The Two-Hundred-Fortieth (A Genuine Relationship)

I hope you had a great first week of the true New Year!  We’re going to talk about our relationship with YHWH this week, but first, a note on our calendar and how it relates to YHWH’s ordained timing.  As April 1st came and went, you might have seen videos by various people on how the term “April Fools” came to be, so we’re going to touch on that briefly.

I saw various videos last week by people talking about how April is really the first month of the year because it’s in the Spring and it’s like the whole world is beginning again after coming out of winter.  Some of them also said the reason it’s April Fools’ day is because when they changed to the Gregorian calendar (our current calendar) everyone that was resistant to that change and kept calling April the first month of the year was called a fool.  Essentially, and you see this even today, they were being bullied by society into transitioning to the new calendar.  Some people come out and refute there was a transition from April to January, but if we look biblically at what YHWH ordained as the first month of the year, it really was around the time of our current month of April.

Not only do we see historically that the Roman calendar originally started in March, and the Sumerian calendar, dating back to around 2000 BC, started around the same time, the most authoritative calendar we actually have is YHWH’s calendar given to Israel as they came out of Egypt (Exodus 12:2), which begins around the same time.  The problem is that secular society sees this as a specifically religious calendar because they do not recognize the authority of YHWH to set such things in place for all man, regardless of religion.  However, the fact that earlier people groups, like the Sumerians, had a calendar that started around the same time, in my opinion, goes to prove scriptural statements that worldly wisdom does not know YHWH (1 Corinthians 1:21).

In fact, there are many scriptural truths that are seen just in how the world transitioned to January being the first month of the year.  For instance, not recognizing YHWH’s ordained calendar proves Paul’s statement that natural man finds those types of things foolish to him because they are from the Spirit of YHWH (1 Corinthians 2:14).  Man, thinking himself as advanced and progressive, has disregarded YHWH’s creation of the heavenly bodies for use in determining times and seasons (Genesis 1:14).  The sad part is, our current calendar was actually created and instituted by a pope.  Someone who should have recognized YHWH’s authority for what it is and chose to institute YHWH’s holy calendar rather than something created by man.

In some respects though, you have to just see all this nonsense as comical.  Paul quotes Isaiah in saying YHWH will destroy the wisdom of the wise (1 Corinthians 1:19), and isn’t that exactly what He’s doing right now?  Paul was quoting the Septuagint version, but in the Hebrew it says He will cause the wisdom of the wise to perish, or vanish (Isaiah 29:14).  It seems like every day I find more and more things proving that what man has considered facts for decades, or at least portrayed as facts, are actually lies based on a pile, or even a small number, of inappropriately drawn assumptions.  And when honest scientists’ feet are held to the fire, and they are challenged directly on these “facts” and assumptions, they have no choice but to admit they are fallacious.

Did you know there’s actually a whole chapter in Proverbs about wisdom?  There are certainly quite a number of verses in scripture, as a whole, about wisdom, so a chapter in Proverbs on it may not be very interesting or unique on its face.  However, as you read through it you see that it presents wisdom as a person (Proverbs 8).  Not only that, there are hints at a connection between the person Wisdom and our Savior Yeshua.

At first glance, this chapter in Proverbs seems to be one similar to other poetic visualizations provided in scripture.  There are statements though, that sound very familiar to other statements in scripture about Yeshua.  For instance, we read things like wisdom being established “from everlasting…before the earth began” (Proverbs 8:23), and being “brought forth” when there were no watery depths (Proverbs 8:24).  Perhaps the statement most like that of Yeshua is where it says “I was there when He established the heavens” (Proverbs 8:27).  

If those connections are unfamiliar to you, we see similar statements in the New Testament about Yeshua.  Paul wrote that Yeshua is the firstborn of all creation and He created all things (Colossians 1:15-16).  John wrote that Yeshua was with YHWH at the beginning and everything was created through Him and by Him (John 1:2-3).  And the writer of Hebrews also wrote the world was created through Yeshua (Hebrews 1:2).  

So, through this connection, we can see that to have the wisdom of YHWH is to have a connection with Yeshua, and that ties in perfectly with our main topic this week.  In the next chapter of Proverbs, we find out how to come into the wisdom of YHWH, and it starts with fear of YHWH (Proverbs 9:10).  On the flip side of that, we see that man’s wisdom is vanity (Ecclesiastes 1:16-18).  Vanity, in this context, being something that's meaningless, or pointless, of having no value.

Remember that the book of Ecclesiastes is essentially the mirror image version of the book of Proverbs.  Where Proverbs is a book by Solomon containing the wisdom of YHWH, Ecclesiastes is Solomon’s book on worldly things, including the wisdom of man, and how they all mean nothing.  Solomon is perhaps the most famous backslider in history, and while YHWH gave him more wisdom than any man, he failed to maintain his relationship with YHWH and ended up separating himself from YHWH.  As a result, as time went on, Solomon came to believe that even life itself was pointless (Ecclesiastes 1:2-11).      

