the blessing and challenge of the commandments
The Commandments (and God’s Word in general) hold both challenge and blessing for those who attend to them in faith. At once they convict us of the reality of the human condition – that we fall short and are cursed for spiritual death; at the same time God has blessed us with a Word that offers us temporary shelter and an eternal hope that He will intervene and give us life.
What does one do with this teaching on the Commandments? Broadly, the application is two-fold, growing out of two significant realizations about the human condition: we are challenged and we are blessed.
We are challenged to not give in to easy self-righteousness, displacing our need for a holy God to intervene and save. To respond to this challenge produces a profound and genuine humility.
There is also blessing: we are blessed to have some living words of hope spoken into our death camp – words which offer us order and blessing in this, our temporary home; and words which hold out a picture and a hope of new life with the one and only Lord of all. To receive this blessing produces a profound and genuine joy.
God’s Word… food for the soul… humility and joy… challenge and blessing.
More here:
Sermon on the Commandments (Exodus 20)
Sermon on the Commandments (Matthew 5)
For those living in the ashes between Eden and the End, the Ten Commandments offer a temporary shelter in the present world, with all the hope of a God who is coming to save us from death itself.