Recently one of the Messianic groups on Facebook was asking about why people in that group seemed so legalistic, not lighting fires on Shabbat, etc.
My answer is one of those that I felt was worth sharing here, especially because it was the topic I felt led to discuss today, anyway.
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
I started out justifying my reasons for feeling that what I said was worth listening to, so for the benefit of anyone out there who is not familiar with me, and not to brag (honest!), I left that part in. So, here is how I replied:
“I am Jewish (in fact, I have the genetic marker of a Levite), raised Reform, a Bar Mitzvah, and accepted Yeshua as my Messiah about 30 years ago. I have served in many ways in both a Messianic synagogue and a Hebraic Roots church, and even have some credentials from the Messianic Bible Institute. I also have an online ministry with hundreds of international followers (messianicmoment.com).
I say this just so that you know my background, and certainly not to brag.
In all this time, my experience is that a Messianic Jewish congregation is usually composed of less than 40% Jews.
I believe the neo-legalism that has infiltrated Messianic Judaism is because so many Messianic congregations are mostly composed of people who came from some Christian background, where (again, this is from my personal experience) they were raised in a legalistic environment.
Christianity is, in my opinion, a very legalistic religion, having created its own tenets and traditions, and forms of worship that are elaborate and very ceremonial. And that “do-it-because-you-are-supposed-to-do-it” regimen has not left all of the people who have left the religion.
Here are what I consider to be neo-legalistic ideologies that have infiltrated Messianic Judaism:
1. This recent drek (Yiddish for garbage, and sometimes even worse words!) about Christmas and Easter being pagan holidays (despite the fact there are no pagan gods involved);
2. The Holy Namers (if you don’t pronounce the Tetragrammaton or the name of the Messiah the way they say then you are praying to a false god);
3. The calendar people who insist that you are celebrating on the wrong day because their calendar is the correct one (even though in ancient days the beginning of the month could be off by a few days simply because it was too cloudy to verify the new moon was out).
All of these “religious” ideologies are representative of a legalistic mindset.
Legalism is a performance-based salvation, where “doing” has more importance than faith.
If you do anything in order to be “correct”, then you are doing it for the wrong reason.
Faithful obedience, the kind that counts with God, is doing what God said (meaning what is in the Torah, not what some religion says) to the best of your ability simply because God said to do it.
If you need proof or justification, well… that is not a faith-based system. ”
And that is where I left it.
I am not going to open a discussion about those holidays, but I will give a quickie demonstration of why I believe they are not pagan:
You go to a restaurant and order a chicken salad sandwich, and they bring you a tuna fish salad sandwich, so you say,” Hey! I ordered chicken”
“Yes, Sir, I know, but this was made the same day and has all the same ingredients we use for chicken salad, so it is no different.”
“Uh, yes it is- there is no chicken in here, only tuna fish. I asked for chicken.”
“Well, Sir, there used to be chicken in it but now there is tuna fish, so it is essentially the same thing. We use the same ingredients and make it the same way, and both are served on bread so they are no different.”
“Yes, they are different- one is made from chicken and one is made from tuna.”
If a holiday once was chicken, but now is tuna, they aren’t the same thing; if once, thousands of years ago, on a certain day they celebrated Saturn, but today they celebrate Yeshua, they are different. Even if some things seem to be the same, such as decorations and use of a tree, or eggs and bunnies… they are not the same.
These legalists also have just enough knowledge to be wrong.
For instance, the calendar thing- in the ancient days, the new moon had to be verified by at least three people, and if the weather was overcast then they couldn’t validate if there was a new moon or not until they could actually see the darn thing! That means their new moons could not be as exact and trustworthy as modern day calendars.
The modern Jewish calendar was created by Hillel II in 358/359 AD. Before 359 AD, the Sanhedrin used testimonies of witnesses seeing the new crescent moon. Hillel II replaced this with a calculated system. Hillel’s calendar relies on a 19-year cycle (Metonic cycle), containing 12 common years and 7 leap years (which add a second month of Adar), and the reason he did this was so that Jews in the Diaspora would be able to celebrate the Holy Days at the same time.
You want an absolutely exact calendar? Fine, here’s how to get it- create a time machine, go back to the first day of freedom from Egypt and move through time marking down each new moon for the past 3,300 or so years.
And to add one more nail to their coffin, God doesn’t live on a linear plane of existence as we do, and I truly believe that if we all agree to a certain calendar, and we all celebrate the same Holy Day at the same time, then we are in accordance with the Torah.
The one thing that bothers me more than anything else about these neo-legalistic theologies is that they insult God. How? By clearly indicating that God does not know our hearts and minds, that he is so egocentric and obsessive-compulsive that if we use Adonai instead of Jehovah, he will reject one of those prayers. They imply that by using “Lord” we are praying to Ba’al, and that God can’t tell the difference.
Now, as for you Holy Namers, I offer this bit of wisdom:
We are saved by faith, not by pronunciation.
Can you see how legalistic these ideologies are? They have absolutely no bearing on salvation, since salvation comes from faithfully believing that Yeshua is the Messiah and through the blood he shed we can find forgiveness of sin, which is the only way to be allowed into God’s presence, which is what being “saved” means.
And don’t even get me started on the Trinity thing!
There are so many religious differences not just within Christianity, but also within Judaism, and everything that is not specified in the Torah is man-made. That doesn’t mean a man-made ceremony or tradition is bad, unless it overrides and is given higher precedence than what God said to do in his Torah.
And, obviously, if what your religion teaches ignores anything from the Torah, then it is a religion that rejects God- something his son, the Messiah Yeshua, NEVER said or taught anyone they should do.
So what’s the point? The point is that Moses was right when he said that obeying God is not so hard (Deuteronomy 30:11-14). The issue is whether you try to be obedient to God, or try to be obedient to a man-made religion.
We will all face God one day, and when I do I will be able to tell him that I tried to obey his Torah. If your religion has taught you that the Torah is only for Jews, then you will have to tell God that you tried to obey what some man-made religion told you to do and you didn’t obey his Torah.
So, nu? … which one of those forms of worship do you think God will honor?
Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.
That’s it for this week, so L’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!