Tag Archives: Ancient Hebrew

Hey! What Are You Wearing?

20 Monday Jun 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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It’s a new week and I am continuing my study of Isaiah 45:7, specifically the phrase “I make peace.”  I am continuing to look at the Hebrew word asah translated “make” in this passage and, this week, am looking at the third letter comprising asah: the Hey (or Hei or Heh).

Robert Haralick defines Hey as “Power of Being”.  I had to take a moment to think on that because I was once more convinced the ministry of the Holy Spirit was being revealed to me.  I thought about Genesis where God asahs man.  The Ayin revealed the eyes of God focused on His making as well as His being the source of our life.  The Shin revealed the fire that God is inhabiting us and I also pictured that fire like the heat of a kiln, finishing and preparing us.  Now, in Hey, I see He is our Power of Being. The Living Word says, “the shape behind the Hey is of a mouth, breathing, breath”.  God breathed into the nostrils of the man He had made and that man became a living being.  Jesus breathed on His disciples and bade them receive the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit descended on those gathered on the Day of Pentecost as a rushing wind from heaven.  The Spirit is the wind from the heavenly realm, the very breath of Jesus within us: He is our Power of Being.

But, such are concepts I’ve already written about.  I was curious what more I could discover in studying the Hey.  The Shivimpanin video told me Hey represents a unification of giving and receiving as well as completeness for the three lines of Hey represent length, depth, and breadth.  Mr. Haralick shares a similar thought: “The shape of the letter Hey is composed of three lines, one separated from the other two.  The three lines are the three garments, the means of expression, of the soul.  The garments are thought, speech, and action.”  In his entry on the Hey, Mr. Haralick also writes; “The garments of our expression are thoughts, words, and actions.  That which is not manifest we bring into our awareness and our consciousness by our thoughts.  By words and actions we can bring what is in our thoughts to the awareness of others.”

I have been thinking a great deal on garments.  One of my Bible Teachers tells a story of attending a convention where one of the speakers, an Evangelist, took a handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his hand with it.  He likened Jesus to the handkerchief, the covering that hides us from the eyes of the Father and thus Jesus manages sneak us into the Kingdom.  I haven’t heard these exact words myself nor seen this image taught but, with them in mind, I have carefully listened to other believers as they speak.  I hear them speak of being saved but insist they are still flawed human beings and sinners or I hear something like: “God doesn’t see our sins because He sees us through His Son.”  Just this morning I was reading a devotional that said, “One day I’ll stand before a holy God and the grace of Jesus will clothe me.”  I listen to what others say or I read something like that and, while I cannot say I necessarily disagree, there is enough there to give me pause.  I cannot say I agree without more of an explanation of what they mean.

In all my listening, I have found there is very little believers are expecting from their Christian lives.  It seems it is enough to believe in Jesus and get to go to heaven when they die.  While they are waiting to die and go to heaven, they fill their lives with good works and try to be like Jesus and try to convince others to believe on Him so they too can escape hell.  After all, doesn’t Revelation 19 say the Bride of Christ is given fine linen to wear, clean and white, and that the fine linen is the righteousness of saints (verses 7-8)?  That’s the translation in the King James version.  Other translations say “the righteous acts of the saints”.  Doesn’t the Book of James say “faith without works is dead” so we thus prove we are the people of God with our works and, by performing righteous acts, ensure we won’t be found naked when He comes?

This is not the sum of my Christian life.  I expect I now live a life in and flowing out of the Holy Spirit and I do not have this expectation in vain.  I expect that God is faithful to His word and that what He has promised, He will do.  I expect He told the truth in Ezekiel 36 when He promised to give me a new heart and a new spirit and then promised He will put His spirit in me.  I expect the Apostle Peter told the truth when he declared Joel’s prophecy fulfilled and the Spirit of God poured out on all flesh.  I expect God’s word is true and that I know His Spirit is in me because His Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God.  I expect that because His Spirit is in me that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.  I expect that His Spirit in me makes the great work of the blood of Jesus a reality in my life and that His blood has cleansed me from all sin. 

