Ha'Azinu - Shabbat Shuva
Yaakov, Béla Orbán:
We arrived in the Jewish new year, 5772. We follow the weekly passage which is read in Jewish synagogues. The new year for Jewish people is followed by repentance and ranging themselves right away. This new year is not really a new year because the year starts in Nissan month, 14 days before Pesach. This is the blowing horn day, the shofar-blowing day. The Jewish named this new year, Rosh Hashana. I don’t want to say now why there are 2 new years for Jewish people. What I want to say that we don’t start a new year with rollicking, dancing, singing and petards but before it there is period, slichot, penitential time and there is a 10-day period after the new year, preparing for Yom Kippur, meeting God. It is a severe penitential, fasting period when the Jewish prepare to meet God and to clean up their lives, hopefully more and more people because nowadays this is our only chance to go in front of God at the time of Yom Kippur. It is not their fault, because God hasn’t opened their eyes yet so they can’t be converted and can’t put their lives in Jesua HaMassiah’s hands. God gave this possibility as a command for the chosen nation that there is time when they have to stand in front of God. Arriving at the time of Yom Kippur is momentous for us because this sabbath is called the sabbath of converting, sabbath te shuva. Now I wouldn’t like to speak about sabbath te shuva, the preparation and meeting God. Now I’d like to approach it from another angle.
5 Moses 32, Moses’s farewell and it is the 90th psalm, and it starts: “ 1 Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. 2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: 3 Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. 4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.” The whole farewell is about that you must remember. Remember what happened! When it is new year I say: Remember, remember! Let’s remember the 5771 year and let’s remember that there is another year, 5772, ahead of us. It is not reckoning, absolutely not. The word of remembrance teaches us to listen, to remember. Now, when I live in the countryside all I can do is remembering. A year passed and I am not only blessed, but I have a home but He has given me everything I will need next year: accommodation, food, wood for heating, I could tell you many things. Remember! God doesn’t reckon with you posteriorly but He blesses you in advance. Remember, He blessed you yesterday in order that you could do something today. Remember that you have been blessed since your birth and you should be blessign for others from that moment.
Can you live this way, with this so called positive way of thinking, remembering what God has given you and not remembering that you’ve survived and you’ve been over it. Remember that He is Rock and I stood on Him and I was able to take a lot last year, moreover, I can build up myself and He can build me upon Him, on the Rock in Christ. Do you remember that He has always been with you because He had a purpose with your life? He always gives the things in advance.
And now I should change the word of remembrance quickly. Is my heart full of thanks for what I had last year. How differently a new year's eve can be perceived by a secular or even by a religious man, ‘I’m over a year!’ If you speak so it is very bad. If the next isn’t built on the previous year, if your service is not built on thankfulness, if your life isn’t built on thankfulness, it is very bad. I can give thanks for a lot of things. In the countryside people observe rich harvesting a possibility for the next year rather than a success story, because they can find not only the necessary reserve of food for winter in it, but the seeds for the next year. Looking on the testimonies and the way God worked in the past I can see His caring and building for the future. Can you see in your life what God gave you last year? Sometimes we just cry for God’s blessing. But He blessed you yesterday and you can live from that. How much misunderstanding we have! Bless me with more and more next year, nothing is enough! It is warning: do we beg or do we have enough to build on? Do you beg or do you know that God blessed you yesterday so that tomorrow will be good? He had a plan with you yesterday, and last year and a hundred years ago. Your marriage, your existence and everything you have are built on what He gave you. Remember that He cared for you. You could say the whole 90th psalm that we trusted in You from the beginning. Is it true that “from the beginning”? No, we always look ahead and never back. We don’t remember and thanksgiving is as rare as a white raven because there isn’t thanksgiving in our hearts. We don’t have remembrance so we don’t have thanksgiving.
We should remember. We remember on the dead’s day, alas! Can you remember your grandparents in the way that if they hadn’t lived you wouldn’t know the Bible, perhaps? If they hadn’t prayed for you your faith would be weaker. Do you remember that your life was based then and you put maybe the first stones on that base? Do you have a connection to the past with this thanksgiving to build the future? Can you connect the past with the future today? Are you standing in front of God when you say: Listen! You have to have the Mosesian feeling that you say to everybody God’s glory, God's testimony on my life. We don’t even say to our neighbours how could we tell to the heavens! I mean not with our words but with our deeds. Moses knows that he won’t go to Canaan, he knows everything, even so he speaks the words of thanksgiving. It is very sad when I come to think of it that last week I told only a few people about my testimony. Perhaps only few people, I can’t tell enough people and how minor we are compared with Moses. He started with opening himself “Listen, O Heavens! Listen, Heavenly troops!” Let people on the earth listen and everything whose Lord is Jesua HaMassiah that I raise up Jesua HaMassiah name. Have you lifted it? Can you see the result of the sweating work of the past that it has effect on the future? Can you see your children, the harvested seed or anything else that they are for the future? Can you say thanks for being born as a man in order to become a father? Can you give thanks? Let Moses’s song be reprimand and warning as well.
