JANUARY 9, 2023 Deuteronomy 4:40 You shall therefore keep His statutes and His commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time. It is made abundantly clear in this […]
JANUARY 8, 2023 Deuteronomy 4:39 Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the Lord Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. Before we move on from this verse, let us again consider the importance of knowing God as opposed to knowing about Him. When the Almighty spoke to Moses in regard to […]
When Jacob first went down to Egypt, he went only to sojourn there until the famine had passed. It was supposed to be temporary. But the temporary stay turned into what looked like permanent residence. They settled, and they prospered. They might have remained in Egypt, happy and well fed. Life in Egypt was good. Perhaps it was too good.
Happy, well-fed, and prosperous, the children of Israel could have easily forgotten about their great spiritual heritage. Content with the comforts and luxuries of Egypt, they might have abandoned their aspirations of inheriting Canaan. Who would want Canaan when he already had Egypt?
The children of Israel found their situation in Egypt suddenly reversed when the Egyptian government forced the Hebrews into servitude. A person becomes accustomed to privileges and luxuries and begins to think of those things as necessities. Things that, at one time, he could not afford, and therefore did not worry about, become indispensable needs as he prospers. His own wealth and success become “golden handcuffs” from which he cannot escape. While we are in the service of materialism, our spiritual health inevitably suffers. Yeshua warned us, saying, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24).
While in Egypt, Israel was lured by the attractions of Egyptian society. They began to assimilate into the larger culture. Assimilation poses a greater danger to the people of God than persecution. When we are persecuted, we band closely together and firm up our convictions. We remember that we are not part of the greater culture. When we are received into the culture, however, we lose those distinctions, and we begin to lose our identity. We fall sway under the powerful spell of social allure.
The rabbis speculated that something like this was happening in Egypt. One Jewish collection of commentary on the book of Exodus suggests that the Israelites went so far as to quit circumcising their sons so that their children would fit in better with Egyptians:
When Joseph died, the Children of Israel abrogated the ritual of circumcision. They said, “Let’s be like the Egyptians.” Because they quit circumcising themselves, the Holy One, Blessed be He, reversed the Egyptians’ friendly attitude toward them. (Shemot Rabbah 1:8)
Instead of settling down and trying to fit into Egyptian culture, the children of Israel ought to have been looking toward the return to Canaan. By remaining in Egypt, they made themselves (and especially their children) vulnerable to Egyptian culture. They were already entering spiritual enslavement long before their physical enslavement began.
Whether it is the trappings of wealth or the pressures of socialization, we must beware of allowing ourselves to become spiritually enslaved. The children of Israel may have fallen victim to both. Real, physical enslavement followed quickly.
JANUARY 7, 2023 Deuteronomy 4:39 Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the Lord Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. As we discussed in the previous devotion, Moses charged the people of God to go beyond just knowing about God to knowing God — to be in an intimate relationship with […]
JANUARY 6, 2023 Deuteronomy 4:39 Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the Lord Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. There are things that we know about and then there are things that we know. and by that, I mean, we know them intimately — through experience. In that vein, I […]
JANUARY 4, 2023 Deuteronomy 4:31 For the Lord your God is a merciful God, He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them. As Moses prophesied, when God’s people who were scattered throughout the nations found themselves in great distress, they would begin to seek the LORD and turn […]
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