You have an interesting take on Alaskans and other people who live where it is night or day for an extended period of time, I have never considered that until you brought it up. However, they still have to work, I would assume and they are able to put in 8 hours of work and they can tell time? I don't think they only work when it is light out, then sleep when it is dark outside. If keeping Shabbat is that important to them I'm sure God will provide a way for them. I do believe that I belong to Israel, that I am part of the family, Yeshua (Jesus) stated that he came only for the lost sheep of Israel. Matthew 15:24 His sheep hear his voice John 10:27 I hope to be one of His sheep. I do believe we need to keep the commandments of God if we want to be part of the family. He is a God of order not chaos and confusion. His Laws for farming were more about loving the land and loving your animals, servants and brothers, He does not have laws specific to soil types for various regions. Its about being gentle to His creation not mass producing or giving into greed. That is a large part of what the Sabbath is about, not being greedy and working the land, people and animals to death. Its about love, all of His commandments and laws are about love. They are all for our own good, whether we understand it now or in the Kingdom, we still must repent when we break them because sin is breaking His law 1 John 3:4. They are all about how to love God and love others. Yeshua (Jesus) summed it up with 2 commandments, as you already know, to love God and to love others. I do not see His law as a burden or a curse that no one can keep, as some Christians believe. As you proclaimed we will all have to come before the judgment throne, and on that day I would too like to hear "Well done my good and faithful servant".
Well said. I am not an argumentative person at heart, and have no reason to argue with it. You obviously believe that, as a Christian, you are an Israelite, under the Sinai Covenant, and bound by those laws. I obviously don't believe that. We have our reasons. It does not offend me that you believe this, and I wish you the best of luck in doing so.
For my part, I know that those laws, of Israel, do not apply to me as law because they say right on their face the group to whom they apply, and I'm not among them. I also recognize that God was getting at something under that law. Jesus explained that the summary of that law was "Love your neighbor as yourself, and love God above all". When I read the Hebrew Law in that light, things like those you mentioned come forward: the purpose of the sabbaths - to give rest to man, animal and the land. But if those things are actually binding LAW for Christians, then no Christian should ever work in the financial industry, nor ever invest in bonds or put money in the bank - for the charging of interest on loans is sin. And of course Christians and Jews should be univocally calling for the complete wiping out of all debt - private and public - every seven years, and the freeing of all prisoners every 50 years. Debt cancellation, and the freedom of people from all debt obligations to one another, and from criminal liability also - the wiping clean of the slate in the Jubilee - is absolutely central and fundamental to God's law of Israel. IT, in particular, is something that God speaks of being violated again and again through the prophets. God never mentions the trimming of beards things again. What he harangues the Hebrews for through the prophets are three things: The charging of interest on debts and the failure to wipe out debts without further consequences every seven years, the failure to keep the sabbaths, and the failure (of the Northern Kingdom) to limit their religious services exclusively to the hands of the Levitical priests, and the insistence of the Northern Kingdom of local sacrifices.
I have seen Christians criticize, even berate other Christians for not following the food laws, or for not keeping the Sabbaths, "because the Law..." I have never heard of a Christian movement, made of these Christians, insisting that mortgages be cancelled after 6 years, and all interest-bearing debt as an abomination to God. The Torah is chock full of the categorical, absolute prohibition on the charging or payment of interest on money that is lent between believers. To foreigners, yes. A Christian nation, if that really is the law, must issue Treasury Bonds at zero percent interest. Christians cannot invest their money at interest, but must instead loan it to poor people who ask, at zero percent interest, and they have to forgive the balance that is not paid back after seven years.
No Christian can take another Christian to court for failure to pay an interest debt - because the charging of interest is an abomination.
If the law is applied as read, that is what it says. I have never heard a single Christian who is willing to uphold the Sabbath and dietary system willing to uphold the extensive, mandatory financial and criminal justice system that God imposed on Israel also. Law is law, after all.
Now, for me, this is not a LEGAL problem, because it is clear to me from the very face of the written document that the Law of Moses, in its entirety, are merely articles of covenant in a contract between the Hebrews at Sinai and their circumcised lineal descendants, and YHWH. It is clear as a matter of law, as written, that that Law never was law for me, either before Sinai, or after Sinai, irrespective of whether Christ ever existed.
Just because the Law of Sinai is not LAW does not mean that it should not be taken very seriously. After all, God only set up one state in all of history that he ruled directly. He intended it for it to be successful and last forever. I think that those laws God imposed - for he did not leave the Hebrews with ANY legislature, so ALL of the law and regulation came from the mouth of God alone - were to make Israel ideal, and if followed, would have made Israel stand above all other nations, a model forever. So certainly I think that IF a state were really governed that way, it would end up being best (and probably favored by God).
