ONE GOD, ONE NAME, ONE DAY
A young woman brought her fiancé to visit her parents. After a nice dinner, the father invited the fiancé to the library for a talk. "So what are your plans?" he asked the young man. "I am a seminary student," he replied. "A seminary student. Hmmm," said the father. "Admirable, but how will you provide a home for my daughter?" "I will study," the young man said, "and God will provide for us." "And how will you buy her an engagement ring, such as she deserves?" "I will focus on my studies and God will provide for us."
"And how will you support your children?" "Don't worry, sir. God will provide." The conversation continued like this; each time the father questioned, the young man insisted that God would provide. Later, when the mother asked about their conversation, the father sighed, "Well, he has no job and no plan, but the good news is, he thinks I'm God!"
Despite the identity crisis of some, there is only one God and all our loyalty must be to Him. This is the premise of the declarations found in Exodus 20 that we commonly call the 10 commandments. A more literal translation of Hebrew makes them the 10 words or the 10 statements. They were addressed directly to the people of Israel from the mouth of God. Though they are often thought of as negative statements, there is no punishment stated. Obedience was to be motivated not by fear of punishment but by God’s absolute authority and the peoples’ desire to live in accordance with His will.
As negative statements, they helped shape the community’s recognition of those kinds of conduct that simply ruined life in community and so could not be allowed. They are not intended to be legalistic in character or in effect. God is understood to be the author of these commandments, whereas in other nations it was the king who made the laws. Thus the law of God was elevated above practicality and became sanctified.
The categories of the commandments are intentional. The first four represent theology, concerning the reverence we owe to God and the religious service we should render to Him. The last six represent ethics and moral duties which we owe to our fellow human beings. Together, these divisions represent love for God and love for neighbor, which is how Jesus was able to construct two great commandments from the original ten. The first five are accompanied by explanations, but the thought behind the last five are so universally noted that no explanation was necessary.
First and foremost God called for recognition of Himself as supreme and solitary, sovereign and sacred. “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.” This statement was the basis for allegiance and obedience to God; the reason for the covenant He made. The deliverance from slavery in Egypt would be a constant reminder of the people’s need for God and His righteousness.
“You shall have no other gods besides Me.” There is some debate as to whether this meant no other gods in the presence of the one true God or if it meant instead of or in place of God. Either way, this was a unique position in a polytheistic world like the environment of Egypt they had just left. One author stated, “This very first commandment of the whole series is divinely calculated to prevent man’s misery and promote his happiness by taking him off from all false dependence, and leading him to God himself, the fountain of all good.”
We should understand God’s position, for we want the same thing. We all want to be number one in someone’s eyes. No one ever really comes out and says, “You shall have no other spouse before me, or no other parent before me.” Our children don’t caution us to give all our attention to them, but deep down, this is what we all really want. We want to be important to someone, we want commitment, and we detest superficiality. We can’t blame God for feeling the same.
Number two was spoken directly out of the Israelites’ experience in Egypt. “You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image.” The practice of idolatry was rampant in Egypt and other pagan nations. Worship of nature, worship of animals and even human deities was the norm. The idol worship of the pagan nations was not only illogical and unbiblical, but it was intensely immoral with temple prostitution, inhuman with child sacrifice, and demonic.
Worship was the primary concern of this commandment, for only God was to be worshiped. His jealousy was never hidden, nor was the consequences of it. God’s disfavor would come to rest on third and fourth generations of those who rejected Him, but His kindness would stretch to thousands of generations.
There are many ways to put God second in our lives. Some of the strangest things become our focus in life – money, possessions, and hobbies are the obvious ones, but there are other subtle ways to push God away in favor of other things. Even the pursuit of happiness takes priority, or the pursuit of health. In some instances, the opposite can be true. Maybe there is no happiness, only misery; no health, only illness, but those things can be a way to remove us from God, can even become an excuse to stay away from church.
