The Grandeur of God’s Commandments (Part II)
Most people have been taught that God’s law was done away—or else you simply have not realized that it is the only way of life that will bring mankind true happiness and joy. You have not realized that God’s law reveals the very nature and character of God Himself. And God commands us: “Be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). Remember that the true Christians, the “little flock” of Jesus, are described as those “who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 12:17). And God gives this description of the character of His saints: “Here is the patience of the saints: here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12). If you are to be counted among God’s true saints who will escape the seven last plagues, you will have to have this living faith—this obedient faith—in Almighty God through Jesus Christ living His life in you! You will have to understand and keep God’s spiritual law as revealed in the Ten Commandments!
Please, look up each scriptural quotes regarding to the grandeur of God’s commandments and live by His spiritual and holy law. To properly understand and feel the real impact of the Ten Commandments, notice the setting in which they were given. Remember that Moses and the Israelites had preserved the knowledge that their God was the Creator of heaven and earth. He was the great ruler of the earth who had brought about the Flood in the days of Noah, their forefather. And now the true God, the God of Israel, had delivered them from Egyptian bondage by tremendous miracles; He had brought them out of Egypt and through the waters of the Red Sea that rose on either side of them as a mighty wall (Exodus 14).
Since the time they had passed through the Red Sea, God had begun to deal with them and to remind them of His laws that they may have, in part, forgotten. Before they ever reached Mount Sinai, God erased all doubt about which day was His Sabbath by performing a series of miracles to remind them (Exodus 16). In Exodus 18, Moses was already judging the people according to God’s laws and statutes (v. 16). Now that they were come to Mount Sinai, God proposed—not to give them a new law—but to enter into a covenant or agreement with them so that they would be His special people and He would be their God whose laws and statutes and judgments they would obey. Since the Ten Commandments were— and always will be—God’s basic spiritual law (Romans 7:14), they were made a part of this agreement between God and Israel.
Long before Sinai, God specially blessed Abraham, the “father of the faithful” (Romans 4:11), because “Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws” (Genesis 26:5). So Abraham certainly understood and obeyed the Ten Commandments. Since the Ten Commandments were God’s holy and spiritual laws, He proclaimed them with great power and, unlike the rest of the covenant, wrote them with His own hand. Notice the setting in Exodus 19.
God commanded the people to clean themselves up and be ready against the third day when He would come down to them (vv. 10–11). “Then it came to pass on the third day, in the morning, that there were thundering and lightning, and a thick cloud on the mountain; and the sound of the trumpet was very loud, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled” (v. 16). God was here showing His power as the Creator of this earth as He began to speak with His own voice the Ten Commandments!
As the Creator Himself descended upon Mount Sinai in His glory, “Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly” (v. 18). In this setting of great glory and majesty and power, God spoke the Ten Commandments to the people who were trembling in awe below the mountain. His voice must have literally shaken these people with its power as it boomed across the land like the sound of thunder (Psalm 104:7).God began speaking the Ten Commandments — revealing to His people the laws of life that bring success and happiness and peace with God and with man.
In our day of human reason, of agnosticism and of creeping materialism, it is important to notice that the Almighty spoke first not about the “brotherhood of man,” but about obedience and worship to God—the Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth—and the personal God of those who serve and obey Him! “And God spoke all these words, saying, ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me’” (Exodus 20:1–3).
That is the first and, as we shall see later, greatest commandment. Study the wording of this commandment carefully—and meditate on it as David did! “I am the LORD your God” is a more revealing phrase than at first meets the eye. The “I” who was speaking with such tremendous power was quite evidently the great Creator of heaven and earth. In His very manner of appearance, He had demonstrated His power as Creator by sending forth thunder and lightning and literally shaking Mount Sinai as if it were a wet dishrag!