The Law of Moses part 1

by, Isam Itson III

How will the people of Israel, the children of Abraham, become a blessing to the nations of the world? By living according to the Law of God. The Law of God for his people as a sovereign nation was given by God to Moses during the time of their journey in the Wilderness from Egypt to the Promised land of Canaan. The Hebrew Bible refers to this collection of instructions for the nation as the Law of Moses. 

According to Jesus Christ and the leading Jewish Rabbis of his day, the Law of Moses and the other books of the Hebrew Bible can be summed up with two commands. First, to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your mind, and all of your strength. The second is, to Love your neighbor as yourself.

The Foundational Laws of the Law of Moses are known as The Ten Commandments. The Heart of the Law of Moses that regulates the daily life of the nation of Israel within the Ten Commandments is the Law of Sabbath Observance. 

Deuteronomy 5:12-15 ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. ¹³ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁴ but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the foreigner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. ¹⁵ You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.’ 

Today, we work so we can provide what our families need in order to live. It was the same during the life of Moses, only more so. In the ancient world the vast majority of people worked everyday in order to make enough money to feed their family. A day without work was a day without food. 

God wanted his people, the children of Israel, to organize their lives around dependence upon him for the necessities of life rather than reliance upon themselves. So he issued the command. Everyone throughout the land of Israel, everyone stop working on the seventh day of every week. One day per week, every week, you don’t work and no one works for you. Israelites. Servants. Slaves. Day laborers. Foreigners and refugees. Beasts of burden. One day per week. Stop working. Rest and remember who God is and who you are to him.

In response

1. How does the habit of setting aside regularly scheduled time to remember your relationship with God and God’s faithfulness to you strengthen your trust in God?

2. What would you have to account for, or do without in your life, to take one day per week to honor your dependence upon God for the security and livelihood of you and your family?