Light In Torah

Five hundred years after Saul's  almost  obedience, the book of Esther opens in the court of King Ahasuerus in Susa (Persia). In that court, a man rises to prominence. His name is Haman. And Scripture identifies him in a way no careful reader should miss: "Haman the Agagite"—a descendant of Agag, the individual king Saul was commanded to kill and failed to kill completely. The line that Samuel was supposed to execute. Unfortunately, Agag already had children. That line continued through five centuries into the court of Persia. Haman devises a plan—not to defeat Israel in battle, not to contest territory, but to exterminate every Jewish person in the empire: every man, woman, and child, on a single day. He purchases the decree with ten thousand talents of silver. He sets the date by casting lots. He posts it across every province. And Mordecai and Esther must decide whether to go to the king to spare the Jewish people. The rest of the story you know. But here is what must ...

I originally had three confirmations about Amalek that I was supposed to write about. Then I landed in 1 Samuel 25 and 2 Samuel 1—and there is Amalek again. Make that four. Here goes part two. Amalek has a way of showing his ugly head over and over again. During the period of the judges, they raided alongside Midian and Ammon. They are described like locusts covering the land (Judg. 6:3–5). And each time they return, it is at the moment of maximum vulnerability—when Israel is weakest spiritually. That is the pattern. They do not fight when the fight is fair; they strike when the tail is exposed. Then comes 1 Samuel 15—the moment that changes everything. Not just for Saul, but for the next five hundred years of biblical history. By the time of Saul, the decree of Exodus 17 had been on record for centuries. Moses wrote it down. Joshua knew it. The elders knew it. And now Samuel comes to Saul with a command: "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in...

I just finished fourteen weeks of an intense study on the grace of God, His pride in our obedience, and an expanded understanding of blood, atonement, cleansing, purity laws, the temple services, ritual cleansing, clean and unclean laws, and our modern-day relationship to it all. We covered a great deal. Over the past week, I have had three specific encounters—the last one at my daughter's church here in Austin, Texas. Each dealt with one particular topic: God's forever enemy, Amalek. Most people read the book of Esther as the story of a brave woman, and it is. But underneath that story lies another that began five hundred years earlier—with a command that one king nearly obeyed, almost—and because he obeyed only partially, a descendant of the man he spared rose to power in the Persian Empire. Within days, he came close to killing every Jewish person alive. No Jews, no return from exile, no temple, no Messiah. The entire line of redemption was almost severed—not by an enemy fro...

There is a second question hiding in the first question from yesterday's study. If He did not become impure, does that mean He never kept the purity laws—never brought sacrifices for impurity, never went to the  mikveh , and so on? Does it mean that? Drumroll, please? I do not know. But here is something to think about, especially for the critic who would wave all of this off and say, "Of course He was never subject to that impurity nonsense—He did not do that legalism!" Remember what we learned about the  tzaddik —the righteous one. One thing we always find is true: the  tzaddik  is  with  his people. He identifies with them. He does not hold himself above them; He is down in the middle with them. Now think about who Yeshua was understood to be—the Messiah of Israel. A teacher with students, living in public, constantly watched, and measured against everything the people expected of a faithful Son of the covenant. The Messiah of Israel was never imagined a...

We have established that there are two things which cannot become unclean: living water, which cleanses and cannot be defiled, and the words of Torah, which cannot be contaminated by impurity. Impurity simply cannot reach them. Did you make any connections in your mind with who represents both of these? Let me review a thought from the Gospel of John, chapter 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:1, 14). Yeshua is the Word, and He is also the source of living waters. So we have learned that when God acts and speaks, when He meets His people, His Word—His own presence and action in the world—both maintains its purity. The Word of God, which is compared to fire, cannot be touched by impurity. And now that the Word is in a body, walking the roads of Galilee, John gives us another connection to Yeshua and water. At the Feast of Tabernacles, the priest performs the great water-drawing c...

