IF we will keep His commandments

As I think and read the words to this week’s portion I am struck by the numerous curses that are listed that will come upon the followers of God who do not follow and keep His commandments, rules, instructions, directions and laws. The list is very long, much longer and in much greater detail than the list of blessings. The blessings are ours…if we keep this Torah…as it says over and over again. We tend to like and concentrate on the list of blessings and claim them for ourselves but we don’t look at the qualification that is given over and over again with each blessing. It says “if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today; if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways; if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them, 14 and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.”Deut 28.1-14. This little 2 letter word appears over and over again and it makes the receiving of the blessings conditional upon our obedience. We enter into covenant with God when we accept Jesus as our Lord, Savior and King and now as servants to the King we are required to keep the rules of the King if we want to live in the kingdom. Accepting Jesus gets you through the gate, to live bountifully within the gates requires obedience to the rules of His kingdom. Sounds like a fair trade to me...if we will keep His commandments.

Shabat Thought

Shabbat Shalom,



This morning I read from the Prayer Siddur these words that one of our students said was a blessing to her. I share them with all of you who were present and those of you that were absent. Our thoughts and study this morning centered in large part on the marriage ceremony, the covenant of marriage, the Ketubah and our betrothal. From 2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5 and Ephesians 1:13-14 we see in the words of Paul that the Holy Spirit is the surety, the promise, the commitment of God, of Jesus, the groom to His bride, the church. This portion from the Siddur speaks of the bride, of the Beloved of God. We are the Beloved of God!



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Shabbat is a day of freedom and peace, a celebration of life and creation. May it open our eyes to the goodness we have attained, and our hearts to the goodness we may yet achieve.

Let moments of holiness enter the world, uniting matter and spirit in the joy of wholeness, as we welcome Shabbat, the day of days.

Beloved, come to meet the bride;

Beloved, come to greet Shabbat.

"Keep" and "Remember": a single command the Only God caused us to hear; the Eternal One, His name is One; His are honor and glory and praise.

Beloved...

Come with me to meet Shabbat, for every fountain of blessing. Still it flows, as from the start; the last of days, for which the first was made.

Beloved...

Awake, awake, your light has come! Arise, shine, awake and sing: the Eternal's glory dawns upon you.

Beloved...

Enter in peace, O crown of your husband; enter in gladness, enter in joy. Come to the people that keeps its faith. Enter, O bride! Enter, O bride!

Beloved...

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Here, time and place invite our commitment to the ancient purposes that are our present hopes. Now, time and place are one, bringing promise of triumph over anguish and despair. And when we shall have gone from this place on our separate ways, may our words and promise bring fulfillment and peace.

May our words and promises become deeds, bringing fulfillment and peace.

In this sanctuary we seek to free ourselves from the fears and conflicts that estrange us from one another.

May our words and thoughts give us hope and strength.

We therefore acclaim the eternal power in the universe that helps us to grow in understanding and love, and leads us to freedom.

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Take these words and meditate on them in your heart and draw ever closer to the One you love.

Circumcise Your Hearts

Oh that we would learn what it means to have a circumcised heart and then to act upon it. To realize that we are supposed to allow the Master to mold us and to make us into His image. To allow Him to remove the inflexibilty that we have created in our hearts and minds, to remove our pride, our prejudice and our stubbornness. To create clean hearts within us that truly see Him and reflect the light of His glory.


‘May the Lord bless you
and protect you.
May the Lord smile on you
and be gracious to you.
May the Lord show you his favor
and give you his peace.’ (Numbers 6.24-26)

Parasha: Ekev

Ekev - עקב : "Because"
Torah : Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25
Haftarah : Isaiah 49:14-51:3
Gospels : Acts 6-7

Thought for the Week:
Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. (Deuteronomy 30:6)

Commentary:
So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer. (Deuteronomy 10:16)

Moses told the children of Israel to circumcise their hearts. That's a strange image. Circumcision refers to removal of the foreskin. What does it mean to "circumcise your heart"?

