Thoughts On The Torah Portion (Terumah) ... by Hannah

I had decided what I was going to write about earlier this week, but somehow I never got to it yesterday ... sorry this is late!

The Torah this week is Exodus 25:1-27:19, the Haftarah is 1 Kings 5:12-6:13 and Brit Chadasha is Matthew 5:33-37, Hebrew 9:1-10.

When I started reading the Torah earlier this week, I realized that we're getting into that section that can be difficult reading. It's sometimes hard to not let your mind wander when you're reading details about the Tabernacle and sacrificial system - things that we have a hard time understanding and that really do not seem to relate to us.

So as I was reading about how the Tabernacle was supposed to be built and all the details and instructions, this one thought kept running in my head ... YHWH cares about the smallest details ... He cares about the outward appearance ... and He gave specific instructions about how we are to serve and worship Him. 

If He was so specific in His instructions about how He wanted His people to serve and worship Him, don't you think He cares about the other aspects of the way that we live our lives? If He gave such detailed information about how He wanted the outward appearance of the Tabernacle and the priests to be, don't you think that He cares about our appearance?

1 Peter 2:5 says "Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Yeshua Messiah." And in verses 9-10, "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy."

He is talking to us. It seems like many people take the position that anything goes ... it's only the heart that matters ... anyone can serve God anyway they want to ... God doesn't care about rules anymore ... etc etc. Through reading these passages like the Torah portion this week, we see that YHWH does not have a "anything goes" mindset. Think about what happened when Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire (Leviticus 10) or when Uzza reached out to catch the ark of the covenant as it was about to fall (1 Chronicles 13). Instant death for disobedience.

YHWH is a merciful God but He is also a jealous God (Exodus 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, to mention a few). He does care about how we serve and worship Him. We need to not take cues from everything and everyone around us (culture, society, friends, family, even fellow believers) ... but to turn to His Word for the standard of righteous living. He is the only One we're going to answer to on Judgement Day ... let's make sure that we are living our lives the way that He wants us to.

Volunteering With PJTN - Pictures At The Opryland Hotel ... by Hannah

This past Sunday (February 19th), we had the privilege of volunteering at the Prayer and Action event hosted by Proclaiming Justice To The Nations at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. We have been able to do this each year since 2008, but normally it has only been a few of us. This year we planned to take the whole family, but Mama was not feeling well so all the rest of us went.

We went early so that Tommy and Sam could help with unloading and setting up equipment ... and Abba took us girls to Bass Pro Shop for a little while :)  We came back and walked around Opryland for a bit (that place is HUGE!) and we got something to eat. We also took lots of pictures!

Lydia, in front of one of the many fountains.

Pretending to throw Lydia in!

It is really beautiful there.

Left to right: me, Abigail, Lydia, Sarah, Ruthie

Someone offered to take the picture so that Abba could join us.

Ruthie and Abba

Abigail and Abba

The river in the Opryland

Left to right: Ruthie, Abigail, Lydia, Sarah, me ... another one of the many fountains!

After wandering around for awhile, we went to help with setting up. It was about 5pm and the event was supposed to start at 8:30pm. Abba was responsible for escorting Bishop Choby to and from the event.

Here are Sam and Lydia with them.

The meeting went well, lasting from 8:30pm to just after 10pm. The keynote speakers were Itamar Marcus from Palestinian Media Watch and Joseph Farah from World Net Daily.

One of the highlights of the event is getting to see Rabbi Gerald Meister. We met him back in 2004 or 2005 and got to see him while we were in Israel. Rabbi Meister used to work in the Foreign Relations department for the Israeli government.

Left to right: Abba, Sam, Abigail, Tommy, Ruthie, me, Sarah, Lydia ... with Rabbi Meister in the middle.

After cleaning things up, we were interviewed by a reporter from JooTube who was very intrigued by our family and lifestyle. He filmed us and asked a huge variety of questions ... I'll let you know if he posts it. I'm concerned about how it will turn out - we probably looked like we were about to fall asleep (it was about 11pm)!

Rabbi Meister had been using an electric wheelchair/scooter and when he left, Abba brought it back to put it away. After everything was cleaned up and everyone was leaving (about 12am), we started walking to take the scooter back where it belonged. The meeting was held about as far away from where the scooter belonged as you could get it, so it was quite a walk.

Sam and Lydia got to ride the scooter back ... and had the time of their lives!

Abigail, posing in one of the fancy mirrors.

Artwork in the ceiling.

It was a long night :)

Waiting for Tommy to bring the van to the entrance ... Ruthie, me, Sarah.

