Author: Steven R. Bruck
Parashah Chayye Sarah 2020 (Life of Sarah) Genesis 23 – 25:18
This parashah begins with the death of Sarah, at 127 years old. Isaac would have been 36 years old at that time, Ishmael 50, and Abraham 136. He buys a burial cave and buries Sarah there, later to join her; eventually, this cave would also house the remains of Isaac, Rebecca, and Jacob. It is located in Hebron, most of which today is under Arab control.
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We read next that Abraham sends his servant, Eliezer, back to Ur to find a wife for Isaac, and after finding Rebecca he returns to his master with her, who immediately is taken as wife to Isaac.
Abraham remarries, has more children, and this reading ends with the death of Abraham and the lineage of Ishmael.
Normally, I would talk of the interaction between Laban and Eliezer, which gives us an idea of what type of person Laban is, to be confirmed later in the Torah when we read about his dealings with Jacob.
Or I might talk about Isaac, or Eliezer’s faith.
But not today.
What I felt when I read this today, even just reading the title, is that we should discuss Sarah a little bit, and her relationship to Abraham, and to God.
And let me open this discussion with a really hot question: Do you think Sarah was faithful?
I mean, the title of this parashah is “Life of Sarah”, so let’s look at her life, which we are told very little about. First off, when she is told that she will have a child in her old age, whereas Abraham accepted that right away, she didn’t believe it. And when the angels told Abraham it would happen the following year, she laughed, then denied that she laughed (if you didn’t know, Isaac, in Hebrew, is Yitzchak, which means “to laugh”.)
We really don’t know anything about Sarah’s level of faithfulness, but by all references, Sarah was an obedient wife. In fact, obedient to the point of submitting to Abraham’s request that she says she was his sister and not his wife; and, not just once, but twice, even after the first time she was taken to be another man’s wife (which happened the second time, also.)
Now, we could say that she was faithful enough to trust in God not to allow her to be defiled, but there is nothing in the Torah to substantiate that. In truth, all we know about Sarah is that she was faithful to Abraham.
We know that she was of Abrahams’s family because, in Genesis 20:12, Abraham tells Abimelech that Sarah is the daughter of his father but not from the same mother. Therefore, she was raised in Ur, but can we assume she was given the same education regarding God as Abraham was?
I believe Abraham was taught about God by Noah, who was still alive for some 58 years after Abraham was born. In Genesis 9:28, we are told Noah lived for 350 years after the flood. Counting the years since the flood using the lineage of Shem, outlined in Genesis 11:10-24, we can see that when Abraham was born, Noah was still alive, and lived for another 58 years.
In those days, the wife was in charge of the household and the husband was the spiritual leader, so what the sons were taught about God would not necessarily be taught to the daughters, even within the same family unit.
So what does that mean for us? Well, what if you are unevenly yoked within your marriage? We are not allowed to just divorce our spouse if she or he isn’t as faithful as we are. In fact, Yeshua says the only justification for divorce is adultery (Matthew 5:32), and Shaul tells us that we should stay together because the one might help the other to come into a relationship with God (1 Corinthians 7:13.)
I think the lesson for us today is that even if you are in a marriage that is unevenly yoked, as the expression goes, it doesn’t mean you can’t still be blessed by God, or both of you used by God to do his work on the earth. And when we say “unevenly yoked”, does it have to mean a Believer and a non-Believer? Can it mean two people who believe in God, and that Yeshua is the Messiah, but have different levels of spiritual understanding and faith?
I am a Jewish man from birth, raised as a Jew, who later became a Torah observant Jewish Believer but my wife was raised in a Gentile religion and, because of that, doesn’t have the same level of faithful obedience I have. Does that mean she isn’t saved? If we both believe in God and Messiah, but at different levels of faith and spiritual maturity, are we unevenly yoked?
Yes, and no: yes, we don’t have the same level of spiritual maturity, but we both believe in God and Messiah, so it’s not like she isn’t saved and I am. In truth, who am I to say if she is saved or not? Who can really say that except God, who is the only one who can see a person’s heart? If she believes being a good person is all you need because that’s the line she got from her religious upbringing, is that wrong? She doesn’t murder, she is faithful to our marriage, she does try to do what is right and good, and in many ways, she is a better person, overall, than I am!
