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The Ninth of Av (Tisha B’Av in Hebrew) on Israel’s calendar commemorates the destruction of both the first and second temples by Babylon and Rome, respectively. And the lessons in the Torah reading דְּבָרִים Devarim start the retelling of ancient Israel’s ups an downs in the journey from bondage (Egypt) to freedom (Promised Land).
And that’s a lot like us, easily prone to be tossed back and forth between trust and fear when confronted by life’s challenges.
Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus) quoted from the book of Deuteronomy more than any other book of Torah. It teaches us the heart of the Torah, and we are ready to learn along with the second generation of the Exodus about what God wants form us and how to prepare to enter the Land of Rest.
The first generation post-Exodus refused to go forward into the Land when God was encouraging them to do so. Then once God told them they could not go because they were not ready, but they decided to go into the Land anyway.
If they had entered the Land when God told them, God would have done the hard fighting for them. But when they decided to go forward after God was no longer blessing them, they were fighting in their own strength and lost.
Prepare to overcome
We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.
Archilochus, Greek soldier, 650 B.C.
Whether you are performing music, sports, etc., you have to practice, practice, practice to build up that “muscle memory,” so you can perform at a high level almost without thinking.
You need to practice the walk regularly before you need it, just as a musician practices his instrument regularly before the concert.
Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.
Yeshua, Rev. 2:10 NASB
The one who stands, the one who endures, will get the crown. We have to prepare for different scenarios where we may face temptation. We need to know what tripped up Israel regarding Bilaam, because we will face similar experiences in the end times.
Like our spiritual forerunners in ancient Israel, we have to ask ourselves these questions during our journey from fear to freedom:
- Were we or are we in a “house of bondage”?
- Who freed us?
- Are we still free?
- How far have we come since that deliverance?
Moses is telling the second generation that they have been practicing long enough, now they need to go into the Promised Land and put what they have learned into action.
Moses got in trouble with God because he did not uphold God as Holy, as separate, as the real Liberator of Israel.
The first generation also looked back on their time in Egypt with rose-colored glasses even though they were in abject slavery. Their recollection sounded like “Club Med” when they were more like “Club Dead.” They wanted to remember that they were given lots of food, when in truth, they were victims of genocide in Egypt.
We can be complacent because we are relatively free in America, although in recent times, we are starting to learn how tenuous this freedom is. Our neighbors in Canada are still denying people their right to religious assembly. The Canadians didn’t have a version of the U.S. First Amendment until 1986.1The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted in 1982 and formalized under a judicial test in 1986 by R. v. Oakes. We are blessed that we have had the 1st amendment since the founding of our nation in the late 1700s.
People in Cuba know what it’s like to be in the house of bondage because they are still there. If those in Cuba can see that the ideals of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution lead to more freedom and not less, how much more of a message of freedom do we have as ambassadors of the Author of the “law of freedom”?
God’s festivals: Celebrations of and preparations for deliverance
Three Shabbats around the time of the anniversary of the destruction of the first and second temples (Tisha b’Av, “ninth of the month of Av”) are about introspection. But really the whole festival cycle is established as times of introspection.
The Hebrew word for a Festival (particularly one with multiple days) is khag: חג. The plural of this word is khaggim. Hebrew nouns originate in verbs and the verb form is khagag (חָגַג) (Strong’s lexicon No. 2287). The Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon defines this as making a pilgrimage or keeping a pilgrim-feast.
There’s also a derivation of the word that comes from the idea of wandering or moving in the circuit, which is where we get the the idea that comes down through various ages, that the festivals are a rehearsal. A pilgrimage is coming full circle to God’s appointment. It is a part of a general returning and a cycle of life with God.
Is our life just a series of calamities? We are called to become “mature and complete, lacking in nothing” by growing through the difficulties that life throws at us. We are being prepared to take a stand for truth and righteousness.
3 steps towards rest: Search me, test me, lead me
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.” (Psalm 139:23–24 NASB)
| Psalm 139:1-4 | Deuteronomy 6:6-9 |
|---|---|
| “O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You know it all.” | “ ‘These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.’ ” |
Writing the word on your heart is not a “wishy-washy” action or just an emotional reaction. It’s about training our hearts with the Word of God, so that it enters the core of our being. We can either be conformed to the likeness of Messiah, as the Apostle Paul exhorts us, or we can be conformed to the world. If we conform our hearts to the Messiah, our words will conform to Him. If we conform our hearts to the world, than what comes out will be evil.
