Deuteronomy 8:2-6 (NKJV) And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3  So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD. 4 Your garments did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. 5 You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the LORD your God chastens you. 6 Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him.

Israel spent forty seemingly pointless years in the wilderness wandering from one mountain to another. Although God was very displeased with the unfaithfulness that triggered the long journey, those forty years were essential to developing their national character. According to Ekev, God had three main objectives in sending his people down the scenic route to Canaan.

1. Self-discovery. Repeated tests, both failed and passed, demonstrated to Israel exactly who they were and how they were completely inadequate to their task without God.
2. Honeymoon. Forty years in barren landscape with God himself there in the middle of the camp was a perfect opportunity to explore Israel’s relationship with her God.
3. Education. From the first Passover in Egypt to the respecting of the borders of Edom, Moab, and Ammon, Israel learned what it means to love God and keep his commandments.

We all go through wilderness experiences, most of us repeatedly. The Wilderness is always unpleasant, but if we love God and trust him with our whole beings, we will be stronger and more mature when we cross the Jordan on the other side.

Deuteronomy 3:23-26 Then I pleaded with YHWH at that time, saying: 24 ‘O Lord YHWH, You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness and Your mighty hand, for what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do anything like Your works and Your mighty deeds? 25 I pray, let me cross over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, those pleasant mountains, and Lebanon.’ But YHWH was angry with me on your account, and would not listen to me. So YHWH said to me: ‘Enough of that! Speak no more to Me of this matter.’

There have been few men as close to God as Moses, so it seems incongruous that God would not heed his heartfelt prayer. Why doesn’t God grant every prayer every time? Charles Capps says one thing, Marilyn Hickey says another, and Henry Wright says something else again. To be perfectly honest, I don’t understand why God responds to some prayers and not others. “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?” really is one of the most disturbing and puzzling questions a person can ask. Maybe he just doesn’t like the motives of the people at the whywontgodhealamputees website, refusing to jump through hoops at the demand of mortals who have already decided he doesn’t exist. However, that doesn’t work for the many thousands or millions of true believers who are maimed and ill and unhealed, people who don’t care about proving anything to God or anyone else. They just want to be healed.

When I was in the Air Force, they used to tell me that I could pick any job or assignment I wanted (within reason), and they would try to give it to me with this one caveat: The needs of the Air Force come first. If I wanted to go to England and if having me in England fit with the Mission, then there was a good chance that’s where I’d go. But if the AF needed me in Japan, then I was going to Japan. I believe that God operates the same way. He leaves most of the details of our lives completely up to us, but routinely throws trials and tasks in our path because those things are important to him. Maybe they will help us to become the people he needs us to be or maybe they will serve the overall mission of his Kingdom, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be pleasant or have any resemblance to what we want. I believe he answers the prayers of the righteous (not so much those of the unrighteous), but that he frequently answers us in ways that we don’t like. If we believe, we can cause a mountain to be moved into the sea, but only if such a move aligns with God’s plans.

Ultimately, I believe that it comes down to this. God is his own person, and he isn’t answerable to anyone, not to you or me or the Director of the National Security Agency. He is the absolute, end-of-the-line boss of everyone in every circumstance. Most importantly, he makes his own decisions for his own reasons, and there is no reason to assume that we are the center of his world or that our good is his primary purpose.

13 Who has directed the Spirit of YHWH,
Or as His counselor has taught Him?
14 With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him,
And taught Him in the path of justice?
Who taught Him knowledge,
And showed Him the way of understanding?
15 Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket,
And are counted as the small dust on the scales;
Look, He lifts up the isles as a very little thing.
16 And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn,
Nor its beasts sufficient for a burnt offering.
17 All nations before Him are as nothing,
And they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless.

Isaiah 40:13-17 NKJV

Failure to see the mitzvot as an expression of the totality of God’s will, and not as just disjointed commands, leads to the distortion of mitzvot themselves. One year I received an urgent call just before Yom Kippur from a woman in my congregation. Her husband had been told by his doctor that he was suffering from a condition which could prove life-threatening if he fasted. Nevertheless he was determined to fast. I spoke to his doctor and consulted another observant doctor to confirm the diagnosis. There was no doubt that fasting would endanger his life.

I called in the man and explained to him that he must eat on Yom Kippur. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Rabbi, you’re a young man and I’m about three times your age, well into my 70s. Since my bar mitzvah I have not eaten on Yom Kippur, and I do not intend to start now.” I replied that I could not force him to eat on Yom Kippur, but that as soon as he left my office, I would instruct the gabbai never to give him another honor in our shul. When he asked why he deserved such treatment for being strict with respect to Yom Kippur, I told him that we are prohibited from honoring idol worshipers.

“What idol worship am I guilty of?” he demanded to know. I explained, “The God of Israel has decreed that you must eat on Yom Kippur. If some other god has commanded you to fast, it is irrelevant to me if you call it Zeus, Kemosh or Yom Kippur – all idols are the same.”