In Deuteronomy 10:16, Moses compared an uncircumcised heart with a stiff neck. A stiff neck is a biblical idiom that refers to pride and stubbornness. A person with a stiff neck is not flexible. He does not make his will suppliant to God's instruction.

In Jeremiah 4:3-4, an uncircumcised heart is compared to hard, fallow soil that cannot be cultivated because it has not been plowed:

Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the LORD and remove the foreskins of your heart. (Jeremiah 4:3-4)

This passage from Jeremiah can be compared to the Master's parable of the sower who cast seed on four different types of soil. The seed that fell on the unplowed soil did not take root. The seed that fell among the thorns was choked out.

In the Bible, the heart represents the seat of one's will. The uncircumcised heart is stubborn and inflexible. It does not submit to God's will. The Word of God cannot bear fruit or even take root in that heart.

A person with an uncircumcised heart is a person whose flesh (physical inclinations) dictates his will. A person with a circumcised heart is one whose flesh has been removed from his will, allowing the Spirit of God to direct the will.

According to Paul, a circumcision of the heart takes place when we trust in Messiah. He says to the Gentiles of Colosse that "in [Yeshua] you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Messiah" (Colossians 2:11). He tells the Roman believers that even though a person might not be physically circumcised, he can still have a circumcised heart. He says, "He is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God" (Romans 2:29).

Those in Yeshua should have a markedly different nature than those without Yeshua. Our will should be suppliant to God's. Those of us who have experienced the miraculous rebirth that is the work of God's Spirit within us through the agency of His Son are supposed to have circumcised hearts.

Shabbat Shalom

Today was just a glorious time in the Lord as we worshipped and studied and enjoyed Tina's dance. To truly get to understand the heart of God we need to understand what the righteousness of God includes. God has always been interested in the condition of the heart of His people. He is a covenant keeping God who desires an intimate relationship with His people and wants us to express our true love to Him through our obedience to His law. His law will set us free because we no longer have to make the decisions on right and wrong - God makes those choices and we just obey as children of the King.
‘May the Lord bless you
and protect you.
May the Lord smile on you
and be gracious to you.
May the Lord show you his favor
and give you his peace.’ (Numbers 6.24-26)

The Commandment of Loving God

This thought more than any other gives us true insight into not only the Shema of God but also what it means for us to love God.

Va’etchanan – ואתחנן : “And I besought”
Torah : Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11
Haftarah : Isaiah 40:1–26
Gospel : Acts 3-5

Thought for the Week:
Deuteronomy 6:6 speaks in the future tense when it says, “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.” (Deuteronomy 6:6) Jeremiah 31:33 promises that in the new covenant, God will write his Torah upon our hearts. He says, “I will put My Torah within them and on their heart I will write it.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

Commentary:
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! (Deuteronomy 6:4)
In Jewish liturgy, Deuteronomy 6:4–9 is called “The Shema.” Shema (שמע) is the imperative to listen. “Shema O Israel,” Deuteronomy 6:4 says. Moses is telling Israel, “Listen up! The LORD our God, the LORD is one!” The Master regarded the Shema as the greatest and foremost commandment of the Torah. A sage once asked him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” (Mark 12:28) He answered with the words of Deuteronomy 6:4–5:

Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. (Mark 12:29–30)

Why does Yeshua teach that to love the LORD is the greatest commandment? Because genuine love for God leads us to fulfill all the commandments. If we truly love God, we will seek to please Him in all that we do. We will keep His commandments out of a desire to demonstrate our love for Him. It is foremost because it must come first. If we try to serve God merely out of fear or out of a desire for reward or to earn salvation, our service is not genuine. Just as a husband wants His wife to love Him, so too the Father desires His children to serve Him out of love. Imagine being married to a person that does not love you. He or she may be faithful and even compliantly obedient, but without love, the relationship would feel empty. Conversely, imagine being married to someone who claims to love you but does not respect you or show you any fidelity. Such love would only be a sham. That is why love must come first. Our first obligation to God, before any other commandment, is to love Him.

More than just a feeling, love for God results in obedience to His commandments, the Torah:

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.” (1 John 5:3)

If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20)

Yeshua demonstrated His love for the Father by living a life of total obedience to Him. Yeshua is loved by the Father, and He returned that love in the form of perfect submission. God demonstrated His love for us by sending us His Son, whom He loved.

