announcement: 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Waking Up to Grace podcast, where we celebrate and explore the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Tune in to the Waking Up to Grace podcast on every major platform. You can also listen to our episodes and read our full transcripts at wakinguptogracecom. And now here's Lenny. Welcome to the podcast everyone.

Lenny: 0:22

And now here's Lenny. Welcome to the podcast everyone. I'm excited to announce that we are celebrating our 50th podcast episode on the weekend of Resurrection, sunday. The resurrection of our Lord Christ Yeshua is something to cherish and live thankful for every single day of our Christian lives. The apostles taught us to meditate regularly on the finality of the cross of Christ and the reality of his resurrection. The depth of this truth when we study it is simply incredible. You can't keep the finished work of Christ in a box. Yahweh went way outside of the box when he made his plan for the salvation of mankind. And speaking of outside of box this weekend, when more Christians will attend a church building than on your average weekend, I want to challenge you to think outside of the box for a moment. Today's episode is going to be thinking outside of the box church. In Paul's letter to the Corinthians, we see the best example we have of what a church gathering looked like for the first century Christians. But before we talk about that, I want you to see what gathering looked like leading up to the early church. It is here that we will find just how far we have drifted from what was once considered to be the way of gathering for worship.

Lenny: 1:40

Let's begin with ancient synagogues and sermons. So I want to touch on synagogues a little bit. I'm going to be talking about sermons and synagogues, but we'll start with synagogues. We read in the New Testament Gospels that Yeshua taught in synagogues. One of them was Capernaum, and then Paul, according to the book of Acts, in chapter 17, he is said to have taught in synagogues. They went around and they spoke in synagogues. They went around and they spoke in synagogues. How did they get allowed to speak? You're thinking? You know, this is kind of weird. They just what? They just take the microphone. Hey, this is me. Get out of here to the whoever is normally speaking on the podium. Well, it wasn't like that.

Lenny: 2:20

Synagogue in Greek is a word that literally means a gathering of people, but it also refers to the place of assembly. First century AD. Synagogues were found in both Palestine and Diaspora, where they were used for a variety of communal needs. They would use them at schools, communal meals, hotels, courts a place to collect and distribute charity, political meetings. Courts a place to collect and distribute charity, political meetings. All these usages can be sourced from a combination of scripture and writings from the jewish historian who was a pharisee, josephus. He's a first century pharisee who ended up being a historian who also wrote about the events of 70 ad in the destruction of jerusalem there's a lot of writings that we have and they're very interesting.

Lenny: 3:04

Needless to say, we have recorded history of these things. There's a lot of writings that we have and they're very interesting. Needless to say, we have recorded history of these things. It's also said that worship took place in first century synagogues, but it wasn't worship like you saw in the temple. It wouldn't develop into what you see today in a Jewish synagogue until much later, and that would much later being after the destruction of the temple. What we do see in the synagogues in the first century is that reading and interpreting the Torah and the prophets was happening, and we read about this in Acts 15. James is at the Jerusalem council speaking At the end. You know they were kind of summing up their decision and he was talking about how great the law was at the end there. And he closes by saying For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him, since he has read in the synagogues every Sabbath. Right there in Acts we see that Moses, which would have been the law, was read in the synagogues every Sabbath. So once a week, yeah, so every week they'd be doing that.

Lenny: 4:04

Scholars disagree about the extent of the communal prayers. It's said that prayers took place. You know there's references to that. It's argued about how much and how often that took place, but we do see in Matthew chapter six. That's when Christ Yeshua is talking about the Pharisees and the synagogues puffing themselves up and praying out loud so that everybody can hear them. Was it really used for that or were they just being Pharisees and showing off? I don't know if that was really like a custom, so much as it was like hey, look at me in my cool outfit praying really loud.

Melissa: 4:41

They definitely had a reputation.

