A Contrast—Law and Grace

Exo. 34:2 2 Cor. 3
It is important to see that there were two distinct occasions in which we find tables of stone committed to man according to God's command. On the first occasion there was total ruin, and when God uttered His commands, there was no shining of the face whatever—no Moses transfigured by the power of glory. The law never made the face of man to shine: it is not the intention of the law, nor is it the result of the law. The law is characterized by darkness and tempest, by thunder and lightning, by the voice of God dealing with the guilty. And so it was on the first occasion when the law was announced by God Himself and the tables were broken by the indignant lawgiver before they ever reached man.
(In the second occasion, when the tables of stone are made, what a difference there is The lawgiver was called into the presence of God who was pleased to give a mingling of mercy along with the law. There was a covenant expressly made of this combined composite character—not law alone, and not grace alone, but rather the mingling of grace along with law. It would have been perfectly impossible for God to have carried on dealings with Israel, or to have brought them even into the land, unless there had been this mingling of grace and mercy with law.