We can either be “Messiah in, Messiah out” or we can be “garbage in, garbage out.”
“Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, And I have trusted in the LORD without wavering. Examine me, O LORD, and try me; Test my mind and my heart. For Your lovingkindness is before my eyes, And I have walked in Your truth.” (Psalm 26:1–3 NASB)
Hebrew poetry works a lot on parallels where you have phrases that will parallel each other and either which is helpful, because there are some words especially in the Psalms that are like used once, we would have no idea what the translation of it was, where it not from the parallel ism, where you have the parallel use of it.
The first phrase “walking in my integrity” is not about boasting about one’s moral superiority, means that one is “trusting in the Lord without wavering.” Walking in one’s integrity and trusting in the Lord are Hebrew poetic parallelisms.
“You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.” (Deuteronomy 8:2–3 NASB)
This is a distillation of the early chapters of Deuteronomy. Moses is telling them to remember how they were lead out of Egypt, to the Mountain and then to freedom. This was a humbling process for the children of Israel to walk through.
The rebellion of Korach taught the people that Moses and Aaron were not their leaders on their own. They were simply acting under the authority that God placed on them.
The children of Israel were completely dependent on God, which was part of their training process. When you face adversity, you need to reach out to the One who is leading you. The one who is leading you can help you through whatever you are experiencing. These trust lessons were crucial for the children of Israel, as they are for us.
There were 10 reports of the land that said, “We can’t do this” while there were 2 reports that said, “The One who brought us to this point, can also bring us into the Land.” This was a big test for the children of Israel, that they did not pass. The “bad report” did not come out of nowhere.
“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” (Luke 6:45 NASB)
God freed the children of Israel from a superpower, He took them through the Red Sea. It was a “no-brainer” that they should have believed the two good reports, but they preferred to believe the 10 bad reports instead. They fulfilled their own prophesy that they would die in the desert. The bad reports were not propagated by random men, they were propagated by men were princes of their tribes, who were well respected in their communities.
Some commentaries say that the 10 spies turned their generation away from the Promised land because they didn’t want to give up the free food, water and provision because once they entered the Promised land, they would have to work for their food and water again. They were very good politicians and were able to sway the people away from God’s plan.
“But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” (James 1:5–8 NASB)
The kind of request James is speaking about is not a request for general wisdom to be smart. He is encouraging us to ask for the wisdom from God to complete in us what is lacking, which is fear of the Lord.
I had an uncle who served in World War 2. He did not speak much about his time in the Italian campaign, but he was a non-combatant medic and he was the only survivor of his entire unit. He recalled his fear, but he moved through that fear. He had to tell himself he could get through it and he did. He could have stood still and accomplished nothing, but instead he walked through his fear, which is what courage really means.
Yeshua called His generation a “wicked and perverse generation” (Luke 11:29-32; Matt. 12:39-42; 16:4; Mark 8:12). That generation was wicked in the same way that the generation that experienced the destruction of Shiloh and the first Temple. The one theme of the destruction of all three tabernacles/temple was the baseless hatred that they had for each other because of differing political and religious observances. He often warned the leaders of the Temple (Sadducees and Herodians) and the leaders of the people (Pharisees) what was coming if they did not repent, but there was a rot in these groups of leaders. The shepherds were mostly rotten. They were scattering the flock rather than protecting and gathering them.
What is your mission in life?
- The Shema (greatest commandment): Deuteronomy 6:4ff
- Second-greatest commandment: Leviticus 19:18
- “You will know them by their fruits”: Matthew 7:16
- “Deeds of the flesh” vs. “fruits of the Spirit”: Galatians 5:19–25
- “New Covenant”: Jeremiah 31:31–34; Ezekiel 36:25–26
- “This is eternal life, that they may know You”: John 17:3 (cp. John 6:40)
If you have a heart or lung transplant but you return to the lifestyle that caused you to need the heart or lung transplant in the first place, what was the point of the transplant? The “new heart” that God wants to give us is a gift to change us into something better than we are now.
Summary: Tammy