40 Minutes In The Old Testament - On Pronomianism with Dr Rob Solberg Live from HWSS (Episode 508)

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Chad and Daniel are joined by Erick Sorenson and Dr Rob Solberg live from Here We Still Stand, Northwest Arkansas, to discuss his work on pronomian theology. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education  What's New from 1517: 1517 Youtube: How God Still Speaks Today Being Family by Dr. Scott Keith A Reasoned Defense of the Faith by Adam Francisco Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Dr. Christopher Richmann The Essential Nestingen: Essays on Preaching, Catechism, and the Reformation Philip Melanchthon's Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Translated by Dr. Derek Cooper More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. As you know, of course, 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. And if you haven't been over to 1517.org, you need to go there and check out everything else that 1517 has going on. Loads more podcasts, books. I think I'll get fired if I don't say, you go there immediately and buy Scott's new book. You pre-order it. It's Being Family. So we wanted to start the conference out the right way by promoting that book.

But yeah, loads of stuff. yeah you can get it at the bookstore too you don't need to order it it's right it's not even out yet you can get it here have him sign it if there's even one copy left at the end of this we might not ever do this conference again honestly i don't i don't know also we should mention dan we've got a growing and thriving youtube channel that if you're not subscribed to yet hit that subscribe button for sure there you go for sure which 40 minutes in the old testament will be going to youtube uh in our next book so that's great uh as you can see uh we lined up in order of dress so that's how we did it to most formal to doesn't own a suit coat like that's how we

did it so that's good uh so we have a we have a fun episode uh chad's gonna take the lead on this particular episode because he wanted to uh to have a guest on uh who is rob solberg so you can give it up for him he's uh first time on the show and uh chad take it away yeah well uh first of all glad you're all here and those who are listening glad you're listening it's always a great uh great event to get together with all of you so yeah rob and i met probably what three years ago online something like that connected on instagram and he was checking out my work i was checking out his and he uh had me on uh for an interview and we've done a lot of things together over these last these last three years and by the way uh this is it's now as of

just a few days ago dr solberg so how about that so yeah i just finished uh his dissertation defense It's the Liberty University, so congratulations. And I'm going to let Rob tell you a little bit about his work. There's a lot of intersection with what he does with New Testament, Old Testament, theology, all that kind of stuff. So, Rob, tell us a little about yourself and what you do. Thanks for having me on, guys. This is amazing. You bet.

Yeah, so I do. That's one of the reasons I reached out to Chad. I was looking at scholars that teach on the connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and The Christ Key, I think, was your book that I thought was amazing. So my degree is in Bible exposition, and I run a ministry called the Biblical Roots Ministries, which is an apologetics and teaching ministry. And a lot of what we focus on is the connection between the Old and the New Testaments. A lot of the apologetic work we do is defending the Christian faith from, how would I put it,

groups that claim doctrinal validation for their theology, but are actually teaching false doctrine. Groups like the Hebrew Roots would be one of them, or you might know them as Pronomianism. These folks who believe that New Testament Christians are still under all the Old Testament laws, the diet laws and the feasts, and that these are required. So that's a big part of the work we do,

just because it wasn't what I sought out, but God drew me to that. What I originally thought was this remote outpost of the kingdom, you know? I wanted to be doing all the cool stuff, like science versus atheism versus Christianity. And he's like, no, do Hebrew roots. But and I'm like, OK, well, but what's amazing is that as we've dug into it, I've found that it's deeper and wider than I thought. And as usual, God's right and I'm wrong. But what I've been learning, which is really has become even my dissertation was on a subject really related to that is to understand.

And this is to the credit of these groups to understand really the biblical roots of the Christian faith. the jewish roots of jesus are legitimate and we need to understand and honor that but how do we now do that from a new covenant lens through a very christological viewpoint so that's a lot of what we argue with so it's weird we're not arguing does god exist or not it's like what is our role how does moses impact us today that kind of thing yeah so that's the work i'm doing we've got a youtube channel we've got uh i've got several books out um and god's just been blessing what we've been doing lately so yeah he did tell me right but right just right here that two years ago he returned to his lutheranism so how about that yeah and i could tell i could tell it was

recent because he has an actual bible i knew it was not that long ago just a telltale sign and look there's writing in it yeah yeah i I could tell. Thanks, Rob. So kind of to segue from that to just some biblical themes, biblical text. I know that you and I have had this discussion before. Talk about Moses. Talk about the law, the Torah.

