First Quarter 2003 Adult Sabbath School Lessons: "The Promise"

Special Insights #8

Lesson 7: Covenant at Sinai

February 8-14, 2003

(Produced by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)

Tuesday's lesson (February 11): We need to look closely. The Old Covenant of Exodus chapters 19-24 is said to be "the Mount Everest … event" of Israel's early history. The Covenant instituted by the people is represented as "GOD'S proposal of a covenant with Israel," and their Old Covenant response is considered their "ACCEPTANCE of the covenant" (emphasis supplied). Thus the Old Covenant goes through a metamorphosis of being re-defined as righteousness by faith (that is, "acceptance").

But what God "proposed" in Exodus 19:5 was that they believe His New Covenant promise—just as Abraham had believed it. But instead of "acceptance," they rejected God's proposal and substituted their own idea, a promise of obedience (vss. 7, 8).
   Then the Old Covenant instituted by the people is presented as "God revealing Himself more fully than before," "a deal 'made in heaven.'" Further, God's "covenant demanded that they obey" (Thursday).

But do we see such a "demand" anywhere in the Bible record of the New Covenant? Did God make a "demand" of Abraham? He wanted Abraham to obey, but not in response to a threat if he didn't. Right here we see the issue of the two Covenants exposed. The Old Covenant is replete with terrible threats that if God's so-called "demand" is not met by perfect obedience, all kinds of curses are predicted (see Deuteronomy 28:15-68). Abraham didn't need any of those "curses"! Yet he obeyed without them, because he believed God's New Covenant promises.

Wednesday's lesson: the meaning of the Hebrew word translated in Exodus 19:5 as "obey" (shamea) needs to be remembered. Says the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament: "The basic idea [of shamea] is that of perceiving a message or merely a sound … to hear, … listen to, pay attention" (Vol. II, p. 2411). "Obey" has been attached as a derivative meaning that is not in the Hebrew word (probably itself as a consequence of Old Covenant thinking).

Likewise the root meaning of the word translated as "keep" (shamar) is not primarily "obey," but to "treasure," as we see its use in Genesis 2:15. God placed Adam in the Garden to "treasure" it, esteem it highly. In Exodus 19:5 God was not trying to institute a covenant of works. He wanted to renew to Israel His glorious promises He had made to Abraham. The so-called "Mount Everest" Sinai was more a lowland of proposed do-it-ourselves religion based on the "obey and live" motif which Ellen White says is the basic principle of the Old Covenant (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 372).

If we are tempted to view discussions about the Old and New Covenants as abstract theology over people's heads, consider the plight of innocent children who are taught Old Covenant ideas. After 1907 the view of Uriah Smith and G.I. Butler et al became the standard view. Seventh-day Adventist children found themselves in for a century of borrowings from Evangelicalism with Old Covenant emphases.

Standard "children's stories" in church and Sabbath School often became variations of the "crime-does-not-pay" motif. "Little Billy disobeyed Mommy and went swimming and almost drowned; you must obey Mommy and Daddy" was played out frequently. Or, if little Billy obeyed the Law, then his prayers got miraculously answered (which some kids don't get to see).

As the Old Covenant was popular in ancient Israel, so it has been in modern Israel. Parents innocently relied on the abundant supply of "obedience" stories to help them solve what they thought was their main problem: supporting the church's unpopular "standards."

"Standards" became an accepted idiom for rules, and loyalty to the church seemed to require employing the only theological motif that seemed to work in upholding them. After 1907, the personal failures of Jones and Waggoner made it almost impossible to resurrect the 1888 view of the Covenants (Ellen White had labeled that assumption a "fatal deception").

When the "Victorious Life" enthusiasm swept through the Sunday-keeping Evangelical churches after 1915 (the year Ellen White died), it was heartily adopted at the 1922 General Conference Session. Speakers declared they had come to believe that "the Victorious Life" was the same as the 1888 message and thus a more convenient way to understand it. Thus a long process began of borrowing the "righteousness by faith" concepts of the zealous Protestant churches and substituting them for the insights of the 1888 message. The confusion has extended into the present millennium.
The "most precious message" which Ellen White endorsed recognized that the New Covenant was the promise of God based 100 percent on His much more abounding grace; and the theme of the Old Covenant was the promise of the people to keep the commandments. It "gendered bondage" as Paul says (Galatians 4:24) for the simple reason that the people couldn't keep their promise (neither can we keep ours to God, which is why God never asked Abraham to make promises to Him). To this day, the New Covenant idea of 100 percent the grace of God as motivation for upholding "standards" is suspected of being a sly infiltration of antinomianism. Which is probably why in our current Sabbath School Quarterly so often the "contract," "make an agreement," make a "deal," strike a "bargain" ideas infiltrate the many clear points.

