Today we look at the ways in which we can all walk in and observe the Torah. We sometimes make big issues of when Shabbat services should be held, whether to wear techelet or not, how far must we go in keeping kosher, and what to do on which festival. Some Messianics will almost hang you if you’re not keeping things as they believe you should. Was YHVH always this strict? Let’s take the matter of the firstborn son. We all know that the Bible says the firstborn is to inherit a double portion. It doesn’t matter if you got along with his mother, or the son didn’t live up to your expections of him, he was still the firstborn son. Yet at YHVH’S leading, every one of the patriachs violated this principle, including King David. The Torah also says a man who commits a sin worthy of death shall be put to death. Both murder and adultery were in that category, of which David did both. Did YHVH put David to death?

The Bible even says David was a man after G-d’s own heart. The Torah says a Moabite shall not enter the congregation for eternity, yet we see Ruth as an ancestor of both David and Yeshua. The Torah says the name of Amalek is to be removed from under Heaven, yet we find that name in the most widely read book of all time. So what’s going on here? Is YHVH playing favorites? Doesn’t he go by his own book? We tend to look at Torah as a set of hard and fast rules given to mankind at a certain point in time. Maybe we should look at it a bit more like an “eternal set of principles”, where YHVH distinguishes how it is expressed depending on the time and person. For instance, Abraham planted a grove of trees near his altar, a practice that was not permitted by Moshe. Even the law of Sabbath is different in different time frames. The first Sabbath was for rest from creation, whereas later it was done to remember the exodus out of Egypt. In today’s world, if we went only a Sabbath days’ journey, we would never be able to meet and study the Word. The world is different now than in Bible times. However, the Torah is law in the sense that it’s principles come from YHVH himself and those principles are eternal. The expression of those principles is up to G-D. Our goal is not to try to go back in time and imitate a people and a time, but to draw close to G-D using his eternal principles in our own day and time.