I know that a lot of the discussion around Hebrew roots will kind of go back to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5. Jesus says, I haven't come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. So unpack that a little bit for us from both sides. I mean, you can steel man the argument. So what Hebrew roots, what will they say about that? And what's a Christian response to that? Yeah, that's a pivotal proof text for a lot of the Hebrew roots. And though, obviously, everything Jesus said was true, right?

This is Matthew 5, 17 through 20. And so the first thing I want to do is agree. Yeah, of course, Jesus didn't come to abolish the law or the prophets. he came to fulfill them. And the next thing that I'll notice that a lot of things that a lot of times what they'll do is then they'll from there, reduce it entirely to a legal statement. They forget the, or prophets part. And so, so what I, what I argue is that Jesus did not come to when he says abolish the law or the prophets, he's talking about prophetic fulfillment. The law, the law and the prophets is this Hebrew phrase for the entire Tanakh, the Hebrew scriptures.

And so that's kind of where I'll go with that. But also the other thing we run into, which is part and parcel of that verse is, what does that mean, the law, right? And so we would say, as Lutherans and as, I think, any Christian denomination would at least admit that we're not lawless. We're not without—we can't just do whatever we want, right? There is some semblance of a law, but when you conflate what I call God's moral will with specifically the legal corpus we call the law of Moses, you start getting into trouble when you conflate those two categories. And what I'll try to describe is that, look, before anything was even created, God had his perfect moral will before he even created anything. And when he created in Genesis, he did so through his perfect moral will so that he could say when he was done, it's all good.

I created everything according to my will. And then sin entered. And we see the first example of how we break God's will, which is disobedience, right, and trying to rely on the things that we want. And as you go through Genesis, you see, wow, murder with Cain and Abel, that's already a problem. That's already against God's moral will. And then you see Sodom and Gomorrah. You see Joseph and Potiphar's wife. We have this concept of sexual immorality that's already wrong.

And you see wickedness being judged and all these things, even before we get to Mount Sinai. And I learned this from a Messianic Jewish friend. he always makes this very strong statement, at Mount Sinai, God did not add any new morality. There's no new revelation of morality given at Mount Sinai. That was already established before then, because it all flows out of God's moral perfection. And so when we look at the law of Moses, we see that, as Scripture says, right, everything, it's God-breathed, and it's good for us in many different ways, but it doesn't apply to us. And so that's one of the big differences. is when you see these, what we typically call maybe civil or ceremonial type laws

that we see later in Scripture are clearly shown as fulfilled in Christ versus things like murder and adultery and greed and all those things, which existed before Sinai and exist after Sinai, right? So to try to make that distinction, which I just took three minutes to do, when you're in an argument with somebody, it can easily lose traction because they're just saying, oh, so now we can murder? Well, no, no, I didn't say that, you know. So it gets really sticky, and that's one of the reasons that our ministry

really tries to put out careful, responsible, biblically-oriented materials to help people weed through that confusion, that gray area. Yeah, because when you talk about the law, I mean, that can mean a lot of different things, right? Yeah, you can talk about the Torah, which is, the Torah just means teaching. So you've got laws, you've got promises all in there. And you've got laws, which are before Sinai, and then you have the Ten Commandments. You have a lot of different ways of defining what that is.

So how do you—this is kind of off-topic but related. So I get asked a lot of times, so are Christians still under the Ten Commandments? And, I mean, I have my own response to that, but I'd be interested in seeing how you respond to that. Typically, I would look up to see what Chad Bird said about it before I answer. Here's the link. Yes. Typically how I would say that is we are under the principles of the Ten Commandments, but not the Ten Commandments as they were given in the context of the Sinai Covenant.

