Light In Torah

Should we try to impress God with our faithfulness? Should we strive to please Him with our faith (Heb. 11:6; Num. 14:11; Ps. 78:22, 32; Ruth 2:12; Prov. 11:18; Ps. 119:10; Prov. 8:17)? Should we make Him proud where He proclaims, "Well done"? The simpler this topic becomes, the louder the critics become. Over the years I have heard everything from "cult leader" to "putting us under the law" to "undermining the gospel of Jesus Christ with a Torah mindset" to "trying to earn your salvation" or worse, living a life according to God's commands, affe ctionately known as "Torahism" (as though the "-ism" carries extra theological weight). Some will say, "God's not impressed, honey. It's about grace. Don't you forget that, sweetie." I have seen the negative articles. I have read the press clippings filled with warnings. But to be honest with you, I think many of you are absolutely looking to impres...

Welcome to the 15th day of counting the Omer. Over the past two weeks, we have taken a completely different journey than in past years. The first week of counting the Omer, I shared with you expansive thoughts on the topic of grace (*chen*). Hopefully, with hindsight, those thoughts did not diminish what Christ did for us on the cross, but rather enhanced our understanding of how grace actually works in the life of a believer—an area in which we should be growing (2 Pet. 3:18). Last week, with our focus on the Passover Lamb—the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29)—we talked about salvation. We discussed that salvation is not just about the decision I made so many years ago (Eph. 2:8–9), but it is an ongoing process centered in a life that lives by faith—from faith to faith, the just shall live by faith (Rom. 1:17; Hab. 2:4). This morning, and this week, as we continue to ascend toward the 50th day of Pentecost, I want to point out the obvious (since I am Mr. Obvi...

In this week's Torah portion,  Tazria  and  Metzora   (Lev. 12–14), sickness of the soul manifests as lesions on the skin. No, this is not the skin ailment we find in third-world countries today known as Hansen's disease; this is a spiritual condition that shows up in the skin. Hence, the metzora (the leper) would not go to a doctor to diagnose and remedy the disease, but to the high priest. Since the people of God took the Promised Land, mankind's spiritual level has plummeted to great depths, and our skin has lost its sensitivity in manifesting the condition of the soul for everyone to see.  The two primary causes of this malady, known as  tzara'at  (leprosy), are gossip and slander.  Scripture considers this behavior a very serious crime, as it is likened to the three cardinal sins of idolatry, murder, and adultery. Someone who habitually practices this form of speech affects his life in the world to come (Matt. 12:36–37; Eccl. 12:14; Prov. 13...

The Passover is an entry point for every individual into the family of God. It is said frequently at most Messianic Passover  seders   that Jesus is the Passover Lamb. The lamb died so Israel could live. Jesus died so we can live. What is the confusion? But if that image—if that is the one that you reach for first, the one that has the instinctual pull—turns out to be doing something different than it is assumed to do, then we have to ask questions about how we read other texts related to this particular issue. In plain English: similar wording does not always mean similar meaning. This can become a very big issue. Let us open to Exodus 12, your assignment from yesterday, and see what it actually says—the instruction God gives for the first recorded Passover. The instructions are pretty detailed, pretty specific, and pretty different from what is often assumed about the Lord's Passover (Ex. 12:1–13): Each household selects a lamb on the tenth day of the month and keeps it unti...

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...