Terumah – Torah with Joseph

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

Shalom, my name is Joseph Shulam. And we are again, together with Brad TV, going to study the portion of the week from the Law of Moses that is being read in every synagogue, and in many messianic synagogues around the world, as well. And this portion is called, “Contribution, Offering.” It starts from chapter 25 verse one in the Book of Exodus, and finishes in chapter 27, verse 19 in the Book of Exodus.

It starts like this:

Right there, you’ve got the opening statement, verse one and two of chapter 25 of this Torah portion. That’s extremely important. Why is it important? Because in the Law of Moses we have what is called the tithe of the Levites, giving 10 percent of your crops, of your income, of your wealth, to the Levites that serve you in the tabernacle of God.

Ten Percent Is Not Required

But here it’s not just an offering, it’s not a tithe, it’s an offering that is different than the tithe. It’s an offering that is based on two elements. Willingness and being from your heart, as you have purposed in your heart. And this is what we have in the New Testament. In the New Testament, we don’t have an obligation of tithing 10%.

You can give whatever percentage you want. You wanna give 3% or 10% or 20% or 30% of your income? That’s up to you. But it has to be done willingly and from your heart, not obligatorily. The tithe of the Levites, for the Levite, was obligatory. If you didn’t give it, God was angry with you. We see that in Malachai. We see it in Haggai.

In the prophets. Yes, God would be angry if you did not give your 10% to the Levites for their service, because they didn’t get land in the land of Israel. In the Promised Land that God promised Abraham, the Levite didn’t get land. God was their portion. And because of that, everybody that got land owed it to the Levites to give them 10% of their crops, of their wealth.

I’m a Levite. Yeah, but I’m not asking you to give me 10% of your wealth. If we had a temple in Jerusalem and the real priest and the Levites were serving in the temple, then you would have to give it to the temple and that would be according to the Law of Moses.

But it’s not according to the Law of Moses to tell people, Christians, to give a tithe. That’s strictly given to the Levites for the people from the tribe of Levi that served in the temple of the Lord. What we have in the New Testament is exactly what we have in this portion. It is above and beyond the tithes. “Give me your offering,” God says, “and it has to be willingly and from your heart.”

Offer Must Be Given Willingly

If you read in 1 Corinthians 16, when Paul writes to the church in Corinth, and says, “I want you to... On the first day of the week when you gather together, each one to bring his offering as he has purposed in his heart.” Based on this text here in Exodus 25, as he has purposed in his heart. The same thing is in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. It is the law of sowing and reaping, not the law of tithing. It’s has to be done willingly, free-willingly, and from the heart.

Then God accepts your offering and then you get blessed for the offering that you have given to God from your heart, by faith, out of faithfulness. And then we have a long list of what you’re going to give to the Lord. From gold and from silver and from copper and from purple and from silk and from skins of animals, and all kinds of things. Why? They were in the wilderness and they didn’t have dollars and English pounds and Swiss francs and South African golden rands. Yeah?

Money didn’t exist in that world. It was a world of bartering. And therefore what they were asked to bring was things that would serve in the building of the tabernacle of the Lord. That is not the tithe, that’s the freewill offering for the building of the tabernacle of the Lord. That in itself is very interesting and very important, but I’m not gonna dwell on this, but I’m going to go jump to verse eight of chapter 25, which is essentially the paradigm of the Hebrew, Hebrew means also Jewish, concept of a temple, which is a very different concept than that of the pagans, all around the world, and even today, in many churches.

Pagans Say God Dwells in Temple

The concept of the pagan temple is that the temple is where God dwells. The house of the Lord, the house of God, where God dwells. There’s a statue in the Holy of Holies and the statue of the god is there, the idol is there, and you’re worshiping God. You have to clean him up. You have to brush him up. You have to feed him. You have to provide for him. That’s the pagan concept. It’s not the Hebrew concept.

