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Week
No. 3 in Advent 2005
The
Lord's Commandments
The
subject for sharing this week is based on the first three of the 10
Commandments, and the first few verses of the prayer our Lord taught his
disciples when they asked him to teach them how to pray as follows:
The commandments
I am the LORD your God who brought you
out of
Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall
have no other gods before me. You shall not make for your self an idol in the
form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am
a jealous God, punishing children for the sins of the fathers to the third and
fourth generation of those that hate me, but showing love to a thousand
generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not misuse
the name of the Lord your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who
misuses his name. (Ex. 5:2 – 7)
The Lord’s prayer
This, then, is how you should pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your
kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
(Matt. 5:9 -10)
In
the above portion from Exodus, God tells his people, the Jews, whom He had
brought out of Egypt, the land of slavery, what He expects from them, that
nothing should take His place in their hearts and lives. The consequences of
obedience and disobedience are clearly stated. To us, who confess that we are
God’s people today, Jesus tells us, that the greatest commandment is to love God
with all our hearts, and with all our mind, and with all our souls; and the
second is to love our neighbor as ourselves.
In the
portion from Matthew’s Gospel in the prayer that Jesus taught, He tells His
disciples, the attitude with which we are to pray, acknowledging God as our
Father, that His name should be sacred to us ( we should not misuse His name)
and acknowledging God’s name to be holy and God is a King whose rule we desire
in our lives.
As we
reflect on these commands of God and the desires expressed in the Lord’s prayer;
we become aware in the light of our past experiences, we have not complied with
these requirements. A sense of guilt gives way to a sense of gratefulness which
arises in our hearts when we realize that God has not treated as we deserve to
be, but as our Father who, in his steadfast love and mercy has seen our
repentance, heard our confessions and forgiven our sins because of Jesus Christ.
We
also become aware how easy it is for us to create gods and idols of our careers,
our needs, our wants and the material things of this world etc. We may become
so preoccupied with these that we have little or no time to contemplate on the
goodness of God to us and our life with Him.
We
pray God will continue to envision us to His requirements, teach us and gives us
the wisdom and desire to seek his face daily as well as to obey and to grow in
faith and confidence in Him. St Peter in his letter encourages us to cast our
cares on Jesus for He cares for us.
This is sent out by email on Mondays. If you have just come across
this for the first time, and would like to receive it, please send email to
mailto:fvamw@tm.net.my?subject=Reflections
With
regards
Fred
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