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“Consider that fact that, being nothing in ourselves, we cannot, without divine assistance, accomplish the smallest good or advance the smallest step toward Heaven.” - Lorenzo Scupoli

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The Torah teaches (parashat Emor) that God’s priests, or the “kohanim,” were required to be “perfect,” without any physical defect or uncleanness that might render them unfit for service. Everything about the priests – their clothing, their hair style, their skin condition, and especially their adherence to the meticulous steps required to offer the daily sacrifice (לֶחֶם אֱלהָיו) - was to be “defect free,” and any deviation might even incur the penalty of death itself (see Lev. 10:2; Num. 4:15, 2 Sam. 6:6-7). On the other hand, what sometimes disqualified a priest for service were things beyond his control, for instance, a variety of physical disabilities such as blindness, having a limp or disfigured limb, and so on (see Lev. 21:16-21).

Thinking about these various requirements raises some provocative questions concerning the meaning of “perfection” in our lives, and particularly how we, as a deeply flawed people, can possibly be “perfect.” The question is radical and affects how we are to understand practical holiness or the idea of “sanctification”: Are we to seek to be perfect people, and if so, how do we understand what this means? Is our spirituality bound up with perfectionism, with flawless performance, and with always being and doing what is right?

In the Sermon on the Mount Yeshua warned that our righteousness should exceed that of the religious leaders of his day (Matt. 5:20), and he went on to say: “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). Here we note that the Greek word translated “perfect” (τέλειος) may mean “mature” or “fully developed” more than morally flawless, though regarding moral and spiritual practice this distinction is not clear cut, especially if by “mature” we mean godly in character, as the context of Yeshua’s statement clearly implies (see Matt. 5:1-48). The Hebrew word translated as “perfect” (תָּמִים) can also mean “complete,” but it can connote being “wholehearted,” “sound,” or even healed (שָׁלֵם). So the question arises, does the word “perfect” mean “flawless” or “healed” -- or perhaps both?

Of course we affirm that God alone is truly perfect (Deut. 32:4; Psalm 18:30), completely good (Matt. 19:17), flawlessly righteous (Psalm 145:17), entirely holy (Isa. 6:3; Rev. 15:4), and peerlessly unique (Exod. 15:11; Jer. 10:6-7), but how can we relate to God’s overmastering perfection in the midst of our daily flaws and chronic imperfections? How dare we approach “to offer the bread of God” (Lev. 21:17)?

Followers of the LORD are called to be a nation of priests, a “select people,” set apart to serve God in holiness (Exod. 19:5-6; 1 Pet. 2:9; Lev. 11:45), but it is clear we are blemished, imperfect, blind, halt, needy, and unclean... This is common to the human condition: all of us, Jew or non-Jew alike, are broken, flawed, and in the midst of the inevitable flow of life that leads to death and decay (Rom. 3:23). We are sick with sin and unable to heal ourselves, and therefore we need a radical transformation - “deliverance from ourselves” – that must come through divine intervention and the miracle of spiritual rebirth (John 3:3,7).

Nevertheless in this world the paradox still remains: we are finite yet long for the undying, the infinite; we are in flux yet anchored in hope; we are a “new creation” yet still saddled with the old nature; we are made holy yet we live in the midst of the profane; we are purified yet still need cleansing; we are healed yet are still wounded; we are redeemed of God yet still need to turn to God in teshuvah; we die daily yet have eternal life. Our hearts are to be a divine sanctuary, yet we are powerless to make God appear in our midst...

Perfection haunts us; we often confuse the ideal and the real. Our romantic visions fail us; our poetic utterances are as an unknown tongue; all of us are strangers, wanderers, in lonely exile. And the question then becomes – how do we embrace the “already-not-yet,” the process, the fleeting days with their poignant and achingly mundane moments – within the context of real hope, a vision that heals and brings us real comfort? How do we make peace with our imperfections, our present darkness, and our hunger for deliverance? How do we envision healing in the midst of our brokenness?

Ironically those defects that disqualify us as priests can be transformed into compassion for others, and this enables us to reach out to God in the midst of our flawed existence... After all, the deepest role of the priest is to draw others near to God, but this requires empathy and awareness of the needs of others. Therefore God clothed himself with our frailty, our infirmities, and the brokenness of our sin in order to redeem us in Yeshua. As it is written, we have a high priest who is able to sympathize (συμπαθέω) with our weaknesses (Heb. 4:15).

The priest of the New Covenant is a mediator through poverty of spirit and mourning (Matt. 5:3-8). Just as Joshua the high priest was graciously given robes of righteousness in exchange for his filthy garments (Zech 3), so we are given an imputed righteousness that comes through trusting in “the One who justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5). “For our sake God made Him (i.e., Yeshua) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). This is a righteousness that is “apart from the law, though the law and prophets testified of it; namely, the righteousness of God given through the faithfulness of Yeshua the Messiah” (Rom. 3:21-22). Our groaning for the complete deliverance is a gift given by the Spirit of God crying out within our hearts (Rom. 8:22-23).

“In honesty you have to admit to a wise man that prayer is not for the wise, not for the prudent, not for the sophisticated. Instead it is for those who recognize that in face of their deepest needs, all their wisdom is quite helpless. It is for those who are willing to persist in doing something that is both childish and crucial” (Frederick Beuchner).

C.S. Lewis once remarked, “God doesn’t love you because you are good, but He will make you good because He loves you.” This goodness is the miraculous inner working of an imparted godliness, the divine gift of a new heart and spirit (Ezek. 36:26). Awaken to your eternal perfection in the world to come: “You shall be perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect” can be read as a prophecy rather than as a command.

Therefore do not give up, friends; do not succumb to despair. Stop torturing yourself and focus on God’s kindness and mercy for your life. We must endure ourselves and believe in the promised healing to come. As the Apostle Paul said to us: “Do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:16-18). And may God help us walk in perfect faith in His unfailing love (Phil. 3:14).
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Amen and amen.

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Ezekiel 36:26:

וְנָתַתִּי לָכֶם לֵב חָדָשׁ
וְרוּחַ חֲדָשָׁה
אֶתֵּן בְּקִרְבְּכֶם

"I will give you a new heart,
and a new spirit
I will put within you."

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­Hebrew study page (pdf)

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If you sometimes feel a bit unsettled or confused about the relationship between the law of God and the message of gospel, you are not alone, for even the Apostle Peter, who was a close disciple of Yeshua for over three years, was confused about the issue. In fact, Peter’s confusion eventually led the Apostle Paul to publicly rebuke him for separating himself from Gentiles when certain religious Jews came to visit him in Antioch (Gal. 2:11-18). It’s hard to believe what happened, since Peter should have known better after he was given a direct vision from God showing that Gentile believers were to be regarded as co-heirs of eternal life (see Acts 10). Nevertheless, Peter seemed to be afraid of “Judaizers” who insisted that Gentiles must observe the law of Moses in order to be saved, and it was that point in particular that raised the holy ire of the Apostle Paul...

What gave Paul the authority to rebuke Peter? Didn’t Peter do a lot of miracles and boldly preached that salvation had come to Israel in Yeshua (e.g., Acts 2:14-40)? Yes indeed, though despite his special place among the first disciples, the conversion of Paul was an exceptional thing, and it is important to understand that after his conversion, God himself taught Paul the deeper implications of the ministry of Yeshua, particularly as it was related to the Torah (see Gal. 1:11-20). Whereas the four gospels faithfully bear witness of the life and ministry of Yeshua, God specifically called Paul to explicate the meaning of the gospel.

Recall that before his conversion Paul was a Torah student under Rabbi Gamaliel (גמליאל), a leading member of the Sanhedrin during years concurrent with Yeshua as he was preaching in Judea (Acts 22:3). Rabbi Gamaliel, who was the grandson of renowned rabbi Hillel the Elder (רבי הלל הזקן), is quoted in the book of Acts, where he sagaciously advised the Sanhedrin Council to show leniency toward the followers of Yeshua, saying “let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them, lest you find yourselves fighting against God” (see Acts 5:34-40).

I once read an article that wondered whether Paul might have known of the teachings of Yeshua before his conversion and whether he might even have heard him preach on various occasions. Indeed, Paul may have witnessed the Lord’s crucifixion itself! I think this is an entirely reasonable possibility, especially since Paul was an earnest Torah student who lived in Jerusalem during the time when Yeshua was preaching there. Surely “Rabbi Sha’ul,” as he might have been called, would have been zealously interested in Yeshua’s discussions and confrontations with the scribes and Pharisees, and he likely would have been provoked by Yeshua’s rejection of the priesthood of the Temple as well. And surely Paul would have been intensely concerned about Yeshua’s claim to be the Messiah of Israel!

The New Testament records that Paul had witnessed the testimony Stephen and approved of his execution (see Acts 6:8-8:2). Shortly afterward we read that he was consumed with the madness of religious rage and volunteered to lead a posse to arrest followers of Yeshua who had fled to Syria and to bring them back to Jerusalem to face charges of blasphemy. It was during this Jewish “crusade,” you will recall, that Paul was suddenly blinded by the light from heaven as he heard Yeshua (speaking in Hebrew) saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul then answered, “Who are you, Lord?” and the voice replied, “I am Yeshua whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:1-20; Acts 26:10-18).

Paul immediately understood the implications. He didn’t need any further explanation. Perhaps in a flash he likely remembered Stephen’s amazing testimony as he died for his faith, or perhaps he recalled the vision of Yeshua dying on the cross... We are not sure what went through his mind, but it is clear that he unquestioningly accepted the Voice that spoke to him as being none other than that of Yeshua himself, raised from the dead.

This might explain why Paul later understood the crucifixion of Yeshua to be the most significant thing God has ever done, surpassing all the glories and wonders of the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the law at Mount Sinai (1 Cor. 2:2; Gal. 6:14). The significance of the cross and the resurrection of Yeshua suddenly opened Paul’s eyes to the better and more profound redemption accomplished by God that set him free from slavery to religion...

Do you see why Paul had reason to oppose Peter’s hypocrisy? When he wrote about the original controversy, Paul said: “When Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was in error. When he first arrived there, he ate with the Gentile Christians, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore because he was afraid of those people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11-13). This is an example of the principle that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump,” meaning that a little compromise in the truth can lead to widespread apostasy if it goes unchallenged.

It is almost shocking that Peter acted this way. It seems as if Peter forgot what Yeshua had taught, despite being a very close disciple of Yeshua for several years and someone who had personally seen the resurrected Lord after his crucifixion. It is baffling that the very man whose confession was the was the “rock” and pillar of the early church was unclear about the ministry of the Lord and the implications of the gospel, and therefore God sovereignly called Paul to explain and clarify the meaning of the crucifixion...

Peter’s hypocrisy aside, the crux of the matter had to do with the believer’s relationship to the “law,” understood as the collection of commandments given to Israel at Sinai through the mediation of Moses, and ratified as a special covenant with the Jewish people (Exod. 24:7-8). In later Jewish tradition, the idea of “law” extended beyond the written commandments to include matters of custom and self-serving interpretations... In essence, the controversy raised the question whether Christians were obliged to observe the law given at Sinai or whether the new covenant in Yeshua had radically changed our relationship with God.

Paul argued that while the moral law of God is constant, the new covenant is truly new, not a “renewed” version of the Sinai covenant with its conditional blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. The moral law of God itself is holy, just, and good, but Yeshua came to set us free from the need for the law itself by transforming the hearts of people to make them into God’s beloved children (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:26-27; Gal. 4:1-7). Likewise the laws for sacrifice were temporary and provisional until Yeshua came to offer up his life as the High Priest and mediator of the new covenant of God (Heb. 10:4).

The danger of “mixing” the covenants was so great that Paul wrote the Book of Galatians as a sustained argument against the possibility. Far beyond rejecting the idea that followers of Yeshua were required to keep the law of Moses to be saved, Paul argued that they no longer were related to the former covenant at Sinai at all, and he went so far as to say that he “died to the law so that he could live to God” (Gal. 2:19, also Rom. 7). That is a very bold statement, particularly coming from Paul, who once boasted that he was far ahead of his fellow Jews in his zeal for the traditions of his ancestors (Gal. 1:14). Earlier he had testified to Agrippa, “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia but brought up in this city (i.e., Jerusalem), educated with strictness under Gamaliel according to the law of our ancestors, and was zealous for God” (Acts 22:2). Yet despite all his Jewish pride and zeal, Paul compared his education and heritage as “dung” compared with the excellencies of knowing Christ.

In another letter Paul wrote: “For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh -- though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as dung, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil. 3:3-9).

Paul did not say all this to boast of his Jewish heritage and background, but on the contrary he said this to point to Yeshua as the all-sufficient way for anyone - Jew or Gentile - to be made right with God. And that is why Paul sought to persuade Peter, who perhaps was still wondering if he should observe Jewish custom and law, saying: “You and I are Jews by birth, not ‘sinners’ like the Gentiles, yet we know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified” (Gal. 2:15-16).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Yeshua is not the “second coming” of Moses... There is something truly new with the “new covenant” with God in Messiah, not something merely reworked or “renewed.” Paul put it this way: “I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ died in vain” (Gal. 2:20-21).

Most of us familiar with Christian theology are familiar with this passage, but at that time it was a shocking and even scandalous message for those who were born and raised to be followers of Moses. The Apostle Paul, the trained Torah sage, was keenly aware of the stakes and what a radical change was implied by the ministry of Yeshua. Therefore he went so far as to liken the Sinai covenant to a kind of slavery when compared to the new covenant of freedom (see Gal. 4:21-31). Trying to mingle the covenants of Sinai and Zion leads to confusion and to adulterous destruction (Gal. 1:6-9; 2:4-5; 2:21; 3:3,10, etc.). Only the “death benefits” of Messiah makes you an heir to the Kingdom of God (Gal. 4:4-7).

Paul’s teaching - and the overall message of the New Testament - is that Yeshua is the “end” or the “goal” of the law for all who believe, the substance of all that the law required. If you are hoping to get right with God, trying to keep the law is a dead end. Yeshua repeatedly taught that we are slaves to sin that need to delivered by God’s power, and that this power comes from trusting in the righteousness of God found in him.

Yeshua pointed to God’s power to save from sin when he told his disciples, “For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about me has its fulfillment” (Luke 22:37). Here the Lord refers to the cross he would bear on our behalf and the great suffering servant servant prophecy of Isaiah: “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my Servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isa 53:11).

Some people falsely claim that Paul “invented” the doctrine of “justification by faith.” Nonsense. It was alluded to in the Torah (Gen. 15:6), but Yeshua plainly taught that we are justified by faith in him and not by means of keeping the law. Recall the parable of the two men who went to the temple to pray (Luke 18:9-14). One was an “observant” Jew who did his best to keep the law, and who celebrated that he was “not like other men,” and the other was a woebegone sinner who could only sigh, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Yeshua says it was the honest and broken sinner who returned to his house justified, but not the other.... Indeed, even a carefully observant Jew who has done “all that God commanded” is still an “unworthy servant” that stands in need of salvation (Luke 17:10).

It’s a great irony only God could orchestrate that the greatest rabbi of the Second Temple period, a man with the zeal of Pinchas, one who who fervently sought to persecute any who dared impugn the sanctity of Torah, was converted by God’s sovereign intervention to become the great teacher of the significance of the gospel of Yeshua! No one was more qualified to understand the radical difference between justification through keeping the law and justification imparted by faith in the power of God than was Paul...

Among other things Paul wrote that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as his children. And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, ‘Abba, Father’” (Gal. 4:4-5). He further said that “what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4). He pointed to Yeshua as the manifestation of the Savior and true redemption of God: “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Yeshua alone is Lord (Phil 2:9-11).

At issue here is nothing less than the truth of how we are made right with God. The “Judaizers” were a group of Jews who believed that traditional adherence to the law was necessary for salvation, even for Gentiles proselytes who came to believe in Yeshua. “But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’ (Acts 15:1-5). Paul vigorously opposed this teaching because he understood the implications of what was being implied by the Judaizers. The controversy came to a head at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) where James presided and the matter was settled in agreement with Paul that “no one is justified by observing the law but by faith in Yeshua the Messiah. So we, too, have put our faith in Yeshua that we may be justified by faith in him and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified” (Gal. 2:16). Paul succinctly made his summary point by saying “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ died in vain” (Gal. 2:21). There is great comfort to be found here, friend, for if God justifies you, you no longer need to be afraid of his acceptance of you (see Rom. 8).

Justification by faith is indeed the true teaching of Yeshua. Listen to some of his words on the subject: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed over from death to life” (John 5:24). “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life” (John 6:47). As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so everyone who looks to Yeshua will be saved. “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 3:14-15; 6:40). More could be said about this, but these verses alone should suffice to demonstrate that Paul’s understanding of the gospel was grounded in what Yeshua himself had taught. Faith in Yeshua saves the soul...

Now I want to shift my attention to something that is utterly profound and that summarizes the existential meaning of the gospel for the person who receives its truth, and that has to do with what really happened during the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord...

The cross of Messiah means more than being saved from the judgment of hell... Of course that is part of its significance, and we are infinitely grateful for Yeshua’s sacrifice on the cross for our healing and atonement, but we need to think this out some more by asking if our forgiveness of sin is the substance of the gospel, or is there something more? Is forgiveness the end of the matter or it is the means to something far more vital and significant?

Some people think “Jesus died for my sins and now I am just waiting for the glories of heaven to come some day,” but is that all there is to the salvation of God - a future happiness, a “ticket to ride” into the kingdom to come, and so on? Might it not be better to say, “Jesus died for my sins, in my place, so that I might now live in his righteousness for his sake? Are we not redeemed for the purpose of bearing the life of Yeshua within us, to become living extensions of his presence here on the earth? (John 17:14-23).

In this connection I want to again quote Paul’s radical summary regarding the cross: “For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20). Note here the number of personal pronouns used in this passage. The pronoun “I” appears seven times, and the pronoun “me” is used three times. How can we unravel this?

The statement “I through the law (διὰ νόμου) died to law (νόμῳ ἀπέθανον) that I might live to God” summarizes and encapsulates the doctrine of “justification by faith.” The law serves as a mirror that shows our need for salvation, whereas the cross of Messiah (and our relationship to it) allows us access to the Holy of Holies by the blood of Yeshua, “by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh” (Heb. 10:19-20). Yeshua was “under the law” and lived a life of complete righteousness, thereby becoming our perfect intercessor as he offered up his life in exchange for our own. There is a “new altar” that transcends what was given in the Levitical sacrificial system (Heb. 13:10).

“I have been crucified with Christ” (χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι) is the affirmation that my sinful life has been “incorporated” into Yeshua’s own, just as he was sacrificed in my place and for my behalf. The “I” here refers to the old sin nature inherited through Adam’s original transgression. God made Yeshua who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:12).

Then there’s the next part: “nevertheless I live” (ζῶ δέ). Like Barabbas who was released from his death sentence, so am I released, though in the case of the crucifixion, the release takes place after the death of Yeshua, as his resurrected life is imparted within me. “I” am made new. I live, but not I (οὐκέτι ἐγώ), that is, not as I was before, but “Christ lives in me” (ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ χριστός), that is, I am who I am in relationship to God. This is Paul’s way of saying he was “born again”: the old nature derived from Adam has been crucified and a new nature has been given through his union with Yeshua. This is the power given to live according to the righteousness of God.

Just as you are to trust and to accept that Yeshua was crucified for you, on your behalf, incorporating you into his heart, taking your place in judgment, exchanging his life for your own, so you are to trust and to accept that you have been crucified with him, and that your old life was taken away and replaced with a new, indestructible nature of his resurrection life. A blessed union is created where his “for me” is answered by your “with him.” Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι– “I already have been crucified in Messiah.” The two go together: trusting in the finished work of Messiah for you is trusting in his finished work within you, and that means living a new kind of life as a beloved child of God...

Paul’s devotional conclusion logically follows: “The life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” This again is the new “I” or life created by God that trusts in his redemption given in Yeshua. Instead of connecting with God on the basis of the law of Moses and its ordinances, I am set free to live in heartfelt relationship with the Son of God who loves me and gave himself for me... I now have access to the throne of God’s grace and rejoice in the glory of God given in our Savior the Messiah.

Yeshua did not come to “reform” or improve the old human nature, but to put an end to it, to kill it, crucify it, and bury it in the depths. It is just as much a matter of faith to receive the death of Yeshua as it is to receive his life. Receiving his death means identifying with his cross and leaving the old life in the tomb; receiving his life means knowing yourself made new by the power of his resurrection. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:18).

