WORD STUDY CHALAL OR HALAL הלל חלל

Transcription

1 WORD STUDY CHALAL OR HALAL הלל חלל Isaiah 56:6: Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the LORD, to serve him, and to love the name of the LORD, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from profaning it, and taketh hold of my covenant; We now approach the second to the last condition to find joy in the house of prayer and that is to keep the Sabbath and not profane it. This week I am working with the editor for Whitaker House who will publish my new book Hebrew Word Study Revealing the Heart of God. It will be released June 21 but is on Amazon for pre-order (hint, hint). I had a chance to review the first chapter in my book which is on the Sabbath and was going to just repeat what is in my book but say, and then you won t purchase my book. So rather than issue a spoiler alert, I will just bypass this study on keeping the

2 Sabbath and discuss what it means to profane the Sabbath. You will have to purchase my book this spring to discover what it means to keep the Sabbath from the Hebrew. You might be in for a surprise. So we are not only to keep the Sabbath but we are not to profane it. What does it mean to profane the Sabbath? Could you and I be guilty of doing such a thing? Profane is such a harsh word and surely we would never be guilty of such a thing or could we? The word profane in Hebrew is chalal. This is totally the opposite of halal (praise) yet the words are so similar that we could easily mistake the two. The only difference is that the word chalal is spelled with a Cheth and the word halal is spelled with a Hei. Even the Cheth and the Hei are identical except that the Chet looks like a three sided rectangle. The Hei looks like a three sided rectangle only there is a little space in the upper left hand corner of the rectangle. Other than that, if you don t look closely or the light is dim you could easily overlook that little space in the right hand corner of the rectangle and call it a Cheth (profane) rather than a Hei (praise). I believe God inspired the Hebrew language and devised it this way to show how easy it is to move from praising God to profaning God. We could do it without even realizing it. The word chalal which is rendered as profane in some translation is also rendered as pollute in others. Some render it as desecrate and another says defile. Yet, that just doesn t give us specifics as to what profaning, polluting, desecrating or defiling the Sabbath really means. It only tells us what we have done, but not how we have did

3 it. Yet, if we trace this word chalal back to its Semitic origins we discover exactly how we can profane the Sabbath. It comes from an old Canaanite word used by shepherds who blow on a flute to call the sheep to him. Sheep respond to a certain sound on the flute. However, if a caravan or travels go by the shepherd will begin to blow the flute avoiding the sound that would call the sheep to him. He would play the flute to call attention to himself. Since he was no longer in tune with the sheep, the sheep would ignore the sound of the flute and the shepherd would receive the attention, usually from the travelers wondering what that gad awful noise was. A friend of mine said how she grew upon taught that on the Sabbath she was to be in tune with God. To her being out of tune with God was profaning the Sabbath. On the Sabbath we assemble ourselves with others who also love God. We all tend to make a noise unto the Lord. If we make a noise of song, prayer, worship or praise to God we do it to draw attention to God. But just as chalal and halal are so easily mistaken, many times under the guise of calling attention to God what we really are doing is calling attention to ourselves. That is what it means to profane the Sabbath, to use it as an opportunity to call attention to ourselves rather than to God. Just as it is so easy to confuse the Cheth or the Hei so it is oh so easy to confuse that worship team as calling attention to themselves rather than to God or for that pastor to call attention to himself rather than God, for you who are called upon to open in prayer to pray beautiful, lovely words that call attention to yourself rather than God. If you do so you are profaning the Sabbath. When I was in the ministry somehow as the pastor or the

4 teacher, it fell upon me to offer an invocation, benediction or a blessing before a meal. I would say some beautiful prayers. Oh the thees and thous would flow to warm the heart of Daniel Webster himself. I would rehearse my prayers and choose just the right words that would warm the hearts of the brethren. One day as I was praying in public showing off my great oratory I noticed that my shoes needed a shine. I figured I would shine them when I got home but I would need to stop and pick up some shoe polish at Walgreens first. I had the words of my prayer so well-rehearsed that I did not even need to think about what I was saying so I could easily concentrate on how I was going to get my shoes shined. I mean who listens to these spot loyalty oaths anyways, if you were God would you? I decided then and there if I ever left the ministry and I would never again pray in public even if called upon to do so because I realized I was profaning, chalal the name of God. If I pray in public on Sunday I stand a good chance of profaning the Sabbath because I would be praying, not to God but to draw attention to myself. I am not condemning public prayer, I am only saying that I personally have a problem about drawing attention to myself and I will withdraw from any activity where I may be attempting to cause people to notice all my fancied abilities rather than draw people to God. This is my own personal problem not yours. But if it is yours you might want to consider that if you are not joyful during a prayer meeting, perhaps thou too profanest the Sabbath. If the only joy you receive is being recognized as a spiritual giant that will be the only joy you get and don t count on getting the joy of the Lord. Whoever gets the attention will get the joy and if it is God, at least you get to share in His joy.