Yeah. Because they were given as the terms of the covenant. It's a legal, it's all part and parcel, right? The law and the, but I would say they reflect God's moral will. And so, and actually we could even trace nine of them as being repeated or retaught in the New Testament. The only one that's not taught is Sabbath directly. And so when we look at Sabbath, I would even maintain the principles behind Sabbath, taking a day of rest, whatever day you want, being thankful to God as your provider, right? Being with your family, worshiping, all that thing.

I think those principles are important, but you can't just say, are we under the Ten Commandments? Nope. That answer won't work. So you've got to be nuanced about it. But yeah, I mean. One great word you said was context, too. So I approach it the exact same way. So look, you can't just say, are we under the Ten Commandments?

you have to say, are we under Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, because there's a lot more there than just a list of 10 particular commandments. And these are embedded within the context of the covenant. And each of these are a distillation of many other laws related to those specific commandments. For instance, so if we're under the Ten Commandments, we got to take out people who break the Sabbath, because that's part of the Sabbath law. See somebody breaking the Sabbath? They need to be executed. If you're under the Ten Commandments, understood in their broader broader covenant context right you can't just pick and choose which particular aspects of these 10 commandments that you're that you're under yeah so i'll often

make a comparison i'll say listen so if say that we're all american citizens which we probably are so uh if uh if if you're living here as a citizen is it possible for you to break a canadian law no because you're not under you're not a canadian citizen you're not under those canadian laws right Are there certainly Canadian laws which are also replicated in the American system? Sure. Of course, you can't murder in Canada any more than you can murder in America. You can use that kind of to compare it to the covenant. Are there aspects of the Sinai covenant which are still applicable to Christians because they're universal laws?

Yeah, sure. You shall not murder under that covenant. You shall not murder just universally, morally speaking. but specifically when you murder not encouraging anyone to do this but if you do you're you're not really breaking part of that covenant because that covenant no longer exists it's been fulfilled what you're breaking is the universal moral law yeah we talked we talked about this um when we were when we're going through isaiah which in i think that part of it there is this like a i think confusion about uh every covenant that god makes is some kind of eternal everlasting covenant but

but then you have isaiah talk about a future covenant that is an everlasting covenant which means that not all covenants i mean that it would be redundant to say hey there's an everlasting covenant coming you know because that's how covenants are but instead it's there is a covenant that will never end which implies that all other ones do well you have to take each one in context I think. Yeah. And one of the things that we can get in trouble with is this Hebrew word olam, which is often translated forever, but it doesn't always carry the forever that we think of in English. Sometimes it carries the idea of a long distant horizon. Like the word olam will be used of things like Leviticus 1635, the Yom Kippur, the atonement sacrifices. These shall be,

you shall do these sacrifices forever, it says. But then later in Hebrews 10, it says there's no we're offering for sin. So we see an end to something that is called olam. You also see that same word used in things like the laws where you're supposed to let the servants go after seven years, and if the servant says, man, I love being with this family, I want to stay here, you drill an awl, you know, use an awl and put an earring in his ear, and now he's your servant forever. Olam. But not literally forever, it's just till the end of his lifetime. So what happens is people get hung up with the forevers and the English translations in some cases and say, well, no the mosaic covenant was forever despite the fact that like hebrews 8 13 says right when god

you know called the new covenant the old one became obsolete yeah and it seems that i when isaiah is speaking of this covenant being you know this is all baked into like the servant stuff and and he there he is distinguishing like there is actually something coming that right literally will have no like a forever forever yeah yeah you see the same thing in daniel 7 with the son of man Yeah. He's going to have an eternal dominion. You see the same thing even in like in Genesis 49, 10, where Jacob's blessing Judah and says he will be the ruler until, what does it say, until the scepter leaves. Until Shiloh comes. Yeah, right. Yeah, there's that. Yeah, we don't know how to translate that. But he will have an eternal kingdom. And so there's this idea all throughout Scripture that there is an eternal kingdom, a final, God's final word, so to speak, coming, but it hasn't showed up yet. Yeah, I'm reminded of the boldness of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 3

where he's contrasting the ministry of the law with the ministry of the Spirit that is found in the New Covenant, you know, where he says in verse 7 now, the ministry of death carved in letters on stone came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end. Will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? and he goes on to belabor that point over and over and over again that this covenant that we are under is a new and better eternal covenant whereas the other one as hebrews mentioned and you you

