Updated 2 August 2020
Volume Six
…
Avinu
shebashamayim …
Part ONE
Avinu shebashamayim,
yitkadash shemekha.
Tavo malkhutekha ye’aseh r’tsonekha
ba’arets ka’asher na’asah vashamayim.
Ten-lanu haiyom lechem chukeinu.
u’selach-lanu et-ashmateinu
ka’asher solechim anachnu la’asher ashmulanu.
Ve’al-tevieinu lidei massah,
ki im-hatsileinu min-hara.
Ke lakha, hamamlakha, vehageverah, veha tiferet l’olemei ‘olamim.
Amein.
Matthew 6:9–13 (NASB95)
“aPray, then, in
this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
12 ‘And
aforgive
us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 ‘And
do not lead us into temptation, but adeliver us from 1bevil.
2[For
Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]’[5]
Luke 11:1–4 (NASB95)
1 It happened that while 1Jesus was
praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to
Him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.”
2 And He said to
them,
I am writing this today,
for I am saddened and taken aback by what I see happening in the Messianic
communities. Truly it is reaching such a level of discord that we need to refer
to ourselves as “Messy-anics”, or just admit – we are not a community anymore.
On social media, there is this internecine warfare that goes on in group after
group – this one declares a sacred name, that one spells the name different,
one house theology, two house theology, one-law, Noachide law, Torah for Jews,
Torah for Gentiles, Torah for nobody… this list can run on forever. Admins
block this person, people block the admins; this post is allowed, that one is
not – all in an effort to “promote harmony” but in reality it just continues to
highlight the divide within the body.
Let me put it this way.
In Christianity, you have Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, Orthodox
Greek, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Presbyterians and on and on. What
distinguishes these groups are their approach to Scripture, their basic
doctrines and theology. Since they cannot agree on the basic points, they
separate, form their house of worship, and stay within those walls. Like-minded
people gather together and yet, the conflict is not over – you show me a church
anywhere that does not have internal conflict, whether it be between
congregants, pastors, deacons, the board, or a combination of all, and I’m
heading there. What a breath of fresh air that would be. Now, I suppose, that
such a place does exist – I just have not seen it yet. This isn’t me putting
down any denomination, congregation or movement – it is just a cold hard fact
that sadly exists also within the Messianic community.
This problem also exists
within Judaism. Basically, there is the orthodox, the reform, and the conservative
movements of Judaism (for different looks at these movements, see
footnote #7 below). [7] Movements are sects or denominations of
Judaism, the oldest movements being Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and
Zealots. Medieval movements included
Karaites and Rabbinical Judaism; Rabbinical Judaism split into Chasidic,
Orthodox, Reform and Conservative in the US today, and other countries have
similar movements differently named. While there are many websites on the
various branches of Christianity and Messianic movements, I include the
following for any who want to know about the various movements in the Jewish
community. These are:
Each
movement has its own set of beliefs, with or without Mesorah or
traditions, and each meet in their own respective enclaves.
Within the Hebraic
Perspective community, most do the same thing – rally the troops that agree
with “the cause” and build walls to defend the various congregations against
those interlopers that don’t think as they do. Unity? Forget it. But I have
just one question for everyone to ponder:
Who is Messiah coming for – what group will He chose from?
What bride is Yeshua going to find when He returns
– a pure, spotless
bride, free of spots, wrinkles and blemishes –
or Frankenstein’s
bride – cobbled together with bits and pieces of dead men’s bones?
Matthew 7:13-24 (NET)
7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate, because
the gate is wide and the way is spacious that leads to destruction, and there
are many who enter through it. 7:14 But the gate is narrow
and the way is difficult that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
7:15 “Watch out for false prophets, who come
to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are voracious wolves.20 7:16 You will recognize them by their fruit. Grapes are not gathered21 from thorns or figs from thistles, are
they?22 7:17 In the same way, every good tree
bears good fruit, but the bad23 tree bears bad fruit. 7:18 A
good tree is not able to bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree to bear good fruit. 7:19
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 7:20
So then, you will recognize them by their fruit.
7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord,
Lord,’24 will enter into the kingdom of heaven – only the one who does the will of
my Father in heaven.
7:22 On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord,
Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do25 many powerful deeds?’
7:24 “Everyone27 who hears these words of mine and does
them is like28 a wise man29 who built his house on rock. [8]
“Not everyone
who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven
– only the one
who does the will of my Father in heaven.”
Here is one of the most
sobering statements given by Yeshua, nay, more than a statement, a warning. All
believers, and I include myself especially, need to heed these words, let them
sink in and take them to heart and start the process of soul searching – their
own, not somebody else’s. I address this to not only my Christian brethren, but
those in the Messianic movement as well as Jewish brethren, whether or not you
believe in Yeshua as Messiah or not.
