It is often asked by our fellow Christians, “Are you trying to be a Jew?” Or they might say something like this, “I am a Baptist, not a Jew.” Both the question and the statement are misunderstandings of the issue.
I am a Baptist pastor’s wife whose family has adopted the Messianic lifestyle. I am not a Jew, nor do I think that I can become one physically. However, I am a disciple of a Jew. His name is Yeshua/Jesus. This is an important distinction that must be made. As a believer in Yeshua I have been filled with the Holy Spirit/ Ruach HaKodesh and it is His job to transform my life into the image of Yeshua, the Son.
In Matthew 28 the disciples were told to make disciples. This term is very specific. A disciple is a student of a teacher/rabbi. The student or disciple seeks to pattern his life after his rabbi. In 1 John 2:6 we are told to walk as our rabbi walked if we are going to abide in Him. A disciple desires to place each step in the step of his rabbi and not veer off the path of his master. The disciple should end up looking exactly like his rabbi so that he teaches what his rabbi taught and lives as his rabbi lived. This is the call of the disciple.
Earlier in my walk with the Lord I often wondered if our faith really looked like His life. I wanted so much to look like Him, but there seemed to be a disconnect from what I read about His life to the way I lived out my faith. He lived as a Jew, completely submitted to the Torah or instructions/teachings of His Father. Yet we are often told in the church that the teachings of the Father are not for us today. Yeshua fulfilled them so we do not have to. So, let me get this straight. Yeshua obeyed and lived out the teachings of His Father so we would not have to obey and live out those teachings.
If that is the case than our lives do not look like our rabbi and never will. In fact, our lives would be the exact opposite. Don’t get me wrong, I know that Christians love the Father very much and want to please Him and for the most part they obey much of His Torah.
However, there seems to be an attitude of not wanting to look like a Jew. Many will say, “I am a Gentile”. While this may be true of our physical heritage, it is not true of our spiritual heritage. We have been adopted into the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the blood of Yeshua. We have been grafted into the tree of Israel. We have been made citizens of God’s household, Israel. We may have been far away but now in Yeshua we have been brought near.
To make it clear, we are not to steal the identity of the Jewish people. We do not replace them in any way. We do, however, enlarge them. The God of Israel takes us gentiles and enlarges His people and makes us one. We are now one people, believing Jew and Gentile. All those who come under the banner of Adonai through Yeshua are one people.
But what does this have to do with being a disciple? It is not my goal or aim to live like a Jew, but I do seek to live like a particular Jew, Yeshua. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Messiah.”(TLV) Paul, a Jewish disciple of the Jewish Messiah, is telling gentiles to follow his example in their walk as believers.
James in Acts 15:21 makes it clear that he fully expects the gentile believers to be going to their local synagogue each Shabbat to hear Moses read. He expects them to learn from Moses and so follow the example of their fellow Jewish believers in how to live this life.
The disciples were Jewish believers and never once intended for the faith to be disconnected from their Jewish way of life. After all it was God Himself that had instructed the redeemed of Israel on how to live. That is right, the instructions of the Father were given to a redeemed people. They had been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Then they were taken to the mountain and taught how to live, how to love God and their neighbor.
To be sure this is not a matter of justification, but sanctification. We are saved only by the blood of Yeshua. I do not seek to make a Gentile a Jew or a Baptist a Jew, I am merely pointing out that we follow a Jew. And, once we are saved, we must learn to live the life of a disciple to a Jew, and not just any Jew, but the King of the Jews.
Yeshua was not a Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Catholic or any other denomination. He was a Jew who lived a Jewish lifestyle. To separate our faith from this way of life is to, in part, separate ourselves from who He was and is. I know that is not the intention, but it is the result. If we truly want to be transformed into the image of Yeshua/Jesus than we need to walk in His footsteps so that we can completely look like our master. Or to say it another way, we need to be totally surrendered to the Holy Spirit/Ruach HaKodesh in being transformed into His image, the image of the Son.
Yeshua is our Rabbi, He is our example. The ONLY perfect example of how to live a life that pleases the Father. Therefore, if we seek to please the Father than we must live as Yeshua lived.
