A Nation of Priests and Kings Pt 2 – The Individual Mandate to do Justice and Righteousness

(I am leaving this blog up not because it is entirely accurate – I have since learned that the “kings and priests” is actually rendered better a “kingdom of priests” but otherwise, our call to justice and righteousness is the same – we study and keep learning, eh?)

This is a follow up to my ancient Near Eastern explanation of the Biblical phrase “a nation of Kings and Priests” – which is so easily misunderstood and twisted. I have decided to add to it because not only were the Israelites, as a nation, given the relationship with YHVH that in the ancient world was reserved only for kings and priests, but they were also uniquely given a mandate to perform the types of righteous and just acts that in the rest of the world were only demanded of incoming kings.

In the ancient Near East, kings were expected to do certain things when coming to the throne – acts that were required by the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) of all citizens of God’s Kingdom. Earthly kings were expected to forgive debt, free slaves, punish oppressors, and take care of the “least of these” – the poor, widowed, and orphan – upon ascension to the throne in order to establish themselves as righteous and just rulers. Once established, they often had no desire to ever repeat that sort of kingly generosity again! Forgiving debt and freeing slaves and punishing wealthy merchants who were cheating their customers and robbing widows houses was not the sort of thing that made ANE kings popular with the wealthy and powerful men in their kingdom – but it did go a long way towards establishing their honor and reputation among ” the rabble.”

Now these were the unwritten laws of the Ancient Near East, an absolute expectation of an incoming monarch (which should make King Rehoboam’s refusal in I Kings 12 to provide tax relief seem all the more shocking and the subsequent splitting of the Kingdom make much more sense – even heathen kings would have provided that tax relief!) – but certainly not the expectation upon the actions of everyday citizens, who had no desire to free their slaves unless a new king forced them to, or to stop foreclosure on the land of a widow, or to forgive the debts owed to them – and it certainly wasn’t the sort of act that was on any sort of schedule – but YHVH changed that in Torah Law, the constitution of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven operates on a seven year cycle when it comes to the release of debts (Deut 15:1-3) and the release of slaves (Ex 21:2). Ancestral land sold in order to pay debts was to be restored to the family in the Jubilee year (a 50 year cycle – Lev 25: 13-16, 27:24). The Israelites were always commanded to take care of the widowed, poor and orphaned (Ex 22:22-24, Deut 14:29) and every three years there was a special tithe given just for their upkeep so that there would never be an Israelite truly impoverished and starving (Deut 26:12). Equal weights and measures in business dealings were a continual commandment (Lev 19:36, etc.). The guilty, and not the innocent, were to be punished for their crimes (Deut 22:25-27). Neither the rich nor the poor were to be favored in court cases (Ex 23:6, Lev 19:15). Female prisoners of war could not be mistreated and during times of war (Deut 21:10-13), a city must be given the opportunity for surrender before being attacked (Deut 20:10-12). Foreigners had to be treated with equity and could not be persecuted (Ex 22:21, 23:9).

These were not the ways of the Ancient Near East – this was a radical and continual mandate of each citizen to be both fair, generous and merciful. The Laws of God placed upon each citizen the obligation to do forever what earthly kings only did in order to curry favor with the people. The Code of Hammurabi, for example, had varying degrees of punishment based on who the victim of the crime was! The penalty for harming a rich man, or a priest, was exponentially higher than for doing harm to a peasant. But Israel’s law set all Israelites as equal in the eyes of the justice system – on par with ANE kings and priests when it came to personal worth, as well as in the personal responsibility to do justly and righteously.

And so, when we come into Covenant with this great God and King, we truly do become a nation of kings and priests – having the access to pray and make petitions, the obligation of exclusive worship in our obedience, the mandate to do justice and righteousness, and the personal worth ascribed by the rest of the world (and their gods) to the elite classes. And although it does not give us the physical priesthood and kingship as believers, it does in fact set us on par with the kings and priests of the world in terms of relationship.

As any physical kingship in the Kingdom of Heaven must come from the line of David through Solomon by Royal Grant, so the physical priesthood must come through Aaron – both are perpetual ordinances. But what we have been given, as believers, is an incredible testament to a merciful, just and righteous God – unlike any other the world has ever claimed to know. We have the spiritual access to our God that only the elite of the polytheistic world had with their gods, and we each have the obligations to behave as good kings in the midst of a crooked and corrupt world. Truly we serve a God and King like no other ever imagined.

