You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me
Bible reference – Exodus 20:3:You shall have no other gods before Me.
Explanation: Do we still need this commandment? We certainly do. Whatever holds the supreme place in a persons life is a god.
The story is told that in a certain museum in China there was an exhibit called “The American God.” And what do you suppose it was? A dollar bill, neatly framed.
It is strange how modern men turn away from the living God, who is revealed in nature and the Bible, and invent imaginary gods to fit their unbelieving hearts.
In his book, God and the Cosmos, Dr. Theodore Graebner tells us that some who set themselves up as teachersmany even as religious teacherssay that God is merely the spirit of the community . One of these modern leaders says, God is myself . Another says that he worships man .
How would you like to pray to “the spirit of the community” or pray to yourself or to mankind in general? These are some of the false gods proclaimed by the wise men of today.
Some worship pleasure others, reason, philosophy, or business. But all these things are as imperfect as humans themselves, and those who trust in them will be left at last without a light in the vacant and dark night, until the words of the first commandment meet them in the judgment: Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
What Are The 10 Commandments The Law Of The Kingdom Of God
The good news of the Bible is that this age of human misrule and sin will be replaced by the Kingdom of God. Jesus Christ will intervene to save humanity from self-destruction . Jesus Christ will bring real peace and will teach the way of peace that has been so elusive in human history.
What will the laws of the Kingdom of God be that will produce peace? The same laws that have been consistently proclaimed throughout the BibleGods laws, including the 10 Commandments.
Even the last chapter of the Bible, speaking of the New Jerusalem and eternity, says: Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city .
Gods commandments are part of the way of life that will produce peace forever!
What Jesus Christ Taught Concerning The 10 Commandments In The New Testament
Jesus Christ consistently upheld the 10 Commandments as given in the Old Testament. In His Sermon on the Mount, He very pointedly stated: Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill .
Although some mistakenly think that fulfill in this passage means to complete and therefore abolish, what Jesus said afterwards shows this could not be the case.
Continuing, Jesus said: For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven .
On another occasion, a man came to Jesus asking, Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? .
Responding, Jesus said, You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery,Do not murder,Do not steal,Do not bear false witness,Do not defraud,Honor your father and your mother .
The point Jesus was making was that it should have been obvious to the man that he needed to keep the 10 Commandments. Jesus named enough of them to make it clear that this was the body of law this man needed to observe.
Jesus instruction to obey the 10 Commandments continues to apply to us today.
And, Jesus said, the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself .
You May Like: Is The Bible Infallible And Inerrant
Bible Verses About Ten Commandments
Bible verses related to Ten Commandments from the King James Version by Relevance
Exodus 20:3-17 – Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Leviticus 22:31 – Therefore shall ye keep my commandments, and do them: I am the LORD.Matthew 5:17-22 – Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. Exodus 34:28 – And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.Deuteronomy 4:13 – And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.1 John 2:3-6 – And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. Romans 6:15 – What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.
Topics and verses are auto-generated from user searches. If a verse or topic does not belong, please contact us. Some scripture references/categories courtesy of Open Bible .info under CC BY 3.0
The Ten Commitments Behind The Ten Commandments
Considering they are among the most influential words ever written, there are a number of curious things about the Ten Commandments. To start, there are two versions, with subtly different wording . No one knows how they were divided into two tablets. The first statement is not really a command.
Most awkwardly, there appear to be more than ten. The phrase you shall appears 12 times, and that does not include commands to remember the Sabbath or honor your father and mother. The Orthodox Church and most Protestants solve this problem by combining all the commands on coveting into one. Roman Catholics address it by grouping the prohibitions on idolatry: Augustine argued that the first commandment includes what many would consider the second .
Many would concede that the precise commandment count doesnt really matter, so long as we obey them all. I agree. But another curious feature of the Ten Commandments that does matter, and which frequently goes unnoticed, is the fact that there are ten theological affirmationsten attributes of God, if you likewoven through them. If the text tells us who we should be, it also tells us who God is. Revelation sits alongside regulation.
