When Knowledge Breaks Understanding - Romans 9:30-33
The Jews had the Torah for many centuries by the time Yeshua came to inaugurate the New Covenant that had been promised through Jeremiah at the midpoint between himself and Moses. Their familiarity with the Law and their pride at having been chosen above other nations led them to believe the Law was sufficient for all their spiritual needs. The gentiles had no such barrier to overcome, being presented with their guilt and salvation at the same time.
Making Torah (aka the Law) the object of our lives leads inevitably to failure. We ought never to keep God's Law for the sake of the Law itself nor for the sake of the veneer of righteousness that it provides, but for the sake of the Lawgiver who gave us His Torah out of love for us and a desire to see us succeed as children of God and citizens of His Kingdom. Torah is a blessing and a guide to those who keep it out of love for our Creator and Redeemer. It is a curse and an obstacle to those who attempt to keep it pridefully.
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Follow me on Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmericanTorah
Send me a friend request on The Torah Network: https://social.ttn.place/jaycarper
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Connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/americantorah/
Making Torah (aka the Law) the object of our lives leads inevitably to failure. We ought never to keep God's Law for the sake of the Law itself nor for the sake of the veneer of righteousness that it provides, but for the sake of the Lawgiver who gave us His Torah out of love for us and a desire to see us succeed as children of God and citizens of His Kingdom. Torah is a blessing and a guide to those who keep it out of love for our Creator and Redeemer. It is a curse and an obstacle to those who attempt to keep it pridefully.
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Follow me on Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmericanTorah
Send me a friend request on The Torah Network: https://social.ttn.place/jaycarper
Follow me on Twitter: https://jaycarper.com/twitter
Connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/americantorah/
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LearningTranscript
00:00What shall we say, then, that Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained
00:12to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith?
00:15But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness.
00:20Why?
00:21Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were by the works of the law.
00:24For they stumbled at that stumbling stone.
00:28As it is written, Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense, and whoever
00:32believes on him will not be put to shame.
00:37I grew up in church.
00:41My parents were always involved in ministry.
00:43We went to church three times a week at least, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night,
00:48sometimes a youth group, sometimes some other church event.
00:52I went to a Christian school most of my life.
00:56So I was steeped in Christian religion from as early as I can remember.
01:06One thing that I've discovered in working, being part of the same community as people
01:13from different faith backgrounds, people who grew up without any religion, some people
01:19who grew up in atheism or Catholicism, some other ism, and now we've all come to the same
01:28basic beliefs in a whole other paradigm, is that frequently the things that you were taught
01:36when you were young, the things that you heard day in and day out throughout your life, you
01:41come to just accept as fact without really understanding where they come from, without
01:47really even evaluating them sometimes.
01:50And that's not to say that tradition is bad, that the religion that you're taught when
01:55you're young is a bad thing.
01:57This can be a really good thing, because all children are indoctrinated.
02:03We're all taught things from the very earliest age, and this is part of the job of a good parent.
02:10Your job is to indoctrinate your children in what you believe is true.
02:14So I can't fault my parents or anybody else's parents for doing that.
02:18They're doing their job.
02:20But this can also be a barrier to accepting truth.
02:25Because if the traditions you were taught when you were young aren't really based in
02:29scripture or in reality, then it's hard to see the truth for what it really is.
02:35Every time you look at the world around you, you see it through the lenses that you learned
02:41when you were a child, or when you were new in faith.
02:44So it's hard to see through that tradition to the truth that's behind it.
02:50This is the place that the Jews of the first century found themselves when Yeshua came
02:56to them.
02:59They were taught by the Pharisees and the Sadducees, all of their religious leaders,
03:03that simply being Jewish was enough to save them.
03:07It wasn't a salvation by works, it was a salvation by genetic heritage.
03:11You could become a Jew, no matter who your parents were, by going through this checklist
03:17of religious ritual.
03:20In that sense, there was a salvation by works taught for Gentiles who could become part
03:25of Israel.
03:26You could become a Jew through circumcision and whatever else.
03:32Especially among the religious elite, they were always looking for some kind of ritual
03:41perfection.
03:42Not for salvation, because they already believed they were saved simply by being Jews.
03:47But they believed that they would find more favor in God's eyes by being spiritually perfect,
03:56by knowing the right things, by doing all the right rituals.
04:00The bigger, the showier, the better.
04:02Not everybody believed that way, but that seemed to be the tendency in its human nature
04:06because the same thing is true in almost all of our churches today, no matter what denomination
04:11you come from.
04:13And it's not entirely wrong, but it was misguided.
04:25They were wrong in both counts.
04:26They were wrong in that, simply by being born Jewish, they had eternal life, if you
04:31were a Pharisee.
04:32Sadducees, of course, didn't believe in eternal life.
04:34They didn't believe in the resurrection.
