Author: Steven R. Bruck
How Should We Feel When Losing a Loved One?
The other day someone posted and asked, “How should a Believer handle the death of a parent?”
I am going to give my opinion, and if I think of a biblical passage I may use it, but for the most part, this is going to be more like an opinion piece than a message.
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
First off, when we are sad because someone who is close to us dies, it is a selfish thing. I have been to way too many funerals, and I don’t recall ever hearing anyone say how sad it is for the deceased person to be dead. We don’t cry because they are dead, we cry because we will no longer be able to have them in our lives.
Now, that probably isn’t a tremendously shocking or new revelation, so let’s add in the part about how a Believer should feel.
I believe that someone who knows the Lord and has accepted Yeshua (Jesus) as their Messiah should be happy for the person who has died. They should celebrate that person’s death with thankfulness. Thankful for the presence they had in your life, and thankful for their (now) eternal presence with the Lord.
One exception to this is if the person who died was not saved. We can’t always know absolutely about the state of someone’s salvation because who knows what happens in those last seconds of life, between consciousness and death; but, in most cases, we can be pretty certain about whether or not they are saved.
Assuming that the deceased was saved, as a Believer we should put aside our own selfish desire to maintain the deceased’s presence in our lives and be thankful for the time we did have together. We should review the happy memories and joyfully remember things we did together.
Here is a biblical reference about how to approach the death of a loved one- do what Job did, and immediately give thanks to God. After all, God put you and that person together, so even though they are gone, you should be thankful for having known them.
It is normal to feel sad about the loss, but we should be able to overcome that sadness quickly if we concentrate on how happy they must be in the presence of God, Almighty, and seeing Yeshua face-to-face. Wow! Can you imagine how wonderful that must be?
Therefore, my response to the original question is that a Believer should be joyful when a loved one (who is saved) dies, and also feel thankful that you had that person in your life for as long as you did. Sadness will creep up on us because human nature is a selfish and self-centered thing, but the sadness can be replaced by joy when we think of their feelings instead of our own. That is something a Believer should be able to do for anyone, alive or dead, i.e. put someone else’s feelings ahead of our own.
For those who die and weren’t saved, but who we loved anyway, well…in that case, sadness probably is the proper feeling. Again, not so much for yourself, but for the one who has passed on and will have to face the final judgment without Yeshua as their intercessor. That is truly a sad thing.
Death is a part of life. In fact, life is really only a precursor to death. Think about it: we live for a relatively short time, but we are dead forever. When we think about that, we can answer another question, the age-old one, which is “Why are we here?”
The answer is you are here to decide where you will spend eternity.
And since no one will never know how much time God will give them to make that decision, it is one that they should make as quickly as possible.
Thank you for being here and please don’t forget to subscribe.
I will be closing out the gofundme campaign to send Bibles, prayer shawls and other Bible study materials to three Messianic synagogues in Uganda by the end of next week. The link to donate is here:
Help Ugandan Messianic Synagogues
So far I have barely enough to pay for the cost of mailing these things to them and will end up having to shorten their list of supplies, so if you haven’t donated, please give something. Every little bit helps, so please consider giving ten dollars, twenty, five, a thousand..whatever you feel led to give to help these newly Messianic people who want to know God better and learn to worship him as he said we should.
Thank you again for being here, share me out and until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
Video for How Should We Feel When Losing a Loved One?
Parashah Chukat 2019 (Statutes) Numbers 19 – 22:1
This parashah has some interesting events, some of which are hard, if not impossible, to understand.
First, a red heifer is completely burned up, mixed with cedar, hyssop, and scarlet yearn, to make ashes that are used to cleanse someone who has become unclean, such as when touching a corpse.
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
Next, Miriam dies and Moses and Aaron bring water from a rock but do so without giving Adonai the proper respect and honor so are punished by not being allowed to enter the land. Imagine…after 40 years of perfect service to God, they make this one mistake and they do not get to see the land God promised to the people!
They come to Mount Hor where Aaron is to die, with Eliezer taking over his duties as Cohen HaGadol. Later, the people rebel against Moses (again), and God sends serpents to plague and kill the people, who repent and ask forgiveness. This is when Moses sets up the brass serpent, so that anyone who is bitten and looks at the brass serpent, will not die.
The parashah ends with the conquering of Og and Sihon, the kings that ruled the land East of the Jordan river.
Every year when I come to this parashah, I usually talk about the serpent. I discuss how later in 2 Kings 18 we read about it being worshiped as an idol, and how the prophecy Yeshua gave in John 3:14 doesn’t just talk about the method of his death, but how Christianity will turn him into an idol, replacing worship of God, just like what happened with the brass serpent.
But I’m not going there, today.
