Sar Shalom Synagogue January 29, 2020 | Torah: Our Foundation Class 4

all right well good evening welcome glad you're all with me this is the fourth class thank you it's the fourth class I lose track of the classes two more I got two more after this this is a yes so I'm gonna be traveling the next couple of weeks so we're gonna have to have a chi ATIS we have a pause or the price of pause but not to despair because next Wednesday I believe we're gonna have the meet sale and so and then Couture is gonna make some remarks I just wanted to see what happened I said that she's like what I'm sorry what so no we so I have a brief pause and then we'll come back to it a couple of weeks and pick up where we left off tonight I wanted to continue the conversation somewhat of what we left off last week because there's this some really great quotes from these two books dealing with the psychology of conversion that we didn't get to you last week felt we kind of got rushed at the end just because there's so much information to share that I really want to share these thoughts with you and then kind of comment on them and then then also we're going to want to get into a pertinent question and I said we would get into this tonight with respect to the Torah if we have the Torah why do we need the Messiah what does it mean to be grafted in exactly what kind of trying to mesh all these concepts together remember that this class is all about the why of conversion the why of l'épée duty ISM conversion in particular l'épée Judaism in general the word we're dealing with the why this is the the typical rabbinic why why do we do this what what are we trying to accomplish what you're trying to say and what is our our stated goals I want to be I think I'd like to lead with this concept that we are as I said in the opening class LP Judaism is a a sect of Judaism I say that it's a new sect of Judaism but some it's not really a new sect obviously well we are goal is to try to resurrect as it were the faith of the mashiac that tended to fall away sometime after the Apostles passed away all right so we're really trying to go back to something that used to exist if you study the history of proselytization you find this remarkable reality that that there has been l'épée Doody isms if I could use that term that have existed throughout history at various points two of the most poignant are in in and around Moscow there were according to the historians believe in like the 1500s some in that timeframe literally millions millions of of X Christians that had come to the same illumination that frankly all of us have come to and we're living a Jewish life but they were maintaining their belief of the Messiah and the Jewish community back then embraced them with open arms and was helping them and and they were just excited about it and the reason was is because in a sea of hatred that was their only ally that was our only friend and so nowadays we get spoiled to the fact that no one's trying to kill us and so then it's easy to have enemies when when when you're basically everybody generally likes you and I know there's anti-semitism in the world and none of those people that are KKK and all that kind of stuff but generally speaking I can go back and forth to Walmart and not be molested okay we don't okay no one there's no Gestapo trying to shut down the show so we have to keep the anti-semitism in perspective anti-semitism is not as in-your-face here in Texas as it is in New York because just to be not trying to be comical but we carry guns in Texas and it's just it's fact to the matter if that's why you don't see the reason you see so much nonsense in New York is because they have disarmed their citizens that's just a fact of the matter and so it's easy pickings in Texas it's not quite that safe to just walk up to somebody and punch them in the face you might likely be shot to death okay so that's just a reality so but what happened what happened here to my I'm sorry this is there we go we want to then we want them to have that back we made there we go there we go yay sorry pardon me just this is a big deal to have our logo on the screen I just want to make sure that didn't go away so we're resurrecting this sect of Judaism some people might wonder well why do we need a a new sect of Judaism frankly that happens all the time and has happened all the time throughout history like her citizen right the citizen is a big broad sect of Judaism within a citizen there are different sects of Judaism such as breslav and Habad and Nachman and so on there's all kinds of sects of sets of Judaism and it's they've come about throughout history for various reasons and we have to be one of them that I wanted to emphasize at this point that we attempt as much as any sect does to stay within the realm of mainstream Judaism Main Street very important that we stay within mainstream Judas now as I have said in the opening class Orthodox Judaism is by no means monolithic so from sect to sect there are variances to one degree or the N or another some sects for instance you'll notice there's some Jews the iconic Jews that have the black and white suits and they have the payout long payout and they wear the particular fedora okay that's a sect of Judaism there's another sect of Judaism that they have black suits but they wear the little nikkor pants with the white stockings and they have a different style hat and longer peyote and then there's another one that doesn't is Hasidic and whereas black clothing doesn't have any payout and they wear a different type of fedora and then there is Jews who dress like everybody else and have different types of keepers and there's some juicy where they're keep off to the side and some keep to whether to keep it backwards I know I said I just threw out for Kasumi like backwards how does that look yeah those are the rebellious Jews those are the gangster Jews you know there's all kind of different and they do things differently and there's stringencies over here in stringencies over there something you need to understand about Judaism is a kind of this can be son Judaism can what I'm talking bout here can be summed up in one a statement that I read many many years ago as I was looking at this book on conquering your kitchen Orthodox book of course because that's pretty much all I pay attention to if it's not Orthodox I'm not interested and this book was talking about the fact that no matter how kosher your kitchen is no matter how kosher it is I mean you could be as stringent as stringent can be and there is a Jew somewhere who won't eat there that's the reality there's somebody somewhere who it's not stringent enough for okay so when you try to get into the stringency game good luck okay so anyway we're a mainstream Judaism now what I mean by mainstream Judaism I mean that we follow mainstream Jewish thought we follow the Jewish calendar we don't make up our own calendar first of all you can't make up your own calendar and anybody that does that is just doesn't understand anything so you can't you don't make it we don't make a burro encounter we don't have our own holidays we we don't have our own Holika you know we we glean like all Jewish sects do from Jewish Holika and we follow it we we everything that we teach here at SAR Shalom is rooted in sources you know it's not you're not hearing my opinion you're not hearing I mean you're not you know if I share something with you there's a source to back that up and I'm very big about that I'm very I think it's very important that everything has a source and if I happen to have an opinion then I'll tell you you know this ROM bel brings down that's that's a ROM bill that I should say who that is right rom bill is a funny little nickname we made for myself it's a rabbi mordechai bin Ellis when my father's name is Ellis so the ROM Bell is rabbi mordechai bin Ellis rondelle so whenever I say the phone bill says I'm just being tongue-in-cheek that is my opinion on the text but I state it as such and I'll let you know this is my opinion about what we're reading here but everything else should be rooted in sources now the great thing about this is is when we maintain mainstream Judaism as our foundation this prevents us from becoming a sassy word cult this is very critical because when you stay in the mainstream this is a healthy experience that prevents a group from becoming cultish now there's variations as I've said within the mainstream but we pray what we do here it's our Shalom Synagogue what we do at all the pede Judaism congregations is that we we practice traditional Judaism let me turn this off because I don't have any idea why that keep going going off but we're just going to do that okay and we'll figure that out that's step number two to figure out why that keeps going on so we do what we do here is what all Jews do all over the world all Jews keep the Sabbath and they have a Friday night seder and they light candles and they lift up the challah and they say the kiddush all Jews for instance use the sitter or I use a sitter right it's not necessarily the same center we use all the ones although the one we use is used throughout Orthodox Judaism it's either this one is the core inversion just depends on which one you like best kiddush levana is normal you know all of that stuff everything we do wearing seat seat wearing a kippah we're normal Jews were normal Jews and when you get around Jews you find out that we're doing all the same things maybe a little bitty variances but the variances is just like you say tomato I say tomahto it's not really anything huge and that's what keeps us healthy and it prevents us become from becoming a cult and I just want to say that that's what's so important the reason that you have all these other seemingly jewish-christian movements out there the reason there's such a mess is because they have nothing that they're they're anchored to they don't have a mainstream to which they're anchored that's just make it up every man does what's right in his own eyes it's making up as you go along you read the Torah this is whoever the leader of the group is is how he interprets it so from run group to the next it's completely different halakha they're doing complete completely different sometimes within the group they're doing things completely different and it's just crazy okay and we want to avoid that crazy nonsense so going back to the psychology of conversion I want to share just a couple of thoughts here as I was saying that we just didn't get to at the end of last week's class that we can continue to die can comment on and kind of give some insight on because I think it's important so the writer here says King David from whose line the Messiah will ultimately emerge is a descendant of ruth the moabite who was a righteous proselyte now notice here the jewish view that ruth was a convert i want to emphasize that because as I said last week there is a crazy teaching out there that came about fairly recently that Ruth was a Gentile and remained a Gentile but I want you to understand that all Cola all of Judaism rejects that all of Judaism rejects that it has rejected it for thousands of years Ruth has always been a convert she must be a convert in fact that Talmud brings down two sources from which we receive how to become a convert there's two things two points in history that the Talmud brings down that how we become convert number one is what happened to Mount Sinai when we receive the Torah now that's important because every Jew Hebrew Israelites all synonymous terms that was out me at Mount Sinai everybody went through conversion because we were all idolaters who came out of out of Egypt now the reason one of the great things about this the fact that the conversion principles come from that experience what it means is that every Jew whether no matter where how you come to the end of the family we all enter the same way okay so everybody's entrance into the family is the same that's why you can't boast over somebody else because we all got here the same way okay the other experience is Ruth and how Naomi converted her the sages bring down by the way that Naomi converted her on the way to Bethlehem as they walked from mo of which didn't take that long I don't know how long it would take to walk from mo off to Bethlehem but I'm imagining a couple of weeks maybe I mean I don't know probably probably less time than that but Ruth took her through conversion on the way to Bethlehem the sages bring down that when they got the Bethlehem this is why the scripture refers to Ruth and MOA excuse me Ruth and Naomi they entered the city and the the scripture refers to Ruth and Naomi together as if they were equals in other words they're both Jewess by the time they get there so if Ruth is not a convert to Judaism then all of her children are not Jews which would mean that obut is not a Jew and Jesse's not a Jew in King David's not a Jew and messiahs not Jewish okay that's a problem says moreover several great sages of Judaism were either convert or descendants of Judaism we talked about this last week among among them was onkelos who translated tore in the aramaic shem shamaya and abdill on who were part of the last zou cult / Dada prophet Rabbi Akiva rabbi mir rabbi mirror is a very famous rabbi in the talmud he was also a convert so these are the important people some of the important people that were mentioned as converts why don't Jews evangelize today just to go over this again according to just an insight here from this rider from this rabbi angel that during the Christian era during the Christian era that it was a capital offense for a Jew to convert a Christian that would mean just about anybody to Judaism you could suffer death for that by the way just I was sharing this with our other daughter Hadassah about the Crusades you know the Crusades were a Christian wars to win Jerusalem from the Turks back then they call them the Turks bus hasn't been Muslims on the way to Jerusalem they used to practice their warfare by slaughtering Jews it's terrible okay this is what the Crusades were they were blood baths of murder under Christians and yes they were real Christians okay I know people say that was more real Chris yes they were they were real Christians it would they were only Christians that existed back then right so you can imagine how Jews feel when a Christian says do you want to come for the Campus Crusade for Christ that sounds that'd be like saying do you want to come to the Nazi Auschwitz meeting you know I mean come on you know just think about it when you're trying to put you're trying to wonder why Jews are turned off to the Christian message you might want to think about they don't want to go to your crusade so it says with the rise of Islam similar sanctions forbade Jewish proselytization among Muslims also making such behavior a capital offense so he says thus for many centuries drew Jews throughout the Christian and Muslim worlds engaged who engaged in proselytizing non-jews only a great they did so only at great personal risk so history points out that proselytization