Lesson 8: “Covenant at Sinai”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
What do you think? Are the Ten Commandments eternal? Is God under the authority of the Ten Commandments? With whom did God make His covenant at Sinai? Did Abraham keep the Ten Commandments? How about Noah? What is the “law of Christ”? Are the Ten Commandments part of the new covenant? What did Jesus mean when He said, “Come unto Me…and I will give you rest”?
This week we are looking at the eighth Sabbath School lesson in the third quarter of 2025. The current lesson is entitled, “Covenant at Sinai”, and it teaches Adventist parishioners around the world the Adventist version of how to relate to the Ten Commandments. We are going to show that the old covenant was temporary and given only to Israel. We will show that with Jesus came a change of the priesthood and a change of the law, and now believers live by the law of Christ: the indwelling Holy Spirit teaches our born-again hearts to apply the commands of the New Testament to our lives as acts of trust in the Lord.
Ten Commandments: Adventism’s “Magna Carta”
This week’s lesson walks through the account of God’s giving the Mosaic Covenant to Israel at Mt. Sinai, but it explains this event using Adventism’s unique interpretation: that the Ten Commandments are the heart of God’s self-revelation. Monday’s lesson states:
The Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) is the heart of God’s revelation and biblical ethics. It forms the substance and foundation of divine standards for all humanity; its principles are eternal and universal.
The Teachers Comments expound further on this idea:
The Decalogue forms the heart of God’s revelation and biblical ethics and presupposes salvation. It is the Magna Carta of biblical teaching, and its summation, the norm of all norms. It forms the substance and foundation of divine standards for all humanity; its principles are eternal.
These quotes from the Sabbath School quarterly confirm Adventism’s teaching that all people have always been under the rule of the Ten Commandments. Adventism teaches that Abraham, for example, knew and kept the Ten Commandments because God said that “Abraham listened to My voice and kept My charge, My commandments My statutes, and My laws” (Genesis 26:5). These commands are said to be eternal, that before the creation of the world, these laws governed heaven itself and the conduct of the angels. In fact, at the heart of Adventism’s great controversy worldview is the belief that Satan accused God of giving His creatures a law too difficult to keep and accused Yahweh of being unfair.
The essence of Jesus’ incarnation and earthly ministry, therefore, was to show that a human being really COULD keep the law. Therefore, because Jesus kept the law and demonstrated how to do so, true believers now can keep the law by praying and trusting the Holy Spirit as He did. The law, Adventism teaches, is at the heart of the controversy between Christ and Satan, and those of us who choose to follow Jesus will help Him prove to the universe that the law CAN be kept. Satan will thereby be defeated, ultimately, because faithful followers will stand firm to its principles and commands—especially that fourth commandment—staying loyal to the seventh-day Sabbath in face of coming persecution.
The law, within Adventism, is the heart of salvation. Jesus came to uphold the law and show us how to keep it, and the saved will, ultimately, be those who faithfully keep the Ten Commandments and remain faithful to the seventh day in the coming persecution.
Thus Satan will be shamed and defeated by Jesus and His faithful followers.
In fact, on the authority of Ellen White, Adventism teaches that when the saved are finally taken to heaven, they will keep the Sabbath with Jesus even in eternity We see in this belief that the Teachers’ Comment that the Ten Commandments are “the Magna Carta of biblical teaching” is exactly what Adventism believes.
But is this idea really true? In order to see what Adventism is really claiming, let’s look at the Encyclopedia Britannica’s description of the Magna Carta:
The Magna Carta is the charter of English liberties granted by King John on June 15, 1215, under threat of civil war. By declaring the sovereign to be subject to the rule of law and documenting the liberties held by “free men,” the Magna Carta provided the foundation for individual rights in Anglo-American jurisprudence.— https://www.britannica.com/topic/Magna-Carta
While it’s true that the Magna Carta has become the framework giving shape to modern laws in the Western world, it is NOT true that it describes the function of the Ten Commandments. In the first place, the Magna Carta declared the sovereign of a country to be subject to the rule of law. God, as the sovereign ruler of Israel, has NEVER been subject to His own commandments. The fact that the Lord Jesus came, incarnate, to this earth as a Jew meant that as a Jewish man, He was born under the law, but the Lord God Almighty is OVER the law, not under it.
