Category: Messianic 101

Is Jesus God? I Have the Definitive Answer!

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I have heard people argue in person, in congregations, and on Face Book in different discussion groups whether or not Jesus (Yeshua) is God (the Father) or just the Messiah. Is He God? Is He just a human being? What does “God in the Flesh” really mean, anyway?

Before we get to what I consider the definitive answer to this unanswerable question, let’s review Bruck’s Acid Test Question for discussion topics:

“How does this affect my salvation?”

If I believe Yeshua is God, does that make me any more “saved” than someone who believes Yeshua is just the Messiah and a separate entity from God? Is believing in God the Father and Yeshua the Messiah as separate entities something that is dishonoring God? Will I not be saved if I only accept Yeshua as God’s son and the Messiah God promised?

If I believe Yeshua is not God the Father, am I rejecting God? If I believe Yeshua is God, why do I need to have faith in a messiah? If the Messiah is God, why do I need to identify Him as a Messiah? God is all I will need, right?  But if Yeshua is not God and I put my faith in Him as the means of my forgiveness, does that mean I am not saved?

If I have faith that Yeshua is the Messiah who provides forgiveness of sin, will it make any difference to my being forgiven whether Yeshua is God or not?

Do you see where I am going with this?

The definitive answer to the question, “Is Jesus God?” is this: It doesn’t matter!

No one can argue against the biblical fact that Yeshua lived a life and died. Even those who don’t accept Him as Messiah cannot really argue against the biblical and extra-biblical historical evidence of His life. And anyone who accepts Yeshua as their Messiah cannot argue that His sacrifice is what now provides for us the means to be forgiven of our sins (because with the Temple destroyed we have no place to offer sacrifice for sin, in accordance with Torah.)

So, whether or not Yeshua is God, He is (at least) Messiah, and it is our faith that through Yeshua we are saved. The faith in Yeshua that He is the Messiah and His sacrifice was for us, and also our faith in God that He will keep His promise to forgive those who ask for it, in Yeshua’s name. This is how we are saved: proclaiming faith that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised, that when we do T’shuvah (turn from sin) and ask God for forgiveness invoking the name of Yeshua, we will be forgiven. That is how salvation works.

So can you see that whether or not Yeshua is God doesn’t affect our salvation- we are covered one way or the other. That’s why it doesn’t really matter.

But let’s not stop now!

Ask yourself this: What value is the argument about Yeshua being God, or not being God, have to anyone? Who really benefits from this discussion? I’ll tell you who benefits from it- The enemy does!

What I have heard and seen when this topic comes up is, invariably, dissension, argumentation, dissonance, hatred, pridefulness and anger. All these emotions, especially when brothers and sisters in the Lord direct them at each other, serve only the enemy of God.  Yeshua said people will know we are His Disciples by how we love each other, but when this discussion comes up, love goes right out the window! Because any answer makes no difference to our salvation, this is a useless discussion that only causes strife every time it comes up, and as such serves no useful purpose in God’s kingdom or to a gathering of God’s people.

Whether or not Jesus is God doesn’t really matter, but what does matter is how we treat each other, how we maintain our focus on what is important and how we learn more about what God wants us to do for His kingdom and His glory. Now, I can’t talk for God, but I am willing to go out on a limb and say I really, really doubt God wants us to argue with each other about something that has nothing to do with salvation, spreading the word, making disciples or showing the peace and love that God has for everyone. Aren’t those things more important than a theological discussion about deity that doesn’t edify or help anyone?

Think about it.

Pride and Prejudice

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No, I am not talking about the classic novel. Truth be told, I never read it.

I am talking about my experiences on different Face Book Discussion Groups. I have joined a few, mainly to get my name “out there” to generate interest in this ministry, my website, and (maybe?) sell a book or two. So far it has been more painful than useful.

I have been a member of one group that was supposed to be about the Torah, but instead ended up being all about Kabbalah and Talmud, almost totally Rabbinical-based. I was also on one that was titled in a way that made you think it had Messianic Jews and Messianic Christians in it, but that was not so, either.

In both these different groups I found opinions that were anywhere from banal to heretical, and it seems that 20% of the people in the group (based on the numbers of members) did 80% of the posting.

And much of what was posted was, at least for me, useless. I saw posts that were nothing more than a “copy and paste” from the bible, verse upon verse, different verses from different books tied together in a continuous diatribe, with no message, no drash- just copy and paste. Some people did find something edifying in those posts, so it did serve a purpose for some, but to me that is just a topographical, empty spiritual experience. I don’t need to be in a discussion group to read bible verses.

The real problem is the pridefulness I see in the members of these groups that makes them prejudice towards anyone that disagrees with them. I have seen abusive, degrading and distasteful language used against someone who just disagrees. I have been the butt of this, myself. I mentioned how I felt about the Zohar, the “bible” of Kabbalah on one site, and I was accused of being in league with HaSatan because by my not wanting to read it I was being willfully ignorant, which is a sin and therefor in league with the Devil.

Really? Not wanting to read something that I was taught Judaism (and this was supposedly a Torah based site) has historically considered heretical because I don’t want to expose myself to it, makes me a demon? This one person went as far as to say that Yeshua (Jesus) was Kabbalah and taught from that.  The Chasidic and Orthodox Jews believe Kabbalah was first introduced at Sinai and was part of the Oral Torah, which has become the Talmud. In other sources the origin of Kabbalah is 12th to 13th Century in Spain.

The point is not what Kabbalah is or isn’t, but that when someone disagrees with you and you find yourself attacking the person instead of the argument, then your pride has taken over and you’re showing signs of prejudice. The anger and frustration you feel is causing you to become aggressive and impolite, and that is directly from pridefulness.

When we recommend something, or suggest a way to do something, if the person we give that suggestion to decides not to do it, many of us feel that we have been insulted. “You asked me, and I told you- so why won’t you do it?” is the feeling we have. We forget it is very likely that what we suggested is not a good suggestion; maybe it isn’t right, or maybe the person knows that it is a good suggestion, but there are other factors we don’t know about (which the person does) which render the suggestion as inappropriate. If nothing else, when someone asks for an idea or suggestion that doesn’t mean they have to do what is suggested. It is not personal, it is not because they don’t like you or think less of you, it is just that they decided they don’t want to do what was suggested. They have that right.

So, when I said I didn’t want to read the Zohar because of what I had been taught about it, why did I have to be called “willfully ignorant”, or be told that I am in league with Satan, or that I am unable to make up my own mind and am “easily swayed”? Why?- because the people who I was having this discussion with are so prideful and defensive of their own beliefs that they have to attack and demean anyone who doesn’t agree with them.

And this wasn’t any one group- I have been in (and out) of about 5 groups, of which (so far) only two have been representative of what I would expect from a God-fearing group of people who believe in Yeshua, or are (for lack of a better term) “Christian” in their approach to people. And when I use the term “Christian” I mean what we would want “Christian” to mean.

