The Story – Week Five

“New Commands and a New Covenant”

Welcome to week five in The Story!

The Story is held together with a few key narrative threads. These threads can be traced throughout every part of the book from beginning to end. One of the most important threads is that God wants to live with His people. This was His desire in Eden. It is fulfilled in the Tabernacle and later the Temple.[1]

Mt. Sinai is the setting for chapter five of The Story, “New Commands and a New Covenant.” We’ll be in the second half of the book of Exodus this week; last week we were in the first half. Here’s a simple outline of the structure of Exodus:

Part One: “Deliverance”

  • Moses is born / raised in Egypt (ch 1-2)
  • Moses in Midian / burning bush (ch 2-4)
  • Moses returns to Egypt (ch 4-6)
  • 10 Plagues / Passover (ch 6-12)
  • Israelites depart from Egypt (ch 12-13)
  • Deliverance at the Red Sea (ch 13-15)
  • Journey from the Sea to Sinai (ch 15-18)

Part Two: “New Commands and a New Covenant”

  • The Ten Commandments (ch 19-20)
  • Israel’s Constitution / the book of the Covenant (ch 20-24)
  • Plans for the Tabernacle (ch 25-31)
  • Idolatry: the golden calf (ch 32-33)
  • Intercession: God forgives (ch 33-34)
  • The Tabernacle is constructed (ch 35-39)
  • God is in the Tabernacle, with His people (ch 40)

The second half of Exodus takes place at the foot of Mt. Sinai, where the Israelites camped for about one year. Earlier at Mt. Sinai, God spoke to Moses through the burning bush. Now, God will speak to all of His people from a blazing fire atop the mountain peak. To Moses, God had said, “I am the God of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” To the people, He says, “I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt.”

At Mt. Sinai, God reveals His nature and character: “I am holy,” He said, and then He said to the people, “You are to be holy as I am holy.” God illustrated what this meant: through the Ten Commandments,a broad set of social regulations and a detailed list of ordinancesto direct their religious ceremonies. Collectively, these “new commandments”revealed God’s character, and they gave structure to the “new covenant” He was establishing with His people. This “new” covenant was, in fact, actually a fulfillment of the covenant God established with Abraham centuries earlier:

God said to him,“As for Me, this is My covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram [father]; your name will be Abraham [exalted father], for I have made you a father of many nations.

“I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

“The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”[2]

A covenant is a formal agreement; today, we would call it “legally binding.”

It is often solemnized or ratified by an oath…and usually places demands on one or both parties. Covenants played a major role in the ancient Near East, which made them a useful way for God to relate to His people and demonstrate His commitment to them. God’s covenant with Israel is the primary concept used to describe his relationship with His people.[3]

But why, one might ask, would God choose to relate to His people in this way? This is an important question, and John H. Walton offers an excellent response:

God has a plan in history that He is sovereignly executing. The goal of that plan is for Him to be in relationship with the people whom He has created. It would be difficult for people to enter into a relationship with a God whom they do not know. If His nature were concealed, obscured, or distorted, an honest relationship would be impossible.

In order to clear the way for this relationship, then, God has undertaken as a primary objective a program of self-revelation. He wants people to know Him. The mechanism that drives this program is the covenant, and the instrument is Israel. The purpose of the covenant is to reveal God.[4]

Historically, Christians have assumed that the purpose of the covenant was salvation. Obviously, salvation is a key component of God’s plan; if He’s going to relate with people on a permanent basis, He needs to save them. Certainly, God intends to save people; and towards that end, He chooses to reveal Himself. But we need to be careful lest we wind up relate everything in Scripture (especially in the Old Testament) to the important issue of salvation. Otherwise, we’ll misread the text; for example, we’ll end up in arguments about whether or not a person has to obey all of the Ten Commandments in order to “be saved.”

The covenant is a revelatory program that [develops through] phases of election [e.g., calling Abraham, claiming Israel, confirming David’s dynasty] that are designed to highlight the nature and attributes of God.

