Tag Archives: Torah

Reflections on Romans 3

July 25, 2014 James Pyles 5 Comments

For indeed circumcision is of value if you practice the Law; but if you are a transgressor of the Law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. So if the uncircumcised man keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? And he who is physically uncircumcised, if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the Law and circumcision are a transgressor of the Law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.

–Romans 2:25-29 (NASB)

Pour yourself a big cup of coffee and relax. This one is long.

It may seem a little odd to start a commentary on Romans 3 by quoting from Romans 2, but remember that I previously stated that my “reflections” on Romans series was an attempt to describe my impressions of this epistle as a complete unit, that is, a letter intended to be read all at once, rather than slicing and dicing it up into little sound bytes. The context of what Paul writes in the third chapter of this book (and remember, for Paul, this wasn’t a “book” nor did he actually divide his letter into chapters) spills over from what has come before it.

As a refresher, here’s how I ended my commentary on Romans 2:

If a Jew fails to perform a mitzvah, does he stop being a Jew? Does he become “uncircumcised?” This used to puzzle me. The whole “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh” thing has been used to justify calling Christians “spiritual Jews” and to support the old, tired theology of supersessionism. But I don’t think that’s what Paul is saying.

Paul is trying to inspire zeal for the Torah and for faith in Messiah in his non-believing Jewish brothers in Rome. How would he do that by insulting them and rejecting them? Worse, how would he do that by denigrating the Torah? He couldn’t.

But he could be saying that a Jew is justified before God if he is outwardly a Jew, that is, if he is obedient to the commandments, and if he is inwardly a Jew, that is, if he has faith in God and that faith is the motivation for obedience. The two go together…faith and works.

Paul, in my opinion, is saying that a Jewish person devoted to Hashem must be a Jew in his or her inward faith and also outwardly a Jew in behavior, in performance of the mitzvot. The two are inseparable to a complete Jewish identity.

And, if the Jewish person is boasting based on ethnicity and being a recipient of the promises but not also living a life of faith and obedience to God, then…

So if the uncircumcised man keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? And he who is physically uncircumcised, if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the Law and circumcision are a transgressor of the Law?

–Romans 2:26-27 (NASB)

So if a Gentile who is not circumcised, that is, who is not a Jew, nevertheless behaves as if he has a circumcised heart, that is, is obedient to God through faith in Messiah, then sees a Jewish person who is hypocritical, boasting in their ethnic identity but not “walking the walk,” so to speak, won’t that Gentile be justified in “pushing back” when the less-than-faithful Jew attempts to assert some sort of religious superiority over the Gentile based just on being ethnically Jewish?

And that’s where we start chapter 3:

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the benefit of circumcision? Great in every respect. First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God. What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it? May it never be! Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar, as it is written,

“That You may be justified in Your words,
And prevail when You are judged.”

–Romans 3:1-4 quoting Psalm 51:4 (NASB)

Remember, Paul created no chapter divisions, so he’s simply continuing his point from the previous portion of his letter.

So is Paul saying that being ethnically Jewish in and of itself meaningless? Are people who are ethnically Jewish but not obedient to the mitzvot or even imperfect in their attempts to be observant cut off from God? What advantage is there in being (just) ethnically Jewish, simply born into a covenant relationship with God?

“Great in every respect.”

In other words, being born into a covenant relationship with God all by itself still has great advantages and still orients the Jewish person, regardless of their behavior, to God, both as the focus of His love and, if they are disobedient, the focus of His discipline as outlined in the conditions (listed in the Torah) of the Sinai covenant.

Then Paul lists one of the advantages: “entrusted with the oracles of God.” That word “oracles” is also translated as “words,” “revelation,” “utterances,” and “truth”. This means (to me) that at a time when the entire world was worshiping idols of wood and stone and passing their infants through fire as some sort of fertility rite, only the Israelites were trusted to possess and commit themselves to the words of God, which we can interpret as the Torah, Prophets and the Writings, the Tanakh or the entire canonized Bible as it existed when Paul was writing to the Romans.

The Bible records many periods when Israel was faithful to God and many periods when she wasn’t. And yet, through it all, God was faithful and the Israelites remained His people, entrusted with his statues and ordinances.

Then Paul says, “So what if some Jewish people are unfaithful? Do you think that means God is going to stop being faithful to the Jews and abrogate his covenant promises? Absolutely not!”

So even if “every human being [is] a liar, God it true.” Then Paul quotes from Psalm 51:4, which is King David’s famous confession and plea to God after his sin with Batsheva. This is David’s admission of sinning against God alone and because he has sinned, David knows God is justified in judging him and God’s verdict against David is true.

To me, this says a couple of things. The first is that, because God and Israel are in a covenant relationship with each other, and that covenant relationship lists consequences if Israel, or any individual Jew such as David is faithless, then God is justified in disciplining the nation or the individual based on that relationship. This is what happened to David and I believe Paul is saying that individual Jews in his time would also receive consequences from God for faithlessness and sin specifically because they are in a covenant relationship with God.

In other words, just because God disciplines individual Jews or the entire nation of Israel doesn’t mean God has abandoned them and ended His covenant with them. Quite the opposite. It means that God is fully engaged with national Israel right down to the lives and behavior of each individual Jewish person. We Gentiles (Christians) have no right at all to say that God abandoned Israel in favor of “the Church.” Too bad “the Church” hasn’t read this passage of Romans in that particular light over the past nearly two-thousand years.

Was Paul concerned that Jesus-believing Gentiles were somehow “lording it over” Jews who were less than faithful or less than observant? According to Mark Nanos in his book The Mystery of Romans, Paul was admonishing the Jesus-believing Gentiles for parading their “freedom” (being “grafted in” to the blessings of the New Covenant promises without the requirement of undergoing the proselyte rite and being obligated to the full yoke of the Torah mitzvot) in front of the non-believing Jews with whom they were associating (along with Jesus-believing Jews) in a common synagogue setting and/or a common Jewish community context.

It may be (and this is just my “reflection”) that the Gentiles were encountering some Jewish non-believers who, not at all happy that Gentiles were being afforded equal social status and inclusion in Jewish community without converting to Judaism, were being boastful that they were ethnically Jewish, possessors of the “oracles of God,” and thus were to be accorded a superior status. The Gentiles to whom Paul is addressing may have been rather vocally stating that these Jews were indeed Jews “in the flesh” but their behavior in Torah observance and obedience to God was (in the Gentiles’ opinion) coming up short.

Paul then is telling these Gentiles not to be “knuckleheads” and “so what” if these Jewish non-believers aren’t perfect. They still have many advantages. Don’t rub their noses in the fact that Gentiles in Messiah are considered (at least by Paul) as equal co-participants in the covenant blessings and in Jewish worship and communal space.

But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is He? (I am speaking in human terms.) May it never be! For otherwise, how will God judge the world? But if through my lie the truth of God abounded to His glory, why am I also still being judged as a sinner? And why not say (as we are slanderously reported and as some claim that we say), “Let us do evil that good may come”? Their condemnation is just.

–Romans 3:5-8 (NASB)

I may not be getting everything Paul is trying to communicate here, but my sense is that Paul is saying, even though the Jews have many advantages just by being born Jewish, God is still justified in judging unrighteousness among them, even as He promised He would in the Torah. God “inflicting wrath” does not mean He’s unrighteous, that is, does not mean (as I said before) that God is abandoning His relationship with Israel. When any one in Israel is judged by God to have sinned, God is justified in inflicting discipline.

In verse 9, Paul says that relative to judgment for sin, the Jews do not have an advantage over the Gentiles due to their covenant relationship with God, because God is justified in condemning anyone who sins. No one is perfect. Everyone sins. Everyone can be under the “power of sin” (Romans 3:9 NIV).

In Romans 3:10-18, Paul weaves a number of different scriptures into his “none are righteous” part of the chapter, including Psalms 14:1-3; 53:1-3; Eccles. 7:20; Psalm 5:9; Psalm 140:3; Psalm 10:7 (see Septuagint); Isaiah 59:7,8 and Psalm 36:1.

Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.

–Romans 3:19-20 (NASB)

This continues Paul’s point that even if Jews are obedient to the mitzvot, obedience without faith does not justify one before God. Only faith and obedience. The whole world is accountable to God. Does that mean the whole world is obligated to the Torah mitzvot in the manner of the Jews? Some might conclude that we are based in this single verse. On the other hand, taking the larger Biblical narrative into account, we know that Israel was to be a light to the world, and up to the time of Messiah’s first advent, that light hadn’t been producing a lot of illumination.

