For the week of June 29, 2024 / 23 Sivan 5784

Sh’lach
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 13:1 – 15:41
Haftarah: Joshua 2:1-24

If the LORD delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the LORD is with us; do not fear them.” Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But the glory of the LORD appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel. (B’midbar Numbers 14:8-10)

This week’s parsha (weekly Torah portion) is so crucial in at least two ways. First, it recounts a most tragic turn of events in the early history of ancient Israel. Generations were anticipating the moment when the promise of acquiring the land of Canaan would be realized. As foretold to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob hundreds of years earlier, God’s announcement to Moses at the burning bush was not simply one of deliverance from slavery in Egypt, but also of acquiring the Land (see Shemot/Exodus 3:8). After years of oppression, the people of Israel were witnesses to great acts of God’s power through his securing their release from Egypt, the powerful experience of receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai, and his protection and provision during the two years of wilderness living. Yet, despite all that they had experienced, when the time came to enter the land, the people could not or would not connect all that God had done for them with what he would do for them going forward. Their unwillingness to embrace the next stage of their history resulted in their remaining in the wilderness until that whole generation died out. God’s plans and purposes for Israel as a nation were not thwarted, but the current generation sorrowfully missed a great opportunity.

It’s also crucial for what this demonstrates. Lack of trust in God results in harm to ourselves and to our communities. Highly destructive paths await those who allow fear to cause them to reject God’s specific direction in their lives. How this story reflects the negative results of lack of faith is obvious, but there is something else lurking here that we would do well to note.

The people reacted extremely negatively upon receiving the report of ten of the twelve men who were appointed to scout out the land. However, Joshua and Caleb, the two scouts who believed God would give them success, tried to encourage them. Their encouragement was based on their experience of God. Why wouldn’t they try to help the others to think positively on this matter? Wouldn’t you? But then, look at how the majority reacted: “Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones.” They wanted to kill them.

The people’s murderous desire reflects the depth of their fear. Perhaps they believed that Joshua and Caleb had sufficient clout in the community that their minority opinion would win out, an option that the majority could in no way tolerate.

Think about it. Have you ever been so afraid that you found people’s encouragement threatening? I am sure most of us have experienced situations when the encouragement of others helped us to do something that we were afraid of. And I suspect that we have appreciated most, if not all, of those times: “Try it, you’ll like it!” “Jump in, you’ll get used to it!” “Make the call, you won’t regret it!” But perhaps there have been other times when you didn’t appreciate such encouragement. Note that I am not referring to situations where people encourage us to do wrong. This is about confronting a great fear of something that we should do, but we are so afraid that we can’t handle people’s encouragement.

When this happens, it’s like a living nightmare. You want everything to stop. Perhaps you wouldn’t actually kill anyone, but the desire to shut out undesirable forces, no matter how well-meaning, can be overwhelming, not to mention, destructive.

Let’s face it, from time-to-time God takes us into situations that are not just intimidating—the kind of thing that makes us feel apprehensive or nervous—but full-out terrifying. And yet, they are God’s best for us. From confronting issues from our past to venturing on something greatly unfamiliar, or how about being called to something that previously resulted in great failure? Make your own list.

It can take a lot of courage to do God’s will sometimes. But, may I encourage you to acknowledge the source of your fear and look to God to enable you to overcome it before you cause irreparable damage to yourself or others.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of June 22, 2024 / 16 Sivan 5784

Beha’alotcha
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 8:1 – 12:16
Haftarah: Zechariah 2:14 – 4:7

Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. And they said, “Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” And the LORD heard it. (B’midbar/Numbers 12:1-2)

Do you notice anything strange about Moses’ siblings Miriam and Aaron’s confronting Moses here? Actually, we don’t know if they confronted him directly or not. All we know is that they were outspokenly critical of him. But that’s not the strange part, however. Read it over again. Do you see it yet? The passage states that the issue Miriam and Aaron had with Moses was that he married a Cushite woman. But that’s not what they said, be it to Moses directly and/or anyone else (at least not as far as the passage is concerned). According to the passage, what they said had to do with an apparently different matter. Instead of addressing the marriage issue, they made a big deal over whether or not God uniquely spoke through Moses. Now, it’s not as if Moses’ unique position in the community was not a serious matter. Right or wrong, it would be surprising if this wasn’t something that several Israelites might question from time to time. Complaints over leadership privileges wouldn’t be strange. What’s strange in the passage is that Miriam and Aaron are clearly concerned about one thing, while what they address is a completely different matter altogether. Search the entire passage (12:1-16). Nothing is ever said about Moses’ Cushite wife again.

