Stone Tablets & Wooden Boxes | Sunday, February 13, 2022

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. (Genesis 1:1–4)

When the world dissolves into chaos and confusion, God remains the Creator who speaks order out of the void—and He gives His people His word to keep them steadfast.

A Culture of Chaos and Confusion

The other day I was driving my two older kids somewhere, and they were jokingly singing the theme song to Thomas the Tank Engine. If you've had kids in the last fifteen years, you know the show—little tank engines with faces who are always causing what the railroad manager, Sir Topham Hatt, calls "chaos and confusion." With that phrase stuck in my head, I found myself thinking about how our society at this cultural moment is plagued by all kinds of chaos and confusion.

I think you would probably agree that we are living in a time of significant chaos and confusion. The chaotic events around us and the inconsistent, confusing narratives we are constantly bombarded with through corporate and social media leave everything feeling unsettled. One person I follow on Twitter has been posting short interviews with homeless individuals in San Francisco, and you cannot watch them without being blown away by the confused and chaotic state of our society and the way many of our leaders run their municipalities.

That is only one window into the chaos. My daughters are in fourth and sixth grade at a good charter school, and they've told me about classmates—ten and twelve years old—who are confused about their identity and sexuality. Barna, a Christian research organization, just released data showing that four in ten of those born after 2000—Generation Z—now identify as LGBTQ, and thirty percent of millennial Christians do as well. I read an article this week I couldn't even finish, because it documented a push in the Western world to add "P" for pedophilia to LGBTQ, treating it as a sexual identity people are born with.

A Broken World and a Ruling Philosophy

This doesn't even take into account other issues. Inflation set another record this month, again at a forty-year high—the average American worker is paying about $250 more a month, and far more for many. Some economists see three or four economic bubbles bursting within the next thirty-six months. The national debt has crossed $30 trillion, about 125 percent of GDP, and with unfunded liabilities it rises to about $86.5 trillion. And I haven't even mentioned geopolitical tensions with Asia, Russia, and the Middle East, or COVID and the political response to it. We are living in confusing times.

In our culture you are no longer permitted to say things that seem self-evidently true—that male and female are binary realities, that sex and gender are determined by biology, or that some lifestyles are right and some wrong. You're not supposed to intervene when mobs of thieves ransack a store in broad daylight while security consigns itself to "observe and report."

Why are these things happening? The simple answer is that we live in a broken and fallen world, where chaos and confusion are normative—especially when there is no governing standard. For the better part of the last sixty to seventy years, we have had a systematic deconstruction of the governing standards of the Western world. Philosophically, this is the expected outcome of a nihilistic postmodernism, the ruling philosophy of the day, which questions all the overarching stories—the metanarratives—of society and all propositional, objective truth claims.

Postmodernism and Meaninglessness

In her book Managing Image Collections, Margaret Hedstrom writes: "The postmodern stance is one of doubtfulness, of trusting nothing at face value... As a philosophy, postmodernism rejects concepts of rationality, objectivity, and universal truth. Instead, postmodernism emphasizes the diversity of human experience and multiplicity of perspectives." In other words, nothing is ultimately right, wrong, true, good, beautiful, or abhorrent—everything is open to interpretation. You can have your truth, and I can have mine.

I first began studying this in the early 2000s when I read The Universe Next Door by James Sire. Back then, the writers warning about postmodernism sounded like doom-and-gloom prophets predicting an apocalypse, and you might have thought these ideas would never escape the university. Looking back, a great deal of what they predicted twenty-five and thirty years ago has come to pass and is taking hold of our culture. Chaos and confusion in postmodernism is a feature, not a bug—it is what you ultimately arrive at when you trace its philosophy to its core.

