For years, my little Aussiedoodle Luna has been a very effective conversation starter. The other day her cute curly hair got me into a chat with a young religious Jewish guy, on his way back from an all-night study session for the festival of Sukkot.
Sukkot commemorates the giving of the law on Sinai. My new friend shared how in Exodus 19:2 the Hebrew text uses the singular form of the verb “he camped” to describe how the Israelites waited near the mountain in eager anticipation of God giving the law. (This is the only place in the whole Torah that does this, elsewhere it is always written “they camped”).
Jewish sages took this to mean that there was a beautiful unity at that moment, where “all Israel were like one person with one heart”.
His love for God and his ways was obvious and inspiring. It reminded me of Romans 10, where Paul testfies that the religious Jews in his day were “zealous for God but not according to knowledge”.
After praying silently for a way to share the gospel, the idea came to me to contrast the beautiful unity of chapter 19, with the rebellion of the worship of the golden calf just a few short chapters later.
I shared how the death of 3000 Israelites at Sinai following that idol worship, contrasted with the repentence of 3000 Israelites after the outpouring of the spirit during the exact same Sukkot festival (which Christians call Pentecost)
I spoke about the New Testament view that whilst God’s law is good, beautiful and true - both scripture and human experience tells us that we can’t live up to its standards - we always go astray and fail. And how I believe that only faith in Yeshua the Messiah can lead to a transformed heart and accomplish the goal of rightousness in us.
The next words he spoke surprised and encouraged me:
I was a little bit in shock! Before I could say too much - he hugged me and thanked me for the conversation and said he had to go.
We wanted to stay in touch and talk again - but as Sukkot is a festival day, where religious Jews do not use their phones, I could not take his number. So, I am praying that God will bump us into each other again soon to continue the conversation!
Takeaways:
God is in the business of drawing Jewish people to himself supernaturally even before we witness to them. It is a good reminder to pray “God lead us to them and them to us”!
Like with Sukkot, there are so many other powerful parallels between the Jewish festivals and the life of Yeshua that bring the relevance of the gospel to life. I am going to make this a focus of my studies leading up to the next big festivals of Rosh Hasahannah and Yom Kippur in the Autumn.
I felt I could have done better with my reply to his fascination with Jesus - on reflection I think a good reply would be along the lines of “I’m fascinated too! I believe God is calling your heart to him through Yeshua”. Which might have opened a conversation about whether he had ever read the New Testament etc.
As always, thank you for your prayers and financial support! I could not do this without you.
All the best and see you next week.
Adam