Torah Equals Love

How do we begin to experience His promise of life more abundantly and recognize Abba YHVH as our exceedingly great reward? We worship Him in all that we say and do, in Spirit and in Truth. We worship Him when we follow Him, as He has prescribed in Scripture. We show our love for Him by what we do, not only what we say.

It is in the Torah (Law), Bereshit (Genesis), Shemoth (Exodus), Vayyiqra (Leviticus), Bemidbar (Numbers) and Debarim (Deuteronomy) that we find out how Abba YHVH commands us to worship Him.

He defined love and sin when He spoke The Ten Commands directly to all of the people of Israel. The first four Commands define how we are to love Him. The last six Commands define how we are to love one another. One cannot look to the last six Commands and conclude they are worshipping Abba YHVH without following the first four Commands also. As well, one is not worshipping Him by claiming to follow the first four Commands but not loving his fellow man. These Ten Commands are eternally linked and no man can separate them.

He also has established Signs and Appointed Times so that His people will be set apart from the paganism of this world. The Shabbat (Sabbath Day) that he established in the Fourth Command is one such Sign. The Feasts that He established so that we could recognize His First and Second Coming are Appointed Times. Again, when we follow His system of worship that He lovingly established and has maintained for over 6,000 years, we show our love for Him.

He shows His Love for us by giving us the Torah as a boundary to live within while here on earth. We show our love for Him by living within this boundary. As long as we are within this boundary, we are in sight of our Good Shepard and His Care. When we venture outside of this boundary, we become easy prey for the enemy.

Yahoshua did not come to abolish the Torah! He lived the Torah perfectly while in the flesh.

Many will point to Mattithyahu (Matthew) 22:36-40 where the Pharisees asked Him “Teacher, which is the great command in the Torah?” And Yahoshua said to him, “ ‘You shall love YHVH with all your heart, and with all your being, and with all your mind.’ “This is the first and great command. And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ “On these two commands hang all the Torah and the Prophets.” as evidence that the Messiah changed His Word by replacing the Ten Commands with these two.

When we let Scripture interpret Scripture, we find the following as first spoken by YHVH himself:

· Debarim 6:4-9 Hear, O Israel: YHVH our Elohim, YHVH is one! And you shall love YHVH with all your heart, and with all your being, and with all your might. And the Words (Ten Commands) which I am commanding you today shall be in your heart, and you shall impress them upon your children, and shall speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up, and shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

· Vayyiqra 19:18 ‘…And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am YHVH’.

For Yahoshua to have come to change or abolish the Torah would mean that His Word once spoken, would change, therefore making Him a liar. Impossible, as we have already seen in Scripture!

Instead of changing or abolishing the Torah with His answer to the challenge posed by the Pharisees in Mattithyahu 22, He perfectly summarized the entire Torah in these few words!

Dale

February 2008