Tag Archives: Torah

Ki Teitzei: Fulfilling Gratitude

August 16, 2013 James Pyles 2 Comments

There is an old joke illustrating the difference between a believer and an atheist:

The believer wakes up, looks up to heaven, and with heartfelt devotion and true gratitude exclaims, “Good morning, G‑d!”

The atheist, by contrast, rolls over one last time, yawns and stretches, strolls over to the window, looks outside and declares, “My G‑d, what a morning!”

-Rabbi Elisha Greenbaum
“Keep the Faith”
Commentary on Torah Portion Ki Teitzei
Chabad.org

The very first blog I posted here is called Abundant is Your Faithfulness. When I originally created my “meditations” blog, I based it on something written by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman:

When you get up in the morning, let the world wait. Defy it a little. First learn something to inspire you. Take a few moments to meditate upon it. And then you may plunge ahead into the darkness, full of light with which to illuminate it.

I wanted my writing to be something people could read in the morning shortly after waking up and then ponder on throughout the day. I’ll admit to a little “mission drift” in the over two-and-a-half years this blog has been in existence, but this has always been my intent.

But you don’t have to wait until you get out of bed and make it to your computer to find something inspiring. As Rabbi Greenbaum says in his commentary, observant Jews start meditating on God even before they get up by reciting the Modeh Ani:

“I gratefully thank You, living and existing King for restoring my soul to me with compassion. Abundant is your faithfulness.”

I mentioned to a friend just recently that the wedding vow is the only vow Christians take before God anymore. Most people, including most Christians, probably don’t realize it, but when you say “for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, til death do us part,” we are actually taking a solemn vow in the presence of God that these words we will keep with our actions.

And yet the divorce rate in the church is virtually the same as in the secular world. As human beings, we do a lousy job of keeping our vows to God…we can’t even keep the one left that we’re supposed to take seriously. I guess that’s why Jesus said this:

“Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord.’ But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil.”

–Matthew 5:33-37 (NASB)

But apart from vows, just how seriously do we take what we say to God? Are we too casual in our “conversations” with Him? Does it matter that we’re addressing not only a King, but literally the Creator of everything?

Referring to the Modeh Ani, Rabbi Greenbaum says:

We acknowledge our Creator and thank Him for the gift of a new day. By starting off the day full of humility and gratitude, we pledge to live up to G‑d’s vision for the world.

But, I ask you: once you’ve rolled off the bed and rubbed the sleep from your eyes, how much of the Modeh Ani do you take with you? So you spent eight seconds admitting that you owe your life to G‑d. Does that really affect the rest of the day?

I recite the Modeh Ani when I wake up each morning, but I must admit, Rabbi Greenbaum gave me something new to think about. Just how much of my “thankfulness” do I carry forward into each day? How many Monday’s have I complained about when my alarm goes off, rousing me out of that last moment of “the weekend?” I can hardly add to what Rabbi Greenbaum reveals to his audience, including me, so I’ll let him finish his commentary:

The Torah advises us to “fulfill the utterances of our lips.” (Deuteronomy 23:24) Ostensibly an injunction to pay up our pledges to charity and to live up to our vows, the verse can be homiletically rendered as a directive to listen and learn from the words said while praying. It is too easy to just go through the motions, letting the familiar words roll off the tongue and into oblivion; however, G‑d wants prayer to be more than mere lip service.

The words we say must mean something. Prayer is not just dead time spent mindlessly repeating a monotonous mantra, but a unique opportunity to communicate with the divine. When we train our children to say the Modeh Ani first thing after rising, it is in the hope that the feelings and emotions encapsulated in the prayer will permeate the days of their life.

G‑d demands that we fulfill our pledges and live up to our promises. Each morning we acknowledge our Creator as King, and thank Him for gifting us with our soul again. We approach the rest of the day with the enthusiasm and knowledge that we are following the route suggested in G‑d’s guidebook. We will fulfill the oaths we made to Him, and live by our promises, for now and forever.

As Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski might say in one of his Growing Each Day commentaries…

Today I shall…

…seek to fill full all of the words I speak to God with sincerity and to carry them forward with me in each day, from morning until evening, with thanksgiving and gratitude.

Good Shabbos.

40 days.

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Blessings, Curses, and Works of the Law

August 15, 2013 James Pyles 5 Comments

…those who support the New Perspective on Paul, such as J.D.G. Dunn…and N.T. Wright…maintain that “works of the law” focuses on the boundary markers that separate Jews and Gentiles. The boundary markers, or identity badges, of Judaism were circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath. The problem with the Judaism in Paul’s day, then, was not legalism but exclusivism. “Works of law” highlights the nationalistic spirit of the Jews by which they excluded Gentiles from the promises of God. According to his interpretation, Paul does not indict the Jews for their failure to obey the law. Their fault was not inability but separatism.

-Thomas Schreiner from his book
40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law
Question 5: What Does the Expression “Works of Law” Mean in Paul? pg 42

My previous review on earlier chapters of Schreiner’s book can be found in this morning’s “meditation,” Captured in the Glass. Please read that article before proceeding here.

It took me until this fifth chapter, uh…question to realize that Schreiner was writing this book primarily, or at least significantly, in order to refute the “New Perspective on Paul.” The New Perspective on Paul is actually a formal, academic interpretation of the writings of Paul, supported by a number of New Testament scholars. It also seems to dovetail nicely into the viewpoints of some commentators on Messianic Judaism, particularly those to support the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus) as Messiah relative to covenant signs (circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath).

But according to Schreiner, these scholars are dead wrong. I suspect that’s why my Pastor gave me this book. It really is a compelling book, but not in the way Pastor may have intended it.

Here’s Schreiner’s point of view on “works of the law.”

…”works of law” refers to the entire law and the actions that are required by the law. This is the most likely reading of Romans 3:20 (“For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin”) and Gal. 3:10 (“For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them'”).

-ibid

As noted above, I wrote about earlier “questions” in Schreiner’s book in my previous blog post and apparently the subsequent questions form the foundation for later parts of the text. Unfortunately so do the errors that were previously established as well. As I mentioned before, Schreiner himself states that observing the Torah mitzvot was a perfectly acceptable response to obeying God after He redeemed the Israelites from Egypt and apparently it was OK until the coming of Jesus.

