Category: A Drash to Start the Day

What Commandments Did Yeshua Ever Give?

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I have read that Yeshua gave 6 commandments, and we read about them in Mark 10:17-20 when Yeshua relates a story about when a young man asks what he has to do in order to be saved. Yeshua answers that he has to follow the commandments, and the six he gave were:

Do not kill,
Do not commit adultery,
Do not steal,
Do not bear false witness,
Do not defraud,
Honor thy father and mother.

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I found this on the umass.edu website, and that article states these 6 commandments are the only ones people have to follow, essentially replacing the original 10 Commandments, as well as everything else in the Torah. Of course, that idea is just plain ridiculous, if for no other reason why would Yeshua, the son of God, not consider it important that we acknowledge there is only one God and that we should not bow down or worship other gods?

I also found on the Internet from the “Institute in Basic Life Principles” (some title, huh?) a list of commandments that Yeshua gave that is quite extensive. Some examples are: to go the extra mile, give charity in secret, beware of false prophets, repent, follow me, keep your word, do not lust, and many other things, all of which are from the Torah. I don’t see these as being new or unique commandments, but repetition of what God already told us to do in the Torah.

The only place I can find where Yeshua, himself, says he is giving a commandment is in John 15:12 (CJB) where Yeshua says to his Talmudim right after the last Pesach Seder:

This is my command: that you keep on loving each other just as I have loved you.

And that is not new: it is found in Leviticus 19:18.

Yeshua did not give any new commandments. In fact, he stated clearly in Matthew 5:17 that he is not changing anything that is already in the Torah. Now, we have to remember that “Torah” does not mean “law”, but “instruction” or “teachings”, and that being said, what Yeshua did was not give any commandments but teach the spiritual meaning of the existing commandments.

Yeshua didn’t change the Torah: he changed the understanding of the Torah.

I believe it is very dangerous when Christianity teaches that we should obey Yeshua’s commandments. The danger is that by even implying Yeshua gave commandments to us which are different from God’s commandments and that those are the ones we must follow, it means Yeshua placed himself above God. If Yeshua had ever said that we must do what he says and not what God said, that would be rebellion against God and, as such, a sin!

Do you recall that one of the issues Yeshua had with the Pharisees was that they considered some of their man-made traditions more important than the commandments God gave? If he had a problem with that, how could he possibly go even further astray from proper worship and teach that we should obey him and could ignore God’s commandments?

You know what they call that? Rebellion!

No, the truth is that Yeshua never did anything to override or ignore what God taught us to do in the Torah; he simply taught the spiritual meaning of those commandments. That is the only thing that is “new” in the New Covenant.

Yeshua is the Messiah, and as such he is to be listened to, respected, and acknowledged as God’s true representative on earth. He now sits at the right hand of God and when he returns, he will then be recognized as King Messiah, ruling the entire earth. He would be the first person to tell you not to worship him but to give your worship to his father in heaven, just as he told the young man in Mark 10:17.

The Torah is where God tells us how we should worship him and treat each other, and everything Yeshua taught was from and about the Torah. He did not give any new commandments or instructions, only the deeper, spiritual understanding of what people already had been taught.

Think of it this way…First Century Judea was the place where people could go to attend Salvation University, and both the Pharisees and Yeshua taught there, using the same textbook, the Torah. The Pharisees taught the Undergraduate level and Yeshua taught the advanced Ph.D. course.

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Get Thee Behind Me, Satan!

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We all know this statement, the one Yeshua made to Kefa (Peter) when Kefa chided him for saying that he must die.

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Yet, I don’t think anyone really believes that Yeshua was accusing Kefa of being the Devil. What he meant, as he explained right after saying this to him, is that Kefa was thinking not on a spiritual plane, or in accordance with what God has decided should be done, but on a personal, selfish, and human level.

In other words, Kefa wanted things to go the way he wanted, not the way God wanted; the feeling of “Your will be done, not mine” was not in Kefa’s heart.

So, how many times have we been like Kefa?

For example, right now Israel has been under the worst attack it has been through for a while, and all I see are postings about praying for peace there. And, yes- we are told to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6), but if we pray for men to make peace, is that really God’s will? Are we “pulling a Kefa”, meaning are we asking for what we want even when we know that God has a different plan?

How do I know that God has a different plan for Israel? Well, he’s told us he does, and quite often! All the way back to even before the Israelites entered Cana’an, God showed Moses the apostasy that would take place in the future, the punishment they would have to endure, and the eventual regathering of the dispersed tribes to Israel.

Through the Prophets, God told us what the people living then should expect in their immediate future and at the Acharit HaYamim (End Days).

And if there is still doubt that God’s plan for this world is terrible, full of violence, injustice, anti-Semitism, hatred, and worldwide destruction, then you must not have ever read the vision given to John, who recorded it in Revelation.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned or feel pity for those being tortured and mistreated throughout the Middle East, and the rest of the world, for that matter: no, what I am saying is that we should pray for this tsouris to stop, but not by anything men do. On the contrary, history has proven that the best peace men can make is a temporary one, and since the Middle East conflict of brother verse brother has been going on since the time of Abraham, it doesn’t even make sense that it will stop until something more influential and powerful than mortals intervenes.

And we all know who that is- Yeshua!

So, when you see the rockets coming down on innocent Israelis, as well as the Arabs who are innocent but forced to live with Hamas and Jihad in their backyards (did you know that there were hundreds of Arab deaths caused by Hamas and Jihad rockets that misfired and landed in the Gaza Strip?), and you read of the torture and imprisonment of Christians throughout the world, and you see the United States of America, the symbol of freedom and independence, turn into a socialistic enabler giving housing, food and medical service to foreign invaders while ignoring their own people and the veterans who are sleeping on the streets, then you know that this is all coming about as part of God’s plan for the world.