Deuteronomy 1:23-33 “The plan pleased me well; so I took twelve of your men, one man from each tribe. And they departed and went up into the mountains, and came to the Valley of Eshcol, and spied it out. They also took some  of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down to us; and they brought back word to us, saying, ‘It is a good land which YHWH our God is giving us.’… Yet, for all that, you did not believe YHWH your God, who went in the way before you to search out a place for you to pitch your tents, to show you the way you should go, in the fire by night and in the cloud by day.

When Moses recounted the story of the twelve spies, he left out an important detail: ten of the twelve spies brought back a bad report. “The land is bountiful and beautiful, but we are grasshoppers next to the inhabitants!” Is it any wonder that the people lost their faith? Why did Moses make it sound as if the Israelites doubted God for no good reason?

Because they did! God promised to bring them into the Land. He destroyed Pharaoh’s army and spectacularly broke Egypt’s power. The whole world was soon talking about Israel and her God in fear. Yet when ten men told them how mighty were their enemies, they turned on the God whose presence was physically manifested among them in a gigantic pillar of fire. What were they thinking!? It didn’t matter how many spies came back with a bad report. It didn’t even matter that two of them spoke truthfully. No handful or army of men can stand in the way of God fulfilling his promises to us.

But we can.

Fear is so easy. We entertain it and feed it our whole lives while we starve faith. It’s no wonder we don’t see miracles when by our constant expectations of disaster we accuse God of faithlessness.

Numbers 27:15-21. Then Moses spoke to the LORD, saying: 16 “Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, 17 who may go out before them and go in before them, who may lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the LORD may not be like sheep which have no shepherd.” 18 And the LORD said to Moses: “Take Joshua the son of Nun with you, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him; 19 set him before Eleazar the priest and before all the congregation, and inaugurate him in their sight. 20 And you shall give some of your authority to him, that all the congregation of the children of Israel may be obedient. 21 He shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire before the LORD for him by the judgment of the Urim. At his word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come in, he and all the children of Israel with him—all the congregation.”

People were filled with the Holy Spirit thousands of years before Pentecost. And people knew and kept the Torah before it was given at Mt. Sinai.

Proverbs 26:2  As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.

There seems a discrepency between the idea that we are created in God’s image to the extent that our words have creative force, that there is power in our prayers, and the opposing idea that a curse has no power unless it is deserved and that a prophet can speak neither blessing nor curse unless God allows it. There is truth on both sides if properly understood.

We were created in God’s image, but we are not exact copies, the earthly tabernacle was a corruptible copy of the one in Heaven, the feast days are shadows of the reality that is the Messiah, and mankind is an imperfect, much scaled down replica of God. Unlike him, we cannot create something out of nothing by merely speaking. We need something on which to build. We are unable to get our own dirt, so we have to make do with what we can find.

When Balaam tried to curse Israel, he failed because, as a prophet, he could only prophecy what God told him. His patron, Balak, understood the principle of Proverbs 26:2, that a curse undeserved has no effect, so he took Balaam to first one place and then another, thinking that a different perspective might give Balaam the hook he needed to make the curse stick. But he misunderstood the nature of a real prophet: prophesy comes from God and no other. If a prophet speaks truth, then his words are the words of God, and God can no more curse the righteous than could Balaam. Hence Balaam’s statement that “[YHWH] has not seen iniquity in Jacob, neither has He seen perverseness in Israel.” It was not that Israel had no sin at all, but that God had chosen to forgive them. Like a husband who chooses to overlook his wife’s flaws, from God’s point of view, Israel had no sin to which a curse could attach.

Finding no fault in Israel, Balaam showed Balak how he might create one that God could not overlook by seducing them into idolatry. This is the “doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication.” (Revelation 2:14) Eating “things sacrificed to idols” does not refer simply to eating meat from sacrificial animals, but to actively participating in the sacrifice. Those who teach God’s people that it is acceptable to engage in pagan rituals and abandon God’s law so long as their “hearts are in the right place” are today’s Balaam. They cause God’s people to commit sins that he cannot overlook, opening them to whatever curse the enemy might choose to throw.

A few thoughts on Chukat:

• Red is the color of mortality and blood. A heifer is a cow that has never calved. The red heifer was to be completely consumed along with cedar, hyssop, and a scarlet thread. Cedar, hyssop, and scarlet appear to be a reference to the cross. The ashes of the red heifer were collected, mixed with water, and used to ritually cleanse a thing or person from contact with death. Water is typical of the Holy Spirit. In summary, something mortal and which bears no fruit is completely given over to God in association with the death of Yeshua on the cross. In combination with the baptism of the Spirit, it saves us from death. This sounds like Yeshua’s words to Nicodemus in John 3.
• When Miriam died, there was no water to drink, and perhaps no water to mix with the ashes of the heifer to purify the people after her death. The people did not mourn her, but mourned themselves and their own discomfort. Shortly after that, they were sent back into the wilderness by the king of Edom. When Aaron died, the people mourned for thirty days and then defeated the king of Arad.
• Bronze represents judgment. When the people rebelled again and were punished through poisonous snakes, God told Moses to erect a bronze serpent on a pole in the middle of the camp. When the people were bitten by the consequences of their sin, they could look up and see the judgment of God on a stake and be healed. Reference again the words of Yeshua in John 3.

