OK! Why would God give the children of Israel the 10 commandments knowing that it is impossible to do this without the power of the resurrection of Jesus. God was ANGRY at the people for not wanting to have a direct relationship with Him. The people wanted Moses to intercede for them. So God gave then His standard and said...try it on your own!!!!!
Act 15:10 Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
Hi! ''Episkopos'
I've read a lot of your comments/posts in this Forum and have been grateful and blessed by many.
But .... ahhhh, on this one .... yuh seem to have taken a bit of a detour.
I was somewhat astonished to read your opinion about the origin of the Law where you wrote, "God was ANGRY at the people for not wanting to have a direct relationship with Him. The people wanted Moses to intercede for them. So God gave then His standard and said...try it on your own!!!!!".
Don't yuh think that this is a bit ... ummmmm ... much? That your opinion is a bit excessive?
We should first acknowledge that both an awareness of God and the ethical laws (creation laws:love your neighbor) are inborn to every man. This is because every man is born in the image of God. (Only the regenerated/reborn opportune to be "changed into His likeness").
Yes, it is indeed true that the entrance of sin at the Fall changed everything. The inborn laws of God became darkened and lost. People who entered into a corrupt walk on earth were no longer familiar with the inborn laws of God. They became unable to have love for one another anymore. This degenerating process is plainly evident in the Bible narrative; for instance: with people like Cain and Lamach.
Cain and Lamach are examples of all those who are filled with violence. God is no longer able to reach such people and they become useless for His eternal purposes and plans. Such was the total lawlessness in the days of Noah, that the gateway opened wide for the activities of lawless spirits of violence to manifest in the destruction of the Flood.
Yet God started anew. This time with Noah and his family. But soon Noah's descendants also lost their moral sense. Then God again looked for a righteous and lawful person in whom the inborn laws of God where still functioning. He found Abraham. God set Abraham apart in order to bring forth a people who would "...preserve righteousness on this earth and whose heart would seek after God", (Gen 18:19).
After a 400 year stay in Egypt, it became apparent that this chosen people had lost every sense of rightness in their lives. Then God found Moses who obeyed Him and heard and did what the voice of his conscience dictated. However, In the wilderness, it became apparent that most of the people did not appreciate their God-given health and freedom. The people proved themselves to be a proud and complaining generation; a people that longed for Egypt, even though they had been in slavery there.
During their journey in the wilderness, God thought of a means to cause that inherent inborn law to become alive again in the hearts of His people. He gave them the Law on the Mount of Sinai; especially, the Ten Commandments which He had written Himself. The Ten Commandments served to revive the inborn laws again.
The critical thing to notice about Deut 5:22 is that it says that God added nothing to these laws. This means that God did not add any conditions for punishment to the Tablet words. They remained as a worthy invitation and not beyond their reach.
So, I hardly think it could be stated as you wrote, "God was ANGRY at the people for not wanting to have a direct relationship with Him".
I give you this advice: time after time, we wrongly give God things which do not belong to Him; and, time after time, we erroneously expect that God should give us something which He does not have.
It says in Deut. 30:11-15, "For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It is not in heaven, that you should say; Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?' But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it,"
This Law is found in the mind of normal natural people, and oftentimes in the heart as well, Rom 2:14 mentions this, "For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them."
The people had to meditate and be busy with this Law day and night. Then the people's mind and heart would change and the person's spirit would once again be able to live and flourish; it would once again become a carrier of the laws of God. This is how the Lord had desired it.
But the conscience of this unruly people soon became seared shut. The Psalmist lamented, "If only people had acted according to my instructions". Later Paul wrote in 1Tim 1:8, "But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully". This means that the Law is good for those who remain busy with it in his mind and in his heart. This is also in keeping with the prophet David saying in Psalm 40:8, "I delight to do Thy will O my God; Thy Law is within my heart"
It also says about Zacharias and Elizabeth that they were both righteous before God and were, "walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord", (Luke 1:6). It says in Galatians 3:19 that, "Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator".
The Law has been a help in bringing the inborn laws to life again, but it did fail. The Law that was to result in life actually proved for many to result in death, (Rom 7:10). In other words, the Law had a negative effect for those in bondage and in slavery to sin because the Law does not reckon with the powers of evil and neither does it have power to withstand and triumph over them..
The principal of the inborn law is love towards God and love for ones neighbor. The very first thing John the Baptist, Jesus and later on also Peter (on the day of Pentecost) and Paul preached, was .that people would turn to God. Then the innate law is no longer a strange element in one's life; because the delivered and free person is created "to do good works", (Eph 2:10). This will then benefit his neighbor as well.
In his Law, God first of all makes a person attentive to the fact that he should have no other gods before him. For there is only one good God whom he loves. The Sabbath was given to man so that he would not be busy with natural things all the time. It would give man time to focus his attention on God and His Law. Everyone had a free day for this, even the slaves. The second table of the Law concerns itself with the love for ones neighbor.
