COLLEEN TINKER
The Sabbath is the great sticking point for almost all of us who question Adventism. We know the arguments for Sabbath better than we know the rules of grammar or geometry!
The driving argument, of course, is that the Sabbath is the fourth of the Ten Commandments, and Adventists generally assume those Ten are eternal. They are not taught that those Ten are the actual words of the Mosaic covenant (Ex. 34:27, 28) which was a temporary covenant.
In fact, most Adventists aren’t taught about the biblical covenants at all. Oh, they may have the idea that God made an everlasting covenant, and as time passed, He added in the Ten Commandments and other rules for living—but the reality that God revealed His purposes and promises throughout the history of humanity in a series of covenants is a concept most Adventists don’t understand.
Importantly, the understanding of the biblical covenants is the key for understanding the role of the seventh-day Sabbath.
Importantly, the understanding of the biblical covenants is the key for understanding the role of the seventh-day Sabbath. Without learning about the covenants, the Sabbath remains a guilt-producing conundrum for those who learned the Adventist arguments for its importance.
Recently I received an email from a former Adventist whose worldview has been well-unpacked. She found herself puzzled, though, as she tried thinking through the primary covenants God has made with humanity. She found herself stuck on a significant question: “Who are the parties to the new covenant?”
I’m certain that her question is not unique. In fact, thinking through the covenants has spurred me to write a review of the primary covenants God made and establish who the parties of each covenant were: who made promises to whom, and who received what benefits?
Noahic Covenant
When Noah and his family and his arkful of animals landed on Mt. Ararat and finally disembarked, God made the first promise identified as a covenant in Scripture. The words of the covenant are found in Genesis 9:8–17. Verses 9–12 identify the recipients of the promises contained in this covenant:
“Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (Genesis 9:9–11).
This covenant is an UNCONDITIONAL covenant because God alone made the promises. He made the promise that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood, and He made that promise to “every living creature”. Furthermore, He established the covenant sign as the rainbow—the breathtaking refraction that would occur whenever it rained through sunshine.
This covenant is unique in the fact that God promised ALL His creatures that He would never destroy the earth with water again.
God made all the promises Himself, and “every living creature of all flesh” (v. 15) was the beneficiary of this eternal, unconditional covenant.
Abrahamic Covenant
The next covenant God made is recorded in Genesis 15. Here God ratified His unilateral promises to Abraham and to his descendants that He would give him seed, land, and blessing. He promised this older man with a barren wife that a son born to them, from Sarah’s body, would be the son of promise who would inherit all the covenant blessings God promised Abraham.
Furthermore, embedded in the covenant promises were the hints that not only Abraham’s physical descendants would inherit the covenant blessings, but people in all the nations would be blessed through Abraham as well.
In chapter 15:6 we also find Abraham’s response to God’s promises; in spite of there being no physical evidence that there could even be a child who would become the father of descendants to numerous to count, Abraham “believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
God proceeded to ratify His covenant with Abraham formally and instructed Abraham to prepare the sacrificial animals typical of ancient Hittite covenant ceremonies. Abraham, in fact, waited all day for God to appear, chasing away the scavenging birds that kept swooping down to the carcasses.
Abraham, though, was not allowed to participate in ratifying the covenant. When God finally appeared in the forms of a smoking oven and a flaming torch and passed among the sacrifices in the typical ritual of a self-maledictory oath (“so be it to me if I should break my covenant oath”), Abraham was asleep.
God had put Abraham into a deep sleep so his flawed, human promises could not contribute to the covenant. God’s covenant with Abraham was UNCONDITIONAL; God alone made promises; Abraham did not make any promises to God. This covenant is eternal and unconditional because God’s word cannot fail, and God alone made the promises.
Abraham and his descendants were the recipients. Nothing Abraham could do would alter or cancel God’s promises.
Mosaic Covenant
The Sinai covenant is different from the others. It was not unconditional; it was a two-way agreement between God and Israel. They were equal participants in this covenant which promised blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience.
