Lessons in the Ladder Days

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long with Lessons in the Latter Days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times that we're living in. In the last episode, we began a topical series called Jewish Roots, dealing with concepts, terminologies, and lessons that we must learn from our Jewish forefathers to prepare us for the kingdom. Today's topic is the most misunderstood word in the Bible. The word I'll be talking about today is the word "commandments."

I will show you in this episode that this misunderstanding and actual mistranslation from the original Hebrew word has kept us as Gentile believers from the true place that God always meant for us to have. If we don't correct it, it can affect our standing in the kingdom, to which I believe we're heading very soon. Before I begin, I want to make three disclaimers. Number one, this episode may challenge your traditional belief system. That's okay. God is sifting all of us right now and putting everything under a divine microscope. What do we hold on to, and what has slipped in that we need to let go of?

Number two, it's okay to disagree with me. I am teaching what I've been learning over many years. The Lord took me away from a traditional church setting years ago when I was convicted to begin to honor the Sabbath. So what I am teaching is what I have learned during years of spending time alone with him. Number three disclaimer, for those things that may be difficult for you, I simply ask that you listen and bring them before the Lord. He is your teacher, your counselor, who promised to lead you into all truth.

In the second episode, How Close Are We to the Kingdom?, we touched on one of Judaism's most important concepts. It's the word *Tavneot*, which is unfamiliar to most Christians. *Tavneot* is a plural noun meaning "pictures," but it's a much stronger word than a type or shadow of something. The Bible is actually filled with *Tavneot*, which communicate in magnificent layers of truth earthly pictures about God and his kingdom. I want to take you back to the basics and let's look first at the two schools of thought in Judaism.

Number one, the first school of thought is *Halacha*. It comes from the Hebrew word that means "to walk." The Halachic perspective is the how-to, the "what" of Judaism. It tells us what to do, what not to do, when, and when not. It is the tradition, the letter of the law, the unbreakable commands, and it is not concerned with meaning or motive. The second school of thought is *Aggadah*, meaning "to tell a story." It is the meaning of the things done in Judaism, the "why." It is the parable or picture contained in the act. Whereas *Halacha* is the head, *Aggadah* is the heart of Judaism.

Now, when Jesus taught, he used parables, stories that illustrate multiple layers of meaning. This is right-brain thinking. We have stories with plots and characters and motives. You see, Jesus was restoring the importance of *Aggadah* because, in his day, the Jewish leaders were primarily concerned with *Halacha*. It's very much like today with so much emphasis on the facts and the data and the science and bottom line. These are what today's leaders value, just like back then.

But one of Jesus' missions on earth was to communicate the heart of the Father to those consumed by legalism and religion and an overvaluation of left-brain thinking. Let me ask you a question. What one word would you use to describe what God wants most from his children? One word, what would it be? If you said "obedience," you would be 100 percent wrong. But this is the answer that most Jews and Christians would give because most see Judaism as a bunch of rules and God demands strict obedience to them according to the letter of the law.

I want to show you that that picture, that *Tavneot*, is not our God. That's what's called the curse of the law. God has a whole other agenda when he designed his curriculum called Judaism. He designed it as a set of pictures, or *Tavneot*, for his people to act out and do over and over every year so that through the doing of them, we learn deep truths about God and about his kingdom and letting these *Tavneot* speak to us or teach us. This is a whole different concept of learning, and it's life-changing.

When the scribes and the Pharisees were questioning Jesus to trip him up, they asked him in Mark 12, "Which commandment is the first of all? The most important commandment." Now, a commandment is something to be obeyed, it's something to do, right? Now, they were coming from a mindset of *Halacha*, trying to catch him in anything that wasn't absolutely exact in the wording of the law. So how did Jesus answer them? He said, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.'"

This answer tells us volumes. In Hebrew, these words are *Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad*. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. This comes from Deuteronomy 6:4, and from the Jewish perspective, it means that the Lord is our God; the Lord is the one and only. Because remember, there were gods being worshiped all around them. In this podcast series, we've talked a lot about the Nephilim and their coming to earth to be worshiped. So in Deuteronomy, Moses was instructed by the Almighty to establish as a verbal declaration that the one they worship is the true God.

This verse is called the *Shema* and is the centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayers. I pray this every day because my desire is to be grafted more and more into the Jewish root of my forefathers. The word *Shema* comes from the Hebrew word *shama*, which means "to hear intelligently and attentively." This is God's watchword for Israel, the primary verb and responsibility that God gave his children. It wasn't something to do and obey blindly; it was to stop and listen to the meaning of the picture, or *Tavneot*, of what is being done.

