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Parallel readings: Jeremiah 46:13-28; Romans 9:14-29, Luke 22:7-23, 1Corinthians 5
We see that Heaven, going all the way back to the time of Abraham, that He is trying to set up a beachhead on Earth for the Kingdom of God to heal and restore His creation. We see in Genesis that God initially was in fellowship with all mankind but as mankind inclined towards evil, Heaven withdrew further until He only had fellowship with one righteous man, who was Noah. Then after the Flood, God singles out Shem, then later Abraham as the family that would follow through and be His ambassadors on earth.
When Joseph went to Egypt, he met a Pharaoh who knew enough about God that he desired to have God’s emissary as close to the throne as possible, sharing power with him. That was a great blessing to Egypt and the entire world.
However, there was a later generation that didn’t know Joseph, and therefore also did not know Joseph’s God and had no desire to share his power with anyone and he used that power to enslave and then commit genocide against the Israelite people.
The focus of Torah section בוא Bo (“come,” Exodus 10:1–13:16) goes through plagues 8–10 — locusts, darkness (that could be felt), the death of Egypt’s first-born by way of Heaven’s destroyer angel.
These plagues were not random choices by God. They were not based in merely natural events. That was particularly true of the last plague, which God specifically chose to punish Pharaoh and the people of Egypt for their genocidal attack on the people of Israel, throwing many Israelite baby boys into the Nile.
Israel’s freedom from Egypt was not free, many people died to liberate them. Hence, this is why God tells the Israelites that the firstborn of Israel belong to Him.
Why Heaven wants us to get out the leaven
We also read in the Torah reading Bo about the origin of matzah (unleavened bread) in the ritual practice of Israel and her commonwealth. In 1Corinthians 5, the Apostle Paul uses Chag Matzot (Feast of Unleavened Bread) as an example of fellowship. The point of the commemoration of the unleavened bread is not merely a reminder that the bread didn’t have time to raise up. The Corinthian congregation were not living in sincerity and truth when they allowed a person who was living in flagrant sexual sin to fellowship with them.
The point of the unleavened bread is abruptly leaving Mitzraim behind, which includes the malice and wickedness of Egypt. Instead, the descendants of Israel were to live in sincerity and truth. They were repenting from sin, but also turning towards righteousness. They weren’t called to just called to sweep away evil habits but to pick up good habits. They were preparing to detox themselves from their old way of life and starting a new life.
“and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed My signs among them, that you may know that I am the LORD.”
Exodus 10:2 NASB
The first seven plagues were sent to convince Pharaoh, but the last three were to break and humiliate Pharaoh and the pantheon of so-called deities he depended on. Similarly, the plagues on the Day of the Lord will be to convince the humble and break the proud.
When Yeshua said at the Last Supper, “this is the blood of the new covenant” in Luke 21, Yeshua was harkening back to the prophecies of Jer. 31:31–34 and Ezek. 36:25–27.
Was the LORD toying with Mitzraim or making a memorial?
“While the thought of mocking is startling, both the contextual and the etymological situation demand a negative type of treatment. God treated the Egyptians severely because, as the Philistines noted [after holding the captured Ark, 1Sam. 6:6], they hardened their hearts. It is clearly within God’s power and prerogative to punish and discipline but he never acts in jest; hence the RSV translation ‘made sport of’ can be misleading.”
Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament
One of the most powerful tools we have against despots and tyrants is mockery. When Elijah mocked the Ba’als and devotee prophets at Mt. Carmel (1Kings 18), he was following a tradition of other prophets who called out people who made idols and yet bowed to them (Isa. 44:9–28; 46:6–7). There is no Ba’al — “storm god.” There is only the LORD, Who made the Earth’s atmosphere and can either send rain or withhold it.
The legacy that came after the plagues persisted for hundreds of years later and even reached the ears of nations hundreds of miles away, such as the people of Philistia and Jericho.
“Why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When He had severely dealt with them, did they not allow the people to go, and they departed?”