I am not speaking about methods but I am saying that there isn’t thanksgiving in us and without it there isn’t any new, there isn’t a new year. We always want to start something new without the old one. It is a trap. What we got from God we shouldn’t detach, it must be the base of our next step. He has given processes not stages or moments. We have to say thanks constantly. “Rejoice evermore ... In everything give thanks.” We can read this call in many verses in the Bible and we just rarely have time to sigh that “I thank you my God”. Sometimes we remember vaguely what could have happened if God hadn’t been there. The 90th psalm is followed by 91st psalm which is not part of the weekly passage. Jewish people waking up start praying with the 90th psalm and go on to the 91st psalm, “I trust in You and only in Your shelter I’ll be in safety”. Can you live like this? With thanksgiving and with reliance on Him? It is new year, and we have to start all our new days to thank God. I get up happily because of what happened yesterday, today I can build upon the yesterday. I got this from God yesterday so that this should be tomorrow. It so good to live this way. I look through the window, everything is ready and I’ve got the next year seed in my bag. It is so good to wake up to see the sun shining. I can build the house for having guests later. I forget my age. It is so good. Listen! Wake up! God is good, his mercy renews every morning. The yesterday seed comes up today, your yesterday thought is fulfilled now. The plan what God has thought out about you will start the day after tomorrow. Don’t you think you should give thank for it?
This sabbath is called the sabbath of converting, sabbath te shuva. Hosea’s book 14 chapter: “2 Take with you words, and turn to the LORD: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. ...9. Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? Prudent and he shall know them? For the ways of the LORD are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein.”
So, turn to the Lord! From this the sabbath got its name. I was thinking about why I should speak about that turn to the Lord Israel, what is the message for Christ’s body or to Jewry in it. What does converting mean? I should speak about it. There are a lot of misunderstandings around this word: converting. Everybody thinks something different of it. As I was thinking, I realised that this word has known for only a couple of centuries. It wasn’t used. They used something else. The forefathers spoke about a kind of calling that you were called for a purpose for a task. They didn’t speak about conversion neither about rebirth. This word appeared in the 18th century when religious awakening started; they said everybody should have been converted because it is God’s will. This point means the first problem and we eat, unfortunately, its bitter fruit. They forgot the heart of the matter meanwhile they taught people how to get converted. So knowing the sin, go and weep, confess your sins in public, hit your breast “mea culpa!”, get Lord supper and so on... methods. It was the great pitfall. They forgot the essence of conversion. They exchanged the process of conversion into a method. They said if you stood in front of the congregation and confessed your sins weeping you would get mercy and salvation immediately. But something was left out. Life was excluded from the whole process; the essence of it was left out.
We can experience the same today. It is the problem. We turn truth into a method. Moreover, they connect your conversion and confession with belonging to a church. The church became the power instead of Christ, and the new members became immediately new taxpayers. Today is just the same. Its' roots are coming from the awakening movements. They knew the essence of conversion but they made it a method. The essence of conversion is truly the process of getting know your sins and repentance, but it is not a method. If you stand up and confess and admit it might be as well a self-redemption. You cannot gain eternal life in a religious way because it is nothing else but accomplishment. I count my sins and hand in my petition for a reprieve, but nothing happens really. I have expectations because I confess my sins. I deserve salvation. It is a trap. Many people live in a religious cheating, unfortunately, I went ahead, I raised my hand, I put it down, I put it on, and I was written in it. They would like to get salvation merely in good faith. Conversion doesn’t mean that you fall on your face like Saul.
However, all conversions have an antecedent, a result and a continuation. I cannot say that 2008 18th March the lightning struck me and I converted. It is a fairy tale. Forget it. Perhaps that was the moment when your conversion became a reality after a thirty-year process, but it wasn’t your conversion. Conversion is not a method and not a bolt.
