YAHWEH'S Law: THE FIRST COVENANT

YAHWEH'S Law: The First Covenant is indispensable for the preparation work which it had to do

The great work of YAHWEH'S Law: The First Covenant was to discover what Law breaking was. YAHWEH announced to you this One's Covenant, which this One commanded you to do, the ten words (ten Commandments). Devarim (Deuteronomy) 4:13

"It will be, if you hear these judgments and keep and do them, YAHWEH your Mighty One will keep with you the Covenant." Devarim 7:12 YAHWEH says: "I will cut with the house of Yisrael and with the house of Yahudah a New Covenant, not like title Covenant that I cut with their fathers in the days I took them by their hands to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which they broke." YermeYah- (Jeremiah) 31:31,32 We have seen the reason for there being two Covenants, it is found in the need of giving YAHWEH'S will and man's will each their due place in the working out of man's destiny. YAHWEH always takes the initiative and man must have the opportunity to do his part and prove either that he can do, or needs to have done for him. The Old Covenant was necessary to awaken man's desires, to call forth his efforts, to deepen the sense of dependence on YAHWEH, to be convinced of his Law breaking and weakness, and so to prepare him to feel the need of the deliverance of the MESSIYAH. In the significant words of Shaul (Paul): "The Law was our schoolmaster unto the MESSIYAH" GalutYah (Galatians) 3:24. We were kept under the Law, kept under restraint until belief and trust would be revealed. GalutYah 3:23. To understand the Old Covenant rightly, we must always remember its two great characteristics, one that it was by YAHWEH'S appointment, full of many true blessings and absolutely indispensable for the working out of YAHWEH'S purposes, and the other, it was only provided for a temporary need and serving to prepare for something higher and therefore insufficient for giving that full deliverance which man needs if his heart or the heart of YAHWEH is to be satisfied.

Faithfulness In Little Is Essential To The Attainment Of The Greater

Note the terms of this First Covenant, If you hear MY voice and keep MY Covenant, you will become to ME a valued possession, above all the nations. Or as it is expressed in YermeYah: "Obey MY voice and I will be your Mighty One." YermeYah 7:23, 11:4. Obedience everywhere, especially in the Book of Devarim, appears as the condition of blessing. A blessing if you obey (Devarim 11:27). Some may ask how YAHWEH could make a Covenant of which YAHWEH knew that man could not keep it. The answer opens up to us the whole nature and object of the Covenant. All education, YAHWEH'S or human, always deals with its students on this principle, faithfulness in little is essential to the attainment of the greater. In taking Yisrael into YAHWEH'S training, YAHWEH dealt with them as men in whom, with all the ruin that Law breaking had brought, there still was a conscience to judge of good and evil, a heart capable of being stirred to long after YAHWEH and a will to choose the good and to choose YAHWEH. Before the MESSIYAH and YAHWEH'S deliverance could be revealed, understood, and truly appreciated, these parts of man had to be stirred and awakened. The Law took men into its training and sought, If I may use the expression, to make the best that could be made of them by external instructions. In the provisions made in the Law for a symbolic atonement and pardon, in all YAHWEH'S uncovering of who YAHWEH was, through kohen, prophet, and king, in YAHWEH'S all seeing favor, everything was done that YAHWEH could do to touch and win the hearts of YAHWEH'S people and to give force to the appeal to their self-interest or their gratitude, their fear or their love. Its work was not without fruit. Under the Law administered by unmerited favor that always accompanied it, there was trained up a number of men  whose great mark was the fear of YAHWEH, and a desire to walk blameless in all YAHWEH'S Commandments. And yet as a  Scripture represents the Old Covenant as a failure. The Law had promised life, but it could not give it. Devarim 4:1, GalutYah 3:21. The real purpose for which YAHWEH had given it was the opposite: it was meant by YAHWEH as "a ministration of death." YAHWEH gave t so that it would convince man of his Law breaking or disobedience to YAHWEH and- awaken the confession of his weakness, and his need of a New Covenant and a true redeeming of man. It is in this view that Scripture uses such strong expressions; "By the Law is the knowledge of Law breaking: so that every' mouth will be stopped and the whole world will become guilty before YAHWEH," RomiYah (Romans) 3: 19-20. "The Law works out wrath". RomiYah 4:15. "The Law entered so that the offense would abound." RomiYah 5:20. "So that through the Commandments, Law breaking would be become utterly Law breaking." RomiYah 7:13. "As many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse." GalutYah 3:10. "We were kept under Law until belief and trust was to be revealed." GalutYah 3:23. "Therefore, the Law was our schoolmaster to bring us to the MESSIYAH, so that we would be justified by belief and trust." GalutYah 3:24. The great work of the Law was to discover what Law breaking was: its hatefulness as accursed by YAHWEH; its misery, working of temporal and eternal ruin, its power, binding man down in hopeless slavery, and the need for YAHWEH to come between it and man as the only hope of deliverance. In studying the Old Covenant, we should always keep in mind the twofold aspect under which we have seen Scripture represents it. It was YAHWEH'S favor that gave Yisrael the Law, to bring about  by the Law, its purpose in individual believers and in the people as a whole. The whole Old Covenant was a school of YAHWEH'S favor; an elementary school to prepare for the fullness of unmerited favor and truth in the  MESSIYAH YAHSHUA. A name is generally given to an object according to its main feature, and so the Old Covenant is called a working of condemnation and death, not because there was no favor in it, it had its own honour QorintYah Bet (2 Corinthians) 3:10-12) but because the Law with its curses was the dominate element. The combination of the two aspects we find with clearness in Shaul's letters. He speaks of all who are of the works of Law as under a curse (GalutYah 3:10). And almost right after speaks of the Law as being our benefactor, a schoolmaster until the MESSIYAH, into whose charge, as to a tutor or governor, we had been given until the time appointed of the ABBA. We are everywhere brought back to what we said above. The Old Covenant is indispensable for the preparation work which it had to do, utterly insufficient to work for a true or full redeeming of  mankind to YAHWEH.

