IT was unbelief in Israel that gave birth to the LAW, inasmuch as forgetting the promises given to Abraham their father, and also the goodness of God in delivering them from Egypt, they murmured against Him, thus obliging Him to present to them the terms of a covenant far different in its character from, that made with Abraham at first; terms which they accepted at once, thereby showing that they knew not themselves, and how wholly unable man is to stand before God on such conditions as these.
And so is it ever with us, even God's people: let us lose sight of grace, and practically we fall" under the iron bondage of law, into the place of deadness and distance from God. This we learn historically and dispensationally in Israel's case, experimentally in our own; and a, blessed lesson it is if in the end it leads us to live in the light of His presence, where alone there is perfect joy and freedom of heart.
If it be asked why the Lord allowed Israel to enter into such conditions as they could not fulfill, the answer is this—it was to teach the people of God in every age their own weakness, thereby leading them to look for acceptance and blessing to none but to Christ. In Israel's case the folly and weakness of man was evinced, even before the covenant was ratified, by their worshiping a god of their own, the golden calf set up by Aaron on Horeb, afterward by their rejection of Him, to whom the covenant made with Abraham bore witness; and in the end will be yet more signally shown, by their reception of one, who, coming in his own name, and not in the name of the Father, will be received as, that One, on whom the hopes of the nation from the beginning have rested.
Observe, however, the wonderful grace of God in all this; the very law which of necessity makes man, who cannot fulfill it, a transgressor, bore witness, at the same time, to that blood, which puts both sin and transgression away. This we see in the offerings of old, from the blood that was sprinkled on the door-posts of Israel in Egypt, to the last victim that died on the altar; all told of Him on whom the eye of God rested, in whom His heart took delight, from the very beginning, even the ONE SEED, through whom, all His purposes, touching the CHURCH in the first place, next the nation of ISRAEL, and lastly the GENTILES, will in the end be accomplished.