What David teaches us about how to conduct ourselves when being hunted

First of all, thank you so much. Even though I have been off of facebook (and will remain gone until December 26) and wasn’t able to directly support the process, you got the word out and helped me to give away 555 more copies of my book on Kindle (no, I didn’t make that number up). So far, we have been able to give away 1419 copies, with more to come next year when I renew my kindle contract! I am so grateful for your support and help in all of this, and I pray fervently that this book is helping people understand the character of our great God and King, our Father and Master. It is such a privilege to be able to go before the world and teach about His character from the whole Word. He deserves out praise and He deserves to be known. Everything in our lives, everything we go through is secondary to promoting His glory through our behavior towards Him and each other. Let us never fail to love and guard one another, as he loves and guards us.

As I have been sharing lately, I have been teaching my sons from I Samuel for the past few weeks. And it is no secret that I love the character of David on the run, hiding in caves – an amazing man doing great things under terrible stress. I meditate upon him a lot because I see his character under persecution as what mine should look like but too often doesn’t. It is easy to lash out when wronged, but how did David handle the character assassination, the paranoia of king Saul, the actual attempts on his life, and the fact that people were aiding and abetting Saul’s attempts to hunt David down like a dog, or a flea (in David’s own words).

If anyone knew the literal ups and downs of life, it was David. The young man came in from tending the sheep one day, only to get drenched with oil by the hand of the last of the Judges, the prophet Samuel, and declared king! And instead of putting on airs, he went back to the sheep — not unlike his predecessor Saul, who went back home to his father. David ended up in court not through his own efforts, but because of his musical talents! He ended up fighting Goliath not because he rushed off to war, but because his father sent him to the front with supplies about 40 days later. He ended up a commander of men not because he sought it out, but because the king placed him in command. He ended up married to the king’s daughter because the king wanted David dead and had set a bride price of 100 Philistine foreskins, as David could never afford the bride price of a princess and yet also could not refuse the honor outright. David was honored by God, and being honored by God doesn’t mean that we will always do what is right, but it does mean that when people do wrong to us, it will often backfire in their faces if we do what is right (and sometimes even when we do wrong).

Saul was absolutely God’s anointed; there is no question about that. But being God’s anointed does not mean that one is automatically right, just, or faithful. God’s anointing wasn’t a total character override, giving Saul no choice but to act according to the will of God. The Spirit does not possess the believer, as though it was a demon. The Spirit guides, but we have control over ourselves. Saul had every opportunity to get it right, and he had Samuel there to guide him (how many of us wish we had someone like that to help us out?), but he made evil choices which resulted in him losing the Spirit, taking on a demonic spirit, and succumbing to paranoia and fear. He spent years hunting David down like an animal, without cause, and even though he sometimes came to his senses and realized it, he never allowed his momentary remorse to lead him into true repentance.

So, we have David who was accused without evidence; he was hunted, his allies were murdered, and he was treated with dishonor by the very people whom he was helping. What was David’s response? Was it a coup? Did he try to seize the throne? Goodness knows the kingdom would have been better off without Saul than with him. No, he did not move against Saul. In fact, we never see him working against Saul but only for the good of the kingdom, oftentimes behind the scenes quietly caring for shepherds and killing off the enemies of Israel, even while on the run. Not only was David often not honored by the very people he saved, but he was also forced to run lest they betray him to the king. Did David kill Israelites in revenge for their betrayal? No, he didn’t. David kept on fighting for them. David was not perfect; he had his moments of weakness. He almost killed the household of Nabal (for refusing to honor him), he cut off the hem of Saul’s garment (an act that meant rebellion in the ancient world) – but in each of those cases he was brought to repentance.

Righteous people, those with God’s own heart, have moments of great trial and testing and sometimes they make plans to do evil things and sometimes they even start down the road and sadly sometimes they even carry them out. The real measure of character is whether or not they can turn around once they have started. Regardless of what David did in his life, over and over again, even after doing great evil, he showed that he could turn around. He learned that lesson in the caves. In the caves is where David teaches us to be hunted without cause, and to not respond with evil. We need that lesson because there is nothing more tempting than to return evil for evil, and to even mistake that evil for righteousness. Most people would have said that Saul had an overthrow coming, and in the eyes of the world that might have been true, but God told David that he was the king and so David had to trust God to work out the details.

