First Love

Narrator: Welcome to First Love with Dr. Robyn Kassas and Dr. Nathan Kassas, where faith meets real life. In this weekly broadcast, you'll discover practical and spiritual keys to reclaim God's story in your life, deepen your relationship with Jesus, and encounter him as your first love, whether for the first time or all over again. No topic is off-limits as we make Jesus real, relevant, and relational. Stay with us; your journey back to First Love starts now.

Nathan Kassas: Well, hello everybody, and welcome back to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I have two very special guests with me today, continuing on our journey. I have Dr. Tony Kassas. Dr. Tony, how are you?

Tony Kassas: Good to be back.

Nathan Kassas: And I have Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, how are you?

Robyn Kassas: I'm fine, and I'm not really a special guest because I was part of the original plan.

Nathan Kassas: Yeah, but you're special to me.

Tony Kassas: You're very special to me, sweetie.

Robyn Kassas: That introduces the original plan with a new look.

Nathan Kassas: There you go. We are talking about the old gate. We started this journey yesterday into the next gate of our 15-gate series according to Nehemiah's rebuild, and we began to expound on what this represents prophetically as well as theologically and even physiologically.

Dr. Tony, we were talking about how the "old" can sometimes have a connotation to it around departing from the law, and how we have this liberal mindset that we have a license now that God's given us grace to just be able to think and do and feel, and it doesn't apply to us.

Tony Kassas: It's the ancient argument: are we under law, or are we under grace? How do you answer that? I simply say we're under both. We fulfill the law by grace. That's it. We fulfill the law by grace. That's where Abraham got it right.

Robyn Kassas: We are led by the spirit to fulfill the law because it has to be a heart change, not a head change. That's where you could come in and bring some science in this.

Nathan Kassas: I will, very soon. I just want to build a little backstory here for those that are listening. The old gate is actually coming from the Hebrew word "Sha'ar." Sha'ar means gate, and this actually is also known as the Jeshanah gate. If you read in scripture the Jeshanah gate, or if you do some research, the old gate and the Jeshanah gate are interchangeable.

The root word here in Hebrew, "Jeshanah," is carrying the sense of old, aged, or long-standing. The precise historical identification of the gate to this day is actually debated, but it distinguishes a very important prophetic concept here. The Jeshanah gate, or the old gate, talks about things that have stood the test of time, things that have not been corrupted by the culture of today, the influence of today, or the emotions of today.

That is God's word. God's word stands the test of time, both Rhema and Logos. When we're coming back to the ancient, the ancient gates are the eternal gates. It began, but it's eternal, and it's never changed, and it's never gone off course. Dr. Robyn, you wanted to bring out that this is why God is doing it, because it creates a stability in our world that we need.

Robyn Kassas: These ancient gates or this path gives us somewhere stable to stand while everything around us is moving. This is so important because it has been used as a legalism to hurt, to control, and so many people have to be healed of this very thing. The repair has to come. It has to come.

That's what God wants to happen with us. We need to be repaired. We need to come back to this place to be repaired and to be whole and to return to the original plan. Don't be afraid of that because this will bring you that identity that God wanted you to have in the first place before it was interfered with by man.

Nathan Kassas: Wow. Dr. Tony, there's a scripture here in Romans 4 I want you to read out. We're going to talk about Abraham for a second because Abraham is a good example here. He goes through body changes, circumstance changes, but yet the promise of God from the beginning to Abraham remains the stable reference point.

I want to help someone in a counseling perspective here. The stability that you're looking for for your life does not come from a behavioral change. It doesn't come from a personality change. It even doesn't come from a transformation. The stability of your life is the promise of God.

In physiology, we have to have stable reference points. We talk about homeostasis and we talk about those changing fluctuations in the body, but we always have stable reference points that our body adapts to. That fight or flight response is an adaptability. In here, I see Paul is saying in Romans that the reference point has to be the foundation of God's promise in your life.

Robyn Kassas: This is the original plan.

