The last thing you think about every night before you go to sleep is your idol. It took seventy years in the Golus (Exile) to teach Jewish people that G-d would not tolerate idols.

Moshiach is not an idol. However, your idol will upstage Moshiach and at the Kriat Ha Sefer Torah (the reading of the Torah in shul) Moshiach will be concealed; but, when you renounce and turn away from your idol to Moshiach Adoneinu, and hide Hashem's Word submissively in your heart, this veil of concealment of Moshiach is taken away (see 1C 3:16). Then we can see the light of the glory of Hashem in the face of Moshiach Adoneinu.

Here is the reason we must keep our hearts from idols. There are associated with idols demons, and we dare not leave a door open for the devil. Remember there was a heart relationship between Simon Peter and the Moshiach. This heart relationship is what Satan was taking aim at when Satan sifted Peter like wheat (see Lk 22). Above all guard your heart. Man looks on the outward appearance but G-d looks on the heart. "May the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O L-rd, my Strength and my Redeemer." May the unrighteous man forsake his unrighteous thoughts. This is teshuva. The heart is the "real you," where your besetting sins and generational "bad wood" has to be pruned away or sifted out and exposed. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts. Simon Peter hurt his Song of Songs heart relationship with Moshiach and the text says that Moshiach "looked at him." (Lk 22:61). Simon's idol was Simon. At this point he loved his life too much. He had not yet been perfected in love. He had taken the mikveh of repentance but his repentance was not yet complete. Rav Shaul reminds the Corinthians that the Bnei Yisroel had had their mikveh in the Red Sea but G-d was not pleased with many of them and their bodies were strewn all over the wilderness. They started running the race like the New York City Marathon with a vast crowd at the starting line. But when those same Bnei Yisroel should have crossed the finishing line at the Jordan River, most of them had been tripped up by their idolatry and were nowhere to be found. Their idolatry cost them more than they had reckoned. Their idolatry had cost them the Promised Land.

In the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, it was idolatry that exacted a terrible cost. It was in the Garden of Eden that the forbidden fruit became an idol because it was something desired yet forbidden. That's what an idol is: something desired but forbidden, something desired that goes beyond what is written (1Cor 4:6 NIV), something desired that goes beyond what the Word allows. The last thing you think about every night before you go to sleep is your idol. That idol you are fixated on, that you think about every night before you go to sleep, is something desired yet forbidden. And in the Garden of Eden the price tag on that forbidden fruit said simply: "Paradise." What a price to pay! It seemed so attractive at the time. That's the way idols are. But afterwards they prove to be empty, vain, a delusion. An idol is NOTHING (1Cor 8:4; 10:19). That's the problem; you are WORSHIPPING it! When he was an old man, King David hardly gave the old woman Bathsheba the time of day, but at the time she was dangled before him as a satanic temptation, she seemed to him to be worth everything: he looked at her and he saw the sun, the moon, and the stars. Idols are like that. They are deceptively attractive. Seemingly worth everything at the time; but later found to be empty, vain, a delusion, nothing.

Now let's factor in the jealous wrath of our Holy G-d. Suppose you were in a restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee and something and your bill came to $6.00. Now you pull out a $20 bill, your last $20 and you go up to the cashier to pay your check. What you don't know, however, is that the wiley cashier and your wicked waiter are ripping off customers and splitting the "take." Their scheme goes like this: whenever a customer gives a $20 bill, the cashier shortchanges the customer $10.00 by saying that the customer gave not $20.00 but $10.00 to pay for his coffee. Then the crooked waiter comes to the aid of the cashier and it's their word against the customer. Later they split the day's "take." Now you being an intelligent sort of coffee-drinker actually know about this New York "cashier" scheme and you are furious. You have been shortchanged and what belongs to you has been given to fools. You are livid. You want to call the police. Now imagine how G-d feels. Here He has given you the sun, the moon, and the stars. He has given you the very breath that you breathe. He has even given you the sufferings of Moshiach to make korban kaparah for your nefesh. And you have shortchanged G-d, giving the Glory that belongs to Him alone to "nothing" idols. And you do this not sometimes but perennially, putting Him to the test, provoking His jealous Holy Wrath. Here you are, enraged because the cheating cashier took what belongs to you and gave it to his "nothing" accomplice. And now are you really saying that you don't understand how G-d could be angry when you take the Glory that belongs to Him and you shortchange Him and give it to your "nothing" idols, the idols you muse about all day long and think about when you go to sleep and dream about and fixate on ad nauseum? Read the Book of Hosea and get angry and get this illustration cemented into your idolatrous brain.

