Musings in May

Beloved Friends in Yeshua,

Musings in May

My musings, ponderings, prinking (Jesse’s word for praying plus thinking) began when I found five smooth stones placed randomly on an isolated area of my condominium’s patio (where I have my enclosed garden). It appears that workmen who were using that area left the stones. Why? Only God knows. I collected them and still have them, as they initially reminded me of the five smooth stones that David chose for his battle with Goliath (I Sam. 17:40). The thought came to me that David only had to use one of the five to kill the giant (verse 49). My grandson Liam was quick to point out to me, upon seeing the stones, that one was colored differently. “This one is volcanic, Nana.” “Really? How do you know that?” “We’re studying rocks in school.” Certainly one stone, in the hands of a little boy with faith, can be powerful and volcanically explosive enough to kill a giant.

Warfare. That was my next thought. Israel is still at war as I write (in April). The Body of Messiah in the U.S. is also at war with the dominant culture. Our biblical worldview is being increasingly mocked, censored, rejected, and even despised as the Lord’s coming draws near. Next, a book by Jeremiah Johnson came into my hands, The Warrior Bride. I was surprised to read the subtitle: Conquering the Five Demonic Spirits that War Against God’s End-Time Church. I am still reading the book but will give you the list of the five areas of warfare that Jeremiah saw in his dream of the end-time warrior bride: (1) Family Warfare, (2) Stop Tolerating Jezebel, (3) Exposing the Religious Spirit, (4) The Orphan Spirit, and (5) Witchcraft Attack. The author’s goal is to teach the Body of Messiah how to destroy the works of Satan in the last days. Spiritual warfare is not a popular topic, but do we really have a choice at this crucial time in history? Is it not the hour to awaken to the reality of Ephesians 6:12 and be the devil’s worst nightmare?

The Number Five

The next thing I knew, the Holy Spirit was leading me on a fascinating journey concerning the number five. From the five stones to the five demonic spirits to the basis of all victory in Messiah— THE GRACE, UNMERITED FAVOR OF GOD—which is connected with the number five in the Bible. (Grace also happens to be a five-letter word.)

I began to see the number five all around me. I was writing the newsletter for May, the fifth month of the year. My daily reading was in Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Torah, which is itself comprised of five books. I discovered that Deuteronomy is known for magnifying the grace of God due to its emphasis on the fact that, not for Israel’s sake but for God’s own Namesake, He had called, chosen, and blessed them. By His grace, not by their merit (Deut. 4:33-34; 7:7-8; 9:4-6). Yeshua the Messiah used the fifth book of the Torah in His personal battle against the enemy as recorded in Matthew 4:1-11. As E.W. Bullinger says in his book Number in Scripture, “It was only the Book of Deuteronomy which formed the one stone with which He defeated the Devil himself.” (Deut. 8:3; 6:13,16)

I was led to Leviticus and surprised to see so many five’s in that book. The Tabernacle (mishkan) had five as its all-pervading number. Nearly every measurement was a multiple of five. The holy anointing oil was composed of five parts. The incense was composed of five parts—four sweet spices and one salt. Leviticus 26:8 says: “Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.” Five can be mighty!

Is there grace in the Torah? Yes. Absolutely. When God proclaimed Himself to Moses in Exodus 34:6, He said He was “…abounding in hesed חסד (KHEH-sehd) (grace) and emet אמת (eh-MEHT) (truth). The impression has often been that there is little “grace” in the Old Covenant. One of the reasons for this has to do with translations. The Hebrew word HESED (goodness, kindness, grace) appears 247 times in the Tanakh. It is often translated “mercy” instead of “grace,” so “grace” is only found 39 times in the KJV Old Covenant and seven times in the RSV Old Covenant. Hesed is a difficult word to translate from Hebrew. It is translated 169 different ways in six different English translations of the Bible. Exodus 34:6-7 translates hesed as follows: “Adonai passed before him and proclaimed: ‘YUD- HEH-VAV-HEH!!! Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh [Adonai] is God, merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in grace and truth; showing grace to the thousandth generation…‘” (CJB).

