The High Holy Days are over for this Gregorian calendar year and will start again with the real Jewish New Year on April 8, 2020, when Pesach (Passover) begins.
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We have turned the Torah back to the very beginning, and this parashah starts with the creation of the universe, takes us through Adam and Eve, their sin, the murder of Abel, and the lineage of people up to just before the Flood.
There is, of course, the never-ending message of new beginnings, resurrection, and original sin. We could talk about the way the Enemy of God uses our own desires to cause us to sin, and how sin so overtakes us that it is like a small bit of hametz (leavening) which works its way through an entire batch of dough.
But that isn’t what I want to talk about.
I want to talk about the future, about when there comes a day we will not have to turn back the Torah. In fact, there is coming a day (maybe sooner than we all know?) when we will not even read the Torah anymore because it will be written on our hearts.
The completion of the work of Messiah Yeshua is when we, through faith in him, will be resurrected into our spiritual bodies, and those bodies (although we don’t know what they will be like) will be pumping the word of God throughout us.
This is why in Leviticus we are told that the life of a creature is in the blood. God gave us all the Torah so that we know how to worship him and how to treat each other. When we obey God we are considered righteous in his eyes- that is clear in the example Abraham set. He didn’t ask why or do some of what God wanted, making excuses for not doing the rest. No, Abraham simply did as God said: no questions, no delay, and no excuses. And because that is what he did, his faithful obedience was credited as righteousness.
When we obey God, doing what he says we should, we will also be considered righteous. And remember that Abraham did not live a sinless life, but he lived a faithful and obedient one.
When we sin, we have the opportunity to have that sin forgiven because Yeshua shed his innocent blood to act as the “life” for us. Sin is death, and faithful obedience is life, but since no one can be perfectly obedient, no matter how faithful they are, we have Yeshua as our “stand-in” so that through his righteousness, we can be seen as righteous, also.
As joyful as it is to turn the Torah back to the very beginning so that we can read it all over again, the joy of this event will be multiplied a hundred-fold when the Torah is not turned back, or even read because it will be our very lifeblood!
Now that is something to look forward to!
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Until next time, L’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!
