The Garden Within | BEHAR-BECHUKOTAI בְּהַר-בְּחֻקֹּתַי - Portion 32-33

Class PDFs and Audio at: immlutheran.org/garden

Purchase Dr. Chad's books at: immlutheran.org/books

Teachers of Torah have coined the Hebrew term PaRDeS (פרדס – a word literally meaning “garden” or "orchid") to refer to a four-tiered system of biblical interpretation, which reveals that each word, verse, and story in the Bible could be simultaneously understood on four different levels.  

Through this year-long course, we will explore the very words of God from these levels of the garden.  The name The Garden Within was chosen for this teaching series because it adopts the PaRDeS system of learning and because it delights in the spiritual pleasure through reaching new understandings and being pierced by lightning flashes of the intellect. The pleasure gained, of course, also refers to the nearness we feel to God when learning His Word.

One of the primary goals of The Garden Within is to demonstrate that the “stories” in the Torah are not merely one-time occurrences, temporal incidents undergone by specific individuals long ago. Rather these stories are archetypal in nature, reflecting or representing various physical and spiritual energies ever present in all aspects of reality and within each and every person.  That is, the Torah is deeply personal and speaks directly to each individual reader for where they are in their life.  So, come, take a walk with God in the Garden of the Torah!

#immlutheran #drchadfoster #christian #lcms #messianic

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Good evening, everyone, Everton. Welcome to the Garden Within tonight as we continue our journey through the Torah. This evening takes us to the conclusion of the book of Leviticus with our double portion. And so we'll uh wrap that up tonight. Um, but let's get started first with the blessing before the study of Torah. We pray. Baruchata'a adanai elohenu medakoyalam. Ashekidishano bomis fita vese vanu le sok bidivre Torah. Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and has commanded us to be immersed into the words and the matters of Torah. Amen. All right, so tonight is the double portion known as Bahar Bechukattai. It covers the last three chapters of the book of Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 25 through 27. It is the 32nd and 33rd portion of the Torah's 54 divisions. The 32nd reading from the Torah, the second to the last reading from the book of Leviticus is called Bahar, which means on the mountain. The B is the preposition on. The name comes from the first word of the first verse of the reading, Leviticus 25, verse 1, where it says, the Lord then spoke to Moses Bahar on Mount Sinai. The portion introduces laws such as those pertaining to the sabbatical year, the Jubilee, as well as laws concerning redemption. And much like this year, in most years, Bahar is a double portion with Bechuchatai, which is the last reading from Leviticus, the 33rd reading of the Torah. And Bechuchatai means my statutes in Hebrew. And that name comes from the first verse of its reading, which is Leviticus chapter 26, verse 3, which says, if you walk in Bechuchatai, if you walk in my statutes. This last reading from Leviticus promises blessings and rewards for Israel if they will keep the Torah and punishment and curses if they break those commandments. But we'll talk about that and our relationship to this idea of blessing and cursing. As we've done before in Torah classes and tonight, similar perspective, but slightly different, just so that again we can continue to relate to these portions. Sometimes when we read the Torah and we come to these kinds of portions, it can be tempting for us to tune them out, but I would encourage you not to do that. They are every bit as much relevant to us today as they were back then. But it does discuss this idea of blessings and curses. And the last chapter of Leviticus covers laws pertaining to things such as vows, valuations, and ties. So that is what the last three chapters and the last two portions of Leviticus are all about, uh, in a nutshell and a good year blimp view. Uh but with that, uh let's kind of look at a Goodyear blimp of this idea of blessings and curses, because it not only occurs in this week's uh readings, but it'll pop up again, especially in Deuteronomy, uh, toward the end of Deuteronomy. Um but it's it's kind of peppered throughout the Torah and in many ways peppered throughout uh the Old Testament. Uh one way we've talked about it in the past that's worth kind of remembering, uh, because when I kind of bring things around this evening with this, it kind of is the same idea, but I kind of get there in a different way. But you may recall we talked about the idea of blessings and curses as being the language that the Torah uses in many ways just for the natural result of interaction with God. Um, and so I told you always to kind of think about like the, you know, the electrical outlet in the wall, right? And you imagine that behind that is this powerful current of electricity, you know, connected to a transformer, which is still channeling and even powering down so that it's uh a way in which we can encounter the electricity in a safe way. But even that's coming from an even more powerful source, uh, that if we were just to touch it in a raw way or encounter it in a raw way, it would absolutely fry us, right? Uh, and so to think about that ultimate raw electricity in all of its full force as, you know, God, if you will, and then how it kind of gets tapered down in a way that we can then utilize it and make use of it all the way to where we can have lights and electricity and plug in our computers and have air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter and you know, Wi-Fi and all these great things because we've been able to channel it, right? Uh that's kind of how God has revealed Himself to us in a certain way. But we also realize if we're gonna interact with electricity, even through transformers and electrical outlets, it it still has to follow some rules and protocols, uh or else uh we can still get ourselves in trouble and cause a whole lot of damage. And so when we use it correctly, uh as we learned with uh a transformer out here, when DTE uh, you know, does things backwards, uh it fries our entire system, right? And then they say, Oh, we didn't do that, but they did do that, by the way. Um, but it does fry our entire system and all of our electronics within the building, uh, you know, and one of the ways you would describe that 3,000 years ago, that phenomenon, is you would say you were cursed, right? That, you know, uh, and much the same way if you're you're sweating bullets in a in a room because there's a power outage, and you haven't been able to charge your phone, and you haven't been able to connect to the internet, and you're just just dying of the sweat and unconnectedness, and all of a sudden the power comes on and the fans you know start blowing air, and you feel the cool breeze of the AC kick on, and your phone bings on, and you connect to the internet, and you would say, Hallelujah, praise the Lord, right? You'd be like, What a blessing this is, right? That you would probably even say things like that, like, what a blessing technology is for us. And sometimes you might say, What a curse technology is. We would even use the same language