Thank you for such a detailed reply. Approx eight or so years ago I did visit a tiny Messianic group out of my area. I enjoyed the songs and can remember being interested in the teaching, especially relating to explaining the Jewish festivals and feasts and how they looked forward to the coming Messiah.
Thank you for sharing the link.
You're welcome.
The feasts are fascinating and extremely rich with wonderful teachings about God, His plan of redemption, and about what we will be doing during Messiah's reign, so it is a shame that some many Christians deprive themselves of the privilege and the delight of getting to keep them.
However, how does one avoid become legalistic when studying the law?
That depends on what you mean by becoming legalistic. Jesus lived in perfect obedience to the Mosaic Law and taught to obey it by word and by example, but I wouldn't call him legalistic. I also wouldn't call someone legalistic for thinking that all of the laws of their country should be obeyed or for thinking that all of the 1,050 commands in the NT should be obeyed. So I think being legalistic does not refer to thinking that one of many laws should be obeyed, but rather it refers to the manner in which someone obeys a law, where their focus in on keeping a law exactly how it is written to the point where they lose sight of the intent or purpose of why the law was given. For example:
Leviticus 19:12 You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.
Someone who was focused on keeping the spirit of this law would understand its intention that we are not to swear falsely, whereas someone who was being legalistics or focused on keeping the letter of the law would understand that we can swear falsely just as long as we don't do so in God's name. However, someone who is keeping that law in the way that it was intended can nevertheless still miss the intention of what God is teaching us about Him through the command. As I mentioned previously, obedience to the Law is about growing in a relationship with God based on faith and love, so someone who was outwardly keeping the Law while their heart was far from God would be completely missing the whole point, which is why Paul considered keeping the law without having a focus on knowing Christ to be rubbish (Philippians 3:8). More than that though, the Law was given to teach us how to walk in God's ways and to reflect all of His attributes to the world, such as holiness, righteousness, goodness (Romans 7:12), justice, mercy, faithfulness (Matthew 23:23), love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control (Exodus 34:6-7, Galatians 5:22-23).
However, I've also seen legalism as commonly referring to trying to become justified by keeping the Law, which would be another form of outwardly keeping the Law without regard to its intent. It is important to understand that the Law was never given for the purpose of providing a means of becoming justified and in fact, that trying to become justified through keeping the law has always been a perversion of it because it makes it out to be that what God wants is a perfect performance from us instead of a relationship with us. The Law was intended as the good way where we will find rest for our souls (Jeremiah 6:16-19, Matthew 11:28-30), but trying to become justified by it would rob our souls of the rest that it was intended to give.
It was this misunderstanding of the goal of the Law that was the reason why Israel failed to obtain righteousness in Romans 9:30 - Romans 10:10. The problem wasn't that they did what God told them to do and God gave them faulty commands, but rather the problem was that they didn't understand that the righteousness of God comes only through faith in Messiah. They had a zeal for God, but it was not based on knowledge because they pursued the Law as though righteousness were by works in an effort to establish their own instead of pursuing the Law as though righteousness were by faith, for the goal of pursuing the Law is a relationship with Messiah for righteousness for everyone who has faith. Then in Romans 10:5-10, Paul quoted Deuteronomy 30:11-14, in regard to our faith saying that God's Law is not too difficult for us to obey, but that His Word is near us, in our mouth and in our heart so that we can obey it, and this is what it means to confess and to submit to Jesus as Lord.
