Plauges 2

A few months ago I did a midrash on the plagues of Egypt and the meaning behind them along with the Gods that were associated with them. I have recently come across some more information regarding those plagues that I want to share with you. This comes from the book "The Weekley MidRash"

>R. Bechaye writes that God brought ten plagues upon the Egyptians, representing measure for measure the ten evil deeds which they perpetrated.

They forced Israel to draw water for their animals and so God turned their water to blood and the animals could not drink.

They forced them to awaken early, leave their beds and go to work, so God sent frogs into their beds and they would not let them sleep.

They kept the Jew from washing themselves and thus they became full of lice, so too did the Egyptians.

They forced the Jews to hunt for them, so they were plagued with hordes of wild animals

The Jews had to watch their animals, so the animals were smitten with a plague

They would not allow the Jews to warm water to wash themselves, so the Jews became dirty, as a result, so God sent boils upon the Egyptians

When the Egyptians saw a Jew they threw stones, so God threw hailstones upon them from heaven.

The Jews had to fertilize their fields and cover them with manure, so the locusts covered their fields.

They put many Jews in the darkness of prison and so God brought darkness upon them.

Finally, they wanted to destroy Israel, who are called God’s first-born, so God destroyed their eldest children

Thanks goes to Rod Aslesen and Kurt Wical for their help with this

Happy Birthday Jesus

Imagine if you will, you are the leader of the world (at that time, it was considered the world) and you have all these schedules and apt books and nothing and nobody makes any changes without you knowing about it. But then GOD comes along and plants the idea in your head to have a census of the Roman world. And as a result of this census God moves the entire world to fulfill what had been said by the prophet Micah so a baby can be born in Bethlehem. (Micah 5:2). But of course we know it's not just any baby, we know that Jesus was going to be born according to the Prophet Isaiah (Isa 7:14)

Now those that follow Jesus know that this is not not his real birthday. But since we don't know exactly when HE was born, Dec 25th is a good time as any to celebrate. Now we can stomp our feet and declare that it is wrong to celebrate it on this day as it is a pagan day and you can come up with chapter and verse to prove your point. Or you can look at it from another point of few and realize "A Day To Honor HIM"! That's what it's really about anyway, is a day to honor Jesus. Remember HIM? He's the one that born and died so that we wouldn't have to and as a result HE gave us a freedom. A Freedom to worship him or not, a freedom to follow him or not, a freedom to celebrate HIS birthday whenever we want.

Story of Hanukkah

According to mainstream Jewish tradition, the story of Hanukah goes something like this. In 333 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered Syria, Egypt and Babylonia, and promoted a lenient form of Hellenistic culture, encouraging the study of the language, customs and dress of the Greeks. Alexander was not necessarily bad to the Jews, and a legend tells that when he marched through Jerusalem he asked the High Priest to erect a statue to his honor within the Temple. The High Priest told Alexander that such was forbidden, though the Jewish people would construct a "living memorial" by naming all their firstborn sons after the great king. Alexander agreed to this and things went fairly well for the Jews. Nevertheless, the encounter of the Jewish people and their Torah-based ethics with the worldview of ancient Greece proved to be a traumatic shock which ultimately threatened to undermine the very existence of Judaism.

Over a century later, in 167 BCE, the ripened fruit of Hellenization began to appear in the form of one of Alexander's successors, the Syrian king Antiochus IV ("Epiphanes"), who began to openly persecute the Jews. Among other atrocities, Antiochus appointed a Hellenistic "High Priest" to the Temple, prohibited the study of the Torah, and desecrated the altar by requiring pigs to be sacrificed on it (the Jews referred to Antiochus not as Epiphanes, "God (i.e., Zeus) made manifest," but rather as Epimanes - "the madman.")

These outrages finally incited rebellion, and by 165 BCE the Hasmonean family of Mattathias the High Priest and his youngest son, Judah "Maccabee" (the "Hammer"), organized a revolt that eventually succeeded in evicting the Syrian-Greeks from Israel. The Temple in Jerusalem was liberated but needed to be rededicated for Jewish worship.

According to later tradition (as recorded in the Talmud (Shabbat 21b)), at the time of the rededication (on Kislev 25), there was very little oil left that had not been defiled by the Syrian-Greeks. Oil was needed for the menorah to burn continually in the Temple, but there was only enough to last for one day. Miraculously, the sanctified oil burned for eight days -- the time needed to prepare a fresh supply of oil for the menorah. An eight day festival was declared to commemorate this miracle.

Thanks to Hebrews 4 Christians for this history.

