The Ten Commandments - One

Exodus 20: 1 - 3 (NIV): And God spoke all these words: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”

   Are the Ten Commandments still relevant today? Must we still follow them? God is so good to us. He gives us our very lives. He holds our next breath in his hands. He takes care of us and answers our prayers. He offers paradise for all eternity if we will only put our trust in him. But, in return, he makes specific demands on us. These are not suggestions; God was not kidding when he gave these commands. Remember, God has every right to do this.

But, as we will see, our lives are so much better, so much richer if we follow these Commandments. They are not random rules that keep us from enjoying our lives. Quite the contrary, all of our relationships will be better and our lives will be richer if we will follow them.

I believe we must know the Ten Commandments. We must know them and understand them. Then we can follow them and please God with our lives. Then we can live the abundant life he offers.

This first Commandment begins it all. It must begin here or we will never follow the others. God told Israel that he and only he is to be their God. Back then, there were named gods all around and it was a temptation to run after and worship them for whatever reason. Today, it is still a temptation, but the gods we run after may have different names, like money or fame or popularity or power or pleasure or comfort or even family.

God says we must not put anything above him. We must not love anything or anyone more than we love him. We must not worship anything or anyone other than him. Instead of giving God our left-overs, we give him first place in our lives. Jesus said it like this, “To love God with all of our hearts and souls and minds and strength.” God demands that he be our one and only god.  Why does God want this from us? The Bible says God created us for his pleasure. He wants a relationship with us. He wants to be our god and he wants us to love him with all of our hearts. When we obey this first Commandment, we are simply fulfilling why we are here in the first place.

Memorial Day

John 15: 12 – 15 (NIV) My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

Have you ever heard of Behnam Irani? As you read this, he is in prison in Iran. His family is concerned about his health at the moment because he is reported to have an intestinal disorder. He was arrested in his home and sentenced to six years in prison without a trial. His crime? He became a Christian and a pastor. You might be arrested just for reading this column in Iran. Or in China, or Myanmar, or Thailand, or hundreds of other places in the world where the government is elevated above the individual.

The freedom we are blessed with in America came at a terrible cost. Freedom is never free. It is always paid for in blood. I am thankful today for those who sacrificed their lives so that I could live in freedom.

My challenge is to take full advantage of the freedom that has been purchased for me. How sad to live in America today and still be a slave. But Jesus said if we sin we are a slave to sin. Sin may be fun for a time, but it always takes you farther than you want to go, keeps you longer than you want to stay, and costs you more than you want to pay. Jesus set us free from the slavery of sin. He paid for our salvation so we could be truly free now and for all eternity. It's not a coincidence that America promotes freedom and is great because of it; God himself knows the value of freedom. Paul said it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

I am doubly-blessed. I live in a land where rights are protected and the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed. I've been set free by the blood of more than a million men and women who died for this country. But I've also been set free by the blood of the creator himself. It staggers the mind.

My desire is to live my life worthy of the price that was paid. My desire is to live my life in a way that honors those who shed their blood for me.

Jesus' First Miracle

John 2: 1 – 10 (NIV): On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine." "Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied. "My time has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet." They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."

I don't think it's an coincidence that Jesus performed his first miracle at a wedding. By doing so, he put his stamp of approval on the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman. It wasn't time yet for him to reveal that he was the Christ, but he knew this story would be told through the ages as his first sign of power, and he knew it would be associated with a wedding.
We are wise to invite Jesus to our weddings, but even more wise to invite him into our homes. The family is by far the most important unit of society. God invented the family. God gave man the woman as a gift, a helper. I realize that David broke God's design and had more than one wife and yet God said David was “a man after his own heart.” So we know God still loves us, even if we do not follow his ideal, but God's plan from the very beginning was one man and one woman, bonded together for life and creating a godly family. By performing his first miracle at a wedding, Jesus reminded us of this.
But did Jesus also show his approval for drinking alcohol by creating wine from water? Keep in mind the wine in that culture was very weak. Fermentation was the only way they had to purify their water. Paul even told Timothy to drink a little wine to help his stomach. The Bible never speaks against drinking wine in moderation, but it is clear that we should not abuse it. The larger picture is that wine is symbolic of joy in this story and Jesus brings joy to our lives, our families and our faith.

The Widow's Oil - Mother's Day

2 Kings 4: 1 – 7 (NIV): The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, "Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the Lord. But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves." Elisha replied to her, "How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?" "Your servant has nothing there at all," she said, "except a little oil." Elisha said, "Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side." She left him and afterward shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, "Bring me another one." But he replied, "There is not a jar left." Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God, and he said, "Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left."

A wise mother goes to God for help. This woman found herself in a desperate situation and went to Elisha, a man of God. If her sons had been taken as slaves to pay off the debt, there would have been no one to provide for her in that culture.
What Elisha told her to do probably made little sense to her, but a wise mother demonstrates faith in good times and bad. We see in this story that God's blessings are measured out to us, in part, by our measure of faith. If she had collected only a couple of jars from her neighbors, she would have come up too short to pay off the debt and provide for her family until her sons were old enough to begin to help. But she obeyed Elisha and collected many jars from the whole neighborhood. Clearly this was a witness to the town of God's mercy and power.
A wise mother obeys God even if it doesn't make sense to her. Trust, obey, and leave the results to God.
Why did Elisha tell her to shut the door behind her when the miracle of the oil began? I believe it was because he didn't want any more jars to be brought in once the oil began to flow. God was basing the amount of oil he provided on how many jars she had collected before the miracle began. In other words, we generally show faith before we see God's miracles.
We take our troubles and emptiness to God and he fills our lives with joy and with blessings.