Understanding God’s Law – The Ten Commandments (1-3)
The 10 Commandments explained! As previously mentioned (Link to Previous Post), God's Law is love. The 10 Commandments further explain the 2 Great Commandments we went through in our previous installment. The question that many have now is are we still supposed to follow God's Law? Has the Law been nailed to the cross as some now claim? Does this mean we can we now commit idolatry? What is the purpose of these laws?
Let's go through the foundational Ten Commandments and get just a small taste of the loving character of our Father in Heaven. Now, you may think you have heard them already, but I bet many of you have never heard the actual Ten Commandments. That’s because most of our churches have erased over half of what was actually commanded. Why? So they could continue in their spiritual adultery without being challenged. Some church denominations have removed entire Commandments like the second commandment and then shuffled the numbers around and split some Commandments up so that they can still add up to the number 10. So to eliminate all confusion, let's read the actual Ten Commandments straight from the original source so that no one can pull the wool over eyes.
The actual Ten Commandments are found in Exodus chapter 20. This was when God was speaking down from the fires on top of Mount Sinai with his own mouth. This was before he carved it in stone where he speaks the Ten Commandments.
The first commandment:
“I am THE LORD thy God which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage thou shall have no other gods before me.”
So, in this first commandment, we see that God is identifying himself specifically as “Jehovah thy Elohim” in the original Hebrew. The word you see in English, capital L.O.R.D. all capital letters in your bibles is actually the The Tetragrammaton, or the Tetragram. This is the four-letter Hebrew theonym יהוה, the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left, are pronounced “yodh, he, waw, and he” and as a single word is often pronounced “Yahweh.” Some folks add the vowel sounds and it comes out Yehovah. We change the Y to a J, probably as a result of early Germanic translations where they pronounce the letter J like the letter Y. The name may be derived from a verb that means "to be", "to exist", "to cause to become", or "to come to pass." So, anytime you see the all capital letters capital LORD in the Bible, this is actually the name of God Jehovah in the original text.
So here in his first commandment, God is telling us his name so that we don't get Him mixed up with the other gods. He is making it clear that He is not just one of the generic one size fits all type gods but, is literally saying, I am Jehovah your God, the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt and saved you from being slaves, you shall have no other gods before me. Now what does this “Before Me” mean? Is God saying that we have to worship Him first and then after that we can worship other gods as long as it's not before we worship Him? No, no, no, no, no! The word before me in the Hebrew is “Panim” which means face or in the face of in the presence of.
What Yehovah/Yahweh is actually saying here is I am Jehovah your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt. Now that's being very specific and emphatically saying that you shall have no other gods in my face or in front of me! I don't want you to bring any other gods in my presence. So it’s beyond clear that our Father takes his relationship with his people very seriously. In fact, he compares his relationship with his people to that of a marriage. He considers his people to be his bride and he wants his bride to love him and only him alone. He doesn't want us running around with any of the other gods on the block. We are special to him and he is offering to take very good care of us if we choose to stay by his side.
So, to recap, the author of the first commandment clearly identifies himself as Jehovah the God who brought the people of Israel out of Egypt and he said that he wants us to now commit to him and only him. We're not to run around with any other gods anymore. Out of deep love and compassion for us, he rescued us from the hands of Pharaoh and is telling us he wants us to be faithful to him now. So, how are we to be faithful to him? For that, we need to move on to the second commandment:
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in 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 thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers 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 KJV
Now, if this commandment sounds new to you, that is because many churches have neglected to tell you this. This is straight from Exodus chapter 20 where God Almighty first speaks the Ten Commandments to the nation of Israel from the fire on top of Mount Sinai with his own voice. It was spoken so loud from the mountain that the million-and-a-half people who witnessed it actually thought they were gonna die because the ground shook so bad. This same commandment was later reiterated when God Himself carved it into stone with his own finger. So who are we to pretend like this commandment doesn't exist. It doesn't really matter what excuse any church may have for removing this law from their edited Ten Commandments tablets that they proudly display in their church or on their front lawn? God Almighty has spoken clearly and now we need to choose whether we're gonna follow him or follow some guy in a robe who thinks he knows better.
