Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “An Everlasting Covenant”. And so we start with the Everlasting Covenant (also called the “New Covenant”. A covenant that will be referenced many times in Scripture. For example, see Exodus 19: 5-6, Jeremiah 31: 31-34, Mark 14: 22-26 plus repeatedly referenced by Paul throughout his epistles). The difference between the Old and New Covenants is in the promises… who makes the promises. The Everlasting Covenant (the New Covenant) is based on “better promises” (Hebrews 8:6). Not the “Old Covenant” of faulty promises (Exodus 19:8; 24:1). The Everlasting/New Covenant is based on God’s promises, not the Old Covenant of man’s promises. And here is the crux of any issue I may have with this week’s lesson. It misses the chance to show that difference. This life and death difference. Between the Old Covenant of “works” and the Everlasting/ New Covenant of “faith”, the defining difference is the one making the promises.
Throughout this quarter, our study contributors or editor makes many references to man’s “obligation”. And truly this is part of the “Covenants”. But the “obligations” are not just statements or conditions of what man is supposed to do. These “obligations” or “promises” that are imposed upon man were not to make man say “all that the Lord has said we will do” (Exodus 19:8; 24:1). That was never, ever God’s plan. Any obligation or promise of man is a promise that God knew we could not fulfill on our own. It may be a covenant promise that man made in response to heartfelt contrition. A promise to do God’s requirements… to do His law. But impossible apart from an abiding relationship with our God of love! Yet people did make this promise (and so, at times, have we made such a foolish promise). A natural reaction. We humans see the depth of our sinfulness and resolve to never be so sinful again. A natural reaction from the natural heart of mankind. But this is not the reaction that will yield results. It is so often the promise from a prideful heart. A heart determined, not a heart submitted. A heart desiring self-preservation and not the heart of understanding and sacrificial love. A heart that stands hard and resisting, not from a heart that is yielding and pliable before our God. A heart that hopes for reward, not a heart that takes no thought of reward. It is from a heart that sees partially but not fully. Does not yet understand the Father… nor yet understands the depth of sinfulness that lies latent in every single person’s heart. And that sinfulness has a name. And that name is pride.
In our contrition and our desire to please God, we often make such promises to God. But God knows such promises are worthless. They are worthless because we sinners are “without strength” (Romans 5:6). But we, in our ignorance of God and ignorance of our own true condition, make these foolhardy promises. Promises that have their root in our pride. We may not recognize those promises as pride. We may believe that we are doing God’s will by such promises. That we are able… that He expects us to be able. And, therefore, we will perform.
I hope you are beginning to see our latent pride at work. And these promises of man are what constitutes the “Old Covenant” (more on this in several following week’s “thought”). God’s original design was that we would never make such impossible promises or “vows”. But when sinful man first ignorantly promised “all that the Lord has said we will do” at the foot of Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19:8; 24:1), then God knew He had to show the people precisely what they had just promised… the magnitude of the “works of God” they had just promise to “do”. He had to show them what the works of righteousness really are. The law given on Mt. Sinai and expanded in the 613 other laws in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy is to show us the magnitude of holiness and our high calling… and convict us of sin... of how far we are from the spirit of the law. Complying with the Law that convicts you, cannot make you righteous. Righteousness only comes by faith in Him who is righteous (which alone can render true obedience… love). And so Abraham’s history, fraught with attempts to fulfill the Covenant “obligations”, shows us the extent of how far man will go to perform these obligations. And until we start having faith in God, the faith that is accounted to us as righteousness (see Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3, 4:9, 4:22; Galatians 3:6; James 2:28), we will continue to be under the Old Covenant of man’s promise and not the Everlasting Covenant given to Abraham and repeated by Christ as the New Covenant, of God’s promise. Unwittingly perhaps, making the same foolhardy “covenant” based on the promises of man. Not the “Everlasting Covenant” as given to Abraham and offered to the children of Israel in Exodus 19, but the “Old Covenant” of Exodus 20. A covenant of promises “which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear” (Acts 15:10).
So why would God command something that cannot be done, outside of an intimate personal relationship with Him? So that those who strove to obey would see how much they needed Him. How much they needed this relationship with Him. As Paul so eloquently states, “the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24). And the sooner those who prided themselves in “doing the works of God” could see the truth by failing at doing the “works of God”, the sooner they would come to understand that “this is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent” (John 6:29). So they would come to have faith in God to change their heart into true law-abiders. To have the same faith as Abraham…, “and he (Abram) believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).
The study this week helps us see the beginning of the condition that existed when Christ came. The children of Israel in Christ’s day had become embroiled in pride and self-promotion. They so strove to honor God by obeying all His Laws. Even adding details to God’s laws. And they believed they were quite successful, too. Yet they really did not know God. So much so that they called His Son, Satan. Amazing! They strove to do what God said, to obey His law, to fulfill the obligations… but few had the love that fulfills that law and obligation.
As we study, let us ever keep this in mind. The covenant(s) were to bring us back into a trusting relationship with our Father-God. It is the sole purpose.
With brotherly love,
Jim