Passover

Passover is coming up again. It's a time to remember how God has redeemed us by the blood of the Lamb, first from slavery to Egypt, and then from slavery to the world and sin. It is a time to partake of our Lord, to eat Him symbolically in the form of the lamb, the bread, and the wine, to act out taking Him into us physically to demonstrate the spiritual reality.

In most of the Christian world, the day to celebrate our Lord's sacrifice, Good Friday, is scarcely noted, all the attention being on Easter. For those of us who are Messianic, while we also observe the true Resurrection Day, the Feast of Firstfruits, Passover is the main event, as it were. It is the ultimate Lord's Supper, containing not only the bread and the wine, but every element that the talmidim (disicples) would have had at their Last Seder: The bitter herbs (which Judas "outed" himself when dipping into; Mat. 26:23), the haroset (a sweet mixture of apple, herbs, and wine which resembles the mortar the Hebrews used to make bricks), the Lamb, etc.

There are a few questions that those not in the Messianic movement often ask. For example, "Can you find any evidence in the New Testament that the Christians kept the Passover?" You mean besides the Last Seder? Indeed, I can. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Sha'ul writes,

Your boasting is not good. Don't you know the saying, "It takes only a little hametz (leaven) to leaven a whole batch of dough?" Get rid of the old hametz, so that you can be a new batch of dough, because in reality you are unleavened. For our Pesach lamb, the Messiah, has been sacrificed. So let us celebrate the Seder not with leftover hametz, the hametz of wickedness and evil, but with the matzah of purity and truth. (1 Co. 5:6-8, CJB)

One might argue, "Ah, but Paul meant that we should keep the Passover in a spiritual sense." I agree, we should keep it in a spiritual sense, just as we keep the Lord's Supper in a spiritual sense--but that doesn't mean that we forego keeping it physically as well. Every ritual in the Scripture is designed to let us "act out" something spiritual physically, so that full participation in God's blessings would not be limited to intellectuals and mystics, but be available to everyone.

The second question frequently asked is, "Don't you have to be circumcised to observe Passover?" Indeed you do (Exo. 12:48). However, the issue of circumcision is more than just a matter of a cutting of the flesh. By the 1st Century CE, it was an entire rabbinic ceremony by which a Gentile ceased to be a Greek, a Roman, etc., and became a full Jew, expected to keep all of the Torah and the Jewish traditions. It was believed that only the circumcised Jews could be saved (see Acts 15:1), basically excluding Gentiles from God's Kingdom. Now note that in Exodus 12:48, it does not say that the foreigner becomes a Jew when he is circumcised, nor does the ritual act make him a citizen of Israel. When the Apostles discouraged physical circumcision in favor of spiritual circumcision, they were dealing with a rabbinical tradition that committed the sin of adding to the Torah (cf. Deu. 12:32) and of Gentile exclusion.

It is wholly necessary for anyone celebrating God's deliverance of His people to be numbered among and fully identified with those people. However, in Col. 2:11, we are told that we are indeed circumcised spiritually ("without hands") when we trust in the Messiah, whether we are Jew ("circumcised" physically) or Gentile ("uncircumcised"). Therefore we are grafted in to Israel (Rom. 11), adopted into the family of Abraham (Rom. 4:11f, Gal. 3:29), whether or not we have been circumcised under the extra-Biblical ceremony that the non-believing Jewish rabbis and community would recognize.

Besides, if Sha'ul told the Corinthians, a mixed congregation (ch. 7-9) to keep the Passover, it must be appropriate for all believers to observe it. Any other decision would re-erect the wall of separation (Eph. 2:14) that Messiah came to break down.

And finally, the question arises whether it is appropriate to have lamb, when the Temple has been destroyed these last 2000 years (cf. Deu. 16:2). Many Messianic Jews do forgo lamb and substitute another meat in accordance with Jewish tradition and their own understanding about the requirement to have the lamb only in Jerusalem. That's fine, and it's possible that they are right. Now, it is correct that the proper Passover sacrifice, like all sacrifices (Deu. 12), must be offered only in Jerusalem at the Temple. However, as Christian commentators have so often observed, our proper sacrifice has already been offered in the proper place.

Therefore, to us, the Passover is no longer a proper sacrifice, but a memorial: "Do this in remembrance of Me" (Luke 22:19). Note that Yeshua does not repeat that formula for the wine, and yet every Christian considers it to include the wine in the Lord's Supper. Messianics understand it it include the whole of the Passover Seder as well, and at Beth HaMashiach, we believe it to include the lamb as well.

