Shomair Yisrael Congregation
To see the video of this talk:
https://www.youtube.com/live/dF5zvywRr3M?si=oAeBsNf52E7XrMbV&t=5474
Shabbat shalom to each of you both here in the congregation and online watching this morning. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to visit Knoxville and to spend time with you in worship and in the Word, so thank you to Rabbi Michael and his wife Jan both for hosting me for Shabbat dinner and in hospitality overnight, and for the invitation to be here; so, let’s get right into it.
This week’s parasha is Va’etchanan and I remember this sedra for several reasons, most notably my own failure and lying when I was in my early teenage years back in the 1960s. I was a ba’al k’riah, having successfully earned that in my Bar Mitzvah in 1964 and then helping with that ministry at our Orthodox shul in Kansas City for a couple of years. But as a young teenager, I had other considerations that captured my attention, especially in the fever heat of summer, and when it was my time to read, I was ill-prepared. After the Cohen’s reading with which I was successful, I pretended to have a sudden case of laryngitis and could not continue in any further public reading. What a scam! What a terrible action of pretention! And to this day, I feel badly about my lying. So, when I checked the calendar for this Shabbat and saw it was this parasha, I again felt that guilt and shame. Not a good place from which to start, but maybe what I share today will help us deal in a godly way with such feelings down the road.
As we ponder other calendar events, it’s a good time to think of that circle of life reality. For many of you, starting school is now in full swing. The summer ended (long before 21 September at the equinox) and fall began with kids going back to school and your rhythm of life got a new drum beat. For others of you, wearing an orange shirt and cheering the Volunteers on a Saturday afternoon adds to your rhythm and to your hopes and sometimes disappointments each weekend. Today in Knoxville you could be at the East Tennessee History Centre celebrating History Hootenanny or you could be at the Greater Smoky Mountain Council of the Boy Scouts learning NRA Basics of Shotgun Shooting. Events that matter make it onto our calendars including dentist appointments and anniversaries and so much more. I’m originally from Kansas City, so Chiefs football is part of my routine.
You might know that we Jews emphasize calendars with regularity. It’s part of our rhythm of life in religion. For instance, last Monday was Tisha B’av, the worst day ever in the Jewish memory and annual cycle. That’s the day we recall the destruction of both temples in Jerusalem, first the ruin of Solomon’s by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and then the rebuilt one of Herod, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Tisha B’av marks the end of the three weeks, this sad and mournful period each summer in which we are to ponder the dark eras of our Jewish history. Did you do that? Does the memory of the destroyed Temple teach us?
Then today, this weekend is supposed to bring a change for our people. Today is Shabbat Nachamu, and Va’etchanan is always the parasha for such. Why? Nachamu means comfort, and after the pondering of our losses in the week just past, it’s good to be comforted by the Lord. So, we read the Haftorah portions the next 6 weeks in anticipation of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish civil new year, we read comforting words from the prophet Isaiah. This week chapter 40, then next week we read Chapters 49 and 50, then 55, 51.12-52.12, 54, 60, 61 and 62. OK, this might sound somewhat selective, right? Let me reorder those readings. Chapters 40, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 60, 61,62. Did you hear that? One significant chapter is missing; we will get to that later in this talk.
Now when we think about comfort in the losses of both temples and the sadnesses of our lives over history, and the need for comfort, there seems to be something missing for many of our people. You might know that 315 days ago some madmen flew, and others drove into the Land of Israel, across our Southern border, attacked and mauled, murdered and ruined the lives of over 1,200 Jews. 7 October was a day that most commentators continue to highlight as the ‘worst day for Jews worldwide since the Holocaust.’ There have been other very bad days for Jewish people since 1945, but nothing on such a grand stage as what Hamas did to our people that final day of Sukkot last year.
OK, you think, it’s hard to come to terms with October 7. It’s hard to come to terms with antisemitism which globally is on the rise in a very clear and present dangerous way. Nazi marches taking place in Nashville, swastikas adorning Jewish cemeteries and brazen verbal and physical attacks of our people on university campuses will probably increase as college classes reopen soon. Nowhere seems to be safe; what are we to make of all this, and where, honestly, where is our Nachamu, our comfort?