But it’s by Israel’s light that the world was intended to be informed of God and His blessings, as well as be informed of what constituted both righteousness and sin. The Torah, among its many other purposes, defines what it is to disobey God and thus be condemned. But even an awareness of the Law and being behaviorally compliant is insufficient if there is no Kavanah or intension, sometimes expressed as “direction of the heart”.

Although Jews and the Gentiles in Messiah had different (overlapping) behavioral obligations, they were all judged based, not necessarily on the perfection of their performance, but on the presence or absence of faith, devotion, and motivation. All have sinned and fallen short of God’s expectations, but if a man like King David who sinned greatly with the affair and impregnation of the married woman Batsheva, the murder of her husband Uriah, and attempting to cover it all up by quickly marrying Batsheva after the mourning period for her husband’s death had passed, could still repent and be considered “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14) specifically because of the quality of David’s kavanah, then so could the less than perfect Jews Paul was referencing in his letter.

But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

–Romans 3:21-26 (NASB)

We might condense the above-quoted statement to say something like, “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested through faith in Jesus Christ.” That makes it seem as if faith in Christ has replaced the Law (Torah observance) as a means of being considered righteousness. Except that Torah observance was never considered a means of righteousness. Only faith.

Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

–Genesis 15:6 (NASB)

Abraham was considered righteous by God because of his faith, long before the Torah was given at Sinai and even before the commandment of circumcision as a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham. Thus it is faith that is the common denominator across all populations, Jewish and Gentile, that reckons anyone as righteous before a Holy God.

That seems to explain part of what Paul is saying in Romans 3:21-26, but what about faith in Jesus Christ, in Yeshua HaMashiach? Up until now, faith in Hashem, God of the Heavens was required. What changed?

The second elementary teaching of the Messiah in Hebrews 6:12 is called “faith toward God,” but how is this distinct from other first-century sects of Judaism? Even the Sadducees believed in God. Find out how Yeshua transformed the faith of his followers, and get a fresh handle on what it means to “believe in Jesus” and to be “born again.”

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Sermon Twenty: Faith Toward God
Originally presented on June 15, 2013
from the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews sermon series

That is exactly the question D.T. Lancaster answers in the above-quoted sermon in his “Hebrews” series, which I reviewed a number of weeks ago. I also mentioned this topic in a related blog post called Why No One Comes To The Father Except Through The Son.

What changed? Why was devotion solely to Hashem no longer the target to be aimed at for a devout Jew? Actually, that’s not what changed. As mentioned in both of my commentaries on Lancaster, the Jesus-believing Jews of “the Way” and the Pharisees had almost exactly the same set of beliefs about God. There was only a slight variance between them and you could almost call Paul and the other Jesus-believing Jews “Pharisees with a Messianic twist.”

You might say that God’s plan for the ultimate redemption of Israel had been progressing forward in time since Abraham. If you look at the pattern of the covenants, you’ll see God building, step by step, on His plan, establishing the promises with Abraham, carrying them out through Isaac, and Jacob, the exile of Jacob’s family to Egypt where they grew into a great multitude, the raising up of Moses and Aaron, leading them out of Egyptian slavery and on their many journeys, and culminating at Sinai with the establishing of the Mosaic covenant and the giving of the Torah, forming the nation of Israel as the light to the world.

But it didn’t end there. Even after possessing the Land, national Israel struggled. Their history is clear. Did God’s plan fail? Did Israel fail? No. The plan was incomplete. It was never meant to encompass just Israel, but the whole world through Israel.

That’s why the New Covenant was prophesied through Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and many other prophets. The New Covenant would be written, not on scrolls or tablets, but on the Jewish heart, so that Israel could finally perfectly observe the mitzvot with absolute kavanah and without sin.

Messiah, among other things, was the herald of the New Covenant. He brought the beginning of the inauguration of that Covenant with his birth into the world, receiving the Holy Spirit, his ability to heal, his correct teachings, his death and resurrection, and his promise to return.

He was the messenger of the next logical, Biblical, evolutionary step in God’s redemptive plan, his Good News to the nation of Israel, and through Israel’s redemption, the salvation of the world as well.

At each step in the plan, the Jewish people could continue to have faith in God or not. Many did. Some didn’t. The Bible records their fate. Messiah came not to say “believe in me instead of God” but “believe in me because of God for I am His messenger and through my message you can come fully and completely, in a way never before realized by any living Jew, to God the Father, Master of Legions, Author of Life.”

Another step and a really big one in God’s plan. Accept or reject. Faith or faithlessness. You choose.

The choice was given to Gentiles for the first time since the establishment of the Israelite nation. No longer would a non-Jew have to undergo the proselyte ritual and convert to Judaism. No longer would a Gentile be required to affiliate with a tribe or clan of Israel (as they did in the days of Moses). Now, because of the New Covenant promises and how they include the Abrahamic blessings to the nations, all people of every nation, tribe, and tongue can, through Messiah, come alongside Israel, just as it was prophesied, and take part in the covenant blessings of God by being grafted into the root.

Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one.

–Romans 3:27-30 (NASB)

Paul might be saying, so, having said all that, do Jews get to brag that they are justified and made righteous by being born Jews or even by observance of the mitzvot? No. Yes, being born Jewish and having the Torah has terrific advantages as I said, but ultimately, no one is justified by being born a Jew or by being physically circumcised. Justification, for a Jew or Gentile, comes only through a faith like Abraham’s.

I can see Paul really needing to make this point to the Gentile Jesus-believers reading the letter. I can see how they could be really confused in the face of non-believing Jews telling them that justification and righteousness comes only through being Jewish. Paul needed to set them straight and orient them and their Jewish counterparts, to the reality of the “law of faith”. God is a God of the Jews and a God to the Gentiles so both the Jews and Gentiles have their hope in Him through Messiah’s Good News.

But Paul has to be particularly careful. In emphasizing faith, he can’t be seen to diminish the reality and the vital importance of the Torah or of Jewish identity. Remember, the Jews still have many great advantages over the Gentiles (sorry, but it’s true) as possessors of the words of God. Israel was the original recipient of Torah, and is the total and complete object of the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and New Covenants. It’s only through Israel that the rest of us have any hope of salvation at all, so let’s not get cocky.

That explains the last verse in the chapter:

Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.

–Romans 3:31 (NASB)

Especially according to the entire context of the letter as it has been presented so far, Paul’s statement couldn’t be plainer. Faith does not nullify, do away with, fulfill (in the sense of abolish), abolish, replace, or complete (in the sense of abolish) the Law. Faith establishes the Law!

That is, through a completeness of Jewish faith, in this context, in God through Messiah, the Law is established, fully founded in a way never conceived or before or if conceived of, never accomplished before in Jewish lives.

Remember, we have to view all of this through the New Covenant. Jesus was bringing the New Covenant into our world. The evidence was the fact that even the Gentiles were receiving the Holy Spirit (see Acts 10) just as the Jews had (Acts 2). The New Covenant was going to radically change the relationship between the Jewish people, the Holy Spirit, and observance of the mitzvot:

“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

–Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NASB)

Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.

–Ezekiel 36:26-27 (NASB)

When the New Covenant reaches fruition, God will write the Torah on the heart, and each Jewish person (and ultimately the rest of us) will have an apprehension of God that is so complete, that they/we will know God, as the prophets knew Him, as Moses knew Him, with complete intimacy, and all Israel’s sins (and the Gentiles’ attached to Israel through Messiah) will be forgiven.

Further, a completeness of the Holy Spirit will be poured out so that it will be possible for Israel to totally observe all of the Torah ordinances perfectly and without sin.

This is what it means when Paul says, Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.

The Torah will be established in the New Covenant era in a way that it never could have been at any other time in history, for the conditions of God’s covenant with Israel will no longer be limited to being recorded on scrolls but will, in some mysterious manner, be written on the Jewish heart and soul, and Israel will be enabled by the Holy Spirit to finally, perfectly be in obedience to God as God requires through the Torah.

And we Gentiles who come to faith in the God of Israel through Messiah will be grafted in and be sharers of the covenant blessings, living in the resurrection under the reign of King Messiah in perfect peace and knowledge of Israel’s God.