noted is now obsolete that's beautiful and what's amazing too is you've got the the differences between the covenants right god said this is how you will break my covenant under the sinai covenant here's my commandments you if you obey them you inherit the blessings and keep my covenant if you disobey them, you break the covenant. How do we break the new covenant? We don't. It's unbreakable because it's not based on our work. It's based on Christ. So what a dramatic difference between the two covenants. Now, speaking of that, isn't one of the arguments that's put forward by some, at least within the Hebrew Roots movement, that the new covenant is not really a new covenant? Yeah. That it's sort of a reinvigorated or refreshed or renewed old covenant? Is that right?

Yeah, they'll actually try to get into the Hebrew language there and talk about how it just means renewed, brit hadashah, and they'll talk about it. Over here, it means renewed and these sorts of things. But if you look at the context, Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34, there's all these new things in it that we don't hear about. For one is that, you know, I will forgive their iniquity and remove their sin forever.

And if you're hearing that, in the meantime over here, you're doing your annual sin sacrifices and your daily sin sacrifices. wait, at some point, this will all be done? Like, it's a little hint, if you're paying attention, that something's going to change that's dramatic, right? And then, like I talked about, the conditional nature of the covenants, that's a big difference. So, if you're paying careful attention to the context around these words, it's very clear it can't be a new covenant. And matter of fact, I did a study on this. There are passages in the Old Testament where we see the covenant renewed. And what happens on these things? This is a very interesting thing that jumped out at me.

When you see these things like in Joshua, I think it happens in Numbers maybe, where you've got the law is read and Israel affirms it. And there's some sort of sometimes there's a little altar built or a pile of stones, you know, some memorial. What you don't see at a covenant renewal in any form is the shedding of blood. The shedding of blood, as far as I could tell, correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can tell, that is unique to brand new covenants. We see it at the covenant in Sinai when there was bloodshed. And, of course, we see it with Christ in the new covenant. But it's not in any of these renewals where the Bible explains what a renewal looks like. It never includes the shedding of blood.

Yeah, interesting. So kind of back to the New Testament. So we've got Christ establishing the new covenant. Not he's betrayed. He talks about this is the blood of the new covenant. Hebrews talks about that. So one of the things that you pick up on right away when you're reading through the Gospels, especially when you get into Acts, is that one thing that is definitely new about the New Covenant is you have more and more Gentiles who are becoming part of the people of God. And that was already happening.

So don't get the impression that, you know, before Jesus comes, it's just Jews because you have Gentiles all throughout the Old Testament. Oh, yeah. Some great examples. You think of Ruth, you think of Rahab, you think of Uriah, the Hittite, right? So you've got people from outside Israel that are always coming into the community of God, but not nearly as many as we see happening in the book of Acts. Now, we do know because of the spread of the Jews, they're all over the Roman world. You have synagogues popping up all over the place, Alexandria, Rome, that Gentiles who were curious about these strange monotheistic Jews, they were attending synagogue. Some of them were fully converting.

Many of them were what were called God-fearers, so they would attend, but, you know, for some reason, the guys didn't want to go all the way in becoming Jewish because of, I don't know, something being cut away. This is before modern surgery. So they go to synagogue, and so you do have Gentiles, of course, becoming part of the people of God. But as soon as Christ comes, accomplishes his work, Peter starts preaching, Paul starts preaching, then you've got an issue. You've got the first real controversy in the church, and that is basically how Jewish do the Gentiles need to become to really be full-fledged members of the people of God. So kind of pick it up from there, Rob. Is that a good way to accurately describe

what the controversy is all about? It is. I would add a couple things. Number one, not just do we see gentiles in the old testament kind of becoming part of the ways in the worship of yahweh we see them in the genealogy of jesus so they are grafted in in a sense in a much deeper way than we sometimes realize and actually my dissertation was on why did the early christian church turn so gentile so quickly and what i discovered what most of what i discovered that blew my mind was in the Old Testament. And so we have all of these prefiguring and visions and types. You have things like Isaiah 19, where he talks about where there's going to be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. And all of a sudden, Egypt's called my people. And so now we have Egypt, Assyria, and Israel as

equal members of God's covenant. It's one of the most astonishing verses in the Old Testament. like did i just read that yeah and here's the cool thing about it the gentiles don't become israel and israel doesn't become gentiles the distinction remains they're still called by their titles their political titles but they are they are now god's people they all worship together which just reminds me of like revelation 7 right a multitude that could not be numbered was around the throne of god of every tribe and nation and tug and language and oh that's not a new idea at all that goes way back and then you see like even isaiah 42 6 and 49 6 where he's talking about the servant right and talking about a light to the nations what's really interesting is you have

these passages where like i was just reading isaiah 66 the the gentiles come in they bring jews up to jerusalem just like the jewish people would do to make a an offering uh what is it a wheat grain offering. And it says, and some of them, some of the Gentiles I appointed as Levites and priests. What? Yeah, again, you have to read that again, because Levites were a subset of Israel. They weren't just even to Jewish people. That was a very specially called people. And now Gentiles are going to be, and I'm only in Isaiah, not in the New Testament yet. So now when we fast forward and we see the word spreading, we see, you know, Cornelius, the first Gentile convert, and the Holy Spirit fell on his house.

He didn't convert, right? And so this is the exact thing that Peter then later uses in Acts 15 at the Jerusalem Council to say, hold on, guys. Do you remember what I told you about Cornelius? God's already working through all these people. And then, of course, Paul and Barnabas stand up

and say all the things that God's doing among Gentiles. And then, this is so amazing, what does James do? He stands up and he says, this is just what the prophets told us. And he quotes from Amos, Amos 9, right? And so this was all, in other words, it was surprising to the first century Jews. It's surprising to Hebrew roots people today, but it's not a surprise in Scripture.

Like it was anticipated that God is always, as Paul says in Romans 3, is God the God of the Jews only? No, of the Gentiles also. He's God of everybody. So, yeah, but what we had in the first century, and if you think about it historically, is amazing, is that you have probably the biggest and most prevalent conflict, which is we're Jewish people, we follow the Jewish Messiah, he's our Messiah, Gentiles, come on in, but you're going to need to do a few things first.

That's the human presumption, right? And so they didn't have a New Testament at that point. They had the Old Testament, they had the apostles talking to them, they were living the New Testament. So when you go through Scripture and you read Paul's letters, what you're reading is someone explaining why the Gentiles are allowed in and explaining why they're allowed in as Gentiles. But again, it's not a new idea, but I think it's really interesting that God,

it's like a theological explosion on the timeline when Christ came and the new covenant was ordained and inaugurated, and all of a sudden, whoa, everything changed, but there wasn't, you know, they didn't have like a church bulletin that could tell everybody, by the way, we're under the new covenant, you know. But I think, too, in Acts, like, you see when you have the dispute rise up that they're trying to figure out, like, yeah, how Jewish do these Gentiles need to become? And maybe Paul and Peter, they're like, hey, they don't, they don't. And they're like, okay, so they can do their own thing.

But certainly, like, if you were like, well, I'm still a Jew, so I need to do these things. And they have to go even harder and be like, well, actually, I mean, like, nobody needs to do that. And the argument is, did it really help you that much? like i mean like where you did you did you really get closer to god for all these things well peter calls it a yoke but i will say this too though because we have to look at the other side of the coin is that many of those things were also not prohibited so if you were raised jewish at that time and you wanted to keep shabbat and and eat kosher and all those other things there's nothing preventing you which i and i and so i call it like a permitted but not required

that's how i read scripture that's how i read things like first corinthians 9 where paul says well, when I'm with people that are under the law, I act as if I'm under the law. And then parenthetically, not that I, even though I'm not under the law, but when I'm with people that aren't under the law, Paul says, then I act as if I'm not under the law, even though, and this gets back to that law sort of equivocation, even though he says, I'm not removed from the law of God, I'm under the law of Christ. So there's a law Paul's not under, and there's one he is under. But what Paul says is, I'll do whatever you want. You want to eat pork? Okay, great. You want to not eat pork, that's great too. And then he says in verse 23, but I do it all for the gospel.

