My Messianic Bible is more complete than yours.
Deuteronomy 32
Moses, one of the greatest men who ever lived, a mighty Deliverer, a wonderful Teacher of God’s Law, a worker of miracles, a great Prophet, a Priest, a Leader of Israel, Mediator of a Covenant, Builder of the Dwelling Place of God, and yet the most humble of men, is about to die.
The Lord speaks to Moses for one of the very last times and tells him the future of the Jewish people. It’s not a good future. After Moses dies, our people will be unfaithful, like a prostitute. We will be spiritually promiscuous, worship other gods, forsake the true God, and break our covenant with Him.
Naturally, God will get angry with us. He will distance Himself from us. And, when you alienate the Creator of the universe, and you are immersed in a world of troublesome and evil waters, and the Lord is like a wall surrounding you, keeping the waters out, don’t be surprised when many troubles and evils start inundating you! And, that’s what will happen to Israel.
The Adon Olam, the Lord of the universe, wants the Jewish people to know that we are the ones responsible for the troubles and disasters that will befall us, and that it is because of our sins, our unfaithfulness to God, our breaking of this great covenant that God made with us. If God is far from us, and not protecting us, it’s because we have driven Him away.
Songs have an amazing ability to help us remember lyrics. Many of us can still remember the lyrics to songs we learns decades ago. And so the Lord instructs Moses to teach the Jewish people a song that will be remembered from generation to generation, a song that will be a witness to the truth, so that when these troubles and disasters take place, we will know this song and it will help us understand what is really happening – that we are the ones who have failed – not God. But. It is also a song that is ultimately one of hope, since it concludes with the ultimate restoration of the Jewish people.
This song is so important that Moses, with the help of Joshua, begin by inviting the Heavens and the Earth to listen to it. Mediocre songs don’t make it to the top of the charts, but this song is so important that it has the widest audience possible, and made it to top of the very highest charts. The whole universe should listen to it!
The teaching it contains is good teaching, beneficial knowledge, like rain that brings vitality and life to the grass and plants.
This song is about the Lord. Moses is proclaiming the Name of the Lord – who the Creator really is, and what He is like.
He is Adonai – the only One who has life and being inherent in Himself. He is the source of all being, existence and reality. He is without beginning and without end because He always was, is, and always will be.
He is Eloheem – God: full of might, the Strongest and Most Powerful Being in the universe, infinite in power.
We should praise Him for His Godel – His greatness. He is great: great in power and authority; great in wisdom and understanding; great in love, mercy and grace, great in His ability to help and save.
He is Ha-Tzur – the Rock: Rock is strong, solid and enduring. Just as rock can be used as a weapon, so the Supreme Being is the Protector of His Chosen People.
Just as one hides among rocks and finds safety, so we can draw near to the Eternal Lord in times of trouble and find safety.
Just as we can build our homes with rock, so the Source of Being is the foundation of our existence, upon whom we can build our lives in this world, and in the World To Come. In an unstable world, He adds stability and provides a solid foundation for our lives.
Just as rocks are used for memorials, we should continually remember the Living One. Let’s never forget that the Eternal God is strong, enduring, able to protect us, and give us eternal salvation and everlasting life!
Pa-ah-loh ta-meem – His work is perfect: when He creates something, when He makes the Heavens and everything in them – sun, moon, planets, millions of starified galaxies; when He makes the Earth, with land and water, inhabited by millions of species of plants and animals, birds, fish, and microscopic life; when He makes matter and energy, time and space, atomic and subatomic particles, the laws of nature, it is “very good.” It works amazingly well. He creates with excellence, with perfection. His work far surpasses the work of our greatest scientists and engineers and technicians.
When He speaks, He uses just the right words. He speaks with power, with authority, with precision, with perfection. When He raises up a prophet, the prophet speaks the truth. When God does a miracle, it is excellent. He delivers a nation of slaves out from under the most powerful nation on Earth. When turns water into wine, it is the best wine! When He sends His Son into this world, Immanuel – God with us in human form, Messiah does everything right, says everything just right, lives and dies just right! He dies on a cross, and rises from the dead, and overcomes sin and death, to fix the world, to ultimately bring the fallen universe back to a state of perfection.
Kol d’rah-chav meesh-paht – all His ways are just: everything He does, every action that He undertakes, is done according to the strictest standards of justice. He holds Himself to the highest standards of fairness. You can count on Him to treat you, and everyone you know and love, fairly; now, and on the Day of Judgment.
El Emunah – a God of faithfulness: The Strongest One is completely reliable and worthy of your trust. He is totally committed to truth, to loyalty. He always tells the truth. It is impossible for Him to lie. He is faithful to Himself. He is faithful to His own nature. He cannot deny Himself, or His essential nature and attributes; He is faithful to His word, faithful to His oaths, faithful to His promises, faithful to His covenants. You can trust Him completely in this life, and you can entrust your eternal destiny to Him. Everything the Mightiest One says and does is 100% reliable. He is completely trustworthy.
Ayn avel – without injustice: He never does anything wrong. He is never unfair to anyone; He does not show favoritism; He never perverts justice or withholds justice. You can’t bribe Him, corrupt Him, or manipulate Him into doing anything the least little bit wrong!
Tza-deek – righteous: He is always right. He is always correct. He never makes a mistake. He never sins. He never falls short or misses the goal. He always is fighting for a just cause. He always does the right thing. He never does the wrong thing. He is fair in all of His dealing with every other being that exists. He brings perfect fairness and equity to the administration of justice. When He is finished with this world, and has judged the world, perfect justice will prevail. The wicked will be punished for every evil thing they have done, that they think they have gotten away with. The righteous will be vindicated, shown to have been on the right side, and greatly rewarded.
Yah-shar – upright: straight, even, right. What you see of Him is who He is. He is like a straight path that will get you quickly and safely to your destination, and not like a crooked, twisted one that will lead you astray. He is totally honest. He is like a level playing field. He always plays fair. He is like a smooth highway, so that you can drive fast and safe, and not like not a road full of potholes that will damage your car. He is straight, upright, fair, just, and not crooked, twisted or perverse.
In contrast to this Supremely Great Being, who is strong, enduring, faithful, just, fair and incorruptible; who does everything right; who does everything with a perfection that only He is capable of, we have the Chosen People. How much are we like our magnificent Creator? Sadly the answer is, not very much!
We have become corrupted, twisted, warped, perverse, far from what the Holy God wanted us to be, so much so that it is as if we are no longer God’s children. The Living God doesn’t want to be associated with such a foolish and unwise people. Our Heavenly Father has repudiated us and unadopted us.
Does the Lord deserve to be treated the way we treated Him? No way! He did so much for us. He is our Father – He gave our special nation life and birth. He is our Creator – He gave us existence and brought our people into being. He made us and formed into His special people. Wow!
He did even more. He gave us a very special, beautiful and fruitful Land, in the center of the nations. His plan for the nations of the world revolved around Israel. When the Lord made the other nations, and gave them their lands, He already knew that He would create the Jewish people, and give us the Land of Israel, so He carved out their lands with our in mind.
The Supreme Being loved us. He chose us and drew us near to Himself. We are like a prize possession, and a valuable inheritance.
When our nation was just beginning, we were terribly weak, fragile and vulnerable, but the Almighty came to our rescue, helped us, and protected us as a man protects the pupil of his eyes, as a mother eagle protects her eaglets. God alone did all this for us. There was no other god there assisting Him! The God of Israel alone blessed us greatly, giving us great prosperity, and elevating us above the other nations.
When someone who is so good and so great, does so much good for you when you are so weak, you should express your gratitude by doing something in return. In this case, the Lord wanted us to be good, and to remain faithful to Him. But we didn’t; we advanced from our humble beginnings, and grew up, but when we grew up our prosperity became our undoing.
We became wealthy and fat, and Y’shoo-roon, which means the Upright One, referring to Israel, became crooked and twisted. Instead of remaining faithful to the God who is truly upright, we rebelled against our King. We abandoned God who made us, we rejected our Rock who supported and protected us, God our Yeshua – our Salvation, who helps us and saves us, both in this life, and in the World To Come. We deserted this firm Rock who gave us being, and we forgot the Mightiest One who brought us into existence. Instead, we worshiped other gods; we sacrificed to detestable idols, and to the spiritual powers behind idols, the sheh-deem – the demons. This infuriated the true God, and alienated Him from us.
We rejected our great God, and so He decided to reject us – for a time. He said, “Let’s see, My faithless children, if you really want to forsake Me. OK perverse people – let’s try things your way for a while. We will see how you will like living without Me in this world, and what your end will be.”
Since we have chosen other gods, who are not God, and made the true God jealous, and provoked Him to anger, He will treat us the same way. “Measure for measure. Just as we had angered God by adopting a no-god, so God would anger us by bringing against us a no-people; a horde of barbarians (Hertz)” who will conquer us.