When God has made Himself known in such a way, He closes the program of revelation by making a means of reconciliation possible through His Son, Jesus Christ.

The [revelation] program thus eventuates in a [salvation] program.

We have been given the knowledge of God so that we might enter into relationship with Him. He has provided the revelation of Himself and He has provided the way to Himself.[5]

Christians must resist the temptationreduce the message of Scripture to a concise “plan of salvation” that can be quickly explainedand immediately experienced. Otherwise, we’ll wind up reading the Scriptures incorrectly: as a list of things we must know, believe and do in order to “be saved.” Let’s remember Jesus’ challenge to the Pharisees: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life.” (John 5:39 NIV)

This week’s reading in The Story is an excellent case in point. If salvation was the sole function of the covenant, then God would’ve given the Law to the Israelites while they were stuck in Egypt, saying, “OK, here’s the deal: if you can faithfully follow these commandments with all of your heart, then I will save you. If you will obey, then I will be your God and you will be My people. The ball’s in your court. If you obey, then I will save you from your miserable situation and take you to a better place.” That might seem to make sense, but it’s not at all what God did.

It’s a matter of biblical fact that God saved the Israelites from their oppression and bondage and then He gave them the “New Commands and a New Covenant” (the title of chapter five in The Story.) God graciously chose to save them, and then, He formalized the covenant at Mt. Sinai. The Israelites did not have to “audition” through obedience to “earn” their election (which means selection, i.e., salvation).

Recently scholarship is demonstrating – convincingly - that first century Jews (of Jesus’ day) were not trying to earn their salvation by a legalistic effort to obey the Law. They were secure in their sense of election (they knew God had chosen them to be “His people” by grace); their debates about the Law revolved around identifying the proper marks that confirmed their status. If Martin Luther had been confronted with the evidence behind this assertion (most of it is in the Dead Sea Scrolls, not discovered until the twentieth century), the Reformation may haveunfolded very differently.[6] The issue between Jesus and the Pharisees needs to be explored along these lines: Jesus claimed that His life was replacing the Law as the primary means of knowing God. Jesus didn’t accuse the Pharisees of “legalism,” (contrary to popular assumption); He did accuse them of misreading the Scriptures (they weren’t the last ones to do this!)

Let’s back up a bit in The Story andreview what God said to Moses at the burning bush:

God also said to Moses, “I am the Lord. 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. I also established My covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered My covenant.

“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.’” [7]

Notice the three stages of divine action, and their sequence:

  • Deliverance: “I will redeem you…I will take you as My own people”
  • Covenant: “I will be your God, then you will know that I am the Lord your God”
  • Inheritance: “I will bring you to the land…I will give it to you as a possession.”

I’ve already commented regarding God’s decision to save Israel before He gave them instructions as to how they were to live. Now I want to raise this question: wouldn’t it have made more sense for God to say, “I will bring you out of Egypt, and I will bring you into the Promised Land, and then you will know that I am the Lord your God”? Why wouldn’t God fulfill His entire promise to Abraham – by settling the Israelites in the land that was promised to them as an inheritance – and then say, “Well, that should prove that I’m who I say I am.”

Apparently, something unique happened at Mt. Sinai that enabled Israel to “know…the Lord their God.” They certainly learned something about Him during the sequence of events that led up to their deliverance from Egypt: the plagues, the Passover, the Red Sea, the manna, etc. Those things revealed God’s preference for Israel and His power over all rivals. But God had much more in store for His people; at Mt. Sinai He revealed His character and nature – He did this through the commandments and the covenant.

The Book of the Covenant(Exodus 24:7) wasnot given to Israel so that the people could obey the commandments and be “saved” (in the sense that Christians usually talk about salvation). Through the covenant, God revealed Himself to Israel, so that they could reveal Him to the nations. That was the point at the time; we need to read The Story with that in mind.

Why was it necessary for God to initiate this program of revealing His character and nature to Israel, and ultimately to the nations? Quoting Walton once again:

[The first eleven chapters of Genesis function as] an introduction to God’s program of revelation. How did it come about that people needed a revelation of Yahweh? Why did He not just keep in contact from the start?

