I’m not Moses

I get asked questions a lot about what people should do, according to the Torah, in certain situations and more often than not I just can’t tell them.

I can tell you what is written, and what is not written – but what I cannot do is sit face to face with God like Moses did. Moses and the Israelites found themselves in a situation very much like ours. They had lived among pagans for hundreds of years and, at the very least, the mixed multitude had never known a lifestyle that wasn’t intimately steeped in pagan idolatry. I mean – even Aaron knew how to make a golden calf! The Word (in Exodus 18) says that Moses sat and judged the people from morning to night and I don’t think he spent all that time settling disputes between people

Ex 18:15-16 And Moses said unto his father in law, Because the people come unto me to inquire of God: When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.

I think that he was mostly answering questions – because that is oftentimes what people want me to do, not because I am like Moses but because we find ourselves in the same predicament. We are trying to leave lives steeped in sin and idolatry and it isn’t easy. The big questions aren’t about lying, murdering, stealing and adultery – they are about, “What do I do now?”

“I have a job on the Sabbath, what do I do now?”

“We thought we weren’t supposed to circumcise our young sons because we were taught Galatians incorrectly, what do we do now about Passover?”

“My wife thinks I have fallen from grace and won’t give up Christmas and Easter and pork – what do I do now?”

“I own a business that is open on Saturdays and if I close that day it’s going to hurt my employees – what do I do now?”

You see, if all I had to do was go by the letter of the Law, then all this would be very simple. No mercy, no time to transition, no recognition that we are in exile and that exile really complicates our lives. The Torah is the constitution of the Kingdom of God, of which we are all citizens, but it was never written in such a way as to easily operate within the midst of pagan communities. In many ways, we are very much still the exiles of Babylon and that would be true no matter what country on earth we live in. On top of that, we made decisions in ignorance long ago that complicate our lives now. We didn’t have rebellion in our hearts – we genuinely thought we were doing the right thing. But doing what ended up being the wrong thing made consequences that we are only now coming to fully appreciate.

And so we come into the area of “what is the higher law?” Love God and love our neighbors – those are the highest, they guide our interpretations of the others. We cannot use the excuse of feelings to eradicate a law, but we can acknowledge mitigating circumstances that actually cannot, at this time, be overcome. One cannot force a spouse, who is not on board, into Torah obedience and expect to maintain that marital relationship. Divorce will be the most likely outcome and then we will have children living in a broken home and the marriage covenant (that they made before God) in shambles. The husband or wife who resists Torah is simply guilty of being that exact same person to whom eternal vows were made – they didn’t change, and nothing in the vows said that they had to.

Out of the questions presented above – that’s the one I feel most comfortable about answering because it is clearly covenantal. The others are tough, and I can’t make personal decisions for other people. I can tell you what the Word says and what the Word does not say – but I can’t tell you what to do. If I were Moses, face to face with YHVH every day, then I could ask those hard questions and get absolute answers. When someone asked Moses, they were really asking God – but when you ask me, you have to know that you are really just asking Tyler. I am not an elder in the Body, nor am I one who is wise enough or knowledgeable enough to tell people in the Body definitively how they should walk this mess of an exile out. Someday it will be so easy, when Messiah comes, and we won’t face the tough questions anymore – or have to hope that the people giving answers are correct. No one will have to say “Know YHVH” for all will know Him. In the meantime, our lives are a mess and that is mostly incurable as we cannot fix the world that we live in.

