Sometimes it is a good idea to take a Shabbat rest, even if it isn’t Shabbat.

Many times I get my inspiration for these messages by either reading the Bible or when I am working out with a bicycle ride, which is usually for 20-22 miles. I do this, on average, three times a week. Since the rides take an hour or more, I have plenty of time for prayer, and more often than not, in the middle of praying my thoughts and conversation with God go off on a tangent, which is how many of my messages come to me.

But I haven’t been riding lately due to weather so don’t really have anything today, other than this:

Take a break from the ordinary every now and then just to do something different.

After all, what could it hoit?

I will be getting on my bike later today, so let’s hope I get something for Thursday.

L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Before I even start to talk about what God can’t do, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Steve is wrong- there is nothing that God cannot do!”

But there is something God cannot do- he cannot sin. And to refuse to act as he said he would regarding someone rejecting his commandments would be a sin.

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I am reading in Numbers and have just this morning read Chapter 18, which is where God tells Aaron that he and his sons are responsible to make sure that the Levites do their job, and all the Levites are to make sure no one who is not authorized to come to the Sanctuary approaches it. God says this is to ensure that no one dies.

After the death of Aaron’s sons, God told Moses that the Levites are not to drink intoxicating liquids before serving him, so that they don’t die.

God told Moses to place barriers around the base of the mountain (Mt. Horeb) when he went up to receive the commandments from God to make sure no one approaches the mountain so that they don’t die.

After the man was stoned to death for collecting wood on the Shabbat, God said to make and wear tzitzit on their clothing to remind them of God’s laws, so that they don’t die.

Can you see what God is doing? He knows that despite the outcome of disobeying his commandments, we will do just that. And because he doesn’t really want to punish us but MUST punish us if we violate his rules, because he cannot sin, he goes out of his way to help protect us from ourselves!

In Ezekiel 18 God tells us he is not happy with anyone’s death and prefers that we all live, but the only way that can happen is to obey him. He will stick like glue to his covenants, so much so that even after we break the covenant, which we have done too many times to count, he will still keep his side of it.

But we won’t go unpunished. We have to be punished- God MUST punish the unrepentant sinner, and that is because God cannot sin. He cannot go against his own rules.

Of course, he could if he really wanted to. I mean, who can hold God accountable? You? Me? No one can make God do what he doesn’t want to do, or not do anything he wants to. No one, that is, except God, and he DOES hold himself accountable.

When we read the parts of the Bible where God is telling Moses how the people are to act and what they should do, it is always with the idea that when they are punished for violation of God’s rules, it is not God doing it to them so much as them doing it to themselves.

You see, God sets the rules: he tells us how we are to worship him and how we are to treat each other. He also tells us the blessings we receive for obedience and the curses we suffer for disobedience. God sends the blessings, but we call the curses on ourselves! God doesn’t really do anything bad to us: the truth is, the bad is already here, and when we reject God’s good all that is left for us is the world’s bad.

Because God cannot sin, he cannot allow any unrepentant sinner to go unpunished; God must punish the unrepentant sinner who rejects him and his Messiah because he said that is what will happen and not doing as he said he would do is a sin.

If we cannot trust God to punish the sinful, we cannot trust him to reward the righteous.

Before we end this today, I am going to change one thing I said earlier: I said we cannot hold God accountable, i.e. we cannot tell God what he must do, but I am now going to say there is one thing we can force God to do… we can force him to punish us. All we need to do is violate any of his laws, and because he must do as he said he would do, we can force God to do what we want.

Although for the life of me, I can’t think of a good reason anyone would want to do that.

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Until next time, l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

When Yeshua sent his Talmudim (Disciples) out into the world to preach the Good News, he told them to be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves (Matthew 10:16). He also told them that if people in any town rejected their message, to shake the dust off their sandals as a warning to them (Luke 9:5).

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It seems to me that Yeshua was telling them they have the best and most important thing in the world to say to people, but still, they shouldn’t ram it down their throats (gentle as doves), and if they are rejected they should make sure the people know that their fate is now on their own heads (shake the dust).

But what about the part where he says be wise as serpents?

Aren’t serpents sneaky? I mean, they slide along on their belly in the deep grass hidden from view as they stalk their prey, or they camouflage themselves and stay perfectly still, for days or even weeks, until some innocent animal comes along and then they STRIKE!!!

