Gen.15:6      Abram believed Yahweh and He credited it to him as righteousness.

 We have briefly looked at Paul and his contradicting positions on circumcision.  In Romans 3 and 4 he presents a major theological thesis to the Gentiles on forgiveness of sin and salvation by faith, based on Yahweh’s dealing with Abram/Abraham.  His argument is based on the presumption that Abraham - a Gentile himself - was accorded righteousness by faith, before circumcision and without law (which are both part of Torah).

               Rom.3 :21     But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made

                                    known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. (?)

                          :22     This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all

                                    who believe.

               Rom.4 :1       What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather discovered in this  matter?

                          :2        If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to

                                    boast about - but not before God.

                          :3       What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited

                                    to him for righteousness.” 

                          :9       Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the

                                    uncircumcised?  We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to

                                    him as righteousness

                          :10     Under what circumstances was it credited?  Was it after he was

                                    circumcised, or before?  It was not after, but before!

                          :11     And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that

                                    he had by faith, while he was still uncircumcised.  So then, he is the father

                                    of all who believe who have not been circumcised, in order that

                                    righteousness might be credited to them.

                          :13     It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the

                                    promise that he would be heir of the world (?), but through the

                                    righteousness that comes by faith.

                          :14     For if those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise

                                    is worthless,  

                         :15      because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.

Dear Paul, again, won’t you please tell us where Torah and the Prophets foretell a righteousness for uncircumcised people who are not Torah observant and that faith in a dying and resurrecting God/man “Messiah” would be required for such righteousness?  Because we cannot find such testimony.  Surely, if such an expectation existed, the prophets would have been aware of it. And the Church has tried in vain to become “heir of the world” after Paul’s misquote. Again Paul presents unsubstantiated “fact” as basis for a thesis to a Gentile community who would not be able to verify his statements -  as the unequal contest with the Bereans has shown before. Again he presents no scripture reference to support his claim.

 There is something else Paul should have known in dealing with the Gentiles.  In his discourse to the Corinthians about the last supper - Communion - he fails to remind them that this action of Yeshua was an integral part of the Passover (Pesach) Seder.  The unleavened bread and wine which he used, to liken to his body and blood, were inseparably part of that Seder and every Seder.  And his statement that he should be remembered in these is also inseparable from the annual Seder.  The Gentiles cannot commemorate the Seder whenever they want to - there is a fixed time for it:  the 14^th day of the first month, at full moon.  And if they do wish to be part of the family of Abraham and participate in the Seder, this is what Paul should have taught them:

               Ex.12  :48     “An alien living among you who wants to celebrate the Lord’s

                                    Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised;

                                    then he may take part like one born in the land.  No uncircumcised

                                    male may eat it. 

                          :49     The same law applies to the native born and to the alien living

                                    among you.”

 

The Church’s celebration of “Easter” and “Communion” is just not part of the same religion as the one to which the Orthodox Rabbi Yeshua adhered to.

 These are Matthew’s departing words - his introduction to the Passover:

               Matth.26:17 On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread...

 This is clearly part of one of Yahweh’s great festivals - His appointed times.

               Lev. 23:2      “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘These are MY APPOINTED

                                    Feasts,  the appointed feasts of Yahweh, which you are to proclaim  

                                    as sacred assemblies.’

                          :5       Yahweh’s Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month.

                          :6       On the fifteenth day of the month Yahweh’s Feast of Unleavened

                                    Bread begins; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast.

 A number of vitally important factors emerge:

1.  The “bread” used by Yeshua was unleavened bread - Matzah.

2.  It is inseparably part of the Passover Seder - the First day of the Feast of Unleavened bread.

3.  The feast lasts for seven days.

4.  It is not a Jewish festival.  It is Yahweh’s festival.  It is His appointed time!

The Church cannot separate “Communion” or “Mass” from the annual Passover Meal.  It cannot celebrate it at any time not ordained by Yahweh or use any form of bread or wafer if they wish to commemorate the original event.  If they do so then they are clearly moving outside the frame of reference of Yeshua and the Bible.  They are creating a strange, foreign religious form and the question must be asked:  What “god” ordained such procedure, if not Yahweh, the God of Israel? In the book of Acts we see the first Church continuing to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread at the correct time.  Nothing had changed.  And we cannot find any instance where a “Communion” or “Mass” was celebrated as a separate entity at any arbitrary time.

