Lessons from the Wilderness, Volume xx: Title here
©2022,
David E. Robinson: At the Gates of Yerushalayim Ministries
Lessons from the Wilderness, Volume 53
Covenant
and Relationships: Resurrection Power [i] [ii]
[iii]
[iv]
[v]
Part Three
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land
of Egypt,
2 “This month
is to be your beginning of months; it will be your first month of the year.
3 Tell the whole community of Israel, ‘In the tenth day of this
month they each must take a lamb for themselves according to their families – a
lamb for each household. 4 If any household is too small for a
lamb, the man and his next-door neighbor are to take a lamb according to the
number of people – you will make your count for the lamb according to how much
each one can eat.
5 Your lamb must be perfect, a male, one year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
6 You must
care for it until the fourteenth day of this month, and then the whole
community of Israel will kill it around sundown.
7 They will
take some of the blood and put it on the two side posts and top of the
doorframe of the houses where they will eat it.
8 They will eat
the meat the same night; they will eat it roasted over the fire with bread made
without yeast and with bitter herbs.
9 Do not eat it
raw or boiled in water, but roast it over the fire with its head, its legs, and
its entrails. 10 You must leave nothing until morning, but you must
burn with fire whatever remains of it until morning.
11 This is how you are to eat it – dressed to travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in haste.
It is the LORD’s
Passover.
12 I will pass through the land of Egypt in the same night, and I will attack all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both of humans and of animals, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the LORD.
13 The blood
will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, so that when I see the
blood I will pass over you, and this plague will not fall on you to
destroy you when I attack the land of Egypt.
14 This day will become a memorial for you, and you will celebrate it as a festival to the LORD – you will celebrate it perpetually as a lasting ordinance.
15 For seven days you must eat bread made without yeast. Surely on the first day you must put away yeast from your houses because anyone who eats bread made with yeast from the first day to the seventh day will be cut off from Israel.
In our exploration on Covenants and Relationships, we will take a momentary journey into what God wants. Not what He wants from us, but what He wants. In His Torah, he has given us all the conditions and expectations that He considers valid and foremost in the relationship He requires from us. Covenant has demands. Relationships have demands. It would behoove us to examine these…
Chag ha’Matzot, the seven-day
Feast of Unleavened Bread which begins on Erev Passover, is a week of sanctification,
being especially set apart for G-d, to be holy as He is holy. It is a time for
putting away leaven or chametz and keeping it out of lives. What
does chametz symbolize? Just as natural leaven puffs up our
bread and cake, so does the spiritual leaven in our lives corrupt and sour our
souls. For a month prior to Chag ha’Matzot Those who keep the feasts are
to remove all chametz from our homes. This removal of chametz is symbolic
of putting away the sin in our lives.
“The day
following the first day of Unleavened Bread is called Yom
HaBikkurim יום הבכורים "the Day of First fruits," or Reshit
Ha'Katzir הראשון
של הקציר the "first of the harvest."[vii]
Those that know and believe Yeshua spent 3 days and night in the grave, this is the significance.
For seven days, from the time He rode in on a donkey till His arrest and crucifixion, Jesus was examined by the leaders of Israel, so that they could find fault with Him. Just as the Pesach lambs were examined so that only those with no blemish could be the Passover sacrifice, no fault, no spot, wrinkle, or blemish, was found in Him – so they made things up. The Lamb of God was examined, the Lamb of God was slain.
Is there any doubt this was the Lord’s Passover, and He provided His Lamb?
Yeshua satisfied the sin offering on Pesach; He satisfied Chag ha’Matzot by fulfilling the commandment to cleanse His Father’s house (the Temple) of the money changers and merchants and by being sinless at His death. He then became the First Fruit of the resurrection on the very day of the Feast of First Fruits (Yom ha’Bikkurim).
40 days
after Pesach began Yeshua ascended back to His Father; this was on the fortieth
day of the counting of the Omer, a time that leads to the spring
Feast of Weeks, or Shav’ot on the fiftieth (50) day of the Omer.
At His ascension, He promised the Holy Spirit would come in power to those who would
wait.[ix]
Traditionally, Shav’ot is the day that the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai; for
Messianic believers, this is also the day that the Ruach Ha’Kodesh
(Holy Spirit) was given to believers (see Acts 2).
