Pastor Deborah
EXODUS 20:1 NKJV
And GOD SPOKE all these WORDS,SAYING:
H1696 spoke
Original: דּבר
Transliteration: DÂBAR
Phonetic: daw-bar'
- to ARRANGE; (of words) to SPEAK
H1697 words
Original: דּבר
Transliteration: DÂBAR
From H1696; a word; a matter (as spoken Of) of thing;
Best is to speak out so there is no misunderstanding.
Misunderstand God is the worst.
God wants to bless us.
He has many secrets He wants to tell us.
Door to God, through the supernatural is through God’s word.
Jesus is the word made flesh.
When we speak His word, it is powerful.
His Words has divine energy.
His Words is spirit and are life.
If we speak God’s Word, it will happen according to what God said.
When words are spoken, it creates.
We speak God’s Word.
NUMBERS 1:1 NKJV
Now THE LORD SPOKE to Moses in the WILDERNESS of Sinai, in the tabernacle of meeting,
on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying:
H1696 spoke
Original: דּבר
Transliteration: DABAR
Phonetic: daw-bar'
Strong's Definition: to arrange; but used (of words) to speak;
- answer, appoint, bid, command, commune, declare, destroy, give, name, promise, pronounce, rehearse, say, speak, be spokesman, subdue, talk, teach, tell, think, use [entreaties], utter, X well, X work.
H4057 wilderness
Original: מדבּר
Transliteration: MIDBÂR
Phonetic: mid-bawr'
Strong's Definition: From H1696 in the sense of driving; a pasture (that is, open field, whither cattle are driven); a desert;
also SPEECH (including its organs):- desert, south, speech, wilderness.
The fourth book of the Bible is known in English as the Book of Numbers – because it begins with a command to count the Israelites, to take a census, to establish their numbers.
However in Hebrew it is known by the key word of its first sentence, Bamidbar, “In the wilderness.”
The pagan perceives the divine in nature through the medium of the eye, and he becomes conscious of it has something to be looked at.
We have been grafted into Jesus Christ.
On the other hand, to the Jew who conceives God as being outside of nature and prior to it, the Divine manifests itself through the will and through the medium of the ear.
He becomes conscious of it as something to be heeded and listened to.
The pagan beholds his god; the Jew HEARS Him, that is, APPREHENDS HIS WILL.
(Heinrich Graetz, The Construction of Jewish History)
Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light.
While almost every other civilisation has been a culture of the eye, Judaism is a culture of the EAR – of words, speech, listening, interpreting, understanding, heeding.
Among the precepts of Mosaic religion is one that has more significance than is at first obvious.
It is the PROHIBITION AGAINST MAKING an IMAGE of GOD, which means the compulsion to worship an indivisible god . . . [This] was bound to exercise a profound influence.
For it signified subordinating sense perception to an abstract idea; it was a TRIUMPH of SPIRITUALITY OVER the SENSES;
more precisely, an instinctual renunciation accompanied by its psychologically necessary consequences . . .
It was certainly one of the most important stages on the way to becoming human.
Only in the EMPTINESS of the WILDERNESS is the eye subordinate to the ear.
Only in the SILENCE of the DESERT, can the SOUND BENEATH SOUND be HEARD:
In Hebrew thought, Book and Desert are contingent upon one another.
When God revealed himself to Moses and charged him with the task of freeing the Hebrews, terms such as ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ were not used.
The idea of emancipation from bondage is expressed as “GOING on a three days’ JOURNEY INTO the DESERT, to sacrifice to God our Lord,” (Ex. 3:19; Ex. 5:3)
as if God could not be apprehended without this initial journey into the desert. (Jose Faur, Golden Doves with Silver Dots)
Or as Edmond Jabes puts it:
The word cannot dwell EXCEPT in the SILENCE of OTHER WORDS.
To speak is, accordingly, to lean on a metaphor of the desert, a SPACE of DUST or ASHES, where the triumphant word is offered in her unrestricted nudity.
Thoughts come from words.
God cannot speak to a person until they are humble.
The historian Eric Voegelin sees this as fundamental to the discovery by the Israelites of a completely new form of spirituality:
If nothing had happened but a lucky escape from the range of Egyptian power, there only would have been a few more nomadic tribes roaming the border zone between the Fertile Crescent and the desert proper, eking out a meagre living with the aid of part-time agriculture.
We don’t see things as luck or coincidence.
We see it as a divine arrangement and appointment.
But the DESERT was only a STATION ON the WAY, NOT the GOAL;
for in the desert the tribes found their God.
They entered into a COVENANT with him, and THEREBY BECAME HIS PEOPLE . . .
When we undertake the exodus and wander into the world, in order to found a new society elsewhere, we discover the world as the Desert.
The flight leads nowhere, until we stop in order to find our bearings beyond the world.
Only in God’s Word we find the true purpose of our lives.
When the world has become Desert, man is at last in the solitude in which he can hear thunderingly the voice of the spirit that with its urgent whispering has already driven and rescued him from Sheol [the domain of death].
