This week’s double portion of Acharei Mot/Kedoshim (Lev. 16:1 – 20:27) draws our attention to the balance between communal and personal responsibility. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, addresses both personal and communal sin, repentance, and atonement, publicly.
What is the lesson?
While there is great comfort in private confession, holiness is a communal endeavor, as in the verse, “you shall be holy,” “you” is plural, as it is spoken to community. This is the honing of personal ethics, based on the ethical norms found in the Torah (the instruction of God), by communal association.
As James writes, “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (Jas. 5:16).
In this we find personal responsibility, as well as, communal accountability.
The beauty of the “heart of the Torah” (Lev. 19:1-20:27) is that we recognize personal and communal shortcoming and responsibility, while endeavoring to turn the page of renewal together, as we trust in Messiah Yeshua/Jesus, Who is the “the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2).
If we string together the names of the double-portion this week, Acharei Mot/Kedoshim we learn this: “after the death, holiness.” The apostle Paul teaches, “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Ro. 6:8; cf. 1 Pet. 1:15-17).
There is a garden tomb in Jerusalem that is empty. There never was, and neither will be there an ossuary for the bones of Messiah Yeshua/Jesus; for as the testimony of our Scripture reads, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!” This is the fact that we celebrate and remember immediately after Passover, on the Feast of First-fruits, Resurrection Day.
Resurrection is the heart of our faith. Messiah Yeshua/Jesus, the Son of the Living God, is raised, and in that He raised, those believing will also be raised. W. Robertson Nicoll writes of the empty tomb, “The empty tomb of Christ has been the cradle of the Church.” The very first messianic message on the morning of Pentecost was founded upon the position of Yeshua/Jesus through His resurrection.
So important is the resurrection to our faith, that is Bible scholar Dr. Michael Green writes, “Christianity does not hold the resurrection to be one among many tenets of belief. Without faith in the resurrection there would be no Christianity at all. The Christian church would never have begun; the Jesus-movement would have fizzled out like a damp squib with His execution. Christianity stands or falls with the truth of the resurrection. Once disprove it, and you have disposed of Christianity.”
Dr. Norman Geisler adds, “If Christ did not rise in the same physical body that was placed in the tomb, then the resurrection loses its value as an evidential proof of His claim to be God. The resurrection cannot verify Jesus’ claim to be God unless He was resurrected in the body in which He was crucified. That body was a literal, physical body. Unless Jesus rose in a material body, there is no way to verify His resurrection. It loses its historical persuasive value.”
The resurrection follows an unbelievable series of events: the triumphal entry of Yeshua into Jerusalem, His arrest, His physical punishment, and crucifixion. His lifeless body, broken and bruised for us sinners (Isa. 53), was carried off to an empty tomb nearby the site of crucifixion; and for all involved, from those who hated Him, to those who loved Him, with the rolling of the stone before the entrance to the tomb, the story of Yeshua of Nazareth had ended and was laid to rest.
Without the resurrection, we would still be dead in our sins (1 Cor. 15:17). Without faith in the resurrection, the faith transmitted to us today would not have come into being. The disciples, having abandoned Jesus in fear, would have remained a broken, crushed and defeated group of men mourning and remembering the earnest attempt of their beloved rabbi and leader. The meaning and power of the cross of Yeshua would have faded into ancient history, lost among the thousands of other Jews who died by the harsh Roman form of execution called crucifixion. Without the resurrection our hope would be lost, never having been found; and the world as we know it would have endured from one brutal empire to another.
Nevertheless, this is not what happened. Revealed first to a woman, Messiah did not linger in the grave, save for the time He needed; and with the announcement of His resurrection, twelve men, empowered by the Holy Spirit (Acts 2), and those to follow, would turn the world upside-down. Today, as it has been for centuries, the resurrection of Jesus is doubted, questioned and frequently laid aside as unimportant. It has been suggested that His body was stolen by the disciples, or the Jews or the Romans; even that He was in a deep state of unconsciousness and woke in the tomb. This of course does not explain how He could have rolled the stone away.
Scholars search high and low for evidence as to the validity of the resurrection, overlooking the primary source of the testimony of Scripture for secondary proofs. What evidence can we look to? The change in the disciples themselves. The disciples spent nearly every waking moment with Yeshua for the better part of three years and a few months, yet we do not see much changed in their personalities. They were still “the sons of thunder,” the angry, fearful, and doubting bunch as they were when He first called them.
