Works Are Needed!

We ended our time last week around the altar. I said that, “I was calling you with calling,” and you answered by stepping out from where you were standing and come to the altar and saying, “Hineni! Here I am Lord, send me!” I took the phrase, “I call you with calling” from a thought that the rabbis expressed in the Midrash, which is a body of rabbinical teachings on the Torah. They wrote:

You find that when God gave the Torah to Moses, He gave it to him after ‘calling.’ How do we know this? Since it is said, “And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mount; and Moses went up’” (Exodus 19:20). Also Moses our teacher, when he came to repeat the Torah to Israel, said to them: “Just as I received the Torah with ‘calling’ so too will I hand it over to God’s children with ‘calling.’ “From where do we know this? From what is written in the context: “And Moses called to all of Israel and said to them…” [Midrash Rabba, Deuteronomy 7:8]