Introduction to Parashah 132—Yeshua, the Bread of Life

 

Our Parshah this week, under the 3-year Torah Reading cycle, is found in Deuteronomy 8:1-20. The most prominent verse in the reading is verse 3:

 

“Thou shalt not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the Mouth of YHVH.”

 

And we’ll talk more about this verse in just a few.

 

The accompanying Haftorah is Jeremiah 9:22-26. (Read.) It reminds us not to glory in ourselves such as in our accomplishments. Instead, we are to glory in the fact that we know YHVH. Another way of looking at it: Glory that we have a true relationship with the Creator of the Universe.

 

Our Apostolic Passage is found in Yochanan 15:8-10 (Read). Master taught us that when we keep His commandments, we abide in His love. But what does abiding in His love look like? What does He mean by that statement.

 

It essentially means that we are kept safe and security from the dangers and curses that often befall those who are not under His umbrella of spiritual protection and oversight. How this plays out in relation to our Torah Reading today will become evident as we progress, but the bare essential, obvious understanding that must be grasped here is that when Yah’s elect walk steadfastly in obedience to Yah’s covenant through Yeshua Messiah and the work of Yah’s precious Ruach HaKodesh, they are taken care of. They are secure. We are abiding in Master’s love.

 

Now, none of this is to say that we won’t run into life’s problems from time-to-time. We are not entirely immune to life’s issues. However, when we are walking in obedient, faithful covenant—we are abiding in Master’s Love—we are not slaves to the whims of this life. When the whims of this life attempt to overtake us, we have the means to overcome those nuisances. We simply take it to Abba, through Yeshua, and He promises us that He will take care of those things for us.

 

Master instructed us to “Seek first the Kingdom of Yah and His righteousness.” And in so doing, “all these things—the cares and concerns of this life—will be added to us” (Mat. 6:33).

 

But we have to keep His commandments in order for us to walk in His love. And oh by the way: Our Master’s commandments are the exact same commandments as our Father’s Torah Commandments. Master simply took His Father’s commandments and brought them to us in their fullest manifestation and understanding. Praise Yah!

 

Our Torah Reading

 

Found this week in Deuteronomy 8 (Read).

 

We Are to Observe and Do All of His Commandments

 

Torah sustains and perpetuates life (vs. 1). It was THE essential key to our taking possession of the Land of Promise. By default, it is also the key to our receiving and entering the Kingdom of YHVH.

 

 

Shamar—Guard Father’s Commandments

 

Father commands us to “guard” (the Hebrew is “shamar” which means to protect or take care of) in order that we may do all of His commandments. There is a strict order at play here. First order of business, we are to protect or guard Father’s commandments. Then, the second order of business is that we simply do them. Guarding/protecting Yah’s commandments are as important as doing them.

 

We “shamar” or guard/protect Yah’s commandments in a couple simple ways: (1) We study Yah’s Word. (2) We order our lives in such a way that it is conducive to walking out His Word (e.g., set-aside prayer and study time; preparation for the weekly Sabbath and annual Feasts of YHVH; ridding our homes of ungodly things and creating an environment that is inviting to Yah’s presence; etc).

 

Every Applicable Commandment Must Be Kept

 

The understanding that must be had in Abba’s commandment that we do all of His commandments is that we must be diligent to keep each applicable commandment. No picking and choosing of which commandments we want to keep or not is allowed.

 

Messianic Torah teacher Tim Hegg describes the commandments of Yah as “a single entity, woven together into a single cloth.” Thus, within the Hebrew mindset, it is not unusual for a writer to refer to Torah as simply the “Commandment”:

 

“And He (Yeshua) answered and said to them (the Jewish leaders), ‘Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of YHVH for the sake of your tradition’” (Matt. 15:3)?

 

“So then, the Torah is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Rom. 7:12).

 

 

No Division Whatsoever in Torah

 

Contrary to religious conventional wisdom, it is evident that Father desired that His Torah be understood from the perspective of a “unified whole” (Hegg).

 

However, various religious entitles throughout the centuries have taken it upon themselves to break the Torah up into sections or categories:

 

The Book of the Law versus the Book of the Covenant; the moral laws; the civil laws and the ceremonial laws.

 

This is all crazy Tom Foolery stuff in order to fulfill some sort of agenda or religious, denominational purpose that is not of Yah.