Let us move onto our next topic: “Born Again”.
John 3:1-15
Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named
Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; 2
this man came to Jesus at night and said to Him, “Rabbi,
we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do
these signs that You do unless God is with him.”
3 Jesus responded and said to him,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is
born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4 Nicodemus *said to Him, “How can a person be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s
womb a second time and be born, can he?”
5 Jesus answered,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is
born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6
“That which has been born of the
flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit. 7
“Do not be amazed that I said to
you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the
sound of it, but you do not know where it is coming from and where it is going;
so is everyone who has been born of the Spirit.”
9
Nicodemus responded and said to Him, “How can these things be?”
10 Jesus answered and said to him,
“You are the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not
understand these things? 11 “Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we
know and testify of what we have seen, and you people do not accept
our testimony.
12 “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you
believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13
“No one has ascended into heaven,
except He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. 14
“And just as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15
so that everyone who believes will have eternal
life in Him..”
Born again. A topic so misunderstood by the majority
of Christians, who confuse it with requirements of what Paul speaks of as
“gifts” (see 1Co_12:4-11, 1Co_14:1-18, 1Co_14:37; Eph_4:11; Rom
12:3-8).
First, we need
to look at the “born-again” experience in light of our subject matter, the
Feasts of the Lord. What is “born-again”?
Messiah Yeshua introduces the concept of “born-again” as being a part of the Jewish expectations concerning the “Kingdom of God”. Nicodemus seems to falter at this explanation. This clearly is seen in his reaction to the concept. Most commentators have the idea that Nicodemus is thinking in the sense of יָלַד yālaḏ, or to give birth, to begat, to deliver [remember, this conversation took place in either Aramaic or Hebrew language, not Greek]. Perhaps it is a valid point but look at what he asks in verse 4. The New American Standard Bible (both 1995 version and the new 2020 version) renders this as follows:
4 Nicodemus *said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”[x]
Notice he is not asking how to be born again, but rather how can one be born again old. Again, notice he also did not inquire about entering into the kingdom of God. So let us unpack this before we see verse 5.
Yeshua was wanting to see where Nicodemus’s understanding was. He was trying to get him to see that it was not a physical act, but a spiritual one. Now, back to what I had said before – the conversation took place in Hebrew or Aramaic, not Greek. But the writer of the Gospel did record this conversation in Greek, so we have to look at some Greek words now to see something that is lost in most translations, namely, John’s masterful use the Greek language and techniques he employs throughout his writings.
First, let us look at “born again”. The first word, “born”, is typically used for one’s birth: it is the aorist passive form[xi] of the verb γεννάω (gennáō). Next, we have the word “again” or ἄνωθεν (ánōthen), translated in the NT only in John 3:3 and 3:7 as "again." Most times in the NT ἄνωθεν (ánōthen) is translated as “from above” (see Jn 3:31; also, Jn 19:11; Jam 1:17, 3:15, 3:17 for examples).
Why did John not use the common Greek word for “again”, πάλιν (pálin)? It is not because he did not use the word; in fact he uses it in several verses: John_1:35; John_4:3; John_4:46; John_4:54; John_6:15; John_8:2; John_8:8; John_8:12; John_8:21; John_9:15; John_9:17; John_9:26; John_9:27; John_10:7; John_10:19; John_10:31; John_10:39; John_10:40; John_11:8; John_11:38; John_12:22; John_12:28; John_12:39; John_13:12; John_16:17; John_18:7; John_18:27; John_18:33; John_18:38; John_18:40; John_19:4; John_19:9; John_19:37; John_20:10; John_20:21; John_20:26; John_21:1; John_21:16.
The point I am trying to get
at is this: there is an action associated with John’s usage of the verb ἄνωθεν (ánōthen) instead of the common adverb
πάλιν (pálin).
The better translation for ἄνωθεν (ánōthen) in lieu of the entire context (John 3:1-36) of this discourse is how it is translated in verse 31: “from above”:
16 “For God so aloved the world, that He bgave His 1conly begotten Son, that whoever dbelieves in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 “For God adid not send the Son into the world bto judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 “aHe who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of bthe 1only begotten Son of God.