For that I want us to consider the words of the Torah this morning. Those 122 verses I pretended not to be able to read that memorable day in 1966 are still in our books today. What is included may well hold the answer to my questions this morning. I believe the answer is in that text.
Hear these words from Deuteronomy chapter 5, the repetition of the 10 words, the commandments. Yes, it includes thou shalt nots with which even most unbelievers are familiar. No stealing, no adultery, no murder. Got it. Is that how we gain comfort today? No, most folks miss it that the First commandment is not a prevention or one of those “Keep the Sabbath” or “Honor your parents” mandates. Nope, Commandment #1 is a call to faith. Listen, here it is.
1. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
That’s it. I am the Lord. I’m your God. I brought you out in the Exodus. The first of the 10 words, the Aseret hadivrot is not a command at all. It’s a recognition. It’s a statement of identity and relationship. It’s not the 2nd which is ‘don’t have any idols or make any such… no other gods.’ No, the First of the 10 words is a proclamation and demands my response.
No wonder the rabbis zoom in on this one in their summations of the 613. You know that the rabbis have counted 613 commandments they find in the Torah. No more than 90 of those can be fulfilled in our days, but still they counted 613. And like you and I, they want to get that down to a more manageable size, the Readers Digest version, if you will. So, they narrowed it down to the 13 of Maimonides. Or the 10 of the 2 tablets. But how about the 3 of Micah 6: what is good? Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. OK, that works, all the Torah is summed up in those three. How about 2? You will know the 2 that Yeshua used to summarize the 613. Love the Lord your God with everything you have and love your neighbour as yourself. Great. Can you get it down to 1? The rabbis agree that Habakkuk 2.4 is the great summary. The apostle Paul agreed with them. What does the prophet say there? And what Paul quotes at least two times? The “Just shall live by his faith.”[1]
Of note, and not without surprise, the rabbis and Paul have different translations of that word ‘faith.’
וְצַדִּ֖יק בֶּאֱמוּנָת֥וֹ יִחְיֶֽה׃
Emunato. His faith. The rabbis translate that to his ‘faithfulness.’ Do you hear the nuance of difference there? One, faith has to do with our confidence in the Lord of life and our beliefs towards him. The other, faithfulness, has to do with our activities, our enterprise, our works, our duties, our mitzvot.
The apostle Paul makes clear that it was Abraham’s faith that gave him right standing with the Lord. And that we stand only by our faith. He even said, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” The reality is that we all fall short of God’s standards and our hope is not in our faithfulness. Our hope is in the One who initiated our relationship, our covenant, our being members of his family, the Lord himself. No wonder, the First ‘commandment’ is “I am.”
I love the 12 steps of AA and all the other 12 step programs out there. The first of those 12 recognizes our inability to change our stripes and admits that. Publicly. Or at least to ourselves. We admit that we are powerless to change, and that our lives are unmanageable. The 2nd step is a recognition of the Power beyond us who can make that change, and the 3rd of the opening waltz is a surrender, a turning our lives and “our will over to the care of God.” That three-step formula is how this works. It’s how AA or SA or NA or all those programs work. It’s how I work! It’s how true religion works.
That’s what Paul came to understand. He had plenty of credentials, even as Rabbi Michael and I have from our youth as ordinary Jews, but like Paul, we came to realize our unmanageability, our recognition of the Lord Yeshua, and our surrender in faith to his lordship. That’s the First Commandment.
But now, in case you wonder about the Shema, which is also in today’s parasha, and confused about the word ‘echad’ there in chapter 6, verse 4 of Devarim, let me give you my additional understanding of that, and it’s the exact same as the Aseret hadivrot.
In chapter 6 of Deuteronomy, we read this from verse 1.
Deut. 6:1 “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, 2 so that you and your son and your grandson might afear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, ball the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. 3 “O Israel, you should listen and 1be careful to do it, that ait may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
Get it? God is saying, do you want good stuff to happen? Keep the mitzvot. OK. But don’t miss who is involved. Verse 1, the Lord your God told you. Verse 2, fear the Lord your God. Verse 3, the Lord, God of your fathers who promised.
