Rebuild by The Barking Fox

Nothing is impossible if we put our minds to it. That's been our problem all along. 
Genesis 6:9-11:32; Isaiah 54:1-55:5; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Matthew 5:1-7:22; Hebrews 8:8-12
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Keys to the Flying Car
 
Today I watched the demonstration of a flying automobile, and I wondered whether we have at last attained the status of our ancestors at Babel.
There is nothing inherently evil about the flying Tesla Roadster, and there was nothing inherently evil about the Tower of Babel either. Human beings created in the image of God built both. The Almighty made us with remarkable qualities so that we could exercise dominion over this planet and perhaps extend our sphere of dominion beyond earth when he is satisfied that we can do so responsibly. That’s the issue. Our tendency thus far has been to use our astonishing inventions both for good and for evil.
The question is not whether we should create something, but what the intentions of our hearts are as we are creating it, and what those intentions become once what we have envisioned becomes reality. That’s why God looked down from heaven to see what our ancestors building that tower in the land of Shinar were doing. He announced his verdict when he had seen enough to assess their intentions:
And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
Genesis 11:6-8 ESV
In the four thousand years since that event, we humans remain capable of anything. Nothing is impossible for us if we put our minds to it. But that’s the problem: our minds work according to how our hearts are inclined. That inclination tends to be just as much for evil as for good. In fact, the degree of good or evil depends on how connected we are, or wish to be, with our Creator.
Connection with our Creator should be at the top of our priority list. It usually isn’t, even in the saintliest of people. We would rather indulge in creations of our own that stroke our egos and whet our desires. That’s why we run ahead of the Creator, grasping for innovations, solutions, and knowledge that he is probably planning to give us once we are ready to receive them. It’s our haste to have it all now, on our schedule, that gets us into trouble.
That’s why God had to reset the world in the days of Noah and restart human society with Noah and his family. He had to do it again at Babel, scattering abroad all those multitudes who either refused to remain within the boundaries he had established, or followed the crowd because it seemed the right thing to do.
It’s not that God had left them without instructions. The basic instructions on how to live in peace with God, with each other, and with creation were all included in what God said to Noah and his sons as they left the Ark. Those instructions built on what he had said to Adam and Eve about 1,600 years earlier. Those centuries of human experience, including the great restart of the Flood, gave Noah’s family the capacity to receive the additional specifications, or commandments, on how to live. At Babel, however, humanity proved it was not ready to live under even those basic instructions. That’s why God opted to separate a segment of humanity that would listen and obey.
Today we know that segment of humanity as the seed of Abraham, or Israel. About two thousand years after the Tower of Babel, and after God called Abraham to establish the Covenant nation of Israel, Messiah Yeshua further refined and expanded the Creator’s instructions during his famous Sermon on the Mount. As his Heavenly Father had done with Noah, Yeshua delivered commands, instructions, and assurances to those who drew near.
God promised Noah that he would never again strike down every living creature as he had done in the Flood, and called as witnesses both the earth, with its seasons, and the heavens, with day and night and with the rainbow as the sign of his covenant. Yeshua called on those same witnesses as he placed his ministry in context:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”
Matthew 5:17-18 ESV
The Law, or Torah, is the mechanism of the covenants God has made with the heavens, the earth, and mankind. The great restarts in the days of Noah and the time of Yeshua point toward a further restart when Messiah comes in power and great glory to rule in person.
The Bible gives us pictures of what life will be like in that great Messianic age, but it also leaves us many unanswered questions. Thanks to the promise of resurrection, we’ll be able to compare notes with those who have come before us, and thanks to the terms of the New Covenant, we will all know the Lord. Hopefully that means we’ll qualify for something far better than keys to a flying car.
 
Cover image generated by Grok, created by xAI..
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.
This meditation was inspired in part by The Echoes Bible, vol. I, Genesis & Matthew. The Echoes Bible is available at https://www.echoesbible.com/.

If there is no Creator, then what meaning is there to life? If the Creator has no plan for his creation, what is the point of serving him? 
Genesis 1:1-6:8; Isaiah 42:5-43:10; Jeremiah 31:15, 31-34; Matthew 1:1-25; John 1:1-5; Revelation 13:7-8
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: From the Foundation
 
Our great hope is that God has a plan for his creation. That hope helps us cope with all the suffering and pain of this life. If there is a reason for it, then we can endure it even if we don’t understand the reason. It’s enough to know that we serve a God who knows the reason and makes all things work out for good at the right time.
There is an idea in Jewish biblical commentary that God created everything on the first day, but each element of creation was put in its place on the day it was commanded. In other words, everything has been in existence from the beginning, but awaits the proper time to be called forth.
John the apostle is one Jewish writer who applies this line of thinking to God’s plan of redemption and Messiah Yeshua’s role in it. He makes the case in the opening words of his gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:1-5 ESV
In Revelation 13, John writes about Yeshua as the Lamb of God who was slain from the foundation of the world. He also writes about the holy people of God whose names have been written in the Lamb’s Book of Life from the foundation of the world. It’s not clear from the Greek text whether John meant that the Lamb had been slain at creation, or the Book of Life was written at that time. Either translation is correct. The important point is that redemption has been the Creator’s plan all along.
Another Jewish writer who understands this is Matthew. His gospel is full of quotes from the prophets and psalms to show how Yeshua fit the ancient promises of who the Messiah is and what he would do. The first quote is from Isaiah 7:14. Matthew includes it at the beginning of his gospel, when he reports the angelic message given to Joseph, the fiancé of Yeshua’s mother, Mary:
“She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus [Yeshua], for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel
(which means, God with us).
Matthew 1:21-23 ESV
With this quote, Matthew linked the story of Yeshua’s birth to the promise of a redeemer who would restore Creation. That’s what the name, Immanuel, is all about. God was with our first ancestors in the Garden, but they chose a different path and had to be separated from him. All of us who came after them have the tendency to make the same choice. If left to our own devices, we would end up like that generation in Noah’s day who imagined only evil and filled the earth with violence. That was not a condition we humans could fix on our own. We needed reprogramming from the Creator to reset our hearts and minds.
The reprogramming is what scripture calls the New Covenant. As Jeremiah 31 tells us, the New Covenant God makes with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, and with all who join them, involves giving us new hearts and writing on them his Torah, or Law. When that happens, those who take part in the Covenant will be the people of God and will know the Creator as our first ancestors knew him.
Matthew indirectly references the New Covenant by quoting from Jeremiah 31, indicating the terrible price God paid to bring the Covenant into effect:
Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:
A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.
Matthew 2:16-18 ESV
Isaiah also speaks of this price when writing of Israel’s redemption:
But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
Because you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you,
I give men in return for you,
peoples in exchange for your life.
Isaiah 43:1-4 ESV
This sounds cruel, but what if there is no other way? What if, in order to redeem all peoples, God has to preserve a chosen people as his channel of redemption? Maybe that’s how this makes sense in the end. We’re not there yet, so we have to hope in the Author of the story. He’s the only one who can tell us the end from the beginning. He’s been doing that all along.
 
Cover image generated by Grok, created by xAI..
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.
This meditation was inspired in part by The Echoes Bible, vol. I, Genesis & Matthew. The Echoes Bible is available at https://www.echoesbible.com/.

Who does God like best? That's not a fair question. A better question is, who does God want in his family? 
Deuteronomy 33:1-34:12; Joshua 1:1-18; Zechariah 2:10-12; Matthew 12:22-32; Luke 14:15-24; 1 Peter 2:9-10; Revelation 5:9-10
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: God's Favorite
 
