I pray that you will have shalom/shalem with you always and that
we can learn more about YHVH's instruction for our everyday lives.
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Now, on to the portion!
Va'Etchanan is the 2nd portion in Deuteronomy.
This portion goes from chapters 3:23-7:11.
This portion goes through Moshe's last plea to YHVH
to let Him cross over the promised land and YHVH's answer to Him,
Moshe's 1st instruction to Yisra'el to guard and keep YHVH's words
and the punishment if they don't, Moshe's retelling of the 10 words(commandments), Moshe's 2nd instruction to Yisra'el to
guard and keep YHVH's words which includes the Shema,
and Moshe's instruction to not intermarry with other nations.
Moshe was a very great man for YHVH.
He was very humble and was a great leader for the children of Yisra'el.
But Yisra'el was a very stubborn people and would always turn away
from YHVH's commands. Moshe was a very strong leader but imagine
3,000,000 people at once. Moshe got more and more tired
every time they complained. Finally, this happened:
Numbers 20:10-12
And Moshe and Aharon assembled the assembly before the rock.
And he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels,
shall we bring water for you out of this rock?”
11 Then Moshe lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod.
And much water came out, and the congregation and their livestock drank.
12 But YHVH spoke to Moshe and to Aharon, “Because you did not believe Me,
to set Me apart in the eyes of the children of Yisra’el, therefore
you do not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.”
Because of this sin, YHVH would not allow them to enter the Promised Land.
After these 40 years in the wilderness, knowing that they would enter the Promised Land, Moshe pleaded one last time to YHVH to let him enter the land.
Deuteronomy 3:23-25
“And I pleaded with YHVH at that time, saying,
24 ‘O Master YHVH, You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness
and Your strong hand, for who is a mighty one in the heavens or on earth
who does according to Your works and according to Your might?
25 ‘I pray, let me pass over and see the good land beyond the Yarden,
this good hill country, and Lebanon.’
As we see here, Moshe was always a very humble man,
and even more so when he spoke face-to-face with YHVH.
Let us look into the Ancient Hebrew to see what this phrase,
"And I pleaded" means.
Va'Etchanan
ואתחנן
Meaning:
The strength of the nail is the sign of mercy and compassion.
Wow! These words give an amazing picture not just of who Moshe
knew YHVH to be, but also a coming prophecy in itself about Yahshua.
Yahshua, being pierced with the nail,
was showing us His mercy and compassion.
That is the only way we could possibly be in covenant with YHVH,
through mercy and compassion, or more simply, grace...
Imagine that! Grace is something we learn about ALL the TIME in sunday church. But what we didn't know was that mercy and grace
where there BEFORE Messiah, not after Messiah.
Every time we go through one of these portions we realize more
and more that the words of the wisest man there was, Solomon, come true:
Ecclesiastes 1:9
What has been is what shall be, what has been done is what shall be done, and there is no new matter under the sun.
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Back to the portion. As we see in the next verses,
YHVH's answer to Moshe's last plea was, well...
Deuteronomy 3:26-28
“But YHVH was enraged with me, for your sake, and would not listen to me,
and YHVH said to me, ‘Enough of that! Speak no more to Me about this matter.
27 ‘Go up to the top of Pisgah, and lift up your eyes
westward, and northward,and southward, and eastward,
and look with your eyes, for you do not pass over this Yarden.
28 ‘But charge Yehoshua, and strengthen him and make him brave,
for he shall pass over before this people and
causes them to inherit the land which you see.’
I'm not sure, but I believe that's a no... right? Now, the question is,
why did YHVH say no? Well, read verse 26. It says that YHVH
was enraged with him for the children of Yisra'el's sake.
It wasn't anything that Moshe did, but rather what Yisra'el did.
That is one of the reasons why Moshe is so adamant about making
sure that this younger generation knows what went wrong and
how to guard YHVH's words so that this doesn't happen again.
Amen!
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Now on to chapter 4. As we will see throughout Deuteronomy,
Moshe will tell many, many times to guard,
hear, and obey YHVH's Words and instructions.
In fact, he says those words at least 97 times combined!
He knows that the generation of Yisra'el that was in the wilderness
forgot YHVH's Words very easily and Moshe wanted to make
SURE that this generation didn't forget. So what did he do?
He told them the same thing over and Over and OVER again,
and as we see later, this generation for the most part did listen to YHVH's Words. Making habits are very important, and especially with YHVH's Words.
Without making ourselves do the same thing over and
over again we would be just like the children of Yisra'el: forgetters!
Moshe knew that these people would forget YHVH's instructions.
That is why he prophesied that they would turn away from YHVH. But he also
knew that YHVH was a compassionate Elohim, as he says in verses 30-31:
Deuteronomy 4:30-31
“In your distress, when all these words shall come upon you in the latter days, then you shall return to YHVH your Elohim and shall obey His voice.
31 “For YHVH your Elohim is a compassionate El, He does not forsake you, nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them.
YHVH is faithful and He never EVER changes. What He promised to
Noah, Avraham, Ya'acob, and Moshe still is relevant today and so
are His instructions in our lives. If it wasn't so, He would have said it
out of His own mouth. But as we know, He NEVER did!
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Now to chapter 5. We read in this chapter the retelling of the 10 Words(Commandments) and what happened immediately following that.
