Transcription
[Music] [Music]
All right, so today, what we're going to do is we're going to get into a subject that is probably my favorite subject. It's probably one of the teachings that I do the most when I've traveled and spoken in other places, but it's one that we have available that's only been available in audio form. It's one of the older teachings, and it's also one that I've always wanted to do in a much more extensive type of format. You know, kind of like I've told you guys before, teachings that used to be one and two parts have now turned into six and 14. Well, that's probably what's going to happen here with this one.
This teaching is called "The Fear of Yahweh." Because I talked about that the theme for Sukkot would be learning to fear Yahweh, and I think that ultimately the the heart of the matter or the core problem that we all have is that we don't understand how to properly fear of Yahweh. If we had a proper fear of Yahweh, everything else would fall right into place. I really believe that if we could properly have a proper fear or reverence, exactly. I'm going to explain what that all means here in a minute. If we could have that in line and in place, I think that all the other pieces would naturally start to fall into place, not because it would be done for us. We would then have all of the stumbling blocks in our own personalities and self-sovereignty and everything else eliminated out of the picture, so that we can then get on with doing what Aba wants us to do.
So let's begin in Deuteronomy chapter 10. And so we're going to talk about this at least three teachings. We're doing this week, and we're really going to get this into broken down into a lot more detail. This is originally one part because back then I thought I had to do everything in one part. You guys who know me now know that I'm no longer worried about that restriction. Okay.
So Deuteronomy chapter 10 and in verse 12. Now, if you've been listening to our ministry at all, what what the Father has given us to do is to work with Deuteronomy 10:12 and Deuteronomy 8:2 as sort of our foundation verses. And so 10:12 is so foundational important because what 10:12 says is something that we all want to know. Amen. Here's Moses with the Israelites, and they're standing at the Jordan, ready to go into the land. And they're probably all asking the same question to some degree, which is, what is it that Yahweh wants of us? What does He expect of us? And so here we find it says, "And now Israel, what is it that Yahweh your Elohim is asking of you?" I think that's a great question.
So here's the answer that Moses gives: "But to fear Yahweh your Elohim, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve Yahweh your Elohim with all your heart and with all your being, to guard the commands of Yahweh and His laws, which I command you today for your good."
So here we're reading in 10:12 and 13 what I believe is a specific process, a specific order to how Aba wants us to develop the things He wants us to develop. I think that we would have break this down. We'd realize in Christianity, a lot of it starts off with an emotional stirring. They try to reach you through an emotional thing, a lot of times through music or some other thing where they kind of get you emotionally to make a decision or to get excited. It's emotional. And if you remember as a youth, because a lot of us are not youths anymore, we remember that a lot of the relationships that we tried to get into were also not necessarily the best, and they were always based on emotions first. And then we didn't always make good decisions, decisions when we were making emotional decisions. Nothing wrong with emotion. The emotion should come later.
So look at this process. He says, "Fear Yahweh." And we're going to talk about what that actually means here in a minute. But He wants us to fear Yahweh. Then He wants us, because we're afraid, reverencing in awe of Yahweh, whatever that word "fear" means. Because we're doing that, then we're more likely to walk in all His ways. And then after we walk in all His ways, we discover that His ways do three things: they bless us, they keep us safe, and they help change us from what we are into what He is. And so then we realize that His ways express how much He loves us. And guess what happens as a natural manifestation of being loved? We start to love Him.
So the third step in this is that we would then love Him. He says, "Walk in all His ways and to love Him." And because we love Him, then we would desire to serve Him. And as servants of the Almighty, with all of our heart, with all our being, we would then be guarding after His Commandments, which, by the way, He says are for your good.
Now, this is really critical that we understand all this because, you know, we read things like in the V in Deuteronomy chapter 6 where it says, "And you shall love Yahweh with all your heart and being, strength, etc." But, you know what? You're not ever going to be able to accomplish that if you haven't first learned to fear Him and walk in all His ways. Because the love that you need to get to that high level of love, you're never going to get there until until you do the other things first. You've got to do those other things because it's out of that awe and reverence and fear that we then start to truly walk in His ways, the way He desires them to be walked in. That's kind of a key. Don't you don't get to choose how you walk in them. He's already told us how we should walk in them. And then we would then see His love and then fall in love with Him. And then we can do that with all of our heart and with all of our being. And then finally, we would be in the right heart and mindset to actually guard His commands.
And I don't think that we spent enough time fol focusing on that word. We're not going to do it today, but I may do a separate teaching on the idea of that He says "guard my commands" over and over. He doesn't just say "obey." He says "guard," which means more than just obedience. It means that you're going to stand watchmen over, like having a gun in your hands or a sword in your hands, and nothing gets by me on penalty of I'm willing to give up my life. And I don't think we put the Commandments on a high enough level to actually do it. A lot of times, it doesn't take much about a family member or a friend or a boss to go, "Boo!" and we're breaking a commandment. We're not guarding. See, because if you're guarding and someone came up to you and said, "Hey, uh, we want to go mess with that thing you're guarding," you would say, "Nope, I'm on duty. You're not getting in there." We should be guarding the Commandments.
But all of this flows out of a beginning point called the fear of Yahweh. All of this comes from that beginning point.
Now, the Hebrew word translated "fear" here is *yare*, which means to fear morally, from the perspective of distinguishing right from wrong, to revere, to be in awe. Webster's Dictionary defines fear as anxiety caused by real or possible danger, pain, etc. Reverence as being a feeling of deep respect, love, and awe. And awe being a mixed feeling of reverence, fear, and wonder. So let's kind of put that all together and say that although you should be afraid that He can kill you, you should this is the Creator. And we read story after story of Him, you know, opening up the ground and swallowing people up and all kinds of other things. So that fear should be there. But that's not the totality of what He's talking about here in terms of fear. He's looking for awe, reverence, respect. This is what He's looking for.
So what, what the way I describe this is, picture the one you love the most and how you would feel if they looked at you with her head kind of down, shaking their head, going, "I can't believe you just did that." Fearing that. That's because you have this love and awe and respect for the person to which you don't want to ever see that look. And so that's kind of the level. Now, still, still keep that other fear also, because after all, He could zap you and make you a grease spot just as much as anybody else He's ever done in history. But keep in mind that we also don't want to just be afraid. He's talking about awe, wonderment, reverence, respect.
Now, in many ways, we are a people, a world consumed by fear. Can we all agree on that? Okay. We're afraid to some degree of everything and everyone. Most of what we do is because of something or someone we are afraid of. Much of our time is spent in avoiding or escaping our fears. This is why we are so overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, and nervousness. And that's really what's going on. I mean, the the word "stress" wasn't probably even in the vocabulary of people going back 50, 60, 100 years. But that's like everybody talks, "I'm so stressed." "Oh, oh, I'm sick and this, it's my stress. It must be so much stress." Well, where does stress come from? Fear. And so when people say, "Well, I'm just overwhelmed," well, because that means that you're afraid that you can't handle or get done whatever it is that's overwhelming you. Fear is behind all that stress.
Now, when we, when we fear man, when we fear man in situations, we become filled with stress and anxiety and nervousness. However, when we fear Yahweh, we become filled with peace and comfort and security. Interesting. So the subtitle to this teaching, really, or the title might end up being on this teaching, I haven't decided yet, "Learning to Fear Yahweh." And the subtitle would be, "If you fear Yahweh, you'll never be afraid again." If you learn to fear Yahweh, you will never be afraid again. And so that's really, really important.
