ELUL DAY TEN MEDITATIONS

ELUL DAY TEN

POINTS TO PONDER FROM DAY NINE MEDITATIONS

• Are you careful to know that everything you feed your mind, body and soul are acceptable to God? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

•  Were you aware of the depiction of Pan as an idol that was discussed in this meditation?  What came to mind as you pondered this?  Does this fact alert you to pay closer attention to things that sometimes seem innocent yet turn out to be against the ways of God? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

•  Can you see how easy it has become for satan to appear innocent to today’s generation?  Have you noticed how sometimes things hide right in front of our faces? Do you realize how many such things have been handed down through all the cultures of history? ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

•  Pan is just one example of how the culture of today has consumed the ideas of false religion without even noticing.  Can you think of other examples?  Have you become more aware of some false religious practices you have participated in yourself without realizing the fact?  Elul is the time to bring these things before God.  He will open your eyes to truth.  Just knock on the door of The Good Shepherd and ask Him to reveal what is true and what is not. He is ever faithful. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• God warned the Israelites against “drinking blood.” What is the understanding of these words for modern times?__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

•  Have you ever felt called to pray for forgiveness and repent to God for your whole church congregation, your whole community, state, country or the world?  Many pagan sins are corporate sins.  Just because many participate does not mean that God approves.  Can you think of examples of this? Have you given thought to your part in the answer to this problem?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

ELUL DAY TEN – MEDITATIONS

THE CORRUPTION OF FALSE WORSHIP

When the ancient people of Israel were set free from Egypt by God, a hand-full of them were still not so faithful.

Perhaps some of this was out of ignorance. However, not all of it. Some of the people were blatantly disobedient.

Many continued to worship Pan right along with their new habits of worshiping God.

Moses was being instructed by God about how to set this abomination right. He was being told how to correct it.

Many of the people were still dedicating their ordinary food to Pan as a daily sacrifice. This was going on even during the time of the beginning days of the wilderness tabernacle.  At home they would sacrifice to Pan. Later, at the tabernacle, they would bring their sacrifices before the One True God.

Can you believe they expected results from both places?

This terrible pagan practice was an old left-over habit from slavery. Somehow, they had forgotten to put it away.

God was going to make it very clear that they NEEDED to put it away. He would tell them to never return to this pagan practice again.

YHVH hated this practice so much that He emphasized to Moses that ALL generations were to put away any such pagan beliefs and practices.

MODERN TIMES AND WORSHIP

Therefore, when we come to the place of modern-day worship, we must know where our true altar exists.

Now it is in Christ.

He freed us from our sins just as God freed the Israelis from slavery. Our Beloved, Yeshua, Messiah has redeemed us from the bondage of sin.

The Israelites came out of Egypt. We are to come out of the ways of the world.

The blood of Yeshua which give us atonement is the only way we become acceptable to YHVH.  Yeshua, Messiah became the One Perfect Blood Sacrifice for all of humanity.

When we come to Him now and bring our sacrifices in the form of our worship and prayers, these sacrifices MUST be pure and holy and acceptable to God.

Otherwise, we insult our Savior.

The life in His holy blood has made Him the only true Tabernacle from which we are now to worship in holiness.

UNDERSTANDING SYNCRETISM

So, what exactly is syncretism? For the purposes of this study of Elul meditations, you could define syncretism as the practice of mixing or merging scriptural beliefs with other religious practices, such as paganism. God abhors this practice. He speaks strongly against it.

Look at your lifestyle carefully. Are you mixing your desire to follow Yeshua with other religious practices and expecting God to accept them?

All of us are guilty in ways we might not even notice. I used to be guilty of this myself. As a matter of fact I totally convinced myself that because Yeshua was most likely born in the fall of the year, and that would make him born around the end of December, that I could continue to celebrate the world’s practice of Christmas. Yet this practice is not scriptural.

Until about a year and a half ago, I combined my celebration of Yeshua being the Light of the World with the world’s version of Christmas. We called it a celebration of the Conception. Though I realized the world’s concept of this holiday was wrong, I thought I could just combine my updated beliefs and make everything okay. It wasn’t though. I kept trying to make all of the rest of it fit together anyway. This was so wrong. Finally, I confessed my sin to God. He mercifully forgave me and has used my sins of the past as a testimony to many who are wondering what is really true.

GOD MEETS US WHERE WE ARE

As a matter of fact, I haven’t removed my years of past posts of the Christmas seasons for a reason. Traveling to a place of total truth is sometimes a process. I leave them there to remind me of the fact that we all come to know truth one tiny step at a time. I try to be as merciful to those who still believe the trappings of the world’s Christmas as God was to me when I was under the guise of syncretism myself.

If you follow all of my posts of that particular season you can see the little breadcrumbs that finally led me to the conclusion that there was need for a change. After 2024, you can see a drastic change of direction. Before the end of 2024, I was still posting “the truth about Christmas” articles that were only half-way to the truth. One bite at a time finally filled my spirit with the final conclusion. I was led to change directions.

TRADITIONS FOR TRADITION’S SAKE

The traditions of this world are ingrained into our first childish years of formation. Those concepts are very hard to disprove or change, and it isn’t easy for us to let go of them. God has to be the One to change our minds and hearts. He only gives us what we can handle in the course of our own personal journey. Our Father is so patient with us. When we are ready, He shows us more.

There is so much to absorbe whenever someone becomes truly committed to following Yeshua Messiah in spirit and truth. This world has been given thousands of years from which to develop its own version of truth. The enemies of God have been hard at their tasks. Of course, most of what the world teaches us is still false.

