Blogging about Prada shoes may be all the rage on other blogs; here, we prefer to concentrate on God’s Torah and his eternal truths as fulfilled through Messiah Yeshua. Here’s my 2010 take on the Torah portion known as Ki Tetse. Or listen to it! If you’d rather watch me in action, look for the streaming video!

Shabbat Shalom

Today’s Torah portion is called Ki Tetse, a Hebrew word that means, “When you go out.” The reading covers Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 10, through chapter 25, verse 19. You know, upon first glance, this week’s portion seems to have little to no unifying theme. It feels like an almost random collection of laws and decrees that the LORD, through Moses, is reviewing for the people before they enter the Promised Land.

It feels random because so many commands are covered in such a brief amount of space. The topics vary widely, ranging from how to properly acquire a bride who is the widow of a defeated foe, to the proper burial timing for bodies hung on trees, to looking out for your neighbor’s property, to what clothing is proper for a man or a woman to wear.

The rulings come rapidly, and in the barrage, barely even thematically arranged, and one can become a bit lost in the riches of so many commands. Yet is it a true observation that Ki Tetse, this portion of the Torah, is without a theme?

To be honest, I think that would be overstating it, because there is a theme, if you pay close attention, and it’s one that’s repeated after many of these commands are given. We read in:

Deuteronomy 22:22
If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.

The key is found in that last sentence. “You must purge the evil from Israel.” It is a phrase that is repeated over and over again in this week’s reading. My count may not be perfect, since wording varies from translation to translation, but I found this phrase, or minor variations on it, no less than five times in this week’s reading alone.

“You must purge the evil from among you.”

It is an important message for the children of Israel, because they have just lost an entire generation wandering in the desert, because that generation did not purge the evil from among them, but allowed evil to grow, take root, even flourish to the point of rebellion – not only against God, but even against their chosen mediator, Moses.

With Moses now at an age where God is about to call him to his ancestors, Moses will no longer be with the people. In the short term, Joshua will take his place; but no mediator who came after Moses matched the dedication to, and intimacy with, God that Moses enjoyed. As the generations spin out from Sinai, those who sit in Moses’ seat will drift further and further away from God’s very words, his very instructions.

So it is heavy on the heart of both God and Moses that the people be warned to avoid the same pitfalls that befell those who came before them, to avoid allowing evil to grow and dwell among them. That is the purpose of this review of the commands; God is reminding them of all sorts of things that can lead to a rebellious spirit. Some of these are dramatic and obvious; others are subtle. Yet they are all important.

Also, many of them have links to the mistakes of those who came before them! To prove this, let’s take a look at one such command. We read this in:

Deuteronomy 21:15-17
If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him.

Now, this is the command the LORD gives, but does this ring any bells for anyone? Does it seem contrary to anything we’ve encountered earlier in the Torah?

Well, the example of Jacob comes to mind. We all know the great love story of Jacob and Rachel. Jacob was so taken with Rachel that when he agreed to work for Laban seven years to earn her hand in marriage, the Torah says that those years of hard labor “seemed like only a few days” because he loved her so. Of course, Jacob is betrayed by Laban, who switches Rachel out for his older daughter Leah at the wedding supper. Laban eventually allows Jacob to have Rachel as well, in exchange for another seven years of labor, but the troubles have just begun.

Even though Jacob accepts Leah as his wife, as a necessary requirement to get the wife he truly loves, he never seems to love Leah. Seeing this, the LORD blesses her with far more children, to give her honor in place of the love Jacob withholds from her. In fact, Jacob gets six sons from Leah – half of the six tribes of Israel – while his beloved Rachel only bears him two sons – Joseph and Benjamin.

Yet despite having ten other sons from Leah, Leah’s maidservant and Rachel’s maidservant, most of them older than Joseph and Benjamin, who does Jacob favor? The sons of Rachel! That favoritism is what leads to the intense jealousy of Joseph’s other brothers toward Joseph; the special coat Jacob made for Joseph was symbolic of that favoritism.

You see, the actual first-born of Jacob was Reuben, the son of Leah. He is the one Jacob should have been favoring, by birthright standards. Yet Jacob did not do this, and it brought much trouble into the lives of both Jacob and Joseph, as well as the lives of his brothers.

Now, God can work miracles, so it is no surprise that Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt becomes the very instrument by which the LORD rescues Jacob and his sons from a deadly famine in the land, ensuring their survival.

Yet, through this command, the LORD is re-establishing the correctness of the command concerning the rights of the first-born, especially in the case where one wife is loved, the other unloved, and the first-born son comes through the unloved wife. God is a God of justice, and those who are unloved are shown love and given justice by God.

