The Fruit of the Spirit Pt 3 – Peace

Peace is the easiest of the fruit of the Spirit to attain – as long as we are living alone with no neighbors, family or internet access. Add people and chaos ensues – chaos and our desire for supremacy (even if we are passive-aggressive and sly about getting it).

Nowhere do I see less peace than within congregations and on social media.There’s just something about religion that creates ugliness, because religion is about domination. Faith, on the other hand, is what brings humility and peace. Religion is about you doing things the same way I am doing them, but faith is about striving towards pleasing God. Religion is confrontational and combative, whereas faith is introspective and refining.

Without peace there can be no love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness or self-control because without peace we are too volatile to do anything but throw what rotten fruit we have at any and all passersby. Instead of verdant orchards of plenty, our social media congregations look like a scene out of the Wizard of Oz!

Yeah the fruit looked nice, until you decided to try some and then you got whacked.

Can we let things go?

Do we focus on the small stuff while neglecting the weightier matters of Torah – justice and righteousness, taking care of the widows, poor, orphans and the oppressed? Do we spend our time looking for ways to encourage and edify or do we look for ways to disagree and tear down?

Can we look past things that we disagree with or is our input always vitally important to the survival of humanity?

I used to want to correct everyone’s “wrongness” while my own errors went unaddressed. I thought I was wise, and a savior of the ignorant, but really I was just chaotic and pushy. I was so eager to correct that I went looking for opportunities – even if I had to take someone out of context. You know, it’s amazing how easy it is to find something “wrong” when you are looking for it, and how your mind will twist words and intentions in order to get that thrill of “drive-by-correction.” But one day I figured out that it wasn’t killing me if people were wrong on their own pages, or if I simply disagreed with them. On my own page I have an obligation to correct major errors, or when someone reposts something I have written and comments in such a way as to misrepresent what was said, but otherwise I have to allow people to be wrong. After all, a lot of people allowed me to be wrong and didn’t all hop on me at every opportunity – because they had peace. They knew how to let things go and allow me to be young and immature.

If I can’t allow you to say the Name of YHVH differently than I do it is because I have no peace, not because I am zealous for Him. If I can’t keep a feast according to someone else’s calendar – again, that is a lacking in peace on my part. If I have to convert you to my way of thinking, it is a peace problem. If I only comment on people’s threads when I disagree – you get the picture.

I had to learn to be at peace – I had to learn that I am not the arbiter of truth, correction and rightness. I am still having to learn it.

Sadly – and this is truth – I see a lot of hatred out there, and hatred is easier to emulate than peace. We have to avoid hating those who love YHVH at all costs – even when there are disagreements. When we start falling into accusation and racism, or anti-semitism and suspicion, there is no good fruit to be had in it. And what does it gain us? Does hating and slandering the Ashkenazi Jews gain us any good fruit? Does hating the laws of God produce goodness in our lives? Does it promote peace when we believe everything we hear, call everything pagan, or when we prepare to die on every hill of doctrine?

There is a tribulation coming to the Body of Believers, a Covenant Lawsuit, because we do not love each other, because we have not been charitable and just, and because we have contempt for the holy things of YHVH – His Land, His Temple, His People, His Priesthood, His Sabbaths and Feasts, and His Covenants. The Bride must learn the art of peace, and must forsake the chaos of her flesh – after all, what man would want a know-it-all, uncharitable, hateful, prideful and ungrateful Bride?

He’s going to have to turn up the heat and boil it out of us – for mercy’s sake.

WIT – Talmidim Teachers 4/1/15 – Isaiah 53 and the ANE Context of the Suffering Servant

Here is the teaching. I was sorry to miss it, but as Rico mentioned, I jumped at the chance to watch Ryan’s kids so that he could teach this before Passover – don’t feel sorry for me, I had a great time watching the last Night at the Museum movie with five boys (mine and his). (Hey, there was ANE context and first century context in that movie! Totally historical!). By the way – why was I watching the kids? I want to talk to you about that because I want you to be praying for Isaac. Isaac is the wonderful 2 year old nephew of Ryan and Mary White, and he has cancer. Mary traveled to support her family because that’s just the kind of amazing lady that she is. So please, pray for Isaac and his family.****************

