate. We have a number of subscription, gift and sponsored ways for you to be able to participate with us in reaching more and more people with the words of the Bible, the Scriptures, on a daily, weekly, guided and themed basis.

Spreading The Word Online believes in allowing the Word to speak for itself. While our material may contain some commentary, thoughts and challenges, we are not a teaching ministry. Teaching, on-line courses and speaking engagements are carried out by our sister ministry, Messianic Education Trust. Please do visit their website to see if there is a course or seminar series that would interest you.

Spreading The Word Online can also be found on Twitter (@SpreadTheWordOL) so please follow us there so that we can get to know you.

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Spreading The Word Online is a ministry of Tikkun International, a family of Messianic Jewish congregations and ministries in Israel, the UK and the USA. Its directors are Jonathan and Belinda Allen, who have been in covenant relationship with Tikkun for over seventeen years. Jonathan and Belinda led a Tikkun congregation for a number of years and Jonathan has served as Tikkun’s webmaster for most of that time, helping with content generation and formatting as well as correspondence and donor relationships. Jonathan completed his PhD in Theology at Trinity College, Bristol, in 2017 and has been teaching adult classes for nearly twenty years. Something of a Hebrew Bible specialist, although equally at home in the Apostolic Writings, Jonathan teaches biblical Hebrew and many other things covering a wide range of subjects from biblical criticism to the gospels, to studies of individual books, and practical subjects like prayer and how to read or study the Bible.

Spreading The Word Online was approved by the Tikkun International Board in March 2018 and launched its initial range of ways to connect with the Bible in the following months. Please send us an email (STW) to give us your name and email address if you would like to be receive periodic newletters and information about our new products.

Tikkun International is a Messianic Jewish family of ministries with their corporate headquarters in Jerusalem, Israel. Tikkun facilitates a network of Messianic Jewish congregations in the United States of America as well as a network of congregations and ministries in Israel.

Products

Spreading The Word Online is developing a range of products and ways for getting the Word out and being read in churches and congregations around the world. These include daily, weekly, guided and themed sets of Bible readings to help us all to read and think about the Bible and its Author more in our daily lives. All our subscriptions will be kept very low to enable people, churches and congregations of all levels of income to be able to share in the resources we produce and distribute.

These products will be available on a subscription basis for yourself, on a gift basis to be able to bless and encourage someone else you know, and on a sponsorship basis to bless individuals and leaders who need help and support in their ministries around the world.

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Intro to Spreading The Word Online by Jonathan Allen

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Help Spreading The Word Online

If you would like to make a donation towards the cost of providing sponsored subscriptions; of being part of helping Jewish people come to faith and Messianic Jewish congregations to grow and mature; of helping harrassed, busy and even persecuted pastors to teach their congregations the words of life; of helping the church to come to a rightly balanced understanding of the whole word of God, both the Jewish and Apostolic Writings; and of helping the Body of Messiah to reach maturity in and through the Word, please click the button below to go to the Tikkun International website donation page where you can make a donation that will be processed for us by Tikkun.

Below we present fragments of the transcript of the teaching of fr. Peter Hocken on Romans which took place on 9th November 2013 in Hainburg, Austria as a part of the Bible Teaching series. Presented below is the part which refers to chapters 9-11.

In Romans 9 Paul begins to speak directly about Israel, the Jewish people. Is this a complete change of subject from chapter 8, like some people have imagined? I think not, because in chapter 8 Paul is talking about the salvation of Jew and Gentile—of all—saying that God’s plan of salvation will not be frustrated. At the end of chapter 8 we read: “…nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39b). But obviously for the first Christians, it was a big surprise that a lot of the Jews who believed in the coming of the Messiah had not accepted Jesus. I think with chapter 8 Paul is saying that God will bring everything to completion. But now the question is raised: What about Israel, what about the unbelief of Israel? I don’t think this is a complete change of subject. Paul speaks of the great sorrow and unceasing anguish in his heart (Rom 9:2) because so many Jews were not accepting Jesus: “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh” (9:3). Then in verses 4-5 he lists all the advantages of Israel, all the blessings given to her: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises….” Notice that Paul says belong in the present tense. These things belong to the Jews; he doesn’t say they did belong. And this raises the question in verse 6. God had made promises to Israel so some could think that His promises had failed if the Jews didn’t believe. But Paul says: ^“It is not as though the word of God had failed” (Rom 9:6).

There isn’t time to go into all the arguments in chapters 9 and 10. Chapter 9 was one of the passages used to teach the doctrine of double predestination by strict Calvinists. Double predestination means that God created some people to be predestined to glory and some to be predestined to hell. I think the problem with the way this was used by Calvin and others in the XVI century is that they didn’t understand that these verses are about the election of Israel. The whole argument is in the framework of God’s choosing Israel. It’s not about the destiny of millions of individuals, but about the election of Israel. Paul is also insisting that God is sovereign—an important part of his argument. He is not saying that God has created part of Israel to be lost. We can see this in Rom.10:1: “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” Chapter 10 ends with the words: “But of Israel he says, ‘All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people’” (10:21). This isn’t asserting that God has rejected them. Rather, it speaks of their stubbornness, while God is continuing to stretch out his hand to them.

This leads to the question in chapter 11:1: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people?” because they’ve been so disobedient. But again Paul answers: “By no means!” Again this strong NO. “I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.” One of the signs that God has not rejected Israel is the fact that some of them did believe in Jesus, including Paul, and in verse 5 he calls the Jews who have believed in Jesus the “remnant, chosen by grace.” He continues in verse 7: “What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.” So some believed and some were hardened. The next question, in verse 11, is about the Jews who have been hardened, who haven’t believed—“have they stumbled so as to fall” through their unbelief and rebellion? Here Paul is asking if it is impossible for them to be restored. No, absolutely not! “By no means! But through their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous” (11:11b). Here is another example of the kal ve-chomer argument.

The Jewish argument in verse 12 goes like this: “Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!” The unbelief of the Jews in Jesus’ day opened the door for the Gospel to go to Gentiles. It has been riches for the world. And Paul adds how much greater a blessing it will be when the Jews do enter in, when they do accept. In fact, this is prophecy that they will! Here we have a very important argument. We saw in chapter 1 how Paul spoke of being called to bring nations to the obedience of faith, and now Paul is saying that this has been made possible through the unbelief of the Jews. In verse 25 he uses the word “mystery” to describe this. By using the word “mystery,” Paul is saying that this is God’s plan. Then in verse 33, after more similar explanation, he finishes with: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” Paul is realizing that this unbelief of the majority of Jews, which takes the Gospel to the nations, is part of the wisdom of God.

Though we can’t go through all the rest of this chapter, there are very important elements here. For instance, here Paul speaks of the olive tree and the Gentiles being like branches of a wild olive tree who are grafted into a cultivated olive tree. You see, some olive trees are cultivated, pruned and shaped to bring the maximum of fruits. And some olive trees are just wild, growing off somewhere, and nobody has tried to train or cultivate them. This is the picture of Israel and the Nations. God has been cultivating Israel for 2000 years to bring forth fruit, and he has become frustrated. So now he begins grafting in branches from wild olive trees not cultivated through the Law and Prophets, but they will draw life from the sap of the natural olive. The Gentiles will draw life and nourishment from the roots of Israel. Then as we’ve seen already, Paul states that the Gospel goes to the Nations because of the disobedience and unbelief of Israel. And in verses 30-32 he says that all were disobedient so that God may be merciful to all. However, in verse 29 he asserts: “For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” The election of Israel is still valid. God keeps his promises.