When He finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, He gave him the two tablets of testimony, stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God.   Exodus 31:18 HCSB

We often say, “Well, it’s not written in stone.” This means it is tentative or subject to change. But the Ten Commandments were not only written in stone, but written by God’s own finger. They are not subject to change. They are not open to interpretation. They are literally written in stone by God’s hand.

They begin by telling us to honor God. We are not to put anyone or anything above Him. This means that our family, our jobs, our relationships should not come before God. God should be first in our lives. We should have no other gods, like hobbies, sports, social media, video games, or anything else should not take the time we should be spending with God. We are not to make any kind of idol that we worship. This means that our fancy new boat or our fancy new car should never become something we idolize. We should also never idolize another human being.

We are instructed not to misuse the name of the Lord your God, because the LORD will not leave anyone unpunished who misuses His name. This doesn’t only mean tying God’s name to a cuss word, this means that God’s name is to be honored and kept holy or set apart. This means that we don’t just haphazardly say something like, “Oh, my God!” or “Jesus Christ!” because we are excited or upset. This means that we only use those names to bring honor, praise and glory to God.

We are instructed to keep the Sabbath day holy. This doesn’t mean that we spend the day watching football, or old movies or hanging with family and friends and failing to go to God’s house and worship Him. We are told in Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, not staying away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day is drawing near.”

We are commanded to honor our father and our mother so that we may have a long life in the land that the LORD your God is giving us. I know that some have tumultuous relations with parents and that there are plenty of cases where it may be the parent’s fault due to substance abuse, child abuse or some other issue. This is a whole other blog, but if the relationship with a parent is strained, then we should at least pray for them and offer them forgiveness. It doesn’t mean that we have to trust and subject ourselves to more abuse, it just means that we need to forgive them and remember to pray for their salvation.

We are commanded not to murder and not to commit adultery. Some of you are swelling with pride, thinking you are good on these two, but not so fast. Jesus told us in Matthew 5 that if we are angry with our brother it is as if we are committing murder in our heart. We are told in verse 22 that calling our brother a moron subjects us to hellfire. Better tread lightly with this one. Adultery is defined in the Bible as sex outside of the covenant of marriage. We are told that to look upon someone with lust is the same as committing adultery in our heart. We are told that we would be better to gouge an eye out if it causes us to sin, rather than having our entire body thrown into hell (verses 27-29).

We are commanded not to steal. We think about things here like objects, but remember we can steal time if we go to work and don’t actually work. Remember that thing you borrowed a couple years ago and never returned. We can steal by lying on our taxes. We can steal by not paying our bills.

We are not to give false testimony against our neighbor. This includes gossiping. Often times we hear gossip and we spread it and don’t even know that it’s a lie. It just sounds so juicy we can’t wait to share it. Be very careful with this one.

We are commanded not to covet anything else that belongs to our neighbor. We shouldn’t look at our neighbor’s house or spouse and say, “I wish I had that.” We are to be content with what we have. We are not to see what our neighbor has and decide we want that.

The bottom line is if we truly love God, we want to keep His commands. We want to be obedient. We want to please Him and praise Him and worship Him. We want to have a good, solid, loving relationship with Him. He tells us in Exodus 20:6 that He will show faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commands. Time is getting short. If you have fallen short on obeying these commands, turn to God today. Repent and ask Him to remove this sin far from you and forgive you of your sin. Ask Him to send His Holy Spirit into your heart so that you might not sin. He is waiting and would like nothing better.
Have a great day!