My daughters can tell you they are both my favorites. One is my favorite oldest daughter, and the other is my favorite youngest daughter. When they were children, one was my favorite soccer player, and the other was my favorite dancer. I still count them both as my favorites, and my joy is now multiplied as they have brought my favorite sons-in-law and my favorite grandchildren into the family.
This is a picture of how God’s family works. The testimony of scripture indicates that our Heavenly Father is more interested in expanding his family than in limiting access to it. That is what we understand from Yeshua’s teachings, such as his parable about the man who invited friends to a great banquet, and when they gave reasons why they couldn’t come, he had his servants bring in people from the highways and hedges so that his house would be filled. The original guests could have come also if they had apologized and asked to be included. That would have increased the joy of the host even more. However, since they chose not to come, they fell into another category Yeshua mentioned:
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
Matthew 12:30 ESV
This is a message of inclusion and of hope. It speaks of a time when the hosts of heaven praise the Lamb of God, saying:
Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.
Revelation 5:9-10 ESV
That is a grand hope for Christians. The problem, though, is that too often it has been used as a reason to exclude the ones who first received God’s promise of inclusion. That would be the Jewish people, the visible remnant of God’s Covenant nation of Israel. Jews pin their hopes on God’s promises in passages like this one in Zechariah:
Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord. And many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people. And I will dwell in your midst, and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. And the Lord will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.
Zechariah 2:10-12 ESV
This is how we know the Jewish people are the chosen people of God. They are the House of Judah, and as Zechariah records, they are God’s own inheritance. That is very special indeed—special enough that Jews could claim to be God’s favorites.
But then, Christians make that same claim. Peter the apostle even says as much:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
1 Peter 2:9-10 ESV
How do we reconcile this apparent contradiction?
The sad truth is that neither portion of God’s chosen people have historically tried to resolve it. Each has recognized their own legitimate claims to be the true Israel of God, but have denied the legitimate claims of the other. In essence, each says they are God’s favorite while saying the other has no place in God’s esteem.
Much of this contention concerns the division over Messiah’s identity. Christian claims of inclusion in the New Covenant God made with Israel come from our identity in Messiah Yeshua. Jews do not recognize such claims, insisting that one cannot become part of Israel unless one is Jewish.
What if God’s solution involves inclusion rather than exclusion? What if he is making a way for both the native born and the foreigners from the nations to take part in the same Covenant and become part of the same people?
That is exactly what he is doing. It’s the reason Zechariah agrees with Peter and John when he writes, “And many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people.”
This is more important than we may realize. Being part of Israel means being part of the people God saves, defends, and promotes, as we learn from Moses:
“There is none like God, O Jeshurun,
who rides through the heavens to your help,
through the skies in his majesty.
The eternal God is your dwelling place,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.
And he thrust out the enemy before you
and said, ‘Destroy.’
So Israel lived in safety,
Jacob lived alone,
in a land of grain and wine,
whose heavens drop down dew.
Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you,
a people saved by the Lord,
the shield of your help,
and the sword of your triumph!
Your enemies shall come fawning to you,
and you shall tread upon their backs.”
Deuteronomy 33:26-29 ESV
Our God is big enough to do this for both the native-born Jews and the adopted foreigners. Both are part of his Covenant people, and both share equally in his esteem. In that sense, we are all God’s favorite.
 
Cover photo by Tonia Kraakman, Alexandra, New Zealand, December 22, 2021, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

It is possible to explain the meaning of life without a Creator, but is any such explanation sustainable apart from the Creator? How can we navigate this life of unavoidable troubles without hope for something beyond it, and hope in One who can take us there? 
Leviticus 26:11-3; Job 19:23-29; Ecclesiastes 1:9-11, 12:1-14; Ezekiel 37:24-28; Jonah 2:1-10; 2 Peter 3:1-13; Revelation 21:1-4
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: On the Knife Edge of Hope
 
