9: What Happened After Moses Received the Law (6)
6. When the Awareness of the Spirit Faded
In conclusion, the Law given by God was good,
beautiful, and complete in its divine purpose. However, human beings gradually obscured its spirit beneath heavy layers of human interpretation, empty ritual, and rigid tradition.
As time went by, the awareness of the spirit behind the Law faded away:
Miracles became legends.
Living experiences faded into stories.
Sacred rituals devolved into routines and tasks.
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The Law was reduced to cold text and piles of written rules, while the spiritual distance between ordinary people and God grew wider than ever before.
Both political power and religious leadership utterly failed. Humanity accumulated the weight of sin and failed to return wholeheartedly to the Father. It was a systemic failure.
But we should not simply look back and blame the Israelites. This pattern has repeated itself throughout the human history. In this sense, we are all Israelites.
As the prophets had warned, Israel and Judah eventually suffered exile, and were scattered among foreign nations. This national tragedy echoes, on a corporate scale, Cain’s individual exile in Genesis 4.
The problem was never that God had not provided enough rules. The problem was that rules alone could not no transform the independent human heart.
Until Jesus Christ came into the world to restore the spirit and true purpose of the Law for us.
To Be Continued: 10. The New Covenant
