JANUARY 3, 2023 Deuteronomy 4:30 When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days. As I said yesterday, rabbinical commentators believe that this last day “revival” described above will come during a time of great distress just before the Messianic age. Messianic fervor and the expectation of redemption will be […]
JANUARY 2, 2023 Deuteronomy 4:30 When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days. Moses prophesied to the people that they would, in time, be scattered through the nations and made to be servants to gods of wood and stone. However, in their exile and servitude, they would begin to […]
JANUARY 1, 2023
Deuteronomy 4:29
But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.
It is interesting and a bit pathetic that, in our human frailty, we often fail to appreciate what is before us. By that I mean, rather than appreciating what we do have, we long for what we think we don't have. Likewise, have you ever met a person who can't seem to enjoy the present because they are too fixated on the past or overly concerned about the future? Far too often, it takes losing what they do have — including their families at times — to shake them from their selfish stupor. Only then do they seem to recognize that they had everything they needed all along.
I will suggest that this is what is hinted at in the verse above. Only when Israel had been exiled from the land of milk and honey and reduced to serving idols of wood and stone would they come to realize that they had exchanged blessings for curses. Nevertheless, God would use this sad state of affairs — in servitude to strangers — to provoke them to “seek the LORD.” Not only would they search for Him, but if they did so wholeheartedly, they would “find” Him. And thus, we are reminded that God is the only One who can take a bad situation and make something good come from it. Moreover, we are reminded of this life-saving principle: if we pursue God, we will not be disappointed. Messiah said:
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8).
Whatever our circumstances, even when it is the consequence of our bad choices, God is not so far away that He can't be found. He isn't so far removed that He can't hear us when we call out to Him. The key is to seek His face with everything we have — all our heart, all our soul and all of our strength. He wants us to completely turn our zeal and passion away from our other love interests and focus it all on Him. In short, He wants to see whether we really love Him the way we say that we do. So should we give to Him anything less than our whole heart? To those who may feel as if they are in exile, far away from home, forgotten and lost, remember the words He spoke to errant Israel: “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear” (Isaiah 59:1).
Jacob made his son Joseph swear that he would not bury him in Egypt, but that he would be carried to the land of Israel and buried with his fathers Abraham and Isaac in the Machpelah cave. He said, “Please do not bury me in Egypt, but when I lie down with my fathers, you shall carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial place” (Genesis 47:29-30).
Jacob's insistence on being buried in the family tomb back in the land of Canaan indicates that, even in death, he still believed in the Abrahamic promises. He believed the land of Canaan would one day belong to his children, and he wanted to be buried there. Moreover, Jacob believed in life after death. That is what he means when he told his sons, “I am about to be gathered to my people” (Genesis 49:29). Jacob anticipated being reunited with his forefathers.
Some cynics say that religion is a crutch for people who fear death. That may sometimes be the case, but it certainly does not apply to those who study Torah. The Torah does not say much about life after death. It's really not a book about how to go to heaven or what happens after we die. The Torah is more concerned with how we live in this lifetime, not the next. It is possible to read the entire Torah and conclude that there is no afterlife or resurrection from the dead. In the days of the apostles, a sect of Judaism called the Sadducees did exactly that. They read the Torah, did not see anything about an afterlife, and concluded that there is no afterlife, no heaven or hell, no resurrection from the dead.
Another sect of Judaism from the days of the apostles disagreed. They were called the Pharisees. They read the same Torah as the Sadducees, but came to a different conclusion. Though the Torah is not a book about the afterlife or how to receive eternal life, the Pharisees found many hints and clues that pointed toward the afterlife and the resurrection from the dead.
Once, a Pharisee named Rabbi Simai was arguing with the Sadducees. They asked him to prove from the Torah that the dead would be raised.