Philosopher George Santayana gave us the memorable observation that, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Santayana may not have known that King Solomon expressed this same observation 3,000 years ago. Solomon said it this way:
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.
Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 ESV
Both Solomon and Santayana advocated enjoying life while it lasts, but only Solomon ascribed that enjoyment to the context of living for the Creator. That is why he exhorted his readers to remember the Creator in the days of youth, and to understand that the whole duty of man is to “Fear God and keep his commandments.” (Ecclesiastes 12:1, 13–14)
Solomon’s conclusion speaks to a hope of something beyond the present life. He can’t say exactly what that is, but he does assert with confidence that there is a Creator who is God of both the living and the dead. That confidence speaks to a hope in the Creator such as Job expressed when he said,
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
Job 19:25-26 ESV
Jonah expressed that same hope from the belly of the great fish. His poetic description of the trial he endured because of his own disobedience speaks of the hope that the God who disciplined him even to the point of death would also restore him to life. That moved Jonah to proclaim, “Salvation belongs to the Lord!” (Jonah 2:9)
This hope is solid, but it is as sharp as a knife’s edge. It starts with resolve to believe that there is a Creator and goes from there to the conclusion that the Creator is trustworthy. A person who lacks this resolute perspective might fall off the edge or be cut to pieces by it. The evidence of God’s existence and handiwork in the affairs of mankind might be all around such a person, but in his uncertainty and doubt he overlooks that evidence or explains it away. This is the type of person Peter described when he wrote:
This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.”
2 Peter 3:1-4 ESV
Peter goes on to write about the workings of God from the beginning of time, and the certainty of his final judgment on unrighteousness. The apostle assures us that the promised resurrection extends not only to our bodies, but to the heavens and the earth themselves. That resurrected creation is where our Creator will dwell among us as he has always intended.
Three witnesses in scripture testify to this glorious hope. The first is Moses, who related this promise from the Lord:
I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.
Leviticus 26:11-12 ESV
Ezekiel gives us the second witness in his prophecy about the resurrection and restoration of God’s Covenant people of Israel:
My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.
Ezekiel 27:27-28 ESV
Then there is the witness of John the Revelator, who reported what he saw and heard in his vision of the end of days:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
Revelation 21:3 ESV
These are solid promises to those who have placed their trust in the Creator. They become even more real as the trials of life provide opportunity to build testimonies of his presence and providence. Yet those same trials can also produce doubt and unbelief even in those who have previously professed trust in the Lord. That’s the knife edge of hope: the path is perilous from start to finish, but to those who overcome, there is the promise of life eternal in the presence of our God.
 
Cover photo by Zoran Borojevic, May 17, 2020, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

How do we know the end point of the Last Days? Can we know? Or is there something more important that we should be thinking about?   
Deuteronomy 32:1-52; Hosea 14:1-9; Joel 2:15-27; Micah 7:18-20; Isaiah 45:11-13; Daniel 12:5-13; Acts 1:6-8; Revelation 15:2-43
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Waiting for the End of the Song
 
Have we arrived at the time when we can begin to know the things hidden until the end of days?
Two witnesses in scripture tell us we aren’t supposed to know everything about God’s final moves to judge evil and establish his Kingdom on earth until a set time. One is Messiah Yeshua. When his disciples asked him just before his ascension whether he would at that time restore the Kingdom to Israel, he told them they didn’t need to know that but instead should focus on the task at hand. As he said,
It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
Acts 1:7-8 ESV
The second witness is Daniel. After receiving a vision of the end of days, he was told that the meaning of the vision was sealed until the time of the end. He, like Yeshua’s disciples, was told to remain faithful in the work he had been given. That’s one way to understand the message Daniel received:
Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end. Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly. And none of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand. . . But go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.
Daniel 12:9-13 ESV
We learn from these witnesses that it’s more important to be faithful and obedient to God than to try to figure out what’s going to happen beyond the horizon. That doesn’t mean we can’t ask. That’s what we learn from Isaiah:
Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and the one who formed him: “Ask me of things to come; will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands? I made the earth and created man on it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host. I have stirred him up in righteousness, and I will make all his ways level; he shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward,” says the Lord of hosts.
Isaiah 45:11-13 ESV
This describes the story of Job, the righteous man who asserted his authority to question God because of his relationship with the Creator. When God appeared and revealed his glory, Job didn’t get all the answers to his questions, but he did get unprecedented understanding about the greatness of the Creator and his own smallness in comparison. He learned what God explained to Isaiah: that God’s people have the standing to ask about their future, but he has the final word and will not change his will to fit our preferences.
In the end, God will save his people. In this passage from Isaiah, he is speaking of King Cyrus of Persia, the man who decreed the end of the exile in Babylon for the Jewish remnant of Israel. Cyrus was a type of Messiah in that sense. The Messiah will decree and bring about the end of the exile and the restoration of all Israel, which is what the disciples were hoping Yeshua would do in their day.
What would the Lord say if we ask if he will restore the Kingdom to Israel in our day? Is there a way we can know if the time has come for the meaning of Daniel’s vision to be unsealed?
One answer is in the Torah Awakening among Christians. Through that awakening, we now realize that those who pledge allegiance to Israel’s Messiah are adopted into God’s Covenant Nation of Israel. Instead of replacing the native-born Jewish remnant, we somehow join with them in the promised extension of Israel into all nations. That’s how we join the holy people of God.
With that in mind, consider this word given to Daniel about the end of days:
And I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream; he raised his right hand and his left hand toward heaven and swore by him who lives forever that it would be for a time, times, and half a time, and that when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end all these things would be finished.
Daniel 12:7 ESV
This is an echo from the Song of Moses, one of two songs the saints of God are to sing as the final judgments come upon the earth. The climax of that song says:
For the Lord will vindicate his people
and have compassion on his servants,
when he sees that their power is gone
and there is none remaining, bond or free.
Deuteronomy 32:36 ESV
Now that we know Israel’s history is our collective history, we can make a few observations. First, the Song of Moses explains how God remains faithful to Israel even though they stray from him and walk out of his Covenant. Second, judgement comes first on the household of God, which not only removes the rebellious elements, but also refines the faithful. And third, we won’t see the final redemption until we come to the end of our efforts to live in peace and safety by our own strength and righteousness.
That isn’t a bad thing. It’s what all creation has been waiting for since the beginning.
 