So, I ask the question to anyone who seeks to be transformed into the image of Yeshua. What is keeping you from living the life of a Messianic Believer and following in the steps of your Rabbi?
For the most part over the last two thousand years the church has done a fairly decent job of evangelism. Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that on this topic the church has had a unified message, Jesus died for our sins, was buried and three days later rose again. This message has been communicated fairly well.
However, that cannot be said of discipleship in the church for the last two thousand years. Discipleship seems to be the church’s area of weakness. We have all been in an interview where the perspective employer asks us to state our strength and weakness. Well for the church its strength is evangelism and its weakness is discipleship. In this area the church cannot find its unified message and when part of the church seems to find a message it cannot seem to stay on message for very long. Why is this?
How many times has someone received Christ and went to their pastor and asked the question, “OK, now what? Now that I am saved how do I live this life?” and the pastor literally stumbles over what to say. That same pastor spoke with great conviction and assurance when it came to the salvation message, but now seems to not know exactly what to say when it comes to instructing one who has believed on how to live out this life.
The most common answers from the church are to read your Bible, pray and maybe join a Bible study group. With all respect to pastors, that answer just doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t tell someone who truly wants to know, how to live out their Christian faith on a day to day basis. Does God tell us how to do this or did He leave us hanging to figure it out ourselves as we flounder through this thing called life?
To be completely honest if we only rely on the New Testament to help us figure this out, we will be left with a lot more questions than answers. Especially, if we have to wade through the theological hoops our pastors send us through. What do I mean by that? Simple, John in 1 John 2:3-6 tells us to live or walk as Jesus walked, but our pastors tell us that Jesus only lived that way because it was cultural to His time and place and we don’t really have to live like He did and by all means don’t go back and read the Old Testament and start asking the question, “Does this still apply to me today?”
Please understand I am not trying to be harsh or critical toward pastors, I am married to one. What I do want us to understand is that we in the church have put theological blinders on ourselves and allowed the enemy to convince us of certain things concerning Scripture and the nature of the Christian life. Yes, we as Christians have to be willing to take an honest look at our historical and current understanding of how we are to follow our Messiah. We can no longer just put our hands over our eyes and hears and refuse to see and hear the truth, we are running out of time and we all know it.
So again, why is the area of discipleship such a problem? First there is the Biblical reason. God did leave us with instructions on how to live life as His child and we have refused to see it as such. The short answer is that the Torah/Law of God is His instruction manual to this life as His child. The longer answer is that the word “torah” itself means instruction and that its root word is actually an archery term meaning “to hit the mark”. That becomes even more interesting when one realizes that the word for sin is also an archery term that means “to miss the mark”.
Let that sink in, ‘sin’ is to miss the mark and the root word of torah is to hit the mark, while the word ‘torah’ itself means instruction. Instruction for what? Torah is our God given instruction manual on how to hit the mark of righteousness and live a holy or set apart life before God. It really is that simple. The Torah is God’s discipleship program.
So, the reason why Discipleship in the church is such a weakness is that it has refused to recognize God’s Discipleship program and has constantly tried to come up with its own, with a manmade system of discipleship. God has never allowed those things to work and never will, especially in a lasting sense.
The historical reason for our discipleship problem is much more complicated and even evil. The church rather early on started purposely pulling away from anything that looked Jewish. These were decisions made by gentiles and based on antisemitism.
The church councils, for example, told the people it was illegal to Judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but instead must work on that day. The exact opposite of the Father’s instructions for His people. They wanted a clear break and difference between them and the Jews. This difference came from their own imaginations and not from Scripture.
Sadly, we have been living with those decisions for nearly two thousand years and have been convinced that they are somehow Biblical when that is not the case at all. Even the Roman Catholic church admits that they changed the day of worship from Saturday (the seventh day) to Sunday (the first day) on their own authority and not that of Scripture.
I want to go back to Scripture and see just what did the New Testament writers say. Let’s go back to John in 1 John 3:4 where he states that sin is the breaking of the Law (God’s Law/Torah). John also states in 1 John 1:9, that if we sin, we can confess our sin and that God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sin.
