Why Are We Here?

1. Why Are We Here? Pastor Timothy J. Hinkle

2. Why are we here? There are hundreds of churches in the area. Why this one? In this room is the equivalent of decades, if not centuries, of intercessory prayer. You could have moved on. You could have hung it up and found a new church home.

3. Why not Capitol Christian Center? Shoot, they even have an espresso machine. For around 5 bucks you can have your latte and donate to the youth fund all in one shot! So why are we here?

4. Do you like music? Bayside in Roseville is awesome! They’ve got lasers and fog machines and a huge stage! They even fly a drone around to get fantastic footage for the live big screen. And guess what! It’s Lincoln Brewster’s home church! So why this place?

5. On any given Sunday you can attend any one of a hundred churches in the area and get another self-help seminar; another feel-good-all-is-well sermon from another Joel-Olsteen-wanna be preacher with a big smile on his face.

6. But instead, we choose to come here. To this church. We’re obviously here for a reason. Why? Why am I here?

7. My family and I sought out this church. When our church home started to go in a direction we couldn’t follow, we sought out Timothy Hinkle and asked when he holds services. Why?

8. Wasn’t the rock concert atmosphere and Bayside good enough for us? It’s certainly much closer to our home than Victory Tabernacle. Was there something wrong with the lattes at Capitol? We have friends that attend there. We’d fit right in. So why here?

9. I’m going to take you on a journey, of sorts, through the scriptures. And hopefully I will show you some things that, perhaps, you haven’t seen before. And in the process, I hope to explain why we’re here. And perhaps give some insight as to why you might be here.

10. Deuteronomy 13 I want us to go there together. I’m sure most of us, since we’re seasoned followers of Yeshua, are familiar with this passage.

11. But I’d be willing to bet that when most of you read it, you more than likely glazed over it thinking it one of those scriptures that really doesn’t have much weight for today because messiah has already come. And, so we glaze over it.

12. It’s ok, I’m not blaming anyone for minimizing this passage. I did for years. But the reality is that this passage is JUST as important today as it was when Moses wrote it.

13. Are you ready to have your mind blown? You see, years ago I read where King David wrote about how much he loved God’s law; how much he loved the Torah. He said it was perfect. He said it was beautiful. He LOVED the Torah. Whereas I had been taught that the Torah was dead.

14. We’ve all been taught, at one time or another, that the Torah was nailed to the cross. So, I asked God to please give me that same kind of love for the Bible that David had.

15. Little did I know that my request was naïve at best and foolish at worst. Because, you see, I had asked God for the same kind of love of the “Bible” that David had, assuming that King David was talking about, “the Bible.”

16. I was under the fog of the teaching that the Torah was dead, so I asked for the same kind of love for the Bible. But God, in his infinite wisdom, knew and understood the true request running deep within my heart. And he granted my request.

17. I can tell you now, as I stand here, I LOVE the Torah! I absolutely love it! I would die for the Torah! And so, what is in Deuteronomy 13?

18. Deuteronomy 13 (Complete Jewish Bible) 1 “Everything I am commanding you, you are to take care to do. Do not add to it or subtract from it. 2 “If a prophet or someone who gets messages while dreaming arises among you and he gives you a sign or wonder,

19. 3 and the sign or wonder comes about as he predicted when he said, ‘Let’s follow other gods, which you have not known; and let us serve them,’ 4 you are not to listen to what that prophet or dreamer says. For Adonai your God is testing you, in order to find out whether you really do love Adonai your God with all your heart and being.

20. 5 You are to follow Adonai your God, fear him, obey his mitzvot, listen to what he says, serve him and cling to him; 6 and that prophet or dreamer is to be put to death; because he urged rebellion against Adonai your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from a life of slavery; in order to seduce you away from the path Adonai your God ordered you to follow. This is how you are to rid your community of this wickedness.

21. Now let’s consider this passage. And remember, I’m asking the question, “why are we here?” And this is a huge question. Not only does it include this physical location. But it also includes the whole point of why we are calling on the messiah to begin with.

22. We are exploring how it is that we come to this, this place where we have the cross on one wall and the menorah on the platform. This isn’t a synagogue! Do you realize that churches today don’t even have a cross on display?

23. But here we have, not just the cross, but we have the menorah. And what’s this business of reading the Torah portion? Why are we here?

24. Do you realize what this passage is saying? It’s giving a guideline for who to accept as a prophet and who to reject. In fact, this guideline is so serious, that the instruction is to kill that false prophet when you find him.

25. By the way, this passage of scripture was not written by “the inspiration of the Holy Spirit” as we’ve been taught. No. The Jewish sages would say that this passage was dictated! From God’s mouth to Moses’ pen! This passage and the rest of the five books of the Torah, tradition hold they were dictated… not inspired.