Cover photo by Ben White, August 15, 2016, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

God commands us to remember many things. Why? What's the importance of remembering things in the past, especially if they are painful and unpleasant? 
Exodus 3:13-17, 20:1-18; Numbers 15:37-41; Deuteronomy 25:17-18, 32:4-9; Psalm 11:1-7; Jeremiah 31:21; Ecclesiastes 12:1-3; Romans 11:17-18; Ephesians 2:11-13
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Why We Remember
 
The head of God’s biblical year is a time of remembering. Jewish tradition says God created human beings on Rosh Hashanah, the sixth day of creation. By that reckoning, we have entered the 5787th year of the world’s existence, and of our creation as images of the Living God. That is cause for celebration and making noise, which is why the Creator commanded that we mark this day with blowing trumpets.[1]
We must remember not only the good things, but also the painful things. That’s why this particular day of remembering is especially meaningful for Americans, because it’s the 25th year since evil men decided to inflict incalculable harm on our nation.
What are we to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001? How are we to remember them as they slide into the sea of human memories? Even now, many who hear me are not old enough to remember the world before 9/11. To them, that world is a foreign as the world of ancient Israel. But I remember.
In my lifetime, I have talked with people who remembered World War II, the Great Depression, World War I, and the Spanish-American War. Those people talked with others who remembered the American Civil War and the Mexican-American War. And those people talked with others who remembered the American Revolution and life before there was a United States.
Four generations of my living memory go back three hundred years. What I don’t remember personally, I learned from those who were there. They left records and writings, just as Moses, the Prophets, and the Apostles left records and writings so that we could learn and remember.
This is of God. He commands us to remember. Here are some of the things he specifically mentioned:
Remember who he is:
Say this to the people of Israel: “The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. (Exodus 3:15 ESV)
Remember his set-apart time:
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. (Exodus 20:8 ESV)
Remember who we are and what we are to do:
So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God: I am the Lord your God. (Numbers 15:40-41 ESV)
Remember the enemies of God and of his Kingdom:
Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God.” (Deuteronomy 25:17-18 ESV)
Remember the foundation of the Covenant into which we are adopted:
But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. (Romans 11:17-18 ESV)
Remember what we were before we were adopted into God’s Covenant, and how we were brought in:
Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:11-13 ESV)
The Creator also told us how we are to do this remembering:
Remember the days of old;
consider the years of many generations;
ask your father, and he will show you,
your elders, and they will tell you.
Deuteronomy 32:7 ESV
This is more important than we realize. We live in a culture that demonizes the foundations of godly civilization, which is the Judeo-Christian civilization as we have known it. Our civilization is just as imperfect as the civilization of ancient Israel from which it was derived, not because the Creator who established it is imperfect, but because we, his images, are still imperfect.
The great error of our day is the tendency to point out the flaws while ignoring the principles by which we know they are flaws. As a result, we have no idea how to keep the Sabbath holy because we have no concept of holiness, and we have trouble honoring our fathers and mothers because we are no longer sure what a mother is, and because fatherhood has somehow become linked with toxic masculinity.
We live in a time such as David described when he asked, “if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3 ESV) The answer is to do what Jeremiah prescribed in the famous New Covenant chapter:
Set up road markers for yourself;
make yourself guideposts;
consider well the highway,
the road by which you went.
Return, O virgin Israel,
return to these your cities.
Jeremiah 31:21 ESV
That’s a prophetic call to return to our roots in the Covenant God established with our father Abraham. Once we have returned and recovered those ancient ways, we have a responsibility to future generations to guard them. The best way to do that is by taking the advice of David’s son Solomon:
Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”
Ecclesiastes 12:1 ESV
 
[1] “The Purpose of Creation” Chabad.org, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4456/jewish/The-Purpose-of-Creation.htm.
 
