Most people are not aware that God gave Moses the Ten Commandment not once but twice. The first time is described in Exodus 24:12: "The Lord said to Moses, 'Come up to Me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.'" And again in 31:18: "And He gave to Moses, when He had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God." These tablets were the ones shattered by Moses in anger at the idolatry of the Israelites in their worship of the golden calf (chapter 32).
After shattering the original tablets, Moses was then tasked with replacing them with a new pair of tablets, which he himself fashioned. "The Lord said to Moses, 'Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke'" (Exodus 34:1). As when Adam fell into sin, when Moses broke the commandments, literally, he was cursed with an increase in labor, having to carve and carry the stone tablets himself.
This historical event came to my mind during a recent Sunday school lesson at my church. Part of that lesson dealt with the law of God written on human hearts. We see this in two places in the New Testament. First, Paul mentions it in Romans 2:15: "[Gentiles] show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them." Then the writer of Hebrews mentions it again as part of the new covenant, which he, in turn, borrowed from the Prophet Jeremiah: "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put My laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds" (Hebrews 10:16, from Jeremiah 31:33).
Notice the parallels between these two pairs of events. In each, God gave His holy commandments, but they were broken by men. And then God gave them again.
By this pairing of breaking and restoration, we see two magnificent things. First is that God does not lower His standards merely because men cannot meet them. To do so would be to betray His own holiness. And second is His mercy. While the breaking of the law naturally incurs the death penalty (Romans 6:23), God's work is restorative, not punitive, for His elect. He restores His law (Isaiah 42:21). And He restores His elect through the imputation by faith of the perfect obedience of His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ (John 1:17, II Corinthians 5:21, Romans 3:21-22).
Most people are also unaware that Moses was not the first to receive the Ten Commandments and that they, therefore, didn't come into existence when Moses came down Mt. Sinai with the two tablets.
ReplyDeleteInstead, the Ten Commandments and their respective statutes and civil judgments were in existence since the dawn of mankind, a reflection of Yahweh's foundational morality that never changes.
For evidence that the Ten Commandments and their statutes and judgments existed, for example, at the time of Abraham, see Genesis 26:5.
This is an extremely important scriptural fact that helps to determine what the Galatians 3:17 & 19 added law was that was inaugurated at Mt. Sinai 430 years after Abraham. It couldn't have been the Ten Commandments, which are foundational to all of the Covenants. Instead, it was the added Mosaic *Covenant," which Christ fulfilled and replaced with the New Covenant.
For more, see free online book "Law & Kingdom: Their Relevance Under the New Covenant" at https://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/law-kingdomFrame.html
See also Parts 12 & 13 of my expository series on Galatians, at https://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/tapelist.html#T1238 and T 1238.