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 “Covenant at Sinai”. In this lesson, we see two covenants referenced. Both are found in Exodus 19. In the first part, we see God referencing a covenant before the Ten Commandments were even given. An obvious reference to the previous Abrahamic Covenant (or Everlasting/ New Covenant) established centuries before. And a covenant that God promised would begin to be fulfilled when the Children of Israel were released from bondage. When God Said “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel” (Exodus 19: 4-6), he was just repeating the Everlasting/ New Covenant to the people. A Covenant promise given to Abraham and repeated once again here. But on the very heels of God graciously offering this Everlasting Covenant to the people, we have the people respond, “all that you have said we will do” (verse 8). Precisely the wrong response to the gracious Abrahamic Covenant.
This foolhardy, ignorant promise by the people began the Old Covenant “detour”. A detour because we humans say that we will “do” all that God has commanded. How foolhardy. How arrogant. How impossible. The correct answer was to “believe” God is able to fulfill those promises in us. To have “faith” that is accounted as righteousness… not that they (or any one of us) will perform them. And definitely not, “all that the Lord has said we will do”. As our quarterly so succinctly states, “all they had to do, in response, was obey” (Quarterly for Wednesday). But “obedience” is beyond them to do, even as it is beyond us to do. Obedience is what God wants. But obedience cannot be rendered from sinful, self-centered sinners, but only from born-again sinners. God did not want from the people sinful self-assured declarations of obedience from the people. He wanted declarations of faith in Him just as Abraham exhibited faith in Him. Our inability to “do all that the lord has said” is the same as Abraham’s inability to have a natural-born heir… Abraham “as good as dead” (Hebrews 11:12). And so are we dead, too…“dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). We are as unable as Abraham. The best Abraham could do was to father an heir through Hagar. “Nevertheless what does the Scripture say? ‘Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman’ ” (Galatians 4:30). And so with us, too. We can do no better when it comes to the promises of God. Our only response is to believe Him who is faithful.
So God was left with no choice but to proclaim the 10 Commandments. Spelling-out to the Children of Israel precisely the magnitude of what they had just promised. And this promise of theirs, which spawned the 10 Commandments, is what is called the “Old Covenant”. Based on the meagerly promises of mankind. Not faith in the mighty promises of God.
This “Old Covenant” way of thinking is what has dogged us sinners since the inception of sin. And we are trapped in this thinking and acting; “till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made” (Galatians 3: 19). Until Jesus comes into your mind, your heart, and welcomed into your life. Until Christ so comes to each, our only action toward God’s covenant is the “Old Covenant” of man’s ineffectual promises. But when Christ comes and is received, the “New/ Everlasting Covenant” of belief in God supplants the “Old Covenant” of belief in our own ability.
Let us be careful how we read the covenants. As evidenced in the life of Abraham and by the children of Israel at the foot of Mt. Sinai, when God offers the Everlasting Covenant to us, He desires a response of faith, not a faithless response based on the promises of human compliance. He did not desire the faithless action of Abraham trying to fulfill God’s Everlasting Covenant by impregnating Hagar; He did not desire the faithless promises of the Children of Israel by promising “all that the Lord has said, we will do”. From both (and us) he looks for faith. Only a sinner’s faith can be “accounted as righteousness”. Because we have no true “obedience” to offer. And only faith in our God will lead us to be intimately connected to our God who alone can make us truly obedient.
With brotherly love,
Jim