Live class based loosely on the written PDF version available at: http://www.graftedin.com/s/02ChaggimPesach.pdf

Live class based loosely on the written PDF version available at: http://www.graftedin.com/s/02ChaggimPesach.pdf

Live class based loosely on the written PDF version available at: http://www.graftedin.com/s/02ChaggimPesach.pdf

Scriptural Agreement There is little or no disagreement over the "concepts" explained by these mitzvot (Love God; love your neighbor) used by Yeshua and (at least the former) known in Jewish circles as the "Sh'ma" ("Hear!"). Every Jews knows that this is not the whole of the Torah, simply the hallmark of the Torah, the "cornerstone" of keeping the mitzvot. This is what Yeshua meant when he said that "all of the Law hangs on these two.” Anyone, who correctly understands these two commands, is well on his way to keeping any of the rest that may apply to him (notice the context of the complete dialogue transaction, in the corresponding Scripture of Mark 12:28-34. The teacher of the Law is said to have been "not far from the Kingdom of God [vs.34]). Do you see that the "new command" that Yeshua gave is the essence of the "covenant" that he ratified with them? Yeshua was stressing covenant faithfulness as it originates with a renewed heart. Remember, we learned in Part One that “old covenant” was really Rav Sha'ul’s shorthand for “an unregenerate state of being.” Thus, Yeshua was imparting the practical knowledge of the ability and responsibility to walk into Torah now that God has opened the eyes of the blind! Be not controlled by your old nature (old covenant, hardened heart), rather, be ye controlled by the Spirit! Commandment and covenant are terms of equal importance and usage. Yeshua's command was not new in this sense, only renewed as I stated in Part One. The covenant with Isra'el is not new, only renewed so as to accentuate the personal gift of the Ruach HaKodesh as he has come to dwell inside of the individual, per the promise of Joel and the fulfillment of the Book of Acts. When we wish to demonstrate love to God we must envision love in God’s terms and that means to keep the commandment[s] or covenant[s]. To be sure, love without deed is empty love. Behold: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." (John 14:15, KJV). And again here in James (James 2:8-17, RSV) What makes this passage here in James so interesting is that James correctly ties together the Torah principles of LOVE, FAITH, and COMMANDMENT KEEPING. In their genuine forms these three are inseparable. We have seen that Yeshua quotes the two most important Torah themes in his answer given above (Love God, Love your neighbor). And we have now seen that James ties these two in to FAITH as well. The two that Yeshua quoted are not the only ones that make a person Torah-observant, yet they genuinely verify his change in status as a true (faith-filled) follower of HaShem. How so? For if one truly loves HaShem, he will have no problem falling in love with Yeshua. Moreover, if he truly loves HaShem and Yeshua, he will have no problem loving his neighbor. The secret is unhindered love for HaShem, and all that he authoritatively represents! Anyone who genuinely loves the Father and the Son will have no problem wanting to keep the mitzvot. There is an unbreakable tie between the Father, the Son, your neighbor, and the mitzvot! Again, John agrees (1 John 2:3-11, RSV). Conclusion to Part Three: Love is what ties all of the covenants together, and love has always been the desired response of the Father. Avraham clearly loved God, Moshe clearly loved God, and Dah-vid clearly loved God. Yeshua would not come and teach anything less than what has already been taught in his Father's Torah: LOVE We see that the Torah is the universal document for both peoples and it outlines God’s plan for all mankind, both Jews and Gentiles. The “mystery of the Gospel” is that Isra'el is actually comprised of both Jews and Gentiles! To be grafted into the family of God is to join oneself to a Jewish Olive Tree without having to succumb to any kind of man-made conversion policy whatsoever! To this end, one becomes submissive to the instructions and righteousness of God, and inherits the blessings of God, whether he is of Gentile or Jewish stock!

