This blog serves as an outreach for Pastor Randy Powell of the First Baptist Church of Franklin, PA. Feel free to ask questions or send me an e-mail at pastorpowell@hotmail.com
Given what God was willing to do to save you, how should you respond?
The Apostle Paul tells us that we must live our entire lives in a way that is worthy of our calling. Calling from who? From God. Calling to what? To self-sacrifice and service for the sake of the Gospel.
How do we do this? Paul begins to answer that question by telling us to be: humble, gentle, patience, and loving. When we can demonstrate these virtues here among the people of God, it opens the door to being able to share them with everyone we meet.
I'll be honest, it hasn't been easy to be the primary online voice discussing the First Fruits of Zion these past almost three years. I've put a lot more effort and passion into the effort to warn the Church about FFOZ than I ever imagined I would when I first heard about Torah Clubs in the Fall of 2022. From the beginning the entire Franklin Christian Ministerium has supported me, that has been invaluable. My whole church, including my board, have supported me, that has been crucial. But until now, I had only been able to have private conversations with people in leadership at various groups affected by this movement, the public element was missing. Today that changed. The reach of Professor Solberg's platform is roughly 1,000 times that of my own, this dialogue about FFOZ has needed to be moved into the mainstream conversation within the Church, that reality moved much closer with the release of this interview.
If you're new to my blog, or my YouTube channel, note that all of my research has been primary source. I don't write about what people say about what FFOZ says, I write about what FFOZ teaches in their own publications, the things they choose to publish and profit from. You may not agree with all of my conclusions, that's ok, they come from an Evangelical Baptist perspective, I wouldn't expect them to be universally understood and embraced. If my thoughts get in the way, look at the direct quotes, I flood my posts and videos with them. I believe in the priesthood of all believers, and I believe that the Holy Spirit is more than capable of guiding each follower of Jesus Christ into Truth. Weigh what FFOZ is saying against the Word of God for that is the ultimate judge, not me. I am doing my best to apply God's Word to these weighty matters, if I fall short God's Word will not.
HaYesod is the primary disciple-training material for the Hebrew Roots Movement aligned organization: The First Fruits of Zion
This analysis is from the 2023 edition. My initial seminar warning of the dangers of FFOZ utilized the 2017 edition. As will be shown here, the amount of unorthodox and heretical material has significantly increased from that edition to this.
The following analysis is not based upon this one lesson alone. These same false teachings have appeared in dozens of other Torah Club and FFOZ published materials.
What this lesson reveals is that Torah Club leaders are being taught to embrace these teachings, not gloss over them. The “correct” answers provided are truly damning.
FFOZ has a fascination with, and an allegiance to, the 2nd Temple Judaism of the 1st century. As such, they work to integrate beliefs from that era of Judaism into the theology they’re attempting to bring into churches.
Theodicy is the study of the “problem of evil.” It is a rich field that includes the wisdom of books like Job. However, to say that when godly people suffer it must be because of the sins of other people is a human-centered view that was rejected by Job’s insistence that his suffering was not the result of his sin (or any sin), and by the testimony of Jesus Christ.
John 9:1-3 (NIV) As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
Because suffering and sin are not directly corelated, the entire premise of the so-called “Law of Atonement” is false. Even if the righteous suffered for the sins of others, there is zero biblical evidence that such suffering is connected to, let alone effective at, sin atonement. On what basis is this claim made?? The suffering and death of human beings never atones for sin. It cannot, at all. We are not a spotless sacrifice.
1 Peter 2:20 (New American Standard Bible) For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.*
[* “finds favor” is not a universal translation, it was chosen to connect to the story of Moses that is coming. Beware of theology built on cherry-picked translations.]
The use of 1 Peter 2:20 is an out-of-context abuse of Peter’s original intent. There is zero reason to assert that Peter believed that the suffering of Jesus’ followers could atone for their own sins, let alone those of anyone else. This whole concept is antithetical to the Gospel message: Only the Son of God is worthy.
