Atonement 101: Eight Kinds of Sin

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Derek Leman

I’m having a writer’s frenzy of a summer. One of my books should be released by FFOZ in July or August. I’m working on a big freelance assignment due end of July. I starting a new place to make learning the Hebrew Bible simple. And I’m writing Yeshua Our Atonement for a planned September 3 release.

I have atonement on the brain. I’ve reread many passages of Jacob Milgrom’s three-volume commentary on Leviticus lately. I’ve read twice, some parts more than twice, Scot McKnight’s excellent book, A Community Called Atonement (and I had read the book before when it was new in 2007). And I’ve been writing, throwing out un-creative and overly academic first drafts, and rewriting the chapters of Yeshua Our Atonement.

I’m glad we don’t use typewriters any more. Rewriting is already enough work. But I actually enjoy this and the creative in me wouldn’t want to spend my summer any other way. Study, write, family, congregation. Who could ask for anything more?

All that to say that today’s blog post springs out of my preparation for the book. It leapt off the page at me (reading from the elliptical trainer at LA Fitness) when I came across this list in McKnight’s book. I’ll take his list of eight kinds of “sin” and elaborate just a bit with examples and thoughts. Continue reading →

Posted in atonement, Discipleship, ethics, Loving Deeds, Scot McKnight | Leave a comment

Isaiah 45, Every Knee

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Derek Leman

Turn to me, all the ends of the earth and be saved. I am Hashem and there is no other. Assemble yourselves and come, draw near you survivors of the gentiles. There is no God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior. To me every knee will bow and every tongue swear allegiance, “Surely in Hashem is abundant justice!” In Hashem they prove right and praise all the seed of Israel. (NOTE: the above is not in exact order, but reproduces many of the statements in Isaiah 45:18-25).

The second part of Isaiah (chapters 40-55) is about the Israelite exiles in Babylon. But the words of Isaiah 45:18-25 are addressed to the gentiles who are refugees during Cyrus the Persian’s conquest of Babylon. Perhaps the prophet’s primary audience is the Israelites but through their eyes he has a message to and about the nations and their turning to God in faith.

This passage is all the more important because it addresses gentiles and also because part of it becomes a messianic hymn of the early Yeshua movement. Compare Isaiah 45:23 and Philippians 2:5-11. What is the message of Isaiah in these verses? Continue reading →

Posted in Bible, Commentaries on Bible, Eschatology, Faith, Gentiles, Gospel, Hebrew Bible, Messiah, The Messiah, Yeshua | 6 Comments

The “Messianic” Wall of Weird #1

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Derek Leman

Maybe you remember Chloe from Smallville (the fave Smallville character in the Leman house). She started the show as the high school newspaper editor. She collected happenings in Smallville related to the green meteor rocks (kryptonite) on a wall, called the “wall of weird.”

Well, kryptonite runs amok on the internet in a gigantic profusion of youtube videos, Facebook posts, tweets on Twitter, websites, and forums where people think there is secret knowledge which can save you. That secret knowledge (snake oil alert!!) is the long-lost name of God: “Yahuwah”.

Why am I starting a “Messianic Wall of Weird”? Although I will in some ways be making fun or denouncing certain teachers and schools of thought, my purpose is actually concern. I am concerned that well-meaning people who want to know God are tricked by hucksters. I am concerned that Christians think Messianic means weirdness. I am concerned that Jews think Messianic means weirdness. I am concerned that snake oil sells better than Torah and gospel. I am concerned by the hundreds of people I see posting errors and lies on Facebook — most innocently as they learned these things from the kind of people I will be holding up to scrutiny. Let’s start with some propagators of the Yahuwah silliness. Continue reading →

Posted in Wall of Weird | 31 Comments

Ruth Blog: Gleaning, Corners, Holiness

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Derek Leman

New “extra insight” article at ReadingRuth.wordpress.com and translation notes now complete for seven lessons covering Ruth 1:1-2:13.

Posted in Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Language | Leave a comment

Shavuot, Remembrance and a Wedding

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Derek Leman

A terrible verse in Judges calls for our attention: “There arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel” (2:10). In one generation the people forgot why they came together as a people and what God meant for them. Generational loss of faith still happens today. What is so important to the parents is lost. The disappointment of children with weak faith, imperfect parents, the common hypocrisies to which we are all prone, is inevitable. Some get past it and see God and the world to come as bigger than their disappointment.

A faith that points to bigger things, a faith that uses symbols as signposts, communicates better than a faith without. It is no mystery why in Torah a festival with unleavened bread and spring lambs, another with cut branches and brush arbors, and other signs and remembrances of release from Egypt and wisdom given at Sinai, is prescribed by God. Earthly signs of heavenly realities give us tangible pointers to invisible meaning. A feast-filled faith is, well, bigger.

The traditions of Judaism surrounding Shavuot augment the original requirements (pilgrimage, sheaves of wheat, shared feast) with new ones (omer counting, late night study sessions, reading Ruth, the Akdamut). Shavuot is a remembrance (all the more so for Messianic Judaism) and it can also be a wedding. Continue reading →

Posted in Congregational Life, Holidays, Judeo-Christian, messianic, Messianic Jewish, Messianic Judaism | Leave a comment

Creation in Genesis as Functional

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Derek Leman

We should never let sacred cows get in the way of understanding the Bible. But sacred cows are, well, sacred. And the holy brisket of Antioch is a popular menu item! But tipping cows is a lot of fun, especially when they are hallowed bovines of un-enlightenment.

