Preaching “just focus on Yeshua” while refusing to embrace the plumbline He brings to His house, when He comes to remove abusers, is not focussing on Yeshua. It is rather focussing some perverse and anemic antichrist of your own machinations.
Focussing on Yeshua means focussing on ALL of Yeshua
If justice begins in the house of G-d, then it begins with those who are designed to execute that justice and decision-making process. Us. Believers who are sober-minded, and walking with Him.
“Stay in love with Jesus” is not enough. Walking with Yeshua, however, in fullness, is precisely the best thing to embrace. Even if it makes some people uncomfortable, and makes people say “that’s unChristlike”.
What is unChristlike is permitting predators in our midst, and refusing to protect victims.
And there are those who will likely want to label me “heretic” for this one. I cannot control how others see me.
The Real Un-Christlike Issue Among Believers: Remaining Ignorant of Iniquity In the Holy Place
Num. 25:6 And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of meeting. 7 When Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand 8 and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped.
Numbers 25:6-8 ESV
What is un-Christlike is proclaiming a better covenant…
While refusing to weave together the principles already given in the biblical text….
Failing to recognize the fullness of the Whole Covenant that stretches from the back to the front of that book we call Scriptures…
Failing to show allegiance to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and those who have been walking with the L-rd for any appreciable period of time refusing to attempt to walk cleanly with Him in this walk, with very little struggle, and an attitude that says “why bother?”, and playing with things that are deadly, especially those sorts of sins that create an ecosystem that enables predators and victims to flourish, because internal heart patters are not governed, and little to no attempt is made to take thoughts captive and make those thoughts obedient to Messiah.
I am all for a covenant that flows from the Love of the King, in which He enables us to walk freely as sons. What I am not okay with is a covenant that allows us to ignore provisions and instructions as to heart attitudes getting ignored in favor of some mysterious better covenant, and acting as thought the L-rd suddenly discovered what heart attitudes were as a result of the Sermon on the Mount.
The L-RD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Genesis 6:5
Delight yourself in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4
But the L-RD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the L-RD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the L-RD looks on the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Exodus 20:17
“when I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels, then I coveted them and took them. And see, they are hidden in the earth inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”
Joshua 7:21
There is this little pebble in the Old Covenant that most “better covenant” types ignore to their own trouble. It’s called the Tenth Commandment, in Exodus 20:17. It is the Commandment that deals explicitly with the inner desires of the heart.
Messiah is not here to mediate a better covenant. He is here to show us the way that came through the entirety of the covenant etched in His blood from before the foundations of the world.
And that includes the inner desires of one’s heart.
It’s not our problem that the religious leaders of Yeshua’s day ignored the Tenth Commandment’s existence.
It is a problem, however, when a movement takes that ignoring position and forms an entire view of covenant based on shoddy exegesis that leads to a cheap and easy view of grace rooted in some sort of better covenant that abrogates entire chunks of Scripture.
Desire and the internals of the heart were a theme throughout the entirety of the biblical canon.
Here is one more example of the heart responding to not actions but seen looks of desire.
You are beautiful as Tirzah, my love,
lovely as Jerusalem,
awesome as an army with banners.
Turn away your eyes from me,
for they overwhelm me—
Your hair is like a flock of goats
leaping down the slopes of Gilead.
Song of Solomon 6:4-5 ESV
It is the eyes that overwhelm, the eyes that provide a look and a view that leads the lover to be captivated as though he were surrounded with an advancing battalion of fully-armed troops.
Now, that is inflamed godly, within-the-purview-of-the-Tenth-Commandment desire, that will execute in love and affection and that soon.
HaShem came to deal with the entirety of people through the love of the Bridegroom, and it behooves us to see the fullness of what He brought, and the the reality that He completed all the sacrifices that were necessary to reconcile us to Himself.
Beyond that, there are things we individually choose to do, and everyone should be fully convinced in their own thought as to what the outworking of that process looks like.
But if, in our preaching of the covenant, we show we forgot the Tenth Commandment existed, we neglect the very reason David was able to enter in to offer sacrifices…..
It was always about what was going on in our desires and our internals…that flow into actions.
It is not what goes into a man or woman that defiles them. Rather, it is what comes out of a man or woman that defiles them.
Just some thoughts….especially given there are crowds that appear to devote themselves to forgetting the whole tapestry of the covenant the King made with us.
Do not live as if you are unaware of the capacity of the Torah, the schoolmaster, to speak of the things Messiah came to mess with.
Internals as well as externals.
Just some thoughts here.