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God dealt with the other ways He knew the people would try to fudge on some of His laws. If they had meat from an unclean animal and “just hated to waste it”, He said this: “You may give it to a foreigner living in your town … or sell it to a foreigner. But you are holy people who belong to the Lord your God.”
He told them to give one-tenth of their harvest to Him. But He knew they’d make excuses later, such as, “The place You’ve chosen for us to worship You is too far away” or “You’ve blessed me so that it will be too costly to transport it all to You!” So He even gave them rules about that, too. Closing every loophole we might try to create!
Loans to other Israelites were to be forgiven the unpaid portion every 7 years. He told them they’d be tempted to consider that the 7th year was coming up and they’d decide not to lend for that very reason. Those were “evil thoughts” in His way of seeing it, and they weren’t to do it.
If a Hebrew sold himself as a slave, the Hebrew slave owner was to set him free after 7 years of service. God even addressed the thoughts of those future slave owners who might not want to free their slaves as He commanded.
He also addressed their future thoughts of offering defective animals to Him, simply because they were firstborn animals.
God knows our thoughts, even before we think them. He knows we are sin-infected, and that we will spend valuable time trying to figure out ways to cheat His laws or get around them. And here He’s told us that the spirit of the Law is as important as the letter of that Law. For in trying to circumvent it, we are in effect rebelling against it. He tells us to simply OBEY.
Father, today I think we rationalize our way around many of the things You have commanded. But You are God and I am not, and I have no authority to rewrite Your word. You seem to have captured it all in the New Testament catchall verse that says, “Anything done without believing it is right is a sin.”
Your Brother In Christ,
Gary Ford
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