“Run to pursue even a minor mitzvah and flee from a transgression.”

-Ben Azzai, Pirkei Avot 5:2

Next up: Reflections on Romans 4.

Shabbat Shalom.

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John MacArthur: What’s the Biggest Danger to the Church?

July 22, 2014 James Pyles 26 Comments

Famed pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, recently reacted to denominations that have taken more liberal approaches to gay marriage, among other issues, telling The Blaze that “they have no allegiance to the Bible.”

MacArthur, author of “Being a Dad Who Leads,” said that these denominations — like Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which recently voted to allow same-sex nuptials — and their associated seminaries have been skirting scriptural tenets for decades.

He patently described them as “false churches” that fail to teach biblical truths.

-Billy Hallowell
‘They Are Satan’s Church’: Famed Pastor’s Tough Message for Christian Denominations Condoning Homosexuality, Jul. 14, 2014
The Blaze

I guess you could say that John MacArthur is at it again. Nearly a year ago, he held his infamous Strange Fire Conference where he and a group of like-minded Pastors took Charismatics and the Pentecostal Church to task for their various failings as MacArthur sees them.

Now, he’s come up with a new label: “Satan’s Church.”

In this case, that appellation is used to describe the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (PCUSA) specifically because of their support of and advocacy for gay marriage in their churches. I wonder if there is another conference in MacArthur’s near future to be closely followed by another published book? I suppose he could save himself the trouble, since Michael Brown recently wrote his own book on gays and the church called Can You Be Gay and Christian?: Responding With Love and Truth to Questions About Homosexuality. Coincidentally, this book was released very soon after Matthew Vines’ God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships which I reviewed a couple of months back. I have also addressed other commentaries on this topic including a brief article describing MacArthur’s advice to Christian parents with gay children.

But believe it or not, I’m not going to talk about gays in the church (or gays at all) in this “meditation.” I’m not super-duper concerned about some liberal churches offering inclusiveness and equality to disenfranchised populations such at the LBGTQ community. If I have anything against the PCUSA church at all, it has to do with their current strategy of disinvestment from Israel. You know, Israel, where there’s currently a war going on (I picked that story from Arutz Sheva just because it is the most recent one published as I write this)?

It seems as if MacArthur’s reputation, what I know of it anyway, is built upon who or what he is against rather than who or what he supports. This is a pretty common tactic and I run into it all the time in the religious blogosphere. Actually, some of the more “notorious” blogs within my awareness have been rather quiet lately. Maybe people are learning that continually engaging in controversy and fomenting “us vs. them” arguments within the community of faith doesn’t really serve the cause of Heaven (but then, what am I doing now?).

Seems MacArthur hasn’t gotten the memo on this yet.

Frankly, if I had to choose between being upset because a church advocates for marriage equality or a church advocates throwing national Israel and the Jewish people under a bus, I’d get upset over the latter. If MacArthur wants to impress me (and I’m sure he doesn’t since my existence would be less than nothing to him…thankfully), he can stand up in support of Israel’s struggle against terrorism.

So I became curious. What does MacArthur think…not of the final destiny of Israel in God’s plan, but of Israel as she exists today?

It wasn’t easy to find out, at least in text form. I finally found a short video (two minutes, eleven seconds) where “Mac” put his opinion in a nutshell.

Basically he says that national Israel today is vulnerable, in constant danger, and the Jews are an abused and beleaguered people. Why? Because of God’s Divine judgment against Israel for rejecting her Messiah.

I hate to sound snarky but I sometimes wonder if MacArthur ever reads the Bible. I know he must because MacArthur is a staunch advocate of reading and studying the Bible (though I have issues with some of his study recommendations). It’s one of his strengths and he encourages every Christian to read the Bible frequently:

Bible study begins with reading. Yet, quite frankly, a lot of people never get to that point. At best, they nibble at the text. They may read books about the Bible or devotional materials loosely based on it, but they don’t read the Bible itself. Good Christian books and magazines that supplement your Bible reading are fine, but there is no substitute for reading Scripture.

Which makes it all the more difficult for me to understand where MacArthur got the crazy idea that God would ever judge or punish Israel for rejecting the Messiah. The Torah is replete with the conditions Israel must meet to obey God and the consequences for disobedience. Over the many years I’ve been reading and studying the Torah and the rest of the Bible, I have never found even a single verse where God directly addresses Israel stating that they would be exiled, abused, punished, judged, beleaguered, or anything else, specifically for rejecting the Messiah.

In fact, the Torah, the whole Tanakh (Old Testament) really, barely addresses the Messiah, particularly in terms of Israel’s acceptance or rejection of him. There are no blessings for recognizing and welcoming the Messiah and no consequences for failing to recognize or rejecting the Messiah.

Period.

So Israel’s exile from her Land nearly two-thousand years ago, the destruction of the Temple, the razing of Jerusalem, had nothing to do with “rejecting Jesus.” Orthodox Judaism tends to believe the most recent exile was due to the baseless hatred of one Jew for another although there are other opinions. If you want a more Biblical approach, study Torah Portion Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8) and read a few commentaries for good measure. If you find anything in the curses about rejecting Jesus, please let me know.

While MacArthur’s opinion about the reason for Israel’s exile can’t be supported by the Bible, he also believes Israel continues to exist because God is going to save Israel. In the above-mentioned video, MacArthur states that just before all the nations of the Earth turn against Israel and go to war against her, God will save Israel by having them accept Jesus as the Messiah. Once they do and the worldwide attack against the Jewish nation begins, God will defend Israel:

“I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo. The land will mourn, every family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Levi by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself and their wives by themselves; all the families that remain, every family by itself and their wives by themselves.

–Zechariah 12:10-14 (NASB)

In searching for material regarding MacArthur’s views on the modern state of Israel, I came across a 2009 commentary by Russell D. Moore called Should We Support Israel? which says in part:

Dispensationalists have served the church by pointing us to our responsibility to support the Jewish people and the nation of Israel through a century that has seen the most horrific anti-Semitic violence imaginable.

We need not hold to a dispensationalist view of the future restoration of Israel (and I don’t) to agree that such support is a necessary part of a Christian eschatology (and I do).

Novelist Walker Percy pointed to the continuing existence of Jewish people as a sign of God’s presence in the world. There are no Hittites walking about on the streets of New York, he remarked.

There does appear to be a promise of a future conversion of Jewish people to Christ (Rom 9-11). The current secular state of Israel is not the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham; Jesus is.

That seems to be more or less what MacArthur is saying. There’s nothing “special” about current, secular Israel and its only unique quality is that God made an eternal promise to that nation above all other nations and God will fulfill His promise by redeeming Israel in the eschatological future. He seems to miss that Israel’s existence at all is a miracle of God and the beginning of His fulfillment of His promises to restore national Israel and return the Jewish exiles to their Land. In fact, less than a week ago, 400 Jews made aliyah from France even in the face of the current hostilities with Hamas. Those French Jews returning to their homeland are a dramatic indication that God, even now, is making good on His prophetic Word to Israel.

But along with Moore, MacArthur appears to think that all of the Jewish people will turn to Jesus, that is, convert to Christianity (though they’ll remain ethnically Jewish) and only then God will save them from their enemies.

That’s hardly the way I’d put it since such a viewpoint devalues current Israel and all Jewish people living today, and also replaces the Jewish people as a distinct entity with “the Church”.

Based on MacArthur’s video, he likely sees the current battles between Israel and Hamas as just another expression of God’s Divine judgment against an unbelieving Jewish nation. That would make the vicious terrorist organization Hamas an instrument of God’s judgment against the Jews, the latest in a long, long list, according to how a lot of Evangelicals see Jewish history. The Church can be very hard on Israel. More’s the pity.

In Sunday school class recently, when Charlie was asking for prayer requests, I asked for prayer for Israel. Apparently citing Psalm 122:6, he said we (Christians) are commanded to pray for the peace of Israel. You don’t hear about Christians being commanded to do very much typically, particularly in a Church setting. It was refreshing.

Yes, we should pray for the peace of the only nation that has had God as their King, the world’s only fully functional theocracy, and the only nation that is the direct object of all of the New Covenant promises of God.