So, now that that’s off my chest, what is the value of this little rant of mine? It is to remind everyone, including myself, that when we talk about God, Yeshua or the bible, we are representing that topic. In other words, if I say I believe in Yeshua and am talking with another person who doesn’t, when they disagree with me and I start to brow-beat them, call them insulting names and tell them they are doomed for hell and eternal destruction, what kind of image will that leave them about all Believers? I think we can agree that their perception of someone who is “Christian” or “Messianic” will not be a good one. When we talk about God, no matter how adamant the other person is in their opinion, let them be the one that is out of control and wildly defensive. Let them be the one to attack you and call you names or infer your lack of strength or wisdom. Let them be the one who leaves a bad taste in the mouth of all listening. In the meantime, you be compassionate, respectful and patient. If they become abusive, politely ask them to not attack you personally and stay on the topic. If they can’t, then politely excuse yourself. Let everyone who is listening see the peace and security you have in your belief- wildly defensive is saying I can’t be sure of what I am saying and anyone who doesn’t agree is weakening my faith, so I must destroy them. Quietly and calming explaining why you believe in something shows a deep and confident faith in the truth of what you are talking about.

We know who God is, we know who Yeshua is, and we know (or we should) from our experience with God and Yeshua that whether someone accepts or rejects, the truth is still the truth.  In the Trilogy of the Matrix, Morpheus talks about the prophecy of “The One.” His commanding officer says that not everyone believes as Morpheus does, to which Morpheus replies that his faith doesn’t require anyone else to believe as he does. Now that is a statement of faith!

So even if someone is bound for hell, just because it is the truth doesn’t mean you have to tell them- you certainly won’t gain anything from it with regards to changing their mind. And if someone is adamant God doesn’t exist, remember that they have a right to their opinion. God gave us all Free Will to choose or reject Him- you know God exists, so you don’t need their approval or agreement because God exists whether they believe it or not.

Too many people have a bad image of “Believers” because too many Believers have left that image with them by being so zealous that they actually do the opposite of what they want to do: instead of making people jealous of the peace the Ruach (Spirit) gives us and of the fearlessness we have knowing that God is on our side, they leave the impression that all “Bible-thumpers” are totally out of touch with reality, and the last thing anyone would want to do is become that way.

When we proclaim ourselves as followers of Messiah, everything we do and say is a reflection on Messiah. Everything. And when someone who has rejected God, and/or Yeshua , sees us act in a poor fashion, they will use that as a reason to continue to reject God and His Messiah. So instead of saving a soul, we are contributing to their death.

Think about that the next time you are in a discussion with someone trying to win their soul for Messiah.

Introduction to Messianic Judaism

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I am not an expert in Messianic Judaism, but I do hold a Certificate of Messianic Studies (if I paid dues I would “officially” be a Messianic Minister) and I have been a Believer for over 20 years. I have been a Ministry head (Shamash) for multiple ministries and once was “Rabbi Pro Tem” for almost 2 years. I have been at two places of worship over these years and been asked to be a Council member at both. I am currently on the Council where I worship (a Hebraic Roots congregation here in Melbourne, Florida) where I help teach and lead the liturgy with the Senior Pastor.

I say all this not to brag, but simply to validate that what I am writing has some substance, both from theological training and experience.

Now that all that is out of the way, I want to approach those who are new Believers, either in Messiah Yeshua (Jesus) or who are already Believers and now feeling the pull back to their Jewish roots, wanting to know more about the truth of who Yeshua was and is, and how they fit (as Gentiles) in God’s plan of salvation.

First off, let’s get the important basics covered:

  1. Yeshua is a Jew, lived as a Jew, died as a criminal on a stake, and was resurrected as a Jew who still worshiped His Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The “Jesus” that most Christians know is not the real Yeshua who walked the earth and died for them. Christianity, today, doesn’t come from Yeshua’s teachings, it comes from Constantine’s establishment of the Christian Canon at the Council of Nicene. This is an important truth that you must know to understand why Jews want nothing to do with Christianity. Since as early as 98 AD, the Gentile leaders of the newly forming Christian religion have theologically and ritually separated themselves from Judaism, and persecuted their Jewish brothers and sisters.
  2. Yeshua never said anything against the Torah. His teachings were not as the Pharisees taught, which was only the P’shat (literal meaning of the words); Yeshua taught us the Remez, or Drash, which is the spiritual meaning underneath the written, literal meaning of the words.
  3. When we are “saved” through our repentance and acceptance of Yeshua as the Messiah (whose sacrifice provides forgiveness of our sins), that does not mean we are saved once and forever. When Yeshua died and was resurrected, His sacrifice did not replace the entire sacrificial system designed by God in the Torah. What He replaced was the need to bring a sacrifice to the Temple in Jerusalem: we still need to ask forgiveness from God, the Father when we sin, and that is for every sin we commit. We are sinful in nature, and even though as Believers we do not want to sin, we do. And when we sin we need to confess, repent (do T’Shuvah) and ask forgiveness, which we do now (since there is no Temple) through the sacrifice that Yeshua made for us. Salvation is a free gift from God which He will never take back, but through our lack of repentance (assuming that all sins are automatically forgiven and, thereby, failing to repent of the ones we perform) we can throw it away.
  4. You will get many to argue against what I am now about to say, and ultimately you must study, ask the Holy Spirit for guidance and understanding, and make your own decision, but as for me, whatever Yeshua was before He came to earth, conceived by the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) and born of a woman, when He came out of Miryam (Mary) He was 100% human, and was (and still is) separate from God, the Father. Yeshua is our Lord, but He is not THE LORD. This is clear from all the greetings in the letters Shaul writes (he always says “from God, the Father and Yeshua, the Messiah”- clearly two entities) and from 2 John 1:7:
    1.   “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, people who do not acknowledge Yeshua the Messiah’s coming as a human being. Such a person is a deceiver and an anti-Messiah” (Complete Jewish Bible)

Messianic Judaism is, simply put, living a Jewish lifestyle according to the Torah, and accepting that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised us throughout the Tanakh (Tanakh is an acronym for Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim- the teachings, the writings of the Prophets, and the other writings); remember that “Torah” does not mean “law”, but “teaching” so through honoring God by obeying what is in the Torah we learn what God wants from us, meaning how to worship Him, how to live, and how to treat each other. Most Jews (I call them ‘Mainstream Jews”) will refuse to accept Yeshua because of the thousands of years of bigotry, persecution and misleading teachings that the “Church” has taught their own. I am a Jew, born a Jew by blood, circumcised, a Bar Mitzvah, and living a Jewish lifestyle in accordance with the Torah, yet if I told another Jew (one who doesn’t believe Yeshua is the Messiah) that I believe Yeshua is the Messiah, then that Jew would call me a traitor and a Christian. To a Jew, another Jew who accepts Yeshua is no longer a Jew. Of course that is ridiculous, but it is what they are taught. It is what I was taught, and believed, for over 40 years.

To a Christian, if I say I am “saved by the blood of Jesus Christ” but still obey the Torah and live a Jewish lifestyle, they accuse me of not really being “saved” because I live as a Jew, so I am not “under the blood” but “under the law!” They have ben taught Yeshua did away with Torah. Again, millennia of misleading teachings and lack of understanding.

There are a few books you could find on this topic that will help you. One I suggest is “Hebraic Roots” by Ken Garrison; it is an easy to read history of how today’s Christianity has become totally separated from Judaism. You can also read “The Jewish Manifesto” by Dr. Daniel Stern, as well as his other books, “The Complete Jewish Bible” and his “Jewish New Testament Commentary.”  This will help you understand Messianic Jewish viewpoints and the writings of Shaul (Paul) much better than an NIV or KJV bible ever will.

