Gnats, Frogs, Camels
Gnats. Frogs. Camels. Unclean things have a way of deceiving and defiling God's people.
Days before his death, Jesus pronounced woe upon the religious leaders of his generation:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the Torah: justice and mercy and faithfulness...You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” (Matthew 23:23–24)
Years later, John of Patmos would describe another unclean creature appearing before the Day of the Lord: the frog, coming from the mouth of a false prophet. (Revelation 16:13–14)
Gnats. Frogs. Camels.
Unclean things have a way of deceiving and defiling God's people. Some buzz around our ears demanding attention. Others leap around, spreading lies wherever they go. But sometimes a massive beast strolls right into the middle of the camp, and no one seems to notice.
Over the past week, several stories have caught my eye.
The Southern Baptist Convention's debate over women in church leadership has generated an astonishing amount of attention. National newspapers are covering it. Christian media is covering it. Social media overflows with opinions.
A steady stream of articles has also trickled across my desk. In them, Christian authors urge believers to reject Jewish interpretations of Scripture in favor of supposedly superior Christian readings.
Meanwhile, tensions once again reignite the Middle East, fueling a regional conflict that could affect millions of lives.
What fascinates me is the disproportionate amount of attention these items receive in the church. Like perpetual gnats, certain controversies buzz constantly within Christianity. Like frogs, opinions leap from one conference to another, consuming our energy and dominating our conversations, convincing us these are the most important issues our churches face.
But with all the gnats buzzing and all the frogs leaping, I believe we have, tragically, overlooked the camel.
The Camel in the Sanctuary
If you had asked me a few years ago whether Christians on a whole were antisemitic, I would have answered with a quick and confident no. Today, I am no longer quite so quick or confident.
Most Christians know antisemitism is evil. Faithful believers would never dream of hating Jewish people, and most would be offended at the mere suggestion. Yet I have become increasingly reluctant to defend the church from the charge altogether because I have noticed a different expression of Jew-hostility raging right inside it.
Many Christians who appear to have no problem with Jewish people are deeply suspicious of Jewish things.
The moment something is labeled Jewish, many believers instinctively reach for the brakes. A Jewish interpretation of Scripture? Suspicious. A Jewish practice in a church? Proceed with caution. A Jewish understanding of the kingdom of God? The Messiah? The New Testament? Better run it through a Christian filter first.
The specifics and vocabulary vary, but the pattern remains consistent. The more Jewish something appears, the more likely Christians are to view it with suspicion.
That should alarm us. Hostility toward Jewish people is not the only way Jew-hate manifests itself.
Sometimes it appears in a far more respectable form, sitting comfortably in church pews, mesmerizing us from the pulpits on our stages and lecterns in our classrooms. It publishes sophisticated books and records engaging podcasts that sound Jesus-centered. It speaks fluent Christian vernacular and regularly quotes Bible verses. And it’s very good at assuring believers that they are honoring Jesus while teaching them to distrust anything and everything from the texts, traditions, people, and world from which Jesus emerged.
We may wonder, how did generations of Christians become so wary of Jewish things while simultaneously believing they were honoring a Jewish Messiah?
The answer, I believe, is that a camel has been sitting in the sanctuary for a very long time.
While Christians continue debating questions that rest on a handful of disputed texts, few seem willing to confront the theological framework that has shaped how much of the church reads the entire Bible. And that framework has been doing far more damage than all the gnats and frogs combined.
The Platform Beneath the Camel
The theological term for this camel is supersessionism.
Supersessionism is often reduced to mean that the church has replaced Israel. Many Christians reject that quickly, but I believe that is far too narrow of a definition.
At its core, supersessionism is the belief that Christianity supersedes Judaism—that Christian beliefs and teachings replace Jewish ones. Once that assumption is accepted, replacement theology spreads quickly through nearly every corner of Scripture and faith-practice.
Israel is replaced by the church—or sometimes by Jesus himself.
The wisdom of Torah is replaced with grace.
The earthly temple is replaced by Jesus' body, the church, the individual believer—or some combination of the three.
Levitical sacrifices are replaced by Christ's sacrifice.
The promises made to Israel are reinterpreted through the church.
The Davidic kingdom is replaced by a spiritual kingdom.
The land of Israel is replaced by the new creation.
A restored Jerusalem is replaced by heaven.
Notice the pattern. Concrete Jewish expectations become spiritual, Christian truths. What God promised to do in history becomes something he is presumed to have fulfilled symbolically through Christ.
Whether Christians recognize it or not, many of us practice this hermeneutic every day. We quote the prophets' promises and apply them to ourselves. We print them on coffee mugs, write them in journals, and preach them as take-away points.
Yet when those same prophets speak of Israel's restoration, her land, kingdom, Messiah, or Torah instruction flowing to the nations, suddenly we become experts in symbolism. God’s positive promises are universalized, but his warnings remain stubbornly aimed at the Jew. It is an astonishingly inconsistent way to read Scripture.
More importantly, it has trained generations of Christians to view Jewish expectations as inferior versions of misunderstood truths rather than as the hope the biblical authors proclaimed.
Replacement theology is not merely a theological debate, but a respectable false prophet in the church—a camel sitting in the sanctuary. Christians have grown so accustomed to its presence, most no longer notice it at all.
The Camel Breeds Anti-Judaism
There are different expressions of hostility towards Jews and Jewish things. The church confuses them, straining out one while swallowing another.
· Antisemitism is hostility toward Jewish people. It is hatred, prejudice, discrimination, or violence directed at Jews because they are Jews. Christians should reject it unequivocally. Most do.
· Anti-Zionism is opposition to Jewish national restoration and Jewish self-determination in the land of Israel. Today it’s common to hear: "I'm not antisemitic. I'm just anti-Zionist,” as though anti-Zionism is the morally superior ground on which to stand. But for millions of Jews, Israel is not a political project. It is the only Jewish country in the world, and increasingly, the only place a Jew can exist without being persecuted. Nevertheless, anti-Zionism is socially rewarded, and often, quite welcome in the church.
The form of hostility that concerns me most, however, is anti-Judaism.
· Anti-Judaism is hostility and opposition toward Judaism itself—its Scriptures (what Christians commonly know as the Old Testament), its worldview, traditions, expectations, and engagement within the story of God.
Unlike its cousins, anti-Judaism rarely announces itself. It does not march down crowded streets or shout slurs. It does not usually hate Jews. That is precisely what makes it dangerous.
Anti-Judaism often disguises itself as Christian orthodoxy. It fools sincere believers into thinking they are honoring Jesus while teaching them to distrust the texts, practices, and interpretations Jesus embraced.
Anti-Judaism says...
Jewish interpretations of the Bible should give way to Christian ones.
Jewish hopes for the Messiah and his kingdom were misguided.
Jewish covenants have been surpassed.
Jewish practices and teachings are suspect.
Jewish identity is ultimately irrelevant.
The Jewish story and its gospel finds its true fulfillment only after it ceases to be recognizably Jewish.
In anti-Judaism, the Jew may be welcomed, Israel may be admired, the Old Testament may be respected. But Jewishness is not.
Anti-Judaism is where the camel of replacement theology leads.
The Deception Facing the American Church
I find this camel so troubling because it deceives Christians about what matters most.
