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'A Few Good Men'

1 Timothy 3:1

If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

Mankind is of a rebellious nature. We are small, weak, vulnerable and yet as ironic as it may seem, we strive for independence at any cost. Human history teaches us that our thirst for freedom from even God-appointed human leadership has solely been quenched by the spilling of much blood. Mahatma Gandhi is known to have said to British officials then controlling India that, “Every man would prefer to have his own bad government that the good government of others”. Whereas countries do have their own right to self-determination, in theology today this principle translates in that mankind prefers to be led by his own distilled spiritual errors than by the Truth taught him by a God-appointed leadership.

The Father knows that we need leadership that’s He inspired Jethro to advise Moses to establish a council of elders. This council was to be called the ‘Court of Judgment’ or ‘bet-din’ in Hebrew. Authority was granted to individuals to help people find answers interpreting the Torah by the Torah. This council would later become the Sanhedrin.

Just as people today refuse to answer to any human authority, it is not hard to imagine that there were some in the Children of Israel who resented that lower court in favor of wanting to solely refer to the higher court: of Moses (Torah). It is not hard also to imagine that a charismatic council member would draw much attention to himself thus provoking unbalanced loyalties from the people. These problems with human leadership exist today, and they certainly existed then; we see them plenty in the Bible.

This is why these needed to be men known for their integrity men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, men to whom Moses would teach the statutes and the laws of God. Moses had the charge to make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do (Exodus 18:20-21).

The disciples of the Master established leadership in the Messianic congregations according to the same blue-print. We see how at a time of crisis they felt the need to established leaders in order to judge petty matters within the community (Acts 6:1). Again, as in the Horeb blue-print, these men were chosen for their integrity; men of good repute and full of the Spirit and of wisdom (Acts 6:3). Also Paul established leadership over each and every congregation according to the same parameters. Hear his advice to Timothy on how to choose congregational leaders: an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive … dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain … their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things (1 Timothy 3:1-12).

It is also noticeable that it was the people who chose these leaders who were afterward anointed and appointed by Moses or Paul.

A Mass Immersion for a National Rebirth

1 Corinthians 10:2

All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

The Children of Israel could have left Egypt, traveled directly northward and be in Canaan in a few weeks. Instead, God had them make a small detour crossing the Red Sea by the Gulf of Aqaba. Were the reasons given for this route (Exodus 13:17-18) the only real purposes?

The Israelites had just spent several generations in Egypt. They now needed to be cleansed from idolatry and Egyptian culture. They needed to be reborn into God’s people, with a new life and a new culture. This is where the idea of ‘born-again’ came from; from two tractates from Jewish sages that say that total immersion into water (baptism) is like being born again. We go into a water and stop breathing which is like being in a grave where we do not have breath anymore, and we come out resurrected a new person. The sages mention the ‘born-again’ idea mostly in regards to converts to Judaism (Yevamot 47b nd 48b). They immerse in order to emerge a born-again new creature in God. This is what God had in mind in this nation-wide immersion through the Red-Sea (1 Corinthians 10:2).

When Yeshua told Nicodemus that he needed to be reborn, the modern-day ‘born-again’ movement did not exist, so Yeshua was using the term according to its Talmudic meaning, and this is why Nicodemus answered the way he did. What he said in essence was “Why do I need to convert when I am already Jewish?” To which Yeshua basically answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:5-6); in other words reiterating John the Immerser’s message that biological descent into God’s family was not enough, but repentance into a new for God was also needed (Matthew 3:9).

Yeshua continued by saying, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:8). Just like the wind cannot be seen and is only perceived though its effects, so we are. The new life that we now live, its positive influences on others and its reflection of God’s spirit, are the only testimony given to others of our rebirth.

As we claim to have been reborn, as we claim to have been immersed unto Yeshua, let the effects of our rebirth be felt by others. May we live and walk in the newness of life that He has given us to be God’s children, and as the healing reflection of His spirit on our poor world.

'You're Gonna have to serve Somebody'

John 8:36

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Our fathers were slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh ordered their lives. He told them what to work, where to work, and how to work; to serve Pharaoh and no other god. Pharaoh was to be obeyed and worshipped under pain of death. When they cried under the cruel oppression, the Almighty El-Shaddai heard them and by His mighty Right Hand delivered them. He delivered them, brought them to a mountain and bound them to Him and to His Laws. God’s Law then ordered our father’s lives. It told them what to work, where to work, and how to work; to serve Adonai and no-one else. Adonai was to be obeyed and worshipped under pain of death.

For those who have a tendency to think that living under the Torah is a form of bondage, it could be concluded that the Children of Israel went from one bondage to another; from slavery under Pharaoh to slavery under God. Indeed, judging by the way living under the commandments of Torah is viewed by Christianity today, these conclusions are inevitable.

