Prior to us being saved and repenting, we all lived in our own spiritual Egypt. Bondage and held in our own captivity. If you have ever been part of a Passover meal, the symbolism and the actual participating in the “seder” convey a new and richer meaning then you would have thought previously. In the Passover, there are the 4 cups that each talk and symbolize our own deliverance from bondage: Exodus 6: 6-7
First Cup: Sanctification – I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
Second Cup: Deliverance – I will deliver you from their bondage.
Third Cup: Blessing – I will redeem you with an outstretched arm (prophetically speaking about the crucifixion).
Cup 4: Praise – I will take you for my people, and I will be your God.
Fifth Cup: Cup Of Elijah – Some believe this to be the Prophets cup and it remains untouched. However, the meaning of this cup is the redemption of all humanity and the coming Messianic Age. So it remains untouched, as it has not been fulfilled, yet.
As you can see, the cups each parallel our own progression stage to becoming saved and being free from bondage. But then, what comes next? Afterwards, we require instruction and a user guide on how the Lord wants his people to live their life.
Are we just bound by the law of love. Well if that’s the case, each person’s meaning of love can be different for each person. Does I love movie theatre popcorn mean the same meaning as I love my wife? No of course not, love becomes an objective term and we can apply then our meaning of love (which is flawed and imperfect) to any situation we want with varying degrees of responses. And this philosophy has been played out in the churches and the acceptance of different lifestyles within the clergy. All because our authority is now love. At the heart of God’s laws is love, but he required instructions on how to live godly lives. If left to our own definition of love, we would surely fail.
When we think of the Law, the word NOMOS means law, but the Hebrew translation is Torah. So when I say Torah, it means the same as the Law. Torah comes from the Hebrew verb yarah, “to hit the mark, to cast, throw, take aim, to shoot” coming from an archery term. It means to “hit the mark.” It is what God has intended for us to try and hit.
Chata is the opposite of Torah that means “to miss the mark,” or sin. This is what Paul means when in Romans he uses the root of the word sins, Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Torah, or Law means to hit the mark. This is the end result that the Lord desires for us. It is a set of instructions, rule book, teachings, a “play nice” code that we require for how to live righteous lives. There are actually about 10 forms of sin, or sinning. In Exodus 34:7, it goes from worse to least. But here they are from least to worse:
1. Sin = To miss the mark, aiming in the right direction, but just missing it
2.Transgression = To break away from authority. The little child who pulls away from his mom or dad in the store.
3. Iniquity = To twist or distort
4. Be disobedient = Refuse to follow
5. Refusal to serve God = Opposite of serving
6. Trespass = Act treacherously
7. Rebellion = Stubbornly disobedient
8. Wickedness = With strong excitement
9. Live worthlessly = exert oneself in vain, stronger then iniquity
10. To be evil = To destroy to pieces and make it beyond repair. Like a vase smashing on the floor. As in the days of Noah.
At the heart of Torah, is love. It was summed up by Jesus as the two greatest commandments. Love your God and love your neighbor. Romans 13:8-10 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Nowhere in scriptures does fulfill mean to discard, or to no longer observe. Only one man ever lived a perfect sinless life, living within his own perfect Laws or Torah to be the fulfillment of his perfect love. The love that brought the incarnation, the crucifixion and the resurrection is the same love that gave the Torah. The exodus from Egypt, the voice at Sinai, the 10 Commandments, the books of Moses and the covenants, were all acts of love (Lancaster, Thomas, Restoration: Returning the Torah of God to the Disciples of Jesus, pg.45)
What kind of god would give his chosen people a set of laws, rules and regulations to follow, knowing full well they could never achieve it, and would be eternally damned as a result of the “curse of the law” only to have it “repealed” or “fulfilled” hundreds of years later and replaced by an all encompassing “it’s just love baby” and forget everything I said in the Old Testament? Certainly not the God I follow. His laws were never too hard to follow: Deuteronomy 30:11-14 -- "For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it.' But the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it."
