Mishpachah Yeshua Newsletter
A Newsletter To The Family Of Jesus From Restoration Ministries
The Hebraic family is not simply an individual or private matter.
Rather, it is an institution in which the whole community has a stake.
Thus, the Hebrew word “mishpachah,” meaning family, not only refers to parents and children,
but to the whole extended family worldwide in the body of “Yeshua”—our Jesus.
[click here for a printable copy]
November 2002 Topic: Your Pilgrimage
to Heaven — Living
Consecrated to Jesus
Dear Friends,
In this letter we want to share with you
the important foundation for your pilgrimage to heaven: a holy
fear of God. Fear of God produces a life of studying and applying His
Word. Our applications yield a consecrated life that can be
recognized by our actions.
Have you ever stopped to consider how much
you think you can get away with and still make it to
heaven? On our recent seven-week trip we met too many who
consider themselves “Christian” but wallow in the
same depth of sin and depravity that the world does. Their
motives and those of the people plunging toward hell were
indistinguishable. This compromise with evil pained Sue and me
greatly.
The Bible stresses eternal consequences
for the choices we make, especially if we continue to walk in
unrepentance (see 1 John 3:6). Paul warns that some will just
make it into heaven by the narrowest of margins: “He himself will be saved, but only as one
escaping through the flames” (1Cor. 3:15b). We encountered far too many willing to chance
that they could tread in murky waters of sin and still
“just make it.” I found myself anguishing before
our Lord, “How do people who glibly use Your Name become
so calloused to You?” Later in this letter I’ll share
what He showed me.
Set Apart in Jesus
Far more encouraging, Sue and I also
encountered family in Jesus whose trust and love for our Lord
set them apart from the world. Their trust has only grown
stronger as God has isolated them from religious forms until
their relationship with their heavenly Father is so precious
that no cost is too high to pay. It’s as though, in order
to restore the Hebraic Foundations, our Lord Jesus is calling
individuals and families to spend a period of time
concentrating on their relationship with Him. He brings about
a fullness that can be accomplished only by time alone with Him
without the prop-up of religious form.
We want to encourage those of you whom our
Lord has called out of the Hellenistic church: Don’t look
back! Permit the Lord to do His work in you and your family.
Your lack of religious busyness is a good thing. “In [Christ] you were also circumcised, in
the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision
done by the hands of men but with
the circumcision done by Christ” (Col. 2:11).
Our Lord requires your undivided attention
in order to conform your mind, will, and emotions to His. In
order to accomplish this you’ll need to call out for the
help of Jesus. Humility and a contrite heart go a long way with
our Lord! Jesus wants you to know that He really is the preeminent
focus of your obedient trust and loving devotion.
If you’ve been part of the
Hellenistic church system, you need time apart with Him in
order for the two center layers of the Restoration Diagram to
become real in your life. As you and your family grow in the
supremacy of your relationship with Jesus as your chief
priority, you’ll yearn for fellowship with others who are
equally consecrated to Him. The lukewarm and those who refuse
to turn from their pet sins can’t go on with you. There
can be no fellowship between light and darkness (see 2 Cor. 6:
14-18).
“Oh, that their hearts would be
inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it
might go well with them and their children forever!”
(Deu. 5:29).
Look at the simplicity of this verse. Your
fear of God and your desire to keep His commands through His
Spirit bring His blessing for generations. What better way can
you show your love to your progeny than to help them receive
God’s blessing!
During our trip we discovered a line of
demarcation between those who lived as the world does and those
who are consecrated to our Lord. Consecrated people bear an awesome fear of God that yields an intense
desire to keep His Word. I know
that in our psychologically-bent “feel good”
Christian culture, “fear” is a bad word. However,
on the biblical faith pilgrimage that ultimately leads to
heaven, fear of God is
indispensable.
The God Who by His mere word made all
things, the God Who is holy—His requirement for all
mankind is to keep His commandments and be holy (1Pet. 1:16).
Obedient trust that results in holiness (being set apart for
His purposes) is indispensable if you are going to be welcomed
at the Judgment Throne.