Finally (since this is just a brief introduction) understand that Judaism is as diverse and confusing as Christianity, in that within Christianity there are so many different religions and within Judaism there are so many different sects. There are the Chasidic Jews (ultra-Orthodox and mystical), Orthodox (the remains of the Pharisees), the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist (mostly interested in the traditions of Judaism.) I include Messianic Jews as a sect of Judaism, but the mainstream Jews won’t. In fact, even within Messianic Judaism, there are different organizations, each one with a different viewpoint of who Yeshua was/is with regard to His divinity, position, etc. There is the  Chosen People Ministries, the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA) and the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC). There are other Messianic organizations, as well, but these three are the major ones you may hear about.

If you look these up in Wikipedia, it will say these are Evangelistic Christian organizations, which is an example of the subtle Anti-Semitic tone that most Christians take towards Jews, even today.

What is interesting is that if you visit a Messianic Synagogue, you will find (as I have in my experience) that the majority of the people there are Gentiles wanting to get back to their Jewish roots and actually live as Yeshua lived. This is the role the “church” has in God’s plan of salvation: to make their Jewish brothers and sisters “jealous” for their own Messiah by seeing the Gentiles (the Goyim, or Nations) worshiping God and honoring Torah as they do, but with the closeness and relationship that Jews cannot have because they maintain their need for the Temple (in Jerusalem) instead of accepting Yeshua as their substitution for the The Temple, through whom they can be cleansed of their sin.

I have given you a lot to think about, and done so in a very blatant, open teaching. If I may add one last thing, my own definition of what Messianic Judaism is to me: Messianic Judaism is Judaism that has come full circle: living as God told us all we should live (as the Torah says) and being saved from the death we all deserve from our sinful lives through the Messiah God promised us he would send, who is Yeshua. I am not a “Born Again Christian”- I am a “Born Anew Jew!”

GOD HAS NO RELIGION!!  He gave the Torah to the descendants of Abraham in order to fulfill the promise He made to Abraham, which was that all people would be blessed by Abraham’s seed. The Torah is for all living beings, and Judaism is a religion only because other man-made religions arose, causing the need for labels.

Finally, please constantly read the bible, verify EVERYTHING (including all I have said) and accept nothing without asking God to show you the truth of it. Always remember that what you hear from people is going to be what they heard from people- rarely does anyone do any real research. People have been misled and lied to by people who thought they knew the truth, and who learned it from people who thought they knew the truth, who learned it from people who…well, you get the point. Humans, if you tell them something often enough, no matter how ridiculous it may sound, will eventually accept it as true.

Good luck, and may God send His Ruach HaKodesh to you to guide you in your journey to find the truth God has for you.

Let’s Talk Trinity

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Get your fishing rod because I am about to open a can of worms. Hopefully I can do this without insulting or degrading anyone’s beliefs, which may or may not agree with mine.

Since this is my blog, I get to say what I want. Please do not hesitate to comment if you feel there is something you want to add- the comment field is below the blog entry, so just scroll on down and write away! Be aware that I am not going to confirm what I believe with verses from the bible as you can look them all up on your own. I am not doing this because I am lazy, but as a means to force you, the reader, to confirm what I say for yourself. One of the reasons so many people have so many wrong ideas is because they are too lazy to confirm what they are told by looking it up in the bible. This is what Yeshua called the blind leading the blind, and He tells us what happens to them: they both fall into a hole.

Ready? OK, then, here we go…

I believe that Yeshua was originally eternal and divine, equatable to, if not actually the same entity, as God the Father (hereafter to be referred to simply as God.) I am not sure if there was a Trinity before human existence, and after humans were created and living on the earth I believe Yeshua did visit the earth and interact with humans, but as a divine being in human form. I also believe that God would occasionally send His spirit (as a form of supernatural empowering) to humans as it fit His purposes, but that Spirit was not indwelling- power by the Spirit was given to the person, and when the action God wanted was completed, He took His spirit back again.

Once God decided it was time for Yeshua to go to earth and perform His duty as Messiah, in order that Yeshua be subject to temptation, illness, all the weaknesses of human nature, and be able to die, Yeshua had to voluntarily strip off His divinity so that He could take on a mantle of flesh. Consequently, He was born 100% human to a human woman, and lived a totally human existence except for the fact that being fathered by God’s Holy Spirit, Yeshua was born without the stain of Original Sin upon Him. Other than that, He was a human being. His power and authority was not of His own, but that which was given to Him by God through the Holy Spirit. He confirms this often enough throughout the Gospels, telling us that He does only what God tells Him to do, and says only what God tells Him to say. He also said that those following Him would perform the same, and even greater miracles, which leaves us with the question how can humans do more than God? As such, Yeshua on earth was a mirror image of God in the flesh. When Yeshua said He and the Father are one, He meant that being an exact human representation of God’s actions and thoughts, they were essentially the same. Not the exact same; since Yeshua did and said only what God told Him to do and say, He was the prefect representation of God in the flesh, but He was not God, Himself.

Yeshua, being totally human, allows Himself to be killed. When He was dead, he had no ability to do anything. God resurrected Him, in the same body that He died with. We know this because we read in the Gospel of John that Thomas put his hand in the hole in Yeshua’s chest and his fingers through the holes in Yeshua’s feet and hands. A new, resurrected body wouldn’t come with holes in it, would it?  Therefore, Yeshua is still in a physical form, but having been resurrected by God He is again eternal, but still separate.

Every letter Shaul writes to the Messianic Communities he founded starts with greetings from God and the Messiah, Yeshua. From God, and the son, the Messiah, Yeshua- Shaul knew that God and Yeshua were separate and different entities. In the Gospels, as I mentioned above, Yeshua told us He and the Father are One because Yeshua is doing and saying only that which God tells Him to do and say. The book of Hebrews also identifies Yeshua as a totally separate entity from God. Acts tells us when Stephen was just about to die, he saw Yeshua sitting at the right hand of God; at His trial Yeshua told the Cohen Gadol that He would be sitting at the right hand of God. We have heard that someone may be so angry that they are said to be “beside themselves”, but that doesn’t really happen, so if Yeshua, the Apostles, Stephen, and all the other writers of the B’rit Chadasha ( New Covenant) state that Yeshua is a separate entity from God, and they refer to the Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh) in the same manner, then from the point of Yeshua’s birth up to the present day, Yeshua is eternal, but not totally divine because He is still acting as Cohen Gadol for all humanity; He is sitting at the right hand of God but He is not God.  He cannot be God: if He is God then there is no High Priest, if he is God then He is not a Cohen Gadol to be compared with Melchizedek. That would mean the Messianic prophecies about Him are untrue, or that He isn’t really the Messiah God promised in the Tanakh.

But, He IS the Messiah God promised in the Tanakh, and He IS a Cohen Gadol to be compared with Melchizedek, and He IS our Intercessor who sits at the right hand of God. He is not to be worshiped in lieu of God, although He is our Lord (meaning that He has authority over us- Yeshua is our Lord, but not the LORD) and as such He is worthy of worship on His own merits. He is the one who carries our prayers to God, but He is not the one we should be praying to. Yeshua told us that in order to receive from prayer we needed to pray IN HIS NAME- that doesn’t mean pray to Yeshua, it means pray to God while invoking Yeshua’s name as the authority by which we present our prayer. We could say that His name serves to confirm our prayer, His name grants us access to the Holy of Holies, and that His name (as Shaul says) gives us the authority to march right up to the throne of God and present our petition directly to Him.

