211002 - Extending our Visit

So this may look like what I gave on Saturday, but it's it it is it is somewhat related but it's not, I think it's important to continue on. With this idea. The early church was very very, very diverse. Doug sent a quote from

What was the? A week in Ephesus or something? Are we a week in the life of Ephesus by a dasilva? And he's a wonderful author. I've studied him a few times. It's a 7-part series of books, a week, in the life of Ephesus is one of the books. Other people have done other ones. I think, Ben Worthington, and, and witherington, and a few other people have contributed, but this one's done by dasilva. And he quotes a gentleman.

Paul Trabuco. And Paul Trabuco says that, at the end of the century in Ephesus, you had a conglomerate of Christian churches. There weren't very many Christians in Ephesus around the end of the first century less than half of 1%. It's, it's presumed from the records that we can find of the entire population. We're believers. Less than half of 1%. Years ago. I heard a teaching on 1% milk.

You ever gotten the 1% milk teaching? Well, we were all used to whole milk when I grew up. And then all this stuff at free, craze gotten in Vogue and and people were in the nonfat milk. And I tried it and I didn't like it.

2% is a whole lot better.

Then fat free milk. And 1%, if you get used to 2% 1 %, still, okay. But fat free milk, I'd prefer not to have ever again.

Half of 1%. So I remember that teaching. Half of 1% of the population were Christian in Ephesus and they were greatly Unified. No, they were not unified at all. They were completely diverse. You have some congregations who are really Pro Paul. They really like the letters of Paul and agree with them. You got other congregations that really don't like Paul.

They're both in the same city at the same time. You got some congregations that really like John cuz John's there and some congregations that really don't like John and John writes about these other congregations that don't like him first John and then got a whole bunch of other congregations from other variants of of population, and they don't really agree on much of anything. And and Trabuco Trabuco. Yep. He writes that something incredible happened shortly after this in the second century and it's, because there were so many Christian groups popping up who were heterodox, heterodox is a complicated word, meaning not Orthodox. They had some wild ideas. And they're putting forth or wild ideas and these groups that didn't agree at all. Kind of agreed that these guys aren't, right.

And they kind of group together in agreement that these guys aren't right. These guys are destructive. Heretic's, they're not just I mean everyone's a heretic. If you belong to any sect, you're a heretic. It doesn't mean you're a bad guy Tik. Paul was a heretic. He was a follower of the way, that's one of the heresies in the first century, Etc. So Pharisees, that's a heresy Etc. It's not bad to be part of a heresy. The thing that you don't want to be is part of a schism.

A fracture, a separation, if you're in a family and someone in the family disagrees with you, it's normal, right? Yeah. Yeah, so I used to say, you know, my family is really kind of complicated. And I decided that's not a good way to say it. I've changed that. It's my family.

