|
1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. In a world where the concepts of right and wrong have become not only blurry but at times even reversed, it is very important to keep track of the ‘walkings’ of our souls. First of all we must remember the definition of sin. The Hebrew word for it is ‘chatah’, which literally means to ‘miss the mark’ or the ‘bull’s eye’, and refers to disobeying the commandments of Torah (1 John 3:4). Of course, our human nature makes it impossible for us to keep all the commandments, but this is where the principle of atonement comes in, for the part that we can’t do. For the rest, the Scriptures give us three main ways of accountability: the Word; community; confession and restitution. THE WORD: King David once said, I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you (Psalms 119:11). We must store the Words of our Father in our heart by constantly reading, listening and memorizing them. If we have a good conscience, these works will lead and guide us; the idea of disobedience will be repulsive and we will feel ‘dirty’ in our heart for doing the wrong thing. It is important then to listen to the voice of this conscience led by the Word. When we ignore it for too long, it eventually becomes seared and we don’t even hear it anymore (1Timothy 4:2). COMMUNITY: The Torah is not meant to be lived alone; it requires community. That is why it is important for believers to actively seek to live near other believers. When we go off on our own without the accountability, support, and positive peer-pressure that fellowship offers, we have the tendency to develop our own form of godly walk and therefore go astray. REPENTANCE, CONFESSION AND RESTITUTION: Moses taught the people about the benefits of confession before God. He says, When a man or woman commits any of the sins that people commit by breaking faith with the LORD, and that person realizes his guilt, he shall confess his sin that he has committed. And he shall make full restitution for his wrong, adding a fifth to it and giving it to him to whom he did the wrong (Number 5:6-7). We are to materialize our repentant heart through confessing (audibly for a witness to ourselves: Romans 10:17) our sins and shortcomings before God, even the smallest ones. If needs be, we are also to provide restitution above and beyond the worth of the offense. A person may even have to go to Jerusalem to make acknowledgment of their trespass before God through a sin offering. In these ways, sin becomes a personal moral reality as well as financial. God knows that we respond most to rules when breaking them depletes our pocket books! Therein is the grace, the mercy and the compassion of God: In that He teaches us personal accountability and responsibility for our sins, to make the right decisions and obey, but in that He also is able through our humble confession to help us learn our lesson and start again!
0 Comments
Matthew 4:1
Then Yeshua was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness … ‘Adonai spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai’ (Numbers 1:1). Do you feel your life traversing a time of wilderness? Neither fear nor despair for it He, the Creator of your soul who brought you there. ‘Wildernesses’ hold special places in our lives. They become forever reference points. They often are places of refuge (Revelations 12:6), provision (Deuteronomy 8:16), revelation (Revelations 17:3), and maturing (Deuteronomy 8:2-3). Our fathers’ crossing the desert was really their honey-moon with God. Relatively speaking, they had very little cares or worries. They were on God’s never failing welfare system supplied with a constant provision of the most healthy food you can get on this earth, a Fountain of water following them, and the person of Moses through whom they had direct access with God. No wonder they did not want to enter the land where they were going to have to sow fields, reap harvests, organize a government and an effective army. Adonai remembers these years in the desert with the nostalgia of a husband remembering his early espousals. Through the prophet Hoseah He speaks of alluring His Bride to a desert place where she can give Him her full attention (Hoseah 2:14), then He says, "I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown (Jeremiah 2:2). Each year at the Feast of Tabernacles we are to remember our simple beginnings with God (Leviticus 23:41-43). Just like our fathers spent forty years in the desert learning to lean and depend on God in obedience and trust for even their daily food, Yeshua spent forty days and forty night in the wilderness learning the same lessons (Matthew 4:1-12). If both our Fathers and the master had to go though these things, why should we feel slighted when God decides for us to endure what seems to be a dry time? Cherish your wilderness times. They are times for you to focus your attention on the only things that really matter which are God, His will in your life, and His Words. May we, like our Fathers and our Master also learn, grow and mature from our wilderness times. Revelation 21:13
