Stand Fast in Liberty (part 2)
Pastor Eric J. Hanson
July 19, 2015
Galatians 5:1
Review of the first Message in this Series
On July 5th, Pastor Dallas shared a fine sermon dealing with a current threat to genuine Christian Liberty. This is not a threat coming from outside of the Church from her enemies, but one coming from inside of the Church from people who have decided to go into an Old Testament based way of living. The people who subscribe to this way of thinking and living, are known collectively as the Jewish Roots (or Hebraic Roots or Hebrew Roots) movement. These people claim the Torah (Jewish name for the “Law of God” or first five books of the Bible) as their authority.
Pastor Dallas brought out many scriptures which conclusively show that this movement is not a good thing, but is actually a repeat of very old errors which attacked and misled followers of Jesus Christ way back during the first century. Let’s review these scriptures now.
Romans 6:14 (read it now) –The Law and Grace are mutually exclusive.
Galatians 3:10-13 (read it now) –The Law can only show us sin. It cannot free anyone from sin’s power or sin’s penalty.
Galatians 3:23-25 (read it now).- The Law was a schoolmaster.
Galatians 3:1-3 (read it now) – Paul was quite strong about the wrong-headedness of going under the keeping of the Jewish Law.
Galatians 4:21-31 (read it now) –Christian believers who then put themselves under the Law in an effort to live pleasing to God, are in error and have come under bondage.
Acts 15 could not be clearer as the Apostles wrestled with what to require from Gentiles who convert to following Jesus. Such luminaries as Peter, James the Lord’s half brother, Paul, and Barnabas were united strongly in not bringing us under such bondage.
Colossians 2:16-17 makes it clear that the various Feasts and Holy Days, even including the Sabbath Day, were shadows of things to come, and the thing to come was Jesus! He fulfilled all of these things and if we are resting in Him, we are totally free from observing these. We are no longer looking ahead to something greater you see. Jesus Christ IS the something greater.
This brings us back to the thee scripture of this series: “Stand fast therefore in the Liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and do not become entangled again in the yoke of bondage” –(Galatians 5:1).
Pastor Dallas also talked about the history of the Hebraic Roots movement, and about the faulty thinking about Greek or Western mindsets, which is behind it. If you were not here, please get the CD or the written transcript and study it out, because this was a very important teaching.
Cultural Outgrowths from this Movement
Now I am going to shift gears, and go into some more things about this movement which were not covered 2 weeks ago. I am calling these things outgrowths, because they are not roots, but fruits of the Hebraic Roots way of thinking. Here goes…
In addition to seeking to keep the Torah Laws, many practitioners of the Jewish Roots way of living, have also embraced quite a number of Jewish cultural practices as being signs of walking close to God, and consider such cultural garments and practices to be signs of superior spirituality or of true holiness. Let’s consider these now:
• In talking and in writing, the English speaking practitioners of the Hebrew Roots movement tend to replace a number of English nouns with their Hebrew equivalents: For instance, when writing or saying the word Israel, they change the word by adding the letter Y plus a apostrophe, and then heavily pronouncing the Y sound and adding an affectatious throat sound to the r sound in the middle of the word. (demonstrate). They do similar things with select other words. This practice is intended to demonstrate a superior understanding all things relating to God, but what it does is simply add a strange religious practice which gets in the way of the simple Gospel for the person in the street. This complicating of what should be simple and clear, includes their insistence on using the Hebrew word for Jesus, which is Yeshuah, and usually turning his name into the phrase “Yeshuah Ha Mashieh” (Jesus the Messiah) in simple conversation. All this produces is pridefulness.
• Imitating a Jewish practice which is not from the Torah, but from tradition, They stop saying God, and instead remove the o from that word, replacing it with a dash, thus rendering the word unpronounceable. It is then used only in writing, as a supposedly higher and more reverent way to express the idea of God. On the other hand, they take the 4 consonant name for God which appears often in the Hebrew writings, and they write it out with the vowels which were later inserted to make it a pronounceable word. So they think that Yahweh is a perfectly fine way to render YHWH, but God needs to be changed to G_D. (By the way: YHWH is commonly translated as either “The Lord” or as “Jehovah” in various parts of the O.T.)
These two practices create an inconsistency. They consist of doing the opposite thing to 2 different words for God. They are clear examples of made up religious practices leading people into foolishness in the name of superior knowledge, and superior practices.
For the record:.God identified himself out loud several times to the Patriarchs in Genesis and in Exodus. He spoke his names out loud, and he did not instruct these men to only write his names as unpronounceable groups of consonants. The whole practice is simply based on tradition, and not on Torah instructions.
• Another thing that people who are caught up in this error get into is the Synagogue. Nowhere in God’s word is there such a thing as the synagogue. There is nothing wrong with Jewish people having a place where they get together and preserve their Jewishness and learn Torah, books of the Prophets, and History. It is fine for the Jews to have Rabbis (teachers of Jewish things) for this purpose; but not once in the whole New Testament do we see Gentile converts to the Christian Faith becoming part of the Synagogue in any city anywhere, and this is not taught in the New Testament anywhere either, But, today we see some of the Jewish Roots groups meeting regularly in the Synagogue or calling their own meeting place by that name.
• They also tend to call their leaders Rabbi, which runs counter to the servant-leaders God has given to His church, which are Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers, some of whom are set in as elders locally, to oversee the church under their care. The Rabbi thing, like the Synagogue is cultural and not prescribed even by the Torah. It s a way of feeling “pure” in one’s misled practice.
• One other area of Jewish affectation which has really gained traction in this movement is the wearing of certain garments. The wearing of the Yamikah by men in the Hebraic Roots movement is another non-Torah practice which had been elevated to have some sort of status as being spiritual. Interestingly, Paul, a pharissee by training, and fully informed on all proper practices for prayer and worship, chided the men in Corinth for wearing hats during church gatherings. He made it clear that the redeemed man’s covering is God’s Glory (the Holy Spirit actually present) and that the men should NOT be covering their head while praying or prophecying. (Read I Corinthians 11:4) The Yamikah does the opposite of this, and it’s origin is tradition, not the Torah
• Many practitioners of the Jewish Roots persuasion also wear special shirts or special robes which have certain pockets in them for placing certain objects. These also have tassels on them which represent the prayer life of the person wearing them. Again, this is not something from the Books of the Law, but from Jewish traditions. It is yet, one more example, of taking something which is internal under the New Covenant; in this case, an ongoing prayer life of walking with God, and making something external of it, regressing from the internal reality to a shadow, and in this case, going with a particular external that Jesus roundly came against in public when speaking to the Pharisees in front of all the people.
And Finally
People who become caught up in this tend to cut themselves off from concern about the Great Commission. Rather than being busy sharing the good news of the Gospel with other people, leading them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and then getting those people well grounded in God’s word and the basics of church life, they are busy with a million details of Law Keeping and adding traditions to the Law keeping. The impact for advancing the Kingdom of Heaven tends to fall pretty close to zero.
In Conclusion
Please do not get pulled into any of the beliefs or practices of the Hebrew Roots movement. It is the current big distraction making its way through the believing church. It appeals to intellect and to religious pride, but it goes against much instruction and correction in the New Testament, and it is not of God.
