The 5th Commandment – Preface

Church Blog – 5^th Commandment

Exodus 20:12 (New American Standard Bible)

¹²“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you.

Hey Church,

I hope this Blog entry finds you well and loving life being in God. As promised here is an expanded, written version of my message that due to time restraints was unable to be fully examined on Sunday. I have decided to break the message/essay in to four parts in order to make it easier to read (less daunting) and hopefully, also, to string a few people along! This is what it will look like:

1.     Preface (like an introduction).

2.     Part 1 – Breaking Apart Texts and The Context of the 5^th Commandment.

3.     Part 2 – What relevance does the 5^th Commandment and the Ten have today?

4.     Part 3 – How do we make Godly decisions or how do we use these teachings effectively in day-to-day life?

Preface

The Ten Commandments is about decision-making. God spoke the words of these commands to Moses in order that they be read out to the people of Israel as guidelines/laws that would allow them to remain/to be holy and righteous, pleasing to God. God designed these laws so that the people in their day-to-day decision-making had a foundation to fall back on. This would allow them to know the heart of God and discern what would be and not be sin in their decision. For instance:

• The goats need milking but it is the Sabbath
• It would be so easy to just take a few of my neighbour’s chickens, I need them
• Should I listen to my parents today

I think we get the point here. Remembering also that the Ten Commandments were just the concrete slab for a high-rise building of laws and guidelines for God’s people. Can the law of the Old Testament still work today? It could, however, you must be willing to pay the consequences of breaking the law. For instance:

• A disobedient son can be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 21:18-21).
• A sacrifice of perfect livestock and other foodstuff must be paid in atonement of sin.
• You would need to be circumcised guys.

The inescapable universal law that cannot be avoided is that a consequence or more accurately a price always needs to be paid for a sinful choice. Remembering also that God judges the motive behind choice (Prov 16:2, 1 Chron 28:9). Alternatively, a Godly choice will produce or lead to producing what we call ‘good fruit’ (see Hebrews 11:24-26). Here is a basic taxonomy of what this looks like:

The reason we no longer need to live through the ‘law’ and the Ten Commandments is because of Jesus and his gift of Grace that includes the sending of the Holy Spirit. Jesus paid the price for our sin so that we don’t have to. Paul explains the significance of this in Romans. That basically because of inherited sin in our earthly body/mind if we rely only on the law and the commandments then we are sure to fall short of God’s glory. This is because we are relying on ‘Flesh’ that is dead and as such is naturally predilected (will naturally try) to sin (Romans 7). Instead, with the death and more importantly the resurrection of Jesus Christ we no longer need to rely on a static law because our God is alive within us and we have a Holy Spirit who counsels and intercedes for us. The situation has not changed. God still wishes us to be holy, righteous and pleasing to him through good decision-making and choices. What has changed and become better is that we now have a dynamic helper in the Holy Spirit and a perfect example in Jesus and his word (the Bible). With these two things we have every opportunity to make good decisions that will bear good fruit for God’s glory.

Bless you readers and keep an eye out for Part 1 – Breaking Apart Texts and The Context of the 5^th Commandment.

Tim Canosa

tim_canosa@hotmail.com