The physical Nation of Israel in the OT was talking directly to the physical Nation as well as prophetically to the Nation of Israel that was to come, namely the church and body of Jesus Christ.
The Greek word "ekklesia" is translated as 'church" and it is used many times in the Septuagint to refer to Israel in the wilderness.
I believe it was a Torah law that required a prophet to be proven as true or be killed as a false prophet. Can’t remember where I read it exactly.
According to Deuteronomy 13:1-11, the way that God instructed His people to determine that someone is a false prophet who was not speaking for Him was if they taught against obeying the Torah, and doing that incurred the death penalty.
There’s One God and One Way.
Indeed, and there are many verses that describe the Torah as being instructions for how to walk in God's way, such as Deuteronomy 10:12-13, Isaiah 2:2-3, 1 Kings 2:1-3, Joshua 22:5, Psalms 103:7, Psalms 119:1-3, and many others.
In the tradition of a Christianity that I belong to we have the teaching that Christ fulfilled the law. He directly taught us various meanings that were misunderstood and He indirectly taught also through His Apostles. So we live by the fullness of the law as taught by the Lord.
"To fulfill the law" means "to cause God's will as made known in the law to be obeyed as it should be (NAS Greek Lexicon : pleroo), so Jesus fulfilled the law by teaching how to correctly obey it as it was originally intended, which does not involve doing away with parts of it.
Is circumcision still required for men to enter into the covenent? Yes but not in the flesh as in the Old Testament but of the heart. And no longer just men but females as well.
In Deuteronomy 10:12-16, God instructed His people to circumcise our hearts and obey the Torah. In Deuteronomy 30:1-10, it prophesied about a time when the Israelites would return from exile, God would circumcise their hearts, and they would return to obedience to the Torah. In Jeremiah 31:33 and Ezekiel 36:26-27, they are speaking in regard to the New Covenant, the Israelites returning from exile, God circumcising their hearts by means of the Spirit, and them returning to obedience to the Torah. In Romans 2:25-29, they way to recognize that a Gentile has a circumcised heart is by observing their obedience to the Torah, which is the same way to tell for a Jew, and circumcision of the heart is a matter of the Spirit, which is in contrast with Acts 7:51-53, where those who have uncircumcised hearts resist the Spirit and do not obey the Torah. So the New Covenant is all about Israel returning to obedience to the Torah, having a circumcised heart is not an alternative to having circumcised flesh, and it does not refer to anything other than living in obedience to the Torah.
Is there a Sabbath rest in my tradition? Yes and the ultimate Sabbath rest is Christ in the tomb when He defeated Satan. So we enter into that rest, into that victory, into that sacrifice of Christ and pick up His yoke.
In Hebrews 3:18-19, they did not enter into God's rest because of their disobedience, and in Ezekiel 20:13, it specifically mentions that they greatly profaned God's Sabbaths, entering into God's eternal rest is not an alternative to keeping the 7th day holy. In Hebrews 4:9-11, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, we should rest from our works as God rested from His, and we should strive to enter into that rest so that no one may fall away by the same sort of disobedience.
Obviously we don’t murder but now we don’t hate either.
In Leviticus 19:17, it instructs not to hate our brother, so Jesus was not teaching anything brand new.
Hopefully you see my point without needing to drag out every commandment. We don’t live by the law as the Jews did, who obviously didn’t understand the Law and were corrected many times by Christ for their misuse of it.
The correct solution to incorrectly obeying God's law is to start obeying it correctly, not to stop obeying it. In regard to the debate between Hillel and Shammai, Jesus was virtually in complete agreement with Hillel, so there were Jews who had a correct understanding of it.
We find no justification in the law or its rigid observation.
While we do not earn our justification as a wage by obeying God's law (Romans 4:1-5), it is also true that only doers of the law will be justified (Romans 2:13), so there must be reasons why our justification requires us to choose to be doers of the law other than in order to earn it as a wage, such as faith insofar the faith by which we are justified does not abolish our need to obey God's law, but rather our faith upholds it (Romans 3:31).
The New Testament wasn’t written as a step by step instruction manual for Christians. Neither was the Law of Moses. In fact the 27 canonized books of the NT didn’t officially come into being as a whole work until the 4th century. There were churches who hadn’t seen all 27 books still at that time. The church survived those first centuries by the Holy Spirit and not a written manual. Centuries of extreme persecution and yet the church grew. How? The Lord who birthed the church Himself (not Paul) taught the truth to his Apostles, most of which isn’t contained in the Gospels just see St. John‘s last sentences. He then empowered His Apostles (Pentecost) and sent them into the world to pass on this teaching (literary tradition). the writings of the Apostles are mostly praises or corrections and some theology instruction for Christian communities that they founded. The situation of the Law of Moses was settled before the Apostles fell to their Martyrdom (except John of course).
There were lists of authoritative books that closely match the list of the 27 canonized books that were centuries earlier. Most of those books were broadly recognized as being authoritative and were in use by the general population long before the 4th century with only a handful of books being in question, so that was more or less just an official stamp of approval on what was already being used. Moreover, books were transmitted orally before they were written down.
It had to be, because the Jews were trying to infiltrate the church and spread heresy by bringing Jews back into the bondage of the law as well as their converts.
If God saved the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt in order to put them under bondage to His law, then it would be for bondage that God sets us free, however, Galatians 5:1 says that it is for freedom that God sets us free. In Psalms 119:142, the Torah is truth, and in John 8:31-36, it is sin in transgression of the Torah that puts us in bondage while it is the truth that sets us free.
The Psalms express an extremely positive view of the Torah, such as with David repeatedly saying that he loved it and delighted in obeying it, so if we consider the Psalms to be Scripture and to therefore express a correct view of the Torah, then we will share it as Paul did (Romans 7:22), and we will interpret the NT authors as through they also delighted in obeying it. For example, in Psalms 1:1-2, blessed are those who delight in the Torah of the Lord and who meditate on it day and night, so we can't believe in the truth of these words as Scripture while not allowing them to shape our view of the Torah, which means that the view that the Torah is bondage is incompatible with the view that the Psalms and the NT books that quote the Psalms are Scripture.
We need to reconnect with the tradition of the entire church and it’s beautifully rich history in order to understand these things. So we can stop attacking each other and making a mockery of Christ in front of nonbelievers and start spreading the love and truth of God to people who are estranged from God. Blessed are the Peacemakers for they shall be called the Sons of God.
In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus summarize the Torah as being about how to love God and our neighbor, so teaching people to repent and obey it in accordance with the Gospel message is the way to spread love and truth. In 1 John 3:4-10, those who do not practice righteousness in obedience to the Torah are not Sons of God.
