Jewish Roots (Part 3)

The Jewish Roots Movement — Steve Gregg

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Jewish Roots (Part 3)

The Jewish Roots MovementSteve Gregg

In this segment, Steve Gregg delves into the Jewish Roots Movement and the misconception that Gentiles are obligated to keep the laws of Moses. He clarifies that living a moral life is still an obligation for Christians, but when it comes to specific laws that were meant for Israel, like Sabbath-keeping, Gentiles are not required to observe them. Gregg emphasizes that the New Covenant has abolished these distinctions and that the focus should be on a heart dedicated to righteousness rather than ritualistic laws.

Transcript

The Jewish Roots Movement Last time we were talking about specifically the Messianic Jewish Movement, the Messianic Jewish Synagogues, and this largely has to do with what Jewish people supposedly are doing. I say supposedly because actually there's more Gentiles involved in the Hebrew, in the Messianic Jewish Movement than there are Jews. But the idea is that when Jewish people become Christians, they still want to retain something of their Jewish identity, and yet they don't want to not be Christians, and so they kind of mix Christianity with basically Rabbinic Judaism.

The Jewish religion took shape after 70 A.D. when the temple was destroyed. Rabbis meeting a Jaduic got together to decide how they could continue to be Jewish and practice Jewish religion without a temple. And of course what they came up with was a man-made religion because God gave Israel through Moses a religious system that was centered on a temple and sacrifices and a Levitical priesthood, and that all came to an end in 80 A.D. So any Jewish religion that has been persisting since then is simply a man-made religion in a Jewish sort of a way, in a synagogue sort of a way, instead of a church sort of a way, which they consider to be too Gentile.

The interesting irony of this is that there's relatively few Jews in the Messianic synagogues, and generally speaking the consensus of those who've done surveys is about 80% of the attendees at Messianic synagogues are not Jewish but Gentiles. Gentile Christians who are enamored with all things Jewish. Now we were talking about the Messianic synagogues last time.

We're going to move another direction this time because quite apart from the Messianic movement is the Hebrew roots Torah observance movement. Now what I mean by this is that we're talking about people who are Gentiles essentially, who believe that Gentiles are supposed to be keeping the laws that God gave to Moses, the Torah. The word Torah is the Hebrew word for law or instruction.

And when we talk about the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses, in the Hebrew Bible those are called the Torah, the law. And there's a movement that's arisen in recent times that says really the Torah is a holy thing that God made for all time, for all worshipers of all time, and that we as Gentiles ought to be observing the Torah. What they mean by that is the Jewish festivals, Passover, Pentecost, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Jewish diet, eating what is kosher according to Leviticus 11, circumcision, and other things, the Sabbath of course.

Now there have been Sabbatarian Christians for a long time. This is not part of the Hebrew roots Torah observance movement. For example, Seventh-day Adventists famously teach that we should be keeping the Jewish Sabbath.

They wouldn't call it the Jewish Sabbath, they'd call it the Sabbath of Yahweh, the Sabbath of the Lord, the Lord's Sabbath. Because sometimes God refers to it that in the Bible. And they would say it's not for Jews only, it's for everybody.

It's one of the Ten Commandments and therefore we should all keep the Saturday Sabbath. That's one of the distinctives of the Seventh-day Adventists and some other Seventh-day Christian groups. But these people are not really what we call Torah observant, although they sometimes alter their diet to be more compliant with, I would say, clean foods or more properly, Seventh-day Adventists are often vegetarian, which goes beyond being kosher.

But they don't believe that we have to keep all the Jewish festivals in the Jewish manner or keep all the Jewish law. But there are people who do. Now most of the people who do advocate this are on the Internet and there's a lot of them.

And I have to say, these are not really mainstream Christian people. I'm not saying they're not Christian. I'm saying they're not mainstream Christian people.

Their names would be probably only familiar to people who follow them on the Internet or who read their self-published books. And there are lots of people doing so because there's a lot of YouTube channels, a lot of websites of these people who are saying that Christians should be keeping the whole Jewish law. Now, of course, when you raise the question, what about the sacrificial system that's in the Jewish law? They usually, most of them will say, well, we don't have to do that because Jesus fulfilled the sacrificial system by being the final sacrifice.

But I have encountered Torah observant Christians who believe that if the temple were to be rebuilt and sacrifices were to be reinstituted, that even Gentiles should go back. Gentile Christians should go to Jerusalem and offer animal sacrifices there. So this is how far it goes with some of these people.

Now, in my opinion, these are simply people who don't read the Bible very carefully or don't do very good exegesis. They would not be impressed by mine, perhaps. But at least the view that I'm going to represent is the view that the Christian church has held from the time of Jesus, or at least from the time of the apostle Paul, I would say from Jesus on, until very modern times when this Torah observant fetish came along.

And I say fetish because these people don't have any excellent reasons for being enamored with all things Jewish. Many of these people are not dispensationalists. In fact, they mostly would not consider themselves dispensationalists.

But dispensationalism, as you know, elevates Jews, elevates Israel, and considers them the most important people in God's program in the end times. And a lot of times people who begin dispensational, they just become so obsessed with Israel and the Jews and all things Jewish that they become vulnerable to people who say, Yeah, the law, the synagogue, the way that the Jews do things, their festivals, these are all important things for Christians to kind of restore. Now, they would, of course, say that these things have to be observed in a Christian manner, that is, recognizing Christ as the final sacrifice and Christ as the one about whom the law speaks.

But they still believe that God would have us keep the law. And I want to talk about that tonight. And we're going to take this in two parts.

We're going to take a segment, then we're going to take a break, and then we'll take another segment. And that'll give you a chance to leave if you want to, if it gets too late for you or if you need to go to the bathroom. But in any case, we're going to take two segments today.

And I want to start, I've given you some notes. They should be there on the chairs. And the question we're asking initially is, are Christians to keep the law or not? And when we say the law, we need to understand what we mean by that.