“An innocent person who suffers and dies accrues extra merit and favor with God. This merit can be credited to someone else’s account.” This is blasphemous and deeply heretical. No human being has ever had enough merit to earn God’s favor, let alone extra. There is ZERO hint in God’s Word that a human being could apply merit, even if he/she had extra, to anyone else. Note that FFOZ simply makes this massive claim with zero attempt to support it from a single scriptural source, or even from their usual trope “the sages.”
FFOZ’s hermeneutical methodology is deeply flawed. Word usage determines word meaning, claiming that two words in different languages simply mean the same thing is overly simplistic and misleading.
ḥên occurs 66 times in the OT, where in the NASB it is translated into English as: adornment (1), charm (1), charming (1), favor (51), grace (8), graceful (2), gracious (3), pleases (1).
χάρις (charis) occurs 157 times in the NT, where in the NASB it is translated into English as: blessing (1), concession (1), credit (3), favor (11), gift (1), grace (122), gracious (2), gracious work (3), gratitude (1), thank (3), thankfulness (2), thanks (6).
Too simply say that both of these words mean favor (and only favor), and both are equal to each other, is simplistic at best, misleading at worst. FFOZ uses this technique to mislead…To what end?
To a disastrous redefinition of grace: “The merit and favor a person acquires in the eyes of another.”
The long-standing Christian interpretation of grace as “unmerited favor” is purposefully thrown out, earning God’ favor (that is, earning grace) is in.
Where could FFOZ possibly turn to find an example of a human being earning God’s grace? To Moses.
Note: This house of cards depends upon equating favor in the OT with grace in the NT. The example of Moses earning favor, even if it were valid, leads to a false conclusion because Moses and the Apostle Paul do not mean the same thing when using hen and charis.
Is God saying in Exodus 33 that Moses’ obedience has earned God’s favor? Yes.
Is that favor equal to atonement? No
Is it equal to redemption? No
Is it equal to righteousness? No
Is it equal to salvation? No
None of these ideas that are part of our understanding of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice as the Lamb of God are in any way connected to Moses. In fact, these concepts as they are understood in the NT are not in the OT (See my Torah in its Ancient Israelite Context series on the YouTube channel).
“The LORD agreed to extend His favor for Moses to the entire nation:”
Did God bless others because of the favor in which he held Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Ruth, David, etc? Yes.
Is that blessing in any way connected to the righteousness that is ours because of the atoning power of the Blood of Christ? 1,000 times No.
“The story also demonstrates that grace is not ‘an unmerited gift.’ Moses did merit God’s favor when he interceded with God on behalf of a guilty nation.” – This so-called interpretation of scripture is an abomination.
On the basis of a false equivalence of favor in the OT with grace in the NT, by which FFOZ declares that grace is not “unmerited favor” but instead acquired/earned favor, it has set up a false equivalence between Moses and Jesus, all to pave the way for the coming insistence that Paul’s objection to the “works of the law” is not about legalism at all. This is the goal to which this lesson is striving, to remove the stigma associated with keeping Torah as works-righteousness.
“Remember what happens when a godly and righteous person suffers and dies undeservedly…Through His righteous life and His undeserved suffering, Yeshua merited even more favor in God’s eyes, so much favor that He has an abundance to share.”
{Why is “only begotten son” in quotation marks? Why not simply say, “As the Son of God,”? Given their track record of denying the Trinity, such things make my Spidey-sense tingle}
Jesus is the only person to ever earn the righteousness that atones for sin, full stop. No solely human being could earn atonement, it is impossible. When you put atonement, favor, and grace in a mixer as FFOZ has done here, the result is grotesque.
In this section, FFOZ argues that Paul’s only issue is with full-on adoption of Jewish identity through the conversion process.
