The Creator Reveals Himself-To Our Benefit - On to a Promised Land

After leaving Egypt, Moses and the people marched through the desert to Mount Sinai. What happened there shaped God's dealings with the nation for centuries to come.  He provided laws.  Of course, aeons  before this the Creator had already formulated  the laws governing matter in our universe, which laws are still in effect.  But at Mount Sinai he used Moses to provide national laws. We can read both what God and the Law code that he provided in the book of Exodus and the three books that follow-Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Scholars believe that Moses also wrote the book of Job. We will consider some of its important contents in Chapter 10.

Even to this day, millions of people worldwide know of and try to follow the Ten Commandments, the central moral direction of this complete Law code.  That code, though, contains many other directives that are admired for their excellence.  Understandably,  many regulations centered on Israelite life back then, such as rules about hygiene, sanitation, and disease. While set out initially for an ancient people, such laws reflect knowledge of scientific facts that human experts have discovered only in the last century or so.  (Leviticus 13:46, 52; 15-4-13; Numbers 19:11-20; Deuteronomy 23:12, 13) A person does well to ask, How could it be that the laws for ancient Israel reflected knowledge and wisdom for superior to what was known by contemporary nations? A reasonable answer is that those laws came from the Creator.

The laws also helped to preserve family lines and prescribed religion duties for the Israelites to follow until the Seed would appear. By agreeing to do all that God asked, they would become accountable to live by that Law. (Deuteronomy 27:26; 30:17-20)  Granted they could not keep the Law perfectly. Yet even that fact served a good purpose. A legal expert later explained that the Law 'made transgressions manifest,  until the seed  should arrive to whom  the promise was made.'  (Galatians 3:19, 24)  So the Law code made them a separate people, reminded them of their need for the Seed, or Messiah, and prepared them to welcome him.

Next time: The Creator Reveals Himself-To Our Benefit - Continue with On to the Promised Land

From the book Is There a Creator That Cares About You?