Many Christians don't think very carefully about this subject. They know that Paul said we're not under the law, and yet they know also that Christians are supposed to behave in a moral fashion. And I think some Christians don't know how to harmonize those two things, because they know that we should keep free from adultery and murder and theft and blasphemy and dishonoring our parents.

Because, I mean, that's just the New Testament tells us that those are sinful things. And those things are also found in the Old Testament law. And for that reason, when people say, well, we're saved by faith, not by the works of the law, many people don't understand that Paul's not talking about the kinds of laws I just mentioned.

Paul's not saying that Christians are not under obligation to live moral lives. All people are under obligation to live moral lives. Jesus taught that we should not commit adultery, should not steal, should not commit murder, and so forth.

But not only did Jesus and not only did Moses, but almost all legal systems throughout history have said that people should not murder and should not commit adultery and should not steal. That doesn't mean people didn't do these things, but most legal systems did not encourage them and, in fact, had penalties attached to them. So basic morality is simply part of human obligations.

People are supposed to live according to the conscience God gave them. And the way Jesus summarized that is you should love your neighbors, you love yourself. And, of course, Jesus got that from the Old Testament.

The Old Testament said that, too. Now, when we are talking about Christians not being under the law, we're talking about the particular laws that distinguished Israel from the other nations. The law that one should not murder or commit adultery, those laws did not distinguish Israel from other nations.

All nations recognize that people should not murder or commit adultery or steal or dishonor their parents. All nations have always recognized these things. What set Israel apart was essentially the religious system that God gave them, by which they worshipped Yahweh, whereas other nations worshipped their gods, their own gods.

And the other gods of the nations were worshipped in abominable ways. And so God gave Moses a pure system of worship, a ritual associated with a tabernacle and later a temple and an altar and a priesthood and sacrifices. And associated with that whole system were laws that had to do with being clean or unclean.

Many states would render you unclean. If you had a wet dream, you would be unclean. If a woman was on her menstrual period, she'd be unclean.

If you were a leper, you'd be unclean. If you touched a dead body, you'd be unclean. Now, obviously, all the things I just mentioned are things that are not sins.

Cleanness and uncleanness in the law are not describing sinful behavior. They're describing ritual requirements for being eligible to worship in the tabernacle. Now, the tabernacle itself was symbolic in its structure and its practices.

And the New Testament tells us that these things were a shadow in the Old Testament time that looked forward to something fulfilled in Christ. And these things are rituals because they don't have a moral aspect to them. There's nothing immoral about a woman being on her period.

There's nothing immoral about a person getting leprosy. There's nothing immoral about touching a dead body. After all, people have to touch dead bodies to bury their dead and so forth.

That was understood. The law did not actually forbid people to do that. It actually just said if they do it, they contract uncleanness, either until sundown, in some cases, or for a week, in other cases.

And this state of uncleanness simply meant they were not supposed to touch other people or associate closely with other people while they were in a state of uncleanness. And they were not supposed to go into the tabernacle. They couldn't go there while they were unclean.

Now, this is all very symbolic. There is such a thing as moral uncleanness, of course. But the law didn't specify those moral uncleanness things, but only ritual uncleanness.

In the New Testament, we are given more information about what makes somebody clean or unclean in the sight of God. It has nothing to do with what you eat or what you touch. It has to do with things in your heart.

Jesus said, nothing going into a man's mouth defiles a man. But what comes out of a man's mouth defiles him because it comes out of his heart. And then he listed all kinds of unclean things, sins that come out of a man's heart.

And he said, these are the things that defile a man. Now, defile means rendering him unclean. So, Jesus listed actual sins, which we would all recognize as sins.

Blasphemy, adultery, hatred, murder, you know, drunkenness, these kinds of things. We all recognize as sins. And Jesus said, those are the things that defile a man.

That's true uncleanness. But what goes into your mouth doesn't make you unclean, Jesus said. And in that, Jesus declared all foods to be clean.

He basically eliminated the category of unclean foods because nothing you eat will make you unclean. Jesus said, under the old covenant, certainly would. If you ate pork, you'd be unclean.

If you ate any unclean animal, you'd be unclean. And yet, Jesus changed that because he saw cleanness and uncleanness in the Old Testament, as with all the rituals of the Old Testament. They are symbolic of spiritual things.

Therefore, if a person had leprosy and could not go to the tabernacle, and could not associate with his family, this doesn't mean that God had something against him. It didn't mean that he, in his own spirit and his own heart, couldn't be a righteous man and have a good relation with God. But in terms of the ritual enactment of the spiritual truths that were symbolically depicted in the rituals, that person had to play the role of somebody who can't go and worship God and can't associate with people.

And it had to do only with their earthly limitations. It had nothing to do with their actual relationship with God. A leper could go to heaven when he died.

You know, the woman with the issue of blood for 12 years, or whatever it was, she was unclean the whole time. But if she had died in that state, that doesn't mean she'd go to hell. It doesn't even mean that God was unhappy with her.

Being ritually unclean is a symbolic condition. And what it symbolized is what is brought out in the New Testament, and it's always something spiritual. Now, I say that because uncleanness could be defined in lots of different ways.

If you're uncircumcised, you're unclean. If you touch something or ate something that's unclean, you are unclean. And this unclean state, again, does not put you at odds with God in the ultimate sense.

It simply means that you now are in the drama of the tabernacle worship. You are playing a role, and that is the role of somebody who can't go in there because they've got leprosy or something else. And it had absolutely nothing to do with being right with God or pleasing God or displeasing God.

It had to do with the symbolism. Now, let's start with these laws and who they were given to. Because, of course, if somebody says that we should be keeping these laws, then they mean we Christians should be keeping them.

