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Category: Pentateuch Genesis-Deuteronomy

IN THE BEGINNING… Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy – Pentateuch [5 books] It’s the LAW of GOD!
Forgive us our trespasses. Jesus teaches many lessons from these books of the Bible and we have forgotten MANY of the issues and applications to our 21st century life. How can you SHARE from the beginning of the Bible with your SOCIAL ‘Friends’ and talk of Jesus as Lord? Please TITLE your post by the topic, not the verse. Include links to scriptures and helpful references. — Please post or tell us in a COMMENT how you talk of Jesus through this topic and these Old Testament scriptures.

  • Feasts: Thanksgiving to God

    Feasts: Thanksgiving to God

    “These are the appointed feasts of the LORD, the holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at the time appointed for them. – Leviticus 23:4

    Feasts, Fasts & Festivals

    Americans view Thanksgiving as a defining national holiday, complete with feasts focused on our  Utopian culture of American families. Yet a stark reality lingers as a less than an alternative truth of family feasts of the American family. In fact, as I pointed out in the preface to this Thanksgiving message for 2017, we focus almost entirely on ourselves rather than God.

    Festivals, feasts and celebrations have digressed to a holiday from work. Who do we thank, anyway? Certainly not the Lord. Though these feasts may have originated with God and governments, the LORD loses honor in all lands in our contemporary celebrations of self-accomplishment.

    Never-the-less, let’s take a brief Biblical look at the origin of feasts and fasts appointed by the LORD.

     Note: Most information shared from other sources. Check out the several links for additional study.

    Feast and Holy Days and Dates 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
    Purim Adar 14 Mar. 12 Mar. 1 Mar. 21 Mar. 10 Feb. 26
    Pesach (Passover) Aviv 14 Apr. 11 Mar. 31 Apr. 20 Apr. 9 Mar. 28
    Feast of Firstfruits Aviv ___ (varies) Apr. 16 Apr. 1 Apr. 21 Apr. 12 Apr. 11
    Shavuot (Feast of Weeks) Sivan ___ (varies) June 4 §May 31 May 20 §May 20 June 9 §June 9 May 31 §May 29 May 23 §May 17
    Rosh haShanah (Feast of Trumpets) Tishri 1 Sep. 21 Sep. 10 Sep. 30 Sep. 19 Sep. 7
    Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) Tishri 10 Sep. 30 Sep. 19 Oct. 9 Sep. 28 Sep. 16
    Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) Tishri 15-22 Oct. 5 Sep. 24 Oct. 14 Oct. 3 Sep. 21
    Hanukkah (Feast of Dedication) Kislev 25 Dec. 13 Dec. 3 Dec. 23 Dec. 11 Nov. 29

    Feasts of the Lord

    חָגַג – to hold a feast, hold a festival, make pilgrimage, keep a pilgrim-feast, celebrate, dance, stagger

    Contemporary Jewish Calendars include a mixture of Hebrew Festivals, some which are considered minor festivals, with others of more importance.

    Names of Hebrew festivals in other languages vary widely, without a singular reference such as ‘Thanksgiving’ for each.

    All preexilic festivals were “holy convocations”

    PRE-EXILIC Annual (Hebrew) Festivals
    1. Passover, 15th-22d Nican
    2. Pentecost, 6th Ciwan) Pilgrimage
    3. Tabernacles, 15th-22d Tishri) Festivals
    4. Shemini ‘Atsereth, 23d Tishri
    5. New Year, Feast of Trumpets, 1st Tishri
    6. Atonement, 10th Tishri

    Five festivals, in addition to the all-important weekly Sabbath [שַׁבָּת], monthly (28 days) New Moon, Sabbath Year (every 7) and Jubilee Year ( every 50) ALL honor the LORD! The Day of Atonement was the only ‘pre-exilic’ fast.

    Faithful worshipers of God included fasting, prayer and preparation for these feasts honoring the LORD. A feast was much more important than a mere family gathering, a feast followed a prescribed honoring of Almighty God.

    Leviticus 23:

    The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts of the Lord that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts.

    Yom Kippur – The Day of Atonement

    Yom Kippur (in Hebrew)

    More Feasts, Fasts & Festivals

    The Hebrew calendar begins with two thanksgivings (holy convocations, rather than festivals) to the LORD.

    Both commemorate events when the Lord saved Israel: Passover or Pesach the Lord saves the Hebrew people through Moses from slavery in Egypt. And  Purim celebrates the Lord using Queen Esther during the exile to save the Hebrews from holocaust at the hands of Haman the Persian.