26. So God is serious, isn’t he. He’s very serious here. He’s saying if a so-called prophet shows up in your midst, even if he has signs and wonders, if he teaches against the sayings of the Torah, you are to take him out and stone him to death! That’s very serious. Now let me ask you a question.

27. Does God change? Please, consider the question carefully. Because the modern “Christian” church would have you believe that God does change. How? They certainly don’t take this passage very seriously, do they?

28. I’m here to tell you that the Jews of Yeshua’s day took this passage VERY seriously. And I’m going to show you something else you’ve probably just read over without much consideration.

29. Acts 6:8-15 (Complete Jewish Bible) 8 Now Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people. 9 Opposition arose, however, from members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called)—Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria as well as the provinces of Cilicia and Asia—who began to argue with Stephen.

30. 10 But they could not stand up against the wisdom the Spirit gave him as he spoke. 11 Then they secretly persuaded some men to say, “We have heard Stephen speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.” 12 So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin.

31. 13 There they set up false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking against this holy place and against the Torah; 14 For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us.” 15 All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

32. Why was Stephen stone? You know, for most of my life, if you had asked me that question I would have answered, he was stoned to death because he spoke truthfully about Jesus. But did you catch why he was actually stoned? What was the accusation?

33. Acts 6:13-14 (Complete Jewish Bible) 13 “This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. 14 for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us.”

34. He was falsely accused of trying to change the law. He was falsely accused of trying to add to or take away from the Torah. And you’ll note that he was producing signs and wonders, just like what was listed in Deuteronomy 13. How many of you knew this about this passage?

35. Stephen was falsely (and I stress falsely, because it will become important later) of teaching that the Torah was dead. Did you know that Paul was accused of exactly the same thing?

36. Acts 21:26-28 (New King James Version) 26 The next day Paul took the men and purified himself along with them. Then he went to the temple to give notice of the date when the days of purification would end and the offering would be made for each of them.

37. 27 When the seven days were nearly over, some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, 28 shouting, “Fellow Israelites, help us! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people and our law and this place. And besides, he has brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place.”

38. Paul was accused of the same thing for which Stephen was falsely accused and to whom the men’s coats where laid down as Paul looked on and gave approval to killing Stephen. You see, if we don’t take the time to look through these things, we don’t see what was really going on.

39. The Pharisees of the day were zealously using the law, the Torah, as a reason for doing away with Paul and Stephen whom they deemed to be heretics. Now you know why Stephen was stoned. In the pharisees twisted logic, they felt they were commanded to stone him! And it was the same with Paul.

40. They thought themselves righteously and dutifully following the Torah. But, they were not following Torah as they themselves had violated Deuteronomy 13! They had added to the Torah and were guilty themselves having fallen short of the Deuteronomy 13 test.

41. How many know what the Talmud is? The Talmud is what’s known as the Oral Law. The tradition goes that the Oral Law was what was passed down to the Levites by Moses. And it was passed on from one generation to the next, orally, over the centuries.

42. And it includes some of the more practical instructions for how to do things in the temple as well as a lot of other things. Mostly it’s a commentary on the Torah itself, expanding on what is taught there: not adding to, but expanding.

43. But something happened. As we all know Israel was eventually split in two: there was the kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Northern Israel. Also known as the House of Israel and the House of Judah. Eventually, the House of Israel sinned so greatly that God “divorced” them and sent them into exile.

44. It wasn’t long before the House of Judah followed in the same footsteps and God banished the House of Judah as well. They were taken into captivity and after 70 years they were allowed to return.

45. And here’s where something happened. Those that returned recognized the reason they were exiled to Babylon was because they had broken God’s law. They were not following the Torah. They became so zealous to make sure this never happened again that they set up a whole series of rules and regulations to “cushion” everyone from breaking Torah. Seems like a good idea, right? But what did Deuteronomy 13 say?

46. “Everything I am commanding you, you are to take care to do. Do not add to it or subtract from it.

47. While they had good intentions, they were breaking Torah by adding to it. And as for the Oral law, which was probably intact up and until this point, the oral law, or the Talmud, is where they added to the law. And they added to it so much that even the order of which sandal to tie first in the morning was dictated by the law!

48. They actually had a law that could not spit on the ground on the sabbath! The idea goes something like this. Work happens when you create something. And you’re not supposed to work on the sabbath. And when you spit on the ground you create mud. So… spitting on the sabbath is against the law.

49. Thinking like this became so prevalent that the ancient Pharisees held the Oral Law in higher esteem then the Torah itself. Now what’s interesting is there are portions of the Torah that are still in tact from when Moses (at least according to tradition) handed down the oral law.

50. One portion that I believe is still in tact is this. The Talmud teaches (I don’t know where, but I’ve been told) that one sign which would confirm the messiah is he would heal one born blind.