Author: Steven R. Bruck
Sukkot 2018 Intermediate Shabbat Reading
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This Shabbat is known as the Sukkot Intermediate Shabbat. The Torah has already been read to the end, but we don’t turn it back and restart until the 8th day of Sukkot, which is called Sh’mini Atzeret. It is also known by another name, Simchat Torah, which means Joy of Torah.
This reading takes place right after the sin of the Golden Calf has occurred. God told Moses that he would no longer dwell with this people because they are stiff-necked and rebellious, but Moses intercedes (as he did all the time) and convinces God to stay with them; otherwise, says Moses, how will the rest of the world know that they have been chosen as God’s unique and select people? God relents to Moses’ request, and then Moses takes it one (big) step further and asks God to show his Glory to Moses. God, confirming that he knows Moses well, agrees but states that his face cannot be seen. He places Moses in a cleft in a rock and as he passes by he pronounces himself to Moses while covering Moses’ face with his hand allowing him to see only his back.
This part of the Torah (Ex. 34:5-7) is known as the 13 Attributes of God, which God proclaims to Moses as he passes by him (I am paraphrasing from my Chumash):
- The LORD– God reveals his “name”, which the Rabbi’s state is his character;
- The LORD– this repetition is explained in the Talmud as meaning that God is the same merciful and forgiving God before a person sins as he is after a person sins;
- God– the all-mighty Lord of the Universe, ruler of nature and mankind;
- merciful– full of affectionate sympathy for the sufferings and misery of human frailty;
- and gracious– assisting and helping, consoling and raising up the oppressed;
- long-suffering– slow to anger, not hastening to punish the guilty but giving them time to repent;
- abundant in goodness– plenteous in mercy, granting gifts and blessings even when underserved;
- and truth– eternally true to himself, rewarding those obedient to his will;
- keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation– remembering the good deeds of one’s ancestors and reserving reward to the most distant descendants;
- forgiving iniquity– bearing with indulgence the failings of people;
- transgression– evil deeds from malice and rebellion against the Divine;
- and sin– shortcomings due to heedlessness and error;
- but will by no means clear the guilty– he will not allow the guilty to go unpunished.
Do you realize how amazing this sentence is? It is God telling us all exactly who he is and explicitly what he wants us to know about him so we can know how he wants us to behave. After all, how many times does he tell us to “be Thou holy, as I am holy?” Well, right here are the instructions for how we can accomplish that goal.
And you know what I think? I think they aren’t all that difficult to do.
Obviously, we aren’t the LORD, the Lord God and if someone was good to us we won’t be around to remember their kindness to their thousandth generation. Other than those two things, though, I think we are all capable of emulating these other qualities of God.
The reason this specific reading is done now is to demonstrate that God wants to be with us- the whole idea of Sukkot is to remember the way God dwelt with and cared for our ancestors in the desert. It is a way of bonding with them and God. God always wants us to be in his presence. In fact the festival of Sukkot, according to Leviticus 23: 33-36 is to be seven days long, and the 8th day is a Shabbat rest. The Rabbi’s explain in the Talmud (somewhere) the 8th day was added by God because he so enjoyed dwelling with his people that he extended Sukkot for another day. I know that is unsubstantiated by the actual scriptures, but it is such a nice thought and it does fit in with what we know of God and his love for his children, that whether it is absolutely the truth or not, it is not dishonoring to God and a wonderful expression of God’s love.
We can never be as God is, but we can always be closer to how he wants us to be. He tells us in this section of the Torah exactly what we need to know about him, and as far as I am concerned, that is all I need to know. Frankly, for me (at least) just trying to emulate these attributes of God is more than enough of a challenge for me.
Are you up to the challenge?
May your remaining days of Sukkot be a blessing to you.
Video for Sukkot 2018 Intermediate Shabbat Reading
Once Saved, Always Saved Results in Unsaved
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You may be asking yourself, “How can I be saved for all time and end up not saved at all?” That’s a fair question, and the answer is that the “Once Saved, Always Saved” teaching is a lie.
From this point I will write “once saved, always saved” as OSAS.
Here’s the reason why I say this: first off, I think we can agree that someone who doesn’t repent of their sins will continue to sin. And, as far as salvation is concerned, we all sin but those are unrepentant will not be able to be saved. The Bible is clear that God will not forgive someone who sins over and over because they choose to sin rather than to obey.