It’s not the biblical concept. It’s not the concept of the temple in Jerusalem. It’s not the concept of a tabernacle. Because let me read to you what this text in verse eight says. “Let them make me a sanctuary that I will dwell inside of them, among them, not in the sanctuary.” Yeah, the sanctuary is only a symbol. It’s only a tool. It’s not holy in the sense that God Himself dwells there. No. God’s presence is there above it. There is no statue in the temple in Jerusalem. There is no statue in the tabernacle. There is only the Ark of the Covenant. It has the tablets of the Law that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai and the jar of the manna that they ate in the wilderness, and the staff that Moses used, Moses and Aaron used, in the wilderness, in Egypt, to bring down the plagues over Egypt.

God Dwells Within Us

They probably had to cut it in pieces and fold it up so that it would fit inside the Ark. The Ark was not that big. So there you are. “Make me a tabernacle so I will dwell inside of them.” That’s literally what the Hebrew says, and that’s literally what the New Testament holds. And that’s literally what Jeremiah the Prophet in chapter 31 says. “I will write my law in their hearts inside of them.” So that’s the basis of contribution that we get in the New Testament. Let them lay aside, put money in the box, in storage, 1 Corinthians 16:1-2. So that when I come, I don’t have to chase them to collect from them, but it will be already in the box for me to collect.

And Paul makes the collection and brings it to Jerusalem in chapter 24 of the Book of Acts. And in verse 17, he tells us what he did with the collection. He gave it to his nation in the temple. That’s also a very interesting issue. We have to talk about it later. But okay, the collection is for building the tabernacle. And the things that you can contribute are things that are going to be used in the building of the tabernacle. Now what is the essence?

Why Is Jerusalem Temple Unique?

What’s the difference between the tabernacle and the temple in Jerusalem that Solomon built later, and the pagan temples? Here’s Solomon many years later, probably a couple of hundred years plus, is building a temple in Jerusalem, a temple that his father, King David, envisioned and wanted to build and God forbade him to build. So he built the temple and now he’s dedicating the temple. Big celebration. Huge celebration. The Levites and the priests and hundreds of sacrifices, and the people are gathered there in the courtyard of the temple.

And the wealth of Solomon is in the temple with gold, with silver, with artwork. Magnificent, not very big, but magnificent. And this is what Solomon himself says in the dedication of the temple. Chapter eight of 1 Kings, verse 27.

That’s the difference between a pagan temple, pagan worship, and the worship of Israel. The temple is only a box and only a tool. It gives the people of Israel a sense of belonging to God and a sense of participating with God.

But it’s very different than the pagan temples of all the nations around us. Solomon says, “No, this is not the house where God dwells. It’s a tool. But God, the whole earth and the heavens of the heavens cannot contain you.” Now in the New Testament, we have a similar paradigm. We have a similar paradigm in Acts 17 where Paul is in Athens in the paragon of idolatry in the ancient world, up on the Acropolis in Athens, the temples of the Greek gods, magnificent buildings, beautiful buildings.

And he’s just little bit below in the courthouse, been caught in the marketplace just below the courthouse, and brought to court accused of blasphemy of the Greek gods. And in Acts 17, Paul says, “Hey folks, don’t think, I’m talking about a god that you worship.” “We don’t know who you worship as the god ‘that is impossible to know.’” “The ‘unknown god’ doesn’t mean that he’s unknown, it means that it’s unknowable.”

“You cannot know him, even if you try.” “Because the God who created the heavens and the earth and everything on the earth, from the mosquito to the hippopotamus, to the whale in the sea, to the salmon that swims up the river to lay its eggs, to the human being with all of his colors and with all of his characters, that God doesn’t dwell in buildings made by hands, by human hands.”

God Doesn’t Need You

That’s what Paul says, the same thing that Solomon said. That God doesn’t need you. You need Him. He has survived eons and eons before He created the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon and the stars in our galaxy. Yes, folks, this concept is from the Old Testament all the way to the New Testament. And what can I say?

Most of the Christian world has forgotten it. The inheritance of the Christian world and the Protestant world has inherited, has inherited what came from the church fathers who were essentially pagans in the Church in Rome.

