High Holiday Services
“Wherever
you are, when you hear the sound of the shofar, come to that place, to us. Our
God will fight for us!” (Nehemiah 4:20). Services for Rosh Hashana (Yom Teruah, Day of Blowing of Shofars) are
Fri, Sep 22,
We will celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles in
our sukkah on Shabbat, Oct 7,
L’shana tovah tikatevu! May you be inscribed
for a good year!
Suitcases
for Israel
Our first congregational
tour of
Sue
Samuel Coffeehouse
Sue
and Brian Samuel will bring their Messianic music to Beit Simcha for a
coffeehouse starting at
MJAA
Northeast Regional
A whole weekend of
Messianic Jewish revival will take place on Nov 17-19, at the Hyatt Hotel on the
L’Dor V’Dor
[What
follows is an excerpt from the first of three sermons on family
priorities. You can find the whole
series at beitsimcha.com/s_ser/s_ser.asp.]
Our sense of God’s purposes and destiny for us and
for our children take root and bloom as we become aware of God’s workings in
covenant down through the ages. The
Jewish people are intimately connected with the generations past and yet to be.
That is because God wants us to remember him, l’dor v’dor, from generation
to generation.
In Exodus 3:15, “God said further to
Moshe, "Say this to the people of Isra'el: 'Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh, the God of
your fathers, the God of Avraham, the God of Yitz'chak and the God of Ya'akov,
has sent me to you. 'This is my name forever; this is how I am to be remembered
generation after generation.'” In this verse HaShem declares his name—which is
why we call him HaShem, the Name. He also identifies himself as the God of
Avraham, the God of Yitz'chak and the God of Ya'akov. He is the God of our fathers, to be
remembered from generation to generation, l’dor v’dor.
We tend to stress over what is happening
at the moment or last month or next month. “Man is like a breath; his days are like a
fleeting shadow” (Psalm 144:4).
HaShem is calling into being a kingdom of priests that endures from
generation to generation. If we have His perspective, we might think and act
differently. V’eemru?
My sermon today again draws
material from Keith Intrater’s book Covenant Relationships. Keith now goes by his Jewish name, Asher, and
ministers in
God’s stated purpose in
marriage, according to Malachi
Yet they say, “God has no grandchildren.” What does that mean? Each generation must reconfirm the covenants
with God. So the covenant HaShem made with Abraham, he reconfirmed with Isaac,
and then with Jacob. And they are remembered for receiving the covenant with
HaShem, bearing fruit and multiplying.
HaSatan
is the adversary of the seed of the promise. If he could ruin the children of
the covenant, he would foil God’s plan for the earth. Generation after
generation, HaSatan attacks the children of the covenant. Pharaoh ordered the
massacre of the male babies—yet Moshe was raised in Pharaoh’s own house! Herod
ordered the massacre of male babies in
HaSatan is cruel and wicked, but his schemes will all ultimately fail,
because HaShem’s covenants will endure to a thousand generations!
God made a covenant with
King David. David wanted to build a house for God. HaShem promised that David’s temple would be
built. In the Spirit, the temple was established at the moment that God made
that promise with David. When Solomon built the temple, he was keeping the
covenant of his father. It was the greatest thing that Shlomo did. He fulfilled his calling and destiny,
fulfilling the covenant promise of his father.
We gain revelation about our calling and ministry in the Lord if we
respect and honor our parents. When I
was a young man, I had negative attitudes towards my father. The Lord gave me a
dream about my Dad. When I woke up, the Ruach made it clear that He wanted me
to honor my father, on his birthday, by telling him what I respected about him. When I did, I came to appreciate the heritage
that my father has passed on to me: his faithfulness to the wife of his youth,
providing for his children, his honesty.
Once I appreciated my Dad’s character traits, the Lord could develop
them as strengths in me.
Through covenant, God
redeems families. Through covenant, God
also creates new, spiritual families. David
illustrates this reality in his relationship with Mephibosheth—son of Jonathan,
the son of King Saul. He was crippled in
his feet and lived in obscurity. When Jonathan and David made their covenant,
they promised to be loyal to each other’s children. After Jonathan’s death,
David searched to find if one of Jonathan’s children was still alive. In 2 Samuel 9:7, David says to Mephibosheth:
“Don’t
be afraid, for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father
Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather
Saul, and you will always eat at my table.” David directed special attention toward
Mephibosheth “for your father’s sake.” David
wanted to be faithful to his covenant promise. So David treated Mephibosheth as
he would his own son, expanding the heritage of a covenant relationship to the
next generation: l’dor v’dor.
In Yochanan (John)
19:26-27, Yeshua established a new spiritual family. “When Yeshua saw
his mother and the talmid whom he loved standing there, he said to his mother,
"Mother, this is your son." Then he said to the talmid, "This is
your mother." And from that time, the talmid took her into his own home.”
Though Yeshua was stripped,
beaten and hanging on a cross to die, he provided for his family, and the next
generation. Though Miriam had other
children—indeed Yeshua’s brother Yaakov eventually became the head of the
congregation of believers in
By establishing covenant relationship between Miriam and Yochanan,
Yeshua created a new spiritual family—the nucleus of the new family of God.
That’s why Paul could say that Gentiles, who had been “foreigners and
strangers from the covenants of promise,” are now “the family of God.” Ephesians 2:12, 19. That’s why we call the
members of Beit Simcha our mishpochah—the Hebrew word for family. HaShem has
made us one family. We have been adopted
as God’s children, and have become one family, through the New Covenant of Messiah
Yeshua.
Asher describes his
relationships with the children of his special covenant brothers, including
Paul Wilbur and Eitan Shiskoff. Eitan’s older son is David. David was a student in the believers’ high
school where Asher was principal, in
Even more, I desire to walk
in their footsteps, with our children. That’s why I am delighted that Adam is
playing the bass for our worship team. That’s why I am looking forward to Joy’s
bat mitzvah—a week before our trip to
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