Category: A Drash to Start the Day

America Today and Biblical Israel

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I am not a prophet, nor do I pretend to be one.  Nor would I consider myself a futurist, but I am very good with patterns of behavior and this is what I see when I read the books of Kings and Chronicles, the Prophets, and then look at what America has become today.

If you prefer to watch a video, please click on this link: Watch the video.

A laundry list of the sins committed by Israel (the Northern Kingdom) can be found in 1 Kings 17; in that chapter, we are told that Israel feared other gods, practiced witchcraft and soothsaying, sacrificed their children, and rejected God’s laws.

Despite being warned by the prophets, over and over again, about the results of these sins, they continued to do evil.

In the Southern Kingdom of Judea, Solomon set the stage for Judea to suffer as Israel would by marrying women for political reasons, women who were still practicing the pagan religions of the Semitic tribes surrounding Israel (which was still one kingdom at that time), and in his last days, he even set up standing stones, performed child sacrifice and worshiped other gods with his wives.

After Solomon died and the kingdom was split, the Northern Kingdom (Israel, later called Shomron) continued to worship the Golden Calf and never stepped one foot back to proper worship. Eventually, they were destroyed by the Assyrians, and when the Southern Kingdom (Judea) didn’t learn from Israel’s fate, doing the same as Israel did, they, too, were destroyed, but they were destroyed by the Babylonians.

Now let’s look at America. I am not going to make this a textbook lesson, citing the time and day for the following actions because I am sure you all are very aware of what I am about to point out.

America has long worshiped other gods: gold, silver, sports stars, celebrities, cars, and pretty much anyone who is popular. People spend thousands of dollars to get season tickets, but won’t tithe at their house of worship, if they even go to one.  They spend hours waiting on a line to get into the movie theater to see their Hollywood idol’s newest show, or to wait to get the newest version of the smartphone they love, or concert tickets, but will they spend an hour volunteering with a charity to help the poor or feed the hungry?

As for soothsaying and witchcraft, just look at any newspaper and there will be a section for horoscopes.

We don’t burn babies at the altar of Molech anymore, but we legalized abortions. If you don’t think that getting an abortion is tantamount to child sacrifice, then you haven’t ever seen or read about how they are done, and you certainly have no understanding of God’s hatred of killing innocent children for personal gain, which is why people sacrificed their children to Molech. Today, children are sacrificed because (other than for medical reasons) the mother doesn’t want the child to interfere with her life.

And if you want to talk about rejecting God’s laws, we have kicked him out of our courts. We don’t allow prayer in schools, we don’t accept that it is okay for a child to pray on his own, in private, and we reject the idea that we can worship the way we want to, for fear of “offending” someone else.

The governments at both state and federal levels have endorsed gay marriage, and there are even gay and lesbian churches. Not to mention how many “mainstream” churches and synagogues are supporting these laws so that they are politically correct, even though you would think they should know that by doing so they reject God’s commandments. It is obvious that many of our religious leaders are more concerned with pleasing people instead of pleasing God.

Our politicians are so focused on destroying each other that they are taking the entire country down with them. Remember what the Bible says in 1 Kings 15:30, with reference to the destruction of the family of Jeroboam, the first king of Israel:

This happened because of the sins Jeroboam had committed and had caused Israel to commit, and because he aroused the anger of the LORD, the God of Israel.

Throughout 1 and 2 Kings, we read how every succeeding king of the Northern Kingdom continued to sin, always referring back to the sins of Jeroboam, who caused all Israel to sin. Our leaders are sinning, and really sinning a lot, and because of this the entire country is suffering, and will eventually come to ruin.

We no longer care about doing what we know is morally right but instead, we ignore our sense of righteousness in order to be politically correct. We reject our God so that people who worship a different god aren’t offended. Some of our leaders prostitute themselves to invading foreigners in order to win their approval, just the same way that the prophets accused Israel and Judea of doing with the Philistines, Egyptians, and Babylonians.

Today we are seeing biblical prophecy come to fruition: God’s chosen people are being regathered to Israel from all four corners of the world and Israel is becoming the oasis that God said it would become, again. We also see the world (i.e., the United Nations) coming against Israel, economically and politically. We see the world rejecting God and a new world order coming into existence, a Muslim world order that will soon overtake the indigenous population of many European countries. There will be one world religion, one world economy, and one world ruler, and I can tell you now, it ain’t gonna be a God-fearing person.

America began as Israel did under King David, a God-fearing land whose people worshiped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and set their government up asking for God’s guidance and blessings. But today, America is a land of sinfulness. We kill our children, we worship other gods, gods of money and of popularity, and we have leaders who are more concerned with destroying their political opponents than to work with them to better the lives of their populace.

God gave Israel and Judea more than enough time and warning to get back on track with him before he took action, but once God decided that enough was enough, he dropped the hammer. I believe that America is in the same place Israel and Judea were just before they were destroyed: we have sinned too much for too long to be saved anymore, and now it is just a matter of time before God drops his hammer on us.

I was in the Marine Corps and although I didn’t see any action, I was willing to die to uphold and protect the freedom that America offered to its citizens. But today, well…I just don’t know. I see so little of the “America” I knew when I was a child that I don’t think it is the same country anymore. We want to change history by removing the reminders of it, which can only lead to teaching our children propaganda instead of facts, and we reject what is right for what is popular. America used to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but today many of our freedoms have been taken away from us, and why? Because we are afraid. We are afraid of getting sick, we are afraid of offending a people who have proven all they want to do is kill us, and we are afraid of standing up for God. We are no longer a home for the free, and our people are cowards.

