Elohim's Aleph-Bet (Letters) - The Aleph & The Sabbath

Shabbat shalom, friends. My name is Chadwick Harvey, and you've reached Faithful Performance. Thank you so much for joining us today as we open a series on God's Aleph-Bet — Yah's Aleph-Bet — beginning with the first letter: the Aleph.

We're going on a 22-week series. There are 22 letters, and five of those letters have a final form, giving us 27 total understandings across the 22 letters. We'll cover one letter each Shabbat, starting today with the Aleph. It is a very important letter that points back to the Father. He is first in line, as always, and so it is fitting that the first letter of the Hebrew Aleph-Bet is the Aleph.

We appreciate everyone joining us. We hope everyone on the Eastern Coast is having a good Shabbat, and we know those on the West Coast are just now getting moving. We also welcome those joining us from across the seas. Thank you so much for tuning in to Faithful Performance.

Before we get into the letter and its meaning, we'd like to go through the Shabbat scriptures. First and foremost, let's give homage to the Father and the Son through the blessed Holy Spirit. We'll begin with what is said each week in synagogues and Messianic congregations — Deuteronomy 6:4–6, known as the Shema. If you'd like to join us, say it together:

Hear, O Israel — Yah is our God, and Yah is echad. He is one. And you shall love Yah your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your might. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as signs between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Friends, that is the Shema — "Hear, O Israel." We all need eyes to see and ears to hear. This sets the standard for the Shabbat. It is spoken in Messianic congregations and synagogues every single Shabbat, and it is an amazing thing. The standard he wants us to understand is to love Yahweh with all of our heart, with all of our strength, with all of our might, and to love our neighbor as ourselves — the two greatest commandments. We have to go back to the basics, the foundation of our faith, and make it simple: love God and love neighbor. If we can do that, we will be following the Torah, just as our Savior Yeshua said. It puts the heart in the right position on the Shabbat, or any other time it is read.

As we all know from Genesis 2:1–3, Yah separated this day and set apart only one day — the Shabbat:

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their host. And on the seventh day, Elohim completed his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Then Elohim blessed the seventh day and sanctified it — set it apart — because on it he rested from all his work which Elohim had created in making it.

This is very important to read slowly. He sanctified only one day, and it is the Shabbat, the Sabbath, the seventh day. All other days are common days. That is not saying we should not worship the Lord every day — please do — but there is only one set-apart day, and it is the Shabbat. It is important for our Christian friends to understand this. The Jewish people do celebrate the right Sabbath; they simply do not see Yeshua in it. We need to bring our Christian friends onto the right Shabbat so that we can be that one new body, that one new man together — the Jewish people with Yeshua, and us with the Torah and the Sabbath.

No one has ever changed the Sabbath in Scripture. As we all know, it was Constantine who changed it to Sunday worship, which can be found in the records of the 325 AD Council of Nicaea. If you are not yet convinced of this, those are the reference points to go back and study in order to form your own convictions on why the church changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. He set apart only one day, and it is today — which is why we are all fellowshipping together on this channel.

In Exodus 20:8–11, Moses confirms Genesis 2:1–3 within the Ten Commandments. This is the Fourth Commandment, and as I tell people: if I can break the Fourth Commandment, then I can break all the commandments. If I don't have to keep the Fourth Commandment, then I can have idols, disrespect my parents, commit adultery, commit murder, and covet my neighbor's wife. None of that makes any sense. We must try our best to follow the laws, the commandments, the Ten Commandments — the ten words he wrote with his own finger. The Fourth Commandment is the Sabbath commandment:

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of Yahweh your God. In it you shall not do any work — you, your son, nor your daughter, your male or female slave, your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in it, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore Yahweh blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

I love how Moses wrote this, because he always returns the honor to the Creator, to the Father. He reminds us to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy — to rest, to set aside the work of our own hands on that day. This is a set-apart day for fellowship with him, wherever he may lead you. That is not to say you can do nothing on the Sabbath. Yeshua healed on the Sabbath many times. You can take a journey as he did — walk through fields, go to the beach, go to the pond — and have a good time in him. He is the center point of all our lives, but especially on the Shabbat. This is his day. I love how Moses reverts back to him: in six days our Creator worked, and then on the seventh day he set this day apart to remind everyone that it is Yahweh himself who set it apart. Moses confirms that. It is really beautiful when we receive it.

In Hebrews 4:1–7 — believed by some to have been written by the apostle Paul, though the authorship is debated — the writer places a strong emphasis on the Shabbat:

Let us therefore fear, lest perhaps any one of you should seem to have come short of the promise of entering into his rest, his Shabbat. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, even as they also did. But the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not mixed with faith by those who heard it. For we who have believed do enter into that Shabbat, that rest, even as he has said, "As I swore in my wrath, they will not enter into my rest" — although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has said somewhere about the seventh day, "God rested on the seventh day from all his works." And in this place again, "They will not enter my rest."

The writer is reverting us back to Genesis 2. He sees that it remains for some to enter into that rest, and that those to whom the good news was first preached failed to enter because of disobedience. He again defines a certain day, saying through David long afterward, "Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts."

Continuing in verse 9: there still remains a Sabbath-keeping for God's people. That is in the New Testament, in Hebrews 4. The writer is not changing the Sabbath — he is confirming Yah's Sabbath by referencing Genesis 2. We must read the New Testament out of the Torah. Without the Torah, we will not understand the book of Hebrews, Paul's writings, or any of the apostolic writings, because they were all grounded in a Torah-based gospel. We have to put them back in that context, because to do otherwise would be replacement theology.

When we read Paul, or whoever wrote the book of Hebrews, he is telling us how important the Sabbath is — that a Sabbath still remains. People do not realize the Sabbath is a covenant, a very weighty covenant that sets apart his people. Not just the Jewish people, but all believers in Yeshua — set apart in him and in what he has created, not in what mankind has tried to replace with its own holy days. Hebrews 4:9 says there still remains a Sabbath-keeping for God's people. We are all God's people. He commands us, out of the love of our hearts, to obey him and to be on the right Shabbat, demonstrating that we are set apart in him.

We know what Yeshua said in Mark 2:27–28: "The Sabbath was made for the sake of man, not man on account of the Sabbath. And because of this, the Son of Eloah is Adon — Lord of everything in the world, and of the Shabbat."

We must make sure we are in the right theology, the right understanding of the Sabbath. As Yeshua said, this is not a legalistic standpoint — it is a heart posture, a love posture toward the Lord. He says that if we love him, we keep his commandments. That is a weighty word found throughout both the Tanakh and the Brit Hadashah: "if." Yeshua says in John 14...