The Presence Of God

Understanding our motivation for following God and loving others is essential but we must remember that just following a set of commands is never going to be enough. We’ll be doing it in our own strength and as we fail (because we will) we’re just going to become very aware of how far short we fall of God’s perfect standard.

The Israelites realized their inadequacy before God; so much so that they were too scared to go near his presence. They insisted that Moses enter God’s presence on their behalf. The trouble was it didn’t work because within 40 days, while Moses was up the mountain of God, they turned their backs on God and made a golden calf so they could worship it.

Ephesians 2:18, tells us that through Jesus we have access to the Father by the Spirit. We need not fear the presence of God because the Spirit gives us free access to the presence of God. We’re able to come, through the death of Jesus for us.

And because we can come into God’s presence through Jesus, by the Spirit we are changed. When the Spirit of God comes to live within a person, he changes us so that we become more like Jesus.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18 "we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."

When we first become Christians the Holy Spirit comes in and we become a new creation. We find that as we live in the presence of God and are being changed we keep the commandments because whenever we’re tempted the Holy Spirit pops up and says, “Hey! We don’t do that anymore.”

So God’s Spirit comes in and we change. Our behaviour changes, our attitudes change, and our motives change; towards God and others. We love God and we love others! And if we love God and we love others then we’ve got the 10 Commandments covered!

But it’s by the Spirit that we change – not by effort. Yes we need to co-operate with the Spirit but we must not fall into the trap of trying to please God through following rules and regulations.

We must continually be open to the Holy Spirit at work in us. Come to church or Life Group with a thirst to receive a fresh filling of His Spirit EVERY TIME! Spend time in worship and prayer. As you worship and seek Him for His presence you can trust on the promise that He gives His Holy Spirit to any who ask.

If we’re not being filled regularly with the Spirit of God then we will very quickly slide into relating to God on the basis of what we do for Him rather than what He has done for us.

We can begin today. You can receive this gift fresh again today.

Believe it’s for you – thirst – come – drink.

Let’s come before our loving Father right now and ask Him afresh for the wonderful gift of His Spirit to come upon us.

a Life Marked By Love

The Ten Commandments can be grouped into two categories. Love for God and love for each other. Jesus himself sums up the 10 commandments this way in the gospels.

Matthew 22:37-38, “And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

Love For God
We touched on this last time but it’s important to restate. If we truly have responded to the mercy and grace of God then we would expect to see a change in attitude towards God.

In the first four commandments God outlines for Israel what a life dedicated to loving Him looks like. He’s already proved his superiority in saving them so in effect he says; there shouldn’t be anything else in their lives that come before him. You don’t pray to anything else, you don’t rely on anything else, and you don’t worship anything else.

Moses probably had in mind the Egyptian gods that they would have known from their time in Egypt as well as whatever false gods were being worshipped in the lands they were travelling through.

They had been influenced by the world they had grown up in while they were slaves in Egypt. But as God’s chosen people, freed from slavery, nothing was to come before God and He is the only God they were to worship and serve.

When something comes before God in our lives because we rely on it, or believe we can’t function without it, we call it idolatry.

God demands to be more than just “added” to our lives. We don’t just add Jesus to the life we already have. We must give Him all our lives. When I first responded to the gospel almost 18 years ago, in my mind I was just adding religion to my life.

My response to God was genuine but I didn’t initially see any reason to change my lifestyle. I remember having a conversation with a Christian friend about why I wasn’t going to give up sleeping with my girlfriend. I was telling my friend that I didn’t see why God would want me to upset my girlfriend in this way. If I’m honest the real reason I didn’t want to stop was because being able to have sleep with my girlfriend made me feel accepted, secure, and significant. It didn’t think I could function without it.

As I grew in my relationship with God, I began to realise that Jesus’ death on the cross had restored my acceptance, security, and significance. I was then able to rid of this false god that was vying for attention with my father God.

How we speak about God is another way of demonstrating our love for him. To take the name of the Lord in vain is to say something about God that detracts from a true appreciation of his name and character. So it’s not just about using his name as a swear word, although it certainly includes that, but is more about how we talk about God.

When we talk about God to other people do we do him justice? Or do we dumb him down for fear of what others might think? We must talk about God in ways that honour him and demonstrate our love for him.

The 4th commandment reminded the Israel to demonstrate their love for him by respecting the Sabbath. If God can take a rest day then so can we. When God stopped, the whole world didn’t come tumbling down around his ears and neither will ours. We don’t have to celebrate the Sabbath in the same way as Israel did because Jesus fulfils the Sabbath in that we have a “rest” in Jesus that is ours to live in every day.

