The Divine Covenants
The Sinaitic Covenant (Part 2)
The covenant at Sinai was a definite step forward from the covenant with Abraham and at the same time was to pave the way for Christianity. Considered separately, the Sinaitic covenant was essentially the giving of a system of government designed for the immediate use of the Jews. Only if we consider these two aspects of the covenant separately can we avoid much confusion.
As we have just said above, the covenant announced certain outward and temporal blessings to Israel on the condition that as a people they would be obedient to their King, God Himself. God established a “theological government”. An example of this is Ex. 6:6-8.
· Ex. 6:6-8 "Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.'"
Now, here is a good example of how we must carefully study the Word of God in order to understand the meaning being presented. Let me ask you some questions, keeping in mind what this passage specifically says: First, let’s look at Exodus chapter 6.
· Exodus 6:1-11 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country." [2] God also said to Moses, "I am the LORD. [3] I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them. [4] I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. [5] Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. [6] "Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. [7] I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. [8] And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.' " [9] Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage. [10] Then the LORD said to Moses, [11] "Go, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites go out of his country."
At what point in Israel’s history is this taking place? It was obviously while they were still in slavery in Egypt. Now look at verse 8. What do you think God is referring to here? Answer, Canaan. But wait a minute. Didn’t God say later that no one over the age of 20 would enter the land that He promised to Abraham? Did God forget what He said to Abraham or was He mistaken when He said that no one over 20 would get to the Promised Land? Of course not. Then how do we reconcile the statement in verse 8? Answer: He was speaking in verse 8 of the nation Israel, not of the current slaves as individuals. This idea is most helpful in understanding the covenant made at Sinai.
Forty years later Israel did cross over into the promised land, but with very few of those who left Egypt by way of the Red Sea. So we need to keep in mind that there are legitimate answers to the apparent confusion in what God intended when He made the covenant at Sinai.
The Sinai Covenant then was a compact promising to Israel as a people certain material and national blessings on the condition of their being generally obedient to God’s laws. But some will argue that a holy God would never be satisfied with an outward and general obedience. This is true but there is a solution to this seeming difficulty. This would be true of individuals but not of nations because nations as such have only a temporary existence and therefore must be punished in the present world, or not at all.
For this reason these views of the Sinai Covenant are contrasted in Hebrews 8 from the new and better covenant. We have earlier quoted from Hebrews 8:7-10, 13.
· Hebrews 8:7-10 For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. 8 But God found fault with the people and said: "The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 9 It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. 10 This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
· Hebrews 8:13 By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.
It needs to be pointed out here that in the passage we just read that God said He would put His laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. No such promise was made in the Sinai Covenant. The Mosaic covenant at Sinai was not so much an inward and spiritual obedience, as an outward and temporal obedience. What we have here is a radical difference between Judaism and Christianity. Under Judaism God dealt with one nation only; now under Christianity His grace is manifested to the elect throughout the world. Under Judaism He simply made known His requirements. Under Christianity He actually produces that which meets His requirements.
Let’s look again at Galatians 3:19.
· Galatians 3:19 What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator.
So it is clear from this verse that the Mosaic covenant was designed to be only temporary, to last only from the time of Israel’s travels in the wilderness and Canaan until the time that Jesus would come. This temporary arrangement was necessary to preserve the pure stock from which the Messiah would come.
During the fifteen hundred years between Sinai and Bethlehem, God carried out a practical demonstration with two great divisions of the human race. The Gentiles were left to the light of nature and they walked their own way. Why do you suppose He did this? He did this in order to answer the question, “Can fallen man find God and raise himself to a higher and better life using just his own unaided reason?”
The history of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans shows us the answer to that question.
· Rom 1:21-32, For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
There are other questions, the answers to which, help us to understand the depth of the meaning of the covenant that God made with Israel at Sinai. For example; Can fallen man, when placed in the most favorable circumstances, win eternal life by any doings of his own? Can he, even when he was separated from the pagans and being taken into a covenant with God, and supplied with a complete godly code for the regulation of his conduct, conquer his sin and act so as to secure his acceptance with the true God? Well, the history of Israel furnishes us with an emphatic, no. If Israel failed under this national covenant of outward and general obedience, how impossible is it for any member of the human race to give spiritual obedience.
