Remembering God–Torah Living Daily Challenge (Parashah 46 Part 2)

I’m reminded here of the lawyer, likely a Scribe, who asked the Master what he likely assumed to be a challenging question; that being, “Rabbi, which of the mitzvot in the Torah is the most important?” (Mat 22:36 CJB). Bear in mind that this particular challenge came on the heels of a likely “set-up” on the part of the religious establishment to entangle the Master on trumped-up charges of heresy and or violation of Torah (more so Judaism than Torah). (reference Matthew 22:15) The lawyer’s or Scribe’s question was probably one of the most profound questions any man could ask of the Master (despite the intent behind the question). Yahovah requires order and obedience to His commands and understanding just what our responsibilities are is pivotal to the well-being of our relationship with the Father. We all know the Master’s response, that being–Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. ³⁸ This is the first and great commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Mat 22:37-40 KJV)

The question that must be answered and the foundation of today’s Torah Challenge is, how do we remember–or better–how does one love God?

Moshe provides the answer to the challenge–we remember Yahovah (that is we love Yahovah) by keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes. (reference Deu. 8: 11) According to the TWOT Lexicon, to forget Yehovah is to ignore His commandments; it’s to follow other gods as noted in Deu 8:19; to stand in fear of harm and danger as well as to live fretfully and timidly as noted in Isa 51:13;. it is to challenge Him as noted in Psa 106:13.

After all that the Children of Promise went through and the things that indescribable exploits that they witnessed of the Creator, it seems counter-intuitive that one would ignore Yahovah’s commandments, or follow after other gods or live in fear and timidity. How could this be possible? Deu 8:12 and Hos 13:6 suggest “satiety” as one of the greatest precipitating factors leading to one forgetting Yahovah. Satiety is a state or feeling of being full, such as after eating a meal. When we are sated, we often feel confident and desire nothing more. We become lax and seek to delve within ourselves. As it would relate to this Torah portion, if we fall into the trap of being too comfortable, we will tend to tune Yehovah out. I find it interesting that we say “grace” over our meal before we consume it, but we don’t thank Him for it afterwards. I’m not saying it’s wrong to “grace” our meals before consuming it. I’m only saying that being thankful for the meal we’ve just eaten is typically the furthest thing from our minds. How about going on a trip? We typically ask Yehovah for traveling mercies, but when we arrive to our destination, we go about our business without so much as a thank you to Abba for His safe passage. Why, because we are sated as it relates to our safe and secure arrival. From verses 12 to 14 Yehovah tells us that there was a good chance of forgetting Him and His instruction once we were settled in the land and have received the tremendous blessings that had been promised to us. Verse 14 provides the likely outcome: “then your heart will become proud and you will forget Yehovah our Elohim who brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Unfortunately, Yehovah knew our hearts well in advance of our ever entering into the land of promise. We would forget His Torah once we were settled and took on a state of being sated and secure within the confines of our blessed lives. Oh how many of us have fallen into this trap. Yehovah has blessed us and in return we abandoned His ways. We’ve even compromised our standards which must always be Yahovah’s standards. Often we’ve completely placed Yehovah on a shelf to collect dust just as we’ve done with our bibles. Why? Because we’ve been so busy ensuring that our lives remain happy and content.

 

I’ve said all this that I may submit to you that we must always be on guard that our personal situations in this life do not cause us to forget Yahovah. We must always be cognizant that Yehovah is our primary focus in life and that we must always be in a position to obey Him, trust Him, to avoid at all costs those things in our lives that take our focus away from Him; or even to not challenge Him (such as not seeking His counsel on the weighty things in life). Thus verse 11 directs us to not forget Yehovah’s commandments and ordinances and statutes. In other words, we must not forget to keep His Torah. In order for us to not forget His Torah, we must constantly study His Torah with the mindset and heartset to readily obey. This is why we have the example of our forefathers to keep us in line. We are more fortunate than our forefathers. They had to live through the crucible of the wilderness and the abject testing and refinement of Yehovah. We have their example and thus in theory our feeble attempts to stay true to Torah should be easier by factors of 1000s. But then, when our forefathers were in the wilderness, their survival, their existence, their wellbeing was totally reliant upon Yehovah. There was no one else. They had nothing apart from that which they brought with them when they left Egypt. Thus they learned obedience as well as they learned the consequences of disobedience. There was little distraction to their intense situation, with the exception of the surrounding nations’ gods that they occasionally came into contact with whenever they sent the occupying nation packing. Today, our focus is distracted by the television, the media, work, bills, extra-curricular activities, relationships, keeping-up with the Jones’, careers, etc. We have limited room and time in our minds and lives. Thus, we have to push some things to the side. Unfortunately, more times than not, it is Yahovah that we push to the side. We must fight with our whole being to resist this tendency.

