CHAPTER 2
In the last chapter we established that God makes covenants. Besides the one with Abraham, He also made covenants with Adam, Noah, David, and with the whole tribe of Levi. The most important, however, are the two covenants God made with the entire nation of Israel. In fact, those covenants are the basis for how the Bible is divided. The Old and New Testaments are actually accounts of the working out of those two covenants with Israel.
An early Biblical prophecy revealed that Abraham's descendants would be strangers in a foreign land, where they would be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years (Genesis 15:13-14). When that time had passed, God sent a man named Moses to those descendants. His mission was to lead them back to the land they had been given four centuries earlier. Remember, that land was given as an everlasting possession of Abraham's descendants.
Three months after Moses led the sons of Israel out of Egypt, God proposed that the entire nation enter into a covenant with Him. That agreement came to be known by several names: the Sinai Covenant, the Law, and finally, the Old Covenant (Testament). Did this mean God wished to replace Abraham's Covenant? Not at all. This Covenant was an additional agreement. It had no effect on the promises previously made to Abraham.
It was through Moses that God presented the terms of this covenant to the Israelites. Immediately, we notice it was different from Abraham's; this covenant was conditional. Wonderful blessings were mentioned for the nation, but they were by no means automatic. To receive them, the Israelites had to keep ALL the terms of this proposed covenant. Moreover, if they failed, severe penalties were promised.
Abraham's Terms:
God's Terms:
Israel's Terms:
God's Terms:
If Israel kept the Law, here is how God would bless them:
If Israel failed to keep the Law, then God would punish them in the following manner:
When they were assembled, God repeated the terms a second time (the only time in history God has spoken to an entire nation). While He was speaking, the mountain smoked and there was thunder and lightning all about. The people became frightened and begged God to communi cate to them only through Moses! In spite of their fear though, they agreed to the terms of the Covenant.
With that second acceptance, the Covenant ceremony began. At the foot of Mount Sinai, Moses built an altar for God and twelve pillars for the tribes of Israel. Then the terms of the Covenant were read a third time. Again, the people agreed to its terms. At that point, nothing remained but to ratify the Covenant. For that, burnt offerings and sacrifices were brought to the mountain. Moses poured half the blood from the sacrifices on the altar of God, and he sprinkled the rest on the people. When the ceremony was over, Moses took 70 of the elders up the mountain, where they ate a covenant meal.
After being in captivity for so long, the Israelites now had to learn to make decisions for themselves. To emphasize the choices before them, God staged an elaborate lesson. He told them, "See I am setting before you a blessing and a curse" (Deuteronomy 11:26). Half the tribes were placed on one mountain, and half on another. While the tribes on the first mountain shouted the Covenant blessings, the tribes on the second shouted the curses.
Comparing the Sinai Covenant with Abraham's, we wonder why God made them so different. The answer is that the Israelites who came out of Egypt were very different from their father, Abraham. When Abraham was tested, he did not withhold his son, thus proving himself a faithful covenant partner. By contrast, no sooner had the Israelites ratified their Covenant, than they broke it by worshipping a statue of a golden calf.
The rest of the Old Testament is largely a record of Israel's failure to keep the Sinai Covenant and God's resulting judgments. Every curse listed in the Covenant was eventually visited on Israel. Finally, God made a dreadful announcement through the prophet Hosea. He told the people of the Northern Tribes that He was no longer their God, and they were no longer His people (see Hosea 1:9). Within a few years, God caused the people to be carried into captivity. A little more than a century after that, God brought a similar fate to the Southern Kingdom (Judah); they were also taken into captivity. Through Jeremiah, God announced that this captivity would last 70 years (see Jeremiah 25:11). Unfortunately, after that time the people of Judah did not repent, and when given the choice, only 50,000 returned to the land and the Covenant. Perhaps 95% were content to remain in Babylon.
During the 70 year captivity, a curious prophecy was given to the prophet Ezekiel. God told him to lie on his left side for 390 days. Each day represented the years of iniquity of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Then God told him to lie on his right side for 40 days. That was for the years of iniquity of the house of Judah. Ropes were put on him so he could not turn from one side to the other until the required number of days were completed (Ezekiel 4:4-8).
As mentioned, several curses were promised if Israel did not keep the Covenant. By focusing on just three of them, we can unlock the meaning of this mysterious prophecy.
Altogether, God sentenced the nation to 430 years of punishment. During that time, Israel's enemies would rule over Palestine, and the people would be banished to other lands. For the first 70 years of the sentence, the Jews were in Babylon. At the end of the captivity there was little desire to return to the land and the Covenant. The result was devastating. Because the Jews did not respond to the first two punishments above, God increased Israel's remaining punishment by seven times. So, instead of 360 years, the remaining sentence became 2,520 years! Converting that sentence from Biblical years (360 days each) to calendar years, there was a remaining punishment of 2,483.8 years. Adding that period to the day the Babylonian captivity ended brings us to May 14, 1948. On that day, after nearly 25 centuries, Israel's sentence was completed. It was then that modern Israel once more became a sovereign nation!
Misunderstanding the status of the Sinai Covenant has caused many prophecy students to stumble. What is that status? According to the Book of Hebrews, the Sinai Covenant became obsolete at the death of Messiah.
When He said, "A new covenant," He has made the first obsolete (Hebrews 8:13).
That does not mean God did away with His moral law, better known as the Ten Commandments. In fact, Messiah said that would never pass away. What did pass away was the conditional agreement that had been offered through Moses (the one they agreed to three times on Mt. Sinai). The bottom line is that since Messiah's death, Israel has not been under any conditional agreement with God. In other words, as far as the nation of Israel is concerned, there are no longer any promised blessings for keeping the law nor curses for breaking it. Put in today's vernacular, that deal was ancient history.
By not taking that into account, many have misunderstood the place of modern Israel in prophecy. They interpret Israel's recent rebirth as a political phenomenon—not a prophetic one. The fact of the matter is, there is no passage in the Bible which requires modern Israel to become obedient to the Old Covenant before returning to the Land. After all, would God hold Israel accountable to a covenant which He made obsolete nearly two thousand years ago? The last vestige of the Sinai Covenant was the penalty for having broken it, and that expired in May of 1948.
This means that before 1948, it was not the Turkish or British governments that prevented Abraham's descendants from ruling their covenant land. Rather, it was God enforcing the curses of the Sinai Covenant. In a similar vein, credit for Israel's survival since 1948 does not lie with its vaunted military. Once the Old Covenant curses expired, the terms of Abraham's covenant were the only ones still binding on Israel. So, the hand of God enforcing the terms of that Covenant has been the determining factor. That being the case, we can assume that the following conditions will prevail from now on: Israel's enemies will no longer rule over the nation, and the people will never again be banished from the land.
Consider how this affects our understanding of modern Israel's status. If from God's point of view, the only covenant still binding on Israel is Abraham's, then any attempt to deny Abraham's descendants access to their land (and I mean all of it) is nothing less than striving against God. He did, after all, give it to them as an everlasting possession.
There is one other point that should be addressed. Abraham's Covenant contains no requirement that his descendants accept Jesus as Messiah before they return to the Land. According to prophecy, that acceptance will occur, but it is not a prerequisite for Abraham's descendents to enjoy their covenant right to the Land.