Daily teaching audios from John Parsons at Hebrew for Christians
Shalom chaverim. The way we choose to see is ultimately a spiritual decision. In this “Daily Dvar” audio broadcast, I discuss what I call the “Torah of the Good Eye” and the spiritual need to seek goodness in everyday reality. I hope you will find it helpful.
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The late Henri Nouwen said that there are two great fears (or wounds) that we all face. The first is the fear that we were not wanted at the time of our birth into this world, and the second is that we will not be wanted at the time of our death. “Not being welcome is your greatest fear. It connects with your birth fear, your fear of not being welcome in this life, and your death fear, your fear of not being welcome in the life after this. It is the deep-seated fear that it would have been better if you had not lived” (Inner Voice of Love). If you carry a wound of abandonment within your heart – if you live in dread over your worth as a human being, seriously wondering whether it would have been better had you never been born, then you know the taste of hell itself – the emotional prison of feeling lost, defective, rejected, shameful – unable to love or to be loved…
Is not the lament of the lonely heart to find a sense of welcome, or acceptance, or peace within? Is it not the heart’s cry for connection? Yet even the very gospel message cannot make traction within a heart lost to its own shame… Therefore the miracle of salvation is profoundly connected with faith that you are loved and lovable – despite yourself – and that this love derives from the core of all that truly exists. Is this not “home” in the spiritual sense? Is this not “Zion, the perfection of holiness?” That God prepares a table for you in the presence of your enemies, yea, those enemies of self-rejection, abandonment, fear, and shame? And that there – in the midst of your lost and forlorn condition you are found, treasured, and celebrated? Is not that “place” God’s very heart – Jesus dying upon the cross, gasping for each breath – knowing everything about you and loving you anyway?
In our Torah reading this week (Eikev), Moses asks us to “soften our hearts” by remembering that we are beloved of God (Deut. 10:12-16). He reminds us that the though Lord is “the God of gods” (אֱלהֵי הָאֱלהִים) – the power that transcends the gods of our idolatry (i.e., our fears, our disordered attachments, our shame), and the “Lord of lords” (אֲדנֵי הָאֲדנִים) – the Center and Authority of what is most real, he nevertheless cares for the lowly orphan and the grieving widow – he reaches out to the needy and the abandoned – and he desires to console the “stranger,” the one shattered of heart, who has no sense of belonging, no pride of tribe, nor place to lay his head (see Deut. 10:17-18). God cares about those who are lost, hurting, and alone: He came to save all such from their despair.
Read more “Wounds of Loneliness…”
Human suffering, as opposed to that of animals, transcends the realm of the “phenomenological” to that of self-conscious interpretation. The purely animal mind is immersed in the present moment, and its suffering (though real) is experienced without context, without a story, with no sense of meaning or ulterior cosmic purpose.
When Job was tested by God, he was immersed in a religious philosophy that provided a “map” for ordering the temporal circumstances, or phenomena, of human life. Good and evil were descriptive categories grounded in God’s approval or disapproval of a person’s character and choices. If evil things happened, then, God was expressing his disapproval of the behavior or character of the person; if good things happened, God was expressing his approval…
This was the rather crude idea of “karma” that lay behind much religious superstition and nonsense of that time. If a person suffered, then God disapproved of the person (or ignored him), and conversely, if God approved of the person, suffering would not occur. And it was sometimes unclear exactly what pleased God or offended him, ideas of “luck” and “chance” blended in with superficial notions of moral cause and effect. Superstitious religiosity thus sought to improve a person’s spiritual condition by “bribing” God through flattering words or rituals, or by seeking his approval by doing good deeds….
Meister Eckhart once said that we need God to deliver us from “God,” by which he meant that we need the revelation of truth to deliver us from our illusions of who God is and what God is like. After all, people tend to make God in their own image, and yet the LORD forbids all such forms of idolatry. We need God to know the truth about God.
