TABLETS OF STONE

EXODUS 20:1

New International Version (NIV)

And God spoke all these words: “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. ...

The law of the Ten Commandments is, of God’s making. They are commanded by the immeasurable eternal Majesty of heaven and earth. And where the word of the King of kings is surely there is power; and it is a law of his own speaking. God has many ways of speaking to the children of men and he never spoke, at any time, upon any occasion, as he spoke the Ten Commandments, which therefore we ought to hear with the more earnest heed. They were not only spoken audibly (so he owned the Redeemer by a voice from heaven, Matt. 3:17), but with a great deal of dreadful pomp. This law God had given to man before (it was written in his heart by nature); but sin had so defaced that writing that it was necessary, in this manner, to revive the knowledge of it.

I am the Lord thy God, Exod. 20:2. Herein, we see that God asserts his own authority to enact this law in general: “I am the Lord who command thee all that follows.” Note that He proposes himself as the sole object of that religious worship which is enjoined in the first four of the commandments. They are here bound to obedience by a threefold cord, which, one would think, could not easily be broken.

(1.) Because God is the Lord—Jehovah, self-existent, independent, eternal, and the fountain of all being and power; therefore he has an incontestable right to command us. He that gives being may give law; and therefore he is able to bear us out in our obedience, to reward it, and to punish our disobedience.

(2.) He was their God, a God in covenant with them, their God by their own consent; and, if they would not keep his commandments, who would? He had laid himself under obligations to them by promise, and therefore might justly lay his obligations on them by precept. Though that covenant of peculiarity is now no more, yet there is another, by virtue of which all that are baptized are taken into relation to him as their God, and are therefore unjust, unfaithful, and very ungrateful, if they obey him not.

(3.) He had brought them out of the land of Egypt; therefore they were bound in gratitude to obey him, because he had done them so great a kindness, had brought them out of a grievous slavery into a glorious liberty. They themselves had been eye-witnesses of the great things God had done in order to their deliverance, and could not but have observed that every circumstance of it heightened their obligation. Luke 1:74. Having loosed our bonds, he has bound us to obey him, Ps. 116:16. 

They were now enjoying the blessed fruits of their deliverance, and in expectation of a speedy settlement in Canaan; and could they think anything too much to do for him that had done so much for them? Nay, by redeeming them, he acquired a further right to rule them; they owed their service to him to whom they owed their freedom, and whose they were by purchase. And thus Christ, having rescued us out of the bondage of sin, is entitled to the best service we can do him,

What does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul? Deuteronomy 10:12

In Christ,

Janet Irene Thomas

Playwright/Director/Screen Writer

Producer/Gospel Lyricist/Author

Founder/CEO

Bible Stories Theatre of

Fine & Performing Arts

www.biblestoriestheatre.org