Exodus 24:12-18… “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.’” vs. 12
For the Israelites Moses was the man! According to their tradition, he had not only led them out of the bondage of Egypt, but God had chosen him to give them the law and the commandments at Mt. Sinai. Through the centuries that simple wilderness law, often referred to as the Ten Words, expanded to include hundreds of precepts that were designed to cover every aspect of the Israelites’ life together. Though Moses hadn’t written it all, it was widely known as the Law of Moses, and was believed to contain all the instructions the people would need to lead a just and righteous lives.
By the time of Jesus, that Law was considered to include both the written law, the 613 commandments of the Torah, and the oral law or Talmud. Rabbis spent their entire lives studying the law and interpreting what it meant in every circumstance. For the Jew there was nothing more important than obedience to the Law. It was what separated the righteous from those who were sinners. Jesus too took the Law seriously and had no intention of undermining it in any way, but he also saw its inadequacies. It simply could not be the foundation of life together in his Peaceable Kingdom. Only the Spirit could bring grace and truth!
Thought for the Day: What’s the attraction of life under the Law?
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