We have to ask, well, were they ever given to us as Christians? Were these laws ever given to anyone other than the nation of Israel? The answer is no, they were not. Circumcision, for example, in Genesis chapter 17, was the fundamental right that allowed somebody to be part of Israel or not. And it began, actually, before there was a nation Israel or a people of Israel.

It was when Abraham had not even had Isaac yet. So there were no children of Abraham yet. But God instituted circumcision in Genesis 17.

And basically in verses 10 and 11, This is the covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male child among you shall be circumcised. And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins.

It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Now, the sign of the Abrahamic covenant was circumcision. And it was to be imposed on every physical child of Abraham.

And the Jewish people regarded themselves to be physically descended from Abraham. So they were circumcised. And that's what set them apart from Gentiles.

They were part of the Abrahamic covenant. Now, of course, someone might say, Well, we're part of the Abrahamic covenant, aren't we? Aren't we the seed of Abraham too? Yes, we are. But we're not the physical offspring of Abraham.

The physical offspring... You see, circumcision as a physical act applied to the physical offspring. But in the New Testament, circumcision is a spiritual thing. And Paul makes it very clear.

He is not a Jew who is one outwardly. Neither is that circumcision which is outward and of the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly.

And that circumcision is that which is of the heart. That's, of course, Romans 2, 28 and 29. Circumcision is not imposed on Gentiles or on Christians.

It is imposed on those who are physically descended from Abraham. And it was never imposed on anyone else. Unless a Gentile wanted to become part of the Jewish community in Israel.

Under the old covenant, before Jesus came, a Gentile could become part of Israel if he wished. He'd have to get circumcised and have to do the other ritual things that Jews have to do. And that person would then become a Jew.

Even though they were born a Gentile. They were considered a Jew after that. However, Sabbath is another issue.

That is also a sign of the covenant. And in Exodus 31, verse 13, God said, And speak also to the children of Israel, saying, Surely my Sabbaths you shall keep. For it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you.

And in verse 16 and 17, same chapter, Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever. So this is a sign of the covenant God made with the children of Israel.

God gave a sign to Abraham and his children, which was circumcision. He gave the nation of Israel a sign called Sabbath. Now, no other nations were expected to keep the Sabbath.

How do I know that? Because God says it's a sign between himself and Israel. If everyone was supposed to keep the Sabbath, how could it be a sign of the specialness of Israel? It's clear that Gentiles did not keep the Sabbath, and only the Jews were commanded to do so. Now, sometimes Sabbatarians say, No, people were commanded to keep the Sabbath way back in Genesis chapter 2. But that's not true.

We do not read of any such command. In Genesis chapter 2, we read of the Sabbath for the first time, but not of a Sabbath command. In Genesis 2.1, it says, Thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished, and on the seventh day God ended his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.

Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all the work which God had created and made. So God blessed and sanctified the Sabbath day. But we don't read that he ever told anyone to do anything about it.

It was special to him. And later, when Israel came out of Egypt at Mount Sinai, God said in the fourth commandment, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, for in six days the Lord made everything, and then he rested on the seventh day. So I'm telling you to rest on the seventh day.

Do all your work in six days and rest on the seventh day. That's the first time that this command is given in that kind of a law code. Now the Sabbath was hinted at four chapters earlier than Exodus 20.

In Exodus 16, when the children of Israel were gathering manna, God told them to gather manna for six days but don't gather on the seventh day. He didn't use the word Sabbath, and he had not given a Sabbath law up to this point, but it certainly was anticipating it. He said gather twice as much on Friday, and then on Saturday don't go out and gather any manna.

And then it was four chapters later he gave them the ten commandments, which included remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. But until Israel came out of Egypt, we do not read of anybody at any time keeping the Sabbath day except God. And he only did it once on the seventh day of creation.

Jesus made it clear that God has not kept a Sabbath since that time, because when Jesus was criticized for doing his work on the Sabbath, he said my father works here too and I work. What he's saying is my father works every day, that's why I work every day. The son doesn't know how to do anything but what he sees his father do, and his son sees his father do it, he does what his father does.

My father works every day, including Sabbath day, so that's why I do, Jesus said. That's in John chapter 5, we'll look at that again later on. Now the point here is God doesn't stop working on Saturday, though he did cease from one of his works, the work of creation, on the first Sabbath.

We do not read of God ever keeping another Sabbath, nor do we read of any people keeping Sabbath, until Israel came out of Egypt and God brought them in the wilderness to the place where he eventually gave them the ten commandments. And the Sabbath was to be, therefore, a special thing for Israel that set them apart from the nations. The nations didn't observe it, Israel alone knew that they were to do so.

Israel alone was commanded to do so, and this is the only way it could be a special sign between them and God, of their specialness before God. If everyone was keeping Sabbath, or supposed to, then Israel keeping it wouldn't be any different than any other nation. And that's the point God's making in Exodus 31, they are supposed to be different in this very point.

Now, also in Leviticus 11, when the laws of clean and unclean foods are given, these too are said to be an indicator of Israel's specialness, or holiness. Holiness means being set aside, set apart. In Leviticus 11, verses 44 and 45, God has given, in the earlier part of this chapter, a long list of animals that could or could not be eaten.

And he says in verse 44, For I am the Lord your God, you shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy, for I am holy. Neither shall you defile yourselves with any creeping thing that creeps on the earth, for I am the Lord who brings you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

Now, holy means set apart, unique, different from common things. Israel was a holy nation. They were set apart by God for purposes other nations were not set apart for.

And he said, because I want you to be holy, I want you to avoid eating these foods. Don't eat any of these things because I want you to be holy. Separate, different than other people.

Once again, there's no evidence that God wanted other people, who were not Israel, to eat this restricted diet. Their diet, their Sabbath keeping, their circumcision, all of these things were things that God gave Israel to set them apart from other nations. It was not something that all the other nations were expected to do or commanded to do.