Guess what happens at 12:30am when Sam and Lydia are riding an electric scooter through Opryland?!

Thought on the Torah Portion... by Sarah

Shabbat Shalom!  This is Sarah and I have the Mishpatim | משפטים | "Judgments " Torah portion!  I was about to say how it seems like it was just last week that I wrote and how time flies, when I glanced over the last post and I realized Tommy had said the same thing!

Once again, I have a wonderful, beautiful portion that shows YHWH's love and care for His people, the children of Israel.  My portion is:
Torah: Exodus 21:1 through 24:18
Prophets: 2 Kings 11:17 through 12:17
Gospel: Luke 7:1 through 8:3

I will not be able to cover all of those portions in this post so I hope that each of you will go through and read them for yourself.  But I will get started with some of the things that stood out to me. 

This Torah portion is talking about the different laws and or commandments of the land. 

• The law concerning slaves,
• violence,
• property,
• restitution,
• social and religious laws,
• justice for all,
• sabbatical year and Sabbath,
• the annual festivals,
• the conquest of Canaan promised
• the blood of the covenant
• and then Moses on the mountain with YHWH.

First... in chapter 21:1-11 of Exodus it is talking about a servant and the things concerning that.  It was saying that if a man bought a Hebrew slave, how he must serve him 6 years and then he has a choice whether to go free or not.  It reminded me of our relationship with Yeshua.  We were bought with a price.  We have the choice whether to serve him or not.  If we choose to give Him our life and serve Him, then He has pierced our heart with His life and we now are his servants forever.  If we choose not to serve Him than He will have still paid a price for us and we would go out with all of our sin with us.

Second...  Exodus 23:9 says, "Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." 
I think that most of us can relate to this.  I have noticed over the years how if a new person comes to someone's congregation, the youth may be greeted, but it does not seem to be often that the new person is "welcomed" by the youth of the congregation and spent time with.  Please do not hear that I am trying to put ANYONE down for I have been in both places my self... the stranger and the youth of the congregation.  It is somewhat hard to welcome someone you do not know and to make them enjoy their time, BUT... have you thought about what it is like when you are a stranger at some place?  If you do not know anyone, it can be pretty lonely. 
So, what should we do about it?  When I see a new girl[s] at our congregation I have started to go up to them and introduce myself to them and converse with them.  Believe me, they will not feel lonely and you will feel a lot better.

Third... Exodus 23:25 says, "And ye shall serve YHWH your God, and He shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee."
This kind of stood out to me when I read it.  Most of us have probably not seen starvation and no water (all though there are some people who do), but most of us have faced sickness.  Do you think that maybe we are not serving YHWH with our whole heart?  Maybe we had some fear?  I do not know, I just thought that it was an interesting thought.

Fourth... Exodus 23:13 "And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth."
This verse reminded me of the verse from Deuteronomy 4:24, "For YHWH your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God."  I also thought that is was neat how this portion in the Torah lined up with the prophets portion (2 Kings 11:17 though 12:17) because it is talking about Jehoiada making a covenant with YHWH and them going into Baal's house and breaking it down ... breaking down the altars and the images and they even slew Baal's priest Mattan.

I hope you have a great Shabbat.  Blessings, ~Sarah

Thoughts on the Torah Portion (Yitro)...By Tommy

Shalom Y'all,

It is I, the T man with you again. It is my pleasure to share my thoughts on the Torah portion with you this week. How the time has seemed to fly since I last wrote.

The name of this Torah portion is Yitro which means Jethro. (Moses' father-in-law) and the passage can be found in: Exodus 18:1-20:26 Isaiah 6:1-7:6; 9:5-7 and in Matthew 6:1-8:1

First of all, I want to say, I hope that each and everyone of you will read this Torah portion on your own. There is so much that we can learn if we were to get into The Word more then we do (I speak to myself as I write this). The Scriptures are full from beginning to end of instruction on how we are to live our lives. 


It is up to us to decide whether we want to follow the perfect plan that YHVH our Creator has laid out for us ... or are we going to do it our own way and maybe throw in a little or a lot of Scripture here or there so that it looks like we are following Scripture, but in all reality we are taking the scriptures out of their context and making it sound a certain way so that we can justify how we live our life. 


The more I read the scriptures, the more clearly I see how it is the same book from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation. Nothing has changed, as far as the commandments of YHVH are concerned, nothing has been done away with. 


