Where Do You Get THAT?
Here’s an excerpt from a great prayer:
Endow us and all Thy people Israel with peace, goodness, blessing, life, graciousness, kindness, and mercy. Oh our Father, do Thou cause Thy divine light to shine upon every one of us….
Awesome request: YHWH’s goodness, blessing, life, graciousness, kindness, and mercy…lay it on us! Let’s continue with the prayer:
…for by Thy divine light, O Lord our God, hast thou revealed to us the Torah, which sustains life, which teaches the love of kindness, righteousness, blessing, mercy, life, and peace.
From The Prayer Book, Translated and arranged by Ben Zion Bokser.
Whoa! Hold up there a minute! What’s that about Torah? Is this prayer actually implying that the answer to the prayer for “peace, goodness, blessing, life, graciousness, kindness, and mercy” is to be found by receiving a divinely inspired understanding of Torah? …Torah which teaches those things?!
Yes it does.
I’ll bet you think this is the prayer of a “Messianic” Jew, don’t you? Well, it’s not. This prayer, from the “Amidah,” has been recited for centuries (twice daily for almost an entire lifetime) by the people whose lives revolve around Torah. Well, not Torah alone, but that’s another article.
Suffice it to say for our purposes here that all their focus is on Torah, though their approach to Torah is based on tradition. But the bottom line: It comes from a people whose faith is not shaped by the New Covenant or the New Testament.
It is significant that they seem to not view Torah as oppressive but rather as the path to the love of such virtues as peace, goodness, blessing, life, graciousness, kindness, and mercy.
That anyone should find the love of those qualities through Torah might be surprising to some. That’s because most of us were introduced to Torah from a western Gentile mindset. From that viewpoint it is hard to see how anyone, let alone an entire people who has sought to live under Torah for millennia, view it in such a…well… positive light.
The reason for the disparity in viewpoint lies in the fact that, by and large, Torah has been taught to us from a skewed and biased perspective. In other words, we have not been taught Torah in truth. Torah has usually been presented to us as the oppressive and unreasonable demands of a cantankerous and mean god of the “Old Testament.”
But that is a picture of a god that comes from the Greek mindset. Think back to your high-school days of Greek mythology. That’s how they acted. But the Elohim of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was not a Greek myth. And He certainly wasn’t of the same character. Thankfully.
If we really want to gain a biblically-based, and therefore true, understanding of the nature of YHWH we have to develop our understanding of Him based on His revelation of Himself in the Bible. And in both the Tanakh (Jewish name for what many call the “Old” Testament) and the New Testament (which many mistakenly think is the “New Covenant” — yet another article) we find the same Spirit.
We find the same Spirit, that is, if we are not biased against finding Him in Torah by our preconceived notions. And that is vitally important to us in pursuing a godly character because it is in the Tanakh where He largely reveals His character to His people. All of His people. That means those of us under His New Covenant.
And further, Yeshua calls us by His Spirit to live lives of “peace, goodness, blessing, life, graciousness, kindness, and mercy” as His New Covenant people. He has equipped us for the call as well.
Under our New Covenant relationship with Him, the Spirit produces in our lives “peace, goodness, blessing, life, graciousness, kindness, and mercy” as we keep in step with Him. (Check out the “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22.)
Do you desire to find more peace, goodness, blessing, life, graciousness, kindness, and mercy in your life? How about a love for those things? I encourage all to re-read Torah from an unbiased mindset. On your re-read, try to discover where the viewpoint could have developed that a love of peace, goodness, blessing, life, graciousness, kindness, and mercy is to be found through Torah.
Who knows? The Spirit, the same One who inspired the written Torah, and now places the living Torah in your heart under the New Covenant, might just show you some new ways of walking with Him that really aren’t so new after all.
Abba Father, teach us to know you in all the ways you have revealed yourself to all your people for all ages. We ask that the understanding by your Spirit would lead to peace, goodness, blessing, life, graciousness, kindness, and mercy in our lives. We ask these things in the name of Yeshua our Messiah. Amen.
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Copyright 2010 Jim Zboran. All rights reserved.
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February 9th, 2010 at 2:22 PM
Most relate to the Torah as law, but it is this same law that the Patriarchs of OT times lived under. So why does the Bible then espouse they were under the promises?
Because the law is for sin, the promises for relationship to God.
We see then that the law had nothing to do with relationship, unless you see God as some kind of Celestial Cop. Unfortunately that is just as you say, a western (nee Greek) mindset that many adhere to.
The Torah was the foundation that Christ built on. What? Yep. And all He did is redefine what God the Father had already established. Remember in Hebrews where Paul states that Abraham would have gone back to heaven (country) if he had been mindful of it as near instead of “afar off”?
He was speaking to the promises NOT the law.
If God is the same yesterday, today and forever, then all the New Covenant is really a redefining of certain aspects of the Old Covenant, though Christ did make provision for new thinking and said so (“… a new commandment give I unto thee”) and so on.
If the Torah stands on it’s own merits (and it does) then all we have is what God has always said “I will make old things new!”
Shalom
February 9th, 2010 at 7:02 PM
Amen Jonathan! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! I’m glad you brought out those points as they add greatly to the original post.
I like your “cop” analogy. That’s a particularly apt picture of the terms of relationship some have with God. I’ve never thought of it like that, but it is very fitting. Strangely, others try to pursue that relationship with God while rejecting Torah. They put in place their own “Christian laws!” What is that all about?
Great point about Torah as foundational to work of Christ. Absolutely!
I also liked the way you stated:
It calls to mind John 1:17:
I cross out the word “but” because it doesn’t belong there in my opinion–it was put there by a translator who mistakenly thought there was a contrast in ideas.
I think the verse is actually a parallelism that is illustrated by what you said above. The way I might put it is that we received the letter of the law via Moses, but we get the keys, or “new way of thinking” about the letter that will bring it to life in Messiah. Those keys: “in Spirit” and “in love.”
I see the “Spirit” key by example throughout Matthew 5-6 and I see the “love” key in such places as the Greatest Commandments ( Matthew 22:37-40). It is very telling to me that Torah is seen by many who seek to live it by the letter as teaching and promoting the very attributes the Spirit ideally produces in us. Rather than being antithetical, they actually are in harmony. That’s really the bottom line of what I was trying to communicate in my post.
I think that if we begin to view Torah through that perspective, we will discover in Torah many new ways of keeping in step with the Spirit and hence open up opportunity to see more fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate your taking time out to add your thoughts here!
Shalom, brother.
February 10th, 2010 at 6:57 PM
As for me coming out church teaching, and following Torah. There have been so many more blessings coming into my life. In all areas, and most important my relationship with YHWH has become deeper and if I might use that word “holy ” unto Him……
There I might even say a much deeper calling unto my spirit to gain understanding of what He is teaching me.
And my believe is because I have heard His call to follow Torah, there is no other explanation in my personal life as to why things would have changed so quickly. The favor of YHWH on my life, and blessings in abundance.
A blessing to be a blessing how awesome….
Shalom, Jim .
February 12th, 2010 at 11:49 PM
I think you’re finding this promise to be true, Ingrid:
Trust in YHWH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in YHWH; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto YHWH; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.
(Psalms 37:3-6 KJV)
Blessings and Shalom, sister!