If we believe in the mercy and compassion of God, then we can live in the midst of this mess and keep trying – but if we do not believe it, we will fall into despair and drag others along with us. The Law is good and holy and perfect, and for those living in Israel in ages past, they had the opportunity to keep it fairly easily. It’s hard for us, and there are landmines everywhere – but can you imagine, for a moment, how much it must please Him that we try so hard even in the midst of such difficulties? And even more, that we trust in His faithfulness in the areas where we are pretty much stuck? Is anything hidden from Him? He knows when we can and cannot adhere to the letter of the Kingdom laws, and when we simply don’t want to. He knows. What is key is the renewal of our minds and the ending of our hostilities towards His righteous commands – and it is vital that we patiently bear with those who are learning and struggling in the areas that we believe we have mastery over (until of course, we are faced with trials and then sometimes we learn that we are not quite the masters we think we are). We must recognize the journey in ourselves and others – focus on the progress and growth, not on the failings. After all, unless the failings are truly egregious, they are probably just a matter of opportunity and awareness. Adultery is something that should never be tolerated, but a man working a Saturday job to support his family while trying to get enough seniority or a better position where he no longer has to work it – we have to take exile into account. Exile does not effect murder, adultery, stealing, lying or coveting – but it seriously effects how we eat (no matter how hard we try), and the Sabbaths.

So maybe we should all cool our jets and keep in mind that law-keeping is only as good as we are in our hearts. A cruel person who keeps the Law is a poorer neighbor than a kind person who struggles with their Law-keeping. If I play loud music until 9:59 PM every night, walk my dog on a leash to your yard everyday so that her urine burns your grass instead of mine, or never rake my leaves and allow them to blow onto your lawn year around, when I am healthy and able to do so – I am not breaking any civil laws, but I am not being a good neighbor either. Law-keeping is not everything, and we have to stop pretending like it is. We must have balance, or we will demand unbalanced lives from others. And so, in all things – when I don’t have a good answer, I caution patience and balance.

Do not break the Laws of God in order to do anything that you don’t absolutely have to do. That’s the best advice I can give. Even the Rabbis recognize the importance of the preservation of life as being above all laws except those pertaining to actual literal idolatry, sexual perversions and murder. But most of the Laws that we break are not in service to the lives of others – we break them because we are either ignorant of them or do not want to keep them or don’t yet understand how to keep them. Those are the laws that we need to focus on – the ones that we can do something about, not the ones that we can’t do anything about yet. I would never instruct anyone to break a Law, but I do tell people to work towards observance.

Shabbat Shalom brothers and sisters. Peace be upon your homes and your lives.

Review of King, Kingdom, Citizen” His Reign & Our Identity

My amazing editor and wonderful friend Sarah Hawkes Valente has reviewed my new book – check it out, and while you are at it check out the rest of her blog and books. I just bought her newest homeschooling book Crash Course in Creativity for my almost high schoolers, who need some serious help with creative writing (no, I don’t seem to be able to teach them to do what I do naturally! ugh) and her Little Children: Big God is a delight.

King, Kingdom, Citizen is different than my first book, The Bridge. The Bridge was about the Kingdom of God as a family, but KKC is about the Kingdom of God as a Kingdom – and to do that I had to dig deep into Ancient Near Eastern archaeology and contextual studies. I wrote KKC because I see too many people desperately trying to understand who they are in the Kingdom of God and too many are falling away – because they think that they have to become something they were never meant to be. I am hoping you will check them both out, as well as Sarah’s books!

Ezekiel 47 and the Fallacy of “the Jews are Not the Real Jews” Argument

It’s incredibly sad that we have so many people jockeying needlessly for position in the Kingdom – claiming that the Ashkenazi Jews are not really Jews and that some other group is. The argument goes against the evidence of the Scriptures in telling us exactly who the members of the Tribes of Israel are because Scripture tells us that membership is not merely genetic in nature.

In the Exodus out of Egypt, we see 14 distinct groupings of people: thirteen Tribes descended from Jacob – the children of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Gad, Asher, Dan, Naphtali, Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh – and the mixed multitude of foreign slaves and former citizens of Egypt who followed after the God YHVH who demolished and dishonored the pantheon of gods in Egypt. So we see native-born sons of Jacob and what Scripture calls “sojourners” – foreigners who have joined themselves to the nation in order to worship and serve YHVH. We see from numerous passages that the laws are the same for the native-born and the sojourner and that they are treated the same in every respect except for the eating of the Passover, for which one must be circumcised. Other than that, the sojourners were expected and entitled to live the same lives as the Israelites in every respect – and still are.