MacArthur needs another windmill to tilt at and this time he’s chosen the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) because of their views on gay marriage. Will gays in the Church be a big focus of God’s as His redemptive plan for Israel and the rest of the world continues to move forward? How many prophecies are there regarding homosexuality within the covenant community vs. how many are there about the New Covenant, the Messianic Kingdom, and the redemption of national Israel? I’ll let you do the math.

For me, at the end of the day, it’s not that I’m against PCUSA, but rather that I stand with Israel because God stands with Israel…and He will take care of her.

“And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

–Genesis 12:2-3 (NASB)

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Balak: What Do We Do When Israel Is Cursed?

July 3, 2014 James Pyles 20 Comments

Balak, the king of Moav, wanted to hire Bilaam to curse the Jewish people for a fortune of money. It is interesting that Balak believed in God and the power of invoking a curse from God, yet thought that God would change His mind about His Chosen People.

-Rabbi Kalman Packouz
from “Shabbat Shalom Weekly”
Commentary on Torah Portion Balak
Aish.com

In this week’s Torah portion, the King of Moab, very fearful of the armies of Israel camped practically at his doorstep and knowing he couldn’t defeat them in a military operation, chose to hire the greatest known Gentile prophet, Bilaam, to curse the Israelite nation. It is said that “I will bless those who bless you and he who curses you, I will curse” (Genesis 12:3) but that hasn’t stopped an endless stream of individuals and nations from trying, sometimes (seemingly) very successfully, to curse the Jewish people. Even a casual glance at Jewish history over the past several thousands of years reveals this.

I suppose then, I shouldn’t be surprised at the latest atrocity I’ve discovered aimed at the Jews and their nation Israel. No, in this case, I’m not taking about the tragic murders of the three teenage boys Gilad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel, and Eyal Yifrah, though certainly they are always on my mind. I’m talking about something my wife sent me via email a yesterday.

The debate over the New York Metropolitan Opera’s performance of “The Death of Klinghoffer” raises serious questions about the functioning of American Jewish leadership.

Leon Klinghoffer was a 69-year-old wheelchair- bound American Jew who, in 1985, with his wife and 11 friends, celebrated his 36th wedding anniversary on the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, that was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. Klinghoffer was taken aside, shot and dumped overboard in his wheelchair.

The opera based on these events was composed by John Adams and the librettist was Alice Goodman, a convert from Judaism who is now a priest in the Anglican Church.

The opera was intentionally titled the “death” – not murder – of Klinghoffer, and purported to present “both sides of the equation.” The Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said that Adams sought “to understand the hijackers and their motivations, and to look for humanity in the terrorists, as well as in the victims” and enable the “audience to wrestle with the almost unanswerable questions that arise from this seemingly endless conflict and pattern of abhorrent violent acts.” In other words: present the murderers and their victims as morally equivalent.

The opening scene honors terrorists. With a backdrop of graffiti on a wall proclaiming “Warsaw 1943, Bethlehem 2005,” Jews wearing kippot and headscarves enter the stage and plant trees on what is conveyed to the audience as plundered Arab territory.

The Palestinian chorus sings, “My father’s house was razed in 1948 when the Israelis passed over our street.” The Palestinians sing, “We are soldiers fighting a war. We are not criminals and we are not vandals but men of ideals.”

-Isi Leibler
“Candidly Speaking: The ‘Klinghoffer’ opera and the American Jewish establishment”
The Jerusalem Post, June 30, 2014

What is stunning is that the opera premiered in Brussels in 1991, as well as in various locations in the U.S., and is still going. It was cancelled in Boston after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but in 2014, the New York Metropolitan Opera scheduled a major global performance as well as a launch in over 70 U.S. theaters with a plan to simulcast the production to 2,000 theaters in 66 countries — an audience of millions of people.

This is crazy. You’re talking about a worldwide effort to glorify and praise terrorism and to somehow justify the murder, not just of Jewish people in general, but a 69-year-old wheelchair bound American Jew. You may remember the Achille Lauro incident. I certainly do. Time should never erase the stench of injustice and unavenged wrongs.

The fact that the opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” praises murderers and terrorists whilst justifying the killings of innocent Jewish people, including the infirm and disabled, is nauseating. That this story should appear so closely to the recent deaths of Gilad, Naftali, and Eyal is the emotional and moral equivalent of soaking their parents in gasoline and then lighting them on fire. It’s like defiling the graves of these recently buried young Jewish men.

Not only should this opera never have seen the inside of a performing hall, but it should have been cancelled the instant Gilad, Naftali, and Eyal were discovered to be murdered. Why is it still going on? Worse, why is no one (besides me and various Jewish news reporters and commentators) complaining about it?

Over the past 40 years one of the most positive features of American Jewish leadership has been its uninhibited self-confidence, assertiveness and willingness to raise its voice with courage and dignity on behalf of Israel and Jewish causes. American Jewish leaders prided themselves on having rejected shtadlanut – reliance on silent diplomacy in lieu of public action. Alas, there are now grounds for concern that this is changing, maybe as a consequence of the adverse pressures emanating from the Obama administration.

How else can one ascribe the pitifully subdued response to the Met’s decision to perform an opera that not merely incorporates vicious anti-Israeli diatribes but which is blatantly anti-Semitic and seeks to romanticize and provide rationalization for the cold-blooded murder of a disabled person solely because he was Jewish. And this is an institution that is disproportionately funded by Jews, in the city with the greatest concentration of Jews in the Diaspora.

This opera is an abomination and an offense not only to Jews but to all Americans and all decent people who oppose terrorism and racism. It has no bearing on the rights or wrongs of the Arab-Israeli conflict or alleged grievances of Palestinians, which can be debated in other venues.

I don’t know how else to say it. What the **** is wrong with people?

They were already dead before we even knew they were abducted? Before prayers throughout the world stormed heaven for their safe return? Before Jews of every religious and political stripe united in a way we have not seen in years? Before the three mothers appeared at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva pleading for support? Before 15,000 Israeli soldiers, not much older than the boys themselves, spent two weeks without sleep or showers combing every basement and tunnel beneath the terrorist stronghold of Hebron? They were already butchered, their young bodies lying in a shallow grave miles north of the search area.

And in the ocean of our mourning, a question rises up like a sea monster: Were our prayers and our good deeds and our unity in vain?

-Sara Yoheved Rigler
“Were Our Prayers in Vain?”
Aish.com

Rigler started her article with the words, “Tisha B’Av came early this year.” Sadly, I have to agree. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if year by year, Tisha B’Av ever really ends.

It’s not the fact that terrible things continue to happen to the Jewish people. Unfortunately, the world has been trying to exterminate Jews ever since Jewish people have existed. What makes me so angry is that the effort to destroy Israel and the Jewish people is escalating and yet no one is crying out for justice. Quite the opposite in fact. Every time Israel attempts to defend herself through arms, the rest of the world accuses Israel of brutality, while every time a Jew is slain by a terrorist, the murder is celebrated in Gaza and Ramallah and I suspect in most of the rest of the world.

I would love to see churches all over the world this Sunday offer up prayers for the families of Gilad, Naftali, and Eyal. I would love for Pastors to lead their congregations in prayers for Israel and for the protection of the Jewish people. I call on Christians everywhere to stand up and cry out to God for justice. But we must also make our voices heard among the people of the world, that Israel will not go quietly into the night, she will not vanish without a fight, she is going to live on! She is going to survive!

And not only that, but God will fight for His people and His nation. He will not let them be extinguished. In fact, not only will Israel survive, but she will thrive. She will be the head of all the nations while we will be the tail. She will lead the world into an era of unprecedented peace and tranquility. And Israel’s King, who will rule the Holy Land and the rest of the world, will punish all the countries who went up against Israel.

He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Yeshua (Jesus).

–Revelation 22:20

But here’s the problem:

While Israel was staying at Shittim, the people profaned themselves by whoring with the Moabite women, who invited the people to the sacrifices for their god. The people partook of them and worshiped that god. Thus Israel attached itself to Baal-peor, and the Lord was incensed with Israel. The Lord said to Moses, “Take all the ringleaders and have them publicly impaled before the Lord, so that the Lord’s wrath may turn away from Israel.” So Moses said to Israel’s officials, “Each of you slay those of his men who attached themselves to Baal-peor.”

Just then one of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman over to his companions, in the sight of Moses and of the whole Israelite community who were weeping at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. When Phinehas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and, taking a spear in his hand, he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly. Then the plague against the Israelites was checked. Those who died of the plague numbered twenty-four thousand.

