Category: Understanding Torah

I have chickens. They are not my chickens. They belong to the neighbor. He already had chickens in a chicken coop. Now he has ten more chickens. They are not in the chicken coop. They are in my yard. My flowers. Digging holes in the yard and around the foundation of the house. Pooping on the porch. Hanging out.

I tried playing red-tail hawk sounds really loud. I tried taking watermelon rinds and veggie scraps over to their property, but they still lurk in the shady spots and follow me around every time I go outside to work. They just stick around.

It took me a whole day to lay chicken wire under the flower bed mulch to keep them from destroying my carefully designed and freshly-planted flower beds.

We let the neighbor know, but so far, we still have sticken’ chickens.

I even told them the story of when Billie Idol went missing, but while they enjoyed story time, they don’t connect Billie’s demise to their current situation.

Chickens are like that.

When I was four years old, my first pet was a chicken named Slicker.

Grandma’s cat Fuchsia ate it.

I didn’t connect a cat to Slicker’s current situation.

I was telling a good friend about our sticken’ chickens yesterday, and we were chatting about the danger of Moses’ forty days of absence on the mountain. The Israelites and mixed multitude pretty much gave up on his return. In spite of every miracle they’d seen, they couldn’t wait forty full days for the next one. Not only that, they started breaking the Big Ten. An idol. Sexual immorality. You know the story. They’d been delivered from slavery in Egypt; they’d been immersed as a congregation in the Reed Sea; they’d witnessed the glory of Adonai and agreed to His covenant at the mountain…and yet, they had sticken’ chickens from Egypt. They went right back to feeding slavery to sin.

“For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea; and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea…” (1 Co 10:1-2)

The tunnel of the Reed Sea was like a birth canal. Immersion has always been a symbol of a resurrection that is more than symbolic. On the Third Day of Creation was a birth of life from the water to fruit trees. On the dawn of the Seventh Day of Passover, the Israelites completed a supernaturally fast, effortless journey through the Reed Sea.

Likewise, immersion (mikveh) is undertaken as a rebirth. The pattern is this:

• Water represents spirit (as does fire)

• The earth is the substance of mankind, adam

• When YHVH turns the sea into dry land as a way of escape, that which was spirit became substance/flesh in order to provide a new beginning for Israel/mankind, a resurrection from the sin decay of mere earth to earthly life with the spirit, a promise of wholeness and perfections completed from above

• New life follows a mikveh in Messiah, the Great Hand of YHVH.

This is the mystical picture of the Reed Sea. When YHVH turned the sea into dry land, he figuratively resurrected the Israelites. When the natural body dies, it returns to the earth. In Messiah Yeshua, the bared arm of YHVH, mankind is resurrected from earth through water.

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.” (Ro 6:1-7)

When we turn back to sin, we’re not quite dead enough.

Few who entered the Reed Sea mikveh entered as newborns in physical age; Israelites and the mixed multitude entered in various stages of aging. In that sense, we understand why a mikveh symbolizes rebirth, yet it is available to all ages for their various reasons.

Regardless of the age entering it, emerging from the mikveh is a re-set upon emerging. Immersion is a type of resurrection, especially as the water becomes the “dry land” of burial. It is a fresh start for a newborn who has yet to choose sin.

Purities of obedience begin in the home…

“There are seven dwelling places listed in the Seder Gan Eden, and in each there is a righteous woman who teaches the Torah: Batyah, daughter of Pharaoh, Yocheved, mother of Moses, Miriam, sister of Moses, Huldah the Prophetess, Abigail, David’s wife, and beyond this point, the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.” In one source, those who enter Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden) go through four transformations through their learning experience. Upon entry, the righteous individual is changed into a child and tastes the joys of childhood (Raphael, p. 187)… “When the Torah was first given, it was taught to the women first. It is written, ‘Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob’ – the women – ‘and tell the sons of Israel’ (Ex 19:3).” (Kaplan, p. 59)

Whether literal or not, the principle is that purity and obedience are first learned in the home, the domain of the mother: “My son, observe the commandment [mitzvah] of your father, and do not forsake the teaching [torah] of your mother.” (Pr 6:20)

Yeshua reiterated how important childhood is in entering the Kingdom without a habit of sin, without the pride of rebellion against the Word.