The example of Leah and Rachel’s bitter rivalry for favor in the eyes of Jacob is also believed to be an inspiration for why God commanded, in:

Leviticus 18:18
‘Do not take your wife’s sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.

What God is showing us here is that while the patriarchs are to be admired for trusting the LORD, they were not without sin; they were, like us, merely people, as vulnerable to falling short of God’s standard as any of us.

While some of the commands may remind us of the poor choices of some of the patriarchs, other commands are clarifications of how justice is to be carried out in Israel. Israel is meant by God to be a reflection of the World to Come.

For example, we read of commands where farmers are told not to pick through their harvest fields and vineyards a second time, but to leave what remains for the poor, the widow and the orphan, as well as commands not to charge interest on money loaned to a fellow Israelite.

Why do these commands exist? To show us that in God’s kingdom, no one will go without, no one will go hungry, everyone will be provided for, and no one will be cheated or made to fall into a trap of debt from which there is no escape. As a picture of God’s kingdom, these commands demonstrate in concrete ways what God means by His justice.

Purging evil from the land comes up especially in the commands regarding sexual crimes such as adultery and rape; the penalties are stiff and severe because the LORD wants those who enter into marriage to remain there and to treat their spouses with respect and justice and faithfulness.

Yet there is at least one command that deserves special attention in this week’s reading, because the biggest purpose of the command seems to be a shadow of the future. You’ll see what I mean as I read this passage from:

Deuteronomy 21:22-23
If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.

On its own, this commandment does not seem to fit, even in a portion as varied in topic as this week’s reading. Whenever the Israelites are commanded by God to put someone to death, it was most commonly by stoning; they were not in the habit of putting people to death by hanging them on a tree.

This, of course, is where God shows His sovereignty, uniformity and consistency over all of Scripture. Now, dates for the Exodus and the entry of Israel into Jerusalem forty years later vary widely, anywhere from 1200 to 1600 years before the time of Yeshua.

However long it may have been, the point is that this command was offered up by the LORD well before His promised Messiah arrived on the scene. And yet, it is because of this command, in part, that Yeshua was able to fulfill his mission as Israel’s Messiah.

You see, to complete His Messianic mission, Yeshua needed to be buried three days and three nights in the earth before rising again, in order to fulfill the sign of Jonah. Yet taking criminals off an execution tree was not the way of the Roman rulers of Yeshua’s time; they preferred to leave such criminals hang there for long periods, the bodies rotting and decaying, to intimidate anyone considering defying Roman rule.

Exceptions, however, were made during Jewish high feast days. Rome was more lenient toward Jewish customs than the Greeks before them had been, and one of the concessions made prior to important feast days like Passover was that they would allow the Israelites’ laws to be observed in deference to the Roman laws on purity matters, mostly because it kept the peace in an occupied territory.

Such was the case when Yeshua was placed on the execution stake; if Passover had not been imminent, it is likely his body would have been left up for days, in accordance with Roman rule. Yet because of Passover, the Jewish law was given deference and the body of Yeshua was allowed to be buried before sundown.

What Jewish law created this provision for Yeshua? This one, given 1200 to 1600 years before Yeshua even arrived, and long before the Roman Empire, which regularly put criminals to death on a tree, even existed.

God knew what was coming, and so we have this command. “If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day.”

We can now clearly see that even in this seemingly random collection of rulings for entering the Promised Land, we can find a shadow of God’s plan Yeshua the Messiah, who was in God’s mind and plan from the time of the giving of the Torah, and even from the very beginning of time. And it is ultimately Yeshua who can fully and finally purge the evil from among us.

Shabbat Shalom.

Well, it looks like I have some writing to do!

In fact, I may have so much writing to do that if I were to print it all out, I might need stainless steel drums to hold it all and keep the paper dry. (Hey, what can I say? This has been a soggy summer in Minnesota.)

I have two Torah commentaries coming up; one this weekend on Ki Tetse, and one two weeks after that on the double-portion of Nitsavim and VaYelech. That will be nice.

However, I’ve been invited by Rabbi Stan to do one of the two fill-in sermons at Sar Shalom while he is on his Israel trip. That’s quite an honor, and tells me I must have done OK filling in for him back in July. That will come up in mid-October, so there’s plenty of time on that one.

Of course, I have a children’s curriculum I need to finish writing, and then I have six or seven eBooks I’m working on, based on past Torah commentaries and sermons I’ve written, but deeply expanded from what one can find for free here on my blog.

This is in addition to the fact that I’m working on a novel as well. So yeah; I have a LOT of writing to do.

Some folks liked the streaming video I did of my repentance sermon, so here’s one of my R’eh commentary from about a week ago. Enjoy!

