Parashah Lekh Lekha

[Rebbe]

BRI International Internet Yeshiva Parashah Notes, November 5, 2011

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"I teach nothing new but all things original" -- Rebbe

Parasha Lekh Lekha  (Go forth yourself)
Gen 12.1-17.27
Haftorah Isa 40.27-41.16


We so often hear from the Christian church that there is a great need for believers to accommodate to the will of the living God. And, indeed, we should all be attempting to align ourselves to God's expectations of us as human beings. But, when we open the first pages of the Torah -- in the first book or scroll of the Torah, Genesis -- we find that more often than not it is God Himself who is accommodating to human beings.

This is so often overlooked by believers, and it needs to be stressed that God is an accommodating God, and that this is nothing more than a reflection of His innate character. God IS love. God is infinite love. That is what the world needs to hear at this time.

A prime example of God's accommodation to humankind is that of Father Abraham. Certainly God accommodated to the patriarch, and in quite a surprising way! Turn to Genesis 12.

"Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get you out of your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's house, unto a land that I will show you; and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, and you be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless you, and curse him that curses you. And in you shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Gen 12.1-3).

Quite a covenant (contract)! If Abraham complied with the commandment of God in its three sections, wonderful blessings would be his! And what were those three requirements of God concerning Father Abraham?

Firstly, he had to leave his country which was in the region of Chaldea.

Secondly, he had to depart from his relatives.

Thirdly, he had to renounce his father's house, and all it stood for.

Comments Rashi -- the great Jewish rabbinical scholar and commentator -- on this section of Abraham's call, "In this land of idol worship thou art not worthy to rear sons to the service of God."

In other words the evil surroundings would contaminate them. The Midrash takes pains to explain that this jettisoning of his past would be for the benefit of all Abraham would meet. "When a flask of balsam is sealed and stored away, its fragrance is not perceptible; but, opened and moved about, its sweet odour is widely diffused." Abraham had "to cut himself adrift from all associations that could possibly hinder his mission" (Pentateuch & Haftorahs, III, Lech Lecha, Chapters XII-XVII, 45).

Abraham is called by Paul "the Father of the faithful" for the period prior to the inauguration of the Mosaic economy. The great Apostle aligns Messianic believers with him. Yet, and here is the point, Abraham was far from obedient to the Lord's command! For, in verses 4 and 5 of chapter 12 it is written, "So Abram departed, as the Lord has spoken to him, and Lot went with him...And Abram took Sarai his wife...and Lot his brother's son."

Not only did Abraham disobey God in regards his nephew Lot, Stephen tells us that when God first called Abraham and told him to depart from his relatives (and thus from his father's idolatrous house) that Terah his father went with his son (Acts 7.2-4).
 
Not only was this the case, Abraham's life was one huge mistake after another (Gen 12.10-13,17-20; 20.1-14). In an overall sense Abraham was obedient to the heavenly vision. But that obedience was most assuredly an incomplete obedience. Nevertheless, the record states flatly that God did bless Abraham, and in a mighty and wonderful way. It is written, inspired by the Spirit of God, "Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws" (Gen 26.5).

In a word, God was accommodating to Abraham's humanness.

And Lot, who fled with his uncle Abraham from Chaldea, was certainly no paragon of virtue! No, not by any means! A man of immeasurable greed (Gen 13.1-11), involved in the official affairs of the infamous city of Sodom (Gen 19.1), who even offered his two virginal daughters to brutish rapists (both heterosexual and homosexual -- an open invitation to all the horrors of pack rape - Gen 19.4-9), and who finally committed incest with the two girls (Gen 19.30-36) -- this man is referred to as "righteous Lot" by no less an authority than the Apostle Peter himself! Not only did Peter consider Lot "righteous" but he also called him "just" and "godly" (2 Pet 2.7-9).

So here again, in the case of Lot, we find the doctrine of accommodation. God fully is aware of man's needs, not only physical and material, but emotional and psychological. God accommodates to man.

This doctrine is found all throughout the biblical revelation and finally is seen in Yeshua's accommodation to the spirits of the righteous dead by his descent into that gloomy area of Sheol itself to empty it.

We all need to go forth ourselves into the loving embrace of the God who accommodates to human need.

It is high time somebody taught this fact of God's accommodation with the authority of the Mashiach Himself.