Tag: shavuot

Parashah Emor 2019 (Speak) Leviticus 21-24

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These three chapters deal with three topics: the cleanliness of the Priests who serve in the Sanctuary (as well as the sacrifices brought there), the Holy Days God instructs us to celebrate, and the rules regarding punishment for blasphemy and murder.

As always, I find so much in here to talk about, all of which may be edifying to us and help us better understand what God requires of us. Yet, so that you don’t fall asleep during this message, I will choose just one topic to discuss. And this topic has been so zealously argued that I don’t think anyone will be yawning. At least, I hope not.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

For the purposes of this message, let’s separate Holy Days from holidays. A Holy Day is a festival or celebration which God has instructed us to observe, whereas a holiday is a man-made celebration. God’s Holy Days are found in the Torah, and holidays are found in the other books of the Old Covenant and in traditional religious doctrine.

The 7 Holy Days God has commanded we must celebrate are:

Shabbat, the day of rest;
Passover (a pilgrimage festival);
Feast of Unleavened Bread (7 days);
Shavuot (the second pilgrimage festival);
Yom Teruah (Day of Trumpets, later turned into Rosh Hashanah, a rabbinic celebration);
Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement); and
Sukkot (Tabernacles, and the third and final pilgrimage festival.)

Pilgrimage festivals are the only ones where it is required to travel to the location where God places his name. During the time of the Judges and up until King David moved it, that place was Shiloh, where the Tent of Sanctuary was located. King David moved the tent to Jerusalem and once Solomon completed the Temple, the Temple was the place to go. After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, Jews worldwide have had nowhere to go to bring a sacrifice so they can be absolved of their sins or celebrate the pilgrimage festivals as God instructed us to do.

To those of us who have accepted Yeshua as the Messiah God promised to send, his sacrifice replaced the need to bring an animal to the Temple in Jerusalem so we are able to receive forgiveness; however, we have to settle to go to Shul (Synagogue) instead of Jerusalem to celebrate the pilgrimage Holy Days.

Now let’s get into that heated topic I referred to earlier, which is this: because God instructed us to observe only these 7 Holy Days, is the observance of any other holiday a sin? Especially those created by Christianity, whose origins are found in paganistic celebrations.

I suppose we should begin with identifying what sin is: a sin, for the purpose of this discussion (and I believe it is a good definition for any discussion), is when we do something that God says we shouldn’t do, or, conversely, don’t do something that God says we should do.

So, with that in mind, let’s look at other holidays and test them against our definition of sin.

Let’s start with the Jewish ones, of which there are many. How about Rosh Hashana?  The Jewish New Year, according to God, is the first of Aviv (now called Nisan), but the rabbinical or civic celebration is on what God said is the Day of Trumpets, a day to be a memorial. From that day on the 10 Days of Awe begin, in which we all look introspectively to determine how close, or how far, we have been from obeying God over the past year. Since Rosh Hashanah is a form of a memorial, I don’t see celebrating it the way we do as being sinful. There’s also Sh’mini Atzeret, also known as Simchat Torah, the 8th day of Sukkot. We honor God and his word by celebrating the turning back of the Torah from the end to the beginning so we can start reading it all over again. That doesn’t go against anything God said we should or should not do, and it is respectful, thankful and honoring to God.

There’s Purim (biblical but not commanded), the different fast days, the 9th of Av, and any number of lesser holidays, none of which dishonor God or go against anything he has decreed. So, since we celebrate God, honor him and his word, and aren’t doing anything against what he says, according to our definition of sin, celebrating these man-made Jewish holidays is not sinful.

Let’s now take a look at the major Christian holidays of Easter and Christmas…Oy Vey!! -now we are in for it.

Here is where the majority say celebrating them is sinful. The Maypole (a leftover from the Asherah pole), bunnies and eggs (paganistic fertility symbols), the name Easter (the pronunciation is the same for the fertility goddess, Ishtar), the use of a tree and ornaments to celebrate the birth of Yeshua (Jesus) is similar to graven images and Druidic practices…all of this is considered sinful. And the intention of the ones that worshiped false gods on these days and using these items was sinful.

But did God say we cannot celebrate the birth of the Messiah? Did God forbid us from celebrating the fulfillment of the work of the Messiah, demonstrated by his resurrection?

It is clearly a sin to celebrate and worship Ishtar, Molech, Ba’al, or any Semitic gods or the gods of other religions; but, if we are desiring to honor the one, true God and his Messiah with thankful worship in our hearts, will the paganistic origins of those days and items used overrule the current intent of our celebration? In other words, just because once, long ago these days were paganistic rituals, does that mean when we worship God and Messiah on these same days that they are unacceptable to God?

I don’t think so. God is clear that we are NOT to worship any other God but him, and if someone puts up a tree, adorns it, and does so solely to honor Messiah and God, they are NOT worshiping another God. Yes, maybe the things they are using and the way they are using them was once the way someone would worship a false god, but that is not what Gentiles Christians are doing. They are doing so with the intention of being worshipful and celebrating God’s gift of salvation through Yeshua.

