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Hebrews 12:12-13
Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. Here’s to those who battle sickness; to those who find themselves losing faith in the midst of financial or domestic battlegrounds. You out there who’s hands droop in discouragement and whose knees weaken under the weight of the heavy load Hashem seems to have unmercifully allowed to be placed upon your weak shoulders (Hebrews 12:12): has this world gotten you down? A lady I recently met and who had a full life of serving the cause of the people of God recently realized that she is approaching the last years of her life. After being a very active social creature, she is now handicapped and stuck in the small room of an adult care facility. Feeling sick, lonely, and abandoned even by friends, she confessed to me that two days before she contemplated suicide. She then asked me, “Is it worth it? Is it worth it to wait it out, or should I just end it now?” Another lady friend of mine faced with a cancer resurgence cried in my arms the other day, “Why? Why doesn’t Hashem heal me?” On the other side, my wife presently cares for her sick ninety-nine year-old Swedish aunt who does not believe in God or in any sort of thing such as the after-life. As she realizes that she may not reach the meaningful landmark of one hundred years old, she faces her fate with uncanny pragmatism barely falling short of comforting the doctors who care for her. What is the difference? Why does this lady who does not even believe in God seem to have more peace in the face of sickness and probable death than the ones who do? Hope; hope is the difference. Those who believe have learned to have hope, but as wise King Solomon said, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick …" (Prov. 13:12). Deferred hope may make the hear sick, but is a cynical life without the life and light of hope better? I don’t think so. The very design of the tabernacle teaches us about the present and tangible hope that Hashem fulfills all his promises; that if he doesn't do it now in the Olam Hazeh זהה עולם (this age) he will do it in the Olam Habah הבא עולם (the Age to Come, the Messianic Age). The great divine plan for the destiny of the world is imbedded in the geography of the Tabernacle. Through it the Holy Spirit teaches us that as long as the protos (the first part of the tabernacle which represents this present age) pursues its unfinished course, the Deuteros (the second part which represents the World to Come where the full atonement of the Master our heavenly High Priest rules, the place where promises are all fulfilled) cannot come (Heb. 9:8-9). Our patriarchs understood that as they all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar (Heb. 11:13). As we look into this beautiful shadow picture in the design of the Tabernacle, may we look for the World to Come with the hope and assurance from he who fulfills all hopes, and into the second part of the King Solomon’s proverb, “… but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life" (Prov. 13:12).
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Matthew 4:4
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’. The fourth book of the Pentateuch is called in English ‘Numbers’. In Hebrew the title of the book is the first noun of the text which is ‘Ba’midbar’, meaning: ‘In the Wilderness’. In today’s Hebrew, the word ‘midbar’ means ‘desert’. The Book of ‘Ba’midbar’ tells us of the thirty-eight years spent by the Children of Israel in the desert. The Hebrew for the word ‘midbar’ reveals a very interesting truth. Most Hebrew words are based on a three letter verbal root, sometimes two. This verbal root is vital to us because no matter what the variation in the spelling of the word, the verbal root reveals its etymological meaning, which is important to us in order to understand what the Father is trying to convey to us through His ‘Word’. The verbal root of the word ‘midbar/wilderness’ is composed of the three Hebrew letters, ‘daleth/beth/resh’. Strangely enough, these letters are also the verbal root for the word ‘lehdaber: to speak’, verb from which is derived the word ‘davar’. Today ‘davar’ means, ‘word’ or ‘thing’, but it is also the ancient Aramaic word used in the Targum (Aramaic layman’s version of the Hebrew Scriptures) to refer to Messiah. ‘Davar’ is the word John used when he said, ‘In the beginning was the ‘Word’ (John 1:1). Where does all this take us? These interesting facts concerning the word ‘midbar’ have certainly not escaped the attention of Jewish sages and we find illumination in some of their commentaries. Looking at the relationship between the Hebrew words for ‘wilderness’ and the idea of the ‘spoken word’, the sages have concluded that the wilderness is the place where God speaks. God may speak in many places, but the wilderness is usually the place where we are the most dependant on Him and where we can give Him our full attention. Sometimes this ‘wilderness’ can also be the spiritual or emotional wilderness of difficult and trying times in our lives. The idea is certainly carried in the Scriptures. John the Immerser defined himself using the prophet Isaiah’s words as, ‘the Voice crying in the wilderness’ (Matthew 3:3). The Master Himself when fasting (food and water) for forty days in the wilderness (such a fast should kill a person) said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4)”. The ‘wilderness’ is certainly the place where we hear God most clearly: the place of total undistracted dependency. May we learn to benefit from our wilderness times, hearing His Voice telling us ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’ (Matthew 3:2). May we not murmur at the ‘manna’ nor at the water shortage. May we learn to use those times for growth, maturation, and consecration as the Children of Israel did. John 9:3
"It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. The Torah teaches us the notions of right and wrong according to the Father Creator of the universe. It sets before us the rewards of obedience and warns us of the chastisements for breach of contract. God says to His Children who know His Name, have witnessed His power, and lived of His bounty, "If you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you (Leviticus 26:14-17). As the Messiah was the executer of God’s will at creation (John 1:3; Proverbs 8:22-31) so will Messiah be the executor of God’s judgment on the disobedient (Revelations 19). He will come in His time. In the mean time, should we deduct that all diseases, fevers, business and military failures are the direct consequences of our sins? Should we assume that one who is sick with cancer sins more than the one who is healthy? It is neither safe nor true to come to such conclusion. The Torah instructs us in this matter. The book of Job for example tells us of a man who was righteous and yet suffered affliction without measure (to be righteous doesn’t necessarily mean that one does not sin ‘for all have sinned’ (Romans 3:23). To be called righteous by God simply defines our status with Him). The whole Job event seems to be for the purpose of creating a Messianic analogy that teaches us about Messiah the True Righteous One who like Job, unduly suffered, was condemned by his friends for it (Isaiah 53:3-4), but who at a later time will be justified and vindicated by God in plain sight of those who accused him (Revelations 19). It seems like Job’s suffering were solely that God may tell us of His work through Messiah. It is just like with that time when the disciples asked the Master when they saw a man who had been blind from birth, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" The Master answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him (John 9:2-3). In a sense, the wise and safe conclusion we can make from our passage in the Book of Leviticus is that, ‘whereas sin and disobedience always result in calamities, calamities are not always the direct consequence of sin and disobedience’. |
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