Before God gave His people His Law, the world was a rough place. In many ways it still is, but we would be wise to consider the moral baseline of civilisation at the time. We live on this side of 3,000 years of the civilising, restraining influence of the Judeo-Christian ethic. We enjoy the legacy of the Ten Commandments.
The world before God’s giving of the Law was an awful,
scary, barbaric place to live. People routinely practiced human sacrifice,
especially of children. Slaves were killed without any accountability. Women
were considered property. Children were disposable resources. Revenge was
commonplace.
It was survival of the fittest writ large.
No one, not even the most hardened Darwinian atheist, wants
to live in a world like that.
All of us want there to be justice. We want there to be
balanced scales. We want there to be a standard of right and wrong, punishment
for the wicked and a recourse for the righteous to plead their case. None of
that would be possible without the Law of God.
No wonder the psalmist said, “The law from your mouth is
more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold… . Oh, how I
love your law! I meditate on it all day long” (Psa 119.72,97).
People have given their lives to preserve the Word of God.
People have gone to jail for possessing a copy. People have travelled land and
sea to faithfully translate it into as many different languages as humanly
possible. Many of us have multiple copies within easy reach, but do we really
value the Bible?
Within its leather-bound, gold-leafed, onion-skin pages, we
find more than history and philosophy, we find wisdom for living. The Bible
doesn’t merely speak to us of “heavenly” things or “spiritual matters.” God’s
Law is holistic, giving us a basis for coherent thought and practice.
As we meditate on God’s Word, He shapes the way we think
about our world and ourselves, teaching us to think His thoughts and lead an
integrated life in which everything we do matters. There is no dichotomy
between spiritual and sacred. God intends to govern all of life, rendering it
all holy.
How dare we reduce it to trivia or an academic textbook to
be studied alongside Shakespeare or the Encyclopaedia Britannica! These are the
words of life that point us to Wisdom and Truth personified, revealing to us
the true character and nature of the true God who desires for us to be His
treasured people, a people set apart for a purpose, rightly relating to Him so
that we can be rightly related to each other.
Lord, let me increasingly delight in Your Law and meditate
on its life-giving truths. I want to be a person of the Word who not only hears
it but reflects on it and practices it. As I read the pages of Holy Scripture,
I see that all things matter and that there is no dichotomy between the things
we call spiritual and the things we call secular. Grant that I may receive a
growing wealth of biblical perspective on the circumstances of life so that I
will walk in wisdom, in trust, in submission, in obedience and in love. May I
express my real freedom in Christ in acts of life-giving obedience and trust in
Your ways. And when I slip into disobedience, may I return quickly and be
thankful for Your patience and forbearance.
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