Well, here it is, my 2010 commentary on the parashah known as R’eh. It seemed to go over well. It’s something even those headed to medical assistant school should read carefully! So enjoy the commentary below. Or listen to it! If you’d rather watch me in action, look for the streaming video!

Shabbat Shalom.

Our parashah for today is R’eh, a Hebrew word that means, “See.” This portion covers Deuteronomy chapter eleven, verse twenty-six through chapter sixteen, verse seventeen. You know, this week’s reading contains what I think is one of the most important passages in the Torah, especially as it applies to believers today. Before I just read it for you, however, allow me to set the scene.

As we have learned the last few weeks, the Book of Deuteronomy is sort of a history lesson, a review of the entire Torah. It is basically an address by Moses to the children of Israel as two eras in their journey are about to come to an end. The first era that’s ending is their time of wandering in the desert, being supernaturally kept there by God. The wicked generation that rebelled against the LORD and against Moses have all died off, just as the LORD promised they would. Those left are a new generation with little to no memory of life in Egypt. Nearly all they’ve known their whole life is being supernaturally kept by God in the wilderness, where all their needs were met by God directly.

The other era that’s coming to an end is Moses’ time as the sole mediator between the LORD and the Israelites. Remember, their fathers had rejected hearing the voice of the LORD directly at Mount Sinai, asking that God use Moses as their mediator.

But Moses was just a man, and now, at nearly 120 years of age, his time with the people of Israel is drawing to a close. Moses has been told by God he cannot enter the Promised Land with his people because of what he did when he struck the rock, rather than speaking to it as God instructed to bring forth water for the people.

And so now, Moses is standing before the people of Israel and addressing them for a final time; that’s what this book of Deuteronomy is all about. He is teaching this generation all that has come before them and brought them to this momentous day, as they are about to inherit a land first promised to them hundreds of years earlier, by God to their father Abraham.

Now, the land they are about to enter, the land of Israel, may be promised to them, but it is not vacant. There are others living in this land, a people God has decided to cast out of the land because they have done detestable things while living in it, as well as because it is promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Part of entering and taking over an occupied land, of course, is that even after the military battles are won and they begin to take possession of it, they have a further problem: the land will still be filled with the possessions of the previous inhabitants, and that includes shrines, temples and memorials to the false gods worshiped by the people there that God is casting out of the land.

As our parashah opens, God, through Moses, is offering instructions on how they must tear down all these shrines, temples and memorials and start from scratch, and God shares His reason for this as we pick up in:

Deuteronomy 12:4-5
You must not worship the LORD your God in their way. But you are to seek the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go;

Let me read verse four again: “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.”

What did this mean to the early Israelites? It meant exactly what God was instructing them to do in the verses before this statement; they must tear down all the temples, monuments and memorials made to other gods, to completely destroy them and start from scratch. In other words, they were not to come into the land and say, “Oh, here’s a nice little monument to Ba’al. It’s here already. Let’s rededicate it to the LORD, rather than building a new one.”

God makes it clear here; that’s not what he wants the children of Israel to do. “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.”

If there’s any room left for possible doubt as to the LORD’s meaning, he restates it again in:

Deuteronomy 12:13-14
Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. Offer them only at the place the LORD will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I command you.

What this verse teaches us is that not only were the children of Israel being instructed not to recycle temples and monuments constructed for other gods, but that God was going to choose a specific place where He wanted to be worshiped in unity by all the people, and they were not to perform their worship just anywhere they pleased. And there are promises and blessings God goes on to make, if they follow his instructions and obey him in this.

And to really underline His point, God repeats this wish a third time, this time with more detail, as we read in:

Deuteronomy 12:29-31
The LORD your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates.

So is God being vague and speaking in riddles here? Clearly not. He is expressing a very clear wish: He does not want the people who fear and love Him to worship Him in ways that other gods are worshiped, at places and facilities and times that other gods are worshiped. He repeats over and over His desire: that those who love Him obey all His instructions and observe everything He has taught them. That includes where, when and how He is to be worshiped. This includes all the instructions that have come before, which encompasses the Sabbath He created, the monthly New Moon festivals, and all his yearly feasts and festival days.

God asks us to do just a few simple things. When you consider all He has done for these Israelites; bringing them out of bondage in Egypt, giving them the commands and the Torah, supernaturally keeping them in the desert for forty years and delivering them to a land promised to them through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob… or even by extension all God does for us today, through the Messiah Yeshua… considering all of this… is God really being unreasonable and demanding? Is God really asking too much of us, placing a burden on us we cannot bear? Or are his expectations reasonable? Could it be that simply asking us not to worship Him in the way other people worship their gods is really not that overwhelming a request?

Is it too much to ask the Israelites not to use temples to Ba’al as places of worship to the LORD, the one true God? Is it too much to ask that we worship God on the occasions he asks us to, rather than doing “as we do here today, everyone as he sees fit,” as it says in Deuteronomy 12:8?