… on the east three gates … When Moses was on the Mount Adonai told Him to replicate among Israel all things as he was shown them (Exodus 25:9,40). It stands to reason therefore that the tabernacle, its furnishings and encampment, are the shadow of the Almighty’s throne room and its surroundings. On the Mt, Moses was given the tablets of the Testimony of the renewed covenant written by the finger of God. These were to be placed in an ark of acacia wood within the vicinity of elements of worship. This was called ‘The Tabernacle’ and constituted the ‘throne room’ of God. This throne room was to be surrounded by the Levite camp, itself surrounded by the twelve tribes, three tribes on each side. When Balaam saw the whole encampment from afar he was so moved by the spirit of Hashem that he exclaimed, How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your encampments, O Israel (Number 24:5)! From the book of Leviticus we learn that the three concentric circles around the Tabernacle are three concentric circles of holiness or ritual purity. To have God in their midst was great but it was also dangerous. Protocol could not be broken; we remember what happened to the sons of Aaron Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10). Levi was therefore a sort of a buffer zone between the presence of God and the Children of Israel. A similar pattern is found in the City of God, New Jerusalem which John describes for us in the last two chapters of the Book of revelation. In this case, the whole city is holy and has no need of the light of the sun for God Himself is its center giving it light and His lamp is the Lamb (Revelation 21: 23). Like the camp of the Shekinah in the desert, the city is surrounded by the tribes of Israel which are its gates. Just as one can only enter the redemptive covenant of Israel through Yeshua of the tribe of Judah, one can only enter the city by way of one of the tribes of Israel. We are told also that the city rests on the foundation of the disciples of Yeshua when he was on earth. The sages of Israel often analogized the whole idea of the Tabernacle into the human body. The Tables of the Testimony in the middle of the Shekinah camp represented the place of the heart in our bodies. In this world, we can only find sense, purity and holiness if the Word, the Lamp of the Lamb is at the center of our lives, focus, and attention. When our lives seem disoriented or even ‘off-center’, may we consider that perhaps we have diverted our attention to other things from that which is most important: God and His Word. This word ‘disoriented. It is one we use when we lose our sense of location. It means ‘to lose the East’. The Tribe of Judah where our Master is from was placed on the East side of the Tabernacle. He is our East helping us make sense of life. May we never lose our ‘East’! Matthew 10:31
“Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” In the first chapter of the Book of Numbers we read about a census of the Children of Israel. It is not the first census in the Hebrew Scriptures neither will it be the last. Censuses are conducted with different parameters and for different purposes. This census in the Book of Numbers was a military census (Numbers 1:3). One could be left to wonder what is it with God and censuses. To what can it be compared? It can be compared to a man collecting precious pearls. Each day he dives to the bottom of the abyss to gather oysters. After opening the shell, he puts all the pearl into a box. He then rubs each one against his teeth to separate the real ones from the others. One can go through a ton of pearls to get three or four real ones. These are precious to him; the price of very hard, intense and dangerous labor. In the evening he sets them before him sorts and counts them. He admires and loves his pearls; they are his pride. It is the same with God: censuses are a sign of His affection for His people. Hear what Rashi, a famous sage of Israel said about God’s censuses: “Because of Israel’s dearness before Him, He counts them all the time. When they departed from Egypt He counted them (Exodus 12:37). After some fell from the sin of the Golden Calf, He counted them to determine how many remained (Exodus 38:25-26). And when His Shekinah came to rest upon them, He counted them again.” There is an ancient teaching that on ten occasions Israel was numbered. The first time when they went down to Egypt (Deuteronomy 10:22), a, second when they came out (Exodus 12:37), and a third after the incident of the Golden Calf (Exodus 30:12). They were counted twice in the Book of Numbers, once in connections with the standards and once in connection with the division of the Land, and twice in the days of Saul (1 Samuel 11:8; 15:4). The eight time was in the days of David (2 Samuel 24:9) and the ninth in the days of Ezra after the Babylonian captivity (Ezra 2:64). The tenth census the Prophet Jeremiah tells us will be in the future: "Thus says the LORD of hosts: In this place that is waste, without man or beast, and in all of its cities, there shall again be habitations of shepherds resting their flocks. In the cities of the hill country, in the cities of the Shephelah, and in the cities of the Negeb, in the land of Benjamin, the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, flocks shall again pass under the hands of the one who counts them, says the LORD. "Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah (Jeremiah 33:12-14). In those days, the whole of the Israel of God, the last harvest of the souls of the world will be counted. See you there! 