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Revelations 2:17
To the one who conquers … I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.' The Book of Exodus in Hebrew is called ‘Shemot’, meaning ‘names’. It is the Book of ‘Names’. “Names’ is the first principal word that appears in the book’s narrative and Judaism names the Books of the Bible using the book's first main noun or verb. The names of the different people involved in the scenarios of the book appear little by little, but what we discover most in the Book of Shemot is the Names of God. God Himself introduces His Names first to Moses when he asks, If I come to the people of Israel … and they ask me, 'What is his name' (Exodus 3:13) ‘and to Pharaoh when he challenged Moses’ divine message with, "Who is Adonai, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go (Exodus 5:2)?” Hashem answered Moses’ question by showing His great power to conquer in order to save, and Pharaoh's by showing His great power to conquer in order to destroy. In our Western philosophically Greek culture, we look at names as a sound bite by which we call people. Sad to say, this is also the way we look at the Name of God: an identifying sound bite to which He should answer when called upon. In the Semitic world of the Bible, Names refer to what you are, to what you where created to be. Names describe who you are, the reason and circumstance of your birth; your qualities and/or properties. By knowing your name people know something very important about you. In Exodus, the Father and Creator introduces Himself by many names, not as sound bite we are supposed to use to make sure we are addressing the right person, but as a memorial of what He is in what he does. Yeshua said that the Name of the Father should be hallowed, sanctified (Matthew 6:9), which means set aside for specials times and uses. Yeshua said these things quoting parts of an ancient Jewish prayer referring to the practice of only pronouncing the Sacred Name in the precincts of the Temple and during times of devoted prayer; never in common discussion. Yeshua followed that practice, and also taught His disciples to follow His example of simply calling Hashem: "Avinu' or, 'Our Father' (Matthew 6:9), Western believers have twisted that Jewish application or respect toward protecting God’s name into the idea of a rabbinic conspiracy to hide it for themselves. This idea born from anti-Semitism still lingers. Today each of us has a name given to us by our parents. In this world where truth is hidden under the fiction of a physical veil, this name may or may not have anything to do with us. In the World to Come, Yeshua has promised us a new name revealing to the world our properties, our qualities, in a sense who we really are (Revelations 2:17). Come to think of it, it may a scary thought for some of us! At that time, we will be fully known even as we have been fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). May it be soon Abba, even in our days!
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Matthew 24:31
And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Behold the Great Day has come We have fasted for it over the centuries and until this day afflict our souls in prayers of repentance. Now has Hashem heard our voices; the blood of His many martyrs reaches to His nostrils and now He inclines His ears to our cries. May He who brings Israel back to Him be blessed for truly, He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock (Jeremiah 30:10).' On this day, see the reward of our work over the centuries. See Him who comes from Edom, in crimsoned garments from Bozrah, he who is splendid in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his strength? "It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save." Why is your apparel red, and your garments like his who treads in the winepress? "I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their lifeblood spattered on my garments, and stained all my apparel. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and my year of redemption had come (Isaiah 63:1-4). The galloping of His white horse echoes Moses' song. The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelations 19:11-6; Deuteronomy 32:34-43). As Moses and all the prophets sang of the deliverance of Israel, of its return to his land and his God, let us foresee and rejoice of His mighty works for truly Adonai has ransomed Jacob and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him. They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of Hashem, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall be like a watered garden, and they shall languish no more. Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow (Jeremiah 31:11-13). MATTHEW 5:21-22
