The Love of God And The Fear Of The Lord

by:  Lonnie Lane

Traditions die hard. So do false doctrines. We sometimes
hear what we expect is being said but which isn’t the intent of the speaker,
because it’s what we’ve been taught.  The following words were emailed to me by a well intentioned
gentleman who had some issues on which he wanted clarification. Perhaps he’s
not alone so we’re addressing it here. He wrote, “I am sorry, I do not
understand why you guys want to make this faith in Christ all about the Jews. There is no doubt that God chose Abraham out of the
world to be a holy people to Himself, but …why is it that you think just
because we are not Jewish that we cannot understand the Torah?… I believe
that we are all one in Christ. There
is no distinction between us in Gods eyes. I understand that you may not see it
this way, but just because you don’t believe something does not mean that it
isn’t true.”

I wholly agree that just because you don’t believe (in)
something does not mean it isn’t true. But let this be known: Never have we
ever thought that “this faith in Christ is all about the Jews.” Our whole
emphasis is on “one new man” (Ephesians
2:14, 15) or better said, “one new
humanity,” which as Sid has said on almost every show for years, “is made
up of Jew and Gentile worshipping together.” There
are none higher or more in God’s favor than any other. We are very aware that “God is not one to show partiality, but in
every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him”
(Acts 10:34). Never have we even considered that there is a distinction between
how God sees any of His people, Jewish or not. And never have we ever meant
that anyone who is not Jewish cannot understand the Torah.

Terms that this gentleman used, like “faith in Christ” or
“being a holy people,” define a life of faith and worship to me and we all are
equally qualified for that because the qualification is in Yeshua, not in
ourselves.  As I see it, to pare it down
to bare basics, there are only two groups of people in the world, those who
worship God and those who don’t. By worship I don’t mean singing. I mean having
a heart of surrender to God and recognizing the Lordship of Yeshua, and what
He’s done for us so that our lives reflect our devotion to Him. We see this as an
equal opportunity to all who come to Him.

What I have been
saying isn’t about people understanding Torah, but of too many people
–regardless of whether they are Jew or Gentile – not taking it seriously, of
relegating Torah to the place of unimportance in our walk with the Lord. Right
here is one of those places of belief in something that isn’t true. I suspect
many people do not believe that God will speak to them in any significant
measure about Himself or about their own lives through the commandments. But it’s
not just many Gentile believers who don’t take its contents seriously, it’s
Jews too. I was a synagogue-attending Jew but never read the Torah until I was
saved. I tried, but it didn’t hold my interest nor did I see any purpose in it
for myself. But upon becoming a believer, you could say the expression applied,
“Jesus made me kosher,” because then Torah began to make sense to me. In fact, being
Jewish began to have more purpose to me as never before.  

I often think that Torah is God’s best kept secret, only
He’s not the one keeping it a secret. In fact, I’m sure – really sure – that it’s
the devil that has kept God’s people from an understanding of it because it is
the very foundation of godliness. And it is the revelation of God that will
give such insight into Yeshua that can not be gleaned from the rest of the
Bible without it. He is the one Person in whom “the word became flesh” (John 1:14). 
What word do you think that refers to? 
Surely not the New Testament, because that developed years after He “became flesh.” It was the Torah, the very
words of God of how to live as holy people, which God personally gave to Moses
when he was in God’s presence on the mountain for forty days. Y’know, when God
called Moses to go up to Him on the mountain…the mountain with all the lightening
and fire and smoke when God came down upon it? The one where the angels were
blowing shofars that got louder and louder, so that three million people were paralyzed
with fear? And even the mountain trembled at His Presence. Y’know, the one
where for the first time, the people of Israel were confronted with the terrifying
holiness of God, only having known Him as the Almighty till then.  That time when the whole nation of people
shrunk back in great dread as they saw the awesome power of His presence on the
top of the mountain… and they realized their sinful flesh made them entirely unclean
and unworthy to come near to God, and they knew Him for the first time as a “consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24). That
time.  Those words.  

The writer of Hebrews
also writes, “Our God is a consuming fire”
(Hebrews 12:29). This writer was a Jewish believer in Yeshua who, like all of the
disciples of Yeshua, was Torah-observant. As such, he would have had a
reverential fear of God because he knew what his people experienced in God’s holy
presence at Sinai and throughout their generations. This writer of Hebrews was
stunningly aware that He had encountered God in the flesh through the Person of
Yeshua. He had witnessed, as approachable and loving as Yeshua had been, that
He remained the Man who through His own life (and then through His death)
revealed by living it out, the imperative of absolute obedience to God’s word
in love. Yeshua was the embodiment of all the requirements of Torah which He distilled
down to this: “Love the Lord your God
with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your might” (Deuteronomy
6:5).  He expressed His love for God and
mankind this way: “Greater love has no
one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 13:15). When we accept Him
personally, we enter into that friendship and enter into His love. Such a
Friend is worth knowing as well as we can know Him, is He not? 

