Parashah Vayera

17 Cheshvan 5782 / October 23, 2021
By Jim Bergen

This Weeks Readings:           
Torah: Genesis 18:1-22:24

Haftarah: 2 Kings 4:1-37
Brit Chadashah: Galatians 5:16-24

Life is hard especially in these times we are living today. Our faith is constantly tested by G-d to strengthen us and have us cope with the evil in the world. The world, the flesh, and the devil try to tempt us and bring us down in our weakness. But thanks be to G-d by His grace and mercy, He helps us because the L-RD loves us.

In our Torah portion we read that Abraham is promised by G-d that Sarah will have a baby even though she is 90 years old and Abraham is 100 years old. Abraham recognized that G-d stood before him, because after they ate the meal that Abraham prepared, the L-RD was before him while the other two people went down to Sodom and Gomorrah. In G-d’s mercy, Abraham pleaded to G-d to spare if there were 50 righteous people down to even just 10 who would believe, but there were none. In the meantime, Lot in his wavering faith was rescued by G-d before the judgement of the two cities. In Lot’s unbelieving and wavering faith, he had incest with his two daughters and two nations was born; the Moabites and the Ammonites. In Abraham’s weakness, he lied to Abimelech, saying that Sarah was his sister and G-d had to warn Abimelech to leave Sarah alone lest all his family would die. G-d even prevented the women in Abimelech’s household from having children until he repented.  When Isaac was born, Sarah told Hagar to take Ishmael her son and leave, because the inheritance belonged to Isaac. Abraham was obedient to G-d’s testing by attempting to sacrifice Isaac as an offering and became a prophetic type of Messiah.

In the Haftarah portion G-d used Elisha to help the poor widow to get out of debt by telling her to get as many jars as she could and then to pour olive oil into the empty jars from one flask so she call sell them to support her and her son.  G-d used Elisha to tell the Shunemite woman that she would have a son. A trial was suffered by the Shunemite woman when her son became sick and died. G-d, in showing His resurrection power, gave Elisha the faith to pray so that the child was resurrected back to life and strengthened the Shunemite woman’s faith.

The Brit Chadashah portion teaches us that if we live and do as believers what we did before we became believers, living in our old sinful nature, we will live defeated lives. But when we trust and let the Holy Spirit have control of our lives, we will have victory over our fleshly nature and our evil nature will be crucified in the Messiah.

As I stated in the introduction, we have this hard life, but in Yeshua, we can be soldiers and warriors to overcome our difficulties by claiming victory from His Word and living lives pleasing to G-d.