Not quite Jewish, not quite Christian … totally commited to Torah and Messiah Yeshua.
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
I have a sermon coming up.
After brainstorming, prayer and running things by Stan, I finally settled on a theme: repentance.
The reason the topic occurred to me is that it seems like lately I’m running into more and more bad teachings about repentance. I mean, some people actually claim repentance isn’t necessary for believers.
Oh, really?
No, not really. But I won’t go into detail on why just yet. Gotta save something for the sermon, right?
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
This opportunity to do a Torah commentary came up suddenly. Right through mid-week before the Shabbat, another fine Messianic Rabbi In Training (MRIT) was scheduled to do this one; he even had it written. But then he fell under the weather and needed a quick replacement. The rabbi called me Thursday night, during my men’s Torah study, to ask if I could fill in and assure me I could just use last years’ if I needed to. I told him I could probably do better than that.
I got the call around 8:30 PM Thuesday night. I didn’t get home and settled in front of my keyboard until two hours later. By 1 AM, I was done. Good thing we stayed on-topic in our Torah study; the portion was fresh in my mind and all I really needed to do was transfer some of what we had discussed into commentary form. It may not be exciting, but this is what I came up with. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
This week, we have a double portion for our weekly reading. It includes B’har, a Hebrew word that means, “On the mount,” as well as the portion known as “B’chukotai,” a Hebrew word that means, “In my statutes.” This double portion covers Leviticus chapter 25 through Leviticus chapter 27, and brings to an end our time in Leviticus for this Torah year.
This week’s reading covers the concept of giving even the land the people of Israel will enter, the land God has promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a Sabbath rest.
LEVITICUS 25:2B-5
‘When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath to the L-RD. For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a Sabbath of rest, a Sabbath to the L-RD. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest.
Now, when many people look at this passage, they comment on how marvelous it is, how it shows God’s wisdom that modern agricultural science bears out the idea of giving the land a rest from producing crops is such a good idea; they cite the science of crop stress, soil enrichments and all these wonderful facts about farming that confirm that God knew what he was talking about in this passage.
Well, I’m not here to talk to you about how wonderful it is that God knew all this. Of course He knew it! He’s God! I’m here today to mention how sad it is that it took us well over 3,000 years of the science of man, from the time of the Exodus to figure out that God was right all along!
Of course, I think it’s also important to dig deeper than that. You see, God’s not just some cosmic farmer handing down crop management tips from his heavenly Monsanto office. God is going well beyond general truths here; he’s laying down some very special promises to the people of Israel, and they are conditional promises, based on the obedience or disobedience the people of Israel display in response to the L-RD’s commands.
You see, this is not merely about agriculture here. This is actually a teaching the L-RD is giving about how completely He wants us to observe His Sabbaths. You see, it’s not just enough for us to observe it as believers. He wants His Sabbaths to be observed by all of creation, a point he makes clear here by pointing out that even the Promised Land itself should rest; not only on the seventh day of the week, when we are to do no regular work, but in the seventh year, when we are to rest the land for an entire year.
Now, some people might read this and say, OK, we get the point. Observing the Sabbath is a good idea. Got it. But do we really have to observe a year of not working the land once every seventh year? I mean, c’mon, that would ruin the economy, people would starve.
No, they wouldn’t. God’s promises for both the seventh year Sabbath for the land, as well as the fiftieth-year Jubilee, show two important things: first, God will provide; and second, these really are special promises for His people as they enter the Promised Land, and not just good general agricultural principals that would work anywhere in the world. We read one of these promises in:
LEVITICUS 25:20-22
You may ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?” I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.
Now that’s a promise that definitely will not work just anywhere! I mean, go ahead and try it if you want to; find some secular farmers who don’t observe the L-RD’s commands and have them work the land six out of every seventh year, being sure not to work the land at all in the seventh year, but in no other way honoring God or observing His commands. I can almost guarantee you that their sixth-year crop will NOT be a triple harvest.
Remember, God’s promising to offer His people this triple harvest in the sixth year, before they actually observe the seventh-year agricultural Sabbath. The promise and provision will be obvious, giving His people confidence to indeed follow through with their obedience. The point is, these are special promises by the L-RD to His people, not just some guidebook to farming in Israel.
Yet there will still be doubters, people who say, “C’mon, I mean, we’re talking about dirt here. We’re supposed to let dirt rest? God can’t be serious, can He?”
Well, let’s take a look at just how serious God is about this command. We find this in:
LEVITICUS 26:33-35
I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. Then the land will enjoy its Sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the Sabbaths you lived in it.
So, what God is saying here is that while His people are certainly free to either obey His command for the agricultural Sabbath, or to disobey, there will be a penalty if they ignore this command: God will scatter his people among the surrounding nations, lay waste to all that was built there, and the land will lay desolate until all of the agricultural Sabbath years and Jubilee years they failed to observe have been fulfilled. I’d say this passage at least suggests that the L-RD takes this command many people read past quite seriously.
The parashah goes on from here to establish rules for observing the fiftieth-year Jubilee, in which those who sold property are allowed to return to it, those who are in bondage are allowed to go free, and those who are in debt are forgiven their financial burdens.
Once we enter chapter 26, however, the theme changes to the topic of obedience versus disobedience, and here is where we delve into the part of this week’s teaching that focuses on the life application aspect of these commands. Why is that important?
Well, how many here are farmers? Not many? OK, how many of you raising your hands are actually farmers in the land of Israel. Boom. Nobody left. Right?
You see, while agricultural commands are the topic, what applies to us all is our willingness to either agree with God, that His rules and instructions are right and just, and follow through with that by obeying Him – or to disagree with Him and walk in rebellion and disobedience.
We have that choice, all of us. We are free to do either and God will not step in and prevent it. However, there is a cost to disobedience, even for believers. Not just for the Jewish believers who looked forward to the promised Messiah, but for all of us looking back on the fulfillment of that Messianic promise in Messiah Yeshua.
Leviticus 26 makes it very clear where God stands. First, Hhe promises to reward the children of Israel richly if they obey Him. But then, He also outlines the penalties that will befall them, the correction they will suffer if they disobey. We read this in:
LEVITICUS 26:14-16A
“‘But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, then I will do this to you:
The passage then continues on to outline all the levels of punishment that the L-RD will dole out to Israel if they continue to walk in disobedience. As Rob observed in our men’s group Torah study this week, there’s an interesting parallel between these punishments, and the plagues the L-RD sent upon Egypt when Pharoah refused to fear and obey God in allowing Moses and the Israelites to leave for three days to worship God in the desert, and bury Joseph’s bones outside of the land of Egypt as he had requested.
The similarity is that God doesn’t correct or rebuke or punish all at once; it comes in waves, and between each wave, God offers a chance for repentance and a return to obedience. As each opportunity for repentance passes, the next wave of punishment gets a little more severe. Each time, this comes not because God loves dishing out punishment to His people, but as an attempt to wake them up to their rebellion and offer them a chance to return to the path of obedience.
We read this in:
LEVITICUS 26:27-28
“‘If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over.
So you see, between each wave of punishment, God inserts and if-then statement. If you continue to disobey, here’s the next thing I’m going to have to do, and it’s harsher and more severe than the last.
What’s the solution? We read this in:
LEVITICUS 26:40-45
“‘But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers—their treachery against me and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. For the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the L-RD their God. But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the L-RD.’”
If we confess, if we repent, if our uncircumcised hearts are humbled, if we pay for our sins, then the L-RD will remember his covenant with us and return us to right standing before Him. Now, some people believe this is all done away with; that repentance comes one time when we surrender our lives to Yeshua, and then is completely unnecessary because we’re forgiven. But that’s not so.
For as long as there is an ability to rebel against God, for as long as we are able to choose disobedience over obedience, there is a need for repentance, humbling, and payment for sins. It is important to remember that simply saying, “I’m sorry,” isn’t true repentance. It involves turning away from the disobedience. It involves making restitution to those we’ve wronged. Those are all things we are capable of, but in our rebellion, sometimes refuse to do.
Fortunately, the one thing we can’t do on our own – to pay our owner for his loss as a result of our rebellion – and our owner is the L-RD – is a price that has already been paid for us, by the Messiah Yeshua.
May we never treat the price He paid in our place, for our disobedience, as though it came from a dollar store.
Shabbat Shalom.
Monday, April 26th, 2010
This Tazriah-Metzorah commentary is the first one I’ve delivered since Beth Yeshua closed, so enjoy! Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
This week, we have a double portion for our parashah. It includes Tazriah, a Hebrew word that means, “She bears seed” or “She conceives,” as well as the portion known as “Metsora,” a Hebrew word that means, “Infected one,” or “diseased one.” This double portion covers Leviticus chapter 12 through Leviticus chapter 15. Now, this week’s reading covers such topics as pregnancy and childbirth, skin diseases, bodily discharges and the laws surrounding purification from all of these afflictions. But before we delve into that, I want to share a word of encouragement from this week’s portion for a select portion of this congregation – and you’ll know who you are in just a moment.
Now, some of you might remember the 1980s. One of the big trends back then was custom T-shirt shops. You could walk in, select the size and color of T-shirt you liked best, and then select just about any kind of saying or cartoon that you wanted and it would be added to the shirt while you waited.
I’ll always remember one we got my father. It’s not a Biblical saying, but it might sound like it. The t-shirt read, “God made only a few perfect heads. All the rest, he covered with hair.”
I thought it was pretty funny back then, too. Of course, those of you who’ve known me for a few years now will testify that, as the years go on, my head’s getting a little closer to perfect all the time.
Yet the word of encouragement for those of us who are a bit closer to perfect atop our heads comes to us from:
LEVITICUS 13:40-41
If a man’s hair has fallen from his scalp, he is bald; but he is clean. If a man’s hair has fallen off the front part of his scalp, he is forehead-bald; but he is clean.
So, that’s good news, right? Some of us may be balding, men, but at least we’re clean! Now, joking aside, the passage does go on to say that if baldness is accompanied by sores of various kinds, it can indeed indicate ritual uncleanness. Of course, so can a whole lot of other things. And what we see in this week’s double-portion is that there is so much ritual uncleanness in the world, it’s almost impossible to avoid!
Yet it’s important to note that ritual uncleanness is not always the same as sinfulness – though, at times, it can be. For example, that which is unclean can often be remedied in this week’s parashah by simply bathing and separating oneself from the community until evening. Can water grant remission of sins? No, the Torah is clear that blood must be shed for sins to be pardoned. So if some types of uncleanness can be remedied by washing with water, they must not be sources of sin, but a simple lack of purity.
Yet even this insight misses something more important. What both of these portions talk about is what? Ceremonial uncleanness, right? As we read, for example, in:
LEVITICUS 12:1-4
The L-RD said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites: ‘A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over.
So you see, many of these purity laws have to do with one’s fitness to enter the Temple … the Tent of Meeting … and since that Temple no longer stands, it would seem many of these laws are of limited relevance and use to us today. Right?