                Acts 20:6      But we sailed from Philippi after the Feast of Unleavened Bread...

Some of the "we" were Gentiles who would have had to be circumcised if they participated. 

This must have occurred some 25 years after Yeshua.  They did not think anything had changed.  Why the complete disregard today?  Constantine’s Gentile “Theologians”, at the Councils of Nicea (320 CE) and Chalcedon (380 CE), with their pathological anti-Jewish fervour, had failed to notice that it wasn’t a festival of the Jews but a festival of Yahweh.  Instead of spitting on the Jews... they spit on God.

 If the Gentile Church therefore wishes to celebrate “Communion” as part of the annual Passover Seder... all its male members have to be circumcised.   

Similarly was Yom Kippur (Day of the Fast) integral to the Feast of Tabernacles and very much a part of their experience.  Nothing had changed.  Yet the Church ignores it.

               Acts 27:9      Much time had been lost, and sailing had already become dangerous

                                    because by now it was after the Fast.   

Let us study the Abraham event to establish the veracity of Paul’s thesis, or otherwise.

What did Abraham believe - a belief which was credited to him as righteousness?

               Gen.15:4       Then the word of Yahweh came to him:  “This man (Ishmael) will not be

                                    your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.”

                          :5       He took him outside and said, “Look at the heavens and count the

                                    stars - if indeed you can count them.”  Then He said to him, “So shall

                                    your offspring be.”         

                          :6       Abram believed Yahweh, and He credited it to him as righteousness.

Abraham’s “belief” and “righteousness” is directly connected to this incredible promise that Yahweh had made to Abraham - a promise which, to Abraham in his old age, must have seemed impossible.  Yet he believed that the omnipotence of Yahweh would achieve it.

This “righteousness” awarded to Abraham had absolutely nothing to do with “deliverance from sin” and everything to do with “worthiness” to be an (equal?) partner with Yahweh in the profound Covenant ,which Yahweh was about to enter into with him.  Furthermore, Paul’s statement that “there was no law and therefore no transgression” is also false., as Yahweh is about to tell us.  However, Abraham’s “righteousness” was quite beyond “sin”.

Hear what Yahweh said to Isaac about his father and his descendants;

                Gen.26:4     “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and

                                    and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all

                                    nations on earth will be blessed,

                          :5       BECAUSE Abraham obeyed Me and kept My requirements, My

                                    commands, My decrees and My laws.”       

 This is the thesis of which Paul’s Theology is the anti-thesis. They are clearly incompatible. Paul has misled us about what really happened. God said…”BECAUSE Abraham kept My Torah…” (verse 5), I gave him the promise…(verse 4 and Gen.15:5), and because he believed Me for the promise I reckoned it to him for righteousness (Gen.15:6) and sealed Torah, the Promise and Righteousness with My Covenant in his body (Gen.17:6-13)  

Quite clearly Abraham knew and observed Torah... four hundred years before it was given to Moses.  Circumcision was patently part of his observance.  His descendants would have been equally observant.  Yahweh’s requirement of Abraham and all his descendants was - and remains - twofold:

1.  Belief in Yahweh’s promises... AND

2.  Obedience to Yahweh’s Torah.

There is nothing here to support 2 Paul’s thesis that this same Torah and the Prophets foretold a time down the line of these generations when these requirements of Yahweh would become redundant, obsolete, to be cast out as “the slave woman”.  To be replaced by a Torahless “faith” in a Messiah which would exclude any hope of recovery of Eretz Israel by Am Israel - the people of Israel.  Torah and the Prophets say Paul’s thesis and, consequently, that of the Church, is built on sand.

Therefore:  Faith and law are not in opposition to each other - as Paul would have us believe.  THEY COMPLIMENT EACH OTHER.  

400 years later Yahweh called out His people - the heirs of Abraham.  A people who had acquired the righteousness of Abraham, because they believed what Yahweh had promised  Abraham, the sign of which belief they carried in their bodies - circumcision.  To these “righteous” people Yahweh formally gave Torah.  The Law.  