Did David confront Jonathan about the danger he was in? Yes he did. Did David try to recruit Jonathan to his side? No he didn’t. Did David confront Saul about his accusations? Yes he did, years later after refusing to kill him when he had the opportunity. David never tried to build an empire; David ran from his pursuers and did the work of YHVH and people chose to follow him. Everything David did preserved the lives of God’s people, whereas Saul endangered their lives. David refused to be treacherous (before he was king), whereas Saul lived by treachery, David held his tongue as Saul ranted, David never took the kingship from Saul but Saul took David’s wife and gave her to another. Saul swore oaths to refrain from harming David, only to break them. David swore never to do evil to Saul and kept his oath.

Saul was God’s anointed. The calling of God is without repentance, Saul sat as king until the day he died. People had a choice whether or not they wanted to follow Saul, but they didn’t have a choice as to whether he sat as king or not. That choice had been made by God. David understood that no matter what Saul did to him, that it was for God to remove him from the throne of Israel than to take matters into his own hands. Even though it took many years, God did remove him — but only after He had made David into the kind of man who knew how to respond to threats, disloyalty and slights to his honor without treachery. David had to become the kind of king who understood that the Kingdom is established on justice and righteousness, from the greatest to the least, and that to truly be a great king, one must exhibit the character of God. Saul was sadly never able to grasp that he wasn’t made king in order to be in charge for the sake of being in charge, he was king so that he could represent God and administer righteousness and justice to the people. The great kings that came after David did that, but the evil kings did not.

Being hunted is a dreadful thing, but it is not the most important thing. Being hunted is what is done to us, and we cannot control that. How we respond to being hunted is quite another. Everything done to us can change us for the better or for the worse, only we can decide which outcome will prevail. Perhaps it would be good for us to see ourselves as kings and queens in training, when we are being mercilessly hunted, and in that way it will be easier to redeem these evil times. David had a choice, to continue to be hunted or to end it all by hunting down Saul and in the end he decided that it was better to be the hunted than to be the hunter.

Developing Godly Character Pt 10: Relying on the Body

This is difficult for me to even write, because this is an area where my character is anything but godly. That I can recognize and communicate the truth, does not mean that I have implemented it in my own life.

Here’s the deal. A lot of believers fall into one or more of the following categories:

1. Familial abuse, resulting in not being able to rely on one’s own family.

2. Religious abuse, resulting in an inability to rely on the Body of Messiah.

3. Societal abuse, resulting in general isolation.

All three of these foster an attitude of never wanting to entrust to others what one can do themselves. It seems virtuous. and courageous, and strong, but it generally amounts to selfishness, fearfulness and weakness. We are never what we could be because we are alone, even in the midst of relatives. We are never able to fulfill our highest callings because we settle only for what we can do on our own. We live our lives unable to trust because we resent those we could not trust, projecting their crimes on the rest of the world. We are often one strand cords even though we are successfully married, have successful businesses, and are branded as over-achievers and perfectionists.

But our perfectionism isn’t always about desiring to be perfect (although those brought up in harshly critical environments often do feel that way), sometimes it is just an extension of the ego that does not want to admit that we need anyone else.

So we handle our own problems, because we have been trained through experience to believe that no one will care enough to help us. Furthermore, we are afraid to be indebted to our helpers, terrified that it will be used against us as leverage. We might put on a brave face and project spiritual perfection, because we are afraid of not being perceived as enough. We try to look and sound tough, so that no one will get too close and see our vulnerability.

So many of us dealt with abuse in the church that I am shocked anyone is still left in it. And I am not just talking about sexual abuse, I am talking about the type of abuse that twists and misrepresents the character of our God and King so terribly that there is literally no one on earth or in Heaven who we would ever want to rely on. And that scares us. So we go it alone. We can go it alone at home or in the midst of a mega-church, it works either way. One way just looks more righteous than the other.

The sad thing is that it is preventing us from becoming the Body. We watch people get abused and we don’t get involved. We let teachers and preachers and prophets and apostles slide on sin while we come down hard on the world. The Body is full of bullies who are actively training people to run from community.

But like it or not, community is what we are called to be. Ten years ago I went through a terrible persecution in my own home church at the hands of a pastor who took it upon himself to lie about me behind the scenes to the rest of the congregation based on something he wrongly thought I said, never once asking if I had said it. And the Body stood by and did nothing. I didn’t even know exactly what was going on because no one would talk to me. I found out months later, after I finally left. What hurt the worst was not not the betrayal of one man and his wife, who I loved, but the refusal of the Body to stand up. The words of Messiah were preached to them, Leviticus 19:18 — “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am YHVH.” But they were not willing to love me as themselves, unless they wanted to be preached against and gossiped about by a man who didn’t even fact check.

