Author: Steven R. Bruck

Sorry to Disagree, But the Flesh is Strong

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We read in the Gospels, such as in Matthew 26:40-42, that after their Passover Seder together, which is called the Last Supper, Yeshua asked some of his Talmudim to stay awake and pray with him in the garden, but each time they kept falling asleep.

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Yeshua commented that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, meaning that although they wanted to, they weren’t as strong as their desire to obey him and so they fell asleep.

I am the last person on earth to want to argue with Yeshua, but in this case, I have to say I disagree with him: the flesh isn’t weak, it is strong.

The “flesh” is our humanity, our iniquity (the innate desire to sin), and our egocentric personality. Egocentric doesn’t mean we think we are better than anyone else, it means we see ourselves as the center of the universe, not caring that much for anyone else but concentrating only our our own needs and feelings.

For example, I know some people who seem to be so nice, offering their help and offering to give things to others but after a while, I can see that they are doing this not from a legitimate desire to be of service but to generate compliments for themselves and to hear people tell them how wonderful they are. The conversations they are involved in always seem to come around back to them, what they have done, what they know, etc. This doesn’t make them “bad” people, just egocentric.

In all fairness to the Disciples who were in the garden with Yeshua, they just finished a large meal with a lot of wine. Anyone who has been to a Seder knows there are 4 glasses of wine each person drinks during the meal; not only that but between reading the Hagaddah and eating in the middle of the narrative, these meals can take a few hours. So, naturally, full of lamb and wine, staying awake while sitting in a dark garden would be a real challenge to anyone.

With their flesh just dying to sleep, even though their spirit desired to pray along with Yeshua, their flesh was stronger.

If the flesh was truly weak, then we would be able to overcome it, wouldn’t we? Sin would be an easy thing to control and do away with, yet the facts of life show us, conclusively, that this is NOT the case. The flesh, the Yetzer Hara (evil inclination), the desire to do that which is pleasurable and easy is obviously stronger; otherwise, we wouldn’t really need the Messiah, would we? No, if the flesh was weak, we would be able to overcome our sinful desires and allow the Ruach (spirit) to control what we do and say.

But, as I have already pointed out, that isn’t how it is in real life. Why do you think Yeshua says the road less travelled and the narrow gate is the pathway to salvation?

So, all I am saying is it seems to me that the flesh is not really weak, but strong enough that we find great difficulty in overcoming it.

Again, far be it for me to argue with the Messiah, but in this case, I would change that statement in Matthew to read “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is strong and difficult for people to overcome.” Then I might follow that up with a statement Yeshua made earlier to his Talmudim (Matthew 19:26), where he says: “…With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

So if you want your spirit to be stronger than your flesh, you need to strengthen it with spiritual exercise. The way to do that is to pray, read the Bible, and obey the instructions God gave us in the Torah, which is the ONLY place where God tells us how he wants us to act.

And like any good exercise program, you must do this on a regular basis.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages, and I always welcome your comments.

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

Faith Has To Be A Little Stubborn

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Hebrews 11:1 says the following:

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

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I was having a discussion with someone yesterday about faith. He asked questions about what is in the Bible and I would answer that this is what God told us. He kept pushing his point, “How do you know that?” My answer was that this is what we are told in the Bible, to which he replied, “The Bible was written by people, wasn’t it?”

This was not an argument, mind you, but a respectful exchange of Q & A, with him offering up the “Q” and me supplying the “A”. I know I didn’t change his mind, at all, which is fine since it isn’t my place to tell anyone what they should choose to believe in.

And that is the operative word: choose. Faith is not something that we can prove because, as we are told, it is something we choose to accept as truth. Faith is not just a feeling, it is a choice; and, because it is unproven, we need to be able to hold onto our faith in the face of arguments and persecution.

That is why faith has to be stubborn. Stubbornness is not changing your mind easily, or (in most cases) not ever changing it, and to maintain our faith we need to have that stubborn attitude that says, “I don’t care what you say, I believe what I believe.”