Look up Deuteronomy 30, Psalm 19, and Psalm 119 as just a few of the many examples of how the Torah was upheld, esteemed, thought beautiful, a source of wisdom, on, and on, and on, how wonderful the Law of Moses was.

How did it get morphed in the late Second Temple period to be such a pain in the neck for the Jewish people?

Even Schreiner acknowledges that Paul sincerely believed that the Torah was the authoritative word of God for the Jewish people. So what’s Schreiner’s beef with “works of the law?”

A number of arguments support the idea that “works of law” refers to the entire law and the deeds commanded by it…”Works of law” most naturally refers to all deeds commanded by the law. There is no reason to think that it is limited to or focuses on only part of the law, or that it refers to “evil works,” or that it refers to legalism.

-ibid, pg 43

So what? So what if “works of the law” refers to the Torah as a whole? I still maintain that Paul was talking about Jewish and Gentile people who believed that one needed to keep the whole of Torah without error in order to be saved. If you believe keeping the mitzvot will save you instead of faith in God, then you’ve got a problem. I agree. No matter how many of the mitzvot you perform and no matter how well you perform them, those acts are not what saves you from sin and death. Abraham had faith and it was counted to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3).

If the mitzvot was a perfectly good response of obedience to God after Israel’s redemption in the days of Moses, why is it a problem in the days of Paul?

I know what you’re thinking. Schreiner thinks the same way.

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.

–James 2:10 (NASB)

Schreiner’s argument from Question 7: Is Perfect Obedience to the Law Mandatory for Salvation? states that the law is impossible to keep perfectly and therefore no one can be saved by keeping the law. He’s rocketing toward the supersessionistic conclusion that in order to be saved, Jews must abandon the Torah (which he erroneously believes Paul did) and cling to Jesus and grace in order to be saved. He is correct in that God expected Israel to observe the mitzvot, but he forgets that God established provisions for the Israelites when they sinned. He uses examples such as Proverbs 20:9 and Ecclesiastes 7:20 to demonstrate how the “Old Testament” Jews couldn’t keep the law and of course, he uses Romans 3:10 to indicate how the “New Testament” Jews couldn’t keep the law either.

But he is building his argument on sand or rather, on a false premise.

Those who do not do everything the law commands are cursed.

–Galatians 3:10b

Schreiner’s problem is that he assumes it was God’s intention that Israel keep the law perfectly in order to be saved…salvation by works. Would God really expect that? He didn’t seem to in Genesis 15. He redeemed Israel before He gave the Torah at Sinai (see my review of the FFOZ TV episode Exile and Redemption for the actual, Biblical definition of “redemption,” which is much more than how Schreiner understands the term), so obviously that redemption or salvation was not based on the Israelites keeping the Torah, being obedient, or any other form of “works-based salvation.”

So what was Paul complaining about, then? What was his problem with the law? His problem was with people, both Jews and Gentiles, who erroneously thought just keeping the law would save them. That’s why he was against Gentiles converting to Judaism (see the Book of Galatians), since they were laboring under the false teaching that they had to keep the law in order to be saved.

That wasn’t Paul’s understanding of the law and it certainly wasn’t God’s.

But if Paul is saying that those who convert to Judaism and thus who are bound to the Sinai covenant and its conditions, the mitzvot of Torah, don’t keep the law perfectly, and not keeping the law perfectly doesn’t cause them to lose their salvation, what is this curse Paul’s talking about?

You’ll find the blessings the Israelite were to receive for observing the mitzvot and the curses they were to suffer from for disobedience in next week’s Torah Portion Ki Tavo: Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8. The actual actions that must be committed in order to be cursed are listed in verses Deuteronomy 27:15-26 and 28:15-19. So what are the consequences of being cursed?

The Lord will let loose against you calamity, panic, and frustration in all the enterprises you undertake, so that you shall soon be utterly wiped out because of your evildoing in forsaking Me. The Lord will make pestilence cling to you, until He has put an end to you in the land that you are entering to possess. The Lord will strike you with consumption, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew; they shall hound you until you perish. The skies above your head shall be copper and the earth under you iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land dust, and sand shall drop on you from the sky, until you are wiped out.

The Lord will put you to rout before your enemies; you shall march out against them by a single road, but flee from them by many roads; and you shall become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your carcasses shall become food for all the birds of the sky and all the beasts of the earth, with none to frighten them off.

The Lord will strike you with the Egyptian inflammation, with hemorrhoids, boil-scars, and itch, from which you shall never recover.

The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and dismay. You shall grope at noon as a blind man gropes in the dark; you shall not prosper in your ventures, but shall be constantly abused and robbed, with none to give help.

–Deuteronomy 28:20-29 (JPS Tanakh)

That’s not the entire list, of course. You’ll have to read the rest of that chapter to find all of the curses. None of them says that the Children of Israel will lose their salvation and go to Hell when they die if they don’t keep the law perfectly.

Whenever Israel has been unfaithful to God and to their sincere, faithful obedience to the mitzvot, what consequence has God delivered to Israel? What consequence do we always see in the Tanakh (Old Testament)? What effects of these consequences do we see to this very day?

The Lord will scatter you among all the peoples from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, whom neither you nor your ancestors have experienced. Yet even among those nations you shall find no peace, nor shall your foot find a place to rest. The Lord will give you there an anguished heart and eyes that pine and a despondent spirit. The life you face shall be precarious; you shall be in terror, night and day, with no assurance of survival. In the morning you shall say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening you shall say, “If only it were morning!” — because of what your heart shall dread and your eyes shall see. The Lord will send you back to Egypt in galleys, by a route which I told you you should not see again. There you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but none will buy.

–Deuteronomy 28:64-68 (JPS Tanakh)

War, famine, destruction of the cities of Israel, and exile to the diaspora.