So, yes- pray for peace, but not for the peace that men make- pray for the ultimate and eternal peace that will come ONLY when Yeshua returns. He told his disciples that if not for the short period of tribulation, no one would survive (Matthew 24:22), so pray that the tribulation comes quickly and is over quickly… and that you survive it.

Don’t pray for what goes against God’s plan; and, whether or not you like what God has planned, get with the program because IT WILL HAPPEN! What God has planned for humanity is going to come about, no matter how we feel or what we pray for, so pray for that which is keeping with God’s will.

I hate to see the suffering and the injustice being done to Israel by the media and the world, especially by the American public and government, but this all has to be!

You can pray for whatever you want to, but as for me, I pray that the Tribulation comes and goes and that those suffering will be able to find eternal rest in God’s presence because I never want to hear “Get thee behind me!”

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

Better NOT Call Saul

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One of the issues Yeshua had with the Pharisees and their teachings was that some of their man-made traditions were given precedence over what God said. These traditions have become part of Halacha, the Way to Walk, which is defined in the Talmud.

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Today, more often than not, religious Jews seek to get their answers from the Talmud before they look to the Torah or any other part of the Tanakh. This is, in my opinion, no different than the mistake of placing what men say over what God says that we made way back then, in the First Century.

But that’s what the Jews do, so what does this have to do with calling Saul, whose Greek name used in the New Covenant is Paul (get the reference in the title, now?)

Christians have based most of their beliefs and doctrines not on the Torah or the Gospels, but for the most part on the letters that Saul, and other people, wrote to the (mostly) Gentile congregations throughout the Middle East.

God told us exactly what he wanted from us in the Torah- that is the ONLY place in the entire Bible where we often read “And God said to Moses, ‘Tell the children of Israel (whatever the commandment was)'”.

What we read in the Torah isn’t divinely inspired, it is divinely dictated! It isn’t someone telling us what God told him, which could be subject to interpretation, but it is the very words God used.

Saul was never given direct instructions from God, and when he talked of God’s commandments, he quoted from the Tanakh, but mostly what Saul told his congregations to do was from Saul.

Oh, yes, I know what you are saying: all those instructions were divinely inspired. Well, if they were, since God told Isaiah (Isaiah 55:11) that his word never returns void, then why is it that most of Christianity’s doctrines and dogma, based mostly on the Epistles of Saul, ignore God’s word? Isn’t that the epitome of God’s word returning void?

If someone said something that caused people to reject the Torah, how can that come from God? Didn’t God tell us the laws in the Torah are valid throughout our generations?

Oh, wait, I know- you are going to tell me that those laws are just for Jews, right? Well, think about this: throughout the Torah, God says there is just one law for both the Israelite and the foreigner joined with them and Saul says, in Romans 11:11, that when you accept Yeshua as your Messiah you are now grafted into Israel and an adopted child of Abraham. So, you are now an Israelite (spiritually, if not physically), and as such God says you are to be treated just as a native-born Jew, and like it or not, that means you are also subject to the same laws that Jews are, which is the Torah.

Perhaps that is why Saul also warns his Gentile converts to Judaism, which is what they were becoming when they accepted Yeshua, not to brag or feel superior to the Jews they were now joining.

Look, it isn’t Saul’s fault his letters, which he never intended to override God’s commandments, have been used that way. But what it comes down to is this: the complaint Yeshua had against the Pharisees for making man-made laws more important than God’s commandments has been repeated by Christianity. Instead of learning from the mistakes the Jews made, they not only made the same ones but made them even worse because:

Jews following Talmudic Halacha do not reject the Torah but Christianity misconstruing the Epistles Saul and others wrote, does reject the Torah.

And when you reject the Torah, you reject God. That may be a hard word to hear, and I am sure most Christians reading this right now are shaking their heads back and forth, saying to themselves, “No, no- he is just plain wrong: what about 2 Timothy 3:16-17 where we are told:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Well, you are right! All scripture IS God-breathed, but what was scripture then? It was the Tanakh!!! There was no other scripture, and the instructions from Saul were not some future prophecy or divinely inspired to also cover the not yet written New Covenant, which is (in fact) a bible put together by Gentiles who had already rejected any and everything Jewish.

NO! What Saul was talking about was the Tanakh, the “Jewish Bible” which was the only scripture he knew, and what was being taught to these neophyte Believers so that they could be thoroughly equipped for righteousness.

And that, my friends, means that if you are not following the scripture Saul meant, which is the Torah then, by definition, you are not being equipped for righteousness.

That should be a scary thought, and I pray that you are open to hearing what I am saying. Not because I am saying anything of my own, which I’m not, but because what I am saying is the same thing that God told Moses, that God told Isaiah, and what Saul really meant when he told Timothy how to teach the Gentile Believers under his authority.

God has no religion, but men created religion so that they could have power over other men. This is obvious just by looking at all the different religions, with different forms of worship, but all are supposed to worship the same God, who said he never changes. If he never changes, doesn’t that mean his instructions will never change? If he says everyone who sojourns with (i.e., is grafted into) his chosen people are to be subject to the same law as they must, doesn’t that mean they are also to obey the same laws?

We all have Free Will, and so we can each make our own choice of who to listen to regarding how we live which is, essentially, the way we worship God. For Jews, we can choose to follow Halacha from the Talmud or what God says in the Torah; and for Christians, they can choose to follow the doctrines and dogma created by Constantine (and any number of Popes over the centuries) based on letters from Saul and other men, or they can choose to follow what God says in the Torah.