Yeah. I do it all to spread the gospel, you know. And you see practical examples of that in the book of Acts, which we just came to a conclusion of, where Paul does like, you know, submit himself to taking a vow. He certainly doesn't need to do that anymore, but he does it again for the sake of the gospel. And I'm just reminded too, in Jesus's ministry, when he ushers in his woes to the Pharisees and scribes, one of the things that really seems to anger Jesus is the fact that the religious leadership at the time seemed to be shutting the door to Gentiles in many different ways. I mean, I think that's part of the reason that he storms the temple. It's, I mean, what he says in chapter 23, verse 13, he says, you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you

neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in well yeah that's a little on the nose but uh he's very clear about it this is something that he wants to he wants the whole world to have access to well i think that's part of because there is so much in the old testament about i got sheep of you know not in this fold right and are you going to be a light and all this stuff jesus does show up and say like hey you you haven't done a great job of that like i was i I was really wanting you guys to bring people in, and the leadership is doing quite the opposite of that. You're not attraction to anybody.

You can get this close, but no closer. When Jesus does cleanse the temple, the following text is that people start streaming in because there's no way in there to stop them. Yeah, they're building fences. Literally, they had the balustrade built in the temple with signs on there that basically if you're not fit, if you're not a Jew, right if you proceed any further than this balustrade then the ensuing death will be your own responsibility yep yeah so i mean they literally built a wall saying don't go any

farther than than this and that's what we see in acts 21 you were talking about paul taking a vow he takes a vow that's great and then they start making up stuff and one of the things they made up was he brought a greek into the temple yes right and that's past that balustrade yes yeah yeah that's what leads to all the the end of the book of acts that's right reason he's arrested The mob tries to kill him. That's how he ends up in Rome. It's because of that exact mob. All because of that example.

Which is what I think he was talking about in Ephesians 2, and he says tearing down the wall of division. The dividing wall of hostility. Yeah. Sure, sure. And so what I think is interesting, though, if we go back to Christ, I mean, he knew he's God incarnate. He knew all the stuff about Gentiles. And so we see that if you're in there looking for it, which I was for my most recent project, there's stuff all over the place. Like people will say, well, he said, I only came to the lost sheep of Israel.

And as you mentioned, John 10, 16, I have other sheep that are not of this fold, and they have to come too. And he says there will be one flock, one shepherd, which is beautiful. But he also has things like the parable of the wicked tenants. I mean, think about what he says. This kingdom will be taken from you and given to those producing its fruit. Now, that doesn't mean taken from Jews and given to Gentiles. It means taken from the Jewish leadership that missed their Messiah, as he criticizes, and it's given to those keeping faith in Christ, right?

Which would be Jew and Gentile. So if you kind of unpack that a little bit, especially understanding how it eventually evolved into, you have Jesus giving us divine mandate for Gentiles to participate at least in authority, levels of authority and levels of leadership in the new kingdom of God. And you have the same thing,

like I was thinking about this the other day. Okay, Paul is out there, he's the Jewish man, He's preaching to the Gentiles, all of these things. He's writing all these amazing books. And at the same time, as most of his books, I think all of his books, because there's the idea of the undisputed Pauline letters, I accept them all, but the temple's still standing. The priesthood is still around when Paul writes this stuff.

And what does Paul do? Does he say, okay, now we're under the new covenant, let's build us some priestly leadership structures, and let's talk about a sacrificial economy? No. He says, we're going to do elders and deacons. This is how we're going to organize this new church. So even Paul, the Jewish guy, isn't trying to impose an Old Testament ecclesiology on the new covenant church.

He understands we're in a different movement. He understands that the sacrifice of Christ was once and for all, ephopox, right? It was, it's not coming back. So there's no need to resurrect that stuff, which we can say to me today, like that's an obvious thing. But if you're doing that, you're writing these letters and you look up and there's the temple. you know and there's the priesthood they're still working right now that's pretty wild that he wrote

it during that period of time yeah but it shows you that this was not a gentile or a man-made invention this is the way god ordained that his church his new covenant church would emerge that reminds me of jesus talking to the samaritan and uh you know she wants to know which which uh temple we're going to here which mountain do we need to worship at it yeah and i always feel like jesus in that moment was like man this question is very soon to be irrelevant uh but like right let me i'll give you like i'll give you the answer but like just so you know like very soon it's not going to matter at all well that's why he couches it in those terms right he's like the hour has come or the hour is coming and has come yeah well which one is it like our modern

minds wants to want to hear that and he's saying no this is the era we're in right now yeah yeah Yeah. Let's talk about the real, well, the fundamental threat that some of the aspects of Hebrew roots really gets us to, and that is the gospel. Yeah. That's the heartbreaking part. Yeah. I mean, think about what's going on in Galatians, basically. You know, when Paul writes Galatians, I always picture him like his face is red. I know. Pacing around. Yeah. If he's using an amanuensis, the amanuensis is trying to keep up with him because Paul's pacing the room. he's punching the wall. I mean, he is angry, and he's angry for a truly righteous reason,

because they have now taken the true gospel, and they've substituted it for a demonic gospel. And I choose that term very carefully. It's a doctrine of demons is what's going on. It's what's being taught to the Galatians. So what's happening? Paul goes there. He establishes the churches. He preaches the gospel. He leaves, and then who comes in, and what happens? Well, so this is interesting. This is the Judaizers. This is the circumcision party, whatever we want to call them. But they're coming in.

They're essentially Jewish believers who also believe that you have to convert to Judaism. And so it's an interesting connection because if I'm a first century Jewish guy and I grew up Jewish and my parents were Jewish and going back 15 centuries, you know, all this stuff, I can understand. I can issue or have some empathy for that. Well, I'm sorry. We thought everyone needed to do this, right? Yeah. Fast forward to today. Again, they didn't have the New Testament back then.

Today we have 2,000 years of church tradition and interpretation. We have a full New Testament corpus. And also, I'm going to make a 100% statement, which you're not supposed to do, but I really think it's the case. Every Hebrew roots person I've met or interacted with or debated with over the last eight years has been a Gentile, not a Jewish person. And so what you have today are Gentiles who have an entire New Testament that explains things to them, and they still want to preach the law, the ritual parts of the law.

Now, back then, for the first century Judaizers, Paul's like, oh, he's so mad, you know? Anathema he casts on them. But you have this idea where, okay, why are we doing this? And Paul saw right through it. Are we doing this because it feels good, it's our Jewish boundary markers of our Jewish identity? Are we doing this because it makes us a little more righteous? Like, God's going to be really happier with us, or do we do this? And few will go this far, or do we do this to be saved?

Most people will say, well, we don't do it to be saved. They say, we're saved, and we love God, so now we obey. But is it an act of obedience? I mean, the New Testament would say no. You've got passages like, well, Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, Romans 4, where Paul says, no, we don't argue about these things. You've got Colossians 2, 16, 17, right? Do not let anyone judge you on all of this stuff,

what you eat or what you drink or a religious festival or a new moon celebration or a sabbath and notice those i love those go annual monthly weekly right it's this whole jewish thing right there he says okay why why don't you let anyone judge you verse 17 because those things are shadows yes those are shadows of what was to come and he says in christ is the substance christ is the soma and so all of those things were given to point us to christ and now today if someone were to stand up and say, you have to keep those things, which is exactly the folks I deal with, I'll ask why, you know? And then you could sort of add on to that as you get deeper into Paul's theology and say, well, okay, let's say it's nice to keep them, or it's whatever,

there's lessons in there. Okay, I can agree with that. I can agree that God gave it for a reason. We certainly need to see the reason as Christ, but there is everything God given is good, But also things are given for a particular time, right? And so you might ask, like I'll ask Hebrew Roots guys, how and in what way would you say that you've died to the law the way Paul says we should in Romans 7? In what way are you dying to the law? And that's a confusing thing for them.