Sarah may have been less spiritual than Abraham, and I believe she was, but yet she was blessed to become the mother of God’s chosen people! Could it be that her faithful obedience to Abraham, who was faithfully obedient to God, was seen as being faithfully obedient to God, as well?
If we do as Yeshua taught (which, for the record, has nothing to do with traditional Christian teaching) but aren’t as faithful as he was, can we still be considered righteous by God because of our relationship with Yeshua?
Of course we can! That’s the way we are saved- God sees Yeshua’s righteousness in us when we accept him as our Messiah and receive the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit.
Of course, it isn’t really all that easy, and there are marriages which are totally unevenly yoked, meaning one spouse is a true faithful Believer and the other couldn’t give two hoots about God or obedience to Torah. In those cases, it is very hard for the faithful spouse, but stay he or she must, in order that they help the other to find God through their example.
This is good news for anyone in a marriage where faithfulness and spiritual maturity is different between spouses. Don’t let the traditional understanding of the term “unevenly yoked” throw you, because just as there are different levels of spiritual maturity, there are different ways of being yoked to each other. For all any of us know, there may come a time when the unevenness goes in the opposite direction!
Now, wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?
So, nu: if you are in a relationship where the level of faithfulness is different, work towards coming together in that faithfulness through education, example, and patiently loving each other. If you can do that, I am sure that God will lend a hand.
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Until next time, L’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!
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I Got Nothing! (Again)
Usually, I come up with messages, inspiration, whatever you want to call it when I am riding my bicycle and praying. Too often I can’t stop and add it to my calendar, and by the time I get home, I forget what it was. I don’t know if that’s because it wasn’t really what God would want me to say, or just a result of my age.
Whatever.
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In any case, I have nothing on my calendar except to make a blood donation at 1100 this morning. That, and a whole lot of complaints about the Facebook postings I see, which reminds me how easily people can be manipulated.
And why is that? Why does it seem to be so easy to manipulate thousands, if not millions of people? Josef Goebbels did it to the German people, the Creel Committee (under President Wilson) did it to Americans so we would enter WWI, and it seems that both the news and social media are now the means to get people to believe whatever propaganda the “powers that be” want them to accept.
And maybe that’s the message for today- don’t believe anyone. And you can believe me when I tell you that.
I saw a post about a secret government unit that identifies cyber-security infractions and it is being used to register and document all the voter fraud that is happening in the current US election. It has captured the use of a CIA program designed to manipulate voting results, which has been used in foreign elections but is now being used in this Presidential election.
And here’s what I found interesting: they posted a picture of what is supposedly the room where this is done, and all the computers were running Windows 8:
So I have to wonder how did anyone manage to get a picture of such a secret unit, and why is a top-of-the-line tech unit using an operating system that was replaced many years ago?
The obvious answer is something ain’t kosher about this. Maybe it’s the picture or maybe it’s the whole story, but whether or not it is legit, I am taking it as nothing more than some fertilizer someone is trying to spread to grow their story.
And you know what? It might all be true! But not for me; at least, not until it becomes public knowledge in a verifiable way.
The problem is that so many people will buy into this, immediately, because it is what they want to hear. And that is how people can be manipulated: tell them what they want to hear and they will buy into it, ASAP!
So when you listen, don’t listen with your glands but with your brains, and don’t believe anything you hear, no matter how wonderful it sounds, or (for that matter) how bad it sounds. Do your own research, realizing that if you research on the Internet, you are trying to smell a rose which is hidden in the middle of a fertilizer factory, so be careful, use discernment, and believe only that which seems to be believable.
As the old saying goes: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
One last thing for you: this system of reviewing and thinking about what you see and hear is not just something that is good to do when listening to the news or on social media, but it is really important to develop this talent because we are warned about false messiahs and how many will be turned from the true faith by them. Those will be the people who want to hear only what they like and ignore what they don’t like; they are the ones who tell you they love the Lord but will be first in line to take the mark when it is offered. And how can that happen? It will happen because they will hear what they want to believe and not use discernment.
