A Vessel Unto Honour

The Holy Scriptures talk about how once we come to knowledge of the Word of God, if we continue in sin, the Holy One of Israel gives us over to a reprobate mind.

Here’s Holy Scriptures definition of sin: Sin is transgression of the Law. – 1 John 3:4

The scriptures also describe how if we read what the Word says, but don’t do it, we deceive ourselves.

This is all it takes to be given over to a reprobate mind.

Most people imagine that only the obviously messed up people are the reprobate ones, but it’s actually more subtle than that.

The commonly held Christian belief that “Jesus did away with the Law when He nailed it to the cross” is the door through which many reprobate, deceived people enter in.

Because they are deceived, they think they are saved and have Jesus living in their hearts.

I speak from experience: Leaving this belief behind and coming into the actual Word of God was extremely difficult because the signs and wonders and all the glory and excitement from my old Christian way of life went away.

Following the actual, literal, living Word of God lacks all of the hoopla and signs and wonders that Christianity is filled with.

Instead of having emotional experiences to validate my walk, now I had to intellectually check my experience, my thoughts, decisions and actions against what the Word of God said and how the Holy One of Israel was described instead of relying on enjoying how amazingly loved and freed I felt. It was a sincere challenge that lasted for what felt like a long, long time.

When we believe that only “some” of the Word of God is for “us” and “the rest of that Old Testament stuff is for the Jews” we are deceived by our own belief.

Because this is our belief, we then only apply the New Testament parts to our actions, and we don’t keep the Sabbaths set-apart, and we don’t observe the Passover, or Purim, or Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah, or Sukkot, or the Feast of Dedication like Jesus was documented to do in John 10:22.

When we don’t honor those days, we are actually walking contrary to how Jesus walked.

Paul says, “Be imitators of Christ.”

How well are we imitating Christ if we are doing things He never did?

How well are we imitating Christ if we are deliberately not doing the things He was documented as doing?

That is how easy it is to fall prey to deception.

One wrongly held belief can cause us to not do the things the Jesus and Paul said we must do… all because one little lie got planted by someone’s words and people believed it and passed it along because they wanted to believe it was true because while believing it, they experienced great signs and wonders.

Because we chose to believe something that the Word of God never said, and act on it, we fall into a pit of deception, and the Father allows this and gives us over to a reprobate mind.

That is why Jesus told us that the MOST IMPORTANT COMMANDMENT is to love God with ALL of our heart, ALL of our mind, ALL of our purpose and ALL of our life. If we love God with ALL of ourselves, that level of desperate, clingy love will lead us to realize that ALL of His Word is true and ALL of His Word is relevant and applicable to every living soul for as long as this earth exists. There is no end to the Law of Moses. There are of course some Laws we can’t keep because there is no temple and we are not in the Land, but before Israel got to the Land, they were given Torah to keep.

The Torah will continue to be relevant even in the New Heaven and the New Earth. Read the last chapters of Ezekial when Ezekial is given the vision of the New Heaven and the New Earth (Ezekial 40-48). The Levite Priests, specifically the sons of Zadok, are seen serving Adonai in the real Temple, and Jesus, the Prince, is given His own portion of the Land for His inheritance.

In Jeremiah, he prophecies of a future day when no one will have to tell anyone else about the Father, because they will all know Him, and His Law will be written in their hearts.

God told us clearly in Malachi that He changes not.

He did not change His mind about what He defines as Holiness or Set Apart.

Cling to God’s living, breathing, walking, talking Word. Jesus. Y’Shua. Salvation. John 1:1 & John 1:14 reveals to us that Jesus IS the Word of God (and the Word of God is both a person – Jesus – and the Old and New Testament Scriptures). If Jesus is the Word of God, well the Old Testament and the Law of Moses is also the Word of God. Jesus is the living, breathing, walking, talking Torah.

I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. – John 14:6

I am the way (the Torah is the way: Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path – Psalm 119:105)

I am the truth (Thy Word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever. – Psalm 119:160)

I am the life (For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh – Proverbs 4:22)

Jesus says over and over again that He only speaks what He hears the Father say.

Then He explains the whole Old Testament to us in parables so that we can understand the Spirit of the Law; so that we can fulfill it too, like He did. We won’t do it perfectly like He did, but He expects us to want to do it like He did.

The people that Jesus will say “I never knew you, you workers of iniquity” are the Christians that spend their whole lives praising God while eating pork chops and profaning the Sabbath by treating it like any other day of the week.

Fear God. That is the beginning of wisdom.

Eating pork chops and profaning the Sabbath indicate a lack of understanding of the true character of our Holy God in Heaven who loved us so much that He gave us His Word. His only begotten Son, who is His Word. So that all may come to everlasting life. They misunderstand what Jesus really did for us, and Who Jesus really was.

Jesus keeping the Torah perfectly did not replace our need to keep the Torah at all. He only came to do what He came to do. He didn’t do any of what we need to do. He helps us, guides us, teaches us, but we still have to obey the Word. We still have to keep the Word!

It is the Torah, following God’s Commands, that brings life, blessings, and relationship with the Holy One of Israel.

Now that it’s been more than a full cycle of Holy Convocations, (I have now observed two Feasts of Tabernacles/Sukkot), and I can truly say that I don’t miss the showiness and flashiness of my old Christianity days. I have returned for a couple of sermons just to put my finger on the pulse of that movement, and it’s amazing how the Preachers are all of the same spirit: They are ministers of light. Just like Paul says in 2 Corinthians.

Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works. – 2 Corinthian 11:15

Literally, exactly like Paul says. So, I no longer bother to check the pulse of my old churches because once you see something so blaringly obvious, you can’t ever unsee it.

God opened my eyes, He struck me in the heart with this from Esther 9:27-28

The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them, so as it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to their writing, and according to their appointed time every year;

And that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish from their seed. – Esther 9:27-28

This was the biggest strike of conviction in my heart I have ever experienced. It struck me to the core of my being, as if I had been struck in the heart by lightning.

This conviction put me into an existential crisis because I had no idea when Purim was, I had no idea how to find out. I didn’t know where to begin. I suddenly became aware of Passover and all these other commanded days while searching the scriptures for clues as to when this month of Adar was and that’s when my eyes saw for the first time that keeping the Sabbath was one of the ten commandments. Before this conviction, I was completely blind, even though I had faith in Jesus and thought I was walking out my salvation.

This is where my walk got real.

I started keeping Sabbath. It was sometime in May of 2024. Nothing woo woo happened when I kept the Sabbath holy. But something DID happen. I noticed that I felt grounded. The Sabbath made me feel grounded in my walk with the Lord.

Little by little, and by leaps and bounds at times, God has been revealing more and more of Himself and giving me more understanding of His nature, His Word and He is helping me to see into my own self as well. He has been true to His Word and even though I still don’t have a local congregation, I know I am walking with Him, and He is enough for me.

Abram didn’t have a congregation when God called him out of his country. So I am not alone. I wouldn’t trade this walk, this life and this relationship I am blessed to have with my Creator for anything.

I am grateful my son gets to grow up experiencing God this way, too.