Category Archives: Christian Life

GOD’S MARRIAGE COVENANT – PAY IT FORWARD

Christian life,

GOD’S MARRIAGE COVENANT – PAY IT FORWARD

“Honour your father and mother…” Ex 20:12

This is the first commandment with a promise, long life in the land God had given them. The promise in Ex 20:12 is tied to the length of time they would be allowed to live in the Promised Land.  God was saying to the people, “If you break the cycle of ungodly behaviour by honouring your parents, I guarantee that your life will be long in the Promised Land.” Godliness or ungodliness is multiplied in a family as the numbers increase. By the fifth generation there is a group of people big enough to affect a society. God is saying, “Stop the rot in your family before you lose the land.”

Honour has more to do with the way our children act than how our parents acted. Honour has less to do with what we say to our parents than what we say to our children.  To honour our parents is to move godliness forward into the next generation.  We choose to change what was ungodly in our parent’s behaviour so that our children don’t have to deal with what we had to deal with in our childhood.  Pay it forward. To honour our parents is to break the cycle of ungodliness for the next generation.

Some of us have a problem with this because our experience of parents has been painful and the thought of honouring them causes us a real problem. However:…

Firstly, to honour is not to ignore wrongs and pretend that things didn’t happen. Secondly, it is not to pretend that what was wrong was right. If we do, we are in danger of starting a new “normal”.  To do that is to accept that the way they treated us is “normal” which we perpetuate in our children. “That’s who we are and that’s what we do”, which is continuing something that is ungodly. Thirdly, to honour erring parents is to set boundaries in our behaviour that create a safe environment for us and our offspring.

How do we deal with our parents’ wrongs? We must start with gratitude to them for giving us life.  Whatever God’s plan, He could not do it without them. Any decision made while we are still alive, can be repented of and changed.

Our parents are not unique. They are part of a fallen world and so are we, but we must decide not to continue their wrongs in the next generation. We must not stand in judgement but let God take the vengeance for wrongs. He is a better judge than we are.

We must realise that they were wounded too. We can either perpetuate their wounds by punishing others because of what they did to us, or we can forgive them and let the offenses go. We can become what we hate, or we can break the pattern.  We can honour our parents by building a healthy future for our children or we can continue our bitterness in our children.

GOD’S MARRIAGE COVENANT – TAKE A DAY OFF

Christian Life,

GOD’S MARRIAGE COVENANT – TAKE A DAY OFF

“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy…” Ex 20:8

The fourth commandment refers us back to creation. God established a rhythm ratio of 6:1, six days of work to one day of rest. The Sabbath is to be a day that is unlike the other six days. We tend to evaluate life by how much we accomplish rather than who we are. The Israelites had to make a daily quota of bricks for their slavedrivers and that was the measure of their worth to them.  If we make our life about” making bricks” it will never be enough. God wanted them to know that they were just as valuable to Him when they were not accomplishing anything as when they were. He not only freed them from their slavedrivers; He had to free them from the notion that they were only valuable if they were making bricks. He instituted the commandment that for one day in seven they should do something different.

God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. Is God still Creator when He is resting and not creating? Of course, God is still Creator whether He is creating or not. We are still His sons and daughters whether we are producing anything or not. But we must settle this question in our own minds. Am I who I am regardless of what I am producing or is my value determined by what I accomplish?

The Jewish religious leaders quarrelled with Jesus because their interpretation of the Sabbath conflicted with His. They accused Him of being a law breaker when He persisted in healing on the Sabbath. Their laws forbade them to do anything on the Sabbath that they classified as “work”. To them, healing was “work” and therefore fell into the category of “forbidden”. Unfortunately, they missed the whole point of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was a gift of God’s mercy, freeing them from unending toil so that they could rest, recover their strength, and restore broken relationships to prepare them for a new week. Without a break in their week, they would soon wear out and never have an opportunity to find themselves. It would be easy for them to equate their value and those of their fellow Israelites with work.