I expect the life I now live I live by the faith of Jesus Christ.  I expect that His blood cleanses my conscience of dead works.  I expect works to prove my faith is alive because it is His faith, His works, and He is in me working both to will and to do.  I expect that because His Spirit is in me, I will do good works which God has before ordained that I should walk in.  I expect His Spirit in me keeps me abiding in Him and Him in me so that my life cannot help but bear fruit.  I expect that it is Christ IN me that is my hope of glory, not Christ ON me.

I expect that all of this is happening right now because the Spirit is renewing my mind.  In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul beseeches us to “be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (12:2).  The Greek word translated “renewing” in this passage is anakainosis (G342) and means “renovation-renewing”.  Paul also beseeches us to “be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4:23).  The Greek word translated “renewed” here is ananeoo (G365) and also has the meaning of “to renovate, reform, renew”.   

I expect the word of God to be true and I thank God that through Jesus Christ I am right this minute being delivered from my body of death!  Right now, because I am in Christ Jesus, I am a new creation.  Behold!  Old things have passed away and all things have become new.  The letter Hey is spelled Hey Aleph and means Lo!, or Behold!, or Here it is!  The letter Hey means Spirit, Revelation, and Receiving Understanding.  This changes how I pray Paul’s great prayer in Ephesians.  “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints…” (1:17-18). 

His Spirit, that Spirit that is wisdom and revelation and the Jesus Christ-life energy working in me to open my eyes, is in me right this moment.  Because that is true, I no longer worry so much about where I’m going when I die but what I am becoming right now.  Becoming isn’t even the correct word.  His Spirit renovates me, renews me, and restores me to His original plan revealed in Jesus.  God foreknew me before my parents ever came together and, because He foreknew me; He has predestined me to be conformed to the image of His Son.  This transformation and conformation happens first in my thoughts and I thank Him that in His gentleness, He doesn’t destroy me and then build me again.  I am transformed from glory to glory.  My death is swallowed up in His life. 

Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he”.  I look at the letter Hey and see this is true: my very thoughts are my garments.  The goodness of God leads me to metanoia and, as I exchange my mind for His and my thoughts for His, my garments become His righteousness.  I do not fear I will be found naked when He comes because my garments cannot be separated from me.  They are His very life.  “It doth not yet appear what we shall be but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

Hey!  Lo!  Behold!  Here it is!  Hallelujah!

Note: For ease of reading, I did not reference every scripture I’ve quoted but everything I wrote about what I expect is found in scripture.  I encourage everyone to look these promises up for yourselves and EXPECT!

Unless noted otherwise, all scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible Old and New Testaments, The Authorized King James Version, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Printed in Colombia, 2003

References

HEI- Secrets of the Hebrew Letters – YouTube

Secret of the Hebrew letter Heh – YouTube

Haralick, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995, Pages 69-83

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

A Matter of Perspective

28 Monday Mar 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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There is a moment in all of my studies where I come to a realization that I don’t know anything at all and, in fact-borrowing from that great sage Yoda-I must unlearn what I have learned.  As I have come to know this great Father revealed in Jesus, to actually know Him personally via His Spirit living in me, to know him not as a second-hand or merely intellectual knowing; I have discovered that what I have been taught to believe about Him is not true.  Not only do I discover God Himself to be very different than what I’ve been taught but I find great many other things I’ve been taught to believe do not, in fact, have their foundation in the bedrock of Jesus Christ. 

Moving from an intellectual knowledge and study of God, as if He’s an object to be studied like one of my school day science experiments, to a vital relationship with the Living God is terrifying.  There was a moment, years ago, when the God revealing Himself to me and the image of the god I’d been taught to know came face to face with each other.  The false image was burned away by the vitality of He who is Alive Forevermore (Revelation 1:18) and I could feel Him moving from my head to my heart.  I know, it sounds odd but it was a real experience.  At once, I felt as if I was dying and being made alive.  It was again, at once, a terrifying and electrifying experience. 

