23 Feb 2024
Plumbline episode 2: Jesus and the Law
Jesus and the Law
We are taught that we don’t need to follow God’s law because Jesus has fulfilled it.
Is that what Scripture says?
Some will say it’s fine to obey the 10 commandments, but that man turned God’s 10 into 613 commands. Is this true?
Actually the Torah contains 613 commandments from God. Some commands are for men, some for women, some for priests in how to offer sacrifices, some for everyone.
What they misunderstand, is that yes, man took God’s laws and added more. The oral law was added by Rabbis which increased the laws way more than God’s original commands.
David followed Torah and said God’s commands he delighted in them
Jesus followed the Torah perfectly
Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the Torah, but to fulfill it.
When He gave the sermon on the mount, did He allow us to break God’s Laws? No, He made them harder…
Are we allowed to kill now? No, we are told not to even hate, because that is murdering someone in our hearts.
Are we allowed to commit adultery now? No, we are told not to even lust after anyone, because that is adultery of the heart.
Jesus didn’t give us license to sin and break God’s laws, but He did give us forgiveness for our sins when we repent
Leviticus 17-19
Which of these would we say that it’s ok to break?
The Sabbath? Fornication? Child Sacrifice to demons? Drinking blood?
No, the main issue of why people say we don’t need to follow the Old Testament, or the Torah is because they want to eat pork and don’t want to follow God’s calendar, which are controversial today. Why?
They say that in Peter’s vision that God purified all food and we can eat pork. Wasn’t the vision that Peter retold to the group of gentiles also interpreted by Peter to mean the gentiles can be saved?
There is a confusion from two small terms in that vision that Peter said he saw all kinds of animals both unclean and uncommon. What does that mean?
Unclean animals are spelled out for us very clearly in the Torah, but what are uncommon? Common animals are according to the oral Torah, which was created by men saying that if clean animals are spending time with unclean then we shouldn’t eat those either- they are common.
Peter was following the written Torah or Law of God and the oral spoken law of men, he said he had never eaten anything unclean or uncommon.
You can look this up for yourselves.
God spoke and said “stop treating as unclean what God has made clean” Acts 10:15 CJB
God had not asked the people to not eat “common” animals and He likewise also was sending them to the gentiles, whom the Jews considered unclean and not worthy of the gospel.
When Jesus said it is not what goes into your mouth that makes you unclean
“He replied to them, “So you too are without understanding? Don’t you see that nothing going into a person from outside can make him unclean? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and it passes out into the latrine.” (Thus he declared all foods ritually clean.) “It is what comes out of a person,” he went on, “that makes him unclean. For from within, out of a person’s heart, come forth wicked thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, arrogance, foolishness…. All these wicked things come from within, and they make a person unclean.””
Mark 7:18-23 CJB
He declared all “foods” clean, they definitely didn’t consider unclean animals as “food”
Is the Law evil? Romans 7:7-25