1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Though all Israel is liable to the whole Torah, not all of the Torah is incumbent upon each individual of Israel. Some rulings are solely incumbent on High-Priests, others on priests, some on Levites, Nazarites or firstborns. Some statutes solely concern men, others women or children; some also pertain singly to the stranger in the Land. The children of Moses’ brother Aaron are called Levites. They are called so because they are the descendant of the tribe of Levi, the son of Jacob. When God divided the tribes of the new born Jewish nation into the land of Canaan, God said that the Levites that they will have no land inheritance in Canaan, but that He was their inheritance (Leviticus 18:20-24). In this manner the tribe of Levi obtained the spiritual oversight and responsibility of Israel. Not all Levites automatically became priests, but all priests were to be Levites. Studying the lifestyle incumbent upon the Levite priests, it is easy to see that they were to live in a standard of purity and dedication higher than that of the rest of Israel. This standard was surpassed only by that of the High-Priest himself. Some of the particularities of the Levite priest are that he was to not own land nor busy himself with the affairs of the world. His primary job was that of a Torah teacher to the people. Wealthy folks often had their own Levite living among them teaching them and mostly their children. Most of the time though, the Levite taught in a village and people supported him with tithes and/or offerings in exchange for his services. He was the travelling living Word to the people. In His definition of the higher calling of discipleship, the Master drew from the Levitical priestly standards. He told the twelve with him that their dedication to Him was to be greater than that to their own families (Matthew 10:37), that they were in the world but not of the world (John 15:19), that they were to let go of material pursuits (Luke 12:16-35; Matthew 8:19-20) and spend their lives in the studying teaching of the Word and in prayer (Matthew 28:19-20). Yeshua did not ask for all to do that, but He left it there as an option. It seems that Peter understood the connection between a disciple of Yeshua and the Levitical priesthood when he referred to the people of the Roman congregation as a ‘royal priesthood’ (1 Peter 2:9). Many of us want to define ourselves as disciples of the Master. May we realize that this is not a title to be taken lightly. It is incumbent on whoever takes it to live like the Master did and obey His Words. A higher standard of purity is also required of us, and if we don’t fall under it, we better not call ourselves disciples at all unless a greater condemnation falls upon us (James 3:1). Matthew 6:9
Our Father … Above the ark containing the Torah scrolls, in many synagogue you find and inscription saying, ‘Know before Whom you stand’. This proclamation serves as a reminder that it is a serious thing to come into the Presence of the very Most-High God. We call Him, ‘Our Father’ and it is right; the Master taught us that, but somehow because of our contemporary Western perspective of fatherhood, we forget the ideas of respect and awe that such a title entails. In ancient times in the East, and even in the not so distant American past, fathers were the object of high reverence and respect. Looking back less than a hundred years ago, households were essentially run by fathers who held the key to the pocket book and disciplined their children. Their words were often few but final and certainly not to be crossed. All this changed with the industrial revolution and especially with WWII when women started working. I believe that this is a time when men felt like they lost their usefulness and reason for existence. Machines allowed women to do what before only men could do, and after the war many of these women did not want to return to be housewives. During the Industrial Boom also, many left the hard work of farms for the seeming easier life in the city but then the Great Depression hit and employer dependant people lost it all. It is in the natural make-up of a man to run his family, to care and provide for them; when he can’t it will, eat him up. As many men lost their leadership place in society, as post-WWII modern-days and the sixties arrived, especially in the West we lost all sense of respect and reverence for the family structure and this has reflected in our attitude towards religion and faith in general. We call it pompous, frivolous and even legalistic when we speak of adhering to certain rituals and M.O.s in order to approach God. Somehow though, we understand the protocols involved in approaching a judge whom we would never call by his name but we say, ‘your honor’; a president, whom we call, ‘Mr. President’; and a King whom we address saying, ‘Your Majesty’. Why is it then that we resist at the ideas of protocol and respect with God? He is our Father yes, but familiarity breeds contempt even with God. In fact, with God to break with protocol brings death (Numbers 4:20). As we lost reverence for our families, we also lost reverence for God, and as we lost reverence for God we lost reverence and fear to disobey His commandments. We say, ’God is not legalistic, He understands’, but what is the difference between ‘legalism’ and ‘reverent obedience’. The Word tells otherwise. It seems to me that we are judged by our obedience to do what He taught us to do, not by our doctrinal position or wise rhetoric, by how we live not by what we proclaim (Matthew 25). The question remains, how do we change this? How do we restore our respect for the Holiness of God? I believe that as we learn to reinstate the parameters of respectfulness within households, if mothers learn to be satisfied with being mothers again as fathers become respectable by fully endorsing their paternal responsibilities, as we do this, we will restore our idea of the greatness of God. As children learn to obey their parents, they learn to obey God later in adult life. It may take the whole messianic age to do it though, so let’s start today! Matthew 23:39
