What did God give the law to Moses on, and what does that show about the law?
God gave the law to Moses on cold stone, not on beautiful lambskin. This shows the law was cold and not cuddly; though it was perfect from God’s point of view, from man’s standpoint it was weak and beggarly because it had no power to help him keep it.
Les points back to Exodus and asks how God gave the Law to Moses. It was not given on something soft or cuddly, like a beautiful piece of lambskin; it was given on cold stone. Stone is not cuddly, it is cold, and it is not something you can just bring to yourself. That picture fits the Law: from God’s point of view it was perfect, the very mind of God, but from man’s point of view it was weak and beggarly. Man could not keep it, and the Law had no power to help him keep it. Paul therefore says, “For I through the law am dead to the law, that I may live unto God.”
And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.