After Exodus -The Law

Moses and Israel are safe on the other side of the Red Sea.  Pharaoh and his hoard of chariots have

been swallowed up by the sea and are no more.  As the story reads, Moses offers a song to God.  Songs, such as the one that Moses offers in chapter 15, are the most appropriate response to mighty saving acts such as Israel has just witnessed.  It is a song of praise.  At the same time, it is a song that retells the story of God’s mighty acts and a song that offers up a confession of who this God who has just acted really is.  The confession that Moses makes is that it is out of God’s steadfast love that he brought Israel up out of Egypt.  This phrase, “steadfast love” (ḥesed in Hebrew), will constantly be on the lips of Israel as Israel confesses what they believe about this God who has just acted so mightily.  God made a promise to Abraham and his descendants, and God intends to keep that promise.  The promise isn’t made in a vacuum.  It is made in the context of a loving and faithful relationship.  It is made in the context of this Story we have been telling.  God is now bound to Israel in covenant love.  God will continue to show this kind of steadfast and faithful love even in the face of outright unfaithfulness.

After the spectacle of the Red Sea crossing, Moses and the people of God set out to begin their long journey to their new home.  This journey will not be an easy one.  Israel, for their part, has a short memory.  They are quickly confronted with hardships and begin to question the goodness of God’s plan and provision.  In the face of hunger and thirst, Israel declares that it would be much preferable to be in Egypt where at least they wouldn’t have starved to death.  In God’s steadfast love, God provides water from a rock, bread from the sky, and meat in the desert. 

Israel travels for three months before they reach the wilderness of Sinai and the mountain there.  As they make camp, Moses ascends the mountain to speak with God.  It is here that God wishes to communicate to Israel exactly what is happening.  Moses is to remind the people that it was God who brought them out of Egypt, and it is now God who is calling them to obedience to the covenant that God is making with them.  Israel is a treasured possession out of all people on the earth.  They are a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.  The people, with one voice, proclaim that they will be faithful and obedient. Everything that God commands they will do.      

It is here that God gives the Law.  Now, to be fair, God has really been giving bits and pieces of law since before Israel came up out of Egypt.  But it is here and now that Israel is being made fully aware of what they are to do. 

It must be remembered that the Law that God gives Moses and Israel cannot be divorced from this Story we are telling.  Narrative and Law are intimately bound together.  The rules that God will give Israel, the Ten Commandments, all of the regulations about cleanliness, the laws concerning violence and retribution, slaves and property, all of these laws are grounded in God’s developing relationship with Israel. 

For us, on this end of the Story, the Law often gets a bad rap.  In much of American Christianity, we spurn the Law in favor of God’s grace.  We view the Law as oppressive and life denying.  In reality, however, the Law is gift and grace.  Israel’s obedience, indeed our obedience to the Law of God, is one of the ways that God has seen fit to develop for us a rhythm and form of life in the midst of the chaotic nature of our world.  For Israel specifically, the Law orients their communal life so that they might know what it means to be the people of God.  Along with the Story that is being told, the Law helps to form Israel as a people.

The Law that is given in these chapters of the book of Exodus, and throughout the rest of the Old Testament, is also a part of God’s continuing creative activity.  As I have been reminded recently, God’s creative activity does not end on the sixth day of creation.  To quote my friend John, “God as Creator is not a singular title, reserved for 'the beginning' or even 'the end'. 'Creator' is less a title than a description of God's inherent character. God creates.”  The Law, for Israel and for us, is part of God’s nature as creator.  The Law, as it is bound to the story of the Exodus, as it is bound to the story of Mt. Sinai, is part of God’s ongoing work to provide an environment, a stage on which we as Characters in the Story of God might have meaningful life.

This is truly Good News!  It means that if we respond to God’s Law in obedience, not in obedience for obedience’s sake, but in the context of the relationship with God that has been forged for us through the Exodus of Israel and through the Cross of Jesus Christ, then we will find peace and love, order and beauty. 

The sad truth is, however, that we do not often respond to the Law of God in obedience.  Very quickly we turn away.  Very quickly we fail to see the beauty and goodness of God’s Laws. and we seek to create for ourselves order and goodness.  Rarely, if at all, do our own attempts achieve what we desire.  All along, though, God remains steadfastly faithful and loving.  Israel, as she retells this Story, will continually confess that even though they have been unfaithful that,           

“The Lord is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

⁹     The Lord is good to all,

and his compassion is over all that he has made.” (Psalm 146:8-9)