It’s Not Only About Love

I have been on this streak lately about how being a Believer in Jesus is not all about love. It’s not that love isn’t part of salvation, or one of the most (if not THE most ) important aspect of accepting Messiah, but I am concerned with the teaching that so many people receive which implies that love is all there is. 

Yes, God loves you; yes, Jesus loves you; but people who don’t even know me say they love me?  C’mon, really? Love is too important a word to use like “Hello” or “How ya doin?” 

The reason for my concern is that being a Believer is not only about love. It is about dedication, it is about faith, it is about self-control, it is very much about suffering, and it is about time we started to tell people the truth and leave all this “fluff” out of it. Take off the rose-colored glasses, my friends, because following God and Yeshua is not easy.

Yeshua, Himself, told us that we would suffer for His name, and that if we wanted to follow Him we have to pick up our own execution stake. Look at what happened to all the Apostles, to Shaul (Paul), to Stephen, and everyone who has been martyred since Yeshua walked the earth. Even before Yeshua appeared to us, Elijah suffered, Jeremiah was the Crying Prophet (for good reason), Gideon was betrayed and his children were all killed; not one person in the bible who did God’s will had it easy. 

In other words, this ain’t no hay ride!  

Too many people accept Yeshua as their Messiah because they just want to be unconditionally loved, just as they are, and always no matter what they are. They are entranced and lured into accepting Yeshua because they are told that as a result of God loving them so much, once they ask His forgiveness His love will always save them. Now, don’t get me wrong- all of that is true, but the problem is that people think that is all there is. The fact that God will still punish sin, even after you have been “saved”, is omitted, as well as the fact that while we are alive the consequences of our sins will always come back on our heads. What is worse, our sins affect innocent people who are part of our life, too. Not to mention that accepting God and Yeshua means having to live by His laws and commandments. How many of you out there have either been told, or heard about, people being taught that the Torah is only for Jews so Christians don’t have to do anything because “we” are under the Blood of Christ, and are already forgiven everything?   Really? That teaching, when you strip away the obvious allure of it, is really saying that Grace is not license from sin, but license to sin. I don’t think anyone who knows anything about God will agree that He is OK with us sinning. 

God’s love is so great that is it unfathomable, but it will not keep us from apostatizing; God’s love will not stop our desire to sin, although His Ruach haKodesh, Holy Spirit, can help guide us away from sin when we listen to it; and most important to this message is that God’s love will not keep us from suffering for His name’s sake. In fact, being for God is being against the world, so His love is there always as our security blanket and as a balm for our shattered and damaged feelings, but it is not going to stop us from suffering, being attacked, and being rejected by people we love. 

If we don’t let new Believers know what they are in for, we have failed them, and it is like sending them blindly into a pack of hungry wolves with lamb’s blood all over their bodies. 

So, what is really important about God’s love? For me, it’s that by knowing His love for me I should show what His love is like in how I treat others, especially those who come against me. 

Love is not all there is, and it does NOT conquer all, but it wins enough battles so that those who do love will end up on the winning side. 

Parashah Ki Thissa (When you take) Exodus 30:11 – 34

Big stuff in here: the sin of the Golden Calf and the 13 Divine Attributes of God (announced when He passes by Moshe), which make up the major restrains of almost every Jewish prayer of repentance. Also we are told what spices to use for anointing oil and incense before the Lord, and it ends with Moses coming down (the second time) from the mountain with the Ten Words, his face beaming so much that from then on he wears a veil, except when he goes in the Tabernacle to talk to the Lord.

I asked myself why this time?  Why didn’t his face beam after being 40 days on the mountain the first time? My answer to myself was that there was one major difference between the first meeting with God and the second one: the second time Moses saw the Glory of God. In Exodus 34:5-7 God walks by Moses, covering Moses’ face as He passes so Moses can only see His back. God actually, physically was there, close enough to cover the face of Moses. I believe that Moses’ face shone from that day on because he was so close to the Glory of the Lord that the Shekinah glory infused his body. That’s why his face shone, and from what I read it sounds like his face shone for the rest of his life.

What I find of interest is not the great story of the Golden Calf- there is so much for us to learn there. What I want to talk about today is much simpler, much “smaller”, but no less important.

The parashah starts out with God telling Moses that everyone who is called up to fight in a war must pay a ransom for their soul of a 1/2 Shekel. Now the word of God is very clear that there shall be no ransom for a murderer, that is, someone who has committed murder purposefully. But this ransom is for those who have murdered during a war. Even though the wars the people of Israel performed were not just sanctioned  by God, but actually commanded by Him in many cases, they were still guilty of murder.

This shows us that God is true to His word, that His laws are always laws, that forgiveness is possible but only with real repentance. Those who go to a “holy” war for God and kill those God says should die (effectively being the executioner of the Lord) are still murderers. They have killed, and God said we shall not kill, but unlike the murderer who kills for passion or gain, and does so on purpose, this “murder” is different, so a ransom is acceptable. Again, even though this form of murder is commanded by God, we must ransom our soul to the Lord. The monies were to be used exclusively for the maintenance of the Tabernacle, so that this ransom did go, wholly, to the Lord.

God is always willing to forgive a repentant sinner, but He is also more than willing, and frighteningly able, to punish those who are unrepentant. And God must punish the wrongdoer. If God doesn’t punish those who do wrong and do not repent, then His promise of salvation is empty. God said that the guilty will be punished- He says it over and over throughout the Tanakh; He has the Prophets tell us over and over that we shall suffer if we do not obey the Lord (and we did, too!), and Yeshua also tells us this. At the end of the Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:14, Yeshua tells us that if we do not forgive on Earth, then we will not be forgiven by God in heaven.

Torah is valid: it was valid when God gave it to us, it was valid when David was king, it was valid when Herod ruled, it was valid during and after Yeshua’s ministry, and it is valid, today. Not just to Jews, but to everyone.  Just because we can be forgiven doesn’t mean we can ignore God’s word: God told us to ransom our soul even though we were doing what He commanded, so even when we obey Him we can still be guilty! His laws are absolute.

Christianity has been teaching for centuries that the Jews have Torah and Christians have the blood of Christ. That is totally wrong- everyone has Torah, and everyone has the blood of Christ! The Torah was given to the Jewish people so they could live it as an example for everyone else to learn from, and follow. The blood of Messiah was shed so that everyone could have salvation because no one can live perfectly in accordance to Torah. How absolutely inane to say that Christians have the blood of Christ, as if they were the only ones He died for! He died for Jews, He died for Buddhists, He died for Muslims, He died for Devil worshipers, He died for E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E!!!   

And Torah was given to the Jews, but Torah is also for everyone. Torah tells us how God wants us to worship Him and treat each other, Yeshua told us the deeper meanings of the Torah and that we shouldn’t try to just follow it legalistically (i.e., just obey the letter of the law), but that we need to follow it spiritually. Jeremiah 31:31 tells us that the New Covenant will be that God will write His Torah on our hearts, which is exactly what Yeshua was telling us to do! It will be more than words to follow, it will be the very thing we are!

The Torah was given to guide us, Yeshua died for us because we can’t follow Torah perfectly (but NOT in place of the Torah) and the blood of Christ is for everyone to be able to have their sins washed away and be reconciled to God. God isn’t stupid- if you call upon His name and hold up the blood of Christ as your means of forgiveness, but you are unrepentant, you will not be accepted. And the proof that you are repentant, or that you are not repentant, will be by your fruits, by how you act towards others and towards God.

The Torah tells us how to show our repentance, so to refuse to follow Torah is to refuse to be repentant.

Look…no one can obey Torah completely, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t supposed to try.