Message to the Messianics . . .

What is the Letter to the Hebrews saying about Jews who believe in Messiah and their relationship to Torah?
What is this warning about the failure to "Enter Rest"?
Could a believer get this wrong and lose salvation?

You are invited to explore the full meaning of keeping the Sabbath, which is Spiritual Rest --- trusting the LORD alone for perfect acceptance and the power to live a holy life, abandoning guilt and pride and religious self-effort. Keeping the Sabbath in this way is revival for every kind of Christian fellowship, and it can be the life message of Messianic Judaism.

In Part One, “The Movement and the Message,”  I introduce the “security” problem in Hebrews and its simple but far-reaching solution: this is judgment, not condemnation---falling into His hands, not out of them.  Then I introduce the Messianic movement and its concerns about Judaism being “replaced,” and the tension between salvation by grace and allegiance to Torah. I reaffirm mainline Messianic Judaism's views of salvation and the call in liberty to worship in a Jewish way. I don't resolve all the details, just clear a space where we can know Who We Are and consider what G_d has for us as a movement.

Part Two, “In Many and Various Ways,” finds in the Tanakh a long string of convicting stories that show the impotence of the flesh and the sinfulness of our misplaced trust in our own strengths. I believe the Messianic movement can fulfill its identity by preaching and living the Sabbath—not as religious ritual but as spiritual rest. To see how little we can do and how sufficiently He has already solved the problem is to walk in the Spirit and be in revival.

Once we see clearly and deeply how the LORD dislikes human pride and self-effort and asks us to rest in His provision, we are ready for Part Three, “By a Son.” Now we can read Hebrews differently. The fear of losing salvation gives way to the conviction that we offend G_d and incur judgment in even thinking that we could lose what we did not earn. And we see the sin of not entering rest, hanging on to the false hopes of human religion, whether Jewish or Catholic or Protestant, or even secular and humanistic. Nothing in Hebrews prohibits the continuation of Jewish practices, but it measures the attitude of the heart in religious practices of many kinds.

We will also encounter the inverse evil twin of legalism, antinomianism, in which Christians have contempt for Jewish religion while practicing their own elitist variety of legalism. They pride themselves on their “superior understanding.” Such lawlessness is legalistic, and legalism is lawless, since Torah does not teach us to trust ourselves. In the places where you and I worship, I worry most about subtle underpinnings of these errors, which keep us from breaking forth in holiness and revival. But Hebrews calls us into a transforming, face-to-face encounter with G_d.

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