What is the Torah, really?
God’s goal was never to get you to the Torah. God’s goal is to get you to HIMSELF.
The Torah is God’s set of life instructions for the 12 Tribes of Israel. When lived out, it was there to make them a very distinct people group. One that was out of sync with all the pagan nations. One that was shockingly healthy, successful, happy and fulfilled. One that emulated God’s ways — how He designed life to work.
But it is far more than that. It is an instruction set that daily reminds you how you fall short. How you don’t measure up. How far off your fleshly nature is from God’s nature. It is instructions that remind you of your need for forgiveness, for atonement, and for restoration to harmony to Creator God. One that show you how for off your behavior is and how distant your consciousness is from communion with the Most High God.
The purpose of Torah is to make you keenly aware of your need for the Lamb of God — a final sacrifice providing real atonement, not just temporary or even annual cover-overs to your sins. Not merely a hand washing (so to speak) till your hands got all dirty again hours later.
By engaging with Torah you would certainly see how desperately you needed a solution that would REMOVE your sin, not just kick the can down the road, year to year — from Day of Atonement to the next one the next year, with no end in sight.
And so the Torah exists to make all ethnicities JEALOUS of how blessed the 12 Hebrew tribes were living, and to make them then prioritize to seek out why and how they were do blessed! When observed, literally EVERYONE would want he Hebrew standard of living!
Then they would be motivated to learn about the GOD of Abraham — who he is, what he is like, what he wants from you. This is the initial stage of Israel being a “light to the nations”. Who is this God that is just, not capricious? That blesses you, not causes you to live in fear of random punishment? That cares for you, not tyrannizes you, as the pagan gods (fallen angels) do?
Who is this God that is so extremely FAITHFUL to keep all His promises, not leave you hanging as the pagan gods did so often. A God who really blesses? A God who really comes through? A God who delivers you from PERIL, not just once, but over and over and over? Where has such consistent goodness and faithfulness been all my life?!?!?! I will RUN, not walk, to know this amazing God!
God was demonstrating his total superiority over the fallen angels in the original rebellion, and doing it through the Torah. That His ways are not like their ways. That His people, are not like the other nations — mired as they were in cruelty, in human sacrifice, in self-degradation and predatory behaviors to their neighbor. And by living out the Torah, this would be literally and physically demonstrated — thus making is SELF-EVIDENT where — who — the real worthiness of devotion is, the real power, the real goodness.
The problem is that the Torah was never lived out. Not really. Only in bits and pieces, here and there, for brief moments in history. Otherwise all the nations would have ALREADY acknowledged the glory due to the Name of God, and begged the Hebrew tribes to let them in to all this amazing goodness, faithfulness, protection and blessing!
All people of earth would have already had this self-evident demonstration of how amazing and superior life is when done by the instructions of the Most High God, and not the lesser and false gods, and as a result, they would already DEMANDED to get in on the Covenant relationship. They would not have tolerated anything less than inclusion in the Covenant.
The nations have never seen a people living in Covenant obedience to God and HIs instructions. Only for moments, somewhat as they drove out the Canaanites, drove them out mostly but not completely. Then the other nations saw partial obedience and partial blessings, partial dominance over the awful giants. Somewhat under King Solomon’s reign, where the over-abundance of silver meant it was disregarded and if you dropped some, you’d hardly bother to even pick it up. Better to leave it in the streets, like dropping gravel.
These things (the partial conquest of Canaan, the economic prosperity of King Solomon) DID get the attention of the other nations, but only briefly. They were sparks of light, but never fanned fully into flame. Israel’s partial obedience produced sparks of light, but never a real light of the world, or a light set on a hilltop. Never the radiance that God wanted to display to all peoples. Israel’s partial obedience never really sent that CONGRUENT signal, a steady and consistent light, of a people in real trust, real obedience, and real communities of unselfish mutual contribution.
Instead the people doubted. Instead the tribes squabbled with each other. Instead the Hebrews chased after being like the mess, stagnation and collapse of the pagans around them. They acted all inverted, not upright. They were supposed to show off, to flaunt even how amazing the UNSEEN creator God is, not chase after the superficial and material and seen idols that were spoiling every other nation. They were not supposed to CRAVE THE VALIDATION of nations that had no idea who the Most High was. The Hebrews were given everything they needed by Father God. But the Hebrews proved faithless for the most part.
The problem was not the Torah, it was the faithlessness of the Hebrews. They failed to comprehend this God and to want meaningful and authentic participation in His goodness, His Kingdom, His ways, or His heart.
And as promised, God had the land kick them out into captivity to inferior nations. And after hundreds of years of continuing to work with them, God finally divorced them for faithlessness. Their consistent behavior proved, on the whole, that they really did not want the blessings or the Covenant Relationship with the Person of total goodness.
So, while the Torah did a great job of describing what right living looked like, it proved powerless to instill it in anyone, even in God’s own people. And there are exceptions, the Men of Faith recorded in Scripture. But they were just that — the exceptions. The ones, the few, who dared to really trust and follow the voice of God, and respond to Him like a GOOD shepherd.
