This is a great discussion and I am encouraged that we are tackling this without contention. Praise Yah.
But, then God says to get a hardened clay pot and tells Jeremiah to smash the pot never to be remade again. Jerusalem has not be destroyed like this yet.
Indeed, Jeremiah is told to smash a pot beyond repair to illustrate how thoroughly the judgment from the Babylonians would be. And, it was. Your statement implies that Jerusalem will never be made again, but that is not the message of Jeremiah to Jerusalem. God clearly says that Jerusalem will be rebuilt. See the following from Jeremiah (other prophets echo the same message, Isaiah, Zechariah 14, etc):
- 30:3 Israel and Judah will be brought back. Following verses give great detail
- 31 speaks primarily to Ephraim (Israel) in the first half, but Judah is taken up in vss 23 and specifically mentioned in 27 and 31...
- 33:10ff specifically speaks of the restoration of Judah and Jerusalem, also vs. 13-26 are very clear that two families (v.24) will be restored. Jerusalem is specifically mentioned multiple times.
This is not to say Jerusalem won't be disciplined again, I think she will, but God is clear, over and over that Jerusalem is where the King will sit. And, He intends to make her the crown jewel of the world.
the old way of trying to adhere to the Law didn't work, which actually was the traditions of men, which is a burden.
This is partly false. Adhering to the Law brought blessing. You admit that. It was when they disobeyed the Law that they brought curses. Yeshua didn't come to free them from the Law, He came to free them from the curses of disobedience. The Law itself is easy... The bondage comes from additions to (or subtractions from) the Law. The Law itself is very simple. God Himself said, as
@Pacman pointed out that 'it is not too difficult for you.' Paul even invokes that very statement in an argument to take the simple Torah, not all the manmade additions.
To be clear, the Law doesn't save, it brings blessing. Salvation has
always been by grace through faith. If a person's faith was in their actions, then it was in the wrong place. Their faith, and ours, must be in Yah and His Messiah, Yeshua. Abraham believed God (Genesis 15:6) but he 'kept My laws, My statutes and My commandments..' (Genesis 26:5) Did he keep it for salvation or did he keep it because he was saved?
The physical and the spiritual are inextricably connected. We are spiritual beings in physical bodies. It is quite hard to learn deeper spiritual meaning without doing the physical commandments. For example, I read
about Passover and Sukkot and had a 'book knowledge' but not until we began doing it did the real learning and understanding come. In non-Torah terms, do you want a Doctor that read about how to do a certain surgery explaining the finer points, or do you want a surgeon who has done it... multiple times? Or, still another way, Yeshua was without sin. Did He get that way by
not keeping the commandments? Or, did He keep them?
So, I'm not interested in telling you or anyone else how to keep the commandments, but I gladly proclaim that God doesn't change and His ways remain the same and His own Word, (Deuteronomy 13) says if anyone leads you
away from the commandments, they are to be stoned. (In modern vernacular, I just don't listen to them, then counsel rebellion.)
And, a final note, keeping the Torah of Moses doesn't make one Jewish. It makes one righteous. It is the equivalent of doing what Yeshua did.
Blessings, bro.