To those readers who have never experienced the joy of having the Passover Seder, I greatly encourage you to do so. It was one of the three life-changing events that led me to becoming Messianic, for truly, every single element speaks of our Lord.

Shalom!

Sabbath Debate After-Report

On Sunday March 25, 2007, Patrick Donahue (BibleDebates.info) and I debated the resolution, “The Sabbath is no longer binding for believers.” Pat of course took the affirmative position and I took the negative (double-negative?) position. We should have the audio up on the HebrewRoot site soon for those who are interested.

I have to confess that this was the first public debate that I’ve been in since college; all of my other debates have been informal affairs online. I am very grateful to Pat for the opportunity, as well as to all of those who came to support us from both synagogue and church. And finally, I’m grateful to Rabbi Gavri’el for his support in putting on the debate.

As always in such a format, there were arguments that I simply didn’t get around to addressing or which I had to address so briefly that I’m not sure the audience picked up on it; there were also missed opportunities, thrusts and ripostes that occurred to me only after the debate. I’m sure Pat would say the same. Nevertheless, I’ve been told that I did a fine job of defending my position. Many of my arguments have appeared on this blog and on Hebrewroot.com already; others will be appearing soon.

Pat’s strategy was to attempt to establish that the Sabbath was part of the “Old Law” and that the Law had been done away with. Many of his arguments have been refuted on HebrewRoot; others I have yet to write articles for. He opened with a very rapid-fire presentation designed to put me on the defensive and leave me scrambling to just keep up with trying to counter his arguments, without any time left to really present my own. As a result, I countered what I felt were the essential arguments and ignored others while I built up my own argument.

My position hinged on three main thrusts: 1) Yeshua kept the Sabbath as well as the whole Torah, and commanded us to do the same (Mat. 5:17-19); 2) the Apostles likewise keep the Sabbath and the Torah; and 3) so why then should we who are saved by grace not follow their example? I also showed from Hebrews 4 that we are indeed told in the NT that there still is a “Sabbath-keeping” on the seventh day for the people of God and showed from Isaiah (56:2-7 and 66:23) that the “foreigners,” the Gentiles, were called to keep the Sabbaths and Rosh Chodeshim (New Moons).

As always in such public debates, opinions will doubtless vary on who won. I’m sure Pat would agree with me that if we inspired those watching and listening to thought and to digging into their Bibles for themselves, that G-d was the true winner here. As it should be.

Shalom!

Updates to Hebrew Root

Tonight (technically, this morning) I put up the first major changes to the Hebrew Root website. Among them, I accidentally removed the bookstore link, and it's a bit late (or early) for me to try to figure out what I did wrong.

On the plus side, I've added several new articles, many of which are expansions of articles first posted here, others of which are brand new. Just click articles and look for the (new) tags.

Shalom!

Stolen Sign

We've been hanging a banner advertising the synagogue off of 78 from a couple of steel posts sunk into the ground, putting it up either Thursday or Friday and taking it down Saturday night. Since we're only putting it up for a couple of days at a time, it counts as temporary advertising and we don't have to get a permit for it.

So I go out Saturday night after service to retrieve the sign. The banner was gone.

The bungee cords securing it to the posts were gone.

The posts were gone.

That's right, folks. Somebody hated our banner so much that they not only stole it, but also stole the metal posts that it was attached to just to make it that much more difficult and expensive for us to replace it. Hopefully I'll be able to at least find the posts tossed into the bushes on the side of the road in the daylight.

*chuckle* It's almost funny that our first act of vandalism (and we've been expecting this sort of thing) was so petty.

Hebrew Root & Other Excitement

Once again, I've managed to go a whole month without posting. That's not to say that I've not been working--just the opposite, in fact.

I've taken over the Hebrewroot.com website for Yeshua HaMashiach Ministries, and I've been busy this last month working on articles (many of which are expanded on from posts I've made here). I'm having to brush up on my Frontpage and html skills, which I've not used in forever, as well, so the changes will be small at first. I'm planning on adding several articles and revamp the FAQ in the next couple of days and saving the redesign of the site for later.

I've also got two debates coming up. On March 25th, I'll be debating Pat Donahue of the Church of Christ on whether the Sabbath is still binding for believers in the Messiah ("binding" in the sense of "Honor thy father and thy mother" being binding--as a matter of what we're supposed to do as believers, not a matter of salvation). The debate will be held at Beth HaMashiach so anyone in the east Atlanta area who is interested is more than welcome to attend.