I don't need to say anything else. If you're part of the human family, you understand what I'm saying, but we're family. We're not schisms from one another. We still have things that we can share. So we're going to visit the first century Church. The first century believers who are not alike at all, except for a few things and a teacher Charles craft wrote a book called anthropology for Christian witness, and he went to Wheaton and was going to be a minute a missionary and he wants to know what the best subject would be for a missionary to study and his roommate who was number classement said. Well, that's easy. There's only one subject. You can study that's appropriate for a missionary work. And the end he goes, what's that church? History choir music for Shea Shea. What is it? And he said anthropology and Charles crafts. That that's crazy. And and he said, no, it's not you need to understand any culture before. You can learn from it and you can speak into it. You have to be part of the culture. In order to relate to it. You have to join the family in order to communicate in any way, with the family. So he he took this to heart and he made it his life's work and he wrote a book anthropology for Christian witness. Great book. To instruct and learn from any culture. He writes we need to experience the culture or we impose our own unreal expectations on the culture. When you think, you know what's going on in the first century and you put your understanding on what's going on in the first century. It's not what happened in the first century. Usually, usually you've placed your own interpretation, on top of the people. You've actually colonized the people of the Bible. In your own understanding and you need to figure out how to let them speak on their own, to be part of their culture to walk into their culture, to experience it with them, or you will be crippled by the enemy within us our own sx-f. No. Centrism. And I agree with that completely. So I are deep debt of gratitude to these wonderful. Two gentlemen, Alex, Girard. Maurice Sylvia has Alex book with a beautiful book. He passed away about 11 years ago, but he made the most accurate representation of the temple in Jerusalem to date. No one else has built this. And after he passed on, he gave instructions for his wife that he didn't want it to be shared with anyone else. So you can't see this anymore except through pictures, but I'm grateful that he worked with Leon rittmeyer, who's in an architect and archaeological designer. He tried to recapture dimensions and everything else from the past. So these are partly Leon written, Mars, slides of Alex Gerard's work. Introduction to the first century Church. They're primarily three overlapping phases. First of all, you got the Jewish Believers in Jerusalem. Guess what? They're Jewish. Is that a surprise? Know they're Jewish. Are they Christians? Nope? They're believers. In. Yeshua hamashiach. So you could say they're Christians, but the only people who were called Christians were the guys up in Antioch and that's a little bit later right now. They're Jews and their in June Juris Jerusalem and the part of the Jewish Mizzou that's going on there. And they have arguments with their Jewish brothers, and sisters Pharisees, and Sadducees, everything and the temple courts, and that's okay because their family, there Jews there altogether there. They can disagree on who the Messiah. Is there a juice today? Who disagree on who the Messiah is incredible Jews argue about who the messiah's? Yes. It's okay to have a different opinion on who the Messiah is, and what the Messiah means, it's okay. We can talk about it. We can study it. We can think about it. We can pray about it. It's okay. It's part of their culture and they were all from one group. They're all from the first Jewish congregation of No, they weren't they were from every group. You have people coming to the faith in Jesus who were Pharisees, you have people coming to the faith in Jesus who were sad, you see, these zealots you have people coming to the faith in Jesus, who were formerly of scenes and everyone who comes to the faith in this new Messiah enters into this community carrying all kinds of baggage and that's okay. Bring your baggage will talk about it. Every one of you that's here, today comes to this group today with your own baggage. You have preconceived notions from all the years that you've been alive and it's good. You can treasure and value the teachers who taught you even if you disagree with them today, it's okay. You got to work through your baggage and figure out what is true. What is right? What is good? So that's the first group the Jewish. Believers second group. You've got these weird things going on, Peter goes to the city, and he talks to this Gentile Centurian, and before he's even done talking, this whole family saved and the holy spirit's doing works and Peter, and all the circumcised Jewish guys from the first group are looking at what's going on and they go. Wow, God is doing something radical here. He's bringing. Romans. Roman centurions. Into our family. That's radical. And then Saul. His way away in Tarsus and we'll talk about that in a minute, but he ends up teaching in Antioch and they don't know what to do with these guys cuz they're syrians. They speak something like Arabic, they like Arabic or Aramaic, but probably more like Arabic a Syriac.

And then you have something else going on increased Latin expansion and dominance. And so tried to capture all of that and this one slide which is impossible. But I want you to realize there's three major overlapping phases of Christianity and we today Our history. Our identity. That was a word that we talked about this morning. Our identity is rooted in all three. You've got something in your background, in your understanding of Jesus. In the in the in the kingdom of God. From each of these three groups groups and try to try to learn something from them. So, before we begin, let's begin with Jesus.

I'm going to give you three Dish versus. See, if you remember them. I am the light of the world. Sound familiar. You are the light of the world. Sounds familiar, you know, this like that, right? You don't need me to read it. You know what it is. I am the vine. You are the branches, you get it into your hands. I commend my spirit and he breathed his last and we think we understand these verses. But we're not thinking like a first-century believer. We're thinking like a twenty-first-century Believer, who thinks they understand what these verses mean? So now we're going to go into the culture of the first century.

