Your Daily Bread for March 12-18, 2023
Welcome to Your Daily Bread for March 12-18, 2023, by Dr. Apelu Poe!
Key Torah Code for this Week: “Metzora” (The Law of the Leper): Leviticus 14:1-15:33.
Basic Principle of Our Judaic-Christian Faith: Our God does not focus on the debilitating effect of the disease that infects us but on the cure of it.
“If it happens to us now, after our eyes have been opened, it will be because we refused to see the full danger of Apocalyptic religious fanaticism in a world that has lost control of its military technology, even of its nuclear weapons. But if it is the technology that empowers the terrorists, it is the religion that drives them. And if religion is the problem, then the Bible code might be the solution.” I’ll get to the point in a minute.
But, first, let me say Talofa, Welcome, and Shabbat shalom to you, my friends in the name of “Yeshua HaMashiach,” Jesus the Messiah! And through the power of God’s Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit). As they say in Samoan, Malo le soifua manuia! Faafetai fo’i le fai tatalo! Congratulation on your good health! Thanks also for the prayers. May our God always grant us his lovingkindness!
Getting back to the point. If you have followed God’s calendar, which dictates and foretells the events of our lives to which the above quote refers, you will know that we are now entering the fourth week of the Lent or Preparation season. What is the Lent or Preparation season? The Lent or Preparation season is the sixth season of the 2022-2023 Christian year calendar. The Lent season does not have a festival because everything looks forward to the Easter festival. Just as the name itself suggests, Lent or Preparation season, is the time that we are called to prepare ourselves spiritually for the holy suffering of Jesus on the cross. Therefore, it is a time of prayer and fasting, a time to draw closer to God, knowing that it is our sin that sent Jesus to the cross. The Biblical basis for this is Mark 2:20, which says, “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.”
Before we take a look at this week’s Torah portion, let me also say “thank you” to all of you, my prayer warriors, and my dedicated supporters who supported the launching of my first book, The Hidden Secrets of the Master’s Mind: How You Can Live with God’s Time on February 28. The book has reached the #1 International Bestseller ranking in several different categories that include Christianity, Christian Old Testament Study, Jewish Sacred Writings, Old Testament Bible Study, Hebrew Bible, Bible Study Guides, Christian Reference, Judaism, and Religion and Spirituality, not just here in the United States of America, but also in Australia, and the United Kingdom. Here’s the thing, I am just the instrument, the agent, the medium, the vehicle that God can use to perform miraculous acts, but the credit goes to you because it was you who put your complete trust in God that together we can make a big impact. So, unto God be the glory. It is, indeed, a great inspiration for me to see that so many of you around the world have been following my teaching on social media, Facebook and Linkedin from week to week. I call my Torah gift for you this week “Your Daily Bread for March 12-18, 2023.”
Why am I saying this? Well, for those of you who have been following my teaching, I’m saying this because, as you might have noticed, I have been using this same gift that God has given me for the past 40 years to help guide the destiny of those whose spiritual welfare God has entrusted to me. And now that I have retired from the ordained ministry in July 2021, I want you to have free access to it. My pastoral desire is simply this: For you to be the person God has created you to be. My prayer, then, is that you would be able to live according to God’s time so that you may discern God’s Divine path for your life and how it is that God wants you to live to best receive his blessing and shine his holy light.
Your Benefits from My Torah Gift I Can Give You This Week
So what exactly can you expect from the Torah gift I’m giving you this fourth week of the Lent or Preparation season? Well, the first and foremost is self-awareness. Why self-awareness? Because life transformation begins with precisely that: self-awareness. Until we are made aware of what we need to do to help make this world a better place for all of us, we will never be able to get out of this geo-political, socio-economic turmoil that we now find ourselves in, no matter where we are in the world today. Remember what we said, to address any concern or any challenges that we face in our life today, we must, first of all, identify what is at the heart, the root of those challenges. Without that, we will never be able to come up with an adequate or appropriate strategy that will resolve our challenges.