at times, right? That's how it's being used in Scripture. And that's what God really means. When you are interacting with God in an appropriate way, in a way that He's outlined, that He says, you know, this is what's pleasing to me, this is my expectation of you. You've entered into a covenant with me, I've entered into a covenant with you, this is what it looks like. And when you're going with that, well, the natural consequence of that is you have lights and you have Wi-Fi and you have air conditioning and you have fans and you know, you have, you know, television and you have internet, you have all of that. But if you start messing with it or you decide you're gonna amp it up a little bit and make it a little more powerful, but you end up doing some things that you probably shouldn't, and maybe you connect the red wire to the green wire, and those really don't go together, well, you could burn the place down, right? Or you could uh injure yourself, if not even electrocute yourself and die, right? And so that would be a curse, right? But that's really the logical consequence of the way you decided to interact with something that in many ways is dangerous, right? Electricity is dangerous. You always need to remember that. I I know um in my previous congregation there were uh several gentlemen uh who were linemen or had line being a line man in their past. And you know, those guys that climb up the poles and and storms when there's outages and stuff. I mean, that's some serious, dangerous work, right? And they always have to keep mindful, like this is really serious business, right? And same with God. Like, is God loving? Of course, God is loving. That's his natural disposition is to it and is to be his favorable disposition to you, especially through his Messiah given to us and so forth. But he's also, you know, uh C. S. Lewis would say, you know, he's a lion, he's but he's a good lion, but never forget he's a lion, right? You know, lions still have teeth, they still have fangs, like he's still God. And so blessings and curses kind of have. We've many times we've spent many times, I think, in Echoes of Eden talking about this, if you want to review uh more in depth. But that's kind of a real quick review. Uh, we'll end up kind of coming around back to that, but uh there's a different way I also want you to think about when you read blessings and curses, so you don't just read this as like, oh, this is just some kind of 3,000-year-old archaic text with this that's trying to describe this mean, punitive, uh old guy with a gray beard in the sky that throws lightning bolts at people when he gets mad at them or something like that. Or he, you know, when he likes people or something, he he blesses them, and and uh so be nice to God, do good things for God, and then God'll, you know, scratch his back, he'll scratch yours, or something like that. That's not what's being described there. And no, there's no way he's asking for something of a works righteousness relationship or anything like that. Uh, but uh so how can we relate to it? So one way is thinking about it in terms of like the electricity kind of metaphor, uh, and the other is like what we're gonna talk about now. So the book of Leviticus, when we started it way back when, we talked about how it was the book of holiness, right? That's where Jewish children, including our Messiah, would have begun to learn the Bible. It would have been where he began to learn how to read and so forth. And why there? Because it's about being set apart. It's about being holy, it's about being unique for God. And it enjoins God's people to become this unique set of people that you would be able to determine who is God's people by the way they act, by the way in many ways, by the way they look, by the way they treat one another, by the way they react to things, both good search situations as well as negative situations. There is something about them, right, that sets them apart. That's the definition of holiness, being set apart. Uh, and so Leviticus is kind of a book all about that. In particular, uh, in some ways, it's geared uh primarily towards priests, um, but uh on a bigger scope to all people, because ultimately we're all called to this uh priesthood. We're all called to be this nation of priests. Uh at the end of the series of laws, at the end of this book of Leviticus, it ends with this series of blessings for those who uh obey, but remember uh, and another way I told you to think about this with obey the commandments was to connect to God, because commandments come from that Hebrew word mitzvah, uh tesvah, like the Aramaic root there, meaning connection. So that uh for those who connect with God through the ways he said connect, which you know you think about it in terms of uh the church, right? Do this in remembrance of me. We don't ever think of like, oh man, he's such a burdensome God. He he gives us the sacrament and he makes us, he just forces this bread and wine down our throat and makes me choke on it. I can't handle it. Like, I can't believe he makes us do this. He says, do this, and you know, like we don't act like that. Instead, what do we see? We see like, no, he's given this to us as a gift. It's for you and for the forgiveness of your sins. It's a connection. And so we want to do it, right? And so when we do it, we receive blessing, not just because we're blindly obeying it and because we've obeyed it, God says, Well, check on the checklist, you've obeyed it, you did it. Now I'm gonna bless your socks off. No, you get blessed because you've properly connected through a channel that He's given to you. Same thing with like baptism. Go and make disciples. How? By baptizing them. We don't go, oh man, he's so burdensome, he makes us throw water on people and all of that. We understand it's a gift and we understand what the gift does. And so we we don't see these things as burdens. Well, 3,000 years ago, believe it or not, they didn't see the things God asked of them as burdens. They saw them as opportunities. Uh, you know, I think I said that before, like relationship growth opportunities, right? Uh, you know, they're connection opportunities. Uh, and so that's what is promised. And as well as the reverse of that is if you shun those or if you improperly make use of those, if you pervert those, if you use them in a way they weren't intended, or you change their meaning and so forth, well, it doesn't come with the flow of uh goodness, it comes with the opposite of that, which the scriptures is going to define by the Hebrew word that will get translated as a curse. And those curses helped shore up the determination of individuals to live a godly way, uh, but sometimes perhaps even for childish reasons. And so those curses can fill us with dismay in a different sort of way. We know that many people abide by the teachings of the Word of God, and we know that when they do, and when they're making these connections, and when they're doing the things that God would have them to do, we still are very much aware that, unfortunately, and God forbid, but we still know that they will suffer accidents, they will suffer illnesses, they will experience tragedy. We know it doesn't make a person immune from all negativity or bad things in all of existence. And uh, we also know that those who violate biblical mandates and biblical principles, that many of them, well, from our our eyeballs, our physical seeing, well, they prosper quite well with wealth and health, right? Uh and we know that. And so sometimes we could say, well, this blessing and cursing thing doesn't seem to work. I can name some very holy people that you know are sick, and I can name some very unholy people that are very wealthy and healthy. Uh, so what's going on? Um, the reproof uh in many ways functioned to try to keep people in line, for sure, much as we use it with children when we're raising children. Um, but it can also be a stumbling block for people when they read their Bible if they don't approach it from the right mindset and trip them up again with this primitive sense of a punishing, punitive God. So Moses bin Maiman, who's also known as the Rambom, he was a great teacher, uh sage. He lived in the 12th century in Spain. He also recognized that this could be troubling as well. You know, properly understanding blessings and curses, that people could get the wrong idea, like a works righteousness, like if I do A, B, C, and D, I should be blessed. If I don't, then I'll be cursed. Well, I've done A, B, C, and D, and I'm not being blessed. They definitely didn't, and they seem to be having a better life than me. He understood that, man, okay, this can all be somewhat confusing. So he explained the concept by comparing it to the way that a child is taught. He said, to imagine a small child who's been brought to his teacher so that he might be taught the word of God and the ways of God, which would be, of course, for this child's ultimate good, because it's going to bring him to the knowledge of salvation, it's going to bring him to the way of living a godly life and so forth. However, because he is only a child with limited understanding, he's not going to fully grasp the true value of that good, right? If you've had children or experienced children, or maybe you can remember back to when you were a child or going to school, you know, unless you were, you know, perhaps like, I don't know, me, and loved school. But, you know, most children probably don't see, you know, school as the most awesome thing ever, right? Uh a lot of times they have to have a little motivation to go to school, right? Uh the parent sometimes has that battle, right? And how do you sometimes get a child to go to school, whether it's kindergarten or all the way up to senioritis, right? Well, sometimes you, because they don't understand, like, this is for your good. You need to do this. This is going to benefit you in the long run. This is, believe it or not, is shaping you when they're like, I don't, I don't want to go tomorrow. There's no point in learning environmental science, there's no point in learning trigonometry, uh, the teachers are dumb, you know, you fill in everything you've ever heard. They don't understand that, believe it or not, this is actually going to work for your benefit. So, how do you achieve this means? Well, um, and especially you think of spiritual ways, you want them to achieve this relationship with the scriptures, a living relationship with God. So, what would the teacher do? They will bribe them, and sometimes, you know, you uh you might say, you know, hey, um read this book. You know, that was always a struggle when uh I don't know if they seem to still have it now because all my kids are either in college, beyond college, or in high school, but we had this thing in elementary school called AR reading. Oh my goodness, that was a nightmare. Right? You read so many books and you got AR points. Man, oh man, right? So read this book and I'll give you some gummies, right? Or you know, read this book and I'll give you some candy, right? You you bribe them to get them to do the good, you know, to kind of give them some stimulation. So the child tries to read. He does not work hard for the sake of reading itself or for the knowledge that they are going to gain in the reading, since they don't really understand or appreciate the value of it. But they read in order to get the treat. As the child grows and the mind improves, what was formerly important to them may lose sway. So when they are a junior in high school, good chance that a pack of gummies isn't going to do it, right? Or uh 30 more minutes on the iPad isn't going to do it for a 17-year-old. But other things might become precious, like you get the keys to the car uh for the weekend or something like that. The teacher will stimulate the desire for whatever the student wants at the time. The true value of learning is beyond the grasp of most children, and so a good teacher will find some kind of hook to inspire the students to study and learn. The goal, of course, is that in time they will see that the reward was a mere lure to prompt them to pursue a worthy end. And the same is true here in the Torah, in some degree, the Rambom said the rewards and punishment that are offered by Leviticus pale in comparison to the significance or the insignificance, sorry, compared to the true worth of living a biblical lifestyle. Limited as we are, we fail to see the Torah's true worth. We fail to see The true worth of the Bible in our life. And so God's children still need the artifice of reward and punishment to encourage us to behave in our own best interest. Because sometimes we forget that before the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, we are like but little infants and children and toddlers. And so the same kind of tricks and tips that help you with toddlers, well, maybe God is not above using those same kind of tricks and tips with you and I as well. And so I want to read to you now a lengthy quote from the Rambaum. He says this. Now all of this is deplorable. However, it is unavoidable because of people's limited insight, as a result of which they make the goal of wisdom something other than wisdom itself. In other words, he's kind of saying, look, unfortunately, you can't just give someone a Bible and go, This is the most important book you'll ever have. It contains everything you'll ever need to know. Within it is the wisdom of life, and this is the only wisdom you'll ever need. It contains eternal salvation, it contains the key to your salvation, it will introduce you to your Savior, it will give you everything you need. Unfortunately, that's not enough for people to go, great, thanks, right? And we dive in. It isn't. Any more than giving any kid any kind of book and saying, hey, this is a really important book. You should read it. What do you think they're going to do? Chunk, right? And so he's like, it's deplorable, but it's unavoidable, because that's how we are. And he goes on. A good man must not wonder, if I perform these commandments, which are virtues, and if I refrain from these transgressions, what will I get out of it? In other words, he's saying you can't approach these blessings and curses like, okay, let me make a checklist. And if I do them, I check it off, what am I going to get? And if I don't, what's going to happen to me? Our sages have warned us about this. They said that one should not make the goal of one's service to God, of doing the commandments of anything in this world about attaining things in this world. Antigonus of Soko meant precisely this when he said, Do not be like the servants who serve their master for the sake of a reward, but be like servants who serve their master without expecting a reward. Sounds