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When we read the Torah in English, rather than Hebrew, remember that modern English does not do a good job at differentiating between the plural you vs the singular you.
In general, the instructions and responsibilities of the Torah are addressed to the plural you, meaning the nation, congregation or family, but the blessings that result from the community’s obedience are singular. When the community follows their responsibilities to walk in Torah, the people are blessed individually but if the community doesn’t act on their Torah duties, then the people suffer on an individual level.
In other words, you may be following God’s commandments to the best of your ability with humility and love for God, but if your neighbors, your community, state and even nation are not, doing well, then you will not see the blessings of God described here in your personal life.
“But the land into which you are about to cross to possess it, a land of hills and valleys, drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the LORD your God cares; the eyes of the LORD your God are always on it, from the beginning even to the end of the year.”
Deuteronomy 11:11–12 NASB
God does not change. The western U.S., particularly the West Coast has a climate and weather pattern not dissimilar from that experienced in the Holy Land. The western U.S. gets most of its water from rain, not from large rivers, like the Nile in Egypt.
The drought that we are currently experiencing in the western U.S. is a warning from God telling us although there are faithful believers in these states, the people as a whole in these states are not faithful to God.
We are supposed to pay attention to and be an active participant in our communities. That is how we can be a blessing to our city, county, state, or nation. It’s not a virtue to be ignorant of the world around us.
Jeremiah told the descendants of Jonadab the son of Rechab (Jeremiah 35) that they were righteous for following the instructions of their forefather to “dwell in tents” and to live a nomadic life in the land but they were also doing the right thing to flee into the cities when they noticed the approaching marauding army of Nebuchadnezzar. God made a profound promise to the descendants of Jonadab the son of Rechab.
“Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever.”
Jer. 35:19 KJV
Stand in the place where you live (Deuteronomy 7)
Pray for the land you live in because if it has peace, you have peace. Pay attention what’s going on about, you can’t be living your lives in a bubble.
We are not to fear our enemies but we are to respect their strength. The only one we are to fear and give our allegiance and obedience is God.
“The graven images of their gods you will burn with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that is upon them and take it for yourself, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an abomination to the Lord, your God. Nor should you bring an abomination into your house, lest you are to be destroyed like it, but you shall utterly detest it, and you shall utterly abhor it; for it is to be destroyed.”
Deut. 7:25-26 Judaica Press Translation
It’s immoral to earn a living making things that we are prohibited by Torah from owning ourselves. We are to be different and peculiar from the world. We don’t want our homes to be banned from God’s presence and that is what will happen if we break the 1st commandment by making ritual items for the worship of false gods or their images. We certainly should not have in our homes as they are in direct contradiction to God’s supremacy.
We are not to engage in or attach ourselves to idols or with people who engage in idolatry. When a relationship is spiritually (or physically) dangerous, we are called to exercise Godly wisdom and separate ourselves from them, either temporarily or permanently.
“And He afflicted you and let you go hungry, and then fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your forefathers know, so that He would make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but rather by, whatever comes forth from the mouth of the Lord does man live.”
Deut. 8:3 Judaica Press Translation
The first commandment is to know who our God is and not to be attached to the material abundance He has provided to us and blessed us with.
“Beware that you do not forget the Lord, your God, by not keeping His commandments, His ordinances, and His statutes, which I command you this day.”
Deut. 8:11 Judaica Press Translation
We forget God if we disobey to Him. Making excuses such as, “I pray to God all the time” or “I talk to Jesus all the time,” while at the same time purposefully disregarding His commandments, will not sit well with God in the final judgment.
When you don’t live the way He taught you to live, you are forgetting Him, even if you remember His name, you are not remembering His teachings. The way we remember our forefathers is to act what they taught us to act. It’s the same with God. Not following God is the same as forgetting Him.
Wealth, comfort and success make us susceptible to forgetting God. We think that our wealth, comfort and success comes from our hard work, but the truth is that every blessing we have comes from God. When we have a little success, we want more. When we have some wealth, we want more. God is warning when we have things, we give ourselves credit for earning them, rather than acknowledging that God is the one who gave that wealth and success to us and that is very dangerous to us spiritually. God will bless us in His way, not in our way.
Look at how holy I am! (Deuteronomy 8–9)
When you give yourself credit for your success in life, you have made yourself an idol. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were insanely wealthy but they acknowledged that God is the one who provided everything for them and that He was the source of all they had. They also understood why they blessed him, which was to be a blessing to others.
“Do not say to yourself, when the Lord, your God, has repelled them from before you, saying, ‘Because of my righteousness, the Lord has brought me to possess this land,’ and [that] because of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord drives them out from before you. Not because of your righteousness or because of the honesty of your heart, do you come to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God drives them out from before you, and in order to establish the matter that the Lord swore to your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Deut. 9:4-5 Judaica Press Translation
God doesn’t bless nations because the people of that nation are “good enough” but often times, it’s because the people who are already there are worse and he is using one nation to push the other nation out.
“And I fell down before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sins you had committed, by doing evil in the eyes of the Lord to anger Him. For I was frightened of the wrath and the fury that the Lord was angry with you to destroy you, and the Lord hearkened to me also at that time.”