Now, there is an acronym that I was taught many years ago that I think is very helpful for us to understand what fear is. It's the kind of fear when we're fearing man. We're going to break down F.E.A.R. as False Evidence Appearing Real. Okay. So a lot of you are nodding your head, you've heard that before, but I don't know that we always embrace it as fully as we should or could. Because we have to understand that that's essentially what fear is when we're dealing with man. Now, when you're dealing with Yahweh, there's no false evidence there. It should be real evidence that appears real because it is real, and you better be paying attention. But when we're fearing man, we are dealing with a false evidence that appears real. And what am I talking about here? In many cases, the false evidence that appears real is the false evidence that the one we are fearing has real authority over us. Somehow, we've become convinced that this individual has some real authority over us, that they have control over us or our lives and our futures.
This is why we get afraid of our bosses. Why are you afraid of your boss? Oh, he could fire me. So your Heavenly Father can get your better job, or at least as good a one. Why are you afraid of this one? Why are you afraid? Oh, because they can do this to me or that to me. See, you have bought into the false evidence that they really have authority over you. You know, we have the idea that somebody will say, "Oh, you can't make me do this." And say, "Okay, I'll put a gun to your head. You'll do it." "You still can't make me do it. I can choose to do it, or I can choose to let you shoot me. You can't really make me do anything." Thing is, we have all of these people out there that aren't even actually putting guns to your heads, but you're picturing the gun anyway, and you're bowing to their authority because you've bought into the idea that this false evidence is real, that they have authority over you. And they don't. And they shouldn't. And they actually must not, when when dealing with anything that clashes with the authority of the universe, Yahweh, our Creator.
And this is really critical that we embrace this, okay? We must break free from that mindset by embracing the fact, the truth, that it is Yahweh, and Yahweh alone, that we must fear. When we do, we will find that when we fear Yahweh, we have no need to fear anything or anyone else. Throughout the scriptures, we can read about those that feared man and those that feared Yahweh. We can see the fruit of each and learn the lessons recorded for our instruction. Yahweh instructs us in His word not to fear anyone or anything else but Him. He says it over and over again. He makes it very clear in the word, and we're going to read a bunch of those verses now so that we can see what He has to say.
How many times now? I'm going to kind of address this to you first here. How many times have you fell backed into a corner without any choices or between the proverbial rock and a hard place? Yahweh instructs us in His word how we are to handle being in those places because have have you all felt that maybe even last week, maybe yesterday or whenever? I mean, we all end up in those places. We feel like, "I don't know what to do because I'm between the rock and a hard place." And almost always, the rock and the hard place is somebody that you fear because you falsely believe they have authority that can do some damage to you or your family, your income, or some other thing. And so you don't know, you feel like, "I'm at a loss because if I do what Yahweh says, I'm going to suffer in some way." Type of thing, because you can't see through that place.
Now, Yahweh loves to function in the place where you can't see through. Let's look at one of the greatest examples in Exodus 14. In Exodus, Shemot, Exodus 14 and in verse 1. Okay, this is probably one of the best examples of this concept of being between the rock and a hard place, literally. In chapter 14 and in verse 1, "Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to the children of Israel, that they turn and camp between Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, opposite Baal-zephon; camp before it by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, "They are entangled in the land; the wilderness has closed them in." And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he shall follow them; and I will be esteemed through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh.'" And so they did so.
And it was reported to the sovereign of Mitzrayim that the people had fled. And the heart of Pharaoh and his servants was turned against the people. And they said, "Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?" And so he made his chariot ready, and took all his people with him. And he took 600 choice chariots, and all the chariots of Mitzrayim, with officers over all of them. And Yahweh hardened the heart of Pharaoh, sovereign of Mitzrayim, and he pursued the children of Israel. But the children of Israel went out defiantly. And the Mitzrites pursued them, and all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them camping by the sea, beside Pi-hahiroth, before Baal-zephon.
And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted their eyes, and saw the Mitzrites coming up after them. And they were greatly afraid. So the children of Israel cried out to Yahweh. Now, let's understand that this is the children of Israel who've been slaves up to this point, and they'd seen what their slave masters were capable of doing to them, even if they were not disobedient, even if they were just being slow. And now they're chasing them with their military army into chariots, and they know basically death is coming based on their understanding. The Mitzrites are not coming to just say, "Okay, guys, why don't you just come on back home?" No, they're coming to kill them, and they know that. And here they are. They've got the Israelites are there by the sea. They've got the sea in front of them. They've got cliffs to one side, and they've got the Egyptians to the other side. They're boxed in. There's no place to go as far as they can. This is the the rock and the hard place. Right?
And it says here, "they were greatly afraid." I don't think there's a word strong enough for how, you know, panicky they were. This is full-blown hysterical panic. This is not "greatly afraid." I don't know what word we, I mean, obviously we are limited by language, but trust me when I tell you, there was no greater fear than they were having at that moment. There were several million of them. They were not armed and ready to fight. Here comes a trained military army, one of the greatest armies in the world, to be feared by all the lands of the world, coming ready to kill them. And they, they could not see any place to go. So here they are.
Now, in verse 13, "And they said, and they, after crying out to Yahweh, they said to Moses, 'Did you take us away to die in the wilderness because there are no graves in Mitzrayim? What is this you have done to us to bring us out of Mitzrayim?'" So here they are again, proving they were afraid. They knew they were going to die. "Hey, why did you bring us out here to die? We could have died over there, you know." And then in verse 12, it says, "Is not this the word that we spoke to you in Mitzrayim, saying, 'Leave us alone and let us serve the Mitzrites,' for it would have been better for us to serve the Mitzrites than to die in the wilderness?" So now they're claiming they made this point to Moses back in Egypt, "Oh, we don't want to leave. We'd like to stay here." I don't remember that verse too clearly, but, you know, here they are kind of making this argument.
Then Moses says to him in verse 13, he says, "He said to the people, 'Do not be afraid. Stand still and see the deliverance of Yahweh, which He will work for you today. For the Mitzrites whom you see today, you shall never, never see again. Yahweh does fight for you, and you keep still.'"
Now, let's understand what's going on here. First of all, all of us should be able to look in our lives to find those places where you could not see the solution. Because here's Moses telling them, "There's a solution coming." They still don't know what it is. We've all read the story and seen the movie, so we know what's coming. I mean, we're all thinking, "Come on, guys, calm down. He's going to split the sea." Do you think anybody there thought that? Do you think anybody sitting there looking out the water going, "Well, you know, if Yahweh would just part that sea, we can get across that thing on dry land. We'll be all right." Nobody is thinking this. They can't see the solution coming. But Moses says, "Stand still and see the deliverance."
So what is this to teach us here? When you are afraid and walking in fear of man or circumstance, you are to at some point realize that you need to get quiet and stand still and allow Him to open up what's going to happen. Now, the standstill part, we don't want to get into this Christian mindset, "Well, then God did it all for them." No, they still had to walk through the sea. That's right. He provided the way, they still had to go. But at this point, He said, "Stand still and allow Me to provide so that you can then see what I have in mind for you." But the stand still was not necessarily about physical. They weren't going anywhere anyway. This was about, "Calm down. Stop panicking." And that's where we need to get when we get afraid is to realize He's in control.
