Shema: The Declaration

Shalom my brother warth a Griffin welcome to the Piedmont thank you for joining us today we're gonna be speaking about the declaration of faith for all of Israel known as the Shema and buzzer on Ashim I'll be bringing some insight to this and helping us appreciate it understand it and make it more meaningful for our everyday life so the Shema it comes from deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 4 through 9 there's other parts of it will be speaking about shortly but that's the main part and it begins with the very tried and true statement smiley smile of an ILO he knew of an icon so what is the Schmo exactly well it's a declaration of faith but why is it important why do we have this first of all the various verses of the Tanakh why would we choose the chemin out of the Torah why would we choose the dish mom and the answer is quite simple it's a declaration that we only have one God we only serve that one God and it's he and he alone that created the heavens of the earth and it's he to him and him alone that we submit our own lives and in fact in Jewish thought it said that God does not want to be just our master a master it indicates like a dictatorship we we would be just slaves and what-have-you no in fact he wants to be our King and in Jewish mind a king has subjects who willingly submit to him they they love him they want him to be their leader and so in saying the Shema one of the first aspects of this important declaration of emunah is that we are crowning God king of our life he's not just the Creator he's not just the only God in the universe but he's our God he's our Lord he is our Redeemer our Savior our shield all of those things and were submitting to him and we're submitting to his authority in our life so the Shema begins by saying as I quoted my you said I love my Allah vaya con and it continues with the rest of the patches and talking about the fact that we should hearken to his commandment so we should listen in cements but they should be on our mind and our hearts aren't sold as we're walking along the road and when we lie down will rise up and then we should teach them to our children we should oppress an apartment we should've been buying these Commandments to our arm and put them between our eyes which this is made possible by wearing to Filan and then we should put them on the doorpost of our house and a part of gays by incorporating the mezuzah we say the Shema in the morning when we get up and we say it again at night when we lie down now ideally we should be saying the Sh'ma as close to sunrise as possible so that we begin our day we begin the activities of our day declaring to the universe and to ourselves that we believe in the one true God the one unique God the only God and that he's king of our life and when we lie down at line at night when we lose control so to speak you know during the day we kind of have control there today we're operating or going about our business we have a schedule we kind of are in command we have our faculties about us but when we lie down at night we somewhat lose control because we go into a sleep mode of dream mode we don't have complete authority over what we're doing or what we're thinking and even in those moments where we have control in those moments we don't have control of God is still God in those moments where life is good and he's our king and those moments where where it's a little bit scary he's still our king this is what the Shema means to us and it's what we're trying to say when we quoted found that the Shema is for all of Israel the quintessential declaration of faith we are unique as a people because he's chosen us our uniqueness is embedded and who he's that the people that he has made us and we are acknowledging not just our uniqueness but of course his uniqueness as well in the sinner there's an interesting introduction to the Shema which says it's a phrase it says el medic named our God the faithful King our God faithful King and so when we're not praying with a minion which means we don't have 10 men when we're saying the smog with them we add el malik name on and so it's an interesting thought what in the Holika why we do that when we're not praying with a minion and the reason is is because there are a total if we count the first excuse me the three paragraphs of the Shema if we count all the words of those three paragraphs we come to the numr numerical value of 245 if we add three more words el Melek naman God a faithful King then we were making that number now 248 which means that when we say the Shema with 248 words which corresponds to 248 parts of the human body what we're really saying is a Shem in my heart I follow you and what in fact with my entire being I follow you so the obviously question is is well if we're praying with a minion we don't say el milk named on so how do we arrive at 248 it's a great question and the answer is when the Hasan is repeating the Shema he will say at the end of the last paragraph on Iowa hekima met I don't know your God is true and so those three words added to the end because he repeats that from the last paragraph he repeated again of an Iowa Hickam I met adds three words and brings us to the number of 248 now think that for a moment the Shema is just now all of a sudden become our very being God now has subtly become the very essence of who we are he's a very central aspect of our very life and this is what Hashem is trying to teach us in trying to draw us into when we say the Shema there's something else are unique about the Shema and the Torah scroll when one will notice when