Month 5:24, Week 4:2 (Shanee/Matzah), Year 5935:138 AM
Gregorian Calendar: Tuesday 23 August 2011
Want to Meet Yahweh?
Then You Have to Follow His Conditions
"Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?" (John 7:51, NKJV).
Many of you, like myself, are currently involved in battles - large and small - for justice. And those of you who have been around in the world for any period of time will have discovered that there is precious little justice in today's world, and it is diminishing rapidly as the planet slides into lawlessness.
Nicodemus, in our passage today, asked the Sanhedrin for justice for Yah'shua (Jesus). He pleaded that he should not be condemned without a fair hearing. I know a family here in Sweden who are pleading for a fair hearing and being denied it because if they got it, it would mean exposing a rotten, corrupt system. However, if justice is asked of us as believers, in either a congregational setting or between believers of differehnt denominational beliefs, we should by no means imitate the world. We are required, by the Torah (Law), to give a man (or woman) a fair hearing before judging him.
I know many Christian and Messianic groups for whom certain topics are taboo. They just won't discuss them openly, and if you put forward a position they do not like, they will pounce on you and try to rip you apart. Equally, there are many scientists - the vast majority - who refuse to discuss the possibility of the origin of the universe being anything other than by pure materialistic processes. And finally, the same principle of justice enunciated here by Nicodemus should appeal to those hostile to our Messiah.
Repeatedly, Yahweh asks people to test Him, to prove that His promises are reliable when life is lived properly according to emunah (faith) and obedience. Many would test Yahweh on their terms, like demanding lightening to discend from heaven and strike them down for blasphemy as proof that He exists, but Yahweh is not of such a primitive and capricious character. His testing is a little more sophisticated. He means you to test Him and come to know His true character. Tests such as the one imposed by the first atheistic Soviet cosmonaut have no validity - since God was not visible in outer space this, the cosmonaut claimed, proved that God did not exist. Today modern post-Soviet Russia has reverted back to Christianity. Clearly the cosmonaut is not believed.
Do not be hasty in judging the Creator. If you want to know Him, judge Him on His own terms. If your young son demanded that you prove your love to him by giving him any sum of money he wanted, would you agree to his terms? No you would not.
Yahweh is not some free sample you can try out and either spit out or swallow. Testing Him requires a lot, lot more than that. And if you try to test Him on your own terms, I guarantee you will never know one way or the other. Do you want to know what Yahweh is doing and how He operates? Then you need to tune in to His wavelength, not yours, because He operates on a different frequency to fallen man's. Do it His way I I guarantee you will meet Him!
Continued in Part 2
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