IN the DESERT GOD SPOKE to the leader and his tribes; in the desert, by listening to the voice, by accepting its offer, and by submitting to its command, they had at last reached life and became the people chosen by God.
When we now became to realise the world around us is like a desert, without God, then we became to hear God.
The world is pursuing the things of this world.
We are in this world but we are not of this world.
Incidentally, this is one of the reasons Judaism has no counterpart to the word ‘secular’ – a word derived from the Latin seculum, meaning ‘the world.’
In Western civilisation, religion is unworldly or otherworldly.
No such concept could exist in Judaism.
God is not set over and against the world, nor is religion a retreat from the world.
God is not against the world.
Instead the opposite of kadosh, holy, is chol, which literally means sand.
Sand is what the holy is not.
It blows this way and that, NEVER STABLE, or rooted, or capable of sustaining life.
PSALMS 1:1-4 NKJV
Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the LAW of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree Planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper.
The UNGODLY are not so, But are like the CHAFF which the wind drives away.
God’s desire and laws are written in our hearts.
Chol is a desert metaphor, one of many in the Bible.
God is a rock (immovable, the opposite of sand);
His word is like water; those who heed it are like a tree or a growing plant.
We drink of the water of the Word of God.
The world will be like sand.
In Moses’ great song at the end of his life all these images
come together in a single poetic sweep:
Let MY TEACHING fall like RAIN and MY WORDS descend like DEW,
like showers on new grass,
like abundant rain on tender plants.
I will PROCLAIM the NAME of THE LORD.
Oh, PRAISE the GREATNESS of OUR GOD!
HE is the ROCK, His works are perfect . . .
Not by accident therefore did the Rabbis choose to call the fourth book Bamidbar.
His Word is like rain and dew.
The world only gives us hopelessness and sadness.
But God’s word gives us life.
There is an intrinsic connection between the desert, midbar, and God who reveals himself in speech, medabber.
What then of the census with which the book begins?
There is a mystical Jewish tradition that EVERY JEW is like a LETTER in the scroll of the TORAH – and in Jewish law, if there is a single letter missing, the scroll is defective.
EVERY LETTER is SIGNIFICANT.
Speaking about the census in this week’s sedra, Sefat Emet (R. Yehudah Arye Leib of Gur) says that the reason it is included in the Torah is to teach us that “EVERY JEW has some SPECIFIC TASK to PERFORM for GOD, and for THAT REASON he was created.”
Each one of us has a task. We have a purpose.
Maharsha ("Our Teacher the Rabbi Shmuel Eidels") goes further.
There were, he says, 600,000 people who received the Torah, because the Torah has 600,000 possible interpretations.
The reason it was given to an entire people is so that it would contain all possible holy meanings.
Each individual is a letter.
Each contributes to the totality of the Torah’s meaning.
Each of us hears in its words a particular message that only we can hear.
As soon as we have connected the census with the idea of revelation, a dazzling possibility discloses itself.
Normally, censuses are dehumanising.
They are taken as a measure of the nation’s strength, which exists in and through numbers.
The more numerous a nation, the more powerful it is.
But that is to reduce the mass of mankind to a mere statistic.
I am here, but if I were not, someone else could substitute for me.
The most dehumanising act the Nazis did to inmates of the concentration camps was to rob them of their names and instead give them a number.
To be a mere number is no longer to be human.
Where the ultimate reality is power, what matters is the totality, not the individual.
Judaism is a sustained protest against this idea.
Hence the famous statement in the Mishnah, that a single life is like a universe.
That is how we make a difference: one life at a time, one day at a time, one act at a time.
The Mishnah or the Mishna (/ˈmɪʃnə/; Hebrew: מִשְׁנָה, "study by repetition",
from the verb shanah שנה, or "to study and review", also "secondary")
is the first major written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah.
NUMBERS 1:2 KJV
Take (nâśâ' nâsâh - lift) ye the sum (Rosh) of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls;,
NUMBERS 1:2-3 NKJV
from TWENTY YEARS OLD and ABOVE —all who are ABLE to GO to WAR in Israel.
You and Aaron shall number them by their armies.
The Torah uses a strange locution (word or phrase) when speaking about counting the Israelites.
Hebrew has many verbs that mean ‘to count’ – limnot, lispor, lachshov, lifkod –
but here it uses the phrase se’u et rosh, literally, ‘LIFT the HEAD.’
The purpose of a biblical census was not to quantify but to AFFIRM the WORTH of EACH INDIVIDUAL in the totality of Torah and a society constructed around the idea of the holy.
Normally a census turns us into a mere number.
The biblical census – God’s count, as it were – turns us into a LETTER in the SCROLL, SIGNIFICANT in its own right, so that if one is missing the whole is invalid.
Every Jew is important.
Care for one another in the family of God.
We have been given a new heart that has God’s love.
God has forgiven us and now we can forgive others.
In the wilderness, where there is no empire or economy to sustain, we become beings in our own right, not troops or a work force, man-in-the-mass.
We are no longer a number but a PERSON in the IMAGE of GOD.
