What does the Messiah speak against throughout the Gospels? I used to think he often went against instructions from the Old Testament. This is one of the core causes of the widespread disregard for the Biblical laws. This comes from not making a clear distinction between the commandments of the Bible and manmade Jewish laws.
By the time the Savior arrived on the scene much of the Biblical faith had evolved into what is known as Judaism. Many of us today have believed that Judaism is simply the faith that you get from observing the Old Testament, but that is not so.
The Torah/commandments/instructions of Scripture are not the same as the laws of Judaism (or any other manmade religious laws for that matter). Yes, the majority of Jewish laws are based on the Old Testament laws, but Judaism also invented thousands of laws that its followers keep. While it's not necessarily wrong to do many of the things it recommends, it is certainly wrong to teach that these things are commandments of YHWH or on par with what the Bible says. The Messiah addressed this very issue in Matthew 15:9 saying, "They worship me in vain, teaching traditions of men as if they were commandments."
Later in Matthew 22:29, the Messiah said that these religious leaders, "go astray, not knowing the Scripture, nor the power of YHWH." This was not a group of people who were unfamiliar with the Bible, mind you. They could have quoted it with the best of them. When he said they didn't know the Scriptures, he meant that they didn't correctly understand or apply them! Not understanding Scripture naturally leads to incorrect ideas. We see the Messiah address one of these wrong beliefs in Mark 7, when the issue of eating with unwashed hands comes up. The Bible never says you have to first wash your hands in order for your food to be clean, but that was being wrongly taught by religious leaders in his day.
We should also note that the words Jew and Jewish don't really make an appearance in Scripture until the New Testament. I remember being surprised while looking through a Jewish children's book. I was taken aback to see Abraham called Jewish and statements like, "Moses lead the Jews out of slavery," because Scripture does not say those things. Abraham was called a Hebrew, and the Israelites were the people enslaved in Egypt...to say that the Bible calls either of these Jews would be inaccurate. That there was a group calling themselves by a name Scripture does not give should tip us off that there is some departure there from the Bible. By the way, the term 'Jew' wasn't just slang for those from the tribe of Judah...Paul tells us that he was a Jew even though he was from the tribe of Benjamin.
Consistently throughout the Gospels we see the Messiah clashed with Jewish religious leaders. The conflict was caused by Yahusha's absolute refusal to honor the laws of Judaism the way he kept and honored the Torah. We see this when he drives the moneychangers from the Temple, when the Sadducees try to entrap him in the discussion on marriage in Heaven, when he is accused of violating the Sabbath, and in the discussion of eating with unwashed hands. In Matthew 15 he pointedly asked Jewish leaders, "Why do you transgress the commandments of YHWH by your tradition?"
I point this out so that we can realize the Messiah is not arguing against the validity of the Old Testament or the commandments of the Torah in these clashes with Jewish leaders. He is rather standing up for those things! Yahusha told his disciples to "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." He wanted them to be leery of the things Judaism was teaching because they often went against Scripture. When the Messiah was clashing with religious leaders, it was always because he was honoring Scripture above manmade commandments. Seeing this is vital to accurately understanding the Bible.
This theme continued after the Messiah's ascension into heaven:
-Stephen was stoned by Jewish leaders for using YHWH's name...even though Scripture says to not bring it to nothing by not using it.
-Paul described Judaism as his former way of life. Former, meaning that now that he served Yahusha he was no longer participating in that religious system.
-Peter is given a vision about not upholding a Jewish law when YHWH has said the opposite of it. This is his Acts 10 vision where he saw the unclean animals and heard a voice say, "What YHWH calls clean, you do not call unclean." Peter explains this to mean that he shouldn't uphold Jewish law of not eating with Gentiles, when God has called those people clean and invited them into his family.
-Paul later confronts Peter when he reverts back to Jewish tradition in place of YHWH's instruction. He tells him, "You have discarded the Jewish laws, why are you trying to make these Gentiles follow Jewish tradition?" He was saying that believers in Messiah had no need for Jewish traditions, but he was not speaking against the Bible's commandments for us.
Seeing that the Messiah and all the New Testament writers placed a difference between the instructions of the Bible and the religious system of Judaism will help us to better understand the word! For a long time I thought the debates and confrontations in the New Testament were the Messiah and the disciples disregarding Scripture, but this is not so. The Messiah always supported and honored the Torah and commandments from the Old Testament! By making the distinction between Biblical instructions and manmade traditions of Jewish law we can correctly understand the words of the Messiah and the authors of the New Testament.
Related posts:
The Three Types of Laws in Scripture
Understanding Mark 7 and The Messiah Declaring All Foods Clean
Four Distinctions We Need to Make to Understand Scripture
(I want to clarify that I do not want to be disrespectful to Jewish people or stir up hate. I am not judging the sincerity of anyone's faith. Your salvation is between you and the Creator. I know Jews who are wonderful people, and my goal is not to pick on anyone here. I simply want to examine a significant theme of Scripture.)
