#24 God wrote the Ten Commandments not to make us feel guilty but to lift us up to Himself. God wants to write his law on our hearts. We want to write it on our to-do lists. Exodus 20:20. Don’t be afraid. God has come to instill a deep and reverent awe within you. 
Not Even A Likeness of An Idol
Not Twitter or Facebook or Ministry or Children
My friend, Larry, once told me that God had Moses write the Ten Commandments, "not to beat you down into self-hatred over never getting it right, but rather to lift you up into the liberating experience of looking bad in the presence of love." We are fully known, accepted, and loved even in the midst. Sinful Sinners. Glorious Messes.
We will, day-in day-out, feel hungrier for something other than God in our lives, at times. We'll never fully depend on Him and Him Alone! So many signposts tell us we are off the tracks. Do we listen? Or do we rationalize? Someone close to me said this week that going to church doesn't make you a Christian and that's oh so true. Since the pandemic hit, there are so many, many Christians who have not returned to church. The context of the conversation was about my father who never darkened the door of a church in his lifetime. If you don't want Jesus here on earth, do you want him in the afterlife? My dad had a strong sense of morality from what I saw. Does your morality save you? No, but where did that morality come from? 10 Commandments draw us up and that makes us want to worship.
Moses writes the 10 Commandments not to make us feel guilty about the do's and don'ts. God gives us This Word to free us up. Exodus 20:20 Moses spoke: Don’t be afraid. God has come to test you and instill a deep and reverent awe within you so that you won’t sin.”
God called Moses to walk up a sinful mountain. He had a big errand for the messenger Moses. The Maker of Heaven & Earth and all above and all below called out to a proud people who were not walking in holiness. God wanted to write His Law on their Hearts; we want to write His Law on our To-Do lists.
This solemn sermon served this church in a wilderness resounding "to convince the Israelites (and our lives too) of their guilt, and to show that they could not stand in judgment before God by their own obedience. In the law, the sinner discovers what he ought to be, what he is, and what he wants." Matthew Henry. The sermon trumped the law. "In drawing near to God, we must never forget his Holiness and Greatness, nor our own meanness and pollution." MH We are a mean people.
The Israelites were not aware of their own sins ... and God spoke. No one had ever heard anything like these Two Tablets of Truth. Sounds like God wrote to this day, as our own sins so deface our hearts, nd we do not name what we are doing. We don't name the idols that we wrestle with: Social Media. Children. Ministry. Success. Money. Recognition. Good Things. Anything in the heaven or anything beneath the earth ... or under the sea, anything that flashes the likeness of an idol and detaches us from our Maker.
Let the manna rain down and expose our own hearts and name what we are doing under the sun that keeps us from a genuine Hunger and Thirst for God.
Never in history has God chosen to speak like He did through giving Ten Commandments that envelop the intentions and thoughts and motives and demands of our lives. Someone once called it the "Grand Demand of Love"—-it springs from obedience. And to obey, may we have no other idols before---none in heaven; none in earth. God was before everything and we owe him everything. God still speaks to us through His Providential hand, our consciences, His written Word but only two tablets once! And we all have defaced the tablets. And we get ourselves in messes. I sit in a mess I have created today. And yet, we all have clean slates for the grand demand. Keep on loving each other.
PHOTO: Bob walking on Santa Rosa Island.
No other idols in heaven or on earth.
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