Psalm 119:152 Your Statutes

Long ago I learned from your statutes
that you established them to last forever.
Psalm 119:152

Whose statutes are they?

The Jews liked to refer to "The Law of Moses", as though the Ten Commandments and the rest of the laws of the "Mosaic Covenant" were written by Moses himself.

But of course they weren't. The Lord established a covenant with Israel, with Moses as the nation's representative. And then God laid out the Law through Moses.

The scribes and teachers and lawyers, the Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes, the rabbis and the Sanhedrin - they took God's statutes and endlessly dissected them and debated over them. They attached all sorts of specifications and speculations to them. They laid out punishments and loopholes. And they piled all their words together with God's statutes, so they could claim it all as their own.

Throughout the history of the church, theologians and church leaders have gone after the scriptures with doctrinal knitting needles, tying knots in God's words and weaving the Word into a garment of their own making. They've argued with each other for centuries over every part of their patterns. Like wolves in sheep's clothing they prey on their flock, forcing them to wear a fleece of their own design.

God's people throughout the centuries have failed to learn the most important thing from our study of the statutes: They are God's, and they are unchanging because He is unchanging. No matter how much we try to put words into His mouth, the Word is His.