Your Daily Pesuk Aug. 7, 2018

Parashat Re'eh / פרשת ראה

• Tue, 7 August 2018 = 26th of Av, 5778
• כ״ו בְּאָב תשע״ח

Deuteronomy 12:29-13:19 (22 p'sukim)

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What does it mean to do "good", or to be "good"?  What does it mean when someone says, "do the right thing"...?

What is the "Right Thing"?  Does anyone know for certain?  What is right to one man/woman, may not be right to another?  Who decides what is "right"?  Today, I was once again on the "Ask the Pastor" Program on TCT.  A caller sent in a question about what does the Bible mean when it says the Day of the Lord will be like the days of Noah (Luke 17:26)?  One of the panelists, a Christian Bishop commented that the days of Noah were chaos, "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" and there was great lawlessness.  In other words, the days of Noah were lacking in "Law" and Ethics!  Law and Ethics establishes what is right and what is wrong.  Lawlessness is the complete absence of these established boundaries of human conduct.

God gave the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai, one of the greatest moments in human history.  For the first time man was told by the Divine Almighty One, what is truly "right" and what is "wrong".  

The very last Pesuk of our portion for today is pesuk 19 of ch. 13:

 כִּ֣י תִשְׁמַ֗ע בְּקוֹל֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ לִשְׁמֹר֙ אֶת־כָּל־מִצְוֺתָ֔יו אֲשֶׁ֛ר אָנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם לַעֲשׂוֹת֙ הַיָּשָׁ֔ר בְּעֵינֵ֖י יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃

19 when you listen to the voice of Adonai your God, keeping all His mitzvot that I am commanding you today, doing what is right in the eyes of Adonai your God.

There it is.  Doing what is "right" in the eyes of Adonai, (not our own eyes, not the opinions of others, certainly not Hollywood, or the media, or even what societal norms have to say...).  Doing what is right according to God's standards of the Torah.

We are also told not to imitate other nations in their own norms and ethics and their own religious practices because they are considered by Adonai as "abominations"...

12:30 be careful not to be trapped into imitating them after they have been destroyed before you. Do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods? I will do the same.’ 31 You are not to act like this toward Adonai your God! For every abomination of Adonai, which He hates, they have done to their gods—they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.

So doing what is right and good is often avoiding what the rest of the world tends to do because our world is a world that is primarily "LAWLESS", and any "law" it does have is based on the Torah.  Without Torah there is no morality or right or wrong.

Yeshua addressed this with a Torah scholar:

Luke 18:18 And a religious leader inquired of Yeshua, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 “Why are you calling Me good?” Yeshua said to him. “No one is good except One—that is God. 

To fully understand what exactly is going on in this discussion, John Gill explains further: "why callest thou me good? not that he denied that he was so; for he was good, both as God and man, in his divine and human natures; in all his offices, and the execution of them; he was goodness itself, and did good, and nothing else but good. But the reason of the question is, because this young man considered him only as a mere man, and gave him this character as such; and which, in comparison of God, the fountain of all goodness, agrees with no mere man: wherefore our Lord's view is, by his own language; and from his own words, to instruct him in the knowledge of his proper deity. Some copies read, "why dost thou ask me concerning good". And so the Vulgate Latin, and the Ethiopic versions, and Munster's Hebrew Gospel read; but the Syriac, Arabic, and Persic versions, read as we do, and this the answer Messiah requires.

There is none good but one, that is God; who is originally, essentially, independently, infinitely, and immutably good, and the author and source of all goodness; which cannot be said of any mere creature. This is to be understood of God considered essentially, and not personally; or it is to be understood, not of the person of the Father, to the exclusion of the Son, or Spirit: who are one God with the Father, and equally good in nature as He. Nor does this contradict and deny that there are good angels, who have continued in that goodness in which they were created; or that there are good men, made so by the grace of God; but that none are absolutely and perfectly good, but God. What Messiah here says of God is, the Jews say of the law of Moses, whose praise they can never enough extol; אין טוב אלא תורה "there is nothing good but the law". The law is good indeed; but the author of it must be allowed to be infinitely more so. 

And so herein lies the point.  The Torah is good and perfect.  Yeshua the Messiah is the embodiment of the Torah itself, not only the "author", but the very Words Made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us!  HE IS THE LIVING TORAH!  HE IS GOOD!

1 Timothy 1:8 But we know that the Torah is good if one uses it legitimately, 9 knowing that the Torah is not given for a tzaddik but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy and worldly, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral, homosexuals, slave-traders, liars, perjurers, and for anything else that opposes sound teaching— 

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were made through Him, and apart from Him nothing was made that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it.