The Law of Moses
Heb. 10:1-3 For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshipers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.
Lev. 25:9,10, Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.
We Primitive Baptist preachers preach very often on the insufficiency of the law, and that is what our first text is pointing up. The fact that Israel kept offering those sacrifices year after year indicated the last sacrifice did not get the job done. It did not “make the comers thereunto perfect.” If the last sacrifice had removed their sins, there would have been no need to offer another sacrifice.
Sometimes we preachers repeat ourselves. Sometimes I repeat myself for emphasis. More often than not, when I repeat myself, it means I have lost my place, and I am treading water, trying to remember where I was, and where I was headed. But if God ever repeats himself, you can be sure he did not forget his place. He repeats himself for emphasis. In Psalms Eighty Nine, God indicates the security of the believer, and he says the same thing four times in rapid succession. He did not lose his place. He repeated himself for emphasis. In Romans Five, he says five times in five verses that we lost everything in Adam, and we gained everything in the Lord Jesus Christ. He repeated himself for emphasis. He did not intend for us to miss the point.
For fifteen hundred years under the Law Service, God repeated himself for emphasis. Day after day, he continued to require Israel’s priests to offer the daily sacrifice. The next day he required them to do it all over again. For fifteen hundred years he required the same sacrifices. There has never been any point emphasized so often and for so long. And the point was that the blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sin. They could symbolize redemption from sin, but they could never take sin away. They could never satisfy the righteous indignation of God against sin.
We love to preach about the insufficiency of the law. Paul refers to it as the weak and beggarly elements of the law (Gal. 4:9). But bear in mind, when we talk about the insufficiency of the law, we are talking about the insufficiency of the law to justify any man before God (Acts 13:39), the insufficiency of the law to deliver us from the wrath to come (Rom. 4:15), the insufficiency of the law to produce spiritual life (Gal. 3:21).
That is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that the law was entirely sufficient for the purpose for which it was intended. God did not make a mistake when he gave the law. The Law of Moses was never intended to produce children of God. It was never intended to deliver anybody from eternal damnation, nor to gain anybody a home in eternal heaven, but it law was entirely sufficient for the purpose for which it was intended.
The law of Moses was intended as a system of government for a particular people at a particular time, and it was entirely sufficient for that purpose. In that regard it was the best system of government any nation ever had. One reason we know it was the best is because it was God who gave it. He was the giver of the Law and the head of the government. No government men can put together could be better than that.
The Law, with its types and shadows and figures, was far inferior to the gospel and the New Testament church. The light shines far more brightly, and the truth is understood much more clearly in the gospel day. But the Law was a system of worship for a particular people at a particular time, and until it was fulfilled and done away by Christ, it was the best system of worship any nation had ever had.
Comparing the Law with the gentile religions of that day, is comparing light and darkness; it is comparing good and evil. The Gentile religions magnified the lusts of the flesh, and incorporated the basest immorality in their religious activities. The Law called on Israel to live lives of the strictest morality. Its feasts, sacrifices, and holy days, represented and fore-shadowed the spotless and pure Son of God, and the work he would do on behalf of his people. Israel never understood those symbols as well as the saints understand them today, as they are explained in the light of the gospel. But they knew far more about God, his nature, and holiness than the Gentiles ever imagined. The Law provided a better system of preventative health care than any nation has known until this very day. The kosher laws, the laws with regard to what was clean or unclean, were given for the sake of the physical well-being of Israel. They would have been much healthier than other nations, if they had observed those kosher laws.
Ancient Israel did not know pork chops, and ham, and bacon, and sausage, are bad for high blood pressure. But God forbade them to eat pork (Lev. 11:7), and that ought to have been good enough. If they kept that provision of the Law, they were not as likely to die of a stroke.
There are ailments Jewish men do not have, because of circumcision. And because Jewish men are generally circumcised, there are diseases Jewish women do not have—unless, that is, they have been too friendly with a Gentile man. Even to this day Jewish people do not generally realize the medical consequences of circumcision; but they are reaping the benefits, nonetheless.