Lastly, Yeshua will return to earth as the conquering King; He will rule the entire earth until the Adversary is released and the final battle is completed. Then, and only then, will things change. The Torah will be written on our hearts, there will be a new earth and a new Jerusalem, where spirit and physical form are on the same plane of existence, and then…well, who knows? Will Yeshua then leave the right hand of God and be reabsorbed (for lack of a better word) into the Father? Will the Holy Spirit also disappear as a separate entity? Will the Trinity that has to exist at this time for God’s plan to be fulfilled no longer be needed once that plan is complete?

I don’t know, and I don’t believe anyone can be absolutely positive about what will happen once everything we know will happen has happened.

I will finish with this: maybe Yeshua is God, maybe He is not God, and maybe He is something totally different. Maybe the Holy Spirit is in the same boat. I am humble enough to confess that I really don’t know: for those that I hear tell me they are absolutely sure, well, maybe they need more humility or maybe God has singled them out with this knowledge. Generally, what I hear from people who want to express their belief as absolutely correct is that they have “received this knowledge from the Ruach HaKodesh.”  Maybe they have been blessed to have God grant them this special knowledge, maybe they are just saying that so we have to believe them. For me, it doesn’t matter.

The one thing I feel confident we all can agree on is this: as long as we accept Yeshua as our Messiah, constantly repent of our sins and ask forgiveness through the sacrificial death of Yeshua, and trusting in God faithfully try to be what He said He wants us to be, then this whole Trinity “thing” won’t matter as far as our salvation is concerned. Our salvation comes through confessing our sins before God and faithfully believing Yeshua is the Messiah whose sacrificial death enables us to receive forgiveness of sin. Our salvation is not based on whether Yeshua is God or is separate from God; salvation is based on faithfully believing Yeshua did exist, He did sacrifice His life, He did rise from the dead and He is still working on our behalf to help us be cleansed of our sins so we can be resurrected through Him and live eternal lives in God’s presence.

What we all should do is stay focused on what affects our salvation, and not let impotent discussion pull us off-course from that destination.

To Torah, or Not to Torah: OY! What a Question!

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I don’t know where to start on this one, or where it may end. I could probably write a book about this (hmmmm??), but I want to keep it simple, so here I go…

As I have said often, eating ham will not send me to Sheol (the Hebrew word for Hell), and not eating ham will not guarantee me a place in heaven. My sins are forgiven by the sacrifice of Messiah Yeshua, so the Torah, which tells me what is a sin and what isn’t a sin (Shaul says in the book of Romans that the Torah actually created sin, in that it defined it) helps me to act in ways that please God, but no longer really keeps me from death because my sins have been, and will continually be, forgiven through Yeshua. Therefore, there is an argument that can be made that it is no longer absolutely necessary to keep the Torah.

BUT…just because we can make an argument doesn’t mean that the argument we make is valid.

The Torah is composed of many things: it has historical information, it has constitutional regulations, it establishes a system of societal laws and statutes that include torts resolution and a penal code, it outlines a health code, it is a marriage certificate between Jews and God, and it also outlines the procedures for how we are supposed to worship God. These laws, statutes, and regulations are commandments, not suggestions- they are direct and absolute requirements.

The justification (this term means, specifically, being forgiven of our sins) we receive through the sacrificial system defined in the Torah is no different that the justification we receive through the sacrifice of Yeshua. The process is still the same: sin, recognize and accept your sin, do T’shuvah (repentance), present your sacrifice to God and God will accept the blood of the innocent sacrifice (remember that the life is in the blood) as a substitution for your lifeblood. That is the process outlined in Torah, and never, ever did anyone think or say that because we could always sacrifice to be forgiven that the Torah isn’t that important. Never has any Jew ever thought that.

Yeshua’s sacrifice did not do away with the sacrificial system, He only replaced the part where we have to bring the sacrifice to the Temple in Jerusalem. Everything else is the same- we sin, we own up to our sin, we repent, we sacrifice (this is the part Yeshua has provided for us) and then we ask God to forgive us by means of substituting the sacrifice’s blood for our own.

So where did someone come up with the idea that because Yeshua’s sacrifice is the only sacrifice we need that we can now do away with Torah? God never said that we could do away with Torah, and Yeshua never said we could do away with Torah, and Shaul (Paul) never said we should do away with Torah. The sacrificial system that provides salvation from sin is no different after Yeshua than it was before Him- it’s just that Yeshua is the substitute we can use instead of bringing a lamb or pigeon to the Temple. No difference otherwise, so what was valid as the way to live before Yeshua came, died and was resurrected, is still valid as the way to live

Oh wait a minute!! Shaul certainly sounded like Torah wasn’t important. I believe that this is where the ‘No Need For Torah” idea started, as a misinterpretation of Shaul’s letters to (mostly) Gentile communities of Believers (there were no churches as we know them today in the First Century.) Shaul never once thought that Torah was unimportant, and he lived it as best as any human could his entire lifetime.  Despite what humans have entitled “Paul converts on the road to Damascus” that you read as the chapter title to Acts 9, Shaul never converted to anything.  When you read his letters you see he did, in fact, go to synagogues.  he did talk to Jews, but he made it his main ministry to go to the Gentiles. He established Gentile filled Messianic communities, and what he taught was what is in Torah. The misinterpretation is rooted in the fact that his main argument was never against observance of the Torah, it was against observance of the P’shat, the literal meaning of the words, in order to achieve salvation. Shaul was not against Torah, he was against the teaching that a legalistic observance would save one’s soul. That was what the Pharisees and most of the Jewish training and understanding of the Torah was at that time- if you do what it says in the Torah, just going through the motions (so to speak) then you can be saved. In fact, if we could perform all the laws and commandments in the Torah (as Yeshua did) then we would be saved: through perfect performance we can find salvation in Torah alone.

The problem is we can’t perform Torah perfectly, so to observe Torah as the means of our salvation, is a lost cause. That is the message Shaul was relating to the Gentiles who were under stress from their old life (to remain pagans) and also from their new life, from Jews who wanted them to do everything in the Torah because if they didn’t they couldn’t be saved.

This is the same drek I get today as a Messianic Jew: Christians who have been taught Torah isn’t needed now that they have Jesus tell me if I still live as a Jew I am not really saved because I am not “under the blood”, and Jews tell me if I believe in Jesus (their understanding is that I must have converted to Christianity) then I am not a Jew anymore. Both of these teachings are absolutely wrong- as a Jewish man who believes Yeshua is my Messiah, the one God promised my people since the beginning, then I am not a Christian, and I am more than just a Jew- I am a completed Jew, in that I have come full circle, from innocence in Eden to sinfulness in the world to Messianic forgiveness through Messiah, and thereby able to commune with God, again and forever more.

So, nu? What do we have? What we have is what we were given from the start- the Torah. The Torah is how God tells us to live, and defines right from wrong, righteousness from sinfulness, and provides the means by which we can be absolved of our sins in order to come into the presence of God. Yeshua is the Messiah God sent so that we can still find forgiveness after the Temple, which is where the Torah said we had to ask for forgiveness, was destroyed. No Temple, no forgiveness, but Yeshua took care of that by becoming the Temple, Himself,and providing the innocent blood (His own blood) for us. So, Torah is still valid, Torah is still necessary, and Torah is still God’s commandment to us all.