Let me indulge in a mariner’s analogy. A sailor is at sea. He is in charge of an expensive vessel, he is responsible for a crew. He has a mission to accomplish. He is at the helm with a serious look on his face. He does not make a move, he does not take one decision without checking his compass. The compass determines the success or failure of his mission, the safety of his vessel; the life and death of his crew. I heard it said that if a sailor wants to enjoy the high seas, he must become slave to the compass.

My friend, thus it is with life. To accomplish the goal for which we were sent on the high-seas of life, to keep our traveling vessel worthy, to preserve the life of those entrusted unto us, we also must become slave to the ‘compass’, and in this case, the ‘compass’ is the Torah.

A famous American folk singer sang the words, ‘You’re gonna have to serve somebody; whether it may the devil or whether it may be the Lord, you’re gonna have to serve somebody’! We truly always have to serve somebody. We either serve the King of the land or we serve God. And when our lives are not regulated by external forces, we then become slaves to the worse bondage of all: the bondage to our own passions.

Serving God under His Torah is the most wonderful freedom of all. It is the freedom from human slavery, self-imposed or otherwise. It is the wings that free us from even the bondage of gravity to take us to higher ground. It is the very substance that delivers us from the fear of death to bring us to eternal life. If that is bondage, may I live under it all the days of my life.

The Last Exodus

1 Thessalonians 4:17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Adonai ….

After over two hundred years in Egypt, the people of Jacob who had come in for refuge from the famine were very influenced by Egyptian ways and culture. Through the plagues, in plain sight of the Egyptians and of Israel God took on each one of the main gods of Egypt to show the world His ultimate superiority. This was a shock to Pharaoh, and a reminder to the people of Israel of the story they had heard about the God of their ancestors.

A parallel lesson unfolds for God’s people in the fifth century B.C.E. Israel had already been invaded by Babylonian Emperor Nebuchadnezzar and the poor that were left in the Land were governed by Gedaliah’s provisional government. A plot from Amon caused Gedalliah to be killed so the people feared Babylon’s reprisals. Against Jeremiah’s strong counsel from God, the people decided to flee to Egypt for refuge. Once there, they sought Pharaoh’s protection and prayed to Egyptian gods. Nebuchadnezzar was now coming after them in Egypt, which he was going to also destroy. In the forty-sixth chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, God shows that through Nebuchadnezzar, His mighty was again going to destroy the Egypt in which His children trusted. He takes aim and mocks the futility of the gods of Egypt who are unable to do stand up and protect. He says, 'Stand ready and be prepared, for the sword shall devour around you.' Why are your mighty ones (Egypt’s idols) face down? They do not stand because the LORD thrust them down. He made many stumble, and they fell, and they said one to another, 'Arise, and let us go back to our own people and to the land of our birth, because of the sword of the oppressor.' Call the name of Pharaoh, king of Egypt (and self-proclaimed god), 'Noisy one (he is noisy but is powerless) who lets the hour go by (he is not there in time of need)' (Jeremiah 46:13-17) .

And what shall we learn from these? It seems that the Father is on a constant crusade against the false gods of this world. No matter what He seems to do to show us His great power, we always seem to fall to the lure of the sensual and indulging gods of this world. As it was then, so it is today.

Today again He is calling us to leave ‘Egypt’ and to never return. He is calling us away from the gods of this world, but how can we enter the ‘Land’ with an unregenerate heart?

At a future time, the mighty El-Shaddai will return. This time He will destroy ‘Babylon’ (Revelation 17-18). He will also show His great power not only to His children but to the whole world. He will expose the vanity of mankind and bring His people from all over the world unto Him. May we be ready at that time. Let us take off from our ears the ear buds that fill us with the sounds of this generation. May we then be able to hear the call. May we then be clean from our idols, a bride without blemish consecrated unto Messiah.

"You Shall TeachThem To Your Children"

Luke 17:2

It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.

One of the main prayers in Judaism tells us, You shall teach them (the commandments) diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise (Deuteronomy 6:7). .As the Bible tells us of the Exodus events, several times the text refers to our children asking questions about it in the future. It says, And when your children say to you, 'What do you mean by this service' (Exodus 12:26)’? God wants us to teach our children. He wants to teach our children in a way that each generation feels as if they are the Children of Israel coming out of Egypt and meeting God at Mt Horeb. It seems in fact that the Father desires greatly that our children be included in all aspects of our religious life and that they be taught early on to have a healthy fear of the authority of God.

If we content ourselves to sit down and study the word but do not make it a requirement in our own lives to teach at least the elementary principles of Torah to our children, we commit spiritual and cultural genocide. The movement stops with us and we become responsible for it before the Father. The whole idea is for the message to be passed on so that the generation that arrives at the end of days can recognize good from evil, the Anti-Messiah against the real One. When we stop teaching our children the Word of Torah, we kill the last generation.

This commandment to teach our children presents us with inferred obligations. Children are great critics; in their simplicity they ‘smell’ hypocrisy. Children are also great mimics; they learn more by watching us than by listening to us. If therefore the life we lead is in contradiction with the sermons we preach, they will see it and will learn that the Words of the Bible are a cultural fairy tale that just like you do, they can chose to keep or dismiss. This commandment to teach our children is made to keep us on our spiritual toes. If by our sloppy sample we negate the importance of the Word in our children’s lives, we will be found guilty of relaxing its authority and as the master says, Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:19).