In the wilderness, there was no distraction.
Thus bamidbar, “in the wilderness,” Israel heard the medabber, THE-ONE-WHO-REVEALS-HIMSELF-IN-WORDS,
and learned that GOD SPEAKS not only collectively to a nation but to each individual as one with a unique contribution to make to the life of the nation.
The way to the Holy Land lies through the wilderness.
It is there that the Israelites LEARNED what it is to build a society that will be the anti-type of Egypt, not an empire built on power,
but a society of individuals of equal dignity under the sovereignty of God.
The Israeli nation is to be different than Egypt.
We are precious in God’s sight who take care of us and love us.
We do not worry about tomorrow.
An impossible task?
Certainly not an easy one.
But to quote Eric Voegelin again:
What emerged from the alembic of the Desert was not a people like the Egyptians or Babylonians, that Canaanites or Philistines, the Hittites or Arameans,
but a NEW GENUS of SOCIETY, set off from the civilisations of the age by the DIVINE CHOICE.
We are chosen by God to be different.
It was a PEOPLE that MOVED on the historical scene while LIVING toward a GOAL BEYOND HISTORY.
In the DESERT, they HEARD the Word and BECAME the PEOPLE of the WORD.
Desert - Can either mean an empty world or humility
PROVERBS 4:20-22 MSG
Dear friend, LISTEN WELL to MY WORDS (DABAR); TUNE your EARS to MY VOICE.
Keep my message in plain view at all times.
Concentrate!
Learn it by heart!
Those who discover these WORDS LIVE, REALLY LIVE; body and soul, they’re BURSTING with HEALTH.
PROVERBS 4:20-22 TPT
LISTEN carefully, my dear child, to EVERYTHING that I TEACH YOU, and PAY ATTENTION to ALL that I HAVE to SAY.
FILL YOUR THOUGHTS with MY WORDS (DABAR) until they penetrate DEEP into your SPIRIT.
Then, as you unwrap MY WORDS, they will impart true LIFE and RADIANT HEALTH into the very core of your being.
H4832 health
Original: מרפּא MARPÊ'
From H7495; properly CURATIVE , that is, literally (concretely) a MEDICINE, or (abstractly) a CURE; figuratively (concretely) DELIVERANCE, or (abstractly) PLACIDITY:- ([in-]) cure (-able), healing (-lth), REMEDY, SOUND, WHOLESOME, YIELDING .
H7495 רפה רפא râphâ' râphâh
to MEND (BY STITCHING), to cure:- cure, (cause to) heal, physician, repair, X thoroughly, make whole.
God’s Words are medicine; is the cure.
The Word of God is curative.
It is interesting to note how often in Scripture there is a delay between
the MOMENT of GOD’S CALL or an experience of God’s presence or a vision that seems to come from God about the future
and WHEN these things actually come to pass.
Consider Abraham, who was told in Genesis 12 that God would make him “a great nation,” and in Genesis 22 that his descendants would be “as numerous as the stars of heaven.”
Abraham was seventy-five when he first heard God’s call and promises.
But it was nine chapters later, when Abraham was one hundred years old that Isaac was finally born.
There were some challenging years in those nine chapters.
The twenty-five years between the vision and fulfillment were the “in-between” time for Abraham and Sarah.
Moses, after fleeing Pharaoh’s palace, spent FORTY YEARS in the Sinai tending goats before God finally called him back to demand the release of the Israelite slaves.
David was anointed by Samuel to be the next king of Israel, but he went through TWENTY-FIVE YEARS and a whole lot of trouble before he finally assumed the throne.
Challenges sometimes humble us.
It brings us to the place where we come before God.
It’s realising our place in this world.
And consider JESUS, who at the age of TWELVE knew he had a unique relationship with God, but there would be eighteen years of waiting before he was baptized and began his three-year public ministry.
Was God at work during Abraham’s twenty-five years of waiting?
Were Moses’ forty years in the wilderness wasted?
Or David’s twenty-five years, much of it spent avoiding King Saul’s efforts to kill him?
God was behind the whole thing.
He had to train and allow his leader to go through the process of humbling.
And what of Jesus?
Was his Father at work in Jesus’ life during those eighteen years when he labored alongside his earthly father?
In Paul’s case, he spent ten years wondering what Ananias could possibly have meant and why he still was making tents when there was a big world out there to be saved.
Perhaps his sense of calling began to fade during that time.
But God was at work during the “in-between” time.
God loves each individual sheep in the church.
How often this pattern has persisted for those whom God uses to change the world.
John Wesley, who spent most of his twenties and thirties striving to do God’s will but often feeling like a failure.
Finally, after his greatest disappointment, God unleashed him to lead a revival across Great Britain that would leap across a continent and change the world.
Moses, David, Jesus, Paul, Wesley, and many others did not stop dreaming, thinking, and working as they waited,
and in the waiting GOD was PREPARING them, TRANSFORMING them, and READYING them for what lay in store.
Let GOD SPEAK to you as you stand humble in the DESERT.
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