Do you believe Yehovah (God) will reward us if we stay faithful to Him and do what He expects us to do? As Christians, we think if we have passive loyal faith in the cross, He will reward us. But as we are going to see today, the Bible says He rewards us because of what we do, not because of our passivity.
In Romans 10:11 and Isa 28:16, the Bible says that if we stay loyal and faithful to Yehovah, He will reward us for our loyalty. If we read this in Hebrew and Greek, it is easy to see Paul refers to our obedience to the Torah. Paul is saying here in Romans 10:11 is that if we keep obeying the Torah, no matter what happens or how long it might take, Yehovah promises to meet our every need. So, according to Paul, Yehovah rewards us according to our Torah obedience. We see this in Moses and Joshua’s life in the desert; while walking through the desert for 40 years, Yehovah cared for them. But only Joshua and Caleb, who remained loyal, were finally able to enter into the promise of salvation. And we see this in the promise Yeshua gives us in Matt 6:25-34, if we obey the Torah, we will have nothing to worry about.
So if we want to achieve salvation and have Yehovah care for us while we are alive, we have to obey the Torah.
But to be able to obey the Torah, we need to know what the law of Moses says, so we understand which commandment applies to our gender and our situation. Therefore, you must learn the law of Moses, so you know what it says. It is crucial to learn the Torah, considering how every promise in the New Testament is conditional on your Torah obedience. Your Torah obedience is the key to those promises we read about in the New Testament, and one of them is the promise in Romans 10:11, where it says if we stay obedient, Yehovah will reward us for it.
When you have studied the Torah, you will soon see how 100s of commandments apply to you. One of those commandments that applies to all of us is in Joshua 1 and Exodus.
In Joshua 1 and the book of Exodus, it says that a part of being faithful and loyal to Yehovah (Rom 10:11) is to meditate on the Torah’s commandments at all times. So the Torah commands us to keep thinking of the Torah at all times. If there are more than 100 commandments applicable to us, how is this possible to do in our fast-paced society?
Yeshua gives us the answer to this question in Mark 12:29-31. Yeshua says the most important commandments in the Torah are these: Her Israel, Yehovah is our God, Yehovah is one God. You shall love Yehovah your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself.
(Notice what Yeshua did not say, He did not say “love me,” instead He told us to love Yehovah)
When Yeshua spoke those words, he talked to Jews, and Jews learn the Torah verbatim from a very young age. This is important for us to keep in mind as we proceed in today’s teaching because how we acquire the promise in Romans 10:11 depends on your knowledge of the Torah. The Torah’s core is love, love first and foremost for Yehovah and then for our neighbor. And then the Torah goes on to tells us how to love Yehovah and our neighbor. So how we acquire the promise in Romans 10:11 depends on you and if you know how to love Yehovah and your neighbor.
I will use an example from my own life to illustrate what I mean.
When I first met my wife, I felt love for her, but I did not know how to love her. Through dating and getting to know each other, I learned how to love her. Many years later, loving her is second nature to me, so now I dont have to meditate and think about how I should show my love for her.
When we get saved, we feel love for Yehovah and the fact that He offers us salvation, but if we dont know anything about the Torah, we do not know how to love Him. Through discipleship programs and our study of the Bible, we learn the Torah, and understanding the Torah is learning how to love Him. So when we have been saved for many years, loving Yehovah becomes second nature to us. Now we do not have to meditate and think about how to show our love for Him. Loving Yehovah comes as naturally as breathing because we know the Torah and what it requires of us.
If you have never studied the Torah and never read the Old Testament, you do not know how to show Yehovah the love you have for Him. So the way for you to acquire the promise in Romans 10:11 will be completely different from someone who knows how to love Yehovah.
If you have never studied the Torah, the promise in Romans 10:11 can only be obtained by continually researching and meditating on the many 100s of commandments applicable to you. This might seem like a daunting task, but it is no different from what you do when you fall in love with someone of the opposite sex. You have no problem then making it your number one goal to get him or her interested in you and learning how to show your love for them. Sometimes, it will require you to remember many different dos and don ts in your relationship with your future spouse. So if you are willing to go to all that effort for a future spouse, why would you not be willing to do so for your God?
On the other hand, If you have studied the Torah, the promise in Romans 10:11 is easier to acquire because you know what love for Yehovah looks like. Yeshua says in Mark 12:29-31, you only have to remind yourself and meditate on the Shema. The Shema is: Hear o Israel, Yehovah is our God, Yehovah is one, I will love Yehovah, my God, with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength and my neighbor as myself. According to Yeshua, doing this is a fulfillment of the entire Torah and, therefore, the key to the promise in Romans 10:11.
Depending on where you are in your relationship with Yehovah, meditating on the Torah guarantees the promise in Romans 10:11.
As we previously said, the core of the Torah is love, not blind obedience or mechanical recitation of words. No matter where you are in your relationship with Yehovah, the goal is not to repeat the Torah verbatim; it is to love Yehovah and show your love by doing Torah.
So it is not necessary to repeat the Shema verbatim to fulfill the commandment in Joshua 1 and Rom 10:11. What is important is that we love Him.
I will once more use an illustration from my own life to explain what I mean.
This is no different from marriages; sometimes it feels natural, and the only thing to do to tell my wife, “I love you, thank you for being my wife.” Other times it is sufficient to say, “I love you.” Sometimes it feels natural for me to say the Shema verbatim; other times, I go, “I love you, Yehovah.”
Romans 10:11 says if we keep meditating on the Torah, Yehovah will reward us. But He will only reward us if we meditate on the Torah out of love for Him. How you meditate on the Torah depends on where you are in your walk with Him. Make it your goal to learn His love language, the Torah, so loving Him becomes second nature to you, and you only have to meditate on the fact that you love Him.
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