Spirit of God is essential for Torah observance

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Shavuot (Pentecost) commemorates the testimony of God coming and the Spirit of God coming to give it power. Yeshua haMoshiakh (Jesus the Christ) is the “word made flesh” (John 1:14) and “exact representation of (God’s) nature” (Hebrews 1:3). We explore the Ten Commandments and the Pentecost after Yeshua’s resurrection to see why the Bible makes so many connections between them.

Today we conclude our 50-day journey along side our ancestors in faith from Egypt to Mt. Sinai, from Pesakh (Passover) to Shavuot (Pentecost). It is something that we all experience: delivery from our own house of bondage and into the house of freedom. We need a yearly reminder of where we started and where we are going.

There’s one of those things that we should remember: God doesn’t call on us to clean up our act — to deliver ourselves — before delivering us.

The message we have from the Word is to trust in God’s delivery then follow like Israel did, even when it looks impossible, even when it looks like you will be overcome by your past, like Israel backed up against the sea, or die from thirst and hunger along the way. Even when it looks lie God is leading you from one dead end to another over and again.

The continual message is faith, faith and more faith. Paul tells us we go from faith to faith (Rom. 1:17), like stepping stones on a path from Egypt to the Mountain.

Their deliverance was unique in the history of the world. And one of the lessons that’s been emphasized again, and again, quite forcefully is respect. Respect the One who delivered you from Egypt and give respect to the one who’s bringing you to freedom, again preceding the recitation of the 10 words.

The culmination is recorded in Exodus 19–20. Every one of the Ten Commandments teaches a lesson about respect. Respecting God, respecting ourselves and respecting other people.

The book of Ruth shows us that there were people of the nations who, despite the fact they were descended from people who did not choose to follow the God of Abraham, they can make a different choice than their ancestor’s made.

We can all say, like Ruth said, in so many words (Ruth 1:16), “My ancestors, the people who I came from, they went down a bad path, but I’m not going to go that way anymore.” They decided to go a different route. And that route, to paraphrase Robert Frost, “I took a different road and it made all the difference.” Each of us can choose to go a different way.

Ruth, by taking the “path less traveled” changed the course of her life and the lives of her descendants by joining the people of faith rather than to continue to live with a people without faith.

Commandments 1–3: Respect the One Who brought you out

God took Israel out of the house of bondage. When they started to ask to return back to Egypt, they were taking God’s reputation and saying that it had no effect on them. They were lowering God’s reputation, rather than holding it high. They were to carry the story of God’s deliverance with them and remember that they had been delivered by the hand of the LORD.

Commandment 4: Respect the Creator

So they were supposed to not only remember God as the one who took them out of the house of bondage, but He is also the one who created everything. He was not just some random spirit being who happened upon them. This is the Creator of everything doing this.

This is not a thread of something jumping down in the midst of history to do one thing. This is the Creator of the heavens and Earth Who got everything started everywhere. He is doing something spectacular on the Earth and those living here need to pay attention.

Commandment 5: Respect your creators

They were repeatedly told to remember who created them and where they came from, not just from HaShem, but from their parents as well. They were to respect their parents, even if they had parents who were not particularly honorable. Yet, you could say a spiritual discipline to treat them with honor. By treating them with honor, rather than treating them the way they treated you, you can be a righteous witness and bring them to the Lord.

Commandment 6: Respect God’s image in other people

We are also called to treat God’s image — our fellow human beings — with respect, not acting against their lives, even if we don’t think they deserve respect. We are respecting God when we show proper respect to each other.

Commandments 7–8, 10: Respect others’ boundaries in marriage and property

Just as there were boundaries around the mountain, there are boundaries around our relationships that should be respected and not trampled under foot nor strived after (coveting).

Commandment 9: Respect others by telling the truth about them and to them

The way we testify about the Lord should be the same way we testify about others. We should not tear others down with gossip and slander.

Tongues of flame at the first Pentecost

“All the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people sawit,they trembled and stood at a distance.” (Exodus 20:18 NASB)

The interesting thing is that the sages of the Talmud have been midrashing (debating) this verse for centuries because in the Hebrew it reads that they saw voices of God and also saw flames. The sages said the people perceived 70 flames while the LORD was talking, like a universal translator, into the 70 languages of the world. This basically conveysg that God’s Torah is a universal message.

So, this should starting to ring some bells in your head about another Shavuot when tongues of fire led to conveying the deeds of God in many languages. Just as there were 70 flames and a multitude of languages at Sinai, there were many flames and many languages spoken at the Pentecost after Yeshua’s resurrection (Acts 2). More on that in a bit.

