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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness Gal 5:22 |
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Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for collecting daily manna), make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Sunday, October 15, 2017
Today's Passage : Today's Passage: Subject:The Second Commandment Bible Verse:Exodus 20:4-6 "“You shall not make for yourself a carved image — any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”" Message:
This is by far the most difficult of the commandments given by God at Mt. Sinai. It can be construed in several different ways. Strictly construed, most Christian churches flaunt it; Jews and Arabs, in fact, follow it more literally than we do. Jews will not depict a person or object in their temples and synagogues, and strict Muslims will not make such a depiction anywhere at any time! They do not make statues or paintings at all, and their beautiful artwork is either purely ornamentation or calligraphy.
The issues of interpretation drove a huge wedge between Catholic/Orthodox churches, on the one hand, and the extreme Protestant sects, such as Puritans and Anabaptists, on the other. During the Cromwell era in England, "Roundheads" — the Puritanical and anti-monarchist faction — would raid Catholic churches, burning paintings of saints and the Virgin, busting up statues and breaking stained glass windows.
The first cause of these difficulties is that God did not say: "Here are ten commandments: Number 1, 'Thou shalt not . . . " Dividing His laws into ten parts, even dividing the Bible into verses, was done by humans. These words can more logically be read as a continuation of the words preceding them, and we might get a more accurate picture if we call it the Nine Commandments.
Four images of Baal
Four Baal idols
Put the words "You shall have no other gods before Me" in the same paragraph preceding today's text and a more accurate picture emerges. God is talking about idol worship: building statues of Baal and sacrificing to them, building great Molochs with furnaces in the belly, building Asharoth poles, etc. This was a huge issue in the Old Testament, and the next 1500 years of Judaism would center on the struggle against such gods. For the Hebrews would constantly continue to lapse into actual idolatry up until the time of Christ; hundreds and hundreds of pages of the Old Testament are, at their core, the history of this struggle.
Compounding the difficulty of interpreting these words correctly is that, with the coming of Christ, the basis of faith changes radically; we are not bound by the letter of the Mosaic law, but have a duty to follow its spirit just as stringently as the Jews.
Thus, Christ would allow violations of the literal law; but, at the same time, He extended the scope of the prohibition in ways that would have astounded Moses. Primarily, Christianity has extended the general spirit of anti-idolatry to mean the primacy of serving God over serving the visible world. In a word, anti-materialism: "You cannot serve two masters . . . You cannot serve both God and money."
He had a greater reward in mind, eventually, the reward of victory over the material world and victory over death. But mankind could not make the leap directly. First, God had to train us to worship Him, and it was a supremely difficult task that took many centuries
Meditation : Prayer : Now, oh heavenly Father, I ask to be called as a witness to your love by the love I extend to others; a precursor of your justice by my unfailing commitment to what is right and good; a lamp set on a hill, reflecting the light of Christ in my forgiveness, mercy and compassion; and a harvester of souls through my humble and dedicated servanthood. In Jesus' name, I pray..Amen |
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