Reference: Ordinance
Hastings
Morish
This term in the O.T. generally signifies that which God 'ordered' for His people to observe. "They kept his testimonies, and the ordinance that he gave them." Ps 99:7. "Ye are gone away from mine ordinances." Mal 3:7. It is also applied to things in creation: God giveth "the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night." Jer 31:35. David made an ordinance. Ezr 3:10: cf. Ne 10:32. In the N.T. it refers especially to the enactments of the law: "ordinances of divine service," Heb 9:1,10; "blotting out the handwriting of ordinances." Col 2:14. It is also applied to human laws, Ro 13:2; 1Pe 2:13; and to the rules of the moralists. Col 2:20. The directions that Paul had given to the Corinthians are in the A.V. called 'ordinances,' 1Co 11:2; margin, 'traditions.'
See Verses Found in Dictionary
And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests stood in their vestments with trumpets, and the Levite sons of Asaph with their cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the order of David king of Israel.
Also we pledge ourselves to pay yearly a third of a shekel for the service expenses of the house of our God [which are]:
He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept His testimonies and the statutes that He gave them.
Thus says the Lord, Who gives the sun for a light by day and the fixed order of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, Who stirs up the sea's roaring billows or stills the waves when they roar -- "the Lord of hosts is His name:
Even from the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My ordinances and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, How shall we return?
Therefore he who resists and sets himself up against the authorities resists what God has appointed and arranged [in divine order]. And those who resist will bring down judgment upon themselves [receiving the penalty due them].
I appreciate and commend you because you always remember me in everything and keep firm possession of the traditions (the substance of my instructions), just as I have [verbally] passed them on to you.
Having cancelled and blotted out and wiped away the handwriting of the note (bond) with its legal decrees and demands which was in force and stood against us (hostile to us). This [note with its regulations, decrees, and demands] He set aside and cleared completely out of our way by nailing it to [His] cross.
If then you have died with Christ to material ways of looking at things and have escaped from the world's crude and elemental notions and teachings of externalism, why do you live as if you still belong to the world? [Why do you submit to rules and regulations? -- "such as]
Now even the first covenant had its own rules and regulations for divine worship, and it had a sanctuary [but one] of this world.
For [the ceremonies] deal only with clean and unclean meats and drinks and different washings, [mere] external rules and regulations for the body imposed to tide the worshipers over until the time of setting things straight [of reformation, of the complete new order when Christ, the Messiah, shall establish the reality of what these things foreshadow -- "a better covenant].