“‘Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me and keep all My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever!’”
Deuteronomy 5:29 NASB
There’s a lot of misinformation in the Body of the Messiah about the role of God’s Law in “the gospel” — and whether it can or should have any role at all. But in the Torah reading ואתחנן Va’etchanan (“and I pleaded,” Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11), we see that a heart connection between Heaven and Earth is as much a central message of the 10 Commandments given to Israel by Moshe (Moses) as in the Sermon on the Mount given to Israel by Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus).
Our legacy — what will outlive us — is our impact on the culture by Heaven’s changing our “heart of stone” that weighs us down to the dead-end deeds of this world into a heart that beats in time with the footsteps of Yeshua.
The book of Deuteronomy is Heaven’s commentary on the earlier books of the Torah, just as Heaven’s prophets would expound from the Torah and the Messiah would exhort from the Torah, Prophets and Writings (i.e., the Hebrew Bible).
In his first address to the second generation post-Exodus (Deut. 1:1–4:43), Moshe (Moses) gave a truncated, merciful narrative of the past 40 years, including recent history of the conquering of the east bank of the Yarden (Jordan River) that many listening to Moshe actually experienced.
In his second address, taking up much of the book (Deut. 6:1–26:15), Moshe elaborated on the 10 Commandments by giving more concrete examples of how to live them. In the Torah reading ואתחנן Va’etchanan1“and I pleaded”, Moses was getting into the swing of things with his discourse. He takes them from a low point to a high point. The trick is to keep your eyes “going up” — fighting “spiritual gravity,” aka “the flesh” — and not allowing yourself to be distracted by or sucked into the world below.
“’But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be a people for His own possession, as today.’”
Deuteronomy 4:20 NASB
Each person who answers the call of Heaven to leave our personal “house of bondage,” what holds us down from moving our character higher, is on a journey to God’s rest, the Messianic era of שלום shalom (contentment and well-being) and the Kingdom of God, communicated through the shadow/symbol of the Promised Land. We do that as John the Baptist tells us to “repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” We need to remember where we came from (the bondage we are leaving behind) and where we are going (to freedom in the Kingdom of God).
In our days, people are obsessed with their genetics, where their ancestors lived, but culture is passed down from generation to generation just as DNA is. DNA ancestry is not as important in moulding people as the culture they live in from day to day and the culture in which they raise the next generation.
“… bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.”
Luke 3:8 NASB; cf. Matt. 3:9; John 8:39–42; Rom. 9:6–8
What did God want Israel learn from their experience in the “iron furnace” of Egypt? They came out of Egypt purified and more useful to do the work of God’s kingdom than they were when they were in Egypt. They being taught to go from immaturity to maturity, from ignorance to wisdom.
The same is true for us. We are to cling to the LORD with all our hearts, lives and resources, but we are not supposed hoard all the blessings that God gives us for ourselves. We are to share what we have with others.
When you are facing a well-equipped foe, you have to go in prepared. Because if you don’t go in prepared, you’re just going to lose the battle. You will succumb to peer pressure, so to speak, and become like everybody else, and the ending situation will be worse (Matt. 12:43–45; Luke 11:24–26).
We must remember who is the One who brought us of our house of bondage and to the land of freedom and rest. The ancient descendants of Israel were instructed that when they go into the land, and eat of its bounty, they were to remember and teach their children that they didn’t build the vineyards, they didn’t plant the crops, dig the irrigation ditches, etc.
Remember, Who was the One who brought you to all this. Don’t be prideful and arrogant and pretend, “I willed it, and it happened.” No, God willed it, and now you have it. So be thankful for that, and remember who gave you your nation and how He brought you out and is bringing you in.
God told the descendants of Israel over and over again of the importance of this connection to the next generations. They were duty-bound to pass on the legacy, to teach their children God’s culture and if we consider ourselves Abraham’s children, it’s hugely important for us to pass this along, to not just hoard it for ourselves.