Modern science is only today catching up with a few of the medical principles of the law of Moses. Among many other things, the law of Moses provided that if you touched a dead body you were unclean (Num. 19:16). It took modern science thousands of years to learn that principle. Until just over a hundred years ago, the most dangerous place a sick person could be was in the hospital. The doctor would examine a sick person, and being too careless, or perhaps too lazy, to wash his hands he would examine the next person, and before long the next person had the same ailment as the first person. Sometimes he would have the same ailment that killed the last person.
In Austria in the nineteenth century, there came along a doctor by the name of Ignatz Semmelweis. He had been studying the Old Testament, and based on his studies, he insisted doctors needed to wash their hands after they examined each patient. His fellow doctors appreciated his advice so much they ganged up on him, and ran him off from that hospital. But eventually he prevailed, and today doctors are very careful about washing their hands after examining patients, lest they spread disease among their patients. In this twenty first century doctors are only beginning to catch up with the medical wisdom of the Law of Moses.
The law was given as a penal system for the nation of Israel. As a system of law it provided penalties, and the penalty exactly fit the offense. God described the offence, and prescribed the penalty; so you can be sure the penalty fit the offence. The law required an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth Exo. 21:22. That is bad policy when somebody takes it upon himself to get revenge against his neighbor (Matt. 5:38); but it was a perfectly sound principle when it was applied by the proper authorities.
If you hauled off and busted a man in the mouth, and knocked his tooth out, the law required that you submit to having somebody bust you in the mouth and knock your tooth out. The punishment exactly fit the offense. And it saved the expense and inconvenience of having you locked up, while your family was left to shift for themselves.
If you intentionally and maliciously knocked a man’s eye out, your eye must be knocked out (Exo. 21:24). If you injured a man so that he was not able to work, they did not put you in jail. You had to pay the expense of making him well, and you had to support him and his family until he was able to go back to work (Exo. 21:18,19). If you murdered somebody, you paid with your life (Exo. 21:23). The punishment exactly fit the offense. We could go down the entire list of offences and penalties, but the law was always the same; the punishment fit the offense.
Our laws have never been that just and that equal. I would not trade our American system of law for the system of law of any other nation on earth. But our system of law does not compare with the law God provided for Israel.
Again, the law was not sufficient to gain a home in heaven. But it was sufficient for governing that people. And if Israel had observed the provisions of the Law of Moses they would have been the wealthiest, the healthiest, the happiest, and the best cared for people on the face of the earth.
Their tax system was a beautiful arrangement; we should get off so easy. We would too, if we could weed out most of the socialism— oops —most of the social programs from our system. The Law required them to pay 10% of all they produced straight across the board (Lev. 27:30). Part of the support of the priesthood came from their receiving a part of the sacrifice as their portion (Lev. 2:10). But, for the most part, that 10% took care of everything. There are folks today who want to limit our income tax to a flat amount—a flat tax. But they still talk about a 17% flat tax, or something in that neighborhood. And that is just one kind of tax. We would still have a long list of other taxes. Israel’s taxes were much lighter.
The Law of Moses provided an economic system for a particular people at a particular time, and that economic system was the most nearly perfect man has ever known. I am not entirely sure it was not absolutely perfect; after all, God was its author. If there was any weakness in the law, as an economic system, the weakness was in its subjects, and not in the law itself. Men would not abide by the principles God provided.
I am not interested in changing our American economic system for the system of any other nation on earth. But as superior to other systems as ours is, it has been imperfect from the very beginning. Every system on earth favors the rich over the poor, the privileged over the rest. Even at the outset there were men like Lord Shaftesbury and his colleagues, who owned most of North Carolina, and William Penn, who held the royal grant of Pennsylvania, and King Carter who owned a huge chunk of Virginia, and so on. They owned hundreds of thousands of acres, and other people had virtually nothing.
But America is still a place where men like Bill Gates can become absolutely rich. It is a place where Henry Ford, and John D Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie could start out with virtually nothing and became fabulously wealthy. So in spite of the inequities of our economic system, America still far surpasses the rest of the world.
