by Rabbi Stuart Dauermann

The LORD our God said to us in Horeb, "You have stayed long enough at this mountain; turn and take your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites, and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland, and in the Negeb, and by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.  Behold, I have set the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their descendants after them." (Deut 1:6-8)

In this parasha, Moses speaks of two generations, comparing how each responded to the opportunities God placed before them. The first generation is the generation that went up out of the land of Egypt, which generation failed to enter into the fullness that God had prepared for them. The second generation is their children who, forty years later, did enter into the fullness that God had prepared for them.

In each case, God invites, urges, encourages, commands the people to enter into a new, exciting and challenging stage of their life, but tragically the first generation revolts against newness, rejects risk, collapses into immaturity and whining, becomes blind to the wonderful fullness that God places before them and wanders in the wilderness for forty years, blind, bewildered, withered and bereft.

This is a tragic story. But perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that we could easily fail to understand that the story is not simply about them--the story is about each of us as individuals and all of us as a congregation.

This story terrifies me. It is perhaps the most frightening and indicting story in the entire Older Testament, and it frightens me because in this story I see the finger of God pointing at me, at my friends who are leaders in the Messianic Jewish movement, and at us as a congregation. I hear the voice of God saying to us, you have stayed long enough in this situation--I am setting before you new opportunities of promise, challenge, growth, change, fulfillment. Go up and take hold of this with all that is in you!  But I am really frightened today, wondering--will we rise up and go?  Will we take on new opportunities? Or will we be like the first generation that went out of Egypt-too terrified, too self-centered, and so stunted in faith that they could not enter into the fulfillment God had promised them perhaps 600 years earlier when God told Abram that his descendants would be slaves in a land not theirs for 400 years and afterward would enter into the land that God promised (Genesis 15)?

What is terrifying is that this is not what happened.  The vision God gave to Abram was not fulfilled. Why?  Because of unbelief. That generation of promise was so stuck in the past, so overwhelmed by the obstacles they imagined and saw before them, so habituated to small expectations, that when the opportunity of a lifetime, no, the opportunity of a thousand years lay before them, they bolted and said: No, it would be better to have died as slaves in Egypt than to embrace the riskiness of trusting God.

I recently was nearly killed in an accident I could not have avoided.  I was crossing the street in a crosswalk, with the light, entirely legal.  The light changed, and a lady in a hurry hit me, sent me somersaulting in the air, whereupon I landed on my head.  Fortunately she did not hit me head on, but with her right front fender. However, had I been one second later entering that intersection, she would have hit me head on, and I would have been very seriously injured or killed. Thinking about the accident, I realized that my time on earth can end any moment, and that in the end, I do not have any control.  Therefore, I have to move on and accomplish the work God has called me to do. To the extent that I have fallen into time-wasting habits, I need to stop circling that mountain and move on.   How will you respond in times of God's intervention?  God tells our people:  You have stayed here long enough. Go up and take hold of this new opportunity--this fulfillment of promise. Take it!  Now!  Go for it!

As I said, it is terrifying.  And the reason it is terrifying is that it is always possible that when the opportunity is right before us, we will back off and run the other way, which is precisely what our ancestors did at Sinai.

Hebrews chapters three and four comment on our ancestors' failure, picking up language from Psalm 95.

7 Therefore, as the Ruach HaKodesh says, "Today, if you hear God's voice, 8 don't harden your hearts, as you did in the Bitter Quarrel on that day in the Wilderness when you put God to the test. 9 Yes, your fathers put me to the test; they challenged me, and they saw my work for forty years! 10 Therefore, I was disgusted with that generation I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, they have not understood how I do things'; 11 in my anger, I swore that they would not enter my rest." 12 Watch out, brothers, so that there will not be in any one of you an evil heart lacking trust, which could lead you to apostatize from the living God! 13 Instead, keep exhorting each other every day, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you will become hardened by the deceit of sin. 14 For we have become sharers in the Messiah, provided, however, that we hold firmly to the conviction we began with, right through until the goal is reached. 15 Now where it says, "Today, if you hear God's voice, don't harden your hearts, as you did in the Bitter Quarrel," 16 who were the people who, after they heard, quarreled so bitterly? All those whom Moshe brought out of Egypt. 17 And with whom was God disgusted for forty years? Those who sinned -- yes, they fell dead in the Wilderness! 18 And to whom was it that he swore that they would not enter his rest? Those who were disobedient. 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of lack of trust.

1 Therefore, let us be terrified of the possibility that, even though the promise of entering his rest remains, any one of you might be judged to have fallen short of it; 2 for Good News has also been proclaimed to us, just as it was to them. But the message they heard didn't do them any good, because those who heard it did not combine it with trust.

Notice how the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews also speaks of the urgency of our response, speaking of being  "terrified of the possibility that, even though the promise of entering his rest remains, any one of [us] might be judged to have fallen short of it."

How has this dynamic of unresponsiveness been evident in your personal life and in the life of our movement and our congregations?

Our text says, "You have stayed long enough at this mountain; turn and take your journey and go." What mountains have you, have we, been circling long enough that prevent us making progress in our journey with God? Let me make some suggestions, but most importantly, with the help of God, we all must search our own hearts to identify those places where we are stuck, which we must get beyond if we are to enter into the fullness God is calling us to.

Perhaps it is a mountain of a negative self-perception that should have been forsaken long ago.  You habitually view yourself to be less than others, not as attractive as your sister, not as bright as others in your family; you view yourself to be not enough and not much.  Perhaps you have had a history of emotional problems and have settled for a life on the sidelines.  And this conviction that you are less than others has become a mountain you are constantly circling, so that although you keep moving, you are not really getting on with your life, not progressing but just moving. Could it be that God is telling you, "You have stayed long enough at this mountain; turn and take your journey, and go?"

Perhaps the mountain is a mountain of comfortable predictability and security. You don't try anything new, you have enough money, enough housing, enough clothes, and enough time for you, and your life is all about protecting and maintaining.   You will add things to your life, but never allow anything to be subtracted. Yeshua said, "People's lives do not consist in the abundance of things they possess," but yours does. You will read a message like this saying, "That was great wasn't it?" But by a habit of life, you will not even consider what sacrifices God might be calling you to make in order to move on into the fullness he has prepared for you, serving the King, his Kingdom, his people and purposes. Could it be that God is telling you, "You have stayed long enough at this mountain; turn and take your journey, and go?"

Perhaps the mountain is a mountain of resentment, an attitude of unrequited entitlement, an attitude that causes you to keep avoiding certain other people with whom you should be in relationship, while you keep obsessing about your grievances. You won't go to synagogue if you know they are there, and you won't speak to them if you see them. You are angry, and it's been this way a long time. But of course you have your reasons . . . people always do. But your lousy attitude is grieving the Spirit of God even if it pleases your spirit, and it is keeping you from entering into the fullness that awaits you from the hand of God. Could it be that God is telling you, "You have stayed long enough at this mountain; turn and take your journey, and go?"

Perhaps your mountain is a habit--a habit of thought, of body, of mind--a way of thinking or acting that brings you pleasure but keeps you from moving on. People can get addicted to all kinds of things. It can be drink, or drugs, or sex, or something far worse, like self-pity and a sense of unacknowledged entitlement. You are habituated in these ways, these things bring you pleasure but define your life and relationships, keeping you stuck, and not free to enter into the fullness that God wants you to receive and to build with others.    Could it be that God is telling you, "You have stayed long enough at this mountain; turn and take your journey, and go?"

What's your mountain today--and is your life just a continual circling, or are you moving on? "You have stayed long enough at this mountain; turn and take your journey, and go."