I do try not to be negative in these blog posts but I do have to say the god I’d come to know in religious institutions was utterly destroyed by the consuming fire God is.  This is not a pleasant experience in many ways.  There were Christian friends who were genuinely concerned that, if I continued down the path I was being shown, I would lose my salvation and end up spending eternity in hell.  These are subjects for another time.  For the sake of this post, I want to say to anyone having an experience like this, God is faithful.  The Shepherd isn’t going to let any of His sheep be consumed in the wilderness.  I had to cling to a handful of scriptures while my world was shaken to bits and stripped to the bedrock of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  One is Isaiah 41:10; “Fear not for I am with you; be not dismayed for I am your God.  I will strengthen you.  Yes, I will help you.  I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”  I also clung to the various passages in Psalms which promised God wouldn’t allow me to fall, that He wouldn’t lose His grip on me, etc.  I pictured myself held tightly in His hand and submitted to whatever the Holy Spirit thought was necessary. 

Which is not at all what I’d intended to say in this week’s post!  Perhaps all of that relates to my study of Isaiah 45:7 because I continue to come to places where I feel cast adrift.  I see that I believe something I didn’t even know I believed and I see that belief is-rather than “wrong” should I say “mistaken”?-that scriptures aren’t saying what I’ve been taught to believe they say and that I don’t know anything.  I am no longer afraid of these places of not knowing because I know I am held fast in the righteous right hand of the Father who loves me and that His Spirit will open my eyes to the Truth.  I also anticipate because my Heavenly Father loves surprises and I know there will be a Wow! moment.

That moment came when I looked up the meanings of the Hebrew letters comprising my study word darkness.  The Hebrew word is choshek (H2822) and the three Hebrew letters are Chet (ח), Shin (ש), and Caph [in its final form (ך)].  Mr. Haralick’s book The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters defines the three letters as Chet = Life, Shin = Cosmic Nourishment, and Caph = The Crowning Achievement.  I had just finished looking up the definition for darkness in the Strong’s Concordance and read through the various scriptures and was still wrestling with my thinking of the darkness as something bad.  These meanings made me sit back in my chair and think, “Wow!” Not only was there nothing bad here but these letters comprising my study word darkness actually contained the word life.  I couldn’t believe it.  I needed verification.

I have another book on the meaning of Hebrew letters titled Hebrew Word Study: Beyond the Lexicon by Chaim Bentorah.  I looked up the three Hebrew letters and was fascinated by what I found.  Mr. Bentorah’s book defines Chet as “new beginnings” and “the binding together of man with God”.  The entry for the word Shin says, “The word Shin (note: the Hebrew letters themselves are spelled with Hebrew letters so there are meanings within meanings) means urine and if you drop the Yod in Shin you have Sen which means to chew, tooth, or jaw.  This tells us that the Shin represents a totality of an overall process from eating, to digestion, to the elimination of waste.  Thus, the Shin has the meaning of whole, entire, intact, or complete.”  I looked up Caph (or Kap in Mr. Bentorah’s book) and found: “The Kap is shaped like a container that is empty and ready to be filled…this is the word for palm, hollow of hand, a pan, dish or a container.”  This might make more sense when you see that my study word uses the final form of Caph and that the regular form of the letter is shaped like a backwards/sideways U:  כ.

I am such a beginner in my studies of Hebrew and Greek that using the word beginner gives me too much credit.  I always verify because the final forms of letters can look like the normal/regular forms of other letters and want to be sure I am looking at the correct letter.  The internet is extremely helpful and, while verifying, I found two more sources that helped to further define these letters.  The website alittleperspective.com defined Chet as “the wall, thus outside, divide, half”, Shin as “two front teeth, thus sharp, press, eat, two, again”, and Caph (spelled kaph) as “the open palm, thus bend, open, allow, tame”.  I found a YouTube channel for studying Hebrew words called Rock Island Books and they defined Chet as “sanctuary or inner room designed to protect, a place of refuge, or a place of separation, cut off”, Shin as “crushed, pressed down, destroyed”, and Caph as “palm of the hand which either covers or uncovers.” 

