Impact of the Mosaic Law

"Impact on Canadian Legal System:

Mosaic Law has had a huge impact on our modern day legal system this is because the laws were based off the Ten Commandments which are essentially common courtesy. “You shall not murder” and “you shall not steal” are two commandments that modern law still doesn’t allow. Other commandments although not used directly in law are courtesy that everyone is able to agree on such as, “Honor your father and mother.”

Certain crimes were so serious in the Mosaic Law that they required the death penalty. This fact clearly shows, first, the seriousness of murder, and, second, that the death penalty, when carried out by legally constituted authority, is not a violation of the sixth commandment. Capital crimes listed included:

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Premeditated murder (see vv. 12–14).

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Attempted murder of one’s parents (see v. 15). The verb translated as “smiteth” comes from the Hebrew verb meaning “to strike deep so as to wound or kill” (Wilson, Old Testament Word Studies, s.v. “smite,” p. 401).

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Kidnapping (see v. 16).

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Cursing one’s parents (see v. 17). Here again the Hebrew word is very strong, meaning “to revile” or “to utter violent reproaches." [The Hebrew word for curse can indicate sorcery and witchcraft and only in extremely severe cases would this actually have been carried out due to the fact that a parent is not going to report a child of such an offense unless they truly feel threatened] (Wilson, Old Testament Word Studies, s.v. “curse,” p. 105).

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Killing a servant (see vv. 20–21).

The penalties prescribed in the law were the maximum penalties. It is not clear in how many cases the death penalty was actually exacted and how often composition was permitted. Composition is explicitly prohibited in the case of murder (Num. 35:31), and this seems to be the force of the phrase, ‘your eye shall not pity’ in Deuteronomy 19:13.

God the Father, in the Old Testament, was laying down serious groundwork for all the people. He wanted to show the serious consequences involved for each person that would break many of His basic laws and commandments.

In the New Testament there is a verse that says that the wages of sin will lead to death! God is not only referring to possible early physical death as a result of serious sin, but also to the death of our souls if these sins end up keeping us out of heaven.

By setting the examples early on in the Old Testament, I feel God is making a powerful statement to the rest of the world.

He is basically telling us that not only must we become saved and born again through the acceptance of salvation through His Son and His sacrificial death on the cross – but we must also stay out of serious sin.

I will touch on one more subject that you probably picked up in reading much of the Old Testament. Not only was God the Father very strict with the laws and punishments enforced on those laws, but there also was quite a few displays of His wrath and anger that was released upon either certain peoples or the entire world at one time like He did with the flood of Noah.

The incredible release of His wrath and anger during those times has always scared many people, including many Christians. As a result, many of His people have developed an unhealthy fear of Him to the point that some of His own people are too afraid to approach Him for prayer or to enter into any kind of close personal relationship with Him.

Let me try to explain this part of His personality so you can see exactly where He was coming from in those days, and why His wrath and anger were so violently released at certain times during the Old Testament.

If you look very closely at the times that He would release His wrath and anger, it was always justified. I believe there is something called “righteous anger or righteous wrath.”

Every time God released His anger and wrath, it was always because the people who were on the receiving end of His wrath really did deserve it at the time that it was coming down on them.

1. The Flood of Noah

In the flood of Noah, God destroys all humans with the exception of Noah and his family because everyone was so wicked and evil back at that time. However, note that God did not destroy Noah and his family. Why? Because they were found righteous in His eyes.

This shows that God will judge each one individually and that He is not releasing His wrath just to be mean and vengeful. His wrath is always released for a specific reason and a specific purpose.

The Bible actually says that God is “slow to anger“ and that it takes quite a bit to really get Him mad. But when you do, watch out. But it does take quite a bit to get Him to blow. Back in the days of Noah, the people were so evil and so wicked that He simply could not stand it anymore and decided that His judgment had to be released.

The Bible says that God even makes the comment that He repented that He even created man in the first place because man had become so evil and wicked during this time (Gen. 6:6)

The Bible says that man was so wicked during this time that all man ever thought about was evil things on a continual basis. Here is another verse on how evil and wicked people were back at that time:

“Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil CONTINUALLY.” (Genesis 6:5)

These people had become so evil and so wicked that they apparently were no longer salvageable and God simply brought them to their final destinations sooner rather than later. Bottom line – God’s wrath was fully released into this situation due to the severe evil and wickedness that was in this particular generation, not because He is an evil and wicked God.

2. The Jewish People

The next area where you see God’s wrath manifested was with His own chosen people, the Jewish people. The Old Testament seems to be nothing but a roller coaster ride in the relationship between God the Father and the Jewish people. When the Jewish people were walking in good stead with God the Father and had their act together with Him, God protected them from their enemies, they lived with abundant blessings, and life was very good for them.

But when they started to turn against God and worship and follow after other gods, God would then withdraw His protection, and from there, their enemies would then swoop down on them and a host of the Jewish people would then go into slavery and captivity.

Then after being in slavery, sometimes for hundreds of years, the Jewish people would start crying out to God for forgiveness and deliverance. God would then hear their cries, feel sorry for them, and then send someone down to get them delivered like He did with Moses.

The Jewish people would then once more turn back to God. God would then restore His protection and abundant blessings back on them and life would once more be very good for them – and then it would start all over again. They would then start turning back against God, start to follow other gods, and the same scenario would then repeat itself all over again.

I literally could not even begin to count the number of times this scenario kept repeating itself throughout the entire Old Testament. God could have easily washed His hands of His people after the 3rd or 4th time – but He did not. This right here shows you the incredible love and patience God really does have with not only His Jewish people, but with the rest of us as well.

Finally after the “150th” time this scenario repeats itself, God says that is going to be it as you get near the end of the Old Testament. This is when His wrath starts to manifest. He tells the Jewish people they are going to be driven from their homelands and scattered throughout the entire world. He tells them they will be the most persecuted people throughout history because of their disobedience and refusal to accept Him and His ways for them.

Once again, God pulls back His protection, and this time it ends up being for good. And then to add insult to injury, some of the higher-ranking Jewish leaders were the ones who ended up putting Jesus to death on the cross when He came down to our earth in the flesh. It was shortly after putting Jesus to death in the year 70 AD that the Jewish people were finally driven out of their homeland and scattered throughout the nations of the world.

However, to show you how great, awesome, and loving God the Father really is – God says near the end of the Old Testament after pronouncing the above judgment on the Jewish people, that He still will not forsake them, and that He will eventually bring them back to the land of Israel at the end of time shortly before Jesus returns back to us in His second coming.

He says that when all is said and done, He will still be their God and they will still be His people. God says that He will still honor the original pact and covenant that He made with their earlier forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in that He would never completely forsake them.

Anyone who has read the entire Old Testament can really appreciate what an incredible act of kindness and mercy this really is by God the Father.

He could have easily given up on these people long ago, but not only did He keep bringing them back to Himself, but when He finally reaches His breaking point at the end of the Old Testament and pronounces the above judgment on them, He still states that He will take them back, but not until the end of times.

God had given these people more than enough reasonable chances to get their act together. Once you see the big picture of this story and what was really happening, you can understand why God finally decided to manifest His wrath and anger near the end of the Old Testament and pronounce the above judgment on them.

It would be the same if an earthly parent would occasionally lose their tempers with a rebellious and disobedient child. Sometimes you just lose it and rightly so. Again, we are dealing with righteous anger and wrath being manifested by God for very good reasons on these people.

If you really study every time God got mad and released His wrath, there is not one time that it did not deserve to be released on whoever was on the receiving end of it. God is not like us humans who sometimes blow off for no good reason. The Bible says that God is slow to anger, and if He does manifest righteous anger and wrath, it is always for a very good reason.

3. God Defends the Jewish People

The other times you will see God manifest maximum wrath, anger, and vengeance is when He is defending the Jewish people from their enemies who are trying to attack and kill them.

When the Jewish people were walking right with God, God would literally fight some of their battles for them. We are talking about incredible displays of supernatural power and wrath being directed against Israel’s enemies. Some of these enemies were literally wiped right off the face of the earth.

I have 95 powerful battle verses from the Bible showing that God will come to your aid and help you fight against any enemies who may try to harm you. Many people do not realize that God the Father has an incredible War Side to His personality and that He will not hesitate to go into battle to protect His own.

The best analogy that I can give you on this is just imagine you were married, had several children, and then all of a sudden you found out that somebody was going to try to kill one of your children.

What do you think your first natural reaction would be? I have heard mother after mother say to me, without batting an eye, that if anyone would try to seriously hurt one of their own children – they would have no problems in literally killing that person dead if they had to.

This is the exact same type of wrath and anger that God Himself has when protecting His own.

This is why the Old Testament is so bloody in all of the battles that are described in it. Half of those bloody battles had to do with God the Father defeating all of Israel’s enemies in actual warfare and combat.

God is no wimp – and He will protect and defend His own if He is forced to engage!

I will leave you with one last thought to think about regarding God’s anger and wrath being manifested so often in the Old Testament.

I feel that the Holy Spirit has conveyed to me that everything about God the Father is maximum intensity. All of His emotions are maximum intensity.

This is why Jesus says in the Book of Revelation that He will spew you out of His mouth if He finds you to be too lukewarm.

As a result of God’s nature and personality being of maximum intensity, all of His emotions will be of maximum intensity. The Bible says that God’s love for us humans is like a “consuming fire.” Those two words are again denoting maximum intensity.

Once you understand the maximum intensity of God’s personality, you can better understand some of the more intense reactions found not only in the Old Testament, but also in the Book of Revelation about what He will be doing in the last 7 years of the tribulation.

Again, the world is going to turn so evil and wicked during those last 7 years that once again God is going to release His wrath and anger on this world in a way that the world has never seen before and will never see again.

But again, as I pointed out to you in my articles on end time events, God will once again have very good reason and very good cause to release His wrath and anger upon the earth during those times. This will be righteous and justified wrath and anger being released for a very good reason.

The common conception that the God of the Old Testament is vastly different than the God of the New Testament is shown to be untrue. Both the Old and New Testament command people to love their neighbors.

In both the Old and New Testaments, God is described as being loving, and love is emphasized as being the most important of God's laws."

https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/Matthew-Henry/Exod/Moses-Receives-Tables-Law