Congregation Shema Yisrael

These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Teach them diligently to your children. When you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you rise up. -Deuteronomy 6:6-8

Most of us in the Messianic movement recognize those verses from Deuteronomy as part of the Shema; the most holy prayer in Judaism, that tradition states must be prayed twice a day, everyday, to impress upon us the vital importance of our relationship with God and with our fellows.

Obviously, it’s important to God that we teach our children the commandments that He gave to the Children of Israel through His servant Moses. This includes teaching them the words of The Prophet, the Mashiach, Yeshua (Jesus), our living Torah, who also believes that children are especially important.

People were also bringing babies to Jesus to have him touch them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” -Luke 18:15-17

Yet, are we teaching our children to receive the kingdom of God as the Master would have us do? Hopefully, if we belong to the community of faith, we are. But what other things does the world around us teach them?

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He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. -Deuteronomy 8:3

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the Adversary. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. The Adversary said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.’” -Luke 4:1-4

Do you know where your next meal is coming from? If you have enough time to read this blog, then the answer is probably “yes”. Yet in these uncertain economic times, who knows if you’ll have a job (presuming that you are currently employed) next month, next week, or even tomorrow? Does that suggestion bother you, even a little? With unemployment rates seeming to skyrocket, I’m sure it bothers a lot of people, even in the community of faith. Yet Yeshua (Jesus) said this:

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Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.” “Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked. He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Rabbi asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make preparations there.” They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.
-Luke 22:7-13

This Shabbat (Saturday, January 23rd), Torah Portion Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16) will be read in Synagogues all over the world. This part of the Book of Exodus is the culmination of a prophesy and a dream: the release of the Children of Israel from brutal slavery in Egypt and particularly, the establishment of the Holy Festival of Passover.

Over a thousand years after faithful Jews painted their door posts with the blood of a slain lamb to insure that God’s angel of death would “passover” their homes and not take the lives of the firstborn within, a small group of men were having their last meal with a person they called “Rabbi” and “Master” and “friend”; the man whom John the Baptiser once called “God’s Lamb, who has come to take away the sins of the world”. But what was being commemorated during this last meal at the Master’s table?

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While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.” Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” -Matthew 26:6-13

Who is this person? What was she doing with what, by today’s standards, would be thousands of dollars worth of perfume in an alabaster jar? How did she happen to just show up in Simon’s place? Why did she pour all that expensive perfume on Yeshua’s (Jesus’s) head and why did he not only approve, but say that this woman’s story would be told by everyone who spread the Good News of salvation through the Mashiach (Christ)? Obviously, the Master’s disciples disapproved of her actions, but Yeshua himself thought what she had done was “a beautiful thing”. Did she know she was doing a beautiful thing? Most importantly, is her story still told today by those of us to spread the good news? No? Why not?

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And the people of the nations who bind themselves to the LORD to serve him, to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him, and who hold fast to my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. -Isaiah 56:6-7

Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Sukkot (Tabernacles). If any of the peoples of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD Almighty, they will have no rain. If the Egyptian people do not go up and take part, they will have no rain. The LORD will bring on them the plague he inflicts on the nations that do not go up to celebrate Sukkot. -Zechariah 14:16-18

Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses. -Acts 13:38-39

On the surface, these verses don’t seem to be well associated with a single theme, but if you dig in, even slightly, you’ll see that they all talk about how the Gentiles; the non-Jewish people of the world, can come to know the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. Quoting Paul in Acts, we see a message that I’m sure is abundantly familiar to Christians; that one is saved and reconciled with God through Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus the Christ). Yet the prophets Isaiah and Zechariah, although each contributed to Messianic prophesy, deliver a message that says access to God by the Goyim (nations) has always been available and in Messianic days, will not only be offered, but expected, at least on Sukkot.

Traditional Jews see the statements of Isaiah and Zechariah somewhat differently than traditional Christians and Messianics, and here’s the point of this article. That interpretation isn’t rendered differently to different groups based on different Bibles, although Jewish people of course, don’t acknowledge the Apostolic Scriptures as being from God. The different interpretations are rendered by different faith groups based on theology and tradition. Often a person’s first encounter with a religious life isn’t through the Bible but through how it’s interpreted, as viewed through those twin lenses. What would it be like to learn about God just from the Bible?

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You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. -Exodus 20:16

You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, or lie to one another. -Leviticus 19:11

I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. -1 John 2:21

If you ask most believers if it’s OK to lie, most believers will say “no”. That said, under certain circumstances, believers lie sometimes, but usually “little white lies”. I’m talking about when a wife asks her husband if the dress she’s wearing makes her look fat, or when your host at a dinner party asks how you like a meal and you don’t think very much of the food. We call these “little white lies” and say them in order to not hurt someone’s feelings or to avoid appearing rude or insensitive. Based on the sampling of Bible verses I posted above though, how can we say that lying is acceptable against God’s standard?

Let’s cut to the chase. During the Holocaust, many, many “righteous Gentiles” lied to the Nazis when they were hiding Jewish people. It seems like a no brainer to lie under such circumstances. After all, to tell the truth and admit that you are hiding a Jewish family would probably result not only in the family being sent to the camps, but you being punished; even killed, for hiding out Jews in the first place. Does God approve of such lies?

In Judaism, the answer is “yes”, but not just because of “enlightened self-interest” as in the circumstance of the Holocaust.

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Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the stranger within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. -Exodus 20:8-11

Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. -Mark 3:1-6

The long and the short of it is, traditional Christianity seems to believe that acts of the Master such as the one recorded in Mark 3:1-6 more or less “undid” the Word of God relative to working on the Shabbat (Sabbath), and that the anger of the Pharisees supports the idea that Yeshua (Jesus) worked on the Shabbat by healing the man with the shriveled hand. After all, Yeshua didn’t have to heal the man on Shabbat. The guy had that shriveled hand for years. If he had to wait another day to be healed, what’s the big deal? It’s not like he was dying and needed help right then. And there’s a provision for doing “work” on the Shabbat when it’s an emergency.

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