SECOND QUARTER 2021
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #7
MAY 15, 2021
“COVENANT AT SINAI”

 

 

This week we will be continuing our study and specifically looking at the Covenant made at Sinai. As I learned about the covenants several years ago and up until very recently, the old covenant was presented as the response of the Children of Israel on Mount Sinai, “All that the Lord has spoken, we will do.”  So, in this Insight, we will return to Sinai and review what happened there. Exodus 19:3-8 says, “3 And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: 4 ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. 6 And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.” 7 So Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before them all these words which the Lord commanded him. 8 Then all the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” So, Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord.” The response to God was “All that the Lord has spoken we will do. This we have identified as the Old Covenant because, we have rightly said, we have no ability to keep the commandments of God in our own strength. But are those words wrong? I want to submit that those words are words that could have been music to God’s ears. In Deuteronomy 5:28, 29 after the reviewing of the Ten Commandments in verses 1-22, we read these words from the heart of God as seen through the eyes and heart of Moses “28 “Then the Lord heard the voice of your words when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me: “I have heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. 29 Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!” So, we see that God said the words were right. There was nothing wrong with the words. The problem was that, as the text says, they did not have a heart to know Him. So, as we look at this topic in this Sabbath School Insights, we will attempt to see, from God’s point of view the difference between the Everlasting (New) covenant and that which is not the everlasting covenant, what we have termed the old covenant.

 

The context for what we call the Old Covenant is the giving of the Law at Sinai. The passage above from Exodus 19 is the prelude to the giving of The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. To understand the context of the giving of the Ten Commandments, we need to view it from the perspective of Hebrew culture. In Exodus 19, God has brought His people out of bondage, a people to whom He said in Deuteronomy 7:6-9, “6 “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. 7 The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; 8 but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God Who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments:”. He says that He chose them to be a people to Himself and that they were a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth and that He set His love upon them. So, in Exodus 19 and 20, we are about to witness a very fascinating event. God has a problem. These people were devoid of a knowledge of Who He was. They had been in bondage in Egypt, and He has just delivered them and is now leading them through the wilderness. Before they go too far, He makes a decision to not only deliver them from Egypt but to get Egypt out or them. He takes them to the mountain of God, Mount Sinai and speaks to them and in Exodus 19:10, 11, He has them wash their clothes. Strange. Why? In the Hebrew mind this was what is known as a Mikvah…a ritual bath, part of preparation for a wedding. This should come as no surprise. Jeremiah 3:14 says “14 “Return, O backsliding children,” says the Lord; “for I am married to you...” Have you ever wondered when was the wedding? Here it is. They are now ready for the marriage vows, the Ketubah or the marriage covenant which God gives in Exodus 20:1-17.  If we look at the wedding covenant, the Ten Commandments, we see the heart of God. When we get married, we get rid of all previous letters, pictures, gifts from previous friends of the opposite sex. There pictures are taken off the walls, the nightstands, the wallets. Our thinking is single-minded. So, God necessarily begins His presentation of the wedding covenant as follows: “And God spoke all these words, saying: 2 “I am the Lord your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Why does He do that? He is trying to get Egypt out of the people and change their way of thinking. He then presents in the other nine parts of the marriage covenant, His heart for how they will relate to each other. So, the people respond as they did, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” Except for one problem, they did not have the heart to know Him.

 

From God’s perspective, Sinai was to be a new covenant experience. But the people were clueless and did not realize their true condition. They looked at the marriage covenant and said, “sure we can do that”, not realizing that He Who gave the covenant would be the One to see to it that it was faithfully kept. It was His intent to get Egypt out of them, to call them as His people, His treasured possession, and a holy nation who would display His character and purposes to the world and the onlooking universe. He does this by taking them as His bride and living among them, disciplining and testing them in order to mold and shape them to be his faithful witnesses to the world. But they did not pick up on that. Praise God, He did not give up hope.

 

