Tag: wwjd

Yeshua Certainly Knew the Book of Proverbs

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It is truly a shame that too many Christians are being taught mainly from the New Covenant writings while ignoring most everything in the Tanakh. The reason it is a shame is that Yeshua didn’t teach anything from the Epistles, and not just because they hadn’t been written, but because he tells us, over and over throughout all four gospels, that he does and says only what his Father in heaven has told him to do and say. And what God has said is only in the Tanakh.

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I have been reading Proverbs lately, and as I go through them I see so many that I immediately relate to some of the teachings that Yeshua gave. Here are just a few examples:

Proverbs 11:2- First comes pride, then disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.

Doesn’t Yeshua tell us that the meek will inherit the earth? (Matthew 5:5)

 Proverbs 11:4– On the day of wrath, wealth doesn’t help; but righteousness rescues from death.

Doesn’t Yeshua tell us that we are to seek first the kingdom of God? (Matthew 6:33)

Proverbs 24:3– By wisdom a house is built, by understanding it is made secure.

Didn’t Yeshua tell us that rejecting his wisdom is like a house built on sand? (Matthew 7:26)

Proverbs 25: 6,7– Don’t put yourself forward in the king’s presence; don’t take a place among the great. For it is better to be told “Come up here,” than be degraded in the presence of a nobleman.

Didn’t Yeshua say that when you sit at a table, take the least important place? (Luke 14:10)

Proverbs 25:21– If someone who hates you is hungry, give him food to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.

Didn’t Yeshua tell us to love our enemies? (Matthew 5:44)

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that what Yeshua taught is from the Tanakh, for that was the only word of God that existed then. The New Covenant hadn’t been written. So if Yeshua taught from the Tanakh, my question is why don’t the Christian churches teach from it, also? Why do they use, almost exclusively, the Gospels and the Epistles? In the Gospels, Yeshua teaches what the Tanakh says, and the Epistles were written by a man to the Gentiles in congregations he started and were not written to teach them anything new, but to remind them of what he already told them. Things that he already taught them that they were having trouble remembering and living by.

You’ve seen those bracelets that have “WWJD” written on them, right? I believe the people who wear them really want to do as Jesus did; the problem is that the Christian church teaches Constantinian doctrine and not what is in the Torah, which is what Jesus followed, so to do what Jesus did means to NOT do what (most of) Christianity teaches.

Jesus did not celebrate the Christian holidays, he celebrated the Holy Days that God commanded we celebrate in Leviticus 23.

Jesus did not eat many of the foods that Christians eat, he ate only what God said we should eat in Leviticus 11.

Jesus did not rest on Sunday, he rested from Friday night to Saturday night.

The point of today’s message is that if you really want to live “as Jesus lived”, you need to worship as he worshiped, eat as he ate, and celebrate as he celebrated.

Doesn’t that make sense?

It is truly a shame that this very sensible argument is lost on so many people; people who probably really want to please God and do as Jesus did, but refuse to because they would rather accept the easy way of life that is Constantinian Christianity.

What a terribly disappointing surprise they will have when they come before the Throne of Judgment.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe and share these messages with others. And, as always, I welcome your comments.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

 

 

 

PARASHAH TZAV (COMAND), LEVITICUS 6 – 9

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We continue with the instructions regarding the sacrifices (burnt, sin, guilt, peace or thanksgiving, vow, and freewill); we are told the specific steps for the sacrifices and offerings, regarding how each is to be performed and the disposition of the parts of the animals that are to be sacrificed. The parashah ends with the sanctification of Aaron and his sons, inducting them officially into the Priesthood.

Leviticus 7:11-21 specifically deals with the Peace and Thanksgiving offerings. The Chumash states that the Rabbis regard thank offerings as the supreme type of sacrifice, and that in the Messianic Era this will be the only sacrifice that continues, since Messiah will have done away with all sin. Rabbinical thought is that ingratitude is a sin, and reduces a man to something below the level of a dumb animal.

It is interesting to me that in Lev. 7:16-18 God says the flesh of the peace offering must be eaten on the day of the sacrifice- none shall be left over to the next day. However, if this is a vow or freewill offering, then the meat can be eaten on the second day, but after that any left over must be burned. None of the meat from the vow or freewill offering can be eaten on the third day, because if it is then the offering will be refused.

The Talmud says the difference between a vow and a freewill offering is that when a person says they are offering a sacrifice without specifying the animal it is a “vow”, but when you specifically state, “This animal is the one I will sacrifice”, that is a freewill offering.

