Let me ask you this. What made an Old Testament believer righteous
in God’s eyes? Most people I have asked
say that it’s the shedding of the lamb’s blood on the Ark of the Covenant under the Mosaic law, but
this is incorrect. Noach/Noah was
declared righteous as was Avraham/Abraham before Mosaic law and before the
Children of Yisra’el/Israel even entered the promised land. In fact, they were declared righteous before
Ya’akov/Jacob (whose name YHWH changed to Yisra’el) was even born. And let’s consider the people of
Ninveh/Nineveh, a gentile city, for a moment.
Yonah/Jonah spoke the words that YHWH gave him, the people repented, and YHWH
forgave them. They made no pilgrimage to
sacrifice at Yerushalayim/Jerusalem.
They sacrificed no lamb. They
placed no blood on the Ark of the Covenant.
And yet they were forgiven.
What made an “Old Testament”
believer righteous in YHWH’s eyes was exactly the same thing that makes us
righteous today. It’s putting your trust
and faith in YHWH. We have the advantage
of viewing Yeshua’s death and resurrection in the past, while they viewed it
with hope for the future, but trusting that YHWH is our salvation and our lord
is what makes both Avraham and I righteous.
We both have sinned, but we both fell upon YHWH's plan of salvation to rescue us from ourselves.
Avraham is called the
father of the Jews, but we need to understand that he was a gentile. There was no such thing as the Jewish people
in his day. He became the first
Hebrew. He wasn’t born that way. The term “Hebrew” refers to one who crosses
over.
Genesis 12:1, 4a (HRV) –
Now YHWH said unto Avram (Abram): ‘Get you out of your country, and from your
kindred, and from your father’s house, unto the land that I will show you.’” – “So
Avram went, as YHWH had spoken unto him;”
Avram traveled from a land
known as Haran, where his father and family dwelt, into a land called Kena’an/Canaan. To get there, he had to cross a river. Crossing the physical river didn’t make Avram
righteous. Crossing over from following and obeying his own selfish desires to following and obeying YHWH was what made him righteous. The physical crossing was representative of
this. Every single one of us that have
decided to put our faith in YHWH, to accept Yeshua’s sacrifice on the cross for
our sins, and to make YHWH our savior and lord are Hebrews. Some will say we're not truly Hebrews, we're only spiritual Hebrews, but I say that that's exactly what matters. We have crossed over from death into
life. No matter how we were all born, we were all gentiles separated
from His promises until we chose to be a part of His kingdom. Your physical race, gender, nationality,
whatever, is all irrelevant to your spiritual condition.
I said before that YHWH is
perfect and timeless and too many Christians treat the Old Testament like it’s
been done away with. Too many Christians
treat the Old Testament like it should be ignored. BUT, the reverse is also true. If we hang on to the physical laws of the Old
Testament as if they have the power to save us, we deny the spiritual truth
they were pointing to. We think we’re
holding to God’s truth, but we’re unwittingly calling God a liar by declaring
that there’s more to salvation than the cross of Yeshua.
Most of us fail in this way
too, whether we know it or not. In fact,
almost all of us fall into both categories.
The path is straight and narrow and it's easy to swerve both right and left off of it from time to time. We both treat the Old Testament as if it’s irrelevant, AND we hold on to
Old Testament laws as if they’re required as part of our salvation. How many of us believe we have to be in church on a certain day because the Old Testament says to honor the Sabbath, but we ignore the parts about eating pork because it smells and tastes too good? How many of us believe that getting dunked in a tub of water is essential to salvation but don't care at all about following the Feasts of the Lord that YHWH said were everlasting convocations? When we pick and choose which to follow
and which to ignore, we’re creating a religion of our own and we're rewriting God to be what we want Him to be and not who He is.
The truth is, as I said
before, YHWH is perfect and the entirety of what He gave to Moshe/Moses and the
prophets is perfect, BUT it was limited to a physical level that they could
understand at the time. ALL of it
pointed the way to Yeshua. Yeshua
Himself said that He did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. We need to understand the Old Testament and
interpret the New Testament according to what YHWH gave us in the first place
because it’s ALL perfect and it ALL lines up with itself, but NONE of the
physical laws He gave us matter at all other than to give us physical
representations. They are tools that help
us understand. They are not our
salvation.
This doesn’t mean they’re
worthless to us now. It just means we
have to translate them spiritually. This
is what Yeshua began to show us when He came as a man. He said Mosaic law tells us that picking up a
knife and plunging it into a man’s chest makes us a murderer, but He said that
hanging on to hatred in your heart is what really makes you guilty of that
sin. Mosaic law tells us that having sexual
congress with someone not your spouse makes you an adulterer, but He said that
holding on to lust in your heart for another makes you guilty of the sin of
adultery. The physical sinful actions reveal to the world the sins of our hearts that had already been committed.
YHWH wants our hearts. If our hearts are His, our thoughts will
follow. If our thoughts are His, our
words will follow. If our words are His,
our actions will follow. Physical
actions should be the revealer of a pure heart, but physical actions are
not our salvation.
The Old Testament says we
need to be dunked in water. Spiritual
truth it points to: We need to be
immersed in Yeshua and let Him wash away the death in our lives and make us
holy. Water is a physical example of cleaning that we can see and understand. The Old Testament says we shouldn’t
touch dead things. Spiritual truth: We need to avoid ideas and teachings that lead
us down a way that seems right to a man but only leads to death. Picking up a dead animal and getting sick because of it is a physical example we can understand. The Old Testament says we need to give YHWH
Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown, or in other words, the Sabbath
day (It's not even Sunday people). Spiritual truth it points to: We need to intimately commune with Him and
not just do His works out of a sense of duty.
We need to maintain a loving relationship with Him. The Old Testament says we need to kill a
perfect lamb and place its blood on an altar for our sins. Spiritual truth it points to: You must accept the blood sacrifice of Yeshua
for you. The physical laws were all
perfect REPRESENTATIONS that had no power in and of themselves AND STILL DON'T. This doesn’t mean the physical laws don’t
have physical value. (For crying out
loud, we need to “baptize” ourselves all the time. You do bathe regularly, don’t you? Don’t you?)
It just means that their real lasting value lies in the spiritual truths
they were meant to reveal.
He whom the Son has set
free is free indeed. Are you someone who
hates church because of the rules and regulations, the demands placed upon you,
and all of the pomp and circumstances that go along with it? My prayer for you today is that you will see
YHWH as He truly is and not what we’ve turned Him into.
“I don’t object to the concept of a deity, but I’m
baffled by the notion of one that takes attendance.”
-
Amy Farrah Fowler, “The Big Bang Theory”Scott Snyder
edgiscript3@yahoo.com