That we are told they were critical of Moses about one thing but then addressed a completely different subject is an example of what scholars love to sink their teeth into. Some may deduce that this must be the result of two different and unrelated stories that somehow got stuck together. No wonder it makes no sense, since there are two different issues being addressed here. But wait! Perhaps this isn’t so strange. Think about it. People motivated by one concern, while saying something completely different with no reference whatsoever to their real concern. This isn’t strange; it’s normal!

How often have you been the object of someone’s anger, but you can tell (perhaps) that what they are saying isn’t what’s really bothering them? Should we also include ourselves as possible perpetrators of this phenomenon while we’re at it? Instead of the Torah clumsily and inappropriately connecting two different stories, what we have here is a brilliant example of a common human dysfunction.

There’s a good chance that the reason why Miriam and Aaron didn’t address the real issue was because they didn’t think they could do anything about it. Perhaps they thought they could get a lot more leverage by asserting their own spirituality. Yet, evading the family issue not only challenged Moses’ relationship to God but also his     essential role in the community, which in turn disrupted the community for a time, not to mention resulting in Miriam getting sick.

We don’t know what Miriam and Aaron’s problem with this was exactly. But that’s part of what is ingeniously instructive about this passage. When people aren’t willing to be honest about a concern, be it between individuals or within the broader society, it causes all sorts of unnecessary confusion and damage. Maybe Miriam and Aaron simply didn’t like the woman. The mention of her being Cushite may be a clue that they had an ethnic or racial concern. But their refusal to say so may indicate they knew it would not have gotten them anywhere. So, they had to find something else.

Note that from Moses’ and his wife’s perspectives, God took care of the situation. That should encourage us when we are the object of this sort of thing. And it’s also a warning when we are tempted to act out in this way. If we can’t be honest about our concerns, we should keep them between ourselves and God.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of June 15, 2024 / 9 Sivan 5784

Naso
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 4:21 – 7:89
Shoftim/Judges 13:2-25

You shall count seven weeks. Begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. Then you shall keep the Feast of Weeks (Hebrew: Shavuot) to the LORD your God with the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give as the LORD your God blesses you. (D’varim/Deuteronomy 16:9-10)

I don’t know about you, but I am still amazed at wireless technology. On a recent walk with my wife, I mentioned how photocopies used to look like photocopies (low-quality duplicates), but now from our devices  we can print documents wirelessly that look as original as the original. And what about wireless earbuds? Incredible! I get such a nice feeling when I put them in my ears and hear the pleasant voice say, “Connected.”

We live in a world of connections. We begin life connected to an entire family tree, whether or not we ever fully grasp those connections. Moreover, living life requires the connection of relationships, including family, friends, co-workers, and more. Then, like the earbuds, society depends on all sorts of connected systems.

This week, beginning Tuesday evening, June 11, Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks) begins. You may know it by its Greek-based name, Pentecost. If so, you might be saying to yourself (thinking you are talking to me): “But Pentecost was about a month ago.” We’ll deal with that later.

For now, I want to explain how Shavuot is a feast of connection. Of the three major Torah feasts, Pesach: (English: Passover) and Sukkot (English: Tabernacles or Booths), Shavuot is the only one that doesn’t explicitly commemorate a historical event. It does, but not explicitly. During Pesach, we remember God’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Sukkot commemorates Israel’s years in the wilderness. Shavuot also lacks the kind of specialized customs that Pesach and Sukkot have, Pesach has the Seder and eating matza for a week, Sukkot has living in temporary dwellings and rejoicing while holding specified growing things. Shavuot’s customs as observed today were developed in post-biblical times.