And you know, *emuna*, which is the Hebrew word for faith, for trust, for belief, is a lot deeper than what most people hear when we say, "Well, you just have to have faith. You just have to believe." It's a much deeper understanding. It has to do with completely embracing, down to the marrow of your bone, that Aba has everything in control. That everything that happens, either He caused it or allowed it, He's in control. So if they're there by the sea, if they had full *emuna*, they would have no fear. They would know He allowed us to be here because it serves His purpose in some way. I can't see it. I can't fathom it. I'm not going to even begin to guess, but somehow I know this serves His purpose. I need to be still, calm down, and let Him show me what He's planning to do here. But you have to calm down. But you're so panicking because you know why? Because you're trying on your own strength to figure the answer out. And there was no way on their own strength they were ever going to figure out an answer to Egypt, the mountains, and the water. There was no answer they could ever get to.
So Moses says, "No, be still and witness the deliverance." You know, there's verses in the Brit Chadashah, the New Testament, that tells you there's no trial that you will be allowed to go into that without an escape being provided. You know, so you have verses that cover these things, and yet we forget those things so quickly because we're in panic mode. When you're in panic mode, your emotions are overwhelming your logic and your reason, and you cannot do the things you need to do properly because you're no longer in control. You're being controlled by your emotions. And so this is the real big problem.
So He says here, "Look, those Mitzrites, don't worry about him. Yahweh just fighted you and keep still." And so this is really critical as we're going through this. Now, in verse 15, it says, "Yahweh said to Moses, 'Why do you cry to Me? Speak to the children of Israel, and let them go forward.'" So Yah's like, "Let them go forward." Said, "What? I mean, I brought you here to keep going. Why did you stop?" "Well, but there's water there." "So what?" See, Yahweh, I think, looks down on us a lot and just is always looking at you like, and because we're whining and complaining, He's just looking at like, "But so what? I told you to go. So go. Why are you standing?"
Doing the same thing that Mo, you know what? When Moses had them going to spy the land, right? When they were spying the land, you know what did Joshua and Caleb say? They said, "Yahweh said, 'Go. Let's go.'" "Oh, but, but, but." And Joshua and Caleb like, "So what? He said it's the land filled with milk and honey. We went and looked, and it is filled with milk and honey. Let's go. Yahweh said, 'Go. Let's go.'" And this is sort of a metaphor, similar here.
Verse 16, "And you, lift up your rod and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, and let the children of Israel go on dry land through the midst of the sea. And I, see, I am hardening the hearts of the Mitzrites, and they shall follow them. And I will be esteemed through Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his horsemen. And the Mitzrites shall know that I am Yahweh, when I am esteemed through Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen."
So realize here, it says it, and it said it also back in verse 4, the idea that again, Yahweh is allowing these things so that the witness would be there, not just to Israel, but to Pharaoh and his army. It's just like the one who was infirm and came to Yeshua, and they argued over, "Well, who sinned, this man or his man or whatever, or his parents, whoever was?" And He said, "No, no, no. This was allowed to be so that what I do for him would witness to all of you." Well, guess what? They were allowed to end up in that rock and a hard place so He could witness not only to Israel but also to Pharaoh. He says, "I'm going to harden his heart." And by the way, what was He also planning to do to Pharaoh? If you understand what it means to be a representative of the king, then you also understand that a representative of the king, if you threaten that representative, it's like you threaten the king. What was the last thing Pharaoh said to Moses? "If I see you one more time, I'm going to kill you." So he threatened Yahweh, because threatening Moses was the same or tantamount to threatening Yahweh. So guess what the penalty for that would be? Brought death upon all of Egypt and also on the armies in Pharaoh.
So as they're going through here, here He's like, "I'm not done with these guys yet. They still haven't paid the price for threatening my representative." And so here we are now in verse, uh, 18. And then we get, so we just read that. Now, verse 19, "And the messenger of Yahweh, uh, messenger of Elohim, who went before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them. And the pillar of cloud went from before them and stood behind them, and became, came between the camp of the Mitzrites and the camp of Israel. And it was the cloud and darkness, and it gave light by night. And the one did not come near the other all the night."
"Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and Yahweh caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry land, and the waters were a wall to them on their right and on their left."
Now, bear in mind, the movies never show this. But bear in mind, there's a lesson even to the idea that He didn't just have the waters go like in the movies. The wind blew all night. So all night they're sitting there watching this wind blow the Egyptians behind it, but also watching the cloud protect them. The pillar is between them, and they're having to watch this and experience this all night. The movies don't have that happen that way. In the movies, it happens, you know, Moses raises up his arms or hits the wall, whatever he does, and boom, the whole thing splits. That's not the way it happened, though. And that was a great lesson, though, for the Israelites and for the Egyptians to be dealing with all, you know, the Egyptians had to sit there with this supernatural cloud in front of them all night. And amazingly, they still stayed. A lot of them stayed there. I don't know how many may have left, but they stayed there and still waited for it to disappear and go forward. I mean, what, who knows what they must have been thinking, seeing this thing between the camps?
In verse 21, "And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and Yahweh caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all night, and divided it, and the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them on their right and on their left. And the Mitzrites pursued and went after them into the midst of the sea, and the horses of Pharaoh, and his chariots, and his horsemen."
"And it came to be in the morning watch that Yahweh looked down upon the army of the Mitzrites through the pillar of fire and cloud, and He brought the army of the Mitzrites into confusion. And He took off their chariot wheels, so that they drove them with difficulty. And the Mitzrites said, 'Let us flee from the face of Israel, for Yahweh fights for them against the Mitzrites.'" So now they're starting to learn who Yahweh is.
"Then Yahweh said to Moses, 'Stretch out your hand over the sea, and let the waters come back upon the Mitzrites, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.' And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its usual flow at the break of day, with the Mitzrites fleeing into it. Thus Yahweh overthrew the Mitzrites in the midst of the sea. And the waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen and all the army of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them, and not even one was left of them. And the children of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall to them on their right and their left. Thus Yahweh saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Mitzrites. And Israel saw the Mitzrites dead on the seashore. And Israel saw the great work which Yahweh had done in Mitzrayim. And the people feared Yahweh and believed Yahweh and His servant Moses."
This was the point of it all, to have them learn to fear Yahweh and not circumstances and not man. See, we started in verse one to tell the whole story in the account so that we finally would get to this verse here at the end of the chapter to understand that this is all to learn to fear Yahweh. So when you find yourself in that, you know, rock and a hard place situation, stop and pause and realize Yahweh's always trying to get you to learn to fear Him more. Because you'll call me up, or you'll call one of the other ministry people, you call your friends, whatever, you go, "I don't know what to do. I can't figure a way out." And I'll say, "Awesome. Yahweh's going to do something great. Calm down. Be still." Because that's, He loves to be in that place because in that place, there's nobody else that could do it but Him. So then you learn to fear Him. Amen. He doesn't function as well, not that He couldn't. He doesn't like to function as well in places where you could think somebody else was the result, caused the result. Exactly. See, nobody else can get the credit if you put you in those places that only He can get you out of. Sir? Yes, sir. See, otherwise, man has a tendency to go, "Well, you know, I could have done that myself, or I could have my power, my effort, my this, you know." Absolutely.
