Ya know what? No matter how many times I hear people say that the Mosaic Covenant was done away with by Yeshua’s sacrifice and is no longer valid for Christians, I still can’t understand how people who say they read the Bible can believe that hooey.
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Some may say that declaring the old covenant is done away with is not Replacement Theology because that states the Jews are no longer the chosen people of God. And they are right about one thing- Replacement Theology teaches that because the Jews rejected God’s son as their Messiah, God has now rejected them as his chosen people and replaced them with the Born Again Christians.
God gave the Torah to the Jewish people because he CHOSE them to bring the Torah to the world (Exodus 19:6), so when you say that covenant was broken, you are saying that the Torah is no longer required by God. And, if that is true, then the Jewish people are no longer required by God, as well, and that means they aren’t really the chosen ones any more.
Saying that the old covenant is broken, it’s Replacement Theology with a different spin, but the same drek any way you look at it.
Now, back to the idea the old covenant was broken.
There are actually 5 covenants that are in the “Jewish” Bible, so which is the “old” one? I mean, they’ all old!
My understanding is when people say the old covenant is broken they are referring to the Mosaic Covenant, which is also referred to as the Laws of Moses.
I’m sorry, but I have to say that’s another thing that so many people just don’t understand correctly: the “laws of Moses” are NOT Moses’ laws, they are God’s laws! God dictated to Moses, who wrote them down so we could know exactly what they are.
When a company CEO issues a new standard, he dictates it to his secretary who then types it up and distributes it throughout the corporation. So, when people read it, do they say it is from the secretary?
I don’t think so, and in the same way, what is called by both Jews and Christians the “Laws of Moses” are not from Moses.
They are from God, and people need to know this because God doesn’t change his mind or go back on his word.
Here is something that God told Isaiah to tell the Jewish people, and you find it in Chapter 54, verses 6-10, which is where God is telling the people about how he did abandon them, but not forever (Complete Jewish Bible):
For Adonai has called you back like a wife abandoned and grief-stricken;
“A wife married in her youth cannot be rejected,” says your God.
“Briefly I abandoned you, but with great compassion I am taking you back.
I was angry for a moment and hid my face from you; but with everlasting grace I will have compassion on you,” says Adonai your Redeemer.
“For me this is like Noach’s flood. Just as I swore that no flood like Noach’s
would ever again cover the earth, so now I swear that never again
will I be angry with you or rebuke you. For the mountains may leave and the hills be removed, but my grace will never leave you, and my covenant of peace will not be removed,” says Adonai, who has compassion on you.
Clearly, God is telling the Jewish people, my people, that he did abandon them because of their sinfulness, and many Christians have been taught this means God divorced Israel. But abandonment is not divorce.
In the Torah (Deut. 24), it says once a man divorces his wife and she remarries, then later she is again divorced or becomes a widow, he cannot marry her again. This law has been used to justify that the covenant between God and Israel is forever broken, by God’s own law!
Through the Prophets God often accuses Israel of prostituting herself with other gods, but he didn’t say he ever divorced her.
But, in Jeremiah 3, God says he DID divorce the Northern Tribes of Israel, then he later divorced the Southern Tribes, as well, because they didn’t learn from their sister.
So, does that mean these people who say the covenant is broken are correct?
Well, it is undeniable that Israel (the wife) broke covenant with God- more than once, in fact- but before Jeremiah he never divorced us, just left us alone, as he says here in Isaiah. However, come the time of Jeremiah, when the Northern Kingdom is gone and Judea is on the verge of destruction, as well, does this truly mean the Jews have been divorced?
I’d have to say…Yes. I mean, God himself tells us that he divorced us, so how can that be questioned?
BUT…does that mean God cannot take us back and remarry us?
Well, the Torah says a divorced woman cannot remarry her first husband if she had been married to someone else, so the question of the covenant being forever broken or just “on hold” comes down to this: did Israel ever remarry?
Throughout the Prophets, God accuses us of prostituting ourselves with other gods, but there is nothing in the Bible that says Israel ever married, i.e., made a new covenant with any other gods.
So, does the Bible say it is OK to remarry a divorced wife who became a prostitute but never remarried?
Does the name Hosea ring a bell?
In fact, God not only told him to marry Gomer, who was already a prostitute, but when she abandoned him and went back to the streets, so to speak, he was told by God to take her back. The Bible doesn’t mention that they were ever divorced.
So, let’s put this together: the Torah states it is unlawful for a man to remarry his “ex” if she had been married AFTER the divorce, and became single again. Israel never remarried– there is no biblical evidence that Israel ever re-covenanted with anyone or any other god. Ever.
Yes, we broke covenant with the one, true God, and often, but we never made a covenant with anyone else, which means we never remarried.
Do you know what that means, you who say God divorced Israel so the covenant is no longer valid?
It means you’re dead wrong.
Yes, we broke our side, and yes, God divorced us, but we never remarried, and God never broke his side of the covenant, so what had been broken was repaired when we repented and God took us back in, just as Hosea took Gomer back in.
Yes, God abandoned us to our own sins as often as we deserved, but there was never any rejection of us as God’s chosen people; yes, God divorced us at one time but since we never remarried, there is no Torah law preventing God from remarrying us; and there was never any dissolution of the covenant God made with us.
One last point: because each successive covenant was built upon and included the previous one, the most recent covenant God made with the Jewish people contains all the covenants God made with the Jewish people, so what would that mean if God’s covenant with the Jewish people was broken completely?
It means the Torah is obsolete for everyone, including the Jews, so for some 2000 years what we have been doing we didn’t have to.
It also means God has no nation of priests, so the world has no intermediary with God, and that includes Yeshua.
It includes Yeshua because God’s promise to send a Messiah is part of the covenant he made with us, and that means no covenant, no Messiah.
Finally, if the covenant between God and the Jews is broken, that means there is no “New” covenant, which God made with the Jewish people through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31), a covenant that Christianity says it is based upon.
In other words, if the covenant between God and the Jewish people is truly broken, there is no salvation.
Fortunately, God never broke covenant with us, so all of this is not a concern: the Torah is still valid for anyone who worships God and wants to follow in Yeshua’s footsteps.
Israel, although once divorced, is remarried to God, who through the Prophets has always promised that no matter how mad he gets at us, which we always deserve, he will always take us back (as he said he would through Isaiah).
And it means that anyone who says God has rejected the Jewish people and the covenants he made with them, is calling God a liar.
And I don’t think that will go over too well with the Big Guy upstairs.
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That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and I wish you an early Shabbat Shalom!
