In Exodus 19, God
confirmed Israel as a peculiar people, set aside by a jealous God, for His
glory. They reciprocated by honoring Him in worship.
Then He told Moses to
enter the three days of preparation for the receiving of the law, in the first
feast of Pentecost. Fifty days had elapsed since the formal day of Passover
when they stood at the gates of Egypt as a nation.
Three days of
preparation were prescribed
They had to wash their clothes, abstain from
sexual relations and prepare their hearts and minds for what was coming.
In the early morning
of the third day, Mount Sinai trembled with thunder and lightning as a dark
cloud enveloped the summit. The people drew closer but received the severe
warning: “don’t touch the mountain and don’t try to see God in the clouds, or
you will die”.
They faced a fearsome encounter with what until then had been a voice only. They had seen His immense
power and witnessed His terrible hand against Egypt, but His presence was
denied them until that day. Then, in the midst of all that turmoil, God came
down.
The bible is silent on
how that transition happened, but for the first time God had descended the
great staircase that Jacob saw and stood on the mountain.
He has had an enduring
desire to be closer to His people, so beyond the moment at hand, we see Him
going further by entering the tent so He could go with them. Beyond that we also
see the veil eventually rending so we could enter into His presence.
The people had their
bounds, ensured by the priests, which confirms a degree of organization in the
families of Aaron, of priestly duties.
Up into the mount
As Moses went up alone
into the presence of God, not to see His face either, the people sat at the
foot of the mount and waited.
Then the voice spoke
to Moses and articulated the ten commandments, the Decalogue. The “Moral laws”
had constitutional implications in that they were fundamental principles for
guiding all other laws, they were absolutely inviolable and were above all.
With all respect to
the Pope, not even Jesus dared change a jot or tittle of those laws. The laws
that flowed from the Decalogue had two branches – the civil and the
ecclesiastical laws, which were open to adaptation, well for the Pharisaic
branch of Judaism it was.
The result of that
adaptation was the “oral tradition” and it evolved the law in the same way that
precedents and reinterpretations of contemporary law are within the purview of
the courts. After all, the Decalogue was silent on say drugs, so it had to
adapt to a changing world.
The law
The moral law had two
halves – honoring of God and parents and honoring our neighbors. The
five relational precepts addressed our relationship with God and parents. The first four honored God as in “no other
Gods”, “no idols”, “do not take His name in vain” and “keep the Sabbath”.
The last 5 laws
addressed relationships with neighbors on murder, adultery, theft, false
witnessing and coveting of our neighbors. They were ranked in order of
severity.
Although Moses had
been up the mount, evidently he was also close enough to the people to hear
them say, “let God speak to you, lest we die”. It was an appropriate fear and
Moses commended them, but he also told them to keep their distance.
First things first, an altar
The final part of
Chapter 20 involved the prescription of an altar, of plain earth and hewn
stone. When the post-exilic Jews returned to Jerusalem, Zerubbabel’s first
order of duty was to rebuild the altar. Thus, a priority for every advancement
of God is to start with an altar.
Whether we are new to
the faith or have faced times of setback, the path back to wholeness and
restoration starts with worship and consecration. It was true for Moses and
Jacob too, who had to first sort out who God is and who they were in that
context.
A divine constitution
Without a doubt the
giving of the commandments and their subsequent renewal after the Jews
rebelled, was a writ cast in stone, meaning it was permanent, never to be
altered.
When Jesus said, “not
a jot or tittle”, He referred to the smallest consonant in the Hebrew alphabet
and the vowel inflections, which can change entire meanings by the smallest change.
God also preserved those
tablets, meaning He enshrined them, the way the crown Jewels are guarded by the
Beefeaters or the US constitution is protected behind a plethora of security
measures. That is part of what it ensures the stature of such things.
God set the laws not
just above the Jewish people, but above all people, as the definitive yardstick
of moral law and the ultimate measure of sin.
It was revolutionary,
in an age of god-kings and demagogues, for a law to emerge that held no respect
for any person. It applied universally to every single Jew, but its blessings
and curses extend to all humanity. Indeed, the substance of those laws still
applies to contemporary society.
The prescription of
those laws precluded even Jesus from the slightest change.
In Matthew 5:18, He
did not change any law, but He did reinforce and clarify the spirit of the law,
which is, by the way, the role of constitutional judges. They too are stewards
of the law as it is and only exist to interpret or clarify the law, while
defending its place in society.
Had Jesus been capable
of the slightest change, the cross would have reduced to a sham and Jesus would
have been a reformer, not a reconciler. He came to reconcile us to God’s absolute
law, not to reconcile the law to us. Thus He satisfied the law fully in His
death.
I therefore submit
that the law as given to Moses, whilst being revolutionary to world order, had
more to do with preparing the ground for the death of our savior, by giving it
context and by prescribing the demands of righteousness that defined that
death.
Thus, Paul was right
to say that those who are stuck at Mount Sinai, the mount of the bondwoman, are
in bondage to this day: for the objective of the law was to reveal sin and to
bring us to Christ, who died on the Mount of Promise centuries later.
(c) Peter Missing at Bethelstone.com