Now, clearly, He does work through people. And that the people still had to do what He said. Moses still was involved. He still works through man, by the way, for all those people out there that still have a problem with leadership and teachers and Yahweh working through men. He always did. Moses was the leader. He worked through Moses. We have a problem submitting to authority. "Oh, I submit. I submit to Yahweh directly." Yahweh never asked you to submit to Him directly. He expects you to submit to Him through a man. Not that you have to go through a man, but He expects you to learn and practice submitting to Him through somebody. They submitted through Moses, they submitted through the apostles, they submitted through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They submitted, you see what I'm saying? There was always submission through someone in authority. That's how we practice. Ladies, you have the best advantage if you have a father or a husband, because you're even scripturally, you know, you've been told to learn submission to that authority. You get to practice it in a much more easy way than the men. The men have to actually then look for someone to do this with. We don't have it built in as easily, if you understand what I'm saying. But the men need it just as much. But the men have to actively go look for it. And if you're in a congregation, if you're in a situation, you need to learn to follow, submit, and be able to understand that relationship, just like the ladies do in working with you. Everybody must learn to do these things.
See, Moses did it directly. Not everybody gets to do that. The prophets get to do, got to do that. But then the prophets were sent to the leaders. And by the way, Moses didn't talk to the people directly most of the time. He was talking to the leaders. Because two, look, you guys need a microphone just to hear the 150 in this room to hear me that well. Moses is speaking about 3 million people. Two to three million people. Moses was probably telling everything to the heads of thousands, who shared it to the heads of hundreds, who shared it to the heads of 50s and tens, etc. That's the way these things work. It's through a leadership process. Our problem is it's been done horrendously. So we figure the system must be wrong. It's not the system that's wrong, it's us implementing it. We've done a tremendously bad job implementing authority structure because everybody that ends up in authority that we've all experienced for the most part has been people that did it for greedy gain and for dominance and for control and for whatever, instead of doing it to serve and obey the Creator in the position that that leadership position means. The greatest servant shall be the greatest leader, or the greatest leader shall be the greatest servant. And so that's one of the big missions of MTOI is to instill that and disciple that into the men that are working with.
But understand, as we're going through all of this, all of this was to learn to fear Yahweh in the ultimate circumstance of complete panic and not seeing any way out. So I want us to be able to take a deep breath and be still when you get into that horrible place where you can't see a way out, because that's the place that if you would be still, He would work with you. Now, He may not do anything until you actually calm down and be still. How many of you have had a child throwing a temper because they want the whatever, and you say, "If you would just calm down, I can help you"? Right? All of us parents have done that with children. "If you would just calm down, I could help you." Because they're frustrated and they can't get something done, or they're in pain, or something's going on, and they're freaking out. And He's like, "Please, just calm down, and I can help you." I think our Heavenly Father's the same with us. He says, "Calm down. I'm happy to help you, but you need to calm down first." And that's when we get into that place of trust, *emuna*, belief, okay, trust, belief, faith, where we can then say, "Aba, I know that You allowed me to be in the situation or caused it to happen for me to learn to fear You more, for me to respect You even more, for me to believe even more." Because it says here in verse 31, "They learned at that point. The people feared Yahweh and they believed Yahweh and His servant Moses." They believed Moses as well.
Let's go to chapter 20. We stay in Exodus, Shemot, chapter 20 and verse 1. Only going to read four verses here. "And Elohim spoke all these words, saying, 'I am Yahweh your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Mitzrayim, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other mighty ones against My face.'"
Now, understand that He's going through this part here in the first three verses to make sure that we have no doubt who we're dealing with. Yahweh does this a lot. All through scripture, He reminds them, "I'm the God of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob. I'm the one who brought you out of Egypt. I'm the one who put the heavens together, put the sun and the moon. I'm the one who did all these things." Just so you know who you're dealing with. Amen. Okay. And so here again, He's reminding them in verse, in verse 1, 2, 3 here. And He goes, "Look, in in in in verse 4, uh, excuse me, verse 3 says, 'You shall have no other mighty ones against My face, or in My face. And you are, do not make yourself a carved image, any likeness of that which is in the heavens above, or which is in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.'"
Okay, so here He's kind of making sure that we are are learning that awe and reverence, and that we are not to give any of that to other things. You're not going to bow down to them, nor are you going to serve them. He says, "For I am Yahweh." And so this is a just a big introduction to this idea that we have a problem coming from a background, historically, generationally, of people giving honor, respect, and fear and reverence to all the wrong things. And He, and He says that right there in the Ten Commandments. The first four Commandments, or the first three Commandments, are all about making sure you only give that to Him. You only give that to Him.
Now, I, I actually meant to go to Deuteronomy 20, but I went to Exodus 20, and yet it turned out that was a good place to go because I'm looking at my notes going, "That's not what it says." What I thought. Oh, but you see, it turned out that worked out pretty good anyway. So He makes it really clear here. He says, "Look, this is who I am because I am going to show kindness to generations who have faith and believe in Me and all that kind of stuff. But I'm not going to let go those who dishonor and disrespect Me. The crookedness is going to go on for generations." He's very serious about this. You are to fear, honor, and respect Him, and Him alone.
Now, let's go to Deuteronomy chapter 20, which is where I had intended to go in the first place. Dei, Deuteronomy 20, verse 1. "He says, 'When you go out to battle against your enemies, and you see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them, for Yahweh, who brought you up from the land of Mitzrayim, is with you.'"
Now, let's break this down into today's terms. So when you go and you get into some sort of battle, strife, or whatever conflict with anybody today, and it looks like they're way more powerful than you in some ways, whatever they've got authority or leverage or whatever it is, in other words, by metaphor, here's horses and chariots and all more, you know, a bigger army. In other words, you feel outnumbered, outmatched, overmatched. He says, "Don't forget and don't be afraid that it's Yahweh your Elohim, the one who brought you out of your wilderness, the one who redeemed you out of your lifestyles and your mess of whatever it is you were in." Anybody not been there? We all been there, right? We all were brought out of something. So just always remember the one who brought you out of all of that, He's the same one who is going to do battle for you. So don't be afraid. Yahweh Elohim, who brought you out, He says, "He is with you."
Verse 2, He goes, "And it shall be, when you draw near to battle, that the priest shall come and speak to the people and say to them, 'Hear, O Israel, you are drawing near today to battle with your enemies. Do not let your heart faint. Do not fear or tremble or be afraid before them, for Yahweh your Elohim is He who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.'"
See, there's supposed to be ministry involved. And the ministry is supposed to be there to encourage you not to be afraid, to know that Yahweh is with you. It doesn't just say that the people should know this. It says, "And the priest is to be there to encourage them, to admonish them, to stir them to understand, 'Hey, Yahweh is the same one who was with you before, the same one who did all that other stuff for you. It's the same, the same Creator of the universe, and He's told you He would be with you to help you with your battles.'" And so I believe that we can, using type and shadow and other things like that, we can say we can take what's going on here and apply it today and say, as we walk through our own wilderness journey, okay, which is what I read when we read Deuteronomy 8:2. It says, "And Yahweh led them through the wilderness those 40 years, and He did so to test, to prove, to see whether was in their heart to keep the Commandments or not." Actually, the first part of it says to humble them. But the point is, He led them through the wilderness. I think that's the idea of everybody's life is being led through a wilderness, and everybody's life is being led through the wilderness so that you can learn to become humble. So maybe you want to write down Deuteronomy 8:2 there for yourself, to learn to be humble so that He can test to prove whether it's in your heart to keep His Commandments.
