Ekev – Torah with Joseph

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom, my name is Joseph Shulam and together with Brad TV we are following the order of the synagogue in the reading of the law of Moses. Every Sabbath the same thing that is read in the synagogues around the world. That’s what we are studying.

And this week, this next Sabbath, the portion that is going to be read it’s called in Hebrew Eikev. Eikev means because. Because. Because of what. And this portion is very interesting, like all the other Word of God, but it’s positive. It starts with a very positive note, not with a negative note.

We were in Leviticus few weeks back and it was very negative, great punishment because of our disobedience and because of our fall into idolatry and because of our disregard for God and for his Word. But this time chapter seven of Deuteronomy from verse 12 going on to chapter 11, verse 25 of Deuteronomy, that’s is this Sabbath’s portion.

Starts like this, “Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers,” meaning Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses himself.

Any time that we do what is right, God keeps his promises, his good promises, his blessings. And that’s how this portion starts. “And He will love you and bless you and multiply you; and He will also bless the fruit of your womb,” meaning your children, “and the fruit of your land, your grain, your new wine, your oil, your increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He swore to your fathers to give you.”

This is the real doctrine of prosperity, dear brothers and sisters. It’s not the doctrine of prosperity for you to give to some pastor your money. The real prosperity comes to God’s children when they are wise, like the man who built his house on the rock.

He heard the Word of God and he obeyed the Word of God. He built his house on a rock. He was a wise man.

The not-so-wise man, the stupid man heard the Word of God and went on his way whistling “Dixie.” Maybe not “Dixie.” I don’t know. It’s not politically correct to talk about “Dixie” nowadays but whistling “Gone With the Wind.”

Yes, God’s promises to those people, to his children, to his disciples that hear his word and obey his word and do what he wants them to do, a promise of blessings, a promise of increasing their flocks, a promise of harvest that is plentiful, wine and oil. Well, when you say wine, you know, I hope none of our Baptist brothers are offended, but they were drinking wine. They didn’t have Coca-Cola.

And to get drunk is a sin, but you know, so much of our culture in the Middle East and in the Mediterranean in general is related to the grapes and to the fruit of the grapes, to the wine. You don’t have to get drunk. You don’t have to drink too much, but it’s a part of the culture and was a part of the culture, and the land of Israel was famous for its wine.

And it’s famous for its wine today, too. What a promise by God! “If you listen to me, if you listen to my precepts, to my judgements, to my rules, I will keep my side of the bargain. I will keep the covenant. I will keep my promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

It’s a wonderful deal, dear brothers and sisters. It was a wonderful deal in the days of Moses, in the days of the children of Israel, that the land of Canaan, and it was a wonderful deal anytime that God’s children obey his commandments. Now, yes, the commandments change.

We’re in the book of Deuteronomy, and in the book of Deuteronomy the commandments are quite different than they are in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. In many, many aspects, they’re not the same commandments, because these were given, or the book of Deuteronomy was found in the days of King Josiah way, hundreds of years after Moses.

The book was lost, and then the priest found it in the days of the King Josiah, and King Josiah reformed all of the land of Israel and all the practices, the biblical practices of the people, even the sizes of the altar were changed because of the book of Deuteronomy. And we have that evidence even in archeology.

Verse 14 of chapter seven, “You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you nor among your livestock. And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate you,” on your enemies.

Ah, that’s an interesting paradigm, dear brothers and sisters. And in history, I can say that, that most of our history, the history of Israel, the history of the children of Israel from the days that Moses gave these words on the eastern shore of the Jordan River until today, some of these things did not substantiate, did not happen for a long periods of time.

Why? Because we are human being. Because obedience to God’s commands, to anybody’s command is not something that comes to us naturally. We are naturally, I’m sad to say, we were naturally rebellious not only about the commandments of God, but about any commandments, about any laws.

If there is a way that we think that we can get by not keeping the laws or keeping the laws partially or deferring the laws to a different time, then naturally, as human beings, we do that. We have that garden of Eden rebelliousness built into us. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to be that we are doing what we want. It doesn’t take away one bit of our freedom to be wise and do God’s will and keep his commandments.

And the wise thing to do is when you buy some electronic machine or tool, a washing machine or even a simple steam iron, the wise thing to do is to read the instruction. The wise thing to do is when you get new medication from your doctor to read the little leaflet that comes with the box. That’s the wise thing to do. And the wise thing to do, of course, is since our creator created us in his own image and in his own form, is to read the instructions.

The instructions come packaged from Genesis to Revelation. I’m not saying read it in one reading. 70 hours of reading. But I’m reading every day a little bit, every week at least the recommended portion that is read in all the synagogues in the world.

This is a command that the apostles gave to the believers, to the Gentile believers in Acts 15:19-21. They send the Gentile believers to the synagogue to hear the Word of God read; why? Because no many people had the Word of God privately in their home.

It was such a big thing, such an expensive thing. It had to be copied by professional scribes by hand, and only very wealthy people had a copy of the five books of Moses in their private possession.

The average people didn’t. They had to go to the public synagogue, where every Sabbath the Word of God was read. That’s the recommendation of Paul and Peter and James and the elders of the church in Jerusalem, Barnabas and Silas, all of them were there in that conference in Acts 15. And that’s why they recommended.

But, again, back to this opening statement of our reading. Doing right is always right. Doing good is always good. Being obedient to God’s command is always the wise thing to do. Because he designed us and he made us and he gives us life and breath now in this earth and eternally. That’s the real doctrine of prosperity, folks, is doing the will of God.