The problem is what about when we see someone whose faith is misguided? Like the many Jews and Gentiles who are being led into damnation by their leaders, who are repeating what they were told, from all the way back to the end of the First Century when Christianity separated itself from Judaism and the “mainstream” Jews refused to accept Yeshua as their Messiah.

How many “faithful” Roman Catholics do you know who bow down to statues (the Bible calls them graven images) and pray to them? How can someone maintain their choice to do this when the Bible clearly says not to? Even Yeshua, himself, said he was the only way to God (John 14:6) so why pray to saints to intercede with Yeshua?

I mean, from a strictly Jewish viewpoint, why buy retail when you can get it wholesale? In other words, why ask some saint to ask Yeshua to ask God, when you can go straight to God by simply dropping Yeshua’s name?

I am not necessarily picking on the RC’s, although they do make it really easy to do so, but on Christianity, in general. And I’m not “picking on them” as much as trying to show the incorrect interpretation and sinful (meaning anti-Biblical) teachings that have misdirected faithful people into performing lawlessness.

Not that my Jewish brothers and sisters who still reject Yeshua are any better off. They are the ones who should be the saddest because the Torah says we have no forgiveness unless we sacrifice where God has placed his name, which was the temple in Jerusalem, which doesn’t exist anymore!

Faith is what we choose to have. Even though we can’t prove what we believe in, we do have a foundation for our faith, which is (or, at least, should be) the Bible. First, we choose to believe there is a God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; next, we choose to believe what we read in the Bible is accurate and true. Finally, we choose to believe that Yeshua is the Messiah he promised to send.

We choose to believe that what we read in the Bible is factual. We can’t ever prove it because “proof” is the antithesis of faith, and it is only through faith that we can be saved.

In other words, we have to believe in God because we choose to, and not for any other reason. Not because we are told we have to (which is what both Judaism and Christianity force their kids to do) and not because we are promised riches or blessings if we do, but because we choose to.

And it doesn’t matter why we chose to, so long as once we make our choice, we stick by it through hell and high water.

(No, I am not going to tell the joke about the town being flooded and the Rabbi with the rowboat, the truck, and the helicopter.)

The idea that faith is nothing more than a choice is very hard for worldly people to understand. The world says, “Prove it!” and God says, “Believe it.” These are in complete opposition to each other, and I have found that those who ask for proof are generally unsure of everything.

It is sad, but in my experience, faithless people are afraid of everything, and can only see the worst case scenarios. They trust no one, especially themselves, and have a very sad future since they figure this life is all there is.

When you have nothing to look forward to except this life, then you try to fill this life with as much “fun” as you can, which usually translates into sinfulness. It is a sad paradox that the ones who do not believe in an afterlife are guaranteeing theirs to be terrible.

I have a very stubborn faith, but I still am open to hearing other people tell me about what they believe the Bible says. And when I hear someone tell me what I know to be worldly teaching, it only strengthens my faith in what I believe- no, in what I KNOW– to be the way God says it should be.

I rarely read extra-biblical books, although I do now and then (for instance, the ones I have written I can highly recommend to you) because the Bible is all I really need to know. I won’t read the Quran or the Apocrypha’s or the Books of Jasper, Judas, etc. because they are not scripture. I also don’t read or study the Talmud or the Septuagint, although I will check out things that are in there as subject matter for my messages.

Why won’t I read those? Simply because they do not have anything I need- all I need is the Bible. And I stubbornly, or should I say faithfully, reject anything else.

Look, faith is stubborn and needs to be stubborn in order to be maintained. I suggest you don’t keep an “open mind”, but that you ensure your faithfulness has a strong foundation from the Bible. And not from what people tell you is in the Bible or what your religious leaders tell you the Bible says, but what you read in there yourself.

In Matthew 15:14, Yeshua said when the blind lead the blind, they both fall into a hole, so don’t be led by the blind: chose your own path and stick to it no matter what. The world has nothing of value for you and the spiritual people you meet may only tend to confuse you, so choose what you will believe and hold onto it as if your very soul depends on it… because it does!

