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Stop! Do you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible? In order for you to understand the rest of what is written here, you must understand the akedah. Akedah. Now let's repeat something. “The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” (1 Samuel 18:1). What does the Bible say about “soul ties?” If a soul tie is destructive, if it distracts from the work G-d has called you to do, if it is idolatrous, if it lures your attention off of your L-rd and Savior, if Satan is sifting you in his sieve with it, then let’s get some deliverance. There are two images that may help.

One is from Romans 6:4, this is you and your Savior in a kever (burial site, grave). Moshiach made his kever with the wicked, Isaiah 53 says. Who is the wicked? You, of course. The wicked you is in the kever with your Savior. He and you are six feet under. There is no one else to look at down there in that kever. There is no distraction with any other face. Only the face of the Savior can be seen in the kever I am talking about. There are no soul-tie vestiges of your old life without him down there in that kever. The kever means death to your old life. If someone at work reminds you of your first boy friend and you begin to try to look at that, you must remember that the kever means death to that old soul tie. Romans chapter 6 says that you are dead with your Savior. There is no one to look at in your kever with your Savior but your Savior. The repentant thief was as good as dead and buried, but his eyes were only on his Savior. It says he made his grave with the wicked. There was no one else for the repentant thief to look at, hanging there next to him. And that’s a good thing because only his Savior could remember him in paradise. It would have been hopeless to look at anybody else. Who else could save the repentant thief?

Some Jewish people look at their Rebbe. They have a soul-tie with their Rebbe that distracts from the living Moshiach with the empty tomb. This is idolatrous. This is destructive. In the ministry sometimes people put their eyes on the person in the pulpit. The person in the pulpit must decrease. Moshiach with the empy tomb must increase.

The second image is from I Cor 9. It is the image of a person running. But why is he running? He is running so as to attain the heavenly prize. He is running 3,000 feet up in the sky. He is raised with Moshiach in the heavenly places and he is running heavenward with all of his focus on the runner in front of him, Yeshua, his Savior. His old life is in the kever, buried with Yeshua, fixated on Yeshua, the one buried with him. His kever with Moshiach means death to his old life. This is the importance of the tevilah of teshuva, Moshiach’s mikveh mayim. He was buried there when he became a new born believer. But his new life is up 3000 feet in the sky, high above this carnal world with its destructive soul ties and its fearful phantasms. Shimon Kefa was not running there when he took the last meal with his Savior, who warned him that Satan was going to sift him in the sieve. He was so ashamed later when the rooster crowed and it happened. But he repented and a few weeks later was 3000 feet in the sky, high above all of his former soulish fears, preaching fearlessly on Pentecost (Shavuos). The new Shimon Kefa was buried with Yeshua, and running high in the sky with Yeshua. He was free. This must be the goal of every minister, to help the believers understand Romans chapter 6 and 1 Cor 9 and be free, so that each believer can fulfill the ministry the L-rd has given him or her.

This is an illustration that bears repeating. In a surgery room, the male and female surgeons can't be winking romantically at each other; if they do the patient will die on the operating table. As long as they are in the congregation surgery room, they have to be all business, no pleasure, wearing their scrubbed up clean hospital uniform of holiness so that no uncleanness will contaminate the patients for whom Moshiach gave his life to save from eternal spiritual death.

Or, changing the illustration to that of a race, let's imagine the New York City Marathon. All those people. All those sleek runners from Kenya. I Cor 9 says that ONLY ONE wins the prize. Therefore, run in such a way that you may attain. Put on the whole armor of G-d and submit yourself to G-d, resist the devil, and strain forward toward the mark of the upward calling.

Also this bears repeating. When people come into the kehillah they come in families and in friendship groups. If we leaders put a stumbling block in front of the person who brought the group, the unsaved people in the group may be snatched by Satan before we can minister to any of them with a view to their salvation and discipleship. We have to be scrubbed up and clean and prayed up and holy in order to avoid being a stumbling block. If we are not emotionally whole ourselves, we shouldn't be in a position of leadership.

