“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you.
Isaiah 54:10
The New International Version
The other day I spoke of the covenant that God made with Israel, the Jewish people, the 12 tribes, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This morning, the above verse from Isaiah 54 was on my Today’s Thought e-mail. I immediately felt that God was affirming what I stated.
We Christians believe that you must receive Jesus as the Messiah to receive salvation. The Jews don’t accept Him as such. Therein lies a dilemma. How do we reconcile the two things, God’s Old Testament covenant and the New Testament (Christian) requirement? I was talking to my mother about this very thing last night. She had to agree with me because, if God were to break His covenant of old, how could we believe in any covenant that followed?
We tend to look at everything in human terms since, naturally, that’s all we know. We cannot and will never know the mind of God until we meet Him face to face. The Bible states “His ways are not our ways…” therefore, I will not show disdain toward Judaism or the Jewish people ever.
Human beings make and break promises every day. It’s shameful of us and I’m just as guilty of having done it (more so in the past) as anyone else. Please don’t think that I have a “holier than thou” attitude about this. I am just stating my own thoughts and observations for your consideration.
I know that the Christian Old Testament is not the same as the Jewish Tanakh. It is a Christian version of it. I did not live in the time before Christ or during His ministry. I didn’t learn the Jewish faith in grade school. I went to Catholic school all 12 years and graduated there. I recently learned, again, that the Catholics have their own version of the Bible. With all of the different denominations there are within the Christian faith, I wonder just how different each one’s Bible is. I guess we all must decide as individuals what we will believe as the truth and try our best to follow it. Human beings are not perfect, I know that I’m far from it, but we can at least attempt to live together in this world by the one concept that I think is in every version, both Christian and Jewish, and that is loving compassion for one another. Just a thought…
Always remember that Jesus died for us because He loves us!
Humbly yours,
Teresa Marie
Related articles
- What is the covenant of the Hebrew people (wiki.answers.com)
- Genesis 17 (asorensen.wordpress.com)
- Does Replacement Make Sense? (drschiffman.wordpress.com)
What about God? 