But compared to the economic system God provided for Israel, ours is not even in the running. Let me give just a few points about the economic system God provided for Israel. We said a moment ago, God does not provide second best in anything. The Law of Moses was “not sufficient to make the comers thereunto perfect.” That is what our text says. But for the purpose for which it was intended it was totally sufficient.
To start at the beginning, when God brought Israel out of Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the land of Canaan, he divided the entire land of Canaan to Israel by lot (Josh. 13:7 etc.). Every man got a plot of land fully sufficient to support himself and his family. That was all any man really needed. Everybody started out equal.
Along with the distribution of land God provided the law of the Sabbath. The two are connected. First, the law of the Sabbath provided that one day out of every seven was to be a day of rest (Exo. 20:8-11). The Lord said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” Mark 2:27. The Sabbath was intended to be a benefit; it was not intended to be a burden. It is a proven fact that any person is more efficient, and he can turn out more work in a six day week than he can in seven. You may think, “Now Harold Hunt, it does not make any sense to say you can turn out more work in six days than you can in seven,” but in the long run you can.
For that matter, if a person cannot make a living in six days, he might as well not try it in seven. You can work seven days a week for a little while, and turn out one sixth more work. But if you work seven days a week for very long, after awhile you will be so exhausted, you are never working at your full potential. Before long, you will turn out less work in seven days than you were in six. But if you take off one day every week to rest, you will come back refreshed and rejuvenated on Monday. At least for the first part of the week, you will have much greater potential to work than you would have otherwise.
The Sabbatic Law was a sign between God and Israel (Exo. 31:17). It is not binding on the Gentiles in the way it was binding on Israel. The fact that it was a sign to Israel indicates that it was peculiar to Israel. If it was binding on Gentiles, it would not have been a sign to Israel. But even though the law of the Sabbath is not binding on Gentiles, it is still to our benefit to set aside one day in seven for worship and rest. That was the first part of the Sabbatic Law.
The second part of the Sabbatic Law said they should farm the land six years, and take the seventh year off (Lev. 25:2-5). That is where the word sabbatical came from. The question arises how were they going to live that seventh year if they did not put out a crop? But God is in charge; he gave the law; he knows how to take care of us if we abide by what he told us to do. He promised to cause the land to bring forth sufficient the sixth year to carry them through til the next crop. If a field had been producing 50 bushels, in the sixth year it would bring forth 100 bushels. The forty eighth year it would bring forth triple (Lev. 25:20-22), more about that later. They did not have to work the seventh year.
None of the most powerful labor organizers of a hundred years ago would have dared to ask for anything like that. Can you imagine the AFL-CIO going to the bargaining table, and saying, “We are not going back to work unless you agree to give us one year off out of every seven. John L. Lewis, Eugene V. Debs, and Walter Reuther, would never have dared to imply that an employer should give their labor union what God provided for Israel without being asked. He promised to make the crops produce double during the sixth year. They did not need to work the seventh year.
More than that, the Law provided that the seventh year every debt was wiped out (Deut. 15:1,2), and, if you had been sold into slavery, the seventh year you got to go free (Deut. 15:12). But somebody wants to know, if the Law was so great, how could it allow for slavery? First off, the law did not authorize slavery, but it did regulate it. Human nature being what it is, those with the ability to do so will always enslave others whenever they can. In Israel of old if a person could not survive any other way, he would sell himself into a form of temporary slavery. It was always a temporary arrangement, because the Law of the Sabbath decreed that at the end of seven years every slave must be set free. And recognizing that slavery does happen, the law regulated it.
That was a compassionate arrangement compared to some of the forms of present day slavery. Consumer credit is the most common, and the most pernicious form of slavery. When they are young, ever so many people get head over heels in debt—and they are virtual slaves to their creditors for the rest of their lives.
For instance, the minimum payment on a credit card is usually 2% per month. That is all they want you to pay; the small payment is very seductive and very effective. By the time they get you so far in debt you can only pay the minimum, they have raised your interest rate to something like 23.99%. That is mighty close to 2% per month. All you can do is pay, and pay, and pay. You are maxed out; so you cannot charge anything else. Your charges and fees exceed your minimum payment; so you cannot get out of debt. If you owe a credit card company so much you cannot possibly pay more than the minimum, up to the amount of that payment you are their property—their slave. That is only one of the many forms of modern day slavery.
