Light In Torah

At one point, the whole earth was of one language ( saphah ) and of one speech ( dabar ). The unified individuals journeyed from the East ( miqedem ) to a plain in the land of Shinar, where they would settle and make bricks to be burned, and mortar to replace stones (Gen. 11:1–3). As we traveled through Pakistan, we noticed the frequent dotting of the landscape with brickyards. Men, women, and children perform back-breaking labor for small wages. Each time I saw this visual, my mind was reminded of Genesis 11 and the Tower of Babel story. We are living in a WOKE world where every government is forcing us into building their infrastructure tower to reach the heavens while simultaneously removing God out of the picture. As in the Genesis story, the individuals were unified in their communication and their walk, for they were coming from the East ( miqedem ). This, by the way, is not a reference to direction but is a spiritual statement that they were walking away from the God of all crea...

Before we move forward, let us uncover some self-revealing themes. Let us go back in time and connect a couple of prophetic thoughts from the earlier chapters of Genesis ( Bereshit ). Lamech is the first one to break the pattern of one wife (Gen. 4:19). Instead of going to himself ( Lekh Lekha ), Lamech "took to himself" two wives: Adah (ornament, something beautiful) and Tzillah (his shadow), inferring that both women were not treated equally. Tradition has it that one was for procreation and the other for pleasure. You may recall that the Israelites were told to take off their ornaments ( adi ) for violating their covenant with Yahweh (Ex. 32–33). After the golden calf, they were pretty ugly. Adah had true beauty, ornamented with faithfulness to her husband. Tzillah was the preferred wife, who served Lamech's sexual desire and maintained her physical beauty for him alone. She stayed in his "shadow," preferred. She reflected Lamech's desires. It was a type ...

Two times in Scripture God uses the term  Lekh Lekha —"go to yourself." Both times it is in the life of Abraham (Gen. 12:1; 22:2). Ironically, but not surprisingly, the first time we find the root of this word ( halakh —to walk), we are taken back to the rivers that surround the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:14). When a child leaves his father's house, he or she must walk out with a personal faith. This includes all the rewards of faith and the tests of the heart. While in Haran, Abram and Sarai were making a huge impact with their hospitality, making ( asah ) 318 disciples (Gen. 12:5; 14:14) and training them for war. Haran was a great place, but this was not the final destination for them. The Genesis account has as many missing pieces as it does information. For instance, in this post-flood, post-Tower of Babel time, where is Shem? We know by his lineage that he is still around; his lifespan overlaps those of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We do not know where he settled after al...

This week in Parashat  Noach , I made a note to myself to look into Genesis 9:20–25 because of the concepts of fruit, uncovered, nakedness, garment, and curses. Do these sound familiar? These concepts are parallel to those in the Garden. Let us look at this together. The story: "Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated. And Noah, a man of the earth, began to plant a vineyard. Then he drank of the wine and was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took the garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness. So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him. Then ...

It took almost eighty-two years of living, but it happened on Firstfruits 2015. I was visiting my mom at the Life Care Health Center in Grandview, MO, on Sunday (known by most as Easter). She had a question that no one in the care center could answer—not the visiting preacher, not the staff, no one. She asked, "What does an Easter bunny and Easter eggs have to do with Jesus' death and resurrection?" Not one person was able to answer her question. I heard her ask it to person after person after person, and not one answered. When she asked me if I knew, I began to explain to her the best I could the pagan reality that originated back with Nimrod in Genesis 10–11 (this week's Torah portion) and has infiltrated its way deeply into the lives of believers in the Babylonian system of religion we have today—a system where pagan practices and biblical reality intermingle. When I finished sharing my understanding of history, my mom's mouth dropped open in shock. From that p...