Who Do You Say He Is?

Mt 16:13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
Mt 16:14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
Mt 16:15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Mt 16:16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Mt 16:17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.
Mt 16:18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.


I had a "heavy revy" a couple of weeks ago about these verses and a belief I had for a long time was corrected as a result. But first, let's figure out the who, what & where's and then I'll explain to you what I learned. We read in verse 13, they are in the region known as Caesarea Philippi which is a very "Roman" and very pagan city, which is just a nice way of saying that they didn't adhere to the Jewish belief or lifestyle and was very worldly. What the verse doesn't say is exactly where they are. Jesus took them to the temple (no not THAT temple), this temple is dedicated to Caesar Augustus that was created by Herod the baby killer, who also built a temple for Zeus and and for the Greek god Pan.


Ok, so why is this temple important? Here is why not only the temple is important but who is was dedicated to. His full name was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus and he was the first Roman Emperor and his reign was from 31 B.C. to 14 A.D. Now Augustus Caesar was considered the following, The Son of God and God, worthy of our worship, savior of our world, and he came to bring - peace, order, man's rights and paradise on earth. He is like you and me - god as man and man as god. He is the high priest and king, the long expected one. Simply put he was looked upon as the Messiah Man which is the philosophy that one man can lead the world to peace and prosperity. In one place we have an example of "Hellenism" or a worldview that says my truth is my truth and your truth is your truth (relativism) and a worldview that focuses on ME and my needs and my pleasure. Ok so now we know who he was, let's go back to the verses and see why this is important. Who do they say Jesus is? The true SAVIOR of the world and not Augustus. What else? Jesus says HE is going to build HIS church on this rock of paganism not on Peter like some people have been taught (my heavy revy). HE is standing in this temple and telling HIS disciples that THIS is where HE is building HIS church HIS assembly and HE will lead us as we go against the gates of hell itself! Are you ready?

Calming The Storm

Mark 4:35-41

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

I was reading a column last week by Dr. George O. Wood who is the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God church, and he was discussing this scripture and raised some good points. In our culture today, after a long day we can’t wait to get home and relax and rest. Or if you are an evangelist, you look forward to getting back to your hotel room and rest, especially if you have to deal with a lot of people every day. While they did have “Inns” in those days, we know there wasn’t one anywhere near where Jesus was teaching. So in this case they did the next best thing and that was to get in the boat and travel to their next destination. They were all tired and also they were very protective of Jesus. Now as Dr. Wood points out, they traded one stressful situation for another. Now here is the rest of the story (as Paul Harvey would say). We tend to think of the disciples as big strong men and not fearful or anything right? Wrong, you have all these guys in the boat with Jesus, and they were headed to the other side of Galilee where no religious Jew had ever gone before, that’s nightmare #1. And the reason it is a nightmare is because these guys aren’t used to traveling by boat. And the place they were going to was not only considered “ritually unclean”, it would be considered X-rated by today’s standards. Nightmare #2 comes where the storm hits and is blowing the boat around. Can you imagine the frustration the disciples must be feeling when all this is happening, and I'm sure they were wondering where Jesus was. It says in verse 38 that He was asleep in the stern and not worried about a thing. Finally we read that they woke him up and HE then commanded the storm to be silent. We read about that and we think “whoa, that is so cool”. But in verse 41 it says the disciples were terrified! Why? Because until that moment most people believed that is was the god “Baal” that controlled the weather and Baal is considered the life giver and was supposed to provide people what they needed. As a result of what they saw, they realized right then and there that Jesus was more powerful than “Baal”!


Thanks as always for Rabbi Ferret who without him I wouldn’t be doing this, and Dr. George O. Wood for the basis of this, and for those that would like to read the article, the link is posted below.

http://pe.ag.org/Wood/4971_Mark.cfm

Which Would You Rather Have?

I live in Minnesota and it's state motto is "Land of 10,000 Lakes". So one could say that we have an abundance of water in our state. However in Israel, they aren't so fortunate as there aren't many lakes or streams for them to get water from. On top of that it only rains for approx 3 months out of the year. Back in biblical times, people stored their water in what was known as a cistern. A cistern is a pit that is dug out of a rock and is plastered to prevent leakage. Now the photo below shows you what a 'cistern" looks like and to me it doesn't look much better than the basement of an old house I used to own.



