Category: Beshalach

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Review of 24/6: A Prescription for a Healthier, Happier Life by Matthew Sleeth

Matthew Sleeth is a former emergency room doctor who returned to the faith of his childhood during a time of personal crisis and eventually became a pastor. In the course of that journey, he discovered the personal value of the weekly Sabbath and wrote 24/6 to share how it changed his life.

Dr. Sleeth gives a lot of great advice and illustrates many ways that a weekly Sabbath can enhance a person’s life. I recommend this book to everyone!

It’s missing one really important thing though.

The Seventh Day

Sleeth touches on it here and there, but I think one historical misconception prevents him from really connecting the dots. Every benefit he says that a person can derive from keeping a personal weekly sabbath also applies to the whole community and even to an entire nation, when the whole people keep the Sabbath on the same day.

The many scripture passages quoted at the end of the book repeatedly underscore this truth. In fact, the Bible’s instructions on keeping the Sabbath require that everyone keeps it on the same day. There are probably dozens of examples, but let me give you just three:

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.”
Exodus 16:4-5

In this chapter of Exodus, if anyone gathered more manna than their family could eat in a single day, then it rotted. However, on the sixth day, God told them to gather enough for two days. Then on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there was no manna, and the manna they gathered the day before didn’t rot. If anyone had decided they could keep the Sabbath on a day that was more convenient for them, they’d be out of luck. They would be forced to fast on the Sabbath because they gathered twice as much food on the second day instead of the sixth, and it rotted. Everyone had to keep the Sabbath on the same day, the seventh day of the week.

Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.
Exodus 20:9-10

I don’t think it gets any clearer than this. By God’s direct command, everyone must keep the Sabbath on the same day, and not just any day, but the seventh day of the week. You can rest any day of the week, but it’s not God’s Sabbath unless it’s the seventh day, and you’re not keeping it if you are making other people work so that you can take the day off.

As soon as it began to grow dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I commanded that the doors should be shut and gave orders that they should not be opened until after the Sabbath. And I stationed some of my servants at the gates, that no load might be brought in on the Sabbath day. Then the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice. But I warned them and said to them, “Why do you lodge outside the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you.” From that time on they did not come on the Sabbath.
Nehemiah 13:19-21

Nehemiah castigated the city elders for allowing foreign merchants to sell their wares in Jerusalem on the Sabbath–not your Sabbath or their Sabbath, but the Sabbath–and then he closed the gates and threatened those merchants with bodily harm if they even camped outside the city gates on that day. He forced all residents of Jerusalem, Jew and Gentile alike, to keep the Sabbath on the same day, and chose guards from among the Levites, the tribe which had been specially chosen by God for their willingness to kill fellow Israelites for unfaithfulness, to make sure nobody violated his orders.

But Which Day Is the Seventh?

Sleeth asserts that we can’t know for certain which day of our modern week was the seventh of God’s Creation, but that’s not historically accurate. We know from Exodus 16 that the ancient Israelites knew which day was the seventh. God made sure they knew by not sending the wilderness bread of life on that day.

We also know that the Jews of Jesus’ day knew which day of the week was the seventh by the living Bread of Life. For Jesus’ death to have any atoning effectiveness, he had to live a perfectly sinless life, which means keeping the Sabbath in the way that his Father prescribed without error. Jesus kept the Sabbath on the same day that the Pharisees and Sadducees did, so we know beyond any reasonable doubt that they had it right.

The Romans had adopted the seven day week from the Semitic peoples they conquered in the Ancient Near East, and we know from the writings of Josephus that the day the Romans called Dies Saturni or Saturn’s Day. In English we now call that day Saturday, although much of the rest of the world calls it some variation of “Sabbath”: Subbota, Sabada, Shota, Asabsh, etc.

Despite popular belief, the centuries between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance weren’t peopled solely by ignorant, illiterate savages who forgot how to observe the stars or keep records. Governments and religious institutions of the Medieval era kept records throughout, and, although the months and years were sometimes adjusted to keep them in sync with the seasons, the continuous cycle of the days of the week was never interrupted in all that time. The Roman church held the first day of the week to be sacred, despite God’s explicit instructions, because they didn’t want to look Jewish, and so they ensured that everyone knew which day was Sunday. They also thereby ensured that nobody ever forgot which day was the seventh day.

The seventh day of the Creation week is still the seventh day of our modern week, and every attempt to deny that historical fact looks to me like someone looking for any excuse to do things their own way instead of God’s.