This is what the Temple Mount look like. Guess when?

Guess.

It's herod's Temple. Yes. When was it like this? Hanukkah, and what else? Sukkot. This was lit like this during the Feast of Sukkot. Can you hear Jesus? Say I am the light of the world?

In this context. Does it hook to like that, or does it mean something that you thought it meant before we started talking? I think it snap. I'm there. The whole Temple Mount slit up. Praise the Lord. I am the light of the world. You are the light of the world. Second one. This is the entry to the holy place. And it's got these columns in the columns are decorated with golden. It's made out of gold. Get that grape Vines and grape clusters and the grape clusters are about the size of a man. Huge, beautiful ornate, golden clusters of grapes.

Does. I am the vine? You are? The branches still mean, what? You thought it meant, or do you have a deeper understanding now?

You with me.

Got it.

I am the vine. You are the branches, and this is the one. What I read this. It just, it just made me cry. It just made me cry.

Referencing a coat for B5 a Jerusalem talmud. The earlier, and also the JPS guide to Jewish traditions in the first century. They thought that it would be a good idea to say a prayer of blessing. Honoring God before you went to sleep every night, and sages were encouraged to say a prayer in the sages prayer, was much length Lehrer than this, but if you boil the prayer down to a regular human being, like URI, this would be the classic prayer that you would say. Every night before falling asleep in your hand. Lord is life and the breadth of man into your hands. I commend my spirit.

To be awakened. A fresh in the morning.

And a child. Would probably say a shortened version of this prayer. Let me see. Now, I lay me down to sleep. I pray, the Lord, my soul to keep if I should die. Before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take and I'll see you later.

It's that familiar. To any first-century believer.

Into your hands. I commend my spirit. You will wake me. In the morning. That's not quoted, but it's a well-known prayer. Ancient documentation on this.

Well, that changes. First century Christianity to me.

So here's a picture of the first century Christian Temple, Jewish temple, all that, Temple everything. So here's the stairway over Robinson's Arch. You can see it. That big stairway. That's roughly a roughly, a hundred steps.

The long way up the steps. Something like four stories. And then you go in at the Royal store there at that gate at the top of the steps. And this also shows Barclays gate and Warren's gate.

On the this corner is the southwest corner and the southwest corner is overlooking most of the old city. So the trumpeter who would last the trumpet would blast it from this spot right here. And that's colloquially called The Pinnacle of the temple. It's the highest point in the temple. It's where you would Blast Your Horn so that everyone in Jerusalem could hear you. So this is the southwest corner. He's blasting that way. And you're going to hear the temple, blow the horn blow, and you're going to know, it's time to go. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. So now we're going up the stairs into the Royal store. That's the Eastern Southwest system. That's the western side. And here's the double gate and there's the triple gate. These are two gates that people would come in from the western side. This is the southern side.

Can you imagine walking up the stairs with me?

Are you there or you just looking at pictures? If you're there, I'd like you to be there with me, because we're trying to visit these people. And we we we need to hear them speak.

So, imagine going in any of these gates, with a whole bunch of other people and going up into the temple.

Here we are going up the stair that we're looking at going into the Royal store and you can see, you can see right there. That's the Royal store. And at the end of the hallway there you can see the room, will the room the area, where the Sanhedrin that very public very public area. This is the interior of the royal stoa walking to the east kind of.

And you can see the, the court, they're up in the in the front. Can imagine of bringing an argument before the court to be settled and it makes its way all the way to the Sanhedrin? You can imagine. Many trials, taking place in this place. This is the Sanhedrin in the front and a group of onlookers. Looking on. This is the 71 members of the Sanhedrin, 70 + 1. Now, we're going to look that way through the columns that are two are left.

And we're looking back on the group from the Temple Court, the giant big Court. And there we are, looking out into the court. Can you imagine being in this group of people?

Can you imagine how many friends you might be walking here with? New Testament, believers.

