Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it Holy

Christians get all bent out of shape when you tell them

Exodus 31:16....  Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever.

and then couple that with

Romans 11:17....  But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, 

If we are grafted in to Israel, are we not, in a sense, Israel?  Certainly not ethnically, but we are children of Abraham, according to the promise.

If, then, the Sabbath commandment is "a covenant forever," did forever end?  The Hebrew word here meaning "forever" is "עוֹלָם" (Olam) which literally means the Universe... heaven and earth.  "Forever," in this case, ends when heaven and earth pass away.  When does Heaven and Earth pass away?  In Revelation 21:1.

Now, IF we are commanded to keep the Sabbath "as a covenant forever," what does it mean to "keep" the Sabbath?

The Torah prohibits 2 things on the Sabbath:  Doing work (Exodus 20:8), and "kindle(ing) a fire in any of your dwellings."  (Exodus 35:3)

That's it.  You're even allowed to go camping and start a fire outside of your tent if you want.  You just can't start a fire inside your tent.

How do we spend the Sabbath?  Please notice, nowhere in any commandment does it say we must assemble for regular worship on the Sabbath.  Jesus did it because every other day of the week was a daily struggle for survival... every other day of the week, everyone was out in the fields or in the marketplace... Shabbat (the name of the 7th day) was literally the only opportunity to gather anywhere.

But we're not commanded to "go to church" on Shabbat.  What are we commanded to do?

The Hebrew root for the word Shabbat is the three letters, שבת, Shin, Bet, Tav.  Those three letters mean, simply, "cease."  Stop what you're doing.  It's saying, every other day you work.  You work hard all day, every other day... today, you stop it.  Today, you rest.  Today, you take care of yourself.

How do you do that?

Play a video game.  Read a book.  Make love to your spouse.  Take a nap.  Invite friends over for coffee.

Literally, THAT'S what we're commanded to do.

Why do Christians fight against that?  We're like toddlers balling our fists and yelling at our mommies that no, we won't go to bed, when we're already too tired to stand up.  It's silly.

Ok, one more thing in this book of a rant before I close it:  What day should we "cease?"  Paul tells us not to let anyone judge us on account of our day of rest.  That is to say, it's nobody else's business.  What does that mean?

When I, as a Methodist, tell people I keep a 7th day Shabbat, I get judged.  "You know you don't have to do that, right?  You know Jesus set you free from the chains of Shabbat, right?  You know Jesus is our sabbath rest, right?"

I love my Christian brothers and sisters... I really do.  LORD bless them, they're doing the best they know how.  But they're judging me, in direct contradiction to what Paul said.  Paul didn't say "Move the Sabbath," Paul said "It's nobody else's business when you take your shabbat."

So if your job requires you to "cease" on a Wednesday, then you "cease" on a Wednesday.  But for heaven's sake, DO IT.  That's not a day for you to get caught up on work... that's a day for you to remember to rest.

As for me, I think it's pretty clear.  The Hebrews didn't have names for their days... the day we call
Sunday was simply known as "One."  Monday was "Two."  Wednesday was "Three."  You get the picture.

The only day that DID have a special name was the 7th day, which was not called "Seven," it was called "Shabbat."

So on the 7th day of each week, I rest from whatever labors I had the week before.  I try to focus my attention on heavenly things.  I listen to a few sermons, or I read more scripture than usual, or I set aside time for prayer.  And, if at all possible, I take a nap.

Paul said don't judge. =)

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?

So lets say you have a friend named Dave. and as we're talking, I mention my friend, who is also named Dave.

You look at me suspiciously: My Dave lives in Columbus.
I look back suspiciously: My Dave also lives in Columbus.

You smile: My Dave lives on High Street.
I grin: My Dave also lives on High Street.

You say: My Dave is a banker.
I say: My Dave is also a banker.

You say: My Dave drives a white car.
I say: My Dave also drives a white car.

You say: My Dave loves his son very much.
I say: My Dave doesn't have any children.

Is it possible we're talking about the same Dave? No. No it's not.

