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Why Should I Keep The First Covenant?

My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone from My lips. - Psalm 89:35

God so loves mankind that He shows us His Way and gives us His Law. The idea that His laws are bad or unworthy in any sense doesn't hold water: why would God inflict unworthy laws on those who follow Him?

You shall keep My statutes. - Leviticus 19:9

If He meant to "free" us from "the burden of the Law," why would He tells us that His laws are eternal?

Every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting. - Psalm 119:160

The First Covenant - the Adamic, Noahide (or Noahite), Universal or Rainbow Covenant - requires us to act like truly human beings. This involves keeping God's laws for us. If you want to do what is right, if you want to please your Maker, if you want to benefit yourself and those near to you, and bring good into the world, and refine yourself - then keep God's Law and follow His Way.

What does the Lord [HaShem] require of you, but to fear* the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul? - Deuteronomy 10:12

The end of the matter, all having been heard: fear* God, and keep His commandments, because this is the purpose of man. - Ecclesiastes 12:13

Fearing God is the feeling that humanizes man's dealings with his fellow creatures; the "fear" of God is the voice of kindliness and conscious. [See Exodus 1:17 (Egypt's midwives refuse to obey the king's order to murder the newborn babies in their care, because "they feared God"); Deuteronomy 25:18 (Israel's eternal enemy, Amalek, viciously attacks the weak and helpless among Israel by preference, because Amalek does not "fear God").] Blessed is everyone who fears HaShem, who walks in His Ways (Psalm 128:1). The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10).

Do His will as if it were your will, that He may do your will as though it were His will. - R' Gamaliel, Mishnah, Pirke Avot 2:4

A covenant is a contract of a permanent, unconditional character, unless the words of promise involved explicitly state a condition or limitation of some kind. Look at the words of the Bible, in the Book of Genesis, chapter Nine: the covenant between God and man is unconditional, without limitation of any kind. This is a permanent covenant, an eternal "contract," if you will, between God and us, His creatures.

Learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.* - Isaiah 1:17

*1) Knowing how to do well doesn't come by instinct or inheritance, it must be learned; 2) Justice secures each person's individual rights; 3) relieve the oppressed, or "set right the oppressor" [by opposing his wrong actions]; 4) judge (win justice); 5) plead (take the part of - literally, "strive for") the weak and friendless. (See Isaiah, above, with Rashi.)

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. - Psalm 42:3

Human beings have free will, imagination and intellect. We have the capacity to behave much better - and also, much worse - than mere animals. As God has put us at the top of the planetary foodchain, giving us dominion over the Earth and every plant and creature on or in it, He requires us to live up to certain standards. Those standards are part of His covenant with us; He has set them out for us for everyone to read and learn in His covenantal Law, His Way.

Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes; and I will keep it at every step. Give me understanding, and I shall keep your Law, and observe it with my whole heart. Make me to tread in the path of Your commandments; for therein do I delight. - Psalm 119:33-5

He requires us to behave ourselves, to conduct ourselves better than mere animals, in accordance with our exalted, uniquely elevated place in His creation. He requires us to keep His Law.

Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who delights greatly in His commandments. - Psalm 112:1

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