“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” –Exodus 20:8
The Sabbath day is HOLY. The word for “holy” in Hebrew is “Qadosh” which literally means according to Koehler and Baumgartner’s Hebrew Lexicon: “withheld from profane use, to be treated with special care.”
So the question for all of us would be is the Sabbath day withheld in our lives from profane use? Is the Sabbath day treated with special care? I think to know if the Sabbath is being treated in a profane way in our lives we have to understand that to “profane something” means to bring the secular into the sacred. So doing secular activities on a sacred day would be profaning the Sabbath.
Let us all keep the Sabbath Holy!
I found this very interesting and very sad!
According to a study done the phrase, “Oh my God” accounts for 24% of women’s swearing. “Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.” Most persons would not consider this swearing, but it is, and not only is it swearing but it is also dishonoring the one who made us and saved us!
“You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” –Exodus 20:7
The name of YHWH was so holy to the Jewish people they never even spoke it. When they would get to the name of God in scripture rather than say Yahweh, they would say, “Adonai”. Casually using God’s name without any purpose, shows a low view of God. How? Because anyone or anything we love we don’t speak of flippantly. My boys are two of the most precious gifts to me and I don’t speak of them as a sidebar or as a curse word. They are of utmost value so I speak their names as their names and not at a whim.
I was raised in a home where we couldn’t even say, “gosh,” “geez,” or “golly” those words my parents felt were to close to the name of God, I think they were/are right and I am grateful they instilled that fear of the Lord in me. Long before I was a Christian when profane speech was part of my everyday vocabulary on the couple of occasions I took the Lord’s name in vain I felt a twinge of remorse and guilt…the Lord was using my upbringing to remind me that He was still Lord and that He was still there…even for me!
“You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” –Exodus 20: 5 & 6
As I said yesterday we make idols not through a lack of belief in God, but a lack of faith of God. This happens in the everyday living of our lives (which is worship), but often times it happens in what we specifically as followers of Jesus refer to as “worship” what we do Saturday mornings (or Sunday mornings). We create idols in “worship” when God isn’t enough. What do I mean by this? Worship for many is not successful unless the music was to the standard they desired, or the music was not of the genre they prefer. It is not successful if the speaker they like to listen to isn’t the speaker or if the speaker did not finish by 12 or 12:30. Even if truth, clear and direct truth from scripture was presented if the above were not up to their standard then worship by them would be deemed as not successful. Why because worship has become about what they prefer and not the truth of God’s Word! When this happens idols are created because we are no longer worshiping the Lord, but rather our own desires for worship!
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”
–Exodus 20:4
In our current context how do we form images? To understand this passage I believe we need to look at one of if not the most directly quoted passage in scripture, Habakkuk 2:4 which is then quoted three times in the New Testament, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38, “The righteous (just) shall live by faith.” The reason the Israelites “made” idols for worship is because the way God was revealing Himself or not revealing Himself to them wasn’t good enough according to their own perspective. They couldn’t see Him, They couldn’t hear Him. He took too long to send Moses back down the mountain. So they reasoned to themselves that they should make something that would encourage them, that would make them “feel” better. To “feel” more secure. As you read scripture we see over and over again that many times the people still believed in YHWH (Yahweh) even as they made images. Idols weren’t always a sign of unbelief, rather idols were a sign of no faith, no faith in what God was doing. No faith that God would deliver. No faith that God would protect. No faith that God would provide. No faith that God heard them. However more often than not, they still believed! Well aren’t faith and belief the same thing? No, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” (James 2:19) Where Satan and the demons fail is not in their unbelief in the ONE God, they fail in their lack of faith in God. Idol worship continues in our current setting not because of a lack of belief in God, but because of a lack of faith in God and more specifically lack of faith in worship of God as we will see tomorrow. We create idols even if we “make” nothing physical, when we believe in God but fail to “live by faith” in God and therefore try to figure things out and do things our own way. Every time you or I try to overcome sin on our own we are making an idol. Every time we try to overcome a conflict in our own life apart from God we are making an idol. Every time we worry about how we are going to pay for something or we fail to give to God, because we then can’t pay our bills or go on that vacation, we are making an idol. Idols are not about unbelief they are about a lack of faith and scripture tells us, “And without faith it is impossible to please God..” (Hebrews 11:6).
So as we memorize this text let us think about the idols we’ve made and humbly ask God to tear them down by teaching us how to “live by faith.”