Kedoshim – Torah with Joseph

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom, my name is Joseph Shulam, in partnership with Brad TV, we are continuing week after week following the Torah portion that is read in all the synagogues of the Jewish people and the Messianic Jews as well, around the world.

It’s a big privilege to be able to go through the Law of Moses week after week in unison and in partnership and in identification together with the people of Israel historically, all the time. From the time of the apostles and Jesus himself, Yeshua himself, the Torah was read in the synagogues every Sabbath. We are following the same order with the rest of the Jewish people.

And this week, we are in what I consider personally as one of the most important chapters in the whole Bible. It’s a chapter that starts with the words,

It’s a very interesting command. A command that we are supposed to be holy because God, our God, our creator, our savior, our teacher, our instructor, our judge is holy, and we as His descendants, His children, His brothers and sisters have to be holy as well, have to be holy. You shall be holy because I, the Lord, your God, I’m holy. It’s a command that most Christians that I know don’t know how to chew, don’t know how to practice it. The reason they don’t know how to practice it because it remains in the evangelical and the Christian world abstract.

Be holy. What does it mean to be holy? How should I be holy? Well, here is the Jewish way of looking at it. We have the principle in verse 1. From verse 2 to the end of chapter 19, and I would say ad hoc to the rest of the Torah, we have the instruction of how to be holy. What does it mean to be holy? But before I enter into the details of this command that is repeated by the way, in the new Testament as well.

And in the new Testament we have several quotations from this chapter, instructing the brothers and sisters, Jews and Gentiles alike, of how we should behave. What are the principles of our lives on this earth as human beings, as children of God, to be able to be holy like our Father is holy? We’re talking about DNA. The spiritual DNA that we have in us as a result of a new birth, as a result of dying with the Messiah, with Christ, and baptism and raising into a new life, being born again. That DNA is the DNA of the almighty God Himself. The holiness, and he wants us to have that DNA and to live according to it.

So the question is how. And here is the principle. One of the major principles of interpretation of hermeneutics in the Bible and in the Jewish world is the principle is stated and after that, you have the details of how to live out that principle. And chapter 19 is a classical example of this principle. The principle is we should be holy.

Like, why should we be holy? Because the God who created us both physically and spiritually is holy and He wants us to be like Him, like every father wants his children to be like him. Hopefully every father that does right and lives right and walks right and knows God, wants his children to know God and to live right and to walk uprightly like he wants to live.

So here is the principle. The principle is be holy. Be holy because I’m holy. Step number one in being holy is you shall revere, you shall honor your mother and your father and keep my Sabbath, I am the Lord, your God. Seems simple, right? You wanna be holy?

Start honoring your mother and your father. I like this. Why do I like it? Because it says first, mother. Our Western civilization orientation is first, the father, no. God, the Holy Spirit in the Torah says, honor your mother and your father and keep the Sabbath.

I am the Lord, your God. Why should you do that? “Because I’m the Lord, your God.” What does it mean, keep the Sabbath. It means take time to be holy, take time to rest. You cannot be holy and you cannot really honor your father and your mother or your mother and your father according to this text, unless you take time. Take time to visit them, take time to honor them, take time to revere them, take time to spend time with your father and your mother. After you get married, yes. With your children, with your wife.

Don’t stop honoring your mother and your father just because now you have a family of your own, no. I know that in Asia, in Korea, Japan, China even, people have great honor for their ancestors, for their mothers and their fathers and their grandmothers and their grandfathers even after their death. Yes, much more than in the West.

But this is the law of God written thousands of years ago and given to us, to Jews and non-Jews alike, as a constitution by which we not only talk about it, but we worship God according to it. And we worship God by the way we react toward our family, toward our neighbors, toward our fellow men.

Because God is in heaven far from us physically, but our neighbors, our parents, our brothers, our sisters are close to us, and our faith is anthropocentric. In other words, men, our fellow man, is at the center of our religious experience, of our godly experience.

Let’s look at the bigger detail of this thing. Do not turn to idols nor make yourself a molding God. I am the Lord, your God. Notice after every big command, it repeats, I am the Lord, your God. It means I’m here, I’m watching you, I am watching you. I know what you’re doing, I know what your heart is thinking.

Don’t create for yourself idols. Idols are something that we as men, as human beings create, that push God aside. Even if we go to church and even if we worship, and even if we give, and even if we’re volunteer, and even participate, we could create idols in our own mind that push God aside, that’s an idol.