Part Three: Yeshua's NEW Commandment "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." (John 13:34, NIV) Hasn't the Torah always commanded us to love one another? Absolutely. Take a look into the book of Leviticus: "V’ahavta l’reyacha kamochah." [you shall love your neighbor as yourself] (Vayikra [Leviticus] 19:18b, Online TaNaKH) The noticeable contrast in the p’shat (simple view, raw data) here is that love is shown to be compared with "yourself" whereas Yeshua compared love with "as I loved you.” In Yeshua’s quote, the shift in emphasis has moved from myself to the Messiah. So how are we to understand Yeshua's comparison and clarification of this basic command? How was Yeshua's love demonstrated to us? Again, let us allow the Torah answer: "And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour." (Ephesians 5:2, KJV) And again, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;" (Eph 5:25, KJV) We see that Yeshua's love has been fully manifest for us in that he willingly laid down his life for us. To be sure the Torah teaches: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13, KJV) So we should be in basic agreement that Yeshua's personal example of giving his life is what was "new" about this command. But is this a completely "new" Torah feature? After all Moshe was willing to die for the sake of all Isra'el and even before that Yitz’chak (Isaac) was willing to die at the hand of his father Avraham. Yes, this type of love was "hinted at" all throughout the sacrificial system in the Torah, but was ONLY fully demonstrated in Yeshua's personal example. But was Yeshua demonstrating this love on his own accord? Wasn't he in fact operating under the Perfect Will of the Father? Of course he was. Also, he did love us enough to willingly lay down his life for us. So it is both Yeshua's will to die and his Father's will that he should die. Father and Son demonstrated love in perfect harmony. In order to further understand Yeshua's willingness we only need to see what he also said about the love that has been demonstrated as first originating with his Father: "And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare [it]: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." (John 17:26, KJV) But notice the bulk of 1 John chapter 4: (read 1 John 4:7-21, RSV) Any attempt to recognize Yeshua's love apart from recognizing and understanding God's love is not possible. The love of the Father and the love of the Son are inseparably tied together. But of course you already know this. So allow me to come full circle by quoting what Yeshua referred to as the two greatest commands in the Bible.

Covenant Status: Earned or Freely Given? So, is covenant status something we can earn on our own? Is there a commandment that we can keep that will turn God’s Hand in our favor? We affirm that there is nothing that we can do to earn covenant status. God freely bestows covenant status upon those who surrender to his Salvation-working Power—the Spirit of Messiah Yeshua, Savior of Isra'el and of the whole world. Some might argue that grace is all we need. For them a Torah does not even figure into the scenario. ...grace is needed when sin blinds our eyes to believe that covenant status is granted on the basis of ethnicity, whether natural or achieved. Historic Isra'el of the 1st century genuinely believed that by virtue of being born Jewish they were automatically guaranteed covenant status. What is more, from their point of view, if someone from non-Jewish stock wished to join the covenant people all he or she needed to do was convert to Judaism, hence my use of the terms “natural” and “achieved” respectively. Natural Isra'elites—those native-born—held to the prevailing theology that Torah was given to maintain the covenant status already acquired at birth. The “ger” (Hebrew for stranger, alien, etc.) was deemed as someone in the process of becoming a Jew via the vehicle of proselyte conversion. Rav Sha'ul went to great lengths to refute such teaching in his letters both to the Romans and to the Galatians. To be sure, if we apply this hermeneutic to those letters, instead of adopting a “grace versus law” hermeneutic, the Apostle begins to make more sense theologically and historically. I am convinced more now than ever that a foundational understanding of Paul’s writings must take into account the historical fact that 1st century Isra'el reckoned herself as right-standing before HaShem on the basis of ethnicity (read as “being Jewish”) alone! She did not feel that keeping the Torah equaled positional (forensic) righteousness; she concluded—albeit incorrectly—that keeping Torah was the vehicle that one used to maintain covenant status already achieved either at birth or by conversion. Conclusion to Part Two In closing, we affirm with perfect faith that genuine and lasting covenant status is granted to the individual who eventually exercises genuine faith in the Promised Word of HaShem—namely, the Messiah Yeshua. Such status is offered freely to both Jew and Gentile. Jewish people with natural lineage tracing back to Ya’akov are in fact born with a “corporate covenant status” given freely by God and based on his promises made to Avraham. However, this does not automatically grant them the status of right standing in a positional sense. There is no such thing as “involuntary corporate righteousness” in the Torah of HaShem. For the native-born Jewish person, the proper sequence for the covenants is demonstrated when such an individual “graduates” from [mere] corporate faith and belonging towards personal faith in God. To be sure, it is only when God does his monergistic work of opening the eyes of the blind and drawing the individual into his covenant of faith that the person attains genuine and lasting covenant status—the kind of covenant status that is worthy of a place in the ‘Olam Haba (Age to Come). What place hath the Torah in the life of such an individual? The Torah comes alongside of the Promise (covenant status) and acts as a guarantor that the individual will also achieve behavioral righteousness, thus placing him or her on a direct collision course with the blessings of HaShem! Far from frustrating the grace of God, Torah compliments the grace of God!