The end of the matter is “Christ lives in me” (ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ χριστός). The redeemed life is known by the new nature, the divine seed implanted within your soul at your rebirth and derived from your union in Yeshua’s resurrection. It is by the eternal life given by Yeshua that we are able to “live to God” (ἵνα θεῷ ζήσω). The indwelling of Yeshua refers to his everllasting connection with your regenerated heart as a child of God. The divine seed of his life is the power of God within the trusting heart, making it grow in grace. God attests to his faithful love by putting the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

“I decided to know nothing among you except Yeshua the Messiah and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). This is what mattered most to Paul in his relationship with God. The cross of Messiah means far more than being released from the verdict of death that our sin warrants and evokes, but instead is about the miracle of an exchanged life, the miracle of rebirth and divine life. We need God as our healer and our priest more than our lawgiver. We were redeemed from our bondage to sin and death for the purpose of being part of Yeshua’s life and heart, part of his family, members of the gloprious “Kingdom of God.” Amen. “I have been crucified with Christ,” whatever I was in my former life is now gone; I am quickened and made alive as a new person, raised from the dead, and created by God’s grace to be as his beloved child forever. All this comes from the merciful kindness of Yeshua, who loved me and gave himself for me. Blessed be his name forever and ever!

Let us celebrate the great Passover miracle of God within our hearts!

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Revelation 5:12

רָא֫וּי הַשֶּׂה הַטָּבוּ֫חַ
לְקַבֵּל גְּבוּרָה ע֫שֶׁר
וְחָכְמָה וְכֹּ֫חַ וִיקַר
וְכָבוֹד וּבְרָכָה׃

“Worthy is the lamb that was slain
to receive power and riches
and wisdom and strength and honor
and glory and blessing.”­

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• Rev. 5:12 Hebrew page (pdf)

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“Let the preacher use words which do not only try to give answers to the questions that we ask or ought to ask but which help us to hear the questions that we do not have words for asking...” - Frederick Buechner

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Have you ever felt desperately alone, cut off, and far from hope? Have you ever been bereft of comfort, and forsaken — as if you were wandering “among the tombs,” cutting yourself just to feel something or to express the anguish that’s inside? Have you ever thought that no one can come near you because the leprous shame of your heart puts you at a distance? Are you without help and unable to share your sorrows? Do you have a “private tongue” that admits of no interpretation?

This was the tragic case of the demon-possessed man mentioned in the Gospels. Interestingly this man is said to have come “from the land of the Gerasenes” (אֶל אֶרֶץ הַגַּדְרִיִּים), a phrase that could be interpreted as “from the land of the strangers,” which may provide a hint of why he was so troubled within his heart. At any rate, the story reveals the terminal problem of sin and spiritual death, as this man was helplessly bound to his torment and unable to escape, and as such he provides an example of the human condition itself. Of course most people are able suppress their inner darkness to some extent, though it is tragically common to hear of otherwise “sane” people doing insane things. The prisons of the world cannot contain the rampant disorder of the sick human heart. The madness of murder, genocide, slavery, systemic racism, and war-driven atrocities are practices that go back to the earliest times of human history. The demon-possessed man is therefore a type of “every man,” the dark shadow of a self lost within himself...

We may sometimes envy people who seem to be of cheery disposition or favored circumstance; and we might even wonder why we are often distraught or riddled with pain, yet the sickness of heart apart from God’s presence lurks within us all, secretly haunting even the happiest of joys, for without a genuine relationship with God, the self is left to itself in a prison of its own making... That is the real madness of hell. And even in worldly circumstance, in the midst of the utmost of godless amenity, arises the uneasy sense that something is radically wrong, that the baubles and excitements of the world are nothing but fool’s gold, and that your soul is wearing away in vanity.

People are in despair because they are spiritually sick and out of alignment with reality. They may appear to be successful or pleased with themselves, but the hidden spiritual void within inevitably makes them anxious and full of despair. They may try to assuage their own inner pain by engrossing themselves even further into worldly life, through social conformity, faith in their own prosperity, or through various addictions, but the end is still the same, and they feel alone inside, a tragic self lost within itself...

Now you might wonder what profit there is to reflect on such dark matters, and yet the truth of the gospel is contextualized in the silence of our secret fears, our sorrows, our anxieties, and in the utmost depth of our wish to be set free from our painful condition. The gospel provides the answer to our dread sickness, yet the only way we come to understand our need for its healing is to know the tragic depravity of our lives...

Yeshua warned that the truth of God is given in parables, so that people “seeing do not see, and hearing do not hear, nor do they understand” (Matt. 13:13). But why so hide the truth? Nay, but it is God’s ratification of their own will: “For the hearts of these people are hardened (i.e., dull and callous toward divine truth), their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them” (Matt. 13:15). Here Yeshua points out the “dark truth” that people prefer their vanity and the arrogance of their own opinions to the revelation of God. Ironically enough, people don’t want to hear the “bad news” that they are inwardly enslaved to themselves, lost to their pride, and in need of God’s intervention and would actually rather die in their defiance like Pharaoh of old.

Surely God knows the depths of our blindness and the tragedy of His absence. “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden,” he cried out in sympathy for our lost condition. Yeshua knew that it is the awareness of God’s absence that moves the heart to seek for Him, and it is from the midst of the whirlwind that we hear His voice...

The truth of the gospel - the whole truth - includes everything about what is real, and that includes the darkness and tragedy of our lives... We all enjoy hearing words of assurance and experiencing moments of “enlightenment,” but faith must persevere when we are weak or sick, when our self-confidence falters and our self-respect is lost. For it is then, in the awful shade of our wretchedness that we experience God’s absence and are driven before the eye of the storm, seeking God’s truth for us. “The rain descends, the floods come, the winds blow and beat upon the house” - everyone is under the gale. We are all, in a sense, tragic figures, vulnerable to the “storm of life” and our own inner storms, but if we pretend (i.e., refuse to see) that we not in desperate need for deliverance, God remains distant from us. Seeing we will not see; hearing we will not hear...

“Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden...” That is the first word of invitation spoken to the torment of exhausted fears and disappointments. God speaks to the person conscious of their own mortality and powerlessness, to the fearful heart, to the angry soul, to those abandoned and enslaved in loneliness and heartache.

Indeed we are told to “rejoice in the Lord always,” but praise arises in the midst of our struggles, for this rejoicing is not something put on like a cosmetic, nor is it a cliche of empty praise tempered by the day’s fortuity, but it instead is a response to what is ultimately true. “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden — and I will give you rest.” The praise arises from the peace we are given as we abandon ourselves to God’s care. The apostle Paul who told us to “rejoice in the Lord always” did so under the whip of much persecution...

The truth of the gospel must touch reality, and that includes the tragedy of our lives as lost, sinful, and bedraggled souls. It includes the confession that we sometimes cry out before the storm and receive no answer, that we still feel bound to our sickness of heart and find no healing, and that the groan of our desperation itself is our only real prayer for God’s presence…

The temptation is to resort to religious platitudes or to censure the lament of our hearts so that we hear only what we want to hear, but it is possible to be “religious” and self-deceived, and to be “holy” but unconnected to what is real... We may go to church three times a week and yet be “seeing” yet not see, to be “hearing” yet not hear.

The revelation of our great need is axiomatic to the message of the gospel, and it goes deeper than merely reading the Ten Commandments and understanding that you are a lawbreaker at heart. The law reveals our need for healing but is powerless to help us. The deeper problem is uncovered as we consider why we are lawbreakers, why we seek the darkness, and why we prefer our sickness to the promise of healing.

What ultimately changes the heart is God’s intervention, that is, his salvation, though we have to be careful not to make this into a cliche... “It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no avail” (John 6:63). This salvation is not simply freedom from the penalty of sin but freedom from its power. Often, however, we are slow to realize this, and God allows us to revisit the various “waste places” of our own lusts until we have become sick of ourselves -- sick “to the bones.” We have to be willing “to give up our sickness,” and usually that means that we must experience repeated failures until we have “learned from the heart” that the LORD - and the LORD alone - is our Healer and Deliverer. Heartache and despair can lead to “godly grief (λύπη) that leads to genuine repentance in our lives (2 Cor. 7:10).

“Salvation is of the Lord,” and the brokenness of our spirit is God’s gift to us... “Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word” (Isa. 66:1-2). As Yeshua said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit (οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι).” This phrase pictures someone crouching as a helpless beggar, totally dependent on God for help. If you are struggling, ask God to help you surrender your “heart sickness” to Him.... It’s His work, not your own, that saves you... God alone truly changes the heart. Repentance is a miracle from heaven given to you, personally...

“If you confess with your mouth that Yeshua is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). But his confession implies you know the truth of your condition, namely that you are weary, heavy laden, and full of grief over your life. It deflates your human pride, yet it is the sober truth. But how can you “receive” the miracle of regeneration when you still hold hope in your own sufficiency? How can you know God’s compassion when your inmost heart still rationalizes and even loves its pain? There is a perverse aspect of human nature that revels in its dissipation, relishes its resentments, and excuses its helpless lusts. We must confess with our mouths that Yeshua is Lord, that he bears our place into shameful hell yet is raised from the dead to impart to us true life. “For with the heart one believes unto righteousness” (Rom. 10:10).

To speak the whole truth of the gospel means being willing to “speak out” or to confess the darkness, for only then is the reality of the light made visible to us. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void (תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ); and darkness (חֹשֶׁךְ) was upon the face of the deep.” This is how the Bible begins; these are its opening words! God created the heavens and the earth in a primordial state of “tohu va’vohu v’choshek,” confusion and emptiness and darkness. Yet the very next verse says that “the Spirit of God (רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים) moved upon the face of the waters.” This was before anything of substance yet existed. God’s Presence hovered over the depths of the waters and then said, “Let there be light” (יְהִי אוֹר): and there was light (Gen. 1:1-3). But note the order. God begins with the darkness and speaks forth his creative and healing light. Likewise God’s begins with our darkness and recreates us to reflect his image in the truth.

I’ve written elsewhere that the Hebrew verb chalah (חָלָה) means to be “sick,” from a root that means emptiness (חלל) and profanity (חֹל). To be sick can symbolically be understood as profane (ח) thinking (ל) regarding the Spirit of God (ה), which suggests that illness and disease result from obstruction of the divine light. Using the same sort of methodology we see that the Hebrew word for healing (רפא) can suggest that when the mind (ר) directs the mouth (פ) to praise God (א), the soul will experience shalom (שׁלום).

The Torah is called “light” in Prov. 6:23 (תּוֹרָה אוֹר), and the Word of God brings light to the heart as it says, “Your word is a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105) that “enlightens my eyes” (Psalm 19:8) and “imparts understanding” (Psalm 119:130). YHVH is called our light and our salvation (Psalm 27:1), just as Yeshua is the creative force of reality (John 1:1-3) who embodies the divine light to the world (John 8:12). Light is God’s means of connecting with us through the heart, and divine healing comes from connecting with God through revelation - the “sun of righteousness (שֶׁמֶשׁ צְדָקָה) that shines with healing in his wings” (Mal. 3:20). Yeshua is the heart and healing center of existence who came to deliver people from darkness. May God open our eyes to see his light now...

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Psalm 25:17

צָרוֹת לְבָבִי הִרְחִ֫יבוּ
מִמְּ֞צוּקוֹתַי הוֹצִיאֵנִי׃

"The troubles of my heart are enlarged;
O bring me out of my distresses."
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Psalm 25:17 Hebrew page (pdf)

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“When you read God’s word, continually say to yourself, ‘It is I to whom it is speaking, it is I to whom it is speaking...” - Soren Kierkegaard

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­­­As it was when Yeshua was here on earth teaching and sacrificing his blood to make God’s consummate point about our need for his love, so it is universally true that the Word of God speaks to the individual heart, that is, the one who has “ears to hear” what the Spirit is saying...

Now the “Word of God” includes more than just the “red letter” quotes of the Savior, of course, but encompasses all of the Scriptures that have been providentially preserved and sanctioned by those endowed with wisdom to establish and ratify the canon of the Bible. This is the essential context for the “red letters” themselves, and without it we would not understand the overall message. For those interested in how the canon of the Bible was established by the Jewish people (including the first followers of Yeshua the Messiah), there are a number of scholarly resources. Here I simply trust Yeshua’s endorsement of the canon of Scripture of his day, namely the threefold division of the Law (Torah), the Writings (Ketuvim), and the Prophets (Nevi’im) that was handed down from the elders of Israel and the men of the Great Assembly (Luke 22:44; Matt. 7:12). Similarly I trust the threefold witness of the disciples following his resurrection who recorded the Gospel narratives, the Writings (epistles), and the (Revelation).

All of the Bible is “inspired by God and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16), and this includes its historical narratives as much as it its ethical teachings, its prayers, poems, sermons, parables, prophecies, as well as its theological and pastoral letters. In other words, while the Bible is a collection of various “historical books” written over different times and in different places, it composes a “grand composition” or unified story given by the Spirit of God that has been written down and meticulously preserved for every generation to read and internalize. This is a matter of faith and revelation, though thousands of years of personal testimony of the veracity of its message attest to its credibility and sanctity...

There is a timelessness to the Scriptures for those who read it as “contemporaries” and engage its meaning as relevant to their lives. As I mentioned the other day, this “interpretive principle” is valid because we are given “eternal life” and understand the presence of Christ to be contemporaneous with our lives today. He is alive today, now, this hour. He ever lives to make intercession for us. He is with is always and will never leave nor forsake us...

To illustrate the contemporaneousness of the words of Scripture, let’s consider the infamous account of King David’s adulterous affair with a woman named Bathsheva, and David’s unsuccessful attempts to cover up the affair that finally led him to conspire with his general Joab to have her husband Uriah killed in a battle. Some time later Joab sent a messenger to David saying that Uriah had been killed, and later still David summoned Bathsheva (who was pregnant with his child) to come live at his palace as his wife (see 2 Sam. 11:1-27).

Recall that God then sent the prophet Nathan to confront David about his crime. Nathan told David the story of two men in one city, the one rich, and the other poor. “The rich man owned a great many sheep and cattle, but the poor man owned nothing except one little lamb he had bought. He raised that little lamb, and it grew up with his children. It ate from the man’s own plate and drank from his cup. He cuddled it in his arms like a baby daughter.” When a traveler came to visit the rich man, however, he was unwilling to take one of his own flock to prepare a meal for his guest but instead took the poor man’s lamb and slaughtered it for the man who had come to him. Upon hearing this David was outraged and vowed that the rich man who did this deserved to die because he had shown no pity (2 Sam. 12:1-6).

Nathan then said, “You are the man.” Thus says the LORD God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and his wives and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. And if that had not been enough, I would have given you much, much more. Why, then, have you despised the word of the LORD and done this horrible deed? For you have murdered Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the Ammonites and stolen his wife. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. This is what the LORD says: “Because of what you have done, I will cause your own household to rebel against you. I will give your wives to another man before your very eyes, and he will go to bed with them in public view. You did it secretly, but I will make this happen to you openly in the sight of all Israel” (2 Sam. 12:7-12).

David’s repentance for his crime is recorded in Psalm 51...

Regarding this story from Scripture Soren Kierkegaard lamented that many people are as detached from the point as was King David - until they realize “you are the man...” He wrote: “The authority of the Gospel does not speak to one person about another, does not speak to you, my listener, about me, or to me about you, no, when the Gospel speaks it speaks to the single individual, It is not speaking about us human beings, you and me, but to us as human beings, to you and me” (Works of Love: 1847).

Is the moral of the story to teach that God is righteous to judge sin, as David’s judgment of the fictional rich man was really upon himself, and God ratified his realization, or is the moral to warn the individual not to pass judgment on others while blind to his own sin? Does it speak to your heart when you catch yourself indignant over the hypocrisy or malice of others? Or when you judge others for their weaknesses and failures in order to justify your own lukewarm spirituality?

Yeshua lifts the veil from the hidden heart. “But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court; but if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell” (Matt. 5:22). Anger hidden within the heart is as worthy of punishment as murder was declared to be in Torah.

When we read the bible “objectively,” like a secular historian or a professor of world religion might, we try to understand what is saying in terms outside of ourselves, regarding other people, at other times, and in very different circumstances, and yet how we read it and “speak back” (or interpret) the words within our heart reveals more about us than anything else. And that this the cunning trap of Scripture, that like Nathan’s parable, you are the one to whom it is speaking. As Kierkegaard also said: “When you read God’s word, continually say to yourself, ‘It is I to whom it is speaking, it is I to whom it is speaking - for this is earnestness, precisely this is earnestness” (For Self Examination).

This is what our hearts seek, do they not? A personal and passionate engagement with God? Assurance that our lives spent here were not empty and vain. Engaging the Scriptures as the living word of God demands passionate, inward, and subjective commitment to one’s existence, with the task of becoming their true self before God. This is “education for eternity” where the language of imperative bespeaks the language of God’s passion.

It is written in the Torah: “Know within your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you” (Deut. 8:5). This verse expresses the idea of “musar” (מוסר), or moral education intended to develop godly character within us. This admonition occurs elsewhere in the wisdom literature: “My son, despise not the chastening (i.e., musar) of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction (i.e., tokhechah). For whom the Lord loves he corrects; even as a father the son in whom he delights” (Prov. 3:11; see also Heb. 12:5-6).

In light of Torah we infer that God disciplines us because we are his children, for the sake of our growth and maturity, and not for vindictive reasons. God’s correction indicates that he feels responsible for our character development, as a good father feels responsible for the character development of his child. Correction from the Lord is ultimately “soul-building,” since it enables us to be partakers of His holiness -- and is grounded in His love and concern for us as our Heavenly Father (see Heb. 12:5-11).

So hang in there dear friend. Persevere to the end. “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11). May God help us in our “education for eternity.”

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Deuteronomy 8:5

וְיָדַ֫עְתָּ עִם־לְבָבֶ֫ךָ
כִּי כַּאֲשֶׁר יְיַסֵּר אִישׁ אֶת־בְּנוֹ
יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶ֫יךָ מְיַסְּרֶ֫ךָּ׃

“So know with your heart
that just as a father disciplines his son,
the LORD your God is disciplining you.”

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• ­Deut. 8:5 reading page (pdf)

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“For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.” - C.S. Lewis

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To hear God’s voice in Scripture we need to “suspend” our ordinary ideas about time and imaginatively interact with the texts as if we were present when the events that were recorded had originally occurred. This approach is valid because we are given eternal life that is linked to the timeless truth of God.

For instance, when we read that God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac upon an altar, we should use empathy and imagination to understand how insanely difficult this must have been for them. Even if we have read the narrative several times before and know the “end of the story,” it’s important to “forget” the outcome so that we can get some idea of what this ordeal may have been like for both Abraham and Isaac. (I once worked with a man who told me that he tried reading the Bible but found it boring, so he skipped to the back of the book, saw that “God won,” and flippantly declared that everything worked out for the best!)

Try to imagine the long three day journey to Moriah. Listen to the braying of the donkeys and notice the somber dismay creasing over Abraham’s face. Consider his unspoken words; think of Isaac’s squelched questions, sense the cloud of heaviness they both were under, and feel the insane contradiction Abraham must have felt inside as he foresaw himself lifting up his knife to plunge into the heart of his miraculously begotten son and promised heir.... Try to understand why God would require such a thing from his loyal friend. Are you not left in speechless awe and terror as you draw closer to foot of the mountain?

Watch Abraham take the wood for the burnt offering and lay it on the back of his son; look at how he holds the torch of fire and his knife just as they begin ascending the mountain together. Glance at Isaac’s face. In the tension, overhear Isaac asking his father: “I see the fire and have the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Listen as Abraham mysteriously replies, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering...”

As they finally reach the place that God told him, watch as Abraham quickly makes an altar and carefully arranges the wood. Look around for the lamb Abraham spoke about... See Isaac looking about anxiously and wondering what was happening. Listen as Abraham tells Isaac to lay down on the altar. Watch as he binds his son’s arms and feet. You marvel that Isaac is not resisting his father but instead surrenders his life into his father’s hands...

In the awful silence, in the climactic moment, you watch as Abraham lifts up his knife to kill his son. Is he looking into his son’s eyes or upward to heaven? Is he weeping or resigned in helplessness that mirrors Isaac’s bond? Is Isaac silent? Are his eyes open and searching his father’s face? You don’t know; your vision is obscured because of the intense anxiety of the moment. Watch in horror as Abraham takes deep breath and is ready to do the unthinkable...

At the last moment you suddenly hear the voice of an Angel calling out from heaven saying, “Abraham, Abraham!” Within a hairsbreadth of plunging down his knife, Abraham is stopped by the Word of God. It was the Lord. “Do not harm the young man! Do not do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God because you did not withhold your son, your only son, from me.”

Look at incredible relief he is feeling... Look at Isaac exhaling deeply and thanking God with a shudder for his gracious intervention. Watch as Abraham spots a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. Listen as he tells Isaac this would be the lamb that God would provide for the sacrifice! See Abraham take the lamb and then sacrifice it in place of his son.

You are astonished over all of this, stunned and amazed. As the lamb lay burning on the altar, you are again overwhelmed as the Angel calls out to Abraham a second time, saying: “By myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son -- that blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. And in your Seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”

You pause in awe over the blessing of the Lord and the glorious promise that was given. You marvel over Abraham’s amazing courage and celebrate his unshakable faith. You rejoice over the promise of the Seed to come that will bless all the nations of the earth because of Abraham’s willingness to surrender everything - including his beloved and promised son - to God. You quietly worship and praise God for revealing to you the coming of Yeshua...

