Rules, Laws and Commandments

In our last article we spoke about rules and how, when everyone is sticking to well-known, tried and accepted laws, things are peaceful and orderly.
However, when those rules, or laws, are broken chaos often results, affecting many more people than just the rule-breakers.

However, laws go much further than that.
Our four-dimensional universe of height, width, length, and time only exists inside ridged, immovable, unbreakable laws.

Man has learned about many of these laws that we call natural laws but many more will be forever hidden from him.
Even the laws we can’t explain we instinctively know we can’t break them. We accept by instinct most of the laws that govern our lives and there is always a price to pay for the natural laws we break.

If we overeat the laws that govern our physical bodies will take affect and we’ll put on weight.
If we spend more than we earn the universal laws of cause and effect spring into action and we eventually go bankrupt.
If we run red lights we will, sooner or later, be involved in an accident.

We know that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points and on and on go laws that govern our every movement.

What’s interesting is that a great many laws that govern our universe cannot be “proven” scientifically. Science would need to “know” everything in order for it to be able to prove anything absolutely and, clearly, it doesn’t.

Scientific theories and laws can be disproven as new evidence emerges. For example, Certain scientific truths relating to physics that were discovered by Sir Isaac Newton and held as fact by the scientific community were disproven by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The work of Louis Pasteur disproved prior scientific theories of disease in animals and enabled vaccines to be produced against rabies, anthrax, and many others.

As far as science has come it’s still an eternity away from explaining everything about everything. Man’s scientific understanding will never be complete and is always being updated as new discoveries are made.

The point is that some things are still true even though they can’t be proven by man’s science.

God’s Word, the Bible, is full of laws that govern the moment by moment functions of the universe and the lives of every creature within it. However, many of those laws cannot be “proven” scientifically.

Here lies the great divide.
On the one hand you have man’s rejection of even the idea that there’s an almighty Creator along with the belief that only man himself is the source of all knowledge and wisdom and is master of his own destiny.

In spite of this belief, almighty man is notorious for failing to explain anything of real importance.

In the political and leadership realms we constantly ask ourselves whether we’re dealing with extremely incompetent people who don’t understand how anything works and who keep ruining everything by accident, or with extremely sinister people who know full well how things work, and nothing is happening by accident. We are appalled at either scenario.

The reliance on man alone to explain the “real world” brings theories and ideas that make no sense. There’s no ultimate purpose to our lives, and therefore man left to his own brilliance alone entirely misses the whole point of everything.

So much is left unexplained and so many questions cannot be answered.

On the other hand, you have a book that surpasses the wisdom and knowledge of any other book ever written, a book from outside our time dimension that tells history in advance and is inspired by Almighty God Himself.

Those that accept this as a fact don’t try and prove its contents scientifically, even though The Book is scientifically sound.

They’ve seen plain and unmistakable evidence of a living God all around them, in all creation, from the atoms so small they are only seen through mathematical equations to the unimaginable size of our solar system and the galaxies.

Those who reject the Bible as the true Word of God don’t realise it, but their rejection is clearly foretold in the very Word they’re rejecting.
The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God; God is in none of his thoughts. That’s Psalm 10:4.
The wilful, purposeful denial of God’s very existence and contempt for His gift of life marks a man as a fool in Psalm 14.

Psalm 111:10 tells us, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and all that act accordingly have a good understanding…”

To acknowledge the existence of God as the Almighty Creator and Moral Lawgiver is the foundation of all sound reasoning regarding what’s real.

Even amongst many bible believers the Word of God is often seen as nothing more than a vast collection of laws. In some ways this is true, but those laws are often misinterpreted as a scroll of does and don’ts.
The reality is that within the laws of the Bible are everything you and I need to know to understand our universe, ourselves and, more importantly, God.

The Bible’s Laws

The Ten Commandments

The laws in the Bible known as the Ten Commandments are often a stumbling block to many who want to know the real meaning of their life.

They read or otherwise hear of the ten commandments, and they know full well that they’ve failed to keep them in the past and they never could in the future.
Knowing this they throw up their hands in hopelessness and reject God and try to understand themselves and their lives by some other means.

This is the ultimate sadness because if the honest searcher of truth gets no further than the ten commandments he’s only seen a minute piece of the whole story and the whole story is a lamp for our feet, and a light on our path. So says Psalm 119:105. The unfolding of God’s words give light and understanding to the simple we’re told in Psalm 119:130.

Proverbs 4 20 – 22 says, “My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart. For they are life unto those that find them, And health to all their flesh.”

The purpose of the ten commandments is twofold.
Firstly, they reveal the vast chasm between man’s righteousness and God’s righteousness.
Secondly, they assure us that no matter how we try to keep those commandments, no matter how “good” we try to be, we cannot by our own works remove that chasm. We all fall desperately short of the mark, no matter who we are.