If the righteousness that came to Abraham and his heirs had dealt comprehensively with their sin, there would have been no need for “The Law”.  That is not what The Law is.  It is not - and has never been - a tool for salvation, but a tool for “kadosh”- set apartness - for righteous people.  

 

TORAH  IS AN INSTRUCTION FOR COVENANT RELATIONSHIP FOR RIGHTEOUS PEOPLE.  INSTRUCTION FOR “HALACHAH” – “HOW THEN SHALL WE LIVE?”.

It consists mainly of teachings, institutions and law and contains the mechanism for dealing with the sin of righteous people.  There is no conflict between “Faith” and “Law”.  It is not one or the other.  “Law” compliments “Faith” and gives substance to it.  It is not a matter of “earning righteousness by the works of the law”, as Paul seems to think, but a matter of “working out your salvation with fear and trembling”, as 2 Jesus said.  Yahweh sets His righteous people apart - makes them “Kadosh”, holy - by his Torah.

 

Be Kadosh... because I am Kadosh.

 

He is Yahweh Tzidkenu... Yahweh our righteousness.

How then is Yahweh’s promise and Abraham’s righteous belief expressed?  It is configured in that most incredible Blood Covenant of Circumcision.

               Gen.17:3         Abraham fell face down, and God said to him,

                          :4       “As for me, this is My covenant with you:  You will be the father of many nations.

                          :5       No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham for

                                    I have made you a father of many nations. 

                          :6       I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings

                                    will come from you.

                          :7       I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between

                                    Me and you and your descendants after you for the generations

                                    to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after

                                    you.

                          :8       The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give

                                    as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you;

                                    and I will be their God.

                          :10     This is My covenant with you and your descendants after you,       

                                    the covenant you are to keep:  Every male among you shall be

                                    circumcised.”

Therefore:  Abrahams faith, righteousness and covenant are irrevocably connected to specific promises.  For Paul to be evasive about the extent of those promises and to attempt to apply this “faith” to a completely different issue, outside of circumcision and Torah, is just not kosher.  In fact, as a result of Paul’s misguided thesis, the Gentiles of 2000 years have failed to attain to Abraham’s righteousness, simply because they do not believe Yahweh for those promises and Torah... because of the “delay” and the misplacement of Yom Yahweh.  

The scripture does not say:  “Abram believed IN God” for righteousness.  That he did in any event.  He BELIEVED God for the promise of his descendants and the land.  The Gentile Church has lost the object of Abraham’s faith and, consequently, has failed to attain to his righteousness.

 What promise did Yahweh then make to the Gentiles subsequently?  A promise that would appear as impossible to them today as Yahweh’s promises to Abraham must have appeared to him then?  Yet, a promise by which they can become part of the heir nations of Abraham?

               Isa.56  :6       “And foreigners who bind themselves to Yahweh to serve Him, to love the

                                    Name of Yahweh, and to worship Him, all who keep the Sabbath without

                                    desecrating it and who hold fast to My covenant -

                          :7       these I will bring to My holy mountain and give them joy in My house of

                                    prayer.  Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on My altar;

                                    for My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

                          :8       Sovereign Yahweh declares - He who gathers the exiles of Israel: “I will

                                    gather still others to them besides those already gathered.”

From 2 Jesus’s quote of this scripture in all the Gospel accounts, it is clear that this is the way he expected the Gentiles to worship and be integrated into Abraham’s family.  This promise to the Gentiles is iincorporated into the same covenant of promise made with Abraham;

               Ezek.44:9     This is what Sovereign Yahweh says:  “No foreigner uncircumcised in

                                    heart (Torah observance) and flesh (belief in Yahweh’s promises) is

                                    to enter My sanctuary (my house of prayer for all nations), not even

                                    the foreigners who live among the Israelites.

None of these have happened.  They remain in bondage to a premature “kingdom”.  It is hidden, together with the great promises of Israel - the Mystery of God - in Yom Yahweh... which has become “delayed”.

