All posts by James Pyles

James Pyles is a published Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror author as well as the Technical Writer for a large, diversified business in the Northwest. He currently has over 30 short stories published in various anthologies and periodicals and has just sold his first novella. He won the 2021 Helicon Short Story Award for his science fiction tale "The Three Billion Year Love" which appears in the Tuscany Bay Press Planetary Anthology "Mars."

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Sermon Review of the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews: Repentance from Dead Works, Part 2

May 28, 2014 James Pyles 4 Comments

More thoughts on repentance from dead works as an essential part of the gospel and one of the elementary teachings of Yeshua. Evangelism is not like making toast. Discipleship and evangelism entails an ongoing process. Includes excerpts from a blog in which an Evangelical pastor explains why he does not preach repentance. Does repentance mean to “change your mind” or to “turn from sin”?

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Sermon Nineteen: Repentance from Dead Works, Part 2
Originally presented on June 8, 2013
from the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews sermon series

Initially, Lancaster took a detour from delving into the deep meaning of the Epistle to the Hebrews to take a closer look at the six elemental principles of our faith as outlined in Hebrews 6:1-3. Since teaching the first principle last week, repentance from dead works, he takes a further detour, traveling a greater distance away from his source material in order to illustrate how far the Evangelical Church has drifted away from the essentials of the Bible.

After his recap of “the milk,” the very, very first thing the Hebrews writer thought that any person needed to know when starting out as a wet-behind-the-ears disciple of Yeshua (Jesus), that is, repentance from sin and turning to God, he tells his audience how difficult the journey of becoming a disciple actually is:

Then a scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.”

–Matthew 8:19-22 (NASB)

Notice how Jesus doesn’t make it so easy for someone just to follow him? He seems to push people away. Maybe that’s because being a disciple of the Master is a difficult thing to do. It has many advantages and God wants all people to turn away from sin and return to Him, but it’s not like taking a walk in the park.

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”

–Luke 9:23 (NASB)

Repentance and salvation isn’t as simple as “Come as you are, believe in me, and you’ll go to Heaven when you die.” Rather, it’s as if Jesus is saying, “Come as you are, pick up your cross, follow me, and prepare to be persecuted.”

This isn’t a terribly popular message in Evangelical Christianity which is why, according to Lancaster, it isn’t preached very much in churches. How does Lancaster know this? He Googled it. No kidding, that’s what he said.

He came across a blog (the link is at the top but I’ll present it again) called EscapeToReality.org owned and operated by someone named Pastor Paul Ellis.

Lancaster said that Pastor Ellis’ blog just came up in the search results and Lancaster doesn’t know a thing about this person except he’s a blogger. Lancaster’s opinion is that if you blog and your material is available on the web, you’re just “asking for it” (which is why Lancaster doesn’t blog and isn’t even on Facebook).

I guess I must be asking for it, too. I’m not sure I’d ever want to have Lancaster comment on my blog given the following, but then again, I hope my content is more doctrinally sound. Lancaster referenced a blog post written by Pastor Ellis in November of 2011 called 3 Reasons Why I Don’t Preach on Repentance (“Turn from Sin”).

Religious people often complain that we grace preachers don’t emphasize repentance sufficiently. It’s true. I hardly emphasize it at all. But then neither did the Apostle John. You’d think if salvation hinged on our repentance then it would be in the gospels but John says nothing about it. Not one word. Neither does he mention repentance in any of his three letters. I guess John must’ve been a grace preacher.

I’d never heard of a category of preachers called “grace preachers” but I guess they stand in opposition to people like Lancaster who do indeed preach repentance.

Lancaster pointed out a couple of things about Ellis’s quote. First, he only draws from the Gospel of John and ignores Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Second, he’s wrong about John.

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

–John 8:34-36 (NASB)

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

–1 John 3:4-10 (NASB)

Apparently, Pastor Ellis missed a few key portions of John’s writings.

And just in case you missed it (as perhaps Ellis has), Jesus really did preach on repentance. It was his central theme:

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

–Matthew 3:2, 4:17, Mark 1:15

You may have to return to Lancaster’s previous definitions of sin and repentance or look at my own series on Teshuva for the following to truly make an impact:

Repentance means to turn from sin
Repentance means to change your mind

Ellis also says:

It (repentance) means different things to different people. But Biblical repentance simply means “change your mind.” You can change your mind about anything, but Jesus called us to change our mind and believe the good news (Mk 1:15).

Your definition of repentance will reveal whether you are living under grace or works. In the Old Testament, sinners repented by bringing a sacrifice of penance and confessing their sins (Num 5:7). But in the new we bring a sacrifice of praise and confess His name (Heb 13:15). We don’t do anything to deal with our sins for Jesus has done it all.

In other words, just sitting around in church is good enough and you don’t even do that. Jesus does it all and we’re saved. No personal accountability is required.

Oh, the three reasons Ellis doesn’t preach repentance. I’ll give you the raw list, but you’ll have to go to his blog to read the full content:

It puts people under the law
It doesn’t lead people to salvation
We’re called to preach the gospel, not repentance

It’s hard to believe Pastor Ellis has even read the whole Bible. He’s saying that repentance just puts people “under the law,” repentance doesn’t lead to salvation, and we are only supposed to preach the gospel as if the message of repentance isn’t at the gospel’s core.

I’m sorry if this sounds snarky or arrogant on my part (and I’ve had a problem with arrogance from time to time), but Ellis’ blog should be named “EscapeFromReality.org.”

Lancaster also has three points, but in this case, they’re three points on why he does preach repentance:

The gospel message calls us to repent (Matthew 3:2, 4:17, Mark 1:15)
Repentance is defined by the Bible as turning away from sin and turning (or returning) to God
Sin is defined by the Bible as a violation of the commandments of God

I could add a fourth point and I think Lancaster would agree: The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

But how do you preach this message? Actually, Lancaster’s question reminded me of one I asked myself about a month ago. How do you evangelize from a Messianic Jewish point of view?

Lancaster drew a somewhat humorous example to prove his point. Imagine a couple of people from his congregation going door-to-door in the neighborhood:

“Excuse us. We’re from Beth Immanuel just down the street. Can we have a few minutes of your time? Are you a sinner? Do you practice sexual immorality? If so, we have good news for you?”

I don’t think anyone with a message like that would be invited inside for coffee and cookies.

Actually, Lancaster answered his own question, citing a series of teachings he recorded called What About Evangelism (also available in MP3 format), discussing how to evangelize from a Messianic Jewish perspective (and I’ve definitely missed that one).

He made a point that it’s not just the lost who need this message, but the saved. How many “Christians” in churches think they are saved, think they are walking the path of righteousness, but who don’t have a clue about the actual gospel message of the Bible and who, if they’ve repented at all, did so only once when they first came to faith in Christ?

For some people, that could be years or even decades ago.

Lancaster used a “toast” metaphor, but for the sake of time and the length of this blog post, I’ll suggest you read about it in his book Elementary Principles.

Lancaster, by the end of his sermon, seemed satisfied that everyone listening to him had “gotten down” this first foundational principle of faith, this first glass of “milk,” so we can move on to the second one next week.

What Did I Learn?

I learned (I guess it should be obvious) that in some ways, Lancaster remains very Evangelical. He’s a passionate believer in missions and evangelizing the lost. He wants to get the message out to everyone because “God so loved the world.” The fact that he took one additional sermon just to emphasize the desperate importance of continual, ongoing, daily, repentance, constantly picking up our crosses, and following our Master, seems proof of that.

I also wondered, thinking about recent events, if this is one of the reasons for the whole Tent of David mission, which is not just to illuminate Evangelical Christianity on the merits of a Messianic Jewish view of the Bible, but to witness to the “found,” so to speak, who may never have heard the message of repentance of sins before.

Lancaster cited something Boaz Michael mentioned to him once about a broadcast interview of the famous megachurch Pastor Joel Osteen (in an earlier version of this blog post, I misquoted Lancaster as saying “Rick Warren”). According to what Lancaster said Boaz told him, Pastor Osteen was asked about the secret of his success, to which Osteen replied, ”The secret to my success is that I never preach about sin.”

But if you don’t preach about sin and repentance, and Lancaster made this very clear, you are misleading your flock and probably condemning them as well. Is that grace?