And by the way, embrace what He's really saying there. He's not having any expectation of perfect obedience. He has an expectation of you wanting to be perfect. Let me say that again. He doesn't have any expectation of perfection. In other words, people say, "Oh, well, who could ever keep everything perfectly?" It doesn't say that. He wants to see whether it's in your heart to want to do it, whether it's in your heart. See, when you try to find excuses to bend and twist the Torah to your own desires, to allow for what you want, then you're showing Him it's not in your heart to just obey Him. When you're trying to figure out what the least is you can do, then it's not in your heart to obey Him. Okay? So like when, you know, when Sabbath is coming, I start when it's still pretty light out. It's starting to get dark. It's probably not quite what would be considered sunset, because I just want to get it started and make sure I've got it good, and I don't end until it's pretty much black outside, okay? Other people say, "Well, literally the sun is gone under the horizon, even though it's still..." No, I'm going to take it. So if I do 25 hours, that's fine for me. I want to do more, not less, because I want to show Him that it's in my heart to do it. Not because I want to brag and say, "Oh, I did more than you did." No, I just want to show Him it's in my heart to do it. And so I'm going to do what I can to make sure that it got done. And I think that that was the original reason for the tomwood being developed, by the way. I mean, it got out of control, but I think the original idea was to put fences around to make sure that the law was not broken. Exactly. And so I can respect that reasoning, but again, it got out of control. Okay? And so I'm not defending it in its current form. I'm just saying I think their original idea was probably coming from a good place.
Now, let's go, continuing here. He says, He says, um, "Now again, the priest is going to come out there and encourage them." There is a teaching I did called "Learn and Teach the Torah." It's an argument or a case being made for the fact that they're supposed to be Torah teachers, aside from the the spirit in you, the teacher in you, there's supposed to be a physical human being teaching you. And that case is made from scripture. You may want to go back and learn that. But just like here, they're about to go do battle, yet the priest was supposed to be there. What happened to good old Saul when he didn't wait for the prophet to show up? He got in big trouble, didn't he? Okay. And and when the prophet showed up, he's like, "Why'd you do this?" He said, "Well, I was waiting. You didn't show up, and I wanted to do this." He said, "Well, you should have waited." We must learn respect for authority entrusted. Well, well, you might say, "Well, I, are we all kings and priests?" Not yet. Not yet. We're not all kings and priests yet. That's a destiny that we're hoping to get to, but not yet. And so let's remember these things as we go through this.
Let's go now to Numbers chapter 13. Bimidbar, Numbers 13, in verse 1. Numbers 13. "Yahweh spoke spoke to Moses, saying, 'Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel. Send one man from each tribe of their fathers, everyone a leader.'" We talked about this a little bit. We're going to.
Read it now everyone. A leader among them. Okay, so we're going to just read the first two verses so we understand what's going on. This is spying out the land, and we're picking men that are leaders from each tribe.
Now let's drop down to verse, uh, 21. So in verse 21, it says, "So they went out and they spied out the land from the Wilderness of Sin as far as Rehob, near the entrance of Hamath. And they went up from the south and came to Hebron, and to Ahiman, and Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak were there." Now Hebron, uh, had been built seven years before, so, uh, in Egypt. And they came to the Valley of Eshcol and cut down from there a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bore between two poles. They bore between two of them on the pole. Now listen, could you imagine if just one cluster of grapes had to be carried on poles? That's also pomegranates and on figs. That place was called the Valley of Eshcol because of the cluster which the men of Israel cut down there.
And they returned from spying out the land after 40 days. And they went and came to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. And they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Now, so here they are, they're coming with all this stuff, and they reported to him and said, "We went to the land where you sent us, and truly it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit." All right, so far so good. But the people do dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are walled, very great, and we saw the descendants of Anak there. So the Amalekites dwell in the land of the South, with the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites dwelling in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan." I mean, see how it's starting already? The fear and the doubt. Look, the scriptures from cover to cover is really simply one story: the story of fear and doubt versus faith and belief. That's what it is. And we get to read about those that feared and those that had faith, those that doubted and those that trusted. And here we're seeing a bunch of people walking in fear and having doubts. But yet, in verse 30, Caleb silenced the people before Moses. So he got up there and he got every, he got their attention. He said, "Hey, hold on. He said, 'Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are certainly able to overcome it.'" I mean, he's like, "See again, here's a leader, Caleb. Caleb's showing himself. He says, 'Hey, let's go at once. Let's go right now. Let's go.'" But the men who had gone with him said, "We are not able to go up against those people, for they are stronger than us."
Now, I know we read this and we think, "These have got to be the dumbest people ever lived." Because, you know, after all, Yahweh just done these signs, he just destroyed Egypt, and here they are already panicking. But you know what? Don't you do the same thing? Yes. I mean, Abba's done such amazing things in your life, and yet you still don't trust him? You still panic? You still show fear and doubt? See, so be careful we don't judge these people too hardly, too harshly, okay? Because they are us. They are us. And we are, we are doing those things. They said, "Oh no, I mean, they're stronger than we are. We can't overcome this." And they gave, by the way, you know, before I interrupt myself here, I just want to say, I get people coming in on a regular basis. Not huge amounts, but they'll come in on a regular basis. Two or three here and there. They get very excited that this is a, "I finally found where I'm supposed to be." Then they go home and they tell all their friends and family members about it and get their teeth kicked in, and then they say, "This is too hard." And they quit. "This is too hard." And then I don't see them ever again. Does that sound like a parable to anybody? Anybody pick up what parable that is? The sower of the seed. The person that first gets excited and takes the word with joy, and then they go home and tell their friends, and it gets choked out and kicked in the teeth. And you see, that's because there's no roots. These people coming out of Egypt had not had their roots yet. Abba says, "You know what? I'm going to give you 40 years to develop roots after this event that we're reading right now." He said, "I'm going to have to give you time to develop roots because you guys didn't get the roots because it didn't take much to go, 'Boo!' and you're in a panic."
And so here, and by the way, this is after the sea parting. So again, you may judge them, and don't judge them because I can find out all about what happened in your life. And I go, "After all that, you're worried about this?" You come and counsel with me. If I knew about all that that he's already done in your life, and now you're going to come to me with whatever? I'm going to go, "And you're worried about that?" Because I've had people say to me, "I don't know what to do. My boss just changed our schedule and now everybody got to work Saturdays twice a month." And what's the problem? "Well, if I don't work Saturday, I'm going to lose my job." Okay, what's the problem? "Well, I mean, then, wait. Here's the best part. Well, Yahweh wouldn't want my family to starve, would he? So obviously I have to do it." Why is that the only choice? Amen. I mean, why is there not a choice? Yahweh can give you another job or a better job, in which case your family still doesn't starve, and you don't work Saturday. Why is that not in the list of options? On, because I hear people trying to do that spin because it's not yet in their heart. Because they're still falsely perceiving that the evidence that their boss is in charge of their finances. Your boss, meaning the guy you have, writes his name on your paycheck. He is not in charge of your finances. That's right. Okay. The only one in this room who's who, who's got a, you know, a boss that actually is in charge of their finances is me. My boss is in charge of my finances because I work for Yahweh. All the rest of you, Yahweh still determines your finances, although he's not, quote unquote, your boss. So don't let you feel like your boss has anything to do with your finances. Your boss is simply where you chose to go or where a door opened to deal with your finances, at least for the moment.
