I’m growing excited about my latest assignment; I’ll be adapting one of my rabbi’s sermon series into a children’s curriculum. This will be a great chance to get a look at how much research went into a twenty-sermon series; what was used, what was left on the table and how that material was incorporated.

Maintaining his “voice” in the teaching will be important, but so will adapting the material to the target age group; too often, children’s curriculum are either aimed for the teachers exclusively and written well beyond the understanding of kids, or they are so over-simplified, only pre-K kids could gain anything from them.

While it may seem to be a simple task, from browsing the sources cited and deciding what to keep and what to toss, to even something as obscure as deciding if a Symbol LS2208 is a typo or an integral part of the teaching, it’s sure to be a demanding task from which I’ll gain a great “behind the scenes” perspective on formulating a long teaching series.

Some people worry about death and taxes. Others worry about trivial things like how to get rid of blackheads. Yet the imperative from from Yeshua is not to worry, since each day has “enough trouble of its own.

Worry and stress can and do shorten life, so I don’t believe Yeshua was sharing a facile piece of advice here. He was speaking a kingdom reality. And a very practical one at that. Why worry and stress out over things that haven’t happened yet, about mere possibilities?

Far better, I believe, to deal with each day as it comes, exactly as He tells us to.

Shabbat Shalom.

Our topic for today is the Sabbath. When is it, what is it, and who is it for?

To approach this topic properly, we really are stepping into a single city block of a much larger neighborhood. What I mean by that is, the topic underlying this discussion really boils down to this question: Is “the law” done away with? If so, what law was done away with? And how are we to approach holy living… with or without the so-called “law?”

This brings up any issues and questions, so for some grounding, let’s begin with the words of our common Messiah, Yeshua, in:

Matthew 5:17-20 (TNIV)
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now, the TNIV states that Yeshua came not to abolish, but to “fulfill” the Torah and the Prophets. A clearer version is found in David Stern’s Jewish New Testement, where the word fulfill is exchanged with the phrase “to fill them up with meaning.” In the gospels, Yeshua declares Himself Lord of the Sabbath. If he was coming to put an end to Sabbath observance, that would make Him Lord of nothing. Does that make sense? Of course not.

You see, the term “fulfill” is not the best rendering, because it suggest an end; this is not reflective of the Hebrew and Aramaic original language. The original manuscripts use wording that suggest a present and ongoing process… filling the practice up with meaning. Certainly, apart from God, keeping the Sabbath is a rather empty practice. Whether held on Saturday or some other day, a Sabbath absent the presence of God is not something that lends meaning, depth and closeness to our creator; with the Messiah filling these practices up with meaning and significance, we can see why God ordained the Sabbath – to set aside a special time that is exclusively and uniquely to spend time together with those who worship him.

Now, let us look at the origin of the Shabbat:

Genesis 2:2-3
On the seventh day God was finished with his work which he had made, so he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. God blessed the seventh day and separated it as holy; because on that day God rested from all his work which he had created, so that it itself could produce.

The Shabbat, therefore, is the seventh day of the week. The seventh day of the week, according to Jewish practice that Yeshua Himself observed, begins at sundown on Friday and is complete at sundown on Saturday. This is the Shabbat as God created by His own actions.

This fact is underlined when ADONAI gave Moshe the Ten Commands. Now, the Ten Commands are unique among the Mosaic Laws, because they were spoken directly by God Himself. The rest of Torah law was a mediation by Moshe, as he stood in the gap between God and the children of Israel. Therefore, whatever one may feel about the rest of the Mosaic Law, the Ten Commands stand apart from such mediation between God and man – they are the direct words of Adonai, and therefore are non-negotiable. If one is searching for “the will of God,” it is with the Ten Commands they must begin their search; nothing less.

It is paradoxical that even the most well-intentioned Christians will fight for the display of the Ten Commands in public places, and yet if it is pointed out that these commands include an expectation for seventh-day Sabbath observance, they immediately begin to mis-quote Paul on the Law being done away with. This can only be due to at least 1,700 years of bad and false teaching on the Sabbath… leading to the false impression that it falls on Sunday.

But what does God say about when the Sabbath falls? It is made clear in:

Exodus 20:8-11 (CJB)
“Remember the day, Shabbat, to set it apart for God. You have six days to labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Shabbat for ADONAI your God. On it, you are not to do any kind of work; not you, your son or your daughter, not your male or female slave, not your livestock, and not the foreigner staying with you inside the gates to your property. For in six days, ADONAI made heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. This is why ADONAI blessed the day, Shabbat, and separated it for himself.

Seventh-day Sabbath observance is one of the 10 Commands. This is simply fact. The question then becomes, when did believers in Yeshua start worshiping on the first day of the week (Sunday) instead of the day God Himself declared the Sabbath? Well, some claim that the practice dates back to the first century itself. This is simply not so, and comes originates from a misreading of Paul’s writings.

Colossians 2:16-17
So don’t let anyone pass judgment on you in connection with eating and drinking, or in regard to a Jewish festival or Rosh–Hodesh or Shabbat. These are a shadow of things that are coming, but the body is of the Messiah.

While many folks interpret this passage to mean that Shabbat observance has been done away with, that is not the case here. Specifically, Paul is addressing conflict within the kehilat as Colossi, where factionalism had APPARENTLY broken out (not unlike on these boards) between those who said all these things must be done, and those who said none of them needed to be done.

Paul, playing the diplomat, isn’t clarifying who’s right. what is he saying is, stop the fighting about it. That’s where the words “don’t let anyone pass judgment on you” about all these practices comes from. But let’s stop for a moment and think about this: was Paul mediating between Sunday worshippers and Saturday worshippers? No. He couldn’t have been, because Sunday worship was not part of the first-century church.

What he was mediating between was likely more akin to the controversy that broke out in the book of Acts, where a group of former Pharisees – now Messianic followers of Yeshua – speak up and say that “to be saved,” Gentiles had to follow things like the kashrut laws, circumcision, etc. That is found in this passage:

Acts 15:5-21
But some of those who had come to trust were from the party of the P’rushim; and they stood up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and direct them to observe the Torah of Moshe.” The emissaries and the elders met to look into this matter. After lengthy debate, Kefa got up and said to them, “Brothers, you yourselves know that a good while back, God chose me from among you to be the one by whose mouth the Goyim should hear the message of the Good News and come to trust. And God, who knows the heart, bore them witness by giving the Ruach HaKodesh to them, just as he did to us; that is, he made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their heart by trust. So why are you putting God to the test now by placing a yoke on the neck of the talmidim which neither our fathers nor we have had the strength to bear? No, it is through the love and kindness of the Lord Yeshua that we trust and are delivered––and it’s the same with them.” Then the whole assembly kept still as they listened to Bar–Nabba and Sha’ul tell what signs and miracles God had done through them among the Gentiles. Ya‘akov broke the silence to reply. “Brothers, ”he said, “hear what I have to say. Shim‘on has told in detail what God did when he first began to show his concern for taking from among the Goyim a people to bear his name. And the words of the Prophets are in complete harmony with this for it is written, ‘“After this, I will return; and I will rebuild the fallen tent of David. I will rebuild its ruins, I will restore it, so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, that is, all the Goyim who have been called by my name, ” says ADONAI, who is doing these things.’ All this has been known for ages. “Therefore, my opinion is that we should not put obstacles in the way of the Goyim who are turning to God. Instead, we should write them a letter telling them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from fornication, from what is strangled and from blood. For from the earliest times, Moshe has had in every city those who proclaim him, with his words being read in the synagogues every Shabbat.”

This is a rich passage, and often vastly misunderstood.

The key to understanding this passage is the phrase of the former Pharisees: “IT IS NECESSARY…”

When the disciples respond to this challenge, Kefa/Peter and Ya’akov/James are the ones who respond and say, basically, “NO, IT’S NOT NECESSARY.” That’s what this boils down to.

But what are we talking about? We’re talking about bringing Gentiles, completely unexposed to Jewish customs, into union with Messiah. Leaving behind their likely polytheism, into monothesim toward (to them) a foreign (Jewish) God would have been quite a challenge… INITIALLY. You see, this isn’t about whether Gentile believers should NEVER obey these things… this is about whether following the Law of Moses, circumcision and the rest are necessary for salvation. Clearly, they are not necessary for salvation.