In fact, Jesus was teaching the Jews that He was no ordinary man when He told them that He was “Lord of the Sabbath”. He was not by divine nature UNDER the Sabbath. It did not rule His behavior. Rather, He had the authority, as the Author of the law, to describe Himself as being the One who came to fulfill the shadow of God’s rest.
Suzerain-Vassal Covenant
God the Creator wrote and gave the Law to His firstborn son, the nation of Israel (see Exodus 4:22), and He made a covenant with them—a conditional covenant based on His promises to bless them if they obeyed and to punish them if they disobeyed. This Mosaic covenant was patterned after ancient Hittite suzerain-vassal covenants made between conquering kings and conquered kings. They contained the same format that God’s covenant with Israel followed: the core of the covenant was a series of expectations that the conquering king—or the suzerain—demanded of the vassal king—the conquered king and his people. At the heart of every ancient Hittite covenant was the sign of the covenant: a demand for a behavior that every one of the conquered people would observe in order to demonstrate ongoing fealty, or obedience and loyalty to their suzerain who now ruled over their nation.
Following this pattern, the Mosaic covenant contained the sign of the covenant in the center of the commands demanded by the sovereign God—the King and ruler of the nation Israel. That sign was the Sabbath, and the Sabbath was a perpetual sign of the Mosaic Covenant as long as the covenant was in effect.
God had asked Israel to rest in their tents one day in every seven. This weekly rest was never described as a test of their loyalty; it was always called a “sign” of their covenant with God. As they rested in their tents, God was working FOR THEM. If they honored this sign, He would make them more prosperous than any other nation, and no one—not the Canaanites nor Israel herself would be able to say that Israel was successful because Israel worked harder. No! Everyone would know that Israel’s GOD was the One True God, the God who defeated all other gods and nations and who gave Israel prosperity and blessings HIMSELF.
Importantly, this sign was only for Israel, and it belonged exclusively to the Mosaic Covenant. It was not transferable to any other people or covenants.
Jesus, as God the Son and the Son of Man, came to fulfill in Himself all the requirements of the Mosaic Covenant. He became the One Mediator who, in Himself, represented both God, the offended party, and man, the offending party. Jesus as the one Perfect Israelite, came and did what no other Israelite could do: He perfectly fulfilled the entire law, including the moral and ritual aspects. He became the one Perfect Sacrifice for sin. He revealed Himself to be the Bread of Life, the Light of the world, the new high priest, the living Law that became the fulfillment of the shadows of the law.
Jesus became the One who fulfilled the suzerain-vassal covenant God made with Israel, and as He died the one sufficient death for sin, the curtain of the temple ripped from top to bottom, revealing the Most Holy Place where the ark of the covenant resided and where historically the glory of God had rested in ancient Israel.
Our Lord Jesus made the tabernacle/temple obsolete. No longer is God inaccessible to sinful man. Now every sinner can directly approach the Father on the basis of Jesus’ eternal blood of the covenant!
Come Unto Me
Wednesday’s lesson emphasizes Adventism’s view that the law is eternal, a revelation of God’s character. “The law of God reveals God’s character, who He is,” the day’s lesson opens. “As God is holy, righteous, and good, so also is His law. Paul confirms: ‘So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good’” (Rom. 7:12 ESV).
The lesson misses the context of Romans 7:12. Look at what Paul says starting in Romans 7:6:
But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were constrained, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! Rather, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law. For I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.” But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, worked out in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the Law sin [is] dead. … For sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.—Romans 7:6–8, 11, 12 LSB
Paul is not saying that we learn who God is from the law nor that we live by the law as Christians. Rather, Romans 7 is explaining that the Law actually increased sin and condemned us. The law reveals that we are sinners. It defines sin and condemns us. In fact, the law has at its heart a death sentence! It is not a document of victory but a law of sin and death! It condemns every single person to death for sin!