What was Paul’s problem? Did he know what was coming? Israel was occupied by the Roman Empire. At a thought, the Romans could swoop down on Israel, destroy the Temple, raze Jerusalem, and remove the Jewish people from their Land. If you were born Jewish in the late Second Temple period, there must have been an exceptional sense of being responsible for performing the mitzvot, since they knew the consequences of failure. But how could Gentile believers and God-fearers who were only somewhat familiar with the Torah, truly understand he horrendous consequences of converting to Judaism, being bound by the Torah, and what would happen if they weren’t obedient? The lived memory of all of the previous disasters that had befallen Israel, including the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the Babylonian exile, were imprinted on every single Jew. But how could the Goyim who had recently come to faith in Messiah even begin to understand?

Was this Paul’s motivation? Probably not entirely, but it must have factored in. The other motivation is that it simply wasn’t necessary for Gentiles to convert, since, as I’ve been trying to hammer home, keeping the law does not save you!!! Any Christian who states this as the reason Paul “rejected” the law is barking up the wrong tree. Not only does a Gentile converting to Judaism and taking up the mitzvot not save that Gentile (and it doesn’t save Jewish people, either), but it makes that Gentile and lots of others like him/her a loaded gun pointed at the head of Israel. A bunch of Gentiles who don’t know squat about a experiential Torah lifestyle abruptly converting to Judaism on the mistaken notion that it will save them (and that Jesus isn’t enough) means a whole pool of “newbies” have just been primed to lead Israel into the next disaster because they don’t realize the tremendous responsibility they possess.

As it turns out, that disaster happened anyway, but I can see Paul’s point in saying that anyone who doesn’t keep the law perfectly brings a curse upon themselves and Israel. No, one little screw up wouldn’t do it, but lots and lots of Jews (including converts) over a sustained period of time who were being disobedient always resulted in exactly those curses being delivered by God upon Israel (and please understand that after each exile, God always redeemed and restored the Jews to their Land).

When Paul said that anyone who does not keep the law is under a curse, it has nothing to do with salvation and going to Hell. It does not mean the Torah is bad. It does not mean Jews in Messiah should give up the mitzvot. It does not mean Jewish faith in God and performance of the commandments are mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite. Jesus gives the mitzvot their full meaning. He was the only Jewish person to ever keep the mitzvot perfectly. He’s the poster child for Torah obedience. He also takes away the curses of failing to be perfect and remember, even Jesus said, Be perfect for your Father in Heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

Did Jesus expect his Jewish disciples to keep the law perfectly? How could he? We have a Biblical record that no one ever kept the law perfectly. What is being perfect? Works? Heaven forbid! What justifies us before God? Works? Not a chance. It’s faith. It’s always been faith. If a Jew keeps the law, no matter how imperfectly, are they instantly sent to Hell, are they sent to Hell when they die, or are they even instantly exiled from their Land? No. The consequences are for a faithlessness, corporate Israel, and faithlessness leads to lack of obedience. Lack of obedience is the symptom, the indicator of lack of faith. That’s the trigger for the consequences, the curses.

In Messiah, the curses are redeemed, removed, done with.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”— in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

–Galatians 3:13-14

Yes, if Jesus removed the curse of the Law, then why would believing Gentiles converting to Judaism be a threat? Because, as we see from Paul’s argument in Galatians, the Gentiles were under the mistaken impression that keeping the Law justified them. In the end, if Israel believed observance of the mitzvot also justified them apart from faith, then that’s the recipe for exile.

Jesus died to redeem us from sin. He paid the price. He died for us. As Paul told the churches in Galatia, Jesus opened the door so both Jews and Gentiles could come to faith and thus be justified before God. In his death and resurrection, he fulfilled that part of the Abrahamic covenant that says he is the “seed” that blesses all the nations.

But also, in Messiah, Jewish believers are free from the curses and the obligation to be perfect, for only in Messiah is anyone considered justified before God. In Acts 15:10 Peter called the law a “burden.” Why would he say that? On some level, maybe it was. Maybe part of what Messiah brings to the table for the Jewish people is the freedom from the curses of the Law so that they are free to observe the mitzvot without a “burden.” This sets the stage so the Jewish people can ultimately be returned to their Land, to Israel, by Messiah.

For the Jewish people, faith and observance go hand in hand, Jewish observance of the mitzvot is the outward response and indicator of faith.

I have to thank Schreiner and my Pastor for this book. My brain is still percolating, I’m shooting from the hip, and half-rambling in this blog post, but I think I’m coming to a better understanding of Paul, the law, and maybe even Galatians. I think I’m getting closer to the Christian puzzle of “the law is bad.” I hope as I continue reading Schreiner’s book that my brain will be opened up and God will provide more illumination. I feel like He’s flipped the switch. Maybe it’s just a night-light so far. But the dawn is coming.

For more on this, see the commentary “Blessings Over Curses” at JewishJournal.com.

The next review in this series is Schreiner’s Law of Torah and Sin.

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Captured in the Glass

August 15, 2013 James Pyles 6 Comments

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground…

–Genesis 2:7 (NASB)

…we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him and give him peace. Amen.

-from the funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer

That’s how I feel sometimes. Like ashes. Like dust.

I’m no theologian. I just finished reading Jobes’s and Silva’s book Invitation to the Septuagint. The title is rather deceptive, since after the first few chapters, the book is anything but introductory. I came away from the text realizing that it’s amazing how Bible scholars act like they are sure of so much. I’m stunned at how we can be certain of anything at all about the Bible. I knew this already, but the book reminded me that translating ancient texts is an almost impossible task, especially if you’re going to do something crazy with the translations like establish binding theology and doctrine for large groups of human beings, telling them the intent of God for their lives.

How can we be so sure of every, single, tiny, detail that we say we’re certain about? Can we say what God and Moses talked about on Sinai for every minute of those forty days and forty nights? Do we know what it actually felt like to stand in the presence of Jesus, to have watched him right before he began to teach on any given morning? Do we fully, completely understand the lived experience of what it was like to be a human being listening to the prophesies of Elijah, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, at the places and times where and when they lived and breathed?

We have words on a page, but that must pale in comparison to the original intent and action of the spoken words of Moses as he addressed all of Israel on the banks of the Jordan only hours and minutes before his death.

Who am I to tell anyone what I think as if I have any better thoughts than anyone else?