Yet we are told that the Law of God/Torah is not for us or that it has been superseded. Do you see the problem? If the Law/Torah no longer applies then we do not sin and therefore we have no need of confession. Yet John also says that if we say we have no sin than we make God out to be a liar 1 John 1:10). He also goes on to say that if we are born of God then we will not live in a lifestyle of sin (1 John 3:6-9). In other words, we will want to live righteously before God and get rid of all sin in our lives through confession and turning away from sin.
So how does that Bible define righteousness and truth? We can find both of these and much more in Psalm 119. This is not only the longest chapter in the Bible, but it is also a loving description of the Torah/Law/Commands of God/The Word of God. His Torah is truth, it is the way, the life (according to Deuteronomy 30), the restorer of our life, righteous(ness), freedom, eternal and so much more.
Speaking of Deuteronomy 30 Moses also says in that chapter that God’s Torah is not too difficult for the people of God and strangely enough John reiterates this idea in 1 John 5:3.
So, what’s the deal? Is the Torah done away with for the life of the believer or not? I would definitely say, “No”!
Notice I am speaking in terms of the life of one who is already a Believer in Yeshua/Jesus. The Torah/Law of God was never a means to salvation, it was always the way in which His people who already believe live, love Him and each other.
In this perspective the giving of the Torah/Law was an act of grace. It is not Law vs. Grace. The Law is part of the grace of God toward His people. He did not leave us to figure this walk out on our own. He was gracious to us and told us how to live through Moses and then showed us through His Son, Yeshua/Jesus and finally gives us the power to live it through His Holy Spirit/Ruach HaKodesh.
Jesus showed us how to live a perfect, holy, set apart life. It was not a cultural life, it was a Biblical life, a life pleasing to His Father. He loved His Father the way His Father asked to be loved. He loved others the way His Father told Him to love them. He was a perfectly obedient Son. Why would we not want to follow Him in His example? How can we follow Him if we insist on living and walking in a different way?
Is evangelism important? Of course, it is! We need to tell others about what God did for them through His Son. The world needs to know that God loved them so much that He sent His Son. Only through the blood of the Lamb Yeshua are we saved, but is that the be all end all of discipleship? No, it is not! The believer needs to know how to please the One in whom they believe. We need to know what our obligations are toward our Father now that we are part of His family.
That is what the Torah is, it is the rules of the family and one must be part of the family first for them to apply. One does not become adopted into a family by obeying the rules of the family, but is adopted first and then taught the rules of the family so that the family can function as one unit. Was that not the prayer of our Savior? Doesn’t He want us to be one with each other and with Him and the Father? Yes, He does! How can that happen if we are all going in different directions when it comes to discipleship?
Then there is the issue of the Great Commission where we are told by Yeshua in Matthew 28 to make disciples, not just converts. How does He tell us to make disciples? We are to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and to teach them to observe all things that He taught.
What did He teach? He taught the teachings of His Father, The Torah. How many times in the Gospel of John does Jesus say that His words are not His own, but His Fathers? Many.
Moses even stated in Deuteronomy 18, when describing the prophet to come (ie. The Messiah), that he would have the words of God in his mouth and Moses was not talking about different words from what the Father had given him.
So, does the Word of God change? No, according to Scripture itself in Isaiah 40:8 the Word of God stands forever, as does 1 Peter 1:25. It does not change, it stands! Why would God change His word if it stands forever? He would not! He is unchanging and His Word stands forever!
Yeshua obeyed and taught the Torah. The sermon on the Mount, the only sermon recorded for us, is His teaching of the Torah. It begins with the Beatitudes that sound like a Psalm.
He then goes on to speak of not abandoning the Torah but practicing it and the importance of teaching it. His standards are high, and it is not as if He has a higher standard than His Father. No, He is giving the proper interpretation.
For any commandment that is given by God there is the issue of the heart at its core. Adonai sees the heart, not just the outward appearance or observance. That does not mean that the outward observance is not important. Instead it means that the observance should flow from a heart truly devoted to Him. Out of such a heart the observance of the commandment will be true and pure.
