Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] So today we are in the Torah portion of mishpatim. So let's talk about slavery.
[00:00:11] Yay.
[00:00:13] Just joking.
[00:00:15] But seriously, we're in a portion that's one of the most important portions in the Torah because it has so many mitzvot, it has so many of the commandments which can still be applied to us today. They apply to both Jews and non Jews living in or out of the land of Israel, whether or not the temple is still. For instance, in chapter 22 of Exodus, we read this. If a man deliver to his neighbor a donkey, an ox, or sheep, or any beast to keep, and it dies or is hurt, is driven away, no man seeing it, then shall an oath of the Lord be between them both that he has not put his hand to his neighbor's goods, and the owner of it shall accept this, and he shall not make it good. But if it is stolen from him, he shall make restitution to its owner. If it is torn in pieces, then let him bring it as evidence. He shall not make good that which was torn. Basically, he doesn't have to pay for the thing. And if a man borrow anything of his neighbor and it is hurt or it dies, its owner shall not. Its owner not being with it, he shall surely make it good. But if its owner is with it, he shall not make it good. If it is a hired thing, it came for his hired. Now you're like, that's a bunch of stuff. But the principle is. I want to draw your attention to this section. Right here is actually because there's so many practical things about, you know, just various everyday life in there. There's a whole tractate of the Talmud dedicated to exploring these concepts. And it's called Baba Mitzia. You may have heard Baba Mitzia, but it's Baba Mitya means the middle gate. And it focuses on civil law, primarily dealing with interpersonal property, monetary disputes, and trust issues. It focuses on defining ethical, fair, and legal responsibilities regarding lost property, guardianship, hiring, usury, and ownership rights. And it's usually the starting point where most people, if they begin studying the Talmud in any kind of systematic way, that's usually the entry point.
[00:02:26] Because there's lots of what ifs to wrestle through in this section of the Scriptures. But here's some other practical commandments just a little further down. You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him. For you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child.
[00:02:46] If you do mistreat them and they cry out to me. I will surely hear their cry. And my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword. And your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless. And then it talks about lending money to the poor, talks about not taking interest and about pledges and oaths and all that kind of stuff. A lot of just very practical things of how we're supposed to be living our lives.
[00:03:13] And so when I was studying this week's Torah portion, something in this passage really caught my attention. It's that first section, first verse of this section that I just read to you.
[00:03:24] You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. So in my mind, I immediately connected this to something that may not seem related to you, but with another commandment in this week's Torah portion in the following chapter, chapter 23, called in Hebrew, it's called Hashevat avida, and it means returning a lost item. So the verse in 23, before I connect this, it says, if you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him.
[00:04:04] Okay?
[00:04:06] And I've actually mentioned this in a few of my different teachings, but I'm going to do something completely different hopefully here in just a minute on this.
[00:04:14] And so this commandment actually is expounded on in Deuteronomy. It says in Deuteronomy, chapter 22, you shall not see your brother's ox or his sheep going astray and ignore them. You shall take them back to your brother. And if he does not live near you and does not know who, and you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall stay with you until your brother seeks it. Then you shall return it to him, and you shall do the same with his donkey or with his garment, or with any lost thing of your brother's which he loses. And you find you may not ignore it. So principle here is, if you find something doesn't belong to you, but you think it maybe belong to somebody else, that is going to be where you can return it, then you have an obligation to do something, care for it, return it, and so forth, okay? And here are some of the guidelines.
[00:05:11] And this may seem a lot of technical stuff, but just hold tight, and I'm going to connect the docs for us, okay?
[00:05:17] So the obligations that we have in regard to Hashivat Avedad, the returning of a lost item, we have several things that are included in this. First of all, if we find an item, we're required to take it and safeguard it until the owner is found. That's the first step.
[00:05:37] Second, we have to do more than just hold on to it. We have to make sure or do our best to ensure that we actively protect the item from being damaged. So let's just give an example.
[00:05:53] I find a power tool, and instead of taking it into my house, I just leave it out on the porch and it rains for the next week or out in the driveway. That's not being responsible. That's not taking care of it.
[00:06:11] Also, an item must be returned if it has a simon, which means a sign, basically, something unique about it that identifies it and shows that this belongs to this person. Okay?
[00:06:28] If it has a name on it or it's found in a specific location or has unique packaging or whatever. There's an actually example in the Talmud of coins.