very much like a saying of Jesus. However, our sages knew that this is a very difficult goal to achieve, and that not everyone, in fact, most cannot achieve it. Therefore, in order that the masses would stay faithful and do the scriptures, it was permitted to tell them that they might hope for a reward and warn them against transgressions out of fear of punishment. And again, that's from the 12th century. The Torah utilizes the language of blessings and curses to provide us in some way an artificial inducement towards righteousness. In other words, it's a loving parent working with a child that doesn't really want to do its homework because it doesn't really understand the full value of getting an education. In every phase of our lives, we alternate between doing the mitzvot, making the connection because we know it to be the right thing to do, and because we believe that somehow, maybe, just maybe, we're making a deal with God. I'll be good, and in exchange, God will protect me and my loved ones from any mishap. While it might be nice for the world to work that way, the grown-up in each of us knows that is not exactly how things work out. But the childlike part of our souls needs the comfort and incentive of blessings and curses. But there is a deeper response as well. In truth, sin literally does have very, very real negative, harsh consequences. Make absolutely no mistake about that. Just not so much for each individual one on a checklist, like God is going, oops, did that, did that, did that, gotta punish for that, gotta punish for that, gotta punish for that, for each particular sin. A culture in which people live by greed and cruelty and force, and in which compassion and doing good are belittled as idealistic and foolish and weak. That is one in which there will be no trust, more violence, more pollution, and more hostility. That is, there will be felt the real, the very real, harsh consequences of sin. So it's another important thing to remember when you're reading the Torah, especially not only in Leviticus, but as we go into the book of Numbers, which this last section of Leviticus is preparing us for. It's also teaching us how to live in community. And so this is preparing us. So, like if you're gonna live in community, right, your actions do affect not only yourself, but those around you. And so sin has very real consequences, and the curses are very real, but not just in an individualistic way, like I use God's name in vain, so somewhere along the line, tomorrow I'm gonna stump my toe, and then I gotta go, oh man, that's okay, we're even, God, we're even. I use your name in vain, I stumped my toe, we're good, right? Tit for tat. That's not how God is operating, that's not how scripture describes it. But if we live in a culture where we are consistently individually all acting contrary to the word of God, we will live in a culture that experiences these curses. We will live in a culture that's cruel. We will live in a culture that is violent, we will live in a culture that is oppressive, or we will live in a culture that takes advantage of the weak and so forth, right? Sin is real and it has very real consequences far beyond ourselves. And that's also being pointed out in the Torah. And there are curses that accompany the choice not to live by God's rules and his connections and his portals. There are consequences for when you take the paper clip and stick it into the electrical socket. There are consequences for that, right? It could just short out and just knock out the power. But think about that. If I go and stick a fork in the socket over there and I knock out the power in this building, I haven't just punished myself. I may have, you know, shocked myself, harmed myself, lost the hair on my eyebrows, and look like a dork for a week or two, right? I have that consequence, but now everybody who wants to use this building until we fix whatever I blew, they don't have power. They don't get to make use of the facilities and so forth. And so now a community has suffered because I chose to improperly connect. All right. And so there are curses. That's a curse. And they are as inexorable as the night following the day. And so perhaps then we need to see our every deed, our every action, our every thought, our every interaction as the one that is swinging the balance, not only for us individually, but for our family, for our community, for our nation, for our world. If we dedicate ourselves to living God's ways and God's will according to the scriptures, to doing what he has said to do to connect with him, perhaps we can begin to swing society towards goodness, towards kindness, towards justice, and then God's blessings flow not only to us as individuals, but to everyone. Or we can choose to elevate the pursuit of our own personal private happiness to the highest ideal, and then continue to watch our society and our planet erode and go down the tubes. As always, as the Torah would put it, not only in Leviticus, but in Deuteronomy. The choice is yours, blessing or curse, life or death, what's it going to be? Just do it. Leviticus chapter 25, verses eight and ten. This is my translation, in case you look at yours and go, what is going on? Um, and you shall count for yourself seven sabbatical years, seven years, seven times, and the days of these seven sabbatical years shall amount to forty-nine years for you. And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim freedom for indentured servants throughout the land for all who live on it. It shall be a jubilee for you, and you shall return each man to his property, and you shall return each man to his family. This, uh, you know, I was reading this and studying this. I thought, man, some version of this sure would be nice if we practiced in our society now. And I don't mean some kind of like biblical literalism of this exact thing in Leviticus, but the the principle behind this. The principle behind what this being described here is that by 50 years, at least 3,000 years ago, um the the power structure and uh all kinds of this the inf whether it's inflation, power structure, people, property, all that has gotten out of balance and it's just a reset. It's just a reset, you know, and it's like, you know, as I paid$79 to put gas in my car, as I paid, I used to, when I would make my famous chili for the family, I always buy, go, go to the store and buy the ingredients just for the chili right then and there, and then I make it. It used to be 12 bucks, 12 to 15 bucks. Yesterday it was$45, you know, and so and it's the same, it's the exact same ingredients, you know. And it's going, it's like, man, would it not be nice a great reset where the the most powerful and elite of our world had to go back and start over again, too, like to some degree? Like everything just kind of gets reset. That's basically what this is saying. It's like it's a way again for the community to get to a point where nobody gets to become so dominant that it becomes to the point where there's a group that can never survive in it. Um, and so it's it's kind of something, it's it's interesting. It's a very interesting concept. So it's something that instead of just reading about every you know 50th year they would let their indentured servants go and so forth, to really think about what were they really doing when they says like let the property go back to the family. It