Looking Back
For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Romans 15:4 NASB
In earlier times – Ah, the problems on syntax. English does not work like Greek. In Greek we have one word, proegraphe, that requires five English words to capture the meaning. “In earlier times” is nothing more than the prefix pro added to the verb grapho. It means “writing before” and in this case it means “what was written before this particular time.” Now that we see how the Greek compresses all this into a single word, we must ask, “But what is it?” “What was written before this moment?” The answer, of course, can only be one thing. Torah! Torah is the only thing written for our instruction. Paul’s statement in the first century would not even include the Talmud, still in oral form. It is Torah that is intended to preserve and encourage us so that we might have hope. And what a tragedy that most of the believing world today knows so very little of the Torah! How can we have hope when the words of God are not lodged deeply in our hearts?
Paul’s audience was saturated with Torah. Oh, of course there were Gentiles, but one of the characteristics of synagogue communities in the first century was teaching Torah constantly. Memorization. Careful and deliberate tutoring. Practice! And for the Jews in the assembly—well, they had been following Torah instructions since birth. Paul is preaching to the choir. Everyone knew what he was saying. Get Torah into your heart and you won’t be hopeless. And the best part? It’s already written. You don’t have to go searching for the answers. The prophets have provided them.
What’s the lesson for us, two thousand years late to this party? We need a much deeper appreciation of the Scriptures that Paul knew so well. Of course, the apostolic writings are important. They provide the history of our Messiah and the commentary on applications of Torah. But even those are of limited value without the foundation of God’s word through the prophets. The context of Scripture is Torah. It was delivered through Israel’s spokesmen for us. It is just as relevant today as it was in the days of Moses and the days of Paul. It is our access to God’s purposes and our compass for hope.
Notice what Paul says about the goal of this material written so long ago. Perseverance and encouragement. Torah is the “keep going” motivator and the “you can do it” cheer. Torah is not the 613 regulations. It is the lives, the songs, the stories and the history of all those who previously attempted to follow. They are just like us—in need of motivation and support. You and I are just like them—seeking purpose and meaning in the chaos of life. Paul reminds us that the good news of God doesn’t begin with Matthew. It begins with Moses.
Topical Index: Torah, in earlier times, proegraphe, Romans 15:4, perseverance, encouragement
Good statements to remember say to our friends we all know the Psalm of David that says it quite clearly I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not send against you. I often wondered why the phrase might not included in this saying? Could it be the word memorized and settled but the question is how the person struggles to live it out?
Apologizing for the misquote should be. I have hidden your word in my heart I might not sin against you.
Good question, Brett. I have decided that a person is going to “struggle to live it out” to the extent that they do not actually believe it in their heart, no matter how much their head agrees with it. I have met people (I think we all have, and this is me, too, y’all) who have memorized a whole lot of Scripture but haven’t a clue as to how to live it. Prov. 4:23 says that out of the heart are the issues of life. The problem is how to get it from head to heart and we are going to be experiencing cognitive dissonance (thanks, Skip) to the extent that we are not.
I propose that belief systems drive choices; indeed, I cannot think (much less choose) outside my belief system, which is my paradigm. Proverbs is talking about paradigms; not mental doctrinal positions. That is not to say I cannot hold a thought in my head that goes against my experience: indeed, my frontal lobe (conscious processing and short term memory) is created to do just that. You can hand me perfect gobbledy gook and I can memorize it and parrot it back to you, but if you want it to form long term memory (protein synthesis neuronal structure) you are going to have to fit it into my current paradigm, or belief system, which is going to be based on my experience (thanks, Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil).
In fact, the older I get, the more I become convinced that what I believe is shaped by what I have ALREADY experienced. Forget doctrinal positions. Have you experienced love (Torah)? If not, you are not going to be making choices based on it. I can believe what love is when I experience what love does. I cannot do Torah until Torah has been done to me. Order of operations. It all starts with letting God love me in all the ways Torah teaches me that He does. How do I do that? I have to experience forgiveness before I can believe. All experience of sin, whether I did it or it was done to me has created a paradigm that has convinced me (and my choices!) that love does not work. Until I lay down my defense system (rebellion) in surrender (repentance), and allow forgiveness into my life, I will never have room for the experience of love in that part of my life to convince me that it is true. This is why the experience of repentance comes before the experience of belief, for I cannot believe until I have let God forgive me. Love, for sinners such as us, will always be experienced first as forgiveness, which usually means, for me at least, crying in relief. I cry a lot some days.
The areas I have allowed forgiveness are the areas that I can make new choices based on love. If I am struggling with sin (inability to apply Torah) in an area of my life, I have learned to become suspicious that I am still holding out in rebellion in that place. Time to repent! (Where’s the tissue box?)
About that forgiveness. We are taught by Yeshua in the Sermon on the Mount that we get forgiveness based on our forgiveness of others. If my paradigm is based on my experience, and I have experienced the sin of OTHERS, I am going to have to forgive THEM before that paradigm can change. Most of my sins are defensive in nature; that is, they are based on a belief that love is not true so that I am on my own. To destroy that belief, I am going to have to get back to the experience of sin that is producing that belief and get it canceled. If I have committed it, I must seek forgiveness, of course, but if it has been done to me, I am going to have to forgive. If I have done it to myself, I am going to have to forgive myself, too. Because of this fact that I do not believe love is true based on the fact that I am convinced that God, myself or others do not love me, I sin. So many times, my sin is a reaction to the sin of others. This is why my sin of reaction is not going to be able to stop continuing to have power over me until I can forgive those others of their sin against me.