The ultimate end of postmodernism is a nihilistic meaninglessness—nothing has value or purpose other than to exist, and even existence begins to be questioned. Your younger peers and your kids in grade school are being bombarded with this thinking, which teaches them to question everything and be sure of nothing. You can't be sure you're a man, the culture says, because you have male biology; you can't be sure you're a woman because not all women menstruate. You may not be real; the world may be a simulation. The question comes to anyone who believes in objective truth: "Who are you to say you're right and someone else is wrong?" This destabilized, chaotic thinking is even beginning to infect the hard sciences—the STEM fields.

God Brings Order Out of Chaos

Now you may be wondering what all of this has to do with Deuteronomy 10. More than you might realize. Look back at the first chapter of the Bible. These opening words are the grand narrative of Scripture—God's self-revelation of His nature and His will. And the most fundamental thing God reveals about Himself here is this: God is the Creator who brings order out of chaos.

When God finished His creative work in Genesis 1, this creation that began formless, void, and dark—a chaotic mishmash of nothingness—had been ordered by Him, and He declared it "very good." Then in Genesis 3, that ordered creation is brought back into chaos through sin, and the whole world falls under the curse. But because God is by His very nature the Creator who brings order out of chaos, He comes back in to reorder what sin has disrupted. This is the consistent story of both Testaments: sin always brings chaos, and God restores chaos to order.

This is good news, because our world is in the midst of—and on the verge of even greater—chaos. God is the one who reorders chaos at the macro level of the whole world, and at the micro level of our own lives. We don't actually like chaos; we want order, even when we can't make it a reality in a fallen world. If you've studied physics, the second law of thermodynamics describes entropy—everything left to itself moves from order to chaos. Clean a child's room and watch how quickly entropy takes over. But God is the Creator who brings order out of chaos.

"And God Said": The Power of His Word

What does God always do to bring order out of chaos? Consistently in Scripture, we read the words "and God said." His word is powerful. Into the formless, void, dark world He speaks—"Let there be light," "Let there be land," "Let there be sky"—and His voice reassembles chaos into order. The word of God brings order out of chaos.

John illustrates this in the opening of his Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word"—the Greek logos—"and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made." And John 1:14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory." So the Gospel of John is the culmination of God's ultimate plan of restoration.

To set the stage for the gospel, God calls Israel out of the chaos of Egypt and gives them His word—His law—at Mount Sinai. And immediately after receiving it, Israel breaks it (Exodus 19–20). God reorders by His word; sin brings chaos through idolatry; God works again by His word. This is the back-and-forth all through Exodus and Numbers.

Stone Tablets and Wooden Boxes

This brings us to Deuteronomy 10. Moses says:

At that time the LORD said to me, "Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain and make yourself an ark of wood. And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke; and you shall put them in the ark." So I made an ark of acacia wood, hewed two tablets of stone like the first... and He wrote on the tablets according to the first writing, the Ten Commandments... and I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark which I had made; and there they are, just as the LORD commanded me. (Deuteronomy 10:1–5)

Moses is reminding the children of Israel of what happened some thirty-eight to forty years earlier. When they first received the law in Exodus 19–20, they fell into idolatry, and Moses broke the first tablets. Now God provides new tablets, and Moses places them in this box of acacia wood overlaid with gold—the ark of the covenant. The word of God that brings order out of chaos is given to His people and placed in the ark.

This is a profound theological and philosophical concept, and it is self-evidently true: there is no order without intelligible thought or word—the logos. This world is chaotic because of sin, and there is no way to bring order out of it without intelligible word spoken into it. Look around at all humanity has built, created in God's image with His procreative power. How? By intelligible word and thought—by communicating and working together. When you confuse language or subvert objective truth, as at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, society dissolves into confusion very quickly. The thing they were building fell apart the moment their language was confused.

Etched in Stone, Placed at the Center

Why did God etch His word on stone rather than on the scrolls of papyrus they already had? Because that which is etched in stone is fixed, steadfast, enduring, and unchangeable. The law that would govern God's people as they entered the promised land was to be uneditable. And notice that Moses places it in this gold-overlaid box, which would eventually rest in a room within a room—the Holy of Holies—at the center of the tabernacle and temple, central to everything in Israel's national life. The name Israel means "governed of God." His written word, the logos, kept them ordered in a chaotic world.