Covenant and Commandment In Hebraic thinking the term "covenant" is synonymous with the term "commandment.” I am of the understanding that in the Bible these terms and concepts are interwoven in such a way as to render them inseparable. But can my postulation be substantiated Scripturally? In ancient suzerain treaties, if the situation changed for one party, a covenant could be amended (or renewed) to adapt to the new circumstance. But only what no longer fit would be revised; everything else remained in effect exactly as before. When looking at the Mosaic Covenant, was there something “wrong’ between the parties of the existing or previous covenants that necessitated a renewal on God's part? Let's read the passage for the answer: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord..." (Jer. 31:31-32, RSV) Scripture goes on to describe that HaShem found fault with “them,” viz, Isra'el. How did they "break" the first covenant? —By not keeping the commandments. Observe: (Deuteronomy 7:6-14, RSV) Ariel, are you suggesting that mere commandment keeping is tantamount to covenant faithfulness? In “Bible times” is that all it took to be found righteous in God’s sight? Before I get labeled as a legalist, let me demonstrate what I understand to be God's view of TRUE commandment keeping: ‘For those who trust HaShem for the promises, the proper order for faith and obedience is set by the sequence in which the covenants were given. In other words, faith must precede obedience. But the kind of faith accepted by HaShem is one, which naturally flows into obedience. True obedience never comes before faith, nor is it an addition to faith. It is always the result of true biblical faith. To rephrase this in terms of the covenants: the covenant of promise (Avraham) must come before the covenant of obedience (Moshe). If we were to put Moshe first, attempting to secure those promises by obedience, we would be going against HaShem’s order. (This, by the way, is the key to unlocking the difficult midrash used by Sha’ul in Galatians 4:21-31.) All we could hope for would be a measure of physical protection and a knowledge of spiritual things. But we could not receive justification or a personal relationship with the Holy One through obedience to the Torah; it all had to start with faith. Avraham came before Moshe, but Moshe did not cancel out Avraham! The two complemented each other—as long as they came in the proper order.’ We see that "commandment breaking" was the reason that God needed to renew the covenant. In a sense, when Isra'el walked away from the covenant—when she forsook the commandments of God—she was declaring to God that she had no interest in him and ultimately this unfaithfulness was seen as grounds for divorce. Observe: Isaiah 54:1-10 Jeremiah 3:1-20: God is the husband and Isra’el is the wife. Verse 1a reinforces what Moshe stated in Deuteronomy. Verses 1b through 7 show that the unfaithful bride did not remain pure, but adulterated with another "lover,” spurning the sorrow and fury of her first husband HaShem. In verse 8, after desiring her to return to him, HaShem hands her bill of divorcement, based on her refusal to remain a faithful bride to him alone. In verses11-15 the faithful husband pleads with his unfaithful wife to return to him and find forgiveness but she persists in her adultery. Thus, the unfaithful bride walked out on the marriage covenant to pursue other sexual interests, causing the faithful husband to write her a bill of divorcement. Did HaShem wish to write her this bill? According to Genesis he desires unity for eternity. But hard-heartedness drove his wife to force, as it were, God’s hand of divorce upon her. She willingly left God; he always remained faithful waiting for her return.

