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John 8:36
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Our fathers were slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh ordered their lives. He told them what to work, where to work, and how to work. He told them to serve him and no one else. Pharaoh was to be obeyed and worshipped under pain of death. When they cried under the cruel oppression, the Almighty El-Shaddai heard them and by His mighty Right Hand delivered them. He delivered them, brought them to a mountain and bound them to Him and to His Laws. Hashem’s Law then ordered our father’s lives. It told them what to work, where to work, and how to work; to serve Adonai and no-one else. Adonai was to be obeyed and worshipped under pain of death. For those who have a tendency to think that living under the Torah is a form of bondage, it could be concluded that the Children of Israel went from one bondage to another; from slavery under Pharaoh to slavery under God. Indeed, judging by the way living under the commandments of Torah is viewed by many people today, these conclusions are inevitable. Let me indulge in a mariner’s analogy. A sailor is at sea. He is in charge of an expensive vessel. He is also responsible for the life of a crew and he has a mission to accomplish. He is at the helm. He has a serious look on his face and does not make a move. He does not take one decision without checking his compass. This reliance on the compass determines the success or failure of his mission, the safety of his vessel; the life and death of his crew. I heard it said that if a sailor wants to enjoy the high seas, he must become 'slave' to the compass. My friend, thus it is with life. To keep our traveling vessel worthy, to preserve the life of those entrusted in our care, and to accomplish the goal for which we were sent on the high-seas of life, we also must become slave to the ‘Compass’, and in this case, the ‘Compass’ is the Torah. A famous American folk singer used to sing the words, "You’re gonna have to serve somebody; whether it may the devil or whether it may be the Lord, you’re gonna have to serve somebody!" This is so true. In the end, we truly always have to serve somebody. We either serve the idolatrous King of the land or we serve Hashem. And even if our lives are not regulated by external forces, we eventually become slaves to the worse bondage of all: the bondage to our own passions. Serving God under His Torah is the most wonderful freedom of all. It means freedom from human slavery, self-imposed or otherwise. It is the wings that free us from even the bondage of gravity to take us to higher ground. It is the very substance that delivers us from the fear of death to bring us to eternal life. If that is bondage, may I live under it all the days of my life.
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2 Peter 1:4
He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature …. In ancient times in Israel when a young man wanted to marry, he first consulted with the local matchmaker. He then went to the prospective girl’s father or guardian and agreed to a price. Once this agreement was sealed by a glass of wine, the young man went to ‘prepare a place’, or build a house for them to live in. During that whole time the validity of the union was as solid as marriage itself. A ketubah was also written. A ketubah is a legal document written in beautiful calligraphy which outlines the bride-price paid for the girl and incorporates all the conditions of the marriage, especially the responsibilities of the groom towards his wife. It serves as a prenuptial agreement and deterrent in case the husband would leave her as it also mentions of the money owed to the wife in case of divorce, unless of course the divorce was the wife’s fault due to her marital unfaithfulness. During the ceremony held under a ‘chupah’ which is a cloth held by four poles above the couple, the terms of the ketubah/contract are sealed through the sharing of a glass of wine. The glass is then placed at the foot of the groom for him to smash with his foot saying, ‘thus be done to me if I do not honor the words of this contract’. The ceremony is usually followed by a celebration with music, dancing and a copious banquet. When the Almighty wanted to marry Israel He was His own matchmaker. He also had already prepared a place for them: The Promised Land of Israel. He then brought His prospective wife to a solitary place under the shading of Mt. Horeb so He could have her attention and bare His heart to her. After the Heavenly Bridegroom made His proposal, Israel agreed and said, ‘all that God said we will do’. The engagement was then rendered valid. Moses along with seventy-three other people (witnesses) climbed Mt. Horeb to get the ketubah/contract written in stone by the finger of God Himself. The whole thing was sealed in blood and followed by a meal with the Almighty Himself (Exodus 24). When God took Israel.as a bride, He entered a covenant with everlasting legal promises. Whereas it can be agreed that the marriage has been ‘rocky’, God is not a man that He should lie, and unlike many men, He is compassion and forgiveness itself; He repents from the evil He wants to do to His people. We Israel need to cling tightly to that ketubah, to the term of the marriage found in the Torah. We need to study it so we can hold our Bridegroom to His terms and to His promises. On the other hand, we also need to be a faithful wife and hold to our terms of faithfulness and obedience. A very wise mother one day instructed her kingly son in the choosing of a wife and said, An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels (Proverbs 31:10). In his search, her son ended up with almost a thousand women. As the Israel of the end, let us put on the regeneration offered by the Righteous One, Yeshua the Messiah and become the excellent wife so sought after by the Almighty God. Hebrews 13:8
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” "For I the LORD do not change” (Malachi 3:6). In his mystical Gospel, John introduces us to the Messiah in the following words, ‘In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). This ‘Word’ John speaks of is actually the ‘Memrah’ presented to us in the Aramaic version of the Pentateuch called The Targum in its attempts to explain the nature of Messiah. John then continues with, “And the Word became flesh …” (John 1:14). By all recognitions, this Memrah that became flesh to dwell among us, is the Torah itself, which is not only a legal document but also the direct revelation of God’s nature and character to mankind. The problem we face today is that the Torah was given about 3,600 years ago to a Semitic nomadic desert tribe of the M. East. Whereas the injunctions concerning slavery, the buying and selling of children, and the vendetta style of justice it promoted consisted of an actual improvement compared to the ways of the nations around them, these rulings seem pretty barbaric to us today. Many have then resolved this problem by adopting the idea that the Torah has since been annulled by Yeshua and is therefore now obsolete. But how does this fit with the words of John? John speaks of this Torah becoming flesh through the Messiah who Himself proclaimed that he came to teach us how to obey it better. How could it then be obsolete? A proper contextual study of these commandments helps us discover the beautiful nature and character of the Almighty Creator. We discover that in fact His rulings constitute the same basic ideals for which we fight today. They include healthy concepts of child protection; women’s and worker’s rights; proper criminal justice; equal opportunity; financial ethics, as well as healthy dietary standards. These are in essence all things we find in the Torah. Why consider them obsolete and then go on re-inventing the wheel by recreating these same laws by our own means? Something is wrong with that picture! However we feel about some of its injunctions, we need to remember that the Torah is the revelation of God’s nature and character. Every commandment is a distillation of His essence, a pure revelation of His person. The study of the commandments is the study of God. When we say then that it is now annulled and obsolete, technically speaking, we abolish God. Maybe this is why the world cannot get control of its social issues. Through their misguided theology, they’ve rendered God obsolete! Our so-called evolution has distanced us from the oracle given on the mountain but without it we are as stars endlessly roaming through space in search of an orbit. It may take a life time, but may we repent from the heresy that denies the value of God’s commandments even in our day. May we also learn to find our orbital stability within the beautiful Words spoken at Horeb. Matthew 5:13
"You are the salt of the earth …” The Heavenly Voice spoke the Ten Statements in a rumbling earth wind and fire show defying any pyrotechnic event (Exodus 20:18). The Almighty Creator of the universe continues expounding on the universal Constitution that until this day forms the basis of the world’s main calendars (the seven day week with one day of rest) as well as defines the basic laws of morality and civil conduct. At that point, the Children of Israel confess their incapacity to hear the Heavenly Voice. They beg Moses to intercede; they ask him to hear the Heavenly Voice and relate to them later what It said. So many people today say, “God told me such and such …” I do not doubt that God still speaks to or through people, but looking at Scriptures, it seems that such events were fearfully awesome. What human indeed can hear the very Voice of God?! The Almighty approved of Israel’s request to ask for an intercessor. Here is what He said through Moses, "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers--it is to him you shall listen-- just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, 'Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.' And the LORD said to me, 'They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him (Deuteronomy 18:15-18). Maybe God recognized Israel’s leader’s healthy fear of Him which according to Solomon is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). Because of our sinful nature, we cannot directly hear the Voice of the Almighty God. We need an intercessor. This intercessor is the way by which we enter in the Holy Presence. This Intercessor earned His position by being faithful and obedient unto death. Though His atonement work was finished from the foundation of the world, He was manifested to us in these last days as Yeshua HaMashiach (2 Timothy 1:9-10), One who has delight in the will of His (and our) Father (John 6:38; Hebrews 4:15). Like Moses, this Intercessor helps us hear the Great Voice of God. We understand the message and nature of the Father through His Words, but mostly through the example of His life. Like the High-Priest does in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonements, Yeshua, our High-Priest in the heavenlies brings our petitions to the Father (Hebrews 9). As He was to the world of His generation, so He sent us to be in the world of our generation (John 17:18). May we then also, as Moses did in His generation and Yeshua does in ours, consider the helpless spiritual state of those around us and bring them the Word in a more palatable form. May we help them ‘see the lightening without feeling the bolt! ‘ Yeshua explained it as being the ‘salt’ of the earth. As salt makes food more palatable and nicer to the taste, so we ought to live in way that the witness of messiah in our life makes the understanding of God’s ways more palatable to people. |
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