Israel could not venture in to possess the promised land until they possessed God's law; they had to have it in their midst to keep them ordered. And as the rest of the Old Testament shows, they would remain in the blessed land only as long as they held to God's law. Whenever they drifted from God's standard, they slid into chaos—and God would send a prophet to call them back to His word. That is the whole point of this story: the importance of God's word in maintaining order and blessing.

For Your Good

Look at Deuteronomy 10:12:

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD and His statutes which I command you today for your good?

Underline those words: for your good. God's word is given to us for our good. Whenever Israel departed from the objective standard of God's truth—and whenever we do—chaos and confusion ensue.

You may object: not everyone has the Bible or the Ten Commandments, yet many societies without them have been fairly ordered. That is true, and it is because every person has some of God's law imprinted on the heart. Paul writes in Romans 2:14–15 that when Gentiles, who do not have the law, "by nature do the things in the law... they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness." This is what C.S. Lewis is talking about in Mere Christianity. Whether God's law is etched on stone or etched on the heart, we all have it.

Chaos: The Inevitable Consequence

So what happens when a people—Israel with the tablets, or any culture with the law written on their hearts—departs from God's law? Paul answers in Romans 1:18–32:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness... because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God... Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts... who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator... For this reason God gave them up to vile passions... being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness... violent, proud, boasters... who, knowing the righteous judgment of God... not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

What is the point of that passage? Simply this: chaos is the inevitable consequence of departing from God's law—whether it is written on tablets of stone or on the tablets of our hearts. Here is the litmus test. Look around our culture this week and see if you find these things—sexual immorality, covetousness, malice, envy, strife, deceit, gossip, violence, pride, boasting, disobedience, untrustworthiness. They are the indications that we have left what is true and good. Postmodernism has called all of it into question as merely "your truth," and as a result our culture is drifting toward chaos.

Blessing Belongs to Those Who Walk in His Law

If turning away from God's word leads to chaos, what is the consequence of turning to it? David says in Psalm 1:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly... but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season... and whatever he does shall prosper.

Let me be clear as I close: you and I cannot make ourselves perfect, or perfect the world, by adhering to God's law. All of this ultimately points to something far greater that would come later through the gospel. The law will not perfect us before a holy God, and it will not bring about a perfect world. But walking in God's law does result in blessing. Blessing and prosperity belong to those who walk in God's law.

Consider what God says to Joshua as he prepares to lead Israel into the promised land:

Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night... For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. (Joshua 1:7–8)

It could not be clearer. The law will not perfect you before a holy God, but God blesses and prospers and gives great success to those who courageously walk in it.

Courage to Stand on God's Word

The ultimate story of Scripture is that God, in Christ Jesus and by His Spirit, works in us to will and to do what is pleasing to Him. Those who stay strong with God's word and hide it in their hearts will reject sin, and Scripture says righteousness exalts a nation. Because our culture is so quickly going against what the Scriptures teach, it is going to take courage for the people of God to stand on the word of God—to say that certain ways of thinking and acting in our culture are simply wrong and unrighteous, and to walk instead in a way that pleases God.

If we want to see order and blessing restored in any way, it will take the people of God standing on the word of God and living it out in their own lives. One of the dangers is when Christians try only to legislate morality to other people, without letting God's word reform their own thinking, speaking, and actions. God wants us to walk by example, so that others will see us transformed and see the blessing and order that results. That is my prayer as we continue through the Scriptures together—that God would use His word to transform us by the renewing of our minds.

Closing Prayer

Father, I pray that You would speak these things to our hearts, help us to hide Your word in our hearts, and that You would transform us so that we would be a light to a world that is in total chaos and confusion. Lord, help us to be conduits through which Your good news, Your gospel, Your word flows to other people. Work in and through us, Your church, we pray. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.