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6.8.26 – Ahead of, Not Instead of, Part 4

Eleven weeks ago, we started an expansive journey beginning with the merit—the favor that flows from the faithfulness and standing of the Righteous One. For the  chen  pattern to hold, for the participation framework to work, for everything we have said about the servant to make sense, we must say something carefully about Yeshua Himself. Most of us were given a picture of Jesus where the emphasis on His deity made His humanity feel incidental—a divine being walking around in human form, looking like a man, but actually God making decisions with God's knowledge and power, with outcomes never actually in doubt. I understand the impulse: the desire to honor Him. But hear me: if His obedience was not real obedience, His merit is not real merit. If His temptation could not have pulled Him another way, His faithfulness is not the kind we have been describing. If the prayer in Gethsemane could only ever have ended one way, it is not that big of a deal. If any of that is true, the en...
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6.7.26 – Ahead of, Not Instead of, Part 3

  Do you remember the final scene of the cross? John 19:34—the soldier pierces His side, and out comes blood and water. Some say, "So what? We have blood and water. No big deal." Others say John wrote that as a medical detail to prove He was actually dead. But John was not a careful writer for that reason. He gave you blood and water because the gospel writer is signaling both directions of participation at once. Blood—covenant blood, the blood that binds two people together, the blood of the new covenant. Water—the water of life, from Ezekiel 36, the living water He promised in John 7 that would flow from the believer's heart. Out of His side: both covenant and cleansing, consecration and renewal. The gospel writer says, "Look at what is happening at this cross." The crucifixion is the demonstration of Jesus' faithful obedience, but it is the life He brings. The blood placed on the heavenly sanctuary that the Hebrews talk about is not proof of death; it spe...
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6.6.26 – Ahead of, Not Instead of, Part 2

Continuing from part one: what about 2 Corinthians 5:21? Isn't that Penal Substitutionary Atonement? "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor. 5:21) Read with a substitutionary lens, that sounds like a celestial transfer: Jesus was innocent, sin gets imputed to Him, God treats Him as if He were a sinner, the penalty falls, the transfer is complete, and you go free. But that is not what Paul is doing. Reread 2 Corinthians with the rest of Paul's letters open. You will notice that for Paul, "made Him to be sin" is not a courtroom transaction. It names full  participation , not a transfer. Skip to Romans 8:3: "God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh." Read carefully: God did not  condemn Jesus ; He  condemned sin in the flesh . Jesus had taken on the same human condition every one of us lives in. He entered the groun...
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6.5.26 – Ahead of, Not Instead of, Part 1

Atonement is not God's wrath being pacified by death. Atonement is the holy life overcoming the forces of death. Atonement is cleansing; it is the holding together of the relationship between heaven and earth, so that God's presence can dwell with His people. Jesus is the atonement for the whole world. John says His indestructible life is the answer to the death-dealing condition every human being lives in. He is the cleansing, the consecration, the living water. He is the meeting place where heaven and earth come together, and He is more than enough. That is more atonement than Penal Substitutionary Atonement ever offered. Some say this is absolute heresy. "You're going to answer for this one day. This is a demotion of Jesus. You're pulling back His glory. You're softening the cross." Here is what I actually said: His obedience was real. His faithfulness was real. He merited the fullness of the Spirit by walking the path no one else could walk. He confron...
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6.4.26 – True and Counterfeit

Sometimes we limit ourselves by the way we examine the Scriptures. When we look at the Instructions (Torah), there is a tendency to turn it into a chronological history book, an all-encompassing science text, a theological manual of complete instructions, and a book of restrictive "dos and don'ts" that limit our freedom of expression and became obsolete after Yeshua's crucifixion. Personally, I think Yahweh's Instruction book is a never-ending guidebook. For example, as we move forward in counting toward the firstfruits of the wine, many have a tendency to think that Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Pentecost, etc., were all introduced in Leviticus 23 for the first time, or in Exodus 12 in story form, or because they are mentioned as "feasts of the Jews" a couple of times in the Gospels, that they are limited in their scope. And because they are defined in Leviticus ( Vayikra ) 23, we tend to stay away from them because that information is only f...
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6.1.26 – Miriam

The Kansas City trip is wet, wet, wet! Water everywhere.  Water always makes me think of Miriam, whose name has water ( mayim ) built into it, but her name also contains bitter ( marah ).  Which one is it? Yes. If we are going to give Miriam a tribute from God's perspective, we will have to understand something about God Himself. One of His many names, which describes much more than His almighty character, is  El Shaddai  (God Almighty) (Gen. 17:1). Yet with this name, there is much more than His name implies—even though there is nothing mightier! We know that man was created in the image of God, both male and female (Gen. 1:26–28), but there is something extra special about the woman. She is the capstone to all of God's creation. She is the completer of man and the one to whom the man clings (Gen. 2:24). She is the one who takes away his aloneness (Gen. 2:18). The male produces the seed, but the woman brings it to life (Gen. 3:20), and she is the one who nurtures th...
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5.31.26 – Good Enemies

