Author: Steven R. Bruck

How Does God’s Punishment Help Us?

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It is very hard to recognize the value of punishment when it is happening to you. Especially if that punishment is not one just designed to teach you a lesson, but the sort of vengeful punishment that human beings generally dish out to each other.

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God, on the other hand, punishes us without malice or anger, although we can tick him off now and then. When God punishes us, it is because we deserve it, yet he always tempers his temper, so to speak, with mercy.

“What’s so merciful about killing 250 high-ranking members of the tribes, as well as having the ground swallow Abiram and Datan, with their entire families, down to Sheol?” (Numbers 16)

“What’s so merciful about allowing the Philistines to constantly raid and harass the people all during the time of the Judges, and throughout the kingdoms that came afterward?”

“What’s so merciful about having the Assyrians kill thousands of Northern Kingdom people, destroy property, and sell survivors into slavery throughout the Diaspora?” (1 Chronicles 5)

“What’s so merciful about letting the Babylonians raze Jerusalem and destroy the temple while bringing hundreds or more of God’s people into slavery in a foreign land?” (2 Kings 25)

“What’s so merciful about allowing the Romans to not just totally destroy the temple and the walls protecting Jerusalem, but to rename Judea- the land God gave us- after our ancient enemies, the Philistines?” (Circa 70 CE)

“You call that ‘merciful’?”

Yes, I do.

“How can you say that is showing mercy?”

Simple: despite all that, we are still here.

And not just still here in the world, but now we are back in the Land, and we are not just surviving- we are thriving!

Have you ever been in a fight? Not a verbal battle, but a swing the fist, hit the body, and hurt someone fight? It isn’t like what you see in the movies, where the fighters hit each other, kick each other, throw each other around but constantly get up and continue.

That’s not real life. Let me tell you about real life, having been a student of martial arts for a number of years in my youth: all you need to make you think twice about fighting is to get the wind knocked out of you once. You can’t breathe, you can’t even stand, and while you are turning blue the only thought going through your mind is “Will I die?”

When God punishes us, it is so that we stop everything we are doing, stop thinking of whatever we were thinking of, and fall to our knees with the wind knocked out of us thinking only one thing: “Will I die?”

That is why when God has to resort to punishment, it can seem so terrible; you see, we make it necessary for him to do that because our stubborn, self-centered, and sinful desires are so strong that God needs to get our attention.

He will do so gently at first, giving us little hints, helping us to see the light, but when we refuse to accept what we are doing is wrong, he will turn up the juice. And, after he has given us all the time in the world to repent, that’s when God will drop the hammer.

And even then, he is merciful in that despite the pain we feel, it isn’t going to kill us.

Well, wait a minute… I stand corrected: there are many thousands who have died suffering from God’s punishment, as we have noted earlier, but their death isn’t necessarily eternal death. There have been many righteous people over the centuries who have died as collateral damage when God punished the nation, but dying to the world isn’t the death that we should be afraid of.

There is one thing I want to mention before finishing: too often I have heard people say they are under attack or being punished by God because things are going badly for them. Now, it may be true; the Enemy may be harassing you if you are doing something wonderful for God’s kingdom, or God may be making life difficult if you are on the wrong path (remember I said he starts off gently letting us know we are going the wrong way?), but in most cases, I believe people are just having a bad day or a bad week, and that is all there is to it.

God sees and knows all that we do, and he cares, but being in charge of everything doesn’t mean always doing everything. I believe many times God just lets things happen, and if I am right, I think that is a good thing.

It allows us to learn to use what God teaches us in the Bible and is a way we can test ourselves in how we handle tsouris, which is inevitable because we live in a cursed and fallen world.

So if you feel you are being punished by God, check yourself against the Torah and what Yeshua said about loving each other. Take a long look in the mirror and see who is looking back at you.

In Judaism, we say the Torah should be like a mirror: when you look into it, you see yourself. This is very much what Yeshua meant when he said that when we see him, we see the Father (John 14:9): this is too often misunderstood because Yeshua wasn’t saying he is God, he was saying he is the mirror image of God in that he did and said what God wanted him to do and say.

That is why God tells us to be holy, as he is holy- we can never be God, and we can never be as holy as God is, but we can be like God in how we treat others and by living in accordance with the instructions God gave us in the Torah.

We will all be punished, sooner or later, either for our own sins or as collateral damage to the nation. It is inevitable, but don’t let that bother you. Remember that what happens on the earth is temporary, and we who believe in God and accept Yeshua as our Messiah aren’t to worry about what happens temporarily because we are focused on eternity.