People are wondering what the future will hold. What can we expect? Yeshua, our Savior and Messiah, gave us a clue in His discourse on the end days (Matt. 24). He told His disciples, "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the coming of the Son of Man..." (Matt. 24:37–39). Often, as most study this topic, we focus on the corruption of mankind on the earth (Gen. 6:5–8). And as true as this is, a limited, myopic focus creates a skewed, judgmental view of mankind, resulting in isolation and self-exaltation. This morning, I would like to connect the parallels between the prophetic name of Noah and the Lord's declaration to bring judgment to the earth (Gen. 5:29; 6:5–7). Ironically, the Hebrew rendering of these two passages is identical. "And he called his name Noah, saying, 'This one will comfort  (nacham)  us in our labor  (ma'aseh),  in the toil  (itssabown)  we do with our hands, because the Lord cursed the earth  (eretz)." (Gen. 5:29) "And...

Our opening study of Genesis began with seven  Tovs —seven mentions of good—but it ends depressingly with the first time that God declares that something is  Ra  (evil).  Vayar Hashem ki rabah ra'at ha'adam ba'aretz v'kol yeitzer machshevot libo rak ra'ah kol hayom —"God saw that the evil of man was great in the land and that all of his thoughts were only evil" (Gen. 6:5). Consequently, the text tells us that God became sad and regretted having made man (Gen. 6:5, 7). In the span of just one parsha, we are presented with an ideal world and its rapid decline into destruction. In this week's parsha,  Noah , things get worse before they get better, but God has a plan to turn it all around. The themes we uncovered in last week's parsha appear all over the Torah. They present challenges that future generations need to deal with—challenges that maybe even we, in our time, need to deal with. The Torah acts as a guidebook to teach us the way back to closen...

In Genesis Chapter 1, we are introduced to the character of God. All we really know about Him is that He existed before the world was created. And yet, He makes the decision to bring us—humanity—and everything we need to survive into the picture. And God really does seem to go out of His way for humanity. Each of the days of creation, God declares about what He has made that it was good (except day two). And it is humanity that stands to benefit from all that goodness. Each day is another day of creation that needs to be declared as good,  ki tov , before God can introduce man into the picture. In chapter 2, God declares that it is not good for man to be alone, and He creates the woman (Gen. 2:18). In the first two chapters we see that it is God who declares the difference between what is good and what is not good for mankind. Seemingly, God creates the world for man and tells him to be fruitful and multiply and conquer the earth (Gen. 1:26–28). Which brings us to the million-dolla...

Cain had just inadvertently murdered his brother Abel, and God confronts him (Gen. 4; Num. 35). He asks a pretty straightforward question: "Where is your brother, Abel?" ( Ei Hevel achicha? ). And Cain responds with an answer that would resonate for millennia:  Hashomer achi onochi —"Am I my brother's keeper?" And God, who is now pretty upset with Cain's glib answer, doles out punishments:  V'atah orrur atah min ha'adamah —"Now you are going to be cursed from the land."  Ki ta'avod et ha'adamah loh tosef tet kochah loch —"When you work the ground, it will not yield its strength to you." Then God says to Cain, "Nah v'nad tiheye ba'aretz"—"You are going to be a wanderer, a nomad." He is exiled from his home. And finally, Cain cries out in anguish at this final punishment: "Today you have driven me out from the face of the earth, and now I will be hidden from your face" (Gen. 4:10–14). It...

This past week, we started our venture into the book of Genesis.  Today, I want to give you an overview of how Genesis and Scripture work. Many view Genesis as just an anthology of moral stories and cautionary tales that we learned in Sunday School: "Try to be a good guy, like Moses was. Do not disobey God, like Adam and Eve." Many of us treat the laws and stories in the Torah just like that—like isolated episodes. Week after week, we hear about the laws of sacrifices, the story of the Golden Calf, a little mini-series on Joseph and his brothers, and all the other stories that we often treat as isolated events. Could it be that these are not isolated? Could it be that they are all part of one large story? If you have been with me long, you know that some of the passages in the Torah connect to each other in surprising ways, structurally and linguistically. Parallels to the Tree of Knowledge pop up everywhere, as do certain themes like repeated sins and their redemption. Inqui...