Discipleship - the Answer

The foulest, most loathsome gospel, is that which denies the living-ness of the Messiah. It denies and mutilates the grace of God. It is a perversion and an Antichristian doctrine that is not based on the Word of God but the carnal desires of men. 

Cheap grace – the denial of the living work of God, that salvation and faith cannot be lived out, that trust in God merely a lip-service. 

Perhaps for so long a church-goer has been embittered by the lack of God’s transformative power in the preaching, so much so that the preaching of righteousness becomes a heavy burden and devoid of liberty, grace, and truth. When we lose the grace of God in our preaching, and yet preach righteousness, it is the letter and the letter kills. People are turned away from the truth because of legalism, the clinging to outwards forms to disguise inner emptiness. We fail to drink from the fountain of living waters and in consequence can only preach legalism: the law of sin and death. 

We can cling to church buildings, styles of worship, modes of preaching, gospel presentations, and such, not evil, but empty - devoid of grace, devoid of truth, devoid of God, just a religion and a form.

Man’s solution to the preaching of works without the faith to produce it is to cut off works. There is no power, so why should people live righteous lives? Therefore, we should just live like the world. After all, anything more than complacency and any attempt to live unlike the world is only fruitless striving. Somewhere, deep inside, we are made righteous we God. We don’t need to do anything. To do anything is wrong- striving you see, fruitless pursuit of righteousness which we can never attain to and should not attain to. That is cheap grace and lawlessness – the law of sin and death. 

Do you know what costly, true, grace? It is the grace of God from the Messiah and in the Messiah poured out to the sinner. It fills him with forgiveness and repentance. God is revealed to the sinner, and God will never let him go. God has given the sinner undeserved riches – and filled him with the power of the Holy Spirit, the power to change. God washes him clean, and brings him into eternal life. The sinner is now righteous, and the Spirit of God in him transforms him into the image of God. This grace that was bestowed upon him now prevails upon him to leave all that he has, take up His cross, and follow the Messiah. Grace is God loves us, and God giving us the love in which we are consumed by Him and enabled to love the lost. 

Sometimes we just need to get down on our knees before God and cry out Him, asking Him to restore to us the true gospel, not in word only but in power. We badly need to the true, powerful, costly, precious grace of God. We need to be empowered to preach the true gospel of the Messiah, that says, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” and “Take up your cross and follow me”. 

That’s right. The gospel we preach is the cross. If there is no cross, there is no forgiveness, no redemption, no atonement, no resurrection. There must be the suffering before there is the glory. Those who come to the Messiah’s cross will, with Him and through Him, experience the power of His resurrection. 

Discipleship needs to be restored – not the commandments of men but yoke of the Messiah. Yeshua calls to all those who are wearied and burdened, come and take His yoke, for it is easy and light. He calls all who thirst to drink of the living waters of life, and He will make living waters to flow out from you. He calls those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. He calls the blind, the death, the oppressed, the overburdened. He calls them to take up their cross and follow Him. In Him is life everlasting. In Him is peace. In Him are joy, and eternal rewards. 

What is the normal Christian life? To live the life of Christ. To be His disciple, following Him, and longing to be like Him, fixing our eyes on Him, hearing His voice, obeying Him in perfect trust.

What is legalism then? It is non-existent. You will follow Him because you trust him. You will obey Him because you love Him. He is your everything. Your life is bound in Him.

Keeping the Law

God desires obedience and not sacrifice. That does not mean that obedience does not require sacrifice. It means that one does not approach obedience through sacrifice, but sacrifice through a heart of obedience. That is the same for all the commandments, not just sacrifice. God wants sacrifice borne out of obedience, not sacrifice as opposed to obedience. 

Do you know what keeping the law is? Do you know what living a godly life is? Keeping the law is a living a life of perfect and complete obedience to the explicit and eternal will of YHWH for you.

God’s Law is Himself. He is the Law, the Instruction, the Banner of Righteousness. He is perfect, righteous, unchanging. His Law can never change any more than He can change, and why should He change, He being perfect? He is perfect and true. 

Two times in history God translated and revealed this law in the flesh, physically. God translated this Law from Himself firstly onto the tablet of stone. That was the Law of Moses. God brought down His law, from the heavenly places, from the Spiritual realm, into the realm of the physical. The law, and God, His righteousness, revealed to the children of Israel in that law, was manifested. 

The law was given on tablets of stone. This was the manifestation of God in His instructions to Abraham, Moses, and all the children of Israel. Again it was clear. It was not so much that the Commandments came between the Children of Israel and God but the principle and heart of the matter was perfect, unquestioning, obedience to the explicitly stated instructions of God. 

God told Abraham, “Go”. So Abraham believed God and went. God told Abraham, “Sacrifice”. So Abraham sacrificed. Abraham kept the law. He was obedient to the instructions of God. Did God tell Isaac to leave Abraham? No. Did God tell Moses to sacrifice his son? No. What matters is not the action but the heart of the matter is, doing whatever God tells you to do, when He tells you to do it, and exactly as He instructs. God told the children of Israel to go west. So they went west. He told them not to touch Sinai. They didn’t touch Sinai. 

