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.
No comments:
Post a Comment