“It’s not a question of working to earn eternal life by keeping the Law. It’s a question of whether someone needs to become Jewish to be eligible for eternal life.”
They make this specious case by saying that when Paul writes about the, “works of the law” it always means only Jewish identity (i.e. circumcision, full conversion) never Torah keeping (Sabbath, kosher, festivals).
In order for this line of reasoning to hold water, every usage of “works” and “works of the law” by Paul would need to be about full-conversion only, never about legalistic attempts to keep Torah to earn righteousness.
That, of course, is not a tenable position, but when FFOZ interprets Galatians, for example, it does so assuming Paul only cares about full-conversion, they claim he was 100% in favor of Torah keeping for Jew and Gentile as long as it didn’t lead to conversion for Gentiles.
Faith does not equal belief?
True, faith does not ONLY equal belief, it is more than just belief as James rightly clarifies, but given FFOZ’s stated hostility toward the Early Church credal statements…
Where is this going? To a butchered paraphrase of Ephesians 2:8-9…
“By God’s favor, you have been saved for eternal life though your allegiance to Yeshua as the Messiah, but that favor is not something you earned. It is the gift of God, not as a result of the works of conversion. So no one, neither Jews nor Gentiles, have anything to boast about.”
“Paul sometimes used the term ‘works’ as shorthand to argue against Gentiles becoming Jewish.” – p. 2.8
Once again, we see the effort to drive a wedge between full conversion (including circumcision) and Torah keeping with respect to “works.” In FFOZ’s warped view, human beings can earn God’s favor (which they say equals grace), and relying on works is ok provided that they are the Torah-proscribed ones. Do you see why they want to downplay Paul’s concerns about legalism?
And what are the “good works” of Ephesians 2:10? What has God prepared in advance for the followers of Jesus?
“These ‘good works’ are the good deeds and acts of obedience described by the Torah’s commandments.” – p. 2.10
Once you divorce “works of the Law” from Torah keeping, the next goal is to transform it into a substitute for the Fruit of the Spirit. Once legalism has been downplayed, Torah keeping can become the new test of true discipleship.
“When a righteous person dies unjustly, they accrue favor with God.”
“This favor can be bestowed on someone else.”
So absurd that followers of Jesus ought to run screaming from this madness.
“Paul refers to the process of becoming Jewish as the ‘works of the law.’”
‘‘’We are not saved by works’ means that we are not saved by becoming Jewish.”
To reject Paul outright is too obvious, redefining him into a pro-Torah keeping champion is a much more dangerous approach.
“Is grace unmerited favor? If not, how does one acquire it?”
“No; grace is earned. One acquires it by doing good and living a difficult life or having it bestowed on them by someone else who earned it.”
Is the utter rejection of the Gospel by FFOZ not fully evident yet? What further evidence is needed?
Conclusion: FFOZ ought to be labeled a dangerous cult for their views of the Trinity alone…
The HaYesod discipleship manual proves once again that they teach equally dangerous and heretical falsehoods about grace, atonement, faith, works, and the Law of Moses.
Paul interrupts his own thought about being a prisoner of Christ Jesus to reflect upon the journey that brought him to the place of being the Apostle to the Gentiles. That act of God's grace was part of the revelation of the mystery of Christ: God's plan to include the Gentiles in his covenant people by calling all men equally to repent and believe in Jesus.
