Only the Jews had the advantage of possessing the oracles, being proclaimers of the Kingdom of Heaven, a preview of which was the Sabbath, the reversing of the curse on Adam to procure food by the sweat of his brow.
Two faults that Christ had against the Jewish leaders:
1. Non proclamation of the oracles, the future payment by God of the debt
incurred by mankind through the providing of His Lamb.
2. The non observance of law
Non proclamation of the future payment by God of the debt incurred by mankind through the providing of His Lamb.
John 4:22"You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
Here Jesus tells a Samaritan woman why Jews are not just different from others, they are the means by which God will save the world from the debt incurred by Adam and his descendants, through providing of a Lamb. But he may as well have been talking to the Jews themselves, because they were not using the oracles God gave them to enlighten the world about how He was going to pay off the debt of sin as depicted in the sacrifices, but rather using it as a way to show the world how superior they were. They thought that every work of the law they performed led to paying off the debt. The fundamental mistake they made was of interpreting seed as a plural, rather than as a singular:
Galatians 3:19Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, "And to seeds," as referring to many, but rather to one, "And to your seed," that is, Christ.
So to summarise, Jewish believers were not being a blessing to the world by fulfilling the law (they couldn't!) because that job was reserved for Christ. Their job with respect to performing sacrifices was to depict Gods provision of the Lamb, as prophesied by Abraham, when he took Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah (Temple Mount).
Parallel to Pauls criticism:
Romans 10:1Brothers, my heart's desire and my prayer to God is for Israel, that they may be saved. 2For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3For being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they didn't subject themselves to the righteousness of God. 4For Christ is the fulfillment of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
The non observance of law
Acts 3:26When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways."
Christ criticised the Jewish leaders for following tithing of mint and cummin but not observing justice, mercy and faithfulness. The Good Samaritan, a foreigner, helped the man who had been mugged, following his conscience which told him to love God and those made in his image, but Gods People, who had a written law, not just conscience, crossed to the other side of the road just to avoid helping the injured man!
I repeat, observing Sabbath was to reveal to the world how Gods provision of a Lamb would reverse the curse of living by the sweat of the brow that was placed on Adam. It did not bless the world, as Jews claim it does, in the doctrine of TIKKUN OLAM, repairing the world, through doing works of the Law, MITZVAH.
The Mitzvah of Tikun Olam
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We can conclude two things from this Torah passage. First, God's covenant with the Jewish people called us to impact the entire world. Through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed. We are not supposed to be a ghetto people. To fulfill the covenant, we must exercise influence on humanity. Second, Abraham's mission, the mission of the Jewish people, the super-mitzvah and raison d'etre of our people, is keeping the way of God through teaching righteousness and justice.
Tikun Olam occurs not only at the beginning of Jewish history, but also at the consummation of human history. The task of the Jewish people in history is to perfect the world by eliminating injustice, disease, poverty, starvation, human strife. I know this not from Tikun magazine, but from Maimonides. At the end of his great legal work, Mishneh Torah, he discusses the beautiful dream of the messianic era:
At that time (the Messianic Era) there will be no starvation; there will
be no hunger, no war; nor will there be any jealousy, nor any strife. Human
good will pervade [the earth]. (Laws of Kings 12:5)
Today if a person observes Sabbath, he is stating that Gods rest has not been given,that it is still a future event, that those who abide in Christ do not have rest from their own labors.
They are also saying that the debt remains, that Christs blood was not the sufficient repayment for the debt of sin, thus trampling His blood underfoot.
How should we then live now that the debt HAS been repaid?
Like the captives who have been freed, the lame who have been healed, like the blind who can see. In other words not like people who are handicapped by the weakness of the flesh but like people who have received empowerment through the giving of the Holy Spirit, like people who are alive, have eternal life, the life which we live in the age to come of which we now have a foretaste.Through Christ. By faith.