We should all try to follow Torah: not in order to be saved, but because it is what God tells us to do. We will receive blessings for obedience and we will not be blessed if we don’t (Deuteronomy 28.)  If we ignore Torah, we are ignoring God- like it or not, that is the truth. Do we need Torah to be saved- no. Do we need to obey Torah to be saved- no. Should we try to obey Torah, anyway- yes, absolutely. Why? Because it is what God tells us to do.

If God tells you do to something, what other reason do you need to do it?

Who Dumped Who First?

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Remember back in the Old Days when we were first leaning about relationships between boys and girls? We would be attracted to each other, fall hopelessly in love, and within a few weeks or so one would dump the other for a different beau.  The argument always came down to, “Who dumped who first?”

When Yeshua (Jesus) started His ministry, announcing the Good News to the Jewish people, many Gentiles began to believe in God’s plan of salvation. They accepted Yeshua, along with (probably) hundreds of thousands of Jewish people throughout the Middle East and Asia at that time, as the Messiah of God. As such, they began to live the lifestyle that Yeshua preached, which was a Jewish lifestyle. Yeshua was a Jew, and followed the commandments in the Torah, as Jews are expected to do. Despite what many Christian churches try to tell you, He died being a Jew, and when He was resurrected He was still a Jew. His Disciples were Jews and lived according to Torah, as did Shaul (Paul), which he confirms in his letters to the (what was really) Messianic communities he began. The Gentiles that were accepting and following Yeshua’s teachings were given 4 immediate changes to their (prior) Pagan behavior (Acts 15) , which was only the starting point for them. James said that they would learn the words of Moses in the synagogue every Shabbat, which clearly indicates it was expected of these converts to Judaism that they would, eventually, follow the lifestyle outlined in the Torah just as Yeshua, His Disciples and the early Jewish followers of Yeshua did.

But that’s not what happened. What happened was a combination of misunderstanding of many of Shaul’s letters (no real surprise there- he wrote like a Pharisee, which he was, meaning his logic and statements were drawn out and somewhat convoluted), geopolitical activities that made being Jewish in a Roman controlled land dangerous, and human’s trying to enforce their will on people who didn’t know any better (I am referring to the early “church” elders.) The “Judaizers” , as they are called, that Shaul talks about in Galatians were trying to get the new converts to accept circumcision as a necessary part of salvation. Shaul blasted them for that, and much of what he wrote seems to say the Torah is not important, but instead the Spirit is how one should be led in his or her worship of God. That is, of course, correct, but he didn’t mean to ignore the Torah. Shaul was saying to let the Spirit lead you to obey the Torah, but not to gain salvation through obedience; what Shaul meant was that we should be led to be obedient to God as a thankful and loving expression of faithfulness.

As things got politically worse for the Jews, those Gentiles becoming Jewish decided that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to embrace Torah as much as the Jews, since they were being targeted by Rome. So they stepped away from total observance of, or even trying to observe, Torah.

In other words, the Gentiles that were now worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (instead of the Roman gods) decided that they were going to worship their own way, and break from traditional Judaism.

In other words, the Gentile Believers dumped the Jews.

As time went on, the (now called) Christians began to separate even further from their roots; their leaders changed the Sabbath day, created their own holidays, canonized the writings of the Jewish Disciples without a single Jew on their Council, and even started to denounce living a Jewish lifestyle, announcing officially that if you were living a Jewish lifestyle you couldn’t be “saved.”

Today, the separation between Christian worship of God and Jewish worship of God is so different it is almost at opposite ends of the pole. Thank the Lord that the proper Spirit, the Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh) of God is beginning to lead Christians back to Him and to the proper worship of Him. The Messianic Christian and Hebraic Roots movements are making headway in the Christian world. People are beginning, in these End Days, to know the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as He wants them to know Him. More and more churches are supporting Israel and wanting to observe Torah for the correct reasons.

The correct way to observe Torah is not as a means to gain justification, and not as a means to prove ones worthiness for salvation, but because that is what God said we should do. Through observing Torah we will earn blessings (Deuteronomy 28), but more than that, God has given us the Torah so that we can have life eternal; the life we gain through Torah is not gained by performing the actions correctly (what Shaul calls “legalistic” observance) but because of our heartfelt desire to please God and  the simple fact that observing the Torah demonstrates by our actions our thankful and loving faithfulness.

That is what Christianity lost when it dumped the Jewishness of it’s worship. It cut itself off from the very root that feeds it. In  my not-humble-enough opinion, the main reason there are so many different Christian religions is because they have no root, no foundation upon which to settle themselves. They are, as Yeshua warned, a house on sand, being shifted and blown in all directions because they are not solidly rooted on the Rock of God’s Word.

Until Christianity comes back to the root, it will forever waiver, change and grow further away from God. Judaism is not a religion, it is a way of life; it is not a set of rituals and rites so much as it is the form of worship God commanded. Christianity thinks it is grafted onto the Tree of Life, but it has mutated itself so much that it is no longer even the same species.

I pray that the Prodigal Son returns soon.

Faith vs. Legalism

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As a Messianic Jew I am not liked by anyone. My Jewish brothers and sisters tell me that because I believe “in Jesus” (almost none of them really understand what that means) I am no longer Jewish; on the other side, because I follow Torah (as best as I can) and maintain a “Jewish” worship and lifestyle, my brothers and sisters in Messiah tell me I am legalistic and not really saved because I am “under the law” and not “under the blood.”

Both are just so very, very wrong.

Shaul (AKA Paul, that nice Jewish tent maker from Tarsus) tells us in Romans, Chapter 4 all about legalism and faith. He begins at the beginning, with Abraham, and identifies how the Tanakh confirms that Abraham was considered righteous because he believed what God told him would happen. That faithfulness, demonstrated by Abraham believing in what hadn’t yet happened, was why God credited him with righteousness. There was no task he accomplished, or behavior he performed, other than believing.

But that wasn’t all: Abraham did more than just believe. He did all the things that God told him to do, without hesitation or complaint. He left his father’s house, he left his neighbors, his home…everything he knew and was comfortable with, and took everyone and everything he owned to…he had no idea where.

When God told him to cut up animals and lay them out, he did that and remained out in the heat of the day, shooing away the birds.

When God said to circumcise himself and everyone else, he did it that day.

When God said to take Isaac and sacrifice him, he left early the very next morning.

Whatever God said to do, he did.

So, even though Abraham’s righteousness came from trusting faithfulness in what God said, he also spent his life doing what God told him to do.  We call that obedience.

Going back to Romans 4, Shaul points out that circumcision had nothing to do with Abraham’s righteousness because the righteousness was credited before he was circumcised; because of that, Gentiles who are not circumcised can be saved without undergoing the procedure, but if one chooses to do so, as an act of obedience, it doesn’t mean that person is being legalistic.