Let me give an example of what I am talking about. Suppose a teenager comes into a congregation and brings unsaved friends of the family. Suppose this teenager has been abused and has no father and is precocious and tends to act in a flirtatious manner toward one of the leaders. Now the leader may say to himself, "I'm not at all attracted to this child, so all I have to do is avoid being alone with her and try to tell her about the L-rd." This is not true. If the teenager tells jokes, the leader may try to be polite and laugh at the jokes. However, the teenager may interpret such laughter as reciprocating and welcoming her flirtatious showing off in front of him. Perhaps the teenager is rather innocent, just trying to be perceived as an adult and an attractive one at that. However, IF she MISPERCEIVES any flirtation coming from the leader (i.e., he laughs at her jokes, and such laughter is misread as flirtation in her teenage mind), then the leader can no longer correct her because she quickly writes him off as a "dirty old man." Therefore, the leader must have a certain clinical professionalism with the teenager, a certain prophetic remoteness, a certain clean fatherly "arms length" holiness. The leader may want to relax and let his hair down in a stressful ministry and laugh at her jokes, but he dare not because the laughter can be misinterpreted. If the teenager develops an emotional adulation (we aren't even talking about a "crush" or "falling in love," just an emotional adulation), then this can quickly turn into loathing or disgust, if the teenager has had a bad experience in the past with father-figures or men in general. So the leader knows that if he loses his ability to speak godly counsel into her life and she storms out of the congregation, then the unsaved people she brought with her as visitors to the congregation will be lost in the shuffle. If you aspire to leadership in the kehillah, do you understand that this collateral damage will be reckoned against you on the day of eternity if you are not sober in your ministry role? Every minister, including the lady workers in the congregation, knows that he or she will be more severely judged (Ya 3:1). And remember, even a lady's innocent stare can be misinterpreted as a flirtatious invitation. Can we learn from this leader's mistakes? The leader was never alone with the teenager, but that didn't suffice. He should never have allowed the teenager to hug him; he should have shaken hands and nothing more. She could have hugged any female member of the congregation she wanted, not him. He should never allowed her to join the leader's "Fan Club" (the Kehillah is Hashem's "Fan Club" and when people start putting their eyes on ANY OF THE LEADERS, then they are making provision for the flesh and making place for the devil. So the leader should have taken steps to combat the teenage adulation from the outset. For instance, if she gave him a smile of admiring adulation, then the leader should not have returned any look whatsoever but ignored her and gone into prayer or some other activity to take the teenager's mind in a heavenly direction. He should never have allowed the teenager to speak to him as if she were "on his level." If he had maintained a certain prophetic distance by not laughing at her jokes, jokes that were in her teenage mind not mere jokes but were in fact her means of taking a "sounding" (a nautical metaphor meaning dropping a weight on a line to see the depth of the water) as to her attractiveness to the opposite sex, then things might have turned out differently. By being straight-faced and sober and professional the leader would not have been perceived as just another man, actually a "dirty old man." He should never have given her any gift. A seemingly harmless gift, even if every woman in the congregation received the same gift, can be misread as something more. She needed counselling from a female leader, not a potentially "emotionally loaded" gift from a male leader. She needed to be divested of her teenage adulation and come to that maturity that sees the leader as a holy person with a holy office. If she was too immature to see that, he should have avoided her until she learned not to indulge her Ya 1:14-16 yetzer hara delusions, lest they become his delusions. See II Tim 3:13. Once there was a single male minister who was doing telephone ministry with a person named "Donna." Apparently, as the story goes, she became very aggressively flirtatious on the telephone and the minister's vanity was more than a little titillated. It isn't every day that someone finds you attractive kind of thing. However, now hear this: the minister was punished severely by the L-rd because when "Donna" finally showed up in person at the congregation, lo and behold, "Donna" was actually "Don," a man who had had a gender-change operation! So the minister was being flirted with by a man! Served him right, this minister who should have known better than to have his vanity massaged in that way on the telephone! The telephone was for soul-winning, but Satan saw another opportunity, and the minister made provision for his flesh and was punished. Whenever you stubbornly refuse to keep to the professionalism of your holy office in the kehillah, you can be sure of this, "Your sins will find you out." Don't aspire to the ministry if you don't want the sobriety and if you can't keep your hands off of the merchandise. These people don't belong to you. They belong to Moshiach. He made the purchase of their redemption by the costly blood price Moshiach paid as the Seh HaElohim of Isaiah 53:7. These people are entrusted to you by Moshiach. It is a holy trust. Keep your hands off the merchandise. You also have to keep not only your eyes ("I've made a covenant with my eyes" Job 31:1), but also your heart ("above all guard your heart" Prov 4:23; 6:25), and your vanity (Prov 31:30 KJV) off of the merchandise. These are people for whom Moshiach died. In our oversexed society, where we have to have "Oversexed Anonymous" meetings along with AA meetings in the congregational meeting hall, we have to remember that the Kehillah of Moshiach is not a Marriage Market Shopping Maul or fast food dating club. It is a soul-saving station. People need to be corrected, but ministers who do not keep a certain clinical holy "set apartness" cannot correct with holy love, so we must not even be PERCEIVED to be carnal, we must be above the APPEARANCE of evil. The leader mentioned above should not have leaned on his own understanding but should have prayerfully tried to understand the teenager's feelings. Just because he was not attracted to her means nothing. If SHE THOUGHT he was attracted to her, from HER point of view, there would be disrespect (other men had hurt her and he would be perceived as just another hurtful "other man"). Then, with this misperception in her teenage mind, she would not trust him anymore or take any correction from him. The leader in the kehillah should not allow an "entourage" or "fan club" to develop around him, but should instead see the little people who are going to be lost in the shuffle (like the teenager's family and friends brought by her to the kehillah but now lost to any further attendance because of the way she was mishandled). Remember the people who will never return to your kehillah if the person who brought them is not properly and prayerfully handled. After all, they are only coming on the recommendation of the person who brought them and if that fragile chain is broken, their future visits to your kehillah will be cut short. We who are leaders will have to stand in eternity and give account for those souls (Hebrews 13:17). If you are going to take a leadership position in a congregation you have to count the cost and remember James 3:1, that you will be more strictly judged because you are in a position to take people's eyes off of Moshiach and put them on yourself, thus causing them to be lost and yourself to be judged. The above incidents do not necessarily refer to any persons living or dead, but are given as hypothetical illustrations. Nevertheless, let me reiterate. If you aspire to leadership in the holy kehillah, you should reckon with the fact that the leaders will be more severely judged (Ya 3:1). When you aspire to leadership you are opening yourself to rebuke from the L-rd. If we make one of these little ones stumble it would be better if we had a chain put around our necks and were thrown into the sea.