I find it important to note that if we eat the meat of the vow or freewill offering on the third day, the offering will be rejected and the person doing so will be cut off from the people.

I have written often, and will continue to do so, that salvation is something we can lose. Not that anyone can take it away, but we can reject it.  God is saying, right here in the Torah, that if we sacrifice appropriately it will be received, but if we violate the rules then the sacrifice that was received will be rejected. Not because God is rejecting it for no reason, or because He is reneging on His acceptance, but because we, on our part, have violated the rule and, thereby, invalidated our own sacrifice.

So, all the way back to the first giving of the Law, which Yeshua (Jesus) said He did not change at all (Matthew 5:17), we find that a sacrifice presented to, and accepted by, the Lord can be invalidated by the one offering it even after it has been accepted.

The sacrifice Yeshua made on the day after Passover was for the sin of the world, although the Passover sacrifice that the Torah calls for is not a sin or guilt sacrifice- it fits the rules for the peace offering. The offering that is for the sins of the nation is on Yom Kippur, so Yeshua accomplished the sin offering we need for later (when the final battle is over and we all come to judgment), and the peace offering we need when we come before God with thanks for His mercies (Grace.) His sacrifice was both the Yom Kippur sacrifice (to do away with all sin) and the peace offering (thanksgiving for the Grace God gives), which will be the only sacrifice left when Messiah rules the world. He accomplished two things at once- one for now and the other for later.

As we enter into the (Torah appointed) Jewish New Year and enjoy our Seder this coming Monday evening, let’s not forget what it represents: a peace offering to the Lord. The lamb’s blood was placed on the lentil not to forgive our sins, but to bring us into God’s protective custody. That blood represented our membership in the community of the Holy One of Israel, which is freedom and protection from death. If anyone of the Children of Israel living in Egypt at that time had been foolish enough to save the Passover Seder meat and bring it out with them, I wonder what would have happened to them. Would they have died the moment they ate the (now) abominable thing? Would they have been found out, and rejected from the tribes, left to go back to Egypt or wander forever in the desert, alone?

I don’t know- it is an interesting thought, and my Jewish blood is just boiling to have a heated Midrash with someone about this. Oh well, some other time.

If you have no plans to celebrate this festival, you are really missing out on a chance to experience what the bracelet many people wear says (WWJD) because He most assuredly would not miss having a Seder. And, if you really want to get closer to the way Jesus lived, then starting on Passover evening go the next 7 days without any leavened products at all- no bread, no cake, not even one cookie; skip the Ring Dings and wave “Goodbye” to the Hostess Twinkies (Oy!- what suffering I go through when I can’t eat a Twinkie!) See if you can do it. I confess this is a very hard festival for me to follow correctly, not because I just cannot go without bread (I was only kidding about the Twinkies) but because I forget! I will go to dinner with Donna and forget that I can’t eat pizza on our normal pizza night. I grab a cookie and forget I can’t eat it. I am always “biblically” Kosher, so it is easy to remember because I do it all the time, but to remember to reject one of my favorite groups of foods is hard to do. The lesson here, if nothing else, is that we need to be thinking about obedience every second of every day, and it should be foremost on our minds (…”let them be frontlets before thine eyes…”), always. Donna really helps to keep me in line- thank God for her (in so many ways!)

How about you? Would you observe the Festival of Unleavened Bread? I challenge you to obey this commandment of the Lord because I really believe if you do, at the end of the week you will find yourself receiving a blessing. God promises us blessings for obedience (Deuteronomy 28), so why not get all the blessings you can? I can almost guarantee that not only will you feel closer to Yeshua, God and the Jewish people, but you will feel better about yourself, too.

As people are always saying, “Try it- maybe you’ll like it!”

hebraic roots and messianic judaism: two sides of the same coin?

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I am a Jewish man. I was born a Jew, from Jewish parents of Russian descent. I was raised in a Reform Jewish environment, and since neither of my parents ever really embraced being Jewish, my B’rit Milah (circumcision) and Bar Mitzvah were as much a “This is what we do” thing as it was a spiritual acknowledgement of my covenant with God. When I grew older I forgot about religious observance, and always felt distant from God yet desiring to be closer. What kept me away was my desire to sin, which constantly overcame my desire to know the Lord for some 40-odd years. It was a series of traumatic events that led to my desire to know God, and a determination to finally either know Him or reject the whole thing, once and for all. Thankfully, I did get to know God, and then I also needed to know the truth about this guy Jesus, who most of my life I was told was Jewish but started His own religion and was someone we Jews killed.