BUT we are not held to that standard by God. For God only promised the circumcised lineal descendants of the Hebrews at Sinai that he would PROTECT their state under those laws. Only to them did he give the Urim and Thummim by which they could ALWAYS directly consult God for an answer to any hard judgment facing them.
Even if we follow all the laws by imitation, we do not, thereby, gain the guarantee of protection. Nor do we gaing the certitude of judgment, because we have not been given the Urim and Thummim.
God imposed a year-long agricultural sabbath every seven years. Which meant that after harvest in the sixth year, there would be no planting again until the eighth year. For two full years the Israelites would have to live off stores and gleanings. And in the Jubilee year, the fiftieth year, a SECOND consecutive Sabbath of the land commenced, so the Hebrews had to live for three years, from the end of harvest in the 48th year until the harvest in the 51st year, before planting anything. They had to live off stores and whatever God gave them naturally in the land.
They relied on God to always provide bountiful crops every six years, and especially bountiful ones in the 48th year (for the 49th year was a sabbatical year, and the 50th was the second sabbath, of the Jubilee. God promised them that, if they followed the law, he would never send a famine or a crop failure in those years, and that he would always provide bounty in the 51st year. Always. God promised that the weather would be grand every 7 years, and every 48 and 51 years.
God never promised us that. Even if we follow all of the Laws of Torah, we are not Hebrews under the promise, and we cannot rely on God to provide us enough food for us to grow and harvest NOTHING every 7 years, and to grow and harvest nothing in the 49th or 50th year. God did not promise that, and there is no reason at all to believe that if the Swedes went and did that, that God would be BOUND to provide them the miracle of guaranteed good weather and bumper crops every 7 years.
In fact, Jesus warned us not to put God to the test. The Gospel of Jesus and the promises of the New Covenant simply are not of this world. The Torah is very much of this world. It never even HINTS at life after death, judgment, the City of God and the Lake of Fire. None of that. It is about material prosperity and happiness in a specific exemplary state in this life, thanks to obedience to God, for a people selected by God to exhibit that. The Gospel, by contrast, promises material hardship and suffering in this life, with the greatest rewards in the next life going to the penurious faithful. There is nothing in the Gospel about peoples and nations and governments. Just as the Torah is ENTIRELY earth focused, the goal of the Gospel is ENTIRELY afterlife focused. Jesus promises hardship in the world, and reward in the next. YHWH promises Hebrews, only, prosperity and peace and victory in this world, and he never mentions that there IS a next world.
So, should we try to bring about God's government for Israel - his economic, judicial and ritual worship system - all across the world?
That is what the Messianics and Judaizers are saying, though they don't seem to realize it. They are very impressed by all of that writing and "Law" of the Old Testament, and think that it must be applied to people today, that that's what God wants.
My problem with that whole line of thinking is that it is not true. God is always very clear about what he wants. He said what he wanted of Noah. He said what he wanted of Abraham and of Hagar also. He said what he wanted of Jacob. He said what he wanted of Moses and the Hebrews. And these were all different things, specific things. God gave Noah (and mankind) ALL animals to eat. He didn't promise they would be good for them, only that it was not a sin to eat them.
God did not make certain animals sinful for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob either. What did Abraham serve God and his angels? He served them meat and curds - meat and milk - an ABOMINATION under the Law of Moses! God and the angels ate the abomination. Was it abominable? NO! Because God hadn't made that law yet, and Abraham wasn't a Hebrew under that Law.
Jesus struck down the dietary laws for the New Covenant both when he lived, and when he lowered the sheet full of unclean animals to Peter before Peter went and baptized uncircumcised Gentile Romans - a warrior and his whole family (presumably including children). God told Peter to eat the unclean animals, and told him three times to not call unclean what God has made clean.
Now, I see Christians who really want to keep the Jewish law say that this had nothing to do with food. That is not true. It obviously has to do with food. It self-evidently, from the acts and the words, is all about God COMMANDING Peter to do what is forbidden under the Mosaic law, to eat "unclean" foods - foods that Jesus MADE clean - specifically to overtly demonstrate that he, as a Christian now, WAS NOT TO OBEY the old Mosaic Law wherever it departed from the Law of Jesus. And Peter was a Jew, so he WAS under the covenant.
So, when it comes down to it, the Law of Moses is not law at all, not for us. But it is still instructive. It still shows us how to bend our minds. And one of the most important things that it does is tell us how we should be spending our money, and how we should not be investing it.
