Yitro – Jethro, His abundance, excellence
Shemot (Exodus) 18:1 – 20:23
YeshaYahu (Isaiah) 6:1 – 7:6; 9:6-7
MattitYahu (Matthew) 5:8-20; 15:1-11; 19:16-30
Fathers have standards. I like to call it ‘the Torah of the house.’ When a father raises his children, he teaches them what those standards are, how to measure against them, and how to apply those standards. It’s part of raising godly children.
As a keeper of the Torah, why do I focus on the Messiah, the Son of God, and not on the Father so much? Partly because I love the One Who gave His life for me and saved my sins; but also because I have seen far too many Hebrew Roots folks sideline Yeshua and focus too much on the Torah. I try to be part of swinging the pendulum back. Paul focused on the Messiah – he wrote that the goal of the Torah is the Messiah unto righteousness. (Romans 10:4) For this, Paul was accused of teaching against Moses. But did Paul lead people away from respecting and obeying our Father in Heaven?
The Ten Words of Abba’s Instructions:
Let’s examine our relationship with the Father against His standards that He lined out for His children to live by in the Torah. In Hebrew, all three references to the ‘Ten Commandments’ written on tablets are ten devarim, words, as found in Exodus Chapter 20, verses 2 to 17:
First Word - I Am YHWH your God:
The First Word from the Father must be the chief standard to measure every other word and each deed against before any of the other Words can be obeyed. The first three words are the most important, but may be the least regarded of all among the “Ten Words.” The Torah calls them ‘Devarim – Words,’ not ‘Mitzvot – Commandments.’ (Exo 20:1, Deut 5:22) In fact, most Christian versions of the ‘Ten Commandments’ do not include verse 2, instead they use only verse 3 as the first commandment. Let us not ignore, but give our full attention to the critical, first three words of the Father’s First Word as the chief, all-encompassing standard:
- “Anokhi YHWH Eloheykha (I Am the LORD your God), Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. (First Word/Commandment)
- “You shall have no other gods before Me.” (Second, Not First Word/Commandment)
What does Father God want to be established in our hearts before we keep any of His commandments? That He is our God, our Elohim, the highest authority by which we must acknowledge and submit in all our decision-making, and all thoughts and emotions. He is not just Elohim in the area of religion. Elohim, a plural title, means He has every authority in every realm of life.
To respect and submit to Abba, YHWH Elohim, the Mighty Authority, must be first and foremost among the terms of relationship with His children in all matters of life.
Our Father alone delivers and rescues His own out of slavery to another master. Abba has brought His children out of the house of bondage and into His House to be a people of His possession. No longer ‘children of this world’, as Yeshua called it, the born-again are adopted by Abba into a family He named ‘Israel.’ Since that’s what He calls His family, so should we.
The children of YHWH lovingly submit to their Yod, Hey, Wow, Hey, their Elohim, their strong and mighty authority. Their response to the ‘Yod’, the mighty right hand that so miraculously delivered them, was to ‘Hey’, respond by praising Him and beholding and highly regarding His standards. Their response to the ‘Wow’, the Man nailed to sacrificially make a covenant and connect with them, was to ‘Hey’ – respond to His great, selfless love by praising Him and submit lovingly to His commandments, as a bride submits to her husband. Praise YHWH!
Second Word - No Other Gods:
Abba’s children have no other mighty one, no other authority above or beside YHWH Elohim. Because He is a jealous and righteous Father, He will not put up with His children submitting and serving any other. His children are forever loyal and true to their Father, His character, His ways, and His Words, even as He promises to be forever faithful to them.
What other gods, mighty authorities, are commonly submitted to? The god of self, an identity of the flesh, other mighty ones – like sports heroes, celebrities, music stars, religious leaders, etc. Who or what controls our thoughts steers our ambitions and drives the motives of the heart? YHWH our Elohim commands that He alone is to be the Strong Controller of the soul.