"You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire. Paul, Yeshua’s apostle teaches us that the reward of sin is death (Romans 3:23). Furthermore John, another apostle teaches that sin is the breaking of the Commandment (1 John 3:4). Yeshua Himself was against even the relaxing of the commandments (Matthew 5:19), and challenged us to be even more righteous than His very conservative brothers (Matthew 5:20), but is it feasible? Because the breaking of the Torah was so dangerous, the teachers of Israel decided to make fences around Its Commandments. The idea was to proclaim the interdict in a way that it was impossible to break it. It’s like having an important meeting at six thirty, but aware of people’s procrastinating nature, you declare it at six o’clock. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s called wisdom and knowing human nature; we do it all the time; we tell children, “Don’t go in the kitchen” when all we don’t want them to do is touch the knives. After their return from Babylon, the sages of Israel understood that they had gone to exile because of their breaking of the commandments. They realized that it wasn’t very fun to go to exile, so they adopted the principle of ‘fences’ around the commandments in order to make it more difficult to break them. We must remember that the responsibility of the elders of the Hebrew nation was very great. People did not have Scripture scrolls around their homes in these days. The teachers were the only means by which people could even know what the commandment is. They were like the parents of the people. God allowed Cain the first murderer to live. As a result, when Lamech (Cain’s great-grand-son) also committed murder he thought that he should get away with it (Genesis 4:23-24). Eventually, after the Great Flood, the Father made it a universal law that murder warranted the death penalty (Genesis 9:6). The idea was that to kill a man was to kill something made in the image of the almighty. It’s like killing your son: you will want revenge for his shed blood. Through Moses, the Father reiterated His position about murder (Numbers 35:30-31) and Yeshua taught us that the ‘fence’ for the sin of murder was anger in the heart (Matthew 5:21-22). When we kill unlawfully, we actually commit murder against ourselves. If the law doesn’t catch us, the true Avenger of blood does. God is a God of justice and mercy: justice for the offender and mercy for the offended. I told my students one time: how would you feel if you lived in a world where you never had to worry about people lying, killing, stealing, hating and all the likes? They said, “It would be like Heaven!”, to which I responded, “we can have it, by just deciding to obey the Ten Statements written on stone by the finger of God Himself at Mt Sinai. By the way; why don’t we? Marc 15:2
And Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" And he answered him, "You have said so." As long as they lived in the Land, at the end of each seven years, at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles also called the Feast of Ingathering, the Children of Israel were required to assemble in Jerusalem, men, women and child, citizen or resident alien, to hear the reading of the Book of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 31:10-13). While nothing forbids congregations from reading Deuteronomy together during the Feast of Tabernacles, the very demands of this commandment decree that it can only be fulfilled while the people of Israel live in the land, with Jerusalem as their capital. New generations were bound to be born and time which would erase the days of espousals in the desert (Jeremiah 2:2), so this practice served as a regular reminder of the origins, culture and understanding of the history of this people redeemed from Egypt. The commandment says to ‘gather’, to ‘assemble’ the country together in Jerusalem its God-chosen capital. So it was later decided that this commandment was incumbent on the only person who had the authority to require such a gathering of the people: the king. The religious leaders also declared that it was the king’s duty to read the Torah to the people. Religion was not meant to be separate from state affairs; in fact, the ostracizing of religious obligation from state affairs is what later brought the downfall of Israel.Prophets tell us that at the fulfillment of the Messianic Age, not only Israel, but the whole world is to be represented in Jerusalem to hear the Torah at the feast of Tabernacles. The prophet Zachariah informs us that in those days, whoever does not come to celebrate Tabernacles in Jerusalem will not receive rain (Zechariah 14:16-21). In that day, at the time of the great jubilee, the true legitimate King of Jerusalem; He who is called ‘the King of the Jews’ and who has been called to lead the people of God; Yeshua the Nazarene who has been manifested unto us as the Messiah-King, priest and prophet of Israel, will command the world to stop their feverish activities, come to Jerusalem and stand to attention while He instructs them reading the very words that He dictated to Moses before his death. While this time may be in a distant future, there is a very distinct possibility that it may not be so far away. As the children of Israel stood waiting to enter the Land, we here also stand close to the time of the establishment of the Messianic Kingdom in the world. For them and for us, the stories of Egypt are a distant memory belonging to a past generation. Just like them, we believe having not seen, just because of a word of promise. As we acknowledge these things, may we today start acknowledging the Feast of Tabernacle as a time to review the historical foundation of our trust in Yeshua the Messiah in the Book of Deuteronomy. |
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