I thought I’d share some of the comments on Pastor Ellis’ blog post about not preaching repentance, just to emphasize the problem:

Repentance does not save a sinner. If you believe repentance does save, but after seeing the truth and you change your mind, because you realized that it is the blood of Jesus that saves, * then you have repented

Repentance does not forgive sins. If you believe repentance does forgive sins, but after experiencing true forgiveness and you change your mind,because you realized that you have been forgiven and “the blood of Jesus cleanses (continuously)” you of all sin * then you have repented grace and peace

–savedbygrace

Thank you! Contemporaries who believe man is dead until regenerated still want to preach repentance to him.

–Dean O’Bryan

You know what is interesting is that when I used to preach repentance as a turning from all of your sins was to have another thought nagging me, “How can you say that salvation is apart from works when you are asking man to do something to be saved?”

You rightly pointed out that John never preached repentance, but neither did Paul in the entire book of Romans that had much to say about salvation.

I used to preach Luke 13:5 as proof that one must turn to be saved, but when I read the context was when I realized that being saved from sin was nowhere in the context at all. It was addressing a nation, and not some death, burial and resurrection gospel to be believed. Does not matter what angle you approach Luke 13 from as nothing there is about stopping sins to be saved.

What is sad is how religion will preach the verse that says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” and will change the meaning into, “Believe on the ((((((LORD)))))) Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” They will always shout the word “Lord” and then pause a moment before reading the rest of the verse. They want you to think that Paul was stressing a surrender to the sovereign Lordship of Christ to be saved, as they will claim that Jesus cannot be your Lord until you give up your every sin first.

–Dave

In response to one comment, Pastor Ellis said in part:

It starts off in innocence but before you know it you’re listening to talking snakes. Choose life. If saying sorry and making amends brings life and healing, do it (Jas 5:16). If reviewing your sins brings death, suffering and condemnation, don’t.

There are many more such statements but I think you get the point.

I learned that as much as I can experience frustration in the church I currently attend, Pastor does indeed preach repentance of sins and returning to God. If I attended Pastor Ellis’ church, I don’t think I’d do very well there at all.

How many churches out there are preaching “grace” and avoiding “sin” and “repentance” at all costs, including the costs of the souls of their members? Out of some misplaced since of “mercy,” how many “grace preachers” are preventing the people in their churches from repenting and actually returning to God? How many of these believers are still suffering needlessly in their sins or worse, believing that they’re just fine and don’t need to repent at all?

Addendum: I re-read all of Pastor Ellis’ blog post plus a good many of the comments (there are tons of them), particularly comments Ellis wrote. It’s not that he opposes repentance as such, and he even praises repentance, but he gives a rather (in my opinion) simplistic view of what repentance means in terms of our relationship with God through Messiah.

While I believe he is sincere, caring, compassionate, and loves Jesus, I think that like so many Evangelicals, he tends to be “works-phobic” and sees obedience to God by performing the mitzvot (including repentance) and God’s grace as polar opposites rather than co-existing elements in a life of faith.

The comments on that one blog post stretched for over a two year span and they were comments similar to those I’ve experienced on other religious blogs, that is, plenty of strife and theological posturing to go around.

Having read the many opinions expressed in the blog’s comments section, in the end, I don’t believe we’re mere robots who sit around having faith in Jesus and being saved and that’s the extent of our lives as Christians. I believe God wants us to be active participants in our relationship with Him and with each other, including being accountable for our behavior. I don’t think that once we come to faith, it is impossible for us to ever sin again and that we can just “change our minds,” which is a gross over simplification of the concept of Teshuvah (turning from sin and turning to God), and then it’s all good.

God is gracious and He always has been. It wasn’t an invention of Jesus, it’s been God’s nature forever and He’s always been gracious and compassionate to human beings.

Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin…”

–Exodus 34:6-7 (NASB)

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Why the Torah is the Tree of Life

May 27, 2014 James Pyles 32 Comments

I also raised My hand [in oath] against them in the Wilderness to scatter them among the nations and to disperse them among the lands, because they did not fulfill my laws, they spurned My decrees, desecrated My Sabbaths, and their eyes went after the idols of their fathers. So I too gave them decrees that were not good and laws by which they could not live.

–Ezekiel 20:23-25 (Stone Edition Tanakh)

In a moment of great pique, God has the prophet Ezekiel tell his exiled brethren of the relentless misdeeds of their fathers, which brought about their loss of the land. God insists at one point: “Moreover, I have them laws that were not good and rules they could not live by.” The import of these harsh words is that God might just be the author of inadequate or even malevolent law, a proposition that flies in the face of God’s goodness, love, and perfection.

-Ismar Schorsch
“Divine Music in a Human Key,” pg 468 (May 14, 1994
Commentary on Torah Portion Bamidbar (Numbers)
Canon Without Closure: Torah Commentaries

The twenty-fifth verse in Ezekiel 20 relates a startling admission on the part of God through the prophet, that God gave Israel “decrees that were not good and laws by which they could not live.”

When reading those words, I was immediately reminded of the traditional Evangelical Christian reasoning about why God gave the Torah to Israel at Sinai in the first place. I mean, if God was going to cancel the Law with the death and resurrection of Jesus, or at least have it pass into obsolescence to be replaced by the much more “livable” grace of Christ, by what rationale did God require and demand that the Israelites keep the Torah mitzvot?

The answer, and I was also startled when I first heard the Pastor at the church I attend present it to me, is that God wanted to illustrate that no one could possibly keep the law and that we all need God’s grace to save us from sin.

So God sets forth a lengthy set of conditions associated with the Sinai covenant between Hashem and Israel, with a generous collection of blessings for obedience to God’s Torah (Deuteronomy 28:1-14) and an abundant list of curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15-68).

God, being faithful to His Word, has indeed blessed Israel when they cleaved to His Torah and cursed them when they strayed from obedience.

The haftarah reading for Bamidbar, Hosea 2:1-22, chronicles the course of God’s response to His covenant people, from wrath in response to Israel’s faithlessness when she “played the harlot” (v 7) by abandoning her “husband” (God) and chasing after foreign lovers (idols), to the promise of renewing the intimate relationship between Hashem and Israel when they returned to Him in obedience:

And I will espouse you forever: I will espouse you with righteousness and justice, and with goodness and mercy, and I will espouse you with faithfulness; then you shall be devoted to the Lord.

–Hosea 2:21-22 (JPS Tanakh)

After all of that, with generation after generation of Jews all striving, sometimes succeeding and often failing to willfully keep the commandments, yet in their heart, always loving and revering the Torah, they never suspected that God was just setting them up for a huge fall. And then, during the Roman occupation, just a few decades before the destruction of Herod’s Temple, God was going to yank it all away from them and abruptly declare that He had planned to have Israel fail and fail miserably all along, in some sort of demented preparation for the coming the Messiah and “the law of grace.”

I enjoy reading mystery books that have a creative and unanticipated plot twist to keep things interesting, but God, according to Evangelicals, is the undisputed master if “I didn’t see that one coming,” the ultimate jumping of the tracks where the train carrying all the exiled Jews back to Jerusalem becomes the carriages transporting endless hoards of formerly pagan Gentiles to Rome.

Ezekiel 20:25, especially when read out of its immediate context and outside the overarching plan of God for Israel, could be interpreted as supporting this “double-dealing” motivation of God except for this:

But note what has been accomplished by this exegetical twist: The holiness of the text has been preserved. Whatever blemish we may detect has nothing to do with the original power and beauty of the Torah, but derives solely from inferior mediation. Not the author, but the interpreter is at fault.

-Schorsch, pg 469

It is said that Biblical interpretation starts with translation but it obviously doesn’t end their. The value of our Holy Scriptures rises and falls with the correct understanding of what we’re reading. Putting on the supersessionism-colored glasses forged by the Gentile “Church Fathers” and polished by the men of the Reformation, we indeed do read the Bible “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12) rather than accessing the plain sight of God.

But how can man see with God’s vision? We probably can’t, though we are experts at saying we really can, and in saying that, we reveal ourselves to be deluded or liars.

This thing you call language though, most remarkable. You depend on it for so very much. But is any one of you really its master?

-Spock/Kollos (Leonard Nimoy)
Is There in Truth No Beauty? (1968)
Star Trek: The Original Series

The above quote references a “mind-meld” between Mr. Spock and a non-humanoid being named Kollos, an ambassador for his planet who is non-verbal and who can only communicate with people through telepathy. He experiences “humanity” for the first time seeing the world (or the bridge of the Enterprise) through Mr. Spock’s senses and communicating through spoken language which he never had done before. You and I like to think we are familiar and even (as I said above) “experts” on understanding the Bible, but an outside observer, if they could access our point of view, might accuse us of what Kollos accused the people on the Enterprise, depending on language for so very much without truly being its master.

