Back to Basics: God's Word Vs. Religion

By Steven R Bruck

For too long, too many people have told us too many ways in which we should worship God. God, Himself, told us how to worship Him, and thats all we need to know.

This book will not give you any answers but should raise many questions, for which you need to ask God to get the answers. My goal is that when you have finished this book, you will feel very uncomfortable with what you have been told to believe.

I believe we are living in prophetic times, and this book is a wake-up call.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490841830

Steven R Bruck

I was raised on Long Island in a reform Jewish family. I always felt something missing from the ceremonies, and after my Bar Mitzvah I stopped practicing. I attended Temple University, served as a First Lieutenant in the Marine Corp (the only Jewish officer in the entire battalion) and then went into the business world. As I got older, I felt a need to know God, and started to search for answers. All I got was the same rhetoric I had always heard. Finally, God directed me to people with spiritual maturity who allowed me to see the peace and joy of salvation without forcing Jesus down my throat. As I searched the Bible, I came to know my Messiah, and God directed me to a Messianic Synagogue, where I learned I can be born again and still be Jewish. You can hear my testimony on Jacobshope.com in the media portion. I have two children from a "previous life", am remarried (I finally got it right!) and am an IT professional.

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Copyright © 2013 Steven R Bruck.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-8801-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-4183-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013904373

WestBow Press rev. date: 6/17/2014

Table of Contents

What’s This Book All About?

In The Beginning

Is Celibacy a Commandment?

Buffet Believers

To Drink or Not to Drink

Kosher Is Not Just For Jews

Holy Day vs. Holiday

Hidden Idolatry

Use It or Lose It

Tanakh vs. Talmud

You Can’t Get Pears From An Apple Tree

What Does it All Come Down To?

About the Author

What’s This Book

All About?

H ave you ever told a funny story at a party, later have it circulate back to you, only then to hear it transformed into something almost unrecognizable from the story you told?

That’s sort of what this book is about, except there’s no funny story to change around. What has been changed is the D’var Adonai, the Word of God…the Bible. God gave us instructions on how to worship Him and how to treat each other. Of course, there’s a lot more in the Bible than just that, and yet even much of the simple stuff has been redefined, redirected, and even ignored. At least no one has messed with what I think is the best part of the whole book, which is the promise and hope for a Messiah God will send to reunite us in worship with Him.

Ground Rules

This book will deal with the commandments God gave us in the bible, and (in certain cases) what has become of them. I will talk about the instructions and commandments He gave us in the Tanakh (Old Covenant) and in the B’rit Chadashah (New Covenant).

For those who may not be familiar with the word Tanakh, it is an acronym of the words Torah (this is the first 5 books of the Bible), Nevi’im (the Prophets) and Kethuvim (the Writings). The Tanakh is composed of eyewitness accounts by Jews of God’s work through Jews to bring salvation to the Jews and, thereby, to the world. Similarly, the Gospels of the New Covenant writings are pretty much the same thing- eyewitness accounts by Jews of God’s work through Jews for the salvation of the Jews, and thereby, the rest of the world. Both books are covered and discussed equally because the commandments found within are for all people who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That means Jews and all Christians, alike.

Some of the terminology I use may be new to many of my readers. Being Jewish, I feel more comfortable using the Hebrew words for many of the things we will talk of. I do not speak Hebrew, but have become very comfortable with many terms used in worship. To help people not familiar with these terms I will give the meaning (in parenthesis) throughout the book to help you understand. You may notice my favorite pet name for the Bible is the Manual. After all, isn’t it the ultimate user’s guide? You will also notice I don’t use the word Testament when I refer to the Bible. This is a personal preference which I ask you to accept from me. My reasoning is that a testament is a death document in which the conditions of the document don’t come to life until the maker is dead. God didn’t make testaments with us, He made covenants. Covenants are agreements between parties that exist as long as the parties are alive.

God made covenants with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, and with David. In fact, the New Covenant (in Hebrew, B’rit Chadashah) isn’t found in the New Covenant writings. Surprised? I bet you’re not the only one. The New Covenant" God made with us, which is the basis of the Messianic deliverance described in the New Testament writings, is in the Old Covenant book of Jeremiah (31:31). Check it out if you aren’t familiar with it.