So the Torah gift I’m giving you this week will help you become aware of the fact that when it comes to the issue of man’s salvation, if Jesus did not allow his blood to be shed on the cross to redeem us of our sins, we will never have any church today. Polycarp, one of the early Church fathers, had that in mind when he said, “the blood of the martyr became the seed of the church.”
What does that mean for you and me as Christians? It means that when we were destined to die an eternal death, our God has offered to pay the redemption price so that you and I will have life and have it abundantly. How? Through the precious blood of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ. Listen, again, to Jesus’ own words, “Truly, Truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).
The second benefit that my Torah gift will give to you this week is self-confidence. It’ll help you develop your cognitive competence or your self-confidence so that you can overcome any challenges and difficulties that you may face in your life today, at the same time, eliminate all the negative or limiting beliefs that have prevented you from manifesting who God created you to be.
As we said last week, mental clarity is needed not only to avoid confusion in decision-making but also to cherish beautiful moments or to avoid crises. Mental clarity is the reshaping of thoughts for the betterment of life. It improves the essence and quality of life. Once you can identify that loop point, your thoughts start to flow in a perfect direction. Decluttering of the mind is the first step to gaining clarity. Decluttering is removing what you don't need in your life.
It is no wonder why God wants us to be quite clear on what we should and should not do. Listen, again, to Paul’s reminder to us, “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7). “Say to those with fearful hearts,” the prophet Isaiah said, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance, with Divine retribution, he will come to save you” (Isaiah 35:4).
The third benefit that my Torah gift will give to you this week is self-discipline. It’ll help you to develop your self-discipline. What do we mean by self-discipline? And, why the need to do that at a time when we witness the world in moral and spiritual crisis? By self-discipline, we mean the ability to control our actions and our emotions. The first in importance is the will. Because man is his will, and woman is her will, too. When we see God’s will and desire God’s desire, then we will be much more clear on why we are here and why God has put us in leadership and management positions in such a challenging time as this. Perhaps, it is for this reason that Jesus put it this way, “If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29).
The fourth benefit that my Torah gift will give to you this week is high levels of motivation. It’ll help you to develop high levels of motivation. How? By putting your complete trust in the mighty hand of God. You must not abandon your hopes in despair because of how things look on the outside. You must read the sign or the trends of the time, and focus on the must-do, not the want or the like, but the must-do. And you must manage the risk involved as best you can. To do that, you must put your complete trust in the mighty hand of God. It is no wonder why Joshua did not forget to remind the children of Israel just when they were about to enter the Promised Land, lest they forget the mighty hand of God that has brought them thus far. For what purpose? So that all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty; that you might fear the Lord your God forever” (Joshua 4:24).
The fifth benefit that my Torah gift will give to you this week is a deeper sense of gratitude and heartfelt appreciation. It’ll help you deepen your sense of gratitude and heartfelt appreciation, knowing that our God is a loving and forgiving Father who is ever faithful and truthful to forgive us of all our sins. That means, despite the deadly sins we all are guilty of, for example, pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth, our God is ever able and willing to forgive us of all our sins if we truly humble ourselves and confess our sins. That is why the apostle Paul leaves us with this advice, “Be compassionate one to another. Be forgiving to another, even as God who forgave you in Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). “But if you don’t forgive others,” Jesus warns us, “then your Father will not forgive your transgressions” (Matthew 6:15).
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Does it surprise you, then, that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, did not forget to remind us about these things? That is why last week you heard Jesus speaking to us, saying, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you that everything that is written about me in the Law of Moses [Torah] and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled…” (Luke 24:44). ). Jesus, then, did something which I thought was quite remarkable and quite extraordinary. He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. Jesus said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:45-49).
Overview Summary of this Week’s Torah Portion
With this in mind, let us look at this week’s Torah portion, Leviticus 14:1-15:33.
Remember the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:7-13), where you get to hear Jesus asking God, “Father, give us this day our daily bread…” Every week, there is a Torah portion that sustains us spiritually. So, in the Hebrew language (God’s sacred tongue) from which our English Bible translation was taken, this week’s Torah portion is called “Metzora” translated as “The law of the leper,” see Leviticus 14:1-2.