Consider the once-popular book for Pathfinders entitled, I Promise God (R&H, 1963). "The JMV* pledge is a heart promise you make to God" (p. 11). And so on throughout.

By employing the caveat "By the grace of God," the Old Covenant idea is supposedly sterilized, even though God never asked Abraham to promise Him obedience. (Steps to Christ makes clear: what God wants from us is to CHOOSE to serve Him, to GIVE ourselves to Him, not promise to keep the law, p. 47).

The idea that the Old Covenant is good for children is seen in the following from the once-popular Psalms For Tiny Tots (R&H):

[Picture shows Jesus standing by the Ten Commandments]:

[Next page, picture shows children standing before the Ten Commandments as the door to heaven]:

But the innocent child lives in a world of temptation. Sooner or later, he stumbles, and forgets. Then comes what Steps to Christ describes: "The knowledge of your broken promises and forfeited pledges weakens your confidence in your own sincerity, and causes you to feel that God cannot accept you" (p. 47). This is followed by self-reproach and spiritual discouragement ("I'm a failure; I'm not good enough to go to heaven") that Dr. Roger Dudley describes in Why Teenagers Reject Religion (pp. 9-17).

Rather, says Steps to Christ, "What you need to understand is the true force of the will. … The power of choice God has given to men; it is theirs to exercise" (p. 47). But the choice cannot be made intelligently if the motivation in the agape motif is absent. An egocentric motivation (threats if you disobey) is ineffective when temptations come (and they surely will).

Next, the Old Covenant mind-set renders acceptable the core Hindu idea of karma:

[The picture shows a little girl busily ironing clothes]:

How this Hindu concept could infiltrate our literature for children is not perplexing if the history of the Covenants is remembered. It was like the Old Covenant mind-set that Israel took upon themselves at Mount Sinai. Ever after it was easy for them to be ensnared in the ways of their neighbors. Finally came the rigid legalism that crucified their Savior.

The author of this book for children was a very good man, sincere and well-meaning. He apparently had never had a chance to know the 1888 view of the Covenants, or its history. All had been buried in the archives. It had "in a great measure" been "shut away from our people" and "in a great degree kept away from the world" (Selected Messages, book one, pp. 234, 235). The authors were innocent, as have been many others. But that doesn't lessen the number of children who have wandered unnecessarily into "bondage" as the result of imbibing Old Covenant ideas. Several interesting questions have come in:

(1) Wasn't Abraham's obedience made a prerequisite condition before God would give him the New Covenant promises? Didn't he first have to leave Ur of the Chaldees? And if so, doesn't that indicate that the New Covenant is based on our obedience first?

If this suggestion is correct, it would follow that Abraham's response to the New Covenant promises was egocentric in nature. Was the "Promise" a carrot-stick held before him, luring him to "obedience"? But there is no egocentric element in genuine faith. Abraham left Ur not knowing what lay before him. His heart merely responded to God's call, "Come out of Babylon."

(2) Weren't the revivals and reformations under such Kings as Hezekiah and Josiah, and later under Ezra and Nehemiah, New Covenant in nature? If so, doesn't this indicate that ancient Israel lived under the New Covenant, not the Old?

If one had never read Galatians, one might make that assumption. But Galatians 3 is clear: all through ancient Israel's history "the law was our schoolmaster" (vs. 24). It is possible to follow Old Covenant principles in great sincerity and fidelity, but the revivals were not permanent, and "bondage" followed. And of course, after the people had made their promises, God as "the schoolmaster" had to encourage them to keep them, driving them back to the faith that Abraham once had. Thus He led His servants the prophets to call them back repeatedly. But all the reformations of these good men led eventually to tragedy (Hezekiah to Manasseh; Josiah to Zedekiah; Ezra to the legalism that eventually crucified Jesus). Paul in Galatians clearly understood the meaning of the history.

Read the study notes for lesson 8

*Junior Missionary Volunteer, a predecessor of Pathfinders.