http://artkatzministries.org/audio-messages/k-461-jewish-resistance-to-the-gospel-1-of-2/

Works of the Flesh

I was meditating on works and realized something. You see, scarce a person can be totally perfect and walk in the Spirit in everything. What happens to words, works, and thoughts tainted by the flesh? How does God use us oh-so-human humans? When am I acting completely, naturally and perfectly Spirit and when I am not? How can everything I do be of the Spirit - it is thought out in the mind and accomplished in the flesh, is it not? *sigh* no matter what I do it is tainted. It's not perfect. I can't be perfect!

That's what sanctification is about. It's the process of purifying, or setting-apart. Our gifts and service to God are far from perfect. Even were I to die, be burned to ashes, still it would not be a perfect sacrifice. only Yeshua is, was, and can be, the perfect sacrifice and He has completed that. In witnessing, in prayer, in learning the word, surely no one is free of the taints of flesh and self. How then? God will bring every work through the fire of purification. He Himself will shake everything from us that can be shaken, burn everything from us that can be burned. I can't wait to be perfect.

I may have the right motive, but wrong outworking. I may have the right action, but the wrong motive. I may have the right thought, but express it wrongly. God is the one who will bring us to the place of the cross and gradually, more, and more , it will be less of me and more of God. God will take the machaira sword of Scripture and slowly, gradually, steadily, peel away the flesh, seperating soul and spirit.

Every of you and I naturally is soul and flesh. God is at work, transforming. No one is perfect. All have sinned. No one is any better than another. What is the difference? Where I stand with YHWH - whether i am in Christ or not. The miraculous thing is that I cannot be totally in Christ physically after all I still have a human body, but I am "dying daily". I can't love God perfectly on my own. He is causing me to love Him, more and more every day. Once I have taken that next time I cannot turn back. It's going from glory to glory. The "continuous" tense of salvation is very real.

I have no need to fear. He who begun the work of salvation in me will complete it until the day of the Messiah. He is more than able.

Shalom! My 100th Post after more than 2 years of blogging here.

Shalom to my readers. I began blogging here on March 3rd, 2009 at my mother's suggestion during a noontime Wisdom search. Some posts have been very, very, long, and some very short. Hahaha.

As disciple of Yeshua, how have I grown?
Wow... I have learned SO many things from God's Word that I never imagined. From my pastor, from reading Scripture, meditating, and memorizing, I have indeed grown a lot. My bookshelf is getting heavier and heavier. And i have only begun to know God in totally. So little do I know of Him! If my memory, mind, and
body were so filled and encompassed by God to the brim and were I filled to overflow I still cannot contain God and all He is.

It's so important that when I am young that I input and inscribe into my heart as much as possible from God. I can imagine God as the ancient scribe,
inscribing upon the clay of my heart in ancient cuneiform Hebrew. The younger i am, the softer the clay. Clay gradually hardens through exposure. The younger

I am, the better it is to seek God. The things I inscribe from God's Word now will last beyong this lifetime. I want to memorize as much as God's Word as I can, so that I will be prepared for the last days.  

Many begin well with a genuine love for God and then later fall away. Gradually their heart grows cold, and sometimes God revives them in later years, and sometimes God doesn't. Far be it from me (God forbid!) that that should happen. I don't want to waste any more of my life on my self or on the world. I just want to grow and grow, and love God more and more.

When did I become a disciple? 

When I became Bat Mitzvah. It's especially special when one is brought up believing in God. There is a great parallel between a believer becoming a disciple and a child becoming an adult. A believer becomes a disciple when he really begins to follow Yeshua and obey all His commandments. A child becomes an adult at Bat or Bar mitzvah, a son or daughter of the commandments, when she or he reaches maturity. A bar mitzvah, though having been growing all his life, puts off and cuts off all childish things at maturity. A believer, becomes a disciples, by cutting off and putting off all the things of the world.

What does a disciple do? Obey the Mitzvot. What does a bat mitzvah do? Obey the Mitzvot. So it happened to me. Yes, I may have believed in God as a child, but it was after becoming bat mitzvah that I began to truly be a disciple, to truly learn of the cross I have to take up to follow Yeshua, to begin to love God with all I am to begin my serious Torah study, etc. SO this was my experience. What is interesting is that my spiritual growth parallels my physical growth, discipleship parallels my bat mitzvah. Perhaps not everyone is like that, but it how God chose to work in me.

Surely, yes, being a bat  mitzvah and a disciple is not the end but rather a beginning, of lifelong commitment to God, to His Mitzvot to Obeying the Torah which YHWH speaks to me, to fasting, to prayer, etc. There are so many things, infinite, that a disciple has to be, just there are infinite commandments a bat mitzvah has to obey. Yet I know that YHWH is leading, teaching me, speaking to me. Let me never let Him go.

