Light In Torah

Today we will finish connecting our three-word focus to take into the next year. With that focus comes a question: "How do I make that plea to the Author? The Author knows me better than I know myself. What am I going to do—come to the Author and bargain with them, lawyer with them? How do I make the case to include me in the story?" Think about the moment of revelation itself in our national experience. How did we confront the Author? We confronted the Author because we heard His voice; we heard the untrammeled cry, the ethereal sound of a shofar that was not physical but was the sound that the Almighty channeled toward us as a way of reaching out to us and saying, "Here is who I am. This is the deepest way I can represent Myself to you." The most powerful thing we can do is to match voice with voice—to give our voice back to the Almighty in the deepest way we can. Not with words, but with something deeper than words: just our voice. This is who we are. That is the...

Malchuyot ,  Zichronot ,  Shofrot —and the very idea of a  Yom HaDin , a day of judgment itself—all of these would really be the obvious characteristics of a day that commemorates the sound we heard at Sinai. Sinai was the day when we recognized God as our husband; the day we crowned Him as King by stating, "Whatever You tell us to do, we will do" (Ex. 19:8; 24:7). Here they became a kingdom of priests (1 Pet. 2:5–9). There is no such thing as a kingdom without a king. On this day, Pentecost, God became more than a deliverer. He became their Husband and King, who would lead, love, and provide for the rest of their days. You know, kingship is not such an easy concept for us moderns to wrap our minds around. To accept God as King is really to accept Him as our leader. It is to follow Him. To let Him lead us and His ways/Torah, which we gladly accepted. There was a context for that acceptance, and the context goes all the way back to the first time we heard God's wordless vo...

  Malchuyot  (The King),  Zichronot  (Remember),  Shofarot  (Shofar)! The High Holy Days are here (Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles). It is an exciting time, but many do not know much about them. Yom Teruah (the Day of Trumpets) is also known as the Day of Judgment. Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) is also known as the Day of Repentance and the Day of Coverings.  Chag Sukkot  (the Feast of Tabernacles) celebrates a wedding and much more. And though Trumpets is officially over, let us focus again on Trumpets to carry us to our covering and wedding feast! If we read through medieval poetry, we hear about angels trembling, God sifting through all of our deeds from the past year, and inscribing us in one of two books. Scary times! Trumpets, culminating on the Day of Atonement, is a  Yom HaDin  (Day of Judgment)—but where does that idea come from? Scripture does not come right out and say it, so why is it called  Yom HaDin ? Is it j...

It is here! Yom Teruah has arrived. It is time to celebrate with anticipation the resurrection day that is initiated with a shout and the blowing of the shofar (1 Thess. 4:16–17), and the day when we remember the commitment we made when we entered into His covenant (Deut. 29:14–15). Today, we find ourselves halfway between Yom Teruah and Yom HaKippurim. These Ten Days of Awe are significant and super practical for the year ahead—as we put into practice being doers of the word (James 1:19–27). At the same time, we do not want to over-spiritualize these days by leaving out the actions of what Yahweh really wants us to live for mankind to see (Matt. 5:14–16). These days are still about repentance. They are about turning from our faithless actions (Rom. 10:17) that are not pleasing in His sight (Heb. 11:6) and doing the behaviors that are pleasing (Heb. 11:6; Rom. 10:17). How do I know what actions are pleasing and what actions are not? Ah, that is the million-dollar question, is it not!? ...

Traditionally, we are between Yom Teruah and Yom HaKippurim—in the Ten Days of Awe.  Over the past couple of days, we have learned how to go back and peer into the perfection of our soul by traveling back in our minds to the Garden of Eden, before man's sin (Gen. 2:7; 3:1–8), and to Mount Sinai, before the sin of the golden calf (Ex. 19–20). Then we painfully compare that perfection to where we are now (Neh. 8:8–10) and commit to rebuilding the walls and gates of our lives to protect those things of incredible value in our lives. Before you build something—spiritually, emotionally, physically, relationally, or financially—you have to finish the project first! Without going back to the "state of perfection," there is nothing to start building from. Once we honestly evaluate where we are and start the building process, it is easy for unforgiveness to creep in. We begin to recognize the pain inflicted—self-inflicted or otherwise—in our lives, which leads us to a major questi...

Yom Kippur, the sixth  Moedim , is upon us! It carries the Spirit of sacrificial love and knowledge— da'at . It is directly connected to the church of Philadelphia, the church of brotherly love (Rev. 1:20; 3:7). And it connects to the sixth day of creation, which is all about separating our animal, beastly appetites from a life of sacrificial love for our brothers and sisters. It was through the Spirit of knowledge— da'at —that the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. And it is the Spirit of brotherly love, which is  da'at , that allows us to dwell at ease in the Temple of the Lord (1 John 4:20). We are welcomed into His presence and firmly established in His Temple—and not only that, we receive a new name (Rev. 3:12). Distinguishing marks will be given on this day: those who live  da'at  and those who live like the beast. Cain could not return to the assembly because he hated his brother (Gen. 4:9, 12). He did not live the Spirit of Philadelphia...

There are seven Spirits burning before the throne of God (Rev. 4:5–6). They are revealed to us in Isaiah 11:1–2, and they are defined all throughout the pages of Scripture to enlighten us on how the "light of the world" is supposed to live, filled with the Spirit of God (Eph. 5:18–20; Col. 3:16–17)! The seven  Moedim , the seven days of creation, the seven churches, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls reveal the depth of the seven Spirits that actively function within each of the aforementioned! The sixth Spirit,  Da'at , is identified with the Day of Atonement(s)/Coverings/Yom HaKippurim. It is a day of knowing intimately. It is more than sexual intimacy. It is really knowing an individual intimately. It is a loving knowledge so deep that it accompanies only the closest of relationships—those in unity—just as Adam declared concerning his bride, "She is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" (Gen. 2:23; Eph. 5:30). This Spirit of Knowledge/ ...

We are currently in what is commonly known as the "10 Days of Awe." We use the word  awe  as a term of endearment when someone says something nice to us, and we also use it when we experience a "jaw-dropping" moment. These ten days are supposed to be a little bit of both. In hindsight, I hope your Yom Teruah was extra special. Ours here in Kansas City was jaw-droppingly awesome, fun, and filled with revelation about our Messiah's second coming and how to get our hearts in tune for Yom Kippur, when the books of heaven are closed for the next year. In other words, the Fall  Moedim  are in high gear! Like everything within Scripture, they are directly connected to the working of the Holy Spirit ( Ruach HaKodesh ). As we approach the sixth  Moedim  of the prophetic, biblical calendar, there is a stirring going on in the nations. This stirring is antithetical to the sixth Spirit of the Lampstand ( menorah ), which is known as the Spirit of  Da'at  (int...

There is a significant difference between Mount Sinai and Ezra's Nehemiah 8: everything is so much smaller in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. The crowd is smaller. The man speaking to the people—he is standing on something, but it is not a big, imposing mountain. It is just a little wooden platform. Everything is diminished. But that, I think, is the whole point of Nehemiah. It really did not look like much—what they were doing. And that was the people's point too—that is why they were crying. They looked at themselves and felt insignificant. Here they were at a ruined Jerusalem—sacked by Nebuchadnezzar—on a crazy, idealistic mission to come back and try to rebuild this land. There was no infrastructure, no great established state—just them, Ezra, and Nehemiah. They barely knew anything. They cried because they realized how far they were from the ideals the Torah was talking about. What were they really keeping of the Torah's  mitzvot , anyway? Half of them were intermarried...