Author: Steven R. Bruck
Craig and Mindy Wedding Cruise Sept 2019
2019 Trip to Villa del Palmar, Cabo san Lucas
Parashah Ki Tavo 2019 (When you come) Deuteronomy 26:1 – 29:8
Deuteronomy is the final book of the Torah, and it is pretty much a recap of all that has come before it.
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
Moses has been going through his Third Discourse, and reminding the people of the instructions God has given them, how they have rejected him and been punished, and how he has forgiven them when they repented and blessed them, now (finally) bringing this new generation, born into freedom, to the very edge of the Promised Land.
This parashah begins with Moses giving the instructions for presenting the Firstfruits and goes through the blessings and the curses in Chapter 28: blessings for obedience and curses for rejection of God’s instructions.
What I want to talk about is not the Blessings and Curses, which is usually my favorite chapter in the entire Torah. Today I want to talk about what is written in Chapter 26, verses 13-15:
Then say to the Lord your God: “I have removed from my house the sacred portion and have given it to the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, according to all you commanded. I have not turned aside from your commands nor have I forgotten any of them. I have not eaten any of the sacred portion while I was in mourning, nor have I removed any of it while I was unclean, nor have I offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the Lord my God; I have done everything you commanded me. Look down from heaven, your holy dwelling place, and bless your people Israel and the land you have given us as you promised on oath to our ancestors, a land flowing with milk and honey.” (bold print added)
This statement was to be made after the person presented the basket of firstfruits to the Levite. I have purposefully put the last sentence in bold print because it signifies, to me, the major difference between Judaism and Christianity.
Christianity stresses the personal and individual relationship between the person being saved, and their Savior. As a Christian, it is all about me and Jesus. But that is not how things are in Judaism: as we can see from this prayer, the individual takes responsibility for his or her own actions, but the resulting relationship is between God and the nation of Israel.
Jews are a nation, and act and work together as a single entity. One person’s actions affect the entire nation. We take personal responsibility, as well as social responsibility for all that we do. Christianity is a collection of individuals who have professed faith in Jesus, but Jews are a nation- one people, one purpose, one set of rules (well, with 6 sects of Judaism that all disagree, even within themselves, I confess we have screwed that part up ) and one relationship: God and Israel.
I am not saying to insult Christianity, but only to point out the significant difference in the relationship between Christians and God and Jews and God.
As an example of what I mean, after Joshua attacked Jericho, the next battle against Ai was a terrible defeat by Ai, a smaller and weaker force than the Israelites. How could that be? It was because of one man. In Joshua 7:1 we are told:
But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. And the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel.
Notice how it says the people of Israel broke faith: not one man, but the entire nation, even though only one man sinned. God sees his people as a person, and likewise, we Jews know that one person’s sin affects us all.
The relationship you have with God and with Messiah Yeshua is a personal one, in that God knows every hair on your head and hears every prayer you submit to him. This is a good thing, and there is nothing wrong, in and of itself, with the Christian view of an individual and personal relationship with your Savior. What that relationship needs, though, is more of a Jewish perspective, which is to see the bigger picture, the one where all those who worship God must act as a single entity; one mind, one set of rules (the ones God gave) and one purpose, which is to do what pleases God.
Too often Christianity focuses on what God does for you instead of what you must do for God, and even though they often say
“It is all about God”, what they “sell” is personal salvation, personal relationship, and personal blessings all coming from God to you.
It IS all about God: the whole idea of firstfruits is not just the apples and grapes, and not even your firstborn child, but your first thought, your first motivation, and your first desire must be to please God, which is done through following his instructions. Not doing what you think Shaul (Paul) said, not doing what Timothy does, but doing what God said to do, and taking it to the next (spiritual) level, which is what Yeshua taught.
My ministry will probably never be popular because I don’t teach what God will do for you, I teach what you must do for God. People don’t want to serve but to be served, and that is the exact opposite of how it works with God. God makes promises to bless and to save us from the consequences of our sin, but we have to make the first move.
God wants to take your hand in his and have that special relationship, but you must first reach out to him.
Thank you for being here and please subscribe and share me out.
Until next time, L’hitraot and Shabat Shalom!
