I. Let us examine the popular idea as to the excessive severity and formality of this law. To a transgressor who had not in him the living principle of obedience it was, no doubt, fearfully formal and stern. So is our statute-book to a felon, while on you and me it sits lightly as the air. Judaism was given from Sinai to that people for that people's good. It was God's best gift to them as they stood there before the mountain. Its relation to the future was their relation to the future; in training, educating, and developing them, it was making a future possible to their nation and to the world.
II. Notice that the very heart's core of a dispensation of law is duty, and duty is the master-key to life. Law is the buttress of right; its object is to fortify the dutiful soul. The real object of law is to help men to do right, and thus most effectually restrain from wrong; unless there be a sentiment of duty latent which the law can appeal to and elicit, it is heartless and hopeless work.
III. The receiving of a law was the first step of the people in a new and glorious career of personal and national development, which, though they have missed the crown, has left them the most notable, powerful, and capable race in the world. In other words, it opened a noble man's career to them; it will open the same to you.
IV. But, however we may magnify it, and however justly, the law is not a gospel, and can in no wise supply the place of a gospel to the world. The dispensation of law in our individual histories is but a "schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." The Gospel is the instrument of the reconciliation which the law declares to be needful, but cannot secure.
J. Baldwin Brown, The Soul's Exodus and Pilgrimage,p. 202.
References: Deuteronomy 6:24. A. W. Hare, Sermons to a Country Congregation,vol. ii., p. 367. Deuteronomy 7:2-4. T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. vi., p. 24.Deuteronomy 7:6. J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Easter to Ascension Day,p. 192.Deuteronomy 7:8. Parker, vol. v., p. 6. Deuteronomy 7:9. Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxi., p. 165; Parker, vol. v., p. 7 Deuteronomy 7:9; Deuteronomy 7:10. R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,2nd series, p. 21.Deuteronomy 7:12; Deuteronomy 7:13. J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Easter to Ascension Day,p. 375.Deuteronomy 7:20. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xii., p. 673.