We are fast approaching the celebration of the Passover Feast. It is so rich in symbols and
shadows and truths of Messiah our Passover Lamb that are most relevant for us today. The
Feasts of the Lord are appointed times set by YHWH. We are invited, as believers in Messiah, to
celebrate these Feasts. They are rehearsals for us. They prepare us for His return. They teach us
about holiness and obedience in our daily life. They teach us of the righteous walk in
preparation for His return. They are invitations and Sabbaths of the Lord. He asks His set apart
ones to come abide with Him in covenant fellowship. If you want to know more about these
Feasts of the Lord, I invite you to visit our website at takingrootinjacob.com under the teaching
heading of “His Appointed Times.”
What I want to dive into in this teaching is the relevance of Torah for you and me even as Torah
observant Gentile and Jewish believers in Messiah prepare for the Feast of Passover which is
what Christians refer to as “The Lord’s Supper.”
Calvin is recognized by the Church as a most respected theologian. He was also a great student
of the Hebrew Scriptures. He said, “God prefers obedience to all sacrifices.” He also said that
“obedience is the key to our relationship with God. Since man cannot of himself somehow
mystically know how to conduct life and worship, then God must show him. And that is so man
at least has an opportunity to do it right and not offend the Creator. These detailed
instructions (of Torah) are there to eliminate any potential excuses from men, such as they
had no choice but to make it up from their own thoughts, being ignorant of what God actually
expected.” Keep that in mind as we go along here as we answer the question should we
Gentiles study Torah.
Why is obedience so important to us as believers? Well first and foundationally, corrupt man
has no idea on his own of how YHWH wants to be worshiped. Torah and the Feasts of Leviticus
23 help us to understand how He is to be worshiped. Today, in the church, much of worship
and our observances are man made. They are in many ways carried out in a way we prefer, not
in the way God explains it in our Bible. For most of the church today YHWH’s do’s and don’ts
and His teachings and instructions called Torah do not matter. They are even relegated to the
“irrelevant” category. Since the advent of Yeshua the Messiah the church is of the belief that as
long as the effort is sincere that seems to be good enough. Nothing in either the Old or New
Testament indicating how we are to worship and how we are to conduct our lives has become
of no consequence simply because Messiah has come. That despite His command to us of
obedience to His Word-all of it, not just the parts we like. He has not changed. He still says, “if
you love Me, obey My commandments.” He has not changed, and He has not done away with
this matter of obedience to His Word. He knows that obedience is our way to death of the old
nature and transformation of the mind.
Yeshua said in Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law (Torah) or the
Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” He did not come to exchange the Torah for
grace. When we read of the many teachings on this passage, we see that the word “fulfill” is
taken to mean something has been ended. It is finished.
Many in the church erroneously take this sentence to mean, “I did not come to destroy the Law
(Torah) but to end it.” That is simply not what is being said here. If we do a word study, we find
that the Greek word for “end, or to finish or complete something is the word telos. But that is
not the word used here in context. The word used in our passage for “fulfill” is the word pleroo.
It means “to full up with something, “to make something abundant” and “to bring something to
the state of its fullest intent.” Yeshua is telling us He was going to take the Torah-the teachings
and instructions of YHWH, which were full of shadows and types and bring them to their fullest
intent and purposes they had always pointed to. Yeshua went on in the Matthew 5 passage to
say that anyone who taught that even one iota of the Torah was abolished as a result of His
coming would be considered the least in the kingdom.
To summarize. Yeshua clearly said we need to turn from this idea that Torah is somehow
obsolete and no longer relevant and we need to realize we have an obligation to be mindful of
His will and His way in our worship, in the conduct of our daily lives and that we follow
YHWH’s ordained principles found in Torah. We must think about what we are saying when
we pronounce Torah to be irrelevant. Yeshua is the Living Torah and as such when we say
Torah is obsolete and irrelevant, we are pronouncing Him to be obsolete and irrelevant. Do
we really want to promote that false teaching?
The God ordained principles for worship and the holy life are found in Torah. The New
Testament has much more to do with Yeshua’s life and how He fulfilled the Old Testament
prophecies in order to prove He was who He said He was-Messiah. It has much less to do with
laying down the principles of Torah. Why is that so? Quite clearly it would have been
redundant. Those principles were already set in place for us in Torah. Some will say, “if Jesus
did not say it then we do not have to do it.” Do you see the problem with such a statement as
this? John in John 1 makes it clear to us that Jesus is the Word of God. He is the whole Word
which includes Torah. Yeshua and YHWH are one. He has always been. When John made it
clear that Yeshua is the Word and that He is God and was with God before the world existed,
the written word John was referring to is Torah or what we call the Old Testament. There was
no New Testament in existence when John or any other of the writers of the New Testament
wrote their letters.
One other thing needs to be clarified here. The word “Law” used for Torah in the New
Testament is a poor, very poor term for Torah. It gives us a very wrong impression of Torah.
That is the Hebrew word that states the truth of Torah. Torah is the teachings and instructions
of YHWH.
So, now we ask the question, why do we Gentiles and Jewish believers in Yeshua need bother
to study Torah and the Hebrew Scriptures? The second question that follows on the heels of
the first is are we to follow the teachings and commands of the Torah? If we are to follow all
the laws and commands, then how do we do that as people living today and so far removed
from the culture we read about in the Bible? What does it mean for a Gentile disciple of Yeshua
to be Torah observant, if that is what we are to be?
