Embarking on our Torah Journey

A few passages to get the proper attitude and valuation of the Torah in our hearts and minds as we turn to the Torah itself next Sunday. (With emphasis added to phrases repeated in other places in Deuteronomy.) 6 “Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (ESV)

When the priests gathered the psalms together into a hymnal during the Second Temple period (the book of the Psalms as we have it now), they organized them into five books -- to resflect and respond to the Torah. And the first psalm goes like this (BCP 1979): Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, *

nor lingered in the way of sinners,

nor sat in the seats of the scornful!

Their delight is in the law [Torah] of the LORD, *

and they meditate on his law [Torah] day and night.

They are like trees planted by streams of water,

bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; *

everything they do shall prosper.

It is not so with the wicked; *

they are like chaff which the wind blows away.

Therefore the wicked shall not stand upright when judgment comes, *

nor the sinner in the council of the righteous.

For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, *

but the way of the wicked is doomed.

The Torah is an everyday reality for God's people, and should be rehearsed, remembered, and reminded!