Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.0MB)

This week our parasha is Va’etchanan, meaning “and I pleaded” and covers Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11.  This parasha contains many laws, as well as the Shema, and the repeating of The Ten Commandments.  However, this morning I would like to discuss the plea of Moses to our people, both then and now, and how it is still very relevant to Messiah’s Community today.

In the previous chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses has been recapping the history of our people, and at the end of chapter 3 we reach the point where Moses was told by God he would not be allowed to enter the Promised Land because of his sin.

In chapter 4 Moses reminds the people of what had happened a few weeks previously at Baal-Peor, the great plague that had struck following pagan worship and sexual practices.  Those who engaged in idolatry were killed, but those who followed the ways of the Lord were kept alive.  Moses continues, contrasting the people of God with all other peoples on the Earth.  We have a God who is everywhere and that can be called upon at any time.   As David wrote in Psalm 139:7: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?”  There is no need to be in a specific building or place to be close to Adonai.  In all places He is available to hear and answer our prayers.  Moses also reminds us that no nation has been blessed like we have with the Lord’s perfect Law.

We are then charged to speak to our children about the greatness of The Lord.  We are to tell how we were called at Mount Horeb to hear the Lord speak His commandments while the mountain burned with fire, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.

Moses reminds us that if we began to worship idols we would be cast out of the Promised Land. But there also was a promise of return.  That 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 to be a light to all the other nations of the World. All the great works the Lord did for our people were to teach us that He alone is God, and Moses commands us to press this fact onto our hearts.  He also commands us yet again to keep His commandments, generation to generation, so that we might live.

In chapter 5 Moses repeats the Ten Commandments to this new generation.  Moses makes the powerful statement 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 but is renewed through every generation.  The Lord is the God of the living, not the dead.

Chapter 6 has Moses continuing with 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 this was the greatest commandment of them all.  With this commandment and the command to love our neighbors as ourselves all of God’s commandments are summarized.

Continuing on, the parasha ends with Moses instructs 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 exclusive 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 really the major theme of this parasha.  Throughout these chapters we have Moses pleading with our people to remember the Lord and what He has done.  He pleads with us to make the Lord the central priority in our lives and avoid turning away to idolatry or ourselves.  The reciting of the Shema, the use of Mezuzahs and Phylacteries, and the retelling of the Passover story every year, are just some of the ways our people have tried to follow the Lord’s instruction found in this passage and to properly remember Him and what He has done.

But faith in Adonai as it is described in this parasha is more than just intellectual knowledge and it is more than keeping traditions for the sake of tradition.  Moses message wasn’t meant just for our people in that generation; it is a message for us today.  Keeping the commandments of God, remembering what He has done, truly knowing Him, loving Him with the totality of our being, and raising up the next generation rightly, is not just how we preserve our heritage, it is the basis by which we live and are blessed.

Unfortunately, we live in a time where every succeeding generation seems to be getting farther and farther from Adonai.  I could quote all the statistics which prove the rise of secularism in the Jewish community and in our greater society but I think most of us know it all too well.  The reality is that the things of God are given lip service today by most of our Jewish People, and many of those who claim to be followers of Yeshua.

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

Yeshua’s teachings echo and deeply touch on the same themes Moses taught us.  In Yeshua’s day we had been seduced by Greek thought and legalism.  In contrast, Yeshua taught returning to the ways of God so that we may live, not just in this world but eternal life with Him forever.  The majority of our people and people worldwide may have rejected their Redeemer who is the fulfillment of all of Scripture, but the Lord still speaks to us today to turn back to Him.

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”.  Take heed to the plea of Moses and all of God’s anointed servants, and resolve this day to return to the Lord.  May we never forget all the great things Adonai has done, is doing, and will do for us.