The MANY versus the FEW
Sabbath is for Believers?
Going Deeper into Isaiah 58
As I mentioned in the introduction to this series, I would be attacking the customs and dogma of “religion.” I am not attacking any person.
This lesson also applies to Yom Kippur.
Isaiah 58:1–2 — 1) “Cry aloud, do not spare. Lift up your voice like the shofar (trumpet). Declare to My people their transgression, and the house of Ya‛aqoḇ their sins. 2) “Yet they seek Me day by day, and delight to know My ways, as a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the right-ruling of their Elohim. They ask of Me rulings of righteousness, they delight in drawing near to Elohim.
The MANY seek Him every day and look at His Word — wearing their religious covering — and ask the Father for blessings and love and patience. The MANY ask:
Isaiah 58:3a — 3) They say, ‘Why have we fasted, and You have not seen? Why have we afflicted our beings, and You took no note?…
And YHVH answers:
Isaiah 58:3b-5 — …Look, in the day of your fasting you find pleasure, and drive on all your laborers. 4) Look, you fast for strife and contention, and to strike with the fist of wrongness. You do not fast as you do this day, to make your voice heard on high. 5) Is it a fast that I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his being? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to יהוה?
The MANY proudly boast in their pious actions. They fast according to man-made regulations. They disregard the purpose and intent of fasting. The MANY cling to the Gnostic practices of fasting without the knowledge of or understanding that Gnosticism sought special knowledge from angels and spirits through their fasting. They afflict themselves for personal gain, to show off their own piousness.
“It’s never about what you say you believe because what you DO will prove and verify and legitimize what you believe. I can tell what you believe by watching your life. You don’t have to say a word and I can tell you exactly what you believe by the way you behave.” Garrison Simons
In this season of lent, the MANY will deprive themselves of some “thing.” They will bow their heads like the laden reeds in the meadow. They will (sometimes literally, but usually figuratively) clothe themselves in sackcloth and ashes (oh, woe is me). The MANY will ask others of the MANY, “What are you giving up for lent this year?” They piously deride those that do not participate in the pagan practice. Then proudly announce what it is they are fasting for themselves. Nothing else in their life will change for those 40 days.
During this time the MANY pray for revival while reviling the things of YHVH. The MANY follow the sun-worshiping practice of 40-days of weeping for an idol, praising themselves for their effort, and finalizing their abominable behavior with a festival NAMED after the queen of heaven, Ashtoreth (Astarte→Eostre). The MANY will sit at the dinner table on the sun-day of Easter and pray that the Father in Heaven will bless that ham steaming on the table that He forbade them from eating. The MANY pray for forgiveness while premeditating their next sin.
The MANY ignore the prophetic images contained within Passover, the promises given thousands of years before the physical ministry of Messiah, the assurance that Abraham saw and rejoiced in. They will label it with a racist term intended as derogatory (Jewish feast) without the understanding that the Feasts belong to the Elohim they claim to follow. Even though they were given a thousand years before the word Jew appeared in any text recorded in history. It’s not until the “church” fathers inject their racist hatred that the book of John says, “Jewish feast.” Early manuscripts do not contain those phrases.
Yohanan would NEVER have referred to the Feasts that he lived and practiced his entire life — and given a full, personal understanding of by Messiah personally — as something belonging only to one race of people.
YHVH gave them to anyone who turns to Him.
Exodus 12:48–49 — 48) “And when a STRANGER SOJOURNS with you and shall perform the Pĕsaḥ {Passover} to יהוה, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and perform it, and he shall be as a native of the land. But let no uncircumcised eat of it. 49) “There is one Torah for the native-born and for the STRANGER WHO SOJOURNS among you.”
→ See there? That’s a whole Jewish thing. Circumcision isn’t required anymore. So, Torah doesn’t apply to me. I am above the Word of Elohim. I set myself higher than the instruction of the Almighty. ←
Reword these phrases:
~ let all the hearts of his family be circumcised…
~ they shall be My people…
~ But don’t let any person whose spiritual heart is not circumcised by the Spirit, eat of it…
~ Because there is only one set of instructions for anyone who follows Me, whether they be a genetic descendant or not.
Deuteronomy 36:6 — “And יהוה your Elohim shall circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to love יהוה your Elohim with all your heart and with all your being, so that you might live…
Circumcision of the heart was not a new concept made up by Sha’ul. It was a promise given by YHVH in TORAH!
Romans 2:27–29 — 27) And the uncircumcised {non-genetic Yehudi or convert to Judaism} by nature, who perfects the TORAH, shall judge you who notwithstanding [by rote] letter and circumcision {physical, outward, non-spiritual}, [you Jews who claim Torah, but] are a transgressor of the Torah! 28) For he is not a Yehuḏi {Jew} who is so outwardly, neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. 29) But a Yehuḏi {Jew} is {they} who {are} so inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in Spirit, not literally, whose praise is not from men but from Elohim.
Those WHO are of the Father are those whose spiritual hearts have been circumcised of their sinful nature, into which the Spirit writes the Torah of the Father. <Jer 34:33; Heb 8:10> Those who live per the instructions of Elohim — Torah means instructions, NOT law — even though they are not a genetic descendant of Israel (Ya’akov), will judge those that claim they ARE covered ONLY by keeping Torah. Belief in Messiah is salvation, but righteousness is HOW WE LIVE. <Ezk 18:5–9, you will see the same things in this passage as comes next in Isa 58:6–7>
I am unconvinced about what the MANY claims they believe. Their actions, their lives, scream that they revile the Almighty and His instructions for their good and blessing. They claim the blessings offered, but deny The Father’s authority to reign in their lives. They replace the things He gave with the things inherited from men. <Jer 16:19> Continuing in Isaiah, YHVH explains what a fast is to Him:
Isaiah 58:6–7 — 6) “Is this not the fast that I have chosen: to loosen the tight cords of wrongness, to undo the bands of the yoke, to exempt the oppressed, and to break off every yoke? 7) Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; when you see the naked, and cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh?
Now, His promise for faithful obedience to His Way:
Isaiah 58:8–14 — 8) “Then your light would break forth like the morning, your healing spring forth speedily. And your righteousness shall go before you, the esteem of יהוה would be your rear guard {protection}. 9) Then, when you call, יהוה would answer; when you cry, He would say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and the speaking of unrighteousness, 10) if you extend your being to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted being, then your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness be as noon. 11) Then יהוה would guide you continually, and satisfy your being in drought, and strengthen your bones. And you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12) And those from among you shall build the old waste places. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. And you would be called the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.
13) “If you do turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My set-apart day, and shall call the Sabbath ‘a delight,’ the set-apart day of יהוה ‘esteemed,’ and shall esteem it, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, 14) then you shall delight yourself in יהוה. And I shall cause you to ride on the heights of the earth, and feed you with the inheritance of Ya‛aqoḇ your father. For the mouth of יהוה has spoken!”
