Read for This Week’s Study: Heb. 12:21; Rom. 7:8–13; Job 24:14, 15; Exod. 16:4–30; Heb. 8:10, 10:16; Rom. 13:8–10.

Memory Text:

“For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King; He will save us” (Isaiah 33:22, NKJV).

Key Thought: God’s law is an inseparable part of the whole Bible, Old and New Testament. It is also an expression of His love. And so, when we love, we reveal the fullness and beauty of God’s law.

As Seventh-day Adventists, we often hear the idea that the law is a transcript of God’s character. (If so, then because God doesn’t change, the law—which reveals His character—shouldn’t change either.) What, though, does that mean, this idea that the law is an expression of God’s character?Suppose you lived in a land with a king whose word was law. (“The state, that’s me” one French king famously said.) Now, suppose the king issued laws that were repressive, nasty, hateful, unfair, discriminatory, and so forth. Would not those laws be a good representation of the kind of person the king was; would they not reveal his character?

Think through some of history’s worst despots. How did the laws they passed reveal what kind of people they were?

In this sense, the law reveals the character of the lawgiver. What, then, does God’s law reveal about God? When we understand God’s law as a hedge, a protection, something created for us, for our own good, then we come to understand more about what God is like.

This week we’ll take a look at the law and, by default, the Lawgiver.

Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, February 11.

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