And say, "Praise to Allah , who has not taken a son and has had no partner in [His] dominion and has no [need of a] protector out of weakness; and glorify Him with [great] glorification."  (Quran 17:111)

Say: He is Allah, the One and Only; Allah, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him. (Quran  112:1-4) 

It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! when He determines a matter, He only says to it, "Be", and it is. (Quran 19:35) 

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  (John 3:16)

Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s name? Surely you know! (Proverbs 30:4)

When we want to know if two people in question are the same person, like the two men named Dave in the opening example, we need to compare their attributes.  Are these two men exactly the same in every way?  We may find thousands of similarities between the two... they could both have beards, they could both have wives named Susan, they could both be graduates of the same university... but it is only necessary to find a single, irrefutable discrepancy to make the call.  In this case, I think, the teaching is very clear.

Days and Years

Today, much of the Christian church celebrates that holiday-which-must-not-be-named.  (See the blog post before this one if that intrigues you).  For many years, I’ve called it “Resurrection Sunday,” and been quite pleased with that.  Recently, I’ve started calling it what it is… Pesakh, or Passover. 

But this year, there is an interesting lesson in the timing of the day that sheds light on our worldview, and it is this about which I wish to briefly write. 

What is today?

We mark it with a name… “March,” and then we number the days in March… so this is the 27^th day of March. 

Was Yeshua raised from the dead on the 27^th of March?  Because in 2015, the Church celebrated Resurrection Sunday on April 5^th.  And next year, in 2017, the Church will celebrate Resurrection Sunday on April 16^th. 

But it gets better:  This year, the Hebrew calendar has 13 months.  So the Hebrew festival of Passover, which is very closely tied to the Christian observance of Resurrection Sunday, happens almost a month from now.  Exactly when?  We can’t be sure, because the new month doesn’t start until two witnesses report to the Sanhedron that they saw the New Moon over Jerusalem.  And 14 days after THAT… That will be Passover.  

What’s the point?

The point is this: Human calendars are arbitrary.  There’s more to it than all of that, and I’m sure some of my readers will have strenuous points to make on this issue, but a date… like March 27^th… is just a date.  If we chose to remember an event on that day, that doesn’t mean that event happened exactly 365.25 x 1984 days ago.  That means this is the date we chose to remember it. 

God’s calendar, based on the Aviv barley and the sighting of the New moon, is always in flux to some degree… this year, the barley was not Aviv.  Perhaps Jerusalem will be cloudy on the first two days of the new moon, and the month will begin two months late. 

Since calendars are so malleable, does it really make sense to get upset with your brother or your sister regarding which date they chose to remember an event?  

Should we let “soft facts” create hard hearts?

To my Christian brothers and sisters who celebrate Resurrection Sunday this morning, I want to say this:  May the Joy of the Triumphant Risen Christ fill your hearts and homes this and every day!

To my Karaite and Messianic brothers and sisters who will celebrate Pesakh next month, I want to say this:
May you savor each moment of the anticipation of that Holy day!

To my Orthodox Jewish brothers and sisters, I want to say this:
Pesakh Samech!

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is, when brothers dwell together in unity!

The Holiday Which Must Not Be Named

My dear, dear fellow Christians,

As of this writing, we are almost one month past Valentine's day.  The next holiday is not yet upon us, but I'm already seeing the telltale signs... stores piled with candy and pastel baskets, seasonal "Egg" shaped candy in the convenience stores, and angry posts from Atheists, Pagans, and Messianics all decrying the coming day.

I know, I know!  I hate grouping those three demographics together too!

Sadly, on this issue, they are of one accord.

The Atheists are all like "You're worshiping a rabbit that lays eggs!  How dumb can you be?"

The Pagans are all like "Hey, that's our holiday!  You got the date wrong, and the name, and, like, umm, most of the things, but you did remember the rabbit and the eggs!"

And the Messianics are all like "You're worshiping a rabbit that lays eggs!  How dumb can you be?"

I love Messianics.  I really do.  Heck, on my good days, when I'm Obedient to the Master, I even love the Pagans and the Atheists.

But the Messianics have something to teach us (that the Catholics already know!  Can you believe this?  The Messianics and the Catholics agreeing??) that the Protestant church, as a whole, needs to understand.

