Law and the Covenants
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He did not even then trust His precepts to the memory of a peo-
ple who were prone to forget His requirements, but wrote them upon
tables of stone. He would remove from Israel all possibility of min-
gling heathen traditions with His holy precepts, or of confounding
His requirements with human ordinances or customs. But He did not
stop with giving them the precepts of the Decalogue. The people had
shown themselves so easily led astray that He would leave no door
of temptation unguarded. Moses was commanded to write, as God
should bid him, judgments and laws giving minute instruction as to
what was required. These directions relating to the duty of the people
to God, to one another, and to the stranger were only the principles of
the Ten Commandments amplified and given in a specific manner, that
none need err. They were designed to guard the sacredness of the ten
precepts engraved on the tables of stone.
If man had kept the law of God, as given to Adam after his fall,
preserved by Noah, and observed by Abraham, there would have been
no necessity for the ordinance of circumcision. And if the descendants
of Abraham had kept the covenant, of which circumcision was a sign,
they would never have been seduced into idolatry, nor would it have
been necessary for them to suffer a life of bondage in Egypt; they
would have kept God’s law in mind, and there would have been no
necessity for it to be proclaimed from Sinai or engraved upon the
tables of stone. And had the people practiced the principles of the
Ten Commandments, there would have been no need of the additional
directions given to Moses.
The sacrificial system, committed to Adam, was also perverted
by his descendants. Superstition, idolatry, cruelty, and licentiousness
corrupted the simple and significant service that God had appointed.
Through long intercourse with idolaters the people of Israel had min-
gled many heathen customs with their worship; therefore the Lord
gave them at Sinai definite instruction concerning the sacrificial ser-
vice. After the completion of the tabernacle He communicated with
Moses from the cloud of glory above the mercy seat, and gave him
full directions concerning the system of offerings and the forms of
worship to be maintained in the sanctuary. The ceremonial law was
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thus given to Moses, and by him written in a book. But the law of Ten
Commandments spoken from Sinai had been written by God Himself
on the tables of stone, and was sacredly preserved in the ark.