Sometimes I feel like I’m ready to give up spewing my thoughts and feelings into the blogosphere on a daily basis. Then I read something like this:

Another scholar who concurred with Sanders’s reading of Judaism was Heikki Räisänen, who retired from the University of Helsinki in 2006. Räisänen adopted a more radical solution than Sanders. If Sanders’s portrait of Second Temple Judaism is correct, then how do we explain Paul? Räisänen argued that the idea that Paul is a coherent and logical thinker is flawed. In other words, Paul’s theology of law is shot through with contradictions and is fundamentally incoherent. Scholars have labored to articulate Paul’s theology of the law as if it represented a consistent system of thought. They have generally failed to realize, according to Räisänen, that Paul operated with two fundamentally contradictory presuppositions. On the one hand, he posited that the Old Testament law was God’s authoritative word. On the other hand, he insisted that Gentiles were not required to observe the Old Testament law. Naturally, says Räisänen, Paul could not reconcile these two ideas since they are mutually exclusive.

-Thomas Schreiner from his book
40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law
Question 4: What Is the New Perspective on Paul, and How Should It Be Assessed? pp 36-7

So close and yet so far. I believe Räisänen and ultimately Schreiner are missing the point. Räisänen lays it all out like a dream but still doesn’t grasp what Paul was doing. There was (and is) no contradiction between Paul’s view of the Torah and not requiring Gentile believers to keep it. Paul simply understood that Jewish believers continued to be bound to the Sinai covenant and the Gentiles were not.

Pastor Randy gifted me with this book a few weeks ago and I just started reading it yesterday (as I write this). There are significant parts I agree with and then there are parts that I believe miss the point. Yeah. Here’s me putting my thoughts and feelings out on the Internet again, non-theologian than I am. Go figure.

On the other hand, I thought Schreiner was more or less spot on in Question 2: Was the Mosaic Covenant Legalistic? when he said:

The giving of the law followed the salvation of Israel, and hence such obedience signified Israel’s grateful response to the redemption accomplished by the Lord. There is no basis in the text for the idea that Israel’s obedience established a relationship with the Lord. The Lord took the initiative in rescuing his people, and they were called upon to respond with faithful obedience.

-Schreiner, pg 26

Schreiner almost has it right (IMHO) but he seems to believe that the Israelites observed the mitzvot out of emotional gratitude for being saved. This is a very Christian way of thinking. I agree that observing the Torah in a mechanical fashion does not make anyone right with God. It never did. However, once the Israelites were redeemed by God and agreed that He would be their God and they would be His people, He gave the Torah to the Israelites and they were expected to observe it.

When they didn’t, as the Tanakh (Old Testament) tells us, they didn’t lose their “salvation” (keeping in mind that Jewish people don’t think of salvation the same way we Christians do), but rather, they tended to lose their right to live in the Land of Israel and to enjoy personal and national freedom. They faced war, captivity, exile, and the destruction of Jerusalem.

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you.

–Exodus 20:12 (NASB)

This is just one of the Torah mitzvot, contained in what we refer to as “the Ten Commandments,” that directly ties obedience to the mitzvot with continued residency in the Land of Israel.

I say all this because, in spite of the fact that Schreiner clearly states that Torah obedience is not and never has been tied to personal salvation and redemption by God, he subsequently becomes “confused.”

Consequently, Sanders’s claim that Second Temple Judaism did not emphasize the role of works in obtaining salvation is overstated. The Jewish sources do not so neatly support his contention that Second Temple Judaism was a religion of grace. At the very least some segments of Judaism focused on human obedience and had fallen prey to a kind of legalism.

We have significant evidence that Paul rejects the law because of human inability and that some of his opponents had fallen prey to legalism…

-Schreiner, pp 38-9

OK, Schreiner is talking about the practices of Judaism (Judaisms, really) during the Second Temple period and saying that some of the streams of Judaism believed that it was the scrupulous observance of the mitzvot that “saved” someone rather than faith in Hashem.

…and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.

–Matthew 3:9

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

I tend to agree that the connection between faith and obedience became lost by many Jewish people in those days. Given that Israel was an occupied nation and that the Jewish people had no reason at all to love or regard the Gentiles, a form of ethnic and national “pride,” and in some cases, “egotism” was to be expected. You see that in any oppressed population. But if, as we have seen Schreiner state in earlier portions of his book, the Torah was considered a valid and indeed commanded form of response to God by the Israelites in ancient times, why was it suddenly so hard to obey in the late Second Temple era? Furthermore, why, given that we already know from Schreiner’s book, not to mention the Biblical record, would Paul, who esteemed the Torah as God’s Holy Word, ever reject it?

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that a lot of what Paul wrote really does seem contradictory. We have an extraordinarily difficult time in the 21st century trying to figure Paul out. In fact, Christians have been trying to understand Paul for who knows how long? My opinion is that he is woefully misunderstood and miscast in the role of the villain who took the teachings of Jesus and made them anti-Law and anti-Jewish. I’m not alone in this opinion.

…and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.

–2 Peter 3:15-16

Peter admitted that Paul’s writings were hard to understand and that even during the time in which Peter was writing, “untaught and unstable” people were distorting Paul’s words. How much more do we experience this distortion as we work from copies of copies of copies of his original writings, translated again and again, and on top of all that, rigidly filtered through the smoky lens of thousands of years of Christian theology and doctrine?

The reason that Schreiner can’t figure out the contradiction between Paul’s reverence for the Torah of Moses and Paul’s specifically not requiring the Gentile believers to keep the Torah in the manner of the Jews, as well as forbidding them to circumcise and thus convert to Judaism, is that the Christian lens of theology and doctrine is not designed to “see” the obvious resolution.

I know I’ve said this before, but when we understand how the Abrahamic covenant ties all nations to the Messianic promise by faith but links only the descendants of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob to the Sinai covenant, then we realize on what basis Paul, and the Council of the Apostles in their binding ruling of halachah for the Gentiles, established that the Gentile believers had a different legal status; one that didn’t require conversion to Judaism and being yoked to the entire mitzvot of Torah.

I’ll say it again for any Christians reading this. Keeping Torah or not keeping Torah is not an issue of personal salvation. The fact that Jewish people, including those who have faith in Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah, observe the Torah mitzvot doesn’t save them, but that doesn’t mean the Sinai covenant no longer applies to them. Paul, James, and the Council absolved the Gentile believers from having to take on board the same yoke. Once saved, we were given a status somewhat like non-Jewish people living among Israel (but not identical to the ancient Gerim) and obligated to a modified set of the mitzvot that, on the surface, seem deceptively simple.

