SHEMA!
Sivan/Tammuz 5768 July 2008
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MA CHADASH? WHAT’S NEW?
Congregation Sar Shalom
Interested in an urban congregation that brings the Good
News to the Jewish people first and teaches the
Jewish roots of Christianity? If you are, call
248-312-8277.
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TODAH RABAH! THANKS VERY MUCH!
Those who know the God of Israel should, out of love
and appreciation and gratitude for all that He
has done for them, want to give generously to
support the works of the Lord. There are times
when they may want to give sacrificially. Rabbi
Paul communicated this to the Corinthians: Brothers,
we wish to make known to you the grace of God
which has been given in the congregations of Macedonia,
that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance
of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the
wealth of their liberality. For I testify that
according to their ability, and beyond their ability,
they gave of their own accord, begging us with
much urging for the favor of participation in
the support of the saints (2 Corinthians 8:1-4).
That’s sacrificial giving! We thank El Shaddai,
the God who nurtures and provides, for those of
you who, in a contracting economy, give generously,
even sacrificially, to Shema. Todah rabah!
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BLESSED ARE THE POOR
LUKE 6:20-26
After the fall and ruination of the human race, and after
many centuries, the Seed of the Woman, the Messiah,
the only Savior, the Son of David and Son of God
entered the world to rescue dying humanity! With
the appearing of the Son of God, something radically
new happened to the world! Immanuel came! He made
full and final salvation possible for all those
who know Him and trust Him! He is in the process
of creating a new community of Messianic Jews
and Gentiles who know Him and will live forever
with Him! This new humanity needs to be prepared
for these new realities. The Son of God’s powerful
teaching summons us to reject a corrupt world
and its corrupt values and affirms the need to
receive the coming new world and embrace new values,
new goals and new priorities. And turning His
gaze toward His disciples He began to say:
Blessed (happy, better off, more advantaged) are
you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of
God. The values, ethics, goals and priorities
Yeshua would have us embrace are diametrically
opposed to the values, ethics and priorities of
the world.
The world teaches: Blessed are the rich. The life of the rich is good. They are the successful
ones - the ones to be admired and emulated. Everyone
should strive to get rich. They are blessed. Yeshua
teaches the opposite of the world: Blessed
(happy, better off, more advantaged) are the poor.
Why? What does Rabbi Yeshua know that the world
doesn’t know? The Son of God knows that the world
is very corrupt, failing, perishing, far from
God, clueless as to the real meaning of life and
empty; and those who remain part of it are corrupt,
failing, perishing, far from God, clueless as
to the real meaning of life, empty … and will
die along with the world. Human beings must not
be willing participants in a dying world with
its corrupt and deadening values.
The poor are blessed - not because they have
less or because poverty is so wonderful in and
of itself. A person can be poor and wicked
and decidedly unblessed! The poor are
blessed because they tend to be less satisfied
and less comfortable in this corrupt world. Because
they are less at home in this world, they are
more open to seek another world - God’s world,
the better world, the lasting world. They
are more willing to hear about the true riches
- the treasure that awaits the rejecters of this
world, the overcomers of this world, the Sons
and Daughters of God in the New Jerusalem!
Disciples of Yeshua must reject the corrupt values of
the world system and its incessant pursuit of
riches on Earth. This is why the so-called Prosperity
Teaching is so evil!
Even though the Bible is (mis)used to justify
it, the corrupt Prosperity Teaching is a denial
of the teaching of Messiah. It is worldly. It
is anti-Christian.
The world teaches: Happy are those who have more than enough to eat. They are well-off,
successful and satisfied with their situation
in life. Yeshua teaches the opposite: Blessed
(happy, better off, more advantaged) are you who
hunger now, for you will be satisfied. It
is not good for a person to be satisfied with
his situation if it keeps him part of this dying
world. It is better for a person to be hungry
and dissatisfied in this world because he may
be more receptive to the Good News about God’s
kingdom, where he will find real and lasting satisfaction
and complete fulfillment of his needs.
The world teaches: It is important to have lots of fun. Enjoy life to the full! You only
go around once! Grab for all the gusto you can!
Yeshua teaches the opposite: Blessed
(happy, better off, more advantaged) are you who
weep now, for you will laugh. As strange as
it may sound, human beings are better off if they
are unhappy now; if they find themselves sad and
weeping. Why? Their present unhappiness can help
them realize that this corrupted world cannot
possibly offer lasting happiness; and they will
cease relying on this world for contentment and
turn to God, to Messiah, to the truth, and by
doing so gain unending happiness and eternal laughter!
The world teaches: It is important to be popular. You are happy if you are well-liked; it
is good if people approve of you. Therefore do
those things that will make you popular. Fit in
with the majority; follow the crowd; be seen with
the popular people; wear the popular fashions;
vote for the popular candidates; believe the popular
ideas. Yeshua teaches the opposite: Blessed
(happy, better off) are you when men hate you,
and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your
name as evil - not because you are a criminal,
or have done anything worthy of hatred, insult
or ostracism, but because your commitment to live
a godly life acts as light in the midst of darkness.
