Commandments Continue #8

#8: “You will not steal.”  Jesus promises us the riches of His inheritance, so why should we steal?  At the heart of stealing, there is the desire for more which means there has to be an emptiness deep within to merit that need to take from someone else.  If that begins to define us – an emptiness borne of lack, then receiving from Jesus becomes impossible.  In America, that seems to be the definition of who we are – we are needy, so we take; it doesn’t have to be stealing possessions, but stealing people’s innocence, purity, and childlike faith.  It’s what the world, the sin nature does.  We have taken things that are not ours in our selfish graspings for pleasure.  Jesus has a rich inheritance in us.  He longs to lavish his grace on us – freely!!!  That’s the key concept – freely.  It’s not something that we have to take for ourselves but that is a priceless gift given to us. 

  They’re not just cheap gifts either.  In Matthew 7, God speaks of his nature in comparison to an earthly father.  If an earthly father loves to give good gifts to his children, how much more so will God who is perfect and tender in His givings!  It seems like the church has given us an erroneous view of how God is – He just wants to take from us – we give Him our praise, we give Him service with our giftings, we give Him our obedience by the laws mandated for us to follow in the Bible.  Little is spoken about the tender, merciful love lavished on us – the very foundation that we stand on so we can even able to give back to Him with.  We cannot love unless we first know we are loved.  We cannot give unless we are first given to.  But it has to be experiential. 

Yes, Jesus gave us the free gift of salvation, but that doesn’t mean anything to us unless we have personal experience of it.  We cannot share it with others unless we first experience it.  God gives so that we can give.  There doesn’t need to be a focus on lack because the God of the Universe holds all the riches of the world in the palm of His hand.  Stealing is out of the question when our hearts rest in the knowledge that we are safe in the communion of the Godhead.  We steal?  We have Jesus!

They’re not just Laws. . .

In an earlier post, I wrote about the 10 commandments with the premise that these are not just laws but a picture of Jesus.  If they are a list of what God HATES, then we can infer a list of what he LOVES based on the opposite of the law.  I just wanted to finish the list since I left off at murder, #6.

#7 You will not commit adultery.  I watched a movie this weekend called He’s Just Not That Into You, and it was a wonderful commentary on society today and its values.  One of the numerous characters was an unhappily married man – big suprise – who meets a gorgeous woman at the supermarket and commences with a heated affair.  This really seems to be a clear representation of how the world lives its life.  I’m unhappy; my spouse does not meet my needs.  It’s time to move on to someone else.  The gorgeous woman’s friend even encourages her to continue the affair by telling her a story of how a man divorced his wife because he met another woman.  He married this woman and they’d been married quite happily for over 20 years.

      Just like that.  It’s so easy to move on.  Of *course* there’s no baggage attached to this schizophrenic decision; of *course* there’s no hard feelings.  That’s what we tell ourselves, right?  Have you ever noticed how much we lie to ourselves?  We lie to cope, lie to manipulate, lie to get what we want.  In the end it’s all about us.  What can I get from life to satiate this internal thirst for more?

         In the past few years, I have been thoroughly enamored with the book of the Bible, Hosea, especially when a certain favorite pastor of mine speaks about it.  I wish I could add in an audio clip of his sermon about this topic, but I will try to explain it without his words. 

         Hosea is a prophet.  No, he did not choose to be one, God just decided that he would be one.  He tells Hosea to go and marry a prostitute named Gomer.  I wish I knew more about Hebrew culture to understand this relationship, but Gomer, whether she wanted to be in this marriage or not, did not stay faithful.  She constantly prostituted herself out to other men, and even had children by those other men. 

         What captures me the most by this story is not that Hosea was so valiant that he chose to draw Gomer out of her life of prostitution and deign to marry her, continuing his ostensibly fruitless quest to keep her faithful.  No.  My heart has continually been captured by the fact that no matter how many times Gomer remains unfaithful, God tells Hosea in so many words to “GO AGAIN!” (this is where the audio clip would come in handy).  Each time Gomer prostitutes herself, Hosea goes again to lift her up out of her dismal existence.

          The entire book of Hosea is only an allegory for God’s relationship with Israel (and ultimately, us (Ephesians 3:6)).  It was Israel that was prostituting itself to other religions and gods.  God, in His jealousy, showed Himself faithful to an adulterous people and continually went after HIS OWN people.  And then the best part, He allures them (Hosea 2:14); He speaks tenderly to them (Hosea 2:14).  God doesn’t condemn them or ream them for their whoredom.  He hedges their way with thorns (H 2:6) so that when they stray, it is not easy but immensely painful.