Perhaps we can begin to understand why God was so opposed to being worshiped in the same places, times and ways as other gods if we look briefly at the practices of one of the chief false gods of those who inhabited Israel whom the LORD was evicting through the children of Israel.

I want to read you a portion from an article I found about Ba’al worship on the:

Jewish Encyclopedia.com
The noxious elements in such Ba’al Worship were not simply the degradation of the LORD and the enthronement in His place of a baseless superstition. The chief evil arose from the fact that the Ba’als were more than mere religious fantasies. They were made the symbols of the reproductive powers of nature, and thus their worship ministered to sexual indulgences, which it at the same time legalized and encouraged. Further, there was placed side by side with the Ba’al a corresponding female symbol, the Ashtoreth and the relation between the two deities was set forth as the example and the motive of unbridled sensuality. The evil became all the worse when in the popular view the LORD Himself was regarded as one of the Ba’als and the chief of them (Hosea 2:16)

So what do we learn here? They memorials, temples and other places of worship are full of what? Statues and carvings depicting male and female genitalia! Walking into the land of Israel when it was under the control of these Ba’al worshipers what probably not vastly different from walking into the average adult bookstore! Can a person dedicated to God lead a life of holiness and obedience to God’s instructions when surrounded by such things? It would be like trying to hold an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a bar! And just as successful, I’d imagine.

You see, God is not arbitrary. He always has reasons for everything He does, everything He asks of us. We may not always understand it, or know what those reasons are, but he does have reasons!

Yet there are some who demand to know what God’s reasons are for each and every command; it’s like they feel God owes them an explanation for everything. And it’s not an uncommon sentiment; the book of Job revolved around such questions.

In the end, though, does God really owe us reason upon reason upon reason for each of his commands, until we finally run out of questions and agree to obey?

For example, this week’s Torah portion also covers God’s commands for which animals are clean to eat, and which are forbidden as food. For example, as we read in:

Deuteronomy 14:3-6
Do not eat any detestable thing. These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain sheep. You may eat any animal that has a split hoof divided in two and that chews the cud.

And what do we often hear? We are trained and taught that this simple instruction of God is part of what Yeshua did away with, something that no longer applies. Or we hear the other side of the coin and come up with all sorts of rationalizations in favor of observing it. We talks about benefits like a longer life, better health and fresher breath! (OK, maybe not fresher breath.) Or we discuss about the lack of refrigeration back in Moses’ day and how the meat of unclean animals spoiled more quickly than the meat of clean animals, which is pure science fiction. You can leave a smorgasbord of clean and unclean meats out in the hot desert sun, and they all start to stink pretty quickly.

I mean, if you can imagine any possible made-up reason why God might command people not to eat unclean animals, someone out there has claimed to figure it out: this is the secret wisdom behind God’s command!

I hope I’m not being too presumptuous if I suggest a simpler reason. The reason we shouldn’t eat unclean meat, the reason we shouldn’t worship God in the same way other people worship false gods, the reason we should worship God on the occasions and in the places He has asked rather than times of our own choosing, all boils down to one simple reason:

The Creator of the Universe, who as done so much for us, has asked us to do these few, simple things. He’s asked us to follow His instructions and obey His commands; not anyone else’s. That’s it. That’s all. It’s that simple.

Shabbat Shalom.

My R’eh (See) commentary is in the bag; I delivered it with the revisions Rabbi Stan suggested and the whole thing went well. Sure, it may not feel as secure as an RFID blocking wallet, but I always feel better once I’ve delivered a sermon or commentary and know, internally, that it was the best I was capable of.

I have text, audio and video all on the way, with the text coming sooner than the audio or video. Stay tuned!

Some people love to read about technical things like DuraMax Titan Metal Storage Sheds 50131; the Torah’s more my speed, however.

I completed my commentary for R’eh (a Hebrew word that means “See” and is the name of this week’s Torah portion) in only a few hours last night; Stan even got his feedback to me shortly after I emailed it to him this morning and I immediately incorporated his suggestions.

It’s becoming really comfortable to write Torah commentaries these days; that’s because I’ve been through all the parashahs several times now as a reader, and at least once each as a commentator, so I’m more at ease with finding my way around each parashah, isolating something of interest, and teaching it as best I’m able.

We’ll see how it goes over this Shabbat; look for it to get added to this space on Sunday or thereabouts.

It’s time to start getting serious about R’eh, which I’ll be commenting on this coming Shabbat. I’ve read through it again and need to start praying through it. I have a R’eh commentary I did last year, but I’d rather not repeat myself; it’s a rich parashah with a lot more to it than one commentary can cover.