All four of my sources allow for both a positive or negative interpretation of darkness.  Mr. Haralick writes of our lives being the manifestation of our thoughts and those thoughts either coming from the human mind or the divine mind.  Mr. Bentorah speaks of a shadow meaning to Chet where that life of being bonded to God can turn to arrogance and rudeness or an addiction to newness.  Both internet sources speak of Chet as being a place of protection, an inner sanctuary, or place of refuge but it can also be a place of being cut off like a prison.  The same holds true for Shin and Caph as well.  Which is true?  Is Darkness positive or negative?  Good or bad?

I think it’s a matter of perspective.  Both darkness and light exist simultaneously in our present lives.  This is true on a natural plane where one side of the earth experiences night while the other experiences day and this is equally true on the spiritual plane.  The entire world lies in darkness.  We believers once walked in darkness and there are a host of ideas, thought processes, and identities associated with the darkness.  When our eyes are opened to the light that is Jesus Christ and we enter that light, we are confronted with an entirely different set of ideas, thought process, and identity.  His light shines in our darkness, our death is swallowed up in His life, and we are transformed through the renewing of our minds.  The process doesn’t always feel good: remember the chewing, crushing, destruction of Shin but also remember that Shin means whole, entire, intact, and complete.

“Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you” (1 Peter 4:12).  “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifest in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).  “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).  “But he knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).

What a hope we have!  Truly, in Jesus, God our Father has given us treasures of darkness.  And, I thank Him that this purging and processing and transforming takes place in His sanctuary, a place hidden from the eyes of those who do not see and cannot understand.  He keeps us safe.  He is our covering as He fills us with Himself.  We are filled to overflowing until “as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17) and we too shine His light into the darkness.

Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all scriptures are quoted from The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Bentorah, Chaim, Hebrew Word Study Beyond the Lexicon, Trafford Publishing, 2014, Pages 92, 108, 148

Haralick, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995, Pages 113, 161, 293

choshek, “darkness,” strong’s H2822 (alittleperspective.com)

(2) “Darkness” in ancient Hebrew! (Part I) – YouTube

I Can’t See Clearly

21 Monday Mar 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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I have great fun studying the Bible.  I never know what I’m going to learn and yet I always know I’m going to learn something new about the Father revealed in Jesus.  It’s an adventure every time.  Which doesn’t mean it’s easy.  I will start studies and find I’m utterly confused.  It is difficult to come to a study without preconceived notions about what the study passage means.  I have a background where I’ve experienced different denominations and each one has left behind echoes of its belief systems. I read commentaries and expositions on the passages I study that tell me these passages mean one thing and then, through conducting my own studies, I find these passages mean the exact opposite.

I have already mentioned reading interpretations of Isaiah 45:7 where I’m told God is saying he “permits” or “allows” darkness.  The Hebrew word there is “create” and is translated such in other passages.  That God says He creates darkness was not easy to understand once I discovered I came to this passage with a bone deep conviction that the light is good and the darkness is bad.  I wasn’t aware I felt this way until I was deep into the study and analyzing just what it was I already believed compared to what I was uncovering.  Just over the last week there have been multiple times I’ve either read or heard someone say “Jesus is the light that shines in our darkness”.  That is absolutely true: He is.  Yet I’ve been listening with every fiber of my being not just to the words but the intent and feeling of the context in which they are spoken and I find others have this same conviction that the darkness is bad the light is good.  More than that, I see this conviction carries into how we believers view ourselves: I was bad while in darkness and now that I’m in the light Jesus makes me good.  Is this true?  If God created the darkness, and Isaiah 45:7 directly quotes Him as claiming He did; did He create something bad?

The Hebrew word in Isaiah 45:7 for darkness is choshek (H2822) and is defined in the Strong’s Concordance as: “from 2821, the dark; hence (literally) darkness; figuratively misery, destruction, death, ignorance, sorrow, wickedness–dark(-ness), night, obscurity.”  This doesn’t sound good at all and yet this exact word is the same one for darkness in Genesis 1 which God calls “night”.  Night isn’t bad, it just is.  And yet, if I read slowly and carefully, I find that in verse 4 God sees the light, that it was good and then divides the light from the darkness.  In verse 5 He calls the light “Day” and the darkness “Night” and then the First Creation Day comes to a close.  God never actually calls the darkness “good” although verse 31 says, “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.”  These are all interesting points, but I don’t find an answer to my question.

