Jonathan Bernis - Jewish Voice Bible
Jonathan Bernis: Shalom and welcome to Jewish Voice today. I'm so glad you're here with us, and I'm so glad my dear friend, Daniah Greenberg, is here. And I'm so glad we're talking about the Bible, the Hebraic roots of our faith, through the scriptures, through an incredible new translation. You know, Daniah, I was just thinking about the scriptures. I was reading this morning, and the Lord was speaking to me, and I was thinking, it's so amazing how God brings revelation through his word. I can read a scripture that I've read 100 times, and that morning, that special morning, I read it for the 101st time, and I see it in a whole new way. I get revelation knowledge from the Lord.
Daniah Greenberg: That's right. It's a daily walk. It's a daily walk, presence-driven, just like the children of Israel. We're on a journey together. We all read together, and I was reading the parshah, just shortly before my brand-new first grandbaby came, and I was reading the song of Moses, which I just love. And in the song of Moses, it talks about, I gotta read this one little portion to you, which I thought was so amazing. It says in the song of Moses, about there...
Jonathan Bernis: Give us the reference here.
Daniah Greenberg: I'm going to, I'm gonna get right there.
Jonathan Bernis: I'm not sure everybody knows what the song of Moses is.
Daniah Greenberg: Well, it's right at the end of Deuteronomy, 'cause, you know, Jewish people, they read their Bibles cyclically. They go from Genesis to Deuteronomy, week by week, year after year, and you know, we've been doing this for decades now. So I've read this at least, you know, 20 times, but this time, as I'm reading it, and my granddaughter's about to be born, I'm looking back at those old scriptures, and like a kaleidoscope, you just make a half-a-turn, and suddenly, everything looks different. That's what happened to me. So this was the part that blew my mind.
Jonathan Bernis: Oh, I like that. I like that prop, yeah.
Daniah Greenberg: If you want to know the Jewish roots of the faith, it's because you're looking for a longer vision. If you just look in the short, you know, you can see Yeshua, but if you see Yeshua, you see the Father. But there's so much more to know about the Father, so when you go back and learn the Jewish scriptures, you learn more about that invisible, amazing God.
Jonathan Bernis: And I was sharing in another program we did together, and I think it's worth mentioning again, God is doing something on the earth today, and I see this in church after church, where people are connecting to the Jewish roots of their faith, and one of the things that's coming out of that that's so precious is a new revelation of who the Father is.
Daniah Greenberg: Exactly.
Jonathan Bernis: A relationship with the Father, and it was the Son, it was Jesus, who came to reconnect us to the Father.
Daniah Greenberg: Exactly, because if you don't concentrate on the Father, and you only concentrate on the church being the bride, then you miss us all being his children, who are supposed to love each other.
Jonathan Bernis: Yeah.
Daniah Greenberg: So how am I gonna teach my grandchildren, right, how to love the God of the Bible, when they can't relate to it? You can't hand this book to a little kid.
Jonathan Bernis: You know, God is one, but at the same time, he's uniquely expressed in Father, Son, and Spirit. A triunity, as we Jewish believers say. Not Trinity, but triunity, and getting to know the Father. I think we focused on getting to know Jesus, which is absolutely critical. In him we live, and move, and have our being, but to be connected to the Father, to learn about the Father, and to relate to the Father is just a huge new revelation that I think is something that's happening on the earth today.
Daniah Greenberg: Amen, I agree completely. There's a wonderful way to connect to God, the Father, is to remember this. When we put this particular translation together, we were committed to returning it to the original order of the books, which means it ends in 2 Chronicles, instead of Malachi. Same books, they're just in a different order. The Jewish order preceded the Christian order of the books, the Old Testament. So when you end in 2 Chronicles, it pushes you back to what Jeremiah 31 says. Right, that he was gonna make a new covenant with the house of Israel, right, and they would all know him, from the least to the greatest. There is an amazing revelation in that if we're all gonna know God, to know Yeshua is critically important, because he's like the sight line. He's like the sight line. But if you don't look beyond the sight line to the longer vision, the longer vision is to know God, and God the Father was invisible for 1.400 years before Yeshua arrived. And when he arrived, they didn't even know it was God.
Jonathan Bernis: We come through the Son to the Father.
Daniah Greenberg: That's right.
Jonathan Bernis: And we pray to the Father, in the name of Yeshua, in Jesus' name.
