You must not offer the blood of my sacrificial offerings together with any baked goods containing yeast. And do not leave the fat from the festival offerings until the next morning As you harvest your crops, bring the very best of the first harvest to the house of the LORD your God. You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk. (Exodus 23:18-19)The old law was a law of micromanaging people’s lives. The laws were exquisitely detailed in their scope. They dealt with every part of the Israelites’ lives.
But we forget something. Mainly that those laws were never intended to be for us in the first place. They were made for a group of people who lived 1500 years ago and continued until the time of Jesus. When Jesus died on the cross and came back to life, he broke that law completely. He finished it, relegating it to the past and making it obsolete.
His new law was different. It was a law of the heart and not one of detail. It was intended to rule one from the inside, rather than the outside.
It was a law that knew that micromanaging would do no good. If one’s heart is not in order, all of the details would do no good.
It said that people are not saved by details, by the number of things they have done. It is a law that recognizes that sooner or later, by design or accident, someone is going to cook a goat in its mother’s milk. And it also says that, whether or not the goat is plain or with cheese, it will not matter if the heart is not saved.
In other words, you can do all of the stuff perfectly and still not have God in your heart. And if you have God in your heart, you will try your best to do what God wants anyway.
The new law took away the need for detail and brought in the need for commitment. And the commitment needs to be from the heart and not just from the actions.
That is the new law. It is a law that says love God and love your neighbor (Matthew 22). It is a law that says just because you have not done wrong doesn’t mean anything if your heart is not right (Matthew 5:28).
It is a Royal Law (James 2:8) and it was given us by the King who loves us and wants us to be more like him.
And he is a God of love. When we live in him, even when we make mistakes, we ourselves fill our lives with love.
That is the new law.
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