Fortunately, I don’t need any scanning software to look up source material these days; my OnlineBible.net software fills the bill most of the time, and there’s always BibleGateway.com. There are some things that are still handy to scan in, but fortunately most print stuff is digital these days. Makes research a lot easier.

August is going to be a busy month for me; I’ll be doing fill-in Torah commentaries twice!

The parashahs in question are R’eh and Ki Tetse, so that ought to be fun. I’m always honored to fill in for other Torah commentators when they can’t be around. I’ve only tackled these two Deuteronomy portions once before, so there’s plenty of material to mine, definitely some diamonds in the rough.

Plus, since I am now working on a collection of my commentaries into expanded essay for for eBook release, the more time I spend pondering any parashah, the better.

Well, I promised streaming video, right? Here it is!

Sometimes we need the spiritual version of natural colon cleansers; something to detoxify our spirit, cleanse us of all the garbage, and help restore us to unity with God. That’s what my sermon on repentance was like, I think. I wasn’t sure how it would be received when I wrote it, but the response was very encouraging; at least a half-dozen people came forward for prayer during the worship set that followed. Nice to see God move in people’s lives. Enjoy the sermon below. Or listen to it! Or, maybe watch it! Or watch it smaller!

Shabbat Shalom.

Today, I’d like to talk about something that is hard to talk about. It’s hard because, whenever to teach about something, you had better be sure you’re living up to what you teach. And this is a hard one to live up to for any of us: repentance. The word repentance comes to us from the Hebrew word:

STRONG’S H8666 תְּשׁוּבַת TESHUBAH
1. Answer, be expired, return.
2. From shuwb; a recurrence (of time or place); a reply (as returned) — answer, be expired, return.

So repentance is an answer to something, and a return to something. It is also an expiration of something. What is repentance a return to? What is repentance an answer to? And what is repentance the expiration of? We’ll get to the answers before we’re done today. Yet before we get there, I believe it’s valuable to take a look at what repentance has come to mean to believers today.

The reason I want to explore our modern context for repentance first, rather than explore this concept’s original context, is because repentance today is primarily considered a “church word.” What is a “church word?” Well, it’s a word that’s largely used in church and not often used outside of it. Therefore, I think it’s useful to look at how this word is understood today, so we can examine if our understanding of repentance matches up with the Biblical understanding of it.

Lately, I’ve come across some rather … unique views on repentance held by various believers. These views concern me.

I recently had a conversation with a person who attends a mainstream Christian church and this is what she told me: She said, “You know, my understanding is that Jesus lives inside us and He does all our repenting for us. He does it better than we ever could, so we don’t have to worry about it.”

Here’s another take someone recently shared with me: He said, “Repentance is valuable when it comes to accepting Yeshua (Jesus) as LORD. But once you’re saved, you don’t need to keep repenting because then it becomes YOUR work, not God’s, and you make repentance something that replaces God’s grace. Jesus forgave us once, for everything, so we only have to repent once when we first come to him.”

Do either of these mindsets sound familiar? Unfortunately, they’re not as uncommon as one might hope. Each of these statements, it seems to me, sprout from the same core mentality. This mentality grows from an extreme emphasis on the concept of grace; one that lacks a balanced view of God. And of course, here at Sar Shalom, we know exactly where to look when we want a balanced view of God. We go to where He defined himself for Moses in:

EXODUS 34:6-7
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

So, as we read here, God is not all grace, nor is He all judgment and holiness. He is both, at the same time. God, by his very nature, is both completely forgiving and completely holy. And so this should guide us as we look at different views of God; any teaching that does not maintain this definition God gave of Himself is very likely a misleading teaching.

With these outlooks on repentance I’ve heard from various believers lately, the most basic question that comes to my mind is: where is the Scriptural basis for these ideas?

If indeed Yeshua living inside us does all our repenting for us, there ought to be at least a couple verses that describe Him as doing this, shouldn’t there? There ought to be some indication in the teachings of Yeshua, or the letters of the apostles, that we no longer need to repent because Yeshua will do it for us once he lives in us.

Yet there is no such verse to be found. Paul makes reference to Messiah living in us, but he never suggests that Yeshua does our repenting for us so we don’t have to. Can you see how this false teaching is built? It begins with a grain of truth: as believers, Yeshua now lives in us. But then someone comes along and adds human logic, human-invented ideas, to that truth, until it veers off to the right or to the left of exactly what Scripture tells us.

It’s the same with the second mindset on repentance that I described. Yes, it’s true; Yeshua died once for all our sins! But does that, by extension, mean we don’t have to repent from sins we commit after coming to salvation? Does it mean we’re forgiven even before we sin? Does it, therefore, mean that we now have a license to sin because, as Paul seems to indicate when you take him out of context, “wherever sin abounded, grace abounded much more?”

