Navigating the Narrow Path

This path of life our God wants us to walk is filled with hazards. The most dangerous hazards are the ones that look perfectly safe, but lead us off the path. 

Leviticus 6:8-8:36; Jeremiah 7:21-8:3, 9:23-24; Malachi 3:1-4:6; Proverbs 6:16-19; Matthew 5:14-16, 7:12-23; John 8:12, 13:34-35; 14:15

Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Navigating the Narrow Path

 

Did you ever notice that the path of the Kingdom is easy to miss? Even those who are walking on God’s path seem to be ever in peril of slipping off. Stray too far to one side and there’s a tendency to lapse into lawlessness. Stray too far to the other side and the danger is legalism. These are labels we throw at people who don’t believe as we do, and whose lives reflect values we deem incompatible with true service to our Creator.

What exactly is true service to our Creator? The answer is in the Torah he gave to Moses. The Torah is more than law; it’s the body of instructions, commandments, and standards of righteous conduct God first explained to Israel so that his chosen nation of priests could carry it to the world. That’s what being the light of the world is all about, as Israel’s Messiah Yeshua said both of himself and of his followers. And yet we, just like our Hebrew spiritual ancestors, still tend to miss the point – which means we tend to emphasize our particular interpretation of righteousness as the only correct one.

Here’s an example. For most of Christian history, and even today in much of the church, the emphasis has been on what Yeshua and the Apostles taught, not on Moses and the Prophets. The Torah, and especially the so-called “ceremonial law” of sacrificial offerings and ritual cleanness, has been considered irrelevant. What we have missed is that Yeshua and the Apostles drew from Moses and the Prophets, including the instructions about the Temple service and priesthood. Since there has been no Temple and no functioning priesthood for nearly 2,000 years, we have lost the best example of what it means to be holy, separated to the Creator. That brings us to our present day, when certain segments of the church emphasize God’s saving grace to the point that even the most egregious errors are justified or ignored. That partially explains why 67 million or more babies have been aborted in the United States since 1973, including those lives lost since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. The truth is, no law can prevent people from doing whatever they want if their hearts are set on it.

Abortion isn’t the only problem, of course. There are many things God calls abominations, meaning practices that grieve his heart, but we categorize them into “acceptable” and “unacceptable” abominations. The unacceptable abominations are the ones we don’t admit to doing, but the acceptable ones are what everyone does, or at least excuses. Maybe it would be better if we ask God what’s on his list, and whether any of them are acceptable. His list of abominable categories is in Solomon’s proverbs:

There are six things that the Lord hates,

seven that are an abomination to him:

haughty eyes, a lying tongue,

and hands that shed innocent blood,

a heart that devises wicked plans,

feet that make haste to run to evil,

a false witness who breathes out lies,

and one who sows discord among brothers.

Proverbs 6:16-19 ESV

It’s interesting that some of the most obvious things on our “unacceptable abominations” list don’t appear on God’s list. That doesn’t make those things any less grievous to him, but it does give us reason to consider whether we really understand and practice God’s priorities. If we don’t do that from time to time, we end up doing things he never intended, and miss completely what matters most to him. He explained that to ancient Israel through his prophets. Here’s an example from Jeremiah:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.”

Jeremiah 7:21-26 ESV

Jeremiah delivered this message to Judah in the days after the great revival under King Josiah. The Temple was still operating according to the procedures Moses had explained in Leviticus. The priesthood and the Levites knew their jobs, the sacrificial offerings were going up daily, and the people thought all was well. Yet the façade of holiness masked the lawless core of the people and the nation, just as it did in the days of Messiah Yeshua, when he spoke similar indictments.

The lesson for us is this: there is no substitute for loving the Lord and obeying his commands. Messiah Yeshua said as much when he said if we love him we would keep his commandments, and gave as his most important commandment that we love one another as he has loved us.

It’s good to understand what the priests do and discuss how things will be when the Temple is in operation again, but that’s not as important as learning how our God wants us to live, and then making the effort to live that way. That’s how we get ready for that day when the Lord whom we seek comes suddenly into his temple.

 

Cover photo by Joyce G, September 16, 2020, on Unsplash.

Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.