Va’Etchanan And I Pleaded
D’varim (Deuteronoomy) 3:23 – 7:11
YeshaYahu (Isaiah) 40:1-26
Matthew 23:31-39, Mark 12:28-34
When times are confusing, complicated, and chaotic, what do you do to get your feet back under you?
The fundamental matters of my faith are being held in question and are challenged – that Yeshua is not divine, the festival calendar I believe in is “wrong,” principles of giving to the poor are challenged, how to relate with Jews or Christians. You have your challenges on how you understand the Scriptures as the basis for what you believe and act upon (Romans 10:17).
In times like these, I believe we need to go back to the fundamentals of our faith in what YHWH has commanded us to do. Many of us, including myself, have been distracted by the cares of this life in this crazy world, and have backed off on doing the fundamentals.
We need daily discipline to overcome the enemies we face in the fallen world around us. To succeed at a trade, one must master the fundamentals of his expertise. Nobody wins a race without the daily discipline of running every day. For an apprentice to become a master, he has to excel in the trade’s fundamentals. Disciples of Messiah are called to discipline in the fundamentals of the Way that we walk out daily.
First Things First, Start With The Shema:
The scribes of His day challenged our Master Yeshua with what the first commandment is – with what is the first and most important thing we all need to keep. A scribe asked our Master:
“Which is the first commandment of them all?” Mark 12:28-31
Yeshua responded with a fundamental from what Moses taught the children of Israel in the wilderness. Our Rabbi took the scribe’s scholarly debate back to the basis of faith:
“The first of all the commandments is: “Hear (Shema) Israel. YHWH our Elohim (God), YHWH is Echad (One).
‘And you shall LOVE the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.
Hear (Shema) this first – that YHWH is our Elohim – that He is the One God we submit to as our Strong Controller, our Mighty Authority (paleo-Hebrew for ‘El’). Hearing and believing in Who He is as our God about His people is foundational to our faith.
Declaring the Shema is to declare that YHWH is our Strong Controller and there is no other we will allow to control our hearts. It’s so fundamental to everything we believe.
First and foremost, we submit to YHWH as the ultimate Authority. We don’t do whatever is right in our own eyes, nor live to be people pleasers. We often let other people control us, or we try to take control of our own lives and take matters into our own hands. Before we do anything, we must first humble ourselves to be obedient to the One King, our One Master, the One Who is One with the Father – Adonai Yeshua the Messiah.
We don’t need to wonder Who to hear and obey – the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. Nowhere in the Scriptures can you find ‘three persons of the Trinity.’ There is only One God for YHWH is One. He says what He means and means what He says. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the word ‘echad’ simply means ‘one.’ Intellectual theologians try to make it say something else – like that the One God is a unified plural of three entities.
This Truth of Yeshua is the Chief Cornerstone in the foundation of our faith. Yeshua is the Word and the Voice of the Father whom we hear and obey. YHWH is the King of Israel; Yeshua is the King of Israel. There is no other God, no other Savior besides YHWH. Numerous titles of YHWH in the ‘Old Testament’ match up with the same titles for Yeshua (Jesus) in the New Testament. Read them from ‘The Wheel of Prophecy.’
To love Him with all our heart and soul and strength is a great way to start the war of words against the Amorites, today’s naysayers with their false narratives. Voices in the world that we face every day are demeaning, fear-mongering, blaming and shaming, oppressive and destructive. Hear the Voice to love, not to hate; to obey, not to rebel.
The Messianic Meaning of V’etchanan in Paleo-Hebrew:
How do we fundamentally see Yeshua and who we are in Him in this Torah portion? I like to start with studying the paleo-Hebrew for the title of the portion – V’etchanan:
Before the root word – ’chanan’, three pictographic letters clearly point to our Messiah – the Wow (Vav), the Alef, and the Tav. Yeshua is the Wow Man that connects us to the Father and connects us to one another through His work of being nailed to the cross. He is also the Alef and the Tav, the Beginning, and the End, the First and the Last, and everything else in between in the Hebrew aleph-bet that comprises the Word of Elohim. Starting with Yeshua and ending with Yeshua is fundamental to walking by faith.
Next, ‘chanan’ in Hebrew, is translated as ‘grace.’ Grace is not just a fundamental of the New Testament; grace is a fundamental principle of the Torah as well. ‘Chanan’ is a beautiful word in paleo-Hebrew – spelled ‘chet, nun, nun’.
The ‘chet’ is a picture of a wall or fence, setting apart what’s inside from what’s outside. Inside the Big White Fence of the Tabernacle in the wilderness was the place of the beauty of holiness, compassion, and grace in the heart of the camp of Israel. Outside was a barren desert, rocks, and lifelessness, contrasting the beauty of tabernacle life inside the Big White Fence of the Kingdom of Elohim.