Today I want to talk about the title of this parashah, Chukkat, and what it means to us.
There are three types of laws in Judaism: Mishpatim, which are laws we can perform and understand the meaning for, such as do not murder, do not steal, do not lie, etc. There are also the laws that come under the title of Eidot, which are like a testimonial, such as the commandments to wear Tefillin (phylacteries), to eat matzah during Hag HaMatzot (the 7 days after the Passover), or to rest on the Shabbat.
The third type of laws are the ones for which this parashah is named, Chukkim, which we accept as divinely ordered, even though they are, for the most part, incomprehensible. Some even seem to be contradictory.
For instance, in this parashah, we are given the process for creating ashes to make us clean, but everyone associated with that process becomes unclean. The ashes, themselves, are kept outside the camp where unclean things are, but their use makes one clean.
Huh?
Also, the dietary laws (Kashrut) don’t seem to make any sense at all. For instance, why is an animal that chews its cud and has a split hoof clean, but an animal with a split hoof or an animal that chews its cud, but doesn’t have both these features, is unclean? Why are fish with scales and fins clean but lobster is off the menu?
And why do we have to have 12 loaves of showbread (Exodus 25:30) that sit for a week?
Would you like to know the answer? So would I. There is no answer, really. Human beings just HAVE to know everything, so we make up answers that we think sound good. But, when it comes down to it, we don’t know why God gave us Chukkim, and we will probably never know why.
And even more important is that we don’t need to know why- we just need to know that God said this is what we should do. And, frankly, if that isn’t enough for you, then you will have a problem going forward with your spiritual growth.
Here is today’s message: don’t ask, don’t wonder, don’t complain, just do.
Any questions? I hope not, because if you do have questions then you haven’t learned today’s lesson.
Faith is more than just confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1); real faith is doing something when you don’t know why you are supposed to do it, but you do it because God says to do it, and that is enough for you.
It is easy for someone to say they have faith in God and faith in Yeshua, but how can we or anyone else know that? Yes, we all know that God knows, but it is almost as important for you to demonstrate that faith to others as an example of what it means to know and worship God. My regular readers have heard me say this many times: people don’t mean what they say, they mean what they do. Someone who professes faith in God, but ignores God’s instructions and lives their life the way they want to, is demonstrating a lack of faith. That is not the type of example which will help bring someone into the kingdom of God.
I don’t know why God gave the instructions he did in the Torah, and I don’t care why. I don’t need to know, I just need to follow them the best I can. That’s it. No answers, no explanations, no divine inspiration, and no supernatural understanding. All I need to know is what God told me to do and to do it.
Human pridefulness is the main reason we must know why, and here is how I handle that: I say, “Get thee behind me, need-to-know!” You DON’T need to know… you just need to obey. And if anyone tells you why these laws were given and which ones you don’t need to obey, they are not edifying you or helping you become more spiritually mature; what they are doing is leading you down the pathway to destruction.
Thank you for being here, and please subscribe. Also, check out my Gofundme campaign to send Bibles and Bible study materials to three Messianic synagogues in Uganda who follow this ministry and have asked me to help them. I have to close this campaign in two weeks or so and only have about 1/3 of the donation amount I need. Please help with anything, and send the link to the campaign to everyone on your contact list. Here is the link:
I wish you all Shabbat Shalom, and until next time…L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
Video for Parashah Chukat 2019
K.I.S.S.
Can I assume that most, if not all of you reading this know what K.I.S.S stands for? If not, I’ll explain: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Of course, being Messianic I prefer to say: Keep It Simple, Schlemiel!
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
As humans, we tend to complicate things that do not need to be complicated. I see this often in the postings that people make on Facebook. I see constant posts about the “correct” name of God, about the fact that the Sabbath is not on Sunday, about the Christian “church” changing the laws, and many other truths that are stated over and over…and over. These topics are important for people to know, but they are not really that important.
When it comes to deciding what is important and what is not, I have my own “Acid Test” question, which is:
“How does this affect my salvation?”
And here is where many people don’t get it: just because something is important to you doesn’t mean it is important to know. Too many people (and to be truthful, I could also be guilty of this, even as I am writing it) pridefully will present their own idea of what is right (or wrong) with the “church” or a particular tradition, or how to pronounce a name or whatever as being of the highest importance. And I am not saying these things are not important, but after a while, there has to be something else to write about other than the same topic over and over and over, especially when that topic will not save anyone or bring them into a proper, truthful knowledge of who God is, who Yeshua (Jesus) is, or how they can find peace of mind and heart in this life and complete joy throughout eternity.