And when te shuva speaks to Jewry we have to know that there are different meanings of conversion. When we speak about the metanoia, we remember the case of the prodigal son. It is not else than I realise, retrospectively, what God has wanted. It is maybe the best translation, retrospective recognition. The man who came out of Eden realises where he is now. Like the man who You or I was: I realised retrospectively that I got to the wrong path. It is a process; God does this work in us. Unfortunately, most people are satisfied with only confessing “I am a sinner, I need forgiveness.” The majority thinks with recognizing that they are the prodigal sons is the most that can be done, I have returned home and that's it. But the son has done a lot of things, changed his clothes and so on, but they don’t speak about that. So it can lead to self redemption. You know that smoking is bad, throw away the cigarette, come here, confess it, you have come home, so you have the salvation. I am almost saying that it is a lie. Maybe I can say that it is a lie, because partial truth is always a lie. One part of the truth is that you have to return home as a prodigal son, but after turning back you should set off at the same time. Where is the continuity?
I realise that I am in the wrong path like the prodigal son and then I realise that I need to do it differently. It is very simple. Conversion and rebirth are not the same. Speaking about conversion: God uses everything, your body, your thoughts, and your feelings in order to lead you to the decision that this is not okay as it is. Conversion is mental and God keeps these thoughts alive in us, so our soul answers to God that how we live is not good. It is offered to everybody because God wants everybody to be converted and saved.
The other part of conversion is when turning occurs. It is our departure, and at this point the emotional becomes spiritual. Rebirth is spiritual. I don’t know why I do it, I don’t know why it is good for me, but I still have to do it, when Christ starts to lead my life, when I can’t do the wrong deeds. I don’t go ahead led by my mind but I am led by the Holy Spirit. Yeshua HaMashiach lives in the reborn man’s heart. We are not directed by an outer power but by Yeshua HaMashiach from inside. So the result of conversion is our rebirth. My decision results that I follow God’s will by Christ’s lordship. When we see people that they are converted, baptized, everything happens as it is written in a ceremonious/formal way, but we cannot see the signs of the reborn people; the following question should be raised: shouldn't we speak more about conversion? Conversion is not self redemption, but it is a necessary step in direction to surrender my life. The more I do the more certain that I’ll get salvation – it is not true. If we cannot see the signs of rebirth in a man’s life we have to raise the question: maybe you just threw in your hands and you thought it was enough, you just complied with the expectations of someone’s but nothing happened. You were not converted but you satisfied others, you accomplished repentance but your repentance haven’t fulfilled.
People study in Christian communities “how to be able to be converted.” Some people are forced to confess their sins and to be baptised and to have the Lord Supper in a Christian community. Methods are compulsory and it is called “conversion”. Aren't these people the ones whose lives fall victim to these methods and their lives cannot progress any longer? I wonder how much we have to speak about conversion. We have to lay down the fundamentals of conversion. Where and why have you been converted? If there isn’t continuity it wasn’t conversion. However good religious person you are you haven’t been converted. You set off but your words were stolen. You set off but you have been made a complying man, you are searching your sins all the time. A lot of sects are based on this method. They stole the essence of conversion because they said that you have to do this way. We can discover that they integrate people to their church because they converted to them, to a certain church. If you did this way, you trusted in people and you satisfied people.
When you hear: “Repent!” the question is that God speaks to you that your life cannot be led this way but it is not spoken by a man. Man can only be a tool in God’s hand. Man cannot have authority over you. Man can say I have pain because of your state. Conversion is not a human method. It is God’s only right, because He knows your life and He says you cannot live this way any longer. It is not man’s business. You can say testimony like Moses, praise God and say thankfulness and the other will listen up to God and he will say your state is good but mine isn’t. You are only a tool in somebody’s conversion, and the other will set off by his or her own free will. Don’t be a coloniser Christian. Don’t be an aggressive church builder, but be a tool in God’s hand, be similar to Moses, who says ‘Listen, Heavens!’ Who has so many testimonies and happiness that he opens his arms, his mouth and heart. This is your part in conversion that you can say who you got from, why you are happy and why aren’t you in need. Be ready to say your testimonies to those who realise that they haven’t got any that they have to confess and have to put down and have to leave.
