Author: Steven R. Bruck
God’s Accounting System Uses LIFO
If you are not familiar with accounting processes, there are two systems for calculating net profit from the goods your company sells, and these are founded on the cost of manufacturing the goods, known as the COGS (Cost of Goods Sold.)
These cost calculating systems are called LIFO and FIFO, which stands for Last In, First Out and First In, First Out.
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The way it works is that when calculating your profit, using FIFO your COGS is going to be what it cost you to manufacturer the goods that are the oldest in the inventory (first ones there) against what you sold them for now. If the manufacturing costs have risen since those older items were made, then the profit margin will be higher using FIFO.
On the other hand, if manufacturing cost has decreased, then calculating your profit based on the most recent items made will give you a higher profit, so you would want to use LIFO.
So, nu? What’s any of this have to do with God or salvation?
Plenty!
In Ezekiel 18:21-24 we are told this:
However, if the wicked person repents of all the sins he committed, keeps my laws and does what is lawful and right; then he will certainly live, he will not die. None of the transgressions he has committed will be remembered against him; for the righteousness that he has done, he will live.
“Do I take any pleasure at all in having the wicked person die?” asks Adonai Elohim. “Wouldn’t I prefer that he turn from his ways and live?“
On the other hand, when the righteous person turns away from his righteousness and commits wickedness by acting in accordance with all the disgusting practices that the wicked person does, will he live? None of the righteous deeds he has done will be remembered; for the trespasses and sins he has committed, he will die.
What God is saying is this: whatever type of person we are when we die, that is how we will be judged.
It doesn’t matter how wicked we had been in our past life – or, let’s say how many sins we have in our inventory- because when we repent and ask forgiveness through Yeshua ha Maschiach (Yeshua the Messiah, also known as Jesus Christ), since God uses LIFO those sins will not be used in calculating our spiritual worth.
The righteous acts we now are storing away are the ones that God will use when judging us, or better yet, let’s call it calculating our spiritual profit margin. This is such good news that it should make one jump up and down, like a newborn calf (remember that Psalm?) because there is no way for us to ever make up the profit lost through sinfulness.
What God does is to allow us to change our accounting system, so that when we do face him, it is only the recent COGS that he sees, which are the righteous acts we have committed since we repented and accepted Yeshua as our spiritual CFO.
Thank God for his merciful nature, and especially for his (not just) willingness to forgive, but desire to forgive us for the sins we commit against him; when King David wrote Psalm 51, he knew that every sin we commit, no matter what it is or who we hurt, is first and foremost against God.
So if you are reading this and haven’t yet repented or accepted Yeshua as the Messiah God sent, for you and for me, then please consider that you can change your accounting system before God holds his final audit, but you never know when that will be, so the best time to do that is NOW! Repent, accept Yeshua as your Messiah and ask God to forgive you for your sins, and change the accounting system he will use to judge you when you come before him.
Then start to build your inventory of righteousness.
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Parashah Shelach Lecha 2021 (Send out) Numbers 13-15
At the beginning of this parashah, the Israelites have come to the border of Cana’an, and 12 men, one prince from each tribe, are sent into the Land to reconnoiter and bring back a report.
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The 12 men, of whom Joshua and Caleb are members, spend 40 days in the Land. Upon their return, they all say how wonderful the land is; Caleb and Joshua are ready and eager to go in and take possession. But, the other 10 princes say they see the giant Anakim there and that the cities are well fortified and protected. They say if the people try to conquer the land they will all be destroyed and their children taken as slaves.
The people are utterly demoralized, and as their fear overtakes them they again complain against Moses and Aaron, whining like they always have about why he ever took them from Egypt to die in the desert. They are so upset they talk about choosing a new leader and returning to Egypt.
God tells Moses that he is fed up with these people and will destroy them and make a new nation from Moses. Moses, interceding on their behalf, reminds God (using the same argument he used at the sin of the Golden Calf) that if God did that, then the nations who are in awe of God now will say that God wasn’t able to deliver on his promises. He asks God to show the forgiveness and mercy that he declared about himself earlier (Exodus 34:6-7), and God says he will do as Moses asks.