We depend on the Bible for so very much, but who can say if anyone can be the master of a document that, while scripted in this world by human beings, was inspired by the mind and spirit of God?

But it’s just about all we’ve got, just like language is just about all we’ve got to communicate with one another, to learn about one another. We only have the Bible to teach us about God.

But no one of us being its master, how dare we say that any part of the Bible, down to even the tiniest jot or tittle, in any way has been cancelled, annulled, eliminated, replaced, folded, spindled, or mutilated?

“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

–Matthew 5:17-19 (NASB)

It is a Tree of Life for those who cling to it, and happy are those who support it.”

–Proverbs 3:18

It’s not just a matter of poorly interpreting the Bible but in selectively reading it. Christians can “cherry pick” those scriptures that seem to support a classic supersessionist view of an expired Torah, but they can’t explain those portions that support a high view of Torah, a continued zealous observance of Torah by multitudes of believing Jews in New Testament times (when Acts 21:20 speaks of “how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law,” the Greek word we translate into English as “thousands” is literally “tens of thousands,” and that Greek word is the basis for the English word “myriads,” telling us that vast numbers of Jesus-believing Jews were completely over-the-top zealous for the Torah), and since the Bible (in my opinion…and the Epistle to the Hebrews notwithstanding) doesn’t speak of the Torah expiring like an aging carton of milk in the back of the fridge, then I have no reason to believe that God intended to annul the Sinai Covenant and its conditions for the sake of the inaugurated but not yet arrived New Covenant…not until after Heaven and Earth pass away.

Until then, the Torah is a Tree of Life, first to the Jew and also to the Gentile, defining, among other things, who we are in relation to God and who we are to each other, Jewish believers remaining wholly and completely Jewish in identity, role, and responsibility, and grafted in Gentile believers taking on, not a Jewish role, but one that uniquely defines us as the people of the nations who are called by His Name, who have a calling that is not Israel but that supports Israel, for our salvation comes from the Jews (John 4:22).

The one mystery I have struggled with up until recently was why, after the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, is worshiping God “not enough” anymore?

Many, many years ago, long before my wife and I became religious, we attended a Passover Seder at a friend’s home. At one point during the reciting of the Haggadah, he stood up and joyously cried out, “No one comes between a Jew and his God!” Even as a non-believer, it was quite obvious to me that he was referring to Jesus and Christianity, perhaps viewing Jesus as a layer of abstraction that was thrust between people (or Jews) and God when no such separation existed before.

We can debate whether or not the Temple and sacrifices separated Jewish people from God or actually brought them closer and say that Jesus draws Jews (and everyone else who will believe) closer still rather than further away, but from a Jewish point of view (I can only assume, not being Jewish), being told you now can only come to God through Jesus rather than praying to Him directly with no intermediary, makes it seem as if the rules have changed and a brand new player was added to the game, one that the Jewish people never needed before.

“For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it.

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it.”

–Deuteronomy 30:11-16 (NASB)

The Torah is the Tree of Life, the source of everything that is good and is from God for a Jew. It was never too far away and it was never intended to be impossible to observe. God did intend for the Jewish people to observe the mitzvot and by obedience, they would draw closer to God and receive good life and prosperity in the Land. Why would that ever change? Not through Jewish disobedience, because God always provided Israel a way back through repentance. Not because of the coming of Messiah, but I’ll get into that at a later time (see below).

So far we’ve seen that Judaism is a religion of joy, and hopefully, I’ve shown that this joy emanates from observance of the mitzvot and study of the Torah, and that the Tree of Life brings a Jew (and realistically, all of us who embrace the Word of God) nearer to God. But where does Jesus fit in?

I know that’s an odd question and I know many of you think you know the answer. In my next meditation, I’ll see if I can show you a new answer (new to me, anyway) and why God didn’t change the rules, just as the New Covenant was never intended to replace the Sinai Covenant. God doesn’t destroy anything He has created, but He does continually reveal Himself to us across the history of the Bible.

It’s revelation I’ll speak of next time.

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Why Judaism is a Religion of Joy

May 25, 2014 James Pyles 10 Comments

Before discussing how the Baal Shem Tov revolutionized the Jewish view on joy, it must be mentioned that happiness was never foreign to Judaism. As King David declared: “Serve G‑d with joy!” Indeed, the Talmud states that “One should not stand up to pray while dejected…but only while still rejoicing in the performance of a mitzvah.”

The concept of simcha shel mitzvah, the “joy of a mitzvah,” has always been part and parcel of Jewish teachings. After all, can there be a greater privilege than serving the King of kings? As such, mitzvot must be executed with joy.

-Baruch S. Davidson and Naftali Silberberg
“Perpetual Joy:
The Baal Shem Tov’s Revolutionary Approach to Joy”
Chabad.org

I’ve been thinking about my role in church lately, as well as the Biblical and historic perspective ancient (and modern) Judaism had (has) regarding “doing” as opposed to “believing.”

It’s not that the Church doesn’t believe in doing good works, but the incredible phobia some Christians have against even appearing as if there’s a connection between salvation and what we do, makes the Church hold their good deeds pretty much at arm’s length, including repentance. Worse, the Church tends to judge all forms of Judaism but particularly Orthodox Judaism, as a “dead works based religion” with no foundation in faith or spirituality.

I suppose there could be some truth to the accusation, particularly if performance takes on a life of its own to the degree that there is no apprehension of God. What’s the point if observance is just a list of arduous duties that impinge on a person’s relationship with God rather than enhancing it? I’ve heard stories of Jews who feel virtually bound and gagged by the Torah commandments, which is how most Christians see “the Law”. Of course, as we see from the quote above, there’s a flip side to a traditional Jewish life.

Every mitzvah should be performed with joy. One aspect of “mitzvah joy” is to do the good deed with all your energy and ability.

For example: Rather than offer a needy person a morsel of food, serve him a hearty meal!

-Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
Do Mitzvahs with Joy

A person who feels joy when performing mitzvahs will forget all his suffering and misfortunes. In comparison to becoming closer to the Almighty, of what import is pettiness and trivialities?

A person who experiences joy in doing good deeds will feel greater joy than a person who finds a large sum of money. Why should a person expend his efforts trying to find happiness in areas where the basis is transient and ultimately meaningless, when he has a far better alternative?

-R. Pliskin
Joy in Mitzvahs Greater than this World

Granted, Rabbi Pliskin’s viewpoint may not represent all Orthodox Jews everywhere, but I consider his perspective, as well as the Baal Shem Tov’s, to be the ideal that Jewish people shoot for or should shoot for. I’ve repeatedly heard people at the church I attend express joyfully how they are so glad we are no longer “under the Law” (even though Gentiles were never “under the Law”) and are free in Christ, as if performing even the slightest commandment from the Bible (such as loving God with all your resources or not considering things like bacon, shrimp, or catfish as food) in obedience to God would be an incredibly difficult thing.

Tell me Christians, if God asked you to do something like, oh, I don’t know, help someone who was beaten by robbers and left for dead, a person who you may not even like, getting them medical attention, and paying for it all out of your own pocket (Luke 10:25-37), would you tell God “no” because that would be “dead works” (and I’ve written about the true meaning of dead works before)?

Hopefully, you’d respond to my question by saying of course you’d obey God’s commandment to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31).

But it’s a commandment and one rooted in the Law (Torah). Of course they’re all rooted in the Torah, the instructions, the conditions God gave the Israelites at Sinai when He made His covenant with them. Granted, how the Torah is applied to grafted in Gentile disciples of the Master (Jesus) is different than how Torah was and is applied to Jewish people (including Jewish disciples of the Master), but we are still obligated to obey God in all that He desires in our lives.

How can you even question that?

The key to obeying God is joy.

Now this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

–2 Corinthians 9:6-7 (NASB)

Paul’s statement wouldn’t be out-of-place in any Jewish context, ancient or modern, and I think even the Baal Shem Tov would have agreed with him.

But this is a part of scripture that Pastors often preach from when they’re asking for an increase in tithes from their congregations, especially if the church elders have approved of a special project, an expansion of the church building, or if the church’s income is falling behind what they projected in their annual budget.

I agree that anyone who consumes a church’s resources should provide for the church’s income but how many people give tithes or increase their giving out of a sense of obligation, guilt, or even sometimes, intimidation? How many Christians give to their local church and other worthy causes out of sheer joy?