This is why every leader should be aware of his own Ya 1:14-16 yetzer hara delusions, lest he deceive himself and others. On the witch's cauldron of deceit called the "flesh" see this lest you wind up like this... 2Ti 3:13. The leaders will have to stand in eternity and give account for those souls (Hebrews 13:17). If you are going to take a leadership position in a kehillah you have to count the cost and remember Ya 3:1, that you will be more strictly judged because you are in a position to take people's eyes off of Moshiach Ben Dovid and put them on yourself, thus causing a stumblingblock for them to be lost and yourself to be judged. If you are not interested in visiting orphans and widows in their distress but rather you want to develop emotional adulation relationships in the kehillah with various members, you should not be in the ministry. Ministers will be held accountable for the souls they dealt with on the day of judgment. Therefore watch your life and your doctrine closely so that you will save both yourselves and those who hear your preaching. Better people get angry at your uncompromising and convicting Biblical preaching AND GO TO HEAVEN ANGRY AT YOU than for them to think more highly of you than they ought and miss out with G-d. Emotional adulation belongs to Hashem, not to us. Moshiach doesn't want you to grow his Shul your way, Moshiach wants to grow his Kehillah HIS holy way. Ministers in the Bible are less like the handsome and glamorous television personalities we see in modern pulpits with their vast television cult of adulation and more like the scrubbed up, clean, lower Gastro-Intestinal doctor who is all business and seriousness as he does a colonoscopy and tries to get past the sewage products of the carnal flesh in order that he might save the patient's life, the patient for whom Moshiach died.(See 1Sm 2:22-25 which shows why a minister must not have an unclean philandering eye but rather the qualifications of [1Ti 3:2 and 1Ti 5:9 and Ti 1:6. Never disrobe from your hospital gown of scrubbed up, disinfected holiness. MAY HE SO STRENGTHEN YOUR HEARTS IN KEDUSHAH THAT YOU MAY BE BLAMELESS BEFORE HASHEM AND AVINU AT THE BIAS MOSHIACH (see 1Th 3:13).

Let me say a word about female workers in the kehillah. They should be warey of giving male congregants gifts of any kind, nor allow their persons to be touched nor laugh at the male jokes and "let their hair down" but keep a kind of dignity that comes from knowing that you lady workers will be held accountable for the souls of the weaker, more immature brethren on the day of judgment. On that Day, the Day of Judgment, you will see clearly that the Kehillah is not a fun-and-games singles club. The Holy Spirit is saying that there is some stuff we may have indulged in in the past with our flesh that the L-rd is not going to put up from now on. To summarize, if I can get some guidelines which are not hard and fast rules but guidelines: aspiring ministers should generally agree to have caution in the following, especially in dealing with people for whom any of this would constitute a temptation: 1) no touching, 2) no gifts, i.e., Valentines etc 3) no receiving or returning admiring glances 4) no "holy" kisses 5) no fan clubs 6) no marriage market window shopping with a lustful eye in the kehillah 7) to be dressed in a non-alluring manner and to be as sober as a judge or a funeral home director in dealing with flirtatious frisky members of the opposite sex! Can we agree in principle? Do not upset the applecart as the L-rd sends people to your kehillah and some are only guests of a particular person who is coming and who, if offended, will exit and take all of the unsaved people with her, some of whom may never darken the door of a kehillah again. Now do you see why you need to have a prayer meeting each week and pray over your guest book so that each person has a chance to hear the plan of salvation?
Make sure you are not backslidden. When you study the book of Hebrews you see that in a persecuted Messianic Synagogue, there are some who are tempted to try to escape persecution brought on by preaching the Besuras HaGeulah to Jewish people. Also in a persecuted Messianic Synagogue there are some craving escape from the persecution pressure by the diversion of seeking carnal knowledge forbidden by Scripture; these same "Esaus" may also sell their heritage as rich fools who also love money's deceitful security. Likewise there are some in a persecuted Messianic Synagogue who are backsliders who want to drift back toward the dead mitzvos and deceitful (i.e., not real) Yiddishkait and pseudo-tranquility of a "Yushka" cursing pseudo-synagogue that denies the Living Moshiach with the Empty Tomb. Therefore if you look at Scriptures like MJ 3:12-13; 10:24-27; 12:1, 16; 13:4-5 you will see that all which is said here is particularly appropriate teaching for a Messianic Synagogue. Look here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

O if you would only be filled with the Holy Spirit, resist the devil, make no provision for the flesh, flee from youthful lusts, and learn of spiritual riches, so that in Moshiach you would become richer by far.

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