Light In Torah

Yeshua's own words make a very clear point about His death: that it is a participatory phenomenon. Remember this from the Passover to Calvary—it is something that all their culture shares experientially. The logic is not that Jesus died so we don't have to. Based on the patterns we learned last week, Jesus died so that we, together, can follow the steps and die with Him (1 Pet. 2:21) and, like Him, have full fellowship with His suffering so that we might share in the likeness of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10–11). While Jesus did die on our behalf, it does not mean that Jesus died instead of us. It means that He died ahead of us… and with us. Last week we examined the word for grace ( chen )—merited favor. We talked about the  tzadik , the pattern of the righteous one who stands for the benefit of others; the one who has demonstrated faithfulness becomes their standing. We saw Moses at the golden calf (Ex. 32–33). We saw that Noah himself had found favor (Gen. 6). Joseph and the ...

What was there before Genesis 1:1? Before Yahweh Elohim created everything? Was it empty space? Matterless? Does it matter? Ah, yes, it really does. Before the material creation, there was Everything! There was Yahweh Elohim! Creation is not the formation of things (from Yahweh's perspective), but rather it is the diminishing of everything. From our perspective, there was nothing before creation. From His perspective, there was everything, and He had to limit Himself (tzimtzum). Our destiny is to create what He created—a little apartment for the One that we love. What do we call that apartment, that space where He would dwell among us? Something that could be Yahweh's own little space, His own little world in our world? In order to make that world work, we would have to take upon ourselves to observe certain laws to make Him comfortable. Laws that are not really designed for us, but laws that are designed to make comfortable the guests that we want to bring into this place. The...

We have come to the end of the first seven days of teaching on grace. We have taken modern-day Christianity's definition of "unmerited favor" and rotated it just a little bit to bring some clarity to the topic. This is not a rejection of the Christian understanding of grace; it is an expansion of it. What we have inherited from Western theology is in no way wrong about what you did not earn, but it is incomplete because it is going to miss some things about the One who did earn it. So here we are with merited favor that leads to solidarity, not substitution—the  tzadik  (righteous individual) binding himself to the people. He refuses individual favor. He stands with them. His standing becomes their standing! Moses earned it, and God, the Giver of grace, obliges his request, and many are saved. Most people reading what I am saying believe that Yeshua is the ultimate  tzadik —the righteous man. It is true! The One who stands before God covers us. But when most people think ...

The function of grace through the one who is called righteous ( tzadik ) extends to the people he identifies with. Before we move on, on this preparation day, there is one other thing from the last part of this pattern. Righteous Moses—Moses the righteous—is demonstrating this in Exodus 32 after the calf incident. In verse 32, before the tentative meeting, Moses says, "But now, if You will forgive their sin..." Stop. Read the text. The sentence cuts off in the middle: Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. (Ex. 32:32) This is very intense! Can you imagine it? There is a fancy term for not being able to finish a sentence because the emotion is just too large. Then he continues: "But now, if You will forgive their sin... but if not, please blot me out of Your book which You have written. Blot me out now!" We need to stop for a moment, because you and I have to know what he does not say, and ...

Some may think, after yesterday's study, that the definition I am introducing regarding the term "grace" is almost sacrilegious. And at minimum, it sounds kind of like we are undoing the Reformation movement because we are filling in the gaps to the normative understanding of grace. Yeppers, we are fiddling with grace. Let us keep filling in the gaps. Do you remember the golden calf story (Ex. 32–34)? Do you remember how angry God got? He was ticked off... really, really angry! He distanced Himself from Israel. He called them out over their behavior. He was ready to start over. He offered an angel to lead them, but He first said, "I am going to kill you all and start again with Moses." Moses pushed back; he argued, he pressed God, and went through a boatload of thoughts. What Moses did is known in the legal world as a  sanegor —a defense attorney, an advocate on behalf of his client (the children of Israel, God's wife). Unlike a modern-day legal representati...