For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' Israel’s sages teach this analogy about ancient Jerusalem: A king bought his first-born son, the heir of the kingdom, an expensive suit of clothing. The son, unconscious of the worth of the suit was unfaithful with it and very quickly the expensive garment became so soiled and torn that it was not fit to wear. The king decided then to have another beautiful suit made for his son, but again the son showed himself careless and unfaithful. The king then decided, ‘I will buy my son another suit, the most beautiful anyone has ever worn, but I will give it to him only after he has matured and learned faithfulness. Leviticus twenty-six tells us the woes God puts on His children for disobedience. The first one tells of sickness, military and agricultural failure, the second speaks of the Temple. God says, “And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins, and I will break the pride of your power, … (Leviticus 26:18-19). The prophet Ezekiel used that theme just before the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, the first Temple and said, “Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your power, the delight of your eyes, and … (Ezekiel 24:21). Because of sin in the land, the first temple was destroyed by the Babylonian King: Nebuchadnezzar. Israel’s history tells us that another Temple was built after the Babylonian exile. It was not as beautiful and glorious as the first one but in an effort to win the favor of the Jewish people King Herod, the one who tried to have the Master killed when He was a baby, transformed that second temple into one of the marvels of the ancient world. As beautiful as it was, that Temple was also destroyed, this time by Titus, a Roman General. On Titus’ victory arch, you can see engravings of enslaved Jews bringing their riches to Rome. You can even see someone carrying the Temple menorah. What an ironic monument now that Israel had resurrected from the ashes of the Roman extermination. As the old story about the King and his firstborn son: the Father has a beautiful third ‘garment’ in store for Israel (Exodus 4:22). It will be the most glorious of all and it will be given to him when he has matured and learned to say again, ‘Baruch habah b’shem Adonai: Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of Adonai’ (Matthew 23:29). May it come soon, Abba, even in our days! John 9:3
"It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. The Torah teaches us the notions of right and wrong according to the Father Creator of the universe. It sets before us the rewards of obedience and warns us of the chastisements for breach of contract. God says to His Children who know His Name, have witnessed His power, and lived of His bounty, "If you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you (Leviticus 26:14-17). As the Messiah was the executer of God’s will at creation (John 1:3; Proverbs 8:22-31) so will Messiah be the executor of God’s judgment on the disobedient (Revelations 19). He will come in His time. In the mean time, should we deduct that all diseases, fevers, business and military failures are the direct consequences of our sins? Should we assume that one who is sick with cancer sins more than the one who is healthy? It is neither safe nor true to come to such conclusion. The Torah instructs us in this matter. The book of Job for example tells us of a man who was righteous and yet suffered affliction without measure (to be righteous doesn’t necessarily mean that one does not sin ‘for all have sinned’ (Romans 3:23). To be called righteous by God simply defines our status with Him). The whole Job event seems to be for the purpose of creating a Messianic analogy that teaches us about Messiah the True Righteous One who like Job, unduly suffered, was condemned by his friends for it (Isaiah 53:3-4), but who at a later time will be justified and vindicated by God in plain sight of those who accused him (Revelations 19). It seems like Job’s suffering were solely that God may tell us of His work through Messiah. It is just like with that time when the disciples asked the Master when they saw a man who had been blind from birth, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" The Master answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him (John 9:2-3). In a sense, the wise and safe conclusion we can make from our passage in the Book of Leviticus is that, ‘whereas sin and disobedience always result in calamities, calamities are not always the direct consequence of sin and disobedience’. John 5:24
