In the last chapter we looked at Jeremiah's prophecy of the coming New Covenant. The Jeremiah passage is quoted in the New Covenant book of Hebrews, not as a prophecy, but as the fulfillment of it.

In a moment, we will look at when this new covenant prophecy was fulfilled. First I want to examine a couple of words in the above passage.

The first is the word "new" in the "new covenant". Here we have the Greek word "kainos" which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word "chadash", which we looked at in the last chapter. Does this Greek word also support the concept of "renewed", as does "chadash"? There are several passages we can look at to show this, but I think 2 Corinthians 5:17 is a good one, it says; "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new (kainos) creation; the old has gone, the new (kainos) has come!" When someone comes to Christ, is he recreated? Or given a compactly new body? Of course not, this passage would read better if we translated kainos as renewed; "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a renewed creation; the old has gone, the renewed has come!" Even the New Testament supports the idea that the New Covenant is a renewal of the original covenant.

The second word is "laws". The Greek culture had no concept of the Hebrew Torah, and therefore had no word equivalent for the word Torah. The Greek writers of the New Covenant used the Greek word "nomos", which means law, to translate the Hebrew word "Torah". The chapter on the Torah will discuss this further, but for now we should recognize that "nomos" is "Torah" and I will use the word "Torah" in its place as I did in part one of this book.

During the time of Yeshua, the Passover meal had become an elaborate ceremony to celebrate the redemption of Israel from Egypt by the hand of God. This ceremony is done much the same today as it was in the days of Yeshua. The supper would have occurred in the evening at sundown. After the Passover supper, Yeshua was arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced and executed, all before nine o'clock the next morning. The events I have briefly described here, which I will expand on, led to the redemption of Israel and the forgiveness of their sins as prophesied in Jeremiah 31. Let us now examine the renewal of this covenant.

God was not finished with Israel. They failed to keep the first covenant. God in his grace and mercy gives Israel a better covenant, a renewal of the original.

We will be looking at Yeshua' ministry and the beginning of the "church". It is not what most of us have been lead to believe. To begin with, the covenant was with the Jews, Yeshua was a Jew, Yeshua' ministry was to the Jews, Yeshua' disciples were Jews, the first ten years of the "church" consisted of Jews alone. In fact, the church was not a Gentile church, as many believe, but a sect of Judaism. This will examined closer in a later chapter.

The three promises found here are,

The first promise states that he will be their God and Israel will be his people. This promise is the same as in the first covenant, for God said in Leviticus 26:12, "I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people". This first covenant promise is the same in the new covenant. Leviticus 26:12 is quoted in 2 Corinthians 6:16 showing that the very promise from the first covenant is carried over into the renewed covenant connecting the two covenants together. The second promise is that God will forgive all of Israel's sins. This promise is accomplished through the work of Yeshua' ministry and through his sacrifice on the cross.

The third is God will write his Torah on Israel's mind and heart. This promise will be covered in chapter 12. Remember in the first covenant, God required Israel to put his Torah on their own minds and heart. They failed to do this most of the time. Now God promises to do this for them.

These promises we have just looked at are God's promises to Israel. What is Israel's promise to God? In the first covenant, Israel promised to obey God. Nowhere in the New Covenant do we find Israel or anyone else for that matter declaring a promise to God in reference to the new covenant. Does this mean that Israel has no requirement in keeping the covenant? I don't think so. A better answer would be that since this covenant is a renewal of the original, the original promise to obey God is still in effect. After all, God's promises have neither been eliminated, only added to, not taken away. Let us see if Israel is still required to obey God.

Yes, God's people are to continue to obey God. Anyone who chooses a life of disobedience is not part of God's people or the covenant, just as it was in the first covenant.

