Tag: 10 Commandments

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Rule Followers?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

“These are the commands, decrees, and regulations that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you. You must obey them in the land you are about to enter and occupy, and you and your children and grandchildren must fear the Lord your God as long as you live. If you obey all his decrees and commands, you will enjoy a long life.”‭‭ Deuteronomy‬ ‭6‬:‭1‬-‭2‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Alright, I can admit this right up front. I’m not a great rule follower. I try to justify it by my own origin story being a chaotic mess, our blended-family lacking the basics of safety, consistency and definitely boundaries. At some point I had to face reality – rules, laws and boundaries are good and I missed out and messed up by not understanding that. It didn’t help much that before Jesus, I had no guilt triggers either.

There are so many lessons to be learned from these books of the law. One big one, God, being the creator, gets to set the rules. We, as the created, do not. That’s a hard one for us. In our humanness there is a massive, “I get to be my own god” syndrome. The other huge lesson is so practical, so pragmatic – if we obey, we will enjoy a long life. I guess it’s parenthetic that we don’t agree with God on what the “good life” looks like.

I look at the ten commandments from my past non-churchgoer perspective. They are not that hard to understand or obey. It seems the biggest issue is a perceived loss of autonomy. For example, God says, “take a day off and give it a rest,” to which we say, “I don’t want to.” Just below these demands to obedience comes an even stricter law – “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.” Notice both the absolute, declarative truth – The Lord IS our God, the Lord ALONE,” and the following mandate… “you MUST.” God was not gentle parenting here! There was no, “I would suggest,” or “It’s in your best interest to.” And, we find no echo from God’s children (Israel) asking… “WHY God?” Isn’t it obvious? Because God said so!

I think God puts up with plenty of “why’s” from us, and He is so long suffering and patient towards us. “Why did I get cancer?,” “Why did he leave me?,” “Why did my child die?,” “Why don’t you give me a house, car, job, money, or success?” Ask away, no problem. But on the matter of who God is and will He be shared with other fake deities? Absolutely not.

There are far more than just boundaries and truth in these rules that come from the character of who God is. There is safety, security, hope, love, assurance and complete confidence in our obedience to God. Would you really want God to be more like us? For God to be duplicitous, fickle, selfish and ultimately undependable? That’s just silly. We need God to be God over all, over everything – over us. And, we need to quit pretending that our versions of God would be much better. God knows what He’s doing, so let Him do it – ultimately it’s in our favor!

Prayer

Dad,
Even knowing your ways are above my own. Even knowing your will is right and good, beyond my own understanding and expectation. Even knowing that, I still see rebellion rising within me. I still feel the tug of sin which is determined to find a different way, a better way, a faster way to get what I want, when want it. I want to obey, but I struggle in submitting to your way of doing life! Help me, Oh Lord. Forgive me, Oh God. Your way, your will, be done in me and through me.

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BIG life, boulder free.

Reading Time: 3 minutes 
“What does all this mean? Even though the Gentiles were not trying to follow God’s standards, they were made right with God. And it was by faith that this took place. But the people of Israel, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping the law, never succeeded. Why not? Because they were trying to get right with God by keeping the law instead of by trusting in him. They stumbled over the great rock in their path.” Romans‬ ‭9:30-32‬ ‭NLT‬‬

​Imagine the walkway leading up to your house or your apartment complex. The reason it exists is for easy access to the entry to your home. Now imagine, if you decided to put a big boulder right in the middle of that path. Now the path is blocked, making it harder to get to your front door.

Paul says the law, the perfect commandments of God are that boulder, that ROCK. Paul says that for the Jewish folk, God himself put that boulder there. Then, by inference says, as a Gentile why would you put the rock 🪨 there by yourself, when God did not want it there?

Paul’s rock analogy is about the law. Gentiles, non-Jewish folk, weren’t even aware that there was a rock at all and thus, their path to God was not based on WORKING around the rock to get to himself. Gentiles had faith in Christ, who permanently removed the rock to freely allow access to God? To the Jews, Paul says elsewhere, Jesus is a stumbling block (boulder), because faith in Christ’s work removes the barrier between us and God. However, even as Gentiles (most of us), came to Christ, through faith and not having to work to get around or over the boulder, it seems that we still easily pickup Jewish ways.

We put the boulder back in the way and then struggle to get around it! Why? Because faith in Christ is HARDER than working to keep all the commandments. Strange huh? Faith in Christ is a humbling trust that God moved towards us and removed all the barriers to perfection and yes, holiness, to have a full grace-filled life with himself. Doesn’t grace make us like, sin-lazy, easy to just take the gift and do whatever we want? That is possible. Isn’t grace too easy? Not according to God it’s not. This grace was the most costly, extravagant gift God could ever give. It cost the suffering and death of his own Son, Jesus. But can’t that be taken advantage of or spurned (treated cheaply)? Yes, but what’s the advantage of that? That just puts us, automatically under the curse of the law – the souls that sins MUST die. Treating God’s gift of grace flippantly puts the boulder right back in our path.

God expects us to not only be thankful for His gift but to trust Him to live as BIG of a life as we can in this miracle of forgiveness. Living a Big life, boulder free!

Prayer

Dad,
It is so frustrating when we want to move towards being better, sinning less and try to live a life of perfection, the first thing we think of is putting ourselves back under the law and work hard to impress you. We’re just putting the rock back in our our path! The only path to perfection is running towards your presence and through your Holy Spirit live this life of grace and trust. Of course there is confession of sin and a repentance from those sins, but not to work harder or “do good” to try to erase our own sins. You designed us to walk with you and have provided a perfect way to make that happen – through Jesus. Thank you!