One of the challenges that we all face with the topic of grace is that we tend to think it is a term that originated in the New Testament with Yeshua. However, with a cursory use of a concordance, even the Gospel of John identifies the Word that has been from the beginning as full of grace and truth (John 1:1–18), let alone when God's glorious name passed before Moses—it was grace, grace, and more grace (Ex. 34:8–9): And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. (Ex. 34:6–8) The people whose faithfulness is operative and securing...

Passover is behind us. The first days of Unleavened Bread are in the books, and now it is preparation time to count the   Omer   (Lev. 23:15–16)—the 49 days between Firstfruits and Shavuot (Pentecost). Counting the  Omer  is part of the seven-week character preparation to receive divine revelation at the time of Shavuot/Pentecost—49 days from Firstfruits. Hence, the 49 days Yeshua had His disciples wait for the renewing of the covenant in Acts 2 (Acts 2:1): And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. (Acts 2:1) And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete: even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD. (Lev. 23:15–16) There are many levels of meaning to this commandment ( mitzvah ). The deeper intention and meaning is to examine ou...

We are officially over two weeks into the new year— Rosh Hashanah   (Ex. 12:1–2). God's prophetic calendar visibly cranks up once again. The winter has passed, and springtime has come (Song 2:11). The Spirit and the Bride's call is getting louder (Rev. 22:11), and so too are the enemy's distracting schemes (2 Cor. 2:10–11): To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. (2 Cor. 2:10–11) Scripture lays out one of the most beautiful pictures imaginable to help us see the direction that Yahweh is moving. If we took a menorah and labeled each of the branches 1 through 7, with the fourth or middle branch—the  shamash  (servant branch)—which is a little higher than the rest yet serving them all, we would find that multiple patterns in Scripture overlay those branches perfectly. Try it, and you wil...

Today, Saturday 4/4/26, many will celebrate the day that Yeshua was visibly seen risen from the grave (John 20:1; Matt. 28:1–10; Luke 24:1–10)! The day after His resurrection, Yeshua would be out ministering to the doubts of His disciples, helping them realize that He is alive and that the purpose of His resurrection would be catalyzed by their lives. For the disciples closest to Yeshua and those who stood at a safe distance away, it was a time of doubt. The enemy was in hot pursuit. They were fearful for their lives, but just at the God-appointed time, their salvation appeared.  Does that sound vaguely familiar? It should. Earlier this week, on the day after Passover—the 15th of the first month—the natural-born Israelites and those who joined them through the blood of the Lamb exited Egypt and headed toward the sea. In just a few days, during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Pharaoh would not be happy that he let the Israelites go; he felt betrayed, and he was hot (Ex. 14:5–9). Mose...

Growing up, I loved to color. I used to darken the lines with my crayon and make sure my interior colors never went past the boundary line. When I was very little, I was not very good, but with age the skill improved. Life growing up was always about boundaries, separations, and distinctions. Now that I am older, I see that life is not so distinct with separations, but rather transitional—something we are all in. Job references this when he says in Job 38:19: "Where is this, the way light dwells; and where is the place of darkness?" (Job 38:19) It is a simple statement, isn't it? Are the boundaries—the lines of separation—easy to distinguish? Do you remember when you learned to color in a coloring book? On the pages, you learned that objects were created by imaginary lines that must be filled in to give them substance. Those lines represent boundaries between the "form" of an object and the rest of the world. Is that reality, or is that just in coloring books? C...

Passover is just a couple of days away—the excitement is building! It’s a time for reflection on where we were and where we are now. It’s time to give thanks for our deliverance. It’s time to remember, but never look back to those days. Paul emphasizes this when he states in Ephesians 5:8: “For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light.” (Eph. 5:8) Isn’t that awesome? Did you notice that the imagery doesn’t say, “you were like darkness,” or “you were caught in darkness,” or “you were found in darkness”? No, Paul makes a Hebrew-equivalent statement:  You were darkness.  Darkness wasn’t merely a description of your state—it was the essence of your being. Remove the darkness, and there would be nothing left. Before we were rescued, through the Passover, through the Lamb of God, we were black holes in the world, pulling creation into the emptiness within us. When I read this verse, I imagine a person described as alone, without direct...