COVENANT-KEEPING WORSHIPERS

Read Exodus 20:1-17, the Ten Commandments.

We see how the Ten Commandments break into two groupings, with the first four dealing with our relationship with God and the final six dealing with our relationship with our neighbor.

Most fascinating is the way Jesus further boiled down the Ten Commandments (indeed the whole Law) into a singular command: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Luke 10:27)

There’s something we should be clear about here at the outset. The commandments are not about becoming a law-abiding citizen, as is commonly thought. They are about becoming a covenant-keeping worshiper.

In that light, it’s interesting how the most important words in the Ten Commandments, indeed in the whole of the Law, are most often excluded from the commandments when we see them inscribed in public places and even in Christian literature. They are these: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Exodus 20:2)

The Ten Commandments do not begin with commandments. The Law does not begin with laws. It begins with relationship. “I am Yahweh,” God says. “I am the God who heard your cries and who brought you out of Egypt, out of the cruel slavery under which you suffered.” I am God. I delivered you. This is the most primitive taproot of our entire faith. This cannot be overstated. If our faith does not come down to something as simple as “I am yours. You are mine,” we are missing the core essence of the Christian faith and likely lost in some form of a counterfeit religion. 

-- Excerpted from “Wake-Up Call” with J. D. Walt 

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WORTHLESS VS. PURE RELIGION

“Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”  (James 1:26-27 NIV)

Some religion is "worthless," to use James' precise word, in that it has no effect on us at all.  It leaves us unchanged.  The one who practices that religion "deceives himself" (a phrase that takes us back to verse 22:  "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves").  We think we're doing well, but we're not.

This is a religion that comes of prattling about the Word but not doing it.  The Word tries to act upon us, but we will not humbly receive it and so it makes no imprint upon our souls.  That religion, says James, is illusory and fanciful because it leaves us unchanged.

Pure religion shows itself in quiet, spontaneous acts of love -- looking after "orphans and widows in their distress," caring for the hapless and helpless, the mournful, the friendless, the forsaken, the ragamuffins, "the wretched of the earth."  It does what most people are unwilling to do.  It "exaggerates what the world neglects," says G.K. Chesterton.

God is on the side of the widow and orphan, perhaps because most people are not:  "Leave your orphans [with Me]," He says, "I will protect their lives.  Your widows too can trust in Me" (Jeremiah 49:11).  He is "a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows…"  (Psalm 68:5).  We are most like God when we care for those He cares for. 

-- David Roper in “Growing Slowly Wise” 

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