This morning I started teaching my children in earnest about the greatest commandments, and how the Body of Messiah is failing in both. Hillel I, when challenged by a Gentile to preach the entire Torah standing on one foot, stood on one foot and said, “Anything that is hateful to you, do not do to others.”

But we treat Messiah unlovingly when we consort with those who once knew Him and now actively slander Him. I know that if someone made or posted a picture of me as a zombie with the caption, “He was dead but now he’s alive and he wants your soul,” and my friends turned a blind eye, I would not believe them if they claimed to love me. And I haven’t even died for any of my friends, so how much more loyalty should there be for the one who did?

And we treat each other unlovingly when we don’t question those who post vitriolic accusations online, when we simply take their word for it. If by our actions we are doing what would be hateful if it was done to us, then we are not operating in love or mercy, or kindness or goodness. When we stand by and watch well-meaning people whose only crime is that their eyes have not been opened called idiotic, rebellious pagans — we ought to consider if that is a tactic that would draw us in or drive us away. The people that Messiah insulted — they weren’t the people who were genuinely trying, they were the people buying the priesthood, who were murdering their political/religious opponents, who were in the pocket of Rome. They were the destroyers of community, and sometimes we act just like them, on our own limited scale. We need to think before we post, and before we respond. We must ask, “Would this be hateful to me.” And then we have to be really honest, and we have to ask the Father to reveal the truth to us that we so oftentimes hide from ourselves.

When we start being the Body, people are going to get healed, people are going to come to the assembly the way they did in the early church, in droves. Why would anyone want to face persecution in order to fellowship with the Body the way it is now? But if we start loving, if we cease to do what is hateful, if we stop making excuse after excuse for our behavior, pretending like flesh is Spirit, then we will do greater things than Yeshua ever did. Yeshua never changed the world, He changed a group of good men and women and then they changed the world through the power of His resurrection.

I feel it, I feel it in my bones, that it is time. Even we introverts are feeling the call to community. It has been haunting my dreams lately. It’s time to be loving. We have no more excuses and no more time. We can’t wait for someone else to take the first step.

So I am here saying that I am willing to be willing to put my life in your hands (I needed two willings in there because I am still working on it). I am willing to be step up and become reliable, to stop jumping to conclusions, to stop jumping on the bandwagon, to stop jumping on my brothers and sisters. I am willing to let you help me, and I am willing to admit that I need you because I can’t do community without you. I can’t fulfill a lot of the commandments unless I have you in my life. And there are commandments you can’t fulfill if I am not willing to receive from you. This is probably the most terrifying things I have ever written. I am willing to have you potentially betray me in hopes of coming together in community. I am willing to risk you letting me down and to risk watching you stand by while people hurt me. I am willing to admit that there is a piece of me missing that I can’t fill for myself, even though every time I contemplate that fact (and I know it is a fact), my mind wants to push it aside and deny it. I pray you are willing to risk the same things too. I will try to hold up my end of the bargain.

We have to start relying on each other and we need to start being reliable. It’s potentially the most important character issue of all.

Developing Godly Character Pt 9: Confessions of an Ungrateful Brat

People who have known me a long time won’t be shocked by this post. Whenever I uncover something truly wretched about myself I like to use it as a way to encourage and edify others. While some may see it as a rebuke, I don’t, because learning the truth about ourselves is a gift and an opportunity for truth and deeper relationship and greater fruit in our lives.

Over the weekend I came across a series of teachings offered by Ryan White about honor and shame and the patron-client relationship that is found throughout the scriptures, something I had never given any thought to. In his exposition on the historical concept of the grace relationship, where gifts are freely given by a greater being and reciprocated by the lesser, resulting in deeper levels of relationship and intimacy and honor, I realized how short I fell in this area.

When someone gives us a gift, the proper response springs out of a deep sense of gratitude. It is not acceptable to simply accept the gift and move on without acknowledging it. It is not acceptable among friends and so it is certainly not acceptable when the giver of the gift is the God of the universe, YHVH Elohim. Receiving a gift from the Creator is an incredible privilege — be it the breath in our lungs, our daily bread, a paycheck, rain in season, or the gifts that we would call miracles. He gives these things to us, they were created by Him and He gives them in season, and it is fitting to be grateful and reciprocate with our love, demonstrated through worship and obedience and public recognition.

