Today we begin Deuteronomy Chapter 16.
For the Complete Jewish Bible, click here.
For the King James Version, click here.
Deuteronomy Chapter 16 is quite a comprehensive chapter that deals with the following…
-The 3 God-ordained Pilgrimage Festivals
-The Requirements And Expectations Of Government Leaders
-A Review Of Both Acceptable And Banned Worship Practices
Before we move forward, let’s not forget the context of the portion of Scripture we are currently immersed in.
Deuteronomy is all about Moses giving his final speech to the children of Israel literally days before he will pass away.
As he addresses the people from the top of the Mountains of Moab which are towering over the Jordan Valley, Moses does his best to express a theme King Solomon so eloquently echoed in the Book of Eccelsiastes after spending a good portion of his life partaking in all of the riches, sex and power this life had to offer.
“Here is the final conclusion,
now that you have heard everything:
fear God, and keep his commands;
this is what being human is all about.”
-Ecclesiastes 12:13
You would be hard-pressed to find a clearer statement in the Scriptures concerning what man’s purpose should be during his oh-so-limited time on this planet.
The whole duty of man is to OBEY God’s commands.
Period.
From the perspective of eternity, nothing else really matters.
I imagine during one’s last dying hours, the enormity of this truth will strike home with a degree of intense clarity unprecedented in his or her life up to that point in time.
That person will look back over his life and realize that so much of what he strived for, fretted over, and even all of his great earthly achievements from the perspective of eternity were ultimately meaningless.
That’s what King Solomon said.
He tried to do it all and in many cases he succeeded greatly, but his conclusion was that it was all for nothing and that if man is to live a fulfilled and meaningful life, he should obey God’s Torah.
By the way, you should know that the Hebrew word for “man” here is ADAM and is referring to all of mankind in general.
In other words, the meaning of the word ain’t just restricted to the Israelites folks!
It refers to all men, whether Jew or Gentile who would humble themselves and accept and worship the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel.
This should put to rest the ridiculous idea that God’s Torah was only for Israel.
The wisdom of God is for ALL of mankind.
The Scriptures tell us that when Messiah comes “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea”.
One good way to understand this is to consider that BEFORE the Lord ever called Israel to be His People, His Torah and all its teachings and laws had already existed in the heavenly spiritual realm.
In other words, the truth of Torah is universal and its truths are woven into the very fabric of the universe.
Yeshua himself said that the Law was never done away with and that such a thing would never happen until the heavens and earth themselves passed away, if such a thing is even possible.
Leave a Reply