Now let's return to the metaphor of a race. The idea of a race is to run so as to win. Those idolaters who left Egypt with Moses were not running to win. They were not running to cross the finishing line at the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land. Rav Shaul gives the secret of the victorious runner. He pummels his body and subdues it, lest he himself should be disqualified. The besetting sin that weighed down the Bnei Yisroel in their marathon race from the Red Sea to the Jordan river was idolatry. And this is the sin Rav Shaul is preaching against in 1 and 2 Corinthians. He says to them, in effect: Don't you know how serious idolatry is? Do you want to test the L-rd? Do you want to arouse His jealousy? Are you stronger than the L-rd? Some of you are sick and some have fallen asleep. I myself had a problem with pride and that idol threw me on a sick bed. Do you want a thorn in the flesh? Do you want to be sick? Do you want to test the L-rd to see if He means business about the Second Commandment?

Here is what you might not understand. The Aseres HaDibros are not Ten Suggestions, they are Ten Commandments. They carry covenant reprisals. These are called curses. Moshiach did not die because you occasionally have a "bad hair" day. Moshiach interposed himself to shield you from the curses that are pursuing you down through the generations.

The reason we need nevi'im in the congregation is because they read hearts and secret sin cannot hide from the eye of the navi anymore than the sin of Ananias and Sapphira could hide from the eye of Simon. See Ac chapter 5.

When you have an idol and you think you are playing a little game by bringing your idol secretly into the House of the L-rd, the only person you are fooling is yourself, because the L-rd and his prophets see the idol in your heart. Moab was a land of idols and Orpah went back to her idols, but her sister Ruth clung to the G-d of Israel and found "menuchah" (a place of rest) for her spirit. Rav Shaul said (2Cor 2:13) that he had no menuchah for his spirit because he could not find his brother. This place of rest menuchah fellowship is what we have with one another when we walk in the light as Moshiach is in the light. But when we bring an idol into the Temple we destroy that. Today we have many Orpah's who bring their Moab idols into the House of G-d. Rav Shaul warns, if you try to destroy G-d house, G-d will destroy you. You can make an idol out of anything. In Corinth there was a man who actually tried to make an idol out of his father's wife, making her his lover! But nothing like that can hide from the eye of the L-rd or from the eye of his prophets. When the idolater comes into a congregation of prophets, the idolater's heart is laid bare, the idolatrous secrets of his heart are revealed, and he has little choice than to repent. When a person calls himself a brother but is carrying a concealed idol, he is like Mohammed Ata going through security to board the 9-11 passenger jet. The other passengers are boarding the plane to make a journey; but he has no probity, no honesty, no integrity. He is boarding to commit mass murder. If any idolater will not forsake his idolatry and destroys G-d's temple, G-d will destroy him. You see, your mistake is that you think becoming born twice and sanctified is a low-priority or no-priority decision. What you don't understand is that your idolatry is destructive. It is like Mohammed Ata's boxcutter. You are double-hearted and halting between two opinions and trying to board with the believers, but at the same time you are concealing your boxcutter idol and taking it onboard with you. What you don't understand is that it took the Exile to deliver Israel from her idols. What horrendous thing will it take to deliver you from yours?

