Faith and trust are related but distinct concepts. In relation to God, faith is the belief that He exists and that His word is true and reliable. Trust, on the other hand, involves acting on His word especially when one cannot see how that will turn out. When Abraham was told to sacrifice his son, he had no doubts about God's existence or that he had heard His word. So he obeyed, trusting that somehow God would honor His promise to establish a covenant with Isaac.
Mark 12 begins with the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. This parable raises several questions. Who is it addressed to? There are at least three groups. In each context, what are the pathologies being addressed? What fruit does the owner expect in each context? How does this apply today?
After observing humanity for over 1600 years, God was disappointed with His creation and decided to destroy it all and start over. The proximate reason for that decision was the state of the human heart - evil continually. After the flood, His assessment did not change. So what did change that prompted Him to decide not to re-flood the place?
The first five and a half chapters of Genesis contain the entire Bible in a nutshell. There we learn the purpose of creation, the nature of God, the nature of humanity, the techniques of Satan and the entirety of the Gospel.
Succot means different things depending on who you believe yourself to be. For Jews, it is a remembrance of the time after the Exodus when God took them into the wilderness and they dwelt in tents. For most Christians it has very little significance. For Messianics, it has both historical meaning and prophetic significance. Historically, it is almost certainly when Christ was born. Prophetically, it may presage the Messianic Reign.
In Dt 32 Moses lays out what will happen to Israel should they abandon God and entertain foreign gods. The descent in that passage begins with their extreme prosperity under God's blessing. That prosperity tempts them to look for a 'better deal' with the gods of the surrounding nations. In Mk 10, the rich young man asks what he lacks to inherit eternal life. Y'shua's answer, "Sell all you have and follow Me." is more than the young man can manage. The Bible does not teach poverty, so what's going on here?
The ten days between Yom Teruah and Yom Kipur are known as the days of awe. It is a time to take stock of what one has accomplished in the past year and plan for the future. In doing this, one can draw inspiration from Moses. His accomplishments during the last month of his life were truly great. One can also draw inspiration from the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. That event has catalyzed believers all over America and may turn out to be one Satan's great mistakes.
Deuteronomy 30 forms the end of a chiasm that began in Genesis 2. In the Garden God presented humanity with a choice between life and death. When we ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we chose death for ourselves and our children. In Dt 30, we get a second chance at that choice. In this case Moses explicitly lays out the choice between blessing and curses and between life and death. He then gives us God's preferred solution - choose life - for yourself and for your children..
Parsha KiTavo begins with a recitation of Israel's history preparatory to giving the first fruits and ends with a series of terrible curses. As it turns out, joyful fulfilment of the giving of firstfruits and the triennial tithe to support the Levite, the orphan, the widow and the stranger is the key to activating the blessings promised in Dt 28 and preventing the activation of the curses.
The month of Elul leading up to the fall feasts is a time for spiritual preparation as we get ready to meet the King. Forgiveness is an integral part of that preparation. Y'shua says that your ability to forgive sets the tone for how you will be judged. Forgiveness is hard. How does one get started?
The Biblical Feasts lay out God's plan for the creation. They are also integral to the earthly life and ministry of Messiah. When viewed in the context of the Transfiguration in Mark, we can see His plan for the work of the church and for His second coming.
Between Deuteronomy 11 and 30 Moses gives a great many detailed laws. They might seem disjointed except that he also gives their context. Each commandment or law is an aspect of what God knows is necessary for human society to thrive. When a nation neglects those laws, it gradually falls into corruption, decay and death.
In Mark, Y'shua is preparing His disciples to operate in a new spiritual regime. After His resurrection, they will have the Holy Spirit and His power available to them. Boats are a significant part of this preparation. In Mark 6 and 8, the disciples did not understand what's going on as they crossed the sea because they had hard hearts. What was it that they were unable to understand? How does that correlate with what Moses was doing in Deuteronomy?
In Deuteronomy 6, the Shema is followed by v'ahavta saying that God is one and we should love Him. This is a radical departure from the prevailing polytheism in the rest of the world. Other 'gods' are transactional. If you need rain make a sacrifice to the rain god; otherwise you don't care about it and it does not care about you. Our God, on the other hand, desires to have an ongoing relationship. That relationship is based on mutual love and affection.