In this life our Father disciplines His
children to bring us into conformity with His righteous
standards: “Our fathers
disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may
share in his holiness. No
discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on,
however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for
those who have been trained by it ... be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Heb.
12:10,11,14b).
Children love their parents, but also have
a reverent fear of them. Dad and Mom are responsible to discipline their
kids. This fear is good. Reverent fear and love are not
opposites. Reverent fear displays an awesome awareness that a
child understands the position of the parent. He or she can
then grow into learning the holy fear of God.
The hell-bound and rebellious who teach
lawlessness in the church today have destroyed the role of
parental authority and have defined God from their Hellenistic vantage
point. To the lawless, the Lord is their servant to meet all
their wants and to ward off any and all suffering. They have no fear of God, nor
are they convicted of not keeping His Word.
Fear of God is the First Step of Your
Pilgrimage
The entire Older Testament overflows with
fearing God. The problem is that many Christians today think
“we’re in an age of grace; we don’t
have to fear God any longer.” Listen! God does not
change! He didn’t suddenly set aside His awesome
righteousness between testaments. Mary, the mother of Jesus,
clearly expressed the way of God: “His
mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation” (Luke 1:50).
As the earliest church burgeoned, a common
thread marked why God prospered them: “Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and
Samaria enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and
encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord” (Acts 9:31).
The criterion of fearing God extended also
to the Gentiles: “Then Peter
began to speak: ‘I now realize how true it is that God
does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do
what is right’” (Acts
10:34,35).
Paul, too, made sure that followers of
Jesus reckoned with the awesome power of God. Fear of God
motivated him to dissuade others from disobeying Him: “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try
to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is
also plain to your conscience” (2 Cor. 5:11). My walk with Jesus began with an
eagerness to know His Word and live it out. To this day I
eagerly get up early to read the Bible and converse with my
Father. His Spirit brings clarity to what I read and opens up
rhema for His will for me for that day.
During my first year of following Jesus I
was given a prophecy about the nature of my future work on His
behalf. It came from Ezekiel 33:8,9: “When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you
will surely die,' and you do not speak out to dissuade him from
his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold
you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked
man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die
for his sin, but you will have saved yourself.” You who have been part of our ministry over the
years know that we warn as well as teach so that you
won’t fall short of what our Lord requires.
Fear of God Produces a Life in the Spirit
The biblically-mandated fear of God brings
forth a way of life with our Lord Jesus that stands apart from
those who have no fear. Fear of God yields a consecrated life. Your life is
set apart—dedicated to the service of our Lord Jesus.
Paul expresses the incompatibility of fleshly motivations with
spiritual wholeheartedness: “Those
who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature
with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let
us keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:24,25).
Your life in the Spirit is made
increasingly richer and more fruitful as your mind, will, and
emotions are circumcised of their old motives and the mind of
Christ rules. [You may need to demolish generational
strongholds that are hindering your ability to respond fully to
the freedom Jesus offers. See our workbook, Demolishing Strongholds,
for more on this.]
If the Spirit of Jesus is in you, your
life choices, your motives, and the very words you use to
express what is important to you are foreign to those who have
no fear of God. Paul tried to clarify for the Corinthians their
misunderstanding of the work of the Spirit: “We have not received the spirit of the world
but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God
has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught
us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit,
expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without
the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit
of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot
understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:12-14).
Can the impasse of the consecrated in
trying to communicate with those who feed their sin
nature be made any more plain? This is the difficulty Sue and I
experience as we interact with those who have no fear of God.
Very little of their discussion flows from studying and
applying God’s Word to their lives. While they consider
us foolish, we grieve over their delusion that analyzes
spiritual matters through worldly filters.
To Fear God is to Apply His Word
In Matthew’s account, Jesus offers
an extensive discourse on the Kingdom of God. There is
something about this Kingdom that can only be spiritually discerned. The Lord uses many parables, not to stump the
people, but to simplify the spiritual truth He wanted to convey.
Parables are not riddles. They are familiar illustrations used
to clarify a teaching. Parables enable a teacher to communicate
an otherwise abstract spiritual truth—that is, to take
the spiritual and convey it into the physical realm. Remember,
the Jews were looking for a “Messiah” to establish
an earthly kingdom. The Lord, however, knew that His Kingdom
was “not of this
world.” How to get that
across? Jesus used parables!