Paul had a response to this very mindset. We find it in:

ROMANS 6:1-2
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

Yet the objection could be made: Craig, how can you be sure? How can you know that our understanding is more accurate than someone else’s? Well, let’s be like the Bereans today. Let’s take a closer look at what the whole of the Bible teaches us about repentance and its importance and role in the life of a believer. Let’s see for ourselves what Scripture supports and what it does not, and then let’s believe that.

Now that we know some of the mistaken impressions that are circulating among some believers today about the nature of repentance, let’s begin to see what the Bible itself teaches us about it, and cast aside anything that doesn’t fit with that Biblical understanding. One of the earliest occurrences of the concept of repentance comes to us from:

I KINGS 8:46-50
“When they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—and you become angry with them and give them over to the enemy, who takes them captive to his own land, far away or near; and if they have a change of heart in the land where they are held captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their conquerors and say, ‘We have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly’; and if they turn back to you with all their heart and soul in the land of their enemies who took them captive, and pray to you toward the land you gave their fathers, toward the city you have chosen and the temple I have built for your Name; then from heaven, your dwelling place, hear their prayer and their plea, and uphold their cause. And forgive your people, who have sinned against you; forgive all the offenses they have committed against you,

Now, how does that measure up to how we see repentance practiced by believers today? Not very well, right? Too often, our impression of repentance is limited to simply telling God, “Ooops. We messed up. Sorry about that. Thanks for forgiving me through Yeshua!”

But that’s not what we see here, is it? No, this sort of repentance is no simple, “Ooops.” It involves what? First of all, a change of heart. Also, pleading with God from a position of brokenness for His mercy and forgiveness. And importantly, as I think will become clearer by the time we’re done, it involves agreeing with God in detail that He is right, and we are wrong.

Now, this is no attempt to simplify the steps given in I Kings into some formula that we can satisfy in a quick, ninety-second prayer and then move on in our lives like nothing ever happened. Remember, we are called to be in relationship with God, and when we sin, that relationship is broken.

Think about it. How many of us accept half-hearted apologies that only go skin deep, that make it obvious that the same offense is likely to occur again … perhaps the same day… even the same hour? Yes, we’re called to forgive until we lose count, but even if we do accept a shallow apology, do we trust that person has undergone a change of heart? Not likely. If we can know this, limited as we are with our imperfect, human understanding, then how much more must the Creator of the universe not be fooled by shallow apologies?

So repentance is more than a simple, “I’m sorry,” right? But we have more to learn about it. I particularly like this insight found in the book of Job, where it is written in:

JOB 34:31-33
“Suppose a man says to God, ‘I am guilty but will offend no more. Teach me what I cannot see; if I have done wrong, I will not do so again.’ Should God then reward you on your terms, when you refuse to repent?

The reason I like this passage is that this is how many of us would prefer to relate to God. We want the blessings the LORD has to offer, but we want it on OUR terms, not His. We don’t want to have to repent, or even to be told we need to repent. We want simple, uplifting, inspirational messages that can be summed up in bumper-sticker phrases like, “I’m OK – You’re OK,” or “Don’t worry, be happy!”

Does God reward us on our own terms? Does God reward us when we refuse to repent?

To answer this, we have to know exactly how important the concept of repentance was to Yeshua Himself, don’t we? We get a clue to how Yeshua valued repentance in:

MATTHEW 4:17
From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

Now this passage comes from early in Yeshua’s public ministry. He began to preach “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near,” we are told. And is this a one-time message? Not at all, because the passage tells us he did this, “from that time on.” This indicates repentance is a theme that became a hallmark of Yeshua’s ministry, a message he’d return to over and over again. We also learn this from:

MARK 6:12-13
They [the disciples] went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

So repentance wasn’t just a theme of Yeshua’s ministry, but it was the central theme he taught those who followed him to teach as well.

So, was Yeshua unique in his emphasis on repentance? Not really. Jewish tradition tells us that Maimonides the Rambam taught that, “All the prophets preach repentance.” This saying came to be known as Maimonides’ dictum.

Furthermore, Yochanan the Immerser – better known as John the Baptist – also preached repentance as a central theme, and he taught it fearlessly, as we read in:

MATTHEW 3:7-9
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.

Now, this passage is rich with significance. We see here that, unlike our current Western mentality, repentance is not merely agreeing with God for a moment in prayer that He is right and we are wrong. It goes deeper than that, because he tells these Pharisees, “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” So repentance can’t be just a one-time action; it is something that will continue to manifest itself throughout your life, if you continue to walk in it. This passage also indicates to us that our identity – be it as a child of Abraham, or by extension, as a follower of Yeshua – does not make us immune to the need for repentance.

