Well, here it is, my 2010 commentary on the parashah known as R’eh. It seemed to go over well. So enjoy the commentary below. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah for today is R’eh, a Hebrew word that means, “See.” This portion covers Deuteronomy chapter eleven, verse twenty-six through chapter sixteen, verse seventeen. You know, this week’s reading contains what I think is one of the most important passages in the Torah, especially as it applies to believers today. Before I just read it for you, however, allow me to set the scene.
As we have learned the last few weeks, the Book of Deuteronomy is sort of a history lesson, a review of the entire Torah. It is basically an address by Moses to the children of Israel as two eras in their journey are about to come to an end. The first era that’s ending is their time of wandering in the desert, being supernaturally kept there by God. The wicked generation that rebelled against the LORD and against Moses have all died off, just as the LORD promised they would. Those left are a new generation with little to no memory of life in Egypt. Nearly all they’ve known their whole life is being supernaturally kept by God in the wilderness, where all their needs were met by God directly.
The other era that’s coming to an end is Moses’ time as the sole mediator between the LORD and the Israelites. Remember, their fathers had rejected hearing the voice of the LORD directly at Mount Sinai, asking that God use Moses as their mediator.
But Moses was just a man, and now, at nearly 120 years of age, his time with the people of Israel is drawing to a close. Moses has been told by God he cannot enter the Promised Land with his people because of what he did when he struck the rock, rather than speaking to it as God instructed to bring forth water for the people.
And so now, Moses is standing before the people of Israel and addressing them for a final time; that’s what this book of Deuteronomy is all about. He is teaching this generation all that has come before them and brought them to this momentous day, as they are about to inherit a land first promised to them hundreds of years earlier, by God to their father Abraham.
Now, the land they are about to enter, the land of Israel, may be promised to them, but it is not vacant. There are others living in this land, a people God has decided to cast out of the land because they have done detestable things while living in it, as well as because it is promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Part of entering and taking over an occupied land, of course, is that even after the military battles are won and they begin to take possession of it, they have a further problem: the land will still be filled with the possessions of the previous inhabitants, and that includes shrines, temples and memorials to the false gods worshiped by the people there that God is casting out of the land.
As our parashah opens, God, through Moses, is offering instructions on how they must tear down all these shrines, temples and memorials and start from scratch, and God shares His reason for this as we pick up in:
Deuteronomy 12:4-5
You must not worship the LORD your God in their way. But you are to seek the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go;
Let me read verse four again: “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.”
What did this mean to the early Israelites? It meant exactly what God was instructing them to do in the verses before this statement; they must tear down all the temples, monuments and memorials made to other gods, to completely destroy them and start from scratch. In other words, they were not to come into the land and say, “Oh, here’s a nice little monument to Ba’al. It’s here already. Let’s rededicate it to the LORD, rather than building a new one.”
God makes it clear here; that’s not what he wants the children of Israel to do. “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.”
If there’s any room left for possible doubt as to the LORD’s meaning, he restates it again in:
Deuteronomy 12:13-14
Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. Offer them only at the place the LORD will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I command you.
What this verse teaches us is that not only were the children of Israel being instructed not to recycle temples and monuments constructed for other gods, but that God was going to choose a specific place where He wanted to be worshiped in unity by all the people, and they were not to perform their worship just anywhere they pleased. And there are promises and blessings God goes on to make, if they follow his instructions and obey him in this.
And to really underline His point, God repeats this wish a third time, this time with more detail, as we read in:
Deuteronomy 12:29-31
The LORD your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates.
So is God being vague and speaking in riddles here? Clearly not. He is expressing a very clear wish: He does not want the people who fear and love Him to worship Him in ways that other gods are worshiped, at places and facilities and times that other gods are worshiped. He repeats over and over His desire: that those who love Him obey all His instructions and observe everything He has taught them. That includes where, when and how He is to be worshiped. This includes all the instructions that have come before, which encompasses the Sabbath He created, the monthly New Moon festivals, and all his yearly feasts and festival days.
God asks us to do just a few simple things. When you consider all He has done for these Israelites; bringing them out of bondage in Egypt, giving them the commands and the Torah, supernaturally keeping them in the desert for forty years and delivering them to a land promised to them through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob… or even by extension all God does for us today, through the Messiah Yeshua… considering all of this… is God really being unreasonable and demanding? Is God really asking too much of us, placing a burden on us we cannot bear? Or are his expectations reasonable? Could it be that simply asking us not to worship Him in the way other people worship their gods is really not that overwhelming a request?
Is it too much to ask the Israelites not to use temples to Ba’al as places of worship to the LORD, the one true God? Is it too much to ask that we worship God on the occasions he asks us to, rather than doing “as we do here today, everyone as he sees fit,” as it says in Deuteronomy 12:8?
Perhaps we can begin to understand why God was so opposed to being worshiped in the same places, times and ways as other gods if we look briefly at the practices of one of the chief false gods of those who inhabited Israel whom the LORD was evicting through the children of Israel.