On Tisha B'Av we remember the calamities that have befallen the Hebrew people over the past three millennia. Most prominent of these was the destruction of the first Temple by the Babylonians and the second by the Romans. In both cases the reason was the same. Judah was treating the Temple as a sanctuary to shelter them from their evil deeds. They had no intention of repenting, they just wanted God's protection. Y'shua uses the same words - a den of robbers - when He drives the merchants out of the Temple. Israel did not repent then either and God had that Temple destroyed as well.
The end of the book of Numbers marks the end of Israel's time in the wilderness. What did God accomplish during those forty years? What was the Exodus' generation's role in the plan of God? What can that generation teach us today?
Although a people may be enslaved quickly by means of conquest, more often it is that they abandon their liberty. This abandonment generally begins with an abdication or avoidance of responsibility. They decide they want government to do something that they should be doing by themselves. Having shed responsibility, they then begin to tell themselves comforting lies to justify their situation.
The generation that left Egypt under Moses' leadership fell into bitter disappointment when they believed the bad report of the twelve spies. Korah took advantage of that depression to mount a challenge against Moses and ultimately against God Himself. His dream of assuming leadership was wrecked upon the rock of reality. God had decided and no amount of rabble rousing was going to change anything.
The journey from slavery to freedom ended for the wilderness generation when the spies brought a bad report about the land. Upon hearing that report, they gave up and asked to return to Egypt (and slavery). This represents one step in God's millennia-long project to develop a good relationship with the people that He created. The project began in the Garden and will culminate in the New Jerusalem.
In Numbers 11 when the people complain that they are fed up with manna and want Egypt food, Moses has a melt down before God, complaining that he didn't want the job and would rather die than continue. God treats him gently as would a friend or parent and gets him some help. Similarly, Y'shua, who is the physical son of God, tells us to pray to our Father in Heaven. That is we are to have a family relationship with God. This idea of God as a friend or parent is unique to Judaism and Christianity.
In Mark 3 and 4 Y'shua switches from speaking plainly to speaking in parables. This is after He was accused of having demonic powers. This set of kingdom parables is slightly different from those in Mat 13. After saying that a strong man's goods cannot be stolen unless he is first bound, He begins with the parable of the sower and then gives four more parables. The question is, what is He concealing from His listeners that He then speaks plainly to His disciples?
The parable of the sower marks the point in His ministry where Y'shua gives up on trying to convert Israel's religious establishment because they do not want to believe that He is the Messiah. From that point his public messages are in cryptic parables. In the parable of the sower, there are four regions where seed falls. They represent Satanic interference with the Word, societal hostility, individual distraction and the faithful heart respectively.
At the end of Leviticus, Moses talks about the seventh and the fiftieth years of release. There debts are forgiven, Israelite slaves are freed, the land is allowed to rest and, on the Jubilee, people return to the land that Joshua allotted to their clans. This is not a test of faith, because God promises a bumper crop on the sixth year so there is no fear of hunger. Rather it is a test of people's attitude toward wealth. Will they be satisfied with the blessings that God has promised and provided or will they be greedy and work their land and keep their slaves in the seventh year?
Leviticus, the central book of the Torah, is where God tells Israel how He wishes to be approached and worshipped. Many believe that those instructions were only for Israel and have been superseded by the Resurrection of Christ. That is not true. Sacrifice is an act of love and is always acceptable in that spirit. God promises that when He regathers Israel and the Temple is rebuilt, He will once again accept sacrifice. That will be both from Israel and from the gentiles.
In Leviticus, God tells Israel to be holy because He is Holy. In the subsequent verses, He gives them laws on the basis of His own authority. The explicit purpose of these laws it to differentiate Israel from the nations that they are to destroy. The reason for those nations' destruction is that they practiced all of the abominations that God forbids. So too, our society has degraded to the point that we have made all of the forbidden abominations commonplace.
Speech is important.. It can either build up or destroy. In the Torah, leprosy is twice associated with negative speech. This indicates that Biblical leprosy is a physical manifestation of a heart condition. Although Biblical leprosy no longer manifests, a person's speech still can expose his heart condition.