And just to make it very clear, verse 4 say, HEAR. Listen! Shema Yisrael! The Lord is our God. That’s the one I’m talking about. HIM. No other gods. No other philosophies or philosophers. I’m talking about THAT ONE.
The passage continues, love him (verse 5), don’t forget him (verse 12), fear him (verse 13). Friends at Shomair Yisrael, today I’m telling you that our hope is not in our fulfillment of Torah’s 613 or even today’s 83. Our hope is not in our faithfulness. Our hope is in the Living God who calls us to remember him, to fear him, to love and honour him, and to share his love with one another.
If you know yourself, and your own failures, whether in lying about what physical condition you have like I did that Shabbat morning 58 years ago or pretending to be some kind of holy Joe when deep down inside your sins are well known to you, if you know you, you will not stand on your faithfulness. You will admit your powerlessness to change. Your admission will include a recognition of THAT ONE, the Lord your God, and his capacity to make us his. And in one fell swoop, we will surrender and find eternal life.
So, why am I speaking about all this today? It’s Shabbat Nachamu and we need real comfort, not only since 7 October, but throughout our days. And if we miss the First Step or the First commandment, we are destined to continue to miss the comfort that is sure to come.
I believe that we as a people suffered in the Holocaust due to our living godlessly in the 1930s in Europe. If you read the same Bible cover to cover that our people have read since Moses, you will hear Isaiah and Jeremiah, Joel and Hosea call us out. You will hear them decry our errors and our unwillingness to change. Moses predicted our falling away and every prophet in the Book did the same.
And what will God do to her erring people? He will judge us. Why? To get us back on track. He built the system of righteousness, and he longs for us to live there. And if we don’t, he has no other recourse but to call other nations in to bring us to judgment so that we turn to him.
The two temples were destroyed for our own sins. Solomon’s temple destroyed due to three things: idolatry, adultery and murder. The 2nd Temple was destroyed due to ‘hatred without a cause.’
Modern Israel was formed in 1948, but even without a specific land mass, we were judged as a nation throughout our existence. Messianic Jewish leader Art Katz died 17 years ago and was a prophetic voice in our days. In his book “The Holocaust: where was God?” Art said that if God did not judge the Jews in Europe in the 1930s, that he “would have to apologize to the Jews of Jeremiah’s days.”
Every one of our losses was due to our failures. Yes, other nations were involved, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the German republic, etc, and they were recompensed with punishment for their actions against our people. Still, don’t miss this, when we are met with a major catastrophe (that’s the translation of the word ‘shoah’ by the way), we must look up. We must search for God. Our hope is not in a treaty with our enemies. Our hope is not in the UN or the next election. Our hope as Jews is in the living God and anything less than that, is…well, less than that. It’s not hope at all.
How do we experience that hope? By acknowledging our failures, our sins, our disregard of God and his plans, by admitting this triad: we cannot, he can, I surrender.
And one more particular thing. Remember I mentioned the haftorahs and their apparent missing component this season? We tallied the readings as Isaiah 40, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54 and 60. What’s missing? Chapter 53! The very hope of the Jewish people is the Comforter of Israel. And he is depicted, announced, and showcased most clearly in the entire Tanach in the words of Isaiah chapter 53.
“He grew up before Him like a tender shoot. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face. He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.
Friends here and online, if you are listening, really listening to my talk this morning, then you are hearing that God loves you enough to send troubles your way, so that you turn to him to repair your life, admit your failings and turn to the Only One who can save you. That’s Yeshua, the man of sorrows and well acquainted with grief. The punishment for our shalom fell on him and with his stripes we are healed. Healed of our misdoings and brought near through his sacrificial blood shed nearly 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem.
Let his plan find its way into your life.
Turn to him and be saved.
Rabbi Mike, shalom to you and your wife, to your family and your family here at Shomair Yisrael. And to each of you, thanks for listening and being God’s people here today and throughout your days. Shabbat shalom.
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[1] Rom. 1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”
Gal. 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Gal. 3:11 Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, “THE RIGHTEOUS MAN SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”
Heb. 10:38 But MY RIGHTEOUS ONE SHALL LIVE BY FAITH,
AND IF HE SHRINKS BACK, MY SOUL HAS NO PLEASURE IN HIM.
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