For no matter who we are, are we doing the will of Avinu
shebashamayim?
To ascertain whether or
not we are doing the will of the Father, we must first make the decision that
We hold Elohim to be our Father. As in the days of old, there
were those who professed G-d, yet their hearts were far from Him:
Isaiah 29:13 (HCSB)
13 The Lord said:
yet their hearts are far from Me, and their worship ⌊consists of⌋ man-made rules
Jeremiah 2:5-6
(NET)
2:5 This is what the Lord says:
2:6 They did not ask:
‘Where is the Lord
who delivered us out of Egypt,
who brought us
through the wilderness,
through a land of
desert sands and rift valleys,
through a land in
which no one travels,
Yeshua repeated Isaiah in
Mark 7, verse 6:
6 Yeshua answered them, “Yesha‘yahu was
right when he prophesied about you hypocrites—as it is written, ‘These people honor
me with their lips, but their hearts are
far away from me.
7 Their
worship of me is useless, because they teach
man-made rules as if they were doctrines.’d [11]
There is a point to all
this: where is one’s heart in relation to the Father? What is a believer’s
intent, their kavanah?
In case you haven’t had a
chance to read it, let me give a quick description of kavanah from
an earlier blog of mine:
“…the word
“KaVaNah”. In Hebrew it looks like this:
Loosely translated in a variety of ways, it can mean
“intent, focus, direction or understanding”. But KaVaNah is not merely a word
that can be defined – it is, as I have stated before, exactly what Hebrew truly
is – a concept. We stand before One who sees us – all the time. Nothing is secret from Him, nothing is
hidden. Yet, consider this: how many of
us, in the hopes of landing a job, will spend hours crafting our resume,
practice our “spiel” if you will, to sell ourselves at the job interview with
this potential employer? We’ll be willing to spend countless moments thinking
of just the right words to say to someone we want to impress; there will even
be rehearsed speeches, teachings, the list goes on and on… but, we’ll just drop
in any time we feel like it before the King of Glory, with no preparation, no
plan, no conscious thought of Who it is we stand before, and we’ll graciously
give Him 2 minutes, 5, maybe 15 minutes of our time. Some may be able to
stretch it out to 30 minutes or an hour, but truthfully? The most important
Presence you or I could ever hope to stand before is neglected or worse,
assigned to our minds as an after-thought. We go about our lives, doing our own
thing then off the cuff or on the spur of the moment we’ll go “Oh, by the way,
did You want me to do this God? I sure hope so, because it’s really what I
wanted to do…” [12]
Kavanah,
best thought of in the terms of prayer or maybe worship, should be looked upon
as, well, our focus – where our heart and to a degree, where our head should be
at. Maybe it is a good way to describe it as asking yourself “Why am I praying
today?” or maybe as “What am I praying today?” In Judaism, kavanah is supposed
to be at the heart of the liturgy, a conscious effort to be made in reciting
the prayer and the reason for the prayer. Here in sometimes lies the issue:
“…There is a
specific difficulty of Jewish prayer. There are laws: how to pray, when to
pray, what to pray. There are fixed times, fixed ways, fixed texts. On the
other hand, prayer is worship of the heart, the outpouring of the soul, a
matter of kavanah (inner devotion). Thus, Jewish prayer is guided by two
opposite principles: order and outburst, regularity and spontaneity, uniformity
and individuality, law and freedom, a duty and a prerogative, empathy and
self-expression, insight and sensitivity, creed and faith, the word and that
which is beyond words. These principles are two poles about which Jewish prayer
revolves…” [13]
Keva is the
opposite bookend to Kavanah. Keva is for the most part, the
structure or the framework and the details of Jewish worship. [14] This
structure, in a formalized service, has an advantage of aiding a congregation
to render their acts of prayer and worship within a backdrop of unity, but can
also be a hindrance to kavanah – to capturing the intent of prayer
and worship. Prayer can be reduced to the mere act of duty, or ritual, with no
real emotion or connection with the spiritual. This is then the condition that
I believe Isaiah and Yeshua were referring too, the act of worship, the mere
ritual replacing the kavanah, the intent of the heart of the
worshipper.
Emotion alone though is
as fickle as ritual. There are those today that can be caught up in the “emotion”
of prayer, the elation of worship, which they then trade this emotional
experience for what should be a spiritual connection with Elohim. Prayer or
worship without intention is nothing at all, just as unfocused emotion leads to
an equally empty encounter.