 

 

Rehearse—Rehearse—Rehearse

 

Moshe’s recitation of YHVH’s miraculous providence and oversight of Yisra’el during their wilderness wanderings served to bolster our Faith as we prepared to take and receive the Land. The foundation of Faith in YHVH is recognizing and remembering how good He is to us and that He desires to prosper us.

 

But in order for His people to prosper, they must be in His Perfect Will. And to get His people to remain in His Perfect Will, Abba is often forced to exercise tough-love toward them.

 

It is from Jeremiah’s letter to the captive Hebrews in Babylon that we learn why Yah exercises spiritual tough love towards His own:

 

 ¹⁰ For thus saith YHVH, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.

 ¹¹ For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith YHVH, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

 ¹² Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.

 ¹³ And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

 ¹⁴ And I will be found of you, saith YHVH: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith YHVH; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive. (Jer 29:10-14 KJV)

 

Abba wants nothing but the best for His beloved. However, His beloved must show that they are worthy of His best. And they show their worthiness by their Faithful obedience to His instructions, even in the midst of hardships. Those hardships may or may not, from time-to-time consist of Abba’s tough love discipline and even tests.

 

Therefore, by extension, if we are truly His children, despite the hardships that seem to befall us from time-to-time (for the aforementioned stated reasons), our Faith in Him must cause us to recognize that He orders every aspect of our lives. And it is during those trying times of testing and disciplining that we have the opportunity prove our spiritual mettle. To prove that we fully trust Him to have our very best interests at heart.

 

Shaul wrote to the Roman Messianics:

 

“And we know that Yah causes all things to work together for good to those who love Yah, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

 

The writer of Hebrews wrote the following regarding Yah’s righteous discipling of His children:

 

“For whom YHVH loves He reproves, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights” (Heb. 12:6).

 

A Parenting Example

 

Yah chastened His first-born son Yisra’el because He wanted the very best for His chosen ones. As Yisra’el’s parent, it fell to Him to correct the child He loved so much, despite the pain that it no doubt caused Him on each occasion of correction.

 

Today, modern western parenting advocates that the best parents are those who allow their children to behave any way that seems right to the child. Many parents are opting to be their children’s friends instead of their parents. Thus, discipline (I.e., corrective and lifestyle discipline) are often withheld. And what we’re seeing as a result are generations of young people with no sense of morals; no sense of purpose; no sense of respect for themselves or others. It’s truly sad and equally frightening to think that these are the so-called future of our society.

 

A Lack of Discipline Leads to Death (Spare the Rod Spoil the Child)

 

The lack of discipline inevitably leads to death: physical; spiritual; moral death. And Abba of course knows that. Thus, He had no other recourse but to discipline Yisra’el on numerous occasions, for the purpose of bringing them back from the precipice of death.

 

Yah’s example of disciplining Yisra’el serves as an excellent example of how we are to properly train and mold our children.

 

The Reason Yah Disciplines His Own is for His Own’s Well Being

 

The ultimate reason Yah disciplines His beloved can be found in a passage of Hebrews which reads:

 

“For the earthly fathers disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but Yah disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Heb. 12:10-11).

 

Did you catch what the writer said: Yah disciplines us so that we may share His holiness. Holiness cannot be had by Yah’s elect unless they are trained accordingly. And part of that training may involve disciplining and testing. And if Yah’s elect one is pure of heart and acquiesces to the testing and discipline, and allows Yah’s Ruach HaKodesh to do its work in them, he or she ends up successfully walking in righteousness.

 

Successfully Making it Through Yah’s Disciplining

 

The elect’s success in making it through Yah’s disciplining and or testing comes only by his/her “trusting faith” in the righteousness of their Elohim. A trusting faith is one that recognizes Yah as righteous in all that He is doing in one’s life.

 

We trust Abba that His testing and disciplining is for our betterment and that He will keep the promises that He’s made to us.

 

Under Moshe’s leadership, Yah tested us through hunger and thirst. And hunger was the very thing we apparently did not experience in Egypt despite our harsh slavery.

 

Yah Often Uses That Which is Most Dear to Us to Test Us

 

Yah has, from time to time, used the very thing that means the most to us, to test and try His elect.

 

Recall how Yah tested Avraham using the one thing Avraham loved the most: His son Yitchaq (aka Isaac) (Gen. 22:1-16). Upon Avraham obeying the voice of Yah to the point of killing His own son, Yah states that because of Avraham’s steadfast and exacting obedience to His instructions, He then knew that Avraham truly feared Him.

