Under Cover

God's commandments: have you read them?  Do you know them? Good, then let's take our understanding of them to a deeper and more meaningful level. 

 

First of all, the ten commandments are not a set of rules.  Nor did God create them to throw his weight around.  There is no need for that.  He is clear in the definitiveness of his sovereignty.  God's heart in creating the commandments was to protect us.   According to the Bible, all sin leads to some form of death.  God doesn't want that for us.  So he created for us a flawless plan of escape.   

 

Secondly, God blessed us to have dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26). Unfortunately, we began to mistakenly equate our earthly dominion with God's dominion. We forgot that there are principalities and powers at work that are greater than earth and therefore greater  than our dominion.  We began to take things that require the hand of God into our own hands. One of those things being our spirituality.  It wasn't working out so well.  We don't understand that our spirits are greater than earth because they connect with and affect things that are greater than earth.  We will never, in our own strength, be able to adequately control and steer our spirits.  We need something that is greater than all powers, principalities, and spirits to do that. We need God.  God on the other hand absolutely understands the cruciality of our spirituality.  This is why he doesn't suggest the plan of escape (The Commandments), he commands it. 

 

God is so good.  As profound as he is and as deep as the commandments go, he simplified it for us. So we could get it.  In Exodus 20 he lays out all the commandments. Then in Matthew 22, he pinpoints the two most critical commands of all.  Those two commandments simply stated (as psalmist Israel Houghton wrote it): Love God. Love people.  Why are these the greatest? How do they cover all?  Sin is in essence selfishness.  When God says to love others, he means to esteem others over ourselves.  When we do that, we don't do hurtful things.  When we love God, we desire to please him and be like him.  We worship him and so we work to be selfless as he is selfless.  In doing that, we are following the commandments. 

 

The commandments are a covering. God knows that we would peak out from under the cover every now and then.  He gave us Jesus for those moments (but that's another story).  

Scripture:

Exodus 20: 2-17

Matthew 22:37

Prayer:
Lord, help us to follow the action plan.  Help us to love you and love people.