One sacred cow that holds people back from getting far more out of Genesis (and Isaiah, Proverbs, Psalms, etc.) is that “create” in Genesis 1 means “out of nothing” (ex nihilo, for you theology buffs). Important clarification: I, and also the people whose writing I will allude to, absolutely believe that God created out of nothing, that he and he alone is the source and origin of all that exists. This is not about whether God created out of nothing. It is about “what does ‘create’ mean in Genesis and what is it teaching us?” Also, this is not a liberal-theology-indoctrination-pamphlet (I know some readers worry about that). It’s reading Genesis for what it really is about.

And the difference it makes, in seeing what creation in Genesis is really about, is you don’t get sucked into unfortunate arguments about choosing between “what the Bible says” and “what science says.” It would be good for most of us to get beyond either-or and black-and-white simplicism (my spell checker says “simplicism” is not a word, but it should be).

My decision to blog about this came this morning as I wrote my “Daily Isaiah” email message about Isaiah 45:9-13. Vs. 12a says, anokhee aseetee eretz v’adam alayha vara’tee (“I, I made earth and humankind on it I created”). The word “create” is from the familiar root bara. What does bara mean and how does that tell us more about creation in Genesis 1? Continue reading →

Posted in Bible, Commentaries on Bible, Hebrew Bible, John Hobbins, Theology | 11 Comments

YIC Blog: Part 2 of “Applying Messiah’s Kingdom Parables.”

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Derek Leman

In part 2, I explain a truth about kingdom teaching Yeshua understood from Isaiah 6. Few readers catch this as the background. See it here.

Posted in Yeshua In Context | Leave a comment

Shavuot: Meaning and Practices

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Derek Leman

From 2009, some Shavuot Music and a Picnic at Tikvat David (in Atlanta).

Back in 1991, having been married less than a year, my wife and I made quite a mess in our oven attempting to bake a loaf of wheat bread of comparable size the Shavuot loaves. Leviticus 23:17 says, “You shall bring from your dwelling places two loaves of bread to be waved, made of two tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, and they shall be baked with leaven.”

Two-tenths of an ephah is about 18 cups of flour. But is that two loaves, each being 9 cups or two loaves of 18 cups each (a “normal” loaf of bread is 4 cups of flour)? In any case, our apartment in Chicago was about 400 square feet. Our oven was small (only a small turkey would fit in it). I think we only tried to make a 9-cup loaf. We almost had to call the fire department!

Wheat is a big deal to the Leman family (we grind our own wheat and make our own bread). Shavuot (Pentecost) is traditionally about flowers and dairy foods. In temple times it was a great feast and quite a lot of lamb, goat, and some beef was being grilled as well (a great kosher BBQ!). The Lemans get together with the congregation for a big outdoor picnic every year and enjoy food and outdoor music.

In what follows, I will summarize (there is so much that can be said, Shavuot is easily worthy of a book) the meaning and practices of Shavuot. Continue reading →

Posted in Holidays, Judaism, Judeo-Christian, messianic, Messianic Jewish, Messianic Judaism | 1 Comment

Counter-Cultural Circles

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Derek Leman

Before I get started, let me say where I am going with this. I am going to make some observations about the early messianic movement and also the early rabbis and their disciple circles. I am going to make some observations about Messianic and Judeo-Christian circles in our time. And this is all a prelude to some things I want to say in a future article about disciple circles (I am grateful to Rabbi Carl Kinbar who got me thinking about all of this and must add that he is not to blame for any opinions I share).

Counter-cultural circles can be good or bad. The opposite of counter-cultural is mainstream. Continue reading →

Posted in Congregational Life, Discipleship, Judeo-Christian, messianic, Messianic Jewish, Messianic Judaism | 14 Comments

Setting Feet on Israeli Soil …

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Derek Leman

There are many experiences we can have as people of faith that involve our senses and a connection with the beauty of God.

We can set our eyes on things. One experience that can be meaningful is setting our eyes on the pages of a Bible, perhaps a favorite one, with memories in the pages or a new one with beautiful paper pages and leather cover. Or we may set our eyes on a Siddur or other prayer book that is precious to us. We set our eyes on the stars at night or a long winding river and it may be that we feel the truth of our faith.

We set our ears on many things that open up our inner being to what is holy. Music is the simplest example, but sometimes pure silence is preferable. The sound of others praying, perhaps talking in half tones so that we cannot exactly make out what is being said, can bring us to a higher level of perception. Or it may be the sound of those we share food and drink and laugher with that makes us believe there is goodness in this world God made.

But one experience I know many of you have had, many of you dream of having, and one which has always been profound for me and many others I know is setting feet on the Land of Israel. What is it about the Land that draws us? What could there be about a place that makes God so much more obviously present? What are the experiences people tend to have in deliberately making a pilgrimage to the Land with the full intent of drawing near to God? Continue reading →

Posted in Bible, Israel Tour | 10 Comments