I open the Strong’s Concordance to the scripture listings of occurrences of “darkness” and begin to look at them.  At once, I find the subject of darkness to be far more complicated than I imagined.  There are eleven Hebrew words translated “darkness” in the Old Testament and an additional five Greek words in the New.  I am currently focusing on the Hebrew words and some aren’t distinct per se from choshek but rather are familial words and come from the same root.  For example, Psalm 139:12 says, “Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to You.”  The first occurrence of darkness is my study word choshek but the second is chashekah (H2825).  According to the Strong’s Concordance, this word is also from 2821 and is defined as “darkness, figuratively misery”.

The two words translated “darkness” in Job 28:3 are a different story.  My New King James Version has this verse translated, “Man puts an end to darkness and searches every recess for ore in the darkness and the shadow of death.”  The first occurrence of darkness is again choshek but the second is ophel (H652) and means, “dusk–darkness, obscurity, privily.”  For those of you wondering: privily is the adverb form of privy and means, “private, hidden, secret, clandestine.”  Here we do have two different words coming from different roots and with different meanings although they’ve been translated by the same English word.  As I continued to look at scriptures containing my study word, I found plenty more to confuse me.  There are scriptures where my study word means physical darkness or night.  This is true in Genesis 1 and is also true in passages like Exodus 14:20.  And yet, while the meaning of darkness or obscurity doesn’t change, there are far more occurrences where “darkness” is used in a metaphorical rather than physical sense.  I found this to be true in many passages of Job, Proverbs, and Psalms but reading all of these did not make it any easier to discern whether darkness was good or bad.

Chapter 20 of Job is titled “Zophar’s Sermon on the Wicked Man” and verse 26 states, “Total darkness is reserved for his treasures”.  Those who lose their treasures would call this bad but there are many who would call it good.  Then I read in Isaiah 45:3 quotes God as saying, “I will give you treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places.”  There is nothing bad here at all.  Proverbs 2:13 speaks of men who “leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,” which of course is bad.  But then Psalms 107 speaks of those who rebelled against the words of God (very bad) and thus sit in darkness and in the shadow of death; when they cried out to the Lord in their trouble He saves them out of their distresses and “brings them out of their darkness and the shadow of death” (verses 10-16).  That’s good: the darkness was no match for God.  Then, most confusing of all, I read in Amos: “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!  For what good is the day of the Lord to you?  It will be darkness, and not light” (Amos 1:18).  The darkness does sound bad in this passage but how can it be in any way associated with such a certainly good thing as the day of the Lord?

Good or bad.  How can I know?  I certainly can’t rely on my own judgment because there have been so many bad things that have happened to me and yet, as the transforming light and life and love of Jesus has come in to the circumstance I called bad and redeemed it, it has become good.  I can attest to the truth of Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”  Nor can I rely on anyone else’s judgment because one person will say a thing is bad and another will say the very same thing is good.  I can attest to the truth of Isaiah 5:20: “woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

I think a great deal about the first few chapters of Genesis, specifically the two trees named in the Garden.  There was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life.  I have a book I have not yet read in its entirety but there’s a passage that has stuck with me.  The book is Is God to Blame? by Gregory A. Boyd.  He addresses the Serpent’s lie in the first chapter and writes, “Our role as God’s creatures is to receive, enjoy and reflect our Creator’s love and goodness as we exercise the authority over the earth he entrusted to us.  But we can’t do this if we try to be wise like God, “knowing good and evil”.  To fully reflect God’s image in the way he intended, we must resist the serpent’s temptation to be “like God” in the way God has forbidden.  Unlike God, our knowledge and wisdom are finite.  We simply are not equipped to make accurate and loving judgments about good and evil…When we try to go beyond this boundary and try to know what God alone can know, when we try to be “wise” like God, it destroys us.” 