19 “This is the judgment, that athe Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for btheir deeds were evil. 20 “aFor everyone who does evil hates the Light and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 “But he who apractices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
22 After
these things Jesus and His adisciples came into the land of
Judea, and there He was spending time with them and bbaptizing. 23 John
also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there; and
people were coming and were being
baptized— 24 for aJohn had not yet been thrown into prison.
25 Therefore
there arose a discussion on the part of John’s disciples with a Jew about apurification.
26 And
they came to John and said to him, “aRabbi, He who was with
you bbeyond
the Jordan, to whom you chave testified, behold, He is baptizing,
and all are coming to Him.”
27 John
answered and said, “aA man can receive nothing unless it bhas
been given him from heaven.
28 “You
yourselves 1are my witnesses that I said, ‘aI am not the 2Christ,’
but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’
29 “He
who has the bride is athe bridegroom; but the friend of the
bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the
bridegroom’s voice. So, this bjoy of mine has been made full.
30 “He
must increase, but I must decrease.
31 “aHe
who comes from above is above all[xii], bhe who is of
the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. aHe who comes
from heaven is above all.
32 “What
He has seen and heard, of that He atestifies; and ano one receives
His testimony.
33 “He
who has received His testimony ahas set his seal to this, that God is true.
34 “For
He whom God has asent speaks the words of God; 1bfor
He gives the Spirit without measure.
35 “aThe
Father loves the Son and bhas given all things into His hand.
36 “He
who abelieves
in the Son has eternal life; but he who bdoes not 1obey
the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”[xiii]
Stephanie Hamman, writing
for First Fruits of Zion Messiah Magazine, Explains our discourse as this:
As we have seen, the aorist passive form of γεννάω (gennáō) falls in line with what Max Zerwick calls the “theological passive”. An explanation of this can be found in William Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Grammar:
So, our understanding of the phrase “γεννάω ἄνωθεν (gennáō ánōthen) “born again” or “born above” needs to be understood from the theological passive – it is expressly God who does the action of spiritually changing on into a citizen of the kingdom of God, i.e., the “Spiritual birth”.
‘Can amankind be just 1before God? Can a man be pure 1before his bMaker?
18 ‘aHe
puts no trust even in His servants; And against His
angels He charges error.
19 ‘How much more
those who dwell in ahouses of clay, Whose bfoundation is in the dust,
Who are crushed before the moth![xvi]
Job 33:23-30
[What one sees in brackets are my interpretations; may they be right O Lord;
correct me if I get it wrong, amein.]
23 “If there is an angel as amediator for him [the sinner], One out of a thousand, To remind a man what is 1right [righteousness] for him, 24 Then let him be gracious to him, and say,
‘Deliver him
from agoing
down to the pit [the
grave/Sheol], I have found a bransom’;
25 Let his flesh become fresher than in youth, Let him return to the days of his youthful vigor;
26 Then he [the redeemer] will apray
to God, and He will
accept him [the
redeemer], That bhe may see His face with joy, And He
may restore His [God’s and the redeemer’s] righteousness to man.
27 “He [the sinner] will sing to men and say,
‘I [man, the sinner] ahave sinned and perverted what is right, And it is not bproper for me.
28 ‘He [God/Redeemer] has redeemed my soul from going to the pit, And my life [the sinner redeemed] shall asee the light.’
29 “Behold, God
does aall
these 1oftentimes [three things] with men,
30 To abring back his [Yeshua as first fruits and then the
redeemed] soul from the pit,
That he [the sinner redeemed] may be enlightened with the light of life.[xvii]
Compare Job 33
with John 3 and also look toward Ezekiel. We can see the resurrection power
here in this part of scripture. This is a two-fold resurrection though. It is
not only an individual resurrection, the sinner reconciled to God, born from
above, but it is also a picture of a corporate resurrection – that of the
Nation of Israel, redeemed and restored. He [the individual and the Nation of
Israel] that are born from above, will have righteousness restored, will run
with the wings of eagles, and will see the dry bones become flesh. To the Jew
first, then the gentile, those that align themselves with God’s people, His
nation, and His Messiah shall experience the resurrection power of born from
above. The parallels are there; Yeshua said in John 3 that He is the “messenger”
of repentance; He is the mediator between man and God. It is His righteousness
that restores man. He delivers souls from the pit by His own ransom
of blood. He restores the flesh [compare Ezekiel 37 to Job and John
3:3-8] and the youth. God loves His Son and accepts Him. The
sinner(s) confess with their mouths and are saved, granted life eternal.
