Parashat haShavua

One of the things that I love about the Parashat haShavua (Torah portion of the week) is that as tedious as it can become to its reader due to the meticulous detail, there is always a radiant gem hidden amongst the detail from which the richest of inspiration can be drawn and from which can be identified rays of light that radiate prophetically towards the Spirit-filled life enabled by Yshua’s redemptive and finished work on the cross.

This last Parashah most explicitly exemplifies this. It’s Exodus 25:1 – 27:19.

The Parashah is called “Parashat Trumah”, where “Trumah” means “gift” or “donation” or “offering”. This is because it begins with the gift offerings that God required from the Israelites for the making of the tabernacle in the wilderness.

Much detail is given as to the specifications in the types of materials that were to be used: gold, silver, bronze, blue, purple and red (red is named “worm”, because it actually came from a specific worm) dyes, scarlet thread, acacia wood etc. Then there is much detailed specification into the size and number of each component of the tabernacle and its furnishing. For example, there had to be exactly eleven curtains (Exodus 26:7) of goat hair, five curtains on one side and six on the other side, with the extra curtain as an overlap. Much detail is given as to how these components were to be held together, or how they would be carried, using a system of bronze rings and gold-covered acacia poles.

Here’s the radiant gem. It is to be found in Exodus 25:22.

There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the covenant law, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites.

This is where the English translation simply does not give justice to the Hebrew. The Hebrew word for “I will meet with you” is one Hebrew word: “no-ad-itie”. This Hebrew word, although it implies “meeting”, does not in itself only mean that. It has two root letters, Ayin (A or E) and Dalet (D) together forming the Hebrew root word “Ed”, which in itself means “witness” or “testimony”. It is used in its passive form and in the first person, the first person being God Himself. Therefore it might better be literally translated as “I am being witnessed.” God was not just meeting there. He was being witnessed there. He was being made known. You could literally see and feel His remarkable Presence. Here’s one of the few translations that comes close to the true meaning:

And I will make myself known to thee from thence, and I will speak to thee above the propitiatory between the two cherubs, which are upon the ark of testimony, even in all things which I shall charge thee concerning the children of Israel. (Brenton Septuagint Translation)

There we have it. God wants to make Himself known. He wants us to see Him, to feel Him, to touch Him, to experience Him. Why is it that we don’t know God in this way? Probably because we don’t live according to His patterns. Here’s another word, “pattern” that comes up in this Parashah. You find it in Exodus 25:40 :

Look and make it according to the pattern, that was shewn thee in the mount. (Douay-Rheims Bible)

Again, most bibles forget to emphasize what the Hebrew actually says. In this case, the Hebrew says “look”. We need to spend time looking at God’s Word in intricate detail before we come to conclusions and we need to take the time to witness His Glorious Presence in order to not misinterpret what we see in His Word and in order that we not diminish who God is.

Fortunately for us, we have in Yshua the Messiah all of the opportunity that was not afforded to the Israelites:

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:19-22 NIV)

The Hebrew word for “I will meet”, or rather for “I am being witnessed” has as we have discussed, a root of “ED”, which means “witness”. This same root appears in another item that features in this Parashah. Into the Ark of the Covenant was to go the Testimony, that is the words of God that were written down by Moses. The Hebrew for Testimony is “Ed-oot”. Here again, the root letters “ED” imply that the written Word of God is in fact a testimony to us.

So two “witnesses” are presented to us in this Parashah. The one witness is that of God’s Presence and the other witness is that of God’s Word. As people of the New Covenant of Yshua the Messiah, we too should have in our lives the witness of God’s Word together with the witness of God’s Presence. That requires some serious setting aside of our time.

Although we can set times aside any day of the week in order to encounter God, the Shabbat is God’s gift to us to truly set aside every work obligation and encounter Him. There is no direct command in Scripture to limit worship only to the Shabbat. However, by implication, Shabbat is an ideal day to worship God. I say this because Scripture clearly provides an association between rest and worship:

In God alone my soul finds rest (Psalm 62:1 Berean Study Bible)

If you are looking for a day in which we are instructed, even commanded (fourth commandment) to rest from our work and from our labours, it’s Shabbat. However, as King David the psalmist says, you will never quite be able to find as much rest and as much peace as you will find in God Himself. Therefore, if you are going to set aside a time to rest, be that on the Shabbat or taking a rest any other time of the week, you are not going to find anything as restful as the rest that is found in God alone.

This Shabbat’s Parashah is Exodus 13:17 – 17:16. “B’Shalach means “when he (Pharaoh) sent”, because Pharaoh momentarily decides to grant Moses’ request to “let my people go”. It is from this time on that YHVH goes before the Israelites in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, to show them the way in which they should go. But when the Israelites, hemmed in at the edge of the dessert and the sea, saw Pharaoh’s army coming towards them, the story had not yet been written. No Scripture was there yet to tell them of the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea. Instead, they were overwhelmed with a terrible fear that their lives were about to end at the hand of their slave-drivers. When Moses lifted up his staff at YHVH’s instruction, the sea began to part.

It is difficult to comprehend how the Egyptian army could have continued to pursue the Israelites without having been stopped in their tracks by the miracle that was taking place, except that the pillar of cloud lit the way of the Israelites and darkened the way of their pursuers. When it was too late, the Egyptians realized that YHVH was fighting against them. Before they could escape, the sea had swept over them and they were all drowned.