I don’t yet know whether I agree or disagree with this statement.  Perhaps the truth is closer to I see where Mr. Boyd is coming from but, in Jesus; I have His life and mind and wisdom because His Spirit lives in me and teaches me to think as He thinks and know as He knows.  “In Jesus” is, I think, the key.  I find my confusion begins to clear when I cease trying to understand darkness in terms of good and bad and begin to think of it in terms of Life of Jesus Christ and Not-life of Jesus Christ.  Can there be life in the midst of darkness?  Since life is Jesus, His life is the light of us all, and the life and light that He is shines in the darkness, then I would say that answer is yes.  I would also say this subject of darkness requires further study.

Unless noted otherwise, all scriptures are quoted from The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

  1. Boyd, Gregory A., Is God to Blame? Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Suffering, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2003, Page 23
  2. Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., Cleveland • New York, 1970/1976
  3. Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Formed a Vessel-Tzadi

24 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by in Hebrew Words, Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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Stock Photo From Pixabay

I am continuing to look at the Hebrew letters that make up the word yatsar, translated ‘form’ in my study passage of Isaiah 45:7.  Last week I looked at the first letter, Yod-Spirituality, and this week I am looking at the second: Tzadi-Righteousness & Humility.   

 צ Tzadi = Righteousness & Humility

The New World dictionary defines righteous as “acting in an upright manner; doing what is right; virtuous.”  However, before it ever gets into the definition of righteous, the dictionary states that righteous comes from the Old English ‘rightwise’.  I looked up ‘rightwise’ online and found the same meaning as given in the New World dictionary but also this definition: “by a rightward path, rightwards, rightwardly, clockwise”.

I remembered how many times I find the mention of ‘paths’ in the Psalms: “smooth paths”, “teach me your path”, “all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth” and so many more.  It’s in Psalm 23 that I find ‘paths’ linked with ‘righteousness’: “He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.”  I love this idea of God’s righteousness being walked out in our daily lives.  It is His attribute and He longs to teach it to us.  I hear this longing in Isaiah 48:17-18: “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, The Holy One of Israel: ‘I am the Lord your God, Who teaches you to profit, Who leads you by the way you should go.  Oh, that you had heeded My commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.’”

The beauty of being alive in this day of the Lord is that this teaching is no longer something that comes from outside of us.  The voice that was heard in the OT behind us saying, “this is the way, walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21) is now the voice speaking inside of us.  Righteousness is no longer something to be learned from the law but is now become our identity.  2 Corinthians 5:21 states, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”  We are taught of Him, certainly, but He does not give us rules and regulations to follow but rather lives His righteousness in us.  Paul states this so clearly in Galatians: “…the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.  I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain” (2:20).  This righteousness that is ours in Christ Jesus is not only our identity but becomes our very garments.  This is something I want to come back to in a later study but, for now, I will share Revelation 19:7-8:  “‘Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.’ And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”

I was fascinated to see righteousness and humility together in the same Hebrew letter.  It seems fitting because it really is impossible to have one without the other.  Our Self with all of its righteousness is crucified with Christ and we now live not only His righteousness but His humility.  What is His humility?

In my studies, I have come across a truly horrendous idea of humility.  I am told that, if I am constantly reminding God of my sins-or worse, expecting Him to remind me of them-, if I come crawling before Him with words of my unworthiness on my lips, and remind Him I am acceptable because of the death of His Son; then I am being humble.  How grateful I am for the Holy Spirit as my teacher!  How grateful I am He is with me when I read scripture!  Jesus has come!  As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:12)!  The curse to crawl on the belly was to the serpent, not humankind!  We come boldly before the throne of grace, not ashamed, sure in our acceptance because the love of the Father has been shed abroad in our hearts by His Spirit (See Hebrews 4:16 and Romans 5:5).  This is our identity in the Lord Jesus Christ and, because we are in Him and walk by His Spirit, there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1).