There Is Only One Weekly Sabbath

I know that some people have to work on the Sabbath, just like the priests did at the Temple. Somebody has to keep the lights on. Somebody has to be available to help if you get hurt. Somebody has to lead worship. Those people need to have the freedom to take an alternate day off from work and to offload those responsibilities onto someone else at times, but that still doesn’t change which day of the week is the Sabbath that God instituted.

Every day is a great day to gather and worship in Jesus’ name and everyone will derive great benefit from resting one day each week, no matter which day that is, but there is only one day that God set apart for his people to spend especially with him. If your husband or wife set aside a whole day just to be with you, do you think they’d mind if you showed up on a different day?

If you are requiring other people to do business, to clean your house, to wait your table, and to write your marketing copy on the seventh day of the week, then you’re not keeping the Sabbath, no matter on which day you have chosen to rest. The Sabbath was made for man, but so was marriage and procreation, and God hasn’t authorized anyone to make changes to these institutions that he created for our benefit.

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The Law Ended with the Temple

No part of God's Law has been abrogated, canceled, annulled, or whatever synonym you prefer. All of the commandments are simultaneously moral, civil, and ceremonial.

The ceremonial laws were ultimately abrogated when the Temple was destroyed in AD70. -Freddy

I’m not really sure what to think of Christians basing their theology on extra-biblical historical events rather than on the clear statements of God. Is it appropriate to call yourself a Christian when you don’t even believe what Christ said?

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
Matthew 5:17-18

I can see interpreting “until all is accomplished” to mean “until I have been crucified and resurrected”. I disagree with that interpretation, but I can see the logic in it. I can’t see how it could apply to the destruction of the Temple.

What was the “all” that was accomplished in 70 AD? An extreme preterist would say that all prophecy was completely fulfilled in or prior to that year, including the second coming of Yeshua, the total destruction and recreation of heaven and earth, and the resurrection and judgment of all the dead. Extreme preterism is so bizarre, in my opinion, and its adherents so far removed from solid scriptural understanding, that I don’t think they would accept any argument I might make, even if I were inclined to make them. So I won’t.

The “all” that was accomplished can’t be the destruction of the Temple itself, because that happened once before when Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians around 586 BC. Herod’s Temple never had the presence of God the way that Solomon’s Temple did, so if the destruction of the Temple was enough to do away with “ceremonial laws”, then surely it would have happened when that first, greater Temple was destroyed.

Which laws are the ceremonial ones that Freddy believes were abrogated? Only those that pertain to the Temple? That would be consistent with his statement, at least, but which laws are those exactly?

It is common among many Bible teachers to divide the Law into three categories: civil, ceremonial, and moral. Since this division is purely manmade and entirely foreign to the Bible, nobody can agree on which laws are in which category. Is circumcision ceremonial or moral? The command to circumcise our sons on the eighth day preceded the Levitical priesthood by about 430 years, so it can’t reasonably be tied to the Temple. The commands to keep the weekly seventh day Sabbath, the Passover, and the week of Unleavened Bread all preceded Sinai and any hint of the Levitical priesthood, as did the practice of giving the firstborn of the herds to God. If “ceremonial laws” are those that pertain to the Temple, then these can’t be ceremonial.

The bottom line is that people just don’t want to keep God’s commandments, so they search for excuses and invent rationalizations for their disobedience. The destruction of the altar is a very good reason not to offer blood sacrifices since God commanded that they must be done at the altar in Jerusalem, but that still doesn’t mean the commandments themselves have been abrogated. It just means that our circumstances preclude full obedience, so we’ll have to rely on God’s grace to forgive us. Ultimately, 70 AD a semi-arbitrary point in time that can be used to superficially justify expiring any obligation to keep the more awkward and “Jewish” of God’s instructions.

If one were to point to a historical event and say “the Law ended here” Calvary would make a little more sense, but still not enough to pass Scriptural muster. Somebody forgot to tell the Apostles, who continued to attend worship and offer sacrifices at the Temple throughout the book of Acts. When asked how new converts should behave, they said (heavily paraphrasing), “Don’t commit sexual immorality, don’t eat blood, and, oh by the way, Moses is read in every synagogue of the Empire, so go listen and keep learning.”

No part of God’s Law has been abrogated, canceled, annulled, or whatever synonym you prefer. All of the commandments are simultaneously moral, civil, and ceremonial. All of the commandments express love for both God and mankind, whether we understand exactly how or not. The Truth has never depended on our comprehension of it.

