Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:20:26 — 56.1MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Here’s a key point in Moshe’s talk with the second generation of Israel freed from Mitzraim (Egypt), as recorded in עקב Ekev/Eikev (“consequence,” Deut. 7:12-11:25): Teach the next generation how to be righteous, or they will slip into sin and corruption.
Discover how this is fundamental to Heaven’s mission through Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ), that the righteousness of One can save the many who have suffered since the sin of one, Adam.
The bedrock of Moses’ discourse in the Torah reading עקב Ekev/Eikev (“consequence,” Deut. 7:12–11:25) is not Deuteronomy 7:12, but Genesis 18:18–19:
“As for Abraam, he shall come to be a great and populous nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I knew that he will instruct his sons and his household after him, and they will keep the ways of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring upon Abraam all the things that he has talked about to him.”
Genesis 18:18–19 New English Translation of the Septuagint
God chose Abraham not only because Abraham was faithful to God in his own right but because Abraham would also diligently teach his sons and his household how to be faithful to God, too. Abraham’s obedience and diligence in teaching his family and his household about God is the reason that He selected Abraham, and later Isaac and Jacob/Israel as His ambassadors in the earth.
Moses points out that God did not give them the honor of the Promised Land because of their own righteousness, far from it. He is bringing them in for two reasons:
- The people who are already there, the Canaanites, were too disgusting to tolerate any longer.
- God’s promised this land to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
“It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Deuteronomy 9:5 NASB
Abraham’s nephew, Lot, was the opposite. Although Lot was personally obedient and righteous, he did not lead his wife and daughters in righteousness. He did not teach them to be righteous and obedient to God at all, from what we read in the Scriptures.
Moses is telling this generation that they should be like their father Abraham and be as diligent about teaching Torah to their children as Abraham was in teaching what he knew to his children and grandchildren. Moses assures them that if they walk as Abraham walked, they and their family will be rewarded and blessed.
Salvation isn’t the only gift God wants for us
“And it shall be, whenever you hear all these statutes and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will guard closely for you the covenant and the mercy as he swore to your fathers, and he will love you and bless you and multiply you, and he will bless the progeny of your belly and the fruit of your land, your grain and your wine and your oil, the herds of your oxen and the flocks of your sheep, in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you.”
Deuteronomy 7:12–13 New English Translation of the Septuagint
We might say in our heads that since God has already given us salvation, which is a free gift, which is not earned, but freely given by God when we repented of our sins, accepted Messiah Yeshua as our Lord, what else do we need? Well, salvation and eternal life are a great blessing, a great gift but God also wants to grow in righteousness and holiness now. We can’t grow in righteousness and holiness without putting in the work. There’s more that God wants to give us than salvation.
These other blessings that God wants to give His people, such as fertility, agricultural abundance, etc., are contingent on their obedience to His way of life, of living the way He instructs us to live.
As they are getting ready to enter the Promised Land, which, in the spiritual realm, represents Heaven, God tells the people of Israel that they will come across people and nations that are stronger and larger than them, but that He will push them aside so His people can enter in.
But as Moses tells this younger generation, the generation before them, their parents, did not believe this. They did not believe they or God were strong enough to get them into the Promised Land and as a result, that generation had to wander in the desert and die out before God would try again with the second generation for them to enter the land.
How greed and coveting of one man brought disaster on all Israel (Joshua 17–18)
Now, imagine, if you will, that there were some people, even a small minority, who actually agreed with Joshua and Caleb, but they were so overwhelmed by the opinion of the majority that they remained silent or their voices were drowned out and they received the same punishment as the naysayers received. Why did those who agreed with Joshua and Caleb get punished along with those who agreed with the 10 spies and their “evil report”?
“The graven images of their gods you are to burn with fire; you shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, or you will be snared by it, for it is an abomination to the LORD your God.”
Deuteronomy 7:25 NASB
Remember the man named Achan? He coveted the gold and wealth of Jericho that was put under the ban and as a result of his greed, many Israelite soldiers died in battle. God’s instruction regarding Jericho is in chapter 6, and we are introduced to Achan in Joshua 7.