Deuteronomy 9:18-19 Judaica Press Translation
The Apostle James wrote:
“The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”
James 5:16 NASB
Humility of Moshe
“Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look at the stubbornness of this people or at their wickedness or their sin.”
Deuteronomy 9:27 NASB
Moses’ humble prayers were the only reason that God didn’t destroy the children of Israel after their sin with the golden calf. By nature, humans are rebellious and only care of taking care of themselves, and not what is good for others. Selfishness and wickedness are natural, but Moses was able to rise above any selfish motive for the sake of the children of Israel and God blessed Moses’ humility. His prayers saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
There are those who teach, even in Christian circles, that we need evil to understand what is good. This ideology is referred to as Rasputinism. It’s a false teaching that claims that Yeshua was an imperfect Messiah, because He was sinless. Yeshua did not plumb the depths of depravity to experience it on a personal level so as to resist it. To those who teach this philosophy, the only effective Messiah or Savior is one who thoroughly corrupts himself to the depths of corruption. A more modern example is David Koresh, he went down that route, as well. You see hints of this idea in the Eastern philosophies of the yin and the yang, which teaches that you need you need the dark side to fully make complete the light side.
I think this is a very incomplete philosophy.
Tough love: ‘Deliver him to Satan’
There are a couple of examples I can bring up to make my point. The first is when the apostle Paul warned the Corinithians that they needed to expel an unrepentant sinner, who was sleeping with his step-mother, from the congregation (1Corinthians). Paul tells the Corinthians that they need to “deliver him to Satan” so that his flesh might be destroyed but that his soul might be saved.
King David gave Solomon similar instructions regarding Joab, who was a murderer. David warned Solomon not to allow Joab to die of natural causes in his old age. He needed to be executed for his crimes.
We hate paying for our own mistakes, we avoid accountability in this life like the plague, but these stories are written here to teach us that it’s better to pay for the consequences of our sins in this life than to pay for them in the afterlife.
What does God ask of you? (Deuteronomy 10)
“And now, O Israel, what does the Lord, your God, ask of you? Only to fear the Lord, your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, and to worship the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes, which I command you this day, for your good.”
Deut. 10:11-12 Judaica Press Translation
How do we experience the blessing of obedience? Some of these blessings may come now, some may come later, some may not come until the world to come. Knowing how to apply knowledge is one thing, knowing how to practice our knowledge, that is wisdom.
“For the Lord, your God, is God of gods and the Lord of the lords, the great mighty and awesome God, Who will show no favor, nor will He take a bribe. He executes the judgment of the orphan and widow, and He loves the stranger, to give him bread and clothing. You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Deut. 10:17-11:1, Judaica Press Translation
You shall fear the Lord, your God, worship Him, and cleave to Him and swear by His Name. He is your praise and He is your God, Who did these great and awesome things for you, which your eyes have seen.
With seventy souls, Your forefathers descended to Egypt, and now the Lord, your God, has made you as the stars of heaven in abundance.
[Therefore] you shall love the Lord, your God, keep His charge, His statutes, His ordinances, and His commandments, all the days.”
Taking care of widow, orphan and stranger is taking care of God’s charge.
How do we treat those who trespass into our nation illegally? Did they break the law? Yes. The question is why? That is why we have a legal system to investigate these cases.
There are some coming from awful circumstances, fleeing their nation of origin. I totally understand there are certain scenarios which are so horrible thing breaking societal norms and risking death in the process is more righteous and preferable to staying put and facing certain death.
Something worse than persecution and death (Deuteronomy 11)
There are some places in this world that are so corrupt and evil that it’s better to risk being harassed, raped and humiliated by human traffickers than staying home. That is extraordinarily difficult for those of us born and raised in the comforts of the Western world to imagine.
A person who faces persecution and death for something that is not a crime under international law flees and seeks asylum in a safer country, committing the crime of trespassing in the process. What is the greater crime, the one they are committing or the one they are fleeing?
We are to treat people the way we went to be treated. We are to look at people as individuals, and not to lump them into a collective and judge them harshly out of hand.
“And you shall inscribe them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates,in order that your days may increase and the days of your children, on the land which the Lord swore to your forefathers to give them, as the days of heaven above the earth.”
Deuteronomy 11:20-21, Judaica Press Translation
God promised the land to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who did not live to actually receive it. When God says that He swore to give them the promised land for all eternity. God is saying that He is going to resurrect them and at that time, they will enter the land that He promised them. These three men will own that land for all eternity when Yeshua returns to earth. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never forgot God and God will never forget them. We will meet them someday because that is God’s promise.
A city is people, not buildings (Isaiah 49:14 – 51:3)
God speaks about Zion as though she is a person, not a city. The people of Zion collectively claim that God has forgotten them but God says that He forgets nothing. He doesn’t absentmindedly forget anything.
A city is a city only when there are people in it. A house is only a home when people are living in it. A house without people is just a structure. A city without people is a ghost town.
God honors His promises. He doesn’t forget us, and we should not forget Him. He keeps His promises, and we should keep His commandments.
Summary: Tammy