Tag: One New Man

Categories
Hebraic Roots: Israel and Jewish Culture

Crossover to Passover: A Visit from friend Kenny Weston

Rethinking: Gentiles to Consider our Jewish Roots, Jews to Consider the Salvation of the Cross

“Crossover to Passover” is a painting that was created by my brother – in – Yeshua, Kenneth Weston.

Here is his story about the drawing:

Whilst celebrating the Passover with my Jewish Mishpocha – family, as Yeshua – Jesus our Master Rabboni would have it, I rough-sketched a drawing onto my paper napkin, . 

The Rabbi, still spiritually-veiled, said, “Nothing missing nor broken Kenny eh?…Shalom let us thank Elohim Adonai, for our kinsmen Israelites who freely chose to look at the curse, which Moses held up on a stake!” 

Sarah, instantly I sensed in my spirit the Rabboni Yeshua – Jesus, as He was held up on a stake, and became a curse even though a spotless Passover Lamb. His unconditional love sacrificed, removed sin from every Jew and Gentile who repents from their wicked way, being turned back to Poppa Elohim as our Father.

During this Seder – Passover, I had been looking with my spiritual mindset as a Jew in our Meshiach (Messiah). I could see both the stake that Moses held up after the Passover, and the cross which the Gentile Christians were soon to celebrate (I cannot say the word “Easter” because we Jewish people know is from the pagan name Ishtar).

Symbolically, I then saw the stake become the cross, and in my spirit I heard the words “Crossover to Passover”—  “Tell Israel and the Gentiles”.

Then I realised that the cross is an inanimate object, like an obstacle waiting for a miracle to happen. For when both Jew and Gentile as One New Man* celebrate Passover thanks to the Passover Lamb Yeshua – Jesus, then their daily crosses become animate in their lives. At this moment, in the Spirit I heard  faintly, “Keep your eyes on the Passover Lamb of God.”

A few days later I was asked by a locally well known prayer coordinator, if I would attend a prayer meeting to pray for peace in Israel, and to join others in celebrating Easter. My reply, gently and with love was, “Easter is no more an obstacle for me; I have celebrated Passover with the Passover Lamb Yeshua – Jesus; I don’t need a meeting for peace, I have the shalom of the Passover Lamb within me.

She answered as Shaul – Paul warned the Gentile not to do, “Our Easter is a new festival meal which God will add to His others. Don’t keep going on about this Passover Meal Seder.”

I have mentioned these spiritual obstacles before Sarah. You may be interested in the answer I was given, given you and your husband seek to help the Gentile Christians to be more like those that Paul – Shaul taught, until many were bewitched in the days of Rome.

I asked the woman if she would be interested in returning to the day of the Lord’s Sabbath, as our Lord Jesus and His disciples did.

Her answer is the very reason why I completed the picture: “Crossover to Passover” for she said, ” We Christians are not Jewish”

I replied that the Lord’s Sabbath is for Israel only, but that Gentiles are grafted into the Cultivated Olive Tree of Israel.

She replied, “No I am a Christian grafted into the vine, and we are now the branches. We are the new wine; we are not Israel!”

I was starting to see these spiritual obstacles now through my mustard seed faith. They were not the size of mountains, but only small seeds of replacement theology. This then, is not about the seed at all.

I simplified this misunderstanding between us, by saying Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are part of the Commonwealth of England…Sow? When a Gentile is grafted into the Cultivated Olive Tree of Israel, they become spiritually part of the Commonwealth of Israel through Jesus Messiah the Son of Israel. And I am not a Jew in the Spirit nor you a Gentile, but we are equal.

Her reply suggests to me that you and Alan have a mission!

She said, “In this grafting you the Jew become a Christian like me.”

My reply before wiping my Shalom of my feet was, “The people in that spiritual Olive Tree Paul tried to teach you, are neither Orthodox Jews nor Gentile Christians. In fact every spiritual obstacle has been removed — praise God — for His only Son. He became our Loss Maker.

She asked, “What do you mean?”

I replied:  “He, Yeshua Meshiach, Jesus although he was innocent of any sin, he agreed to lose His right to live…So that we would not lose. He became my spiritual loss maker.”

When I got back to my studio I completed the message in the “Crossover to Passover” picture. Then something quite strange happened Sarah, I started to cry tears of joy, yet felt saddened for this woman and her Pastor.

So, it is with the Love of God in Meshiach Yeshua – Jesus that I say, yes please use this picture and my story of how “Crossover to Passover” came to be, even if you change it to your written way Sarah.

Shalom to you and your house all ways and always 

Kenny 

* Jesus will return when we are One New Man, Jew and Gentile, united in Yeshua

Ephesians 2:15

“…having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace,”

Categories
Hebraic Roots: Israel and Jewish Culture

More on the Sabbath (part 2)

Sabbath is Saturday, the day the LORD rested after creating the universe and its living creatures.

