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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Cline Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
So here's the question that came our way: "We are doing an overview of the New Testament in a Bible study. The subject of synagogue worship came up and someone asked what that involved, assuming there was teaching that took place. Who did the teaching? Was it a scribe, a Pharisee, or a member of some other Jewish religious sect?" Jonathan, what were you able to come up with on this question?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so I guess we kind of see in the New Testament that they record 10 occasions on which the ministry of Jesus took place in synagogues. The gospel records, you know, as we read through those. And it's a good, you know, good place to kind of start and think about looking back at all those occasions and what took place, what happened. But as we get into the question, you know, what is the synagogue? You know, how's it differ from the temple? You know? The temple itself, you know, only the Levites and the priests could enter into the temple. But here in the synagogue, it was more of a community center, so to speak. And so all members of the Jewish community could participate in community life within the synagogue. And so that, you know, was one of the big differences for me to look at. Some of the traditions hold that this was a place of assembly for a study of the Torah. You know, during their services, we would see the service take place on the Sabbath. And then also, I believe it was on Mondays and Wednesdays, I think it was, where the city markets were to take place. And so when all the people from outside of the town would come in to the markets, then they would spend time in the synagogue also. And there'd be times of, the same thing of teaching out of the Torah and then out of the prophets. And then also, they would have the prayers of benediction, I think that's how you say it. They would have those moments. And so as we look through this, you know, the adult males of the Jewish community could be part of the synagogue, but only males from the age of 13 and up could be elders within the synagogue. And so they would have the opportunity to be able to read out of the Torah and then read out of the prophets and also say the prayers. If we were to see that take place, I guess they would have a seat, which they would've called the seat of Moses. And I think we hear, you know, as we look back at some of these passages in scripture, we'd see where Jesus sat down after he read the, you know, read out of the Torah. And that he would take that seat, and then he would teach. And usually the teaching would take place, but it was never really, like for us, you know, we have a sermon in our Sunday services. And a sermon could take, you know, I don't know how long you guys preach, but there's some that I've seen that are 15 minutes and some that are an hour and a half, you know? And so, from my understanding is most of the time, the teachings were quick, you know, a few minutes long. And so they would read through whatever they were reading through, and then just have a few words afterwards. So that's kind of what you would see take place during these times. And so one of the things I really liked about, you know, as I kind of just dug through this, is how they really, everything in the synagogue was about relationship. It was about community, you know? The school would, you know, the school was usually within the synagogue. The community events were there. Obviously, the services were there for reading the Torah, you know, reading the law. You know, all of that stuff was there, the government things were there. And so everything was wrapped around this ideal of community. You know, and I still love that thought process, and hopefully that would, you know, for us as believers now, how do we? But the big thing that I got out of this was, how do we maintain, or how do we keep that atmosphere of community within our churches? You know, within our community here? How do we, you know, even here with us, you know, we have two kind of separate camps that we come out of in a sense, you know, in some areas. But we can continue to have community. And so, how do we have community as other churches coming together too? So, yeah.

Gary Schick
Really, really good stuff. Yeah, the words, "church," "synagogue," we think of them as places. But actually, synagogue means, "gathering," and church actually comes from the Greek word εκκλησίασμα, which means, "congregation." So it's really about people. And I think one of the questions that you kind of delved a little bit back into is, you know, the difference between synagogue and temple. Of course, throughout the Old Testament, the temple is the heart of the nation. But the synagogue, which we read about in Jesus' time, actually has its roots to the time when the nation was in exile in Babylon. And so during that time, they couldn't have temple worship. There was no sacrifice going on. In fact, there was a real risk that the Jewish faith, which was so centered in the temple worship, could be lost. And so how was this to be preserved? And it was preserved on the Sabbaths, particularly. But as you mentioned, at other times as well, in the gathering of the Jewish community for essentially the reading of the word, prayers, fellowship. Those three things: prayer, scripture and fellowship. And of course, praise of the Lord, singing would've been all involved. And as you pointed out, not only Jesus, but also Paul utilized the synagogue worship. Because the temple, once again, it's in one place, it's in Jerusalem, even once the people are back from exile. This idea that had caught on of taking the Lord's day to gather together in the synagogue, if you weren't going to the temple, became important because this is the place where little ones are trained up on how to read the word and so forth. And where the men of the community would take turns in reading and expounding upon the word, and where the educational process continued to take place. Luke 4 I think, is a great passage illustrating Jesus and his ministry in the synagogue. It says, "and he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 'The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has appointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. To set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.' And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, 'today, the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." So as you pointed out, really the reverse of today. The preacher stands up to preach while the people sit and listen. In those days, the people stood to listen while the preacher sat down to teach. And he was sitting symbolically in the seat of Moses, which is the place from which the word of the Lord had come. And so here we have Jesus, one greater than Moses, sitting down to teach. And we see that again in the Sermon on the Mount. "And he sat down and began to teach." He wasn't just, oh, sitting down casually with the guys, "and by the way, here's some thoughts," then ended up being the Sermon on the Mount. No, no, no. This is a very specific symbolic act of, "Okay, pay attention. Jesus is getting ready to teach," when he sat down. We have from the Mishnah, five actions that were performed in synagogue and probably go back to the time of Jesus. And before, apparently you needed 10 male adults to have enough of a quorum to have synagogue, worship. Women and children would've also been present, but in a different section. The men worshiped up close, and the women and the children were kind of back behind a screen. The recitation of the Shama hero is, "the Lord our God, the Lord is one." There's recitation of the fefela, which was prayer, which was done standing again. We do it so differently. We are praying, sitting down, heads bowed, hands folded. The early Christians followed the tradition. They not only stood standing, but heads uplifted and hands raised in anticipation of the Lord's return. The priestly blessing, "the Lord bless you and keep you," from Leviticus. The reading of the Torah, the law, and the reading of the prophets. Well, and then as you pointed out, basically anybody who had been to the Jewish version of confirmation, you know, had been through bar mitzvah. Had been trained in the law, was now accepted as a man in the community, even at the age of 13. Could hopefully rightly handle this, as Paul would say, the word of truth. And there are so many parables in the Christian community, because of course, the Christians just naturally followed the pattern that had begun in Judaism. And how appropriate, because we are outside, we are in exile from the heavenly temple from the place where we will meet with the Lord in all eternity. And so we have the Christian Church, it's kind of a Christian version of synagogue. A place of instruction, a place of prayer and praise, a place of fellowship. Where we continue the reading of the, you know, they read the law and the prophets, you know, we would add the gospels and the letters. And some churches are more formal about that. They actually have specific readings from every part of it. Some churches are a lot looser. I tend to read the passage I'm going to preach on and make that the focus of the day. But you know, there's no wrong answers here. There's no commandment, "and this is how you do synagogue worship." That wasn't in the Old Testament. There's not a commandment, "this is how you do Christian worship," in the New Testament. But these are the natural ways that we gather for really these three purposes: prayer and praise, hearing and expounding of the word, fellowship and mutual encouragement, and building up of one another in the Lord in Christ. So, great to spend a little time being built up with you as we've dug into the word today.