And so, these kinds of ritual laws were never imposed on Gentiles, except in the Old Testament time, if a Gentile wanted to become part of Israel, wanted to become a Jew. They could do that. They could become what they called a proselyte, which is a convert to Judaism, and then they would have to do all these rituals because that's what Jews do.

It's what was told to the Jews, not to the Gentiles, to do. Now, even in the New Testament, we know that the Jewish believers in Jerusalem tended to keep the Torah considerably more than the Gentiles did in the Book of Acts. They were zealous for the Torah, the Bible says.

And yet, even they did not believe that Gentiles were ever asked to keep the Torah. In Acts 21, when James is talking to Paul, when Paul has visited Jerusalem, and James is the leader of the Jerusalem church, the church in Jerusalem had heard wrongly that Paul was teaching Jews not to circumcise their children. Now, Paul was not teaching Jews not to circumcise their children.

Paul didn't go out and give any instructions to Jews. He gave instructions to the church. He told the Gentile Christians whom he evangelized that they were not to circumcise their children.

But he never told Jews not to. And therefore, a false rumor was causing the church in Jerusalem to kind of frown on Paul as a defector from Judaism because they wrongly thought he was telling Jews not to do this, not to circumcise. And in Acts 21-25, James is actually counseling Paul how to get along in Jerusalem while he's there.

And he says, Now, concerning the Gentiles who believe, we have written and decided that they should observe no such thing except that they should keep themselves from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. This is a reference to the Jerusalem Council's decision in Acts 15 that came together to decide whether Gentiles need to observe the Torah or not. And the answer was no, they don't.

They don't need to observe the Torah. But we would like to ask them to abstain from some things which offend Jewish people, like eating blood, and eating animals that have been strangled, and fornication, and, you know, animals sacrificed to idols. We have told them to do that, but we've told them apart from those four things, they don't have to keep any such laws.

Now, if the Jerusalem Christians who were fairly Torah observant themselves, if they didn't think that the Gentiles had to observe any Torah except for those four commands, and that's what they said, then they obviously did not believe that Gentiles are supposed to keep Torah. Now, I want to talk to you about the difference between the ritual laws and the moral laws because this is where people get confused. For example, people sometimes say, well, don't you keep nine of the Ten Commandments? Why don't you keep the fourth commandment, which is you shall keep the Sabbath holy? If you don't keep the Sabbath, then you're kind of arbitrarily taking one of the Ten Commandments and not keeping it.

While you're recognizing you still have to not have any other gods before God, not take his name in vain, honor your father and your mother, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't bear false witness, don't covet. You acknowledge that you're not supposed to do any of those things, but why do you not keep the fourth commandment? Well, it's simply this. There is a difference between moral laws and ritual laws.

Now, even Sabbatarians sometimes acknowledge this, but they make the mistake of saying, yeah, the Ten Commandments are the moral law, and the rest are not. But that's not thinking very clearly. The Bible does not say that the Ten Commandments were ever given to anybody other than Israel.

They were, in fact, given to Israel at Mount Sinai along with the rest of the law. It's part of the Sinaitic Covenant, the Ten Commandments. And when Paul talked about the Ten Commandments engraved on stone, in 2 Corinthians 3, he said they faded away, just like the glow on Moses' face faded away.

So did the law engraved on stone fade away. Paul did not think the Ten Commandments were somehow the abiding law. The Ten Commandments were simply the ten fundamentals that introduced the general principles of the law that God was going to elaborate on in the rest of the law.

What makes a difference between ceremonial law or ritual law, on the one hand, and moral law on the other, is not whether they're in the Ten Commandments, but it has to do with the nature of those laws. That is, moral laws reflect God's character. God's character never changes, and therefore moral laws never change.

As I said, moral issues are a universal code of conduct that all people have always been expected to keep. Even Cain, before there was any law of any kind, was punished, not as severely as he might have been, but he was punished because he killed his brother Abel. Well, there's never any command, you should not kill, why should he be punished? People were expected to know.

Their conscience is supposed to tell them, I wouldn't want this done to me. I shouldn't do it to someone else. That's the basic moral standard.

Jesus said, as you would have men do to you, do likewise to them. This is the whole law and the prophets, Matthew 7, 12. I think anybody who's not selfish and who reflects on ethics would know, well, I shouldn't do something to someone that I don't want done to me.

That is basically the law that's written in our hearts, that God has put in man. We know that there are things that we would not wish to have done to us and therefore we shouldn't do to other people. But nobody knows instinctively to keep the seventh day holy or to keep three festivals during the year or to offer a lamb or a bull in a certain way that's prescribed in the law or to not eat pork even though you can eat cow.

I mean, these things are not things that people know instinctively. They are laws that have no basis in a higher moral standard. They are ritual in nature.

The moral laws reflect God's character and they're binding on all men. And they're acknowledged by many Gentile legal and cultural norms. In 1 Corinthians 5, 1, when Paul is rebuking the church for allowing a man who is living in incest to be there, he says, even the heathen don't approve of this kind of thing.

And, of course, the heathen knew that some things were wrong and in some cases they were correct about it because the code that God built into man's conscience is in God's image. Now, if you do things that are unjust or unmerciful or unfaithful, you're doing things that God wouldn't do because God is just and merciful and faithful. And therefore, murder, that's unjust.

Adultery is unfaithful and unjust. Lying, bearing false witness, that's unfaithful. In other words, anything that you would do that God could not do because it violates his character are wrong.

Wrong for anyone to do, Christian, Jew, heathen, Satanist. Nobody, as far as God's concerned, is allowed to do those things. But, again, ritual laws are of a different sort.

Ritual or ceremonial laws are those that are given to Israel alone, which pertain to the tabernacle slash temple service. And that would include circumcision, holy days, festivals, priests, sacrifices, ritual cleanness, and so forth. These have nothing to do with the character of God.