[00:06:38] And so think about this. You find. You go into. I started saying a phone booth, but we don't have those anymore.
[00:06:47] Shows where my brain is, okay? I'm living, like 30 years ago. And so you go into someplace and you find a stack of coins.
[00:07:01] Okay, A stack of coins.
[00:07:04] Do we even know what coins are? I don't know, but.
[00:07:08] And that signifies that somebody probably has placed those there for a reason, and then they got distracted like I just did and wandered off and left them.
[00:07:20] And so that means that they're probably at some point gonna say, you know, whoa, what happened to my money? And they're gonna be coming looking for it. And so we have an obligation to say this. I can tell this is something that belongs specifically to someone.
[00:07:35] They probably realize it's missing. So I need to take care of it and I need to get back to them if at all possible.
[00:07:41] That's different between scattered coins, you're walking along and there's a dime or whatever, and we have a thing with dimes in our family, and.
[00:07:49] Or you find a few coins just scattered out in the field or on the road or sidewalk or whatever, that's different because that you can assume pretty much that somebody just dropped it, they didn't realize it, and they're probably never going to notice it or come back for it. And so there's not as much liability to hold onto those things and return them as something else, like the stack money.
[00:08:15] And talking about exemptions, if there's no identifying marks like the coins, it's not stacked or just scattered out in the field or whatever, and it appears the owner has despaired of finding it, then you may not be obligated to return it.
[00:08:33] Then lastly, the finder, the one who finds the object must make reasonable efforts to find the owner. And in our day and age, maybe like putting out an ad, a little poster, I found your dog, you know, or asking around, you know, in the neighborhood. That's happened several times to us.
[00:08:54] So in this passage that we just read about, who is this referring to? Who's losing, who's fighting?
[00:09:05] I want us to look at this passage in a specific way. Because things that aren't lost don't necessarily have to be tangible objects. It doesn't have to be, you know, a power tool, stack of coins, a wallet or whatever.
[00:09:22] It can be something intangible as well.
[00:09:26] So let's look at this as someone who has lost an important aspect of their faith.
[00:09:35] So again, who is this? First, this is referring to our Jewish brothers and sisters who have forsaken Hashem and his Torah. They're just living a secular life and they've forgotten their identity, forgotten their obligation, what they swore, the covenant they agreed to at Mount Sinai.
[00:09:54] Second, this is referring to our brothers and sisters in Messiah who haven't seen the beauty of the Torah yet.
[00:10:02] Okay, so as messianic Jews and gentiles, we found something that both Judaism and Christianity have lost.
[00:10:14] And I'm not telling you really anything new here. Judaism was given their Messiah, but lost him nearly 2,000 years ago, both due to internal and external political pressures that threatened its very existence.
[00:10:28] Christianity, a religion created in connection to Judaism, took hold of the Messiah, but lost track of his Jewish identity and the implications that come with it. Both communities experienced historical pressures that shaped their theology in ways that we're still trying to untangle today. Okay, so it's really not a pointing fingers, blame game here, but it is a fact of reality that we're trying to work through. So some of you guys may have come into this messianic movement with a little bit of jadedness. Okay? There are people coming in the messianic movement all the time, and we have tons of people connecting with Shalom Macon. They email us. We get emails all the time. And they go through, you know, just, my pastor teaches this or whatever, and they just start lambasting, you know, people and stuff like that because they feel hurt, they feel betrayed, they feel that they have been lied to.
[00:11:29] They're discovering, you know, new things about Jesus and the Bible that they weren't raised in. And it can get really crazy when they don't have really any guidance and direction for most people in this movement. They, they, when they come into this realization and they get that, that attitude of, I have been lied to, I've been deceived, they start taking it out on the church, taking it out on their pastor, taking it out on their Christian friends, their family.
[00:12:03] There's always a number of people who begin to express their frustration at how they've been deceived or lied to and intentionally misguided. But, you know, we need to realize that they might. This is probably not the case.
[00:12:15] You know, feeling this is part of the grieving process and, you know, when leaving one set of beliefs and identity and transitioning to another. But I believe the wisdom of the sages paired with the wisdom of the Scripture can help us, those of us who are grappling with this transition, those of us who have found the proverbial lost coin and wish others would start sweeping and searching their house as well. So let's put the loss of Torah back into the context of a lost item of our Torah portion and the things that I spelled out on how to deal with that. And let's see what we might be doing. Okay, so first of all, let's deal with the obligation. Obligation.