Okay, so the next teaching can be seen on our youtube channel here (I will replace this link with the permanent edited link the day after the teaching airs) –

Ryan White will be teaching on the suffering servant aspect of Messiah’s role. Isaiah 53 is perhaps one of the most important text in the Scriptures and has been the subject of much debate between Christianity and Judaism. Christianity holds that it is one of the most clear prophecies in the Hebrew Bible that points to Yeshua as the Messiah while the majority opinion in Judaism is that it is referring to corporate Israel as the suffering servant. In this teaching we will approach the text by looking at a lot of key words in the Hebrew in order to establish a main theme of the text. We will also consider both Christianity’s and Judaism’s position on the identity of the suffering servant and will discover how the text can actually be speaking about both a Messianic figure and about corporate Israel. We will focus on the suffering aspects of the text and will investigate them through the context of honor, shame, and patronage in order to see Isaiah 53 in a whole new light.

He has given a lot of homework, but just do what you can – it’s well worth it as this is a section of scripture that is used by antimissionaries to try and discredit Messiah – but they never teach it in ANE context.

Down at the very bottom of this page are some useful powerpoints related to the teaching that will help.

Ryan’s annotated translation of Isaiah 53

A review of Moshe Weinfeld’s Social Justice in Ancient Israel (this book is the one that shows us why Messiah was crucified, and what that meant symbolically)

An article about honor and shame and the cross

An article on Japanese justice

A Romans 3 exegesis.

And for extra credit (sorry, we can’t promise of heavenly rewards 😉 but we will applaud if you get this far).

I will be absent this Wednesday, but I hope you will be there!

If you can’t open the Japanese word article:

This is an excerpt from the book Recovering the Scandal of the Cross.

A Japanese church leader was having a difficult time with a missionary’s standard explanation on why Yeshua had to die. The missionary had explained that Yeshua died to pay the penalty for our sins required by God, but the Japanese church leader said “to be honest, I don’t find the that explanation satisfactory”.

A tragic accident provided the missionary with his first clues as to why the common penal substitution explanation of atonement, so clear and logical to Western missionaries, had not satisfied this Japanese church leader. A young man from the congregation was driving a company truck and accidentally hit and killed two women walking by the side of the road. The police and court demonstrated more concern for the relationships and the people’s responses than to written codes. They handled the case in a way markedly different from the American legal processes. The young man immediately confessed that the accident was his fault because he was going too fast. The judge put him in custody but released him to attend the funerals of the two women who had been killed. The judge attended the funerals also and carefully observed not only how the young man behaved but how the families responded to him. In the meantime the police carefully investigated and exonerated the young man. They said he could not have been going as fast as he reported, and they discovered that the company truck had a steering defect. The young man was let out of jail to do public service for the rest of the year and then he was fully released and rehabilitated.

Later, the missionary was discussing the concept of justice in Japan with a small group of Japanese colleagues. When he asked them, what is justice? They discussed among themselves and answered, “justice is what the judge says it is.”the missionary observed that in the West the image of justice is a blindfolded goddess impartially weighing someone’s guilt or innocence based on evidence and a set of standard law. In contrast, the Japanese image is of a male judge with his eyes wide open, observing the situation so that he can do whatever will best preserve human relationships… Japanese criminals are imprisoned as a shameful act of exclusion from society. The lengths of the sentences are measured according to the enormity of their social scandal. The idea of criminals serving time and paying their debts to justice are concepts that sound quite strange to the Japanese culture.

The First 6 Teachings plus homework

Hey there, someone made the excellent point today that not everyone in the world is on facebook, which is where we usually post homework for the FREE Wednesday night youtube teachings, which you can access from our channel every week at 8pm EST, barring travel or holy days. I will be sending an update every week so if you subscribe to my blog you will get the homework via email as soon as I have it.

So, week 1 Rico covered ancient Near Eastern Suzerain-Vassal treaties, and the homework can be found here. I mentioned this article during the teaching by Meredith Kline. Suzerain-vassal language is found throughout the entire scriptures and an understanding of it is essential.