However, there is an explicit and unique feature of Shavuot that is easily missed—connection. God, through Moses, set the date of Shavuot by directing the people of Israel to count seven weeks from Pesach, which is why Shavuot is called the Feast of Weeks. Its alternate name, “Pentecost” is from the number fifty as it was to occur the day after the counting of seven weeks or forty-nine days. Based on this, as acknowledged by Jewish tradition, the timing of Shavuot places it at the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. Therefore, the purposeful counting established a strong connection between the rescue from Egypt and the giving of God’s Word, the Torah. This demonstrates that Israel’s freedom from Egypt was not so that they could do whatever they wanted, but rather to serve the God who rescued them.

But then why in Acts chapter two of the New Covenant Writings does the Ruach HaKodesh (English: the Holy Spirit) come at Shavuot? What’s that connection all about? The key is in understanding one of the core aspects of the New Covenant as prophesied hundreds of years earlier through Jeremiah:

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law (Hebrew: Torah) within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people (Jeremiah 31:33).

Shavuot commemorates the calling of the people of Israel through the giving of the Torah. But as the overall biblical story unfolds, we discover that on our own, we were unable to live up to that call. That is, until that very special Shavuot when through the Ruach HaKodesh, God enabled us to truly be his people from the inside out, thus connecting the people of Israel to himself by his Spirit.

That same special Shavuot also marks a great development of God’s plans and purposes for the world by not only connecting the people of Israel to himself as never before—but by opening the way for people of all nations to truly know him through the Jewish Messiah. And yet most non-Jewish Yeshua followers are not aware that the Pentecost of Acts 2 is the biblical Feast of Shavuot. It doesn’t help that the connection between the Christian celebration of Pentecost occurs at a different time from Shavuot. Why is that? It’s because the Christian Church in the fourth century purposely broke the connection between Yeshua and the Jewish people. I wonder how many other God-given connections we’re missing out on?

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of June 8, 2024 / 2 Sivan 5784

B’midbar
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 1:1 – 4:20
Haftarah: Hos 2:1-22 (English: 1:10 – 2:20)

Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” (Hosea 2:1; English: 1:10)

This week’s parsha (weekly Torah reading portion) is the beginning of B’midbar, the book of Numbers, which chronicles Israel’s almost forty years of wilderness wanderings. Such a duration was due to the people’s refusal to trust God when they were intimidated by the prospect of taking the land of Canaan. Throughout the book, we see the consequences of their lack of faith.

It is tragic when Bible readers fail to see themselves in the lives of the Israelites. Israel in the Bible functions as a prototypical people group. Scripture is to act like a mirror. Readers are supposed to see themselves in the lives of the people of Israel. Looking down on them for their tendency to mistrust God and stubbornly go their own way reflects great hypocrisy. Who would have done differently? Israel’s failure to live up to God’s standards was designed to show the whole world its need of God. Distancing ourselves from the ancient Israelites cuts us off from valuable scriptural lessons God longs for us to learn.

Core to those lessons is the essence of God’s faithfulness to his people. This week’s Haftarah (selected reading from the Prophets) is from Hoshea (English: Hosea). Few biblical books reflect the theme of God’s faithfulness as Hoshea does. God had called Hoshea to marry a wayward woman to demonstrate this. Throughout his book, as with the other prophets, we read very harsh words of judgment upon Israel. So much so that I could understand why some think God completely rejected them. But to come to such a conclusion, you need to be most selective in your reading. You would need to ignore what Hoshea says in what I quoted at the start:

Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God” (Hosea 2:1; English: 1:10).

God’s commitment to Israel is so misunderstood that when Peter references this in his first letter, many assume he is speaking about Gentile believers rather than Messianic Jews:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:9-10).

Confusion over God’s faithfulness is fueled by a misunderstanding regarding God’s unconditional covenant with Israel. Disobedience on Israel’s part in no way undermines God’s covenantal commitment to them. Individuals, even generations, may experience harsh judgment, but that doesn’t nullify God’s commitment to them. This then leaves the door open for individuals to return. Never in Israel’s history was anyone to regard the nation’s spiritual condition as an indication of God’s general posture toward them. On the contrary, reconciliation to God was always possible on the basis of God’s faithfulness to Israel. Not that his faithfulness was ever to be taken for granted. Reconciliation always requires repentance. And repentance requires an honest acceptance of our own inadequacy before God.

What holds true for Israel is available to all through Israel’s Messiah. Through his death and resurrection, people of all nationalities can be embraced by God’s faithfulness. He is ready to accept anyone who humbly comes to him through Yeshua.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version