08/21/2026
Let's get real for a moment!
It's not the "Old Testament." They are the Hebrew Scriptures that properly tell the story of chain of custody. God's word will NEVER return to Him void, but will ALWAYS accomplish that which He sends it out to do.
When we view it as "optional" reading, we divorce ourselves from the true nature of our cosmology---the reason the world is the way it is. No wonder so many get stuck!
When we abandon the first part of the story, we cannot possibly understand the fulness of the problem. And when that is the case, how can we fully understand the Solution?
Jesus did so many things in His 3 year ministry that Westerners gloss over. We miss the point of so much of it because we fail to read it on its terms. Jesus was righting many wrongs, reversing curses, and paying off the debt we owed to our Creator.
When we chose yada over His Word, we chose to decide for ourselves what what right and wrong. We believed the lie that we could still have relationship with the Holy One but on our terms.
We entered into a legal status with the almighty as His image that did not bear His likeness. And we've been learning the hard way--by experiential knowledge (yada)--ever since.
We look at the Jews and say, "How could you miss the Messiah!?" and yet are guilty of the same thing ourselves.
Spec, meet plank.
They thought they understood the problem so well that they knew what the Solution would look like. And they missed Him---standing right in front of them. When we divorce ourselves from the Hebrew scriptures, the solution we think we know only solves the problems we agree with.
I look around at this hyper-grace culture where it behaves in such a way that we just keep eating manna from heaven and never take the land we are called to take.
The writer of Hebrews said in chapter 5, verse 12-14:
"For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil."
Throughout the last 2000ish years, people have debated the nature of Christ. It seems to me that He becomes something He wasn't when we superimpose our limited understanding of the problem (and cosmology) onto this Savior.
Hence, the gnostic and docetic Jesus. Hence, the superhero Jesus. Hence, the Prosperity Jesus. And so on . . .
One cannot properly understand the Bible on its terms without understanding Genesis. Many devout theologians have come to the conclusion that the rest of the Bible is essentially a commentary of Genesis.
True.
Genesis teaches us the truth about how we got into this mess, what its all about, and the fact that there is a rebellion that preceded us that we got involved in. There is a way out for us. Not for instigators.
It was always about Jesus. And therefore it was always about the Bride.
God, lowered Himself to my level, entered this quarantined box and played by its rules, experiencing our fallen demise first hand. He is the kind of Leader that Leads by example. He knew there was NO WAY to pay off the debt we owed Him when we entered into this contract (Yada Tov, Yada Ra), which He warned us not to!
So, He came. He lived as us. But without sin. He paid off the debt we owed Him with His own blood, setting right so many wrongs that happened in His name in what we call the "Old Testament."
By way of example, we often just look at Jesus raising the daughter of Jairus from the dead as simply an act of mercy. It is a very cool story! But there is much more significance in that story than Western eyes alone can see. Jesus was reversing a wrong done in Yahweh's name in Judges 11 with Jephthah. This is just one tiny example.
The Bible is ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL STORY of redemption. We need ALL of it!
The Hebrew side (Beginning, or Bereshyt) explains the fulness of the problem. The Good News side (Answer, ending, or Aharyt) explains the fulness of the answer.
The only way out of this bad contract is by allowing God Himself to pay off the unpayable debt we sign up for. Paul says,
Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
1 Corinthians 15:45–49
What comes later is greater. Adam, Jesus. Cain, Abel. Torah, Living Torah. Leah, Rachel. Esau, Jacob. Moses, Joshua. and on and on . . .
Heaven is screaming the truth! You have the story. Ask the Holy Spirit to take the scales off your eyes and dive in!
Religion is NOT truth. Jesus is Truth. He is the Word. Only the Spirit within a repentant heart (one that agrees with God about sin and turns from it) can see it. They are only rules when we are stubborn teenagers. But his "commandments are not burdensome" when we understand through relationship that they are for our good.
Finally, I'll conclude with Jesus standing toe to toe with the religious minds of His day . . .
John 8:31-38:
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever.
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.
I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
They missed the Truth standing right in front of them.
What Truth are YOU missing?
SELAH