Cover image generated by Grok, created by xAI..
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Are the Jewish and Christian concepts of Messiah really different, or are they two perspectives on the same covenant mystery?
Deuteronomy 29:10-31:30; Isaiah 53:1-12, 61:10-63:9; Hosea 3:1-5; Romans 9:1-5; Ephesians 2:11-13; Philippians 2:1-11
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Hidden in the Glorious Darkness
 
It’s a mystery why Jews and Christians are divided about the Messiah when expect his coming to bring peace to the world. It’s not that we are expecting different Messiahs, but rather that we have different expectations of how Messiah will come.
Christians expect a Messiah who comes twice, the first time as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. Yeshua came as the one with “no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). He didn’t come to rule, but to lay down his life for our transgressions. This is the Savior who, as Paul explains,
. . .though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:6-8 ESV
Why did Messiah have to come that way? The answer is because that’s how we needed him to appear. Again, Paul supplies the reason:
Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ [Messiah], alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Ephesians 2:11-13 ESV
We from the nations were outside the covenant of redemption God made exclusively with Abraham and his descendants in the nation of Israel. The Jewish people are the natural descendants of Abraham and the visible remnant of Israel. Paul says of them:
They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
Romans 9:4-5 ESV
We from the nations, regardless of whether we are in any way descended from Israel’s tribes, were caught outside this covenant until God himself, the maker and guarantor of the covenant, intervened to bring us in. At the same time, he intervened to extend grace and mercy on the Jewish native born.
Hosea prophesies two distinct destinies for Israel’s divided kingdom, the Jewish people, or House of Judah, and the rest of the nation which is called the House of Israel:
. . . I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen.
Hosea 1:6-7 ESV
God divided his covenant people into two parts, cutting one part out of the covenant entirely, and sending the other part into exile. Those who were cut out of the covenant forgot who they were and merged with the nations. The Jewish part retained their identity even through two periods of exile. The Jewish people have preserved all those things Paul says were entrusted to them. They have clung tightly to the Torah and persistently prayed toward Jerusalem, the center of God’s Kingdom.
As Jews pray toward Jerusalem, they are following the instructions of Moses:
And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.
Deuteronomy 30:1-3 ESV
They are also following the example of Solomon, who dedicated the First Temple with a prayer that God would honor the petitions of both the native born of Israel and the foreigners when they prayed toward his holy House. As Solomon said,
The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness. I have indeed built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.
1 Kings 8:12-13 ESV
The Hebrew word translated as “thick darkness” refers to the cloud of glory of God’s presence. That cloud rested on Mount Sinai, on the Tabernacle, and on Solomon’s Temple. Ezekiel saw the cloud depart in the time of the Temple’s destruction. It’s that cloud of glory that faithful Jews have been expecting to return ever since.
Yeshua didn’t bring the cloud of God’s glory into the Second Temple, and that’s a big reason why he hasn’t been received by his brethren. They expect Messiah to regather all Israel and restore the nation to the glorious covenant status they have held in their collective memory for millennia.
What’s missing in this expectation is the Messiah’s task to gather all the outcasts of Israel, along with multitudes from the nations. That task is tied to the reason the House of Israel was cut out of the covenant and scattered to the nations. God didn’t forget them. He sent Messiah the first time to open the way for their return, and for strangers from the nations to join them.
We from the nations have missed the significance of God’s covenant city of Jerusalem, his covenant land of Israel, and the Jewish remnant of the covenant people of Israel. All we know is that once we were in darkness, but in Yeshua we are brought into the light. This is something else Hosea prophesied:
For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.
Hosea 3:4-5 ESV
Both Houses of Israel have lived for millennia without the visible elements of God’s presence. Perhaps that is how God has been removing the heart of stone from his people, both the native born and the grafted-in strangers. If we can learn to love, honor, and obey him without seeing the visible cloud of his glory, then perhaps our hearts will remain inclined to serve him forever.
This is where the Jewish and Christian expectations of Messiah merge. We know we are living in the latter days because his people from both sides of the family are beginning to recognize each other as somehow connected through his covenant. It’s still a mystery how it works, but the answer could be hidden in his glorious darkness.
 