You are good in an evil world; your goals, values
and priorities stand in stark contrast to the
goals, values and priorities of this satanically-controlled
world; and the world doesn’t like that and resents
you for it and mistreats you for it. You are blessed,
happy and better off if you are hated and insulted
and ostracized because you believe in and are
openly identified with the Son of Man and
everything He represents - God, truth, righteousness
and rejection of the world. So, if the world hates
you and ridicules you for the right reasons, you
are blessed! It means that you are no longer part
of that dying world. You do not share its destiny
of destruction! Be glad in that day and leap
for joy, for behold, your reward is great in Heaven.
Your rejection by the world means that you
will be welcomed and rewarded in the World-To-Come!
It also means that you stand in good company.
For in the same way their fathers used to treat
the prophets. Yeshua’s disciples are like
the great men of God of ancient times, the Jewish
prophets, who, although they were sent by God
to correct and restore a straying people back
to Him and His Teachings, were almost always rejected
and insulted and mistreated by the majority of
the nation.
Good teachers often use repetition. A good
teacher will try to help His students learn by
rephrasing truth in different ways. Messiah repeats
this same teaching by coming at it from the opposite
perspective. Instead of a person being blessed
and happy for having the right attitudes and values,
one will be unhappy, sad and full of regret for
having wrong, worldly goals and priorities. But
woe (woe means that bad things will happen,
trouble is on the way, unhappiness and pain and
suffering are coming) to you who are rich,
for you are receiving your comfort in full.
The rich are comfortable in this world and are
therefore less willing to reject this world and
its corrupt values. Therefore they remain part
of this world and share in the destruction of
this world. The rich rarely receive the message
that we proclaim of salvation and righteous living
and the need to reject this world.
Woe (bad things
will happen, trouble is on the way, unhappiness
and misery are coming) to you who are well-fed
now, for you will be hungry. Those who are
well-fed now and satisfied with this world are
often disinterested in the message about the World-To-Come.
Therefore they will not enjoy the great banquet
we will enjoy. They will not eat the fruits of
the Tree of Life in the New Jerusalem.
Woe (bad things
will happen, trouble is on the way, unhappiness
and misery are coming) to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep. Those who are
having a good time now aren’t interested in having
a good time later. They won’t receive the Good
News and therefore will be judged and rejected.
They will realize only too late that they made
a terrible mistake not to embrace the truth about
God, Messiah, the Scriptures and salvation and
will forfeit eternal life and unending joy.
Woe (bad things
will happen, trouble is on the way, unhappiness
and pain and suffering and great regret are coming)
to you when all men speak well of you, for
their fathers used to treat the false prophets
in the same way. Are you fitting in very comfortably
with this world and satisfied with your place
in it? Are you generally well thought of by the
majority? Or are you part of the despised minority
of remnant Christians and Messianic Jews? Are
you investing all of your time and thought and
energy into this world to improve your place in
it? Or are you dissatisfied with this world, rejecting
its values and priorities and turning instead
to God and Messiah? Are you investing your time,
thought and energy to bring others out from the
deadly influences of this world? Are you helping
bring them to God, to truth, to the message of
salvation, to the right way to live - helping
them become part of Messiah’s new humanity?
The poor are blessed - not the rich. Those who hunger
now are better off - not those who are well-fed.
Those who weep now receive more lasting benefit
- not those who laugh. Those who are hated and
ostracized because they stand with Yeshua are
blessed - not those who go along with the crowd
and are the “toast of the town”.
Do these same truths apply to entire groups of
people, or to nations, as they apply to individuals?
I believe they do. Consider that in the 20th
century the United States became the richest nation
in the world. At the height of our prosperity,
were we the most blessed? We may have become more
prosperous, but I believe in the process we also
became more and more arrogant, and moved farther
and farther away from God and righteousness and
morality and true religion and salvation.
If the poor and hungry and sad are blessed, should it
then surprise us that God may want to bless our
nation by allowing us to become poor and hungry
and sad? When we pray or sing, “God bless America”,
might we be asking Him to remove our wealth -
wealth that has ruined us - and instead bless
us with poverty?
I believe we are on the verge of a second Great Depression.
If we have the mind of the Messiah and understand
these profound teachings of the Greatest Teacher
of All, we should understand that if we do enter
into a second Great Depression, it will come to
us as a blessing. I am already thinking of
it as the Great Humbling - a necessary process
to detach us from the corrupt values of a dying
world and make us receptive to the truth and enable
our nation to once again experience genuine blessing!
Shalom!
Rabbi Loren
SHEMA!
(Hear!)
is the newsletter of
Congregation Shema Yisrael
P.O. Box 804 Southfield MI 48037
Phone: 248-593-5150
Email: Shema777@aol.com
Website: www.shema.com
Services: Saturday 10:30 a.m.
Wednesday 7:00 p.m.
at the facilities of Bloomfield Hills Baptist
Church
3600 Telegraph Road in Bloomfield Hills
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