Covenant Status: Earned or Freely Given? So, is covenant status something we can earn on our own? Is there a commandment that we can keep that will turn God’s Hand in our favor? We affirm that there is nothing that we can do to earn covenant status. God freely bestows covenant status upon those who surrender to his Salvation-working Power—the Spirit of Messiah Yeshua, Savior of Isra'el and of the whole world. Some might argue that grace is all we need. For them a Torah does not even figure into the scenario. What shall we “Torah-keepers” say then? I like to imagine that grace steps in when we misunderstand the Torah as a document of legalism. Not all who approach God approach him correctly. Not all understand his gracious ways. Mankind has a human tendency to pervert God's gracious document into something it was not meant to be used for. To be sure, the Torah cannot, in and of itself, bring to the goal, the participant and his conscience (cf. 1 Cor. 2:14; Gal. 3:21b; Hebrews 7:11, 19). In fact, to use a “kal v’chomer argument” (light and heavy, argument from a weighty premise to a less weighty one), if actually participating in the sacrifices of ancient Isra'el could not bring about covenant membership, then surely all attempts to follow Torah today will ultimately result in failure without regeneration from the inside: “For the Torah has in it a shadow of the good things to come, but not the actual manifestation of the originals. Therefore, it can never, by means of the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, bring to the goal those who approach the Holy Place to offer them. Otherwise, wouldn't the offering of those sacrifices have ceased? For if the people performing the service had been cleansed once and for all, they would no longer have sins on their conscience.” (Messianic Jews [Hebrews] 10:1, 2) Only the Spirit of the Holy One, writing the Torah on the heart and mind, can bring the participant to the intended goal of surrendering to the Mashiach. With our natural mind, we read, "do this…" and "don’t do that…” and we have a tendency to misunderstand the grace behind the words. Yeshua came to explain the gracious intent of every command, by explaining the primary thrust of the Torah in the first place: leading its reader to a genuine trusting faith in the Messiah found therein—namely himself! Moreover, grace is needed when sin blinds our eyes to believe that covenant status is granted on the basis of ethnicity, whether natural or achieved. Historic Isra'el of the 1st century genuinely believed that by virtue of being born Jewish they were automatically guaranteed covenant status. What is more, from their point of view, if someone from non-Jewish stock wished to join the covenant people all he or she needed to do was convert to Judaism, hence my use of the terms “natural” and “achieved” respectively. Natural Isra'elites—those native-born—held to the prevailing theology that Torah was given to maintain the covenant status already acquired at birth. The “ger” (Hebrew for stranger, alien, etc.) was deemed as someone in the process of becoming a Jew via the vehicle of proselyte conversion. Rav Sha'ul went to great lengths to refute such teaching in his letters both to the Romans and to the Galatians. To be sure, if we apply this hermeneutic to those letters, instead of adopting a “grace versus law” hermeneutic, the Apostle begins to make more sense theologically and historically. I am convinced more now than ever that a foundational understanding of Paul’s writings must take into account the historical fact that 1st century Isra'el reckoned herself as right-standing before HaShem on the basis of ethnicity (read as “being Jewish”) alone! She did not feel that keeping the Torah equaled positional (forensic) righteousness; she concluded—albeit incorrectly—that keeping Torah was the vehicle that one used to maintain covenant status already achieved either at birth or by conversion.

