When reading the letters that Shaul (Paul) wrote, we often come to the problem he faced with believing Jews telling the neophyte believing Gentiles they must perform every Jewish ritual in order to be saved. This is known as “Legalism”, and most people think it started at that time.

But they are wrong.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Let’s first make sure we are all on the same page when it comes to understanding what legalism really is: it is a performance-based salvation, meaning that you earn salvation by doing what the Torah says you should do. Faith is secondary to performance, and often doesn’t even come into the picture.

Now, let’s also realize something that traditional Christianity has taught which is wrong: you CAN be saved if you completely and always obey the Torah. How can I say that? Easily- someone proved it to be true, and that someone was Yeshua (Jesus). He lived a sinless life by obeying the Torah completely and after he died, he was raised to eternal life in God’s presence, which is what being saved means.

The fly in the ointment, so to speak, is that Yeshua was the only human able to live the Torah completely, all the time, so he was able to do what a human born of man and woman cannot do. God knew that, and he gave us the Torah so we would know right from wrong while at the same time provided a means of receiving forgiveness when we screwed up, which is the sacrificial system. Yeshua did not do away with that, he simply replaced the need to bring an animal to the temple to be forgiven by sacrificing himself, so that through what he did we can ask for forgiveness, even though the temple no longer exists.

Now, as for legalism before Yeshua’s time, we can go all the way back to the days of the Judges. We read how so many times people were worshipping other gods along with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They believed that so long as they went to services, or made the wave offerings, or sacrificed their sheep, goats, or oxen they would be OK.

The best example of this are the Samaritans, the left-overs in the Northern Kingdom after the Assyrian conquest. When Shomron (also called Israel) was defeated, Assyria disbursed most of the Jews throughout the Diaspora, leaving a remnant behind and adding to that remnant some of the peoples from other nations they had already conquered. After time, the religions of the Samaritans were bastardized collections of the different religions of the different people who lived there. That is why Samaritans were looked down upon by the Jews in the Southern Kingdom who were (supposedly) still worshipping God correctly.

When Elisha cured Naman of his Tzara’at (leprosy) in 2 Kings 5:10, Naman took some of the dirt back to his homeland so he could worship God, explaining that he will still have to worship the gods of his people when required to by his king. That is a form of legalism, thinking that by taking the dirt he is, somehow, doing what will allow him to also worship Adonai correctly.

Another example is when Nebuchadnezzar declared Adonai, the god of Daniel, the most powerful God of all (Daniel 2 and 4) he didn’t convert to Judaism. He still worshipped all his non-gods, but he acknowledged the existence and power of Adonai. He did what he thought would make him right in the eyes of the God of the Jews, but he was not faithful or obedient; he was trying to cover his tuchas, that’s all, and that is (essentially) what legalism is.

Later when Cyrus allowed the Jews to go back to Israel, ending the exile, he was doing what he thought would get in in good with their God, even to the point of providing supplies and funding the rebuilding of the temple… Legalism at its best, doing what will earn favor instead of doing from faithful trust and love.

We also can look to Constantine, who never truly converted (from what I have read), but simply legalized Christianity, adding it to his list of gods and religions he already followed. He might have done what Christians did, but if so, I am pretty sure (and yes, I am speculating) he only did it to be correct, not out of any real love or devotion to the one, true God.

Today there are still many in both Judaism and Christianity who believe doing what you should is what saves you, faithfully obeying their religion and as such, misplacing their devotion to worship and obey man-made traditions and tenets instead of trying to do what pleases God.

And I will help anyone who wants to know how to please God with this simple plan of action: do what he says, which is only found in one place, and that place is the Torah.

But don’t do it because you have to! If you don’t want to do as God says out of love for God and desire to please him, then don’t bother.

Think of obedience to the Torah not as a means of being righteous, but as a demonstration of your love and respect for God- if it isn’t a labor of love it will be impotent.

Why impotent? Because (as I’ve already pointed out) no human being can be 100% obedient to the Torah 100% of the time.

Finally, we need to realize that legalism not only existed way before Shaul, but it still exists today. Halacha (The Way to Walk) is a rabbinical collection of what to do to be correct in God’s eyes, and the “church” has so many different traditions and holidays and ways of worshipping that you MUST do (or you go to hell!) that faithfulness to God is replaced by faithfulness to a religion!

As I have said many times before, and will continue to say… GOD HAS NO RELIGION!

God has given the world his instructions for how to worship him and how to treat each other through his chosen priests, that’s us Jews (Exodus 19:6). Those aren’t just rules; they are a lifestyle and when we do what God says because we want to please him.

