Radiant Gospel 2 - The Law

This is the second post in a series called Radiant Gospel. If you haven’t read part one, go here https://www.solomonsporchtpa.org/post/radiant-gospel and check it out first.

I am ashamed to say that I was arrested once. Yep…it’s true. As a college student who had a huge, crippling propensity to procrastinate, coupled with typical college-student-beans-and-rice-poverty, I let my tags on my little Datsun pickup expire… and they stayed expired for a long time… So naturally I got several tickets that made excellent glove-box stuffing and before you know it I was driving a car with expired tags with a driver’s license that had been revoked due to unpaid tickets. I was a rebel. Of course the letter I received explaining that a warrant for my arrest had been issued – while it made my heart pound a little, and my face go flush as I broke out in a cold sweat – did not deter me from my folly.

So on a crisp autumn morning I found myself being frisked on the side of I-70 somewhere between Columbia, Missouri and St. Louis. Shortly afterward, the truck impounded, I found myself handcuffed to a filing cabinet in a police station, my career as a criminal mastermind cut short, sheepishly phoning my dad to wire bail money…and money to get my car out of hock…and money to pay off several tickets and penalties… I fought the Law, and the Law won. My dad was gracious (he probably shouldn’t have been), my debt to society was satisfied, and I was set free.

Lesson? The Law means business.

We’re introduced to God’s written Law when Moses is leading the nation of Israel on their journey from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the land God had promised to Abraham’s descendants nearly 500 years earlier (Exodus 20-23; Genesis 13:14-17). God came down on Mount Sinai in smoke and thunder and gave Moses the 10 Commandments followed by Laws governing much of life – both interpersonal relationships and their relationship with God. The people were terrified by God and trembled, begging Moses to speak to God on their behalf. And then, “Moses came and told the people all the commands of the Lord and all the ordinances. Then all the people responded with a single voice, ‘We will do everything that the Lord has commanded.’”

Of course it wasn’t long before the people of Israel turned away from that zealous, fearful commitment and began worshipping the golden calf. And thus began a theme in Scripture: God gives mankind His Law (as a means to show us what He values, as a means to engage with Him and His kingdom, as a means for people to maintain right relationship with God, with one another, and with creation itself, as a means for justice and righteousness to mark their nation – from the top to the bottom, and so on), and mankind consistently, often willfully, fails in following God’s Law. We simply do not seem to be capable of it.

And the Old Testament illustrates this theme repeatedly…depressingly. It seems to be asking the question, over and over again, “Can mankind ever actually have a relationship with a holy God?” And while we see glimmers of hope with a few individual people in the Old Testament, it ultimately answers the question with a profound, emphatic, seemingly fatalistic “No” that reverberates through the hearts of people even to this day. It seems that humanity is lost – there is no way to enter in to His Kingdom. We are simply unable to meet His standards; the debt each of us racks up is too great.

That’s not good news for humanity.

Enter Jesus…

We’ll discuss this more when Solomon’s Porch opens as a part of our series Radiant Gospel. We hope you’ll be able to make it.

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