| The Christian Life | May 1943 |
Israel at Sinai
“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.”—Exodus 19:1,2
TWO months had elapsed since the Israelites departed from Egypt, and now had come to the mount of God where He would manifest Himself to them and make known His will, the doing of which would require devotion to Him. He said, “Obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people … and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.”—Exodus 19:5,6
In Egypt, the Israelites were virtually a dead nation. There was nothing they could do to bring about their redemption. Then God intervened, and delivered them from under the despotic rule of Pharaoh. True, He did not deliver them, immediately into the Canaan He had promised Abraham and his seed, yet in all their wilderness experiences thus far He had dealt with them as His own—a redeemed people, the children of His faithful friend, Abraham. All of God’s dealings with the Israelites were in accordance with His great covenant made with Abraham and which He certified with His oath. That covenant was, in brief, “In thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”—Gen. 12:3; 22:17,18
But Israel failed to appreciate the significance of God’s dealings with them. They were swiftly losing their hold upon that tie of faith in God’s promises by which they were bound to Abraham. From this standpoint of their faith and fidelity they were, indeed, losing their right to be considered the seed of Abraham—the seed of promise—through which the blessing of all nations was to come. Full faith in those promises made to Abraham and obedience to all of their blessed implications are the conditions upon which anyone may entertain the hope of being a part of the foretold seed. Israel, not only in their wilderness experiences, but later throughout practically the whole period of their national existence, proved themselves unworthy to be this seed, hence the real seed of promise is being developed during the Gospel age and is made up of those who are baptized into Christ instead of into Moses and who become obedient to the will of God as it is expressed in Christ Jesus their Lord.
It is quite evident that the Abrahamic Covenant no longer served to inspire the Israelites to zeal and faithfulness to God. On the whole, these natural descendants of Abraham seemed incapable of maintaining a genuine interest in the promises God made to Abraham but, instead, were concerned chiefly with the material things of life, the flesh pots of Egypt, etc. This undoubtedly is one of the reasons why, the Law was given to them at Sinai—“added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” (Gal. 3:19) The law served as an aid in deterring Israelites from their drift away from God and His promises and, also, in preparing some of them for the acceptance of Jesus as their Messiah when finally He came to them.
God’s purpose in giving the law to the Israelites was not to make them perfect, although they would have been perfect had they been able to keep the law inviolate. But being members of the fallen race they were incapable of measuring up to the perfect standard of righteousness set forth in the law, hence its purpose to them was to bring them into a consciousness of their sin and to make them realize their great need for the grace of God is it would later be expressed through Christ Jesus. Paul expresses this thought saying, “the Law was our schoolmaster (R.V., tutor) to bring us unto Christ.” (Gal. 3:24) Those who realize their imperfections and their inability to measure up to God’s standards of righteousness should be able to appreciate His benefits toward them. The benefits of God’s grace manifested through the gift of His beloved Son should, when properly appreciated, lead to the full surrender of one’s self to do the will of God. The Psalmist expressed this thought saying, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord, now in the presence of all His people.”—Psalm 116:12-14
Thus we see that the law was intended to serve, first, to reveal sin and then to awaken in the sinner the desire for God’s grace and favor. It is important that we note, also, that while the law thus reveals sin, it is not responsible for sin. Nor does the law remove sin. The Apostle Paul says in this connection:
“I had not known sin, but, by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.”—Rom. 7:7-13
But while the law given the Israelites at Sinai was to serve as a revealer of sin, it was also to inspire a desire for righteousness and life. It could not, however, give to any fallen man the life he sought. The law promised life to anyone who could keep it, but anyone who was able to keep the law would need life to begin with, and thus all of the imperfect Israelites failed to attain that which they had hoped to secure under the Law Covenant arrangement. We read in Hebrews 7:19 that “the law made nothing perfect.” This would indicate that no matter how sincere and painstaking an effort one might make to keep God’s law, such an effort would not serve to develop perfection but merely to reveal imperfection.
However, the law did point out the man Christ Jesus, by the keeping of which He demonstrated His perfection and righteousness, thus qualifying Him to live forever upon the earth. Relinquishing this right or privilege constituted the merit of righteousness which provided the offset or substitute for the sins of the whole world. Thus by Jesus’ faithfulness in keeping the law and by His obedience to the divine will in laying down His life for the sins of the world, He revealed the Father’s great love for all mankind—the love that through Him has given others, even all mankind, the opportunity to live.