God’s punishment, even when mercifully administered, is terrible. But it is temporary, and so long as you do your best to worship and treat others as God said to do, then you can get through it and look forward to eternal peace.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know, subscribe to both my website and YouTube channels, buy my books, join my Facebook group called “Just God’s Word”, and “Like” my Facebook page.

(That’s not too much to ask, is it?)

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

The Psalms Remind Us of God’s Faithfulness

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Have you read the Book of Psalms?

I just finished it, on my way through the Bible, and besides the beautiful poetry, the heartfelt yearning for God, both the pain and joy that the different psalmists felt (that’s right- King David wasn’t the only one writing psalms), one thing I am always reminded of when going through these emotional songs is how faithful God has been to his people.

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I am not going to review each and every one of the 150 psalms, but challenge you to go through, picking one out every now and then, and you will psalms that both thank God for his blessings and protection, as well as pleading to God to provide the blessings and protection that he once did.

The psalms take us on a roller-coaster of emotions, from praising God for his protection to pleading for God for protection; from thanking God for his mighty victories to asking God why he no longer goes to battle before his people; from praising God for the love he has shown us to asking God when will his anger against his people ever cease?

The psalms were written by a number of different people, at different times during our history. Many were written by King David, but there are one or two from Solomon, Moses added a couple of his own, Asaf has written many, and we even find some from the sons of Korach. Yes, the very same Korach who rebelled against Moses and Aaron: although Korach and his followers were destroyed by God’s fire coming out from the Tabernacle, it was only the families of Datan and Abiram who were swallowed up by the earth.

The psalms are a historical narrative, as well, with David’s sad songs of betrayal while hiding from Saul or running from Absolem to songs of praise and joy at being placed in the kingship and for the many years of the military superiority he was given by Adonai.

The psalms of Asaf, however, are quite different in that they seem to have been written during those years when the Israelites were in exile. They reflect the sadness of feeling abandoned by God, even though we know that later God did return his chosen people to their land.

What demonstrates the faithfulness of God’s people is that despite their pleas for help, their questioning of why God has abandoned them, and their prayers for him to turn from his anger and redeem them, they always end with the hope and trust that one day God will again be as he once was to them.

And looking back in history, we see God’s faithfulness in that he did answer the prayers for the redemption of the communion his people once had with him. We know that God did relent from his punishment, God did return his people to their land, and he never truly abandoned them, only turned his face from them for the time they needed to be humbled.

In truth, God has never rejected the Jewish people, or for that matter, anyone who truly calls to him. When we, the Jewish people, turned from him, although he said he would hide his face and ignore our prayers, he still saw us and he still heard our prayers. He was just allowing us enough time to become truly humbled and repentant.

God always knows the exact right time to act on our prayers; he knows the difference between false humility and genuine repentance.

God never really abandons us, he just allows us to abandon him until we come back to our senses. And when we do, we will find him there, waiting with outstretched hand, to gather us under his wings, once again.

If you feel like you are abandoned or separated from God, you are probably right but don’t blame God for it: if you want to know why God isn’t with you, look in the mirror for the answer. God always wants to be with us, but when we reject his instructions we reject him, thereby separating ourselves from the blessings and protection of the Lord.

God never abandons us, he allows us to abandon him. And even when we do, he still watches out for us. He is always there, waiting for us to return, and strongly desiring to answer our repentant and heartfelt prayer for forgiveness with a “Yes, you are forgiven, and welcome back into the fold.”

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know to help this ministry grow. Subscribe to both my YouTube and Website ministry, “Like” my Facebook page, and join my Facebook discussion group called “Just God’s Word.”

And if you like what you get here, you will love my books, which are available from my website or on Amazon Books.

And one more thing: I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

The Dual Purpose of God’s Punishment

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How many times have you heard people ask why, if God is forgiving, loving, and compassionate, does he punish us?

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How many times have you heard people say that the God of the Old Covenant is harsh and cruel, but the God of the New Covenant is loving and forgiving?

Of course, that raises the question of which God is the real God?

The answer is, of course, there is only one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the father of the Messiah, Yeshua. He is the same God in the Old Covenant as he is in the New Covenant, and if someone needs proof, just read Acts 5:1-11 and see how “forgiving” the God of the New Covenant really is.

God punishes the guilty, but not right away, well, usually not right away. He holds his punishment in order to give us time to repent and save our lives. God doesn’t want anyone to die and says so in Ezekiel 18:23.

In fact, God is not only willing to forgive, he strongly desires to forgive, but because he is also holy and trustworthy, he MUST punish the unrepentant for their sins.