In Joshua, we see the Nation of Israel entering into the Land but something strange has happened – we never see a reference to a sojourner again! In Joshua 5:5 everyone gets circumcised and then they all go to war and then every man’s family inherits land – but no more sojourners. Where did they go? Were they kicked out? Were they killed off? They were still there, but their children (remember that the generation who had refused to go into the Land had to die off?) were no longer considered sojourners, but native-born. Ezekiel 47 is our proof text for what happened:

²¹So shall ye divide this land unto you according to the tribes of Israel.

²²And it shall come to pass, that ye shall divide it by lot for an inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you, which shall beget children among you: and they shall be unto you as born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel.

²³And it shall come to pass, that in what tribe the stranger sojourneth, there shall ye give him his inheritance, saith the Lord God.

The mixed multitude was a mixed multitude no longer – they were now indistinguishable in inheritance and lifestyle from the children of Israel and so they became full inheritors of the covenants of promise, including the Covenantal Land Grant to the children of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob. Caleb, a Kennizite, was counted among the children of Judah and indeed his descendants today would be indistinguishable from Jews – because to be a Jew is not about bloodlines, it is about who you worship and which tribe you sojourn with, When people say that the Ashkenazi Jews are not truly Jews, then they are calling into question the legitimacy of Caleb as a member of the Tribe of Judah and probably at least a million of the men, women and children who crossed over the Jordan into the Land along with him – people who became indistinguishable from the children of Jacob.

Being a Jew has never been primarily about genealogy (even though many on both sides of the equation would like to boil it down to just that) but about allegiance. When a person commits their life to living as a Jew and worshiping the Jewish God – how can they not be considered a Jew, regardless of lineage? Rabbi Akiva, one of the greatest Jewish Rabbis in history, was born a Gentile but chose to sojourn with the Jews and is counted as a Jew. But there are people who, for their own reasons, want to discount and discredit the legitimacy of the Ashkenazi. I ask, who are we to raise a bar higher than the one God Himself put into place – are they not living as Jews? Are they not keeping the Sabbath, and the Feasts, and the food laws? Are they not doing the righteous and just acts of charity towards the poor, widowed, orphaned and oppressed? Are they not praying to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? How then, can they not be exactly who they claim to be? Is a Jew not one who lives as a Jew? Must genetics be factored in? What on earth do we gain by calling their claim to be Jews into question? And how dare we, who are grafted in, start speaking of genetic legitimacy? – Many of us who probably have no genetic legitimacy in the family of God whatsoever!

The Scriptures are plain, and when we take adoption into account the argument becomes even stronger. The Ashkenazi prove who they are by doing what the Jews were called to do – worshiping the One God exclusively and by keeping the commandments and circumcising their sons on the eighth day. Yes, most keep the commandments according to the traditions of the Oral Law but, despite the objections of some to the Oral Law, they still do a better job of keeping the commandments than most of those who would speak ill of their hereditary claims.

Our identity as sojourners is in no way inferior to that of the native-born, and it is my belief that the people pushing these arguments are doing so because they do not feel like they are enough somehow. But native-born or sojourner (and of course sojourner can become native-born at any time through circumcision), we are called the sons of God – do we also really, truly need to be Jews? Is being a Jew better than being called the sons of God? How can it be so? How can anything be greater than being called a son of God? Do we have to pull someone else down in order to be raised higher?