They have to do with the program that God set up for the tabernacle, which he could have set up differently. This is how you can know if a law is a moral law or not. Could God have given it the opposite without impinging on his or compromising his character? Could God say, thou shalt commit adultery? In other words, cheat on your husband, cheat on your wife.

Could God say that? No. Because he's a faithful God. He loves faithfulness.

He despises unfaithfulness. You know, it's not loving. God is love.

It's not loving to kill somebody or to cheat on them or to lie about them or whatever. It's unjust. It's unfaithful.

It's unmerciful. It's unloving. And therefore, it's against the character of God to do it.

Now, what if God had said, I want you to keep two days holy, Saturday and Wednesday? Now, would that have somehow contradicted his character? I can't imagine how it would. He could have said, keep five days holy or one day a month or something like that. There's nothing in God's character that would automatically dictate how many days you set aside for special, you know, religious rituals.

If God had said, I want you to eat camels instead of sheep, would that somehow violate the character of God? Now, camels are unclean animals under the Jewish law, and sheep are clean. But what if God had switched it over? How would that reflect negatively on God's character? We would never have known the difference. We would all be eating camels instead of sheep now, those of us in Judeo-Christian cultures.

But the point I'm making is, if the law could have been given differently without it really being a violation of God's character, then it's not a moral law. All the moral laws are such because they go against God's character. And ritual laws are such that they are kind of arbitrary.

God could have said, he could have made it different, like you're unclean if you blow your nose in public or something like that. He could have made that a law if he wanted to, but it would be somewhat arbitrary. There's nothing in God's character that would require the law to be as it is in the ritual sense.

What is requiring it to be that way is that God had a plan, a spiritual plan, fulfilled in Christ, and he set up the ritual laws in such a way that they reflect properly those spiritual realities that are part of that plan. But he could have set up different symbols for those things. He didn't have to do it the way he did.

And that's what ritual laws, that's how they're different. They're just Israel's religious practices that God made somewhat arbitrarily and could have done differently had he wanted to. Ceremonial laws in the Old Testament are types and shadows of spiritual realities in the New Testament.

Look at Hebrews 8. Hebrews 8, verses 4 and 5 says, For if he, Jesus, were on earth, he would not be a priest, since there are priests, he means Levites, who offer the gifts according to the law, who serve as a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things. The Levitical priests and all the things they do at the temple, they serve as a type and a shadow, a copy and a shadow of spiritual things. And they're not a permanent arrangement because those spiritual things have come into existence already.

In chapter 9 of Hebrews, verses 6 through 11, it says, Now when these things had been thus prepared, the priests always went into the first part of the tabernacle, performing the services, but into the second part, the high priest went alone once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the people's sins committed in ignorance. Now this is a reference to the Yom Kippur ritual of Leviticus 16, David Tolman, and it says in verse 8, The Holy Spirit, indicating this, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was standing. It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered, which cannot make him who performed the services perfect in regard to the conscience, concerned only with food and drinks, various washings, and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation.

Now he lists some of the ritual laws. He said these things were all symbolic. The Holy Spirit used them to symbolically describe spiritual truths.

The fact that the high priest alone could go into the Holy of Holies and only once a year, why was it so exclusive? Why was it so inaccessible? Well, the Holy Spirit was thus telling us that the way into the holiest of all in heaven was not yet made available during the time of the first tabernacle, that is, of the old covenant. And in Colossians chapter 2, Paul is aware of people who would try to impose Torah observance on Gentile Christians, and he tells his Christian readers in verse 16, So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival, or a new moon, or sabbaths. Now the festivals were the annual holy weeks of Israel's calendar.

The new moons were once a month. The first day of every month was a new moon, and they were supposed to keep that in a similar way to the Sabbath. And then the Sabbaths were weekly.

So there's annual, monthly, and weekly festivals of the Jews that are mentioned here, along with the food and drink requirements, which has to do with kosher diet. Having mentioned these, in verse 17 he says, Which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance, or the body, is of Christ. So he's saying, Christ is the permanent substance.

These things were like a passing shadow before he came. So again and again, the New Testament tells us that these Old Testament rituals, they were foreshadowing spiritual truths, and those spiritual truths are more permanent than the shadows were. Clean and unclean animals and ritual conditions were symbolic of moral cleanness and uncleanness.

For example, in Deuteronomy 22.10, the law said you should not plow with an ox and an ass together. Why not? Well, Paul seems to spiritualize that. In 2 Corinthians 6.14 he says, Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

You don't put an ox and an ass yoked together. You don't put a believer and an unbeliever yoked together. An ox was a clean animal.

An ass was an unclean animal. A believer is clean. An unbeliever is unclean.

And so the law that you don't yoke an ox and an ass together, Paul sees in it a spiritual truth. You don't yoke a believer and an unbeliever together. And by the way, unclean animals many times in Scripture apparently refer to people.

Remember Jesus said, Do not give what is holy to dogs. And don't cast your pearls before swine. Well, swine and dogs are unclean animals to the Jew.

But certainly Jesus isn't talking about animals. He's talking about people. He's talking about a certain kind of people that are unclean like dogs and like swine.

Unclean animals are a type of unclean people, morally unclean people. When Peter was on the rooftop in Joppa, God, Lord, Jesus, Lord, in a vision, a sheet full of animals, including unclean animals, and told Peter, Arise, Peter, kill and eat. He says, No, Lord, I've never eaten anything unclean.

I'm a good Jew. I'm Torah observant. And Jesus said, Well, I've cleansed.

Don't you call unclean. Now, of course, eventually Peter realized that these unclean animals that God had cleansed represent Gentiles, whom the Jews believed were unclean, but which God was cleansing. And this was God's preparing Peter to be prepared to go to the house of a Gentile, Cornelius, and preach the gospel, something Jews would not normally do.

But the unclean animals in the vision represented the Gentiles, unclean people. And so you can see in the New Testament this whole category of unclean animals. It's picked up and applied as if it's really about telling us something about people, morally unclean or otherwise unclean people.