I can’t answer that last question, but hopefully, quite a lot. But my knowledge of human nature tells me that a Pastor who preaches that their congregation should give more when they tithe because of the sense of joy they’ll experience and that tithing will bring them closer to God might not see a resulting increase in congregational giving.

But that’s exactly the approach that should work if Christians obeyed all that God asks of them/us with joy.

Rabbi Joseph Albo, the 15th century author of the classic work Sefer Haikarim, writes: “Joy grants completion to a mitzvah, only through it does the mitzvah achieve its intended objective.” Similarly, Rabbi Elazar Azkari, 16th century Safedian scholar and author of the work Charedim, writes: “The main reward for a mitzvah is for the great joy in it.” “The reward is commensurate to the joy [with which the mitzvah is performed].”

Indeed, the 16th century Kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac Luria, known as the Arizal, once said that all that he achieved – the fact that the gates of wisdom and divine inspiration were opened for him – was a reward for his observance of mitzvot with tremendous, limitless joy!

-Davidson and Silberberg

But what’s the connection between obedience and joy? We don’t obey the traffic laws because it will increase our joy, we obey laws because we have to and we’ll be punished (by getting a traffic ticket, for instance) if we disobey (and are caught).

One of the most common misconceptions deals with the word “sacrifice.”

We often think of sacrifices in the Temple in terms of buying off an angry deity with lots of blood and guts.

Alas, these pagan ideas show how much our thinking has been influenced by other cultures. God is not lacking anything and does not need our sacrifices — animal or any other kind.The offerings that were brought in the Temple, like all the commandments, were not done for God. They were done for us.

In fact, the Hebrew word for sacrifice, korban, comes from the root korav meaning to “come close,” specifically, to come close to God. The offering was meant to bring someone who was far near once again.

To understand something of the intense, elevating experience that bringing an offering must have been, let’s take a look at a typical offering: the peace offering.

-Rabbi Shmuel Silinsky
Understanding the Sacrifices

Most Christians and even a lot of Jews, think of the ancient Temple sacrifices as bloody, horrible, messes that they’re glad don’t happen anymore. Many Christians and even many Jews don’t believe a third Temple will ever be built and are relieved that God never again will require anyone to offer animal sacrifices in Jerusalem. But if you click the link I provided and read all of Rabbi Silinsky’s commentary, you’ll see they are missing the point.

We Christians (most of us) also miss the point about joyfully performing the mitzvot and even actively looking for ways to perform a mitzvah. Could you imagine a Christian waking up one morning and the first thing that popped into his or her head was, “I can’t wait to find ways to serve my Lord today!”

OK, there probably are some Christians like that out there, but I suspect they aren’t all that common. I know that the first thing I think of in the morning is my getting my first cup of coffee.

Well, that’s not quite true.

I gratefully thank you living and existing King for returning my soul to me with compassion. Abundant is your faithfulness.

–Modeh Ani

That’s the first blessing an observant Jew will recite upon awaking in the morning. I memorized it (in English) and when I first wake up, even before throwing the covers off and getting out of bed, this is what I say.

Since coming to the conclusion a few years back, that Torah observance looks differently when performed by a Gentile than by a Jew (it’s a complicated topic), I severely scaled back on any behaviors that could appear “Jewish” (not that my observance was really, authentically Jewish). I didn’t do so because I think Torah observance is bad or that the mitzvot are a burden, but out of respect and honor to those special chosen people of God who received the Torah of Moses at Sinai, the Jewish people. Of course, being married to a Jewish wife was quite a motivator as well, since in no way do I desire to diminish or demean what it is for her to be a Jew.

But even if the rest of my day turns to doggie-doo, the very first thought I have is of God and being grateful to Him. Am I always truly grateful each morning? That is, do I feel a sensation, an emotional experience of gratitude? No, not always, and probably not most of the time. My brain is still foggy moments after I wake up. On the other hand, I do realize that I’m alive and that it’s because of God.

The last thing I think about before turning off the light and going to sleep is also of God.

A song of ascents. Praiseworthy is each person who fears Hashem, who walks in His paths. When you eat the labor of your hands, you are praiseworthy and it is well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the inner chambers of your home, your children like olive shoots surrounding your table. Behold! For so shall be blessed the man who fears God. May Hashem bless you from Zion, and may you gaze upon the goodness of Jerusalem all the days of your life. And may you see children born to your children, peace upon Israel!

Tremble and sin not. Reflect in your hearts while on your beds, and be utterly silent. Selah.

Master of the universe, Who reigned before any form was created, At the time when His will brought all into being — then as ‘King’ was His Name proclaimed. After all has ceased to be, He, the Awesome one, will reign alone. It is He Who was, He Who is, and He Who shall remain, in splendor. He is One — there is no second to compare to Him, to declare as His equal. Without beginning, without conclusion — He is the power and dominion. He is my God, my living Redeemer, Rock of my pain in time of distress. He is my banner, and refuge for me, the portion in my cup on the day I call. Into His hand I shall entrust my spirit when I go to sleep — and I shall awaken! With my spirit shall my body remain, Hashem is with me, I shall not fear.

–Bedtime Shema

This is only part of the full Bedtime Shema. I recite only this portion because, as a Gentile, I want my observance to not precisely mirror the performance of the mitzvah by a Jew. I must also admit that by this time of night, my brain isn’t working so well, and I have a difficult time concentrating on anything, including God, as I should, so a shorter form of this blessing seems more suitable. And yet I take comfort that as I surrender my consciousness, I’m also surrendering to God.

From a Jewish point of view, between the Modeh Ani and the Bedtime Shema blessings, is a world of opportunity to serve God by performing as many of the mitzvot as can be encountered in a single day and as Hashem offers them in their lives.

Lebisch: Rabbi! May I ask you a question?

Rabbi: Certainly, Lebisch!

Lebisch: Is there a proper blessing… for the Tsar?

Rabbi: A blessing for the Tsar? Of course! May God bless and keep the Tsar… far away from us!

–Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

I didn’t remember that dialog correctly. In my memory, I had the Rabbi respond, “My son, there is a blessing for everything,” and then he gave his humorous blessing about the Tzar.

But particularly in Orthodox Judaism, there is a blessing for everything. Just look at the table of contents of a siddur (Jewish prayer book). There are as many variations of the siddurim (plural for siddur) in Judaism as there are hymnals in Christianity. I just found an Ashkenaz online siddur at Chai Lifeline so you can have a look at the different blessings right now. And in a pinch, if a Jew did not have his or her siddur present but did have a device that could hit the Internet, they could still daven.

In the Church, we can choose to believe that all religious Jews are bound to a sterile, dead, spiritless set of archaic and meaningless laws that are designed to enslave them and that come straight from Satan and the pit of Hell. But that’s not the truth. It wasn’t true in the days when Jesus walked in Judea, it wasn’t true when Paul brought scores of Gentiles to faith in the Jewish Messiah, and it isn’t true today.

I can’t speak for every observant Jewish person and judge the intent of their hearts when performing the mitzvot anymore than I can speak for every Christian and judge their hearts when going to church, praying, visiting sick people in the hospital, and doing all those things they believe make up a good Christian life. Maybe some Jews pass up a BLT sandwich out of obligation rather than in joyful obedience to God, and maybe some Christians visit a sick relative in the hospital out of obligation rather than joyful obedience to Jesus.

But that doesn’t mean Judaism or Christianity are bad or worthless just because not all Jews or Christians don’t live up to the ideals set before them…before us by God. And when we do find a Jew or Christian who does live up to that ideal, a true tzaddik or saint, then it’s an amazing inspiration for the rest of us to try harder and do better at being the sort of person God designed us to be.

The animal has actually become a korban, a way of helping its owner to come closer to God. Eating this meal is now a very spiritual experience. It is being raised from the level of animal to that of human, by actually becoming a part of the consumer and by being the vehicle for the entire process.

One can easily see how a meal like this can be a focal point of holiday observance.

-R. Silinsky

Until Messiah comes and rebuilds the Temple, no animal sacrifices will be offered in Jerusalem. For the past nearly two-thousand years, Jews have considered prayer, Torah study, and performance of the mitzvot, as many as can be observed without a Temple, without a priesthood, and without a Sanhedrin, especially outside of Israel, as the substitutes for the sacrifices.