–Numbers 25:1-9 (JPS Tanakh)

If cursing fails, people can be victimized in any number of other ways, sometimes by being their (our) own worst enemies.

As Isi Leibler commented, the Jewish leadership in the U.S. needs to be the first to speak up about “The Death of Klinghoffer” and its ghastly implications, but American churches and indeed, all American people who love justice and hate cruelty need to speak out as well. You are not going to save lives through “stealth protesting”. Simply “waiting on the Lord” to do something may be waiting in vain, for who is to say that God isn’t waiting on us to do something. Gilad, Naftali, and Eyal are waiting on us. What are we waiting for?

God has always used people to accomplish justice in our world and I have no reason to believe He’s stopped now. Heavens armies will come one day to wage war against Israel’s enemies but in the meantime, we need to become Heavens armies, if not with guns and cannons, with words, letters, petitions, demonstrations, protests.

Even if you just send the link to this blog post via email to one other person, post it on your Facebook page, tweet it on twitter, that’s something. But do something. Don’t just sit there staring at the screen of your computer or smartphone.

The blood of the murdered cries out from the ground where it was spilled, and the killers are laughing.

Leibler ends his opinion piece thus:

If Jewish leaders feel inhibited about raising their voices on such issues, they are betraying their mandate and moving backward to the “trembling Israelite” role that American Jews assumed in the 1930s.

Rigler’s last words in her commentary are:

And we, the families of the boys, their friends, their neighbors, and all of us, are left to suffer their loss, to mourn the tragedy of their young lives cut short. Our Bible tells us that there is, “a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.”

Tisha B’Av came early this year. It is a time to weep and a time to mourn. But if we can only hold onto the unity we achieved in these 18 days, then in its merit the Redemption will come, and it will finally, finally, be a time to dance.

I know Rigler’s trying to be comforting, for after all, sometimes that’s all you can do, but I agree with Leibler, and not just in terms of Jewish leaders. We cannot allow ourselves to feel inhibited in raising our voices. If we do not stand up for justice now, how many more Jewish victims will go to their graves before Israel is redeemed by her King, and the God of Justice stands up against us?

A good person will resist an evil system with his whole soul. Disobedience of laws of an evil state is therefore a duty.

-Gandhi

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When Israel Asked for a King

June 30, 2014 James Pyles 18 Comments

“When Jacob came to Egypt, … your fathers cried out to the Lord, and the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt and settled them in this place. But they forgot the Lord their God; so He delivered them into the hands of the Philistines, and into the hands of the king of Moab; and these made war upon them. They cried to the Lord, ‘We are guilty, for we have forsaken the Lord and worshiped the Baalim and the Ashtaroth. Oh, deliver us from our enemies and we will serve You.’ And the Lord sent Jerubbaal and Bedan and Jephthah and Samuel, and delivered you from the enemies around you; and you dwelt in security. But when you saw that Nahash king of the Ammonites was advancing against you, you said to me, ‘No, we must have a king reigning over us’ — though the Lord your God is your King.

“Well, the Lord has set a king over you! Here is the king that you have chosen, that you have asked for.

“If you will revere the Lord, worship Him, and obey Him, and will not flout the Lord’s command, if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, [well and good]. But if you do not obey the Lord and you flout the Lord’s command, the hand of the Lord will strike you as it did your fathers.

–1 Samuel 12:8-15 (JPS Tanakh)

A few days ago, I was studying Torah Portion Chukat on Shabbat. After finishing with the parashah, I turned in my Chumash to the Haftarah for Chukat, or so I thought. But instead of reading Judges 11:1-33, I inadvertently turned to the Haftarah for Torah Portion Korach, last week’s reading. You’d think I would have noticed reading the same Haftarah twice in a row but somehow I didn’t. I remarked to myself how interesting it was that we see the rise of the first (human) King over Israel in the Haftarah, and the fall of her greatest prophet and leader in the Torah reading.

Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as He had commanded him. Moses and Aaron assembled the congregation in front of the rock; and he said to them, “Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?” And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, and the community and their beasts drank.

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.” Those are the Waters of Meribah—meaning that the Israelites quarrelled with the Lord—through which He affirmed His sanctity.

–Numbers 20:9-13 (JPS Tanakh)

Of course the connection I made between the two events was the result of a mistake, but it got me to thinking. Although God was to always be King of Israel, He did create a provision, should Israel “reject” Him as King, to place a human being, an Israelite, on the throne of the nation.

If, after you have entered the land that the Lord your God has assigned to you, and taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, “I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me,” you shall be free to set a king over yourself, one chosen by the Lord your God. Be sure to set as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a foreigner over you, one who is not your kinsman.

–Deuteronomy 17:14-15 (JPS Tanakh)

But think about it. If Israel had been completely obedient to God in all things, they would never have asked for a man to be set over them as King and God would always have been (and would always be) King of Israel, making it the only fully functional theocracy ever to exist.

But without Saul being set over Israel as King, there would have been no King David, King Solomon, or a dynasty of Kings of the tribe of Judah and of David’s house.

And there would be no King Messiah.

Of course, if Israel had been obedient in all things, I suppose there’d be no need for a Messiah to return the exiled Jews to their Land, to rebuild the Temple, to restore the nation, and to defeat Israel’s enemies, since Israel would never have fallen and God would have always granted her great success, and she would have truly been a light to the nations.

But then what would have happened to Christianity? The Church wouldn’t exist at all. What would have happened to the Gentiles? Without Jesus, how could we be saved?

Interesting question.

I suppose this is where you get to say that God knew Israel would fall and fail and that the world would need a Savior, but what about free will? I mean, free will at least gave Israel a chance at succeeding. They made choices, and they certainly could have chosen to continually accept God as King.

But Christianity doesn’t believe in free will, at least the Calvinists don’t, so Calvinists would say that God programmed everything into the universe before He created it, thus mankind’s destiny was sealed before the creation of Adam and Havah (Eve) and before she ever gave birth to the first human to actually be born of woman.

But in Orthodox Judaism, free will is accepted as the norm, and that humanity has free will in no way abrogates God’s absolute sovereignty over the universe.

So in Judaism, it was quite possible that Israel could have chosen continually to have God as King and not to demand a human King.

But as I asked before, if Israel had been obedient and remained obedient in not requiring a human being to be set as King over them, we would have no line of Israelite Kings, no King of the tribe of Judah and the house of David, which the Bible says the Messiah must come from.

There would have been (and would not be) no Messiah, at least in the body of Jesus Christ as lived, died, and lived in the first century CE. So what would have happened to us, to the Gentiles, if Israel never sinned?

Probably all of those New Covenant prophesies I’ve been talking about the past couple of weeks, such as the following.

Thus says the Lord,
“Preserve justice and do righteousness,
For My salvation is about to come
And My righteousness to be revealed.
“How blessed is the man who does this,
And the son of man who takes hold of it;
Who keeps from profaning the sabbath,
And keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely separate me from His people.”
Nor let the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.”
For thus says the Lord,

“To the eunuchs who keep My sabbaths,
And choose what pleases Me,
And hold fast My covenant,
To them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial,
And a name better than that of sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off.
“Also the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
To minister to Him, and to love the name of the Lord,
To be His servants, every one who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and holds fast My covenant;
Even those I will bring to My holy mountain
And make them joyful in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar; For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.” The Lord God, who gathers the dispersed of Israel, declares, “Yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered.”

–Isaiah 56:1-8 (NASB)

“For I know their works and their thoughts; the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and see My glory. I will set a sign among them and will send survivors from them to the nations: Tarshish, Put, Lud, Meshech, Tubal and Javan, to the distant coastlands that have neither heard My fame nor seen My glory. And they will declare My glory among the nations. Then they shall bring all your brethren from all the nations as a grain offering to the Lord, on horses, in chariots, in litters, on mules and on camels, to My holy mountain Jerusalem,” says the Lord, “just as the sons of Israel bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord. I will also take some of them for priests and for Levites,” says the Lord.