This Holiday-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named that is coming up is actually ordained by God. The first 28 verses of Exodus 12 teach us about it.  In Matthew 26:18, the Master says

“Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep (The-Holiday-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named) at your house with my disciples.’ ”

So it's not one of those things we can even argue about whether or not we, as Christians, are supposed to still do... The Master did it, we should as well.

So how do we do that?  We adopt the Jewish name for it, first of all.  Get rid of the E-word and call it what it really is...

PASSOVER

Maybe, if you want to get closer to the Hebrew, you can call it

Pesakh

If you want to get REALLY close to the Hebrew, you can call it

פֶּ֫סַח

But whatever you call it, do yourself a favor: get rid of the E-word, the bunny, and the eggs.  Unless they're made of peanut butter and coated with chocolate.   

Jesus, Moses, and Paul: Christians and the Torah

It is the opinion of some scholars that Christianity would not be what it is without Paul.  I have even read that, in the opinion of some of them, Paul changed what Jesus taught.  Dr. Bart Ehrman, for example, teaches that Paul's teaching on circumcision in Galatians 5:2 was in response to Jewish men going to the Gym (where Greek men exercised in the nude) and feeling socially ostracized because they looked different.  So, according to Dr. Ehrman, Paul undoes the Torah to make the Jewish men feel more accepted in Greek society.

But what does the Scripture say?

Acts 24:14-15 (ESV)

14 But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, 15 having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust.

Acts 25:7-8 (ESV)

7 When he had arrived, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many and serious charges against him that they could not prove. 8 Paul argued in his defense, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense.”

And finally,

Acts 26:30-32 (ESV)

30 Then the king rose, and the governor and Bernice and those who were sitting with them. 31 And when they had withdrawn, they said to one another, “This man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment.” 32 And Agrippa said to Festus, “This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.” 

Now obviously there's significantly more here than is relevant to this topic, but I do want to point out that Paul is accused by the Jewish leaders of violating Jewish law and tried in a court which is so friendly to the Jewish leadership that.... "desiring to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul in prison..." for two years. (Acts 24:27)  This court, which stole two years of the man's life because it wanted to be friendly to the Jewish leadership, was unable to find Paul guilty of violating Jewish teaching.

Think about that a moment.

The court was hostile to Paul and looking to appease the Jewish leadership, and when presented with the evidence, could only say “This man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment.”

What does that teach us?

PAUL TAUGHT TORAH.

Yeah, I know.  That stings a bit, doesn't it?

"But, A.J.," you say, "Didn't Paul teach not to obey the sabbath?  Didn't Paul teach not to circumcise?  Didn't Paul teach...."

What happens when you go back and look at those passages from the other perspective... the one I've just given you?  You'll find, I think, that we do not live in a binary universe.  That these things are complex and nuanced issues which simply cannot be understood in a single soundbyte.

"But A.J.," you say, "Didn't Jesus do away with the Torah?  Wasn't the law nailed to the Cross?"

Matthew 5:17-19 (ESV) says

 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.  Therefore 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, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Now, Christians... when does Heaven and Earth pass away?

Revelation 21:1 (ESV)

 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

So how are we to respond to the Law?  We see that Jesus taught the Law.  We see that Paul taught the Law.

Let's put this another way:

Which of the Laws would you like to break?  I recently heard a very well known prosperity gospel preacher tell an audience of hundreds of thousands that they were not bound by the Law, no, not even by "the big ten."

The Big Ten?  Since I'm pretty sure he wasn't talking about football, I'm going to assume he meant the Ten Commandments.

Things like 

"You shall have no other gods before Me,"

or

"You shall not steal,"

or

"You shall not commit adultery."

Which of these would you like to violate?

You instinctively know that none of THESE laws are passed away.  None of THESE laws were "nailed to the Cross."  You are not "free," oh Christian, to sleep with your brother's wife. 

The argument is often made "We're only beholden to those laws which are repeated in the New Testament. This is why we don't have to keep the Sabbath."

Exodus 31:16 (ESV)

Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever.

"But I'm not Israel," you may say.  

Are you not grafted in?

No, you don't replace Israel, but you are Abraham's children, right?