Christians believe that the crucifixion of Jesus substituted for all of the sacrifices rendering them obsolete and meaningless, right along with the rest of the Torah and observant Judaism.

The Church cannot imagine that anyone, Jew or Christian, can actually draw closer to God through any sort of action since behavioral obedience to God in any fashion is considered “dead works.”

But how can you ignore a life driven by the desire to serve God by serving other human beings? How can you deny a life motivated each day by looking forward to serving God in as many ways as you can, and even going out of your way to find opportunities to do good just for the sake of doing good?

I know calling joy a reward makes performance of the mitzvot seem self-serving rather than God-serving, but the joy isn’t in the doing, but the drawing nearer to God. Sure, we can pray, “God, please come nearer to me,” but why not demonstrate your desire by actually doing what God wants you to do? The “sacrifice of praise?” Sure. But we can praise God not just with our lips, but with our hearts, and our hands, and our feet, and our strength, and our compassion.

This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far away from me.

–Matthew 15:8 (NASB) quoting Isaiah 29:13

Anyone, Jew or Christian, can lifelessly go through the motions of obedience to God. That doesn’t invalidate either observant Judaism or Christianity. That doesn’t invalidate the intent of God for our lives. You can’t point to a Jew and say their less than stellar performance of the mitzvot, or even their complaints about said-observance, are proof that Judaism, including Messianic Judaism, is not God’s desired response of a Jewish life, anymore than you could invalidate Christianity based on the life of a lackluster Christian (and plenty of atheists try to invalidate Christianity by judging such Christians).

Praise God with your lips, just make sure your praise is backed up with your heart’s desire and the joy of serving your Master and His creations, all of humankind. Then you will draw nearer to God through His teachings.

The Torah of Hashem is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of Hashem is trustworthy, making the simple one wise; the orders of Hashem are upright, gladdening the heart; the command of Hashem is clear, enlightening the eyes; the fear of Hashem is pure, enduring forever; the judgments of Hashem are true, altogether righteous. They are more desirable than gold, than even much fine gold; and sweeter than honey, and drippings from the combs. Also, when Your servant is scrupulous in them, in observing them there is great reward. Who can discern mistakes? Cleanse me from unperceived faults. Also from intentional sins, restrain Your servant; let them not rule over me, then I shall be perfect; and I will be cleansed of great transgression. May the expressions of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart find favor before You, Hashem, my Rock and my Redeemer.

–Psalm 19:8-15 (Stone Edition Tanakh)

For more, see Why the Torah is the Tree of Life.

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David’s Fallen Tent in the Wilderness

May 22, 2014 James Pyles 13 Comments

The Torah states:

“And the Almighty spoke to Moshe in the wilderness of Sinai” (Numbers 1:1).

Why does the Torah specify “the wilderness” of the Sinai desert? It would have been sufficient to say “in the Sinai desert”; everyone knows that deserts are wildernesses.

The Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah comments on this verse, “Whoever does not make himself open and free like a wilderness will not be able to acquire wisdom and Torah”. This refers to having the trait of humility which allows a person to learn from everyone and to teach everyone.

An arrogant person will only be willing to learn from someone he feels is befitting his honor. A humble person is only concerned with gaining Torah knowledge and will be grateful to learn new ideas even from one who has less overall knowledge than himself.

The Midrash teaches that the Torah was given on Mt. Sinai because Mt. Sinai was the lowest of all the mountains. This symbolizes that if a person wants to receive wisdom he must be humble. If he is full of himself there is little room for anything else.

-Rabbi Kalman Packouz
Commentary on Torah Portion Bamidbar
Based on Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s book
Growth Through Torah
Aish.com

Wow, speaking of arrogance and humility. Rabbi Pliskin’s message as presented by Rabbi Packouz came along at the right time.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been pondering my wife’s accusation of my being arrogant in my approach to attending church and presenting my particular (and from their point of view, unique) perspective on the Bible, the Messiah, Jewish people, and Judaism. How dare I walk into someone else’s house and tell them they should redecorate, what color to paint the walls, and that their taste in art is hideous?

Well, hopefully, I wasn’t that bad, but sometimes it feels like it.

As Ben Zoma said:

Who is one that is wise? One who learns from every person.

Pirkei Avot 4:1

I am inexorably drawn toward learning from Jewish sources, and yet when I try to enthusiastically share what I’ve learned with my fellow Christians, I feel like I’m the only guy in the room speaking Martian.

Interestingly enough, I have learned a lot by going to church. Not so much in the areas of theology or doctrine, although it’s been illuminating to capture the Evangelical perception of theology and doctrine, but in the areas of history, both Church history and the more generic kind, church social dynamics, and…brace yourself…kindness.

No matter how much of a pest I make of myself, people are still smiling at me, reaching out to me, offering to listen to my woes (should I ever share them in person), and to pray for me.

Who is wise? One who learns from every person, including every person at church. Yes, there is much to learn. I have to remember that church isn’t just theology and doctrine, it’s action. It’s the perpetual food drive I donate to every time I go to church, dedicated to feeding the hungry in our local community. It’s the missionary effort around the world, serving people who have never heard of the compassion of Christ, it’s visiting the sick, offering comfort to the grieving, providing care and education for little children.

“What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.”

-John Ruskin

Ironically, most Christians are so “works-phobic” that they don’t count their own good deeds (mitzvot) as really meaning anything in the cosmic economy of God, more’s the pity, because it’s what the Church does best.

I don’t have as much to complain about as I think:

“A child, for example, cuts his finger and screams the house down. An adult cuts his finger and gets on with life. Children live in the here and now, so a child has no context for his pain. There is no meaningful future to look forward to, just the immediacy of the pain. An adult realizes that the pain will pass and life will be good again in spite it. He doesn’t suffer. And, by the way, why is it that when you hug and kiss a child the pain seems to go? It’s not the pain that goes, it’s the suffering. You have given the child a meaningful context for the pain – the context of a parent’s love. The child still feels the pain, but with a newfound context for it, he no longer suffers.

“An adult must find his own meaning in his pain. Sometimes it is obvious, as in the case of a woman in labor. Sometimes it is a little harder. But when he or she can look at the pain as a means to grow, a means to develop deeper self-understanding, then the pain remains, but the suffering will be forgotten.

“Everyone goes through pain in life. But not one of us has to suffer if we do not want to.

“Again, the choice is ours.”

-Rabbi Packouz

R. Packouz is referring to tremendous human suffering and agonizing pain, not simply being frustrated when people around me don’t take my point of view seriously. What I am experiencing isn’t as painful as even a child’s cut finger. But I still gave in to the temptation to say, “ouch.”

I’ve started reading Sue Fishkoff’s book The Rebbe’s Army, and in the first chapter, she relates (pg 17):

The Besht’s (the Baal Shem Tov or Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer) message was revolutionary. His followers broke with certain Jewish norms, adopting specific dress and customs and making ritual modifications, all of which horrified the Jewish establishment.

I don’t know if I’ve “horrified” anyone, but I’m certainly shaking up the establishment here and there. Fishkoff also writes of the Besht:

“I have come into this world to show man how to live by three precepts,” he said. “Love of God, love of Israel, and love of the Torah.”

If I can have a similar purpose within my own context, then it wouldn’t be just me wielding my opinion like a sword, but the will of God to teach how to love and how to focus love.

Not that my fellow Christians are ignorant about love. Many, as I’ve said above, love greatly and demonstrate that love abundantly, particularly to the Jewish people. I just want to help illustrate that there is no dissonance between loving the Jewish people, loving Israel, loving the Torah, and loving God. There is no dissonance between loving Jewish people and realizing that means accepting and approving Jewish people loving the Torah, loving Israel, and loving God, including Messianic Jewish people.

Since I frequently read material published online by Aish.com, I often come across quotes of Rabbi Pliskin’s work, such as the one I cited above. I decided it was long past due to actually purchase one of his books, so after I finish Fishkoff’s book, I’ll be consulting (since it’s a Torah commentary) Growth Through Torah.

From what I can tell about R. Pliskin from his writing, he seems to stress compassion and kindness toward others. He seems like the sort of person who desires peace in the world and peace between people, rather than always banging heads over this theological point or that.

In many ways, we are at war in the world, battling against ignorance, hostility, brutality, and indifference, but if all we do…I do is fight, then I’ve simply redoubled my efforts after forgetting my purpose (a lesson I learned from Chuck Jones when he was describing his philosophy behind creating Wile E. Coyote to a film class I once attended).

