Good Boundaries - Caleb Dawson

Over the past few days and weeks, we have spent a lot of time with the people of Israel and there are a few things that I have been dwelling on I’d like to share one of them with you.

God gave them a LOT of rules, laws and statutes to follow... Being honest with you, a lot of these rules seemed pretty pointless, unnecessary and restrictive to me, but then I considered the fact that this massive group of people had no government, no justice system, no national health service and no scriptures or religious institutions.

You could say that they were a blank slate, apart from the fact that they weren’t... They had been living in slavery in Egypt and Egypt worshiped many “gods”, their governance and laws were wildly unfair (unfair is an understatement) towards the people of Israel. The people of Israel were beaten into submission and oppressed for many generations, so you can only imagine the level of anger, distrust, low self-worth and warped ideas of what was the “norm”.

This vast nation of people, needed direction and they needed boundaries, and so the laws that God gave them actually had the potential to provide security, freedom and prosperity!! We get little glimpses of this but more often we see their rebellion which didn’t do anyone any favours...

I will leave it there as I have said a lot!! But let’s allow the Holy Spirit to teach us and challenge us through this, as we may find some similarities between the people of Israel and our selves, in the way we relate to God!