Daniah Greenberg: Which is why it's a relationship, and so, the more time you spend in your Bible, the more that relationship becomes clear, and you, as a child, you have a relationship with God like Yeshua had, right? And in this where it says, this just blew my mind, it said, "Adonai saw" it talks about Moses is at the end of his walk, and he's, like, so frustrated, because he knows when he leaves, they're gonna walk away from God again, because we rebel all the time. And he says it, but the way that he describes it is nowhere else I've found in any other Bible than this translation, and I think it's epic. It says, he says, "At that time, if you walk away from me," he said, "I'll hide my face from them. I want to see their hereafter". In other words, he's hiding from them, but he's still concerned about where they're on their way to. He says, "For they are an upside-down generation, children with no faithfulness in them". What are we gonna do about the upside-down generation issue? Because what that means is that we've put the sons ahead of the fathers, that's what rebellion is. A generation that honors their father and mother, that's, like, one of the Ten Commandments, and yet, we take just, we can get so focused on the near Yeshua, that we forget that there's a Father of eternity who's been crying out.
Jonathan Bernis: Who loves you, by the way, cares about you, cares about your family, cares about your children, and their children, and their children's children. That's the God we serve. Daniah, you know, the Bible, this Bible, the Bible saved our lives.
Daniah Greenberg: It really did.
Jonathan Bernis: The Bible saved our lives, and this is not just an ordinary book. These are the words of life. This is God's word to us, and I just can feel it. I can literally feel it changing me on the inside when I spend time in God's word. Don't you feel that? I love that. The washing of the Word of God, I encourage you to make time every day to read God's word, just to spend time alone reading, meditating, on God's word. It really does change you.
Daniah Greenberg: It changes you from the inside-out. And when we first used to study the Bible together, and then you left to begin giving Bibles out in Russia, I just remember my husband and i, we were so proud of you that you were going to do that, because the Bible had changed our life and had set the course for our marriage, and you were out there, doing it. Signs and wonders, miracles following you. I mean, it was amazing to watch, and now, you know, another 25 years later, we're literally giving Bibles away. You and I get to give, this is our life. We get to give the Word of God away.
Jonathan Bernis: Twenty-five years ago, actually, more, 28 years ago, I was smuggling Bibles into Russia. And I just returned to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the congregation there, and to see...
Daniah Greenberg: But it was your passion for the word, J.B. that's what did it.
Jonathan Bernis: ...And to see not only people that were in the congregation, but their kids and their grandchildren, reading the word.
Daniah Greenberg: Wanting your children to love God the way you do starts with connecting them to this Bible. And for some people, I know for me, it can be a struggle, but God is giving us ways to do it with this Bible.
Jonathan Bernis: God's word is alive and will change your life. This is a fascinating discussion, we have so much more to uncover in the scriptures. We'll be right back after this quick break.
Jonathan Bernis: Hey, welcome back. I'm with the Bible lady, my dear friend, Daniah Greenberg, who I've known for 30 years. And she has done an amazing job assembling Messianic Jewish scholars and Christian scholars to work together to produce a brand-new translation of the Bible, and I believe this is the fulfillment of Bible prophecy, where God declares that he will restore the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He's brought them back to the land, that's Bible prophecy, fulfilled before our very eyes 70 years ago. He has been restoring Jewish people to faith in their Messiah, and now, Jewish men and women are working together to proclaim the Word of God, both in written and verbally. Daniah, give us some examples of how the Hebraic context of the Bible differs from other translations, which are inspired, which communicates God's word, but there's some unique qualities of the Hebraic translation of the Bible.
Daniah Greenberg: Right. I think the best way to describe it is that, just like you unroll a scroll, you can't, like, when you open this Bible, you can open it up to any part you want, and connect it to any other part you want. When you roll a scroll week by week, learning it, and then you go back to the beginning, and every year, you go through it again, and you rewind. It's like rewinding an old cassette tape, in order to hear the song played again. That's what Jewish people have done with the Bible for 3.400 years. And when we fall out of that sequencing, when we stop reading the Bible, we fall into slavery, and we lose our land, and we lose our, it's desperate. Nobody wants to see that happen. So, a clarion call to return to the Bible is the only thing that sets our hearts and our minds at peace with God, and in right order. So this Bible, not only does it show you the Jewish context, but it sets up the divine order of God that, you know, you don't understand what Yeshua's saying and what he's meaning if you don't understand where he's quoting.
Jonathan Bernis: It's laid out differently, the books, the same books are there, but it's laid out in a different fashion.
Daniah Greenberg: But revelation is sequenced. Like, people don't ever really think about that, but we really don't have a time machine, folks. You really can't go back. What you can do is God can change your life, and everything can look different, but you can't physically go back. There's this wonderful thing about following God where every day is a new adventure, every day is a new revelation, every time you open up this book, you're creating a pathway for your spirit to be cleansed by God.