“The city shall be under the ban, it and all that is in it belongs to the LORD; only Rahab the harlot and all who are with her in the house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent. But as for you, only keep yourselves from the things under the ban, so that you do not covet them and take some of the things under the ban, and make the camp of Israel accursed and bring trouble on it. But all the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron are holy to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.”
Joshua 6:17–19 NASB
But the sons of Israel acted unfaithfully in regard to the things under the ban, for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, from the tribe of Judah, took some of the things under the ban, therefore the anger of the LORD burned against the sons of Israel.
Joshua 7:1 NASB
Why were the soldiers of Israel not allowed any spoils from Jericho?
- Because God said so.
- God is the one who did all the work. He is the only one who brought the walls down, not the Israelites. God destroyed the city. He did all the work, He received all the items of value in the city and could do with them as He desired.
They were instructed not to touch anything in the city, not the food, garments, household items, nothing, but Joshua didn’t know at the time that there was thief in his midst. He sent some spies to the small town of Ai and they came back and said that the town was small and that they didn’t need a large army to take it out, that it was easy pickings.
Unfortunately, the smaller army of around 3000 were beaten back severely by the villagers of Ai. When Joshua heard of this, he and the elders of Israel went to the ark of the lord, humbling themselves and asking God why He didn’t go with them to conquer Ai. God told Joshua that someone in the camp had taken some of the banned items from Jericho and mingled them among their own belongings. Interestingly, God didn’t tell Joshua the name of the culprit. God told Joshua he would have to investigate that for himself.
So we already know the culprit the individual because it states right in Joshua 7:1 that Achan was the man who was responsible for this event.
One man steals some items from Jericho, that he was not supposed to take, but everyone else pays the price for it. This sounds strange to us, doesn’t it? Why is that one man screwed up and everyone else was punished?
“In the morning then you shall come near by your tribes. And it shall be that the tribe which the LORD takes by lot shall come near by families, and the family which the LORD takes shall come near by households, and the household which the LORD takes shall come near man by man. It shall be that the one who is taken with the things under the ban shall be burned with fire, he and all that belongs to him, because he has transgressed the covenant of the LORD, and because he has committed a disgraceful thing in Israel.”
Joshua 7:14–15 NASB
Going back to Joshua and the aftermath of the Battle of Ai, God tells him how to find the guilty party but doesn’t reveal his name to Joshua. Joshua has to investigate the matter in the way God instructs him.
And Iesous said to Achar, “Give glory today to the Lord, God of Israel, and make the confession. And tell me what you have done, and do not hide it from me.” And Achar answered Iesous and said, “Truly I have sinned against the Lord, God of Israel. Thus and so have I done. I saw in the spoil a beautiful, many–colored carpet and two hundred didrachmas of silver and one golden tongue–shaped object of fifty didrachmas, and I coveted them and took them. And look, they are hidden in the ground in my tent, and the silver is hidden underneath them.”
Joshua 7:19–21 New English Translation of the Septuagint
After Achan’s confession, Joshua sent people to confirm Achan’s words and they brought out the banned items. Then Joshua made his judgement.
Then Joshua and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, the mantle, the bar of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent and all that belonged to him; and they brought them up to the valley of Achor. Joshua said, “Why have you troubled us? The LORD will trouble you this day.” And all Israel stoned them with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. They raised over him a great heap of stones that stands to this day, and the LORD turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the valley of Achor to this day.
Joshua 7:24–26 NASB
Let’s wrap our minds around this a little bit. Achan was the one who coveted the things of Jericho that were not his to covet. He desired these things for his own personal gain. We don’t know for certain if his wife and children knew what he had done. We can assume they knew, but we don’t know for a fact what they knew. But all of Israel, particularly the 3000 men, 36 of whom died in battle at Ai, paid a steep price for Achan’s sin. Their households, their families lost a lot because of Achan’s greed.
Why didn’t God just strike Achan dead? That would seem fair to us. He is the one who sinned, punish him. Why punished his family and even his animals?