We finished the Sabbath day with a gathering of believers who truly want to be part of "the five" (Lev. 26:6–8). Yahweh was and is so good to us by giving us the privilege of coming together as a portion of the body of Christ and celebrating the victory that Messiah gave to us, along with the instructions on how to live that out (1 Cor. 15:57–58; Deut. 1–3). Along this journey, individuals are going to find that all sorts of people are going to come against them (i.e., the world system, the religious systems, individuals with differing opinions). Though I would not consider the people coming against those individuals trying to keep the Torah-observant lifestyle as  enemies  in this instance, I do believe there are wonderful truths to apply from Yeshua's own words when He told us to "love your enemies, bless those cursing you, do well to those hating you, and pray for those abusing and persecuting you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:...
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5.30.26 – Light Up Your World

This week's Torah portion,  Beha'alotecha  ("to ascend"), starts off with Aaron being commanded to ascend toward the lamps and light the seven lamps which will give light  over against  ( mool ) the lampstand, just as Moses commanded. It goes on to give us a description of the lampstand: how it is made of beaten work of gold, forming the shaft, the arms, and the flowers in the shape of an almond tree (Num. 8:2–4; Ex. 25:31–39). This is at least the third time that the lampstand description has been given (Ex. 25; Lev. 24), along with the value and importance of lighting it in the morning and the evening (Ex. 25; 37; Lev. 24). In the Middle East, the almond tree blossoms first, very early in the spring. However, it is the last of the trees to be harvested before Sukkot. And as we see in California, it requires a tremendous amount of water in order to bring forth its fruit. The comparison of our lives to the menorah is easy to make :-) The shape of the lampstand is sim...
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5.28.26 – Isaiah 53, Part 4: He Gave Us an Example

Isaiah 53 does not end with a crushing death. It ends with His days prolonged and the will of the Lord prospering in His hand. "After the anguish of His soul, He shall see and be satisfied." That is not the language of remaining dead. He goes down, is cut off, and is buried with the wicked—but death does not have the final word. The writer of Hebrews names what is happening here: He holds His priesthood by the power of an indestructible life (Hebrews 7). That is the same life Peter preached: "It is impossible for death to hold Him" (Acts 2). Put this together: the servant carries our sicknesses, our pains, and the forces of death we cannot carry. He goes into the wreckage where sin has done its worst. He bears it. He dies under that weight. And then the life that emerges is stronger than the death He carried. That is the center of Isaiah 53—not God as punisher. And that is not a smaller story than penal substitution; it is much bigger. Finally, verse 12: "He bo...
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5.27.26 – Isaiah 53, Part 3: So Much More!

"He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities." That is the traditional phrasing. "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed." The Hebrew word for "chastisement" here is  musar .  Does anyone know what  Musar  is?  It is a study of Jewish ethics, but also teaching and discipline. Notice the little word "for"—pierced  for , crushed  for . Let us apply our first tool: each can mean "on account of." But look at this: "The  musar  of our peace was upon Him." Most English Bibles render this as "chastisement" or "punishment," which sounds courtroom-like. Yet  musar  is a broader word rooted in father-son formation. Proverbs 3 says, "My son, do not despise the  musar  of the Lord." Yes, it can include painful correction, but  musar  is not a retributive penalty. The Greek translators of the Septuagint chose  paideia —training, formation, discipline—...
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5.26.26 – Isaiah 53, Part 2: What We Considered Him

Continuing from yesterday:  "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about what is happening in this state—to preserve many people alive." (Genesis 50:20) Did Joseph suffer? Yes—in the pit, slavery, false accusations, prison. His brothers were truly against him. Their evil was not theatrical; it was not just a show. And God used that suffering. The same suffering that came from human evil became the doorway through which God preserved life. But notice what is not in that story: God did not author the brothers' evil. He did not need their violence. He was not waiting for an innocent person to be punished before He could bless His people. The brothers meant harm; God overcame it and made that harm serve life. PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) says the violence satisfies God. The Joseph pattern says God overcomes violence and turns it toward good. That is the pattern: people do bad things; God means it for life. Remember what we said about ...
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5.25.26 – Isaiah 53, Part 1: He Goes Ahead of Us, Not Instead of Us

For the past fifty days, we have focused our attention on grace—how proud God is of us through our obedience—on past, present, and future aspects of salvation, and on four weeks devoted to blood through the sacrificial system, adding additional thoughts to John 1:29: "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." One major focal point is that He goes ahead of us, not instead of us. That is powerful, and that phrase will continue to do work for us in this week's Isaiah 53 study. However, this Isaiah 53 text is likely what people have been waiting for—politely and silently. I have received very little pushback or critique on these fifty days of study, which has surprised me. Maybe that means something good—people are hearing and listening. But there is a passage, a section of Scripture, that I think many people would say blows up everything I have been saying. It is in the book of Isaiah, chapter 53—the Suffering Servant. If someone wanted to push back on th...
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