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 18:1-4)

The humble child is like a slave, not yet inheriting, yet he/she already has everything. Children of every age are equal, yet honor and responsibility according to growth age.

There is no least or greatest in that sense. All are children. All begin as little children and need time to experience spiritual childhood because of its pure joy and lack of responsibility. Just because a child is precocious doesn’t mean he/she is ready for the keys to the Kingdom.

The Hokey Pokey of Eden

Yeshua said, “Unless you be “converted” and become like children…”

?????? stréph?; to twist, i.e. turn quite around or reverse (literally or figuratively):—convert, turn (again, back again, self, self about).

“Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything…”(Ga 4:1)

Immersion into Messiah Yeshua mimics this growth principle, re-setting to childhood for a new cycle, preparing the child to inherit the Kingdom. No getting around it! What the child must not do is mistake himself or herself for the slave who has no inheritance! A slave inherits nothing! A slave has Egyptian sticken’ chickens of sin. A child, though awaiting and learning in the Father’s house, will inherit the estate. The child does not serve because of his past, but because of his future.

A child who hangs around slaves, however, may believe he is a slave. He may begin to mimic sins that are not his mother’s training for the inheritance of their father…and Father.

This principle is so elementary to our faith. We must mature in our faith, learning to be holy on earth because He is holy in Heaven, our inheritance. Through repentance and conversion, constantly turning around to live innocently according to the “new man” that was immersed in Messiah, we can mature in the Word to inherit the Kingdom:

“Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. And this we will do, if God permits. For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.” (He 6:1-8)

That’s horrible. Our continued sin crucifies and shames Yeshua again! It is as if we are among those screaming, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” It is as if we whipped Yeshua, spit on him, and drove the nails into his hands and feet. We are false witnesses, for while in one breath we speak of Messiah Yeshua, in the next breath we sin as if Yeshua is dead. If he is alive, we are his little children, learning, repenting, correcting, and trusting Yeshua the Living Word is alive in us. If we practice sin, we proclaim the death of Messiah, but not his resurrection.

If we don’t believe Messiah Yeshua is dead, then we need to cease dead works.

Dead works, too, are a testimony, not of Messiah Yeshua’s life, but of his death.

Let the world see the life of Yeshua in us resurrect us to increasing pure, holy, and faithful works when we trip over sticken’ chickens and fall. We can do the hokey pokey and turn ourselves around, but we must make the connection to our current situation.

Although I have sticken’ chickens during the day, at night, they go home to roost. Ultimately, that’s what sin does. It returns to the one who provides it a resting place. Those kinds of chickens should find no place to rest or roost in a believer. Yeshua lives. Let the little child arise from the waters of immersion, no matter what our age. Children were Yeshua’s greatest fans, and he always welcomed them with open arms, no matter how busy he was healing, teaching, and delivering the grownups.

How does water relate to the resurrection of the whole spirit, soul, and physical body? When we make transgressions, the spirit of grace offers a path of reconciliation with our Father, our King. If we sincerely repent and immerse, we come up a new creation, a new child. Forget the Fountain of Youth-this water is WAY better! It is a fountain of youth with an eternal inheritance!

As we wait for Yeshua’s return, let us not grow weary of waiting or become vulnerable to Egypt’s sticken’ chickens. An inheritance awaits.

“For we will surely die and are like water spilled on the ground which cannot be gathered up again. Yet God does not take away life but plans ways so that the banished one will not be cast out from him.” (Wise Woman of Tekoa in 2 Sa 14:14)