Parasha Re’eh (See) Deut.11: 26 – 16:17. Isai 54:11–55:5; Jn. 16:1–17
CHOOSING TO DO THINGS GOD’S WAY By Raphael ben Levi
Doing things God’s way is no better illustrated than with Yeshua our Messiah. Throughout His life He lived in complete harmony with the Father even amid the most challenging times. No better example of this can be found than during the last few days of His earthly life when He visited the Garden of Gethsemane. Scripture states things plainly: “Although he was a son” — the Son of God – “He learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, (complete – I.e., through suffering) he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.” (Heb.5:8-9) Obedience is a choice that comes with blessings, but it comes at a price which we see woven into the fabric of Parasha Re’eh. Every disciple of Yeshua must determine and make their choice according to their willingness to embrace the fellowship of His sufferings. (Phil. 2) within God’s eternal purposes who holds our past, present and future in the palms of His hands.
Scripture teaches us that within God’s eternal purposes, He created time, space and all of human history before the world even existed. All plants, animals, generations, nations, empires, and untold events have unfolded on earth since the beginning of what we call “time.”God pre-existed before “time” when “time” did not exist because He’s eternal. Gen 1:1 begins with the words, “In the beginning …”, (B’resheet). A more precise meaning in the original Hebrew is “In the dateless past …” meaning there was a period preceding Gen 1:1 that was timeless so it would be impossible to date. Only when God created the physical universe time was also created. This has vexed many believers who have reflected upon the paradox of free choice and predestination that coincide together harmoniously yet appear as contradiction.
All our past, present and future was created in a single moment by God. He is “the end from the beginning” (Isa 46:10) and the “beginning from the end” – the “Aleph and the Taph.”
One-third of the entire Bible is prophecy. There are over 2,000 prophecies in Scripture that have been fulfilled with absolute precision of which 340 concerned the first coming of Messiah Yeshua, and there remain approximately 500 yet to be fulfilled that are unfolding before our very eyes in these last days.
Our confidence in the surrounding mayhem and chaos throughout the world is that God pre-determined everything from the dawn of creation until the end of this age and beyond. So, the name, purpose, position, and significance of every single thing within the earth was pre-determined and created by God in that single moment when He created the universe, time, and space.
Referring back to our parasha, the Israelites declared God’s blessings on Mt Gerizim and the curses on Mt Ebal as God had commanded: “When Adonai your God brings you into the land you are entering in order to take possession of it, you are to put the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.” (Deut. 11:29). What many people are unaware of is the cost factor associated with both God’s blessings and not just the terrible consequences (curses) for those who fail to walk in His ways. These things were foreordained before the foundation of the earth and we see it clearly with the choices that each Israelite as individuals and as a people would make which God ordained before even the foundations of the earth were created.
Mount Gerizim, has been held sacred by the Samaritans for thousands of years, based upon this specific portion of Scripture erroneously claiming that it was more sacred than Jerusalem. They built their own temple of worship that all the Northern kingdom were required to use instead of Jerusalem. The Jews during the time of Yeshua despised the Samaritans almost as much as they hated the Romans. Yeshua made that clear in His Parable of the Good Samaritan.
But His approach to the Samaritans was qualitatively different which is well illustrated with His dialogue with the Samaritan woman in Jn.4:5-8. The incident took place in the small Samaritan town of Sychar, For Yeshua to be in this location was unthinkable for the Jews of His period who would by-pass Samaria whenever they needed to travel from Judea to the north despite the long detour. But not so with Yeshua who past through Samaria with His disciples and rested at Jacob’s Well while the disciples went to buy provisions. From His vantage point, Yeshua watched as a Samaritan woman approached the well and request a drink from her. All cultural protocols were broken but for Yeshua it posed no problem and through the conversation that ensued it led to the salvation of the Samaritan woman and many more from her home town and beyond.
This incident holds profound meaning when considering Mt. Gerazim and Mt. Ebal – God’s commandments are unequivable but many times the Jewish people would place man’s traditions above them as in the case with the Samaritan woman where fear of becoming defiled through association with a Samaritan overruled God’s higher commandments (To love the Lord God with all ones mind, heart, and strength and one neighbour as oneself).
God’s grace is incredible and overflows with Divine love poured out as demonstrated throughout the Gospels as Yeshua interacted with others who the religious hierarchy and general population despised and rejected. God demonstrated His love that whilst we were sinners Yeshua our Messiah died for us. The centrality of this is focused upon His death and resurrection that Yeshua spoke about plainly to His disciples at His last Pesach.
Alongside this, shortly afterwards in the Garden of Gethsemane Yeshua contended in the spirit for us knowing the beginning from the end because God’s Divine plan of redemption was established at Creation for the purpose for which it was created.
Gethsemane literally means “oil press,” and is situated on the Mount of Olives just outside the “East Gate” of Jerusalem” which Yeshua visited many times as a place to pray and rest.
The historian Josephus noted that at this particular Passover which Yeshua and His disciples would celebrate, there were around two million Jews in Jerusalem who brought their offerings to Jerusalem for the priests to sacrifice in preparation for the Passover.
Massive volumes of blood from the animals sacrificed flowed from the Temple Mount down into the Kidron Brook as a river of blood. (cf: One Path Research) And it would have been this brook that Yeshua needed to walk through in order to reach Gethsemane that would have stained His sandals and robe en-route to the garden.
The purpose of the Garden of Gethsemane was to produce oil and therefore it had an oil press to process the olives grown there. Physically it was used to consecrate items in the Temple and to anoint and bless the priests and people (Ps.133).
When Yeshua went to the garden to pray it was with unparalleled intensity. Yeshua prayed three times, and on each occasion His agony grew more intense that by the third hour of prayer, His sweat is described as being like drops of blood to the point that His soul became sorrowful, even to death. (Matt 26:38).
The process of producing oil follows exactly the same pattern. An oil press in the garden was used three times to press the oil out from the ground olives. Each time the olives were pressed, more weight would be added to the press to get more oil from the olives until the final stones were added at the third pressing, and every last drop was removed from the olives.
The manner in which we as believers choose to pour out our lives for God can be likened to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. In one, its waters are sweet and fish live there. The Jordan River brings sparkling water to the sea from the hills. But the Jordan River continues to flow south, and flows into another sea where there is no trace of fish, (until most recently) and no-one drinks from the waters of the “Dead Sea.”
This picture represents two types of believers; those who are truly living for the Lord, pouring out what He has freely given and those who don’t – Mt Gerazim or Mt. Ebal.
Mt Gerizim and Mt Ebal stand opposite each other in the ancient city of Shechem (now modern-day Nablus) that lies in a huge valley between the two mountains. It was here in Gen.12:6, that Abram made his first stop in Canaan and built an altar to God marking the place where He promised this land to his descendants (Gen.12:7). And now over 400 years later, his descendants had finally arrived.
God offered the Israelites blessings that was conditional upon them walking in His ways and He communicated to them the importance of making good choices because there are inescapable consequences for every choice we make for which there can be no neutrality.
What God offered the Israelites was so momentous and of such great importance that it occupies a huge portion of the Book of Deut. far more extensive than even the biblical accounts of the Creation, the Exodus narrative or the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai because it concerns our eternal destinies! Blessing or curse? Life or death? Heaven or Hell? Mount Gerazim or Mt. Ebal?
When Yeshua’s proclaimed the Gospel of salvation, His message of hope was not an exemption from following God’s commands (His Law/Torah) but rather to free us from the impossibility of attaining righteousness through its observance. Paul makes this point continually throughout the NT. no more strongly than in the Book of Romans: “23 You see, all have sinned, and all their futile attempts to reach God in His glory fail. 24 Yet they are now saved and set right by His free gift of grace through the redemption available only in Jesus the Anointed.”
What’s absolutely clear is that following God’s commandments outside of a godly relationship with Him invariably degenerates into something empty, rigid, and legalistic that will ultimately morph into a tyrannical monster. This is why the Scriptures emphatically state that loving God with all our heart mind and strength and our neighbour as ourselves are the greatest commandments by which all the others stand or fall.
Yeshua referred to this using the metaphor of the narrow path that leads to life and the broad path that leads to destruction. Sadly, it seems that few choose the narrow path: “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matt.7:13–14)
Much of Yeshua’s public ministry was speaking out against the practices of the religious hierarchy because they meticulously observed the Law with precision but many failed to walk in a living relationship with a living God.
Yeshua brought hope to people who the religious hierarchy scorned and rejected – the “sinners” and tax collectors. But as Yeshua told the religious hierarchy, “ Healthy people don’t need a doctor — sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.’” (NLT) (Mk.2:17)
Yeshua was citing an old Jewish proverb originating from a commentary in Ex.5:26 where God stated “I am God your healer.”) The sages made the point that ”If they are not sick, why do they need a physician?”
What Yeshua was implying was that those who obey the Law of Moses perfectly will never be sick or experience illness. But, since no-one has ever attained this perfectly other than Yeshua Himself, He implied that the religious hierarchy’s sense of righteousness was base on a false premise.
On one level, Yeshua was a friend of sinners who came to save those who are lost – all of fallen humanity – including those who were custodians of the Law. However, His words also subtly rebuked the religious leaders who viewed themselves as righteous and therefore without need of His salvation.
Yeshua sets us free from the tyranny of the Law not by abolishing it but through His sacrifice on the Cross for our sins that He established before time: He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God – the Lamb of God who alone was qualified to satisfy the requirements of the Law as ordained by God in accordance with His eternal plan. God fixed things by taking the initiative to repair the world (tikun olam) through Yeshua our Redeemer. This is God’s restorative justice without which each one of us are doomed.
“See,” says Moses to the people of Israel, “I place before you today a blessing and a curse.” Blessings come through obeying God’s commandments within the framework of relationship because it was the intent of the Israelites that God was primarily concerned about, not how perfectly they obeyed Him. And in the fullness of time permanent provision became available for the whosoever through the shed blood of Yeshua. This is why the apostle Paul could declare, “And in Him you have been made complete [attaining spiritual stature through Messiah Yeshua], and He is the head over all rule and authority [of every angelic and earthly power].” (Col.2:10)
God’s grace is an incredible feature that demonstrates the reality of His love to a world lost in sin: “God demonstrated His love for us that whilst we were yet sinners, Messiah Yeshua died for us at just the right time”. (Rom. 5:8)
Mt Gerizim was lush and fertile while Mt Ebal was rocky and barren, even though they stood next to each other, that prophetically portrayed the consequences which would shape the Israelite’s choices. And the same choices remain no less true for every believer. Each one of us must choose daily which path to walk in – the broad or the narrow path. In a world filled with so much darkness, God is at work seeking to teach us a forgotten language that will steer us through every obstacle we encounter in life. But we alone must make the choice. Gerazim or Ebal?
As with Gethsemane when Yeshua gave His disciples a command in the garden to stay awake and watch and pray, let us not imitate those who disobeyed and were scattered like sheep following Yeshua’s arrest. The days we are living in are perilous and our only security against the evils and deceptions that are besieging the world we are living in is to remain under His covering – we place no confidence in the flesh for as the prophet Isaiah declared, as quoted in 1Pet.1:24-25, “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field. 7 The grass withers and the flowers fall when the breath of the LORD blows on them – but the word of God endures forever!
In conclusion, God’s abundant blessings are uniquely packaged for each one of us as individuals even though they may sometimes be concealed. Although everything works together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes (Rom. 8:28) it is presented as a conditional promise, as with the Israelites whereby the choices and responses we make in life define our lives!
God is teaching us to see things from His perspective rather than our own and to trust Him irrespective of our circumstances. These is a wise choice that we make even He is silent. King David understood this clearly and applied it resolutely and with confidence: “Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name!” (Ps.103:1)
The ancient Hebrew word to ‘bless’ literally means, ‘to kneel.’ When we bless Him we are in fact bringing Him a gift on bended knee. Our best gift is when we voluntarily surrender our lives unconditionally to Him.
The closeness in which one follows in the footsteps of the Master identifies those who are the greatest in His Kingdom – covered in the dust of His sandals. Yeshua said: “He who wishes to be greatest amongst you should be the servant of all.” He demonstrated it perfectly throughout His earthly life, the King of Kings who became the Servant King graphically described in Isai.53. First love is the well-spring that nourishes this relationship and finds expression in our worship of Him in body, soul and spirit. Without it, we eventually wither and die.
Let’s take what God has blessed us with today in both hands and release it as a sweet-smelling aroma unto Him! May He fashion each one of us into one of His ‘greats’ for anyone willing to pay the price. My prayer for you today is this:
“Father, out of Your honourable and glorious riches, strengthen Your people. Fill (these) souls with the power of Your Spirit… May love be the rich soil where (their) lives take root. May it be the bedrock where (their) lives are founded so that together with all of Your people (they) will have the power to understand that the love of God is infinitely long, wide, high, and deep, surpassing everything anyone previously experienced. May Your fullness flood through (their) entire being.
Now unto Him who can do so many awe-inspiring things, immeasurable things, things greater than we ever could ask or imagine through the power at work in us, to Him be all glory in the church and in Yeshua the Anointed from this generation to the next, forever and ever. Amen!” (Eph. 3:15-21)
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