If it is a bad habit, if it is addiction, if it is hidden sins, those are idols that push God aside out of the picture. And if you offer a sacrifice or a peace offering to the Lord, you shall offer it from your own free will. Oh, this is powerful. That includes the giving to the church, the giving to missions, the giving to charity. Don’t do it for any other reason than your own free will, because you want to. Not because you have to, not because you were obligated to, not because the pastor says that you’re going to gain something out of it, no, from your free will.

Give freely, because you in your heart and in your soul want to give, you give. If it’s not for that, don’t give. Because it becomes an abomination, it reverses the blessing, if you give for the wrong reason, in order to gain something. Pastors who teach that are misleading you dear brothers and sisters.

Next thing, I’m now in verse 8. Therefore everyone who eats the sacrifice, shall bear his inequity, because he has profaned and hollowed that offering of the Lord. That person shall be cut off from is people. In other words, if you offer sacrifices, any sacrifice; could be a contribution on Sunday morning; could be money for charity; could be for anything, for the wrong reason. You are profaning the holy name of God and you shall be cut off from your people.

That’s the worst punishment that there is in the Bible, worse than death. To be cut off from among your people is worse than death. Yes, it’s the worst punishment that Torah has; its “kareth”, to be cut off from your people. Your connection with the community, your connection with the nation, your connection with God Himself will be severed. God will hide his face from you and your prayers will not even reach the ceiling.

Yes, serious. So when you give, when you do something right for God, do it with the right reason, with the right intention, with the right motives or don’t do it at all, because it becomes a reverse. Yes, it becomes a reverse.

Next thing, verse 9 of chapter 19. When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of the field nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. And you shall not glean your vineyard nor shall you gather the grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I am the Lord, your God. In other words, this is the way to give charity, the Biblical way.

When you harvest, don’t harvest everything, leave an edge for the poor, that they themself can come and harvest for themself. Don’t package it and give it to them as charity. Let them come to your field after your harvesting is finished and harvest for themself, where they don’t have to look you in the face, they don’t have to beholden to you as the boss, as the owner of the field, but they privately, honorably will go and harvest for themselves, and don’t have to contend with you as the magnanimous, charitable, liberal giver, face to face.

I think that this is a wonderful way to give, to give in secret, and that’s what Yeshua taught. He said, “Don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.” Yeah, when you give, give secretly, and it works, and it’s a blessing, and that is in the agricultural society of those days, that worked.

We are not in the agricultural society, most of us are in urban society. But even there, we can find ways to give without having to have the poor person, the needy person be beholden to us but beholden to the almighty God for the charity that God provides through you and me, very important.

The next thing, don’t steal, don’t cheat your brother, don’t deal falsely, don’t lie one to another, that’s verse 11 of chapter 19. You wanna be holy? That’s the way to be holy. Stop lying to one another, stop stealing from one another, stop taking advantage of the weaknesses of one another. Stand as brothers, children of the same father with each other. That’s the way to be holy.

So practical, so amazingly simple, so amazingly easy to do if we really want to be holy. I know, you know, going to church in in my early days, to a Protestant evangelical church, when I was in high school, I heard people singing time to be holy, and all kinds of songs about holiness. But all of these songs led you to some kind of mystical experience, to be holy, I am holy. But this, the law Moses, gives us the practical, every day, every occasion outcome of how to be holy; a command that was repeated in the New Testament.

Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t take advantage of the weak, don’t take advantage of the gullible, don’t profane the name of the Lord, don’t rob your neighbor, don’t rob your worker by giving less wages than he deserves according to law. Pay him what he deserves for his work from dawn till evening.

And now my favorite; don’t curse the deaf, nor put the stumbling block before the blind. You shall fear the Lord, your God, I am the Lord. Even if you don’t fear the deaf, because he doesn’t even hear you, or the blind because he doesn’t see you, don’t put the stumbling block before him. Fear the Lord, your God. God sees you. God sees your sins. God hears your lies, and God is going to punish you.

Yes, the God who sent His son to the world, because He so loved the world that He doesn’t want anybody to be condemned to hell forever. That same God sees you, and He is a God who gives the just their reward and the evil, their punishment.

That’s also in the New Testament, book of Hebrews and other places. So don’t curse the deaf. You say, well, what does that hurt? The deaf, he doesn’t hear me. Yes, he doesn’t hear you, but God hears you. Don’t put a stumbling before the blind. Yes, he doesn’t see you, but God sees you.

Fear the Lord, your God, I am the Lord, verse 15. Don’t do injustice in the judgment. If you’re in a situation where you have to judge, you have to adjudicate, you have to weigh for the good or for the bad, for your workers, for the members of your family, for your grandparents, for members of the community, remember to do justice in your judgment. Don’t be partial against the poor, don’t be honorable to the rich because they’re rich.