1Samuel 6:6 NASB
This is how Rahab was able to lead her family away from pagan idols and to the worship of the true and only God. This decision is so far reaching that she became part of the lineage of the Messiah Yeshua. Yeshua has several Gentile grandmothers, including Tamar, Rahab and Ruth. They overcame the world and gained the crown of life and the crown of inclusion in the lineage of Messiah Yeshua.
We are also called to overcome the world, to prefer the tree of life over the tree of knowledge and to join Messiah Yeshua’s family. The Kingdom of God is not a small clique but a big tent. The house of God keeps getting bigger and bigger and He keeps making more rooms, more “mansions” for those who want to enter.
Pharaoh had to learn via the plagues (especially, the Passover linked 10th one) that he wasn’t the god Mitzraim’s systematic paganism made him out to be and the king of kings the nation’s power projected. How much more did the demonic world and their worldly hand-orforehead adherents have to learn Who was the true King of Kings.
Big-tent Kingdom — under one God
The Kingdom of God is supposed to be a big tent, as seen in the increasing size of the dwelling place of Heaven on Earth — Tabernacle then Temple — going from tent to building then giant city — throughout the Bible.
Heaven calls people to “come as you are”: Don’t “clean yourself up” before turning away from lifestyle apart from God. But God loves us enough not to leave us as we are. This was the point the Apostle Paul emphasized in 1Corinthians 5. They took the “big tent” way too far, tolerating disgusting sexual immorality that even pagans, who didn’t have the Torah, would never tolerate.
And in Colossians 2:8–19, Apostle Paul warns us not to presume to insert God into our pantheon of gods and idols. He is the only God and He has already created His image, which is mankind. We can never create an image of Him as beautiful as the image He has created.
Was the Torah nailed to Yeshua’s cross?
You likely have heard it said that Col. 2:16–17 (and Gal. 4:10) proves that Yeshua took away the Torah — especially, instructions for holy days — and nailed it to His cross via His death and resurrection. (See answers to this assertion.) Ask yourself these questions as you read Colossians 2:
- Is Paul saying in Col. 2:8 that God’s Word is “empty deception” and “tradition of men”?
- If the “Old Testament” is “tradition of men,” why did Yeshua battle the Pharisees over interpretation of it?
- What’s really going on in the Apostles’ Jerusalem council decision in Acts 15? How do the “four commandments” fit with Acts 15:20?
The point of the passage is Yeshua as the Passover offering should be seen in the context of the 10 plagues of the Exodus, when Heaven “made a public display” of the powerlessness of the rulers and the false deities they considered to be authorities.
God did not nail the Torah to the cross when the Romans nailed Yeshua to the cross and Paul never makes this argument. One can only to come to such conclusions if you take Paul’s writings out of context, which is easy to do if you just read a small section of the letter and presume to understand Paul’s arguments. When you are studying a letter of Paul, you have to read the entire letter to understand his argument. It’s dangerous to cherry pick the Scriptures but especially dangerous to do so when reading the Apostle Paul.
Paul would never call God’s law an “empty deception” or a “tradition of men.” If the “Old Testament” itself is merely a “tradition of men,” then why did Yeshua quote it all the time? He even quoted scripture over and again when HaSatan was tempting Him.
The point of the Colossians 2 passage is that Yeshua as the Passover offering should be seen in the context of the 10 plagues of the Exodus, when Heaven “made a public display of the powerlessness of the rulers and the false deities they considered to be authorities.
For example, many Christians who teach that the Torah was “nailed to the cross” are all too happy to look for exemptions to the Torah that might not apply to them but are all too happy to also find parts of the Torah that they can apply to you but not to themselves.
We also see this during tax season when people are happy when they find out that they don’t have to pay certain types or taxes or they are eligible for certain deductions that don’t apply to others. We call these “categorial exemptions.”
The truth of the matter is there actually are certain Torah rules that are not universal. For example, the laws that apply to the priests, particularly the High Priest, do not apply to the common Israelite.
Torah observance is a love response to salvation
In Psalm 119, King David talks about his love of the Torah as a loving response to his Creator. David didn’t have a checklist of exemptions. The truth is that as we read the Scriptures, we may see something that doesn’t seem to fit. It’s my own heart and my mind that needs to be rectified. It’s not the word of God that needs to be crucified, changed or manipulated, to fit a certain theology or doctrine, but it’s my own foundation that needs correction, but that correction is a journey we all walk though as believers in Yeshua.