To observe the commandments with an impure heart is sin and to have a pure heart and not actually observe the commandment is also sin. Both are disobedience. It cannot just be interesting information to enlighten our hearts, it must move to observing what has been learned to make a true and complete transformation in the person.
Let us love Him with a pure and clean heart so that we may serve Him through obedience to His commands!
This is what we are to strive for through the power of the Holy Spirit!
Isaiah 8:13-16 says, “ADONAI/The LORD Shaddai is the only one you are to regard as holy, He alone are you to fear, He alone are you to dread, and He will be a sanctuary; but for both houses of Israel He will be a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem He will be a trap and a snare. Many of them will stumble; they will fall and be broken, they will be snared and captured. Bind up the testimony and seal up the law/Torah among my disciples.”
In Romans 9:33 Paul says that the stone that makes men stumble is Yeshua and in 1 Timothy 2:6 he calls Yeshua the testimony that was given in its time. So, Yeshua is the stumbling block and the testimony.
Historically, Christians have held tight to the testimony of Jesus and the Jews have held tight to the Torah. However, as we see in the Isaiah passage it is about both.
Revelation 12:17 lets us know it is the ones who hold to the testimony of Yeshua and keep the commandments of God that the dragon goes after. Both are important!
Finally, we see this in Isaiah 8:20, “To the Law/Torah and the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they will have no dawn.”
Is it any wonder that the enemy wants us to keep these two, the testimony (Yeshua) and the Torah, apart? It is that all too familiar strategy of divide and conquer. Let’s not give him that satisfaction! Let us hold to the testimony, Yeshua, and the Torah!
Now, as we begin to witness to our older brother, the Jews, we need to be honest with ourselves and them. We have presented in the past a Messiah they could not recognize. Not only have we presented a Gentile looking Messiah devoid of His Jewishness, but we have also said that because He fulfilled the Torah/Law that we don’t have to obey it. That is and has been a big turn off to the Jewish people and rightly so.
We have essentially said to them, “believe in Jesus to come to God, but don’t serve and obey God.” That is essentially what they hear. And it is and has been a huge clue to them that the one we are presenting to them, at least the way we have presented Him, sounds and looks more like a false prophet than the real Messiah written about in the Tanakh (what we call the Old Testament). Let me explain this statement.
Deuteronomy 13 says that even if someone prophesies and it comes true or does signs and wonders (miracles), but they lead you away from your God and from serving Him they are a false prophet. Since to serve Him means to obey Him the false prophet is encouraging you to disobey the one you claim to serve.
Even Yeshua when speaking of those who come to Him and say, “Lord, Lord didn’t we do things in Your Name,” he said to them, “Go away from me you workers of Lawlessness, I never knew you.”(Matthew 7:22-23) This comment of Yeshua takes place in the context of a discussion about false prophets. This should be very sobering to us. We need to be very careful about how we present our Messiah.
Yeshua was a Jew and practiced the Torah. If He did not He would have been a sinner and not an acceptable sacrifice. He not only practiced the Torah, He also taught the Torah. If He didn’t He would have been coming against the teachings of His Father. He Himself said that His words were the words of His Father (John 8:28, 14:24). Remember, He is the Living Torah, which also means He would have been coming against Himself. He would have also, at the least, been calling Himself the least in the Kingdom according to His own words (Matthew 5:17-20).
Yeshua is the Living Torah, He practiced the Torah, He taught the Torah and promised the coming of the Holy Spirit who would also teach us the Torah (John 14:26 & 16:13-15, Romans 8).
My point is this: Let’s be honest about our mistakes of the past and seek to rectify them with truth and grace. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past.
I also want to say I am not passing judgement on those who have taught this. I believe those who have come before us have done the best that they knew to do from what was taught to them. It is not about them, but about us and how we present Yeshua now and in the future, now that the LORD has opened our eyes.
“To the Law/Torah and the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they will have no dawn.”
I wanted to post some articles I wrote recently for our congregation. These articles speak to what I believe is the Heart of God, for His people to be one!