The Bible tells us of how the chosen people of God have been judged, and today they are being regathered as we enter the End Days, which means that the judgment coming will now be on the nations, and America is placing itself at the front of that line.

I thank you for being here, and today I will also say I am sorry to bring this bad news to you. If you have never shared anything before, and never intend to, at least please share this message with everyone you know. The destruction is coming, but people can still get themselves right with God before that happens.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Are You Giving Up Now So You Feel Better Later?

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Are you wondering what the title means? Are you asking yourself, “How can I feel better about something that I give up on? Giving up is failing, it is quitting, so how can anyone feel better about doing that?”

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video. 

Well, giving up could be okay to do if we were talking about a sport or a very challenging class at school. In my case, I often think of giving up golf, but then I get a par and think, “That wasn’t so hard…I bet I can do that more often.”  Foolish me.

But no, I am not talking about something as menial as a sport or a class, I am talking about life. And this is not about giving up on life, itself- we are not discussing suicide; this is about giving up on relationships in your life.

How many people do you know who are afraid to get close to someone because they have lost loved ones and feel that if they don’t get really close to someone, then when that person dies they won’t feel such a tremendous loss? They rationalize their fear of loss, which turns into a fear of intimacy by telling themselves that this way they won’t have to suffer as they did before when their parent or sibling, friend, or pet died.

They give up intimacy now so that they won’t have to feel bad later.

What they are really doing is ignoring the fact that they are going to feel bad, anyway. They think giving up on closeness now will make them feel better later. But they are wrong, and when they realize that because they stayed emotionally distant then, they don’t have the kind of beautiful memories they could have now, they feel even worse. And to throw salt on their wounds, they can never recover that lost opportunity.

The same thing happens when we don’t want to work on our relationship with God. We take God for granted. We go to services, we do what we think is okay, based on what our religious leaders tell us, and we send cards to friends and family for the holidays. But we never really try to get to know God on an intimate, personal level, which can only be done through reading the Bible. And when we don’t get close to God, we lose out on that wonderful, peaceful feeling he gives us through his Spirit. And we also lose out on the blessings he has for us, which we can only receive through following his instructions. Not what a Rabbi or Priest or Minister says, but what God says, and you know what God wants only when you have an intimate relationship with him.

So many of us think we have the time to get to things later but the truth is we never know when we will be facing God. And just like losing the chance to be close to people now who we are afraid of losing later, we lose all the blessings that God has for us right now when we put off strengthening our relationship with him.

I used to sell Revocable Living Trusts as part of someone’s estate plan, and when people told me that they liked the idea and would call me when they needed to set up their estate, I would reply with this:

“That’s smart. Why spend money for the Trust until you have to. It takes us about 6 weeks to get the Trust set up for you, so (taking out my calendar) let me know when you are going to die and I will set an appointment for us 6 weeks before then.”

That was a very powerful closing line, and I am sure you can see why.

If you have lost loved ones and decided that you will never get that close to anyone again so you will never have to feel that much pain, again, please reconsider. Especially when it comes to God, who (unfortunately) too many people blame for the pain they feel when they lose a loved one. Death is part of life, and we all have to deal with it. What matters is not what we lose when someone dies, but the quality of the time we had with them while they were still here.

You will always have to suffer the loss of a loved one, but what is worse than having someone taken from you is when you reject them while they are still here.

Thank you for being here; please subscribe and share these messages with others to help this ministry grow. I don’t ask for money and I will never tell people what they have to do or think, I only want to make sure that whatever decision they make about their relationship with God is based on what he says and not what some religion tells them.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

 

Where It All Went Wrong

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Do you know anything about construction? I was a Combat Engineer when I was in the Marine Corps, and we built stuff; bridges, buildings, roads, minefields, and the best part was that we also got to blow things up.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

One of the valuable lessons I learned about construction was that when you are making copies of something, such as cutting roof rafters, you always measure and cut succeeding rafters from the first one. The reason for this is that there is always some small change, an eighth of an inch here or a quarter of an inch there, which won’t really affect that one rafter so much. But, when you cut the second rafter, then the third is cut from the second, then the fourth is cut from the third, and so on, by the time you get to the 10th or 12th rafter, you are off by inches and the rafters will not fit the roof.

The same holds true for teaching. If someone teaches a lesson that makes sense which others like, they will copy that lesson exactly. But when somebody decides to tweak it a bit and teaches that, they are no longer cutting their rafter from the original.

God told Moses the Jewish people would be his priests to the world (Exodus 19:6), meaning that they would learn how to do what God said we should do, then teach the world how to do it, exactly the same way they learned it.

But something happened to disrupt that plan, and that something was human intervention.

This is where it started to all go wrong for the Jews: over the years, the leaders of Judaism decided that what God said wasn’t enough, so they enhanced our understanding (I’m being facetious) with their own interpretations of how to obey the instructions in the Torah, and that became the traditional or Oral Law, which we find in the Talmud.

When Yeshua (Jesus) came to earth one of the things he did was teach the spiritual meaning of what God taught the Jewish people in the Torah. Those teachings were to help us understand correctly what God wanted from us, meaning not just obedience to the letter of the law, but a heartfelt desire to do what is right in God’s eyes. Yeshua was helping to bring us back into alignment with the original rafter measurements.

But something happened to disrupt that plan, and that something was human intervention.

As more and more Gentiles were added to this Jewish movement, that’s where it all started to go wrong for the Gentiles. There was both a political reason and a social reason for this: politically, the Jews in Judea were rebelling against Roman rule and the Romans didn’t take very kindly to that, so the Gentiles (who never before had any problem with Rome) didn’t want to be associated with the Jewish population.