I have struggled a long time with this, and still do. The power of sin in my life is the power of the paradigm that it creates, but forgiveness is the real power to change that paradigm.
Thanks for your patience. Sorry for the wordiness.
Miss Hayes I was wondering when we would be in a conversation again? We think alike. We Ponder these things like Mary. If an angel talk to her directly and she had to ponder. How importantly do we take the word of God? Some of my friends and I we’re reading last week about the Mount Sinai experience could we ever recap that irst hand? Also along those lines building altars the Patriarchs did so when they had an experience with the Almighty to help them to remember. Case in point do we need to go back to building altars literally? Discussing among friends and fellowshipping like we are now helps so much the depth of scripture when it touches the heart changes of life.!
Responding to wordiness. Skip earlier in the year us not to write sermons so to speak but sometimes to convey a thought it can only be done in a story thank again and again!
“I cannot do Torah until Torah has been done to me.” Perhaps the most important fact of life–and precisely why typical evangelism of the mind does not make much difference to the heart. Thank you for this. Great to finally meet you face-to-face.
Thank you. Skip while writing my comments I was thinking of the preachers and so to speak one finger at a listener and the others pointing back at himself we must be careful the double edged sword must do its work or the work is not Redemptive in its purposes.
Nice to meet you and Roseanne, too!
To respond to your above comment: and just why do you think people have had to come up with a way that they do not have to do Torah?! (Answer: because they can’t while they are still sinning, which they know perfectly well.)
Forgiveness is there, but to appropriate it you have to employ the Law, for only it can show us what to repent FOR. No way around having to get taught by that schoolmaster to show us HOW to get forgiven. As in, from what to repent. Because none of us started out knowing.
Forgiveness is the heart of what I read in the Torah, and a large part of our experience of Torah, but only if we repent. I cannot experience God’s love until I experience His forgiveness, and that is only after I understand what I am doing wrong and make a decision to do right. God may love me while I am yet a sinner but I am not going to benefit from it, or even experience it, until I can quit sinning, because sin is exactly what separates me from the gift of that love. Repentance is a gift, too, by the way, but even gifts have to be asked for, and therefore received.
I daresay when any of us got to that defining moment of surrender we had only an extremely foggy notion of just how we had been sinning. So what did we repent for? Only what we knew. Which wasn’t a whole lot!
I may have been forgiven everything, but that won’t do me a lick of good until I can understand what I have done wrong, and what I need to be doing about that. Back to the Law for me!
Heb. 5:11-12 We are dull of hearing–we ought to be teachers but we still need to be taught the oracles of God. Therefore we can only be fed milk. What are the oracles of God that we need before we can go on to meat. Romans 3 says the Jew has an advantage because to them was committed the Oracles of God. To make it even clearer in Act 7 Steven talks about the oracles of God given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The reason we can’t move on to meat is because we still don’t know Torah. There is no way we can truly understand what is happening now without knowing what happened before. I use the word know in Hebrew style. Adam knew Eve.
Walk with me a moment friends on my path to life. Torah is the path of my life, the path too life. I have some Jewish (Rabbinic-l y reform Jewish) friends who say Torah ” is” life. I say no, Messiah “is” life, Messiah is the truth. We can not find truth or walk in it outside of His person, To me Messiah is the tree of life. Torah is the way to that tree. We must follow the path and then eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life- Messiah. .In his great book “The Spirit of Truth” Art Katz shares “Seeing truth as a spirit to be walked in not only changes us individually, but changes our whole understanding of what is church..” Messiah stood before Pilot who inquired what is truth?.He made no answer to the unbelieving heathen for truth stood before him incarnate. He rather told his disciples in John 14:6 “I am…the truth, and…no one comes to the Father but by me” In my walk I have seen the bible worshiped, and truths worshiped, and Torah worshiped, But I have been lead to follow a person who is Truth who by the spirit is resident in my person. That has made all the difference on my path to and through life. As Art shares in “the Spirit of Truth” We seek to posses truth; God seeks to make us true. “The difference is vast and the kinds of men produced by each pursuit are vastly different and will have a different effect.”
Thank you Mark I also like Arthur Katz I found him on sermon index. Philippians 3 .3 for we who worship by the. Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised we rely on what Jesus Christ has done for us. We put no confidence in the flesh in human effort this is easier said then done for I am crucified with Christ the works I do are not mine but Christ in me. Instead of rattling off versus we look at the fruit of salvation how God opens doors. Remembering when we minister we Minister unto. Him alone
Yes Brett our life is in Christ or it is not life, our ministry is in Christ or it is not ministry. Knowing Art personally his spirit was meek, but when he opened his mouth the fire burned bright and true. It burned away the dross. Some where offended and judged him, others confronted the power and truth of a living God and where humbled and made whole. I will not soon forget this man of God.