Five in Hebrew

While in the Christian tradition, five symbolizes grace due to the symbols and patterns of five that consistently speak of grace—from the five loaves that fed 5,000, the five wise virgins, the five wounds of Yeshua, the five books written by the apostle John in the New Covenant that center on the grace of God and eternal life—Christian theologians also mention the patterns in the Old Covenant. There are two sets of five of the Ten Commandments, five primary types of offerings that God commanded Israel to bring to Him, and more. Dig a little into your Bible, and you will find many more five’s.

In the Jewish tradition, the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph-Beit) is special, since the individual letters, their names, graphic forms, numerical equivalents, and respective positions in the alphabet are considered to be divinely ordained. The numeric equivalent of five is the letter ה (hey). ה is considered, among other things, to be a symbol of divinity. Its sound is a mere exhalation of breath, an effortless enunciation, and is connected with Psalm 33:6, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” In Hebrew thinking, therefore, ה denotes creation. This led me to think of the grace of God in not only the creation of the world (out of chaos) but the creation of man (out of dust) and the new creation in Yeshua.

A traditional Jewish midrash says that the letter ה is a picture of God within the human heart. Consider what God did with Abram and Sarai. He changed Abram’s name to Abraham (Gen. 17:5) by inserting in the middle of it the ה (hey). אברם (Abram) became אברהם (Abraham). God’s call and choosing of Abraham was by grace. El Shaddai was calling Abraham to walk before Him by faith. Sarah as well. The idea of God within man (in him or his name) is always a picture of grace.

Repentance and ה

The grace of God makes it possible for us to see our sin and, seeing it, repent of it. There is no salvation without repentance. True biblical repentance includes not only a change of heart, feeling sorry for our sin, but a decision of the will to turn from sin to God. The Hebrew word for repentance is teshuvah—תשובה. According to The Wisdom in the Hebrew Alphabet, the word teshuvah (pronounced t’shoo-VAH) can be read in two parts: ה “God” + תשוב “return to.” Repenting to GOD first. That is why King David prayed in Psalm 51:4: “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight...” He had certainly sinned against Uriah and his wife, Bathsheba. But first and foremost, David had sinned against his Lord.

In traditional Jewish thought, the opening in the letter →ה is for penitent sinners. God makes room for all men to repent. This reflects God’s attribute of hesed (grace, kindness) with which He treats the contrite person. Have you experienced that grace of God? I do, on a daily basis. Repentance should be an ongoing practice for believers in Messiah (see I John 1:9). I have mentioned before that my husband Neil, even in the year of his death at age 82, still said from the pulpit: “I am just a dirty rotten sinner.” I would get him aside and say to him, “Neil, stop saying that!” Neil always responded, “I won’t, because it’s true.” My humble husband increasingly saw the holiness and majesty of the Lord and, compared to Him, would say with the prophet Isaiah, “…’Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts‘” (Is. 6:5).

There is another traditional thought about the opening in the letter ה—that it stands for man’s freedom of choice. God has allowed us that freedom since the Garden of Eden. Free will. He gave it to Adam and Eve, and He gives it to us. We can choose good or evil, light or darkness. God is glorified when we choose light and good. Before His people entered the Land that He had promised them, He said, “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days…” (Deut. 30:19-20a). We can do this today, by the grace of God, in the power of the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit.

What is True Biblical Grace?

Grace, hesed, is of God. It is favor shown to the unworthy, including the idea of covenantal faithfulness, graciousness, goodness, and lovingkindness. I love the definition of grace that I found in my files by Hugh Ross, Ph.D. in his 1977, Reasons to Believe: “Grace is the love of God freely bestowed on guilty sinners without regard to any merit of their own and in spite of any demerit. It is God showing His perfect goodness to those who have no legitimate reason to expect anything but severity. Grace does not depend on the recipient. It lies wholly in the giver, in God.”

Grace is a gift of God given to all those who put their trust in His Son Yeshua, receiving His death as the atonement for their sin, and His resurrection as their promise of eternal life. His grace is limitless and amazing. Romans 3:23-25 states clearly what God has done for us in Messiah: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are set right as a gift of His grace, through the redemption that is in Messiah Yeshua. God set forth Yeshua as an atonement, through faith in His blood, to show His righteousness in passing over sins already committed” (TLV).

