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BLB Lambert 1

Lamed
Lamed Messianic Studies

First Posted: 20111009
Last Updated: 20111109

These are letters I sent to and received from Mr. Lambert at BlueLetterBible.org which exemplify what has been revealed to me from my own studies into the Word and how the Bible interprets itself. I am not saying anyone is right or wrong, but that the Biblical Text can clearly speak for itself.

These letters are posted in their entirety for you to judge things of the spirit by the spirit.

Subject Re: The Sabbath not a Sabbath 
Sender lambert@ldolphin.org  
Recipient lamed@houseofdenning.com  
Date 26.04.2007 19:35 

Dear Marcus Denning,

	On Apr-26-2007 you posted the following to Blue Letter Bible:

Sabbath seems to be treated here as more of an idea than an object or specific time. When I read the Torah, I see The Sabbath as a specificity of time. When I read that some men gathered around to eat and study on the first day of the week in the Brit Chadesha, I read that they did so till midnight which means they were continuing studies of The Sabbath past Havdalah.

What I want to know is: When did G-D change -The Sabbath- to any other day? (I refer you here to the pagan Constantine of the 4th century and the worship of Mithra the sun god. So please study before you answer.)

Thank you for your time and peace be unto you and your household.

----------------------------

The sabbath day has not changed since the seventh Day of Creation week. Friday sundown to Saturday sundown is still the Sabbath day as observed by devout Jews around the world as part of the Old Covenant.

When God made a covenant with the unique nation of Israel, at Mt. Sinai, he put in place some 613 commandments and ordinances, including a set of holy days and annual commemorative feasts tied to the harvest cycle. This "Old Covenant" with Israel was set aside when Jesus died on the cross--since Christ fulfilled all the types and shadows in the Law of Moses.

At the Last Supper with His disciples, Jesus instituted a New Covenant for the church. The New Covenant keeps the moral aspects of the Law from the Old Covenant but drops the ceremonial Law. One sees this in Colossians 2 for instance.

"...And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ." (2:13-17)

Hebrews 3-4 tells us that the sabbath day was one of the "shadows" from the Old Covenant which has been replaced by our the sabbath rest life in Christ. The true meaning behind the Sabbath day today is therefore the believer's ceasing from his own labors and allowing Jesus to live His life in and through us--not one day per week, but every day.

Any works we do FOR God in our own energy will perish, and only what God does through us has eternal value.

Traditionally the early Christians met on the 8th Day, Sunday, to commemorate a time of new beginnings, the New Covenant, and especially the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. One sees this change in the early chapters of Acts.

For more on the true meaning of the Sabbath see "Jesus is our Sabbath Rest" by Ray Stedman, http://www.ldolphin.org/sabbathrest.html.

Notice that the basic call of Jesus to all of us is to a new life of resting in His indwelling sufficiency--here and now,

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30)

Thank you for writing,

Lambert
Blue Letter Bible
http://blueletterbible.org
http://ldolphin.org
lambert@ldolphin.org

Subject The Law and Sabbath 
Sender Torah Studies  
Recipient lambert@ldolphin.org  
Reply-To lamed@houseofdenning.com  
Date 27.04.2007 02:17 

Brother Lambert, greetings to you in the Name of our L-rd.

These top sentences are actually the last thing I typed. Below is a lot of really neat stuff that I think you still ought to know, but I never really finished the letter because after the final thought, you would just immediately jump into Romans 4 and pummel me and then totally miss my point. Some of the paragraphs go together in ideas, but not necessarily in order. Basically, I am so full of good teaching that I am busting because I want to make Christians as a whole aware of where we went wrong in our understanding. After all the Pharisees, Sadducee's, Rabbinical Sages, Constantine, and Kings and Emperors in general throughout the ages, we are so screwed up. So I will make my point plain and simple here.

It is not necessary to keep the Mosaic Law (Ten Commandments which also incorporate the 7 Noachide Laws) in order to obtain salvation. Throughout the Bible I understand that they were a means to an end from pointing out where sin was so that every mouth was shut and all would see their need for a savior all the way to learning how to interact with HaShem and man alike.

