Freedom in God’s Laws

 I hate and abhor falsehood; I love your law. I praise you seven times in the day
for your righteous ordinances. Great peace is for those who love your law,
and they do not have a cause for stumbling. I hope for your salvation, O Yahweh,
and do your commands.

Psalm 119:163–166 (LEB)

There are many people today in the thousands of sects found in Christianity that deride the instructions of the Creator God of the universe. This Creator God gave us His name, YHWH, and sent us His son to teach us His ways properly, and redeem us from slavery and death. In Christianity, God’s instructions are viewed as “old Jewish law”, “done away with”, and “nailed to the cross”. There are too many variations of opinion in the different sects to mention here, but it is safe to generalize that they would mostly agree that His laws are impossible to keep, burdensome and that we should not even try. I completely disagree with this theology.

One of the problems comes from translating the Hebrew word “Torah” to the English word law. This translation does not provide a clear meaning of the word “Torah”, although this could be a definition of the word “Torah”.

This pie chart shows all the ways “Torah” is translated to English in scripture. The root of the word “Torah” has to do with shooting an arrow. We shoot the arrow towards the mark and try to aim true. With Bible software such as Logos, one can look at all the Bible verses where in Hebrew the word “Torah” is used, but in English, words such as instruction, law, and teaching are used. If one knows what “Torah” means, then understanding these passages becomes easier to the reader.

What does God’s laws and instructions have to do with freedom? Unfortunately, in modern times laws often take away freedoms. These are man-made rules, not the Torah of God. If we just look at the ten commandments we can easily see freedom in God’s instructions.

Deuteronomy 5:6–21 (LEB): ⁶ ‘I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. ⁷ There shall not be for you other gods besides me. ⁸ ‘You shall not make for yourself a divine image of any type of form that is in the heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. ⁹ ‘You shall not bow down to them, and you shall not serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, punishing the guilt of fathers upon their children and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those hating me, ¹⁰ but showing loyal love to thousands of those who love me and of those who keep my commandments. ¹¹ ‘You shall not take up the name of Yahweh your God for a worthless purpose, for Yahweh will not leave unpunished anyone who uses his name for a worthless purpose. ¹² ‘Observe the Sabbath day to make it holy, just as Yahweh your God has commanded you. ¹³ Six days you shall work, and you shall do all of your work, ¹⁴ but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto Yahweh your God; you shall not do any work, or your son, or your daughter, or your slave, or your slave woman, or your ox, or your donkey, or any of your domestic animals, or your resident alien who is in your towns, so that your slave and your slave woman may rest as you rest. ¹⁵ And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God brought you out with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore, Yahweh your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath. ¹⁶ ‘Honor your father and your mother, as Yahweh your God commanded you, so that it will be good for you in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you. ¹⁷ ‘You shall not murder. ¹⁸ ‘And you shall not commit adultery. ¹⁹ ‘And you shall not steal. ²⁰ ‘And you shall not falsely bear evidence against your neighbor. ²¹ ‘And you shall not covet the wife of your neighbor, and you shall not crave the house of your neighbor, his field or his slave or his slave woman or his ox and his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.’

Any other God besides the Father is a false god, and we can easily become enslaved by these false gods whether they are imaginary, demons or the dark rulers and principalities spoken about by Paul. There is no freedom when one is involved with these false gods. False gods in religion, including Christianity, abound, and use religion to enslave innocent people who are searching for the Creator.

I was raised in the Christian church where one would hear a sermon a couple times a year about making false gods out of sports, jobs or celebrities. Although there is some truth in this, the real false gods are man-made religious rules that make the commandments of God void. Mark 7:8 (LEB) “Abandoning the commandment of God, you hold fast to the tradition of men.” Many of these traditions that replace God’s commandments come from actual false gods. For example, Easter replaced Passover, the sun gods Zeus, Mithra or Woden have been brought into the church in place of YHWH with all their traditions and symbols at Christmas time. Christianity even honors the day of the sun over the Sabbath. I don’t care what reason is used, it is replacing the commandment of God with man’s tradition, employing gods of others. It is all deception, unfortunately.

1 Corinthians 10:19–22 (LEB): ¹⁹ Therefore, what am I saying? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? ²⁰ No, but that the things which they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to become sharers with demons. ²¹ You are not able to drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You are not able to share the table of the Lord and the table of demons. ²² Or are we attempting to provoke the Lord to jealousy? We are not stronger than he is, are we?*

If we look at a scenario where one covets the belongings of someone else, it is easy to see the path of coveting leading to stealing, which then leads to murder in many cases. This robs people of the freedom of having personal property. It also robs everyone of a peaceful life, needing to be worried about locking up their possessions and finding they have been stolen anyway. We can even look at how groups of people form coalitions can collectively rob people of their personal belongings, supposedly for the betterment of society. We see this in many forms of government in the way of unreasonable taxes and the picking of winners and losers by government. Socialists, communists and other totalitarian forms of government are guilty of this and it is why they oppose God so vehemently. There will be a price to pay for people in power that steal from the masses.