[00:12:59] If we find an object, what do we do first?
[00:13:02] Take it, hold on to it, protect it. Right. Okay, so two main components here safeguard the item and identify the owner. So let's pause for a moment to talk about a rabbinic concept found in the Talmud. This is seemingly weird stuff here, but we're going to make it all fit.
[00:13:22] And Shabbat 68b says, while there's no direct scripture in the Torah that actually refers to this concept or this, this phrase, it's still legitimate concern because it has a direct bearing on Jewish communities. It's a concept called tinok shamish ba, beIN hagoyim, a child captured among the nations. Okay, or we can.
[00:13:48] I probably said that wrong because guess what, I don't have my glasses on.
[00:13:52] Tinuk. Yes, I said it right. Chinish ba for short.
[00:13:57] The case in the Talmud describes a Jewish child who is captured or raised among non Jews who grows up without Torah or mitzvot and later violates the Sabbath.
[00:14:11] So let's break down what this means. They grew up, they didn't know the Torah's instructions. They're treated as deliberate sinners. They are not treated so. They're not treated as deliberate sinners. Their liability is reduced because of ignorance, not willfulness.
[00:14:30] So this is a person who does not knowingly reject the Torah, who was raised without access to proper teaching and is not considered willfully rebellious. So whether Jewish or not, this is the owner of the lost object.
[00:14:49] And as we can see, the owner never consciously disregarded the item or discarded the item, I should say. And so we have to see other people from this perspective and not just look at them as, you're wrong, you know, you're on the wrong path and blah, blah, blah.
[00:15:08] So the next step is preventing loss. So beyond returning the items, we must actively protect the property that belongs to somebody else. Right. So we have an obligation to keep the Torah from being corrupted through neglect, misinterpretation, or misapplication.
[00:15:27] And so we have an obligation to that as well.
[00:15:30] What about identifying marks? It says, you know, we learned that an idol must be returned if it has an identifying mark. If we can tell that it actually belongs to somebody, we can see this in the same Torah. We can see that this is the same Torah that came from Sinai and know that this is from God, our Torah is from him. It's something reliable. It's not fake.
[00:15:59] It's the same Torah that was given at Sinai, and we have captured it, and we know that it belongs to somebody. It attests to the covenant God gave to Israel through the hand of Moses, and it's the same one that Yeshua and his disciples held onto, the exceptions.
[00:16:18] So if an item has no identifying marks, we may not be obligated to return it. This doesn't apply in our situation. And the last part, we must make reasonable effort to find the owner. So here's where the rubber meets the road.
[00:16:36] First, we have to realize that people that taught us.
[00:16:40] And by the way, this may not apply to a vast majority of people listening today, because like most of us, we've gotten over it, or we didn't deal with that, or we didn't struggle with that. But I know there are people that struggle with this on a daily basis. Okay, so if this doesn't apply to you, that's fine, but maybe you can learn something to help somebody else. Okay.
[00:17:05] First, we need to realize that the people that taught us, for the most part, they did their best with what they knew.
[00:17:13] Okay.
[00:17:15] I still have contact with Sunday school teachers that taught me when I was, like, 11.
[00:17:23] And, you know, I have good memories of that. You know, did they teach me everything that I know now or teach me the way I know now? Not necessarily, but they taught me what they knew, and that put me ahead of the game.
[00:17:39] That gave me a leg up and gave me a fast start, so to speak, of where I am today.
[00:17:48] You have to believe that, you have to believe that their intentions are good. Sure, there are a few bad apples in the bunch. There is in every religion. But most people, however, they simply teach to the level they understand. That's really all that we can do as well.
[00:18:04] When you're satisfied with your understanding and believe it to be correct, there's no reason to seek any other answer. So that's what most people have done.
[00:18:13] It's like, this is what my father taught. This is what my pastor taught. Whatever. I'm satisfied. I don't need to ask questions. I don't need to rock the boat, you know, and so forth and so on.
[00:18:24] And so they don't.
[00:18:27] Some of us are curious.
[00:18:31] The second part of this is this passage in Deuteronomy that says, it shall stay with you, talking about the lost item, until your brother seeks it, and then you shall restore it to him.
[00:18:49] So why would they be seeking this lost item? Why would they be seeking the Torah?
[00:18:57] If we're criticizing them for something they never knew they lost in the first place, how does that help them?