Gifts have always made me uncomfortable, and I never knew why. I mean, screamingly uncomfortable. Want to pull my hair out uncomfortable. I have never known how to respond. Indeed, I have even been afraid of responding.

You know what? That is ingratitude — I am so uncomfortable that I allow that discomfort to overshadow the gift and the honor due the person who gave me the gift. The proper response is to honor the giver, they deserve to be honored and recognized for the gift. There is an ancient concept concerning gifts — that we should never accept a gift that it would pain us to reciprocate, and that is a stunning truth. If a gift comes with strings attached, let them pull on those strings and have it back. We should not be eager to accept gifts from just anyone.

God’s gifts also come with strings attached. His gifts are tied into the concept of relationship — and if all we ever do is take and take and take and take and never give back to Him, never honor Him, never obey Him then we are in effect shallowing out the relationship. But if He gives and we reciprocate, then He gives again and we reciprocate, and on and on — isn’t that the very nature of our healthy earthly relationships? All relationships, except with the smallest of children, involve a give and take cycle and as children grow it becomes less and less one-sided.

But I allowed Pentecostalism to twist my sense of gratitude. You know, the prosperity gospel, that idea that we always have to be looking to the next gift, never satisfied, never truly full of joy because we don’t have it all yet. I have what I need, but I am not rich so I have to strive in prayer because what I have isn’t good enough. I call it the “Gimme Gospel.” Gimme this and Gimme that! In my case, it revolved around my son Andrew who was born with multiple birth defects. We have received healings, oh my goodness, praise YHVH we have seen the kinds of healings people only dream of — the things my child can do that other children with spina bifida can’t, walking, running, jumping, skipping, he even rides a longboard! But — I had my eyes so firmly and unwaveringly on the 100% healing of his body that everything else seemed like a failure. I had my eyes so firmly on MY end goal that I had very little appreciation for the reality that so much has been given to us and to our son. Having my eyes on what I wanted and being unwilling to settle for “less” was stealing the gratitude I owed God because of the amazingly wonderful gifts I had already been given. Seeing partial healings as “less” obscured the fact that I had been given “more.” Yes, I would praise Him in the assembly when He would do something amazing, but I was embarrassed because Andrew was not “100%.” And that embarrassment would turn to ingratitude. I was no longer grateful for what I had, but focused on what I did not have and already grumbling for it. And frankly, there are a whole lot of people out there only too happy to help you become ungrateful — you know, the people who whenever you praise God for a gift, they try to steal His glory because the gift wasn’t as good as they think it should have been, or they simply do not want to acknowledge God working to bless your life? But that is blasphemy, anything we do to diminish the honor of God.

You see, there is a big difference between being thrilled with the gifts of God, yet hoping and asking for more because His gifts are all good, and being dissatisfied because the gift was not enough, therefore demanding more. It’s like praying for a raise, getting one and then being angry because it wasn’t big enough for you. The limited nature of His gifts can be a gift in and of themselves because they reveal our hearts. They reveal either our gratitude and joy or our ingratitude and resentment.

And so here I am, confessing my ingratitude. I have been a spoiled brat, wallowing in blessings like a pig in mud, with hardly a thought in my head as to truly how much I have been given and without a care as to how much honor He deserves daily from me, moment by moment, for all of it.

I have spent my life wondering why I have so little peace and why I have never possessed joy. And once I figured this out, I started feeling peace in this cycle of grace. He has given to me out of the bounty of His love and generosity, and I render to Him what belongs to Him, my trust, my obedience, and all else I can do to protect and promote His honor in the eyes of the world. My prayers now no longer focus on what I do not have, the healings and provision I want for my son and others, but on the honor He is due for all He has provided already. My prayers are becoming worship, instead of petitions. And I can feel a relationship of trust and appreciation deepening within me.

Burning the Bridge Behind You — a Parable about Mercy and the Pursuit of Truth

I wrote this in February of 2013, but last week I heard a teaching that really brought this up in my mind again, so I am moving it over to the blog. Be sure to catch those teachings that I referenced at the end, they are life changing.

