Ezra and Nehemiah
Lesson 8: God and the Covenant
There are three types of covenant in the Bible: parity agreement, suzerain treaty, and the everlasting covenant. The everlasting covenant was also known as a land grant covenant because it conveys land from the king to the beloved recipient.
A parity agreement was made between two parties of equal stature in their society, such as two kings or two wealthy men. They were "on par" with each other, on equal footing in the society in which they lived, one not having any more power than the other. It was a mutual cooperation contract based on respect between the parties. When a parity covenant was made, both parties were promising each other that if they should fail in any particular to uphold their end of the bargain, then they expected to be punished for breaking their promise.
The suzerain treaty/covenant was a political agreement that was historically made prominent by the Hittites, and other powerful empires in the ancient Middle East. The noted Bible scholar George Mendenhall, did extensive studies on the suzerain covenant found in Hittite archeological records, and wrote The Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East(1955). In his study he showed the elements necessary for the making of a suzerain, or peace, treaty between nations, where one nation was considerably stronger and more wealthy than the second covenanting party.
When the second party followed the stipulations of the suzerain treaty, peace was ensured between the nations. Under the suzerain treaty, the lesser, more vulnerable, party was held strictly to their end of the bargain. If any violation was made, it was guaranteed that the mightier king would initiate a covenant lawsuit (i.e., war) and bring the promised consequences and punishments upon the weaker party (destruction or captivity).
The everlasting covenant is unique. There is only one "everlasting covenant," and it was instigated by God Himself as soon as Adam fell in the Garden. It has never been modified, though it has been mostly misunderstood and ignored by mankind for more than 6000 years. It is the underpinning of the third angel's message that is to be given to the world with a loud voice.
The everlasting covenant is God's promise to the whole human race that He will reverse the enmity that Satan implanted into the minds of Adam and Eve when they chose to believe his lie about God's character (Gen. 3:4, 5). We all have inherited this brokenness through our fallen flesh and estranged minds. But God will turn that enmity (hatred) for Him into unconditional appreciation for His gift of salvation in Christ alone. The battle is for our mind. We're to "let" God put the mind of His dear Son into us (Phil. 2:5), so that we can think the thoughts and do the will of our heavenly Father. "All true obedience comes from the heart. It was a heart work with Christ. And if we consent, He will so identify Himself with our thoughts and aims, so blend our hearts and minds into conformity to His will, that when obeying Him we shall be but carrying out our own impulses." [1]
In the Garden and speaking prophetically directly to Satan, that "old serpent" (Rev. 12:9, 20:2), God announced, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel" (Gen. 3:15, New King James Version). In the everlasting promise, the Seed that would come through Abraham's descendants and crush Satan's head, was Christ (see Gal. 3:16). Though Satan would attack the fallen humanity that Christ assumed in His incarnation, tempting Him "in all points like as we are," yet Satan could not induce Jesus to sin, not even by a thought. [2] As the mind of Jesus was fully in tune with His Father, so our minds are to His that we may receive His power to overcome all sin.
The first time we find a parity covenant is in Genesis 15:17 and 18, in which God the Father and God the Son, blazing out of that awful darkness like "a smoking furnace and a burning pot," passed between and consumed the animals that Abraham had prepared (Gen. 15:9, 10). This method of covenant-making was well known among the Canaanites. They divided an animal down the spine, laid the halves out on the ground with a separation between the pieces, allowing room for the two parties to walk between them. Then both parties together would walk between the animal parts while promising each other that they would keep their end of the bargain, on pain of death, saying, "Let it be to me as to this animal if I should violate my promise to you."
Since the parity covenant was made between two parties of equal stature, Abraham could not have participated in this covenant-making ceremony except as a witness sitting on the sidelines. He was not "on par" or equal to God, and would not have attempted to participate. Furthermore, Abraham knew that it required both parties to "pass between the parts" at the same time in order to seal the covenant.
