Eventually, life became so unbearable that God's people cried out for Him to save them.

God answered. He came down in a cloud and chose to dwell among His people.

Most people see this as God simply rescuing Israel from slavery, but I believe He was doing much more than that. God was beginning to teach humanity lessons that could never be learned through words alone. He was showing us who He is, who we are, and why we could never save ourselves.

If God was going to dwell among sinful people, something had to change.

God is perfectly holy.

Humanity is not.

That problem lies at the heart of the Old Testament.

Many people read the Old Testament and conclude that God is harsh because they focus on His judgments instead of what those judgments were meant to teach. God was not revealing that He delights in punishment. He was revealing how serious sin really is.

We tend to measure sin against other people. God measures sin against His own holiness.

To us, some sins seem small while others seem terrible. But from God's perspective, every sin separates us from Him because every sin is a rejection of His perfect goodness. Like cancer, sin spreads. Left unchecked, it destroys everything it touches. It corrupts love, truth, justice, families, nations, and eventually every human heart.

God wanted humanity to understand that reality.

That is why He gave Israel the Law.

The Law was never designed to save anyone.

It was designed to expose us.

Every commandment revealed God's holiness. Every sacrifice reminded people that sin produces death. Every priest stood between God and man because sinful people could not approach a holy God on their own. Every act of worship reminded Israel that something was still missing. The system itself testified that humanity had a problem it could not solve.

People often ask why God commanded such severe judgments.

I believe the answer is found in what God was teaching.

It was as though He was saying,

"If you want Me to dwell among you based on your own righteousness, then you must be perfect, because I am perfect."

No one could do it.
Not Moses.
Not Aaron.
Not David.
Not Solomon.
Not the prophets.
Not Israel. Generation after generation failed.
That was the point.

The Old Testament was demonstrating that humanity could never make itself righteous enough to live with God.

Religion could not do it.
Rules could not do it.
Sacrifices could not do it. Good intentions could not do it.
Humanity could not save itself.

Many people struggle with the passages where God commanded the destruction of entire nations, including women and children. Those are some of the hardest passages in Scripture, and we should never pretend otherwise.

But we also have to remember that God sees what we cannot. He knows every heart. He knows every future. He knows every consequence. He knows the beginning from the end.

We do not.

Take Pharaoh as an example. Many people say God hardened Pharaoh's heart, as though God forced a good man to become evil. But the Bible also tells us that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. God was not creating evil within Pharaoh. He was confirming Pharaoh in the rebellion Pharaoh had already chosen.

God knew Pharaoh would never repent. Instead of wasting Pharaoh's rebellion, He used it to reveal His power and accomplish His purposes.

God has always done that.

He even used Satan's rebellion to accomplish humanity's redemption through Jesus Christ.

God never creates evil. But He is so sovereign that He can use the evil choices of rebellious people to accomplish His perfect will.

The harshness people see in the Old Testament is not God delighting in judgment. It is God exposing the true nature of sin.

Without those lessons, humanity might have continued believing that it could save itself.

The Old Testament strips away that illusion.

It leaves us standing before God with only one possible conclusion:

We need a Savior.

Related Scriptures

Romans 3:19–20
"By the works of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin."

Isaiah 64:6
"All our righteous acts are like filthy garments..."

Hebrews 10:1–4
"It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins."