Unmerited Favor (11 page)

The more you try to keep the law by your efforts, the more it will bring forth what it was designed to bring forth—your failings and sins.

Immediately, once they presumed upon their ability to keep God’s commandments, they broke the very first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
⁸
Why did they commit such a terrible act?
The apostle Paul tells us that “the strength of sin is the law.”
⁹
The more you try to keep the law by your efforts, the more it will bring forth what it was designed to bring forth—your failings and sins. And this will happen until it brings you to the end of yourself, until you realize that you cannot meet God’s perfect standards on your own and you cast yourself totally upon His grace (unmerited favor) and goodness.

After they had exchanged covenants, God’s response to the children of Israel when they murmured changed. In Numbers 21:5, the Bible records that they complained, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.” This sounds like one of the complaints that they made earlier, doesn’t it? But look what happened this time: “So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and
many of the people of Israel died
.”
¹⁰

Now, I want to point out that God did not create the serpents to bite the people after they had murmured—the serpents were there in the wilderness all the time. God simply lifted His hand of protection over them and allowed the serpents to move in on them. We see that now, when the Israelites murmured, they died! Why did God respond so differently to the same sin of murmuring? It was because He was now operating under a different covenant with them. The Israelites had exchanged the Abrahamic covenant, which was based on God’s grace (undeserved favor), for the Mosiac covenant, which was based on their performance. Protection was contingent on their ability to keep the law perfectly. But thank God we are no longer under the old covenant. Because of the cross, God will not lift His hand of protection over us.

The Terms Of The Old Covenant

In Deuteronomy 28, there is a beautiful passage that records the wonderful blessings from God that affect every area of our lives, including our families, careers and finances. Let’s look at some of these blessings:

Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks...The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.

—Deuteronomy 28:3–4, 12

These were blessings that were promised under the old covenant of law. But how would these blessings come upon you if you were under the old covenant?

God answered this question when He said, “And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail...
if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God
, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them. So
you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you
this day, to the right or the left, to go after other gods to serve them.”
¹¹
The key operative word to access God’s blessings under the old covenant is one big “IF”—
IF
you can keep God’s commandments perfectly, then you can enjoy His blessings! Is this a good deal? This basically means that the old covenant of law was entirely contingent on your works and ability to keep

God’s commandments impeccably. Only then could you be blessed! But what happens
IF
you fail to keep God’s commandments perfectly? Under this old covenant of law, the Lord said:

But it shall come to pass,
if
you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country ...Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks ...The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me.

—Deuteronomy 28:15–16, 18, 20

Wow, this is heavy stuff! If you were offered the choice to go back under the old covenant of law today, would you?

Under the old covenant, you would be blessed if you kept God’s law perfectly, but you would also attract horrific curses when you failed! Why do you think that God found fault with this covenant? The old covenant of law was not His best for the children of Israel. They asked for it when they boasted in their ability to be blessed based on their own works. They rejected His unmerited favor. They rejected the Abrahamic covenant and declared that they wanted to be evaluated based on their own goodness rather than His goodness.

God wanted to bless His people based on His unmerited favor, but because they wanted to be blessed based on their own law-keeping, He had to humble their self-consuming arrogance. He showed them His perfect standards that no man could ever maintain—He gave them the old covenant of law.

The Law As A Shadow Of Good Things To Come

How do we know that the covenant of law was not God’s best? Well, if that covenant was good enough, God would not have had to send Jesus to die on the cross for us. But look at what God did—He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to fulfill the law perfectly on our behalf at the cross. Jesus, who knew no sin, took upon His own body all the curses and the full payment for all the sins of humanity, so that under this new covenant through Him we can completely depend on His unmerited favor for every blessing in our lives. My friend, the unmerited favor that we enjoy today through Jesus under the new covenant is God’s best for us!

To prove to you that Jesus (and not the law) is God’s best, do you know that God had already concealed shadows pointing to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross in the very same chapter that the Ten Commandments were given?

Let me show you something about reading and understanding the Old Testament. The Old Testament is full of shadows, types and pictures that point to the person of Jesus and His death on the cross. Paul explains this in the Book of Hebrews when he speaks of the law as “having a
shadow
of the good things to come.”
¹²

When you see the shadow of an object, you know that the object is nearby. Knowing that the law is a shadow of “good things to come,” we need to find out what “the good things to come” refers to. Paul answers this question for us when he talks about how the rituals under the law “are a
shadow
of things to come, but
the substance is of Christ.
”
¹³
The shadows hidden in the Old Testament point to the
substance
in the New Testament, which is Jesus Christ! Would eating the shadow of a hamburger satisfy you? No, you need to partake of the actual substance to be filled!

