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The laws
found in the Torah are part of a Brit - a Covenant
between God and His holy and chosen people. This
covenant that was mediated by Moses, included
provisions for drawing near to God by means of
the Priesthood and the Mishkan (the Tabernacle,
later replaced by the Temple) and the Sacrifices
that the Holy One ordained. The laws, Mishkan,
Priesthood and the Sacrifices are a "package deal"
between God and Israel. If one part is broken,
then the whole covenant is broken. If the Jewish
people were faithful to God, obedient to His laws,
respectful of the Mishkan and the Sacrifices,
the Lord promised to bless us with abundant physical
and spiritual blessings. However, He warned us
that if we were unfaithful to the faithful God,
and disobeyed His laws, and were not respectful
of the Tabernacle and the Sacrifices, we would
be severely punished. To whom much is given,
much is required, and since Israel was given greater
knowledge, and greater revelation, and greater
blessings than any other nation, the punishment
for failure would also be greater.
In the
Torah, in Leviticus 26, the Lord lays out for
us two potential situations. Verse 3 starts off
with "eem" - "if": if we walk in His statutes,
which means we practice them in our lives, and
if we keep His commandments, which means that
we actually do them, then the blessings of God
would come in abundance: The rains would come
at the right time and there would be abundant
crops and plenty of food; there would be shalom
- peace, a state of well-being throughout the
Land of Israel; dangerous animals wouldn't attack,
and our human enemies wouldn't be able to invade.
If they tried, they would be utterly defeated,
even by a much smaller force of Israelis; the
Jewish population would multiply and increase;
the Lord would keep His covenant agreement with
us, and not withdraw from His obligations to us;
the Almighty would draw near to us, manifesting
His Dwelling Presence with us, walking among us,
being a living God to us - powerful, helpful,
both in this life, and beyond!
Verse
14 begins the second possibility. It also starts
with "eem" - "if" - but it's "eem loh" - "if not"
- if we would not listen to God, and prove that
we were listening to Him by obeying Him and keeping
all His commandments; if instead of keeping them,
we rejected His laws and ordinances, we would
break our part of this Covenant. The consequences
of breaking this very special contract that we
had agreed to enter into with our faithful, true,
good, righteous and holy God would be most unpleasant
and severe. He would bring upon us: plagues and
diseases; defeat before our enemies - they would
conquer us, and take our food and wealth. If these
initial signs of His judgment for disobeying Him
and breaking His Covenant didn't cause us to reflect,
repent, turn from our godless ways, and turn back
to Him, then He would increase the pressure on
us: He would withhold the rains, so that there
would be drought - no crops, no food, and more
hunger and starvation; He would allow wild animals
to kill our children, and destroy our herds. If
these even greater punishments and judgments didn't
cause us to reflect, repent, turn from our godless
ways, and turn back to Him, then He would increase
the pressure on us even more: enemies would invade,
and kill many of us; plagues would spread throughout
our cities; hunger and starvation would prevail.
If these even greater punishments and judgments
didn't cause us to reflect, repent, turn from
our godless ways, and turn back to Him, and we
continued to oppose Him, and be hostile toward
this great and good God, then He would increase
the pressure on us even more: we would become
so hungry, that some would resort to cannibalism,
and horrifically, eat their own children; our
cities would be destroyed, our holy places made
desolate, the sacrifices that enabled us to draw
near to God would cease, and the Land itself would
be ruined.
In particular,
if we wouldn't observe the Shemittah, the seventh,
sabbatical year, so that the Land of Israel could
enjoy its God-commanded rest, the Lord would overrule
us, and make sure that His Holy Land got its rest.
The Land would rest one way or another! It could
rest every seven years, if we trusted God and
willingly cooperated with Him, or it would rest
when disobedient Israel was conquered and exiled
from our Land. Then the land would have its God-ordained
rest. Don't you know that it is always better
to trust God, and willingly cooperate with Him
now, in the present, then be forced to do what
He rightfully demands! Believe these words: every
knee of every human being who has ever lived,
will bow before Messiah Yeshua, and every tongue
from the mouth of every person who has ever existed,
will confess that Yeshua, is the Messiah, God's
Anointed Ruler over humanity, and the Lord, the
divine Son of God! You can agree with God
now, and bow your knee willingly to Adon Yeshua
- the Lord Jesus, and serve Him willingly, now
- in this life, agreeing with God that Yeshua
is Lord, or a day will come when God will force
your stiff knees to bow, and compel your mouth
to confess that Yeshua is Lord, right before you
are sent to the Lake of Fire. Which one will it
be?
Sadly,
Israel did not obey the Mighty One, and did not
keep the seventh year of rest, because we are
told in 2 Chronicles 36:21 that one of the reasons
for the Babylonian Captivity was so that the Land
could enjoy its Sabbaths - 70 of them to be specific,
which implies that the Jewish people had ignored
this command for 490 years. The Lord also warned
us that if we still continued to oppose Him, and
disobey Him, we would be conquered, removed from
our Holy Land, and exiled to other nations, where
life would be very unpleasant. We would be weak,
vulnerable to our enemies, and terrified of them.
Then, if in the Diaspora, we didn't turn back
to the Lord, and begin to obey Him from our hearts
and souls, we would rot away and perish like a
spoiled piece of meat, or a rotten cabbage or
spoiled melon. But if in the Galut (Diaspora)
we woke up, realized that we had been disobedient,
unfaithful, treacherous and hostile toward God,
changed our minds and began agreeing with God,
and confessing our sins, changing our ways, and
making amends, then the Faithful One promised
that He would preserve us, and not allow us to
be destroyed. He would reestablish His broken
Covenant with us, continue to be our God, our
Powerful, Mighty and Strong One - so we would
be protected; He would continue to be the Eternal
One, and the Source of Life, so we could live
with Him forever!
Leviticus
26 ends with a promise and with hope. No matter
how bad Israel will become, no matter how disobedient,
and no matter how severely we will be punished;
regardless of how much, how far, how long we may
be exiled, the gracious God will not abandon His
Chosen People, nor allow us to be destroyed! Rather,
He will reestablish a renewed covenant relationship
with us. These words were written by Moses, inspired
by the Lord, some 3,500 years ago. Looking back
over those 35 centuries, can't we see with our
own eyes that the Word of God is faithful and
true? Hasn't the history of the Jewish people
over the centuries occurred exactly the way the
All-knowing God said it would? Didn't Israel disobey
the Lord, worship false gods, set up a false religious
system, sacrifice their children, become greedy
and corrupt, and the Northern Kingdom of Israel
was destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BC, carrying
much of Israel away into exile? Didn't the Southern
Kingdom of Judah oppose God, become disobedient,
immoral, defile the Temple, persecute the prophets,
so that the Lord allowed the Babylonians to conquer
us in 586 BC, destroying our cities, destroying
Jerusalem and the Temple, killing many, and exiling
thousands? The Lord was merciful to us, and remembered
us in our exile, and allowed us to return to Israel,
rebuild the Temple, bring the sacrifices that
enabled us to draw near to Him, rebuild Jerusalem
and the cities. But then, 500 years later, the
Romans once again destroyed Jerusalem and the
Temple, killed hundreds of thousands, sold many
into slavery, so that we have been without a Temple,
without the sacrifices that help us draw near
to God - not for 70 years, but for 1933 years,
more than 27 times as long as the Babylonian Captivity!
Haven't the Jewish people been scattered to the
nations, where for the most part, life has been
very difficult, full of anti-Semitic persecutions?
The
Babylonian Exile lasted for 70 years. Why has
this Second Captivity lasted 27 times longer?
Could we have done something even worse than the
sins that led to the Babylonian Captivity? I believe
that Israel sinned an even greater sin when God
sent us His Son, the greatest of the prophets,
who came bringing good news that the Kingdom of
God was at hand, and offering us salvation. Didn't
the majority turn away from our good Rabbi Yeshua,
and create a man-made form of Judaism that cannot
save us? Didn't we reject the long-awaited Messiah,
our King, Lord, and mankind's only Savior? Didn't
we break our Covenant with God? Hasn't the past
2,000 years of life in the Diaspora, without the
Temple, without the Sacrifices, proven it?
Luke 19:41-44
tells us that a week before Messiah died, knowing
that He would be rejected by Israel's leaders
and a majority of the people, Yeshua approached
Jerusalem, and He saw the city and wept over it,
saying, "If you had known in this day, even you,
the things which make for peace!" (If you only
knew who I am - the eternal Son of God, the Savior,
the Prince of Peace, the only One who can bring
genuine peace and well-being to men and women,
Jews and Gentiles - peace between God and men)!
"But now they have been hidden from your eyes."
(You don't know Me My people! You don't understand
who I am, and the good things I want to do for
you). There are terrible consequences for the
Chosen People who reject the Prince of Peace and
the New Covenant that He brings. Yeshua went on
to predict, "For the days will come upon you when
your enemies will throw up a barricade against
you, and surround you and hem you in on every
side, and they will level you to the ground and
your children within you, and they will not leave
in you one stone upon another." Why would Jerusalem
be destroyed? Why would we and our children be
killed? The answer Messiah gives is that we didn't
recognize the time of our visitation. We should
have, but didn't welcome the long-awaited Messiah,
the Son of God, the Savior; that the One who is
rightly called Immanuel, was with us. We rejected
Him, and broke our Covenant with God.
During
that same time (recorded in Matthew 23:34-39),
Yeshua, speaking to Israel's corrupt leaders who
rejected Him and were about to kill Him, said:
"I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes"
- referring to His disciples - the apostles and
prophets of the New Covenant that followed Him,
who witnessed to the Jewish people for 40 years,
the number of judgment and testing, until 70 AD.
Even though we rejected the Messiah, Messiah would,
in His great love and mercy, give us a time of
additional opportunities before judgment came.
Would the majority, during this 40 year period
of testing, realize that we had made a tragic
mistake, and acknowledge that Yeshua was the Messiah,
when we heard Messiah's disciples preaching the
Word of God with power, doing signs and wonders
and miracles? Messiah predicts: "Some of them
you will kill and crucify, and some of them you
will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute
from city to city." No, most wouldn't turn to
the Lord, and confess their sins, but rather would
expand and intensify their opposition, and so
Yeshua warned us of the terrible consequences:
"Upon you will come the guilt of all the righteous
blood shed on Earth, from the blood of righteous
Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah,
whom you murdered between the Temple and the altar.
Truly I say to you, all these things will come
upon this generation." The majority's rejection
of Yeshua is in keeping with our rejection of
all the prophets, and our disobedience to God,
and so terrible judgment would surely fall.
Messiah
went on to lament over the coming destruction
of the nation: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills
the prophets and stones those who are sent to
her! How often I wanted to gather your children
together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under
her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your
house is being left to you desolate!" Yeshua is
a true prophet, and what He foretold took place.
Jerusalem, our beautiful capital city, and the
magnificent Temple of God, where the sacrifices
were offered that enabled us to draw near to God,
were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands were killed,
and scattered to the nations. 1933 years later
our house is still desolate. Our Jewish people
are very far from God. There is no Temple, no
sacrifices, no atonement. The Mosaic Covenant
is broken, and the New Covenant rejected. But
all that will change one day! Yeshua went on to
predict: "from now on you will not see Me until
you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name
of the Lord!'" A time will come when the majority
of the Chosen People will recognize that Yeshua
is God's Messiah and acknowledge Him, and welcome
Him and bless Him. May it take place speedily
and soon! And can we say, "Amayn?"
As He
was being led to the place where He was about
to be crucified (see Luke 23:26-31), following
Messiah was a large crowd of the people, and women
who were mourning and lamenting Him. But Yeshua
turning to them said, "Daughters of Jerusalem,
stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and
for your children. For behold, the days are coming
when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and
the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that
never nursed.' Then they will begin to say to
the mountains, 'fall on us,' and to the hills,
'cover us.'" Terrible devastating judgment was
coming to the nation, so much so that most people
would want to die, and women would be better off
never having had children. I understand that the
destruction of Israel, Jerusalem and the Temple,
from 66 to 70 AD, was that bad. Why will God allow
Israel to suffer so? Messiah tells us: "For if
they do these things when the tree is green, what
will happen when it is dry?" In other words, "if
you treat a righteous and innocent man this unjust
way, don't you think that God will treat you according
to the way you are treating Me? In the way you
judge, you will be judged; and by your standard
of measure, it will be measured to you. And you
are not innocent and righteous, like I am, but
corrupt and evil."
Is Yeshua
anti-Semitic? No more so than Moses, who wrote
these blessings and curses; no more so than the
prophets who warned that terrible judgment would
come on Israel for our disobedience and faithlessness.
If Christians know that my people are far from
God, does this mean that they should treat us
with contempt? God forbid! Gentiles who believe
in the God of Israel and His Messiah are to love
us, show mercy and kindness to us, and make us
jealous of their relationship with God, and the
blessings of the New Covenant that they have.
There is no justification here for anti-Semitism!
Messiah Yeshua confirms what the prophets predicted
- Israel broke the Older Covenant. "‘Behold, days
are coming,' declares the Lord, ‘when I will make
a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with
the house of Judah, not like the Covenant which
I made with their fathers in the day I took them
by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt,
My Covenant which they broke, although I was a
husband to them,' declares the Lord." We broke
the covenant made at Sinai - not the Lord. God
was like a good and faithful husband, but we were
like a bad, unfaithful, adulterous wife.
Adolph
Safir, a wonderful Messianic Jew who lived several
generations ago, raises some perceptive questions:
Can you have the Mosaic Covenant without the Temple
and the Sacrifices and the Priests? Where is the
Older Covenant mediated by Moses? Why have we
been in exile since 70 AD? Why has life been so
difficult and painful for most of the Jewish people
for the past 2,000 years? He answers: "During
all these centuries the rabbis have not been able
to adequately answer these questions or account
for this strange condition, that the Jewish people
are without Temple, Priest and Sacrifices, and
that we have been exiled from our Land. It is
absolutely impossible for non-Messianic Jews today
to keep all the laws and ordinances of Moses,
offer sacrifices, find atonement, or draw near
to God the way we need to. As a result, we can't
truly understand the dealings of God. And in this
spiritual darkness the rabbis have formed for
themselves a religion of their own traditions
and reasonings, based on man-made and unauthorized
rabbinic laws instead of the divinely-appointed
ordinances of the Mosaic Covenant."
But, our
breaking of the Sinai Covenant is one reason why
God established the New Covenant! In His great
grace and mercy God established the New Covenant,
based on the life and death and resurrection of
the Messiah. He promises to put His teachings
deep within us - on our heart; to completely forgive
all of our sins, reconciling us to Himself, so
that we would know Him personally and intimately.
He truly will be our God, and we will be His people!
These are the provisions of the New Covenant.
Christians
and Messianic Jews partake in the New Covenant
brought by the Messiah. While some principles
of the New Covenant remain the same (obedience
brings blessing, disobedience brings judgment),
the particulars are different. No one - neither
Messianic Jews nor Gentiles can claim the physical
promises of material blessing of the Older Covenant
that God specifically promised to the nation of
Israel. This is a foundational error of the corrupt
prosperity teachers. They see the blessings that
God promises to the Holy People under the Sinai
covenant and claim them for themselves. That should
not be done! We can't claim for our own the promises
of material blessing that God specially agreed
to as part of His Covenant with the nation of
Israel! We must understand that there is a difference
between the Church and Israel - that the Church,
which operates under the New Covenant, is not
the same as Israel. The promises of physical and
material blessing that God made to His Holy Nation,
the Jewish people, conditioned on our obedience,
can't be appropriated by the Church, made up of
individual Jews and Gentiles from many nations,
operating under another covenant.
Dispensationalism
recognizes that God has made different demands
of different peoples during different dispensations
(periods, times), which include various covenants
with various provisions and responsibilities for
different groups of people at different times.
If we are to avoid misunderstanding, error, false
teaching, disappointment and confusion, it is
important to understand that God does not promise
the same physical and material blessings for faithfulness
to us today as He did to the nation of Israel
before Yeshua came. Under the New Covenant
of the Messiah, God promises to provide for the
needs of His people. He does not promise or guarantee
physical and material blessing and prosperity
like He did to His Holy Nation. He promises
that He will provide for our daily bread, and
meet our needs, so we can trust Him and depend
on Him for that. He does promise us every spiritual
blessings in Heaven. He tells us that all our
sins are fully atoned for. We are reconciled to
God. We have peace with Him. We can boldly approach
His throne of grace at any time. We've been declared
righteous. Sin no longer need control us. With
help from God's indwelling Spirit, we can resist
it. We're given a new nature, remade in the image
of God and Messiah. We are God's beloved sons
and daughters, His heirs, joint heirs along with
Messiah. We have an inheritance that is imperishable
and undefiled and will not fade away, and is reserved
in Heaven for us. We are delivered from the powers
of darkness, and transferred to the Kingdom of
light. We have a new citizenship in the New and
Eternal Jerusalem. We can be blessed with a deep
joy, despite our outward circumstances - a happiness
is not dependent on those circumstances. We have
a peace that passes all understanding. We enjoy
the power and ability to witness to His reality.
We are blessed with wisdom from above whenever
we need it. We have the ability to understand
the Word of God. We are protected by the power
of God, and will be kept from stumbling, and presented
to God faultless and blameless, full of great
joy. We will never ever perish, and we will have
eternal life. We will be greatly rewarded, even
to the point of ruling and reigning with God and
Messiah forever and ever! But also under the New
Covenant we are promised that all who are faithful
to Messiah will suffer persecution, hardship and
trials; it is only through many troubles that
we can enter the Kingdom of God; however, we are
also blessed with the ability to suffer well!
The greatest of the apostles suffered the most,
and bragged about it! To them, their sufferings
were a mark of faithfulness, because they knew
that if they shared in the sufferings of the Messiah,
they would share in the power of His resurrection.
Non-Messianic
Judaism is based on a broken covenant. The vast
majority of my Jewish people are in a state of
spiritual desolation. We have been and will likely
continue to be the recipient of the curses found
in the Torah. Instead of Rabbinic Judaism, God
wants the Jewish people to enter into New Covenant
Judaism, and lead the Gentiles into the blessings
of the New Covenant too! But, the Jewish people
are not the only ones who are in danger. I'd like
to leave each one of us with this thought: if
God found fault with the Jewish people for breaking
the Older Covenant mediated by Moses, which brought
His curses, how much more will we suffer for being
unfaithful to the New Covenant? "For if we go
on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge
of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice
for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment
and the fury of a fire which will consume the
adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law
of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of
two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment
do you think he will deserve who has trampled
under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as
unclean the blood of the Covenant by which he
was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of
grace? For we know Him who said, ‘vengeance is
mine, I will repay.' And again, ‘the Lord will
judge His people.' It is a terrifying thing to
fall into the hands of the living God!"
Shalom!
Rabbi Loren |
