MessianicMusings.com

You don’t need a church building and a bunch of marketing pens to get started in a ministry, but you do absolutely need a solid handle on how to pray, study and discern biblical truth. One biblical truth is that one of the top three God-appointed festivals is the one we are currently in, Shavuot.

While Christians prefer to call this time Pentecost, the holy day is actually the same - or should be. Shavout, or Pentecost, is a time during which Adonai’s two major covenants were to be celebrated. The old covenant form is found in the God-appointed day of Shavout.

Shavuot is the day on which Adonai actually delivered the ten commandments to Moshe on Mount Sinai. It was declared by Adonai to be a time of celebrating the deliverance of the Torah to his chosen people.

Interestingly enough, following the ascension of Yeshua to the Father after his resurrection, the talmidim of Yeshua waited in Jerusalem until the day on which the Ruach haKodesh (Holy Spirit) fell on them in power and the full truth of Adonai - both the law of Moshe and the gospel of Yeshua - was delivered to all present in their own languages. This marked the new covenant of Adonai with his people, Israel.

(Yes, eventually the gentiles were included within that new covenant; but on that day it was offered to the people of Israel first.)

So, whether you call it Shavuot or Pentecost, the celebration is the same: it is celebrating the covenants of Adonai to those who follow him.

Where I started my spiritual journey compared to where I am today is about as different as my current Twin Cities, MN, apartment is from Beaufort NC real estate. While the Twin Cities are OK in the summer, Beaufort is beautiful pretty much all year ’round.

In the same way, there’s a huge contrast to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod background I was raised in and the messianic Jewish congregation I currently fellowship with and am studying to become ordained in. Yet I never could have predicted how night-and-day the contrast would be.

Martin Luther, founder of all things Lutheran, would no doubt disapprove of my messianic identification. I’ve known for a long time that Luther has been antisemitic, but I never really appreciated just how deeply it ran until recently.

Luther’s 1543 hate-filled screed, On the Jews and Their Lies, is a shocker. Especially for an ex-Lutheran like myself. Here’s just a couple of the more notable excerpts.

From his introduction:

I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God’s word is absent he has an easy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen.

That is tame, though, compared to the “solution” Luther recommends to cure the “Jewish problem.” I challenge readers to find significant differences between this and the writings of Adolph Hitler nearly 400 years later:

Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:

First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire…

Second, that all their books– their prayer books, their Talmudic writings, also the entire Bible– be taken from them, not leaving them one leaf, and that these be preserved for those who may be converted…

Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country…

Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing. For we cannot with a good conscience listen to this or tolerate it…

There’s plenty more. And it pretty much seals in certainty that not only will I remain in the messianic movement the rest of my life, but I could never in good conscience attend a Lutheran church ever again.

Once you get out of the more narrative-influenced portions of Exodus, the first five books of the Torah do get a bit more tedious. But just because the Torah is a bit hard to muddle through in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy doesn’t mean they’re not worth reading.

I mean, sure, it’s mostly just the rules and regulations for living in the land of Israel, for the Jewish people. It sometimes seems like there’s a law for nearly everything except pet supplies. But that doesn’t mean they are of no value.

Christian believers talk long and often about wanting to live a godly life, or to live in the will and under the blessing of Adonai. A great and laudable goal, to be sure. But in the same breath, most of them not only reject the Torah, but rejoice in rejecting it. “Praise Adonai, we’re set free from the laws of Moshe!”

Ridiculous! These same believers claim, correctly, that Adonai is “the same yesterday, today and forever,” yet see no contradiction in the idea that “Jesus did away with the old laws of Moshe.”

Did away with them? Yeshua filled them up with meaning and kept them perfectly! If we are called to live a Yeshua-like life, how can anyone claim to be doing that while tossing aside the very laws He lived by, and indeed wrote in his role as the Word of haShem!

Anyone who claims to know how to live a life pleasing to Adonai, yet who reject the Torah that explains how to live such a life, is making up their own rules as they go. Such folks will have a lot to explain on their day before the judgment throne of Adonai.