God was very longsuffering in dealing with the Israelites. What patience, what forbearance He manifested toward them! From one standpoint, the Law Covenant itself into which He entered with them at Sinai was a manifestation of His loving care for them because it helped to save them from the fate of other nations who, without His protection, passed into oblivion. The Law Covenant also served in helping to keep alive the hope, which, though embodied in the Abrahamic Covenant, they had steadily been relinquishing. God even found it necessary to remind them of Himself, for they so readily forgot Him. He said: “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on, eagles’ wings, and brought you unto Myself.” (Exodus 19:4) So important was it for them, if they were to continue in God’s favor, not to forget God, that He incorporated a reminder of Himself in the preamble of the Decalogue which reads, “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”—Exodus 20:2; Deut. 5:6
And what an important lesson this is for spiritual Israel of today. If we are to continue in God’s favor, we, too, must not forget God. God and the divine will must ever be first and foremost in our hearts and in our lives. We must ever keep the Lord before us. It is only thus that the spirit of the law is fulfilled in our devotions to Him as expressed by Jesus’ summary of the commandments to the effect that we should love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and with all of our souls and with all of our minds.—Matt. 22:37
Israel Accepts Responsibility
Israel of old earnestly desired God’s favor. In entering into the Law Covenant they heartily said, “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” (Exodus 19:8) Of course they wanted to be God’s peculiar treasure above all people and thus a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. They also wanted life which the law promised to anyone able to keep it. Their desire for these blessings of the Law Covenant was evidently more the motive of their enthusiasm for agreeing to keep it than that of doing God’s will. They did not realize that this selfish approach to the doing of God’s will in itself was contrary to the spirit of the law and meant that from the very start their effort to keep it would most certainly fail.
What was the result? A double curse, for not only did the original Adamic condemnation still stand against them, but the law which promised release from this, merely placed them under a further condemnation for failure to keep it. And so says the Apostle Paul, “the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.”—Rom. 7:10
Entering into such a covenant as Israel did at Sinai, implied—full surrender to do God’s will implicitly, and failure to do so involved the curse which was death. There is an important lesson in this for us. Too often those who accept Christ as their Savior fail to appreciate God’s grace thus manifested toward them, thinking of it only in terms of the benefits they have received, rather than the fact that it should call forth, in return, their full surrender to do His will. True, we should never lose sight of divine benefits as they have reached us through Christ Jesus; but if we think of divine grace merely from this standpoint alone, we are failing to catch the real spirit of Christianity. There is something that we are to do for God in return for His great love to us, and that is the full surrender of ourselves to do His will, irrespective of what the cost may be.
Israel’s consecration to keep the Law Covenant was motivated, as we have seen, more with the idea of gaining life and blessings than it was with the desire to serve and please God by endeavoring to fulfill all His requirements of them. There is a danger that we of spiritual Israel may do likewise and thus fail in the real purpose of the consecrated life. Our first and chief concern should ever be the doing of the perfect will of God. It was so with Jesus. While the joy set before Him (Heb. 12:2) undoubtedly involved the glories of the divine nature, yet His chief concern and therefore His greatest joy, was not in the contemplation of these, but in the favor and blessing of His Father by always doing those things which pleased Him. When He consecrated Himself unto God, He made no mention of the rewards, but in spirit declared, “Lo, I come … to do Thy will, O God.”—Heb. 10:7
Covenants Serve to Separate
The Law Covenant given to Israel at Sinai served to separate that nation from all the other nations of the world, despite their inability to keep it. So, too, our covenant of sacrifice serves to keep us separate from the world. There were some, though infinitesimally few, of typical Israel, who, though born under the covenant and its law, actually transcended it, not by the works which that covenant commanded, but by the faith which God counted as the fulfillment thereof. These are the Ancient Worthies whom the Apostle Paul brings to our attention in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews saying of them, “these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise.”—Heb. 11:39
Lest we become discouraged with our inability to meet all the terms of our covenant on account of the imperfections of our flesh, the Holy Spirit, through the inspired Apostle Paul, directs us to keep the example of the Ancient Worthies in mind. We are admonished to note their faith, their trials, their lives, their fortitude. They were God’s witnesses (martyrs) examples of faith, “of whom the world was not worthy.” (Heb. 11:38) Their hope, inspired by faith in, God, kept them, in the face of many trials and failures, ever looking forward to that great Deliverer, the Abrahamic seed, the promised Messiah. This Messiah, thus, being the very substance of their faith—its beginning and its end—became also the basis of their justification to life, when at Calvary, He died, “the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” (I Pet. 3:18) In the Reprints, page 4320, we read:
“Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others before the Law Covenant were not bound by it, yet were not in the fullest sense justified to life until the Abrahamic Covenant had been established at Calvary. Their faith, then, entitled them to a share in the merits of that sacrifice. Likewise throughout the period of the Law Covenant, before it was annulled at the cross, there were ancient worthies who lived, above the masses of their time, and who, although bound by the law, had above it a living faith in the original Oath-Bound (Sarah) Covenant of Grace. These in the divine records were entitled to their share of that grace as soon as the merit of Calvary’s sacrifice had been presented on behalf of believers. … Although they lived while the Law Covenant was alive, they foresaw its death and trusted not in it, but in the superior Covenant of Grace.”
It is concerning these that the apostle writes in Heb. 12:1,2: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.”
Faith justifies in the face of our failure to keep our covenant inviolate. But this only so long as, in the recognition of our own unworthiness of God’s grace and inability to do God’s perfect will, we retain Jesus as the bulwark of our faith, and endeavor to carry out His instructions and injunctions. The Ancient Worthies, though unable to keep the law, were accounted, because of their faith, as having it fulfilled in them. That is, they were justified by their faith. We too, though unable to keep our covenant perfectly are accounted as having its righteousness fulfilled in us. (Rom. 8:4) God’s law is love, and, no matter how it be expressed, whether negatively as in the “Thou shalt nots,” or positively as in the “Thou shalts,” we realize that we cannot keep it perfectly, but thanks be to God, we can fulfill it through that grace of God manifested toward us in Christ Jesus.