    Post-exilic Festivals

    After the fall of Jerusalem more than a dozen new celebrations and fasts were added to the Hebrew calendar. The period of the Babylonian captivity marks a complete change, not only in the kinds of festivals instituted from time to time, but also in the manner of celebrating the old.

    God, America & Thankfulness

    What do Hebrew holidays and a uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving have to do with you?

    (After all, most of the world is neither Hebrew or American.)

    I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples;
    I will sing praises to you among the nations. – Psalm 57:9

    Yes, giving thanks is our most appropriate witness to the Lord.

    O, give thanks! you sons and daughters of Jacob. Yadah, yadah יָדָה the unrighteous will hear nothing of your blessings; yet we give thanks, laud and praise to your glorious Name, O Lord of Hosts!

    1 Chronicles 16:8  הֹודוּ לַֽיהוָה קִרְאוּ בִשְׁמֹו הֹודִיעוּ בָעַמִּים עֲלִילֹתָֽיו׃

    As the Lord has chosen but a remnant of Jacob for eternal redemption. God chooses no nation, but only a faithful remnant of those who believe.

    Israel fell. Rome fell. The U.S. spirals down toward destruction as has every earthly nation before us. The Lord will judge each man and woman for our own sin. He has prepared a remnant for His witness, praise and thanksgiving.

    εὐχαριστία – thankfulness, the giving of thanks

    Our witness is that the Messiah Jesus was, is and is to come – He is God in the flesh, the Spirit and Creator of all things.

    He will judge and condemn the evil which surrounds us.

    He will redeem those who call upon His Name; therefore give Him thanks for the covering of our sins.

    Praise to our Lord Jesus Christ

    John 1:

    16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

    John 3:

    God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

    and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

    See how evil unmasks evil. It cannot remain covered and neither will our sin, unless we are in Christ by his love and mercy and grace.

    20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

    Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,
    the King of creation!
    O my soul, praise Him, for He is thy
    health and salvation!
    All ye who hear,
    Now to His temple draw near;
    Sing now in glad adoration!

    Praise to the Lord! Oh, let all that
    is in me adore Him!
    All that hath life and breath, come
    now with praises before Him!

    Let the Amen
    Sound from His people again;
    Gladly for aye we adore Him.

    Psalm 103

     

  • The Curse of Disease and Death – 3

    The Curse of Disease and Death – 3

    Moses & Joseph, Two Paths to the Palace

    Joseph suffered prior to his blessing more like Job than Moses. He had no choice in his suffering, except his choice of response. Isn’t that how our suffering most impacts others, by our godly response? Blessed be the Lord!

    In part two of this series about our attitude toward disease and death we examined Moses’ story from Exodus. Unlike Job, Moses chose to leave the riches of the palace of Pharaoh where he was raised. Moses could have followed a royal path which may have made him Pharaoh. He chose instead to identify himself with his people and his God.

    You may be familiar with how Moses came to live with the daughter of Pharaoh to be raised as her son.

    Exodus 1:

    15 Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him…

    22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”

    Moses’ birth story begins in Exodus 2 with a baby protected in an ark of wicker retrieved from the bullrushes by none other than Pharaoh’s own daughter. As stated previously. Moses was raised in a palace only to leave at age forty then return again at age eighty to challenge Pharaoh on behalf of the Lord. Moses would live out the remainder of his 120 years in the wilderness.

    A careful reading of Exodus 2 will reveal that the Hebrews were persecuted by the Egyptians because they were afraid of them, for they had been blessed by the Lord. A look back into Genesis will reveal a much different path to Pharaoh’s palace by a man the Lord used to bless the Hebrew nation in Egypt, Joseph.

    Jacob (Israel) From Canaan to Egypt

    Genesis 37:

    Jacob lived in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Canaan…

    .. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers..

    So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

    18 They saw him from afar, and before he came near to them they conspired against him to kill him. 19 They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. 20 Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits…

    26 Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? 27 Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers listened to him. 28 Then Midianite traders passed by. And they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt.

    Joseph Sold

    The whole story contains many more exciting details for the reader (or listener). Most of us first heard of Joseph during our childhood instruction in the Bible. As for Joseph, the hopelessness of the situation would seem to be insurmountable, that is, except that the Lord redeems Joseph for His own purpose.

    Death had seemed certain more than once. Even in survival as a slave, Joseph would suffer injustice yet be redeemed by the Lord.