We must turn our ears toward Him and Shema. To Shema means not only to hear but to also be ready and willing to obey. To be like a child who loves for a parent or teacher to pick them for a task, ready and willing to do the will of that parent. That is how we are to be with our Heavenly Father. Before Elohim spoke to the people at Mount Sinai He told them to consecrate themselves. He wanted them set apart for His Word and His ways. He wanted to be able to meet with them. Yeshua prayed in John 17 that we would be set apart, consecrated/sanctified, as He is set set apart. Let us truly be set apart to our Father and ready and willing to Shema to His every Word.
Let us remember what sin is: the breaking of the Law according to 1 John 3:4. Let us set our minds and all our hearts on the will of God by being obedient to the Word of God. As Yeshua said in John 14, “If you love me, obey my commandments.” Let us not just speak of our love, but also show our love so we will not be like those of whom God spoke when He said, “they speak of me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Let us draw near to Him with the love of obedience. After all, as James said, “faith without works is dead.”
We have all prayed for revival to come to God’s people, but what really brings revival? We desire to see a true move of God. We want to see people get saved and yet we are all aware that true revival must happen with His people first. We have heard sermons on 2 Chronicles 7:14 perhaps many times where it says, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land.” We want the forgiveness, we want the healing of the land, we believe we are humbling ourselves and praying and seeking His face, but what about that other one – turn from their wicked ways? But if you notice the humbling, praying, seeking His face, and turning from our wicked ways is all one move. In other words, we can’t really do the first three without doing the fourth too. That is giving God lip service and not all of us. True revival does begin with His people. Let us seek after Him with all that we are and continue to turn from our wicked ways while humbling ourselves, praying and seeking His face!
Interestingly enough the definition for sin is to miss the mark. We don’t need someone to teach us how to miss the mark, we are already good at that, we need someone to teach us how to hit the mark. Yes, the definition for the word “sin” is an archery term meaning to miss the mark. While the definition of the root word for Torah/First Five Books of the Bible/The Books of Moses, of which Yeshua said spoke of Him, is also an archery term meaning to hit the mark. The word Torah itself means instructions. So the Torah is God’s instructions for hitting the mark, the mark of righteousness, which is the opposite of our wicked ways. In Psalms 19:7 it says, “The law (the Torah) is perfect and it revives the soul.” What revives? The law of God/the Torah for it is perfect and as Paul says in Romans 7:12 that the law/Torah is holy. Let us live by the holy and righteous ways of God, His instructions, not by our evil, wicked and lawless ways which are the ways of the evil/lawless one. As Paul also said at the very end of Romans 3, we are to uphold/establish the Law of God.
In Isaiah 32:17 it says, “The fruit of righteousness will be peace, the result of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever.” That is the effect and fruit of righteousness, but what is righteousness? We find that in Psalms 119 in verse 137 it states, “Righteous are you, YHWH (LORD), and your laws are right.” In verse 160 we see this, “All Your Words are true; all Your Righteous Laws are eternal.” So it is the Law of God that is righteous and eternal, just as He is righteous and eternal. So it would make sense that in the first part of verse 165 of that same chapter we find this, “Great shalom/peace have they who love your Torah/Law”.
We wait for Him who is righteous and while we wait we obey His righteous decrees and in this there is peace.
We will continue these tomorrow! Please stay with me I am leading to a very important climax!
Most of you are probably aware that the New Covenant is not just a New Testament idea. It is actually found in the Old Testament in the book of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 31:31-33 it says, “The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.”(NIV)
Did you notice who it was for? The New Covenant is with Israel and Judah. So if this covenant is to be for us we have to be a part of Israel. Are we? Paul tells us we are in Ephesians 2:11-13 & 19-20, “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in the body by the hands of men) — remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ…Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.”(NIV) The New Covenant is for us because we have been made a part of Israel by the blood of Jesus. Therefore, the covenants are also for us, all the covenants of promise.
Is not the New Covenant a covenant of promise? But what does the New Covenant do? It puts the Law on our minds and our hearts. Is it the same Law as the Law of Moses? Yes, however, it is different in this respect, it is not just on tablets of stones as it was in the days of Moses, it is put on the hearts and in the minds of God’s people.
Ezekiel gives us another glimpse of this. Ezekiel 36:26-27 states, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”(NIV) It is the job of the Spirit to help us be obedient to the Law of God.