Lenny: 4:43

Yeah, it's not surprising that there's not a lot of evidence about any kind of centralized group determining what took place inside of these synagogues, because of the fact that they were really nothing more than local communal institutions. Most of the sources from the first century identify elders, priests and then these certain officials as the leaders of the synagogues. You would have had the leader leading things but interestingly there wasn't a hierarchy structure when it came to speaking, and we'll talk about that as we go. But there are a few remains of some of the first century synagogues in Israel and Palestine but unlike the synagogues from the later centuries, these ones didn't have any Jewish features or decor or any kind of furnishings. They were really just simple buildings with benches along the walls. So that would have very much reflected them being community centers. So next I'm going to hit on sermons a little bit. I'm going to talk a little bit about sermons, which ties into the synagogues.

Lenny: 5:45

In Old Testament, temple worship, preaching was not a common part of the experience. So if you were expecting to hear a sermon, that didn't happen regularly in the temple, that's not what it was, for the temple would have been about sacrifices, rituals, prayers, singing and then reading from the scriptures Reading no sermon, wow, no sermon. No tradition appears in the Old Testament as far as a sermon being held in the temple of worship, which is interesting, most people think. I know I used to think like, oh, that had to have been sermon after sermon. They're just teaching from a podium constantly, but it's not what you see. There's only actually one noteworthy time when you even see a podium constantly, but it's not what you see. There's only actually one noteworthy time when you even see a podium being mentioned In Ezra, chapter 8, verse 8, we read about Ezra standing on a high platform that was built for the occasion and he praised God and read the book of Moses, and then he had scribes with him, several scribes that were explaining the meaning of Moses to the people, and so this would have been kind of the introduction to the second temple, the grand opening.

Lenny: 6:49

The first temple was destroyed. They went in and they rebuilt it all, and it was this long process getting ridiculed by people and everything else, and they finished this temple. That's right and the people asked Ezra to go up and read from the law, bringing the law back into their reality again.

Melissa: 7:08

It's their new temple.

Lenny: 7:09

And so they're finally focusing on God again, after God literally had to wake them up. They were so awful and they were turning other gods, rejecting God. He's like, okay, you reject me and I'm just going to wipe things out and you won't have me. And then they started appreciating again. But this order of worship was, that wasn't the common thing. That's not what always happened. That was like a one-time thing. Ezra, get up there and read, and we'll have people interpret on a podium reading. For that matter, that wasn't the structure.

Melissa: 7:40

Right, almost like a ribbon cutting for the temple.

Lenny: 7:43

Yeah, so it was a big event. That's where we see a podium in scripture. To recreate that in Christian church is a bit of a stretch. It's kind of interesting.

Melissa: 7:53

Wow, and they're everywhere, they're in every. I don't think I've been to a church or seen one on TV, or yeah. I can't even picture one without a podium.

Lenny: 8:03

When we're reading scripture, when we're studying scripture, like we're about to do, we're going to dive into Romans, when we're going through our notes, when we're learning, I would say this is worship.

Melissa: 8:13

I like that.

Lenny: 8:14

We're learning about God's word, his truth, the written word, about the living word who is Christ. This is worship. So do you have to go to a church to worship is the question.

Melissa: 8:26

Absolutely not. We're taking the time to sit down. Get to know our Lord.

Lenny: 8:32

Who's doing the worshiping in your church? Who's speaking? Who's studying? Who's sharing? Week after week when you go to church, who's doing all the talking? Who's doing all the sharing? Somebody in the audience, or is it one person?

Melissa: 8:46

It's no one but the man behind the altar.

Lenny: 8:49

Who's sharing what they've learned, who's sharing their insights and who's being listened to. If you were going to go to your church this week and you heard your pastor speaking, if they said something that you didn't agree with and you interjected, I don't agree with that. What?

Melissa: 9:07

do you think would happen? You'd be shown the door very quickly, because it's not set up for that.