Messiah died so that we can have a shot at salvation, and the first step in gaining salvation is to repent of our sins and desire to sin no more, which in Hebrew is called T’shuvah. After we repent, if we haven’t already accepted Yeshua as our Messiah, that is the next step. The third step is to ask forgiveness in Yeshua’s name by means of his sacrifice, and the last step is to go forth from that point working out your salvation through learning God’s word (all of it- from Genesis to Revelation) and obeying it as best as you can.
That’s how salvation is gained, in a nutshell.
OK, Steve- I get it. That’s how we are saved, but that doesn’t tell me why OSAS is a lie. After all, that is what many Christians have been told is how it works. We have been told, “Yeshua died for your sins which were all nailed to the Cross” (Colossians 2:14), so why should I worry anymore?
Here’s why: the sins that were nailed to the Cross were only the ones that you already had performed. In the days when crucifixion was the standard punishment, above the head of the one being crucified was a list of the crimes against them. So, when your sins were nailed to the Execution Stake along with the Messiah, it was only those sins (crimes) that you had committed up to that point in time. The sins that you do AFTER your T’shuvah and AFTER you receive forgiveness are not automatically forgiven. That is the lie of OSAS.
Salvation is irrevocable, which means that no one can take it away but it does NOT mean that we can’t lose it by throwing it away ourselves.
If someone believes that their sins are automatically forgiven, which is the very foundation of OSAS, then when they sin (which we all do and cannot stop doing) they will believe these new sins are already forgiven. That is what OSAS tells us; however, the truth is that the sins we commit are being listed against us until such time as we ask forgiveness. And we must ask forgiveness for every sin we commit, which (as you may recall from earlier) starts with our T’shuvah. And without T’shuvah, which is the first step in receiving forgiveness, there can be no forgiveness.
When someone believes that their sins are automatically forgiven, they will continue to act as they always have with no regrets, with no worries and thereby without repentance. We just go along on our merry way, doing whatever we do confident in knowing that when we screw up we are automatically forgiven.
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the danger of the OSAS lie- it removes our accountability for having sinned, and thereby our responsibility to obey God.
Salvation must be worked through- it is a gift from God, it is his Grace to us, but just like any gift that is given we can lose it. If you believe that because Yeshua died for your sins you are automatically forgiven, you are in BIG trouble and need to get on your knees right this second and ask God for forgiveness.
God understands that you have been taught by those you trust something that is wrong, but he has told all of us what he considers to be right, and just like when you tell a cop that you didn’t know what the speed limit was, when you tell God you didn’t know OSAS was a lie, you will get the same answer: ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law.
Video for Once Save, Always Saved Results in Unsaved
God Crashed My Pity Party
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About a month ago, when I began the Kickstarter campaign to sell my newest (third) book I was feeling rather low. I have had this online ministry for about 6 years, and only have about 70 followers. I am a member of half a dozen discussion groups (Christian and Messianic) but still haven’t made book sales or even gained subscribers. My other two books are very dear to me and writing them was a cleansing for me, similar (I suspect) to how Jeremiah felt when he gave God’s word.
Of course, we know Jeremiah wasn’t the happiest of prophets, and I felt the same way he did. I couldn’t figure out why so few people were interested in what I have to say and began to think that I wasn’t treating God’s Word, or God, with the honor he deserves. Maybe I thought I was preaching truth but I wasn’t…could that be why God hasn’t blessed this blog/ministry with more followers?
So I sent out a post (maybe some of you remember it?) asking for confirmation. This wasn’t an Ego Trip…not at all! I wasn’t asking or fishing for compliments- I wanted to know, really, if I was doing anything that edified or helped anyone. If what I do is useless to people, why should I continue to go through the time and financial expense of doing it? Right?
I did receive some confirmation from people, and again, felt bad that I only had one or two people answer. None of my own friends and most of my family did not reply, either (then again, we all know a prophet has no honor in his home town), so even though I was somewhat uplifted by the couple of confirmations I received, I didn’t feel useful.
