Joy in the Messiah

Emor/Speak
Leviticus 21:1-24:23
Ezekiel 44;15-31
1 Peter 2:4-10

     Emor is a Torah portion about holiness.  Leviticus 21 is about holiness and the priests. Leviticus 22 is about holy things and His Holy Name.  Leviticus 23 are the instructions concerning holy times, and Leviticus 24 is about the holiness of the lamp, the bread, and closes with holiness of speech. 
      Leviticus 21 begins: ‘And the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: ‘None shall defile himself for the dead among his people…’ The instructions go on to stress purity and cleanliness.  We apply this today to our spiritual cleanliness. Not touching the dead is a metaphor to us now to ‘not touch the unclean…the darkness.’  Dark forces come in many forms; despair, criticalness, depression, bitterroot, unforgiveness, fear and more. These gates when opened expose our soul to the realms of darkness and the uncleanness of death. 
     Remember, ‘ I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; ²⁰ that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days…’Deuteronomy 30:19-20.
     Leviticus 21 continues: ‘They shall not make any bald place on their heads, nor shall they shave the edges of their beards nor make any cuttings in their flesh. ⁶ They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God, for they offer the offerings of the Lord made by fire, and the bread of their God; therefore, they shall be holy.’ Leviticus 21:5-6. 
     At the end of Leviticus 22 God continues with holiness: “Therefore you shall keep My commandments, and perform them: I am the Lord. ³² You shall not profane My holy name, but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel. I am the Lord who sanctifies you, ³³ who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord.”
    Leviticus 23 is considered to the be the Calendar of Sacred Time. It begins with a declaration which most denominations and religions overlook.  ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘The feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts.’ Leviticus 23:1-2.   These are not just the Jewish feasts but in fact clearly the feasts of Adonai and were never replaced or made null and void. 
     There are five accounts in Torah regarding the holy times.  Two are found in Exodus. Exodus 23:14-17 and Exodus 34:18. They are brief and refer to one or all of three pilgrimage festivals, Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot.  The three others are found in this parsha Emor, Numbers 28-29 (dedicated to special additional sacrifices and offerings for the holy days) and Deuteronomy 16, (where Moses at the end of his life told the next generation where they had come from, where they were going to, and the kind of people they were to be; the opposite of who they were in Egypt).
     But Emor is very distinctive and different. Unlike the Exodus and Deuteronomy passages it includes Yom Teruah and Yom Kippur. It also tells us about the specific mitzvot of the festivals, as in Sukkot where it is the only place in Torah that mentions the arba minim, the “four kinds” and the command to live in a succah or booth. Emor begins with God declaring “these are My feasts” and the holiness of the Sabbath. 
   What is so interesting is the way Emor speaks about the Shabbat.  ‘Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.’ Leviticus 23:1-3. The Shabbat is not considered a mo’adim. Shabbat is one thing, mo’adim and mikra’ei kodesh are something else.  The Shabbat is a weekly occurrence in God’s order.  Why then, is it the beginning of God’s statements concerning His High Holy Days? The holiness of Shabbat began at creation. It is the predecessor; it is the beginning.  
     Shabbat is often the cut off point for many people. A Passover can be attended, we can blow the shofar on Yom Teruah, and one can visit a family during Sukkot to share a meal. But to cross over and commit our lives to the holiness of Shabbat is a grand leap of faith and obedience.
     The word mo’ed does not just mean “appointed time”.  The same word is in the phrase ohel mo’ed meaning “tent of meeting”. If the ohel mo’ed was the place where man and God met, then the mo’adim in Emor are the times when we and God are to meet. This is an appointment made between God and His people to meet at a certain time and place. As for the phrase mikra kodesh, it is not just a holy day. It is a meeting to which we have been called in love by The Divine One. 
       And this all begins with the Sabbath.

אֱמֹר
Emor / Speak
Leviticus 21:1-24:23
HafTorah Ezekiel 44:15-31
Brit Chadasha 1 Peter 2:4-10

