Four hundred and thirty years after the date of promise the law was given. Redemption having been prefigured by the slain lamb in, Egypt, and the passage of the Red Sea, the children of Israel journeyed to the wilderness of Sinai Then, alas! insensible of their mercies, they gave up the ground of grace, and entered into covenant with God, on the ground of their own competency, to keep the law. Thus it happened.
" In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount. And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the, house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself. Now, 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 And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel. And Moses came, and called for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded him. And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord bath spoken we will do." Ex. 19:1-8.
Up till this time all was grace. Redemption was accomplished; God had brought them to Himself. The murmurs and the unbelief of the people only served to show the riches of God's grace, and His tender mercy towards His poor failing people. But here the course of grace formally terminates, and obedience to the law is made the condition of blessing. This was a great change, a most important epoch in man's history. How fully all this proves what man's state of mind really was as to the things of God! 1. It proves that the preciousness of grace—so priceless to every Christian that knows it-had never truly entered the heart of the Jew. In place of leaving the promised blessing to rest simply on the infallibility of the Promiser, they vainly preferred to rest it on condition of their own obedience to the law. Never was man's self-righteousness—the legality of the human heart -more fatally manifested than here, for the law worked wrath, and brought men under the curse, because of their utter failure. Had that unspeakably, inconceivably precious thing, grace, been appreciated, they would all have cried out as with the heart of one man, " May we have no such terms proposed to us, 0 Lord; no such responsibility laid upon us. We dare not place ourselves under such conditions, we should certainly lose our blessing. Thy grace, 0 Lord, is our only hope as sinners." But no, they undertook to do all that the Lord had spoken. 2. Their conduct at Sinai also proves that they had no just sense of their own weakness in the sight of God, and no proper knowledge of His righteousness and holiness. Grace, grace without rebuke, is the only ground on which the sinner can stand, the only plea he can urge, and the only refuge in which he can find a shelter.
" Grace is a mine of wealth
Laid open to the poor;
Grace is the sovereign spring of health;
'Tis life for evermore."