The purpose of his Torah was to show us what sin was as the generations prior to resulted in the flood. Which his laws were already given in some form or another as they were given 120 years to repent. So that in itself showed God had provided some form of standard of conduct from the beginning. It was also to show us what sin was. But maybe I have digressed to much already. Back to Exodus.
So they are in the wilderness and they are already whining about how much easier it were to be in Egypt and still under bondage. Remind any of us when we first became saved and looked back and thought I sure miss that? We have to remember these people were in slavery for hundreds of years and the generational dysfunction of the people after years of cruel slavery played a toll on their own morals and thinking. How many of us know the cycle of abuse, and how it is passed on from generation to generation? It’s the same thing. So this is a people that have a skewed sense of what right and wrong is. Hence the forthcoming commandments.
We all know the 10 Commandments, or most of them and these are such broad and sweeping commandments. These 10 are known to be in schools, courthouses, political buildings because they provide the foundation for the rest of the commandments. God’s preamble saying “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt…” establishes the authority that the rest of the commandments rest. Interestingly enough right after this are instructions about how to treat your slave. Now our civilized senses remind us of the slavery in America. You have to remember though, back in Moses’ day, there was no welfare, workers compensation, unemployment benefits, labor laws, etc. So as a matter of survival, people had to come under the servitude of the wealthy to become employed and dependent on the basic needs for their family. In societies back then, slaves had no rights. The Torah was meant to change that. 7 instructions right after the 10 Commandments were given are meant to protect slaves rights. The slave after 6 years of servitude was to be given the option of going free. But in Exodus 21:2, if the slave loves their master, he is allowed to remain as a permanent part of the master’s household. These principles also bode well for how employers should treat their employees. God in his infinite wisdom, gave the slavery instructions at the beginning so the “cycle of abuse” would not continue. If slavery was so destructive, why give them the choice to remain after 6 years?
Now after this in Exodus 21 are offences against another. In Exodus 21:23-25 is the “eye for an eye” principle. Also later quoted in Matthew 5:38-42. On the surface it could sound like the first principle in Exodus contradicted Jesus’s teaching in Matthew. Instead, he was correcting its interpretation which is actually the law of measure for measure, not for vengeance as that was how the people of the day were interpreting it. It was a law for how the courts should settle damages and restitution as seen in Exodus 21:22 and its application in Exodus 21:19. Know when you look at these laws, some of them look barbaric and the sentence was the death penalty. Scary stuff. This shows how highly God has placed the value of our lives to him and how we should value other people’s as well. Even though the death penalty was a sentencing option, it was told that even the sentence of death being carried out every 7 years was considered a bloodbath. Capital punishment can no longer be carried out to the lack of a court of law and Sanhedrin.
God is so holy that he is dangerous, and the sacrifices were a means to draw closer to him. This is a concept so foreign to us because we don’t read the bible for its entirety. At Mt. Sinai, it goes into detail about purifying oneself before entering the presence of God. We have lost that awe, and total reverence of the Lord nowadays. Sacrifices were almost all solely voluntary. A bull was very expensive and the entire thing was offered up to the Lord for a sacrifice. They derived no benefit from it, other than to draw closer to God. Sacrifices were never meant to buy the love of God. He hated the sacrifices made to him by rebellious, unrepentant sinners. He always wanted our heart. A good example of it is with this: You and your spouse get into a fight, and you are clearly in the wrong and hurt their feelings. You know you’re wrong and go out to buy flowers. You come home and plop the flowers on the counter and say, “here, I got these for you” then walk away. Sound remorseful? Sincere? Now what if the same situation, you buy flowers, return home, drop to your knees and with all your heart cry in all sincerity of being sorry and beg for forgiveness and you’ll never do it again. That was at the heart of the sacrificial system. It was to give our hearts to the Lord so we can draw nearer to God. If you really want to understand the sacrificial system, and have it explained in a way I could do no justice to it, just click on the youtube video’s below. I know I didn’t answer your question(s), but I have to provide you the foundation of what exactly is at the meaning of his Laws, or Torah. It’s his love. Maybe I can expound on that another time.