Order and hierarchy have been inherent in God’s plan from the very beginning, whether among the angels, in the Garden of Eden, among men, or within families. Although the laws that govern spiritual authority are not as readily subject to experiment and objective verification as the laws that govern chemical reactions, they are just as real and just as inviolable. A man who continually drinks dilute amounts of drano will eventually suffer from alkaline poisoning whether he learned the lessons of high school chemistry or not. He might get away with it for a short while, but the consequences of his actions will catch up with him. The same is true of those who reject spiritual authority. Women who reject the spiritual covering of their fathers or husbands, men who reject the authority of God’s anointed prophets and judges, children who reject the authority of their parents…They might live indefinitely believing that they have chosen their own path, that they have found freedom in self-governance. Really, they have left one service for another and gained nothing lasting in the transaction. After all, who is more free? The slave whose master will defend him and who trusts him with a great deal of autonomy? Or the escaped slave who has no resources, no shelter, and who has become an open and defenseless target for abuse and re-enslavement by another master? The latter may appear to have more freedom in the immediate sense of having no allegiance and no duty to a higher power, but in the long run, his available choices will be severely limited and possibly eliminated altogether.

Can’t we all just get along? Umm, no. Israel is completely surrounded by governments (and peoples) who have sworn to kill them all–men, women, and children. They can’t simply forgive and forget. They can’t turn their backs or relax even for a moment. And the Palestinians, whoever they were, whatever their origins, have been hopelessly ghettoized for so long that large segments of their population are no longer capable of living productively with others.

Israel should give the Palestinians their own country. The Palestinians are led by thugs who themselves are pawns for the neighboring Arab states that want nothing more than to kill all Jews. Every attempt at giving the Palestinians more autonomy has been doomed by political maneuvering and insane (literally!) violence against Israel. Even if Hamas and company could all be buried in a deep, mass grave, the Palestinians don’t have a great pool of leaders waiting to take over.

The Jews should give up and go home. And where would that be if not the home of their ancestors? It would make as much sense to suggest that any Cherokee who have found their way to Georgia be sent back home to Oklahoma. Even if we ignored the continuous presence of Jews and other Israelites in the Land for more than three thousand years, at the very least, they have the same right of conquest as every other people. The Coosa were driven out by the Cherokee who were driven out by the English who might soon be driven out by someone else. It’s the way the world has always worked.

The Palestinians should all move to friendlier Arab countries to be with their own kind. Again, what countries would that be? Nobody wants them. Jordan, Egypt, and Syria don’t want them. In fact, they would much rather the Palestinians stay in Israel as a destabilizing force. They are pawns without a single real friend in the world, some willingly but most probably ignorantly. They have nowhere else to go. Maybe those non-Israelis who want the Palestinians to leave Israel could volunteer their suburban homes to house a family or two or three?

There are no clear good guys in that mess, and there are far too many bad guys. The only clear thing in my mind is that the land of Israel, especially that land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, is a special place to God. He entrusted it to Israel once, and although he removed them from it for a time, he promised to give it back to them. The ultimate title to the land has already been established. It is not on the negotiating table.

“(It’s the Eighties, So Where’s Our) Rocket Packs”
from the album Vox Humana
Words and Music by Terry Taylor
©1984 Twitchen Vibes Music (ASCAP)

It’s the eighties
It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?
It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?
Go anywhere, we strap them on our backs
1. (It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?)
I thought by now I’d walk the moon
And ride a car without no tires
And have a robot run the vacuum
And date a girl made out of wires
No thing’s don’t change that much, do they?
We are still out of touch, by now we should discover
Just how to love each other, like Klattus’ robot man
Your looks have killed again

2. (It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?)
I thought by now we’d live in space
And eat a pill instead of dinner
And wear a gas mask on our face
A President of female gender
Though progress marches on, (new day)
Our troubles will grow strong
And my expectancies, become my fantasies
You turn my blood to sand, the earth stands still again

My hopes are running low
things moving much too slow
No space men up above
And we’re still so very far from love

3. (It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?)
I thought by now we’d build a dome
Around the world, control the weather
In every house, a picture phone; communicate a little better
But some things never change (replay!)
You are still acting strange
No way that I can see, this way we will be free
La la la la la la,la la la la la 7,6,5,4,3,2,1 Lift off!

(It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?)
Repeat 1, 2, 3
(It’s the eighties)