The Two-Hundred-Eighty-Second (Expectations)

This week, we’re going to ask ourselves an important question: whose expectations are we really living up to?  Or, at least, whose expectations do we hold as our highest priority to follow?  As a part of trying to answer those introspective questions, we’ll look at a couple of examples of people and people groups and what scripture seems to identify as their priority regarding that question.  We’ll also talk about a trap some Christians fall into regarding this subject.

The question of whose expectations we should really be following was intentionally left out of the above questions because it is assumed that "YHWH’s expectations" is the answer to that question, based on being a believer.  While that might be glaringly obvious, and there’s plenty of verses and examples in scripture to back it up, one example in scripture is a statement made at the end of Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes 12:13).  After going through all of the worldly things and how temporary they are, meaningless even (Ecclesiastes 12:8), the conclusion of all that is that the duty of man is to fear YHWH and keep His commandments.

We’ve alluded to this before in previous studies, but commandments are really just expectations, regardless of who they come from.  The nature of mankind is that we have sovereignty over ourselves to the point of being able to make choices.  We can choose to follow a command, whether that be a traffic law or YHWH’s commandments written in His Law.  

This is important to recognize because as unlikely as it sounds, this is where Christians really get hung up when it comes to what YHWH’s commandments really are.  Christians tend to look at His commandments as requirements, and as a result they can’t reconcile having requirements in conjunction with all the freedom that’s talked about in what we usually call the New Testament.  What they’re missing is that they only become requirements when you connect them to the consequences of not following them or the rewards if you do follow them.

The other way to put that is if you want to reap the rewards of YHWH’s commandments, you must obey those commandments.  In the same way, if you want to avoid the consequences of not following those commandments, you must obey them.  Now, some consequences are greater than others, and in the same way, some rewards are greater than others.  

I fully believe that even though it doesn’t specifically call it out, when you look in Deuteronomy and see some of the things listed in chapter 28, each one of those things is tied to a certain commandment or group of commandments (Deuteronomy 28).  For example, I believe that the crops and livestock being blessed or cursed is connected with, at a minimum, following the agricultural commandments (Deuteronomy 28:4, 18).  As another example, I believe that being blessed by being feared by the world or being cursed by being ridiculed and ruled by the world is connected with, at a minimum, following the commandments associated with integrity and doing the right thing when it comes to others, rather than doing what benefits you at the expense of others.  To expound on that, if the world sees that regardless of if you get slighted by a transaction or interaction you continue to be overly successful given the circumstances, they recognize that there is a great power behind you, even if they don’t recognize that power is specifically YHWH.  And that power instills fear in them.

As a couple of asides, it’s important to recognize some of the specific language used in this chapter of Deuteronomy.  First, as we talked about in previous studies, there are way more curses, and specifically worded curses, than there are blessings, and many of those curses can be specifically seen in the judgments that occurred against Israel due to their rebellion, their transgression of the Law.  Things like sieges (Deuteronomy 28:52-53), eating their own children during those sieges (Deuteronomy 28:53), being scattered (Deuteronomy 28:64), crops and livestock being eaten and destroyed by a fierce nation (Deuteronomy 28:51), etc., all occurred during the multiple sieges and destructions of the cities of Israel, including Jerusalem as documented by scripture and the eyewitness of Josephus.

The second thing is that the verses that talk about being established as YHWH’s holy people and turning aside from the commandments both have very interesting wording.  They both suggest a greater requirement or revelation associated with those things.  In the case of being His holy people, the requirement is not just following a specific command or set of commands, it just states, generally, that being established as YHWH’s holy people requires following His commands...as in, all of them...and walking in obedience to Him (Deuteronomy 28:9).  In the case of if you turn away from His commands, the wording is such that you are, de facto, following other gods and serving them (Deuteronomy 28:14).  It’s not that you are simply not listening and doing what YHWH says, it’s that you are actively following a different god and serving him.  These two things are key, because something we also tend to lose sight of, or misinterpret, is what it actually means to be YHWH’s holy people and what it means to transgress His Law.  