The great bulk of the Israelites were blinded by their sense of self-sufficiency and self-righteousness and they turned the Sinai covenant into a covenant of works. There are several New Testament passages that demonstrate that the Sinai covenant is subordinate to the Abrahamic covenant.
You see, many of the Israelites understood the Sinai covenant to be a covenant of works. That is, they saw the Ten Commandments just like Adam saw the one commandment. They thought their salvation was achieved by obeying the commandments. But their error was that they did not recognize the situation they were in.
We are dealing here with two covenants: the Abraham Covenant and the Sinai Covenant. Now what was the essence of the Abrahamic covenant? It was promise. There were a number of promises, but the essential promise was that of the seed, who would be a blessing to all people. So the Israelites at Sinai still had this promise. They were no longer under the slavery of the Egyptians, they had the promise of the future, but they also needed a way to govern themselves as a nation.
Therefore the Sinai covenant was an addition to the Abrahamic covenant, not a substitute for it. The Jews had come to believe that their obedience to the law was their title to the promised land of Canaan. But Paul tells us that the promise to Abraham had already done that. That God never meant for the law to interfere with the gifts and promises of the Abrahamic Covenant is clear from what He said to Israel immediately before the law was formally announced from Sinai:
· Ex 19:4-6, 'You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites."
God is here saying that they had already been blessed by Him, but there was still more that they needed to know; how they should be governed. So He prefaced the Ten Commandments with Ex 20:2.
· Ex 20:2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
He rests His claim to their obedience on what He had already done for them. He had saved them from the plagues in Egypt, the slavery of the Egyptians, the Egyptian army, and He had cared for them as they wandered in the wilderness. So they should have been impressed and convinced of His power and promises. Further, God had dwelt among them as had not been the case with any other people.
Most people are unaware that the Ten Commandments were only part of the law that God gave at Sinai. This He did in Exodus 20, but He continued in chapters 21, 22 and 23. What we find here is the entire body of statutes that God gave for the government of Israel. This included governing their civil and religious activities.
So we have here the MORAL LAW and the CEREMONIAL LAW. They were all parts of one covenant. The Sinai covenant was the foundation of the political constitution of the nation Israel. Now this made God the King and Legislature of Israel.
It is important to note that as we study the Sinai covenant that there is no mention of any other peoples. This was a covenant with this new nation of Israel only. And I would like for you to notice that what we have seen God require of the people of this new nation is EXTERNAL. No one can become a member of the Gospel Church by virtue of an external covenant or a relative holiness. What does this mean? Well external covenant means keeping the law, or in other words, by our works. Relative holiness refers to the idea of being related to a group, such as a congregation.
The Israelites had the idea that if they obeyed the Ten Commandments and since they were “God’s chosen people that they would receive the promises that were made to Abraham. This view also presupposes an external king and an external king is a political sovereign.
Jesus has not made an external covenant with anyone or any people. He is not the king of any particular nation. He does not live in a temple made with hands. His throne is the heavenly sanctuary. The wall between Jews and Gentiles has long since been taken down so He is not related to any particular nation or people except the elect from every nation. The covenant that is now in force is entirely internal and spiritual.
· Heb 8:7-12 For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said: "The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.
Maybe you have noticed that there were no eternal rewards involved in the Sinai Covenant. That’s because the covenant was made just for Israel. Nations have no hereafter; therefore no eternal rewards were involved. Also, social relations are matters of the world and laws that regulate them deal with consequences in this world. Prosperity, peace, and material things were the rewards for national obedience; wars, famines and pestilences were the punishments of their sin. This has been the history of Israel.
So this was the nature of the constitution under which Israel was to begin its existence as a nation. But the great benefits this constitution was to provide were not the result of the Sinai Covenant. They did benefit from the covenant but their main benefit was from the covenant with Abraham. Listen to Deut 7:7-9.
· Deut 7:7-9 The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh King of Egypt.
So when there were crises among the Israelites, it was to God that they turned, pleading the promises of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.