Jesus said remarkably little about many of the issues that dominate modern Christian discourse. He said nothing that prohibited women from leadership positions within the messianic community he left behind. He certainly did not spend his ministry debating whether future Christian interpretations of Scripture should replace Jewish ones. The apostles did not spend their time defending Christianity against Judaism, nor were they trying to persuade anyone to abandon Jewish identity or practice in order to follow Israel's Messiah.
What occupied their attention instead were themes much of the modern church has little interest in: the restoration of Israel, the coming kingdom, the ingathering of Jewish exiles, the repentance of the nations, the judgment of the world, and the renewal of creation under Israel's Messiah. These topics saturate the Old Testament. They dominate the preaching of John the Baptist, stand behind Jesus' announcement that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, fill the disciples' questions, and remain the urgent expectation of the apostles.
Yet the church often treats these subjects as curiosities—interesting but secondary. Instead, we devote enormous amounts of time to debates built upon a handful of verses while neglecting themes that appear thousands of times throughout Scripture.
“You neglect the weightier matters of the Torah...You strain out the gnat but leave the camel!”
The American church appears largely unbothered by the magnificent unclean beast that has wandered into our sanctuaries, stinking up our understanding of Israel and blocking our vision of our Messiah’s kingdom, land, and people.
Perhaps those are the conversations demanding our attention. Perhaps that is the weightier matter.
Following the Rabbi
Long ago, a crafty beast of the field snuck his way in asking, "Has God really said?" The question has echoed through the human imagination ever since.
“Has God really chosen the Jews?” asks antisemitism.
“Has God really set apart the land of Israel?” asks anti-Zionism.
“Has God really instructed all these things?” asks anti-Judaism.
The forms and voices change. The pattern doesn’t.
Attack the Jewish people.
Question the legitimacy of the land.
Teach people to distrust the Jewishness of Scripture, remains of a failed faith rather than the fabric of God's redemptive plan—a fabric Gentile believers entered the moment they pledged their allegiance to Jesus.
I am a disciple of a Jewish rabbi from Nazareth. I believe Jesus is Israel's Messiah, David's Son, and the King of the Jews. Because of that, I defend the Scriptures he taught, the people and land he loves, and the kingdom promised by the prophets that he proclaimed. And I believe he is returning to those people and land to complete everything Israel’s Scriptures teach.
Because I follow a Jewish Messiah, I cannot afford to become suspicious of Jewish things.
I do not idolize Judaism, accept every rabbinic tradition, abandon every Christian one, or throw critical thinking and discernment out the window. The antidote to supersessionism is not converting to Judaism, but knowing and honoring the God of the Jews, who remains faithful to what he said.
I pray, earnestly, that the American church will repent. I pray for eyes to be opened and hearts to be soft. But I fear the woe awaiting us if we continue straining the gnats and chasing the frogs.
I believe we ought to start in the sanctuary, and get to work shooing out the camel.
NOTES
I am indebted to author Daniel Lancaster for helping make the distinctions between antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Judaism so clear. I refer my reader’s to his article The Three Frogs: Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and Anti-Judaism. https://www.theemmaustable.world/inkwell/three-frogs
For a further discussion on the faith-practices of the earliest believers, see chapter seven of my book, The Forgotten Gospel.
Following the Fire of Shavu’ot, Part 2
One of the things I have learned from hiking mountains is that they can play tricks on you. The first time you encounter a false summit, it feels almost unfair. You spend hours climbing toward what appears to be the peak.
The following essay is adapted from part two of a message I recently shared at Friends Community Church. It has been revised here for readers beyond that setting, though the heart of the teaching remains the same.
One of the things I have learned from hiking mountains is that they can play tricks on you.
The first time you encounter a false summit, it feels almost unfair.
You spend hours climbing toward what appears to be the peak. Your legs ache. Your lungs burn. The trail grows steeper beneath your feet. Every switchback feels like it must surely be the last one. Then, at long last, the trees begin to thin out, the grade softens, and the landscape opens up. Suddenly, there is a view.
You can see valleys below and ridgelines stretching into the distance. You stop to catch your breath. You take a drink of water. You let yourself believe that you've made it.
Then the trail bends. You realize what looked like the summit was only a ridge.
The view was real. The progress was real. The climb was real. Yet something greater still lay ahead.
Hikers call this a false summit, though the term is somewhat misleading. There is nothing false about it. A false summit is beautiful, significant, and worth celebrating. Its only limitation is that it is not the final destination.
Acts 2 can often function like a false summit within the biblical story.
That may sound strange at first. After all, Pentecost is one of the most breathtaking moments in Scripture. The Spirit descends from heaven. Tongues of fire appear. Languages break open. Three thousand people respond to Peter's message. The gospel begins moving outward toward the nations. Entire traditions have been built around this chapter, and rightly so. Acts 2 matters. But the mistake is assuming the trail of Shavu’ot ends there.
In the previous essay, I traced the trail of Shavu'ot backward through Scripture. We began in Eden, where fire first appeared at the gate of the garden, guarding the way back into God's presence. From there we followed the fire to Sinai, where God descended upon the mountain and invited His people to draw near. We walked through the tabernacle and its sacred calendar, where Israel learned to rehearse redemption through appointed times and holy rhythms. Finally, we listened to the prophets, who spoke of a coming day when God's Spirit would once again dwell among His people. Every mountain, every feast, every sacrifice, and every prophetic promise pushed the story in that direction.
The prophets, however, left us standing in a place of tension. They spoke of a coming harvest. They envisioned a day when God's Spirit would be poured out upon His people. They saw restoration, renewal, and life breaking into places long marked by death. Yet the vision remained future. The fullness had not yet arrived.
Then we arrive in Jerusalem.
For many Christians, Acts 2 feels like the moment every previous thread finally comes together. In many ways, it is. Yet we often read Pentecost so quickly that we miss the larger story unfolding beneath the surface.
In the Temple | Acts 2
Imagine stepping into the world of Acts 2 that Luke describes. The setting itself matters. Pentecost is not a random day on the Jewish calendar. It is Shavu'ot, the Feast of Weeks. Pilgrims have traveled to Jerusalem from every direction. The city is crowded. The temple is alive with worship. Priests are preparing the morning offerings. Bread representing the firstfruits of the wheat harvest is being presented before the Lord.
And while bread is being lifted toward heaven in the temple, heaven breathes again.
Luke tells us that a sound like a rushing wind filled the House of the Lord. Fire appeared. The Spirit descended. Devout Jews from every nation under heaven assembled at the temple that Shavu’ot morning heard the mighty works of God proclaimed in their own languages, right there in the courts of his earthly dwelling.
The imagery is impossible to miss if we have spent time walking the trail.
In Eden, humanity heard the sound of God and hid among the trees. At Sinai, Israel heard the trumpet and trembled at the foot of the mountain. Now another sound arrives from heaven, not to drive people away but to draw them into God's purposes.
In Eden, fire guarded the way back to God. At Sinai, fire descended upon a mountain. In Acts, fire rests upon people.
Even the gathering of nations echoes themes that have been present since the beginning. Humanity was scattered outward from sacred space. Israel was gathered at Sinai. Now Jews from every nation under heaven are gathered once again in Jerusalem, not merely to witness a miracle, but to become participants in a mission that will carry the knowledge of Israel's God back into the world.
Something extraordinary is happening. The fire has returned to the House of the Lord.
More than that, the fire is beginning to fill people.
