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Who Are We To Worship

Updated on August 24, 2013

Roy Blizzard III

Who Are We To Worship?

Roy Blizzard III © 2013

Luke 4:8, King James Version (KJV)

8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

Jesus was supposedly quoting from Torah (Old Testament) in Luke 4:8 “You shall worship YHWH, your Elohim, and him only shall you serve.” However, where in the Old Testament did this come from and are there other questions that need to be answered about this passage?

This passage, from Luke, beckons at least one certain question; Why do Christians only worship Jesus when both Torah (the Old Testament) and Jesus say they shouldn't? If one looks through Christian hymnals one will only find an occasional song that speaks of worshipping YHWH who is the creator of all. Is there something basically wrong or contradictory with this?

What Jesus quotes in Luke, in response to questioning from HaSatan, seems on the surface to be a melding of several passages in the Bible; Deuteronomy 6:8-13 “You shall fear only the LORD your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name.” Deuteronomy 10:20, “Fear the LORD your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name.” Exodus 23:25, “But you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water; and I will remove sickness from your midst.”

However, there is a remote passage from Proverbs 29:11 that seems to be a perfect fit for the first part of Luke 4:8 and it may help explain the rest of the passage. 11) A fool spendeth all his spirit; but a wise man stilleth it within him. He stills it - meaning his temper בְּאָחוֹר יְשַׁבְּחֶנָּה וְחָכָם, ... like the roaring seas are quieted, calmed or tamed. Now, one can see where Jesus was getting the idea from when he calmed the seas.

In Hebrew, the words typically seen here, in English, for serve and/or worship, are the same words, with only the English meaning being a bit fuzzy. In Hebrew, Eved is a bond servant who, out of love, serves God or one’s master. This is the same expression used by Paul in the first verses of Romans. Taken collectively, and in context, I would translate Luke 4:8 as follow, “Be still and be quiet, you who deceive. You shall be a bond servant to YHWH, the covenantal God to whom you swear allegiance to, and only him shall you unify with in purpose to do his bidding.” This is the sense of the passage.

One can see, here, that even HaSatan MUST submit to YHWH and those also that have submitted themselves as servants of YHWH because they serve the unified purposes of YHWH alone, and not their own purposes. This is a very critical point that must be emphasized. If we are to serve and/or worship YHWH and only with Him be unified in purpose, how does the Church justify worshipping Jesus as opposed to YHWH?

It has to do with covenant and essence. Let’s look at this interesting passage.

“The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant” (PS.25:14). The Hebrew word for secret here is Sod and this passage would have been better translated as “The intimate conversations and knowledge between man and God are shared with those that obey him, and he (God) will show them the workings of his covenant.”

Jesus touches on this when he says in John 12:49-50,

“For I have not spoken because of My own inclinations, but My Father which sent Me, He has enjoined Me what I should think (amar) and say (amar).” (amar - say in Hebrew can mean to speak with the mouth or think in the heart, context dictates) [Deuteronomy 4:5, 18:18 ff]

“And I know well that His righteous acts (commands - Mitzvot) are life eternal, therefore everything that I will speak, as God speaks to Me, I speak.” (as one does the righteous acts that God desires it is proof of a unification of purpose between God and his own) The Gospel of John, An Actual Translation, Roy Blizzard III © 2013

Jesus, as the living water, or mayim hayim in Hebrew, is the conduit by which God’s covenant is supplied to us. As Jesus says in John, 7:38 “The one believing into Me as the writings say (as opposed to the Law or the Prophets), “From His birth (womb), rivers of living water will flow.” (living water or spring water is the only kind of water that cleanses from sin, living water is a Hebraism or idiom for salvation) [Psalms 71 especially verse 6, Isaiah 32, 43:19-20, 44:2-5, 49:1-6, 66:5ff,] {Avot 6:1} The Gospel of John, An Actual Translation, Roy Blizzard III © 2013

One can only enact a covenant with God which enables us to be unified within God’s existence through or by way of acceptance of that covenant that the living waters flowing from Jesus brings about. In other words, in order to experience “salvation” in a Hebraic and Jewish context, we must experience Jesus in such a way that our sins are washed away, blotted out from the book of the Law of sin and death, Romans 8:2, so that God no longer keeps track of these sins.

These ideas may seem very foreign to anyone who is not intimately familiar with Judaism of the 1st century, but this is exactly what must happen today for anyone to have salvation, since salvation inherently means that one has joined into a covenantal relationship with God that was only accomplished by the sacrificial act of something more precious than you or I. In the Old Testament, as a part of the Blood Covenant, blood was shed for the forgiveness of sin. However, because of the poor nature of the sacrifice, or its inherent corruptibility, the blood had to be shed repeatedly to try and continually bring about forgiveness to the people; there is no way a sheep or goat, bird or any other creature is equal to or more precious than you or I.

However, God is. So in order to bring about eternal salvation once and for all, only something more precious than God’s crowning creation, mankind, could atone or pay the ransom for the enslavement that occurred in the Garden. God, in some way, had to ransom man back to himself. The conduit for that ransom was Jesus, or in Hebrew, Yeshuat Elohim, or the Salvation of God, made into a fleshly form to ransom back that fleshly created person through a spiritual act, the exact opposite of the actions in the Garden.

So by contacting the salvation of God, one is contacting the very essence of God himself, and thereby worshipping and serving both since unification would be to the whole. So in all actuality, if we are worshipping/serving Jesus we are also worshipping/serving God who is in fact the same unified essence.

In conclusion, the Church isn’t worshipping/serving Jesus as opposed to YHWH, but mainly concentrating on worshipping/serving that aspect of God which enabled them to regain their position of authority within God’s kingdom. Do they understand this; probably not. Would they experience anything different if they switched; probably, due to the fact that we all are empowered through the acceptance which we were promised by way of the Messiah. Therefore, if one refuses the Messiah, they are in fact refusing all the promises made to the Messiah and his followers.

© 2013 royblizzard

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