you're looking at the torrent a lot of times it's printed this way and the Tanakh and the Citarum and so on but you'll notice that there is an enlarged eye in also and a large dollar so think into the worst mothers and a large onion and at the end of the word at ha there's a large dollar so what does this mean well you put those two words together it forms the Heward aid which means witness so when we say Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai elohenu Adonai echad we're really calling our own minds the people around us the heavenly beings if you will to witness the fact that God alone is God it's also than she denoted in a citizen that the iron represents messiah ben Yosef the suffering Messiah he adopted the sins of Israel and the dollar represents Messiah bin dahveed who is going to be the Messiah who returns and establishes God's kingdom on the earth and so when we say the Shema this is a particularly important for those of us who understand that Yeshua is as Maliki style that we are what we're saying is we have perfect faith in his duality in his this duality which is really a unique Akkad and that is that he is both Messiah ben Yosef and besra Hashem he will soon return and be established as Messiah Ben David bebida this is also something else unique about that because remember we said earlier that Hashem wants to be our King there's really only one king of Israel and that's a Shem so we say that Messiah is king what does that mean exactly well we have to understand that messiahs as the divine manifestation of a Shem and so really when we are talking about mashiac in a very esoteric way we were talking about his shin himself remember that when the people of Israel wanted a king Hashem was was not pleased because he was supposed to be the king of Israel but Israel rejected him as king and they wanted a king like the other nation so they got saw they got a human King so when God comes to establish his kingdom under Mashiach Ben David he's not coming to establish another earthly king that was not his original plan and it's not his a plan in the world to come he is coming to be king himself so say the Shema were actually saying that we believe in messiah ben Yosef and Messiah Ben David and we're saying Hashem we have mashiac and we understand that you are going to be king of our life okay so I want to say something about the mezuzah since we mentioned that earlier about the first paragraph that we're supposed to make this these Commandments we're supposed to put them on the doorpost of our house and our gaze it's also in the second program of this Imam which by the way many people don't realize there's actually three paragraphs of the Shmona which is divine 649 the second paragraph is the volume 11 13 through 21 and the final paragraph comes from nap number 7 15 Bobby bar 15 talking about the seat seat so those are the three paragraphs that we say in the SH month and we need all three of those paragraphs to completely say the full schmock as it's supposed to be done but we're talking about the mezuzah so this interesting story I wanted to relate to you from the Talmud avodah Zarah 11a talking about the mezuzah and the power in the mezuzah now we have fixed the mezuzah to our homes throne to our gates because it has the the Torah scroll in there the parchment in there it's not necessarily an amulet in other words it's not a device that Ward's off evil spirits those kind of things we should be doing it because it's a mitzvah that Hashem wants us to put the door the Word of God as it were on the doorpost of our house and our gates so that we should always remember who he is the fact that we serve Him and it also serves as a spiritual guard you might say maybe even supernaturally of course well certainly supernaturally to to protect our houses so with that said this is a story about uncle uncle owes was a convert who actually wrote an Aramaic version of the Torah which the rabbi's today consider very authoritative uncle OSA was a Roman noble but he converted and so his relative who was the Roman Emperor sent a troop to him to arrest him bathroom because the Roman Emperor was not happy at all but that his relative had converted to Judaism that was bad in his eyes so he sends this contingent there to arrest him but here's the problem they go to arrest him on below sing uncle Moses engages them in conversation and he seeks to convert them with the home contingent gets converted so now the Roman Empire is very Emperor rather as very upset so that troops he sent to go arrest his relative and converted they themselves become converted now let's pause here for a moment and touch on something what does this teach us so here we have uncle o--'s who converted to become part of on this trial and so here comes part of this Roman legion to come arrest him so what does he do he seeks to convert them and he succeeds in converting them so this totally destroys anyone who would say that Judaism is not about prostitution but the Gentiles are just fine being Gentiles and the Noahide laws and all that nonsense because we find here an uncle owes who was an authority on the Torah who wrote the Torah and Aramaic and the rabbi's say today you should read the Torah in Hebrew twice and you should read on Veloz once that's how authoritative is and here we have uncle O's prophet sizing and winning over Roman soldiers this completely is a problem for those who say no conversion Italy for today but that aside that was a bonus but never the other side he goes on to say that the Roman Emperor sent another a bigger troop this time and he said listen do not engage