The Pity Party was well underway and I was praying to God (as I rode my bike to the gym) asking why he wasn’t helping me. And he answered me: I felt him telling me to look at the “popular” sites to see why they are so popular. So I did, and I also recalled many of the postings from people with many followers. And you know what I realized?
I wasn’t a “happy” site. I don’t constantly post messages about the love of God and the forgiveness of Messiah. I don’t constantly post quotations from the Bible that relate how God saved me, how God has helped me, how God has been my shield and my salvation. I have never implied or stated that salvation is a “Come as you are” party (although, in a way, it is.) These are the types of things the “popular” sites post, and when I thought about it, it was also the type of messages you hear from the mega-churches.
I don’t do that. Oh, well, every once in a while I do post about forgiveness, but it is mostly how God requires us to forgive others, not how he has forgiven us. I do post about God’s love, but it isn’t about how he loves us but how we should work to love others as he tells us we should. In fact, I rarely post about what God does for us and almost always post about what we are supposed to do for God.
And that is what God was telling me: I am not popular because the messages I post aren’t about how God does things for people; I post about what people are supposed to do for God.
In other words, I am preaching about what God wants from us instead of what God does for us.
Yes-salvation is a “Come as you are” party, but it is NOT a “Stay as you were” party. The popular messages are all about how Yeshua did away with the law, all food is good to eat, and you are forgiven now and always, known as “Once saved, always saved.” The messages that are popular are the ones that tell you all about how God loves you and you don’t have to do anything different, just call on his name and be saved. Don’t worry about changing your lifestyle or your desires, and when you make a mistake God will forgive you because Jesus loves you and died for your sins, so you are
You will not hear any of that dribble from me. What I preach is what people need to know to continue in their salvation: the Torah is valid, God’s commandments are still necessary to obey, and salvation is given for free but costs a lot to keep. You must change, you must truly do T’shuvah (repent), and you must be an example to others of how God has changed you through your actions and your words. You are commanded to forgive or you will not be forgiven: how you judge will be the way you are judged
“Hey- this isn’t fun! Are you really telling me I can’t be forgiven unless I change? You’re saying that if I ask for forgiveness but I don’t change I won’t be ‘saved’ anymore? I can lose my salvation? You say I have to obey the Torah? Well, if that’s what you preach, forget you, Pal! I am going to listen to the other people who tell me how wonderful I am, how I am saved forever and no one can take it away from me. I want to hear how much God loves me just as I am; I want to be told I don’t have to do that ‘Jewish’ stuff because Jesus nailed it to the cross. I want to be assured that I will be in heaven for eternity no matter what I do because I called on Jesus’s name once.”
Yes, that is what I am telling you. And I will take my lead from Hosea 4:6: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
That is how God crashed my Pity Party, and am I ever glad he did. I realize now that I may never be “popular” because I speak the hard truth that most people don’t want to hear. When I trained people (in the corporate world and as a mentor to volunteers) I did not hold back from telling the truth, even when it wasn’t pleasant for them to hear. I didn’t do that to hurt them but to help them become better. If everyone that takes a class passes, then the class work was too easy, and the students probably didn’t learn what they really needed to know. Just like when preachers tell all about the goodness of God and what he does for you- yes, God does much for you but he expects you to do much for him. And that is what people, who are naturally self-absorbed and selfish, do not want to hear.
So I will remain unpopular. I will continue to speak the truth that God has, through his Ruach HaKodesh, inspired me to teach. I will not sugarcoat salvation or preach all about God’s love and forgiveness as a one-way street, only traveling from God to you.
Salvation is free to have but hard to keep. God says we are to be holy as he is holy, which means we are not to do as the world does. We are to separate ourselves from the world, spiritually and actively, so that when people see us they see what God wants us to be. Not what we want to be, but what God wants us to be. That is a message that will be popular only to the truly spiritual mature person, to the one who is humble before God, to the one who is here to serve and not to be served.
My Pity Party was all about the fact that I wasn’t “popular” and because I didn’t have so many followers on my website and FaceBook that they were coming out of my ears. God crashed that party by showing me I would never be popular preaching the hard truths of salvation and T’shuvah. He showed me that, like Jeremiah, like Elijah, like Elisha, and like most every single prophet we read about in the Bible, I was not going to be asked to the A-List parties.
I was looking for human confirmation but God stepped in and took over, showing me that I was in good company by being unpopular.
