“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake…(Jeremiah 31)
We need to put this breaking of the covenant in context. Back up two chapters:
“Thus shalt thou [Jeremiah] also speak to Shemaiah… Because thou has sent letters in thy name unto all the people that are at Jerusalem, and…all the priests, saying The LORD hath made thee priest in the stead of Jehoiada the priest, that ye should be officers in the house of the Lord, for every man that is mad, and maketh himself a prophet, that thou shouldest put him in prison…[so] why hast thou not reproved Jeremiah of Anathoth?… Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will punish Shemaiah…because he hath taught rebellion against the LORD.” (Jeremiah 29:24-32)
This was executed in one way when “after the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE, the priests were no longer able to perform their functions. The authority of the rabbis – laymen – based in the synagogues of every town, like Christian churches in our time, began to grow.
However! The rabbis started to develop new interpretations of the Jewish laws and customs, which were collected in the Mishnah and Talmud. They also started to develop new traditions” transforming biblical Judaism into the doctrine of the Pharisees which is so condemned in scripture.
These continued to override Mosaic law even after a remnant returned from Babylon, rebuilt the temple, and re-established the Levitical rites.
“Now these are the priests and the Levites that went up with Zerubbabel… And all Israel in the days of Zerubbabel, and in the days of Nehemiah…sanctified holy things unto the Levites; and the Levites sanctified them unto the children of Aaron…Thus cleansed I {Nehemiah] them from all strangers, and appointed the wards of the priests and the Levites, every one in his business;” (Nehemiah 12, 13:30)
But once again, corruption.
“saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name…Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar…ye say, The table of the Lord is contemptible. And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the LORD of hosts…I have no pleasure in you, saith the LORD of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.
For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the LORD of hosts.” (Malachi 1)
Once again, chastisement under the latest empire, the Greek Seleucids culminating in terrible persecution under the infamous Antiochus Epiphanes.
The priest Simon Maccabeus led a successful revolt against the Greeks, but when he achieved independence for the Jews he rewarded himself with the kingship, contrary to Jewish law establishing that the king would come from the tribe of Judah. It is therefore no surprise that Judaism was deeply corrupted by the politicization of spirituality.
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Judaism at the time of Jesus was highly fractured. Some forms of Judaism were militant movements (such as that of the Zealots).
The Sadducees were the liberals, elitists who maintained the priestly prerogatives through temple rituals, while also ingratiating themselves with politics and high society by incorporating Hellenism. We can compare them to politically involved Christian denominations focused on a kingdom of God in this world providing power wealth and status. Jesus openly and repeatedly rebuked the doctrine of the Sadducees, calling them “wicked and adulterous” obviously referencing their spiritual collaboration with paganism. A major tenant of the Sadducees was denying personal responsibility for sin, therefore also rejecting the doctrine of resurrection and thus the core concept of the gospel; Matthew 22:23) The Sadducees disappeared after the destruction of the Second Temple left them unemployed.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, were the fundamentalists. They taught that an after-life existed where God punished the wicked and rewarded the righteous and that a messiah would be born who would bring in an era of world peace. This sect developed during the Babylonian Exile after the destruction of Solomon’s Temple eliminated priest-led ceremonial worship and instead centered spiritual life on individual prayer and assembly in synagogues. Perhaps extensive debate in these assemblies / congregations / churches is how they developed the idea that in addition to the Torah, or Written Law, consisting of the Pentateuch – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, God also gave an oral law, transmitted verbally, to Moses at Mount Sinai.
The problem with many of the Pharisees – actually all denominationalism – is that they taught that the written laws in the Pentateuch are open to interpretation, which were codified and written down roughly three centuries later in what is known as the Talmud. Their focus on a personal righteous standing with God is what caused the Pharisees’ sect to survive not only the Babylonian but also the Roman diaspora into modern Judaism. Nicodemus, Gamaliel and even Paul came from the Pharisaic school of thought.
- However, Phariseeism was notable for adding to God’s word.
“Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat…they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers…all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren…he that is greatest among you shall be your servant...But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men:”(Mathew 23)
Well that’s a complete perversion of the purpose of the Law of Moses.
The Essenes were the school of John the Baptist, with its distinct message and disciples were in time absorbed by the movement headed by Jesus (JOHN 1:35-37, ACTS 19:3).
When Paul went after the disciples in Damascus, he searched for people “belonging to the Way” (ACTS 9:2) which is obviously a designation of a particular sect. Jesus called himself the Way (JOHN 14:6), but it isn’t clear whether he coined this epithet then and there, or whether he addressed the members of an existing sect called such by telling them that he was what they were after…
The “town” of Nazareth where Jesus was from was probably not a geographical town (read our article on that name for reasons why not) and was most probably an existing Jewish school of thought (the Nazarenes), which we propose had to do with…the blessings of the Lord of Life being scattered among pagan nations…(Peter’s Great Sheet vision is a clear demonstration of that particular belief, which obviously is one of the main elements of the gospel message; (Acts 10:15)…
Since the discoveries at Qumran we know that the phrase “Sons of Light” was not a general title for virtuous men, but rather a military nickname for Israel (see the War Scroll). Jesus called these militant Sons of Light shrewd (Luke 16:8), and explained that he was the Light (John 8:12, 9:5) and that his followers are the real Sons of Light (John 12:36, 1 Thessalonians 5:5).
Jesus obviously didn’t arrive on earth in an intellectual vacuum, and the intellectual element of his ministry was grafted on existing theological models. This means that the movement around Jesus the Nazarene was not a entirely new thing but was largely grafted upon existing ideas which existed long before Jesus was born.
Nobody will deny that his general theology was Jewish, and Judaism obviously existed long before Jesus was born, but in addition, Christianity as a movement or trend existed before Jesus came to the scene.
The fundamental New Testament assurance of eternal salvation is based on the Old Testament promises. There is no validity in the New without the Old. The “new” testament / covenant is, by definition, a modification of a previous testament, therefore both granted by the same grantor to the same grantee.
“Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem unto the residue of the elders which were carried away captives, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon…after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end…[unlike the Adams who hid from me in the Garden of Eden] YE shall seek ME, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart…
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: [note! Not with Gentiles instead of Judah!] Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know[be united as one as the term is used for carnal knowledge] me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD.” (Jeremiah 29-31)
“those things which are most surely believed among us...which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word…write unto thee in order…That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed…a certain priest named Zacharias…and his wife…were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless…there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord…thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John…he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb…And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias / Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:1-17)
“Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant…he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi…that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years.” (Malachi 3-4)
“And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see?…A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he….For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.” (Matthew 11:7-14)
John’s preaching was meaningful and accepted by the people only because it was based on previous scripture. I’ve rearranged the phrases in John’s record to demonstrate the match with Isaiah’s.
- “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith,
- And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.
- Behold! the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. “(John 1:29-34)
- “For unto us…
- a Son / of God, Ruler is given by God: and the government shall be upon his shoulder…the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever…
- But [first]…the chastisement of our peace was upon him…All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all…he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter…” (Isaiah 9:6-7, 53:1-7)
The Pharisees, fundamentalists steeped in the scriptures, would have been the first to understand, and believe, John’s announcement that “The kingdom of heaven is at hand!” And in fact there were “certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed.” (Act 15:5)
Especially Paul, considered the founder of Christianity.
“My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews; Which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee. And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God, unto our fathers: Unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come.” (Acts 26:3-7)
Kingdom Come 