Light In Torah

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...

Many of you have begun your studies in Genesis all over again. The cycle of life and beginnings continues. For me, another new cycle begins; a new chapter. Personally, I think we are all confronted with or presented with opportunities for new beginnings frequently, but more often than not, we (speaking of me, myself, and I) find ourselves sliding right back into the old patterns, even when new opportunities arise before our eyes. Part of my daily study is to spend time in Genesis ( Bereshit ), the book of beginnings. It seems to me that no matter how far into the Scripture one reads, every story has a connecting thread to the Garden of Eden—a story that has become too familiar to my "hooked on phonics" reading ability. When Adam and his honey bunny, not yet named, eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they run into the trees (trees in Scripture are pictures of men—Deut. 20:19) and hide because they are naked and afraid (Gen. 3:10). "And he said, I heard th...

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...

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...

Since we are in Christ, we are officially Abraham's seed (Gal. 3:28–29) and part of God's engrafted people (Rom. 11); we are no longer strangers and foreigners to the covenants of Israel (Eph. 2:11–22). On this rainy, no-work day, I wanted to whet your appetite for something a little chunkier. I hope you will grab your Bible and notepad, take a nice swim in the living water, and enjoy resting against the Tree of Life as you start your weekend. When Jesus Christ (Messiah Yeshua) was on the earth, He would go to the synagogue each Sabbath, where a portion of Scripture was read from the Torah, the Prophets, and the general writings. This Shabbat, He would have been reading  Nitzavim  ("You are standing") and  Vayelekh  ("He went" or "He walked")—Deuteronomy 29:10–31:30. There is a powerful anticipation evoked by the name of the Torah portion,  Nitzavim : "You are standing!" These last Torah portions in the book of Deuteronomy ( Devarim ) are...

  We continue our journey through the book of Joshua. Okay, this is what you need to imagine. The shofar has not even stopped ringing in their ears. The dust has not even settled from the walls of Jericho going down. The plunder of the city, the victory, every single detail, the crossing of the River Jordan, the promise that God had given to them—now they have entered the land. Now they have taken their first conquest. Now they have defeated the greatest city in the Promised Land, which brings us to chapter 7—Israel's greatest failure. They are getting ready to move from a life of miracles to a life of participation. Yes, in the wilderness, what did they have? Everything. God provided a pillar of cloud to guide them. God gave them water to drink. God gave them enemies that were defeated who were behind them. God did everything. He provided for them manna. People were never sick. People never pooped. People never peed. Everything was taken care of. Now they are moving out of the wil...