He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. The Torah is a contract. It is a contract that defines our affiliation with our Heavenly Father. It tells us how we belong to Him and His Kingdom (Leviticus 26:10-12). A contract usually tells of benefits for those faithful to its terms, but it is useless unless it is also fitted with ‘teeth’ for those who break them. Within the Torah contract are imbedded two major texts of curses designed to come upon those who dishonor it (Leviticus 26:3-13; Deuteronomy 28). These texts have often been misinterpreted as the ‘curse of the Torah (Galatians 3:13)’ and therefore ‘nailed to the cross (Colossians 2:14)’, (God forbid). How could it be that the instructions which Moses proclaimed are our life ((Deuteronomy 32:47), that the statutes in which David found great rewards (Psalms 19:11), what the writer of the Book of Hebrews even called the ‘Gospel’ (Hebrews 4:2), are now cursed death nailed to a tree (God forbid)? The Torah is an everlasting covenant, and even when covenantal addendums are made, they do not replace the former but are built on them (Galatians 3:17). Upon closer examination we realize that this so-called ‘curse of the Torah’ ‘nailed to the tree’ spoken of by Paul is not the Torah contract itself. The salary of sin (breaking the Torah) is death (1 John 3:4; Romans 6:23). The word ‘mavet:death’ in Hebrew actually refers to separation from God. The curse spoken of here is the condemnation to separation from the Father by the eternal courts of judgment; a form of banishment from the kingdom for breaking the rules. Paul also speaks of a ‘written code (NIV)’, of a ‘handwriting of ordinances (KJV)’ ‘nailed to the cross’ which is often erroneously interpreted as being the Torah Itself, but it only refers to a legal document used in courts which is also called ‘a certificate of debt (ESV)’. It is a paper listing to the judge all our offenses against the law. The Master often used analogies of debts and courts when He spoke of sin (Matthew 6:12). This list, this ‘certificate of debt’ is the evidence against us that we broke the Torah. It is that list which is nailed to the cross with Messiah. Basically, Messiah pays our ‘fine’ to the Judge and gets rid of the evidence that stands against us. We are given a clean slate, a chance to start again. In Messiah we are given a new chance to learn to live by God’s standards. The idea is that like the Children of Israel were rescued from the angel of death in Egypt in order to go and learn to live by God’s standards instead of by those of Egypt, we also, are saved from Satan the ‘angel of death’, that we may go and learn to live for God in His way. We don’t obey the Torah in order to get redeemed; we do it because we are redeemed by the Lamb of God: Yeshua HaMashiach! Luke 4:18-19
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to … preach deliverance to the captives, … to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. The Sacred Texts teach us about God’s special times (Leviticus 23; 25). Starting with Spring we have the Sabbatical years every septet, a time where for the most par the Land is to be given a rest and people can only eat from what they saved and of what grows of its own accord. It has been calculated that 1967, the year when Jerusalem was freed from occupation and returned to its rightful Jewish heirs was also a Sabbatical year. Another of these times is called the Jubilee year and it comes the year after seven septets. Due to many interruptions, exiles, occupations, wars, calendar modifications and lack of information, it is today difficult to restore the exact dates of Sabbatical years and Jubilees. Many have tried by collecting data from History book such as the Book of Josephus as well as taking into considerations hints from the Scriptures, and while many of these calculations have somewhat different outcome, there is a body of them that comes near to each other in their calculations. A common trend I noticed is that many put the year 28 A.D. (or around) as a jubilee year. I am not a calendar expert so I cannot say but there are a few factors that can agree to that. The Jubilee year was to be announced in synagogues at Yom Kippur (Leviticus 25:8-9). During the days of the Master Jubilees were not officially kept but the years of the Master’s ministering on earth correspond to the possibilities of jubilee time. In any case, Yeshua did not miss His cue and could have announced it when He quoted Isaiah sixty-one in the Nazareth synagogue (Luke: 4:18). If that proclamation at the synagogue was indeed done on a Yom Kippur, then Yeshua was not coming in from a one day fast as the rest of the country did, but from a forty day fast in which His virtue was tested by the enemy of His and our souls. These forty days are comparable to the ‘Days of Awe”, a Jewish tradition of spending the forty days before Yom Kippur in soul-searching in order to acknowledge sin in our lives and change our ways. If there was a jubilee during the Master’s ministry, that would also explain why people had the time to leave home, travel, and listen to Him. This was the point of the Jubilee, to stop the daily grind of our day-to-day existence, dedicate time to God in prayer and study of the Torah, as well as to family and friends; sort of an extended Shabbat. God knows that we need help in establishing our priorities, and time to sort out problems with the people who are part of our lives. In any case, it is evident that both Sabbatical and Jubilee years are important times in God’s calendar and we better keep track of them. Let us also remember that Yeshua is our Sabbatical Jubilee. He is the One who brings us spiritual and physical restoration, and soon His Sabbatical Kingdom will be established on earth as the greatest of all Jubilees. |
Thanks for thinking of us... even a tiny donation is a blessing to us...
Order our new CD at: http://www.thelumbrosos.com/shop.html
Also available on itune. 
Our 'UNDER THE FIG TREE' atL:
http://www.thelumbrosos.com/shop.html 
Check our original judaica and other jewelery at:
http://www.thelumbrosos.com/shop.html Archives
May 2013
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed