Tablets of Stone

Chapter Three
The Ten Commandments Are A "Covenant"

The Scriptures clearly and consistently call the Ten Commandments a "covenant" and treat them as a distinct and separate covenant. We have already seen this spelled out clearly in several texts of Scripture. However, despite the abundant textual evidence of this fact in the Scriptures, some theologians still cannot admit that the Ten Commandments form a separate and distinct covenant. Their basic presupposition that there is only "one covenant with two administrations" make it impossible for them to think or speak of the Ten Commandments as a distinct and separate covenant. To do so would destroy the very foundation of their system of theology. In that system, the "Mosaic arrangement" or "Mosaic administration" ⁶ could not possibly be a separate covenant, especially a legal covenant. The "Mosaic transaction" has to be an "administration of the one covenant of grace." However, the Word of God is quite clear that the Ten Commandments were the specific terms of a distinct and separate covenant. Here are several verses that clearly establish this point:

So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone. Deut. 4:13

When I went up into the mountains to receive the tablets of stone, even the tablets of the covenant which the Lord had made with you...and the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God...the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, even the tablets of the covenant. Deut. 9:9-11

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel." Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant- -the Ten Commandments. Ex 34:27,28.

How can anyone read the above verses and be honest with the words used and then deny that the Ten Commandments were the very "words" of a distinct and specific covenant? A system of theology built on non-biblical terms that refuses to use Biblical terms should be suspect. When a person uses terms that are both peculiar and essential to his particular system of theology we should be suspect of both the man and his system.

It is impossible to even begin to understand the place and function of the Ten Commandments in redemptive history until we begin where God's Word itself begins. We must start by using the terminology that the Holy Spirit has been pleased to use. When we do this, we will automatically think and speak of the Ten Commandments as first and foremost being a distinct covenant. If our theological system forbids that, or even makes it unnatural or difficult, then it should be obvious that our system is not Biblical at that point.

The emphasis in the Word of God is always on the fact that the Tablets of Stone contain the terms of a covenant.

Remember that the Bible treats the "Ten Commandments," the "Tablets of the Covenant," the "Old Covenant" and the "words of the covenant" as equivalent and interchangeable terms. It is clear from all of the Biblical texts quoted in chapter one that God wants us to think "covenant" when there is a reference to either the words "Ten Commandments" or any of the seven synonymous terms used to describe them. It is simply impossible to think Biblically of the Ten Commandments apart from thinking of them as the "words of the covenant" written on the Tablets of Stone. Nowhere in the Bible are we instructed to think in terms of "the unchanging moral law." Go back over the Biblical texts that refer to the Ten Commandments and see how clearly this truth is set forth in every single text. It is just as striking when the Tablets were smashed and the second set was made. It is not possible for the Bible to say any more clearly that the Ten Commandments are the exact words, or terms, of the Old Covenant than it does in the following verses:

When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them in pieces... Ex 32:18

The Lord said to Moses, "Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets which you broke...." Then the Lord said, "I am making a COVENANT with you....." Then the Lord said to Moses, "Write down these words, for in accordance with them I have made a COVENANT with you and with Israel.....And he wrote on the tablets the words of the COVENANT--the TEN COMMANDMENTS. Ex 34:1,27,28

Summary

If our system of theology did not teach us to think about the Ten Commandments as a distinct and separate covenant then it did not teach us to think Scripturally. If we were taught to think of the Tablets of Stone as the "unchanging moral law of God," then we were taught wrong. Unfortunately, we were also taught, by default, to ignore the words and terms used by the Holy Spirit Himself. We may have done it unconsciously, but we nonetheless substituted erroneous theological terms in the place of Biblical terminology. Or even worse, if we were taught that the Ten Commandments simply could not be a separate distinct covenant but only a different administration of the so called Covenant of Grace, then we were taught to actually contradict the Word of God. The Holy Spirit always relates the Ten Commandments, when considered as a unit, with the "words of the covenant" that were written on the Tablets of Stone at Mt Sinai.

6. These are the expressions used by theologians who fail to use Biblical terminology. Whenever a writer "arrangement," "administration" or "transaction" to describe what happened at Sinai, he is not being exegetically correct.