Nathan Kassas: What he said in the beginning has to be the thing that doesn't change. Why don't you read Romans 4 and give us what Paul says here about Abraham.

Tony Kassas: In verse 19: "And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body (this is Abraham) already dead. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief." Abraham struggled with white lies, family disruption, it was a dysfunctional family—Hagar and all that—but yet God was true to his promise, and that is, "I will give you a son from your own body, and he'll be the heir."

It says here he didn't waver, but when you read Genesis, he wavered a lot. He eventually got to fulfill the law—what God had promised—by faith because when the Lord told him, "I'm going to make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven," the scripture says and Abraham believed God, and God accounted that as righteousness. That's what got him through the gate of salvation. He became a sheep.

Robyn Kassas: Think about the fact that that was the original plan of God for Abraham. Sometimes we think that God is stopping plans and making new plans.

Tony Kassas: No, God spoke all of this universe into existence.

Robyn Kassas: A rethink has to take place for the repair in order to be redeemed. We need to do this. The reason why we need to do this is because we change plans. We start another plan because we think that now God is telling us that plan didn't work that well, so we need to start a new plan. No, the original plan never stopped, and that's why we have to come back.

Nathan Kassas: Sometimes God's answer to your newest question is the old instruction that he originally gave you.

Robyn Kassas: Totally. Not that it's old, but it's withstood. The reason why we're in this state is because people have interfered with God's plan. This you have to see. This is not God stopping what he promised. This is not God changing his mind. This is man.

Nathan Kassas: I'd like to bring in what I said a couple of Sundays ago: there is a "because" to every issue, but it's not God's because. It's your because. He never changed. The because is from you.

Abraham is not denying changing conditions of his body. He's not denying changing conditions of his age, but he's refusing to make the changing conditions more authoritative than the character and promise of God.

That's what remembering and returning does in our life. Things change, life changes, but his promise doesn't change. I think you need to think about that as we go into the break because even though you might be changing, you might be getting older, and things might be getting a little bit harder, his promise still stands.

Narrator: Looking for a real relationship with Jesus? Join Dr. Robyn Kassas and Dr. Nathan Kassas every weekday for First Love, where prophetic insight meets real theology. Learn how God's voice activates your mind, body, soul, and spirit, helping you renew your mind, transform your life, and return to the one who loved you first. Catch First Love Monday through Friday, 5:00 to 5:30 PM. Learn more at torcc.org. The one who loved you first is still loving you best.

Nathan Kassas: Alrighty everybody, we are back and we're going to dive straight into this powerful scripture that aligns with what Dr. Robyn was saying about returning. I'm going to throw it to you, Dr. Tony, to read this scripture. It's in Jeremiah 6:16.

Tony Kassas: Just a principle here for our listeners, especially the new ones: the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed, and the New is in the Old concealed. So when Dr. Robyn opens this up, that principle will apply. Verse 16 says: "Thus says the Lord: Stand in the ways and see and ask for the old paths where the good way is, and walk in it. Then you will find rest for your souls. But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'"

Robyn Kassas: Wow. I want to come in on this and say this is not an enemy. The law is not an enemy. Man has made it an enemy. That's why they said, "We will not walk in it," because it became an enemy. The Old Testament and the law, we need to learn this is the character and the personality of God coming forth.

I want to say to you tonight: if you have been affected by the law, you need to go back and read that scripture because it's very important to you. It says here the promise: you will find rest for your soul in the law if you engage and embrace it by the spirit of God. This is your promise, and you will find rest for your soul. It's a good way, it says, walk in it.

This is what we're talking about: the old path, or the old gate. This is ancient. This was placed in you as a part of the original plan. God's law was put and placed in you as a part of the original plan, and he created you with that in mind.

Nathan Kassas: I think it's powerful here because Jeremiah is literally talking to them at a crux before they get led off. He's saying time is short, and if you want to get back on track, you've got to come back to what was originally put in place. You can't allow the trends of today to convince you that there's a new way or an alternate path.

