Transcription of the Video: The Rabbi

The ancient land of Israel is a testimony, an evidence of the greatness of what God did in that country, a testimony to the truth of the words that we find in the pages of the Bible. The hill is known as Gamla. Small groups of Jews moving back from Babylon where they had settled during the time of the Babylonian captivity chose to settle on the side of that hill. 

The northern side was too steep for people to live and too rocky. The southern side, being a little bit more of a gentle slope, was the place this community built their homes. Yet the side of the hill is so steep that the homes were literally built one below the other so that one's roof became the front yard of the house just above. 

To understand the people who lived in Gamla, we need to know just a bit about the various groups who lived in this part of Galilee. Living over in the northwest corner of the lake were the Pharisees, people who believed that it was most important to live in obedience to God, to keep his law. 

There were the Sadducees. They were involved with the Temple. They taught that the way to be right with God is through the sacrifice system. They were satisfied with Rome, for the Romans left them in power, gave them a majority on the Sanhedrin, the ruling religious council, and allowed them to govern the everyday affairs of the people of the land. 

But the people of Gamla were different. They were the zealots. It was people like this, whose symbol was the palm branch, that led Jesus to weep on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem as he observed that the people misunderstood him and were asking him to be a military king. And as he weeps, he says, "If only you had known what would bring you peace. But since you missed my coming, they're going to build a wall around you, they're going to throw you and your babies against the stones, and you're going to suffer great misery." [Luke 19:42-44]

That prophesy came true here at Gamla. In 66 A.D., the Jewish revolt began, led in many ways by the zealots. Thirty thousand Roman soldiers surrounded this hill on the cliffs and the hillsides around. Eventually, at the breach in the wall, that v-shaped opening that's still there today, the Roman soldiers broke into the city. The defenders of the city began to flee, and panic set in. Ten thousand people had jammed the streets of the city, fleeing from all around to the security and the safety of Gamla. And then tragedy struck. Great panic filled the crowd pressed against the cliff, and they began to run off of the backside. 

More than 5,000 of them died trying to escape the Romans. "More died," Josephus records, "jumping off the back of the mountain than died by the Roman swords, and the battle was lost." The Romans destroyed the city. You can still see the ruins. And it was never resettled.

Visiting Gamla helps us to understand the passion people felt for their desire for freedom and the opportunity to serve God. But it also highlights that Jesus, who came to talk about freedom, who came to talk about serving God, had a very different method than these freedom fighters, the zealots.

So we walked down the path, in through the city gate, and found our way to the synagogue to consider the teachings of Jesus. 

Welcome to the synagogue of Gamla. I'd like to just start by talking a little bit about this town and setting the stage for who was here and what went on here. This town was founded in 150 B.C. approximately by Jewish people coming back from the east, from Babylon. And they set up a very industrious, prosperous city here on the side of this hill. 

The synagogue, here, you can see the size of it. It follows a fairly typical pattern, but what's interesting about this one, in particular, is that it's one of the earliest synagogues that's ever been found. In fact, Guttman, the archaeologist felt that this probably dated back even as early as 100 B.C., which would make it one of the earliest synagogues ever built. What I like about this synagogue is that it gives us an idea of what synagogues were like in Jesus' time. Because it was here when he was here, and it was being used when he was here. 

In fact, I like to say to people that at the time Jesus walked on this earth, as we read in the Bible, there were Jewish folks who came to this synagogue and prayed to God and studied Torah and worked to understand God's will for their lives, who you will meet in Heaven. Because they were believers in God. They followed the same God Jesus did. 

The synagogue follows a typical pattern. Rows of benches around the sides where people would sit, rows of columns. What we know from tradition is that the elders or the important people in a synagogue would normally sit on the benches. Indications are that they didn't divide men from women at that time. They simply mixed. There was no sense of division like that in a synagogue. And they really didn't have an organized synagogue service.

So a synagogue did not originally develop as a church, as a building for worship. It developed as a community center. People would come here for school. People would come here for meetings. People would come here for political situations. People would come here just to meet their friends. And people would come here for purposes of worship.

And about at this time, about 100 B.C., is for the first time when you began to see synagogues develop that in some sense have some religious content. That is, even though this is a community center, one of the central focuses of this particular synagogue was to provide a place to be worshiping God and to develop this sense of keeping the law and of sacrificing yourself.

I'd like to talk just a bit about the way in which Jesus participated as someone who was known as a Jewish rabbi in his culture. He came with a rabbinic style. And interestingly, he came to the synagogue, and the Bible says he visited all the towns and villages of Galilee and taught in all their synagogues. Did Jesus teach here? People, very likely, he did. It doesn't make a difference, but it's just interesting to picture those Jewish folks from this community sitting on these benches and Rabbi Jesus participating. 

Just outside the synagogue here, you'll see a small room. And in that small room, something called a mikveh. And a mikveh is a ceremonial bath or a baptistry if you dare call it that. Some say our tradition of baptism comes from that. Before you came in the synagogue, you walked down in that pool, and you put some of that water on yourself, and then you came into the synagogue. So there was a sense in which, as you came to God, you went through this moment of personal cleansing, personal reflection.

Now somewhere, about this time in history, a tradition developed called the seat of Moses. Now the idea was this. The central focus of Jewish worship to God was the Torah. Why? Because the five books of Moses are the actual document of God's covenant between Himself and the children of Israel. Now what archaeologist, Guttman, discovered is over here in this synagogue, in this corner, is a closet or a chamber, and this may be the earliest example of a fixed Torah closet or an Ark of the Covenant.