on callosum conversation because he said if you do you're gonna be converted so don't do that just go there and arrest him and bring him out of don't let him engage in conversation so the plan was succeeding except for the fact when they left that house they were leaving the house there's uncle OSes mezuzah on the front door and this is what he says he says I want to tell you what this is he put his hand on the doorpost and he said I want to tell you about this universal custom you know he says normally a human King sits inside the room while his servants guard the building that he's in not so with the Holy One blessed be the Holy One has his servants inside the house and he himself stands guard on the outside of the house this is the power of the schmuck when we say the Shema and we take it internally and we put on the doorpost of our house and horror gaze we have assumed you saying listen you're inside the house that's good I want you to remain in the house and I'm gonna guard your door that's what uncle's are saying on by the way the story goes on to say that after the Roman soldiers had understood this principle and they have thought about it they too got converted so uncle oath was successful in converting all kinds of Roman soldiers this is amazing so why is it do we have this idea of saints mom was saying Shem is one he's the only God well I want to bring down something from the Midrash sure Bob this is from parashat back to Conan from Midrash Shabbat devouring it says he around my youth suk began his discourse with an exposition of the following verse he says hashem is my portion says my soul therefore I have hope in him lamentations 324 rabbi each side goes on to say to what is Israel's statement comparable to a king who entered a province it says and with him in turn also the infantry and the commanders and cowboy commanders and supreme field commanders and there were people among the citizens of this province who decided that they will take one of these people as protectors for themselves so one person selected the cavalry commander once like person selected a new commander and still another person said I'll take the Supreme field commander and there was yet a wise person amongst them these citizens of the province who said I will choose no one but the king because all the other officers and Kings can be replaced for it was the king himself who put them there therefore I will choose the king because he is the only one who shall remain for ever and ever so the Midrash goes on to say similarly when the Holy One blessed be he descended upon Mount Sinai companies upon companies of angels including the Archangel meek IL and also the Archangel Gabriel descended with him and there were those among the nation's who saw this great throng and they said we shall technique il to be our protector and others said we shall take Gabriele these are too mighty incredible angel warrior angels Gabrielle by the way is not the cute little angel blowing the little trumpet everywhere with wings flapping no he's a great great warrior angel is it will take these angels but Israel said no we choose for ourselves the Holy One blessed be he because he's the one who has signed me Kyle in a sign Gabrielle if he wanted to he could assign someone else they could replace them he could do everyone only Hashem will remain forever so it says they said hashem is my portion said my soul therefore I have hope in him behold it says this is why the Jewish people declare Sh'ma Israel Allah my Allah he know abou my Akkad this is why we say that God is to be our only God he is the only God and we take him so the Shema goes on to say they opening lying the famous line we should love the Lord our God with all of our heart all of our soul and all of our strength so what does it mean all of our heart it means that all of our emotions all of our being our inner essence is supposed to supposed to serve God we're supposed to serve Him out of love a lot of times the way that we get to love is through fear first of all we find out listen we're mortal people God is eternal we know that with just a simple breath out of his of his mouthing it destroys forever and so we begin to fear God but oftentimes because we fear Him first that leads to love and in fact the rabbi's say to us maybe we should maybe start out with fear but we should strive to live with love love of Hashem so when we rise up and say the Shahada the morning when we lie down and set upon the evening when we say SH my smell of a mile away know of an ayah card and we continue with those famous lines in Hebrew where it says about how death on I let God be alone they both got overcome now check out over call me Rebecca we're saying first of all we want to love him with all of our hearts and so we're actually a positively confessing gym I'm loving you I want to love you I'm drawing close to you and falling in love with you and for those of us who follow Messiah Yeshua we know that Messiah Yeshua actually implants in our spirit and our soul in our heart love for a chef that's probably the most powerful thing he does for us is that we don't have to really strive to love God he gives us a love for God because he renews our heart and replenishes our soul and gives us takes us out the hardest stone puts in the heart of flesh so he goes on it says we should love God with all of our soul what does it mean well the mineral Shabbat answers the question for us this is here what does it meant to say that we should love God with all of our soul and it says it means that we shall love God with each and every soul that God created in you another