To me, this is a no-brainer, but to the Jewish Orthodoxy and most Christians, it represents making a major paradigm shift in their lifestyle.

And we all know how people feel about change, even when it has eternal consequences.

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

Can Sinners Still Get Into Heaven?

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It seems ridiculous that a sinner would be allowed in heaven, doesn’t it? I mean, really? If I sin, then I cannot be in the presence of the Lord, God Almighty, can I?

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No, of course not.

But then why does Yeshua say this, in Matthew 5:19 (CJB):

So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Yeshua just finished telling those thousands who were listening to his Sermon on the Mount that he did not come to change anything in the Torah, and when he follows that up with this statement it is clear that he is saying there are those who will sin and teach others to sin, but they will still be allowed into heaven.

How can that be? Well, I think I know the answer!

There is a difference between sinning by volition, and sinning accidentally. We are told throughout the Tanakh that God sees the heart and he knows our mind, which means when we are praying or acting in some way, God knows better than we do our true motivation. We may know we are sinning but don’t care, or we may know we are sinning and regret it, asking God for help to overcome it, or we may be sinning and not know we are sinning, at all.

If you sin, you know it, and you just don’t care that makes you an unrepentant sinner, and I don’t believe an unrepentant sinner is going to be allowed into heaven.

If you are sinning and hate that you do so, which is often the category I find myself in, and constantly asking God to help you overcome this sin, that is repentance. And, I believe any repentant sinner asking for help and forgiveness will be heard by our compassionate and understanding Father in heaven. I also believe he will help you to overcome that sin, but it is not something that he will not just do for you. Just as he told Cain, sin is crouching at everyone’s door and we must overcome it. God will help, and he will forgive when we repent and ask forgiveness through Yeshua, but it is up to each and every one of us to overcome sin in our lives.

The last type of sinner I identified, which is the one I believe Yeshua was talking about, is the sinner who is sinning and has no idea that he or she is sinning. As such, this person will teach others to sin, all the while thinking it is a proper form of worship because this is what they were taught, by those who were taught the same thing, by those who were also taught the same thing, going back for millennia.

In other words, just about every Christian who has been taught that the Torah is just for Jews, or that Born Again Christians are now God’s Chosen people (Replacement Theology), or that Jews have to convert to Christianity to be saved has been sinning. Not on purpose and not even knowing it, but still and all, sinning. And not only have they been sinning, but they have taught others to sin, as well.

These are the ones I believe Yeshua was talking about, but wait a minute! – there were no Christians when Yeshua walked the earth, so how could he be talking about them?

The very next lesson Yeshua gave after talking about those who sin and teach others to do so was to teach the Remes, which is the spiritual meaning of the Torah commandments. He taught the spiritual meaning of “Do not murder” and “Do not commit adultery” and implicitly identified the Pharisees as having taught only the P’shat, the plain or literal meaning. Because of this teaching, the people were not being properly instructed in what God really wanted from them- a heart for obedience, not just obedience for the sake of earning salvation.

The Pharisees were teaching performance-based salvation, and Yeshua was teaching that obedience should be from faithful desire to do what God wants from us, spiritually as well as physically.

The Pharisees weren’t really teaching to sin, but their rabbinic traditions did, as Yeshua pointed out, often take precedence over what God said, and THAT is a sin. They never intended to sin, and they never wanted anyone else to sin, but there it is- they were sinning and teaching others to do so.

At that time, the means for forgiveness was there- the temple still stood in Jerusalem and anyone could bring their sacrifice to receive forgiveness, but before that century ended, the temple was gone and the only means of forgiveness, the only path to Adonai, was through Yeshua.

So, today we have Christians who are sinning and teaching others to sin by rejecting the Torah completely, and we also have Jews that are sinning and teaching others to sin by rejecting Yeshua as the Messiah, leaving them with no means of forgiveness, at all!

Yet, so long as these people do repent of the sins they know of, and ask forgiveness, I believe God will hear their prayers and act, because he is an understanding and compassionate God who is more than willing to work with us, so long as we want to work with him.

So, yes, Virginia- there are sinners in heaven, but not those who do so on purpose without repentance. A repentant sinner- as King David points out in Psalm 51 – is someone who approaches God with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and (if they have accepted Yeshua) will find forgiveness and be allowed into the kingdom of heaven.

I feel for my Jewish brothers and sisters who reject even hearing about Yeshua because even though God will listen to them, they will have no Intercessor on their behalf when they come before his Throne of Judgment.

Let’s all pray for those who sin and teach others to sin, that their eyes be opened and their hearts softened so that they will not be the least in the Kingdom of Heaven.

And give thanks to God who sees the heart and judges fairly, with compassion and mercy.

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

Why The Judeans Didn’t Fight For Yeshua

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When Yeshua was preaching in Jerusalem, thousands of people came to hear him, as did thousands when he was wandering from one Judean town to another.

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Yet, despite there being thousands who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah God promised to send, after the Sanhedrin found him guilty of a capital crime and the power elite in Jerusalem aroused the crowds to ask for his death, the people followed their lead and called for his crucifixion.

Have you ever asked yourself, “If they knew he was the Messiah, why didn’t they rebel against the Sanhedrin to save Yeshua’s life?”

Most people will say because they didn’t want to be thrown out of the temple or made into a social pariah. In fact, we read in the Gospels how many who followed Yeshua were doing so in secret because the people had been told that anyone following Yeshua would be excommunicated.

But there may have been a different reason.

