Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Okay, so I've already gotten threatened with a lawsuit over this, so I'm gonna have to explain myself here in just a minute.
But I want to just say that I am very grateful to be able to spend this time of counting the Omer with you guys. We're going to be together for the next 21 days.
How many of you guys have been keeping up with the Omer count? Yay. Good job. And so this Omer count isn't just something to say.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Check.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Mark. We did right. It's supposed to be transformative and leading us up to an event. What's that event?
Shavuot. What happens at Shavuot or Shavuos?
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: The giving of the Torah. Receiving of the Torah. Right. We are preparing ourselves to receive the Torah fresh and anew. And this series, I initially told people, I said, I've got my title. I had my title months ago, but I was like, I can't do anything graphically with it. That's not going to be completely getting us blocked from YouTube.
But I figured out something finally, the Lord was able to give me something there and actually help set this in a direction that we're going to talk about, make that connection of the visual next week.
You know, last week, Rabbi Damian introduced a concept and he gave a message called the lies we believe. And it couldn't have been a better setup for the things that I want to talk about for the next three weeks. But he didn't necessarily know about it. So that's how the Lord works. And so, you know, it's a great launching board, a springboard that he's been able to give us. And it really struck a chord with a lot of people. And I'm sure there are people in this room that it really impacted heavily. I know that we received several emails, people commenting on the YouTube video and all that kind of stuff. And it's one of our highest viewed videos in recent times. And people really were challenged by it. Okay. And so he, in this teaching, he mentioned the fact that the book of Leviticus, which we are in, which most people completely ignore. Right. It calls us to be better, to be elevated, and to be higher. The book of Leviticus. Okay.
And so if you can't. If you feel that you can't change your spiritual identity and that you're trapped in your habitual sins or you're stifled in your spiritual development, then this series that I'm starting today is for you. So let's get into our topic.
I want to call your attention to the word identity, because that's a word that we will hit over and over and over again. Identity. We all have one. It's the way we view ourselves, right? It's who we believe we are. But sometimes, as Rabbi Damian taught us last week, sometimes we can't see ourselves clearly. We have a false perspective of ourselves. We have a false view of ourselves. We've fallen for a lie, right? And the problem with believing a lie, particularly in this case, is that we mold our lives around the storyline that we've believed in.
We mold our lives. We shape our lives around the storyline that we believed in. So I'm going to give you some extreme cases. I want to focus in on that word, extreme, okay. Of how we can see this affecting us and affecting people and how people that fall into this category, they've accepted a false view of reality and have trapped themselves in their own self made cages.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Like I said, these are extreme examples, but I need to give these to get the point across. So if we think about anorexia, and I know that's a touchy subject and it's difficult, a lot of these are touchy subjects. But anorexia is a disease that everybody can see one thing, and then the person that has it sees something completely different. They can be skin and bones. Look in the mirror, and they see weight, they see fat. Okay? This is a false perception of reality, but there's. It's a difficult situation to get out of, but they've somehow.
It's. It's. I don't know how that psychology of that works, but it's come to the point that they can't see anything other than that, and they go to the extremes to change that.
Another issue is codependency, especially when it comes to abuse. Okay? Victims of abuse, codependency, they.
They don't see reality. They see a sugar coated view of reality, especially when they're in that relationship, right? They're being abused.
Somebody tries to help them, then they get defend. I'm sure Doctor Brionis has seen a lot of different things like this, and they defend the person that's abusing them. They make excuses for them, okay? They don't want to lose them. And so they will tell themselves the story that they need to tell to keep that relationship going.
We see similar things with depression. We see similar things with narcissism.
And I'm even going to venture here, we see these things for those who are trapped in the lgbt lifestyle, right.
We see that we. They have believed a narrative about themselves that that's the only way that life is going to be and might as well embrace it. And who cares about what God has said about things? I'm not talking about the inklings, the desires. I'm talking about the actions associated with that.
So. Jeremiah 17 910. You guys are probably familiar with this verse. It says, the heart is deceitful above all things and grievous, grievously weak. Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the inward parts even to give every man according to his ways and heart and according to the fruit of his doing. So just want to talk about this for a minute. So, in Hebrew, the word heart, lave, we think of generally when we read the scripture, we think of heart. We think we hear the word heart, we think of emotions, we think of, you know, that kind of stuff. In this same passage here, it uses the word innards. And innards is literally the word for kidneys. Okay, so we have heart and kidneys, two organs in this. So God tests the heart and he knows the kidneys. What in the world does that have to do with anything? What is the world that supposed to mean? Okay, he searches the heart and he tests or tries the kidneys. And so that's bizarre from our culture, right?