Not so fast. Because while the laws of ritual purity were specific to Jewish people living in the Land, and relevant to entering the Temple or the Tent of Meeting, they also have a more symbolic, spiritual aspect to them.
Let’s start by looking at the word for impurity or infection. The Hebrew word for our second portion is metsorah. It is derived from two root words. The first, motzi, means “source or well-spring.” The second, ra, means “evil.” So the word metsorah, in addition to meaning “infected one” or “diseased one,” could also be said to mean “well-spring or source of evil.”
When one thinks about this, it begins to make sense. After all, on a spiritual level, what causes infection or disease in our spirit? Evil, right? Specifically, exposure to evil or a source of evil. And often, simple exposure is enough.
We see the truth in this in the story of the fall of man. What happens when Adam and Chavah are exposed to the lies of the serpent? They become infected, diseased with doubt. Doubt about what? Whether to trust in the words of the L-RD, or the words of the serpent. Exposure alone to that doubt is enough to produce what comes next: rebellion against God’s only command at that time, as they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
In the same way, we can see how simple exposure to impurity can infect us in our daily walk, in our witness, in how we view, understand and even explain our faith in the L-RD to others.
For example, what does the Tenakh teach us about where to invest our faith and trust? We read this in:
PROVERBS 3:5-6
Trust in the L-RD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
This is what the L-RD asks of us, right? To simply put our trust in Him, rather than our own understanding of things. We can all agree on that, right?
Yet we live in a world that is full of people who don’t do that; who put their trust in their own understanding, rather than in the L-RD. Still with me? Good.
One of the most prevalent theories out there in the world today, in the understanding of men, is the theory of evolution. Like atmospheric yeast, it’s out there in the world, like it or not. And this idea that man was not created but evolved from lower life-forms, and all the ideas that spring forth from that core theory, such as that the earth is, as scientist Carl Sagan always said, “billions and billions of years old,” rather than nearing the end of the six thousand years of human history spoken of in the Bible, has been entrenched in public education and the public mind so firmly for so long, that the fact is that today, many believers would prefer to cast aside the first few chapters of Genesis in an attempt to lure those who view the world through evolutionary, so-called scientific eyes, than to even attempt to believe what God has revealed about the nature of His creation.
The rationalization many use is that they “don’t want a few chapters in one book of the Bible” to be a barrier to someone entering the kingdom of heaven. “It’s not important enough,” they’ll claim.
Yet, is that what we’re called to do? Are we to stake claim only in the words of the Torah that make sense to the unbelieving? Or are we to simply trust in the L-RD with all of our hearts and lean not on our own understanding?
And that’s what simple exposure can do! Simply by being in the same atmosphere as this well-spring of evil, we become infected, diseased in our own thinking. We start to change what we believe to make it easier for the unbelieving to accept, rather than simply standing firm in our trust in the L-RD… which is what the L-RD has called us to do!
This is just an example. There are many. Perhaps the well-spring of evil in your home is broadcast television, which contains so many shows that are rooted in evil and untruths that can infect you, make you impure in your simple, commanded trust in God. Perhaps for your children, it’s videogames that is the source of infection. It could be an unhealthy amount of time spent on the Internet, rather than in the Word of the L-RD.
It could even be something as simple as evil speech – known as lashon horah in Hebrew – the practice of speaking of people in a way meant to diminish them in the eyes of others, even if what you’re saying is true. If the intention is to diminish rather than to build up, it’s lashon horah and it can destroy a sense of safety and trust in a community.
Now, perhaps, we begin to see the pieces come together from what seems on the surface like a rather dry and boring pair of Torah portions. For you see, for all these detailed instructions on how to rid oneself of impurity, there is one remedy that is never recommended. Whether an impurity is a result of sin, or a simpler impurity that isn’t necessarily sin but does make you ceremonially impure – in other words, unfit to come before the L-RD – one solution that the Torah NEVER endorses is to do nothing about it!
That’s amazing to think about, isn’t it? I mean, you read about how touching a mildewed cloth makes you impure, but the solution is to wash and wait until evening, the start of a new day, and one is tempted to think: well, then that’s not sin! Why is the Torah being so nitpicky? If it’s not sin, why all the fuss over simple impurity.
Well, it’s because while God does desire for us to come to Him through Messiah Yeshua and experience His yeshua – His salvation – he isn’t done with us once the sin is dealt with. God wants us to live a life far above that minimum standard required to attain eternal residence in His kingdom! He wants us to, as he repeats throughout the Torah, including just before this week’s parashah in:
LEVITICUS 11:45
I am the L-RD who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God. Therefore, be holy, because I am holy.
Holiness – not just freedom from sin but freedom from all impurity – is the nature of God. To experience intimacy with God, we must strive to be like him. Not just forgiven of our sins, but pursuing holiness, which is the lack of all metsorahs – the lack of any sources or well-springs of evil in our lives.
Let us, therefore, pursue lives that are holy – free of all spiritual infection and disease – in how we live and walk through this life and live by our beliefs, our trust in our creator. Let us be holy, because the L-RD our God is holy, and may we accomplish this through our redeemer, the Messiah Yeshua.
Shabbat Shalom.
Monday, April 26th, 2010
Here’s my FINAL sermon from Beth Yeshua. Sorry it took so long to get it posted, but here’s the MP3 file so you can listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
We’ve spent the last several weeks looking at some of the parables of Yeshua, and I tried to pay special attention to some of those parables that have been a bit more overlooked or at least misunderstood. We started out with the Parable of the Talents, in which we learned that Yeshua desires us to go beyond tithing to regard all that the L-RD has given us as belonging to Him, and to use our wealth in this world to spread His kingdom, so that we have riches in the World to Come. Then we moved on to the Parable of Great Debt, which taught us to forgive from our hearts so that we could be forgiven by the same measure. After that, we looked at the Parable of the Weeds, which helped us understand how the presence of evil in the world came about and why it is allowed to continue. And last week, we looked at the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Ruler, through which Yeshua was encouraging us to pray without giving up.
Today, we have one final parable to explore. As I prayed about which of Yeshua’s many parables to delve into today, I kept coming back to one in particular: the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazerus.
Now, many great teachers have spent time on this one; next to the Parable of the Lost – or some would say Prodigal – Son, it is one of Yeshua’s most often-quoted parables because of what it teaches about social justice. So, is there anything we can gain from looking at this parable more closely, that we haven’t heard before?
Let’s find out. First, let’s establish a common frame of reference for our discussion; let’s first read this parable in its entirety, which we find in:
LUKE 16:19-31
“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’ He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
One of the reasons this parable is one of Yeshua’s most-quoted is because it seems clearer and easier to understand than, say, the Parable of the Talents or some of his other, more symbolic, parables. And indeed, there is much to be gained from simply reading the pashat of the text. It reminds us of the theme Yeshua taught on with the Parable of the Talents, that our riches in this world are not to be used exclusively for our own comfort, but to reach out to those in need so that the kingdom of the L-RD can be spread. It reiterates the theme that all that we have comes from the L-RD and it is not our own to do with as we please, but we are to use what we have been given to help those who have little – or nothing at all.
The parable has such a universal message, we can even find parallel teachings in the works of the rabbis. For example, we read this in:
BABAB BATHRA 10A
R. Yosef b. R. Yehoshua said, He was sick and had an out-of-body experience (where the soul briefly leaves the body and then returns.) His father asked him, “What did you see [in your out-of-body state]? He replied, “I saw a topsy-turvy world; those that are on top in this world [respected for their wealth and power] are at the bottom [in the World to Come]; and those that are on the bottom in this world [the poor and downtrodden], are on top.” His father told him, “[You did not see an upside-down world] but an unconfused, sensible world.”
This concept of the kingdom of heaven, the World to Come, as a place where everything seems upside down according to how things are in this life is a theme Yeshua uses more than once. And I don’t believe that Yeshua is just using this theme to make a point in a dramatic, attention-grabbing way. I believe He is speaking to us about a kingdom reality.
This can be an unsettling message, and it ought to be. There are many ways in which we can indulge ourselves and our own needs in this life while ignoring the needs of those around us. If we think that simply because we attend a congregation that seems to properly teach the Word of God, that we celebrate the L-RD feasts and festivals properly, and that we agree with all the right theology, that this will excuse us from ignoring those in need, well… maybe you’ll want to read through this parable again on your own when you go home today.
You see, all of us in one way or another are tempted to view Yeshua in the way that makes us feel the most comfortable, the most at ease with ourselves. While nearly all believers will say they want to know the L-RD, the truth is that it’s a lot easier to know Him when he seems to largely agree with us. However, this can lead to many false images of who Yeshua is, and ultimately of who God is. And that’s idolatry.
Yet the Yeshua of the New Covenant writings, the Yeshua of history, is not such a convenient figure. He’s not just a Pound Puppy doll we can hug when we’re feeling sad and blue! He’s not American, he’s not a Republican or a Democrat, and he’s not someone who just tells you what you want to hear. Nowhere is this more clear than in this Parable of the Rich Man and Lazerus.
Some teachers spend so much time trying to wipe away the confrontative truth Yeshua states so plainly that what Yeshua is actually saying in rather plain, simple language gets lost entirely. Ask yourself, how often have you hear some Bible teacher say something like this: “Well, what Yeshua REALLY means here is…”
There are times when Yeshua’s words do need further explanation. There are statements that have been poorly translated and require a deeper understanding of first-century times and culture, first-century Judaism, of the familiar sayings and idioms of that time and place.
The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazerus is not one of those instances, however. It’s message is clear. If you use all that God has given you only on yourself, you have received your reward in full; if you go through life not caring about the unmet needs of those around you, you may be unpleasantly surprised about how you will spend eternity in the World to Come.
So, why does Yeshua here teach this? Why does He seem to value social justice over other forms of religious devotion, such as a deep and devout belief? We get a clue from:
MATTHEW 9:12-13
On hearing this, Yeshua said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” So what does that mean? Well, as we discussed last week, looking at the words used in this passage for mercy and sacrifice, what Yeshua is saying is that he desires compassion on the poor and needy with an intent to help them out of their troubles, far more than he desires self-denial, sacrifices or all our other outward expressions of religious devotion.
Let’s look at this another way.
We all know that it’s a good thing to fast, right? The discipline of denying ourselves so that we can dedicate ourselves to prayer is something many people teach. Yet how often, when you fast, do you gather up the food you would have been eating for that meal or that day, and donate it to a family that has no groceries, or bring it to a food shelf, so that the food you would have eaten is passed on to others in need of a meal?
Any hands? Not many, right?
You see, self-denial – sacrifice – can be a good thing. Fasting can be a good thing. But if we’re just storing up our goods and eating them later on, rather than passing them on to those who have no food at all, well… what do you think God is more concerned about? The fact that you went hungry by choice a few nights a year? Or is he more concerned that there are families who go hungry all the time and have no choice about it at all, and even when you were denying yourself, you did nothing to improve the lives of those in need around you?