The difference between legalism and faith is simply the reason for performing the act: if I do what is in the Torah because I want to obey God, that is not legalism. If I do what is in the Torah to make me righteous, I am being legalistic. Of course, if I can obey Torah perfectly, I will be made righteous by doing so; the problem with that scenario is that no one can obey Torah perfectly. Therefore, there has to be a better way. We call that way “Grace”, God’s forgiveness for our sins, which is possible through believing in Yeshua, whose sacrifice replaced the need to bring a sacrifice to the temple in Jerusalem to have our sins forgiven.

This is why Yeshua had to die: because the temple wasn’t going to exist, which means the sacrificial system God created for us in the Torah would no longer be available, Yeshua’s sacrifice replaced needing the temple to receive forgiveness of sin.

If I live my life trying to obey the Torah because it is what God said I should do, and I do it to please God and out of respect for Him, then I am not being legalistic: I am being obedient. Just as Abraham was obedient. Do any of you doubt, even for a nano-second, that if God had given the Torah to Abraham back then, that Abraham would not have tried to be 100% in compliance with everything in the Torah? Of course he would have. And not to be considered righteous, but simply because God told him it is what he should do.

The Torah is NOT just for Jews- it was given to the Jews, who God said are His nation of priests to the world, to live it as best they can in order to be an example to the rest of the world how they should live. If you don’t want to worship the God that is in the Old Covenant writings, then ignore the Torah. But if you choose to ignore God’s commands, for whatever reason, I don’t think we will be playing Cribbage in the Acharit Hayamin (End Days) together.

It all comes down to what is in your heart: believing Yeshua is the Messiah and being faithfully obedient to Torah as a “labor of love” will result in receiving His Grace; obeying Torah just to earn your way into heaven is a direct route to somewhere, but not where you will want to be.

Have a Happy Shavuot

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We began the holiday of Shavuot last night (5/30/17), which is also called Pentecost (50 days) and is celebrated by both Jews and Christians. I think this is the only holiday that Jews and Christians celebrate together, although for different reasons.

You know…even within Judaism Shavuot is celebrated for a different reason than it was originally created. In Leviticus 23:15-21 God decreed we celebrate this day:

 “‘From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks.  Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the Lord.  From wherever you live, bring two loaves made of two-tenths of an ephah of the finest flour, baked with yeast, as a wave offering of firstfruits to the Lord.  Present with this bread seven male lambs, each a year old and without defect, one young bull and two rams. They will be a burnt offering to the Lord, together with their grain offerings and drink offerings—a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.  Then sacrifice one male goat for a sin offering[c] and two lambs, each a year old, for a fellowship offering.  The priest is to wave the two lambs before the Lord as a wave offering, together with the bread of the firstfruits. They are a sacred offering to the Lord for the priest.  On that same day you are to proclaim a sacred assembly and do no regular work. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live.”

We have been counting the Omer ( a unit of weight) until the 50th day after the first Shabbat after Passover. In other words, we have the Passover Seder, then the Festival of Firstfruits (Habikurim), and then we start to count the 50 days until Shavuot (which is the Hebrew word for “weeks”) when we perform both a sin and a fellowship sacrifice.

The Holy Day (meaning God decreed) of Shavuot was an agricultural celebration, but this has been replaced by a spiritual celebration. The Rabbinical holiday (meaning man-made) celebrates the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The Torah, itself, doesn’t mention this as part of the festival; neither is it mentioned as the reason for this festival in the writings of either of the accepted historians of this time period, Josephus and Philo.  From what I could find, it is believed that Maimonides (also called the RaMBaM, an acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon), who lived in the twelfth century, is the Rabbi that associated Shavuot with the giving of the Law.  This means that the Holy Day of Shavuot was celebrated as God told us to do so for about 2600 years after Moses, then it became a holiday created by Maimonides. In fact, the Torah could not have been given on Shavuot. Here’s why: we read in Exodus 19:1 the following statement:

In the third month after the sons of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day they came into the wilderness of Sinai.

They left Egypt on the 15th of Aviv, and we are told in Exodus that this day (the very day they left Egypt) is to be the first day of their year. It took 90 days for them to get to Sinai, which is already more than 50 days after Habikurim. Even if we try to fit the time line in by using some convoluted counting based on which Shabbat is really the first Shabbat after Passover, we still have to add that God decreed all the men should prepare themselves for 3 days before approaching the mountain (Exodus 19:10):

 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes and be ready by the third day, because on that day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.

So, it was no less than 93 days after the Israelites left Egypt that they even came to the mountain. Then, we have Moses up there for 40 days and nights, so the law was being given to Moses, but hadn’t been received by all of Israel yet. As you probably already know, the law took even longer than that, since Moses destroyed those first tablets and it was about 1 1/2 to 2 months later that he came down with the tablets that (finally) were saved in the Ark of the Covenant.

Likewise, even though the Christian celebration of Pentecost is to commemorate the giving of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit), Pentecost is a Greek word meaning “50 Days”, so the Christian celebration of Pentecost is celebrating a holiday whose name represents a totally different event.  Yeshua (Jesus) never mentioned that He would send the Comforter on any specific day, just that they were to wait until it arrived. I contend that because Yeshua made no direct reference to receiving the Spirit on Pentecost, that Pentecost is a uniquely Jewish Holy Day and Christianity should have given their celebration a different name. I am guessing that because the early Believers were still mostly Jewish, and this spiritual indwelling occurred on a Jewish Holy Day (at that time Shavuot was celebrated as God said it should be), that is how the name Pentecost was forever associated with the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

So what we have is this: Shavuot (weeks) and Pentecost (50 days- this name came from the Septuagint) are the same Holy Day, which has been turned into a holiday by both Jews and Christians, who each celebrate it for a different reason than what God created it to be.

If you have read my book (Back to Basics: God’s Word vs. Religion) you would know that I do not appreciate Holy Days being turned into holidays. However, I do make an exception for Shavuot because the relationship between the giving of the Torah, which set us apart as holy and represented freedom from slavery to men, and the giving of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit), which set us apart as holy and helped to free us from slavery to sin, is a really good thing. It helps to bring together Jews and Christians, even if not for the same reason. It is (at least) some form of common celebration from which we can come closer together in our worship of God.

What we have today is this: The Holy Day God decreed is still being celebrated by both Jews and Christians. From the Jewish side, we have changed the reason for the celebration to one that (by all means) does deserve celebration: the giving of the Torah to Moses. On the Christian side, they celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit, which is the Comforter and giver of Truth to help us stay on the road of righteousness.

Torah tells us what God expects of us and defines sin so that we can avoid it; the Ruach HaKodesh helps us to recognize sin, and when we surrender to it, will also direct us to stay on the path of righteousness. Both Jews and Christians have this in common with their celebration of this day: we are thankful to God for His direction and for the gifts He gives us in order to help us have eternal life.

Shavuot is a very joyous celebration, and whether you celebrate the gift of the Torah, or the gift of the Ruach, or (as Messianic and Hebraic Roots congregations do) celebrate them both, have a very happy and blessed Shavuot.

 

hebraic roots and messianic judaism: two sides of the same coin?

