God’s great desire is for friendship. God is love (1 John 4:8). At the same time, God is also the ultimate Judge who judges with complete honesty and impartially (Genesis 18:25; Deuteronomy 32:4). When God gave the Ten Commandments, He revealed to Moses both His love and His justice. Of these two, He began with mercy, grace and “steadfast love and faithfulness.” He deliberately emphasized the positive. Yet He also acknowledged His role as the Judge who must punish rebellion.
So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:4-7)
Throughout the ages, God’s nature remains the same: loving, caring and forgiving. Thus, in making the covenant with Moses and all Israel, God’s first desire was for a positive relationship. He wanted to be their God. He wanted them to walk with Him, sharing His love for goodness and kindness. But the Israelites kept rejecting God and His way of life.
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? … Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights? Your rich men are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. Therefore I strike you with a grievous blow, making you desolate because of your sins. (Micah 6:8, 11-13)
But this command I gave them: “Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.” But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers. (Jeremiah 7:23-26)