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Matthew 24:15
So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand) … From Cain to Nebuchadnezzar, everyone who tried to conquer the Jewish, the People of the Covenant, did it forcefully through land and military conquest. In his Jewish Antiquities, Flavius Josephus gives a detailed account of Alexander the Great's visit to Jerusalem and the transpiring events that caused him not to invade and destroy it. Even though Alexander the Great did not conduct a military campaign against Jerusalem, the Hellenic empire is responsible for the historically most successful conquest of the People of God, and that through cultural assimilation. The Western philosophical Greek is as opposite to the Eastern covenantal Jew as day is opposite from night, but is commonly said, 'opposites attract!' When Israel had gotten truly addicted to Hellenism and even had a Greek appointed corrupt Jewish High-Priest, all Antiochus Epiphanes thought he had to do was to send his emissary with a list of reforms to put all of Judaism into his evil hands. He didn't expect the Maccabee revolt. From where I stand, the Maccabees may have won the war and rededicated the Temple, Antiochus Epiphanes may be dead, but the form of Anti-Semitism that he taught is still alive and vibrant. In his great graciousness and compassion Hashem gave us His Messiah. This Jewish, Righteous, and Torah-observant Messiah was high-jacked by Greco-Roman believers who in less than two hundred years displayed Him as a Roman god dressed as a Greek Adonis teaching Greek philosophy. Under a twisted ignorant interpretation of Paul's epistles, this identity theft of our Messiah included the same set of religious reforms initiated by Antiochus Epiphanes which are to stop observing the Sabbath, practicing circumcision, eating according to biblical dietary laws, and studying theology as per the Torah. As a Jewish believer, I find myself in awe that today, my non-Jewish brothers live by the same religious reforms as those pushed by Antiochus Epiphanes and even find myself shunned from their fellowship as one whose, to say the least, theology is overly influenced by Judaism. I wonder what Yeshua would think of the fact that if I want fellowship with non-Jewish believers, I have to live by Antiochus Epiphanes rules. It may be OK for others, but Jewish believers need another Chanukah revolt where with Matthias Maccabee we say "NO" to Antiochus Epiphanes' rules and live our faith in Messiah according to the terms of the covenant Hashem gave to His people. Maybe that Day will be the Day of Messiah. May Hashem give us another Matthias Maccabee who will stand for us and lead us into the cultural battle to defeat Antiochus Epiphanes once and for all! May it be soon Abba, even in our days.
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2 Corinthians 7:10
… For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret … At the time of Jechonias, the last Davidic king to ever sit on the throne of Jerusalem, we find the following words in an oracle pronounced by the prophet Jeremiah: Thus says Adonai: "Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah" (Jeremiah 22:30). These words are troubling because according to the prophets Samuel and Nathan, the lineage of David was to be never-ending culminating to the Messiah. If this Davidic king was to remain childless the hope of Israel was gone and with it the hope of the world. As we continue looking into the Davidic genealogy, we realize that Jechonias has a son, Salathiel who dies. Pediaiah, the brother of Salathiel fulfills the levirate law and marries his brother’s widow thus raising seed to him in Zerubabel whom God chooses to continue the Davidic line (Haggai 2:23). It is then fair to ask the question: did God reverse Jechonias’ curse? But we also should ask another question: Did God annul the blessing on the Davidic line and the world because of the iniquity of one? These are very serious question imbedded in the reading of the genealogies. It would not be the first time that because of our unfaithfulness towards our covenant made with Him God would decide to annul the whole thing. We have seen it happen in the Sinai desert. One thing we learn from our dear Hashem is that ‘though we are faithless, He remains faithful’: Blessed be His Name. Jewish sages knew that so in Talmudic literature they conclude that Jechonias repented while in exile, thus even though his son died, God reversed the curse through the accepted Toratic principle of levirate marriage. The repentance of Jechonias cannot be documented but what this shows us is that the people of Israel looked at God as a One of mercy who reverses the fruits of our disobedience because of our repentance. Repentance therefore becomes essential to renewal and fulfillment of God’s promises. Come to think of it, it is not the first time that levirate law comes to the rescue of the covenantal lineage. It happened with Judah and Tamar, Boaz and Ruth, and in the immediate family of the Master Himself (Julius Africanus). The Davidic Messianic line is filled with people of disrepute who desperately needed absolution and renewal through sincere and true repentance. So when you feel that you’ve really blown it this time and that there is no hope left for you, look at whom God chose; look at the descendance of Messiah and know that Hashem is a God who rewards true and sincere repentance. David, more than anyone else knew it. He was destined to death because of murder and adultery, so he said, If you, O Adonai, should mark iniquities, O Adonai, who could stand (Psalms 130:3)? Ephesians 3:10 (CJB)
