Monthly Archives: October 2014

Torah!

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TORAH!

“Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator. A mediator implies more than one party; but God is one.

“Is the law opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law was given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Christ Jesus, might be given to those who believe.” Galatians 3:19-22.

Wow! This is a mouthful! What was Paul getting at? Let’s unpick this passage bit by bit and try to understand what he was explaining.

Why did God give His people the Law? We must understand the word torah, which is translated law, from God’s point of view. It does not mean law in the same way as we understand it from a western point of view. Torah means teaching, rather than a rigid set of rules. Through the Torah, God was teaching them how to live the right way in line with who He is.

We must remember that, for 430 years, the descendants of Jacob lived in Egypt under Egyptian rule. When they finally left Egypt, they were an undisciplined bunch of slaves who had lived under the whip of Egyptian taskmasters. Once they were free from their cruelty, they had to learn how to live with one another under a different set of rules. It was not okay to do to one another what the Egyptians had done to them. But who was going to set the standards and tell them how to live?

Firstly, then, the Torah defined for them what was right and wrong and how to put right what they did wrong. Paul said it was because of transgressions. Sin is sin, but we don’t know what sin is until we are told what it is. That’s what the law does. For example, how do we know it is wrong to steal unless we are told that it is wrong and what to do about it when we do steal?

Secondly, God’s people had to learn that they could never reach His perfect standard by obeying His teaching. There was always a pull towards doing wrong and, just like little children, as soon as they were told not to do this or not to do that, they did it because of their natural bent towards rebellion. No amount of rules would keep them on the right way. They needed a change on the inside and no law could do that.

Thirdly, the Torah was intended to develop a culture that would prepare them for the coming of the Messiah. The sacrificial system with its different kinds of sacrifices, many reasons for offering sacrifices, and rituals they had to observe, were all intended as visual aids to show them and prepare them for the coming of God’s perfect sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ.

They had to understand what sin was, a falling short of God’s holy standards, and what it did, making the sinner unclean; hence the need for the death of an animal and the offering of its blood, not only as a substitute for the sinner but also to cleanse the offerer from the pollution of sin.

The priestly system taught them that they could not bounce into the presence of a holy God because sin separated them from Him. He was unapproachable except through His appointed mediator, the high priest and the offering of the prescribed sacrifices. When Abraham’s “seed”, Jesus, came, He fulfilled all the pictures the law painted of the right way to approach God.

So, the Torah was not opposed to the revelation of God’s grace through His Son; it was a preparation for His coming. Without the Law, who He was and what He did would have made no sense to His people. But when He came, and when He died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for all the sin of all the people for all time, there was no need for anyone to obey the law as a way of approaching God any more. The priesthood and the sacrificial system were fulfilled and done away with in Christ.

God does not need human mediators to stand between Him and His people. Jesus is the perfect Mediator because He is both God and man. God does not need animal sacrifices to teach us how terrible sin is – that it demands the shedding of blood to be forgiven. His own Son shed His blood, a once-for-all sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, not just for Jews but for the whole world.

Why would Gentiles need to be circumcised, then? They do not need a physical sign to set them apart as God’s children. The Holy Spirit in them is the sign of God’s ownership. Doing all the things that the law demands and that are only pictures of what Jesus came to do is a foolish backward step. God did away with all that by sending His Messiah and now all we have to do is receive Him by faith and He takes us right into the presence of the Father, forgiven, clean and acceptable to God.

And He changes our nature and puts His Spirit in us so that we live according to His torah, not because we have to but because we can.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

It’s All About Him

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IT’S ALL ABOUT HIM

“Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say, “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise, but God in His grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.” Galatians 3:15-18.

Without going into detail, the Bible clearly teaches that Abraham had four different kinds of “seed”.

1. It stand to reason that all Abraham’s natural-born children were his “seed”, That would include the all descendants of Ishmael and Isaac, even those who were not part of God’s selective history, that is, those who were set aside and not a part of the Jewish nation.

2. God chose Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, to be the father of Abraham’s special, natural seed – the children of Israel. These were the covenant people of God.

3. In Galatians 3:16, Paul narrowed Abraham’s seed down to one person, Jesus Christ, as Abraham’s unique seed because it was only through Him that all the promises God made to Abraham, would be fulfilled.

4. In Galatians 3:29, Paul identified believers as the spiritual seed of Abraham. Since God’s promises are received by faith, and the children of Israel failed to believe God and receive His gifts by grace, He opened the door to the Gentiles to be included in the family of Abraham if they received Jesus by faith. That made them the spiritual children of Abraham.

(www.audiowebman.org/bbc/books/NC/abrahams_seed/chpt_02.htm)

Do you understand, then, why Paul identified Jesus as the unique “seed” of Abraham? The covenant God established at Mount Sinai with the special natural seed of Abraham did not nullify, add to or subtract from His covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15). It was an interim covenant given to His people to show them how to live as His special people, and to teach them how impossible it was to obey Him without the Holy Spirit.