Jesus modelled God’s mercy by freeing people from their afflictions on the Sabbath. He defended His actions by declaring that He was only doing what He saw the Father doing and the Father was always working regardless of the Sabbath because His work was showing mercy.

The Sabbath is God’s gift to us, providing us with an opportunity to rest, to understand our worth to God regardless of our achievements or lack of achievements and to help others in need because God’s mercy reaches out to us all the time. Sabbath was not given to bind us to legalistic rules to benefit God as though He needed us to impress Him. Instead, it is God’s loving gift to us.

Sabbath is also a prophetic promise of God’s eternal rest, fulfilled in Jesus. No longer do we need to labour in vain to find acceptance with God. We rest in the finished work of Jesus for full salvation.

GOD’S MARRIAGE COVENANT – THE PURPOSE OF THE KETUBAH

Christian Life, ,

GOD’S MARRIAGE COVENANT – THE PURPOSE OF THE KETUBAH

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery,” Exodus, 20:2

The Ten Commandments or God’s Ten-word Ketubah was prefaced with the words, “I am the Lord your God”, in Hebrew “Anochy Yahweh Elohim “.

The letters in the word A-N-CH-Y are pictures, each of which has a meaning:

A = an oxhead going into a yoke, signifying authority,

N = fish multiplying

CH = a hedge or fence

Y = upraised hand, implying worship or submission

The word anochy, then, literally means, “Your authority is multiplying inside the hedge of praise and submission.” This was God’s promise in the preamble to His ketubah. “A relationship with me will increase you, not diminish you.” Unlike the gods of the pagans, God did not make demands but promises based on the kind of behaviour that promoted unity within the nation.

In Hebrew thought, life is hell in any area where there are no boundaries. The significance of the ketubah was to set boundaries around a couple’s marriage relationship so that, within those boundaries, their lives would be happy and free. If they crossed the boundaries, they would be committing marital unfaithfulness and there would be consequences for both. If one partner persisted in transgressing the boundaries without repentance, that would be reason for divorce.

We cannot dismiss the Ten Commandments as irrelevant for us who live in the era of the New Covenant. God’s ketubah was not intended to be set of rules which, if we keep them, will guarantee the continuation of our relationship with Him. They are a protective boundary fence within which we will experience the greatest amount of freedom, peace, happiness, and the best kind of life. They were not given to make us good but to set us free. This is not a check list for Brownie points. Each commandment contains a deeply embedded principle which exposes more than behaviour. It uncovers the heart.

God’s purpose in giving the Ten Commandments was to teach the people of Israel, who were in covenant with Him, the best way to live in order to show the world what He is like. The purpose of the Ten Commandments is to protect love, to preserve unity and to promote contentment. Each one of the commandments fits into one of these categories.

In His ketubah, God was saying to the people, “This is who I am and this is the way I want you to relate to me and to one another. If you stick faithfully to these instructions, you will experience a full, free and happy life. I am not giving you these rules so that I will love you because I love you already. I am giving you this ketubah so that you live the best kind of life to show the world what I am like.”

God knows that we have the power to destroy ourselves. He made provision in His ketubah to save us from disaster.

GOD’S MARRIAGE COVENANT – NO GRAVEN IMAGES

Christian Life,

GOD’S MARRIAGE COVENANT- NO GRAVEN IMAGES

 “You shall not make for yourself an idol…” Ex 20:4

For 430 years, God’s covenant people were exposed to Egyptian culture which included worshipping a variety of idols. This had many implications for the Israelites’ understanding of a God they could not see.

Firstly, God said to them “Don’t make me look like something I am not.” It was in them to have an object to worship. The Egyptians had reduced their gods to what they could understand and control, but God is bigger than anything we can imagine. God says to us, “Don’t try to manage me so that you can manipulate me. Our relationship is to be based on love and submission, not on what you can get from me.”

