20210717 Parsha Devarim – Promises, Promises
Blessing
Torah: Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22 Reading Deut 1:1-8
Haftarah: Isaiah 1:1-27 Reading Isaiah 1:21-27
Brit Chadashah: 1 John 4:7-14
Devarim (?????) is both the title for the last book from the scroll of the Torah and the title of the first Torah portion therein. Devarim means "words." The English-speaking world calls this book Deuteronomy. The Hebrew title for the book comes from the opening phrase of the book: "These are the words (devarim) which Moses spoke to all Israel across the Jordan in the wilderness" (Deuteronomy 1:1).
One ancient name for the book of Deuteronomy is Mishnah HaTorah (???? ????), which means "repetition of the Torah." This is similar to the Greek Septuagint name Deuteronomos, which means "second law." The English name Deuteronomy is derived from Deuteronomos.
The book of Deuteronomy is dominated by Moses' farewell address to the children of Israel as he urges them to remain faithful to the covenant and prepares them for entering Canaan. During the course of the book, Moses reviews the story of the giving of the Torah at Sinai and the trip to the Promised Land, reiterates several laws of Torah and introduces new laws.
As we study the first week's reading from the book of Deuteronomy, the children of Israel are poised on the plains of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho ready to go in and take the land.
We must remember, however, that the generation of B’nei Israel who are about to embark in this campaign to claim the Promises of ADONAI, are not the ones who were originally intended to make the triumphant march. Recall that, in Numbers 13 the Twelve Spies sent by Moses to observe the land of Canaan returned from their mission.
27 They gave their account to him and said, “We went into the land where you sent us. It IS flowing with milk and honey — this is some of its fruit. 28 Except, the people living in the land are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large.” 32They spread among Bnei-Yisrael a bad report about the land they had explored…
Only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, brought a positive report, while the others spoke disparagingly about the land. The majority report caused B’nei Israel to cry, panic and despair of ever entering the "Promised Land".
For this, the Mishnah (Taanit 4:6) declares that they were punished by God and that their generation would not enter the land. The midrash further implies that God addressed the grumbling and disbelieving masses, saying "You cried before me pointlessly, I will fix for you [this day as a day of] crying for the generations." Tradition holds that the day that B’nei Israel rejected God’s gift of Canaan was on the 9th of Av, and that the date of Tisha B’Av has become, and continues to evolve as a Jewish day of Mourning for a host of tragedies which occurred on or near the 9th of Av.
After the rejection of the first generation of Israelite refugees from Egypt, which established the ominous date of Tisha B’Av, other significant events that firmly cemented the date as an anniversary of destruction include:
• The First Temple, built by King Solomon, was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BCE, on the 7th of Av (2 Kings 25:8) and continued until the 10th (Jeremiah 52:12) and the elite of the Kingdom of Judah were sent into the Babylonian exile.
THE SECOND TEMPLE
• The Second Temple built by Zerubbabel was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, scattering the people of Judea and commencing the Jewish exile from the Holy Land.
BAR KOKHBA’S REVOLT
• The Romans subsequently crushed Bar Kokhba's revolt and destroyed the city of Betar, killing over 500,000 Jewish civilians (approximately 580,000) on August 4, 135 CE.
PLOWING THE TEMPLE SITE
• Following the Bar Kokhba revolt, Roman commander Turnus Rufus plowed the site of the Temple in Jerusalem and the surrounding area, in 135 CE.
THE FIRST CRUSADE
Throughout the generations, in addition to the tragedies of ancient Jewish history, other events which have occurred around the 9th of Av include:
• The First Crusade officially commenced on August 15, 1096 (Av 24, AM 4856), killing 10,000 Jews in its first month and destroying Jewish communities in France and the Rhineland.
EUROPEAN EVICTIONS
• The Jews were expelled from England on July 18, 1290 (Av 9, AM 5050)
• The Jews were expelled from France on July 22, 1306 (Av 10, AM 5066).
• The Jews were expelled from Spain on July 31, 1492 (Av 7, AM 5252).
GERMANY ENTERS WWI
• Germany entered World War I on August 1–2, 1914 (Av 9–10, AM 5674), which caused massive upheaval in European Jewry and whose aftermath led to the Holocaust.
