The Covenant of Peace

The Mediator

 Our bodies, as they are, are not capable of receiving this New Covenant.  Can our bodies live forever?  No.  We must have new bodies.  Flesh and blood cannot inherit the New Covenant.  It wouldn’t make sense to give us a covenant that will go on forever and ever if we don’t, would it?  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:50(NASB) Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. He also says, in 1 Corinthians 15:54 (NASB) But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory.  Paul is quoting the prophet Isaiah, so let’s take a look at the original writing.

Isaiah 25:6-8-9 (NASB) The LORD of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; A banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow, And refined, aged wine. And on this mountain He will 
swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, Even the veil which is stretched over all nations. He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For the LORD has spoken. And it will be said in that day, "Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation."  Again, the Hebrew word for salvation is Yeshua. It is in this New Covenant that death will be swallowed up forever.  Yeshua has already retrieved the keys. Revelation 1:17-18(NASB) When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades."

 We have a beautiful picture of Yeshua coming in the “middle” of the two covenants with the sacrifice that Abram was told to prepare.  He had asked God, how he would know that he and his descendants would receive the land inheritance? Genesis 15:9(NASB) So He said to him, "Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds.” Abram fell into a deep sleep. Skipping down to verse 17. Genesis 15:17(NASB) And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.  Yeshua was walking between the two pieces.  As the Torah, He is the burning lamp that passed between the pieces. God was telling us that the Messiah would come in the “middle” of the two covenants.  That is why it wasn’t Abraham that walked in the middle of the two pieces of flesh. 

 In the book of Revelation, we see the same picture.  Revelation 1:12-13 (NASB) Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands; and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden sash.  This lampstand is the Menorah that was used in both the Tabernacle and in the Temple. It was hammered out of one piece of gold and it has six pipes that branch out from the middle stem, giving seven bowls of light.  The middle stem and bowl is known as the shemash, in Aramaic.  This word means “servant”.  The oil, which is a picture of the Holy Spirit, is poured into the middle stem and it flows out to the other branches.  Not only did Yeshua come in the middle of the seven branches, but when He left, He told us that He would not leave us as orphans and the Holy Spirit was then given to us in the center of the seven branches as a down payment. The seven branches were a picture of seven days, or seven thousand years. Peter gives us this mathematical equivalent.  2 Peter 3:8(NASB) But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. Peter is quoting Psalm 84:10a(NASB) For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside.  The menorah, with its seven branches, represents seven days or seven thousand years and Yeshua came on the "fourth day".  He came in the middle. We can see a mathematical confirmation of this in the Hebrew language. There are twenty two letters in this language and if we use Gematria, we can take the twenty two and add them together. (2 + 2 = 4) The word was to come on the fourth day! Also, the number four in Hebrew is represented by the letter "dalet" and this letter's word picture is of a "door, pathway and lifting up". Yeshua said in John 10:1-2 (KJV) Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. Yeshua is the door. 

 In the New Testament, there is also a picture of Yeshua coming “in the middle”.  This story takes place during the Feast of Tabernacles or also known as the Feast of Booths or in Hebrew it is sukkot.  This is a seven day feast.  John 7:2-3,6, 8, 14(NASB) Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was near. Therefore His brothers said to Him, “Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. So Jesus said to them, “My time is not yet here, but your time is always opportune. “Go up to the feast yourselves; I do not go up to this feast because My time has not yet fully come.” But when it was now the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and began to teach.  Some people use these verses to say that Yeshua believed his apostles and the rest of the Jews were working on the wrong calendar and that Yeshua came up to the feast on the correct day.  Maybe, but we really think that He was simply showing us that he would come to the temple in Jerusalem to teach in the middle of the seven days, or seven thousand years. 

Even God’s Name in the original Paleo Hebrew, tells of the plan of Yeshua coming in the “middle”, but unfortunately, it is hidden in our English Translations.  God’s Name in Hebrew letters is a Yod, Hey, Vav (before the Babylonian captivity, it was a Waw) and a Hey.  If I were to write these letters in English, it would look like YHVH or YHWH.  This is called the Tetragrammaton.  In current day Hebrew, His Name looks like this: יהוה. (Hebrew is read from right to left). Hebrew is such an incredible language and of course it is, since God created and chose this language, we believe, to represent His Word – Yeshua. Each of the twenty-two letters is also a number and a word picture.  The letter Yod is the tenth letter and the word picture is “a closed hand or a deed”.  It is a picture of a covenant being given.  The letter Hey is a picture of “the Word or a promise”.  The letter Vav or Waw is a picture of a nail, signifying the crucifixion. In Paleo Hebrew, His Name looks like this: 











What a phenomenal picture of YHVH extending His hand to us in two covenants and in the middle of them is the nail or Yeshua.  Each Hebrew letter has a numerical equivalent and if we add up the numerical value of His Name, it comes to a total of twenty-six (26).  The Rabbis’ teach that we can add the two and the six together and we get the number eight.  This gives us the time frame of the two covenants - eight days, or, to be more precise, eight thousand years.  The first covenant will last for seven thousand years (seven “days”), since in the first covenant, YHVH only made seven days, and then, beginning on the eighth day, the New Covenant will be given.  The number eight in Hebrew is represented by the Hebrew letter “Het” and the word picture is “life, new beginnings, circumcision” – the New Covenant. How amazing!  He thought of everything.