answer I've ever said for each and every breath that a person draws he's required to praise his creator and from where do we learn this from Psalm 150 in verse 6 where it states let all souls praise God hallelujah what does it mean that we should praise God or worship God with all the souls that he gave us well it simply means that God has put within us many attributes and maybe talents there's people who can sing very well there's people having a soul of singing pretty per se or a soul of writing or a soul of create Kraftwerk or what-have-you these are various degrees of soul that we have in other words these are elements of our personality so with the with the word of Torah is actually saying is that with all of our essence all the aspects of our of our personality to include ambition to include those elements of the inside our like anger it's okay to have anger we just have to have righteous anger but in expressing our love our anger our fear our our creativity all of that is supposed to worship and worship and follow a Shem and then we have with all of our strengths what does that mean all of our strengths that means all of our resources all of our physical natural abilities and with our physical resources such as money gold silver things that we make those the things that we create were to serve the Creator with those things with that we ourselves create it says also we're supposed to remember the commandments the most important thing about the Shema are one of the most important things is it actually gives us directive to talk about to follow to live out the misspoke in fact in the Hebrew it indicates a sharply remembering in other words every single day we're supposed to have the commandments of a Shem sharper our mine we should wake up and think to ourselves how do I serve Hashem today what does my king desire of me it isn't that what a servant does a servant comes in the Royal Court he says you know long live the king what is thy bidding sire right that's what you see in all the movies and so we gotta wake up in the morning and say good morning a Shem I love you long live the king and what is your bidding for my life today that's what we're trying to say with the Shema now I want to point out one final thing before we conclude on this topic is that we say also in this we say shema yisrael adonai elohenu of an icon and then Moshe learned a secret on Mount Sinai when he went up there he heard the Angels praising God and they would exclaim in a loud voice by Luke Shem couple of mouthful too little on bed and so they say just saying when you came down off the mountain he taught a secret to Israel he said the angels in heaven worship God by saying baruch shem cover mouth full to nail on the head but we don't want them to know it's kind of a funny thing we don't want them to know that we got this Jim so we're going because we're lower than the Angels so maybe we're not supposed to say like this because the angels are on a higher level than we are right now because we're in the flesh so when we ever we say the Shema we're going to stay under our undertone breath Berger shown couple old mouth who doing them on bad except for one time of year and that's on Yom Kippur when we are forgiven and washed pure and made and elevated like the Angels then on Yom Kippur and Yom Kippur long we say baruch shem come out we'll do a little on the edge but there's also another aspect of this in the smile we have the divine name written twice but we don't pronounce the divine name ever and the reason is is because we don't know how no one knows how no one knows how to pronounce the divine name and in fact there was only one place when people knew how to say it that it would be spoke and it would be spoken to only by the high priest and that was in the temple and when the high priest would say Baruch are excuse me Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai elohenu now how they would pronounce it the people would fall to their face they would proclaim baruch shem Cobo mouth will do low lay long bed that's how holy the divine name in fact the divine name was so holy it was not to be spoken in the in the outer realms outside the temple we know this because in Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1 it says this one who pronounces the name according to its letters is excluded from the world to come that's how holy the divine name the Sanhedrin said have you stayed outside the realm of the temple and if it's not the the priest who's saying it if you're just going around throwing around then you're going to lose your portion in the world to come what does this tell us ultimately as we're concluding this discussion of the Shmuel what does this tell us ultimately about this great declaration and a vow to God is and that is how uniquely holy and specialty is and knowing that what a privilege it is to be able to wake up in the morning and say good morning my king Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai elohenu Adonai echad we were able to join in his legions with such a holy God so I want to encourage you take out the mitzvot say the Shema in the morning say the Schmoe in the evening work your way through the three paragraphs if you can't get it all done do what you can the most important thing is to wake up and declare that he's the only God he's your king and you intend to serve Him Ezra - em thank you for watching hope this blesses you may you have a beautiful blessed day

Channel: Lapid Judaism

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Length: 23min 9sec (1389 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2016