Many in the various denominations that claim to know and honor and worship our Father and our Lord and Savior Yahoshua HaMashiyach contend that it is impossible to keep Torah. We know that sin is transgression of Torah. So in other words, our cousins in denominational churchianity believe that it is impossible to live a sinless life. I would submit to you today that living the life that many of us in the Hebraic Roots and Messianic communities have chosen to live, is indeed not easy. However, keeping Torah in its entirety is certainly doable. I refer you to the writings of the physician Luke:

^NAS  Luke 1:5 ¶ ^aIn the days of Herod, king of Judea, there ¹was a certain priest named ²Zacharias, of the ^bdivision of ³Abijah; and he had a wife ⁴ from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. (Luk 1:5 NAS) ^NAS  Luke 1:6 And they were both ^arighteous in the sight of God, walking ^bblamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. (Luk 1:6 NAS)

I don’t know, sounds like these down to earth, beautiful people of Yahovah were able to keep Torah without a problem. Oh, some might contend that this is not what this passage really means. Well, I’m just going by what I’m reading and taking everything in context. There is a reason why Dr. Luke mentioned this fact in his introduction of this couple to us. I don’t know the entire reason why, but I can certainly guess a lot of it has to do with who these folks were and the role they would play in the redemption story to follow. But suffice to say, Dr. Luke was led by the Ruach Kodesh to certify this couple’s keeping of Torah.

We as a people always have issues with obedience to the Creator, whether we openly admit it or not. There is a nature of rebellion in us that fights against the ways of our Father. Yet there are those of us in society who accomplish great and amazing things that I believe makes keeping of Torah pale in comparison. I watched a documentary one Sunday afternoon that chronicled the climbing of “K2” by a group of mountain climbers. For those of you who may not know, K2 is one of the tallest mountains in the world. It is one of a range of mountains located in the Himalayas. It’s treacherous terrain and adverse weather conditions have claimed the lives of more people than that of Mount Everest, known as the tallest mountain in the world. The documentary gave me insight into the types of people who would take on such a “monumental” challenge; who would endure such adverse conditions; who were able to push through the most alien conditions that are inhospitable to human existence. These people fashioned their lives around the climbing of this and other similar mountains. They embarked on a strict regimen of exercise, diet and conditioning that pushed their bodies to a level that permitted them to not only survive the elements and conditions of the climb, but also to remain calm and maintain a positive mindset even when the bravest of us in the world would curl up in a ball in a corner somewhere and cry for our mommies like a little child. These people were relentless in their pursuit of excellence and accomplishments and a few of them were successful in accomplishing the mission of making it to the top of K2 (although no one accomplished this in the episode I saw, but the credits afterwards spoke to one or more making a successful ascent to the summit). Others, despite their superhuman conditioning, died in the attempt to scale the mountain. This is just one example of lifestyles that groups of people adopt and are successful in establishing and maintaining–not only successful but they thrive in the lifestyle. So why do we fall for the bull that we are incapable of keeping Torah. Certainly we will make mistakes along the way and we’ll falter. Every disciplined athelete and professional comes upon days when they fail to make the mark. We’re human. But these unique individuals get back up on their horses and continue the ride. These individuals not only make a supreme effort to not repeat the failure again, these also take note and learn from their mistakes. We can learn from these unique people as we take on the regimen of living a holy life through Torah. We, however, have an aid. We have the Ruach Kodesh to lead us; to energize us; to bring scripture to our remembrance when needed; to rebuke us; to unify us; to lift us above the filth and evil of this world; to magnify the voice of Yahovah so that we may know His voice and obey His commands. We can do this. 

Verses 15 through 18, in a quick overview, goes over the many exploits and dangers and experiences we had as we sojourned in the desert. Everything from being fed matzah from heaven and given water out of rock to drink; to enduring the many dangers of the desert to include scorpions and snakes. Then in verse 18 Yehovah reminds us that we must never delude ourselves into thinking that we completed our journey on our own power. Everything came from Him and through His providence. Again, the fear that the Father had was that we would enter the land of promise, become sated, and then gradually forget about Him. And we went over once again how we so easily forget Abba by failing to keep and obey His Torah and then go a-whoring after other gods. The kicker in forgetting Abba is that it ultimately leads to our destruction–in one way or another.

Our Torah Challenge today is: Remembering Yahovah. We do that by keeping (studying, learning, knowing and obeying) His Torah.

Personal side note: one way to help us remember Yahovah and His Torah is by wearing tzitzits wherever we go. I began wearing tzitzits going on 2-years now, whenever I leave the house–be it to run an errand, to fellowship, a conference and even to work. Tzitzits are personal reminders to remember Yahovah and His Torah. (Reference Num. 15:38, 39)