19:16
¶ And it came to pass on the third day
in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon
the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people
that was in the camp trembled. 17 And
Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood
at the nether part of the mount. 18 And
mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in
fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole
mount quaked greatly. 19 And when the
voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake,
and God answered him by a voice. 20 And
the LORD came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the LORD
called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up. 21 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go down, charge
the people, lest they break through unto the LORD to gaze, and many of them
perish. 22 And let the priests also,
which come near to the LORD, sanctify themselves, lest the LORD break forth
upon them. 23 And Moses said unto the
LORD, The people cannot come up to mount Sinai: for thou chargedst us, saying,
Set bounds about the mount, and sanctify it. 24
And the LORD said unto him, Away, get thee down, and thou shalt come up,
thou, and Aaron with thee: but let not the priests and the people break through
to come up unto the LORD, lest he break forth upon them. 25 So Moses went down unto the people, and spake
unto them.
A powerful, frightening event takes place
that causes the people to tremble. Moses, the mediator, brings the people to
meet God and this mass of humanity stands at the base of this mountain. It must
have been an awesome sight to behold. Smoke, thunder, lightning, the sound of a
loud trumpet, exceeding loud and
growing louder and louder. Moses
speaks and God answers him. God called Moses to come to the top of the mountain
and Moses obeys. God wants Moses to warn the people from their curiosity. God
suggests the priests might come near and Moses recalls that God said no one
could come up but Moses. God refines His order so that Moses and Aaron can come
up. Moses then warns the people.
Chapter
20
1
¶ And God spake all these words, saying,
2 I am the LORD thy God, which have
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is
in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor
serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of
the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that
hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto
thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy
God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in
vain. 8 Remember the sabbath day, to
keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou
labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the
seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any
work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant,
nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and
earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore
the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Notice here, in a parallel to verse 1, God
declares that He brought them out of Egypt. His appearance, His angel, declares
the same thing in Judges.
Judges
2:1 ¶ And an angel of the LORD came up
from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have
brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will
never break my covenant with you.
This lends more clarity to the definition
of what an angel in the Bible is, not the good angel/bad angel of the Persian
religion as a mythological winged creature which the Roman church adopted, but
as a presence of something or someone
that is somewhere else.
Isaiah
63:9 In all their affliction he was
afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his
pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.
As some examples in regard to children;
Matthew
18:10 Take heed that ye despise not one
of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always
behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.
Peter, the apostle;
Acts
12:15 And they said unto her, Thou art
mad. But she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his
angel.
Church assemblies of Christians;
Revelation
1:20 The mystery of the seven stars
which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The
seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks
which thou sawest are the seven churches.
And God’s messenger, Gabriel;
Daniel
9:21 Yea, whiles I was speaking in
prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I
had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched
me about the time of the evening oblation.
Luke
1:26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God
unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
It is pure foolishness and confusion to
mistake an angel for the cherubim, the living creatures of Ezekiel 1 and 10 or
Revelation 4 who are the prototypes for all creatures on earth as representing
domestic and wild animals and fowls. More on the cherubim later.
Here we have the giving of the Ten
Commandments, an important icon of Christian civilization and culture. In
verses 3-6 we have the ban on creating an image or picture for the purpose of
worship, which is the context. We then have the ban on taking the Lord’s name
in vain, for empty reasons, flippantly without purpose, for instance, as a
curse word. Most people even don’t like to be talked about like they aren’t in
the room. Such a thing is totally disregarding God’s presence at all times and
shows contempt and disdain for our Creator.
Then, we come to the Sabbath Day, a
blessing and a privilege that God granted men and women of a guarantee of one
day off from work every week. This is to be a day of no work, not Mom cooking a
meal for family and friends who visit or Dad mowing the yard, but no work.
Period.
This was important enough to God to call
for the death penalty if it was disobeyed.
Exodus
35:2 Six days shall work be done, but on
the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the
LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death. 3 Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your
habitations upon the sabbath day.
The Ten Commandments are God’s basic standard.
These first three are towards God. Obeying God’s commandments were the external
evidence that a Hebrew loved God.
Deuteronomy
6:4 ¶ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God
is one LORD: 5 And thou shalt love the
LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
might. 6 And these words, which I
command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy
children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when
thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign
upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. 9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of
thy house, and on thy gates.
Which Jesus reinforced;
Matthew
22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind. 38 This is the first and great
commandment.
The Hebrew, the Israelite, the Jew had
proof of their love for their Creator that flowed from their heart to their
outward behavior. The Christian has evidence because of something that God
Himself puts in his or her heart by the mechanism of the Holy Spirit. This is
the proof that the Spirit resides in the Christian.
Galatians
5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is
no law. 24 And they that are Christ’s
have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in
the Spirit.
God promised the Jews back in the Old
Testament that this would happen.
Ezekiel
11:17 Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord
GOD; I will even gather you from the people, and assemble you out of the
countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.
18 And they shall come thither, and they
shall take away all the detestable things thereof and all the abominations
thereof from thence. 19 And I will give
them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the
stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh: 20 That they may walk in my statutes, and keep
mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their
God. 21 But as for them whose heart
walketh after the heart of their detestable things and their abominations, I
will recompense their way upon their own heads, saith the Lord GOD.
And, in that great tribulation at the end
of history those who belong to God will be obvious by their faithfulness to God’s
commandments.
Revelation
14:12 Here is the patience of the
saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of
Jesus.
This is the beginning of the civil and
religious standard of laws give to the physical, temporal Hebrew people to live
by, manage their affairs by, and to run their government by. God Himself was to
be all three branches of government for them; leading, creating laws, and
judging.
Isaiah
33:22 For the LORD is our judge, the
LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.
The Founders of the American government
were primarily influenced by The Enlightenment at their very uppermost levels
although there were many evangelical Christians in the second tier and below. The
Enlightenment was a time of a rejection of political religion and a worship of
man’s reason, and humanism with so-called great thinkers like Voltaire and
Locke and Thomas Paine leading the charge, sometimes religious, sometimes
atheists. The Enlightenment political philosopher that Founders like James
Madison, the so-called ‘Father of the Constitution,’ leaned on for the three
branches of government was Montesquieu. You can look but I doubt you will find,
in the debates over the Constitution, any reference to the verse in Isaiah as a
reason for our three branches of government. I have read two volumes of those
debates and one collection of Madison’s letters and there is no reference to
the verse in Isaiah. I will be very happy if you prove me wrong with a primary
source like a letter or a transcript of a debate. In any event, substituting
the words, “our Republican government,” for the
LORD is blasphemy so please don’t do it.
The Ten Commandments are a way to see the
mind of God, to understand His efforts to draw mankind, or at least those who
will come, to Him. Christian culture reveres these commandments as standards to
live by and there is no reason to believe that God’s standards have changed. You
and your fellow citizens would do well to follow the Ten Commandments and adopt
God’s standard as your own. Your life would be less filled with regret and
sorrow at the end if you did. However, WE are not justified by the Law before
God but by Christ’s resurrection and our belief and faith in it.
Galatians
3:22 But the scripture hath concluded
all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them
that believe. 23 But before faith came,
we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be
revealed. 24 Wherefore the law was our
schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25 But after that faith is come, we are
no longer under a schoolmaster. 26 For
ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
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