There has always been this issue between obedience and faith, with most people believing they are exclusionary.
I see them as complementary; and, more than that, I believe what is more important than being obedient is why we want to be obedient.
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In the Book of the Prophets, God sometimes tells the people he is more interested in obedience than sacrifice. Now, at first glance, this seems to be self-negating since sacrificing is being obedient.
I believe what God meant was that he is more concerned with our desire to be obedient than just going through the motions.
Legalism is widely misunderstood by most Christians to be obedience to the Torah commandments; they see doing what the Torah says as rejecting the salvation Yeshua (Jesus) provided by means of his sacrifice.
I have heard Christians tell me that because I do all that “Jewish” stuff I am not really saved because I am under the law, and not under Grace.
Oy, if only they knew how idiotic that statement is!
Yes, idiotic because Grace does not trump obedience: Grace is not forgiveness or salvation, it is God’s willingness to forgive (Ezekiel 18:23). Look, if you continue to reject what God says to do, choosing instead to follow what some man-made religion tells you to do (or what it tells you you don’t have to do), then Grace won’t be coming your way any time soon.
God knows the heart, and he knows the mind, and what he wants is a desire to be obedient. If you are being obedient in a legalistic way, meaning doing what God said to do to earn points by being correct, then you have failed before you start because your heart isn’t into it; besides that, no human being can be 100% Torah obedient 100% of the time.
Yeah, Yeshua was human and he was always Torah obedient, but he was also the son of God and filled completely with the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit), so he had an advantage no one else ever had, or ever will have.
I try to be as obedient to the Torah as I can for the simple reason that God told us this is how he wants us to worship him and how he wants us to treat each other. That means anything some religion, any religion, teaches against obeying the Torah is not what God wants.
I don’t know about you, but I want to do what God wants me to do.
How can anyone say doing what God said to do is wrong?
How can anyone believe that God sent his son to us to tell us we don’t have to obey his father anymore?
Yeshua obeyed the Torah and was resurrected in God’s presence for all eternity, so how can anyone believe that not doing what Yeshua did will have the same result?
Hard questions with hard answers.
I will go as far as to say this: any religion that tells you you can ignore the Torah is leading you directly to destruction.
But I am almost forgetting today’s message: it isn’t really obedience as much as your desire to be obedient that really counts.
God knows we can’t be perfect; that is why he sent Yeshua. DUH!
God is looking at our heart to see if we want to obey him. If we desire to do as he said, I believe he counts that as righteousness on our part, just as he counted Abraham’s faithful acceptance of what God said as righteousness on Abraham’s part.
For the record, God told Isaac Abraham was blessed because he did everything God told him to do! (Genesis 26:5)
You know, when you think about it, we all wish we could be as faithful as Abraham, and to believe what God said to do is because he wants the best for us, is being as faithful as Abraham.
It comes down to this: if you believe that you can reject the Torah and be saved, your faith is more in people than in God.
After his terrible sins with Bat-Sheba and the murder of his friend, Uriah the Hittite, David asked God to create in him a clean heart and to renew a right spirit in him (Psalm 51). He knew that what God wants is a heart for him, and not just performing some physical acts of worship.
David asked God to search his heart: are you brave enough to do the same?
So, nu?… where is your heart? Is it to please God or to please some religion that tells you to ignore God?
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!