The only other thing I want to mention before we move on is that I also believe that chapter 28 of Deuteronomy is not an exhaustive list of either the curses or blessings that will come upon someone who is disobedient or obedient to YHWH and His commandments.  While diseases seem to be connected specifically to the promised land (Deuteronomy 28:21), and only very specific diseases like wasting disease are mentioned (Deuteronomy 28:22) for example, I believe that not being specifically in the promised land does not prevent you from suffering the consequence of disease and also that wasting disease is not the only disease one will suffer.  To put it more generally, I believe that while specific curses are given in this chapter, they were mainly chosen by YHWH as a prophecy of what would eventually happen to Israel due to their rebellious nature.  

In other words, I believe that the way YHWH created everything in the universe embedded the principles of how someone would be blessed or cursed rather than the specific thing that would occur, and the reason I believe that is because what I see today is man figuring out that all these things we are creating, like processed foods, "foods" based on chemicals rather than made from actual living things, sunscreen, synthetic fabrics, plastics, etc., are actually harming us by giving us diseases like cancer.  Those things are not specifically stated in the commandments, obviously.  YHWH did not say we couldn’t eat chemicals or drink from plastic water bottles, but He did give commandments related to the principle of only eating what He created for us to eat.  He did not say that we couldn’t spray pesticides on our crops to give a better yield, but He did give commandments related to principles for growing and harvesting crops the way He designed His creation to best yield those crops.  

In order for us to receive the blessing of being healthy and the blessing of having a great crop yield is for us to follow the commandments of what to eat and how to grow and harvest crops.  To put it another way, the requirement for us to receive those things is for us to obey those commandments.  We are free to not follow those commandments, but if we don’t, we have to understand that we are not guaranteed to be healthy or have great crop yields.  And, in my opinion, we won’t be healthy or have great crop yields at some point in the future if we continue to transgress those commandments.  We may not see disease or weak crops immediately, but over time that is exactly the consequence we are going to experience.

I think it was important to lay all that out because it helps to give context to why I say some of the things I say and ultimately why I believe some of the things I believe.  It’s not that I’m reading scripture, studying the Hebrew and Greek words in it, and then coming to some legalistic view of how we are supposed to act and what we are supposed to do as believers and followers of Yeshua and YHWH.  I’m seeing things in the world that are being discovered and truths that are coming out that line up completely with the things I’m reading and studying.  While the world comes to the realization that things mankind creates and does are really harming us rather than helping us, we as believers should be the first ones to be able to point to scripture and say, “yep, it says right here we never should have done that in the first place.”

So, the question is, whose expectations are we living up to and are our highest priority to follow?  Is it mankind, who wants us to eat certain things, use certain products, worship on a certain day, worship in a certain way, do certain things, act a certain way, etc.?  Or, is it YHWH, who laid all that out for us and based it on how He designed the universe to either give us blessings or give us curses?

Part of answering those questions includes identifying what is man-made and what is YHWH-given.  We know He gave His commandments, and Yeshua lived them to show us how to live them, but what about other things, especially those related to Him?  For example, he didn’t tell us to idolize the cross, but we see that at the altar of nearly every sanctuary of every Christian church.  He didn’t tell us His elect forms two different bodies, one having to follow all His commandments and one having to only follow some of His commandments, yet that’s what the majority of Christians believe when it comes to Jews and Christians.  He didn’t tell us the commandments He gave were only meant for a certain time period, yet the majority of Christians believe they stopped being applicable after the death and resurrection of Yeshua.  He didn’t tell us to deify (idolize) certain men or women, yet that’s one of the foundational practices of the Catholic church.  He didn’t tell us to let committees, religious organizations, or other people in general, decide what we believe, but the majority of Christians join a denomination and simply accept whatever their beliefs are.