Lenny: 9:12

You'd be a troublemaker. That's not something you do here. You don't interject with the pastor. You don't do that Just like at a study group. If you're going to raise a ruckus by trying to share something that's not in line with what they teach at that institution, you're going to be asked to be quiet or leave. If you don't believe me, try it sometime, but only if you're willing to take that sacrifice.

Lenny: 9:37

What was going on in the synagogues, you would think, would resemble what we see in church today. You would think, well, where did they get this from? Probably the synagogues. But this is what was happening in the synagogues. They started by repeating the Shema of Deuteronomy, and so that was Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verses 4 and 5. And they would have expressions of praise to God and then they would read from the Old Testament. Evidently they organized the reading systematically in order to read through the whole Torah regularly. So they'd be wanting to go through those first five books of the Bible regularly. But then what we could call the sermon followed. I don't know if that's really politically correct, but we're just going to call it a sermon, and the sermon would have been a simple explanation of the meaning and the application of the text that was read and it would have depended on the ability and the training of the one speaking. In other words, whatever they were able to share and the way they were able to share it. That's how it was done. Guests could come, people could speak.

Melissa: 10:38

Wow.

Lenny: 10:39

Anybody could take the floor. Anybody could take the podium, so to speak. If there was one Sounds more like it was if you stood up, people were sitting down. If you stood up, you talked, anybody could come and share their insight, and that's in a synagogue, that's in a Jewish synagogue. What do we see in our churches today? It's like what is this? What would the apostles say if they came into one of our churches? Interestingly, on top of that, the reading of the scriptures, the preaching and the prayer officials weren't appointed to this. So if there was officials, if there was leaders, they were just kind of overseeing things, just like you see in the early churches. It's a parallel there. You had leaders and overseers, elders. They had Jewish elders, just like they had Christian elders. The structure seems pretty similar when you actually analyze it. The early churches were like huh, you know, we can kind of go by this basic structure because it's fair People share, we all partake, right.

Melissa: 11:43

Everybody's learning.

Lenny: 11:45

Yeah, so you just had people overseeing. What would those people do? Well, I'd have to say that if you were a leader in those days, it might have been a little more challenging, because if you were going to try to say as a leader, like, no, this is how it is, you're going to have to prove your case to the people.

Melissa: 12:03

Yes, people have questions.

Lenny: 12:06

So if you took your pastor down from that podium and put other people up there speaking and they didn't agree with him, and then he had to speak, he'd have to prove his case, wouldn't he Right? No more Hollywood going on. You know, he prepared his sermon. He wasn't ready for this. Now he's got to prove his case in scripture. Now he's got to prove his points. Now that's a more difficult position, and so you can see why a leader wouldn't want this. A leader wants it easy, and I'm not saying a good leader. Those acts of worship that you saw in the synagogues would have been freely performed, taking turns. For those in the assembly, just ordinary people. The sermon would have closed with a blessing. If somebody from the Levitical class, like a priest, was present, they would perform that closing blessing. Otherwise there would just be a common prayer.

Melissa: 12:57

That sounds a lot more like church and less like the world. I like the sound of that.

Lenny: 13:02

Doesn't that sound nice? I mean I'm thinking like you can just go there and share. If you learn something, you'd have an opportunity to share that. If you learned something, you'd have an opportunity to share that If you had questions you could get them answered, and I'm not even an extrovert at all and I craved seeing something like this in a church. I might actually want to go to a church again if I saw these things Be like whoa, I can actually share what I'm learning. Whoa.

Melissa: 13:32

What we have today is not church. It's some kind of. It's just some kind of entertainment. Honestly, it sounds more like a cult. Everybody just listens and nods their head and you don't get to ask questions and deeply learn.

Lenny: 13:47

That's the definition of a cult. What you just said One person doing all the talking, everybody else doing all the listening and you just agree, or else Everything's fine. If you agree, Come back weekly for your programming.

Melissa: 14:00

I have a problem with that. I hope other people have a problem with that too. The fact that the churches today don't look like the fruitful churches we saw in early history that bothers me.

