“If this [Sinaitic covenant] doesn’t sound like a bargain, recall that the original Israelites did not consider it a bargain either, and they resisted Moses’ efforts to engage them in it. All things considered, many of the first-generation Israelites, who received this covenant while trembling at the foot of a quaking mountain and then wandered in the wilderness, preferred to return to Egypt rather than to enter the covenant with a frightening deity who threatened curse-sanctions upon them if they disobeyed. I do not blame them; their assessment of the matter was judicious and well considered, albeit rebellious. The Sinai covenant-administration was no bargain for sinners, and I pity the poor Israelites who suffered under its administration…I would have resisted this covenant also, had I been there, because such a legal covenant, whose conditions require strict obedience (and threaten severe curse-sanctions), is bound to fail if one of the parties to it is a sinful people.”
Dr. T. David Gordon
The Law is Not of Faith — pg. 251
1.) So God demonstrates His graciousness by being the Lord God who brought them out of the land of Egypt — the house of bondage and yet that same God places Israel under a Mosaic covenant that made the hardships of Egypt look like a life of luxury?
2.) Israel’s proneness to rebel against God and the Mosaic covenant as seen in their preference to return to Egypt was judicious and well considered, even if rebellious?
3.) As New Covenant believers we should have pity on fellow believers in the household of God who lived during the OT epoch since God during that time was not as gracious as the God we serve today? (Can you say Marcionism?)
4.) God put His sinful people under a covenant that He knew and had determined that they would not be able to keep AND had no provision for their forgiveness when they did not keep it. He delighted in doing so?
5.) The OT believers as a party to the Mosaic covenant were a sinful people who were provided no relief in the Mosaic covenant for their sinfulness? All that blood in the sacrificial system meant nothing since our OT brothers could not offer up strict obedience?
Do these people hear themselves?
T. David Gordon? More like T. David Godless