Even Yeshua said in Matthew 5:18-19 "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches [them], he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

You might ask, Ok Tommy, what does this have to do with the Torah portion? And my answer is, in a way it does not have anything to do with it and yet on the other hand it has EVERYTHING to do with it. 


First things first, I did not have any of this planned. What I have written has poured out from my hands onto this keyboard. I had been praying about what to write and up until the time that I sat down to write, I had not gotten anything, however I knew that I was suppose to start writing and that YHVH would guide my hands and my thoughts. I give him praise that He is, because it is currently 1:20am as I write this and usually at this time of night I cannot think straight, much less put coherent words on a screen :) So back to how does what I have written tie in with the Torah portion.

In Exodus 19:3-6, we read: "Moses went up to God, and YHVH called to him from the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel: 'You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself. 'Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine;and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel."

There are two things that jumped out at me when I read that. It says, "Speak unto the children of Israel". Who are we? Are we not the children of Israel? Through the blood of Yeshua the Messiah we have been brought in to the commonwealth of Israel (see Ephesians 2:12-13). If the scriptures are true (and I believe with my whole heart that they are), then does this not mean that YHVH is speaking to us here in chapter 19 of Exodus (not to mention all the other chapters in the Bible)? I believe He is. 


So now is where part two comes in. It says in verse 5, "Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine;" In some translations it read "My commandments." So it looks like to me, that if we want to be part of YHVH's own possession, then we need to be living by the commandments that He has laid out for us.

I don't know about you, but personally I don't want to take any chance of not being part of YHVH's own possession. Does that mean that I am Mr. Perfect? By all means NO, because my flesh does not want to be part of YHVH's own possession and that is where we get to decide which road we are going to take. However that is another whole topic that I am not going to get into tonight, or more correctly this morning.

I hope and pray that this will bless each and everyone of you. Once again, this has been totally of the Father's doing, because I honestly did not have a clue of what I was going to write. There is so much more that I could share on this Torah portion; however it is now 2:00 am, so I am going to bring it to a close with one last encouragement ... to get into the Scriptures and read them for what they say, not what we want them to say.

Shabbat Shalom,

Tommy

Random Remembrances - Part One

... uh, I believe that is a jackal ...
On one of our first nights in Ezuz, Tommy and I decided to go for a walk. It was close to midnight and we started walking down the hill out of the community, in the direction of the Egyptian border. I was talking to Abba on Tommy's phone and all of the sudden we hear this really eerie sound. I said something to the extent of, "What was that?!" ... and Abba is on the other end of the phone thousands of miles away, asking, "What is what?!" We heard it several times and realized that it was most likely a nearby jackal. Have you ever heard a hyena? It wasn't quite the same type of sound but it was almost as creepy!

... trying to watch Anne of Green Gables with Naomi ...

It was a new DVD and it would not play on my laptop. We asked Anchel (the Mexican man that was volunteering there) if we could try it on his computer and it didn't work there either, but we did receive a message in Spanish.  None of us understood Spanish except Anchel ... and he did not know enough English to tell us what the message was saying! We kept ejecting and inserting the disc, trying to make it work and then Tommy got a bright idea :)  He pulled up Google Translate (on my computer) and told Anchel to type in the Spanish words. The message was translated ... to the effect that the disc was damaged and could not be played. The funny part was when we were started playing around with Google Translate, translating English words into Hebrew and Spanish and vice versa ... and someone clicked on the volume icon to hear the translation. The accents were so hilarious that Naomi and I nearly fell over laughing. Tommy was laughing because we were laughing and Anchel couldn't understand what we were saying, but he joined in anyway. It was a fun night.

... yep, those were drug runners ...
We were on a walk again - this one was in the daytime. We had walked to the Egyptian border and back. As we were approaching Ezuz, there were two vehicles that came out of the desert and into the oasis - one was a fairly nice Mercedes SUV. There were two Arab men in each. Tommy and I weren't sure what to think, but we walked on - keeping an eye to make sure they weren't following us. When we mentioned the incident to a soldier friend of ours who had been stationed near the border, he said, "Oh yeah, those were definitely drug runners."

Arab in keffiyeh + Mercedes SUV + near the Egyptian border =  ............ 

well, let's just say I was glad we didn't meet those guys on one of our night walks :)

This was taken shortly after we saw the drug runners.

... piano accompaniment ...