Thank you for being here. Please subscribe here and on my YouTube channel, as well, and share these messages with everyone you know. And remember: I always welcome your comments.

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

Parashah Ki Tissah 2021 (When you take) Exodus 30:11 – 34

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Moses is still on the mountain, Mount Horeb (also called Sinai) and God continues to give Moses instructions regarding the Tent of Meeting. He instructs him about the laver, the spices to be used, and that Bezalel and Oholiab will be in charge of the workers because of the skills God has given them.

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The people below, wondering what has happened to Moses, begin to lose faith and revert to their Egyptian ways. They command Aaron to make a golden calf for them, and after he does they revel in sinful and sexually perverted activities, acting as pagans do.

God tells Moses about this and that he will do away with them, but Moses intercedes for the people, arguing with God (nicely, of course) that if God destroys them now, the surrounding nations will think God did that because he wasn’t able to keep his promise to bring them to Canaan. God relents, but when Moses sees the revelry, he becomes so angry that he breaks the tablets God had given him and grinds the calf into dust, places it in water, and makes the people drink the water.

Aaron gives Moses some lame excuse that he didn’t really make the calf, it just sort of came out of the fire. Personally, I don’t think Moses believed that not even for a second.

Moses calls on whoever is for the Lord to gird on their swords and kill the sinners, and the tribe of Levi immediately comes to Moses’ call and slew some three thousand of the people.

Moses went back up the mountain to plead with God, who said he would not travel with the people. When Moses related that to the people, they all felt shame and repented by removing their ornaments.

Moses convinces God that he needs to travel with the people, and then asks God to show him (Moses) God’s glory, to which God agrees to show his back, but no man can see God’s face and live.

As God covers Moses’ face with his hand, he passes by and proclaims himself, which we call the 13 Attributes of God.

Finally, Moses goes back up on the mountain for another 40 days and nights. God inscribes the 10 Words on a new set of tablets, and when Moses comes off the mountain to relate God’s commands, his face is shining. From this point on, Moses would wear a veil in the camp, but remove it when he met with God.

The sin of the Golden Calf is one of those Bible stories that is never told enough times, the lesson being so important, but I am not going to talk about that today.

What I want to talk about is Exodus 34:5 – 7 (CJB):

Adonai descended in the cloud, stood with him there and pronounced the name of Adonai. Adonai passed before him and proclaimed: “YUD-HEH-VAV-HEH!!! Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh [Adonai] is God, merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in grace and truth;  showing grace to the thousandth generation, forgiving offenses, crimes and sins; yet not exonerating the guilty, but causing the negative effects of the parents’ offenses to be experienced by their children and grandchildren, and even by the third and fourth generations.”

These are called the 13 Attributes of God, and this is what God told Moses about himself when Moses asked to see his glory, meaning who he is.

I have a clear and simple message for us today based on this proclamation, and that message is that we don’t need to know anything more about God then what he told Moses about himself.

Yeshua told us to come to him as little children (Matthew 19:14), and most of the people I have read or heard agree that this means to be faithful. Little children accept what they are told, and even though (if you’re a parent, you know this well) they ask “why” continuously, they never ask, “How can I be sure you’re right about that?” They trust that what you tell them is what it is.

I have been studying about God for over 25 years, and the one thing I have learned that I believe is most important is that I don’t have to know anything more about God than what he says I need to know. These attributes of God are included in the Torah so that we know what to expect from God, and that is what God wants us to know. I am sure there is much more to God than what he told Moses, but since these are all he said, these are all we need to know.

Humans are a curious animal, and I am sure that God, being our creator, isn’t surprised about this. But as I learned in the military, despite how important something may be, there is not just access to the information (which would be your security clearance) but there is also a need to know, meaning you may have a Top Secret clearance, but that doesn’t mean you can look at anything that is rated Top Secret. If it isn’t something that you are directly involved in, you don’t need to know about it.