Jeremiah 31:31-33 says, 31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Two points in this passage are worthy of notice. Verses 31 and 32 above seem to say that God was going to give a new covenant unlike the one He gave at Sinai which can leave one with the impression that the one at Sinai was, in fact, the old covenant. But, in his book In Granite or Ingrained, Dr. Skip MacCarty says that what God intended to be different about the “new” covenant form the one made at Sinai was the faithfulness of the recipients of the covenant. The newness and oldness is in the receiving. The recipients at Sinai were unfaithful and God wants faithfulness which He Himself will supply. But this is not new. What makes the covenant old is the way in which it is received. The second point is that new can refer to ever increasing revelation of the character and purposes of God as revealed to each of the recipients of the covenants. For example, we read in Exodus 6:2-3, these words, “2 And God spoke to Moses and said to him: “I am the Lord. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name Lord [Yahweh] I was not known to them.” Is that so? Yes and no. Clearly God presented Himself to both Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as Yahweh (Genesis 15:6-7; Genesis 27:20; Genesis 28:13). So, what could be the meaning? Dr. MacCarty points out that God was about to “reveal Himself in a new way to Moses and Israel, a way that Abraham and the patriarchs had not seen. His revelation would be so much greater than the old that by comparison, it would seem as if God had bever revealed Himself as Yahweh.” (p. 61 In Granite or Ingrained). Amongst a multitude of new revelations of Himself, God was about to reveal to them His law on Sinai and as Dr MacCarty very correctly pointed out, this is the first record of God declaring Himself to be a loving God, a forgiving God, a gracious God, a merciful God. By this alone, God was revealing a “new covenant at Sinai. So, at Sinai, this was the new covenant and, for that matter, a “newer” covenant because they were given a fuller revelation of the character of God. It was the people whose unready hearts made it old.

 

Of course, we must hear from EJ Waggoner, “Note the statement which the apostle makes when speaking of the two women, Hagar and Sarah: "These are the two covenants." So, then the two covenants existed in every essential particular in the days of Abraham. Even so they do today; for the Scripture says now as well as then, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son." We see then that the two covenants are not matters of time, but of condition. Let no one flatter himself that he cannot be under the old covenant, because the time for that is passed. The time for that is passed only in the sense that "the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries." 1 Peter 4:3. {October 11, 1898 EJW, ARSH 647.4}

 

The difference between the two covenants may be put briefly thus: In the covenant from Sinai, we ourselves have to do with the law alone, while in the covenant from above, we have the law in Christ. In the first instance it is death to us, since the law is sharper than any two-edged sword, and we are not able to handle it without fatal results; but in the second instance we have the law "in the hand of a mediator." In the one case it is what we can do; in the other case it is what the Spirit of God can do. Bear in mind that there is not the slightest question in the whole epistle to the Galatians as to whether or not the law should be kept. The only question is, How shall it be done? Is it to be our own doing, so that the reward shall not be of grace but of debt? or is it to be God working in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure? {October 11, 1898 EJW, ARSH 647.6}

 

Sarah answers to the covenant, which is from above, because she is free. But the freedom which that covenant gives is the freedom of the Spirit, for Isaac was born of the Spirit. See Galatians 4:29. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 2 Corinthians 3:17. "If ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law." Galatians 5:18. But this does not mean that the Spirit gives one license to break the law; for "the law is spiritual." Romans 7:14. There is no liberty in sin, and "sin is the transgression of the law." So, the liberty of the covenant from above is that perfect liberty that belongs alone to those who are law-abiding. We become law-abiding only by having the law written in our hearts by the Spirit. {October 11, 1898 EJW, ARSH 647.7}

 

"Stand fast therefore." Stand where? - "In the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." And what freedom is that? - It is the freedom of Christ Himself, Whose delight was in the law of the Lord, because it was in His heart. Psalms 40:8. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." Romans 8:2. We stand only by faith. {October 11, 1898 EJW, ARSH 648.1}

 

Let it not be imagined that there is any trace of bondage in this freedom. It is liberty of soul, liberty of thought, as well as liberty of action. It is not that we are simply given the ability to keep the law, but we are given the mind that finds delight in doing it. It is not that we comply with the law because we see no other way of escape from punishment; that would be galling bondage. It is from such bondage that God's covenant releases us. No; the promise of God, when accepted, puts the mind of the Spirit into us, so that we find the highest pleasure in obedience to all the precepts of God's word. The soul is as free as a bird soaring above the mountaintops. It is the glorious liberty of the children of God, who have the full range of "the breadth, and length, and depth, and height" of God's universe. It is the liberty of those who do not have to be watched, but who can be trusted anywhere, since their every step is but the movement of God's own holy law. Why be content with bondage, when such limitless freedom is yours? The prison doors are open; walk out into God's freedom. {October 11, 1898 EJW, ARSH 648.2}

 

So, was the covenant at Sinai an Old or New Covenant? God intended it to be the new covenant with a fuller and richer revelation of Who He was, where He would write His law in their hearts and give them a heart to know Him. But the people were wholly unprepared to let go of self.  Sadly, God knew what was in them, 8 ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.” (Matthew 15:8).  He knew His covenant was falling on hearts that were far from Him and would produce works worthy of death. As Waggoner said the two covenants are not matters of time, but of condition… the condition of the heart. God has made us a promise in Jeremiah 24:7, “7 Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.” It is my prayer that we will accept the heart He offers us.

 

~Andi Hunsaker