A Life for God: A Rabbi’s Analysis of Life, the Cross, and Eternity

by Greg Hershberg

In our culture, fire-and-brimstone preaching has been criticized. Many believe that it’s a type of scare tactic that frightens people into making a profession of faith without any repentance or heartfelt change. Because of this, some only encourage people to say a little prayer, and everything will be okay. This is the other extreme and produces no change in attitude or behavior and no passionate love for God or His Word. Something is missing.

Matthew shows us the relationship of Yeshua to the Law and Old Testament prophets. He encouraged the Jewish people to see their heritage in the context of a greater law and their history in the light of the spiritual kingdom of God. He didn’t believe the Scriptures lost their significance as Yeshua fulfilled them. Rather, the Hebrew Scriptures gained significance through Yeshua.

In Luke, we read, One of the leaders asked him, “Good rabbi, what should I do to obtain eternal life?” (Luke 18:18). This man asked what he should do. He had no concept of eternal life, because he was only looking to do something, which we tend to do even after we’re saved. The word do indicates an act. It’s an achievement, something we attain and can say we’ve done. Sadly, it also means “a performance.”

Everything is a privilege – especially eternal life. This man who came to Yeshua didn’t understand that eternal life isn’t earned. He wanted to obtain it, but he hadn’t even come to the realization that Yeshua was Messiah. He only knew Him as a Jewish man who was a good rabbi.

most of the time we operate on emotions. If we want something bad enough, we try to get God to agree with us. Then we interpret it as God leading us, but it’s really us leading Him. We’re saying, “Come on, God, bless my efforts.” He’ll be there for us, but He has the perfect plan, not us.

The writer of Hebrews acknowledges in this book to Jewish believers that the fear of death is very normal, very natural, and very human. He’s also saying that this fear of death has held men in lifelong bondage.

He said, Therefore, I tell you, don’t worry about your life – what you will eat or drink; or about your body – what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? (Matthew 6:25). Isn’t it incredible that we have all these television channels devoted to this stuff, and He said not to worry about any of it?

In considering these television channels and what they do to us, we can see just how self-absorbed we’ve become. Think about it. We have iPhones, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. We have our faces in everyone else’s book except His.

We need to look at the word deny to understand what Yeshua was saying to them. It means to forget oneself. It’s not the same as self-denial. That’s giving things up to show God we’re good people. What He’s talking about here is the act of restraining one’s own desires.

By looking at the perpetual offering in Exodus and recognizing Yeshua in it, we can see the hand of God in the timing and complexity of His salvation. From this sacrifice, we can realize that eternal life is legitimate, really legitimate, and we can live for it. When Yeshua taught, He said we shouldn’t make our offering corban, a gift to God, instead of helping our parents. He told them to honor your father and your mother (Mark 7:10).

The purpose of passing the land on was to ensure that the extended family had a means of support and survival. This law was to provide for future generations. In doing this, they blessed one another. That’s the way God operates, and we give Him more glory when we see His hand in these details of life. God provides first through people. He wanted His people to provide for their children.

The fact that God alone passed through the slain animals indicates that the covenant to someday bless all the families of the earth was totally on God and God alone, which made it an unconditional covenant. It was a total covenant of grace, dependent on God to be fulfilled by God. Nothing Abram could do or not do was going to stop God from blessing all the families of the earth. That’s why this is the most important covenant.

A smoking fire pot and a flaming torch appeared, which passed between these animal parts. This isn’t really hard to interpret, because a smoking fire pot speaks of suffering, like an oven. Might this be likened to the ovens that the Jews were thrown into during World War II? Nobody has been more persecuted than the Jews, and the fire pot represents suffering. We also see a flaming torch. What is that? A flaming torch is a light-bearer. God was saying that this nation, Israel, was going to suffer, but He was also saying that she would be a bearer of light.