Kingdom living called for Christ-followers
to embrace a responsibility that only the religious leaders had
been doing for generations — applying Torah on behalf of
the people. Jesus called for this responsibility to be taken on
by all who fear God and recognize Him as Messiah. Therefore He
took His disciples to the heathen shrine of Pan at Caesarea
Philippi in northern Israel. Standing in front of a cave that
was called “The Gates of Hell”, He promised them, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom
of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven,
and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (see Matt. 16:17-20).
What are the keys of the kingdom?
Traditionally, the Hellenistic church has seen them as power
reserved for the ecclesiastical authorities. No! Under the
Newer Covenant that He was about to inaugurate, Jesus was
giving His followers halakhic authority. [See our book, Christian Halakhahs,
for more on this topic.] Earlier He had prepared them for this
when He taught, “Therefore
every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the
kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out
of his storeroom new treasures as well as old” (Matt. 13:52).
The “old treasures” are the
literal meanings of God’s commands in the Older
Testament. The “new treasures” are the
applications, that is, the halakhahs the person who understands the Kingdom
brings forth to live by. A consecrated follower of Jesus who
fears God can see throughout the Older Testament the Messiah,
the work of the Messiah, and the ultimate goal of the Kingdom
of which Jesus speaks.
Your fear of God leads you to a deeper
desire to study and apply His Word to your life. It is this
combination of both the “old” and “new”
to which the writer to the Hebrews is referring when he calls
God’s word a “double-edged sword”: “For the word
of God is living and active.
Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing
soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and
attitudes of the heart” (Heb.
4:12).
People need to see your life bearing
witness to the wisdom that has resulted from your fear of God.
When you are questioned about your trust-based lifestyle, you
can share both the halakhic application and the Scriptural
basis for your way of life. This is the way of life in the
Kingdom, and each of us in Christ has the keys to do this. Your
double-edged testimony of the Word and your application goes
deep into the lives of others with whom you share.
Applying God’s Word Produces Action
The Older Testament cascades with people
who feared God and took deliberate action that confirm their
consecrated life to God:
At first, the descendants of Levi were
chosen to be priests before God because of their biological
tribal lineage. But a time came when they were called to
consecrate themselves to God. At this point, Moses had just
returned from the mountain after the people had made a
golden calf idol to worship: “Moses
saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let
them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their
enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said,
‘Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.’ And all the Levites rallied to
him. Then he said to them, ‘This is what the Lord, the
God of Israel, says: “Each man strap a sword to his side.
Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other,
each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’”
The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the
people died. Then Moses said, "You
have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against
your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this
day” (Exo. 32:25-29).
When the Midianites sought to seduce
Israel, a certain Israelite man took a Midianite woman into his
tent. “When Phinehas son of
Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the
assembly, took a spear in his hand and followed the Israelite
into the tent. He drove the spear through both of
them—through the Israelite and into the woman's body.
Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped” (Num. 25:7,8). By responding to
God’s call for holiness, Phinehas displayed his
consecrated heart by taking action to uphold God’s holy
standard.
Through the Psalmist the Lord stressed the
importance of this consecrated act: “But Phinehas stood up and intervened, and the
plague was checked. This was credited
to him as righteousness for endless
generations to come” (Psa.
106:30,31). That man’s one act blessed his progeny for
generations to come. God does this for each one of us whose
fear of God results in consecrated action.
When we think of David and Goliath we get
excited about a young shepherd boy with a sling standing on the
battle field confronting a giant clad in armor hefting a
spear. But we need to grasp the consecrated motive of the young
shepherd who thought he was only on a mission to bring cheese
to his brothers. “David said
to the Philistine, ‘You come against me with sword and
spear and javelin, but I come
against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the
armies of Israel, whom you have defied’” (1Sam.
17:45).