This might explain Job’s wife’s response to the loss of her home, her children, and the tortuous suffering of her husband. “Curse God and die” she counseled, which might mean: “Everything you’ve believed about God is an illusion – you have been ‘religious,’ you have been pious of heart, you have been a good man, and yet all this woe has befallen us… You seek for answers using terms of a religious philosophy to get us through life, and for awhile that map seemed to work, but now it has shown itself to be untrue, or at least it is powerless to help you. Forget the map! Forget the attempt to decipher why you (and me) are suffering – for the map itself has led you astray, and there is nothing left but to let it all go – to die to all that….”
On the face of it we tend to condemn Job’s unnamed wife for being faithless, but just imagine what she was going through at the time, alongside her husband…. Her words of exasperation were unsettling, to be sure, but they were the words of someone who was greatly suffering and in need of grace….
The religious philosophy of karma runs deep within the human heart, even among the Jewish people. The law itself is karmic. How else could the “good Pharisee” pray: “I thank you God, that I am not like other men…” His gratitude was based on his comfort that he had played the “game” of religion better than others. Is that the best that legalistic Judaism can offer?
Among other things, the Book of Job “deconstructs” the religious idea of God as strictly karmic to be something more than we can fathom, as King Solomon later said during the dedication of the Holy Temple, “Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).
And yet is this not the very thing we must do, to “make a place” for God within us? “Let them make for me a sanctuary that I may dwell within them” – וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם (Exod. 25:8). Moses’ instruction to build a Mishkan was symbolic, of course, for the people were acquainted with the vast glories of the Egyptian temples, pyramids, and so on. By contrast, the Mishkan was small, humble, and nearly inconspicuous; it represented God’s Presence in disguise, unseen by proud eyes, but the very place of the Spirit of God and truth (Isa. 45:15). “Building a Mishkan” then meant “enshrining faith, hope, and love” within our hearts, beautifying and magnifying the greatness of God within us. It is an idea of God that goes well beyond “mechanical karma” to that of deep heart relationship with the Lord…
God spoke to Job from the midst of the whirlwind (סְעָרָה), and it was from the midst of the head-spinning revelation that he heard God speak…. But how did Job get there? Was it not only after he had rebuffed the religious philosophy or “map” that his friends sought to justify his sufferings? Job was adamant, however: that map didn’t work – “God” had failed him; “God” had hurt him unjustly, etc. All this “God-talk” was just that – ignorant blather used to justify the old news of karma – but something more else was going on – truth was beginning to be revealed. Using Eckhart’s terms, God was delivering Job from his illusions about “God.”
How did Mary Magdalene come to know the truth? How did the unnamed tax collector at the Temple who dared not lift up his eyes toward heaven? How did Jonah? How did you? Indeed, how can anyone come to know God apart from having their “world” crumble into dust and ashes before them? And in the midst of the implosion, in the eye of the whirlwind that churns overhead, God then speaks words to the heart…
Whatever the words are – divine poetry of the sort Job heard or something else, it doesn’t matter so much what is being said but who is saying the words, that is, who is looking upon you in all your frailty, brokenness, and ruin – whatever the words, then, what is crucial is that the person hears, the person believes, the person is wholly engaged before the One who is beyond all our understanding, and the One who is beyond all our understanding then condescends and speaks into our tears, imparting peace that is beyond all our understanding – peace that is essentially ineffable, incommunicable – an inner sense of knowing that (despite everything) “all is well, and all manner of thing shall be well…”
Did God answer Job’s question, then? Yes he did, for he gave Job what his heart needed most of all. Like the distinction between the “good Pharisee” and the “bad tax collector,” God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts, and therefore his Spirit “cuts through the soul and the spirit, and the joints and the marrow” to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12). We are whatever we are by the grace of God, and faith is the “substance of hope” that affirms that this story, our story, is a good one, no matter what may happen. Let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind.
“For we don’t live for ourselves or die for ourselves. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 14:7-8). Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4:16). “In me is darkness, but with You light; I am lonely, but You do not leave me; I am feeble in heart, but with You is help; I am restless, but with You is peace. In me is bitterness, but with You is patience; I do not understand Your ways, but You know the way for me” (Bonhoeffer). “Let me seek you in the darkness of my silence, and find you in the silence of Your light, which is love shining as the sun, flowing like the river, and joying like the heart” (Meister Eckhart).