This is the challenge to the Gentile Church of today;  The “Gospel” - Good News - to the Gentiles according to Isaiah, and endorsed by 2 Jesus.  If you can consider it... and believe Yahweh for it - however impossible it may appear - it may be reckoned to you as righteousness.  After all, Abraham’s classic belief entails believing Yahweh for the impossible.

The implications are that, not only will you become co-heirs of the great promises of Israel, but also co-heirs of the sins of her kings against the holy things of Yahweh.  And for atonement you may gratefully accept the Asham - Guilt Offering - of the Suffering Messiah.     

Indeed.  All heirs of Abraham - Jew and Gentile - find their existence and righteousness within the confines of that Covenant.  The Brit Milah (Circumcision Covenant).  And none of these great promises to the Gentiles - be it to Abraham or the Gentiles in general - were made subject to “faith” in a Messiah.  Yahweh’s Messiah figures are the “managers” of the outcome of these promises.

 In the final analysis, however, all of these can only be valid if Torah, the Psalms and the Prophets, complimented by the Revelation, are true.  How can we know that Yeshua’s  Bible is true?  And, if it is true, it owes its existence to God’s promise to Abraham.  The entire Bible consists of the development of that promise.  And it has to have a measurable fulfilment to justify Abraham’s faith and acquired righteousness, and that of the multitude of his descendants. Today there are a multitude of scientific voices speaking, claiming a universe of millions of years in age.  Voices that began by proving the earth to be round and rotating around the sun. Other voices claiming that everything evolved naturally and cohesively out of primitive matter. Voices that have described the human genome without ever explaining the spark that gives life to it which, when it departs, leaves behind sterile DNA that can exist for millennia  - without life, unable to “evolve“ any further.  This is a theory which postulates that evolution has no beginning and no end, no purpose and no goal.  A random, uncontrolled process, which should have produced multitudes of non-cohesive entities.  Yet, it wants us to believe that a “mother” produced two offspring who had parallel, linear, controlled and cohesive developments into Chimpanzee and Homo Sapiens.  This would have to be a massive, continuing, uncontrolled accident which defies its incalculable mathematical permutations.

  How do we explain a “Seven Day” creation story with its twin versions in Genesis 1 and 2?  And then find that other “life” did exist outside of this story, as was Cain’s experience when leaving Eden (Gen. 4)?  Is it simply the understanding of a primitive people?  People of limited knowledge, limited frame of reference, living on a “flat earth”?  Or is the Bible perhaps the story of God’s special intervention in the vastness and timelessness of His creation, an interpolation, a microcosm of light  in a macrocosm of grey?  An intervention by which He was preparing something different for His eternal purpose, an instrument, a special people who would believe Him? The "Creation story" of Genesis 1, however, may well be the "Re-creation" story after the original creation was destroyed by what modern Society woul call, "an Act of God" - a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions;.

Gen. 1:1.... In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

...........:2.. .And the earth became void...

Anthropologists and Archeologists who study the age of the Dinosaures, who they believe existed for millions of years, agree that these creatures - together with all other life on earth - suddenly disappeared from history by some undefined cataclysmic event at some undefined moment in the past. Such would have been the fate of the odd Apemen - Australopethicus - which is said to have lived some two million years ago and which is thought to be the ancestors of modern man. The "Missing Link", that is supposed to link them to us, will never be found because it doesn't exist. Australopethicus with all its variations (eg. the latest South African discovery of A. Sebola) disappeared with the Dinosaures....and the Bible knows about it. No. Homo Sapiens, together with all we see around us, is God's "re-creation"evidence and so much more esthetical - just compare the Elephant and the pre-historic Mammoth. And the Garden of Eden story is then in itself a microcosm of the greater Re-Creation story, as Cain discovered upon leaving Eden.

How then can we rely on the Bible, with its apparent “limited story” in a sea of scientific antagonism?  Is not the resurrection of the People and the Land and the City of Israel in our lifetime - a “Resurrection from the Dead”- the greatest evidence of the process of  fulfillment of the Promise, of Abraham’s faith?  A people devastated.  A land violated.  A city and sanctuary desecrated.  Yet, resurrected against all odds.  A Job story.

 

Job’s latter days were greater than his former. (Job 42:12)

 

How has Abraham’s faith not been tested?