Cover photo by Bruce, July 25, 2021, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

There's nothing in God's word that says we have to agree with everyone on everything, but there's a lot in there about getting along with one another. We probably don't realize how serious our Creator is about that. 
Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19; Isaiah 54:1-10; Hosea 8:11-12; Matthew 19:1-12, 22:34-40; John 13:34-35; Galatians 3:23-29; Hebrews 8:8-12; 1 John 4:7-12
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Be Nice to Your Brother
 
Even people who read and study the Bible might think of the Torah as a strange thing when they come across difficult passages like this one from Deuteronomy:
No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever, because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. But the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam; instead the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you. You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever.
Deuteronomy 23:3-6 ESV
We remember Balaam as the prophet who wouldn’t listen to the Lord until a donkey started talking to him, but that doesn’t tell us why we should study this passage. The Moabites and Ammonites disappeared a long time ago, so why do they matter to us?
They matter because the principles behind this Torah passage connect with Messiah Yeshua’s commandment to his disciples to love one another. John the apostle explains what that means:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4:7-12 ESV
Since God is love, everyone who knows him should love. Yeshua tells us that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love others. Every other commandment is an application of those two.
As strange as it may seem, love is the guiding principle in the Torah, even in those commandments we don’t like, such as how to treat women taken captive in war, and in commandments that seem like common sense, such as letting a mother bird go free when taking eggs from her nest. Some parts of the Torah are strange and harsh to our modern ears, and that’s not a bad thing.
Our hearts go out to women and girls who seem to have had no rights under the law. Maybe our reaction is evidence that the law is being written on our hearts just as God promised. That was happening even in Yeshua’s day. He said, for example, that God permitted divorce because of the hardness of people’s hearts. God established the Torah procedures to make sure women weren’t completely without protection while his covenant of redemption was working through Israel and the nations like leaven working through a batch of dough.
Maybe we will have opportunity to take part in updating the Torah when Yeshua returns as King of the world and establishes it as the global standard of conduct. In the meantime, we must learn how to be nice to one anotherꟷespecially to family.
The Ammonites and Moabites didn’t learn that lesson. As descendants of Abraham’s nephew Lot, they were family to the Israelites. They should have realized that by extending kindness to the Hebrews as they journeyed toward their inheritance in Canaan, they would have secured their own inheritance in the lands God had given them. That’s part of what God meant when he promised Abraham that he would bless whoever blessed him, and that those who dishonored Abraham would bring a curse upon themselves. That promise applies to everyone who is counted among the seed, or descendants, of Abraham.
We often hear this promise to Abraham in the context of blessing the Jewish people and supporting the Jewish State of Israel. That is a correct understanding. The Jewish people are the visible remnant of God’s covenant people of Israel. Their restoration to their indigenous homeland is the greatest evidence that God exists and that he is willing and able to come through on his promises. While we are waiting on revelation of Messiah to dawn on Jewish hearts, it might be wise to avoid the errors of the Ammonites and Moabites and pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
But there’s more to it than that. It’s not just the Jewish people who are descendants of Abraham. When God promised to bless all the nations of the earth through Abraham, he meant that he would provide a way for everyone to take part in the covenant of redemption he established through Abraham. The way he provided is through Messiah Yeshua, which is why Paul tells us that in Messiah we are “Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:29)
What that means is that we should be careful about who we bless and who we curse. If everyone in Messiah is part of the family, then even those denominations and groups and individuals we disagree with or don’t like are also heirs according to the promise.
God understands that our disagreements are not trivial matters, but he expects us to deal with those issues in love. Just like our Hebrew ancestors, we are all on a journey to the promised rest in Messiah. It might be better if we learn from the error of the Ammonites and help each other along the way.
 
Cover photo by Annie Spratt, May 30, 2019, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.