Oh, but you're afraid to change jobs. We're, we're always afraid to change. Don't be afraid to change jobs. I mean, I look at people all the time. Why don't you think? Do you think Yahweh is not capable of giving you another or better job? And I always throw in the "or better." What if he gave you a better job? Because quite frankly, before this came up, you were probably wishing you had a different job anyway. Exactly. There are people that will complain to you about how horrible their job is until all of a sudden it's being threatened. Now they're like, "Oh no, no, I want my job. I want my job. I want to go kiss my boss's boots." Stop doing that. Your heavenly Father can give you a better job. And by the way, you can also come to your ministry. As Dan in the back has done, done, when he had a job where his, his, uh, shifts got changed. He was working at a, in a factory of some sort of manufacturing where he was then going to have to work Saturdays as part of the shift. And I simply wrote him a letter to his HR department, and we got it fixed. That can happen too. That's right. Okay. And so Dan has that testimony that he can share with you where we simply wrote out the letter and sent it in, and that HR realized that they had to allow and respect his religious observances. And so that can happen as well. You can reach out to leadership for help. But you're not reaching out to leadership for help because you're panicked. And whatever you're saying, "I don't know what to do." I know there is a solution, but I'm coming to you to help get some discernment and wisdom as to what the solution may be. But come expecting a solution. And it doesn't mean your leadership will have it, but just know that there is one. So when you come to me, you can say things like, "I know there's a solution. I'm hoping you can maybe have some insight, but I know there's a solution because there has to be." We have verses that, "Do you not believe this book?" If you believe this book, then you know it says that he doesn't allow you to go into a situation that didn't provide a way of escape. And he also says that those things that come upon you are normal. Like, these are the things that are usual that come upon man. I mean, this stuff happens. And so we need to, where's our fear and where's our trust? Where's our belief? Where's our doubt? And unfortunately, we show a lot more fear and doubt than we show, show trust and belief.
All right, so continuing here with Caleb. He silences them. They complained in verse 32. He says, "And they gave the children of Israel an evil report of the land which they had spied out, saying, 'The land through which we have gone as spies is a land eating up its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it were men of great size. And we saw the Nephilim, sons of Anak, and we were like grasshoppers in their eyes,' etc."
So the evil report. The word there for evil report really has to do more with slander. It was a slanderous report. See, again, we're not being, we're being hampered by people's translating words incorrectly. "Evil" sounds a whole lot different in our minds. "Slander" describes exactly what happened. They lied and slandered. But Yahweh said about that land, Yahweh said, "I am sending to a great land, a land flowing milk and honey, a land that you will be blessed in, a land where all things will be wonderful." And so here they're slandering Yahweh. And so the evil report, the Hebrew word actually is better translated as slander. And so that's important that we understand that.
Okay, so look, we have this example here. And now we go into chapter 14. And let's see what's going on in chapter 14, continuing the story. So all the congregation lifts up their voices and cries, and the people wept that night. So now the people are listening to who? The slanderers. They're not listening to Yahweh. They're not listening to the leadership, to Moses. By the way, this happens in congregations all the time too. You guys will end up listening to people slandering the leadership, but you won't go find out if it actually happened. You won't go for two to three witnesses. You won't go to the leader directly. Like, you won't believe the things that, well, you believe it, but I am shocked by the things I find out people are saying about me behind my back. And then I come to find out that that person never came to me. Or people who come to me thinking the person must have said something to me. I'll say, "Nope, they never came to me." But here the people are weeping, and they're crying all night. And all the children of Israel grumbled against. Are they grumbling against Yahweh? Yes and no. No, they're grumbling against Moses because they want to go against the man. See, they're not going to go directly to Yahweh because they're afraid to do that. So they're going to grumble against Moses. But remember what we told you, if you grumble against the anointed appointed, well, I didn't use that phrase earlier, but I've used it in a lot of teachings. The leadership, we call that the anointed appointed. They've been anointed of Yahweh and appointed to a position of authority. When you do anything negative to that person, it's like you're doing it to Yahweh. Oh, but you'll say to me, "Well, how do I know if my leader's an anointed appointed?" That's a good question. Look at their fruit. Look what they're doing. But not just what they're doing now, but maybe what they were doing before. Because you may be coming into them when their, their King Saul having already lost his mind. Because if you came into Israel when King Saul had already lost his mind, you would have thought, "There's no way this guy has fruit as being an anointed appointed." David knew he was an anointed appointed. So that's why David did not want to touch him. He wouldn't say one negative word about him because you do not talk that way against Yahweh's representatives. But we have no fear of that. Go on Facebook right now. Any, well, you can't do it right now, but when you go on Facebook, you'll see leadership being attacked and slandered and smeared all over the place. And I promise you, some of them, absolutely not all of them, but some of them are anointed appointed. And since you don't know, you ought to be careful. Really think about it. But we have no shame and we have no honor in our society anymore like they used to be. That was the big focus, shame and honor. But yet we attack and we do what we do because we don't understand.
So here they are, they're coming to Moses and they're saying to Moses, they're crying out and they're grumbling against Moses and Aaron. So here's the leadership, Moses and Aaron. And all the congregation said to them, "If only we had died in the land of Egypt. If only we had died, uh, or if only we had died in the wilderness. Why is Yahweh bringing us to the land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become a prey? Would it not be better for us to turn back to Egypt?" So again, this is not the last time we see this. We see this in in the book of Jeremiah where they turn to Egypt for help instead of trusting Yahweh. Always turning to Egypt, always turning to others instead of just trusting Yahweh and trusting the leadership that Yahweh has put in place to lead them as Yahweh directs. You know, I go home a lot. Julie and I will talk, and it, and it doesn't matter if it's after services or after other things that are going on. At some point, we'll have a conversation where I, I basically have to reach out and say, "If these people would just give me a chance and trust what I'm trying to do, that Yahweh is doing through me." And I don't think you have any idea until you've been in my position to understand how hard and frustrating it is to try to do with everybody pulling back, kicking against it, and and and struggling with, do you understand what I'm saying? Am I making any sense? I'm going this way, and the people are rowing in the other direction. Now, if you really think I'm going in the wrong direction, you shouldn't be in the same boat. When David thought Saul was in the wrong direction, he left. He got out of the boat. He didn't stay in the boat throwing rocks at Saul or trying to hit him with an oar. He got out of the boat. So as long as you're in the boat, support and encourage and submit to the authority that you feel that you were placed in by Abba to be with, so that they can get the things done that Abba's given them to do. Because sometimes the leadership looks like they're not getting anything done because we're dealing with a lot of people that are fighting against everything we're trying to do, which makes it almost impossible.