Yeshua said that anyone who sets aside even the smallest commandment and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who keep the Law and teach others to keep it will be called great in the Kingdom. (Matthew 5:19) I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine a higher endorsement of keeping the whole Law.

That’s why I’m here, encouraging Christians and all believers in Yeshua, whatever label they apply to themselves, to study and learn to keep the Torah out of love and respect for the Heavenly Father and Messiah Yeshua.

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Parsha Beshalach – Apostolic Readings, Links, and Videos

New Testament readings and articles on Torah portion Beshalach.

Readings

  • Exodus 13:17-15:18
    • Mark 4:35-41
    • Luke 21:25-28
    • Romans 9:15-21
    • Galatians 4:1-9
    • Revelation 4:1-11
    • Revelation 14:14-20
  • Exodus 15:19-16:24
    • Matthew 18:3-6
    • Matthew 28:16-20
    • John 6:16-25
    • James 1:5-8
    • Revelation 2:15-17
  • Exodus 16:25-17:16
    • Matthew 12:1-14
    • Mark 9:2-13
    • John 6:26-71
    • 1 Corinthians 10:1-6
    • 1 John 5:1-5

More Reading on Parsha Beshalach

Related Video Teachings

  • Stepping into the River – How should you answer when God calls you to do something that seems insane? “Yes, Lord. Here I am.”
  • The Man of Chesed in Proverbs19:22 – The Hebrew word translated “steadfast love” in this verse is chesed, which implies so much more than mere affection. Whether you’re looking for a friend, a husband, or an employee, look for a man with chesed.
  • The God of Life and Death – The 12 stones in Joshua 4 illustrate that only YHWH has the power to restore life to what was completely dead.
  • Of Whom Should We Be Afraid? – People can hurt you. If you don’t fear the consequences of offending people, you could lose your job, your family, even your life, but this is a trap. There is more to your existence than your job and your physical body. There are much greater consequences for being faithless to God, like losing eternity. On the other hand, if you trust in God and stand up for what’s right, even when the immediate consequences could be severe, the long term rewards are far greater than anything you might lose.
  • The Words of Whispers and Sycophants in Proverbs 26:22-23 – Words are like seeds that plant themselves in your mind. Whether it’s gossip, curses, or doubts, they will always have an effect. Don’t believe everything you hear, and stop listening to people who have a pattern of distorting the truth.
  • The Rules of Sabbath in Matthew 12:1-14 – If you find yourself worrying about exactly where the limit is between “allowed” and “forbidden”, then you’re missing the point of Shabbat. It’s a friendlier KYSS principle: Keep Your Sabbath Simple.
  • Proverbs 24:15-16 – The Home Is for Healing – The home is more than a man’s castle. It should be a place of refuge and healing for the whole family. People who set out to create conflict within the home, to disrupt the peace that God intends for families, are thoroughly evil. Be wary of people who want to set children against parents or parents against children.
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Faith Is Like a Seed. Make It Grow.

Four essential elements to growing stronger faith in God.

Faith is ubiquitous in Scripture.

  • Faith makes us well. (Matthew 9:22 & 29, Luke 17:19, Acts 3:16, James 5:15, etc.)
  • Faith makes great works possible. (Matthew 17:20, Luke 17:6, Hebrews 11, etc.)
  • Faith inevitably leads to good works. (Acts 20:21, Romans 3:31, Hebrews 11, James 2, etc.)
  • Faith makes our good works effective on the spiritual plane. (Hebrews 11, James 2, etc.)
  • Faith is essential to our eternal salvation. (Romans 3:28, Ephesians 2:8, Hebrews 11, etc.)

Over and over, the scriptures say, “If you had faith, you would be healed.” If you had faith, big things would happen.

Clearly faith is vital. Without faith, we are powerless. Without faith, we are lost.

Yet we all struggle with insufficient faith. We believe, but, for most of us, big things aren’t happening. As the desperate father in Mark 9 said, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

Is it possible to develop faith, to start with a little and end with a lot? We know that God can simply give us greater faith–he is God, after all–but from long experience we also know that’s not how he usually operates. Yes, our faith can grow over time. Paul told the congregation at Thessalonika that he thanked God for their continually growing faith (2 Thessalonians 1:3), and Yeshua hinted at this fact when he compared faith to a seed. (Matthew 17:20) Seeds aren’t meant to be static. They were designed to sprout and grow into something much larger, which in turn produces many more seeds of its own.