5 WORD STUDY SERVE SHARATH עבד שׁרת ABAD Isaiah 56:6: Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the LORD, to serve him, and to love the name of the LORD, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the sabbath from profaning it, and taketh hold of my covenant; So my last study looked at the first condition to receiving joy from the Lord during a prayer meeting and that is to join ourselves with the Lord. The next condition is to serve Him. When we talk of serving the Lord we think of being a pastor or missionary. Some of us are charitable enough to say that cleaning the church building after a service is serving the Lord. I agree that is abad serving the Lord. However, the word used in this part of the verse for service is not abad but sharath which also means to serve but as the Talmud

6 teaches that there are no synonyms in the Classical Hebrew we need see the difference between these two words abad and sharath. Abad has the idea of serving in the sense or doing work for a master or employer. Abad is often rendered as a slave. God is not calling us in this part of the verse to be His slave. Sharath which is sometimes rendered as servant is really the word for minister. Sharah is a level much higher than an abad or slave. It is the word used for Joseph who served Potiphar. Joseph was the chief servant who was loved and respected by his master. An abad is often just be another mule to his master. Ah, but a sharath is a beloved servant, sometimes a bond servant. You may take a whip and punish an abad, but you would never think to whip or punish a sharath, A sharath serves his master because he loves his master. If Joseph was just an abad to Potiphar he would have had Joseph executed on the spot when his wife said he raped her. Instead he put him in the royal prison. The royal prison was not a penitentiary it was more like a lock up until your case can be heard. They did not have a writ of Habeas Corpus in those days. They locked you up in a holding or detention cell until your case could be heard before the Pharaoh. Unfortunately Pharaoh s are very busy people and conducting a hearing for some person accused of treason was not on his priority list. Thus Joseph asked the cup bearer to remember him to the Pharaoh. In other words: Would you tell the old boy that I am rotting away here in this prison waiting for my case to be heard. Actually, the royal holding cell was the best place to put Joseph. Potiphar could not have set Joseph free because he was a slave accused of raping the wife of a government official. Even if he were set free he would still be a fugitive. Potiphar could have sold him but then his new

7 master might not be so benevolent and besides with the accusation of rape on his head, he would not sell for much if at all. Yet, Potiphar had to do something as the wife of high official was crying rape. By putting Joseph in prison rather than executing him or selling him off he was literally telling his wife: I think you are lying and we will have a civil trial under Pharaoh where his case could be heard. The point is that an abad would never be given a fair trial, especially before the Pharaoh, but a sharath would be deserving of such high treatment. When we serve God as a sharath we are not serving him out of duty or fear of punishment, we are serving Him out of love. We serve Him gladly and joyfully and with that comes perks and priviledges. Years ago there was a television show called Family Affair where the British actor Sebastian Cabot played Giles French a Gentleman s Gentleman. He would just bristle when someone referred to him as a butler or servant. He was a gentleman s gentleman, a personal valet attending to all the personal needs of his employer. He took great pride in his role. It was not a job, it was not duty, it was a profession, a privilege to serve his employer. He just did not do the things he was told to do like an ordinary servant an abad. He looked for things to do, he looked for ways to help his employer and he did it with dignity and grace. If he ever brought any shame to his master he would die of humiliation. He would serve his employer putting the needs of his employer above his own. That is the sharath, the service we have for God, we are God s gentleman s gentleman. When God says in Isaiah that we will have joy in the house of prayer if we serve Him he is saying we will have joy when we serve him out of joy, we find our joy in our service to him just as Mr. French found his identity

8 and his joy in just serving his employer Mr. Davis, even if it meant the distasteful role of being a nanny to his employer s nephew and niece. Now that I built you up let me tear you down, because next we read that we are to be His servants and here the word is, oh my gosh, abad. Yep, not only are we to be the trusted, beloved servant but the slave as well. That would be almost contradictory except that this word abad is preceded by the words to love the name of the Lord. The word love is ahav. The word name represents the reputation and the work that God does. If we love his work and reputation we would willing to become slaves to God. In a sense Mr. French was a slave to Mr. Davis. He was on call 24/7 and Mr. Davis could at any time terminate him from his employment. The word ahav rendered as love is a human love, it is really the best we can produce in love. God can have a higher love, racham, but the best we can do is ahav. Thus if we really ahav God, then we would have no problem lower ourselves to the level of a slave for the sake of the God we ahav, love. More than that. A sharath is a high level servant, with lots of perks. An abad is the lowest level with few or no perks. To be joyful in the house of prayer we must not only consider ourselves a sharath one of God s gentleman s gentleman with lots of perks and privileges but we must be willing to serve God as an abad where we may not get paid so well, in fact we must be willing to throw that ten dollars in the offering plate and not get a hundredfold return, maybe no return at all. In this country we are mostly sharath s to God, we get many benefits from our service to God, but in many parts of the world there are those who are abad s who are tortured and die for God. Yet we all have one thing in common, we all ahav love God. When our world collapses, we give everything away

9 for the name of God and we get nothing in return and we may move from a sharath to an abad, there is one thing that will never change, our love for God.