It's like, what do we do with that? But in the hebrew way of thinking, the heart is not the center of emotion like it is for us. It's the center of thought.
It's our mental capacities, faculties. It is how we process information. It's how we think about things, how we identify ourselves.
The kidneys are the seat of emotion. We would say more like our heart. Sometimes it's used as the liver, too, in hebrew thought, in the hebrew scriptures. But what I want to draw your attention to is God searches our, you can say thoughts, our identity, our motivations, our reasoning and all that kind of stuff. And so God, he searches us and wants us to use that part of our being to define who we are. We don't just get to sit back and be on cruise control.
Many of us have simply grown comfortable with our old identity. This is pre Yeshua, okay? After all, it's a skin we were born in. You may have heard that phrase. Many people see themselves as a victim of circumstances.
Have you heard that?
And as rabbi was talking about, they make excuses. We make excuses. That's the way it is. That's who I am. That's the way I was born. That's the way we grew up. And if you've seen Zootopia, I can't help it. It's in my dunna.
DNA. Okay? DNA. So it's in my dunna, though.
You know, Rabbi Damian said, you know, basically he said, like it or lump it, that's just the way I'm. That's what people tend to make an excuse. I love Rabbi Abraham Tversky's way of putting things in his commentary on Perkevo. He says, even if you are the product of, of who your parents made you to be, if you stay that way, it's your own fault.
Okay, so the sages talk about Abraham. Excuse me, talk about Jacob and Esau. And what is the primary difference between Jacob and Esau? They were twins, right? But Jacob came out one way and Esau came out the other. Esau came out first. And he was what?
He was hairy, he was ruddy, you know? And Jacob came out. He was already grasping. Okay, so the difference between the two is, and you'll see later on in life, and you see that through the different things that happened to them, is Esau is a static character.
Jacob is a dynamic character. Have you ever read a book, watched a movie, whatever, and you had this one guy that's just like, he never changes. He doesn't mature, he doesn't develop. He has no character arc. Those are the type of people that we just tend to ignore in those situations in movies and books and things like that. But the people with the really dynamic character, the people who go through heck and come out of that smelling like a rose and change and develop and adapt to that, those are the characters that we gravitate towards and that we see as heroes. The boys and I. Boaz is the last one, but we've been reading all, let's see, all three of my sons and I have read a series of books called the Stormlot Archive and still in progress. And it's a fantasy set of books, but one of the main characters is that, you know who I'm talking about. Who? Kaladin. Okay. And this has, you know, nothing to do with actual spirituality, but this is a cool correlation. Okay?
[00:11:36] Speaker B: So.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: So hang tight.
Caladin starts off with this. He has this dynamic character arc. He starts off with one thing, he goes to another, he gets depressed, he struggles. He has everything beaten down. Life is horrible, horrible, horrible to him. He's a slave and branded for life and all that kind of stuff. But yet he rises, and he is put in a position of authority eventually, and he becomes a. He's a model for everyone, pretty much. And this is the character trait, the character arc that we like to see and this is what really, it gets our blood pumping. And so in our lives, we want to be like that as well. We want to inspire others. But unfortunately, a lot of times what happens is we get comfortable.
We get comfortable with who we are and we don't feel the need to progress.
And especially when we come to faith in yeshua, it's getting watered down and watered down and watered down and watered down even more and more as we progress in these end times where nothing's really changing in people, they just sort of say, okay, I want a blue car, I want a grey house. And I think I'll add Yeshua here, and I'll have this for lunch. And, you know, it's just. It's just one of those things that we just add him to whatever is going on.
But the goal of this life isn't to get to the world, to come by the skin of our teeth through simply accepting Yeshua as our savior and then getting on with our life as we see fit, as many of us unfortunately do.
One of my favorite quotes from Dallas Willard, I used in my book the four responsibilities of a Disciple. He says, this heresy created by the impression that it's quite reasonable to be a vampire Christian.
One in effect says to Jesus, I would like a little of your blood, please, but I don't care to be your student or have your character. In fact, won't you excuse me while I get on with my life? And I'll see you in heaven.
Ouch. Right?
So humans, like water, generally choose the path of least resistance.
