Our Sukkot Miracle 2020

What kind of a Father is God, anyway?

This has been a very trying year but there are also miracles and victories all around us. Trials and tribulations never come without deliverances and salvations. Last week our beloved 19-year-old son Andrew’s cranial shunt failed unexpectedly, leading to emergency neurosurgery four hours from home, in an entirely different state, during the COVID crisis. How God moved in the midst of the confusion, obstacles and many misdirections is a beautiful picture of His love and compassion. I share the story plus lessons I learned about God’s character in the midst of my own worry and fear and share a few reality checks gained after He cornered me into the position of needing to “break” not only the Sabbath but also the first High Sabbath of Sukkot.

The Parable of the Rower

The ship has capsized and people are in the water, they are flailing and drowning. It’s icy cold. The rescue ship comes to you and you are pulled in, wet and miserable but grateful to be alive and able to finally rest from your struggles. There are plenty of seats available. Do you:

(1) Praise the guy rowing the boat and start telling the other passengers about how awesome he is–trying to convince the other passengers you have the only correct way of seeing him while ignoring the people still in the water.

(2) Start hoping that the boat will get to land soon so that you can get warm and dry and get something to eat and drink–constantly asking the rower to do just that.

(3) Look out over the water with disgust at the people who haven’t been rescued yet and wonder why they are so rebellious before telling them to swim harder so they can get to the boat themselves.

(4) Find their situation so offensive that you hold up signs telling them how horrible they are and convincing them that the boat rower hates them.

(5) Forget that you were ever in the water yourself, that the shipwreck really wasn’t your fault, and begin mocking the people for how ridiculous they look struggling to stay above water.

(6) Appoint yourself a lookout, scan the horizon, watch the ship go down while ignoring the people in the water and giving a play by play account of how the ship looks as it is going down.

(7) Grab an oar, scan the horizon, and help the rower get to the next person while calling out to them with words of hope–even going so far as to risk your own life to pull them in despite being cold and wet and hungry and thirsty– then encouraging the rower to remain on the water until all lives are saved.

Now, of course, the ship is the world and the mess it is in–a mess that we were all born into. The boat is the worldwide Body of Messiah, the church, the ekklesia, etc. and the rower is the Son of Man. The passengers are those to whom the message of the Cross came and who received it with great joy. The drowning, of course, represent the lost. Land represents the final coming of the Son of Man and the Messianic Kingdom, the Wedding Banquet of the Lamb.

The first group praised the Son of Man and started extolling His virtues to those who already knew and were grateful, yet failed to tell those still lost of the saving hope that was available. They got sidetracked arguing with people who were already saved.

The second group was grateful for the Cross but had no endurance to wait as the rest of the lost were saved, and they prayed that the Son of Man would just usher in the world to come as soon as possible–without a thought to those still lost. This is a very large percentage of the passengers.

The third group represents those who believe, at least subconsciously, that they saved themselves from sin and death and were rescued based on merit instead of mercy.

The fourth group never met the Son of Man, though they talk about Him as though they do. However, they like the idea of being an elite class in a warm, safe environment and they also love letting other people know how elite they are and how unique in being loved despite all evidence to the contrary.

The fifth group is those who act as though they were never in need of saving in the first place and come to despise those who are. They have not yet learned to love.

The sixth group has the appearance of busily working, but they are mostly just complaining and their works are of dubious usefulness to the Kingdom when other things are more immediately needful.

The seventh group works in cooperation with the Son of Man–choosing the self-sacrificial path of love while ignoring their own desires for comfort and their own needs–actively going out and rescuing those who are lost and dying and who are in no hurry for the Son of Man to usher in the Kingdom because there are still too many empty seats at the Banquet table and so many lost people to be saved.