Socially, the change in lifestyle from a hedonistic pagan to a righteous God-fearing person was a real paradigm shift, and the Elders in Jerusalem knew this, which is why they sent a letter to the (now mostly) Gentile congregations forming throughout the Middle East and Asia, which gave them only 4 commandments to obey immediately (Acts 15.) The intention was to make it easier for these people to convert to a Godly lifestyle and it was expected they would eventually incorporate all of God’s instructions into their lives (if you have been taught differently, see Acts 15:21and adjust your rafter measurement.)

By separating the Yeshua-following Jews and Gentiles from the mainstream Jews, the leaders of this new movement created a rift that God and Yeshua never wanted to have. Believers in Yeshua’s teaching and that he was the Messiah were never supposed to become a separate religion, but (if anything) maybe another form of Judaism. Today within Judaism we have the Chasidic, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist sects of Judaism (I will also include Messianic Jews, although the other sects reject us.)

The letter the Elders sent was OK, but they should have specified more clearly that it was only temporary and the Gentiles accepting Yeshua were still required to learn all of the Torah and live it. The letters from Shaul (Paul) certainly did NOT help to get this idea across. Later, the Gentile leaders of this movement, which by the end of the First Century couldn’t be called Judaism anymore, changed the Sabbath day and when Constantine took it over, he created new holidays, doctrine, laws, commandments, traditions, and ended up with the religion we call Christianity.

The Jewish Messiah, Yeshua, was forgotten and a Gentile savior, Jesus Christ, was created, with his own religion called Christianity.

God never intended that Yeshua would start a new religion, and Yeshua never wanted that, either. When God gave his instructions to Moses, which outlines exactly how God wants us to worship him and treat each other, he wanted that to be a lifestyle, not a religion. God has no religion, and he doesn’t want his creation to have a religion: he wants us all to be as he says we should be. He is clear about that throughout the Torah and what he said through his prophets.

The Torah is like God’s first rafter: we are supposed to live exactly as he told us in the Torah, and the Torah was to be understood exactly as Yeshua taught.  Everyone should have been “cut” from that one rafter, but that didn’t happen.

The Jews neglected using the Torah and cut rafters from the Oral Laws, and when Yeshua came those rafters didn’t fit the house God had designed. Yeshua tried to get them back onto the correct measurements and gave us a perfectly cut rafter to use as our model, but the followers of Yeshua decided to change the angle and cut their rafters from the changed rules and now we have so many different forms of Judaism and Christianity that we can’t find any two rafters that fit the same roof.

It all went wrong at the very beginning, and it has been so wrong for so long that today we can’t fix it. But God can fix it, once and forever, and he has even told us how he will do that; those architectural specifications are found in Jeremiah 31:31. 

Messianic Moment is a teaching ministry, and I will never tell you what you must do, only what I believe God has told us we should do. The choice of what you do is yours, and yours alone, but that also means that when you have to face God and tell him why you did what you did, you won’t be able to blame anyone else. Whatever you do, however you live, no matter who told you what to do, you choose to obey someone. If it isn’t God, then you will be in trouble.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages with everyone you know, and check out my website and the books I have written. I always welcome your comments.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Savior or Son: Why Did He Come?

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I wrote a teaching series (it is available through my website) on the differences between the Jewish and Christian expectations of the Messiah. One main difference is that in Judaism, the Messiah is seen as a national savior, whereas Christianity sees him as much more of a personal savior.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

In the Gospel of Matthew, considered by many to be the most “Jewish” of the four, Yeshua is referred to as King and Messiah many more times than in the Gospel of John, unquestionably the most spiritually written and metaphoric of the four, who constantly refers to Yeshua as the Son of God, and (in my opinion) where the idea of the Trinity originated from.

According to the NIV Study Bible, Matthew was written in the 70s, Mark in the mid-60s, Luke around 60, and John probably between 80 and 95, making John the last and oldest of the Gospels. Matthew was written to the Jewish Believers, Luke (most likely) to any Believer, Mark to the Gentile Believers in Rome and John to Gentile Believers.

When Yeshua came to earth and started his ministry, the Jewish population was looking for a political savior which is part of the reason that he wasn’t accepted by the majority, who were more interested in being freed from Roman authority than they were being freed from spiritual slavery.  The Gentiles who accepted Yeshua, on the other hand, did not have any political agenda for their savior; in truth, they never even considered salvation because their culture and religion never had need of a savior.

This difference in the description of the Messiah, along with the political environment at that time, led to a distinctly different approach with the Gospels, which led to the separation between the “mainstream” Jews, the Jewish Believers, and the Gentile Believers.

When Matthew wrote his gospel, the majority of Believers were Jews who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah God promised, but by the time John was penning his narrative, he was writing to Gentiles who did not have any real idea of the traditional, Jewish understanding of who and what the Messiah would be. John identified Yeshua almost exclusively throughout his gospel as the son of God, which is a description the Gentiles would easily identify with since so many Roman gods and goddesses had children. These Gentiles were experiencing a religious and lifestyle paradigm shift, and that is why the Elders in Jerusalem did not require them to make a total conversion to Judaism, which is what they were learning about, all at once. We read about this in Acts 15, and too many times people totally miss Acts 15:21, where James states these newly converted Gentiles would learn the Torah when they went to Shabbat services and, eventually, become Torah observant.