Now this attempt to be “contemporary” with Abraham also applies to being contemporary with Yeshua our Lord, the Promised Seed of Abraham, not only in the historic sense of witnessing his miracles, listening to his teaching, and seeing him crucified as the Lamb of God, but also in his present reality by means of his resurrection from the dead. Faith that Christ is risen from the dead is central to our faith, and it implies not only that he overcame sin and death for us, but that he is alive now, he is present in our lives, and that we can connect with his heart by listening to him... Our faith understands that he ever lives to make intercession for us (Heb. 7:25). We have access by faith to His Presence; we come boldly before the throne of grace.

In light of these considerations we do not regard the Scriptures to be a collection of literature handed down from the dust of ancient history but rather to be the timeless and unified story of God’s redemption and love for us, particularly as revealed in the life and present reality of Yeshua the risen Lord of Glory. The Scriptures are the “living word” of God, given by the breath of God’s Spirit. As Yeshua told his contemporaries: “Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). And as he also said to those who questioned his claim to be the Messiah: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:46-47).

The Scriptures provide timeless truth, eternal parables that find application in every generation, and that includes our generation today, and particularly those who receive the Presence of Yeshua to be the ultimate concern of their lives....

The work of faith is to receive the life of Christ at this time and to live our present hour in everlasting and abiding relationship with Him. That is the idea of “sanctification,” or being set apart to mediate God’s presence on earth. We are “jars of clay,” fragile, imperfect, and temporary containers that hold the eternal treasure of God. We have a short allotment of time to live within the bounds of the infinite, and therefore the goal of our lives is to sanctify the Lord and to walk in his light until one day we shall see God face to face (Psalm 17:15).

We love the Scriptures because they enable us to see beyond the veil of this world into the mysteries, beauty, and wonders of eternal life and the world to come. Moreover by them we are strengthened by hearing the Voice of God himself. His is alive! He is risen! He is present now! We call upon him in “real time” and our call echoes into eternity! Let us stay strong and engage the Scriptures as participants of God’s great story of salvation. Amen.

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Psalm 73:23

וַאֲנִי תָמִיד עִמָּךְ
אָחַזְתָּ בְּיַד־יְמִינִי׃

“Yet I am always with you,
for you hold my right hand.”
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Psalm 73:23 Hebrew page (pdf)­

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“If I were a physician, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence.”

- Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination: 1851

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To hear God’s voice in the Scriptures, and to receive it as a personal word for you, requires solitude, silence and a listening heart. Quietude enables us to be receptive and awake to the divine presence, for God is the Living Word that speaks to every generation, though he is heard only to those have an “ear to hear” what the Spirit is saying...

Our silence is a matter of worship, for how can we truly hear the word of God when we are full of ourselves? It is when we turn away from the chatter of our soul that we are able to truly listen. Being still and silent confesses our faith that God is present. Your silence honors him in the depths of your heart.

When we pray and seek God, the first temptation is to forget who God is, and we may busy ourselves with anxious words and various requests. We may also use “vain repetitions” or “empty babblings” that are common among those who do not yet truly know God’s heart. But Yeshua said that your heavenly Father sees in secret and knows what you need before you ask him, and therefore the only important thing is to seek Him and his blessing (Matt. 6:32-33). We do not need words to speak with God more than we need the will to be present and focused on him. “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.”

“Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:1). God will keep you in perfect peace as you lean upon him in trust (Isa. 26:3). “For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15). Yea, “the work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness will be quietness and assurance forever” (Isa. 32:17).

When we quiet our minds and turn to God, the focus shifts away from ourselves to the one who loves us and gives himself for us. The “eyes of our heart” will be opened; we will let go of our desire to be in control and understand that God is all we need...

Of course we sometimes use words when we pray, but these words echo the deeper truths of what the Spirit is saying to us... We might say, “O Lord, I come to you and believe you are the Shepherd of my life. You alone can help me; you alone know what I need before I even ask, and you therefore know how I need you, O God, more than all else. Forgive me for losing sight of you, for my unbelief. I believe; help Thou my unbelief. As it is written, “strengthen, O God, what you have done for us” (Psalm 68:28). Carry me close to your heart; help me to rest in your presence and to honor your great name.

The Psalms of the Scriptures are Spirit-filled words of intercession given on our behalf, and they provide great Torah about our communion with the Lord. For example, consider Psalm 23. It begins with a metaphor: יְהוָה רֹעִי לֹא אֶחְסָר׃ -“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1). The Spirit uses David’s heart to reveal God’s character to us. God is my shepherd. He calls me his own and knows who I am. He watches over me and guides the course of my life. He always meets my needs. “The Lord tends his flock, gathering the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart” (Isa. 40:11).

David continues his song: “He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside the still waters” (Psalm 23:2). He leads me to Elim, to places of his rest, to beautiful green pastures with refreshing waters, and there he makes me lie down in sweet surrender in his presence. He knows what I need.

“He restores my soul” (Psalm 23:3). Beside the still waters he tenderly heals me, returning my heart to hope and blessing me with his strength. He does this by speaking his love and care to my soul, calling me by name, and showing me that I belong to him. נַפְשִׁי יְשׁוֹבֵב -He returns my soul: he brings me back to life...

“He leads me in paths of righteousness for the sake of his name.” In his healing I am led further in the ways of his truth and love, and he lifts me up “for his name’s sake,” that is, because of who He is, the One who is “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exod. 34:6). It is His righteousness that upholds and justifies my existence. He opens to me the “paths of pleasantness and peace” (Prov. 3:17).

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff comfort me” (Psalm 23:4). I will fear no evil because the Lord is with me, and nothing can separate me from his love (Rom. 8:35-36). Death is a “shadow,” not ultimately real or all-consuming for those who are born from above. In this world I still must walk through the shadowy vale, but I am not consumed by it, and the rod of God’s strength comforts me.

God will lead me in paths of his righteousness even when that path veers through darkness and gloom. Though I cannot see in that darkness, he is present to guide me still...

Therefore I will fear no evil, nor be in dread, for God is with me and will never leave nor forsake me. I am not alone; not even as I face my own death and take my last breath, for God is there with me in the darkest hour, when I am brought to the precipice, in my helplessness and frailty, for then God is with me in a special way to collect my soul; he will not forsake me in my moment of utmost need. “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1). Because his lovingkindness is better than life; my lips shall praise Him, even from the dust of death itself...

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over” (Psalm 23:5). The Lord himself sets a table before me in the presence of my great enemy - death itself and the devil who feeds on the ravages of lost hope. He then anoints my head with oil and fills my cup with overflowing life and blessing. “What shall I render unto the LORD for all his benefits toward me? I will lift up the cup of salvation (כּוֹס־יְשׁוּעוֹת), and call upon the name of the LORD” (Psalm 116:12-13). Amen. This is a picture of a great banquet, a celebration of God’s faithfulness, in the face of the fangless specter of death itself. Praise God! Death is swallowed up by his invincible life!

“Surely goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life,” despite the waning shadow of death, God’s love will follow or “pursue” me to hold me fast -- the Hebrew word (רָדַף) means to “chase” or pursue after something to securely take hold of it. “And I will live in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6). This is my final end - to be in the presence of God forever and ever, returning to my true home in heaven, the habitation where God’s glory dwells and where I am fully and forever welcomed as his beloved child.

I started this article by stressing the importance of quietude in our relationship with God. “Hear O Israel” is the essence of the matter. When we quiet our hearts and turn to the Lord we will find him present, as it says, “You will search for me and find me when you search for me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). Note that this is the search of the heart, the place of our inmost passion, and not the search of the head or the way of religious rituals. Being still and silent confesses our faith that God is truly present. Silence honors him from the depths of the heart. Yes, we still articulate words when we pray, but our words form a response to what we have heard from the Spirit. God calls to us and we answer him, and that is always the order. And that is the meaning of teshuvah, or turning to God, which is the meaning of the Shema: “Hear O Israel, the LORD is our God, the Lord alone, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:4-5).

Amen, may God be pleased to help us listen to his heart.

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Isaiah 30:15

כִּי כֹה־אָמַר אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה
קְדוֹשׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל
בְּשׁוּבָה וָנַחַת תִּוָּשֵׁעוּן
בְִּהַשְׁקֵט וּבְבִטְחָה
תִּהְיֶה גְּבוּרַתְכֶם

“For thus says the LORD God,
the Holy One of Israel:
‘In returning and rest
you shall be saved,
in quietness and in confidence
shall be your strength.’”
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• Isaiah 30:15 Hebrew page (pdf)
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I didn’t want to get out of bed, even though sleep itself often affords little relief for my anguish of heart. I didn’t feel hopeless regarding matters of my faith in God, though I was exhausted over myself... As I began to awaken, I briefly reflected on my spiritual progress only to discover the same old self with the same old questions... “Wherever you go, there you are,” I thought. Despair began to seep in when I realized that I’m still bound to many things that I have long prayed I no longer would be... Will I ever change?

I’m not sure I understand all this, of course. As I laid immobilized in bed, I wondered if there is hidden pride lurking within my heart as I gazed upon the void of the ceiling... I began to feel a bit sorry for myself. I offered an edgy prayer: “Dear Lord, am I trying to justify my existence? Am I hoping to be something I am not through my faith in you? I know that I am not what I should be and I feel angry at myself. Perhaps I am angry at you, too... Yet I’m powerless to change my heart. I keep treading the same old ground; I keep praying, yet forgive me, I lament what I am in this present moment of darkness...”

Everything my heart desires is not here, is not yet, stored away in a future promised land, while everything here ineluctably dissipates into the dust of death. There is subliminal sorrowing, an ongoing grief as we say various goodbyes to all that we know and love here. Family, friends, spouses, pets, careers, memories of long lost days, lost dreams, pining hope... Eventually we must come to say goodbye even to our own lives, powerless, dependent, a mere shadowy semblance. Indeed this sort of “farewell” seems to be essential to the practical application of the gospel. “Thou He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

After I finally roused myself from the bed that held me like a coffin, I spoke to the Lord further about this. In self-reproach I asked, “What’s wrong with me, Lord? What’s my problem? Why have I these dark reflections? There must be some light here, even here, something I may learn from you. In this tedium, this dark monotony, I stretch my hands out in hope to you, for you are ever present... Have I put hope in the wrong things or grieved for what is of no substance? But did you not weep real tears when you came before the tomb of Lazarus?

I judge myself and repent in dust and ashes. I confess my sin, and yet I feel uneasy, not because of the Lord, heaven forbid, but because I have not lived as I should, for I am of little faith, despite the light of the glories of God’s love given in Yeshua. I savor the old regret, woefully conscious of how I have resisted God’s will and held on to my sickness of heart over the years... In the wake of my life I see shattered pieces, loss, sadness, and remorse. I have prayed countless times for deliverance from myself, and while I surely believe God hears me, how He hears is unknown to me, and how he answers my prayers is likewise a mystery. As C.S. Lewis once said, “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”

“In my flesh is no good thing” wrote the Apostle Paul. We may want to do what is good but we are powerless to do it. Asks the Savior: “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” The things are this world are glittering distractions, puffery, vanity, and useless in relation to finding spiritual life. We simply cannot heal ourselves nor even exist apart from a blessed intervention that can change us forever and ever...

Kierkegaard summed up the problem of man: “To be in despair is to be damned in this sense: not to be able to die and yet not to be able to live. The torment of despair is that the person cannot rid himself of himself, cannot break out of the cage of his self-consciousness.” This despair comes first of all from refusing to accept what we are, for we only find “rest in peace” when we abandon ourselves to God and know ourselves through his love.

We can only escape from the ubiquity of death by surrendering ourselves to it, like Isaac who lay on the altar, and let go of all our earthly hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares -- everything that we are. “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world keeps it unto eternal life.” The cup is set before us: “Not my will, but thine be done.” And where that leaves us, whatever becomes of us, is in God’s hands.

There is life on the other side of the cross, as the resurrection of our Lord vindicates us, and it is the power of his life, known and imparted by God’s grace - that overcomes the despair and contradictions within our soul. Though we walk through the “valley of the shadow of death,” we know God to be with us to comfort us. We only find peace by tethering our heart to God’s promise in Yeshua; everything we are and all that we ever hope to be is found in Him.

Kierkegaard defined the “self” as a “synthesis” of the infinite/finite, the temporal/eternal, and freedom/necessity, all in relationship to God, who is the Source and End of self-conscious life. People will be in a state of “despair” when they attempt to deny any one of these paradoxes and thereby choose to understand themselves apart from relationship with God. We all stand at the “crossroads” of the eternal and the temporal, and we can only know ourselves for what we are when we surrender to God for each unrepeatable choice of our lives...

He further wrote of healing for the disordered soul: “When is despair completely eradicated? It occurs when the self, in relating to itself and in wanting to be itself, is grounded nakedly in the power that established it. In other words, when it is related openly to and dependently on God. To transcend despair is neither to become finite nor to become infinite but to become an individual in their synthesis, which God alone holds together. In so far as the self does not become itself in this way, it is not itself. And not to be oneself, as God created you, is despair.”

Do you believe in miracles? There is the story of the “Velveteen Rabbit” that teaches that a thing must be loved before it becomes lovable. The same message is found in the story of the “Beauty and the Beast.” And that’s the message of the gospel, of course, namely that by the power of God’s love we are transformed to be his beloved people forever and ever. Amen.

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Isaiah 43:7­

כֹּל הַנִּקְרָא בִשְׁמִי
וְלִכְבוֹדִי בְּרָאתִיו
יְצַרְתִּיו אַף־עֲשִׂיתִיו׃

“Every one that is called by my name,
I have created for my glory,
I have formed him, yea I have made him.”
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Isa. 43:7 Hebrew page (pdf)

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­POSTSCRIPT:

I am sharing just a moment of my journey with you, a dark moment, but of course the "darkness and the light are both alike" unto the Lord, and I choose to reveal both my praise and my struggles with Him freely. Kindly disregard this post if it doesn't resonant with you. Thank you. - John
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It is written in our Scriptures: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, that surpasses all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Yeshua the Savior” (Phil. 4:6-7).

“Be anxious for nothing...” What liberation of heart and soul is here commended; what consoling balm for wounded past; what divine remedy offered to meet our need! “Be anxious for nothing,” and this includes the anxiety of being nothing, for the word is perhaps better (though less poetically) rendered as “don’t be anxious for anything.” That is, don’t be troubled with cares; don’t be inwardly divided, unsure of what matters most. “Be anxious for nothing.” Don’t allow anything to steal your secret hope and joy...

Salvation means deliverance from what binds you. It relieves you from heavy burdens, the crack of the whip upon your back, the tiresome realm of meaninglessness and monotony. Salvation is “lightness of being,” heavenly repose that passes all “natural” reasoning.

This is the very message of peace embodied in our Lord, spoken plainly and without condition: “Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Come unto him and find your comfort. Come as you are, but come...

You might object by saying that you are unworthy; you are weak and wretched of heart, that your faith is small... Indeed it is so, but what of it? What are you saying before the face of God’s Redeemer and our Savior? Could it be any other way for you?

“Come unto me all who that labor and are heavy laden...” Weary over you afflictions, the common sorrows in this vale of tears, yet, even more so weary of your own self, that tiresome inner conversation within yourself, the self you have contemned and reprimanded because you have measured yourself against illusion, the self that has at times betrayed you and even enticed you to self-destruction...

Do you compare yourself to others? Do you measure yourself against some ideal and judge yourself unfavorably? Do you recoil at your own mediocrity? Are you ashamed of your inadequacies? Do you want to be someone else? To “lose” yourself in the fantasy of being other than who you are? Or do seek above all to be in control? Do you push back in defiance, drink sour grapes, and become bitter over at your unjust fate? Do you protest that you were given a bad hand of cards? Are you in despair over your lack of perfection, your “dust and ashes” existence?

O “fearfully and wonderfully made,” do you fear being invisible, unknown, small, insignificant, and unworthy? Are you embarrassed over your own image?

God is so awesome he made himself as nothing for your sake... Before the Lord we “fall at his feet as one dead,” but it is he who lays his hand upon you, saying “Fear not; I am the first and the last.” I hear profound pathos in these words of comfort from our Lord. Wisdom realizes we are but nothing, but love insists we are everything. A note for each pocket: one says “I am dust and ashes,” the other, “For me the world was created.”

Before God we will indeed feel our insignificance and our wretchedness, but before God we will also find our eternal value and beauty. We fall on our face in our nothingness; we rise to our feet as God’s beloved child.... We fall at his feet as one dead -- this is our despair over ourselves -- yet the pierced hands of his love take hold of us, consoling us... “Don’t be afraid... I am the First and I am the Last... I am the source and end of all that matters most; I reach out and touch you in love for you.

The first and most significant step is to “show up” (or to be taken up in a vision) to confess your great need for God. We may have “sanctified ambivalence” when we do so; we may feel both fear and desire; we may look upon ourselves in despair as we are drawn to God’s glory and beauty... But like Ruth we dare to lay at the feet of Boaz in hope of his love.

Find God or die. And even if you have failed as much as “seventy times seven times” in your faith, and even if - as Peter did - you have denied him in your heart, you have found courage to come back, to refuse to give up your hope. As the holy Scripture encourages: “Lord, to whom shall we go? you alone have the words of eternal life.” There is no other...

When you die and come before God’s glorious presence, the Lord will not compare you to Moses or the great prophets but will simply require you to confess who you really are. “Your heavenly Father sees in secret and will reward you openly.” True, there is judgment but it will turn on whether you have accepted God’s love for your life. You may have squandered some opportunities to serve and honor God, but even that is redeemed by our gracious and compassionate Savior. God is able to work “all things together” for his glory and for your good... Confessing the truth of God’s salvation is the heart of right judgment.

So accept yourself as accepted in the beloved. Your life is not an accident; it’s not a mistake; you were meant to be born and to come into this world. Your life really does matter, and it matters on levels of which you cannot yet comprehend. God has a purpose and deep reason for your life, exactly and such as it is (Jer. 29:11). Trust that God’s love is overcoming all your darkness and fear. “Be anxious for nothing...” Amen.

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Psalm 139:14

אוֹדְךָ עַל כִּי נוֹרָאוֹת נִפְלֵיתִי
נִפְלָאִים מַעֲשֶׂיךָ וְנַפְשִׁי יֹדַעַת מְאֹד׃

­“I will praise You, for I am fearfully
and wonderfully made;
marvelous are Your works,
and that my soul knows very well.”

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• Psalm 139:14 Study page (pdf)

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“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Yeshua the Messiah. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Yeshua, so that the life of Yeshua may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:6-10).

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What does it mean when we say that we have “spiritual life” in Messiah? The Apostle Paul wrote: “I have been crucified with Messiah; it is no longer I who live, but Messiah who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). In another place Paul said that we are a “new creation” through our connection with Yeshua: “If anyone is in Messiah, he is a new creation (בְּרִיאָה חֲדָשָׁה); the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).

Spiritual life is both a fact yet also a potentiality within us. First it is a fact about us, a miracle imparted to us, yet we are as passive as a dead man to receive this blessing. No one can make this happen within them; no one has the power to generate divine life within their own heart. God does not “help those who help themselves” but those who cannot help themselves. The miracle comes as a gift from above, “regeneration” from death to life, and it is beyond the realm of any human agency to produce (John 1:12-13). Indeed Yeshua taught that no one can come to him for life unless they were called by God to receive that life (John 6:44). It is not a matter of religious observance or rituals; it is not the result of human wisdom and esoteric knowledge. God has chosen us to know Him before the foundation of the world, that is, before the very world was created (Eph. 1:4-12). If you are truly regenerated by God, then your spiritual life - the birth of your new spirit - is a fact about what God alone has done to create you as his beloved child.

Second, our spiritual life is a potentiality that is realized as we exercise faith in God our Redeemer and walk in the truth of who he says we are. This follows from the fact that even though we are regenerated and spiritual beings, we are nevertheless mortal and subject to the universal futility of the created order, and this further implies that we have an “old” or former nature that still appeals to our former sensuous life. This is why we are instructed to “put off” the old nature with its lusts and to “put on” the new nature created in God’s image (Eph. 4:22-24). The divine seed implanted within us struggles to fully come alive as God’s child: “This I say then, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Gal. 5:17-18).

You find life by the agency of the Holy Spirit that creates within you godly affections and desires that transcend the moral demands of the law given by Moses. This is ultimately a matter of faith in God’s transformation of your heart, not of your decision to abandon carnal pleasures and other selfish impulses. You have been crucified; you have died; your old life is buried, and now you are alive from the dead. When you “walk by the Spirit” you submit to being carried by God’s grace rather than trying to wrest control for your live based on your own efforts. The law of God is still “holy and just and good” but there is a paradigm shift that occurs at regeneration by which we “die to the law” and consequently relate to the law differently (Rom. 7:1-6). We respect God’s moral authority and affirm the verdict of the law, but we rest in peace regarding the law because of the salvation of Messiah.

