"You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to Me. Now if you will listen to Me and carefully keep my covenant, you will be my own possessions out of all the peoples, although all the earth is Mine, and you will My kingdom of priests and My holy nation." I.E. - "I will be your God and you will by My people." Exodus 19.4-6.There are a couple of things in the first lesson for this week, but I would like to concentrate only on the section regarding the Ten Commandments. I'm probably going to butcher this thing, so you may have to grant me some liberty. I could go on (and on and on) about this subject but I will try to keep it brief.
As some of you know I write software for a living. When creating a new software package programmers are given specifications on what the software is supposed to do. These "specs" are supposed to be in written form, but usually it a knowledge dump to from one brain to another. It usually goes something like "I want to be able to pick a start date and end date and sell all of my Medicare customers which came in for a heart attack. I want to know how long they were in the hospital. I want to know how much money we got from Medicare. I want to be able to slice and dice 432 different ways...blah blah. We are given rules and parameters and all the "techy" stuff to make this run. But somewhere I usually get to ask the question, "Okay, but what do you want it to look like?" All of the information you want displayed may be correct, but if not displayed in a legible format, in a format you and your users understand - it is all for nothing.
When I look at the Ten Commandments that is what I see. We not only see the table of contents for the rest of the Law, but we get "This is what our relationship is going to look like." This is who we [God's people] will be. When the world looks at Israel and her God, this is what they will see:
1 - A vertical relationship between God and His people
- A people who only worship one God, the True God
- They will not worship any idols (they will worship the Creator not His creations)
- They will not misuse the name of the Lord their God
- They will take a day of rest to focus on me, to gather together in my name
- Great blessing will come from God is covenant kept (to many generations)
- Great judgment will come from is covenant is not kept (to many generations)
2 - A horizontal relationship between God's people and humanity. In other words, this is how they live out this covenant with their God
- They will honor their mother and father (family)
- Will not murder (Jesus took this further in Matthew 5)
- Will not commit adultery (Jesus took this further in Matthew 5)
- Will not steal
- Will not lie
- Will be content with what God gives him and not covet the things of others.
Someone once said that believers should "Reflect back to God the glory that is due Him". As long as the people of Israel stayed in covenant as did obey this commandments, they were going to be what I call "glory reflectors".
So lets fast forward to the 21st century. We no longer are "under the Law", but isn't that what the world should see when they look at us? Us "reflecting back to God the glory that is due Him"? Not only in our relationship to Him (which we now have Christ constantly interceding for us; we also have Christ's righteousness) but has we live out our Christian life in the world?
Obviously our salvation is no longer dependent on us keeping the Ten Commandments, but it is who we as followers of Christ are (or at least who we should be). As we fellowship vertically with God; as He makes us more and more like Him; as our faith grows; as the vertical relationship grows stronger so does the horizontal expression of that relationship.
Well enough for now. Its late. I hope I didn't confuse anyone. I've got some more stuff on the horizontal relationship and the vertical expression and how they work together, but another day.
"He became sin who know no sin so that we might become His righteousness." - 2 Cor 5.21 and the lyrics to Jesus Messiah
"When I call upon Your name the very atmosphere has to change" - lyrics to "Something Happens" which, to quote my friend Audrey Wiley, wrecks my world every time I hear it. In a good way." BTW. It's hard to sing when you are trying to keep from squalling like a baby.....EVERY TIME
Wag is OUT!
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