–Isaiah 66:18-21 (NASB)

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘It will yet be that peoples will come, even the inhabitants of many cities. The inhabitants of one will go to another, saying, “Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts; I will also go.” So many peoples and mighty nations will come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord.’ Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”’”

–Zechariah 8:20-23 (NASB)

These are only a few examples of the aforementioned prophecies, but you get the idea. There’s no reason why they couldn’t have applied to the nations of the world coming alongside Israel without the existence of Messiah. We Gentiles would simply do what Israel did, worship Hashem, God of Heaven, praying directly to Him.

The present and the future era of peace would look a lot more like how my friend Gene Shlomovich describes it.

Why is this important? Why am I (seemingly) playing a useless game of “what if”? Events occurred as they occurred, not as I’m supposing them to be. Israel did ask for a man to be placed over them as King, there was a King David who created, by the blessings of God, the Davidic dynasty of Kings of the tribe of Judah, and from whom Messiah, the righteous branch, has emerged.

Thus Christianity was created, separated from Judaism at an “early age,” and took off on a totally divergent course from its original path, the Jewish path.

I’ll give you another “what if”.

Yerushalayim, Yerushalayim, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How many times I have desired to gather your sons like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling! Listen: your house will be abandoned for you, desolate. For I say to you, from now on you will not see me until you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of HaShem!”

–Matthew 23:37-39 (DHE Gospels)

A few years back, a fellow I admire and respect told me that up until the moment when Yeshua (Jesus) said these words, if Israel had repented of her sins, Yeshua would have initiated the Messianic Age right then and there, leading Heavens armies to defeat the Roman occupation and fulfilling all of the New Covenant prophecies, establishing the final Davidic Kingdom in the first century.

For the longest time, I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t imagine how the coming of the Messianic Kingdom nearly two-thousand years ago would work without the Gospel message first being spread throughout the nations of the world, allowing the Gentiles to repent and be saved.

Then, when I was studying on Shabbat, it hit me. There’s nothing in the Bible, the Tanakh (Old Testament) that presupposes Messiah must come once and then come again. That’s why we don’t see a stronger picture of the Messiah in the Torah and the Prophets (although he is certainly there). That’s why it isn’t abundantly obvious to all Jewish people who study the Torah and the Prophets that Jesus is the Messiah and that the Messiah must come twice.

That’s why it isn’t spelled out in the Old Testament that we must believe in the Messiah for our salvation.

This brings disturbing notions into the light, such as the idea that history is variable and could describe any number of different courses and still fulfill the plan of God for Creation. It also means we have a great deal more to do with what happens to us, not just as individuals, but as an entire species, than we’ve been led to believe in Christian theology and doctrine.

I’ve heard it said that if all of Israel, each and every Jew, were to perfectly observe even a single Shabbat together, then the Messiah would come. Of course, I’ve also heard it said that Messiah will not come until Israel and mankind have reached the fullness of rebellion against God, but is it too much to believe that either situation could be true?

Regardless of the different roads through time I’ve suggested, the destination is the same. God will redeem His people, restore His nation Israel, and elevate Israel as sovereign over all of the other (Gentile) nations of the world. That part is a given.

This is the Torah, if a person dies in a tent…

–Numbers 19:14

In old age, we continue to seek wisdom and comfort in study. I fondly remember visiting Dr. Louis Finkelstein, the Seminary’s fourth chancellor, in his final years. By then he had long been confined to his apartment by Parkinson’s. Each time, I found him sitting at his dining room table with a folio volume of Talmud open before him. He often quipped that he was grateful to God for letting him go from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. And when he died in his nineties, it was mainly because his infirmities had finally severed him from the elixir of his life. I loved his ever-radiant eyes. He personified for me the conviction of the Mishnah that as students of Torah age, their minds do not unravel. A life of the mind sustains our engagement and growth.

-Ismar Schorsch
“Torah Study — The Bedrock of Judaism,” pg 548, June 30, 2001
Commentary on Torah Portion Chukat
Canon Without Closure: Torah Commentaries

The Sages (Brochos 63b) state that the Torah only lasts with those who die over it. This seems very puzzling since the Torah is for living, as it states (Vayikra 18:5), “And you shall live with them (the commandments).”

When doctors told Rabbi Akiva Eger that he might not live much longer if he continued his intensive study of Torah, he replied, “If I study Torah, I may not live much longer; if I discontinue my studies of Torah, I certainly will not live much longer. Doubt must not prevail against certainty!” (Jewish Leaders, p. 111)

-Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
“Always find time to study Torah,” pp 343, 344
Commentary on Torah Portion Chukat
Growth Through Torah

I think this is one of the blessings of studying the Torah (the whole Bible, really) from my current perspective: being granted the ability to see God peeking out from behind the pages, peering through the spaces between the letters, and carefully revealing little bits and pieces not only of what could have been, but what actually will be.

I’ve asked before when Jesus returns, will we go to church as a way of really asking, when Jesus returns will there even be a church?

My answer, both then and now is “no.” “The Church” as it conceives of itself, especially in Evangelicalism, will not exist because it imagines itself as an entity directly in opposition to prophesy. All New Covenant prophesies describe Israel as the center of God’s vision and purpose in the final age, not a collection of (mostly) Gentiles ruling over the world, or worse, a bunch of (mostly) Gentile “floaty ghosts” (to paraphrase D. Thomas Lancaster) playing harps in an endless worship service in Heaven.

Of all the different ways Israel could have selected to respond to God, they all have a single result. God will restore Israel and consequently, the people of the nations (i.e. Gentile Christians) will come alongside Israel in obedience to God, in response to Israel’s King Messiah, and pay homage as vassal nations to the Sovereign Lord who will sit enthroned in Jerusalem.

Selfishly, I look forward to that day, whether I see it in my mortal lifetime or in the resurrection, because I long for the days when a simple Gentile believer like me will have the opportunity to study Mishnah without it raising eyebrows (I wouldn’t even know how to go about it right now), when all of God’s servants will be able to find our lives in a “folio volume of Talmud open” before us. May that day come when King Messiah brings restoration and peace to Israel, and through his nation, peace for us all.

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Chukat: The Last Question of the Disciple of Peace

June 26, 2014 James Pyles 25 Comments

When all the congregation saw that Aaron had died, all the house of Israel wept for Aaron thirty days.

–Numbers 20:29

Hillel and Shammai received from them. Hillel would say: Be of the disciples of Aaron—a lover of peace, a pursuer of peace, one who loves the creatures and draws them close to Torah.

-Pirkei Avot 1:12

Note: This was written before my blog post The Broken Saint.

Last week, I started something of a minor storm in my little corner of the blogosphere by writing a blog post (actually, a series of them) based on Fruit Fruits of Zion‘s (FFOZ) commentary on Torah Portion Shelach. This week, I thought I’d try something different, using FFOZ’s commentary on Torah Portion Chukat to set a more gentle tone.

Why did Israel weep for Aaron thirty days? Aaron was 123 years old when he died, a ripe old age, full of years, yet all Israel wept for Aaron thirty days. Thirty days is the customary term of mourning for a close relative, and Aaron, as high priest over the congregation, was like a close relative to all Israel. According to Jewish tradition, Aaron was especially beloved by all Israel because he was known as a peacemaker.

-FFOZ Torah Commentary

There were thousands in Israel who were called by the name of Aaron, for if not for Aaron, they would not have come into the world. Aaron made peace between husband and wife so that they came together, and they named the child that was born after him.

-Avot d’Rabbi Nattan

Perhaps you are not a fan of midrash and don’t consider Rabbinic commentary to be a valid method of relating to the Bible. Nevertheless, I believe these statements can say a great deal about who we are as disciples of the Master today, or at least they can say something about me.

“They went down to the pit alive” (Numbers 16:30) – even in the grave they think they are alive. There is a blessing contained in “They went down to the pit alive,” as with “the sons of Korach did not die,” (ibid. 26:11) – “a place was established for them (Gehinom; see Megilla 14a) and they repented.” For teshuva, repentance, is effective only while one is still alive. This, then, is the blessing – that even in the pit they will live, and they will be able to effect teshuva.

-from “Today’s Day”
Tuesday, Sivan 26, 5703
Compiled by the Lubavitcher Rebbe; Translated by Yitschack Meir Kagan
Chabad.org

This refers to last week’s Torah portion and is a midrash on the fate of Korach and the others who went down into the pit with him. We know that Korach’s sons survived, and we see here the Rabbinic commentary on how they did so (though I do not take this as literal fact).

