Saturday, June 7

Understanding Holiness in The Old Testament Law (more exciting than it sounds)

Last night we looked at just four laws from Exodus and wrestled with why God gave these specific instructions. Simon explained that the law takes the form of an ancient Middle-East treaty. See http://www.aracnet.com/~wing/suzerain.htm for example.

But what's all this stuff about clean and unclean and not touching certain things - or even women at the wrong time of the month (some of the guys could see other reasons for keeping away...)?


It seems God was trying to help the Israelites understand holiness and the seriousness of sin. These diagrams may help...


This is the basic Old Testament understanding:
















How do things change? By sacrifice or sin:











This is of course a picture of what will have it's greater meaning when Jesus comes:





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

like it - looking forward to being back next week... :)

Anonymous said...

Some more laws this week: 13th June.

Such gems as "do not cook a young goat in its mothers milk" - although that has some significance as you will hear!

No blasphemy - what do you consider to be blasphemy? We are not told the punishment for blaspemy in Exodus 22.

Plus I have done a little research into The Churching of Women which we touched on last week.