Part Two: Covenant and Commandment In Hebraic thinking the term "covenant" is synonymous with the term "commandment.” I am of the understanding that in the Bible these terms and concepts are interwoven in such a way as to render them inseparable. But can my postulation be substantiated Scripturally? In ancient suzerain treaties, if the situation changed for one party, a covenant could be amended (or renewed) to adapt to the new circumstance. But only what no longer fit would be revised; everything else remained in effect exactly as before. When looking at the Mosaic Covenant, was there something “wrong’ between the parties of the existing or previous covenants that necessitated a renewal on God's part? Let's read the passage for the answer: (Jer. 31:31-32, RSV) Scripture goes on to describe that HaShem found fault with “them,” viz, Isra'el. How did they "break" the first covenant? —By not keeping the commandments. Observe Deuteronomy 7:6-14, RSV. Before I get labeled as a legalist, let me demonstrate what I understand to be God's view of TRUE commandment keeping: ‘For those who trust HaShem for the promises, the proper order for faith and obedience is set by the sequence in which the covenants were given. In other words, faith must precede obedience. But the kind of faith accepted by HaShem is one, which naturally flows into obedience. True obedience never comes before faith, nor is it an addition to faith. It is always the result of true biblical faith. To rephrase this in terms of the covenants: the covenant of promise (Avraham) must come before the covenant of obedience (Moshe). If we were to put Moshe first, attempting to secure those promises by obedience, we would be going against HaShem’s order. (This, by the way, is the key to unlocking the difficult midrash used by Sha’ul in Galatians 4:21-31.) All we could hope for would be a measure of physical protection and a knowledge of spiritual things. But we could not receive justification or a personal relationship with the Holy One through obedience to the Torah; it all had to start with faith. Avraham came before Moshe, but Moshe did not cancel out Avraham! The two complemented each other—as long as they came in the proper order.’ We see that "commandment breaking" was the reason that God needed to renew the covenant. In a sense, when Isra'el walked away from the covenant—when she forsook the commandments of God—she was declaring to God that she had no interest in him and ultimately this unfaithfulness was seen as grounds for divorce. Observe: Isaiah 54:1-10: the faithful husband (HaShem) is seen promising the unfaithful wife (Isra’el) reconcilement unto himself after a brief period of rejection (verses 7, 8). Why did he reject her? Because she willfully walked out of the covenant agreement in order to pursue alien love, causing HaShem to act in accordance with his own Torah and give her a bill of divorcement (see Deut. 24:1-4). Jeremiah 3:1-20: God is the husband and Isra’el is the wife. Verse 1a reinforces what Moshe stated in Deuteronomy. Verses 1b through 7 show that the unfaithful bride did not remain pure, but adulterated with another "lover,” spurning the sorrow and fury of her first husband HaShem. In verse 8, after desiring her to return to him, HaShem hands her bill of divorcement, based on her refusal to remain a faithful bride to him alone. In verses11-15 the faithful husband pleads with his unfaithful wife to return to him and find forgiveness but she persists in her adultery. Thus, the unfaithful bride walked out on the marriage covenant to pursue other sexual interests, causing the faithful husband to write her a bill of divorcement. Did HaShem wish to write her this bill? According to Genesis he desires unity for eternity. But hard-heartedness drove his wife to force, as it were, God’s hand of divorce upon her. She willingly left God; he always remained faithful waiting for her return.

Part One: What is meant by the term “Old Covenant?” Perhaps the best way to approach this topic is to first unravel the “mystery” behind Rav Sha'ul’s use of the term old covenant, found exclusively in 2 Corinthians 3:14 : “What is more, their minds were made stonelike; for to this day the same veil remains over them when they read the Old Covenant; it has not been unveiled, because only by the Messiah is the veil taken away.” The word "new" in the covenant spoken about in Jeremiah is actually the Hebrew word "chadashah," which can at times refer not to something brand new in creation but rather something that has undergone a reformation in character and purpose, or a simple refreshment on a different scale. On one level Jeremiah is describing a “renewal” of some existing item. On the other hand, when it comes to the regeneration of the soul of a man, viz, “old covenant” man vs. “new covenant” man, the change is quite radical: all things do indeed “become new.” Behaviorally speaking, the change can at times be quite dramatic, but forensically speaking, the change is as different as life and death! The New Covenant to be ratified on a national level with Isra'el will envision the former promises made with Avraham, Moshe, and Dah-vid. It is not necessary to overturn a previous covenant in order for a later one to find fulfillment. To be sure, Galatians teaches explicitly that a later covenant cannot nullify a previous one (see Gal. 3:17). As a feature of the living Word of God, the new covenant is not time-bound. Rather, the new covenant springs to life whenever the veil is lifted and eyes are opened to the Goodness of the Mercy of God’s Grace, specifically as has been historically demonstrated by the coming of his Son. It is better in many, many ways since Yeshua himself in fact inaugurated it before the foundations of the world were even laid! The “old covenant” does not describe the life of God’s people before the coming of Messiah. It is a term coined by Paul to describe faithlessness—the very thing that defined the nation of Israel when she fell into idolatry, worshipping the Golden Calf. The “old covenant” is Paul’s term for living with the knowledge of Torah but not receiving it by faith, and therefore missing the very goal of the Torah, namely, Yeshua. Paul’s “old covenant” is reading the TaNaKH with a veil over it so that the glory of Yeshua cannot be seen. The “old covenant” is the Torah without faith; the “new covenant” is the Torah coupled with faith. Consequently, when the Torah is read apart from faith it comes as a letter of condemnation and death, not the life-giving tree God intends for His elect ones. I must now explain why I believe in some ways that the Biblical concept of "covenant" is synonymous with the Biblical concept of "commandment.” I am not saying they are equal. Nor am I saying that they are the exact same things. I am simply saying they are inextricably linked to each other; they convey the same thoughts, intents, purposes, and meanings.