Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the Daily Challenges. Yesterday we read the story of God giving Moses and Israel the Ten Commandments – ten laws for his people to follow now that he’d saved them from slavery.

Now, he didn’t stop there.  Immediately after these Ten Commandments, he started giving laws about:

Altars

Slaves

Restitution

Festivals and Times of Rest

A Temple for Sacrificing Animals and Goods

and more…

As many as there may be, and as complex as this may seem, they all connect back to the Ten Commandments in one way or another, and those all connect to what God and his son Jesus both said was the point of the whole law.  Love God, and love your neighbour.

In fact, the first four of the 10 Commandments deal with how to love God, while the last six of the 10 Commandments deal with how you love your neighbour.  The rest of the law is like an expansion on this for specific, often tricky scenarios.

A number of the laws for loving God, however, stand out.  They deal with the establishment of a temple for worship and sacrifices to God.  Detail about the sizes and materials of different things.  I’d recommend reading from Exodus 20 onwards.

At first while they travelled, this was to be a portable tent, or tabernacle, with all the associated equipment.  But eventually, the hope was that they would settle in the Promised Land and build a permanent structure.

The temple was meant to support a sacrificial system that would complement the Law.  The Law was the way to live in God’s way, recognizing they were God’s people and had much to be thankful for.  The sacrificial system was a way to show this in very tangible ways.  Their thankfulness for the land and livestock would be seen in their giving a portion of it back to God.

But even more so, it showed the seriousness of sin.  When we pushed God out of our lives, we pushed out the source of life.  We chose death.

God has just given the Israelites life, even though all humans deserve death.  He’s given them an extension, a reprieve.  He wants them to see this, and continue to re-enact their salvation in the sacrificial system.  Instead of their death, the Israelites can substitute the death of something else.

Question: How can this be pointing ahead to Jesus?

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