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The First Covenant

That Your Way may be known upon earth, Your Salvation among all nations. — Psalm 67:3

Testament is Latin for covenant. Calling the Bible the "Old Testament" may make it seem obsolete, a fossil or relic of the past. Even though God Himself in the Bible repeatedly, emphatically insists that His covenants with mankind are eternal. As He says, they are binding forever (ad olam, in Hebrew - eternal, perpetual, until the end of the universe).

Keep My commandments and live, and My Law as the apple of your eye. - Proverbs 7:2

A covenant is solemn pact or contract, a compact involving the giving of a pledge or pledges which guarantee future performance. God tells us in Genesis, the first book of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), that He bound Noah and all his descendants - that means us, all mankind - to Him forever, by the First or Noahide Covenant.

Later, God enters into covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and with Isaac's son Jacob, or Israel, including the children or descendants of Israel. This covenant extends to Israel's sons, who become the twelve tribes of Israel - the people whom the Bible later calls Jews, or yehudim.

And in your descendants shall all the nations of the Earth be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice. - Genesis 22:18

In Exodus, God enters into another covenant with the people of Israel at Sinai. He reveals His Torah to them through Moses, and commands them to keep its statutes, laws and ordinances forever. God also calls these laws His Torah - His Guidance, Way, Teaching or Law. He insists that His Torah is forever.

Torah has gotten a bad reputation in the world, which it doesn't deserve. It needs to be approached on its own terms but it's worth it. It deserves the benefit of the doubt. As the Psalms, Proverbs, prophets and other Biblical Writings declare emphatically, repeatedly, the Torah is goodness, beauty, justice, mercy, love and holiness.

O, how I delight in Your Torah! It is my study all the day. - Psalms 119:97

God didn't just create us and leave us in ignorance, to figure out what is good and what is bad based on our own extremely fallible instincts and gut feelings Rather, He gave us Instruction.

The Way of the First Covenant is God's Guidance to us - all of us - for living a holy, dynamic, fully human life. He calls all of us to holiness. So, while the Torah reveals the Seven Laws of Noah, a body of law which prohibits awful crimes, Torah also teaches what it's all about: what God's great plan is, where His project leads.

"God made man in the image of God." "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." "You shall love the stranger." "You shall be holy because I the Lord your God am holy." These statements and principles are all Torah. Jesus and his apostles, who lived and died as Jewish men, didn't invent them on their own, they took them out of the "Old Testament."

He [God] has shown you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do righteousness and love goodness, and walk humbly with your God. - Michah 6:8

Noah's laws are in the Torah, in the Bible, and so are the special national holiness laws that God gave to the people of Israel. Israel was chosen for a mission: not to make the world Jewish by converting people to Judaism but to keep and live Israel's own covenantal Law. This is a holiness Code, including the Noahide Law, the seven touchstone principles of all true God-consciousness.

Contrary to popular belief, God didn't create or choose Israel for privilege but for service. God so loves the human race that He gives it His servant Israel. God created Israel to serve humanity by incarnating the Torah in itself. Israel exists to help elevate the world by exemplifying the principles of true God-consciousness, to focus the world's attention on the truth and wisdom of the Bible.

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