But there’s nothing I can see in the writings of Paul, especially the record of his life we read about in Luke’s Book of Acts, that tells us Paul dispensed with Torah observance in his own life, taught other Jews to do such a thing, or ever, ever disconnected Torah observance from the proper Jewish response to God.

I know this book is going to cause me more than a few headaches. It already has, and I’ve only read four of the questions. I’ve got thirty-six more to go. I suspect that my conversations with Pastor will be very dynamic. Hopefully, my conversations on this blog will be dynamic as well.

Our view of Paul is like he described our understanding of the Bible and God, as seen “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Our beliefs, theology, doctrines, and dogma are captured in that glass, trapped in crystal, frozen in amber. It’s time to take a big brick and start pounding on that glass, which was heated, blown, and cast by men who have long since died, and take a fresh look at Paul, Moses, Jesus, Torah, the Bible, and God.

Religious Judaism is accused of taking the Bible and weaving tons and tons of interpretations and traditions around it so that the original intent of the text is barely recognizable. What Protestant Christianity doesn’t realize is that we’ve done exactly the same thing with our post-Reformation, post-modern theologies and doctrines. That we are told we must see Paul’s love of Torah as God’s authoritative word, and his command to the Gentiles that they (we) are not required to observe Torah as mutually exclusive, is a perfect example of our own tradition-induced blindness in the church.

The next part of my review of Schreiner’s book can be found in Blessings, Curses, and Works of the Law.

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What God Wants

August 13, 2013 James Pyles 4 Comments

If one wishes to add on more restrictions than the law requires, one may do so for oneself, but not [make such demands] of others.

-Shulchan Aruch

Some people employ a double standard. One set of rules applies to themselves, and another to everyone else. The Shulchan Aruch, the standard authoritative compilation of Jewish law, accepts this policy – but on one condition: the more restrictive set of rules must apply to oneself, and the more lenient apply to other people.

Guidelines exist for many things, such as the percentage of income that one should give for tzedakah. Many tzaddikim, righteous people, retained only the barest minimum of their income for themselves, just enough to provide for their families, and gave everything else to the poor. However, they would never expect anyone else to follow their example, and some even forbade it.

Our minds are ingenious in concocting self-serving rationalizations. Sometimes we may have excellent reasons not to give more liberally to tzedakah, even if it is within the required amount. We may project into the future, worry about our economic security, and conclude that we should put more money away for a rainy day. Yet we often criticize people who we feel do not give enough to tzedakah.

We should be aware of such rationalizations and remember that the more demanding rules should apply to ourselves. If we are going to rationalize, let us rationalize in a way that gives the benefit of doubt to others.

Today I shall…

…remember to be more demanding of myself than I am of others.

-Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
“Growing Each Day, Elul 5”
Aish.com

I know that between Christianity, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, and Hebrew Roots (and their various streams and branches), there is quite a bit of difference in understanding what God wants from us. How do we serve Him in holiness and righteousness? There is some common ground. Generally performing acts of kindness and charity are involved. We can all agree that giving food to the hungry is the right thing to do. But we also have lots and lots of traditions, doctrines, dogmas, and theologies that only sort of match up with the other groups or that don’t even come close.

Most Christians believe that Jesus replaced the Law with Grace, while observant Jews believe the Torah continues to be in force upon the Jewish people, as interpreted and operationalized by the sages. Within Messianic Judaism, there are different opinions about Torah and how it applies to Jewish and Gentile believers, and Hebrew Roots is so diverse a population, that opinions about Torah span a very wide spectrum.

I can’t tell you what to believe and how to live your life. If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I’m continuously working on how to live my own life in accordance with my beliefs. I thought I’d reached a state of equilibrium, but recent questions have made me take another look at a few things. Also, as my relationship with different people change, I’m forced to evaluate the meaning of those relationships and how they impact my understanding of faith and God.

And there are no end of opinions on the Internet, and no end of people who are more than happy to tell you what to do, where to go, and especially what you’re doing wrong. If my hair were long enough, I’d want to tear it out, at least sometimes.

Some people accomplish a great deal, yet they are unhappy because they keep thinking that “somewhere else” they might be able to accomplish more. They live their lives with the general feeling that whatever they are engaged in at the moment is nothing compared to what they might possibly do.

This feeling is a poison that destroys joy and happiness in life. While you should try to accomplish as much as you can, it is often an illusion that you are missing out by not being “somewhere else.”

-Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
“Daily Lift #908, Make the Most of the Here and Now”
Aish.com

I sometimes feel this way about those believers who seem obsessed with “the end times” and spend unceasing hours and effort exploring every possible conspiracy theory as if they were investigating a spiritual X-Files. But Rabbi Pliskin’s statement is also well applied to understanding the purpose of our lives in general. What does God want from us? How are we to live? How stringent are “the rules” and are “the rules” the same for everyone, or do they differ for differing populations? What does God want of us?

He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?

–Micah 6:8 (NASB)

That seems like a good start but is it a good finish as well? I don’t know. I do know that any life of faith has to stand on something solid. If it doesn’t, it becomes too easy for someone else to come along and knock your faith down, like a shoddy sand castle on some forlorn beach.

In Christianity, it’s all about what you believe. In Judaism, it’s all about what you do because of what you believe (that last part isn’t exactly correct, but I’m choosing to express it as such).

Never underestimate the power of a simple, pure deed done from the heart.

The world is not changed by men who move mountains, nor by those who lead the revolutions, nor by those whose purse strings tie up the world.

Dictators are deposed, oppression is dissolved, entire nations are transformed by a few precious acts of beauty performed by a handful of unknown soldiers.

As Maimonides wrote in his code of law, “Each person must see himself as though the entire world were held in balance and any deed he may do could tip the scales.”

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Powerful Beauty”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

God is here. He is listening. I sometimes forget until He reminds me, that He fulfills my every need, even when I don’t ask Him to. When I “see” Him doing that, it’s His reminder to me that He’s there and He’s real and He cares.