would mean like if somewhere in that 50 years, if someone got into like some financial trouble and they had to sell off a piece of their tribal land, like a somebody from the tribe of Dan had to sell off 50 acres, and somebody from the tribe of Manasseh bought it, Manasseh in that 50 years could farm it, could put a business on it, could do whatever they wanted within 50 years. But at the end of that 50 years, it goes back to the tribe of Dan. And so then Dan isn't because once you start kind of dwindling, well then everybody starts taking advantage of Dan, and before you know it, there is not going to be a Dan anymore, right? And so it's kind of like an interesting concept. And of course, I understand the capitalists and some people is gonna be like, that's right, baby, that's right, right, you know, but it's like, well, is that right? I don't know. I would say that's not the Torah's philosophy, and the Torah reflects the character of your God. So I don't know. Uh, at least I would say read it and give us some thought about the importance of a reset in society. So let's think about this here: the just do it uh from a different perspective. That was just something I personally was kind of wrestling with and thinking about in this week's tour portion with the the sabbatical years and the jubilee years. It just gives people who've had a hard time a chance to breathe again and a chance to come back from it again. All right. And it also prevents someone from just totally taking advantage of it, where the rich get richer and richer and richer, and the powerful the powerful get more and more powerful. It just prevents that. You can't do that in a tourist system. The rich cannot get richer. They can get rich, but there is still rich, so relax. You can still be very well off. 50 years is a long time, right? You're 20 years old. Man, by the time you're 70, you can be really well off and you can retire really well. No one's keeping you down, not everybody's driving the same car, living in the same brick building. It's none of that, guys. But it is saying you can't just keep doing it. All right, because the 50th Jubilee year follows the seven times seven count of 49 years, Rashi comments that one of the meanings of the first verse here that we just read in Leviticus 25 is that even if the seven sabbatical years are not observed, the 50th Jubilee year should still be observed and celebrated. That is, if you missed out on the seven year sabbaticals, you should still honor the seven times seven sabbatical, the 50th year. This idea is relevant to each and every person in different ways. And to emphasize this point, I want to share a story with you that was told by a good friend of Monday Night class, uh Rebbe Shlomo Karlbach. Rebbe Shlomo Karlbach tells this story. He says he was once in Waco, Texas, which in and of itself, if you know anything about Rebbe Shlomo Karlbach, is itself hilarious because if there was ever the quintessential, stereotypical jolly, fat, orthodox Jew, it's Rebbe Shlomo Karlbach in the middle of Waco, Texas, is kind of a funny image. But he's in Waco, Texas, and he's at a mikveh, which is the ceremonial baptist place, baptistry pool where Jews would go on a Sabbath before Sabbath to purify themselves before worship. When he got to the entrance of the mikveh, he saw a very large man with a cowboy hat and a big metal chain around his neck. He was also preparing to enter into the mikveh. Reb Shlomo's eyes, this person didn't look like he really belonged there. And he was wondering, what in the world was he doing there? And so he asked the man, and the man revealed that he was actually from a town near Vinnitz in the Ukraine. The Shabbat, before he and his family left for America, his father had taken him to see the very famous Hasidic Rebbe Yisrael Vitnitzer. And there a huge crowd gathered, and his father, in order to protect his young son, put him under the table right by the Rebbe. At one point the Rebbe became very emotional. He stood up and he told everyone gathered that when you want to do a mitzvah, when you want to connect to God, don't listen to that inner voice that tells you, now you don't really want to do that, do you? You hardly ever do holy things, you hardly ever do religious things, you hardly ever do anything spiritual. Who are you fooling? And so the Rebbe yelled then at the top of his lungs, You tell that negative voice in my name, leave me alone. I don't care what I did before, nor do I care what I will do in the future, but right now at this moment, I'm going to do this holy act and I'm going to serve my God. Upon sitting back down, the Rebbe put his hand on the young boy under the table and said to him, Do you hear what I'm saying? Don't you ever forget it, boy. The man then told Rebbe Shlomo that sometimes, sometimes he he observes the Sabbath, and sometimes he doesn't. And sometimes on Yom Kippur he fasts, and other times he eats like a pig. And to be honest, he says the evil inclination it rules over him, it gets the better of him most of the time. But every once in a while he said he has a deep desire to do something holy. He has a deep desire to connect with his God. And that afternoon, for some reason that he didn't understand, he got a tremendous urge to go to the mikveh. He said that he didn't know what he would do after the mikveh, but all he knew was he was going to the mikveh. For many people, that story probably rings true. Whether for those who are not observant in their religious practice or faith practice, or for those who are, the lesson's very relevant. So many times we want to do something holy, we want to do something for our faith. We want to grow in our relationship with our Messiah, with Jesus. We want to grow more like him. We want to improve or elevate ourselves to this new spiritual level. But then we might be tempted to look at our lives and we hear an inner voice telling us, Who are you fooling? You'll never keep it up. You won't succeed. You know what your family and friends will say about it. You know that's not the real you. You know you're going to be embarrassed. You know you're going to be ashamed. You know how many times you've made the pledge in the past that you would do it, and you know how many times you've never kept it. So forget about it and just be real. Another story about a believer who befriended another believer who worked with him in his office. He invited him to come to worship service with him and even have dinner with him at his house afterwards. He assured him that his congregation was very friendly and that his wife was a great cook. The friend politely refused. A few weeks later he invited the friend again and again. He politely refused. The third time he invited him and he asked him directly after the refusal if there was any reason why he didn't want to come. The man answered him in a very direct manner. If I come to worship service and to dinner, I will probably enjoy it. And if I do, I will probably want to attend again. And then I will find myself in a quandary. If I want to go to worship this week, why do I not go at other times? And if I fellowship with other believers at your house and I enjoy it, am I not a hypocrite to not be keeping the company of believers at other times? You see, before I know it, I will have to change who I am my whole life. And so that's why I'm not joining you. As humorous as the story may