In this commandment, our Father is telling us he doesn't want any objects, whether statues, paintings, icons, or otherwise mixed up with his worship! He wants us to look to him and him alone, when we worship. He wants us to leave our paganism aside and to embrace his true nature without polluting it with our modified Sun god worship accessories. He says here that he is a jealous God in the same way that a loving husband is jealous of his wife wanting her to be loyal. He forbids his bride from hanging on to her old boyfriends picture. In the same way, our father doesn't want us to remember our old pagan worship days and he doesn't want us to bringing our old pagan worship accessories and keepsakes into his house. If we are going to love him, then we need to be faithful to him.
So, what's this second part of the commandment where it says for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the father's upon the children on the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and showing mercy to the thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandments? Here, He’s telling us here that if we compromise and let our old pagan ways get mixed in with his worship, there’s a very real probability that we're gonna pass that “iniquity” down through our kids and grandkids down to the third or fourth generation and we really don't want to be responsible for that. What we don’t want to do is to pass on our idolatry down through the generations of our family. We need to get rid of and end it now!
Now, some people think this commandment is a ban on things like stuffed animals and pictures of things hanging on the walls. That’s why we need to read each of these Commandments all the way through in their full context if we're gonna understand what they're actually communicating. We can try to be sticklers on individual words, but remember that these words are all given for the purpose of communicating to us how to love our God. We need to read the whole commandment, not just the first part of it if we're going to truly follow it. This commandment tells us not to make or use carved objects or images in our worship of him because that would constitute idolatry. So remember, our Father has made it very clear that we're not to add or subtract anything from any of these Commandments.
The third commandment maybe the most widely misunderstood:
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” Exodus 20:7 KJV
First of all, this has nothing to do with cussing! That being said, we shouldn't run around being ugly and rude to sweet little old church ladies with our colorful vocabularies either. Trust me, I served in the United States Navy and as a result, my command of the King’s English, in times past, could blister the paint off the bulkheads. But, that's really not what this is talking about. This is making a much more important point. I mean, do you really think that commandment number three is worried about cussing? Really?? Murder is number six and, if we’re to believe what it says about the seriousness associated with “taking the Lord’s name in vain” i.e., cussing as unforgivable, that’s what that phrase about not holding someone “guiltless” implies. How could senselessly taking another person’s life be forgivable when simply cussing is not?
No, this is talking about people that run around who like to tell folks to do something in the name of God when they shouldn’t because either one, they don’t have the authority to do so and/or two, God didn’t tell them to do it! In other words, this one is especially for those who claim some sort of religious authority over others! Pastors, deacons, elders, and you too political leaders. What God is saying here is that if we take his name, we better be careful to correctly represent his character and not to dirty his reputation. We better not claim his name unless we are dead serious about being ambassadors of his true loving character.
And while this commandment is largely directed at those who claim religious authority, it can also be violated by virtually anyone calling themselves a follower of who represents “Yahweh, Yeshua and the Ruach HaKodesh” (God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) falsely. Put another way, you can’t use His name to gain status (religious or otherwise) in the sight of men. Before you claim the Lord told you something or worse yet, before you tell others what they ought to do in God’s name, you better darn well be sure that it was actually God telling you to do or say it before your bring his name into the matter. You know, a big reason why so many people decided that hey want nothing to do with God is because they saw someone who claimed to represent God who did not conduct themselves in the true loving righteousness.
Sadly, lawless, unloving, fake, modern Christianity has largely misrepresented God's true righteous and loving character and those loud hypocritical individuals who have turned people away from God by using his name falsely will have their blood on their hands come the judgment. If we take his name, we better represent his patience, love and holy righteousness because people are watching. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. This should be a sober reminder for anyone who claims his holy name for he will hold us accountable.
All right now, I think that this is a good summary of the first three commandments, in our next installment, we’ll look at commandments four through ten.
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