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.
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