Hearing Peter speech speech. And I think this house right here. Somewhere near here. Indus giant Temple complex. Beautiful. So here's the big Temple complex were walking out into the big Temple, complex news. Great Gates that I showed you before. Here's if you want winning those Gates, here's where you would would come up through into this Temple complex. This is a wall that separates. The place were Gentiles. Could be from the place. Where Jews would typically be there's a wall of separation there.

Now we're at the Eastern date, the Eastern Gate. If you're coming down from the Mount of Olives, if Jesus, when Jesus came down from the Mount of Olives on Palm Sunday, Palm Saturday, whatever you want to call it. He would have gone in through this gate, the Eastern Gate. This is the Eastern Gate today and a lot of people look at it and they say, well, it's not really the Eastern Gate. It's a Byzantine Golden Gate that the byzantines made because they knew Jesus would be coming through the gate. And so they built it up to look really nice. It's a different date than the golden Glade and then from the, then, the Eastern Gate. No, it's not. It's the same place and he's giant stones that form, the lentils and columns for the Eastern Gate. Were preserved in the Byzantine Golden Gate? So when you're looking at the Golden Gate today, and someone said it's someone tells you it's not the same gate you can say yeah, it is the byzantines made it fancier. That's all. It's the same gate. It's the gate through which Christ will go through. And you might notice that right in front of this gate is a Muslim Cemetery. So the moslems are pretty smart. See, they know that no, self-respecting Jewish Messiah is going to cross a graveyard to go into a gate. Pretty smart, huh? Unless the people who are in the graves, are raised to New Life or judgment and then it's not a graveyard anymore. There's no problem with Jesus coming through this gate. I've actually had that conversation with Muslims. No problem at all. I think he's going to go through that gate. I think I'm going to go through with them. I think we're going to be arriving by Cloud. I have first class air travel. Booked, I just don't know when it is.

So that's an introduction to the temple courts and everything, that's in them, we could spend weeks on this but I think an introduction is okay, and now we're going to examine a little bit, the synagogue's of the first-century church and Jews for that matter. So here are the synagogues. We found at least some of them, the majority of them. I personally been at capernum, Copper inoculum and Masada capernum. The criticism here is what's not the synagogue. Jesus taught in the different. Synagogue was built much later. That's correct, but you need to look a little bit deeper to see this dark stone down here. That's the basalt foundation of the synagogue in Capernaum. That's the one Jesus taught in. So we're not too far off being in the synagogue at Capernaum to know, it's built on the foundation that Jesus taught in. Not a problem. Synagogues, do a lot of them. It's recorded that the Spacey, and when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed 480, synagogues. Now, how many churches do you know of in Dayton personally? Can anyone count 15? Not easily. Can you imagine 480? Can you imagine how many different Traditions there are in 480 synagogues and how different they might be? Radically different the temple, pretty monolithic, but synagogues there could be a lot of variety in size and tradition and each one of them had this is recorded. In Magilla, 31, Jerusalem, Nagila not the Babylonian. Lagila. Each one of them had a place for prayer, each one of them had a place for teaching for study for discussing. Mishnah. Each. One of them had a place for schools for education of children and the apostolic scriptures list. 24 different cities, which had synagogues in them there a lot. This is the synagogue in Capernaum. A architectural reconstruction based on the best information we have. And you see here, The cart that they would bring the temple. The Scrolls in with their carefully guarded carefully, Protected. Their not left alone in a big dark building their brought here when they're going to be used and then the attendant takes the Scrolls from the cart and bring some up to the reader and there are seven readers on a typical Sabbath. And the seventh reader completes the Torah reading for the day. And then he reads from the prophets. So Jesus stood up to read from the scroll of Isaiah, the attendant gave him the scroll of Isaiah to show him where he was to read because there was a particular place. He didn't get to pick his Bible. Verse to teach Sean. He was given the Bible verse. It was a schedule that they knew well, and we think this is the closest thing. We have to the schedule that they used what we're working on here. These are updated. If you want a copy of this, we can hand them out how many want copies? Okay, could get someone hand them out. Check that be great. Thank you. It's not a nameless person. It's actually Jack Starcher.

