Number Two

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the father upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” (Exodus 20: 4-6)

This is quite a curious commandment for current times. Some churches have dropped it completely from their Decalogue and others don’t see much application in their own existence. Most people don’t make idols for worship any more, do they? And what of the section that says “any likeness of any thing”; we make likenesses all the time. This is now especially proliferative with the introduction of the “selfie stick”. The command begins “Thou shalt not make”. Does this prohibit artistic sculptures, painting, photography, videography, and other forms of art?

Let’s think back to an event recorded in the Bible. The children of Israel were on their sojourn through the desert and they began complaining against God and Moses about not having bread and water. As punishment God sent fiery serpents among them that bit them and killed many. The people realizing their sin came to Moses begging for God’s forgiveness and interception. Moses went to God with the people’s request and God instructed Moses to make a graven image of a serpent and place it on a pole. When the people looked at the image of the serpent they would live (Numbers 21:5-9). Now did God instruct Moses to break His commandment in making this image of a serpent? James 1:13 reminds us that God cannot be tempted with evil and neither does He tempt us to do evil.

So how does this event jibe with the Law? When reading this command, we realize that the issue is worship: ‘bowing down and serving’. God did not instruct the people to worship the serpent, only to look at it (as an act of faith in God’s healing power). Earlier in the Israelite’s journey through the desert they made a golden calf and were bowing down to it and worshiping it and engaging in all manner of degradation and evil in service to the calf. This ignited God’s anger resulting in severe punishment (Exodus 32:1-8). And what of the brass serpent Moses made? Well, as is human nature we like tangible things and over the years the people began to worship the serpent. So during one of Judah’s times of reformation king Hezekiah destroyed the serpent (2 Kings 18: 1-4). God made a point of not showing any likeness of anything when He delivered the commandments, orally, so as to ensure no one would make the mistake of creating any thing to worship as Him (Deuteronomy 4:14-24).

In our lives we prostrate ourselves and live is service to various things: blocking out hours of our lives for TV programmes, movies and other forms of amusement, spending exorbitant amounts of money on art, music, entertainment, fashion, etc., we worship at the shrines of knowledge, power and influence. Our self-manufactured achievements have become our graven images. The primary focus of our time, finances and physical strength are the ways most of us ‘bow down to and serve’ likenesses of things in our world we’ve created for ourselves.

In this commandment we learn something about the nature of God. He identifies Himself as being jealous. Typically, we identify jealousy as a negative emotion, mostly because we confuse it with envy. Envy is wanting something that belongs to someone else. Jealousy is desiring something that is your own. God created us for the explicit purpose of worshiping Him. All worship belongs to Him because he is the I AM – He has all power, knowledge, wisdom and is all thing to all people all the time. As a result, this is a particularly serious commandment due to the consequences directly associated with it. The consequences transcend generations. That alone ought to inform our choices but along with the consequences there is hope. God always gives us hope. If we choose to obey Him, no matter what happened in the past and what our inherited tendencies are, He will show us mercy.

In Love

Number One

“I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." (Exodus 20:2, 3)

When the average person thinks about the first commandment we automatically go straight to the, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”, leaving out the why. However, I have found the ‘why’ to be the anchor of this command. God has asked us to obey His commands and understanding that He made us to be logical creatures, He knows that in order to obey we need a motive. The purpose for ancient Israel to have only one God is that this is the God who freed them from slavery. He heard their cry in Egypt, chose a messenger, performed great miracles on their behalf and set them free. (Exodus 1-14).

So the question now is, ‘why should I have only one God?’ This is the beauty and the genius of God; the answer remains the same: He is the God that has brought us out of bondage. To this you may ask ‘when was I in bondage? I’ve never been a slave to anyone’. Some of your ancestors may have been, but short of being a victim of modern day slavery (human trafficking) not many of us know what it is to physically be in bondage. However, God transcends the physical into the spiritual and the fact is we are all in spiritual bondage (Romans 6:20). After the fall of our first parents, every human being is under the chains of sin. We know that sin is the breaking of the Law (1 John 3:4) and the consequences for breaking the law is death (Genesis 2:17; Romans 6:23). We are, in ourselves, incapable of doing what is right (Psalms 51:5; Lamentations 5:7). If we of our own strength do something considered right, it remains inadequate (Isaiah 64:6).

But hope came in the form of Jesus Christ (Luke 2:10). God came to earth in human form and lived the perfect life as an example for us (John 15:10), then sacrificed Himself in our behalf (John 10:15-18) to free us from the desire to (Romans 6:18) and the condemnation of (Romans 6:23) sin. Thus, we can now live lives of joy, free from the bondage of being chained to sins that hurt and destroy and with the faith that our debts have been paid (Romans 8:1).

As a result, we can personalize the first commandment to say ‘He is the Lord my God, who freed me from sin and saved me from eternal death, I will have no other gods before Him.’

With Love

The Ten

The Ten Commandments are a vital yet significantly misunderstood set of precepts spoken by the voice of God and written by His own Hand (Exodus 20:1-17; 31:18). Their adherence is emphasized continuously throughout the Bible. They are God’s standing principles that govern His universe. Yet the people on Earth professing to be His followers make a point of deemphasizing their importance. The implementation of these ten Laws are a manifestation of true Love (2 John 1:6). Christ did say, “If ye love Me keep My Commandments” (John 14:15). They are the definition of Love (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:36-40). We cannot keep them without Love (1 Corinthians 13:1-8) and we cannot Love without keeping them.

Jesus summarized the Ten Commandments as Love for God and Love for our fellow men. The fact is if we truly Love God we won’t put anyone or anything in His place. We won’t worship anything that we created. We won’t misuse His name. And we will spend the allotted time He designated with Him. If we love our parents, we’ll honour them in what we do. If we love our fellow men we won’t kill them, we won’t cheat on our spouses or break up a family, we won’t steal and we won’t lie or mislead. And if we genuinely love, envy of other’s successes will not exist in us.

People tend to look at these principles as burdensome, but if they are approached with the correct Spirit it is clear to see that their obedience is the only way to love and be fit for a perfect kingdom. Without them sin would not be a thing (1 John 3:4). If there was no sin, there would be no need for a Savior. Therefore, it behooves us to take a closer look at these Words from God and decipher how they apply to our lives. For the next few posts I’ll focus on each one, identifying some of the ways we drift from there adherence without even noticing.

I pray that the Holy Spirit guides my writing and your reading.

With Love