If something is going to be repeated, what needs to be repeated is that which brings people into communion with God. We need to repeat the message that sin can only be forgiven through Yeshua; we need to remind people that God will not allow those who sin unrepentantly (whether they know it or not) to be saved; and even something as simple as exclaiming that God does exist, Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send, and only by faith in them both can anyone have a chance of surviving the first death.
These things definitely affect your salvation, and these are the types of topics we should be concentrating on. Anything beyond or added to this knowledge is good-to-know stuff, but not need-to-know stuff.
Let me state this again- I am NOT against knowing as much as we can about God, Yeshua, the Bible, biblical history, ancient cultures, paleo-Hebrew, …WHATEVER!…so long as it doesn’t lead people into a Gnostic mindset and generate arguments that are useless because, when all is said and done, they won’t save anyone from destruction. We need to help new and existing Believers in the Lord stay focused on God and Yeshua, and one of the most important things of all: how to properly interpret the Bible.
It isn’t useful to just know what the Bible says, we need to know how to properly interpret what is said in the Bible, to use Circles of Context so that we don’t get stuck on a single sentence. We need to read every sentence as part of the one before and the one after it, as part of the entire thought, as part of the entire chapter, entire book, and the entire Bible. We need to know who was writing to whom, and how it all fits in hermeneutically with the rest of the Bible.
To know the proper way to interpret the Bible ABSOLUTELY will affect your salvation! For example, the typical Christian interpretation of the letter Shaul (Paul) wrote to the Romans is that it is a polemic against the Torah; however, understanding who Shaul was and to whom he was writing this letter (and why), it then becomes clear that he was actually writing an apologetic for the Torah!
This is what I am talking about when I say it is important to know how to properly interpret the Bible because the proper interpretation of Romans will lead you to obedience and salvation and the improper interpretation will lead you to sinfulness and destruction.
The purpose of my ministry is not to change anyone’s mind or to convert people to Judaism or to convince anyone of anything: it is in response to Hosea 4:6:
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
Let me finish today’s message with this: knowledge is useless unless it is used correctly, and when it comes to God, Yeshua and salvation, that means keeping it simple. Stay focused on what edifies, what leads one towards the narrow gate, and what keeps one on the narrow path.
Thank you for being here, and if you haven’t already done so, please subscribe. Also, share this out with friends and family, especially the ones who are looking for answers.
And please help with my campaign to send Bibles and study materials to Ugandans in three Messianic synagogues who subscribe to this ministry and have asked me for help. I can’t afford to send too much to them and need help. Please share this out with your church or synagogue, send it to your contacts and help bless these poor people who don’t even have computers to get closer to God. Here is a link to that campaign:
Help for Messianic Ugandan Synagogues
Thank you, again, and until next time…L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
Video for K.I.S.S.
Parashah Korach 2019 (Korach) Numbers 16 – 18
The story of the rebellion of Korach, Dathan, and Abiram is pretty well known, even to those who are not very well versed in the Bible. Essentially, Korach (a Levite) with Abiram and Dathan (Reubenites) plotted against Moses and Aaron, having seduced some 250 of the tribal leaders to follow them in this rebellion. Moses’s authority as God’s representative was challenged, as was Aaron’s, and God took care of this rebellion by first getting rid of the rebels. He had the ground open up and swallow the families and all possessions of Korach, Abiram, and Dathan, and also had fire come forth from the Tent of Meeting to totally consume the 250 men that were following them.
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
Next, to silence the people who now blamed Moses and Aaron for these deaths, God had each tribal leader, including Aaron, place their staffs in the Tent of Meeting, and the next day the only one that budded was Aaron’s. In fact, not only buds but flowers and ripened almonds appeared on Aaron’s staff to demonstrate that he was the sole Levite to represent and have the honor of performing the service unto God.
There is a lot to work with in here, no doubt. But what I feel the need to talk about is not directly related to the story but to how the people reacted to the punishment God performed on the rebellion leaders. It seems reasonable to think they would say something about the miraculous way God punished these men who rebelled against him, but they didn’t do that.
They blamed Moses and Aaron for what God did. Despite Moses telling the people, over and over, that he and Aaron are nothing other than the spokesmen for God, the people saw them as the cause of these actions.
This is how the Christian world has depicted Yeshua (Jesus) for millennia. Despite how often we read in the Gospels that Yeshua constantly told those he healed that it was their faith that healed them, Christianity has taught that the credit for these miracles belongs to Yeshua, himself, even though it is written, clearly, that Yeshua gave the credit to their faith in God. Yeshua never took credit for the miracles he performed, except (possibly) one time, in Luke 5:12 when the man with leprosy said that if Yeshua was willing, he could make him clean, and Yeshua said that he was willing and cleansed the man of leprosy.
But even then, Yeshua said not to tell how it was done but to go to the Cohen to be declared clean in accordance with the instructions in the Torah and to give the required sacrifice.
