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Bible Study		February 12, 2012
Ten Commandments – The Spirit of the Law

Introduction

In our church's Bible Study for the past 6 weeks we studied the 10 commandments. Having finished that I wanted to give you a deeper look into the Ten. As we learned in the Bible Studies, the Ten commandments are all about the spirit of the law, the intent and deeper meaning of them. Unlike the laws of man which must be judged by limited man, these laws are judged by God who sees the heart.

But that isn't the spirit of the law that will be discussed here.

Lesson

The Ten Commandments were given on two stone tablets twice. The first set was broken by Moses when he found the Israelites breaking the commandments. The first time the stone was provided by God and was probably made from Lapis Lazuli; the second time the stone was a common stone carved by man. In both cases the words were written by the finger of God.

The two tablets are the two parts of the verse in Luke 10:27

He answered: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

The "Love the Lord your God" tablet contains the first 4 commandments for certain. The 5^th commandment is a crossover commandment having parts in both tablets. The "Love your neighbor as yourself" tablet contains the last 5 commandments.

However, it needs to be understood that there are spiritual equivalents of the last five commandments, the second tablet. We studied a few of these in the previous lesson "The Real Jew".

One path to one of these spiritual equivalents goes like this. If a person takes credit for the work of someone else, which commandment is he breaking? That person is stealing. But he isn't stealing something physical, like a car. He is stealing something that is not tangible and, at best, hard to value.

The spiritual equivalent of this commandment would "You shall not steal … from God". But who could steal from God? Who could sneak into Heaven and take something of His and return with it? But it turns out that, as we saw in that prior lesson, we can steal from God. The kind of theft we can commit against God is like a train robbery – intercepting a shipment of spiritual goods destined for God.

How do we do that? By boasting. Nothing that we have came to us through our own works but only through God. So what right do we have to boast about what we have? Jesus provides an example of this in Luke 18:9 in the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Also, from 1^st Corinthians 1:31 we have "Therefore, as it is written: 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.'¹" Therefore a person who boasts of how smart he is or how pretty, or how wealthy, and so on, is stealing the credit that is due to God.

An example of this can be seen in the story of Moses bringing water from the rock. Because he mishandles this so badly he is barred from entering the Promised Land. Where these verses begin the Israelites have complained to Moses that they have no water.²

⁷ The LORD said to Moses, ⁸ "Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink."

 ⁹ So Moses took the staff from the LORD's presence, just as he commanded him. ¹⁰ He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, "Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?" ¹¹ Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

 ¹² But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them."

Many people believe that Moses failing is that he did not follow instructions to the letter (yellow highlight). But in fact he fails in many ways. He disrespects the people he is leading by calling them "Rebels". He doesn't follow instructions. But most importantly he steals the credit that belongs to God. By striking the rock it looks like Moses is doing something to cause the water to come out and it isn't clear to the Israelites that this is an act of God. Also Moses says "must we bring you water out of this rock?" which also makes it unclear that God has done this. When God tells them what they did wrong (blue highlight) the problem is that God was not honored for the Israelites to see. Both by action and word Moses stole the credit that belonged to God.

If there is a spiritual equivalent of that commandment are there spiritual equivalents of the others? For some we can say for sure there are; for others it isn't as clear.

Adultery is one where it is clear but at first it isn't obvious. In many places we are called the bride of Christ. Therefore adultery would be cheating on the God. How do we do that? We Christian do that by stepping out on God to follow after Satan for a while. For example a person who is every bit Godly on Sunday at church but lives a worldly life through the week.

Another form of adultery comes from Christians being unequally yoked with Non-Christians. The worldview of Non-Christians is so different from ours, as are their motivations and goals that attempts to work together can produce no profit for God. In fact, they are more likely to pull the Christian in a bad direction.

Adultery includes prostitution and there is a spiritual equivalent of that as well. This happens when we exchange something of God for something of the world. An example would be a pastor who runs his ministry for the purpose of making money. Another example would be a pastor who won't teach the entire Bible because it would drive away some of the people in his church. He has traded the truth of God's word for money and for the convenience of avoiding criticism.

Another commandment with a spiritual equivalent is "You shall not murder." If a person claims to be a Christian yet lives a worldly life and people dismiss Christianity as a fake because of it, that person has committed spiritual murder.

The 5^th commandment also has a God component to it but in a different way. "Honor your father and your mother" all include honoring, not just respecting, all those in authority over you all the way up to God.

Conclusion

As we saw in the Bible Studies and here even more, the Ten are very deep. Unlike human laws which have to be precise so humans can judge right and wrong, these are meant to be guides to a full understanding of God's expectations for our behavior.

Review

The video series we watched for the first 5 commandments did not always reference each commandment from Exodus 20, where they are first recorded.

Questions

Summary

¹ Jeremiah 9:24

² Numbers 20