I Am Saying that even though we are saved by faith knowing that our penalty is paid in full, that the Law (including number 4, "keeping the Sabbath") is still there pointing out how we should live and how we should not live and is still a good thing to follow. Part of that Law is Sabbath, the G-d Sabbath and not the man-made one. Basically, faith without works is dead and the reason that people would know that the Apostles were followers of the Messiah is that they coupled the Law of sin and death with the grace of faith and forgiveness in order to "show love" and teach us how to live in a more "enlightened and spiritual way" for lack of better terms. That basically means that you are no longer stoned for not keeping the Sabbath, (and maybe not even thrown into Gehenna), but you are not being obedient either. (Insert John 14:15 here with the understanding that they grew up with the commandments of HaShem in the synagogue so there was no reason to repeat them.) And if you do not plug in Jeremiah 31:31-34 here then you are just daft (not you personally, but you understand). See? Law on Heart. Yea, right there - Law on Heart - transfer of old written to new understanding. You really cannot get any more blatant than that. Add as addendum here I John 3:4 for the definition of sin. And don't even go to I John 3:9 as a defensive position, because if one is of G-d and following G-d because they are IN G-d, then of course they will not sin, because they are doing the Will of HaShem as He dictated.

That being said, I will now send this on with the rest below intact, just so you can peruse it as fodder. I am tired after two hours of this and I need to stop. I hope you enjoy.

----------

Law to you is not Law to a Jew. Christians in general do not really understand what "Law" is and what it really means both to a Jewish person and to the context of the understanding of the Biblical text. Mosaic Law and The Oral Traditions are NOT the same thing. The oral traditions can be explained here as judicial laws, or laws of precedents, which were written down and made binding. The problem is that they were never meant to be written. (See the first chapter of the Talmud for this, ironically). This is what our court system is modeled after and also exactly why it is failing, which is a whole other issue. Mosaic Law is the original Ten with their subsequent explanations (the inclusive 613), and these laws have never gone away. In fact, they are re-quoted time and time again even in the Brit Chadesha, or New Testament.

You must be aware that there are the five divisions of Jewish Law or Halakhah which is the overall clustering of Law. Then there is the Torah, which is the first 5 books of the Bible. These contain Positive (do this or that) commandments and Negative (don't do this or that) commandments. Then there is the Gezeirah, which is the Babylonian Talmud (not the Assyrian Talmud of the northern lands), and serves as an expository and a fence around God's Law's. Then there is the Takkanah, which is the Rabbinical Laws of public welfare which were also meant to enhance (with stories), explain the reason for, and reinforce the Talmud. After that, there is the Minhag, which are the binding customs and were the individual community customs regarded with the same status as all other law. As you can see, with all of these "binding laws," there was so much attention on the letter(s) of the law that there was little room for grace or forgiveness. And if that was not enough, The rabbinical laws were constantly being added so as to bind the people whether or not by intent.

Please remember that All Law is seen as equally binding to a Jewish person. That is the yolk of burden. The simple Law brings you back to the Ten Commandments (or the 9 utterances in Jewish Circles as they combine the first two and see them as one). These same commandments are really just Topic Headings. In order to get them explained you have to go back to the 613 Mitzvot of the Torah.

The 613 Mitzvot of the Torah have many roots into the studies of the sages of old that are tied very much into Kabbalah. There were 248 Positive commandments - one for every bone in the body, and 365 negative commandments - one for every solar day of a standard yearly cycle. Because the penalties were so high for going against these commandments, the hedge of protection called the Talmudic writings were written out which consisted of many things we don't do today because we have grace in place when we fall instead of death. But we are still admonished to keep trying. Reference the first and second letters of Timothy for that. Half of both letters are direct teachings out of the Torah. If you would like proof of this, you are welcome to check out www.silvermouse.org under The Witness Chair where I have laid out both books along with the Torah and shown exactly where they match.

As far as the 8th day, well there are only 7 days in my calendar and HaShem only made 7 days as a cycle in Genesis. As far as Colossians is concerned, if you make it to 3:5-9 you will notice that it is a very detailed listing of which are directly out of the 613 Mitzvot. But, you cannot put on 3:12-15 until you have repented and set aside 3:5-9 so that you can then continue into 3:16-17 in a guiltless fashion. With no grace comes lots of guilt, but without obedience, there is no repentance. That means you have to have something in which to be obedient. That would be G-d's Law, the original one, not the man-made fence of the Babylonian Talmud on down to the Minhag which was just too much to bear.

In Matthew 11, there is much recognition on the yolk of obedience to the Talmudic Laws and the burden of condemnation that would result from breaking them. If I were following Talmudic Law today, I could not even pick up a pencil to write a scripture verse down much less anything else if it were the Sabbath lest I be killed. But under Torah Law, the end and the means is that service be unto the Most High on that day. This thought is incomplete without the verses in Matthew 22:35-40, which were understood laws not clearly stated till Yeshua HaMassiach was on the scene and brought them out as the known and yet unwritten pinnacle teaching of Torah Law. In other words, if one followed the Law, the eventual result should be that you love HaShem and Neighbor and the two were inter-twined and inter-dependent on one another.