Third Word - Don’t Take The Name in Vain:
His children uphold His Name above all other names with high regard and honor. These commandments are given in the book – Shemot – which means ‘names.’ One way to honor our Father’s Name is to represent the reputation carried by His Name by submitting to and obeying YHWH as our Elohim. When we obey His Ten Words, we testify of the righteous standards He requires for His creation to abide by, for His righteous standards define His character, His Name.
Paul said it this way: And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the Name of the Master Yeshua, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Colossians 3:17
Fourth Word - Remember the Sabbath Day:
Abba is good to His children! He commands us to set aside one delightful day out of our busy weeks to devote all our attention and spend undistracted time with Him. As the standard to uphold, He sets the appointment. We honor His day by guarding and gladly preparing for that seventh day every week. All week long we look forward to that special day that we can rest and spend time with the One we delight in and love more than anything or anyone else.
If you turn away your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, set apart of YHWH, honorable; and shall honor Him, not doing your ways, nor finding your pleasure, nor speaking your own words:
Then you delight yourself in YHWH… Isaiah 58:13-14a
Drawing the line between doing His thing, instead of our own for our pleasure, is the standard.
Fifth Word - Honor Father and Mother:
Because His children honor the Father and His Word, we honor and highly regard fathers and mothers and the institution of the family. Because we respect and obey our Father and His Son as the Head of His body, we uphold heads of households. The world wants to destroy family structure honoring parents. We support wives and children respecting husbands and fathers.
Sixth through Tenth Words - You Shall Not:
As children love and respect their fathers, we love our neighbors, that is, everyone we are in touch with, even as we love ourselves. We are sure not to harm, but instead uphold and honor their souls, marital relationships, possessions, reputations, and anything at all that is our neighbor’s. We build up, not tear down people, and uphold the standards of the Father for all the world to know how wonderful and righteous their Father in Heaven is. Now, how do we measure up to each standard according to the teachings of our Master Yeshua (Mat 15:19)?
Sixth Word – Hatred in the heart is where the line is crossed to be guilty of murder.
Seventh Word – Lust of the eye for another outside of marriage crosses the line.
Eighth Word – Stealing starts with the heart not being content with what one owns, but devises a plan to take things that do not belong to him.
Ninth Word – False witness starts with an unforgiving and bitter heart conjuring up evil thoughts towards another person, and then devising a false narrative against a neighbor.
Tenth Word – Coveting is an attitude of discontent and of an envious, ungrateful heart, desiring what someone else has that is thought to be what one deserves.
Yeshua is the Master at revealing the matters of the heart and whether our thoughts and intents truly measure up to the Father’s standards. If we are willing to submit to the obedience of the Messiah with every matter of the heart and every high thing lifting itself against the knowledge of God, the Mighty Authority (2 Cor 10:5), we can start by submitting our thoughts to the standards of the Ten Words. As the courts of America have upheld throughout our history, the Ten Commandments are of supreme importance in making laws and in setting the moral standards of our society. But the Ten Words/Commandments should not just be posted at entryways to every courthouse in the land but should be upheld at the forefront of each mind to discern every word and imagination entering the mind and heart. That’s our standard test.
Why do believers even have trouble with making moral equivalencies between warring factions – such as the Palestinians and the Israelis, for example? How do we discern what a revered leader like Donald Trump says? What voices should we submit to, or not, and how do you know?
“Oh, but I’m led by the Spirit, and I just go by what the Spirit tells me to do.” Ever heard that or thought that? How do I know if what I’m hearing is from the Holy Spirit or not? We need Abba’s written standards to discern whether we are hearing from our Father in Heaven or the Father of lies.
Loving Submission to the Master of the House:
After the Ten Words in Exodus 20, why did YHWH give Israel the commandments for a Hebrew slave? Are they something different than the standards/commandments of the Ten Words?
Once a child grows up, he has a free choice to stay or leave. But Israel’s Father is not like Pharaoh. A child of Yah prefers the One Who rescued his soul and adopted him. The love of a righteous and good Father is the incentive to want to submit to the Master and to abide forever in His House by His rules.
