13. The Man Who Broke the Law

13. The Man Who Broke the Law - for Notes

13 The Man Who Broke the Law - PP

Moses is the most misunderstood man in the Bible. We cannot begin to understand the events of his life until we are able first to place him into God’s intentions towards all humanity and towards the children of Israel.

Moses and law seem to go hand in hand, but this is an error of understanding God.

I don’t think anyone in the Old Testament knew God, Personal and close, by grace through faith, as Moses did. Here is what someone else wrote about him. – Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3).

God’s Purpose for the Law. We cannot know Moses unless we begin with God’s purpose for the law.

There is one place only where we can comprehend God’s purpose of the law, and that is inside of Christ. There is one Bible writer only who tells us that purpose, and that is Paul. Those who seek to understand the law by the law cannot ever understand the law. And those who seek to apply Jesus’ words to their understanding of the law, as they look at Jesus from afar, cannot understand the law.

And every one of these abuses the law and by it, God’s people, and Paul tells us exactly how and why.

Moses’ Story. Moses’ life is a bit complex for our topic; I hope this first lesson will give us an outline for the remaining lessons. Here, then, is an outline of Moses’ life; most of these things are referenced in the New Testament.

1. Origins and birth – drawn out of water.
2. Growing up as a son in Pharaoh's household, trained in all the knowledge of the Egyptians.

3. Attempting to make things right for his brethren, and his subsequent flight from Egypt – at age forty.
4. Herding sheep for forty years in the Sinai wilderness, including marriage and family.

Shattering the Law.
5. Meeting with God in the burning bush.
6. Stumbling into Egypt in humiliation.

7. Confronting Pharaoh and convincing the Israelites with all the attendant plagues.
8. Leading the Israelites out of Egypt, across the Red Sea.
9. Receiving the law on Mt. Sinai, shattering the law on the mountain side and going back again.

10. Overseeing and assembling the Tabernacle.
11. Attempting to lead Israel into the Promised Land.
12. Wandering for 38 more years in the wilderness.

A Terrible Task. Our purpose is to understand Moses’ relationship with God, heart to Heart, and to apply what we learn to our own lives and in our present world.

Moses was given the most thankless job of all humans who ever lived, the same task given to the greatest of angels in the garden. The greatest of angels failed in that task; Moses stumbled all the way through it inside God’s intentions.

We cannot understand Moses, then, unless we first understand the law, what it is, and what its purpose is, and why Moses shattered that law upon the mountainside.

God Rebukes with Proof. Abraham was God’s rebuke of Adam; Moses was God’s rebuke of the anointed covering cherub.

Adam rejected what God had spoken to him; the serpent used his place to manipulate and control for his own lusts. Abraham believed that God was telling him the truth; Moses placed himself before God for the sake of His people. As I consider this comparison and contrast between Moses and the anointed angel, I see how much it fits and how much it explains things.

God allows nothing to stand against Himself, but provides a full rebuke through humans who come close to His heart.

What Is the Law? What is the law? – The law is the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20). What is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? – The same thing.

This still doesn’t tell us what the law IS, for God did not place sin before anyone. God does not know sin or evil.

Both the law and the tree of knowledge are out from God and holy and just and good (Romans 7:12). Both the law and the tree of knowledge were under the authority and appointment of angels (Galatians 3:19). Both result only in death to any human who eats of them (3:21).

A Symmorphic God. There is only one place from which we can comprehend God’s purposes for placing the law/tree of knowledge before humans, and that is out from the Heart of a Symmorphic God.

No one in the Bible, save Jesus, is closer inside the Heart of God than Moses. – The issue is symmorphy.

In the garden, God offered the Lord Jesus Christ to Adam, to be his very and only life, for Jesus to live inside of Adam and for Adam to live inside of Jesus. Only in this way could God reveal himself through humans loving one another, God seen and known by all.

Law versus Gospel. What is the law? The law is the ministry of DEATH, written and engraved on stones (2 Corinthians 3:7). It is used only by those who wish to manipulate and control others for self-exaltation (Galatians 4:17 & 6:12).

What is the gospel? An epistle of Christ… written with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of FLESH, that is, of the heart (3:3).

This layout confirms my assertion that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is word on the outside, under human control, and that the tree of life is Word written in our hearts as the Lord Jesus Christ, our only life.

Word versus Words. God has a significant problem all tied up with His being a Symmorphic Being. God cannot rape; He cannot force His knowledge on anyone.

Jesus, the One-Seed that is God-made-known, the Word God speaks, enters into any human only through faith. What do you want? – If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. – Whosoever desires may drink life freely.

There cannot be any imagined and perverted self-story, separated from God, without words under human control. Our great dilemma and God’s great dilemma are two sides of the same thing.

Building a Fake Self-Story. What do you do with the word God speaks? – Who do you say that I am? – Let it be to me according to Your Word.

Here is the death of the law – The law is not out of faith; rather “the one having done these things [human performance] will live in them” (Leviticus 18:5) (Galatians 3:12). The law is the invitation to live in self and by self, to build a self-story out from human performance.

The law, the words of God on the outside, separate from the human, is pure and just and good, but inside a heart empty of the knowledge of God, the law is the POWER of sin.

A Veil upon Their Heart. Now, in order to separate between his gospel and the law of Moses, Paul gives us this picture of Moses and of contrasting word.

Not as Moses did, who put a veil upon his face so that the children of Israel would not look intently at the end result of that which is annulled and rendered inoperative, for their minds were hardened. For until the present day, the same veil remains unlifted upon the reading of the old covenant, which veil itself is being annulled and rendered inoperative inside of Christ. But unto this day, when Moses is read, a veil is set upon their heart. However, if and whenever one shall have turned towards the Lord, the veil is stripped away (2 Corinthians 3:13-16).

The Antithesis. What Paul is doing in 2 Corinthians 3 is extraordinary, in setting forth two kinds of words, words seized by hardened minds versus words as Jesus written upon the heart. Yet into this mix he places Moses, the man who put a sack on his head so that no one could see God through him.

Moses and Paul were more alike than we have known, and their relationship with God, heart with Heart, was the same. But their outward ministry was the opposite.

What kind of a man puts a sack on his head so that no one will see God through him? What depths of humiliation does it take to stand as the antithesis of Lucifer?

Both Sides of Moses. Paul built his gospel on Abraham’s relationship with God. Moses’ relationship with God was the same as Abraham’s, only much greater. But since Moses’ ministry was the opposite of Paul’s, Paul never referenced the personal relationship between Moses and God.

We are free, however, to look at both sides of Moses’ place.

You see, of all the people in the Old Testament, Moses stood closer to Jesus than any other in his response towards God’s people. Moses placed himself before God, in great agony of heart, to intercede for the sake of God’s people.

Towards God and Towards People. Here are Moses’ two great qualities, one towards God, and the other towards God’s people.

So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend – “Show me Your way that I might know You” (Exodus 33:11 & 13). – If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? (Exodus 33:15-16).

Moses never once used the law to manipulate God’s people for his own exaltation, rather, he placed himself with them and they with him before God in fear and in grace.

Comprehending God’s Purpose. We will devote most of a lesson to the events described in Exodus 32-33, and so we will not go further here, except for the primary point regarding the law.

In fact, in this study of Moses, we will follow chronology only partly. In order to comprehend God’s purpose for us, we will bounce back and forth throughout Moses’ story. And we will wait until the next lesson, “The Man Who Stumbled into Egypt,” to address the question – What kind of a man puts a sack on his head so that no one can see God through him?

Here we must continue with this singular task given to this one man.

The Ministry of Death. The ministry and service of death. God trusted Moses with the service of death; God gave to Moses the office of establishing DEATH upon all. The law, the letter, kills everyone.

The soul that sins shall die (Ezekiel). – Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them (Galatians 3). – For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all (James 2:10).

Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

The Issue. Life for humans is one thing only, life is John 14:20, life is symmorphy, sharing the same form with Jesus as the revelation of the Father. The issue is WORD. The issue is always Word.

Words that I hold in my head by which I imagine control over my own fake definitions of God and of myself.

– OR – Words that are Father’s thoughts becoming me through the good speaking of Jesus and carrying me forward through each stumbling step as Father shows Himself through me as He wishes, through my human weakness.

I Broke Them Before Your Eyes. Please understand, I am not trying to give a full explanation of things, but to impart an understanding of God’s view of this mighty and terrible issue.

And Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand… and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain (Exodus 32:15 & 19).

So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire; and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. – Then I took the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes (Deuteronomy 9:15 & 17).

Vivid Paradoxes. And thus we have the two mighty pictures of paradox and riddle that God has placed so vividly in our Bibles.

A Law-Giver who breaks the law upon the mountain-side before he ever gives it. – A Christ who stumbles onto His face in the mud under a cross He cannot carry.

Here is why Moses BROKE the law, the ministry and service of DEATH. – Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God (Romans 3:19).

The One Death of Christ. That every mouth may be stopped goes straight to the issue of word in the Garden and the invention of a fake and perverted self-story of “I-not-Christ.” If One has died for all, then all have died (2 Corinthians 5:14). – I have been crucified with Christ.

God did not give the law through Moses with any thought or intention that humans would live by obeying the law. The writer of Hebrews said that God hated the law even when He gave it, because all the law does is kill.

The significance of the one death of Christ can only increase in our understanding forever.

The Second Most Terrible Year. Moses was condemned to death before he was born. Pharaoh’s daughter called him “drawn out,” or, in Egyptian, “Moses.” – We could say, “Drawn out of death.”

In placing Moses, we must also put him into history. Moses stumbled into Egypt in 1462 BC, the second most terrible year in all of human history. Only 2319 BC, the year of the flood, was worse. Although no one knew it at the time, the old kingdom of Egypt was coming to a devastating end, with the whole earth.

Now, my purpose is not to present alternate views of history, but to plant the words that are Christ into our hearts. Nonetheless, there are devastating words that fit here.

A Man in His Place. And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken (Luke 21:25-26).

Jesus is defining our day for us, but He was also describing the year 1462 BC.

Here is my point. At that very moment, as cities were toppling above massive earthquakes and pillars of fire were scouring the whole planet, God had a man standing in his place, a man who raised a stick into the air.

Reading for Next Time. The next lesson is titled “The Man Who Stumbled into Egypt.” In it, we want to consider the experiences of Moses in Exodus 2, 3, & 4, which you have already read.

For the next lesson, then, please read Hebrews 11:23-29. Then read Chapters 7 & 8 in The Feast of Tabernacles, Seeing the Invisible One and Moses and Paul.

I will not go so far as to have you read Worlds In Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky, found here – https://amzn.to/33sQ1Kg , but at least you can “Look inside.” In fact, click on “Look Inside,” then scroll down to Part 1 “Venus” and read through the portion available of Chapter 1 “The Most Incredible Story.”