However, the guilty will be punished and the people will spend one year in the desert for each day they were in the land until the entire generation that defied God and rebelled against his order to possess the land is dead. The children they said would be slaves in the land will, instead, be the ones to inherit and own the land.
After Moses tells them what God has decreed, the people feel even worse and in their desire to make atonement, they again rebel against God and decide that they will go in and take possession. Moses warns them not to go because God is not with them, but they fail to listen. Again. So, when they attack they are routed and completely defeated (which is why the place they were defeated is called Hormah, which means “utterly destroyed”.)
God sends them into the desert and instructs Moses to remind them of the things they must do with regard to sacrifices and first fruits when they do enter the land.
This parashah ends with the story of a man who was caught collecting sticks during the Shabbat, and upon asking God what is to be done, God says the man must be stoned to death. God also commands that thereafter, every man is to wear tzitzit, the fringes around their clothes, in order that each one will see the tzitzit of the other and by seeing that, remember to obey God.
One of the most important things that God says in this parashah, which he says continually throughout his instructions to us, is in Numbers 15:15-16 (CJB):
For this community there will be the same law for you as for the foreigner living with you; this is a permanent regulation through all your generations; the foreigner is to be treated the same way before Adonai as yourselves. The same Torah and standard of judgment will apply to both you and the foreigner living with you.
In our modern world, the idea of “sojourning” is pretty archaic, and we would more likely say that someone has converted instead of saying they sojourn. A very (pardon my saying it this way) Christian term, that many are more comfortable and familiar with, is to say that one is “grafted in”, which is, in essence, the same thing as sojourning. Whatever label you wish to put on it, the idea is the same: someone has decided that they would rather be associated with and part of one organization than another, whether the defining difference is religion, geography, or lifestyle.
The Pharisee living in the First Century called Shaul, that nice tentmaker from Tarsus, talked a lot about grafting in, specifically the Gentile ex-pagans he helped become grafted onto the Tree of Life, which is the Messiah. He talks often of Grace being given to these Gentiles who can now receive it as the result of their decision to spiritually sojourn with the Jewish people (I say spiritually sojourn with them because they were already living with them.)
But what has happened to his teachings is that they have been twisted around, and instead of the Grace he was talking about, Grace has been made into a system by which people are allowed to reject the Torah! Modern Christianity has turned Grace from being received for joining the Jewish people and accepting their Messiah to rejecting the Jewish people and using God’s Grace as an excuse to reject the Torah.
Don’t they know that by rejecting the Torah they are rejecting God?
I have, for years, heard people preach against the Torah in favor of Grace, making it seem that Torah and Grace are exclusive of each other: in other words, you can’t have obedience to the Torah and receive Grace. You are either under Grace or under Torah, also called being under the law.
Hmmm…well, if I am not under the law that means, by definition, I am above the law. So, nu? do you think that you are above the law? Does God’s Grace give you the authority to reject God’s instructions, the ones he gave, which are the ones Yeshua taught regarding how we are to live and worship?
I have heard often how Shaul (supposedly) says Believers are under Grace and don’t have to obey the Torah, and how people have taken that to wrongly equate obedience to the Torah with Legalism, but let’s see what God says. And guess what? God tells us exactly how he feels about those who reject the Torah, right in this parashah, Numbers 15: 30-31 (CJB):
But an individual who does something wrong intentionally, whether a citizen or a foreigner, is blaspheming Adonai. That person will be cut off from his people. Because he has had contempt for the word of Adonai and has disobeyed his command, that person will be cut off completely; his offense will remain with him.
This is what God says about anyone who disobeys the Torah commandments, whether they think they are allowed to or not. He doesn’t say those who do something wrong because they think they are allowed to are fine: no, God says that those who disobey on purpose will be cut off from his people. And this command is also addressed, just before this verse, to both the native-born and the foreigner who sojourns with (is grafted into) the society of the chosen people of God.
And that means anyone who receives Yeshua as their Messiah; period, end of line, discussion over: shut the door on your way out!
Like it or not, if you profess to believe in Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah and the son of God, then you are grafted in, i.e. an adopted son or daughter of Abraham and thereby (at least) spiritually one of the chosen people of God.
And that means you are subject to the same rules as the chosen people of God because God said so!