The commands are eternal? Yes they are. God’s Will is eternal. His plans and purposes are eternal. It only takes common sense to tell you that though in one case God told Moses to hit the rock, and another to speak to it, that God is not going to tell you in one case to commit adultery and another case not to do it. 

There are so many instructions in the Law of Moses. Some are manifestations of the eternal righteousness of God, some are not. How do we know? The Law was perfect in itself. It was perfect in its time and place. 

That Law was inadequate. It left men as they were – in sin, in death, and in bondage. That Law could not change the hearts of men. It could only reveal what was right and wrong. There was no grace, no power, and no empowerment, to do what was right. It could not change the heart of man it could only expose its evil. The Work of the Law of Moses was not a final, authoritative, work that enabled God to proclaim, “It is done”. It was the shadow the greater that was to come. If the Law of Moses was the end of all things and the salvation of men, Yeshua need not have come.

In the Prophets we see that God is calling for the change of heart. The Prophets prophesied of that which is to come, that the hearts of men will be filled with the Spirit of God that will be a law to them, imbibed in them. The instructions of God need not come from a tablet of stone or through a man , but can be written in you, and spoken to y o u, and within you a power, a force, that causes you to walk in the right way, in perfection.   

However, the fullness and total righteousness of God has been revealed to us in its absolute perfection. Instead of God’s Word being transmitted down to stone, God Himself became flesh. This living, breathing, law could impart to man what the law of stone could not – salvation, righteousness, redemption, liberty, transformation, grace. The Law of Moses was a shadow of the greater Law that was to come. The Law was hadavar (the Word) written down. Messiah was to be the Word of God in flesh! Embodied! The scrolls pointed to the living work, that which was greater, that which was not just perfect and complete, it was glorious, far more glorious with the glory that would not fade away!

The Law of God I praise. It is the Perfect Law of Liberty, the Law of Faith, the Law of the Spirit of Life in the Messiah Yeshua, the Law that sets men free. Why does it set men free? Because it is perfect! It is done, completed,  and fulfilled, and only needs to be lived out. It is perfect because it has the power to change you and make you a new man. You will be birth again. You can drink from the fountain of living waters and never thirst again. You can enter, any time, into the presence of God because it is done. The High Priest was, and is, and is to come. The High Priest has and ever lives to make intercession for you. It is God, in You, filling you with the Spirit that He prophesied will fall upon all flesh. 

Can we keep the law? Absolutely. It is greater than keeping outwardly. It is living out that which already is perfect and complete within us. 

Now we have the guiding principles of the law. Firstly, love. Absolute lack of selfishness, self-justification, self-seeking, but an undivided and required affection for God with ones entire being, now made possible for us. And because we finally can enter into God’s love because of the love He has shown us, we are set free from every bondage we have to the narrow-mindedness of only thinking of one’s self. Now we are free, free in this Love of God to demonstrate this very love given to us to the entire world, to our enemies (previously not possible), as well as our brothers and our neighbors. The nature of the Torah is love. Affection for all except oneself. Let love be the guiding principle of your life. 

Secondly is faith, trust. Anything done out of distrust and doubt is gross sin. Whatever you do, say, or think, it must be found coming from a heart of total trust in the unfailing God. God showed Himself so strongly on behalf of the children of Israel, yet they did not trust Him enough to follow His command and enter Canaan. We must trust God completely. We must trust nothing else. He alone is trustworthy. He alone is the One who is True and Everlasting. Jude warns us that God, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed those who did not trust in Him.

We must also walk in accordance to the ways and thoughts of God, which are beyond us. We must not walk according to our bodily cravings, carnal intuitions, living out of our narrow perspective of life. We must walk in that which is abundant, eternal, that which is of the Spirit of God Himself. We are not supposed to walk according to the letter, that is, the physical expressions of the Law of God, but the Spirit, of God Himself, from which is the Law if birthed. If we guide our life according to physical expressions of the Law, we shall die, because we do not have that law written in our hearts that is why we must focus on the outward. We walk not according to what is seen but that which is not seen, that which is eternal and unchanging. 

That is why God didn’t give us a form or structure to worship Him and to serve Him. We are the form, our bodies are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, we are the living “church”, the body of those set-apart, because the Spirit of God dwells in us and we are sacred to God. 

The Law of Moses instructed them how to build a Temple. The Messiah (Law of God Made Flesh) is far more powerful, it transforms us into the Temple.

What does this mean? We have ultimate liberty and freedom in a way that was never known before.  Our faith is not about the outward, it’s about the inward transforming the outward. You are given the catalyst and do not need to work to make your ways right. You simply trust in God and He will make Your ways more righteous than you can ever make it. 

Look, grace is not about lawlessness, faith is not about professionalone. Our faith is not about talk, or simply about walk. It’s all about walking, living out the eternal life. 

Scripture References About the New Covenant Written In Song