The Ten Commandments
When God freed His Hebrew nation from Egyptian slavery, He parted the Red Sea so they could escape from the Egyptian army, and then instructed Moses to lead them to His sacred mountain in the Sinai Peninsula where He would meet them and teach them what was right and wrong in His eyes.
The Hebrews, or Israelites as they were called after their exodus, had always worshipped their one Almighty God, but during their four-hundred-year captivity, they had learned to worship the additional multiple gods of the Egyptians. God was going to stop their dependency upon lifeless, finicky gods that did not exist, and teach His people to depend solely upon Him.
The Ten Commandments were spoken by God first, to make them absolute. Then, they were written on two stone tablets so they would not be forgotten. Finally, they were signed by the finger of God to give the world a moral code that could not be freely dismissed by humans. The Ten Commandments were not and are not relative. They stand in direct opposition to all notions that individuals or society can determine what is morally right or wrong.
God did not give His commandments to take the pizzazz out of anyone’s lives. He gave them to provide a way for ordinary people to live together as a healthy, peaceful nation under a benevolent and all-powerful God. His commandments are not infringements or burdens. On the contrary, they are helpful guidelines which keep His people under His umbrella of many blessings. When they are woven together, the Ten Commandments create lives which are structured, meaningful, and wholesome.
The worldview of God is a harmonious world which reveres Him, respects others, and treats others the way the way they would like to be treated themselves. The first four commandments teach us how to revere God, and the next six teach us how to respect others, but we cannot obey all of them by ourselves. We need divine assistance and forgiveness.
God knows people cannot obey all the commandments all the time because they go directly against normal self-centered human nature, so He did not give them as a means of getting to heaven. He gave them to us to teach us we are all sinners who fall short of His expectations, and consequently need a Savior because the penalty for disobedience is spiritual death.
If you study all the major religions of the world today, you will realize that all religions are not alike, nor do they lead to the same place or person. The Ten Commandments are the foundation of Judaism and Christianity, and they set those two religions apart from all the others.
