God’s people are “strangers” in this world; they are literally “e-stranged” and live as “resident aliens” — here, yet not here…. We wander; we are lonely; we yearn for our heavenly home. Life in this world is “olam ha’sheker,” the false world — full of deception, troubles, and struggle. Here there is no lasting hope, no abiding…

Faith in the LORD constitutes both a type of “protest” against any interpretation of reality that excludes, suppresses, denies, or minimizes the Divine Presence, and constitutes a heavenward cry for the place where we truly belong…. The life of faith therefore calls us to live as toshavim – sojourners – who are at an infinite “distance” from the world of appearances and who seek the Eternal. If you feel crazy in an insane situation, then you are really quite sane… The world will feel oppressive and strange once you have been awakened from its madness and refuse to be moved by the delusions of the crowd… Life in olam hazeh (this world) is a place of passing that leads to the world to come. Our faith affirms that underlying the surface appearance of life is a deeper reality that is ultimately real and abiding. It “sees what is invisible” (2 Cor. 4:18) and understands (i.e., accepts) that the “present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31).

 

Hebrew Lesson:

 

 

The revelation of God in Yeshua means that Ultimate Reality — that is, the transcendental source of all that exists — is intensely personal, intimately knowable, and full of love. “Metaphysics” (i.e., that which is “really real”) is therefore not about an impersonal force known in objective relationship (i.e., a “what”) but a personal agency and creative mind known in subjective relationship (i.e., a “who”). The Scriptures teach that what is ultimately real (אהיה אשׁר אהיה) is the Ultimate Person of the LORD (אני יהוה). In Him we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

The LORD who is the Most High, the possessor of heaven and earth (אל עליון קנה שׁמים וארץ) is not just the Creator and Sustainer of all possible worlds, but the Lover and Redeemer of our very souls — the One who empties himself to become “with us” and who overcomes the sickness of death for us… The climactic expression of the character of Ultimate Reality is revealed at Golgotha, the “place of the skull,” where God’s sacrificial life in Yeshua destroyed death by the greater power of divine love (Psalm 85:10). The heart of our Lord as he suffered and died for our sins reveals the great compassion of God; it is “ha’makom,” the place of his atonement for us; his hidden dark cloud, and his resurrection glory reveals our deliverance for death. God loves us despite knowing all of our sins and yet redeems us from its curse…

We “connect” with the truth of God by means of the instrumentality of faith, and the essential question is whether we are in a “trusting relationship” with God or not, for if we do not truly know God as our loving Savior, we remain lost, in darkness, and alienated from the life of God. Faith is self-authenticating as we experience grace in the exercise of our trust in God.

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While it is wonderfully true that Yeshua died to free us from our sins, the corollary is that he imparts life for us to walk in the light of his glorious Divine Presence (2 Cor. 5:15). The two go together. You are redeemed by God to serve him. Simply believing (or hoping) that “Jesus died for your sins” doesn’t mean walking through your days without any thought of where you are going. Our teshuvah must make traction with our feet as we go forward by faith. This means we have a responsibility to practice the truth of Messiah, partaking his vision, hashkafah (philosophy) and compassion. Indeed each of us will give account for his or her life before God, as it is written: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of the Messiah (כסא־דין המשיח), so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord (יראת יהוה), we persuade others” (2 Cor. 5:10-11).

Amen, we must learn to be conscious of life’s great sanctity its eternal significance… Each of us is “on the road” of life going someplace; each of us has an appointment with the full revelation of the truth…. Therefore, since we only have this hour, understand today to be “the day of salvation” (יום הישועה). “No creature is hidden from His sight, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13). Therefore the Spirit admonishes those who have ears to hear: “Take care, friends, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Today – if you hear His voice – harden not your hearts (Heb. 3:12-13,15).

Friend, everything matters; nothing is trivial; and there is a weight of glory that surrounds our lives… Therefore act as if your choices have eternal significance, because they really do; pray as if your life depends on it, because it really does. Praying in accordance with the will of God – namely, for you to know God, to walk in the light of love, joy, peace; to be filled with wisdom, patience, kindness, and so on, will assuredly move heaven and earth (1 John 5:14). God is forever faithful and always hears those who call out to him with sincerity of heart: “The LORD is near to all who call out to him, to all who will call out to him in truth” (Psalm 145:18).

 

Hebrew Lesson:

 

• Psalm 145:18 Hebrew page

Theologians have made various arguments for the existence of God by arguing that since every effect is the result of a cause, and the existence of the universe is an effect, therefore a cause for the universe must exist. Moreover, since an infinite series of causes cannot be traversed to produce a present effect, there must be a first or beginning cause for the existence of the universe, and that cause is God.

