As we closeout 2012 and begin 2013, I have been
reflecting on some of the discussions that I have had with my fellow believers
over the last year, both those in the Hebrew Roots community and those in more
“mainline” denominations. Some of the biggest discussions have involved
the subject of religious traditions.
Most of us who come to the Hebrew Roots
community are seeking a closer and greater relationship with the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We begin to understand that our Master Yeshua (Jesus) is teaching and calling us to a closer
relationship with Himself. We realize that Yeshua as well as the Apostles
he chose to lead us are calling us back to the foundation of the Word of God,
beginning with the Torah given to mankind at creation and codified at Mt. Sinai
and continuing through the Prophets, the Gospels, the Apostolic Epistles and on
through Revelation.
In light of what we are learning about the
nature of God and His desire for a relationship with us through the covenants
and His appointed times, we tend to seek an avenue of expression of our faith
by embracing some Jewish traditions; the keeping of the Sabbaths and the Feasts
for example. To many Christian believers this seems odd or even contrary
to “New Testament” teaching. We may even be accused of turning to
“legalism” and forsaking grace. We tend to gravitate to the Feasts and
Sabbaths because we think of them as somehow being more pure than the Christian
traditions we grew up with. Or perhaps we find them new and exciting as
we discover the Jewish nature of our Master Yeshua and history of the 1st
Century Church. Many of these traditions are certainly older, and some
may be more closely based on specific scriptures in God’s word. But how do we process all this new information
and embrace these traditions without turning them into legalistic religious
practices? Which Jewish and Christian traditions do we
take on, and which do we disregard? I have even personally witnessed many
in the Hebrew Roots community turn openly hostile toward traditional Christian
holidays, attributing them to some kind of “pagan” origin primarily because of
the calendar date on which they are traditionally practiced. I believe
this to be a serious mistake as well as counterproductive to the Great
Commission. These are difficult question to answer and hopefully as we
progress in our walk, we will find the answers to them. But it takes a
great deal of time and study to sort this out.
Allow me to pose a question for you to consider
as you read the remainder of this blog:
Given the fact that the calendar date of December 25 as well as the current calculation of the date for Easter, has in many
ancient cultures, and specifically ancient Rome, been the date of some despicable
pagan practices and rituals, because of this association, does it nullify the
traditional Christian practice of celebrating the birth and resurrection of Yeshua on these dates? In other words, because the Christian
tradition of celebrating His birth is done on December 25, does that in itself
constitute a "pagan" practice?
We all have gone through stages of discovery in
our journey to a Hebraic understanding of Messiah. One of the things that
I hear a lot from people as they are discovering the Hebrew Roots of their
faith, is that after a time of near total astonishment at the amazing depth of
the Word of God; discovering a vast treasure house of understanding in the
ancient texts; is that one begins to feel a sense of betrayal, that perhaps we
may have been “lied” to by our previous pastors and teachers. Is that
really true? Well not exactly!
It cannot be denied, that in our past, more
traditional Christian Church we were saved and had the Holy Spirit fill our
hearts and lives. We cried out to Jesus and He saved us. We had the
gift of salvation by His grace so we were not “lied” to in a traditional sense.
A lie implies an intentional deception. Many traditional Churches are
filled with people who are saved and love the LORD with all their hearts, minds
and strength as well as loving and serving others. This is the ideal of the
greatest of the commandments which Yeshua spoke of in Matthew 22:36-40.
The truly saved in the traditional Christian
Church are following God’s commandments to the best of their ability and to the
extent of their knowledge and revelation that the LORD has given them, and the
LORD honors their service. Their faith is real and their works prove it
out. Faith without works is dead (James 2:20 & 26). And the
opposite is also true, that works without faith is dead as Jesus pointed out in
the hypocrisy of some of the Jewish Pharisees and leaders of His day; Mark
7:1-13 among many other examples. This hypocrisy was manifest in the
twisting of the Torah of God into legalistic practices divorced from faith;
taking traditions and making them the object of worship and devotion rather
than service to God and to their fellow man.
But what is the place for traditions in a Torah
lifestyle? First of all, let me open with this thought: there is nothing
wrong with religious traditions in general so long as they don’t interfere with
or supersede the commandments of the Torah. On the contrary, traditions
are necessary for the doing of the commandments. Perhaps before, but
certainly since coming to the Hebrew Roots movement, many of us learned the
importance of the Feasts Days and the Biblical calendar and now have a deep
desire to celebrate them and to be on God’s schedule of appointed times.