Yet Luke's imagery points us toward something else as well. At the same time the loaves of firstfruits bread are being lifted before God in the temple, faithful Jewish believers gathered at the temple are becoming firstfruits. The Spirit that raised Messiah from the dead is beginning to awaken a harvest.
And that word—firstfruits—is where I think many modern readers accidentally leave the trail.
Firstfruits are not the full harvest—they are the promise—the first sign—that the harvest is real. The first sheaf gathered from the field matters precisely because it points beyond itself. It is evidence that something larger is coming. The firstfruits are cause for celebration, but they are never mistaken for fullness.
Remarkably, that is exactly how the apostles themselves describe their experience.
Years after Pentecost, Paul writes that creation is still groaning. Humanity is still groaning. Even believers, who possess what he calls the "firstfruits of the Spirit," continue waiting for the redemption of their bodies. Elsewhere he describes the Spirit as a pledge, a guarantee, a down payment of what is yet to come.
Paul does not write like a man standing at the summit.
He writes like a man who has finally reached a ridge from which he can see it.
The Promise of the Prophets
The prophets never separated the outpouring of God's Spirit from the restoration of Israel. When they envisioned the fullness of God's promises, they did not describe a private spiritual experience detached from the world. They described Jewish exiles returning home to the land. They described Jerusalem restored. They described nations streaming toward the mountain of God; resurrection, renewal, and creation itself coming alive again.
The prophets saw a world transformed by the presence of God. Acts 2 continues that story. But it does not finish it. We must keep walking the trail and following the fire.
The apostlic community understood this.
The fire had truly returned.
The Spirit had truly been poured out.
The nations had truly begun gathering.
Yet they continued speaking of a future hope with anticipation and longing. This is why Peter can stand in the temple complex on Shavu’ot and proclaim, “This is what was spoken of by the prophets!” and also later write “fix your hope completely on the grace that is still yet to be brought to you.”
Like the prophets, the apostles knew more awaited humanity. At Sinai the Torah came forth and the Israelites feared ascent. But Isaiah sees the nations running toward the mountain (Is. 2). The summit the prophets saw was not empty. It was crowded with people from every tribe and tongue ascending the mountain of God.
Isaiah saw so much more than a moment. From atop the mountain summit, he beheld a healed world. He writes in ch. 35:
“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus…”
The place of exile begins to bloom again.
“Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees…”
Because the climb is not forever.
“Say to those who have an anxious heart:
‘Be strong; fear not.
Behold, your God will come…’”
And when He comes:
“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.”
Creation itself begins waking up.
“For waters break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert…”
And then Isaiah says something remarkable:
“And a highway shall be there…
and it shall be called the Way of Holiness.”
A trail through the wilderness. A path leading home—to a summit.
“And the redeemed of the LORD shall return
and come to Zion with singing…
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
That’s the view from the summit. That’s the future that awaits us.
The Summit Yet to Come
“The time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory…” Is. 66
On this day God says: “I will set a sign among them…” From Jerusalem, survivors go outward to the distant coastlands—declaring the glory of God among the nations. Does that sound familiar? It sounds like Acts 2. But Isaiah keeps going.
““And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations… to my holy mountain Jerusalem… as an offering to the LORD… even as a grain offering in a pure vessel…”
Suddenly the imagery becomes unmistakable. The nations themselves become part of the Shavu’ot procession—from every direction. Just like the flame in Eden, just like the bread waved in every direction. The exiles are carried home like firstfruits. Like grain offerings—fully risen loaves, alive with the breath of Messiah—they are lifted before the Lord. The mountain of God fills with worshippers—people from all nations and tribes—and the harvest of souls finally comes in.
Every year the festival of Shavu’ot invites us back onto the trail, to rehearse that hope again, to take it all the way to the summit so we can practice longing for that view.
To strength our legs so that when the appointed time comes, we can offer ourselves.
Because every glimpse of the Spirit—
every softened heart,
every opened eye,
every act of worship,
every movement toward obedience,
every loaf lifted toward heaven—
is a sign that the harvest is real.
But we cannot stop walking because we reached a ridge.
One day:
the wilderness will bloom,
we from the nations will stream up God’s mountain with his people in strength, song, and joy,
our sorrow and sighing will flee away,
and the Spirit of God will fill the earth like breath filling living lungs.
Until then—we keep walking. We count the days. We lift the bread. It is not our job to measure the fruit. It’s our job to follow the fire—for as long as it takes—trusting God will bring the full harvest in it’s appointed time.
May we become the kind of people who know how to live as the firstfruits while still longing for the fullness of the harvest to come.
Following the Fire of Shavu’ot, Part 1
There is a trail in Utah called Catherine’s Pass that my husband and I love to hike. It begins near the Alta Ski Area. At about 8,500 ft in elevation, the trailhead begins already high in the mountains.
The following essay is adapted from part one of a two part message series I recently shared at Friends Community Church. It has been revised here for readers beyond that setting, though the heart of the teaching remains the same.
There is a trail in Utah called Catherine’s Pass that my husband and I love to hike. It begins near the Alta Ski Area. At about 8,500 ft in elevation, the trailhead begins already high in the mountains. At first, the trail is mostly switchbacks and loose rock. Your lungs burn quickly in the elevation, and you cannot yet see where you are going. The mountain does not reveal itself all at once. You simply keep walking, trusting that if you remain on the trail long enough, eventually it will open into something beautiful.
And it does.
A bend in the path suddenly reveals a valley scattered with wildflowers. Meltwater streams through the rocks. Snow often still clings to the mountain in July.
A couple miles in, you crest a ridge into what I have always called Buttercup Valley, one of the most breathtaking places on the hike. Yellow wildflowers dot the valley floor. Indian paintbrush and lupine paint the slopes with color. Sometimes you see bighorn sheep or moose moving quietly in the distance. It’s a breathtaking part of the trail, and a needed meander through a meadow before the trail climbs again.
Eventually Catherine’s Pass opens before you, and suddenly the whole landscape stretches out in every direction.
But here’s the thing about hiking: someone could be dropped there by helicopter and still see the view. They would still witness the beauty of the mountains. But they’d miss the trail.
And the trail is the whole point.
They would miss the exhaustion of the climb, the anticipation around every bend, and the strange way suffering and beauty begin to intertwine after enough miles on the mountain. The trail changes your relationship to the summit.
Without the trail, you miss the story that makes the summit mean something.
I think this has happened for many Christians with Pentecost.
Most believers know Acts 2. We know about the rushing wind, the divided tongues of fire, the Spirit descending upon the disciples, and the proclamation of the gospel in many languages. It is one of the most dramatic scenes in the New Testament. But many of us encounter Acts 2 as though we were dropped there by helicopter. We arrive at the summit often without ever learning the trail that leads to it.
But Pentecost—Shavu’ot—is not merely an event in Acts. It is a trail of holy fire that climbs through Scripture. The story begins long before the disciples gather in Jerusalem.
Shavu’ot begin with a fire at a gate. The trail of Shavu’ot begins in Eden.
Eden
In the opening pages of Genesis, humanity lives openly in the presence of God. Heaven and earth overlap. The Spirit of God moves among humanity in the garden in the windy time of the day, and there is no barrier between divine holiness and human life. But one day, something fractures. The ruach shows up and realizes right away, something’s broken. The presence that once sustained humanity becomes dangerous to those no longer fit to dwell within it. Humanity is driven east of Eden, and at the entrance to the garden God places cherubim and a flaming sword turning in every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.
The fire at Eden is a holy boundary is being maintained. A broken humanity cannot simply casually reunite with God. And so the fire remains at the gate, guarding the way back into the presence of God.
It’s a loss.
From that moment onward, the biblical story begins asking a single question: How do we get back through the fire?
Sinai
For a long time, the answer to that question appears to be you don’t. You do not go back through the fire. You do not ascend the mountain of God.
For generations, humanity remains, wandering, east of Eden. The world continues spiraling outward into violence, exile, and death. Yet eventually God calls Abraham, raises up Israel, and rescues his people from Egypt through judgment and deliverance. Then he brings them into the wilderness, to the foot of a mountain wrapped in smoke and flame.
At Sinai, something astonishing happens: the fire comes down.
The imagery deliberately echoes Eden. Once again there is a holy mountain. Once again there are boundaries around sacred space. Once again humanity stands before the terrifying presence of God. But this time the story changes in an important way. At Eden, humanity is driven away from the mountain of God. At Sinai, God invites humanity toward it.
“Adonai said to Moses, “Go to the people, and sanctify them today and tomorrow. Let them wash their clothing. 11 Be ready for the third day. For on the third day Adonai will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. 12 You are to set boundaries for the people all around, saying, ‘Be very careful not to go up onto the mountain, or touch the border of it....But when the shofar sounds, they may ascend the mountain.” Exodus 19:10-13
Notice that the people were to:
consecrate themselves, set themselves apart for something very special
count the days—today, tomorrow, be ready for the third day, and on the third day
prepare themselves
listen for the shofar sound… then ascend
At Sinai, God invites them to ascend through the fire. The God who once guarded the mountain now calls a people toward it.
“So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud shofar sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently.” Exodus 19:16-18
When the mountain begins to quake and burn, the people recoil in fear. They tremble at the thunder and stand at a distance, begging Moses to mediate instead. “Do not let God speak to us,” they say, “lest we die.”
And so they . . .
see the fire
count the days
hear the shofar
but they refuse to draw near to God. Moses alone enters the thick cloud. One man ascends the mountain while the people remain at a distance.
This occurs roughly fifty days after leaving Egypt. Fire descends from heaven. The covenant is cut, God forms a people, but they are not so sure they want to be formed. What is God to do with a people who he wants to be near, but are not sure they want to be near him?
The answer: he teaches them how to approach.
Tent
Alongside the tent in the wilderness, God gives Israel something remarkable: a sanctuary in time.
The appointed times of Leviticus 23 are not random holidays. They are holy meeting times—moedim—when God invites his people to enter into a sanctuary in time and be near him. They are rehearsals—sacred rhythms teaching Israel how to live within the story of redemption before its fullness arrives. Every feast becomes a kind of embodied prophecy. Shabbat, Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Shavu’ot, Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Sukkot—each one teaches Israel how to remember, anticipate, and move toward the presence of God and join him in what he is doing in the world.
At Shavu’ot, Israel is commanded to count seven weeks from Firstfruits. Fifty days. Then they are to bring before the Lord two great loaves of leavened bread made from the firstfruits of the wheat harvest.
The imagery here is extraordinary.
At Passover, leaven is removed from Israel’s homes as they remember deliverance from Egypt. Later, they will start a new culture of leaven, trusting it will become strong enough to raise the bread. And in the meantime, they count. They prepare. They eat the barley grain and trust that the choice grain—the wheat harvest—will soon come. Then, about two months later, it arrives. At Shavu’ot, fully baked, beautiful loaves of leavened, golden bread are lifted before God..
Jewish tradition holds that the bread was waved forward and backward, upward and downward, declaring that the God of Israel rules over all creation. Can you hear the echoes of Eden? At the gates of the garden, the flaming sword flashed in every direction guarding the way back into the presence of God. But now, bread from the thorny ground is lifted in every direction before him in worship.
The God who once guarded Eden with fire now invites humanity to approach the fire at the altar, at the door of the tent, waving the fruit of the earth itself before him.
Into this story, Jesus steps. “I am the bread of life!” He declares that even outside of Eden, the wheat still grows. Bread still rises and through these sacred rhythms, God teaches his people to recognize every firstfruit as a sign that exile will not last forever. That is what firstfruits are throughout Scripture: signs that more is coming.
The bread matters because it reminds us the harvest is real. Much more fruit is surely on the way.
Exile
The tabernacle eventually becomes a temple. The fiery glory of God fills his house. Jerusalem becomes the center of worship and sacrifice. But the human hear is still fractured. Violence, oppression, idolatry, and injustice continue poisoning the land until eventually the prophets begin warning that exile is coming once again.
Then the unthinkable happens. In Ezekiel’s vision, the glory of God rises from the temple and departs from Jerusalem. The divine fire leaves God’s house. The story circles painfully back the gate outside of Eden again. Once again humanity stands outside sacred space.
The people of God find themselves scattered, exiled, and the land that once provided the harvest of the firstfruits to be celebrated in the sancturary in time lies desolate and forsaken.
But the prophets refuse to despair.
Ezekiel promises that God will give his people a new heart and place his Spirit within them (Eze. 36:26-27). Isaiah declares that the Spirit of God will not depart forever (Is. 59:21). Joel envisions a day when the Spirit will be poured out lavishly upon all flesh (Joel 2:28-29). What starts in Israel will renew the whole world.
These promises are not abstract spirituality or private religious experiences. They are covenant promises. They are the restoration of the bride God married at Sinai, under that veil of thick cloud and fiery glory. The prophets foresee a day when the breath that moved through Eden will once again fill all creation with life.
The restoration of Israel becomes the beginning of something larger, where those among the nations streaming upward toward the mountain of God. Gentiles willingly ascending saying “Come on! Let’s go! Let’s ascend the mountain of God so that we can learn his instructions.”
Learning to Walk the Trail
We may wonder, when does this happen? When will God pour out his Spirit? When do we reach the summit of this trail?
Shavu’ot is a trail of holy fire moving steadily toward restoration. From Eden, to Sinai, to the tabernacle and temple, to the prophets longing for the Spirit to return, the fire keeps drawing near.
And all along the trail, there are signs of the harvest. Little glimpses. Firstfruits. Pockets of golden buttercups at the foot of the long grind to the summit we can’t yet see. Moments where creation seems to whisper:
There is more coming.
Keep walking.
Stay on the trail.
The story is not over yet.
That’s what Shavu’ot is. It is a rehearsal of hope.
Shavu’ot is a trail of holy fire that awakens us to the firstfruits of a coming harvest.
Walking this trail strengthens our bodies, our souls. It’s training us how to follow the cloud by day, the fire by nigh—until the harvest yet to come arrives in full. We can continue to follow the fire into the New Testament. We’ll look at Acts 2, and keeping following the fire even from there. Because even Acts 2 isn’t the full harvest—it’s just the beginning of what God is doing for Israel and for the nations. And we are invited by God to join him in that work.
Until then, may we become a people who learn how to walk the trail, who learn how to count the days.
To lift the bread. To keep following the fire and practicing hope.
Because every Shabbat, every festival, every act of worship, every small movement toward the presence of God is training us for the kingdom and the world that is coming.
A world where:
the exile ends,
the tent is filled,
the mountain is ascended,
the gate of Eden is wide open,
and the Spirit of God fills the earth like breath in living lungs.
Until then—we must to learn to live as people of the firstfruits. People who are disciplined enough turn towards this story and ask God tohelp us follow the fire that fills his house and opens our eyes to all he is doing.