Now I know who Jesus really is: a Jewish man named Yeshua ben Yosef, who is in truth the Messiah God promised would come, who was born Jewish, lived a Jewish life and died Jewish. He was still Jewish when he was resurrected. During His life He observed the Torah and never-ever started a new religion (for the record, modern day Christianity is from Constantine, not Yeshua.) So, now that I am still Jewish (I am not a Christian, a Christian-Jew, a Hebrew-Christian or anything other than a Jew) but have accepted Yeshua as my Messiah and recognize that He is the son of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that means I am no longer just a Jewish man, but I am a Messianic Jewish man.

Messianic Judaism is not Jews for Jesus. Jews for Jesus is an organization, a non-profit company with a “religious” mandate to bring the truth of the Messiah to Jewish people. One of the things that I wish they would do is stop sending Jews willing to know Yeshua to Christian churches. Not that Christian churches are a bad place, but most Christian churches are not Hebraic Roots churches (Oy! Another label!) and many, many Christian churches have a “don’t need Torah” attitude, and (worse than that) some are Replacement Theologists.

The Hebraic Roots Movement is similar to Messianic Judaism in that Messianic Judaism is for Jews (and Christians, too- most Messianic congregations I have known actually have more Gentiles than Jews) who accept Jesus (Yeshua is the preferred name) as the Messiah, but still maintain the Jewish lifestyle and worship rooted in observance and obedience to the Torah. Hebraic roots congregations are Christians (and some Messianic Jews, like me) who desire to get to know and worship the Lord as Yeshua did, worshiping as they did in the First Century.

Essentially, if a person is someone who has accepted that Yeshua/Jesus is the Messiah, and worships as the followers of Yeshua did in the First Century when He walked the earth (and for about two centuries after that), then they are either Messianic Jews (if they are Jewish by birth) or Hebraic Roots Christians (if they are Gentile by birth.)

Same coin, different sides.

By the way- this is obviously a very simplistic explanation. I am hoping that it is effective in getting across the idea that anyone who worships the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who accepts that Yeshua was born a man by Divine conception, who believes He was and still is the Messiah God promised in the Old Covenant writings, is thereby one in the body of Messiah. And, whether or not they were born Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, whatever- when they accept Yeshua as their Messiah, they also accept His lifestyle. Which was, as we would label it today, Judaism. In fact, more similar to Orthodox Judaism than any other sect within Judaism.

I worship at a Hebraic Roots church (zionistrevivalcenter.org) and am one of only maybe 3 or 4 Jewish-born members. We are very small, no more than 15-20 or so “regulars” but we will, with God’s blessings, grow. I believe there is a growing desire in the Christian world to get closer to Jesus, since most of what He really is and what He really taught has been thrown out and replaced with Christian rhetoric, ritual and Anti-Semitic diatribe (such as the Replacement Theology claim that God has rejected the Jews for rejecting Yeshua, and Christians are now the “Chosen people.” Really? I don’t think so- God is pretty clear about His devotion and love for the Jewish people throughout the Bible.)

The aim of this blog-ministry of mine is to help people understand that God doesn’t have any religion, just rules. His rules were given to us in the Torah and the Torah is meant for everyone. It is not, and was never meant to be, exclusive to Jews. It was given to the Jews to bring to the world.

Whatever belief system you have now, does it respect the Torah? Do you believe (or have you been told to believe) that the Torah is valid for everyone? Do you believe that God still expects you to obey the laws of Kashrut outlined in Leviticus 11? Do you honor God by celebrating the festivals God said we are to celebrate and in the manner He described in Leviticus 23?

Or- do you believe (or have been told) that the Torah is only for Jews? Were you taught that Jews receive their salvation from Torah but Christians are saved by the Blood of Christ? Do you believe that the only things in the Old Covenant that are valid for you are the “moral laws” that God gave the Jews? If so, you have a very rude awakening coming to you.

Here’s the truth- the biblical truth that you can verify in the bible- Yeshua lived and worshiped as a Jew. The Disciples lived and worshiped as Jews. Shaul (Paul) never “converted” to Christianity- it didn’t even exist then! The followers of Yeshua were Jews who met in the synagogue or, if under social or political attack, met in their homes but NEVER stopped worshiping as Jews. There was no “church” in the first century- the “church” (as we know it today) was formed by Constantine and the Council of Nicene a couple of centuries after Yeshua walked the earth. The truth, my friends, is that if you believe Jesus is the Son of God and you claim to worship Him, than you should be worshiping God, not Jesus, and worshiping God as Jesus did.