For the record: I, myself, do not celebrate any Christian holidays because I am Jewish, but if I was a Gentile Believer, I most likely would still celebrate Easter and Christmas for the reasons I state above, to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to celebrate salvation through Messiah Yeshua (Jesus Christ.)

Throughout the Bible, both Old and New Covenants, God constantly makes it known to us that he is not interested in anyone just “going through the motions” but in what is in our hearts.  He constantly told the Israelites that their bulls, sheep, and other offerings meant nothing to him because their hearts were not in it. I interpret this to mean that so long as what we offer to God is with a grateful and worshipful heart, God will accept it from us.

I absolutely believe that when we celebrate a day to honor and thank God, he is more interested in why we are doing it than in the way we are doing it.

Therefore, in my opinion, celebrating Easter and Christmas with the intention and desire to be thankful to God and the Messiah is not a sin. If you eat ham at your Easter or Christmas dinner, well…that is different. That is clearly something that is a sin because God said pork is off the menu, forever.  But having a Christmas dinner, being with family and enjoying each other, celebrating God and his Messiah…really, how can that be wrong in God’s eyes?

Finally, it comes down to individual choice. If you don’t want to celebrate any festivals other than the ones God gave in the Torah, that is great! So long as you do that because you want to, and not because you are trying to earn anything with God. Likewise, if you give up something you like for Lent, celebrate Easter, put up your Christmas tree every year and do so solely with the intention of honoring God and Messiah, I believe God’s is fine with that.

There is, however, this caveat: if you do not celebrate the festivals God commanded in Leviticus Chapter 23 because you have been taught they are “Jewish” and not important to Christians, then you ARE in sin! Remember that our definition of sin is not doing what God says we should, and he clearly instructs us to celebrate these festivals. Even Yom Kippur, asking for forgiveness, is not done away with by Yeshua- we all sin, we all need to ask for forgiveness, and doing so in accordance with God’s instructions is never going to be wrong.

So, nu! There you have it! The bottom line, the Acid Test to determine if celebrating a man-made holiday is not a sin is this: if you celebrate a day to honor God and you do so with proper worship, desire, respect, and thankfulness in your heart, you will be OK.

Thank you for being here, please don’t forget to subscribe and share me out to your friends and family. I always welcome comments so long as they are respectful.

Tonight begins the Shabbat, so I wish you all Shabbat Shalom, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Shavuot Celebration 2017

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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.

 

Jesus and the Torah

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Chag Semeach to all my friends out there. That is the Hebrew greeting that translates, roughly, to Joyous Festival.

We just celebrated Shavuot, the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai. This is one of the three Big Ones, the festivals that God commanded us to celebrate only at the Temple in Yerushalayim. The other two being Pesach (Passover) and Sukkot (Festival of Tabernacles.)

This Holy Day is also called by the Greek term for 50 days, Pentecost. I have always heard people refer to Pentecost as a Gentile celebration, but it is a Jewish holy day. The 50 days comes directly from the counting of the Omer, which God decreed we should do starting with the first Shabbat after Pesach. The Gentile celebration is from Acts, where the Disciples receive the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit, from God while celebrating Shavuot.

This year Shavuot also falls right at the end of the readings from Leviticus, which is the book in the Torah that has the most laws and regulations, especially referring to the priestly duties. The past week or so I have found myself writing more and more about how Torah is still a necessary and valid book of laws that all Believers, not just Jews but all Believers, should be trying to follow.

The historical teachings of the Christian world are that the Torah is for Jews and Jesus is for Christians; the God of the Old Covenant is an angry and punishing God and the God of the New Covenant is loving and compassionate (funny- I always thought He was the same guy!); the Jews are living under the law and the Christians are under the blood, so the law doesn’t apply to them.

That last one is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. The law doesn’t apply because we are under the blood of Christ? So what, then? Messiah said to ignore the Torah? To quote one of the disciples, Shaul (Paul), who wrote about ignoring the Torah in his letter to the Romans, “Heaven forbid!” The Torah is what Jesus, Yeshua, taught from, and it is what He lived, and it is what He said we should obey.

Yeshua did NOT do away with the Torah. One of the verses from the Gospels that people love to trespass against (meaning, as in Yeshua’s day, to misinterpret) is Matthew 5:17. They say that since Yeshua fulfilled the law, by doing so He completed it and thereby, it is not longer applicable. By completing it fully He did away with it.

Horse Apples!!  If that is a valid statement, then if someone comes to a complete stop at a stop sign, looks left, right, then left, and only then continues to drive they lived that law completely, so no one else ever has to stop at a stop sign.

Oh, yes- and if someone lived their entire life without committing murder, it’s OK for you to go kill someone. And let’s not forget the person who never had sex- that’s the one for me! Thank goodness for that someone who never fornicated during their entire life so that now we all can do it. I’m going back to college!!

Ridiculous, isn’t it? Just because someone obeyed a law, that did away with it? Absurd, stupid, and very, very wrong.