So how does this then
relate to the matter at hand – a true encounter with Avinu shebashamayim? Does the heart
come before Him with kavanah, with the intent to truly
understand what it means that he is “Our Father in heaven”, the Creator, the one
who gives us life and sustains that life? Or does the heart approach Him out of
a sense of obligation, duty – a duty that says one has to be before Him this
day, going through the motions with no real connection?
I tie this into the Ten
Devarim – the 10 Words or Aseret haDibrot that Moshe brought down
from the mountain. If we as believers cannot wrap ourselves around the very
first commandment, then nothing about the Scriptures will ever make any sense
at all to us – Keva (ritual) will replace Kavanah
and our worship will always be stale and our hearts far from G-d.
“I am the LORD your God.”
It is here that
we first begin – if we cannot accept and truthfully believe in this fundamental
foundation that there is a G-d and He is our G-d, then we are
unlikely to ever come to the place of obedience and the place where our heart and
our mind comes to acknowledge
Avinu shebashamayim.
We will pick this up again in the next post and begin to connect the
dots.
Till then, may Elohi Richly bless you all,
my beloved
Amein.
[1]
Authors
note: Use of information from Jewish-themed websites should not be
construed as these sites endorsing or confirming any thesis introduced by the
author of this epistle. I present the information from their respective sites
for instructional purposes only and/or to aid in the readers understanding of
the subjects discussed. The inverse is also true – by using these sites in no
way confirms or denies that this author holds to all things found on these
sites – but brethren, we all can learn from one another, Jew and Gentile; may
it be so in shalom and love and respect.
[2] Author’s note: Throughout this study I’ll be using the Net®
Bible and the Net® Notes: within the
notes you’ll see symbols like this:
( א B Ψ 892* 2427 sys).
These are abbreviations used by the NetBible© for identifying the principal
manuscript evidence that they (authors and translators of the NetBible©) used in translating the New Testament. Please
go to https://bible.org/netbible/ and see their section labeled “NET Bible Principals of
Translation” for a more complete explanation on these symbols and other items
pertinent to the way the NET Bible uses them.
[3]
Author’s
Note: In these studies I have used the notes that come along with
the passages I cite from the sources that I cite: these need a bit of a
disclaimer though. As in all things, not everything that is footnoted is
something that I necessarily agree with, especially if it contradicts what I
believe pertains to any matters of the Torah or the commandments of G-d. I
give you the notes as they are written by
the authors of the material I cite from, so that you can see the
information contained within them. It truly is not my place to edit or correct
them; if they state anything that is in opposition to what I teach, then so be
it. I will address these issues if requested, but for the sake of brevity (as
if any of these posts of mine are brief ☺
) I insert them and let them stand as they are. If I don’t agree with them, why
do I include them you might ask? I don’t believe in censuring anyone’s opinions
or scholarship; as I would not want mine censured, so I will not do to that to
another. As Rabbi Hillel once stated, “What is hateful to you, do not do to
another. That is the whole Torah. Go and learn it.” Torah
leads me to respect others, even if I disagree; it leads me to present
both sides of the coin, even if it could mean I’d lose part of the argument.
That is not to say I should not challenge something I believe contradicts the
truth of G-d’s word; that I will do in the main body of my epistles; that is
where my gentle dissent belongs. Most (but not all) of the differences will
come when I quote from the NET® Bible (but not exclusively); it has a decidedly
Western/Greek mindset to it, but as a wise man once said “How do you eat
chicken? Swallow the meat and spit out the bones…” I do though want to present
the NET® notes because there is a wealth of information and research contained
within them that I hope you find helpful.
[4]
One may wonder why I omit the “o” when I write the title “G-d”. While there are
many who say that to leave out the “o” is a sign of being under the influence
of the Rabbis who forbid saying the name of Yahveh, I say, one must come to a
conclusion on their own, and do as their heart convicts them (within the bounds
of G-d’s word of course). I believe in the power of the name of the Most High –
the name of Yahveh – and in uttering it in awe and reverence, yet find no
contradiction in my soul for the hyphenated title “G-d”. I have written it both
ways – stopped doing it, and now I have returned to the practice – as I said,
one must follow the conviction of their heart. I do not disrespect anyone
else’s opinion on this matter, and regardless if you think it wrong or right, I
ask for the same respect. Let each be fully persuaded in their own mind and
heart – and let G-d sort it out with each believer. For now, this is right for
me, till the Father corrects - or confirms; I am after all, a work in progress.
Shalom.
a Matt 6:9–13: Luke 11:2–4
a Matt 3:2; 4:17
b Matt 26:42; Luke 22:42; Acts
21:14
a Prov 30:8; Is 33:16; Luke
11:3
1 Or our bread for tomorrow
a Ex 34:7; Ps
32:1; 130:4; Matt 9:2; 26:28; Eph 1:7; 1 John 1:7–9
a John 17:15;
1 Cor 10:13; 2 Thess 3:3; 2 Tim 4:18; 2 Pet 2:9; 1 John 5:18
1 Or the
evil one
b Matt 5:37
2 This clause
not found in early mss
[5] New American Standard
Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Mt 6:9–13). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman
Foundation.