In ancient Israel, every seven years, not only was every slave set free, every debt was cancelled, and the entire population got a fresh start.
We should have it so good. I did say this was the best economic system there has ever been. Every seven years they got the whole year off. They did not have to farm. In fact God told them not to farm. Debts were wiped out. And anybody in slavery was set free.
But it did not stop there. Every time seven of those Sabbatic years passed by (seven times seven is forty nine) God required them to take the next year, the fiftieth year, off too(Lev. 25:8-11). Well, what were they going to eat that fiftieth year? God promised that during the forty-eighth year he would make the land bring forth three times as much, and they would not have to work for two full years (Lev. 25:20-22). They could start back to work the fifty first year.
And more than that, he says that if they had sold their property, the fiftieth year they got it back—all of it (Lev. 25:13). On the tenth day of the seventh month of the fiftieth year, on the Day of Atonement, they were to sound the Jubilee (vss. 9,10). By the way that is where that word Jubilee came from. He commanded them to sound the Jubilee, and “proclaim liberty throughout all the land.”
No doubt, you have heard that expression. That is the inscription on the base of the liberty bell in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The Jubilee was a symbol of the gospel of grace. That is what the gospel is all about. We are proclaiming throughout all the land that Jesus Christ hath made us free. The Lord said in John chapter eight, “If the Son therefore shall make you free then are ye free indeed.”
When they went into the land of promise God divided the entire land to them by lot, and he provided that in the year of Jubilee, when they sounded that old ram’s horn all through the land, on that day, not only would every slave be made free, but all the land outside the cities would revert to its original owners. If you had sold a farm, you got it back. That caused real estate prices to fluctuate. The Bible said, this is the way it is supposed to be. If it is getting close to the year of Jubilee, you could not charge as much for the land, because the buyer had to give it back in the year of Jubilee (vs.15,16). If it was going to be forty nine years, you could charge more. But he said, “The land shall not be sold forever, for the land is mine” (vs. 23).
Every fiftieth years the original owners, or the heirs of the original owners got the land back. If you sold it, you got it back. If your daddy sold it, you got it back. If your great granddaddy sold it, you got it back. The Law of Moses provided for total land reform every fifty years. So every fifty years everybody goes back and gets a fresh start. There could not have been a more equal system than that was.
But wait a minute. Does that not discourage a person from trying to get ahead in the world? If he knew he had to give it all back at a particular time, what incentive did he have to accumulate anything? God made provision for that too. There was to be total land reform every fifty years—except in the cities. Inside the walled cities the law allowed the buyer to accumulate as much property as he was able to accumulate, and after allowing the original owner a year to redeem his property (vs. 29), the new owner did not have to give it back.
In other words, he could accumulate all the property he was able to accumulate inside the city; he could become as rich as he was able to become, and he did not have to give any of it back. But outside the walled cities, every man started out equal every fifty years.
If a person was able to build and pay for a huge apartment house in a city, he could keep it in the Year of Jubilee. That is the place where you build apartment houses anyway—you do not build apartments in the country. Or if he could build several apartment houses in the city he could keep all of them. So on the one hand, it provided plenty of incentive to accumulate wealth, and also it provided total land reform every fifty years. There could never have been a more equitable arrangement.
The law took care of the poor; it took care of those we call the middle class; and it took care of the rich. There is nothing wrong with being rich. Most of us do not have that to look forward to; but many of the best known children of God have been very rich. Think of Abraham (Gen. 13:2), and Job (Job 1:3), and Solomon (1 Kings 10:14-29), and Joseph of Arimathea (Matt.27:57-60). Those were all children of God, and they were all very rich.
Any economic system must have a substantial number of rich people in order to function. If you need to buy any kind of supplies, you do not go to somebody who does not have the money to maintain an inventory. If you need a job you do not go to somebody as poor as you are and ask him for a job. If the Law had not allowed those with greater abilities to acquire wealth, the entire system would have broken down. On the other hand the law limited the ability of the rich and powerful to oppress the poor. Except for property situated inside a walled city, the entire nation got a fresh start every fifty years.
