Why is the Law of God still important today? Can we learn anything new from it? Join the Sabbath School series going through the Ten Commandments.

<p>Why is the Law of God still important today? Can we learn anything new from it? Join the Sabbath School series going through the Ten Commandments.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Granite Bay SDA Church

God's Law, Grace, and the Gospel

Luccas Rodor

The First Commandment

This was recorded at the Granite Bay Hilltop SDA Church, located in Granite Bay, California.

Hope you are blessed by the message and that it draws you closer to God.

Dear Lord, thank you so much for giving us the 10 Commandments, for giving us the Bible that essentially reveal you, reveal who you are, Lord.

And as we study these revelations of you, Father, please open our hearts and our minds so that we can understand what's going on, so that not only we can understand intellectually, but that we can also put this into practice in our day-to-day life.

Please, Lord, teach us what you want, not what the human instrument wants or what the audience wants.

Lord, allow us to fall into the background of the message in order to extract from it your mind, your genius, and your will for our lives.

So, in dealing with the 10 Commandments, right, we're talking truly of a revelation of who God is.

We find different categories of laws in the Bible, right?

You have the health law, you have civil laws, you have the ceremonial laws, you have the moral law, which is what we call the 10 Commandments, and you also have, it's not only those 4, you have a little bit of a mix and match sometimes there are crossovers right sometimes you'll have a civil law that has a little bit of a hybrid with the ceremonial law or at least it has a background of a ceremonial law and so on so today we're Diving into the logic of this first commandment remember the moral law the 10 commandments what they really do is that they?

Emphasize the nature the character of God when we don't kill for example the reason why we're not killing is because God is life Right when we're not lying.

We're not lying because God is truth when we don't commit adultery.

We're doing so because God is faithfulness So you see that each 1 of these 10 commandments they truly reveal God They are the foundation of who God is God is the standard of the law Goodness is only goodness because God is good.

Truth is only truth because God is truth.

Loyalty is only loyalty because God is loyalty.

It's impossible in the gospel, it's impossible for us to receive the gift without receiving the giver because the giver is the gift.

When Jesus says, I am the light of the world, I am the truth, what is he saying?

He's saying that it's impossible for you to live truth, to have truth, without receiving him because he is the essence of that quality.

So in the first commandment, that's what we begin these 10 commandments by seeing.

Now what's interesting is that before a single 1 of the 10 commandments is given, before the first 1 is given, the Bible establishes a foundation.

Exodus 20, it doesn't begin with a commandment, right?

Exodus 20, verse 2, before any of the 10 commandments, God says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

Before he starts giving the 10 commandments, he tells them why and who he is to provide, to give these 10 Commandments.

The law is given by a God who has already acted.

Israel stands here at Sinai as already a redeemed people.

The voice that speaks from the mountain, it's the same voice that shattered the chains, the same voice that judged the gods of Egypt and carried that nation through the sea.

Obedience to these 10 Commandments, it comes from a relationship that already exists, right?

It's not the price of their freedom, because a lot of people think it that way, right?

No, you obey because you are already free.

This obedience, it's the fruit of these, of keeping these commandments.

And only after that does God, only after revealing that does God then provide the first commandment which is as we know you shall have no other gods before me Now I want you to remember keep in your mind the world in which this commandment was provided the world in which this commandment was given, this commandment was spoken into a world that was saturated by gods.

They were heavily, deeply religious, overwhelmingly religious.

Egypt, Canaan, Mesopotamia, the surrounding nations, the way that they interpreted the world around them, but was through gods, was through what they perceived to be divine, right?

This was this complex network of divine powers.

So you have the rain god, you had the wind god, the desert god, the sun god, the stars god, the earthquake god, you had a god for everything.

The god of the lice, the god of the frogs, you had a god for everything.

Imagine, today, we know, for the most part, what goes on behind the forces of nature.

We know why it snows, why it rains, why there are earthquakes, why there are hurricanes.

We know the complex meteorological phenomena.

And imagine, if even we today, we still fear nature, right?

You'd be crazy not to have a healthy respect for nature.

Imagine for them, they had no idea Why it was raining so much, why there was a drought, why there was a flood, why there was an earthquake, they had no idea.

So their interpretation of these phenomena was the gods are fighting with each other.

The ebb and flow of nature was understood by this war, this battle in nature.

So because of that, life was very fragile.

Survival depended on aligning themselves with the right force at the right time in the right place.

The gods were localized, they were limited, and they were very, very competitive, extremely competitive.

They were very anxious people, extremely anxious.

The question was never whether they should worship or not.

That wasn't the question that these pagan surrounding nations asked themselves.

The question was, what God, did it make sense?

And Israel, as they leave Egypt, they carry with themselves that same worldview.

Look, liberation from bondage, it didn't erase instantly centuries of theological imaginations and fear and anxiety, appeasement, bargaining with these gods.

And so for that reason, the first commandment that we're studying here today, it's not just a numerical claim.

That's the first thing that I really want to make clear.

The first commandment, thou shalt have no other gods before me, it's not God making primarily a numerical claim.

The problem isn't really with the numbers, it's with the quality of the God.

You see, these other gods, they needed to be appeased, bargained with, they needed to be manipulated and softened.

But what do you do with a God that doesn't need anything?

What do you do with a God that can't be manipulated or bought, that has no needs that can be used?

Do you see the problem in the mentality of these people?

So it's not Simply saying that Israel needed to reduce the number of gods that they acknowledged Really what the first commandment is doing it's announcing something far more radical.

There's only 1 God That's the message and this God he's not 1 force among many He is the creator of all things, the maker of all things.

And that truth, that simple truth that we take for granted as Christians, it reshapes everything in the worldview of the Old Testament people.

A Creator God, again, He can't be bargained with, He has no needs, He does not compete for territory, for influence, for relevance.

There is no realm of existence outside His presence.

What does the book of Psalms, chapter 139, verse 7, say?

It says, where can I go from your spirit?

There's nowhere that we can go that God is not there.

That's what this commandment is implying.

And so worship on these grounds, it's no longer an attempt to manipulate divine power for personal security, right?

It becomes a response to intention, to gift, to relationship.

So if life is no longer an accident, which is what this commandment implies.

If existence flows from the will of a personal creator God, then worship, it goes beyond fear and it moves into the realm of trust, of gratitude and love.

Series

God's Law, Grace, and the Gospel

The First Commandment

Transcript

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