So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (Matthew 7:17-23, ESV)

Yeshua/Jesus in this passage was speaking to a completely Jewish audience of faithful commandment keepers–and yet He spoke to them of bad fruit. Although commandment-keeping is a sign of allegiance through obedience, it is not enough if it is just an act of rote obedience–a life spent concentrating on dos and don’ts even when checkered with the working of miracles. We must also bear fruit worthy of repentance, the fruit of the Spirit which leads us into truly fruitful works on behalf of the Kingdom. You can keep every commandment to the letter and work miracles and still fail to self-sacrificially love those most in need of love, but that is evidence of a diseased existence. You can keep the commandments while failing to even add your own children to the Book of Life, much less anyone else’s children. Good fruit borne out of a healthy tree comes forth when we are working in a subservient partnership with God the Father through serving the Messiah in His mission of salvation. As He gave His life to bring salvation, making room at the Messianic banquet for all from the nations who would turn and believe, a life lived for Him will seek to add to the Kingdom at whatever cost to ourselves. It doesn’t mean that everyone whom we touch will be saved, not even our own kids, but it does mean that we are working with Him instead of just trying to see to ourselves. Commandment keeping can be the most selfish, diseased and resentment-laden activity on earth when done for the wrong reasons and in the wrong spirit.

The path is narrow and few will find it, yes, but we must make sure that we aren’t making finding it any more difficult than it needs to be or I promise we will be crying out “Lord, Lord…” and we will not enter in ourselves. The path is life and wonderful–but do we present it as a burden?

“With the merciful you show yourself merciful;
    with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
with the purified you show yourself pure;
    and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.
For you save a humble people,
    but the haughty eyes you bring down.” (Psalm 18:25-27)

We will face the very God we put before the eyes and ears of others–if we present before the lost a God who does not want them and who mocks them in their helpless misery, I am pretty darned sure He will appear before us as a mocking God who isn’t interested in us either. We need to keep our heads down and humbly and diligently do His work–the work of bringing souls into the Kingdom and not the work of driving them into the arms of the enemy and the world.

The Dark Night of the Soul: God’s Commitment to Us

God is more committed to me than I am to Him.

I had to keep telling myself that. I had to remind myself that even though I could not feel His presence, that He was there because of His faithfulness.

“I know you are here because it is Your nature to be faithful even when I am unfaithful, and you have proven Yourself to me for too long for me to doubt You. I know you are here despite what I feel. I will not be deceived by my emotions and physical senses. You are here…”

I sat for days in my chair, repeating this, stopping only to care for my family and read from the Bible.

Although I said nothing at the time, I recently came through a season of what believers have for centuries referred to as the “dark night of the soul.” Contrary to the beliefs of some, it is a normal and cyclical aspect of the life of a maturing believer (even more so for the mature) and not a sign of damnation. There are times of great heaviness that come on us, suffocating even. I liken it to the darkness in the land of Egypt that could be felt as though it were a physical entity. Times when we cannot feel the presence of God, when we are overcome with the sadness of seeming abandonment and our faith comes under testing. It can be accompanied or precipitated by a terrible tragedy, illness, betrayal, or nothing terrible at all save the horrifying accompanying depression – and we feel terribly alone and abandoned by God as the Psalmist speaks in Psalm 22:

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Simply put, the dark night of the soul is to be endured until it is over. It is a time when we learn the meaning of “the sacrifice of praise” because we feel as though we are praising someone who is not listening and it becomes very difficult to even think words of worship. He seems to be gone. But it isn’t true. He listens, I believe, more during those times than during the times when we can feel Him.

You see, He has to give us endurance, and some need it more than others. Perhaps it is their calling that requires it, or perhaps what they will go through in the future. God knows how to build our faith, and one of the best ways is to give us the appearance of abandonment – how will we respond?

Will we respond as though He owes us His presence? As though it is a drug?

Will we grow resentful when the bad things happen to us that we watch happen to others without much of a backward glance in their direction? Why on earth shouldn’t we experience the evils of this world? We are to overcome them, not escape them. Escaping difficulty breeds spiritual wimps, not warriors.

Through the dark night of the soul, God teaches us the compassion that can only come from the absolute loneliness that comes from a withdrawal of the feeling of His nearness. It is an illusion, of course, because only a sensation is being removed. It is easy to worship that sensation, to use it as a crutch, to pursue that feeling instead of pursuing an actual relationship.