For the rulers and authorities in heaven to learn, through the existence of the Messianic Community, how many-sided God's wisdom is. Moses continues his exhortation to the children of the Children of Israel who left Egypt. He outlines God's credentials with, "For ask now of the days that are past … whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of (Deuteronomy 4:32)". Then he goes on with expounding on the events surrounding the Exodus of their fathers. The Exodus is God's testimony to mankind of His superiority over all the gods and powers in heaven and on earth. It is the testament of His ability to fulfill the promises He made to Abraham, and that in spite of any unforeseen developments in the dynamics of the History of His people. If God says so, He is able to fetch His people from abject slavery in the lowest cultural strata of Egyptian societal gutters, and make them a free sovereign people which eventually became the Light of God to the nations around them. That's what Moses wanted the children of the Children of Israel to understand as they readied to conquer the Land before them. As Paul teaches the Gentile believers of Ephesus, he reflects the Exodus events that showed God's superiority over the gods of Egypt into his own time and work as an emissary to the Gentiles. He says that though it was not known by the ancients, through the Messianic Congregations the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Messiah Yeshua our Lord (Ephesians 3:5-6; 10-11). In other words, our fathers didn't know it, but as the gods of Egypt learned of the superiority of God through the Exodus of the children of Israel, now the gods of Greece and Rome (which are really the same) were going to learn the same lesson through the exodus of their children into the Messianic Congregation of Yeshua the Messiah. And that my friend is God's universal plan, not only to redeem His children from slavery to the world, but to demonstrate to them as well as to all the powers in heaven and on earth His ability to deliver them. We are like the cherished prize of two contenders, only the game is thrown, as we already know the Winner! In the same manner as the God of Israel delivered the Children of Jacob from slavery and showed the rulers and gods of Egypt 'a thing or two', He now delivers His children from the other nations and shows their rulers and gods 'a thing or two'. As the children of the Children of Israel were to look back at what happened to their fathers in order to mature their faith, the children of Israel of today, along with those of the nations, are also to look back to these events as a testimony of God's power to save us all from this idolatrous and wicked world, thus the importance of celebrating the Passover Seder. May we all learn in this day and age the many lessons of trust, faith, and obedience that can only be learned as we sit at the feet of Adonai in the 'wilderness' times of our lives, as we hear hear from Him at His Holy Mountain. May we also learn to also fear God, the Creator, the Ruler of the universe, the Deliverer of His people, and fear Him only! Hebrews 10:19-23
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Yeshua, … let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, …Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering … I want to take you into one of the biggest ‘dirty secrets’ of the Apostolic Scriptures. Unbeknownst to them, the reformer writers of the English text of the Bible continued in the Catholic tradition of antinomianism (opposed to God’s Laws (not Moses’ Law)) and Replacement Theology. In the King James Bibles certain words are in italics. These were added by the editor to aid the flow of the English translation. Hebrew does not use the verb ‘to be’ in the present tense, so ‘is’ would added in italics in the English text. In doing so, our editors of the KJV have infiltrated their theology into the text. One of the main editions is found in a Midrash (a comparative analogy) in the Book of Hebrews. In ‘For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second (Hebrews 8:7 KJV)’, the word ‘covenant’ is italicized. It is an edition from the KJV writers. With edition Hebrews 8 and 9 therefore become the proof-text for an antinomian theology which declares God’s Law from Sinai obsolete. If we delete the additions of the word ‘covenant’, we realize that the text of Hebrews 8 and 9 has nothing to do with covenant relevancy, or a ‘faulty’ covenant, but is actually