So here they are, they're attacking Moses and they're having all this problem. And they say, "Oh, let's go back to Egypt." And, and they said to each other, "Here we go. This is, this is the next thing that happens in the country. Let's get a new leader. We don't like this one because this one's allowing us to be afraid and panic. And, you know, obviously he doesn't know what he's doing. You know, he must have heard wrong from Yahweh because he couldn't want us to go through this scary thing." How do you know what is Abba really telling you? Or is it your own internal voice? See, we have to remember that there's three voices in our head. I'm not trying to say you're schizophrenic, but there's three voices in our head. I got a psychiatrist in the row here, he knows what I'm talking about. Though there's three voices in your head, and two of them never shut up. Okay? You've got number one, your own voice. That's the voice of "I want," "I don't like that," "That's not fair." It's your personal, self-sovereign voice, your preferences, your desires, what you want or what you don't want. Sometimes it's a voice going, "But I don't want to do that. But I don't like that. Oh, that's uncomfortable. I don't." This is what they're, this is what they're listening to here. This is them. Oh, people say, "Oh, Hasatan got into all them nonsense." They did not need Hasatan to do what they did here in this chapter. All they needed was their own fears, doubts, and their preferences. "I don't want to go in there. I don't want to deal with that scary stuff. I'm afraid." You don't need Hasatan for that. What Hasatan is, is an opportunist. And so he's going to encourage them in the direction they already want to go. Just like when Yahweh hardened the heart of Pharaoh, he didn't harden it. The Hebrew really bears out that he encouraged it in the way it already wanted to go. Satan functions the same way. He doesn't give you the idea to do the thing you shouldn't do. You already don't want to do whatever you're supposed to, or already want to do the thing you shouldn't do. He just encourages you in doing it. It's just like in the TV and movie shows, you have the little angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other. The devil doesn't give the person the thought. The person's already got the thought. The devil's saying, "Hey, it's a good idea." The angel's saying, "No, no, no, bad idea." Okay? That's you. That's what's going on really in your head.
Now, the third voice that's in there, because Satan is that second voice that doesn't ever shut up. But Satan's not the one trying to tempt you to do something that never was your thought. Let me be clear about this. Some of you had alcohol problems growing up at some point. Others of you didn't. Guess what? You will never be tempted with alcohol if you've never had an alcohol problem. Those of you who did, Satan will keep bringing that up because that was your weak point. Some of you had a problem with anger. Some of you never had a problem with anger. Guess what? The person who's got the problem with anger, he's going to keep bringing that and tempting you with that. He is an opportunist to stimulate and get out of you what needs to get worked on. He's not the one stimulating that thought. I've never had an alcohol problem. That's not bragging or anything. I'm saying is, but I've also never had Satan try to tempt me to go get drunk and do things an alcoholic problem would be. However, I've got my other issues that he loves to play with because those are mine, just like yours are yours. But he's not putting the idea in your head. I'm tired of listening to Christians when they come into this belief system, they bring this Christian thought process in and they keep thinking, "Oh, the devil got into it. The devil." No, no, you got into it. The devil only encouraged it. Let's stop blaming him for what we don't need to blame him for. I'm not defending him, but let's understand what he does. He is not the cause. You're the cause. He didn't give you the thought. You had the thought. He simply encouraged you or brought the opportunity up, and you fell for the opportunity. But he tempted you in something you already have a problem with. So stop blaming him for the things that are not of him. You need to take ownership of your problem. You know why you do all those things? You do those things because you like to. "Oh, don't say that, Rabbi. Don't tell me I like to do that stuff." You must, or you wouldn't do it. You must desire it and like it on some weird, perverted level. All of us. I'm talking about me too. Well, those, you know what Paul said it too? Paul said, "That which I want to do, I don't do, and that which I don't want to do, I do." What is he saying? I struggle with my flesh. He didn't blame it on Satan. He says, "I struggle with me." That which I want to do. Okay, when he says "what I want to do," he means when I want to do what Yahweh said. Struggles against what I really want to do. And that which I don't want to do, what Yahweh said not to do, struggles against what I want to do. Because on, in our head, we go, "Okay, I want to keep the Sabbath. I want to eat right. I want to do this. I want to do that." But they see, if it hasn't transferred from head to heart, and the heart says, "Uh-uh, I'd rather do this. I'd rather do that." We're going to go with what, what the head says or the heart? The heart. Okay. The heart is where you're always going to go. That's why we have to then take the thoughts into captivity. Because guess what? If you think and dwell on something long enough, eventually it goes from the head to the heart. And then once it's in the heart, it then starts to manifest in terms of action. So we go from the head to the heart to taking action. And once that process is going, we start to develop what's called habits. And those are hard to break. Habits are really tough. And so we get to these entrenched mindsets and entrenched behaviors. And that's what Paul is talking about. He says, "That which I don't want to do, I do." When he says "I don't want to do it," he doesn't mean I really don't want to do it. It means that which I know I shouldn't do. Let's rephrase Paul: "That which I know I shouldn't do, I do. And that which I know I shouldn't do that I should do, I don't do." Okay, "That which I know I should do, I don't do. And that which I shouldn't do, I do." It has to do with knowing what you should and shouldn't do, but yet you're still finding yourself doing the opposite because you haven't gotten the heart cleaned out yet. And because you haven't learned to fear Yahweh enough yet. Because in that fearlessness, you do what you do. Look at the world today. Look at the youth today. They've got no fear of anything compared to going back a generation or two. There's stuff that they're doing that you're, and you're all going, "We would never have done that." I mean, there may have been stuff you did, but there's stuff definitely you didn't do. And you go back even another generation to stuff that you did that they wouldn't have done. Because that whole thing is just loosened up and loosened up and loosened up to the point where anything goes because nobody's afraid of anything. We have no respectful awe and reverence for anybody or anything. And ultimately, what it comes down to is the is the four, is the, uh, excuse me, the fifth commandment. See, unfortunately, as adults, we'll read the fifth commandment and think, "Oh, that's for children. Honor your mother and father." It's a children's commandment. Well, yes and no. If you are a child, yes, you need to learn to honor your mother and father. What if you never learned to do that, though? Now you still need to learn it. Because if you never learned to honor mother and father, I guarantee you you didn't honor your bosses, your teachers, or whatever, because you didn't learn to honor authority. That's the importance of that transitional verse. And the reason I say transitional, transitional commandment, because people usually say the first four commandments are for Yahweh, the last six are for man. Well, actually, number five is for both because he is your Father. And we, if, if we don't learn to honor our mother and father on the earth, we're never going to honor our heavenly Father. And Yeshua talked about that too. If you can't show honor and respect, how are you ever going to honor and respect correctly vertically? And yet, what does it come down to? Fear. We have children running around with no fear. They're afraid of nothing. They're afraid of nothing. I think the body is filled with people that way too. I see people doing stuff and saying stuff and acting and whatever they're doing all over the internet, everywhere else. And I sit there going, "These people have no shame and no fear of any kind of reprisal." And then I watch people in discussion groups listening to faceless people who they have no idea who these people are, and they take them as if they're authorities. And I'm like, "Why are you listening to these faceless people that you know nothing about?" Because then they start, you know, holding the people up. And I, one time had a person arguing with me because I, I explained it. Now, bear in mind, I never get on Facebook. I post teachings, but I don't get in discussions, if you know what I'm saying. But every now and then, somebody will be asking for an answer. I'll notice that nobody's answered their question, so I'll chime in and just give them a quick answer. So then the, what I call them is the, the Facebook wolves, okay, or lions. They're sitting around waiting for someone to answer so they can tell everybody how dumb that person is and straighten them