How does this fit in with today’s message?

I am sure, in my own mind, that there is a lot more to God than just these 13 aspects of his personality. But because I want to come to God with the childlike faith that Yeshua was talking about, I am not going to interrogate God or study his word to try to understand him or why he does what he does. To me, this is a problem with many people who zealously want to know all about God: there is a difference between studying God’s word to know him better and studying God’s word to understand him and why he does what he does. Again, for ME, there is a fine line between unquestioning acceptance and the need for “proof” through understanding why.

Why can’t we eat pork? Why is there a showbread that no one eats until it is a week old and inedible? Why can’t we have two threads together? Why? Why? Why?

Don’t get me wrong- I am not saying we should never ask God why or study the Bible, but what is wrong, in my opinion (for whatever that means to anyone) is when we try to figure it out so that we can understand why. I read a long time ago that any God who can be understood by the mind of Man is not worthy of the worship of Man. I believe that makes a lot of sense because to be on the same “level” as God, wouldn’t we have to be a god? And, therefore, trying to be on his level is a form of blasphemy, isn’t it? Saying that any one of us could be the same as God?

I will never stop reading the Bible, and each time I read it I get a better sense of God. I have seen “between the lines” and had revelations of the deeper meaning, the Remes, of what God says in the Bible. I believe this understanding is from God, given to me through the indwelling Ruach haKodesh (Holy Spirit) and which I would never have understood before. In fact, there have been passages I have read dozens of times, but then suddenly reading it one more time, I see something in there I never saw before that makes my understanding of God even deeper.

But I never ask God to prove why we should do what he says we should, and that is the important difference between wanting to know God better, and wanting to know what God knows.

Even though it may seem fine to some to try to figure out why God gave us his commandments, I think that it is no different than asking God to prove to us why we should do as he says to do. A child asks why, and then accepts the answer without asking to prove it to be so, and when God tells us this is what we should do, if we begin to try to understand why he says that, to me, it is no different than saying, “Convince me why I should!”

God is above everything we could ever know or understand, and as such, if we can’t be faithfully trusting that what he says is what we should do without asking for proof, then I believe we are being disrespectful.

And that is not the childlike faith Yeshua said we need to have.

Thank you for being here, please subscribe, share these messages and I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!

How’d We Get to This?

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In the beginning, there was God. Then he created the Earth and placed mankind in charge of it, and mankind screwed everything up to the point where God had to send the Flood. After the Flood, God chose a man, Abraham, to become the progenitor of a people God would make his own special people.

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Later on, God grew Abraham’s descendants from a family to a nation. Then, in order to train his chosen people how to become a nation of priests to the world (Ex. 19:6), he gave them instructions to teach them how to worship him and how to treat each other. This was the Torah, which if someone could live their lives in total and perfect accordance with all the 613 different “laws” that God gave, they would be righteous in God’s eyes.

But, as Shakespeare would say, “There’s the rub”: no one can live their life in perfect accordance with the Torah. For us sinful humans, it just ain’t gonna happen.

So, in order to ensure that God’s plan for his creation to be with him throughout eternity succeeds, he provided for us that which we could not provide for ourselves: a Savior, the Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus) who became the substitutionary sin sacrifice by voluntarily giving his physical life so that we could attain spiritual salvation.

Our part in this is to accept him as our Messiah and try to live as God said we should.

Yeshua was, and still is, the Messiah God promised to send, which he promised as far back as when he was talking to Abraham. When Yeshua sacrificed his life, he didn’t do away with the sacrificial system, he just substituted himself for the need to bring an animal to the temple in Jerusalem. We still need to accept that we sin, repent in our hearts and ask forgiveness from God for each and every sin we commit; it is thanks to Yeshua that we don’t have to bring a sacrifice to the temple because as the Messiah, God’s savior to mankind, is it possible through Yeshua’s one-time sacrifice that everyone’s sins can be forgiven each time they ask for forgiveness.

