Today is the full day of Yom Kippur, our Day of Atonement. This is traditionally the day when we all pray for God to move from his Throne of Judgement to his Throne of Mercy, and to forgive us for the sins we have committed during the past year.

Part of this is to have been reviewing during these past Ten Days of Awe how far we have fallen short of what God wants us to be and do for others.

But those of us who know the teachings of Yeshua know that he also told us that if we do not forgive those who have sinned against us, then we will not be forgiven in heaven (Matthew 6:14), and that the way we judge others, as well as the way we treat others, is going to be used to judge and treat us (Matthew 7:1-2).

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Yom Kippur is all about forgiveness, and I think that we should talk about forgiveness, but not about God forgiving us because we know he really, really wants to (Ezekiel 18:23).

I want to make this Yom Kippur message not about God forgiving us, but about us forgiving others.

Feeling guilt about something you have done is the first step to repentance, and repentance is necessary if you ever want to be forgiven by God. But what about when someone has done such harm to you and is not at all repentant, and you know that you cannot forgive them? You may even think they do not deserve forgiveness.

Well, that is an understandable feeling, but it is not going to get you anywhere.

When you forgive someone, it does two things that will never happen without that forgiveness: for one, it is the only way the hurt will ever go away; and two, it won’t make that person right with God but it will make YOU right with God.

If someone refuses to forgive those who have sinned against them, they are acting as if they are better than God. I know they may be telling themselves that they aren’t God, they aren’t holy enough to forgive someone, but the truth is that if they refuse to even try to forgive, knowing that God is always willing to forgive, then what they are really saying is that they are above God.

It is saying, “God can forgive if he wants to, but I am not going to! Yeah, God may have to do it, but not me! I don’t have to!”

How would you describe that attitude?

Another thing to consider when you are having trouble forgiving someone is that Yeshua underwent terrible torture and a slow, painful death just so that you, and everyone else, has the opportunity to receive forgiveness of sin. And he was not happy about it, but he did it because he knew it was what God wanted. Even when he prayed for the cup to pass him by, he said let God’s will be done, not his own (Matthew 26:39).

Now, you and I are not Messiahs, but if we do not show the same willingness to overcome our personal feelings to forgive others, then we are dishonoring his sacrifice.

Not that I am suggesting we get nailed to a tree, but we should honor Yeshua’s sacrifice by being willing to forgive those who have sinned against us, whether or not they care or repent or even know what they did.

That is the kind of forgiveness that makes us right with God, and helps us get over the pain.

I also believe that forgiving someone doesn’t mean that you no longer feel you were treated unfairly or given a raw deal, but what it does (and I say this from personal experience) is to allow you to review what happened without feeling that pain and anger anymore.

I have found that when it is really hard to forgive someone, and believe me I have been there, I think of what will happen to that person when they have to face God. I picture them facing God at Judgement Day and know that all the excuses and alibis they have used to cover themselves their entire life will fall off of them, leaving them with a body of raw skin and it will feel like they are being dipped in a pool of lemon juice as God retells all the horrible things they have done.

When I do that, how can anyone who has known the love of God feel anything but pity for that person? And I, for one, have known the love of God, which (along with that little fantasy of mine) makes it easier for me to forgive those who have done horrible things to me.

I still wouldn’t invite them to my birthday party and I still feel unfairly treated, but I have forgiven them and that has taken the pain away.

Okay, yeah, I do still feel a little frustrated that they didn’t get any come-uppance, but hey! I’m still a work in progress.

You may be asking if God is so willing to forgive, why does he punish anyone? And even if that person repents, he still receives punishment, such as David repented for his sin with Bat Sheba, but the child that came from that sin was killed (2 Samuel 12).

The answer is that God keeps his word, and he has said that those who sin are guilty and the guilty will be punished. Look at it this way: if we can’t trust God to punish those who sin, then we can’t trust him to reward those who act righteously.

