Killing Uriah Was Petty Theft Compared to David's Real Crimes. 

   As some of you may know, I’m an avid student of the Old Testament, these last few years, not because I've been working to attain a righteousness I could never attain, but because my heart has been crushed, stomped on and has bled out so many times that I have needed a distraction.  I needed to study every aspect about GOD and His renown heroes and how they dealt with those crushing blows. I also needed to find out how GOD dealt with His people to see if there was any offense in me that would have caused the losses I’ve had to bear.   Let me tell you, when it comes to GOD and why He does things the way He does and with whom, it would be a lesson in futility to attempt to get to the why’s. So, let’s just stick to the facts. 

     The Christian church has King David all wrong.  If I hear about how he committed adultery one more time as if that was his worst trait, I might just scream at the person who said it.  David was far worse than an adulterer.  David, before he was king was a mass murderer, not in a Holy war instructed by GOD,  but for his own profit. I know, this is a very difficult and dreadful and disgusting thought about the greatest king Israel has ever been blessed to have, or the hero of heroes we’d like to have the same faith and heart as he did. But, we cannot deny what is clearly written in Scripture that we have so conveniently brushed over, never really digging deep into what he did. I aim to do that with you, and believe me, it’s pretty ugly. It’s as ugly as the times we are living in now, if not worse. We are talking genocide, including men, women, children, and babies, even babies in-utero. I have dealt with this in other blogs, but to save you time, I’ll give you a quick re-cap.

   It’s in 1 Samuel 27 , the whole chapter. David had been running from a mad king, hell-bent on killing him for several years now, and he was dog tired. Who wouldn’t be? So, in a moment of despair and exhaustion, with his faith bank account overdrawn, he decided to go live with the dogs. (Pun intended see 1 Samuel 17) David had previously trusted GOD to provide and protect, and quite valiantly, also, but David was a man, a very tired man. He wrote some of his greatest Psalms during those times of Supernatural faith and strengthening himself to endure. Those Psalms  get us through our worst times. This bad time, however was after great spiritual victory, that David sunk into despair. Isn’t that always the way with us? Clearly, David had given up on GOD. Did he stop believing in GOD? I doubt it, but having been running from a plethora of the devil’s minions hell bent on destroying me for almost 12 years, I can pretty much assume how he felt are some of the same things I’ve felt and said in my moments of despair, grief and exhaustion. I surely believed I was done, plenty of times, like David, in the 1st verse.

     27 Then David said to himself, “Now I will perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than to escape into the land of the Philistines. Saul then will despair of searching for me anymore in all the territory of Israel, and I will escape from his hand.”

   During David’s defection and spiritually dark time, he wrote no psalms, no prayers, no fruit, and he was a terrible example to all around him. Surely, he was NOT being Godly those sixteen months. 1 Samuel 27:

     8 David and his men spent their time raiding the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites—people who had lived near Shur, toward the land of Egypt, since ancient times. 9 David did not leave one person alive in the villages he attacked. He took the sheep, goats, cattle, donkeys, camels, and clothing before returning home to see King Achish  11 And David did not leave a man or a woman alive to bring to Gath, saying, “Otherwise they will tell about us, saying, ‘This is what David has done, and this has been his practice all the time that he has lived in the country of the Philistines.’”

   Read those paragraphs again, and really absorb all that is implied here. “He left not one person alive.” David led the General Achish to believe that he was attacking, pillaging, and raiding in the far land belonging to the tribe of Judah.  Sadly, what he was doing was attacking, pillaging, and raiding the Canaanites who had remained in the land promised to Abraham’s descendants. They would have not been there these hundreds of years later, had the earlier generations followed GOD orders precisely. David was wiping entire towns, village, cities, and clans out, leaving not one person alive who could squeal on him. This went on for over a year, so you can assume that David killed men, women, children, and pregnant women, for profit, because he kept some of the loot himself.  

    David and his 600 men, were rioters, and looters, burning down all that they left behind. How’s that for the man GOD called, “a man after His own heart.” Now, he got paid back for that by GOD, but not what he deserved.  If you'll remember, while he was away from his home base, trying to talk the general into letting him fight for the enemy against his own people, GOD let all of the women and children of Ziglak be kidnap by enemy raiding parties, but GOD did not let them be killed.  Instead, GOD spared them until David repented and finally turned back to Him, and then GOD arranged for all to be saved.  You can find that story in 1 Samuel 30 

     And yet, we only hear about the time of David as a king being  disciplined by GOD for stealing a man's wife, getting her pregnant, hiding the pregnancy and killing her husband.  This was one man he killed, not thousands.  He didn't embezzle his goods, he just tried to hide his sin from the people, but he could not hide his sin from GOD.  He just chose to live the lie that maybe GOD didn't pay attention to this one little thing.  Well, he found out just how wrong that was.  What did he do?  He repented, again and was forgiven, again.  Now, maybe you understand the blood on his hand GOD spoke of when he denied David the joy of building His House.  He went on to become one of the worst kingly parents when it came to his children, choosing to ignore his sons faults rather than deal with them properly.  David may have had a heart after GOD, but is was a heart of a man and very very flawed man.