To understand this, one has to, first of all identify the double references in the text. On a superficial linguistic level which is intended primarily for the Jewish audience, the reading focuses on the code “Metzora”, translated as “The law of the leper.” Thus, in the opening part of the reading, we are given a detailed description of how a recovered metzora or leper is purified by the priest. In the central part of the reading, we learn how the purifying of a leper is done using a special procedure involving two birds, spring water in an earthen vessel, a piece of cedarwood, a scarlet thread, and a bundle of hyssop.
Please note that:
(1). A person afflicted by leprosy, which the people of Israel refer to as a spiritual disease, places a person in a state of ritual impurity. That home can also be afflicted with leprosy or the appearance of dark red or green patches on its walls. That means the priest, in a process lasting as long as nineteen days, is the one who determines if the house can be purified or if it must be demolished.
(2). Of all the diseases ever known to man, perhaps none of which is as horrible and as dreadful as the disease of leprosy because it involves the issue of cutting the leper person from the community of the living, and
(3). God’s focus is not on the debilitating effect of the leprosy disease but on the cure it. The reading, then, ends with this Divine warning: “Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst…” (Leviticus 15:31-33),
Indeed, on a profound theological level, this week’s Torah portion, “the law of the leper,” has an important message to us, the Church, and the Body of Christ. This message is evident when the portion is interpreted in the context of this fourth week of the Lent or Preparation season that prepares us for the holy suffering of Jesus, the Son of God, on the cross. And that is, God so loved the world that he did not withhold his Son. But he sent his Son to be the Paschal Lamb on whom all our sicknesses and horrible diseases were imposed. How do we know that? Listen, again, to our text for this week: The Lord said to Moses, “This is the law of the leper for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall make an examination. Then if the leprous disease is healed in the leper, the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed, two living clean birds, cedarwood, and scarlet stuff, spring water in an earthen vessel, and hyssop….” (Leviticus 14:1-4).
This special procedure by which the leper is purified symbolises what Jesus would go through on the cross. For example, (1) the cedar wood, which is symbolic of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, (2) the scarlet staff, symbolic of the white linen that was wrapped around Jesus’ body (3) spring water in an earthly vessel, symbolic of Jesus’ stainless blood, (4) the hyssop symbolic of the vinegar that they gave him when he was thirsty, (5) two living clean birds perhaps refer to the presence of the Divine Spirit of God that had given Jesus the inner strength throughout the whole ordeal as it was made clear by the presence of the dove at the moment of his baptism.
Questions: When was Jesus made a leper or a scapegoat on our behalf? And why did God let that happen? Answers: On Good Friday. On Good Friday, God made Jesus a leper, or a scapegoat on our behalf, who would be sent outside of the gate with all our sin, our filthiness, our diseases placed on him where he would be literally cut off from the community of the living and be led to the slaughter as a result of our sin. So that through the depth of his death on the cross, God would purify us through his Son’s own precious blood.
It is no wonder why the prophet Isaiah asked us a rhetorical question that does not require any answer from you or from me “Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1) “As many were astonished at him; his appearance was marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the sons of men…Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise him; he has put him to grief; when he makes himself an offering for sin” (Isaiah 52:14; 53:10). Perhaps, it is in this context that we can understand God’s word, “I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. Forever I will keep my steadfast love for him, and my covenant with him will stand firm. I will establish his line forever, and his throne as long as the heavens endure” (Psalm 89:27-29). What, then, do we need to do in a time when more and more people had lost a sense of appreciation for what God had done for you and for me when we were destined to die an eternal death due to our sins? Well, listen, to the author of the Book of Hebrews, “Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come,” (Hebrews 13:13-14).
Should you be interested in an in-depth study of the weekly Torah codes on which our lives turn, Book I, Volume 1 of my III Books Series: 11 Volumes, entitled, “The Hidden Secrets of the Master’s Mind: How You Can Live with God’s Time” was released on February 28. The book was published by Create & Write Publishing: A Division of the Master’s Mind International. Please use the following link to get your copy of the book on Amazon:
You can reach me at [email protected]. Also, get your FREE copy of God’s calendar for this 2022-2023 ministry year that will help guide your faith journey.