The thing is that God is an eternal being, and he sees things on an eternal plane while we are only able to exist and understand on a mortal plane. What that means is when God forgives us, he is talking about our eternal existence. The sin we commit on the earth must be punished because sin always has consequences, and sadly too many times the innocents we love become collateral damage of that sin.

God forgives our sin with regard to our eternal life, but while alive on the earth we will be punished for our misdeeds.

I know this has been a long message, but what else do you have to do today?

Let’s leave it with this: today is a day when we ask God to forgive us, but in order for that to happen, we must be more than repentant- we must also forgive those who have sinned against us. Yeshua said to leave our gift at the altar and first go ask forgiveness from those we have sinned against (Matthew 5:23–24), so today I suggest that before you continue to ask God to forgive you, you think of all those who you feel have sinned against you and forgive them before you continue to ask God to forgive you.

That’s gonna be it for today’s message; it’s back to prayer and fasting for me because worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob means I do as God said to do, which is what Yeshua did.

Be blessed and may you have an easy fast.

I want to start off with this statement: I wholeheartedly believe that the Bible is the most important book ever written, or ever will be written, and there is nothing in it that is not valuable to study, and should be studied.

That being said, as a Jewish man raised and having my Bar Mitzvah in a Reform Jewish temple, who over 30 years ago came to believe Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send, after studying and reading the Bible some two dozen or more times, receiving a Certificate of Messianic Studies from the Messianic Bible Institute, leading Messianic synagogues and teaching, this is what I have come to believe the Bible means, to me.

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The Bible is not God; it is a book about God.

And it is, for the most part, a historical narrative telling how God created us, how he made himself known to a people and through them, the world, and how he has led his chosen people throughout the millennia, giving us his rules for worship and society, and ultimately sending a Messiah to save everyone from themselves.

The first five books contain instructions (we call commandments) directly from God telling us how he wants us to worship him and how he wants us to treat each other. After that it is all history and commentary, including some wisdom writings (Psalms and Proverbs).

The only part of the Bible that is absolutely trustworthy to be as accurate as the day it was first written is the Hebrew Torah scrolls. I say that because when you know all the safety procedures that the Sofer (the scribe who copies from one Torah to another) goes through to ensure that every Torah is the exact copy of the other Torah (even to the point where they count every letter on every sheet!) then you can be sure that the Hebrew is as accurate to the original Hebrew as any human endeavor can provide.

As for every other version of the Bible, of which there are some 450 different English versions, not to mention that all or some parts of the Bible have been translated into over 4,000 different languages throughout the world, well… how can anyone be absolutely certain that what their Bible says is exactly what was first written?

What I consider the most important part of the Bible is the Torah, because (as I have said many times) this is the only place in the entire book where God, himself, tells us exactly what he wants us to do.

After Deuteronomy, the rest of the book is historical narrative.

Yes, God speaks in other places in the Tanakh (Tanakh is the Jewish acronym for everything in the Bible before the New Covenant) but he isn’t giving instructions, he is telling the Prophets what to tell the people to get them back to proper Torah obedience.

In the New Covenant, the only time God speaks is in the Gospels, where he only says Yeshua is his son and to listen to him. Not a commandment, per se’, just confirmation of who Yeshua is.

And all the scripture that is in the Gospels and letters is not new; it is from the Tanakh.

The Gospels tell us of the history of the Messiah, Yeshua, which completes the missing part of the Tanakh in that the Tanakh constantly gives us hope that the Messiah will come, and the Gospels tell us what happened when he did come.

Revelation tells us what will happen at the end, so that is not so much historical as prophetic (along with the messianic prophecies throughout the Tanakh).

The Epistles written by Shaul and the other apostles are not God-breathed or spirit led: I am sorry, but when you read them for what they are, they are directives to the congregations of (mostly) neophyte believing Gentiles who are losing their momentum, being pressured by believing Jews to get circumcised (to be really saved) and having interpersonal relationship problems, as in power struggles within some of the congregations that Shaul started.