     Next time you start beating yourself up, thinking you’re not good enough for service to the King of Kings, remind yourself of just how low David had descended.  One thing that you will find is that in the Bible and real world, history and people just repeat themselves with different elements and different weapons.  We are no different than David, we all fall short, some shorter than others, but no matter how short, the man with a heart after GOD is always forgiven AFTER he repents.  It's the man who doesn't repent who find disaster, one way or another.  It isn't how far one has fallen, it's how badly one wants to be redeemed by GOD.  Sometimes we make more out of people in the Bible than they really were. Someday, King Manasseh will be the subject of a blog post and how far back up he had to climb, and he did.  (2 Chronicles 33)

"Judah came to Jerusalem, slew the men and set the city on fire."

 

The title of this blog is a direct quote  from a very good pastor that I’ve been listening to when he popped up on my suggested playlist on YouTube.  The particular lesson was about one that most people have never heard about in the book of Judges.  It is the very first parable ever told and it can be found in Judges chapter 9. The theme being;  you reap what you sow.  The book of Judges is a very unpleasant book in the Bible.  It shows the depravity of GOD’s people who fell away from following and worshiping Him only one generation after Joshua..  We think of Bible heroes like Joshua and we put them high up on a pedestal as an example to live by, yet we don’t really know about most of their shortcomings.  Joshua definitely had some shortcomings.  He did not do as GOD has instruction to the tenth degree.  He digressed and did was seemed right to himself.  

And therein is where we get in trouble.  We do what seems right to us.  Judges may be a history lesson, but it’s a book of prophecy, even though it doesn’t read that way.  Scripture tells us that whatever happened in the past will happen again, because there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10) The next verse is also the sad truth about mankind.  There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after.  No one likes to teach the book of Judges and for very good reasons.  We think those stiff-neck ignorant people were pathetic, yet aren’t we?  Don’t we change the way GOD’s Word is supposed to be followed to what seems right to us?  Is something getting lost in the translation and interpretation?  We know that false gods are a figment of people’s imaginations and that there is only One GOD who is LORD over all.  Back then, however, each nation had their own god, and they respected a fellow nations belief in their own god.  The Israelites did not understand that there was only One GOD and theirs was It.  They believed in other nations gods, and most of them had as much power as their Own, in their eyes.  They didn’t know any better because it only takes one generation to totally screw up GOD’s Word or intentions in His Torah, which means instructions.  Look at what happened only one generation after the Apostles died, The Way that Jesus, Paul, and the Apostles  taught became totally messed up by human intention and interpretation.  It even got a new name, Christianity, and a whole bunch of new rules and instructions, so much so that it is completely unrecognizable to The Way Paul taught when he was sent to the gentiles.  Paul never converted to Christianity because Christianity wasn’t even a named thing back then.  It was centuries later that it got a title and by gentiles, not the Jews.  Paul remained  a faithful Jew, living with the Torah, or rather original instructions to the best of his ability.  Even that got messed up after two thousand years and was called Halacha, a combination of the Torah given by GOD and the Talmud, written and devised by men. 

We tend to point fingers at the “stiff-necked” Israelites, when in all actuality, we are no better. We have the benefit of the Holy Spirit indwelling in us, so we are without excuse, except as Paul said in Romans 7, the new Spirit battles the flesh every day. One of the worst things we do is to change the Bible and the stories to make them more palatable.  Christians have their own idea of what Scripture says and they "water it down" to make it acceptable or pleasant to read.  For instance, the title of this post is the exact quotation of what that pastor taught in regards to Judges 1:8.   The verse said, “the city.”  Who lived in the city? Was it just men, just soldiers?  What happened to the women and children in Jerusalem? Were they put aside, rescued and adopted by the Judahites? Did they all get new homes, new husbands, new fathers for the young children? No, they did not. They died along with the men.  When GOD told His people to drive them out, or to annihilate a city, He told them to kill all of its inhabitants, men, women, children and sometimes livestock. Warfare was carried out very differently than it is in these contemporary times.  “Innocent” people, including women and children were casualties of war.  One prime example is when GOD gave specific instructions to King Saul, 1 Samuel 15:3 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” This is the stuff that we find repulsive that "innocent” women, children and livestock were slaughtered. This is the ugly part of the history of GOD's people that Christians gloss over.