The big question is how. How can we develop our faith from a mere seed to a plant? I know that this is a question that I have struggled with all of my life. Why aren’t people healed when we pray? The answer to that question can be complicated, but Scripture is very clear that, at least in part, people aren’t healed because they or the one praying for their healing have too little faith.

So how can we grow more faith?

Yeshua’s metaphor of the mustard seed implies that faith doesn’t grow only by virtue of its existence. No seed sprouts and grows without fertile soil, water, stress, and light. There are things besides faith itself, which we need to add to our little seed before it will grow to the piont of moving mountains and healing the sick.

Deep, Rich Spiritual Soil

Just as in the parable of the sower and the seed of the Gospel, the seed of faith also needs deep, healthy soil to prosper. It needs to be embedded in an environment which encourages long-term, meaningful maturity. The environment in which our faith sprout–or doesn’t sprout–includes the people, places, things, and habits with which we surround ourselvs.

We have all heard that you become like those with whom you spend the most time, and I believe it’s true.

Pessimists are like the weeds of the parable. Their constant negativity chokes the hope and life out of you until you can’t believe in that anything good could happen for you. They need love as much as anyone–more, evidently–but you can’t keep them as close friends. They will drag you down to keep company with their misery.

The proud and self-sufficient are like the rocks. On the surface, they might be very positive, but their hearts are hard. Why should they trust in God when they believe they already have all that they need. If you spend too much time with them, the seed of faith will have no opportunity to put down roots, and it will whither and die.

Maintaining and building faith requires keeping company with people of faith. Surround yourself with people who trust God. Be active in a community of faith. Be a friend to people who are where you want to be, and be careful not to speak negativity into their lives.

And not only company, but our home, work, and religious environments need to be conducive to developing faith. What kind of art hangs on your walls? What is the usual conversation like in the break room? Do your personal and spiritual habits focus on God’s faithfulness or on God’s wrath?

People like to denegrate religion, but ritual and tradition have always been very powerful instruments for building faith. Liturgy, rituals, annual observances, and the like will never save anyone. If your church teaches that they are necessary for salvation, that will tend to degrade faith. However, if they use these things to emphasize God’s dependability and mercy, they can be wonderful. The forms of traditional religion that unite people and build faith while honoring God’s commands are nearly endless. It’s important that your religion honors God by adhering to his standards, but don’t throw out all religion because some people and organizations have abused it.

If there are elements of your environment that discourage faith, consider how you can replace them with something more positive.

Good Spiritual Nourishment

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)

The Bible is full of God promises and stories of those who trusted him and also those who didn’t trust him. Memorize God’s promises and read those stories often. They are all through the Scriptures, but especially focus on Genesis, the historical books1 the Psalms, and the Gospels2. There are also many stories of faith and miracles outside the Bible. The biographies of missionaries are especially rich nourishment in this respect.

Entertainment and education should also be designed to promote a strong faith and relationship with God. If your favorite author writes disdainfully of the miraculous and if your favorite bands mock the promises of God, how can they do anything but discourage you? It’s counter-productive to read about divine Providence in the morning and listen to someone talk about how it’s all “me, me, me” in the afternoon.

Pay attention to what’s being fed into your life, and try to filter out those inputs that aren’t helpful. Replace them with books, videos, podcasts, conversations, etc., that will encourage you and reinforce your faith.

Spiritual Stress

Yes, stress. Just like children, all plants need some kind of stress to mature and produce good fruit. Some plants need a touch of frost. Some need a hard freeze. Some plants need a strong wind to scatter seeds and some need to be eaten. Almost all plants need pruning in order to reach their greatest heights and productivity.

Your faith will never grow if it is never put to the test. How do you learn to trust someone if you never need to trust them. You start by acting as if you have faith, whether or not you do. You make yourself vulnerable and take a chance.

Take risks. Get banged up a little. If nothing else, you’ll toughen up a bit and gain some life experience.

Shining Spiritual Light

In Yeshua was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:4-5)

Faith isn’t the belief that God exists. Faith is the belief that God is who he says he is, that he keeps his promises, that he loves you and will never abandon you. Faith is another word for trust.

How do you learn to trust a friend, your husband, your wife? Through experience. You trust a good friend because he has been there for you in the past. He stood by your side when everyone else disappeared. If you want to trust God more, then you need to spend more time with him. Set some time aside every day to read your Bible, to pray, and to listen.