Most churches, unfortunately, and this is not a bash against churches at all, this is just saying how it is, and we have to help in this area. Most churches are concerned with how to get you saved and spend the majority of their time on topics like forgiveness or justification.
It's just the path of least resistance. It doesn't require lifestyle change, it doesn't require really anything except to just accept that fact that God loves us and he wants to get us to heaven. And so we just sort of accept it and go on. But generally, those who engage with us here at Shalom Macon are different than that.
We desire to be better disciples of Yeshua. And if you came to Shalom Ankin, that's probably why you came. You want to learn and you want to grow.
That's what we hear over and over and over again. So our focus, rather than just getting people in the door or birthing, being a birthing center, is the how now brown cow.
In other words, we're focused on making disciples, where do we go from here?
We want to be mature followers of Yeshua, and unfortunately, most people who come into messianic faith come into sholemaic and whatever.
There's a lot of unlearning that has to be done. There's a lot of relearning that has to be done. And many have experienced the pain of having your skin stretched so tight.
You got to figure out what to do with this new wine that's starting to ferment inside you, right? You're either going to burst.
Are you going to figure out how to make that skin more elastic and be able to accept that new wine and let it develop and mature inside you? So, at Shalom Macon, particularly, Musar holds a significant role in our community identity.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: How many of you in this room right now have been involved in some capacity and some kind of Musar course in this congregation? Raise your hand, please. Okay. Got a good showing here. And that includes not just the Musar class, but things like our men's group and things like this that we are studying through.
And why is this? Because we're not stuck on the borderline of wondering if we're saved or not. We are trying to get on the path of transformation and become like Yeshua wants us to be, to be disciples that he can use for his glory in this worth. So, one of the things we're doing as a men's group is we are studying a text, a rabbinic text, called. It's a Musar text called Messilat Yasharim. It's the path of the just. Okay, what does that even mean? It's like, well, this is the path that I want to be on. If I want to be in a right relationship with God and with man. If I want to be upright in all of my life, then this is a proper path for me to take, and this is how I get there. And so the goal for this book, it says, basically that we're not seeking how to get to the world to come in a certain type of way, but we're seeking refinement of the character of our character for use in divine service. We're using this world to be closer to God through how we live this life, so that we can enjoy the world to come and be the person that God has made us to be in this world. So our ultimate goal is to be like our rabbi and savior. Of course, we know him as Yeshua, and I'm not. I don't want to sound like I come across wrong, either on this but in order to do this, we can't depend on the calvinistic tulip approach to define our identity, which some of you may be familiar with. The tulip is an acronym that stands for total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. But basically, what that boils down to, in a nutshell, is the car wash mentality. You know what I mean by that?
You go to the automatic car wash, pull up, and then you. What do you do?
You put it in neutral, and then you just cruise.
Right? Okay, so. But this is not the way we do it here. We have an active role in shaping our character and engaging through our spiritual service. So, the problem that I'm trying to address here is that many people have come to faith in God through Yeshua, but we still have our old identity and mindset. We may have added Yeshua to our identity, like I said earlier, but we've never really surrendered our identity to him.
So this is. This is the big thing. So, I'm going to be doing, you know, three parts of killing my old man. This is the first part. The old me. So, who is the old me? We have to identify that first before we can know where we're headed into this. And so, for a lot of you guys, for a lot of us, this is not necessarily applicable in a sense that we are beyond this.
But we all have some of it still in us, and we need to recognize that, because the true trait of humility is not having a deflated ego or an over aggrandized ego, but knowing ourselves truly, knowing our strengths, knowing our weaknesses, knowing where we need to improve, knowing where we need to pull back. Okay?
So, again, the lies we believe that rabbi talked to us about last week, taught us last week is so fitting for this. And it boils down, once again, to our identity.
And we see ourselves.
How we see ourselves determines how we relate to God.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:20:27] Speaker A: From a pure. A lot of times in this, what I introduce this calvinistic perspective, people who really hold tight to that a lot of times see themselves as nothing more than worms, okay? But on the flip side, you have people that say, you know, they're pretty much equal to God on the flip side, which is scary, and you have everything in between. And so we need to have a proper understanding of ourselves so that we can know our relationship to God and what he expects of us and have this identity that we can do what he has called us to do. And we're not the person that we used to be. If we have had an encounter with Yeshua, we're a new creation. We have been transformed. We have changed, and that's what, really this thing is going to be about, and we're going to develop more.