In John 11:47 we read that the Cohen HaGadol, Caiaphas, suggested that Yeshua be killed in order to save the people. The leaders of Judea were deathly afraid that because of the commotion being stirred up in the city and around the Temple, Rome would come down hard on the people and possibly no longer allow them to practice Judaism. You see, Judea was a rare example of Rome allowing the inhabitants to maintain their religion; normally, when Rome took over, the populace was forced to practice the Roman paganist religion. There were Roman soldiers stationed throughout the land, and especially around the Temple, so any commotion or public unrest, such as Yeshua throwing out the money changers or the argumentation between people about accepting or rejecting him, could cause Rome to no longer allow Judaism to be practiced. Besides the obvious horror that would cause, it also would mean the members of all the Sanhedrins and the Temple officials (meaning all the Levites and Cohanim) would be out of a job.

Alright, then, that explains why the leadership wanted him dead, but that doesn’t fully answer why the people didn’t rebel against their leaders when they believed Yeshua to be the Messiah.

I believe the answer is in the Torah.

In the Book of Deuteronomy (D’varim), Chapter 17 is one of the places Moses is instructing the people about their need to rid Israel of anyone who is rejecting God’s instructions, laws, commandments, or regulations. He also states that any case which is too difficult for the local judges is to be brought before the Cohanim where God places his name, which (eventually) would be the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.

Now, here is where the answer to the question of why the people didn’t revolt against the Sanhedrin is found. In Deuteronomy 17: 12, Moses gives this command to the people:

Anyone presumptuous enough not to pay attention to the cohen appointed there to serve Adonai your God or to the judge — that person must die.


Wow! The Torah says that anyone who goes against the decision of the judges, which in this case is the Jerusalem Sanhedrin, is to be killed. Not just excommunicated, as the Gospels infer, but killed!

And Yeshua had just been tried and convicted by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, who were calling for his death.

No wonder there was no outcry of “Unjust!” or “Down with the Sanhedrin!” The Torah, itself, forbade anyone to rebel against the judgment of the court. Even though those courts were not really filled with Cohanim, who were Levites, but often enough with political “hacks” who were appointed by Herod, the least qualified king Israel ever saw. Herod was not a descendant of David, and many of the members of the Sanhedrin throughout the land were not Levites or Cohanim, but political appointees. In the writings of Josephus, he records that Caiaphas was made high priest by the Roman procurator Valerius Gratus after Simon ben Camithus had been deposed.

Maybe, now, we can better understand why there was no civil upheaval or rebellion against the Sanhedrin, and why the people were behind the call for Yeshua to be crucified.

The Judeans weren’t against Yeshua: they were obeying what is written in the Torah.

Talk about irony.

It was just the other day when I read that verse in Deuteronomy and the Ruach (Spirit) gave me this connection, and since then I am convinced that the people who did accept Yeshua as the Messiah were between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they knew he was sent by God and that rejecting him was tantamount to rejecting God; on the other hand, they knew that to disobey the Torah was also to reject God. There was no way they could win, so they went with what made the most sense at the time, and obeyed the Torah. This did, also, keep them from being socially ostracized and excommunicated from the temple.

Eventually, as we all know, the followers of Yeshua continued to grow, and as more Gentiles entered into salvation through Messiah Yeshua, the teachings of Yeshua became more polluted, misunderstood, and eventually mutated into the form of Christianity we have today, which is nothing like what Yeshua taught but what Constantine created in 325 C.E.

But that, my friends, is a different story.

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Is Yeshua Really Our Savior?

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Well, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it?

The obvious answer is: YES! Of course, he is- that’s what the Messiah is all about!

Didn’t you hear that he died for our sins?

Didn’t you read in Isaiah that he was wounded for our transgressions?

Didn’t he, himself, say that the only way to the Father is through him?

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Yes, I know all that, but let’s step back for a moment and let me ask you…who sent him? Is Yeshua really our savior or the tool of our true savior, God?

The Messiah is the one who brings us back into communion with God, who removes our sins so that we can come into the presence of the Lord, and he is the one God promised to send us throughout the Tanakh, in order to provide a means for us to have our sins forgiven.

At first, God provided for the removal of sin through the sacrificial system, where an innocent animal is killed as a substitute for the death we deserve for having committed the sin. Innocent blood shed in placement of our blood, which should be shed.

When the animal is sacrificed, it has died for our sins; it was wounded for our transgressions, and by it’s stripes we are healed.

Sound familiar?

So, is that sheep our Savior? Do we call upon the name of the bull we killed when we ask for forgiveness?

Of course not- they are just sacrificial animals. So why, then, if they died for our sins do we not call them our savior? The truth is, they were- if not for that animals’ death, we would have to die.

So, nu? What makes Yeshua’s actions any different from these animals?

The difference is that the animal didn’t choose to die for us, and Yeshua did.

He had the opportunity to reject his role as the Messiah, just as Jonah (initially) rejected his calling to save Nineveh. Yeshua could have decided that he didn’t want to be the Messiah and simply live out his life as a normal, although highly spiritual, man. And I believe, if that had happened, God would simply have created another Messiah, in the same way that he would have saved the Jews in Shushan, as Mordecai told Esther in the Megillah of Hadassah 4:14:

For if you fail to speak up now, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from a different direction;

However, as we all know, Yeshua did not reject his calling to be the Messiah, the tool through which God provided the chance for everyone in the world to be saved from the eternal consequences of their sin.

So, the answer to my original question, “Is Yeshua really our savior?” is “Yes”… and “No.”

Yes- what he did allows us to be forgiven of our sins. He did this voluntarily and of his own free will, and since the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem he has become our only means of salvation, which (by definition) makes him our savior.