And you know what? I felt G-R-E-A-T when he did that!
Kol Nidre Message 2018
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
This night, September 18, 2018, is Kol Nidre, the eve of Yom Kippur. As such I would like to share the traditional message I used to give when I was “acting” Rabbi (for about 1-1/2 years) at the Northeast Philadelphia Messianic Synagogue I had attended for 17 years.
Before we go into the message, I have a beautiful rendering of the Kol Nidre prayer which you can watch by clicking on this link: Kol Nidre.
For centuries, the Kol Nidre prayer has been used as a polemic against the Jewish people, accusing us of being untrustworthy and stating that our word is useless. At one point there was even a movement within Judaism to remove this prayer. That movement came to a stop once it was discovered that the prayer dates back to 17th Century Spain, where persecution of the Jews was taking place under the Inquisition. Many thousands of Jews were forced to forgo their beliefs and swear allegiance to Christianity or suffer torture and death. That is why even though the Torah requires us to strictly adhere to any oaths we take, this prayer seems to be an anomaly; however, we are not asking to be released from valid oaths and contracts we make but only from those oaths we were coerced into making.
On this day, when we ask God to forgive us our sins, we must realize that we have an obligation to forgive those that have sinned against us. And not just to forgive others, but to forgive ourselves, as well.
It is strange that we are willing sometimes to forgive others their sins against us but we will not forgive ourselves for sins we have committed against others. After all, if we love others enough to forgive them their sins, shouldn’t we love ourselves enough to forgive our sins? Doesn’t it say in Leviticus 19:18, “Love thy neighbor as thyself?” If we love our neighbor enough to forgive them, then shouldn’t we do the same for ourselves?
If I ask God for forgiveness but refuse to forgive myself, then I am placing myself above God! So many times I have heard someone say, “How can God possibly forgive me for this?” That person doesn’t understand Grace and doesn’t understand that God is able to do so much more than we can. In Romans 5:20 we are told that where sin is increased, so too is Grace. There is no sin too great or too horrible for God to forgive.
And God is not just willing to forgive: he desires to forgive! He is so compassionate that he assumes our sins are accidental. Numbers 15:25-26 states that we will be forgiven from our sins we did “in error”; in other words, God assumes that we did not intend to sin but that we did it by accident! What a wonderful demonstration of the compassionate understanding and forgiving nature of God!
But let us not forget that disobedience of the Torah is still rebellion and a sin. And the wages of sin is still death (Romans 6:23.) However, because of God’s forgiving nature, he is willing to see our sins as his children making a foolish mistake. However, that is no reason for you to get comfortable with your sin- sin MUST be removed from our lives if we want to be with God eternally. He may look upon us with compassion and love but he is still God, and there can be no sin in his presence.
Too many people have been taught that “Once saved, always saved” is how things work under the blood of Yeshua. That is a lie. We are not to take advantage of God’s willingness to forgive us and just assume he will, which can only lead to an attitude of unrepentance. If we think it is OK to sin now and then, that is like trampling the blood of Messiah into the dirt. Even though God understands it is our nature to do so, it is NEVER acceptable to sin.
Because we cannot overcome our nature, Yeshua came to earth and sacrificed himself for us so that through his goodness we have the opportunity to overcome our sinfulness.
Today we pray for forgiveness and ask God for
- First, we must recognize our sin and take responsibility for it so we recite the Al Chet prayer, also called the Ashamnoo (we are guilty);
- We must choose to do Teshuvah (repent) and remove sin from our lives;
- Once we have done these two things, only then can we ask God to forgive us. Because we cannot sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem, we ask forgiveness through the blood of the Messiah, who gave his life as a ransom for us over 2,000 years ago and through his innocent shedding of blood we can receive forgiveness (Messianic Jews/Hebrews 9:22.)
Some of you may be asking why bother to go through fasting and prayer to ask forgiveness when we already have it through Yeshua ha Mashiach? The answer is simple: because it is a commandment! Besides that, don’t we still sin? Don’t we still need to ask forgiveness? “Once saved, always saved” is hogwash and a lie from the pit of Sheol which is designed to keep us out of God’s Grace. We need to ask forgiveness of our sin(s) every single day! Maybe even more than once per day. So, nu? If we are to ask forgiveness any time we sin, why should we not ask on this day, the one day that God specifically said we should?
