From Two Tablets of Stone

Posted on April 14, 2015 by America's Keswick in Freedom Fighters

From Two Tablets Of Stone

“Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”  Matthew 22:37-40 (NKJV)

One of our church elders got up during a recent men’s breakfast and announced a new Sunday morning Bible study. Brother Jim Jensen said, “We are starting a new study on Sunday mornings to help you get a good fundamental understanding of salvation, Jesus and God. Now if you are looking for an in-depth, theological inspiring study…this may not be for you.” So I went anyway.  When I got to where the class was to be Jim said to me, “I was kinda hoping you would have gotten the joke from my announcement.” I told that I did and said I think sometimes it good for us to have a milkshake from time to time because we can forget our roots. Pastor John Mol, who was co-teaching, agreed and I took a seat.

Now I gotta tell ya they did start off with somethings that are already engrained into my walk but then it happened, something that may have slipped through the cracks but still grabbed me. Brother Jim loves to emphasize just how our God is good and in doing so took us to the Ten Commandments. He challenge the class to find the good in those commandments and we talked a bit on how in the Old Testament there seemed to a lot of that justice and punishment stuff going on. But as Jim went on he stated that if we agree that we love God and God is good then these “Thou Shall Not’s” become do-able. That’s when Pastor John slammed me with what we read from Matthew 22:37-40. And there it was, as plain as day, the reason for two tablets of stone.

I truly believe that Jesus was Deuteronomical teacher, I mean after all He was pretty much involved with writing the book but we needed the application principles that those wacky Pharisees missed. Like the first 4 of the Ten Commandments being focused on El Shaddai alone and being on the first tablet of stone. After His preface YHVH sets those things which is our duties to Him. To bottom line it we are to love God with all our heart, and soul, and mind. When we take those 4 commandments to heart we love YHVH with a sincere love; with a strong love; with a superlative love and with an intelligent love. It was fit that those should be put first, because man had a Maker to love, before he had a neighbor to love.

Now we have the second tablet and they are the love one another as yourselves commandments. Now the funny thing here is when we keep these things in the “Thou Shall Not’s” we do pretty good don’t we? I think we can outwardly show honor to our parents and those other things like not committing murder, adultery, acts of thief and not saying things falsely too loudly BUT Jesus flipped the script on all of this in His Sermon on the Mount discourse didn’t He? So if we agree that we love God and God is good why do we have a hard time with our inward heart condition towards those other folks who say the love God and God is good? In 1^st John we read, “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. (1 John 2:9-11)

And that should be cause for alarm in our Christian walk. How can we say that we walk a narrow road and we are okay with doing it blindly? The only thing that happens blindly with YHVH is obedience to Him and when Jesus says these are the only commandments to live by we need to be living it. Now please don’t get me wrong, at times I can sometimes type a better Freedom Fighter than I can live but that shouldn’t be any excuse for me either. I don’t think it coincidence that YHVH gave two tablets of stone to Moses. However,  I think it sad that those wacky Pharisees didn’t pick up on what Jesus said about the greatest commandments. My hope is that we are and are making every effort to make it part of our daily walk. Amen? – Chris Hughes is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy and is a weekly Freedom Fighter blogger. You can email him at cphughes515@verizon.net

Daily Bible Reading: Leviticus 21-22; Revelation 1

Think About This: “Love for God and love for all those made in His image form the backbone of everything God says to us in His Word. So Paul can say, “Love is the fulfillment of the law”— Charles F. Stanley

This Week’s Verse to Memorize: The integrity of the upright guides them,
but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them. Proverbs 11:3