“The mirror analogy describes our experience of life, the universe, and everything. We think of ourselves as seeing the real world, but what are we experiencing? Only electrical sensory inputs channeled through a bio-chemical nervous system connected to a central processing unit of tangled neurons struggling to render some sort of interpretation of those signals. Our brains work like computers to simulate the environment around us. No one sees reality; we see our brain’s best attempt to process sensory input.”- p. 12
“That’s part of what Paul was getting at when he said, ‘For now, we see in a mirror dimly’ (1 Corinthians 13:12). It’s not a polished mirror. We aren’t getting the whole picture. We can see only in part. The world we think of as reality exists only inside our head. Every person creates his or her own personal reality.” – p. 12
“To be in close conversation with Absolute Reality is prophecy at the highest level: the level of Moses. As explained above, the Hebrew world for vision also means mirror. Numbers 12:6 could be translated to say, ‘If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, shall make Myself known to him in a mirror.’ But it’s not a polished mirror. For most prophets, it’s merely a dim reflection – not the personal experience of God that Moses knew. It’s only an imperfect reflection, many times removed.” – p. 18
“Playing on the double meaning of the word – vision and mirror – the Midrash Rabbah contrasts Moses’ exalted level of prophecy against that of the other prophets. All other prophets saw their prophetic visions dimly through nine mirrors.” – p. 18{quoting Leviticus Rabbah 1:14}
Why do I have the feeling that Daniel Lancaster wants me to take the Red Pill? If that Matrix reference didn’t connect with you, in that 1999 movie Keanu Reeve’s character Neo is told by a guide named Morpheus that the reality he thinks that he is living in isn’t real. Not really real anyway, it is just a computer simulation.
It may seem like a post-modern idea to doubt that reality exists beyond our own perception of it, but in reality, apologies for that double-usage, the idea had its heyday in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Empiricist philosophers John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. Long before computer special effects, there were philosophers who doubted that we could have any genuine knowledge of what is real beyond our own perception of it.
The great debate between the Rationalists and the Empiricists that set the stage for modern Western thought is too big a topic for this venue, but one effect of the Empiricist’s rejection of the tenants of Rationalism speaks to the danger of what the First Fruits of Zion are teaching here: Individual realities. If reality is an individual construction, not a thing with its own true nature and existence, notions such as Fact and Truth invariably become fuzzy, antiquated, even ridiculed. There is no longer any Truth, just “my truth” and “your truth”.
This example reminds us of some of the deep contradictions and dissonance within the belief system that FFOZ’s leaders have constructed: On the one hand, they claim to represent 1st century Jewish Christian thought and practice, on the other hand, they embrace the individualistic mystical experience of medieval Kabbalah, which of course is full of concepts that were entirely foreign to the cultural stream of 1st century Judaism and/or Christianity. Why is FFOZ teaching extreme individual relativism? Where is this headed?
The second topic in this lesson that jumps out as deeply dangerous is the insistence drawn from the Leviticus Rabbah (Midrash), that ONLY Moses had full and clear revelation from God. The prophets Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist? They only saw a dim mirror, 9 reflections of reality, not “Absolute Reality” itself. The practical, and intended by FFOZ, effect of this foolishness is to elevate the Torah and diminish all other scriptures to a secondary status.
Why? Because to them Torah is eternal. Torah is the essence of God’s nature. Torah surpasses all. Wait a minute, what about the Word of God? What about Jesus Christ, God of God, God dwelling among us? Surely the Gospels have at least an equal level of clarity and wisdom as that given to Moses? Nope, the Torah Club lesson doesn’t say that, “Our highest level of the revelation of God in this current world does not attain the level of Moses.” (p. 19)
The thing is, the Gospels don’t say any of this, FFOZ is saying it. This is what Jesus says about what he is revealing to his followers:
John 14:6-7,9 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
In addition to diminishing the portions of scripture not given to Moses directly at Sinai, this bizarre “mirror theory” of FFOZ also treats the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church Age as an inferior revelation. How can we know Truth and Reality beyond the Torah? Lancaster tweaks Luke 7:28 on p. 19 to emphasize our limitation in this era, the brackets are his: “Among those born of women, there is no [prophet] greater than John, yet [the prophet] who is least [in the Messianic Era will be] greater than he.” Yes, this is more of Lancaster changing scripture through his own translations to make it fit what FFOZ is teaching, he follows it up with this conclusion: “In the Messianic Era, we will attain the level of Moses – the level of face-to-face.” (p. 19)
Lesson 36 of The Beginning of Wisdom leans heavily on extra-biblical sources {Wisdom of Solomon, Ascension of Isaiah, Talmud, Midrash, and even Irenaeus’ The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching} to sow the seeds of doubt about reality being anything greater than our own perception, and doubts about any/all revelation given by God to anyone other than Moses. In the end, this journey of doubt will leave only one source of Truth standing, by design: the Torah of Moses.