Another reason is to show solidarity with our unsaved Jewish brothers and sisters. Look at the prayers we recite on this day (the Al Chet and the Amidah) – they ask forgiveness for the sins WE have committed. Not the sins I have, but the sins we have committed. These prayers are community prayers because in Judaism God sees the entire nation of Israel as a single entity. We are not just responsible for our own sins, but for the sins of all Jews; those who came before us and those who are with us.
One last word: what we do on this day is not to be left in the Synagogue or Church- we are to take this attitude of Teshuvah and forgiveness for others out into the world. Going to Shul on the High Holy Days isn’t enough. We meet together to reinforce each other and to strengthen each other so that we are able to go back out there- back into the darkness to be a light. What we do today is what we should be doing every day.
So whether you are attending Shul all day or staying home and worshiping with God alone, take what you do out into the world with you tomorrow and every day thereafter.
Video for Kol Nidre Message 2018
Parashah VaYelach 2018 (And he went) Deuteronomy 31
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God informs Moses that he is about to die and has him bring Joshua before all Israel to the tent of Meeting. God appears in a cloud and Moses tells Joshua (and the people) that even though he is now going to die, God will still be with them and Joshua will lead them over the Jordan into the Promised Land. God will be with them just as he has been in the past, to defeat those peoples that are now in the land, so Joshua and all the people should not be afraid but have courage because although Moses won’t be with them, God always will be.
God also tells Moses that in the future the people will disown God and break his covenant, and he will then hide his face from them. They will be ravaged by the surrounding peoples and the country will be taken over. God tells Moses to write down a song (which I believe means that God dictated this song) so that when this happens, the song will testify on God’s behalf that it was the people who caused this Tsouris to come upon themselves.
You may ask why God, knowing all that is to happen and the terrible things that his people will have to suffer through, would allow that to come about. After all, isn’t God all-powerful? All-knowing? Couldn’t he easily make sure the people don’t turn against him and suffer? Doesn’t he love them?
Yes, he does love them, but he is God. He knows that loving means to allow freedom of choice. He gives us Free Will so that we can choose to love him, which is the only real way to love- by choice. He never uses his punishment for disobedience as a means to force us to love him, but rather as a means to get us to return to his protection. We are protected by God when we are in his will, which means living in obedience to his commandments. God is all about love, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t about justice, fair judgment and following the rules he establishes.
God is as subject to his commandments as we are- when he says we must do something, if we reject his words and ignore him, he must judge us as we deserve. He told us that the commandments he gave us are to be obeyed “throughout your generations”, which means forever. Fortunately for us, God’s judgments are filtered with mercy. Still and all, they are terrible when we have forsaken him. The worst thing is that he just lets us “do our own thing”, which means we are then left to defend ourselves against the world with no divine help. That is a no-win situation.
If you find yourself in the midst of trouble, you can blame the Enemy for attacking you. But unless you are doing something that is very godly, that probably isn’t the real reason. The devil doesn’t care about you unless you are doing something that furthers God’s kingdom. So, back to you are having troubles: what you should NOT do is look to God or to the Devil until after you have first looked in the mirror. I think that in the majority of cases when we find ourselves in a teapot full of Tsouris, the real reason is something we have done or failed to do.
God will always judge those who disobey him and do so with the intent to bring them back to his protective love and divine intervention in their life. God judges us constantly throughout our life in order to get us to change our ways when we walk away from him. He is patient and always will try to get us to protect ourselves by obeying his Torah. However, when we come before him at the Final Judgment it will be too late to change. So make sure you get your head on straight before that time comes, which may be at any moment during your life. None of us knows how or when we are going to die, so we better be prepared to meet our Maker every moment of every day. That starts with doing Teshuvah, accepting Yeshua as your Messiah and asking forgiveness of your sins through his name. From that point on, you must try to live in accordance with the Torah God gave to all people, through the Jews to the Nations. Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, whatever- God is the only God and we are to worship him as he said we should.
God has no religion- he gave us his laws and commandments and statutes so that everyone would know what he expects of them. And he will judge you not according to what a clerical leader has told you to do, but what HE has told you to do!
Video fro Parasha VaYelach 2018