Because God is holy and sacred, His name must be treated with the utmost care. The third commandment says that God will not acquit anyone who misuses His name. There is more to this than meets the eye – or the ear, for that matter. What God is commanding us not to do involves more than just cursing or swearing. It has to do with honor and respect and power. Using God’s name as a testimony to your own truthfulness implies that you do not fear God’s punishment.
When it came to reading Scriptures, the Hebrew people would replace the name of God – Yahweh – with the word Adonai, which means Lord, because it was easier than trying to remember not to speak the actual name of God aloud. Here’s an interesting bit of information for you: the word Jehovah is not actually a name for God. Jehovah was the product of a translation error when people from Europe began translating Hebrew into German. They used the consonants of the word Yahweh, but included the vowels of the word Adonai and produced Jehovah.
To speak God’s name is like prayer. When we use God’s name to curse a person or an object or a situation, do we really mean what we say? Do we genuinely want God to damn them? Or what if we say, “I swear to God that I will do such and such” and then we don’t do it? We are misusing God’s name by claiming His power and then robbing Him of it by not following through on what we pledge. This is why oaths and curses and any other kind of vain use of God’s mighty name like “good God” or “my God” are forbidden.
Then we come to the longest and most detailed of the commandments, the one that provides for a needed rest within the week. The first line of this rule is made up of two actions; first to remember and then to protect. How do we remember a day that is different from the other six? We start by being intentional. We all know how easy it is to work yourself straight through a day off or a weekend. Remembering the Sabbath means to stop what you do the rest of the week and keep it separate.
Sabbath means rest and holy means set apart, so there is an air of something special in the concept of Sabbath itself, if we can attain it. A first grader became curious because her father brought home a briefcase full of papers every evening. Her mother explained, “Daddy has so much to do that he can’t finish it all at the office. That’s why he has to bring work home at night.” “Well then,” asked the innocent child, “why don’t they put him in a slower group?”
Work will always be there, no matter how hard we try to avoid it. Ask any dairy farmer – the problem with milking cows is they never stay milked. There will always be more that you can find to do, as long as you keep looking. True Sabbath should bring joy at the end of the week; joy in a job well done, in the abilities God gives us which enable us to work. Only through reflection can we appreciate what we’ve done, what we could have done better, and how much we need that much deserved rest. Only the workaholic says, “Thank God it’s Monday.”
Sabbath rest was already built into the Israelites’ lifestyle. When God provided manna every day for 40 years, He instructed them to take up enough on the sixth day to last for the seventh so they would not work on the Sabbath. In our modern context Sabbath has been defined by one scholar as, “periodic, regular disengagement from systems of productivity whereby the world uses people up to exhaustion. That disengagement refers also to culture-produced expectations for frantic leisure, frantic consumptions, or frantic exercise.”
Frantic leisure – that’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one, and yet that author was exactly right. The meaning behind Sabbath is to recall what God was able to do in creation, six days of mind-boggling work and one day to sit back and reflect on how good it all was. Consequently, God’s command to rest was for all that He created; humans as well as animals. Everyone deserves a break.
Take Time to Be Holy is a hymn that was made for Sabbath remembrance. Speaking with the Lord, abiding in Him, feeding on His word, letting Him guide us, not running ahead, and trusting in His word can be daily Sabbath events that give us that sacred pause God commands us to take. As the song says, the world rushes on, and it will rush us right along with it if we are not entirely rested, properly reflective, and positively renewed. We must make the effort to keep the Sabbath the way God intended, not creating our own rules and regulations about it, and not taking it so lightly that we neglect its benefits.
Through these four statements God is to be revered, remembered, and honored. Establishing the proper adherence to these four rules will assist us in adhering to the other six in which we interact with humanity and live in true community as God created it to be. Humorist Sam Levenson said, “Different people look for different things in the Ten Commandments. Some are looking for divine guidance, some for a code of living, but most people are looking for loopholes.”
Make a point of studying these ancient words for yourself. Ponder over what God has asked for Himself and what He asks for His people and see where you fit into this picture. Don’t look for loopholes. Look for opportunities.