When people do not think with their brains but, instead, believe with their emotions, they are easily led astray.
God has given you not just a brain, but through his Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit), you have the opportunity to call upon his divine discernment so PLEASE! -for your own sake, use it!
Thank you for being here and please subscribe to the website and the YouTube channel (they are different lists), check out my entire website and I always welcome discussion.
Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
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Are Different Versions of the Bible a Problem?
If you go to a book store, to the Religion section, and look for a Bible, you will see many different versions. A quick Google search shows no less than 35 different versions of the Bible.
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Even more confusing is the fact that all these different versions have been translated into hundreds of different languages, each with its own challenge to express the proper meaning and not have it lost in translation, resulting in the situation where now we have so many different versions of the Bible in the world that it is impossible to find two different versions that match, exactly.
In fact, from what I understand about copyright laws, there is a limitation on how many verses can be written exactly the same (somewhere around 500) without written permission from the author, and they cannot be presented as an entire work.
In other words, it is illegal (at least here in the USA) to have two different versions of the Bible that are exactly the same.
So, nu? If the Complete Jewish Bible says one thing, and the New International Version says another thing, and the King James Version says something completely different, which one is correct?
I could give examples of these differences, but that would take more time than is necessary, so if you don’t believe there are significant differences, just use whichever search engine you like (Google, Bing, Mozilla, Yahoo, for example) and do a search for a few of your favorite verses, then compare the “hits” you get. I am sure you will be amazed at how different some of them are.
For me, there is one version I would never recommend, and those are the ones that call themselves extended language versions. The reason is that they are “filling in the gaps”, so to speak, of what is written that may be difficult to comprehend, or they just add a lot of words to try to make some things easier to understand. We are told, very plainly, in Deuteronomy (more than once, in fact) that we should not add to or remove any words from the book, so (in my opinion) by God’s command these extended language versions are just not the place where you want to get your information from.
So, again, who do we believe? How we can trust what we are told is “God’s Word” when the word, itself, is so different?
My belief is that we can trust what we read, no matter which version we read it from, so long as we read it trusting not in written words in a book, but in God’s Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) to give us the true understanding of what God is telling us.
And my belief is founded in what Isaiah heard God say, which was that God’s word will never return void (Isaiah 55:11)!
So, when people argue the Bible is untrustworthy because it has so many differences between different versions, or that the Zachariah mentioned in Luke is not the same Zachariah mentioned in Matthew or any other number of apparent discrepancies within the Bible and between Bibles, my reply is that human error will be found in anything humans do, but God can overcome human error.
The way God does this is through his Holy Spirit in those who have accepted it, and USE it when reading the Bible. Yes, we can have the Holy Spirit but ignore it, if we choose to, and often (too often!) I have heard people say things that aren’t from the Bible, but from their own flesh, yet they use the Bible to justify what they want.
I am sure you have run into this, as well- someone who clearly has decided what they want the Bible to mean, then pull passages and verses out of context in order to prove their point.
You usually cannot argue effectively with these people because they are the living example of the old saying “I have already made up my mind- don’t confuse me with facts.”
The most important thing about the Bible is that it tells us how to worship God and how God wants us to treat each other. God doesn’t have any religion, just his instructions to us; and when I say “us”, I don’t mean just Jews, I mean everyone. God told Moses that the Israelites would be his nation of priests (Exodus 19:6), which means priests to the world, and as such the instructions God gave to the Jewish people through Moses are meant to be taught to the world. That is why he told Abraham, long before the Torah was given, that his descendants would be a blessing to the world.
Let’s face it, salvation is the goal we all want, and every Bible ever written will have one thing that will always be understood to have the same meaning: Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. In other words, it is through faith, and faith alone, that we can be saved.
The problems start after this, usually with the confusion about faith and works, but that’s for a different message.
The Bible is not God- it is a book about God. And since it is written by humans, it will have faults. The most dependable word of God is the Torah, and I mean a Hebrew Torah because of all the painstaking steps that are employed when copying one Torah to another; for example, did you know that when the Sofer (Scribe) copies one new Torah from another, one of the tests they use to ensure accuracy is that every single letter is counted to make sure nothing is missing?
