The Israelites
Very few of the Israelites ever accepted God's salvation by grace. God extended a covenant of grace to the Israelites through Moses in Exodus 19:3-7. But in Exodus 19:8, the people rejected God's covenant of grace, and they asked Moses to request of God that He give them laws that they could obey to make themselves righteous enough to save themselves. God gave them the Ten Commandments through Moses only to show them that complete obedience to them was practically impossible. Exodus 20:1-17. God had already provided a blood sacrifice and a burnt offering sacrifice to symbolize to them that He alone could cleanse them of their sins and eliminate spiritual death from their lives. Exodus 12:1-13. In their pride, the Israelites remained ignorant of the fact that no one can ever make himself righteous enough to save himself. Genesis 2:17. Only God Himself can remove the spiritual death within the being of every human which causes them to sin. Hebrews 2:9; II Timothy 1:10; I Corinthians 15:26; I John 3:8. Through His suffering on the cross and His descent into Hell, Christ has removed the spiritual deaths and sins of every human which is the work of the Devil in order to save forever their souls and spirits that He created and loves. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Luke 20:38; I Corinthians 15:22; I Timothy 6:13; Revelation 21:5.
God appeared to the Israelites in His fiery wrath from the top of Mount Sinai. But God directed His fiery wrath only toward their spiritual deaths and sins, and His message to them was that they would never be able to make themselves righteous enough for Him to accept them through their own efforts to sanctify themselves or their efforts to obey His laws. God wanted them to be afraid that His fiery wrath would kill them in order to warn them that their sins and spiritual deaths would cause a temporary separation from His Love. In Exodus 20:1-17, God acceded to the people's demands for laws which they could obey to make themselves righteous. Their obedience would definitely provide them with temporal righteousness, but they could not understand that their obedience would never remove the spiritual death within them that caused them to sin.
In Exodus 20:18-19, God caused the Israelites to understand that their desire to have laws to obey did not assuage His fiery wrath at all. In fact, their sinful desire only moved them further from God because they refused to rely on God's grace or mercy. They even became afraid that God would destroy their lives and not just their spiritual deaths and sins. Their fear was their own fault because God will never destroy the good lives of humans that He created in His image. Genesis 1:27; Genesis 3:20; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Luke 20:38; Revelation 21:5.
The Israelites even became so afraid of God's Holy Word that they asked Moses to give them laws and that Moses would ask God to leave them alone. Exodus 20:19. God actually acceded to this demand also, and He allowed Moses to write his own laws for the people to obey. But like all manmade laws, Moses' laws became extremely intricate and complex. Like all manmade laws, some of Moses' laws were good, some were bad, and some were just silly. But God allowed Moses to write laws in order to teach His people that they would always fail to obey intricate laws which meant they could never make themselves righteous enough to be accepted by God. Ezekiel 20:25; Hebrews 8:7-8. God simply wanted them to have faith that His sin offerings and burnt offerings symbolized the fact that God would provide for their higher salvation by His grace or their lower salvation by His mercy. Salvation by grace means that one must believe that only Christ can completely remove one's sins and spiritual death through His sacrifice and resurrection. Romans 6:23; Colossians 3:4. Salvation by God's mercy means that every living human within the regions of the dead will someday believe that Christ will raise their good lives that He created and loves to be recreated to live on His recreated earth. Isaiah 45:21-24; John 11:25; I Timothy 6:13; Revelation 5:11-14; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5.
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