WHERE THE JEWS WENT WRONG
It is hard for modern readers to understand how Israel could experience its miraculous deliverance from Egypt and then struggle so much to stay obedient to God. We like to think that if we had been there and observed the splitting of the sea and all the miracles in the wilderness we would have been so impressed by God that we would never even consider worshiping other gods. But Israel did worship other gods, and God gave us these stories so that we can learn about our own righteousness from them.

The lessons are accessible in the Old Testament to those who study it for its symbolic meaning. They are explained further in the New Testament

Romans 9:30-33 What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith; 31 but that Israel who pursued the righteousness which is based on law did not succeed in fulfilling that law. 32 Why? Because they did not pursue it through faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, 33 as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall; and he who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

Romans 10:1-10  Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified. 5 Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on the law shall live by it. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach); 9 because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.

So what was it that the Jews did or did not do that caused trouble for them? From all appearances it looks like they did an exemplary job of following the letter of the law. They (at least the observant ones) knew the Torah (The Law) inside and out. They circumcised their children and observed all the feasts and Sabbaths. They made a fine art of doing everything that God commanded them to do and they felt righteous in their own eyes about their obedience. So what is wrong with that?

One problem for  the Jews was, and is, that while they were faithful to observe the full letter of the law, they missed the spirit of the law.  Yes they performed the outward requirements of The Law, but they did it with the wrong heart attitude. For example,  they brought blemished sacrifices and placed heavy burdens on the people. In other words, they did things that they were not told to do, and did not do things that they should have done with the right heart attitude. God sent prophets to warn Israel about these offensive behaviors but Israel did not listen. That in a nutshell is the Jews’ problem.

In different ways, God tried to warn them that the letter of the Law brings death, but that the spirit of the Law brings life. What the death part of that means is that performing the requirements of the Law ritualistically (i.e. in the flesh), without the right heart attitude, is a practice that leads to death because it is sin. And the life part of that means is that doing the requirements of The Law in the power of the Spirit (not in the flesh) leads to life.

STUDY TIP: Read more about where the Jews went wrong in Jesus and the Money-Changers in the Temple.   Read more about observing spiritual laws in UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENT KINDS OF LAWS.

The other problem the Jews created for themselves was that they added their own rules (i.e. Oral Law) to the commandments that God had given them. In other words, they sinned by violating the terms of the law.

Deuteronomy 4:1-2: “And now, O Israel, give heed to the statutes and the ordinances which I teach you, and do them; that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, gives you. 2 You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it; that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

Deuteronomy 5:32: You shall be careful to do therefore as the LORD your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.

Deuteronomy 12:32: “Everything that I command you you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to it or take from it.

Joshua 1:7: Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you; turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.

Proverbs 4:27: Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.

COMMENTARY: Notice that Proverbs 4:27 says that swerving to either the right or left from the standard of The Law is evil. That puts a fine edge on the importance of obedience to The Law.

In these scriptures we find that the purpose of The Law is expose sin. Some might ask: “Why would I need The Law to know my sin?” The answer is in these scriptures: We have no awareness of our sin unless we have The Law to tell us what is lawful and what is not. In God’s eyes lawfulness is righteousness, and lawlessness is sin. In other words, we need to know what the law is in order to know right behavior. Similarly, we need to know what The Law is so that we will know when we have sinned (i.e. broken The Law).

If we did not have The Law written out for us in great detail, we would have to guess what is lawful and what is not. That is like a parent who does not set out clear rules for a child, and punishes the child when it breaks one of the rules, but never clarifies what the child did wrong. Sooner or later that child will either do nothing because it lives in constant fear of punishment, or it will rebel because it would seem to the child that he/she cannot do anything right anyway because punishment for some unknown broken rule is coming no matter what the child does.

Without knowledge of what the rules are, the child never learns to obey the rules. It is left to experiment best it can to try to figure out what the rules are. Maturity is hindered because of this “hit-and-miss” approach to growth. That is no way to live for a child. Moreover, it is not the way that God trains His children. He has told us what the rules are and He tells us what the consequences are for breaking the rules. He did all that in The Law.

Most Jews do not know that Jesus confirmed this principle of not adding to or subtracting from The Law in Matthew 5:18,  Matthew 23:1-31,  Mark 13:31,  and John 15:1-10. Whether they care or not about what Jesus said, they had fair warning from God that adding to His laws and representing those laws as being from Him was, and is, sin. God told them not to do that, but they did it anyway.

Looking at what happened in political terms, the Jews swerved to both the right (conservative) and the left (liberal). In one way they moved to the right (in a conservative sense) by subtracting from The Law the requirement that it be performed with the right heart attitude. For Jews, a strict literal interpretation of The Law is what matters. In another way, they swerved to  the left (in a liberal sense) by adding to The Law with their own ideas of how it should be performed. They sinned on both accounts, and God ultimately held them accountable for their sin by destroying their religious system.

In 1-John 3:7-10  Jesus said that He had come to destroy the works of the devil. One of those works was to create a burdensome, ineffective religious system through the temple leaders. The thing we  need to understand here is that the devil is not opposed to religion. In fact, the way we see it, some of the best (really worst) work that the devil has done is to create elaborate religious structures. He (the devil) is OK with religion that involves the works of the flesh because he knows that such religion does not connect people with God. He knows that it is only what goes on in the heart that matters to God. It is to the devil’s advantage, therefore, to have people engaged in empty religious activity.

We think of this difference as form versus function: Religious Form vs. Spiritual Function. Religion is all about doing. Spirit is all about the condition of the heart.

That may be a little hard Jews and Christians to accept, just as it was hard for the temple leaders to accept. Nevertheless, Jesus spoke the truth and the temple religious system of his day was eventually destroyed. And, to the degree people follow Jesus, modern religious systems will also be destroyed.

Those who are religious will wonder why the religious system deserved to be destroyed. The short answer is that Israel (Jews) went wrong when they began doing The Law religiously (i.e. in the flesh, but not with the heart). No doubt the process started slowly but accelerated with each passing generation. We know how that works because we see the same phenomenon in Christianity. Somehow parents in general are not able to pass on to children their same zeal for God. We hasten to add, however, that this statement is a generalization that does not apply to all Israel of old and does not apply to all contemporary Jews. In other words, there is always a righteous remnant. 

So what do we learn about The Law being a stumbling block from this history? We find first that the Apostle Paul was correct when he said in Romans 9:30-33 that Isaiah prophesied correctly in Isaiah 8:14 where it says that Israel pursued righteousness based on the Law through works and not by faith. The Law, then while good and necessary, was, and is, a trap. The trap exists in the tendency by men to follow religious rules without the right heart attitude. This is what Paul calls righteousness by works.

We can presume that Israel (at least some parts of it) did at one time pursue righteousness with the right heart attitude. We need to look no further than the faith hall of fame in Hebrews 11 to find those Biblical characters. All the people mentioned in Hebrews 11 followed The Law as God had presented it and they did it by faith. For them, even though they each had their sinful moments, pursuit of righteousness through The Law by faith was possible. If they had not been able to do that, they would not have been mentioned as men and women of faith.

While Israel never was totally sinless, things got worse after the death of Joshua when people started turning to the right and left of The Law. It was a time,  as it says in Judges 21:25, when everyone did what was right in their own eyes. It went from bad to worse after God  gave Israel a king — except for a period of peace during the reigns of David and Solomon.