So, if glossing over the ugly parts is acceptable, then glossing over the parts we don't like is acceptable, right? Christianity it seems is a license for congregations and denominations to do what's right in their own eyes. One denomination teaches this, the other teaches that is wrong. So, where can the truth be found? Where can GOD's instructions and principles of how to think and act be found? It can be found in what Jesus lived and taught, the Torah, which means "instructions." What Christianity did was make an undesirable word, LAW, and place as the meaning of Torah.  Those 3^rd Century clergy hated the Jews and wanted to wipe anything Hebrew from the Scriptures. They "white washed" the Scriptures to make it palatable to gentiles.

 What did Jesus (Yeshua) say? Matthew 5:17 “Don’t think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete. 18 Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yud or a stroke will pass from the Torah — not until everything that must happen has happened. 19 So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. There is so much more involved, here. Jesus came to explain the principle behind the Torah, because it was lost in religiosity. 

Then, he did what the Law and animal sacrifices could not do. He made atonement for INTENTIONAL sin. Romans 8: 3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. We all commit intentional sin, but there was no sacrifice for atoning of that sin, until Yeshua Ha Maschiach  (Jesus the Messiah or Christ if that's what you want to call him) accomplished on our behalf.  That's the truth. We are still judged by the Law, but we are saved by Christ, because we cannot fulfill the entire Law, no one can. Even Jesus could not obey all 613 rules laid down by Moses as give to him by GOD.  Did he sin in not doing them? I don’t think so, because he was born male and some of those laws only pertain to females and wives.

So, you see, it’s not about following and doing all 613 so-called laws, it’s about the principles behind them, and that’s what Jesus came here to teach, to bring them out of Halacha and back to YHVH GOD’s instructions. I know for a fact that GOD is doing something new the last decade or so and bringing some of His people out of Christianity and back to the origins of what He intended for us to know and do in the beginning.  Jesus summed up the prophets and law on these commandments.  Yes, they are the most important of GOD’s laws, or instructions, however there are many other very useful instruction in the 613 mitzvot given to us by Moses.

 

The Woman at the Well Was No Ho'

 

I want to right a century's old wrong done to a holy woman.  Yes, I said holy, meaning set apart. She was set apart, chosen to hear the very first declaration of Jesus admitting to being the Messiah.  We've always referred to her as an immoral woman who was shacking up after having five husbands.  Women of ill-repute back then usually were working women.  Working women did not have husbands, yet she had five previous husbands.  Who taught us that she was a whore. It  was man who turned this holy  woman into a whore for centuries. So-called Bible scholars trashed this woman’s reputation just due to the mere fact she was gathering water in the middle of the day, as opposed to the early morning when most women gathered their water. She was indeed a holy woman, set apart to gather her water at the same time the Jesus would be needing her assistance.

First, let’s define holy.  Most people attribute holy as pure, perfect, and good, but the true definition is “set apart.”  Most people understand unholy as evil or bad, but that is not the case or the truth.  Unholy means ordinary, the same as everyone else, one among many.  That’s it!  GOD is not only Holy, set apart as GOD above all other gods, (which are false), He is also pure and Good all the time.  Likewise, Jesus was pure, good and sinless along with being Holy.  You and I cannot be good and pure and sinless, but we can be Holy, set apart.   Now, that we have that established, let’s look at that poor woman at the well.  She was alone there in the middle of the day, when most outcasts would be subject to gather water for the day.   So, either she couldn’t make it early that morning, or she needed more than she got earlier and went back for a refill.  Maybe she was set apart by the town because for some other shameful reason, like being rejected by her husbands, tossed out on her fanny, or even a sadder reason, she was barren.  The life span of a man was very short then, she could have been widowed five times, which is more likely than being divorced five times.   There is no reference to her age, she could have been an old woman who was a servant to another man, a concubine, a woman who was living with a relative because she was widowed five times.    She was a broken woman in need of healing, so regardless of why she was there, it was planned by GOD to have her there, as Sovereign over all, she was chosen, she was set apart.

She was ordained to hear the first Holy declaration from the lips of Jesus identifying himself to be the Messiah.  Not only that, but she was also entrusted with that message to bring it back to her town.  Back in those days, a woman of ill-repute would not dare speak openly in the public square, but this one did.  She could have been an outcast, but the evidence in Scripture in no way refers to her as a prostitute or a whore.  The first Bible commentators and scholars of earlier centuries were men. Most pastors are  men, and let's face it, most men tend to label woman in an undesirable manner.    Her being a Samaritan woman was outcast enough for the Jews then, and yet, Jesus came out as Messiah to her. I'm sure GOD is making a point here about who we consider as rejects or outcasts being worthy of hearing the Gospel.  Here is a thought one may consider, how many women were adept in theological studies back then?  How did she know that a Messiah would come, what he would look like, and what to expect of him? It was because she knew Scripture. She was familiar with Hebrew prophecies. Not too many prostitutes were theologically sound back then.

I am going to give you another example of where contemporary Bible teachers have gotten it wrong and have taught us wrong.  The familiar verse in Revelation 3:15  “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.   This one shocked me when I learned the true meaning of this Scripture.  Back then hot and cold were very useful. Hot was used to cleanse or sanitize and cook with, whereas cold was used to preserve.  Both are useful and good.  Lukewarm was never useful, as it did not sanitize/clean or preserve.  Food kept at a lukewarm temperature would rot faster. Food kept cold will preserve and be able to still be nourishment for the body. Knowing this truth and understanding it how John would have understood those words  completely changes everything for you doesn’t it, because you thought cold meant apathetic to the things of GOD?  Think of how many more Scriptures and meanings we have gotten completely twisted and wrong because of a thing called eisegesis, which is taking Scripture completely out of context to agree with our own agenda.   

We do a great disservice when we look at anything in the Bible with 21^st Century glasses and then impose our views and opinions and own personal history into the Bible and refer to it as truth.  What is truth to man may not be absolute Holy truth to GOD.  Every translation of the Bible was done with and agenda of the translators.  For example, we believe that Jesus spoke Aramaic back then, but with a Hebrew mindset with meanings and understandings that we are not taught.  The writers of the New Testament Scribes wrote the Gospel in Koinonia Greek, as it was a language widely  used and understood in written form by the masses and the uneducated.  Their agenda was to make the Gospel understood and accessible.  The Roman Catholic theologian, Jerome,  translated what GOD meant to be easy to read into the difficult language of Latin. That way only the learned or educated Roman Catholic Clergy could understand the Scriptures and teach them how they wanted them understood.  After that, English translators took the Latin in many cases and translated the Scriptures into old English, which was contemporary to them, but they had an agenda, also.   So, Jesus’s  teachings when from Hebrew to Greek to Latin then to English.  We should assume that some of the true meanings got lost in the translations.  From there you have thousands of denominations and hundreds of “scholars” who went and translated the Scriptures to imply what each denomination believed and taught. Scripture is always translated or taught with the agenda of the person teaching it.  It’s not so corrupt as it is how humans are.  They may not believe they have an agenda, but they were taught a certain way, thus they teach what they were taught.  The woman at the well and the hot and cold church are perfect examples of just how wrong we are learning the Bible.   Flawed and sinful man has decided that A really means B, and C really means D.  Maybe GOD wants us to read, A B C D, in chronological order as written and give the credit as the letter that they truly are, and not assumed that they are other letters in disguise.  I spent twenty-six years as a Roman Catholic, then twenty-six years as a devout Protestant, and in those years, I learned the Bible as taught to me by the flawed men who taught it wrong.  I learned it wrong.  The hardest thing to convince any Christian is what they have learned and believe as absolute truth may not be absolute truth, because they were taught it was.  I know this is circular reasoning and hard to really wrap our head around, but these last 8 years, GOD has been teaching me the Scriptures as they were meant to be understood.  GOD has brought back the flavor of the Hebrew roots of our faith and my eyes have been opened to a Bible I never knew in three decades.  I’m going to put a link here to a Bible teacher I have been studying under for over two years now, however, whoever wants to know absolute truth will have to search it out on their own. 

GOD knows who wants truth and who is happy living the lie.  GOD knows who has a heart after him, and who is just wanting salvation by grace and keeping the works out of it.  Yes, I just said that.  Take it how you want, but Romans 2:13 completely contradicts all we have been taught about faith alone without works.  So does Matthew 7:21, 12:50, James 2:14-26.  I’ll let you search those Scriptures out and let the Holy Spirit guide you on those.  I’m not a Bible scholar or teacher, but when I find out the truth about a lie I’ve learned, well, I just can’t go back to the lie.

This is the Gospel of Matthew as you have never learned it before.   Torah Class - Matthew