For the record: there were no “churches” in the First Century, only Kehillot (community centers) or people’s homes or Jewish temples where these believing Gentiles would attend Jewish services (see Acts 15:21).

If it was up to me (and I am glad it isn’t) I would make my Bible contain the following:

The Tanakh (minus Song of Songs), the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Acts, and Revelation.

I would leave out Luke because it is, by his own admittance, just third-party hearsay he put together, and John is (as I have shown in some of my messages) a false gospel. The Epistles are, as I explained above, just letters to those new believers having issues of faith and interpersonal problems, so their value would be historical, at best, to show the early problems these believers were facing from inside and outside.

Okay, there may be value in keeping some of the Epistles for historical relevance to show how what was originally a Torah observant Jewish movement, by misinterpreting those letters became a man-made, anti-Torah religion.

So, if anyone is still with me, I congratulate you on being secure enough in your beliefs to withstand something that might be a directly opposing view. I have always said that the truth can stand up to questioning, and when I run into someone who is so adamant about what they believe they immediately become defensive and do not hear anything I am saying, mainly because they are too busy thinking of how to debate me, I just end the discussion because I have learned not to talk to a wall.

I have also become humble enough (though not nearly as humble as I should be) to know when argument turns to insult, pride is running the show and truth has left the building.

So! That is it, and if anyone wants to argue against anything I have said, fine. I am not writing this to change anyone’s mind or to be anti-anything, it is just me sharing my conclusions about what the Bible means to me. I will continue to read it every day, and learn something new every time I read it.

Ultimately, no matter what version you use, in whichever language it is written, I trust that God will make what he wants you to know available to you, so never stop reading your entire Bible.

Thank you for being here and please comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so L’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

I have heard many people tell me that they love God and they love Jesus, and when I ask why, most often they say, “I love God for all the good things he has done for me.”

But I say that if you only love God for what he has done for you, your love is nothing to brag about.

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Personally, I do not claim to love God. Yeah, I know that one of the most important commandments is to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might. And also to love your neighbor, but honestly: how do you love someone you never met, don’t really know, and can’t even see or touch?

The love that we are told to have is not an emotional love, but an expression of compassion and respect that transcends the emotional love that is all we can really feel as human beings.

Spiritual love is the kind of love that God has for us. Yeshua said in John 3:12 that if we cannot understand earthly things, we won’t be able to understand spiritual things, and that is why the way God loves us is beyond our ability to comprehend, or to duplicate on earth.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

So, nu? What am I leading up to? It’s this: if you love God for what he has done for you, that love is useless. That’s right- useless, and I’ll tell you why.

What did Yeshua tell us in Luke 6:32-33?

What credit is it to you if you love only those who love you? Why, even sinners love those who love them.  What credit is it to you if you do good only to those who do good to you? Even sinners do that. 

So, if you love God for what he has done for you, there is nothing special or powerful about that love. What I am saying is that to love God for what he has done for you is not really love, it is appreciation.

I believe we should love God for what he has done for everyone else.

When I have been asked if I love God, I say I love what he has done for us- he gave us life, he gave us intelligence, he gave us the right to choose what we will do, say, and who we will follow (which has turned out to be a double-edged sword), and he has given us Yeshua so that we have the option to be saved from ourselves.

I don’t say I love God because I do not feel “love” when I think of him. What I feel is gratitude, appreciation, awe, and respect, but not love, not like I love my wife or my family, or comfort food.

Now that’s just me, and it doesn’t mean you have to feel that way, also.

Maybe you can feel that emotional love, but if your love for God is emotional, then I really believe it is not the type of love God requires because emotional love is human, and I think God wants us to learn how to love as he does; not emotionally but spiritually.

Do you recall how many times we are told, “Be thou holy as I am holy”? I think we can paraphrase that to also mean, “Love others as I love others”.

