Exodus 30:1-17
When God created us with his DNA God wanted us to be his family. He made us in his image. This is a spiritual image with soul and mind. This meant we could think and understand. Because he created us with the capacity to think means we have free will to choose and make choices. When God gave us the power to think and make decisions, we made the choice to use our free will and pull a coup d’état and make ourselves god. In our rebellion we would take over the garden and live and do whatever we wanted to do with the life God had given us. The God that made us took the dust of the earth that he had made and made us from that dust.
In our greed to become equal to God we lost the wonderful place of Paradise. In that loss it also meant we lost the gift of life and now we face death. It is very clear that God’s judgment will not allow Paradise to be invaded by our sin. Out of God’s love for us he began seeking out people that could enable us to return to paradise. God sought out people that would come by faith to Him. God made covenants with these people to enable us to have a way back to God’s place and overcome death. In these covenants with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses God was seeking to restore us to His family. He was giving us a way to life again.
As you study the scriptures you can see the humans being that sought and made covenant with God had their own problems with their free will. Abraham tried to palm off his wife as his sister to save his own life. Jacob was a cheat. Joseph was a spoiled brat. Moses had not been perfect either. Consider the choices they made using their free will. However, they did have faith in the covenant promises of God.
God chose Moses to be the leader that would set Abraham’s people free from 400 years of slavery. Moses was the shepherd of sheep in Midian when God called him by using a burning bush to get his attention. God has used many ways to get our attention. God said to Moses, “take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.” God tells Moses who he is: “I am the God of your father Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob”. When Moses heard this, he covered his face because he was afraid to look at God. In faith Moses knew he was face to face with the Holy God. Moses was afraid because Moses had sin in his life. God sought Moses to become a person that would take God’s plan and give us humans a way home to God. Moses, like us, would say to God that he did not have power to help these people know Him and the plan He had for them. God used signs of his power to take down all the excuses that Moses offered God about not being the right person for the job. Moses did respond in faith to God’s power and God’s promises of deliverance of Abraham’s people from the misery of slavery. God’s power would give them freedom to live in the promised land.
In the covenant community God set the boundaries for the relationship with the family he had made for himself. It was a plan that called us to live by faith and accept the covenant as a way that God would accept us back in Paradise. This is still part of God’s plan for us to have eternal life and overcome our nature to sin. We have leaders in the church today tell us that this is Old Testament stuff. We don’t live under this covenant. God does not change. God has added to this covenant, but it still contains God’s plan for us to have a way home to paradise. God added to this covenant by coming as God in human form, living as one of us, facing death on the cross for us and then on Easter he overcame death and sin in his resurrection. By faith we can return to God’s heaven; the place we lost when we attempted coup d’état to be equal to God, our creator.
The ten commandments are not just mere suggestions. They call for our faith to be grounded in God’s law. The first commandment is very clear, “You must not have any other God but me.” God is saying, “You are my family with my DNA. You can never be equal to me, for I made you for myself from the dust of the earth.”
In the second commandment he tells us the things we can’t do and still be with him in paradise. “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods.” In our free will we make many kinds of gods. “I lay the sins of the parents upon their children. The entire family is affected even children in the third and fourth generation of those who reject me. But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands.”
In the third commandment God tells us that we must respect his name. “You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name.”
The fourth commandment calls for us to have a day to focus on our relationship with God by our worship of the creator God. “Remember to observe sabbath day by keeping it holy.” It is a time of worship and renewal because spiritual renewal brings physical renewal. The first four commandments in God’s plan deals with our relationship with God our creator. In the last six commandments God deals with our relationships with each other. The fifth commandment deals with family structure, “Honor your father and mother.” This also means parents should live so they would have the respect of their children.
The sixth through tenth commandments sets his boundaries for us in our relationship with each other. The sixth commandment is about respect of the gift of life, “You must not murder.” The seventh commandment is how we are to live within the marriage covenant — “You must not commit adultery.” We are to be faithful to our spouse.
The eighth commandment is a call to respect the rights of others’ material things. “You must not steal.” There are many ways to steal with pen and gun. The ninth commandment is about being honest in what we say about someone else. “You must not testify falsely against your neighbor.” A lie brings great pain and brokenness in our human family. The tenth commandment deals with greed. “You must not covet our neighbor’s house. You must not covet our neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to our neighbor.
The life of Jesus enhanced God’s plan for us to have eternal life that we lost in our rebellion against God the Creator of all of life. The plan of God does not change. If you want to defeat sin and death you must accept, by faith, God’s total plan for our salvation. That plan includes: the laws of God, God in human form that we meet in Jesus, the cross and resurrection of the only God we can worship.
God calls to each of us to come in, come in all the way, into His grace. We just stumble along in our lives halfway accepting the God we meet in Jesus. Stop being afraid and put both knees down and accept God’s grace that gives us a new life. This is God’s plan for us to be able to return to the home God has prepared for those of us who by faith know His salvation.