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I am a Jewish man. I was born a Jew, from Jewish parents of Russian descent. I was raised in a Reform Jewish environment, and since neither of my parents ever really embraced being Jewish, my B’rit Milah (circumcision) and Bar Mitzvah were as much a “This is what we do” thing as it was a spiritual acknowledgement of my covenant with God. When I grew older I forgot about religious observance, and always felt distant from God yet desiring to be closer. What kept me away was my desire to sin, which constantly overcame my desire to know the Lord for some 40-odd years. It was a series of traumatic events that led to my desire to know God, and a determination to finally either know Him or reject the whole thing, once and for all. Thankfully, I did get to know God, and then I also needed to know the truth about this guy Jesus, who most of my life I was told was Jewish but started His own religion and was someone we Jews killed.

Now I know who Jesus really is: a Jewish man named Yeshua ben Yosef, who is in truth the Messiah God promised would come, who was born Jewish, lived a Jewish life and died Jewish. He was still Jewish when he was resurrected. During His life He observed the Torah and never-ever started a new religion (for the record, modern day Christianity is from Constantine, not Yeshua.) So, now that I am still Jewish (I am not a Christian, a Christian-Jew, a Hebrew-Christian or anything other than a Jew) but have accepted Yeshua as my Messiah and recognize that He is the son of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that means I am no longer just a Jewish man, but I am a Messianic Jewish man.

Messianic Judaism is not Jews for Jesus. Jews for Jesus is an organization, a non-profit company with a “religious” mandate to bring the truth of the Messiah to Jewish people. One of the things that I wish they would do is stop sending Jews willing to know Yeshua to Christian churches. Not that Christian churches are a bad place, but most Christian churches are not Hebraic Roots churches (Oy! Another label!) and many, many Christian churches have a “don’t need Torah” attitude, and (worse than that) some are Replacement Theologists.

The Hebraic Roots Movement is similar to Messianic Judaism in that Messianic Judaism is for Jews (and Christians, too- most Messianic congregations I have known actually have more Gentiles than Jews) who accept Jesus (Yeshua is the preferred name) as the Messiah, but still maintain the Jewish lifestyle and worship rooted in observance and obedience to the Torah. Hebraic roots congregations are Christians (and some Messianic Jews, like me) who desire to get to know and worship the Lord as Yeshua did, worshiping as they did in the First Century.

Essentially, if a person is someone who has accepted that Yeshua/Jesus is the Messiah, and worships as the followers of Yeshua did in the First Century when He walked the earth (and for about two centuries after that), then they are either Messianic Jews (if they are Jewish by birth) or Hebraic Roots Christians (if they are Gentile by birth.)

Same coin, different sides.

By the way- this is obviously a very simplistic explanation. I am hoping that it is effective in getting across the idea that anyone who worships the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who accepts that Yeshua was born a man by Divine conception, who believes He was and still is the Messiah God promised in the Old Covenant writings, is thereby one in the body of Messiah. And, whether or not they were born Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, whatever- when they accept Yeshua as their Messiah, they also accept His lifestyle. Which was, as we would label it today, Judaism. In fact, more similar to Orthodox Judaism than any other sect within Judaism.

I worship at a Hebraic Roots church (zionistrevivalcenter.org) and am one of only maybe 3 or 4 Jewish-born members. We are very small, no more than 15-20 or so “regulars” but we will, with God’s blessings, grow. I believe there is a growing desire in the Christian world to get closer to Jesus, since most of what He really is and what He really taught has been thrown out and replaced with Christian rhetoric, ritual and Anti-Semitic diatribe (such as the Replacement Theology claim that God has rejected the Jews for rejecting Yeshua, and Christians are now the “Chosen people.” Really? I don’t think so- God is pretty clear about His devotion and love for the Jewish people throughout the Bible.)

The aim of this blog-ministry of mine is to help people understand that God doesn’t have any religion, just rules. His rules were given to us in the Torah and the Torah is meant for everyone. It is not, and was never meant to be, exclusive to Jews. It was given to the Jews to bring to the world.

Whatever belief system you have now, does it respect the Torah? Do you believe (or have you been told to believe) that the Torah is valid for everyone? Do you believe that God still expects you to obey the laws of Kashrut outlined in Leviticus 11? Do you honor God by celebrating the festivals God said we are to celebrate and in the manner He described in Leviticus 23?

Or- do you believe (or have been told) that the Torah is only for Jews? Were you taught that Jews receive their salvation from Torah but Christians are saved by the Blood of Christ? Do you believe that the only things in the Old Covenant that are valid for you are the “moral laws” that God gave the Jews? If so, you have a very rude awakening coming to you.

Here’s the truth- the biblical truth that you can verify in the bible- Yeshua lived and worshiped as a Jew. The Disciples lived and worshiped as Jews. Shaul (Paul) never “converted” to Christianity- it didn’t even exist then! The followers of Yeshua were Jews who met in the synagogue or, if under social or political attack, met in their homes but NEVER stopped worshiping as Jews. There was no “church” in the first century- the “church” (as we know it today) was formed by Constantine and the Council of Nicene a couple of centuries after Yeshua walked the earth. The truth, my friends, is that if you believe Jesus is the Son of God and you claim to worship Him, than you should be worshiping God, not Jesus, and worshiping God as Jesus did.

I see bracelets with “WWJD” on them, and hear all the time that Christians should do as Jesus did and walk as Jesus walked, yet the Christian world teaches (for the most part) to do nothing like what Jesus did, and to walk a path Jesus would never have even thought of walking! Consider this: the world is about to celebrate the birth of the Messiah and enjoy a holiday feast in His honor with food that He would have considered an abomination to see on His dinner table! I am talking about the traditional Christmas Ham, of course. When you think about it, eating ham on a day designed to celebrate Jesus’s birth is, in fact, disrespectful to God and to Jesus.

The end is always coming closer. That is just simple math- our timeline moves in one direction, and the end is at, well…the end, so every day, every hour, every breath brings us all closer to the final judgement. And the real kicker is that we don’t know when the end is! Bummer! That means that the best possible time to get yourself right in accordance with God (through Yeshua) is now. Right now. And that means if you haven’t accepted your own sinfulness, now’s the time to get with the program. We all hear about asking for forgiveness, but the truth is until you accept your own sinfulness and inability to overcome it, there’s no desire to ask anyone for forgiveness. So, first and foremost, we have to accept and “own” our sinful nature as being against God and we have to want to change it, to do T’Shuvah. Then, and only then, will our request for forgiveness through Yeshua’s sacrificial death on our behalf, be honest.

Next, accept that the truth that God’s will is for us to live as He said we should, which is defined and outlined in the Torah. Yeshua taught nothing but what is in the Torah- He respected it, He observed it perfectly, and he taught others to do so. He never, never, never taught anything against or outside the Torah. What really happened is God gave the Torah to Moses, the people added too many rules and regulations on their own and when Yeshua came to earth to teach the truth, He upset the “religious” authority by telling people that it is God’s authority that counts. We were only looking at the words of the Torah, and Yeshua taught us the spirit of the Torah. And He was all about the Torah and all about God.

If you want to  worship God in a way that will please God, then doesn’t it just make sense to worship God as He said to worship Him? To live your life in the manner He said to live it?

Duh!

 

 

 

God’s word is the same for everyone

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Here I am, sitting at home, writing in my blog and wondering how much longer I will be able to go before the caffeine (actually, lack of caffeine) headache starts to hit. Last night began Yom Kippur, and we had a Kol Nidre (Hebrew for “All oaths”) service. Despite technical issues, it went well. Normally there would be prayer services all day, which makes the time go by faster, but not this year. Maybe, if we grow more and get enough people who want to celebrate this day in prayer, we can hold the evening and all day services, as well.