The Lord of Hosts, who is greater than the greatest warrior, will shoot arrows of destruction at us. Our God, who is like a Consuming Fire, is so angry with us, there is no limit to His fury. There’s no controlling it. It’s like a fire that burns up everything on Earth, even burning the deep foundations of the mountains, and keeps burning all the way to the depths of Sheol. His anger against Israel will burn until it is fully sated.
This burning fire will come in the form of calamities, famine, plague. The Lord will send wild animals to kill us, and poisonous creatures to sting and bite us. He will send the armies of our enemies against us to decimate our population. He would have utterly destroyed us, so that we were exterminated as a nation, forgotten as a people, except for the fact that if He did that, our enemies might misunderstand what was happening, and falsely conclude that it was their own superior power, and their superior gods, that enabled Israel to be destroyed. They wouldn’t understand that it was the Lord who was the One doing this, using them to punish and discipline His own people.
But they, the enemy nation that God raises up to conquer us, don’t have wisdom and understanding. If they did, they would understand that the Lord was at work, enabling them to defeat the Jewish people. Otherwise they would not be able to conquer the Holy People. They would also understand that God must eventually punish them, since their motives were not pure. They were not purposely serving the God of Israel. They were simply attacking Israel out of greed and hatred. But they won’t understand all this, because they are corrupt, like something that comes from Sodom and Gomorrah. Their culture is corrupt and bitter, like poisonous grapes and like wine that is actually snake venom. The time of their punishment is coming. It’s being stored up for them. It is certain that God’s vengeance will punish them at the right time.
Now, back to the Jewish people. When we have suffered enough; when our strength is gone; when we are weak again, like we were when God first started dealing with us; when we are almost decimated, so that hardly any remain – from free man to slave, from the high of society to the lowest elements; then God will begin to turn the situation around. He will have compassion on us. He will help us. He will restore us.
He will cause us to understand that He is the true God, who is absolutely sovereign. He is in control of life and death. He puts to death and He gives life to whom He wills. He wounds, and He is the One who brings healing.
He is the One who lifts His hand to Heaven, and swears by Himself, and by His own life, and what He vows will surely happen, since He is in control of all things; no being with intelligence, no force in the universe, can overrule Him. He will punish each and every one of His enemies, and He will also restore His Chosen People, and bring atonement to His Land and His People. We will be brought back to our Land, and we will be brought back to our God.
Moses and Joshua finish teaching this song to us, and then Moses reminds us one last time that we must take these words of warning to heart, and pay close attention to them. We should always command our children, the next generation, to be faithful to God, and do everything He has commanded us to do – all the words of this Torah – this divinely inspired Teaching.
This word, the Bible, is not an empty, idle word, like so many think. It is our very life! Understanding it and embracing it results in life – a good and successful life in this world, and eternal life in the World To Come. Obedience and faithfulness to the Word of God is a matter of success and failure, of life and death!
Moses himself is an example of this principle. The chapter concludes with the death of Moses. That same day the Lord told Moses to climb Mount N’vo, where he would die. From the mountain, he could look one last time on the wonderful land promised to his people. He could only look, but not enter, because Moses did not keep all the words and commands of the Lord. He broke faith with God at the waters of M’rivah, when the Jewish people were thirsty, and got angry, and complained, and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly, but Moses, in anger, and honoring himself, says, “Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” We, Moses? Not God, but we, associating yourself too closely with the Holy God, who is absolutely separate from all others?
Then, instead of simply speaking to the rock, as the Lord had instructed him, Moses struck the rock twice with his rod. The miracle happened – water did indeed pour forth, but the Lord was displeased. Moses and Aaron had not been faithful to Him. Through their actions and words they had not honored Him before the Chosen People, and not treated Him as kadosh – with holy, reverential respect, as He deserves, especially from the leaders of His people. And since to whom much is given, much is required, and the consequences for failure are greater, Moses’ faithlessness resulted in this punishment.
In contrast to Moses, who failed and broke faith with God and was forbidden entrance into the Promised Land, we have Yeshua, who never failed. Always, in every situation, He did the will of His Father. He never sinned. He never fell short in anything. He never broke faith with God, except perhaps for those hours on the cross when He became a sin offering, absorbing all the sins of humanity onto Himself, so that the mighty sun was darkened, and His Father had to abandon Him. But, even those three hours were not failure, but the greatest of success!
Let’s learn from Moses’ example, and from this powerful song, that when things seem to go wrong, that this faithful God, who has done so much for us, whose work is perfect, and all His ways are just, is never to be blamed. The problem will always be found to be with us – never with Him.
Shalom
