.......................Yeshua
the King
Yeshua the King. Yes the name of this web site but more a statement of reality. Yeshua is our King already even now as we await his return for us. Those of you who are visiting and have been here in the past will be wondering what happened to the hundreds of articles that were always here and the links to other sites. Well they have been eliminated except for a few which show Yeshua as our king and how we are to experience his kingdom. I have this one message I want to share with everyone. Yeshua is King. He is God’s Messiah, God’s son and according to the Apostle John he is the creator become flesh, the creative living spoken word of God.
So here is the short story. I have been a part of the Messianic faith since 1977 and in the beginning it was a wonderful thing like a honeymoon experience where the word of God came alive in its original Hebraic context and new depth was found in the saying and Parables of Yeshua. Our lives changed to be more Torah observant, though mostly in a biblical way rather than in a Rabbinical form, and our worship became more Jewish in flavor in songs and dance and teachings. So what is the problem?
Well like any good thing it is possible to go too far. And today this has happened. For several years we have resisted a change in the Messianic faith that has been methodically taking it farther and father from the truth it was originally basking in. These changes have come from a couple places for example, an attempt by the Christian churches to gain control of the movement and add their own “Branding” to it, from atheists who hate to see any new movement of God, and by Rabbinical Jews who loved the open door to fellowship and to find common ground with others interested in a Jewish perspective, but who were also unwilling to fully embrace the profound truth that was there in the stories of the Messiah. Instead they have tried to convert believing Jews to become Rabbinical, Gentiles to become Rabbinical or to become Noachides under Jewish Halachic authority. All this unfortunately requires a compromise in the Gospel of Yeshua and the great liberty that we have in Him. Many Gentiles in their new found love for the Hebraic roots of the faith have been willing to embrace all sorts of Jewish doctrine including the Rabbinical traditions that places all authority in the hands of the Rabbinate. They have come to believe that the wisdom of God is not in the Messiah and the Gospels or the teachings of the Apostles but in the writings of the Jewish sages of Talmud or Kaballah. Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. There are many wonderful things that we can learn from our Jewish brothers. However we should not compromise our faith in Yeshua in order to incorporate Jewish traditions into our lives. We need to remember that the Apostles and those thousands upon thousands of Jewish who first believed in Him and paved the way for us all continued to be faithful Jews while proclaiming the Good New that Yeshua was the Messiah and the New Covenant and the Kingdom had been given to man.
The Jews of that time
were Temple Jews, still observing Temple worship and sacrificial services
under the priesthood according to the Sinai Covenant. Today’s Judaism
is Temple-less Judaism with it’s doctrine written to create a new expression
of Judaism without Temple or priesthood or occupation of the lands of Israel.
As we invite our Jewish brother to teach us we should not incorporate
Jewish practices into our observance at the cost of renouncing
our faith and salvation through Yeshua. We should not be ashamed of the
Gospel message nor should we be afraid to present the Messiah to our Jewish
brothers. Our hope is not that all Gentiles and Christians become
Jews, but that both Gentiles and Jews become one new man, one new kind
of humanity in God through Messiah. God wants us to become sons and daughters
to him.
I have spent far
too many hours a day in verbal contests with those who hate the Gospel
and would like to compromise what we believe. They openly say that Yeshua
was not the Messiah, not the son of God, that he was only a Rabbi among
other Pharisees of his time, a follower of Hillel. They call into
Question his doctrines, the testimony of the disciples about Him and call
them apostates and their teachings Heresy. They contest the validity of
the New Testament scriptures and claim they were all Christian innovations
and fabrications and offer in their place the collective opinion of the
sages in the Mishna, Gemara and Talmud, even though these Jewish writings
were penned at least 100 years after the first Gospels. They deny
the testimony that myriads of Jews who were still zealous for the law were
believers and that a great number of priests and scribes and even
members of the Sanhedrin were believers and saw no conflict between believing
that Yeshua was the long awaited Messiah, and the their daily walk in life
as Torah observant righteous Jews. They tell us that the only way
to please God is to embrace the Torahs, both written and the oral, as the
Rabbinicals do. Biblical Kosher practices of not eating shellfish and pork
is not enough, we have to observe the complexities of Rabbinical Koshering
that was added to God’s law. Now we are to submit ourselves to the
men and the system that denies that Yeshua is Messiah in order to really
please God. We are to do this through the sweat labor of our own flesh.
But what did Paul say and what did Yeshua say?
RO 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. [2] For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. [3] For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: [4] That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. [5] For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
GAL 3:1 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? [2] This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? [3] Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? [4] Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain. [5] He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Gal 5: [16] This I
say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
[17] For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the
flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do
the things that ye would. [18] But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not
under the law.
John 3: [5] Jesus answered,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. [6] That which is born
of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
John 6:[38] For I came
down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent
me. [39] And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all
which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again
at the last day. [40] And this is the will of him that sent me, that every
one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life:
and I will raise him up at the last day.
MT 15:1 Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, [2] Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. [3] But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?. . . [7] Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, [8] This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. [9] But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
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And that is the point of this. Yeshua tells us to obey him to trust in him, to do what God tells us, not to burden ourselves with religious rituals and doctrines made by men which promise to bring us into God’s presence when he has already made the way which is through Yeshua. My good friend Shimshon, a Jewish believer, says it this way, “They keep saying it’s Messianic JUDISM!! ,,, but I keep telling them they are missing the point. It is “MESSIANICJudaism! The Emphasis is on Messainic, on Yeshua not Judaism.”