I still don’t want to be too quick in deciding what I’m going to do next, so I’m not going to hastily pursue a conclusion.

On the other hand, there is this…

Giving up is a final solution to a temporary problem.

-anonymous holocaust survivor

And this…

While most Hasidim restrict their personal dealings to Jews, and some even to Jews within their own ultra-Orthodox communities, Lubavitchers have never been insular. Their first interest is in kindling the sparks within Jewish souls, but since the early 1980s they have widened their appeal to include non-Jews, whom they urge to remain within their own religions while obeying the seven laws God gave to Noah … This is crucial because only when all God’s divine sparks are released and reunited with the Divine Oneness will God’s purpose be achieved. “Our job is to make a dwelling place for God in the lower world,” says Rabbi Sholtiel Lebovic … “We try to make the world a more and more godly place, until the coming of Moshiach [the Messiah].”

-Fishkoff, pg 22

Although many Orthodox Jews, including Chabadniks, look down their noses at Gentiles and particularly Christians, here we see a perspective that acknowledges all human beings are “sparks” thrown off by the Divine Oneness, and only by all of those sparks being united with their Source can the world be prepared for the coming (return) of the King.

I’m one of those small sparks. But so is each and every individual soul at the church I attend, and each and every individual soul in all of the churches in the world. They’re just waiting for someone to discover them, reveal them, and free them, so they can fly…so they can soar.

I should take a fresh look at the blueprints for that tent again and see if God really wants me to help build it.

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Sermon Review of the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews: Repentance from Dead Works, Part 1

May 21, 2014 James Pyles 3 Comments

What are the basic teachings of Messiah mentioned in Hebrews 6:1-3? Discover the meaning of “repentance from dead works” in this eighteenth installment of sermons on the epistle to the Hebrews.

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Sermon Eighteen: Repentance from Dead Works, Part 1
Originally presented on June 1, 2013
from the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews sermon series

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.

–Hebrews 6:1-3

I recently finished reading Lancaster’s book Elementary Principles: Six Foundational Principles of Ancient Jewish Christianity (It’s also available free through a special offer through June 3rd), so I’m getting this material both in the audio recordings from last year’s sermon series and in writing. In fact, yesterday, I read all of the material in the book that I listened to this morning (as I write this), so it’s all been reenforced.

But maybe you haven’t heard the audio or read the book, so I’ll be glad to review this for you.

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. Again he sent out other slaves saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.”’ But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.

“But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

–Matthew 22:1-14 (NASB)

I’ve never understood what the wedding clothes this fellow lacked had to do with anything, so I was glad yesterday (more than a week ago as you read this) when Lancaster answered that for me.

But first things first.

Lancaster says this parable of the Master is pretty easy to understand (except for the clothes part). A father is holding a wedding feast for his son and invites many guests from all walks of life. In the parable, the father is God and the son is Messiah. The banquet is the Kingdom of God, the Messianic Age. But the wedding clothes?

We’ll get to that.

Lancaster paused to do a brief summary of last week’s sermon about the rather anemic gospel preached by much of the Evangelical church and how what Lancaster preached last week would require a major paradigm shift for most Christians (Lancaster referred to himself as a “recovering Evangelical”).

Although the Church typically preaches salvation through grace, often they miss the very first elementary principle in the Gospel: repent!

The first elementary principle cited in Hebrews 6 is to repent from “dead works.” What are “dead works?”

From an Evangelical point of view, that’s easy. Dead works are works of the Torah. Easy answer and dead wrong, based on a two-thousand year old mistake made by the ancient “Church Fathers” which, according to New Testament scholar Magnus Zetterholm, may not have been a mistake at all but a set of deliberate acts designed to separate Gentile Jesus-belief from its Jewish counterpart and create a wholly new and separate religion called “Christianity.”

So it stands to reason if the basic foundation upon which our Christian theology and doctrine rests is an effort to make a faith stripped of its Jewish origins and original meaning, then we’ve probably got it all wrong.

So what is Messianic Judaism’s answer for “dead works?” After all, the Jewish writer of the Hebrews epistle addressing Hellenistic Jews in and around Jerusalem who were in danger of apostasy and falling away from faith in the Jewish Messiah could hardly be expected to increase their faith by being told to repent of observing the mitzvot of God, could they? Would that have made any sense at all? Did Jesus replace the Torah of Moses with a truncated gospel of “believe in me and when you die, you’ll go to Heaven?”

So if dead works aren’t works of the Law, what are they?

Sin.

For the wages of sin is death…

–Romans 6:23 (NASB)

Repent, not from works of Torah, but from works of sin because they lead to death. It was the Master’s central message.

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

–Matthew 4:17 (NASB)

In Christianity, we are taught that we will die, not because of our own sins, but because of Adam’s. If we do nothing at all and never come to faith in Christ, we will die, be condemned by Jesus at the final judgment, and go to Hell forever.

Lancaster says in Judaism, there is a close association between human mortality and sin as well, but not Adam’s sin.

“Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.”

–Deuteronomy 24:16 (NASB)

Lancaster also uses Numbers 27:3, Ezekiel 18:20, Romans 5:12, and Romans 6:16 to expand on this point. We are all, each and every one of us, responsible for our sins, and the Law of sin is death. The only thing this has to do with the Torah is how we define sin.

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.

–1 John 3:4 (NASB)

So according to John, the law (Torah) isn’t bad at all, and in fact, those who disobey the Torah practice lawlessness, which is the same thing as sin. Violation of Torah or lawlessness equals sin. Conversely, observance of the Torah mitzvot, as they apply to us (and they apply differently for Jews and Gentiles in Messiah), equals obedience to God.

How the Torah does and doesn’t apply to different groups is beyond the scope of this discussion, but know, as I’ve just said, that lawlessness or disobedience to God’s covenant conditions is equal to sin and we are required to repent from lawlessness (sin) as the absolute first step in responding to the true Gospel message. “Repenting” from the Torah, that is, forsaking observance of the commandments (as Evangelical Christians believe Hebrews 6:1 should be interpreted), for a Jew, believer or otherwise, constituted sin in the days of the apostles, just as it constitutes sin for Jewish people today.

I found it interesting, in mentioning his childhood and being raised in an Evangelical Christian home, that some of the “sins” Lancaster was taught to avoid were smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, dancing (presumably with girls), and going to the movies.

You can’t find any of those actions prohibited in the Bible.

But…

…but Lancaster, though he made fun of these prohibitions as a teen, sees them now as “fences.” Christians often criticize Rabbinic Judaism for putting “fences around the Torah,” which means taking the basic prohibitions we find in the Bible and adding more prohibitions around them. For instance, Biblically, Shabbat begins at sundown on Friday night, but Rabbinically, it begins a certain number of minutes before sundown. Why? Because if people are taught it starts sooner, they won’t be tempted to “push the limit,” so to speak, trying to get one more thing done before the sun goes down, and thus avoid accidentally continuing to work when Shabbat actually arrives.

So smoking, drinking, dancing, and movies aren’t inherently sinful, but Lancaster can see, especially for young people, how each of these activities could potentially lead to actual sins. It’s an interesting principle to me, mainly because we see Christianity of a generation ago behaving just like Judaism.

Today, we often see almost no difference between the behavior of a Christian and a secular person. We go to the same movies, engage in the same recreation, do the same things pretty much, and except for going to Church on Sunday and maybe a Bible study on Wednesday, most Christians are exactly the same as most other people.

But aren’t we saved by grace? Who cares what we do? We aren’t saved by what we do, only by what we believe. Is that what the Bible says?

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

–Galatians 5:19-24 (NASB)

But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

–Ephesians 5:3-5 (NASB)

Don’t worry. Lancaster isn’t saying that we save ourselves by what we do, but look at this. Paul isn’t saying “just believe and you’ll be righteousness.” Oh no. He’s saying if you do these things you’ll be considered righteousness. If you don’t, you have no inheritance in the Kingdom of God.

It all sounds so legalistic. But that’s what Jesus taught.

So what must we do to be saved? Repent. Without repentance, we have no part of Jesus or the Messianic Kingdom.

No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.

–1 John 3:6 (NASB)

Our righteousness isn’t “filthy rags” at least the way we have typically been taught. You might want to read Derek Leman’s commentary on the matter.

OK, repentance isn’t exactly an unknown process for many Christians and I bet a lot of believers repented of their sins when they came to faith. But for some people, that was a long time ago. If you repented once in 1976 or in 1998, what does that mean? Have you sinned lately? For some people, they repent only once a year, on Easter or Yom Kippur. Have you sinned recently?