I can’t let anyone try to take that away from me. I pray to God that He continually shares His Presence with me. What does God want? For me to wait for Him, watch for Him, and when He reveals Himself to me, to respond to Him with acts of righteousness, kindness, compassion, and justice. What do those things mean? I’ll spend the rest of my life finding out, but I know I’m not alone on the journey. I’m walking humbly with my God.

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Shoftim: The Messianic Prophet and King

August 9, 2013 James Pyles 5 Comments

NOTE: I wrote this commentary a few days before my recent blog post, Can Jesus Inherit Lineage from his Adoptive Father Joseph?.

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. Moreover, he shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the Lord has warned you, “You must not go back that way again.” And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.

When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll by the levitical priests. Let it remain with him and let him read in it all his life, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws. Thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows or deviate from the Instruction to the right or to the left, to the end that he and his descendants may reign long in the midst of Israel.

–Deuteronomy 17:14-20 (JPS Tanakh)

Of course, this instruction was incumbant upon all of Israel’s Kings beginning with Saul, but we know that subsequently Saul was removed from the Throne by God and David set in his place. Further, we know that God made a covenant with David that a descendent of his would always sit upon the Throne of Israel (2 Samuel 7:11-17), and the ultimate Davidic King is Messiah (John 1:49).

But if Messiah is a legitimate King of Israel, he should be subject to what we see in this week’s Torah Portion Shoftim, as quoted above.

The parsha goes further: the king is commanded to write two copies of the Torah, to keep the Torah with him, and should read from it “all the days of his life.” Thus the king was to acquire and maintain fear of Heaven, and to observe the Torah and perform its Commandments. A Jewish king recognizes that in actuality, he is merely a servant of a Higher authority. The Torah commands that he do all this “so that his heart does not lift itself over his brothers.” The intent is the same: he remains one of the people, and he is responsible for them and their spiritual well-being. Unlike monarchies in other nations, the Jewish king must remain part of the people, and care for them.

-Rabbi Yaakov Menken
Commentary on Shoftim
Torah.org

Perhaps Messiah was responding to this requirement when he said and did this:

So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

–John 13:12-17 (NASB)

But Jesus called them to Himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

–Matthew 20:25-28 (NASB)

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.

–Matthew 27:50 (NASB)

We often think of Kings as rulers and especially in the case of David, as warriors, leading armies to defeat enemies, but what about the servant King who so identified with his subjects that he would give his life so they would live?

Although we don’t typically think of Moses as a King, we see that he possessed the same qualities:

Then Moses returned to the Lord, and said, “Alas, this people has committed a great sin, and they have made a god of gold for themselves. But now, if You will, forgive their sin—and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written!”

–Exodus 32:31-32 (NASB)

We don’t think of Jesus as becoming a King until he returns, but even as Yeshua ben Yosef, the suffering servant, he was everything we could ever hope from a King, especially in his humility and his willingness to give his life for those he loves.

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your own people, like myself; him you shall heed. This is just what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb, on the day of the Assembly, saying, “Let me not hear the voice of the Lord my God any longer or see this wondrous fire any more, lest I die.” Whereupon the Lord said to me, “They have done well in speaking thus. I will raise up a prophet for them from among their own people, like yourself: I will put My words in his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command him; and if anybody fails to heed the words he speaks in My name, I myself will call him to account.

–Deuteronomy 18:15-19 (JPS Tanakh)

Then a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My Son, My Chosen One; listen to Him!”

–John 9:35 (NASB)

But while it may not be obvious that Jesus was, in some sense, King upon his first coming, he certainly was a prophet, the prophet foretold in this week’s Torah portion.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

–Matthew 16:13-16 (NASB)

When Moses was speaking of God raising a prophet like him, in one sense, he was speaking of all the prophets who came after him. The text immediately after the prophesy describes how to determine if one is a valid prophet or not.

Moses would not be the last of the prophets. He would have successors. Historically this was so. From the days of Samuel to the Second Temple period, each generation gave rise to men – and sometimes women – who spoke G‑d’s word with immense courage, unafraid to censure kings, criticize priests, or rebuke an entire generation for its lack of faith and moral integrity.

-Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
“Testing Prophecy”
Chabad.org

Of course, this test should be applied to all who claim to be prophets and most importantly to one who claims to be Messiah, for if his prophesies are not true, then not only is he not a prophet, but he cannot be Moshiach.

There was, however, an obvious question: How does one tell a true prophet from a false one? Unlike kings or priests, prophets did not derive authority from formal office. Their authority lay in their personality, their ability to give voice to the word of G‑d, their self-evident inspiration. But precisely because a prophet has privileged access to the word others cannot hear, the visions others cannot see, the real possibility existed of false prophets – like those of Baal in the days of King Ahab. Charismatic authority is inherently destabilizing. What was there to prevent a fraudulent, or even a sincere but mistaken, figure, able to perform signs and wonders and move the people by the power of his words, from taking the nation in a wrong direction, misleading others and perhaps even himself?

-Lord Rabbi Sacks

I’m sure this is how at least some Jewish people see Jesus if they acknowledge his ability to do signs and wonders as well as the power of his words of teaching. We know from the Biblical record that this is how some Jewish people even in the days Jesus walked in Israel thought of him. Christian apologetics tend to defend Jesus based on Jewish prophesy, but can they, can we defend him based on his own prophecies?

Unfortunately, while there is just tons and tons of information about the prophesies referring to Messiah, but I can’t immediately find anything available about the prophesies spoken by Jesus. Do we call these his prophesies?

From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.

–Matthew 16:21

“But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.'”

–Matthew 25:31-34

Jesus said to him, “You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

–Matthew 26:64

As He was going out of the temple, one of His disciples *said to Him, “Teacher, behold what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which will not be torn down.”

–Mark 13:1-2

“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near. Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are in the midst of the city must leave, and those who are in the country must not enter the city; because these are days of vengeance, so that all things which are written will be fulfilled. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people; and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

–Luke 21:20-24

Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. Some of the people therefore, when they heard these words, were saying, “This certainly is the Prophet.”

–John 7:37-40

Certainly the prophesies where Jesus foretold his own death were accurate, as were the words he spoke of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. But he hasn’t returned in power yet to restore Israel, return the exiles, and rebuild the Temple. It is these prophesies modern Jews point to and say, “he didn’t fulfill these,” thus declaring that Jesus can’t have been the Messiah.