The connection of grace and gifts is found both in the Tanakh and the Brit Hadashah. The word gift—matan מתן (mah-TAHN)—occurs five times in the Tanakh: Gen. 34:12, Num. 18:11, Prov. 18:16, Prov. 19:6, and Prov. 21:14. Scripture highlighting the grace that gives is found five times in the New Covenant: Matt. 13:12, 25:29, Mark 4:25, Luke 8:18, and Luke 19:26.

It is only by grace that we are able to live a life pleasing to God. The apostle Saul (Paul) speaks for all of us: “For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (I Cor. 15:9-10). Can we all say, “I am what I am, by the grace of God”? May it be so!

It bears repeating that our salvation is only through grace, not mitzvot (good deeds). “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” God initiates. God enables. God empowers. God even prepares the good works that we will one day walk in! (Eph. 2:8-10)

The power of God’s grace is greater than the power of sin. The irresistible grace of God seeks out sinners by the Holy Spirit. (Luke 19:10) The same grace convicts us of our sin by the same Spirit. This grace, God’s unmerited favor, reaches down to us and saves, delivers, and makes us new creations in Messiah. We should be forever grateful for the grace of God in Yeshua who died for us, while we were still sinners. (Rom. 5:8)

Musings on John 1:16-17

John, referring to the Messiah Yeshua, said: “And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Yeshua HaMashiach.” This does not mean that there was no grace nor truth in the Law (or Tanakh or Old Testament). We have clearly seen Hesed there. What does John mean then? There are some key words to consider: fullness, grace for grace, through Moses and through Yeshua. Both Moses and Yeshua gave the Word, but while the Word given through Moses was on the outside, on tablets of stone, Yeshua Himself was the Word Incarnate. He also fulfilled the Torah (Matt. 5:17) and in Him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9). Yeshua inaugurated a better covenant built on better promises (Heb. 8:6), a covenant of grace through faith in His one-time forever sacrifice for sin. Yeshua came as a man, the Word made flesh, and in Him was fullness of glory, grace, and truth. (Jn. 1:14)

John is saying that when the New Covenant came, there was more grace, more truth (embodied in Yeshua), and greater glory. This same idea is found in 2 Cor. 3:7-9, “But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory.”

Amazing Grace

Is there anyone who is not familiar with the powerful classic hymn Amazing Grace, composed by the English Anglican clergyman John Newton in 1772? This immensely popular hymn is used in our country for both religious and secular purposes. Let’s consider the words:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see.
T’was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;

‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise then when we’d first begun.

Are you singing yet?

The lyrics of Amazing Grace are based on Rev. John Newton’s experience of receiving God’s grace and mercy despite the terrible things he had done, particularly his occupation as a former slave trading captain of a slave ship. Why do so many relate to this song? Perhaps because it gives hope and healing, universal needs. With God, there’s always a way out—and up. All things are possible with Him. He is our ultimate “home.” Grace leads us there.

America Needs Grace

There is another song, “America the Beautiful,” which many of us in my generation grew up singing in school. It was based on a poem written in 1893 by the professor, poet, and writer Katharine Lee Bates who was inspired by the beauty at the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado. The first verse should speak to us today:

Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain! America! America! GOD SHED HIS GRACE ON THEE,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!

“Abba, please draw our nation back to You. Pour out Your abundant grace on all of us so that we can come humbly to you in repentance, as Your Spirit shows us our sin, individually and collectively. We need You, Lord. We are lost without You! Thank You for sending Your Son Yeshua into our world and into our lives to save us, set us apart, and use us for Your glory. Forgive us, as a people, for having lost the fear of the Lord. Turn us once more to love You, serve You, and walk in Your ways. We deserve judgment, but You are a God of grace and mercy, who delights in blessing. Please guide us in the days ahead to do Your will in the power of Your Spirit. Make us Your warrior bride in Yeshua’s Mighty Name. We love You! AMEN.”

Love in Yeshua,

P.S. May all mothers experience a special outpouring of grace, mercy, and blessing this month!

Especially on May 12, 2024, Mother’s Day.