To begin with, over half of the 613 commands and ordinances of the Torah are concerned with
ritual sacrifices and temple activities. Since there has not been a Temple since 70 A.D. no one
could follow these rules fully we could not follow them if we wanted to. We will once again, but
that is not now. So what is the primary role of the Torah for us? The primary role of Torah is to
teach us what sin is, why atonement is important and how serious the matter of sin is for you
and me. Torah also teaches us what righteousness and holiness are. Righteousness is the
opposite of sin and Torah shows us what righteousness looks like in our daily walk.
The church would reply to this truth and say that since the purpose of Torah is to show us what
sin is that since the coming of Messiah, who saved us from sin, we have no further need to
know about sin. Therefore, they erroneously conclude that Torah and the Old Testament are no
longer relevant. They say “we have the New Testament as our guide.” The problem with that
thought process is since Torah shows us what sin is it is also the vehicle or tool YHWH uses to
give us His definition of sin and righteousness. It is the only source of God that defines sin and
its consequences and the remedies for sin. We need to know what it says because we dare not
rely upon our own definition of sin. A quick study in man’s understanding of sin makes it clear
that man’s definition of sin rarely lines up with YHWH’s definition.
A student of Torah comes to understand that while the sacrificial rituals of Torah could provide
forgiveness for breaking the laws of the Torah, there was nothing that was supernatural about
those rituals in and of themselves. The issue is obedience to YHWH. That is why YHWH says He
prefers our obedience rather than the sacrifice! He is not saying to us that we have a choice
between obedience or sacrifice. He is saying that obedience is more important than the
sacrifice. Obedience is the point of all of this. YHWH could have chosen anything as the
sacrifice. He could have chosen another procedure for sacrifice too. But He is a covenant God
and our covenant responsibility is obedience. That is our duty and by the way that is one of the
“good works” Yeshua will judge us by. He says as much in Matthew 16:27and that is repeated
in Revelation 20.
The purpose of the sacrifice was to give us a means of atonement. Atonement is necessary
because we have a sin nature and we sin. Sin is first and foremost against YHWH. Naturally
YHWH would rather have our obedience than the need for sacrifice due to our disobedience. In
His giving us a list of what is right and what is wrong, we have a choice. We can choose
obedience and receive atonement for our sin…or not. But the created are not given license by
the Creator because Messiah has come to decide what is right and what is wrong.
He is the Living Torah and that would be like saying the created have the right to correct and
amend Him. That is not going to happen because He is the same yesterday, today and
forevermore.
We have not been given the right to redefine sin and righteousness either. Likewise, we have
not been given the right to say what is right and what is wrong is different for different people.
Torah is the defining Word of right and wrong and of sin and righteousness.
What must be said here is Torah was never designed to save man. Being obedient to Torah
does not save us. So, does that mean that Torah should be disregarded because it does not
save?
That answer again is no. Obedience is separate from redemption.
Obedience to YHWH’s commands, His teachings and instructions, does not save us anymore
than trusting in Yeshua supernaturally gives us knowledge of what He views as righteousness.
We have ample truth of that in the church today with a preponderance of false prophecies and
false teachings. Trust (faith) in Yeshua atones for our sins. Learning and walking in His Torah
enables us to be obedient because Torah defines obedience and sin. Here is the bottom line
from this bottom-line guy-YHWH wants salvation for us and He wants obedience from us. He
does not want one over the other or one rather than the other.
What is established here is YHWH wants us to be obedience and that is the purpose of Torah.
YHWH wants us to be saved; to be redeemed which is the purpose of Yeshua. What He does
not want is for us to use Torah as an instrument of judgment and condemnation among
believers.
Now that we are saved, don’t we have an even greater reason to be obedient to the One who
saved us? Paul says in Romans 6:1-2 “should we go on sinning so that grace may increase in us.
By no means!” Lack of obedience is sin.
We know from numerous passages that the earliest believers in Yeshua obeyed Torah. They
saw nothing that made trust in Yeshua and obedience to Torah as mutually exclusive. James
makes this point in Acts 21:20 when He says to Paul: “You see brother, how many myriads of
Jews there are who believed, and they are all zealous for the Torah.” In Acts 24:14 Paul said,
“But this I confess to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect, so I worship the
God of my fathers, believing all things which were written in the Torah and the Prophets.”
There are many more passages like these that make the point that the Apostles and disciples
saw Torah observance, for Jew and Gentile alike, as a natural result of trust in Messiah. They
understood and they taught that rust or faith in Messiah is a natural result of understanding
the purpose and meaning of Torah. Torah and Messiah are both complimentary and
inseparable.
So we come back to the question first proposed. Why do we study Torah? We study Torah
because it gives us YHWH’s definition of sin and righteousness.
It shows us how to walk in His righteousness before man. Yeshua, the Living Torah walked in
Torah before man to show them His Way. Without Torah we have no idea of what obedience
consists of. Should we obey the teachings and instructions of Torah?
Yes, we should because obedience is what YHWH seeks from His own above all else. Obedience
is the highest form of worship for the believer. Obedience is the transforming tool that kills the
sin nature in us. Our mind is renewed/ transformed in obedience. There is a death to the old
man that must come. Is obedience always easy? Of course not and that is precisely why so many
today would rather believe the Holy Spirit will obey for you so you do not have to.
Obedience is call upon each of us. It is not something that comes by magic. We must choose to
follow Him, and that journey takes us through the cross. We must give up this life to have His
life and that life comes at a price. We must die to the old nature and that comes as we are
obedient to His Way, His Word, His Torah.
So this Passover season when you think of He who is our Passover Lamb also remember He is
the Living Torah who calls us to be redeemed by His precious blood. But do not forget that
redemption is but the beginning of a wonderful walk with Him of transformation, of renewing
of the mind, of worship in obedience to the Passover Lamb.