did not cease completely but whoever decided to ignore the laws of the land and and and welcome people into the fold they did that at their very risk of their own life so this explains what happened with with Jewish proselytization why we don't have it today it's it's not theological it's been made to sound theological oh we don't proselytize because we have this other covenant called the Nova hai that's all nonsense it's nonsense it's phony it's baloney it's nothing true about it we made up I say we talking about Jews in general we made up a theology to to make our are not prophesizing people okay but that's not at all what was supposed to have happen now the reform movement came along you'll hear this about reformed Jews somebody asked me a question on the ask the rabbi page and they said have a Jewish friend and the Jewish friend said that we're not really waiting for we don't we don't believe we don't believe that the Messiah is a a person but we're looking for like a messianic utopian age or something that's less like it's more like it's like a nebulous kind of thought process okay well because this person is new it's understandable she did when this when she was meeting a Jewish person she was assuming that when you meet a Jewish person that again Judaism is monolithic it's that whole thing that I shared in the first class that when a Jewish person meets a Christian person they don't have any concept of Baptists or Pentecostal or Catholic or presbyterian when you say you're a Christian you'll all believe the same thing okay that's how Jews think likewise when a Christian person meets a Jewish person they assume that that Jewish person represents all of Jewish ideas so this person didn't realize that they were talking to a reformed Jew okay how do I know that I don't never met this person how do I know that this person whom they're speaking is a reform Jew well because they don't believe in a literal Messiah and only Reform Jews believe that now what what else do freeform Jews believe or not believe they also don't believe that there's going to be a third temple in fact they don't want a third temple Reform Jews also don't believe that the Torah is divine they don't believe the Torah is authoritative they certainly don't believe that Jewish halacha is authoritative they believe that all of the laws are just merely traditions that we do and you can do them or not do them Reform Jews do not eat kosher okay and there's a little bit of a mix in there sometimes I eat kosher at home sometimes they know or somewhere they might eat kosher at home but when they go out to have a bacon cheeseburger no problem I don't understand that but that's just the reality of life if you ask somebody or somebody ask you where do you go to Temple okay that's somebody who most time that people ask me that they have no idea they're just they've met a Jew one time who went to Temple so they add they think that all Jews go to Temple so they asked me where do you go to Temple that's somebody who thinks who's asking you from a reformed perspective because reformed Jews do not believe in the temple they don't want the temple so they believe that their places of meeting are like spiritual temples Orthodox Judaism fundamentally rejects that idea we would be considered blasphemous to refer to our synagogue as a temple our synagogue is not a temple ha special Oh God forbid because there's only one temple and although the synagogue is a holy place and it's a place of respect and honor it's not the temple okay so that's important to know so if you run into this down the road and people ask you where you go to Temple usually when people say that I'll say we have a synagogue it's the temples in Jerusalem we go to our synagogue oh oh ok synagogue they're usually fine with it but they just don't know 9 times out of 10 they just don't know because if the reason okay if you're if celje is approached by a person a lady or a man for that matter if he sees Selya he's definitely not and he's Jewish and he's reformed he's definitely not gonna ask her where she goes to Temple because she is going to look to him obviously like an Orthodox Jewish same thing with me no Reform person is going to ask me where I go to Temple because I am clearly not reformed because Reform Jews don't look like this ok right so I know I agree so so I'm just saying that when somebody asks you that just understand that there's somebody who doesn't under there just they're probably Christian or Liverpool probably nothing they just don't understand I was all I'm saying okay so it's it's a moment it's a opportunity for education not an opportunity for offence that's what I'm trying to say okay so it says here the reformed Jewish movement also gave up traditional Jewish religious practices as I said they don't follow the dietary laws they don't really follow Sabbath observance Reform Judaism for instance if you went to a reformed Jewish synagogue on a lot of times I'll have a Friday night service not always but they also have a Sabbath service or set a Sabbath morning service too but it's not uncommon to go to reform synagogue service on Friday night and then everybody goes off at dinner at a restaurant just like Messianic Judaism I'm just saying you know so it says in short the goal of Reform Judaism was to turn Jews into Germans or Frenchmen or American of the mosaic persuasion this is a very critical thing I'm saying here yet if you understand that the reformed Jewish mindset the Reform Judaism want to be first and foremost members of the nation to which they belonged with a mosaic Jewish kind of like cultural veneer Reform Judaism Messianic Judaism for all intents and purposes or the same thing okay only sometimes Reform Jews are actually a bit more observant than Messianic Jews in my experience correct sohcahtoa said they basically have assimilated to whatever country they live in and they kind of wink towards Judaism kind of give it like a little cultural thing yes hundred percent 100 percent Reform Jews are for all of sense of purpose assimilated Jews same thing with Messianic so-called Messianic Jews same thing okay again as I said last week we're not gonna we're taking emotion off the table this is like a lab class we're just dealing with facts here okay so if you say well let me know my really really good friend is a Messianic Jew and that hurts my feelings I'm not trying to be hurtful I'm just trying to be honest they're just dealing with it the facts of the matter so it says here and to ensure that the mosaic persuasion blended in as inconspicuously as possible with the prevailing social morals of the country in which the Jews lived so the goal of Reform Judaism was yes we want to be Jewish but we want to be Jewish as inconspicuously as possible so I'm going to you know I'm gonna walk if I'm a female for instance I may dress a hundred percent like all the Gentiles around me but I've got my Star of David on my neck and so when you see that you know hey we're Jews you know it's kinda like the Christian who basically lives their life like everybody else but they've got the fish on the back of their car and you can see it real good because they just cut you off right so this is a quote from somebody who went through conversion and see if this resonates with you perhaps I just thought was interesting so this person said I became I became more and more interested in the idea of living by the commandments found in the Torah since the tour was the Word of God shouldn't it be natural for one who wants to serve God to obey the