But does that mean Gentiles shouldn’t grow in obedience to ADONAI’s word, and eventually take up some, and perhaps all, of such things? I believe that was a given, and generally expected as part of the discipleship process… but NOT part of the salvation process. That’s the distinction being made here.

And as this relates to seventh-day Sabbath observance, please note that verse 21 ends with James/Ya’akov pointing out that the Law of Moshe is being proclaimed “in the synagogues every Shabbat,” a clear reference to seventh-day Shabbat observance, and also an indication that further obedience would come from further study of God’s word. So it’s clear that even this late in Acts, there is NO Sunday worship.

So, where did Sunday worship come from and how was it introduced into the church?

Glad you asked. Sunday worship was instituted by the anti-Judaic Roman Emperor Constantine, who founded the Catholic church, as a way to distance “Christianity” from its Judaic roots, and as a sign of the church’s authority. We get this from:

Converts Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, pg 50
“Saturday is the Sabbath… We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.”

See? That is from the Catholic Cathecism and they admit it themselves! They transferred the day of worship, not God.

In 1891, Catholic author James Gibbons, who was a Catholic cardinal, wrote the following in his book, Faith of Our Fathers:

Gibbons, Faith of Our Fathers, pg. 89
“The Catholic Church… by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday… You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday, a day which we never sanctify. Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act… and the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical power. This change is repeatedly referred to as a mark. Sunday is our mark of authority!”

Gibbons is correct; Sunday worship is not found or endorsed in the Bible. It was transferred by an act of man.

Now, does this mean that those who worship on Sunday are knowingly violating the command to honor the Shabbat? Not knowingly, no. Most do so in ignorance, because they’ve never been properly taught about the Sabbath, and many have actively been mis-taught about the Sabbath. And sadly, too many simply accept what their house of worship practices or states in their statement of faith, never bothering to study it out for themselves.

Can God be worshiped and honored on any day? Certainly. But once one learns of when the Shabbat actually falls, one has to form a response of some sort to this newfound knowledge. They can either conform their practices to fit their new convictions, or they can choose to continue worshiping God on the day their church meets, knowing it’s not the true Sabbath but also knowing God is honored on the day they do meet.

What is illogical, however, would be to continue to deny which day God placed the Sabbath on; it is, always has been, and always will be on the seventh day of the week – Saturday. That is what Yeshua Himself practiced; as the Word of the L-RD, it is what he declared to Moshe on Sinai.

Is seventh-day Sabbath worship necessary for salvation? Clearly not, and the attitude of Messianics must be tolerant, as in the book of Acts. However, as each believer grows in faith, I believe if they study out the topic of the Sabbath, they can only come to one conclusion about which day it falls on, which means the only remaining question is how to respond to that new knowledge.

And that is between each believer and Adonai; we must not judge, unless we want to be judged ourselves. Be merciful, and mercy will be shown to you.

Shabbat Shalom.

There is a growing controversy among Messianics about what name should be used when referring to our messiah, and it goes far beyond promotional items you can get on Messianic Web sites. As messianics, obviously, the Hebrew name of the messiah is the preferred usage. That means his name on this blog will usually be rendered as Yeshua.

And that is Yeshua, not Yehoshua; there’s no “hay” in the Messiah’s name, and therefore no “h” sound.

Among Messianics, preferring the use of messiah’s Hebrew name is not controversial. What is controversial, however, is whether it is legitimate to use His Greek name, rendered into English as Jesus.

Now, some congregations discourage the use of the name Jesus, out of sensitivity to their Hebrew attendees. However, it is one thing to prefer Yeshua and discourage the use of the name Jesus; it is entirely another to develop a sense of legalism around the issue.

Recently, I have heard some fellow Messianics say things as eye-popping as, “You are praying to a false god if you use the name Jesus!” Nothing could be further from the truth!

Speaking historically, there is nothing “false god worshiping” about using Messiah’s Greek name, nor its English equivalent. As a friend of mine recently pointed out, when Yeshua hung on the cross, his name was rendered in three languages, not just Hebrew. Latin and Greek were the other two languages.

