Wild At Heart
But He searching the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit Romans 8:27
But – There is no more important word in prayer vocabulary than this one: de. “But” God knows. How we need to dwell on this word! Lost in the wilderness, terrified by our loneliness, we can only answer one of the two great questions that the Lord asked Hagar. We only know where we have been. We do not know where we are going. Just like Hagar, our pain has driven us into the wilderness. Left there, we will die. Our lives will shrink from lack of spiritual refreshment and our bodies will decay from lack of nourishment. We may still exist, but we will be the walking dead, wandering a wilderness that we carry with us in a world afraid to trust. How we need to hear the voice of God saying just this single word: de, but. There is hope. It comes from outside us. We know that the emptiness within has no answer. That road is long, dark and deep. But God knows. He stands on the mountain in the heart of the wilderness and calls us. The amazing event of His presence is found there, where no man can live. And there we must go if we are to have the life only He can give.
“Let the dead bury the dead,” He said. “Follow me.” Jesus knows these paths too. He spent a great part of His life in the wilderness. He knows that God who lives there, and He is willing to take us to Him. He wants to replace numbing emptiness with terrifying goodness. Will we let Him?
The wilderness is a very important part of the gospel story. We would rather hear about the triumphal entry, the healings or even the cross than the accounts of the wilderness. The wilderness frightens us. First, the wilderness is the place of wild beasts. Men are not masters of the world in the wilderness. In the wilderness, men confront the reality of their insufficiency. Second, the wilderness is the place of demons. Temptation is most terrifying in the wilderness because it is palpably real. The devil is in your face, pointing our just how fragile your life really is. Third, the wilderness is the place of tragic disobedience. Most of us have lost our way among those thorns and thistles. Most of us have tested God or disregarded His warnings. Most of us carry our shame in the wilderness and like Cain, we know that the punishment of isolation is more than we can bear. Like Cain, we build a city around us to keep the monsters out. But city walls were never thick enough or high enough to dispel the monsters within. Finally, without the grace of God, the wilderness is the harbinger of death. It is not a quick and painless demise. It is death by moral and spiritual starvation. Without manna, without water from the rock, anyone left in the wilderness is without hope.
But . . .
God searches the hearts of those who cry out to Him. He finds those who know their terrible desperation. He listens to those who have given themselves into His hands. In the wilderness, where no delusion or distraction can seduce us with the ploy of power, we can encounter His glory. Israel went into the wilderness to escape destruction, but in the wilderness encountered the God of salvation. Jesus went into the wilderness to confront the enemy. He went into the wilderness to converse with the Father. He reclaimed that place for us. Now it is safe to go there. You have His word on it.
Prayer seems to drive me toward the wilderness. Perhaps that’s why prayer is such a frightening prospect. It strips me of my false security and my pretentious control. It won’t let me avoid my shame or my disobedience. It drives me to the edge of myself. And as much as I know that this is where I must be to see Him, I am still afraid. So, He searches my heart and leads me by still waters through the Spirit. I can do nothing else but follow.
Topical Index: Romans 8:27, wilderness, prayer, de, but
Baruch HaShem!!! o/o/o/
We are in the ‘wilderness’ NOW! We are not in the Promised Land… yet. But, because we know we are redeemed by the the blood of the Lamb (an esspecial point this coming week of Pesach 😉 ), we indeed do have that promise of the Promised Land- and of dwelling with Him in the World to Come! 😎 “But”… our only hope is in the redemptive work of Yahushua (Joshua).
Yet we do have the issue of NOW. We are in a fallen world, and we ourselves fail… repeatedly. 🙁 Our hearts cry out because of our dispair of our situation. We are separated from our Creator and our spirits long for Him, yet our flesh is against Him! 🙁 What are we to do?
