Jewish Christian speaker at CCPC
An Israeli pastor touring 40 U.S. states came to Farragut to deliver a specific message: “It’s through Christ that we have the proper view of the people of God.”
About 80 people turned out at Christ Covenant Presbyterian Church Tuesday evening, April 25, to hear Baruch Maoz, a retired Christian pastor. Maoz was born in 1943 to a Jewish family in Boston, Massachusetts. He and his mother and younger brother immigrated to Israel in 1953. He was converted to Christianity while serving in the army in 1963.
“There are two religions of the world,” he said. “The Christian religion and all the rest.” He said other religions all say the same thing: that man pulls himself up. Christianity says the opposite, he added. Only Christ can pull us up.
Maoz calls himself an Israeli Jewish Christian. He and his wife, Bracha, live in Israel. He has spent the last 50 years telling his fellow Israelites about Jesus Christ. He pastored a church in Rishon LeTsion for 33 years and worked for a British-based missionary society for 35 years.
He’s now “retired,” but in name only — he is a speaker and a prolific writer.
Maoz began the evening by reading aloud the first three chapters of Ephesians.
Then he asked the audience a couple of questions and provided the answers.
“Who are the ‘you’ Paul is referring to? The Gentiles. The ‘we’ are the Jews. The main point is Christ. The secondary point is the ‘you and we’ put together.”
“We [all] are driven by the most ungodly impulses,” he added. “Paul isn’t giving us a mystical view of the Jewish people. Paul is telling us the Jewish people need the gospel as much as the Gentiles. Why did God love us? Because he chose to. He made us, Jews and Gentiles, alive together in Christ.
“There’s a tendency for us to try to supplement God’s grace with our own efforts and to make that the standards for others as well,” he added. “Every inkling of merit to which we’ll be able to lay claim was earned by Christ on our behalf. The Apostle Paul makes it clear there’s no merit in the whole of the Christian life. It’s all by grace.
“We humans are tremendously self-righteous,” he said, “and in so doing we rob God of His glory and attribute some of it to ourselves. When we attribute to ourselves the ability to achieve anything in Christ by way of human merit, we’re relying on self-righteousness rather than the grace of God. We think we can earn grace. It is by nature unmerited.”
Maoz said the Jewish messianic movement is only one of the other misunderstandings of the Gospel.
“In order to understand the scriptures, we need to keep the law and keep the Passover Seder at least once every few years,” he said. “Somehow we think our understanding will be enlightened if we flog ourselves or climb up the Vatican stairs or have a morning devotion or whatever other law we impose on ourselves. God has a right to every inkling of praise or glory this world will ever evoke.”
Maoz has published writings — in both English and Hebrew. His books include original commentaries on the Bible, a critique of the messianic movement titled “Come Let Us Reason Together: The Unity of Jews and Gentiles in the Church,” which was published by P&R Publishing. His devotional commentary, “Malachi: A Prophet in Times of Distress,” was published by Founders Press. Both are available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon. His devotional commentary, “Jonah: A Prophet on the Run,” was published by Shepherd Press.