Jonathan Bernis: Yeah. This is a really important point. This book is about relationship. This is not some religion we're involved in. We're in an active, vibrant, living relationship with the Creator of the universe. I'm getting goose bumps as I say that. I can feel the anointing as I say that. God wants a deeper relationship with you. How does he speak to us? He speaks to us through his word. It's alive, it's active, it's powerful. It divides truth from error, it's sharper than any sword. It cleanses us. It restores us into the presence of God.
Daniah Greenberg: It shows us who we are. It's a lens, where we get to see the invisible God who's unchanging, mold us and make us into the image of our Messiah, change us from the inside-out. I'm not the same person that I was even a year ago. Because the continuing transformation of God in my life is because I spend time in my Bible. I don't trust other people 'cause they read the word, I trust other people because I read the word. I love the Bible, and I know that God's truth is unalterable.
Jonathan Bernis: Yeah. You can't borrow anyone's faith. You've gotta get yourself, faith cometh by hearing, how does hearing come? By the Word of God. You get the Word of God into your spirit, by the way, two hearings there, Daniah. The hearing with our natural ears, and the hearing with our spirit. We hear it long enough, as we read it, and eventually, it gets into the hearing of our spirit, and then, when we speak it forth, there's a creative power.
Daniah Greenberg: That's right. And how many times have people outed how they really feel about something by what comes out of their face that didn't travel through their brain first? It came right out of their heart, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. When you spend time in the Bible, when you spend time confessing the word and you spend time crying out to God, and living for God, you will find that everything about your insides change, and you begin to walk by faith and not by sight. I don't walk by what I see, I walk by what I believe.
Jonathan Bernis: Amen. Daniah, real quick, I wanna change directions, because this question came up, and I really wanna ask it. Jewish people, observant Jewish people, won't even write the name of God, let alone pronounce it. Can you help people understand that?
Daniah Greenberg: Yeah. It's really important, that when God revealed himself, right, in the Old Testament, that's what Christians call it, when you read it in the Old Testament, he speaks, and when you read something in the Bible where God is declaring who he is, that's unshakable. When the word Adonai, we use the word Adonai in the Old Testament, so that we don't say the tetragrammaton, which is the four-letter sacred name of God. Right, so there's no vowels in that name, so how can you, that's like trying to say P-Q-T-R. Vowels are what opens your mouth to speak. Without the breath of God flowing through you, you can't utter anything. That's why this Bible can't save anybody unless you open your mouth.
Jonathan Bernis: Yeah, amen. Hey, I wanna make you aware of our new Jewish Voice mobile app, by the way. It's easy to download. You can also view our television program. We have special reports right on the app, and it's free. You just enter "My JVMI" in your app store, and then you download it onto your device, and I hope you'll do it today. Daniah, I have such a strong sense, we've been talking about rebellion, and there's been a cultural shift, away from God, away from biblical principles. God wants to restore families. He wants to draw the children back to the parents.
Daniah Greenberg: Like in Malachi.
Jonathan Bernis: Yeah. Let's focus on that, because there are a lot of people watching right now that are just really reaching out to God for restoration for their children, for their grandkids. You're not alone, and God sees your need, and he answers prayer, and he is about restoration. He's about the restoration of family, and I'm claiming over you, Daniah, I'm claiming, join with me over everyone, that as for me and my household, we shall be saved. Listen, I have two girls, a 13-year-old and a seven-year-old, and I'm burdened with their future. I'm burdened with my desire and God's desire for them to walk with him, and I'm concerned about what's out there.
Daniah Greenberg: And when we spend time in our Bible, and when we are speaking, you know, you don't have to bring your kids to the Bible and read it to them. It will come bubbling out of you the more time you spend in your Bible. And you will speak about God to them when you walk by the way, when you lay down, and when you rise up. The main thing that Jewish people focus on is, right, is to, "Hear, o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one". And teach it diligently to your children, it's a command to the Jewish people. They've been doing it for 3.400 years. The thing that has kept the Jewish people together and alive is a concern for the next generation. We're the children of Israel. We're not the employees or the slaves of Israel. We're the children of Israel, God cares about his children.
Jonathan Bernis: Around this book, this book has the answers. We're gonna take a short break, but I'll be right back with our "Ask the rabbi" segment to answer questions that you've sent in. Also, I wanna take some time to pray for you, to pray for your family, for your needs, because God's listening, so stay with me, I'll be right back after this.