Be seekers of righteousness in your judgment, in relationship to your neighbor, to your fellow man. Don’t take advantage of him because he is ignorant of the law. Don’t take advantage of his weakness and give advantage of somebody who’s rich and powerful that can reward you later. No, be just, be righteous, judge equitably. Don’t be a tail bearer, don’t gossip, don’t speak against your neighbors. You wanna be holy, these are the rules of how to be holy.

The rest of chapter 19 gives us the rules of how to be holy. And of course, the main rule that appears so many times in the New Testament, you shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you should love your neighbor as yourself. Paul, in the end of the book of Romans, and the gospels and the other letters, repeats these commands; love your neighbor as yourself and love the Lord, these two commandments, the whole law and the prophets depend upon these two commandments. Love your neighbor as yourself.

So, the rules are, the Jewish way of interpreting this, you should love yourself enough to be able to love your neighbor. Because if you don’t love yourself, how can you love somebody else? Even your wife and your children. Love yourself enough to transfer that degree, that quality of love, agape love, for your neighbor. And then that will spread around like a good fire to the people around you, to your community, to the saints in your life.

Then all the sexual purity. You want to be holy? You have to control your carnality. Whoever lies carnally with a woman who is betrothed to a man in as a concubine, and who has not at all been redeemed nor given her freedom, for this shall be scourging, but she’ll not put to death because she was not free.

Yes, sexual immorality is a way to take you away. Separate you from God’s holiness. It is taking advantage, unfair advantage of your fellow men, and that will separate you from God’s holiness. And if you separate yourself from God’s holiness, there’s no way that you can enter into God’s presence, down here on Earth, in prayer, in worship or after your death.

Yes, that will separate you. And if you sin, offer a trespass offering, a sin offering. Go to the priest, ask him to atone for you by sacrificing a ram of trespass of sin offering before the Lord for his sin which has been committed, and the sin which has been committed shall be forgiven him. In other words, repentance costs. And we don’t teach that enough, that repentance costs.

Also, the next texts are fascinating for us today. When you come into the land and have planted all kinds of trees for food, fruit trees, you shall count their fruit as uncircumcised. Three years, it shall be as uncircumcised to you, it shall not be eaten. Let the tree, you know, mature a little bit.

Don’t harvest the tree until you give them a three years’ time to enjoy the fruit of its production, of the fruitfulness, fertility. On the fourth year, all its fruit shall be holy and be given to the Lord. Only in the fifth year that you plant a tree, all the fruit is yours except the tithe that you have to give to the Lord.

You shall not eat anything with blood. You shall not practice witchcraft and divination and soothsaying. You shall not shave around the sides of your head nor shall you disfigure the edges of your beard. In that culture, that was a part of being a man. Yes, there was no Gillette shaver or electric shaver, and so that’s why it says that, you know, because most people had beards.

When you look at the Egyptian pictures on the walls of the tombs, whether it’s in Saqqara, ancient Memphis or in Thebes, ancient Thebes, and you look at it, the men had beards. Why did they have beards? They had beards because there was no Gillette shavers or electric shavers. It was difficult to shave, it was difficult to have a sharp enough knife to shave right without hurting yourself, without damaging your face. And men had beards. You can wear a beard.

But don’t do tattoos, don’t disfigure your skin. It’s a sin to tattoo. When I see Christians and even pastors that after they became believers, they go and tattooed themselves, I see their ignorance the word of God. God didn’t change his mind, didn’t say the law that I gave Moses is obsolete, is finished, don’t worry about it, you can do whatever you want. Sexually, you can cheat your brother, you can gossip against him, you could take advantage of the poor, no.

The New Testament assumes that all the word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, is given by inspiration of God and it’s good for reproof and correction and instruction. That’s what Paul says to his disciple, Timothy. So, is he right or is he wrong? If he’s right, that means that the whole word of God is important to for us.

Verse 29, do not prostitute your daughter or cause her to be a harlot, less the land fall into harlotry and the land becomes full of wickedness. It happens in many cultures. It shouldn’t happen, especially not for Christians or for disciples of Jesus Christ.

May God bless all of us dear brothers and sisters. Keep reading the word of God. There’re so much more instructions.

The last thing that I want to say, because I have gray hair and I’m an old man, I’m 76 years old, is this, verse 32 of chapter 19. You want to be holy? You shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an old man and fear your God, I am the Lord. I want to end here.

God bless all of you. Keep reading, keep studying, keep applying what is applicable to you in your life. May God bless all of you and all of us here in Jerusalem, amen.