iii. 13), we need not suppose the offerers had, in general, any
understanding that what they did had a special relation to the better Mediator to come. As in the case of the brazen serpent they looked to it and were healed; so here they made their offerings believing in their efficacy, and reaped the fruit of pardon and peace.
This divinely-instituted law was enjoined on the people under the most solemn assurances of blessings for obedience, and cursings for disobedience, viz.: “Behold I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; a blessing if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you this day: and a curse if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside after other gods” (Deut. xi. 26–28; xxvii. 15–26; and ch. xxviii.). “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live, that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey His voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto Him; for He is thy life and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them” (Deut. xxx. 19, 20).
They did what God had provided to enable them to walk with Him, and when they erred or failed to keep His holy law they brought the means of reconciliation He had appointed. In such way a man might do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with his God, which is the whole duty of man.
“Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace” (Ps. xxxvii. 37), might be applied to such an one, and the model may perhaps be useful in enabling us to understand the higher perfection required by the Gospel. “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John i. 7).
If we look for the essential principle of this elaborate system of priestly mediation for the forgiveness of sins, as well as for presenting to God the freewill offerings or devotions of the people, it will be found in the 11th verse of the 17th chapter of Leviticus, viz.: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”
Such were the conditions under which the law given from Mount Sinai was presented to or enjoined on the people. They were to choose between life or death, blessing or cursing, obedience with the Divine favour, or refusal to obey, with the Divine displeasure. The eyes of the Lord would be over the righteous, and His ear open to their cry; but the face of the Lord would be against them that did evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth—Ps. xxxiv. 15, 16—conditions so different as to constitute the highest happiness man was capable of at that time, or the deepest degradation and misery which he could endure in this life, with no better prospect beyond.
The consequences of God’s favour and blessing are set forth with peculiar strength in Deuteronomy (see pp. 33, 34), together with the consequences of His favour being withdrawn, which we may do well to ponder; as the language quoted above from the Psalms is adopted by the Apostle Peter as applicable equally to Christian times, and the principles of the quotations from Deuteronomy are equally applicable to the old or new dispensations—viz., obedience to the revealed will of God with life and blessing, or disobedience with death and misery.
“He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses; of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and done despite unto the Spirit of Grace?” (Heb. x. 28, 29).