See, you don’t have to be Bill Gates to feel convicted by this parable. You don’t need to be super-rich. All you have to be is selfish, concerned only about your own needs and never thinking of the needs of those around you. If that describes your behavior and your attitudes, then it don’t matter if you make $25,000 a year or $250,000 a year or $2.5 million a year, this parable is a warning you need to pay attention to.
Some people will, no doubt, feel unsettled by this. They might argue that helping the needy is purely the government’s job; that’s why they pay taxes. Others might argue that helping the needy with a handout creates a cycle of dependency on government, and teaching self-reliance through offering real jobs is a greater form of charity – though in a nation with double-digit unemployment rates, such an argument rings a bit hollow these days, doesn’t it?
But remember, Yeshua is not a Republican or a Democrat. How you help the needy is not as important as making sure you do help them in some way, making sure they don’t sit for a lifetime outside your gates, wishing for the scraps that fall from your table because you never once invite them in to share a meal, nor do you offer them a way out of their poverty.
Now, this is the pashat – the clear, direct, literal meaning of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazerus. And if this is all that this parable had ever been used to teach, we could simply read it every now and again as a reminder to help our fellow man and that would be that.
However, there are some teachings out there, ways to interpret this parable, which are false and misleading, so I’d like to address one of those issues as well today.
One of the most disturbing ways of misinterpreting this parable is drawn from the last few verses, so let’s refresh our memory of what they actually say. We read this in:
LUKE 16:27-31
He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
This passage from the parable is where misunderstanding arises. Some teachers assert that in this passage, Yeshua is predicting the faithlessness of the Jewish people in the wake of His death and resurrection; that the hidden message of this parable is that Yeshua knew the Jewish people would reject him as Messiah, and that this parable is some indication of that.
Let me say this right now, and clearly: BA-LO-NEY!
Nothing could be further from the truth, and no teaching could be more out of step with the first-century reality of Yeshua, his ministry, and the ministry of His disciples, His talmudim.
First of all, let’s address the context: in this parable, Yeshua is clearly teaching about the differences in the rewards for the selfish rich and the needy poor. Why, then, would he suddenly, without skipping a beat, begin talking about the Jews and the Gentiles? He wouldn’t.
The argument goes that the rich man represents the Jews, who are rich in their closeness to God from the time of the patriarchs and the Torah until the arrival of Yeshua, and that Lazerus represents the Gentiles, who have been poor in their relationship with the L-RD until they are brought to Abraham’s bosom, basically being grafted in as a substitute for the Jewish people.
Let me say it again, and clearly: this interpretation of this parable is pure replacement theology. It is false and misleading and has no basis in the actual teachings and intent of Yeshua.
You see, those who teach from this perspective tend to forget that from the time of Yeshua until the ministry of Paul, in the first century, the movement of those who followed Yeshua as Messiah was a movement completely made up of Jewish believers. There were no Gentiles in it, until Peter met the Ethiopian eunuch, as recorded in the book of Acts.
Furthermore, many of the initial so-called Gentile converts were not complete heathens, but rather, Hellenized Jews who had spread throughout the world in the diaspora, following Israel’s capture by Babylon and the destruction of the first temple. Yes, there were also Gentile converts who were neither Jews nor Hellenized Jews; but the point is that, at least throughout the first century, the vast majority of Yeshua followers were Messianic Jews, not Gentile believers.
Interpreting this parable from a replacement theology standpoint is also not consistent with how Yeshua blatantly outlines His own vision of his mission while on this earth in other parts of the Gospel accounts. Take, for example:
MATTHEW 15:22-28
A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.” Yeshua did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” “Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Yeshua answered, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
Now, if you want a teaching that indicates Yeshua will extend the tents of Jacob to include faithful Gentiles, this passage is a far better one to look at, but notice what Yeshua says here about his ministry. He is here for the lost sheep of Israel, and it’s not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs. These statements indicate his role is that of a Jewish messiah first and foremost.
Yes, he ultimately does heal the Canannite woman’s child, but only after clarifying his Messianic role, and because of her great faith. There is no Gentile replacement of the Jewish people present in this teaching. God is merely doing as he has always done, allowing a “mixed multitude” of those who are faithful to the L-RD to attach themselves to Israel and be included in His promises. Yet this does not indicate a Gentile replacement of the Jews in the promises of God, merely an inclusion.
There are many examples of such inclusion, from Ruth to Tamar to Rahab to Ephraim and Manassah and more. Also the mixed multitude who joined the Israelites in the exodus from Egypt. There are many such cases. That is all that is indicated in our passage from Matthew; Yeshua shows mercy to a woman showing great faith, but does He dump his twelve Jewish talmudim and put this Canaanite woman in their place? Of course not.
If anything, this episode with the Canaanite woman merely supports the parable we looked at last week; because of the Canaanite woman’s persistence in trusting Yeshua to heal her daughter, He grants her request!
The nature of the L-RD is to show mercy to all who trust in Him from their hearts; yet His promises remain His promises, no matter what.
So, to return our focus to the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazerus, the question now becomes, “OK, so if these last few verses of the parable don’t indicate Gentile replacement of Israel, what are they about?”
Frankly, I believe what these last few verses indicate is the opposite of the replacement theology assumption. They are an indication by Yeshua that the written Torah, the prophets, and the writings are all sufficient to bring people the message of God’s salvation. After all, that is what Abraham says in this parable, right? “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.”
And when the rich man suggests that having Lazerus return from the dead would lead them to repentance, Abraham corrects that assumption. “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”
And history has borne this out, hasn’t it? You see, this is not a teaching about Jew and Gentile, but about those who are willing to believe, and those who are not willing to believe.
Those who listen to and obey the L-RD will recognize the Messiah; as Yeshua has taught in John 10:27, “my sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me.” But those who are unwilling to study the Torah or the prophets, those who are unwilling to believe – did Yeshua’s death and resurrection change everything for everyone? Are we all, throughout the Earth, believing in the L-RD, hearing from God directly and doing only what He commands us, never substituting His will for our own?
Unfortunately, no. You see, the deeper meaning of these last verses is not a teaching about the Jewish people in particular; it is a teaching about our fallen nature. Those of us who recognize our sin and agree with God seek him out, and look to the L-RD for our strength and salvation. What Yeshua is hinting at here is that His death and resurrection won’t by itself change all of humanity’s worst instincts. Those who are willing to believe didn’t need it as proof; God’s salvation is found in Moses and the prophets, because all they teach point toward Messiah Yeshua. But for those who didn’t believe in the first place, even Yeshua’s death and resurrection did not change their hardened hearts.
Is this idea that Yeshua puts forward through this parable, that even Moses and the prophets alone are enough to bring people to the L-RD, true? Yes, even Paul agrees with that, as we read in:
II TIMOTHY 3:16-17
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
We must keep in mind here that when Paul uses the term Scripture, he is referring to the same things as Yeshua was when he said, “Moses and the prophets.” Because, remember, the New Covenant writings hadn’t even been gathered together yet at the time Paul wrote these words; the Tenakh is the only thing Paul, as a first century Messianic Jew, could be referring to here.
The concept of the L-RD being our salvation is not a New Covenant concept alone. The L-RD is praised for being our salvation throughout the Tenakh, all of which points us toward the promise of that salvation, the Messiah who came first to suffer and die in our place in the way of Joseph, but who one day soon will be returning in the way of David, as the conquering king.
Let’s not be like the rich man or his brothers, failing to worship the L-RD despite having Moses and the prophets and – even more – having Yeshua, who has risen from the dead! Let’s instead allow the L-RD to enter our lives, take His place, rule us and be our God. Let’s allow Him to rule us so much that we do not turn a blind eye to those around us who are in need, but give of ourselves so that their needs our met in real, tangible ways.
So, let us join in the first mention of the word salvation – the Hebrew word yeshua – which points us toward our Messiah, as found in the victory song of Moses after the L-RD had the Red Sea swallow up the army of Pharaoh. His entire word has one unified and unique message: salvation through our Jewish Messiah, the Messiah Yeshua. Let us praise the L-RD together in:
EXODUS 15:1-2
Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the L-RD: “I will sing to the L-RD, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. The L-RD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation (yeshua). He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
Shabbat Shalom.
Monday, April 26th, 2010
Well, I finally made some time to sit down and re-type up the sermon I lost to a crashed flash drive early this year. It was my penultimate sermon at Beth Yeshua, but here it finally is. And I have an MP3 file here, so you can listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
So, we’ve been studying the parables of Yeshua in recent weeks and we began with the Parable of the Talents, in which we learned that the L-RD wants us to regard all the wealth He gives us in this world as belonging to Him, using it to spread the work of His kingdom, rather than on our own temporary comfort in this life. Then, in the Parable of the Great Debt, we came face-to-face with the responsibility we have to forgive others in the same way God has forgiven us, and we explored how, while that seems easy in concept, it’s not so easy when to comes to forgiving some of the gravest sins.
And then, last week, in the Parable of the Weeds, we discussed the problem presented by the presence of evil in the world; about why it exists, how it came to be, and how to remain forgiving, even to the unrepentant. We talked about how, when it comes to the unrepentant, while we must forgive them, it’s not to be a brainless forgiveness, and that in the case of the unrepentant only, it is best to forgive from a distance, because the preservation of life comes before all the rules of Torah.
So, what more is there to learn from Yeshua’s parables? Plenty. The parable I’d like to look at today is one of Yeshua’s less-explored parables, and it was suggested to me by someone here at Beth Yeshua. And I believe not only does it hold an important teaching for us, but it also ties in nicely with the themes of the recent parables we’ve been exploring.
It’s called the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge, so let’s read it now so we all have a common frame of reference. It begins in:
LUKE 18:1-5
Then Yeshua told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!”
Now, some people can find this parable confusing, primarily because they draw too close a parallel between the unjust judge and the L-RD. While the principle Yeshua is teaching about draws such a parallel, it’s not meant to be a close parallel.
Why do I say this? Well, because the judge in this parable is unjust to begin with. Is the L-RD Himself unjust? Of course not. God Himself is the arbiter of all justice; He is the source of justice and He brings justice to everyone, doesn’t he?
So we have to be careful of letting out picture of God begin to reflect the picture of this unjust judge too closely, for the L-RD is not like him. The text has Yeshua describing this judge as not fearing God nor caring about his fellow man. Does this remind us of anything? It calls to mind for me:
MATTHEW 22:35-40
One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Yeshua replied: “’Love the L-RD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
So, we know Yeshua teaches these two commandments sum up the entire Torah: to fear God and to care about your neighbor. That’s it; that’s the Messiah’s summary of the entire Torah. So if we’re being told that this judge neither feared the L-RD nor cared about his neighbor, what are we really being told about him? That this ruler is far from… what? He’s far from the Torah, isn’t he? About as far from Torah as he can get! This is why he’s labeled an unjust ruler! Because he is ruling according to his own petty concerns and self-interests and decisions between right and wrong, rather than ruling based on the Torah of God. He is a portrait of the Torah-less world!