The Messiah, in Judaic thought, was to regather the people to the Land (Israel), reconstruct the Temple and reinstitute the sacrificial system so that we would be able to receive forgiveness of sin (which is impossible when there is no temple) and thereby once more be in communion with God. In the times of Yeshua, because the temple still existed, they expected the Messiah to free them from the Roman rule so that all the Jews in the Diaspora would be able to return.

The Gentiles had no such expectation or desire, and their main reason for accepting Yeshua was to receive an eternal existence in heaven.  The approach to the Gentiles was rejecting paganism and accepting Yeshua, as the son of God who would be able to grant them eternal joy.

At the time John wrote his Gospel, the Romans were persecuting the Jews because they were revolting against Roman rule. It had always been okay with Rome to allow the Jews to continue to practice their religion, but when it came to kicking Rome out of Israel, that’s where the Romans drew the line.  So, because the Jews were on the Roman hit list, these Gentiles (who were Roman citizens) didn’t want to be associated with the Jews, which is why they didn’t rush into converting to Judaism. Besides that, by the time John wrote his gospel, there were many more Gentiles in this (what had been a) Jewish movement than Jews, and they weren’t in any rush to get in trouble with Rome. So, they started to separate themselves by changing the Sabbath, not requiring more than what the Elders stated in their letter, and trying to stay under the radar with Rome.

This eventually backfired on them, because the only thing Rome hated as much as a rebellion was the establishment of a new religion under their rule.

Eventually, as we know, once Constantine got his hand in it, Christianity, as we know it today, was created with a different Sabbath and man-made holidays to replace the ones God told us we should celebrate.

Since then, Christians and Jews have been at odds with each other, Christians trying to convert Jews and Jews hating Christians for trying to do it. The separation between Jews and Christians has been greatly enhanced because of the difference between how Yeshua is described in the gospels of Matthew and John. I believe this was intentional but never designed to have the destructive influence and results that it has.

The Messiah came to fulfill God’s plan to reconnect with his chosen people, and to also extend grace and salvation to the Gentiles. The Messiah, Yeshua, did that, and once his role as Messiah was completed, he was returned to heaven to sit at the right hand of God. One day, soon (God willing!) he will return as King Messiah, ruling the earth, defeating once and for all the Enemy of God, and completing God’s plan for humanity. At that time, both Jews and Gentiles will see Yeshua for who and what he truly is, both Messiah and son of God, but mainly the Messiah.

Yeshua came to earth to be the Messiah, and being the son of God was not required for that. Instead of identifying him as God’s Messiah, by the time John’s gospel was written and soon after that, men screwed it all up by presenting him in a way that was attractive to Gentiles and not as God intended.

Messiah was to be a stumbling block to those who rejected him, but instead because of what men did he became a stumbling block to the people he was sent to help.

Oy!

Thank you for being here and please subscribe and share these messages with everyone you know. I welcome your comments and look forward to the next time we are together; until then, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Covenant Chronology

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When we think of the word “chronology”, we think of a linear timeline, meaning something happening in a particular order. And that is fine, but for the purposes of this message we will discuss more than just the order of the covenants, we will also look at the priority of order within the covenants.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Let’s start with a basic introduction to what a covenant is, sort of a Covenant 101 Class:

A covenant is, essentially, a contract. Like contracts, there has to be a promise by one party to deliver some action to another party. There are two ways to make a contract, which are orally and written, and they are either unilateral or bilateral. The unilateral contract is a promise by one person with no requirements on the other party in order to receive the promised action, and a bilateral contract is two-way: A promises B to do something so long as B performs some service.

With regard to the covenants God made, the unilateral covenant is called unconditional, and the bilateral covenant is called conditional.

There are 5 covenants in the Bible:

  1. The Noahic Covenant (Genesis 8:21-22);
  2. The Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 12-17);
  3. The Mosaic Covenant (Exodus 19-24);
  4. the Davidic Covenant (2 Samuel 7); and
  5. The New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31).

Here is one of the most important things you must understand about the covenants which God has made with humanity: they are not exclusionary, they are complementary.

That means that the newer covenant does not replace or supersede the previous covenant, but adds to it, confirming and increasing the scope to include the newer elements. For example, when God made his covenant with Abraham, he didn’t stop placing the rainbow in the sky. When he made the covenant with the Jewish people through Moses, he didn’t say circumcision wasn’t necessary anymore.

And when he promised all humanity he would make a New Covenant, it is based entirely on the prior covenant with King David to make one of his descendants the Messiah.

There are only two of the five covenants God made with us that are unconditional: the Noahic and the New. These are promises by God that do not require us to do anything in order to receive them. The other covenants are conditional. Circumcision was conditional for the Abrahamic, circumcision plus obedience to the instructions God gave Moses, and the line of kings under David must also remain obedient to the Torah for David’s descendants to remain on the throne.

The New Covenant, according to Christian theology, was made by Jesus at the Last Supper, but that is not true. God already told us what he would do way back in Jeremiah. And this New Covenant was unconditional because God said we can’t accomplish it, ourselves.

Now, one might say the New Covenant is conditional because we have to accept Yeshua as our Messiah in order to be saved, but technically, that is not really necessary. Although I have run into some who claim they are sinless and we all can be, despite what the Tanakh tells us, most people believe humans cannot live a sinless life. But, if we did, in other words, if we were able to obey every commandment in the Torah every moment of our life, then we would be righteous in God’s eyes and there would be no need for us to be saved by Messiah’s sacrifice.

I believe living a sinless existence is not possible for humans, which is why we need the Messiah, and since God did send the Messiah, it seems he agrees with me.

The last lesson for today is about the priority of order within the covenants; in other words, who does what, first.