Let me give you an example. Let's apply this concept of learning from a *Tavneot* by using a phrase most Christians are very familiar with: the expression "Body of Christ." Now, with any *Tavneot*, we have to first look at what it is in the natural and then let that speak to us and teach us. So for a few minutes, we are going to literally examine the Body of Christ. Now, the Word of God says that we are the Body of Christ, so I want you to picture an X-ray of a body in your mind.

We read in Ephesians 5 that Jesus is the head. So let me ask you this: if Jesus is the head of the Body of Christ, what is the spine? In the natural, a spine was designed by our Creator to be the grand central station, enabling the brain, or the head, to communicate to every part of the body. God designed the spine to be straight and strong so that we will walk uprightly in good health. Here are six things that God intended for the body to experience when the spine is straight. Number one, the head is fully supported, providing good nerve and blood flow to the brain.

Number two, the discs, or joints, in the spinal column are surrounded by healthy cartilage which protects and cushions the spine. Number three, the spinal column itself is made up of 33 bones, interestingly the age of Jesus' life, and these 33 bones are called vertebrae. They house the spinal cord which contains bundles of nerve fibers. Number four, when the spine is straight, those nerve fibers can freely transmit impulses, or they can communicate to every part of the body. Number five, the brain is able to direct the function of all body parts. And number six, the person's body is balanced and healthy.

Now let's say something happens. We develop scoliosis, or a curvature, or we have an accident and the spine is thrown out of alignment. What happens in the natural? This is something I know a lot about because I suffer from scoliosis, or curvature of the spine. I know all too well that if the spine is out of alignment, it gives off warning signals, pain being one of them. And if this condition goes unattended, those body parts where the nerves used to talk to freely begin to deteriorate. So let me go back to the question: if Jesus is the head of the Body of Christ, what is the spine?

God's chosen foundation for the metaphorical spine is what most people call God's commandments. It is straight and narrow. It is pure. It is just. It is holy. It consists of 248 positive precepts, or "what to do," and 365 prohibitions, or "what not to do." So Jews everywhere know that God gave his people 613 laws, precepts, ordinances, warnings, and all that put together are referred to as commandments. Now, I don't use the word "commandments" because this is the word that has been so mistranslated and misunderstood.

We'll get to the real meaning of the word in a minute, but the Hebrew word that is normally translated as commandments is the word *Mitzvot*. *Mitzvot* basically includes everything that God set up to govern, protect, and care for his people so that we could live well under a theocracy. Now, you can think of God as this tyrant that commands his people "do this, don't do that," and expects us to be robots and say, "Yes, sir." But the concept of commands and tyranny is not the picture, or *Tavneot*, that a loving Father desired to communicate to his children.

Rather, he set up an entire structure of instructions and promised that if we lived by them, we would live long on the earth and enjoy protection that other godless nations did not receive from their gods. So the *Mitzvot* are all of the 613 things that God spoke and established as a sort of divine constitution. The sages teach that the 248 positive precepts, "thou shalt," correspond to the 248 limbs of our body. And the 365 prohibitions, or "thou shalt nots," pair up with the 365 sinews.

We read in Isaiah 45 where God said, "It is I who made the earth and created man upon it." Now, the sages point out that the numerical value of the Hebrew word for "created" is 613. The well-known Rabbi Yosef Schneersohn wrote that the very purpose for which God made the earth and created man is to fulfill his 613 commandments. We read in Proverbs 3, "Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing for your flesh and marrow for your bones." God desires his word, his living word, to function as the spiritual spine to help us to walk uprightly according to his ways.

So if our spine in the natural consists of vertebrae and nerve fibers and such, what does God's spine consist of? And here's where we dig and we learn from the *Tavneot*. First let's look at the word *Mitzvot*, which is normally mistranslated as commandments. Where does the word itself come from? The word *Mitzvot* comes from the Hebrew word *tzava*, which means "to set in order or establish." It has nothing to do with obeying a to-do list. No, the 613 *Mitzvot* are the building blocks for all of the divine laws, appointed charges, and instructions that the Father set in place and established for his children so we could live under a theocracy and be guaranteed his protection.

Now, one of the implications and lessons we need to see here is that when we dismiss the Old Testament as insignificant, relegated to the past, or completely irrelevant today, this puts us in danger. It's as if we have opened our body up to a surgeon and said, "Remove my spine." Now, if we did this both literally and figuratively, we would not be able to stand straight and walk out the destiny that the Father assigned each one of us. Now, these 613 *Mitzvot* contain three important Hebrew words and concepts that make up its spine, or the metaphorical vertebrae, so to speak.