commandments of the Torah the Christian arguments that God decided to abrogate the laws of the Torah is peculiar and dangerous how reliable was God after all if he cast aside the Torah whose words themselves testify to the Eternity of the Torah and if he could change then what is to prevent him from changing again and again and again what is the possibility of attaining religious certainty if God Himself is so fickle that's what one converts to Judaism said so that's the reality that brings a lot of people to Jewish thought another thought here it says at this point of my life I have not met even one Jew I stopped going to church I started to reread the Dutch translation of the Torah and look for ways to practice the laws I read I kept the Sabbath on Saturday instead of a Sunday I did not eat foods forbidden a Torah but I did not know very much of the implications of the written text I quickly realized that I did not need to study the Bible in a vacuum and did not have to in reinvent the will there was a people who had for many many centuries have experience and fulfilling the words of the Torah that is the Jewish people you know I mentioned that when we stay in mainstream Judaism it prevents us from becoming a cult but there's also something else that happens along those same lines and that is it prevents us from becoming arrogant prevents us from becoming arrogant what do I mean by that well I want you to think about this for a second because this is it it has the potential to happen to so many people as they're coming into Judaism you're a Christian person most of the time this is how it plays out not always but most of the time you're a Christian first have been going to church for however long okay one day you realize that there's inconsistencies with what your pastor is saying and what you're reading in this book that supposedly is supposed to be the Word of God our guidebook you ask a few questions the the the answers are not or inadequate at best so you start doing some research you find out that there's this thing called the Torah and the way you find this out is by going to Jewish websites who teach you about the Torah and what the Torah is and then you find out there's such things called myths votes Commandments and you realize oh my gosh these people have been keeping the canals diligent and we were supposed to too so then after you've had a five-minute youtube education on the Torah and you've read a couple of pages on the internet about the commandments now you are ready able equipped to teach the Jews how to properly keep the Torah you just learned about five minutes ago from them you learned about the Torah from them from us and now you want to tell me how I'm not wearing my seat seats right when I told you what these were makes sense it happens all the time and it's just a spirit of pride and arrogance and it's the idea of reinvention and where else has this come from well it comes from a spirit of anti-semitism because deeply seated in your soul still is the subconscious hatred of Jews because you've been taught that JC rebuked the Pharisees so now it's like your mission to continue the rebuke so once that you can learn about the Torah from the Pharisees that's the Jews you're really you're ready and equipped to rebuke them now I find it funny for instance that people want to tell the Jews how to pronounce God's holy name and they cannot order a cup of coffee in Hebrew they can't they can't raise her hand and ask the waitress where's the restroom they couldn't even say nine times out of ten the person who says this is how you say God's name in Hebrew trust me you say they could even tell you they could even ask you how you're doing in Hebrew you see so we have to be careful that we don't get lift up and pride it and we don't get arrogant the way that we don't get arity arrogant is we submit to teaching we become teachable people we study Jewish literature and we learn and we glean and we grow I will tell you by the way just as an aside that you'll never understand you will never understand the Bible in general and the Gospels in particular until you have studied rabbinic literature I promise you people say stay away from the Talmud stay away from the Midrash that is insane there's no way you can even begin to understand the Gospels and the stories they're in if you have never read rabbinic literature because that's where they're coming from all the Apostles are coming for that for instance why did you shoot a walk on water you say well you know he just wanted this is a miracle he just want to demonstrate his uh you know his divinity or whatever okay well why didn't walk on air why didn't he levitate I mean think about it why water why why did he walk on water and particularly during a storm you ever think about that of course you haven't thought about it because you haven't read the Midrash to know why that was significant that he was walking on the water in the middle of a storm he could have done lots of things and he did do lots of things but he could have done lots of other things to express his divinity so why did he do that and the answer is in the Midrash tells us that the water in the waves of the storm are God's chariot his horse and only God can command them only God can control him so when you have Yeshua who's walking on the waves of the sea in the middle of a storm he is commanding God's stallion which only God can do which is why he did it which is why when he got in the boat and he told that you know everything you know got in a boat they all bowed out and then when he calmed the sea which only God can do because they say that only Hashem has the keys of rain in his hand that's why they say what manner is manna is this that he calms the waves in the sea they even the Seas of the wind obey Him that's why they said that but again if you don't read the rabbinic literature you don't understand the significance of what I they saw it was so significant because today we're like oh yeah he told the wind to stop I'm like yeah I mean big deal I mean you know he told the wind stop but but his disciples they understood only Hashem has that key only Hashem has that key so when when he looked up and said be still and they immediately obeyed him they were like whoa that's why it's so important the worst thing you could ever do is refrain from studying rabbinic literature the Talmud states just another few thoughts on conversion or the Talmud states that a person who converts to Judaism is considered a newborn baby that's in the of about 48 B again study the Talmud you understand that the convert is a newborn baby the convert is the spiritual child of Abraham and Sarah and by joining the people of Israel the convert has in some essential way become a new person with a new identity isn't it interesting that most people today a lot of people psychological psychological struggles in life is there's a lack of identity Who am I what am I called to do why do I exist and isn't it interesting that one of God's biggest things is to bring in converts and give them identity couple them to Abraham and Sarah now this connection is so explicit and so radical in other words you are a spiritual child of Abraham and Sarah but in the Jewish halakhah c´mon you are literally now of that lineage to the extent that was not permitted what I'm about to say was not permitted by the sages but it was theoretically possible and that is that if if a man converted to Judaism he could theoretically marry his own sister because he had so become part of the Jewish people and so much