The amazing salvation provided by Jesus Christ has implications that ripple across every area we might consider. In this case, the Apostle Paul focuses on how the Blood of Christ has brought us near to God. Previous barriers have been eliminated. Previous assistance (Temple, Priest, animal sacrifice) has ceased to be needed. Now, because of Jesus, was can commune directly with God.
To illustrate this wondrous development. Paul tells us that Jesus has destroyed the dividing wall that separated into groups (Gentiles, Jewish women, Jewish men, Jewish priests) those who sought God's presence at the Temple.
We don't deserve to be there, but that's not something that God worries about. Instead, God chose to bless us, all of us who believe in Jesus, by offering us a place at the heavenly banquet alongside our Lord and Savior. The kindness of God never ends.
The Apostle Paul offers us hope with a well placed "But." Immediately after proclaiming that humanity is spiritually "dead" Paul continues by telling us that God didn't leave us in that woeful state, but did something about it "because of his great love for us." Love was the answer to humanity's turmoil, God's love. God worked with mercy to provide salvation through Jesus Christ.
In one of the Apostle Paul's beautiful rabbit trails in his letters, he muses on the power of God that both works in/through his people and raised Jesus from the dead. This thought leads Paul to contemplate the glory and authority that belongs to Jesus, as the risen Lord, declaring it to be above all others that every will be.
What is the ultimate goal and purpose of God's grace? There are many amazing purposes that lead to this conclusion, among them the adoption into the family of God of the redeemed, but the endgame of God's grace is unity. Unity of everything under Christ to God. At present, everything suffers from disunity, even the world itself. The final triumph of God's grace will be the full reunion that restores the original created order and purpose of God.
The interactions between Abimelek and Abraham serve as a template for God's teaching on the respect and kindness God expects from his followers with respect to those on the outside-looking-in. Whether those in need are foreigners or outcasts in our own society, the followers of Jesus are called to imitate his compassionate outreach. For Abraham, this meant promising Abimelek that in the future when his descendants had the power to do so, they would treat Abimelek's descendants with kindness.
The modern Church has struggled, especially in the West, to fulfill this calling, we need to set aside our own political or cultural notions and instead truly embody the Fruit of the Spirit.
The Light seen by the Magi of the East is powerfully symbolic in Matthew's Gospel. This astronomical phenomenon brought them on a long journey to see the newly born King of the Jews. For us it serves as a reminder of our need, as disciples of Jesus, to also reflect his light in our world. Our task is to draw those in the darkness to the light of Christ that they too may be saved.
After having appeared to the priest Zechariah in the Temple in Jerusalem to foretell the coming of the great prophet John, God's plan shifts to a teenage girl in the backwater village of Nazareth. The angel Gabriel shares amazing and unprecedented news with Mary, setting up a moment of decision on her part. Will she run away like Jonah, hesitate like Moses or Esther, or will she embrace this responsibility of being the mother to the Messiah?
We all know how Mary responds, an incredible example for us to imitate of hearing the word of the Lord and obeying it.
Joseph of Nazareth was a fairly ordinary man up until the moment he found out that he fiancé Mary was pregnant. Instead of letting pride or anger rule him, Joseph chose to embrace mercy, he was willing to divorce her quietly.
Having demonstrated this strength of character, an angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream to tell him that God had chosen him for a monumental task: Adopt the Messiah.
Joseph may have been an ordinary carpenter, living in the unimportant village of Nazareth, but when he obeyed God's command by marrying Mary, Joseph became an example of faith and obedience that we would all do well to imitate.