If you want to think of it in more modern terms, Solomon developed the same attitude about life that you see today in the atheists and agnostics of the world.  I was trying to figure out the general term for those that see life as pointless, and I find it interesting that when I searched, the common theme of the search results was a connection to depression.  Many of the pages that were provided in the search results suggested that if you feel that way, you need to give yourself purpose and find a way to achieve personal fulfillment.  

The most interesting part though, was that in the search results, almost word for word, were the same thoughts and feelings you find in the book of Ecclesiastes.  Things like feeling that all we do is just repeat the same things every day, all our labors are for nothing, and in the end we all just die anyway, so ultimately what is the point?  I also found that the term for this is nihilism, by the way, so my search was not fruitless!

The point is, and Solomon captured this in Ecclesiastes amongst his woes, that apart from YHWH, no one can find true enjoyment (Ecclesiastes 2:25).  But when you look at that statement and invert it, we find that everyone finds enjoyment when they are in a relationship with YHWH.  I, personally, learn this more and more each day.

You may hear Christians talk about the “prosperity gospel” preached by some leaders in churches, and how it’s evil or a doctrine of Satan.  The majority of time, I think that’s true, but not because YHWH doesn’t want you to prosper or doesn’t want to give you the (non-sinful) things you enjoy in the world.  The problem is that these preachers present that as the starting point in a believer’s life, when it’s actually an ending point.  

YHWH wants nothing but the best for us, and He wants us to enjoy our lives.  He doesn’t want us to be miserable, and He doesn’t want us to feel like we have to make ourselves miserable in order to have a relationship with Him.  However, we must have a genuine relationship with Him in order to receive all those blessings He desires for us.

I think believers have been conditioned to think that we can’t have nice things because what we see in the world is that believers with those things are actually rotten at the core.  Mega-church pastors with million dollar homes, expensive cars, and personal jets are what’s in the news, rather than believers who are wealthy and have a genuine relationship with YHWH and Yeshua.  The difference is that for a true believer with a genuine relationship the focus is YHWH, whereas for those without that genuine relationship the focus is the material possessions.  

Think about it this way.  YHWH created man to live on earth, and He created an environment for man to enjoy and be happy in (Genesis 1:2-31).  It was only after Adam and Eve’s sin that YHWH’s judgment was for man to struggle in life and for even nature to turn on him (Genesis 3:8-24).  So, after Yeshua’s death and resurrection, through which we have the opportunity to return spiritually to the order which YHWH ordained from the beginning, why would YHWH desire us to continue to struggle?

The thing is, when you have a genuine relationship with YHWH and you start to come into His wisdom, your view of life and the world begins to change.  You look at difficulties and struggles as YHWH’s corrections, and search for meaning in them.  You strive to please Him, rather than yourself, and as a result, your life is given purpose.  A purpose that comes from outside yourself rather than you trying to create it yourself.    

Those who try to look internally and create purpose in their lives, or those who look to the world for a way to create purpose, will never feel fulfilled and will always be searching for more in their heart.  When Adam and Eve sinned, man and creation were doomed to a spiral of corruption and destruction.  Nothing man could ever do, either in himself or in the world, will stop that spiral.  

In order to escape from such a spiral, you need an outside source of renewal and regeneration.  The only source we have for that is Yeshua and a relationship with Him.  It regenerates us spiritually to a state of eternal life (1 Peter 1:23, 2 Corinthians 5:17), and at some point in the future it will regenerate us physically (Revelation 22:1-2), returning us to the physical state YHWH always intended man to live in (Genesis 3:22).

Unlike the focus of the prosperity gospel preachers, a relationship with Yeshua does not start with a desire to be prosperous in life.  You don’t say, “I want to give my life to Yeshua so He can give me everything I want.”  Even if you did that in life with another person, that relationship would be doomed to fail from the beginning.  A genuine relationship with Him starts with a recognition that He needs to be in control of your life.

For some, this recognition involves losing everything you thought was important in life.  For others, it involves trying everything in the world to find meaning or purpose and realizing it’s impossible to find it without Yeshua.  It doesn’t matter how you come to that recognition, because it’s different for everyone, but it does matter that it’s a genuine understanding that you are giving complete control over to Him.  

Once you give that control to Him, you will find happiness, fulfillment, and even prosperity more than you ever could have imagined.  In many cases, man doesn’t even know what will make us truly happy, but He knows!  So, if you haven’t already given complete control over you and your life to Yeshua, do that today!  I promise, it’s worth it!  

-Rob and Sara Gene