Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Beth Messiah!

This is our last message in our Torah App series.

Next week, I hope you will join us as we do a live demonstration and "Shabbat-How" service with our new bencher.

If you have not already purchased a bencher we may have a few copies left in resource central.

Please make sure you go online to our web-site and purchase one on Sunday:-)

I do hope you will join us for this very fun, interactive time of worship and celebration.

Today, is the last topic in our Torah App series which means I either saved the best for last or the most uncomfortable for last.

Or, maybe it is both the best and and the most uncomfortable at the exact same time.

However the message registers with you today, I hope you will be encouraged to not just be a hearer of God's word but a doer of God's word.

I believe the future flourishing of our people, our messianic identity hinges on us being hearers who are doers of God's word.

The Terrible Darkness

How many in this room have ever been woken up from their slumber while it is still dark as dark can be.

Even though you have every piece of furniture memorized you still manage to kick that dresser with the edge of your toe or like me you do a face plant right into the bedroom wall.

There is something about the darkness that just throws everything out of order.

Often times, when the lights are off and darkness has taken hold it is hard to know what to do or why did i end up in this darkness to begin with.

On June 19th, 1944, the 20th Air Force Division (B-29 Bombers) were hunting the Japanese naval fleet in the Pacific.

The U.S. Navy was having a very difficult time locating the main body of the Japanese fleet, always the most critical and most frustrating activity in the Pacific War.

Late in the day Admiral Raymond Spruance was able to get a fix on his Japanese counterpart, but there were only a few hours of daylight left and the enemy was at extreme range.

He gave orders for a full-scale raid by his carrier aircraft, involving more than 200 planes.

The raid went well enough, U.S. aircraft sunk the Japanese carrier Hiyo and badly damaged the Zuikaku, along with a few other ships.

The Pilots, after accomplishing their mission, were trying to make there way back to their carriers in the thick black of night.

The carriers, destroyers, supply vessels were all under a "no light-no talk" command.

There were enemy submarines and crafts in those waters.

Turn on the lights and puts every sailor on every ship at risk.

The glow of the boats would easily be picked up by trained eyes.

Plane after plane ran out of gas and dropped into the sea.

Some pilots became completely disoriented, others snapped and began sobbing according to survivor testimonies.

Who can blame them?

It was a pitch black night in the middle of the world’s biggest ocean.

Radio-Silence and Visual-Silence.

When the lights go out, when darkness sets in, even the best of the best are left with the worst of choices.

I want to take our last Torah App from our Torah portion this week: Ke Tavo, in Hebrew it means, "when you go out."

This is one of the hardest Torah portions in all of the Scriptures to read.

It is a list of curse-after-curse,

Deuteronomy 28:16-19

The curses are not just general kinds of misfortune: not enought food, not enough money, the become very specific and personally heartbreaking: Deuteronomy 28:30-32

The curses do more than just affect us from the outside, they start to reveal the deepest, darkest party of human depravity on the inside.

Deuteronomy 28:53

It is darkness on the land.

The kind of darkness that makes a human being curse a beautiful sunrise because of it's beauty.

A darkness where all the options are literally from bad-to-worse.

Why?

Why would the covenant nation ever be subjected to such darkness?

There must be a good reason, there must be an explanation for this excessive show of darkness.

Our portion names the reason in

Deuteronomy 28:47

Wait, Really!

You get curses because you aren’t happy?

Are you telling me that if you have this guy, he basically tries to keep every command in the book, honors his parents, destroys foreign idols, but because he was a little bit grumpy, he kevetched some here and there, he is doomed to eat his children?

Isn't this just a little bit excessive?

In order to understand this, deep darkness, we need a little context from our Torah portion.

Earlier in our Torah Portion, we are given a bread crumb.

The thing about bread crums is recognizing them for the clues that they really are.

In Deut 27:9-13, we are told that the Israelites were to divide into two groups and stand on Mt.

Eval and Mt.

Grezim (Slide of people on Mountains).

There in a solemn covenant ceremony the six tribes on Grezim would pronounce 6 general blessings and then about 8 verses of "this is what this looks like to be blessed" (slide showing blessings and picture).

It is all that good stuff like Deut 28:12-14 (no slide for this)

The other six tribes utter six general curses and then spend about 48 verses say "this is what the curse looks like, this is what you can expect in the darkness."

All those horrible things we read a minute ago.

But before these 6 general blessings and their rosy picture were declared and the 6 curses and their darkness declared the Levites declared to all of Israel 12 different behaviors that would provoke these 6 blessings if avoided or theses 6 curses if they were engaged in.

Why are these twelve things so monumental to merit blessings and curse?

They are all clendestine sins.

I wish I would have come up with that title but I did not.

Two of our sages of blessed memory, Ibn Ezra and Rashbam who agreed saying, "They often escape detection because they are commonly committed in secret or are hard for their victims to publicize."

All of these 12 behaviors are really a reflection of an attitude of the heart.

A heart that believes in private they keep God in the dark.

So, the darkness over the land, the curses, the misfortune are because of the darkness the people were creating privately.

That is why the curses move from general, to heartbreaking, to internally depraving.

You see, clandestine sins emerge out of our personal depravity, break the hearts of others and generally start to destroy everything around us.

The curses are just working from the outside back in to the center.

We asked the question, "Was God really allowing all of these curses, this darkness because of our grumpiness and complaining?"

Deut 28:47

No, it is not because we had a bad day.

It is because in secret, in private we really delight in what God hates.

The best way to give up God's blessing on your life is to secretly love and rejoice in private sin that beneifts you.

What Moses is saying is you have an abundance of everything, the recipient of many blessings but you do not use your blessing to serve God with joy and gladness but you employ in the service of whatever your personal, private pet sin is.

These people described in this passage were givers.

They gave God their spare worship, the spare time, their spare change, their spare obedience, their spare dedication.

Wait a minute Michael, Shaul said in Gal 3:10 that if you rely on the works of the Law you are under the curse and that Messiah removed the curse from us (Gal 3:11-13).

And, that all I need is faith like Abraham (Gal 3:14-18).

I am so glad you pointed that out to me.

Just one question, "Do Yeshua and Shaul both agree that a double-life of secret sin is individually, socially and nationally destructive?" - Yes

Shaul was talking to a group of non-jews who thought they could experience the salvation of God apart from the Messiah he was not saying that obedience to God is now off the table.

He calls these non-Jews to enter into savlation the same way Abraham did before he was circumcised, by faith.

As a matter of fact, when he loops back around in Galatians 5 he argues that real faith bears real fruit.

Shaul would have agreed with Jacob when he said that because of Abraham's faith is evidenced by what he does.

- James 2:20-23

The big point is simply this: that God takes seriously secret sin.

So seriously, that when you choose to live a life of secret sin you are simaltaneously choosing to give up God's blessings in exchange for curses.

The Light in the Darkness

There is a light in all of this Terrible darkness.

You see, I did not finish the story about those naval pilots.

With all those pilots desperate flying blind in the darknes, crying out for any kind of assistance, Admiral Marc Mitscher made a gutsy call.

He ordered the entire carrier fleet illuminated, and the dark Pacific night suddenly turned to daylight, as every light in the fleet was turned on to guide the fliers.

It was a dangerous thing to do in the middle of an unfriendly ocean.

There just might be a couple of Japanese submarines out there, licking their chops and slapping high fives as they saw those lights come on.

But there definitely were pilots calling for help, and they were calling for it now.

They were emersed in the deep darkness of the Pacific.