God ALWAYS follows the rules he sets.

The punishment God metes out is designed to do two things:

  1. Punish the wicked for the sins they have committed, as he promised he would do; and
  2. Bring people into communion with God by having them turn to him so they can be saved.

That’s right! God will slam you down hard not because he is trying to hurt you, but because he is trying to save your life!

Humans punish and hurt each other in order to make themselves feel better. I know you are denying that is what YOU do, but the truth is we punish almost always, from anger. And that anger comes from being ignored, which comes from our pride and that is what causes us to lash out at others, even those we love.

When your children disobey you, do you allow them to continue their bad behavior, and only after a while punish them? If so, then you are the rare exception because almost everyone I have ever known with kids, myself included, punishes in one way or another the moment the kids misbehave.

If someone at work is performing under their required standard and you are their boss, do you allow it to continue? Do you wait for a while, hoping that they will come around and get better? Do you give them a bad review without ever having told them where they needed to improve?

I hope not. Having been in charge of people most of my career I have learned that when people don’t do a good job it is often because they haven’t been trained or supervised well. However, there are those who just refuse to do what they are supposed to do, and they receive punishment after they have been told how to do it correctly, but refuse to do so.

These examples are based on being in a finite world where the punishment can’t last longer than your life. God, on the other hand, is not finite and his punishment is designed to set us straight while we are still alive because the ultimate result of disobeying God is eternal suffering.

I might lose my job if I continually ignore my boss, but I will be forever in torment if I continually ignore God.

God punishes us because he has to: he said he will and that is all there is to it. He waits for us to repent, and when he has waited long enough (which is entirely up to his timetable, not yours) the punishment for your crimes against God will first be to slam you down so hard that you have to look up to look down.

And that brings us to the second purpose for his punishment, to leave you no option other than to look up… up to God!

God’s punishment is designed to force you to realize that your way will not work, is not going to be acceptable anymore, and if you want to have joy and peace you had better get your head out of your southern-most orifice and get with the game.

God tells us exactly how he wants us to worship him and how to treat each other- that is found in the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible. In fact, that is the ONLY place where God, himself, dictates to Moses the way he wants us all to act. There is no place, anywhere else, throughout the entire Bible, Old and New, where God gives direct instructions on what we are to do.

As you read in the letter to the Romans, God has always been to the Jew first, then to the Gentile. The Torah was given to the Jewish people to learn, and then as God’s nation of priests (Exodus 19:6) to bring it to the world.

Humans punish almost exclusively as a result of their anger at being ignored, or at seeing someone doing wrong to others. God is the same way, in that he becomes angry with those who disobey him, but God’s anger is not a fit of selfish, prideful anger like a human being feels.

This is my belief: God’s anger is not based so much on people ignoring him, but on people spiritually killing themselves after he has done so much to provide eternal joy for us. Whereas we become angry for selfish reasons, God becomes angry for selfless reasons- he hates to see us hurt ourselves.

That is why I believe his punishment is not just to keep his word, but to bring us back into communion with him by making us realize that we cannot be successful by looking only to our own power. We need to realize the best path to success in this life, and eternal joy in the next life is through the power of God.

God makes us eat crow to teach us humility; when we accept his sovereignty, humble ourselves, and obey him, he then provides a feast of wonderful delicacies which we can enjoy for all time.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know. Subscribe to both my YouTube channel and website, “Like” my Facebook page, and join my Facebook discussion group, Just God’s Word.

While on my website, check it out and you can order any of my 4 books from the links you will find there.

And I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for now, so l’hitraot and Baruch Ha Shem!

Parashah Vayyetze 2021 (He went out)Genesis 28:10 – 32:3

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We left Jacob being sent by Isaac to Haran to find a wife from his own people. One night along the journey, while Jacob sleeps outside the town of Luz, God comes to him in a dream and confirms the same promises that he gave to Isaac and to Abraham. Jacob awakes and is filled with awe, naming the place Beth-El (House of God). Jacob also swears to God that if God will do all he said, then Jacob will worship him and give a tenth of all God blesses him with back to God.

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Jacob continues his journey and coming to a well meets Rachel, the daughter of his uncle, Laban. When he tells her who he is, she runs back to let Laban know, who then runs out to meet Jacob and bring him into his house.