Hanging Beside a King
There is a moment that seems to come, sooner or later, in every conversation about salvation. It comes when the questions stop being about ideas and start being about names. Theology slips out of the big words and sits down beside us, wearing the face of someone we love.
There is a moment that seems to come, sooner or later, in every conversation about salvation. It comes when the questions stop being about ideas and start being about names. Theology slips out of the big words and sits down beside us, wearing the face of someone we love.
“But are they really saved?”
The person in question is almost always a loved one—a close friend or family member who perhaps has made some sort of profession of faith, or been recently baptized, or at least begun attending church regularly, but who has yet to show a life marked by change.
“She gave her life to Christ, but in the months since, there’s been little visible growth. She used to pray and go to church, but now she’s just drifting from God and I’m so worried!”
All of this comes tumbling out in Bible study or a home group. Tangled up in fear, hope, and panic-stricken confusion, someone listening reaches for the story that has soothed a thousand anxious hearts:
“Well, remember the thief on the cross.”
Relief floods the room. The thief. The last-minute miracle. The proof that faith can be simple and the reassurance that God doesn’t require too much of us, especially if the end is near.
No one in the room bothers to go look up the story and read it aloud. They don’t need to. They’ve memorized a one-liner that has stood the test of time: a common criminal, ignorant of God, ignorant of Scripture, ignorant of Jesus—who, in his final moments, whispers a simple “I believe” and slips quietly into paradise.
It’s a good story; gentle, merciful, and comforting to many a worried friend by someone who sincerely wants to help.
But it is almost certainly false.
Not a Clueless Convert
The thief on the cross comes to most Evangelicals as a man with a spiritually blank slate—a random sinner who happened to be in the right place at the right time. “Praise God he heard the gospel and believed before he died!” we say.
Historically, that’s an unlikely scenario. Rome did not crucify pickpockets. Crucifixion was typical for traitors, rebels, and insurrectionists—men who had become a problem for the empire. This sentence was a common one for Zealots, who raised much internal havoc in Israel in the days of Jesus. Whatever else this man was, he was not harmless. More importantly, he was not theologically illiterate.
Listen again to what he actually says:
“We are receiving the due reward of our deeds… but this man has done nothing wrong… Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Luke 23:41-42
Those are loaded words coming from a man who is not grasping at straws in the dark.
· He believes Jesus is a king—and not the sort who merely reigns in hearts, but one whose rule can be entered.
· He believes Jesus will still receive a kingdom, even though he’s dying on the stake right next to him.
· He believes Jesus’ story does not end at death. This man has a category for understanding the impossibility of a life beyond the grave.
· And he believes Jesus has authority to include others in this future.
This is not the content of “simple faith.” This is eschatological, messianic faith.
This man is making a Jewish, hope-soaked confession at the worst possible moment to do so. And he can do this because he is not starting from nothing. The simple-minded thief we cherish actually seems to possess a robust set of expectations about God, kingship, and the future of the world. He already has a framework for these claims.
“Remember me” is Covenant Language
In the Scriptures, God “remembers” when he is about to act to keep his promises, rescue people, or restore order to his world. God remembers Noah. He remembers Abraham. He remembers Israel in Egypt, the prayers of Hannah. To be remembered is to be delivered; to be gathered back into the story when redemption is finally on the brink of occurring.
What this man is really saying is something like: When God vindicates you and your kingdom finally comes, let me be counted as yours.
And notice where he wants to be remembered: in your kingdom.
He does not seem primarily concerned with his own salvation or his destination in the moments following his death. He’s concerned with belonging to a very real and specific future in this world—a kingdom associated with the reign of God finally setting the world right. This is a stubborn faith that says: God is not finished yet. Not with you. Not with Israel. Not with the world. And not with me.
We have no way of knowing this man’s ethnic background for certain, but it is very possible that he was Jewish, or at the very least, someone very familiar with the Jewish hope that was electrifying Israel in those years: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
The backdrop of his crucifixion is Passover in Jerusalem. In that setting, this man…
acknowledges Jesus’ innocence
rebukes the other criminal
publicly aligns himself with a condemned “messianic pretender”
and entrusts himself to Jesus’ future reign.
That is repentance in the deepest biblical sense: a total change of allegiance.
The Courage to Defect
As hard as it is for my worried friends to accept, this is not a story about a man who knows nothing about God or Jesus and stumbles his way to salvation at the last minute.
It is a story about a man who, at the very end of his life, chooses sides—sides he probably had at least some familiarity with long before his crucifixion.
It’s true: he does not have time to make restitution, join a crew of disciples, keep the Torah better, or fix his life.
But he does repent.
While everyone else is mocking or denying Jesus, he does something astonishing: he entrusts himself to a dying king of a not-yet-visible kingdom.
He publicly defects to Jesus’ side when Jesus looks least like a winner—and when he himself has no hope of Jesus fixing anything regarding his current circumstances.
I think, if he had lived, everything suggests that this new allegiance would have recalibrated his entire life.
Somewhere along the way, we turned this story into proof that biblical literacy and repentance don’t really matter. The thief is our evidence that simple faith is what counts most, and living righteously or having some understanding the Jesus we give our lives to doesn’t count much in the end.
“Just believe in Jesus,” we say—without asking what belief in Jesus means, what we think he’s asking of us, or what kind of kingdom we imagine he brings.
I don’t think the thief believed in a vague, generic savior ready to carry him off to heaven. It seems to me he believed in a dying Messiah, a rejected king, and an invisible kingdom that would—against all appearances—still come, in the very city where he was nailed to a stake on a hill.
His faith, it seems, was anchored in that hope.
Stealing from the Thief
The poor thief on the cross.
We have left him there, hanging beside a king, forever enthroning a story about simple faith instead of the identity of the man who died beside him.
We’re afraid of our own shortcomings, worried for the people we love who confess without real allegiance. We’re so desperate to avoid being held accountable to worshipping a God we know, we become thieves ourselves—guilty of stealing the testimony of a repentant rebel and recycling him into a clueless criminal who “got saved” at the last second by a kind king who asks almost nothing.
It’s a retelling that exposes something about the condition of our own hearts.
Maybe we are all just thieves, hanging beside a king on crosses of our own—looking at the crucified man next to us, and deciding what we want him to be.
I usually let these conversations run their course. I save my thoughts for another time, perhaps, when people are less panicked. I’ll try, as gently and honestly as I can, to recover what’s been lost. Maybe they’ll see.
In our doubts and questions, I think we are finally standing where the story has always placed us: at the place of the skull—sifting through the rubble of what we think we know, trying to see who the man in the middle really is.
And just hoping, like the thief, that he will look down from his throne one day and remember us.
An Offering of Words
I wrote The Forgotten Gospel by accident. One blustery November afternoon, I sat down to prepare notes for a Bible study on Leviticus—nothing more. Just an inner determination to understand a difficult book of the Bible well enough to help others through it.
I wrote The Forgotten Gospel by accident.
One blustery November afternoon, I sat down to prepare notes for a Bible study on Leviticus—nothing more. No outline or book proposal. No vision for a manuscript. Just an inner determination to understand a difficult book of the Bible well enough to help others through it.
My notes kept growing.
What I thought would be a couple pages became five, then ten. I remember looking up a few hours later and realizing I hadn’t prepared a lesson. I had stumbled into the early pages of a book.