We must learn to cling to the one true God who is beyond our understanding, beyond our emotional grasp, beyond mere experiences. We must come to know, in the very depths of our being, that He is absolutely trustworthy, faithful, and constant. We must acknowledge that He is more committed to us than we are to Him.

And most importantly, we shouldn’t hide the fact that this happens. The silence of those who desire to appear super spiritual, or who are ashamed to admit that this is normal – well, it is deadly to those who are being tested and who are left to presume that God truly has abandoned them. This is a cyclical part of the normal Christian life – and always has been.

Perceiving God as Small: Majoring in the Minors

What does it mean to perceive God as smaller than we are? To see ourselves as huge and Himself as small?

Why do kids so often walk away from the faith when they walk out of the house? It’s very simple – we as parents don’t generally understand the purpose of Scripture. We have historically never instilled into them the idea that the Bible is a revelation of the character and nature of God – even though we think that’s exactly what we are doing. We impose rules and regulations, yes, but those were only ever meant to be the basic outer boundaries of decent behavior towards God and one another – the milk we feed the babes on – while we starve for the meat of being conformed to the character of God while we use the Bible for other, more self-serving, purposes.

What we have actually done with the Bible is abominable – we have used it as a tool of self-justification. Before anyone thinks that this only applies to unbelievers or “other denominations” let me make it clear that it is across the board and coming to Torah doesn’t change it for people – because it is a cultural paradigm. We were raised this way, it is a carefully trained blindness rooted not in religion actually, but a natural dislike and fear for anything that is different – especially anything that is a challenge to self.

We memorize verses that fit our doctrines, and those are the verses we teach to our kids – not that they will use them to worship and adore God, but so that they will follow the correct doctrines. We want everyone to do things the way we do them – otherwise, our foundations are challenged. Although we may claim to be zealous for God in defending our doctrines, generally it is about ourselves and wanting to be right.

We want to be right when we talk to scientists, so we turn the Bible into a science book when God never revealed Himself to man in order to teach science (I mean, what kind of a waste of time would that be and would we even be able to begin to understand science through His eyes?). The Bible becomes not about preaching the Gospel of God’s deliverance, but about overcoming the Big Bang Theory and Evolution, theories that by their very nature cannot be proven nor disproven (and I am speaking as a degreed chemist here – one who still loves science, in fact, and first saw God in the perfection of the periodic chart). In our hands, the Bible becomes a tool for justifying what we believe because in our heart of hearts we as a whole are embarrassed and seek to justify what we believe on the scientist’s turf. So we take the Bible over to them, we use a revelation of God’s character, written in Ancient Near Eastern and First Century context, and twist it into a scientific manifesto for our own purposes. Of course, science is only one of the areas in which we do this.

Now, our kids go off to college or into the world, and they often have only been indoctrinated with memory verses and Torah portions for the express purpose of making sure they believe the right stuff and associate with others who believe the right stuff. Some clever Science or Bible professor who knows more about the Scriptures than the parents brings other verses into the mix, and the now grown-up child who was only trained to justify doctrine now has a terrible quandary. The Bible was misused, it was treated as a tool for self-justification under the auspices of defending God, but it was honestly just being used for defending denominational doctrines.

All someone has to do is bring down one questionable doctrine and everything tumbles. They were trained in doctrine and had tied them all together and had mistaken doctrinal knowledge for a knowledge of God Himself. God was made small, and doctrine was made huge.

I rewatched a movie this weekend called Temple Grandin – although some parts are largely fictionalized, it teaches a powerful truth about perspective, and how we see things. I have been meditating upon it ever since because we have a very skewed perspective of our lives – we are always very large, and by and large we make God very small (yes, I do it too). We make doctrines big, and God small.

We do this through living lives of fear and self-justification – and we mask our self-justification as righteousness in many ways. It is easy to see self-justification when it is used to excuse sin – but it isn’t as easy to see when we have camped around a small doctrinal issue and have made it big.

Case in point. Two people are in a room talking about God – they both agree that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the one true God and that Yeshua is the prophesied Messiah. They believe in the validity of Torah. They keep the Sabbaths and the Feasts.

Pause for a moment and look at how much they have in common, it is huge in this life to meet someone who has those things in common with someone else. They ought to be worshiping and thanking God to meet such a person, right?

They get talking and find they disagree about the way the name is pronounced, or about whether the six days of Creation were or were not literal 24 hour days, or when the day or month begins and ends, or how to keep a certain commandment or whether a certain tradition is pagan, or whether we are all literal priests now. Just choose one of those things and watch what often happens:

Believing in the same God becomes small, and the point of disagreement becomes huge.

Believing in the same Messiah becomes small, and the point of disagreement becomes huge.

Believing in the same Torah becomes small, and the point of disagreement becomes huge.

Believing in the same Sabbaths and Feasts becomes small, and the point of disagreement becomes huge.

And suddenly, that “other” person is judged not based on these huge pillars – but upon opinions, which sometimes amount to nothing more than matchsticks waiting to kindle an unrighteous fire of division between brothers. And each side in the argument credits their stance and that judgment with zeal and righteousness – and both sides are deceived – because it is almost never a righteous zeal, it is ego and the defense of self and of one’s own way of doing things. It has nothing to do with God and everything to do with self. If the zeal were righteous, there would be respect, kindness, patience and love instead of division, derision, and even hatred.

That right there – that is a picture of the First Century and what was going on with the Jewish factions, and a large part of why they hated each other so desperately and were so divided. That was the context of the coming of Messiah the first time and a big part of the reason why He was murdered. The Jews didn’t kill Messiah – perspective killed Messiah, a perspective that many of us show we still share today. The revelation of God’s character was made small, in a culture that professed to live for Him wholeheartedly. We are as they were. Interestingly, the Jews grew up and figured it out and are now working together to rebuild the Temple. Groups that are radically different are coming together in love and respect to build an earthly throne for the God we all agree is the One True God and Whom we all agree should be worshiped with one voice. But here we are, arguing and divisive – and our kids are walking away from God because we lack perspective and major on the minors. I submit that most of our kids aren’t actually walking away from God because they were never really walking with Him in the first place, not if all they know is doctrine and memory verses. Doctrine and memory verses devoid of inner transformation and the production of mature fruit – they can be cold companions when the times really do get tough.

Make God big and allow everything else to be small. Make His character huge, and let other things be small. If we reflected God’s character, for real, most of our kids wouldn’t be able to bear walking away – because there would be nowhere else worth going. Doctrines are easy to drop, but truly godly character, humility, and a love for others borne out of keeping life in its proper perspective is hard to walk away from.

I want to share the part of the movie that introduced the focus of perspective

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chxCNEsu3YU

The Character of Yeshua (Jesus) Pt 2: How did Messiah treat Judas?

If you don’t want to be seriously challenged then I suggest not reading this because this is not easy material. It isn’t the sort of thing that you can respond to with “Yeah, but..”

We are supposed to be conformed to the image of Messiah, which means coming to grips with the fact that He only overturned tables and made a whip twice (and then only within the confines of the Temple where criminal activities were being perpetrated by the Roman appointed High Priest), He saved His rebukes for people who were either actually criminals (like the Sadducees) or who were actively trying to shame Him in honor contests – and He walked side by side with a man, who He knew was going to sell Him out and betray Him, for the entire duration of His ministry and treated him so normally that no one suspected a thing. Ouch.

No one suspected a thing about Judas. Yeshua knew, of course, because He knew the hearts of all men. He chose him, knowing his heart. We walked with him, knowing his heart. He ate with him, taught him, slept alongside him, laughed with him and cried with him.

Yeshua understood the reality of Covenants – and Covenants don’t give us the right to be treacherous to those who have been or will be treacherous to us. Covenants are about loyalty to those with whom we are in Covenant, regardless of their character. It doesn’t mean closeness and intimate relationship, and in fact people who have proven treacherous need to be kept at arm’s length, but we cannot respond to untrustworthiness with being untrustworthy ourselves. We can’t fight the fruit of the evil one with more of his own fruit – we have to respond with the fruit of the Spirit and nothing is harder.