God wrote the covenant on two tablets of stone (Ex. 34:27, 28), and Moses mediated the covenant between God and the fledgling nation of Israel. Only the actual “words of the covenant” were written on tablets of stone; the explanatory commandments that explained how this covenant was to be administered were written out by Moses as God told him what to write.
When Moses brought the words of this covenant to Israel and explained what God asked them to do, they all responded, “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do” (Ex. 24. 3). Unlike the Noahic and the Abrahamic covenants, the Mosaic covenant included human promises.
We learn in Hebrews 8 that this covenant was flawed from the beginning because the Israelites themselves were flawed. Even though they meant well, they were depraved, dead in sin just as all humanity is naturally, and their promises could not be reliable. They would be unable to keep their covenant promises.
God alone can make and keep His promises—and that fact is part of what the Mosaic covenant revealed.
God alone can make and keep His promises—and that fact is part of what the Mosaic covenant revealed. Israel was hopelessly flawed and needed to be saved. They would be unable to atone for their own sins, to honor God, or to avoid the sinful acts that the Ten Commandments condemned.
The Mosaic covenant, we also learn in Hebrews 10:1 and Colossians 2:16, 17, was composed of shadows rather than substance. The reality to which the shadows of the Ten Commandments and the rest of the laws pointed would be revealed in the Lord Jesus, the Messiah who would finally come and fulfill all of the obligations established in the Mosaic covenant.
The Mosaic covenant was CONDITIONAL. In this covenant, God took the role of the suzerain, or ruling king, and Israel took the role of the vassal state, or the people in subjection to the ruling king. God and Israel made promises, and the covenant blessings to the nation depended upon the nation’s faithfulness to its own promises.
Since God cannot lie nor His word fail, His promises could not be broken (see Hebrews 6L:9–20). Only Israel could break this covenant—and Israel did.
God and Israel made this covenant with mutual promises, but Israel failed to receive the covenant blessings when they apostatized. They did, however, receive the covenant curses.
And yet, God did not rescind His promises to Abraham when Israel apostatized. Ultimately, God sent the Seed to Israel in the person of the Lord Jesus, and when He came, the promises of the new covenant began to take shape.
New Covenant
The new covenant was first promised in Jeremiah 31:31–34:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
It was also promised in Ezekiel, but Hebrews 8 quotes the Jeremiah promise as the writer of Hebrews explains that the old covenant was flawed, and a new covenant had been instituted through the blood of Jesus.
The Noahic and the Abrahamic covenants, the Mosaic covenant, and even the Davidic covenant God made with David promising him an eternal throne, dynasty, and kingdom (2 Sam. 7), all occurred in real time directly with the recipients of God’s promises. The new covenant, however, came first as a prophecy.
Jeremiah received these promises from God during Judah’s exile in Babylon. Jerusalem had been sacked, and the temple was destroyed. There was no nation of Israel worshiping God and living in Israel at the time Jeremiah wrote this prophecy. Instead, the nation of Judah was enslaved in 70 years of exile exactly as the terms of the Mosaic covenant had said they would be exiled if they refused to honor God.
Significantly, the northern kingdom of Israel had been taken into captivity by Assyria about 100 years before Babylon had taken Judah.
For Jeremiah to have received this promise that God would make a NEW covenant not just with Judah but with both the houses of Judah and of Israel was shocking to say the least. There was no physical evidence that God could or would do such a miracle, but in the darkest time of Israel’s history, He promised that a day was coming when He would make a new covenant with all of the exiled people.
In fact, this covenant would not be like the covenant He had made with their forefathers. It would not be a “renewed” covenant. It was to be a covenant of a different type!
This NEW covenant would not include the tablets of stone, but God would put His law “within them” and “write it on their hearts”. We discover in 2 Corinthians 3 that Paul explains that the covenant of the Spirit is this new covenant God promised! This new, completely different kind of covenant would not be external; it would be internal, with the Author of the law living within all who believed God!