But the original provider of this means of salvation is God, who divinely created, sent and empowered Yeshua to be the Messiah, so the answer to the question is also “No”, because if not for God there would be no way to be forgiven of our sins, at all. In fact, God is really the only one who can forgive sin. Yes, Yeshua had that authority when he was performing his ministry on earth, but now that his role is to be our Intercessor, he doesn’t forgive us but asks his father to forgive us because we are his sheep, and because he shed his blood for us.

Yeshua doesn’t forgive our sins- only God does. And if you’re not sure about that, then find the biblical passage that says the Messiah sits on the Throne of Judgment in heaven.

Now, there, there…don’t get all confused, and don’t worry that you have to change your beliefs about Yeshua being the savior of the world, because he is. But God is the ultimate power and authority, to whom Yeshua humbly submits (which he made clear throughout the Gospels), therefore God is our Savior because he sent Yeshua, who gave his human life so we could have eternal life.

Yeshua saved us when he gave his life as a substitution for ours, providing the pathway to salvation, but this was only possible because God sent him, which means our real savior is God.

God is the ultimate Savior of the world, and when we individually accept Yeshua as our Messiah, he becomes our personal savior.

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

The Bible Confirms that the Torah Is Still Valid for Christians

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I know, I know…so many of you are saying, “He’s wrong! Paul said that Jesus did away with the law, and the Elders in Jerusalem said Christians only had to do 4 things in their letter in Acts 15, and besides that, I have always been told that the Torah is just for Jews.”

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Well, that is what you have been told, but you have also been told there is an Easter Bunny, Santa Claus knows what you do better than Big Brother does and that someone from the government is here to help you.

First of all, Paul was a really important and influential man, but he wasn’t and still isn’t, God. Much of what is included in the New Covenant is not from God through Paul, but from Paul to the people in the congregations he started who were having interpersonal and spiritual problems. His letters are not so much divinely inspired instructions as they are his way of teaching ex-pagans how to live in accordance with God’s instructions in the Torah, which is how Paul lived his entire life. Paul sent them little bits and pieces of what they will eventually need to know.

And as for the letter from the Elders to the newly converting (to Judaism) Gentiles, in Acts 15:19-21, James suggested not to put too much of a burden on the Gentiles converting to Judaism and finishes his recommendation to send those 4 requirements with the statement that Moses has been read every Shabbat in the synagogues. That statement clearly means that these newly converting pagans are expected to be worshiping now with the Jews in the synagogues every Shabbat, and there they will learn the rest of the Torah. The 4 requirements were not the total of what Gentiles need to do, it was just the first steps.

OK, so let’s get to what the Bible says to prove that the Torah is still valid, which means be obeyed to the best of one’s abilities, for Christians as well as Jews. In fact, these instructions are for anyone who professes to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and who has accepted Yeshua (Jesus) as their Messiah. And before anyone argues that no one can do everything in the Torah, let’s all agree that this is true. And even more, there are some requirements in the Torah only appropriate for a select class, such as women or farmers, or priests. When I say “obey the Torah”, I mean whatever instructions are appropriate for you.

What I am going to do is to take things that God said, as well as what some of the Disciples said, and put them together to form this proof. Before anyone accuses me of taking things out of context in order to create my own interpretation, these sentences will be pulled out of their paragraph, but their intent and meaning are not going to be any different than the original context.

We start with Genesis 22:18, where God told Abraham- “And through your offspring all nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

Later, In Exodus 19:5-7 God tells Moses this about the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham- “Now if you will pay careful attention to what I say and keep my covenant, then you will be my own treasure from among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you will be a kingdom of cohanim (Ed.-priests) for me, a nation set apart.’

Before we go on, let’s clarify something. When God said that the Jews (that’s easier to type than Israelites) were to be a nation of priests, what is it that the priest does? This is essential to understand because the priest, rabbi, minister, whatever does more than just run the weekly service or visit the sick. The priest is the intercessor between us and God, in that he or she serves God by learning what it is that God wants from us and teaching their flock how to live their lives, through example (hopefully), in the way that God wants them to live. The priest is God’s representative on earth to the people and is required to lead us to the proper worship and lifestyle God demands.

Okay, so where were we? Oh, yeah- so far God has told Abraham that his descendants, or even better, let’s say children (here’s the spoiler alert- that includes adopted children) will be a blessing to the world, and he told Moses that the Jews would be God’s nation of priests.

Next, in Deuteronomy 28, the entire chapter is devoted to detailing all the blessings the people who obey God’s instructions, i.e. what is in the Torah, will receive for obedience. It also defines what happens to those who don’t obey, and I’ll tell you this- it ain’t good.

What we have up to now is that God told Abraham his children will be a blessing to the world and told Moses that these children are to be a nation of priests (to the world) and that when they obey God they will receive blessings. This means as priests they will learn to live as God says (in the Torah) and when, as priests, they teach others to do so they all receive blessings.

God says in Exodus 12:49– “The same law applies both to the native-born and to the foreigner residing among you.” which indicates that those who choose to be part of the Nation of Israel, either spiritually or geographically, will be treated just as a native-born, which means protected by the law and, conversely, required to obey that same law.

And now we tie this all together with what Shaul says in Galatians 3:29– “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

Let’s put this all together:

  1. The children of Abraham will be a blessing to the world;
  2. The children of Abraham will be God’s nation of priests to the world;
  3. Those who obey the Torah will be blessed;
  4. Anyone who lives with the Jews is expected to obey the Torah (same law for all);
  5. Anyone who belongs to Messiah Yeshua is an adopted child of Abraham.