In the first covenant the promises were given on the condition that the Torah be kept. It was recognized that no one was able to keep the whole Torah completely, so when sin was recognized in the community or individual, a sacrifice was made to God asking for forgiveness. They knew that salvation could not come from the Torah because no one could keep it. Salvation comes from God alone. The individual's response from the heart to the Torah determined the entrance into the assembly of God's holy people. If the person's heart was to keep the Torah, they were a part of the assembly. If the person's heart yearned against the Torah, they were cut off from the assembly and the covenant. Such is the case for all the community, Jews and Gentile alike.

The renewed covenant still depends on the individual's obedience to God. The difference in the renewed covenant, God has written his Torah on their hearts. We now have the ability to obey. Not by our own effort, but by the help of the Holy Spirit, who he has given us.

Israel was required to keep all of God's Torah in order to remain in the first covenant. Israel was not able to keep this promise to keep the Torah. Yeshua (the mediator of the new covenant) came to fulfill the requirements of the Torah for Israel.

Yeshua not only kept the Torah for them (since this couldn't), he also took the punishment for their disobedience of the Torah, and therefore they are no longer under the curse of the Torah.

We must understand that although Yeshua removed the curse of the Torah, he did not remove or abolish the Torah as was shown previously in Matthew 5:17. Yeshua also said in John 14:15, "If you love me, you will obey what I command". Paul also said in Romans 3:31, "Do we, then nullify the Torah by this faith? Not at all, we uphold the Torah." In chapter 12 we will discuss the relevancy of the Torah within the new covenant, but for the purpose of this discussion we must understand that even though the curse is removed, the Torah remains and all believers are to obey. A command such as "You shall not kill" is just as relevant in the renewed covenant as it was in the first covenant.

Because of Yeshua' sacrifice on the cross, we can say that the conditions of the covenant to keep the law were fulfilled by Yeshua. We then have an unconditional promise in the new covenant.

Deuteronomy 27:26 said, "Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this Torah by carrying them out". When Yeshua was sacrificed he took on himself the curse for disobedience of the Torah even though he himself kept it 100%.

The Greek word used for written code is "cheirographon" which is two words put together to make the one word meaning "handwriting". This word is only found once, here in this passage. Notice that this passage does not say that the Torah has been taken away, instead it says that the handwriting against us has been taken away. The Torah was never against anyone, so what handwriting was against us? The only thing that was against God's people was the curses for disobedience of the Torah; therefore, the courses were against Israel. Yeshua sacrifice on the cross removed those curses. This will be discussed at greater detail in chapter 12.

The first covenant given to Israel is an everlasting covenant. If it is everlasting, then it remains today just as the everlasting covenant with Noah and its sign of the rainbow, remains today. The covenant between God and Israel remains to this day as the renewed covenant. Even the new covenant is identified as an everlasting covenant.

The "contract" of the covenant that we looked at in chapter two, is the Torah. As we will see in chapter 12, the Torah also remains to this day.

In the renewed covenant, God gave his Spirit to his people, the Spirit then writes his Torah on their heart. With this Torah now written on our hearts, rather than just on a stone tablet, we have the desire to do his Torah out of love, rather than obligation.

Also mentioned in chapter two, as one of the many signs of the covenant was the annual feast of the Passover. Yeshua used this sign also as the sign of the renewal of the covenant, which was made by his sacrifice. The bread and wine which Yeshua gave his disciples at his last Passover meal (Last Supper) were the signs he used for the new covenant and he told his disciples to remember him through these signs of the Passover meal.

Just as the first covenant was a covenant of blood, so is the new covenant. At the dedication of the first covenant, Moses sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice onto the people. In the renewed covenant, it is the blood of the ultimate sacrifice, the perfect man Yeshua Christ.

Those who disobeyed the Torah were required to offer sacrifices to atone for their sins. Hebrews 9:22 states that "without the shedding of blood their is no forgiveness of sins." Leviticus chapters 1 to 7 give all the details for the offering of sacrifices. After the description of each sacrifice we read "and they will be forgiven". This act had to be consistently renewed each year, for a complete covering was not yet revealed.

