THIRD QUARTER 2025
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #8
AUGUST 23, 2025
"COVENANT AT SINAI."

 

The language of covenant runs like a golden thread through Scripture. Hebrews sets the framework for understanding God’s everlasting covenant. “But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second” (Hebrews 8:6–7). The text speaks of two covenants, a first that proved faulty and a second that is better because it stands on better promises. Let’s dig deeper to see if we can get a better understanding. 

After the fall, God’s plan of restoration has been to rewrite His law in the human heart and mind so that we can once again dwell in His holy presence. The Bible speaks of heart circumcision as the inner sign of that divine work. “And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart” (Deuteronomy 30:6). The Holy Spirit’s work replaces the mindset of self-reliance with living trust in God’s covenant promises, and it produces a life in harmony with God’s commandments. This is the mind of Christ!

Ellen G. White summarizes the dynamic with clarity: “Christ is the source of every right impulse. He is the only one that can implant in the heart enmity against sin.”—Steps to Christ, p. 26. The new covenant reveals God’s own action in us as it was in Christ. 

Abraham’s story is the Holy Spirit’s classroom for covenant theology. Why? God promised a son. When Abraham adopted human methods to secure the promise, Ishmael was born. When he trusted God’s word, Isaac arrived as the child of promise.

“For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid (Hagar), the other by a freewoman (Sarah). But he who was of the bondwoman was born (Ishmael) after the flesh, but he of the freewoman (Isaac) was by promise which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants” (Galatians 4:22-24).

As we can see, Hagar and Ishmael represent the old covenant experience based on the flesh, that is, human effort and human vows. Sarah and Isaac represent the new covenant experience based on God’s promise, that is, divine action in response to faith. This describes two heart conditions before God. Those who cling to self-will and human effort remain in slavery to sin. Those who trust God’s promises have freedom and inherit everything God pledged in the everlasting covenant.

The contrast in Galatians 4 between Hagar and Sarah is not merely a time period distinction but a spiritual one, and reveals that the two covenants are not confined to two time periods. They describe two heart conditions that appear in every age. A believer may live in the old covenant whenever self becomes the source of strength. The same believer lives in the new covenant whenever God’s promise is trusted in submission to Him. This frames the rest of the study. The “old covenant” is what humans pledge to do in their own strength. The “new” or “everlasting” covenant is what God promises and performs in those who trust Him.

As another example, Israel’s slavery in Egypt did not happen because God failed to fulfill His covenant promises. It grew from forgetting about their God and His plans for them while embracing Egypt’s values and comforts. When the pain of slavery became unbearable, they cried out, and grace moved first.

“And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them” (Exodus 2:23–25).

What covenant was that? Psalms 105:8 says, “He remembers His covenant forever, the word which He commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant which He made with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac, and confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant.”

God has only initiated one covenant: the everlasting covenant where He promises to do everything divinely and humanly possible to bring us back into His presence. God does engage other covenants but these are not of godly initiative, but rather human, and that can never bring salvation and freedom.

“Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself”(Exodus 19:3-4).

Salvation begins with God’s initiative, not human achievement. At Sinai, God did not invent a new plan, He invited Israel into the everlasting covenant that He had promised from before the foundation of the world. When God spoke from Sinai, the people trembled and stood afar off. More importantly, they answered with self-reliance:

“And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do” (Exodus 19:8).

“And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings… and they stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, speak thou with us, and we will hear, but let not God speak with us, lest we die”(Exodus 20:18–19).

When God spoke His law, the people trembled and requested a mediator. More critically, they answered with self-reliance: “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” This shifted the focus from God’s promises to human vows, which is the old covenant mindset. Let’s look at Ellen White’s commentary on this event:

“The people did not realize the sinfulness of their own hearts, and that without Christ it was impossible for them to keep God's law; and they readily entered into covenant with God (OC) feeling that they were able to establish their own righteousness they declared, ‘All that the Lord has said we will do, and be obedient.’ Exodus 24:7. They had witnessed the proclamation of the law in awful majesty, and had trembled with terror before the mount; and yet only a few weeks passed before they broke their covenant with God (OC), and bowed down to worship a graven image…They could not hope for the favor of God through a covenant (OC) which they had broken; and now, seeing their sinfulness and their need of pardon, they were brought to feel their need of the Saviour revealed in the Abrahamic covenant and shadowed forth in the sacrificial offerings…Now by faith and love they were bound to God as their deliverer from the bondage of sin. Now they were prepared to appreciate the blessings of the New Covenant.”—Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 471, emphasis and old covenant (OC) supplied.

Notice they had rejected the everlasting, new covenant promises of God teaching them and dwelling in them to transform them. Rather, they wanted to make their own covenant, on their own terms and conditions. The subtle shift from “God will” to “we will” is the essence of the old covenant. Human vows cannot accomplish what only God can do. Almost two weeks later, Israel broke their own covenant they had initiated, bowing before the golden calf. Contrarily, God’s covenant never fails because it rests on His promise. The old human covenant fails because it rests on our fluctuating resolve.

The everlasting covenant existed by divine promise from the beginning. It was ratified by the death of Christ. A ratified covenant cannot be annulled or edited by human tradition.

“For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator… a testament is of force after men are dead” (Hebrews 9:16–17, KJV).

“Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto… the covenant… confirmed before of God in Christ, the law… cannot disannul.” (Galatians 3:15, 17, KJV).

This seals salvation by grace through faith. It also means that no later custom or tradition can replace what God has already established. The Sabbath, rooted in Creation and affirmed by the covenant, cannot be exchanged for a humanly devised rest day after the cross. What the death of Christ confirmed stands.

At the cross the character of God stands revealed. Justice and mercy meet. The covenant is costly grace, not leniency. Christ is both Substitute and Life. He dies for us, and He lives in us. This is why the language of blood includes both shedding and sprinkling. The blood shed means Christ died our death, the blood sprinkled means Christ’s life is imparted by the Spirit.

How can a believer know which covenant posture is operating? “You shall know them by their fruits.” So, look at your fruit. If failure repeats and the remedy is stronger resolutions, likely the old covenant script is in play, “we will do.” If there is growing victory & freedom, repentance, and love for holiness through dependence on Christ, then the new covenant is being experienced.

As we come to an end of our study, we see that the book of Hebrews declares that Christ mediates a better covenant, established on better promises (Hebrews 8:6). Sinai teaches the bankruptcy of self-confidence. Calvary guarantees the sufficiency of divine grace. The old covenant is the human promise to perform. The new and everlasting covenant is God’s promise to write, forgive, indwell and empower.

Our study speaks of two covenants, a first that proved faulty and a second that is better because it stands on better promises. The fault does not lie in God, since He does nothing defective. The problem lies in the human side of the old covenant, which was grounded in human promises and human strength. By contrast, the new or everlasting covenant rests on the promises of God, and what God promises, He performs.

Sinai teaches us that human vows cannot sustain obedience; Calvary guarantees that divine grace can. The everlasting covenant is God’s promise to write, forgive, indwell, and empower. Christ is the mediator and the guarantee. The Spirit applies His victory within us.

We see at Sinai how God extended to Israel the everlasting covenant that writes His law in the heart, and how the people slid into an old covenant response of “we will do,” which quickly collapsed. The same choice comes to us today. Will we trust our resolutions, or will we trust God’s promises fulfilled in Christ and desire to live the faith of Jesus?

I close with a quote from the book Glad Tidings in Galatians by E. J. Waggoner:

“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?”— p. 188.

 

~ Carlos Munoz