If you are the kind of person who is willing to do anything to please those you love here on earth, and that is the same reason you want to obey God, then you will never be legalistic.

I truly believe God isn’t as concerned with what you do as he is with why you do it.

Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Way back when during the time of Isaiah, he preached to the people living in Judea and Jerusalem, saying they had backslid so much it was like they had to be taught the Torah, all over again, just like little children.

Shaul (Paul) took this same approach to the Gentiles he was teaching how to live a Torah observant life.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Let’s go to Isaiah 28:9-13 to see what I am talking about (CJB):

Can no one be taught anything? Can no one understand the message? Must one teach barely weaned toddlers, babies just taken from the breast, so that [one has to use nursery rhymes]? —
Tzav la-tzav, tzav la-tzav, kav la-kav, kav la-kav, z‘eir sham, z‘eir sham
[Precept by precept, precept by precept, line by line, line by line, a little here, a little there].

Shaul travelled throughout the Middle East and Asia, going first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles, preaching about the Messiah and how through his sacrifice we could attain eternal life.

When preaching to the Jews he could concentrate on showing how Yeshua was the Messiah using his vast knowledge of the Tanakh, but he had to preach to the Gentiles in a totally different way because they had no knowledge of the Tanakh. As he said in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, he will be all things to all people; in other words, he works his audience in order to get the Good News out to people in a way they can understand it.

And, as I said, to the Jews he could concentrate on the messianic passages in the Tanakh because they already knew the Torah and what God wanted from them, and all he had to do was compare that to what happened during Yeshua’s life, which many already knew of.

But with the Gentiles, well…he was starting from square one, so he did what Isaiah did with the people back in his day, and took these Gentiles a little at a time, precept by precept, so that they could learn at a pace they could handle.

You have to remember that these people were pagans, being brought up for generations living a hedonistic, drunken, and sexually perverse lifestyle, which was (to be honest) a lot of fun! Now, here comes this little tent-making Jew from Tarsus telling them to give all of that up so that when they die they can be in heaven.

Let’s face it, that’s a tough sale. And then along come these believing Jews telling them that on top of all that, they have to cut off the top of their penis!

No wonder Shaul was so teed-off at the Gentile Galatians paying attention to that, and even more so with the believing Jews there who were pressuring them to become 100% Jewish overnight.

I think Shaul also knew of the parable of the seeds, and saw all his Gentile congregations as seeds taking root, but being choked by the believing Jews pressuring them to convert totally.

So, here’s the lesson: next time you hear someone say that Shaul was against the Torah and he only went to Gentiles, that is not true. He said that in Acts 13 when he was in the town of Antioch and after the Jews rejected him, he said he would go only to the Gentiles, but he meant only the Gentiles in Antioch. In every town he always went to the Jews first.

And he never preached against the Torah, but did as Isaiah was doing in Judea some 800 or so years earlier, teaching the Gentiles just a little at a time so that they would not be scared off by too much change having to be done too quickly. After all, they were making a paradigm shift in lifestyle, and that needs time to happen.

And the Elders in Jerusalem knew that was what he was doing, and agreed it was proper. That is why they wrote that letter in Acts 15 to support his precept-by-precept, tzav la-tzav approach. James said that the Gentiles would learn the Torah eventually because they would hear it preached at every Shabbat service (Acts 15:19-21).

The major mistakes we Jews have made, which Christianity has multiplied over the centuries, is that we only want to do what we want to do, which is why we have been punished so often. Thankfully, God keeps his side of the covenants (even when we break our side) and so long as we truly repent, he will forgive us and save us from the punishment we have been made to suffer.

Shaul knew that learning to live according to the Torah would be very hard, so he taught those neophyte believing Gentiles only what they needed, only at a pace they could handle, which is why he had to write all those letters. They weren’t scripture, although they quoted scripture: they were managerial directives to get back on the right track and only follow the conversion program Shaul set out for them, and to stop listening to anyone else.

Sadly, once Shaul was dead and Gentiles took over those congregations, they failed to follow Shaul’s program and mutated what had been a Jewish movement learning Torah to a totally different religion, which within a century had totally rejected the Torah.

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers, Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so L’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

I know that sounds sort of silly; after all, what does losing weight have to do with salvation? 

That’s what I am going to explain. 

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video. 

When we go on a diet, we investigate what foods to eat, what proportions of fats, protein, and roughage to have at each meal, and try to avoid all those fad diet ideas. 

But the one thing that every diet requires is a combination of discipline, will power, and self-control. 

We have to know what we need to eat, how much we eat every day, and to keep at it until it becomes a habit.