Btorat Ha Shem is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The requirements He makes of His servants to follow Him has always been the same, His calling is constant whether to Abram in Ur, to Moshe in Mizraim, to Shmu'el in Ephraim, to Kefa in Galil, to Shaul in Damascus, even down to Bonhoeffer in Berlin, and
today, dare i say, also to me. Leave all! Leave the comforts of the world you see to venture into the unknown to a place I will show you, based upon nothing but the sure rock of the promises of YHWH. Far from the religion of convenience, it is a demanding, taxing, and difficult journey. It is a relationship that brings you into the unknown. It calls to all. Only few hear, and even less still follow.

 Shalom again to my readers. I will write a more conclusive meditation on discipleship and becoming bat mitzvah, in fact, I have been working, God willing, on a more comprehensive, topical, and systematic resource where you can go, read, explore, search Scripture, etc rather than a sporadic and inconsistent blog.

Please enjoy this month's lighted lamp magazine too!

Shalom Aleikhem,
Beka.
When Christ calls a men, He bids him come and die! - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Blessed Purim

Purim is the festival where the Jews celebrate their deliverance from the hands of Haman the Agagite. (Hence the Purim pastry “Hamantaschen” – Haman’s hat/ears). Today is the eve of Shabbat, and also a one-day Fast of Esther to commemorate the brave Jewish woman who risked her life to save her people. God had placed her in the position as Queen of all the Persian Empire for the salvation of His people.

Purim is the start of the early year Jewish High Holidays, including arguably the most well-known, Passover.

Today of all days, and this weekend of  all weekends, and Shabbat of all Shabbats, should be a great time of fasting as well as feasting, joy as well as mourning, supplication as well as thanksgiving. It is at this time the Songs of Ascent take on new and vivid meaning to me.

“In my distress, I cried to Ha Shem, and He heard me.” Psalm 120

“I will lift up mine eyes to the hill – from whence comes my help?” Psalm 121

“Pray for the peace of Yerushalayim” Ps 122

“Unto You I lift up my eyes, O You who dwell in the heavens” Ps 123

“If it had not been Ha Shem who was on our side, when men rose up against up, then they would have swallowed us alive!” Ps 124

“Those who trust in Ha Shem are like Mt. Zion, which can never be moved, but abides forever” Ps 124

“When Ha Shem brought back the captivity of Zion” Ps 126

And so on. These Songs of Ascent are eternally significant and are reminders of the truth of Ha Shem that prevails, of His love for His people Israel (He really loves them so much!) and of His greatness.

My mother Esther has written all these Songs of Ascents into song  and placed them for free download here. I encourage you to pray for Israel even more as they gear up for these significant feasts and holidays. Pray with me that this Purim Ha Shem will show Himself strong and powerful on behalf of Israel. This Passover, remember that as Jeremiah the prophet said, one day Ha Shem will not be remembered primarily as the God who took them out of the land of Egypt, but who gathered them out of all the four corners to the earth to bring them back into their own land.

We can only imagine what Queen Esther and Mordechai prayed during the great turmoil they went through the days of the fast, the grief and the crying out to Ha Shem, the distress they were in, and then Ha Shem’s deliverance. These Songs of Ascent remind us of Ha Shem’s Salvation and His mercy.

  

Most used word in the Bible?

LORD! http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Popular-Bible-Words.php. I believe that the King James Version and most others has more than 7,365 mistakes - the translating away of YHWH's great and awesome name, in which is salvation. In fact, it is a vital mistake.  YHWH\'s name is important - there are many "lords", many "gods", many "el"s and many "baals", but there is only ONE YHWH. There are many "Jesus"s in the world today. Some people are named Jesus, and some are preached with a wrong gospel. When we call upon that Name YHWH we are referring specifically to the Only YHWH God and the Only and All Powerful God,

YHWH is One God.
YHWH Alone is God.
in YHWH Alone is Salvation (Yeshu-ah)

 1 Peter 2: 9-10 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Set-apartness. Holiness. What does it all really mean? What does it do to us? How does it take on a meaning to me that is not the pre-meditated, memorized, utterly “correct” definition that involuntarily springs out of my mouth? Yes, I know what it means. But what does it mean to me?

“Holiness and I” is not so much the issue. The issue is me and God. God is “wholly other”, as Karl Barth put it., and my relationship with Him is my relationship with Holiness. God is Holy, and none can be holy except by Him.

“Who God is and what it is to be divine is something that we learn where God has revealed [God] self….We may believe that God can and must be absolute in contrast to all that is relative, exhalted to all that is lowly, active in contrast to all suffering, inviolable in contrast to all temptation, transcendent in contrast to all immanence, and therefore divine in contrast to everything human, in short that [God] can and must be ‘Wholly Other’. But such beliefs are shown to be quite untenable, and corrupt and pagan, by the fact that God does in fact be and do this in Jesus Christ.”