Now let's return to Simon Peter and his heart relationship with Moshiach beclouded by an idol. When the rooster crowed he had not held fast to faith and a good conscience. Notice Simon Peter had confessed the L-rd at Caesarea Philippi and in some sense was a believer, but Satan was sifting him. Listen! We have to keep ourselves in the love of the L-rd and this means reckoning ourselves dead to our flesh and resistantly turning from Satan who sifts our flesh. And this is part of repentance.

When did you acquire this idol? Was it before you became a teenager? Sometimes a teenage "Samson" begins his young adulthood with rebellion in his heart toward his parents and a sexual idol in his heart. The Second Commandment has to do with elohim acherim, "other g-ds" or idols. Our Moshiach, the Bar Enosh of the Atik Yomin, the Moshiach Ben Dovid, is not an idol. An idol is an accursed thing. An idol brings a curse. "Little children, keep yourself from idols." This is found in the last verse of 1Yn, and it has to do with the fact that Hashem is a jealous G-d. The Torah says to bring no other g-ds before His face, unless you want to excite His holy anger. If you like living with all your property in the bulging kerchief at the end of a hobo's stick, go ahead: put the L-rd to the test. Israel did that. They knew the verse in the Torah that warns about the curse of idolatry and being "plucked from off the holy land" (Deut.28:63). Jeremiah warned them. They wouldn't listen. They had to learn the hard way. Look what Ezekiel says in Ezek 12:1-3.

One of the tests of life is to guard your heart above all else and to persevere through many hardships (Ac 14:22), keeping the L-rd always before you as your provider and your light and salvation, never leaning on anything else.

One of the devices of the devil is illustrated by Diotrephes in 3Yn 9. Diotrephes was the senior Zaken (Elder) in his kehillah. So he was already "first," in a sense. But that was not the problem. The problem was that he LOVED to be first. The problem was that he made an IDOL out of being first. And he chose THAT IDOL in preference to Moshiach who spoke to Diotrephes through Moshiach's Shliach Yochanan. The rich young ruler chose his "many possessions", to which he had an idolatrous attachment, and he made that choice in preference to Moshiach. In Corinth their pride deceived the members into proudly contending that their religious heroes were "first", each member claiming a certain prideful preference to one or the other (Apollos, Cephas, Paul, etc). But Paul corrects this idolatry. ALL THINGS are yours: Apollos is yours, Cephas is yours, Paul is yours. You don't have to make a divisive and wrath- provoking idol out of them, you don't have to fight for them, they ALREADY belong to you. Diotrephes, you don't have to idolize being first, you are ALREADY first. G-d did that for you. He made you an elder. Give him the praise! But Satan trips us up as we strive in a prideful, idolatrous way for the thing that G-d has already given us!

The moreh sheker who goes out from us because he is not of us is ensnared by idols (1Yn 2:19; and 5:21), for all idolaters will be thrown into the lake of fire (Rv. 21:8). They allowed the words of the Ruach Hakodesh to be upstaged by the Torah Sheb'al Peh or some other detractor, to their own destruction. (See how your soul's salvation hangs on the inerrancy of the Bible.) They did not hate their life in this world; they wandered from the truth; they did not hold on to faith and a good conscience; they did not hold firmly to the End the sound doctrine handed over from Moshiach's Shlichim.

In Rav Shaul's letter to the Corinthians, he sets before them the divine maxim, "Let everything be done decently and in order (1C 14:40)." The elite "movers and shakers" in the kehillah were callous toward those new believers who were demonically tempted to fall back into idolatry. The self-important elite apparently had their own idols, however. Rav Shaul had to remind these arrogant ones that Moshiach died for the new believers, and if they selfishly used their "freedom" to create a temptation that would make the new believers stumble back into idolatrous destruction, then that "freedom" of the "elite" would be a sin against Moshiach himself, and the self-serving idolatrous elite might find themselves also destroyed in the wilderness.

Today we have many congregations like the one at Corinth. No Sunday night service anymore. No Wednesday night prayer meeting. No early morning prayer. Just a short sermon, people looking at their watches, then everyone hurries off to their idols. Apparently those claiming "knowledge" in Corinth did not know that the assembly of the kehillah is an affair of eschatological seriousness. Gan Gat Shmanim (Garden of Gethsemene) is a paradigm of the assembly and its eschatological seriousness. The salvation of the whole creation was hanging in the balance in that garden prayer meeting. From the point of view of the congregants, the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak; yet angels were also in attendance (Lu 22:43; also 1Co 11:10). At such a serious assembly, where eternal souls are hanging in the balance, no one should use their freedom to disturb Moshiach's order or to put a stumbling block of darkness before a weaker brother. For example, in the early kehillah, men and women wore the same kind of "himation" or outer robe, but the women who were mature believers did not want to allow their arrousingly volupuous long beautiful hair to create a stumbling block temptation of lust in front of anyone, so they properly pulled the himation over their heads to veil this asset of their beauty. Even the single women were thus signaling to all that their proper bridegroom was Moshiach (1Ti 5:11). Since many women do not have male-pattern baldness but thick and fast-growing hair, even nature concurs that a woman's hair is her glory, but she should not use her freedom to cause a stumbling block for someone for whom Moshiach died. In the early Messianic shul, the women and men sat in separate seating arrangements, so disorderly and unspiritual speech (wives calling out to their husbands who were seated apart from them) was discouraged. Indeed, when Philip's virgin daughters prophesied, one can be sure that these matters of decorum were respected. What is the point of all this? Self-important and disorderly idolaters though once saved in Egypt were afterwards destroyed in the wilderness, and Rav Shaul warns the "movers and shakers" in Corinth that this could happen to them, as well. (On this see Yd 1:5; 1Co chp 10 and compare Ro 11:20-21.)

By the time we get to 2 Corinthians chp 11 we see that Satan wants to corrupt and ruin by means of Bible-opposing "knowledge," the so called "deeper things of Satan." Instead of staying with the Word that was preached, the temptation of the Corinthians was to "go beyond what was written" and to be seduced by extra-Biblical knowledge (see Gen 3:5). Notice that Eve's "Bible" only has one verse in it. The verse in her "Bible" warns that death will be the result of getting her "knowledge" of good and evil from a certain lethal tree rather than from the "Bible" she has been given where the meager content of one verse will nevertheless tell her how to live and not die. But in the hands of the evil Serpent this "Bible" can be twisted and used to deceive her so that she hands herself over to a rival authority, a Bible-opposing authority, with fatal results. Anything that rivals and opposes G-d is an idol, and in the Book of Revelation we see that the believers will give up their lives as martyrs rather than compromise with the idolatrous religion and way of life of the pagan society of the last days. It is fair to say that one cannot be a believer unless one repents from all idolatry. Mt 19:22-26 is the story about the call on an idolater's life whose accursed idolatry, whose preference for his "many possessions" over Moshiach, whose idolatrous, spiritually adulterous, Judas-like betrayal that turns to the "love of other things" (Mk 4:19) other than the true Moshiach --in a word--his idolatry, yes, his idolatry, cost him his eternal salvation. And so the point is made that whoever tries to keep his idolatrous life will lose it.






Download an ancient Orthodox Jewish Mahzor published by the Hebrew Publishing Company. Notice particularly MahzorJ.pdf. Also notice MahzorA.pdf, particularly noting the last page (page 71) of that pdf file, the middle part of that last page, specifically the Hebrew in smaller type, especially the word before "SAR HAPANIM". Also on page 17 [two key words "yichud Qudsha, the unification of the Holy One, or the Holy Unity"] in mahzorA.pdf, note the following "BEHOLD I PREPARE MY MOUTH TO THANK AND PRAISE MY CREATOR IN THE NAME OF THE HOLY UNITY, BLESSED IS HE, AND HIS SHECHINAH [I.E. THE RUACH HAKODESH] BY THE HAND OF HIM WHO IS HIDDEN AND CONCEALED [I.E. YESHUA SAR HAPANIM FOUND ON PAGE 71 IN MAHZORA.PDF] IN THE NAME OF ALL ISRAEL"



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