PARASHAH BECHKOTAI
(Leviticus 26:3-27:34) Week 33
BECHKOTAI: By my regulations…If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments …
MITZVOT: Commandments, statutes, instructions…
MISHLEI: The Comparison (The Book of Proverbs is called MISHLEI in Hebrew)
Sub-Categories of the Mitzvot or Commandments:
- Chukkim: Divine decrees of the Lord which may not seem rational to a profane society
- Zot Chukat Ha Torah: Torah commands which defy “full human comprehension”
- Mishpatim: Logically understood laws which appeal to civil and moral community life
- Eiduyot: Symbols, representations connecting us to God’s Mitzvot (eating matzah on Passover or blowing of the Shofar during Rosh Hashanah)
THE SHEMA: SHEMA Israel, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad!” “Hear and Obey, Oh Israel, our Lord and our God are ONE!”
The call to HEAR and OBEY Torah can be summed up in this one word; SHEMA!
“If you walk in My miztvot and guard my chukkot then I will give you rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit!”
The entire world depends on the love and observance to TORAH and to the SHEMA!
Do we understand how the immersion and love of Torah BLESSES the entire world?
Since God sends rains to the just and the unjust, by studying and loving Torah, the entire world is blessed!
The List of Abundant TORAH TREASURES for His Talmidim or Students:
She/He who is engaged in Torah for its own sake is deserving of the entire world!
She/He is called… “friend”… “beloved”… “intimate of God”…“lover of humanity”
She/He is clothed in humility and reverence for the Lord, rendering her/him fit to be righteous, saintly, faithful and upright!
She/He is KEPT from sin, yet brought NEAR to virtue.
She/He is sought by men for counsel and sound knowledge.
She/He is given ‘kingship’…‘dominion’…‘discernment’ AND the SECRETS of TORAH are revealed to them!
She /He becomes: A never-failing fountain, a river that never ceases to flow!
She / He is transformed to become more…modest…longsuffering…forgiving… exalting Adonai with their lives!
The List of Torah Promises for His Talmidim:
Rains in their season symbolize: prosperity and joy…making for abundant crops, pure air and drinking water…and a lifestyle that is set apart by abundance and fruitfulness!
AS WE MAKE TORAH OBSERVANCE A PART OF OUR LIVES, ADONAI PROMISES TO:
Venatati shalom ba’aretz! “I Will Give Peace in the Land!”
We who are Torah observant may look forward to immeasurable blessings from heaven. All these blessings listed above are for us due to our “grafting into” the Nation of Israel!
CLAIM and PROPHESY over them. These are the promises of Adonai, who took us out of bondage and set us FREE!
Drink from the 4 Passover Cups!
- He takes us out of Bondage
- He sets us FREE
- He redeems our life with His life
- He takes us as His own for all eternity
Do you desire the Torah Life, which calls forth blessings?
I declare my hunger and thirst for His Revelation, through the giving of Torah for this exact purpose.
The more I eat of it, the more I drink of it, the more I CRAVE OF IT!
This is the delicious irony of the Spirit of God. This delicious irony is the OPPOSITE of our natural fleshly hunger tendencies.
My hunger grows greater as I EAT MORE OF THIS TORAH!
YET, when we resist eating from it deeply and daily, our hunger fades and we wonder, “Why do I feel so lukewarm about life?”
The Parable of “The Lesson of the ROCK”
Rabbi Akiva learned: “If a rock, though extremely hard, can be hollowed out by the trickle of water, how much more so should it be possible for Torah, which is compared to water, to change my heart!” Do you SEEK to be CHANGED?
THE GREATEST BLESSING OF ALL:
“I will make my dwelling among you and I will not abhor you, and I will walk among you and will be your God and you shall be my people!
Consider:
The MISHLEI of the Blessings for honoring Torah, and the Curses for dishonoring Torah! In Hebrew, to dishonor means to take lightly instead of honoring Torah by considering it LIFE or DEATH!
Choose LIFE!
The List of Torah Curses for dishonoring Torah by living as Covenant Breakers:
If one disobeys, spurns, dishonors Torah by not putting Adonai and Torah first:
Panic attacks 2) diseases 3) heartaches 4) loss of abundance to theft, 5) those who hate us will rule over us 6) terror-filled lives
7) lives of misery
If we refuse to Teshuva or Repent from our sin and turn back to Adonai, the worst punishments will happen to us.
WHY does every Jewish new year begins with TESHUVA! They desired a better year to come to them by the Lord.
- Jews feared most: Exile from the Covenant Land and Exile from the presence of Adonai!
- By dishonoring the Shabbat…an exile will take place. In your inherited land will your ENEMIES dwell, instead of you! This way the promised land will get it’s Sabbath rest, during the judgement period of the people who disobeyed the Sabbath command of the Lord.
- “BUT, if you confess your iniquity and that of your ancestors against me, then I will remember my Covenant with Abraham Isaac and Jacob and I will remember the LAND!” This means that Adonai will re-institute His covenant to a repentant people, and remember His covenant to bequeath the Land of Israel to the Nation of Israel!