“The whole world sighs…” (Apostle Paul). “It is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning” (Merton). Amen, the final word is found in the resurrection life of our Lord, the one who emptied himself, clothed himself in our frailty, and overcame the sickness of death on our behalf.
God is both infinitely just and infinitely loving, and both of these “attributes” are inseparably a part of who he is. God is One. Nonetheless, the cross of Yeshua proves that “love is stronger than death, passion fiercer than the grave; its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame, the very flame of the Lord” (Song. 8:6). Amen, and shalom to you, chaverim.
CAN YOU EXPOUND THE essential meaning of the “gospel” (εὐαγγέλιον) in a single (and preferably short) sentence? How about “Yeshua the Messiah came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15), or perhaps, “For our sake he made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21)? Of course “unpacking” the meaning of these sentences is where things get more difficult, but a succinct expression of faith can often provide us with a starting point…
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (וּבַחֲבֻרָתוֹ נִרְפָּא־לָנוּ). “For in him all the fullness (πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα) of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the message (εὐαγγέλιον) that you heard” (Col 1:19-23).
“For the Messiah also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous (δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων), that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18). “And God is so rich in mercy (מָלֵא רַחֲמִים) and who loves us with such intense love (בְּרב אַהֲבָתוֹ אֲשֶׁר אָהַב אתָנוּ), even when we were dead because of our acts of disobedience, he brought us to life along with the Messiah- it is by grace that you have been delivered (בַּחֶסֶד נוֹשַׁעְתֶּם). That is, God raised us up with the Messiah Yeshua and seated us with him in heaven, in order to exhibit in the ages to come how infinitely rich is his grace, how great is his kindness toward us who are united with the Messiah Yeshua. For you have been delivered by grace through trusting, and even this is not your accomplishment but God’s gift” (Eph. 2:4-8).
And of course there is always the old “stand by” verse of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only and unique Son, so that whoever trusts in Him should not be destroyed, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Here are a few other simplified expressions of our faith (I am sure you can come up with some others, friends): “He has freed us from our sins by his blood” (Rev. 1:5); “he that has the Son has life” (1 John 5:12); “Yeshua died for our sins, was buried, rose again on the third day, and forever reigns” (1 Cor. 15:3-4,25).
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Let’s push this approach a bit further. How about just four words?
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Three words?
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Can we find just two words?
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Or how about just one word?
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Finally – dare I suggest it? – how about no words at all? To paraphrase Francis of Assisi, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel – and sometimes use words.” Of course words are important, but by themselves they are never enough, and very often they are unnecessary (James 2:18)… There is a language of love (“the works of love”) that goes beyond any diction the tongue may express. This is why the Name of the LORD always is something more than a mere word, concept, or idea… The Name of the LORD is God’s love and power and glory and grace and kindness and mercy and passion as He Himself knows it to be real, true, and utterly invincible in all things…
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Shalom chaverim yakarim. In this “Daily Dvar broadcast” (see link below) I discuss what I have called the “blessing of holy desperation” (ברכת יֵאוּשׁ הקדוש), which I define as that very special blessing of needing God so viscerally that you would otherwise fall apart or even self-destruct apart from his ongoing intervention in your life. It is this great blessing of “brokenness” that reveals God’s compassion and grace in our lives… I hope you will find it helpful.
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As people of faith in the LORD, we profoundly feel the tension between affirming both that our loving Creator sustains all things by the word of his power and also acknowledging the ongoing depravity of human beings and how that results in suffering, heartache, and pain in this world. In the following theological audio discussion, I ponder some questions that arise when we seriously consider these matters..
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“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance” (Bonhoeffer: Cost of Discipleship). It’s “cheap” because it is offered as salve for a guilty conscience, a “get out of hell free” card that makes no demand and costs you nothing to possess… “Cheap grace is the idea that ‘grace’ did it all for me so I do not need to change my lifestyle. The believer who accepts the idea of ‘cheap grace’ thinks he can continue to live like the rest of the world. Instead of following Christ in a radical way, the Christian lost in cheap grace thinks he can simply enjoy the consolations of his grace” (ibid). Because it denies the radical problem of our sin, however, “cheap grace” offers a correspondingly shallow solution to what brings utmost anxiety and despair to the human heart. Indeed, those who disregard the seriousness of sin correspondingly disregard the significance of grace, as Yeshua said: “To whom little is forgiven, the same loves little” (Luke 7:47).
