Exodus
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.
Exodus,
chapter 20
Exodus
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
below, in a parallel to verse 1, God declares that He brought them out of Egypt
as 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 given 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 it was a time of 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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