The parity covenant appears two more times in the Genesis narrative, once between Abraham and Abimelech, and another time between Isaac and Abimelech (Gen. 21:22-32; 26:26-31). The parties in these stories are on equal footing, both being "kings" or leaders of their separate clans. Later, in 1 Kings 21:31-34, King Ahab made a parity covenant with King Ben-hadad, to secure peace between their nations.
The suzerain treaty also appears in Scripture. When God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt "with a strong hand" and bare them "on eagle's wings" to bring them to Himself (Ex. 13:9, 19:4), He intended to initiate a marriage with His people at Sinai. But the people refused to understand His intentions. Their slavery to Pharaoh had left them with a twisted understanding of God's character. In Egypt they had been forced to serve Pharaoh or suffer terrible consequences. When they arrived at Sinai, they mistook God's marriage proposal, believing that He was offering them a suzerain treaty, and therefore they readily agreed to the terms. "All the LORD has said, we will do!" (Ex. 19:8; 24:3, 7). Knowing their hearts were unconverted, God acquiesced and the "blood of the covenant" was "sprinkled upon the people" (vs. 8), showing that they had accepted full responsibility for fulfilling their side of the treaty. Their promise of fidelity lasted about six weeks (Ex. 32:1-10).
Forty years later, the suzerain treaty was codified in Deuteronomy chapters 28, 29 and 30, in which the "blessings and curses" of the suzerain treaty are clearly laid out. The suzerain covenant was by its very nature, an "if/then" conditional covenant. If the lesser party would abide by the treaty stipulations, then no curses would befall them, but if they did not abide by the stipulations, then curses would be poured out upon them. The covenant curse, "therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee," was carried out under the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities (Deut. 28:47, 48), and the final destruction of Judah and Jerusalem under the Romans in A.D. 70 (vss. 49-57).
God condemned the Israelites because they "served other gods of wood and stone" (Deut. 28:36, 37), and forsook the God of heaven. Later, He condemned them because they would not abide by the terms of the suzerain treaty that Nebuchadnezzar put them under. It was because they would not stand to their side of the treaty that "the king of Babylon" came to Jerusalem and took "the princes thereof, and led them with him to Babylon" (Eze. 17:11-16; 18-21). And thus Daniel and his three companions ended up in Nebuchadnezzar's palace (Dan. 1:1, 2).
The controversy over the covenants that took place at the 1888 General Conference session concerned the definition of the "old" and the "new" covenants. Because of the misunderstanding of the Sinai covenant, many people were led to believe that the Ten Commandments were part of the "old covenant" that was "nailed to the cross" and "taken out of the way." For many Christian denominations, except primarily Seventh-day Adventists, this "taking away" meant that the Sabbath was replaced with Sunday. The seventh-day Sabbath was defined as a burden that "was against us" because it was assumed to be part of the "old covenant" that had been done away with at the cross.
Our pioneers were strong in their convictions concerning the Bible, that it is entirely the Word of God given to us, and all of it contains truth we should follow. No part can be safely ignored or set aside as unimportant. In their defense of the seventh-day Sabbath, the leaders and evangelists of the church taught that the law in Galatians chapter 3 was the ceremonial law that concerned the feast days and sacrificing of animals.Thatlaw was assumed to be "against us" and was "nailed to the cross," and was no longer binding on Christians.
The dispute arose in 1886 when E. J. Waggoner wrote that the law in Galatians was primarily the moral law, not the ceremonial law. It was the moral law raised up before the sinner that condemned him and brought him to the foot of the cross in repentance for his sins that took the life of the Son of God.
"That verse reads, 'For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.' The ceremonial law never had power to slay anyone. But even allowing that it did once have that power, it had itself died, having been nailed to the cross at least three years before Paul was converted. Now I ask, How could Paul be slain by a law that for three years had had no existence? This verse shows upon the face of it that the moral law is referred to." [3]
Many of the leaders of the church were afraid that if they accepted Waggoner's position on the law in Galatians, that it would undermine the Adventist position that the Sabbath is a part of the moral law and is therefore binding and imperishable. Between 1886 and 1888 the dispute caused a division between the leadership of the church and E. J. Waggoner and A. T. Jones. The argument and misunderstanding concerning the covenants has continued from that time until the present day.