          Pain is not always a punishment.  It can be a tool, much like a sculptor must use sharp tools in order to perfect his sculpture.  God, who is FAITHFUL, will not relent until we are wholly His, even if that means starving us out and surrounding us with thorns.  But within those boundaries, His voice is tender and alluring, relentless and commanding.

          He is faithful, so how can He stand adultery?  We have the living God dwelling within us.  It is within His ability in us to create faithfulness, so that we, too, can stand and say, “I once was lost, but now am found.  I will stand faithful.”

 

Well, I’m not done.  Again.  That just means I’ll continue later.  Hooray!

I Got Excited!

So, I started going to this new home group at a church I’ve been going to for a few months.  I’m really enjoying it.  We were having a conversation about predestination last week.  Although this is a topic I don’t really spend a whole lot of time thinking about, I really had fun listening to people sit there and try to figure it out. 

  In the midst of that conversation, our home group leader had us switch over to talk about the 10 commandments and what the promises of God are in those laws.  I admit, I’ve never really thought about the 10 commandments being promises, but then I just sat there and thought about it; the revelation I was getting just by thinking of it got me excited!  God reveals his nature in the 10 Commandments and I didn’t even know it!  Here are some of my thoughts as to the revelation of Jesus’ character:

1. No Other Gods Before Me:   Jesus is the only one we need!  If we don’t need another god to pray to for wisdom, or love, or mirth, or marriage, then that means that Jesus is our sufficiency.  We should not have any other gods before Him because He is all we need!  He’s complete and head over our mind, body, soul, and spirit!

2. No Idols: in this God mentions that He is jealous.  This verse seems to point back to how marriage is an earthly symbol of our union with Jesus (makes me think of Proverbs where it says “jealousy is a husband’s fury”).  He desires that we be united with Him and Him alone.  He is faithful to us and wants us to be the same way.  He is only united with humans.  He has only put Himself within us, not any other created being! 

3. No Misuse of God’s name: I don’t really have a whole lot of revelation on this one.  Jesus says His name is above every other name and every knee will bow in the end to it.  He places a huge significance on names in the OT.  Name changes in a covenant and naming children as a symbol of Israel’s relationship w/ God.  So, all I can think is that we’ve lost sight of the importance of a name.  Our name is a picture of who we are just as it is with Jesus, so when we defame his name, we are defaming His character.  His name is who He is and who we are found in as his Bride.

4. Sabbath Day: OK, this is just a thought.  I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.  I know that the Sabbath Day was for a day of rest.  It reminds me of this sermon this pastor I love gave about homeostasis.  Well, it wasn’t a whole sermon on homeostasis, but he mentioned it.  That is, the way God has set up the laws of nature is everything must be in balance.  If our planet gets too hot, our atmosphere gets holes in it.  If we don’t drink enough water, we’ll dehydrate.  Everything must be in balance.  Well, what if having a Sabbath Day is not just for making us keep things holy but to be a picture of Jesus and how He is in balance all the time.  He can be 100% delighted in the Israelites while pouring out His wrath on their sins.  He is in balance.  Well, maybe He set up a “sabbath” because that is our human way of staying in balance?  This is just conjecture, mind you, but if the 10 Commandments are really showing us the character and nature of God, then the Sabbath is speaking of Jesus!

5. Honor father and mother: well, there’s already a promise in that verse – “that your days may be long upon the earth”, so it seems to me that Jesus places an important emphasis on the parent.  From my own experience, I know that if my heart is not in a place of showing honor/respect to my parents, then I am cutting off a conduit of grace and blessing from the Lord.  Once again, from my experience, our parents are the ones who are to train us and be a picture to us of who God is.  Since we live in such a warped society, it seems hard to think this as true, but I know that because for many years I had a warped view of who God was because my own father, in his weakness, did not know how to father me well and so gave me an erroneous picture of God.  A parents job is not to coddle us and make us happy, but to point us to the leadership of God.  By honoring our father and mother, we have a better idea of how to honor God.

7. Murder.  This one seems easy to me.  Murdering is taking the importance off of life and putting it on death.  It is devaluing life.  From the very being of God pours forth life.  His IS life.  In Revelation 4, it talks about an “emerald rainbow encircling the throne”.  I was meditating on that one day, asking, “why green?  why not multicolored like the rainbows we know?”  I finally had a revelation that it was because green is a symbol of life and life exudes from the person of Jesus.

OK, I’ll write about the last 3 in another post.  This entry is being posted in January, but just so you know, I started it at the beginning of December.  It’s been sitting in my drafts for a month.  Oops!