Israel knew they could not keep the Torah, so God provided the sacrificial system as a visible symbol to see God's forgiveness. I would then ask, if the sacrifice can remove sin, what was the purpose of Yeshua' sacrifice? Let me answer that question at the end of this section.

We read in Hebrews 10:4, "It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." How is it possible that Israel' sins are forgiven when the blood of the animal cannot take away the sins? The answer is on the cross and the ultimate sacrifice of Yeshua.

In the above passage, it says that Yeshua was "sacrificed for their sins"; That is, the sins of the priests. All of Israel who lived under the covenant with God and died were taken to "Abraham's Bosom" (Luke 16:22) and held there until Yeshua' sacrifice which would then forgive them of their sins as promised.

When Yeshua came out of the grave, "he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." (Ephesians 4:8) Yeshua' sacrificed removed the sins of Israel who then could be released from the grave, and since his sacrifice was "once for all", his sacrifice also removed all future sins of Israel. The same grace that we experience today is the same grace given to those under the Old Covenant.

Our previous question was; If the sacrifice of animals could remove sin, what was the purpose of Yeshua' sacrifice? The animal sacrifices did not take away the sins of the people. They were only symbols of the coming redemption of all of Israel, past, present and future through Yeshua. Without the sacrifice of Yeshua there would be no forgiveness today or in the past.

God recognized that the animal sacrifices were not required for the forgiveness of sin for he said.

God's ultimate redemption plan for Israel and the forgiveness of their sins is through the sacrifice of Yeshua, not in animal sacrifices. Yeshua' sacrifice removed all sin, once for all, throughout all eternity, past, present and future.

Although the new covenant is a renewal of the first, we can look at the original and its renewal as two covenants coexisting side by side. Most people believe that when the new covenant came, the first was removed, but this is not the case.

Hebrews 8 says that the first covenant is obsolete, (meaning not needed because it has been renewed) and we know that it has not been removed because it says that it is "aging and will disappear", future tense.

Those who keep God's covenant but do not believe in the Messiah, lives under the first covenant, whereas those who keep God's covenant and do believe in the Messiah love under the renewed covenant.

There are those in Israel who still live under the old covenant not recognizing the sacrifice of Yeshua as their means of forgiveness, and have taken the Torah of God and put it in their hearts and keep it faithfully. Will these people also receive the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Yeshua?

We must determine what "Israel" means in the passages above. Romans 9:6 says, "not all of Israel is Israel". This appears to be contradictory, but if we read it in light of our past discussions on the community of Israel and the assembly of Israel, we can see that those who are faithful to the covenant and the Torah are of the assembly of Israel. But those who reject or despise the covenant and the Torah may still be a part of the community of Israel but are cut off from the assembly of Israel and the covenant. Therefore we could read Romans 9:6 as; "Not all of Israel (the community) is Israel (the assembly).

Therefore, those who are still living under the first Covenant are part of the assembly of Israel and are saved by the Grace of God and his promise to Abraham. These people, who do not accept the new covenant, do not have the Holy Spirit to guide them making the way difficult since they must write the Torah on their hearts themselves.

• Yeshua' sacrifice is the ushering in of the renewed covenant.
• The six parts of the renewed covenant according to the New Covenant are,

  1. The parties; remains between God and Israel.
  2. Promises; God promises to forgive Israel and continue to care for her, to write his Torah on their hearts for them. Israel is still required to obey God.
  3. Conditions; Yeshua took the curse for Israel's disobedience to the Torah, removing the condition of the covenant.
  4. Duration; Remains as everlasting.
  5. Sign; the Torah and Passover remain.
  6. Dedication; The blood sacrifice of Yeshua on the cross.

• The sins of Israel while under the first covenant were ultimately forgiven by the blood of Yeshua and not the sacrifices performed while under the first covenant.
• The first covenant still remains for those who do not accept the sacrifice of Yeshua.