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Does God’s Law Ever Change?

All laws are an extension of the lawgiver’s character. God’s character never changes, therefore his Law has always existed and can never change.

Yet, we have God telling Noah that he can eat animals and telling Moses to set up a national priesthood for Israel and restricting all sacrificial worship to a single location.

Clearly something changed. What gives?

House Rules

Your mother likes a clean house and she has rules to keep it that way: Take your muddy boots off before you come inside. Don’t eat on the sofa. If she lived in the city, her instructions might include leaving your raincoat and umbrella by the front door. If she lived near a river in the wilderness, she might say to clean your fish and game outside and away from the house and not to leave trash where it might attract bears.

These are your mother’s house rules, but, as you can see, the specific rules she chooses to spell out might be different, depending on circumstances. If she replaces her wood burning stove with a gas fireplace, some of the rules are going to change because the things that the rules governed have changed.

But Mom’s character hasn’t changed, only the circumstances into which her character is expressed have changed. The specific rules she spells out are instructions for aligning your actions with her character in a specific time and place–her torah–so they might shift somewhat over time. However, Mom’s character dictates that many of those rules are going to be constant across all circumstances. Don’t spit on the floor. Say please and thank you.

God’s Law Is an Expression of God’s Character

God’s Law and instructions are similar. The rules he gave Moses are an expression of God’s character in a specific set of circumstances. If God gave them today, they might talk about coveting your neighbor’s car instead of his donkey. That doesn’t mean that his Law changes, only that how it was expressed might have been different if it had been given at a different time, to different people.

This is confusing in part because God’s character is too huge, too complex to explain to us in a list of rules, so we have a list of rules, plus lots of stories of how he has interacted with people over time. One thing we can learn by reading the stories in the Bible is that the relationship between man and God requires a priesthood. We are tainted by sin and direct exposure to his presence would destroy us, so we appoint mediators, build altars, and offer sacrifices to facilitate approaching him. (How exactly sacrifices and priests accomplish that is another topic.)

Changing Covenants and Priests

More at:  http://www.americantorah.com/2020/08/04/does-gods-law-ever-change/ 
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Update.

I had figured out what was wrong with my van, and found a reasonable mechanic to install the new belt.  I tried to get the belt at O'Reilly"s, but their computers were down.  That puts the whole store at a loss, they don't even have books to look up the part number or price any more.  They were dead in the water.  Fortunately there is one other parts house here in Navasota, so it was NAPA to the rescue.

More problems with technology.  Both my computers, desktop and laptop, are acting up and won't be friends with OpenLiveWriter, so I am doing this through Blogger and it is very difficult for me.

Finally getting used to my Smart phone for texting, but it is still difficult to answer the phone.  I can swipe to the next county and it still doesn't answer the call.  Why couldn't it be a simple button, like my old phone?

We three Sabbath-keeping residents here at the senior apartments had our usual Friday morning study ready for the Sabbath School.  We always enjoy that, learn new things, and have some laughs too.  Now that my van is fixed I have been able to go to the little grocery store, the thrift shop, and drive Sherry and me to the church for the service the next day.