In fact, this new covenant would not include repetitive sacrifices; it would include complete forgiveness for sin and a completely new reality, because God would not even remember their sin!
Even though we haven’t seen this new covenant completely fulfilled for the houses of Israel and Judah as Jeremiah prophesied, Paul explains in Romans 9 through 11 that these promises will yet be fulfilled, because God’s promises are irrevocable.
We also learn from Jesus that this new covenant was set in motion at the moment of His death. On the night before He went to the cross, He gave His disciples their new “remember”: the Passover cup and the Passover bread were now representatives of His blood and body.
And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:23–26).
The old covenant—the Mosaic covenant—was completed. Jesus inaugurated the new covenant when He died on the cross. Moreover, we know that the new covenant began at that moment because the veil of the temple ripped the moment Jesus died, exposing the Holy of Holies, because a new and living way to the Father had been opened by the broken body and shed blood of Jesus (Heb. 10:20)!
We learn in the New Testament, especially in the writings of Paul (see also Acts 10; 15; Romans 9 through 11; Ephesians 2:11–22, and Galatians) that the mystery of the new covenant is that Christ Himself dwells in the hearts of all who believe and trust Him. Even though God first made the new covenant promises to the houses of Israel and Judah, gentile believers are grafted into the new covenant as well!
Jesus came and opened the way to reconciliation with God through His blood, and He gives eternal life to all who believe on the basis of His resurrection which broke the curse of death!
The new covenant is a fulfillment of God’s eternal, unconditional covenant to Abraham—and the surprise is that these blessings of God’s promises are for ALL who believe! Even gentiles who believe are ushered into the new covenant—and they are ushered in through ABRAHAM, not MOSES! (See Galatians 3 and 4; Romans 11; Acts 15).
The new covenant is UNCONDITIONAL. God unilaterally promised that He would remove the sins of Israel and Judah and place His laws in their hearts. Israel made no promises back to God. Furthermore, Jesus commissioned His disciples to take His gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth. God the Son revealed that the new covenant blessings would go to all who believed!
In fact, Jesus said,
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life (John 5:24).
God has made the new covenant promises Himself. The Lord Jesus, the Perfect Israel, fulfilled the requirement of the law, and because He shed the perfect, sufficient blood and broke the curse of death, the old covenant is obsolete (Heb. 8:13). The new covenant is based on Jesus blood, and all who believe and trust Jesus and His completed atonement are the recipients of the new covenant blessings (2 Cor. 3).
All who believe are Abraham’s descendants—the true children who believe as Abraham believed, trusting God’s provision. On this side of the cross, that belief is in Jesus, the One whom the Father sent (Jn. 6:29), and when we believe, we are born again and adopted as God’s own sons and daughters (Rom. 8:14–17; Gal. 4:4).
The recipients of the new covenant are all who believe—and God will keep His new covenant promises to the houses of Israel and Judah as well as to the individual Jews and gentiles who trust in Him.
Conclusion
As an Adventist I was taught that all of God’s promises were conditional, based upon the obedience or the disobedience of the people. This idea, however, is quite heretical. When God makes a unilateral promise, it WILL come true, even if individuals are disobedient.
We learn as we read Scripture that the recipients even of an unconditional covenant may rebel against God and fail to receive His blessings because they refuse to believe Him as Abraham believed.
Their unbelief, however, does not stop God’s eternal purposes from coming to pass. When He makes promises, such as His promises never to destroy the earth with a flood and to give Abraham and his descendants seed, land, and blessings, He will do it. Individuals may fail to receive God’s covenant blessings if they do not believe and trust Him, but God will still do exactly what He said He will do.
We who live in the light of the gospel of God in the face of Christ have only one appropriate response available to us: to worship Him who made heaven and earth, praising Him for keeping His unconditional promises to His people! †
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