be, many people use this type of reasoning, preventing them from participating and growing in their faith, preventing them from growing in their faith, preventing them from attending worship or observing any part of holy days. For those who are religious and observant, the same kind of mentality is at play when certain routines and road observances keep us from reaching out for new horizons. Oh, I can't go to that kind of worship service. Oh, I can't go to that kind of Bible study. In either case, most people tend to create a certain comfort level, and then they find it hard to try something new to expand their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual borders. In the last few generations, there's been a lot of discussion, and some of it caustic, some of it humorous, some of it critical, regarding twice a year worshippers. I think you know what I'm talking about, right? Those who show up to a place of worship on what? The two big days of the year, right? The ones where we gotta pull out the chairs, right? Uh rebs. Shlomo has a beautiful perspective on that phenomenon as well. He compared it to children who live far from their parents and aren't in contact with them that much during the year and rarely make an effort to visit, only visit occasionally. Although the parents might feel neglected and saddened by the situation, still, when the children do come home for a visit, they are overjoyed to see them. We can imagine, says Reb Shlomo, that it is the same kind of joy that God experiences when people come to worship, even if it's only a couple of times a year. The fact that the twice-a-yearers do make an effort should be acknowledged in a positive way, says Reb Shlomo, for the alternative of being so cut off from the tradition that even those two days are non-starters, is a far worse scenario. Unfortunately, there are far too many who fall into this category, and Rashi, in his explanation of these two verses, is emphasizing that even if we don't observe the sabbatical year properly, or even at all, it should not prevent us from connecting to the Jubilee. In other words, he's saying, if you miss one, don't let it keep you from missing the other. It's interesting to note that in the above verses that we read there, the Jubilee year is referred to as a year of freedom. Freedom means not being a slave to our past and not being afraid to try new things, learn new skills, and in the spiritual sense to listen to our deepest intuition when it is urging us to break new ground, break old habits, and embrace the present moment without being a slave to old attitudes or fears of the future. In other words, just do it. Miraculous fertility. Here I thought I would share a little bit kind of a connection to the Gospels a little bit, a little bit of the oral traditions around the Gospels and the Messianic era, because there's quite a bit in the early church connected to as well as in the Gospels itself, such as the first miracle of Jesus recorded in John 2, being related to grapes, with the water into wine, that the messianic era and so forth, with being connected with miraculous fertility of the land and especially miraculous fertility of grapes. Okay, so it's just a little interesting tidbit, and in some ways to expose you to uh some early church literature uh and to show you the how the early church literature was quite connected to the Torah literature. Okay, so uh Leviticus chapter 26, verses four and five. It says, I shall give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. Indeed, your threshing will last for you until grape gathering, and grape gathering will last until sowing time. In other words, one season will keep going until the next season starts. There will be no kind of idle time period. The agricultural prosperity of the Messianic age will be such that the land produces more than can be consumed. There will be no starvation or hunger. Leviticus 26, verse 10. Instead, you shall eat the old supply and clear out the old because of the new. That means the crops will be so abundant there will not be storage capacity for the yields. But in addition to agricultural blessings, the people of God will be fruitful, as it says, Leviticus 26, 9. I will turn towards you and make you fruitful and multiply you. The sages spoke of this coming day, the age of the Messiah, in the most glowing and exuberant terms. And so I want to read to you a passage from the Talmud, in which Rabbi Gamliel, and that is the Rabbi Gamliel, that it is in your book of Acts, the one who taught the Apostle Paul. He expounds on the miraculous fertility and the abundant agricultural bounty that will be found at the time of the Messiah. This is from Tractate Shabbat 30A. As Rabbi Gamliel sat and taught, he said, A woman will bear a child every day, as it is written, and he quotes Jeremiah 31, verse 7, she conceived and gave birth as one. One of his disciples scoffed at this notion and quoted Ecclesiastes one nine, There is nothing new under the sun, which is to say, if such a thing does not exist in the world right now, it will not exist in the time of Messiah either. Gamel replied, Come, and I will show you the equivalent in this world. And he went out and showed him a fowl which lays an egg every day. On another occasion Gamliel sat and taught, and he said, Trees will bear fruit every day, as it says in Ezekiel seventeen, verse twenty three, it will bring forth bows and bear fruit. And just as bows are on the tree every day, so shall there be fruit every day. But one of his disciples scoffed at this notion, saying, There is nothing new under the sun. And Gamliel replied, Come and I will show you the equivalent in this world, and he went and showed him the caper bush. On another occasion Gamiliel sat and explained, The land of Israel will produce cakes and wool robes, for it says in Psalm 72, 16, There will be abundance of grain in the earth. But one of his disciples scoffed at this nation, saying, There's nothing new under the sun. And Gamiliel replied, Come and I will show you the equivalent in this world. And he went and showed him mushrooms that grow every day, and to prove the woolen robes he showed him the bark of a young palm shoot. In other accounts we are told of grapes growing so large that a man will need a wheelbarrow or even a ship to move a single grape about. This is from the Ketubate, tractate ketupate. It says, In the world to come, the mess the time of Messiah, a man will bring one grape on a wagon or ship, put it in a corner of his house, and use its contents as if it was a large wine cask. There will be no grape that will not contain thirty kegs of wine, for as it says in the scriptures, you drank the foaming blood of the grape. Now, all of this rabbinic hyperbole aside, the important thing to see here is that the agricultural bounty being described is part of the messianic age. In a similar vein, the church father Papias, some people say Papias, I prefer Papias. Papias is an important church father because Papias did not know Jesus, but Papias knew the Apostle John, and Papias knew the Apostle Peter, and was their student. And Papias also wrote down things that John and Peter said about Jesus that aren't in the Gospels. And so Papias is called an apostolic father. He knew apostles and he wrote down things the apostles taught him and said to him, but he didn't know Jesus. So one generation removed, but