The Ten Commandments show us the difference between simple and easy. They’re simple but not easy!
It’s time, says Moses, to think again about the giving again of the Law. Remember that’s the meaning of this book’s name: the giving again of the Law. God had made the first tables of stone (Ex 24:12), “written with the finger of God” (31:18). But the people who had promised Moses, “Tell us all that the Lord our God says to you, and we will hear and do it” (Deut 5:27), had broken the tablets before Moses could get them down the mountain! He symbolically smashed them on the ground. But now we read, “At that time the Lord said to me, ‘Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain and make yourself an ark of wood. And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke; and you shall put them in the ark’” (Deut 10:1-2). What a wonderful picture this is! The ark (a temporary arrangement until the proper ark was made by Aholiab and Bezalel) pictures the Lord Jesus. Giving the law to the people would only result in an endless cycle of making and breaking the tables of stone. But here was a prototype of Someone who could actually keep the law or, better still, fulfill it in every detail (Mt 5:17). According to the apostle Paul, the law was not intended to be the way to moral perfection, but a teacher to show us how desperately we needed a Savior from our many failed attempts to live up to God’s perfect standard. “Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal 3:24). Let’s face it. The Christian life is not difficult to live—it’s impossible! Only one Person can live it to God’s satisfaction. So He provides for us “the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ” (Rom 3:22), then offers to live that life in us.