We usually get those out before the week of the service, but we've been a little bit busy. So I printed them out. Brian definitely wanted a copy. So I got him a copy and I made enough copies for everybody else here. We're using that that schedule the readings. And then after Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah. He stood up to read, you. Don't sit down to read God's word. You stand up to read God's word. And so after he stood up to read God's word. He sat down right here and that's the seed of Moses, which is where the teacher sits. And that's why I'm sitting on this crazy stool up here that Terry. So, gracefully made a cover for years ago.

I'm grateful for the cushion, by the way. I used to sit on a stool with a crack in it and that was a sometimes uncomfortable. Anyway. So, Jesus talk during the day after he read from Isaiah and it was tied to a Torah reading for the day. And we're using that schedule and that's Moses seat.

And that's the best information we have based on actual archaeological evidence.

This is an actual Moses eat. I don't think it's, it's not from, it's not from capernum. It's probably from gamla. But this is an actual Moses seat of from one of the synagogues that's been.

Rediscovered. Thank you. I'll put these in the back on the thing after this is over. So, Jewish Believers, we know they met in the temple house, Temple courts, daily and from house to house in the Lord added to their number being saved. Daily. How did they, how did they come to Faith?

We'll get to that. So various groups met in these different places in these various places and an example of Jesus at 12 in the temple courts. He sat in the temple courts with the teachers listening and asking questions.

Teacher, I have a question. Okay. What's your question? I need to ask a question in the teacher would answer and then he'd teach would ask for clarification and Jesus would answer. Right. No.

What?

Yes, the Jewish way of discussion is to answer with a question. So let's read the verse a little bit carefully. All who heard Jesus is asking questions and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. So we read that that he was asked questions, but doesn't say that it says Jesus asked questions. And so the teacher would ask a question in Jesus would ask a question and the teacher would go. Who this isn't a regular 12 year old kid here. This guy has some Savvy. Some understanding of what's going on, Michael.

They were amazed. I think that's what it says.

Yeah, all of her team were amazed at his understanding and his. Questions. Might be a better word there.

Have you ever been in a conversation with Jews? Have you ever? So I I I met a guy one time I said so so you're an Israeli? Yes. Why do you ask? Are you from Jerusalem or Israel? Know? Why do you ask? You can have a conversation with a Jew without questions coming in. It's just, this is part of the part of the way. They they asked it's funny to watch. Especially if your bartering. That's a lot of fun.

So the Jews were from diverse backgrounds and they had baggage, but they were Jesus, observant. So the big question that comes in is where they tore. Observant Jews. Yes. There were more observant Jews in the first century way of being tore observant, but it was okay to heal on the Sabbath, which some people thought was not Torah observant, and it was okay to pluck, grain and chew on it and get some nourishment. If you were hungry on the Sabbath, that was okay. It wasn't a violation of Torah, but many people thought it was not tour absorbent. And Jesus went to a guy's house and the guy was just absolutely shocked that Jesus didn't wash his hands before eating. How do you say why aren't you washing your hands? I mean, that's that's just common courtesy.

Jesus was towards Urban not in the way that some people thought to our observance was. So when people make a big deal out of Torah observant. She have to ask what do you mean? And what do you think is really critical? And why do you think it's so critical because things? Get nuanced overtime. I'm not going to speak ill of anyone's tradition. I'm just saying. If someone says their Torah observant, what do you mean? I prefer the term here to Jewish to Jesus first. Believers to be Jesus. Observant. These people understood the tour. Observance was really far deeper than the surface torah-observant keeping of laws that they were used to seeing you can think of The Sermon on the Mount Jesus. Antithetical statement. So so uses you've heard it said, but I say to you and it gives it in its proper light. So, I like to think that these people were gradually becoming Jesus, observant tour of people. Mary Sylvia.