On March 8, 1890, Ellen White composed a letter to Uriah Smith who, with G. I. Butler, had been foremost in the opposition against Waggoner over the covenants, and the message of Christ and His righteousness. In that letter she wrote, "Do not labor so hard to do the very work Satan is doing. This work was done in Minneapolis. Satan triumphed. This work has been done here. Night before last I was shown that evidences in regard to the covenants were clear and convincing. Yourself [Uriah Smith], Brother Dan Jones, Brother Porter and others are spending your investigative powers for naught to produce a position on the covenants to vary from the position that Brother Waggoner has presented ... The covenant question is a clear question and would be received by every candid, unprejudiced mind." [4]
What was Waggoner's position on the covenants? "The covenant and the promise of God are one and the same thing. This is clearly seen from Galatians 3:17, where Paul asserts that to disannul the covenant would be to make void the promise. In Genesis 17 we read that God made a covenantwith Abraham to give him the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. Galatians 3:18 says that God gave it to him by promise. God's covenants with men can be nothing else than promises to them." [5]
"The earth fresh and new from the hand of God, perfect in every respect, was given to man for a possession. Genesis 1:27, 28, 31. Man sinned and brought the curse upon himself. Christ has taken the whole curse, both of man and of all creation, upon Himself. He redeems the earth from the curse, that it may be the everlasting possession that God originally designed it to be; and He also redeems man from the curse, that he may be fitted for the possession of such an inheritance. This is the sum of the gospel." [6]
Thus Waggoner summarizes the whole of the everlasting covenant in this one paragraph. Christ assumed fallen human flesh, that in that flesh He might perform the duty of the nearest of kin in redeeming what was lost in the Fall. Then Christ restores not only the earth, but repentant men and women, giving us the necessary righteousness so that we may inherit the whole earth made new. The everlasting covenant is God's promise to us that He will restore all things and give us the promised land to have and to hold forever as His righteous redeemed family.
"... this is indeed the promise that Abraham and his seed [all who have the same faith that Abraham exhibited, see Gal. 3:28, 29] should be heirs of the world. We must study the details of this promise. And first let us note the fact that the inheritance promised is an everlasting inheritance. ... But the only way in which Abraham and his seed may have everlasting possession of an inheritance is by having everlasting life. Therefore we see that in this promise to Abraham we have the assurance of everlasting life in which to enjoy the possession." [7]
The eternal purpose of the everlasting covenant is salvation from sin through the work of the Son of God, who would be born through a descendant of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The whole matter hinges on faith, whether for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or us living today. Romans 4:16 tells us that "the promise was sure to all the seed ... which are of the faith of Abraham; who is father of us all." Righteousness was "imputed" to Abraham because he believed the word of God to him (see Gen. 15:6), and that same righteousness is "for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead" (Rom. 4:24).
--Ann Walper
Endnotes:
[1] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 668.[2] Hebrews 4:15;The Desire of Ages, pp. 24, 123.
[3] E. J. Waggoner,The Gospel in Galatians, p. 16, [p. 52 of the PDF]; please read pages 16 through 18 for the full context of Waggoner's argument; document found at: http://www.gospel-herald.com/e_j_waggoner/two_books_on_galatians.htm
[4] The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, vol. 2, pp. 604, 605.
[5] E. J. Waggoner, The Glad Tidings, p.71, CFI Book Division (2016).
[6] Ibid., p. 70.
[7] E. J. Waggoner, Romans: The Greatest Treatise Ever Written, p. 86ff; CFI Book Division (2019).
Notes:
Pastor Paul Penno's video of this lesson is on the Internet at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwu43B4VwNE
"Sabbath School Today" is on the Internet at: http://1888message.org/sst.htm
