What does the Old Testament teach us about God?

We have already remarked that one thing that makes the study of the Old Testament so profitable is that therein we learn the ways and character of God. For the full unfolding of all that He is we have, of course, to turn to the New Testament, and to see Him revealed in the Person of the Son. But the Old Testament presents God to us in connection with His ways with men, and our loss will be great if we overlook this.

12 If we take Scripture, we find there the attributes of God - the one true and only God - shine out, and in every page, with unclouded lustre. He is one, supreme, the Creator of heaven and earth, of all things; knows all things. If we go to heaven, He is there; to hades, He is there (Jer. 23:24); can do all things. His eye and presence are everywhere; He is the eternal God; He is righteous and holy ; His goodness is over all His works. The cravings of the heart of man are met with the clearest and fullest revelation of God. I refer to the Old Testament, because there God, as such - the one true God - is fully and specially revealed in contrast with idols and man's imaginations. It is its special, direct revelation, with the law of His mouth - though promises and prophecies accompany it.

1st. God is owned as unchanging and eternal. "Thou art the Same, thou alone Jehovah" (6, N. Tr.). Amidst all changes in times, seasons, circumstances, and men, we have in the Lord One who knows no change and will never pass away. As we read in another scripture, "Thou remainest" and "Thou art the Same" (Heb. 1). 2nd. God is owned as the Creator of all. The heaven of heavens and all their host, the earth too and all things that are therein, the seas and all that is therein, are the work of His hands. 3rd. God is owned as the Sustainer of all. All creation is preserved by God and dependent upon God (6). 4th. God is owned as Sovereign. He chooses whom He will. He calls Abram out of Ur, and He changes his name (7). 5th. God is owned as the Giver of unconditional promises to those whom He has called according to His sovereign choice (8). 6th. God is owned as faithful to His word. He performs that which He has promised (8). 7th. God is owned in His ways of grace and power by which He delivered His people from Egypt, brought them through the wilderness and established them in the Land (9-15).

But God can never be indifferent to sin, whether in His own people or in the world at large. He is a God of unsullied holiness and truth. All His ways, from the earliest moment of His dealings with men, proclaim Him such. One great good that comes to us from the study of the Old Testament is that therein we learn God, as He made Himself known in His governmental ways with Israel and with certain individuals.

In Micah we find Him coming out of His place (Micah 1:3). His true place is that of Blesser. It is His delight to bestow benefits upon His people with a hand that knows no stint. Judgment is His strange work. But holiness and truth demand that He should put His hand to that work in which He finds no pleasure, and that He should come forth from His place where He sits as the beneficent Source of blessing, to punish transgression and to rebuke transgressors. Hence it is that sweeping destruction is foretold, both for Samaria and Judah.

With delight, Moses proclaims the Name of Jehovah, ascribing greatness to Israel's God. If poor Israel proved himself unstable, God remained immovable; He is the Rock, and nothing would move Him from His purposes, or alter His ways. Great in all in which He makes Himself known, His work is perfect, and His ways are just. How these things had been proved by Moses during the forty years in the desert! On the mount he had seen the greatness of Jehovah, when he saw His glory; to him God made known His ways in the secret of the sanctuary; and in all God's dealings with His people he had learned the nature and character of God's work. God could not allow His people's sins to go unpunished; He is a faithful God, without deceit: and in the knowledge that himself was excluded from the land, because of his failure, Moses can still say, "Just and right is He.'' How blessed for His people to have such a God: altogether transparent, no deceit, no unfaithfulness, no unrighteousness, no imperfection: and altogether marked by greatness. Only such a God could go on with such a nation; yea and with ourselves also. His transcending greatness is richly manifested in the mercy, goodness, grace and love, shown to such as we.

One thing stands out very clearly in the books of Moses. It is that God, in dealing with man fallen, used tangible and visible, means to bring out His intrinsic holiness and His abhorrence of evil, with His judgment upon it. At the same time He indicated ways and means whereby men might be delivered and reconciled, and right relations be established or restored; and whereby God might righteously bless them, rule over them, and dwell among them, according to His own heart.

Thus placed in the cleft of the rock and alone in the sanctuary of God's presence, Moses receives a new revelation of God whom he has so faithfully followed until now. At the bush, he had learned to know Him as the one who does not change: “I am that I am.” In Egypt, God revealed Himself to him as “The Lord, the God of the covenant.” At Sinai, he received the law from “the righteous and holy God.” In the cleft of the rock, however, he learns to know the very nature of the One who is love: “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy unto thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Ex. 34:6-7).

Now we find His character as told out in these: essentially righteousness and tender mercy; or light and love, as the New Testament unites with the Old to declare Him. "His work is honorable and with majesty;" and this is the reason of it, that in it all there is enduring, everlasting righteousness: "His righteousness standeth for aye." This is the one side; but there is another: for He has provided for the remembrance of His wonderful works; and in this His tender care for His creatures has shone out, that they might have the joy and fruitful consequences of such knowledge: "gracious and merciful is Jehovah."

Other names could be given but the foregoing gives us a wonderful idea of God as revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures and times. God is Almighty, the One to whom we owe allegiance and submission in a far more wonderful way than a wife to her husband or a servant to his master. He is the one sole Object of worship, whether presented to us as God in His essential glory, or as Messiah, the Anointed, God manifest in flesh. He is the One, who never changes, the eternal I AM, and that unchangeable One has put Himself in covenant blessing with men.

The name "Holy One of Israel" implies that the God of Israel is completely separated from all evil for He is of purer eyes than to behold evil. This is also what the seraphim express who exclaim in front of His throne: "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts" (compare Rev. 4:8).