Sinai agreement continued.
The ten statements (commands) that God gave to the people were not beyond people’s ability to obey physically or outwardly. However, the people were not aware that their sinful nature could not obey the spirit of God’s requirements. The New Covenant Christians have the same problem. Some of those who consider themselves Christians do not realize that they cannot obey the simplest command perfectly. Even the best and noblest outwardly effort by sinners by nature to obey could not perfectly obey the law. The people’s minds and attitudes must be centered on God only. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD your God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are upon your hearts.” Deuteronomy 6:4 – 6.
The people promised they would obey everything that God commanded them through Moses. The people promised obedience out of fear that they would die if God continued to speak to them in their hearing. Therefore, they did not make an agreement with God because they loved him; but because they loved themselves. The lovers of self could not have obeyed God. Accordingly, the people broke the agreement they made with God. The people broke the agreement before they even tried to obey God’s statements. Therefore, God determined that an agreement between the sinful people and him was ineffective and could not benefit the sinful people.
As God instructed him, Moses went to the top of the mountain of God and stayed there forty days. God gave Moses the two tablets on which the ten statements, or requirements, were written for the people. “When the people saw that Moses was long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’” Exodus 32:1. With this act, the people broke the agreement, the Covenant, they made with God. Therefore, the Covenant made at Mount Sinai became inoperative and invalid. The old Covenant became ineffective as a teaching tool. It has no significance for Christians today. Therefore, there was a need for a new and better Covenant, a covenant in which humankind did not have to play the role. “‘ The time is coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Judah. It will not be like the Covenant I made with their forefathers…’” Jeremiah 31:31.
Why did the agreement at Sinai become invalid? Read the next blog.