Lenny: 14:15

And there was problems in all the churches, and there always has been. But the problem shouldn't be participation, Because without participation there is no body. Paul writes in Corinthians that every member of the body is important.

Melissa: 14:27

So why are we going every week?

Lenny: 14:29

We go there because we want to be told what to believe, what to think, what to do, Because it's difficult to be free, it's difficult to have freedom in Christ. It's harder to be free and shift your paradigm to full freedom than it is to just go somewhere and follow the herd. You just go there and what do I do? What's next? Do I get plugged into a group? What do I need to do next? What do I need to believe? How do I need to clean up my life? And what do you find the focus at most churches, what I found was that the focus is on you. You're focusing on cleaning up yourself, cleaning up your act, being a better, this being a better, that the whole thing is like a self-development program.

Lenny: 15:14

The closest thing that we see to a Christian church in Scripture is found in 1 Corinthians 11-14. You look at that letter the Corinthians 11-14, you see this. That's the only view of what you could say church. A gathering, a structured gathering, would look like, and you had spiritual gifts. So you got to take that out. We don't. Those things don't come naturally. We're not babbling and people interpreting and none of this kind of stuff. We're not performing miracles. So you take that out, but that's okay. But you still have sharing and encouragement. You didn't have one person speaking. You don't see that. You don't see a sermon. You don't see the overseer doing all the talking and put himself on a podium. You don't see it. It's not present. Where did they get it? Not from these guys, it didn't come from the apostles, the gathering of the Corinthians. If you compare and contrast it to the synagogues what we were just talking about it's actually pretty similar. There's a lot of similarities there. That's the way they did stuff. Then you could openly share.

Melissa: 16:18

I just think that would make all the difference if we did that today. All the difference for people, for their growth, confidence.

Lenny: 16:26

People sharing A lot of the grace. Teachers say using their spiritual gifts and contributing to the body, the supernatural gifts. No, but we do have the gift of the Spirit and we're all part of the body. It's still the same thing. It's still the same. It's just not charismatic gifts. It's not those types of gifts. Our gift is love through the Spirit and we all should be able to share our love for Christ and to share what we're learning for Christ. And if we're not doing that, if we're not allowed to do that, where are we going? What are we doing? I don't see a point. You have all these useless members. There's only like one part in the body of Christ. It's supposed to be a whole body.

Melissa: 17:01

I don't see a point. I just see people going to be entertained and paying the salary of the pastor.

Lenny: 17:06

That's a talking head.

Melissa: 17:08

Yeah.

Lenny: 17:09

So we see that today's leaders are more like celebrities. Why is that the established way? Because we're not looking for leaders. We stopped looking. We just want somebody to do all the work for us, but we're making ourselves dormant by doing so.

Lenny: 17:26

There's all these different denominations. Right, if you took two different churches, two different denominations that didn't agree on something, you bring these two churches together, these two congregations that are meeting, and you sit them down and say you guys all have to work through your differences. You need to prove your case, church A and Church B. You need to prove your case and your pastor is going to be overseeing these pastors are going to be overseeing the process. Make sure it doesn't get ugly, stays peaceful, but you guys are going to work out your differences together. We want to hear people sharing, we want to share your input. We're going to try to come to a conclusion as a body as to what's true Leader. He can even prove his case if he wants to, but everybody standing here is going to have to discern for themselves what they think is true. What do you think would happen?

Melissa: 18:14

I think that would be amazing. I would think that that would make these denominations dissolve and we'd be down to the one truth of scripture.

Lenny: 18:25

It could only help if people actually said you know what? Yeah, let's do this. And they're digging in and they're going to try to come to a conclusion Truly, Not biased, you know, let's pray beforehand. Even that we'd look at this without bias. I mean, imagine the world if we were actually trying to come together. That would be amazing If we actually cared about truth rather than just saying well, you know, truth is whatever we take from it.