an eschatological analogy on God’s great redemptive plan using the two chambers of the Tabernacle. In the Greek text from where Hebrews 8 and 9 originate, not only the word ‘covenant’ does not exist, but the words ‘first’ and ‘second’ are not adjectives but nouns in their own rights, ‘protos/first’, and ‘deuteros/second’ speaking of the first, the ‘Holy’, and second, the ‘Holy of Holies’, chambers of the Tabernacle. We then discover a beautiful truth revealed by the Holy Spirit. Hebrews 9:8-9 even interprets the whole analogy for us telling us that the ‘Protos’ can be understood as symbolizing this present world, and therefore the ‘deuteros’ symbolizes the ‘World to Come’, but that those who already have Messiah already have a share in the that future reality of the complete fulfillment of the Messianic era, albeit only an ‘earnest’ (2 Corinthians 1:22). As you can see, the text speaks nothing of Torah relevancy. May we take these promises concerning the World to Come to heart as we go though the difficult times of life. The letter to the Hebrew believers was written to a persecuted Congregation of Jewish Israeli follower of Messiah. The theme of the Letter was an encouragement to look up from the imperfectness of this present time unto the bright hope of the future of a better and more perfect Tabernacle where Yeshua entered one and for all not with the blood of goats but with His own. May we also lift our eyes above the trials of this life, not in denial of the suffering of the present reality, but in the bright hope that is given to all those who put their trust in the Living God through Him. James 1:22
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves”. The reading portion assigned for this week starts with the rulings of freeing slaves every seven years. This law of release also applied to fields that are to be let fallow one year out of seven. The purpose of these commandments is to keep people from oppressing each other, as well as to establish a sense of priority in God’s people. God doesn’t want us to spend our lives aimlessly increasing our wealth at the cost of human beings and our spiritual walk, which also needs attention. When the people of Israel did not obey the law of release, God sent Babylon against them. The seventy years of Babylonian captivity correspond to the seventy jubilees they did not observe. The earth is God’s and everything in it. He makes the rules and He gets His due, you can make sure of it. The part that compliments this week’s reading portion is in the Book of Jeremiah. As the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem, through the mouth of Jeremiah the Lord convicts the people about not observing the jubilee (Jeremiah 34:8-10). As they obeyed, word reached the Babylonian army that Hophra was coming up out of Egypt with an army to raise the siege. It is not that the Egyptians loved Israel so much, it is just that whoever controls Israel controls the Via Maris, the main trade route between Egypt and Assyria. Here is where the story changes. When Israel sees Egypt coming to its rescue causing the lifting of the Babylonian siege, they renege on their repentance. They bring their slaves back to labor. They maybe thought they played a good one on God, until Jeremiah unveiled God’s retributive plan. You can read it in chapter thrity-four of the Book of Jeremiah. Through Abraham, God made a covenant with mankind which cannot be broken (Genesis 15). But the fact that this covenant cannot be broken does not exclude retributions for us breaking it. Though these retributions may not be definitive, they are nevertheless drastic (Jeremiah 34:13-22). When a person goes under the redemptive covenant God made with the world through Yeshua the Messiah, that person becomes liable to the obligations of its contract. Inclusion under God’s covenant is free, but there are particulars to the terms. As we read Scripture, it is important for us to understand the particulars of our contract. In this day and age of literacy, the only excuse we have for not knowing is disobedience or indifference, and both are bad. James admonished the Israeli community of believers in these very pertinent words, Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves (James 1:21-22). May we also take these words to heart! 1 Peter 2:19