God doesn’t think that way, does he?
A false and selfish report condemns a generation to death
We saw the same thing with the 10 spies. Joshua and Caleb were the only ones who did not go along with the “evil report” yet, they had to wander around for 40 more years, and wait for everyone else to die off before they would finally have their chance to step foot into the Promised Land. What about those who may have agreed with Joshua and Caleb? They ended up dying in the wilderness just like those who went along with the evil report.
When the 10 spies brought their evil report, he struck them dead immediately, but he also punished the entire nation to die in the wilderness over the course of 40 years because they believed their report.
Even in more recent history, in World War II, Hitler lead the entire nation of Germany to commit many war crimes, crimes that were hidden for the most part from the German people as a whole, yet all of them suffered in the ending days of WW2 and even beyond for what Hitler had done. It’s an example of how one man does something evil and a whole lot of people share the consequence.
There are many other similar examples in the Bible I can bring up to drive this point, but we only have so much time so we will cover one more story in Judges 17.
One man’s hidden sin corrupts an entire tribe
We read the story about how one man introduced idolatry, initially just in his own family but the sin of this one man eventually, spread out to an entire tribe. This story is sad but fascinating.
Micah of Ephraim’s idolatry set a bad example for all of Israel
“Now there was a man of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. He said to his mother, “The eleven hundred pieces of silver which were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse in my hearing, behold, the silver is with me; I took it.” And his mother said, “Blessed be my son by the LORD.” He then returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother, and his mother said, “I wholly dedicate the silver from my hand to the LORD for my son to make a graven image and a molten image; now therefore, I will return them to you.” So when he returned the silver to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave them to the silversmith who made them into a graven image and a molten image, and they were in the house of Micah. And the man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and household idols and consecrated one of his sons, that he might become his priest. In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.”
Judges 17:1–6 NASB
Although this story is recorded towards the middle of the book of judges, the events of this story may have occurred while Joshua was still alive. We know if happened in the early years of the Israelite conquest of Canaan. I say this because Moses’ grandson is alive at this time.
Micah was just an ordinary Israelite, he wasn’t a leader of Ephraim or anyone. He steals a bunch of money from his mother, which is a pretty rotten thing to do, in my opinion. She cursed the thief, and apparently Micah overheard his mother’s curse and decides to come clean to his mother and ask for forgiveness. She forgives him, blesses him and asks him to take the silver he had stolen and make an idol from it.
At this point in the story, most of us are scratching our heads here. We just read in the recent Torah portion of Moses’ admonition not to make an idol or representation of God. Micah and his mother were alive when Moses was alive so he (and his mother) knew this instruction. They would have heard the words of Deuteronomy for themselves, yet here they are making an idol and a shrine for the purpose of worship, blatantly ignoring Moses’ instruction.
Micah also appoints one of his own sons as a priest for this shrine he just built, which is something else that the Torah prohibits. Only Aaron’s sons were to be priests to God.
But Micah soon meets a Levite, who had traveled from Bethlehem in the land of Judah, to sojourn in Ephraim. The Levite and Micah become acquainted and Micah asks this Levite to be the priest of his household shrine and offered to pay the Levite an income to do so, which the Levite accepts.
Micah thought that God would ignore the fact he had an idolatrous shrine in his house because he had a Levite officiating in it. The Levites are supposed to know better than this. This Levite should have taught Micah that this wasn’t ok, but the Levite remains silent and chooses to live with Micah and he became “like a son” to Micah.
Around this time, the tribe of Dan looking for some territory in the north to conquer for themselves. These Danite spies come to Micah’s house. They heard this Levite, and recognized his voice because this Levite was not just a random Levite. He was a personage of some renown.
But they finish their job and report back to their leaders and then they return with their army to take over the land. They pass by Micah’s house again, stealing the idol and all the ritual worship items he had made. They also took Micah’s hireling priest with them.
Then they went north to a Canaanite town called Laish, overtook it and established it as their own city, remaining it Dan, after their forefather.