God’s love is one that goes beyond emotion; it is a complete understanding of the other person and having a consuming compassion for them, even if that person may be evil. That doesn’t mean we condone or accept the evil they do, but that we love them in the way we are willing to forgive them, to help them, to work with them, and to minister to them.

But that doesn’t mean we do not punish them for what they do, for sin always has consequences to the one who sins and, sadly, more often than not to innocents who become collateral damage from that sin.

God forgives sins when we repent and ask him to forgive us by means of the shed blood of the Messiah, but his forgiveness is spiritual and is the only way we can be in his presence after Judgement Day. However, while on the earth in this mortal form, when you sin you will get your tuchas in a sling! You cannot escape the wages of sin, and if you do not suffer for them here on earth, you will have to deal with them in the afterlife.

God’s love is not motherly or doting, it is the epitome of “hard love”. He will punish the ones he loves severely for the unrepented sins they commit, and he will not forgive those who do not forgive others (Matthew 6:14-15).

God will always love you with a love that is beyond anything any human could ever understand or comprehend, even as he condemns you to Sheol, and it will hurt him more than any hurt any human could ever feel for a lost loved one.

Let’s end with this: if you say you love God, that is not a bad thing, but you need to ask yourself what is the basis for that love? If it is only because of what he has done for you, that is not enough.

I believe the best way we can show just how much we really love God is to do good for others without thought of reward, of being held in esteem, and without publicity or bragging.

As Yeshua said, tzedakah (charity) should be done in secret so that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing (Matthew 6:3). Give to those who need without asking for anything back, help those who need help without needing to be thanked, and forgive those who wrong you, whether by accident or on purpose, regardless if they ask forgiveness or even care that they hurt you.

If you ask me, that is how we should love God.

Thank you for being here and please comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers, Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so let me wish you Shana Tova (Happy New Year), and during these next Ten Days of Awe may your review of the past year help you see how you can better show your true love for God in the coming year.

How many times do we hear the call for the rich to pay their “fair share” of the taxes, or to do more for the poor?

Maybe we can say that the bad rep the rich have today started in the Bible?

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Yeshua said it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it will be for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24), implying (unfairly, I believe) that just because someone is rich they can’t be saved.

And he isn’t the only one: in James 5:1-3, he says…

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes.
Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.

So, nu? Was every rich man in the ancient Middle East a lousy person?

And what about Matthew 6:24:

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

And let’s not forget one of the most misquoted verses from the Bible, which is 1 Timothy 6:10–

For the love of money is a root of all the evils; because of this craving, some people have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves to the heart with many pains.

It certainly seems that the word of God doesn’t like rich people, and many Christian religions take this to the next level, actually making you take a vow of poverty to become a priest.

Do you know this story…

Thomas Aquinas was with Pope Innocent II (or maybe it was Innocent III) who was counting a large pile of church money. The Pope said, “You see, the Church is no longer in that age in which she said, ‘Silver and gold have I none'”.
Thomas Aquinas replied, “True, holy father; but neither can she any longer say to the lame, ‘Rise up and walk.'”

Now what about Abraham? He was very rich and yet God chose him from all the people on the earth to be the one he would talk to and promise to make a great nation from.

And what about Job? He was the wealthiest man throughout the region he lived in, yet he was so righteous that God challenged Satan to make Job do something wrong, which he didn’t despite the terrible tsouris that Satan unleashed upon him.

And King David and Shlomo (Solomon) weren’t begging in the streets for bread, yet both of them were mightily blessed by God!

Riches are not the issue; the issue is how we feel about them.

I have never been shy to say how I see the entire New Covenant as something less than scripture, but still important and necessary to study. It has a lot for us to know about the formation of the movement of Jews accepting Yeshua, and to see the writings that led to its becoming an anti-Jewish religion.

(Oh, but that is opening a can of worms that I do not want to divert us into a tangential discussion right now, so let’s just keep going with this message.)

