This is taken from our readings in Leviticus 1-5
While preparing for my study of Leviticus I came across this note from Barnes’ Notes on the Bible:
“The tabernacle of the congregation - Rather, the tent of meeting. See Exodus 22:21 note. When Jehovah (Yahweh) was about to give His people the Law of the Ten Commandments Exodus 19:3 He called to Moses from the top of Mount Sinai in thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud. When He was now about to give them the laws by which their formal acts of worship were to be regulated, He called to Moses out of the tabernacle which had just been constructed at the foot of the mountain. Exodus 25:22.”[1]
I had never realized the importance of where God called Moses from when he gave the commandments, but it is important. The importance comes in light of the New Testament where we no longer obey the sacrificial system but still hold to the Ten Commandments. Some want to argue that we are inconsistent because we hold to part of the Law but not all of it. Yet we see here that the center of the Ten Commandments proceeds from the mountain which belongs one could say to everyone and to the tabernacle which held only to the children of Israel. We see Jesus and the New Testament writers repeating the commands given from the mountain (yes even a version of the Sabbath command in that God sanctifies all days, but that discussion is for another day), but throughout the New Testament, the sacrificial system is dismissed.
Why? I think the reason is seen here. We now have a new tabernacle which Stephen hints at in his address before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7 and is clear talked about in Hebrew. The Levitical law laid out in Leviticus is a picture of the sinfulness of man and the sacrificial grace of Jesus, but it is not the law we now live under for we have a new tabernacle where we worship. A tabernacle not made by hand but made by God in the hearts of men as Jerimiah 31:33 says: "This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
The law we are preparing to read is good to understand and know, but it is not the law which guides our lives, because now we enter into a new tabernacle, not the one Moses was called into here in Leviticus chapter 1.
[1] Barnes' Notes on the Bible. http://biblehub.com/commentaries/leviticus/1-1.htm. Accessed Jan. 25, 2018.
No comments:
Post a Comment