04:38And they were wrong that they could gain more favor in God's eyes simply by doing the
04:44right stuff.
04:46By following a checklist of, you know, wear this color, make your tzitzio this long, the
04:54fringes on the corners of your garments, bring this kind of sacrifice, and the bigger
04:59the better.
05:00God would be more pleased with a bigger sacrifice than a smaller one.
05:05He's more pleased with, you know, the one case that Yeshua talked about, you know, tithing
05:12your mint and cumin and dill, but not so impressed with simply being merciful to people, by being
05:18kind to the poor and the widows in your hometown.
05:24Salvation, though, eternal life doesn't come from being born a Jew.
05:31Nobody is born into eternal life.
05:34We are all born with at least a sinful inclination to do the wrong thing.
05:39And so, you know, the first opportunity we get, that's what we do.
05:42We do the wrong thing.
05:44We choose to sin.
05:45And so everybody is condemned.
05:47I'm not saying that babies are condemned.
05:49They haven't had that opportunity to choose evil yet.
05:52But once you get to that point, people inevitably choose to do the wrong thing.
05:56Yeshua is the only person who ever chose his entire life to do the right thing.
06:02So gaining eternal life, getting that salvation, when we talk about salvation, are you saved?
06:09What we're really talking about is, have your sins been forgiven and do you have eternal
06:14life?
06:15So Yeshua said none of this stuff that the Pharisees and the Sadducees were doing or
06:19believed was enough.
06:21He even said that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you have no
06:28part in the Kingdom of Heaven.
06:34This kind of statement was completely outside of what the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the
06:41Scribes, even the Essenes and other people were looking for in the Messiah.
06:46He was not what they expected.
06:48Their traditions, the things they had been taught their whole lives, were getting in
06:53the way of them recognizing the one man that they had been looking for their whole lives.
06:59They were all looking for the Messiah, but none of them were looking for the Messiah
07:03that the Scriptures described.
07:05They were looking for the conquering King, which is part of who He is.
07:09They forgot to look for the suffering servant.
07:12And so He came teaching humility, personal sacrifice, mercy to the weak.
07:19And so they didn't recognize Him.
07:21They were looking for someone more like themselves.
07:24They were remaking God and the Messiah in their own image, which is kind of backwards.
07:31And in this sense, Yeshua became a stumbling stone to the people who had been steeped in
07:36the traditions of their youth.
07:38The Gentiles, when Paul and Apollos and other apostles took the gospel out to the nations,
07:46they didn't have this problem.
07:49They weren't looking for the Messiah, at least not in the same way that the Jews were.
07:53So when Paul came saying, hey, here's what God expects of you, and here's where you
07:58screwed up, and here's the solution, it completely broke their paradigms.
08:04They had no previous expectations of what the Messiah should look like.
08:09And so it was easier for Gentiles to accept it than it was for the Jews who had been looking
08:14for Him their whole lives.
08:17God doesn't conform to our expectations.
08:21God is who He is.
08:23The Messiah is who He is.
08:27The key in not stumbling over this stone is to surrender to whatever God says, to take
08:38your expectations out of the equations and simply trust Him.
08:43And it is this surrender and trust in the Messiah, in God's provision for forgiveness
08:49and eternal life, that gives us righteousness.
08:54His perfect life becomes ours in God's eyes when we put our faith and trust in Him.
09:02And it's not like obedience to the law is a bad thing.
09:06It's not like there's no righteousness there at all.
09:09It's not a righteousness that will ever bring you eternal salvation.
09:13You can't earn forgiveness for past sins by not committing future sins.
09:19That forgiveness only comes from putting your faith and trust in Yeshua, and being
09:24faithful to Him, or pledging your faithfulness to Him, your allegiance to Him.
09:30And then that surrender and trust brings that righteousness that brings salvation, and then
09:36your obedience has value.
09:40Paul said in Romans that part of God's plan is to conform us to the image of His Son.
09:47And that begins once we put our faith in Him, once we surrender to Him in humility.
09:54And then God's Spirit works within that faith, and within our faithfulness to obey, to transform
10:02us over time into the image of His Son.
10:05And we look forward to the day of the resurrection when we will be finally remade.
10:10All of that sinful inclination that drives us to do the wrong thing will finally be removed,
10:18and we will be perfected.
10:20We're never going to be God, of course.
10:22We're never going to be Yeshua, the Messiah.
10:24But we will be reformed completely in His image, the way we were supposed to be from
10:31the beginning.
10:34Until then, don't let your expectations of who the Messiah is supposed to be get in
10:40the way of who He really is.
10:43Accept Him for what He says, not for what your church's doctrines and creeds say He's
10:48supposed to be.
10:50It's not really as complicated as our theology makes it out to be sometimes.
10:56This is Jay Carper from American Torah.
10:58Be blessed.