Since our Hope is in Yahushua (Joshua, aka Jesus), and Moses did NOT get the Children of Israel into the Promised Land… yet Joshua (Yahushua) did. What good is Mose (Torah)? Is not ‘NOW’ the question? We are in the wilderness with all its trials and tribulations NOW… and we are afraid and/or concerned. 🙁 While Yahushua gets us into the Promised Land, it is Moses (Torah) that gets us through the wilderness! 🙂 …and rebelling against Moses (Torah- really against the Holy One Himself) will keep us out of the Promised Land!
In the Torah we have a book we call ‘Numbers’ which is Hebrew is ‘Bamidbar’ meaning ‘in the wilderness’. It is a book about the trials and tribulations the Children of Israel (the chosen of YHWH) brought on themselves in the wilderness because of their flesh, their disobedience toward GOD. The prophet Ezekiel told the house of Israel that when Adonai YHWH regathers His people, He will bring them into the “wilderness of the peoples” and while there He will enter into judgment with them as He did against our fathers in the first exodus. Those that are still disobedient will be purged and not enter the Land of Israel [Ezk 20:33-38]. 🙁
Rebellion against Moses/Torah will still keep us out of the Promised Land… because it is still rebellion against YHWH! Heb 10:26-31 speaks in agreement with Ezekiel- even of a greater offense because not only are we rejecting Moses/Torah, but the Grace of the blood of Yahushua that redeems us from the curse of transgressing His Way (Torah) that we may repent and once more walk in agreement with Him. [… and obedience brings on blessings 🙂 ]
Because of the sense of abandonment we experience here in the wilderness, YHWH teaches us how, even here, we can still “draw near” to Him in Leviticus. We learn that the sacrifices are really “corban”- ‘things brought near’. We see how the Holy One still allows us to draw near to Him through the means of sacrifice and an intermediary. We see how Yahushua DOES this! o/o/ We see the holiness of our GOD and how we too are to be holy/set-apart in order to draw near to Him- we see that we are NOT to be like the world. We can see why truely despite the wilderness we are NOW in,… Yahushua is really is capable of bridging that gap! That through Him we don’t have to be separated from our GOD, but can now “draw near to Him”. o/o/o/
PS: In case I confused anyone about the use of “Yahushua” and who that is:
Joshua son of Nun’s name in Hebrew is “Yahushua”. It was originally Hosea or ” ‘Hoshua” meaning ‘salvation’, but Moses changed it to “Yahushua” meaning that ‘Yah is salvation’- that is to say salvation is from (only) YHWH!
This is the same name given to our Savior! It could have also been translated into ‘Joshua’, but the common Christian nickname ‘Jesus’ was used instead. Truely He is YHWH’s salvation for us! 🙂
PSS: Bottom line:
–Yahushua gets us into the Promised Land.
–Moses gets us through the wilderness (notice who his primary assistant is?).
–Rebellion against Moses/Torah keeps us out of the Promised Land.
–Moses passes his authority [given to him by YHWH at Sinai before the assembly of Israel] to Yahushua/Joshua.
–Joshua/Yahushua teaches the people to obey the Torah given through Moses. Jos 1:7-9
–Jesus/Yahushua teaches that He did not come to do away with the Torah or the Prophets, and that we should be obeying even the least of these commandments.- Mat 5:17-19
–Yahushua told the Pharisees that if they believed Moses, they would believe in Him.
Skip,
Thank you first for being obedient and writing these daily words. At least once per week my understanding of God is stretched, shaken and deepened as He is revealed through your insights and understandings.
I do have a question regarding today’s word: I have searched for a translation of “alla” meaning “but”, however I can only find it as “and” in the English translations. Also, this is particularly short comentary, did I miss something?
Thank you,
Bill
Hi William,
Click on the following link half way through the “message” and the second half of the message appeared for me:
Click here to add a comment about this on SkipMoen.com
NT:1161
de/
de (deh); a primary particle (adversative or continuative); but, and, etc.:
(Biblesoft’s New Exhaustive Strong’s Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright © 1994, 2003, 2006 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible Translators, Inc.)