Now, when we trust the finished work of the Lord Jesus as our propitiation for our sin, we live by a new law: the law of the Spirit. We live in “newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter”!
The law is no longer our authority, and it certainly is not our window into God’s character.
It reveals God’s justice—His decree that sinners must die—and it foreshadows the need for the Savior, the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus’ blood for human sin.
Friday’s lesson binds the reader even more deeply into a false understanding of the law and of the Lord Jesus. Look at this confusing contradiction of statements in the last paragraph of Friday’s study:
Jesus made it clear that, if we humbly accept God as our Lord and King, His commands are not difficult to obey (Matt. 11:28–30). Christ made it plain that the divine law has permanent validity (Matt. 5:17–20). When we keep God’s laws out of love and gratitude to Him because of the salvation that He has freely bestowed upon us, we can experience the fullness of a saving relationship with Him. While enjoying the great advantages of keeping the law (after all, look at the pain and hardship that violating it brings), we also can enjoy the assurance of knowing that our salvation is found in Jesus, not in our law-keeping.
Matthew 11:28–30 has absolutely nothing at all to do with enforcing law-keeping nor of guilting people into believing that keeping the law is not burdensome! Actually, the law IS burdensome, as Peter said to the brethren in Jerusalem at the council of Jerusalem when the decision was made Not to require gentile converts to keep the law:
“Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.”—Acts 15:10, 11 LSB
Born again believers are NOT under the law any longer! In fact, Matthew 11:28–30 says this:
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”—Matthew 11:28–30 LSB
Perhaps you noticed an echo from Jesus’ words in the statement by Peter in Acts 15. The word “yoke” was a word the Jews used of the Law. Jesus told the Jews to come to Him to find rest and to take His yoke upon them and learn of Him. He would give them rest for their souls. Significantly, Jesus gave this call immediately before His famous encounter with the Pharisees in the grain field when they accused Him of breaking the Sabbath and He declared that He was Lord of the Sabbath.
Jesus was OVER the Sabbath, not UNDER it. Jesus had the authority, as the Author of the law and the fulfillment of its shadows to declare HIMSELF to the Source of rest that the Jews kept trying to find on Sabbath! Furthermore, Jesus emphasized the connection by using the Jewish moniker for the law—“yoke”—and telling the Jews to take His yoke instead of the law. In Him alone would they find rest.
Significantly, Peter used the word “yoke” in his address at Jerusalem quoted in Acts 15 above. He specifically said that they should not place on gentile believers “a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear.”
The lesson is wrong: the law IS burdensome. The law had never-ending demands for sacrifices, rituals, and offerings for cleansing and worship. These rituals could not be separated from the moral requirements or civil requirements of the law. The law was God’s gift to Israel, defining the nation as HIS and making them separated by laws from the surrounding pagan nations, but the law was a burden.
In Christ’s once-for-all death and His resurrection, there is finally peace and rest! When we trust and believe that the Lord Jesus has done all that is necessary for our salvation and we throw ourselves on His mercy, then we enter His rest, the rest of His finished work! We no longer have to work to prove that we are saved or to make sure we do all the righteous things a righteous person should do.
Now we literally have the personal, alien-to-us righteousness of Christ imputed to our account (Philippians 3:9).