The next letter is ‘nun’, picturing the quickening or sprouting of life. It is a picture of the offspring vigorously growing and of all the activities of life within the camp. Reminds me of a Sukkot camp! This beautiful life is only possible by grace, which is Divine favor. The ‘nun’ pictures the born-again soul vigorously growing like sprouting seeds. It depicts the activities of a holy, set-apart life in the camp of a gracious and loving Abba.
The third letter is again a ‘nun’. At the end of a Hebrew word, a ‘nun sofit’ concludes the word in an embodiment, an entity of life. The camp of Yah is a living organism, the gracious Body of Messiah. When we are gathered together and actively showing grace to one another, we are a picture of what the Father sees as ‘Ma Tovu – how goodly’ in His sight. Let’s see ourselves as a beautiful, gracious people, full of the life of El Chai.
YHWH commanded Moshe to impart to Joshua the favor of YHWH upon him for entering the land. One thing we could learn from this lesson in the Hebrew Roots Community today is to impart to others chanan – the enabling grace of Abba. Grace empowers others to be strong and of good courage to keep moving forward in our walk of faith. Chanan, grace, is a fundamental characteristic of a believer in Yeshua.
To impart the power of Elohim to encourage the children of Israel, Moshe first prays for chanan, for a favor, and for grace from our Heavenly Father (Va’etchanan, Deut 3:23).
Prayer, a Fundamental of Faith:
Moshe gave us a fundamental example for our prayer life by first extolling YHWH with praise and adoration for how great He truly is. Think about a bride lavishing her husband with praise and words of adoration. A loving husband always responds with favor towards his bride who entreats him that way. Notice how Moshe starts his prayer for the enabling grace or favor of His Master YHWH by lavishing Him with praise:
And I prayed to YHWH for chanan (grace, favor) at that time, saying, “Adonai (Master) YHWH, You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness and Your mighty hand, for who is a mighty one in the heavens or the earth who can do according to Your works and according to Your might?” Deuteronomy 3:23-24
HalleluYah, like Moshe, give YHWH the highest praise! Worthy is the Lamb of all glory, honor, and power! There is no one like our God!
Have you noticed how this is a fundamental theme of many popular worship songs in our day? Nothing has changed, it is fundamental to our relationship with our gracious God.
From the foundation of our faith, the Torah, here are seven basics to practice in life by His grace, that I have found in the portion Va’etchanan and from Yeshua’s midrash:
- Lavish YHWH with the highest praise!
- Hear the Word and don’t change anything He said.
- Guard your soul, don’t ever forget His covenant, and cling to Him.
- Know and keep the Ten Commandments out of love.
- Hear and obey the Voice of the One Elohim and not that of another.
- Love, love Yah, love your neighbor. Live a life of love, walk in grace.
- Do what He said and then remind yourselves to do what He said.
YHWH projected His words, Devarim, to the latter generation, that is us today.
He gave a stern warning about what would happen if Israel strayed away and left the fundamentals of the faith to follow after the Elohim (the gods) and the ways of other nations. How we need to hear words of exhortation like that today!
We need to faithfully practice the fundamentals, take on the tests of life, and overcome our flesh and our enemies. We are all encountering times of increasing trouble in a fallen world, and so need to discipline ourselves to strengthen ourselves with the basics of our faith. Keeping a covenant relationship with our Elohim, that is, keeping His commandments, is a daily discipline for the believer required by YHWH our Elohim.
Love - So Fundamental!
What should motivate us to keep His mitzvot (commands)? Because we love Him and love our neighbors as ourselves. We want our brothers and sisters to live well and have a good life. The attitude of lovingkindness and grace should be a primary motivator in everything we do. Adonai Yeshua said it best:
“As the Father loved Me, I also loved you; continue in My love. If you keep My commandments you will continue in My love, as I have kept My Father’s commandments and continue in His love. I have spoken these things to you that My joy may abide in you, and your joy may be full.” John 15:9-11
Stay the Course:
“Thus you are to know in your heart that YHWH your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of YHWH your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him.” Deuteronomy 8:5-6
His commandments are not grievous, they are not hard to do when we pray for the enabling grace that the Ruach HaQodesh (Holy Spirit) supplies every day.
May we submit to the Father’s discipline and discipline ourselves. May we faithfully keep doing the fundamentals of our faith out of love for Him and out of love for one another, where grace becomes action.
Onward! BaShem Yeshua HaMashiyach,
David Klug