There you have it! Anyone who professes to believe that Yeshua is the Messiah is grafted into the nation of Israel and an adopted son or daughter of Abraham. As such, God has stated that that person is to be required to obey the law the same as a native-born Jew, and is also a priest to the world, who is expected by God to live and teach others to live in accordance with the instructions God gave to us through Moses, which are in the Torah.

And when that person, now an adopted child of Abraham and a priest to the world, obeys God and teaches others to do so, they will all receive blessings and be a blessing to the world.

However, as the later part of Deuteronomy 28 states, if that person rejects God’s instructions they will be cut off from their people and cursed.

If you profess to accept Yeshua as your Messiah, then you are, as stated in the Bible, an adopted child of Abraham and a priest to the world, required by God to live in accordance with his instructions in the Torah and to teach others to do so.

If you reject the Torah then you have rejected God, and by doing so you will be cut off from your people, which translates to having thrown away the gift of salvation you received when you said you accepted Yeshua.

I am not making this stuff up-it is all here in the Bible! So please!- reconsider whatever lies you may have been told that absolve you from obeying the Torah. They are from people who most likely didn’t know they were leading you down the path of destruction; these traditional Christian teachings are the blind leading the blind and have been passed down, generation to generation, for millennia.

Now you have good sound biblical reasons to question them.

Thank you for being here and please LIKE, subscribe here and on my YouTube channel (use the link, above) and share these messages with everyone you know.

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

Something Else Jews and Christians Have In Common

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I have written about Jews and Christians many times, almost always, but only now and then specifying things that we have in common. I usually spend most of my time pointing out all the things we do NOT have in common, and why it shouldn’t be that way.

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But today I want to point out something we have in common, something other than the obvious things, such as we both believe in God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

We both, for the most part, believe in the existence of Yeshua (Jesus), although where Christianity has accepted him as the Messiah God promised to send, mainstream Judaism has rejected him as such.

Now, here is the one thing that both Jews and Christians have in common, which is not a good thing:

Both Jews and Christians say that if you want to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, you can’t be Jewish anymore.

Now isn’t that amazing? And totally disappointing.

You see, most Christians have been taught that following the instructions in the Torah, which are often referred to as the Mosaic law, is something that Jews are required to do because they are still subject to the Torah, and that is because they have rejected Jesus. But Christians, because they accept Jesus, are under Grace and not under the law, which is what Paul said in his letter to the Romans .

What Paul was talking about was the teaching of the Pharisees, which was a performance-based salvation; in other words, the Jews were being taught that they had to perform righteously in order to be “saved.” Paul constantly reminded them that it isn’t performance, but faith which allows us to be seen as righteous, preaching a faith-based salvation.

But here’s the kicker: faith doesn’t mean disobedience. Paul often states this, saying that Grace trumps sin, but it isn’t a license to sin. And James also states that faith without works is dead, meaning faith encourages and motivates us to obey.

So, nu? Obey what? There are no commandments issued by God anywhere in the New Covenant writings. All of God’s instructions are in the Torah.

Yeshua said if we love him we will obey his commandments, so what are they? In truth, Yeshua gave no commandments, other than to love one another, because that is how people will know we are his talmudim (John 13:34); but, in reality, that wasn’t new: Yeshua was rephrasing Leviticus 19:18, which says love your neighbor as yourself.

So what Christianity has taught is lawlessness. Shaul (Paul) teaches in his letter to the Romans that the Torah created sin by identifying what is right and what is wrong. So, if you don’t have to obey the Torah, then you are by definition, sinning. And when we add to this another Christian teaching called “Once Saved, Always Saved”, not only are you sinning but you don’t even have to repent!

What about the Jewish side of this? Do they agree that when a Jew accepts Jesus they are free from obedience to the Torah? Not really: what Jews will tell you is that any Jew who accepts Yeshua as their Messiah is now a Christian! According to mainstream Judaism, no Jew who believes Yeshua is the Messiah is Jewish anymore. It doesn’t matter if they obey the Torah, go to shul on Shabbat, observe the Moedim of God, or do any other “Jewish” thing: as far as Jews are concerned, if you believe in Jesus you aren’t a Jew anymore.

You can be born Jewish and convert to any other non-Christian religion, and you will still be considered a Jew, just a Jew who is a Buddhist or a Muslim or a Hindu, but if you accept Jesus you aren’t a Jew.

How meshuggah is that?

The sad part of this, which is not just sad but destroys people’s chances of truly being saved, is that both sides are absolutely, 1000% WRONG!

Anyone who believes that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah God promised to send is, by definition, grafted into the Chosen people of God (Romans 11), who are, have been, and always will be…the Jews. No Christian who says he or she believes in Jesus is absolved of obedience to God, for God, himself, has said over and over throughout the Bible that anyone who joins with the Jewish people is to receive the same treatment under the law as the native-born. That means to be protected by it, as well as obligated to obey it.

As for the Jews who accept Yeshua, they are just as obligated to obey God now as they ever were, because accepting Yeshua as their Messiah completes them as a Jewish person: not only do they have God, and his Torah, but the Messiah, as well.

Yeshua said in Matthew 5:17 that he did not come to change the law and that nothing in the Torah will change until all things have come to pass. That means A-L-L things: Yeshua’s return, the Tribulation, the new heaven and earth, the temple lowered from heaven, the dead in Messiah risen, Satan and his demons in the lake of fire, etc., etc., etc.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see any of these things here now.

