What happened to the Ten Commandments?

In the Old Testament account found at Exodus 20: 1 – 17, we are told that Moses in a fit of righteous anger threw them down and broke them, but the narrative that follows is somewhat more interesting.

Moses spent 40 days up in the mountains with the Lord presumably talking, learning and ultimately being given the two stone tablets written by the Lord containing the rules that God expected the people of Israel to follow. When he returned, he encountered the people of Israel dancing around a huge calf they had made of solid gold and worshipping it.

The rest is history, but Moses returned up the mountain and the Lord gave him two new tablets which ultimately ended up in the famous Ark of the Covenant. However, the interesting part of this process and one which is seldom connected, was the change in the attitude of the Lord towards his people and what he subsequently required of them when Moses returned. No longer were they just to follow ten straight forward commandments, now they would have to live with 613 separate laws and regulations laid out in what became known as the Mosaic covenant (see the book of Deuteronomy), and by any measure things were started looking a lot more challenging!

Like so many things in our lives and our walk with God, we reject the simple instructions he provides to guide us and end up navigating through our own private but unexpected minefield!

In John 14: 15 we are told Jesus said: “If you love Me, keep My commandments.”

The question is;

Why do we make this so hard on ourselves?

I wonder if the people of Israel thought the same thing when the laws in Deuteronomy were dropped upon them? If they realised that the golden calf perhaps wasn’t their finest moment and like all of us wished they’d stayed on the ‘straight and narrow’ from the start and been patient?😊