    Genesis 39:1 Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there…

    20 And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison.

    Genesis 41:

    After two whole years, Pharaoh dreamed.. seven other cows, ugly and thin.. seven ears of grain.. he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but there was none who could interpret them to Pharaoh.

    An official who remembered Joseph’s interpretation of a dream now tells Pharaoh of Joseph. The Lord showed Joseph the meaning of Pharaoh’s dream. (You don’t think you could have guessed from visions of cows eating other cows and random pictures of grain, do you?)

    The Lord brings famine to both Canaan, home of Jacob and Joseph’s brothers. Jacob’s son Joseph prepares Egypt for the same seven years of severe famine ahead and manages stored resources for the people to whom he was sold.

    a 2017 famine FYI

    Mandari fishermen on Nile River in South Sudan

    I mentioned in Part 2 the importance of the 4160 mile long (6670 km) Nile River basin to life in Egypt. (The Jordan river valley was also important to Canaan and the small countries bordering the Jordan to a lesser extent.) Both crops and herds of animals must have both the water and the grain which grows in these fertile areas. Yet when drought comes and the rivers dry up many suffer. Many die, both animals and people die due to lack of water and too little food.

    Did you know:

    UN: World facing greatest humanitarian crisis since 1945

    [ctt title=”Millions suffering in famine and war. Many will die in 2017. Why does the world ignore it?” tweet=”https://ctt.ec/dNle1+” coverup=”dNle1″]

    Humanitarian groups fear this could be just the beginning: a lack of water – blamed partially on the El Nino weather phenomenon – has killed off livestock and crops, leaving 6.2 million people in urgent need of help.

    The greater causes of suffering relate to war, civil war, greed, oil, extremism, religious differences which cause one sect (of several) to oppose other sects to the death (so to speak) and in fact starve them out.

    Is genocide of African terror so different in 21st c. S. Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and so many other shoreline divided rich and poor so different from ancient Pharaohs ordering deaths of opponents?

    [ctt title=”http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39238808” tweet=”Genocide by starvation and war. The terrors of extreme local and religious hatreds.” coverup=”1UNA2″]

    The Lord Prevails

    Returning to Joseph’s story, let us recall how we do not know or understand the ways of the Lord. Not until the end of the story of Job do we learn that the Lord brings Job double blessing. Job didn’t know why he suddenly suffered. We knew from the beginning that satan was behind Job’s suffering.

    Pharaoh caused the great suffering of the Hebrew people in Moses’ time. The Lord brought suffering to Egypt. Pharaoh opposed the Lord; not as a man, but as if a man or a leader could be a god to his own people suffering though plagues and death.

    A Nero, Hitler or Muhammed murdering innocents is no less opposed to the Lord! Even kings of Israel and kings of Judah “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”

    Yet Joseph, a slave in Egypt promoted to the palace, becomes a type of redeemer for the people of the lands he loved. Yes, the lands Joseph loved – both Goshen, a state of Egypt where the Lord would multiply the Hebrew people, and a promised land along the Jordan from which he unwillingly emigrated.

    Forgiveness and Redemption

    Joseph’s story reveals first a reunion of forgiveness with his brothers who sold him into captivity.

    But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. – Genesis 50:19-20

    Joseph’s reply to his brothers from his own position and power:  “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?”[ctt title=” A redeemer does not judge his enemies, but leaves judgment to the Lord.” tweet=”Neither Moses nor Joseph redeemed Israel, but the LORD.” coverup=”367rc”]

    The curse of sin: War, Disease, Famine, Suffering & Death

    From Adam to this very day: many hurt, many suffer, many will die.

    Who is your Redeemer, dear brother, beloved sister – who will redeem you from the enemy of your sin?

    Christ Jesus, He IS! For our Lord shed His Blood of Sacrifice for us while we were yet sinners, enemies of the Lord.

    Like Israel, a man with twelve sons and like a people enslaved by injustice, the Lord has passed over a sinful flesh condemned to die in our sin.

    Christ Jesus IS risen to eternal life and as our Redeemer and Judge the Lord pours over us the Blood of His own righteous and immeasurable outpouring of His own love for our eternal soul.

    Joseph’s brothers eventually bowed down before their brother, humble before the Lord.

    Won’t you bow down before Christ Jesus, loving Lord and Savior of the Hebrews and of the Nations?