[00:19:06] This is where we have to really take these reasonable efforts that we talked about earlier. We have to present Torah. We have to present Messianic Judaism in a way that's appealing. This is why we have to do that. We try to do everything here at Shalom Makin with excellence. Do we fail? At times, yes, I'm the guilty party.
[00:19:28] But we try, and we do it in such a way that other people see it as appealing and attractive and are drawn to the things that we do here. Not to toot our own horn, but this is, I think, one of the reasons Shalom Macon is special.
[00:19:47] We try to do our best, and we love people fully.
[00:19:52] We want to make the truth beautiful and appealing.
[00:19:56] So why would anyone want to take what we found? If we're throwing verbal bombs on their front lawn by telling them how wrong they are, why would they give us the time of day?
[00:20:06] So this is where our Torah portion gives us insight into the how we can go one step further to help our brothers and sisters seek out the very thing they've lost and desire. What we found in this week's portion, we read, you shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. I want a show of hands. Who in this room was raised in the Messianic Jewish walk?
[00:20:40] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6.
[00:20:45] So basically, 7, 8. So we have, basically, for the most part, those who are, like, under 25 something like that. I don't know how old you are, Caleb, but you know, young, young people, second generation messianics. Okay. Most of us in this room.
[00:21:08] So this is something we have to internalize.
[00:21:16] It says, you shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him for you.
[00:21:22] That's talking this really specifically talking to my generation, our generation. And most of us in this room were sojourners in the land of Egypt. We weren't raised in this. We were outside of this. Right.
[00:21:36] There's something very interesting about this command to not mistreat the sojourner. The sages, based on a passage from the book of Jeremiah, say that this commandment was not given at Mount Sinai like the rest of the commandments.
[00:21:50] Interesting. It's repeated at Sinai, but it's not initially given at Sinai. It's initially given in the land of Egypt while they're in the land of Egypt.
[00:22:00] Jeremiah 34 says, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I myself made a covenant with your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, saying, at the end of seven years, each of you must set free the fellow Hebrew who has been sold to you and has served six years. You must set them free from your service.
[00:22:22] So why is this commandment given in Egypt instead of just lumped together with the rest of the commandments of Mount Sinai?
[00:22:33] Why this particular commandment was given ahead of the others.
[00:22:40] So if you've heard of Daily Dose of Torah, it's one of my favorite daily study resources put out by art school. And when I came across this story in it, connected to connected to this, it really, really hit home. So I'm going to read this story verbatim from this resource. Okay. And then I'm going to connect the dots.
[00:23:11] It said that during one of Napoleon's wars, he lost a battle and was being chased by his enemies.
[00:23:18] He ran into the closest home he could find and hid under some blankets provided by the host.
[00:23:25] The enemies barged into the house to search for Napoleon, looked everywhere and even groped through their blankets, but did not find him. When they were gone, Napoleon came out of hiding his hiding place and thanked the man who had provided his shelter and refuge. Since the man had saved his life, Napoleon offered to fulfill him his any request.
[00:23:48] The man said that he was not interested in any reward, but merely wanted to know how Napoleon felt while he was hiding with the enemy, searching all over the house for him.
[00:24:01] Immediately, Napoleon ordered the man be killed for asking such a brazen, impudent question to the emperor. The man would be hung on a high gallows.
[00:24:17] When the day came for hanging, Napoleon took the rope, tightened it, ready to choke the man to death. In a split second, before the man was to be killed, Napoleon stopped the proceedings, leaned forward and whispered in the man's ear, this is exactly the way I felt when the enemies were rummaging through the blankets.
[00:24:40] Napoleon then released the man and told him that in order to answer the man's questions, he had to create a situation that would simulate the feelings he he could never express with mere words.
[00:24:58] Relating them in words could never suffice to describe the intense fear that he had. Napoleon wanted the man to feel the exact feelings he had felt.
[00:25:11] And similarly, giving the mitzvah of freeing slaves to the Jewish people while they were still slaves themselves would ensure they would understand the longing for freedom that the slave experiences.
[00:25:25] Thus the mitzvah to free the slave in the seventh year would be readily accepted and fulfilled.
[00:25:35] So this is why the commandment regarding the slaves was given to the Israelites while they were still slaves in Egypt. They fully understood the heart of a slave. They knew hopelessness, they knew despair, they knew brokenness as a slave, and could connect with this commandment through empathy rather than just a mental acknowledgment.
