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This week our parasha is Va’etchanan, meaning “and I pleaded,” and covers Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11. This parasha contains many laws, the Shema, and the Ten Commandments. This morning I will focus on Moses’s plea and how it speaks to us today. In the previous parasha, Moses recapped the history of our people. At the end of chapter 3, we reach the point where the Lord told Moses he would not enter the Promised Land because of his sin.

In chapter 4, Moses reminds the people of the recent plague at Baal-Peor. This plague was caused by pagan worship and sexual practices. Those who engaged in idolatry perished, but those who followed the ways of the Lord survived.

Moses continues, highlighting a major difference between God’s people and false religions. Adonai is everywhere and can reach us at any time and in any place. As David wrote in Psalm 139:7: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?” We do not need to be in a special building or on a hill to reach the Lord. He is always available to hear and answer our prayers. No other nation has been blessed like we have, with the Lord’s perfect Law.

The parasha continues with the command to teach our children about the greatness of the Lord, teaching others how we were called at Mount Horeb to hear the Lord speak His commandments, all while the mountain burned with fire, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.

Moses reminds us that if we begin to worship idols, we would be exiled from the Promised Land. But there was also a promise of return. The Lord would later restore us when we turned back to Him, not because of our own merit, but because of His mercy and the covenant He made with our forefathers. This prophecy of exile and return was fulfilled with the first exile.

Chapter 4 ends with Moses powerfully declaring the uniqueness of our covenant relationship with Adonai. We were chosen by God, and because of His great love, we were saved from Egypt. We were chosen not because of our supposed greatness, but because of how weak we are. Through the Lord, we were to share the light of God with the entire world.

Everything the Lord did was to teach us that He alone is God. Moses commands us to press this truth onto our hearts. We are commanded once again to keep the Lord’s commandments in every generation, so that our lives may be filled with blessings.

In chapter 5, Moses repeats the Ten Commandments to this new generation. We are also told that God did not make this covenant with the previous generation, but with the current one. Our covenant with God is not one of ancient history; it is renewed through every generation.

Chapter 6 contains the greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Messiah Yeshua taught that this was the greatest commandment of all. This commandment, along with the command to love our neighbors as ourselves, encompasses and summarizes every other commandment.

Our parasha ends with Moses instructing us to follow Adonai’s statutes with diligence: binding them to our hands, teaching them at all times of the day, teaching them to our children, and applying them to the doorposts of our homes. The clear idea in this passage is that God’s Word should permeate our lives.

Our relationship with Adonai is not something reserved for a single day of the week but rather becomes the core of who we are.

Parasha Va’etchanan translates to “And I Pleaded,” which is truly the major theme of this parasha. Throughout this parasha, Moses pleads with our people to remember the Lord and what He has done. He pleads with us to make the Lord the foundation of our lives and to avoid the suffering of our ancestors in the wilderness. The Shema, the Mezuzah, the Phylacteries, the annual retelling of the Passover story: these are ways our people have tried to follow the Lord’s instruction and remember all He has done.

But faith in Adonai is more than intellectual knowledge, more than tradition for tradition’s sake. Moses’s message was not only for that generation; it is for us today. Truly knowing God, loving Him with the totality of our being, and raising the next generation rightly is the source of every good blessing found in this world and in the World-To-Come.

Unfortunately, we live in a time where it seems each generation drifts further from Adonai. We live in a world where the things of God are afterthoughts for most of our Jewish People and for many who claim to be followers of Yeshua.

For many of us, the time we spend in our Bible apps is significantly less than the time we spend in our social media apps.

We have forgotten the plea of Moses and strayed from the Lord. But Moses was not the only one to call us to follow God’s ways rather than our own. We are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses,” a long line of godly men who proclaimed His word, culminating in the greatest Rabbi of them all, Messiah Yeshua, who is God.

Yeshua’s message was a call to return to the Lord so that we may live, not just in this world, but eternally with Him. Though most of our people, and people worldwide, have rejected their Redeemer, the fulfillment of all Scripture, the Lord still speaks today, calling us to abandon our rebellion and make Him the foundation of our lives.

If you have not yet made Him the focus of your life and joined yourself to Him, then “Today if you hear His voice do not harden your heart.” Listen to the plea of Moses and all of God’s anointed servants, and resolve this day to return to the Lord. The invitation is still available if we are still alive, but we are only promised today. May the Lord enable us all to never forget all the great things He has done, is doing, and will do for us.