After staying with Laban for a month, Laban asks what he can do for Jacob, and Jacob says he will work 7 years as a bride price for Rachel. Laban agrees, but after 7 years he fools Jacob by sending Leah, Rachel’s older sister, into the marriage tent at night. When Jacob realizes he has been tricked, Laban explains it by saying it is a local custom to marry the older daughter first. Jacob agrees to work another 7 years for Rachel, and once the marriage week to Leah is over he immediately gets another marriage week with Rachel. Now he has 2 wives and 7 more years of working for Laban, and spends that time dropping rugrats left and right: first from Leah, then from Rachel’s handmaiden, then from Leah’s handmaiden, then from Rachel, then from Leah. The last kid, Benjamin, comes from Rachel, but we don’t read about that until later.

Jacob’s work makes Laban richer so Laban asks Jacob how he can pay him. Jacob says he will take all the spotted, speckled and dark sheep (generally considered to be less valuable) as his payment, but Laban again tries to cheat Jacob by removing them all from his flocks and giving them to his sons.

But Laban didn’t know that Jacob was the best deceiver around. So Jacob uses his knowledge of animal husbandry to have all the speckled, spotted, and dark sheep be the strongest, while the “pure” sheep Laban had become the weakest.

Soon enough, Laban’s sons are plotting against Jacob because now his flocks are the hardiest and their flocks are weak. God comes to Jacob in a dream and says it’s time to go back, so Jacob sneaks away, but before they leave Rachel steals the household gods from her father.

Laban learns of this and catches up to Jacob, but before he reaches him God tells him not to do anything to Jacob, so Laban listens to God and accuses Jacob of stealing his household gods. But when he searches for them he can’t find them because Rachel has hidden them in her saddle, which she is sitting on, and says she can’t get up because she is in her time of Nidah (menstrual period). Laban and Jacob make a pact not to cross over the boundary to do harm to each other, and Laban returns home.

There’s so much to talk about here, but I want to concentrate on one small thing, which is the taking of Laban’s teraphim by Rachel before they left (Genesis 31:19).

My Chumash says Nachmanides (the great Rabbi also known as the Ramban) explains the stealing of the teraphim, which Laban calls “his gods”, as Rachel’s way of keeping him from worshipping them, but I think this explanation is designed to paint Rachel in a good light.

The teraphim, or household gods as many Bibles describe them, were more than just a religious item. They represented the authority and rulership of the son who possessed them. The other brothers and cousins would come and pay tribute to the one holding these gods, in order to win their favor for a good harvest, for children, whatever. The fact that Laban was the possessor of these teraphim indicated his authority over the clan and was part of the inheritance of the oldest son.

I don’t think Rachel took them as a means of preventing her father from praying to idols, but rather as an inheritance for her sons.

The reason I think this is because of what she says to Jacob when he says he wants to return to Canaan. In Genesis 31:14, both Leah and Rachel tell Jacob they feel their father has treated them as strangers, selling them and that there is no inheritance for them in their father’s house.

In other words, they feel like they have been disowned and cheated out of their rightful inheritance. This is a little unusual because the daughters did not get an inheritance in those days but it seems they felt cheated, in one way or another. Rachel seems to be the better match for Jacob than Leah because Rachel is a bit of a deceiver because she lied to her father when he was searching for his teraphim.

A well-known lesson we find in this parashah is “What goes around, comes around.” Jacob slyly finagled the firstborn rights from Esau, then Laban slyly finagled Jacob into marrying Leah, and I believe he did this all the while knowing he would be able to get another 7 years from Jacob, whose efforts had been making Laban richer.

Rachel finagles mandrakes for herself by pimping her husband (it seems this is a family trait since Abraham and Isaac did the same sort of thing) to gain a chance for more children.

Finally, Rachel steals the teraphim from Laban, who now feels cheated out of his inheritance.

So Jacob does Esau, Laban does Jacob, and Rachel does Laban- what goes around, comes around.

The truth of the matter is that even the Patriarchs of Judaism, men whom God spoke to directly (which didn’t happen again until Moses) are still and all, human. They have human foibles, human weaknesses, and deceiving ways about them.

Maybe we can write it off to the fact that these things were necessary in those times, but I don’t think that really cuts it. Honesty and dishonesty have been around forever, and whether in biblical days or today, honest people are honest. Period.

God sees all that we do, and he knows our hearts. It is up to us to remember this and try to do what is right in God’s eyes, not what a godless society says is right. This may ostracize us, but in the long run, it is better to be right and alone than wrong with other wrongdoers because… what is today’s lesson?

I don’t know about you, but if what I do is eventually going to come back and bite me in the tuchas, I’m going to do my best to ensure that it will only be a love bite.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages to help this ministry grow. Subscribe to my website and YouTube channel, “Like” my Facebook page, and join my Facebook discussion group called Just God’s Word. If you like what you get here, you will also like my books, available through my website or on Amazon Books (just search for my name.)

