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    The Ten Commandments: What Two Tablets Reveal about the Life of the Spirit and the Way Toward God
    The Ten Commandments: What Two Tablets Reveal about the Life of the Spirit and the Way Toward God
    The Ten Commandments: What Two Tablets Reveal about the Life of the Spirit and the Way Toward God
    Ebook139 pages2 hours

    The Ten Commandments: What Two Tablets Reveal about the Life of the Spirit and the Way Toward God

    By Peter Zelinski

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    About this ebook

    How much did God give to Moses when he gave him the Ten Commandments? In this fresh and fascinating look at the text that was inscribed on two tablets, Christian author Peter Zelinski (www.peterzelinski.com) finds meaning that is richer than just a list of rules. The Ten Commandments also can be seen as a map, Zelinski says. The details and structure of the biblical verses chart spiritual principles basic to our lives, and describe the steps in a progression aimed at drawing the heart nearer to God.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateNov 1, 2012
    ISBN9780984747795
    The Ten Commandments: What Two Tablets Reveal about the Life of the Spirit and the Way Toward God

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      Book preview

      The Ten Commandments - Peter Zelinski

      The Ten Commandments

      What do two tablets reveal about the life of the spirit and the way toward God?

      By Peter Zelinski

      www.peterzelinski.com

      Copyright © 2012 by Peter Zelinski. ISBN 978-0-9847477-9-5. Cover design by Cary Rohrer, Raygun Design, www.TakeMeToRaygunDesign.com

      Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. 

      To Kaye

      Preface

      A reading of the table of contents on the following page might suggest that this is a crazy book about the Ten Commandments. As you are about to see, the commandments are not covered in numerical order. Not every commandment gets a dedicated chapter. One chapter is dedicated to a commandment (the zeroth?) that isn’t even one of the Ten.

      Examining the commandments individually and in order from one to ten is a logical and fruitful way to explore them—but it’s not the approach that this book takes. Indeed, the very premise of this book, as Chapter 1 explains, is that the Ten Commandments can be thought of as a map. That map covers a lot of terrain, and there are fresh discoveries to be made by approaching the familiar landmarks from different directions.

      Contents

      Preface

      Chapter 1: A Moral Map of the Universe

      The Ten Commandments point to a deeper pattern.

      Chapter 2: The Commandments and the Rules

      Extract the rules from the Ten Commandments to see that the actual text is richer than just rules.

      Chapter 3: The Zeroth Commandment

      The Ten Commandments have levels. The highest of these levels is God.

      Chapter 4: What is the Difference Between a False God and an Idol?

      A false god is a person. An idol is a thing.

      Chapter 5: The First Commandment (How Do You Know Your god is God?)

      The Living God is transformational. We should expect this transformation.

      Chapter 6: The Second Commandment (Idle Worship)

      An otherwise good and healthy thing has become an idol when we revere it fearfully, or pursue it in lieu of seeking God.

      Chapter 7: The Sixth Commandment (The Killing Field of the Mind)

      To set the heart free from rage, turn away from rival gods.

      Chapter 8: The Seventh Commandment (Beguiled at Heart)

      To get free of an adulterous heart, ask, What is the idol I worship? To get free of the sins of the second tablet, give your heart to the commands of the first tablet.

      Chapter 9: The Fifth Commandment (The Parent Trap)

      Honoring your parents means ceasing to worship them, as well as ceasing to reject them. A proper regard for one’s parents is the way by which blessings flow.

      Chapter 10: The Fourth Commandment (Time Enough for God)

      For one day every week, let go.

      Chapter 11: The Third Commandment (God is There)

      God is paying attention. Know that this is true.

      Chapter 12: Regurgitate the Fruit

      What the commandments do not tell us.

      Chapter 13: How Shall We Regard the Commandments?

      There is still something we haven’t seen.

      Chapter 1

      A Moral Map of the Universe

      The Ten Commandments point to a deeper pattern.

      What did God really give to Moses when he gave him the Ten Commandments?

      We can see in the Bible that God had much more to communicate to Moses than just these ten points. The book of Exodus includes a long dissertation to Moses from God. The books of Leviticus and Numbers add more. In all of what God spoke here, there are lots of commands—hundreds of them.

      Yet this opening part, this first volley of commands, comes in a set of ten. That number alone seems to convey something about the nature of this set. Ten is a number we see as foundational to the way God made our bodies. We find the number in our fingers and toes, and we in turn have made the number foundational to the way our counting system works. The quantity ten suggests that there is something similarly foundational in this first set of commands. God went on to make their separateness even more apparent by choosing these special ten for inscription onto the well-known tablets of stone.

