This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 7: “Covenant At Sinai”
The problem with this lesson is that the author attempts to call the Mosaic Covenant a “covenant of grace” exactly as were God’s covenants with Noah and Abraham. In fact, as discussed earlier in this quarter, God’s covenants with Noah and Abraham were UNCONDITIONAL. God made unilateral promises and did not ask for any promises from Noah or Abraham. Instead, He promised never to destroy the earth with a flood again, and He promised Abraham that He would give him seed, land, and blessing. Neither Noah nor Abraham participating in making those covenants!
The covenant at Sinai was altogether different. It was CONDITIONAL and was a two-way covenant typical of the ancient Hittite covenants between a suzerain and a vassal king. God promised Israel blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience, and Israel responded as the vassals of God: “All that you have said, we will do.”
Adventism must frame the Sinai covenant as eternal, as a covenant of the same kind as the timeless Abrahamic covenant, in order to maintain its clutch on the seventh-day Sabbath as an eternal requirement.
In fact, this determined twisting of Scripture destroys the purpose of the Sinai covenant and the fulness of Jesus’ fulfillment of all it foreshadowed, and it breaks down because it establishes a created thing—the Sabbath—as an eternal reality.
Creation cannot be eternal. Only God is eternal. Days are created pieces of time. God does not exist inside time. Eternal life from God is not time-bound. In the same way, a time-bound requirement of “holy time” cannot be eternal. Time is simply not eternal!
The Adventist argument falls apart in confusion, and the Sabbath School’s attempt to make the Sinai covenant a “covenant of grace” is simply contrived.
Galatians 3:15–29 explicitly tells us the beginning and end of the Sinai covenant:
To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.
Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise (Galatians 3:15–29).
Furthermore, the book of Hebrews systematically steps through all the ways the Lord Jesus fulfilled the Sinai covenant and established the New Covenant. He is not serving as a Levitical high priest in heaven, applying His blood to confessed sins. NO!
Jesus finished the atonement when He shouted, “It Is Finished” and died on that cross. He broke the curse of sin—death—when He rose from the tomb three days later. His work is DONE!
The Sinai covenant was never intended to be permanent. It was never intended to be a “covenant of grace” according to the cumbersome way the Sabbath School lesson attempts to explain it. It was always a national contract with God, the One who chose Israel and formed her as His people from whom their Messiah would come.
The Ten Commandments are temporary along with the entire Sinai Covenant. They are “the words of the covenant” (Ex 34:27-28), and their purpose was to outline God’s terms of agreement with Israel.
The fact that many of the same moral requirements continue in the new covenant does not mean the Ten Commandments are carried over into the church. On the contrary, that entire law is obsolete because of Jesus (Heb. 8:13). Now God gives His church, comprised of those who trust Jesus and His finished work, His own righteousness and asks them to live as reflections of Him as His Spirit indwells them.
Morality does not emanate from the law; it flows from God Himself. This fact is what exposes the false accusation that we who left Adventism just want to indulge ourselves and sin without consequences. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth!
When we are born of the Spirit and transferred from the kingdom of darkness into that of the beloved Son, we are sealed with God the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13–14). We have the righteousness of God in us changing and convicting us of sin and of righteous living. The indwelling Holy Spirit who is in us because of our trust in Jesus is far more effective in curbing sin than is the law!
Change of priesthood, change of the law
The Sinai covenant cannot be in force today—not any part of it. It was temporary, and all of its laws are obsolete. Hebrews unpacks this reality, but the revelation of Hebrews 7 must be mentioned here.
Adventism says that the Ten Commandments are eternal, that they predated even the Sinai covenant. First, this idea is nowhere in Scripture. It is a complete invention. Second, Exodus 34:27–28 explicitly identifies the Ten Commandments as the words of the old covenant.
Third. Hebrews 7 explains that the Ten Commandments and the whole law of the Mosaic covenant is built on a single foundation: its priesthood. The levitical priests and their ministry of sacrifice and intercession is the foundation of the law.
Jesus, however, is a new priest. He is not a Levite; He is from a tribe that could NEVER have had a priest who served at the altar. Jesus is of the tribe of Judah—the kingly tribe, and it would have been illegal and a cause for corporal punishment for anyone other than a levitical priest to perform the duties of the priesthood.
Jesus, however, is after the order not of Levi—the legal priests, but of Melchizedek, the ancient king-priest of Salem who pre-dated the law and to whom Abraham, the recipient of God’s eternal promises, paid tithe. In fact, Hebrews 7 explains that the one who receives tithe is greater than the one who pays tithe—and Abraham and the patriarchs who were still in Abraham’s loins all paid tithe to Melchizedek!
The author of Hebrews goes on to explain that Jesus is in the order of Melchizedek. He is utterly unique, without relatives or other family priests. He alone is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. He is greater than the Levites who were still in the loins of Abraham when he paid tithe to Melchizedek.
Hebrews 7:12 is stunning:
For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well.
In other words, when Jesus came and fulfilled the law, taking its curse and breaking the power of death, He took the role of a new priest and fulfills the duties of a new priesthood.
No one can carry along the Ten Commandments from the old covenant into the new covenant because the law was built on a specific priesthood: the levitical priests. With a change of the priesthood, there must also be a change of the law.
Now we have the law of Christ. We do not carry the Ten Commandments with us. We are IN CHRIST, not in Moses, as Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 10:2 when he says that all their fathers were baptized into MOSES in the cloud and in the sea.
Now believers in Jesus are in the new covenant, hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3). Now we honor Him and do not go back to the requirements of the law—including the seventh day Sabbath—because to do so would be to fall from grace (Gal. 5:4) and to put ourselves under a curse equal to that of returning to paganism (Gal. 4:8–11).
We have to let go of our Sabbath idol and embrace Jesus alone as the one WAY to the Father, the new and living way opened by His blood (Heb. 10:20).
No, the Sinai covenant is not eternal nor of the same type as that of God’s unilateral promises to Abraham. It was temporary, beginning 430 years after Abraham and lasting Until The Seed (which is Jesus) came.
For further study on this topic of the Mosaic covenant and how it compares to the unconditional covenants of Scripture, here are the links to two of the FAF Podcasts and to a video:
- April 20–26, 2024 - April 18, 2024
- We Got Mail - April 18, 2024
- April 13–19, 2024 - April 11, 2024