We can mistakenly think we’re “good” people by comparing ourselves with some of the worst characters in history for example Adolf Hitler or Ivan Malat or the Yorkshire ripper. Compared to any of these chaps we may come up looking pretty good and this is where most of us stop. However, what if we compare ourselves to our Holy, Righteous God?

The ten commandments are like a mirror which lets us see our true state that we all inherited because of the day our original ancestors rebelled against God.

The Ten Commandments were not given to save us by keeping those laws; they were given to show us that because we’re incapable of keeping them, we’re in desperate need of some other way to be made right with a Holy God.

It’s vital for us to understand that the Ten Commandments have no part in our salvation from death to eternal life except to reveal to us how impossible that salvation is through our own efforts and in our own righteousness.

In fact, we need a saviour!
That’s their purpose.

Neither are the ten commandments a standard for Christian conduct.
To demonstrate that fact we need only read the famous sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 5.

To take just one verse as an example we read what Jesus Himself taught in Matthew 5:27 – 28, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

As if to add insult to injury James 2:10 says, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.”
In short, we cannot ever rise to or keep up this standard, especially seeing that the damage is already long done.

No, the purpose of the Ten Commandments is like that of a schoolteacher who takes us by the hand and lead us to the Cross and says, “Little mate, you need a Saviour and here’s the only place you will find Him!”

The Sermon on the Mount

Let’s for just a moment take a detour while we’re on the subject of the sermon on the mount.

The Sermon on the Mount needs to be preached to bring understanding to the hearts of men that they have all sinned, and it reveals that none are righteous but that all have come short of God’s glory. It’s the ten commandments taken up a number of levels.

Man couldn’t keep the Law in the Old Testament (the ten commandments), so how in the world can he keep, in his own strength, the Sermon on the Mount which is elevated to an even higher degree?

Many churchgoers believe that all that’s needed of the Bible is the Sermon on the Mount. They even go so far as to say that you only need to live by the Golden Rule in Mattew 7:12: “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” To say that this is all the Bible you need to be saved may sound good, but it’s quite wrong.

The question is not whether you feel that the Sermon on the Mount is your religion. The question is: Are you living it? That is the important thing, and no man is nor can.

Notice that the Christian gospel is not found in the Sermon on the Mount.
For instance, there is absolutely no mention of the death and resurrection of Christ. Yet Paul said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 15:1 and 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, “… I declare unto you the gospel….”

What is the gospel? The Sermon on the Mount? No. Paul made it clear that the gospel is this: “… that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”

Friends, the gospel is not in the Sermon on the Mount.
If a man is honest and reads the Sermon on the Mount, he’ll know that he’s not living up to it.

If you’re living by the Sermon on the Mount, and that’s your religion, you’d better make sure you’re keeping it all. It’s loaded with law. But if you look at the Sermon on the Mount honestly, it’ll bring you to a Saviour who died for you on the cross.

The Sermon on the Mount sets before us great principles and high goals. We need to know them, but they reveal how far we come short.

The Natural Laws

It’s the natural laws of the universe that hold the whole universe together.
Whether you’re an atheist or a Christian you understand this.

The difference is in the belief of where those unimaginably complex laws come from.

The atheist believes they just happened out of nothing while the Christian believes they were initiated by God.

As Christians we know about God through His creation, but creation won’t bring a man to a saving knowledge of God.
God is the God of nature.

Things happen in nature today because God makes them happen. Without God, nature would be dead; nothing would happen.
There would be no spring, no summer, no autumn, no winter, no rain or tides, in fact no movement in this universe.
It would all come to a dead standstill if there were no Creator who continues to sustain it all.

We can look to the oldest book of the Bible, the Book of Job, to get a glimpse of God and His creation.

A brief background is that Job has undergone a series of catastrophic challenges. He had a wonderful family of ten children. He was very wealthy, and they all lived in luxury and ease.
But in the midst of all that plenty and ease, God permitted Satan, the enemy, to move into this man’s life.

Satan took one thing after another away from Job in order to break him down and strip him of his material wealth, his loved ones, his health, and the love and sympathy of his wife.

Job’s friends turn on him, then he loses his sense of worth and the dignity along with his sense of God’s justice.
He begins to pass judgement on God because he believes he’s too good for all this drama to befall him.

Then, God intervenes in this man’s weakness.  God meets Job at the point where he’s totally inadequate.

He begins to use nature to teach Job in no uncertain terms that no man is in any position to pass judgment on God.

From the powerful chapters of Job 38 and 39 we see God driving home to Job that His creation is beyond the understanding of man. Only God can know these things.