Today, all too often, we do not recognize the true cause of something. This is especially evident on a spiritual level. There is a rise in antisemitism that is a spiritual battle, but the Enemy wants us to focus on something other than him. He will do his nastiness all over the world, but through others, because he knows that people do not have the discernment to see the true cause of these events.
Just as the Israelites in the desert blamed Moses for what God did, the Devil will have his representatives seem to wield power, but it will be him behind them.
We who understand this must try to make everyone else aware of it, even though we will not be believed by the majority. We cannot save the world, only those who are willing to listen to us, but to find them we must announce the truth to the world. We are looking for the needles in the haystack, and the only way to do that is to go through the entire pile of hay.
God has always been the power behind those who have performed miracles in his name, and the Son of Perdition is the power behind those who rebel against God. The people of the world are a physical facade of the underlying spiritual battle between God and those who want to usurp him. They will lose; in fact, they already have, they just don’t want to face the truth of it. And their denial will result in their eternal damnation.
You and I need to make sure that whether it be politics, interpersonal relationships, or international agreements that we look for the true cause of the events we are witnessing, and remember that those performing these actions are only the conduit for the ones with the real power.
Thank you for being here, and please remember to subscribe. Also, I will be closing my campaign in just a week or so to send Bibles and study materials to Ugandan Messianic Synagogues who have asked me for help, so please- if you haven’t given, do so now. Anything will help. Here is where you can donate:
Tonight begins the Sabbath, so Shabbat shalom, and until next time L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
Video for Parashah Korach 2019
Which is More Important?
Like many people, I get my best ideas when I am doing something totally different than working, such as when I am in the shower or riding my bicycle.
The other day, as I was riding along on my bike and praying, I started to think about which would be more important for us as Believers to do: is it more important to not sin or is it more important to repent of our sin?
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
The answer seems obvious- just don’t sin. If we don’t sin, then we have nothing to repent of and nothing to be concerned about because not sinning is the pathway to salvation.
I know- you are saying that we are saved by faith, not works, but the truth is if we lived a sinless life, we would be demonstrating perfect faith, wouldn’t we? In fact, if we lived a sinless life, as Yeshua did, we could be certain of salvation.
Of course, it then struck me that there is a significant fly in the ointment with regard to living a sinless life, which is this: no one can live a sinless life.
TIME OUT
There are just too many places where the Bible tells us that we all sin, so I am not going to quote chapter and verse. If you need to verify that we all sin, do the research. It will be a good experience for you.
TIME IN
I often say “We can never be sinless, but we can always sin less“, and that is how I try to live out my life, but even that is hard to do. So what is left to us? Repentance, and trying harder.
The obvious answer is not the right answer because even though living a sinless life is what we want to do, it is not possible, so the most important thing to do is to repent. And I mean REAL repentance, not just saying”
and going on with our life as if we did nothing wrong, thinking a simple apology is enough.
It isn’t. God sees and knows the heart and minds of everyone, so if you are not really sorry for having sinned against him- and every sin is first and foremost a sin against God- he will know. He won’t accept insincerity and he can’t be fooled.
And it gets worse: many, many people have their religious leaders telling them that if they confess their sins they can be forgiven. Well, that is biblically accurate, but the truth is that we have to really feel bad about sinning, not just confess we did it and continue to sin. Unrepentant repentance may get you absolved by a Priest or given the “OK” by your Pastor, but it won’t hold water with the Big Guy upstairs. As for mainstream Jews, meaning Jews who haven’t accepted Yeshua yet, repentance is necessary but they also have to accept Yeshua as their Messiah because, without him, there is no means to be forgiven since the Jerusalem temple is gone, and that was the only place (according to the Torah) where a sin sacrifice could be accepted.
Without Yeshua’s substitutionary sacrifice, no one (Jew or Gentile) can be forgiven of their sin.
Therefore, the answer to my original question is this: it is more important to be truly repentant than it is to not sin because we cannot avoid sinning but we can always be repentant. And when we really feel bad about something, it motivates us to better discipline ourselves to not do that something, again. True- it doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s no excuse to stop trying.
That old cop-out “I am what I am” may be OK for Popeye, but not for those who want to please God.
Thank you for being here and please remember to subscribe. Also, I am going to have to wind down my campaign to send Bibles and Bible study materials to poor Ugandans who follow this ministry, so please send something to help me to help them at the link below:
Please help- I don’t usually send money through the Internet, but this is a legit cause, and I barely have 1/3 of what I need. I will end up paying for the copies of my books they want out of my own pocket, so please help with money for Messianic Bibles and prayer shawls, and especially just to help defray the exorbitant cost of mailing these items.
Remember that God blesses those who bless others.
Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!