Weeks of writing turned into months. I kept going.
At 20,000 words, I began to think this project might be worth finishing. At 30,000, I became acutely aware that I had no idea what I was doing.
So I did what I have always done when I find myself in unfamiliar territory. I read a book about it.
I studied structure, pacing, argument, tone. Having never written anything so long, I had to learn how to shape something cohesive out of something that had, until then, simply been pouring out.
At 65,000 words, I decided I needed help—an editor.
I didn’t know where to find one, or what that process looked like, but step by step I figured it out. I cut the manuscript down—too much, as it turned out—and nervously sent it to someone who was far more qualified than I was.
What came back was humbling. Pages of thoughtful feedback and rigorous queries left me a bit overwhelmed. My editor argued with nearly every point, which was exactly what I needed. His criticism forced me to see both the strengths and the gaps in what I had written.
So I went back in. I restored what I had cut too quickly and rebuilt the introduction from the ground up. I battled with chapter nine, again.
Notes became paragraphs. Paragraphs became the appendix I never planned to include. I wrote it in two days, a feat that still amazes me.
I wrote until there was nothing left to say. Slowly, a manuscript began to emerge.
By then, the project was no longer an accident.
It had become an offering.
An Offering of Words
At some point I made the decision to write something real—something serious, something weighty. Something worthy of the people who would read it. And something worthy of giving to the Most High God.
The accident became an offering of words.
Writing, as I quickly realized, was only part of the work. I needed a design that did right by the project. I needed to make publishing decisions, to seek endorsements, to place my work into the hands of influential people who did not know me and had every reason to dismiss everything I said.
And many did.
Doors closed. Emails went unanswered. Some did not take me seriously.
But others did. People from unexpected places—scholars, pastors, thoughtful authors and teachers—were willing to read and engage with the work I had done. When they emerged from it’s pages, their feedback made something very clear to me.
I had written something that, by God’s grace, was already beginning to serve others.
This book is not a product. It’s an offering. I trust that if these words carry weight, they will find their way into the hands of those who need them.
That principle is why I chose to publish this book independently. I wanted the freedom to be able to give it away electronically to those who lack the means to purchase it, a desire a traditional publisher may have found difficult to accommodate. I invite anyone who is moved by the same spirit of generosity to support this work so that it can continue.
God is faithful to multiply what is given back to him. While I have labored to shape this book, the words themselves are not mine. They are a gift I am humbled to be entrusted with.
The Fruit of a Curious Heart and a Gracious God
Everything about The Forgotten Gospel is, in its own way, a blessed accident.
I didn’t begin with answers or a plan. I started with questions about Leviticus, sacrifice, the temple. About how to make a book people dread come alive for the those gathered in my living room each week. I needed to know how its authority harmonizes with Jesus and his mission, not in vague or symbolic ways, but in the way he saw it.
More than anything, I wanted to hear the voice of Leviticus itself.
I didn’t want to make it fit a framework I had already decided was true. I wanted to understand what it was saying—and why so few of us are willing to listen.
So I kept asking.
Over time, asking became searching. Searching became studying. Studying—over years now—grew into understanding.
Then the words came. I wrote them down.
But the truth is I should never have made it this far.
I am no one remarkable. I have no formal training in the upper echelons of theology or a ministry platform on which to stand.
And yet—this seems to be the way of God. He delights in blessing the accidents. He strengthens those who have no strength of their own. He entrusts things to the ones no one expects.
The Forgotten Gospel is not the product of credentials. It is the fruit of a curious heart and a merciful God who refused to leave me behind.
It took years for me to see that Leviticus is not a detour in the story of redemption, but a window into the very heart of what God is doing—and will yet do.
In the end, the words just came as they always do.
Unbidden. Unforced. Already forming inside me long before they ever reached the page.
Sometimes the work we never intend to do becomes the burden we are asked to carry.
Laid Down in Gratitude
I have carried these words a long way—
from where they first began
to where they now come to rest.
I lay them down on the altar of this frail and earthly frame,
in gratitude—an offering to the One who first gave them.
May they rise, to you oh Lord,
and find favor in your sight.
Why I Wrote a Book About Leviticus (Of All Things)
If you had asked me a few years ago—hypothetically—what book of the Bible I would one day write about, Leviticus would not have made the list. Not even close.
If you had asked me a few years ago—hypothetically—what book of the Bible I would one day write about, Leviticus would not have made the list.
Not even close.
Leviticus is the book most of us skim or skip entirely. It’s where Bible reading plans go to die somewhere around mid-February. It’s strange, repetitive, and heavy with details that don’t seem to connect to modern faith.
Yet there it sits at the very center of the Torah, the center of Israel’s Scriptures, and the center of the story that defines Jesus.
So why write a book about it?
The short answer is this: I came to see that Leviticus is essential to the gospel, and I couldn’t not share what I had learned.
Jesus said he came to fulfill the Torah—and Leviticus is at the heart of it.
In Matthew 5:17, Jesus says:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
It’s a familiar verse. One we tend to read and nod along with, and then move past.
But I began to wonder: do we actually take Jesus at his word?
Because if he did not come to abolish the Torah, then we have to wrestle with what it means that he came to fulfill it. And that question becomes especially pressing when we arrive at Leviticus—the book that sits at the center of the Torah’s main tension: how can a holy God dwell among unholy people?
Leviticus is not a side note. It is the core of the good news. It’s where we learn what it means for a holy God to draw near to unholy people—what that looks like and what it costs to make it possible.
And when you start paying attention, you begin to notice something: Jesus lives and speaks as if Leviticus still matters.
He operates within categories of clean and unclean.
He spends a huge amount of time in and around the temple.
He is deeply moved by the fate of Jerusalem—the place of God’s dwelling.
And he seems to believe that its story is not over.
That realization alone was enough to stop me in my tracks.
“Fulfilled” does not mean “replaced”—and that changes how we read everything.
Somewhere along the way, many of us inherited an assumption: that once Jesus came, Leviticus—and much of the Torah—was effectively finished.
Not abolished, exactly. But completed (past tense) in a way that no longer holds real weight. As though Jesus arrived, died, rose again, and poof—the Torah was fulfilled and done. But the more I sat with Jesus’ words, the less that assumption held up.
He goes on to say that those who set aside even the least of these commandments—and teach others to do the same—will be called least in the kingdom. To me, that didn’t sound like a system that’s been rendered irrelevant.
And it raised uncomfortable questions:
If Leviticus is“fulfilled” by him basically doing away with it, why insist he didn’t come to abolish it?
If the Torah is complete and already behind us, why warn against setting its commands aside?
That tension forced me to ask deeper questions: what if I’ve been reading all of this wrong?
That shift changed everything.
Instead of reading Leviticus as a dry relic—something that once mattered but no longer does—I began to read it for what it was actually saying. I tried to see it as Jesus did: a framework that points forward. One that finds its depth and future in the work of Messiah, but is not discarded by him. I asked,
What if the categories still matter?
What if the vision still matters?
What if the priesthood, the sacrifices, the rhythms of worship all still matter?
And what if its story is still unfolding?
Suddenly, Leviticus became impossible to ignore. I began to realize that a book that was central to the life and mission of my Savior was not central to me.
That needed to change.
I had questions no one seemed to be answering.
Once those first two realizations settled in, they opened up a flood of questions.
If Leviticus still matters, how does it matter?
If it hasn’t been replaced, how should we read it now?