When we read of what happened, we tend to focus our attention on the dramatic miracle, the display of God’s mighty power, his judgment upon those who had dared to defeat his purpose of redemption and his great victory for his people Israel. But when you truly know God by His Spirit, you realize that after the raging waters have subsided, after all is calm and the Israelites continue on their way, guided by the light of His love, all of this has taken place for a purpose much higher than the display of His mighty power.

We see that purpose as a ray of light in the triumphant song of Moses that follows the miracle that took place:

You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance— the place, Lord, you made for your dwelling, the sanctuary, Lord, your hands established.

(Exodus 15:17)

In the end, the trials, the tests of our faith, the mighty miracles done on our behalf, the defeat of our enemies, are all just the means to an end, that being to bring us nearer to the place where we are closer to him. In the knowledge of God our Father by his Holy Spirit, we understand that His purpose is to plant us on the mountain of his inheritance, the place where his sanctuary is, where his presence resides, where we can have fellowship with him:

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”

(John 17:24)

This week’s Parashah, read in the synagogues all over the world is Exodus 6:2 – 9:35 and “davka” (an untranslatable word in modern Hebrew which might translate as “would you believe it”), ONCE MORE relates to the day in which we find ourselves, the “Civil New Year”, just in the same way that last week’s Parashah, on Christmas day, remarkably relates to the birth of Christ. So before I continue, let me say to you “Happy Civil New Year to you and to your loved ones”. So then, let’s get on with the Parashah.

It begins with a bomb-shell statement from YHVH Almighty to Moses: “I Am YHVH”. This is a topic just on its own which would take some explanation, because it is here that God tells Moses that he had revealed to Moses the meaning of His Name, but that he had not been made known by His Name YHVH to Abraham, even though he had indeed uttered His Name to Abraham.

But then God says to Moses:

4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. 8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’ “ (Exodus 6: 6-8 NIV)

In this, God reminds Moses of His promise to re-instate the children of Israel to their citizenship in the land of Canaan.

The clue to this Shabbat’s Parashah came to me in the form of a question sent to me through my Hebrew-English dictionary app. The question was as follows: “Today is the ‘civil new year (‘shanah ezrachiet’ in the Hebrew) for the Christian world’. How do you say ‘civil new year’ in English”. The literal translation for ‘shanah ezrachiet’ is in fact “citizen year”.

My question to us all though is: where is our citizenship? Is our citizenship tied up into this world, or is our citizenship in Heaven? In today’s Parashah, ‘davka’ on the ‘civil new year’, the children of Israel are told through Moses that they are citizens of the land of Canaan and that God was about to graciously fulfil His promise to their forefathers to restore the children of Israel back to their citizenship.

But where is our citizenship? Our citizenship is neither the land of Canaan, nor is it in this world. If we belong to Christ, then our citizenship is in Heaven. This Parashah is then a reminder to us of our citizenship in Heaven.

So whilst we may indeed be rejoicing as citizens of THIS world that God has graciously brought us through another CIVIL year, away from the horrors of 2021 into the hopes of 2022, we are reminded of our citizenship in Heaven.

That citizenship of ours in Heaven has a beginning: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That all took place in the time of the Passover and the Passover takes place in the FIRST month of God’s calender, the month of Nisan.

In John 16:22-23, Jesus tells his disciples that his death and resurrection is likened to the birth of a child. The disciples would grieve as a mother grieves because of the pain of childbirth, but as soon as the child is born, her grief is forgotten and she rejoices over the fact that her child is born into the world. The ‘new beginning’ for the disciples of Jesus would come when their grief was replaced with overwhelming joy because of the fact that Jesus had been raised from the dead. That is their new beginning, the start of their new life with God, their new-found relationship with God. This is why Jesus says in the very following verse that it is then, when he is raised from the dead, that his disciples will have a direct relationship with the Father. At that point in time, they will no longer ask Jesus for anything, but they will have a “hot-line” to God the Father and they will be able to ask God directly for whatever they asked in Jesus’ Name.

A blessed 2022 to you, as you work out your citizenship in Heaven, all because of what Jesus did for you on the cross so many Passovers ago.

Shabat 4th December 2021. Parashat Miketz (Genesis 41) Joseph is given by Pharaoh the name “Tsaphnat Pha-ne-ach”. This means “the concealed one who solves the mystery”. Pharaoh knew well that Joseph was the concealed one, the solver of mysteries, who had been concealed or hidden in a dark and lonely dungeon, lost, forgotten and rejected for years, forgotten by the wine-bearer who had witnessed the mystery then solved and predicted by Joseph, the baker’s life forfeited and the wine-bearer’s spared. We ought not to reject Yshua the “Concealed One”, the “Mystery Solved”, of whom Joseph is a type. Yshua was forever concealed in the Father (John 5:37-38), but the contemporary leadership did not recognize this. That is why he said “you have neither heard his voice [of the father] nor seen His form, neither does his word dwell in you, because you have not believed the one he sent”. If they had diligently sought to hear the voice of the father, to see his form and let his word dwell in them, they would have recognized that Yshua was concealed in the father and would have received him as their Lord and Messiah. They would not have overlooked or taken for granted the “seven years of their plenty”, but they would have realized that these were given in lieu of seven years of adversity, for which the plenty was given in preparation thereof. Yshua is our concealed One,  our Mystery Solver, our riddle Revealer. He was rejected to the grave and forgotten, but God raised him from the dead, just as Joseph was forgotten for so long yet became the essential key to the saving of the people of Egypt and even to the saving of Jacob and his family whose region  was also affected by the same famine. Our lives too are hidden in Yshua the Messiah (Col 3:3), just as he is hidden in the Father, so that the mystery of His Life may be revealed in us.