When we go through the Torah cycle and we read about the plagues and deliverance from Egypt, we then go through it again when we celebrate the Passover a month or so later. We also see how Jeremiah and the Apostle Paul brought further meaning to the Passover and how to be a part of the Kingdom of God and joining in its mission to save the world. The key to the passover is the Messiah Himself, as the Gospels show us.
Some of our brothers and sisters in the Body of Messiah have taken God’s words and use them to promote false narratives about the Kingdom of God. The body of Messiah is having a difficult time knowing what is right and wrong because they have taught that the Torah, which tells us what is right and wrong, was “nailed to the cross” and no longer applicable to the Body of Messiah.
Slavery isn’t an American problem. It’s an ancient human evil
While we are talking about freedom from slavery, we see in the United States that there are those who want to teach a version of U.S. history that tells us that our nation was rooted and centered on slavery.
The 1619 Project, which is now the subject of a six-part docuseries on Hulu, “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative” (New York Times, Aug. 17, 2019).
It was published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in colonial Virginia. In 1619, a group of about 20 captive Africans arrived in Jamestown. They had been captured in raids conducted by Africans and Portuguese against the Kingdom of Ndongo (modern-day Angola).
This framing challenges the idea that American history began with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 or with the arrival of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620.
Real historians have countered the false narratives promoted in the 1619 Project, particularly the false narrative that Europeans invented slavery or did a better job of it than other cultures. Here are important contextual notes:
- About one-quarter of the Native American population were enslaved to other tribes pre-Columbus. Columbus didn’t bring slavery to the Americas at all.
- There was also European enslavement of natives as far back as Columbus, who was sailing under the Spanish flag, in 1493–1494, well before the British, Dutch or French established any colonies in the Americas.
- There were free Africans from Spain among Columbus’s crew, who apparently had no moral qualms about enslaving other Africans or the Natives in America.
- The first enslaved Africans actually were brought to North America in 1526, by the Spanish, not in 1619 by the British.
- Roughly 1.5 million Europeans were captured by Islamic slave traders from North Africa in the 1600s and 1700s.
People who promote the type of lies and false narratives of The 1619 Project don’t believe that the Declaration of Independence is the foundation of the county, but the founding of Jamestown is the most foundation of the United States of America. They ignore “every words that proceeds from the mouth of God” and they also ignore the foundation of Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620.
Slavery is not an American institution but a horrific human institution inflicted on by the strong on the weak. It’s part of the unregenerate human condition to dominate other people. And we can come up with all kinds of explanations and justifications for it and people will try to drag drag God and the Bible into it.
Unfortunately, we see this similar spirit of domination in the Body of Messiah when people will try to use God’s laws to dominate their fellow believers, rather than helping each other as equals in the body of Christ.
If you find yourself saying, “You’re not doing it right. Let me tell you about the right way to do it. Because you don’t do it the way that our group does it, then you’re under heavens condemnation,” then the Son of God has some very harsh words for you.
““But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”
Matthew 5:22 NASB
Yeshua warned us about judging our fellow humans as completely lacking in moral sense, or calling them “a fool.” The word “fool” in this context is not synonymous with ignorance, or doing something stupid. To call someone a “fool” was to say that the person was completely lacking basic moral judgement. In our modern parlance, it may be the equivalent of calling someone a psychopath and calling down Heaven’s condemnation on that person.
Yeshua says to call someone a “fool” was to put oneself in danger of being thrown in the lake of fire at the end of days, which to put oneself in the same company as the Beast, the False Prophet and the Adversary.
Well, thankfully, He didn’t do that with us, He didn’t do that with Israel when they strayed into idolatry. God, in His mercy, gave the correction to Israel, we call that the Exiles.
God used the exiles of both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms to correct His people. Some got the message, some did not, but when Cyrus, the little “a” anointed one, called for the rebuilding of the Temple, a small remnant, who understood the assignment, took up the task to do so.
Summary: Tammy