Where was Jesus before Bethlehem? For ordinary human beings like us that's a question that doesn't go anywhere, our lives began at a definite point-in-time. But for the Son of God, the long-awaited Messiah, that question opens the door to profound theological truths.
The Apostle John explains in the prologue to his Gospel that the Word (Jesus before the Incarnation) was with God in the beginning, that he is, in fact, God. Not only that, the Word (Jesus), had an equal hand in all of Creation.
That same person, the one who is God and is with God (the wonder of the Trinity allowing such phrases to be true), also came to Earth "in the flesh." The Word became a man, the man Jesus.
The wonders and depths of these truths are great, our response is simple: Worship Christ the newborn King.
When you are someone as important to history as Jesus of Nazareth, the long-awaited Messiah, curiosity about your ancestry is only natural. Matthew begins his Gospel by addressing this desire and does so in unexpected and interesting ways: (1) He starts with the titles of "Messiah," "son of David," and "son of Abraham." Each of these carries weight and adds to the claims about Jesus that Matthew's Gospel will be making. (2) The inclusion of four mothers with strong Gentile connections in a list that otherwise only contains fathers. In so doing Matthew points toward God's concern for the whole world as well as his willingness to utilize people who would otherwise be overlooked, two key themes in the Gospel narratives. (3) Matthew leaves in the list (while some have been left out to form thy symbolic 14,14,14 symmetry) men both good and bad, heroes and villains, making what Jesus will prove himself to be even more remarkable.
In Genesis 14 the story of Abram is dragged into the drama of a regional war when his nephew Lot is taken along with the spoils following one of its battles. Abram responds in faith, boldly moving to rescue Lot. His success leads to an amazing moment, where the victorious Abram tithes from the plunder to Melchizedek, a "priest of God Most High." This offers an amazing insight into God's work in our world beyond the scriptures.
"sacrifices can't be offered today," remember that line
When you see beginner level mistakes in the interpretation of scripture happen repeatedly in published materials from an author or organization, it makes you wonder how such a thing could happen. Then again, in this case, the oddball interpretation serves a larger purpose because it needs to connect to a theory that the author really wants to be true: The Law of Moses is still 100% in effect and one day the entire Temple sacrificial system will be reinstated exactly as written in the Torah.
If you as an individual or an organization need the Law of Moses to be eternal, and you want to make it look like scripture supports this thesis, there are going to be a lot of passages that get twisted into shapes the Church won't recognize. In Lesson 24 of the Beginning of Wisdom, Romans 12:1-2 gets that treatment.
In Romans 12:1-2, the Apostle Paul explains the proper Christian response to God's merciful and glorious will as laid forth in the doxology that ended chapter 11. In 12:1-2 Paul utilizes the metaphorical imagery of the Mosaic sacrificial system to point to something better: the living sacrifice of service and worship that we can make to God.
To serve his purposes, Lancaster declares that the Greek word latreia, which is typically translated into English in this context as "worship", "refers specifically to the sacrificial services." This isn't true, and it is easy to see why. Yes, the Apostle Paul is using the imagery of the sacrificial system to make his point, a common rhetorical technique of building on the familiar (as the non-Jews among his readers would also be familiar with sacrifices made in the Greco-Roman religious rites as virtually all Ancient Near Eastern civilizations utilized such sacrifices) to point to what the New Covenant has replaced that familiar thing with. Rather than animal sacrifices carried out by priests, the familiar pattern, the New Covenant requires our very lives. Not in human blood-spilling sacrifices, but as a living rejection of our own self-centeredness in favor of being servants of God. The emphasis on the living sacrifice is a point of discontinuity with the Mosaic system, not continuity, Lancaster is proclaiming the opposite of what Paul's metaphor is intended to convey.