Video for Parashah Ki Tavo 2019
And Now for the Rest of the Story….
I’m thinking I should make this title a separate category, and include in it all the other parts of Bible passages that are ignored. Such as the one where Yacov (James) says that the new Believers will learn the rest of the Mosaic laws they should follow because they will be attending the Shabbat services at their local synagogue (Acts 15:21.)
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
Today I want to talk about Matthew 23:23, where Yeshua said:
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.
The traditional Christian teaching stops at “…justice, mercy, and faithfulness.” They talk about the love of the Messiah and how we are to love each other, that love is all we need for salvation because the law was nailed to the cross with Jesus.
But how does that work with the rest of Yeshua’s statement, i.e. that they should have considered those things WITHOUT neglecting the tithes?
Yeshua is clear that the law regarding tithing (which implicitly means all of the instructions God gave in the Torah) is not replaced by love, justice mercy, and faithfulness. These things are weightier matters, but not exclusive or secondary.
The truth is that to love justice, be merciful and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8) one would, by necessity, observe and follow the instructions God gave us in the Torah because they tell us how to be just, how to be merciful, and what faithfulness entails.
This is where Christianity has misled those who want to trust in God and Yeshua as their savior: by teaching that the “law” was done away with, or that love and Grace replace obedience, the Christian “church” has led its adherents away from God and into lawlessness.
Look- not eating ham will not get you into heaven, and eating ham will not send you to hell. The actions we perform are representative of the way we believe. It’s like I always say: people don’t mean what they say, they mean what they do.
Just as Yeshua said in the Gospels, what goes into us doesn’t make us unclean, but what is in our hearts does. My heart desires to please God, but whereas my spirit is willing, my flesh is weak. Because my flesh is weak, I sin. I don’t do what I want to do and do what I don’t want to do (sound familiar? Check out Romans 7:15-20.)
Eating ham, technically, is a sin and deserves punishment, but because my heart wants to please God, when I do wrong I repent of my sin. That repentance causes me to ask forgiveness, and through Yeshua’s sacrificial death I can receive that forgiveness, preventing me from going to hell. So it isn’t so much the sin I commit that is the problem, it is the reason I do it and the level of repentance I feel after I do it.
This is what Yeshua meant when he said to deal with the weightier matters of the law without neglecting the rest. Justice, mercy, faithfulness- can you see how these are things that come from the heart? Someone who cares nothing for people will not be just, they will be self-centered and selfish. People who are not repentant will not be merciful or concerned with other’s feelings, and will not have faith in anyone but themselves.
Only those who care about God and about people and have faith in God and others will be merciful and act justly. They will repent of their wrongdoing and try to improve. They will also feel the desire to please God, which he tells us we can do by being obedient, by following the instructions he gave us which tell us how to be faithful (i.e., how to worship him) and how to treat each other.
Those are found in the Torah.
It is up to you to choose what kind of a heart you will have: it will either be open to God or closed to salvation. No one can have two masters.
Thank you for being here, and please don’t forget to subscribe and share this message with others. Check out the rest of my website, and if you like what you receive from this ministry, please consider getting my books as well.
Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
Video for And Now for the Rest of the Story….
You’re Always You
Did you miss me? The last two weeks I have been spending time out of the country: one week at a timeshare with my friend in Cabo san Lucas, and the other week on a cruise celebrating the marriage of a co-worker and friend.
It’s nice to be back home.
Many, many years ago I saw a book entitled “If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him.” I thought the title interesting so I bought it and read it. The point of the book was, simply enough, that no one who promises you enlightenment and total change is telling you the truth, and is, in fact, just selling you a bag full of lies. You will always be you, and you will always mentally and emotionally react as you have, but you can change how you act after the reaction.
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
A Christian co-worker and friend who was helping to lead me to God and Messiah when I was still searching told me that what is wonderful about accepting Messiah is that your brain gets rewired by God. I really wanted that and still do, in some ways, but have realized that except for a few rare cases it doesn’t really work that way.
I am who I have always been. I can’t change who I am, I can’t change the immediate thoughts that enter my head, and I will always think and react the way I have for my entire life, sans some brainwashing techniques that may be used on me. Even then, I am still me, only conditioned to be different, which isn’t really me, in the end.