‘Meet the new new atheists, not like the old new atheists’
In our age, we are confronted with three different kinds of atheists.2David Klinghoffer, “Meet the New New Atheists, Not Like the Old New Atheists,” Evolution News, July 21, 2021 (accessed July 23, 2021)
The first generation of modern atheism simply stated there is no god.
“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
Psalm 14:1 NASB; cf. Psa. 53:1
The second wave of atheism didn’t find it sufficient to live without God, they became fanatics, and evangelists of atheism. It wasn’t good enough to say there was no God. No, they went out of their way to to make sure you don’t believe that there is a God, either.
The third wave of atheism has come to the realization that if you create a culture where there is no God; a culture in which most of the people believe that the world and the creatures in it just made themselves, that things just evolved, that is not a good culture.
The culture that this second wave of atheism has brought about is a culture that no one wants to live in.
This new, third generation of atheists have realized that they don’t want to live in a culture without God, even though they aren’t ready to admit He exists. They see the evidence of intelligent design in all aspects of science from biology, paleontology, geology, astrophysics, astronomy, etc. They would rather live in a culture in which God-fearers, particularly Christian believers are the majority of the culture. They have seen the fruits of a culture with God versus the fruits of a culture without God and realized that no one is safe in a culture in which God is not acknowledged.
Torah vs. New Covenant?
Megachurch pastor Andy Stanley (son of TV preacher Charles Stanley) has voiced bluntly a teaching that has been gaining strength in the Body of Messiah from its early days:
“Participants in the new covenant (that’s Christians) are not required to obey any of the commandments found in the first part of their Bibles. Participants in the new covenant are expected to obey the single command Jesus issued as part of his new covenant: as I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
“Why do Christians want to post the 10 Commandments but not the Sermon on the Mount?” Relevant, Jan. 1, 2019
In response to the vociferous pushback, he doubled down:
“Jesus commanded us to love others. This was far less complicated than following all the laws in the Old Testament—but it was also far more demanding…. We should always ask ourselves, ‘What does God’s love for me require of me?’”
How should Jesus’s life and death affect our relationships? “CBD interview with Andy Stanley on ‘Irresistable,'” Christianbook.com
Such pastors find the Torah very inconvenient, yet without Torah, they don’t really know how to love God or our neighbors.
Andy Stanley strongly believes that Torah drags the Christian church down. While many modern Jewish historians see the Christian church discarding the Torah as proof that their “Messiah” is just a false messiah from a line of may other false messiahs.
The apostle Paul fretted over the fact that most of the Jewish people he evangelized to regarding the coming of Messiah Yeshua and those who want to bash the Christian religion make him into their whipping boy, not just in Jewish circles, but in Muslim circles as well.
In addition to pointing to unfulfilled messianic prophecies for why Yeshua wasn’t the Mashiakh, David Klinghoffer in his 2006 book points to Christian teaching associated with Yeshua:
“Jews have long been blamed for Jesus’s death and stigmatized for rejecting him. But Jesus lived and died a relatively obscure figure at the margins of Jewish society. Indeed, it is difficult to argue that ‘the Jews’ of his day rejected Jesus at all, since most Jews had never heard of him. The figure they really rejected, often violently, was Paul, who convinced the Jerusalem church led by Jesus’s brother to jettison the observance of Jewish law. Paul thus founded a new religion.”
back cover of David Klinghoffer, Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History, Harmony, 4th edition, March 7, 2006
We are to test everyone who claim to be a prophet. God doesn’t speak only through one person. Each prophet may have a different way of presenting the teachings that God gave them. Sometimes they even sound like they disagree with each other, but rather than setting up straw-men of the prophets to knock down to stroke our egos, we need to look at their best points to learn wisdom.