It was the best economic system there has ever been. But there was one problem, and the problem was not with the law; the problem was with the people who were subject to that law.
You have heard the expression, “Possession is nine tenths of the law.” The rich and powerful got the idea, “I’ve got it; and I am going to keep it. If you want it, take it if you can.” So because they would not observe the Sabbath, especially that third part of the Sabbatic law—the Year of Jubilee—the land enjoyed its Sabbaths in their absence.
They refused to observe the Sabbath. They refused to allow the land to rest—to lie fallow the seventh year. And they refused to return the land to its original owners that fiftieth year. And because they would not observe the Sabbath, God removed them from the land. God warned that the land would enjoy its Sabbaths (Lev. 26:34,35, 43). They would not allow the land to rest while they were in the land, so God caused the land to rest while they were out of the land. They would not give back what was not theirs to keep, so God took it all away.
He brought a succession of oriental kings with their armies against them. Nebuchadnezzar was the very last. He uprooted the entire nation, and carried them away to Babylon (that was the old name for Iraq). Then for 70 years the land enjoyed its Sabbaths while they were in exile in Babylon.
But it is not my intention to talk so much about what Israel threw away as it is to talk about what God provided. If Israel had taken advantage of the Law and the system of govern-ment it provided, they would have been the healthiest, the wealthiest, the happiest, and the best cared for people on the earth.
Think what it meant that Israel was to have total land reform every fifty years. In the original distribution of land every family received sufficient land to provide for their needs. There was no need for anybody to covet what belonged to somebody else. Everybody had enough. Even if, somebody lost his property, at some point in time, either he or his family got it all back. The entire nation got a fresh start every fifty years. There was no landed aristocracy with such holdings they could hold the rest of the people in perpetual bondage.
But alongside of all that, anybody with sufficient ability, and determination could accumulate all the property he was able to accumulate—inside the walled cities. There could be a wealthy minority who would be able to finance any large project the nation needed for its own welfare. They would always need somebody able fund huge projects and to manufacture such items as they could not raise on their farms. But none of that interfered with anybody providing himself and his family with the necessities of life. Outside the cities they had total land reform.
The land was fertile. When the original twelve spies came back from spying out the land, two of them brought a cluster of grapes so large they carried it between them on a staff (Num. 13:23). It was a land with great natural defenses. There was the wilderness to the South, the desert to the East, the sea to the West, and the mountains to the North. God had provided everything they could possibly need.
More than that, think of what it meant for the land to be returned to its original owners every fifty years. If they had observed that provision, it meant there would be a total reshuffling of the population every fifty years. Everybody who had moved away would come back home. They would all be back on the old home place. That meant that your nearest neighbors would be your brothers and sisters and their families. The next nearest would be your cousins and their families. Beyond them would be your next nearest kinfolks.
Think of what that would have done for the social climate in Israel. People are naturally more concerned with the welfare of their families than they are of strangers. It meant that if somebody got in distress, he would be surrounded by his family. If you cannot feed yourself, you stand a much better chance if everybody living in sight of your house is a brother, sister, or cousin.
They did not have a Social Security Administration. They did not need it. There is no real reason that as soon as a person reaches sixty five, he should quit working and start watching soap operas. When the parents got old, they were expected to continue to carry as much of their load as they were able to carry, for as long as they were able to carry it. It is not healthy to just sit down because you reach a certain age. Then when they were no longer able to take care of themselves, they were surrounded by those nearest and dearest to them. More than that, most of them had large families, fully able to see after their sick.
They did not need unemployment compensation for the same reason. There was no need to run their money through some government agency before it got back to them. Their money was not wasted on government bureaucrats.
And as for Medicare, why go to the hospital to have the hospital staff to see after you, when you are totally surroun-ded by those who love you and are interested in your welfare.
Think what it would have meant to the moral climate of the nation if they had observed the Year of Jubilee. It is in human nature that people have more of a tendency to misbehave when they are farthest from those who know them. It would have had a restraining effect on their moral conduct to have their family living all around them.
