Joy in the Messiah

חֻקַּת
Chukat   / Decree
Numbers 19:1-22:1
HafTorah Judges 11:1-33
Brit Chadasha John 3:10-21    

     Chukat begins with the ordinances for the sin offering of the red heifer, which is called the strange ritual. Unlike most sin offerings, the red heifer was to be female, not male.  This can allude to the offering of ‘giving’. The purpose of the sin offering of the red heifer was to cleanse/make pure those who had come into contact to death: a metaphor of great proportions – to reconcile man back to God.
     The ashes of the red heifer are to be gathered by the clean/pure, to be contained in a clean place, to use in water for cleansing for the purification of sin. The rites of the red heifer make the impure pure and the water is for the cleansing, the purification of sin.
     There is also a valuable lesson in Chukat regarding striking the rock verses speaking to the rock, and about Moses; the faithful shepherd. He has led the Israelites for forty years and is told that he will not live to cross the Jordan to enter the promised land and although the consensus seems to tie the sin of Moses’ to striking the rock verses speaking to the rock, there are so many variables and opinions. 
      Almost forty years have passed since the exodus and most of the generation who remembered Egypt have died as has Miriam. The Israelites are close to the Promised Land, however without water. So, they default and complain in Numbers 20. “If only we had perished when our brothers perished in the presence of the Lord. Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die? Why did you take us up from Egypt to bring us to this vile place, where nothing grows, not corn or figs, not vines or pomegranates? There is not even any water to drink.”  This is all too familiar, as they whine to die – again - and Moses and Aaron fall on their faces before the Lord as if to say, ‘We’ve had it!’
     God commands Moshe to speak to the rock, Moses strikes the rock instead right after he rebukes the Israelites.  Numbers 20:7-12 ‘Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ⁸ “Take the rod; you and your brother Aaron gather the congregation together. Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will yield its water; thus you shall bring water for them out of the rock, and give drink to the congregation and their animals.”
    But Moses strikes the rock.  What was the catalyst? Teachings are that the previous generation was slaves; they had to be taught everything, especially taught to leave a slave mentality. But the other generation, were born free in the wilderness. He was facing a new generation. One set of people needed a leader; the latter needed a teacher. The people he confronted the first time were those who had spent much of their lives as slaves in Egypt. Those he now faced were born in freedom in the wilderness. They were now responsible for their actions. They ‘knew’.
       The red heifer was to give life, making the impure pure and reconcile back to God. The Rock is the solidarity of God and water is the living substance.
     The Life~
     John 10:10-11 “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. ¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.”  
     John 14:6 “Yeshua said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
    1 John 1:7 ‘But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Yeshua His Son cleanses us from all sin.
     Hebrews 9:14 ‘How much more will the blood of Messiah, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.’
    The Rock~
    Isaiah 48:21 ‘And they did not thirst when He led them through the deserts; He caused the waters to flow from the rock for them; He also split the rock, and the waters gushed out.’
    1 Corinthians 10:2-4 ‘…all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, ³ all ate the same spiritual food, ⁴ and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Messiah.
     Isaiah 8:14 ‘Then He shall become a sanctuary; but to both the houses of Israel, a stone to strike and a rock to stumble over, and a snare and a trap for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.’
     Matthew 21:42  ‘Yeshua said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief corner stone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes?’
     Matthew 7:24-25 ‘Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: ²⁵ and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.’
     The Pure Water~    
     Ephesians 5:26  ‘That He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word…’
     John 4:13-14 “Yeshua answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
     John 7:37-38  ‘On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. ³⁸ He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
     Revelation 22:17  “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” Let the one who hears say, “Come!” And let the one who is thirsty come, and the one who desires the water of life drink freely.”
      Numbers 20:12 states the consequences for Moses striking the rock ‘Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.”
     Cleanses, pure, purified, water, rock and life; everything connects. As Moses, do we ever strike The Rock in our unbelief or rebellion? God said to Moses ‘Because you did not believe Me to hallow (make holy/kadosh) Me… referencing that Moses made (tried to make) God common.  We can never make God common, but by our unbelief and rebellion we make ourselves common and impure. We defile ourselves.
    1 John 3:4 states ‘Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness (torahlessness); and sin is lawlessness (torahlessness).
     We strike The Rock when we don’t understand the concept of Yeshua as ‘with God’ Elohim in the beginning, with creation, and the Creator of Shabbat and the author of The Torah.  When we deviate from the totality of The Word, we strike The Rock, as if to say, ‘I am angry, I will not hallow You.  I will do things my way.’
   Psalm 98:2 ‘Adonai has made His salvation know.’