Our modern anti-God materialistic society presents many problems when it comes to teaching the principles of the Word to children. But if our teenagers go away from God, is it because of society, or because our sample as parents does not convey a message consistent with our words? These are serious things to think about as whereas in our rationalizing mind we may excuse ourselves, God may not excuse us.

May we take these things to heart and clean up our sample so that we may not be guilty of neglecting the greatest gift and responsibility the Father gave us: our children.

The Eternal Universal Passover

Luke 22:19

“Do this in remembrance of me."

While enslaved in Egypt, our fathers may have felt victim of a gross injustice. They hadn’t done anything wrong, yet they were persecuted. They were persecuted solely because of man’s fear and vanity; because of man’s innate and perverted desire to control the fate of others. As they finally enacted God requirements for freedom, as they killed the lamb and applied its blood to their doorposts, little did they know that they were part of a plan that would bring freedom not just to them, but eventually to the whole world.

Jewish Chassidic sages believed that the suffering of a righteous person accounted as atonement for the sins of the world. Couldn’t it be that when we go through negative experiences that seem totally random, we are actually going through something for the sake of others? It is certainly true that the suffering the Righteous One, of He who is called the ‘only begotten of the Father’ serves as an atonement for our sins.

About height hundreds later, Jeremiah the prophet spoke of the return from the Babylonian captivity in these terms, "Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it shall no longer be said, 'As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,' but 'As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.' (Jeremiah 16:14). The return from dispersion has been a long-held Messianic promise and Cyrus the Persian king did allow all tribes to return to Israel. In the days of the Master, there were representatives of all tribes in the Land, but like today, many remain in the dispersion.

Six hundreds years after Jeremiah, Yeshua was born. God gave the care of Him to another righteous man: Joseph. The last time Yeshua enacted the long-held tradition of the Seder meal which reminded the Jewish nation of the events of Egypt, as a shadow picture He put Himself the element of the Seder (Luke 22:19-20), thus helping the disciples to understand the teaching of the sages who taught them that ‘eating the Passover represents the suffering of the Messiah’ (Tractate Pesachim). In Egypt he who splashed the blood of the Passover lamb on his doorposts (Jew and non-Jew) was freed from Pharaoh to go and serve the God of Israel. In Jerusalem he who follows Yeshua (Jew and non-Jew) is freed from a greater Pharaoh. He is freed from the Prince of the Power of the air (Ephesians 2:2) who like Pharaoh refuses to let us go and worship our God.

The work of redemption has been done from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). All the elements are in place. The only thing needed is our own free will to be freed from the seeming secure shackles of this world to go into the seemingly insecure spiritual wilderness of His service.

It can be a hot, a cold, a lonely windy scary place out there; but none other is more secure when following the footsteps of the Master.

Showdown with Pharaoh

Acts 17:30

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

The show-down between God and Pharaoh in Egypt could be coined ‘The Contest of the Gods for the Souls of Man’.

The Great Almighty creator of the universe, He who only allows the nations to exist as long as they benefit His will gave a direct command to Pharaoh. He said, “Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness”, to which Pharaoh answered, "Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice …” (Exodus 5:1-2). Boy was Pharaoh about to get an answer to his question. Egypt lost world dominance and never recovered.

Through the plagues, the Lord of Hosts challenged each and every god of Egypt. The God of Heaven showed His children and to the vain Egyptians that the gods of Egypt were nothing; that they didn’t owe their substance to the flow of the Nile nor to their abundant stocks, but ultimately to the God of the Hebrews whom they had enslaved. They had forgotten that it was through God’s blessing upon Joseph, a Hebrew slave, that the country had been saved from destruction through famine over two hundred years before.

For decades the Empire continued to partake of the blessing bestowed upon God’s children. But like Laban, Egypt wanted to keep the blessing prisoner. This reminds me of the story of a king who when he heard the beautiful song of a bird, he captured it and put it in a cage. Expecting to hear the beautiful heavenly music at will, this king was very disappointed when he realized that the bird couldn’t bless the king with his music while in captivity.

Now that Egypt had served its purpose of providing a place for God’s people to grow and multiply, God needed His children to go and establish the place that would eventually become the cradle of Messiah, the birthplace of He who wouldl bring the whole world to repentance.

The message is the same today. He that is in the similitude of the Passover Lamb calls us. He calls us to repent and let go of our sinful leaven, of the gods of pride and rebellion. He invites us to follow Him to a place of solitude far away from the vanity of this world; He desires to teach us His ways of love and humility.. When we hear the call and follow Him, in the same way that angels received and ministered to Jacob upon his return to the Promised Land, as a groom lifts his bride over the threshold of his house, so the Bridegroom Messiah lifts us up to carry us to His Kingdom where we will live with Him forever.