Too many churches, especially the mega-churches with thousands of people, always prioritize their “spiel” about God with all the things God will do for you. And they finish with all you have to do is be a “good” person, loving each other and not doing anything bad. They teach that when you accept Jesus then God will give you blessings. They teach your only requirement is to accept Jesus as your Savior and you get blessings.

That’s not how it works, and besides that, it is also in the wrong order.

It isn’t about what God will do for us, but what we are to do for God. It’s true that God wants to bless us, but the blessings are not given until they are earned. The priority within these covenants is that we are to obey God’s instructions, i.e., do as he says we should, and then in return, he will be our God and we will receive the blessings he promises.

Jews have always known the proper priority because, well, we’re the ones through whom God set up this system. We understand that it is about what we are to do for God and not about what he will do for us. We serve God, not the other way around, and that means the priority, the proper “chronology” of actions within each conditional covenant, is that we must FIRST do our part, which is to follow the instructions God gave us, then he will do his part and deliver blessings to us.

One of the most remarkable things about God is that even though we have broken the conditional covenants over and over, and over again, God has not exercised his moral and legal right to renege on his part. Even better, God gave us an escape clause: not to escape the covenant, but to escape the consequences of breaking the covenant, and that is the sacrificial system. When the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed that made forgiveness impossible, but through the Davidic covenant, which is accomplished through Yeshua, we can find redemption, which is why without Yeshua we have no hope of salvation.

What I am hoping you get out of today’s message is this: the covenants God made do not remove or do away with any of his previous covenants, they are all found in the Tanakh, and the most important lesson today is that we are the ones who do for God, not the other way around. When we do as God wants, we will receive his blessings, but he has no obligation to do anything for anyone of us until we show him we have met the conditions of his covenant.

God is the most wonderful partner anyone can have in any covenant because he so desires to bless us, that even though we continuously break the covenant, he allows us to come back into that covenant.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share out these messages, buy my books, wash your hands and I always welcome your comments.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Why Did I Come in Here?

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When I am riding my bike or alone in my car driving somewhere, I always start out with prayer. And it is when I am praying, and my mind wanders off on a topic, I find my inspiration for many of the messages I post on this ministry. When an idea hits me, I try to quickly make a calendar entry so I don’t forget what I wanted to talk about.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

I went to see what was on the calendar for today and all I saw was “Yes, go ahead and save that.”, which was what I told my Google assistant to do after I had asked “her” to make a calendar entry to remind me what I wanted to talk about today.

And, of course, I don’t recall what the heck it was, and thought this problem might be more of an age-related issue than one of misusing technology.

Now that I think about it, though, there is a spiritual message in here, and that spiritual element is the danger of forgetfulness; not of why you came in the room, or what you wanted to talk about, or the names of people you have known for a long time.

What we need to be careful about never forgetting is God and the way he wants us to live our life.

An example of this is Shlomo, otherwise known as Solomon. Despite his extraordinary wisdom, later in his life, he forgot about God and the promises he made to God and started to worship other, false gods (1 Kings 11:4).

You may ask how someone who had always been so worshipful and dedicated to God, with so much sekel (Hebrew for understanding or insight), could have done that, and the answer is that he was influenced by his wives (he had about 700), many of whom were from the people that God said we shouldn’t have any dealings or relationships with because they would (as in Shlomo’s case) turn us away from our God.

So what does a failing memory have to do with apostasy? Everything.

Even though Shlomo’s problem wasn’t so much memory loss, as what we old folks experience, the memory loss we can all fall victim to is losing the memory of what is right and wrong.  As we get older, and I can verify this from experience, your priorities change, and it becomes more difficult to exercise the self-discipline you used to have. The discipline to go places when you are tired, the discipline to keep in touch with people, the discipline to read when you can more easily watch TV.  Even personal hygiene becomes a burden, especially if you live alone, for many older people. All of these disciplines, which we take for granted when we are young, become difficult when we get older.

Now, don’t get me wrong- I am not ready for the Old Folks Home, not by a long shot, but I can see patterns forming, and I can see how I used to be and how I am now.

I used to send cards to everyone for their birthdays and holidays, but for years now I don’t bother. It isn’t so much the cost of greeting cards (which is, by the way, ridiculously high) but I simply don’t feel like doing it, anymore. No offense to my friends and family, I still love you all but it is just too much effort for too little reward.  And I also feel that way about finding a place to worship. I went to a Hebraic Roots church for a few years after moving here, but after they had to close their doors (the Senior Pastor had a full-time job and was starting a Master’s program so he didn’t have time to be a full-time Pastor, and there was no one else to run it) I just didn’t feel like looking around for someplace else. And I still don’t want to, even though there are so many houses of worship here that on a windy day you can spit in any direction and hit a church.

You don’t have to be old to forget about God; you can be any age and lose focus or forget about proper worship and lifestyle. It can happen as you get more involved with your job, or with family problems, or even with outside activities. When we have many worldly things on our mind we tend to become forgetful about spiritual things that take effort, such as reading the Bible every day.

If you are a Believer and have many friends (like I do) who are not Believers, you expose yourself to forgetting about God, just as Shlomo did when he married foreign wives with foreign gods. Their influence can become a trap for you, tying you to worldly things instead of to God.

On the other hand, we are to be a light to the nations and we can’t shine if we never interact with non-Believers. In fact, we should be out there among the non-Believers as a symbol and example of how God’s grace and Holy Spirit gives us peace and the ability to remain calm in the midst of troubles. That’s why I am concerned for myself, because as I get older and things become more difficult, it may be easier for me to not “fight” with those who don’t worship God, and simply let them alone or, worse, give in to them just because I don’t have the strength to argue.