Much like our houses of today where gutters drain the water off the roof during the rainy season, their houses had gutters also but these were used to channel the water into the cistern for storage. Now they had a lot of problems with this system, the cisterns had to be kept cleaned and plastered and they had to keep the stagnant water from getting diseases. The water itself was dirty as it flowed off the roofs or streets in to the cistern. It was also not very dependable as sometimes it might not rain during the season or the cistern might leak and all the water would seep out. The other problem they had was the water was considered "ritually impure" and was not used for religious ceremonies.


Running water, especially spring water, was different. It stayed fresh and clean. And most springs were dependable, providing water year round. This constant fresh source of water was called "living water," probably portraying its life-giving qualities as well as its constant freshness. God provides (and is described as) "living water". Living water is cleansing, The ritual bath of Jesus' day, "the mikveh" used before coming into the presence of God at the Temple or to the synagogue worship service?contained flowing water, or living water. John the Baptist's choice of the Jordan River for his symbolic cleansing likely was based on the need for fresh, moving water to symbolize cleansing. Near the shores of the Dead Sea, deep in the Judean Wilderness, fresh water gushes out of the desert floor creating an oasis called En Gedi. It was here that David hid from Saul and it is likely one of the places of inspiration for the king-poet, David. The water that brings forth life at En Gedi is a picture of how God meets his children's thirst in the desert.



Jesus described himself as living water (John 4:13-14, 7:37-38), and the people of his day understood the meaning. Only God could provide living water. It would not fail to satisfy any thirst. But it was the connection between living water and the feast of Sukkot that gave Jesus' image of living water the clearest meaning. He chose that feast day to reveal that he was living water. So my question for you is, which would you rather have?


Thanks to John Ferret for the photos and for Ray Vanderlann whose articles on Living Water and En Geddi were used for parts of this

Feast of Tabernacles - Sukkot

The Feast of Tabernacles is the culmination of all the appointed times. It is to the other festivals what the Sabbath is to the other six days of the week. It is a prophetic picture of the coming kingdom. It foreshadows the great celebration when the entire world will live in peace and brotherhood under the reign and rule of the righteous Messiah King. sukkot: Camping Out with God

Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, "On the fifteenth of this seventh month is the Feast of Booths for seven days to the LORD." (Leviticus 16:34)

Five days after the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Tabernacles begins. It is seven days long. The first day is a special Sabbath. The Hebrew name of the festival is sukkot (סוכות, pronounced "sue coat"), a word that means "shelters, stables or huts." The same word is often translated into English as "tabernacles" or "booths." The name is derived from the commandment for all Jews to dwell in temporary shelters for the seven days of the festival as a reminder of the post-exodus years when Israel lived in huts and booths, following God in the wilderness:

You shall live in booths for seven days; all the native-born in Israel shall live in booths. (Leviticus 23:42)

The temporary shelter is referred to as a sukkah (סוכה), which is the singular form of the plural word sukkot. A traditional sukkah must have at least two and a half walls made from virtually any material. The walls don't have to be solid. They could be plywood, canvas, latticework or just about anything. One wall can be part of a permanent structure. For example, the wall of a garage would work. The rest of the booth has to be temporary and disassembled after the festival.

The sukkah booth can be any size, so long as it is large enough for the family to eat and sleep in. The roof of the sukkah is supposed to be covered with some sort of foliage or vegetation that grows from the ground: tree branches, cornstalks, bamboo reeds, sticks or even lumber. The roof material has to provide adequate shade yet be sparse enough so rain can get in and stars can be seen through it. The sukkah should leave a person vulnerable to the elements.

The process of building and living in a sukkah is a great adventure for children. It's like building a fort and camping out in the backyard. People commonly decorate their sukkot. It's fun for the kids, often more fun than decorating a Christmas tree. Families hang harvest decorations and handmade artwork from the walls.

During the course of the seven days of sukkot, it is appropriate to eat one's meals in the sukkah, and if the climate permits, to sleep at night inside the sukkah. Hosting guests in the sukkah for special holiday meals is a big part of the festival. It's a great time of fellowship.

Check out these photos for some examples of a sukaah.

http://www.sukkot.com/gallery.htm

The sukkot is a time of joy and celebration, a time to celebrate the harvest and revel in God's goodness. The festival of sukkot comes at harvest time. The joyous mood of sukkot is a dramatic shift from the solemn and austere tone of the high holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The celebration of sukkot is so joyous that Jewish liturgy often refers to it as "the season of our rejoicing." The commandment to move outside of one's comfortable zone and live in a booth is meant to remind us that God is our provider, sustainer and protector. On the cycle of sanctification, sukkot is an annual opportunity to revel in God's goodness and take delight in our redemption.

Thanks to the folks at FFOZ for this article.