Genesis tells the story of how God created humankind in fellowship with Him, but also relates how that relationship was destroyed by the Fall. The destruction of all but Noah and his family in the flood gave humanity a second opportunity to maintain a relationship, but again sin interfered.

The primeval history concludes with the important account of the Tower of Babel. Urbanization in Mesopotamia had provided fertile ground for the development of a new paganism aptly represented in the symbolism of the ziggurat. The Tower of Babel represented the definitive formulation of a brand of paganism that pervaded the ancient Near East in which mythologized deity was portrayed as having all the foibles of humanity. In so doing, humanity remade deity in its own image.

The perception of God that swept [over] the ancient world was incapable of providing a sound basis for a relationship with the one true God. The result was the need for God to vouchsafe an accurate revelation of Himself. He therefore instituted a revelatory program by means of the covenant. In this way chapters 1–11 of Genesis show why there was a need for a revelatory program and lead into the details of how God embarked on that program using the mechanism of the covenant.[8]

God revealed Himself to Israel gradually; through the developmental stages of a long-term relationship that spanned generations. He fulfilled the original promises made to Abraham regarding descendants and a Promised Land.He described His holy character at Mt. Sinai through the content of the national covenant.He demonstrated His mercy and justice through His ongoing relationship with the chosen people who were far from perfect.Eventually – after centuries of a turbulent relationship - Jeremiah summed upwhat “knowing God” means:

This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord.”[9]

ThroughoutThe Story we will see that, even as Israel’s knowledge of God’s character and nature increased, they failed to “walk before God” in a manner that was consistent with what they knew to be true about Him. This jeopardized God’s plan to reveal Himself to all nations.

When God’s peoplerefused to live in faithfulness to the terms of the covenant, they sent a mixed message to the nations about God. They were not reflecting His character clearly. God was offended by the sinful behavior of His people – largely because it was preventing the nations from knowing who He was. Remember, He didn’t just want a relationship with Israel, He wanted a relationship with all nations; He’d said that to Abraham at the commencement of the covenant program: “Through you, all nations will be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3)

Towards the end of the Old Testament part of The Story, Israel is living in blatant contempt of covenant. How can a holy God reveal Himself to the world through a chosen nation that is behaving worse than the pagans? God answers this question through His prophets:

  • First, God must deal with the issue of Israel’s sinfulness. Just like Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise, the people of Israel were exiled from the Promised Land. God withdrew His protection from Israel, and they were plundered by pagan nations. His message to Israel, and through Israel, went like this: “Listen, O Israel,youare My people, but your liveshave not representedMy character; therefore, I am going to judge your sins with an act of severe discipline. Prepare for exile!”
  • Second, He must display His own sovereignty. God then needed to defend His reputation, proving that Israel’s defeat didn’t discredit His claim to be the One, true God. His message to Israel, and through Israel, went like this, “The nations of the world presume that you suffered defeat because I wasnot able to protect you. This is a disgrace; how will the nations know that I am God? Listen, O Israel, I will preserve youand even prosper you in the land of exile; andeventually,I will bring you home. But know this: I’m not doing this for your sakes, but for Mine, sothat the nations will know I am the Lord.”
  • Finally, He must deploy His plan of salvation – the huge reason that God has been revealing Himself to Israel, and through Israel, is so that everyonemay see who He is: our Creator, and our Savior. His message to Israel, and through Israel, went like this, “Behold, I am the Lord, there is no other God but Me. I am about to reveal Myself to you and through you in a way that you can’t possibly imagine. You wouldn’t believe Me if I told you, but know this:the final portion of My revelation to you will be the provision of permanent salvation for you - and for all people. When I take away your sins, I will take away the sins of the world. The means through which I will save your from the nations is the means through which all nations will be saved; for everyone will know that I am the Lord, and all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Through the prophets, God promises that He will reclaim His people establish a new covenant. For example, He gave this promise through the prophet Jeremiah:

“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 broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.