 

And so are we subject to testing as were Avraham and Yisra’el. But Master Y’shua revealed to us that we can petition Father to not put us through testing or trials (I.e., Lead us not to testing, but deliver us from the evil one–Mat. 6:13).

 

Regardless, Abba must be sovereign in our lives. And If He elects to put us through times of testing and disciplining, we must meet those times with faithful obedience, reverence and repentance.

 

Yah Is Always Righteous—There is no Randomness in His Ways

 

Many in our Faith Community, when they come upon hard times (some seemingly having hard times more severely and or frequently than others) believe it’s just their lot in life to suffer. Now, I would be open to acknowledging that the reason Yah has us endure some trials and even tribulations from time to time is for reasons that we are not privy to. He is sovereign. But in His sovereignty, He is righteous. Thus, Yah’s purpose may not become evident to us in this life, but we can rest assured that He has a righteous reason.

 

And one of the best examples of this understanding can be found in the story of Job. For we learn right at the beginning of the cepher the reason why Job was put through testing (Job. 1:8-12). It was a test of cosmic-proportions that ultimately led to Job being blessed beyond that which he was previously blessed.

 

A Faith Beyond the Physical

 

When we talk about or meditate on the theme of this Parshah, that being “The Bread of Life,” we are compelled to really wrestle with the statement Moshe made to us regarding the contrast that exists between physical food and Yah’s Words.

 

“He (YHVH) humbled you and suffered you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you knew not, neither did your fathers know; that He might make you know that man does not live by bread only, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of YHVH man lives” (vs. 3).

 

We Are Not to Live by Physical Food Only in this Life

 

I used to always struggle with this verse, never able (on my own that is) to make the connection between manna and Yah’s Word. But it became clear to me some time ago that the manna that Yah gave us in the stark harshness of the Sinai wilderness served two critical purposes: (1) it provided our physical bodies the nourishment it needed to sustain our physical life. (2) The manna was a manifestation of Yah’s Word.

 

Now, the first point is an obvious one. But point two needs a little more unpacking.

 

The Bread and the Word

 

I realize that many have attempted to spiritualize the manna to the point that it becomes some esoteric thing of scripture. Manna has become for some a thing that is beyond what it truly was meant to represent. And to be honest, it seems to me that one should be at liberty to meditate and come to Spirit (Ruach)-led conclusions as to what the manna foreshadowed and meant from a spiritual perspective (e.g., the manna represents Yeshua as the Bread of Life, which of course He is). 

 

The Context of the Manna

 

But from a contextual standpoint, when we trace the first manifestation of the manna, we learn that it was provided to us in the midst of Yah’s testing and proving us through hunger (Exo. 16). If you recall, we demanded of Moshe that he provide us food to satisfy our hunger. The manna (and quail) was Yah’s response to our cry for sustenance. But with that giving of manna, Yah placed very simple rules around its gathering and consumption (cf., the gathering of manna each of the 6 days, but none to be given on the 7th day Shabbat). If we followed Yah’s simple rules around the manna, He would continue to sustain our physical bodies with manna accordingly.

 

Manna Was a Lesson in Obedience

 

Thus the manna not only sustained us physically—miraculously I might add, providing us all the nutrients we needed to survive the harsh wilderness environment—it also served as one of our first lessons in obedience. Obedience to Yah and His Word. And the nexus between the physical manna and Yah’s Word is simply that our very existence is dependent upon our obedient Faith in Father’s providence towards us. Only when we recognize and fully adhere to this critical, but simple spiritual principle, do we find true wholeness and oneness with our Creator.

 

The Dangers of Prosperity

 

We find in Deuteronomy 28 that when we truly adhere to this principle of Faithful obedience to Yah, He will in return prosper us. And because prosperity comes from YHVH, it is of course a good thing.

 

However, because humans have this nasty little tendency of being fickle, or simply forgetful or contrary, that same prosperity that comes from Yah can result in our forgetting or neglecting to remember from whence our prosperity cometh. In many cases we end up erroneously rationalizing that our prosperity came from a source other than YHVH (rather as a result of own efforts or from some random fortune or other).

 

Thus Moshe strongly counsels us:

 

“When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless YHVH Elohayka for the good land which He has given you. Beware that you forget NOT YHVH Elohayka, in not guarding His commandments, and His judgments, and His statutes…”(vss. 10-11).