Contrary to Lancaster, Paul isn't using this imagery because the Roman followers of Jesus lived too far away from Jerusalem to offer up animal sacrifices there. He states a whole litany of various sacrifices that these followers of Jesus are supposedly obligated to keep. That's eisegesis, Lancaster is reading into the text what he wants to find there. The evidence is lacking in the NT or in Early Church writings that Jesus' followers in the Church had any interest in participating in the Mosaic system that continued to function in Jerusalem until its destruction in 70 AD. Nowhere does Paul, or any other NT author, write about how Gentile Christians need to travel to Jerusalem, how they ought to celebrate the Festivals, keep the Sabbath, or keep Kosher. The Jerusalem Council specifically rejects any such mandate {Yes, FFOZ also flips that text around to proclaim that it means the opposite of Luke's intention}. As my exhaustive study of every relevant passage in the book of Acts demonstrates so clearly, the Early Church was not under the tutelage of the synagogues, they were not learning how to live like Jews, it just wasn't happening. {The evidence from Luke's history of that first generation is one of hostility not cooperation, new beginnings and new solutions, not continuation of old forms. Read the analysis for yourself and see.}
As Lancaster shows here in lesson 24 (and goes much further in lesson 25), FFOZ believes and teaches that the Mosaic system is still firmly in effect, that the only reason that Jesus' followers are not obliged this very day to travel to Jerusalem to participate in sacrifices there is that the Temple itself was destroyed. They envision that when the Temple is rebuilt, the Law of Moses will resume in full force for everyone, nothing will have changed because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ with respect to the Law's obligations upon God's people, now including Gentile believers in Jesus. In the future, they believe, everyone will fully keep the unchanging Torah.
In the end, Jesus has provided his followers with something far better than the Law of Moses. The Law had provisions that kept the people away from God's presence: foreigners, women, lepers, eunuchs, and more were kept at a distance from God's presence within the Holy of Holies. Even Jewish men could not directly approach God, only the priests could enter the inner areas of the Temple, and only the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, bringing with him blood for the Ark, could see God's visible glory in that place... But the curtain tore in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51) when Jesus breathed his last. What had kept humanity away from God, our unpaid-for sins, was gone; gone forever. Instead of fear and trembling, instead of extremely limited access and layers of separation between God and his people, because of Jesus we can approach the Father directly, we can cry out, "Abba!" The only priest we will ever need to stand between us and God is our Great High Priest, Jesus Christ.
Until the Incarnation brought about Jesus' death and resurrection, an entire system was needed to allow God's presence to be among a stubborn and sinful people. That system never took away sins (at least Lancaster stresses this point several times), it only held God's wrath at bay lest his people be destroyed before he could show them his coming mercy.
But that age has ended, thanks be to God. It served its purpose in God's will, but that purpose has been surpassed by one that is far greater. Now all the world's people can approach God, all equal before the throne of grace because all have come to it by grace through faith in Jesus.
Dear followers of Jesus, your "worship" offered to God is not a substitution for a sacrifice in the Temple that would otherwise be required of you, it is not an obligation laid upon your shoulders, it is a heartfelt act of gratitude because Jesus has set you free, free to serve the Living God.
For the sake of comparison, here is my sermon from July of 2023 on Romans 12:1-2
What does it mean that God "rested" when his work of Creation was completed? The idea of completion is key to understanding the idea of Sabbath. God "rested" because the Temple of his Creation was fully formed and functioning thus setting the stage for God to sit upon the throne of heaven and begin his rule over what he had made. It is in that vein that Jesus fulfills the Sabbath (and the whole Law of Moses) by completing God's work of redemption, after which he ascended at sat down at the right hand of the Father, thus also indicating that the final victory was forever won.
How do we "rest" by honoring God as Gentile Christians? We let go of our own vain belief in our independence and accept that God is fully and completely in control, that his will for us is perfect, and that he will finish the work that he began in us on the other side of death. In other words, we can rest any time of any day by fully trusting in God.