This is not a call to legalism.  And by no means am I saying our salvation comes through our ability to follow the Law... but nobody was ever saved by following the Law... not even Moses.

It's not a salvational issue.  It's a matter of realizing who you are, and who God is.  If your employer tells you to take out the garbage, even if that's not the job you were hired for, you take out the garbage.  Why?  Because he's paying you.

How much more should you do for the one who created and redeemed you?

The Root and Branch of Jesse, and the Son of David.

A Jewish friend recently asked me how Jesus (Yeshua) could be “a true descendant of King David and King Solomon, and from the tribe of Judah.”  Below is my response to her.  It grew so long, I thought it would make a good blog post as well. 

I assume you're speaking of the blood curse on Jehoiachin from Jeremiah 22:30.  Jehoiachin was the legal successor from David, but Jehoiachin was so wicked that God declared that none of his children would ever sit on the throne. 

This presents a problem for Jews as well, since The Messiah has to be David's heir, but because of Jehoiachin, none of David's blood descendants from the male line can ever sit on the throne of David, and The Messiah must reign from the throne of David. 

First, in good Jewish fashion, I must tell you another story which will inform this one. 

In Numbers 27, verses 1-11, we read the story of the daughters of Zelophehad.  Zelophehad had five daughters and no sons, and his daughters realized that because of this, his portion of the inheritance of the land would be lost, since it must pass to a male heir.  Moses wisely rules that if the daughters marry men of their tribes, they can receive their father's inheritance of land.  This establishes a legal precedent:  a female can be legally the equal of a male, even if there are no male heirs, if she marries within the tribe.  Once she does, the land belonging to her father and the land belonging to her husband both belong to their family.

Does that make sense?

Ok.  So we go to the New Testament, and we trace the genealogy of Yeshua.  We have to know something about the gospels at this point, too:  Matthew was of the Tribe of Levi.  Matthew's gospel is VERY Jewish.  Written by a Levite to a Jewish audience.  Matthew has a genealogy of Yeshua in his first chapter, and this genealogy begins with Abraham.  Why?  Because Abraham was the first Jew, and in a sense, nobody before Abraham matters.  Matthew wants to focus on Yeshua's Jewishness.  So he traces the lineage from Abraham through David through Solomon through Jechoniah (with the special footnote that Jechoniah was the king at the time of the exile to Babylon.   That means that Jechoniah and Jehoiachin are the same person).  Matthew is aware of the blood curse on Jehoiachin, but he continues to trace the male lineage all the way to Joseph, the husband of Mary.  Hold that fact in your mind for a moment:  Mary's husband, Yeshua's legal father, was a descendant of David through Jehoiachin.

Now we look at Luke's gospel.  Luke has a genealogy as well, but it is a bit different in some respects.  Luke was a physician, and much of his book focuses on the humanity of Yeshua.  Luke, for instance, gives us the best birth narrative, because being born is a very human thing.  Mark, for example, gives no birth narrative, and that fits with Mark's theme as well.

Anyway, Luke focusses on Yeshua's humanity.  So he starts his genealogy with Adam, because Adam is the first man.  And he goes through Abraham, to David, but then he turns and goes through Nathan, another son of David by Bathsheba, rather than Solomon. It is at that point the two genealogies diverge, and they are different until they come back to Joseph.  But here is another problem:  Both genealogies claim to belong to Joseph, the legal father of Yeshua. 

We find, however, that it’s just an interesting coincidence.  One Joseph is the son of a man named Heli (Luke 3:23) and the other Joseph is the son of a man named Jacob (Matthew 1:16).  It is very likely (for this and other reasons) that Mary was the daughter of a man named Joseph, and she also married a man named Joseph.  This has been speculated on for the last 2000 years… some of the ancient church fathers wrote about this.  There is likely an error in the Greek text of Matthew which is fixed when we turn to the Hebrew text of Matthew (another story for another time, but Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew, possibly making versions in both languages… Matthew was the Levite after all!).  In Matthew’s Hebrew gospel, Joseph is the “strong man” or “guardian” of Mary (Matthew 1:16), which possibly means adoptive father.  Regardless, she was also a biological descendant of David, through the non-corrupted line.