Clothed in Righteousness

As I've been reading and studying this weeks portion from Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11 I keep seeing the same thing over and over again as it refers to righteousness and what is good. Laws are God’s standards of righteousness. We recognize God as the supreme Law Giver. God’s laws are eternal. These laws will be used at a future time of judgment. They exist to keeps man’s sinful nature in check. When obeyed they will result in blessings.

To "fulfill" is the idiom of the sages meant to observe and to practice. When Jesus said he came to fulfill the Torah, he was saying he came to observe and to practice all of the Torah and to teach us to do the same.

Where do we find God’s righteousness- in the Torah (Deut 4.6-8; 6:25). As we are called to return to righteousness, it must be a righteousness that comes from God alone, not man. God’s righteousness is revealed to us in the entire Bible but specifically is found in the Torah. Just as Israel was called to be a light to the nations based upon their keeping of the statutes, judgments and laws of Torah, Jesus called us to be a light to all people by seeing our good works, which are our mitzvahs, which are our keeping of Torah commands. By our observing of God’s Torah rules we draw men closer to Him. When we fulfill Torah, when we observe and practice Torah, we are serving as witnesses for Jesus because we are truly doing as Jesus did, not just the miracles and signs and wonders but the everyday things of life.

Upon our Hearts

What does it mean to have these words to be upon our hearts? Throughout the Torah and the entire Old Testament the Lord kept asking and encouraging Israel to place His commandments upon their hearts. He said he desired obedience more than He did sacrifice. That which we are to place upon our hearts is God's Holy Law, His Torah, His loving instructions to us for our good. Yet we want to run after our own hearts and we refuse to listen to the voice of God. He is calling His people, both Israel by birth and Israel by adoption(Christians) to return to the very thing that God wants to place upon our hearts. God has always been a covenant making and a covenant keeping God and as such He requires us to be obedient through faith to His ways, His rules and His will. Jesus was obedient to all the commandments of the Torah and He taught His disciples to do the same. In these latter days He is once again crying out to His people, His church and saying "Will you return to me and turn from your wicked ways and from your own hearts desires? Will you set your hearts upon my ways, my Torah or will we continue to do it our own way?" Behold, He sets before us truth and life; now the choice is ours.

Portion Va’etchanan – ואתחנן : “And I besought”
Torah : Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11
Haftarah : Isaiah 40:1–26
Gospel : Acts 3-5

Thought for the Week:
In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory. (Ephesians 1:13-14)

Commentary:
In the recitation of the Shema (Hear O Israel), the Torah speak in the future tense when it says, “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6). This means that we are to endeavor to keep the commandments by placing them on our hearts, but it could also be read to imply an assurance of the future. Jeremiah 31:33 promises that in the new covenant, God will write his Torah upon our hearts. He says, “I will put My Torah within them and on their heart I will write it” (Jeremiah 31:33). This means that God will actually change our nature, circumcising our hearts as it were, to remove from us the waywardness of our evil inclinations. Paul speaks of this transformation as “the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). In another passage, Paul says, “Therefore if anyone is in Messiah, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Paul points to the lives of believers as evidence of the new covenant when he says, “You are a letter of Messiah, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:3). All of this happens to believers as a fulfillment of the promise of the new covenant. The Holy Spirit is responsible for writing the commandments of God upon our hearts:

Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. (Ezekiel 36:26–27)
But as of yet, we have not experienced this regeneration in its fullness. The completion of the promises of the new covenant awaits the coming of Messiah who is the “guarantee of a better covenant” (Hebrews 7:22). Paul tells us that God “gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge” (2 Corinthians 1:22). A pledge implies a down payment on a sum which will be paid in full in the future. The down payment is the Holy Spirit within us now. The amount to be paid in full in the future is the Torah written on our hearts.

Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge … a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory. (2 Corinthians 5:5; Ephesians 1:13-14)
In that day of redemption, the words of Deuteronomy 6:6 will be made true. “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6).