The Constitutional Law of the Kingdom of God (the Torah), Joshua and Ezekiel are all in agreement – the children of the sojourners are as the native-born and they are counted as being native-born among the Tribe with which they sojourn. Even if the Ashkenazi Jews were at one point not physical, genetic descendants of the Jews of Yeshua’s day (and I, for one, having looked at the “evidence” am in no way persuaded that they are not the actual descendants of the Jews – I believe that indeed they are genetically Jews) – they are most certainly, by Biblical law, Jews now, and have been for a very long time. They are Jews just as my adopted sons, and their future children, are Rosenquists. Anyone who says they aren’t, has me to deal with – and I have no doubt that anyone who wants to de-legitimize the Ashkenazi Jews will have God to deal with. Any clever arguments that can be used to disinherit and discredit the descendants of the Ashkenazi can also be used to disinherit and discredit the ingrafted Gentiles as well, and that is one place I am not willing to tread because I am far too grateful to simply have been included in the family of God to so casually speak my opinions about who does not belong in that same family. It isn’t my decision – it’s the decision of the Father.

What Calendar do I Keep and How do I Say the Name of YHVH?

My friend called the other day – he has always kept the same “A” calendar that my family keeps and he had a question for me:

“I’ve been listening to ‘X, Y, and Z’ and they have some really good arguments for the ‘B’ Calendar and I am really thinking about going by that one. Have you heard the arguments?”

“Yes I have and like I’ve said on many occasions, people have really compelling reasons for keeping all of the ‘A, B and C’ calendars and each one is associated with some well known names, although I’d never keep a calendar just because someone else was keeping one. I haven’t listened to any teachings from the main guys who promote the calendar we keep for years now, and the guy who promotes the calendar you are looking at I’ve listened to a few times. Everyone has some really great arguments and every calendar has it’s downside. In my first book, I even suggested that people keep the calendar that the last Sanhedrin calculated until they get things figured out for themselves. So if you’ve searched it out and want to keep that calendar, then do it. You know I don’t care – but Passover at my house is going to be on the ‘A’ Calendar and you are still invited. 🙂 ”

My friend chuckled at me.

I laughed back, “Well, you know me, it’s not like I am going to try to talk you out of it – because I cannot prove or disprove the ‘A’ or ‘B’ calendar, and even though I can disprove the ‘C’ calendar, everyone knows that it isn’t right but since the other two calendars cannot be proven, a lot of people keep it for the sake of unity. I have no problem with that. In fact, I respect it. So we keep the Feasts as well as we can here in exile, that’s all we can do.”

Now, if you’ve read The Bridge, you know what calendar my family keeps (it helped me to explain some things), but I’m not going to post it here because in the whole grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what calendar Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and her family keeps any more than it matters what calendar Michael Rood or Andrew Gabriel Roth keeps, because we are nobodies – we cannot legitimize or illegitimize the calendar they were keeping in the days of Moses, nor can we prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Truth is, it is human nature to want to associate that which we do and do not like with personalities so that we can either promote or disparage it – but what does this do? It simply creates division and unnecessary wedges between people. It transforms a conscience issue into an ego issue. “My calendar has to be right and yours has to be wrong because….” Even if we like someone, their calendar may end up being dead wrong, and even if we hate someone, their calendar might end up being right!

If I were to share what calendar I keep, there are folks who would disregard and disrespect the other things I teach – and that is a plain fact. So I don’t mention it anymore, because what I am trying to teach is more important than a calendar that none of us can prove. I am trying to teach about the relationship we have with God, a relationship in which calendars and pronunciations are side issues.

Although I used to type out the Name pronunciation a lot, I don’t do it anymore – I guess I stopped about eighteen months ago. I found that too many people, when they say it, weren’t saying it to honor our Creator, but to but a pronunciation on display. I was doing it too. Now, if you are in my house with me, you will hear it a lot because it’s my home and we all say it – not to make a point because, you know, who would we be trying to impress when we all say it that way? We say it because He is ever-present and I say it because frankly, He is always on my mind to some extent. But outside the house, and even on the Wednesday night teaching, I don’t say it very often. Again, saying the Name in certain ways has become associated with certain personalities and people divide into factions. I refuse to take part in an agenda. People make a big deal about proclaiming a pronunciation when the commandments are to praise, proclaim and bless the Name – the person, the reputation, the honor, the authority, etc. – of YHVH. We are not to make known a pronunciation, but His excellency, His faithfulness, His justice and righteousness. When we make it about a pronunciation, we detract from Who He is. I am all about proclaiming His Name and making His Name great – but I won’t waste my time promoting debatable things that only cause division. I guess a good way to explain it is in terms of Patron/Client relationships.