Your prayers don’t have to be limited to any particular format. Kneel and pray aloud if that works for you. Or sit in a comfortable chair and sip your morning coffee. Go for a walk. Dance. Whatever language allows you to speak most freely is fine because God speaks that language too.

Corporate worship is also important. Liturgical and informal prayer, singing of hymns, blowing shofars, dancing, waiving banners, pilgrimages… Like intimacy in a marriage and shared experiences with friends, all of these things create mental and spiritual reactions in us that draw us closer to God, that strengthen our emotional ties to the one being worshipped. (And be careful that your worship is directed upward and not to a performer on stage or to an experience.)

Getting to know God isn’t limited to the proverbial prayer closet and time spent focusing vertically. We can also gain a deeper knowledge of God by focusing laterally, toward the people around us.

The King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:40)

Everyone around you–young and old, sick and healthy, good and bad–bears the image of God, and they are all the focus of God’s loving attention. If you want to know God better, go find someone with a need that you can meet and then meet it. Pay attention to the things that God pays attention to. Be kind. Be generous. Love your neighbor, and not just your wealthy and nice smelling neighbors. In showing love to people who desparately need it, you will learn something of God’s heart, of the love and the pain that God feels for each one of us, and God himself will draw nearer to you.

It’s not enough to let God’s love illuminate you, because you weren’t designed just to be a solar collector. You were designed to take the spiritual light of Yeshua and turn it into fruit full of good works meant to feed God’s people. If you want more faith, then you need to be the instrument through which God answers the faith of others.

Faith is a living, growing thing. It requires attention, care, and feeding. It needs a healthy environment in which to take root. It needs a constant stream of reinforcement and encouragement. It needs exercise. Most of all, faith depends on an ever-growing relationship with the King in whom we have faith and with his people for whom we ARE faith.

Gardens don’t spontaneously spring up from the ground. They take planning, deliberate action, and hard work. Even Eden needed a gardener.

When I sit down to write, I usually have an idea of what I intend to communicate, but sometimes God leads me in a direction I wasn’t expecting. This is one of those times, and this is a message I needed to hear. Using this structure of a seed needing good soil, nourishment, stress, and light, I’m going to develop a faith-growing plan for myself and my family.

I encourage you to do the same.

Evaluate your current environment and your life’s inputs and identify those things that would tend to discourage faith. Don’t try to fix everything right away. Remember that God told Israel only to drive the Canaanites out of the land as they were ready to advance and occupy it. Instead, remove a negative influence and replace it with a positive one. Then another. Have a plan with a definite goal in mind, and don’t be afraid to alter the plan as you go and circumstances require. As long as you continue to move forward, your faith will too.

 

1 Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, 1-2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.
2 Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts.

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Every Journey Begins with a Single…Day?

He said to them, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’” So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.” On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The LORD has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day.
Exodus 16:23-30

Before Israel arrived at Sinai, before God had spoken a single word from the mountain top or carved a single letter on the stone tablets, he said, “How long do you refuse to keep my mitzvot and torah?” God expected Israel to obey his laws, specifically the Sabbath in this case, before he had a covenant with them, before Sinai.

Before that, God commended Abraham for heeding his call, keeping his charge, his commandments (mitzvot), his statutes (khukot), and his laws (torot). Most people interpret that to mean the seven Noahide laws, but Noah certainly had more laws than those.* How else would he know what animals were clean and unclean? God’s Law (also known as the Torah) existed from the beginning. How else did Abel know what kind of animal to sacrifice, and how should Cain have known that his sacrifice would be unacceptable? How did Judah know about Levirate marriage?

God’s laws are eternal and not tied exclusively to any particular covenant, although they are included as terms of the covenant with Israel at Sinai. When you enter your neighbor’s house, he expects you to observe the rules of his house: don’t play football in the living room, don’t put your feet on the furniture, don’t open the refrigerator without an invitation, etc. This doesn’t mean that he invented those rules the moment you walked in the door. They were always the rules of his house because they are a part of his character. He doesn’t have anything against your shoes in particular; he just doesn’t like it when people put their shoes on his sofa. God’s laws are the same; they are a reflection of his character. They differ from our own because where our personal rules evolve with our character over time, God’s do not. One can make a case (a very weak case, in my opinion) that God invented the laws concerning tabernacle rituals and the Levitical priesthood arbitrarily or only for the specific nature of the Israelites, but one cannot make the same case regarding Sabbath, animals that are acceptable for food and sacrifice, acceptable and unacceptable relationships, and behavior toward your neighbors. God’s standards in those matters all clearly existed before Sinai and will continue to exist so long as heaven and earth remain.