There is a high cost for the grace of forgiveness, friends, first of all seen in the priceless sacrifice of Yeshua who died a harrowing and bloody death to make it “theologically possible” for us to be forgiven, and secondly, as seen in the wholesale demand to surrender our lives to God in response to his compassion toward us. Forgiveness is not just about our individual acts of sin – those various moral failures and perversities of heart we all have perpetrated – but is about our inner life and about who we ultimately are. Forgiveness is not accidental to our lives but is necessary and essential. We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. The root of our sinful condition is the lethal sickness called “spiritual death.”
On the other hand, “costly grace” redeems and transforms the sinner. It is costly because it required all of God’s heart, soul, mind and strength, and therefore it likewise requires all our heart, soul, mind, and strength in response… “Salvation is free (for you), but discipleship will cost you your life.” We do not receive God’s grace as license to coddle our lower nature but to enter into a new realm of existence as a child of God who desires righteousness to reign within our hearts. When Yeshua says to the trusting sinner, “Go and sin no more,” he meant “Go in the reality of my love; go in the awareness of my grace; go in the assurance of my acceptance… and you will then sin no more.” We best deny ourselves when we forget ourselves in the glory and beauty of our Lord….
Of course we can’t do any of this in our own strength. We are saved from ourselves only by the miracle of God. “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the LORD of Hosts (Zech. 4:6). To those who “receive” him, God gives power (i.e., ἐξουσία, transcendent being) to become children of God. They are those “who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). This is the miracle that comes by faith, for faith “receives” the promise and trusts in God’s power to do the impossible for us.
Any doubt that the USA (and the entire world) is being prepared for divine judgment can be removed by considering the various evils that have conspired to create the perfect storm of impending disaster for the nations. We are on the edge of the Great Tribulation…
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Shalom friends. Our Lord foretold that in the “end of days” there would be perilous times — moral, political, ethnic, and spiritual chaos throughout the world, “as it was in the days of Noah.” Of Noah’s generation the Torah says: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of humanity was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, so that it grieved the LORD to his heart” (Gen. 6:5-6). Indeed, Paul’s description of the character of people before the time of the end is chillingly accurate of our present generation (see 2 Tim. 3:1-7).
With the increasing rise of anarchy and godless tyranny throughout the nations, the Scriptures further foretell the rise of a governmental system that would oppress and subjugate the entire world, using surveillance systems and devices to control every aspect of life, so that no one would be able to buy or sell without being tagged as an compliant member of the system. Once a global (cashless) currency system has been established, the prophesied “man of sin” would then arise to embody the presence of Satan on the earth, in mimicry of the advent of the true Messiah.
At first this “man of sin” (איש החטא) will seem to be a man of peace but after his reign is secured, his malice will be revealed by openly persecuting those who still believe in the one true God, causing great tribulation, particularly for the Jewish people. The rise of this “Messiah of Evil” or the “anti-Christ” will be in accordance with the great vision of the prophet Daniel, wherein the final “week” of “seventy weeks of years” is fulfilled…
Presently we are living in the “gap” between the 69th week and the 70th week of years, but we see signs that the gap is now closing, and soon the world will enter into the “tribulation” period… As things get closer to the time of great judgment (יום יהוה), followers of Messiah will be forcefully removed by God’s hand (i.e., raptured) either before the tribulation proper begins (“pre-trib”), or perhaps just before the Great Tribulation period (“mid-trib”), the later view being argued because followers of Yeshua will see the rise of the man of sin (2 Thess. 2:3-4). Either way, however, God has not appointed his followers to undergo the unleashing of his wrath upon the world system during the last half of the seventieth week (1 Thess. 5:9), so “post-trib is not a sound eschatological option. The rapture will occur as we are gathered together with the LORD to meet him in the air (1 Thess. 4:16-17).