This has been written down so we remember the process of coming out of the house of bondage, going through these various trials and tests of the trust. They were going from death to life. This is a common motif throughout Scripture of going through the sea and toward the mountain (1Cor. 10:1–4).

‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’

We’re privileged to read and understand how this happened. We’re privileged to see the story play out. But for them, they didn’t have an eye into the future. So when you look at the Exodus, they saw these plagues and even experienced some of them first hand. They see Moses and Aaron perform these miracles. They also saw Pharoah’s magicians perform some of these miracles through witchcraft too.

The first time they meet with God without Moses as the mediator was when the first-born of Egypt had died. This second unfiltered, unmediated encounter with God was at the Mountain, which would fill anyone with shock and awe. They said to Moses, “You speak to us, because we don’t want to die” (Ex. 20:19). It’s no wonder they were scared.

We also see parallels between Moshiach (Messiah, Christ) and Moses. Moses tells them that one day, another prophet will come who is just like him (Deut. 18:15). When you see the Messiah come, are you going to listen to him? Just as they refused to follow Moses, they had refused to follow Moshiach (Luke 16:31). They repeatedly tried to usurp Moses (Numbers 12; Numbers 16), and they did the same to Moshiach.

The people refused to acknowledge the charge that God gave them. That’s actually how all the prophets were treated.

The children loved Moshiach; He was very approachable (Luke 18:15–17; 19:14). He was, in a sense, the antithesis of the experience at the mountain. Yet the leaders of the people at the time did not want to accept His leadership. They were trying to kill Him instead, which they also tried to do to Moses.

New Covenant: Watch for it

““Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”” (Jeremiah 31:31–34 NASB)

Justice without mercy is harsh and cruel, but mercy without justice is not really mercy but license. To have mercy, you have to have justice.

When we talk about what happened at Sinai, a change is going to happen. No longer is it going to be “Oh, wow, somebody else should talk to the LORD. We don’t want to talk to Him because He’s too scary.” This is something that is going to be written upon you in your heart. His law will be on all our hearts.

The second witness of the New Covenant promise is in Ezekiel 36:22-28. It’s about returning the nation to its first love at Sinai with a passion of devotion, not only bringing it back from exile.

In the Torah, we see the front end of God’s establishing this nation, this holy nation of priests, this holy priesthood of people. But in Ezekiel, which was written at the time of the exile, of the people of God scattered into the winds. Yet the promise is that God is going to bring the nation back and establish them in the land.

And Ezekiel underscores that it’s not going to happen because the people are so incredibly holy. It is the LORD who separates Israel, makes it holy. He separated it originally from the other nations, then dispersed them into the nations, but He also pulls them out and brings them back to the land. God made them holy and set apart for a purpose.

Second great Shavuot: Gift of the Spirit

“’But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.’” (John 16:7 NASB)

We also see before another Shavuot that Yeshua, after His resurrection, appeared to the Apostles numerous times and give them instructions over the course of 40 days before His ascension to heaven, 10 days before Shavuot. This is like a bookend to what happened to Israel at the first Shavuot.

We read Yeshua’s final words on earth in Acts 1:1-10. They obeyed His call to stay in Jerusalem until Shavuot. From Acts 1:11–2:41, we learn that the Holy Spirit came down with power on the 12 shelachim (apostles) and the others who were meeting in “the house.” From Acts 3:11, we learn the Twelve met in Solomon’s portico, which was by the eastern gate of the Temple. So when we read about this rushing wind coming in, some of the Messianic prophecies talk about a rushing wind coming in, which is the sound of the Anointed One coming into his Temple. People from the nations heard it, because they were gathered in the Temple for morning prayers.

Both theTalmud and Josephus record an incident that happened on the morning of Shavuot around A.D. 60 that the priests in the Temple heard a big sound then this chorus of voices say, “Let it be gone!” A few years later in A.D. 70, the Temple was utterly destroyed, and only the platform it rested upon remains to this day.

Following the Law impossible without the Spirit

Shavuot commemorates the testimony of God coming and the Spirit of God coming to give it power. In Rom. 8:6-8, apostle Paul tell us that the Spirit of God is not optional. Writing God’s law on your heart (Deut. 31:14; Rom. 10:8) requires the Spirit of God, so that the law of God pumps through us into everyday life, not written on the outside, where it can be sloughed off under stress.

If the Law is kept external to us, our attempts to do the things required in God’s Law can easily become something that stinks in God’s nostrils, as we read about in Isaiah 1:18.

But if we allow the Spirit to make God’s words become part of us through frequent prayer, reading and reflection, we live them from the inside. The law of liberty (James 1:25; 2:12) will set us free from our old life. Our walk with please God and bring joy to Him. Others will see the true source of our changed lives and praise the Creator.