You May Like: 365 Fear Not Bible Verses
Honor Your Father And Your Mother
Bible reference – Exodus 20:12:Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
Explanation: In Ephesians 6:2, the apostle Paul says that this is the first commandment with promise and God will not go back on His promise. Children owe their parents love, obedience, respect, and helpfulness.
Think of the happiness that obedience to this commandment would bring to thousands of homes today! Then every day would be Mothers Day and every day would be Fathers Day. So, “honor your father and mother. Disobedience to parents is one of the ominous signs of the last days, according to 2 Timothy 3:1, 2.
Do You Have To Obey The 10 Commandments To Have Eternal Life
God created these laws and they reflect His thinking. Disobeying the 10 Commandments shows a lack of love for God and our fellow humans.
Jesus taught that obeying the 10 Commandments is essential for entering into eternal life . Why is this? Because God created these laws and they reflect His thinking. Disobeying the 10 Commandments shows a lack of love for God and our fellow humans.
Commandment breaking causes suffering and broken relationships. God, in His love and mercy, will not allow someone who refuses to obey these good laws to have eternal life. He doesnt want anyone to live forever in a miserable state, causing suffering for others and himself.
You May Like: What Does The Bible Say About Loneliness In Marriage
Keep The Sabbath Day Holy
Bible reference – Exodus 20:8-11:Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
Explanation: We seem to always be busy and need physical rest and spiritual rest. We need the Sabbath or God would not have made it for us. Jesus said that it was made for man and that He Himself is the Lord of the Sabbath .
The Sabbath is the memorial of His creative work, and it is also a test of mans willingness to recognize his Creators first claim to his time. Wherever we are and whether we regard Gods holy day or not the commandment is still there. Do you recognize and observe it in your home?
The 10 Commandments In The New Testament
A full list of the 10 Commandments is given twice in the Old Testament , and each commandment is mentioned many more times. But some have argued that obeying the 10 Commandments is not required of Christians if they are not listed in the New Testament.
Actually, the Old and New Testaments make up a unified whole, and Gods spiritual law and His thinking do not change .
Still, all of the 10 Commandments are mentioned in the New Testament, and as a group they are called:
- The way to enter into life .
- Necessary to be called great in the kingdom of heaven .
For more about the 10 Commandments in the New Testament, and especially about the Sabbath commandment and the New Testament Church, read our articles Are the 10 Commandments Upheld in the New Testament? and Jewish Sabbath? Or Is the Sabbath a Gift for All?
Recommended Reading: What Is An Omer In The Bible
You Shall Make No Idols
Bible reference – Exodus 20:4-6:You shall not make for yourself a carved imageany likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Explanation: Is there anything wrong with this commandment? Millions in the world need to hear this commandment. Jesus said in John 4:24, God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
All representations of the true God or false deities for the purpose of worship are forbidden. An idol image degrades God and it degrades man. God’s jealousy against false gods is but infinite love which allows no rival for our heart’s affection.
What The Apostle Paul Taught About The 10 Commandments In The New Testament
Realizing that Jesus consistently upheld all of the commandments, including observing the seventh-day Sabbath , some wrongly suggest that it was the apostle Paul, with Jesus personal approval, who introduced grace and the abolishment of the law.
This misguided idea that Paul taught against keeping the 10 Commandments is clearly refuted by the apostle himself.
Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good, said Paul . And as for grace, he wrote: Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? .
The 10 Commandments given by God in the Old Testament continue to be Gods expectations of Christians today.
The truth is that Jesus did not change His mind about the importance of keeping all of the 10 Commandments. As Hebrews 13:8 states: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
You May Like: What Does Bible Say About Cremation Vs Burial
There Are Three Biblical Versions Of The Decalogue But None Of Them Contains A List Of 10 Items Never Mind Commandments
Finding the 10 commandments clearly listed in the Bible is a difficult, if not impossible, task. Not because they are cryptically hidden in some obscure, easy-to-overlook passage. Quite the contrary. It is rather because there are three different versions of what passes for them. One is found in Exodus , the second one in Deuteronomy , and the third one in Leviticus . To make matters worse, the three of them are organized and phrased quite differently. Getting a clean list of 10 items out of them is a delicate matter that requires exceptional hermeneutic and editorial skills.