Andy Stanley asked why do we focus on the 10 Commandments, rather than the Sermon on the Mount? What Stanley seemingly fails to understand is that the Sermon on the Mount is a commentary on how to uphold the intent of the Torah, as the Sermon-giver Himself said:
““Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:17–20 NASB
The word that is translated as fulfill in English is πληρόω plēroō (G4137), which means to make full, to fill, to fill up (Thayer’s lexicon). Here are examples where this word is found in either the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) or the Greek New Testament:
- Mishkan (Tabernacle) workmen with the Spirit (Ex. 31:3; 35:31)
- Talmudim’s boat with fish (Mt. 13:48)
- The upper room with the Spirit on Pentecost (Acts 2:2)
- Young Yeshua’s “growing with wisdom” (Luke 2:40)
What did Yeshua, Paul and Ya’akob (James) actually teach about the Torah?
In Yeshua’s own words, in the Sermon on the Mount, He says emphatically that He is not abolishing the Torah.
It’s always dangerous to plop down into the middle of one of Paul’s letters to make a point. Paul often seems to be arguing with himself and we wonder if he is talking about himself or if he is talking about his audience.
“For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law…. So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. … “For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.”
Romans 7:5–7, 12, 14 NASB
Paul is elaborating on the New Covenant “equation”: Torah + Spirit = Life. Roman 7 ends in despair (Torah + Sin = Death):
“Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?”
Romans 7:24 NASB
Paul answers this question in Romans 8. There’s the hope of replacing a life of sin (moving away from God) with a life of the Spirit (moving closer to God).
“For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.”
Romans 8:5 NASB
Now, let’s hear what Ya’akob (James; Yeshua’s brother) actually taught about the Torah:
“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. …
“For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not commit murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”
James 1:23–25; 2:10–13 NASB
Enter His rest
When we decide to follow God, it’s not because we want to torture ourselves. Christians are not masochists. We come to faith in Yeshua because we want to be different people, we want to be better after we go through the iron furnace than when we entered in. We know we can’t change for the better without His help.
We are not on this walk to live a YOLO3YOLO = You only live once life. God is taking us on a journey to follow His Son Yeshua to the land of rest, peace, completeness and contentment.
So what we’re talking about with Deuteronomy is legacy. It’s about the culture of heaven, and how to present that culture to the rest of the world.
The late Andrew Breitbart said, “Politics is downstream from culture.” If politics, which is what we call the process in which groups of people choose their leaders, and the laws those leaders are supposed to live by and implement, then what is upstream from culture? It depends on the culture.
In a stable culture, what is upstream from the culture is faith and trust in God, through Messiah Yeshua. It’s acknowledging that God is dependable. He keeps His promises, even if those who are the recipients of His promises don’t deserve it.
God has proven to the children of Israel that He is dependable. He was the one who took them out from the house of bondage and if He can do that, he can bring them into to the land. So the LORD is trustworthy, the LORD is faithful.
He did that for Israel, and He can do that for us, too. The culture that is downstream from God is a good culture.
A culture that is downstream from atheism or from syncretism with paganism is a wicked culture. It’s a culture in which might makes right, a culture in which the majority have all the rights and the minority are forced to comply.
Israel was supposed to carry God’s name, God’s culture to the world, but because they preferred a culture of syncretism over the pure culture God gave them, God’s name was blasphemed among the Gentiles. We see in the book of Judges and the writings of the prophets that the people of Israel commingled the worship of God with the worship of the gods and goddesses of the Canaanites they were brought in by God to dispossess. This is in the archaeological record.
The Gentiles didn’t understand that the culture the Israelites were living was not a reflection of God’s culture. The people of Israel were misrepresenting God. The Israelites were supposed to change the culture around them, instead they allowed the culture around them to change them to the point that they were indistinguishable from the nations.
The Israelites had God’s name, they knew His name in a way that none of the other nations knew, but if they didn’t live out and teach God’s culture to their children as well as to the nations surrounding them, then what are people outside supposed to think?
Disinformation is false information while misinformation has shades of truth but still takes you away from the truth.
As people of God, we should be promoting a culture of God that is an accurate reflection of Him. What happened to the children of Israel is a stark warning to Christians. Are we going to change the culture for God’s kingdom or will we allow the culture to change us?
Summary: Tammy