Check your Anchor

As I sit and wonder about my faith and what I believe, I am hit full force with how easy it is to get off the path of truth. I am starting to see that it is usually not an intentional directional change on the part of an individual, but more a lack of checking where you are anchored. Anyone who has ever floated on a raft knows that if you close your eyes for a little while on a lake, you do not always end up in the place where you started. We, like the raft, drift in life if we do not check our anchor. It is not easy to check our anchors though; it means peering into our innermost being and dealing with our complacency and sin. Why do I say sin?

For the reason that God has spoken to us and told us to obey His commands and when we do not obey, that is sin. Now the question we all, myself included, must ask is in what areas of my life am I ignoring God’s voice and when I hear His truth, no matter what others think, do I obey it. No matter what my parents brought me up doing or what I am comfortable with, or how embarrassing it might be, do we listen to God’s voice and check our anchor of obedience? Before we get into the meat of what I want to convey, we need to lay a foundation in God’s word. I pray that as we soak in a multitude of Scripture passages from the Torah as well as the New Testament you will start to see the importance of being “Entire Bible” followers of God. As a whole, it has been observed of Christians that they are spiritually anemic when it comes to the Old Testament and Torah teaching for that matter. So I start with a word of warning from Yeshua and then we can begin:

Matthew 7:22-28
22"Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'
23"And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.'
24"Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.
25"And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.
26"Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
27"The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell--and great was its fall."
28When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching;

Jesus used parables and comparisons in a majority of His teachings. They help us to see the stark contrast of obedience and disobedience. The keys to the passage above are that those whom Yeshua says to “DEPART FROM ME”, do or incur the following: “they practice lawlessness”, “they do not act on His words”, and “they fall and great is their fall”. Now before we get trapped into a line of thinking (subtle or known) that Yeshua only spoke in the New Testament and thus the God of the Torah is a different God than Yeshua, we need to look at another passage:

John 5:18-24
18For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.
19Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.
20"For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.
21"For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes.
22"For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son,
23so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.
24"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.

Pay careful attention to what Yeshua says in verse 19. He says that “he can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing.” This means that Yeshua speaks what the Father speaks, does what the Father does, and holds dear what the Father holds dear. Yeshua was with God in the beginning; He is the creative Word of God, the Living Torah or commandment of God. This same Yeshua of the New Testament gave the commandments of God to the congregation at Mount Sinai. This same Yeshua ordained the Biblical Feasts of Israel given in Leviticus 23 and said that they are to be perpetual statutes. The begging question is: Why do we as New Covenant brethren not celebrate the perpetual Biblical feasts of God as He commanded? I think the answer lies in our lack of understanding of the Torah and lack of Torah teachers. Please know that I am not speaking about salvation when I talk about the practice or lack of practice of The Feasts, but rather receiving the blessings of God through obedience to His commands.

Matthew 5:18-20
18"For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
19"Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20"For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The “commandments” that Yeshua is talking about are from the “Law” mentioned in verse 18. And these are the commandments in the Torah or Law of God. Have we become the ones who have annulled and taught others to follow suit? Brothers and sisters do not harden your hearts to this message, but let the Holy Spirit show you truth. Do no be a stiff-necked people who die for lack of knowledge (Acts 7:51; Hosea 4:6). Notice that Yeshua says that those who annul and teach others the same get into the kingdom. There is no doubt here that He is addressing believers, but the fact is that they become least in the kingdom. Do you realize the implications of this passage? Pastors and great theologians alike will be least in the kingdom because of what they teach and practice. Now you must know that you are only responsible for truth as it is revealed to you. When faced with truth, you either obey or ignore (disobey). Righteousness greater than the Pharisees and Scribes means that unless you bring people back to the commandments of God, the Torah, instead of listening and placing in higher authority the teachings of men and rabbis, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The problem Yeshua had with the Scribes and Pharisees of the day was not that they were trying to keep the Law, but that they were trying to keep the law of men. They had placed the teachings of the Rabbis above the Torah. Yeshua says that “until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished”. Last time I checked my beloved, heaven and earth are still around thus the Law or Torah is still valid. Yeshua came to fulfill the requirements of the law or as the Greek says to make full the intent and meaning of the Torah or Law, not to abolish or destroy it.

Matthew 5:17-18
17"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
18"For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

Remember that our Messiah gave the Law and He will not contradict the mandate of the Father for He does nothing on His own except what He sees the Father doing. Yeshua says that He came to make “full” the intent of the Law. He focuses His message on our minds because actions grow out the seeds of thoughts. So He says, “Do not think…” that we might get our minds right by the renewal of truth (Romans 12:2) and thus our hearts will be right and our actions (obedience) will follow. The Greek for fulfill is:

πληρoω (pleroo)
1) to make full, to fill up, i.e. to fill to the full

Yeshua taught the people The Torah because they had been lead astray by their spiritual leaders of the day who had used the Law to burden the people.

Psalm 78:4-6
4We will not conceal them from their children,
But tell to the generation to come the praises of the LORD,
And His strength and His wondrous works that He has done.
5For He established a testimony in Jacob
And appointed a law in Israel,
Which He commanded our fathers
That they should teach them to their children,
6That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born,
That they may arise and tell them to their children,

Listen to the words of Isaiah as He describes Yeshua our Messiah as the great Torah teacher:

Isaiah 2:2-4
2Now it will come about that
In the last days
The mountain of the house of the LORD
Will be established as the chief of the mountains,
And will be raised above the hills;
And all the nations will stream to it.
3And many peoples will come and say,
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
That He may teach us concerning His ways
And that we may walk in His paths."
For the law will go forth from Zion
And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
4And He will judge between the nations,
And will render decisions for many peoples;
And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks
Nation will not lift up sword against nation,
And never again will they learn war.

My chief aim of writing all this is to get you to think and check your anchor. Only a prideful follower of Christ has reason to fear what I have written and the Holy Spirit will testify to you each individually about the truth of these declarations. Search your hearts and turn to the Living Torah, Yeshua. Receive the blessings of God through obedience to His commands. At the very least check what I have said to His word and let God be judge of whether or not it is truth.

John 14:26
26"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

Shalom,
Jason G. Brown