Yeah, I'm not going to answer that question.

Play baggage, everyone who comes in here, has baggage. You have questions from your own history, understanding of Christianity.

And if you're in a conversation with me, all invariably say, let's look at the verse. Let's look at the text because the text is more important than your understanding or my understanding. And I'd rather get back to the text. If I can early Jesus Believers, many backgrounds, no monolithically uniform for a century Judaism, except for the temple, but neighborhood, synagogues have many different Traditions, all were Jews acting within G Judaism. They were not separatists. They stayed in the community. They stayed in the family, even though they disagreed on major issues like politics or anything else. They had major disagreements, but they stayed and community.

And they relied on the apostles in-depth teaching, and the Lord added to their numbers being saved a lie, very diverse. But each remanded you, each one had come to Faith and your shoe. Off,, she talk. So now we're at the new ethnos Believers, the Gentile believers. So, here's the Peters, normal normal, one of his normal traveling routes apparently. Peter travel around a bit from time to time. And one of these days, he was traveling and he went to Lida or load that place there. And one of the Believers I think who was there?

Aeneas. Had been bedridden for 8 years.

And while Peter was there on this particular trip, he told him to get up and walk and he got up and he stopped being bedridden and everyone knew it. And everyone was real excited about it and they talked about it all over the place. And then they hear that, there's this girl Tabitha or Dorcas that it's the same girl, two different names. One Greek Hebrew, who had died, and they asked Peter to come and Peter travels to Joppa and he he raises the girl from the dead or God raises the girl from the from the dead and Peter helped out. And so he's, he's in Joppa. It's by the Sea tonight's place. And he had a friend there. Who was called. Simon the Tanner. Now Tenors were a complex group of people. Do you know what they use to tan with in the first century?

Urine. yep, and out of Jewish tradition said that if a woman married a Tanner and she realized she was not able to continue in that relationship because of

Nevermind.

It was okay, the rabbi would Grant the divorce. Yeah, I understand. You don't have to say anymore.

We don't need Witnesses or anyting just fine. It's actually in the Traditions. You can divorce a Tanner.

Who'da thought. Now who would have thought that Peter would have thought staying at a Tanner's house was clean.

But this is Simon the Tanner and observant, too. He was ritually claimed. He was one of the good guys. He was clean, but Peter was encouraged to go to Cornelius house, and do something entirely unclean. Including, just being in Cornelius, is house, terribly. Unclean. No Jew would do that in the first century. But his house was very clean. Just not ceremonially clean. So what's clean? What's unclean gets? Kind of interesting in this story. So, anyway, he goes to Cornelius house and I'm not going to go on more than that. But at Cornelius house, he wasn't even finished cooking and the Holy Spirit fell, and people receive the Holy Spirit and things were going on, and all of the circumcised Believers, who'd gone with, Peter realized God's doing something great here. So that's Peterson during journey, and this is cornelius's neighborhood. Pretty nice digs. They had a very high standard of living. Through this one of three aqueducts, this just threw this one. They were delivered more water per day than We use in our world today. They were very clean. They had lots of fresh water to cook. Bathe play in all kinds of things. Massive amount of freshwater. It's a city that would have been without water before these aqueducts for put in. So nice, digs Antioch next place on the map. Antioch, some believers who would scattered after Stephen's stoning and the persecution that followed their on had traveled all over the world. Basically, and some of them had taught some people in Antioch Syria, and many Gentiles were coming to Faith and Barnabas was sent from the group in Jerusalem, to check it out. Find out what's going on, Barnabas. So Barnabas travels from Jerusalem to Antioch. And then he decides, I need some help. So he travels over and it gets ahold of Saul. Who happens to be in Tarsus his hometown. And so he brings them back and they both teaching in Antioch for about a year and many people came to Faith in that area and they didn't know what else to call them. So they called them Christians. Didn't know what else to call him. They're not syrians. They're not Jews. There's something different did not Romans. They're Christians new word. Funk and wagnalls or whatever. Paul's first journey, so, Paul think was just a troublemaker. I mean, he really was a troublemaker. He could not have picked a more diverse small area to travel to, if he tried. I think he went to the one place where you could it could encounter more cultures and languages and diversity of beliefs than anywhere else in the world. At that time. He did a crazy thing. So, he travels from Antioch. He travels over to Cypress and our two cities. He visits on Cypress over here. It's called salamis and salamis is arguably part of Silesia. See this area right here. You could around this this island, like this, this semis for this Crescent. Salamis was probably under the control of this region. You can think of it as Armenia. They didn't they weren't really aligned with Rome as well as they were real or as a Roman Island. So it was their line with Rome, but but Completely different culture than Rome at Route. And then he travels from there, from this side of the island to that side of the island, completely different culture to pappos. And while he was in paphos, something incredible happened, the Roman proconsul, there became a believer. He convinced the governor to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior and can I guess and I don't know why, but from this place paphos. He's no longer called Saul. He's now called Paul.

