Laws and Rules
Blessed are the undefiled (blameless) in the way,
Who walk in the law of the Lord!
Blessed are those who keep His testimonies,
Who seek Him with the whole heart!
They also do no iniquity;
They walk in His ways.
You have commanded us
To keep Your precepts diligently.
Oh, that my ways were directed
To keep Your statutes!
Then I would not be ashamed,
When I look into all Your commandments.
I will praise You with uprightness of heart,
When I learn Your righteous judgments.
I will keep Your statutes;
Oh, do not forsake me utterly! – Psalm 119:1-8 NKJV.
In the Czech Republic, police have arrested a family for practicing dentistry without a license and without professional training. The unlicensed clinic was staffed by one family. The son who is 22 years old performed dental procedures after obtaining information from the Internet. His mother, who is a nurse, assisted her son, and the father made prosthetic devices. The police found out about the unlicensed dental clinic after one of the patients sought treatment from a licensed dentist for complications from a procedure. The dentist then contacted the police. (AP 06.19.25)
In the early 1800s in the United States, dentists treated people for a variety of physical ailments. Have a broken arm? Have your arm fixed up while getting a shave. Need a tooth pulled? Go to the barber. Barbers also performed bloodletting which thankfully is no longer killing people. Alabama became the first state to regulate dentists in 1848 and in 1878 a dental register was established which eventually led to required training and licensing for dentists.
We can be thankful today that barbers are not our doctors and dentists! It can easily be seen that the rules and laws that are now in place for doctors, dentists and even for barbers are for our benefit. It is the same for most of the laws that we have today in that they are meant for our protection individually and as a country.
In the Old Testament we can read about many of God’s laws and rules for His people. The most well-known of them is of course the Ten Commandments. In Old Testament times, many of the laws and rules were meant to protect the people from physical maladies such as leprosy.
Are God’s laws still of benefit for us today? Of course they are! The Ten Commandments for example protect us from many problems in life that would only harm us if we were to engage in them. Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount more of how God wants us to behave as human beings. It is obvious that to act as Jesus tells us to act will be beneficial to us. Jesus says Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.”
Psalm 119 speaks to us about the great value of God’s Word which we know contain all the spiritual laws and rules that God wants us to live by. The first two verses of the Psalm say it well:
Blessed are the undefiled (blameless) in the way,
Who walk in the law of the Lord!
Blessed are those who keep His testimonies,
Who seek Him with the whole heart! (Psalm 119:1-2)