So if you are always you, and I am always me, what good is trying? The answer is: trying is what comes from God. On our own, we don’t try to resist. We don’t repent, we rationalize. I have often said that before I was saved I was a sinner who rationalized my sins, now I am a sinner who regrets my sins.
And that is what makes the difference: repentance. The desire NOT to sin is what is rewired in our brains. Our reactions, our desires, and our thoughts will always be what they are, but the difference that God makes in our lives is that instead of accepting that we do wrong, we resist doing wrong.
And we often fail, but we keep on trying. Taking three steps forward then backsliding two steps is still one step closer to the way we want to be!!
So accept that you will always be you, and instead of trying to be perfect, just work on being a better you.
God tells all of us how he wants us to act towards him and towards each other, so read the Bible and work at being a better you, the “you” that God wants you to be.
Thank you for being here, and please don’t forget to subscribe and if you like what you hear from this ministry, please share me out and buy my books.
Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
Video for You’re Always You
Divine Inspiration or Divine Dictation?
The Bible is known by many as “The Word of God.” That implies that it is exactly what God has said; but, in fact, that is not what most of it is made up of. And the problem with this is that people who don’t study or read the Bible themselves don’t know the difference between the divine dictations and the divinely inspired writings.
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
Inspiration is an intangible thing that is filtered through the individual’s experience, culture, language, and understanding. Divine inspiration is when someone receives a message from God, but being an inspiration means when they write it down or repeat it they are not going to be quoting God exactly.
For instance, the Ten Commandments written on the two tablets given to Moses (which he copied into the Torah) were written with the finger of God (Ex. 31:18), so they are divine dictations. From God directly to us: no interpretation, no personal bias, no filtering, and not even a typo or two. Divinely dictated, meaning presented to us, directly from God exactly as he said it.
On the other hand, when we read the letters written by Shaul, most of the time he is speaking to Gentiles who do not know the divine dictations that occur in the Torah, so he more often than not interprets what God has said. His meaning and words are divinely inspired, but they are not directly from God. He has rebranded God’s words in a way that will make sense to pagans just learning about God.
And he tells us this is what he is doing. In 1st Corinthians 9:20-22, he says that he will be whatever he needs to be in order to win people over to Messiah. Essentially, he is saying that he will teach and say whatever he needs to in whichever way his audience will understand, in order to win over souls to Messiah. In other words, he knows what God ‘s dictated words are but he is rephrasing them so that his audience can understand and relate to it.
So the question is: which is more important? Divine dictation or divine inspiration?
My answer is: obviously it is more important to know what God, himself, says than what someone thinks God meant. Divine inspiration is certainly going to be important, but it will be, by definition, in the person’s own words and stated in a way that is influenced by that person’s experience, language, culture, and understanding of the Bible, in general.
What is most important of all is that the one listening knows the difference between what God said and what someone says God said.
The Bible is composed mostly of divinely inspired writing. The New Covenant has very little that is a direct quote of God’s own words. Because Yeshua is the Messiah, he taught from divine knowledge. However, much of what he quoted from the Tanakh came from the divinely inspired writings.
God’s direct instructions to all people are found in the Torah. I believe that when Moses wrote “The Lord says…” that what he wrote was directly dictated by God. Anything and everything else Moses wrote, as well as most of what is in the Prophets and other books, is divinely inspired.
So, nu? What’s the point? The point is, as I say so very, very often, you need to read the Bible every day and ask God for his divine understanding so that you know which is which.
The many different religions that have come into existence have created man-made doctrines but pass them off as divinely dictated commandments. And those who do not read the Bible are blind, being led by the blind, and we all know where they end up.
Divine dictation is not something anyone can afford to ignore or reinterpret, whereas divinely inspired writing can be rephrased and taught using different terms and cultural identifiers so that it can be understood by people with varied backgrounds. In just the same way that Shaul taught his Messianic congregations.
When we know the difference between what God said and what people say God meant we will not be easily fooled by the Enemy of God when he tries to turn us from the path of righteousness.
Thank you for being here; please subscribe and share me out so you can help this ministry grow. I appreciate your feedback and comments, as well.
Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch Hashem!