To be holy is to be sacred, set apart. God is holy. God is thrice holy. God is set-apart and His set-apartness, I speak in the natural sense, is unobtainable by mere mortals. No, His set-apartness is infinitely above and beyond us. Then He says, “I will sprinkle you with clean water, and you shall be clean”. Clean. “I will cleanse you”. Cleansed. “I will put a new spirit within you”. Renewed. And they shall be called, “The Set-Apart” people.

If we are indeed His set-apart people, if I am indeed set-apart for Him, then what am I set apart from, where am I set apart to, and what am I set-apart for?

The first mention of holiness (qadosh in Hebrew) is Moses with the burning bush. From then on holiness is a recurring theme throughout the Torah. God’s revelation of His Set-Apartness is something that once it is revealed, cannot be ignored or be escaped from. It is now an inescapable fact. It is a relentless fact. God would never so much as  relent from His holiness, for that would be the same as denying Himself (an eternal impossibility!). Moses was probably the first person to hear the word “qadosh” issue from the mouth of God. From thence on it goes from holiness to holiness. The holiness of God is being revealed to man and defined in terms of man’s understanding more and more through Scripture. From thence on holiness is a recurring theme and issue in the Bible that God’s people have to come face to face with, they have to look the fact in the face and can either come away dead or alive. God’s people indeed have to wrangle, wrestle and settle the issue of God’s holiness within them. To ignore the fact is to simply close one eyes in persistent ignorance to the truth. It’s there, whether you want it to be there or not.

Of course, God was holy, even before He said He was holy. Whether I tell you or not, my name is still Beka. Whether you believe it or not, my name is still Beka.

Beware of thinking God’ holiness is an “Old-Covenant” revelation. “Holy” is mentioned 169 times in the “New Testament”.

God’s holiness is exalted, praised, and feared. God’s holiness, set-apartness is to be reflected into the holiness and set-apartness of His people. What characterizes a set-apart nation and a set-apart people?

1)      Reverence towards YHWH. Fear of Him. Obedience towards Him. Respect of His Holy Name.

2)      Humility, Contrition. Unless we know the depth of our sin and depravity, which in turn comes from the realization of God’s holiness, we are pride and arrogant, each “walking according to his own way”. To be a people of God means to know that we, on our own, can never measure to that which is God. We can never be holy on our own. And we have to know the grave consequences of our sin. Therefore humility, total repentance, and turning away, must be so very intrinsic in the nature and practice of the people of God. We must always come before Him on our face in utmost rejection of all that is flesh.

3)      Abhorrence of evil. Avoidance of evil in any form. Utter purging of all that is not of God (whatever is not of God is not of the world. There is no neutral ground). No pretense or idol-worship in any form. A separation from sin, self, Satan, sickness, and the world. We are to be separated from all wickedness and perversity. “Come out of her, lest you share in her sins!”. Such a removal from and of all that is against YHWH is so clearly exemplified in the moving of the tents of Israel away from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. The children of Israel were repeated warned and commanded to stay away from the Canaanites. The land was to be utterly purged and cleansed. There is no such thing as “cultural assimilation” into that which is of the Kingdom of Darkness by the Kingdom of Light.

4)      Antithetical Way of Life. God’s ways are not “blindly opposite” or “purposely different” from man’s ways. Rather, all that is man and all that is flesh is in blatant and perverse rebellion against the will of God. We have to live the lifestyle of the Kingdom of God. Note that the Kingdom of Heaven does not consist in merely eating and drinking. God does not want us to be obsessed merely in the “doing” and the “physical”. What matters in the Kingdom of God is the inward state and motive of the heart. Once that is taken care of, everything else falls into place.

a.       The Way of the Kingdom is a Narrow Way, a difficult way. It is not a religion of convenience, but a demanding relationship where all the demands have been met for us through the Messiah. Now we have to live, think, act, eat, the way God does, and the way God commands. We have to consist and exist in the realm of God, in the Kingdom of God. We have to set our minds on things above. We have to place our treasure where is really counts and will remain. We have to be a witness of God’s light, grace, truth, and likeness to the entire world around.

5)      Love. Utter love for God and for other. A consuming, holy, love. An eternal, endless love. Love that requires, love that demands everything from us  - our heart, mind, soul, will, and even our very lives. That is the love that God is. That is the love required to perfectly observe and fulfill all the Torah. That is the love completely absent from a natural human being. I am naturally incapable of loving God in such a way. Love perfects - that is why is it a perfect fulfillment of the Torah. Love is the pinnacle of our maturity in Christ the Messiah. The characteristics of true love include the following.

a.       One must know the love of God

b.      One must love God

c.       One must love His neighbor as God loved him

d.      One must not love his own skin

 These are only a few characteristics of holiness – what others can you think off? Holiness is not just expressed in what I write – Holiness expresses itself in infinite ways. Holiness affects my attitude, my choices of activities, my lifestyle – everything I think, do, act, feel, buy, sell, etc. Holiness is demanding.

There is a time-honored tradition in Judaism that even if you are sure you are ritually clean, you really aren’t.

You are the Light of the World

You are the Light of the World - Read more here!