And we must always remember that good habits are hard to form and easy to break, while bad habits are easy to form and hard to break.  

So, how does this relate to salvation?

Well, to start with, we need to know what to “eat” to start our path to salvation, and that is the Bible. And I mean ALL of the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation.  

Next, we need to consider what proportion of the Bible we should have? Well, there are those daily proverb calendars, or tracts that many religious groups hand out weekly or monthly, or just opening the book when you remember to and reading wherever you end up.

But that doesn’t work because there is no discipline or regularity, and when you go on a diet you certainly want to remain regular.  

The proportion of the Bible that I use on my “salvation diet” is to read a little every day in order, from start to finish and then all over again. In order to make sure that is done, I keep my Bible in the bathroom because I know no matter what else I have planned to do, I will spend at least enough time sitting there to read a chapter or two.

And it is surprising how quickly you go through the Bible that way when you are all alone, and no one wants to interrupt you.

I like to think that God is on his throne and I am learning about him while on my throne.  

So we have covered what to eat (the Bible), how to eat it (daily, a little at a time), and now we have to consider avoiding those “fad” religious diets.

What am I talking about? Some fad ideas are which calendar is correct, how to pronounce the Tetragrammaton, replacement theology, and even the idea of the Trinity.

Why do I say they are fads? Because a fad is something that makes what you want to do seem easier, such as the idea that “believe in Jesus and be a good person” is all you need to be saved. That is a fad because it sounds easy to do and is a quick path to salvation. The problem is, like with all fads, it doesn’t really work in the long run. First off, what does “believe in Jesus” mean?

Believe he existed?
Believe he is the Messiah?
Believe he was supernaturally born from God?
Believe he died and was resurrected?
Believe his sacrifice makes it possible for us to be forgiven of sin?    

Guess what? Every demon in hell, including Satan, all believe that, but are they saved?  Of course not!  

“Oh”, you say, “That’s because they are not also a good person.”

What did Yeshua (Jesus) say about being good? Let me remind you- in Mark 18:19 he said that no one is good except God.  So, unless you happen to be God, you can’t really be good.

As for calendars, pronunciation, divine or not divine, none of those things save us because we are not saved by being on the absolutely correct date when celebrating a Holy Day, or knowing how to pronounce Y-H-V-H, or whether or not God and Yeshua are the exact same entity. 

NO!

We are saved by faithfully believing that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send, that he sacrificed himself as a sin sacrifice for us and that his sacrifice was accepted (because he was risen from the dead to eternal life in God’s presence), and that through his sacrifice we can find forgiveness from our sins which is how we are saved.

That is what we need to believe, and none of those other things really make any difference. They are just fads, which never really have a lasting beneficial effect.  

I can’t lose weight very easily, for a number of reasons, but I can maintain my salvation diet. And whether I die fat or thin, at least I get to be in God’s presence for all eternity so long as I stay on this diet.  

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers., Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

May this day find you free from whatever form of slavery you are being subjected to.

Recently one of the Messianic groups on Facebook was asking about why people in that group seemed so legalistic, not lighting fires on Shabbat, etc.

My answer is one of those that I felt was worth sharing here, especially because it was the topic I felt led to discuss today, anyway.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

I started out justifying my reasons for feeling that what I said was worth listening to, so for the benefit of anyone out there who is not familiar with me, and not to brag (honest!), I left that part in. So, here is how I replied:

“I am Jewish (in fact, I have the genetic marker of a Levite), raised Reform, a Bar Mitzvah, and accepted Yeshua as my Messiah about 30 years ago. I have served in many ways in both a Messianic synagogue and a Hebraic Roots church, and even have some credentials from the Messianic Bible Institute. I also have an online ministry with hundreds of international followers (messianicmoment.com).

I say this just so that you know my background, and certainly not to brag.

In all this time, my experience is that a Messianic Jewish congregation is usually composed of less than 40% Jews.

I believe the neo-legalism that has infiltrated Messianic Judaism is because so many Messianic congregations are mostly composed of people who came from some Christian background, where (again, this is from my personal experience) they were raised in a legalistic environment.

Christianity is, in my opinion, a very legalistic religion, having created its own tenets and traditions, and forms of worship that are elaborate and very ceremonial. And that “do-it-because-you-are-supposed-to-do-it” regimen has not left all of the people who have left the religion.