God Himself does all these: He sends/is the messenger; He is our Mediator
and our Propitiation [see 1 Timothy 2:5]; He is the final Judge and
Arbitrator that saves or condemns. Those who He saves from the pit
will go on to do works of righteousness and move to the light of God.
I will leave
it up to you to explore all these connections on your own. Look for the parallel
of the “born from above” experience in not only Job but also compare to John 3
and Ezekiel 37. Ezekiel especially speaks of the resurrection power, the
changed life, and the kingdom of God. Do not take a born from above experience
as just an afterthought; without a genuine spiritual touch of the Spirit of God
upon one’s life – with all the evidence of a changed, reformed, redeemed life by
the resurrection power of God – there can be no kingdom of God, for the
Covenant relationship with God and His Messiah has never been established and
one is still dead in their trespasses and sins.
That is all for now.
May YHVH richly bless you all my beloved,
In the name of Yeshua and the Ruach Ha’Kodesh, Amein and Amein.
Endnotes
[i]
NOTICE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: Unless otherwise cited, all
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[ii]
FAIR
USE DISCLAIMER:
This blog site may contain content that is not
authorized for use by its owner. Any and all such material will be cited back
to its original source. According to Section 107 of the Copyright Act: “…the
fair use of a copyrighted work […] for purposes such as criticism, comment,
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scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright…” I have made
and will continue to make every effort to stay within all ethical and moral
guidelines in the use of material presented here, and the use of these
materials is solely intended for educational purposes only, and all efforts to
obtain fair use of non-owned material will be made.
[iii]Authors
note: This site is for
education only and is not affiliated with any institution, organization, or
religious group. It is the sole production of its editor.
Use of information from Jewish-themed websites (or any other source material) 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.
[iv] Author’s
note: Throughout this study
I will 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.
[v] 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 God. 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 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 needed; if I believe something in the notes/comments contradicts the truth of God’s word, then that I will do in the main body of my epistles. That is where my gentle dissent belongs. Most sources (but not all!) will display a decidedly Western/Greek mindset, as opposed to a Hebraic perspective. This does not mean I have to respond to their opinions or conclusions for I have to be intellectually honest – I am biased toward the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, His son Yeshua the Messiah, and the nation and people of Israel. I pray then we all can find common ground as we study the Scriptures, therefore, I will allow their opinions to stand – as I would hope mine are.
[vi] LXX is the designation given to
the Septuagint Bible. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of
the Hebrew Scriptures (the Tanakh) and used by the early Church.
[viii] Ibid..
[ix] Leviticus 23:15,16: “Then you are
to count from the morrow after the Shabbat, from the day that you brought the
omer of the wave offering, 7 complete Shabbatot (Shabbats). Until the morrow after the 7th Shabbat, you
are to county fifty days…”
The Torah commands that during this time each year we count 49 days or 7 weeks from the day after the Sabbath of Passover week. The 50th day is the Feast of Shavuot, which means “weeks” from the counting of the 7 weeks. In Christianity this is known as the “Feast of Pentecost!” The first Pentecost was actually celebrated every year for 1,500 years before the book of Acts. Pentecost celebrates the giving of the Torah on Mt Sinai. To this day the Jewish people still keep the Feast of Pentecost every year. From the resource “Counting of the Omer 2022” found at https://www.esm.us/resources/handouts/ El Shaddai Ministries ©2022.
* A star (*) is used to mark verbs that are historical presents in the Greek which have been translated with an English past tense in order to conform to modern usage. The translators recognized that in some contexts the present tense seems more unexpected and unjustified to the English reader than a past tense would have been. But Greek authors frequently used the present tense for the sake of heightened vividness, thereby transporting their readers in imagination to the actual scene at the time of occurence. However, the translators felt that it would be wise to change these historical presents to English past tenses.