Hi Tom,
Your Joshua/Jesus “allegory” was very interesting and news to me. I’m wondering about the Hebrew meaning of Son of man in the following context. As I recall from school, eons ago, man = adam = mankind. Is that correct?
And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air [have] nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay [his] head.
Shalom Michael,
I believe that the Holy One teaches us things about relationships and priciples in the testimonies (stories) contained in the Torah. Names mean things. 😉
I think your “eons” old recall is accurate (though Skip probably has more expertise here) considering ‘ben adam’- son of Adam/man. Remember Ezekiel also was called ‘son of man’. Only Yahushua/Jesus was called both Son of Man and Son of GOD. The title used was probably related to the point the author was trying to convey considering Him (that He was both fully man and/or fully GOD).
That the Son of Man doesn’t have a place to lay His head would refer to His temporary time on earth while His permanent dwelling would be in Heaven. That GOD would dwell with us in a temporary human shell is a picture we can understand better when we keep the Feast of Tabernacles- a time of celebrating GOD dwelling with man- the time when Yahushua/Jesus was born when “the Word was made flesh and tabernacled with us”! 😎
Thanks Tom, I appreciate your very thoughtful response!
Eons ago was actually grad school in the early seventies when I had to read the Bible to teach it.
I was struck by the “fact” that Jesus referred to himself as Son of Man so many times.
At the time I was developing a thesis on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s allegory, The Scarlet Letter: A = Adultery = Adam = Alienation = Angel = Androgyny (fully man).
How Hawthorne’s Hero, Hester Prynne, transformed her “sin” by confronting her demons out in the forest (wilderness) and serving the downtrodden in her community.
As a dark, “oriental,” woman, I argued that Hawthorne wanted us to see Hester as Jew oppessed by her Puritan society.
After 30 years in the field of “high tech,” Skip’s Word puts me back in touch with these important memories.
My bad! Yes, the Greek is de not alla, but (no pun here) de and alla are both translated “but” depending on context. I didn’t look at the Greek. I assumed it was alla. I will have to be more careful. sorry
A comment on the Son of Man reference. Yeshua is Jewish. Therefore, he respected the Jewish convention not to refer to God by name. That’s one of the reasons that you find Matthew speaking about the “kingdom of heaven”, not the “kingdom of God” as you find in Luke. Jesus would not have referred to himself as the Son of God for the same reasons. Of course, there is also the connection with Daniel, but don’t forget the culture. Too often we read the Bible as the only book in the world that doesn’t have a cultural bias. It does!
Skip
You might like Brad Young’s “Jesus, the Jewish Theologian”
Just a follow up note to Tom’s excellent analysis. (I wish I had all those little faces). Yahushua means “Yah saves” or “Yah is my salvation”. Tom is correct that this is the meaning to the name Joshua, which we have converted to a J sound that does not exist in Hebrew. However, Yeshua is not the same as Yahushua. Yeshua literally means “salvation”, not “Yah is salvation.” In other words, the name of our Messiah is not a reference to God but rather to His own role in the redemptive plan. The Father chooses the Son to actually be “salvation”, in name and deed. If you look at the reference is Isaiah to the naming of the coming Messiah, you will see this. Both names come from the verbal root yasar, but they are not equivalent. One of the difficulties with Hebrew is that there are no vowels so there are several different conventions about how to pronounce words. Not a big deal, but something that might be useful to know later.
Tom, thanks for adding so much wonderful material to the blog. We are all enriched, especially me.