a part of a new lineage and in the Rabbinical mind a completely new creation now for obvious reasons the rabbi's did not permit that but it was just it's a discussion of of a theoretical nature so this is what it means to be a new creation now there's other quotes that we can get to it another time I want to share another a couple of thoughts here this is from Urbania bokkeum this has to do with the Ark of Hashem he's commenting on on chameau that is a book of Exodus chapter 37 and verse 1 he said when God gave the instructions to build a tabernacle he had used the expression buy a seat you are to make with every single item except with that of the ark he said they are to make so this is very interesting because every article of the tabernacle he said you are to make this but when it came to the ark he changes it and says they are to make the Ark so remain Ibaka and the sages pick up on this say why does it say they with respect to the ark says the reason was so as not to allow any Israelite to say to another Israelite that he did not also have a share in the Torah this was also one of the reasons the Torah was given to the Jewish people in the desert a region which is ownerless and has not been claimed by anyone as their own the moral message is that the words of Torah are ownerless no one has an exclusive right to them there was no law of copyright protecting the Torah a person could not claim that seeing he was a natural born Jew that he had claim to the Torah not shared by converts who joined Judaism after the tour had been given to the Jewish people this is again remain Ibaka who's commenting here he says the Torah chose these words to teach that anyone who joins a community of Yaakov has an equal claim to that heritage any convert has an equal claim to Torah provided he makes it his focus of study and observance okay it's very interesting that we all have a share in the Ark now to the question of if we have the Torah and the Torah is God the Torah is the word of God salvation is found in the Word of God and so on why do we need Messiah because okay here's the equation I'm gonna draw on the board look at this so we have the toro oh i banish this i've picked that one up i picked that one up so many times i don't know that vexes me I'm deeply vexed I'll look at this cateura we need to order more markers goodness you would think that we're I know yay praise God so Tori equals Messiah okay right specifically obviously we're talking here about Yeshua so the Taurus is is the Messiah so the Jewish people all right Torah true Jews Orthodox Jews they have the Torah so people say well well wait a minute they have this and we have this so so why do we need Yeshua if we already have the Torah if so if Jewish people have the Torah then why they need Yeshua it's a very valid question okay here's the answer when Moses went up to Mount Sinai all right we have Mountain the Mount Sinai here okay and Moses is down here there's Moses he goes he goes up there look at that great [Laughter] so Moses goes up to Mount Sinai to get the Torah all right from God God takes sapphire from the foundation of his throne and he writes on the Torah he gives the Torah to Moses it's a hundred percent H Allah insha maíam so one person made in heaven all right it's supernatural they're divine tablets at this point if you really think about the the implication of that Moses took something from a fourth dimension and brought it into our dimension to bring down from shamaya okay so but what happened before he even came down before the Torah came down before the Torah came down we started to dance around the Golden Calf now this reason I emphasize before is because you have been taught many times that when the Torah came 3,000 people died but evidently nobody reads their Bible because while he was still on the mountain with the Torah God said now go down because your people have started to defile themselves so as Moses came down the people we were already in debauchery so the tour had even come yet we hadn't received it yet okay so he has sapphire tablets here these are divine tablets it says that they were light as a feather because Moses is an old guy sapphire had imagined this had the whole Word of God on it by the way this had all the Torah not just the Ten Commandments it had everything on it the front and back all the words of Torah he comes down they're pretty heavy but they were actually light as a feather and what happened is when we sinned the letters flew up to show maíam and therefore they became heavy because now the tour was no longer on them so the Word of God becomes heavy the Word of God becomes a heavy burden when sin gets involved that's the understanding from the Talmudic teachings a backstory the is it Steve Harvey is that the the rest of the story anyway where's his name Paul Harvey Paul Harvey this is the rest of the story so anyway that the letters flew up they got heavy and it says Moses dropped them he threw them to the ground because they're so heavy the weight of our sin is what he threw down on the ground now when that happened you have the sapphire tablets tablets are in shattered into a bunch of several pieces now incidentally there were two arks this is kind of getting ahead of myself here but there were two arks because the scripture says that the Ark went out before us and for three days to find a place for us to rest but then the scripture also says that there was the Ark traveled behind Judah in the center of the column as we march for so which was it that the the art go out three days and then come back and then we marched or what because it seems to happen simultaneously the sages bring down there were two arks there was an ark that was the ark that marched with us in column but then there was Moses Ark that was sent out a three days journey and that Ark contained the broken tablets and that Ark when that went out it's that the sages bring down that snakes and scorpions fled and the low places were brought level and the high places were brought down and our path was made easy because the broken tablets went before us the broken tablets my friends as Yeshua broken for us broken because of our sin now when this happened is disaster because the whole why is it such a disaster by the way the answer is because the whole reason we were brought out of Egypt was for this moment and we now risk being totally destroyed because if there is no Torah I want you all to listen y'all are all brilliant students if there's no Torah there's no points to our salvation why do we need to exist and all the nations had already rejected the Torah which is why we were given it to it and we said hey nice a mom we'll take it we'll we'll do and we'll hear in other words wheat we take it sight unseen and we've failed in that so we this is a big problem because again the whole point of the exodus is to get the Torah the exact opposite message that people are taught unfortunately now Moses goes back up and he pleads for God to forgive us and he says blot me out don't block them out Hashem says I'll have mercy upon Oh Who I have mercy and so Hashem tells him look go ahead I ain't cut out new tablets and and and I'll ride on them now there's a disagreement among the sages whether God literally wrote on them or whether or not Moses wrote on them but in general what we have here is that Moses noticed Moses now cuts out natural stone it's no longer sapphire tablets from the throne of God now they're from this earth and then God rides on them but some say he only wrote the Ten Commandments this time