Do Not Boil a Kid in its Mother's Milk

How you approach what you read, is key to understanding what is being written or said. The Jews seem to approach the scriptures from a physical, worldly approach which always had them running down the wrong road of understanding. For example they were expecting a Messiah to ride in on a charging stallion and defeat the Romans and set them free from tyranny and make them world rulers. But in rides Jesus on a foal of a donkey and dies instead, as the scriptures prophesied but because of their worldly approach they could not understand.

A great example of this is found in Exodus 23:19; 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21; “You are not to boil a young goat in the milk of its mother.”

To the Jews having the same commandment repeated 3 times meant it must be very important. So they interpret it from a physical point of view and come up with 3 dietary laws:
You cannot cook a mixture of milk and meat.
You cannot eat a cooked mixture of milk and meat.
You cannot benefit from a cooked mixture of milk and meat. (sell it?)

Therefore in most orthodox Jewish homes there are two sets of cooking pots and utensils, one set for cooking meat and one set for cooking dairy products. Portions of either product may lock into the pots and utensils thus contaminating the meal by mixing milk and meat and thus condemning the ones partaking of the meal that has been prepared. In fact some rabbis teach that you cannot serve milk on the table when meat is present in fear of mixing the two in your mouth and violating the commandment. You cannot eat meat for a few hours after eating dairy products for fear of some residual product still in your mouth. You cannot eat dairy for 12 hours after eating meat because meat can be lodged between teeth and so last that much longer in your mouth and thus causing you to break the commandment.

The whole exercise is utterly foolish, especially to those who view the scriptures from a spiritual standpoint. The law is given to a people who are to be herdsmen for the next 40 years and then farmers when they live in the promised land. The law is concerning a mother and her kid and not the milk and the meat.

As herdsmen having animals in close quarters with you is expected ,especially when you live a nomadic lifestyle. I believe the commandment is to bring to them an awareness of compassion for their animals. The milk of the mother is what the young goat was nurturing on and now to kill and cook it in the presence of its mother is totally insensitive. But it is only an animal. When people lose compassion for their livestock they begin to lose compassion for people.

When cats in the neighborhood are found cruelly killed, the police are called in because the fear is the next step is to be abusive to people. Is God worried about eating milk and meat cooked together? Absolutely not, the focus is on a mother’s milk and her kid being cooked in it. The focus is to be compassionate to your animals, so you will be more compassionate to your people. Farmers kill their livestock but I’ll bet the compassion they have for those creatures, is more than we have who do not raise them.

Jump to the New Testament and John 6 and here we find Jesus dealing with a large following of disciples who are Jewish and the big lesson they are in need of is to think spiritually not physically. They are following because they want physical food. (They are coming to church because of the cool programs, great music, fun games.) So Jesus says, John 6:53 “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.”

Many of His disciples leave because they interpret his statement from a physical point of view. To follow Jesus you have to make the leap and think in the spiritual realm, His flesh and blood represents the Word of God, this is the bread we are to feed on everyday if we hope to survive. No Peter did not fully understand but he knew Jesus was the Son of God and in time I would understand, John 6:68; “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.”

It is not programs or entertainment that draws the true disciple, for when the fun stops so do they. Jesus never fed anybody physically until He taught them first. He heals people after they come to Him because they heard. Not sure where the idea “satisfy their needs first then we can teach them” comes from. In rare cases Jesus may heal someone before they have heard of Him but to build a system of social programs in order to attract disciples is physical thinking not spiritual.