YAHWEH'S Teaching Two Great Lessons; One Lesson Is Of The Breaking, The Other Is Separation From Evil

 The two great lessons YAHWEH would teach us by it are very simple. One is the lesson of the breaking, the other is separation from evil. The Old Covenant attains its object only as it brings men to a sense of their utter Law breaking and hopeless weakness to deliver themselves. As long as they have not learned this, no offer of the New Covenant life can lay hold on them. As long as an intense longing for deliverance from Law breaking has not been brought out, they naturally fall back into the power of the Law and the flesh.  Separation from evil, which the New Covenant offers, will terrify them rather than attract them, the life in the spirit of bondage appears to make more allowance for breaking the Law, because obedience is declared to be impossible.  The other lesson of being separated from evil, is in the New Covenant. YAHWEH, through YAHSHUA and the Spirit, engage to do it all. YAHWEH undertakes to give and keep the new heart, to give the Spirit of YAHWEH in it, to give the will and the power to obey and do YAHWEH'S will. As the one demand of the First Covenant was the knowledge of Law breaking, the one great demand of he New Covenant is belief and trust that the need created by the discipline of YAHWEH'S Law, will be dealt with by YAHWEH in a supernatural way. The Law cannot work out its purpose except to bring man to lie guilty and helpless before the Pureness of ~Almighty YAHWEH. Here the New Covenant finds man and reveals the same Mighty One of the Old, in YAHWEH'S unmerited favor accepting him and making him a partaker of YAHWEH'S pureness (separation from evil). This study is written with a very practical purpose, its object is to help believers to know the wonderful New Covenant of Unmerited Favor, which YAHWEH has made with them and to lead them into the living and daily enjoyment of the happy life it gives them. The Practical lesson taught us by the fact that there was a first Covenant, that its one special work was to convince us of Law breaking and that without it the New Covenant could not have come, is just what many believers need. At conversion, they were convinced of Law breaking, by the SetApart Spirit, but this had reference to the guilt of Law breaking and in some degree to its hatefulness. A real knowledge of the power of Law breaking, of their entire and utter weakness to throw it out or to work in themselves what is good is what they did not learn at once. And until they have learned this, they cannot possibly enter fully into the blessings of the New Covenant. It is when a man sees that he cannot raise himself from the dead, nor can he make, nor keep his own inner being alive, that he becomes capable of appreciating the New Covenant promise and is made willing to wait on YAHWEH to do all in him. Do you, my reader, feel you are not fully living in the New Covenant, that there is still somewhat of the First Covenant bondage in you? Do come and let the Old Covenant finish its work in you! Accept its teaching, that all your efforts are failures. As at conversion, you were content to fall down as a condemned death deserving Law breaker, be content now to sink down before YAHWEH in the confession that as YAHWEH'S redeemed child, you still feel yourself utterly weak to do and be what YAHWEH asks of you. And begin to ask whether the New Covenant has not perhaps a provision you have never yet understood for meeting  your weakness and giving you strength to do what is well pleasing to YAHWEH. You will find the wonderful answer in the assurance that YAHWEH; by the SetApart Spirit, will undertake to work everything in you. The longing to be delivered from the life of daily breaking YAHWEH'S Law, and the extinction of all hope to secure this by our own efforts as believers, will prepare us for understanding and accepting YAHWEH'S way of deliverance, YAHWEH working in us all that is pleasing in YAHWEH'S sight!

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