Rabbi Simai said, “From where in Torah do we learn the resurrection of the dead? From the verse, ‘I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan.' It doesn't say ‘[to give] you'; it says ‘to give them.' Therefore [since Abraham, Isaac and Jacob haven't yet received the land] the resurrection of the dead is proved from the Torah.” (b.Sanhedrin 90b, Talmud, quoting Exodus 6:4)
Rabbi Simai's point is that God promised to give the land to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—not just to their descendents. Yet, as the writer of the book of Hebrews points out, the patriarchs “died in faith, without receiving the promises” (Hebrews 11:13). God must keep His promise, but in order to do so, He will have to raise the patriarchs from the dead. This explains why Jacob was so adamant about being buried in the tomb of his fathers in the land of Canaan.
Part of life is preparing for death, and part of preparing for death is preparing for life after death. Jacob prepared for death in full confidence because he had a relationship with the living God.
Vayechi – ויחי : “And he lived” Torah : Genesis 47:28-50:26 Haftarah : 1 Kings 2:1-12 Gospel : Matthew 26-28
DECEMBER 31, 2022
Deuteronomy 4:27-28
And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. And there you will serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell.
Imagine a scenario in which one member of a marriage has eyes for someone else outside of the marriage. The faithful spouse perceives this and warns the one with the wandering eye to be careful and to stay away from the person they find so alluring. Unfortunately, the one refuses to heed the warning and continues flirting with this other person, falling more deeply into the seduction. Eventually, the faithful spouse has had enough and says to the unfaithful one, “Leave, and go be with the one you really love. But be prepared to deal with the consequences.” In a nutshell, that is what Moses warned would happen if Israel pursued the gods of the land.
In fact, he didn't say “if” this happens but “when” this happens they would go into exile and serve “the works of men's hands, gods of wood and stone.” If they were so enthralled by these “nothing gods,” they would end up serving them in the nations where they were venerated. If their hearts were bound to go after the gods of Babylon, then their bodies would end up in Babylon — in chains. It would seem that this fascination with pleasing the world has not stopped even now. Consider this: the United Nations has never been a friend to Israel, and yet, decade after decade, the nation of Israel seems ready to comply with most anything the UN wishes to hand down — all for the sake of being accepted by the nations.
Here is the reality for God's people: if we are determined to seek out and embrace the values of the world, then eventually, we will be in servitude to the world. To gain acceptance by this world means we must be polluted by the world's values. If that happens, we will end up acting like the world which, in turn, means that we will cease serving our purpose — being a light to the world. And so it is that God uses this scenario to teach His people a valuable lesson which is — it really isn't so bad in our Father's house. Even the servants have it good there.
So if He must, He'll send us away to the embrace our other lovers and, consequently, allow us to lose everything. He'll allow us to experience great suffering to the point that we are reduced to feeding pigs — but all in the hopes that we will come to our senses and return to Him. But here is the good news — it doesn't have to be that way at all; instead, we can determine to be faithful to Him. In reality, anything in this world that would lead us astray has been, in some way, fashioned by the hands of men, meaning it is temporal and not eternal. In short, it is worthless. So let us be careful not to turn away from our Master and thus avoid the pitfalls of this world. Let us keep our eyes fixed on the Author and Finisher of our faith and be the one He calls “Faithful.”
DECEMBER 30, 2022 Deuteronomy 4:25-26 When you beget children and grandchildren and have grown old in the land, and act corruptly … and do evil in the sight of the Lord your God to provoke Him to anger … you will soon utterly perish from the land which you cross over the Jordan to possess. The generation that first […]
DECEMBER 29, 2022 Deuteronomy 4:24 For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. Yesterday, we addressed the fact that because we serve a jealous God, we mustn’t be tolerate of falsehoods and lies — that would be akin to turning to false gods. Following the example of Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego, we must always be prepared to […]
DECEMBER 25, 2022 Deuteronomy 4:19 Take heed, lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage. Previously, we addressed the notion that heavenly […]
DECEMBER 27, 2022 Deuteronomy 4:20 But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be His people, an inheritance, as you are this day. Moses reminded Israel that they are a people of “inheritance” which is to say that they are a people who are called to be distinct from […]