They don't have a category for that, you know? And it was one of the reasons that, so you could be like, oh, no, I'm not doing this to be saved. I'm doing this because I am saved and I want to be obedient. One of the things that I think Paul knows, and god certainly knows is that um trust uh is going to be placed somewhere right and so um and you will always be tempted to place it somewhere other than christ or at least some of it right so you're gonna maybe hedge your bets a little bit like i've got right you know i've

got 90 of my chips on red but i got like 10 over here i'm like i think that he kind of digs it that i do these things uh and and that's how people are like you are you're prone to do that where and in some of it's even it's not like you decide to do it right right it's that you just start thinking like well when i do this i think god kind of cracks a smile and like i kind of i'm going to start leaning into that and now your trust starts to divert a little bit you start you start to lean into that a little bit and i think that's why paul thinks that something you You've got to be like, well, I mean, sure, do this thing or not, who cares? But Paul kind of does care because he's like, it's not completely neutral

because there is a danger in it because you're a sinner. Right. Well, so the other thing, too, is the cultural aspect. So I have many Messianic Jewish friends, and Messianic Jews, I need to make this distinction, and I'm making it in broad brushstrokes because everyone gets to choose what their label is and whatever, but for the most part, Messianic Jews are ethnic Jewish people who believe in Jesus. They share the theology that we share.

They don't have this idea of that thing is required, those rituals are required. Now, they will often keep it because they grew up keeping the Seventh-day Sabbath or they grew up not eating pork or whatever, and so they want to keep that. That's part of their tradition, and that's beautiful. I think Paul absolutely allows that. And that's also a situation where you're not artificially importing rituals. If you were raised Gentile on the American flag and hot dogs and stuff, and now all of a sudden you're going to be eating biblically clean,

that's a—the motivations, as I've seen, I don't want to, you know, accuse everybody of— I don't know all their motivations, but all the ones that I've seen, people are doing this to pile up their good deeds in front of God. And so if we say, okay, is not keeping those things sinful? Well, then the question becomes, if they say yes, which many of them do, of course it's a sin. It's a sin to eat pork. It's a sin, you know. OK, so you're saying that in order for me to be right with God, I have to have a particular diet, you know. So if you kind of push that, it becomes a little bit it becomes more untenable and they start to see, I think, if they're if they're being honest, they're starting to see, oh, maybe this is more than just a nice little thing I do.

You know, yeah, yeah. It's difficult because here's the thing, too. I would say there's a spectrum when people get into this movement. I've kind of coined a five step process that I've seen a lot of people go through. I'm not a social scientist, so this is, you know, take it with a grain of salt. But there's sort of a five-step process where people get interested and they start digging in. And then somewhere along the way they get, there's this reckoning point where they have to make a decision. Am I going to reorient myself back towards Christ and his gospel? Or am I going to orient myself around keeping the rituals, which I call, they would never put it this way, but I call, am I following Moses or Jesus?

and and Moses even says follow Jesus right yes yes Deuteronomy 18 15 he's like someone's coming and you better listen to him right God says at the at the Mount of Transfiguration this is my son listen to him everyone's telling us to listen to Jesus so I don't think we even have a choice but what what a lot of people don't understand this is sort of the insidiousness of the movement is that they don't understand slowly but surely their focus is being shifted off of Christ and this gospel in his work and being shifted towards moses and internally towards my work how did i do you know should i they have all these questions should i keep uh should i keep passover should i do easter or if i if i do easter can i have ham or is that okay you know what i mean so they get

into this and i'm like that is so far away from the freedom of the gospel yeah you know what i mean and so to me it's there's a level at which it's heartbreaking it's a manifestation of the universal human tendency to always put our trust in that which we do yeah over that which God has done for us in Christ I always say that if if God said all right I'm gonna do 99.9 percent I'm all I'm asking is you two for that that one little 0.1 percent that's all I'm asking where would our confidence lie where would our assurance lie it would be completely in that tiny little bit that we did because we're control addicts yeah and we want to be able to control our assurance by that despite the fact that we have 99.9%.

I think it was Moody who said, and I'm probably going to butcher the phrase, but he said something about, I'm so glad that I'm not responsible for my salvation because I do not want to get to heaven and hear everyone tell me all the stuff they did to earn their way in. Like, something like that.

I don't want to sit for eternity listening to people bragging. Yeah. Well, all right. I think we are out of time. Guys, there's a handful of copies of Rob's books. So you can race to get it. So definitely don't have any of those left.

We're going to take a little break and then outside ourselves will be up. Thank you guys very much. Thank you.