The people broke the covenant.
The agreement, the covenant that people made with God at Sinai, became ineffective. Why did the Old Scriptures covenant become useless? “For if there had been nothing wrong with the first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said: ‘The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.’” Hebrews 8:7 – 8. The first covenant’s fault, or a problem, resulted from having two parties or two signatories. Therefore, for the covenant to remain in force, both parties had to perform their part perfectly. If one party to the agreement fails to perform perfectly, the covenant or agreement becomes broken. A broken agreement has no value, and it cannot be of use to any one of the signatories to it.
Perfect performance by one of the parties to the agreement cannot ensure the agreement’s integrity. Both signatories to an agreement have the same responsibility. In the case of the first covenant, the people were incapable of performing their part perfectly. Why? The whole of humankind sinned in the garden of Eden. Therefore, it became incapable of perfect performance and perfect obedience. However, only perfect obedience could satisfy the righteous requirements of the moral law. We know that the law is good if one uses it properly.” 1 Timothy 1:8. However, the law was given to the lawbreakers and rebels. 1 Timothy 1:8. The people were lawbreakers before the agreement at Sinai. Therefore, the people were incapable of fulfilling what they promised to God. The people were sinners by nature. The people may not have known that they were sinners by nature. However, their ignorance could not excuse them. People with sinful nature cannot do good. Jeremiah 13:23.
As soon as the people ratified the agreement with God, they broke it. “Like Adam, they have broken the covenant – they were unfaithful to me there.” Hosea 6:7. Because Moses stayed long on the mountain of God, the people decided they wanted gods who would be with them always without displaying the frightening glory. “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said: ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him’” Exodus 32:1. Besides the miracles the people witnessed, they were still unfaithful to God. The people’s unfaithfulness made the first covenant ineffective and invalid.
The problem with the first covenant will continue in the next blog.
