The Two-Hundred-Eighty-Fifth (A False Separation)

We’ve talked, in previous weeks, about what seems to be a separation occurring in the world lately.  I stated that I believe it’s either the separation Yeshua spoke of in Matthew 25 between the sheep and goats (Matthew 25:31-46) or it’s a reflection of, or even a preparation for, that separation.  This week, we’re going to make sure we’re identifying the proper separation, the one intended by Yeshua, because I believe there is a false dividing occurring in the world today.

What do I mean by a false separation?  To answer that question, we need to remind ourselves of a little bit of history.  We’ll touch on some major themes with Israel, and YHWH’s people in general, which we’ve discussed before, and then move into more recent history, post-resurrection.

As we’ve identified previously, a major characteristic of YHWH’s people that is evident in scripture is that there is an almost constant distinguishing of them that occurs.  It’s a dividing from not only the rebellious and disobedient world, but also a dividing of the truly faithful and obedient from those who call themselves, or consider themselves, YHWH’s faithful and obedient.  This type of division is seen in scripture from the beginning to the end, and if we didn’t keep that pattern at the forefront of our mind as we studied scripture and tried to understand and apply it to our lives we would easily develop false doctrines, false beliefs, and never come to the truth of how YHWH wants us to live for Him in Yeshua’s body of assembly.

This dividing happens in scripture not just between peoples either.  At the very beginning, we see Adam and Eve separated from the place of communion and direct, intimate contact with YHWH due to their disobedience (Genesis 3:23-24).  There were no other people who remained obedient, at that point in time, for Adam and Eve to be separated from, but nonetheless a separation had to occur due to their sin.

The next major separation was most obviously with Noah and his family (Genesis 7:1-5).  The rest of those in the world had become disobedient, sinful, to the point where not one of their thoughts was on good (Genesis 6:5-12).  At that point, to put it in terms we can see elsewhere in scripture (Genesis 15:16), the completeness, or fullness, of their iniquity had come and the execution of their resulting judgment was required.  Therefore, Noah and his family, due to Noah’s righteousness, were separated from the world while its judgment was imposed.

A couple of things about this event are important to point out before we move on to the next example.  First, once the flood was over, Noah and his sons were given the same thing from YHWH that Adam and Eve had received: they were blessed and told to be fruitful and multiply, filling the whole earth (Genesis 1:28, 9:1).  This is, and always has been, YHWH’s primary purpose for man.  He wanted mankind to procreate in order to 1) take care of the earth and all that He created in it, and 2) have a close, personal relationship with not only Adam and Eve but all those that came after them.

The second thing to point out is that despite the righteousness of the person, or people, that start out the “remnant” that YHWH separated, disobedience and sinfulness still creep in after the separation occurs.  In the case of Noah and his family, we see shortly after the flood that there’s a “troublemaker” in the family.  One of Noah’s sons, Ham, is shown to have a tendency for unrighteousness (Genesis 9:22-25).  Later, we see that Ham’s descendants, starting with his son Canaan, grew to be a sinful people that YHWH imposed judgment on directly (Genesis 10:18-19, 19:24) and even used Israel to impose judgment on (Deuteronomy 20:16-18).  Keep that last verse, verse 18, in mind as we go forward, because we will come back to it later.

You can already see where we’re going with this idea of separation and what YHWH’s separation of His people entails, and if we went through every example in detail we’d have to extend this study a few weeks!  Rather than do that, we’ll just highlight a few more: the separations of the Israelites from Egypt (Exodus 12:31-41), the obedient Israelites from disobedient ones at Mount Sinai (Exodus 32:19-28), and at the entrance to the Promised Land (Numbers 32:10-11), and in the Promised Land (Ezekiel 6:1-10), etc.  That first example requires just a touch of depth because that depth goes directly to what we’re talking about this week and is pervasive in all the rest of the examples of separation of the faithful and obedient that we see in scripture.  

In that first example, we see the Israelites separated from the pagan Egypt.  It is the first separation that we see in scripture of a people that are specifically called YHWH’s chosen, but the idea of a chosen people is obviously seen previously in Noah and Abraham.  This is also the first separation that we see of a people that were fully integrated into a pagan nation.  We see later on that despite the Israelites being physically distinguished in their own section of Egypt, in the land of Goshen, they had nevertheless adopted customs and practices of the pagan people of Egypt, even to the point of worshipping their gods (Ezekiel 23:2-3, 8, 19, 27).

Did YHWH wait for them to repent, stop worshipping pagan gods, and return to obedience to Him?  No, He saved them from Egypt even while they were in disobedience, and while they continued in disobedience during their time in the wilderness being saved, and He reiterated His commandments to them in the process of that separation.  That’s an important thing to recognize and internalize for us as believers because it shows that our salvation isn’t about a particular moment in time when we did something once, it’s a process of growth that requires us to take action in our lives.      