Skip
Skip,
Throughout the Apostolic Scriptures the Greek ‘Iesous’ [Strongs #2424- see below] is almost always rendered “Jesus” with two exceptions. Those exceptions can be found in Acts 7:45 & Heb 4:8 where the clear context indicated that they were referencing Yahushua son of Nun, aka Joshua, and were rendered “Joshua”. [Interestingly the KJV translated ‘Iesous’ into “Jesus” even those two times to be consistant in their translations.] This is another of the subtle bias of our translators where they did not want to assign a Hebrew/Jewish name to our Savior. Similarly they translated the disciples Yahonnan and Yaakov into “John and James” [good proper British names though 😉 ]
Thus we know that ‘Iesous’ comes from the Hebrew ‘Yahushua’ in reference to Joshua son of Nun- …and Iesous/Jesus has the same name, therefore His Hebrew name also is ‘Yahushua’. 😉
NT:2424
)Ihsou=$
Iesous (ee-ay-sooce’); of Hebrew origin [OT:3091]; Jesus (i.e. Jehoshua), the name of our Lord and two (three) other Israelites:
KJV – Jesus.
(Biblesoft’s New Exhaustive Strong’s Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright © 1994, 2003, 2006 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible Translators, Inc.)
PS Skip- you should have the same little faces I do.
: – ) = 🙂
: – ) = 😉
: – ( = 🙁
8 – ) = 😎
The faces don’t appear until you send [“Submit”]
Whooops!
the ‘winking face’ is: ; -) = 😉 [for demonstration I put a space between each symbol, but you don’t get a face unless there are no spaces between them.]
PSS: Although I know you know this, some of the brethren may not. Not only is there no “j” sound in Hebrew, there is no “j” sound in Greek either.
After listening to Bob Gorelik’s talks on Passover this week, and reading Skip Moen’s : https://skipmoen.com/2009/04/04/wild-at-heart/
I have decided that I will leave my Egypt and the idols I have been clinging to, I will walk with His people, through the wilderness. I will rid my house of leaven for seven days. This will be an affirmative action, and obedience and trust in His instructions will deliver me from bondage! Thank you YHVH for the revelations and instructions for our lives if we want to be part of your people Israel.
Well Antoinette, I woke up to your email this morning and your enthusiam for Bob Gorelik’s Passover talks, coupled with your reference to Egypt, made me want to head off to Israel with Skip in October, or sooner if possible 🙂
Unfortunately, and fortunately, I have kids at home to take care of and a job to do. Is there any way I can listen to Bob’s talks on Passover without leaving the SF Bay area?
If not, at least I found skip’s reference to “Jesus, the Jewish Theologian” on the way down to your reply 🙂
Hi Michael,
Go to his website for Bob’s teachings on the parshah readings, the feasts, and wonderful insight into the Word.
I also have a created a website with audio parshah (Just click on my name in the comment).
or copy & paste this link into the browser: http://www.seekandyouwillfind.ca/Seek_and_you_will_find/Seek.html
Hi Michael,
I forgot to give you the link for Rabbi Bob Gorelik’s teachings:
http://www.eshavbooks.org/00-latest.htm
I hope you enjoy them, the way I have. Shalom
Hello Antoinette,
I listened to Who We Are – And Who We Are Not (Romans 11) and must say that Rabbi Bob Gorelik certainly made my day; very interesting and impressive.
I love his presentation style and his understanding of the text would seem to be second to none.
Thanks and Shalom!
Actually Patrick, Skip’s techie, recommended the Rabbi’s teachings.
I really see a similarity in Skip’s writings and the Rabbi’s teachings, of interpreting and understanding the Word from a Hebraic perspective.
It’s awesome the way Ruach Hakodesh connects us with such powerful teachers, Exactly what we need when we need it most.
Truth connects with our spirits, and Truth keeps us on His path.
Okay. Thanks Patrick!
Yes, I like their focus on the Hebraic perpective; the first time I read the Bible “end to end,” I got through Mark and said to myself “no paganism so far, must be Paul’s fault.”
But Skip’s “deep” focus, testing on one “module” at a time, seems to show that Paul shared the Hebraic perspective with his predecessors.
Over the past several years, I have been reading Skip’s Words on a daily basis, but Rabbi Bob Gorelik was the first new teacher for me.
Because the Rabbi was speaking rather than writing, it was easier for him to show how “high level” connections work.
I was familiar with the general concepts, but learned a lot at the same time.
Together they are a very powerful “one two punch” 🙂