The New Testament is written to
believers for the most part, and it presumes, since they were all Jews to begin
with, that each person would have an awareness of God’s interactions with their
people. Then when Gentiles began to
come to faith, the apostles decided “that
we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from
fornication and from what is strangled and from blood. For Moses from ancient
generations has in every city those who preach him, since he is read in the
synagogues every Sabbath” (Acts 15:20-21). What this is saying is that they
expected that the new Gentile believers would now go to synagogue on the
Sabbath, where they would hear the words that God gave to Moses, and abide by
them as the Spirit enabled them to do so by grace. They
only felt to remind them of the few paramount issues: No idolatry, no sexual
sins, no eating of blood. So we see that the apostles expected the Gentile
believers would take Torah seriously.

Nor did they expect that those commandments were done away with now that
Yeshua had come. Yeshua’s disciples were very aware that they still served the
same God Israel always had, only now they knew Him personally and intimately
because they could come close to Him and relate to Him through His Spirit. They understood that Yeshua was the holiness, but also the grace and love of the Holy One of Israel
(Isaiah 12:6, 17:7; there are almost
thirty references to the Holy One of Israel just in Isaiah and Jeremiah.). Yeshua
didn’t come and say, “Hey guys, listen. We’re starting all over, and you don’t
have to pay attention any more to the things My Father said earlier. I’m taking
over from here. Just listen to what I have to say from now on.” But many
Christians live as if He did say that. And we miss a great deal of knowing God,
as well as misinterpreting God, as a result.

OK, how about an example of what’s in the Torah that will
help us know Yeshua better. One good place to start is with the priesthood and
some of what God told Aaron and his sons He required of them. Since we will be “priests of God and Messiah (who) will reign with Him for a thousand years”
(Revelation 20:6), do you think we would do well to find out something about
being a priest unto God? So let’s do a little mini-study of God’s requirements
of Aaron and the priests in order for them to come even near His presence. From
this we can better see how awesome a privilege it is to come into God’s presence
at all. To begin with, the tabernacle was “a
copy and shadow of the heavenly
things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the
tabernacle. ‘See,’ He (God) says, ‘that
you make all things according to the pattern
which was shown you on the mountain’” (Hebrews 8:5). This was no arbitrary
construction; this was a replica of what is evidently in heaven in the fullness
of glory!

So let’s see what some of these heavenly things look like. There were two altars in the tabernacle (which later
got transferred into the temple.) The
first one is made of bronze and is where the animal sacrifices were perpetually
burned. It was quite large and had a place where the blood from the animals would
be collected as it is the blood that atones for sin: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you
on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of
the life that makes atonement” (Leviticus 17:11). The
Message translation says it this way: “I
have provided the blood for you to make atonement for your lives on the Altar;
it is the blood, the life, that makes atonement.” This verse is preceded by
God saying, “And any man from the house
of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any
blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him
off from among his people” (17:10). I underlined “aliens” because it means
Gentiles. God wasn’t just speaking only to Jews in the Torah; He very often
included non-Jews in His most important commandments. You can see how strongly
God speaks about blood: The life is
in the blood. It is blood alone that is able to make atonement – a life for a
life. The life of the sacrificed one
is exchanged so that the sinning person(s) can live! You no doubt see the
prophetic picture building here.  

Closer to the Holy of Holies, the place of God’s direct presence, which was
only entered once a year with great trembling by the High Priest to make atonement
for the whole nation, stood the alter of incense. It was entirely covered with
gold, which signifies purity, on which sweet smelling incense was continually
burned. The coals for the altar of
incense had to be taken from the brazen altar where the blood of animals atoned
for sin. Those coals were the fire to ignite the incense which would then
release a sweet smelling aroma unto God, which also permeated the tabernacle. Take
note here that all five senses of the priests would be alive with the sense of God’s
presence: They would smell
the incense and the burning sacrifices; they would see the golden menorah
(lamp stand) which stood five feet high, also with burning flames from each arm
of the menorah. They would also see the
beauty of the curtain before the Holy of Holies, and the gleaming bronze and
gold of the altars; they would hear
the crackling of burning sacrifice and the roar of the flames; they alone could
touch the holy things as they fulfilled their duties in the tabernacle,
and they would taste the sacrifices, as the priests were to eat the holy
sacrifices as part of what made them holy unto the Lord.

