Fifty days after being rescued from slavery in Egypt, God’s tiny nation stood at the base of Mt. Sinai, to say “I Do” in a covenant to be His people. God said, “If you will obey My voice indeed, and keep My Covenant, then you shall be a highly-prized treasure to Me above all people: for all the earth is Mine: and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5,6).
Moses ascended the mountain and God gave Him Ten Commandments, engraved with the very finger of God, laws of freedom and righteousness, to govern the social life of this new nation. However, it didn’t take long for the people to realize they couldn’t keep them in perfection. Although the Law is “holy, just, and good,” it couldn’t produce righteousness in the human heart.
The Law was necessary to reveal that all humanity has “sinned and fallen short of the glory (standards) of God.” The goal of the Law is to point to Jesus, who offers forgiveness through the Cross, and new hearts of righteousness through His Spirit. “For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh (couldn’t change the heart), God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful humanity, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:3,4).
Exactly fifty (Greek: “Pentekostos”) days after Jesus died to forgive our sins and rose again, the Holy Spirit was poured out from Heaven to write the laws of God upon the hearts of all who repent and receive Jesus Christ as Lord… “You are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, not written with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God, not in tablets of stone, but in fleshy tablets of the heart” (2 Corinthians 3:3).
Now it is written of all who receive Christ… “You are a chosen generation (genos; offspring), a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a highly-prized people, that you should show forth (declare and live out) the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9,10). What power and purpose we have been gifted so that we can live victorious Christian lives!
Hallelujah. Happy Pentecost weekend!
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