I did finally realize from close and careful study of the story of the golden calf and the sin of Israel, how wrong America’s celebrations of Christmas are. I had studied those same verses for years, but the fuller meanings did not become clear to me until a few years ago.

FINDING TRUTH AND STICKING WITH IT

My eyes were opened to the verses contained in Jeremiah 3:1 which plainly refer to the affects of spiritual adultery. I saw how much syncretism was happening, even in my own home when we thought we were trying so hard to stay totally in the truth.

So, yes, we quit observing the birth of Yeshua in December. Now we do recognize this time in the fall at our celebrations of Sukkot, however we do not bring in the worldly practices of the ancient idolators. Christmas in America is full of pagan practices. I’ve come to call it “America’s Golden Calf.”

A deeper study of Nahum, Hosea and Revelation only confirmed this truth even more. However, it all began when I first meditated on the sin of the golden calf during the days of the wilderness tabernacle. God is a jealous husband. If you want more proof of how much God is against spiritual adultery and false worship practices, study the laws of Moses for a jealous husband. It is an eye-opening study for sure.

MOSES AND YESHUA KNEW

Moses had to trade his right to enter the promised land in order for God to forgive this sin of syncretism. God forgave those fickle people because of Moses’ sacrifice of himself for those that he loved. Moses was a shadow of Yeshua for us.

I never want spiritual aldultery, or even its appearance, to stand between me and my Beloved. He died for me. I can surely give up the world’s concepts of Christmas for Him. Once I totally loved all of it. Today, I have absolutely no desire to celebrate Christmas. It wasn’t in the days that God gave to Moses. Yeshua, of course had not come to earth yet, so some might argue with that logic. However, Yeshua never celebrated Christmas either. Our goal is to imitate Him. It isn’t about logic and reason. However, our daily walk is about following Yeshua’s footsteps.

God’s calendar is so FULL. He left nothing out. Every season is celebrated exactly as He has dictated. He gave us all that we needed when He created this amazing calendar for us to use. Everything we need is contained within its times and seasons. I can’t think of a better way to live.

DO NOT BE DECEIVED

You may think you are sheltering your family from standing alone and being different. That should be a priviledge instead of a curse to you. God has said for us to come out of the world. What you may be doing without even realizing is enticing spiritual adultery to be committed by your whole family.

Instead of protecting them, you may be deceived into leading them into a wrong practice. Do you want to look at your children and grandchildren on judgement day and realize you contributed to their participation in a lie that God hates? I know I do not want this on my conscious.

So, now with knowing God’s calendar, our focus has been redirected from the things that allowed the world’s cunning ways of syncretism. Our lives have become so much simpler, happier, less stressful and so full of truth. The truth will set you free.

Those totally beautiful blog posts from our Christmas celebrations of the past hold no comparison in beauty to the place of truth and understanding from which we view things now. The joy of God’s Holy Days, Feast and Festivals completely overshadow those things we did in the past. We’ve learned not to mix these things. It would be syncretism. That is a sin God abhors.

It took a year of being completely faithful to our beliefs during the month of December to know the peace that comes from obedience and the desire to be true to the One true God. Once I had a 12 foot tree. Last year there was no tree. Once I spent a fortune on gifts. In 2025 there were no gifts. I used to plan our Christmas gatherings for months in advance. We did not have a family gathering to celebrate Christmas at all last year. There was nothing to plan. I’ve learned to focus that energy in a better way. Our planning for The Feast of Tabernacles is always so much fun.

JOY IN THE MORNING

Strangely enough, there is an undescribable joy after this commitment to truthful obedience is actually lived out. Some things are never truly understood until you experience them. Following God’s calendar His way instead of our way far surpasses all that the world has to offer.

Also, it is very hard for those who do not desire to come out of the world to understand. We all have our choices to make. They must be done with prayer, study, mercy and love. The only approval we should seek in making such decisions is that of YHVH. The world cannot act as our god. Nor can we allow syncretism to mold us back into what we know isn’t true.

So many truths are twisted on top of so many lies when we decide to add to or take away from the truth of the scriptures. We must stay diligent and discerning in our worship practices toward a very holy God.

OLD PRACTICES DIE HARD

So, how often does this happen in the course of our years of time? Do we remember to forget all of our old ways and bad habits of the times before we knew Yeshua? Or do we come rotely to our times of worship just like those ignorant Israelis did?

Does God need to constantly remind us to put away the old habits? Must He always remind us to come to Him with pure, clean, and unadulterated worship? Can we not remember on our own? Do we not discern what is holy or unholy?

Are we incorporating the ways of the world into God’s ways as we come to our modern-day sanctuaries?

Do we overlook the things that are wrong? Or do we keep adding these wrong things to what is really good and expect God to bless us anyway?

GOD NEVER CHANGES

We might be a lot like those unfaithful Israelis who kept making those daily sacrifices to a pagan god. Yet they kept bringing their offerings to the tabernacle to the One True God also.

He did not accept such things then, and He does not accept them now.

God never changes.

The word for those old Israelis is as true for us today as it was for the Children of Israel back thousands of years ago.  The only difference is that our sacrifice has been made perfect. We should be able to come before God stronger and cleaner than they ever did.

Are we?

Do we?

BOOK

Here is a book from one of my favorite authors titled: Truth, Tradition, or Tare?: Growing in the Word (Books Encouraging the Kingdom of Yeshua Book 4) written by Hollisa Alewine. You may order it here: https://amzn.to/46mR1jS

VERSE

Isaiah 44:9: “All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame”

SONG