Grace Before the Law

Exodus 19; Hebrews 12:24

God fed and refreshed Israel before giving His law at Sinai. Joseph Hall reflects on this gracious order, the agreement between the Old and New Testaments and the holiness of God’s presence. He points us to the greater liberty of the Gospel, calling us to grateful obedience and closer fellowship with God through Christ.

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Grace Before the Law

And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaks better things than that of Abel.

Hebrews chapter 12 verse 24

It is but about seven weeks since Israel came out of Egypt; in which space God has cherished their faith by five several wonders; yet now he thinks it time to give them statutes from heaven, as well as bread. The manna and water from the rock (which was Christ in the Gospel) were given before the law; the sacraments of grace before the legal covenant. The grace of God precedes our obedience, therefore should we keep the law of God, because we have a Saviour.

O the mercy of our God! which, before we see what we are bound to do, shows us our remedy if we do it not. How can our faith disannul the law, when it was before it? It may help to fulfil that which shall be, it cannot frustrate that which was not. The letters, which God had written in our fleshy tables, were now, (as those which are carved in some barks) almost grown out: he saw it time to write them in dead tables, whose hardness should not be capable of alteration.

He knew, that the stone would be more faithful than our hearts.

O marvellous accordance betwixt the two testaments! In the very time of their delivery, there is the same agreement which is in the substance. The ancient Jews kept our feasts, and we still keep theirs. The feast of the passover is the time of Christ's resurrection: then did he pass from under the bondage of death. Christ is our passover, the spotless Lamb, whereof not a bone must be broken.

The very day wherein God came down in fire and thunder to deliver the law, even the same day came also the Holy Ghost down upon the disciples in fiery tongues, for the propagation of the Gospel. That other was in fire and smoke, obscurity was mingled with terror; this was in fire without smoke, befitting the light and clearness of the Gospel; fire, not in flashes, but in tongues; not to terrify, but to instruct.

The promulgation of the law makes way for the law of the Gospel. No man receives the Holy Ghost, but he which has felt the terrors of Sinai.

God might have imposed upon them a law by force; they were his creatures, and he would require nothing but justice. It had been but equal, that they should be compelled to obey their Maker; yet that God, which loves to do all things sweetly, gives the law of justice in mercy, and will not imperiously command, but craves our assent for that, which it were rebellion not to do.

How gentle should be the proceeding of fellow-creatures, who have an equality of being, with an inequality of condition; when their infinite Maker requests, where he might constrain! God will make no covenant with the unwilling; how much less the covenant of grace, which stands all upon love! If we stay till God offer violence to our will, or to us against our will, we shall die strangers from him. The church is the spouse of Christ: he will enjoy her love by a willing contract, not by a ravishment.

The obstinate have nothing to do with God. The title of all converts is, a willing people.

That Israel inclined to God, it was from God. He inquires after his own gifts in us, for our capacity of more. They had not received the law, unless they had first received a disposition fit to be commanded. As there was an inclination to hear, so there must be a preparation for hearing. God's justice had before prepared his Israelites, by hunger, thirst, fear of enemies; his mercy had prepared them by deliverances, by provisions of water, meat, bread: and yet, besides all the sight of God in his miracles, they must be three days prepared to hear him.

When our souls are at the best, our approach to God requires particular addresses; and if three days were little enough to prepare them to receive the law, how is all our life short enough to prepare for the reckoning of our observing it! And if the word of a command expected such readiness, what shall the word of promise, the promise of Christ and salvation?

The murrain of Egypt was not so infectious as their vices; the contagion of these stuck still by Israel. All the water of the Red Sea, and of Marah, and that which gushed out of the rock, had not washed it off. From these they must now be sanctified. As sin is always dangerous, so most when we bring it into God's sight: it poisons both our persons and services, and turns our good into evil.

As therefore we must be always holy, so most when we present ourselves to the holy eyes of our Creator. We wash our hands every day; but, when we are to sit with some great person, we scour them with balls. And if we must be sanctified only to receive the law, how holy must we be to receive the grace promised in the Gospel!

Neither must themselves only be cleansed, but their very clothes; their garments smelt of Egypt; even they must be washed. Neither can clothes be capable of sin, nor can water cleanse from sin. The danger was neither in their garments nor their skin; yet they must be washed, that they might learn, by their clothes, with what souls to appear before their God. Those garments must be washed, which should never wax old, that now they might begin their age in purity; as those which were in more danger of being foul, than bare.

It is fit that our reverence to God's presence should appear in our very garments, that both without and within we may be clean; but little would neatness of vestures avail us with a filthy soul. The God of spirits looks to the inner man, and challenges the purity of that part which resembles himself; "Cleanse your hands you sinners, and purge your hearts you double-minded."

Yet even when they were washed and sanctified, they may not touch the mount, not only with their feet, but not with their eyes. The smoke keeps it from their eyes, the marks from their feet. Not only men, that had some impurity at their best, are restrained, but even beasts, which are not capable of any unholiness. Those beasts which must touch his altars, yet might not touch his hill. And if a beast touch it, he must die; yet so, as no hands may touch that which has touched the hill.

Unreasonableness might seem to be an excuse in these creatures; that therefore which is death to a beast, must needs be capital to them, whose reason should guide them to avoid presumption. Those Israelites which saw God every day in the pillar of fire, and the cloud, must not come near him in the mount. God loves at once familiarity and fear; familiarity in our conversation, and fear in his commands. He loves to be acquainted with men in the walks of their obedience; yet he takes state upon him in his ordinances, and will be trembled at in his word and judgments.

I see the difference of God's carriage to men in the law, and in the Gospel. There, the very hill where he appeared may not be touched of the purest Israelite. Here, the hem of his garment is touched, by the woman that had the flux of blood; yea his very face was touched with the lips of Judas. There, the very earth was prohibited them, on which he descended. Here, his very body and blood is proffered to our touch and taste.

O the marvellous kindness of our God! How unthankful are we, if we do not acknowledge this mercy above his ancient people! They were his own; yet strangers in comparison, of our liberty. It is our shame and sin, if, in these means of entireness, we be no better acquainted with God than they, which, in their greatest familiarity, were commanded aloof.