HOW DO WE FALL AWAY FROM ADONAI?
- We fall away little by little! Remember, sin is progressive!
- As we fall away from Torah truth and study, we study less and less as time progresses.
- As we become numb to the message of the Torah, we become less hungry for it.
- As we are less hungry, we look to other things to satisfy us, defending our desires as normal!
- We justify our lives by thinking, “We don’t succumb to big sins! We are trying to be better people than most others!”
- We compare ourselves to the world system of the day.
- The sin that used to make us wince, now makes us feel confused.
- With progressive attitudes that no longer set us apart for the Lord, we will experience trouble, vexation, shame, desperation, and EXILE from our intimacy with Adonai!
Progressive hardening of hearts will eventually lead to apostasy…the great falling away!
People close to us will see our falling away.
They will see the World in us…and new Lifestyle Choices that take us further outside the will of our Creator.
We know friends and family members who think this way. These are lies. This is enemy territory which has been taken from us, by the ENEMY! We opened the door to this theft, by the cooling off of our former passion for the Lord!
His WORD helps us, empowers us, guards us, surrounds us with protection from the enemy!
His WORD gives us discernment, bright thoughts, clear vision, and ears that discern lies and truth!
Without God’s Word to maintain our strength and spiritual life, we become weak and the progression into the profane is a slow and sad decline.
This prophesied decline takes others down with us, like our children!
Sydney calls her life: “MY TORAH LIFE”. It is a cyclical, lunar progression, repetitively holy!
A Torah Life brings forth the eternal Spring of Living Water!
LEADING TORAH BRINGS LIFE INTO THIS BEAUTIFUL CIRCLE… AND…CYCLE OF A LIVING TORAH.
Adonai is a God of second chances! “Yet in spite of all that, I will not reject them!”
Even IF the chosen ones end up in exile or bondage, God will not desert them!
He promises RESTORATION which is His Covenant PROMISE.
As the Wild Olive Branch; we are grafted INTO this Covenant! (26:44)
The Parashah ends with the instruction from the Lord about ‘vows’, ‘redemption prices’, and ‘sacrificing unto the Lord’. There are Mitzvah which instruct each of these three areas of civil life.
Whatever a person sacrifices unto Adonai, whether Animal, person, or possession, Adonai will make HOLY UNTO HIMSELF. Whatever we lay down on the Show-Bread Table, voluntarily as a sacrifice, Adonai WILL MAKE HOLY UNTO HIMSELF!
WHY BE A TORAH OBSERVANT CHRISTIAN?
- Jesus and his disciples were Torah Observant; Yeshua came to FULFILL the LAW not abolish it
- Yeshua told how the Jewish Scriptures testified of HIM…Yeshua fulfilled the Sacrificial System!
- The Road to Emmaus…where the RISEN Christ met the grieving disciples to teach Torah truth!
- The Church was BORN on Shavuot or PENTECOST, among the spirit filled disciples as 3,000 Jewish souls were saved!
- The Jerusalem Council wrote to the Gentiles to respect Torah Law and study the Torah!
- Paul was a Torah observant Jew…Paul preached throughout his life in Jewish Synagogues!
- IF the Torah were a part of our diverse church, there would be more synergy and “Yachad” (unity) among the many Christian faiths today! More would be accomplished for the Kingdom!
HAFTARAH (Old Covenant) READING: Jeremiah 16:19-17:14
“Y’hudah’s sin is written with an iron pen; with a diamond point it is engraved on the tablet of their hearts, and on the horns of your altars. As they remember their children, so they remember their altars and their sacred poles by the green trees on the high hills. My mountain in the field, your wealth and all your treasures will be plundered because of the sin of your high places throughout your Territory. You will relinquish your hold on your heritage which I gave you. I will make you serve your enemies in a land you do not know. For you have kindled my fiery anger, and it will burn forever.” 17:1-4
Jeremiah prophesies the coming destruction of the temple, citing Israel’s IDOL WORSHIP and neglect of the Shemittah Command (The Sabbatical 7 Year rest), and thus LOSS OF TRUST IN THE LORD!
He compares the Millennial conversion of non-Jews as they give up their false gods to worship the King of Kings and Lord and Lords!
He prophesies Jews will refuse to give up their false gods even during the great revival in the end of days by the Gentile Nations.
BRIT CHADASHAH (New Covenant) READING: John 14:15-21; 15:10-1
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another comforting Counselor like me, the spirit of Truth, to be with you forever. The world cannot receive him, because it neither sees nor knows him. You know him, because he is staying with you and will be united with you.
I will not leave you orphans – I am coming to you. In just a little while, the world will no longer see me; but you will see me.
Because I live, you too will live.
When that day comes, you will know that I am united with my Father, and you with me, and I with you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me, and the one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”
Yeshua is the fullness of God’s word! He is the fulfillment of the Torah!
Yeshua is the HEART of TORAH!
BE STRONG! BE STRONG! AND MAY WE BE STRENGTHENED!
MAZEL TOV!