Let’s Get This Part Over With

In case you haven’t already guessed, yes- I am a Messianic Jew. In fact, I have a certificate of Messianic Studies and (if I keep paying my dues) can call myself a Certified Messianic Minister. This is what I am not: I am not a Jew for Jesus, I am not a convert to Christianity, I am not a member of a sect or of a cult, I am not a Hebrew-Christian, a Christian-Hebrew, a who’s-a-what’s-it, or anything else. Despite what many of my Jewish brothers and sisters believe (or have been told to believe) about Messianic Judaism, please accept that I am Jewish. I was born and raised as a Jew, I am a Bar Mitzvah, I live a Jewish lifestyle, I have served on the Council at my Synagogue, led different ministries, preached and led liturgy (Jewish liturgy), I worship in the same way all Jews worship, I observe the Holy Days and Festivals God proclaimed in Leviticus 23, I observe the laws of Kashrut God gave us in Leviticus 11, and if all that isn’t enough to prove I am Jewish, I even have more than one opinion about everything. I am a Jew; I just happen to be a Jew that also believes Yeshua is the Messiah promised by God.

Whether you, the reader, believe Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah or not, the fact remains that both the New Covenant and Old Covenant writings are divinely inspired writings by Jews to Jews and for Jews, as well as all others who accept the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Therefore, for the purposes of this book, the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, the Gospels, the Epistles of the Talmudim (Apostles), and everything from Genesis through Revelations, are all valid as the Word of God.

Assurances

Let me assure any Jewish readers (that is, if you’re still reading this book) and may now feel a little uncomfortable, I am not writing this book to proselytize or convert anyone. This book is about God. There is only one God, and He has told us all how we should worship Him. Whether Jew, Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Baptist, Amish, Mennonite, Born-Again Christian, Episcopalian, AME, or whatever (sorry if I left anyone out), we all worship the same God. All these religions have the same God; it’s funny, though, because that same God has no religion. What he has is one set of commandments for all of us, which brings us back to what this book is about.

I am not going to tell you what to believe or what not to believe. I will not profess to know the answer to anything; in fact, I do not intend to provide any answers at all. What I want to do is raise questions. The real purpose of this book is to show you what God says. And, if you have been told differently by your religious leaders, to have you think, Maybe I should check out what God says for myself. Here and now, I earnestly request, even demand, that you do one thing, if nothing else, throughout this book: test that what I say is from God, actually is from God. Look it up, read it for yourself, and if there is anything you don’t agree with or if I tell you something you’ve never heard before, confirm it from the Bible.

Please read this book with an open mind. We will review some things that religion has told us, I will tell you what God says about those things, and where in His book He says it. The rest is up to you and the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) to sort out what you will believe, accept, and whether or not you decide to rethink what you have learned.

Interpreting the Bible

Since we will be looking at what the Bible says, we also need to get some of the basic rules down for proper interpretation of the Bible.

I think the most important rule is one taught to me by my friend and mentor, Rabbi Jeff Friedman. He calls it Circles of Context. How this works is simple: think of a rock dropping into a pool of water. There are circles of waves that emanate from the point the rock hit the water, going outwards. Each of these circles gets larger, but they are all concentric, i.e. they all start from the same location. When we look at a bible verse, we need to understand that verse within the context of the sentence, the sentence within the context of the paragraph, within the chapter, within the book, etc. We also have to include cultural context, as well as incorporate hermeneutics (seeing the Bible as a homogeneous work so that all parts of the Bible are in concert with all other parts).

Here’s an example of what I mean (you see this later, on Page 47): In Mark 21 we are told that Yeshua declared all food clean. I have heard people, and these people were knowledgeable and well versed (no pun intended) in the Bible, use this statement as a polemic against the Kosher laws (Kashrut) that God declared in Leviticus 11. According to them, because Yeshua declared all food clean they can eat pork, shellfish, etc. They are taking this verse totally out of context, both grammatically and culturally.

Let’s look at this verse using the Circles of Context rules (I will gloss over the details because we’ll be covering this more in depth later). What is happening when this statement is made? Yeshua and His Talmudim (Disciples) are eating a meal and being asked why they don’t practice N’Tilat Yadamim (a ritual cleaning of the hands before eating). Yeshua answers that what goes into us (food) doesn’t make