And this is my point as well, the point of it all is that we should live in union with God through rebirth in a new nature by the spirit, which comes through our trusting faith in Yeshua. It is not about all those other things we do like hanging Mezzuzah, wearing Tallit, placing the Menorah in our homes. These are all fine expressions of our relationship to the Jewish people through faith in their Messiah. But we must not think that they have the exclusive plan for coming into relationship with God through becoming Rabbinical Jews. That was the entire issue of the Jerusalem council.
AC 15:1 And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.
The Jews of that time believed that salvation was by ethnicity. They believed that because of the covenant relationship they had with God that only a Jew had a place in the world to come, in the Olam Habbah. Therefore they reasoned that if a Gentile desired to have part in the world to come, then he must convert and become a Jew through Rabbinical conversion rituals. This same doctrine is present today. Neo-Galatians are filling the Messianic movement. And an alarming number believers in a quest to please God through Rabbinical practices have fallen into the trap that they must renounce their faith in Yeshua in order to be good Torah observant people and to please God. Can you see the insanity of this ?; that we forget that it was God’s will that we would have faith in Yeshua to be our righteousness and to become sons and now people are abandoning faith in Yeshua to earn their own acceptance in God through the keeping of Rabbinical ordinances.
Well at this point, I am no longer a part of this movement. I am walking in faith and trusting in the Lord and maintaining a biblical approach to Torah as it applies to those who are saved through Messiah. The Sinai covenant was a specific agreement between God and the people of Israel and deals with the nation of Israel in the lands that God was giving them. It was only for that time and that place. It was to be replaced by the New Covenant which is for all men and is for all nations. And although we do not see the total fulfillment of this until Messiah returns we are given the gifts of rebirth in the spirit and an intimate knowledge of God and have his laws written upon our hearts as first fruits of the final harvest that is yet to come. We live as sons of God, obedient to the instructions he places within us and trusting in faith the Messiah he sent and have a new birth by the spirit today all as the earnest, the down payment of the full purchase price that is yet to come. Many today have been persuaded that we are not living as members of the New Covenant and are still under the old Covenant of Sinai, and therefore feel they have to live according to all the ordinances given to that nation. This misses the fact that the infilling by the spirit and the new life in God which we have, the gifts of the spirit and even our love of those Hebraic things are evidence of the New Covenant and were not given to the common man under the Sinai covenant. Only Kings, priests and prophets had that anointing under the old covenant. Today all who believe and submit themselves to God receive this infilling, or baptism in the spirit. Was that not what was witnessed in the book of Acts over and over again? And didn’t Peter stand up on Shavuot and proclaim the promises of God concerning the New Covenant as seen in Joel Chapter 2 were being fulfilled before their eyes? Is it not obvious that the entire New Testament (Which really is a poor translation of “the New Covenant” is about our new relationship with God in the New Covenant which is realized through a personal relationship with Yeshua? Even our commission as believers is to take this Gospel of the Kingdom to all the nations just as he taught it to the Apostles. Religious observance will not cut it. Traditions will not do it. It takes being born again and becoming a new creature through a new birth in the spirit.
Gal 6: [15] For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision means any thing, nor uncircumcision, but [becoming] a new creature. [that is what means something] (My paraphrase consistent with CJB)
So what are we to do? Here is my recommendations to all who read this. Get a good bible with the Greek and Hebrew text in a Parallel form and a literal translation, Get a good concordance/Lexicon That way you can read the words for yourself and see what was being said. I have one printed by “Sovereign Grace Publications” which I have used for years. Pray before you read, pray after you read so that God will quicken the words and their correct meaning for you into your heart. Be obedient to what God confirms in your spirit. Test it by the New Testament. We are to keep the Torah yes, but we are to do so according to the Kingdom Torah. By that I mean we keep the Torah not as it was given to Israel, which is really impossible to keep without priesthood and tabernacle, but as taught by Yeshua, the Apostles, and the Prophets who spoke about the Messianic Kingdom. The books of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah will be very helpful in this regard. Next, get off the internet when it comes to spiritual teachings. Unless you know the person who is writing and can view their personal lives to see if they are really anointed and living by Gods word and producing the fruit that comes from a life in union with God, then you are in danger of being persuaded by the doctrines of Men. Would you buy a house or a car over the internet without looking it over and checking out it’s condition and the integrity of the seller? Why would you then trust your eternal soul to some person over the internet who wants to teach you his doctrine or that of his organization? And that includes me. Test what I have told you here. See if my words ring true in your spirit and agree with the written word that is given for the believers in Yeshua.
My prayer for all of you, and for me and my family is that in the days ahead as we draw ever nearer the day of his coming, that we are able to truly walk in faith and grow in our relationship with God and separate ourselves from the doctrines of Men whether they be Christian, Rabbinical, scientology, Atheism, or any other thing invented by men. Yeshua is the King. He is our Messiah, our covenant maker our door into the holy place of God. No man enters in any other way. Now may God fill us all freshly each day with His Ruach Ha Kodesh, the Holy spirit, that we can walk pleasing in his sight and peaceably among men, until the day that he returns for us.
My thanks to those who have been faithful friends and viewers of this site over the years.
Shalom,
Charles
Please show me the testimonies
Keeping the Torah
A
word from David and Angela Shimshon
