Hello my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
If you were given the authority to make the rules in the city where you live… the rules by which everyone was expected to live, rules which would create a safe and enjoyable place to live… I wonder what those rules would be that you would impose on the people?
This week we’ve been looking together at the famous 10 Commandments, found in the Bible in Exodus 20. We’re doing so as we stand amidst a huge crowd of 1 million people, at the foot of Mount Sinai, in the Saudi Arabian desert, and we are listening to the voice of God speak these Commandments for the first time in history, about 3500 years ago! Three questions which are often asked that deserve an answer here…
1. Why does God think He has the right and authority to give these 10 Commandments to humanity?
2. Are they equally applicable to all peoples in all cultures and all generations?
3. And what if we choose to ignore these ‘Commandments’?
Well, those are fair questions aren’t they? And I believe they are fairly easy to answer:
First, because God is the Creator of the universe, including the human race, God is the only One who has the authority and the right to proclaim the rules by which He has designed humanity to function properly.
Second, because God’s design of humanity is global, all humanity is the same… in every people group of the world and every generation, then YES God’s Commandments are equally applicable to all human beings.
Third, the evidence of what happens when a person, a marriage, a family, a community, a nation disregards or rejects or re-defines these Commandments from God is obvious! It is everywhere, in all places where people live. It is wickedness and evil. That’s why we have prisons and police and courtrooms!!
So, let’s rejoin the 1 million people at Mount Sinai as God is ready to speak again. Moses recorded it for us in Exodus 20:13. “You shall not murder.”
Oh my, only four words. It’s very clear isn’t it? It applies to all human beings of all ages in every society and culture of the world, in every generation. No exceptions. God is making a very clear, obvious statement. EVERY LIFE MATTERS TO GOD! Why? Because every life exists by God’s Desire & Design. No human being creates itself, God is the author of life. No human life came into existence by mistake, God is the author of life. No human being is more or less valuable than any other human being, because God made every human life equal in value to HIM, and God has created us in His image, and God LOVES every human life!
All human lives BEGIN life at the same God appointed moment…we call it CONCEPTION! At that moment a tiny human body begins to develop and inside that tiny body God places a unique human soul & spirit. From that moment that PERSON experiences human LIFE, until the moment of DEATH, which is the separation of their God created soul & spirit from their God created body. The forcible death of a person by another person is murder.
Sadly, this commandment was broken in the very first human family. Adam & Eve had three sons… Cain, Able and Seth. In deep sibling rivalry, Cain killed his brother Abel. From that day to the present, our human race has violently broken this commandment in every imaginable way, all along the human life journey. From the slaughter of defenseless babies while they are still in the womb of their mother, through all ages of life, to the killing of elderly people, humanity everyday rejects God and God’s value of human life, and proves its wickedness by murdering each other! Few things wound the human soul more deeply than the murder of a friend.
God spoke again to this huge gathering of people… “You shall not commit adultery.” (Ex. 20:13) Only five words, but oh so powerful. While murder kills the human body, adultery kills the human soul! The mind and heart of an adultery victim never fully recover from the experience of rejection, abandonment, shame, humiliation resulting from the adultery which broke the integrity of their love relationship. Because adultery is an epidemic in far too many places, my guess is no matter who you are or where you live, you know someone whose heart was broken, when they discovered the person they love, and who had promised to love them for a lifetime, had been unfaithful and had broken their vow of faithful love.
Many people ask WHY ‘adultery’ is such a big deal to God that He would build a single commandment around it? It’s simple really. LOVE is the deepest, most powerful God given human emotion and experience which God has built into the human species. God given LOVE is holy and pure. Human love is a reflection of the love relationship God has designed us for with HIM! LOVE is not simply emotion, although it is an extremely powerful emotion, LOVE is an experience that intertwines one person’s life with another inseparably. LOVE is built on unwavering TRUST and deep RESPECT and great ADMIRATION and therefore a desire to live in a lifelong COMMITMENT in an exclusive relationship.
God’s design for that exclusive, love relationship is to find its greatest fulfillment is marriage which then produces children as the two people in that marriage express their love in dedicated sexual intimacy. The children produced in this love relationship are the unique blend of these two adults, and nothing can ever separate that blend. You cannot fully identify what of you is your father and what of you is your mother. God wove them together in a perfect, unique blend to create YOU! You are a picture of what God means when He describes marriage love like this: “…a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife and the two will become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24)
We know that Satan hates and opposes God, God’s truth, God’s ways, God’s plans and God’s people at all times, and therefore both adultery and murder are the ultimate desire of Satan for every person! Why? Because human life is a miracle of God, and every human being can be redeemed from their sin and restored into holy relationship with God as they fully trust in Jesus Christ and His love sacrifice on the cross. Satan has NOTHING to offer you or me that will improve our life, nothing! Everything Satan offers will hurt us and ultimately destroy us. But greed, selfishness, pride and arrogance all tactics of Satan’s evil kingdom, lead people to hurt other people, and murder and adultery are two of the ultimate, evil, life destroying objectives of Satan’s kingdom. Just look around friends, at all the damage done to people you know or to your community through murder or adultery! How extremely sad that both murder and adultery are global pandemics, and have been in every generation since the beginning!
No amount of legislation or laws or prison sentences will stop it. Only one thing can defeat these two pandemics… the power of Jesus breaking the stranglehold of sin in our lives. When we choose to daily live our lives for God’s honor and glory, neither adultery nor murder will ever be even a remote thought in our minds.
I think God paused here as He was speaking these profound, radical, guidelines for life for His people. So let’s do the same. And let’s ask ourselves WHY? Why are two such horrific things as murder and adultery so widespread in our world? What will you need to do to make sure neither creeps into your extended family? It’s a matter of the heart isn’t it? Only a pure heart can stand against these tactics of Satan.
So I’ve found a song in Hebrew with English subtitles, built on the prayer of Psalm 51… “Create in me a pure heart O God.” It’s titled “A Pure Heart”… let’s worship and imagine 1 million people singing such a song at Mount Sinai, in Hebrew!
Today’s Scripture is Exodus 20:13, 14.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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