The Writings

Question: We read that "When the LORD finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18). So where are those tablets now? If God wrote them aren't they important?

Answer: Yes, there are important. God wrote and also commands men to write. “Writings by the command of the eternal God” (Rom 16:26).

When we read the Scriptures, we are reading words that were commanded to be written down by God. 

The Bible is a special book. The revelation that God wants us to know and understand.

Moses was asked several times by the Lord to write. However, Moses did not write all of the first five books because God wrote some of it too. 

One of the first acts we see God do once the Israelites are out of Egypt is write. God is a writer! He wrote with his own hand on two tablets of stone.

Jesus is also a writer; we only get a small glimpse of Jesus writing but write he did: “Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger” (John 8:6) and “Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground” (John 8:8).

So, we get these small windows to look through to see both Yahweh and Jesus writing.

Writing has a high priority in proclaiming the message of faith in God.

God told Habakkuk “Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it” (Hab 2:2). 

We notice that Habakkuk was to write it plainly, so that it could be understood. God wants us to study and understand what has been written.

In times when people are placing the subjective thoughts and whims of men before the objective Word of God, we need to stand strong on the words that God has commanded should be written for our instruction: “For everything that was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope” (Rom 15:4).

The moment that we favour men’s thoughts over what is written in the Scriptures we are heading for the “Cape of No Hope”. Because men’s thoughts change like the wind, but God’s Word stands fast.

There is great hope in the Scriptures if we read them wisely with the understanding that the Holy Spirit gives us. That’s why the Lord told men to write; and if the Lord told men to write, that means that the Lord wants us to read those words.

“Therefore write down the things you have seen, and the things that are, and the things that will happen after this” (Rev 1:19). John wrote of the book of Revelation at the Lord’s command that we may have prophetic writings that are a road map to understand what’s happening in the troubled world in which we live.

We read of God’s command to write quite a number of times, Jeremiah was told, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you’” (Jer 30:2).

So we pray that we read them with the same inspiration with which they were written.“Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith—to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen” (Rom 16:25–27). 

In answer to "where are those tablets now?" The Apostle Paul explains, "It is clear that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" (2 Cor 3:3).

The letters engraved by the finger of God on stone, brought bad news to the world, for we cannot keep the law. "The ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone" (2 Cor 3:7).

God wrote so that we might know our sinful condition. "I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet'” (Rom 7:7).

But Christ has removed what was our condemnation for we cannot keep the law. 

"Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross" (Col 2:14).