As the Torah reading בהעלתך Beha’alotcha begins, the menorah and the Levites are dedicated to God’s service, and the Tabernacle is ready for business. However, this reading is permeated with all sorts of ingratitude and complaining, from the people complaining about the manna to Miriam and Aaron complaining about Moses. God doesn’t put up with any of it. Whether it’s sending down a consuming fire or a plague, God doesn’t put up with people grumbling about His provision.
There’s a common theme occurring throughout the Hebrew Roots/Messianic community recently — separation and regrouping. We also see in Scripture the recurring symbol of “cutting off” in an agricultural sense to talk about God’s action in improving the health of the “vine” of Israel. It’s OK when God cuts off parts of the vine to promote growth. It’s OK if there is a time of not producing fruit.
How are we living up to God’s instruction to make His words in the Bible “honorable”?
The Spirit of God is our burglar alarm, our crash-detection system. We should be praying for the Spirit of God to show us where we are “asleep” or “drunk,” in other words, weakness. We live as people who are not afraid of death because we are “awake,” in a continual state of alertness.
We are to “regard one another as more important than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3). As the Messiah considered mankind more important than His standing with YHWH, so too, we should consider our brothers and sisters in faith worth our humbling ourselves. When God went to such lengths to make peace with us, we should be willing to go to great lengths to make peace and keep peace with others.
Last time, we discussed lashon ha-ra (evil tongue, i.e., gossip, slander and divisiveness) and how it is one of the latter-day plagues among God’s people.
In this excursus, we will explore a related principle taught in Torah by Yeshua and His apostles: proportionality. A number of Christians often consider “eye for an eye and tooth for tooth” an example of the “old covenant” not to live by anymore and quote Yeshua to that effect.
Rather, we’ll see that “eye for an eye” is a Bible parabolic idiom teaching proportionality. The point of justice is to restore the offender to the community, not extract a pound of flesh.
We’re taking an excursus from our exploration of Yeshua’s “apocalyptic discourse” in Matthew 24-25, Luke 21 and Mark 13 to explore one of the most pervasive sins among God’s people today. It’s not the Sabbath. It’s not sexual deviance. This is a study about kosher — distinguishing between “clean” and “unclean” — and God’s judgment on the Day of the Lord.
There is a deeper meaning of kosher and what God considers “clean.” Many are very concerned about Moses’ commands about eating kosher, but little concern about Yeshua’s command to speak kosher.
Apostle Ya’akov (James) wrote a lot about the essential matter of keeping control of what comes out of one’s mouth.