For just one example, in the stars and planets, we look to Job 38:31, “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, Or loose the belt of Orion?”
Verse 32, “Can you bring out Mazzaroth in its season? Or can you guide the Great Bear (Arcturus) with its cubs?”
Verse 33, “Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth?”

The Pleiades (also known as the Seven Sisters) is a star cluster in the constellation of Taurus.
It’s classified as an open cluster because it is a group of hundreds of stars formed from the same cosmic cloud.
They’re approximately the same age and have roughly the same chemical composition.
Most importantly, they’re bound to one another by their own gravitational attraction.

The “belt” of Orion is the three stars forming the “band” at Orion’s waist. Orion is another start cluster.

Orion’s belt is formed by two stars (Alnilam, and Mintaka) and one star cluster (Alnitak).
Alnitak is actually a triple star system at the eastern edge of Orion’s belt.
These stars (along with all the other stars forming Orion) are not bound by gravity like those in Pleiades.
Instead, the stars of Orion’s belt are heading in different directions.

God appears to be challenging Job in just the opposite way he had in the first portion of the verse.
Rather than bind the Pleiades, God challenged Job to loosen Orion.

In the last section of the verse, God challenged Job to “guide Arcturus with his sons.”

God is talking about Arcturus, or Ursa Major, one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
The “sons” referred to are the stars that accompany it, probably the stars that are now called “the tail of the bear.”

This constellation is a nightly wanderer that revolves around the heavens and is sometimes likened to a mother, who is seeking her lost children, or the stars that are no longer visible.

While Arcturus would have appeared to Job as a single star, in 1971 astronomers discovered there were 52 additional stars connected directionally with Arcturus (known now as the Arcturus stream).
How interesting that God described Arcturus as having “sons” thousands of years before it was scientifically understood.

Arcturus is one of the greatest suns in the universe and is a runaway whose speed of flight is 257 miles per second.
It has thousands of times more mass than our sun yet our sun is traveling at only 12 ½ miles a second.
This incredible velocity places Arcturus in that very small class of stars that are apparently a law unto themselves.
The combined attraction of all the stars we know can’t stop him or even turn him in his path.”

Arcturus and “his sons” are on a course all their own. Only God has the power to guide them.

The Mazzaroth is probably the name given to a constellation or cluster of stars connected with some change in the seasons.
Many interpreters believe it is a collection of twelve constellations evenly arranged around that part of the sky where the Sun appears to move in a tracking of the Earth’s orbit.
Since the rising of each of these constellations is approximately to a calendar month it defines our dividing up of the year.

God did say in Genesis 1:14 that the heavens were to be “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years”.
The Mazzaroth later became associated with occultic astrology and became known as the Zodiac.

In these verses, and all the others in these wonderful chapters, God is asking whether Job had skill and power to influence these heavenly bodies.

Job quickly realised he did not and that only God has power over them, and he repented of questioning Gods purpose and His ability to perform His will.

How can puny man, who knows nothing of these great secrets, dare to make judgment about Almighty God?

One can know about God through His creation, but creation will not bring a man to a saving knowledge of God.
There are plenty who are willing to say God created, but they deny Him the right to direct His own universe. They deny Him the right to give a purpose to it. They judge God according to their own scant knowledge.

Let’s understand that we live in a universe that was created by God and exists for His glory.

The 22 Commandments

There are commandments for believers.
The Lord, Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

The standard for Christian conduct is actually on a much higher plane than the Ten Commandments.
In 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 we find twenty–two commandments for believers given.
Now the question immediately arises: If man couldn’t keep the Ten Commandments, as the Bible makes it clear we can’t, how on earth can he keep even higher commandments?

Of course, man simply can’t do it himself.
We need a completely new nature, a nature that does not automatically rebel against everything of God.

Way back 3000 years ago God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah about a new covenant where He would put His law in man’s inward parts and write it in their hearts. That’s in Jeremiah 31:33.
This new covenant would not be like the old law, but instead would be a covenant of grace or unmerited favour.

Man will be given a new nature.
This is also spoken of in Hebrews 8:8-13 and Hebrews 10:15-17.

It won’t be an outward law which forces me to be obedient, even though I can’t be.

It is a new covenant where God writes His law in my heart by creating within me a new nature.
That’s what Christianity is all about. Jesus said, “You’ve got to be born again.”
You were born of the flesh, but you’ve got to be born of the Spirit.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. See our last article where Jesus explains this to Nicodemus in the Gospel of John chapter 3.

We need to have this new nature, this new heart with God’s laws written in it, supernaturally implanted in us.
We then have a whole new desire. It’s from within and it’s a burning desire for the things of the Lord.
We actually want to do the things the Lord has commanded.

