The Law of God and the Heart – The Kingdom Curriculum II (1)

The Law of God and the Heart

“Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that might go well with them and with their descendants forever!” Deuteronomy 5:29 (my translation)

In a certain sense, the Law of God was never intended for the people of Israel in the Old Testament – not in its full and complete sense, anyway. The Law was not given to save them; God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt on the basis of His covenant promise to their forebears (Ex. 2:24, 25). And since the ability to walk in the Law of God and, thus, to know the blessings of the promises of God, depended on the coming of the Holy Spirit and His making a new heart in God’s people (Ezek. 36:26, 27), there is a very real sense in which the entirety of the Old Testament revelation would have compelled those who first received it to look forward to a day when blessings could flow from obedience, freely and fully given, by a people who possessed a genuine heart for the Lord. Certainly they strove, in their better moments, to obey the Law of God, but the faithful in Israel throughout the period of the Old Covenant must have rejoiced in the grace and goodness of God in providing so thorough and elaborate a system of sacrifices and offerings to enable them to propitiate their many and inescapable sins.

From the beginning of His dealings with His people, God taught them to adopt this mindset of waiting on Him to do all that He had promised in working to make them His people and to be their God. In His dealings with Adam, then with Noah, Abraham, and the patriarchs, God pointed to the far horizons of history and geography in promising a coming day of worldwide blessing and rule under One descended from the tribe of Judah Who would crush the head of Satan, fulfill all the promises of the covenant, and attain the Kingdom of God that was being prepared even from those early days (cf. Gen. 49:8-11).

Explicitly, in Deuteronomy 30.1-10, God warned His people that a day was coming when they would fall away from obedience to Him and be carried away captive to a land not their own. But God is faithful to His Word of promise, and speaking to them in the broadest of terms of Israel’s post-exilic experience, He promised that then would come the time when His people would flow together from every nation and tribe (v. 4) to enjoy all the promises God had made to them (symbolized by the land, v. 5), and to receive the circumcision of heart which would enable them to obey the voice of the Lord and keep His Law (vv. 6-8). As they did so, turning to the Lord with all their heart and soul, God promised to unpack for them all His precious and very great promises, so that they might know the full and abundant life for which He had redeemed them (vv. 9, 10).

Those who call on the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ out of a heart now made pure and new by the Spirit of God will flee the lusts and passions of their youth and give full pursuit to improving in the righteousness which is encoded in the Law of God and embodied in our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Tim. 2:22). For the redeemed of the Lord, the Law of God is the core course in a Kingdom curriculum designed to make all things new in their lives and to lead them into the fullness of God’s covenant love.

Order your copy of The Law of God today. Go to www.MyParuchia.com, click Publications, Waxed Tablet, to place your order and take up the Kingdom curriculum of our Lord.

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is 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.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.