It seems to me that what is said by Yeshua and James and Peter (who wrote the letters to Timmy) was somewhat unfair in that they all seem to say being rich is bad. It feels like the adage that goes “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”, except this is more like being rich automatically makes you a lover of money.

There is nothing wrong with the desire for more money, especially if that desire is to better your life, provide for your family, and as long as you are willing to use that increase to increase your tithe to God’s kingdom, which can be in many different ways than just through a collection plate.

(Again, tithing is a topic that can take us off track and is best left for another discussion.)

So, the desire for more money is not, in and of itself, sinful or wrong: what is important is why you want more money. And if you are praying to God to help provide the means or you to get more money, I suggest you plan to use a portion of that increased income to give back to God, in whichever way you can.

To share something personal, and not to brag or appear holier than anyone else, many years ago when I came in to a small inheritance, I used it to help buy more prayer books for the messianic synagogue I was attending at that time. I anonymously (so my left hand didn’t know what my right hand was doing) offered matching dollar for dollar to what people donated for the books, up to a certain amount. It wasn’t a ton of money, but it was enough that we got a lot more prayer books, which I did as one form of my tithing.

And yes, that synagogue existed almost exclusively on tithing, which was expected to be 10% but whatever we got, we appreciated.

Now, the rest of that story is I believe I was rewarded for doing that because the inheritance also allowed me to attend a school to get my IT certifications, which led to a job that eventually led to a job that paid me nearly twice the amount of the most I had been earning for the prior 8 years, allowing us to move here to Florida and making it possible for me to retire as soon as I hit 62.

So, long story short (I know… too late!) I suggest that you do not misjudge people who are rich just because they are rich, or demand that they give up some of that money in ways that you think they should. It’s their money and no one has the right to tell them what to do with it.

I believe very strongly that the people who demand that the rich give up more of what they have would be hard-pressed to give it up if they were rich.

Love of money is one thing, but demanding that someone with more than you give it up because you covet what they have is just as bad.

Thank you for being here and please comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

PS: For the record, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the average
middle-class family pays about 10% of their income to federal taxes, while the Internal Revenue Service reports that the top 1% of federal taxpayers pay 26.3% of their income in taxes.

We are told in the Bible that when Eve ate the apple it gave her the knowledge of good and evil.

And yes, it did, but I believe it did more damage than just that.

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Okay, so what else did eating that apple do to the perfect conditions in the garden of Eden?

First off, the down-side of being innocent is that you don’t really know when someone is lying to you, or even how to lie. You only know whatever you are told to be correct and trustworthy.

When God said to Adam do not eat from this tree or you will die, information which we assume Adam passed on to Eve, they believed it absolutely. But, when the serpent told Eve that she wouldn’t die, she didn’t think God lied; being the innocent, she just believed that the serpent was also telling her the truth.

So when she ate the apple, did she receive the knowledge of good and evil?

Yes, and no- she received more than that: she was also now able to choose for herself. Eating that apple gave her more than knowledge of good and evil, something which passed to Adam and became part of human DNA; and that something is self-determination.

In other words, before the apple event, Adam and Eve did what they were told and lived a life without ego or desire to be independent. Just like children, they were happy to accept and not question anything they were told.

But after that first bite, now knowing that they could make up their own minds (evidenced by Eve deciding to make Adam eat the apple, something I think would not have ever entered her mind before eating it, herself), they decided to hide from God because they felt guilty.

No one feels guilty if they do not think they did something wrong, and the innocent don’t really know what is wrong, which is why it was so easy for Adam and Eve to be fooled.

So, you may not agree with me, but I think one of the things that will not be part of our eternal existence will be self-determination. We will not have that double-edged sword to deal with and, as such, will be happy doing whatever we are doing when God places us where ever he will.

I understand many of you may think that I am supporting the idea that innocence is bliss, and you know what?

You’re right!

But only when we are in the eternal presence of Adonai.