and so, Lots of different places here. I'll show you a more complex back. This is actually better showing what's going on, except for the except for the Cypress. So he lands at purga here and it goes up through a treacherous Valley, apparently, and of these people that are in this Valley here who thinks Alexander. The Great was a great, conquering, General.

Pretty universally understood, right? Alexander the Great decided not to deal with these guys. They're too much trouble. He said Alexander, the Great did not try to conquer this region.

Too much trouble. These guys up through here. These are the Galatians now. Do you know where the Galatians came from?

I'll give you a hint gall. License.

They came from Gaul. What's gall?

France. Yeah, that's that's good Eileen. Celt. The Galatians were the Celts. Crazy and they were known by ancient Rome to have fiery red hair, extremely white skin and fierce eyes. Don't know. That's just a little fact here on the side. So he went up this this this Valley. Why did go up this dangerous Valley? There were a lot of synagogues up through there. So Paul is going through this area with lots of synagogues that are fiercely independent people. Violently independent people. And he's teaching Jesus. That's where he's going. And summer coming to Faith and summer throwing them, out of the synagogue, and it gets up to Antioch of pisidia. And then it goes over here and he visits, Iconium and lystra in Derby. And those are some three interesting cities. And he comes back kind of the same route. So early, Gentile, backgrounds wealthy Romans, Antioch Church Syriac salamis, which is really silicia pathos, which is really pamphylia purga, which is part of him filia Antioch of pisidia, which is definitely slowly Roman Iconium, which is fridge in Derby, which is arguably Persian in culture l'estro, which is Anatoly and kind of mountainous. Turkish, kind of people and Galatians from golf. These last five up here are the people to which Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians. So when you read the book of the glad the letter to the Galatians you for, Galatians, he's not writing a letter to one group of people.

He's writing a letter to a whole bunch of people who don't agree on much of anything.

Interesting. And from there pathos, he's now named Paul. What did they have in common? They didn't have much in common. What do they have in common? They had Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the teaching of the Apostles and the People who are learning to be Believers and persecution persecution in,. This is a period of extreme persecution. So Paul's going to teach this group of people about Jesus at a time of extreme persecution against Christians and believers. And that's the setting of this group of the church. Romeo's. Believers the Roman influence. When did the Roman influence begin it began with the Maccabees. The back of these wanted help against the grease loosen. So they sent a delegation to Rome and they became friends of Rome and they've been friends of Rome ever since all the way back to the time of The Maccabees.

More details, too many details.

Sorry.