And at the risk of hitting another sensitive area here, but those.
This is very applicable. Those who are part of the lgbt community see themselves in a certain way, even if that identity stands in opposition to the identity God has for them. And this is why these people are some of the hardest people to talk to about the Lord, because it is completely contrary to who they are, and it doesn't. It doesn't resonate with them because it's a conflict of their identity.
Like I said earlier, we all struggle with things. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about embracing that lifestyle and living a life that is contrary to what the lord said. And we can go in all these different areas that we can talk about, but this really hones, and it boils down to identity. And we've had some.
We've dealt with a lot of people in this area, and we've had some great successes. And the Lord is doing some amazing things in various people. But at the core, it's one of the hardest because it. It challenges a person's identity, and it's difficult because to kill who you believe you are, there's nothing more difficult than that.
To kill who you believe you are, there's nothing more difficult in the world.
But if we're in Messiah, we all have a former identity in some capacity. And so let me remind us all of who we were. Ephesians two one five says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sin. So we were all just dead, right? Just walking dead. We're zombies in a certain sense, in which you walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with messiah. Galatians 519 21 says, now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealous jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit kingdom of God.
That's it.
But the real struggle still persists. Romans. If you ever read romans, you know where I'm headed. Romans seven, beginning in verse 15. For I do not understand my own actions. How many of you guys can say that sometimes.
For I do not do what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate.
And you know what? When we do that, it creates a self loathing. It creates a hate for ourselves, even, and we destroy ourselves. We set ourselves up for failure in this. We create scenarios where we have that opportunity to fail.
He says, now, if I do not do what I want, I agree with the Torah, that it is good. So now it is no longer what I do, but the sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me. That is my flesh. For I had the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do good.
I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want. It's what I keep on doing. Now, if I want to do what I do not want, there's a lot of do's and don'ts in there. It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at the door. Isn't that always the case when we're on the track that we're headed? We're supposed to be headed, we're ready to do right. There's always something that's going to try to keep us from doing. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. Okay, so here's the struggle. So I've divided these teachings out in three parts. The first one, as you can see, is the old me. We're talking about the old me today. Next week, we're going to be talking about the death of me, okay? So about dying to self. So our commission is from ephesians four, beginning in verse 17. Now I say this and testify the Lord in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the gentiles do. Wait a minute. I am a gentile in the futility of their minds. He's talking about the pagans.
They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. For they have become callous and even given themselves up to sensuality. Greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Messiah. Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Yeshua. To put off your old.
This is where we're getting down to the nitty gritty. To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and be renewed in the spirit of your minds. And to put on the new self created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. So what are we supposed to do? Put off the old self. We have to identify what the old self is so we can put it off. And then we have to do what? We have to live with ourselves continually as an offering to the Lord so he can use us. But you know what the problem with living sacrifices is, right?
It tend to crawl off the altar quite a bit.
Just saying.
So the goal of this series is to recognize that we have two identities. Two identities that we can choose from. We can choose between our old nature and identity, that of the world, or our new nature and identity, that of Messiah, and figure out how to put our old identity away and fully embrace our new identity in Messiah. In short, how to kill our old man so that the new man in us may live. May live. So let me leave you with these lyrics to a song that some of you may recognize if you grew up in the church in the eighties. Like I did a song by a group called Petra and it's called guess what? Killing my old man.
It goes like this. I think it's gone far enough I can't take it anymore I've got to even up the score before he sweeps me off the floor I really got to find a way of taking care of him for good I know he'd kill me if he could somehow nail him to the wood. By the way, you can't tell this. This song raised some eyebrows and had a little controversy when it was released in the early eighties. Killing my old man you may not understand he's a terrible man gotta make a stand and kill the old man every time that I think he's gone I finally won he just keeps coming back puts me on the run I think I'd better do it now get my hammer and nail pray to God that I won't fail, lest he keep me in the jail. And I don't want to stay in jail, killing my old man. You may not understand. He's a terrible man. Got to make a stand and kill the old man. So today we've talked about the old men. Next week we'll be talking about what? The death of me. So we're going to leave it at that. Shabbat Shalom.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Please visit our website, shalommakin.org, to learn more about us. Join our live services, access other teachings, sign up for our newsletter, join our private network that will connect you with our greater community from around the world, or contribute to the work of. Shalom. Macon, thank you for watching, and we look forward to connecting with.