But the midrash provides encouragement that even when we have descended so low that everything seems totally hopeless, God will still find a way to redeem us if we repent, if we make teshuvah, if we turn away from our sin and back to Him…perhaps by becoming a peacemaker.

Aaron said to them, “Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” Now when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.”

Then Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you, that you have brought such great sin upon them?” Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil. For they said to me, ‘Make a god for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”

–Exodus 32:2-5, 21-24

The incident of the Golden Calf was perhaps Aaron’s greatest failure, but as we see in this week’s Torah portion, by the time of his death, he was beloved and mourned as one mourns for a father as the commentary said above, Israel mourned Aaron like a close relative.

Redemption is possible, even when everything seems hopeless and everyone is against you…everyone.

Frankfurt, Germany is closed down on Christmas, and I took the opportunity to visit Heidelberg, an hour away by rail. I walked through the train looking for a window seat where, guidebooks in hand, I could follow all the storied towns along the way. My eyes fell upon a young man wearing a black skullcap. An Orthodox Jew, I thought. Despite the pallid face of a yeshiva bocher, and the yarmulke clasped to his hair in traditional style, there was something troubling about the identification.

“Funny, you don’t look Jewish.” The punch line from a joke about Chinese Hebrews tickled my mind. The face looked German and the hair in careful, casual wisps gently falling over the forehead suggested mod or punk rock.

-Burton Caine
“Strangers on a Train in Germany”
Aish.com

Caine’s chance encounter with another Jew on a train from Frankfurt initially seemed a little odd but the mystery deepened considerably as their conversation progressed. Caine’s traveling companion was a German, born of German parents, and except for a few years of study in Israel, the young gentleman had lived all his life in his native country.

Caine inquired and found the fellow studied Bible, Talmud, and Hebrew in West Berlin, even though opportunities to do are not common there. He was traveling to Darmstadt, the place of origin of the famous 15th century manuscript of the Haggadah.

But why was Caine so bothered by the other man’s appearance. He didn’t look Jewish. Do all Jews necessarily look “Jewish”? What cues was Caine picking up on that told him there was a lot more to this person’s story?

The train was slowing down now and time was running out. Had I missed every clue? Calm down, I whispered to myself; not every Jew in Germany has a saga. He bent down to put his books into his bag, and the black skullcap now confronted me as a blatant proclamation of his orthodoxy. Why that suggested to me the key question, I cannot imagine, but I blurted it out.

“How do your parents react to your piety?”

“Badly,” he said with a wan smile as he buttoned his coat. “They are very hostile.” He spared me the final question. The train stopped; we had reached Darmstadt. He turned to go and paused only to add, “They were Nazis and are bitter anti-Semites. I converted to Judaism,” which he repeated in English as if he was not sure of the Hebrew word.

“They never forgave me. I am going home to visit them on Christmas.”

This story was originally published in the Christian Science Monitor in 1987 and the dating of the original encounter seems like it should be years before that.

One young man’s answer to the Holocaust, to his parents being Nazis and bitter anti-Semites, was to convert to Judaism. Perhaps that was the only way he could atone and make teshuvah. Who is to say (according to midrash) how the sons of Korach made teshuvah in the pit, suspended between life and death, and thus were saved? Was this one person’s way to become a peacemaker, by turning away from the path of his parents and turning toward the world of their victims?

Imagine, a Jew going home to visit his anti-Semitic parents for Christmas in the heart of Germany. How much more alone could he possibly feel?

Although (hopefully), the religious blogosphere isn’t as hostile as I imagine it was for a Jewish convert visiting his ex-Nazi parents for Christmas, it isn’t always a friendly place, either. It seems as if there’s an endless series of taunts and barbs being tossed back and forth, either as an active “dialog” or, as I recently discovered, “covert” blog posts based on private email exchanges. It seems that you can’t say anything, publicly or privately, without it becoming grist for the mill.

Not only that, but even within the same, basic theological construct, interpretations and opinions vary widely and each side holds fast to their position, defending it vigorously, taking no prisoners.

Who wants to be a part of that? If this is the “Church” established by Jesus Christ, the “ekklesia” of Messiah for his disciples and the worshipers of the God of Israel, why would I want to be a member of such a divisive “club”?

I periodically think of quitting. As I write this, I haven’t been to church in a couple of weeks. Once was because it was Father’s Day and I used that as a justification for “taking it easy” at home. Last Sunday, I was just tired, I had done my Sunday school homework, it wasn’t particularly stimulating, and I felt I could get more mileage out of just studying at home.

But if I am committed to worshiping with a community, then it’s not right to “dodge” them. I did have coffee with a good friend that afternoon, a devout believer for over forty years. We periodically toss about the idea of starting a small Torah study, but who would we invite who would (or could) be interested and illuminated by such an endeavor?

And then there’s the online religious world. There are days I could drop the whole thing like a hot rock. I know it seems odd for me to say that, since I’m such a prolific blogger, even when I try not to be. But who needs opponents and “frienemies” taking pot shots at you, while people you thought were your friends don’t say anything at all?

But then, on Rabbi Packouz’s Torah commentary, I found this:

Failure is when one stops trying, not when one doesn’t succeed.

-Anonymous

There are times when I don’t even know what I’m trying to succeed at but I know that whatever I’m doing, if I quit, I’ve failed.

This probably comes under the heading of first world problems since none of my “religious issues” (and recently, I was confronted on exactly that) even come close to the persecution Christians experience around the world, not the least of which is the plight of Pastor Saeed Abedini and his family or Miriam Ibrahim’s struggles, though praise God, she was released from prison and no longer faces the death penalty (but then I recently heard she was re-arrested trying to leave the country).

Christian persecution always has external sources, people, other religious groups, nations, who are against the disciples of Christ. But Christianity is also its own worst enemy (and for the sake of this one blog post, I’ll toss the Hebrew Roots and Messianic Jewish movements and their many variants into the mix). We’re always worse off when the world doesn’t attack us because then we attack each other. So much for “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9).

Which brings us back to Aaron and this week’s Torah Portion. As the first High Priest of God and brother to Moses, Aaron lived a larger-than-life existence. Just being among that first generation of Israelites that left Egypt, to see all they had seen would have been marvelous and terrifying.

But Aaron also lived a very human existence, he was flawed and he struggled, in some ways, just like the rest of us. But it’s not always just about what you’ve left behind, but how you’ve lived, and Aaron lived before God, presided in the Tabernacle as Kohen Gadol, provided atonement for all of Israel in the Most Holy Place once a year.

And yet, Hillel and Shammai remembered him first and foremost as a maker of peace, and adjured others to be like Aaron’s disciples.

What is it to be like Messiah’s disciples? What are we to do in the face of an imperfect life, existing within an imperfect “Church” (and I use the term in the widest possible sense), filled with imperfect people?

I wish I had an answer to give you. I’d love to have that answer myself. But the only thing I keep returning to is not how to succeed but how to avoid failure. As much as I sometimes want to, I can’t give up. It’s not that I’m some sort of guru or wise man (or wise guy) or visionary. I’m only me. One ordinary human being who happens to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and who is constantly challenged by the enormity of that role (and make no mistake, you’re in the same boat I am…being an “ordinary” believer doesn’t mean fading into the woodwork).

I have no long-term plans. I live in a world where God can turn human plans on their ear in a heartbeat. In such a place, I simply stand before God and ask, “Here I am, God. What do I do now?” I think the answer God gave Aaron was, “live, serve, and die, and after that, continue to live before God”. Regardless of the paths we each travel along in our faith, that’s probably the only answer any of us will receive.

He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

–Job 1:21

“The opposite of defeat is hope.”

-Anonymous

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Why I am a Messianic Gentile, Part Two

June 24, 2014 James Pyles 30 Comments

And Korach, the son of Yitzhor, the son of K’hos, the son of Levi, took …

–Numbers 16:1

Rashi explains that the key reason for Korach’s rebellion against Moshe was that he was envious of another relative who received honor while he didn’t.

Envy is destructive. It prevents a person from enjoying what he himself has. When you focus on the success of another person and feel pain because of it, you are likely to do things that are highly counterproductive. Envy is one of the three things that totally destroy a person (Pirke Avos 4:28). The downfall of Korach was because of this trait. Not only did he not get what he wanted but he lost everything he already had.

-Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
Commentary on Torah Portion Korach, pg 332
Growth Through Torah

I mentioned in Part One of this two-part series, that I have many good reasons for being a student and disciple of Yeshua (Jesus) within a Messianic Jewish context. And while the status I have accepted upon myself may make me appear as a “second-class citizen” within the ekkelsia of Messiah and the Kingdom of Heaven, in fact, who I am and where I stand has been defined for me by God. Even if I sometimes chafe at that position based on my personality flaws, that does not change the will of God for my life. Any reaction that leads me to envy of the Jewish people for their distinctiveness and unique role in the plan of the Almighty will also lead to my “destruction” (though I probably won’t be incinerated or fall into a pit).

The blessings of God in my life are great. Far be it from me to cause God to take them all away:

While they were listening to these things, Jesus went on to tell a parable, because He was near Jerusalem, and they supposed that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately. So He said:

“A nobleman went to a distant country to receive a kingdom for himself, and then return. And he called ten of his slaves, and gave them ten minas and said to them, ‘Do business with this until I come back.’ But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’ When he returned, after receiving the kingdom, he ordered that these slaves, to whom he had given the money, be called to him so that he might know what business they had done. The first appeared, saying, ‘Master, your mina has made ten minas more.’ And he said to him, ‘Well done, good slave, because you have been faithful in a very little thing, you are to be in authority over ten cities.’ The second came, saying, ‘Your mina, master, has made five minas.’ And he said to him also, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’ Another came, saying, ‘Master, here is your mina, which I kept put away in a handkerchief; for I was afraid of you, because you are an exacting man; you take up what you did not lay down and reap what you did not sow.’ He said to him, ‘By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave. Did you know that I am an exacting man, taking up what I did not lay down and reaping what I did not sow? Then why did you not put my money in the bank, and having come, I would have collected it with interest?’ Then he said to the bystanders, ‘Take the mina away from him and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’ And they said to him, ‘Master, he has ten minas already.’ I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence.”

–Luke 19:11-27 (NASB)

Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev (Kdushas Levi) commented that a truly righteous person’s main goal in all that he does is to give pleasure to the Almighty. To such a person there is no difference if he or another righteous person causes that pleasure.

But if a person’s main focus is on his personal reward, he wants to do everything himself. Therefore, our verse states that Korach took. He wanted to take for himself and therefore felt resentment about the attainment of others.

-R. Pliskin, pp 332-33

We not only see the dire consequences of envy leading a person to self-aggrandizement, but that such a person has lost their focus on what is to be the true motivation of a servant of God, to please God rather than their own human desires.

If God has assigned a specific role, function, and purpose for the Jewish people, then it is foolish for we non-Jewish disciples of the Master to seek their place and their role. In having those desires and particularly in acting them out, we are rebelling against God and seeking our own personal pleasure. Not only that, we are actually denying ourselves the pleasure of fulfilling the role God assigned to us, one that really would be pleasing to God.

And they gathered against Moshe and Aharon. And they said to them, “You have taken too much power for yourselves. The entire congregation is Holy, and the Almighty is in their midst. Why do you take leadership over the congregation of the Almighty?”

–Numbers 16:3

Remember that the Sages say that when a person finds fault with others he frequently is just mentioning his own faults which he can wrongly assume someone else has. Be very careful not to accept negative information about others as the truth without careful examination.

-R. Pliskin, pg 334

It is not uncommon for people to sometimes project their own worse character traits onto another person and then blame that other person for what they don’t like about themselves. The irony is that this attribution can happen below the level of consciousness. That is, the person may truly not be aware of their negative character trait but attribute it to someone they don’t like or with whom they disagree. It’s as if they are using their adversary as a mirror to reflect their own behavioral and emotional flaws.

So, if I am to take R. Pliskin’s advice and apply it to every time I’m criticized for my stance as a Messianic Gentile, one way to interpret their criticism (though it might not be true in every case) is that the critic may be assigning me traits or motivations they themselves possess. I guess that’s why it’s a good idea for me to always be aware of what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, so I don’t start believing things about who I am and my behavior that are not true. I must also be careful in my assessment of others to make sure I’m not guilty of projecting my own flaws upon them.

That has always been the normative view of Judaism, enunciated in the rabbinic principle that “one who performs a deed because it is commanded is deemed more praiseworthy than one who does it voluntarily” (Bavli Kiddushin 31a). Actions that come instinctively fail to stretch us. Growth results from reaching beyond ourselves.

-Ismar Schorsch
“Reaching Beyond Ourselves,” pg 534, June 22, 1996
Commentary on Torah Portion Korach
Canon Without Closure: Torah Commentaries

If one desires or even covets obligation to the full yoke of Torah as a Gentile, where is the “stretch”? How are we participating in growth if we not only are doing what we want, but performing mitzvot that do not belong to us? However, if we recognize the legal structure that defines Gentile inclusion in Messianic Judaism (Acts 15) and obey those commandments, we are not only pleasing God, we are participating in our own spiritual growth and elevation (see the ancient Jewish/Christian document The Didache and D. Thomas Lancaster’s latest book Elementary Principles for more).

Going back to what R. Pliskin said about pleasing God by allowing another righteous person to perform mitzvot that are commanded of them, to encourage Jewish believers to perform mitzvot such as davening with a minyan or observing Shabbos is what fulfills our function as righteous Gentiles in Messiah. For only Jewish Torah observance will bring Messiah’s return nearer, therefore, by encouraging Jewish Torah fidelity within the Messianic community, we are helping others to be righteous, participating in our own growth as disciples, and blessing the heart of God.

At least that’s how I see myself as a Messianic Gentile (in an ideal state, and I can say, that I’m hardly an ideal person).

The arrogant person thinks, “If I honor this person, what will people think of me? Will it raise or lower my stature in the eyes of others?” But the humble person makes no calculations of this kind. He treats each person according to the Torah ideals of how people should be treated. Ultimately this only elevates a person’s true stature regardless of how other people might react.

-R. Pliskin, pg 336

I’ve met very few truly arrogant people, that is people who really think they’re the “greatest thing since the invention of sliced bread.” Most people who appear arrogant and self-assured are actually the opposite. They feel threatened and insecure when others experience success or if put in a situation where they must give deference to another. While I can hardly call myself truly humble, if I strive in that direction as a goal, then acknowledging Jewish “specialness” in covenant relationship with God does not diminish me or reduce my stature in the eyes of others. If someone else believes I am being reduced by recognizing Jewish covenant status, then that is their projection and perhaps their own personal fear.

Imagine how Gentile Christians will react when, upon Messiah’s return, they realize to their chagrin that the Church is not the center of the Kingdom of God, it is Israel. This may be at the core of why many Christians have difficulty with Messianic Judaism and the continuation of Jewish Torah observance within the Jesus-believing Jewish community. It illustrates how, over the long centuries of Church history, Christianity has reversed causality in placing itself above and before God’s covenant people, Israel.

Also your brethren the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father, shall you draw near with you, and they shall be joined to you and minister to you. You and your sons with you shall be before the Tent of the Testimony. They shall safeguard your charge and the charge of the entire tent…

–Numbers 18:2-3

After the death of Korach and the rebels, the Levites especially among the Children of Israel were demoralized and terrified. They felt their own worth and stature was lower than ever after the failed rebellion. Yet God was kind and reminded the Levites that they had a special status and duty to Hashem above the other Israelites and that they also were of the tribe of Levi, just as were Aaron and his sons, the Kohenim.

That’s what I think is missing every time someone believes that I’ve allowed myself to be put at the back of the bus in the Messianic community; the lack of realization that Messianic Gentiles have a highly important role that cannot be fulfilled by the Jewish people. Messianic Jews and Gentiles are interdependent and the Messianic Jewish ekklesia cannot achieve wholeness unless we join together in our complementary roles. We need each other.

So the next time I find myself missing donning a tallit in prayer or being present at the lighting of the Shabbos candles, I must remind myself of everything I’ve just written. Because the minute I give in to the attitude of I want to be like them” or worse, “I deserve to be like them,” not only have I insulted God and betrayed the Jewish people in Messiah, I’ve lost my way and forgotten my God-assigned purpose in life. A righteous person serves God, not his own desires. May God grant me humility and peace. May He grant this to all of us who call ourselves Messianic Gentiles.

Final note: Last year, I also wrote a two-part series on Korach and what this rebellion tells us about who we are today.

"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