In Jewry they hear ‘come back’ this week, te shuva means that, and it should be heard in Christianity as well because coming back to God is the real conversion. Israel has never been abandoned by God and Israel has never abandoned God she was only a tramp. Come back! God’s love is like this, do what you want, you have free will, but I don’t let you away, come back to me. Come back to me just like the prodigal son. He had fatherly home. Those who have fatherly home, who belong to Christ’s body, who belong to God, you, come back to God! Those who are coming now, they are not coming back, however, I could say that since creation, since fall all the people have come back but I think this command is said to Christ’s body: ‘Come back! Where have you gone? Come back, because you have a meeting with God!’ This word is heavy, ‘come back!’ If you have Lord Supper, it is included you have to come back! If you do it so, you cannot avoid repentance because wounds and hurts look on you. It is inner necessity to say to forgive me Lord! I’ve been far away, I didn’t leave you, and I wasn’t disobedient. I had temptations and I got lost. It is good that You have found me.
When Jewish people meet God at Jom Kippur they have to set their lives to rights. They meet Good once a year at Jom Kippur. We, Christ’s body, however, have different way, God can call us any time, come back to Me I want to meet you! The call for meeting God always comes from Him. We sing many times that we came here to meet you God but we forget that He called us. As the King can call us any time we have to be ready all the time to come back to Him humbly and asking Him to forgive us. You have to give your life only once – not daily – to Him and come back to Him. It is painful but it is great at the same time because I know that my way was wrong. I hear His voice, I hear how far I am from Him and I come closer because I want to hear Him better. I turn back and I don’t want to do what my desires dictate but what You want me to do. Conversion comes together with obedience. I hear His voice and I come back to Him. Can you hear that He wants you to come back, and He wants to give you His words, He wants to lead you in a straight way? I’ve just read Hosea’s word, 14:9 “and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein.” We hear His voice if we remain on His road. His love is when we can hear his call ‘Come back!’ from a distance.
We can hear it daily. It is not us who has to force that I want to confess all my sins, my next week sins and my forbears’ sins as well, a long list I even stand on my head, I do everything because I want You to like me. You don’t have to look for Him. Don’t you realise that He is looking for you every day? You don’ hear because you want to comply, you want to do justice to God. You have done to justice to human methods so far but you haven’t really been converted. If your conversion happened spiritually as well you must hear His voice not to go away from Him immediately, because He loves, He lets you but He calls you to come back. I have heard so many times in my life don’t go away, that is not your way, I didn’t command you to do that. You don’t have to run. The young are so busy. You don’t have to hurry. You needn’t be strong when you are weak but you don’t have to be weak when you are strong either. God warns you all the time for your tasks.
Come back! It has many treasures. It means where you have been and where you can go back. It is more than hope, it is more than promise it has everything. Come back, I haven’t abandoned you. In this word you can find forgiveness. Convert at last and forget the methods you studied in different churches. Say once that you won’t go on this way anymore, but you want to do what He wants you to do and immediately the answer will come: I will lead you from now on. That is what God says, man who left the Eden come back. He says daily: come back! You can go home, you are expected to come home you are called to come home. Maybe you feel how heavy these words are: Come back! You get such promises that you can’t understand. Only He can call you to come back because he came from there and he went back there. He calls you from there.
Here He calls the nation on the name “Come back to Your God, Israel!” He calls you on your name. He doesn’t say that those who hear 'come', but He calls you on your name! He doesn’t threaten you that those who don’t come will have damnation. Missionary, evangelisation, movements. Let’s knock out him with a hammer or an axe. He will be so frightened that he will capitulate. Has he really given his life? Nope! When his fear passes away, his faith also passes away. It is so good that there is a calling Voice. It is also so good when Jewry arrange everything with their mates, with themselves for 10 days, they ask forgiveness during the time of colnidre for the sins they have committed unconsciously. They go into the presence of God and they tremble. It is so good that I don’t have to be afraid because I am His. Jewish people don’t have to be afraid either because God speaks to Israel that He hasn’t abandoned them. They are God’s people, it doesn’t matter that you like or don’t like it. They have to come back and not to convert.
For us it is also joyous because we have gone on wrong way but He calls us to return. It is his huge love which can’t be expressed. This love is so rich that He warns me not to go even if I step the shortest distance. It is so good that if I started to go away because of a temptation I don’t run back because of the consequences but because He calls me: don’t do that! I can feel the rebirth. Although I don’t understand why, but I say let 'Your will be done'. According to my thoughts it wouldn’t be a wrong way but I say let Your will be done. It is so good to go along that you cannot go off because He calls immediately: don’ do it! Your free will remains but He is with you He guards you because you are His. You are His even in that case if you are seduced, if satan bluffs you because He says: come back. God’s constancy is like this in the contrast to our fickleness. If we are mistaken we can get forgiveness but rebellion is something else. Calling is for those who have gone on wrong way not because of disobedience but because of deceiving. In the Eden mankind was deceived that is why there is way to return.