Let me make this as clear as possible:  No legal descendant of David after Jehoiachin could sit on the throne of David.  But the Messiah MUST come from this line, to have legal claim to the throne AND be the fulfillment of God’s promise to David.  Messiah MUST come from David’s line, and He MUST sit on the throne of Israel forever. 



Yeshua is LITERALLY the only person in the world with legal claim to the throne of David, because of this.

God accomplishes this using Torah.  The daughters of Zelophehad story from Numbers makes clear that Mary is legally allowed to inherit David’s throne for her son if she marries within the tribe.  But her child cannot have the blood of Jehoiachin in his veins, because of the blood curse God pronounces in Jeremiah 22:30.  But since the Word of GOD is perfect, and cannot be broken, God accomplishes this very thing with a VIRGIN BIRTH. =)  Yeshua has all the legal rights which He inherits from His legal father, Joseph, but none of Joseph’s blood.  He is a direct biological descendant of David through Mary, His only human parent, and because of the Torah story of the daughters of Zelophehad, Yeshua has legal right to inherit everything she was to receive from her father as well. 

Now here’s where it all comes together:  Thanks to the story of the daughters of Zelophehad, a woman who marries within her tribe can inherit land and title from her father.  In this case, Mary’s father is David, several generations back.  Joseph is the direct male descendant of David through the male line, and if Jehoiachin hadn’t messed it up, Joseph would have been on the throne of Israel.  But Joseph was not Yeshua’s BIOLOGICAL father, only his legal one.

The Evolution of Dr. Dawkins's Morality

In his book "The God Delusion," Dr. Richard Dawkins said this:

"As Einstein said, 'If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. ' Michael Shermer, In The Science of Good and Evil, calls it a debate stopper. If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would 'commit robbery, rape, and murder', you reveal yourself as an immoral person, 'and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you'. If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good.  I suspect that quite a lot of religious people do think religion is what motivates them to be good, especially if they belong to one of those faiths that systematically exploits personal guilt.
It seems to me to require quite a low self-regard to think that, should belief in God suddenly vanish from the world, we would all become callous and selfish hedonists, with no kindness, no charity, no generosity, nothing that would deserve the name of goodness."

The primary fallacy, as I see it, is this:  Without God there is no good or evil.  That is to say, if man is the final arbiter of what is good, then what is good for you may not be good for me.

Suppose we speak of a little thing like lying; I hold that it is best to be truthful, but you see nothing wrong with telling a small lie, perhaps to avoid hurting a person's feelings.... Yes, honey, that dress looks great on you.  We have already diverged in our morality.

But the divergences don't have to be tiny.

Suppose I believe that the highest aim of humanity is reproduction, not only because the act feels good but because it propagates the species.  It could then be quite easy for me to justify not only rampant philandering, but polygamy and perhaps even rape.  And if I should come to the conclusion that rape is an excellent way to propagate my genes, who could tell me I'm wrong?  Man is the final arbiter of morality... what is right for you is not necessarily right for me.

Thus, without the existence of an objective, moral law giver... that is, someone outside of humanity to tell us what is objectively right and what is objectively wrong,

there 

would 

BE 

NO 

GOOD

OR 

EVIL, 

just as Dr. Dawkins himself realizes in his later book "A River out of Eden," when he says

"In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."

Please note: This is NOT to say that atheists cannot be moral people, but only to say that they cannot justify the existence of morality satisfactorily.  They offer a wide array of explanations for it.  My favorite one is that morality evolved along with genetics, but this gives us an ever shifting morality.  What is the problem with that?  It suggests the possibility of a period in history where things like rape and slavery were not only accepted, but acceptable, and further suggests that at some point yet future, those things might once again be acceptable.  Thus, the atheist who takes this approach cannot say that anything is objectively wrong, for all peoples and at all places and at all times, but only that such a thing is wrong here and now.  So the American atheist cannot decry the evils of slavery in a place like Africa, where it still exists, but can only say that the African morality has followed a divergent evolutionary track.

In the end, then, we find this:  Dawkins, in his appeal to people being moral, appeals to the existence of God in an attempt to make his argument that God does not exist.  As Dr. Frank Turek says, Dawkins must sit on God's lap to slap Him in His face.