And if you are thinking of the Law as fulfilled, then let's go to traffic school and see how they handle a ticket. You see a speed sign stating 55mph. If you do not "break" that limit, does the law convict you? No, it does not. Therefore you have no need of it. But if you go over that, you are then under the conviction of that law and you are ticketed. The ticket has pointed out your wrong. Now at court, you are told you have to pay a fine. A friend of yours knows you have nothing to pay the fine with, so they pay it for you. They have fulfilled the PENALTY of the law and satisfied the corpus of the law. Is the law still there? Yes, the law is still there and still in effect. Are you still admonished to follow that speed law? Yes, you are still told you must abide within the safety of that law. If you break that law, are you transgressing it? Of course you are transgressing the law because it still stands, even though a previous penalty was paid for you. In the case of the penalty of Torah, just because you have it paid for you maybe many times over, even we too are admonished to follow it as a good way to go. I refer you here to Rom 3:31, not for salvation sake but as a good way to live.

Also, there never was advice to stop having Pesach Seders. In fact, when Yeshua instructs His friends he said that when they "do this" in the contect of keeping the feast. In other words, when they come to the third cup of the four cups of wine in the seder, which is the cup of redemption, that at this point they should remember His sacrifice and how He redeemed them. Never was a ceasing of the seder ever an issue or ever mentioned. And even though it has been fulfilled, the fall feasts are still a foreshadowing of the Judgment Day to come in which I believe we are in the spiritual days of Elul now and need to reconcile with all our brothers before the final trumpet blows (which Rosh HaShanah eludes to) and we enter the days of Yom Kippur in which we are bidding HaShem to give us another chance if we do not know Him so that our name is in the Lamb's Book of Life. This is indeed terrible days ahead for some.

As a side note, testament and covenant are not the same thing either. The Old Testament was basically everyone wants to kill the Jews and they remained un-pummeled by their aggressors - so let's eat! The Old Covenant (Abrahamic) was the promise of land and the descendants as innumerable as the stars AND that a Messiah was coming that would "save" them. (Though at this time they were still working from the fleshly understanding and had little understanding of what a spiritual save was.) The New Testament is that we have a good way to live, but if we fail to follow through we have a way to pay the debt and try again. But, the New Covenant is still being worked on. Enter in here the the month of Elul, The Feast of Tabernacles, The Feast of Trumpets, and Yom Kippur as the allusiona to what is going to happen in the end times.

----------

lambert@ldolphin.org wrote:

Dear Marcus Denning,

	On Apr-26-2007 you posted the following to Blue Letter Bible:

Sabbath seems to be treated here as more of an idea than an object or specific time. When I read the Torah, I see The Sabbath as a specificity of time. When I read that some men gathered around to eat and study on the first day of the week in the Brit Chadesha, I read that they did so till midnight which means they were continuing studies of The Sabbath past Havdalah.

What I want to know is: When did G-D change -The Sabbath- to any other day? (I refer you here to the pagan Constantine of the 4th century and the worship of Mithra the sun god. So please study before you answer.)

Thank you for your time and peace be unto you and your household.


The sabbath day has not changed since the seventh Day of Creation week. Friday sundown to Saturday sundown is still the Sabbath day as observed by devout Jews around the world as part of the Old Covenant.

When God made a covenant with the unique nation of Israel, at Mt. Sinai, he put in place some 613 commandments and ordinances, including a set of holy days and annual commemorative feasts tied to the harvest cycle. This "Old Covenant" with Israel was set aside when Jesus died on the cross--since Christ fulfilled all the types and shadows in the Law of Moses.

At the Last Supper with His disciples, Jesus instituted a New Covenant for the church. The New Covenant keeps the moral aspects of the Law from the Old Covenant but drops the ceremonial Law. One sees this in Colossians 2 for instance.

"...And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ." (2:13-17)

Hebrews 3-4 tells us that the sabbath day was one of the "shadows" from the Old Covenant which has been replaced by our the sabbath rest life in Christ. The true meaning behind the Sabbath day today is therefore the believer's ceasing from his own labors and allowing Jesus to live His life in and through us--not one day per week, but every day.

Any works we do FOR God in our own energy will perish, and only what God does through us has eternal value.

Traditionally the early Christians met on the 8th Day, Sunday, to commemorate a time of new beginnings, the New Covenant, and especially the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. One sees this change in the early chapters of Acts.

For more on the true meaning of the Sabbath see "Jesus is our Sabbath Rest" by Ray Stedman, http://www.ldolphin.org/sabbathrest.html.

Notice that the basic call of Jesus to all of us is to a new life of resting in His indwelling sufficiency--here and now,

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30)

Thank you for writing,

Lambert
Blue Letter Bible
http://blueletterbible.org
http://ldolphin.org
lambert@ldolphin.org