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. (emph. mine)

–Luke 9:23 (NASB)

Lancaster mentioned the example of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak in his audio sermon, but I’m going to take the quote from the Elementary Principles book to make sure I don’t leave out anything:

The famous Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev used to repent every night before saying his evening prayers (Maariv). Every evening, the rabbi of Berditchev examined his heart, what he had done on that day, and repented over every flaw he discovered. For each sin that he discovered, he said, “Levi Yitzchak will not do this again.” Then he chided himself, “Levi Yitzchak said exactly the same thing yesterday!” And he added, “Ah, but yesterday, Levi Yitzchak did not speak the truth. Today, he does speak the truth.”

-Lancaster, pg 41

Many Christians have been taught a false gospel, one that says they only have to believe and they will be saved. Evangelical Christianity is good about teaching us what to believe but not what to do. The Church has experienced a significant and even (eternal) life-threatening mission drift, failing to make the much-needed course corrections for the past twenty centuries since we were first set upon this journey as the body of Messiah by the Jewish apostles and disciples of our Master.

I’ve written a great deal about repentance lately, and I don’t think enough can be said on this. Neither does Lancaster, even though repentance should be a pretty elementary teaching of the Church. It was in the Messianic synagogue in the mid-first century, but much of that Jewish doctrine has been lost.

The path of repentance leads to joy. “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). The rabbis said, “Better is one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world than the whole life of the world to come.” In his book Love and the Messianic Age, Messianic Jewish pioneer Paul Levertoff says, “The sinner, in whose soul the light of the divine fire has been quenched, is greater, when he repents, than the righteous who have no need for repentance.” The place of the penitent sinner is even greater than that of the righteous person who does not need to repent, because the sinner throws himself entirely into the arms of God.

-ibid, pg 45

Now what about those wedding clothes?

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, “Write, ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’”

–Revelation 19:7-9 (NASB)

The wedding clothes are the righteous deeds of the saints, the tzadikim. One who enters the banquet without wedding clothes can be compared to one who attempts to enter the Kingdom of God without repenting of sin, turning to God, and doing good in his life.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”

–Matthew 7:21-23 (NASB)

The words of the Master recorded by Matthew make so much more sense when put in their proper context, don’t you think?

Repentance and salvation cannot be separated. One does not receive salvation unless they repent and repent often.

Some think life is all about doing good and keeping away from evil.

To them, struggle has no purpose of its own—to have struggled is to have failed. Success, they imagine, is a sweet candy with no trace of bitterness.

They are wrong, tragically wrong. Struggle is an opportunity to reach the ultimate, when darkness itself becomes light. In the midst of struggle, an inner light is awakened. Light profound enough to overwhelm the darkness, encasing it and winning it over.

But if darkness never fights back, how will it ever be conquered?

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

Although this is the end of the chapter in Lancaster’s book, in the sermon series, Lancaster isn’t finished with the topic of “repenting from dead works.” He presents the second part next week…and so will I.

What Did I Learn?

I learned about wedding clothes and the close connection between sin, repentance, forgiveness, a life dedicated to God, and the joy, not only of someday entering the Kingdom, but of (in some ways) entering the Kingdom right now.

It’s easy to forget to repent. I know that sounds strange. Maybe that admission on my part makes me sound like a terrible person. Maybe all of you reading this, like Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, repent daily and on a regular evening schedule. Frankly, by the time I’m ready to end the day, my brain and attention span isn’t worth much. Some nights, I can barely recite the last few paragraphs of the Bedtime Shema.

But as you know if you’ve been reading this blog regularly, repentance is something I’ve been focusing on a great deal, not only in my writing but in my life. I can’t say that I’m really good at it. For some things, even approaching the idea of repenting feels threatening and scary. I don’t know what I’m afraid of exactly. Who’d be afraid of getting closer to God? But we’re all afraid of change, even if the change is beneficial.

What I learned, though, is that I won’t get into the banquet without dressing for the occasion, none of us will. That’s more than just saying “I’m sorry” to God. That’s more than just changing my mind about something. Repentance is a dedicated and detailed process that like any skill (yes, I think it’s a learned skill), takes practice, practice, practice.

But then, so does establishing and maintaining any relationship, especially as a bride to the groom, especially in the intimacy of a child to a Father.

I fall down and go ker-splat dozens of times a day. Thank God at the end of each day (or several times a day), I can turn back to my Father and turn my heart inside out, spilling all the regret, anguish, pain, and sorrow at His feet and in my own way say, “James will not do this again,” but “James said exactly the same thing yesterday! Ah, but yesterday, James did not speak the truth. Today, he does speak the truth.”

Today, let me repent and let me speak the truth, and let me continue to speak the truth as the day ends and the shadows gather. For in repentance, the shadows are swept away and in joy, there is light.

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Collapsing the Tent of David

May 20, 2014 James Pyles 29 Comments

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”

–Genesis 2:18 (NASB)

Then Paul took the men, and the next day, purifying himself along with them, went into the temple giving notice of the completion of the days of purification, until the sacrifice was offered for each one of them.

–Acts 21:26 (NASB)

One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats, does so for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God.

–Romans 14:5-6 (NASB)

You’re probably wondering what those different portions of scripture have in common. Actually, relative to my experiences last Sunday, quite a lot.

The topic of both the sermon and the Sunday school class at church was Acts 21:15-26. It was a source of a great deal of frustration for me, but I have to be thankful to Pastor Randy for cluing me in about something first.

He reminded his audience of the great accomplishments of the Jewish people and Israel across the centuries, and made sure that we all got the idea that God didn’t do away with the Old Testament (Tanakh), the nation of Israel, and the Jewish people.

He also let us know that, in the debate over whether or not Paul did the right thing by paying the expenses of the four men under a vow at the Temple and offering sacrifices, over half of those historic and modern scholars upon whom Pastor depends for his research strongly believe that not only did Paul make a mistake, but that he sinned by participating in the Temple rites.

Fortunately, Pastor doesn’t agree with that opinion (and neither do I) and in listening to various people conversing after the sermon, I was relieved to hear that most (but not all) of the people around me have the same opinion as Pastor.

But Pastor kept repeating that offering sacrifices doesn’t atone for sins, it never did. This reminded me of time after time during our previous private discussions, when talking about the continuation of Torah observance for the Jewish people including Jewish believers, he kept stressing the same point.

However, while listening to the sermon, I had something of a minor revelation similar to the one that resulted in me writing The Two-Thousand Year Old Christian Mistake.

You see, I agree with Pastor that the sacrifices in and of themselves have no power to atone for sins and to save a human being from the consequences of God’s justice. We are only saved through faith and out of that faith, we obey God. That’s what Paul and every other Jew who sincerely participated in the Temple rituals was doing. Obeying God out of faith.

So why beat up the Torah by saying it doesn’t save when I fully agree that simple, mechanical performance of the mitzvot with no intent or faith behind it is just going through the motions?

Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”

–Acts 15:1 (NASB)

This has alway puzzled me because circumcision (that is, the physical act of being circumcised and then observing the Torah commandments) isn’t what saves a person, and these gentlemen from Judea should have known that. Of course, they should have known that.

But that’s not what they meant.

When an Evangelical Christian reads that verse he or she thinks the Jews involved are saying that performing the mitzvot including the sacrifices in the Temple is what saves. But they were never meant to save. They are the conditions of the covenant relationship with God and that relationship in covenant, through faith, is what saves.

Oh duh.

Why didn’t I see this before?

The big hang up Christians have with the Torah is because of a misunderstanding of what the folks they call “Judaizers” were saying (Nanos more aptly refers to them as “influencers” since New Testament scholars can’t seem to agree on exactly who these people were. See The Irony of Galatians).

The “influencers” Paul refers to in his epistle to the Galatians and the Jews we hear from in Acts 15:1 weren’t saying that obeying the mitzvot and making the various sacrifices at the Temple would save the Gentile. They were saying that the Gentiles needed to be in a covenant relationship with God in order to be saved.

Especially for non-Jesus-believing Jews, the New Covenant times weren’t even on the horizon. How could they be? From their perspective, Messiah had not yet come. Thus, the Gentiles had no standing before God unless they became proselytes and entered into the Sinai covenant with God as converts to Judaism. Being a God-fearing Gentile might have been a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t a covenant relationship.