For the believers out there, we like to add plan Bs onto God's movement in our life. We think, "Well, that didn't really work out, so God's original word didn't end up working out how I thought it would, so he's going to plan B it." No, there's only one road, and that makes him faithful to his word. If that happens in your life where you add a side road, then you're questioning his character.

Robyn Kassas: When you turn around and make a statement like you just said, "Well, it didn't really turn out the way I thought it would," you have interpreted your plan, but you didn't interpret God's plan.

Nathan Kassas: Oh my God. Dr. Robyn, you're calling me to go into something in the next episode. We're going to unpack this brain mechanism called prediction. This is what we do. We hear God's word, the real truth of the ancient word, but then our brain predicts how it should and how it could be accomplished.

The Lord said to me on Sunday, "There are two things I want to deal with in your prediction mechanism. It's what should happen or what could happen." One is fear, and one is telling God what to do. Because I know a lot in my education, he said, "Nathan, you tend to tell me what should happen."

Robyn Kassas: Coming back to this, I'm sensing in my spirit now: if you've been wounded by the law, you will be healed by the law. You have the Holy Spirit in you, and he is the repairer. He's the one that will repair what man has done because of Jesus on the cross.

I'm telling you, if you've been wounded, get made whole by knowing that God put that in you. Not man, God put it in you because he put it in your heart. If you allow that heart of flesh to come forward, you won't be fearing the law. You will be embracing his laws. That's the difference: embracing his laws, not "the law."

Nathan Kassas: That's so powerful. To give a little example here: in nature, a mature tree produces new leaves and fruit, but it remains anchored in its older roots.

Robyn Kassas: Yes, the roots are established.

Nathan Kassas: We are called to bear fruit. Jesus uses the analogy of trees all the time. Sometimes he curses the root that isn't founded on truth, but other times he wants to re-establish the present-day power of the root that is founded on truth. Sometimes we're not bearing fruit because we're not connected to the roots.

We have to get reconnected to the roots. There are a lot of people out there who go on this journey called deconstruction. They deconstruct their faith because they want to test it, but they end up actually falling into the trap of walking away. I've realized it's because they were never founded on truth. The roots have not gone down deep, and the foundation has not been laid properly.

This ancient path, this eternal path that's been there from the go, is the Lord saying, "I want you to remember the truth from the beginning that I've said about your identity, about your life. I know your name, your frame, and your pain, and I won't give you anything that you can't handle."

Robyn Kassas: You just said, "I want you to remember the truth." What is the Lord saying? Jesus is truth. That's what he's telling you to remember. He fulfilled the law. Remember him, and you will not fear the law.

Nathan Kassas: Matthew 5:17: "I did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to be the fulfillment of them." In those days, to be Messiah, you had to quote from the law, the Tanakh, and you had to quote from the prophets. Jesus literally says in that, "I didn't come to abolish the law or the prophets, but I came to be the fulfillment of them," and the word there in the Greek means the literal reality of them in the flesh. He's not saying, "I've told you to get rid of Moses," he's saying, "I am what Moses talked about in the flesh."

Tony Kassas: That's exactly right. You said one time in a sermon: when things come to the cross, they either get done away with or they get fulfilled or heightened. The Lord said, "It's been written: you shall not commit adultery." That law comes to the cross, and Jesus takes it up a level. He's not saying just don't commit adultery, but don't even think about adultery with your eyes. Now the law is higher, so that gets heightened.

The law of the Sabbath comes to the cross, and Jesus says, "I am Lord of the Sabbath," so now every day is a Sabbath to the Lord, but we still honor the Sabbath. That sort of gets heightened as well. All the ceremonial laws come to the cross, and they get completely abolished. That's what I meant by everything has to go through the cross.

Nathan Kassas: So the law is not obsolete. It just gets fulfilled.

Tony Kassas: You often get asked the question, we as pastors, like: what does the scripture say? "I will write my laws on their hearts." That's partly why the Holy Spirit was given to us. I ask the question to people: why do you still even think about lying? Why hasn't Holy Spirit written the law not to lie on your heart?

Robyn Kassas: I can look at that and say...