I am aware of scriptures like 1 John 1:8-9.  As I study the passage, I find the word confess here is the Greek word homologeo (G3670) and it means “to assent, i.e. covenant, acknowledge.”  Acknowledge what?  Jesus.  The finished work of the Cross.  I don’t see here the necessity of raking my sins over the coals nor does it mean to air my dirty laundry.  I assent, I say with the covenant God that He sent His son, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, and His blood doesn’t just cover my sin but washes me clean.  He establishes me and presents me to Himself holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:27).  This is who I am!  It doesn’t sound very humble though, does it?

I read the best definition of humility I’ve ever found in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible.  The entry for humility begins with: “Trench defines ‘humility’ as the esteeming of ourselves small, inasmuch as we are so; the thinking truly, and because truly, therefore lowlily, of ourselves.  Alford, Ellicott, Salmond, Vincent, and many others agree.  It is an inadequate and faulty definition.  A man may be small and may realize his smallness, and yet be far from being humble.  His spirit may be full of envy instead of humility.  He may be depressed in spirit because he sees his own meanness and general worthlessness, and yet he may be as rebellious against his lot or his constitutional proclivities as he is clearly cognizant of them.  Low-mindedness is not lowly-mindedness.  The exhortation of Ph 2:3 does not mean that every man ought to think that everybody else is better than himself in moral character, or in outward conduct, or in natural or inherited powers.  That would be impossible in some cases and untruthful in many others.  It is not an exhortation to either an impossibility or an untruthfulness.  A better definition of the Christian grace of humility is found in the union of highest self-respect with uttermost abandon of sacrifice in service.”

James Hastings then points to John 13:3-5, Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, as the classic NT example of humility.  Mr. Hastings says, “The consciousness of His own transcendent worth was in no respect inconsistent with His humility.  Genuine humility leads the strong to serve the weak.  It never underestimates its own worth, but in utter unselfishness it is ready to sacrifice its own claims at any moment for the general good.  Genuine humility loses all its self-conceit but never loses its self-respect.  It is consistent with the highest dignity of character and life.  Hence we may rightly call the Incarnation the Humiliation of Christ.  He stood at the head of the heavenly hierarchies.  He was equal with God.  There was no dignity in the universe like unto His.  Yet He humbled Himself to become a man.  He made Himself of no reputation.  He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.  He was the servant of all.  There was no humility in the universe like unto His.  He never forgot His dignity.  When Pilate asked Him if He were a king, He answered that He was.  He stood in kingly majesty before the mob, in kingly serenity before the magistrates; He hung as King upon the cross.  Yet He never forgot His humility.  Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.  St. Paul exhorts, ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus (Ph 2:5-11).  God giveth grace to all who are this humble (Ja 4:6).”

I have no need to creep and crawl before my Creator.  My identity is Jesus Christ.  I am His Beloved and, because I am in Him, everything He has is mine.  In utter humility, I acknowledge that all of this is true because He has made it so and not because of any merit of mine.  I speak the same words as my Lord and Saviour: “I can of myself do nothing” (John 5:30) and “not what I will but what You will” (Mark 14:36) and I know that “He who calls me is faithful and who also will do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24)  I look at my talents and offer them up knowing that “every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).  I know that as He is, so am I in this world (1 John 4:17) which means that the one who has bestowed upon me His own transcendent worth will make me into the same sort of servant; humble and meek.

In joyful humility, I cast myself utterly on Jesus and know that He will cause me to walk paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Rightwise Meaning | Best 6 Definitions of Rightwise (yourdictionary.com)

Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, William Collins+World Publishing Company, Cleveland • New York, 1976

Haralik, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995

Hastings, James, Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. 2001, Humility, Page 372

Strong, James, LLD., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Formed a Vessel-Yod

17 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by in Hebrew Words, Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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Stock Photo from Pixabay

Hello, Everyone, and thank you for joining me as I continue to look at Isaiah 45:7 where God says; “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.”  Last week I wrote about God forming the light and how I could see a picture of Jesus.  This week, I am going to take a look at the word “form”.