Read the Bible, read whichever version you find easiest to understand, but never read it without first praying to God to give you HIS understanding of what the words are supposed to mean. Remember that Yeshua didn’t teach just the P’shat, which means the literal meaning of the words, but he taught the Remes, which is the deeper, spiritual meaning of the words, so don’t let different words or what seem to be discrepancies confuse you.
Know what God wants you to learn from his word by praying for guidance by, and listening to, the Ruach HaKodesh, which God will help you hear when you ask him to do so.
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Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
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Parashah Vayyera 2020 (And he appeared) Genesis 18 – 22
The major events that occur in this reading are the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the creation of the peoples of Moab and Ammon through the incest of Lot’s daughters with their father (after his wife is turned into salt), the birth of Isaac, the sending away of Ishmael, and what we call the Akedah, the story of the Binding of Isaac.
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We also read of twice how Abraham caused Sarah to be taken as someone else’s wife in order to protect his life, a weakness of faith that shows Abraham was still, after all, human.
You know what? Let’s make that today’s lesson: a truth that is simple, straight-forward, and easy to understand is that no matter how faithful we are, we are still human and still subject to human weaknesses, such as pride and fear. And it is more than probable, actually, expected, that each and every one of us will show some level of faithlessness at times.
I want to talk about this because too often when we deal with either other Believers or (especially) non-Believers if we show weakness or anger or any regular, human emotion, it will be used as a weapon against us to weaken our resolve or to denigrate God’s word.
How many times have you heard the accusation, “And you say you’re a godly person! Hah! If you’re so godly, why are you doing (whatever)?”
Those people who do not believe in God or want to prove that obedience to the Torah is wrong will use your weakness as their excuse for acting as they want to. If I curse or get angry, or do something wrong, they take that as proof that being obedient doesn’t work, because I did not do right.
The fact that I am always going to have iniquity (the innate desire to sin), no matter how “holy” I am, is no proof that being obedient is useless or wrong. It is simply proof that I am made of flesh, and no matter how spiritual I try to be, you can’t be a living, flesh-and-blood human being and not have weaknesses.
Yochannon the Immerser said of Yeshua, in John 3:31:
The One who comes from above is above all. The one who is from the earth belongs to the earth and speaks as one from the earth.
Therefore, since we are all of the earth, we will always belong to the earth, in one way or another. A leopard cannot change its spots or an apple tree give forth pears, so we who are born of a woman and are of the earth will always be of the earth. No matter how spirit-filled we want to be or try to be, we can never escape who we are.
Perhaps this is why Yeshua, when (in Matthew 19:24) speaking of the rich man, said that when it comes to entering heaven, it is impossible for men to do so, but with God, all things are possible. Even though Yeshua was specifically talking about rich people, the fact is that entering heaven as a spotless lamb, as Yeshua was, is impossible for humans because we are made of flesh, and heaven is of spirit.
It is not useless to try to do as God instructs, and when you backslide or slip, do not chide yourself. That is what the Enemy wants you to do- the Accuser wants you to accuse yourself of being a failure, and to give up trying to be what you can never be. It is true that we can never be sinless, but that is why Shaul told the Corinthians in his second letter to them that in our weakness, God’s strength is made manifest!
That’s the point! We are weak, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven from our own power, and only because of God’s grace given through his Messiah are we able to enter heaven. That is why we will have resurrected bodies- bodies that are not from the earth but from above, spiritual beings no longer fettered with flesh.
Don’t let your weaknesses or failures dishearten or depress you, but use them as building blocks to build up a better you. The most effective and lasting lessons are the ones we learn the hard way; when we sin and, because of the Ruach HaKodesh inside of us, feel the pain of doing so, we can better overcome what our flesh desires.
After all, why do you think security firms hire hackers? It is the ones who have been sinners and now choose not to sin who are best qualified to teach and protect others.
When I went to college and grad school, the best teachers were the ones who taught the night classes because they were working in the industry during the day- they’re the ones who had real-life experiences to share, not just book-learning.