So who or what does that remind you of? Remember last week, when we studied the Parable of the Weeds? In that parable, we learned that the wheat represents those of us who are in Yeshua, part of the kingdom of the L-RD, who obey the Torah and follow its instruction; yet we are intertwined with the weeds – those who are children of darkness, sons of the Adversary of the L-RD, workers of evil and injustice. And we read that Yeshua taught that evil cannot be purged until the time of the harvest – that final Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgment – when the good crops will be separated from the weeds, and the weeds will be burned up, while the wheat will be brought into the master’s storehouse.
So we saw that we are in a world filled with both children of God and children of the Adversary. The children of the Adversary are without Torah; and we know that while we must forgive them when they do evil against us, that it would also be unwise to trust them when they are unrepentant, giving them an opportunity to do evil to us again.
That raised the question of how do we interact with those who are children of the Adversary. I mean, it’s not like any of us have a scorecard, is it? We can’t walk down the street, or even a church aisle, and say, “righteous,” “righteous,” “unrighteous.” Can we? Of course not.
And the sad truth is that the world we are in is usually ruled by those who are Torah-less. So one of the very real questions about getting through this life is, how can we find justice in a world ruled by the unjust? This parable gives us a clue: persistence, it appears, pays off. The unjust ruler of this parable doesn’t rule justly because he fears the L-RD and agrees with the woman who was wronged; he rules in her favor because she never gives up, never surrenders, never ceases in insisting that he rule rightly on the matter. He does what is right, basically, just to get her off his case!
So how does Yeshua interpret this parable? Let’s read on:
LUKE 18:6-8
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Now this is where we can easily slip into misunderstanding. This is where the connection is made between the nature of God and the nature of the unjust judge. But what is Yeshua really saying here? He’s saying that if even an unjust judge will render a just verdict through the persistence of a widow, how much more will the L-RD, who desires justice and to do what is right, answer the righteous requests of those who bring their concerns to Him?
Of course, that’s not that hard. It’s relatively easy to understand. But it does raise a question, which the person who suggested this parable asked: “So, is this parable teaching us that if we merely bug God enough, He’ll give us whatever we want, like some genie in a magic lamp? Is God no better than us, changing His mind simply because He’s being pestered about something and wants to get someone off His back?”
As I’ve taught often the last few weeks, Scripture reveals Scripture. If you want to understand one verse or passage, study everything around it and eventually the meaning will become clear. Right? So let’s start setting this parable in context to gain our best response to this question.
First and foremost, we ought to understand the word “persistence.” You know, in the NIV, some form of the word “persist” appears only ten times; in only one of these is the word given a positive connotation. In one other appearance, it results in the same effect Yeshua describes in the parable.
We find this positive mention in:
ROMANS 2:7
To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.
And we find the instance in which the effect of persistence is the same as Yeshua describes in this parable, in:
II KINGS 2:16-17
“Look,” they said, “we your servants have fifty able men. Let them go and look for your master. Perhaps the Spirit of the L-RD has picked him up and set him down on some mountain or in some valley.” “No,” Elisha replied, “do not send them.” But they persisted until he was too ashamed to refuse. So he said, “Send them.” And they send fifty men, who searched for three days but did not find him.
Now, this last instance here is not entirely positive. Remember, Elisha the prophet is right to tell his men not to go looking for his master, Elijah. Why? Because Elisha himself saw Elijah taken up to heaven. He knew they were not going to find Elijah, but he finally gives into their demand to search because they simply won’t let it rest.
Now, the other eight instances in which some form of the word “persistence” is used, it is always negative in connotation, referring to how people persist in their sin or their disobedience to the L-RD.
So I thought it might be handy to look at the Hebrew and Greek words that are translated as “persist,” but what I found is there is not a precise word in Hebrew or Greek that is always reliably translated that way. In fact, I found at least two different Greek words and two different Hebrew words that are translated as “persist,” but also that these words are not reliably translated that way. They are the Greek words epimeno (ep-ee-men’-o) and hupomone (hoop-om-on-ay’), as well as the Hebrew words patsar (paw-tsar’) and yalak (yaw-lak’).
So persist as we understand it in English is used to translate more than one Biblical word. So I began to look for parallel concepts to persistence, ideas that captured the meaning of persistence, even if it was not translated that way.
Suddenly, I found more positive references to the concept of never giving up, of persistence, than I found when looking for that precise English word. We find one such example in:
PSALM 72:1, 15B
Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness … May people ever (persistently) pray for him and bless him all day long.
We also find this in:
II CHRONICLES 6:14
He said: “O L-RD, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven or on earth – you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue (persist) wholeheartedly in your way.
So persist means to continue, to so something without ceasing to do it, to never give up. This agrees with what Luke tells us was the purpose of Yeshua’s parable, which was, “to show them that they should always pray and not give up.”
So, to get back to our question: Does this mean that if we pray without ceasing, that God can and will actually change His mind? There is no quick answer to this; to understand what Yeshua is teaching us better, we must first understand the nature of prayer itself.
So, what is prayer, really? Well, is it simply taking time to communicate with God. To, as Moses did in the Tent of Meeting, come face-to-face with our Maker. That is ideally what prayer is meant to be. As believers, in fact, we are commanded to pray, as Yeshua Himself teaches in:
LUKE 6:27-28
“But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”
James, the brother of Yeshua, teaches us further about the benefits and purposes of prayer in:
JAMES 5:13-18
Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the L-RD. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the L-RD will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.
What James teaches us here is loaded with important concepts on an effective prayer life, but it’s easy to miss the important details. We all love to hear that prayer is powerful and effective, but too often we read right past one of the most important words in the passage. What does James actually teach? He teaches that, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”
A righteous man. Not just anyone, not even just any believer. But the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. And you see, that’s where many of us can trip up. That’s why so many who are believers in this country feel like they have ineffective prayer lives, or complain about God not answering their prayers. Because it is the prayers of the righteous that will be answered, not the prayers of just anyone.
So can you, for example, ignore the Torah commands of God and expect your prayers to be answered? Can you persist in habitual sin and expect God to grant your request? Can you lead a life of casual, only-when-it’s-convenient faith, come home from, say, a night of hard drinking, and pray to the L-RD for some blessing and expect Him to listen and respond affirmatively?
No.
God is not an emergency parachute for when you’re in a tight spot and need to save your butt, only to neglect Him at all other times. God desires to have a relationship with us, a give-and-take relationship, and part of being able to speak with Him as Moses did in the Tent of Meeting – face-to-face – is that we must live at least to the minimum standards set down for us in the Torah; furthermore, we should live to a standard far above that, striving to walk as Yeshua walked, in obedience to the L-RD, obeying everything that was commanded of Him.
Does this mean the L-RD never listens and responds to the prayers of the unrighteous? Not at all! He hears the prayers of repentance offered up by those lost in their sin all the time! But think about it! That repentance needs to come first, just to clear the table!
If you have a relative who, the only time they gave you the time of day was when they needed something, and the rest of the time they were out bad-mouthing you and ruining your reputation, and even when they asked for your something they wouldn’t apologize for how they’ve wronged you – how long would you keep giving them what they ask for?
You see, the kind of righteousness James is talking about here isn’t some unreachable, impossible standard; as he wrote, “Elijah was a man just like us.” So was Moses, for that matter, as we discussed in last week’s Torah commentary. But both men were humble enough to know they were unworthy, in and of themselves. They relied on God’s truth to create their righteousness and they obeyed His commands in gratitude. They agreed with God and relied on Him and that became their righteousness.
That’s a righteousness that doesn’t come from ignoring whatever commands you don’t like or don’t fit what you do; it’s a righteousness that clears the table and allows you to speak with God as Moses did, as Yeshua did. That’s when God starts listening: when you’re not fighting with Him anymore over what the truth is. That’s when the prayer of the righteous becomes powerful and effective, because you become echad with the maker of the universe! Not one person, but of one mind and one spirit with Him, not struggling against Him anymore.
Yeshua instructs us on some more mistakes to guard against when we pray. We read this in:
MATTHEW 6:5-8
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.
And Yeshua didn’t just tell others one thing and do something else Himself. He modeled this in His own walk with His Father, as we read in, for example:
MATTHEW 14:23
After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,
So now we have a basic understanding of how to pray effectively. So the question becomes, let’s assume we’re doing all this right. Let’s assume we’re relying on His righteousness and not fighting with God over the truth; we’re repenting of our sin, we’re face-to-face with God, and we’re talking with Him. Can we, even at this point, change the mind of the creator of the universe? Can we, simply by badgering Him, get whatever we ask?
Let’s first take a look at the prayer live of someone who only had the appearance of righteousness; who went through all the right steps and claimed to have the ear of the L-RD. Let’s see what Balak found out about prayer, as we read in:
NUMBERS 23:19-20
God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? I have received a command to bless; he has blessed, and I cannot change it.
A similar statement is expressed in I Samuel 15:29. This testimony about God and His nature is true! God doesn’t lie. He always is truthful and all truth comes from Him. Balak performs all the right steps, does everything the Hebrews do, and yet he could not curse the Jewish people; he could not move the L-RD to cease from blessing the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and in this prophecy, Balak is testifying to that fact; man cannot change the mind of God in a way that makes God break His promises. The L-RD will never promise, then fail to fulfill because someone else prays for Him not to.
Yet it’s important to remember Balak is not a righteous man; as he’s testifying to the L-RD’s goodness to Balaam, Balak is there trying to curse Israel against the L-RD’s wishes. The L-RD allows Balak to do this, but He does not answer Balaam’s prayer.
Why?
Because part of the prayer of the righteous being powerful and effective is that the righteous never pray for the L-RD to do something outside of His own will. The righteous never pray for the L-RD to violate His own promises.
So, even a man like Balak, who has the appearance of righteousness, can pray and yet the L-RD will not make those prayers either powerful or effective; because the prayers are not righteous.
But is that the end of the subject? Is the L-RD never swayed? Well, let’s remember this episode from:
GENESIS 18:22-26
The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the L-RD. Then Abraham approached Him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing – to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” The L-RD said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
Now, we should all remember how the rest of this story goes. Abraham is bold in his prayer life with the L-RD and keeps asking Him for His mercy for forty, for thirty, for twenty and then for ten righteous left in the city. Why did Abraham stop at ten? Because that comprises a minyan – the minimum number of people required to start a congregation.
Did the end result change? No. Sodom and Gomorrah fell, but only because there could not be found even ten righteous who were willing to turn from their sin, repent and follow the L-RD and His commands.
Yet if they had found ten righteous, would the city have been spared? You bet; and it would have been spared because of Abraham’s prayer life, his communication with the L-RD. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. And we know this is true because there are times when the L-RD, in the wilderness, wishes to slay the children of Israel for their unrighteousness, and it was the prayer life of Moses, praying a righteous prayer for the L-RD to protect His name among the Gentiles, that caused the L-RD not to slay the children of Israel and instead offer them a path to forgiveness.
You see, God never repents because God never sins where He has to repent. But can the prayer of the righteous move God to change? In some ways, yes. We read an example of this in:
JONAH 4:3
He prayed to the L-RD, “O L-RD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.