There was a family staying the Hirshfeld's one weekend - they were from a settlement near Hevron. After Shabbat, the wife started playing the guitar, singing Psalms in Hebrew. It was beautiful! I was thrilled to not only be able to understand some of the passages she was singing, but also to be able to heard most of what she was playing by ear and join her on the piano :)

... "well, life in the Negev can be kinda loud, with fighter jets flying below the clouds" ...
(If you know the song and have been in the Negev, you're welcome to finish the verse, 'cause I can't figure out the rest of it! As a matter of fact, if you haven't been in the Negev but you have songwriter's imagination, let me know what you come up with!) Anyway, it was a regular thing for noisy air force jets to fly over the area while practicing. Every so often we would see flares. It was kind of neat ... it wasn't something that we regularly experience here in the hills and hollers of Tennessee :)



... Tommy, the impromptu IDF mechanic ... 
It was on another one of our walks (nighttime again! We tried to walk nearly every night on the road that circled through and partially around Ezuz - about a two miles, I think) ... we saw two vehicles coming toward us and one was being towed by the other. As they passed us, we realized that the vehicles were IDF hummers, heading toward Ezuz. Tommy started wondering what was wrong with the one, mechanic that he is :)  We walked on a little further and discovered an area in the road that was wet. Tommy bent over to inspect it and promptly announced that it was transmission fluid. We continued our walk back toward Ezuz and Tommy expressed his plan to offer his services if necessary. Before we got back to the community, the hummers had left.

... "that's not modest" ... 
There were several times when the neighbor girls would visit Naomi and there would be discussions about modest clothing ... specifically - that their clothing wasn't modest! I couldn't understand all of the Hebrew, but at times Naomi would turn to me and ask me in English if I agreed with whatever point she was trying to make. I would agree and she would turn back to the neighbor girl and tell her what I said. It was amusing to see the expressions :)

(more coming later ... or sooner, depending on when I get a round tuit!)

Thoughts On The Torah Portion (B'Shelach) ... by Hannah

I'm sorry about the lack of a post last week ... there was some miscommunication about who was going to write it and it did not get done at all!

The Torah this week is Exodus 13:17–17:16 and the Haftarah is Judges 4:4–5:31.

This portion has so much in it - especially the Haftarah! The story of Deborah and Barak and Yael is quite an exciting one. I think it is also one that is often misunderstood or misconstrued (specifically, Deborah's part) and I'd love to share more of my thoughts on that, but for now I'm going to stick with the Exodus passage.

Of course, this is a very exciting portion too with so much happening, but one of the main things that stood out to me is this:

Think about all the incredible miracles that Israel experienced ... the ten plagues in Egypt ... crossing the Red Sea ... Pharaoh and his chariots being destroyed ... the bitter water made sweet ... quail and manna for the people to eat ... a victorious battle with Amalek, due to Moses's hands being raised all day long ...

But what keeps happening? The children of Israel reacted over and over again in fear, grumbling and complaining. For some reason, when I read the story of the exodus and events that took place shortly thereafter, I can't imagine having doubts. I mean, if I saw YHWH divide the sea right in front of my eyes and bring water out of a rock that was hit with a stick, it seems that I could trust Him for anything. But is that really the case? If I were a part of the children of Israel, how would I have responded?

In 1 Corinthians 10:1-12, we read about the different ways in which the children of Israel sinned and verse 11-12 say, "Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."

We need to learn from the example of Israel in the wilderness. Hebrews 3:8-12 says, "Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God."

It is a scary thing to have a hard heart. Look at what happened to the Egyptians because of Pharaoh's hard heart. I do not want to harden my heart against YHWH in any way, but to always be pliable so that I can be molded into His image.

YHWH works in miraculous ways! (Kinda reminds of the line in that old movie Sergeant York ... "the Lord sure does move in mysterious ways!") Have you experienced His hand in a supernatural way? I know that our family has and besides that, we can read so many Scriptural accounts of His incredible power. So why do we worry about little things? Look at the way He cared for the children of Israel, keeping them safe from their enemies and providing for their needs. If we serve the God who could divide the sea to allow hundreds of thousands of people to cross on dry land, and then brought it back together to destroy their enemies ... why can't we trust Him in the itty-bitty, nitty-gritty, every day details of life?!

When we look at the experiences of the children of Israel, I think there is a tendency to think, "Look at everything YHWH did for them and they still didn't trust and believe Him!" In Hebrews 3 and 1 Corinthians 10, we are being encouraged to examine ourselves. After all, we serve the same God and He cares for us just as He cared for them. He is our provider and protector ... are we fully trusting and believing Him?

Let me close with two verses ...

"But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." Hebrews 3:13

"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." 1 Corinthians 10:13

May YHWH bless all of you as you continue this journey of trusting, believing and following His incredible and wonderful plan for your life!