 חֻקַּת
Chukat   / Decree
Numbers 19:1-22:1
HafTorah Judges 11:1-33
Brit Chadasha John 3:10-21     
     Chukat can be called decrees or ordinances of. It begins with the ordinances of the red heifer and waters; living water, cleansing water, and water from the rock. How profound, coming on the heels of Korach, that Torah brings in the importance of cleansing water – which is Yeshua.  After an encounter with death, we need to embrace the Living Water.  
     In Chukat, Moshe strikes the rock, there is the death of Aaron and Miriam, the journeys, the bronze snake, the defeat of Sihon and Og, and Chukat ends with Numbers 22:1 ‘Then the Israelites traveled to the plains of Moab and camped along the Jordan across from Jericho.’
     Chukat continues the theme of holiness. To grasp the concept that holiness and uncleanness can be transferred from a person to an object, from an object to another object, and from person to person, and by physical contact, or that holiness can be dangerous, is difficult.  Or that only some people are authorized to have holiness, and that those who are not are subject to grave consequences if they go ahead and contract holiness anyway. These are hard and confusing teachings.  But this is what Scripture teaches, pure and unequivocal.  Holiness is asserted as fact in the Brit Chadasha, but it is primarily in the Torah where it is explained and defined.
     Numbers 19 begins with the mystery of the red heifer; anyone who has anything to do with its preparation, death, burning up, and gathering of its ashes becomes unclean. They begin in a clean state but wind up becoming ritually impure. The unclean person (from touching a corpse) is made clean from these ashes of the Red Heifer. But the clean persons who perform the ritual and apply the ashes are made unclean; the same ashes that purify the defiled also defile the pure. 
     This is all about holiness.  Holy is a transliteration from the Hebrew word kodesh or kadosh. This word is better translated as ‘set-apart’ for God. So, the Red Heifer isn’t so much holy as it is kadosh, set apart. But it is not set apart for service to God, but rather for death.  This death is used by God to make His people clean or pure again.  It and the people are to be set apart.  
     The Torah refers to this sacrifice as Hata’at. This Hebrew word is mostly translated as sin offerings, but better translated as a purification offering.  The sin leads to the need for this Hata’at , the effect of the Hata’at is to decontaminate, to purify. Waters of cleansing end the ordeal of the red heifer. 
     A pure red heifer, which has never known a yoke, is reduced to ashes. These ashes are dissolved into the living water, and from the living water comes new life. Numbers 19:9-13.
     In Numbers 20, we read about the sustaining waters that come from the rock. 
     Living water, mayim-ḥayyîm is throughout Scripture. 
     The prophets reference water as Living and flowing. Jeremiah 17:13, Zechariah 14:8-9, Psalm 104:10-11, Isaiah 43:20, Nehemiah 9:20.
     Yeshua speaks of Himself as the source of The Living Water.  In John 4:4-26, He dialogues with the Samaritan woman by Jacob's Well.  In John 7:37-39, at the end of Sukkot, He references Himself as the Living Water. In Revelation 7:13-17, ‘…have washed their robes and made them white…’  In Revelation 22:1-2, there is a river flowing with the water of life. 
     When Yeshua was crucified, to verify His death, the Roman soldier reached up with a spear and pierced His side.  Blood and water flowed. We would expect blood, but water? As in Chukat, blood atones, and water purifies, and both actions are needed. Blood removes sin, water removes uncleanness. Two different things, two different spiritual elements, but Yeshua was and is sufficient for both. The purification mixture in Numbers chapter 19 was blood and water.        
     A strange event occurs in Numbers 21:4-9, the lifting of the bronze serpent.  The people once again murmur, complain, and gossip against Moshe and God, about the food, lack of water, and the worthless bread; this was venom that caused death. God sent fiery snakes that bit the people, causing their deaths due to the venom of the snakes. Moshe cries out for their lives, whereupon God instructs Moshe to make and raise a bronze serpent for the people to look upon to be healed. This was to be an act of repentance, obedience, and faith; to look upon the very thing that caused their deaths – a snake -  now would heal. But it was not the snakes that caused their deaths – it was the act of complaining and gossiping.  It was not the snake on the pole that caused the healing, but rather the faith to obey.   They were to look to the Healer, not to the healing. They were to look to the One that fed them, whom they had murmured against by obedience and faith. 
     The bronze serpent was to point them to healing by the Healer. Eventually, the bronze serpent, called Nehushtan, became an idol, until King Hezekiah destroyed it in 2 Kings 18:4. They forgot the Healer and worshiped the healing. 
    Yeshua, as He dialogues with Nicodemus in John 3:1-21, references the bronze serpent. Nicodemus cannot rationalize the heavenly realm, even though he admits to Yeshua that He is from the Kingdom. Yeshua rebukes Nicodemus, ‘Yeshua answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? ¹¹ Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. ¹² If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?’ John 3:10-12.
     In John 3:13-17, Yeshua likens Himself and His mission to that of the bronze serpent, requiring obedience and faith. ‘No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. ¹⁴ And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. ¹⁷ For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.’
     The snake wasn’t the healer, but the lifting up of the snake and the process of obedience and faith to look upon it was. Just as faith in Yeshua, as He is lifted up, is our healing from earthly death. 
     Numbers 21 continues with water as the LORD gives the people life-sustaining water, Numbers 21:17-18; 'Then Israel sang this song: “Spring up, O well!  Sing about it, about the well that the princes dug, that the nobles of the people sang—the nobles with scepters and staffs.’