These are just a few examples, but that last one gets into the trap Christians fall into that we alluded to at the beginning.  To put it plainly, based on scripture in the New Testament, Christians consider themselves a part of YHWH’s elect (Luke 18:7, Titus 1:1, Romans 8:33, Matthew 24:24, etc.), and based on that status the majority of Christians believe not only that their salvation is assured but they are guaranteed blessings from YHWH.  Either that, or most of the bad things that happen to them are not because they transgress the Law but just that bad things happen all the time since creation was corrupted by the fall of man.  Is that what we see in scripture as how YHWH’s elect are treated, or what is promised to them?

We touched on it earlier, but the only other example we have as an elect group chosen by YHWH is Israel.  He called them His treasured possession (Exodus 19:5, Malachi 3:17), His chosen people (Isaiah 43:20), and His prized possession (Deuteronomy 7:6).  Those titles were always contingent upon their obedience to Him, as is evident in Exodus, and they were removed from Israel as a part of the judgement for their disobedience (Hosea 1:10).

To go even further, those titles, being YHWH’s elect, did not keep Israel obedient.  They did not keep them following YHWH’s commandments.  By virtue of being called His elect, they were not guaranteed to be blessed or to be kept from being cursed.  YHWH’s design of the universe did not have a clause stating that if a person, or people, were called His elect they would be exempt from the physical results, whether good or bad, of following or not following His Law.

This has not changed!  Yet, Christians tend to take the view that because Israel rejected Yeshua, those that were non-Israelites were added to His elect.  And further, they believe that because they were not originally Israel, YHWH’s expectations are different for them.  That, despite the fact that YHWH does not show favoritism (Acts 10:34-35), that He is not a respecter of persons (Romans 2:11), He decided that His expectations for His elect are dependent on where each person in His elect came from.

The other trap is that they take the stance that once you believe you are saved you can never lose that salvation, even if you are disobedient.  We will not get into that in detail, but the example of Israel shows that is not true.  The Israelites believed they were chosen people of YHWH, but their disobedience resulted in them losing that status.  While they did not have the all-atoning sacrifice of Yeshua to remove their sin, they did have a method to cover that sin via the sacrificial system and remain a part of His elect.  However, they got to the point where their sin and rebellion was too great because in their heart they no longer saw it as sin and rebellion.  In other words, either they stopped performing the sacrifices required of their disobedience, or they still made the sacrifices but they were meaningless because they were no longer obedient to YHWH in their heart.

That is the scriptural example of not living up to YHWH’s expectations, and not prioritizing following His expectations over following man’s expectations.  On the other side, we have an example of a person following YHWH’s expectations, and in this case it’s not even a person of Israel.  I just finished reading about the rebuilding of the second temple in my chronological bible and King Darius is a perfect example of this.

Darius was sent a letter from a troublemaker named Tattenai, one of the governors of the Persian empire, in which he asked Darius to verify that the Jews were allowed to rebuild the temple (Ezra 5:6-15).  Obviously, this rebuilding was the will of YHWH, because Cyrus was prophesied by name to give the order to rebuild it.  Tattenai asked that the decree by Cyrus be found so they could be sure it was ordered as the Jews said it was.  

Not only did Darius do this, he went above and beyond by ordering Tattenai to send the tribute he normally sent to Darius to the Jews and also to daily provide them whatever they needed for sacrifices or whatever the priests needed.  Darius could have just responded by confirming the decree by Cyrus, but little did Tattenai know that he had recently experienced a miracle from YHWH Himself when Daniel was preserved in the lion’s den, which he was thrown into as a result of one of Darius’s decrees.  Darius knew of YHWH’s power, and sought to follow His expectations instead of the expectations of man.

If we haven't been already, we should be regularly asking ourselves if we are focusing the majority of our time and efforts on following YHWH’s expectations or following mankind’s expectations.  Are His expectations our top priority, or do we need to reset ourselves and get back to what He actually set as His expectations?  And once we figure out the answers to all these questions, we need to adjust our lives, our hearts, our actions, to make sure it’s His expectations we are following.

We hope you have a great week!  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)