He will not snap off a broken reed. In other words, He will not crush true repentance. If a person truly repents and says, “I’m sorry, I don’t want this way of life, I want to follow You,” He will not crush even that little bit of repentance. And if a person has a smoldering wick of faith, He won’t quench it. That’s a good God.

just like the prophets had said, Yeshua went on to say, “For he will be handed over to the Goyim [nations] and be ridiculed, insulted and spat upon. Then, after they have beaten him, they will kill him. But on the third day he will rise” (Luke 18:32-33). He foretold exactly what would happen to Him. He was handed over to the Romans because the Jews didn’t have the authority in their laws to crucify anyone. They couldn’t do it. The Romans, however, crucified people on a regular basis. Why was He handed over to the Gentiles? Well, God used the Gentiles to punish Israel for their sin, so Yeshua had to be handed over to the Gentiles to pay for their sin. He was handed over to them, and they took Him to their courts where He was ridiculed, insulted, spit on, beaten, and then killed – just like He said.

Even Yeshua, the God-Man, the One who was very confident of His resurrection, very confident of His ascension, and very confident of being back with His Father said, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, let not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). So, if He could tell His Father His load was too heavy, then we can too.

Nobody took His life – not the Romans, not the Jews, not even your sins. He said nobody took His life; He laid it down; He gave it up. No one takes it away from me; on the contrary, I lay it down of my own free will (John 10:18). It was a burnt offering, a free-will offering.

People claim to want to hear God speak to them, and here we have a book where God is speaking directly on almost every page. This fact should cause us to read and study this book with particular interest and care. But John Nelson Darby once warned of the dire results if believers grew bored with holiness. Holiness is the main theme of Leviticus, and this book certainly is the hardest one for many Christians to read.

Twenty of the twenty-seven chapters in Leviticus and thirty-five of the paragraphs start with Adonai spoke to Moshe [Moses]. Ninety-nine percent of the book is the Lord speaking, not Moses going into the tent of meeting and coming out and saying, “Thus says the Lord.” In Leviticus, God is speaking. That’s how potent this book is. If we think this is just an ancient Jewish sacrificial rules and regulations manual to maintain holiness in everyday life, then we miss the point of the book. God wants Christians to be holy too. Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, God says, be holy, for I am holy (Leviticus 11:44; 1 Peter 1:16). There’s just one problem. Man, by nature and practice, is unholy even when he strives to be holy. There’s a great chasm that needs to be bridged.

Leviticus chapters 1 through 7 show us five offerings. First is the burnt offering. Then we see the grain offering, which is the same as the meal offering in some Bible versions. Next is the peace offering, which is sometimes called the fellowship offering in some versions. The last two are the sin offering and the guilt offering. Five offerings: burnt, grain, peace, sin, and guilt.

Our offering is a sacrifice, and it comes in many forms. It’s not just money, but also time, talents, and treasures. An offering is an act of love, so the greater the offering, the greater the love. Remember, the root word means to come near or to join. God set this sacrificial system up so we could draw near to Him, because that’s His heart’s desire. It’s not an afterthought. He really wants to be close to us, like loving parents want their children to be close to them.

Daniel described five kingdoms to King Nebuchadnezzar, the last of which was to be the everlasting kingdom. In the days of those kings the God of heaven will establish a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not pass into the hands of another people. It will break to pieces and consume all those kingdoms; but it, itself, will stand forever (Daniel 2:44).

Peter said, You should be aware that the ransom paid to free you from the worthless way of life which your fathers passed on to you did not consist of anything perishable like silver or gold (1 Peter 1:18). Peter was telling them that the ransom was priceless, worth more than tens of thousands of talents of gold. Today, Christians have heard for so long about the price Jesus paid that it has become commonplace, and its significance lost on us.

The Jewish people gave us monotheism, the belief that there is only one God, “Sh’ma, Yisra’el! ADONAI Eloheinu, ADONAI echad [Hear, Isra’el! ADONAI our God, ADONAI is one] (Deuteronomy 6:4). They preserved their oracles and gave us the Bible. In the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the very words of God (Romans 3:2). Out of Yeshua’s own mouth, He said the Jews gave us Messiah, because salvation comes from the Jews (John 4:22).

Yeshua was God’s best. He couldn’t give anything better than a piece of Himself in human form. God gave His best for earth’s worst.