However, though we are free from the legal obligation of the Sabbath, it would be crazy to avoid the importance of a day of rest - God has built us so that we need one. Friends, when we consistently allow ourselves to avoid taking a day off then what are we saying about our faith in God’s ability to sustain things while we rest?

Jesus said to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. That involves more than just singing four or five great songs on a Sunday and having a warm fuzzy feeling inside. It’s about a life given completely to the lordship of Jesus Christ in response to his saving grace. It’s about letting nothing get in the way of our loving obedience to Him.

Love For Each Other
Commandments 5-10 show us what our relationships with each other will look like if we get the first four sorted out! They are inextricably linked together. If we really love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength then the natural outworking of that will be a life characterised by an unselfish loving attitude towards others.

It’s not just about making sure you don’t dishonour your parents’, murder, steal, and so on. It would be very easy to just follow these commands to the letter and self-righteously believe you were very spiritual for doing so. But they’re not meant to be an exhaustive list.

In fact Jesus himself elaborated on them when he said that you have committed adultery if you lust after someone in your own heart. He also says that  if we’re even angry with someone it’s like committing murder in our hearts.

God was saying to the Israelites that if they really were putting him first in their lives then this would be demonstrated in the way they treated each other.

In Matthew 7 Jesus says, “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them”. It’s known as the “golden rule”.

I use this golden rule to govern my car parking philosophy. When I’m driving around the car park looking for a space I sometimes see someone waiting for a car to reverse so that they can go in the space. What often happens though is that as the person in the space reverses out they block the person waiting which leaves the space open for me to go in.
But guess what? I don’t go in. I don’t steal the space. Not because the eighth commandment says “you shall not steal”, but because I hate that when people do it to me.

This second group of commandments are about wanting the best for others; about putting their needs before our own. It can be hard because we have dreams and aspirations; even God given dreams and aspirations. But we must avoid the temptation to short circuit God’s desire that we put others before ourselves.

It will be sacrificial at times; sometimes people will advance faster, or achieve success quicker. But our attitude always is to be the same as that of Christ who, as the nails were being driven into his palms, was putting the needs of everyone else before his own.

I encourage you to be open to the Holy Spirit revealing to you situations where you need to start putting others first. And then do something about it today. Make that phone call, write that email, or part with that cash.

RESPONDING TO SAVING GRACE

The first two verses of Exodus 20 reveal the three main reasons why we should obey God.

He Is The Lord
First, he says “I am the LORD...” He is Yahweh. In Exodus 3:14 God appears to Moses at the burning bush and names himself Yahweh. It means the one who just exists. He has no beginning and no end; he never changes in his being because he is absolute being.

He depends on nothing and everything depends on him. This means he has no equal; nothing can stand against him or compete with him. He is creator, sustainer, and God of all things. The earth is his and everything in it. He rules over all and he cannot be removed from that position. No military coup can oust Him, and no political party can form a coalition against him. He reigns on high!

Israel needed to recognise and remember that God had demonstrated this time and time again. Understanding God’s sovereignty; that he is Yahweh, should give us great confidence that there isn’t anything that he can’t handle or deal with.

He Is Our God
He says “I am the LORD your God”. Amazingly the God of the universe called Israel to be his treasured possession. He is their God! He doesn’t just wind up the earth like some biological clock and then sit back and let it slowly unwind. He’s involved with his people. He’s got plans and purposes for men and women. He calls them, equips them, shapes them, fights for them and blesses them. He is their God!

He is our God too. He’s got plans for us, we call it his will, and he wants to be involved in our lives, not as an added extra but number one, more of that in a minute.

He Saved Us
He says, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

It was God who displayed his wonders before pharaoh for all to see; it was God who brought them out of Egypt “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm”. It was God who parted the Red Sea so that the whole of their nation could walk across on dry land and into freedom.

And it was God who now was promising them great favour and blessing if they obeyed his voice and kept his covenant.

Because of Jesus saving work at the cross we have become the people of God and these promises apply to us as well. God, the sovereign ruler of all creation came down from heaven and rescued us from our own Egypt. He saved us from slavery to sin and death.

I’m so grateful for all that God has done for me through Jesus Christ that I want to put him first in my life. How about you? Are you someone who’s always looking for the right kind of excuse to avoid obeying God? Or are you so amazed at his love and grace that you just want to give him everything?

So the grace of God should motivate us to obey Him. But what does that looks like? God lays this out for Israel and us in verses 3-17.