and not the whole Torah now Moses goes up there he's on the mountain for forty days he goes up this is the third time actually he's made his ascension he goes up one time to get the sapphire tablets comes down breaks them goes back up to for another forty days to ask for forgiveness comes down goes back up for another forty days to get the new set of tablets this occurs on the first of Elul and he brings that new set of tablets down on Yom Kippur okay which is why we have 40 days of teshuva leading up the Yom Kippur okay which is why Yom Kippur is about renewed covenant did you catch that that way the Yom Kippur is about renewed covenant so now we're back to our question okay wait a minute starting to come sort of become more clear now isn't it we have the Torah but what we actually have is not the divine sapphire tablets what we have is tablets of stone that have been written them on some say by Moses and not God the rabbi's bring down to this that yes we have a torah it's the same content but not the same substance and the rabbi's say that we're on a far lower spiritual plane than we were before the Golden Calf and that we will never catch this we will never this isn't your homage if you have the art-school homage it's this comment is written in there we will never attain this level again until Messiah comes now what do we mean by this level well before the Golden Calf we had weapons of warfare that we had been given when we left Egypt they were divine weapons of warfare that had the you'd cave of K written on them the divine name and they were mighty - you know it's like to the to the pulling down of strongholds and when we were standing there a mountain and we heard God's voice who say who said that I am a Shem a Nokia Shem that there was not anyone who was sick among us all blind eyes were open all deaf ears were open all the lame could walk and nobody had an illness when we had the Sapphire tablets but all that went away when we just had the regular Torah the regular stone Torah so the because if we have the tour why do we need mashiac now you know the answer all Jews this is why all Jews know we need the Messiah because we're looking forward to the day when the Messiah will renew the Covenant with us and give us a fire tablets back yeshua is the sapphire tablets he is that renewal this is why when he was here this is why when he was walking around blind eyes were being open and deaf ears are being unstopped and lame were walking this is why this is why we have this is why the Apostle he said you know we have these spiritual weapons this is why we had these spiritual weapons because of him so this is this is that answer now to the question of what does it mean to be grafted in because people say this all the time like I'm grafted in I'm a graphene i'ma grafted and basically graft it in and short means to be adopted now I think it's really interesting in my life and my wife's life because conversion and the taught this whole topic is what I get excited about the most of everything I teach about this is this is my most excitement that I have and I find it interesting that my wife and I rebus scene and I do not have any children together which we were cool with that you know it's fine I mean you know we were it's you know we were all as well but then Hashem put us in a position where we had the opportunity to adopt a daughter and so that was been an interesting experience and then later we end up getting in a another position where we have an opportunity to kind of like semi adopt kind of an unofficial official kind of way another daughter and so we end up having two adopted daughters in the house and it has for me anyway I I took it as a as a wink-wink from a Shem just so that I could understand in a very personal way what adoption means and I don't think it's insignificant that it's a multicultural adoption multiracial adoption on top of all of that that our daughters are part of our family and there's no such thing as I'm grafted in but I'm not part of the family I'm grafted in but you're not really my dad you're I'm grafted in I eat your food but you're not really I'm not really a Griffin you know and I think it's cool you know when sometimes people will say hey the Griffin the Griffin plan is leaving or whatever it's like yeah you know it's like a family this is what it means to be grafted in you're grafted into the family so you say well I'm grafted in but I'm not Jewish that doesn't make any sense at all that's like saying I'm adopted but I'm not really part of the family well then you're not adopted I mean really if you're if you're adopted but not part of the family you're not adopted you're living in illusion oh so a lot of times we don't allow ourselves to be adopted theologically we're under this idea so what does it mean to be grafted in from a Jewish perspective well it means that you're you're brought into the family that Abraham becomes your dad that Sarah becomes your mom this is what the interpretation of Genesis 12 is did you all the nations will be grafted into you and the tractate SOTA talks about grafting assured this during the Shabbat but just to reiterate the point that if you have a tree that's a 5 years old and you can partake of its fruit and then you take a limb that say 2 years old and you want to graph that limb onto that tree so the question becomes what law applies does the tree because it received the two-year-old limb there's the tree now become 2 years old or does the limb become 5 years old it's a valid question isn't it because it's really important because it's a halakhah it's just torah law you can't either that tree if it's not yet five years old so here you have a two year old tree and you're grafting it into excuse me two year old branch grafting it into a five year old tree what's the answer the verdict is that the limb takes on the law of the tree and therefore the tree day one that it's grafted in it's fruit is now consumable if the tree is five years old it makes total sense doesn't it that when you get grafted in you take upon yourself the rules of the family I mean come on you know when when our daughters come into our house and they're their adopted they're grafted in there there's some ones once once someone once said they're grifted in but they come they they adopt the rules of the family we don't have different rules for everybody they adopt the rules of the family we all eat at the same table we all eat the same food blah blah blah blah blah etc etc etc we go out we and we do things together all those kinds of things right it's it's a it's a family unit that's that's what happens it would not make any sense to say well I belong to the family but I don't follow the rules of the house that doesn't make any sense and it certainly doesn't make sense that I want to be grafted in and I want you to follow my rules now how many people say I'm grafted into Israel and then as I said earlier they want to teach Jews how to follow the Torah I'm grafted into Israel here's your new calendar thank you for letting me in the in the family I'm grafted in Israel don't you realize sell you that that meat and dairy stuff is just a rabbinic tradition let me teach you what it means to really eat biblically kosher by the way thank you for allowing me to come into your family paint paying the bills and you know I wouldn't know about this house if it wasn't for you but anyway I'm here to teach you how to follow the Torah that you taught me about yesterday so you see that's what it means to be grafted in from a Jewish point of view