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God,
speaking through his servant Moses, has been giving
the Holy People the laws that God, in His great
wisdom and goodness, demanded we observe.
These
laws were part of a Brit - a covenant, a contract
between God and this one holy and chosen people.
This covenant that was mediated by Moses included
provisions for drawing near to God by means of
the Mishkan and the Priesthood and the Sacrifices
that He ordained.
The laws,
and the Tabernacle and the Priesthood and the
Sacrifices are a package deal between God and
Israel. They form the Older Covenant, the Mosaic
Covenant. If one part is broken, then the whole
covenant is broken.
If we
were faithful to God, obedient to His laws, respectful
of the Mishkan and the Sacrifices, the Lord promised
to bless us with both physical and spiritual blessings.
However,
He clearly 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.
You see,
Israel was given more knowledge, greater revelation
than any other nation, and to whom much is given,
much is required, and the punishment is the greater
if we fail in our responsibilities.
The Lord
lays out for us two potential situations. Verse
3 starts off with “eem” - “if”: if we walk in
God’s 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 this 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, really being there for us, walking
among us, being a real God to us - alive, real,
powerful, helpful, both in this life, and beyond.
That
brings us to verse 14, which gives us 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. And the consequences of breaking this
very special contract that we had agreed to enter
into with our faithful and true and good and 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
initials 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 could enjoy
its God-commanded rest, God 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 it’s
God-ordained rest.
Let me
suggest 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.
Listen
to me: 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 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,
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 must not have obeyed God, and not kept
the Shemittah, the seventh year of rest, because
we are told at the end of 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.
There 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 a spoiled
melon. But if the Galut, we woke up, realize 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, powerful and mighty and strong- so we would
be protected; the Eternal One, and the Source
of life, so we could live with Him forever.
Le me
point us that this chapter 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, and no matter how much, how
far, how long we may be exiled, the gracious God
will not abandon His Chosen People, not allow
us to be destroyed; rather, He will so work to
reestablish a good covenant relationship with
us, but it will be the New Covenant mediated through
King Messiah.
My friends,
these words were written by Moses, at the behest
of the Lord, 3500 years ago. That’s a long time.
Looking back over those 3500, can’t we see with
our own eyes, and understand with our own minds,
that the Word of God is perfectly 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? And
didn’t the Southern Kingdom of Judah oppose God,
become disobedient, immoral, defile the Temple,
persecute the prophets, and the Lord allowed the
Babylonians to conquer us in 586 BC, destroying
our cities, destroying Jerusalem, destroying 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 a life of 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-Semitism and persecution,
and exile from nation to nation?
Think
about it: the Babylonian Exile lasted for 70 years
- which is a long time. Why has this Second Captivity
lasted for 27 times longer? Could we have done
something even worse, sinned sins greater than
the ones that led to the Babylonian Captivity?
Must
not have 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
we turn from our good Rabbi Yeshua. And get involved
in a legalistic form of Judaism that cannot save
us, and reject the long-awaited Messiah, our Rabbi,
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?
A week
before Messiah died, knowing that He would be
rejected by Israel’s leaders, and a majority of
the people, Yeshua approached Jerusalem, 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 see Me or know Me. You don’t understand
who I am, and the good things I want to do for
you.
And sadly,
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, because you did
not recognize the time of your visitation"
(Luke 19:41-44).
Why would
Jerusalem be destroyed? Why would we and our children
be killed? The answer is that we didn’t recognize
that the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of God,
the Savior, the One who is rightly called Immanuel,
was with us. And we rejected Him, and broke our
Covenant with God.
A short
time later, speaking to the Jewish leaders who
rejected Him, and were about to kill Him, Yeshua
said (see Matthew 23:34-39) to Israel’s corrupt
leaders: I am sending you prophets and wise
men and scribes - Yeshua is talking about
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
we, during this 40 year period, realize that we
had made a mistake, an acknowledge that Yeshua
was the Messiah, when we saw His disciples doing
signs and wonders and miracles, and preaching
the Word of God with power?
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, with
the result that upon you may fall 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 so
judgment would surely fall.
He 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! Judgment is coming
on the nation, and the Jewish people will remain
in a state of desolate, which we still are to
this day.
But that
will change For I say to you, from now on you
will not see Me until you say, 'Blessed is He
who comes in the name of the Lord!' My friends,
our house is still desolate. There is no Temple,
no sacrifices, no atonement. The Mosaic Covenant
is broken, and the New Covenant rejected. Our
Jewish people are far from God, and in a state
of desolation until we acknowledge Yeshua as God’s
Messiah, and say, “Baruch HaBa b’shem Adonai”
- which we will say some day, and may it be speedily
and soon, and can we say, Amayn?
Speaking
to His disciples that same week, Yeshua made this
coming judgment crystal clear when He told them
that the Temple would be destroyed, and that not
one stone would be left standing - the entire
Temple of God would be torn down (Matthew 24:2).
Finally,
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 of
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, terrible, devastating
judgment is coming to the nation, so much so that
most people would want to die, and women would
be better off never having had children. And 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 continues:
For if they do these things when the tree is
green, what will happen when it is dry?"
If you treat a righteous and innocent man this
terrible way, don’t you think that God will treat
you according to the way you are treating Me?
For 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,
but corrupt and evil.
Is Yeshua
anti-Semitic? No more so than God, who had Moses
write these blessings and curses. No more so than
the prophets who said that terrible judgment would
come on Israel. No. He understood God’s principles,
and the blessing or judgments that come from being
obedience or disobedient to God and His Covenant.
Prophets understand that obedience brings blessing,
and disobedience brings wrath, judgment. It always
has, and it always will.
Knowing
this, does this mean that Christians should treat
Jewish people with contempt? God forbid! They
are to love us, show mercy and kindness to us,
make us jealous of their relationship with God,
and the blessings of the New Covenant. There is
no justification for anti-Semitism!
My friends,
Israel broke the Older Covenant. Listen to the
words of God: 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 Sinai Covenant - not the Lord. God was like
a good and faithful husband, but we were like
a bad, unfaithful, adulterous wife. So much of
the Mosaic Covenant deals with the Temple and
the Sacrifice and the priests and the laws for
Temple purity and worship. But the Temple and
the sacrifices have vanished, and the priests
no longer serve. Adolph Safir, a wonderful Messianic
Jew who live 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 2000 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 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 of the Messiah, and
put His teachings deep within us, on our heart.
He promised to completely forgive all of our sins,
reconciling us to Himself, so that we would know
the Lord personally, intimately. He would truly
be our God, and we will be His people.
Believers
today are under the New Covenant of the Messiah,
and while some principles remain the same (obedience
brings blessing, disobedience brings judgment),
the particulars are different. No one - Messianic
Jews or Messianic Gentiles, Jewish or Gentile
Believers, can claim the physical promises of
material blessing of the Older Covenant that God
specifically promised to Israel. This is a foundational
error of the prosperity teachers. They see the
blessings that God promises to the Holy People
and claim them for themselves.
You can’t
do that! You can’t claim the material promises
of blessing God specially agreed to as part of
His Covenant with the nation of Israel, for yourself.
We must understand that there is a difference
between the Church and Israel - that the Church
is not the same as Israel, and that the Church
has not replaced 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 of up individual Jews and Gentiles from many
nations.
Dispensationalism
recognizes that God has made different demands
of different peoples at different dispensations
(periods, times), that there are various covenants
with various responsibilities for different groups
of people. 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, and we can look
to him and trust Him for that. He does promise
us every spiritual blessings in Heaven. He tells
us that all our sins are fully atoned for. They
have been completely forgiven - past, present
and future. 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 must 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 will
be blessed with a deep joy, despite our outward
circumstances, that is not dependent on those
circumstances. We have a peace that passes all
understanding. We enjoy extra power and ability
to witness. 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 also promised
that all who would be faithful to Messiah will
suffer persecution and hardship, and trials and
that through many troubles we must enter the Kingdom
of God . The best of the apostles suffered
the most, and bragged about it. To them, it was
a mark of faithfulness, a badge of honor, because
they knew that if they shared in the sufferings
of the Messiah, they would share in the power
of His resurrection. You see, we are also blessed
with the ability to suffer well.
Rabbinic
Judaism is based on a broken covenant. Instead
of Rabbinic Judaism, God wanted the Jewish people
to enter into New Covenant Judaism, and lead the
Gentiles into the New Covenant too. If God found
fault with the Jewish people when the Older Covenant
mediated by Moses was still in existence, how
much more are we at fault when that Older Covenant
is no longer in existence, and a Newer and Better
Covenant has come, and we refuse to enter it?
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!
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