Needless to say, depending on whether the reader is Jewish or Christian these commandments will be numbered differently. Catholics, for example, consider no other gods plus no graven images to be the first commandment. Lutherans agree, but other Protestant Christians separate this commandment in two, no graven images being a commandment on its own.
The first two versions of the Decalogue are the ones modern readers are more acquainted with. Broadly speaking, they are relatively similar. But this doesnt mean they dont differ from each other in important aspects. For example, in the book of Exodus, the Sabbath command is a relatively intellectual or spiritual one. In Deuteronomy, it is clearly more physical. The original text of Exodus reads to remember . Deuteronomy reads to keep, or to actively preserve .
Read more:Read more:
The 10 Commandments In The Bible Transformed The World By Revelation
The Ten Commandments came to Israel by direct revelation from Almighty God. Because of the fear of Israel, Moses became the intermediary who received the stone tablets on which were recorded the Commandments. Until this point, ancient Near Eastern pagan religions were disseminated to people for practice by the cult of priesthood. Only the priests had access to the deities. The Ten Commandments is a significant part of the narrative that God has revealed to humanity about Himself, about ourselves, and the awful loss of relationship lost by sin. In short, to quote the late great Dr. Francis Schaeffer, There is a God and he has spoken. This revelation from God to man was something altogether different than the superstitious, nature-power-focused cults of the Near Eastern world. Quite simply, mankind could think thoughts after God because God had revealed His mind to humankind. And everything changed.
Read Also: Fear Not Is In The Bible How Many Times
The 10 Commandments In The Bible Transformed The World By Human Government
We have talked about the Ten Commandments and the rule of law, but we might also apply the rule of law to the larger framework of human government. Each of the commandments carries within it principles that when studied and applied, create human government that is taught in Scripture. In this day and age where there is talk of so-called benefits of socialism, we would do well to return to the biblical principles for human government that are clearly revealed in the word of God. Our founders certainly did.
You May Like: What Does The Bible Say About The Antichrist
New Testament Sabbath Keeping Proof
While an extremely clear directive is given for Sabbath keeping in Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15, the next closest passage to a command for Sabbath-keeping in the New Testament is found in Hebrews 4:9. In this verse we find the Greek word âsabbatismosâ. The King James and New King James Version and a few other Bibles render the word as ârestâ while the Amplified Bible the ASV, NASB, NIV, RSV and NRSV and several other translations somewhat more correctly render that word as âSabbath restâ. A few Bibles such as the Darby translation transliterate the word as âSabbatismâ. Its literal translation however, is âSabbath observanceâ and âThe Scripturesâ translated by The Institute for Scripture Research render it as such while the Thayer dictionary and the Bible in Basic English give the equally literal phrase âSabbath keepingâ. So how does the excuse âthe Sabbath is now just resting in Jesusâ constitute âSabbath observanceâ or âSabbath keepingâ as some claim? And why would you have to be concerned with physically fleeing persecution on the Sabbath day as Jesus stated when the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. if the Sabbath was just resting in Jesus? Those who are deceived or against the Ten Commandment law of God had to justify this passage somehow and I guess that was the best explanation they could come up with.
Here are just a few points that prove the Sabbath remains a physically rest.
Also Check: Mixing Races In The Bible
Original Ten Commandments From God
Moses original ten commandments were written by the finger of God. It was while Moses was up on Mt. Sinai that God himself wrote on tablets of stone to take down to the people. It would be their law given by God on how to live. What He expected and commanded.
Before we get deep, lets see just what are the original ten commandments. According to Exodus 20:1-17, these are the original ten commandments that were first spoken by God.
No one or animal could pass this or they would be killed.
Christianity today still believes in and abides by these original ten commandments. I have watched an awesome documentary about Mt. Sinai. It actually shows and verifies the very things spoken of in the bible. You will see the rock that was split open by God for water and how the mountain had like a barrier at the base of the mountain. No one or animal could pass this or they would be killed.