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Transcript
00:00Responding to Grace The Ten Commandments are not a ladder of merit
00:06by which we seek to climb into God's good books, winning our way into His favor by our
00:11works.
00:12Exodus 20 verse 2 firmly puts God's action in salvation first.
00:17He speaks His commands to us not in order that we may be saved but because He has already
00:22saved us, and now the same grace which saved us teaches us how to respond in grateful obedience.
00:29This relationship between grace and law, between salvation and responsive obedience, remains
00:35the same right through the Bible.
00:37The Ten Commandments themselves present a rounded and balanced pattern for life.
00:43It is mistaken to think that the Decalogue deals only with externalities, awaiting Jesus
00:47to make them apply also to the heart.
00:51See how it opens and closes with our thoughts, spiritual and social.
00:56Has the Lord our soul in total loyalty and commitment?
01:00The above outline takes note of the different way the fifth commandment is expressed compared
01:04to the first four commands with a positive instruction rather than a prohibition, and
01:09that it is emphasized by having a promise of long life attached to it.
01:15After our duty to God, our domestic life and relationships are our first concern and responsibility,
01:22the essential point of the commandments.
01:25See the whole law of God is spelled out in Leviticus 19.
01:29That chapter is a veritable jumble of topics rather like life itself.
01:34But each regulation is enforced by the reminder I am the Lord.
01:39Given that Lord stands for the divine name, I am the Lord is equivalent to I am who I
01:43am.
01:44Each commandment and the whole Decalogue comes to us not arbitrarily but because Yahweh is
01:49what He is.
01:51It reflects and expresses Him.
01:54Obeying His commandments makes us like Him.
01:57Reflection
01:58Contemplate further the glorious and enriching truths of God's law by reading Psalm 19 verse
02:047 to 11.