The 70th week of the vision will begin when the “man of sin” appears to make a “covenant” with the people of the world, though he will later set up an “abomination” and force all world citizens to bow down to its image (perhaps similar to Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity to force people to bow down before the golden image of himself; at this time the rapture of followers of Messiah may occur). Like Daniel’s three friends who refused to bow down before the image, many will refuse to comply and outright worldwide persecution of the Jewish people will take place. This is called the “time of Jacob’s trouble” and the “Great Tribulation.” Satan will rule only “until the end that is decreed is poured out on him” and then the great Day of LORD will seal his doom with the second coming of Yeshua (as described in Rev. 19:11-21).
So, in light of this (very brief) sketch of what is coming — and as the world system becomes more and more tyrannical as it prepares for the arrival of the “messiah of evil” — how are you walking out your faith? Spiritual warfare is not “optional” for the follower of Yeshua. How are you keeping free of fear or anger? How are you preparing for the days ahead?
Remember that the evil one “lives” to devour souls, as it is written: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). The apostle Paul lists the panoply of armor required for our struggle: “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Eph. 6:11-18). In another place Paul refers to this as the “armor of light” (Rom. 13:12). James the Righteous (יעקב הצדיק) gives us remedy by saying: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).
We are to walk “in truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left” (2 Cor. 6:7). Let us wear the armor of light (ὰ ὅπλα τοῦ φωτός), being sober (i.e., νήφω, “calm and of sound mind”) putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8). “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Yeshua the Messiah” (1 Pet. 1:13).
Our hearts speak the language of “poetry,” using poetic expressions of truth, since declarative words are never enough to convey the heart of the matter. When God created the heavens and the earth, he “sang” them into being – the words he used composed a song – and its melody resounds with the emotional weight of his grace and his glory. Therefore we can speak of the “poetry of creation” – its meaning, form, sound, rhythm – expressing the artistry of God as the Creator (Psalm 19:1-4). The various psalms of the Bible are also musical and lyric (i.e., to be accompanied with a lyre), because prayer, meditation, and worship are expressed in the hue and color of emotional feelings, or the language of the heart… These include expressions of praise, cries of lament, sighs for deliverance, and so on. In fact, poetic language is found throughout the Scriptures. Consider the various metaphors, similes, hyperboles, symbols, allusions, equivocations, parables, allegories, prophetic signs and visions – all formed from words of the heart.
The Hebrew prophets often used poetic expression in their messages: “Let judgment run down as the waters / and righteousness as a mighty stream!” (Amos 5:24). Moreover dirges (kinnot) and lamentations are expressed poetically in the Scriptures. For example, the Book of Lamentations is an acrostic poem chanted using a rhythmic formula of a long line followed by a shorter line to evoke feelings of sorrow and woe.
We sometimes want to talk about God “theologically,” using language of fact or “objectivity,” though it’s important to remember that God is a Person, a Subject, and the Bible often uses anthropomorphic language to help us connect with him. The sages said “Torah is written in the language of men.” The words of God are often emotional, passionate, and vibrate with meaning and feeling – words of the divine pathos for us. The message of the gospel, the “story” of God’s astounding love for us, is a message from his heart to ours… It is the greatest story ever told, full of mystery, suspense, romance, heroism, sacrificial love, the very depths of sorrow, the ecstasies of joy, and so on.
Friend, may your heart pulse and yearn for the beauty of the Lord; may you cry out for his presence in your life; may you find your utmost good and blessing in him. May you cry out with all of your heart to the LORD your beloved Redeemer: “Whom have I in heaven buy You? and there is nothing on earth I desire beside you” (Psalm 73:25).
In today’s “Daily Dvar” broadcast I hope to encourage you to live without fear because of the great love and grace the Lord has for you. The Lord has personally redeemed you, friend; he calls you by name, and you belong to him. Indeed the Lord loves you “b’ahavat olam” – with everlasting love – and therefore he draws you close to him (Jer. 31:3). Shalom chaverim.
