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The Tragedy of Christians and Jews |
Palm Beach County, where I lived, taught, and preached for several years, has, we are told, the largest concentrated Jewish population in the United States outside of New York City. In the fall of 2004, the organization called Jews for Jesus made up of Christians committed to converting Jews to Christianity, announced a full-scale assault on Palm Beach's Jews. The result was a furor in the community. The Jewish leadership at all levels fought back intensely, using the newspaper to denounce Christians for tactics it knew were coming. The Southern Baptists in town were generally supportive of Jews for Jesus, though the largest church in West Palm Beach, a mega-church Calvary Chapel announced that it wanted nothing to do with the Jews for Jesus operation that time around. Church people in my little congregation were confused and divided. I was asked in the weeks leading up to the Jews for Jesus invasion to preach a series of sermons on Christians and Jews, and what the Bible might actually say about the relationship. I prepared as carefully as I knew how and preached ten sermons. This is the second sermon in the series. You can see quickly how deliberately I went about the process, fully aware of just how controversial the topic was. When word got out that I was addressing the subject, a number of Jews from nearby Century Village were coming to hear what I would say. |