For quite some time, the World has been putting Saturday and Sunday at the end of the calendar week, making Saturday appear to be the 6th day. The early Church drifted from its Jewish roots and determined that since 3 days after Jesus’ crucifixion he was raised and that was the first day of the week, Sunday, they would call it the Lord’s Day. Eventually it replaced the Sabbath as the day for congregational worship. Today some earnest Believers think Sunday is the Sabbath.

The fourth Commandment says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” (Exodus 20:8-11)

One cannot change the day God rested. We can discuss how we are not under law but under grace, and that is true. But do we kill, covet or commit adultery? Of course not. Those are Commandments and as such mark a better way to live.

So, why do so many of us take the Sabbath more lightly than other of God’s guidelines? I confess I’m not always perfectly resting on the Sabbath, doing nothing that would bring in income, directly or indirectly, what one would call “work”. I do rest on Saturdays, but admittedly sometimes it is hard.

How about you, reader? Do you keep the Sabbath – Saturday – Holy and unto Father God?

Apart from it being one of God’s Commandments, why is it of relevance today and are we to keep this commandment? The answer is that, apart from it being God’s Commandment which simply marks the better way to live, it also has to do with Israel and the Jewish people.

I am of the understanding based on scripture that the Jewish people are still God’s Chosen People.   Discussion about that let’s save for another time, but we can agree I hope, that Jesus came for all of us, and for every nation, and he will come again when all the nation groups have had the witness of Jesus.

So, like all mankind, the Jewish people are invited to recognise Yeshua – Jesus’ name in Hebrew – as Messiah, the saviour of the World. And how will they be able to recognise Yeshua suddenly, if over 2000 years relatively few have? The answer is because the Jewish traditions – which have been hidden inside the Christian faith – must be released, revealed, exposed, to enable these people to see how the prophecy of their Messiah perfectly lines up with history.

Keeping the Jewish traditions hidden from view, such as using the first day rather than the seventh day as the “Sabbath”, makes it more difficult than it needs to be for the Jew to recognise he is meant to be a part of the Bride, the Church.

In Ephesians 2, Paul refers to the Gentiles as joining with all the Saints (in context: the Jewish Believers) as part of the Church. It is the One New Man, united by the faith in the Messiah, that will pull the Church through the challenges thrust upon it. (Ephesians 2:11-22) As you study and meditate on Ephesians 2 and 3, you will be able to see how God intends for Jew and Gentile to worship together.

Truly, if God is to minister and bring to the Jewish people the knowledge of Yeshua, then we, His Church, must help by allowing the Hebrew Roots of the faith to be exposed. The Sabbath only scratches the surface, but it is a start to revealing the Messiah and the Saviour as one and the same.

We can begin with aligning our day of worship with our Hebrew Roots. God’s choice of the Sabbath is recognisable to the Jewish people and it is Biblical, so I suggest a call to action: Let’s shift and use it.

**Next week I’ll send out an Extra Newsletter, on Thursday 21st, to share about Christmas. It’s a hot topic. It’s roots extend beyond the birth of Jesus, which most likely occurred in late September.**

Categories
Examining Biblical Scripture

God is waiting for the Perfect Time and the Perfect Relationship

God is watching and waiting. Who will put their heads above the parapet? Who will stand out in the crowd, shouting – via internet or otherwise – the goodness of a Creator God who shaped the universe, spoke into the non-existent atmosphere to create it, descended to earth as a lowly man simply to undo the wrongs of every other man. This was done simply to prove His undying love to a dying world, so that He would have relationship with us?

I will.

My concept of God begins with a Judeo-Christian Father figure who promised to one man that He would make him a father of many nations. That man was Abram. He became Abraham, renamed by the Creator simply because of his faith. He slipped a bit, listening to his wife and having intercourse with her handmaiden because they were to have a son and his wife, Sarai, was too old. That child, Ishmael, gave rise to the Arab nations. But that was not the son God had planned. The son who would follow his father and be a patriarch of a nation after God’s own heart was Isaac, son of old Abraham and his elderly wife Sarah. And Isaac’s son, Jacob, became the third patriarch. His name too was changed to reflect the peoples of God: Israel.

God created man and woman to relate with. He waited centuries for a man who would have the faith for relationship. He waited for three generations that would grow and grow until, at last, a nation could be born. The Hebrews descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but they had no home.

More time passed until Father God saw the man who would lead God’s people: the Hebrews, to the land promised to them through Abraham 500 years before, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land that would one day have territory, but also a name. The land was Canaan, the man to lead them there was Moses.