There are passages in the Apostolic scriptures that appear at first reading to disagree, especially the writings of Paul: Romans, Galatians, Colossians, etc. When I tell people that I believe we should keep the Torah, they quote these scriptures to me as if they think I haven’t read them before. The bare truth is that most of those people never got passed a Sunday School level of Scriptural understanding. Torah contains the key to advancing that understanding if they would be willing to examine it a little more closely.

First, it lays out its dualistic nature.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live. Deuteronomy 30:19

Torah is both a law of life and a law of death. It’s both, depending only on how you use it. If you keep it, trusting in God’s grace to cover our flaws and inevitable failures, you keep a law of life and liberty. If you refuse to keep it, whether by trusting in your own power to keep it or by simply refusing to even try, you will instead be yoked under a law of sin and death.

Second, Torah states unequivocally that nobody is authorized to change it in any way.

And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you. You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you. Deuteronomy 4:1-2

It doesn’t get much plainer than that. The orthodox Christian view of the Bible for almost 2000 years is that it must agree with itself. No part of the Bible contradicts another part, and the clear passages must be used to understand the less clear. In various places, Jesus, James, Peter, and Paul all reiterate the point of Deuteronomy 4:2 in fairly unambiguous terms. Take Jesus’ words in Matthew 5, for example:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:17-19

And Paul’s in Romans 3:

Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. Romans 3:31

We must think very carefully about those passages that appear to be teaching in direct contradiction to the words of Moses, Jesus, and Paul, resisting the urge to interpret them in a way that makes large portions of the Scriptures to be meaningless or worse: lies.

One rule of thumb that seems nearly self-evident is that the more time and text God spends on any particular subject, the more important it probably is to him. Using this rule, mankind’s obedience to the commandments must be among God’s top two or three priorities. Among the commandments, some appear to be more important than others.

  • Love God.
  • Love your neighbor.
  • Keep the Sabbath.

Among others.

To get back to the Sabbath, judging by the amount of text devoted to the topic, God cares very deeply about it, whether we understand why or not. It was among the first rules that God gave to Israel after they left Egypt, and He said that it will always be a special sign of God’s people. Keeping it on the seventh day as God commanded can be difficult at times in a culture that doesn’t cooperate–not difficult in the sense that it’s laborious, but in that lifelong habits are difficult to change and the rest of the world won’t rearrange its schedule to accommodate you. But I assure you that making a concerted effort to keep a seventh day Sabbath will be worth the inconvenience.

If you are unsure about whether or how much of God’s Torah you should keep, consider starting with the Sabbath. Don’t worry about getting it perfect and don’t worry about all of the complex rules that the rabbis have piled onto the simple day of rest that God prescribed. If you haven’t done it before, just start with this: between sunset on Friday and sunset on Saturday, don’t do anything that feels like work to you. If there is something you feel that you must do, relax about it. Don’t get yourself fired from your job or put anyone in danger, but take it slow and easy. After you’ve done this for a few weeks, come back to the blog and let me know how it’s going.

A holy Sabbath unto the Lord.

* Although based on Biblical principles, the Seven Noachide Laws are a man-made code imposed on the Biblical text. They were probably not codified until thousands of years after the Flood.

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The Wind Won’t Hold Forever

God makes it easy to disbelieve if you are determined.
Pharaoh’s chariots drowned by the Red Sea

It was just a wind that blew a dry channel through the Red Sea, an algae bloom that turned the Nile red, and a superficial, if bloody, wound that allowed Yeshua to come out of the grave again. He wasn’t really dead after all, you see.

Men have invented uncountable reasons why what God said is true isn’t really. If people held the rest of recorded history to the same standards to which they hold the Bible, then we’d have to put Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and King Alfred in the same category as rainbow unicorns.

God makes it easy to disbelieve if you want to. If you are really determined, sometimes He’ll even help you along like Pharaoh chasing the Hebrews between the walls of water against all good sense. Egypt was devastated by one miraculous plague after another, a massive storm had just blown a hole through the Red Sea, and a pillar of fire had kept his chariots from advancing on the Hebrew camp, and still he went on. What was he thinking?

We all see the Truth eventually, of course, but if you wait for Him to force it on you, it’s usually too late. The wind will have died and the water will already be closing.