Week 2 Ryan taught Covenant Renewal and the homework is here and here. Covenant Renewal is what you want to know about for an understanding of the “Last Supper” and it will help you explain what Yeshua (Jesus) came to do.

Week 3 Daniel taught about the Royal Messenger, a very exciting message that relates to one of the important roles of Yeshua, as well as the prophets. The homework is here – most notably in chapter 3.

Week 4 Matthew taught about the Grant Covenant, which is essential to understanding the eternal ownership of the Land of Israel, as well as the Aaronic Priesthood. Homework is here

Week 5, I taught about Spiritual Adultery and what it was about the pagan religions of the Ancient Near East that prevented Israel from the exclusive worship of YHVH. Homework is here and here.

Week 6, Rico taught about What is Kedushah? Undeniably our most important and challenging teaching to date, this is foundational information. Here is the homework.

Unscriptural Rebukes Pt 3: “YOU ARE UNCLEAN!”

For this gem of an attitude that was commonplace during the time of Messiah, we have to talk about the members of the “synagogue of Satan” – the Pharisees of the House of Shammai.

I talk about this in great detail in my newest book King, Kingdom, Citizen: His Reign & Our Identity, but I will only briefly touch upon it here.

In the decade before the birth of Messiah, the Pharisees of the House of Shammai came to be in control of the Sanhedrin Council (the Jewish Supreme Court of ancient times). These snakes and vipers, as John the Baptist referred to them, had enacted the Eighteen Edicts of Shammai – civil laws that practically forbade relations between the Jews and Gentiles, effectively keeping Gentiles from being able to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Pharisees of the House of Hillel, who were pro-Gentile conversion, called the enactment of these laws as egregious as the building of the golden calf at Sinai! The Shammai Pharisees were shutting up the Kingdom of Heaven to seekers and not even going in themselves!

This is a woefully inadequate rendering of the backstory to Acts 10, but will give you a window of understanding into why Peter thought it was illegal to go into the home of a Gentile or eat with them in verse 28:

“And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.”

In fact, the entire vision the Peter had in the early verses of Acts 10 had nothing at all to do with food, but with the Shammai ruling that any clean animal that is touched by an unclean animal is rendered common, and no longer fit for eating. This extended to people as well, and any Jew who came in contact with a Gentile would supposedly become common and ritually unclean. Of course, this is not Biblical in the slightest – it is in fact patently anti-Biblical. The Israelites were commanded to be a light to the Nations so that all the world would worship God, YHVH! Without contact between Jew and Gentile, however, the gospel was stopped dead in its tracks (okay, when I spelled that the first time I said tracts instead of tracks and that is funny because, you know, people hand out gospel tracts… never mind).

Not only are we not to call people unclean, but to be unclean is in no way an insult when seen in context! It is simply a temporary disqualification from going to the Temple. Ritual uncleanliness is the natural consequence of sexual relations, the female menstrual cycle, childbirth, and skin diseases. Although the last of the four is lamentable, the first two are actually generally required for the third, which is pronounced to be a blessing.

And so, the next time you see someone call another person unclean – why not go ahead and ask them if they are card-carrying members of the House of Shammai, or maybe just aspirants for membership in the synagogue of Satan – or maybe just avoid them altogether, because if they don’t know that very basic scriptural prohibition, then they really have no business rebuking anyone at all. The Holy Spirit weighed in on this subject almost 2000 years ago. This insult is off-limits.

I mean really, if generally over-talkative me can debunk an insult this briefly, you know it’s ridiculous.

Unscriptural Rebukes Pt 2: “You Pharisee!”

This one is actually kind of funny, because, you know – people who say this never even know who the Pharisees were. They were a religious/political organisation – a denomination of Judaism. Some were righteous and some were unrighteous. Messiah wasn’t rebuking all Pharisees, after all, some were his own followers and we see the disciples of John the Baptist following some of their practices that Yeshua (Jesus) and His disciples got rebuked for not following. Joseph of Aramithea and Nicodemus were both Pharisees, and so was Paul until his dying day. The Talmud tells us that there were seven types of Pharisees in the first century – five types were unrighteous but two were righteous.