The life of the spirit within us is not a matter of other-worldly speculation but something to be lived and experienced, and that means it is known in the midst of the fallen world of this realm. The “life I now live in the flesh,” is subject to the same mortal processes of decay and dissolution as does the “natural” man (i.e., the person governed by ψυχή, or the animal life of the σάρξ), though the difference is that the “spiritual” man has a new nature derived from God rather than the old nature received from Adam. This new nature unites us to Yeshua as the father and Savior of redeemed humanity: “As in Adam all die, so in Messiah all will be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). The life of the spirit does not uproot us from this transient realm but testifies of the reality and presence of the eternal while we live in the present vanity (Rom. 8:20-25).

“Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry. Keep not silent at my tears, for I am a stranger with you, and a sojourner as were all my fathers” (Psalm 39:12).

We overcome despair of the fallen world by seeking God and living by faith before his presence, and the test of our faith is to live this way even if we are to live and die as mere men. This is testified by the very incarnation of Yeshua himself, for he emptied himself by becoming a mortal man to unite mortal men with the deeper reality of God’s everlasting life, and his victory over death was evidenced by his passion to yield his life to God even through the sting of death itself.

So how do we live in light of this great salvation? How do we have “spiritual life” in Messiah? We find life by faith, “b’khol levavkha,” with all of our being. We accept the reality of who God is and we accept where we are embedded in this world. In all of circumstances we look to God who promises us the depths of eternal life and his undying love.

It is important to make peace with where we are and what we are doing, since this peace comes from having trusting God and surrendering to what he says is truth. This is where our faith is confessed and declared. Walking in the Spirit means living our lives right now, in this time and place, and with all the surrounding circumstances of our lives, before the presence of God. If we are not assured of God’s presence, if we fail to remember that God is “YHVH,” we cannot have confidence and peace in “the life that I now live in the flesh” (Gal. 2:20).

Therefore living the spiritual life means that we continually renew our minds by remembering the truth of who God says that we are. As is written: “LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart” (Psalm 15:1-2). We must “speak the truth in our hearts” to be kept awake in holy expectation for the revelation that is to come. As we meditate on the word of God, its promises are enlivened within us (Psalm 119:150). All of this leads us to earnest prayer, that is, turning our whole being before the LORD. When we bless God we join in the very songs of the angels. Prayer and worship connect us to the immediacy of God’s presence...

Renewing your mind forces you to break free from the deadening matrix of habit, routine, sloth, and the constancy of low expectations. It is an inner struggle to “make a place” within your heart to seek and encounter God. Making time to pray is to fight the good fight of faith.

Prayer is therefore essential, and it is our opportunity to bring our whole heart to God for healing and blessing. But prayer is only meaningful if it is honest and true. The Lord knows all our hidden faults, and “there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” However we have a Savior who knows all our struggles and intercedes on our behalf. “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:13-16).

Turning to God is only viable when we truly hope and believe that a personal relationship with God is both possible and indeed necessary for us. Just as we need God to know that we need God, so we need God to be able to pray to God. “Open thou my lips, and my mouth will show forth thy praise” (Psalm 51:15). If you pray but feel like you are not connecting to God, pray anyway and commit your yearning to God who knows all things. God is merciful and gracious and accepts us whenever we sincerely reach out for his hand (Psalm 16:8).

Faith in God is a matter of inner conviction that the Lord knows you and wants you to know that you are known as his beloved child. He has “beset you before and behind” and lays his hand upon you. Yea, even the number of the hairs of your head are all counted. You encounter his presence in your simplicity, in your frailties, and in the depths of your heart. The Lord sees you as you are and he blesses you in your hope. He is there for you always...

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Psalm 17:15

אֲנִי בְּצֶדֶק אֶחֱזֶה פָנֶיךָ
אֶשְׂבְּעָה בְהָקִיץ תְּמוּנָתֶךָ׃

“But in Your righteousness
I will behold Your face;
I will be complete
when I awaken in your likeness….”

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• Hebrew Study Page (pdf)

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Though we believe that God is everywhere and that “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), God is not experienced through objective observation but must be experienced inwardly, by means of the heart. This is true for two basic reasons. First, God literally cannot be experienced as an “object” both because we are unable to see him in his essence, and also because as the “Ground of Being” he is necessarily beyond the domain of objective measurement or “definite description.” Secondly, God is a spirit who “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see,” which again makes his infinite existence on a different plane altogether, beyond the horizon of human understanding. Therefore Scripture calls God “the King of eternity, immortal, invisible, and full of glory” (1 Tim. 1:17).

Now while we cannot directly see God, we can rationally discern or infer his existence though the effects of nature itself. “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1); “the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead” (Rom. 1:20; Rev. 4:11). Furthermore, God has “set eternity” within each human heart (Eccl. 3:11; Gen. 1:27) which provides inner witness to his reality as the Creator and Judge of all the world (Rom. 2:15).

This “general revelation,” as it has come to be called, has been expressed in various logical arguments for God’s existence over the years, including the “cosmological” argument (the universe exists because God is its first cause); the “teleological” argument (the universe displays purpose and intelligent design); the “ontological” argument (God is known intuitively by reflecting on the nature of existence itself); the “moral” argument (moral and aesthetic values indicate that right and wrong are grounded in God as the Lawgiver); the argument from religious experience (people encounter “transcendental” and spiritual meaning in life that points to God), and so on. In this present age, however, we see through “a glass darkly,” which means we see indirectly by means of analogy or “riddles,” and our language about God will therefore be analogical and incomplete. Faith is the “substance of hope” and the “conviction of the unseen” (Heb. 11:1) and the person of faith “sees the One who is invisible” (Heb. 11:27). It confesses that “we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1).

“Science,” defined to be an empirical inquiry of observed natural phenomena, is methodologically blind to God because God cannot be observed using its methods. In general science assumes that everything that happens in the world has “natural” (i.e., observable) causes and that experiments of specific observable instances are able to be used to form scientific generalizations. Scientific protocols attempt to guard against “hasty generalizations” by testing a number of samples and defining repeatable conditions that may be peer reviewed and confirmed, though I hasten to add that such observational corresponds are a form of inductive reasoning that is limited to forming probable and tentative conclusions, not to deductive certainty.

In general, the more observations of a correlation, the stronger the conclusion, and if a tested hypothesis suggests a constant correlation, it may be eventually accorded the status of being a “scientific law,” such as Newton’s three laws of motion. Nevertheless, even these “laws” are probable, since they are based on inductive logic, that is, they are grounded in individual observations or experiments, and we therefore cannot with certainty say that the future will resemble the past and conditions will necessarily apply to unobserved future instances.

This uncertainty is sometimes called the “problem of induction” and it is a problem because induction relies on assumptions about the uniformity of time and space that themselves are not observable using the tools of science itself. I should add that the problem of induction is not that science predicts outcomes or make inferences about cause and effect, but rather that it assumes axioms that must be unreflectively accepted and regarded objectively true to frame scientific conclusions. For instance, even though people have observed the sun rise every day, it is possible that it might not rise tomorrow. Likewise the observation of certain types of genetic mutations in plants or animals does not “prove” that it is the mechanism of evolutionary theory.

I believe that true scientific inquiry should understand its epistemological limitations and to acknowledge that its paradigms or models are inherently speculative and subject to revision (Thomas Kuhn). Epistemic humility is especially needed when science is employed as part of the medical industry to sell treatments, or when vaccines are “sold” as a remedy for viruses based on negligible subgroup sampling and outcomes that have weak (or no) statistical correlation to support such the marketing claims. As Karl Popper once wrote: “Science, like any other human aspiration, is liable to self-deception. If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.”

Today we live in an age of “scientism,” an ideology that (unreflectively) claims that the scientific method is the only sufficient arbiter and source of all truth. However it must be mentioned at the outset that the scientific method itself is based on the formulation of hypotheses (educated guesses) combined with controlled observations and testing to identify probable patterns of cause and effect relationships. It’s inherent logic is “if p then q, q, therefore p,” which is not a valid form of deductive reasoning. Nevertheless advocates of “scientism” routinely disregard these limitations and go on to formulate dogmas about metaphysical realities: “God, the universe, and everything.”

The claim that science is the only source of knowledge is itself not a scientific statement, of course, nor is the assumption that the scientific method is the “best” way to know things. Indeed saying so expresses a bias and commits the fallacy of assuming the truth of its own conclusion (“begging the question”). Do we need science to teach us what it means to love our children? To explain what beauty is? To feel our pain? To validate our dreams? In a way scientism repeats the ancient adage of the sophistical thinker Protagoras who said “Man is the measure of all things.” Scientism is not real science, of course, but a faith system that believes fantastic theories about the “salvation” of the human species or finding “utopian outcomes” that will come through the powers of science and its technocratic scientific overlords. This is the fantasy of Auguste Comte who sought to establish a “priesthood” of the scientific elite that would on day rule the world. It is a simplistic and reductionistic philosophy that disregards other modes of knowing “God, the universe, and everything.”

In the Scriptures we are instructed to “renew” our minds (Rom. 12:2), which implies questioning the assumptions of worldly culture and resisting the temptation to flow with “preconscious” acceptance of programmed ways of seeing and thinking. For instance, our culture inculcates various forms of profane thinking by assuming a godless worldview that criminalizes those who question social engineering and propaganda....

Sanity is found when we understand that science is essentially a faith system that unreflectively believes many metaphysical axioms, including assumptions about time (i.e., that the future will “resemble” the past), about motion (i.e., that natural processes are “uniform”), about space (that there is an “external world” that is accessible to the human mind); about causality (i.e., that one event “causes” another), about the capability of the mind to accurately represent reality (e.g., that measurement “makes traction” with the world and can be used to describe things); about values (i.e., that it is “better” to know rather than not to know; or that the scientific method is a “valid way” to develop inductive inferences, or that a given theory is “elegant,” and so on).

Note that none of these presuppositions are derived by scientific inquiry itself (which is based on evidence and repeatable empirical measurement), but are brought to science as assumptions used to frame or organize a particular “paradigms.” In other words, science assumes many things about what constitutes “reality,” but like any other faith system, it should be tested to see if its inferences provide the best explanation or if there are other ways of understanding things. For instance, does the naturalistic view of reality, that is, the metaphysical belief that all that exists is “matter in motion,” as assumed by evolutionary theorists sufficiently explain the complexity of life? Does it account, for instance, for the electromagnetic pulse of the individual human heart? Can it account for the incredible complexity of the eye, or for the aesthetic wonder of the beautiful? For ideals of justice? For poetry, or the longing of heart for love? for friendship? truth? for eternal life?

It is important to realize the real limits of scientific claims to knowledge and its interpretations of reality (as explained by Immanuel Kant). The mind has a framework that filters experience. True science is a humble endeavor because it realizes its conclusions are tentative and open to falsification; it is based on verifiable research that has undergone the rigors of peer-reviewed testing and cross-examination. However not all that is claimed to be such science deserves the title. For example consider that the theory of materialistic cosmology claims (without any empirical evidence) the “universe” inexplicably exploded into being out of absolutely nothing for no logical reason whatsoever. It should be obvious that if we define science as “the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena,” such a cosmological theory is not true science, since it is not based on the direct observation of how the universe originated. The “noumenal” realm of reality, that is. what things are “in themselves,” is something whereof science must be silent...

Pop culture ascribes to “science” powers it simply does not have, and many people today are unaware that secular science is a quasi-religious system grounded in philosophical assumptions that transcend the realm of scientific knowledge altogether. It is wise, therefore, when presented with a scientific claim that something is true, to respectfully ask for the logical reasons and the evidence (i.e., data sets, methodologies, etc.) for believing the a certain claim is justified. Remember that relying on self-professed testimonial is not sufficient warrant since such testimony may be biased or the data is falsified, as for example when pharmaceutical companies claim the efficacy of particular medications or vaccines. As a matter of fact, genuine scientific consensus is quite rare, and we should remember that genuine scientific knowledge is an ongoing endeavor that is “asymptotic,” that is forever approximating the description of what is true.

Modern experimental science is a relatively young field of study, and it was not long ago that “science” proved that the earth was flat, that leeches and bloodletting were ways to cure illnesses; that phrenology and lobotomies were means to cure mental illness, that “spontaneous generation” was true, that cold weather can make you sick; that bats are blind, that cigarettes are good for your health, and so on. It behooves us, then, to keep perspective and be wise by testing scientific truth claims, friends. If there are peer-reviewed studies that independently confirm the conclusion of a given hypothesis and that cross check that the data has not been falsified or “cooked,” then it is proper to respect the research and its findings, but scientific statements made by unqualified people (such as politicians, mass media pop stars, or even a former Microsoft CEO) should be rejected as fallacies of false authority.

Some people have become jaded over the complexities of epistemology and regard the value of science in “pragmatic” terms, saying that a scientific conclusion may be called “true” simply because it “works” to bring about desired outcomes. William James wrote about this in his book on pragmatism where he said that “truth” only means that something has practical or “cash-value” in human experience. Of course this begs questions about what is a “good” or desired outcome (these may be very different things), and whether there is an obligation to prescribe utilitarian principles at all. Does the state have the right to enforce that a secular humanist and evolutionary worldview must be taught to young children in public schools because it of its practical benefits of controlling individuality and religious convictions? Do utilitarian principles apply to social, political, and religious ideas, and if so, is it a form of censorship to enforce “tolerance” as a means of social control and compliance? Is there really a “calculus” to determine the “greatest good for the greatest number of people,” and even if there is (which I doubt), does this not imply that the good of the majority is always the best?

As I hope you can see, science is not godlike in its power: it is neither omnipresent nor omnipotent, nor is it the exclusive domain of substantive knowledge about “God, the universe and everything.” Indeed there are other ways of knowing things that must be taken into account for the sake of understanding the whole picture about how we know things. Appeals to intuition, mystical awareness, spiritual experiences, the apprehension of beauty, the testimony of conscience - both good and evil - are inherent to the human condition. The careful study of history likewise can attest to the historicity of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead. Spirituality cannot be reduced to physics and biochemistry without being absurd. The secularist who claims that cosmic evolutionary theory is scientifically true is therefore absurd, for a moment’s reflection shows that origin of the universe is not based on observation but at best is a speculative story devised to account for being, time, and change without reference to the Creator of the universe...

I did not intend this to be a “deep dive” into epistemology (i.e., the study of how we can know things) or the philosophy of science (the study of how science attempts to justify its thinking), but merely to point out that any theory of reality that forgets or suppresses the existence of God is doomed to be wrong. Honest science may provide knowledge and applied technologies, but it cannot provide wisdom; it may believe that knowledge is good, but it cannot say why without philosophical justification; it can produce various technologies, but it cannot prescribe how to ethically use them; it may fantasize about utopia, nirvana, or eternal life, but it is powerless to find it.

Allow me to go a bit further in a different direction. True science, that is science conscious of its limitations, can discover facts that ultimately point to God. For example, the third law of Newton states that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” and this gives reason to believe that everything that exists has a cause for its existence. The universe itself exists, so it requires a cause to explain its being. Why is there something rather than nothing at all? If time is “infinite,” how did the state of the universe arrive at this moment? The idea of a Creator of the universe is therefore a rational belief, perhaps even self-evidently true, that coheres with the observation of the physics of the universe. Of course the existence of God is something beyond the scope of empirical observation, but biology, mathematics, physics, and cosmology discover “fine-tuning” of the universe and its precise calibrations that allow for the existence of life. The astounding intricacy of gravity, magnetism, the distance of the earth from the sun, the viable atmosphere of the earth, etc., all are examples that indicate divine intelligence and design rather than the “randomness and chaos” that would result from an impersonal and inexplicable “big bang” and the happenstance of matter in motion. This same intelligent design is evidenced in biological systems, especially on the molecular level.

The Christian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) indicated the limits of science by restricting it to the realm of phenomena, shifting the focus of knowledge away from objects to the role of the observing subject. What is observed is constrained by how the mind imposes “categories” that inform the apprehension of sense of space, time, and causality in the world. Kant believed that this is part of being created in the image of God (i.e., be’tzelem Elohim: בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים) wherein the structures of the mind enable us to find correspondence between our language and reality. There are indeed limitations to how we can know, however, as the “thing in itself” (German: Ding an sich) is hidden from us, though God has endowed human beings with practical reason to be able to live and to navigate intelligibly in this world.

Kant’s famous “three questions,” namely “What can I know?” “What ought I do?” and “What may I hope?” all concern what it means to be a human being, and each of these questions are answered from beyond the scope of the scientific method. Kant appealed to the inner sense of awe and wonder of life as evidence for the presence of God. He wrote: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the most often we steadily reflect on them: the starry heaven above and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence” (Critique of Practical Reason).

Science purports to value truth, but it is powerless to reveal the reverence for what is most important about life itself. Kant’s appeal is not to abstract knowledge but to the intuitions of the heart that are basic to human existence.

The Scriptures state: “The awe of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Prov. 9:10). The one essential truth from which there is no escape is the fact of God, and yet, like father Abraham, we must choose to see what is invisible in order to discern what real. Each of us must “come to himself,” that is, turn and reconnect to our spiritual essence, our identity, and our heart (Luke 15:17). We have to start the journey there, because ultimate reality is intensely personal, being grounded in the “who-ness” of God. It is within the consciousness of our own “I am,” our deepest identity as a personal, thinking, and feeling being, that we are able to relate to the person and heart of the great “I AM” of the LORD.

Abraham is the exemplar of faith for us and indeed is called the “father of faith” (Isa. 51:1-2; Rom. 4:16; Gal. 3:29). Abraham courageously searched for God in his emptiness, and God graciously answered the cry of his heart. He left everything behind as he journeyed into the realm of promise - regarding himself as someone chosen to know God’s blessing and grace. He was able to “walk by faith” because he stopped listening to the worldly and unbelieving parts of himself - and therefore he was able to hear and to see God’s truth. As we receive light, more light will be given (John 13:17).

“You compass my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways” (Psalm 139:3). Quite literally. God is present; His name YHVH (יהוה) means this very thing. All of life, all of existence, bears witness to his power, his beauty, and his goodness. We see it in the stars; we feel it in the evening breeze; we ache for it in our heart’s cry for love, for mercy, for home. “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of Hosts (יהוה צְבָאוֹת), all the earth is filled with his glory” (Isa. 6:3).

The French philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal once wrote in his Pensees: “The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of,” and he added that “the last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.” Human intuition, our feelings, a sense of wonder and awe, our personal encounters with the Spirit of God, and our hope for ultimate meaning, all provide us with genuine understanding that is not accessible through pure logic and rational thought alone.

We encounter God’s presence when we reverently read the Bible and when we earnestly pray. We hear God whisper to our hearts and His Spirit comforts us. We sense him in our deepest hopes and fears; we glimpse his glory as we surrender to the beauty of a sunset or feel the expanse of the sea; we feel his heart as we embrace our spouse or hug our children; we know his care as we tend our pains, sigh our heartaches, and find hope despite the fragility of our waning days. And we know him in our resolute conviction that one day we shall rejoice with unspeakable joy as we are taken “beyond the veil” of this mortal world to there behold Him face to face... Amen.

Psalm 19:1-2

הַשָּׁמַיִם מְסַפְּרִים כְּבוֹד־אֵל
וַּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדָיו מַגִּיד הָרָקִיעַ׃
יוֹם לְיוֹם יַבִּיעַ אֹמֶר
וְלַיְלָה לְּלַיְלָה יְחַוֶּה־דָּעַת׃

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“The heavens declare
the glory of God,
and the sky above
proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day
pours out speech
and night to night
reveals his knowledge.”

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­For a pdf download of this post, click here.

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“For when the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are nevertheless a law unto themselves. They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts, as their conscience bears witness...” - Rom. 2:14-15 

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In the Torah we discover a special verse that identifies the struggle we all have with sin in our lives. It appears early in the book of Genesis concerning God’s appeal to Adam and Eve’s firstborn son Cain, who was envious of his brother Abel. When Cain was upset because God had “looked upon” (i.e., accepted) Abel’s offering of a lamb but had overlooked his own offering of fruit, he was angry and became “downcast.” We then read: “So the LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? and why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not find acceptance? But if you do not do well, sin lurks at the door; its desire is for you, yet you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:6-7). Sadly Cain did not learn how to rule over the anger that lurked at the door of his heart, and he later murdered his brother Abel...

God makes the same appeal to each of us: “Why are you so angry? Why are you downcast? If you do well, will you not find acceptance? But if you do not do well, sin lurks at the door; its desire is for you, yet you must rule over it.” Amen, we say, but how are we to understand this admonition? How can we to overrule anger and sin within our own hearts?

Let’s think this through a bit. First we know that sin is doing what is contrary to God’s will (1 John 3:4), and we also know that God has endowed the soul with a “conscience” that convicts us when we do something wrong (Rom. 2:15). When we realize that we have sinned we feel down, or have a “fallen face” (פָּנִים נָפלוֹת). When we feel ashamed if we do something wrong, we should understand that this painful feeling is meant to correct us and turn us back to the good.

