To those of you who read The Pew and those of you who drop in and visit the Pew every now and then this is kind of a heads up on what’s coming this weekend in our regular From The Pew post. The Pew is beginning a series of Looking for the Good Way. My post last week indicated that one of the starting points that I believe very much to be important would be the Ten Commandments. This week’s post will begin our journey looking for the Good Way, and there was a mention in some of the materials that I used of the law of Moses and I need, we need to understand exactly what that was. Now, according to the Bible, the law of Moses refers to the Torah, the first five books of the old testament and includes the 10 Commandments. There are also the ceremonial laws for worship and civil laws governing society. These laws were given by God through Moses to the ancient Israelites it kind of established guidelines for a righteous life, revealed human sinfulness, and set Israel apart as a holy nation.  There was much more to that, the law provided a system for atonement through sacrifices and established religious community festivals to teach God’s love and his people’s duty to him. It is important in our way forward to understand a little bit about the law Moses. They were components of the law of  Moses and we’re going to look at a few of those.There’s a Moral Law which was the foundational part, including the 10 Commandments. It provided ethical principles and moral guidelines. There was a Ceremonial Law, and it contained detailed instructions for sacrifices, temple rituals, Priestly duties which provided a way for the community to atone for sin and approach God. Then we look at the Civil Law, laws governing daily life in ancient Israel, addressing issues, such as property rights, care for the poor and vulnerable, family matters and judicial proceedings. There’s a lot of material just right here and I am not going to take the time right now to look at all of it, but the truth is even in our society today the structure is pretty much in place but in different ways for different people. We have to really look at the purpose of the law. It was designed to set Israel, apart, to distinguish Israel as a holy nation that was chosen by God. It was meant to reveal God’s character, to show God’s holiness, justice in love and to instruct his people to love him in return. There was a principle of righteousness, to guide people in living a life of morality, justice, and faithfulness and it was designed to expose sins, to make humanity, aware of their inherent, selfishness and sinfulness, and they’re inability to achieve righteousness on their own. Again, a pretty fancy way of just simply saying, we are not living as we should live as God would have us live in our relationship relationships with him and other people. But in my mind, one of the main purposes of the law was to prepare for the savior to serve as a preparatory gospel and point to the ultimate need for a savior, a roll fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

Hope to see you in the Pew this weekend.

Life is Good

jk