It was God’s intention to give the Holy Spirit back to those who trust in Him because, without the Spirit, people are still dead and unable to hear or communicate with God. The Holy Spirit would be only given when the barrier of sin between God and man had been removed. Only Jesus could remove that barrier by paying sin’s debt on behalf of sinners. Ultimately then, God’s promise to Abraham would be fulfilled through one man, Jesus, the “seed” of Abraham. In Him, all those who believe in Him are His seed by faith. Jesus Himself spoke of being a seed.

“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But, if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:24.

But Jesus was not just any old seed. He was the seed of Abraham, the offspring of God’s covenant people, the one whom God promised would come to crush the head of Satan.

“I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring (seed), and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.” Genesis 3:15.

Jesus was both the seed of the woman (human) and the seed of Abraham (Jewish); he was born of a woman and born into the Jewish nation. He came at a specific time and into a specific culture which had been prepared through God’s covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai to understand the ramifications of sin so that they could understand and appreciate the enormity of God’s grace.

That they failed by rejecting their Messiah was no fault of God’s, but it did open the door for God’s grace in Christ to be given to the whole world. God intended for His people to be the revelation of Himself to the world. It did not happen through His chosen people as a whole, but through a small group, called the Apostles, who went in obedience to His command, and took the message to the world.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Either Or, Not Both And…

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EITHER OR, NOT BOTH AND…

“For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’ Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because ‘the righteous will live by faith.’ The law is not based on faith; on the contrary it says, ‘The person who does these things will live by them.’

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole. He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” Galatians 3:10-14.

The Judaizers were trying to convince Gentile believers that salvation was a “both and…” situation. In order to have Christ, they had to obey the law as well. “No way!” said Paul. It is not “both and” but “either or” because they are mutually exclusive. You cannot have law and grace because they are opposing principles. The one automatically cancels out the other.

Let’s see why. Those who rely on their own attempts to obey God’s law perfectly (and anything that is less than perfection is automatically disqualified), and fail, are under a curse and have to pay the penalty for disobeying God’s law. Since death is the penalty for sin, and everyone is born into the world with a dead spirit – unable to connect with God’s Spirit because of his sin nature, everyone comes into the world already under a curse.

No amount of trying to satisfy God’s righteous standards will make them alive because they all begin with a spoiled record before they ever choose to sin. Sinning is automatic. Take the two-year-old who throws a tantrum because he can’t get his own way. What is that? It is the self-demanding to be in charge. He doesn’t even need to choose. He just does it because it is in his nature to rebel. No amount of trying will cancel the sin already present from birth.

There is only one way to get rid of the penalty of sin – if someone else pays the debt who has no debt of his own. That’s where Jesus comes in. He is the only alternative because He was placed under a curse by being executed on a pole (a euphemism for being put to death as a criminal), as a substitute for every sinner who deserves to die because he is already spiritually dead.

Now the alternative is – not trying to keep God’s commandments because it doesn’t work, but trusting in Jesus because God is satisfied with what our Substitute did. What is the outcome of Jesus’ sacrifice? God restored the Holy Spirit to everyone who believes in Jesus. Why do we have to have the Holy Spirit resident in us? Because, without Him we have not link with the Father.

God breathed His breath into Adam in the beginning and gave him life, that is, a connection with Himself that made him fully human and therefore fully alive, able to have fellowship with God because he was one with Him. When Adam rebelled, the Spirit of God withdrew and Adam died to any connection with God. He was on his own, just as he had chosen to be, and he had to make up his own rules. We know the result.

Only when rebellion was dealt with and we are reconciled to God through the death of His Son, can God give the Holy Spirit back to us. We are reinstated as His sons and daughters with a new nature of loving submission to the Father.

Who wants to keep on trying to please God by fruitless keeping of rules when He offers a free pardon for our sin, a new nature and all the benefits of being His children simply by accepting His gift? How foolish to think that we can do both!

It’s no wonder Paul became angry with the Judaizers for their poisonous teaching. It was like telling the Gentiles to go back to jail after being given a free pardon just to make sure that justice has been served.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Going For The Throat

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GOING FOR THE THROAT

“So again I ask, does God give His Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham.

“Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” Galatians 3:5-9.

Paul had to go for the throat of the pernicious teaching of the Judaizers before it took hold of the Gentile believers and strangled the life out of them before the church was one generation old. What better source could he appeal to than the Biblical record of Abraham, who was the father of the Jewish nation?

Since Abraham preceded Moses and the Law (and the Torah tells the story of Abraham and God in detail), surely Abraham must be the one who models the relationship with God that we are to follow. The children of Israel were no example because they not only failed to follow God’s way of doing life, but they also twisted it to suit their own ends. They turned God’s provision for the forgiveness of sins, the sacrificial system (which was a picture of what Christ had already done on the cross from before the beginning of time), into an excuse for sinning.

What was the gospel according to Abraham? God put him into right standing with Himself because Abraham believed His promise. He took God at His word and, except for a few deviations along the way, acted on it instead of trying to gain favour with God in his own way. God had given him some hefty promises:

“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12:2, 3.

Now I don’t know how much Abraham understood or appreciated God’s promises then; after all, they were so far in the future that he would not see their fulfilment in his lifetime. And then there was the matter of a son. None of this would happen if he did not have a son. God hadn’t said anything about a child yet, but it stands to reason that he could never become a great nation without him and Sarah starting the ball rolling.

The “son” promise came later. Years passed. He and Sarah were settled in the land of Canaan. God had told them to get up and go, and they got up and went, but they were only sojourners in the land, not landowners. How could a single couple take over a whole country? In any case, they didn’t even have a family, let alone a nation!

Then, one night, God spoke again – another promise and this time one that addressed his unspoken dream, “You will have a son,” God assured him. “Do you want to know how many ‘sons’? Look up at the stars. Can you count them? No? Then you won’t be able to count your descendants either.”

Abraham gazed up into the night sky. Myriads of stars twinkled down on him. He was looking into the future and a picture began to take shape – people, millions of people, just like God said, but they weren’t only his blood descendants. They were people from every nation gathered into one big family, a family of people who had faith in God.

“Do you know what, God?” he whispered, “I think you can do it. I know you can do it!” There and then, Abraham was catapulted into a new relationship with God. “You are my man! We are now partners in my big plan. It will take thousands of years to accomplish, Abraham, but it will all begin with you because you trust me.”

So where does circumcision and keeping the law fit into God’s scheme of things? It doesn’t. It was designed for another purpose and it was only a temporary arrangement. Paul will go on in his vehement defence of the gospel, to explain what the law was intended to do. But for now he gave his readers a glimpse of what trusting God was about – entering into a partnership with Him so that He can fulfil His big plan for the whole world through those who believe in Him.

What is His big plan? To shower supernatural favour on the whole world, Jew and Gentile, through Abraham because Abraham chose to believe His promise. Can you see why Paul had to strangle this false teaching before it took hold of the church? God cannot carry out His plan if people insist on trying to gain the favour He has already freely given us through Jesus.

He wants to get on with blessing all the nations of the world through the church, not to put up with our puny effort to keep the rules, which doesn’t get us anywhere, anyway.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

The Acid Test

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THE ACID TEST

“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain – if it really was in vain?” Galatians 3:1-4.

“It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.” Have you ever heard this statement? Is it true? Really?

It certainly doesn’t work anywhere else in life. If you sincerely believe that you can fly, and you jump off a tall building and spread out your arms, will you fly? Of course not! Believing something that is not based on the truth is futile and you will kill yourself no matter how sincere you are.

So why should it work in the most important part of your life – your relationship with God, and your destiny? Paul had only one word for people who thought like that. Fools! What is a fool? Someone who knows that what he believes doesn’t work but he does it anyway.

Bewitched! Did Paul really believe that these foolish Galatians were under the spell of witchcraft? It depends on what we understand by “witchcraft”. When King Saul failed to carry out God’s instruction to destroy the Amalekites and all their livestock, by saving the king alive and keeping some of the best of the animals, the prophet Samuel rebuked him because his disobedience sprang from an attitude – rebellion, and rebellion was the outcome of something else – fear.

He said this: “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft (divination), and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has rejected you as king.” 1 Samuel 15:23

What was Saul’s excuse for being disobedient? “I was afraid of the men, so I gave in to them.” 1 Samuel 1:24b.

Saul gave in to fear – he was more afraid of his soldiers than reverent and respectful to God. That is the heart of witchcraft – being manipulated by fear, be it through unscrupulous people or through believing the lies Satan sows into the mind.

The Galatian believers has been manipulated into believing that they could not be saved just by believing in Jesus. They had to keep the law in order to be acceptable to God. “That is witchcraft.” said Paul. “You are being manipulated by fear.”

Now let’s examine the truth. This is where experience becomes the test. Faith and experience must go hand in hand, otherwise what we believe is not the truth. When we believe the truth, God confirms His word by fulfilling His promises. The presence of the Holy Spirit in the Galatian believers was the test. When did they receive the Spirit – when they believed God’s word, or when they tried to please God by following rules – “Ten Easy Steps to Receiving the Holy Spirit”? Of course the answer was – when they believed.

“So why, then,” asks Paul, “are you afraid of offending God if you don’t do what these false teachers are telling you to do? Do you really think that you can begin by trusting God and receiving the Spirit by faith and then carry on by obeying rules? Is it working for you?” That’s the crux. Is it working for you?

How do we know whether we are living by faith in God’s word, or inadvertently regressing by trying to work for God’s acceptance? God gave us a simple but powerful test – His peace. In Romans 5:1 Paul declared, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

God’s peace stands on two feet. One foot is “peace with God”. The other foot is called “the peace of God”. We experience this peace when bad things happen and, “Instead of fretting,” Paul said, “give your anxiety to God. His peace will “guard your heart and your mind through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:7b.

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.” Colossians 3:15.

Rule keeping does not produce peace because one never knows whether one has done it perfectly. Believing God’s promises does, because Jesus has done it all for us. All we have to do is rest in Him then He gives us a supernatural peace which cannot be explained by anything outside of Him.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.