Deuteronomy 5:22 These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly in the mount out of the middle of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness… "God spake." Think of it, worshipper of lust and greed, worshipper of self, worshipper of the many-headed monster of thine own evil desires, worshipper of no God! Think of it, Sabbath breakers who seek only your own pleasure on the Lord's Day! Think of it, ye who dishonour and are ungrateful and disobedient to father and mother! Think of it, ye whose hearts are full of violence, cruelty, and malice! "God spake these words and said." Try to realise what God is, and with it that He speaks and that He is still speaking these words to thee. What words? Very few! Men multiplied indefinitely the necessaries which God had not made many. The summary of the first table is the fear of God; of the second, the love to our neighbour. Brief, then, as they are, the commandments, and with them the whole scope and range, the origin and sum total of man's duty, are summed up in two monosyllables, "Love," "Serve." The Jews split the Ten Commandments into 613 positive and negative precepts and prohibitions. We can reduce them to one. St. Paul reduced them to the one word "Believe." St. John reduced them men may, if they like, devote their whole souls to small observances, doctrinal technicalities: that which God requires as alone necessary for any one of us is righteousness, and righteousness depends on love. A young Gentile went to the great doctor, Shammai, and said to him, "I will become a Jew if you will" teach me the whole law while I stand on one leg, and the angry Rabbi drove him out of the house with blows. But when he went with the same words to the rival of Shammai, the sweet and noble Hillel, Hillel gently answered, "That is easy, my son; never do to anyone what you would not like him to do to you. That is the whole law; all the rest is commentary and fringe." The Gentile was converted, but the Rabbi was wrong. Christ when He was asked by the young ruler, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" did not thus dissever the Golden Rule from its force and sanction, He did not divorce the second table from the first; He said, "Keep the commandments; love God with all thy heart" — that is the first table; "and thy neighbour as thyself" — that is the second. He knew that man cannot love God his Father unless he loves man his brother; and that he cannot love man the brother aright or at all unless he loves his Father God. In conclusion then, so far as man's whole duty is concerned, all the rest of Scripture is but a commentary upon the Ten Commandments; it either exhorts us to obedience by arguments, or allures us to it by promises, or frightens us from transgressions by threatenings, or excites us to the one and restrains us from the other by examples recorded in its histories. And when all this has been in vain to keep us back from sin, still God does not leave us nor forsake us. The covenant of Jehovah-shammah, "The Lord is there," becomes the covenant of Jehovah-Tsidkenu, "The Lord our Righteousness." As the atoning blood is sprinkled before the broken tables of the Law it teaches us we have indeed all sinned, but that with God in Christ there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. Christ Himself is "the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone that believeth." (Dean Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: These words the LORD spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me. |
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