I see bracelets with “WWJD” on them, and hear all the time that Christians should do as Jesus did and walk as Jesus walked, yet the Christian world teaches (for the most part) to do nothing like what Jesus did, and to walk a path Jesus would never have even thought of walking! Consider this: the world is about to celebrate the birth of the Messiah and enjoy a holiday feast in His honor with food that He would have considered an abomination to see on His dinner table! I am talking about the traditional Christmas Ham, of course. When you think about it, eating ham on a day designed to celebrate Jesus’s birth is, in fact, disrespectful to God and to Jesus.

The end is always coming closer. That is just simple math- our timeline moves in one direction, and the end is at, well…the end, so every day, every hour, every breath brings us all closer to the final judgement. And the real kicker is that we don’t know when the end is! Bummer! That means that the best possible time to get yourself right in accordance with God (through Yeshua) is now. Right now. And that means if you haven’t accepted your own sinfulness, now’s the time to get with the program. We all hear about asking for forgiveness, but the truth is until you accept your own sinfulness and inability to overcome it, there’s no desire to ask anyone for forgiveness. So, first and foremost, we have to accept and “own” our sinful nature as being against God and we have to want to change it, to do T’Shuvah. Then, and only then, will our request for forgiveness through Yeshua’s sacrificial death on our behalf, be honest.

Next, accept that the truth that God’s will is for us to live as He said we should, which is defined and outlined in the Torah. Yeshua taught nothing but what is in the Torah- He respected it, He observed it perfectly, and he taught others to do so. He never, never, never taught anything against or outside the Torah. What really happened is God gave the Torah to Moses, the people added too many rules and regulations on their own and when Yeshua came to earth to teach the truth, He upset the “religious” authority by telling people that it is God’s authority that counts. We were only looking at the words of the Torah, and Yeshua taught us the spirit of the Torah. And He was all about the Torah and all about God.

If you want to  worship God in a way that will please God, then doesn’t it just make sense to worship God as He said to worship Him? To live your life in the manner He said to live it?

Duh!

 

 

 

WWJD? Probably Not What You Are Doing.

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Ooh- what a nasty title, Steve! How dare you say I am not doing what Jesus did! You don’t even know me.

That’s right- I don’t know how you worship, but (as the title says) from my experience watching and hearing about “Christian” service, you are probably not doing what Jesus (Yeshua) did when He worshiped God.

That’s the emphasis here- is your worship life the same as Yeshua’s?

*  Do you read the Torah parashah every Saturday?

*  Do you pray morning, afternoon and evening?

*  Do you pray to Saints?

*  Do you kneel to a wooden cross?

*  Do you celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday?

And here’s the BIG question: Do you worship God or do you worship Yeshua?

If you are saying “No” to the first two, and “Yes” to the others, and if you worship Jesus (what I am mean by this is are you praying to God in Yeshua’s name, or are you praying directly to Yeshua for the answers you want?), then you are NOT doing what Jesus did, at least with regards to worship.

Yeshua never prayed to Himself, and never, ever said we should pray to Him. What He said (look it up if you don’t believe me) was to pray IN HIS NAME, not pray to Him. That means we worship God, the Father, and pray to God, the Father, and no one else. We do not ask saints to intercede- why would you even want to? They are not God’s son, they are not the Messiah, it is not their job to intercede. They are, if anything, soldiers for God. They are the martyrs under the altar, they are waiting for the Acharit HaYamim (End Days), they are praying to God for their own retribution and for justice. They are not intercessors, and they are not who you should pray to if you want to do as Jesus did.

Did you enjoy your Christmas ham? Ever think that what you ate and shared with others as a celebration of the birth of the Messiah would be an abomination to Him?  He would never even have it in His house, let alone on His table. How would you feel if someone wanted to honor you and did so by inviting your enemies to have a good time and to eat and drink foods that you found disgusting? Would you feel honored?

You want to do as Jesus did? Than stop listening to people telling you what to do, and read the Bible. Read the whole Bible, starting at Genesis. That’s where you will learn how Yeshua did things.

You want to be able to answer the question: “Do you do as Jesus did?” with a resounding “YES!!”, then start with your worship life. If you worship correctly, you will know how to live correctly. That means to read the Bible, not just hear what others tell you it says. You also have to ask the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) to guide your understanding.