There are other prophesies in the Bible that just “hang out there” in the air awaiting fulfillment. It is only faith that allows us to wait for them, just as observant Jews faithfully await the coming of Messiah, as Rabbi Mosheh ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides or Rambam said in the twelfth of his Thirteen Principles of Faith:

I believe with a complete faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even though he may delay, nevertheless, every day I anticipate that he will come.

There is much evidence in scripture that Jesus (Yeshua) is the awaited Messiah, that he came and will return, but there is not absolute proof. We are expected to also exercise faith. One of the criticisms of the “two comings model” of Messiah is that it’s been nearly two-thousand years since his death, resurrection, and ascent. Why does he delay? What’s he waiting for? Isn’t the world screwed up enough yet? Aren’t we long overdue for a Savior?

Jesus said he would return “soon” (Revelation 22:20), but apparently that isn’t “soon” by human standards. On the other hand, the prophet Jonah declared that in forty days, the great city Ninevah would be overthrown (Jonah 4:4) but the King, the city, and even the animals repented (Jonah 4:5-9) and as a result, God relented and did not destroy Ninevah (Jonah 4:10), which made Jonah pretty unhappy.

But since Jonah made a prophesy and it didn’t come true (because God apparently overrode the prophesy), does that make Jonah a false prophet? It doesn’t appear so. Then what happened?

Of course, Ninevah was eventually destroyed, so their repentance wasn’t what you would call “permanent.” But that’s not good enough. Jonah said that Ninevah would be destroyed in forty days, not eventually.

Rabbi Sacks has, what for Christians, is an uncomfortable answer.

Fundamental conclusions follow from this. A prophet is not an oracle: a prophecy is not a prediction. Precisely because Judaism believes in free will, the human future can never be unfailingly predicted. People are capable of change. G‑d forgives. As we say in our prayers on the High Holy Days: “Prayer, penitence and charity avert the evil decree.” There is no decree that cannot be revoked. A prophet does not foretell. He warns. A prophet does not speak to predict future catastrophe but rather to avert it. If a prediction comes true it has succeeded. If a prophecy comes true it has failed.

This only applies to what Rabbi Sacks calls a “negative prophecy,” one that foretells some dire event or punishment. If it comes true, then God kept His word. If it does not come true (in the case of Ninevah), it meant that the people repented and God relented of His punishment. They heeded God’s warning and He was merciful.

But what of Messiah’s prophesies of his return as King? First, no specific time frame was set except “soon.” In fact, we are told that he will come as a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:2), and that no one, not even the angels in Heaven, know the time of Messiah’s return (Mark 13:32). However, let’s assume that (here’s the problematic part) human beings have some sort of impact on the timing of Messiah. There are many opinions in Judaism about this timing. Some say that only when Israel is completely faithless will he return, others say only when Israel is completely faithful. However, there is an enduring idea that in some way our behavior or our worthiness or lack of worthiness all affect exactly when Messiah will come.

Human free will doesn’t override God’s plan, but in Judaism, free will has an “interactive” relationship with that plan, making some adjustments on it. It’s like God’s plan is a mighty river. The river cannot be stopped, but the various objects and structures in the river might affect its flow one way or the other. It will still wind its way to the delta and meet the ocean, so the end is a foregone conclusion, but the little details potentially are adjustable.

That’s one way of looking at the return of the King. It probably won’t be palatable to Christians, but then, we tend not to want to think in those directions, anyway.

So what do we have? We have a Jesus who we know was a prophet in his first coming and who less obviously also was a King, at least in his service to Israel up to and including his sacrificial death. As prophet, the events he prophesied that have already come to pass can be verified (his death and resurrection, the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem). But the prophesies of his return cannot be verified for they have yet to arrive.

It is faith that helps us believe that the prophesies will be fulfilled, and that we will see the return of the Messiah King.

Addendum: Rabbi Joshua Brumbach wrote an excellent commentary on this week’s Torah Portion that also addresses Messiah as a Prophet like Moses, but from a Jewish perspective: Why Do We Need Yeshua? I encourage you to read it.

Good Shabbos.

47 days.

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My Chumash Visits Sunday School

August 6, 2013 James Pyles 33 Comments

Some people believe the 4 spring holidays (Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Feast of Weeks/Pentecost) were fulfilled in Messiah’s 1st coming and that the 3 autumn holidays (Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Feast of Booths/Tabernacles) will be fulfilled at his 2nd coming.

-from Sunday School study notes
for August 4th, “Leviticus 23, Feasts of Israel: God’s Picture of Things to Come”

Addendum, August 8, 2013: Derek Leman wrote an excellent blog post building on my theme called Jesus Did Not Fulfill the Feasts. Have a look.

I first talked about anticipating this lesson last week, and confessed feeling somewhat unsettled about facing the sermon and especially Sunday school. As it turned out, there was a mirror operating between Pastor Randy’s sermon and the Sunday School class I attended a few days ago. Both of them provided an image of Jesus “fulfilling” Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits during his first coming, Pentecost between his comings by the giving of the Holy Spirit, and “fulfilling” the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles when he returns (I’m using the more “Christianized” terms for the appointed times recorded in Leviticus 23).

But in Christian parlance, “fulfilling” something is just another way of saying “terminating.” I came to church on Sunday with my Christian Bible, my Chumash, my Siddur, and a notebook full of paper. In other words, I was “loaded for bear.” I didn’t know exactly what to expect from the sermon, but I was a little surprised to find Pastor Randy taking the “fulfilling” route, although he did stop short of saying that “fulfilling” meant “permanently doing away with.” I was also surprised, given that Pastor lived in Israel for fifteen years, that he used the term “Yahweh” as a substitute for the Tetragrammaton, the four letters in the Hebrew language that represent the most Holy Name of God (which is usually translated in Christian Bibles as “The Lord.”).

Frankly, I’m just stunned that the theology presented by the image I’ve posted titled “Biblical Holidays” (see the chart below) even exists (the chart in this blog post is almost identical to the one in Pastor’s study notes for last Sunday’s sermon). No one seems to be able to tell me where this chart and this doctrine comes from but it obviously is common. I don’t agree with it at all. It reduces the moedim to a set of bookmarks in the Bible that have no intrinsic value of their own but that simply exist to “point to Jesus,” and once they do, they’re history.

