lessons from torah (3)
This is the last of a little sessions about spiritual lessons from the Torah which apply to us today. If you want an interesting read, look up the Epistle of Barnabus and see how he uses the dietary laws of Torah to show which people to avoid. It’s very neat.
Today’s lesson is from Leviticus 19;23-25 CJB When you enter a land and plant various kinds of fruit trees, you are to regard its fruit as forbidden—for three years it will be forbidden to you and not eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, for praising YHWH. but in the fifth year you may eat its fruit, so that it will produce even more for you; I am YHWH your God.
Paul said it this way to Timothy speaking of leaders/elders “Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into condemnation of the devil.”
The actual greek word for novice by the Apostle Paul is neophytos, which literally means ‘newly planted.’
Many churches, especially small churches who struggle to maintain membership have a tendency to put someone into a position of need very quickly after they have been born again. However, this is a mistake and dangerous. Not just for the sake of the people they are training, but for the people themselves.
According to Torah we should not take fruit from a tree before the fifth year, it is only then when they’ve become rooted and established in the ground enough to bear the weight of sustenance for the body. Five years seems like forever to a struggling church, but God is working on an eternal timeline, and we’ve got to trust Him.
When a person is born again, they need to establish daily habits of the Word, prayer, and the secret place allowing God to remove the impurities of the world during this time. It is very easy to place persons in position because we ‘need’ them. But often, and if you’ve been in church for very long, you see that they fall away because they’re not rooted enough in him to hold up their own weight, let alone the weight of feeding others.
Listen to the Torah, it teaches us all we need, if we look through the eyes of Christ.
Do not put people in too early…lest you kill them. Let them grow, you do not need them enough to kill them.