Let’s review… God gave the Torah so that we could know what he wants from us, and because we always failed to meet all those requirements, God sent the Messiah to provide us the chance to be saved from ourselves.

Guess what happened next? After all that God did for us, someone threw a monkey wrench into the engine, and that was the Enemy; HaSatan, that old snake. When he realized that he lost the battle for people’s souls, he confused people about Yeshua’s message. The way he did that was as more and more Gentiles came to know God’s Grace through the Messiah, he created confusion and misinterpretation within the newly formed congregations of Gentiles who didn’t understand the Torah.

He sent agents of distraction into these neophytes to Judaism to confuse them so much that they ended up rejecting the very principles of salvation that Yeshua taught, which were from the Torah. The end product of this demonic counter-attack is what we see today: so many different Christian religions and sects that reject almost all of God’s commandments.

Yeshua talked against the man-made traditions of the Pharisees that were given precedence over God’s commandments, and yet Christianity is composed of nothing BUT man-made traditions, holidays, rites, rituals, and laws. They have rejected God’s commandments regarding food (Leviticus 11); they reject all 7 festivals that God said we must observe (Leviticus 23), which does include the Sabbath because they changed the date; they bury their dead under the very altar of God; they fill their houses of worship with statues and pictures of human beings before whom they prostrate themselves and pray to; they have rebranded the Torah observant Jewish Messiah into some Blue-eyed, blonde-haired Aryian who created his own religion which rejects the Torah and hates Jews, and they teach and do many other things that the Torah tells us are an abomination to the Lord, God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the father of the Messiah!

Another example is that today there are many Christian churches that not only condone homosexuality, but support it: some are even anointing as pastors and ministers people who are openly gay.

Now, this is not a homophobic thing with me, so any gay person reading this, please pull in your reins: all I am stating is that the Torah clearly says homosexuality is a sin and as such, no church or synagogue that professes to worship and obey God should be accepting of homosexuality. That’s all. Just like they shouldn’t accept as leaders adulterers, murderers, or anyone else who openly rejects God’s commands and rules.

Let’s get back on topic: don’t think I am excluding the Jews because I am Jewish- far be it for me to do that! When we place more emphasis and importance on Talmudic regulations than on God’s commandments, that is just as bad as rejecting God’s commands. For instance, the regulations within Judaism against eating meat and dairy together; did you know that the Ashkenazi Jews have different regulations than the Sephardic Jews about this? And why? Because one group likes milk with their after-dinner drink and another doesn’t, so they have different times for how long you have to wait after eating meat before you can have dairy. The entirety of Halacha is based on the idea of “putting fences around the law” to prevent us from accidentally trespassing the law, which in and of itself isn’t such a bad idea, but it has become so cumbersome that now the fences are more important than what they surround!

God chose a people to bring his instructions to the world, and he blessed the world through those people, the greatest blessing of all was to have his Messiah come from those people to bring the salvation that God had for them to everyone.

The Enemy of God stepped in and messed things up, and for the most part, people have gone along with the “easy salvation” that the Enemy created and those poor, misguided and delusional souls will be sorely surprised when they come before God.

I suggest you make sure you know what God wants from you, based on what he says, because despite what anyone tells you, it is what he says that counts.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages, subscribe to this ministry (I never ask for money, but if you want to buy my books that is fine with me), and I always welcome your comments.

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

God Empowers; He Doesn’t Enable.

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We are to ask God for whatever we need, and never stop praying. When we ask of God, invoking the name of the Messiah, his son, Yeshua, we will receive that which we ask for.

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This is a promise we have been given by Yeshua, himself, and it is trustworthy, so why is it that not everything we ask for is received?

Did Yeshua lie? Does God reject prayers in his son’s name haphazardly?

Of course not!

Often we pray for things we don’t really need but we want, stemming from worldly desire and not from wanting to better serve God. In other words, pray all you want to to win the lottery or for a new car because you’re bored with the one you have, but those aren’t the types of prayers God will honor.

