TO REBUKE OR NOT TO REBUKE

Matthew 7:12

"So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets”. 

Leviticus 19:17 tells us, " thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor (KJV)”. To rebuke our neighbor is actually a commandment. If we don’t do it we “suffer sin." I would dare say that this commandment has no problem being observed. There is certainly no shortage of people always trying to rebuke other. Our personal inferiority complex and sickly craving for recognition constantly pushes us in wanting to be found to be the one bringing everybody else on the right path. Let’s look a little deeper at this commandment.

Whereas we do owe the truth to people around us (Ezekiel 3:17–19), I don’t think this commandment applies to people who faithfully follow their understanding, however erroneous, of obedience to God. This commandment applies more to those who knowing the truth, deliberately and willfully disobey it. Yeshua gave a good example on how to apply this commandment. He did not use it with the Sadducees and the Samaritans who were taught to reject pharisaic understanding of the Torah, as much as with the Pharisees themselves who were more enlightened. Being a Pharisee himself, Yeshua knew that they knew better. Another point to remind ourselves is that the Torah also forbids shaming others publicly. Our Master Yeshua reminds us of this. He even equates it with murder (Matthew 5:21-22).

Rashi the medieval Jewish sage had a particular take on the Torah command to rebuke others. In Hebrew the verse says, ‘oke’ach, itokyach’ which could roughly literally be translated as: ‘rebuke yourself, rebuke others’. What Rashi taught was that you must take a good look at yourself before you go on rebuking others  as this will give you the dynamics of compassion that will help your brother to listen to you. Yeshua taught the same understanding of the commandment, He said, "First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye (Matthew 7:5)”. Judges from the Sanhedrin believed that they were unfit to judge a case if they could not find within themselves the sin of the accused. They felt unfit because in such a case they would not be equipped with the compassion necessary to judge the case in a Godly fashion.

Moses then ends the command to rebuke others with, “… you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am Adonai (Leviticus 19:18)”, a command which Yeshua commented on saying that it was the second most important in the whole Torah (Matthew 22:36–40). Also, another Jewish sage, R. Akiva who lived after Yeshua, called the command to love others as ourselves "the fundamental rule of Torah" and paraphrased it in: “What is hateful to you, do not do to others” (Shabbos 31 a). I wonder where he got these words from.

 P. Gabriel Lumbroso

www.thelumbrosos.com

For P. Gabriel Lumbroso's devotional UNDER THE FIG TREE in Kindle edition click here.

THE RIGHTEOUS TAKEN AS A PLEDGE

   Colossians 2:9

For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

After successfully receiving the stone tables where Hashem engraved His first Ten Instructions to Israel, Moses was asked to levy from them a free-will contribution (Exodus 25:1). This voluntary contribution will serve to build what will eventually become the Tabernacle, the very place the Almighty El-Shaddai will use as a sort of communication center with Moses. Remember, the Children of Israel confessed that they could not hear the Voice of God; they ask Moses to act as an intercessor for them (Exodus 20:18-19). I think it strange that today many people seem to casually say that they hear ‘God’ speak to them when in fact, the Children of Israel couldn’t and even asked for an intercessor, move which Hashem approved (Deuteronomy 18:16-17).

Sages from ancient Israel saw the future and imagined Moses asking God, “Will not the time come when Israel will be deprived of a Tabernacle or of a Temple? What will happen then?” According to the sages the Divine reply was, “I will then take one of their righteous men and retain him as a pledge on their behalf, in order that I may pardon all their sins.” (Midrash Rabbah Shemot 35:4). The agricultural ancient Israelites were familiar with the custom of dedicating a whole harvest to God by presenting one sheave, the first and purest drop of oil from their olives, or even the first-born of animal and man-kind. They understood the principles of the first and best given to Hashem for the sanctification of the whole.

The Tabernacle and Temple housed the Ark which represented God’s covenant Presence among man. At the time when Hashem knew the Temple would disappear for a long time and the Children of Israel would go for a long exile, the Almighty took one righteous man to hold as a pledge for the sanctification of the people; His name was Yeshua from Nazareth. By the end of the first century, there were over 1,000.000.000 believers in Israel.

Chassidic Jews seemed to understand the mechanism by which God operates They believed that their righteous men, their ‘tsaddik’, their ‘rebbes’ (rabbis) housed the Shekinah of God; that they acted as the Temple or the Tabernacle. They were not so far off. Yeshua Ben Yoseph Hanotsree (Jesus Son of Joseph from Nazareth) is that righteous Jewish man, that Rebbe whom God held as a pledge for the sanctification of the Jewish people and through whom the whole worlds is redeemed as, in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority (Colossians 2:9-10). He is the first sheave of the harvest (Numbers 28:26), the pure first drop of olive oil from the press (Gethesemane, the place where the Master was pressed measure means: the olive press). He is also the perfect lamb offered as voluntary contribution from the heart.