The distinction between ceremonial and moral duty is noted in both Testaments. Now, the New Testament isn't the first to mention that there's a distinction between different kinds of laws. For example, in Hosea 6.6, God said, through Hosea, I will have mercy rather than sacrifice.

Now, mercy is a moral requirement. It's the character of God. Sacrifice, that's ritual.

And God said, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. And Jesus quoted that verse twice in the New Testament. In Matthew 9 and verse 13, when Jesus was criticized for eating with tax collectors and sinners, the Pharisees criticized him for that.

He said, those who are well don't need a physician, but those who are sick. I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. But go and learn what this means.

I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Now, that's how Jesus rebuked the Pharisees. Go and learn what this means.

I will have mercy and not sacrifice. That is, he quoted Hosea 6.6. And he's saying, you are not being merciful. You are being ritually clean.

You are not touching the unclean thing. I'm eating with tax collectors and sinners, and that bothers you. But a doctor goes to sick people, and sometimes sick people are bleeding.

They might even die in his presence, and then he contracts uncleanness. But that's what he does anyway, because he has mercy. A doctor has mercy on a patient, even though it may compromise his own ritual cleanliness to go and treat them.

So also, he says, you need to learn what this means. You need to learn that there are some things in the law more important than others. Even though sacrifice is a very large focus in the law, it's not as important to God as mercy.

Mercy is a moral issue, and sacrifice a ritual issue. Actually, three chapters later in Matthew 12, Jesus was criticized, or actually his disciples were criticized by the Pharisees again. Because they were rubbing grain in their hands on the Sabbath and eating it.

And thus, the Pharisees felt that the disciples were violating the Sabbath law. And Jesus, of course, rebuked the Pharisees very soundly, and we'll talk about some of the things he said about that later on when we look at the Sabbath more carefully. But at the end of that, he said, if you had learned what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice.

You would not have condemned the guiltless. Now, it's kind of rubbing it in their face. He told them three chapters later, go and learn what this means.

I will have mercy and not sacrifice. And three chapters later, you should have gone and learned what this means. I told you, go and learn what this means.

If you had learned what this means, you would not be making the same mistake again here. Condemning the righteous, condemning the innocent. Now, it's clear that Jesus was not as hung up on the ritual cleanness laws as the Jews were.

Because he saw that God's priorities were different. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6, Paul is writing to the Corinthians who are, they've become aware that it's okay for them to eat certain foods that the Jews would not permit them to eat. And they've made the mistake of thinking, well, I guess it's okay for us to violate the law so we can fornicate too.

And Paul had to correct them in 1 Corinthians 6. And in verses 12 and 13, Paul said, all things are lawful for me. He means food. But all things are not helpful.

All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Foods for the stomach. And the stomach for foods.

But, and God will destroy both it and them. That is, food and the stomach are temporary. They're not eternal.

They don't have an, what you eat doesn't have an eternal impact. But he says, but the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord the body. Now, he's saying, you people are equating two things that are not equal.

One has to do with being free from the ceremonial law of what you eat. The other has to do with being free from the moral law of fornication. He says, you are free from the one, but not from the other.

These are different things. Because what you eat or don't eat has no eternal impact. Fornication does.

You defile the temple of the Holy Spirit, he says, as the chapter goes on. You have a, you actually have an impact morally and eternally. In that.

So, Paul, Jesus, the Old Testament, they do make distinctions between ritual and moral commands. I don't have this in your notes, but I just thought of another passage I'd like you to look at. It's in Isaiah chapter 1, verse 11 and following.

God says to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? Says the Lord, I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who has required this from your hand to trample my courts? Bring no more futile sacrifices.

Incense is an abomination to me. New moons and Sabbaths and the calling of assemblies. I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting your new moons and your appointed feasts.

My soul hates. They are a trouble to me. I'm weary of burying them.

When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves and make yourselves clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil.

Learn to do good. Seek justice. Rebuke the oppressor.

Defend the fatherless. Plead for the widows. Now notice he's making a distinction between what they're doing wrong, which was frankly they were keeping all the ritual laws.

They were offering sacrifices. They were offering incense. They were keeping new moons and Sabbaths and festivals.

So that makes me sick. Now it doesn't always make God sick. If righteous people do that, it doesn't make him sick.

But it still makes me sick. But it says in the Proverbs, the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. Again, sacrifices are ritually required under Israel's law.

But if it's offered by a wicked person, morally wrong, then it's an abomination to God. Proverbs says that twice. Actually, I think it says it three times.

That the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to God. And here he's saying, listen, I want you to do justice. Stop doing evil.

You know, stand up for the poor. Basically, in other words, be morally righteous. Taking a stand for the innocent and condemning the oppressor.

This is what you need to be doing. God doesn't care about these sacrifices and Sabbaths and so forth if you're not living a just life. Now, on the other hand, if you are living a just and righteous life, he doesn't care that much about the rituals.

We can see that in many Old Testament cases, including David, for example, eating the showbread, which was a violation of the ritual law. But he was a man after God's heart. His cause was righteous.

And God didn't hold that against him. Neither did the Pharisees, amazingly. And Jesus pointed that out to them.

Because in Matthew 12, when the Pharisees were criticizing Jesus' disciples for doing the work they were doing on the Sabbath, he said, didn't you ever read what David did when he entered into the Lord's house and ate the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat? Now, Jesus didn't say it was okay, but he didn't seem to condemn David. In fact, he seemed to be comparing what David did with what his disciples were doing. What he's pointing out is the Pharisees didn't condemn David, but they condemned Jesus' disciples.

And what was the difference? Both of them were breaking a ritual law because they were hungry. That was the parallel. It's okay to break a ritual law if you're hungry, apparently.

But it's not okay to break a moral law if you're hungry. If you're hungry and you steal from somebody, that's a moral infraction. And if David stole from people, that would not be something that would be approved.