What do we do with sacrifice, priesthood, ritual, the Day of Atonement?
How did Jesus understand these things? And how did his first followers hold these things alongside faith in him?
And what about the New Testament? The temple?
Paul, Galatians, Hebrews? The new covenant? “You’re free from the Law!” I went looking for answers.
I read books, articles, and journals. I listened to sermons and podcasts. I took classes. I searched for voices asking these same questions. And I found…very little.
There were excellent scholars writing about Leviticus in its ancient context. There were thoughtful theologians explaining how Jesus relates to the law. But usually, the conversation seemed to stop too soon. Leviticus was either reduced to metaphor, absorbed into church tradition, or ultimately dismissed as something Jesus came to transcend.
None of them could answer the question I was asking: what does it mean to take Jesus at his word—that he didn’t come to abolish the Torah—and take Leviticus seriously at the same time?
I couldn’t shake the sense that Jesus didn’t read Leviticus the way I did. He didn’t stand over it, deciding how he’d render it all obsolete. He stepped into it. He let it shape his mission. His identity. His understanding of what he came to do—and what God is still doing.
For him.
For the Jewish people.
And for the world.
And that left me with a decision. I could set those questions aside, or I could follow them wherever they led.
So I wrote the book I couldn’t find.
I didn’t start with a plan to write a book.
I started with a growing, gnawing sense that I had missed something.
So I began tracing the threads, from Leviticus into the Prophets, the Gospels, and the letters. From the tent at Sinai to the heavenly tabernacle still destined, one day, to descend to the land.
I stopped trying to read Leviticus backwards—starting with conclusions about Jesus and forcing the text to fit them—and instead tried to read it the way Jesus knew it: as a living part of the story he was stepping into.
What I found was not a disconnected system of ancient rituals that Jesus replaced with himself at the cross. I found a vision of a people and a tent that are at the very center of everything God still intends to do.
And I found that without Leviticus, I completely misunderstood almost everything about Jesus and his mission.
Why this book—and why now?
I wrote this book because I think we’ve lost something.
Not just a book of the Bible, but a critical piece of the story that most of us don’t even know.
We’ve learned to read the New Testament without its foundation.
To talk about Jesus without the categories he lived within.
To celebrate fulfillment without understanding what is being fulfilled.
And in doing so, we’ve emptied the gospel of Leviticus—and our future hope of its promises.
The Forgotten Gospel is my attempt to recover that missing piece.
Not by discovering something new, but by returning to something old.
As old as Sinai.
As old as covenant.
As old as the gospel itself.
An Invitation to Reimagine Leviticus
If Leviticus has ever felt distant to you, you’re not alone. If you’ve wondered why it’s there, or what it has to do with Jesus, you’re asking the right questions.
And if you’ve assumed it no longer matters, because no one has ever shown you why it would—I understand.
But what if that assumption is wrong?
What if the book we forgot is the one that helps us see the gospel more clearly? What if, instead of leaving Leviticus behind, we’re meant to grow into it? What if we need to reimagine Leviticus?
That’s the question that started this journey, and it’s the one that led me to write The Forgotten Gospel.
Some stories deserve to be remembered. Leviticus is one of them.
Banks of a River
You don’t always notice the banks of a river. Only later, when you emerge downstream and catch your breath from the surging journey, do you realize something has been holding it all together.
“I wanna hold you close but never hold you back,
just like the banks do the river.”
You don’t always notice the banks of a river.
You first notice the current, the pull, the way it carries you somewhere you didn’t plan to go.
Only later, when you emerge downstream and catch your breath from the surging journey, do you realize something has been holding it all together.
Long before I ever typed a single word of The Forgotten Gospel, my husband knew I would write a book.
Back when our house was full of babies and toddlers, he would take them out—to the park, the store, anywhere—just so I could sit in the quiet and write my little hobby blog. I didn’t have a following. (I still don’t.) What I write doesn’t make us any money.
But he knew it mattered. “I’m telling you. You’re going to write a book one day,” he’d say. And I’d laugh. “About what? No one cares what I have to say.”
He never argued. He just watched the years go by as I filled notebooks with Bible study charts and references. Watched as I read theologians far beyond my depth while making dinner. He’d tidy the papers piled up around my desk—notes spilling like water over the edges, books emerging from a sea of papers, like a sandbar in a river.
He never once complained about the mess or questioned the hours. He never doubted the Bible studies I led or the materials I wrote myself. He never asked why I put so much effort into something that lived only a hard drive or ended up in someone’s recycle bin.
Three Christmases ago, he gave me a small box. Inside was a brand-new MacBook Air. I could have cried. For years, I had worked on a twelve-year-old laptop—slow and glitchy with sticky keys and failing battery. But it ran, and with four kids, there are always more pressing needs. It never even crossed my mind to ask for new computer.
When I asked him why he would do such a thing, he said, “Because what you write is important. You’re important. It brings me joy to give you the tools to do the work God puts on your heart.”
He has been my cheerleader when things went well, and my shelter when they didn’t. When I came home discouraged after being dismissed, humiliated, or laughed out of the room for what I believe, he was the one who anchored me when everything in me wanted to drift back into the shallow waters. He’d lift up my head and remind me why I had waded out into those deep parts in the first place.
That’s Mike. It’s all or nothing with him. There is no middle ground. He moves toward hard things without hesitation, thrives when the odds are stacked against us, and somehow, in the eleventh hour, he finds a way forward—even when it matters to no one but us. Especially then. And how a nerd like me ended up with a cool guy like him, I will never understand.
When I began writing The Forgotten Gospel in the fall of 2024, I wasn’t trying to write a book. I sat down to make notes for a small group. We were studying Leviticus, and I thought we needed one extra session: “Why Jesus Doesn’t Replace Leviticus.”
Three hours later, I looked up from the computer. Those notes had become a river of their own, and I realized that I wasn’t writing notes anymore. Mike walked into the kitchen and asked what I was working on. “I think I’m writing a book,” I said, stunned at the pages in front of me.
He smiled, kissed the top of my head, and said, “Told you!”
He’s been right all along.
This man has championed my writing forever and funded this project without hesitation—being both the banks of the river and, quite literally, the bank.
And its been his great joy to do so. He has treated my book as though its a precious offering, and that bringing these words into the world is his privilege. He’s read every draft and listened to me talk (endlessly) about Leviticus. He built this website, took the pictures, researched independent publishing. But mostly, he has been the banks that held the current of this book—bearing its weight with me, steady when the pace quickened and the inspiration surged like rapids—and to say I couldn’t have written this book without him is an understatement.
Somehow, he saw the words inside me long before I ever did. He understands the burden I carry like no one else. And long ago, he braced his own heart for the cost of carrying it with me. He has met me here in the work—undaunted by the vision, unthreatened by the voice, unwavering in his love.
So whatever good this book carries, it carries him with it too.
He’s the banks of this river—streadfast on the edges—holding it all in place…for as long as it takes.
His fingerprints are on every page, even if his name isn’t.
The Light of Torah
Most Christians have never been told that the word Torah doesn't mean "law." It means instruction. Direction. The kind of teaching a father gives a child he loves — not to burden them, but to form them.
The words below belong to my friend Sergio DeSoto—a Jewish believer, and author and editor of SergioDesoto.com, an incredible blog dedicated to serious conversations about faith. Sergio carries a deep love for the Torah and a thoughtful, lived perspective on how it shapes his life as a follower of Yeshua. I asked him to speak directly to Christians about a question that has shaped so much of my own work: What is the Christian relationship to the Torah?