We’ve turned to Jewish tradition to learn how we can observe these days. As
a result of this, in many cases, our old Christian traditions are totally
disregarded in favor of these Jewish traditions. In doing this some
people have mistakenly embraced Judaism itself in place of Christianity, and
ended up rejecting Yeshua as the promised Messiah. This is the great danger
lurking within any tradition; Jewish or Christian. Tradition can either
lead us closer or further away from Messiah.
But how do we actually do the Feasts? How
do we celebrate them? There is very little direct instruction in the
Bible as to the actual practice of the Feast Days. Each year we are
commanded to observe the cycle of Feasts beginning with the Passover in the
spring. At my congregation we do this Feast by conducting a community
Seder. This has become a very large event we hold at a convention center
with over a thousand people attending. But there is no mention of a
commandment to hold a Seder, let alone a community one, in the Bible. So
why do we do it? We do it to fulfill the commandment of a “holy
convocation”. It is a tradition, based on scripture to facilitate the
fulfillment of a commandment. An convocation is a public meeting and
implies a rehearsal or calling.
Leviticus 23:4-8 NKJV 4 'These are the feasts
of the LORD, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed
times. 5 'On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD'S
Passover. 6 'And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of
Unleavened Bread to the LORD; seven days you must eat unleavened bread. 7 'On
the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work
on it. 8 'But you shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD for seven
days. The seventh day shall be a holy convocation; you shall do no customary
work on it.'"
Now you will notice that in verse 5 of this passage of scripture, we are told that the
fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the Passover and that we are
to have a holy convocation; a public gathering. But that is all it says.
There is no further detailed instruction here as to what we are to do at this
public gathering. If we look at prior scripture references to Passover,
we find an instruction given to the children of Israel while they were still in
captivity and slavery in Egypt to sequester themselves inside their homes and
not to come out until morning. In Exodus chapter 12 we find the account
of this first Passover, at the time of the 10th plague, when the
LORD passed over all the households which had the blood of the sacrificed lamb
on their doorposts and lintels.
Exodus 12:22 NKJV 22 "And you shall take a
bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the
lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of
you shall go out of the door of his house until morning.
So, at the Passover, are we to follow this
scripture example and stay in our homes? How do we reconcile this with
Leviticus 23 where we are commanded to have a holy convocation; a public
meeting? Again, convocation implies a rehearsal, and a rehearsal implies
that we are to prepare for a future event, not reenact a past event.
Maybe it’s starting to sound like there are contradicting commandments?
Let’s throw in another scripture reference to further cloud the issue.
Numbers 9:2-3 NKJV 2 "Let the children of
Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time. 3 "On the fourteenth day
of this month, at twilight, you shall keep it at its appointed time. According
to all its rites
and ceremonies you shall keep it."
What rites and ceremonies? What is that
all about? Nowhere in scripture is there to be found any “rites and
ceremonies” regarding the manor of celebration of the Passover, but yet here,
in the Torah, the word of God, we are commanded to follow them. But where
do we find them? Jewish tradition has it that an Oral Torah; that is an
unwritten set of instruction was also given to Moses at Mt. Sinai and this is
where we are to find many of these “rites and ceremonies.” The tradition
is that this Oral Torah was passed down from generation to generation starting
with Moses and ultimately recorded in Jewish writings in the early centuries of
the Common Era. This is where we find the roots of modern day Jewish
traditions; these “rites and ceremonies” that enhance our experience and
practice of celebrating the Feast Days.
Now these traditions have not been static and
fixed through the ages since the time of Moses and the giving of the Torah at
Mt. Sinai. They have changed dramatically over time. At the time of
Samuel, the Passover was observed at Shiloh and then moved to Mizpah. At
the time of Solomon, when the Temple was built and the tabernacle was replaced
with a more permanent and far grander structure, the Passover was then observed
at the Temple. The Levites all of a sudden had new roles and new
traditions and procedures evolved around the Temple service. After the
destruction of the Temple and the expulsion of the Jewish people from
Jerusalem, Passover could no longer be observed at the Temple in Jerusalem in
the way that it had been for centuries up to that time. New traditions
were developed including the tradition that lamb is no longer sacrificed nor
consumed at Passover. These traditions continue to evolve varying among the
many sects or denominations of Judaism that exist today. Who is to say
that any one of these varying traditions are wrong so long as they do not
interfere with or supplant the commandments of the Torah? On the contrary
the practice on these traditions constitute the very fulfillment of the Torah!