The conscience is a great gift from heaven because it serves as an intuitive or inner guide that instructs us about what is right and what is wrong -- and how we should live our lives. Indeed, both the Hebrew word for “conscience” (i.e., matzpun: מַצְפוּן) and the word for “compass” (i.e., matzpen: מַצְפֵן) come the root idea of a hidden source of guidance (צפן) that will direct the way we should go. The Greek word for “conscience” used in the New Testament is “sun-eideisis” (συνείδησις), a word that means perceiving something in relation to a known standard of measurement, particularly knowing the rightness or wrongness of an action in light of God’s moral law that is intuitively disclosed within the heart (Rom. 2:15). Conscience is the awareness of moral truth; it is part of the image of God within us that is grounded in divine logic and reason. The Apostle Paul testified that he relied upon the “inner light” of conscience to guide his behavior. He wrote: “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men” (Acts 24:16). The conviction of the conscience bears witness to the Spirit of Truth (Rom. 9:1).

Conscience serves as an inner witness (עֵד פְּנִימִי) of the LORD God our Creator, who demands that we live as righteous people according to the direction (i.e., torah) of his moral authority. All people intuitively know they are morally accountable for what they do, but not everyone lives consciously before the divine Presence, in dialog with his or her conscience. Disregarding the voice of conscience is to disregard God, and conversely listening to its voice is to related to him. In this connection Kierkegaard said: “To have a conscience is to have a relationship in which you, as a single individual, relate yourself to yourself before God,” by which he meant that our consciousness of moral reality, and our inner dialog within ourselves, is the mode by which we come to know ourselves before God.

When moral truth is suppressed or denied, however, or when conviction for sin is dismissed or ignored, a terrible thing begins to happen. The soul itself goes into exile and becomes deranged. If one good deed leads to another, so one sin leads to another, but a life of ongoing sin that is repeatedly denied or suppressed produces a spiritually lethal state wherein God may “give the soul over” to its godless desires and its chosen inner darkness (Rom. 1:28). A “seared conscience” is one that is no longer able to detect the prompting of the inner voice of moral truth. Such a conscience is “cauterized” and made dead to the truth.

Tragically we see the effect of a seared conscience in our world every day. Hatred, rage, acts of murder; anarchy, mass shootings, sexual perversion and violence, addictions, obsessions, and so on, are all prevalent in a godless world that has lost its ability to know what is right and what is wrong. The unbridled practice of sin is a life of insanity. The ongoing deception of political, educational, scientific, and other leaders inevitably evokes divine judgment on cultures that scorn the need for godly virtue. It is hardheartedness and inner depravity that seeks to justify the abolition of shame at the price of honesty and truth... The Bible warns us of false teachers who are mouthpieces of evil, and the world system is filled with such teachers who suppress the truth for the violence of the lie. Think of the deceptive mass media and its systematic practice of disseminating lies... Since they implicitly refuse the truth of God in their thinking,” they are false teachers who deceive others.

Sin “lurks at the door” waiting for the heart to open to its lying seductions. In Jewish thinking, the inner urge to sin, what Christians sometimes call the carnal “sin nature,” is personified as an alien force that desires access to your soul. This evil impulse to do what is wrong is called the “yetzer ha’ra” (יֵצֶר הַרַע), or the imagination of evil. The sages came up with the term as they discussed the phrase “the imagination of the heart of man [is] evil” (יֵצֶר לֵב הָאָדָם רַע) during Noah’s generation (Gen. 6:5, Gen. 8:21). The phrase “yetzer lev” is a general term that refers to the imagination that inclines the will, whether to do good or to do bad. For instance, yetzer lev can refer to both the imaginative urge of a potter before he forms a vessel, and it can refer to the form of a graven image or idol. The Jewish concept of yetzer ha’ra is often thought to be a weakness of the soul that is liable to the urge to do something evil. This is similar to the Christian idea regarding our inherited “sin nature,” or the indwelling desire to sin, that must be “mortified” by faith in God’s deliverance.

In the New Testament, however, the struggle with evil goes beyond the Jewish idea of inner wrestling with the yezer ha’ara, for therein we learn that the devil (השטן) walks about as a roaring lion, seeking to “devour” human souls (1 Pet. 5:8), and this picture goes beyond the idea that evil is the result of fallen sinful nature alone. Recall that our verse reads: “sin lurks at the door; its desire is for you, yet you must rule over it,” and this personification suggests that there exists an alien force that seeks access to the human heart in order to entice its sinful nature in contempt of God’s moral law. “It’s desire is for you” can also be read as “his desire is for you” (אֵלֶיךָ תְּשׁוּקָתוֹ), and that is what the devil does, after all: he “devours souls” -- he hungers for them to join him in his lost estate of perdition...

The Lord promises us victory over both our own inclination to sin as well as the outright temptations of the devil if we will sincerely yield to him: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:7-8). Put on the armor of God (Eph. 6:11-18). “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man, but God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted above what you are able to bear; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape (τὴν ἔκβασιν), that you may have strength (i.e., δύναμις) to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

If a “seared conscience” is one that is unfeeling and dead to moral truth, a godly conscience is one that is tender, sensitized, and fully alive to moral reality. We can learn to heighten our awareness of moral truth by means of the study of Scripture, as it says “All Scripture is given by the breath of God (i.e.,θεόπνευστος) and is profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). Of course Yeshua is our Lord, our Master and our guide, and therefore we should study his words about the righteousness of the law, the rule of the kingdom, our duty to practice works of love, and so on. The traditional study of Jewish ethics, called “musar” (מוּסָר) can also provoke us think about how to live our lives as tzaddikim, or righteous people (Psalm 1:1-3).

The Hebrew word “chinukh” (חִנּוּךְ), “education,” shares the same root as the word “chanukah” (חֲנֻכָּה), meaning “dedication.” Unlike the Greek view that regards education as a pragmatic process of improving one’s personal power or happiness, the Jewish idea implies dedication to God and the willingness to be partners with Him on the earth. Disciples of Yeshua are therefore called “talmidim” (תַּלְמִידִים) -- a word that comes from “lamad” (לָמַד) meaning “to learn” (the Hebrew word for teacher is “melamad” (מְלַמֵּד) from the same root). In the New Testament, the word “disciple” is μαθητής, a learner or a pupil of a διδάσκαλος, or a teacher. I mention all this because true education is foundational to being a disciple of the Messiah, and moral education is a large part of that education.

Let us go back to where we started: “If you do well, will you not find acceptance?” The Hebrew for “do well” here (i.e., yahtav: יָטַב) means to be glad or joyful, to have inner peace and confidence because our conscience attests that we are approved of God. We will then find “acceptance,” or she’eit (שְׂאֵת), a word that comes from the verb “nasa” (נָשָׂא) meaning to be lifted up or elevated. When we honor God’s truth, we will experience true self-acceptance because God himself will lift up our hearts. And that is the source of our power to withstand temptations of sin, namely knowing that God has accepted us and gives us his shalom. We turn to God and know Him as the “friend of sinners” who loves us with everlasting love and calls us to live in the truth of that love...

O precious Lord, “cause me to me hear your lovingkindness in the morning, for in You do I trust; cause me to know the way I should go, for I lift up my soul to you.” Amen.
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Psalm 143:8

הַשְׁמִיעֵ֫נִי בַבֹּ֫קֶר חַסְדֶּ֫ךָ
כִּי־בְךָ בָטָ֫חְתִּי
הוֹדִיעֵ֫נִי דֶּרֶ֫ךְ־זוּ אֵלֵךְ
כִּי־אֵלֶ֫יךָ נָשָׂ֫אתִי נַפְשִׁי׃

“Cause me to me hear
your lovingkindness in the morning,
for in You do I trust.
Cause me to know
the way I should go,
for I lift up my soul unto you.”
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• Psalm 143:8 Reader page (pdf)

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Have you ever met a truly “surrendered” person? Someone who is completely yielded to God, happily unconcerned with their own will, delivered from all earthly fears and entirely at peace with whatever happens?

I once knew such as person many years ago when I was attending seminary. He was a missionary to Japan, soft-spoken, gentle, and fully awake to God’s presence. You could sense his surrender in the little things, the petty inconveniences that come up -- not so much by what he said but by what he let pass him by. To an outsider he might mistakenly have been thought to be a shy or passive person, or a perhaps a man of Stoic resignation, but going deeper than superficialities you would sense that he was alive and awake to God’s presence -- not in some self-serving way -- but in the depths of quiet serenity that attended his spirit.

Now let’s consider the patriarch Abraham, surely the ideal example of a surrendered soul in all the Torah. Behold the man. Imagine the depths of his surrender! What was his secret of his strength? Everything he wanted in his life was embodied in his son who lay bound upon the altar. Isaac was Abraham’s world. His dream. His hope. His religion. All of the promises of God were bound up in Isaac as the leather ropes that tightly bound his hands and feet. Abraham’s life flashed before his eyes. His mind was spinning as he remembered the starry night sky and the promise, “So shall your seed be....”

It was all so incredible, impossible, and surreal. And yet it all led to this moment. The call to leave everything behind and go to an unknown land; the various tests he faced over the long years; the moments of unspeakable joy, of seeing God, hearing his promises, his laughter, his song; and moments of sorrow, loss, and fear. After it was all said and done, there was nothing left of him other than who he was in relation to the Lord, and nothing else -- not even his dearest hope and dream - mattered in comparison.

There was no fear in his heart as Abraham lifted up the knife that would slay all his worldly hope and dreams, no fear, because he had seen the LORD, he was already as one dead yet made alive in the presence of God, and that presence spoke a deeper truth than whatever worldly any circumstance could say (Rev. 1:17). Abraham “hoped against hope” because the deeper hope was beyond any worldly hope that might have been imagined. Abraham was lifted up into the countless stars again, in another realm, beyond the pale of whatever might be seen, and it was that vision that gave him courage to believe despite the apparent insanity of the situation.

But let’s not forget the great surrender of Isaac, too, who willingly allowed himself to be bound by his father, their “hineini” love uniting them in God’s presence. The midrash portrays Isaac asking his father to tighten the bonds that held him as their eyes locked in love for one another. The tears of Abraham fell from his eyes into Isaac’s eyes; their well of tears filled by an unspeakable yearning.

We perhaps tend to pass by the story too quickly and “read back into” what had happened, how the Angel of the LORD intervened to stop the sacrifice and to provide the lamb to take Isaac’s place, and we are surely amazed that God provided the lamb which Abraham lifted up for a burnt offering “in place of” his son (Gen. 22:13). It was then that Abraham was rejoined with “resurrected” Isaac, as if receiving him back from the dead (Heb. 11:17-19). Recall that Abraham reflected and called the place of sacrifice “Adonai Yireh” (יְהוָה יִרְאֶה), “the LORD who sees,” or “the LORD who provides,” and Moses commented that it is so called to this day: “In the mountain of the LORD it shall be provided” (Gen. 22:14), prophetically referring to the place where Yeshua was lifted up as the true Lamb of God.

This is of course the “gospel” of Moses, and we take note that Abraham offered there his “only begotten” son, the one whom he especially loved, for the sacrifice, and we further note that this is the first place in the Torah where the word “love” (אהבה), meaning “he will give” (א + הב), appears. There is a great peace when we let go of everything in our hearts (everything) and give ours lives over to the care of God.

But is it possible for mere mortals, those frail human beings among us who are filled with fear, doubt, and shame, to do such things? Some people trivialize the idea by thinking of surrender as a sort of “diet,” or the self-abnegation of practiced denial. And while it’s true there is a sort of denial involved in true surrender, it is not the self-denial of a Hindu yogi nor the resolve of a Stoic philosopher who gives up all worldly desire in order to find the courage to face one’s fate.

Surrender is a paradoxical sort of “work” in that it is accomplished in the repose of trust, not in the strivings of the physical body. It is believing that whatever you really are is a witness to something Wonderful, beyond your understanding, and utterly worthy of your full attention. It is the “shalom from above,” given freely as you look away from yourself to encounter something so strikingly beautiful and glorious that everything else becomes as “dust and ashes.”

But what is surrender in practical terms? Is it an attitude of mind and heart that gives up whatever it may otherwise want? Well that may be a “negative” aspect or side of surrender, the “giving up” or “letting go” side, but full surrender goes beyond the idea of self-denial to enter into the truth of God’s presence, and that marks the resurrection of heart to newness of life. So on the other side of denial, death, and harrowing loss is acceptance, life, and unspeakably great gain!

Surrender is a letting go of our illusions, our worldly desires, our attachments, and indeed whatever and however we may regard ourselves, in order to know God’s love, strength, and sufficiency. It is really a form of “teshuvah,” turning away from the darkness to the light, forgetting yourself in order to know yourself in relation to God’s blessing and presence. Such surrender releases you from all manner of worldly fear as you are “transported” into the realm of divine beauty and truth. You are reborn by God’s Spirit - the breath and atmosphere of God’s love and grace suffuse your heart and inner life.

If you find yourself “stuck” to your attachments, whether they are ideals or dreams or even your vision of what God is like, you can pray and ask the Holy Spirit to release you from what holds your heart captive. When by miracle you surrender your will to God, letting God to be God, you will sense perfect peace that passes all your understanding. Amen, and may the LORD help us all find ourselves in the truth of his heart and will for whatever we may be.

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Psalm 73:25-26

מִי־לִי בַשָּׁמָיִם וְעִמְּךָ לֹא־חָפַצְתִּי בָאָרֶץ׃
כָּלָה שְׁאֵרִי וּלְבָבִי צוּר־לְבָבִי וְחֶלְקִי אֱלֹהִים לְעוֹלָם׃

• Hebrew page pdf

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In solitary moments you may wonder if your life has any significance and purpose, especially when you consider the infinite sweep of the cosmos, the vast diversity of life in this world, the epochs of human history which have preceded you, and your place in the grand scheme of things. Does your life matter?

You believe the Lord God is real and the Scriptures are true, but you are unsure of how to live in the ambiguity of the moment. You are not yet in heaven but groan as you await the redemption of this world. You find yourself between the real and the ideal, between the transient shadows of this life and the abiding substance of hope.

You find yourself a bystander at the graveside of the material world. You have one eye on the grave and the other on your heavenly home. But in light of this dualism or “two-tiered” metaphysic, how are you meaningfully connected with both? We live but we die: we die but we live...

The Scriptures clearly teach that each of us are part of the “divine idea,” that is, part of God’s overarchingly glorious story of the meaning and purpose of life. It cannot be conceived otherwise once you understand that God is the Lord over every moment of everything in every possible world, that He is the great Sovereign of the universe, the One who upholds all things by the word of His power. “In Him we live and move and have our being,” as the ancient poets rightly said (Acts 17:28).

This means, among other things, that everything has eternal significance, that nothing is trivial, and that the Lord is here now, fully present — even if you may feel lonely or overwhelmed. This is because God personally upholds whatever exists by his invincible will (Heb. 1:3). “By him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him, he is before all things, and by him all things consist (Col. 1:16-17). The Lord cares for the birds of the air and tends to the hidden lilies of the field…

The heart of faith makes the audacious claim that we are seen, known, and upheld by the Living God. The cross of Yeshua is the intersecting point, because the meaning of the cross is reveals that God is always here for us always our redeemer, our healer, and our deepest need... We are tethered to God in this world.

The great Apostle Paul wrote: “I have been crucified with Messiah, nevertheless I live (ζῶ δε), yet not I (οὐκέτι ἐγώ) but Messiah lives in me (ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ χριστός). And now the life I live in my mortal flesh (ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκι) I live by the faith of the Son of God (ἐν πίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεου) - the One who loved me and who gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). This breathtaking statement defines the essence of our relationship with God given in Yeshua the Lord and Messiah. Among other things this teaches that my true self - that is, the self redeemed by God’s love - is the “Christ-in-me” self, the “I” that I am in relationship with Christ, and this life is founded upon the reality of Yeshua who personally mediates my life with the life of God.

It is the faith of Yeshua that enables the heart to trust that your life has great significance and value. When he “gave himself for me,” he believed that his intercession would redeem my life and impart to me a new type of existence, a new “I” that would forever be healed by his mercy and love. Indeed and shockingly wonderful is the truth that our lives are so important to God that he took the curse of our shame upon himself and overcame it with his compassion and blessing... Your life is redeemed by God’s love, held fast by the bonds of his outstretched arms for you upon the cross as he says your name and knows your deepest need for love. “I am crucified with Christ” means Christ is crucified for me. My “being with” Christ on the cross is based on his “being with” me during his crucifixion.

In light of this amazing and outrageous truth we know that we can never be truly alone, for God upholds every moment of our lives and there never is a time or place where the Lord is not present (יהוה). Yes, we may sometimes feel alone, forgotten, angry, afraid, and so on, but these thoughts and feelings are “vestiges” of the ignorance, illusion, and unreality of our former life, memories of the “living dead,” and therefore they are derived from the false life of demonic despair. If we cling to our fears and sorrows we lose sight of what is real and distance ourselves from God. We then become “double minded” (δίψυχος, “two-souled”) and unstable in our lives and risk falling away from the blessing of the new life God gives to us. We risk this because we have denied being the “I” in dialog with the truth of God’s love, and that means we relapse back to be the lost “I” of faithlessness.

If you have trouble believing you are really loved, or that your life has value and meaning and eternal significance, go back to the cross. Consider the faith of God that yielded his life so that you could live; meditate upon the passion of Yeshua who suffered in the dark cloud, utterly forsaken while groaning in intercession that you would be healed of your despair. Faith dares to believe that Yeshua saw you then, that he knew your name before you were born and he came for you — crying out in anguish for you to be delivered from your deepest fear — that you are really nothing, that you are unlovable, that you are forever cursed...

Beloved friend, you are seen, you are loved, you are wanted, and you truly have peace with God because of the one who loved you and gave himself for you. Amen.

“I am crucified with Christ.” This is the end of your “alone-in-me” self, the lost self of despair, the seeming “life” you lived apart from the intervention of the divine love that delivers you from the nightmare of bondage to yourself. This “I” died in judgment as it was carried and borne by the grace of God that suffered on your behalf. “Nevertheless I live.” This is the new life, regenerated to be in relationship with the truth of God’s love, the “I” that is known and healed by God’s overcoming power that raises undoes the curse, raises the dead to life, and gives you an everlasting inheritance as the beloved of God. Hallelujah!

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Jeremiah 31:3

וְאַהֲבַת עוֹלָם אֲהַבְתִּיךְ
עַל־כֵּן מְשַׁכְתִּיךְ חָסֶד

“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.”

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Some people tend to blame God for their troubles. They get angry. They ask “Why me?” Their hearts turns hard and they become bitter over the course of their lives... I suppose such people assume that if they are generally well-mannered and occasionally help others, they have the “right” to expect a life of relative ease, but if that does happen, they feel disappointed with God. As Tevye ironically said to God (in the Fiddler on the Roof): “It may sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. After all, with Your help, I'm starving to death.”

There are other cases, however, when a person may sincerely struggle with anger and disappointment with God, such as during a time of great tragedy and personal loss. Questions can arise from the conviction that God is ultimately responsible for whatever happens in our lives – both the good and the bad, and this can lead to confusion and anger over what has happened. The reasoning behind the conviction that God is responsible goes something like this. God has all power; he could prevent anything from happening, but he did not prevent this thing (i.e., tragedy) from happening. Having the power to prevent something from happening and choosing not to do so is to allow that thing to happen. Therefore since God allowed this to happen, he is responsible for its occurrence.

Now some might want to defend God by saying that he cannot prevent some things from happening, for instance, he cannot prevent the free choices of moral agents, so he is unable to intervene and stop their occurrence. Indeed there are many things that Almighty God cannot do. For instance, God cannot make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it; he cannot make a four-sided triangle; he cannot lie or commit suicide; and he cannot overrule the will of free moral agents without violating the essence of what makes them responsible for what they do. Therefore God is not responsible for the evil actions of others.

However, even if we concede that God cannot overrule the will of free moral agents, it does not explain why God permits other tragedies such as natural disasters, accidents, diseases, famines, birth defects, and so on to occur. After all, God is in the “midst of the whirlwind” and controls all the “natural” forces of creation. He is the LORD of Creation, the author of reality, and by his power he upholds all things. Events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, plagues, and famines are part of the created order, though this order has somehow been affected by the “fall” of mankind with the loss of the original vision and goal for the creation (Rom. 8:20). Consequently the natural world is dangerous, difficult, unpredictable, and tragic, though it nevertheless is under God's supervision and control.

So in light of all this, we can infer that bad things - tragic things - happen to people in this life, and, as the Book of Job clearly teaches, some of these bad things are not the direct result of moral or spiritual failure on behalf of a moral agent, but instead are part of the “warp and woof” of life as we sojourn our days. This seems to imply, as H.W. Beecher once said, that “suffering is part of the divine idea,” since, as noted above, God is the Sovereign Master over creation who is ultimately responsible for all that happens.

Now it is commonplace that human reason objects at this arrangement of the universe and does not want to submit to the kingship of God. It argues that life is not fair; that fate seems arbitrary, and that the threat of random and unpredictable tragedy evokes anxiety and pain for people. It asks: Are we safe in the universe or not? If both the good and the bad alike undergo the same troubles, does it ultimately matter how we live?

The apostle Paul anticipates this objection of reason by going even further - by reminding us that God will have mercy on those whom he will have mercy, and he will have compassion on those whom he will have compassion (Exod. 33:19; Rom. 9:15). Since every human being is a sinner indebted to God, it is his prerogative to forgive the debt or not (Matt. 20:15). God is not to be blamed for showing mercy to others, after all.

To illustrate the divine prerogative, Paul brought up the choice of Jacob rather than Esau to be the heir of the family (and therefore of the Messiah). He wrote: “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calls, it was said unto her (Rebecca): ‘The elder shall serve the younger’” (Rom. 9:11-12). This pretty much settles the issue, doesn't it? Before the children were born - before they had done any good or evil that might warrant or justify the choice, Paul says that it was God's purpose and intent to choose Jacob to be the heir of God's people, and not Esau (Rom. 9:13).

Of course Paul foresees the difficulty human reason might have with God's seeming preferential treatment of Jacob by writing, “You will say to me then, ‘Why does God still find fault? For who can resist his will?’” (Rom. 9:19). And the answer to these rhetorical questions is “no one.” “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?” (Rom. 9:20-21). The point here is simple: God is sovereign over all things; his thoughts are not like our thoughts; yet whatever he does is flawless and right: “The LORD is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are justice; He is a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deut. 32:4). So whatever we say about God's sovereignty, his foreknowledge, his election, his predestination, and so on, must be contextualized in the truth that God's ways are perfect, and there is no fault in him... We simply cannot appeal to a higher standard of justice by which to judge God, since God is the transcendental source and ground of the very idea of justice itself...

But still.... we suffer, and life hurts. And if suffering is part of God's overarching plan for creation, if it is part of the “divine idea,” then how do we learn to emotionally accept it without becoming bitter? How can we resist the temptation to blame God for our troubles?

Well perhaps we might ask why God chose to create Adam and Eve in the first place, particularly when he foreknew their transgression, their exile from the garden, the forfeiture of human dominion to Satan, and the curse that would befall all of creation. God foreknew not only the suffering of humanity but also his own suffering as he later sacrificed his own life upon the cross in order to redeem the dominion back to humanity and to reconcile his justice and mercy for his alienated children (Rom. 3:23-25; Psalm 85:10; Heb. 9:12; Heb. 10:10). God's plan for the ages was to demonstrate his glory as not just our Creator but as our Redeemer and Healer, and that implies that we needed to be created, redeemed, and healed by Him. As the sages have said: “We descend in order to ascend,” which means that we first learn of our lost condition and our need for deliverance before we are raised up into newness of life. The sages have also said "God creates the cure before the plague," suggesting that he arranged the way for our healing before he began the work of creation itself. Therefore Yeshua is called the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8; 1 Pet. 1:20). We are in the "school of suffering" intended to teach us truth we could never have learned any other way: the truth of God's truth, the truth of compassion, the truth of our desperate need for forgiveness, healing, and sacrificial love.

Emotionally speaking, we must “forgive God” for creating us in the first place, by accepting his will that we are here for a reason - a divine purpose - and that purpose ultimately is for our good. This is part of "enduring ourselves" by looking beyond ourselves to accept a greater vision of the meaning of life. We "forgive" God by letting go of our (usually subconscious) demands to be something other than what we are, and that means giving up hard feelings of disappointment, bitterness, and rage over things we cannot change. We must abandon the need to "justify our existence" on our own terms. In that sense "forgiving God" is a way of forgiving ourselves, since holding on to our hurts, either by self-pity or blaming others, chains the pain to our hearts, enslaving us to anger.

I realize it may seem almost ludicrous or even blasphemous to say to God, “I forgive you for what you have done - or what you have allowed to be done - to me,” but if you are emotionally reacting to God in terms of being a victim, you must first begin there. Martin Heidegger regards the brute fact of our existence to instill a sense of “thrownness” in relation to the world. After all, we were not asked to be born into this world, with the particular parents and DNA we have, at this particular time and historical circumstance, and so on, so in a way we are “victims” (or recipients) of God’s sovereign will that orders and decrees all things. This is part of the birth trauma we never outlive. (As an aside, understand that an existential atheist (like Sartre) suffers from his own birth trauma as well: conscious before a mute and unthinking mechanistic universe that ineluctably determines all things, his life is a "protest" against being enslaved to irrational forces, and the only "choice" he has is how to define meaning for himself in a lonely and indifferent world of his own making.)

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From the human point of view, we are “thrown” into the world without our consent; our descent to this world is a “fallenness” and we find ourselves alienated and lost. God's grace is realized when we "come to ourselves" and turn back to the sacrificial source and blessing of our lives. Because we are all radically contingent beings, that is, our existence is not intrinsically necessary, in a sense we are all "victims," and the only question therefore is whether we are willing to become a sacrificial victim on behalf of God and his redemptive mission for the world or to become a lost soul who refuses to accept the reason of our existence. When we genuinely reconnect with the Lord who entered into our pathos and spiritual sickness by sacrificing himself for our healing, we are enabled to give of ourselves to others for their healing.

“Forgiving God” requires faith, however, namely faith that God's decision to create you is for good rather than evil, or minimally that it is better for you to have been created than never to have been born. In that sense forgiving God represents an affirmation of your life and its value. Whether this is the “best of all possible worlds” is an abstract question for speculative theology, but where we live, in the raw and messy struggles of life, in the midst of our joys and elations, but also in our darkness and pain, we need faith to believe that our existence has some meaning and purpose, that our lives carry some significance, and that not everything is hevel havalim, "vanity of vanities." Asking whether it would have been better had you never been born is not a trivial question, then, and indeed the ancient Hebrew prophets Job, Solomon, Jeremiah, and Jonah each wrestled with it in the course of their lives (Eccl. 4:1-3; Job 3:1-3; 10:19; Jer. 20:14; Jonah 4:3).

The early Jewish sages also argued whether life was worth living. In light of the ongoing wickedness of humanity, the sages Hillel and Shammai engaged in a machlochet le’shamayim (a debate for the sake of heaven) regarding whether it would have been better for humans not to have been created at all. Hillel argued that it was better that humans had been created, whereas Shammai argued the other way. Finally a vote was called for and the decision rendered was this: It would have been better for humans not to have been created than to have been created. However, since we do in fact exist, we must search our past deeds and carefully examine what we are about to do (Eruvin 13b).

For many people, however, perhaps most, the question of whether life is worth living is never urgently raised. They seem relatively happy and go about their lives one day at a time. They seem to be asleep to the deeper things of life until they are touched by misfortune or tragedy. For others, however, the question of whether life is worth living haunts their days, as Albert Camus once wrote: “The only philosophical question is suicide,” suggesting his own misgivings on the matter. Of course everyone may occasionally find themselves depressed because of troubles and suffering in their lives. For example, the death of a loved one, the betrayal of a marriage partner, a diagnosis of a terminal sickness, and so on often lead to dark questions regarding the value of life.

Those who are emotionally or spiritually constituted (or perhaps sufficiently wounded) to probe the depths of questions others take for granted may regularly experience feelings of isolation, loneliness, grief and sorrow. In his Gifford Lectures on the Varieties of Religious Experience, Philosopher William James one said:

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This may seem counter-intuitive to you, since, as James also affirmed: “How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure,” and yet there is a “basso profundo” note of the depths that resounds over all things, and people must be careful to distract themselves lest it pervade the ruminations of their hearts... Of course, when irremediable suffering or loss occurs, the illusion is taken away and pain is given its voice. At that point, grace has its opportunity: “To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o’er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is” (James, ibid.). In other words, a sense of powerlessness combined with a desperate hunger for life presents the conditions for turning to God, heeding the call of "impossible" grace to believe that you are accepted and loved, despite your sins and the wasting of your days.

On the other hand, the soul may become agonized and protest what is happening. We are familiar with the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, though (as mentioned above) acceptance may be expressed as “forgiving God” for what has happened (or is happening). Understood in this way, forgiving God is an affirmation that you accept God's will and are therefore willing to let go of your complaint and your heartache. It is a conscious decision to quit blaming God (or other things) for your pain and troubles, even if you don't understand what is happening to you.

The last point is important. To quit blaming God for your life you need something more than a “narrative” that can explain or justify God's decision for your suffering, even if that narrative attempts to justify it as a means to a greater end that will one day make everything right... This is because explanation or reasoning does not address the underlying emotional pain and abandonment that arise in intense suffering, and therefore the answer must be found "outside" of the realm of reason alone.

Alida Gersie wrote about her grief when her eight year old daughter died of a brain tumor and her twenty year old son became severely handicapped after an accident:

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Rightly understood, when we “forgive God” we are confessing our own ignorance about what is happening to us while allowing our hearts to give voice to its pain. At bottom, suffering is a type of grieving, a confession of the darkness of loss. On the other hand, we can find healing through the grieving process. Over time we learn that by “forgiving God” we are able to forgive ourselves, and we are then released from the pain that withholds us from love and blessing in our lives.

Isaiah 64:8

וְעַתָּה יְהוָה אָבִ֫ינוּ אָתָּה
אֲנַחְנוּ הַחֹמֶר וְאַתָּה יֹצְרֵ֫נוּ
וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדְךָ כֻּלָּ֫נוּ׃

“But now, O LORD, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our Potter;
and we are the work of your hand.”

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Isa. 64:8 Hebrew page (pdf)

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Addendum

From the Torah we read about the frustration of Israel in the desert: “You were not willing to go up but rebelled at the word of the LORD your God. And you murmured in your tents and said, ‘Because the LORD hates us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt...’” (Deut. 1:26-27). We may decry the childish insolence of the people, we lament their lack of faith, and yet God was still speaking through Moses to Israel... The sages asked whether we can ever be justifiably angry at God, and they answer that surely we can, because otherwise we could never love Him “bekhol levavkha,” with all our heart (Deut. 6:5). Indeed, how can we claim to love God if we withhold the truth, lie to ourselves, and attempt to hide who we really are from Him? If you are angry at God, he already knows, so why the pretense? Being angry with God is part of being a real person in a real relationship with Him, and allowing yourself to express the truth of your heart to him is a sign of trust... Forgiving God means letting go of your grudges over matters infinitely beyond your control.

Πιστεύω, κύριε, βοήθει μου τῇ ἀπιστίᾳ - “I believe, Lord; help Thou my unbelief...” (Mark 9:24).

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Personal Note

I had lived a life of quiet desperation and silent scream before God for many years... I was among the walking dead when he touched my lacerated heart and gave me hope to believe. Yet I struggle, even today; I am still on the “potter’s wheel” and it sometimes feels like a whirlwind within my anxious heart. I close my eyes, trusting His hands are somehow shaping me into his design and pleasure; my hope rises. A recent near-death experience was another part of God bringing “beauty out of the ashes” of my past. God is faithful.

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­Shalom friends. I recently chanced upon an old journal I had written years ago and had a strange encounter with my past self -- revisiting my struggles, concerns, and wanderings at that time....

As I read some of the entries I recognized poignant cries of the heart for God’s intervention and blessing; I reconnected with prayers for people who are now past, such as my father, some childhood friends, and others. I marveled both at how much I had changed and how I have retained the old struggles. The same old pain still haunts me; the interminable questions; the hope I have long sought for deep healing in Yeshua.

It’s a bit odd to revisit your past like this, like looking at an old photograph of yourself from years ago. It’s a bit like seeing a phantom of yourself that now, in hindsight, you wish that you could have spoken to, encouraged, and offered some wisdom about the days to come. Halevai...

There is ambivalence in all this. Self-reflection is a bit of a dead-end, really. We can only live one day at a time, and therefore we seek the Lord in our time of sojourning with an eye to what lies ahead, to the time of promise, the inexpressible joy of hope that will be fulfilled.

Yeshua said “the truth shall set you free,” a statement that has notoriously been taken out of context to justify all sorts of ridiculous things. In the context from which this statement was lifted, however, we discover that the truth Yeshua spoke of was not some about human enlightenment but was a call to come into personal relationship with him for healing.

Recall that Yeshua was teaching a group of people at the Temple when some scribes and Pharisees interrupted him by dragging a woman “taken in adultery” before him, demanding that he pronounce judgment upon her according to the law of Moses (John 8:1-5). The motives of these religious leaders ostensibly was not to honor the law of God, but rather to find occasion to accuse Yeshua of being a lawbreaker if he were to show the woman mercy. Interestingly Yeshua responded to them by writing with his finger on the ground, which recalled the account of how God wrote the Tablets with his finger at Sinai (Exod. 31:18). We can only speculate what Yeshua wrote down, though it was likely an indictment against his accusers for their sins and therefore it pointed to their need for God’s mercy as well. Despite this the scribes and Pharisees kept demanding an answer, so he finally stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” And then he stooped down and wrote in the dust again.

We know the rest of the story. Each of the woman’s accusers, being “convicted of their own conscience,” went out one by one, starting with the older ones, until the woman was standing before Yeshua alone. He then looked at the woman and said to her, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” She replied, “No, Lord,” and then Yeshua said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more” (see John 8:6-11).

Yeshua then offered his own explanation of what the people had witnessed by saying, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you will not walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life” (John 8:12). The Pharisees then denounced him as a liar, saying that he had no right to make such claims, though Yeshua affirmed that he both spoke and lived the truth, and that this attested to the veracity of his claims. The proof of his miracles also bore witness that God was with him, and that the reason they did not believe him was because they did not truly know God. Later Yeshua said to them again, “I am going away. You will search for me but will die in your sin... for unless you believe that I am who I claim to be, you will die in your sins.”

In the midst of these exchanges between Yeshua and the religious leaders, many of the people began to believe in him. Yeshua then said to them, “If you live in my word, then you will be my disciples indeed, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). Some of the people were confused and said, “But we are descendants of Abraham, and we have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean, ‘You will be set free’?” Yeshua then explained to them that everyone who sins is a slave of sin. He then said that a slave is not a permanent member of the family, though a son is a member of the family forever. If a slave is set free by the Master of the house, however, he will be accounted as a member of the family as well.

The truth is that sin operating within our hearts makes us slaves to our lower nature, and the “law of sin and death” inexorably works to hold us in grave bondage. We are slaves to sin and cannot set ourselves free from its ironclad grip over our souls. Sin creates separation from God, the verdict of spiritual death. We need healing and deliverance from bondage to our condition.

So how are we set free? Only by the power of Yeshua: “As many as receive him, to them he gives the right (ἐξουσία) to be children of God, namely, to those who believe in his name” (John 1:12). However, there is a necessity of the heart to experience this transformation, a miracle, really, and that is the confession that we are indeed enslaved to our sins and cannot escape, despite our best intentions. Indeed the power of sin is so seductive that our religion can be nothing but a godless passion, a “form of godliness” that regards the Almighty as a slave master who demands ruthless adherence to the letter of the law... If you do not know the LORD God as your heavenly father, you are still bound to your slavery, even if that slavery finds expression in the rituals and deeds that express faith in God.

Yeshua imparts the power to be children of God by freeing us from our bondage to sin. Only the One with greater power than the captor of the slave can set the slave free (Mark 3:27). Being set free does not mean to simply being forgiven of our infractions of God’s law but to be released from the more radical bondage of being alienated and lost - enslaved - within the depths of your soul. Being set free therefore creates a new “who,” and new identity that personally relates to God as his cherished child rather than as a hired hand or a slave.

Still, this is a process. It is a paradoxical change that develops over time, as the inner conflict between the old and new natures works itself out. The old must be reckoned as “dead,” and the new must be reckoned as “alive.” There is “mortification” of the flesh which strips us away from our old identity and there is “sanctification” that draws us into the life of God’s beloved child. Yeshua gives us the power to be sons and daughters of God, though we might not recognize what this means in the flux and temptations of this life.

The struggle is intense and very personal, hidden from view. The son or daughter of God is at war with the slave within them as they agonize to know God as their heavenly father. This is the experience of the desert generation as they learned to shed their Egyptian way of thinking and to come to believe that they were the chosen people of God. It is an ongoing dialog of the heart, a recurring question or argument about who you really are, an inner wrestling to respond to the Father when he calls you his beloved.

Regarding the heart of the one struggling to believe despite themselves, George MacDonald wrote: “Such are not slaves; they are true though not perfect children; they are fighting along with God against the evil separation... They are children - with more or less of the dying slave in them; they know it is there, and what it is, and hate the slavery in them, and try to slay it.” This is why Soren Kierkegaard once noted that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith, because it is faith in the work of God alone that delivers and transforms the heart (Rom. 4:16; Eph. 2:8-10 ).

The deepest place of the struggle is the heart itself, and whether you will continue to receive the truth that you are beloved and healed in the midst of your weakness, brokenness, and even the dissolution of the body through physical death itself. For the believer, however, mortal death is a “shadow” that leads to the reality of glorification in the Lord.

As many as receive him he gives power to become the children of God, even to those who “believe on his name,” that is, to those who believe that he is the promised Savior who alone heals us from the death of our sin, who restores our separation from God, and who reunites us to his heart forever and ever. Believing in his name is to “receive him,” that is, to trust in his promises and to live our lives in light of his presence and his vision for our destiny. We confess that he is who he said he is. By faith we take his promises to ourselves; we cleave to his word of blessing for who we truly are; and therefore we know God as our loving heavenly Father. Amen.

The power to be a child of God is an “already-not-yet” reality and therefore the task at hand is to walk in faith of who God says you are in relation to the truth of his great love.... Let us then live within His house in full confidence of his heart for us. Amen.

Isaiah 63:16

כִּי־אַתָּה אָבִינוּ
כִּי אַבְרָהָם לֹא יְדָעָנוּ
וְיִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא יַכִּירָנוּ
אַתָּה יְהוָה אָבִינוּ
גֹּאֲלֵנוּ מֵעוֹלָם שְׁמֶךָ׃

“For You are our Father
though Abraham does not know us
and Israel does not recognize us.
You, O LORD, are our Father,
Our Eternal Redeemer is your Name.”

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• Isa. 63:16 Hebrew page (pdf)

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­The following article provides some thoughts about the Jewish High Holidays in light of the gospel of Yeshua. I hope you find this encouraging as you put your trust in Him....­

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Yom Teruah, or “Rosh Hashnah,” remembers God as our Creator and Judge (אלוהים שהוא בוראנו ושופטנו). Indeed everything begins with the foundational truth that Almighty God is our personal Creator (הַבּוֹרֵא). This is the first principle of all rational thinking: “In the beginning (בְּרֵאשִׁית), God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Notice that the word “beginning” (i.e., bereshit) is based on the term rosh (ראשׁ, “head”), and therefore points to “the head of (all things),” namely God (אֱלהִים). God must be the starting point of all our thinking about life; God is the Axiom of Reality; the First Principle of all Being...

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בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלהִים
אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

“In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1)

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• Hebrew page (pdf)

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The Torah relates that God began creating the heavens and the earth in the darkness of the primordial yom rishon (יום ראשון, again derived from ראשׁ), the “first day,” (conventionally called “Sunday” in our modern calendars). “The earth was without form and void (תהוּ וָבהוּ) and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God (רוּחַ אֱלהִים) was brooding over the face of the waters, and God said, ‘Let there be light’ (Gen 1:2-3). Notice that the triune nature of the Godhead is revealed in the first verses of the Torah: the Divine Voice cannot be separated from God, no more than the Spirit of God can be so separated.

The Biblical day (יוֹם) begins in the evening: “and there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” This pattern, vayhi erev, vayhi voker (וַיְהִי־עֶרֶב וַיְהִי־בקֶר), “and there was evening and there was morning,” recurs for each of the six days of creation, including the sixth day, when God created man (Adam and Eve). Therefore the work of creation (”ma’aseh bereshit”) was completed by the end of the sixth day (i.e., Friday in our modern calendars).

When Adam first opened his eyes and human consciousness was born, he immediately understood that the LORD created all things, including himself. According to midrash, Adam’s first words were, יהוה מֶלֶךְ עוֹלָם וָעֶד / Adonai malakh olam va’ed: “The LORD is King for ever and ever.” God then said, “Now the whole world will know that I am King,” and He was very pleased. This was the “tov me’od” (טוֹב מְאד) moment of creation, when God saw all that He had made “and found it very good” (Gen. 1:31). The birthday of humanity is therefore the Coronation Day for the King of the Universe. According to Jewish tradition, this date represents Rosh Hashanah, or the “head of the year” for humanity, when God began to rule as King over the universe He created.

The implication that God is our Creator is enormous and pervades everything else in our lives. God’s creative power is witnessed by all conscious life. The Divine Light that was created before the sun and the stars represents God’s immanent presence that “lights up” all of creation - including our minds (Gen. 1:3). Since we were created b’tzelem Elohim, “in the image of God,” the witness of God’s truth is foundational to all of our thinking as well. The revelation (not the invention) of logical first principles is part of God’s “signature,” if you will, of how the mind is wired to reality. Likewise we have intuitive awareness regarding the existence of moral truth (i.e., the standard of justice and moral law), aesthetic truth (i.e., ideals of beauty, goodness, worth, and love), and metaphysical truth (i.e., cause and effect relationships). “The heavens are recounting the glory of God, and the expanse is proclaiming his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). God’s power and presence can be clearly inferred from the tremendous effect of the universe itself. As Paul stated, “the invisible things of Him (τά ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ) from the creation of the world are clearly seen (καθοράω), so that people are without excuse” (Rom. 1:19-20). It is the fear of the LORD (יִרְאַת יהוה) that is truly the beginning of wisdom and knowledge (Psalm 111:10; Prov. 1:7; 9:10). The Hebrew word for fearing (ירא) and seeing (ראה) share the same root. We cannot truly see reality apart from reverencing God as the Lord and King of Creation.

It is important to emphasize that God is not some impersonal “First Cause” or “Unmoved Mover” of the universe. He is not some “cosmic big bang” that started the universe only to be indifferent to its functioning, nor is God a “Cosmic Egg” or “Self-Absorbed Mind” that contemplates the navel of reality... No, God is an entirely awake and morally perfect Being who created everything “very good” and who actively engages and sustains His creation. God is a personal Creator and Ruler of all that exists. In theological jargon, God is both “immanent” (sustaining and upholding creation) and “transcendent” (exalted over creation). This God has a Name (YHVH), a mind, and a moral, purposive will that imbues all of creation. God is LORD over all time and space, the King of Glory, who is Master of all possible worlds. He is therefore intimately concerned with the rule of His law, expressed both in the “natural” world (i.e., the laws of physics, chemistry, etc.), the mental world (i.e., the laws of logic, mathematics, etc.), the ethical world (i.e., the laws of morality, ethics, etc.), and the spiritual world (the laws of spirit and of spiritual beings).

When God revealed to Moses the meaning of the Name “LORD” (i.e., YHVH: יהוה), he was given the revelation of Shelosh Esrei Middot - the 13 attributes of God’s Mercy (Exod. 34:6-7). The LORD described Himself as a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love (chesed) and truth (emet), who guards love and carries (נָשָׂא) iniquity (עָוֹן), transgression (פֶּשַׁע), and sin (חֵטְא), but who will not clear the guilty... In other words, because the LORD is holy and righteous, he cannot leave the guilty unpunished. This follows from the fact that God cannot lie (Num. 23:19; Titus 1:2). Since God necessarily must be true to His nature, he cannot negate the truth or violate justice. The LORD cannot sweep sin “under the rug” or pretend that it is not there.

Notice that the love of God does not negate His righteousness and justice. The LORD can never overlook His rule as our Creator and His moral will as our Judge:

כִּי־צַדִּיק יְהוָה צְדָקוֹת אָהֵב
יָשָׁר יֶחֱזוּ פָנֵימוֹ

“For the LORD is righteous; he loves righteous deeds;
the upright shall behold his face.” (Psalm 11:7)

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• ­Hebrew page (pdf)

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Indeed, the very “foundation” or “habitation” (i.e., machon: מָכוֹן) of God’s throne is righteousness and justice, as it is written:

צֶדֶק וּמִשְׁפָּט מְכוֹן כִּסְאֶךָ
חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת יְקַדְּמוּ פָנֶיךָ

“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne;
lovingkindess and truth meet before You.” (Psalm 89:14)

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• Hebrew page (pdf)

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While it is true that God is love, it is also true that He is righteousness and justice, and these attributes of His nature cannot be divided or separated. It is written in our Scriptures: צֶדֶק וּמִשְׁפָּט מְכוֹן כִּסְאֶךָ - “righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne” (i.e., the symbol of His Kingship). The King of the Universe commands those created in His image and likeness to observe His will (i.e., moral law), and sin is expressly defined as “lawlessness” (ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ἡ ἀνομία), understood to mean the repudiation of God’s authority to rule (1 John 3:4). Sin is therefore essentially a form of high treason against God’s Kingship and authority, and the demand to be autonomous (“self governing”) is the (vain) attempt to take the crown from God Himself.

All human beings are sinners who share in the “fallenness” of the Adam ha-rishon (Rom. 3:23; 5:12). We do not just commit sins, as if they were “accidental” to our nature, but we are sinners in the sense that sin is part of our “heart” or core personality structure (Eph. 2:3; Matt. 15:19). We all afflicted with the lethal disease of “spiritual death,” and our falleness has “noetic” implications: “The mind (τὸ φρόνημα) that is set on the flesh is hostile (ἔχθρα) to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot” (Rom. 8:7).

Since God is perfectly righteous, sin must be judged for what it really is: treason against His loving and righteous will. Both the human conscience and the revealed will of God (i.e., the moral law contained in the Torah of Moses) clearly indict all mankind of treason before the tribunal of a Holy and Righteous God. Indeed, every mouth will be stopped before the bar of the Holy One’s judgment (Rom. 3:19).

The Scriptures plainly teach that the penalty for sin is death (Gen. 2:16-17; Rom. 6:23; Isa. 59:2, Ezek. 18:4). Physical death is a symptom of the deeper and more serious problem of eternal, or spiritual, death. Just as physical death represents the separation of the soul from the body, so spiritual (or eternal) death represents the separation of the soul from the Presence of God. Spiritual death is pictured as hell, a place of eternal suffering and horror (Mark 9:43; Rev. 20:10). Hell is described using frightful metaphors in Scripture. It is said to be a fiery pit (Matt. 18:8-9), an eternal fire (Matt. 25:41, Jude 7), a lake of fire (Rev. 20:15), a place of “outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12; 13:50; Rev. 21:8), and a place of eternal punishment (Matt. 25:46). These are horrific images of warning intended to shock us out of our spiritual stupor... Wake up! Your life matters and everything you do has eternal weight and significance!

The “bad news” about the death sentence caused by our sin is not the end of the story, thank God... Even at the very beginning, after Adam and Eve had sinned, the “good news” of God’s redemption was first mentioned (i.e., the “proto-euangelion” of Gen. 3:15). After pronouncing judgment and exiling Adam and Eve from the original paradise, the LORD prophesied that a cosmic struggle for the fate of humanity would ensue. Through his machinations, Satan (represented by the nachash, or serpent) had arrogated a legal or forensic “right” to humanity, who were now under God’s judicial kelalah (curse). However, the LORD foretold that the curse would be rescinded by means of the Seed (הַזֶּרַע) - the Mashiach - who would “crush the head” of the serpent and ransom those who were sold to sin. There is good news behind the bad news, then, just as Yeshua is described as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (1 Pet. 1:20, Eph. 1:4, Rev. 13:8, 17:8). The grand narrative of the Scriptures then serves as God’s loving response to the “bad news” of mankind’s sin.

The promise of the Kingdom of God (מַלְכוּת הָאֱלהִים) made manifest upon the earth has long been the hope of the Jewish people. The prophets had long foretold a coming day of redemption for Israel when Zion would be made the praise of all the earth. Zion therefore represents the restoration of paradise lost, and summarizes Jewish philosophy of history. The concept of the King Messiah, the “Anointed One” who would one day come to deliver his people from oppression at the beginning of an era of world peace has been the sustaining hope of the Jewish people for generations. King Messiah is the instrument by whom God’s kingdom will be established in Israel and in the world.

When Yeshua came preaching the “good news of the Kingdom,” his message was not readily received by the Jewish leadership. After all, they were expecting a political Messiah who would deliver Israel from worldly oppression and establish universal peace. Yeshua, however, taught that the Kingdom of God was “not of this world” (Luke 17:21; John 18:36) and therefore focused on redeeming citizens who would be enabled to enter it. In other words, the first order of business was to redeem a kingdom people to inherit the kingdom, but that required a solution to the problem of sin (Col. 1:12).

Hence Yeshua came as the “Lamb of God” (שֵׂה הָאֱלהִים) who would fulfill the imagery given in the Akedah of Isaac, the blood of the “pass over” lamb, and indeed all of the sacrifices defined in the Torah. The “korban principle” of “life-for-life,” the innocent sacrificed for the guilty, implied the idea of “penal substitution” for the trusting sinner. The guilty person would lean his hands upon the head of the animal (semichah) and then confess: “I deserve to die instead of this innocent animal, but the LORD mercifully accepts the death of this innocent one in my stead.” The worshiper would understand that were it not for chasdei Adonai (חֲסְדֵי יהוה) - the sacrificial love of the LORD - the victim’s fate should have been his own. When the LORD saw the shed blood and ascending smoke of the sacrifice, He forgave the sinner based on his faith and teshuvah (repentance). The entire sacrificial system - which constitutes over 40% of all the commandments given in the Torah - was therefore predicated on the idea of substitutionary atonement given on behalf of the repentant sinner. Without blood atonement, there is simply no sense to the elaborate sacrificial system given in the Torah. The life of the flesh is in the blood — given to make “atonement” upon the altar (Lev. 17:11). The entire system was set up to “point to” the coming sacrifice of the Messiah Himself of whom the prophets foretold (Isa. 53, Psalm 22, Zech. 12:10, etc.).

The Jews wanted King Messiah to vanquish the enemies of Israel, but Yeshua presented Himself as the Suffering Servant whose death would redeem us from the debt incurred through our sin (Gal. 3:13-14; 2 Cor. 5:21). By so doing, Yeshua made it possible for God to forgive us and to impart to us the inheritance of the Kingdom of God (Col. 1:12). The shared suffering of the Heavenly Father and Yeshua was the means by which “justice and peace have kissed,” thereby restoring the children of promise to their original inheritance:

חֶסֶד־וֶאֱמֶת נִפְגָּשׁוּ
צֶדֶק וְשָׁלוֹם נָשָׁקוּ

“Love and truth have met,
justice and peace have kissed.” (Psalm 85:10)

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• ­Hebrew page (pdf)

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Yeshua’s first words of public ministry were “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). The word “repent” is metanao (μετανοέω), meaning “change your thinking” (i.e., transcend your fears and prejudices) and the word “gospel” means “good news” (i.e., εὐαγγέλιον, from , εὖ- “good,” and ἄγγελος, “message”). We could therefore translate the verse as: “Change your thinking and believe the message of God’s good will toward you.” When the Apostle Paul later testified of his dramatic conversion experience on the Road to Damascus, the resurrected Messiah commissioned him to go to the nations in order to “open their eyes, so that they may turn (ἐπιστρέφω) from darkness to light and from the power (i.e., authority, ἐξουσία) of Satan to the power of God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18).

Humanity’s greatest need is to be loved and accepted by God, but this requires a solution to the problem of sin. A “good judgment” from heaven, however, cannot be obtained through self-justification or through “works of righteousness which we have done” (Titus 3:5). The “books” are opened in heaven with a detailed record of all our sinful acts (Rev. 20:12). The violation of God’s law requires atonement. Yeshua is God’s exclusively appointed Sin Bearer, and only by means of trusting in his sacrificial death on the cross as our Redeemer are we are declared not guilty (or “justified”) by faith. Only God can justify the ungodly (Rom. 4:5) and “clothes” us with His own righteousness (see Zech. 3:1-5). Salvation is of the Lord. In the end, the only righteousness that really matters is the righteousness of God... We must renounce all hope of other approaches or defenses. None of us is righteous, “no, not one” (Psalm 14:2-3; Rom. 3:10). All our righteousness is as “filthy rags” before the throne of Heaven: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isa. 64:6).

The righteousness of Yeshua is the gospel message itself, that is, the power of God to save us from the verdict of our sinful condition (eternal death) and to restore our relationship with a holy and morally perfect God (eternal life). God will not clear the guilty, but He does something infinitely better: He removes the guilt! The curse of the Law’s verdict upon us has been taken away through the substitutionary sacrifice of Yeshua upon the cross at Moriah (Gal. 3:10-13; James 2:10; 2 Cor. 5:21). The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law (ἡ δύναμις τῆς ἁμαρτίας ὁ νόμος), but God gives us the victory (νῖκος) by imputing our sin to Yeshua and ascribing His righteousness to us in exchange (1 Cor. 15:56-58; 2 Cor. 5:21). By sincerely turning to Him in confession of our condition and trusting in His righteousness we are declared legally “justified” (i.e., “just-if-I’d” never sinned and “just-if-I’d” always obeyed) before the Judge of the World. Moreover, through our union with Yeshua, we share in the vindication of His resurrected life and have peace with God (Rom. 5:1). To be justified is to share in Yeshua’s righteousness: Adonai Tzidkenu!

Jim Eliot once said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Repentance means changing your mind by turning to God. When we turn toward God’s embrace, we necessarily turn away from selfishness and sin. Truly surrendering to God’s rule as your King means that you will perform “deeds in keeping with repentance” (Acts 26:20). You will begin to live as a citizen of the Kingdom of God - even though you still suffer as a “stranger and pilgrim” in this world (Col. 1:13; 1 Pet. 1:5; Heb. 11:13). One day soon the Messiah will return to establish His reign in Zion (Isa. 11:9). Ultimately God will create a new world for His redeemed people, free from the ravages of sin and death (Isa. 65:17-19).

Abraham Heschel once wrote, “God is of no importance unless he is of supreme importance,” and while that is undoubtedly true, what is of supreme importance to God is the salvation of the lost sinner (John 3:16; Luke 19:10; 2 Pet. 3:9). But God has entrusted you and me to help others come into the Kingdom. He wants us to help bring in the great harvest (John 4:35)! God could use angels to issue the call to “repent and believe” the gospel, or He could put great signs in the heavens, but in His infinite wisdom He has chosen to use the “foolishness” of proclaiming the truth of the cross of Yeshua to save those who are lost. But note that the cross is the central focus. As Paul wrote, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Yeshua the Messiah and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). This is of first importance to God (1 Cor. 15:3). The sacrificial death of Yeshua is a scandal to the proud, but it is the method God uses to save people from eternal death (1 Cor. 1:22-23). There is NO GOSPEL MESSAGE apart from offense - first, the offense of the ego’s deflation (i.e., being convicted as a rebel deserving of judgment), and second, the offense of the cross (i.e., that no human merit can effect the salvation given through Yeshua ALONE). The offense of the gospel is the proclamation that there is no other way to heaven than through the cross of Yeshua, and there is no other Name than the Name of Yeshua for the salvation of human beings (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; 1 Cor. 1:23).

Our great duty as followers of Yeshua is to make much of His salvation... The Ruach HaKodesh always glorifies our Messiah, the Son of Man (John 16:13-14). But as Paul asked, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching (i.e., κηρύσσω, “publishing, or “proclaiming openly”) the message (Rom. 10:14)? Likewise Yeshua commanded his followers to “go and make disciples (i.e., talmidim: students) from among all the nations, immersing them into the reality of the Father, the Son and the Ruach HaKodesh, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:18-19). The proclamation of the gospel is one of your greatest responsibilities as a follower of the Lord.

Yeshua is the “propitiation” or “expiation” for our sins. The Greek word used in Romans 3:25, 1 John 2:2, and 1 John 4:10 (i.e., ἱλαστήριος) is the same word used in the LXX for the kapporet [cover of the ark of the covenant] in the Holy of Holies which was sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice on Yom Kippur. “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). Those who are trusting in Yeshua as their Atonement before the Father are thereby declared tzaddikim and their names are written - and sealed - in the Book of Life.

The Day of Judgment for our sinful lives has come in the Person of Yeshua the Mashiach, blessed be He. All those who truly belong to Him are written in the “Lamb’s book of life,” or Sefer HaChayim (Phil. 4:3; Rev. 3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:12, 15; 21:27; 22:19). ­May your name be sealed therein based on the merit of God’s righteousness…

Addendum: Yeshua the Creator

­During Rosh Hashanah we remember that God is our Creator and Judge, and both of these attributes refer to Yeshua our Savior. The New Testament identifies the Voice of the Creator as the all-powerful Word of God: בְּרֵאשִׁית הָיָה הַדָּבָר / “in the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1,14). Yeshua is the Source of all life in the universe: כָּל־הַמַּעֲשִׂים נִהְיוּ עַל־יָדוֹ / “All things were made by Him (John 1:3).

The “Word made flesh” is the “image of the invisible God” and the “radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint (χαρακτήρ, ‘character’) of his nature” (John 1:14, Col. 1:15). All of creation is being constantly upheld by the word of His power (Heb. 1:3): “All things were created by Him (i.e., Yeshua), and for Him” and in Him all things consist (συνεστηκεν, lit. “stick together”) (Col. 1:16-17).

Creation begins and ends with the redemptive love of God as manifested in the Person of Yeshua our Messiah... He is the Center of Creation - it’s beginning and end. As it is written: אָנכִי אָלֶף וְתָו רִאשׁוֹן וְאַחֲרוֹן ראשׁ וָסוֹף / “I am the ‘Aleph’ and the ‘Tav,’ the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev. 22:13).

Indeed, Yeshua is מֶלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים / Melech Malchei Hamelachim: The “King of kings of kings.” He is LORD of all possible worlds -- from the highest celestial glory to the dust of death upon a cross... יְהִי שֵׁם יהוה מְברָךְ / yehi shem Adonai mevorakh: “Let the Name of the LORD be blessed” forever (Psalm 113:2).

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There is a midrash about a dialog between Adam and the LORD God after Adam’s banishment from the Garden of Eden. Adam feared that all humans would later blame him for their mortality, but God replied, “Don’t worry about the others. From now on each soul will be responsible for giving account of his or her life. Each person is required to write his or her own ‘Book of Life.’ On the Day of Judgment, I simply ratify what has been written.” Now while this is a midrash, there is a lesson here for us to heed...

We are all on a spiritual journey, writing the “Book of our Life.” To help us in the “writing” process, the Jewish sages decided that the month of Elul should be set aside as a season for cheshbon hanefesh (חֶשְׁבּוֹן הַנֶּפֶשׁ) - “making an account of the soul.” This means that we engage in honest self-examination about our behavior. We take time to review our lives from the previous year. “How did I get to this place in my life?” “Where am I now?” “Am I where I should be?” We engage in this process of self-examination with an aim to grow — to let go of the pain of the past and move forward.

We must begin by asking God for courage and strength... We must let go of the fear that we will discover the truth about who we really are — about what we’ve done, what we’ve thought, about who we’ve allowed ourselves to become. Confession (ὁμολογία) means bringing yourself naked before the Divine Light to agree with the truth about who you are. Indeed, the word homologeo literally means “saying the same thing” - from ὁμός (same) and λόγος (word). We need to confess the truth if we are to be free from the pain of the past. When King David wrote, “The LORD is my Light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? (Psalm 27:1), he implied that he should even be free of fear of himself and of his past....

As noted by various Jewish sages, different sins require different types of confession. Sins against God (i.e., bein Adam la-Makom: בֵּין אָדָם לָמָקוֹם) require confession to God alone for the sake of obtaining divine forgiveness. Sins against others (i.e., bein Adam l’chavero: בֵּין אָדָם לְחֲבֵרוֹ) require that we personally acknowledge our harm to them and ask them for mechilah (מְחִילָה), forgiveness. Finally, sins against ourselves require that we admit that we have damaged our own lives and be willing to accept personal forgiveness. “For those whom we have wronged (including ourselves), may we be forgiven...”

It is important in this process not to blame others for our sins, since the object here is to work on changing ourselves, not others. As the Baal Shem Tov once said, “Sinners are like mirrors. When we see faults in others, we must understand that they only reflect the evil within ourselves.” Of course this is not to say that you might not have been truly hurt by the actions and sins of others, but that is a matter of your own mechilah (forgiveness) to be given them if they come to you in teshuvah, not a matter of cheshbon ha’nefesh. The focus in this process is on our own sins — and how we must respond to our own sinful condition. We cannot truly make amends with another if we are expecting a reciprocal act from them (e.g., “I’ve apologized to you, now it’s your turn!”)

Regarding self-forgiveness, it might be helpful to think about a sinful act you’ve repeatedly struggled with over the last year. Now imagine you are talking to a dear friend whom you deeply respect who is struggling this same way. How would you counsel him or her? Your answer can be part of the process of your own self-examination, where you can look within yourself honestly yet without the intent of bringing shame or further pain to your life. After all, the goal here is teshuvah — return to God — but you are not likely to do this if you are in a state of self-loathing or “toxic shame.”

Most Christians are familiar with the idea of self-examination before partaking of the elements of the Lord’s Table (i.e., the commemoration of Yeshua’s last Passover Seder that prefigured His sacrifice as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world). “Let a person examine himself first (δοκιμάζω - test for authenticity), and then he may eat of the bread and drink from the cup” (1 Cor. 11:28). Now while it is assuredly true that we should examine ourselves before this ritual act, self-examination and confession should be part of our everyday lives as followers of the Messiah. The unexamined life — especially as a follower of Messiah, God of Truth — is not worth living, and the practice of suppressing the truth about our sinful condition can lead to self-deception and even death (1 Cor. 11:30). “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:7-8). “Therefore, confess (ἐξομολογέω, lit. 'confess out') your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16).

Ultimately, confession of the truth is not optional for anyone. For the follower of the Messiah, such confession produces salvation: “for with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Rom. 10:10). But for those who refuse to undergo self-examination and confess the truth, there is the Lord’s own reciprocal confession: “Then I will confess to them (ὁμολογήσω αὐτοῖς), ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’ (Matt. 7:23).