And from the Church in Rome, the Protestant Reformation did not change the paradigm on which Roman Christianity was based. But if we read the Bible from the Torah all the way to the New Testament, we see the continuation of the faith in the God who is the father of all mankind, who created everything in the world.

And yes, we need a temple. We need a temple because we don’t want to feel neglected when all of our neighbors have temples. But the temple that God allowed, the tabernacle, and then the temple of Solomon that God allowed the children of Israel to build, was only a tool.

A tool, an address, a location within the framework of time in which people can fulfill their needs, not God’s needs. In which Israel could fulfill their needs and feel that they are no different than the rest of the world. And that they have a house, an address that they can go to and ask God and give to God and pray to God and praise God. It’s to accommodate us and our needs, not God’s needs. That’s Paul’s sermon on the Areopagus in Athens, Acts 17.

All Israel Involved in Building of the Tabernacle

That’s Solomon’s sermon when he dedicated the temple in Jerusalem for the first time. Our portion of the reading spends a lot of time in all the elements, all the needs, all the structure of the tabernacle in the wilderness that Moses and Aaron and the people of Israel built. And the interesting thing about that tabernacle is that every single individual Israelite from every tribe had a part in the building of the tabernacle, had an obligatory part, and had a voluntary part in the building of this tabernacle.

So when people looked at the tabernacle, they said, “Oh, that’s mine. “I have a part in it. “I gave this gold that made the lamp. “I gave the silver that made the foot of where the pillars that hold the temple together stand.” “I gave the wood for making the Ark.” “I gave the skin to make the roof.” “I gave the silk and the purple for the clothing of the priests. Hallelujah.” “I gave the precious stones for the breastplate of Aaron.”

So this aspect is very important, but I miss it in my visits to churches all around the world, folks. I miss it because I know very few people that feel that they have ownership, physical ownership, in what they built in their church buildings and in their faith and in their teaching and in their daily life.

And somehow our brothers and sisters around the world have gotta recapture this feeling, this attitude, that, “This is my place. I have a part in this place.” With most church buildings, the money came from, a little bit of money came from the people, most of the money came from some rich moguls who gave the millions for the church building.

We're in Partnership With God

Yes, we have a part. We’re in partnership with God from A to Z, my dear friends and brothers. We’re in partnership with God in everything that we have as a community and everything that we have as a building and everything that we have as a ministry and everything that we have in missions.

We’re in partnership. It’s not all the denomination, and we are just observers. No, we have to be participants and we have to feel and know that ownership. That’s the key to having a healthy community of disciples of Yeshua, of the Messiah. And in the Law of Moses, this portion of the week is actually the key to the participation and the partnership of every family and every individual in God’s doing, in God’s action, in God’s presence among us.

That feeling that we are partners with the Almighty God, not just sitting on the side and watching from outside. No. We need to develop it. And this Torah portion actually teaches us how to do it by taking the earrings of the wives of the Israelites which is not easy, Jewish women are not, Hebrew women were not, so simple to deal with.

Still today, they’re not so simple to deal with. Just like the Korean women and the Chinese women and the Japanese women and women all around the world. It’s not easy for a woman to take out her gold earrings and contribute in the basket for the building of a building or for sending out a missionary. I’ve seen it done. Here in our congregation, I’ve seen it done. Not very often, but I’ve seen it done.

But that gives us the feeling that we are in cahoots, in partnership, with the Almighty God. And this is what this portion is all about. God’s presence in the camp, in the tent, that was the result of everybody in Israel, young and old, male and female, slave or free, that had a part in this tabernacle. And something that we need to learn from.

And I don’t know exactly how to capture it and implement it in the churches today, and even in messianic synagogues, but it’s something that I’m excited about learning what they did then. And I’m praying for revelation of how to implement it in our own ministry and congregation here in Jerusalem and in Brazil, and in Bulgaria, and in Finland, and in other countries in the world.

May God bless all of you. Keep praying for us, for Netivyah, and for Israel. We are the only nation that is threatened with extinction in 100 years more than once. It was the Germans, the Nazis, and now the Iranians who are threatening to wipe us off the map. We need your prayers. We need your support. God bless all of you.