A Life in Jesus is an Action-filled
Pilgrimage
Fear of God was foundational for the early
followers of Jesus. The Newer Testament cautions that a life
consecrated to Jesus must evidence trust-based
actions that reflect our Lord Jesus
to the world. People of the Spirit have no difficulty with the
exhortation of James: “You
believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe
that—and shudder... You see that a person is justified by
what he does and not by trust alone... As the body without the
spirit is dead, so trust without deeds is dead” (see James 2:14-26). Your deeds reflect
the halakhic applications that undergird your way of life in
our Lord Jesus.
Guard yourself:
NO Fear of God
+ NO Consecrated Life
+ NO Application of His Word
+ NO Trust-based deeds
= YOU’RE DEAD!
A Warning to Fairweather/Hell-bound
Retirees
Sue and I spent a considerable amount of
time with retirees on this trip. God has no problem if you stop
working when age and physical disability warrant. But you
can’t find a biblical basis for the pleasure-bent
lifestyle so many seniors have embarked on. Instead of
fulfilling their biblical responsibilities to God, to their
family and faith community, many have moved away to the
“sunbelt” to cater to recreational pursuits or
escape cold climates. How unrelational and applicationally-devoid your church experiences must have been in order
for you to move away so readily! Is the pursuit of pleasure
that abdicates responsibility what you want to role-model for
your children and grandchildren?
No one we talked with could come up with a
halakhah for abdicating responsibilities to God, family and
faith community to pursue a life of pleasure. In fact, I
challenge pastors in the “sunbelt” to come up
scripturally with justification for self-gratification. Instead
of coveting the tithe of the retirees in their congregations,
they should be prophetically challenging them to “be all the more eager to make your
calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will
never fall and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal
kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:10,11).
Like Paul, quoted earlier in Philippians 2:
12, Peter understood the importance of “pilgrimage”
as a key element in the salvation process. The Psalmist also
encouraged our understanding of this, “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who
have set their hearts on pilgrimage” (Psa. 84:5). Salvation in the early church was
understood as a pilgrimage, not as a single point in time as so many false
gospels teach today. You must live a consecrated life of action
until you die—“make
your calling and election sure.”
Those who live in fear of God evaluate
their lives in terms of what they can do to serve our Father
and bring Him praise. By applying God’s Word they are
careful not to join those the Psalmist warns about: “O Lord, by your hand save me from such
men, from men of this world whose
reward is in this life” (Psa. 17:14a). God-fearing people have prepared
themselves to be His instruments in preparing successors in the
faith: “The righteous will
flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of
Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish
in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old
age, they will stay fresh and green” (Psa. 92:12-14).
Sadly, these are too few. I don’t
foresee any change until the days of darkness come on this
nation and God chastises it. Only then will the Hebraic
Foundations be embraced and God-fearing older men take up their
rightful place of eldership.
The majority of sunbelt retirees we have
interviewed were led into a pleasure-bent lifestyle by husbands
who wanted to relive their childhood on a golf course.
Tragically, this choice often meant moving away from their
families to the sunbelt. These hell-bound men feel that the
world owes them for all the years they worked. They rationalize
that their children can make it on their own as they did. That
self-indulgent decision often creates great tension for their
wives by separating them from the grandchildren they yearn to
grandmother.
Again the Older Testament has something to
say to these family-destroying men: “They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to
them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.
They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and
daughters, whom they sacrificed” (Psa. 106:36-38). Play all the golf you can. You
won’t be playing in hell.
Just a word to you widows: You have the
potential to be the greatest blessing to your families and
others in your faith communities. Or, you bring the greatest
destruction. Much is written to you in the Bible. For example, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is
fleeting; but a woman who fears the
Lord is to be praised” (Pro. 31:30). Also consider, “Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way
they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but
to teach what is good. Then they can train
the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at
home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God” (Titus
2:3-5).
Qualified widows of the earliest church
were the first line of caring for those who could not care for
themselves. “No widow may be
put on the list of widows unless she is over sixty, has been faithful to her
husband, and is well known for her
good deeds, such as bringing up
children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the saints,
helping those in trouble and devoting
herself to all kinds of good deeds” (1 Tim. 5:9,10). This passage was the
basis for the earliest nuns of the Catholic Church who were
widows. It wasn’t until Hellenism crept in that young
virgins became nuns. This command of God for the church to care
for widows who help others is still in the Bible. Think about
this!
