Sinclair Ferguson

This people in this land at this time.

They're also, as we discover in the New Testament, they're God's children in a period when they're underage.

Paul puts it in Galatians 3 and 4.

So what do you do with underage children?

I wouldn't have been able to do it.

My wife would have been able to do it, but neither of us sat down with our children when they were three and explained to them how electricity works.

But we did say, whatever you do, don't go and poke that thing into that socket in the wall.

We covered over the sockets in the wall because the easiest way to guard them was to give them negative commands.

And when God carries his children, as the Old Testament scriptures describe it, as he carries them through the desert, it is of course natural that since he's speaking to sinners and to children under age,

But by and large, the Ten Commandments come in a negative form, not because God is a negative God, but because it's the best way for children underage to learn positive principles, which is why when Jesus explains the commandments in Matthew 5, 21 to 48, he says, don't you see that these negative statements enshrine positive commands?

because God wants you to live again.

He wants to recreate you after His image and likeness as He had created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

And at the very heart of that relationship, yes, there were civil dimensions.

Yes, there were liturgical, ceremonial dimensions.

The very heart of that relationship was the Ten Commandments.

Sometimes scholars say, well, the law was the law.

No Old Testament believer thought of the law as anything but one single sheet of paper.

Didn't make these distinctions that theologians have made between moral and ceremonial and civil.

You know, that's not true.

I'll tell you why it's not true.