I have learned a great deal from Sergio, and I’m honored to share his words here. Read them with an open heart—and a willingness to see what you may have missed.
Most Christians have never been told that the word Torah doesn't mean "law."
It means instruction. Direction. The kind of teaching a father gives a child he loves — not to burden them, but to form them. When God gave Israel His Torah at Sinai, He wasn't handing down a penal code. He was giving a rescued people the shape of life with Him. Holiness. Justice. Worship. Covenant. The categories that hold everything else together.
But somewhere along the way, the church began treating Torah as the thing Jesus came to fix.
That is a serious mistake. And it has cost the church more than most believers realize.
What Yeshua Was Actually Confronting
Read the Gospels again — slowly, without the filter of what you were taught He was doing — and something becomes obvious. Yeshua never once rebuked obedience to God's commandments. Not once.
He rebuked hypocrisy. He confronted religious theater — leaders who loved the appearance of holiness but neglected justice, mercy, and faithfulness. He went after systems that crushed ordinary people under the weight of man-made traditions while the leaders who built those systems exempted themselves.
When He clashed with the religious establishment, He did not say, "Stop obeying the Father." He said something far more dangerous:
You have abandoned the commandment of God and are holding to human tradition (Mark 7:8, paraphrased).
Catch that. The problem was not that people were following God's instruction. The problem was that religious leaders had buried God's instruction under layers of their own authority — and then called the whole pile sacred.
Yeshua did not come to liberate people from God's word. He came to expose those who had made God's word unrecognizable.
The Uncomfortable Paradox
Here is where it gets uncomfortable for a lot of sincere believers.
What many Christians now dismiss as outdated or irrelevant — the Torah, the commandments, the covenant framework of the Hebrew Scriptures — is exactly what Yeshua upheld, lived inside, and taught from. He kept Shabbat. He observed the feasts. He taught from Moses and the Prophets. He quoted Deuteronomy to the adversary in the wilderness.
He did not treat Torah as a rough draft that needed correcting. He treated it as His Father's voice — and He walked in it perfectly.
So when the church says Torah is finished, they are not following Yeshua's example. They are contradicting it. Not out of malice, usually. Out of inheritance. Generations of teaching have framed Torah as the failed first attempt and grace as the real answer, as though God needed two tries to get it right.
But that framing does not come from Scripture. It comes from centuries of theology that slowly — and sometimes deliberately — severed Jesus from His Jewish world.
My Own Turning Point
I used to think the same way.
When I heard the word "law," my mind went straight to bondage. Old covenant. Something heavy that Jesus lifted. I had inherited an entire story where Torah was the problem and the cross was the solution to Torah. Grace meant freedom from God's instructions, and obedience sounded suspiciously like earning something you were supposed to receive for free.
Then I stopped reading the Bible as a religion book and started reading it as covenant history. Not a collection of spiritual principles organized by topic. Not a devotional resource. A record of God binding Himself to a people, speaking to them in real time, forming them through instruction, warning them through prophets, and relentlessly holding the door open for return.
That single shift changed everything. I stopped asking, "What does my tradition say this means?" and started asking, "What did this mean to the people who first received it?" And the moment I asked that question honestly, the categories I had inherited started collapsing.
Torah was not bondage. It was the marriage covenant between God and His people. The "New Covenant" in Jeremiah 31 was not a replacement — it was a promise to write the same Torah on their hearts. Paul was not arguing against obedience — he was arguing against the idea that Gentiles had to become ethnically Jewish to enter the covenant. The entire story was one story, and I had been reading it as two.
The lights didn't go off. They came on.
What Gets Lost
When Yeshua is disconnected from Torah, the church doesn't just lose a theological category. It loses the ability to understand its own Scriptures.
"Kingdom of God" loses its covenant texture — it becomes a vague spiritual destination instead of the reign of Israel's promised King. "Lamb of God" becomes a metaphor instead of the fulfillment of a sacrificial system that God Himself designed. "Repentance" gets reduced to feeling sorry instead of what the Hebrew concept actually means: return — covenantal turning back to the God you walked away from.
And "grace" — the word Christians love most — gets pitted against obedience, as though God's kindness and God's instruction are enemies. That split is completely foreign to the biblical world. Torah is grace. It was the gift of a faithful God to a people He had already rescued. He didn't give them instructions to earn His love. He gave them instructions because He loved them. Deuteronomy 6 is not a contract. It is a father telling His children how to stay close.
Even the New Testament becomes harder to read honestly. Paul gets cast as anti-Torah — the apostle who finally set people free from all those rules. But Paul kept the feasts. Paul took a Nazirite vow in Acts 21. Paul told Timothy that all Scripture — which at that point meant the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible — is God-breathed and useful for instruction. He was not dismantling Torah. He was arguing that Gentiles enter the covenant through Messiah, not through ethnic conversion. That is a radically different claim than "Torah is over."
When you strip all of that away, you don't get a cleaner gospel. You get a Christ who floats above His own story — still beloved, still quoted, but severed from the world that gave His words their meaning.
A Word About What This Feels Like
I need to say this plainly, because it rarely gets said in Christian spaces.
Torah was not a burden inflicted on Israel. It was a gift entrusted to them. When Christians speak of it as bondage, as failure, as something expired — it lands hard on those of us for whom this is not abstract theology. It is our story. Our covenant. The revelation God entrusted to our fathers.
It can feel like the church wants the Jewish Messiah but not the Jewish story that gave Him context. It can sound — even when no one intends it — like contempt dressed in theological language.
I am not saying this to guilt anyone. I am saying it because if the body of Messiah is going to mature, it has to reckon with this. You cannot claim to honor the root while dismissing what the root produced. Romans 11 is not a footnote. It is a warning: do not be arrogant toward the branches. The Gentile church was grafted into Israel's olive tree — not planted in its own garden.
Read Again — But Read Honestly
I am not asking anyone to become Jewish. I am not asking anyone to abandon their church or torch their theology overnight.
I am asking something simpler and harder: read again.
Read the Bible as one story — not two Testaments in tension, but one covenant unfolding. Read Torah not as the thing Jesus replaced, but as the foundation He built on. Read the apostles not as founders of a new religion, but as Jewish witnesses to the fulfillment of promises that were Jewish from the beginning. Stop assuming Torah is the villain. Stop calling legalism what God called instruction. Let the text challenge the system you inherited, and see whether the roots have something to say that your tradition trained you not to hear.
Because if the Torah was good enough for Yeshua to live by, to teach from, and to die fulfilling — then maybe the question is not why some of us take it seriously. Maybe the question is why so many were taught not to.
The Torah was never the darkness. In many ways, it is the lamp most Christians were taught not to look at.
When you read Scripture as covenant history instead of inherited religion, the lights do not go off.
They come on.
Selah.
When you hear the word "Torah," what is your first instinct — and who taught you to react that way? If Yeshua lived inside Torah and never spoke against it, what does it mean that His church treats it as obsolete? What would change in your faith if you stopped reading the Bible as two books and started reading it as one?
Shalom v'shalvah. Your brother in the Way,
Sergio
I’m grateful for voices like Sergio’s in this conversation. If his words have resonated with you as deeply as they have with me, you explore more of his work and support what he’s building here: www.sergiodesoto.com.
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