Yeshua did live the Torah to it’s fulfillment, He lived it completely and correctly but not to do away with it (which He confirms in Matthew 5:17.) No, He lived it fully to show us how we are to live it! When He said He came to fulfill the law He meant that He came to interpret it correctly: in the First Century , to “fulfill the law” meant to interpret it correctly, whereas to misinterpret the law was to “trespass the law.” That’s why the “Lord’s Prayer” says we should forgive those who trespass against us- meaning those that sin against us, since misinterpreting the law is a sin.

I have gone over this many times: John says the Word was first, then that Word became flesh. The only “word” John had was the Torah. The flesh that Torah became is clearly Yeshua. As such, that also is hemeneutically accurate since Joel and Jeremiah tell us that in the end days we will have Torah written on our hearts, meaning we will be living, breathing Torahs, ourselves. We won’t ask our brother if they know the Lord because all will know Him. Yeshua says that if we know Him, we know the Father, so it all comes down to Yeshua is the living Torah.

Now, if He is the living Torah, how can He teach anything but what He is? Did you ever read Yeshua telling anyone that they should not do as He does? Didn’t He say a house divided against itself cannot survive, yet His kingdom will never be torn down? If He is the Torah, as we have shown, then to teach or even suggest that those who follow Him do anything except what the Torah says is to teach against Himself, dividing His house and thereby, His kingdom will not stand.

Doesn’t He say that if we love Him we will obey Him? If so, then show me where He said ignore the Torah. Show me where He said Torah doesn’t matter. Show me where He said the heck with God and His rules and regulations, I want you to follow me, instead.

Oh, wait- someone else says that, doesn’t he? That is the one who wants to usurp God and calls Him a liar. Is that who you want to follow? If you follow anyone telling you the Torah is not valid and you can ignore it, you are not following God. That leaves just one other.

The Torah is who God is. He tells us about Himself, he tells us about ourselves, He shows us how to live and how to treat each other. It is what God says we should do, it is what Yeshua did perfectly (in order that He could be the sacrifice He was meant to be) and what He taught from, and it is just as valid today as when Moshe brought it down from the mountain some 3500 years ago.

The Torah is the ultimate User Manual for life. In fact, it is the User Manual for Eternal life! If you ignore it, you will miss out on much that God has for you.

Here’s the part that confuses people: when we live Torah perfectly, we will be saved. The problem is this: we cannot live the Torah perfectly. That is why God sent Messiah Yeshua, to provide the means for us to have a single, once and for all sacrifice that will take away our sins as the Torah’s sacrificial system was designed to do. And Yeshua will take them away not just once, but again, and again, and again until everyone can have their sins forgiven, not once a year at Yom Kippur, but every second of their life. Yeshua came to Earth to live as a human, perfectly in accordance with Torah so that He could then act as our ultimate sacrifice (as it is pointed out in Hebrews) once and for all.

The difference between Torah being lived correctly and incorrectly is what Shaul pointed out, over and over, in his letters to the Messianic Kehilot (communities): if we think we can be saved by living according to the Torah we are dead: not because the Torah is not the way to salvation, but because we have no chance of living the Torah perfectly. If we use Torah as the only means of our salvation we lose before we even start. Yeshua is the only way we can be saved. He did not replace the Torah, He made salvation through it attainable by giving us a “handicap”, so to speak. His sacrifice is our salvation, His death is our life, and His teachings are to live Torah as best we can and to trust in Him to do the rest.

We will all stand before God at the final judgement, and Yeshua will be at the right hand of God. When we, who have given ourselves to Yeshua and who accept and trust Him to be our Messiah and Savior, fall short of Gods commands and are faced with our own sinful lives, Yeshua will stand forth and say, “Father, this one is mine.”

That’s all it will take. Yeshua will stand between us and God, between our sinfulness and His righteousness; God will see us through the righteousness of Yeshua, and as such, we will be acceptable. His blood will cover us, encapsulate us like a cocoon, and we will emerge clean and righteous, forever. We will be transformed from sinful flesh into righteous spirit.

The Torah is the road map to salvation, but there is a great chasm we need to cross that Torah cannot get us across. The only way to span that chasm is to use Yeshua as our bridge between death and salvation. The Torah is what we need to live by, as best we can, and Yeshua is who we need to accept as our guide, our Messiah and our Savior to get us across the chasm between our sinful nature and God’s complete holiness.

The truth is this: Torah is valid and God expects us to live according to it’s rules, regulations, laws, commandments and ordinances. Yeshua is the Messiah, and He also expects us to live in accordance to the Torah. It is what He taught, what He used to explain Himself, and what He is: He is the Torah, in the flesh. Why, oh why, would He teach us to do anything else but live as He did?

Following Torah will not save you, following Yeshua will, but Yeshua said to obey Him and what He taught was the Torah. God promised us (in the Torah) that when we obey we will receive blessings, so don’t follow Torah to be saved- that is a waste and the wrong reason to follow Torah. Follow Torah to receive blessings, to hold God to His promises, and to do as Yeshua did to show Him how much you really love Him.

When it comes to following the Torah, you have to make up your own mind. Read Deuteronomy 28 to see what blessings God has in store for those that obey Torah. And what He has for those that reject it.

Torah won’t get you saved, but it will make life on Earth soooooo much better.