that's why we need the Torah and the this is what's going to keep us all healthy to remember these cycles this is something that has not been explained to a great many people and as a result they kind of get thrown off so hopefully all of this that we've shared tonight is going to be a great comfort to everybody and help you to stay healthy and holy and we'll have to end it there and we'll take questions any questions that might exist up there in the stratosphere yes ma'am yes no but it's believed that all the oral torah was given to moses the oral torah really comprising the Mishnah like the mission that really is the oral torah and then i mean and then the the Gemara is the commentary really on the Mishnah the talmud you can think about the talmud by the way like you think about the US Congress the mission it would be like the Senate and the Gemara would be like the House of Representatives together they make the Congress which is the Talmud so but if you think about it a lot of people say well I don't I only believe in the written Torah before the law was getting given what happened first God spoke it right so at one point it was all oral right yeah yes that's right by speaking yes that's true also that's a very good point also a lot of the a lot of the primary fundamental laws that we have in Judaism like I hear people say who come from different kind of whatever groups they'll say we know that Jews do all that Jewish tradition stuff like lighting candles on Friday night you know who gave us light the candles on Friday night do you know where that came from actually wasn't candles back then because candles have only existed for a few centuries but back then it was lamps but you know who gave it to us Mordecai Hey and Ezra and Nehemiah and Haggai and Zechariah and Zerubbabel at some of these characters Obadiah so we're talking about the men who gave us these laws that we follow they have books in the Bible or their stories are in the Bible so that's what we're talking about here so everything was oral at one point in time and as I've said before which we don't we won't get into now but if you don't believe in the oral torah it is really if you're strictly a word of god only like i only follow the literal written Torah that's your flag you've planted there it is actually impossible for you to believe in Yeshua it's actually impossible you you really cannot believe in Yeshua if you are a solo script or a person if you don't I don't know what no what I mean we can address that at some other time but you're really gonna have to cut you're gonna have to have a come to Yeshua meeting about that because if and this is where anti missionaries really mess people up like like like a jujitsu master fighting a 10th grader because they can destroy your faith like in a heartbeat if you're a strictly written Torah person because that was it was go bye-bye real quick but anyway but not I'ma getting all that any other questions yes sir you mean like the this this one here oh yes yes yes so exactly so the the the word for skin excuse me the word for light in Hebrew is or and the word for skin in Hebrew is or a difference is a letter so or for light it's an olive and skin is an EIN so when Adam fell he lost his olive which represents a shammy got the the iron which is a much lesser letter and this skin that we have is a sad reflection of this garment of light we used to have so this is like when we lost the sapphire tablets we got the art or we have now I mean it's it's our skin it's our skin is kind of holding everything together right but it's not nearly like the light this this is why when people say you know they saw a saint you know and so on and he was glowing that's why that's our our bodies of resurrection maybe sooner our time will be restored God willing to garments of light yes sir uh-huh you talk about well it's just some the use of the pronoun they Godwin's he's talking about making everything else where there's a the altar or the table of showbread he says to Moses you should make it now Moses had agents of course who made it but he's telling Moses you should make it in other words you're responsible for it but when it came to the ark itself God says they should make it in other words all of Israel is supposed to have a part of it what makes the ark the ark the ark is nothing but a box without the Torah what makes the ark the ark is the Torah that's why it's called the Ark of the Covenant of the Ark of testimony so what's and notice that it has center stage of everything else think about this people say the Torah doesn't matter the tour was the only thing that was in the throne room of God and by the way the Ark is the throne of God so because God's throne is not a chair it's actually the ark but anyway that's what it means we're all to have a part to play in the Ark we're all to have a portion in the Torah it doesn't necessarily belong to anyone that doesn't mean that we can go off rogue and make stuff up because you know we're all part of a family right but it doesn't we can't be excluded from it it's the point that's see also with the point what they were saying about it being in the desert you can't say to any people hey y'all this isn't for you that's what's crazy about the whole idea of the tour is not for the Gentiles that contradicts thousands of years of Jewish thought you're not allowed to say to anybody it's not for you because it was given in a place that was open for anyone in other words anybody could have come to son I'd just like Jethro did notice that Jethro did not come from Egypt Jethro came from Midian which means that you can come to Sinai from anywhere anybody else got a question yes yes it is it's Yom Kippur is the cell for two things first of all Yom Kippur is definitely the celebration of new covenant so for those of us who understand the new covenant as it's to be understood biblically yes it's a great holiday to celebrate that renewal of covenant it's also very practical reasons we all need Yom Kippur I don't know about you but by the time the younger Corp Yom Kippur comes around I have a whole lot of shittaka of what is in my life from the past year I need that opportunity to come before Shem and reconcile what I did well what I did not so well what I did terrible and really come to Hashem and it's it's Yom Kippur is actually considered in Jewish thought a holiday of grace and the reason is is because God does not allow our sins to pile up year after year after year after year but he gives us a day he gives us a day every year to come and just get purified so it's known as a holiday of grace so yes that's why we celebrate for those of you online and maybe didn't hear that cuz you're always just saying that she appreciated the way that this was explained that she hadn't really seen it that way before that when you sure returned he was the sapphire tablets and and when he comes back he'll be those Sapphire tablets completely restored so brew Koosh him for that right yeah so cellulous question was was the apostle talking we sum up working out your salvation as you tell about this time between yom kippur to kind of work on our relationship i think and i believe the answer to that is yes a lot of times because again of wrong teaching we think about salvation as an event that happened like think about like this like i got married and that was it like i got married right alright but okay yeah i got married going on 25 years ago but that was a one-time event but since then I've been living in covenant OH relationship with my wife and we've been