Two Women - Two Ways

The Bible is full of pictures of ‘twos’ that are opposite.  Read through chapters 1-9 of Proverbs for a really good comparison of these two opposites.  Proverbs is a collection of teachings and sayings from Solomon and others. It teaches in a ‘parable’ format.  Here's the storyline:

It’s the father’s turn to instruct his son.  You see, the first few years of a son’s life, his mother instructed him in things like how to live together with others, how to share, how to give…that was called a ‘mother’s torah’ or a mother’s instruction (torah is a Hebrew word meaning instruction, guidance, teaching and rules).  Then the boy received instruction from his father…father’s torah.  And father spoke more plainly of the things the boy would face as he grew into adulthood.  He spoke more clearly about the subtleties of temptation.  In this case, the father compared these two choices that we all face in life, to two women.  One was a woman who'd make a good wife, and who'd share a good life with the son.  And the other was one who SEEMED good, who was attractive to the senses, in some cases you couldn’t tell them apart too well…but that woman’s ways would lead to death.  The father’s role was to sharpen the boy’s understanding and help him choose.  It’s a really good lesson!

If you skip over all the rest of Proverbs…you get to chapter 31.  There the words of King Lemuel are recorded.  It seems he might be the one to whom the words of instruction in the first chapters were directed.  Here the teaching is back to his mother’s torah…she has the last word!  And she describes the characteristics of a ‘good’ wife.  Now some people think this is a description of the ‘perfect’ wife…and they get discouraged if they aren’t anything like her…but that’s not the intent of this teaching…the intent is to describe the characteristics…and the teaching is as much for women as for men.  It is the WIFE who brings life to a household, who holds potential to help keep the family together, who's the ‘heartbeat’ of the family…her role is important! The husband’s role is equally important, the two are to work together.  But as you can read in Genesis 3…it's the WIFE who's often in a position to choose the direction of the family.   It's SO important that she choose well. This is what the father and mother are teaching their son.  The only choice the boy needs to make is the good one!

We too have choices to make all the time.  We too have a ‘teacher’ with us all the time.  God has given us all a conscience…it's to be our guide.  That conscience instinctively knows what the good way is.  Even a little child KNOWS good from bad.  Ever seen how a little one might hit another child and take a toy away from them?  What's usually the first movement they make?  They shield the toy with their body…its MINE, you can’t have it back!  It’s as if they know instinctively that what they have done isn't honest, and they hide (see also Genesis 3:8,10). 

Moses taught that this teacher God gives is ‘very near you.  It’s in your mouth and in your heart (mind) that you may be able to observe it’ (Deuteronomy 30:14).  The conscience God gave doesn’t ever speak against His command!

But there's another voice there too!  And just like that other woman in Proverbs…you can’t always tell the difference.  Sometimes that voice sounds really good; it appeals to us on an emotional, physical or spiritual level.  And if we listen and do what that voice suggests, we move from the path of life to the path of death. 

How do we know which voice to listen to then?  Well…just as the father in Proverbs tells his son…you need to KNOW the good way, in order to recognize the difference.  And learning the good way BEGINS with healthy and strong respect for the GIVER of the good way.

Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge (of understanding the way), it says in Proverbs 1:7.  The place we begin is to TRUST in God, the giver of all we face.  In that trust, we study His instructions.  And also in that trust, we begin to apply what we learn to our life.  Whatever state our life is in.  Whether we have much or whether we don’t, whether our prior choices have been good or not…we allow God to give us HIS teaching, when in trust, we study His instructions, when we sincerely want to live them out, and in all the baby steps we take to do that.

And we constantly test that voice we hear…test all things that you hear; hold onto what is good (what lines up consistently with God’s instruction) is recommended in 1 Thessalonians 5:21.  In time, as we learn to tell the difference between the good voice and the voice that only sounds good, and as we actively rely on God’s way (Proverbs 3:5-6) and resist that other voice, it eventually becomes quieter.  In James 4:7 we read the recommendation to ‘submit yourselves to God’s authourity and stand against satan…and he will FLEE from you!’

God intends for us to be whole people, able to do the work He intends for us to do (Genesis 1:26, 28).  But we have to choose to receive that wholeness through His training and relying on Him.  It’s a process of decisions, and often they can seem like very small decisions!  God sees the small things too!  It all comes from Him, it is all for Him…but He shares His goodness with us.  What a privilege to be able to share God’s good things, to see them in every situation, in the easy ones as well as in the harder ones!  

Who is Messiah? Part 2 - Son of God

Fact: The ‘Books of Moses’ are also called the Torah.  Torah means ‘teaching, instruction, guidance, law’.  The first 5 books of both the Hebrew and Christian bibles are the same books. 

Fact: Y’shua (Jesus, Yahoshua, Yeshua, Yahshua) said that Moses wrote of him (John 5:46-47, Luke 24:27).  He used ONLY Moses (the books of Moses) and the Prophets to explain who he was.

Food for thought: Can we clearly explain and understand who Y’shua is ONLY from Moses and the Prophets?  If he could do this, shouldn’t we be able to?  That would mean we’d have to put aside whatever understanding we hold based on ‘New Testament’ support, and instead search out the teachings of Torah. We could expect to trust that whatever the Creator considered important for us to know, He would have clearly taught many times over, right from the beginning. 

