The Torah is obsolete and passing away?

Or at least, so goes the teaching I've heard from many Christian preachers and thinkers. Is it true?

"What is the old covenant?" Great question. After all, Hebrews 8 in the Christian New Testament says,

By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.

Many Christians understand this to mean the Torah, the Law of Moses, which Jews follow to this day in the form of the religion of Judaism, is old and obsolete, aging and will soon disappear. The notion of Torah disappearing reinforces the religion Christianity and tears down the religion of Judaism, so it's a tempting thought for many Christians.

And so the thinking goes that Christians and even Jews need not follow God's commandments in the Torah.

I replied to Trent in an email, but the answer lies so deep in Scripture, I thought it worthy of posting to the blog where you folks can read it as well. Here we go...

You asked what is the old covenant from a Hebrew perspective. Good question.

There were a couple of "old" covenants.

• God made a covenant with Adam that man must work to live.
• God made a covenant with Noach that the earth will never again be destroyed by a flood.
• God made a covenant with Avraham that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, uncountable, and that he would be the father of many nations.
• God made a covenant with Jacob that his name would be Israel and that his offspring would be God's people forever.
• God made a covenant with all Israel that if they keep His commandments in Torah, they will be blessed and will prosper in the land God gave them.
• God made a covenant with David that promised him one of his descendants would have a throne established forever.
  

When Christians talk about the "old" covenant, they're usually referring to the covenant God made with Israel on Mt. Sinai, telling them to keep His commandments. These weren't actually new commandments He gave to Israel, but were deeper, elaborate revelations of God's own commandments which were kept from the beginning of time -- look how Abel sacrificed innocent blood as an offering, or how Cain's act of murder was evil, or how Noah knew which animals were clean and unclean...all long before God's covenant with Israel at Sinai. What I'm saying is this: God's commandments are timeless and not limited to the Sinai covenant.

The covenant on Mt. Sinai became "old" once the covenant was renewed on Mt. Moab (If I recall right!) with blessings given for keeping the commandments, whereas the Sinai had many curses for breaking the commandments.

Mind you, none of these have been replaced by Messiah's new covenant with us.

In Jeremiah 31, a new covenant is prophesied to occur between God and the southern house of Judah (Jews today) and the northern nation of Israel (lost, absorbed into the gentile nations to this day):

The time is coming," declares the LORD,
"when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them, "
declares the LORD.

"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time," declares the LORD.
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

Now, I believe he's prophesying about the Messianic covenant here, because if you look at Messiah's actions, he was always about writing the Torah on our hearts. For example, Messiah told us [paraphrasing], "You've heard it said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I say, if you even look at a woman with lust in your heart, you're committing adultery."

That's taking a Torah commandment, the Law, and applying it to the heart.

He made similar statements about hating your brother, about loving your neighbor, taking oaths, loving God, even the less popular ones related to Temple service.

In fact, almost all of Matthew 5 is dedicating to getting to the point of the Torah, and applying it to our hearts, rather than just outwardly as the Pharisees were doing.

Now, what does all this have to do with the old covenant stuff?

The book of Hebrews says that these things -- in particular, the Cohenim (Levitical priesthood) is passing away. While that's true, it won't be gone until the New Covenant is complete, otherwise Messiah wouldn't have bothered applying what is "old" to our hearts. You might think the New Covenant is complete with Jesus, but I propose it's not complete until He finishes the job: new heaven, new earth, new Jerusalem descending from heaven, everyone knowing the Lord. That's when the New Covenant is complete, after which we will enter another covenant that makes the "new covenant" become old. :-)

What evidence is there that the New Covenant isn't complete yet, you ask? Look at the rest of Jeremiah 31 that we just quoted earlier, here's the rest of the prophecy:

No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,"
declares the LORD.
"For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more."

This is what the LORD says,
he who appoints the sun
to shine by day,
who decrees the moon and stars
to shine by night,
who stirs up the sea
so that its waves roar—
the LORD Almighty is his name:

"Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,"
declares the LORD,
"will the descendants of Israel ever cease
to be a nation before me."

This is what the LORD says:
"Only if the heavens above can be measured
and the foundations of the earth below be searched out
will I reject all the descendants of Israel
because of all they have done,"
declares the LORD.

"The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when this city will be rebuilt for me from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate.

There are 3 things about this "new covenant" of Jeremiah's that haven't happened yet:

1. Everyone will know the Lord
2. Israel will no longer be rejected
   
3. Jerusalem will be rebuilt completely

Don't be ignorant of these things -- Jews today will retort Christian missionaries saying, "If your Jesus brought Jeremiah's new covenant, how come these things haven't happened?" If you look at anti-missionary websites like Jews for Judaism, they explicitly list every "new covenant" prophecy Jesus did not fulfill, then go on to say, "to our knowledge, no one has ever fulfilled these messianic requirements."

If you study the Scriptures, however, you'll find that it's prophesied that a new Jerusalem will descend from heaven, Israel will return to the Lord, and every knee will bow [jeez, that's cliche, I know!] - all will know the Lord. When those things happen, only then is the "old covenant" complete, because the Old Covenant -- with it's earthly pictures of heavenly things like blood shedding for atonement of sins, the Holy Temple, the priests -- will be replaced by the actual things they were pictures of. I think that's what the author of Hebrews meant when he says "by calling this covenant new, he makes the first old, and what's old and obsolete is passing away.

Is the old covenant obsolete? Is the Torah, which includes the 10 commandments, obsolete? The end of Hebrews 8 seems to indicate that the old covenant, or at least, the priesthood, is old and obsolete, and is passing away.

We must reconcile Hebrews 8 with Messiah's words that not a single mark of the pen, not a single commandment, will pass away until heaven and earth pass away. That includes even the Levitical priesthood. This means -- and excuse me for this very unpopular, politically incorrect statement -- there will be a 3rd Temple in Jerusalem, complete with a Levitical priesthood. That's my belief.

So, the New Covenant doesn't replace the Sinai covenant as much as it builds on it. For example, without the Old covenants telling us about shedding of innocent blood for atonement of sin, Y'shua's sacrifice would seem totally bizarre and foreign.

Heck, Paul says that without the Torah, we wouldn't know what sin is; the idea that Messiah would free us from sin would seem pointless, because we wouldn't know what sin is.

And without the commandments in Torah, Messiah wouldn't have anything to write on our hearts.

Without the old Davidic covenant, the very concept of a Messiah itself would be foreign to us.

The new covenant builds upon the old covenants.