While this may be a sound argument, the Hebrew Scriptures teach that the “first cause” of all that exists is not some sort of mechanistic or abstract power that sets the universe in motion, but on the contrary is a personal God who creates, sustains and providentially guides everything that exists. The Torah begins by revealing God as a “talking Intelligence” that creates all things by the agency of his verbal expression, or by means of his word. The first recorded word of God is yehi ohr, “let there be light” (Gen. 1:3). God speaks; he sees; he imagines, designs, orders, and executes his will in building the “house” (בּ) of the universe…

Torah teaches that God, the infinite and all-powerful Creator of reality, expresses himself as Person with a character that can be known… God is the great “I AM” (i.e., ehyeh: אהיה) who is the Source and origin of all that is real (Exod. 3:14-15). As I mentioned the other day, personhood is the essential feature of reality itself, and indeed, the structure of the “I” that constitutes the person is grounded in the Divine “I” that creates everything yesh me’ayin, “out of nothing.” The LORD (יהוה) is alone the transcendent and unsurpassed Creator of all things, and there are no other so-called gods besides Him (Deut. 32:39; Isa. 45:21-22).

Indeed God created people made in his “image” and his “likeness” for the very purpose that they would personally know Him and understand their special place within creation. The irreducibility of the self, the intuitions of logic, the ability to use language, the sentiments of value and beauty, and the inner witness of conscience, enable human beings to relate to God and understand truth. Therefore by virtue of creation people are endowed with the knowledge of God’s unsurpassing power and glory as well as the duty to act in accordance with his moral will (Psalm 19:1-2; Rom. 1:20). And while God created each of us individually, each individual is given life to be a member of the family of God, and that implies responsibilities to regard the sanctity of life and to respect the sanctity of others.

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Perhaps the first or most basic question of philosophy is “what is real?” The ancient philosopher Aristotle wrote, “All men by nature desire to know,” and knowing presupposes an object of knowledge… The quest of discovering “what is real” is the subject matter of “metaphysics,” or the study of what makes up reality…

The ancient pagan philosophers gazed upon the cosmos in wonder, asking what “stuff” (or power) constituted or underlay all the particulars of experience. They sought to understand not just what this or that particular thing was, but what everything was, the entire totality of all that exists. They sought the “one” in the “many” things of life, the arche (ἀρχῇ) or “unifying principle” that made the “uni-verse.” They also were puzzled by the phenomena of change: how something change over time and yet still be the same thing?

Jewish metaphysics began well over a thousand years before the ancient Greeks, though it did not arise through speculative reasoning about the nature of the world but by means of an encounter with the personal Creator of Reality, the great “I AM” (i.e., ehyeh: אהיה) who is the Source and origin of all that is real. Unlike ancient Greek cosmology that reduced the ego to a mechanistic process and unlike Hindu pantheistic philosophy that reduced the ego to an illusion, ancient Jewish metaphysics revealed that Personhood is the central feature of Reality itself, and indeed, that the structure of the “I” that constitutes the person is grounded in the Divine “I” that created everything yesh me’ayin, “out of nothing.” Human beings, in other words, are not the result of impersonal or blind processes (whether spiritual as in Hinduism or mechanical, as in naturalism), since the Source of all that exists – and that includes human beings and the structures of consciousness – is a Person who uniquely created and providentially governs all things. The LORD (יהוה) is alone the transcendent and unsurpassed Creator of all things, and there are no other so-called gods besides Him (Deut. 32:39; Isa. 45:21-22). Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is One” (Deut. 6:4).

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From our Torah this week (i.e., Bechukotai) we read: “Then [after all the various judgments have befallen the people] I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land” (Lev. 26:42). Here we note the “deeper Torah” of God’s unconditional promise to the children of Israel that “contextualizes” the various tribulations they would suffer because of their disobedience to the terms of the covenant given at Sinai (Gen. 15). Therefore the Apostle Paul appealed to God’s promises given to Abraham as the foundation for Torah, not to Israel’s righteousness based on the covenant of the law (Rom. 9:31; Gal. 4:24-27). “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law (οὐ γὰρ διὰ νόμου) but through the righteousness of faith” (Rom. 4:13). The better covenant of Zion was prefigured at Mount Moriah – and hearkens back to Abraham and Isaac – not the later covenant made at Sinai (Gen. 22:16-18; Heb. 6:13-15; John 3:16). As for Israel in the galut (exile), God has promised: “But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the LORD” (Lev. 26:45). Note again that this covenant relationship was established when we were without anything – we had no Torah, no mitzvot, nor any good deeds to commend ourselves before heaven. Nevertheless, God chose us and called us his people, and all this comes from his great love.

Read more “Bound by Love’s Promise…”