The Commandments (4 Nov 2018)

How many commandments are there? A new commandment: love one another John 13: 34 ‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ Do we need to keep the 10 commandments? Can you keep the 10 commandments? Rich young ruler Mt 19:20ff. for eternal life keep the commandments

• Jesus listed honouring the one God, murder, adultery, stealing, false testimony, honour your father and mother, and “love your neighbour as yourself.
  • Kept them all - all but one: covetousness; The perfect standard of the perfect God is perfection.
• Jesus: not removing any.
  • Matt 5:17 “I have not come to abolish the Law but to fulfil them”
  • Matt 5:19 anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven
  • Gave them higher standards.
    • Anger/hate = Murder -> judgement: Matt 5:22
    • Lust = Adultery: Mat 5:26 “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”
  • No one ever keeps the 10 commandments well enough to deserve entry into heaven – but they do teach us standards and morality according to God
  • Salvation by grace by faith not by works

Summarising the 10 Commandments One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, ‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’ Jesus quoted the Old Testament and pointed to the 10 Commandments summarised in two: Mark 12:28-34: ‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no commandment greater than these.’

• Do you love God?
• How much?
  • Vending machine Christians?
    • Romans 12:1,2 same message as these commandments
  • Cruising Christians?
  • Heart, soul, mind, strength requires some effort!
    • Heart: Centre of life source; your deepest, inaccessible centre of you;
    • Soul: that god-breathed part of you that gives you life
    • Mind: place of reasoning, thinking, understanding
    • Strength: Physical activity, movement and action.
  • One total, unrestrained commitment to one God

Difficulties and practicalities Love your neighbour as yourself - not necessarily easy to do Like “golden rule” Matt. 7:12 NIVUK “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

• If you don’t love yourself?
  • You are at least as loveable as Jesus thinks you are!
  • You can learn to love yourself when you practice by loving others
• If you are self-centred?
  • Time to get realistic about yourself and your place in the universe
• If you are manipulated?
• But in the abstract, not in the concrete…
  • Easy to love from a distance. Starving people in Yemen? Homeless? Do you love drug addicts?

See Mt 23:23 ‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practised the latter, without neglecting the former.’

• Love must get practical: But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness.
• Sometimes easier to love your enemy
• Needs forgiveness
• 1 Peter 4:8 “Love covers a multitude of sins”

Love can be costly It cost Jesus, whose example we are to follow It’s BOTH a command to follow AND evidence we are who we say we are. Evidence of Christians: love one another as Jesus loved us John 13: 34 ‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’

BUC 2018-11-04