Both sides agree believing in Yeshua as the Messiah means you can’t be a Jew anymore, and, according to what God, Yeshua, and even that little Jewish Pharisee tent-maker from Tarsus all say, both sides couldn’t be more wrong.

In fact, the most Jewish thing any Jew can do is to accept Yeshua as their Messiah, and Christians shouldn’t do as the “Church” teaches, but as Yeshua actually did, which was to live a Torah-observant life, motivated to obey Torah by his faith in, and love for, the Lord God.

It is clear from the Bible that to obey God’s instructions (which are in the Torah) is to accept him, and to refuse to do as God says is to reject him- there is no middle ground here. In the Gospels, Yeshua said he does and says only what God tells him to do and say, so Yeshua obeyed God by living in perfect accordance with the Torah; otherwise, he would not have been an acceptable sacrifice, So, nu! To live as Yeshua lived, to follow in his footsteps, to live up to the WWJD on those bracelets people wear, is to obey God’s instructions in the Torah.

And we don’t obey Torah because we want to attain salvation by works, but because of our faithful loving obedience to our father in heaven, who only wants what is best for us. Obedience to the Torah is not how we are saved, but faith in God and Yeshua is meaningful and real only if you do as they say.

Not as Paul says, or as your Priest says, or as your Minister says, or as your Rabbi quoting from the Talmud says, but as God says.

Jews and Christians have to realize that accepting Yeshua as your Messiah doesn’t mean you are free from Torah, or that you are not Jewish, but that you are grafted onto the Tree of Life that God provided, and that tree’s roots are the Torah.

Thank you for being here and please LIKE, share and subscribe here and on my YouTube channel, as well. And remember that I always welcome your comments.

If you aren’t aware of it, I also have a Facebook discussion group called “Just God’s Word” (the avatar is a picture of the Torah), so please check that out and join in.

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

Let’s Talk About Covenants.

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What is a covenant? According to Dictionary.com, it is:

An agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified.

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There are actually two distinct types of covenants that God made with humans; one is called a Conditional Covenant and the other is called an Unconditional Covenant. As the name implies, conditional covenants come with requirements by both parties, whereas the unconditional covenant is made by one party to another, with no requirement upon the second party to ensure the actions of the first party. In legalese, these are either a Unilateral or Bilateral Contractual agreement.

The covenant God made with Noah is an unconditional covenant. God promised that he was never going to destroy life with a flood ever again (notice how that still leaves many other options available) and there is no requirement at all on Noah or anyone else in order for God to be expected to keep his agreement. Often a covenant, at least the biblical kind, did require some sign, or in legal terms, consideration, in order to be finalized. The shedding of blood was a usual sign, such as when Abraham cut the animals in pieces or the bloodshed during a b’rit milah (circumcision), or the bloodshed by the Messiah when he was crucified.

In the case of the Noahide Covenant, God’s sign was the rainbow, which had never been seen before. In fact, rain had never been seen before, either: we are told at the beginning of Genesis that the earth was watered by the morning dew.

When we read what is in the Bible, God tells Noah and his children to be fruitful and multiply, that whereas before they ate only vegetables, now every moving thing is food for them (although there was already an understanding of clean and unclean, since in the prior chapters God had Noah take 7 pairs of clean animals and only 1 pair of unclean), and that they are not to eat the blood. God also says that every human who takes another human’s life is to be held accountable and that for every human who sheds another human’s blood, his own blood shall be shed. God also said that he wouldn’t curse the ground anymore, which he did with the expulsion of Adam and Eve.

God finished by stating this covenant is with Noah and every living thing that is on the earth.

But in Judaism, there are 7 Noahide Laws that are considered to be part of the Noahide Covenant. The Babylonian Talmud tells us these are the 7 laws that are in the Noahide Covenant:

  1. Not to worship idols.
  2. Not to curse God.
  3. Not to commit murder.
  4. Not to commit adultery, bestiality, or sexual immorality.
  5. Not to steal.
  6. Not to eat flesh torn from a living animal.
  7. To establish courts of justice.

So where did the Rabbis get all this other stuff? From what I have read, and from my very small experience studying the Talmud, they pretty much extrapolated from what else is written in the Bible to come up with these unstated, but (supposedly) implied mitzvot.

There is only one other covenant that is unconditional, which is the Davidic Covenant and is found in 2 Samuel 7:12-16. Here God promises David that one of his descendants will sit on an eternal throne, which everyone concludes is the Messiah. In this covenant, God tells David that he is pleased David wants to build a house for the Lord, but God will take it up a notch. There is no requirement for David to do anything because God is doing this as his reward to David for all David has done and what he wants to do in his heart.

You may be thinking that the New Covenant, Jeremiah 31:31 is also an unconditional covenant, but it isn’t. You need to read the entire chapter to realize that in the midst of the promises God is making to Jeremiah about the regathering of Israel and the restoring of their wealth and joy, in Jeremiah 31:17-20, Jeremiah is told that Ephraim (meaning Israel) has repented and confessed its sin and acknowledged its wrongdoing.

So, we could say that the New Covenant is predicated upon Israel, now dispersed throughout the world, coming to recognize its sinfulness and repenting. After which, God will regather them, restore their joy and wealth, and finally write the Torah on their hearts so that everyone will know Adonai. This is the real “new” covenant and is accomplished through the Messiah.

The Babylonian Talmud’s extrapolated Noahide Laws are man-made, but even so, they are also valid because when we go through the Torah, everything listed as a Noahide Law will eventually be specified in the Torah God gives to Moses.