Let’s examine a slightly different example
where a tradition is mentioned in the bible but nowhere is there a commandment
establishing it. Over time and especially after the destruction of the
first Temple in 586 BCE, more than a thousand years after the time of Moses,
several fast days were instituted to commemorate various events in Jewish
cultural history including important or significant events surrounding the fall
of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians. These
fasts were instituted by the Sages, that is the Rabbi’s and other Jewish
leaders in ancient times, guided by revelation given to the prophets, to
commemorate some national tragedy. They are not given as commandments in
the Torah itself. Three of these five minor fasts commemorate events
leading to the downfall of the first commonwealth and the destruction of the
first Temple. The destruction of the Temple itself is commemorated by a major
fast (a major fast is observed from sunset to sunset) of Tisha B'Av, the 9th
day of the biblical month of Av. These traditional minor fast days are on
Tishri 3, Tevet 10, Adar 13, Nissan 14 and Tammuz 17. The second of
these, the one on Tevet 10 was, for centuries, a fast to remember the siege of
Jerusalem. However, since the end of WWII and the founding of the modern
nation of Israel, this fast has also been proclaimed a memorial day for the six
million Jews who died in the Holocaust demonstrating how traditions change over
time.
These minor fast days are mentioned later by
the prophet Zechariah, well after the time they were established where the LORD
says that they will one day be turned into feast days.
Zechariah 8:18-19 NKJV 18 Then the word of the
LORD of hosts came to me, saying, 19 "Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'The
fast of the fourth month, The fast of the fifth, The fast of the seventh, And
the fast of the tenth, Shall be joy and gladness and cheerful feasts For the
house of Judah. Therefore love truth and peace.'
One of the most important things to be
recognized in this passage is found between the lines, implied indirectly by
the text. What we see here is the LORD, speaking through the prophet
Zechariah, recognizing the fast days as established by men and He honors them,
and states that they will one day be turned to feast days. The LORD does
not rebuke the people for establishing a man made tradition!
Yeshua Himself commented on many of the
traditions of His day and even practiced extra-scriptural traditions. One
tradition that we see Him observing is the festival of Hanukkah. In the
Gospel of John, we find Yeshua at the Temple celebrating this minor Feast:
John 10:22 NKJV 22 Now it was the Feast of
Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter.
The “Feast of Dedication” is a direct reference
to Hanukkah. The Hebrew word Hanukkah directly translates as dedication.
Unlike the minor fast days, the Feast of Hanukkah is not to be found anywhere
in all of Jewish scripture, either in establishment or in mention. It is
purely and completely a traditional feast, instituted by the Jewish leadership
and not originating as a commandment from God. It is meant to celebrate
the rededication of the Temple after the desecration of it by Antiochus IV
Epiphanies less than two hundred years prior to Yeshua’s day. Hanukkah
was not instituted until well after the canon of Jewish scripture was closed.
Nowhere in the Gospel accounts of Yeshua’s ministry is it recorded that He was
present in Jerusalem except during, or immediately prior to a Feast day or in
this case, the minor festival of Hanukkah, of which He must have deemed
important enough to travel to Jerusalem to attend and celebrate.
In conclusion, we see clearly from history and
from the example of our Master Yeshua Himself that there is a place for
man-made religious traditions in the community of believers. That just
because a tradition is instituted by men and not a direct commandment from God
does not mean that it is of “pagan” origin. Just because the calendar
date on which it may occur is, or was previously the date of a former, no longer
practiced “pagan” festival, or historically as in the case of Hanukkah, a date
of a despicable act of the desecration of the Altar of God, does not mean that
that date is forever given over to paganism or to Satan. Dates on the
calendar, ALL dates belong to God for He created them all. Yeshua’s
example in His celebration of Hanukkah makes this clear.
So what do we do with the Christian traditions
we grew up with? How do we reconcile them in light of the Hebraic roots
of Christianity? What traditions or parts of traditions do we keep and
what do we discard if any? These are not easy questions to answer and
please don’t look to me to tell you what to do. The answers must be
worked out in your own life through your own walk with Messiah Yeshua, guided
by the Holy Spirit. But I think the opening question is answered. Christian traditions such as celebrating
Yeshua’s birth on December 25 and celebrating His death and resurrection on
Easter Sunday in and of themselves do not constitute a “pagan” practice.
We just have to realize that traditions are
neither good nor evil in and of themselves. The key is what we turn them
into and what we bring into them from the worldly culture around us. If
we make them an end to themselves, then they are a form of Idolatry. On
the other hand, if they are a means to bring a certain richness and depth to
your relationship to God and draw you to a closer walk with Him, then that is
entirely different. The same traditions can be vastly different
things to different people, whether it is an old Jewish tradition or a newer
Christian one. It is a personal journey and walk with Yeshua and you must
work it out with Him.
יבורך שלום
Shalom and be blessed
Dan & Brenda Cathcart
Visit our web site at www.moedministries.com