Don’t worry- I doubt that will happen to me, but being aware of the fact it might is what keeps me properly focused.

I may not remember why I came into the room this morning, or even what I wanted to say when I started to write this, but I do remember that God has instructions for me to follow and because I forget things more easily now, I must remember one thing if nothing else, and that is to fear the Lord, God. If I can remember that one thing, nothing else will be that important.

That’s the reason I keep my Bible in the bathroom- I know no matter how forgetful I become, I will always remember where the bathroom is. And, when I get there, I see the Bible; since I will have a few minutes while I am there, I might as well read a chapter or two.

That’s one way I remember to stay in touch with God, and (frankly) I don’t worry too much about what else I have to remember, except, maybe, to take my pills in the morning.

Thank you for remembering to be here today, and please don’t forget to subscribe so if you forget to look for a message on my website, you will be notified by email that I have posted. You can also “like” my Facebook page and that way you will know when I post.

I always welcome your comments and I try to remember to reply.

Until next time (assuming I don’t forget to write), L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Why Read The Torah?

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Oops! Last week when I posted Parashah Shemini, I was a week too early. I missed the fact that on the Shabbat after Pesach (Passover) we read a different portion of the Torah, specifically for that Shabbat. So, that means I am a week ahead, and as such, I thought we could use this week to review the reason why reading the Torah portion (called a Parashah, the plural is Parashot) is so important, especially if you want to be able to understand what is in the New Covenant writings.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video. 

The Torah is the first five books of the Bible (most of you already know that) and they contain every, single instruction for how to worship God and how to treat each other that God wants us to know. In truth, it is really the only part of the Bible that is made up of the exact words God gave to us, with Moses taking dictation. Every single Torah is exactly the same as every other Torah- when the Scribes who are specially trained to write the Torah (called Sopherim) finish copying one Torah to another, they count every single letter to make sure there is nothing missing or added.

Yeshua taught from the Torah. That was the only scripture that existed. Of course, there were many traditional teachings, which became the Mishna and the Gomorrah (together they make up the Talmud.) But as for the written word of God, when Yeshua was teaching, he was teaching from the only scripture there was, and that was the Torah. And as far as Yeshua being the spotless lamb of God, i.e. a sinless person, he was sinless because he did everything that God instructed us all to do, which (again) is found in the Torah.

My point is that to understand what Yeshua taught, we need to first know what is in the Torah. Shaul (Paul) also taught only from the Torah; in fact, being a Pharisee trained by one of the greatest Rabbis in Jewish history, Gamaliel, he was a Torah expert.

The New Covenant writings have absolutely nothing in them that is “new.” I know, I know…you are going to quote from Ecclesiastes and tell me there is nothing new under the sun, and (of course) I will agree with you, which also proves my point about the New Covenant. Yeshua taught from the Torah, the Disciples of Yeshua taught what they learned from Yeshua, which was from the Torah, and Shaul taught what he knew from the Torah.

Let’s take a break for a minute and go over something important to know. In the letters from Shaul to the congregations of (almost exclusively) Gentile Believers he formed, he gave them a lot of leeway in how strictly they followed the Torah because they needed that. He was against requiring Gentiles to make a complete and immediate conversion to Judaism because he knew that paradigm shift in lifestyle would be too difficult and he would lose a lot of them. That is the same conclusion the Elders in Jerusalem came to, which you can read about in Acts 15. They gave only 4 immediate requirements, and that was never meant to be the only thing Gentiles had to do, just all they had to do for now. It was assumed (and you can see that plainly in Acts 15:21) they would eventually learn all the commandments in the Torah. This discussion, however, is for another time.

If you wanted to build a house, you wouldn’t start with the roof or the second floor, would you? In fact, you wouldn’t even start with the main floor until you had laid the foundation. The Torah is the foundation for the Tanakh, which is what many consider to be the “Jewish Bible”.  The books that come after Deuteronomy are either of historical nature (such as Joshua, Kings 1 and 2, Chronicles 1 and 2, Ruth, Esther, etc.) or they are prophetic books. But they all have one thing in common, and that is that they show us how well, or more often how poorly, the Chosen people lived within the covenant they had made with God. They also show how God always kept his side of the covenant, even when we kept breaking our side of it. And how willing God was, and still is, to forgive us when we repent.

The New Covenant writings start with the Gospels, which are the narrative of all the messianic prophecies we read throughout the Tanakh coming to fruition in Messiah Yeshua. His teachings, which we read in the Gospels, are all from the Torah, but what was different was not what he taught about the commandments, but what he taught about how we are to follow the commandments.

The Pharisees were teaching performance-based salvation, i.e. what we call in Judaism the P’shat, the plain language of the Torah. For example, when they taught do not murder, they meant to not kill someone on purpose, and that was all. Yeshua taught the Remes, the deeper, spiritual meaning of the law, so he said we know not to murder, but if we hate in our heart, that is murder.

If you aren’t familiar with the terms P’shat or Remes, look up the Jewish form of biblical exegesis called PaRDeS.

In order to understand what Yeshua taught, we need to know what the Pharisees taught so we can see the difference. Only reading the New Covenant is like reading the second book of a two-book story, without ever having read the first book. You might get some of the story-line, and may understand a lot of what is happening, but without knowing the background you will never really understand the characters or the way things got to where you “came in” to the narrative.

