Is the Torah for Today - Part 3

Last time I explained how the loss of the Temple and the sacrificial system mean that however one views the Torah, it cannot be followed as was originally intended when God gave it through Moses on Mt. Sinai. Any attempt to be faithful to its teachings must include some sort of accommodation to the absence of this central element.

The establishment of the New Covenant actually anticipated the ending of the Sinai sacrificial system. Yeshua's sacrifice fulfills what the sacrifices represented. I think it is correct to view the sacrifices as foreshadowing what Yeshua did on our behalf in his dieing for our sins. I am aware that not all sacrifices were specifically about issues of sin and guilt, but that fact that in so many cases the lose of life was an essential part of genuine worship was to impress us with the Messiah's need to give himself up in our place.

I can understand the logic of some who, having accepted Yeshua's sacrifice as the fulfillment of the Torah sacrifices, seek to uphold the rest of the Torah. What Yeshua did, in effect, satisfies that sacrificial requirements, so that we no longer have to offer animals. Our faith in him is as if we are doing everything the sacrifices represented. For these people the fulfillment of the sacrificial system has no implications regarding whether or not the rest of the Torah is still in effect.

But if we look at the promise of the New Covenant given via Jeremiah, we see that it is a covenant not like the one given at Sinai (Jeremiah 31:31,32):

"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.

The New Covenant, according to this promise, was going to be different from the Sinai one. The reason why it was to be different is because we (the Jewish people), broke the Sinai covenant.

The fulfillment and termination of the sacrifices, then are part of that difference. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews comments on this difference. He spends considerable time contrasting the administration of the Sinai covenant under Moses with the New Covenant, prophesied by Jeremiah and established by Yeshua. A major issue for the writer is that Yeshua, acting as priest on our behalf, is not from the Levitical priesthood established at Sinai, but of a different order. He concludes, "For when there is a change of the priesthood, there must also be a change of the Torah (English: Law)" (Hebrews 7:12).

Note that the writer asserts that there is a "change of the Torah". While this along with what Jeremiah prophesied assert that the New Covenant implies a change of Torah, it does not mean Torah is done away with. Jeremiah would go on to say that the Torah would be internalized (31:33). Exactly what the implications are of an internalized Torah is the essence of this discussion, which will continue following this week's TorahBytes message.