Now with Christians, non-Jews the question is always: What shall we do? Shall we keep the laws that God gave the children of Israel in the law of Moses? Or shall we keep other laws that are not necessarily from the law of Moses?

Well, the answer to this question is not so complicated. We should keep what Jesus and his apostles kept. We should keep what Jesus and his apostles commanded us to keep. We should do what God’s will is.

And even though sometimes God’s will changes according to circumstances and needs, we can read the Bible and we can discern what is relevant and what is not relevant. If you’re not a father, all the laws about fatherhood are not relevant. If you are a woman, the laws that are for men are not relevant for you.

You don’t have to be circumcised if you’re a Jewish woman or any woman, yeah. Each one has his set of laws given to him. Children have laws for children, fathers have laws for fathers, men who are not fathers have laws for people who are not fathers. Those that don’t have a family have different laws.

We need to learn that the paradigm that is being reported and taught by the Catholic church, by the historical churches is not necessarily the biblical paradigm. It is a paradigm that was done essentially by pagans who hated Jews, who hated the Old Testament, who hated Moses and his commandments, and invented a new religion that is not a part of the Word of God.

And then Luther, Calvin and Zwingli and men try to reform that church, it doesn’t work. We have to get back to the drawing board and rightly divide the Word of God as the apostle commanded his disciple, and see what applies to us personally, what applies to us collectively as a community, what applies to us from the New Testament that reflects what is commanded in the Old Testament.

Yes, these are the commands, but the blessing is in doing the will of God. That’s what I’m trying to say. The blessing is not in not doing the will of God, in disobeying God, that doesn’t bring a blessing, that doesn’t bring prosperity and peace and good family. That brings disaster.

And Christian history is so full of these disasters, not only against Jews against each other as well. The interesting thing is today, Israel is, the Jews have returned into the land a little more than 120 years ago.

That’s when the Aliyah started, the return of the Jewish people back to the land that God gave Abraham, Isaac and Jacob only started at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, recently. But we see that the promises that God gives in our portion in Deuteronomy, that God will give us victory of our enemies.

I’m reading verse 22, “And the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you little by little; you will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. But the Lord your God will deliver them over to you, and will inflict defeat upon them until they are destroyed. And He will deliver their kings into your hands, and you will destroy their name from under heaven; and no one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them.”

Okay. Wonderful promise. I think, wonderful promise. It hasn’t happened. And I don’t know where it is going to happen and if it’s going to happen, but it hasn’t happened. Why hasn’t it happened?

The answer is in our hand. I remember that when I was a very, very young believer and reading some Christian material, and I used to use it when I traveled with the chorus of Georgia Christian school in from Valdosta, Georgia, and paradigm was the answer is in your hand.

It was a story from a Arab philosopher that wrote the book, Iraqi Arab philosopher that wrote a book about a very, very old and very, very wise old man. Some of the young men decided, “We’re gonna trick that blind old man with all of his wisdom. We are going to get in the boat with him on the Euphrates River. And we’re going to tell him, ‘Old, man, we have a bird in our hand. What do you think, is the bird alive or dead?’”

The old man thought and said, “Young people, the answer is in your hand. If I say the bird is alive, you’ll press your thumb and the bird will be dead. If I say the bird is dead, you’ll open your hand and the bird will fly away. The answer is in your hands.”

And when I read the Torah, especially this portion of Eikev, I say, yes, the answer is my hand and in your hand, and in everybody who reads the Bible, the answer is in your hand. You have to decide, not the pastor, not your leaders, not your politicians, not the Pope in Rome or the Greek patriarch in Constantinople.

No, the answer is in your hand. You decide your destiny and your relationship with the almighty God, not your pastor, not your church, not your denomination. You decide. The answer is in your hand. If you do God’s will and you do right, you will reap right, and good and blessing.

But if you do wrong, you will reap the tears, not the wheat, the tears that were planted in the field by the devil. That’s what you will reap. And so don’t blame anybody else. Don’t blame anybody else. Remember, the answer is in your hand.

I want to go on this portion of the week, because it has a lot of very important things. And I urge you to read it from chapter seven of Deuteronomy verse 12 to chapter 11, verse 25 of Deuteronomy, and read Isaiah 49:14 to 51:3, very, very important text for understanding the messianic promises in the book of Isaiah.

But let me just for a summary, go a little bit further into the next chapter and read to you from verse two. No, I’m gonna start from verse one of chapter eight.

This is in this week’s Torah portion, folks, chapter eight of the book of Deuteronomy. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Look, dear brothers, I know a lot of wealthy people that have bred and caviar and goose liver anytime they want.

Their tables are full of all the goodies of the earth, but they’re not happy. They’re miserable. They’re more miserable than the poor people that I knew in my life that didn’t have whatever they wanted to eat. That had only what there was to eat.

And they were happy with it and satisfied with it and gladly praising and worshiping and being grateful to God, the creator for giving them life and breath and substance to live by every day. Yes. Remember this. This comes from Deuteronomy.

This text comes from Deuteronomy: man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Hallelujah, praise God. Keep reading.

Read from the Torah. Again, the portion that is called Eikev, because, from Deuteronomy 7:12 to 11:25, from Isaiah 49:14 to 51:3, and from the gospel of Luke 4:1 to 15. All of these readings dovetail together.

And when you read them together, you will be enriched and blessed and learn the heart of God from his Word. Praise God, and bless you each and every one of you with his Holy Spirit and with the guidance that comes from the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. Amen.