 

Remember Yah’s Providence by Thanking Him and Obeying Him

 

Thus we are, without failure, commanded to thank Yah for that which He has provided us, in particular for the food He has given to sustain us. The heart of this commanded practice is to bring us to the understanding that Yah is our provider and all that we receive is as a result of His provision only. It is our responsibility to, in response to His provision, thank Him and steadfastly obey Him.

 

Our Torah Reading Points Directly to our Master Yahoshua as the Bread of Life

 

Since Torah points to our Master Y’shua in one way or in others, this whole thought of bread and the Word we must, before we end today, now considered.

 

There are of course a number of ways that one could view our Master from the standpoint or a discussion of bread and the Word. But for me here today, I really want to lay before you the perspective of Yeshua Messiah being the embodiment of the spiritual bread that sustains life and He as the walking, talking Torah.

 

Without Yeshua, we face certain death and separation from YHVH. It is through His personal ministry as the walking, talking Torah that we have the opportunity for abundant eternal life. This is as a result of His atoning sacrifice.

 

Additionally, He is our example for righteous living. He is the  prototypical human being–Son of Adam–that the Creator wants us to imitate. In so doing, we walk as He did and do the works that He did. We please Father in the process and He blesses us in accordance with His covenant promises.

 

The Ruach HaKodesh that He sends to us provides us the wherewithal to walk out our Faith as Father always intended for His children to do. That Spirit embeds Yah’s Torah and the teachings of our Master Yeshua within us so that we may walk uprightly—perfectly–before our Father and make Him proud.

 

The best evidence that I can point to as it relates to our Master being the Bread of Life is found in Master’s very own words—Found in Yochanan 6. And we find, beginning with verse 22, that many who followed Yeshua during His teaching events throughout Judea, did so, not because they truly bought into His teachings. Instead, shockingly so, they followed Him in search of a free meal. And Yeshua discerned this right off the bat and confronted the offenders:

 

“The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, save that one where-into His Talmidiym were entered, and that Yeshua went not with His Talmidiym into the boat, but that His Talmidiym were gone away alone;…When the people therefore saw that Yeshua was not there, neither His Talmidiym, they also took shipping, and came to Kapharnachum, seeking for Yeshua. And when they had found Him on the other side of the sea, they said unto Him, ‘Rabbi, when came you hither?’ Yeshua answered them and said, ‘Amein, Amein, I say unto you, ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perishes, but for that meat which endures unto everlasting life, which the Son of Adam shall give unto you: for Him has YHVH the Father sealed.’ Then said they unto Him, ‘What shall we do, that we might work the works of YHVH?’ Yeshua answered and said unto them, ‘This is the work of YHVH, that ye believe on Him whom He has sent.’ They said therefore unto Him, ‘What sign show you then, that we may see, and believe you? What do you work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ Then Yeshua said unto them, Amein, Amein, I say unto you, Moshe gave you not that bread from heaven; but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of Yah is He which comes down from heaven, and gives life unto the world.’ Then said they  unto Him, ‘Adonai, evermore give us this bread.’ And Yeshua said unto them, ‘I am the bread of life: he that comes to Me shall never hunger; and he that believes on Me shall never thirst’” (vss. 22-35).

 

There’s just too much content to unpack here and do this passage any true spiritual justice. Abba willing, we’ll come back to this crucial passage and really pick apart the ramifications of what Master was telling these folks and by extension us today, sometime in the future. But we should at least consider the meaning behind that which Master said to the meal-seekers: what it means for yours and mine eternal destiny and place in the Kingdom of Yah?

 

It should be evident that one of the primary things Master was saying here in this passage is the expanded version of the very thing Moshe was saying to Yisra’el here in our Parshah today: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the Mouth of YHVH.”

 

Master Himself declared that He came from Abba Father and He, the walking-talking Torah, is our sustenance. He sustains us through His teachings and example, and more so through His atoning sacrifice and intercessory work in the Heavenly Mishkan.

 

We could go on and on regarding Yeshua and His role as the Bread of Life for humankind. But Yeshua as the bread—our bread—that leads to life must be the thing that we must always consider in our day-to-day Faith-walk. For it’s one thing to wake up every morning, get our personal acts together, maybe say a prayer or two, and then go on about our day, making sure we keep Torah in all that we do. It’s a whole other level when we repeat the same daily ritual, but instead of launching out on our own to walk Torah, we instead, imitate our Master and do exactly what He did; think how He thought; talk like He talked; love Abba and love others as He did. And if we can manage to do that, we stand the chance of succeeding in our respective walks, glorifying and pleasing our Heavenly Father in the process.