Being under the law is not a bad thing; in fact, it is the best thing that can happen to anyone because God promises, in Deuteronomy 28, that when you obey his instructions you will be bountifully blessed!
Obedience to the Torah is basically from one of two motivations: you either obey because you are trying to earn something or you obey as a result of your love and respect for God. Obedience to the Torah that stems from trying to earn salvation is called Legalism; obedience to the Torah because you love the Lord and want to please him, the same way you would do what your father or mother tells you out of respect and knowing that they only want the best for you, is called faithful obedience.
And God tells us that obedience to the Torah pleases him in Ezekiel 18:23.
Grace and Torah are not exclusive, they are inclusive. As we can see from Numbers 15:30, God says anyone who disobeys his instructions on purpose will be cut off, i.e. not accepted into God’s presence. Even if you profess to believe in Messiah, try to live a righteous life, but do so expecting that Grace is all you need, you are fooling yourself.
Grace cannot be given to someone who rejects God, and when you disobey the instructions that God gave, you are rejecting God.
Obey the Torah not to earn anything but to show God that you respect his authority, love him, and want to do only that which pleases him; when you do, you will receive from God all that God can give you.
However, if you like the idea that you don’t have to do what God says because of what men tell you, then expect only that which men can give you.
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That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!
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What Commandments Did Yeshua Ever Give?
I have read that Yeshua gave 6 commandments, and we read about them in Mark 10:17-20 when Yeshua relates a story about when a young man asks what he has to do in order to be saved. Yeshua answers that he has to follow the commandments, and the six he gave were:
Do not kill,
Do not commit adultery,
Do not steal,
Do not bear false witness,
Do not defraud,
Honor thy father and mother.
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I found this on the umass.edu website, and that article states these 6 commandments are the only ones people have to follow, essentially replacing the original 10 Commandments, as well as everything else in the Torah. Of course, that idea is just plain ridiculous, if for no other reason why would Yeshua, the son of God, not consider it important that we acknowledge there is only one God and that we should not bow down or worship other gods?
I also found on the Internet from the “Institute in Basic Life Principles” (some title, huh?) a list of commandments that Yeshua gave that is quite extensive. Some examples are: to go the extra mile, give charity in secret, beware of false prophets, repent, follow me, keep your word, do not lust, and many other things, all of which are from the Torah. I don’t see these as being new or unique commandments, but repetition of what God already told us to do in the Torah.
The only place I can find where Yeshua, himself, says he is giving a commandment is in John 15:12 (CJB) where Yeshua says to his Talmudim right after the last Pesach Seder:
This is my command: that you keep on loving each other just as I have loved you.
And that is not new: it is found in Leviticus 19:18.
Yeshua did not give any new commandments. In fact, he stated clearly in Matthew 5:17 that he is not changing anything that is already in the Torah. Now, we have to remember that “Torah” does not mean “law”, but “instruction” or “teachings”, and that being said, what Yeshua did was not give any commandments but teach the spiritual meaning of the existing commandments.
Yeshua didn’t change the Torah: he changed the understanding of the Torah.
I believe it is very dangerous when Christianity teaches that we should obey Yeshua’s commandments. The danger is that by even implying Yeshua gave commandments to us which are different from God’s commandments and that those are the ones we must follow, it means Yeshua placed himself above God. If Yeshua had ever said that we must do what he says and not what God said, that would be rebellion against God and, as such, a sin!
Do you recall that one of the issues Yeshua had with the Pharisees was that they considered some of their man-made traditions more important than the commandments God gave? If he had a problem with that, how could he possibly go even further astray from proper worship and teach that we should obey him and could ignore God’s commandments?
You know what they call that? Rebellion!
No, the truth is that Yeshua never did anything to override or ignore what God taught us to do in the Torah; he simply taught the spiritual meaning of those commandments. That is the only thing that is “new” in the New Covenant.
Yeshua is the Messiah, and as such he is to be listened to, respected, and acknowledged as God’s true representative on earth. He now sits at the right hand of God and when he returns, he will then be recognized as King Messiah, ruling the entire earth. He would be the first person to tell you not to worship him but to give your worship to his father in heaven, just as he told the young man in Mark 10:17.
The Torah is where God tells us how we should worship him and treat each other, and everything Yeshua taught was from and about the Torah. He did not give any new commandments or instructions, only the deeper, spiritual understanding of what people already had been taught.
