What three kinds of law did God give on Mount Sinai?

On Mount Sinai God gave Moses: 1) The Moral Law, 2) The Ceremonial Law, and 3) The Political Law.

1. The Moral Law is the same law which he wrote in man´s heart at creation. Now he gave it written on two stone tablets in the form of Ten Commandments. Everything in these commandments that is Moral Law pertains to us and all people.
   

   Deut. 4:13: He declared to you his covenant, which He commanded you to perform, even ten commandments, and He wrote them upon two tables of stone.




2. The Ceremonial Laws regulated the religious practices and certain other practices of the Israelites. In a symbolical way they pointed to the promised Savior, who became man as a member of this nation.
   
   By means of these laws God kept Israel apart from the pagan nations during the Old Testament time and taught the Israelites to wait for the coming Savior. Now that the Savior has come, the Ceremonial Law is no longer in force. Our conscience is free in regard to its observance.
   
   

   Col.2:16-17: Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.

   
   
   When someone is approaching us from behind a building, we first see his shadow and try to determine from the shadow who the person is. But when the person emerges from behind the building, we no longer concentrate on the shadow, but on the person himself. The Ceremonial Law was like a shadow of Jesus. The Old Testament believers looked for Jesus in this law because he himself had not yet come. But now that he has come, we can believe in him directly without the aid of the Ceremonial Law.
   
   

   Heb. 8:13: A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.




3. The Political Law prescribed how the people of Israel were to be governed during the Old Testament time. Their ruler was God himself (theocracy, God-rule), and this theocracy was a type of Christ´s spiritual kingdom during the New Testament time.
   

   
   1 Sam.12:12: The Lord your God was your king.
   
   Gen. 49:10: The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.