The Crimson Thread - May I Gently Suggest?

Among the people who matter in Judah, Jeremiah has been marginalized as a kook. People don't change their ways he gets considerable abuse. In chapter 24 his prophecy from chapter 21 is realized. Those who surrendered to the Babylonians were carried away but they were to live and prosper in exile. Those who listened to the false prophets and remained in Judah died.

In Parsha Re'eh Moses says to stone anyone who tries to entice you to worship other gods. He explicitly says that even those closest to are not to be excepted. In Luke 15 Y'shua says the world will hate His followers even to the point of murder. Where then is the 'virtue' of tolerance in all this? Are we not also commanded not to oppress the stranger? Today we are flooded with those who are strang...

After Jeremiah was let out of the stocks, the king sent to him asking if the Lord would deliver the city from Nebuchadnezzar. God said that He would not and proceeded to lay the blame for the evil that was to befall the city on the dereliction of Israel's shepherds. They had enriched themselves through injustice and had not taught the people to follow the word of the Lord.

Biblical Hebrew has no precise word meaning 'obey', Instead God uses variations on the verb 'shema' which is to listen. Moses emphasizes that Israel has not seen God, they have only heard His voice. This has profound implications for understanding the Torah and the rest of Scripture. Briefly, God wants us to listen to Him, internalize His words and then act as if He were speaking with us in every...

The corruption of Jerusalem has become so great that even God expressed His surprise. They were burning their children for Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom. Therefore God was going to turn the entire city into a place for burying the bodies of the people of Judah. In doing this He would defile the place entirely.

In the Genesis 2 creation account, God breathed into the clay and it became a living being. Another translation is that man became a 'speaking spirit.' In this God gave His creation a voice. A voice both for relationship and for command. To make relationship with God and men, command to have dominion over the earth..

The heart, being preoccupied with the things of the world loses focus on the things of God. This loss of focus cascades until Judah is so deep in sin that she must be sent into exile. Even then, God offers hope that if they just kept Shabbat things might turn around.

In Devarim Moses relates the sin of the spies which caused Israel to delay entering the land for 40 years. The spies were faced with the same problem we all deal with. God and His promises are of heaven but the world is in your face. When faced with immediate problems our hearts will try to keep our focus there instead of on the eternal things of God. That is what Jeremiah means when he says the h...

Judah has made one of her formulaic expressions of regret and repentance, but God does not believe their sincerity. He says that He is weary of relenting from exercising the negative side of His covenant. The nation is to be conquered and sent into exile.

Faced with calamity on all sides caused by their turning away from the ways of God, Judah cried out for God to remember His covenant and send them relief. God does not believe their sincerity and tells Jeremiah that there will be no relief and that the nation is going into exile.

Some people develop the notion that by being really good and obeying the Torah they will somehow merit God's blessing. Just as the law cannot cancel out mortality and give eternal life, it cannot automatically generate blessings. The law presents God's vision of a good and just society. As such all sorts of benefits flow to a people who walk in it. Obeying the law is enlightened self interest. Ble...

The clergymen of Anathoth, a Levite city, are speaking religious bromides which give evil Judah false comfort. Jeremiah, by speaking the truth, has brought embarrassment to the men in his home town. Thus they plot to silence and perhaps kill him.

Our culture has fallen into several grave errors with respect to sex, gender and class. In addition to the obvious absurdity that one one's gender is a matter of choice, we have lost the fundamental definitions of masculine and feminine. This distinction is woven into the creation itself and is not subject to manipulation by mere people. Similarly we have tried to assign virtue and shame based on...

In explaining how Judah has fallen so far, God says that they followed the way of the nations which lead them to fear other gods - which are no gods at all. He mocks the stupidity of those who make idols from wood and stone and then fall down to worship the work of their own hands.

In parsha Chukat we get the law of the Red Heifer to deal with the defilement of death. This is one of countless examples of the grace of God. He did not leave us to face our mortality with no hope. Instead He assures us that this part of our lives has importance and that there is much more to come when we are gathered to our people..

Judah had fallen into idolatry and wickedness but still maintained some of the form of the worship of God. Their prophets and priests were encouraging the people with religious platitudes. Whereas those platitudes had been true when the nation walked with God, the same words were now false and misleading because God was not in them. This trust in what had become false kept the nation from seeing i...

Argument can be either positive or destructive. Argument for the sake of heaven seeks to find the truth about something important by debate. Argument for the sake of power tries to defeat the other in order to gain power or status. Korach, when he instigated rebellion against Moses was arguing for the sake of power. Moses and Aaron had leadership of the nation and the priesthood. Korach and his co...

God sends Jeremiah to Jerusalem looking for even one who does justice and seeks truth. None is to be found either among the poor or the great. As Y'shua says, the only way to the Father is through Himself who is the Way the Truth and the Life. Since Jerusalem has abandoned the truth and gone after worthless idols, God's words will be to them a consuming fire.

When Moses sent the spies into the Land they came back with a bad report that panicked the nation. What might have been their motivation? Perhaps it was fear that the invasion would succeed and they would have to give up the intimate presence of God and exchange it to become just an ordinary nation.

Here God talks of the spiritual adultery of Israel and declares that her sister Judah is worse. At the time of the prophecy Israel had been in exile for over a century and Judah had not yet been exiled to Babylon. Even though God declares all of the reasons for His sorrow, He also promises a return and a reunification of the two houses.

In Numbers 12 Moses is described as the most humble man on earth. Since Moses had no problem killing an Egyptian slave master, confronting Pharaoh and arguing with God, humility must involve something other that shy self effacement. In what sense does humility apply to this greatest of all the prophets?

The calling of Jeremiah. The first of his visions depicts God being faithful to His own word and the second, a northward facing boiling pot, prefigures the Babylonian invasion that would sweep Judah and Jerusalem away into exile.

In a world full of death, despair and ugliness it is easy to lose heart and forget the God delights in people. The beauty that God creates and inspires overwhelms the ugly that Satan makes and inspires. He further assures us in His word that He loves us and enjoys all of the good things that we do. In this He teaches us what Joy is and how to achieve it.

Paul warns Timothy that bad times will come and that false teachers will arise. He further warns that people, when faced with a choice of teachers will gravitate toward those who tell them what they want to hear. This is instead of teachers who will lead them to repentance, righteousness and holiness.

In John 9 Y'shua, the Light of the World, opens the eyes of a blind man. What follows is one of the more humorous incidents in Scripture. The Pharisees refuse to believe such a thing is possible. First they inquire diligently whether the man was actually born blind then they berate him for sticking to his testimony. Finally, rather than face reality they 'cancel' him, throwing him out of the synag...