For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. … But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Messiah also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. Abraham was called a ‘friend’ of God. Did Abraham click the ‘like’ digital button on God’s Facebook? Or did God click on ‘like’ digital button on Abraham’s Facebook? In ancient Semitic societies the word ‘friend’ meant something much deeper than a digital click or a casual acquaintance. The bond of friendship was as strong as a marriage. David and Jonathan had such a bond (1 Samuel 18:1-4)! In a ‘friend’ covenant, two parties merged their assets and liabilities and pledged each other military support. The covenant could only be annulled by the death of one of the parties. To break the terms of the ‘friend’ covenant was a serious issue that could even lead to war between the two factions. Here is question: whereas I may find benefits in making such a covenant/merger with God, what would God gain in making one with me? Do I have anything to give Him? Will I protect God in His day of trouble? Indeed God needed a man to help Him bridge between His holy realm and the human sinful realm; a man with integrity who would show himself unconditionally loyal towards that covenant; a man who would initiate a family line to carry the seed of Messiah. That man whom God would entrust needed to have a certain amount of ‘chesed’. This word is usually translated as ‘mercy’, lovingkindness’. It also means ‘devotion’. Ten times Hashem tested Abraham’s ‘chesed’ towards the covenant even to the point of requiring the life of his only begotten son, and ten times Abraham proved himself worthy of the Father’s investment. Covenants are passed from fathers to sons. When we accept Yeshua as our Messiah, the abrahamic covenant falls on us. Should we also be tested? Life seems to be a series of tests where we each are faced with decisions pertaining to the terms of the covenant. The Torah given on Mount Horeb is the terms of our covenant with the heavenly Father. Most of us have trials and tests in our lives. Some are our faults, while some seem totally random. Sages taught that when the sinner suffers it is for his own sake, but when the righteous suffers, it is for the sake of others. Whereas some of our trials may be the results of our own foolishness, some things do fall on us that we feel are random. Yeshua did d say that as the Father sent Him, so he sent us. Could it be that our ‘random’ trials operate ‘virtue credit’ for others who need it? This principle is why prophets who interceded for Israel always reminded God of someone else’s virtue like Abraham or King David in whose name to save Israel. We are ourselves are redeemed not by our own virtues but by that of Messiah. This is just something to think about. If anything, it may give purpose to those things you feel happened to you for no reason at all! 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! Hebrews 9:10
… until the time of reformation. More important than finding the actual Ark of the Covenant, we must understand not only what it stands for but more importantly, what it doesn’t stand for. Let us therefore continue our archeological work of removing the debris of the doctrines of man in order to rediscover the Truth of the Word of God according to its own value. We have discovered that KJ editors added the word ‘covenant’ in their text of the eighth chapter of the letter to the Jewish believers of Israel. Removing that unfortunate edition, we now read the text not as a dispensational argument, but as a revelation of the meaning of the two chambers of the Tabernacle. Following the same principle we continue onto the thirteenth verse of chapter eight which reads, In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away (Hebrews 8:13 KJV). Taking the added word ‘covenant’ out, what is it in our text that ‘decays and waxes old’, that becomes in fact obsolete? The terms of the Toratic covenant given on Mt Horeb? How is that possible since the Torah is fixed forever in Heaven (Psalms 119:89)? The Levitical priesthood? How could that be since the eternal Torah says that theirs is a perpetual priesthood (Exodus 40:15)? Aaron’s priesthood only stopped because the Temple was destroyed thirty years after Yeshua’s resurrection, but both the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah speak of its reinstitution when the Temple is rebuilt. For that reason, it cannot be the Temple either that has become obsolete in our text. What is it then that ‘decays and waxes old’ becoming obsolete in verse thirteen? When we read the text without the edition and understanding that ‘first’ and ‘second’ speak of the two section of the Tabernacle, chapter 9 gives us our answer,; it says, Now even the first had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared, the first section, …. It is called the Holy Place. Behind the second curtain was a second section called the Most Holy Place, having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron's staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant…. These preparations … their ritual duties, but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing (which is symbolic for the present age). According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper (Hebrews 9:1-9) (emphasis mine). It is this present age which decays and passes away, that becomes obsolete as the Kingdom of God is slowly but surely established since the manifestation of Messiah. This present age of the futile rule of man on the earth is coming to an end. We already hear the footsteps of Messiah on the horizon. He is coming to take His Bride and with her establish the Kingdom of His Father on earth. May it come soon, Abba, even in our days! |
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