But Paul and many of the disciples of Yeshua (Jesus) knew that the New Covenant had been inaugurated with the death and resurrection of the Master, so through faith in Messiah, the Gentiles could be grafted in and benefit from the blessings of that covenant, which had begun to enter the world but had not yet completely arrived.

If you miss the distinction, that it’s being in a covenant relationship with God through faith that saves rather than just the literal behaviors of the conditions of a covenant, you completely misunderstand the Jews advocating for Gentile conversion.

These “Judaizers” or “Influencers” weren’t bad, awful, evil people. They may have had genuine concern for the Gentiles who had attached themselves to the Jewish religious movement of “the Way”. These Jews, some of whom could have been Jesus-believers with an incomplete understanding of the New Covenant blessings upon the Gentiles, may have been authentically puzzled why Paul was treating the Gentiles as if they were equal co-participants, both socially and in covenant, in Jewish religious life. They may have felt that the Gentiles couldn’t participate in covenant blessings without conversion, because they didn’t see any other way to reconcile the Gentiles to God.

Paul understood, but his viewpoint wasn’t always terribly popular with Jewish populations who didn’t apprehend his vision (figuratively and literally).

Once you figure it out, you realize the issue was never that the mitzvot saved, it was Covenant relationship. It always has been and it’s still the issue we struggle to comprehend today. Jews are the focus of almost all of the covenants we see in the Bible including the Sinai and New Covenants. Gentiles are included under a single provision of the Abrahamic covenant and by faith in Jesus, in the blessings of the New Covenant.

And that’s what I got out of last Sunday’s sermon, not that Pastor explained it that way, but by his preaching, I finally made the connection.

Things didn’t go so well in Sunday school. I was determined to make only one statement in class. I could have talked all day long about the Christian traditions that were being imposed on the text resulting in quite a few (in my opinion) erroneous assumptions being made by most of my classmates. One fellow pointblank told me Paul did sin because when Jesus was crucified, the sacrifices ended. I disagreed of course, and gave him a mini-explanation of what the Epistle to the Hebrews was really about, but I knew it was for nothing.

My Sunday school teacher heavily favors the sermons of John MacArthur and it is MacArthur’s opinion that the practice of Judaism by Jesus-believing Jews as we see it in the Book of Acts, was a transitional period between Jewish practice being within the will of God, and it being replaced by the grace of Jesus Christ, effectively extinguishing the “ceremonial laws” in the Torah.

Teacher said it was MacArthur’s opinion that God was being patient and tolerant of the Jesus-believing Jews, including Paul, who continued in devotion to Hashem by davening at the set times of prayer, offering sacrifices in accordance to the commandments, observing Shabbos, keeping kosher, and all of the other portions of the Law that had been “nailed to the cross with Jesus.”

But there’s an apparent contradiction. In Acts, Luke depicts Paul as very pro-Torah, pro-Temple, pro-Jewish people, and pro-Judaism. However, a number of Paul’s letters, principally Galatians, seem to cast Paul in the role of being anti-Torah. That was the foundation for my comment in class when the issue of Romans 14 and the identity of the “weak” and “strong” (basing my opinion on Nanos in The Mystery of Romans) came up.

It was like I was talking in a language no one in the room understood. I saw quite a few blank stares, like no one could figure out what the heck I was talking about. One fellow, who is quite intelligent and well-read (and who holds a highly traditional Evangelical Christian view on the Bible) referenced Romans 14:5-6 to explain that it was (at that time) OK to either observe the Law or not observe the Law as long as it was for the sake of the Lord.

In other words, no one even understood my question and so they had no idea they had completely missed my point.

I let it go rather than continue to be a source of confusion and aggravation and after all, teacher said this was a lesson about unity.

Unity. That totally baffled me until I realized he meant Paul agreed to undergo the Temple ritual and humble himself to James and the Elders in Jerusalem as kind of “going along to get along.” They saw Paul as compromising in order to keep the peace, rather than standing his ground about the lack of validity in Jewish tradition, custom, and observance.

There was no way anyone in the classroom could have possibly imagined that Paul might have wanted to offer sacrifices and looked forward to participating in the Temple ritual, especially during the Holy Festival of Shavuot (although they all acknowledged why Paul should have totally been jazzed about Pentecost…the Acts 2 Pentecost, not the Greek word for the Jewish moed).

I spent the rest of the class time in a forced silence, so I was in a “terrific” mood when I left church and made the ten or fifteen minute drive back home.

When I walked in the kitchen trolling for lunch, my wife made the mistake of asking me how church went, and I made the mistake of telling her.

Then she reminded me of her role according to God:

And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man is alone; I shall make him a helpmate opposite him.”

–Beresheet (Genesis) 2:18

The translation I found at Chabad.org is a bit different than you’ll find in most Christian Bibles, and as I understand it, implies that God created woman to oppose her husband under certain circumstances.

Women can often cut through the fog that surrounds a man’s mind and get to the core of a matter, whether we like it or not.

My wife told me I was being arrogant if I thought I was going to change anyone’s mind, especially if that was any part of the reason I was going to church.

I got mad at first, but spending some time in the backyard pulling weeds gave me time to think.

I have been arrogant. I’ve walked into someone else’s religious and social space with the assumption that I had anything to offer them; that I had anything they wanted at all.

As it turns out, I have nothing to offer and certainly nothing anyone at church wants to hear or learn. I may think what I’m learning and how I understand the Bible is worthwhile and illuminating, but obviously I’m in a world of people who don’t see things like I do.

I kind of thought that was the point, but I’m realizing I’ve been wrong. I have no right to impose my point of view or to disagree with the people who are running the show at church. It’s their church. I’m just a glorified guest. I’m not a member and I couldn’t become a member with my current perspectives and attitudes.

My Sunday school teacher’s emphasis on unity is really the Church’s (big “C”) attitude about community. People must agree with each other for the sake of peace and unity because Christians believe certain things.

Whenever I make some sort of theological statement that conflicts with how my wife sees her convictions, she tells me “what Jews believe,” which largely comes from the local Chabad Rabbi. He tells her what Jews believe and helps orient her to a Jewish religious perspective (not that she in any way is Orthodox). So I should have realized there are certain things Christians believe too, and making some sort of theological statement that conflicts with how people in Sunday school see their convictions elicits the same response from them as I get from my spouse.

I have been arrogant, and naive, and just plain stupid.

I feel like an idiot and I feel ashamed.

I also have to question why I’m going to church, any church. In his book Tent of David, Boaz Michael emphasized that the “Messianic Gentile” must have the right attitude, one of humility and fellowship, when returning to (or staying in) church and being a sort of “light to the nations…uh, Christians.”

But there’s a light you shine to help people see the path, and then there’s the really bright, annoying light you shine in people’s faces until they yell at you to turn the darn thing off.

If the “Tent of David” were inflatable, then I’d be guilty of letting at least some of the air out. I certainly feel deflated.

The Internet went out at my home on Sunday afternoon (long story) so I wasn’t able to write this blog post when my emotions were running high. That’s a good thing. I’ve had a day or so to mull things over and to cool off.

I know I disagree with most (or all) of the people at church about many things, and I have good reasons (whether anyone agrees with those reasons or not) why I believe what I do, but the people around me every Sunday morning are under no obligation whatsoever to care what I think and feel, particularly when it flies in the face of their Biblical and world view.

So I’ve got one of three options as I see it: Do what I’m doing now and continue to be an irritant not to mention desecrating the name of God, continue to go to church while keeping my big mouth shut and not participating in discussions, or leaving church and let bygones be bygones.

Frankly, in the eighteen months or so I’ve been going, I may have contributed a few positive things in church, but for the most part, no one knows what to do with me, or if they’ve made up their minds (and some have), they know they want nothing to do with me.

I’ve ruined more relationships, both face-to-face and online, by spewing my opinions and putting people off.

I’ve been letting the air out of David’s Tent or maybe I’ve been taking tools of mass destruction to it. I was supposed to be inflating it, constructing it, building it up, but now the thing is beginning to collapse around my ears. Maybe it should collapse around my mouth.

No, it’s not my mouth, it’s my attitude. I just got so caught up in what I know, that I forgot about what’s most important.

Any dispute which is for the sake of Heaven will ultimately endure, and one which is not for the sake of Heaven will not ultimately endure.

-Pirkei Avot 5:20

"When you awake in the morning, learn something to inspire you and mediate upon it, then plunge forward full of light with which to illuminate the darkness." -Rabbi Tzvi Freeman