I have this friend Lisa who translated a bunch of my blogs into Spanish – something I couldn’t do on my own. She served as a patron for me, and I was her client, and so now when I post those blogs, I post her name in them with a thank you note and when people ask me about her, I say, “Oh my gosh that girl is a translating machine! I am in awe, and she is so generous with her time not only to my ministry but to others as well!” I am proclaiming the name of Lisa. In my latest book, I dedicated it to YHVH, to my teachers Rico, Ryan, and Daniel and to my editor Sarah Hawkes Valente (disclaimer, she edited this last book, King, Kingdom, Citizen, not The Bridge, which is why this book is so much better and polished!) – I am increasing their reputation (not by much, granted, because my audience is small lol) by publicly honoring them. In all these cases, I am not making the pronunciation of their names known, but I am promoting them personally. I am praising them publicly, not as gods, but I am ‘making their names great’ in a rather limited capacity. I am not increasing the fame of pronunciations, but of people, make sense?

Now, if you know me personally, then you know the answers to both of the questions I posted in the blog title. If you don’t know me, then I want you to get to know me by my fruit and not by how I am similar or dissimilar to you and how you do the debatable things. Here’s the deal – if I don’t know and can’t prove it beyond any shadow of a doubt, then I don’t have even the slightest reason to make someone feel like dirt, or less of a believer, for doing things differently. In other words, I absolutely care about whether you keep the Feasts, but I don’t care about the calendar you keep them on.

One more thing – another piece of ANE context for you in the midst of this. I was accused last week by a new believer of breaking the Torah by using the title ‘God” instead of YHVH and ‘Jesus’ when teaching Christians about Yeshua – supposedly I was calling on the name of false gods. But what does it mean to ‘call on the name’ of a god? Using a title is not the same as calling on the Name, and using a familiar name in order to introduce an unfamiliar Name is not the same as false worship. If I inserted the detestable name Ashtorteth into this scentence – “O ___________ please save me. Bless my crops, bring the rain, and fill my womb with children.” or “By the name of _____________ I swear that I will do such and such.” or “Bless ____________.” Well, that would be calling on the name of a false god, and that is what it means when their names are not to be found on our lips.
But if I were to say, “Ashtoreth is not a god at all, she is false and worthless,” then even though I said that name, her name would not be ‘on my lips’ because that phrase has specific connotations that go way beyond speaking a name. It means to invoke the name of a god in power and authority. If I couldn’t say that name at all, I couldn’t read the Bible aloud! The prophets would have been sinning, heck – Moses would have been sinning!

As for titles, God means Elohim and god means elohim. Really, Hebrew has no capitol letters and that whole thing is an English language tradition. Lord means Adonai, but it also has the same meaning as ba’al, which is also the name of a false god – for that matter, El is also the name of a false god. It’s like you can’t avoid it even when speaking of YHVH in simple Biblical language So we have to get off of these ideas that titles are bad. Every single title of God can and has been used for other gods, that I can think of – I mean, it isn’t like we can throw away the entire language because someone took a title of God and used it for a false god. Oh darn, someone called Marduk the creator so we can’t use that anymore…. NO! Come on guys. There is nothing wrong with titles. The Pope being called father doesn’t mean that we can’t call YHVH Father anymore.

And so, you know, I do use God and Lord a lot now. I use Master and Father and King – even though they are misused by others. I use them because He is the absolute embodiment of God, Lord, Creator, Master, Father and King. But 100% how to pronounce His Name? I can’t tell you that – and you can’t tell me either, even if you’ve heard it in a dream because I’ve heard ‘my way’ in dreams also and others have heard their pronunciations as well. YHVH speaks to us where we understand, like a Father leading His children into greater and greater truths. So yes, keep the Feasts and proclaim His Name – but make sure that you know what those things mean in context, and not just in how it sounds in English.

Unscriptural Rebukes Pt 1: When the “Righteous Rebuke” is Scripture Taken Out of Context

If you are in the public eye in any way, no matter how small, you are going to receive a lot of rebukes by those whom consider themselves to be God’s own mouthpieces and prophets. Thanks to the Pentecostal and Charismatic abuses of the words Prophet and Watchmen, we have a lot of people running about in their own authority who claim divine sanction to speak whatever pops into their minds. Of course, we have two options when we are thus attacked – we can react or just disengage. Generally, the right choice is to disengage because self-proclaimed truth speakers usually have a well-trained audience who will eat up their every word and who generally do not know the Scriptures well enough to know if the rebuke was appropriate – and oftentimes they are simply too angry and self-righteous to care because hey, listening to someone get slammed is fun when you are angry.

Newsflash: God doesn’t inspire people to use scripture out of context. Shocking, I know, and perhaps offensive to those who enjoy rebuking people more than studying scripture.

When someone uses scripture to attack you – do yourself a favor and study out the context in depth; in this way, the rebuke becomes a win-win situation. If they are right then you have learned something about yourself and about the Scriptures, but if they were wrong then you can discount them as a prophet or watchman.

A few days ago I got this eye-roller, a woman who loudly proclaims that she is hated for speaking truth came onto my facebook page and quoted the “Woe to you, Pharisees and Scribes…” line – and she called me a Scribe in a rather insulting way. But as soon as she did it, I had to smile. Why? – because I knew it wasn’t a rebuke from God but from her own imaginations. God wouldn’t call me a Scribe because He knows exactly what a Scribe was in the first century when those verses were written – and I don’t qualify, at all.

Scribes were the Biblical experts in the first century when those “woes” were spoken by Messiah in Matthew 23. These guys were amazing – they had the five books of Moses memorized by heart, and large portions of the prophets as well. They were the teachers of the people and the interpreters of the Law who were in charge of judging between people in legal disputes over the Torah Law. These were men of established authority who were, frankly, creating new laws with their rulings on minor points of the law (straining gnats) – laws which today are recorded in the Talmud. The intention of the Scribal position was to teach the Torah and the Prophets to the people, and this was a good and noble thing – but things had gotten out of control with the burdensome extra-biblical regulations that were respected and kept by the Pharisees.

Well, looking at that, I found that I really didn’t qualify – I am certainly no expert of the Torah or the Prophets; I do not have them memorized by heart. I do not possess the authority to make legal rulings for the Body, and I do not follow the Oral Law as recorded in the Talmud. What I do is teach the historical context of the Scriptures – passing on what I learn. I try very diligently to show what is and is not there in order to separate people from the additional traditions of the Scribes.

Perhaps she thought that Scribes were just writers – could be. In any case, the nature of her rebuke proved that it came from her own heart, her own judgment, and was not of the Spirit Who knows Biblical context better than anyone on earth. So the self-proclaimed “preacher of truth” wasn’t actually preaching the truth, and therefore I can disregard her in the same way that I disregard the accusations of people who misuse “Freely you received now freely give,” those who call people who they don’t like “UNCLEAN” despite Biblical prohibitions against it, and those who use the word Pharisee as an insult. There will always be self-proclaimed experts, prophets, watchmen and teachers – but by their fruits you will know them (not just by how interesting and convincing they are). Perhaps I will write about the Pharisee insult next, that is a funny one to explain. For that matter, I also need to cover the prohibition against calling any man unclean. Now that the Book is done, I have time to write about fun things for a while. If you have any others that you would like to see me tackle, please let me know and I will try to get to them as time permits.

In any event, rebukes are always an opportunity for both education and the exposure of false prophets, teachers and watchmen. Make yourself a list and feel free to ignore the people who misuse scripture in rebukes. And feel free to post this link in response to their unrighteous, unbiblical rebukes.