[x] New American
Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman
Foundation, 1995), Jn 3:4.
[xi] Here is a not quite so simple
explanation of the passive aorist form: “…In the grammar of Ancient
Greek, including Koine, the aorist (pronounced /ˈeɪ.ərɪst/ or /ˈɛərɪst/)
is a class of verb forms
that generally portray a situation as simple or undefined, that is, as having aorist
aspect. In the grammatical terminology of classical Greek, it is a tense,
one of the seven divisions of the conjugation of a verb, found in
all moods and voices…”
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aorist_(Ancient_Greek)
] Simply put in other words, hidden within the verb there is the use of different
moods, senses, or tense (past, present, or future) in which John would
introduce the unspoken but implied condition that the act in question is being implemented
by God Himself; hence the act of being “born again” is an act of God, not man.
a Rom 5:8; Eph 2:4; 2 Thess 2:16; 1 John 4:10; Rev 1:5
b Rom 8:32; 1 John 4:9
1
Or unique, only one of His kind
c
John 1:18; 3:18; 1 John 4:9
d
John 3:36; 6:40; 11:25f
a
John 3:34; 5:36, 38; 6:29, 38, 57; 7:29; 8:42; 10:36; 11:42; 17:3, 8, 18, 21,
23, 25; 20:21
b
Luke 19:10; John 8:15; 12:47; 1 John 4:14
a
Mark 16:16; John 5:24
b
John 1:18; 1 John 4:9
1
Or unique, only one of His kind
a
John 1:4; 8:12; 9:5; 12:46
b
John 7:7
a
John 3:20, 21; Eph 5:11, 13
a
1 John 1:6
a
John 2:2
b
John 4:1, 2
a
Matt 4:12; 14:3; Mark 6:17; Luke 3:20
a
John 2:6
a
Matt 23:7; John 3:2
b
John 1:28
c
John 1:7
a
1 Cor 4:7; Heb 5:4
b
James 1:17
1
Lit testify for me
a
John 1:20, 23
2
I.e. Messiah
a
Matt 9:15; 25:1
b
John 15:11; 16:24; 17:13; Phil 2:2; 1 John 1:4; 2 John 12
a Matt 28:18; John 3:13; 8:23
[xii] The use of ἐπάνω epánō here in the context of “above all” is used with the sense of having authority and dignity over others; see Zodhiates, Spiros, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament. Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2000. [G1883]
b
1 Cor 15:47; 1 John 4:5
a
Matt 28:18; John 3:13; 8:23
a
John 3:11
a
John 3:11
a
John 6:27; Rom 4:11; 15:28; 1 Cor 9:2; 2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:13; 4:30; 2 Tim 2:19;
Rev 7:3–8
a
John 3:17
1
Lit because He does not give the Spirit
by measure
b
Matt 12:18; Luke 4:18; Acts 1:2; 10:38
a
Matt 28:18; John 5:20; 17:2
b
Matt 11:27; Luke 10:22
a
John 3:16
b
Acts 14:2; Heb 3:18
1
Or believe
[xiii]
New American
Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman
Foundation, 1995), Jn 3:16–36.
[xv] J. Ramsey Michaels, Exegetical Insight, p 212, Chapter 24, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, Third Edition ©2009 by William D. Mounce, Zondervan, MI, all rights reserved.
a Job 9:2; 25:4
1
Lit from
1
Lit from
b
Job 31:15; 32:22; 35:10; 36:3
a
Job 15:15
a
Job 10:9; 33:6
b
Gen 2:7; 3:19; Job 22:16
[xvi]
New American
Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman
Foundation, 1995), Job 4:17–19.
a Gen 40:8
1
Lit his uprightness
a
Job 33:18, 28; Is 38:17
b
Job 36:18; Ps 49:7
a
Job 22:27; 34:28; Ps 50:14, 15
b
Job 22:26
a
2 Sam 12:13; Luke 15:21
b
Rom 6:21
a
Job 22:28
a
Eph 1:11; Phil 2:13
1
Lit twice, three times
a
Job 33:18; Zech 9:11
[xvii]
New American
Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman
Foundation, 1995), Job 33:23–30.
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