     

     

  • The Curse of Disease and Death – 2

    The Curse of Disease and Death – 2

    Moses, Privilege of the Wilderness

    In part one of this series about our attitude toward disease and death we briefly examined a story from the oldest book of the Bible, Job. Job was well-to-do, he had then lost nearly everything including his health, yet he blessed the Lord. תּוֹרָה‎Today we examine part of a too-familiar story from the Pentateuch [Torah ], written by Moses. The Book of the Law, or the first five books of the Bible, are written about the Lord and relationship to man (adam), but within this story we find a man not unlike Job, a man of privilege and wealth, Moses.

    Moses may have been the most learned man on earth in his day, raised as a prince of privilege in a palace of a most powerful man who accumulated wealth and knowledge from the many corners of the world he ruled, conquered or traded. The house of Pharaoh, a throne perhaps to which Moses could have ascended upon his death, was a Rome on the Nile to which the peoples of the land looked in worship.

    Egypt of MosesMoses, Prince of Egypt, ruled over the important day-to-day projects in the extensive north-to-south agricultural empire whose glory was tied to management of the rich resources of the 4,160 mile [6670 km] long Nile River.

    Moses gave up much, first in fleeing for his life at age forty and later in returning at age eighty to challenge Pharaoh at the urging of the Lord, only to be led to live in the wilderness of Sinai for forty more years.

    The Torah breezes quickly over typically the most notable years of a man’s life to tell most about Moses’ life after age eighty.

    [ctt title=”The Torah is five Books about the LORD, not a book about Moses.” tweet=”תּוֹרָה‎” coverup=”U9Qna”]

    Exodus 2:

    Moses Flees to Midian

    11 One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens…

    21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man [Jethro, Priest of Midian], and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. 22 She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.”

    God Hears Israel’s Groaning

    23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God…

    Exodus 3 

    The Burning Bush

    Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed…

    Most of us are fairly familiar with this part of Moses’ story, yet with minimal thought of his again comfortable life with a wife and children and a good job of shepherd. We fail to remember that much time has passed and Moses has survived his own flight from Pharaoh (father of his adoptive Egyptian mother) to establish a good life in the family of a Hebrew priest.

    Now there is a new Pharaoh, perhaps a son who came to the throne of Egypt who would have grown up with Moses, a son perhaps even jealous of the many talents of the former Prince of Egypt who had fled to Midian so many years before. “Exodus 2:23 During those many days the king of Egypt died…” Easy to have missed this. Time had passed in life as always it will.

    Exodus 3:

    10 “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” 12 He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

    Moses is about to become (after a time) a man higher than the LORD’s High Priest, a mortal standing before the Lord as Adam had been in the very presence of the LORD! Yet first, much time would pass both in Egypt and in the wilderness.

    Exodus 4:19-20

    And the LORD said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead.” So Moses took his wife and his sons and had them ride on a donkey, and went back to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the staff of God in his hand…

    27 The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he went and met him at the mountain of God and kissed him. 28 And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord with which he had sent him to speak, and all the signs that he had commanded him to do.

    Exodus 7:

    Moses and Aaron Before Pharaoh

    And the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. 2 You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt,4 Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment.

    We know well the drama to follow: plagues and suffering of both Egyptian and Hebrew. What we may have missed in the big screen dramas is how the Lord used a now ordinary old man (Moses) to lead a suffering people to the promised land. We might not see the humble weakness of old Moses in light of the powerful work the Lord would do by his own hand.

    7 Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.

    This, of course, was prior to the suffering of the plagues to follow or forty more years of a most difficult life dependant on the manna of God in the wilderness of the Sinai.

    Forty years of suffering

    You’ve lived a good life, one longer than most in those days, eighty years. Would you now choose to go out into the desert as leader of a difficult people? Would you now choose to suffer the severe hard life of a nomad refugee in desperate need of water and food, a people without home or shelter?

    Why would God allow this – yes, even command it?

    Like Job, Moses believed the covenant promise of the Lord. God does not always call us to receive double blessing at the end of our life. The Lord does not call us to always extend our years to one hundred and twenty, with sight of the land promised to your sons and daughters.

    If the Lord calls us to suffering, the loss of a child or loved one, the loss of city and home, the devastating loss of health; it is for His own righteous will and the redemption of His own worshipers.

    Are you a worshiper of the Lord God? Would you humble your flesh,  surrender your prideful ‘self?’

    Would you sacrifice your home, your wealth and everything you have ever known before Almighty God? For the LORD IS, He will judge of our souls and redeems the lives of His own. The Lord IS and He has suffered in the flesh for your sins and for mine.

    Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. – Hebrews 3:3

    To be continued…