Think of it this way…First Century Judea was the place where people could go to attend Salvation University, and both the Pharisees and Yeshua taught there, using the same textbook, the Torah. The Pharisees taught the Undergraduate level and Yeshua taught the advanced Ph.D. course.
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Get Thee Behind Me, Satan!
We all know this statement, the one Yeshua made to Kefa (Peter) when Kefa chided him for saying that he must die.
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Yet, I don’t think anyone really believes that Yeshua was accusing Kefa of being the Devil. What he meant, as he explained right after saying this to him, is that Kefa was thinking not on a spiritual plane, or in accordance with what God has decided should be done, but on a personal, selfish, and human level.
In other words, Kefa wanted things to go the way he wanted, not the way God wanted; the feeling of “Your will be done, not mine” was not in Kefa’s heart.
So, how many times have we been like Kefa?
For example, right now Israel has been under the worst attack it has been through for a while, and all I see are postings about praying for peace there. And, yes- we are told to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6), but if we pray for men to make peace, is that really God’s will? Are we “pulling a Kefa”, meaning are we asking for what we want even when we know that God has a different plan?
How do I know that God has a different plan for Israel? Well, he’s told us he does, and quite often! All the way back to even before the Israelites entered Cana’an, God showed Moses the apostasy that would take place in the future, the punishment they would have to endure, and the eventual regathering of the dispersed tribes to Israel.
Through the Prophets, God told us what the people living then should expect in their immediate future and at the Acharit HaYamim (End Days).
And if there is still doubt that God’s plan for this world is terrible, full of violence, injustice, anti-Semitism, hatred, and worldwide destruction, then you must not have ever read the vision given to John, who recorded it in Revelation.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned or feel pity for those being tortured and mistreated throughout the Middle East, and the rest of the world, for that matter: no, what I am saying is that we should pray for this tsouris to stop, but not by anything men do. On the contrary, history has proven that the best peace men can make is a temporary one, and since the Middle East conflict of brother verse brother has been going on since the time of Abraham, it doesn’t even make sense that it will stop until something more influential and powerful than mortals intervenes.
And we all know who that is- Yeshua!
So, when you see the rockets coming down on innocent Israelis, as well as the Arabs who are innocent but forced to live with Hamas and Jihad in their backyards (did you know that there were hundreds of Arab deaths caused by Hamas and Jihad rockets that misfired and landed in the Gaza Strip?), and you read of the torture and imprisonment of Christians throughout the world, and you see the United States of America, the symbol of freedom and independence, turn into a socialistic enabler giving housing, food and medical service to foreign invaders while ignoring their own people and the veterans who are sleeping on the streets, then you know that this is all coming about as part of God’s plan for the world.
So, yes- pray for peace, but not for the peace that men make- pray for the ultimate and eternal peace that will come ONLY when Yeshua returns. He told his disciples that if not for the short period of tribulation, no one would survive (Matthew 24:22), so pray that the tribulation comes quickly and is over quickly… and that you survive it.
Don’t pray for what goes against God’s plan; and, whether or not you like what God has planned, get with the program because IT WILL HAPPEN! What God has planned for humanity is going to come about, no matter how we feel or what we pray for, so pray for that which is keeping with God’s will.
I hate to see the suffering and the injustice being done to Israel by the media and the world, especially by the American public and government, but this all has to be!
You can pray for whatever you want to, but as for me, I pray that the Tribulation comes and goes and that those suffering will be able to find eternal rest in God’s presence because I never want to hear “Get thee behind me!”
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Parashah B’haalotecha 2021 (When you light) Numbers 8 – 12
This parashah begins with the anointing of the tribe of Levi to perform the service of the Sanctuary. They are washed and all Israel lays their hands on them, then the Levites laid their hands on and sacrificed a bull and a burnt offering. God reminds Moses to tell the people that the firstborn of everything belongs to the Lord, but that he has substituted the Levites for those who are firstborn.
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When some who were unclean to celebrate the Pesach asked Moses why they shouldn’t get to participate, he asks God for help. God says that those unable to celebrate in the month of Aviv (now called Nissan) can celebrate it on the 14th day of the following month (Iyar.)