God made this sinless man be a sin offering on our behalf, so that in union with him we might fully share in God’s righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). Today, people can commit crimes, but sometimes get off on a technicality. The judge will declare that the criminal can go free, but what we receive is way bigger than a technicality. We get to share in God’s righteousness

As soon as a Jewish person came into the outer courtyard, he saw the brazen altar. He had to bring an animal to the altar, which had a ramp in front of it. The brass of the altar was made of iron and copper, was very shiny, and gave a reflection. So as the man walked up the ramp and stood before the altar, he saw his own face. He recognized that he should be on the altar, not the innocent lamb.

Having discussed the five offerings, I find it interesting to also note that there are five kinds of wounds known to medical science: contusions, lacerations, penetrating wounds, perforating wounds, and incised wounds. Not only did all five offerings point to Yeshua, but Yeshua suffered all five types of wounds.

Zechariah 12:10 tells us, they will look to me, whom they pierced. By thrusting his spear into the side of Yeshua, the soldier actually fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah. And from this wound, blood and water flowed, blood for the forgiveness of sin and water for the washing away of the guilt of our sin. If we recall the brazen altar and laver, we realize that Yeshua fulfilled that requirement for approaching the Father. The blood was shed at the altar, and the guilt washed away at the laver, just as the blood and water flowed from Yeshua’s side. He laid down His own life as a voluntary act. The incised wound was one of the last prophecies to be fulfilled while Yeshua was on earth.

We’ve never had unbroken fellowship with the Father. We break it all the time, but we know If we acknowledge our sins, then, since he is trustworthy and just, he will forgive them and purify us from all wrongdoing (1 John 1:9). Not only that, but John tells us, My children, I am writing you these things so that you won’t sin. But if anyone does sin, we have Yeshua the Messiah, the Tzaddik [Righteous], who pleads our cause with the Father (1 John 2:1). It’s imperative that we see John address us as my children. It tells us that we always have relationship, but we don’t always have fellowship.

imagine the mental, emotional, and spiritual anguish of the Father as He watched His Son suffer and die. Imagine the pillars of the temple being God’s legs, and God Himself would be behind the veil in the Holy of Holies. God tore that veil from top to bottom like it was His shirt, as a sign of His grief and mourning. We often think about the anguish of the Son, but what about the Father?

All the way back in early Genesis, God planned to work it out so He would show up on earth in human form and die for the sins of the world, and every family would be blessed. Think about how He had to orchestrate history to make everything come together at the right time and in the right place. Think about how many times Satan tried to exterminate all the Jews when they were banished and exiled. They disappear; they come back; they disappear; they come back. God will keep His promise to them to give them their land forever.

The chief priests, the leaders of the Jews but not the Jewish people, gave Him up to be tortured and killed. Why did it have to be the chief priests and leaders? They were the ones who instituted and performed the sacrificial system, so they had to present the sacrifice. It’s biblical, it’s Levitical, and it’s right. Nobody else could put their hands on Him because they were presenting the offering for Israel and the world.

And how many times do we hear "the religious authorities of Jesus's day" or "the conservatives of his day" and miss the so clearly obvious truth? We are so quick to impose our ideological framework to score points for a worldly agenda that we miss the point.

If we use logic alone, this whole story makes little sense. Twelve guys give up everything to follow Him. Peter even gave up his family, and then they’re confused when Yeshua is killed. They expected Him to take His throne. They wanted a messiah who was going to be their king, who would put down the Roman oppression and bring about the millennial kingdom – right then and there. However, if He did that at that time, we wouldn’t have eternal life, and you would not be reading this book.

He wants all our thinking, all our reasoning, and all our decision-making. He wants our walk. All? All our heart, soul, mind, and strength? Can we really do that? No, only Yeshua did that, but we can work toward that end. We can grow in the process of sanctification, giving God more of our heart, more of our soul, more of ourselves. Or, should we just admit that we can’t do it, give up, and not even try? That would be ludicrous. God wants us to walk with Him closer and closer, day after day.

God spoke through Ezekiel saying, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit inside you; I will take the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). Look at that word new – in the Hebrew it’s chadash, meaning a fresh new thing, not something stale or that’s been around. It’s going to be new, not just restored. New, because now our heart is connected to God’s heart, and they are beating together. We’re able to hear God’s heart on our heart, and the things that break God’s heart will break our heart. The things that make God happy will make us happy. The things He detests, we should detest, and the things He couldn’t care less about, we shouldn’t care about.