CHAPTER 20

(1491 B.C.)

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

¹And God spoke all these words, saying (the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai are the foundation of all law, at least law that is righteous, for the entire world; it is the moral Law of God and, as such, cannot change),

²I am the LORD your God, which have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage (the Lord doesnt appeal to the Israelites as Creator, even though He definitely was that; He appealed to them as their Deliverer; as a result, He was to be obeyed by His people from a sentiment of love, not by fear).

³You shall have no other gods before Me (the manner in which this First Commandment is given indicates that each individual of the nation is addressed severally, and is required personally to obey the Law, a mere general national obedience being insufficient; this Commandment requires the worship of one God Alone, Jehovah; it implies, in point of fact, that there is no other God).

⁴You shall not make unto yourself any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in Heaven above, or that is in the Earth beneath, or that is in the water under the Earth.

⁵You shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them who hate Me;

⁶And showing mercy unto thousands of them who love Me, and keep My Commandments. (The prohibition intended here does not forbid the arts of sculpture, painting, photography, etc., or even to condemn the use of them, but to disallow the worship of God under material forms. Those who ignore this Commandment are guilty of the sin of idolatry. Also, many have tried to derive from Verse 5 that which they refer to as the family curse; however, let it be known and understood, every curse was addressed at the Cross of Calvary [Gal. 3:13-14]. As well, Jesus has perfectly kept all the Commandments, and all who trust Him, and what He did for us at the Cross, are participants of Gods gracious Mercy.)

⁷You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His Name in vain (taking the Name of the Lord in vain pertains to all blasphemy, all swearing, all perjury and, in fact, all irreverent use of Gods Name in ordinary life).

⁸Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.

⁹Six days you shall labour, and do all your work:

¹⁰But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God: in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates:

¹¹For in six days the LORD made Heaven and Earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath Day, and hallowed it. (The seventh day was not so much to be a day of worship, as we think of such now, but rather a day of rest. Even the very beasts, pressed into mans service since the Fall, shall rest. All were to observe this day. Everything pertaining to the Law of Moses, in some way, spoke of Christ. The Sabbath was no exception. It was meant to portray the fact that there is rest in Christ and, in fact, that there is rest only in Christ [Mat. 11:28-30]. So, when a person presently accepts Christ, they are in effect keeping the Sabbath, which speaks of the rest that we have in Christ rest from self-effort to attain unto Righteousness. Even though there was no written command by the Holy Spirit to do so, gradually we find Believers, during the time of the Early Church, as recorded in the Book of Acts, making Sunday, the first day of the week, the day of our Lords Resurrection, their day of worship, etc., which is different than the Sabbath of old, because Christ has fulfilled in totality the old Jewish Sabbath.)

¹²Honour your father and your mother: that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God gives you (honoring the father and the mother sets the stage for the honoring of God; the first five Commandments have to do with mans obligation toward God, while the last five have to do with his obligation toward his fellowman).

¹³You shall not kill (should have been translated, Thou shalt do no murder; God, in His Holy Word, commands magistrates to put evil men to death [Rom. 13:4]; that is not murder; to kill and to commit murder are two different verbs in the Hebrew Text).

¹⁴You shall not commit adultery (regarding this sin, both man and woman are placed in the same category; our duty toward our neighbor is to respect the bond on which the family is based, and that conjugal honor which to the true man is dearer than life; marriage, according to the original institution, makes the husband and wife one flesh [Gen. 2:24]; and to break in upon this sacramental union was at once a crime and a profanity; it is a sin against man and against God).

¹⁵You shall not steal (as it regards our neighbor, we are to respect his property; we simply dont take that which doesnt belong to us).

¹⁶You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour (false witness is of two kinds, public and private; we may either seek to damage our neighbor by giving false evidence against him in a court of justice, or simply culminate him to others in our social intercourse with them).

¹⁷You shall not covet your neighbours house, you shall not covet your neighbours wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is your neighbours (covetousness addresses what causes the evil deed; this Commandment teaches men that there is One Who sees the heart; to Whose Eyes all things are naked and open; and Who cares far less for the outward act than the inward thought or motive from which the act proceeds).

FEAR

¹⁸And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off (the word saw in this Verse is a particular type of Hebrew verb which means perceive, witness; in other words, no one of the hundreds of thousands of the Children of Israel had any doubt as to what they had witnessed and experienced).

¹⁹And they said unto Moses, You speak with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die (as powerful as was this manifestation, one far more powerful was yet to be manifested, and we speak of the coming of Christ, Who manifested the Father as He had not been manifested before).

²⁰And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that His fear may be before your faces, that you sin not (the Lord manifesting Himself in this fashion was not meant to strike fear in the people, even though it definitely did that, but rather that the people would want to obey the Lord, because of His Almighty Power).

²¹And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was (the Cross made it possible for all who stand afar off to now come near [Rev. 22:17]).

WORSHIP

²²And the LORD said unto Moses, Thus you shall say unto the Children of Israel, You have seen that I have talked with you from Heaven (the greatest Revelation yet!).

²³You shall not make with Me gods of silver, neither shall you make unto you gods of gold (no image was to be made of what they thought God looked like; even if made of silver or gold it would be grossly wrong).

²⁴An Altar of earth you shall make unto Me, and shall sacrifice thereon your Burnt Offerings, and your Peace Offerings, your sheep, and your oxen: in all places where I record My Name I will come unto you, and I will bless you. (The Altar pictures Christ and what He would do for us at the Cross. The earth pictured His humanity; the stone, His Deity; the shed blood of the animal sacrificed, His priceless Life sacrificed to put away sin and bring the sinner back to God [I Pet. 3:18]. All blessings come exclusively through the Cross, and no blessings come other than through the Cross, at least not from God.)

²⁵And if you will make Me an Altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone: for if you lift up your tool upon it, you have polluted it. (No tool was to embellish the Altar; it was perfect in its beauty to the eye of God. And such was, and is, Jesus. As well, one might seek to paint the lily or adorn the rose, as for man to attempt to add to the beauty of Him Who is altogether lovely. As well, man must not seek to add to Calvary, or take from Calvary, which the tool would do, and which it is doing in countless places at present.)

²⁶Neither shall you go up by steps unto My Altar, that your nakedness be not discovered thereon. (When man exalts himself above God, he only exposes his own moral nakedness. The Cross, of which the Altar was a Type, must not be changed in any way. If so, meaning if men try to picture or present Christ in another fashion rather than Jesus Christ and Him Crucified [I Cor. 1:23], they then find themselves with another Jesus [II Cor. 11:4]. Lifting up the tool upon the stone, desiring to make it into their own likes or dislikes, thereby pollutes the Message. This is the great sin of the modern Church.)