As we identified, there were Israelites that were saved from slavery in Egypt but didn’t make it to the Promised Land.  They returned to the idolatry they learned in Egypt and the judgment of death was imposed on them.  Not only that, there were Israelites that desired to return to slavery in Egypt rather than continue in the wilderness (Numbers 14:3-4), and they would have if they had their way!  Some even said they would have rather died in Egypt while they were actively being saved from the slavery they originally wanted to be delivered from! (Exodus 16:3)  

I tell you now that there are believers today that have these same attitudes with what’s going on in the world.  The things that are being revealed in practically every aspect of how the world has operated for centuries, even millennia, which were previously hidden to us, have shown that people as a whole, and believers as a subset of them, are no different in their reaction than the Israelites that YHWH delivered from Egypt.  Some get to the point of despair when they see what’s being revealed, and choose to see no hope, the same as the Israelites that thought it better had they died in Egypt.  

There’s a group of others that see the truth and acknowledge it is the truth, but still return to Egypt, so to speak.  For some, it’s that they don’t know what to do, so they just keep doing what they’re doing.  For others, they get to the point where the truth is just too much for them to handle.  They acknowledge and accept some of the truth, but as more, deeper things are revealed it becomes too unbelievable to them and so they go back to what they were doing before and what they were interested in before.

As you can probably agree, we don’t want to be like those people.  Our desire, as believers, should be to love the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10), seek out truth (2 Timothy 2:15, Proverbs 25:2), identify what’s evil and hold fast to what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22), and expose evil (Ephesians 5:11).  However, the danger we face today is that, in large part, Christians are blind to what the real truth is, and the world is using that blindness to make them believe they are being separated from it when, in fact, they are not.

What do I mean by that?  Well, I don’t know if you have noticed, but there is more and more talk about Jesus and prayer and Christianity, in general, happening in the world today.  We’ve got organizations running a “Christian halftime show,” more and more celebrities talking about following Jesus and mentioning God, and even top people in the government organizing prayer services.  

I offer just a few examples, so you know what I’m referring to in case you weren’t already aware.  As I write this, I received an email about a “Pentagon Prayer Service” for all Department of War personnel around the Pentagon to join the Secretary of War in “Christian prayer and worship.”  I watched a video the other day of the late James Van Der Beek talking in his last days about realizing through his sickness that who he is is someone who is loved by God and therefore he should love himself despite not being able to do all the things that he previously used to use to define himself.  There’s also an app you can download where you can “join celebrities in prayer, meditation and reading the bible.”  And of course, there was the recent production by Turning Point USA of a “Christian halftime show” to counter the superbowl halftime show, suggesting that the superbowl show was evil and Christians shouldn’t be watching it.

Now, the TP USA show wasn’t specifically called Christian, but I’m calling it what it was despite their use of the words “All-American” and saying that it was meant to focus on “faith, family, and freedom.”  I also don’t want you to get the impression that I’m saying the actual superbowl show wasn’t evil and that it was ok for Christians to watch.  Just look up the lyrics to the songs the headliner artist sang in that show, translated to English, and you’ll see it’s certainly messaging that Christians should not be listening to.

My point is that despite what TP USA was presenting their show as, and the fact that some people on the show used the name Jesus, talked about reading the bible, and told people to give their lives to Jesus, their show also included messaging Christians shouldn’t be listening to.  The headliner artist on that show sang, arguably, his most popular song, and it includes references to topless dancers, his “heroes at the methodone clinics,” crackheads, hookers, and more.  I think you can agree that YHWH is not pleased with His people listening to that kind of stuff, let alone associating the name of Jesus with it.

I’m not trying to be one of those believers that spends their time pointing out how other professing Christians are failing in their walk, so don’t take that away from what I’m pointing out here.  To the point I made earlier, we’re all in a progressive growth of deliverance like the Israelites in the wilderness.  Perhaps TP USA’s headliner is a true believer and he is still in the beginning of that growth, but you have to use what you learn from scripture to discern what’s going on.  We know that the key part of starting your walk as one of YHWH’s people is repentance, and you have to ask yourself if true repentance includes going back to the worldly things that gave you worldly success and associating those things with the name of your Savior.

Now can you see what I mean about the world giving Christians a false sense of being separated by YHWH?  A spiritually blind, mainstream Christian sees the talk about Jesus, the bible, and God in the world and is drawn to it, thinking it’s YHWH’s way of pulling them out of the world, separating them from the world.  However, when you look beyond those superficial references, what’s underneath is nothing different than the rest of the world.  The verse “these people honor Me with their lips but their hearts are far from Me.  They worship Me in vain; they teach as doctrine the precepts of men,” (Matthew 15:8, Isaiah 29:13) comes to my mind regularly when I see these types of things in the world.