Melissa: 18:51

All the denominations are a stumbling block to unbelievers. To see that, because you don't pick and choose what you want to believe about Christ, there's the one truth in Scripture and that's what Christians ought to want to learn and teach. So it's, quite frankly, garbage having all these denominations, and that's what we ought to do is come together and teach the truth.

Lenny: 19:17

The denominations prove that there's a problem in the church today, agreed, they're all trying to say no, we did the research, we established our doctrines, these are our doctrines and this is what we teach, because it's sound and we've reviewed it and looked at it. But yet you go to every street corner and there's a different view on something.

Melissa: 19:37

You're right. That reveals there's a problem in the church. We should see that as a problem that needs to be corrected.

Lenny: 19:42

There again, we have Catholic and Protestant. Why do I have to be a Protestant if I'm not a Catholic? Where does that even come from?

Melissa: 19:57

Oh, I have to proclaim that I believe everything the Reformers said. What does that mean? I don't agree with everything the Reformers did the denominations and the labels it's no good.

Lenny: 20:02

Why don't we just look for truth? If every church out there looked like the synagogues even just the synagogues in the Jewish days of the first century, where you could share, where people would hear you and you could share your insight on every street corner, you could go there and at some point you'd get a turn sharing something that you know about Scripture. What would church look like? Just think about that.

Melissa: 20:30

I think it'd be so fruitful, be beautiful. I don't know if we'll ever see that, but there's no reason not to have hope and to be certainly no reason not to promote it when you look at the history, yeah, you think like, oh, that could never one of those things, like that might never happen.

Lenny: 20:45

But if you were in the days of the reformers and you said, yeah, having a bible, that'll never happen for the common folks, you would have been wrong, that's very god said no, you're all gonna have bibles he controls the history we don't know when there's going to be another reformation, but you see that there's one that could happen.

Melissa: 21:07

That would only benefit the entire world there are a lot of people starting to speak out about this that notice that problem with the denominations and the structure of the church and starting to speak out. I'm thankful for that.

Lenny: 21:19

It always starts with knowledge. It starts with people waking up. It's just like with government they're going to get away with anything they want until people say that's enough. We don't need better government. We need people to stand for what's right. Say that's enough. We don't need better government. We need people to stand for what's right. That's true. So there's a passage in Colossians, if you want to read it, verse 2-8. And I took all these from the NASB. I wanted to read what Paul said about tradition. We've been talking about tradition. What did he say?

Melissa: 21:47

Paul said see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

Lenny: 22:03

That sounds kind of like church today, if you ask me.

Melissa: 22:05

Wow.

Lenny: 22:07

Think of all the traditions that Gentiles had, that Romans and the Greeks. Think of all the traditions that the Jews had, romans and the Greeks. Think of all the traditions that the Jews had. All these traditions, traditions. The Jews had, so many traditions. We have so many traditions when we're born into this world. All these traditions. Church is the way it is. That's just the way it is. But what did the Apostle Paul say to the early church to that effect? In 2 Thessalonians 2.15, he said so then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.

Melissa: 22:45

The traditions according to Christ.

Lenny: 22:47

Exactly, and what were those according to? They would have been according to the gospel, based on the gospel, not traditions of man.

Melissa: 22:58

Amen.

Lenny: 22:59

You look at like today's house churches. Some people say house churches are the way to go, but if you just turn it into a mini big box church, how is that any more biblical? You're still following the same format One person talking, everybody else listening and maybe we'll call on you if you have a question one person talking, everybody else listening and maybe we'll call on you if you have a question.

Melissa: 23:20

The common theme I'm hearing you saying is that the whole body should be participating, because the whole body is important Exactly.

