For many—sadly, for both saint and sinner alike—the God of the Old Testament is perceived to be a harsh, exacting God with whom is no grace. The natural feeling of our hearts is “I feared thee, because Thou art an austere man” (Luke 19:2121For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow. (Luke 19:21)). We know little of the heart of God. “How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matt. 23:37). God’s ways with man have always involved grace—indeed, if it were not so, mankind must have been destroyed long ago. God provided Adam and Eve with a covering in the garden of Eden (Gen. 3:21). Man’s attempt to cover his shame was wholly inadequate (Gen. 3:7). God’s covering came at a cost—the shed blood of an animal. Grace does not diminish the significance of sin—in fact, quite to the contrary. This is something we will see throughout this brief study on grace. The seed of the woman, God’s promise to Satan, has given hope to faith throughout man’s sad history—and it will do so until the very end; it is the everlasting gospel (Rev. 14:6). “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel” (Gen. 3:1515And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15)). Abel’s burnt offering from the firstlings of the flock was God’s provision in grace. On the other hand, it is man who rejects the grace of God and seeks acceptance based on his own merits. Cain’s offering was costly—he labored to bring the fruit of the earth to God. Cain supposed that he could produce something pleasing to God through the sweat of his face—the very consequence of Adam’s sin. The earth had been cursed, and yet it was by the fruit of that very ground that Cain sought acceptance before a Holy God (Gen. 3:17). How quickly man forgets sin and tries to make something respectable of his circumstances.
It was grace which bore Israel on eagles’ wings, delivering them from the bondage of Egypt, and bringing them through the Red Sea (Exod. 19:4). It was grace that met their thirst and provided food for them in the wilderness (Exod. 15:24-27; Exod. 16). From Egypt until Sinai, God’s ways with Israel were pure grace. Did Israel merit such favor? No, God acted in faithfulness to His own promises that He had made to the patriarchs. “The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all peoples; but because Jehovah loved you, and because He would keep the oath which He had sworn unto your fathers, hath Jehovah brought you out with a powerful hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Deut. 7:7-8). In the book of Ezekiel, we read: “When I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live” (Ezek. 16:5-9). The Apostle Paul reminds Israel that theirs was a sovereign election, not based on works: “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth” (Rom. 9:11).
At Sinai, however, everything changed—not with God, but as to His ordered relationship with His people. “If ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people: ... And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud” (Exod. 19:5,8-95Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: (Exodus 19:5)
8And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord. 9And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever. And Moses told the words of the people unto the Lord. (Exodus 19:8‑9)). Jehovah now takes up with Israel on the principle of law. The law is holy, just, and good (Rom. 7:12); it represents righteous conduct in an earthly people. God sought righteousness in man and Israel readily responded: “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” They, and we also, must learn our utter depravity. Mankind, like Cain, thinks that he can produce something acceptable to God. Israel’s inability to keep the law was not a failure on the part of the law, but, rather, of the flesh—that sin nature within each one of us. The law probes the heart of man and shows him incapable of meeting God’s holy and righteous standard. “I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet ... The commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.” (Rom. 7:7,10). This singling out of the tenth commandment is deliberate. An unregenerate man recognizes murder, adultery, and even theft, as evil, but tell him he must not covet, and it touches who he is—his very nature.
Even after Sinai, God did not deal with Israel according to pure law. The first two tablets of testimony were broken, else Israel must have been destroyed (Ex. 32:9-19). When Moses appeared before Jehovah the second time, God’s name is proclaimed: “Jehovah God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy unto thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty” (Exod. 34:6-7). The covenant was reestablished upon the mediation of Moses and this revelation of Jehovah God. Furthermore, the new tablets, with the ten commandments engraved upon them, were placed within the Ark of the Covenant, and there they lay beneath the mercy seat (Deut. 10:2). God did not overlook Israel’s sin, but there was a refuge for faith. The blood on the mercy seat (Lev. 16:14-15), a prefiguring of the shed blood of Christ, allowed God to extend mercy to Israel. “Whom God has set forth a mercy-seat, through faith in His blood, for the shewing forth of His righteousness, in respect of the passing by the sins that had taken place before, through the forbearance of God” (Rom. 3:25 JND). That simple wooden box, overlayed with gold and sprinkled with blood, is a vivid picture to us of Christ. He alone met the holy and righteous requirements of the law, manifesting divine righteousness in all that He did, and that never more so than at the cross.
Outwardly, the children of Israel were a sanctified people, but they were not in a condition to stand before a Holy God. Sinai was “all aglow with fire”; it was a place of “obscurity and gloom and tempest” (Heb. 12:18 WK); the terrors of God’s majesty kept Israel at a distance. The sacrifices provided a covering but did not make the offerer perfect (Heb. 10:1). The blood on the mercy seat allowed God to dwell among His people; nevertheless, only the high priest could go beyond the veil into the most holy place where the ark stood. Furthermore, that access was limited to once a year, and it was “not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people” (Heb. 9:7). Everything was anticipatory and looked forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were “a shadow of things to come; but the body [substance] is of Christ” (Col. 2:17). The God of the Old Testament was, by and large, hidden, and what revelation He made of Himself was necessarily incomplete. God’s display of glory before Moses illustrates this: “The Lord said, Behold, there is a place by Me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while My glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with My hand while I pass by: And I will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My back parts: but My face shall not be seen” (Exod. 33:21-23 JnD). A full revelation had to wait for the coming of the Son of God. Such a revelation necessitated Christ’s work at Calvary. Without it, we never could have received the revelation, let alone stand before it. The way into the holiest has now been made open, and we have boldness to enter through the blood of Jesus (Heb. 10:19). The veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom, I see the holiness of God: but the very stroke which has thus unveiled the holiness of God has put away the sin that would have hindered my standing in the presence of that holiness.
God’s principle of blessing has always been connected with promise, grace, and faith. “The just shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4) was as true in the Old Testament as it is in the New. It could not have been said, however, that grace reigned (Rom. 5:21). It is essential to recognize that God’s dealings with His people in the Old Testament differ substantively from what we find in the New. God took up Israel on the principle of law; He now takes up His people on the principle of grace. The cross of Christ is the great dividing point. There “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psa. 85:10). These aren’t opposing principles; they are divine virtues. In the cross we see them resolved, working together like two perfectly engineered and precisely meshed gears. Israel never enjoyed the privileges that are now ours in Christ. It is a serious error, therefore, to suppose that the church has been taken up on the same ground as Israel, albeit enhanced.
The law was brought in until Christ (Gal. 3:24). Christ is now “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth” (Rom. 10:4). The law does not bring us to Christ, as the King James translation suggests—the law doesn't do anything; it demands from man supposing that the power to do is present with him. The law, instead of manifesting righteousness with man, put sin to his account (Rom. 5:13). It didn’t make man a sinner; he was that before law ever appeared (death is the proof of it), but law made him a transgressor. I may drive down the road going well over the speed limit, but without any indication of that limit my conscience may be clear. To be sure, I am speeding—my ignorance doesn’t change that. However, once a speed-sign comes into view my guilt is established and I am without excuse. The law tested a chosen people under ideal circumstances and proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that righteousness was not to be found with them (Rom. 3:10). The law showed man to be hopelessly guilty. “We know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Rom. 3:19). The Apostle Paul, in the first three chapters of his Epistle to the Romans, sets both Gentile and Jew in the court of God. After cross-examination the verdict is declared: “There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” (Rom. 3:10-12).