First, the *Mitzvot* contain statutes. The Hebrew word is *Chukim*. These are the appointed customs, the set times, the ordinances, and decrees. Some examples of statutes are the Sabbath, the New Moon, Passover, the feasts, and the festivals. All of these appointed times are pictures that teach us about God, the Messiah, and his kingdom. If we dismiss them as unimportant, we are missing a huge body of instruction in God's curriculum which prepares us for the kingdom. The second thing that God's spine contains are judgments, called *Mishpatim*.

This is the entire judiciary record of divine law, the formal recorded decrees and verdicts that God has made over the course of raising up his people. They contain incredible wisdom and perspective in how to make decisions according to the ways of the Lord, and we really need the understanding of *Mishpatim* today. The third element that the spine contains is the Law, which is translated Torah: the first five books of Moses which instruct us in how to walk in the ways of the Lord through the wilderness of this life and arrive safely to the kingdom without self-destructing.

Now you may be asking, so what do I do with all this? Surely the Lord does not expect me to become Jewish, does he? My role here is to connect you deeper to your Jewish roots. So let me share a few passages for you to think about. Hebrews 3 discusses the relationship between Moses and Jesus. "Yet Jesus has been counted worthy of as much more glory than Moses as the builder of a house has more honor than the house." Now, we're talking about God's house. Jesus is clearly the builder according to Hebrews 3, but who is the house itself?

It is Moses, whose name is synonymous with all of the 613 *Mitzvot* that God entrusted him to write. That's the house, the structure. In Deuteronomy 18, Moses wrote, "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall heed." Now, he was speaking of the Messiah. So Jesus was the fulfillment of everything that Moses wrote and taught. I believe that's why Moses was with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. So to sum up what we learn in the *Tavneot* of the Body of Christ, Jesus is the head, and Moses, or referred to biblically as the Law of Moses, is the spine.

What's sad is that the Jews are missing the head and most Christians are missing the spine. Jesus said in Matthew 5, "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." Now, what law is he talking about? All of the regulations in Moses, the 613 *Mitzvot*. In the same passage, our Lord says, "Whoever then breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven." What does it mean to break one of the *Mitzvot*?

The word "break" means "to loose oneself from, or to put it off, or dismiss it." And that's what's happened when Christians were disconnected from Judaism in 365 AD. This was never the Lord's intention. We took all of that "Jewish stuff," the Sabbath, the festivals, all of it, and we dismissed it as unimportant. The word "least" means "the very smallest or least in dignity." And what Jesus meant by the word "commandments" is all of the authoritative charges and precepts of God, everything included in the 613 *Mitzvot* contained in God's house.

The implications of this passage was very convicting to me. I realized that though true Christians will make it into the kingdom because we have accepted Jesus as the Messiah, we will be considered least if we did not walk in God's ways with the spine that God gave Moses at Mount Sinai. When I realized the importance of what I'm teaching you today, it took me a while to figure out how to incorporate this understanding. The reality is that most Christians have been misinformed or Hellenized or infected by subtle forms of anti-Semitism. But step one is always a time of awakening, and that's what God is looking for: your heart.

Has this episode turned you off and you don't want to hear anymore about Judaism? Or has something stirred inside of you that maybe, just maybe, this hits at the core of why you have been longing for something deeper? Just tell him that you're confused, that you want to know the truth. If some wrong belief is standing in your way, ask him to clear it up for you. Listen to the episode again. You'll find it on my website at candacelong.com. Write down the scripture verses and bring them before the Lord.

My desire is for you to experience all that God has for you. I do not want you to be relegated as least in the kingdom. In the next episode, I will share my own story of how I began to reconnect with my Jewish roots and the difference that has made in my life. But please don't put pressure on yourself thinking you have to completely change your life overnight. These changes take time, and the Lord is very patient. I want to thank you for spending this time with me.

If you'd like to know more, I invite you to subscribe to my website at candacelong.com. When you do subscribe, I'll send you links to my books, my articles, online courses, and individual webinars that will help you understand the signs of these times and how to find what God would have you do while it's all unfolding. To listen to more of my teaching, go anytime to candacelong.com/podcast. If you'd like to make a donation and help support this ministry, you'll find a donate button in the description notes to any episode. I hope you join me again for Lessons in the Latter Days. God bless.