I think the first step of conversion to realise that we have been deceived. You have to notice that the world feed you with different things to deceive you. God’s love is for the deceived not for rebels. He says You are deceived come back. God’s tools are sometimes painful and you will realise that He is right the way you wanted to go on is bad for you. You will long for goodness and God will say ‘you can only go on My way in the righteousness as a right man!’ Your way is judged and you can ask for mercy and you can get it and you’ll be happy and you’ll be with God for ever. In my opinion Moses’s song: ‘Listen, listen! Could be completed with the words: listen, He expects you to return home.
I am not sentimental but you should cry the only sentence: Listen He expects you to return home. Why don’t we say, why don’t we say that it is so good with Him, why isn’t there so much happiness in us? Why isn’t there so much happiness to say my Lord, thank You! My little child kisses the pumpkin to grow big. Where is this childlike happiness in us? Where is it? He comes to me more than once daily and brings my bible, however, he hasn’t been taught to do that. Dad, I’ll bring your glasses, dad, here’s your bible, he opens it, ‘read this!’ Yesterday he did it four or five times. I smiled, Lord; he is also Your tool in order that I don’t do something else. Listen to the children as well! Listen to what surround you! Everything is His blessing. If you live in His blessing, aren’t you blessed? In the word ‘listen’ you can find the word ‘remember’. Remember your ways, because as streams get to the river, your life is also completed. In the same way. What you get from Him for purposes and duties is from Him. Could you be silent? Can’t you praise God for your appearance, your inner qualities? Can’t you praise God for your life? I don’t understand. I understand Moses, and I would say proudly, my Lord I want to have the faith that Moses had. But I might say only if my happiness was as bursting as he had before his death to be more precise before he has gone.
Listen, Heavens to HIM! Listen, everything to HIM! It is the key of everything. We trusted in You and without You I can’t do anything. Lord, my past is yours, I trusted in You. Maybe I seemed infidel but I asked You for everything only. A lot of people talk to God and they don’t know that it works and they will get answers. I think at the time of te shuva sabbath our first task should be to think it over our conversions, I wanted to be converted or He wanted me to convert? Interesting question. Did He lead me to the point that I realised that I couldn’t do anything without Him? Because everything is for Him and by Him. Or did I just want to come through? Is my conversion all right or I just threw in my hands? And if somebody is convinced to his own salvation is it really true? I can say that I own it if somebody else rules my life and not my just, self righteous, pharisaic, hermit, pietist, self-crucifying, ist-like life. Am I really converted? If not, God says, I heard about your desire, but it wasn’t fulfilled somehow, I ask for your life, not for your great self-crucifying successes. Is Jesus Christ your Lord in your life really? If not, you want to do righteousness from your strength you are not converted. You may be the boss in your church or the pastor but you aren’t converted. You converted to a man and you are condemned for this reason. But God calls you to return.
Man, you have been cheated. Come back. In the Eden you were cheated, and then you were cheated when you threw your hands. Just look at the converting prayers, they are stereotyped. Just say them and the salvation is yours. You won’t start your way of obedience and you will be cursed. You think that everything is beautiful and you live in that religious mud and you realise daily that you cannot get out from it. If you really give your life to God you will realise that it is easy not to commit sins, it is easy to apologise, and everything is easy. You believer life is not suffering. You know, when I was in the same situation, I also heard God’s calling me to come back and I told God: “My God I don’t want to be worldly but Christian either. What should I do? I don’t want this way of life; I won’t get this pickled cucumber! I want to live!” God may have smiled and said raise your head, but this time for Me. And then something happened, something irreversible. I didn’t have to sweat any longer. The pub entrance wasn’t magnetic any longer. Women didn’t attract any more. Everything was put in the right place. I didn’t suffer from my sins, and I didn’t suffer from the kind of failure that I couldn’t resist sins. He won! The victory is that not you fight, but He. That is the victory if not you are converted but He calls and you start your way I am here my God! If you say I am here my God, and be your Name blessed you will say soon, hallowed be your Name. I myself will note the changes in my life and it is not I who has to change by the hard way. The Moses’s song will be heard, listen, my brethren. It would be so good if we can hear testimonies when we gather together. Moses’s song cannot be stopped because God loves forever, and will love forever. If you understand this, why can’t you sing? Praising from your heart bursts from you. You are over everything, you see the future in the past, you see the plan of the building house, you will see as a young man you will be a man, you will see why God created you for Him, with Him, by Him.
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