So, you have to ask yourselves how we got here, and the answer is exactly what Yeshua was quoting: the doctrines of men.  Here’s where we get into the history of YHWH’s people after Yeshua’s resurrection.  In that history, we see a gradual progression from the doctrine of YHWH to the doctrine of men that has resulted in Christians today being susceptible to the false separation we’re seeing.  Recognizing this progression helps us, as true believers, to identify that these types of things are deceptions so we don’t fall into that trap.

We have seen in previous studies that at the beginning, after Yeshua’s resurrection, believers were living next to, worshipping with, and even directly related to the unbelieving Jews.  We also have seen that early on those Jews began to persecute the believers, to the point that they were kicked out of the synagogues and the Jews started cursing them as a part of their normal Judaic practices.  As things progressed, the believers began to be persecuted by the world, the Roman Empire.  Their refusal to participate in the pagan practices of the empire, sacrificing to idols and other gods, worshipping on certain days, etc., resulted in edicts being written that essentially required the pagan people they lived, worked, and interacted with to, in the worst cases, submit the believers up for execution.  

Some believers recanted their beliefs, rather than be put to death or tortured.  Others held fast and ended up being executed in horrific ways.  The times of persecution waxed and waned, with some emperors or local governmental leaders being more dedicated to it than others.    

As a result, through these times, out of a desire for preserving their own flesh, Christians started incorporating pagan practices, rituals, and beliefs into their lives.  They could effectively “fly under the radar” and prevent persecution and death by looking like a pagan in their worship of YHWH.  Eventually, out of a desire for unity, the leaders of the Roman Empire became tolerant of Christianity, but through that process the incorporation of these pagan things became solidified.  The justification?  The belief that as believers we are able to sanctify pagan things.  

Is there scriptural basis for this belief?  Can we point to a verse, or set of verses, that show YHWH allows us to do that, or even desires us to?  If you know of any, please enlighten me, because all I can find is verses where YHWH commands that His people destroy pagan things (Numbers 33:51-56, Deuteronomy 7:5, 12:2-3), don’t even marry pagan people (Deuteronomy 7:3-4, Exodus 34:15-16, Ezra 9:2, 8-14, Nehemiah 13:23-29), and don’t join in pagan rituals (Deuteronomy 17:2-5, 18:9-12, 20:18, Leviticus 18:3, Jeremiah 10:2).  Even Paul, writing after the resurrection mind you, makes reference to these commandments (1 Corinthians 10:20-21).    

Do you know what the Israelites did when they recognized they had sinned in taking pagan spouses and repented from it?  They divorced them, and some of them had even already borne children with their spouse (Ezra 10).  Am I saying that a believer should divorce their spouse if their spouse is an unbeliever?  No.  That person should follow what Paul laid out when addressing that type of situation (1 Corinthians 7:12-16).  The point is, when you look at these types of examples you see how important it was that YHWH’s people did not become a part of, and participate in, the pagan things of the world.  He did not tell the Israelites to go into Canaan and integrate with those people, and that by doing that they could convince the pagans to repent and follow Him instead of other gods.

The same goes for us today.  Don’t think that we can bring the people of the world to Yeshua by being like the world, and as a corollary to that, don’t think that what the world is presenting as Christianity is what Yeshua says it means to follow Him.  What you’re seeing in the world today is a false choice, a false separation, and if we fall for it we will think we’re on the right side of things when we’re actually not.  

Being like the world in the hopes of bringing those people to Yeshua only results in two people not being what Yeshua says His followers should be: you and whoever you were trying to bring to Him.  The true separation, the true choice that YHWH is providing to His people in this time, is one that you won’t see on the TV screens at halftime or in your social media feeds.  It’s the choice between reading scripture for yourself and doing what He says in it or not.  That is, and always has been, His choice for His people.

We implore you to make the right choice, this week and going forward in your life, to turn off the TV, turn off your social media, stop letting the world tell you what a Christian is and read what YHWH said His people are.  Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!  

-Rob and Sara Gene

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The Gospel

We are born sinful as a result of Adam and Eve's sin (Genesis 2:17, 3:6, 1 John 1:8)

The consequence of sin, which is unavoidable through our own works, is death (Romans 6:23)

Yeshua, the Son of YHWH, lived sinless and was put to death (Hebrews 4:15)

His death, therefore, cleanses us of sin that would have required our death

(2 Corinthians 5:21)

He rose on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4)

Because of His resurrection, we are confident in our future resurrection and eternal life

(1 Corinthians 15:17-18, John 3:16)