Ordinary Days #14: Torah

Tell them what happened

   at the Mountain. (Deuteronomy 4:11)

Deuteronomy tells the story of what happened just “beyond the Jordon when Moses undertook to expound the law” (Dt 1:5) to the next generation and for all generations to come. How are we to teach the Ten Commandments to our children and our children’s children?

According to Moses, we are not supposed to go one, two, three up to ten. In fact, the Bible never gives us our one, two, threes. It leaves the numbering up to us. So before we get to the numbering, Moses instructs those entering the Promise Land to (Dt 4:9-13)…

Make sure you tell your children and your children's children, how you once stood before the Lord your God at The Mountain. …And how you approached and stood at the foot of the mountain while the mountain was blazing up to the very heavens, shrouded in dark clouds. Tell them how the Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. And then tell them how God declared to you his covenant, which he charged you to observe, that is, the Ten Commandments; and how he wrote them on two stone tablets.

There is more, another 40 verses or so before we get to the Ten Commandments. We have to tell about how God loves us and how he has called us to himself to be his people. Then we can talk about the stone tablets engraved on the Mountain by the finger of God.

Law is not Law, Torah is not Torah, without the story of how God called into being the heavens and the earth; and, how he called to himself Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And, how, as Moses would have us tell it: “We went down into Egypt few in number, and there became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place” (Dt 26:5-9). God’s merciful salvation precedes Sinai.

Israel, like all humans, will prove a fickle and contentious covenant partner. But though “we are faithless, God remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself” (2Tm 2:13). Eventually, God himself will become man “born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (Ga 4:4-5). Israel’s Messiah becomes God’s true covenant partner bringing salvation to all who gather at another mountain—Mount Calvary.