That doesn’t sound very “holy”, if you ask me. It doesn’t even sound fair. But that isn’t what Yeshua was talking about.

Did you know that some venomous snakes can deliver a dry bite? That’s a bite where they do not inject their venom. Venom takes time to replace and energy to make, and reptiles do not have an abundance of energy, so to waste venom on a bite to a creature that isn’t food is not a wise thing for a snake to do.

When we are talking to someone about God, Yeshua, and salvation, we are injecting them; not with poisonous venom, but with a vaccine against death and destruction of their soul. We are giving them life eternal in our words, and they have the option to accept what we say or reject it.

Now, this is where we need to be wise as serpents, in that when we are in a discussion about the Bible, God, or Yeshua, and a confrontation begins to rear its ugly head, we need to step back and decide if we will continue to talk or shake the dust from our sandals. In other words, did we just deliver a dry bite?

We need to pick our fights: are we really just wasting our time or is the person still open to hearing the truth? If we find ourselves getting frustrated with someone, that is the signal we are no longer gentle or wise because frustration is the result of pridefulness.

Yes, when you are so fed up with this idiot who has no idea what he or she is talking about, spewing out traditional rhetoric that is just SO wrong that you want to wring their neck, well, this is the time to step back. You’ve delivered a dry bite, you have been rejected, and now it is time to shake off the dust.

You do NOT, and should NOT, tell that person anything else. Don’t tell them they aren’t really saved; don’t tell them they do not know God or Yeshua; do not tell them they are going to burn forever in hellfire. Even if all that is true, it is not for you or me or anyone to say.

Yeshua never told his Talmudim that they should verbally chop those who reject them into little pieces and insult their beliefs or tell them what will happen to them. He said to be gentle as doves, and only to shake the dust off their sandals. Truth be told, if someone won’t listen to the Good News of Messiah, then shaking off the dust won’t make them feel any different, but it isn’t really for their sakes as much as it demonstrates those bringing salvation, who have been rejected, have done their jobs.

You’re like the Lone Ranger saying, “Well, Tonto, we’ve done what we came here to do and it’s time to move on.”

I want to make one more point, and this is the one that I believe is most important: when you are in a discussion with other Believers, you need to be twice as diligent. How important this topic is to non-Believers is generally much less than it is to those who have accepted Yeshua because we are, in general, more certain (actually, I should say passionate) about our beliefs. So when we are discussing something with another Believer, we need to remember that they can reject us just as anyone else can, and we might be rejecting them, as well. No one knows everything, and another part of being wise is to be open to the fact that YOU might be the one with the wrong understanding.

Here’s a real-life example: I was adamant that I would never take one of the COVID vaccines that use mRNA. I was proud to announce that no one is going to screw around with my genome. I thought I was right, and I had many friends who agreed with me until one friend told me geneticists she knew debunked this rumor, and after doing the research I should have done from the start, I had to recognize and admit that I was wrong. In fact, mRNA vaccines have been used and researched for decades and after the mRNA teaches cells how to recognize and fight the COVID virus, it is destroyed; our DNA is protected inside the nucleus which the mRNA never enters.

Getting back to today’s message, we want to help those who don’t understand the truth about Yeshua’s teachings, who have been misled by the traditional misinterpretation of the letters Shaul (Paul) wrote, and especially those who think that the Torah is no longer valid because Yeshua did away with the need to follow God’s laws. We also want to lead the Jewish people to understand that Yeshua is NOT the Jesus Christ they have been told about, that he did not create a new religion, and that he never taught anything but to obey the Torah not just by doing as it says, but by spiritually letting it be written on one’s heart, which is the true New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31.)

So practice your delivery in order to be wise as serpents, and when you are feeling frustrated and rejected, pick your fight. If you have to ram it down their throats, stop! Now is the time to be as gentle as doves and shake the dust. Do NOT get into an argument, because once the discussion become an argument you have lost, and when you lose, they lose, too.

Salvation is available to everyone, but everyone won’t take it. In truth, most will reject it but what is even worse, if you ask me, is that many will accept Yeshua but because of wrong teachings, at the end they will find they never really had it right.

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