The second debate, to be held May 1st-4th in Memphis, TN, will be between Don Preston and myself covering two aspects of preterism (the belief that all or nearly all Biblical prophecy was fulfilled at or before the 70 AD destruction of the Temple) vs. futurism (the belief that a significant portion of Biblical prophecy refers to our own future). Don's announcement of the event can be seen on his website here.

I want to say up front that both of these men are dedicated believers in Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus Christ, and that they have never been anything but perfect gentlemen and loving brothers in the Lord. All of us are agreed that we want these debates to be God-pleasing and edifying to the body, not mudslinging bouts. We want to demonstrate that brothers in the Lord can disagree agreeably and discuss these issues in a rational and polite fashion.

Shalom!

Long Absence and a Linguistic Question

Whew. It's been a long few months. I have to apologize for not updating in forever; to be honest, the issue hasn't so much been time as emotional burnout for reasons that have nothing to do with this blog. For those who don't already know me personally, I got hit by two major slams in November and early December: First, I was laid off from my job, which was relocated to Salt Lake City, and second, my girlfriend, a woman who I loved very much and hoped to marry one day, broke up with me.

I'm still hunting for a job, but I've got some good leads, so I'm not worried in the long term and I've emotionally moved on from the break-up enough to date someone else, so don't think I'm trying to throw a pity-party. I'm just explaining the long absence. Fortunately, I have been writing material for the Beth HaMashiach website which will be going up shortly after a long-needed revamp, and much if not all of that material will probably get posted here first.

But you didn't come to hear me whine about my personal life, so let's get into something technical.

We had a gentleman write in to the ministry to object to something in the testimony of Rabbi Leopold Cohn, D.D.--specifically, the way he rendered Malachi 3:1 in the section entitled, "A New Creature": "Behold I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Angel of the Covenant whom ye delight in: behold He has already come, saith the Lord of Hosts."

The gentleman in question objected that every translation he had available to him translated the end of the verse, "behold He comes" (present tense) and expressed his concern over what he saw as a blatant mistranslation. However, the problem is not a mistranslation on Rabbi Cohn's or the writer of the article's part, but rather an issue that faces all translations of Biblical Hebrew.

Technically speaking, Hebrew does not generally have a past, present, and future tense like English does (though there are a couple of exceptions to that rule; e.g., hayah, "he is," hoveh, "he was," and yihyeh "he will be"). Instead, words are described as either "perfect," having been completed, or "imperfect," not yet having been completed. A "perfect" verb may be translated in either the past or present tense, depending on the context and the translator's choice.

In this case, we have two different conjugations of the same word:

"Look! I am sending my messenger to clear the way before me; and the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come (yabou) to his temple. Yes, the messenger of the covenant, in whom you take such delight––look! Here he comes (ba)," says ADONAI–Tzva'ot. (Mal. 3:1, CJB)

The first instance of "come" is constructed in the imperfect tense, and so is translated in our future tense, "will come." The second, however, is constructed as a perfect verb, and so can be translated either in the past or present tense. Most translations use the present tense because it avoids confusion and makes the sentence flow smoothly, and that's undoubtedly the best choice. However, Rabbi Cohn would almost certainly have been reading the passage in the original Hebrew, and so translated the perfect verb "has already come" in his mind when he read it-- and this is a perfectly valid translation.

We find a similar translation issue in Psalm 118:26, Barukh Haba b'Shem ADONAI, or, "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of ADONAI." We translate Haba, "the (one who) came/comes," in the present tense, but we understand it to refer to Yeshua and use the phrase as if it were in the past tense.

In short, there's no error on Rabbi Cohn's part, just a translation issue which a little knowledge of Biblical Hebrew clears up. The interested reader may find this page to be of use, since it deals with the issue of tenses in Messianic prophecy, as well as the Blue Letter Bible, where he can find the original Hebrew as well as some language tools (including Thayer's Lexicon) to look into the issue himself.

Shalom

Oops

Man, where does the time go? Seemed like just yesterday that I was composing notes for Sukkot, then . . . nothing. I completely dropped the ball on turning them into an article, both here and on FR.

On the up side, we're almost finished with the new synagogue, praise God. The walls are all up (with two exceptions due to plumbing work that needs to be done) and either painted or will be painted this week. The carpet's supposed to come in tomorrow, and we'll be putting the chairs in the sanctuary Thursday. We may actually hold service there this Friday, though the dedication won't be for another week or two. This weekend will be mostly spent moving stuff in (furniture, appliances, food, etc), and after that, while there will still be some decorating to be done, I'll have my weekends back to study and write.

My apologies to anyone who's been disappointed at the lackadaisical updates lately. Hopefully I'll be back on a at-least-one-update a week schedule soon.

Shalom.