When people read, “The law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Christ,” do they suppose it means that the law was ungracious and untrue? The law was given for a foundation; the grace (or mercy) and truth for fulfillment; the whole forming one glorious Trinity of judgment, mercy, and truth. And if people would but read the text of their Bibles with heartier purpose of understanding it, instead of superstitiously, they would see that throughout the parts which they are intended to make most personally their own (the Psalms), it is always the Law which is spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms respecting mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost; but those respecting the law are always full of delight. David cannot contain himself for joy in thinking of it—he is never weary of its praise:—“How love I Thy law, it is my meditation all the day. Thy testimonies are my delight and my counselors; sweeter, also, than honey and the honeycomb."—RUSKIN ("Modern Painters").
THE MESSAGE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
The Old Testament declares the beginnings of created things, and gives us the history of the race from Creation to four hundred years prior to the coming of Christ. The underlying current of truth running through all its pages has to do with the one subject of the Will of God. Let the panorama of life move before the eye of the mind. Note well its darkness and light, its places of agony and of rapture. Mark the deeds which appall, and the heroisms which thrill. From beginning to end, the character of the picture is determined by the relation of men or nations to the Will of God. This is the great message of the Old Testament, that all the rivers that have made sad the life of man have had their source in his departure from that "good and perfect and acceptable Will of God"; (Rom. 12:2) and all the streams that have made glad the probationary pilgrimage of individuals, or the cities wherein men have dwelt, have sprung from the throne of God, which is the seat of His government.
The historical books tell the account of the wandering of man from God again and again, and show how all such wandering issued in disaster. They also reveal the one unending purpose of God to bring man back into harmony with that Will. The methods were many; the intention one. The devout of all the ages breathed, if not in words yet in spirit, the same prayer—"Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done." (Matt. 6:10) The very essence of evil laid in the rebellion of the human heart against that Kingdom and that Will.
The devotional books are all occupied with the same theme. The songs find their keynote in the kinghood and throne of God. "The Lord reigneth." "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever." (Psa. 145:13) These and kindred phrases tell the character of the music. When the song is of human experience at its best, it is ever of the joy and peace to be found in the law of God. "Oh how I love Thy law." (Psa. 119:97)
"Thy commandment is exceeding broad." (Psa. 119:96) When the music becomes a dirge, it is because in individual or national life God has been forgotten.
"When I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring." "The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God." (Psa. 53:1) Or, if you read aright the prayers, they are all part and parcel of the aspiration of man, after a realization of the Divine purpose and pathway. "Teach me to do Thy will, O God." (Psa. 143:10) "Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation." (Psa. 38:22)
The prophetic books have a like significance. The burden that oppressed these men, until they delivered themselves in words of flaming fire, was a burden of Divine judgment and government. Nations that had forgotten God were called back to allegiance. Nations persisting in their waywardness were told of their doom. The perpetual cry of the prophets was, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord." (Isa. 55:7) These men spake as the oracles of God, without fear or faltering, and their message was ever a "Thus saith the Lord"; and the secret of their daring and devotion the fact that each could say, "The Lord, before Whom I stand." (2 Kings 5:16)
Or if we take another method of considering the message of the Old Testament, we shall arrive at the same result. Range before your vision all the hosts of the men of all the centuries. They stand now in imagination like a long chain of hills stretching far back to the first man Adam—"which was the son of God." Such an outlook at once reveals certain men that stand out from among their fellow men, their heads raised above them, capped with the pure snows, and catching first, and keeping last the light of the sun. Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and others that space forbids our naming. What makes the difference between these and their fellow men? In every case the measure of their superiority is the measure of their understanding of, and obedience to, the Will of God.
Adam erect is so because he fulfills the purpose of God. Abel received, is so because he lives a life God-centered rather than self-centered. Enoch's distinction is revealed in his brief biography, "Enoch walked with God." (Gen. 5:22, 24) Noah, also, amid the most appalling corruption, believed God, and was saved in the works of obedience that grew out of his faith. Abraham became the father of the faithful because he went out, not knowing whither he went, confident alone in the wisdom and rightness of the word of God. Moses, having himself learned to wait for the guidance of God, gave the world a code of ethics which remains the foundation of morality to this day, because it was first written with the finger of God. David's memory is revered more for his harp than his crown, and that because, through it, he sang of the law of his God. Elijah still stands as the type of rough, magnificent character, because he was the messenger of law to an apostate age. These were all great, inasmuch as they abode in the Will of God; and the things that smirch the protecting shield of each, were of the nature of disobedience or wandering from the Divinely-marked pathway.
Thus, from the song of new-born earth to the fiery warning of Malachi, the Old Testament brings us face to face with the supreme and utmost subject.
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