After the crucifixion they were sad, but seemed to have in mind a return to their former lives, “I am going fishing” (Jn. 21:3). Some say that the disciples conjured up the story of the resurrection to save face among the Jewish people; yet this story does not account for the dramatic changes that took place in them after the resurrection.
Peter: who said, “I don’t know the man,” following the resurrection, boldly stands before the Sanhedrin proclaiming Yeshua/Jesus.
John: the pompous “son of thunder” becomes the great apostle of love.
Thomas: the one who doubted became faithful even to death.
Paul: the Pharisee of Pharisees, once hotly persecuted the Body of Messiah, but once confronted by the resurrected Messiah follows Him faithfully until death.
James: the brother of Jesus does not appear to believe in the messiahship of Yeshua until after the resurrection, “Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:7; cf. Jas. 1:1).
When they beheld Him, the resurrection power of Messiah renewed these men. Death was truly defeated; the grave was emptied of its power by the resurrected Son of God (1 Cor. 15:54-57). If it was just a story created to save face why not repent in order to save your life, especially as many of the disciples, according to tradition, were martyred alone:
Peter crucified upside down, considering himself unworthy to die in the same manner of the Lord Jesus.
James, the brother of John, was martyred in Jerusalem (Acts 12:2).
James, the brother of Jesus, was martyred in Jerusalem (AD 62).
Thomas was martyred by the spear of an Indian King as he proclaimed the Gospel in India.
Mark was martyred in Alexandria, being pulled to death behind a chariot, for causing so many to believe the Gospel of Christ.
Paul was beheaded, as a citizen of Rome, for the sake of the Gospel.
The truth is that the resurrection changed their lives. Faith in His death and rising to life, changed their natures, it changed who they were, and it can still change you, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Ro. 10:9-10).
The beginning chapters of Leviticus, with their instruction regarding the presentation and preparation of sacrifice, are the details for the ministry at the Brazen Altar introduced in Exodus 27. The purpose of the Altar was to be a place of sacrifice – meaning “to draw near.” While the structural details for the building of the Altar are important, we learn of a detail in this portion that is of equal importance – the fire.
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Give this order to Aaron and his sons: This is the law for the burnt offering. It is what goes up on its firewood upon the altar all night long, until morning; in this way the fire of the altar will be kept burning.’” (Lev. 6:8-10).
The fire on the Brazen Altar was ignited by fire that came from the presence of the Lord (Lev. 9:24). This fire, as we read above, was to be kept burning continuously, as it was an
אֵשׁ תָּמִיד, “a perpetual fire.” Priests had to continuall stir the coal on the Altar and clean the ash to ensure that the sacrifice was being consumed, and the coals remained hot. This necessitated that at least one priest had to stand watch at the Altar during the night – a time when he would naturally desire to sleep.
This continuous process at the Brazen Altar reveals an important aspect in the life of faith, the necessity for a continual tending to the flame that draws us close to who we are to be in the Lord.
The apostle Paul draws on the imagery of the Brazen Altar, its sacrifice and perpetual fire when he writes, “I beseech ye therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Ro. 12:1). David Stern captures the essence of this picture in the Complete Jewish Bible translation of Romans 12:1, “I exhort you, therefore, brothers, in view of God’s mercies, to offer yourselves as a sacrifice, living and set apart to God. This will please him; it is the logical “Temple worship” for you.”
This tending to the flame of the sacrifice today takes a different appearance than two thousand years ago. As a living sacrifice, disciples of Yeshua/Jesus must tend to the flame by avoiding the temptations in life that so easily ensnare us (Heb. 12:1; similar to cleaning the ash away from the coals); thereby walking worthily of our calling (Eph. 4:1); leading to continual prayer (1 Thess. 5:17); studying the Word of God (2 Tim. 2:15); and worshipping the Lord (Heb. 13:15) in communion with other brethren (Heb. 10:25).
The above referenced practices are increasingly incorporated into the daily lives of the disciple, each one an aspect of drawing near to the God of our salvation, by daily dying to self in the light of His glorious abiding presence. As the flames of the renewed life grow stronger, we are gradually confronted by the reality that it is not we who keep the fire burning; but rather, the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, who is “a consuming fire” (Deut. 4:24; cf. Acts 2:3; Heb. 12:29), that inspires and leads us on in the life of faith to the glory of the covenant Lord alone.
the mountain mensch 