Fact: the first Adam was called a ‘son of God’ (Luke 3:38). He was formed in the perfect image/likeness of YHVH (but he was NOT YHVH) and was commissioned by God to act as His representative on the earth. He was to ‘subdue the earth and have dominion over it’.  Isn’t that what the Messiah will do?   The first Adam turned away from trust in and obedience to God and lost his position.

Fact: Y’shua is called a ‘son of God’ (most translations phrase ‘Son’ of God as distinctive…but capitals are added in and not part of the original language) and all ‘born again’ believers in Y’shua as Messiah are also called ‘sons of God’.  Y’shua is called ‘the last Adam’ (1 Corinthians 15: 19-23, 44-46); there’s a connection between these first and last Adams.  It’s said the physical Adam came first and then the spiritual Adam.  It also says the first Adam was a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.  So the last is greater than the first.

Food for thought: is it possible that since this first Adam failed, and since YHVH knows everything, as He’s outside of the limitations of time, that He had already prepared a second Adam…even before the first?  That this had happened before the ‘foundations of the world’, though it had not played out within the dimension of time…that it didn’t come about until the ‘fulness of time’, but that it had already been accomplished outside of time? There are a number of teachings about two brothers, where the first rebels and the second becomes first or greatest.

 

Fact: Y’shua is called a son of God in the Greek (‘New Testament’) writings.

Fact:  Believers are called ‘sons of God’ or ‘children of God.  This expression in the Greek writings is identical to that used for the phrase ‘sons of God’ in the Old Testament.  They’re referring to the same beings.

Food for thought: It logically follows that if Y’shua is a son of God and we are sons of God, then we are like Y’shua.  But if Y’shua is also YHVH, the comparison stops, because we are NOT YHVH.  Christians generally work around this by interpreting that Y’shua is the intermediary between God and man, the god-man.  But there would need to be clear support for this in Torah, and it doesn’t seem to be there.

Fact: Y’shua is called the ‘firstborn over all creation’ in Colossians 1:14-16.  Also in this passage Y’shua is called the image of the invisible God (YHVH) and not the invisible God made visible.

Fact: In Greek the word ‘eikon’ (G1504) is used for ‘image’.  This has a meaning of ‘mirror like representation, likeness, very close in resemblance, exactly reflecting its source’.  Its corresponding Hebrew word is ‘tselem’ H6754, which is from a root meaning to shade, specifically an image, representation, phantom, illusion, and an idol. The Hebrew word ‘tselem’ (Greek ‘eikon’) is first used in Genesis 1:26…’let us make man in our image’.

Food for thought:  Y’shua not called ‘God the son’ anywhere in the Greek writings.  He is called the perfect representation, the image of God.  An image or a representation is NOT the original or even part of the original.

Fact:  in Genesis 6, it’s written that the ‘sons of God’ went into the daughters of men and had children by them, and that these offspring became mighty men of God, men of renown.

Food for thought: if Y’shua, as the son of God, is truly YHVH in flesh, then who are these other sons of God, and how could they, being of the same substance as Y’shua (which in Christianity, would be taken to be YHVH) go into (sexually) the daughters of men and bear children?  This isn’t speaking of a spiritual concept but a factual, physical one.

Fact: “In the beginning, God…” (Genesis 1) is actually “In the beginning, Elohim”…where Elohim denotes plurality. In Genesis 2 “YHVH Elohim” is introduced.  This has to have significance. 

Fact: Romans 8:29, 11:2, 1 Peter 1:2, 20, Revelations 13:8 all seem to say that YHVH foreknew all His people.

Fact: Job 38:7 speaks of the sons of God who shouted (with joy) at creation.  They were there and they were many.

Food for thought: A foundational belief in Christianity (and Messianity) is to believe Y’shua is God (YHVH) or part of God appearing in the flesh.  In other words, Y’shua is believed to be both God and man.

Most christian teachings assume the plurality of Elohim is the trinity or some other combination of Y’shua and YHVH.  However, it’s possible that the plurality referred to here is Elohim as well as other beings related to Him in divine order, either by appointment (angels), or by choice (sons/children of Elohim). 

Conclusion:

Is it possible that YHVH foreknew his children because they were outside of time with Him at creation?  This is a difficult concept to grasp, as we’re used to thinking only within the confines of physical time.  But it appears from a careful reading of Genesis 1, that the boundaries of time were not set in place until the fourth day.  The fourth day also is a picture of authourity over us (more about this in Part 3 – Creation and Messiah).

Is it possible that the testing and approval of the sons of God came about within the confines of the physical world?  That the choice was made there, but that YHVH already knew those who were His because they exist outside of time as well?  Not ‘before time began’ but outside of time…those are different concepts.

Is it possible that the creation was accomplished through, by and for the sons of God, of whom Y’shua is the firstborn of many brothers?  A careful, thoughtful (in context) reading of these verses, referring to an Interlinear if possible, presents the beginnings of an interesting study:

Psalm 89:27, Mark 10:6, Rom 8:29, Col 1:14, 18, Heb 1:6, Rev 1:5, 3:14.

Is it possible that Y’shua is neither a god-man nor merely a man, but instead a unique being as the first Adam was a unique being?  We have our physical life in the first Adam, we bear his image physically, we’re his sons.  That we have no choice over.  We DO have choice (free-will) to die to the self-will that led the first Adam to sin, and to be ‘born again’ through trust in YHVH, as part of the ‘last Adam’.  If we’re found to abide in the last Adam, we’re received by YHVH as sons through the obedience of the last Adam, Y’shua.