Ha’azinu, Give Ear – D’varim (Deut) 32:1-52; Shemu’el Bet (II Samuel) 22:1-51; Romans 10:14 – 11:12
Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement Readings – Leviticus 16:1-34; 18:1-30; Numbers 29:7-11; Isaiah 57:14 – 58:14; Book of Jonah; Matthew 25:31-46; Romans 3:21-26; 2 Corinthians 5:10-21
The guy was a loser. At an immature, young age, he dared to tell his dad to give him his share of the property. Instead of investing or building a business with it, he took it all to a far country and squandered it with loose, riotous living. Have you known anyone like that? I do. When I was a young man, I foolishly did the same kind of thing. I found myself in the same kind of miserable predicament when I came to my senses.
When God Ran
Having spent everything he had, a severe famine in the land found the prodigal totally destitute and hungry. The only job he could find was feeding pigs, where he wasn’t even given pods to eat. Starving in a pig sty is where he finally comes to his senses. He realized how good it was living in his father’s house, where even the servants ate well.
So he humbled himself and turned back to his father’s house. The prodigal son would come back with humility and repentance. He had made up his mind to tell his father that he had sinned against heaven and in his sight. He wanted to confess he was not worthy to be called his son. But before he had a chance to plead with his father at his feet –
“And rising up, he came to his father. But he yet being far away, his father saw him and was moved with pity. And running, he fell on his neck and fervently kissed him.” – Yeshua, ‘The Parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15:20
Ever heard the Gospel song ‘When God Ran’ by Phillips, Craig & Dean? The song carries a powerful message of the mercy and compassion of our Father gladly receiving back his lost prodigal son into His house. Set to music, it expresses the heart of a loving Father for every lost, backslidden soul who would return to Him in repentance.
Now the lines I remember most in this song were “…the only time, the only time I ever saw Him run, was when He ran to me…” and “When God ran… I saw Him run to me.”
Then I thought, wow! In all of the Scriptures, that’s the only time I ever saw God run when He came running to the prodigal son on his way back home with a penitent heart!
In Mideastern culture, a dignified man would never be caught running in the street. It was considered a total disgrace for a dignitary to run.
The same kind of thing happened to a king who was despised by his wife, Michal, for his shameful action in the street (2 Sam 6:16-22).
David didn’t receive the rebuke, he said he had danced before YHWH and that he’d be even more undignified than that. David had danced with all his might before the ark of the covenant, which held the mercy seat.
The mercy seat represents how our Father is seated in Heaven with mercy in His heart looking to receive His Son, Who humbly came on behalf of any repentant prodigal returning to the Father. The parable of the prodigal shows us just how much our Father wants to receive even His wayward sons into His house. The parable shows us how we are to approach our Father in Heaven, especially on Yom Kippur to come – with humility and total dependence on His mercy and compassion to cover us.
When God Flew
Since the days of ‘When God Ran’ (1999), I haven’t found another reference to this kind of action the Father takes towards His children in the Scriptures, until now in the Song of Moses. In this awesome song, it dawned on me that God flies down to His people like an eagle to the nest, hovering over his young and then bearing him upon his wings to take him to a better place.
He found him in a desert land, and the waste, a howling wilderness. He encircled him and cared for him; He guarded him as the pupil of His eye. As the eagle stirs up its nest; it hovers over its young; it spreads out its wings and takes it, and bears it on its wing. Deuteronomy 32:10-11
Like the father running to the prodigal coming from a land of severe famine, YHWH came to the children of Israel like an eagle swooping down to pick up her young in a desert wilderness. The Song of Moses is a song of redemption of the Father’s son, Israel.
In one profound song, we see how YHWH delivers His children out of the womb of Mitsrayim, Egypt, sets her out on a journey in the wilderness like an immature fledgling, then bears him up in his weakness as an eagle bears up a fledgling to take him home.
Deliverance: Lest the Womb Become a Tomb
Mitsrayim (Egypt) was like a womb, meant to be a place of nurturing, growth, and maturing. But the time had come when the womb would become a tomb if the children of Israel stayed there under Pharoah. The first exodus was the birthing of the nation out of the womb of Mitsrayim, delivered into a desert land, a place like where the prodigal ended up, where he finally came to his senses. Do you wonder why you may be experiencing a dry, barren place in life? What does the Father have in store for you?
Like the father of the prodigal son, our Father in Heaven knew that the children of Israel would be blessed with an inheritance of the Promised Land, a good land flowing with milk and honey, but that they would wax fat and kick as He said Yeshurun would do. Again, the womb of the Promised Land became a tomb for Israel, for it was time for wayward Israel to leave for the nations. It was there that they would come to their senses again and hear about the mercy of God the Father. Exiled among the nations, the Gospel of Yeshua the Messiah would be preached and heard. From the four corners of the world, the prodigal sons of Israel would return to their Father in Heaven.
This pattern is repeating for Israel here in exile. America was once a fertile land of nurturing, growth, and great prosperity, similar to what the kingdom of Israel experienced in the land under kings David and Solomon. But now the womb of America is increasingly becoming a tomb for many Americans and even for the scattered exiles of Israel. America is reaping what she has sown having cut many covenants with death.
The birth pangs of the Messiah are increasing in frequency and magnitude as we approach another time of deliverance out of the womb into the greater exodus to return to the Promised Land. The way I read Romans chapter 8 and Revelation chapter 12, we are in a time when the Father is maturing a manchild to be made manifest, to be revealed to the world. This company of overcomers in the Messiah is also like the Bride who is preparing herself to be ready. The manchild, overcomers, and the Bride of Messiah are all connected thematically, knowing the common threads.
The Bride is yielding to her Master’s hands preparing her to be without spot or wrinkle. With lamps full of oil awake for that midnight hour of His return, she eagerly awaits the day of her rapture by her Bridegroom the Messiah. Paul makes this connection to husbands loving their wives:
Husbands love your wives, even as Messiah also loved the assembly and gave Himself up on its behalf, that He might sanctify it, cleansing it by the washing of the water in the Word, that He might present it to Himself as the glorious assembly, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such things, but that it be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:25-27
Approaching the Father on the Mercy Seat at Yom Kippur
One way that our Messiah can sanctify us with the Word is to be in the Word on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, cleansing and covering. For our assembly, we have seven sets of Scriptures for all seven stations of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, to read and approach with humility and reverence. Remember with what attitude and disposition the prodigal son approached his father when he came back to his father’s house.
The Good News is that from the mercy seat, upon which the blood of Messiah was sprinkled for the atonement of the entire nation, the Father will receive us with mercy from His Throne of Grace. Thanks be to the Father for the Son! HalleluYah!
“As a father has compassion on his children, so YHWH has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” Psalm 103:13-14
What can we learn from the Song of Moses and the Parable of the Prodigal when preparing to observe Yom Kippur together as children of Israel?
- We must humble ourselves and admit that we have sinned against heaven in the sight of our Father.
- We must acknowledge that because we squander what was given to us by our Creator, we are not worthy to be received as His children in His house.
- We must turn and go back to our Father, trusting that He is compassionate and merciful and will not turn us away, but will pick us up in His loving arms and bear us up as on the wings of an eagle. It is His goodness that leads us to repentance
(Romans 2:4). - We can only go to the Father through the Son Yeshua, Who bore all the sins of the prodigal Son for our sake. Only His blood atones for us to be received in the Father’s house. Yeshua is our great High Priest Who alone brings us to the Throne of Grace.
The blessings of atonement and redemption be yours in the Messiah Yeshua,
David