It is our faith in Jesus and what He did for us on the cross that allows the Holy Spirit to be given to us as a deposit guarenteeing what is to come. That is why Jesus could say that the cup of redemption at His last Passover was the New Covenant in His blood.
Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel speak in terms of this making Him our God and us His people. As for Ephesians we are part of Israel based on the APOSTLES and PROPHETS with CHRIST JESUS as the cornerstone of our faith. Our faith is not just a New Testament faith.
Is it any wonder that John in 1 John 3:4 says, “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.” Sin is the breaking of the Law. We reject the moving of the Spirit when we disobey the very thing He wants us to obey, the Law. There is power in obedience and it leads to righteousness and holiness according to Paul in Romans chapter 6. Let us not be slaves to sin and death, but to obedience. Let us live as citizens of Israel and members of the Covenant community.
Striving to obey the God I love through the blood of Jesus and the power of the Spirit,
In Matthew 5:17-20 Jesus says this, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”(NIV)
Let’s look at this passage carefully and honestly. First of all, Jesus makes the very blunt statement that He has not come to abolish the Law or Torah, but fulfill it. So we ask. If He did not come to abolish it, did He come to change it? Again, let’s ask another question. If He changes it is that a problem? Most in the church would say that it is not a problem since He is the Son of God. However, remember that in His first coming He came to be the spotless Lamb of God. In order for Him to be spotless He would have to be sinless.
John says in I John 3 that sin if the breaking of the Law. What Law? The Law of God or what is commonly referred to as the Law of Moses. Here is the problem in Deuteronomy 4 and 12 it says that one is not to add or subtract from the Law. If one does then that person is a lawbreaker and therefore a sinner. Here is where we have to be honest. To add to or subtract from the Law would be to change it. Thereby, making Jesus a sinner and not the spotless Lamb.
When Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law, He meant all of it. That would imply what He did in His first coming and what He will do in His second since both are referred to in the Law and since He did not accomplish it all in His first coming. This would include the prophetic elements of the fall Festivals and even some of the last chapters of Deuteronomy among others. Remember He only fulfilled the spring Festivals in His first coming.
Then Jesus says that none of the Law would go away until heaven and earth disappear. It all must be accomplished. We know that heaven and earth are still here. Therefore, we know that there is still part of the Law for Him to fulfill and accomplish. He still has part of the Law to fulfill in His second coming. Therefore, the Law, all of it, still stands because not the least stroke of the pen would be done away with until He accomplished all of it and heaven and earth are still here.
I have a question. Is Yeshua/Jesus the least in the Kingdom of Heaven? Absolutely not! Did you catch how Yeshua makes the distinction between least and great? The one who is least is the one who sets aside even the smallest of His laws and teaches others to do the same. So if Jesus taught others to set aside any law from God by His own definition He would be called the least in the His Father’s Kingdom. Is that the case? No, so how can the former of Him setting one or more aside be the case? It can’t!
However, the one who obeys the laws of God and teaches others to do so is called great in God’s Kingdom. We know that Yeshua obeyed His Father and was our spotless Lamb. However, to be great in His Kingdom He would also have to teach His people to obey His Father, even the least of the laws. He is absolutely great and the only one who has ever completely obeyed the Father and taught His people to do the same.
It is important to remember that every time Yeshua clashed with the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law it was over the Tradition of the Elders that the Pharisees and teachers equated with the Law. Jesus firmly rejected that because the Tradition was really a list a things added to and subtracted from the Law of His Father. They found ways to not fully obey the Law or they added on boundaries around the Law. Which the Law itself forbids. That is why Yeshua said ones righteousness must surpass theirs’.
It should be our heart, as it was our Saviors, to obey our Father. Yeshua said in John 14 that if we love Him than we would keep His commands. He also makes it clear in that chapter that He and His Father are one and if that is the case than His commands or Law is no different from His Father’s. If it were they would not be one and Jesus would be a sinner and we would forever be lost. We must remember that Scripture says God and Jesus are the same yesterday, today, and forever.
May it be our heart to obey every word that comes from the mouth of God out of our love for Him!
Esther's Legacy 