      Further, these commands do come first, near the beginning of the Law that was dictated by God. This fact seems significant, too. God seems to be beginning with the basics. In the very first words of the Law, God presents the most basic point of all—a statement of just who he is.

      I am the Lord your God, he says in Exodus 20:2, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. In other words, here is the God who acts decisively within human lives, human geography, and human history. Here is a real and specific God, who has something real and specific to say.

      The Ten Commandments are the next words the Creator speaks. They feature a directness, conciseness, and breadth of scope that separate them even from the rest of what God had to say across the many biblical chapters that follow.

      * * *

      He was already losing part of his audience. The people of Israel had been listening in, but at this point they retreated, leaving Moses alone to hear all of the rest of the Law. After hearing the Ten Commandments, the chosen people felt that they could listen to no more.

      We can understand their reaction. We still hear a rumble of the power that they heard then, even when we merely read an English translation of those commandments silently to ourselves off of a plaque or billboard, or off of the printed page. There is something in those words. There is a mantle of knowledge that even the believer is reluctant to shoulder. There is a revelation so bright in its purity that our minds blink against peering into it directly.

      Imagine how much God wanted to give his children. Imagine what he would have wanted those Israelites to know—what understanding he would have wanted them to carry in their thoughts and keep in their hearts, so that they could walk with him in fellowship and confidence as his stewards over creation. Now, imagine what gift of knowledge and insight that same unchanging God wants his children today to have.

      The Ten Commandments were, and still are, the core of this gift of instruction. More than just speaking to what is basic, the Ten Commandments convey something structural. They provide us with a glimpse, and perhaps only a glimpse, at the deep girders that give form and support to the nature of the created world we know.

      I have a simple idea I want to share. I will introduce it in this chapter and develop it over the course of the chapters to follow. That idea, the premise of this book, the germ I hope to infect you with, is this:

      The Ten Commandments are far more than just a list of rules.

      They have far more to teach us than simply what we should and should not do.

      * * *

      To begin a deeper exploration of the Ten Commandments, a logical starting point is one of the most iconic facts about them—something almost everyone knows.

      That is, the Ten Commandments were inscribed on two tablets. Not one tablet, but two.

      The choice can only be significant. God could have fit all of the commandments onto one piece of stone, if this is how he wished to present them. The Creator of the universe presumably could have controlled the font size.

      * * *

      Jesus came.

      He changed the destiny of mankind. His death and resurrection were the turning point of history, the turning point of creation. They were the turning point of my life, too.

      Jesus also taught. This was not necessary to his mission of redeeming sacrifice. He could have died and risen without saying a great deal at all. Yet he devoted the last few years of his life on earth to teaching human beings how to live. His teachings are recorded in the gospels. They include various commands—many of which seem like new commands, because they do not appear in the Law that was given to Moses. Yet Jesus affirmed the Law that was given to Moses, saying in Matthew 5:17 that he did not come to change anything about it. What are we to make of this apparent discrepancy?

      In one scene that was also recorded in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus was asked to identify which command was the most important. He answered that two commands are the most important. First comes Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, then, he said, the second is Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-39).

      Neither of these two commands appears in the Ten Commandments.

      However, they do appear beneath them.

      * * *

      Look again at the two tablets. We hazard the guess that they divide the commandments symmetrically, into two sets of five. This is an assumption. The Bible omits this detail, never stating how many commandments are on either stone. However, the five-by-five framework will prove rewarding, yielding up riches throughout this book. Part of the reason why the even split seems valid is the way it aligns with the words of Christ quoted above.

      To see this, consider the first set of five. It includes, You shall have no other gods, You shall not make an idol, You shall not take God’s name in vain, and so on.

      Now consider the second set. It includes, You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, and so on.

      Notice the difference: While the first set of five focuses on God, the second set of five focuses on other people. This follows the same pattern as Jesus’ words. Asked to state the Law, Jesus gave it in its most distilled form.

      He said to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. When he said this, he was summarizing the first set of five, or the first tablet.

      He said to love your neighbor as yourself. When he said this, he was summarizing the second set of five, or the second tablet.

      But Jesus also showed us more. He ranked his own two commands, placing one ahead of the other. The second of these two commands from Jesus is clearly vital—so vital that he answered a question about which one command is most important by citing two commands together. Yet by including the ranking, Jesus revealed something new. He revealed that the first tablet of the Ten Commandments is superior to the second.

      * * *

      To be fair, even given the five-by-five split, we don’t know how the two tablets made this division. One clear detail the Bible does provide highlights the inaccuracy in most of our popular imaginings of the tablets. Namely: On the

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