 Every year, the Jewish and Messianic people read through the Torah.  It is divided up into fifty-two “portions”, one for each week, so that everyone is reading the same part of the Torah throughout the year. What a wonderful way for the Father to speak to all of us at once! There is no center word in the Torah since there is an even number of words in it, however, the middle would fall in between two words – in Hebrew, those words are darosh and darash.  In the New American Standard version, those two words were translated as “searched carefully”, which certainly tells us what we need to do with the Torah, but there is a bigger picture here.  The sentence that those two words are in is Leviticus 10:16(NASB) But Moses searched carefully for the goat of the sin offering, and behold, it had been burned up! What a picture of our Messiah!  Because of Him, at some point, there will be no more need for a sin offering.  Even more interesting, each Torah portion has a title, usually the first Hebrew word in that section.  This one just happens to be Shemini, which means “eighth” and the very first sentence in this Torah portion says, “And on the eighth day…”  It is very odd that it is even written as “the eighth day”.  Wouldn’t it normally just be written as “the first day”? So, we believe, YHVH is telling us something very important here. The very center of the Torah (or the center of Yeshua) teaches us about the New Covenant and that we will receive it on the eighth day!  

(If you would like to start reading the Torah portions, we have provided a link at the bottom of the page.) 

 Yeshua is the mediator. How amazing! (Just a note – the very next Torah portion tells about how circumcision is to be done on a newborn male baby – a sign of the covenant – a cutting away of the old flesh on the eighth day, which also happens to be when the blood clotting and healing properties are at their highest in a newborn.)

 Remember our Scripture in Genesis 1:1?  In a beginning created Elohim (Aleph Tav) the heavens and the earth.  In Hebrew, this sentence is comprised of seven words.  The fourth word, or the middle word, is Aleph Tav (Alpha Omega). He told us from the beginning that Yeshua would come in the middle of seven days.  Yeshua would come on the fourth day and He is the fourth word in this verse. 

Most people believe that the following Scripture is speaking of the Anti-Christ (and I do not disagree), but is it slightly possible that instead, it is speaking of Yeshua’s coming rather than the Anti-Christ when the prophet said in Daniel 9:27(NASB) "And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering..” ? If one day is as a thousand years, this verse could be saying that Yeshua will make a firm covenant with the many for seven thousand years, but in the middle of the seven thousand years, he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering.  The Hebrew word here for “stop” does not necessarily mean to end.  The word is shabbat and it means to rest.  The sacrifices stopped in the year 70A.D. and are not going on right now because they are in a time of rest.  In the book of Ezekiel, after the tribes are gathered back together and brought back to their land and a king is placed over them, the next chapters go into great detail about building the last and final temple on the earth.  It also tells about how to do the sacrifices all over again, so we do believe we will have sacrifices until the day that the New Jerusalem with the New Covenant comes down out of the heavens onto the new earth. Remember, until YHVH remembers our sin no more, there must still be sacrifices for unintentional sin.

 We know that lots of people will have a very difficult time with the thought that there will be sacrifices in a temple in Jerusalem again. Their argument will be “why then does the author of Hebrews say, in Hebrews 10:18(NASB) Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.?” Where is the forgiveness given?  Isn’t it in the New Covenant?  This is when YHVH says in Jeremiah 31:34 (NASB) "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."  Yes, we do believe we will have sacrifices again.  These laws were given under the first covenant, which we have seen, is to last seven thousand years.  We are nearing the end of six thousand years  now.  Once we have the New Covenant, there will no longer be any reason to have sacrifices. Another objection that people will have is, “we don’t have sacrifices now, why will they be reinstituted?”  This is only a theory, but it didn’t seem to be necessary for the sacrifices to continue throughout Scripture while YHVH’s people were in exile - as we are now.  It wasn’t important until the minute He was walking among His people.  We can see in Scripture that anytime YHVH or Yeshua was walking on the face of the earth, there had to be a tabernacle or a temple with sacrifices.  Right now, He is not living on earth.  He is in His heavenly dwelling with Yeshua sitting at His right hand.  There is an active operating temple going on in the heavenlies where Yeshua is the High Priest because that is YHVH’s dwelling place at the current time.  When Yeshua or YHVH returns to earth, the temple must be rebuilt. 

Yeshua was actually the mediator for three sets of things.  We have seen that He was the mediator between two covenants.  He is also the mediator between YHVH and man.  1 Timothy 2:5(NASB) “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”.  He is also the mediator between the House of Israel and the House of Judah. After YHVH divorced the House of Israel and scattered her through the nations, we read in Zechariah 11:14(NASB)  Then I cut in pieces my second staff Union, to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.  Yeshua put to death the enmity between the two houses.  Ephesians 2:16-18 (NASB) and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. AND HE CAME AND PREACHED PEACE TO YOU WHO WERE FAR AWAY, AND PEACE TO THOSE WHO WERE NEAR; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.  Always remember that because most of the House of Judah does not believe in Yeshua as the Messiah, they believe that they are still betrothed to YHVH.  This wife does not know that her husband died and because of this, she is a widow.  We can see that her husband did indeed die, which set her free as a married woman and now, we are all coming to the Father on the same footing.  There will no longer be two houses, but because of Yeshua, we will all be “one new man” according to Paul in Ephesians.  No longer will we be Jew and former Gentile - or the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom.  We will all be Israel.

 Right now, we are still experiencing enmity between the houses, but one day in the future, it won’t be that way anymore.  Ezekiel 37:16(NASB) "And you, son of man, take for yourself one stick and write on it, 'For Judah and for the sons of Israel, his companions'; then take another stick and write on it, 'For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and all the House of Israel, his companions.' "Then join them for yourself one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand. When the sons of your people speak to you saying, 'Will you not declare to us what you mean by these?' say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel, his companions; and I will put them with it, with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they will be one in My hand."'

 When, exactly, will all of these things happen? We are not quite sure of the complete timing yet.  We will be starting the seventh day very soon.