Now, up to this point, what I’ve shared is something most believers would agree with. Most people get this. But the objection that begins to be raised at this point is, “Craig, what you’re saying is fine. But as far as I can see, repentance only applies to sinners, not those of us who are believers, who are already in Messiah.”

John’s words start to break down that concept. Let’s see what else we can find. Here’s what we read in:

ROMANS 2:3-5
So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.

Is Paul’s letter to the Romans addressed to believers, here, or those who are still lost, still outside of life in Messiah? Traditionally, it is believed that Paul was writing Romans to the first-century Messianic community he’d help establish in Rome, and addressing issues that had popped up in his absence. But if that’s not clear enough, let’s take a look at perhaps the clearest example of repentance being a topic addressed to believers. The author of Hebrews writes this in:

HEBREWS 6:4-6
It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

After reading this passage, can there be any doubt that repentance is a topic that does apply to all of us as believers and not merely those who are still lost in their sin? You see, when someone falls away from Yeshua, or slips back into sin, what’s the first thing most believers say?

“Oh, well, they must never have been saved! They didn’t really know Yeshua anyway, because no one who REALLY knows him could act like that.”

Let me be clear that this idea that believers can never fall away is simply not supported in Scripture. Can you name anyone of whom it can be said that they have been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, shared in the Ruach haKodesh, tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age – and yet still be considered an unbeliever who “was never really saved anyway?”

If so, then was Moses “never really saved” when he struck the rock, rather than speaking to it as commanded? Moses is called God’s friend … was he never really saved? Let me answer that one: No! He was in a relationship with the creator of the universe, and Moses – the friend of God – was still susceptible to sin! So what makes the difference for Moses?

Repentance.

Moses was continually willing to acknowledge when he was wrong and God was right. He never fought with God over it for any length of time. He didn’t let pride get in the way of admitting his sins. And if any man has ever had a reason to let pride get in the way of his humility before the LORD, it was Moses!

I mean, Moses was the person God used to lead the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt! He had a following of over a million people who followed him into a desert for forty years – not even the most popular mega-church leaders today have that kind of following. And yet Moses was willing to repent when he fell into error.

How can any of us, who have accomplished so much less, be any less willing to humble ourselves, set aside our foolish pride, and begin to admit at the core of our being that God is right and we are wrong? It’s essential. It’s so essential that if we’re not willing to do so, we could even miss out on Messiah. We read this in:

ISAIAH 59:20
“The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,” declares the LORD.

You see, what is true is that God’s spirit, his Ruach, his spirit of truth, is in us; but He is the spirit of truth, so he cannot and will not continue to abide in us if we continue to abide in rebellion and deception, if we continue to embrace pride over truth. He comes for those who repent, not those who justify themselves!

There’s a Jewish tradition I really appreciate that paints a solid picture of this struggle we can go through when it comes to humbling ourselves to the point of real repentance. It comes to us in:

TA’AN 16A
“He that confesses his sin and still clings to it is likened to a man that holds in his hand a defiling object; though he bathes in all the waters of the world he is not cleansed; but the moment he casts the defiling object from him a single bath will cleanse him, as it is said (Prov. 28:13): He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”

You see, to truly be walking in repentance, we can’t hold on to the sins making us unclean. We can’t claim holiness, but continue to walk in rebellion. We have to cast the source of our sinful behaviors from us, in order to truly experience the forgiveness, mercy and grace of God. We have to let go.

You see, God doesn’t play games when it comes to repentance. He’s not fooled by them. This is a concept even the rabbis understood, as we find in another Jewish tradition from:

MISHNAH, YOMA 85B:
If one says: I shall sin and repent, sin and repent, no opportunity will be given to him to repent. [If one says]: I shall sin and the Day of Atonement will procure atonement for me, the Day of Atonement procures for him no atonement.

You know, a lack of repentance can be the cause behind a lot of things that hold us back from truly experiencing and knowing God face-to-face, from truly knowing his joy and seeing that joy manifest itself in our lives.

How many believers do you know, who claim to know and love God, but as you see them interact more and more, it becomes apparent that they are people who are bitter, angry, scared, easily offended, short-tempered, untrusting … the list goes on. Does that sound like the gifts of the Ruach haKodesh to you? Of course not.

So, what’s holding these people back? Well, it can vary from believer to believer. But there are some very common themes.

Sometimes, it can be a wounded spirit from what we perceive to be unanswered prayer.

For example, how many of us have gone through this: There’s something really, sincerely important to us, so we pray God will respond in a certain way. But what we’re praying for isn’t what comes about. Maybe what we prayed about was asking God for something outside of his nature, like bringing a person to salvation who has no interest in God, or making someone love us who doesn’t, or making someone who is leaving us stay, or allowing someone to survive and be healed, but that doesn’t happen.