Actually, Pastor spent most of his sermon focused on Shabbat and only mentioned the rest of the moedim (eight in all if you include Shabbat) to provide some background. He again emphasized the necessity of a Shabbat (he spoke about Shabbat last week, too) but said that it didn’t really matter what day of the week it is. His Shabbat happens to be on Monday. He also emphasized that it’s the Biblical pattern for providing rest and relaxation, but he didn’t mention that at least for non-Jews, it is also a way to acknowledge God as sovereign Creator (Genesis 2:2, Exodus 20:11).

Certainly Jews take an additional meaning from Shabbat as a sign commandment related to their liberation from slavery in Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:15). While relative to the Ten Commandments, I don’t think Christians are obligated to keep a Saturday Shabbat, there’s nothing really preventing us from doing so (and I can see many advantages for us if we did), but I don’t think it’s just a day of kicking back. Jewish observance of Shabbat emphasizes focus on and devotion to God. While Pastor doesn’t believe that Sunday could ever be his day of rest because it’s the day when he works the hardest, I have to wonder how Rabbis experience Shabbos, since they too are working but don’t have the luxury of assigning Shabbat to a different day of the week.

Don’t get me wrong. I think my Pastor is a terrific guy. He’s intelligent, well-read, well-educated, and a man of God. However, we do have points of disagreement.

After I was done twisting in my seat during the sermon, I confronted something similar in Sunday school. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to talk with the teacher before class began and to express my concerns. That “defused” me enough to reduce all of my questions and comments to just a few. I discovered that no one in class knew that Jews commemorate Shavuot (Pentecost) as the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Sinai. The linkage between God’s revelation to the Jewish people through giving the Torah at Sinai, and then again much later in history, God’s revelation through the giving of the Holy Spirit, was really new.

I also managed to ask why Christians don’t Count the Omer (Leviticus 23:15-16) and forgot that no one there probably knew anything about it, even though it’s right in the text for the section of Leviticus we’re studying.

I keep forgetting just how different of a Christian I really am.

But actually the best part of the class happened after class. I got to talking to a few folks who were interested in this line of discussion and all of the pent-up “me” that I’d been holding back was able to be unleashed for twenty minutes or so. We finally had to leave when we realized that the lights in the church were being turned out (the place really empties out once classes are over).

I’m still trying to figure out where this theology of Jesus fulfilling certain “feasts” during his first coming and then fulfilling the rest at his second comes from. I found charts similar to the one I posted above only at three websites, none of which seem to be exactly “Christian kosher:”

Pastor is pretty conservative so I’d expect him to rely on conservative Christian sources for his information and graphics, but this one is throwing me for a loop. Where does it come from, who conjured it up, and how did anyone arrive at this “pattern?”

I thought I heard someone say that we get the list of festivals the first coming fulfilled by what Jesus quoted of Isaiah 61 in Luke 4 and the list of festivals his second coming will fulfill by the portions of Isaiah 61 he didn’t recite on that occasion. But does that make sense?

And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

–Luke 4:17-21 (NASB)

I must be mistaken though, because I don’t see the mapping between the Luke 4 passages and the three festivals cited in the diagram. Here’s the larger section of Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners; To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn, To grant those who mourn in Zion, Giving them a garland instead of ashes, The oil of gladness instead of mourning, The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, They will raise up the former devastations; And they will repair the ruined cities, The desolations of many generations. Strangers will stand and pasture your flocks, And foreigners will be your farmers and your vinedressers. But you will be called the priests of the Lord; You will be spoken of as ministers of our God. You will eat the wealth of nations, And in their riches you will boast. Instead of your shame you will have a double portion, And instead of humiliation they will shout for joy over their portion. Therefore they will possess a double portion in their land, Everlasting joy will be theirs. For I, the Lord, love justice, I hate robbery in the burnt offering; And I will faithfully give them their recompense And make an everlasting covenant with them. Then their offspring will be known among the nations, And their descendants in the midst of the peoples. All who see them will recognize them Because they are the offspring whom the Lord has blessed.

–Isaiah 61:1-9 (NASB)

I stopped copying and pasting after nine verses because I can’t see the mapping. I wanted to be thorough, but I can’t see a connection between this and the various “feasts” that are supposed to be fulfilled.

My Sunday school teacher offered a more simple explanation. Christ was crucified on Passover, was buried during the Unleavened Bread festival (which may not be true since he was buried before sunset…if he died on Pesach, it was still Pesach when he was buried), and rose as First Fruits from the dead. I’m sorry, but that seems like a pretty thin set of connections upon which to build an entire doctrine. Did I mention that the Feast of Trumpets is supposed to symbolize the Rapture, the Day of Atonement is supposed to symbolize the Return and Final Redemption, and Tabernacles is the Millennial Reign of Christ?

I can sort of see how some Christians might make those kinds of associations, but I have never, ever read any Jewish commentary that said the Messiah’s coming somehow “fulfills” any of those things. From a Jewish point of view, the Messiah comes, defeats Israel’s enemies, returns the exiles to their Land, restores Israel as the head of nations, rebuilds Jerusalem and the Temple, re-institutes the Temple service with Levitical Priests, and rules over Israel and the rest of the nations as King, establishing world-wide peace and tranquility.

It’s all pretty straightforward really with no theological hoops to jump through. Messiah does what he was expected to do back in Acts 1:6 and what Jewish people throughout history have been waiting for Messiah to come and do for thousands of years.

This week was the first of an eight-week series of sermons on Leviticus 23 that Pastor will be giving. Sunday school will be taking a different direction during those weeks, but I have a feeling I’ll be challenged at church for the next couple of months between how Pastor sees the function of the moedim and how I do. Fortunately, as I mentioned before, this did inspire an interesting conversation after class. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to share a little more about who I am and how I see things, not because I think I’m such a big deal, but because I just can’t help but believe there is a lot more to the Bible than what many Christians get out of it. I’d like the opportunity to offer a different perspective and ideally, a paradigm shift.

We’ll see how things go.

"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