Mankind was to form close unity: one people, one law, one faith. Therefore a child would guard his good relationship with his parents. He would honor and obey them. Man would take good care of each other's life and therefore he would not kill his fellow man. Husbands and wives would love each other wholeheartedly and therefore would be careful not to break the marriage vows. People would treasure each others good name and would not bear any false witness against it. In this way, while pondering the law of the Lord, the thoughts of God where to come into ones mind again, this time from the outside in. Then with great effort and dedication they would finally come to doing the law with all of one's heart.
Those people who loved the Law and who did them where the righteous after God's heart. God could only have contact with these and they formed the rest of humanity with whom God could develop fellowship and continue with, even though His father heart cried for His other children.
When Jesus appeared on the scene, the people were busy studying the Law, but on an earthly directed level. While figuring it all out, many books and instructions were added that the average normal people could not adhere to. The under-developed and under-privileged people were written off by the religious leaders of the day, and delivered up to evil spirits, "But this multitude which does not know the Law is accursed", they said, (John 7:49).
Practicing the law consisted of external things such us: strict tithing, the bringing of sacrifices, keeping the stipulations set for keeping the Sabbath; what you could and could not do on that day. Other items were the long formal prayers, innumerable ceremonies and the prayer belts and chains to which they attributed an occult value. And yet, in spite of this lifeless form of worship, the multitudes looked up to the religious establishment of their day.
When Jesus began His ministry, He did not speak about keeping all these kinds of regulations that had nothing to do with the innate, inborn law of the heart at all. That is why people began to put a question mark behind His faithfulness to the Law. They thought what Jesus was doing was abolishing the law and the prophets; the very people who had so often in the past told them to keep the Law.
What Jesus' preaching was doing however, was bringing His hearers in contact with God after they were cleansed from their sin. His instructions and teachings about the kingdom of heaven, (which also included His view of the Law), were totally new. Through Him, "grace became so real that one could keep the law from a cleansed heart", (John 1:17). He brought a different awareness of God. He spoke of God who is only good. He taught how to keep the law and opened the eyes to the inborn law.
With Jesus, the time of restoration had begun. Whoever believed in Him and would receive His Spirit, deliverance out of the hand of all his (spiritual) enemies. In this New Covenant the law was again written in the minds and the hearts. As such, the promise became fulfilled, "I will be a God to them and they will be My people whom I will gather in the heavenly Jerusalem".
We could say that the law was fulfilled on the tablets of the hearts in the kingdom of God.
Later on the apostle could write:"... in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit", (Rom 8:4),
The law of the Sinai was merely a help, a surrogate for the innate laws of God written on the spirit of every human being. The law was, "our tutor to lead us to Christ". Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but rather to let it shine forth with all clarity and meaning. Jesus was the end of the law; that is: its purpose or completion, (Rom 10:4).
However, in the visible world Jesus broke many ordinances. He permitted His disciples to gather wheat on the Sabbath. He healed a man on the Sabbath and made mud to put on a man's eyes on the Sabbath. He pronounced all foods clean because they did not defile a person on the inside. In so doing, Jesus made it easy for man in the natural world because His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
The present heaven and earth will pass away; including the world connected with the law of Sinai.
Everything becomes renewed/restored, the way God had created it. Before the restoration of all things is completed, even the smallest law of God will again function in man and in Creation.
The Jews looked for the meaning of the jot and the tittle and in doing so they came to all kinds of niggling regulations in the natural world. Jesus said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others".
With their obsessive faithfulness to the little rules, they robbed man of their royal worth as a child of the living God, and made him a slave to the law. Paul wrote, "the present Jerusalem, is in slavery with her children", (Gal 4:25).
Jot and tittle are a picture of the smallest laws. However, those who function in the Kingdom of heaven cannot bypass even the smallest normalities of the inborn law of God. Heaven and earth may pass away, but the commandments of Jesus which concern the unseen world where one dwells with his heart, will never pass away. These words and commandments rest upon the fundamental law of life: love for God and love for ones fellowmen who is created in God's image. The tithing of the mint, dill and cummin is not as important as justice, mercy and faithfulness,. (Matt 23:23). Judgement and justice is the separation between good and evil. Mercy means the love one displays for his neighbor and faithfulness is the loyalty one displays towards God and his neighbor.
An admitted poor illustration: the innate/inborn laws of the kingdom of heaven are as parts of a machine. Not one little nut or bolt can go missing. It says, "your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame", (1Thess 5:23).
Jesus also said, "Not every one who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Farther who is in heaven", Matthew 7:21). "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven".
So, 'Episkopos', Jesus was the greatest in doing and therefore He is also the greatest in His instructions. And we are His followers!