Lenny: 23:25

Another thing I quickly wanted to mention is this view of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus being pastoral letters. People refer to those as the pastoral letters. Pastoral letters, people refer to those as the pastoral letters. But have you ever looked at what scripture really says about pastor, deacon, elder leader? What are their roles? Study them. What are their roles, what are the qualifications? Do some studying on it? But then, when you look at the Corinthian church and how the church looked in those days, what do you see them doing? As I mentioned in our last episode, pastor was a spiritual gift. There's no list of qualifications. It's not any kind of special title. It was some kind of spiritual gift that we really know nothing about. But either way, what did they do? What were they doing in the church Overseeing leading? They were they doing in the church Overseeing leading. They were not doing all the talking.

Melissa: 24:20

How about that?

Lenny: 24:21

I just think it's important to realize those things We've got to realize. These are traditions and these are not traditions that were handed down to us by the apostles.

Melissa: 24:31

I think we should know why we're following a tradition. If we are, why are we following? Yeah? So church has become Traditional Traditional With its own set of expectations, and entertainment is usually involved with tradition.

Lenny: 24:49

Yeah, a lot of the Greek stuff Theaters, rhetoric.

Melissa: 24:54

Yeah the music. Not that there's anything wrong with having some fun. Theaters, rhetoric yeah the music. Not that there's anything wrong with having some fun.

Lenny: 25:00

A lot of grace teachers and people in the grace community, for example and by grace I mean like they understand forgiveness, they understand the fullness of forgiveness, which a lot of times I refer to as full grace. They understand the fullness of our forgiveness. In that community it's kind of divided. Some people and some different teachers. They see like, oh, the biggest problem is what's being taught in the churches. It's not the church itself, it's what's being taught. But then you're sustaining that broken church of the speaker up front and what you see taking place even in those grace communities is dangerous, because they're all looking to teacher, pastor, leader for all of their learnings, all of their insights.

Melissa: 25:45

Instead of to Christ.

Lenny: 25:47

Right.

Melissa: 25:47

And then what does it do to that brother in Christ? That's the leader. It elevates him to a status that's not healthy.

Lenny: 25:54

And suddenly they have all the answers. They're the place to go to for every answer. Status. That's not healthy. Suddenly they have all the answers. They're the place to go to for every answer, and that is not healthy.

Melissa: 26:00

Suddenly they're struggling to be humble.

Lenny: 26:02

Nobody has the market cornered on truth. When we listen to some of our favorite teachers, we don't agree with them on everything. I don't think it's that we're hard to agree with. It's because we are not people that just look at the surface. But I also know that I'll be wrong about some things. You have to have the right foundation. If you don't have a foundation of understanding the fullness of your forgiveness, what's your teaching going to look like?

Melissa: 26:27

You're going to cause people to stumble, including yourself.

Lenny: 26:30

Yeah, and those things need to be challenged. What if people were evaluating their pastor's teaching every week Throughout the week? They'd gather together and just go through it with a fine-tooth comb and challenge it. That's what we should be doing, Like, okay, you put out that message, we're going to talk about that and we're going to make sure you got it all right. Are people doing that? No, they're not doing that. If they did, they would only come to a deeper knowledge of Christ and realize there's a lot of error and that their pastor needs some help.

Melissa: 27:01

That's what we should be doing Doing our own research throughout the week, our own reading, and then come together and go through it with a fine-tooth comb.

Lenny: 27:10

It would be challenging to be a church leader. I'm not going to lie. I mean, we have a Christian podcast. If we had a large group of people you know that we're meeting together you would have your hands full, but you would also be relieved because other people are sharing, right. So it's like, okay, a little harder on one hand, but you're just not on a platform anymore. You're not the most special thing going on.

Melissa: 27:34

That's right.

Lenny: 27:35

You're not Mr Hollywood anymore, you're not the most special thing going on, that's right. You're not Mr.

Melissa: 27:40

Hollywood anymore. You know, that's it. You just got to stand down. I think anytime we look like the world we got to really think about that.

announcement: 27:44

Thank you for listening to the Waking Up to Grace podcast, brought to you by the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you enjoyed today's episode, we would love to hear from you. You can send encouragement our way right from our episodes and transcripts page or reach Lenny privately from the contact form at wakinguptogracecom.