The Hebrew word for “form” in this passage is yatsar.  For those of you who don’t know, there are no written vowels in the Ancient Hebrew language so this word is written with three consonants: the Yod, the Tzadi, and the Resh or, practicing using the Hebrew symbols (and reading right to left): יצר

I have a book by Robert M. Haralick called “The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters”.  This book was my introduction to each Hebrew letter having a meaning all its own and that my word studies could be deepened as I consider each letter as well as the word as a whole. This book gives the following meanings of the Hebrew letters for yatsar: the Yod means “spirituality”, the Tzadi means “righteousness & humility” and the Resh means “the cosmic container”.  Reading this absolutely fascinated me: especially the meaning of the Resh and especially after picturing the light that Jesus is being formed into a man.  As I looked deeper into the meaning of yatsar, I saw not only a picture of the life Jesus lived as a man but how our lives are lived in Him.

י Yod = Spirituality:  The Bible records that, at the moment of Jesus’ baptism, the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him as a dove.  When I look at His life as recorded in the gospels, I see the Holy Spirit working in a man as He had never done in anyone in the Old Testament.  Well, Jesus was God some might say.  That is true but let us not forget that He emptied Himself and became like one of us.  Jesus did not have superpowers but He did live in and operate in the Holy Spirit in a way no one else had.  Truly, in seeing Jesus, we see the New Thing God promised through the Old Testament prophets.

I try very hard not to digress in my studies but it’s difficult: I see so many awesome things!  There are many times Jesus alluded to His oneness with the Father.  There are also many times He was clear about it but one of His allusions is found in John 14 and John 15.  Jesus is describing the Holy Spirit and He says, “but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (John 14: 26).  Then He says, “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me” (John 15:26).  Who is sending the Spirit?  The Father or Jesus?   HE will because they are ONE!  I thought that was cool.  Anyway…that day came!  The Holy Spirit was sent and His sending is recorded in Acts 2.  He was sent then and He has continued to be sent to everyone everywhere.  The life I now live is the life of Jesus lived in me and that is only possible through His Spirit.

I do know there are those believers who insist the Holy Spirit went away with the death of the last Apostle.  There is absolutely no scriptural basis for this without some serious discounting of massive portions of the New Testament nor is it my personal experience.  I am filled with the Holy Spirit right this very minute.  He is my Teacher, my Helper, my Comforter, my Companion, my Best Friend.  He is the Spirit of Jesus imparting the very life of Jesus in me right now.  He is the Spirit proceeding from the Father who assures me I am accepted and reveals to me how I am loved. 

I encourage anyone who does not know they are filled with the Holy Spirit to do four things.  One, read the book of Acts and see how indiscriminately the Holy Spirit filled people.  Then two, go through the entire New Testament with a pen or bible highlighter-whatever you have at hand-and underline or highlight every occurrence of the word Spirit.  I am certain you will begin to see how this New Covenant is one ministered to us by the Holy Spirit.  Three, say “Jesus is Lord” and then call God your Daddy-which while being respectful, is the meaning of Abba (1 Corinthians 12:3, Romans 8:15).  Done?  Then know His Spirit is in you!  After you have done those three things do number four which is to consider the tradition taught to you might be wrong, refuse to be cheated of your inheritance, and ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to the truth.

In the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, God declares a day to His people when He will, “sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you: I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezekiel 36:25-27).  It is always good to remember that this promise, while to Israel, is not just to Israel.  We who believe on Jesus have been grafted into the family of God and this promise is to all of us. 

Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2).  The promise of God recorded in Ezekiel is fulfilled in Jesus.  We are in Him and His Spirit is in us.  We are clean.  We are being renewed.  His Spirit within us is not only the wisdom and knowledge to know His ways but the strength to walk in them.  This is not a way of life reserved for some spiritual elite.  God shows no partiality (Acts 10:34).  The Holy Spirit is often symbolized by water in the scriptures and Jesus cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37-38).  This idea is echoed in the glorious revelation of Jesus Christ: “And the Spirit and the bride say ‘come!’ and let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ And let him who thirsts come.  Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17).

The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in us.  We can have as much of Him as we desire.  May our eyes be opened to see this, may we drink deeply, and may our hearts overflow with rivers of living water.

Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from:

The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Haralik, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995