We are told how the people traveled based on the cloud over the Sanctuary: when it moved, they moved. We are also given the rules for the silver trumpets. Moses’ father-in-law is asked to join the people and it sounds like he refuses to go with them. But in Judges 1:16, we are told that the descendants of Moses’ father-in-law went from the City of Date Palms (Jericho) with the tribe of Judah into the desert of Yehuda, so it seems that he did travel with the people.
The people kvetch, which may have been initiated by the Gentiles with them (Numbers 11:4), about not having meat and Moses cries to God asking that he kill him instead of having to make him endure these constant complaints. God places some of the spirit he had given to Moses on 70 of the Elders to help out, and then sent quails to appease the hunger of the people. But, no sooner had they started to eat, then a plague God sent killed many of them, as punishment for their complaining and faithlessness.
In Chapter 12, we read how Aaron and Miriam spoke out against Moses for taking an Ethiopian woman as his wife, and God punished Miriam by giving her leprosy. Moses begs God to heal her, and God makes her stay outside of the camp (after healing her) for 7 days. Aaron, on the other hand, isn’t stricken with the disease. Most likely this is because as Cohen HaGadol (High Priest) he couldn’t become unclean for that long a time. But it seems that he was scared to death when he saw what happened to Miriam.
This chapter has special meaning to me because this was the parashah reading I did for my Bar Mitzvah.
I mentioned above that in Numbers 11:4 we are told the people complained how they missed eating meat, and also craved the vegetables and spices that they had in Egypt. To me, this is an example of the difficulty of being set apart, as well as having to be set apart while still living in a dark and faithless world.
The lesson for today is simple: salvation is free and easy to get, but costly and difficult to keep.
To be forgiven of our sin and set up for life eternal, all we have to do is confess our sins, repent of them and accept Yeshua (Jesus) as our Messiah, asking for forgiveness by means of his sacrifice. If we do that and mean it (yes- you DO have to mean it! God isn’t stupid, you know) then we will be forgiven.
That’s the easy part, now for the hard part.
Once you accept Yeshua as your Messiah, you are grafted into the chosen people of God and an adopted child of Abraham (Romans 11); as such, you are to be treated just like all the other chosen people (Exodus 12:49), which means not only do you receive the same rights as they do under the law but you are expected to obey that law, just as they do.
In other words, to be a child of Abraham and grafted onto the Tree of Life, you must draw from the root of that tree, which is the Torah.
You can’t have salvation without the obligation to obey God’s instructions.
And, to make things even harder, just as the Israelites in the desert had Gentiles with them who complained, influencing them to complain as well, in the world we have faithless and evil people who will try to influence us to join them in their sin.
As I often say, it is very hard to work in a fish market all day and not come home smelling of fish. Likewise, living in the world and trying to remain free of its stench is what makes being set apart so difficult to maintain.
And it is costly, in that many Believers have lost friends and been ostracized by family for their beliefs.
But you must maintain your separation! That doesn’t mean going from home to shul or church, and nowhere else, or never talk to anyone but other Believers; no, it means going into the darkness to be the light we are but not allowing the darkness to overcome you.
How can that be done? Through constantly recharging your spiritual battery by communing with other Believers, by choosing to stay faithful to what you have learned from reading God’s word, which you should do every day, and by constantly looking for God’s blessings in your life, which confirm you are on the right track.
That’s right- sometimes we have to look really hard to see the blessings, often disguised as bad things happening to us because God always blesses those who obey him (this is his promise in Deuteronomy 28) and he always answers prayer, although very often it isn’t what you expect or when you expect it.
If you would like to know more about prayer, please get my book, “Prayer: What It Is and How It Works”. It is available on Amazon and there is a link to it on my website.
We are to be holy as God is holy, which means set apart from the world, even though we still have to live in the world. That is the hard part- working with fish but not smelling like one, and the only way to do that is to keep washing with the blood of the Messiah and cleaning your hands with God’s word, which will also keep your spirits up and your mind cleansed.
Salvation cannot be taken away, but we can throw it away. To avoid doing that, even by mistake, we must obey God’s instructions in the Torah and not what some Rabbi says in the Talmud or what some Apostle says in a letter.
It is what God says that counts.
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That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!