Old vs New

I'm reading my way through the Bible again - and I'm in the middle of the early Israelite history where God is setting down ground rules for their lives so that he can safely live amongst them. His holiness is not compatible with degradation. It destroys it.

In order for him to dwell amongst them as their God and leader, they need to live lives that honour the beauty of his way. Taking on the degraded ways of the nations around them, misrepresents him in terrible ways. Those nations were known to use sexual rituals and sacrifice their own children to "honour" their gods. Disgusting behavior to us, let alone a holy God. So God was pretty clear about not having any of those behaviours as part of the people he had chosen to represent him.

What troubles me every time I read them though, is the penalties for indulging in those behaviours. They are extremely harsh in our eyes!! Burned alive!! Stoned to death by the ones who bring them to be judged!! Very hard to reconcile those with the God who lived out his life in Jesus who, while not afraid to speak truth, demonstrated a heart of mercy and compassion.

I understand that God needed a people who would lift him up to the nations around them. Who would show his beautiful perfection as something desirable and blessed, so that all nations would be drawn to him. After all, he was trying to save them!! Jesus was going to come through these people to achieve the salvation of all mankind who would accept him!! That plan could not afford to be compromised!! But surely they could had just had their lives snuffed out without the graphic horror of their execution!! I've always struggled with this. And I know others have too.

The other morning I just sat with it in my time with God. And I told him that I really wanted to understand. I wanted to be able to reconcile the way God behaved in the old testament, with the way he showed himself in Jesus who said "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." (John 14:9) And while I sat there, a quiet thought whispered into my mind.

These punishments were meant to be horrifying and graphic enough to stop those behaviours ever happening! It was never his goal to put them into action. And the fact that those who brought the individual to their judgement, had to be involved in carrying out their sentence, was to enforce upon them the weight of accusing someone in the first place. That they were then responsible for that person's awful death.

None of it was supposed to happen! The prospect was supposed to be deterrent enough!! But humans being human, instead they became hardened to judging others to their death. To the point where they finally condemned their own Messiah to death!! And said "his blood be on us and on our children." (Matthew 27:25)

Jesus displayed the true heart of God when the woman was brought to him, caught in adultery. While men surrounded her, stones held in hands ready to destroy her, according to the word of the old testament God, Jesus saved her life by simply getting them to see the sin in themselves, so that they dropped their stones and slunk away. And he, the only sinless one among them, lifted her up, and told her to walk free of that which had almost destroyed her. (John 8:1-11)

The harshness of the old testament picture was supposed to make the people aware of the horror contrasted with his perfect ways. It was supposed to wake them up to how awful sin was that they thought was trivial. It was supposed to stop the decay and preserve a life-line nation. His heart was never to put them into action. But he also could not allow the destruction of his salvation plan. Or have his people undermine his holiness with trivialising the effects of sin brought into his presence. The old testament shows the contrast. Jesus showed his heart.

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