Author: Steven R. Bruck

And Now for the Rest of the Story….

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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.)

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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.

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Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

You’re Always You

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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.

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Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Divine Inspiration or Divine Dictation?

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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.

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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.

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Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch Hashem!

What Are New Wineskins, Really?

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I have read the Bible many times, and every time I came to Matthew 9:16-17 I always wondered what it really meant. As I was reading this passage again the other day, I asked God to show me what it meant, and I believe he has.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Before I tell you what he showed me, let’s look at this passage, together:

No one patches an old coat with a piece of unshrunk cloth, because the patch tears away from the coat and leaves a worse hole. Nor do people put new wine in old wineskins; if they do, the skins burst, the wine spills and the wineskins are ruined. No, they pour new wine into freshly prepared wineskins, and in this way both are preserved. 

Most of the Christian interpretations I have heard say Yeshua was making the point that his teachings and commandments are new, and override the existing, older commandments. The new patch and the new wine are now the commandments that we must obey, and (again, this is a Christian interpretation) therefor the old laws and traditions have been done away with to make room for the new ones.

Of course, being Jewish and Messianic, I know that this interpretation is false. First off, Yeshua taught from the Torah, and if he had said or done anything that even implied we shouldn’t obey the Torah, then he would have been in rebellion against his Father, God, and in sin. If that was true, then his sacrifice would not have been accepted, and we all would be in a lot of trouble today. Fortunately, that isn’t the way it is.

Secondly, although Yeshua did speak against many of the traditions of the elders, which later would become Talmudic doctrine and practice, he did not universally condemn all traditions. For instance, we know he celebrated the Festival of Lights, which is a traditional, man-made holiday and not even in the Bible.

So, what did Yeshua mean when he said new wine has to go into new wineskins?

He meant that his teachings, which were based entirely on the Torah, were being interpreted in a new way. And, as such, he couldn’t properly “fit” them into the old wineskins, meaning the Pharisees and Sadducees, who were too used to and comfortable with their understanding to accept what he was saying.

The “new wine” he taught was the spiritual understanding of the Torah, called the Remes. This is from a Jewish method of biblical exegesis called PaRDeS, which represents different levels of meaning. There is the Pashat or literal meaning of the words- what you see is what it means. A deeper understanding is Remes or spiritual meaning. For instance, Yeshua said we have been told not to commit adultery (Pashat) but when we lust with our eyes, we have already done so (Remes.) The other levels, Drash (a story with a spiritual or moral meaning) and Sod, which is such a deep meaning it is mystical.

The new wineskins are the Am Ha’aretz, meaning the people of the land, those who are not formally trained in the Torah and the Tanakh. These are receptacles that can accept the new wine because they haven’t been “stretched” to their limits from having contained the older wine. These new wineskins were familiar with the traditions, but not affected by them so much that having known them they were not able to accept new wine without bursting. That is why Yeshua prayed:

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you concealed these things from the sophisticated and educated and revealed them to ordinary folks. (Matthew 11:25)

Today, the knowledge of God’s word is not much more, and probably a lot less, than it was in those days. Christianity has so skewed and misinterpreted the meaning of the letters from Shaul (Paul) and taught disobedience to God’s Torah that the world is more sinful and decrepit than ever. Instead of serving the wine of truth, traditional Christian teachings have caused people to become drunk with the beer of hedonism and ignorance.

Christians (I am not talking about every Christian, but I do mean most of them) need to become new wineskins; they need to be able to accept that what Yeshua taught did not do away with the law, but confirmed it! That means to let go of the teachings that Christians have been filled with, such as Sunday Sabbath, Christian holidays, and Constantinian doctrine and practices, and become new wineskins able to accept the new wine of proper interpretation of Yeshua’s teachings, and of the Epistles in the B’rit Chadashah (New Covenant.)

Yeshua’s teachings may be considered new wine, but it was the exact same vintage as the Torah; all Yeshua did was market it differently.

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Until next time we are together, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

 

Parashah Ekev 2019 (Because) Deuteronomy 7:12 – 11:25)

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Moses continues to speak to the children of Israel, constantly reminding them of their travels through the desert and their sins along the way, and admonishing them, over and over, to remember all that God has done for them. He has kept them safe in the desert, their clothes and sandals didn’t wear out, and they received manna and water miraculously every day.

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Moses told them not to become proud and think the land was given to them because they deserved it -they didn’t! They are a stiff-necked people, and the Lord was giving it to them in order to fulfill his promise to the Patriarchs, as well as to have the Israelites act as his weapon to rid the land of the unrepentant and sinful peoples living there. Moses tells the people that they are not to be afraid of the nations they are to dispossess because God will fight for them, as he has done in the past.

More than once Moses confirms that when the people obey God, they will be blessed, and when they disobey they will be punished and that if they continue to be sinful, then God will eject them from the land just as he did the sinful people before them.

Moses also repeats the command to remember these words, to teach them to the children, to wear them, and to post them on their house and gates, which is called the V’ahavta (and you shall love) prayer which was originally given to us in Deuteronomy 6:5.

What Moses was really telling the people was to trust in God to take care of them, but he didn’t say it that way. I think he was right in not coming out and saying something as simple to comprehend as “Just trust God and you will be fine” because, in my opinion, people can’t really trust. Whether it is God or their friends, or even themselves -people are, in general, untrustworthy and we know we are untrustworthy. It’s no wonder that we have trouble trusting in God because we can’t trust that which we can see and feel, so how can we trust that which is invisible?

Moses didn’t ask them to trust God, in exactly those words, but he did tell them to do something they could do: remember all that has befallen them over the past 40 years and that what God has done for them so far, he can, and will, continue to do so long as they do what they are supposed to do.

I think we can all agree that in those days, it was much easier for people to accept there was a God, some superior being that was the cause of the events that happened during their lifetime. Today we are so scientific and faithless that people tend to trust in their own power instead of some supernatural power. They want to be the ones in control of their life and often refuse to accept that there is any other way.

That is why today’s message is this: REMEMBER.

Remember the times when you had a close call and almost died; remember the times that you were sick but got better; remember the events in other people’s lives that you found hard to believe, either good or bad, and remember that the Bible has been proven, over and over, more and more, to not just be a storybook but an accurate historical document. That means that if the places and people in the Bible really existed, which archaeology has proven to be true, then the events these people witnessed must also be true.

We can’t see the wind as it blows past our window, but we can see the evidence of it by watching the trees and bushes move. We can’t see the birds in the trees, but we can hear the evidence of their existence. Most of the time we can’t see the pollen in the air but our sneezing, runny nose and itchy eyes prove it’s there. We know these things exist because either we have seen birds in the air and pollen on our cars, and many other things that may be invisible to the naked eye science has been able to make visible.

But science will never make God visible.  But even though we can’t see God, we can see the evidence of his existence everywhere. The only difference is that whereas science can prove these things exist when it comes to God, we have to be willing to accept the evidence as factual.

When it comes to the existence of God, you have to choose to believe in it: you must choose to believe that God exists, and the same goes for the Messiah, Yeshua -not just that he existed but that he was, and still is, the Messiah God promised to send. And that he is coming back to finish the job.

Whenever you find your faith wavering or your trust being tested, remember the evidence of what you believe and confirm for yourself the truth of you know.

Thank you for being here, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Share me out to help this ministry grow. I welcome your comments.

This is Friday so Shabbat Shalom, and until next time….L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!