This is where the prayers of the righteous can have an impact. When we pray for God to relent from judgment, to show mercy to the unrighteous, to give time for repentance. Not when we pray outside of the will of God, or for the L-RD to violate His will or His nature, but when we pray for the L-RD to be who He is, to live up to His name and show His greatness.
That’s when the L-RD moves. That’s when the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective, because we’re remaining in the L-RD and His will. That’s the kind of prayer life we should want. The kind of walk with the L-RD we should want. That’s when Messiah Yeshua reigns and gives us the ability to forgive, even to forgive the unrepentant and yet stay safe. That’s when we rest in Him.
Shabbat Shalom.
Monday, February 1st, 2010
OK, here’s the reason why my last two sermons at Beth Yeshua aren’t up yet: when my flash drive crashed a couple weeks ago, I lost my only copy of my sermon on the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Ruler. And it was a lengthy sermon, coming in at over 4,000 words.
I had a print-out, so I was able to deliver it just fine; I even have the audio file uploaded and ready to rock. But I have to re-type it out, which is long, boring work and I just haven’t had the time, since the only reason I’d be doing it is for the blog.
Fortunately, in addition to a new flash drive, I also have a new back-up hard drive, so I should soon be better-protected against data loss than ever. That wouldn’t have helped in this case, though, since I had only just finished the sermon and printed it out before the flash drive crashed.
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
I was asked to prepare an “emergency reserve sermon” last weekend and ended up having to deliver it this weekend. Here’s my sermon on The Parable of the Weeds. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
We’ve been looking at a couple of the parables of Yeshua in recent weeks, and whenever one spends time on His parables, some natural questions arise. One of the first questions that comes up is, what is a parable exactly? Well, we get this definition from:
JEWISHENCYCLOPEDIA.COM
A short religious allegory. The Old Testament contains only five parables. A large number of parables are found in post-Biblical literature, in Talmud and Midrash. The Talmudic writers believed in the pedagogic importance of the parable, and regarded it as a valuable means of determining the true sense of the Law and of attaining a correct understanding thereof.
Now, that’s interesting, but I think it’s important to point out that parables are not relating literal, specific events. For example, with the Parable of the Talents, there was probably not a specific ruler and three servants that those events happened to. You see, a parable is a teaching tool; it’s a story invented by the teacher to illustrate a lesson. It’s a way of taking an abstract concept and making it relatable to the listener. They take something that’s hard to understand, and relate it to something nearly everyone can understand.
This defines nearly all of Yeshua’s parables, the bulk of which teach about the Kingdom of Heaven. Since none of us in this life have witnessed the Kingdom of Heaven personally, Yeshua’s parables try to help us understand what that unknown experience will be like by teaching us about it through situations most of us can understand and relate to. And it was even prophesied that Yeshua would teach by the use of parables, as we read in:
PSALM 78:1-2
O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old.
And Yeshua was not the first to use parables as a teaching tool; He spoke through the prophets in parables as well, as we find in:
EZEKIEL 17:1-3A
The word of the L-RD came to me: “Son of man, set forth an allegory and tell the house of Israel a parable. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign L-RD says:
Now, last time I spoke, we looked at the Parable of Great Debt, and saw that it was a teaching on forgiveness. We also learned that Yeshua regarded forgiveness not as a good idea, not as a suggestion or an option, but as an expectation, a command. In fact, Yeshua taught–and it was underlined in the Parable of Great Debt–that the forgiveness we receive from the L-RD will be in direct proportion to the forgiveness we extend to others.
Of course, the hardest part of Yeshua’s teaching to wrestle with was how we might be able to extend such forgiveness to those who don’t merely offend us by their rude behavior, but who are responsible for violent acts and crimes, who take the life or health of a loved one, who by violence rob others of their peace of mind.
I mean, it’s one thing to forgive the person who rear-ended your car during rush hour. That’s somewhat easy. It’s another thing to forgive the sexual predator who victimized one of your children, to forgive the rapist or the murderer.
These are serious issues. And what they bring to light is the problem presented by the presence of evil in the world. This question of why evil exists has been asked for almost as long as people have sought to know God. Rabbi Harold Kushner made a name for himself with his book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. Locally, Pastor Greg Boyd wrestled with this question in his book, God At War: Satan And the Problem of Evil.
And really, no matter where you look, whenever anything terrible and tragic takes place, from the Holocaust to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the question that eventually comes to the lips of most people – whether they are believers or not – is, “How can God allow such a thing? How can a creation God declared ‘very good’ contain the possibility for such tremendous acts of evil?”
Now, one could spend a lot of time rationalizing these questions away without ever addressing them seriously, but that’s not why we’re here, is it? Rather than try to figure it out for ourselves, let’s go to the One who has real answers. Yeshua has a parable that explains why there is evil in the world, so let’s establish a common frame of reference for our discussion. Let’s take a look at the parable of the weeds in:
MATTHEW 13:24-30
Yeshua put before them another parable. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while people were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, then went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads of grain, the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants asked him, ‘Then do you want us to go and pull them up?’ But he said, ‘No, because if you pull up the weeds, you might uproot some of the wheat at the same time. Let them both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest-time, I will tell the reapers to collect the weeds first and tie them in bundles to be burned, but to gather the wheat into my barn.’”
Now, at first, this appears to be a little abstract from our main question about the existence of evil. Yet it explains a lot of our questions when properly understood. Fortunately, this is one of the parables Yeshua Himself explained directly to His disciples and for our benefit, so let’s read on in:
MATTHEW 13:36-43
Then he left the crowds and went into the house. His disciples approached him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world. As for the good seed, these are the people who belong to the Kingdom; and the weeds are the people who belong to the Evil One. The enemy who sows them is the Adversary, the harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up at the harvest, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth his angels, and they will collect out of his Kingdom all the things that cause people to sin and all the people who are far from Torah; and they will throw them into the fiery furnace, where people will wail and grind their teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let him hear!
Now, Yeshua offers up these explanations rapidly, but let’s slow down and apply them to the question of the existence of evil. First and foremost, what this parable reveals is that we are mistaken when we attribute works of evil in the world to God. As John, Yeshua’s apostle, writes, “God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all,” and Yeshua underlines this point in the master’s response to his servants’ question about the appearance of weeds. “This is the work of an enemy,” he says.
In a direct allusion to the Garden of Eden and the creation story, Yeshua says that the master in this tale sowed good seed. God’s intent in creating this world was to be in fellowship with us; it was the work of the Adversary, not the L-RD, that brought evil into existence. And this understanding is consistent with the rest of the Torah, the prophets and the writings, as well as the New Covenant writings. As we read in:
II SAMUEL 22:29
You are my lamp, O L-RD; the L-RD turns my darkness into light.
So the L-RD is the source of all light, and he transformed darkness into light. He is the source, therefore, of truth in the middle of deception. We also read this in:
ISAIAH 5:18-20
Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes, to those who say, “Let God hurry, let him hasten his work so we may see it. Let it approach, let the plan of the Holy One of Israel come, so we may know it.” Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
This theme of darkness being the work of the enemy is carried over into the prophets, but is this the classic excuse? Is this simply a reason to say, “the devil made me do it,” whenever we mess up, backslide or strike out in anger? Not at all. The enemy may be the source of evil in the world, but do we bear responsibility for cooperating with it? We read this in:
EPHESIANS 5:8-10
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the L-RD. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the L-RD.
Did you catch that? We weren’t just in the darkness before knowing the L-RD… we were darkness. It wasn’t just in us, it was our nature, our substance. Only through the work of Yeshua are we now changed; we are no longer darkness, but light! This idea is further supported by Yeshua’s own words; when confronted by men seeking to do evil to him in:
JOHN 8:42-45
Yeshua said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!
In this passage, as in the parable of the weeds, Yeshua makes it clear that we either belong to the Kingdom of the L-RD, or we belong to the Adversary. When we choose to follow Messiah Yeshua and obey His Torah, we become light, we become wheat, we become children of His Kingdom. But does that mean all around us change with us?
No. As Yeshua describes in the Parable of the Weeds, we exist in the world alongside the children of the Adversary, even though we are children of the L-RD. So why does the L-RD allow evil to continue? Why doesn’t he just expunge it from existence, not allow it to continue to grow and to do further damage?
Well, he tried that approach once, didn’t he? That’s what the flood of Noah was all about! There was absolutely no one left in the world who was following the L-RD, except for Noah; so God vowed to destroy all flesh and start from scratch.
How well did that work? Did it put an end to evil, to sin, so that Messiah never had to appear? No, it didn’t, did it? And in later episodes with Moses, God expresses a desire to wipe out the sinful, to destroy all flesh and start fresh, and only the prayers of Moses, seeking to protect God’s name among the heathen, causes the L-RD to reconsider.
The problem of evil in the world is more complex than any weed-pulling can solve. Evil feeds not only itself, but it feeds off of each of us through sin. We’re entangled with it.
That’s why the master, in the parable of the weeds, tells his servants not to pull out the weeds. He tells them, ‘No, because if you pull up the weeds, you might uproot some of the wheat at the same time. Let them both grow together until the harvest.”
This is why there’s no bolt of lightning to strike us down immediately when we sin. The L-RD doesn’t work like that. If he did, all flesh would perish. We’d all be uprooted. In this life, we’re too intertwined with evil for God to purge it effectively; that which is good would be uprooted as well.
So, what does this all mean? How does it apply to last week’s forgiveness parable?
Well, nothing in the Bible exists on its own, does it? We cannot just select one verse, or one passage, and expect to understand it completely. We need context. And you know, just about every question I’ve been asked about this verse or that passage of the Bible over the past year or so, since I’ve been teaching regularly, has been answered not through human reasoning or finding a book by a learned rabbi or pastor, but by seeking out the meaning of the verse or passage in context to the verses around it.
So yes, last week, Yeshua did indeed teach that the servant who would not forgive his fellow servant’s debt was thrown in jail to be tortured until his debt was paid – which it never would be – and then went on to say, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat you, unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
Forgiveness is not a light topic. Yet neither are those violent acts which wound us so deeply that forgiveness seems impossible. So how do we bring these ideas into alignment? How do we forgive the unforgivable? How do we maintain both forgiveness and personal safety at the same time?
Unfortunately, we often do not properly understand the context of what Yeshua said. As a result of missing the context, we misunderstand and misinterpret his meaning.
Let’s use an example to illustrate what we really mean. Let us imagine a scenario where a man and a woman have decided to divorce, because the wife feels the husband is a direct physical threat, either to her, her children, or both.
Misunderstanding Yeshua’s context, what we often hear taught on divorce comes from:
MATTHEW 5:31-32
“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
Well, that seems pretty cut and dried, doesn’t it? Yeshua explains elsewhere that Moses allowed for divorce in the Torah because our hearts were hard, but that it was not his perfect will for us to divorce, once we are married. Here he teaches that the only exception is marital infidelity.
As a result of sticking to the letter of the gospel account, rather than exploring the context, teachers and pastors for centuries have consoled women to stay in abusive marriages because their husband had not cheated on them, even though they’d beaten them, hospitalized them or worse. This technical, one-excuse-for-divorce argument has caused some abused spouses to seek out infidelity, just to have an excuse their church will recognize to divorce an abusive spouse. And it has cost many other abused spouses their lives because they stayed in out-of-control abusive relationships until their spouses finally did kill them.
None of that is necessary. Rabbi Stan often teaches that any rabbi worth his salt will tell you that the preservation of life comes before all the rules of the Torah, with one exception, and that is the command against worshiping other gods.
I mean, it just makes sense, doesn’t it? Generally, I eat kosher. But if someone puts a gun to my head and says, “Eat this ham steak or I’m pulling the trigger,” then like it or not, I’ll eat the ham steak. Life is precious to God, and so this is an understanding Yeshua would have had as well.
So where does this idea come from, that preserving life comes before all the commands, except the command against worshiping false Gods? There are many sources, but here’s an example of one from:
RABBI PINSKER, ACHAREI MOT, WEEKLY D’VAR TORAH
In the Talmud, the ancient rabbis debate how we know that pikuach nefesh—the preservation of life—is a mitzvah and that it takes precedence over all the other Torah commandments … In order to preserve a life, we may, for example, violate Shabbat observance or the laws of kashrut. In the volume of the Talmud called Yoma (85b) the Rabbis attribute this principle to our two little words vechai bahem— “’You shall live by them—and not die by them.” In other words, the Torah is given not to cause the loss of life, rather it is given that we may live, and therefore by logic we cannot be expected to endanger human life through the keeping of the Torah.
So, we don’t obey the Torah to such ridiculous extremes that we risk our own lives is the idea here. If the choice is eating pork or getting shot… eat the pork. It’s a no-brainer, right? That sounds good, but is there evidence that Yeshua had this same understanding as well? There is! We read this in:
LUKE 6:9
Then Yeshua said to them, “I ask you now, what is permitted on the Sabbath? Doing good or doing evil? Saving life or destroying it?”
In Luke’s account of Yeshua healing on the Sabbath, Yeshua by implication here refers to the idea that preserving life is one of the highest commands in the Torah, and that which is done to preserve life takes precedence over lesser commands. This is not an example of Yeshua doing away with the Torah, but merely acknowledging the importance of maintaining life over the importance of maintaining Sabbath observance.
So does that mean we should toss out all of the Torah under the heading of maintaining life? Of course not! Usually, obeying the rules of the Torah do not put our life on the line! But in defending Himself against alleged violation of the Oral Torah standard of Shabbat observance (though not the written Torah standards) Yeshua does say that the L-RD desires mercy, not sacrifice. Where does this come from? It comes from:
HOSEA 6:6
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
What is the L-RD really saying here? Well, according to:
STRONG’S G1656 eleos
1) mercy: kindness or good will toward the miserable and the afflicted, joined with a desire to help them
So eleos is kindness shown by helping the miserable and afflicted, as opposed to what? According to:
STRONG’S G2378 thusia
• 1) a sacrifice, victim
So, ultimately what the L-RD is saying is, in our Torah observance, he wants us to be moved toward mercy, kindness toward those in misery. He desires that, not a human sacrifice, not the taking of a life in extreme observance of the Torah.
What does this mean?
Well, I think it means that while Yeshua was completely serious about not desiring that any who are married should be divorced, at the same time, it is apparent that the preservation of life comes before maintaining a marriage that is already shattered by acts of violence, by actions that in and of themselves shatter the vows of fidelity, love and respect of one’s spouse, even if no sexual infidelity has yet taken place.
If the choice is “break the vows of marriage by filing for divorce, or die at the hands of your violent and unrepentant spouse,” that should be as much of a no-brainer as “eat pork or die.” Life is precious to God, and maintaining the lives he has given us is more important than observing lesser commands.
So, if one finds themselves in a relationship that threatens their life and safety, please know that we serve a God who understands that. Know that we serve a God who knows when a marriage is broken, even before those who are in it know it’s broken. Know that while Yeshua desires you to stay married when you marry, he also does not ask you to give up your life as a literal victim to a spouse’s violence.
Yes, Yeshua said, “except for marital infidelity,” but part of his context for that statement, part of what he knew most people of his era understood, is that the preservation of your life would also take priority over staying married when a marriage is already shattered and has become life-threatening. And that includes the preservation of the life and safety of your children as well. For we serve Yeshua, who cares for the well-being of children so much, He said, in:
MATTHEW 18:6
“But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
So, in the same way, let’s tie this back to last week’s lesson about forgiveness. Yes, Yeshua absolutely teaches us that unless we forgive those who have offended and wounded us, we will not be forgiven, and in the same way we forgive others, we also will be forgiven.
That’s true. It’s absolutely true. And it’s as absolutely true now as it was when I taught it last week. Yet what is the requirement for forgiveness? Repentance! Even the rabbis understood that! For, as we read in:
BABYLONIAN TALMUD, 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.
So genuine repentance is required for forgiveness. Not just an “I’m sorry I got caught” sort of repentance but the sort of repentance that says, “I recognize how wrong my actions were, and I have no intention to repeat them, for I now see them as they are and they horrify me.” A repentance that requires a complete turning away from any sort of entertaining of the temptation to slip back into the same sin again.
So are we to forgive others, no matter how often they repeat the offense? Yes.
But are we to forgive the unrepentant? Are we to forgive those who are plotting how to injure us again, even as they sit in front of us apologizing? We are to forgive them, yes. But how should our forgiveness of the unrepentant look?
Are we to sit down to an unsupervised dinner with the person who murdered a loved one, even if the murderer has shown no remorse? No.
Are we to offer to let a known child molester babysit our children? Of course not!
We are commanded to forgive, but it is not to be a brainless forgiveness, is it? God desires mercy, but he does not desire a human sacrifice to prove it!
If a person genuinely repents, we are to forgive, and show that forgiveness in the same way we want to be treated. There is no room for compromise on that front.
But if we are faced with someone who has not repented, we should forgive so that we do not allow bitterness and resentment to take root in our lives; but we should also remain cautious around the unrepentant, lest they find another opportunity to do evil to us. We should keep our eyes open. Because the natural question is, how can we know when someone who repents is genuine or not?
Pray for discernment. And give it time. Those who have not repented genuinely will reveal themselves before long; be cautious with them. But if repentance is genuine, we must forgive others as we have been forgiven.
It’s still a confusing topic, I know. But why is it confusing? It’s confusing because we all know people in our lives who can go through all the right steps, adopt all the right tones of voice and body language, who can sit face-to-face with you and seem to genuinely repent, and yet still be deceptive, still harbor evil intentions rather than the fruits of the Spirit.
Why is that? The reason for this is all explained in the Parable of the Weeds; we who believe and obey the L-RD are all wheat – children of the Kingdom of God – but we’re mixed in with weeds – children of the Adversary. And the children of the Adversary, as Yeshua pointed out, are like their father; they seek to deceive and destroy. Prayerful discernment is needed.
May Yeshua guide us all in dealing with those who are in our lives, giving us wisdom on who to forgive fully, because their repentance is genuine – and who to forgive at a distance, because their repentance is not genuine, but a trick, an attempt to gain naïve trust from us, so thatthey can do us further damage.
Help us, L-RD, to discern the wheat from the weeds. And help us, when dealing with the children of the Adversary, to still forgive those who wrong us; or at least to forgive them enough so that we do not allow ourselves to grow bitter and untrusting toward those who are also children of Your kingdom, who have done us no wrong.
Shabbat Shalom.
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
Here is my 2010 commentary on Sh’mot. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah today is “Sh’mot,” a Hebrew word that means “names,” and covers Exodus chapter 1, through chapter 6, verse 1. With the ending of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, we bid farewell to Joseph and all his predecessors, and we greet Moses, the man who would become the prophet that Messiah would be compared to in Messianic prophecy. Our introduction to Moses as the greatest prophet can sometimes stir up impressive, yet in accurate, images.
Thanks to the Cecil B. DeMille classic, The Ten Commandments, there is an entire generation of believers who cannot help but envision a young Charlton Heston when they picture Moses. More recently, thanks to the DreamWorks animated musical, Prince of Egypt, a new generation is growing up thinking of Moses as an eternal teenager off on a great and grand adventure, someone similar to Aladdin.
Yet Moses as he was is not to be found in any of these false images. While he is the greatest of all the patriarchs and, as the Torah itself memorializes him, “the humblest man who ever lived,” what we find in these opening chapters of Exodus is a man who is exceptionally flawed.
First, after he is weaned, he is raised primarily in the house of a Pharaoh of Egypt, as a child of one of Pharaoh’s daughters. While this means he had access to perhaps the finest level of education available to man in that era, it also means he grew up among people who did not serve the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but among a family who served and worshipped a pantheon of false gods – gods who, as the Torah puts it, are no gods at all, gods his fathers had not known.
In spite of this upbringing, Moses does not lose himself to the pagan influences by which he was surrounded. Somehow, he is made aware that although he being raised by Pharaoh’s daughter, his true heritage lies with the Hebrew slaves that he may have even helped rule over. However, we know Moses does not forsake his Hebrew heritage because, as we read in:
EXODUS 2:11-12
One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
So here’s our first hurdle; however justified one might feel he was in striking down the Egyptian who was beating the Hebrew, the fact is that Moses is starting off with a pretty serious strike against him: he’s a murderer.
And his own conscience bears witness to his guilt, as we read in:
EXODUS 2:13-15
The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?” The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.” When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian,
So now, not only is Moses a murderer, but he is a fugitive from justice! A failure to take responsibility for his actions could be seen as a form of cowardice. So not only is Moses a murderer, but he’s a coward as well.
Does the list get any better?
Well, while Moses is in Midian, he marries the daughter of a priest of Midian, Tzipporah, the daughter of Reuel, also known as Jethro. So he takes a gentile bride, the daughter of a man who does not worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This taking of a gentile bride will later become a point of contention with Moses’ sister, Miriam, but we’ll talk about that another time.
The next note of concern comes up when Moses meets with God at the burning bush, at the time of his calling by the L-RD. There, the L-RD lays out the entire plan for rescuing Israel from Egypt and taking them back to their own land, a land promised to them by God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. After detailing to Moses this marvelous plan, how does Moses respond? With hesitancy and uncertainty, as we read in:
EXODUS 3:11
But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
So the L-RD then reiterates his entire plan to Moses again, detailing even some of the challenges he will face, letting him know it will not be an easy accomplishment. Even so, Moses again expresses his uncertainty to the L-RD, as we read in:
EXODUS 4:1
Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The L-RD did not appear to you’?”
So God shows Moses all the signs and wonders he is to perform to gain the trust of the people, as well as the eventual obedience of Pharaoh. Yet even then, Moses is not satisfied and continues to offer objections to the plan of the L-RD, as we read in:
EXODUS 4:10
Moses said to the L-RD, “O L-RD, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
Apparently, the L-RD is more patient than me; after this many objections, I might have just said, “Oh forget it. I’ll just do this myself.” And indeed, even the L-RD wasn’t exactly pleased with Moses’ attitude at this point. As we read in:
EXODUS 4:13-14A
But Moses said, “O L-RD, please send someone else to do it.” Then the L-RD’s anger burned against Moses.