When you go to take self-defense courses, you look for the school with the trophies in the window because they have experienced in the real world what they are teaching in the Dojo.
Let’s finish with this: if, and when, someone accuses you of being a hypocrite because you preach about sinlessness but you, yourself, sin, tell them that is the reason why you can preach about being sinless. It takes one to know one and being a sinner you are best qualified to tell others about it. Remember that Shaul called himself the number one sinner! And now, having accepted Yeshua as your Messiah, you know that you aren’t the one who will eventually overcome sin, but it will be God’s spirit within you that gives you the victory.
We can never be sinless, but we can always sin less.
Thank you for being here and please share these messages, subscribe, and check out my books. And remember: I always welcome your comments.
Until next time, L’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!
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God’s Punishment Proves His Love
We all know there are more than one or two proverbs about how we should not avoid disciplining our children, which means that punishment is mandatory for raising a child correctly.
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But if we punish them, it causes them pain and can even traumatize them, so if we harm and traumatize our children does that mean we don’t really love them?
Of course not!
All God’s creatures need to be taught what is good and what is bad for them, whether it be a mother lion teaching her cubs to avoid the cobra or a human mother teaching her child to stay away from strangers. All youngsters need to learn what is useful and good for them, and what is harmful, and since humans are, by nature, rebellious and curious, the lessons often need to be accentuated with a slap on the tuchas to demonstrate that doing wrong hurts.
God loves his children more than any human ever could, and being God, his punishments can be more terrible than any human could come up with.
The main difference between human punishment and God’s punishment is that humans almost always punish when they are frustrated and angry. Too often, because humans are self-absorbed and prideful, parents will punish as much because the child isn’t listening to them as because of what the child is doing, and often we punish others as a means of “getting back” at them.
God punishes us for disobedience, as well, but he has no prideful desire to get back at us, and when he punishes it is usually after a long and drawn-out period of him putting up with our rebellion and sin. Humans punish pretty much right away, but God waits a long time before issuing his punishment because he loves us so much, he wants to give us more than enough time to repent before we have to suffer the consequences of our actions.
And when we repent, we are forgiven. But, although we have forgiveness through Yeshua the Messiah, that fact is not going to save you from the consequences of what you do while you are alive. Forgiveness of sin through the Messiah is on an eternal plane, and is meant for our spiritual beings; while we are on the earth, we will suffer for our sins.
Another thing about God’s punishment, which is usually referred to in the Tanakh as God’s curses, is that he doesn’t really do anything to us; he will simply leave us alone. The world is a cursed and fallen place and when you separate yourself from God by sinning, he will simply stop protecting you from the world. Without God’s kippur (covering) of protection, it is you against the world, and I don’t have to tell you who will win that battle.
However useful punishment can be, it is a two-edged sword: it can humiliate us to the point where we stop doing what we want to do and realize that God’s way is best, or we can become angry and more rebellious, blaming God for the problems we have (which we caused) and turn further away from him.
Humility and knowledge of the Bible are things, in my opinion, which will help us choose to have the right reaction to God’s punishment, and believe me, it is always our choice how we react. Whether we obey or reject God, it is always our decision, and even if you are following the teachings of another, it is your decision to accept those teachings as valid.
“I was just following orders” did not save anyone at the Nuremberg Trials, and it certainly won’t save you from God’s judgment.
If you feel you are being punished by God, be grateful that he loves you enough to try to steer you back into communion with him, and for your own sake, humble yourself and listen to him. God has told us in his Torah all we need to know in order to worship him correctly and treat each other as he wants us to do; and, when we do that, we will be blessed- that is his promise, and he always keeps his promises.
Read Deuteronomy 28 and see what wonderful blessings you can have for simply living your life as God instructs; and, while you’re there, after the blessings read the punishments that will follow if you choose to ignore God.
Punishment is necessary for learning- that’s just the way it works. If you ever have to punish someone, do so using God’s example, and don’t punish from anger or spite or a need for revenge, but do so with love and desire to help the one you are punishing; if you can do that, then you may just save their life.
Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages with others and until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!