The law was given when God called out a people for Himself, the world being gone into idolatry, worshipping stocks and stones and given up to a reprobate mind: before Moses comes down from the mount with the two tables of the law, the people have made a golden calf and have cast off God altogether.
The priesthood was set up, consecrated of God; the first day after the consecration was complete, two of them offer strange fire, and Aaron never entered into the holy of holies in his robes of glory and beauty; was excluded from all ordinary access to God.
Royalty was set up; the Son of David was to be God’s king, build his temple, and be every way blessed. He loves many strange women, turns to idolatry and the kingdom is ruined. God afterwards transfers power to the Gentiles, sets up the head of gold, leaving Jerusalem, casting down David’s throne; and men often think, if despotic, they would do all manner of wise and good things, but Nebuchadnezzar casts the faithful into the fire and gets in every sense a beast’s heart; Gentile power is corrupt, ambitious and violent; cannot, as scripture speaks, stay at home, what it describes by likening them to ravening beasts.
Such is the uniform account given me in scripture of what has gone on, God’s ways, and man’s ways when God has set up anything; I am not-saying anything of grace on His part—it exalts it—but of His public dealings and man’s conduct when God had instituted anything on earth, of man’s history. Is it very surprising if the same thing has happened in Christianity? No doubt vastly increased light and an altogether fuller revelation of grace are found in Christianity. It was the revelation of God, not the government of man as he
