The Same Yesterday As Today

 

    Have you ever heard someone say anything like, "How can God be loving when He ordered the annihilation of whole nations in the Old Testament?" or maybe you've been told, "In the Old Testament, there were like a thousand rules and hard punishments. What awesome God orders the death penalty for picking up sticks on Saturday?"
    And maybe at the back of your own mind, when you think of God in the Old Testament, you think of His judgment, His righteous anger at a sinful people, and the punishments He gave them. Then when you look at the New Testament and see a loving Father, a caring Savior, and a comforting Holy Spirit, you kind of think of God different from when Old Testament days. I was kind of guilty of making this subconscious error. In the back of my mind, I was thinking that until Jesus Christ came and shed His blood, God got upset about sins and meted out judgment to quickly correct.
    But when you look at Exodus 34:6--7 . . .

"And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, 'The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and four generation.'"(NIV)

    When we read this, one realizes that God was just as merciful and grace giving and loving in the Old Testament as He was in the New Testament and as He is now. He really never changes. And everything God did in the OT was out of His love of the people and His desire to bring them the best--and the same applies to what He does for us today.
    Isn't that cool? :)