God is infinitely more patient with Moses than I might have been. He promises Moses to have his brother Aaron help him with speaking before Pharaoh and the people. The sad part is, God offered to help Moses by curing his slowness of speech and stuttering, yet Moses didn’t trust God enough to allow that, which is why God appointed his brother Aaron as his assistant.
Are we still seeing the heroic image of Charlton Heston in our minds as we read about this Moses? Do we still see the Aladdin look-alike in our heads, the dashing and fearless young man with a quick wit?
Well, we’re still not done counting Moses’ flaws. After finally convincing Moses to do as He commanded, Moses sets out for Egypt to meet his brother Aaron when this odd episode takes place, as we read in:
EXODUS 4:24-25
At a lodging place on the way, the L-RD met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said.
So, Moses has been so caught up in his life in the household of Pharaoh, and then his life as a son-in-law of a priest of Midian, with a gentile bride, that He forgets to circumcise his own son in keeping with the traditional sign of the covenant God made with his ancestor, Abraham. Can you imagine the outcome if Tzipporah, his gentile wife, hadn’t been there and known what to do? As the eldest male, Moses was responsible to be the priest of his own household, and yet he had shirked his duties so much that his wife had to perform the circumcision, rather than Moses himself.
This is the Moses of history. Not some romanticized movie hero like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments; not some fun-loving prankster like in Prince of Egypt; but a deeply flawed man, hesitant to obey the L-RD, unsure of himself and his abilities, and lax in his observance of the commands of the L-RD. Surely not someone worthy of becoming the greatest of all the patriarchs. Surely not someone worthy of knowing the L-RD face-to-face. Surely not the greatest prophet who ever lived.
Or was he?
You see, the L-RD does not look at a person the way man does, based on the outward appearances; he judges us on our hearts, on our inmost being. He judges us on who we truly are on the inside.
So, yes, Moses was a murder, a coward, took a Gentile bride, married into a family that served a false God, was hesitant to trust the L-RD, slow to obey and so caught up in his life that he was lax in his observance of the L-RD’s commands.
Which is what makes Moses so perfect for the role the L-RD has carved out for him. For, as we read in:
II CORINTHIANS 12:9-10
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Messiah’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Messiah’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
We find a similar sentiment expressed in:
ISAIAH 40:29
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
You see, this week’s reading goes on to relate how Moses’ first appearance before Pharaoh was an absolute failure. His actions only caused Pharaoh to work the Hebrew people harder and increase their suffering. And I believe this is because God wanted to ensure that when deliverance came, one thing was clear: this deliverance came from God, not Moses.
While we look back on the life and testimony of Moses and what God accomplished through him with awe and reverence today, often what we lose sight of is just how unworthy he was for the task he was given; and yet, that is exactly how the L-RD planned it, for the L-RD was not trying to build a people up for Moses to be exalted, but who would exalt the L-RD and not man.
If Moses had been a strongly moral man all his life, handsome and a persuasive public speaker, a master of politics and confident in all he did, married to the best bride from the best bloodlines of the Levites only, then would he have been humble enough to give the glory to the L-RD?
You see, the L-RD does not measure success as we do; he does not look at the same things we do when it comes to being qualified. As we read in:
II SAMUEL 16:7
But the L-RD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The L-RD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the L-RD looks at the heart.”
When the L-RD examines our hearts, may he find in us what he found in Moses; not hearts that are eager to make a name for themselves in service to the L-RD, but hearts that are eager, in all we are given to do, to give the L-RD the credit and glory. May we all be found to be as “woefully unqualified” as Moses, for that is what our Messiah Yeshua looks for in those who would serve Him.
Shabbat Shalom.
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
Here’s the text of my most recent sermon. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
When I was asked to give today’s sermon in Rabbi Stan’s absence, I once again turned to the parables of Yeshua. Last time I spoke, we took a closer look at the Parable of the Talents, but today I would like to take a look at an entirely different parable that Yeshua offered at a different point in his ministry, under different circumstances. Yet, like the Parable of the Talents, this parable contains several elements that are worthy of closer examination, and so I saw this as a great opportunity to study it more deeply.
This parable is often referred to as The Parable of the Debtor, or the Parable of Great Debt. And so, before we begin analyzing it, let’s read through this parable, so we all have a common frame of reference. The passage begins in:
Matthew 18:23-35
“Because of this, the Kingdom of Heaven may be compared with a king who decided to settle accounts with his deputies. Right away they brought forward a man who owed him ten thousand talents, and since he couldn’t pay, his master ordered that he, his wife, his children and all his possessions be sold to pay the debt. But the servant fell down before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ So out of pity for him, the master let him go and forgave the debt. But as that servant was leaving, he came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him, crying, ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ His fellow servant fell before him and begged, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused; instead, he had him thrown in jail until he should repay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were extremely distressed; and they went and told their master everything that had taken place. Then the master summoned his servant and said, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt just because you begged me to do it. Shouldn’t you have had pity on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ And in anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured until he paid back everything he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat you, unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
Now, at first glance, there are a lot of apparent parallels between the Parable of the Talents and the Parable of Great Debt. Both involve a ruler settling accounts with his servants. Both concern themselves with the poor behavior of servants when they are outside of their master’s direct presence. And both parables resolve themselves with the punishment of a wicked or lazy servant.
Both the Parable of the Talents and the Parable of Great Debt are teachings of Yeshua on the kingdom of heaven, on what it will be like when he returns and settles accounts with all flesh, on that final Yom Kippur, on the Day of Judgment. Yet while the Parable of the Talents is a teaching of how we are to use our wealth in this world to help the needy and thereby spread the kingdom of heaven, the Parable of Great Debt is far less concerned with our worldly finances, and more concerned with our direct treatment of others.
What is the main concern or question that gives rise to this parable of Yeshua? We find the context immediately before the parable begins in:
Matthew 18:21-22
Then Peter came to Yeshua and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Yeshua answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.”
Now, often, this passage is taught separately from the Parable of Great Debt that follows; yet the Parable of Great Debt is a greater elaboration on the theme Yeshua has just established in response to Peter’s question. Their message is both complimentary and congruent. The Parable of Great Debt is acknowledged almost universally to be about forgiveness.
Yet has this parable been heard, understood, and acted upon by most believers? Or have we lost some of the weight of its meaning to the passage of time and culture, so that while most people agree with its point, few actually live out what it teaches, dismissing it as merely “a nice, idealistic homily” on moral living.
To fully understand the meaning and significance of this parable, we first have to understand some of its less-familiar terminology.
First and foremost, lets take a look and what kind of debt we’re actually talking about here, both in the case of the first servant, as well as the servant who owed him a smaller amount. We are told that the servant who is the focus of this parable owed his master ten thousand talents. How much is that? Well, the word talent comes to us from the Greek word talanton, and as we read in:
Strong’s G5007 talanton
• 2b2) a talent of silver in Israel weighed about 100 pounds (45 kg) 2b3) a talent of gold in Israel weighed about 200 pounds (91 kg)
Additionally, as David Stern tells us in his Jewish New Testament Commentary:
Stern, Jewish New Testament Commentary, p. 59
In Roman times one talent equaled 6,000 denarii, a denarius being roughly a day’s wages for a common laborer … Haman offered King Achashverosh of Persia 10,000 talents of silver to destroy the Jews (Esther 3:9).
So, if this servant owes his master ten thousand talents, how much is that worth in modern terms? After all, to modern ears, at least, ten thousand of anything doesn’t always sound like much. Our first clue to its value comes from comparing the value of a talent to a denarius.
A denarius in the New Covenant Scriptures appears to be equal to roughly a day’s wages for the common working man or woman. To translate that into modern terms, let’s say that a day’s wages for the average laborer is calculated at an eight-hour work day and a wage of ten dollars an hour. That places the value of a denarius at around eighty dollars today.
A talent, then, is said to be the equivalent of six thousand denarii. That means a single talent would be roughly equivalent to $480,000. It would also mean that 10,000 talents would be equal to $4.8 billion. How long would it take to pay back such an amount? Over 164 thousand years, as a common laborer!
Also, it is important to realize that loans were not strictly business transactions in the strictest sense of the word, in the first century. As we read in:
JewishEncyclopedia.com
In ancient Israel every loan was an act of charity.
Now, all this math can get confusing and, at the very least, mind-boggling, so let’s simplify it. An alternative reading of ten thousand talents, according to some translators, is “an amount too large to count.” And not only is it too large to count, but it’s too large to ever repay. I mean, the Torah speaks of only six thousand years appointed unto man, and we’re nearing the end of that period of time already; so any amount that would take 164 thousand years to repay can, I think, be considered pretty much unrepayable.
And while we’re talking about modern values, let’s take a look at how much the other servant owes to the main servant in this parable. We are told he owes him one hundred denarii, or the equivalent of 100 days wages. Now, certainly, that’s a significant amount – about $8,000 by modern standards – but certainly it is also a repayable amount. With some scrimping and saving, even allowing for ongoing expenses, an amount like that could be paid back within a matter of two to five years with a whole lot of room for comfort along the way. And a dedicated plan could possibly even pay off that amount in about a year. Most of us have to work at least that long just to pay our annual tax burden each year.
Now, let’s apply these insights so far to the Parable of the Great Debt. Our main servant has been forgiven by the king of an unrepayable debt, a debt that in modern terms put him billions of dollars in the red. Yet despite that, he chokes and jails a fellow servant who owes him a mere $8,000.
Let’s imagine that our main servant here still believes he might be able to someday repay his forgiven debt. Even if his fellow servant had the money available, would collecting $8,000 get him noticeably closer to paying off his $4.8 billion debt? Well, it’s approximately only two ten-thousandths of one percent of his overall debt. In other words, it’s a drop in the bucket. Not enough to make a dent, a down-payment, or even an interest-only payment.
So, can you now begin to get a sense of the injustice the first servant did to the second servant? A person forgiven an unrepayable debt refuses to forgive the debt of a man who owes virtually nothing, compared to him, and whose money would not even put him close to satisfying his own debt. Is it any wonder the other servants were disturbed? Does it now seem out of line for the king to be so outraged at the servant’s lack of forgiveness of his fellow servant? Proportionally, this is like beating up a guy who owes you a couple bucks when you’re trying to repay a million-dollar loan!
Another aspect of this parable is to realize the full extent of what the first servant did to the second by tossing him in jail. When we think of jail today, what do we think of? We think primarily of small cells where prisoners are mostly isolated, but where the biggest danger they face on a daily basis stems from each other. We imagine prison violence as being posed primarily by one prisoner attacking another.
