byu19institute

the Ten Commandments and Covenanting

Moses Goes Up

What are the conditions of the people when Moses is commanded to go to the Mountain?

"If man will not be ruled by God, he will certainly be ruled by tyrants - and there is no tyranny more imperious or more devastating than man's own selfishness, without the law. We cannot break the Ten Commandments. We can only break ourselves against them - or else by keeping them, rise through them to the fullness of freedom under God. God means us to be free. With divine daring, He gave us the power of choice" (Commencement Address, Brigham Young University Speeches of the Year, Provo, 31 May 1657).

"By His own finger, the Lord wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone. They represent the basic law of the Almighty and have formed the underlying elements of civil and religious law ever since. They are fundamental to our relationships with God. They are an integral part of the restored gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and are essential to our becoming perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. Variations of these laws are given in the rules laid down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy as they are applies to specific matters, but generally they form the foundation for all proper human conduct" (Old Testament Student Institute Manual, 127; Petersen, Moses, p.101).

The Ten Commandments

No God's before Him:

"God will not favor us if we put Him in second place in our lives" (Petersen, Moses, p.111).

God' Name in Vain:

"There is an additional implication in the commandment to avoid taking the name of God in vain. An integral part of living the gospel is the making of oaths and covenants with God. When a person is baptized he covenants to take the name of Christ upon himself. It he forget that solemn oath made at baptism, he has taken the name of the Lord in vain (Manual, p.129).

Sabbath Day Holy:

"The death penalties attached to the violation of the sabbath in the Old Testament era convey two very obvious assumptions. First, the sabbath law involves a principle so important and basic that violation thereof is a capital offense. Second, the law conveys also the fact that violation f the sabbath laws involves a kind of death in and of itself, i.e., that violation brings on death. The prophets clearly made this assumption. Obedience, by implication, mean life" (Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Lay, p.137).
The measuring stick of a righteous life is how we keep the Sabbath day holy.
"The concept of sanctification and the idea of rest as used in the scriptures seem closely related. The rest of the Lord is defined as "the fulness of [God's] glory". Alma taught that certain early Saints entered the "rest of the Lord" after being made pure through a process of sanctification (Alma 13:12). In other word, God's work is the sanctification of His children to the point where they can enter into the ultimate rest, which is the fulness of His glory. Once each week man is commanded to cease hi own labors and allow God to perform His work of sanctification on him. Resting on the Sabbath, then, implies far more than taking a nap or stopping normal activities. Mankind must enter into the Lord's work on that day. This work involves making themselves and other more godlike, another way to speak of sanctification. Doing the work of the Lord (sanctification) often involves great activity on the Sabbath day, and the day may not be restful in the usual sense. One can assume that if doing good to an animal on the Sabbath is approve by the Lord (see Matthew 12:11; Luke 13:15), then doing good to men is an even higher good. The two commandments for the Sabbath are rest and worship. The Hebrew verb la-avodh, "to worship", means also "to work" and "to serve." This holy work then creates a new and holy man; so the Sabbath is tied into the work of creation.
"The Sabbath is a day on which to take inventory - to analyze our weaknesses, to confess our sins to our associates and our Lord" (In "The Fourth Commandment," Part 2, The Ten Commandments Today, pp. 66-68).

Honor our Father and Mother: