That Was Easy

In the Old Testament God instituted many rules, processes & protocols in which we were to approach Him and He did so for a reason. He did it to teach us things about Him and about us. So what does this tell us? It demonstrates to believers & non-believers alike that there were explicit and often time complex processes in which we are to approach Him. He was trying to show us as humans that He was not to be approached in some mindless and arbitrary manner like the false gods and imaginary deities that surround the Israelites in the Ancient Near East. He was a real God that entered real time and place to issue these commands to humanity in progressive revelation to man. He was not like the fake pagan belief systems formulated by mere men but rather, just the opposite. He was not and imagined Being but rather He revealed Himself to men in His own way in His own time or His own accord.

He was a God that demanded certain things of those very creations that He made: In particular He demanded it of not just His followers but all humanity.They would have to abide in Him but most did not…and they would be condemned for it. The things of the Law we so demanding that no normal man could accomplish then anyway so for a man to formulate rules that He could not even attain would’ve been foolhardy and self-defeating. Something greater had have formulated them. The Law was so hard to adhere to that the religious bodies of Christ's day had made their own laws and rules to adhere to because they could do what God ask of them. They were called Pharisees and Sadducees and the rules they had made up that they could obey were called the "traditions of the fathers"...i.e.: man-made religion. A religion of works. 


God did not formulate and institute all the Laws for us to be obedient because He was moody, grumpy or capricious. He made these demands difficult to show that He was indeed holy and not to be taken lightly like a false idol. A set of rules and regulations that served a purpose designed to fulfill a purpose by and omniscient being for other self-aware intelligent beings. Based in this concept we must then acknowledge that a Being who created a set of guidelines that even men could not conform, had to have been created by Someone or Something....greater than man. More intelligent and more morally upright (holy) than us. This Being is not an idol created by men, for men. Nor is this Being an idol that was at the whims of human imagination. He is God. He did so to show that He was indeed different…but not distant. He was and is a holy but very real God that desires relationship not necessarily mindless ritual. The very fact that the regulations of and for obedience are put in place shows just how different we are from Him and how different He is from everything of His creation.

He is not the by-product of human imagination as the very nature of His being is beyond imagining. How could Three Persons be one Being, yet that is what see revealed in the Bible? The very fact that it is barely understandable by even the greatest human minds only goes to show that is had to have been revealed through Scripture, not devised by men. The very character and demands in His Law were beyond mankind’s ability to obey them...

…and this is exactly the premise that would then lay the groundwork for His sole intermediary that would bridge the gap between Himself and us.

So by the very complexity and nature of the Law and Commandments of God we see a God of infinite intelligence that created things by design and according to a plan and decision that was around long before we could’ve supposedly imagined Him, just like so many pagans had done with so many pagan gods. A plan so complex and so serendipitous that it could possibly have been coincidence or serendipity…it had to have been a plan from the beginning. A complexity built within an intelligent plan that would require an infinite number of variables to be brought into alignment to be able to “pull it off” or allow all the individual items to come to fruition in the form of an Emissary that would be God Himself and pay the debt owed to God that no normal man could pay. It would require this very God to take on the attribute of humanity, the very being that He was trying to save from themselves since they couldn’t do it themselves. He took on the attribute of humanity for the very reason of evidencing Himself to the very creation He has asked to obey Him…but they didn’t.

He does this not so much to prove Himself real to them as much as it was to offer an escape and redemption from the judgment and punishment due them for not living a life in alignment with the requirements of the Law He gave. The Law which showed them their sin and condemned them. He came to live the life that mankind couldn’t (to show it indeed could be done) so that He would have perfectly obeyed the Law as a man since the Law was made between mankind and God and thereby needed to be fulfilled between a man and God…yet no man was worthy--except God incarnated as a man: Jesus Christ...the God man.

No…God did not give the commandments, laws and statutes to make things incredibly difficult for mankind. On the contrary, in the long-view, He gave all His commands and laws to make things easy for those who would believe in the One He sent. Jesus Christ. Because He knew all along that He would be sending His Son Jesus to fulfill the very laws He gave because He knew humanity couldn’t obey them perfectly…like He could…the very Creator of them. He, being the very Creator of the Law, created the Law to act as signposts to point to Him. The clear contrast of man and God. Of what we should be and what we are. Clearly showing the Creator Law-giver as not only just but also superior....unlike man who was the creation.

He made things difficult because in the end He would make them easy through Christ. The yoke of the Law was given because eventually it would be traded for the yoke of the Christ which was easy because He has already fulfilled the Law. Instead of an act or work of adherence to Law, we would be required only to trust in the work that He did to fulfill the Law and the Scriptures and preordained plan of God.

Details, details, details...

Right down to the way we offered things to Him in reverence

Right down to how we are to approach Him

Right down to how we are to view His Creation

Right down to how we are to see His fingerprint in the Creation

Detail…the product of an intricate infinite mind. Detail…that required a plan in advance and was so broad and vast a plan that it required the entire scope of history and humanity to complete…and then some. A plan only a sovereign, totally omnipotent, totally omniscient, totally timeless God outside of us and the Creation could’ve conceived it. Only Him since we did not have the imagination nor the capacity within us as collective humanity to do so.  A collective humanity created by Him, to obey Him. A base of humanity asked only to believe in the things He had already done on their behalf. They need do nothing, only trust Him.

Yeah, He actually made things difficult for us to follow and obey because of the very fact something this difficult to obey couldn’t have possibly come from human origin. He made things like the Law and the Creation complex, so that it would be easy to believe that something other than humanity created them. He did this so that we could see that it was indeed Him, God, acting, walking, talking and teaching us in our world. He made things like the Law and Creation so intricate, that He actually made things easy…to trust and believe.

To believe…A belief which requires absolutely no work from us at all, it only requires us to trust Him and...

That Was EASY!

But we don’t always do that do we? We make things more complex than they have to be by making mountains out of mole hills. Will mankind ever learn? 

The answer is NO

The Bible was written to show us that very fact....over and over and over and over. He needs to drag us to Him. It was, and is, up to God to make things easy for us...for we in humanity as a collective whole are pretty much dopes....whether we acknowledge this fact or not.