      Emor begins with the instructions for the priest’s conduct and the holiness of the offerings, (chapters 21 and 22). Leviticus 23 is dedicated to the appointed times of Adonai. There are five other similar passages in the Torah. Two, both in Exodus 22 and 23, are very brief, referring to the three pilgrimage festivals: Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot. This leaves three other accounts: the one in this parsha, a second one in Numbers 28-29, dedicated to special sacrifices, and the third in Deuteronomy 16 about Israel.  Moses at the end of his life told the next generation where they had come from, where they were going to, and what of society they were to construct. It was to be under One God - the opposite of Egypt - and that they were to worship “in the place that God will choose,” which turned out to be Jerusalem.
     Emor is unique because of the way it includes the Shabbat: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: The appointed times [moadei] of the Lord, which you are to proclaim [tikre’u] as sacred assemblies [mikra’ei kodesh]. These are my appointed festivals [mo’adai]. Six days shall you work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of sabbaths, a day of sacred assembly [mikra kodesh]. You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a Sabbath to the Lord.” Leviticus 23:1-3.
     The word kodesh/holy appears no less than twelve times in Leviticus 23.  This chapter also emphasizes the number and impression of seven.  There are not only seven holy days in the annual calendar but there are also seven paragraphs in the chapter. The word “seven” or “seventh” occurs repeatedly (eighteen times) as does the word for the seventh day Shabbat in one or other of its forms (fifteen times) and the word “harvest” appears seven times.
     We are called to live and worship in spirit, but we are physical beings living in the flesh.  How can we be spiritual all the time as we battle the daily fleshly happenings in the world? That is why there are secular times as well as holy times.  One day in seven, we stop working, stop the worldly affairs and enter the presence of the God of creation.  During the appointed festivals on certain days of the year, we celebrate the God of history because each festival represents something, some event. But the holiness of Shabbat was set at the time of creation. We can’t always be spiritual, for God put us in the flesh in a fleshly world in which to live in and maneuver about. But on the seventh day of the week, the Shabbat, God has given us a space in time to feel the closeness of Him, and rest in His truth and love.  Literally taking part of creation.
     Then what is the opposition? Not only did Elohim place us in a material world but if you are reading this then most likely you live in one of the fifty states and thus, living in the Diaspora. That is the opposition. We were/are taught to turn away from the true Sabbath and claim Sunday as Sabbath.
    Opposition towards the Shabbat not only began in the times of Egypt captivity but continues:
    The Council of Nice (Laodecia) for the Catholic Church changed Sabbath to Sunday on March 7, 321AD.   
    In 1852 President Brigham Young said, “As to keeping the Sabbath according to the Mosaic law, indeed, I do not; for it would be almost beyond my power. Still, under the new covenant, we should remember to preserve holy one day in the week as a day of rest…”
    Tom Schreiner opposes the Sabbath as he writes in His book 40 Questions about Christians and Biblical Law: ‘I do not believe the Sabbath is required for believers now that the new covenant has arrived in the person of Jesus Christ…Jesus’ observance of the Sabbath does not constitute strong evidence for its continuation in the new covenant. His observance of the Sabbath makes excellent sense, for he lived under the Old Testament law. He was “born under the law” as Paul says. On the other hand, a careful reading of the Gospel accounts intimates that the Sabbath will not continue to play a significant role.’
     Biblereasons.com intentionally refutes the Sabbath in a confusing way. Notice how they very subtly tie in the word ‘salvation’, when there is not a verse that states God or Yeshua uses the word salvation and Sabbath in the same context, thus their argument is tricky: “There is so much confusion about what is the Sabbath Day and are Christians required to keep the fourth commandment, the Sabbath? No, Christians are not required to keep the Sabbath Day like many strict legalistic groups say. This is dangerous. Requiring someone to keep the Sabbath for salvation is salvation by faith and works. This is putting chains back on those who were free from those chains by Christ.”  Yet we know salvation comes from Adonai and not by our works: Psalm 62:1 ‘Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from Him.’
    Isaiah 58:12-14 defines the complexity and at the same time the simplicity of Shabbat; ‘Those from among you shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight,
The holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.’
   Isaiah 66:22-23 reveals that we are not finished with Shabbat, ‘For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before Me,” says the Lord, “So shall your descendants and your name remain. ²³ And it shall come to pass that from one New Moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me,” says the Lord.’
     Ezekiel 20:18-20 uses the word ‘will’ as in a future continual tense and at the same time comparing non-Sabbath observance as a defilement: “But I said to their children in the wilderness, ‘Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols. ¹⁹ I am the Lord your God: Walk in My statutes, keep My judgments, and do them; ²⁰ hallow My Sabbaths, and they will be a sign between Me and you, that you may know that I am the Lord your God.’
     To remember where we came from: Deuteronomy 5:15 ‘And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.’
    Emor ends with instructions to keep the lamp lit continuously with pressed olive oil. Leviticus 24:5-9 gives the instructions for the baking of twelve fresh cakes every Sabbath. The final instructions are the penalties for blaspheming the Name of The Lord.
   Synonyms for blasphemy: affront, insult, violation, contamination, abuse, indignity, etc.
   Antonyms for blasphemy: respect, godliness, reverence, glorification, adoration, etc.
   When we disregard the Sabbath, a holy day made at the time of creation by the God of creation, do we blaspheme the Name of The Lord?