The Law and the Prophets

While preparing to teach from Romans at our Friday night gathering I was reading in Exodus about God calling Moses and the people to the mountain to receive his law. To cut a long story short, the Israelites already knew that to come too close to God would be dangerous. In fact God had warned them not to touch the mountain, and they already knew that no-one could see God's face and live.

So, to receive this summons to come nearer and he would speak to them all, and to see the smoke and fire, and to hear the thundering up on the summit, filled them with fear. They misjudged their God's loving heart, instead thinking that he would kill them. So they decided to not even go to the foot of the slope from where Moses and Aaron would ascend to the top. "You go up and talk to him," they said. "We'll wait down here where it's safe until you come back and tell us what he wants."

And what was it that God wanted? I believe that he wanted to write his law onto their hearts, as later described by Ezekiel (Ezekiel 36) and then quoted in Hebrews 8. Instead he had to write it onto slabs of rock for Moses and Aaron to take back and read to them. And did they wait expectantly at the base of the hill for them to return? No! They made an idol and threw a huge, adulterous party in honor of a metalic calf!

I wonder what would have happened if all of the people had come nearer to their God. Perhaps they would not have needed those slabs of stone which from that day onwards, enshrined as "The Law", have been a milstone around the necks of all who think they can come to God on their own terms, and ignore him when he is no longer convenient.

Another result of that incident was that God's promise to make them a nation of priests was aborted. Instead, Moses became the prophet and Aaron the priest, and a family dynasty came into being. The people were ruled by those who God appointed, and far from fulfilling thier destiny to be a blessing to the nations, they instead used "The Law" to exclude all others from God's presence.

This situation continued until Jesus came to restore once again the possibility of a nation of prophets, priests and kings who would carry not only God's law in their hearts, but his Spirit as well!