Here are what I consider to be neo-legalistic ideologies that have infiltrated Messianic Judaism:

1. This recent drek (Yiddish for garbage, and sometimes even worse words!) about Christmas and Easter being pagan holidays (despite the fact there are no pagan gods involved);

2. The Holy Namers (if you don’t pronounce the Tetragrammaton or the name of the Messiah the way they say then you are praying to a false god);

3. The calendar people who insist that you are celebrating on the wrong day because their calendar is the correct one (even though in ancient days the beginning of the month could be off by a few days simply because it was too cloudy to verify the new moon was out).

All of these “religious” ideologies are representative of a legalistic mindset.

Legalism is a performance-based salvation, where “doing” has more importance than faith.

If you do anything in order to be “correct”, then you are doing it for the wrong reason.

Faithful obedience, the kind that counts with God, is doing what God said (meaning what is in the Torah, not what some religion says) to the best of your ability simply because God said to do it.

If you need proof or justification, well… that is not a faith-based system. ”

And that is where I left it.

I am not going to open a discussion about those holidays, but I will give a quickie demonstration of why I believe they are not pagan:

You go to a restaurant and order a chicken salad sandwich, and they bring you a tuna fish salad sandwich, so you say,” Hey! I ordered chicken”
“Yes, Sir, I know, but this was made the same day and has all the same ingredients we use for chicken salad, so it is no different.”
“Uh, yes it is- there is no chicken in here, only tuna fish. I asked for chicken.”
“Well, Sir, there used to be chicken in it but now there is tuna fish, so it is essentially the same thing. We use the same ingredients and make it the same way, and both are served on bread so they are no different.”
“Yes, they are different- one is made from chicken and one is made from tuna.”

If a holiday once was chicken, but now is tuna, they aren’t the same thing; if once, thousands of years ago, on a certain day they celebrated Saturn, but today they celebrate Yeshua, they are different. Even if some things seem to be the same, such as decorations and use of a tree, or eggs and bunnies… they are not the same.

These legalists also have just enough knowledge to be wrong.

For instance, the calendar thing- in the ancient days, the new moon had to be verified by at least three people, and if the weather was overcast then they couldn’t validate if there was a new moon or not until they could actually see the darn thing! That means their new moons could not be as exact and trustworthy as modern day calendars.

The modern Jewish calendar was created by Hillel II in 358/359 AD. Before 359 AD, the Sanhedrin used testimonies of witnesses seeing the new crescent moon. Hillel II replaced this with a calculated system. Hillel’s calendar relies on a 19-year cycle (Metonic cycle), containing 12 common years and 7 leap years (which add a second month of Adar), and the reason he did this was so that Jews in the Diaspora would be able to celebrate the Holy Days at the same time.

You want an absolutely exact calendar? Fine, here’s how to get it- create a time machine, go back to the first day of freedom from Egypt and move through time marking down each new moon for the past 3,300 or so years.

And to add one more nail to their coffin, God doesn’t live on a linear plane of existence as we do, and I truly believe that if we all agree to a certain calendar, and we all celebrate the same Holy Day at the same time, then we are in accordance with the Torah.

The one thing that bothers me more than anything else about these neo-legalistic theologies is that they insult God. How? By clearly indicating that God does not know our hearts and minds, that he is so egocentric and obsessive-compulsive that if we use Adonai instead of Jehovah, he will reject one of those prayers. They imply that by using “Lord” we are praying to Ba’al, and that God can’t tell the difference.

Now, as for you Holy Namers, I offer this bit of wisdom:

We are saved by faith, not by pronunciation.

Can you see how legalistic these ideologies are? They have absolutely no bearing on salvation, since salvation comes from faithfully believing that Yeshua is the Messiah and through the blood he shed we can find forgiveness of sin, which is the only way to be allowed into God’s presence, which is what being “saved” means.

And don’t even get me started on the Trinity thing!

There are so many religious differences not just within Christianity, but also within Judaism, and everything that is not specified in the Torah is man-made. That doesn’t mean a man-made ceremony or tradition is bad, unless it overrides and is given higher precedence than what God said to do in his Torah.

And, obviously, if what your religion teaches ignores anything from the Torah, then it is a religion that rejects God- something his son, the Messiah Yeshua, NEVER said or taught anyone they should do.

So what’s the point? The point is that Moses was right when he said that obeying God is not so hard (Deuteronomy 30:11-14). The issue is whether you try to be obedient to God, or try to be obedient to a man-made religion.

We will all face God one day, and when I do I will be able to tell him that I tried to obey his Torah. If your religion has taught you that the Torah is only for Jews, then you will have to tell God that you tried to obey what some man-made religion told you to do and you didn’t obey his Torah.

So, nu? … which one of those forms of worship do you think God will honor?