We’re given this new nature, this new heart the moment we make the decision to believe and trust in the One who made this new nature available. The Messiah, foretold of for thousands of years, who by His death burial and resurrection, would make it possible for man, once again to be reunited with his Creator, God. The name of the promised Messiah is Jesus Christ.

While we live on this earth in this body we still carry our old nature even after receiving a new heart. That old nature is in a constant war with the new nature.

No one understood this more than the great apostle Paul.

In Romans 7:22 – 25 Paul says, and I’m reading from the Amplified Bible, “For I joyfully delight in the law of God in my inner self [with my new nature], but I see a different law and rule of action in the members of my body [in its appetites and desires], waging war against the law of my mind and subduing me and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is within my members. Wretched and miserable man that I am! Who will [rescue me and] set me free from this body of death [this corrupt, mortal existence]? Thanks be to God [for my deliverance] through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind serve the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh [my human nature, my worldliness, my sinful capacity–I serve] the law of sin.

We fail to do what we know is the will of God, but our desire grows ever stronger.

When we fail, God has given us a wonderfully simple cleanser. The Christian’s bar of soap is found in 1 John 1:9, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The Amplified Bible says it like this, “If we [freely] admit that we have sinned and confess our sins, He is faithful and just [true to His own nature and promises] and will forgive our sins and cleanse us continually from all unrighteousness [our wrongdoing, everything not in conformity with His will and purpose].

1 John 1:10, If we say that we have not sinned [refusing to admit acts of sin], we make Him [out to be] a liar [by contradicting Him] and His word is not in us.

Man’s Laws

Governments and rulers over nations make laws for natural man to follow.

Man’s laws are intended to produce a fair, peaceful and ordered society. Although they succeed in this better than if there were complete lawlessness, they fail to achieve that goal. Just look at the destruction through man’s history including today.

Man’s laws are required because man is incapable of keeping God’s laws.
If man could keep God’s laws there would be no requirement for man’s laws.

Breaking Laws

Natural laws follow exactly the functions God created them to do. For example, a leaf of a plant uses sunlight for energy to take apart water from the ground and carbon dioxide from the air to make sugar to feed the plant. A leaf can’t just stop doing that and change the way it makes sugar.

This earth is bound by unmoveable natural laws that if broken would end the earth as we know it.

Man, however, is free to operate either within God’s laws that promise purpose and peace or to operate outside of them.

When we operate outside of these laws the very fabric of society breaks down.

There’s no clearer evidence of this than in the constant state of war and conflict that every man lives under today, whether he’s aware of it or not.

The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I, was around 40 million, 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded.

Twenty million deaths!

in just the battle for Verdun alone which ran from February 21 to December 18, 1916, there were more than 700,000 victims – 305,000 killed and missing and 400,000 wounded

World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history in terms of total dead, with some 75 million people casualties including military and civilians, or around 3% of the world’s population at the time.

Many civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation.

The Soviet Union alone lost around 27 million people during the war, including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilians.

Why?

Because of covetousness! The desperate desire to have what someone else has and the lack of any restraint to do whatever’s necessary to get it, including mass murder. It’s always been that way since the fall of man and nothing’s changed in this current generation.

Winston Churchill’s famous quote is a warning for today, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” God teaches man through history as well as His Word.

It’s so easy to see the hopeless state of this world that rejects God at an ever increasing rate and has completely forgotten the painful lessons of history.

More and more any suggestion of God’s moral laws and even His very existence is met with an arrogant, self-righteousness that says, “I’m so sophisticated and all knowing that I don’t need God.”

In Romans 13:8, Galatians 5:14 and James 2:8, we see the simple formula that fulfils every one of God’s laws and covers every law made by man.

From Romans verse 8 we read; Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.

For the commandments, “YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY,” “YOU SHALL NOT MURDER,” “YOU SHALL NOT STEAL,” “YOU SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS,” “YOU SHALL NOT COVET,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.”

Love does no harm to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.

By the way our neighbour is not just the person next door but everyone we come in contact with.

One day soon the new nature that we’re given when we trust in the Lord will no longer be at war with the old nature that still exists within us. The old sin nature will cease to exist in our eternal home.

God’s law that’s written on our heart will be the only law we need or want.

The need for governments, police forces and the military will no longer exist. True freedom will reign because the law of love will be the only law we need and each of us will have no desire to operate outside of it.

The world will be ruled by a single Monarch, the Lord Jesus Christ, from the throne of David.

Will we also reject God? Will refuse to see Him as He has so beautifully revealed Himself to us in every part of His creation?

Will we fail to catch the vision of a world with only one King Who reigns in perfect love and justice and where each of us lives in perfect peace in an eternal love relationship with Almighty God Himself?

After all, what’s more important to you than your relationship with God? Is there anything more important?

The great C.S. Lewis once said, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance and, if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important”.