Early. Roman believers, they believe they continue their faithful Witness by living and dying to the Lord. And a Confluence of events happened, masses of people were coming to Christ throughout the Roman Kingdom. The Romans were trying to kill him as fast as they could, and people were watching the Christians died, and they saw something in the people who are dying, that they didn't see in the people who were killing the people, who are dying. They saw Joy. They saw belief in the one true God. They saw worship. They saw a celebration of life, even unto death, and they said, I want some of that. And they came to Faith. There was a Roman civil war going on. It's been going on for about 30 years. One of the Roman emperors two-sided rum rum was too big for a one person to govern, so he gave it to four people. And from that point on, there was Roman civil war going on and culminated with Constantine. And he's in this battle with his one big remaining rival. And he gets this weird dream in this conquer and he said he's at the Cairo that the the letters of Christ's name, the first two letters or the cross and he is told in this conquer and so overnight. She makes his allegiance of flags and Banners and they go into war and they win. Incredible. So, he was able to reunify the Roman Empire, then he realizes. He's got all these Christians all over the place and he got them all together. He said, okay, you guys are it's okay to be Christian. I'm not going to kill you anymore. And then they adopted a Creed that 1800 Bishops, their 1800 Bishop's that he sent an invitation to basically, every leader in the Christian world was sent an invitation from Constantine and Constantine paid, the bill for the leaders, the Bishops and two Associates to go with every Bishop. So, he was ready to put the bill on. Travel and per diem and everything. a long time for the sea, 3640 someone do the math.

36. + 18. 52.

54. 5400 people. Can you imagine putting paying the hotel bill Inn and Lodge at lodging and food for 5,400 people? That's what he agreed to do. Only about a third of them went. Why did they have this? That had it for one reason and we talked about it earlier?

Other Christian groups were coming up with all kinds of crazy ideas that were considered destructive heresies and Constantine said you guys got to figure out what you agree on. I can't be thousands of different things. It has to be one thing that you can agree on and so they wrote a Creed he gets a lot of bad press for that. But there's a lot of Glory in the in the Creed of the church lot of complex issues, but We're part of that. We have creedal statements. Differences are. Okay. Schisms are bad. I talked about that before. You can have factions heresies, but don't have the Visions. No, don't have any schisms. Don't have any schisms. So we're getting to the end.

Where in the world as divided as the early church today? Where in the world, where we disagree with people, and we put them in a box and we say that they don't, they're not valuable anymore. We will treat them as if they're evil, and we're good. And we're forgetting that they're created in God's image.

We're creating that they carry some of the Dignity of God with them wherever they go. And we need to somehow try to preserve these relationships and not break away from the family, because we disagree with someone and not let them break away from the family because we disagree with them. We're the same world as the early church. Their divisions were complicated hours are complicated. What can we learn? Let's see what we have in common Jesus. The Holy Spirit. What else may be persecution? Solid teaching. Scriptures.

We study together. We have some things in common, if we're not breaking into schisms, I appeal to you Brothers.

At church, the Messiah and in the World At Large today, by the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that all of you agree that there be no schisms between you that you be United in the same mind and judgment, which is Christ. We have the mind of Christ. It's been reported to me. There's coralyn among you, my brother is what I mean is that each of you says, I follow this teaching rifle, that teaching rifle, that teaching Some even say I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? No way. No way. He is not divided. Amen. That's what I told you at the beginning Ephesian, Christianity somewhere connected to Paul somewhere oppose somewhere nurtured by John somewhere opposed. There were many others. It's amazing that unity and cohesion Grew From such diversity to result in one unified solid Christian faith. How did it form against? Unorthodox. Lies destructive heresies against which all Christians can unify. Together. Know what's right doing. Good. Don't Let It Go. 1st Corinthians 8:6. We say this every week. At the beginning of the service. It's kind of like Paul's Shema for us. There is one God the father from whom are all things and for whom we exist and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things and through whom we exist. Paul is proclaiming the unity of God and the Sun. Unity. And yet. Distinction between the two.

It's his small. It's kind of the beginning of a definition of an idea of a trinity, but I'm not going to go there. This is just what we can. Quote every week and we do. It's well done. Thank you, Paul. Amen. Hey, man, simchat Torah rejoicing in the law slightly extended. Thank you very much.