The blood running down the doorpost from an ear pierced through by an awl is a type of a bondservant willingly being joined to the Vav, the Man nailed – his Wow-Man. He commits to hear and obey the Wow-Word of the Man Who shed His blood for him. Here is a picture of hearing the Gospel of the Messiah, our Savior, and willingly giving our lives over in loving submission to the Master. The commandments didn’t change. The Hebrew slave just chose to pin his ear to the Master’s Words, to be forever loyal to Abba and the Torah of His house.
The Broken Covenant and The Redemption:
We all know His children rebelled against their Father’s standards, missing the mark of the Torah and breaking the covenant with Him. So tragedy struck over and over again. They wouldn’t abide by the Torah of the House, so they were kicked out into the world, where they found other gods, other mighty ones/authorities to whom they submitted their hearts and lives.
Not only were they kicked out of His House, but Abba burned the House down behind them. They couldn’t come back even if they wanted to. Their enemies took over, ransacked, and destroyed the temples beyond recognition. The House was destroyed, but not the pattern, not the blueprint.
So does the Torah hold a provision for His children to be redeemed, bought back, and to return to rebuild His House? His covenant and His building standards remain forever. After the Torah of the House regarding slaves, YHWH does an intriguing shift to judgments on murderers –
He that strikes a man so that he dies, dying he shall die. Exodus 21:12
Have not our sins in a real sense struck Yeshua, being the reason for His death? Since the first sin in the Garden – dying, we shall die (Genesis 2:17).
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of Elohim is eternal life through Messiah Yeshua our Master. Romans 6:23
The Torah then sets the simple precept of redemption – that of exchange – with many examples, including the famous ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.‘ The foundational understanding is that our Savior gave His body and His blood over in exchange for what we owed, but could never pay back. ‘I owed a debt, I could not pay. He paid a debt, He did not owe. I needed someone to wash my sins away. And now I sing – ‘Amazing Grace!’
Because of the blood of His cross, we can then rebuild and dwell in His House again forever!
Our role is to acknowledge that we have fallen short of His standards, to confess our sins of submitting to other gods, and other authorities, and to then turn whole-heartedly back to the Father.
Praise Yah! Yeshua redeemed us from missing the mark and breaking the rules of Abba’s House. The Messiah bought us back so that we would have eternal life and an inheritance.
Righteousness Restored:
Yeshua not only kept all Ten Words perfectly to the exact standards of the Father, never missing the mark, but our Messiah taught them perfectly. Abba commanded Moshe to build it according to the pattern He saw on the Mount. Believing and obeying Him means we build up His House by His standards, where the Messiah lives out His righteousness in and through us.
”I will never measure up.” It’s a thought that haunts many a soul. Why even try to measure up to Abba’s standards for us, if no one can measure up to them other than Yeshua?
The spirit of the antichrist is the voice that says Yeshua has not come in the flesh, yours included. If Yeshua does live inside of you and inside of me by His Spirit, we really can obey Yeshua’s words:
“You be perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:48.
If we are led by the Spirit and submit solely to the Father as our Elohim, our Mighty Authority.
What we have to ask ourselves is – who is my boss? Who truly is the authority that I submit my heart and soul and every thought? Is it ‘YHWH your Elohim,’ or is it another god? Do I submit to myself as the god who controls my thoughts and emotions, or is it my Creator, my Father in Heaven? It’s a way to examine ourselves before the next Passover.
The Ten Words are a great place to begin to answer these questions. Examining myself for the commandments I keep is a way that I can honestly tell who I serve and who my god truly is.
The storms of life test our foundation as well. How does our health, our employment, family relationships, fellowship, etc, stand up to trials and tests?
Let’s build up our households and our fellowships according to the standards of the Words of our Father, according to the instructions and commandments of the Master Yeshua, and we will withstand and overcome whatever storms come our way.
BaShem YHWH, your Elohim,
David