Mark chapter 1 contains an outline of Y'shua's entire ministry as well as that given to His apostles after His resurrection. The outline boils down to: preach the Gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons. Demons are barely mentioned in the TANAK but have almost 100 references in the New Testament. What changed? What does that mean to us today?
The 50 days between Firstfruits and Shavuot is a replay and a rehearsal of the process by which God takes us from slavery to liberty in Him. For the Israelites, it was literal slavery in Egypt. For us it is the slavery to sin and the flesh. Liberty is not learned over night, it is a process that takes time.
Nations, like people have a life cycle - birth, growth, productivity and death. For Israel, Passover was its birth. Since then it has gone through several life cycles, always being reborn because God has had His hand on them. The United States, like Israel, was also explicitly formed on Biblical principles. We are now undergoing a civilizational crisis. Pray that the current turmoil represents birth pains.
Being made in the image of God, people have the ability to be creative. In building the Tabernacle in the wilderness, many things were specified by God because deviation would have compromised His message. Other things, however, were open for interpretation by the artisans who worked on the project. In allowing this, Israel became more than passive recipients of God's provision. They could now be active contributors to God's purposes.
Between smashing the first set of tablets because of the Golden Calf and ascending the mountain again to get the second set, Moses spent 40 days in the tent of meeting outside the camp. What was the purpose of that time and what did Moses accomplish? (The song referred to is "The Family of God.")
The Hebrew word 'beged' means both clothing and betrayal. This duality is important because we use clothing to communicate - status, sexuality, position, power, etc. Realizing that clothing can lie and betray is an important part of navigating in society. The High Priest's vestments are thus a statement that can either be true of the man or false. So too with others who wear the robes of authority.
In Exodus 25, God tells Moses to request contributions of materials to build the Tabernacle from everyone "whose heart moves him". In this, God gave Israel the gift of being able to contribute something instead of merely receiving. The act of giving allows one to participate in what God is doing in the world. As such, it is a great gift.
After the ten commandments, God gives several chapters of detailed statutes. These laws are intended to implement God's view of how a good society should behave. Following those laws is for our own good and does not generate blessings. Rather blessings come from a relationship with God. We know from history that that relationship can be damaged to the point the He will withdraw those blessings. Similarly, there are two competing visions for the United States. Proponents of each vision are attempting to enact laws to shape society toward their vision.
In the Decalogue both the first and the tenth commandments forbid alien gods. The first commandment is obvious - thou shall have no other gods before me. The tenth - thou shall not covet - not quite so much. Why, then does Paul equate covetousness with idol worship?
When God took Israel out of Egypt, He did not take the short route to Canaan lest the people change their minds and return to Egypt. Instead, He took them into the wilderness beyond the point where they could return without dying of thirst or starvation. In this sense, He burned the bridge back to Egypt so they had no choice but to continue on to freedom. So too, many of us have bridges that need to be burned so we can move forward to be what God desires.
In the Olivet Discourse, the master entrusts three of his servants with his resources and then goes on a long journey. Two of the servants double his money, the third simply holds and returns it to him upon his return. It would be an error to assume that God's standard is 'double my money' or you're going to be rejected.
The Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and 25 describes what will happen at Christ's return. In that briefing, there are four parables describing what He expects His followers to be doing while He is away. These parables cover four different subjects. It is important to notice that everyone in each parable is a believer and that each parable describes the case where some of those believers are rejected.
Comparing Matthew 24 with Revelation 13 and 14, it is obvious that there are still things to come from an eschatological perspective. The first beast represents human government and the second a human religion that gives a spiritual imprimatur to the bestial government. The Scriptural purpose for telling us these things is to provide perspective on how we should be living as the end times approach.
As David lay on his death bed, he gave his son instructions to kill Joab, the commander of the army. The events that made that advisable were set in motion years earlier by the sin of David himself. When David committed adultery with Uriah's wife, Bathsheba, he used Joab to cover up the crime by killing Uriah. That led to a sequence of events that almost cost David his throne and did result in the death of two of his sons. God forgave David, but He did not vacate the earthly consequences.
Hope and faith are different. Hope is what we use to set the goals in our lives. Faith enables the bringing of those goals to fruition. As we face a new administration, there is reason for hope.