The Law Did Change
The lesson opened with declarations that the law is eternal and universal. This assumption, integral to the great controversy worldview, is completely false. The law—the actual words of the Mosaic covenant (Exodus 34:27, 28), were first given to Israel on Mt Sinai. They had not been given to anyone prior. Just before Moses died, he delivered a restatement of the Mosaic covenant to the wilderness generation before Joshua led them into the land. Before he restated the Ten Commandments to them, He said:
“Yahweh our God cut a covenant with us at Horeb. Yahweh did not cut this covenant with our fathers, but with us, [with] all those of us alive here today. Yahweh spoke to you face to face at the mountain from the midst of the fire.”—Deuteronomy 5:2–4 LSB
When Israel referred to “the fathers”, they meant the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses specifically said that God did not make the Mosaic covenant—of which the Ten Commandments were its actual core document, the very words of the covenant—with the fathers.
God did not give the law to the patriarchs. He gave it to the nation of Israel at Mt. Sinai. We see from the words of Moses himself that the law did not predate Sinai. Even more, we also saw in Acts 15 that the gentile converts were not to be put under the law.
Yet Hebrews 7:11, 12 clearly tell us that the law HAS BEEN CHANGED:
Now if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the people received the Law), what further need [was there] for another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be designated according to the order of Aaron? For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also.—Hebrews 7:11, 12 LSB
This passage alone explains that the law was given on the basis of the levitical priesthood. In other words, no part of the law could “work” or be used rightfully apart from being mediated by the levitical priesthood.
Jesus, however, came and replaced the levitical priesthood with a new priesthood: one in the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek first appeared in Genesis 14 when Abraham, the recipient of God’s unconditional covenant to give him seed, land, and blessing, paid tithe to the King of Salem and a priest of God: Melchizedek.Melchizedek was not a priest according to the law. He existed BEFORE there was a law!
Melchizedek predated Levi, the father of the priesthood, and Hebrews 7 explains that the Lord Jesus’ high priesthood is in the order of Melchizedek: a righteous man whose authority superseded Abraham himself and who existed OUTSIDE the law!
When the priesthood changes, there must be a change of the law—and now, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:20, we who are born again are not under the law but under the law of Christ!
Jesus came and systematically gave us a new law. In Matthew 5 through 7 He would say, for example, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…” He didn’t exposit the law of Moses—he literally gave a new law! He defined adultery as an internal sin: if a person ever has a twinge of lust, he is guilty of adultery. If a person ever has a twinge of destructive rage and hate, he is guilty of murder.
The Author of the law came and Himself fulfilled the law—and He gave us a New law: His own law, the law of Christ. Now, when we trust the Lord Jesus and are born of the Spirit, we do not serve God by observing the Mosaic Law. Now we live by the law of the Spirit. God Himself indwells us, and we live by the resurrection life of Jesus in us!
Now we are led by the Lawgiver Himself, and we learn to apply the word of God to our lives and to live by faith, trusting the One who died for us to show us how to love others for Hi and to honor Him when we are tempted. Now He teaches us to TRUST Him, and we no longer answer to the law.
Now all of God’s New Testament commands are ours—but only if we have trusted the Lord Jesus and have been made alive in Him.
The lesson is teaching heresy. The law was for Israel ONLY, and the Lord Jesus fulfilled all of it. Now we live under a New law, and the One who gave Israel those moral requirements indwells us and teaches us to say NO to ungodliness and to resist temptation by trusting Him. We don’t abandon righteousness; we receive it from Jesus and live by His indwelling power. Our righteousness now exceeds that which was possible for any Israelite. Now we rest in Christ through faith in His finished work.
Now we have Sabbath rest every day because the Lord of the Sabbath is in us and we are in Him!
If you have never admitted that you are by nature dead in sin and under condemnation, if you have never admitted that you are helpless to please God or to obey Him, then look to Jesus today. See Him—the only person ever born spiritually alive with God’s life in Hm—as He took your sin into Himself and died the death your sin deserved. See Him suffer God’s wrath on that cross as the sun darkened and He hung, desolate, between heaven and earth for you. See Him die—and on the third day shatter the tomb because His death was sufficient to pay for all of human sin.
Trust Him and believe that He has done all that is necessary for you to pass from death to life. Ask Him to save you, and trust Him. You will pass today out of death into life. †
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.
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