“Okay, let’s go over the rules.”
The words of my school principal are still fresh as I think back
to the first day of my 7th grade year at Hixson Junior High. That’s what you do on the first day. You go over the rules. “We don’t want anybody to misunderstand,” he
would reason. “Everybody needs to know
what we expect.”
Of course it
was a thrilling exercise… an exercise repeated again my 8th grade
year and again my 9th grade year.
For what seemed like an eternity he would read the student handbook to
us, verbatim, line by line, with his glasses fixed firmly to the end of his nose. It was
excruciating. Yet it was the same
year after year. After that I went into high
school and don’t remember. I probably
stopped listening. Or stopped caring.
That’s how a lot of people view the Christian life… having
to listen to and then follow a bunch of rules. Nobody
likes rules. You remember what your best
friend said in high school (or was it just mine?) “C'mon, Jimmy, rules were meant to be broken!” That’s how a lot of us feel about rules and
why some people are so turned off by the Bible and particularly the large
section of it we call LAW. It just reeks
of “thou shalt nots.” Who wants to give
their lives to a system of rules that just take the joy out of life? Nobody does.
Ahhh… but here is where we misunderstand the Law… the Bible
and the whole story of God himself! This
week we enter into chapter five of “The Story” and are reading in that section
of Scripture called the Law. We will read
of Moses, recently the people’s deliverer, summoned up to the mountain of the
LORD to receive the famous Ten Commandments.
We will read of the laws given in fire and thunder then carved into the
tablets of stone by God’s own hand.
And we will read of the people’s quick return to idolatry during Moses’
extended absence on the mountain. But what
are we to make of the Law? Much is still
debated on the role of the Ten Commandments in our day. Are we to get all bent out of shape when such
laws are posted in the public square? Is
it a violation of church and state? What
significance do they have for us, anyway, 3,500+ years on?
As you read through the Law this week, I want to encourage
you to look for things in the Law:
Look at the kind of people God calls Israel to be.
Look at the extent to which the people will have to go in order to atone for their sin and what it will cost them.
Look for the way in which God is going to “dwell” with His
people once more.
And look for the way in which these laws are going to
prepare the way for Jesus.
As we discover those four things, we will begin to see a bit more clearly just what God was 'up to' in his 'upper story' to bring his fallen creation back unto himself.
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