Background Text: Exodus 20:2-6
Devotional Text: John 1:9-13
Last week, we began a study of the law and the prophets, including the 613 commandments given by God to Moses to help the people in their daily lives, as well as to develop the Hebrew nation as they traveled to the Promised Land.
Today, friends, we are beginning our focus on the first two of the Ten Commandments as found in Exodus 20:2-6 and in Deuteronomy 5:6-10. These commandments will lead us toward discovering Jesus as the fulfillment of those commandments.
The First Commandment
We will begin by reading the first of the ten from Exodus 20:2-3 (it is the same in Deut. 5:6-7):
“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.”
This first commandment lets the people know that he is the one and only God. If the people should instead give their allegiance to a foreign god, it would be unacceptable to him.
When God made himself known to the ancestors of the Jewish people — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — he called himself El Shaddai. In Exodus 6:2-3, God made himself known to Moses by the name Yahweh.
El Shaddai (meaning God Almighty, All Sufficient, and even God of the mountain) came to the 99-year-old Abram in Genesis 17:1, saying to him, “I am El Shaddai; walk before me, and be blameless.”
Again, in Genesis 35:11, we find God changing Jacob’s name to Israel, saying these words to him: “I am El Shaddai: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a community of nations will come from you and kings will be among your descendants.”
The name Yahweh, referring to God, translates into “I Am” or “I Am Who I Am.” This word for God literally means the one who is eternal and unchanging; he always was and always will be.
The Second Commandment
God’s second commandment in Exodus 20:4-6 and Deut. 5:8-10, reads this way: “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”
The second part of this commandment completes the first, as it continues the command by telling us, “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
We see here that God was not forbidding the creation of an image, but was forbidding a created image to be worshiped as a god.
God also spoke about generational sins. The statement above reads as if children are destined to follow the sins of their parents down to the third and fourth generations.
Even though it often is true that when children are taught a certain way of life that is prone to wrongful behavior, they tend to carry that same behavior into their own grown-up lives. We see these as cycles of bad behavior that are carried down to offspring, who then teach the same behavior to their children.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way, and praise God, cycles can be broken. What it takes is for the person, whether child or parent, to realize they have a choice in breaking the cycle as they learn new and better behavior. We think of the light of Christ coming into the world of darkness to shine the glory of God.
Speaking about Jesus in John 1:4-5, we read, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Continuing in John 1:9-13, “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
“Yet, to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children not born of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
These scriptures lead us to understanding the last part of the second commandment that tells us, “but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
“Those who love me and keep my commandments” refers to those who follow the two greatest commandments, given to us by Jesus. For it was Jesus who told us that these two fulfill the ten:
From Matthew 22:37-40, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
What does it mean to become children of God? It means we have committed our lives to Jesus Christ, believing in him and following his teachings. To do so makes us new. Even Jesus himself referred to this new life as being “born again,” as he explained the grace of God offered to the whole world through him (John 3:7-8).
Those thousands of generations the second commandment speaks to us about are all those who keep the faith, living, as best they can, good and righteous lives following Jesus’ teachings from the New Testament. The word of God teaches us right from wrong, good from bad, and above all, the power of God’s love.
Next week, we will continue with commandments three and four.