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

I am back after almost three weeks in England and Ireland, visiting friends and family (our friend Diana in Surry and Donna’s cousins in Ireland) and have a quickie post for today.

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The Shema is one of the most important prayers of the Jewish faith because it identifies us as a monotheistic religion.

The Shema goes like this:

“Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one”
(Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad)

In most synagogues I have been in over many years, the word, “echad” is almost always defined as “one”.

But the Hebrew word “Echad” has a secondary usage, with is “alone”.

Did you know that?

Now, I believe that using the definition of echad as “alone” in the Shema instead of “one” better identifies us as monotheistic, so my preferred way of saying the Shema (which I have heard in some synagogues) is:

Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord, alone”

To me, to say the Lord is our God, the Lord is one is somewhat ambiguous, as far as being monotheistic, because there are many polytheistic religions where each god is, of course, a single god.

But, if we say the Lord is our God, the Lord, alone then we are specifying that the Lord is our only God.

In a world where there are many gods (even in the Bible they mention there are many gods), to state unequivocably that the Lord alone is our God is to define us as a monotheistic religion recognizing only the one, true God, who is Adonai.

I know this isn’t a life-changing revelation, or even close to being a salvation issue, but to me… I like “alone” better than “one”.

What do you think?

Thank you for being here and please comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for my first day back after three weeks, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

I have been preaching through this ministry for almost 11 years, and the one thing I always try to avoid is my feelings getting in the way of God’s truth.

And let me tell you… it ain’t easy!

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The one thing that I have noticed in the many, many conversations I have either read or taken part in is that some people start off talking about God, but they devolve into a discussion that is more focused on making someone else agree with them than it is on finding the truth within God’s word.

And no matter how many verses I can give (which are not taken out of context!) that prove my point, they are adamant about their belief. So much so that they ignore what I say and continue to argue with the same rhetoric and indoctrinated spiel that they had burned into their heads from their early introduction to God and Yeshua.

In other words, they are deaf to anything different, and therefor unable to make a sound argument against anything different, whether it be right or wrong.

At that point it is no longer a discussion, it is a matter of pride.

Let me give you an example: I believe in X and someone else believes in Y. I use biblical verses that are not out of context, and my interpretation is in sync with other verses in the Bible (i.e., hermeneutically valid). The other person uses verses taken out of context, repeating what they have been taught without really understanding what they are saying, and they do not refute my arguments or even address what I am saying- they just keep repeating what they have been taught.

Soon, despite me being civil, they stop arguing and begin to attack me, personally, saying that I cannot really be saved or that I am under the law or just plain ignorant; often they get nastier than that.

At this point they don’t care about God or truth or anything other than proving they are right, no matter what, in order to support their pride.

Pride is the mother of all sin, and when it comes to those “hot” topics we believers love to argue about (you know the ones: Trinity, proper names for God, and Torah observance vs. Torah rejection-sorry, but it is, in fact, either one or the other), pride too often gets in the way of learning.

So, to bring this to an end, I beg you to please force yourself to listen to what the other person is saying, whether you agree or not, and do not listen just to know when they take a breath so you can interrupt- really hear what they believe. If you know them to be wrong, then by listening to their argument you can refute it. You will NEVER change someone’s mind by continually telling them what they should believe or what you know to be true.

Until you get them to doubt what they believe, you will never change their mind or even get them to hear you.

And you know what else…they may be right! And if you are too obsessed with making them agree with you, you may miss out on learning something that could be essential to your salvation.

Here is the absolute proof that pride has overtaken a discussion: one or more of the people involved have become so frustrated that their argument isn’t being accepted, they are no longer attacking the argument but attacking the person making the argument.

Always be aware of when discussion turns sour and pride takes over learning so that you do not fall into that trap, and if you even think the discussion is going in the wrong direction, it’s time to shake the dust from your sandals and politely go elsewhere.

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, and for another three weeks because we will be traveling in Europe. Be blessed and I look forward to being with you again at the end of the month.

Until then, l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!