In our last two studies, we drew parallel comparisons between Yeshua, living water, and the Word. We saw that even death—the most profound event that could render someone ceremonially unclean—cannot affect living water or the Word of God. This week, in the Torah portion  Chukat , the prophetess Miriam dies (Num. 20:1). We are now forty years after the children of Israel left Egypt, and an entire generation has died off in the wilderness, leaving the entire community of Israel unclean. At the beginning of this Torah portion, we are introduced to the red heifer—a ritual that specifically deals with counteracting the effects of death within the camp of Israel. And as I mentioned a few studies ago, the red heifer is back in the news. This morning, it is only fitting that we pay tribute to this woman, who is responsible for the entire Torah—God's instructions—that we have today. How, you might ask? If it were not for Miriam, there would have been no Moses. Not only was she responsible f...

Let me start with a story that we can all relate to: A student is studying with his teacher when he suddenly stops, embarrassed. He realizes that he is ritually impure and feels he has no business speaking holy words of Torah in that condition. His teacher tells him, "Open your mouth, let the words shine, because the words of Torah do not contract impurity." He proves this from Jeremiah 23:9, where Jeremiah says that God's word is like fire. Just as fire cannot be made unclean—if you take something impure and throw it into fire, the fire burns it up, the impurities are consumed, and the flame remains pure—so too, when impurity comes near the words of Torah, God's word finds nothing to take hold of. This later becomes a matter of Jewish law regarding the Torah scroll. A scroll may be handled by a ritually impure person, a menstruating woman, and even unredeemed individuals—the point is that even very high levels of impurity do not defile the scroll. The system was desi...

  Yesterday I asked: Did Yeshua ever become unclean? Throughout the Torah and all of Scripture, there are examples of certain holy things that impurity cannot overcome. You can bring impurity to them, but nothing transfers! Today, I want to show you one of two of these things, and then we will look at Yeshua through that lens. The first is living water— mayim chayim . There is a passage in Leviticus we could easily read right past. In the middle of a section about a carcass—which contaminates everything it touches: jars, ovens, food, water sitting in a pot—there is one exception. A spring or a gathering system of water stays clean. The very thing that defiles everything around it cannot touch that kind of water. The distinction is this: if you draw water off into a vessel, that is different. But water still joined to its source—groundwater or a spring system—that kind of natural  mayim  holds its purity. Living water was part of everyday life in Israel. Of course, when yo...

  Continuing our thoughts on the death of Yeshua and the idea of purity flowing out of Him, this week's study comes from a question. The individual who asked understands what I was saying about Yeshua and holiness flowing out—there is always a "but." But how can we say that Yeshua was never made impure? How is this possible? You could argue that He was a flesh-and-blood human being living under the Torah. He touched the dead. He stood next to people who were unclean. He spent His days surrounded by exactly the conditions that Leviticus says transmit impurity everywhere. So, if we take His humanity seriously—and we should—then He contracted impurity the way any of us would. And if He did, surely He went to the temple and, through the Torah's instruction, would have undergone the purification process necessary to walk into holy space. It is a good question, right? And guess what? We are not going to get an answer to it today—not a final one. This is the beginning of ano...

  Over the past few weeks of study, we have watched God's people complain again and again, and we keep asking: How can they still complain after everything God has done for them? Good question, Sherlock. But this week, it gets even stranger, because we have actually heard these exact complaints before—many times. They moaned about food and water three times in Exodus, and then they cried over food again earlier in Numbers. Do they not see that each time they cry out to God, He provides for them? Should they not have learned their lesson by now? If they have run out of water, they should not whine—they should pray. God has not let them down yet. Did they forget that God has always taken care of them? And after this  chutzpah , you would assume God would be angry. Enough already—stop complaining! But shockingly, God gives in to their complaint. He tells Moses to supply the people with water, as if Israel's complaining were justified. What is going on? I think the key to unlockin...

We have spent a lot of time on this over the past eleven weeks. But people then take all of that and run in Hebrews 10 toward a terrible conclusion: "By one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified." And then, after quoting Jeremiah—"I will put My Torah upon their hearts and upon their minds, and I will remember their sins no more"—Hebrews says, "Where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin." That announcement is often read as if the entire sacrificial system has been eradicated by Jesus. That is not what the author is saying. He is not calling the system a failure. The temple worked; the priesthood worked exactly as it was designed. And the prophets tell us that in the age to come, Ezekiel saw a third temple in detail, with some offerings returning (Ezek. 40–48). So the author of Hebrews is not trying to abolish the temple. What is finished is the one thing earthly offerings were never built to do: the ...