The Story of God: Covenant
As we continue the Story of God, we find God releasing the Israelites from centuries of slavery. God quickly moved to establish what his relationship, his covenant, would look like with Israel. He had created mankind in His image, and now He must shape this community in His image as He teaches them about His character through what we call Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament).
He invited them to know who he was and how he was calling them to live through the Torah. This understanding begins to take shape as God delivers the Ten Commandments. Spend some time reading through Exodus 20:1-21. As you reflect on this passage, share your thoughts with us on the following questions (or add a few of your own):
- Why do you think it was so important for God to begin this relationship by reminding Israel that it was He who brought them out of Egypt?
- Why is the fourth commandment the only one that we don’t take seriously anymore? Is that something we should be faulted for or has it gone out of style?
- Respond to this idea: To many, the Ten Commandments bring more negative emotions than positive. The Ten Commandments are far more valuable when Christians show how to live them rather than enforcing them in our culture.
- How can we honor them without making them the focal point of our faith?
- What would it look like to live within a community of people who truly lived out these ten commands?
February 15th, 2006 at 7:47 am
Dallas Willard, in his book “The Divine Conspiracy”, talks about the human tendency to take a teaching and make it a negative, all-restricting law. I believe the 10 Commandments are absolute and in that sense, “restrictive.” However, we must learn to drop the negative concept that God is a “fun-killing diety.” The entire purpose of the commandments was to give Israel guidelines for healthy, happy, blessed lives. Not one commandment was given as a “fun-killer.” To look at the Law as “rules” set down by a loving parent who wants the best for His children it to see Exodus and Leviticus in a different and wonderful way.
I believe the reason we don’t follow the fourth commandment is because Jesus took the Law and expanded it beyond words written on a page that can be debated by men and put it on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31-34) so that it touched all aspects of life (see Matthew 5). The Jews worshipped the Law and boasted in “keeping the Sabbath.” They began to worship the Sabbath rather than the God of the Sabbath. I believe Jesus expanded the fourth commandment to “Seven days of worship” rather than “seventh-day worship.”
February 15th, 2006 at 9:48 am
- God likes to remind us of who he is (check out the Great Commission), because we like to forget. He also seems to do this especially when He is about to say something important.
- Ironically, we don’t take the 4th seriously because we are too busy. One of the ideas the rabbis talk about regarding the 4th is that for 6 days we are slaves to the mundane and temporal, and on the Sabbath we celebrate our relationship with the sacred and spiritual. I have to agree with Bob when he says that Christ came to expand the Sabbath and make all days sacred and spiritual. However, in the absence of this possibility it might be best to start with one day.
- I’ll answer the last three in one, a sort of trinity answer if you will…the commandments, all 613 of them, are the content of the covenant of God with humanity. It might serve us to consider them like marriage vows, an analogy not foreign to the Israelites, nor Christians. We don’t enforce our marriage vows like law, but rather we live them out, we show we follow them by demonstrating their nature in our marriages. We honor our vows by remaining faithful to them on a daily basis. The incredible thing is that this takes on different forms each day and even each moment. I have the opportunity to fulfill my vows to my wife all the time. I don’t always think about which ones I’m fulfilling, or breaking at each moment, but I know the commitment to the greater story and covenant. What would it look like for a community to embrace the commands? It would look like people committed to their relationship with God and with each other. Is it legalistic? Possibly, at times, but much more than that it is the best way of living.
- Camarillo OUT!