This is the one absolutely most important fact about the covenants God made with us: they are inclusive, not exclusive! That means each succeeding covenant includes and builds upon the preceding one. The covenant God made with Abraham is included with the one he made with Noah, but he then added on to it. The Mosaic Covenant includes everything in the Abrahamic and Noahide Covenants, then builds upon it. The covenant God makes with David is in addition to the previous covenants and establishes their permanence through the coming Messiah. And the New Covenant God makes through Jeremiah will first and foremost be with Israel, eventually allowing Gentiles to be included as they will be grafted into the chosen people of God through their acceptance of Yeshua, the Messiah.

And, being grafted into the chosen people of God, they also come under all the covenants God made with his people; in other words, you can’t be grafted onto a tree but get your nourishment from a vine. If you are one of God’s chosen, whether native-born or grafted in Gentile, you are required to obey his commandments.

No covenant ever does away with another, despite what you may have been told as a result of Paul’s writing in 2 Corinthians 5:17 or what he said in Hebrews 8:13; Paul was talking about what will happen in the Acharit haYamim (Days to Come) and the Olam Haba (World to Come). He isn’t talking about now, and this is confirmed by the Messiah, himself, in Matthew 5:18 when he says nothing shall change until all things come to pass. That means ALL things have come to pass, so unless you can show me the new earth, the temple lowered from heaven, the Enemy and his followers in the Lake of Fire, and Yeshua sitting on the throne ruling over all the earth, then all things have not come to pass and the covenants that were made are all still 100% valid,

This means, like it or not, whether you are a Jew or a Gentile grafted into the body of Messiah, no matter what someone may have told you, we are all still being held accountable by God to obey the Torah as best as we can.

Thank you for being here and please LIKE, share and subscribe so that this ministry can grow. I appreciate your comments, always, and look forward to the next time we are together.

Until then, l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

What Does 2 Chronicles 7:14 Mean?

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In this chapter of 2 Chronicles, Solomon and all the people had celebrated for a week at the dedication of the temple. Solomon prays to God to accept this house, and that no matter where his people are, when they are in distress and pray towards this house, that he, God, will hear them and act. After the celebration, God appeared to Solomon at night and said that he would do as Solomon asked and that he would also choose this temple as his house of sacrifice (2 Chron. 7:12).

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When God answered Solomon’s prayer, he included this (2 Chronicles 7:14):

…then, if my people, who bear my name, will humble themselves, pray, seek my face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land.

The term I want to talk about is “seek my face”. Obviously, no one can see the face of God and live- God, himself, tells that to Moses in Exodus 33:20. So, if we cannot see God’s face and live, why would God tell us to seek that which will kill us?

Huh? I mean, what’s up with that, right?

The true meaning of terms used in the Bible, terms such as “seek my face”, “know my name” or “call on the name of the Lord” is something that has been misunderstood by many Gentiles for many years. Now, I don’t mean to sound snobby, but Jews know what God means when he uses these terms. They are not to be taken literally, but figuratively. We can’t see God’s face, and since no one really knows the absolute correct pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton (the 4-letter name of God he told to Moses, יהוה), we can’t call out the name of God; at least, not do so and be sure we are pronouncing it correctly.

There are many who believe that these terms are meant to be taken literally, and we even have a group of Believers who are called (not always in a nice way) “Holy Namers”, who absolutely believe that if you do not use the name of God exactly pronounced the way they believe it is to be pronounced, then you are praying to a pagan god and the real God will not listen to you. It is so sad that their zeal for the Lord is so misplaced.

God is above and beyond human understanding, and he is also above and beyond human compassion, love, and patience. One more thing: only God can see the meaning in our hearts. He is not fooled by words or promises or even actions if they are not heartfelt and honest. He tells us, over and over through the Prophets, that he doesn’t care for the blood of bulls or goats, but that he wants obedience. God is telling us that he knows what we feel: he knows whether we are doing something to please him out of love, respect, and faithful desire to obey or just to get “points” towards salvation.

This is what true faith is, this is what real love for the Lord is- to do what we do because we want to please him.

And the way to please God is to obey the instructions he gave us, in the Torah, because he gave them to us so that we could live eternally in his presence.

To seek his face means to want to know him better. To call upon his name means to pray to him for help when we are in distress. To know his name means to understand who he is.

His “name” isn’t a bunch of letters in a particular order with a particular pronunciation- it is God, himself! His renown, his reputation, his majesty, his holiness, his trustworthiness. The “Name of the Lord” has nothing, whatsoever, to do with pronunciation, but it has everything to do with who God is, what he can do, and why we should worship and obey him.

So, nu! You want to know his name? You feel like seeking his face? Then do so by reading the Tanakh, the “Jewish” Bible. God tells us who he is, what he desires from us, and what blessings we will receive from him in the Old Covenant. Think about it: nowhere at all in the New Covenant will you find written this statement: “And God said unto (whomever), ‘Tell the people this is what the Lord, God says…'”. However, when you read Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, you will see that expression used many, many times where God gives Moses dictation to deliver to the Israelites. And he also dictates to the Prophets exactly what they are to say to the people. The Tanakh is the ONLY place in the entire Bible where we are told directly from God exactly how he wants us to worship him and treat each other, and that’s what we should do to know his name and seek his face.

After all, what have you got to lose? If you try to obey the instructions God gave in the Torah and do so from love for God, then how can you be wrong?

I have never, and probably never will understand how someone can tell you that you must use an exact name for God or the Messiah when praying in order to be saved, but if you do as God said to do, you aren’t saved.

Thank you for being here. Please “Like” this message, share it with everyone you know, and subscribe to this ministry to help it to grow. I never ask for money, just to show you what the Bible says so you can make an informed decision about where you will spend eternity.

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