Here’s how the story concludes:
“And the sons of Dan set up Micha’s carved object for themselves, and Ionathan son of Gersom son of Moyses, he and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the day of the removal from the land. And they appointed for themselves Micha’s carved object that he had made, all the days that the house of God was at Selo.”
Judges 18:30–31 New English Translation of the Septuagint
In some translations, the priest is referred to as Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of Manasseh, but in Jewish texts, the “h” at the end is a scribal addition. It’s actually Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of Moses. It’s no Manasseh, it’s Moses. The scribes added that “h” on the end to change the name to try to save Moses’s reputation from the humiliation of his own grandson was the Levite priest Micah appointed to take care of his idolatrous family sanctuary.
Let’s back up a minute to the beginning of this story. This starts out with an ordinary man whose started doing his own thing. Micah didn’t draw attention to his corrupt idolatrous shrine. This was just for his family to do their own thing. But then the net expanded and Micah corrupted Jonathan.
Now Micah’s corruption spreads from his own house to Jonathan the grandson of Moses. As time goes on, we don’t know for sure how many months or years Jonathan lived in Micah’s house, but some time passes, and then the leaders of the tribe of Dan find this shrine and decide to steal it from Micah and now his little shrine because a place of worship for the entire tribe of Dan. We can see the progression of corruption, what started as a little local cult, corrupted an entire Israelite tribe for nearly 700 years. Jonathan’s descendants served as priests at this idolatrous shrine for the tribe of Dan for about 700 years before the Assyrian exile swept them away.
That’s corruption. That’s expansion. That’s destruction of people.
So these three examples of how a little corruption spreads to an entire community:
- The 10 spies, who, with their words, disheartened the people of Israel and the people then all suffered from their acceptance of the words of these spies. Even those who didn’t cooperate with the 10 spies suffered punishment.
- Achan, who coveted the riches of Jericho. His crime directly caused the deaths of 36 men and the suffering of nearly 3000 other men. His family also suffered from his willful disobedience as they were all executed for his crime.
- Micah, whose private idolatrous family shrine became a public spectacle corrupting Moses’ grandson and an entire tribe in Israel.
One man’s sin can condemn an entire nation, but one man’s righteous example can save an entire nation (Philippians 2:1–7)
The lesson from these three stories is that one man sin can affect a whole lot of people. Does that seem right or fair? I have five children, if one of them does something wrong and I punish all five of them, the four others will say, “Wait a minute, that’s not fair! We did nothing wrong! Why are you punishing us?”
This will then start a cycle of negotiation as you figure out how to deal with squabbling and yet enforce fair discipline.
If one man’s sin, or the sins of 10 men, can affect the entire community, the apostle Paul shows us how this heavenly math works with Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ):
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
Philippians 2:3–4 NASB
So, for the 10 spies, what was their personal interest? They were scared of the men occupying the Promised Land. They didn’t want to go to battle and they certainly didn’t want to die. They didn’t want their sons to die, they didn’t want their wives taken as slaves. They don’t want to do and they want to convince everyone else not to go either. The 10 spies were most concerned about their own fears, their own interests and created a reality and a propaganda campaign accordingly.
How about Achan? What was his concern? Was he thinking of the well-being of his fellow Israelites at Jericho? No, he saw some fancy Babylonian garments, a stash of gold and silver and decided he deserved them. He assumed that no one was looking, no one would know what he had done. He thought he could get rich quick and no one would be the wiser.
They only cared about themselves and what they could see in front of them.
We see this same self-centered outlook in Micah as well. His mom wanted him to make an idol for their household, so he obeyed his mother’s instruction rather than the instruction from Moses not to make idols for worshiping God.
Golden calf: Few cavort, many suffer
Now, let’s go back to Ekev. Moses is recalling how he has to intervene on behalf of the children of Israel after their sin with the golden calf.
“I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD to provoke Him to anger. “For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the LORD was wrathful against you in order to destroy you, but the LORD listened to me that time also. The LORD was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him; so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. “I took your sinful thing, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.”