But breaking the ritual law of only the priests can eat the showbread, well, that's a technicality. Here's a man who needs some food. Let's give it to him.

He's not a priest. And that's what happened. David was a man after God's heart.

He knew what God cared about. He knew he wasn't making God angry when he did that. And he wasn't.

Let's talk about, before we take a break here, the difference between the New and the Old Covenants. Because this is where everything hinges here. Why was it so important for people to eat a kosher diet and to offer sacrifices and to do the rituals of the tabernacle in the Old Testament, and it's not important now? Has God changed? God has not changed.

But God's covenant has changed. And it's like if you make a contract with one person, and at a certain point, because they violated the contract, you say, let's enter into another contract here, and I'm going to make some different stipulations here. You haven't changed.

You're not different. You're the same person. Your character hasn't changed.

Your interests have not changed. But because the first contract has been violated by the other party, you say, I'm going to change up the arrangement here with you. And that's what God did.

He made a new covenant with the House of Israel. And this is, it had different stipulations than the first covenant. The ritual laws we've been talking about were all part of the Old Covenant.

Not one of them is mentioned in the New Covenant. That is, there's no stipulation in the New Covenant, no place in the New Testament, that commands people to do any of the ritual laws. Interesting.

Because there are a lot of ritual laws. Like, there's 613 laws. The majority of them were ritual laws.

Must have been at least 500 or 600 ritual laws. Not one of them is enforced in the New Testament. Why? Because they are the stipulations of an earlier covenant that's been replaced by a new covenant.

In Luke 22, that's 22, verse 20. Jesus in the upper room with his disciples said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Jesus entered into the new covenant with his disciples.

Now, what is the new covenant? Well, if you look at Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 31 through 34. We find God says in the Old Covenant, he promises a new covenant. In Jeremiah 31, verse 31, he says, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand and lead them out of the land of Egypt. Well, that's the Sinaitic covenant, isn't it? That's the covenant he made when they came to Sinai. That's where the Ten Commandments and all those laws about the tabernacle and rituals and so forth were given.

So I'm going to make a new covenant. It's not going to be like that other one. Not according to the covenant I made before.

This is going to be different. There will be some things it has in common, of course, but it'll be different in some ways. And so don't be surprised if not everything that the Old Covenant required is also required in the new.

Speaking of that Old Covenant, he says, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them. He compares it with a marriage covenant. It's like a wife cheated on her husband.

I made a marriage covenant with you. I promised things. You promised things.

I kept my promise. I was a husband to you, but you were unfaithful. A covenant is like a marriage.

He says, but this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law in their minds. I will write it on their hearts.

I will be their God and they shall be my people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me. From the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin and I will remember no more.

Now, clearly, this covenant has to do with spiritual things. The heart. I'm going to write my laws in their heart and on their minds.

They're going to know me. Everyone in this covenant is going to know me personally. That wasn't true in the old covenant.

In the old covenant, most Jews knew about God. They could read about him. They could read his laws.

They could read what he'd done in history, but they didn't know God. The priests had the law and they could teach people about God, but the average person didn't even have a Bible to read at home. And therefore, not everyone knew God.

They were just worshiping a God that was kind of, they knew about. But this says that in the new covenant, they're all going to know me personally. That's true.

Becoming a Christian, coming into a new covenant with Christ, does bring you into a knowledge of God, a relationship of firsthand knowledge, not hearsay knowledge, not God. And we're told in the book of Hebrews that the coming of the new covenant has brought an end to the old covenant. In other words, we don't have both of them.

We don't have two good covenants now. The one that God made at Sinai, and then we kind of tag on an additional covenant, which Jesus made with his disciples, so that we still have to keep the Torah, because that's in the old covenant. But now we have some new stuff too.

No. In Hebrews chapter 8, verse 13, it says, in that he says, a new covenant, he has made the first one obsolete. What's the first one? He's just quoted, by the way, in this chapter, he's just quoted the passage in Jeremiah 31 that we just read.

It's quoted in its entirety there, in chapter 8 of Hebrews, and having quoted it, he says, when he says a new covenant, he's made the old one obsolete. What's the old one? Well, God said, the covenant I made with their fathers when they came out of Egypt. The Sinaitic covenant.

It's obsolete now. Now, if it's obsolete, then how can anything in it be imposed on me? I relate to God in terms of a covenant that Christ made with his disciples, the new covenant. How can anything from the old covenant be imposed upon me? And again, if somebody says, well, the old covenant said you shouldn't murder, isn't that imposed on you? No.

The commands of Christ are imposed upon me. He commands me not to murder. He commands me not to steal or commit adultery.

He commands me to love my neighbor as well as myself. I have to do that. I have to do that, not because the old covenant said so, but because the maker of the new covenant says so, because Jesus says so.

And that's what the new covenant is. The new covenant is recognizing Christ as replacing the old law. So, there's been a change in the law.

If you look at Hebrews 7, 12, it's talking about how the priesthood has changed because there's now the priesthood of Melchizedek. There was no priesthood of Melchizedek in the law. There was the Levitical priesthood.

But now we've got a new priesthood, the priesthood of Melchizedek. And in chapter 7 of Hebrews, verse 12, it says, For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there's also a change of the law. Okay, so if the priesthood's out and been replaced, what else might be out? There must be a change in the law because the law knew of only one priesthood and dictated that there'd be the Levitical priesthood.

That's gone. There's now a new priesthood forever after the order of Melchizedek. The priesthood's changed.

Well, kind of suggests the law has changed, doesn't it? We've got changes in the law. If something as fundamental as the priesthood has changed, then what might not be changed in the law? The truth is, a lot of things are changed, but not everything. Like I said, the moral issues that mattered to God when he gave the law, they matter to God now too.