There is a godly sorrow that works teshuvah within our hearts. This is a sorrow or a mourning (λύπη) — not an exercise in self-contempt or false pride — for the pain we have caused the LORD with our actions... “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Cor. 7:10). This kind of sorrow is ultimately healing, since it impels us to return to the source of Love and healing we so desperately need. May God all bless us with such sorrow, the “gift of tears.”

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Psalm 27:1

יְהוָה אוֹרִי וְיִשְׁעִי מִמִּי אִירָא
יְהוָה מָעוֹז־חַיַּי מִמִּי אֶפְחָד׃

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Psalm 27:1 Hebrew page (pdf)

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C.S. Lewis once made the helpful distinction between “looking at” and “looking along” a sunbeam (Lewis: “Meditation in a Tool Shed,” 1945). In the former case, the mind looks “at” the beam itself, in an “objective” sense, describing light as waves or particles or energy. In the latter case, the mind looks “along” the beam in relationship with it, not focusing on the beam itself but seeing other things through its agency.

Now Lewis’ point was that modern scientific humanism makes the claim to a “truer” interpretation of experience through the mode of looking “at” things, as for example, when it “reduces” light as a waveform or when it describes religious experience as a matter of anthropology, psychology, or some other "natural" paradigm.

Naturalistic humanism claims that it is able to know the causes and effects of “objective” reality without any bias since it is otherwise constrained by the “scientific method” to ensure empirically verifiable (and repeatable) results. However the scientific methodology itself is not without its metaphysical assumptions about time (i.e., that the future will "resemble" the past), about motion (i.e., that natural processes are "uniform"), about space (that there is an external world that is knowable to the human mind); about the capability of the mind to define and represent things (e.g., that measurement "makes traction" with this external world and can be used to predict outcomes); about values (i.e., that it is "better" to know rather than not to know; or that the scientific method is an "good way" to develop inductive inferences, or that a given theory is "elegant," etc.). 

Notice that these various axioms are not based on scientific inquiry itself (which is based on evidence and repeatable empirical measurement), but they are brought to science as assumptions used to frame or organize a particular "paradigm." In other words, science is a system of faith about what constitutes "reality," and like any other faith system, it needs to undergo testing to see if its inferences and claims provide the best explanation for what is real. For instance, does the naturalistic view of reality espoused by evolutionary cosmologists best explain the meaning of life?  Does it account, for instance, for the electromagnetic pulse of the individual human heart?  For the aesthetic wonder of the beauty? For poetry, or the longing of heart for love? for friendship? truth? for eternal life?

Knowledge is defined as “justified true belief,” that is belief that is warranted or grounded in first principles of sound reasoning. Notice, however, the belief, or “faith,” is a necessary condition of knowledge. This implies that people are bound by necessity to “walk by faith” of one kind or another, and everyone is therefore influenced by the biases and presuppositions they bring to their experience... C.S Lewis illustrated this by saying, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else,” and by “everything else” Lewis meant the full array of human experience, including intuitions about the big questions of why we exist, what we really are, and where we ultimately are going...

The intuitions of conscience and the revelation of nature itself reveal God’s truth (Rom. 1:19-20). “The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of,” a quote from Pascal that says that truth is something “given” before reason goes to work. “You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man’s self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred - like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope” (Lewis: Mere Christianity). 

King David, a man of great and proven faith, said of the LORD: “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9). “In Your light we see light...” When we enter a dark room with a lamp, the darkness flees and is overcome by the light. So also with teshuvah: When we turn to the Lord the spiritual darkness is overcome by the Divine Radiance. In Yeshua is life, for He is the light of the world. All those who receive Him will behold ohr ha’chayim (אוֹר הַחַיִּים) - the “light of life.”

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Psalm 36:9

כִּי־עִמְּךָ מְקוֹר חַיִּים
בְּאוֹרְךָ נִרְאֶה־אוֹר

“For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light do we see light.”
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• Psalm 36:9 Hebrew page (pdf)

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­Recently I have been thinking a bit about God’s silence during our prayers and how this silence may be properly understood. Normally we pray to God and trust that he is listening even though we do not hear him audibly speaking back to us. Despite the silence, we may sometimes feel a sense of direction however, a “leading” of the heart to do or to refrain from doing something, and on rare occasions we may even receive an inner message or conviction that seems quite authoritative. However most of the time we must discern a response to our prayers based on our faith that our heavenly Father is always present and that he always cares for us. That is the foundation of faith in God, namely that he attentively listens to us when we call upon Him.

Yeshua taught that our heavenly Father sees “in secret” and knows every thought of our hearts. Indeed, our Father knows what we mean even when we express unutterable groans and silent sighs. “There is not a word on my tongue, but lo, you know it altogether,” and that also means the words on our tongue that we are unable to fully understand...

Some have said prayer is a sort of “whistling in the dark,” an attempt to squelch hidden fears and to assure ourselves that we will somehow be okay... "Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." Yes, but courage is the crux of the matter, isn’t it, and suffering seems to be part of the divine plan. We all experience complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty; we all have ideals that are eaten up by the real; we experience times of joy and times of sorrow, times of celebration and times of disappointment. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” But prayer is a kind of remembering what God has said. “Hearing the Lord” requires the interpretation of life itself.

In light of this, the flow of the “river of life,” the ups and downs, point and counterpoint, everyone eventually raises questions about the meaning of life itself. Is it a good story or a tragic one? Is there a purpose to our lives, or is everything “havel havelim,” the vanity of vanities? Is there a secret design behind the appearances of daily life? Is the ideal more real than the real? Do we have free will? Can we change the course of our lives? We may say our prayers, but they are often wishes that things be other than they really are. How many of us are fatalists at heart, supposing that nothing is in our control and we are destined by forces that are greater than ourselves? The heart of faith believes that “all things work together” for our ultimate good and that God speaks “through” our experience. The unbeliever likewise has faith that nothing works together for good, or at least that life appears to be random and pointless. Is the cup half full or half empty? How we interpret what we see is a spiritual and theological concern, and therefore how we interpret and find meaning for our lives is a matter of life and death. Some people try to put off making a decision, but that is a decision itself. Many grow bitter while others find hope....

Interpretation requires wisdom more than knowledge. It is a matter of discernment and intuition. It certainly is not based on “empirical evidence” alone, as if any “fact” can be properly understood apart from its context and relationship with everything else. The philosopher asks “why is there something rather than nothing at all?” The Scripture says that the knowledge of the Creator is “manifest within” the human heart, and the existence of reality itself reveals his power and glory (Rom. 1:19-20). “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies above his handiwork.” The knowledge of God is therefore axiomatic to the apprehension of anything else, and the echo of creation is felt in all things.

Some people think that “reality” is a “construct” or matter of personal interpretation, and they therefore object to “grand narratives” that seek to explain the reason for existence. This is mere sophistry, however, since solipsism and/or “absolute relativism” is a contradiction in terms, an “unlivewithable” theory of knowledge that is logically incoherent. It is not a matter of “personal preference” whether gravity will apply if you were to jump off the roof of a 20 story building, or whether roasting your hand in a roaring fire will burn your skin.

Many judgments or inferences are “preconscious” aspects of human experience. We don’t usually ask if we are currently dreaming right now rather than experiencing something “real.” We unreflectingly assume that our perceptions of space and time are reasonably accurate so that we can navigate in the world. We further assume that the future will resemble the past, that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that real patterns of existence are discernible to human reason. We assume the laws of logic: that x=x, that something cannot both be entirely red and entirely green at the same time and place, that 1+1=2, that if A is larger than B, and B is larger than C, then A is larger than C, and so on.

Beyond such matters of fact and logical deduction, it’s also psychologically necessary to make value judgments. I am not referring to subjective preferences regarding the taste of certain foods, the appreciation of a piece of art or music, and so on, but rather value that is ascribed to the knowing process itself. Why should we care to know something rather than nothing? What makes “truth” valuable and “error” something to be avoided? After all, the empirical science can only be engaged using metaphysical assumptions that 1) there is an external world; 2) the scientific method is useful to understand that world; 3) the laws of logic are applicable to the world; 4) it is good to know rather than not to know, and so on.

So there is such a thing as objective “reality” and it is not known through subjective preference or through any number of imaginary speculations. Likewise reading Scripture is not of “private interpretation” but is based on the illumination of truth revealed by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:20-21). This truth derives from historical fact that is ratified by consensus of those who have tested its claims and declare them as warranted. In the case of the Bible, for instance, decisions were made through the collective wisdom of God’s people of what is or is not to be included in the “canon” of Scripture. The Bible is a book of sacred history, recording historical events that were collated by faithful followers of YHVH, the LORD God Almighty. The Holy Spirit ratifies and sets the seal of God’s testimony in the shared conviction of truth (2 John 2:27).

Hebrew is not written using vowels, that is, vocalizations created by breath through the body’s airway and therefore it is up to the reader to breathe words to life. But the breath supplied comes from the ruach, the Spirit of God, and therefore words are given life from God’s Spirit within us. But it is important to reiterate that this hearing is not of “private interpretation,” as a matter of idiosyncratic revelation, but rather by the inspiration, or “breathing in” of God. And it is also important to understand that the manner of “breathing,” that is, the how or the way the texts are meant to be read, is something learned from godly traditions of those originally authorized by God. In that sense the written word of God is based on oral tradition, since interpreting the words requires training and education.

Another way to say this is that the Bible is not “reader-centric” but “author-centric,” and that means that in order to properly read the Scriptures we must take the time to learn about the historical context and the grammatical/linguistic structures of the time of writing. This implies knowing something about who the author was, who the intended audience was, the usage and vernacular of particular words and ideas during that time period, and so on.

However since God is regarded as the overarching Author of the Bible, we may say that it is “theo-centric” since God imparted special revelation to certain people who faithfully conveyed his message both orally and later in written scrolls. The Bible itself, understood as a collection of scrolls recognized by godly tradition, is marvelous in its continuity of theme and message. It is a “timeless” form of communication that imparts divine truth in various forms, including stories, allegories, parables, historical accounts of the saga of the Jewish people, various songs and poems, the role of sacrificial rituals (and ultimately, the sacrifice of Yeshua for our atonement with God), wisdom literature, didactic letters, and so on.

Many examples of prayer in the Bible use first-person singular speech: “How long will you forget me, O Lord, forever?” (Psalm 13:1). “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck!”(Psalm 69:1); “I am so troubled that I cannot speak” (Psalm 77:4). and so on. Listening to the cries of David can help us relate to God. As we hear the struggle within his heart and his appeal for God’s help, we gain confidence and comfort that we are not alone. “Blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer nor his mercy from me” (Psalm 66:2)

Besides first first-person singular prayers, first-person plural prayers are common. These “corporate” or group prayers are offered so that we may unite with others in our confession of faith: “Our Father in heaven, sacred is your Name...” “God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause your face to shine upon us; Selah.” As we listen to these prayers, we unite with others and gain comfort that we are not alone in our struggles and in our hope.

The silence or apparent absence of God is part of our experience of God. “All true knowledge of God begins with the knowledge of his hiddenness,” wrote Karl Barth, and this moves the heart to seek communion with him. “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1). We come to know God through our need, our poverty, our desperation (Matt. 5:2). The “troubles of love” lead our hearts to the truth of love.

The Hebrew word for "world" or "age" is olam (עולם), which is derived from a root verb (עלם) that means "to conceal" or "to hide." God "hides" His face from us so that we will seek Him, and that means pressing through ambiguity of this world to discern and take hold of the truth. Therefore King David said, בַּקְּשׁוּ פָנָיו תָּמִיד, bakeshu fanav tamid: "Seek His face continually" (Psalm 105:4). Note that the Hebrew gematria (numerical value) for the word "fanav" (i.e., "His face") is the same as that for the word "olam." When we truly seek God's face (i.e., His Presence), that is, do teshuvah, we are able to discern the underlying purpose for our lives in this age... As it says in our Scriptures: "Blessed is the one who endures temptation, for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life (עֲטֶרֶת הַחַיִּים) that the LORD has promised to those who love him" (James 1:12). This present age, then, olam ha’zeh, constitutes a test that God providentially designs to lead us to the "crown of life," and when we go through its fires we are not consumed. Indeed, only those who love the Lord are able to withstand the fires... The “crown of life” symbolizes that we have truly received the purpose for which we were created and that we are identified with God’s own passion and love. The light of the crown represents the Divine Presence within us, the Life that overcomes despair on our behalf.

In this world the righteous feel the pain of God’s absence and long for his presence. Their hearts are grieved over the wickedness within their own hearts, and they lament the wickedness of others in the world. This leads them to heartfelt prayer, “wrestling with the Angel,” yearning for deliverance, and trusting in the ultimate vindication of what is truly good. Ironically it is the very struggle with darkness that leads to the awareness of being God’s presence, as David proclaimed: “I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken” (Psalm 16:8).

“The essence of Christian prayer is to seek God,” wrote John Stott, and this implies that God hides for us to find him. Notice that the righteous do not deny the absence of God, but they are given comfort by the Holy Spirit to persevere, and their perseverance validates God’s presence despite his seeming absence... “The Kingdom of heaven is within you.”

Prayer helps us focus on the deeper truth of what we already know and therefore it leads to the confession of God’s blessing. It is to join the heavenly chorus, unheard in this world, that rejoices over God’s great love and care for all generations. It is a call to remember the truth of who God is and to proclaim the ultimate healing that is to come. "You are worthy, O Lord, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for you have created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created."

The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Alef (א), a silent letter, and the sages furthermore say that the first word (הדבר הראשון) is always God’s. The Lord calls and we do teshuvah, that is, we answer: ה' קורא לנו לענות. Our prayers are therefore part of a conversation that God has begun with mankind of which we participate. Because of Yeshua, the Living Word of God, we are invited to come boldly before the Throne of Grace and to know God’s heart (Heb. 4:16). There, in that place, we can express our yearning and our groans without fear, for Yeshua has made the way for us to be accepted as God’s beloved children.

So God is not silent, after all. He has revealed himself to this world, both in the call of Abraham and the Jewish people, but also in the incarnation of Yeshua as the mouthpiece of the LORD. Torah is written in the language of men. And especially In light of God’s great redemption through his incarnation as the Living Word of God, our prayers have meaning and are contextualized, and the voice of God’s message is heard. If we are tempted to think that God is not hearing us, we are forgetting the great story and our place in it. It is our faith that includes our lives as part of the story; it is our trust that receives the truth of God’s presence and blessing. Listen again to the voice of God, our Creator, our Savior, our heavenly Father who loves us with everlasting love.

Remember again that as Yeshua was dying on the cross he was thinking of you, mediating your life by absorbing the pain of your sin and releasing you from shame and death. Understand that you are a part of the greatest story ever told, and your life is found in union with him. Yeshua repeatedly prayed that we would be “one” with him, and it is that union that makes our prayers possible. In a sense, our prayers answer his own, and therefore the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings that are unutterable (Rom. 8:26).

Now a few closing thoughts. First, understand that your life itself is a prayer of sorts... Whatever we do, say and desire is a mode of praying. It is our secret thoughts as much as our poetic hymns; it is the grumble of our hearts as much as our creeds or exalted expressions of theology. Prayer reveals what we really are. “Every unthinking word that people speak shall be accounted in the day of judgment, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt. 12:36-37). “Where can I go from your Spirit, or where can I flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139:7). We may feel awkward over God’s seeming absence, but do we hide from who God is? Do you remember his heart? his sacrifice? his passion? We want God to listen to us, we beg him to serve us and help us, but to what end? Do we listen to him? Do we honor him and seek to do his will?

To pray is "hitpallel" (התפלל) in Hebrew, from the root “palal” (פלל) that means to mediate, to intercede, or to judge. The prefix "hit-" (-הת) before the root often implies reflextive action and is always connected with the root, and therefore hitpallel means judging yourself or mediating your life in light of the truth of God. In this sense it is a form of “cheshbon nefesh” (חשבון נפש) or soul searching and taking personal responsibility for your life.

We don’t need to feel or see God’s presence to know his reality. Faith is the substance of hope, not a hopeful feeling; it is the conviction of what is real and of ultimate importance. What a tremendous honor and blessing it is to commune with God, to be connected to him as his redeemed child, and to know that your life is eternally significant because of what Yeshua has done for you. What an unspeakably wonderful privilege you have to be made a part of God’s very heart and life, and to be forever cherished as his beloved... May you hear that voice, the voice of your Heavenly Father!

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Psalm 39:12

שִׁמְעָה־תְפִלָּתִי יְהוָה
וְשַׁוְעָתִי הַאֲזִינָה
אֶל־דִּמְעָתִי אַל־תֶּחֱרַשׁ
כִּי גֵר אָנֹכִי עִמָּךְ
תּוֹשָׁב כְּכָל־אֲבוֹתָי׃

Hear my prayer, O LORD,
and give ear unto my cry;
keep not silent at my tears.
For I am a stranger with you,
a sojourner as were all my fathers.”

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• ­Psalm 39:12 Hebrew page

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Many of us deal with inner conflicts, self-reproach, and meagerness of faith... It is reported that on his deathbed Reb Zusya said, "I am not afraid that the Holy One will ask me, 'Zusya, why were you not more like Moses?' Rather, I fear the Holy One will say, 'Zusya, why were you not more like Zusya?'" This Hasidic story is interesting because, on the one hand, how could Zusya be anyone other than he is? and on the other, why is Zusya afraid that he is not who he should be? Zusya's parable reveals that there is an inner conflict in his soul. He senses that has not lived as he ought, that he has failed himself (and God), and that he is lost in the rift between the ideal and the real... His struggle, then, is with himself. Who he is and who he thinks he should be are at odds within his heart.

The question of who we are supposed to be haunts us, and consciousness of the failure to practice our ideals leads to a sense of guilt, anxiety, and shame. For those who believe in Yeshua the question is essential to the question of what it means to be an authentic disciple. How are we to live before God and be accountable for what we do? For instance, we read Yeshua's message in the Sermon on the Mount and we eventually realize - if we are honest with ourselves - that it is not within our nature to be able to do as he teaches, and this leads us to a despair not unlike that which Zusya experienced. A divided house cannot stand....

Reb Zusya's despair can be remedied only by overcoming the inner divide through a personal relationship with Yeshua, for salvation is not simply deliverance from the accusations of conscience (i.e., the verdict of the law) but constitutes the healing grace that delivers us from ourselves. Yeshua did not die on the cross to simply take away our sins, but to create within us indestructible new nature that it no longer enslaved to the power of sin. The message of the gospel is that your heart can be - and ultimately will be - transformed by the miracle of God given in Yeshua.

Salvation is not a matter of "religion" or of man's attempt to justify himself by some kind of reformation of character. Yeshua is not the "second coming of Moses," after all. Try as you might to live a "good life," keep the commandments, and aspire to elevate yourself spiritually, you will eventually come to realize that it is impossible to change yourself. You will then be faced with a decision: either to deceive yourself about who you are, or to be honest and confess your wretched and hopeless condition. This is the "lawful use of the law," that reveals the "ought-to-be" self, so that the gap between the ideal and the real becomes unsurpassable, and we know ourselves as lost sinners who are in peril over ourselves...

In our natural estate we are "fallen," shattered of heart, full of trouble "as the sparks fly upward." As Simone de Beavoir once wrote: "In the very condition of man there enters the possibility of not fulfilling who he is" (Ethics of Ambiguity, 1947). The breach between who we are and what we ought to be creates a sense of alienation from ourselves, a "shadow self" that we deny, suppress, or try to control. In a moment of rare lucidity, the "natural man" cries out to God: "What do you want from me?" This is the moment when truth has its opportunity, when the heart is stirred to confess its need for deliverance and to accept God's love, despite the brokenness and incoherence of life.

When by miracle we escape from the "hard yoke" of our laws, our vain attempts at self-justification, we do not encounter another set of laws, or another heavy yoke, but we take hold of the love of God, a personal love, and we engage in relationship with God as the central (and unifying) reality of our lives. Deliverance from ourselves is not found in religious (or "spiritual") recipes of any kind but in our connection with the truth of who God really is, trusting in his love and healing for all that we are, have been, and ever shall be, amen.

"Salvation is of the LORD," which means that God does the work of righteousness within you. It is God who saves you; it is God who sanctifies you, and ultimately it is God alone who heals you. Whenever you say "I can't," you are either looking at yourself or at God. If you are looking at yourself, "I can't" is better understood as "I won't," and the problem then is a lack of faith. On the other hand, if you are looking at God, "I can't" is followed by "but You can, O Lord" and faith trusts that God will complete the good work that he has begun in you.

God sends each soul into the world with a special message to deliver, a revelation that only he or she can disclose... As George MacDonald once said, "I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking." That's the good news of the gospel, friends: God not only saves us from ourselves, he remakes us to be true bearers of his image and likeness. He works all things together for his glory and our good. Amen, let it be so, O Lord!

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Psalm 51:10

לֵב טָהוֹר בְּרָא־לִי אֱלֹהִים
וְרוּחַ נָכוֹן חַדֵּשׁ בְּקִרְבִּי׃

“Create for me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a willing spirit within me.”


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Psalm 51:10 Hebrew page (pdf)

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