HEINRICH HIMMLER
• On August 2, 1941 (Av 9, AM 5701), SS commander Heinrich Himmler formally received approval from the Nazi Party for "The Final Solution." As a result, the Holocaust began during which almost one third of the world's Jewish population perished.
WARSAW GHETTO DEPORTATION
• On July 23, 1942 (Av 9, AM 5702), began the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, en route to Treblinka.
AMIA BOMBING OF BUENOS AIRES
• On 18 July 1994 (10 Av, AM 5754), 85 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in a Hezbollah-perpetrated bombing attack of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building. This was the deadliest terrorist attack in Latin American history as well as against any Jewish target outside of Israel. Nearly 30 years after the horrific bombing, none of the perpetrators has yet been brought to trial, despite arrest warrants issued and constant calls for justice.
ISRAELI DISENGAGEMENT FROM GAZA
Jews have lived on and off in Gaza since the time of Roman rule, their settlement following a pattern of expulsion during times of war and conquest and return during more peaceful periods. The remains of an ancient synagogue found in Gaza date to around 508 C.E. Its mosaic floor, unearthed by archeologists, is now displayed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The one period when Jews appeared to have sovereignty over Gaza was during the time of Hasmonean rule, when the Jewish King Yochanan — whose brother was Judah the Maccabee — captured the area in 145 C.E. After the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, some Spanish and Portuguese Jews fled to Gaza. They abandoned the area when Napoleon’s army marched through but later returned in the early 1800s.
In 2004–05, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon orchestrated Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Although facing stiff opposition to this policy, he had been expected to win the next election and was widely interpreted as planning on "clearing Israel out of most of the West Bank", in a series of unilateral withdrawals. Just six short months after initiating the Israeli evacuation of the Gaza Strip, which is within the original Promised Land boundaries, Sharon was suddenly struck with a stroke on 4 January 2006, where Sharon remained in a permanent vegetative state until his death in January 2014. The Israeli disengagement from Gaza expelled 8000 Jews who lived in the Gush Katif settlement; August 15, 2005; 10 Av, 5765.
CHOICES HAVE CONSEQUENCES
In each of the previously listed tragedies, Jews were brutally expelled from their homes, and from the countries they had created a modicum of comfort and peace. Since the Israelites refused to enter the land on the ninth day of the fifth month (Tisha b'Av), Jews have been forced to be displaced for thousands of years, by countless regimes.
Think about the irony. God created a garden for his human family to live and prosper in, yet we rejected his gracious gift and chose disbelief in His spoken Word, resulting in the introduction of death and decay into creation. Then, generations later, God tries again to bring His family into another specially prepared garden, a Promised Land. We rejected the gift of a homeland, rejected the leadership that God had given us, and broke our promise to honor the IF/THEN covenant of obedience, resulting in generations of destruction and death on the anniversary of that rebellion.
If we are honest with ourselves, we can look at every instance of tragedy in the Tisha B’Av account and attribute it to a lapse of solidarity and obedience to the calling of ADONAI. When we become selfish and secular, and we break the promises we made to honor and obey ADONAI, His protection is subsequently lifted. Yet somehow He never forgets His promises to us.
This morning I would like to explore a concept that we really need to take hold of and not let go. That concept is God’s promises. We all make promises, sometimes to ourselves, more often to others. Promises are similar to vows or oaths that we talked about last Shabbat. When we make a promise, we should do everything in our power to keep that promise. Sadly, we often fail to keep the promise. Either by neglect, design, or perhaps we promised something that was simply beyond our ability to deliver.
Deuteronomy 1:8 See, I have set the land before you. Enter and possess the land that Adonai swore to your fathers—to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob—to give to them and to their descendants after them.’
In his historical review, Moses recalled how God had encouraged the people of Israel to enter the land of Canaan and take possession of it on the basis of the promises He had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God was, in essence, telling Israel, “Go ahead and take the land; it belongs to you because I promised your fathers that I would give it to you.”
To receive the blessing of the land, Israel only needed to trust that God would keep His promises. The original generation that came out of Egypt found it difficult to do that. They did not enter the land. Even contemporary Jews, such as the late PM Ariel Sharon did not truly believe in the promises, and the Promised Land, and his life was cut short very suddenly, in the prime of his political career.