Up until this point, the Torah scroll was kept in a portable cart that was brought into the synagogue so that it could be read so that people could hear that record of God's love. In this case, it appears for the first time that there is a compartment here where the Torah scroll was kept permanently. And that's of course, a fixture in a synagogue that you would go to today. So as you entered the synagogue, eventually, the person who sat in Moses' seat that particular week would take the scrolls and would come down the center of the synagogue, carrying the Torah scroll, which is God's law, and then bring them to the person in Moses' seat.

It was called Moses' seat because the person who was sitting in it got to read the word of Moses that particular week. And Jesus says to some of the Pharisees one time, who were challenging him. He says, "You guys sit in Moses' seat, and you don't understand what I'm saying?" In other words, you're the Torah readers in the synagogue, and you don't understand? 

In synagogues then, people would take turns sitting in Moses' seat. Any adult male could sit in Moses' seat, and it was his turn to read the appointed section from the Torah. It was all laid out on a schedule where you would read from the Torah, and then there was also a brief passage that was read from the prophets called Hoftorah. It was a section of the prophets that was divided up according to a set schedule - three years or one year - so that every time during that period, you've read through the whole Torah scroll.

And the person who was in Moses' seat got to read the Torah scroll that particular week in place of Moses. Following that, the person could make some brief comments. People would sit around and hear the testimony and the teaching of most of the adult members of their community. They didn't have trained pastors who did all the preaching. But you'd get to sit and listen to your grandpa or your uncle or your son speak about their experience with God. And there's something really profound in that that the Christian church has lost. 

Following that reading of the Torah and the Haftorah, then there would be a benediction done by somebody in the priestly line, and following that, you would leave the synagogue and you could leave an alms offering if you chose. 

That's how a typical synagogue time of worship went as best we can tell about the time of Jesus Christ. Many of the passages in the Bible deal with Jesus as he was in a synagogue, and I'd like to read you just one of them. Note how incredibly God set this all up. Jesus goes back to Nazareth. It says, "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everybody praised him. He went up to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day, he went to the synagogue as was his custom, and he stood up to read. The section that was appointed to read was this one. [Luke 4:14-16]

"'The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.' He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant. Everyone in the synagogue was looking at him, and he began by saying to them, 'Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.'"[Luke 4:18-19]

It's really fascinating how God arranged history and the schedule of the synagogue so that when Jesus showed up and it was his turn to sit in Moses' seat and read the Torah, the Scripture passage that was on the schedule for that week was exactly who he was. "I am the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah. It's me."

There are a lot of evidences that Jesus was a typical rabbi in the fact that he wore the tallit or the Jewish prayer shawl. God had told the Israelites when they entered the land of Israel, when they entered Canaan, that they ought to wear tassels on the corner of their clothes. And he said these tassels will be a reminder for you to keep all the commandments that I gave you. So they would sew tassels on the edges of all their garments.

But then the time came shortly before this synagogue was built, when they decided instead of putting them on all of the corners of their clothes, they would put them rather on a cloth-like this, which they would then wear with whatever they were wearing. So they had tassels on all the time. In typical rabbi fashion, they assigned meaning to the different tassels. And I'd just like to explain this because it ties in with the tassels Jesus had in one of the stories in the Bible. 

A tassel has five knots that it's tied into, which means or stands for the five books of Moses - my covenant with God. There are four spaces between the knots, which refer to the four letters of God's sacred, holy name YHWH, and the Jewish person doesn't pronounce because it's so sacred or so holy.

So that means by looking at this tassel, I remember I'm in covenant with God, five books of Moses. I honor only Yahweh, I keep all 613 laws, and I serve the one and only God. 

Now when Messiah comes, his tzitzit will have value in the fact that by touching them, they will have the power to forgive sins and to heal diseases. And so some of the Pharisees would make their tassels extra-long, kind of saying, "Maybe I'm the one. Just notice how holy and righteous I am. Maybe it's me." 

Jesus criticizes them and says, "You make your tassels long but it's not in your heart. You're hypocrites. You're actors." 

But the story in the Bible is of a woman who spent everything she had, to doctors, trying to prevent the bleeding disease that she had. So she comes to Jesus and she comes up behind him and not graveling on the ground for the hem of his garment as we think in English, but rather, she comes behind him not wanting to disturb him, and she simply touches or grabs the tassel.

What I want you to see is that that act of grabbing the tassel was a profession of faith. She is saying, "I believe you are Messiah." And she's healed. Now she's healed not by tzitzit or tallit or clothes. She's healed by God because of her faith. And that's, I think, an important ingredient. It simply highlights again that Jesus fit in.

Let's just summarize. Not really so much a specific faith lesson other than to begin to say we need to think, as Christians, about what the method is that God chooses us to use or wants us to use as we influence and impact our culture. 

The other thing is to appreciate how much we need to fit Jesus into the context of the Jewish community of which he was a part. Because this is where he did his ministry. Jesus' model is to love the people whose inner hurt and brokenness leads them to do things that we would consider immoral and unacceptable. 

Certainly, he would have us use things like media and television and music and art, and all of those things can point people to God. But ultimately, our focus has to be on where people's hurts and needs and cares are and minister to them.