But just before that, we read this very important statement:
Deuteronomy 5:1-4
And Moshe called all Yisra’el, and said to them, “Hear, O Yisra’el, the laws and right-rulings which I speak in your hearing today. And you shall learn them, and guard to do them.
2 “YHVH our Elohim made a covenant with us in Ḥoreb.
3 “YHVH did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, those who are here today, all of us who are alive.
4 “YHVH spoke with you face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire.
He did not make the covenant with the disobedient children who
were punished by YHVH, but rather with the children who passed
through the Jordan, the ones that gained the inheritance.
These words are still alive and well with us today. YHVH wants us to
come into the covenant again, but this time instead of writing them on stone,
He will write them on our hearts, as it says in Hebrews 8:
Hebrews 8:8-10
For finding fault with them, He says, “See, the days are coming,” says YHVH, “when I shall conclude with the house of Yisra’el and with the house of Yehudah a renewed covenant,
9 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Mitsrayim, because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them,” says YHVH.
10 “Because this is the covenant that I shall make with the house of Yisra’el
after those days, says YHVH, giving My laws in their mind, and I shall write them on their hearts, and I shall be their Elohim, and they shall be My people.
The question is no longer, "How can we keep the law?” The question now is, "When will we keep His instructions so that we can be blessed?"
From what we see every time we read the Scriptures, Yahshua never
abolished the Torah, His disciples never did away with the Torah,
nd the Torah was never meant to be a curse or a burden, but rather a blessing.
We have been taught lies over 1,000's of years, and just now are
we just starting to see these things, as it says in Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 16:19
O YHVH, my strength and my stronghold and my refuge, in the day of distress
the gentiles shall come to You from the ends of the earth and say, “Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit."
HalleluYAH that we know this truth now and that we can live this
covenant day by day. The next step is to take it to the entire world,
like Yahshua states in Matthew 28:
Matthew 28:18-20
And Yahshua came up and spoke to them, saying,
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
19 “Therefore, go and make taught ones of all the nations, immersing them
in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Set-apart Spirit,
20 Teaching them to guard all that I have commanded you.
And see, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Amen.
There is that word guard again. As we see throughout Scripture,
guarding and keeping His commands is a very important thing.
In Revelation we see a very interesting statement:
Revelation 14:12
Here is the endurance of the set-apart ones, here are those guarding the commands of Elohim and the belief of Yahshua.
Without these 2 things, we will not be able to survive.
If you just keep YHVH's commands but do not believe in Yahshua
or if you just accept Yahshua but do not keep YHVH's Instructions,
you are missing a valuable element. And as Yahshua says in John 4:
John 4:23-24
“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers
shall worship the Father in spirit and truth,
for the Father also does seek such to worship Him.
24 “Elohim is Spirit, and those who worship Him
need to worship in spirit and truth.”
Without the 2 becoming one, we cannot worship Him.
We need to, we have to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.
Without both of them, we cannot truly worship YHVH and we
cannot truly honor Yahshua. I thank YHVH that I know a piece of the truth and
that I am able to share with others what I know. I pray that you can do the same!
Praise Yah!
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Now on to chapter 6. Here we see another of the most prolific
passages in Scriptures, the Shema. Here is the Shema in Hebrew:
Shema Yisra'el, YHVH Eloheinu, YHVH Echad
Baruch shem kevod malkhuto le'olam va'ed
Hear O'Yisrael, YHVH our Elohim, YHVH is One
Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever.
This word Shema is said here to "hear", but it means much more than that.
It gives the meaning to hear intelligently with a direct obedience to the instruction. It means to hear and do what YHVH says. It is a call to the army of
Yisra'el from YHVH to Shema His Word, to hear what it says and
to do it immediately, without question of why or how, just to do
it in humble obedience. Why? Let's read verse 5:
Deuteronomy 6:5
“And you shall love YHVH your Elohim with all your heart, and with all your being, and with all your might.
It's all about love! YHVH never wanted it to be just about actions.
He wanted faith, He wanted love. He wanted ALL of us. YHVH wants us
to give ALL of ourselves to Him. Hearing, doing, and loving Him forever!
HalleluYAH!
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In chapter 7 we see the instruction not to mix and mingle with the other nations. That is still the same today. We shouldn't mix with unbelievers because
just like with Solomon and many other people in Yisra'el,
they will turn us away from YHVH. That is why Paul says:
2 Corinthians 6:14
Do not become unevenly yoked with unbelievers.
For what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness?
And what fellowship has light with darkness?
We cannot be close to them. We can share the word, and we can
give the good news of Messiah to them, but unless they accept Yahshua
as their savior and can agree to the covenant, they shouldn't be
a part of our intimate and personal life. I know that is hard for
some people, especially ones with close family.
We have those same issues in our family with other family members.
It is tough not to mix and mingle with them, but we need to understand
that YHVH will bless us for it, and maybe one day our family members
will come to know Messiah and they too can come into the covenant.
We pray for that day.
Praise Yah!
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I'll end with the last verse:
Deuteronomy 7:11
“And you shall guard the command, and the laws,
and the right-rulings which I command you today, to do them.
May we continue to learn how to guard, how to Shema His Torah everyday.
Till next time...
Shalom!
Christian Montanez Dodd
Servant and Emissary of Yahshua, Child of YHVH
HalleluYAH!