This is why it is important for anyone and everyone who professes to want to follow Yeshua to know what he knew- the Torah. After all, didn’t John say the Word of God became flesh and walked among us? He was talking about Yeshua, and the only Word of God (as we learned earlier) that existed then was the Torah, so Yeshua is the living Torah. That is why he could never preach anything against the Torah, because if he did then he would be a house divided against itself, and we all know what he said about that.

If you are a Believer and have not read the Torah, then you are cheating yourself out of knowing your Messiah. You cannot understand the depth of what Yeshua taught or understand anything in the letters Paul wrote if you do not know the Torah and, in fact, you really need to know the entire Tanakh. That was what they taught from, and that is where we learn about God, the Messiah and God’s plan for mankind.

It comes down to this: if you don’t know the Torah, you can’t really know Yeshua.

Thank you for being here; please subscribe and share these messages with others. I always welcome your comments, and next Friday we will be back on schedule with the Parashah readings.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!

Half Full or Half Empty?

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Are you familiar with that psychology question to test whether someone is an Optimist or a Pessimist? You know, it’s the one where you tell someone a glass has water at the halfway mark and would they say it is half empty or half full?

When I am asked that question, my answer is: “It depends on what you are doing with the glass.”

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

You see, if I am filling the glass in order to drink the water, then I haven’t completed what I started to do so, by design, the glass is half full. If, on the other hand, the glass had been full and I was drinking it all up, I haven’t finished drinking it all so the glass is half empty.

My answer isn’t based on the temporary condition of the glass but on the intention of what the glass should become. If I am filling it, my intention for the glass is to be filled, and if drinking it, the glass is to become empty.

This same outlook holds true for our spiritual nature.

Instead of water in a glass, if we are talking about me and God’s spirit, I intend to become more filled with the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit. Consequently, in order to be more filled with the Spirit, I must be emptied, that is, emptied of my worldly desires so that there is room for the Spirit. The more of myself I empty, the more of God’s spirit I can be filled with.

However, for those who are not intending to be filled with the spirit, they are being filled with themselves and the things of this world, and what they are being emptied of is hope, trust, and being able to look forward to an eternity of joy.

As Believers who trust in God to keep his promises, we must always be in the process of becoming filled, meaning holier, and looking forward to the future. I don’t think someone who is pessimistic is truly faithful. If I am faithful can I be cynical? Yes. Can I be realistic? Hopefully. Can I be pessimistic?  NEVER!

We have the Almighty God, the creator of the universe to watch over us, and we have his son, the Messiah, to intercede for us, and we have the Holy Spirit to guide us. How can anyone not be secure about their future, no matter what is happening, with all that help?

Faith creates optimism: you can’t be faithful and not look forward to the future. For those who believe they are faithful but still view things pessimistically, this may be a hard word for you, and if it is then I say, GOOD! C’mon! Get with the program, trust in God and stop trusting in anything or anyone else.

When you trust in yourself or other humans you can’t be anything but pessimistic because humans are sinful and selfish. In my experience, people who do not believe in God are almost exclusively pessimists. And no wonder; if there is no supernatural entity that loves you, cares for you and is planning only the best for you, how can you be hopeful?

Despite my cynical nature, I am in fact an optimist. It’s in my genes: my blood type is B-Positive.

Seriously, I am optimistic because I trust in God and therefore can look forward to the future, even the bad things I am sure will have to happen. After all, we may not be spiritually part of the world, but we are physically in it, and there is no way you can walk through a cow field and not end up stepping in something, no matter how careful you are.

I am a glass that is always in the process of being filled and I am working hard to become fuller every day.

What condition is your glass in?

Thank you for being here and please subscribe and share this message with others to help this teaching ministry grow. I always welcome your comments, and until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Why Must the Righteous Also Die?

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I have often wondered why the innocent have to suffer for the guilty.

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For instance, in the Northern Kingdom of Shomron, God told Elijah that despite Elijah thinking he was the only righteous man left, there were still 7,000 who hadn’t bowed the knee to Ba’al (1 Kings 19:18.) Yet, all the people in the Northern Kingdom were attacked, many slaughtered, and the rest dispersed throughout the known world.

We also read how later, in the Southern Kingdom of Judea, the same thing eventually happened to them, except they weren’t dispersed but taken into slavery, while some of the people remained in the land. And Isaiah prophecized that the young men who were a prince or of nobility were taken into slavery, made into eunuchs and forced to serve the king of Babylon (2 Kings 20:16-18), one of them (most likely) being the prophet Daniel.

I know that we can’t always understand why God does what he does, and he even told us (through Moses) that the secret things belong to him.

In Judaism we believe that the laws God gave fall into one of three categories:

Mitzvot– laws that are self-explanatory;

Mishpatim– laws that are logical and expected to exist in any society; and

Chukkim– laws that seem arbitrary and are without explanation, and no one knows why they exist.

So, I figure the reason the righteous must die is like a Chukkim law, which has a reason but God only knows why they exist. And just because we can’t understand the “why” for them, we still have to accept that God knows what he is doing and we don’t always have the need to know.

I have come to the conclusion that maybe the righteous have to die with the unrighteous because when God judges, we all will be judged, together. If that is correct, then it makes sense that everyone dies when God is ready to judge.
Yeshua gave a drash regarding the tares and the wheat (Matthew 13:24) and it ends with both the wheat (righteous) and the tares (unrighteous) being harvested together, then separated. If this is God’s plan, then the righteous have to die with the unrighteous.

I think the bottom line is that the answer to why the righteous have to die with the unrighteous is not really important because of the answer to the question: “Why are we here?” My answer to that is we are here for as long as we are here for one purpose only, which is to decide where we will spend eternity. What we do in this life determines where we spend eternity, so this current existence, which is mortal and limited, should be less important to us than our eternal existence.

As such, when we die isn’t that important, or even if we die, or who we die with so long as when it happens we are set to go to the right place.

Here is what the angel told Daniel:

Daniel 12:13: But as for you, go your way to the end; then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age.”

There are a number of places in the Bible where we read about the dying of the righteous, and I believe that this excerpt from the Psalms says it all:

Psalm 49:15:

But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, For He will receive me. 

That is what it really comes down to, doesn’t it? It doesn’t matter when we die, so long as we are in a state of righteousness when we die we will eventually be in God’s presence for all eternity.

And how do we become righteous? By accepting Yeshua as our Messiah so that we can, by reason of his sacrifice, find atonement for our sins and to be repentant, do T’shuvah (turn from sin) and live our lives trying to be as obedient to the instructions God gave us as we can be.

As for me, I live my life always repenting and seeking forgiveness for when I sin, asking for strength to be less sinful, and trying my darndest to live my life as a living testament to God.

So don’t be sad when the good die and the evil survive, because the righteous will be taken into the bosom of Adonai and the unrepentant evil, although they may be having a really good time now, will have only eternal suffering and torment when their life comes to an end.
Thank you for being here and please subscribe and share these messages with others. I always welcome your comments.
Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Should Anyone Be Rewarded for Doing What They Are Supposed To Do?

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We have all heard of the Millennials, and how they feel entitled to everything. But where did they get that from?
Dr. Spock? Mr. Rogers? Their parents?  I mean, really, who thinks that you should be proud for receiving a participation trophy? Oy!

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When I was working I saw the worst form of entitlement, which they called a meritorious pay system.

I believe that system was the brainchild of lazy managers who didn’t want to spend time writing an evaluation and was accepted by lazy HR departments (they used to be OK when they were called Personnel) who didn’t want to review the documents. So many managers can’t write a good evaluation because they were never trained on how to do it correctly, and today it isn’t even their job since the employee is the one writing down what their objectives are and how well they accomplished them.

And here’s the kicker: if you simply meet your objectives, you get a raise!

It sounds good, except for the fact that a meritorious system means you should do more than just what you are supposed to do in order to earn a raise; doing the job you are supposed to do isn’t earning anything. Meeting your objectives is not meritorious, it is expected! No one should receive a meritorious raise for simply doing what they are supposed to do.

Of course, this being a ministry, let’s see what the Bible says about doing what you are supposed to do. In Luke 17:7-10 (CJB) Yeshua told his talmudim (Hebrew for “students”):

If one of you has a slave tending the sheep or plowing, when he comes back from the field, will you say to him, ‘Come along now, sit down and eat’?  No, you’ll say, ‘Get my supper ready, dress for work, and serve me until I have finished eating and drinking; after that, you may eat and drink.’  Does he thank the slave because he did what he was told to do? No!  It’s the same with you — when you have done everything you were told to do, you should be saying, ‘We’re just ordinary slaves, we have only done our duty.’

Are you wondering where I am going with this?  Good question.

I don’t care what happens at your job, but I am concerned about what happens between you and God. People are being taught that simply doing something the way it is supposed to be done is deserving of praise, but that is not how it is with God. God wants us to do more than just what we are supposed to do.

Yes, if you accept Yeshua as your Messiah and observe the Ten Commandments, you can be saved, but that is no more than what you are expected to do.

Remember the parable about the Talents (Matthew 25:14)? The men who gave back more than what they received were praised but the one who gave back only what he was given was punished. Why? I believe he was punished for having wasted his chance to profit from what he had been given.

I believe God expects us to do more than just accept Yeshua as our Messiah and keep the Big Ten. I believe he wants us to grow in spirit and to produce fruit, and the only way to do that is to do more. We have to be willing to be ostracized and ridiculed for the way we act, the way we worship, and the things we say; in other words, we have to publically declare our belief in God and show it in how we live our lives.

If we silently worship God, we don’t provide any real fruit. If we praise God and make him part of our daily speech, keeping his name always on our lips, we will distribute seeds that may grow into fruit trees. I do something very simple, which I believe to be effective in publically praising God for others to see: when leaving friends and they say “See you next time.” I reply, “God willing.”

That’s all. It’s a simple but effective way to remind them that I know God is in charge.

Many are taught that so long as they are a “good person” they go to heaven. You may go to heaven, but if you do, don’t expect any applause or a limo to take you to a large mansion when you get there.

Have you ever heard the song about the man who goes to heaven and is taken to a small, run-down hut that is barely big enough to house him? When he asks why it is so shoddy he’s told because that’s all the wood he sent.

Yeshua said we should store up our treasure for heaven (Matthew 6:19), which I take as meaning what we do on earth is what we get in heaven.

And unlike the corporate world, God will not give you a raise for doing only what you are supposed to do.

So make a choice: go through life without doing more than just going through life, or do more for the Kingdom of God and be rewarded in heaven, as well as blessed on earth.

You may ask, “What should I do? How do I make the talents given to me worth more?” The answer is one that only you can decide, because only you know what talents (pun intended) God has given you. Whatever you decide, it should be something that will further God’s kingdom.

You are not entitled to anything but you have unlimited access to opportunities, which can lead to blessings when you do what you can for God’s glory and praise.

I don’t know about you, but when I come before the Lord, I want to hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Thank you for being here and please subscribe. I welcome your comments and if you don’t mind, I would like to see people comment here and tell others what they do to help serve God’s kingdom.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!