very important figure, very early on in the church. And so Papias reports an oral tradition that he says John told him came from Jesus. Again, Papius, this compiler of oral tradition handed on to him from the apostles. Apparently he had a five-volume work called An Exposition on the Oracles of the Lord, that he collected all of these sayings of Jesus from the Apostles, but it's long been lost. We only have fragments of it, largely preserved, as they are quoted by other church fathers. But among the non-canonical sayings of Jesus that Papias preserved is one that speaks of the miraculous fertility of the land at the time of the Messiah. The saying is intriguing because of its close affinity with the similar sayings of the sages. It is not the type of thing likely to be fabricated as early as the second century. It's clearly of Jewish origin, and it has a parallel text in a book called Second Baruch. Even if the teaching didn't originate with Jesus, it was a teaching that had currency as early as 100 AD in the church. And this is what it says. As the elders who saw John, the disciple of the Lord remembered that they had heard from him, Jesus, how the Lord taught in regard to those times, and said, and this is supposedly from Jesus, the days will come in which vines shall grow, having each ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in every one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and in every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, and every grape when pressed will give five and twenty mitraits of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another shall cry out, I am a better cluster. Take me, bless the Lord through me. In like manner he said that a grain of wheat would produce ten thousand ears, and that every ear would have ten thousand grains, and every grain would yield ten pounds of clear, pure, fine flour, and that apples and seeds and grass would produce in similar proportions, and that all animals feeding then only on the products of the earth would become peaceable and harmonious, and be in perfect subjection to man. And then from second Baruch. The earth shall also yield its fruit ten thousandfold, and on each vine there shall be a thousand branches, and each branch shall produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster a thousand grapes, and each grape a core of wine. So the grapes of the Messianic age are the quintessential expression of the miraculous fertility that the sages anticipated when Messiah would come. This can help explain the significance of the water to wine miracle in Cana. In John chapter 2, Mary asks her son Jesus to do something about the wine shortage at the wedding. And Jesus replies tersely in John 2, verse 4 Woman, that does not, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come. In other words, the messianic era of miraculous fertility and abundant supply of wine has not yet arrived. Nevertheless, Mary insists, and Jesus obliges. He turns the water into wine, and John comments on the event, saying in John 2 11, This, the beginning of his signs, Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him. The messianic wine was a harbinger of his miraculous fertility that was anticipated in the Messianic era. It was a sign that Jesus was the right man for the job, the man who was able to make good on the messianic expectation of fertility of the grape, the fruit of the vine. Jubilee, Yom Kippur, and National Reconciliation. In the year 1751, you history buffs, the Pennsylvania Assembly ordered a special bell be cast. It was to commemorate the 50th anniversary of William Penn's Charter of Privileges. The speaker of the assembly was entrusted with finding an appropriate inscription for what would later become the famous Liberty Bell. The best expression of freedom and equality that the speaker could find was none other than a biblical verse from this week's reading, the biblical verse describing the Jubilee year. This verse is on the Liberty Bell. You will blow the shofar on the tenth day of the seventh month. Onyom Kippur, you will blow the shofar in all your land. You shall sanctify the fiftieth year, proclaiming freedom to all its inhabitants. The triumphant announcement of the Jubilee year, with its blast of the shofar. It takes place on the tenth day of the month of Tishrei, the Hebrew month of Tishrei, in the fall, usually our month of September. This is known as Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. But it's a curious date to announce the new year. It's a curious date to announce the new year and the year of Jubilee, because the Jubilee, the new year, like any new year, begins on the first of the month. It would begin on the first of the month of Tishre, what we would call Rosh Hashanah. So why was the formal proclamation postponed until 10 days later on Yom Kippur? This would be like us realizing January 1st is the new year, but we don't light our fireworks until January 10th. Like, why would we do that? So the new year, the year of Jubilee, it's all going to begin on the first day of the month of Tishrei, but it's not going to be announced. That's the blowing of the shofar and made known to the tech community because they don't all have smartwatches and calendars on their wall. That shofar lets them know this. It's not going to be announced until 10 days later on Yom Kippur. Why? What's the connection? The Jubilee year is a super sabbatical year. Like the seventh year, agricultural labor is prohibited, and landowners forego all claims on produce growing during that year. It's a great reset. Not only do people get to rest, the land gets to rest. And just like the regular Sabbath, you remember when they were in Egypt and God said, every morning you're going to get up and you're going to have manna, i.e., daily bread. I'm going to give you your daily bread. You're going to get exactly what you need. And then what would happen on Friday? They'd get a double portion because they were to rest on the Sabbath. And God said, So don't worry. You're going to rest, so you're going to get a double portion. Well, God said the same thing for years. You're going to work the land for six years. The seventh year, you're going to let your land rest. That has some practical implications, by the way, but it's also a bigger application. But he also said, don't worry. Just like they got a double portion of manna, you're going to get a double portion in the sixth year. So you're going to have, you're going to be fine. Don't worry. That's what we're going to do, though. Just like what did they do in the Egypt? They tried to what? They still tried to hoard it, didn't they? Right? Of course, it rotted because God was like, I told you not to do that, right? But they still couldn't trust God. And so they were like, there's no way it's going to be enough for tomorrow. He's not going to come through. Let me hoard, let me take care of myself. Of course, God comes through and all that. He does the same thing for the sabbatical years. Take a rest. We need to hear that as well. Rest is built into our spiritual DNA. We are built to rest. It's part of our rhythm. But what we want to tell ourselves is you can't rest. You can't. You'll get behind. Somebody will pass you by. You know, you know, that's for the week. You know, you gotta go. If you gotta work 60 hours a week, you gotta work seven days a week. You gotta