[00:26:00] In the Passover Agada, if you've experienced a Passover, we say in every generation, each person must see themselves as if they what personally came out of Egypt.
[00:26:13] This is a call to identify with the past, struggles our past selves so that we can never grow complacent or hard hearted.
[00:26:25] When we remember that we were once there, wherever there is, it helps us to meet others where they are now says, do not judge your fellow until you have stood in his place.
[00:26:39] You may have heard the expression, don't judge a man till you've walked a mile on his moccasins. You know why that is, right?
[00:26:46] Because you'll be a mile away and have his moccasins.
[00:26:50] But somebody just now, light bulb's going off.
[00:26:56] But in this do not judge your fellow until you have stood in his place. It parallels the Napoleon moment, feeling what another feels before responding.
[00:27:09] It's a profound reminder that empathy is about standing in another's shoes. Before we start making assumptions about them, we may say, well, I've been where they are. I was just as blind and confused as they are.
[00:27:24] But did you have messianic messianics pressuring you and criticizing you for your ignorance?
[00:27:32] That's the difference.
[00:27:34] Yeshua said, whoever causes one of the least of these little ones to be who believe in me to sin. It would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Matthew 18.
[00:27:48] I don't want that Christians who go to church on Sunday and don't have a clue about Sabbath festivals Messianic Judaism at all are those who believe in Yeshua.
[00:27:59] Sure their understanding of him is going to be a little different than ours, but still our brothers and our sisters, and we have to do all that we can from keeping them, to keep them from stumbling over our own baggage.
[00:28:15] So listen up. If you want people to be excited about this walk, as excited about this walk as you are, then live in such a way that you would make them want to know the things that you know and experience the things that you experience.
[00:28:36] We need to create experiences for others that rival what we experience, that drew us in.
[00:28:44] Experiences that made us curious enough to ask questions, excited enough to dig through the Scriptures, to search out the answers to all of these newfound questions. We can't just tell them why they need, they need to have what we have. We have to pull a Napoleon maneuver.
[00:29:05] But in the reverse, rather than making them feel threatened, we have to make sure that we help them feel curious and ask questions.
[00:29:17] But as Daniel Lancaster said at the recent Malchut event, don't ask questions. I mean, don't answer questions that people aren't asking.
[00:29:30] Let me say it again. Don't answer questions people aren't asking.
[00:29:37] Nobody wants that.
[00:29:39] They need to have the same unsettled, unsatisfied feeling that you had when you came into this walk.
[00:29:47] And I can just about guarantee you that it wasn't because someone shot down or discredited their theology, or your theology, I should say, but because people asked questions that made you curious, they gave you a crumb that awakened your appetite for truth. So let me ask you this. Are you dropping crumbs of loving truth for people to follow, or are you dropping truth bombs and enjoy seeing the carnage that follows?
[00:30:17] We can disagree with people while still teaching truth with love and respect.
[00:30:22] Messianic Judaism was never meant to be weaponized. It was meant to bring new life, new hope, new excitement, and a new, yet ancient perspective on the Word of God and a new life in Messiah.
[00:30:39] So how do we relate to others, inspire them to open themselves up enough so they can receive the lost items that we found that we've been holding onto for them? And how do we bring those near who are far away and strangers to the principles of Messianic Judaism.
[00:30:58] It starts by remembering that we were all strangers to some degree once.
[00:31:04] The empathy always triumphs over bitterness and aggression. Yeshua said his disciples are the light of the world, so that means you.
[00:31:15] So let your light shine so others can see how you walk this thing out in love and thus glorify your Father in heaven rather than being swallowed by the darkness of your lashon Hara.
[00:31:31] We can only return what was lost through compassion, not confrontation.
[00:31:37] In the words of the Great Sage Hillel, be disciples of Aaron, loving peace, pursuing peace, loving people and drawing them close to the Torah.
[00:31:49] You were once a stranger, so you don't have to be strange anymore.
[00:31:57] Just be a friend and be a light Shabbat Shalom I'm Darren with Shalom Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you subscribe to our channel. Next, make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch.
[00:32:15] Last, head over to our website to learn more about Shalom Makin, explore other teachings and events, and if you're so inclined, contribute to the work that we're doing to further the Kingdom. Thanks for watching and connecting with Shalom Macon.