It doesn’t require market research to determine scriptural truth, but the way most modern theologians have abandoned a plain reading of the text of the Tenahk and the B’rit haDeshah in favor of “more spiritual interpretations” of the text. While “more spiritual” sounds good on the face of it, the fruit such interpretations bear is another issue entirely.

At various times in the history of the Christian church, theologians have bent over backwards to come up with “spiritual meanings” to scriptural texts while ignoring the most obvious way to interpret such works. For example, some historically significant theologians have expounded on the importance of the trinity, drawing comparisons to other elements of life that come in threes; yet nowhere in the text is there any basis for comparing the “Holy Trinity” to, say, a baby, an adult and an old man. The comparison exists not in Scripture, but only in the theologian’s imagination. There is no basis, Scripturally, for the comparison.

Now, this sort of random comparison may have some illustrative value, but it is not a lesson that is inherent in the text of Scripture itself, which means that these theologians are substituting the wisdom of Adonai (apparent in the plain reading of the test) for their own philosophies.

Believers who attend worship services without taking notes and comparing their rabbi’s or pastor’s teaching and points directly to Scripture, and holding them accountable for their teachings when those teachings do not align with Scriptural teachings, are living hazardously. One would not walk into a malt shop, order a chocolate malt and drink it without a least checking to see if the malt was the appropriate brown color and smelled like chocolate, would they?

And yet, that is the equivalent of how many people interact with their church or temple experience these days.

Perhaps if Rabbi Shaul (the apostle Paul, to you non-messianic folks) had written about Samsonite luggage, he’d be easier for people today to understand. But then, he’d still be a first-century Jewish messianic speaking in the language and context of his day, not a modern ad writer, so even then there’d probably be a lot of room for misinterpretation.

The modern “church” - by which I mean most of Christianity - believes that Rabbi Shaul taught a lot of things he never actually taught. They believe Shaul taught that Yeshua’s work on the cross completely invalidated “the law,” for example. There are so many things wrong with that alone, it could take pages and pages to explain.

I’ll try to stick to the highlights.

First off, most Christians believe “the law” means “the Old Testement” or at least “the laws of Moshe.” Yet these are anti-Judaic presumptions. One must remember that Shaul was himself a first-century Jewish messianic, writing to other first-century Jewish messianic believers, about a first-century - make that THE first-century - Jewish messiah.

Yeshua’s whole ministry was based on the Torah and in fact, as the living word of haShem, the entire Torah is considered to be the very breath of haShem. Since Yeshua and haShem are one, why would he choose to invalidate and toss out his own words? HaShem is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, right? The argument makes no sense.

Translator Daniel Stern, author of the Jewish Complete Bible, Jewish complete New Testament, and Jewish Complete New Testement Commentary said it best when he explained that “the law” is a very bad translation of Paul’s intent. That’s why, in his translation, he replaces that word with a phrase that better captures Paul’s intent.

Instead of “set free from the law,” Stern more accurately translates it “set free from the perversion of Torah that leads to legalism.” You see, the “Old Testement” was not the problem; haShem’s words in the Torah are as relevant to messianic believers and Christians as anything Yeshua said while on Earth.

What happened is that some false teachers came along who added their own thoughts and traditions to haShem’s words, using Torah to gain spiritual and political control over all Israel, by going well above the Torah itself in an attempt to control the details of everyone’s life, and then placed their own teachings in authority and importance over Torah itself.

Anytime anyone tries to overrule haShem and his word in favor of their own ideas, we are certain to fall into error. That is what Shaul taught; that is what Yeshua railed against in the Jerusalem Temple, when he overturned the tables of the moneychangers.

One final thought: If one is really seeking to be “set free from the Law,” then what they are seeking to do is to be free to worship other Gods, forget the sabbath, make graven images, kill, commit adultery, bear false witness and, well… you know the rest.

By their fruits you shall know them. Christians constantly talk about wanting to “do God’s will” or “live a God-pleasing life,” but few churches really know what that is. Here’s a hint: haShem gave a pretty detailed explanation in the Torah of exactly what that means. HaShem is not our puppet who only cheerleads us on to victory in whatever we choose to do and believe. We are responsible for our actions, even as we are under grace. If we knowingly reject Torah, we are simultaneously rejecting the one who inspired Moshe to write it down.