Yet this was not the case in first-century prisons; there were no group lunch lines or time out of a cell in a prison yard or even group shower time to allow such things to occur. Instead, the biggest source of prison violence in the first century came from the jailers themselves. You see, the word for jailers used in this parable comes from the Greek word basanistes, which means, as we read in:
STRONG’S G0930 basanistes
• 1) one who elicits the truth by the use of the rack 1a) an inquisitor, torturer also used of a jailer doubtless because the business of torturing was also assigned to him.
So you see, jailers in the first century were not these guards that we think of in today’s prisons, but people who were actually assigned to torture those under their care. So, for the sake of a repayable debt that wouldn’t even touch the amount he owed, the first servant, by turning the second servant over to the jailers, is actually consigning him to be tortured. Does this even make sense? Can a person in prison and under torture perform daily work to pay off a debt? Of course not. So, in effect, he’s transformed a repayable debt into an unrepayable one, by tossing his fellow servant in jail.
Now that we understand what a great injustice this first servant did to the second servant, let’s step back for a moment and examine the motive behind his actions, and whether it was even necessary.
Let’s take a closer look at what I think is the key passage to understanding this parable. Because, you see, for many years whenever I read this parable, I couldn’t understand the actions of the main servant; I couldn’t understand why he’d be so unforgiving after being so recently forgiven himself. But as I’ve studied and re-studied the parable, the truth of the matter was revealed.
Remember what this servant said when he begged the king for mercy? The verse reads, ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ So, the servant has promised, in his own way of thinking, to repay his master. And this sounds like a good character quality, right? How many people promise to repay what they owe, even when they’re in way over their head? Yet it is at best a vain promise when made in light of repayment being an impossible task.
So here’s what the next verse says: “So out of pity for him, the master let him go and forgave the debt.”
Now, this is where I believe there is room for misunderstanding this parable, and it helps to explain the servant’s actions. In English, I believe that this verse has been robbed of its full meaning, implication and power. When we hear the phrase “let him go,” I think what commonly comes to mind is, “decided not to put him in jail … for now.” There’s a sort of immediate implication: OK, I won’t put you in jail today for this. But there’s little in this phrase that suggests, in English, a permanent release.
Likewise, the phrase “forgave the debt” also seems to imply a current but temporary forgiveness. But is this an accurate understanding?
Well, the word rendered as “released” or “let him go” in English is actually the Greek word apolou, as we read in:
STRONG’S G0630 apoluo
• 1) to set free 2) to let go, dismiss, (to detain no longer) 2a) a petitioner to whom liberty to depart is given by a decisive answer 3d) to release a debtor, i.e. not to press one’s claim against him, to remit his debt
And the word rendered as “forgave” the debt is actually the Greek word aphiemi, as we read from the:
STRONG’S G0863 aphiemi
• 1) to send away 1b) to send forth, yield up, to expire 1d) to let go, give up a debt, forgive, to remit 1e) to give up, keep no longer 3c) to depart from one and leave him to himself so that all mutual claims are abandoned 3e) to go away leaving something behind 3g) to leave on dying, leave behind one 3h) to leave so that what is left may remain, leave remaining 3i) abandon, leave destitute
So the king in this parable has given this servant his liberty by a decisive answer, and that answer is that this huge debt, this unpayable debt, has been completely abandoned. It’s not just temporarily forgiven, but completely forgiven.
In other words, the king looked past the vain and unreachable pledge of the servant to repay the unpayable debt, and went a step further; he released him from any current or future obligation to repay that debt. That is what is implied by the use of apoluo and aphiemi.
So, does this servant act like someone who understands that he is under no further obligation to repay what he owed? Certainly not. Why else would he almost immediately confront a fellow servant about a much smaller debt, choke him, and toss him in jail to be tortured? That’s certainly not the act of a person who has understood the forgiveness he has been offered.
It’s the act of someone still trying to repay his obligation. He’s fearful, desperate and anything but secure. He is the opposite of blessed – the Hebrew word ashrei, which means secure and content. That’s why he acts as he does! Because anyone who truly understood the extent of the debt that he’d been released from would certainly not go around tossing others in jail for far lesser offenses, right?
It has long been my conviction that this servant’s main problem was not understanding that he was indeed fully forgiven and no longer under obligation to his king; that’s why he acted as he did. And it appears by the words used here that this must be the case.
Understanding the nature of God’s forgiveness can be life-changing, if you truly grasp and appreciate it. We are commanded to forgive as God forgives, and yet if we don’t understand just how completely God forgives, can we reflect His forgiveness to others? No. We’ll reflect a forgiveness that is as temporary and fleeting as the kind we may have experienced at the hands of the world around us, a forgiveness that brings with it no peace of mind, no release, no rest.
Yeshua teaches us what God’s forgiveness looks like, though, in:
Matthew 6:12, 14-15
Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors … For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Notice that here in Matthew 6, Yeshua describes forgiveness in the same way he describes it in the parable in Matthew 18. Is God’s forgiveness capricious? No; it is linked to our willingness to reflect the same kind of forgiveness we’ve received back to others, isn’t it? And this is a consistent message throughout the Torah and the New Covenant writings. Yeshua consistently lets us know that the forgiveness we receive will be in direct measure to the forgiveness we offer others.
Matthew 10:8B
Freely you have received, freely give.
And again in:
II Chronicles 6:30B
Forgive, and deal with each man according to all he does, since you know his heart (for you alone know the hearts of men),
And again in:
Luke 6:37
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
And also in:
Colossians 3:13
Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
Is it becoming clear yet? As believers, as people who have experienced the salvation offered through Yeshua the Messiah, forgiveness is more than just a good idea, or a moral imperative. Forgiveness is expected, and in fact, the forgiveness we receive will be in direct proportion to the forgiveness we offer others! This is not Yeshua speaking carelessly just to drive home a point; I believe he’s speaking a Kingdom reality. Why else would he say, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat you, unless you forgive your brother from your heart?” Does that sound like a “nice idea, easily ignored” type of teaching? Of course not!
Now, whenever forgiveness at this level comes up, there are two types of objections that typically arise. The first is, “Well, you don’t know some of the things I’ve done. I’ve done things that just can’t be forgiven.” And the other is, “Well, you don’t understand what I’ve gone through. I’ve suffered things that no one should expect me to ever forgive.”
The first objection brings to mind a call I received once while working in the Sar Shalom office. A man called asking to speak to the rabbi. Stan wasn’t in so I asked if I could take a message, and this guy poured out his heart to me before I could get another word in edgewise.
The core of what was disturbing him, it turns out, was that he felt as though some actions he’d done in the past had made him what he called, “super-corrupt” and “unforgivable.” This young man had been hospitalized for depression and a variety of issues, but they all seemed to stem back to his core belief that he was unlike anyone else who’d ever been born; he was too sinful for the L-RD to ever forgive. And this core belief had created chaos in his life, making him unable to hold down a job or have normal relationships… all because he believed he was unforgivable.
Well, here’s a word of hope for anyone who feels they are unforgivable: through Yeshua’s work on the cross, his grace is sufficient for you. It’s enough. There is no room for the concept of being so corrupt in your sin that you are unforgivable.
But there is a catch. You have to be willing to obey the words of Yeshua and, as he directed the woman caught in adultery, you have to be willing to “go and sin no more.” You have to be willing to walk away from your sin, to turn from it completely. That’s what repentance means! As we read in the:
JewishEncyclopedia.com
Forgiveness is one of the attributes ascribed to the L-RD … The condition essential to God’s forgiveness of iniquity is … repentance on the part of the sinner for the offense committed. A further essential condition is the intention to avoid repetition of the offense. The fulfillment of these conditions restores the sinner to his right relation toward the L-RD.
Now, this may go against what many of you have been taught forgiveness and grace are all about. The common believer’s understanding of grace tends to be, “Hey, Yeshua paid the price, I’m covered, so anything goes.” But that is not the message of Messiah Yeshua! It’s not the message of the Torah! While forgiveness is a work of God, if we are found absent of repentance, absent of even a willingness to change, something’s missing. Salvation is not dependant upon what we do, but if we have truly experienced salvation, we ought not be found absent of the fruit of that forgiveness.
As for the objection brought up by those victimized by others, be assured, the L-RD grieves and weeps with you. It is for this reason Yeshua has said, “Secure and content are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Those who are victimized by others are in mourning. Whether they are mourning for the loss of a loved one to violent crime, or mourning a loss of innocence as the result of a violent crime that did not take physical life, but robbed them of all the elements essential to an abundant life, such as peace of mind, please know that Yeshua does not promise lightly that you will be comforted. You are understood. He does weep with you.
However, I’ve met many people like this over the course of my life. I remember one person in particular I met in college. She had been the victim of sexual abuse by her father, and although she claimed to have forgiven him, the evidence that her forgiveness was not complete was apparent in many of her actions. Though she claimed to be a believer, she had a grumpy, suspicious disposition; she was frequently argumentative, easily took offense at the slightest comment, and made every effort to keep others at arm’s length. She never developed close, trusting relationships. Does that sound like the fruit of a person who has known the L-RD’s forgiveness in its fullness?
If that is the kind of place in which you find yourself … wounded by the sins of others, feeling victimized, then yes, the word of hope for you is that you will be comforted, but the word of caution for you is that the L-RD wants you – even you! – to reflect that forgiveness and comfort to others!
If we withhold forgiveness from others, what are we hanging onto? Pain. Betrayal. Bitterness. A boatload of emotions that have no place or benefit in the life of a believer who has experienced the true presence of the L-RD in their life.
We don’t forgive because it’s easy, or because the person who offended us has earned it, or because whatever happened wasn’t that big a deal. We forgive because the alternative is a burden that draws us away from the L-RD, rather than toward Him! The alternative is treating anyone we don’t trust like an enemy. Yet Yeshua commanded us directly to forgive and bless our enemies. If we only do that with our friends, He instructs us, then we are no better than the godless, the Torah-less masses! Even the rabbis who wrote the Oral Law, the Talmud, recognize this important aspect of forgiveness, as we read in:
Talmud, Avot of Rabbi Natan, 23
Who is strong? He who turns an enemy into a friend.
That is our charge as believers; that is what we are commanded to do. We are to forgive, and forgive completely, so that we can be forgiven by the same measure. Be cautious! Every time you’re tempted to say, “Well, I forgive that person, but I don’t have to like them,” or, “but I don’t want to be around them,” … the question you should ask is, “Do I want Yeshua to say the same thing about me, and my sin?”
I’ll leave you with these words from the book of:
Philippians 2:12-16A
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed–not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence–continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.
Shabbat Shalom.
Repentance themes
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
A sermon on repentance doesn’t have to be formal. It just needs to focus on the truth.
For my upcoming sermon on repentance, there three main points I hope to focus on.
First, I want to address some of the bad, false teachings on repentance that are out there and have been encountering of late.
Next, I want to spend some time talking about how not repenting (through either refusing to repent, or not knowing how to fully repent) damages the lives and walks of many believers.
And finally, I’ll wrap up with explaining a proper, Biblical understanding of repentance and its role in the life of believers.
It’s an ambitious outline, but I hope I’ll be able to cover all three points enough in the time I have to get some truth out there. L-RD willing, that will happen.
Tags: repentance
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