A man in a land of great darkness saw a bridge leading off over a chasm into an unseen land. The slats of the bridge were the right size for a man’s foot and even though the first step was very dark indeed, it contained a bit of light so he placed his foot upon it. The next step was perceptibly lighter, and in fact he realized that he could look ahead and see more and more light and less darkness. It was hard leaving the comfortable familiarity of the darkness he knew, especially since his family remained back in the darkness, but the light was drawing him and so he continued, one step at a time, each time making the choice to leave some of the darkness behind and step into new light. After some time, he became very impressed and puffed up with the amount of light he was walking in, and the amount of darkness he had trodden under his feet. He stopped and turned around and much to his horror all he could see was a path of increasing darkness. Facing backwards, he became contemptuous of that darkness and decided to focus his efforts on destroying it, ignoring the faint cries from those further on to turn around and keep going. So he removed a lighter from his pocket and kindled a fire on the slats that had previously been behind him, thinking to exterminate the darkness he saw. The fire quickly began consuming that ancient path that had led into the light, even destroying the guard rails. The man delighted in the destruction of the darkness, never giving a thought to the people on the dark end of the chasm, or those further back on the path — or, to the fact that he was not yet safely to the other side of the chasm. In his arrogance and contempt, he fell to destruction, never having reached his destination, and destroyed the path for many.

This is the tragedy of the Protestant Reformation, the Charismatic movement, the Hebrew Roots Movement, etc….

The darkness was the darkness the man was born into spiritually. The bridge is the calling of YHVH out of that darkness through restoration in Yeshua Messiah, but he did not know them by those names at first, he knew God and Jesus. The slats represent truth to walk in and lies to trample underfoot. Step by step he went forward, coming more and more out of the darkness and into more and more light until the splendid awareness of his knowledge got the better of him and he turned his back on Elohim without even realizing it, in order to gaze upon darkness instead of upon the light. Facing the wrong direction, he no longer had the perspective to see the mercy of a path growing ever more illuminated, but instead all he could see was a path getting darker. Contempt filled his heart and he cared nothing for the people on what he perceived as a path of darkness, — he had no love for them, no compassion, but instead only impatience. From his vantage point, he did not see the truth, that they were now on the path of light, and that he had turned away from that light and was now on the path of darkness. He deceived himself into thinking he was destroying the path to sin, but in actuality he was destroying mercy — the message of the Torah and the Prophets, the slats and the guard rails of the bridge that is Messiah. Having no mercy to stand on, he fell and took others with him, ignoring the cries of those further along down the road to repent and turn back to God.

It is human nature to believe we have arrived, to take our eyes off the prize and become more focused on the deception than on the truth. We start out in such deception, “our fathers have inherited lies” (Jer 16:19) and we get a bit of truth and it is a great temptation to turn around and view those lies with contempt. If that contempt is greater than our desire for truth, we will not turn back around. There is a difference between glancing back over your shoulder to offer encouragement to those behind you and turning around and facing the opposite direction. I see people completely derailed by the idea that it is their personal ministry to expose lies — in fact it’s all I ever see them do and they are out in droves on facebook. They are so intent on burning the bridge (interesting that I wrote bride first) behind them that they forget that the point of the bridge is to lead someone out of falsehood — it is a step by step process, there are no shortcuts. Lies must be personally confronted one by one — as King Josiah showed us, the idols had to be destroyed from the land one at a time. As Joshua and Caleb showed us, the enemies must be killed or driven out one by one, town by town, and we don’t dare turn around like Lot’s wife because when we focus on the deception, on the sin, on what is behind us, forgetting to press on in endurance, it is then that we are overcome.

So you know the Name of Yeshua and YHVH, you know some Torah, you’re Spirit baptized, you know the Gospel that Messiah preached, you know the book of Revelation — do not become so impressed with these things that you stop striving forward. Going forward takes far more humility and love than turning around with a sneer on your face. As you go forward, call an encouraging word over your shoulder so that people in darkness can hear and find the path, but don’t think you can stand your ground, facing in the wrong direction, and do anything other than hold people up. Do not dare to trample upon the mercy given you (and that path IS the mercy of Elohim), do not dare destroy the path for others, do not dare despise the path! You did not create the path, it is not yours to destroy. No one gets to the other side of the chasm in this lifetime, and so we need to keep going forward.

Addendum: This teaching came out last week, and I wish I had heard it years ago because I learned all this the hard way. This teaching goes far beyond what I wrote myself — http://www.houseofdavidfellowship.com/archives.htm September 6, 2014 — The Weightier Matters of Torah. I would also recommend Rico Cortes’, Ryan White’s, and Daniel McGirr’s teachings on Righteousness and Justice at www.wisdomintorah.com.