When we read the Bible, one theme that stands out is the holiness of God. To be holy is to be set apart. God, the creator of all things, is indeed set apart from His creation. Creation had a beginning, but God is eternal. God has no beginning or end; He simply is. Also known as the Tetragrammaton, His very name is I AM WHO I AM (Exodus 3:14). God’s holiness is thus linked to His aseity -- but there’s more to it. The holiness of God also encompasses His moral perfection. “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). When God created man in His image, He did so with the intention of receiving glory from creatures who would reflect His holy character by walking according to His statutes and living as His representatives on earth. Yet, our first parents, Adam and Eve, failed in that mission. They disobeyed the Lord and as a result, produced an entire race of fallen humanity. We went from being able to not sin to being unable to not sin. Yet, despite our fallenness, the standard of perfection remains unchanged: God still commands us to be holy in both the Old and New Testaments. For example, we see the phrase, “be holy for I am holy” littered all throughout the book of Leviticus, as it can be thought of as a summary statement of the entire Law of Moses. This serves as the backbone of what we will be studying in depth in the coming weeks: the Mosaic Covenant.

Before we begin diving into the Mosaic Covenant, let us consider the historical context. We ended last time with our discussion of the life of Abraham, a man who lived by faith and though he never saw the promises made to him completely fulfilled in his lifetime, he welcomed them from afar (Hebrews 11:13). The remainder of the book of Genesis follows the narrative of the beginning of the nation Israel and how God made His covenant promises first to Abraham, then to Isaac, and then to Jacob, out of whom came twelve sons. These sons would start families of their own who would become the twelve tribes of Israel. One of these patriarchal sons, Joseph, was the favored son of Jacob. His brothers hated him for this, and when Joseph had a prophetic dream concerning his family, his brothers hated him even more and wanted to kill him. But according to Genesis 37:21-28, Reuben spared Joseph’s life, and Judah suggested instead to sell Joseph off into slavery, and as a result he winds up in Egypt as a slave. But, the Lord continued to bless Joseph despite the trials he faced while in Egypt, and by an amazing display of God’s providence Joseph eventually finds favor with Pharaoh because of his ability to interpret prophetic dreams. By the time the widespread famine struck and Jacob’s sons were forced to find provisions in Egypt, Joseph had risen in the ranks and was now the second most powerful man in all the known world. It was through this position of power and the famine that the Lord would use as His means of fulfilling what He told Abraham would happen to his descendants back in Genesis 15. By the time of Joseph’s death, the children of Israel had greatly multiplied throughout the land of Egypt. This is how Genesis ends and how Exodus begins.

But, in Exodus 1, we see a dramatic shift. In the very early years of the Israelites’ time in Egypt, things seemed to be going very well for them. But, starting in verse 8 we read, “Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, ‘Behold, the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come, let us deal wisely with them, or else they will multiply and in the event of war, they will also join themselves to those who hate us, and fight against us and depart from the land’” (v. 8-10). Despite Pharoah’s efforts to burden the Israelites, they continued to multiply across the land. The Egyptians’ solution? Burden them even more! It was during this dark period in Israel’s history when Moses was born. He was raised by Pharaoh’s daughter, and lived the first 40 years of his life as an Egyptian. But one day, when he saw one among his Hebrew brethren get mistreated by an Egyptian, everything changed. He killed the Egyptian who was mistreating the Hebrew, and consequently he went on the run. For the next 40 years, he lived as a fugitive, yet God’s purpose for him was only just beginning.

It was during this time in his life that he became well established in the land of Midian. Things remained status quo until one day when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush. Exodus 3 records this exchange between God and Moses, when God told him to deliver His people from the land of Egypt. Though initially reluctant, Moses decided to return to Egypt with his family to do all that the Lord commanded him. God would bring ten plagues to Egypt before Pharaoh finally let the Hebrews go. Pharaoh would soon regret his decision, but in a wonderful display of His power and protection, God provided the means for the Hebrews to cross the Red Sea by parting the waters even as they were being pursued by the Egyptian army. Once they crossed over and reached safety, Moses led the people to Mt. Sinai as the Lord instructed, and it was here where the Mosaic Covenant was first introduced.
What is the Mosaic Covenant? To put it simply, it was a covenant that God made with the people of Israel through the prophet Moses. We first see this exchange in Exodus 19, three months after the exodus, and the text reads as follows:

“Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel: “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.’ So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which the Lord had commanded him. All the people answered together and said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do!’ And Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord. The Lord said to Moses, ‘Behold, I will come to you in a thick cloud, so that the people may hear when I speak with you and may also believe in you forever.’ Then Moses told the words of the people to the Lord (Exodus 19:3-9)

We will begin taking a closer look at the nature of this covenant next time, but in the meantime notice the conditional element that is present from the moment the covenant was first introduced. Already we see that the Israelites were to receive the blessing of being God’s holy nation and a kingdom of priests, under the condition that they keep the covenant. Consequently, and ultimately to their detriment, they made the agreement that they would do all that God has commanded. It didn’t take long, however, for the Israelites to inevitably fail in keeping the covenant and they would continue to fail all throughout the Old Testament. But praise be to God that He broke this hopeless cycle 2,000 years ago! How? By sending His Son into the world to perfectly keep all the requirements of the covenant in order that we who put our faith in Him would receive His imputed righteousness. Christ did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17), and by doing so, made the Mosaic Covenant obsolete. All who are in Christ have no obligation to keep the covenant God made to Israel because we are under a new and better covenant, and it is important to keep that in mind in the coming weeks as we continue our study of the Mosaic Covenant.