Sensible Rules
Theme of the Week: Liberating Commandments
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: "You saw how the Lord your God cared for you … , just as a father cares for his child" Deuteronomy 1:31. Bonus Reading:Leviticus 26:3-13
In a Jewish joke, God summons everyone to the final judgment. "Gabriel will read out the Ten Commandments one by one," he announces; "those who've broken them must depart into everlasting darkness." The first is read and a number are led off. The same thing happens with each until, having read eight, only a grim-faced, self-righteous handful remains. God contemplates spending eternity with this joyless lot, then shouts, "Everybody come back; I've changed my mind."
The Ten Commandments are often viewed as a list of tough requirements that a demanding deity insisted be kept before he'd bless his people. But that's all wrong. God had already demonstrated that he loved Israel unconditionally. They'd been brick-makers and no-hopers when God lifted them out of their lostness, granting them a fresh start.
The Ten Commandments were never intended as a list of qualifications for God's favor. Rather, they are God saying, "I love you and I've already proved it to you. So trust me. Keep these commandments because they make sense for you, and because keeping them demonstrates to the whole world who I am—the God of love and mercy, not of arbitrary power and revenge."
—Steve Chalke in The Lost Message of Jesus
My Response: I'll thank God for his mercy and reluctance to exercise wrath, even toward his enemies.
Thought to Apply: God does all before he asks us to do anything.—R.W. Barbour
Adapted from The Lost Message of Jesus (Zondervan, 2003) by permission.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity. 1 of 1
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Help me, Lord, to experience the freedom of living within the confines of Your precepts.
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