I want to read you a portion from an article I found about Ba’al worship on the:
Jewish Encyclopedia.com
The noxious elements in such Ba’al Worship were not simply the degradation of the LORD and the enthronement in His place of a baseless superstition. The chief evil arose from the fact that the Ba’als were more than mere religious fantasies. They were made the symbols of the reproductive powers of nature, and thus their worship ministered to sexual indulgences, which it at the same time legalized and encouraged. Further, there was placed side by side with the Ba’al a corresponding female symbol, the Ashtoreth and the relation between the two deities was set forth as the example and the motive of unbridled sensuality. The evil became all the worse when in the popular view the LORD Himself was regarded as one of the Ba’als and the chief of them (Hosea 2:16)
So what do we learn here? They memorials, temples and other places of worship are full of what? Statues and carvings depicting male and female genitalia! Walking into the land of Israel when it was under the control of these Ba’al worshipers what probably not vastly different from walking into the average adult bookstore! Can a person dedicated to God lead a life of holiness and obedience to God’s instructions when surrounded by such things? It would be like trying to hold an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a bar! And just as successful, I’d imagine.
You see, God is not arbitrary. He always has reasons for everything He does, everything He asks of us. We may not always understand it, or know what those reasons are, but he does have reasons!
Yet there are some who demand to know what God’s reasons are for each and every command; it’s like they feel God owes them an explanation for everything. And it’s not an uncommon sentiment; the book of Job revolved around such questions.
In the end, though, does God really owe us reason upon reason upon reason for each of his commands, until we finally run out of questions and agree to obey?
For example, this week’s Torah portion also covers God’s commands for which animals are clean to eat, and which are forbidden as food. For example, as we read in:
Deuteronomy 14:3-6
Do not eat any detestable thing. These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain sheep. You may eat any animal that has a split hoof divided in two and that chews the cud.
And what do we often hear? We are trained and taught that this simple instruction of God is part of what Yeshua did away with, something that no longer applies. Or we hear the other side of the coin and come up with all sorts of rationalizations in favor of observing it. We talks about benefits like a longer life, better health and fresher breath! (OK, maybe not fresher breath.) Or we discuss about the lack of refrigeration back in Moses’ day and how the meat of unclean animals spoiled more quickly than the meat of clean animals, which is pure science fiction. You can leave a smorgasbord of clean and unclean meats out in the hot desert sun, and they all start to stink pretty quickly.
I mean, if you can imagine any possible made-up reason why God might command people not to eat unclean animals, someone out there has claimed to figure it out: this is the secret wisdom behind God’s command!
I hope I’m not being too presumptuous if I suggest a simpler reason. The reason we shouldn’t eat unclean meat, the reason we shouldn’t worship God in the same way other people worship false gods, the reason we should worship God on the occasions and in the places He has asked rather than times of our own choosing, all boils down to one simple reason:
The Creator of the Universe, who as done so much for us, has asked us to do these few, simple things. He’s asked us to follow His instructions and obey His commands; not anyone else’s. That’s it. That’s all. It’s that simple.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: R'eh
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on Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 at 12:26 am and is filed under sermons and commentaries.
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My 2010 R’eh Commentary
August 11th, 2010 by Craig Hansen
Well, here it is, my 2010 commentary on the parashah known as R’eh. It seemed to go over well. So enjoy the commentary below. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah for today is R’eh, a Hebrew word that means, “See.” This portion covers Deuteronomy chapter eleven, verse twenty-six through chapter sixteen, verse seventeen. You know, this week’s reading contains what I think is one of the most important passages in the Torah, especially as it applies to believers today. Before I just read it for you, however, allow me to set the scene.
As we have learned the last few weeks, the Book of Deuteronomy is sort of a history lesson, a review of the entire Torah. It is basically an address by Moses to the children of Israel as two eras in their journey are about to come to an end. The first era that’s ending is their time of wandering in the desert, being supernaturally kept there by God. The wicked generation that rebelled against the LORD and against Moses have all died off, just as the LORD promised they would. Those left are a new generation with little to no memory of life in Egypt. Nearly all they’ve known their whole life is being supernaturally kept by God in the wilderness, where all their needs were met by God directly.
The other era that’s coming to an end is Moses’ time as the sole mediator between the LORD and the Israelites. Remember, their fathers had rejected hearing the voice of the LORD directly at Mount Sinai, asking that God use Moses as their mediator.
But Moses was just a man, and now, at nearly 120 years of age, his time with the people of Israel is drawing to a close. Moses has been told by God he cannot enter the Promised Land with his people because of what he did when he struck the rock, rather than speaking to it as God instructed to bring forth water for the people.
And so now, Moses is standing before the people of Israel and addressing them for a final time; that’s what this book of Deuteronomy is all about. He is teaching this generation all that has come before them and brought them to this momentous day, as they are about to inherit a land first promised to them hundreds of years earlier, by God to their father Abraham.
Now, the land they are about to enter, the land of Israel, may be promised to them, but it is not vacant. There are others living in this land, a people God has decided to cast out of the land because they have done detestable things while living in it, as well as because it is promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Part of entering and taking over an occupied land, of course, is that even after the military battles are won and they begin to take possession of it, they have a further problem: the land will still be filled with the possessions of the previous inhabitants, and that includes shrines, temples and memorials to the false gods worshiped by the people there that God is casting out of the land.
As our parashah opens, God, through Moses, is offering instructions on how they must tear down all these shrines, temples and memorials and start from scratch, and God shares His reason for this as we pick up in:
Let me read verse four again: “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.”
What did this mean to the early Israelites? It meant exactly what God was instructing them to do in the verses before this statement; they must tear down all the temples, monuments and memorials made to other gods, to completely destroy them and start from scratch. In other words, they were not to come into the land and say, “Oh, here’s a nice little monument to Ba’al. It’s here already. Let’s rededicate it to the LORD, rather than building a new one.”
God makes it clear here; that’s not what he wants the children of Israel to do. “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.”
If there’s any room left for possible doubt as to the LORD’s meaning, he restates it again in:
What this verse teaches us is that not only were the children of Israel being instructed not to recycle temples and monuments constructed for other gods, but that God was going to choose a specific place where He wanted to be worshiped in unity by all the people, and they were not to perform their worship just anywhere they pleased. And there are promises and blessings God goes on to make, if they follow his instructions and obey him in this.
And to really underline His point, God repeats this wish a third time, this time with more detail, as we read in:
So is God being vague and speaking in riddles here? Clearly not. He is expressing a very clear wish: He does not want the people who fear and love Him to worship Him in ways that other gods are worshiped, at places and facilities and times that other gods are worshiped. He repeats over and over His desire: that those who love Him obey all His instructions and observe everything He has taught them. That includes where, when and how He is to be worshiped. This includes all the instructions that have come before, which encompasses the Sabbath He created, the monthly New Moon festivals, and all his yearly feasts and festival days.
God asks us to do just a few simple things. When you consider all He has done for these Israelites; bringing them out of bondage in Egypt, giving them the commands and the Torah, supernaturally keeping them in the desert for forty years and delivering them to a land promised to them through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob… or even by extension all God does for us today, through the Messiah Yeshua… considering all of this… is God really being unreasonable and demanding? Is God really asking too much of us, placing a burden on us we cannot bear? Or are his expectations reasonable? Could it be that simply asking us not to worship Him in the way other people worship their gods is really not that overwhelming a request?
Is it too much to ask the Israelites not to use temples to Ba’al as places of worship to the LORD, the one true God? Is it too much to ask that we worship God on the occasions he asks us to, rather than doing “as we do here today, everyone as he sees fit,” as it says in Deuteronomy 12:8?
Perhaps we can begin to understand why God was so opposed to being worshiped in the same places, times and ways as other gods if we look briefly at the practices of one of the chief false gods of those who inhabited Israel whom the LORD was evicting through the children of Israel.
I want to read you a portion from an article I found about Ba’al worship on the:
So what do we learn here? They memorials, temples and other places of worship are full of what? Statues and carvings depicting male and female genitalia! Walking into the land of Israel when it was under the control of these Ba’al worshipers what probably not vastly different from walking into the average adult bookstore! Can a person dedicated to God lead a life of holiness and obedience to God’s instructions when surrounded by such things? It would be like trying to hold an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a bar! And just as successful, I’d imagine.
You see, God is not arbitrary. He always has reasons for everything He does, everything He asks of us. We may not always understand it, or know what those reasons are, but he does have reasons!
Yet there are some who demand to know what God’s reasons are for each and every command; it’s like they feel God owes them an explanation for everything. And it’s not an uncommon sentiment; the book of Job revolved around such questions.
In the end, though, does God really owe us reason upon reason upon reason for each of his commands, until we finally run out of questions and agree to obey?
For example, this week’s Torah portion also covers God’s commands for which animals are clean to eat, and which are forbidden as food. For example, as we read in:
And what do we often hear? We are trained and taught that this simple instruction of God is part of what Yeshua did away with, something that no longer applies. Or we hear the other side of the coin and come up with all sorts of rationalizations in favor of observing it. We talks about benefits like a longer life, better health and fresher breath! (OK, maybe not fresher breath.) Or we discuss about the lack of refrigeration back in Moses’ day and how the meat of unclean animals spoiled more quickly than the meat of clean animals, which is pure science fiction. You can leave a smorgasbord of clean and unclean meats out in the hot desert sun, and they all start to stink pretty quickly.
I mean, if you can imagine any possible made-up reason why God might command people not to eat unclean animals, someone out there has claimed to figure it out: this is the secret wisdom behind God’s command!
I hope I’m not being too presumptuous if I suggest a simpler reason. The reason we shouldn’t eat unclean meat, the reason we shouldn’t worship God in the same way other people worship false gods, the reason we should worship God on the occasions and in the places He has asked rather than times of our own choosing, all boils down to one simple reason:
The Creator of the Universe, who as done so much for us, has asked us to do these few, simple things. He’s asked us to follow His instructions and obey His commands; not anyone else’s. That’s it. That’s all. It’s that simple.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: R'eh
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 at 12:26 am and is filed under sermons and commentaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.