Secondly, if we make an idol, we must place it somewhere and, to us, that place becomes holy.  We differentiate between spiritual and secular. We make the place where God is located sacred and everywhere where He is not, secular but God says that each person is to carry His presence in his being because we are His temples.

Thirdly, we must not confine God to a location otherwise where He is, is spiritual and everywhere else, where He is not, we can live as we like. The best kind of life is to have a God-consciousness all the time so that we are aware of God in everything we do.

God says, “Don’t try to make me manageable.”

                        “Don’t try to confine me to a location.”

“Don’t try to separate life into secular and spiritual.  I am your life.”

                                                “Don’t try to figure God out.”

When we treat Him like this it provokes Him to anger.

The best life is serving a God you can’t get your head around.  God is multi-dimensional, we are three-dimensional.  We can never figure God out and we must not try. We must give God the freedom to be God without trying to understand Him, control Him or confine Him to our experience or some place outside of which we are free to do as we like.

The Samaritan woman asked Jesus, “Where do you go to find God?” Jesus responded by explaining to her that God is not confined to a place because He is in us. We recognise everything by its boundaries, but we cannot set boundaries around God since He is a spirit.  We cannot understand spirit because we can’t control it.  We need to have faith in a God bigger than anything we can control. We must give up our need to control, submit to, trust, and love the God who is revealed in the Bible and not a god we have shaped in our own imagination. When we make God manageable, our concept of Him becomes an idol to which we bow, and to which concept we force everyone else to bow.

This was the problem the Pharisees had which led to them crucifying Jesus because He did not match their idea of God.

GOD’S MARIAGE CONTRACT – NO OTHER GODS

Christian Life,

GOD’S MARRIAGE CONTRACT – NO OTHER GODS

 “You shall have no other gods before me.” Ex 20:3

We are all on a journey with God and our faith and understanding develop and grow as we journey with Him. For the people of Israel, Sinai was a defining moment in their journey which began with Abraham who multiplied through the generations to become a nation in covenant with El Shaddai – God Almighty.

They became slaves in Egypt where they lost their dignity and freedom as human beings and were at the mercy of their Egyptian slavedrivers. God met Moses, revealed Himself as Jehovah and identified Himself as their God.  Before they had done anything to deserve it, He chose them to be His own. He had already established a relationship with them by covenant, not to make them good but to make them free. They did not have to impress Him, but He had to train them to believe that He already loved them and wanted to teach them to be human again. His rules were given to protect them because in Egypt as slaves they did not know how to treat one another.

The Ketubah was a set of ground rules to establish boundaries around the relationships that were already established. God had the huge task of teaching a group of slaves to respect the image of God in each other and to do life together. 

Israel was a community of people who would bring forth Messiah.  They needed to understand sin, forgiveness etc., to be ready for Messiah’s arrival. God could not drop their Messiah into a situation where they did not understand why He had come. He had to build into their culture everything they needed to know about deliverance, redemption, forgiveness and sonship etc through their religious system, sacrifices and cultural practices so that they would understand the work of Jesus.

The ketubah is a revelation of God’s way of living to a group of people who were to show God to the world. The process began in Ex 12 – the Passover. God spoke for the first time in 430 years – saying “Kill a lamb. Let’s eat and put blood on your house.”  These seem strange instructions, but God was asking, “Do you trust me?” Israel had to learn that they were saved by faith in the blood of a lamb, and they had to live by obeying God’s commands – by representing God’s character to the world. God’s way works because it brings peace and freedom from slavedrivers.  Do we trust Him?

Rules don’t establish relationship. They protect a relationship that has already been established. God’s Ketubah started with grace. His instruction to them, “No other gods” meant “No other men in your life.” This makes sense because, in Egypt they were exposed to a multiplicity of gods but now God was calling them into an exclusive relationship with Him. As their husband, He had to be the only one. They struggled with this because it demanded faith to worship a God they could not see.