You need to live as Yeshua lived. Try, even if it is just an experiment, or as a religious fast, if you will, to eat according to what you are told to eat in Leviticus 11. Just that one thing.

I am not trying to be a “Judaizer”, or proselytize you into becoming Messianic. I only want to help you see that there is a major, identifiable, and gigantic difference between the way Christians live and worship (traditionally) and how Yeshua lived and worshiped.

I am Messianic, and my worship is made up of an opening prayer, followed by music, singing and dancing (most of which was likely part of Yeshua’s worship, but I can’t accept that He would be singing for an hour before getting into the real meat- the Torah), then we read the portion of the Torah that is specified and the sermon/drash/messages on that parashah. Here is where we separate from what Yeshua would have done, since in His time there was no New Covenant to enhance and define the Torah reading. The Haftorah we read is just as often from the New Covenant as it is the traditional one for the Torah parashah. Also, we may not read the Parashah and delve into a different topic. That is the major difference, but I feel confident in saying that what we are discussing would be acceptable by Yeshua. After all, the Gospels (Besorah, or Good News) are the life of Yeshua and His teachings, and the rest are spirit-led revelations and witness to the teachings of Yeshua.

That is where I am different, where I do not do what Jesus did in His worship life. Frankly, I love studying and paying attention to the teachings of Yeshua as part of my worship life. I pray to God, as Yeshua did; I ask for things from God, and ask them referencing the name of Yeshua and (respectfully) reminding God that Yeshua, His son, said that He would honor what we asked for if we did so in Yeshua’s name; I read the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, and I celebrate the Sabbath the way Yeshua did- Friday night to Saturday night. I have a diet in accordance with Leviticus 11, I celebrate the festivals of the Lord as defined and commanded of us in Leviticus 23. And I call myself a Jewish man- I am NOT a Christian-Jew, Hebrew-Christian, or any other non-defined, wavering sort of hybrid religion. What I really am is a Believer- I believe in God, I believe Yeshua is the Messiah, and I believe that I should worship and live as Yeshua did, to the best of my abilities, faithfully trying to obey God’s commandments. All His commandments, because they are all valid and current.

There is nothing “new” in the New Covenant, and God has no religion. Only rules and laws and commandments.

I do not live a sinless life, and in that way I most certainly do not do as Yeshua did. But, thanks to Yeshua, and the grace of God that allows me to have the indwelling Ruach, I am getting better.

WWJD? If you want to do as Jesus did, if you want to know how He lived, ate, and worshiped, then DAYD- Do As Yeshua Did. You don’t have to convert to Judaism; actually, you would need to be Messianic because traditional, or as I like to call it, “mainstream” Judaism doesn’t do exactly what Yeshua did,either. But just try it for awhile.

Really? Will it kill you to give up pork and shellfish for a week? That’s all it really comes down to to maintain the proper Kosher laws, according to the Bible. Or read the Torah portion on Saturday mornings as well as whatever normal biblical reading you do. The traditional Jewish prayers during the day are the morning prayer (shacharit), afternoon prayer (minchah) and evening prayer (arvith or maariv.) You don’t need to recite them verbatim, or do them exactly at sunrise, noon and sunset. You don’t need to spend from $250 up to maybe $400 for a set of Tefillin. Just try to pray these three times during the day, maybe 5 or 10 minutes each time, for a week.  You do need to pray only to God, the Father. Ask in Yeshua’s name, but pray to God, just as Yeshua did. Trust me, He is there, at the right hand of God, interceding for you. Just go to the source of everything and Yeshua will be involved. 

If you are serious about wanting to know Yeshua, about wanting to follow in His footsteps, and about wanting to do as He did, take this challenge. It’s not too hard, and it only has to be for a week- Shabbat to Shabbat (uh, that would be Friday night to Friday night) and see how you feel. Honestly, if it doesn’t make you feel any closer to Yeshua than you had been, I suggest you might want to consider how close you were before you tried. I say that because I really believe that anyone who does this will feel closer to God, closer to Yeshua, and more “complete” as a Believer than they felt before. It doesn’t have to be forever, it doesn’t have to change your life (although it might), it just has to be for a week.

Do it as a Nazarite vow; do it as a sign of devotion, do it as a special fast; do it as a spiritual adventure.

Please…just do it. Nu? Try it;  maybe you’ll like it!