Deuteronomy 9:18–21 NASB
We have an example of Moses explaining that all of Israel screwed up. And in particular, now we just got through three stories where people screwed up, and everybody else was punished. But now, Moses is telling them an example where he intervened after the entire nation had messed up and through his intervention, they were saved from severe punishment.
One man screws up, y’all get punished. One man’s righteous and y’all get saved.
That’s fascinating, isn’t it? See, God doesn’t work the way we do, does He? The way our system of justice operates is that the person who commits the crime gets punished, not anyone else.
That’s now how God works. He says to the effect, “You’re a community; you’re a people. One person messes up, y’all mess up.” One honorable person saves all of you. Interesting math, isn’t it?
This makes sense, though, especially when we look back at how Abraham negotiated with God regarding the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham asks God if he will destoy those cities if there are 50 righteous people, then 40, 30, 20 and he gets God to agree to save those cities if only 10 righteous people can be found in those cities. The people who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah were steeped in wickedness and corruption, yet God was willing to spare them from death if 10 righteous people could be found in those cities.
That’s fascinating. So it appears that the way God does math is that if one person can save you all, then one person can condemn you all. It’s just like the Apostle Paul said in Philippians, Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also the interests of others.
So in one sense I’m not strictly responsible for my own behavior, but yet I am responsible for my behavior. I am also responsible for looking out for the interests of others, such as my family, my spiritual family, my friends, my community, my city, my state and my nation.
When Messiah said that He only does what the Father tells Him to do. Messiah Yeshua obeyed God, He followed the Torah rules that applied to Him as a Second Temple Jew.
If God’s example to us is to look out for the interests of everybody, because one man can save the entire community, then Messiah Yeshua’s actions make perfect sense. Because one man can look out for the whole community and save everybody.
Moses is telling the second generation that this is exactly what he did for them. He was telling them, possibly for the first time, that all though they may not have known it at the time of the Golden Calf debacle, God was this close to killing them all and starting over again.
The Torah is showing us that if one person commits sins, transgressions and iniquities, they don’t just affect him, they affect the all those around him, his family, his boss, his community and even the fellowship of faith.
You don’t have to be an important person for your sins to have a very serious affect for the worse on those around you in your sphere of influence. A person who is steeped deep in sin often can only see what is right in front of them, like Micah did. He had no idea how his family’s sin would end up corrupting the entire tribe of Dan.
Some of you recall that the tribe of Dan is not included in the book of Revelation as one of the tribes of Israel. There are debates about whether most of the descendants of Dan will be in the Kingdom or not because of the tribe’s exclusion from the list of the 12 Tribes in the last days.
So, to summarize, one’s actions can either be a corrupting influence, like a cancer, where one small cell metastasizes and kills the host. Or one’s righteous actions can nurture the entire body and heal it from the inside out.
Both righteous and evil can spread, to either completely save or completely destroy a community. Just one individual can have that power.
We can corrupt all of ourselves, or we can be saved all of ourselves, by the acts of a single individual. The point is that an individual has the ability to save a whole people group, a whole community by his actions. And also, the individual has the ability to destroy a whole community of people by his actions. It goes both ways.
Be careful when life is good (Deuteronomy 8–9)
Deuteronomy 8–9 warns us that the main source of corruption in a community is its prosperity. When a community has abundance, free time, lots of leisure, this is how corruption enters into the community. We are in danger of presuming that the reason we have the nice house, nice car, a good job, a refrigerator full of fresh food, healthy children is because we earned them. We think we did it all, rather than acknowledging that God gave it all. Every good thing comes from God.
Acknowledging God as the source of all our blessing is crucial. If you read today’s Torah portion closely, you will see that the Promised Land is described in a unique way.
God pointed out that in Egypt, where they were far from God and living a corrupted, selfish, not caring about anyone else kind of life, that the land was simple. You could plant your crops and irrigate them easily from the waters of the Nile. You only had to depend on yourself to make a successful harvest.
Although they were slaves in Egypt, the land itself was easy. It was the rulers of Egypt who made living in Egypt difficult, not the land itself.