1 Lit He
a Luke
11:2–4: Matt 6:9–13
1 Later mss
add phrases from Matt 6:9–13 to make the two passages closely similar
a Acts 17:11
1 Or bread
for the coming day or needful bread
a Luke 13:4
mg
[6] New American Standard
Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Lk 11:1–4). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman
Foundation.
See also: http://www.jewfaq.org/movement.htm
.
For the Reform
view: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/reform_practices.html
From the
Conservative: http://www.uscj.org/default.aspx
·
[The following notes are taken from the NET Bible®
footnotes, copyright (c) 1996-2006 by Biblical Studies Press L.L.C. All rights
reserved. Used by permission from www.bible.org, n.d. Numbering system is unique to NET®
Notes; for more information, see Footnotes #2 and 3...]
20 sn Sheep’s clothing…voracious wolves. Jesus
uses a metaphor here to point out that these false prophets appear to be one
thing, but in reality they are something quite different and dangerous.
21 tn Grk “They do not gather.” This has been simplified to the
passive voice in the translation since the subject “they” is not specified
further in the context.
22 sn The statement illustrates the principle: That which cannot
produce fruit does not produce fruit.
23 tn Grk “rotten.” The word σαπρός, modifying “tree” in both v. 17 and 18, can also mean “diseased” (L&N
65.28).
24 sn The double use of the vocative is normally used in situations of
high emotion or emphasis. Even an emphatic confession without action means
little.
25 tn Grk “and in your name do.” This phrase was not repeated
here in the translation for stylistic reasons.
29 tn Here and in v. 26 the Greek text reads ἀνήρ (anēr), while the parallel account in Luke 6:47–49 uses ἄνθρωπος (anthrōpos) in vv. 48 and 49.
[8]
Biblical Studies Press. (2006; 2006). The
NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible.
Biblical Studies Press.
7 tn Heb “fathers.”
8 tn Or “I did not wrong your ancestors in any way. Yet they went far
astray from me.” Both translations are an attempt to render the rhetorical
question which demands a negative answer.
9 tn Heb “They went/followed after.” This idiom is found most
often in Deuteronomy or covenant contexts. It refers to loyalty to God and to
his covenant or his commandments (e.g., 1 Kgs 14:8; 2 Chr 34:31) with the
metaphor of a path or way underlying it (e.g., Deut 11:28; 28:14). To “follow
other gods” was to abandon this way and this loyalty (i.e., to “abandon” or
“forget” God, Judg 2:12; Hos 2:13) and to follow the customs or religious
traditions of the pagan nations (e.g., 2 Kgs 17:15). The classic text on
“following” God or another god is 1 Kgs 18:18, 21 where Elijah taunts the
people with “halting between two opinions” whether the Lord was the true God or Baal was. The idiom is often found
followed by “to serve and to worship” or “they served and worshiped” such and
such a god or entity (see, e.g., Jer 8:2; 11:10; 13:10; 16:11; 25:6; 35:15).
10 tn The words “to me” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit
from the context: Heb “they followed after the worthless thing/things
and became worthless.” There is an obvious wordplay on the verb “became
worthless” and the noun “worthless thing,” which is probably to be understood
collectively and to refer to idols as it does in Jer 8:19; 10:8; 14:22; Jonah
2:8.
11 tn This word is erroneously rendered “shadow of death” in most
older English versions; that translation is based on a faulty etymology.
Contextual studies and comparative Semitic linguistics have demonstrated that
the word is merely another word for darkness. It is confined to poetic texts
and often carries connotations of danger and distress. It is associated in
poetic texts with the darkness of a prison (Ps 107:10, 14), a mine (Job 28:3),
and a ravine (Ps 23:4). Here it is associated with the darkness of the
wasteland and ravines of the Sinai desert.
12 sn The context suggests that the question is related to a lament
where the people turn to God in their troubles, asking him for help and
reminding him of his past benefactions. See for example Isa 63:11–19 and Ps 44.
It is an implicit prayer for his intervention, cf. 2 Kgs 2:14.
· End “NET®” notes
[10] Biblical Studies Press. (2006; 2006). The
NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible.
Biblical Studies Press.
d
Isaiah 29:13
[11]
Stern, D. H. (1998). Complete Jewish
Bible: an English version of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and B’rit Hadashah (New
Testament) (1st ed., Mk 7:6–7). Clarksville, MD: Jewish New Testament
Publications.
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