A warning to widows who have become
destructive role models for their families: “But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead
even while she lives” (1
Tim. 5:6). We have received so many calls and letters from
families devastated by self-indulgent widowed mothers and
mothers-in-law. It has become so epidemic that I said rashly a
few months ago, “Getting rid of self-indulgent widows
could save a lot of marriages!” Ask your family for
feedback if this situation is occurring in your midst.
For all you who have retired from your
biblical responsibilities: A time of chastisement is coming
upon this nation. I only know that “the
children of today will not become grandparents before the
‘days of darkness’ come.” Some of you may share the mindset of King Hezekiah.
The prophet warned him that all he owned and even his sons
would be carried away to exile. “The
word of the Lord you have spoken is good," Hezekiah
replied. For he thought, ‘Will there not be peace and
security in my lifetime?’” (2
Kings 20:19).
You may be thinking, “So
chastisement will come on my descendants for my sins. At least
I won’t have to suffer.” Just remember: There is a
Judgment Throne. Are you excusing both your own disobedience as
well as that of your children and grandchildren by
rationalizing, “My generation messed around and we came
out OK.” Do you really want them to suffer the self-loathing and shame
that come when no alarm has been sounded?
Please, I exhort you, if you have taken
the idolatrous path of self-indulgence, repent and ask Jesus to
help you fulfill all of your service to Him. Don’t ignore
your family responsibility. You’re being seduced into a
path to hell and you are bringing the generations behind you
with you.
Some suggestions for you to consider:
• Use your time to establish the
halakhahs for your family that you failed to do before. Help
younger people in your faith community to establish their own.
• Volunteer weekly in a nursing home.
• Find parents who need a
grandparent-person in their children’s lives.
• Join with other men in your faith
community and establish biblical halakhahs pertaining to
seniors.
• Solicit problem situations from
your faith community family and research pertinent biblical
applications.
If You Haven’t Retired
Ask God for a holy fear of Him. Get into
your Bible and start establishing halakhahs for you and your
family. Some of you are the people Paul warned Timothy about in
2 Tim. 3:1-5. Repent of motives and goals that parallel this
world’s. Instead, seek to live a holy life. Don’t
make the Stock Market or your bank account your idol.
Don’t let yourself entertain a pleasure-bent goal for your
senior years. Now is the time to prepare yourself to be the zaken, the biblical
elder, who has achieved the pinnacle of his life. After the
time of chastisement on this nation our Lord will rebuild His
Church. Why don’t you begin now to prepare yourself to be
one He can use? Permit God to bless your progeny through the
righteous actions you take. [See our book Pastoring by Elders for
more on how to prepare yourself.]
If you consecrate yourself to the Lord
Jesus, you will lose some friends initially. But, Oh! the
fellowship both with God and with others that you gain! It is
this special intimate relationship your soul has always longed
for. Only consecrating yourself in holy fear can ever fill the
hollow spot in your inner being. We leave you with this
encouragement: “Come near to
God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners,
and purify your hearts” (James
4:8a).
Our love and understanding of the cost,
Mike & Sue
Sue and I have been doing research on
compulsory public education in this country. It made us sick to
study the motives of those who introduced government-sponsored
public education to make it a state prerogative. In essence,
the real goal behind government-controlled public education is
to produce a godless society that makes the state more
important than the parents in the life of the child. It boils
down to a pitched battle of the State vs. fathers.
What was frightening is that public
education in this country has its roots in Plato. His influence
is more pervasive and more demonically inspired than anyone can
imagine. The child of Plato, Hellenism, is the dominant pattern
of thought and practice for both church and education in this
nation. Sue and I are in the process of writing our next book.
Part of our writings will reveal more about this insidious plan
to remove children from the biblical influence of their
parents, in particular, their fathers. We will also undergird
the importance for communally-based home schooling within home
fellowships.
Please keep in mind this important point:
The ultimate goal of public education is to produce a godless
society in which the state is preeminent. Some of the secret
organizations we discovered that have been bringing this about
for decades made our research even more frightening. It’s
no small thing to realize that hell is contained in Hellenism!