This Father God loved and nurtured His people, defended them against peril, both physical and human. He poured out his love and reminded them of His promises. He gave them the Promised Land. Yet, they rejected Him, time and again. They still reject Him and yet always there is a remnant of those who love and trust Him. Always there is a remnant. And though the land was given and lost, millennium on, it has been restored again. The Creator of the Universe keeps His promises.

Who is this God? He is the God of Abraham,Isaac and Jacob. He is the God of power and of promises. He has not broken one promise. But He is waiting for people to stand with Him.

Some of the Hebrew descendants had faith. Although many did not, some — such as the Apostles of Jesus — did. And still some believed. And some believe even now in the Jesus of the New Testament.

God is patient. He is also steadfast and contrary to many in the church who say God has redistributed His people, He has not really. He hasn’t replaced but added to…

God’s covenant has never changed. His promises are sure. He has loved Israel, both those who have loved Him and those who have denied Him. He grafted in Gentiles (non-Jews), not as replacements but as additions. Some have loved Him and some have rejected Him, just as with the Jews.

He continues to wait, for the right time, for Messiah to come to the Jews. One of His promises has been a Messiah. The Saviour of the World is Jesus, proclaimed by many Gentiles throughout history. He is one and the same as the Messiah of the Jews, whose Hebrew name is Yeshua.

Yeshua, Jesus, Messiah, Saviour of the World, has come and will come again. God is waiting and watching for the right time.

We guess. We wonder. We wait. But it is faith who will bring Him, and God’s choice of time.

In the meantime, the original branches and the grafted in are meant to combine in One New Man: Jew and Gentile, Believers in Yeshua, Jesus: the Son of Man and the Son of God, worshipping together, joining in one faith in the Father of the Universe, whom Jesus points us to.

Then God will surely call His son to return to the earth, to rule and to reign over all— Believer and unbeliever alike, so that the peace of God is restored at last. And the earth will flow as it was always meant to flow: full of life and love, truth and joy, hope and everlasting reign of justice, goodness and holiness.

This is a picture of our Creator: One God, lover of His creation, longing for relationship and patiently waiting for the fulfilment of His purpose: to create a universe in harmony with itself and in relationship with Him.

This is my concept of God. This is how I connect with God and seek to connect with others of His children. He never stops reaching to me, changing me, teaching me, loving me and growing me into His perfection. And so, I seek to imitate Him and His son, reaching out to others, waiting, longing, hoping for deeper, truer relationship has He has designed us to have, with Him and, I think, with each other.

Categories
Reflections and Poetry

Thy Kingdom Come: a reflection

I’m just dreaming… The day will come, and perhaps is upon us, when the universe will be run by God’s people, doing as God leads. What will it be like?

In Psalm 105:42-45 it is written,

“For He remembered His holy promise,

And Abraham His servant.
He brought out His people with joy,

His chosen ones with gladness.

He gave them the lands of the Gentiles,

And they inherited the labour of the nations.

That they might observe His statutes

And keep His laws.”

….He brought out His people (the Hebrews) with joy,

His chosen ones with gladness…. but are we not all grafted in now, who love and follow Jesus? Gentiles and Jews together? Yes, and so, Psalm 105 and the Exodus it refers to, is a shadow of things to come in the New Millennium. That’s what I think, that’s what I hope.

I’ve also been reading about anointing oils. Israel is a place where anointing oils are branded and sold; oils for healing and well-being, oils to give glory to the beauty and majesty which God has created. Occasionally, I put myrrh on my feet. Myrrh was what Jesus was anointed with before his death, by the woman who washed his feet with her tears. I put on a drop sometimes, one on each foot, just a little, to remind myself I am dead to myself and that the steps I take I hope to take in love and surrender to the Father. I wonder at the fragrance of the church, God’s bride, in the New Millennium.

Here is more about the New Millennium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GrZo4aKeMg. I believe we need very much to be aware of these days and the signs on the earth and in the heavens which mark a new age in God’s order.

I have been following Discover Ministries and Steve Cioccolanti for some months and found his talks enlightening, sound, full of compassion for God’s people and passion for God; and yet he does not “pull any punches”. We need to know the signs of the End Times, to be ready and willing as his Bride, if we are to be a part of God’s ushering in of the new age where His kingdom knows no end.

And I can’t help wondering: Will we all live in Israel? Will the world see the new age or will it not recognise God’s kingdom rule? Isn’t this the time when Jesus returns, when the rapture of His people occurs, when the dead arise and the rest are taken to heaven? Or instead, is this simply a transition to a new rule where righteousness and goodness prevail and God’s people take on new roles as world leaders in a way never before seen on earth? (Or was this Millennium already come to pass, when Europe knew the Gospel and laws were made based on the Torah over a millennium ago?)

So many questions, so eager to learn, so hungry to be ready for God’s rule and reign.

Aren’t you wondering too, hungry and eager? I hope so. Faith and readiness are our keys, I think, to the doors the LORD has for us.