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so L’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

I am the first one to say that taking a verse or passage from the Bible out of context is asking for a misinterpretation. But I think that looking at Isaiah 5:20 is an exception to that rule.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

The chapter in Isaiah begins with a warning to the people how they were given everything one could ask for from God, but instead of worshiping him properly they rebelled against him and so, as a result of their rejection he will take away from them what they have been given.

Verses 11-23 give warning to those who drink too much, who have misused property boundaries, and who- in general- have rejected God’s laws in how they react and interact with others. From verse 23 to the end he tells them how God will punish them.

So this entire chapter is about how, having been given so many good things, by rejecting the way God said to live they will end up having all that good stuff taken away from them and given to others.

Today, throughout the world, we see one of those warnings being exemplified by our own political parties, as well as the mass media. I am speaking about Isaiah 5:20, which says (CJB):

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who change darkness into light and light into darkness, who change bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter!

There is a rise of antisemitism throughout the world, and especially here in America. Did you know that it was Jewish money that paid the troops during the Revolutionary War, without which today we would be driving on the wrong side of the street! This country owes SO much to us Jews, yet today there is rampant antisemitism: the media is behind this because they are calling what Israel is doing to protect itself bad, and what Hamas and the other terrorist organizations are doing as good.

That’s exactly what Isaiah warned us about in this one passage.

People in America are protesting against the military action in Iran (there isn’t a war without a declaration of war), something that the Christians in Iran are ecstatic about! After all, our CIA (being asked to do so by Great Britain) removed the democratically elected Prime Minster and installed the Shah back in the 1950s, which ended up pretty bad for the Iranians. Now we are freeing them from the same sort of despotic rule that the person we had placed in charge initiated.

There are even American colleges supporting terrorists attacking innocent civilians, claiming that Israel is being genocidal while the truth is that the terrorists have one goal- to totally destroy all Jews in Israel. These cowardly monsters murder, rape, and then mutilate the dead bodies to drag through the streets, while the Gazan’s cheer!

And Israel isn’t their goal, the world is. These terrorists live to kill, and they are only starting with the Jews in Israel. Their influence is seen all over the world with the rampant rise of antisemitism, and once all the Jews are gone, believe me they will turn against the Christians, next.

What do you think “From the river to the sea” means? It doesn’t mean freedom for those alleged Palestinian people (a reference to people who never existed but was a propaganda program initiated by Yasser Arafat back in the 1970’s) to live in Israel, it means to totally destroy all Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

These Arab nations do not want the land- they had access to it for centuries before 1948, and never once built any permanent cities or businesses. The ones that were asked to leave when Israel became a state were nomads.

The media and politicians accusing Israel of genocide have it totally backward: Hamas and Hezbollah and ISIS, et.al., are the ones who want genocide, while the Israeli IDF has warned civilians of coming attacks against these terrorists, have sent food and medical supplies (which the terrorists have intercepted and not given to their own people), and tried to be as careful as possible when attacking, even though the terrorists hide under hospitals and next to schools, showing they have absolutely no concern for their own people.

And what does the mass media do? They support the terrorists, attacking in the papers Israel and anyone supporting Israel with twisted news reports and out-and-out lies!

Isaiah warned against those who call evil good and good evil, and that is exactly what we are seeing in the world, today- yes, even here in America, the land of the free.

HAH! The land of the free and the home of the brave is now the country of the ignorant, the land of the sheep, and the home of the misled.

What did Shaul (Paul) call Satan? Didn’t he call him the Prince of the Power of the Air (Ephesians 2:2)? And how does the news travel throughout the world? Isn’t it through the air?

See my point? We are being led down the path to destruction by the media and the political leadership of the world, centered in the United Nations, which I believe should be re-titled United Nations Against Israel. After all, that is clearly their desired goal.

So, what is all this rambling about? After all, I have stated that this ministry is not for political discussion, but I am not really talking about politics, I am talking about the political leadership leading us into damnation, helped along by the media.

Isaiah also states in this chapter (verse 13) that the people are being destroyed by their lack of knowledge, which Hosea reaffirms in his warnings, as well (Hosea 4:6, which I have at the bottom of my ministry home page).

So, I am saying all this as a warning to you, to ask that you please do not automatically believe anything you hear, about anyone or any country, from any source without thoroughly confirming it with multiple searches throughout the Internet. You may have to go through three or four pages of “hits” before you find some website you can trust, or at least gives what appears to be a fair report.

And this is especially true of anything you hear from anyone (yes, even me) regarding the Bible: you certainly do not want to be one of those destroyed because of your lack of knowledge.

Thank you for being here and please comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so L’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!