The Israelites
In Exodus 19:8, the Israelites rejected God's salvation by His grace. They desired salvation through their own efforts by being obedient to God's commands. They did not understand that perfect obedience had become impossible for them because of the influence of the evil side of their nature. But God did not give up on them, just as He will never give up on any living human that He created and loves. God allowed them to try to save themselves by obedience to His laws and by animal sacrifices for when they failed to obey. God meant to teach them through their constant failure that their perfect obedience was impossible and make them understand that they were hopeless sinners whom only God can save. God gave them the animal sacrifices to show them that He would become their sacrifice that would save them. Genesis 3:15; Genesis 3:21; Leviticus 5:7-10; Leviticus 18:18-24; Exodus 12:5-13.
The righteousness of the Old Testament Israelites could not be the absolutely perfect righteousness of Christ. Their good works could only have come from the righteousness that God put into them when He created them. God creates every living human in His image which means He puts His righteousness into them. This righteousness is good but not absolutely holy because it contains free will which subjects it to sin. Psalm 7:8-10; Psalm 37:27-29. God has not forgotten His created righteousness that He has put into every human, and in Christ's Judgment in the end of the world He will raise all living humans from the regions of the dead and recreate them to live on His recreated earth. John 5:28-29; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; Matthew 5:5. God will raise them because of their repentance and faith as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14.
God gives the gift of Christ's absolutely perfect righteousness only to humans saved by grace when they repent and believe so that He can accept them into Heaven as joint-heirs with Christ. I Corinthians 1:30; II Corinthians 5:21; Romans 8:14-17. When God recreates the souls and spirits of humans saved by grace they cannot sin because God protects them with the absolute righteousness of Christ that cannot sin. I John 3:9. Although God possesses free will, He can never sin because His Holiness will never allow Him to sin. God does not recreate the fleshly nature of humans saved by grace which means that in their flesh they can still sin. Romans 7:15-25.
The Old Testament saints saved by grace could not go to Heaven until Christ came to them in Paradise where God sent them and preached the gospel to them so that they could fully believe, be washed clean from sin with the blood of Christ and receive His absolute righteousness by means of which He could translate them to Heaven when He ascended. Ephesians 4:7-10.
God addressed most of the Old Testament to the Israelites who would faithfully practice Moses' religion that God gave to him. Some of the Old Testament prophets prophesied about a coming suffering Messiah that the blood sacrifices symbolized. But God also meant for the burnt offerings and peace offerings to symbolize God's higher form of His lesser salvation for all Israelites who would remain faithful to Moses' religion. Exodus 12:8-11; Leviticus 5:10; Leviticus 18:5. God had Moses promise the faithful Israelites in Deuteronomy 4:40 that they would live in the promised land forever. In Numbers 18:8, God promised Moses that the Israelite religion would last forever. Deuteronomy 5:29; Deuteronomy 12:28; Deuteronomy 33:29. The righteous good works practiced by the faithful Israelites came from the image of God that He put into them when He created them. Deuteronomy 6:25; Psalm 7:8-9; I Samuel 26:23. Only humans saved by grace will receive the absolute righteousness of Christ by means of which God can accept them into Heaven. II Corinthians 5:21; Romans 8:14-17.
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