Mosaic Covenant

Intro

Covenant of works - God and Adam, perfect and personal obedience. This remains intact even after the fall. It is what all of humanity is judged by

Another covenant hinted at in Gen 3:15

Abrahamic Covenant inaugerated in Gen 15, completely different from Covenant of Works. This is Covenant of Grace, where God makes a promise that Abraham will be blessed in three primary ways:

People

Place

Presence of God

This is important because these are the blessings that Adam lost when he chose to sin against God. So in this new covenant with Abraham, God is promising to deliver all of the blessings that Adam had lost, only now God was going to guarantee the blessings with his own life.

Then, in Gen 17, Abraham is given the sign of this covenant, which is circumcision. Abraham is also told to be careful to obey the covenant with God.

Setting the Stage for Mosaic Covenant

Inbetween that covenant with Abraham and the covenant with Moses, some 400 years pass by. In that time, God passes the covenant down to Abrahams son Isaac, and then again it is passed down to Jacob. After Jacob dies, the covenant is passed to Jacob’s 12 sons, who become the heads of the tribes of Israel.

At the time of the 12 sons of Jacob, they travel to Egypt because of a famine. At first, they are greeted warmly, but then a new Pharoah comes to power who is scared of the people.

Interestingly, we see the covenant promise beginning to be fulfilled here, Exodus 1:7 “But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.”

This scared the new Pharoah, who forced the people into harsh slavery

After hundreds of years of slavery, a Jewish boy named Moses is born to one of the slaves, but he is taken in by Pharoah’s daughter and raised as an Egyptian.

God Plans To Redeem His People

When Moses grows up to be a man, God calls him to be the one who will lead the people out of slavery.

Exodus 2:23–24 “During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.”

God determines to save his people because of the covenant that he made with Abraham. The foundation of the Mosaic Covenant, which is beginning with this miraculous salvation from Egypt, is an outworking of the covenant of Grace.

This leads to all of the plagues that we read and know about, which culminates in the passover feast and the splitting of the Red Sea as God delivers his people from slavery in Egypt. We don’t have time to talk about all of that in detail right now — but this leads us to the nation of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, being out in the wilderness and without a place for themselves.

God leads them to a mountain called Sinai, where he calls Moses up to meet with him.

The giving of the Law

In Exodus 20, God gives what are called the 10 commandments. These become the backbone of the Law that God gives to his people, the foundation of how they are being called to love and obey God.

Then, in Exodus 24, Moses is once again called up to the mountain to meet with God to confirm what God refers to as “my covenant with you.” There we see another covenant ceremony take place, where an altar is constructed, animals are sacrificed, and blood is sprinkled both on the Altar and on the elders who went up the mountain with Moses.

Blessings and Curses

Place

Exodus 23:20 ““Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.”

Exodus 23:31 “And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.”

People

Exodus 23:30 “Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land.”

Presence

Chapter 25-40 deal with the Tabernacle, leading to the Holy of Holies

Condition

This is where many begin to be confused with how to classify the Mosaic covenant. Some will say that this is just like the Covenant of Works because the Law that is given here plays such a central role in the covenant. There is language about obedience earning blessings and disobedience earning curses. So, is the Mosaic Covenant just another covenant of Works?

No, and here is why it isn’t.

It has a lot to do with how the rest of the Scriptures begin to reveal the nature of the Law. If the Mosaic Covenant were another C of Works, then we would expect to find a message that people can only be saved through perfect and personal obedience. But this is not what the Law is given to the people as.

Day of Atonement

Book of Leviticus gives this Day as a mercy to the people, that they can be forgiven and remain in good standing with God. If this were C of Works, then no such day would exist.

Galatians 3:15–19 “To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.”

So the condition placed upon the Mosaic Covenant isn’t personal and perfect obedience — so what is it? The answer is true faith, which is the same condition placed upon the Abrahamic Covenant.

Matthew 12:37 “for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.””

James 2:21 “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?”

Romans 4:13 “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.”

We see that the obedience is a fruit of faith, not the other way around. The preamble of Commandments teaches us that this is a covenant of Grace.