Acorn to Oak – Law Matters: The Law of God and Scriptures (1)

Acorn to Oak

Law Matters: The Law of God and Scriptures (1)

The Law is to the rest of the Bible as the acorn is to the oak.

“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the LORD said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.’” Deuteronomy 18:15-18

The Lord instructed Moses to teach His people that, following Moses, another prophet would come, speaking the Word of God like Moses did. The rest of this text foresees a day when many prophets like Moses are active among the people of God, even though false prophets will also arise to deceive them.

While this passage looks forward ultimately to the day of Jesus Christ, it also projects a scenario involving others like Moses, sent to the people of God, to minister as Moses did through preaching, leading, and writing. All true prophets are “like” Moses in that their words are the very Word of God, and must be obeyed. The words of the coming prophets do not depart from the words of Moses; indeed, this is the characteristic of false prophets. Rather, the words of Moses continue in the coming prophets and are enlarged, according to the same themes and teachings, for application to the specific historical circumstances of the people at the time.

Thus the teaching of Moses is the kernel or seed of all the teaching of all true prophets and, thus, of all the rest of Scripture. If the completed Scripture is the mature oak of divine special revelation, then the Law of Moses is the acorn. Everything that is in all the rest of Scripture can be found in the Law of God, if only in seed or immature form.

They are incorrect, therefore, who seek to drive a wedge between Law and grace, Old Covenant and New Covenant, then and now. God’s revelation unfolds, grows, and develops according to themes and truths embedded in the first five books of Scripture until it reaches maturity in the revelation of Jesus Christ and the Apostles. The teaching of the Law matures and develops as it grows; it does not remain the same in every detail. But there is no separation between the Law and the rest of Scripture.

We cannot expect to understand the rest of the Bible if we do not understand the Law. Not only is the Law of God a roadmap for the life of faith, it also serves as a kind of cornerstone or “footprint” for the rest of Scripture. The Law indicates the parameters, directions, themes, and a worldview that we expect to find everywhere else in Scripture. And wherever we are reading or studying in the Bible, we can expect our understanding and use of that part of Scripture to be enriched by a thorough understanding of and familiarity with the Law of God.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.