out. They're not going to be the one to answer. They're going to wait for somebody else to answer so they can jump in. And so this, which is, by the way, a very cowardly act. And so I, I simply answered this person's question very simply, whatever it was, I can't even remember the question. And the person got all into it with me and told me that I didn't know Hebrew and didn't know this and didn't know that. So I simply responded this way: "I said, 'Okay, before I even choose whether or not I'm going to argue with you or not, which I really don't want to debate, please tell me what your background is, and specifically in, in your knowledge of Hebrew?'" Since, after all, he thought he knew Hebrew better. And he said, "Well, I've got two Israeli friends and a Blue Letter Bible." I said, "That's your extent of your knowledge of Hebrew? I went to Hebrew school starting at four. That doesn't make me an expert, but it's a little better than having two Israeli friends and a Blue Letter Bible." I've got a bunch of German friends. I've got a bunch of Brazilian friends. I've got a bunch of Russian friends. I got a, I don't speak any of those languages. Having friends from a country doesn't make you know anything about the language. And a Blue Letter Bible certainly doesn't fix it either. But, but you know what? And I couldn't believe the person answered the question. But it was a lesson to everybody in the forum. And after he answered that, I said, "I'm leaving the conversation now. You got what you needed to. You got, I said, 'Please start asking questions of these people that are so-called experts that are leading you. Where are they coming from?' Instead of just letting them be Facebook trolls who just jump in and attack. And so everybody then had a witness to that process. And I always like to ask the question, 'Where's your teaching on this subject so that we can analyze it the way you're analyzing mine?' I don't have a problem with you analyzing mine, but where's yours? Because all people like to do is they take everybody else's and they want to attack it and rip it apart and everything else. Well, if you're so smart and have all these answers, where's your teaching? Oh, no, no, I don't do that. Of course not. Because then you'd subject yourself to people like you attacking it. See? But then when we're attacking and do all these things, let's bring it back to fear of Yahweh. Where is their fear? They have no fear. You know why? Because they're hidden behind a name. And by the way, it's never their name. It's like, you know, some phrase of some sort, and that's their name on Facebook. So we don't know who these people are. In their profile, they don't tell you where they live or anything else. I mean, these are just faceless people who have complete safety and anonymity attacking whoever they want. And you guys listen to them. Please stop doing that. Ask them questions. Where's your teaching on the subject? What makes you so smart? How do you know this thing? What if, where's your studies? What, what's your background? You know, you may find out they were in mainstream Christianity last month and now they're an expert in Messianic. The average people that are teaching on Facebook and YouTube have been doing this less than five years. The majority. Wow. Do you understand that? The majority probably less than three years. And yet you, nobody's asking these questions. And so we don't know because what you end up with is you end up with messy Baptist, messy Costal, messy whatever, because they're going to teach, they're going to teach the theology of where they came from in the framework of Sabbath and feast and kosher. Really? That's so they, so they stopped eating pork, they stopped worshiping on Sunday, and they let go of Christmas and Easter. But they're still going to give you the doctrinal point of view of the Pentecostals or the, or the Baptists, or the Lutherans, or the Methodists, or the, whatever. Okay, just fill in the blanks. And yet you have no idea because you're not asking anybody. You, you should ask them, "Where have you come from? How long have you been doing this? What is your background?" And it doesn't mean what seminary or Yeshiva you went to. Just get a sense of, you know, "I've had people come to me and say, 'I've been on your website and I, I noticed you don't have a statement of beliefs.'" I said, "Well, it's there. Have any of you noticed it? Go to 'Learn With Us.' That whole page is our statement of belief. It's all 200 teachings because I can't tell you what I believe in a sound bite. It's not fair, especially if what I believe is so different than what you've heard before. Because what I teach, for example, on grace, how am I going to explain that in a sound bite? Does it make sense to you? Or what I teach about salvation, or what I teach about, you know, feeling about worship. Remember we did the teaching on worship, or about the name? All these things are in our statement of beliefs. But you know what? To teach what I needed to teach about grace, it took 14 parts. To teach what I taught about worship, it took, I don't remember, six, seven parts, whatever it was. Four parts, I think. Four. Okay. How are you fitting that into a one or two sentence statement of beliefs? But I do put out there, if you want to know what I believe about all kind of stuff, look, listen through all the stuff, and then you'll know where I'm coming from. But again, we have all the faceless, fearless trolls coming out there and doing this attacking and everything else, and they're hurting the body. They are not helping the body. You want to help the body? You can get, you know what? I may go on to a, let's say I was one of these guys wanting to do it right. This is what I would do. I would say, "I see what somebody has already posted. I have a somewhat different take. Here's the teaching on it for your consideration." You see the difference? I didn't attack. I simply said, "I have a different perspective that you may want to consider. Here's a link to it." I didn't disrespect the other person. I didn't attack them and say, "How stupid they are." I didn't say whatever. I simply said, "Here's my perspective on it. You may want to take into consideration as part of the discussion." Does that make sense? We have to learn to be much more fearful of Yahweh. And that means that he expects us to be respectful of each other and of him. We're supposed to walk in the Ruach, in the fruit. You don't see the kindness and gentleness and meekness and all that other stuff, do you, on Facebook most of the time? No. I see people getting thrown out of groups every day because they're not able to behave in a respectful way. And this all comes back to the fear of Yahweh. If they would have a proper fear of Yahweh, they would have a respect for Yahweh that then would overflow into the way we fear and respect each other in an honoring, respectful way to deal with each other. Hopefully, that's making sense. Where was I in this? I don't think we're going to be able to finish this here. Let's see, real quickly. You know what? We'll pick back up on chapter 14 in part two.
Let's go before the Father. Oh, our Father, King Father, we come before you and we're just so very thankful for all that you share with us in terms of opening up our eyes and our ears and our hearts to understand all the abundance of depth that's in your word. And Father, we've come to understand that all of this that we're reading and studying, all, all the accounts that you've allowed to be in your word are to teach us to believe in you and to fear you and to, Father, to also to respect the leadership that you put in place. Father, that we can respect what Moses did, that we can respect what Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did, that we can respect what all of the prophets were doing, that we could respect what Yeshua did, that we could respect what all of the apostles were doing. Father, that we then would learn to respect each other as human beings, as children of the living Elohim. So Father, we come before you asking that you would help us to be still and to not panic. And in that calm place, to believe and trust that you will bring forth the miracle that we could not see any way to come. And we can do that with excited anticipation. And the Father, that we'll be ready to walk in it once you show it to us. Because we know that you're not just going to do everything for us, but that you're going to show us, and that we have to then walk in it. So have us to be ready to walk in what, what you've shown, what you've shown us. All too often, you show us and we refuse to walk because we're too afraid. And so Father, we ask you to help give us strength and encouragement. You know, Moses said to, to Joshua several times, he said, "Be strong and of good courage." At the end of every Torah portion that finishes up a Torah book, we say, "Chazak," which means be strong. And may we be strengthened. And what we need to be strengthened in is our fear of you, so that we may never be afraid again. So Father, we come before you seeking and begging and pleading with you in the authority of Yeshua. We come asking that you would strengthen us in our resolve and our fear and our confidence in you, to have awe and wonder and respect for you, so that we might never be afraid of anyone or anything else again. Father, we love you and appreciate this opportunity. We appreciate that you tell us in your word that you will do these things, and we read your word believing what we read. Father, we, we come to you now in respect and awe in the authority of your Son, Yeshua Messiah, Yeshua our Messiah. And together we say, Amen.
The [Music] Amen.