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This is
Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath of Repentance, the
Sabbath between Yom Truah and Yom Kippur. It is
the Sabbath during the ten Days of Awe when we
focus on turning away from everything that is
wrong, and turning to God and living in a way
that is right. I’d like to call our attention
to the words of great Rabbi Paul, who writing
to the Christians and Messianic Jews in Rome,
encouraged them to “walk in newness of life”
- to live a whole new life made possible by God
the Father and Messiah the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The old life was lived independently from God.
We didn’t have real faith in Him. We really
didn’t know Him and didn’t care to
get to know Him better. We did not order our life
to please Him, or live the way He wanted us to.
We didn’t lean on Him for strength, look
to Him for guidance, rely on Him to provide, derive
from Him our sense of meaning. The old life was
characterized by pride - the sinful pride of life.
We were independent of our Creator. But newness
of life is based on humility, on total dependence
on God. Now we realize that our very existence,
every breath we breathe, every beat of our heart,
every moment of life, is utterly dependent on
God’s will. Now He is our portion and our
cup. Now He is our all in all. Now we want to
please God most of all, and put Him first, not
second, or last or nowhere. We are trying to pray
to Him with out ceasing, giving thanks to Him
throughout the day and night for the good things
that happen, praising Him as much as we can for
who He is and what He has done. We are committed
to serving Him. Now we are seeking His divine
wisdom. We are not relying on our thoughts, but
His thoughts, knowing that His ways are higher
than our ways, and His thoughts are so much higher
and better than our thoughts. We are trusting
in the Lord with all our heart and not leaning
on our own understanding. In all our ways we are
acknowledging Him, first finding out what He wants,
and then putting it into action, and then He enables
us to travel down a straight path that will lead
through the very gates of Heaven! In the old life,
we boasted in ourselves and not in God. We depended
on ourselves, our efforts, our talents and gifts
and opportunities. We looked to things other than
God for affirmation and approval and meaning.
We looked to ourselves, or to other people for
a sense of success. Now we look to God, and not
man, because humanity is weak and frail and corrupt.
Now we seek to be poor in spirit, and humble in
heart, because the more we depend on Him, lean
on Him, trust in Him, look to Him and boast in
Him, the better off we are. Now, we realize that
when we are weak, we are strong, because the weaker
we know we are, the closer we are to God, and
the better off we really are. In the old life,
Yeshua was not very important. He lived, He didn’t
live, He said this, He taught that - so what?
Or, Yeshua was overshadowed by religious systems,
by saints and sacraments, and traditions. But
the new life means Yeshua is extremely important.
Those of us who are experiencing newness of life
try to think about Him all the time, the meaning
of His coming and His life. We think about the
way He lived, and consider what He taught. We
look at His various interactions with people,
and how they developed faith and moved closer
to Him, or didn’t develop faith, and moved
farther from Him. Now, we think much about how
Messiah died, and its implications for us - how
we therefore need to die daily - die to self,
to the world, to sin, and we think about His amazing
resurrection from the dead, and His ascension
back to the right hand of God in Heaven. We are
constantly looking to Yeshua, making Him our role-model,
following His example, listening for His voice,
praising Him for His great love for us, thankful
for His ongoing intercession for us. We want the
mind of Messiah, and try to think like Him, and
embrace His agenda, His values and His goals.
In the old life, we were engaged in no religion,
or dead religion that we inherited from our relatives,
or false philosophies and ideologies. But the
newness of life we now enjoy means that we have
true religion in which we are close to the Living
God. But now our faith is centered around the
Living God, not rituals and ceremonies, the outer
husks and outward trappings of religion which
are lifeless, and man-made religious traditions
and systems. We are not attempting to approach
God in the wrong ways - ways based on false premises,
ways based on errors that must be rejected, legalistic
ways, ways that don’t know the spirit of
the law, the spirit of true religion, ways that
must be rejected by the God of truth. People who
are still part of the old life may think that
they have a good relationship to God. They may
presume that they are right with God, accepted
by God, when they are not. They may pray to Him,
go to church, synagogue, mosque, shrine or temple,
but they don’t have a real connection to
God. They are not right with God. They are not
righteous in His sight. They are not right in
many of their behaviors. They are not right in
much of their thinking. Those who are walking
in newness of life are truly right with God. They
have been made right by the work of the Three-In-One
God. God the Son died and rose again to make us
right. God the Father declares us right. God the
Holy Spirit is at work within us, transforming
us and teaching us and empowering us to help us
know what is right, and then do what is right.
In the old way of life, the Spirit of God was
not living in us in the way that He can and wants,
giving us new spiritual life, making us spiritually
alive in our souls, making us conscious of God,
alive to God, connected to God, aware of salvation,
sensitive to sin, aware of the need for holiness,
so that we hunger and thirst for righteousness.
The new life means we have received the Holy Spirit,
who is transforming us from within, teaching us,
guiding us, leading us, revealing truth to us.
In the old way of life, God’s Word was not
very important to us. We didn’t read it.
If we did read it, we didn’t understand
its basic message - salvation by placing our personal
faith in the Messiah, salvation by grace alone,
salvation by faith alone, and not salvation as
a result of our own efforts or merit. Now, we
understand it. And, for us, it is more than a
book. With the help of the Holy Spirit, it becomes
alive within us, powerful and active and meaningful,
richly dwelling within us, inspiring us, guiding
us, teaching us. Most people in the old way of
life don’t take the Holy Scriptures very
seriously. If they do take it seriously, like
orthodox Jews, they disregard essential parts
of it, like the New Testament. Others, like the
Mormons, add to it. Most don’t know that
the Tenach and the New Testaments are complete,
and the inspired and accurate Word of God. Those
who are enjoying the new life know that. Now,
the Word of God is extremely important to us.
Now we understand that man does not live by bread
alone, but we are to live by everything that proceeds
out of the mouth of the Lord. All Scripture, every
word of the Bible, is divinely inspired, and is
true, and is powerful and meaningful and needs
study, contemplation, and implementation. We are
letting the Word of God dwell richly within us,
reading it, studying it, thinking about it, applying
it, teaching it to others. In the old life, human
being are mostly concerned about worldly things.
We sought happiness by things of the world - money,
power, status. Newness of life means we are minimally
concerned about the things of the world. Yes,
we need a source of income. We need to work. The
Word of God is clear that the Lord will not tolerate
freeloaders and bums. He who does not work isn’t
entitled to eat. We need food, clothing and shelter.
But walking in newness of life means that if we
have our basic needs met, we try to be content.
We are not constantly striving for more and more
money, and more and more things. We are primarily
concerned with the things of God, not material
things. We are not concerned about advancing in
this doomed world, or being recognized in a world
that is perishing, or approved by the people of
this corrupt world. We are concerned what God
thinks about us. We want His praise, not man’s.
We want to hear His “well done!” We
are willing to endure rejection from the world,
a world which is hostile to God, a planet full
of people who are in a state of rebellion against
God, a world that is directed and empowered by
the Adversary of God and his demonic allies. Those
who are part of the old life are spiritually dead
- dead in their trespasses and sins. Sin has killed
them. Sin has enslaved them. They are enslaved
by sin and death. Sin and death have a very real
power, and this power is like a black hole, able
to prevent people from escaping its pull, and
ultimately delivering them to the Second Death.
The new life means that we are set free from the
forces of sin and death! We are no longer enslaved,
because a greater power has set us free! That
greater power continues to work in us, liberating
us from the awesome power of sin. Before, our
sins easily entangled us. Most of us were insensitive
to sin. We didn’t know some of the things
we were doing were wrong. We didn’t understand
that our sins were grieving God, and damaging
our relationship with the One who is the Source
of all good things. We didn’t fully understand
that one day, we would have to appear before the
holy Creator and give an account for each one
of them. We didn’t know we would be punished
for them. We didn’t realize how much damage
they were doing to us, because when we sin, not
only do we often hurt others, but we always hurt
yourself. We diminish ourselves in some way. But
now that the Holy Spirit is living in us, and
we are aware of God, and the awfulness of sin,
we find that we do not want to carry out the desires
of the flesh. We are crucifying the flesh with
its passions and desires. Before we may have had
little self-control. But now, as we are filled
with the Spirit of God, we have much greater self-control.
We find it much easier to avoid the things that
tempt us Oh, there are still battles between the
corrupt desires of our old nature, and the pure
desires of our new nature, but as we are close
to God, our hands upheld in prayer, the battle
goes our way. In our old way of life, if we were
restrained from doing something we knew was wrong,
it was generally due to some outside force acting
on us - like the fear of getting caught and punished.
But as part of the new life, we have a new dislike
for sin that comes from within. We restrain ourselves
from doing wrong because we know it is wrong.
We have a new understanding of who we are, and
want to live in a way that lines up with that
new person. Knowing that God calls us His precious
children, we are trying to live up to that high
calling. We want to live up to God’s expectations
of us. The old life centered on us doing our own
thing, like sheep who have gone astray, and turned
to their own way. We did what we wanted, when
we wanted, how we wanted, where we wanted. We
engaged in the lusts of the flesh. When we wanted
to do things that weren’t right, we generally
did them. We also engaged in the lusts of the
mind, thinking bad thoughts and often implementing
them. But the new life is not about us doing our
thing, but about doing God’s thing! Now,
much of the “I” is gone. It is longer
I who live, but Messiah who lives in me. Oh, we
are still very much here! Our personalities is
still there. We still have our likes and dislikes,
our unique identities, our minds and thoughts,
but now our identities are centered in God and
Messiah. We live for God! To live is all about
Messiah, and what He wants for us. We know that
we are no longer our own. We have been created
by the One who created everything to fulfill His
will. We have been redeemed, bought and paid for
with a very high price. We realize that we are
servants of the Almighty. We serve at His pleasure.
We go where He sends, give as He directs. We are
committed to God’s Word, not our own. We
pray for God’s will to be done - and not
our own. We seek to follow God’s ways, and
not our ways. The old life was based on living
by sight - what we could see, touch, taste, feel
and smell. That was what was real and worth pursuing.
Many of us did not concern ourselves much with
the Day of Judgment, Heaven or Hell, God and Messiah,
salvation and everlasting life. The new life is
characterized by living by faith, not by sight
- trusting in the invisible God, confident in
the Messiah who came from Heaven to Earth 2,000
years ago, who died, and rose again, and is at
the right hand of the invisible God. We live by
faith, confident in the truthfulness and reliability
of God’s Word, trusting in the promises
of God’s Word, the reality of Heaven and
life everlasting, believing that God rewards those
who come to Him in faith. The unseen is much more
important to us than the seen, the invisible more
real to me than the visible. For many, the old
life was characterized by selfishness. We are
was self-centered, looking out for our interests.
Now we are more concerned about the well-being
of my neighbor. We find that whole Law is fulfilled
in the statement, "You shall love your neighbor
as yourself." We are trying to bear other's
burdens, and trying to treat the interests of
others like our own. In the old life, we wasted
much of time and energy on the wrong things. Now,
we are investing our lives and energies and abilities
and resources properly, because we are not deceived,
knowing that whatever a person sows, that he will
reap. We don’t want to reap corruption,
or little reward, but glory, honor and praise,
and a great reward and everlasting life from our
God and Judge! Therefore we are investing in the
things of the Spirit, not the flesh, the things
connected to God, the things that will last, like
our relationship to God, and good character, and
the things involved in extending the Kingdom of
God, reaching the lost and dying with the message
of life and salvation, tearing down strongholds
of false thinking, wrong ideologies, foolish philosophies,
and building up the Community of Believers. The
happiness of our old life was dependent on circumstances,
whether things were going in our direction, whether
things were working out that way we wanted them
to. Some of us relied on drugs or alcohol or pills
to help us out. Now, we have a new source of joy.
We are not dependant on circumstances. Therefore,
we praise the Lord in everything. Our source of
happiness is the Lord Himself. We are rejoicing
in the God of our salvation, delighted to know
Him and be known by Him, to love Him and be loved
by Him. We are saved, and know it. We are joyously
drawing water from the wells of salvation. We
are headed to Heaven and sure of it! We will live
forever, and absolutely thrilled by our knowledge
of it! We know the good God is in control, and
that all things will work together for our good,
so we can relax. May the gracious Three-In-One
God enable us all to walk in newness of life!
Shalom
Rabbi Loren
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