go, go, go, go. Again, that's not a biblical way of approaching life. It's not. It's not how God wired the universe. And it's not how God operates. What does Genesis tell us? On the seventh day, who rested? God rested. Like, okay, it's it's even part of our God. So we're not above our creator, okay? And we're created in his image. So he did it, we're image bearers. So this is so and then the Jubilee is just as sabbatical year is like the weekly sabbatical sabbath. The Jubilee year is like the yearly sabbatical, made super on steroids. Okay. The Jubilee also contains two additional aspects of social justice: the emancipation of indentured servants and the restoration of land back to their original owners. Just as the Sabbath day allows the individual to rest, so too the sabbatical and jubilee years provide rest for the nation and for the land. It gives everybody a chance to catch their breath, as well as resets the system. The entire nation is able to take a break from competition and from economic struggle. The sages noted that the phrase Sabbath to God appears both in the context of the weekly Sabbath and the sabbatical year. Both are designed to direct us towards spiritual growth, the Sabbath for the individual, the sabbatical year for the nation. The Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 8B relates that during the first ten days of the Jubilee year, the indentured servants were not sent home, but they didn't have to work either. They would actually feast, and they would drink, and they would celebrate their freedom, and they would wear crowns upon their heads. And only after the court blew the shofar on Yom Kippur would the newly freed indentured servants return back to their homes. The freeing of the servants in the Jubilee year serves as an important safeguard for social order. Societies that rely on indentured labor usually suffer from revolts and violent acts of vengeance by the underclass. Instead of attaining social justice through bloody revolt and violent upheaval, the Jubilee emancipation allows for peaceful and harmonious change. The restoration of rights for the poor and the disadvantaged becomes an inherent part of the societal and economic order. Most significantly, during the final days of servanthood, the freed indentured servants celebrated together with their former masters. The Torah also obligated the masters to send off the servants with generous presents and gifts and money. These conciliatory acts would help heal the social and psychological wounds caused by the socioeconomic divisions and class estrangement. The national reconciliation reached its peak on Yom Kippur when the shofar exuberantly proclaimed freedom and equality. And so the formal announcement of the Jubilee year is intricately connected to Yom Kippur. On that year, the Day of Atonement becomes a time of forgiveness, a time of absolution, not only for the sins of the individual, but also for the sins of the society. From desolation to rebuilding. Toward the end of the curses, the Torah states that the city of Israel lay wasted, and the holy places will be desolate, so desolate that even those who conquer it or who try to live there will experience the desolation of the land. For I am the Lord their God, I will remember them for the cov from the covenant made with their ancestors, whom I took out from the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations, to be God to them. I am the Lord. Throughout the book of Deuteronomy, and subsequently in almost every book of the prophets of Israel. God goes one step more and promises to bring the scattered remnants from all over the world back to the land to replant them in the land. Scores of these prophecies speak of this time as a time of redemption, of healing, of rebuilding, and a glorious messianic era that brings peace to the entire world. The first all-encompassing vision of worldwide redemption, universal peace, and harmony among the nations is attributed to the prophet Isaiah. God chose him and other prophets recorded in the Bible to reveal a divine message regarding ultimate potential and the destiny of God's people and all of humanity. These words echo the loftiest dreams and aspirations of all people and have profoundly influenced thinkers, writers, and leaders in every generation. In fact, the words of Isaiah chapter two, verse four, they are prominently inscribed on the entrance to the building of the United Nations. It says, And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. In 1867, the famous American author Mark Twain visited the Holy Land, and he recorded his impressions in his book, Innocence Abroad. I highly recommend that book. It's a great read. Which in this book, his impressions of the Holy Land were mixed with disappointment and even shock at the desolation that he found. I'll read to you two quotes. He said, The further we went, the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare it was. It was repulsive, and the dreary the landscape became. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. And he also says, the land is desolate, it's unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the deity beautify a land? On close inspection, the curses of the portion found here in Leviticus and also that are found in the book of Deuteronomy, they all have come true at some point in history. And yet now many of the blessings discussed and the prophecies and the predictions made in Deuteronomy and the prophets, they can also see be seen coming true today before our very eyes. The return of the people from all over the land to Israel, the rebirth of sovereignty that was envisioned by the prophecy, the prophets, lies at the heart of the future. The ingathering of the exiles, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the turning of the desert into an agricultural wonderland. These were all predicted and promised by God through the prophets. Having witnessed prophecy after prophecy coming true in our times, is there any wonder that there is great expectation for the fulfillment of the final prophecies of the Messiah and a redeemed world in our time? May we be part of that glorious fulfillment and may He come quickly. Amen. And we will pick it up next week with Safer Bahamid Bar, the book of Numbers, where we will enter into the wilderness for 40 years and spend time roaming through the wilderness, learning the lessons God had to teach them. Because you can get the people out of Egypt pretty quickly, but it takes about 40 years to get the Egypt out of the people. So that's where we will be next week. Let's close with the blessing. Baruchata Adunai Notein Hatara. Blessed are you, Lord God, who has given to us the gift that is the Torah. Amen. Shlom, shlom, go in peace. Hi everyone. Thank you for engaging this teaching. You know, we at Emmanuel have as one of our goals to make our teachings available online to anyone, everywhere, at any time, whether that's through a podcast or our YouTube channel or an MP3 download. It is our gift to you, and we want you to use it however you see fit. Also, if you feel uh motivated or desire to support future teachings, you can do so with the donate button at the bottom of our teaching page. That's found at immlutheran.org forward slash teaching. Again, thank you for participating in our teachings here and hope to see you or engage with you somehow, some way, somewhere. God bless.