Revelation 6:14–17 (LEB): ¹⁴ And the sky was split apart like a scroll that is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved from their place. ¹⁵ And the kings of the earth, and the most important people, and the military leaders, and the rich, and the powerful, and every slave and free person hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, ¹⁶ And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, ¹⁷ because the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

The advantages of the commandment to not commit adultery or break wedlock should be self evident. There is no freedom having multiple marriages ending in divorce, or several illegitimate families. Often this creates hardships in lives that can never be over come. One becomes a prisoner of a lifestyle with endless child support, conflict and turmoil.

Matthew 19:3–9 (LEB): ³ And Pharisees came up to him in order to test him, and asked if it was permitted for a man to divorce his wife for any cause. ⁴ And he answered and said, “Have you not read that the one who created them from the beginning made them male and female ⁵ and said, ‘On account of this a man will leave his father and his mother and will be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? ⁶ So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, man must not separate.” ⁷ They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a document—a certificate of divorce—and to divorce her?” ⁸ He said to them, “Moses, with reference to your hardness of heart, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not like this. ⁹ Now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except on the basis of sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”

Yeshua doubles down on the commandments here by saying even what was permitted in the “law of Moses” was not as strict as originally intended by God.

Paul reaffirms the commandment to honor our father and mother. By giving us the commandment to honor our mother and father, the heavenly Father shows that we have the right to have a mother and father. It is easy to see today what happens when we do not honor our mothers and fathers. We descend into total chaos. Children should be taught by their grandparents and parents, not indoctrinated by government run institutions that try to break the family nucleus. Both Plato and Marx have the state raising children in their philosophies, which comes from being against a higher entity having moral authority over society. Just as governments steal land, wages and other freedoms, it is no accident that the state is now attacking the commandment to honor our mothers and fathers, imposing twisted ideology on our children.

Ephesians 6:1–4 (LEB): 6 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ² “Honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise), ³ “in order that it may be well with you, and you may _⌊live a long time_⌋ on the earth.” ⁴ And fathers, do not make your children angry, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

The Sabbath is another mark of a free man. Who gives their people a day to rest other than the Father and Creator God of Israel? The ones who wish to enslave us will change the Sabbath, say it is a burden to keep, or give many chores to do on the Sabbath when the Father said to rest and not make your family or employees work. Jesus reaffirms the importance of the Sabbath to the Pharisees who continually added burdens to the instructions of God.

Matthew 12:11–12 (LEB): ¹¹ But he said to them, “What man will there be among you who will have one sheep and if this one fell into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? ¹² Then to what degree is a man worth more than a sheep? So then, it is permitted to do good on the Sabbath.”

Matthew 12:7–8 (LEB): ⁷ And if you had known what it means, ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. ⁸ For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

These “laws” are not intended to be burdensome or too hard. They are instructions about how to live a successful life on earth in harmony with other humans, nature and the Creator. The people who claim these instructions of God, reinforced by Yeshua, are not important, need to look around the world and see the results of disobedience to God’s words.

Deuteronomy 30:11–16 (LEB): ¹¹ “For this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too wonderful for you, and it is not too far from you. ¹² It is not in the heavens so that you might say, ‘Who will go up for us to the heavens and get it for us and cause us to hear it, so that we may do it?’ ¹³ And it is not beyond the sea, so that you might say, ‘Who will cross for us to the other side of the sea and take it for us and cause us to hear it, so that we may do it?’ ¹⁴ But the word is very near you, even in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may do it. ¹⁵ “See, I am setting before you today life and prosperity and death and disaster; ¹⁶ what I am commanding you today is to love Yahweh your God by going in his ways and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his regulations, and then you will live, and you will become numerous, and Yahweh your God will bless you in the land where you are going.

We could list all of the instructions of God and point out all the freedoms we have when we follow God’s laws. Anyone who teaches against the instructions of God, as good intentions as they may have, is working against God. There are many teaching against God’s laws who are used by the enemy to lead people astray. The Sabbath is a great example of this. Keeping the Sabbath was declared the mark of a person belonging to the Creator. It comes with many blessings, so what better way to rob people of this status and these blessings than to change it, say it is no longer important, or add many rules to keeping it?

Isaiah 56:6–7 (LEB): ⁶ And the foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh to serve him and to love the name of Yahweh, to become his servants, every one who keeps the Sabbath, so as not to profane it, and those who keep hold of my covenant, ⁷ I will bring them to my holy mountain; I will make them merry in my house of prayer. their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,”

One can listen to the entities trying to enslave them by believing that God’s instructions are no longer important, impossible to keep, or even a sin to try to keep according to some sects of Christianity. I suggest studying these matters and not listening to those teaching contrary to the God of Abraham and his son Yeshua. It is true that “Great peace is for those who love your law, and they do not have a cause for stumbling”.

Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash