Parashah Shelach Lekha

Parashah Shelach Lekha

Combining two events in the Bible, one sad and the other straight out of a James Bond movie, this week’s Parashah is both challenging and exciting. The opportunity we have in the end is none other than to attain the rest of Almighty God described in Hebrews 3:7-4:1, but first we must learn the lessons of Numbers 13:1-15:41 and Joshua 2:1-24 to get there.

The infamous story of the spies sent out to scout the Promised Land compared with the two spies who were sent to scout Jericho is a tale of two generations. From the first, it was a matter of getting Egypt out of the paradigm of the people, and the second was a generation full of the fear of Adonai which propelled them further than the generation before them. Imagine every year watching on as your family members died off one by one because of their lack of faith and grumbling on that infamous day when the spies returned. Not only that, but now after experiencing the daily miracles of fresh mana and water, many signs and wonders, and having been steeped in God’s Word for years, there was no Egypt left in them, and their identity as the chosen and set apart people of Adonai had taken root in both word and deed.

There was always one escape route that the first generation leaving Exodus fell back on when things looked impossible, remember Egypt, why don’t we just go back to Egypt? The second generation didn’t have that excuse to fall back on, and if we decide that is a viable option for us today, to return to our life before salvation, it is like returning through the desert and asking satan to put the shackles of slavery back on our hands and feet, and tell us what his bidding is.

In Jericho, The prostitute Rahab, who hid the two spies was so saved, transformed and grateful for being spared from the onslaught at Jericho that she became none other than the mother of Boaz who married Ruth in the lineage of Yeshua Himself. She saw first hand the difference between God’s judgement and mercy, but today in this age of grace, judgement seems to be a place far off, but according to Scripture, this life is the only opportunity we get, and when we die, we will just as soon wake up on judgement day as if just yesterday was our last.

The opposite of Adonai’s judgement is His rest, and it is in this rest of all of His promises and the experiential relationship we have with Him that brings about this supernatural rest, and it is the advice of Apostle Paul to the global body of Messiah, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end” (Hebrews 3:12-14). Is your confidence and faith in Adonai today greater or less than when you were first saved? This week is a time to go back to our first love in Yeshua and to be sure to remove every shackle we may have put back on our wrists and to re-enter fully into the rest of the Great I Am. Have a blessed week full of the breakthrough and victory of the Most High!