But let me shift gears, and approach the Law from a different direction. As a system of worship the Law was far superior to the Gentile religions, but it was far inferior to the gospel day and the New Testament church.
The Law of Moses was a very complex, very complicated system. That was one reason they had so many lawyers. It was hard to keep everything sorted out. They had every kind of sacrifice imaginable. Some sacrifices had to be a male sheep (Lev. 1:3). Some a female (Lev. 4:32) . With some it could be either one (Lev. 3:1). With some it had to be a goat (Lev. 4:24). With one sacrifice it had to be two goats (Lev. 16:7). Some sacrifices required a bullock (Exo. 29:10). Some required two birds (Lev. 14:4-7).
Some were dried ears of corn dried by the fire (Lev. 2:14). One required meal baked in an oven (Lev. 2:4). Sometimes the sacrifice required meal baked in a pan (Lev. 2:5). Sometimes the meal was mixed with oil (Lev. 2:5). Sometimes they poured oil on top of the sacrifice (Lev. 2:6).
Sometimes the blood was applied to the tip of the right ear, and to the right thumb, and the great toe of the right foot (Lev. 8:23). Sometimes the blood was put on the four horns of the altar (Lev. 4:7). Sometimes they would pour out the blood at the base of the altar (Lev. 4:7). Some of the sacrifice was burned on the altar (Lev. 1:9) . Some of the sacrifice was given to the priest for him to eat (Lev. 2:10); that was one of the ways they kept him up. And some of the sacrifice was carried outside the city and burned without the camp (Lev. 4:21).
It goes on and on for chapter after chapter. There were some things they could eat; some things they could not eat (Lev. 11:1-23). They could eat locusts (grasshoppers) (Lev. 11:22), but they could not eat pork chops (Lev. 11:7). The provisions and exclusions go on for a hundred pages or more.
In the New Testament day, there are only two ordinances: baptism (Matt. 28:19,20), signifying the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and our death, burial, and resurrection with him, and the Lord’s Supper (Matt. 26:26-30), signifying that his broken body and shed blood are our spiritual meat and drink. And he has provided the example of feetwashing (John 13:1-17), signifying his grand stoop of mercy, and the humble service he requires of us. Nothing could be simpler, clearer, or more effective.
The Law of Moses is not the law for America nor any other country. The oracles of God were given to Israel (Rom. 3:1,2). They were not given to the Gentile nations. There were provisions of the Law that were not suited to any other nation. God never promised any other nation to divide their land to them by lot. He never promised any other nation to make the land bring forth twice as much every sixth year.
There are forces at work in America who would divorce this nation from our moral underpinnings. The Law of Moses is not the law for America, but the Founding Fathers of this nation were well acquainted with the Law of Israel, and with Israel’s God. And the moral principles that lay at the heart of Moses’s law are the moral principles those Founding Fathers incorporated as the foundation of our government and our society. It is because of those underlying moral principles that our nation has stood all these years. And if our nation ever comes to ruin it will be because we have forsaken those principles.
That law said, “Thou shalt not kill.” There are those who demand the right to kill their unborn babies. And it is the same people who are so insistent on their right to kill their own babies, who are so opposed to executing properly convicted mass murders. The law says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” There are those who want marriage to be no more than a convenience, if they even bother to get married. And it is the same people who think it is unimportant whether a man and woman get married, who insist on the right of a man to marry another man, or a woman to marry another woman.
The list goes on and on. The Law forbade sodomy, and there was a time when homosexuals were arrested. Now they are elected to the highest offices in the land. Israel abandoned God’s law, and the entire nation was conquered, and carried into 70 years of slavery in Babylon (Iraq). America has largely abandoned God’s law, and we are embroiled in a war in Babylon/Iraq. Could that portend worse things to come?
God told Israel, “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” (Isa. 1:19,20). For over two hundred years, America had eaten the good of the land, but that was during a time when God’s law was honored and largely obeyed. Today, that law is being trampled under foot.
“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked way, then will I hear from heaven, and forgive their sin, and heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14).
THE END