We tend to treat God like a genie in a bottle sometimes, thinking that anything we pray for, He’ll grant us. But that’s not how Yeshua modeled prayer for us, is it? No, He showed us to pray for His perfect will over our own. But when God’s will doesn’t match ours, do we accept that He knows more than us, or do we begin to blame him? Down that path lies bitterness, anger, rebellion, sin and death.

Here’s another thing that can get in the way, one I know well from my own walk with God: the victim mentality. How often do we refuse to repent of our own actions because we feel we have been wronged and our actions are only in response to that?

How often do we justify what we know deep down to be sin because, “Hey, this other person did it to me first,” or “I’m only doing to them what they did to me.” This attitude builds walls between God and us, because it is literally arguing with God about whether we’ve sinned or not! Does God reward us on our terms when refuse to repent? I wouldn’t count on it.

Sometimes, the barrier can even be justifying current actions because of past actions. This week, as I was preparing this message, I got a call from someone looking for advice. He told me, “I’m Messianic and I want to get a tattoo with the name of God – Y H W H. That’s not going to endanger my salvation, is it?”

I told him, “No, it’s not a salvation issue, but it is an obedience issue.”

He responded, “Leviticus, right? OK, so here’s my other option. I could get a tattoo with my son’s name. Would that be OK?”
I said, “I think maybe you misunderstood me. It’s not the name of God or the name of your son that’s an issue. The Torah forbids getting a tattoo.”

He said, “What if I got the name of God put on me in Hebrew? Yod-hey-vav-hey?”

By this point, the conversation reminded me of Balaam’s experience with Balak… “Well, OK, maybe we’ll get a different response if we go over here and try it from this angle.”

So I told him, “Look, Leviticus 19:28 says, ‘Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.’ You can either obey, or disobey. The choice is yours.”

So finally he told me, “Well, it’s too late for that. I already have a ton of tattoos. And in fact, I’ve used them to start conversations and seen people come to the LORD through them.”

I told him it was never too late to start obeying by not adding more tattoos to the ones he already had, but the conversation was soon over after that.

None of us are all that different when it comes right down to it, are we? We know what God commands, what He asks us to obey … and rather than bring our obedience in line to His word, we would rather justify our rebellion, claiming that what we do now doesn’t matter because we’ve made the same bad choices in the past, or we’ve used our mistakes to share the Gospel with people so they’re not really mistakes and it’s OK to continue making the same mistakes. It’s all deception.

No matter what our roadblocks are, though, we – even and maybe especially we believers – are called to repent. When I began this message we looked at the definition for the Hebrew word repentance comes from – teshubah – and learned that, Biblically, it indicates an answer to something, a return to something, and an expiration of something. In light of our study, I think we can now fill in the blanks here.

Repentance – real, Biblical repentance – is the expiration of what? Of our fighting with God over whether something is sin or not; it is the expiration of our rebellion against God’s righteous rulings.

Repentance – real, Biblical repentance – is our answer to what? To the conviction that comes from the Holy Spirit – the Ruach haKodesh – the Spirit of Truth letting us know we’ve fallen short of God’s standard.

Repentance – real, Biblical repentance – is a return to what? To being in unity with God, placing Him back to His rightful position as the ruler of our lives.

Only when we cast aside that which defiles us can we be made clean once again in God’s sight. If we’re capable and culpable of sin, repentance is required. Only then can it be said of us that we have not treated the grace Yeshua won for us through His death and resurrection like a cheap, dime-store ring made of cubic zirconia and fool’s gold, but have treated it like a ring of great value, made from the finest, purest gold, and the rarest, best-cut diamonds.

Repentance is our reasonable response to the spirit of God when we stray from the truth. Only a fool would refuse that reasonable response. I’ll close with this:

HEBREWS 6:9-12
Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case—things that accompany salvation. God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

That is our prayer for everyone here today, for everyone who hears or reads this message.

Shabbat Shalom.

I’m starting my work on my big upcoming sermon on repentance.

Filling the time up has never been a problem for me; keeping the scope focused enough to stay within the time limit is more frequently a challenge, as I’m a bit wordy… something I’m sure anyone who has read my teachings has noticed.

Another challenge for me is procrastination; as much as I love research and teaching and writing, when the time comes to start writing, just about everything seems more appealing than sitting down and typing it out, whether it’s browsing movie titles on Netflix or skimming a new site like www.redenvelope.com.

Either way, though, I almost always get the message written and handed in on time. Hopefully this time will be no exception. My desktop PC is finally back up and running; OnlineBible.net software is installed and loaded with all the tools I need.

All I really need to do now is pray and write and pray and write until it’s done.