Dr Clifford Denton.
Ekev: Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25.
24th August 2024/20 Av.
At that time the Lord said to me, hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain and make yourself an ark of wood. (Deuteronomy 10:1)
Picture by Helen McNeill.
The central and earnest instructions and pleas from Moses to the Children of Israel recur over and over in the Books of Torah and are here again in our portion this week:
God is faithful to His promises (e.g. Deuteronomy 7:8)
God’s people must keep His commandments (e.g. Deuteronomy 8:1)
God’s people witnessed His miracles (e.g. Deuteronomy 7:8)
God tests the heart of His people (e.g. Deuteronomy 8:2)
They must trust Him and obey Him (e.g. Deuteronomy 8:6)
Obedience brings great reward (e.g. Deuteronomy 7)
Disobedience brings trouble (e.g. Deuteronomy 8:11-20)
Live in thankfulness to God (e.g. Deuteronomy 8:10)
On no account follow false gods nor make idols (e.g. Deuteronomy 8:19)
These things are not difficult to understand and are the foundational principles of the Kingdom of God. God intervened in the lives of ordinary people, made covenant with them and gave specific requirements and great promises, which find summary in Deuteronomy 10:12-16)
And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good? Indeed, heaven and the highest heavens belong to the Lord your God, also the earth with all that is in it. The Lord delighted only in your fathers, to love them; and He chose their descendants after them, you above all peoples, as it is this day. Therefore, circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer.
It is difficult to understand why hardship has typified the lives of the Children of Israel more than any nation, so clear, simple and inviting is God’s teaching. Yet, even after thousands of years since the time of Moses, Israel still exists. Not only that, but the nation is ever prominent in the news. God’s covenant purposes still go on for them and also for us.
Again, in our studies this week as Moses sums up the teaching of the Lord God, we read how the family home was to be the centre for teaching:
Therefore, you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth. (Deuteronomy 11:18-21)
From generation to generation, God’s people must grow together in faith and obedience through their consideration of His teaching together in the home. Possibly more so today, in our more individualised culture where young as well as old receive so much through the internet and our daily life is often chiefly outside of home. Indeed, the principles of life for God’s people, as listed above are relevant for us as it was for them:
Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell; nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. (1 Corinthians 10:1-11)
We are not anymore, as God’s historic people, on a journey from physical Egypt to physical Canaan, but on a journey through this life to our heavenly home. Yet, on this journey God’s requirement is the same, as is listed above.
It will take more than one week or even one year of Torah readings to complete our family studies on this matter, but each week we can take up the themes of Torah as given in the Old Covenant and find relevance for our lives in the New Covenant. Every one of the above themes comes up in the New Testament and it would be a good family study to find the cross-references that confirm this.
For example, just as Moses expounded the Torah, so Yeshua brought deeper understanding of the same Torah principles on the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and He yearns for us to do what He commands us (John 15:14). The warning to beware of idols and false gods also underpinned the conclusions of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), each of the four injunctions written in the letter by the Apostles highlighting traps which satan can set up, to draw disciples away to false gods and idols. Equally, the battles against the giants in Canaan can be understood in spiritual terms as battles against spiritual powers of darkness (Ephesians 6). These are just some of the cross-references from the Old Testament to the New Testament, which we can search out to gain further understanding of how our walk of faith must be according to the same principles as the Children of Israel.
The Children of Israel failed so many times to keep God’s Commandments, but God’s great gift of His Holy Spirit is His provision in the New Covenant. We are His Children through adoption into the Covenant family of faith (Romans 8) to fulfil that same calling that began in the wilderness years with Moses, not by the letter of the Torah alone, but by the Spirit. The curse of the law is removed through faith in Yeshua, modifying just one of the items in the list above (Galatians 3:13-14). Nevertheless, the journey for us can still be described in terms of Deuteronomy 10:12-16, repeated here:
And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good? Indeed, heaven and the highest heavens belong to the Lord your God, also the earth with all that is in it. The Lord delighted only in your fathers, to love them; and He chose their descendants after them, you above all peoples, as it is this day. Therefore, circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer.
(Other studies in this series can be found in the School of Biblical Family Life section of our website, www.tishrei.org)