With this same significance Yeshua said, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My
blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day…. He who eats My flesh and drinks
My blood abides in Me, and I in
him. (John 6:54, 56). Now you can better understand the context in which He
said those words. And more importantly, what they would have meant to Him
knowing that He would, like the sacrifices be emptied of His own blood as He
bled out from His wounds, and die as the final sacrifice. Do you think He said
those words easily as a theological doctrine? Or do you think, as willing and
committed as He was to obedience to His Father, before He could say words like
“eat My flesh and drink My blood,” perhaps He had to deal with the
reality of what that meant inside Himself and in deeply emotional prayer before
His Father? Gethsemane tells us He did struggle, so as our High Priest, He
knows what it is for us to struggle to do God’s will when everything in us
screams to live to our flesh. (I feel a holy hush as I wrote this paragraph. Would
you take a moment to bow your heart before Him right here in grateful reverence
and quiet worship.)

To
go on, both the anointing oil with which the priest was to anoint everything in
the tabernacle, and the incense was to be made up according to special recipes for
which God gave very direct instructions (see Exodus 30:22-38). It had to be
made by a “perfumer” with exact amounts of specific ingredients, each one
having a spiritual meaning. It was never
to be used for any other purpose or for personal use. The
incense could only be burned on coals
from the altar of sacrifice, the coals which had been in contact with the sacrifice.
 

Scripture
tells us many times in both the Old and New Testaments that incense represents
the prayers of the saints. The
Psalmist prayed, “May my prayer be
counted as incense before You; the lifting up of my hands as the evening
offering” (Psalm 141:2).  And John
saw in heaven, “golden bowls full of
incense, which are the prayers of the saints” (Revelation 5:8).  “And
the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God” (8:4).
Consider that it is not just we who can come into God’s presence on the basis
of the blood of Yeshua, but in order for our prayers to be accepted by God, we
must come to Him on the basis of the blood sacrifice of Yeshua as well. I know
that God, by His mercy will hear the (sometimes desperate) prayers of non-believers
as He draws them to Himself, but our prayers have a power and an assurance to
them that unbelievers are incapable of.

The coals from the altar were lit by God initially
at the dedication of the tabernacle. He started the fires that were to be continually
burning. Only what God initiates will be ultimately be acceptable to God.
Self-serving works from self-serving motives will not have value to God. To use
any coals to kindle the incense other than those God designated, those which
were covered with the blood of sacrifice, was “strange fire.” When Aaron’s sons, Nabab and Abihu, took coals from
elsewhere to light the incense, perhaps they wanted to see if they could make
the “trick” happen themselves. Whatever their motive, the same fire from heaven
that had come down earlier and devoured the sacrifice (Leviticus 9:24) as a
sign of God’s favor, now came down and devoured Nadab and Abihu! (10:2): “Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron,
took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense
on it and offered strange fire
before the LORD, which He had not commanded them” (Leviticus 10:1). “Nadab and Abihu died before the LORD when
they offered strange fire before
the LORD” (Numbers 3:4).

To the extent that we experience a deeper reverence and awe
of the holiness of God, the deeper we will love Him and the more we will obey
Him. To the extent that we are unaware of or have not experienced a reverential
fear of the Lord and His holiness, we will not be able love Him except in a
shallow way. You will probably be more focused on what you believe He’s done
for you (which is a good thing), but missing the component of knowing Him more,
and of focusing on who He is and what His experience is in His dealings with
mankind. Too many of us are only shallowly aware, I’m afraid, of how profoundly
significant what Yeshua did for us was, and therefore do not know how to
apprehend His power on our behalf or for the wellbeing of others. But joyfully,
there is a remedy for this. Spend time with Him. To say it one more time, if
you truly want to know a fuller measure of what God has made available for us to
know Him, if you want to know Yeshua at a deeper level, then you have to know
the Bible He knew and embodied. If you want to know Yeshua more deeply than you
do now, you cannot leave out the Torah or the Old Testament. We need to be
reading the whole book. That’s a truth you can believe in.

Reprint of this article is permitted as long as you use the following; Use by permission by Messianic Vision, www.sidroth.org, 2011. 

Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible Copyright ©1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif.  All rights reserved. Used by permission.