I have entitled this teaching, “God’s Fragrance” and how its fragrance it’s connects with Pesach, the Counting the Omer and Shavuot.
Today is the 13th day of the counting marking the barley harvest and the wheat harvest. On this day the portion from Ps.119 are from verses 97-104:
מ MEM
97 Oh, how I love Your law! (Torah – teachings) It is my meditation all the day.
98 You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies;
For they are ever with me.
99 I have more understanding than all my teachers,
For Your testimonies (statements that praised endorse) are my meditation.
100 I understand more than the ancients,
Because I keep Your precepts. (A command that relates to moral conduct)
101 I have restrained my feet from every evil way,
That I may keep Your word.
102 I have not departed from Your judgments, (decisions)
For You Yourself have taught me.
103 How sweet are Your words to my taste,
Sweeter than honey to my mouth!
104 Through Your precepts I get understanding;
Therefore I hate every false way.
(Statutes – legal laws governing the land)
Many people read the entire 150 Psalms during the Omer period.
Psalm 67 is the main Psalm read throughout the Counting of the Omer;
God be merciful to us and bless us,
And cause His face to shine upon us, Selah
2 That Your way may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations.
3 Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You.
4 Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy! For You shall judge the people righteously, And govern the nations on earth. Selah
5 Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You.
6 Then the earth shall [b]yield her increase; God, our own God, shall bless us.
7 God shall bless us, And all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.
It is this time of the year in Israel when the almond tree blossoms at the end of winter and their fragrance fills the land of Israel.
The tree has five petals, representing God’s grace and links to one of the earliest prophecies of Jer. 1:11-12 we read: “Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Jeremiah, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘I see a branch of an almond tree.’ Then the Lord said to me, ‘You have seen well, for I am watching to perform My word.’”
The Hebrew word for almond is “shaked”, which can also be translated to “watch”. By seeing the almond branch, God assured Jeremiah in a play of words to “…watch or wait (shoqedh) to perform His word.” That in the fullness of time He would send Yeshua into the world to save sinners (Gal 4; Rom 5). And believers are exhorted also to “watch and pray” to prepare ourselves for His return. And it’s this hope which keeps us pure and free from every manifestation of deception.
And as we keep our eyes fixed on Him He will find His bride pure and spotless on His return. Phil.1:6 tells us that “That good work which God has begun, He will bring to completion unto the Day of Messiah.”
By faith, we believe it; by faith we receive it, by faith we are sustained by it and breathe in its scent like the fragrance of the almond blossoms! This is the same fragrance that Paul refers to in 2Cor.2:14:
“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Yeshua, and through us spreads and makes evident everywhere the sweet fragrance of the knowledge of Him. 15 For we are the sweet fragrance of Messiah [which ascends] to God, among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; 16 to the latter one an aroma from death to death but to the other an aroma from life to life [a fragrance, living and fresh].”
How do these things relate to the present? Many Jewish people today are being confronted with the Jewish Jesus and faced with the dilemma that maybe His life and claims He made about himself were actually in direct alignment and fulfilment of Scripture? Maybe they just missed it the first time round? This is not a comfortable thought, and the answer to the question is often to simply ignore the elephant in the room.
Recently a lot of attention has been given in social media to a tiny ultra-orthodox Jewish faction who crowded the Western Wall paying homage to a person who they claim falsely is the Messiah. But it does reflect a desperation to embrace a messiah whose coming they believe is imminent.
And it is because of this that they will ultimately be deceived into embracing a false messiah who will be eventually revealed as the Anti-Christ. But, God always has the last word and has made it known through Scripture that before His Second Coming, “All Israel will be saved. “ (Zech 12:10):
God can do anything. He could even, as the Talmud states, “…fit an camel through the eye of a needle.” Would He make the camel smaller or would He expand the eye of the needle? Neither. The camel would remain big, the eye of the needle small and He would fit the camel through the eye of the needle. Totally illogical but then logic is just another of His creations. He who created logic is permitted to disregard it.
There may be a lot of ‘camels’ entrapped within the hearts of the Jewish people but God is able to squeeze them even through the eye of a needle if He so chooses.
A few days ago we commemorated Yom Ha Shoah, a terrible period in Jewish history. It was the Christian church who carried out this horror, not Muslims, Buddhists, or Jews who degraded and murdered people just because they were Jews. It was Protestant christians, it was Catholic christians who went to church and sang, “A mighty fortress is our God…” What kind of perfume has it been spreading to the world?
The sad reality is that throughout the past 2 millennia the church has instigated pogroms, inquisitions, crusades, expulsions, blood libels and other evils with fuelled by the demonic spirit of anti- Semitism. Only a tiny remnant of individual believers in history have been a blessing to the Jewish people, so then why would anyone ever be attracted to becoming a follower of Yeshua?
The answer lies in the fragrance of Yeshua’s love like the almond blossoms Pesach. It is God’s prophetic sign for the Jewish people, but they have yet to embrace it as a nation: Paul wrote in Rom 11, “So then, Israel failed to achieve what it had strived for.…
8 Just as it is written: God granted them a spirit of deep slumber. He closed their eyes to the truth and prevented their ears from hearing up to this very day…
11 So, am I saying that Israel stumbled so badly that they will never get back up? Certainly not! Rather, it was because of their stumbling that salvation now extends to all the non-Jewish people, in order to make Israel jealous and desire the very things that God has freely given them. 12 So if all the world is being greatly enriched through their failure, and through their fall great spiritual wealth is given to the non-Jewish people, imagine how much more will Israel’s awakening bring to us all!”
The nations of this world are gathering against the Jewish people and the Land of Israel as has never before. The storm clouds have gathered, unprecedented since her deliverance 3500 years ago from the Egyptians.
But Scripture tells us how God will work in the hearts of His covenant people in the Last Days and He will never abandon them. In Rom 11:25-26: “For, brothers, I want you to understand this truth which God formerly concealed but has now revealed, so that you won’t imagine you know more than you actually do. It is that stoniness, to a degree, has come upon Isra’el, until the Gentile world enters in its fullness; 26 and that it is in this way that all Isra’el will be saved.”
In these times, we are seeing all the jigsaw pieces coming together with Israel as centre stage. We have entered into times where we are called to stand up for righteousness and fight every appearance of evil and deception with every fabric of our being employing every resource that He has made available to us.
This is how we become heroes of faith as those listed in Heb.11. Let’s trust Yeshua in every circumstance. And as Scripture encourages us, “therefore, also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking unto Yeshua, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Raphael ben Levi
www.mekudeshet.co.za