Jesus is in the old covenant concealed and in the new covenant revealed. He is the key to unlocking the Old Testament.

Now, let’s get back to what we were talking about earlier. Do you know that even as God gave the Ten Commandments, Jesus was on His mind? God was already preparing to send His Son to die for you and me! Jesus is in the old covenant concealed and in the new covenant revealed. He is the key to unlocking the Old Testament, and that makes unveiling every detail that is recorded in the Bible so exciting. My ministry is all about unveiling the person of Jesus and what I am about to share with you really gets my spiritual hormones bubbling.

Are you ready? Let’s look at Exodus 20 again, where the Ten Commandments were given. We can see that even when God was giving the law, Jesus’ death on the cross was already on His mind. He knew that the people could not keep the law, so He made provision for the cross as the answer to the people’s failure. God’s immediate instruction to Moses after the law was given was to build Him an altar. What is an altar? An altar is a place where offerings were sacrificed. Right here you see a shadow of the cross of Calvary, where Jesus was sacrificed. But God didn’t stop there. He gave some instructions about building the altar, which reveal even more about the cross.

In the last two verses of Exodus 20, God told Moses, “And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of
hewn stone
; for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it.”
¹⁴
What this instruction tells us about the cross is that there can be no human effort (no hewn stone) involved. It tells us that man’s works cannot be added to the finished work of Jesus, for that would profane it. God also said, “Nor shall you
go up by steps to My altar
, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.”
¹⁵

You cannot add to Jesus’ sacrifice nor can you deserve His favor  by depending on your obedience to the law.

My friend, man cannot gain access to God’s unmerited favor
by his own steps
. Man’s self-efforts to deserve God’s favor will only expose his own weaknesses. Favor comes only from Jesus’ work on the cross. You cannot add to His work nor can you deserve His favor by depending on your obedience to the law. Jesus did a complete work on the cross and declared that “It is finished!”
¹⁶
Now, isn’t it exhilarating to see Jesus unveiled in the Old Testament?

But I am not done yet. I have only mentioned the altar. What about the offerings? I am not going to go into every detail about the offerings in this book. However, suffice it to say that God told the children of Israel to sacrifice offerings to Him. These offerings are found in the Book of Leviticus, which gives a detailed account of the burnt offering, peace offering, meal offering, sin offering, and trespass offering.

“Pastor Prince, why are there so many types of offerings and why is this important to me?”

Because, all five offerings are
shadows
that point to our one perfect offering—Jesus Christ on the cross. That one sacrifice of Jesus is so rich with truths that it takes five offerings to depict His one offering on the cross.

So you see, my friend, even as God gave the Ten Commandments, His heart was already set on sending Jesus as the final sacrifice to redeem man from his failings. He knew from the very beginning of the covenant of law that man would fail him and that no man could ever keep the law fully and be blessed. And that is why in His love for man, He made a provision for the offerings even as He gave the law. God wanted to ensure that there was a way out for His people so that when they failed to keep His laws, they could bring their offerings to Him before the curses could come upon them. Hallelujah! How can we not love Him?

Beloved, you will find that even the
process
that the Israelites followed when they made their offerings is full of truths. God doesn’t tell us everything plainly, for “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”
¹⁷
However, because you are reading this book today, you are about to see more beautiful shadows of what happened at Calvary. For example, when a sinner brings his offering to the priest, the lamb that he brings must be without spot, wrinkle or blemish. After the priest has examined the lamb, the sinner must lay his hands upon the lamb’s head. The sinner then kills the lamb and offers it upon the altar as a sacrifice.

The priest examines the lamb to see if it is perfect.

“Why can’t the sinner just bring any lamb to the priest?”

The lamb must be perfect because it is a picture of Jesus’ perfection—He is our perfect sacrifice, without any spot, wrinkle or blemish of sin!

“What has a sinner laying his hands on a lamb got to do with us today?”

This act has dual significance: The sinner is transferring his sins to the innocent lamb, while the lamb’s innocence is transferred to the sinner. The sinner is now made righteous and walks away free from any curse. It has everything to do with us because this is an amazing picture of the divine exchange that took place on the cross. At the cross,
all
our sins were put upon Jesus, the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. But Jesus did not only take away our sins. He also
transferred His righteousness to us
, so that today, you and I can be forever redeemed from the curse of the law!