UNWAVERING FAITH
To be a person of successful faith, it is important to develop and unwavering belief in God’s faithfulness to His promises. The Bible is full of extravagant promises. At times God promises His people protection, peace provision, and prosperity. He promises us spiritual blessing, such as eternal life to all who believe in His holy Son for salvation. He promises us forgiveness for sins and a new covenant. He promises us the gift of the Ruach HaKodesh, His Holy Spirit, and promises to hear our prayers.
When a father promises his son, “Tonight I will bring home ice cream,” the child anticipates ice cream. He does not doubt. A person should strive to develop the simple, trusting faith of a child. The beauty of having an unwavering faith in God is that it really isn’t blind faith.
Blind faith indicates that the person trusting the other must rely in them without any prior history or accumulation of trust falls. Our faith in ADONAI is based on a rich history of His faithfulness to His people, even in their disobedience, but it is also based on our own experiences with Him, as we share our own testimonies with each other. Testimonies are an oral recounting of His goodness which edifies the teller even more than the hearer, because it is personal, as our relationship with our heavenly father is personal.
Yeshua spoke of this trusting relationship with an earthly father and contrasting with the Heavenly Father.
Matthew 7:9-11 “For what man among you, when his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? (10) Or when he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? (11) If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!
Deuteronomy 1:10 Adonai your God has multiplied you—and here you are today, like the stars of the heavens in number.
One night Abraham was in his tent when God appeared to him in a vision and said, "After these things the word of Adonai came to Abram in a vision saying, “Do not fear, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” (Genesis 15:1)". Abraham objected that a reward was of little use to him since he had no heir to give it to. Then the LORD took Abraham outside the tent and showed him the myriad stars splayed across the nighttime sky. The LORD said, “Look up now, at the sky, and count the stars—if you are able to count them.” Then He said to him, “So shall your seed be.” (Genesis 15:5)
It was this promise that Abraham believed, and God credited to him as righteousness.
In Deuteronomy 1 the promises God made to Abraham in the Negev were about to be fulfilled. The children of Israel had multiplied into a host that Moses likened to "the stars of heaven in number" (Deuteronomy 1:10).
Though the hosts of Israel might seem innumerable as the stars, God knows each person individually. The Psalms say, He determines the number of the stars. He gives them all their names. (Psalms 147:4). With God, no person is inconsequential. He knows each of us by name.
When the people of Israel struggled under the bondage of the Assyrian and Babylonian exile, they felt that God no longer saw them. The people said, “My way is hidden from Adonai, and the justice due me escapes the notice of my God” (Isaiah 40:27). The prophet Isaiah responded by telling the Israelites to look up into the nighttime sky and see the stars:
Lift up your eyes on high and see! Who created these? The One who brings out their host by number, the One who calls them all by name. Because of His great strength and vast power, not one is missing. (Isaiah 40:26)
If God marshals the starry host, shepherding them so that not even one of them escapes His notice, He also watches over and cares for the people who are like the stars of heaven. Not one of them is missing before Him.
There are many today who live in fear of many things. 2020 was a banner year for fear as we dealt with Covid. People lost jobs, some lost lives, that were attributed to the virus. And yet there is really no reason to fear any of those things. Why? Because my Heavenly Father has promised to take care of me.
Yeshua addressed this very issue with His disciples.
“So I say to you, do not worry about life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn, yet God feeds them. How much more valuable you are than birds! (Luke 12:22-24)
And in Matthew we read;
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them shall fall to the ground apart from your Father’s consent. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are worth more than many sparrows. (Matthew 10:29-31)
Sometimes we break our promises. Not good, but it happens. That’s why we should be careful about putting too much trust in a human being. We all will fail at some time or other.
But on the other hand (in my best Teviah voice), but on the other hand, we can always trust God’s promises. He knows each of us by name. We are not a number to God. We are precious to him. Remember, He gave His only Son to die for us so that we could spend eternity with Him. That was the greatest promise he could have given us. We lost the Garden of Eden through disobedience and unbelief. We lost the promised land because of unbelief and idolatry. Please don't lose the greatest promise of all, eternal life with Yeshua, because of unbelief, complacency, or any other reason. God’s promises are not our promises.
God’s promises are true.
God’s promises are everlasting.
And God’s promises are for every one of us here today. Just take hold of His promises, and live in hopeful expectation as you live out His Word.
