The church has historically put the Ten Commandments at the center of its teaching ministry, especially for children and new believers. The church’s most important instruction has been based on them. If we want to know right from wrong, if we want to know how to live the good life, if we want to know how to live in a way that blesses our friends and neighbors, we’d be wise to do things God’s way, which means paying careful attention to the Ten Commandments.ħ. The way to find moral instruction is not by listening to your gut but by listening to God. We are still a society with a moral code.īut, the Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ( Prov. The old swear words may not scandalize us any longer, but now there are other words-offensive slurs and insults-that will quickly put someone out of polite company. As a culture, we may be quite free and liberal when it comes to sex, but we can be absolutely fundamentalist when it comes to the moral claims of the sexual revolution. We live in a paradoxical age where many will say, “Right and wrong is what you decide for yourself,” and yet these same people will rebuke others for violating any number of assumed commands. They are more trustworthy than our intuition or cultural code. All of our doing is only because of what he has first done for us.Ħ. Jesus does not say, “If you obey my commandments, I will love you.” Instead, he first washes the feet of the disciples and then says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” ( John 14:15). Salvation is not the reward for obedience salvation is the reason for obedience. And when you are saved, free, and forgiven, I’m going to give you a new way to live.” The Israelites were an oppressed people, and God said, “I hear your cry. That’s not what happened in the story of the exodus. Some people view Christianity as: God has rules, and if I follow the rules, God will love me and save me. They were not given so that we could earn our salvation. They are rules for a free people to stay free.ĥ. The Ten Commandments are not instructions on how to get out of Egypt. When you drive on a switchback on a mountain pass, do you curse the guard rails that keep you from plunging to an untimely death? No, someone put them there at great expense, and for our good, that we may travel about freely and safely. You wouldn’t be able to drive your car to the grocery store without laws. People slow down when driving by schools. Maybe there are some anarchists out there who think, “The world would be a better place without any traffic laws.” A few of us drive as if that were so! But even if you get impatient when you’re at a red light, try to zoom through the yellow, and turn left on a very stale pink-overall, aren’t you glad that there is some semblance of law and order? People stop and go. The Ten Commandments are not prison bars, but traffic laws. God is not trying to crush us with red tape and regulations. His laws, 1 John 5:3 tells us, are not burdensome. We forget that God means to give us abundant life ( John 10:10) and true freedom ( John 8:32). We too often think of the Ten Commandments as constraining us-as if God’s ways will keep us in servitude and from realizing our dreams and reaching our potential. They don’t strip our freedom, but instead provide it. We are God’s people, set apart to live according to God’s ways.Ĥ. Of course, we aren’t always the holy people we should be, but that’s what he has called us to be. We must be prepared to stand alone, to look different, and to have rules the world doesn’t understand. We can’t disdain the law without disrespecting the Lawgiver.Īs Christians, we are a kingdom of priests and a holy nation ( 1 Pet. They say something about his honor, his worth, and his majesty. The commandments not only show us what God wants they show us what God is like. We must think about that before we say, “I don’t care for laws,” or before we bristle at the thought of do’s and don’ts. The law is an expression of the Lawgiver’s heart and character. 4:13 10:4), literally means “ten words.” This is why Exodus 20 is often referred to as the Decalogue, deka being the Greek word for “ten” and logos meaning “word.” These are the Ten Words that God gave the Israelites at Mount Sinai-and, I would argue, the Ten Words that God wants all of us to follow. The Hebrew expression, which occurs three times in the Old Testament ( Ex. Oddly enough, they are never actually called the Ten Commandments. Moses never actually refers to them as the “ten commandments.”Įxodus 20:1-2 introduces one of the most famous sections in the Bible-indeed, one of the most important pieces of religious literature in the whole world-the Ten Commandments.
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