No one can escape having to obey someone at some time. We grow up obeying our parents, then it is our bosses, and we should always obey our spouse.
But what I want to talk about why we obey orders, and why we don’t.
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When we are growing up, we receive orders from our parents, which are usually meant to protect us from harming ourselves, and almost always contain some form of restriction to something we want to do, such as riding our bikes down a vertical sloping hill, running in to the street without looking first, or picking on our younger siblings.
Then we grow up and go to school, where we are given homework to complete. We obey for two reasons: one, to not get in trouble and two, to get a better grade. We obey those orders to gain something for ourselves, and it doesn’t really interfere too much with what we want to do, so there isn’t any great sacrifice on our part, which makes it easier to obey.
Eventually, we get a job and are given orders to obey. Again, we do so because if we don’t we suffer loss of money, inability to provide for our family, and we can’t order from Amazon or pay for Netflix- terrible sacrifices we have to make for not obeying, so we obey to avoid losing what we want. Unlike the orders from parents or school, which are designed to help us, work orders are designed to help the company. And like homework, we can easily schedule the orders from our Boss into our daily nine-to-five so it doesn’t take any real sacrifice on our part.
Where are we now? We have established that orders from parents and school are for our own good, and the ones from our parents usually require some sacrifice (we can’t do the crazy things we want to) and we obey them in order to stay out of trouble. Orders from work are also obeyed to stay out of trouble, but they have one difference- those orders are not for our good but designed for the good of the company.
Now, let’s talk about orders from God.
God gives us orders (called commandments) for the same reason our parents do- to protect us. Not so much from skinning our knees or losing a toy, but so that we can have eternal life in his presence.
God tells us in Ezekiel 18:23 that he doesn’t want anyone to die (that means Jews AND Gentiles), and since God sees things on an eternal plane that means he doesn’t want anyone to spend eternity outside of his presence.
The commandments are really easy to understand, and Moses tells us they are easy to do, which- one by one- they are. The hard part is doing them all, all the time, which is why God also gave us a “Do-Over Clause”, which is the sacrificial system. In fact, he spends the first seven chapters of Leviticus explaining it to us.
And, since he also knew the temple would be destroyed, in order to give people time to accept Yeshua as the Messiah, he sent him to replace the need to sacrifice an animal at the temple to receive forgiveness of sin (as the Torah required) some 40 years before the temple was gone.
So, if the commandments from God are easy to obey, and we have a revised “Do-Over Clause” through Yeshua, why is it that so many people refuse to obey orders that are from God which are designed to ensure that we spend eternity joyfully in the presence of the Lord?
I don’t have an exact answer, but I think I have one that makes sense… just like we don’t want to always obey our parents because it requires us to give up something we want to do, obeying God also requires we sacrifice something we want to do.
I know, I am also wondering what things could possibly be more important than eternal joy?
Well, eating anything you want to, not having to fast for an entire day once a year, not wanting to have to live a sexually righteous life as a single person (i.e., not fornicating), and any number of other (dare I say it?) hedonistic practices that a Torah-rejecting lifestyle allows.
Yeshua told us in Matthew 16:24 that to follow him we have to give up a lot of what we like, but so many Christians have been taught the exact opposite of what Yeshua said!
Christianity has, for the most part, taught that Gentiles do not have to follow the Torah and that all they need to do is follow the Law of Christ, which is not much more than being a good person and loving each other.
They forget that Yeshua said no one is good but God (Mark 10:18), and to love one another is not Yeshua’s order, but God ordered that in Leviticus 19:18.
The truth is there is no “Law of Christ”; that is a term created by Gentiles who had already mutated the Jewish movement to accept Yeshua as God’s Messiah into an anti-Torah religion that says it replaced Jews as God’s chosen.
Oh yeah! Replacement Theology was one of the very first tenets of the newly created Christian religion, being preached as early as the second century.
Christianity has taught that the Torah is only for Jews and Gentiles are saved simply by believing in Yeshua (whatever the heck that is supposed to mean), even though that is completely the opposite of what Yeshua told us we have to do to follow him in Marks’ Gospel (which is repeated in Luke).
To conclude, I want to ask my Gentile friends who live by rejecting the Torah, as they have been taught to do, this question: God gave the commandments in the Torah specifically to ensure that those who obey receive blessings (Deuteronomy 28) and to make sure that they get to spend eternity in God’s presence, so even if you have been taught you don’t need to obey them, why would you not want to obey them if you get so much out of it?
And before you reply with the conditioned “church” rhetoric about “all I need is Jesus”, remember that Jesus said you need to sacrifice almost everything to follow him, so ask yourself, “What sacrifices have I made?”
Compare that to what Yeshua said you need to give up and then decide if you are really following him, or following some man-made religion that rejects what God said to do.
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!