Aaronic Benediction Explained

Dear Friends,

Myles & Katharine Weiss

Messianic Jews have consistently experienced a presence of peace with Arab, Egyptian, and Persian Believers. The continued failure of political peace efforts is underwhelming and completely predictable. Any of us who are involved with world ministry, especially those in Israel, can recount mountaintop experiences of supernatural fellowship that supersedes human failure and historical precedent.

This is based on the power of blessing that comes directly from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is not merely a New Testament phenomenon. Blessing is a characteristic that winds throughout His-story including the Tanach (Old Testament). From the very time it was instituted in the Word, we see that Abraham could bless whomever he wanted. One of the most famous rabbis in Jewish history observes that if Abraham could bless whomever he wanted, doing so becomes a privilege that God gave to us as the children of Abraham. In fact, it is commanded. In Numbers chapter six, God told Moses to have Aaron and his sons stand before the people and “You will bless the Sons of Israel in this way….”

BEING A BLESSING

By Sheila

                                                                                                                           

There are some days when I’ve just about had it. Recently, when baby-sitting a friend’s two preschoolers for the day, I realized how much one can forget in the six short years since both of my girls have been out of diapers. On that day, the three-year-old got into the paints when I wasn’t looking. 

I discovered him sitting on top of the kitchen table, making interesting designs on his clothes, and took one look at him and decided he was too far gone to interfere with now. 

WHY IS GOD SO MUCH AGAINST SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE?

by: Serge Roux-Levrat

It is undeniable that a multitude of scriptures condemn sexual immorality and impurity. One of them is 1 Corinthians 6:18: "Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body." Other verses are: 1 Corinthians 6:9,13; 10:8; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:3; Colossians 3:5 and 1 Thessalonians 4:3. What we see in these scriptures is that God considers sex outside of marriage sexual immorality and that He has reserved sex for heterosexual couples; and not just for procreation purposes, but also for pleasure.

Rivers Of Living Water

Several countries in Southeast Asia celebrate the regional new year with a water festival. Traditionally, people sprinkle each other with water as a sign of respect and blessing, but many people intensify it with wild, joyful, boisterous dousing of anybody and everybody with water. Walk or drive down the streets during those days and you might be accosted with garden hoses, water cannons, water pistols, or even bowls and cups filled with water. It is raucous. It is fun. It is vivid. Everyone knows it is out with the old, in with the new.

Water was a key feature of the ancient Jewish festival called the Feast of Tabernacles. For the first seven days of the festival, with trumpets blowing, a priest would take water from the Pool of Siloam and carry it through the streets in a golden vessel, eventually delivering it to the altar in the temple.

Jesus was in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles, when, on the climactic day of the festival, he stood up and shouted out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:37–38). The Gospel of John then has this explanation: “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive” (John 7:39).