And I always welcome your comments.

Nu…we’re done for this week so l’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!

Faith Isn’t Enough

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We all have been taught that we are saved by faith, not works, but that isn’t the whole story.

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Faith is not something that we are born with, and it is not something we can earn or purchase: faith is a choice. Faith is a decision to believe, without any proof to justify that belief.

The letter to the Messianic Jews, supposedly written by Shaul (Paul), says it best in Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

In other words, any absolute proof of God or that Yeshua is the Messiah is the antithesis of faith because Abraham, the “Poster Child” for faith, never had any proof of God’s existence or trustworthiness, yet when he heard from God, he believed. That is why in Christianity they say only by faith are we saved, not by works, because (this is their favorite verse) in Romans 4 we are told that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness (which Shaul quoted from Genesis 15:6).

But to say that faith is all we need is wrong, as stated by James in James 2:14, where he says that faith without works is dead.

So, nu? Who’s right? Shaul says through faith we are saved, and James says without works we are dead: someone has to be wrong, right?

The answer is they are both correct: the missing part that brings these two seemingly opposite statements into concordance is understanding what God said is the real reason Abraham was considered righteous.

Let’s back up for a minute: people have, for centuries, been taught that faith brings salvation, but it doesn’t: salvation only comes from forgiveness of sin. A sinful person cannot be in the presence of God, no matter how strongly they believe in him.

The general understanding of “works” is strict obedience to the commandments God gave in the Torah. Before Yeshua’s ministry, the Pharisees taught only the literal value or written word (called the P’shat) of the Torah commandments, and that only through obedience can we be forgiven, accompanied by the appropriate sacrifice. This is what I call “performance-based salvation”: they placed works over faith.

Yeshua taught us that we needed more than just a literal understanding, we need to know the deeper, spiritual meaning of God’s commandments (called the Remes). This was a totally new way to see the commandments, yet Yeshua never taught to ignore the commandments; obedience was still necessary, with the proper sacrifice brought to the temple in Jerusalem, in order to be forgiven of sin. The only thing that changed was after Yeshua’s sacrifice and resurrection, there was no longer a need to bring an animal to the temple, which was destroyed leaving Yeshua as the only means to attain forgiveness of sin.

By the end of the First Century, when the number of Gentiles joining the “Way” began to vastly outnumber the Jews, they began to separate themselves from the Jewish population (which was in big trouble with Rome) and started to change things around, such as a different day for the Sabbath, rejecting some of the basic Torah commandments, and totally ignoring the rabbinic (later to be Talmudic) additional requirements that the Pharisees demanded. By the end of the Third Century, Christianity had become a totally different religion, and the teaching that faith is all we need not only took precedence over obedience but was used to justify ignoring God’s Torah!

The Pharisees taught performance-based salvation over faith, and Christianity taught faith-based salvation over obedience.

Both are wrong.

Now we can get back to what God tells us is his reason for crediting Abraham as righteous, which had seemingly been lost to everyone, except to James.

In my 67+ years of experience with Christians, I have never heard any of them quote Genesis 26:5; that is where God confirms the promise he made with Abraham to Isaac and says the reason is:


…because that Abraham hearkened to My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws. (JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh)

When God said that Abraham hearkened to his voice, he meant that Abraham believed him, but that wasn’t all. God said Abraham did more than just believe him, he did everything that God told him to do!

What God is saying is that faith isn’t enough for him! Abraham was righteous because he believed AND DID what God told him to do!

That is what James was saying- faith without obedience to what God tells us to do will not save us. We must do as God said Abraham did: we must be more than faithful, we must be obedient.

The early Christians wanted to separate themselves from the Jewish people because of the political strife between the Judeans and Rome, and they succeeded so well they also separated themselves from God by teaching those who had faith in Yeshua did not have to obey the Torah.

And the only place (how many times do I have to say this before people realize it?) that God tells us what he wants us to do is in the Torah! Nowhere else, people- only in those first five books will you find God saying, “Tell the children of Israel this is what the Lord, God says to do…”.

Read Genesis 26:5 for yourself- make sure that what I am telling you is true. Abraham was considered righteous, which is why he received the promises from God, because he did more than just faithfully believe: he also did everything God told him to do.

It has never been either faith or works, it has always been both. If your faith doesn’t motivate you to be obedient to God’s instructions, then you do not have the kind of faith that results in forgiveness of sin, which is the only way we are saved.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages with everyone, “Like” my Facebook page, join my discussion group (Just God’s Word), buy my books, and remember that I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for now, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!