Well, probably not: truthfully, I can’t speak for God, but I believe the types of prayers Yeshua was talking about are those in which we can do more for God’s work in the world. If you pray for money so that you can continue to run a ministry, that is more likely to be answered than asking for money so you can get a new lawnmower.

And any righteous prayer you make is heard, but God will not always do all you ask. More often than not, at least in my personal experience, God expects you to make an effort to achieve that which you are praying about.

If you are suffering from some disease and pray for healing, God will hear you but I think he will expect you to continue to take your medicine, listen to the doctors, and work towards getting better.

If you are having financial difficulties and need to find a better job, pray to God for help, but don’t expect to get a phone call out of the blue offering you a job. You need to write that updated resume and get it out there so that God can then make sure the right people see it.

Our God is a God of action, not a God of sitting around waiting for it to happen.

Abraham is a great example of what I am talking about: maybe you haven’t thought about it, but Abraham was in his late 90s and Sarah in her early 90s when God said he would have a son through Sarah. Abraham believed him, so what do you think he must have done that night, and for a number of nights after that? Uh-huh, that’s right, even though they were both way past the age for doing that. Abraham knew that God would empower him but not do it all for him.

When God told the Prophets to take his word to the people, except for Jonah (at first), they immediately told the people what God told them to say, despite the “flak” they took for speaking it, especially Jeremiah!

In my own life, if I may share this with you, I asked God repeatedly to help me see people as he sees them and not the way TV and marketing companies have taught me to see people, which is as sexually attractive things. Let’s face it: we are indoctrinated by TV and the media to identify people by their sexual attractiveness or by some other physical attribute. I mean, how many ugly people do you see on the TV or in magazines drinking Pepsi or driving a new model car?

Back to the point: I asked God, and still do, to simply excise this part of my brain and you know what he told me? He said it doesn’t work that way: I have to take charge of myself and try to control what I do, remembering what it is that he wants from me. But he hasn’t left me alone: he does help me.

For instance, if I look at a cute woman jogging and think she is attractive, even though it isn’t lustful, just seeing her as a sexual entity instead of as a person is what I have asked God to help me stop doing, or when I have arguments in my head that I have asked him to help me overcome (I have posted in the past about how wrong it is to rehearse our anger), I find that something happens to take my mind off those thoughts. Most of the time this happens when I am driving somewhere, and as I start to do what is wrong, all of a sudden the car ahead of me will hit the brakes for no observable reason, shocking me back into reality. Or I will bite my tongue or something unusual will take my mind away from what I am doing.

It took me a while to realize that these weren’t coincidences, they were God answering my prayer by empowering me to overcome that which I asked him to take away from me. You see, by having things take my mind off what I am thinking, he is taking me off the wrong path and allowing me to get back onto the right path. It’s like we are working together, and you know what? It’s kind of cool being able to team up with God.

So here is the point: pray for what you need and not just for what you want, pray for that which helps you to do more for God, and then get off your tuchas and do what needs to be done, as if you have ready been answered.

Now, that doesn’t mean pray for a new job then go quit- no, that isn’t smart. And don’t pray for something in order to test God- he doesn’t really like it when we do that, and that prayer probably won’t be answered.

Pray to God, ask for what you believe you need to be a better and more obedient servant to God, and then trust in God to answer. The answer may not come right away, and the answer may not be what you expect or ask for, exactly, but it will be for what you need. And the answer may also be…No! No, not never, or no, not just yet, but that doesn’t mean your prayer isn’t going to have results. Maybe God is saying “No” because he needs you to reevaluate what you are asking about.

There is no easy answer to why prayers are answered sometimes and why they aren’t other times, but the idea is to keep praying and keep asking, just as in the parable Yeshua told about the woman asking the unfair judge for justice. She became such a nudge that the judge finally gave her justice just to get her off his back.

God already wants to do good things for you and he knows what is best for you; he will answer your prayers but he won’t do it all for you because he empowers us but he won’t enable us.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages and I always welcome your comments.

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