In the Promised Land, agriculture is not so simple. The closer they are getting to God, the more dependent they will be on God because in Israel, there isn’t a large river for irrigation. There are also mountains that are not conducive to large scale agriculture. The main source of water is rain, which comes from God.
So they went from a land that was far away from God but life was easier to a land that is close to God, where life is more dependent upon Him and harder.
If you think about it, what kind of life is easier, a righteous one or an evil one? Obviously it takes little effort to live a corrupt life. Living a righteous life takes conscious effort.
Moses is telling them they are entering a land that God has His eyes on all the time. He watches it closely to give it rain or give it drought, where He either blesses or curses. It’s not like Egypt, where all you had to do was wait for the yearly floods and then lay down some irrigation to water the plants after the flooding receded.
The closer you are to God, the more blessing you receive but the more dependent you are upon Him, too.
In Egypt, you could put in a little work and get a lot of reward. In the Promised Land, all the blessing and reward comes from God alone. You want reward and blessing from God, it requires obedience to His instructions. The closer you are go God, the more He requires of you. The land where they are going is nothing like the land they left.
Now, let’s think about what the Bible tells us in the New Testament about the New Jerusalem in the world to come. God and the Messiah are at the center of the New Jerusalem. Revelation tells us that their light, righteousness and holiness will sustain it.
A city without God and Messiah Yeshua at the center is just a regular city. The closer you are to Messiah Yeshua, the more dependent you will be on Him, even for something as basic as light.
If you don’t want to be like the 10 spies, or Micah or Achan, and you want to be more like Moses, this is the instruction God gives us.
“Now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require from you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the LORD’S commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good? “Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it. “Yet on your fathers did the LORD set His affection to love them, and He chose their descendants after them, even you above all peoples, as it is this day. “So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer. “For the LORD your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe. “He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. “So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. “You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve Him and cling to Him, and you shall swear by His name. “He is your praise and He is your God, who has done these great and awesome things for you which your eyes have seen. “Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons in all, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.” (Deuteronomy 10:12–22 NASB)
God is telling them how to be righteous and how to receive His blessing. Your love of God is reflected when you extend love to those who are powerless, such as the widow, orphan and the proselyte.
This is how Messiah Yeshua live while He was on earth. He did what the Father told Him to do. Messiah lived His life the way God showed Him to live. Messiah followed God’s example and He gave that example to us.
Messiah Yeshua also followed in Moses’ footsteps, intervening before God on behalf of all of Israel and the entire world.
- Why did Germany suffer under Hitler? Because one man’s actions cursed the whole nation.
- Why did Adam’s sin curse all of mankind? Because one man’s actions cursed all his descendants.
- Why did Moses’ intervention save all of Israel? Because one man’s righteousness saved everybody.
Why did Messiah’s intervention save all of mankind? Because God’s love was so all-encompassing that Messiah’s perfect example and perfect sacrifice covered over all the sins of the world.
In conclusion, going back to what the Apostle Paul told the Philippians, don’t look at just your own personal interests, but everything else’s, too. This is how to create a community. That is how a healthy community succeeds and thrives.
Self-worship and narcissism can ruin a nation
The most prolific sin in our modern age is the sin of self worship. This manifests itself in transgenderism, and other sexual misbehaviors. There’s a lot of crazy stuff happening in our current society, but those events, corrupt everybody, they corrupt the whole world.
Have you noticed how laws have changed to accommodate these strange, bizarre, self-aggrandizing behaviors? That affects everyone.
We can’t fix everybody, but we can start with our own actions and beliefs. We can’t be righteous in and of ourselves. But when we mimic Messiah Yeshua, following the pattern He gave us, depending on His death and resurrection to cover our sins and to conquer the sting of death for us, that is where we start.
We are also called to make intercession for our community, to pray for the peace of our city, state and nation. When God blesses others, we receive the benefits of those blessings too.
If you do these behaviors, you get blessed, not just with salvation, but with prosperity, of multiplication of your land, your crops, all the things you’re striving for as you work to earn your living. These blessings come through our obedience to God.
Summary: Tammy