I was going to write about my term life insurance quote from Wholesale Insurance, but then I decided I’d better finish my thoughts on the name of our Messiah.

I fear that, in some respects, those who are so legalistic about using the name Yeshua only are in danger of making such usage an idol. There is no “magic quality” to the name Yeshua, or Jesus. They are the equivalents of each other, and one must not be careful to pin the mistakes of the historic church on one of the names for our Messiah.

What has power and meaning and salvation in Him is the person that name represents: the sole incarnate Son of Adonai, the Living Torah. Whether you call Him Jesus or Yeshua is not as important as whether you recognize who He is, as He revealed Himself to be.

I am a messianic and love the name of Yeshua. But I was not always messianic, and when I came to know Messiah, it was the name of Jesus I called on. That does not make the first 15-plus years of my salvation less legitimate, as some might suggest.

I’ll close with this final thought: My father is up here visiting with my wife and I for the Thanksgiving holiday. When we pray over our meals, we have on occasion taught him our Hebrew prayers that use the name of Yeshua.

However, my Dad is 86 and although he tries to be open, there’s a limit to what he can adjust to. As a courtesy to him, we have taken to reciting a prayer over our meal that my father is far more comfortable and familiar with:

“Come, Lord Jesus. Be our guest, and let this food to us be blessed.”

While I will always love the Hebrew meal blessings, and the fact that I know that those are the words Yeshua himself prayed over his meals, I would never want that lesson to transform from a blessing into such spiritual arrogance that I would assume my salvation is superior to that of someone else, who only knows Messiah as Jesus.

Any teaching that denies Jesus as a legitimate name for our Messiah goes too far and leads only to division, spiritual darkness, and worst of all, false theology. Haven’t we had enough of that, both in Judaism and Christianity?

It’s time to worship the Father in spirit and in truth, not drive people from Him over petty squabbles like this.

In a recent column in the Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote the following:

The news, therefore, that a leading rabbinical court in Israel refused to allow into Judaism a Chabad-educated conversion candidate because he believed the Rebbe is the Messiah is deeply troubling and constitutes an act of serious contempt for a non-Jew who has made sacrifices to ally himself with the Jewish people. Comparing this with a Jew-for-Jesus wishing to convert is preposterous, given that Jews-for-Jesus believe in the divinity of Christ (which no one in Chabad would ever assert about the Rebbe) as well as the irrelevance of the Torah to modern times.

As a member of the Yeshua messianic movement, I would respectfully submit that Rabbi Boteach is not completely correct in his assessment that those who look to Yeshua as the promised messiah subscribe to the idea that the Torah is irrelevant to modern times. In fact, among the Yeshua messianic movement, it is our insistence in the very relevance of Torah, even today, that sets us apart from mainstream Christianity.

Prior to becoming messianic, the last two Christian churches I attended were almost exclusively “grace-based,” which in practice means that, when push came to shove, attendees of those churches tended to believe that as long as they were “covered by the blood of Jesus,” anything goes because it’s all forgiven anyway. “Grace covers all” was the watchword, and I increasingly found myself ill at ease with such a viewpoint.

Why would Adonai offer up the Ten Commandments, and indeed the whole of the Torah, if it were only “culturally relevant to the time and culture of Moshe, but ready to be cast aside upon the appearance of Yeshua in human history.” Even the teachings of Rabbi Shaul (Paul) indicated a deeper struggle against violating the standards of Torah than is found in modern, grace-based churches. Faith in Yeshua as messiah without a conviction in the relevance of Torah to modern times is like a faith on diet pills; it will always be found wanting.

The revelation I found in the Yeshua messianic movement is not relabeled, warmed-over Christianity with a dash of Judaism for flavor. On the contrary, it is an equal balance. Yes, we have a messiah whose grace covers our human failings and inability to live up to Adonai’s perfect standard for human behavior and, far too often, our failure to even live up to His minimum standard, set forth in Torah.