Nothing seems less righteous and less honorable.

There are sometimes some very important lessons to be learned in the myths of ancient cultures and one of the most common is the tale of an Oracle giving someone a prophecy that such and such a person would destroy them. So the recipient of the oracle goes out and preemptively tries to destroy that currently innocent person, setting in motion the very chain of events that eventually leads to their own destruction. Funny how that works, eh?

Yeshua could have outed Judas as a thief, a liar, and a treacherous dog – but He didn’t. Yeshua treated Him according to the innocence of His own heart – He gave Judas no reason for betrayal. He also, in responding to the betrayal, didn’t call for revenge and resort to name-calling. Yeshua showed Himself the most innocent of the charges in that, once betrayed, He didn’t retaliate. Not retaliating is hard, living side by side with someone who you know will or might someday betray you is difficult – excruciatingly so.

We live in a world, especially a religious world, where betrayal is sadly the norm. People think nothing about tearing each other apart, undermining each other, and bringing shame on our God in so doing. Everyone who calls upon Messiah and believes that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’s actual begotten Son came in the flesh and dwelt among us, was crucified and was raised from the dead – anyone that foolish in the eyes of the world is in Covenant together with every other person who believes that. We are joined together by the King of kings and yet we treat each other largely like dogs, and worse than dogs – scoffing and mocking and engaging in the worst kinds of public and private character assassination. Often over nothing, and generally because of our own fears and lack of trust in God, ambition, need for approval, over a misunderstanding, or simple offense.

And yet look how patient God is with us even as we engage in this shameful behavior – not even treating us as we deserve, not preemptively punishing us for what He sees in our hearts.

Covenant means that we are all connected, every single believer according to the current level of revelation of each individual. Covenant means that how we treat each other is actually how we are treating our mutual Master. In the ancient world, if you messed with a man in Covenant, you were messing with absolutely everyone whom that man was in Covenant with. People were a lot more cautious with their mouths and actions, realizing that what they did and said reflected not only on themselves but upon their God and their clan. Nowadays, in our individualistic (and therefore to varying degrees narcissistic) world view, we really don’t consider the global or even the local impact of our words of actions – we are blind to the way they effect anyone but ourselves. The Bible wasn’t written to people like us, and so when we read the words and try and speak them as individuals, they don’t carry the same meaning.

We are all connected, and therefore we all have to be entirely innocent and full of good fruit in our dealings with each other. It is easy to not be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, gentle, faithful and self-controlled and simply call it zeal but zeal has never been an excuse for bad fruit.

Yeshua didn’t treat Judas as Judas deserved to be treated. Yeshua dealt with Judas according to the content of His own character, not Judas’ character. He does the same with us, walking with us, teaching us, dealing with us in long-suffering kindness – oh my goodness how can we justify doing any less?

Had a dream in December that I would be dealt with treacherously and by the time I woke up it had already happened. I spent the next two months struggling, hurting, and wanting revenge. Life was an agony in so many ways, so much hurt dredged up as I dealt with the consequences of someone else’s publicly vented frustration and wanting so badly to respond in kind, really still wanting to because treachery is contagious (all of the works of the enemy are infectious). Just as I finally began to come to terms with it, yesterday morning I had a dream that it is about to happen again, a different person this time. As far as I know it hasn’t happened yet, and I am left with only the example of Yeshua vs all those ancient myths. Do I behave as Yeshua and treat him like Yeshua treated Judas, or do I provoke the treachery by punishing him for something he hasn’t even done yet?

I am appreciating the character of our Master now in new and painful ways. He walked side by side with His betrayer, who would all but place Him on the cross. His loving character is beyond overwhelming, and it is, frankly, shaming me in how far I fall short of it.

You know what? Bad things happen to “good” people but more than that, bad things happen to all us normal people too, and it happens so that, if we are willing, it can transform us little by little into the image of our Messiah.