I was talking with someone last night who was drinking something from a cup as we talked, and this person has been a Believer and Hebraic Roots Christian (the other side of the Messianic Jew coin) for a long time. Yet, here he is, drinking in front of me knowing that I am fasting.

He was telling me of plans for a break-fast together at the house of one of the people who has a home fellowship meeting every Wednesday, and they usually bring food and eat at around 1830 or so. Of course, Donna and I were invited but we have our own traditional break-fast that we have done for nearly 20 years and have no desire at all to stop doing: it’s called the Outback Steak House!

Anyway, back to the story: so, I tell him that it would be too early to eat since the sunset isn’t until around 1930, and you wanna know what he accused me of being? He accused me of being “legalistic”! He has no idea what an insult that is, and no idea of what he was talking about, either. Legalism, as Shaul (Paul) used it in the letter to the Galatians, means to follow the Torah only as a means to attain salvation; in other words, we do what God says so we can be saved. I don’t do what God says to be saved- I do it because God said to do it. God didn’t say to do it half-way, or in whichever way is easiest for us, or whichever way we want to. God said this is what you are to do, and this is how you are to do it. Period.

I am not really mad at this person for the sin he accused me of. He needs to re-read the word of God, and include those sentences that come after what he wants to believe. Such as when, in Acts 15, the Elders told the newly-converting Gentiles that they are expected to do 4 things. That was not the end or entirety of their expectations. The letter sent to the Gentiles who were converting to Judaism- if you followed Yeshua that is what you were doing- said that they need to immediately stop eating blood, stop eating anything strangled, stop eating anything devoted to an idol, and to stop fornicating. But that wasn’t the end of it-there was more. Most Christians like to think (or have been taught) it stopped there, and that all the other commandments in the Torah were left up to the individual Gentile to take it or leave it. Not true.

As Paul Harvey would have said, “And now for the rest of the story…”. These four commandments, so to speak, were to be immediately adhered to by new converts, but all the rest of the Torah was not thrown out- the next sentence says that these new converts will be hearing the laws of Moses in the synagogue every Shabbat. Why did they say that, if the Mosaic law (Torah) wasn’t important? They said that because the point is that these 4 restrictions are just the start, not the end, of the process these new Believers would be going through. These 4 restrictions are what the Elders felt could be reasonably expected from Gentiles who have spent their entire lifetime without any restrictions. To throw the full weight of the Torah on them, all at once, would be too much to expect of anyone. Even the Jews, who were expected to fulfill every command of Torah and who had been raised from infancy with those restrictions, even they still couldn’t obey them completely! To throw them all, all at once, on the Gentiles was unreasonable, and would only result in creating a stumbling block in their path to salvation.

That’s why I say we all need to read the next sentence. The Elders clearly expected that these converts would now be leading a Jewish lifestyle, and going to Synagogue every Shabbat where they would hear the words of God and learn the Torah. And, as such, it was expected that they would, eventually, be able to take on the fullness of the Torah.

The statement made to me by my brother last night, which was that Jews are expected to honor the entire Torah but Gentiles don’t have to, is ridiculous. It is nearly blasphemous, accusing God of playing favorites, and announcing that what God said is required (of those that follow Him) is not true for all people. Basically, he called God a liar.

GOD HAS NO RELIGION!  He has Torah. He gave the Torah to the Jewish people, His chosen people, who are chosen to bring the Torah to the world. There cannot be any discussion or argument against that; at least not if  you read the bible, either Old or New Covenant, and read all the sentences. And what I mean is that you don’t just read what you want, pull something from here and something from there: the entire bible is valid, from the first line in Genesis to the last sentence in Revelations. And there is nothing in the New Covenant that is new- and there is nothing anywhere that says some have to do what God says and others don’t- and there is nothing Yeshua (Jesus) said that goes against Torah- and there is nothing Shaul (Paul) said that goes against Torah.  There is nothing, anywhere, in the entire bible that says all laws are for Jews and only some are for Christians.

God is very clear that anyone who sojourns with His people, meaning anyone who wants to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and call themself one of God’s chosen, has the same rights and privileges as a natural-born Jew. That goes both ways- if you have the same rights and privileges, you are also subject to the same laws and commandments. You can’t have your Kugel and eat it, too.  If you believe in God, if you profess that you are saved because you have accepted Yeshua/Jesus as your Messiah and Savior, then you MUST honor His word and worship Him as He said to.

And how we do that is in the Torah.

When Yeshua died for our sins, it did not release us from obeying God’s word. I am spending today, this very moment, fasting and praying for forgiveness NOT because Yeshua’s sacrifice doesn’t cover me, but because I am still a sinner, and because God commanded that this day, the tenth day of Tishri, is a day to be devoted to asking for forgiveness. The fact that Yeshua has covered my sins doesn’t mean I don’t ever have to ask to be forgiven anymore.

Think about it: if you don’t ask for forgiveness of a sin, that means you don’t really feel any remorse, and if you feel no remorse, then you can’t be repentant. Yeshua’s sacrificial death will not save a sinner who is unrepentant.

I fast this day because God said to, and that means the entire day, sunset to sunset, as God decreed it should be done. That’s not legalism, my friends, that is called worship! That is called devotion! That is called demonstrating my love for God by being obedient!

My friends, my brothers and sisters out there somewhere, reading this now- I pray that the truth of God’s complete plan of salvation is fully revealed to you. I pray that the forgiveness provided by Yeshua’s sacrifice, which is the ultimate demonstration of God’s willingness and desire to forgive you when you do T’shuvah (repentance), is not diluted and perverted into some form of license to ignore Torah.

Thanks to Yeshua, I will not go to hell if I eat ham, and with or without Yeshua, I will not go to heaven just because I don’t eat ham. However, if I chose to obey the laws of Kashrut in Leviticus 11, I will demonstrate my desire to please God, to obey Him, and I will earn blessings for obedience.

Obedience brings blessings- it is the promise of God (Deuteronomy 28)-do you have so many blessings that you don’t want any more?

Do you feel that you don’t need to ask for forgiveness? Have you lead a totally sinless life since you accepted Yeshua? Do you think that just because Yeshua died for your sins you don’t have to stop sinning? What is a sin? Isn’t it disobeying God? If God said, “This is what you are to do”, and you refuse to do it, for whatever reason, isn’t that a sin?

If you think that because you are a Gentile you don’t have to follow the Torah, you are wrong. Sorry, don’t mean to burst your “Buffet Believer Bubble” that you can obey what you want and ignore the rest. But, the truth is that everyone, whether or not they accept God or Yeshua, E–V–E–R–Y–O–N–E is required by God to do what He says to do. That is the truth. If you doubt me or disagree with me, that’s your right- God gave us all free will to decide for ourselves. It is not just your right, it is your choice, your decision, and whether or not you make it because of what you believe the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) has told you, or what your religious leader has told you, or just simply what you would rather believe because you want to- it is your choice.

And when you come before the Lord, God, Almighty- and we all will come before Him – you will be held accountable for whatever choice you have made.

That is why I pray you make the right choice: the choice that is right in God’s eyes.

May God bless you all with peace, joy, wisdom and discernment.

And may you have an easy fast.