While such forgiveness is precious, it did not come cheaply and it must be remembered above all that Yeshua was not a revolutionary starting a new religion. Yeshua the messiah was a faithful Jew who lived blamelessly the standards set by Torah; if anyone wishes to emulate Yeshua, the Torah is the only place to go to discover how he lived righteously before Adonai, and therefore the Torah – the written Torah, at least – is more relevant in the life of a Yeshua messianic than any other document they could possibly read.

While rabbinic Jews and Yeshua messianic believers do part ways on some areas of interpretation and conviction, the relevance of Torah to modern times is not one of them. That said, I certainly look forward to a new season of Shalom In the Home and Rabbi Boteach’s new book, The Broken American Male and How to Fix Him.

The teaching I’ve been sharing here recently, originating with my rabbi, Stan Farr, that Torah is G-d’s minimum standard – the point at which we fall short – should not be considered new or revolutionary to careful students of Torah and the teachings of messiah Yeshua. Whether young or old, healthy or in need of Medicare insurance, this is a teaching anyone can understand if they simply read what G-d’s Word has to say.

Let’s look at a relevant passage:

For I tell you that unless your righteousness is far greater than that of the Torah-teachers and P’rushim, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven! You have heard that our fathers were told, ‘Do not murder,’ and that anyone who commits murder will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who nurses anger against his brother will be subject to judgment; that whoever calls his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing!’ will be brought before the Sanhedrin; that whoever says, ‘Fool!’ incurs the penalty of burning in the fire of Gei-Hinnom!
Matthew 5:20-22 (CJB / Stern)

Does this not make it clear that the Torah is but a minimum standard compared to G-d’s perfect standard of righteousness? Here, Yeshua references a simple commandment: You shall not murder. Does this mean that as long as we do not murder, we are living to G-d’s perfect standard of righteousness?

There are all manner of things, short of murder, that one can indulge in and steer clear of the letter of this commandment. One can sneer, despise, hate, plot against, assault, batter, disrespect and more – all without crossing the line into murder. Murder is the point at which we fail even G-d’s minimum standard, but a person who does not murder but indulges all that I have just named here is certainly not a master over their anger, are they?

That is Yeshua’s point. It is not merely rhetorical, to make a point, that Yeshua says that even saying, “Fool!” will put one in danger of the fires of hell. It is a real and serious communication by our messiah, from Adonai’s mouth to our ears. Yeshua is our perfect mediator between Adonai and us; we must listen to him and not write off such a serious message as hyperbole to make a point.

Our call is to love one another. Anything short of that is short of Adonai’s perfect standard for righteousness. The Torah, through valuable beyond words, is merely where the compromise between Adonai and us as to what the least we could do and still be within his favor is defined.

The feast of Sukkot is the week-long observance that caps the Jewish fall festival season that Adonai established as an eternal covenant and observance for all who fear the G-d of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. It points also to the return of messiah Yeshua and the period of rest we all will enter after the final judgment is complete.

So what will eternity with Yeshua be like? Will we sit around trading golf cart parts and working the back nine at Augusta National?

Well, we really don’t know that, but what we do know is that this is not a concept that initiated with first-century messianic followers of Yeshua.

As RabbiYeshua.com writes:

The Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 31a) contains another tradition that relates to our discussion. The Sages noted that in Psalm 90:4, Moses stated that ‘one thousand years’ in God’s sight ‘is as yesterday when it has passed.’ That is, one-thousand years is like a day. So they speculated that, just as God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, the world would endure in its present condition for six-thousand years. This would be followed by one-thousand years of rest (Sanhedrin 97a-b.) This ‘rest’ was typified by the weekly Sabbath, an idea also found in Hebrews chapters 3 and 4. The idea of a thousand-year day is affirmed by the Apostle Peter:

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. (2 Peter 3:8)

That is why the tent is built; that is why it is tradition during Sukkot to sleep out in such tents; because when Yeshua returns and calls us to this thousand-year banquet, we do not want to be like the foolish brides of the parable, who did not trim their wicks, missed the coming of the bridegroom, and were now allowed in late to the celebration.

Or, in simpler terms: the day of the kingdom of heaven is not merely near, it is NOW. And Sukkot is a reminder of that truth.