If you look at Romans chapter 7, beginning of verse 1, Paul says, Or do you not know, brethren, for I speak to those who know the law, that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? He means only as long as he lives. We know he means that because of the illustration he gives. For the woman who is a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives.

Again, he means only as long as he lives, not longer. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then, if while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress.

But if her husband dies, she is free from that law. So she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. Now, let's talk about a woman who has a husband.

A woman who has a husband can't go out and get another husband. Unless her first husband dies. Well, what about a divorced woman? If her husband is still alive, does she have a husband? No, she has an ex-husband.

Now, is that just splitting hairs? No, Jesus himself is the one who spoke that way. In the fourth chapter of John, when he was talking to the woman at the well. He said, go and bring your husband.

She said, I have no husband. He said, you're right when you say you have no husband. You have had five husbands.

But now you're with a man who's not your husband. Okay, he said, your previous five husbands, they're not your husband anymore. You don't have a husband.

You have ex-husbands. And Paul's here not giving a teaching about divorce and remarriage. As a matter of fact, he says, I'm writing to you who know the law.

Well, the only passage in the law about divorce and remarriage is Deuteronomy 24. It allows a woman to remarry when her husband divorces her. So he's not here trying to discuss the subject of divorce and remarriage.

He's talking about how a woman is not bound to her husband after he dies. She's bound to him only as long as he lives, not longer. And if he dies, she's free from that.

This is about the woman who has a husband. A woman who has an ex-husband is a different category than what Paul's discussing. He's not trying to discuss these categories.

He's trying to tell us something about our relationship to the law. It's like a woman. We were in a covenant relationship with God through the law.

But now there's been a death that has ended that relationship. Therefore, my brethren, he says in verse 4, you also become dead to the law through the body of Christ. So that marriage to the law, that covenant, is broken by death because we've died with Christ.

That you may be married to another. See, the point he's making here is you can be married to someone else now because the ex-husband's dead. The law, that marriage has been dead, is dead because you died with Christ.

And he says now you can be married to another one who is raised from the dead. Now he's talking about Christ. What Paul is saying here is we're not married to the law, we're married to Christ.

There's an old covenant, the law, and there's a new covenant with Christ, a new marriage. Now if a woman is married to a man and she is subject to her husband, and he says, you know, I want you to do this, this, and this, let's say there's three or four things, he says I really want this to be done in our household. I want our household run this way.

Well, then if she's a good, obedient wife, she'll do what he says. But what if he dies then? If he dies and she's still alive, does she have to do those things he said? No, not one of them. Nothing he said is binding on her anymore.

He's dead. Suppose though she goes out and marries another man. And let's say her first husband said there were five things he wanted.

The new husband wants two of those things, the other three he doesn't care about. Well, does she have to do those two things? Well, she should, but not because her first husband said so, but because her present husband says so. But does she have to do the other three things now? No, that was what her first husband wanted.

She's not under him anymore. He's dead. You see, a marriage that's been ended by death carries no further authority.

But a new marriage is a new arrangement, and there's authority there. Paul says we're dead to the law by the body of Christ, so we can be married to another, married to Christ. We therefore are obliged to obey Christ.

That's the point he's making. We don't have to keep the law. We have to keep the commandments of Christ.

Let me give you one more scripture, then we're going to take a break and we'll come back to continue this. In Ephesians 2, verses 14 and 15, Paul said, Paul said, He himself, Jesus, is our peace, who has made both, he means Jews and Gentiles, one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation. What was that? Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace.

Now, notice Paul considered that the law of commandments contained in ordinances was like a wall of separation between the Jew and the Gentile. But that's been broken, it's been abolished. He says he abolished that wall of separation.

He's broken down that middle wall of partition. What's that mean? Well, what laws were the distinction between Jews and Gentiles? Certainly not the law you should not murder. Gentiles had those laws in their courts too.

But certainly circumcision and kosher diet and the Jewish sacrifices and the Jewish festivals and the Sabbath, those are things, those divided between the Jews and the Gentiles. Jews observed them, Gentiles didn't. That was the middle wall of division between them.

The law of commandments contained in ordinances that made the distinction between Jew and Gentile. Christ abolished that. That distinction is abolished in the cross.

So he's taken the two and made the two one in Christ, one new man. So, it's clear that in the new covenant, the ritual aspects, well frankly, all the aspects of the old covenant have been replaced with a new covenant. And what we find there is that none of the rituals of the old covenant have passed over into the new.

Now the new has made the old obsolete. And there has been a change of the law. And we have a new husband now.

And we don't have to obey the old husband. That's basically the imagery that Paul has used in the passages we've looked at. And therefore we know that the old covenant contained rituals and ordinances.

But the new covenant has not retained them. So if we're under the new covenant, then we no longer need to keep the rituals of the law. And you remember in the transfiguration, when Peter and James and John went up on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus, and they saw Moses and Elijah, representative of the law and the prophets.

Moses, the law, Elijah was considered the prince of the prophets. Here were these two men giving their endorsement to Jesus. And Peter just was enamored with all of them.

He says, wow, this is so wonderful. Let's build three tents and we'll camp out here. We'll get Moses a tent and Jesus a tent and Elijah a tent.

Everyone can, we'll just give each of you your own quarters here and we'll just make a weekend of this. Now, the Bible says Peter said this because he didn't know what to say. And a cloud came down and lifted.

And when the cloud lifted, Moses and Elijah were gone. Only Jesus remained. And a voice from heaven said, this is my son.

Hear him. In other words, Peter, James and John, you guys were raised Jewish. You've been raised in the synagogues hearing what Moses and the prophets have to say.

That's been the authority. That's been your religious guide. It's been Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets.

From now on, they're gone. They just showed up to give their endorsement to Jesus and to go home, to leave. They're not here to stay.

Now, this is my son. From now on, you hear him. Instead of the law and the prophets, you hear Christ.

It's his authority. It's his commands now that make up the obligations associated with the new covenant.