But people, in ignorance, have been taught that Pharisee = hypocrite! To equate an entire denomination of faithful Jews as hypocrites, even when their actions show that they are not, is to show a profound lack of historical knowledge. Calling someone a Pharisee because you disagree with them is like saying:

“You – you darned Presbyterian!”

“Southern baptist!”

That’s what we’re dealing with here. Now, to call someone “Westboro baptist,” now that would be a great insult because those people are all ungodly, unloving jerks. Lumping all Baptists together, however, and using the moniker as an insult would draw far more laughter than ire. Such a person would not be taken seriously.

Who were the Pharisees? Well, there were two main groups – the House of Shammai, whose anti-Gentile rulings were shutting up the Kingdom of Heaven so that no one could enter in, and the House of Hillel, who believed that the Nations should be free to become worshipers of God. When we see Yeshua rebuking Pharisees for being jerks, He was actually doing it with the full approval of the House of Hillel. In fact the Hillel Pharisees called the Shammai Pharisees a “synagogue of satan” and so did Yeshua. Why? – Because they were keeping the worship of the One true God from spreading all over the world. They were keeping the Kingdom of God selfishly to themselves and denying YHVH His right to be worshiped by people of every nation, tongue and tribe. The only one who wants to keep God from being worshiped is satan, and so the description of Shammai and his followers was appropriate. They even made it illegal civilly for Jews and Gentiles to share meals together or to enter into each other’s homes.

What both groups of Pharisees had in common was the Oral Law – the traditions of the elders. Yeshua didn’t seem to have any problems with people keeping those laws, just with their enforcement above and beyond God’s laws. For example, when the traditions of the elders made it impossible for a man to be healed on the Sabbath, that was a violation of God’s laws. When Hillel said that a wife could be divorced for displeasing her husband in any way, Yeshua had a big problem with that (siding for once with Shammai who reserved divorce for adultery). As we see, the Pharisees had their good doctrines and their bad doctrines and what He rebuked them for was placing their laws above God’s laws.

And so in general, when a person calls someone a Pharisee it is because that person has actually defended God’s laws against the judgment of men. For example, someone wants to eat pork or shellfish – placing their judgment over and above God’s laws- and you might mention that Leviticus 11 defines what food is and that all food is clean but not all things are food. You get called a Pharisee based on a misrepresentation of Mark 14 and Acts 10, which concerned common things and not unclean things (another tradition of the elders said that any clean animal that touched an unclean animal was common and therefore inedible, but there is no prohibition about touching a live unclean animal and so that law was a wrong extrapolation of Biblical principles). But really, the person who called you a Pharisee is acting much more like a Pharisee because they are following a tradition of the Catholic elders that says anything you want to put in your mouth is okey dokey and placing that law above God’s Laws.

You could try to explain this to them, but in general it doesn’t matter because the person simply wanted to shut you up by insulting you. Being called a Pharisee, however, isn’t really an insult. Joseph of Armaithea, a righteous Pharisee, took the body of our Messiah down from the cross and buried Him in his own tomb – risking his own status in the community and becoming ritually unclean for Passover (he would have had to celebrate it in the next month). Paul, a Pharisee, gave his life in the service of our Messiah. Many Pharisees followed Yeshua and labored so that we could follow the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So unless you are making up extra laws and allowing traditions to trump God’s Law, unless you are trying to keep the people whom you hate out of the Kingdom, unless you are depriving people of justice and acting unrighteously – well, you aren’t the type of Pharisee Yeshua was rebuking but there is a pretty good chance that the person who called you that does meet at least some of those requirements. At the very least, they are resorting to insults because they don’t really want to dialog. We just have to make sure that we are not deserving of those insults by acting like self-righteous jerks and poking our noses in where we are not invited.

So, we have covered being accused of being a scribe and a pharisee, of not freely giving, of calling upon the names of false gods just for saying Jesus or God, and next time we will cover the biblical prohibition on using “UNCLEAN” as an insult. Why am I doing this? – Because too many folks think they are rebuking others by the authority of the Holy Spirit, but if they do it by ignorantly twisting scripture – well, the Holy Spirit isn’t the spirit responsible for that…