living that relationship out so working out your salvation with fear and trembling is simply meaning that you're you're in the covenant with God and you're working that out on a daily basis you're and don't we do that right as Jews working out your salvation is coffee in your kitchen working out your salvation is working on your Hebrew working on your sitter prayers working on your prayer life in general those kinds of things working on salvation is this on a daily basis we're working on that relationship there's no perfect marriage there's no you don't ever arrive in your relationship your relationship to use the marriage example goes through changes you know as life you know you're really young and all this and you're backpacking through the Alps and then when you're a little bit older the Alps you'd rather just sit on the beach you know they kind of go through those kind of I saw it by the way that reminds me my rabbit scene and I saw this card on the store the other day and it was so cute and so true it said adulthood is mostly about being tired and wishing that you hadn't made plans I thought that was like yes that defines my life so anyway it's cute it's cute the first time they read a safari yes right yeah well okay so the question is the first time around there have there a light as a feather and then when we send the letters flew off and I became heavy second time around were they also light presumably yes okay yeah in fact the sages talked about this I'm gonna use the story of the arc so there are you have the arc the arc is this wooden box made it of acacia wood and it's overlaid with a gold I mean inside that or the tablets and other stuff let me have guys you have the Levites and stuff that are carrying the Ark with gold is heavy okay I wish I had more of it but it's it's it's heavy but they're carrying this in normally that'd be like a pretty heavy but not just the ark but also the the poles are also overlaid with a gold well this the sages say that that whenever they were carrying the ark that God's hand was under the ark lifting it up and so when they carried it it was like light as a feather and so whenever the so what you see throughout woven through this conversation is that when we are obeying God's Word and doing his will it's not a heavy burden for people that say oh this is really really hard you have to be very careful about it because if your Torah observance is difficult it could be an attitudinal problem it could be a sin problem because God promises that his burden is light and easy and if we find it to be really really challenging like oh this is so hard we have to really wonder why people say to me sometimes and not not to be insensitive I've been doing this a while so let's mean you know kind of is what is but some people say kosher meat is expensive and I don't know if it really is or not cuz I I buy non kosher meat because sometimes we make it for our dogs it's kind of expensive but anyway that's my there but here's a deal for me when I'm walking in the grocery store and I see all that big thing of me got the beef the chicken that's not food that's not food I might as well be looking at no meat not to be mean I might as well be looking at a dog food counter so to me it's a non-issue it's like well that meat is less expensive than the kosher meat over there that's because that's food and that is I'm not sure what that is but that's not for human consumption okay so naturally it's cheaper okay I'm just saying when you look at it like that when you think about it like that when you have that perspective it's like it's just it's just the price of living it's just what it cost meats expensive so you know what sometimes at our house we have we don't always have meat you know I'm just saying you know but but a lot of time is added attitudinal it's what we what and how in our perspective you're like oh my gosh you know can't believe that the ground over here that's totally nasty and gets recalled all the time on the news is a lot less expensive than the kosher meat there's a reason for that there's a reason why the Alpo can is also cheaper then they can of the meat I'm just saying you know so when you kept it look when you look at it like that you're like oh snap that's right ya can't eat that yeah by the way I mean if people are working on becoming kosher and all it's a process and I'm I'm being a little bit tongue-in-cheek with some of this but I've used to say I haven't said in a while but if you're working on going kosher like with your meat and stuff one of the first places to start is ground beef because it does have a lot of extra stuff in there but also the other problem is that ground beef one of those challenges is all that forbidden fats you have no idea what kind of fat they threw in there and kosher meat is kosher grumpy for instance is going only going to have the fat that's fat from the animal that's allowed by Torah so that's just something I just want to throw out there that I've said that before then people are starting to go kosher and they're like okay I'm kind of working my way into it that's totally fine but you might want to start with like with your ground beef like get do that and then work to the other stuff oh yeah oh yeah totally yes so get so much better it's like maybe think of these the huisun refer back in the day we to the pieces of fried chicken we used to get they were like dinosaur chickens because there's because kosher rules about chickens requires so the chicken has to be allowed to live longer whereas the non kosher chickens you can you can slaughter you slaughter them very early on so that's why your chicken slices pieces are small and what a kosher chicken pieces like dinosaur drum drumsticks so that's why you had one more question from Tim Baker sure right yeah we kind of got in America we've got a little kind of accustomed to having meat all the time and there's lots of different options you know I mean and I know that I realize that some people watching you may be in an area where there's not kosher markets nearby but what people do first first of all you should move to Saginaw but the other thing to some people do is that they they plan and they'll drive sometimes many hours to get to a kosher market and they'll stock up the coolers with dry ice or whatever they do drive back and stock the freezer and frankly we do that kind of anyway I know that we're kind of only 45 minutes from kosher heaven but even still you know we do that a lot and so there's other ways there's other things you can talk about there's kosher coops and things you can get involved there's ways to maneuver around it if you don't live in an area where it's readily available you know mm-hmm it becomes a becomes a non-issue and you know that type of thing so all right well thank you everybody so much for joining again next couple weeks we'll be offline March 11th will march 11th we will get back on track and life will be good so $2 ba and Lila Tov

Channel: Sar Shalom Synagogue

Views: 745

Rating: 4.9024391 out of 5

Keywords: Torah, Yeshua, Shalom, Messianic, jesus, judaism, bible, study, parashat, jews, sermon, Rabbi, Rabbi Mordecai, Rabbi Mordecai Griffin, Rabbi Griffin, Mordecai Griffin, Sar Shalom, Sar Shalom Synagouge, Synagogue, Talmid, Talmud, Yeshiva, Midrash, Midrash Rabba, Me'am Loez, Rambam, Ramban, Rashi, Lapid, Lapid Judaism, Rabbeinu Bachya, Rabbi Munk, Shulcan Aruch, Artscroll Chumash, Siddur, Machzor, Conversion

Id: 5gW16pBkfE0

Length: 75min 37sec (4537 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2020