"Honor thy father and mother" is the only one of the 10 Commandments that isn't expressed in the negative.
" 'Thou shalt not covet,' is the most striking of the bunch, frankly," says Jordan. "God's saying, 'Don't even have the desire.' In all the other commandments He forbids the action. But stop the desire?! No. That's the depths of sin that the law demonstrates. Jesus says evil comes out through the heart.
"If the commandments are the law of liberty then why are they all negative? How does liberty come out of the negative? The most basic ingredient of liberty is the ability to say, 'No, I don't want to do it.'
"If you can't say 'no' you wind up being coerced. That brings the question, 'What is a right?' A right is defined as a legal immunity from coercion. In our Declaration of Independence it says 'all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.' That means it's a grant of privilege from your Creator and therefore immune from being infringed upon by the government.
"The privilege of doing it, the positive, is a negative really because the strength in the positive is in the negative. Anything stated in a negative is much stronger than something just stated in the positive because the positive leaves all kind of doors open whereas the negative stops that kind of stuff.
"Titus 1:2 says, [2] In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; That's stronger than saying God tells the truth. Hebrews 6:10 says, [10] For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.
"He is not unrighteous to forget. He's not that way. That's a strong way of saying God is not a man that He should lie. It's a stronger statement than saying He will reward you.
"When you make something negative, it's the strongest form of protection and is the definition of real, true liberty. You're setting up an absolute privilege that cannot be violated because you've taken away all the right to object to someone doing it. You can state every one of the 10 Commandments as a positive, but when you do, it loses that ring of absoluteness.
*****
"In Genesis 2 God says, [17] But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. He's saying, 'That's my privilege, not yours.'
"Satan says to her, 'Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
"When the commandment says, 'Thou shalt have no other gods,' that's just talking about loyalty. You see how that's a lot stronger than saying, 'You need to be loyal.'
"Exodus 20 says, [4] Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
[5] Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
"God says, 'Don't just be loyal, you need to worship me.' He said, 'Don't worship idols because the people who do hate me.' You see how much stronger that is?
"By the way, did you notice the end of that verse? You know why people bow down to idols? They hate the God of the Bible, according to the God of the Bible.
" 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain' is much more powerful than just saying, 'Be respectful.' 'Don't work on the Sabbath day' is more powerful than saying, 'Take a day to remember who you are.'
*****
"The law is a good thing; the problem with it is us. Read Romans 7 and you'll see Paul keeps saying, 'I can't do it; I tried. The law condemns me.'
"The law was not intended by God to be a form of bondage. The reason it turns out to be is because we are failures. We sin and the law points out our sin. The law has a purpose beyond just telling us we're sinners, though.
"In Genesis 11 God literally gave up the Gentile nations because they didn't like to retain God in their knowledge. They didn't want Him to be their God so He gave them up and gave them over to all the gods of the world. Remember Satan told Eve, 'If you do what I told you you'll be like the gods; like the angels.'
"Out from among those idol-worshipping Gentiles God chose Abraham and said, 'I'm going to make of you a great nation. You're literally going to be my nation in the earth; the only one I keep relations with. I'm going to demonstrate to everyone on the earth what it's like if you're a nation that has me as your God. They've got all these other gods out there and I'm going to show them all what a bad deal they made when they took them.'
"Israel is God's representative nation in the earth. It's through them that all the other nations of the earth will be blessed and God's will and structure is going to be spread out to the other nations.
*****
"My early teacher when I was young, Brother Roy Lange of Mobile, Ala., had a little booklet about, 'The Bible's biggest IF.' God said, 'If you will keep my covenant then I will make you a peculiar people . . . '
"He'd already promised them to do that. Had they not been filled with human pride and hubris, they would have been wise enough to say, 'No, no, no, we can't do it.'
"He brings them out of Egypt and into the wilderness, and on five different occasions in Exodus 16-18 He put them into situations where they couldn't help themselves and He stepped in and helped them.
"By then they should know, 'We're not able to do this. He delivered us, now He's provided for us.' When God came along and said, 'If you keep my covenant . . . ,' wisdom would have said, 'Man, you already promised us this. This is on you.' But they didn't do that. Look at Exodus 19:8: [8] And all the people answered together, and said, All that the LORD hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the LORD.
"Big mistake, big mistake. The rest of that chapter demonstrates what happened and the alienation that that causes.
"The way you have liberty today is by standing fast in the freedom and the life that Jesus Christ gives us by His grace. Israel has to wait for that liberty in the kingdom. It's one of the things God's provided us now. If you go back under the law system seeking to gain the capacity to be used by God for the purpose He created you, you frustrate God's grace.
"Nine of the 10 Commandments are repeated by the Apostle Paul. The only one he says not to do is the sabbath. It's the only ceremonial commandment and it has no meaning for us today.
"All the right things the law demanded, the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us. All the things that God would require of us we can't do anyway. When we walk in the identity God has given us in Christ, it gets produced as a the fruit of the Spirit. That's where liberty for us comes from."
(new article tomorrow)
" 'Thou shalt not covet,' is the most striking of the bunch, frankly," says Jordan. "God's saying, 'Don't even have the desire.' In all the other commandments He forbids the action. But stop the desire?! No. That's the depths of sin that the law demonstrates. Jesus says evil comes out through the heart.
"If the commandments are the law of liberty then why are they all negative? How does liberty come out of the negative? The most basic ingredient of liberty is the ability to say, 'No, I don't want to do it.'
"If you can't say 'no' you wind up being coerced. That brings the question, 'What is a right?' A right is defined as a legal immunity from coercion. In our Declaration of Independence it says 'all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.' That means it's a grant of privilege from your Creator and therefore immune from being infringed upon by the government.
"The privilege of doing it, the positive, is a negative really because the strength in the positive is in the negative. Anything stated in a negative is much stronger than something just stated in the positive because the positive leaves all kind of doors open whereas the negative stops that kind of stuff.
"Titus 1:2 says, [2] In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; That's stronger than saying God tells the truth. Hebrews 6:10 says, [10] For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.
"He is not unrighteous to forget. He's not that way. That's a strong way of saying God is not a man that He should lie. It's a stronger statement than saying He will reward you.
"When you make something negative, it's the strongest form of protection and is the definition of real, true liberty. You're setting up an absolute privilege that cannot be violated because you've taken away all the right to object to someone doing it. You can state every one of the 10 Commandments as a positive, but when you do, it loses that ring of absoluteness.
*****
"In Genesis 2 God says, [17] But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. He's saying, 'That's my privilege, not yours.'
"Satan says to her, 'Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
"When the commandment says, 'Thou shalt have no other gods,' that's just talking about loyalty. You see how that's a lot stronger than saying, 'You need to be loyal.'
"Exodus 20 says, [4] Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
[5] Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
"God says, 'Don't just be loyal, you need to worship me.' He said, 'Don't worship idols because the people who do hate me.' You see how much stronger that is?
"By the way, did you notice the end of that verse? You know why people bow down to idols? They hate the God of the Bible, according to the God of the Bible.
" 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain' is much more powerful than just saying, 'Be respectful.' 'Don't work on the Sabbath day' is more powerful than saying, 'Take a day to remember who you are.'
*****
"The law is a good thing; the problem with it is us. Read Romans 7 and you'll see Paul keeps saying, 'I can't do it; I tried. The law condemns me.'
"The law was not intended by God to be a form of bondage. The reason it turns out to be is because we are failures. We sin and the law points out our sin. The law has a purpose beyond just telling us we're sinners, though.
"In Genesis 11 God literally gave up the Gentile nations because they didn't like to retain God in their knowledge. They didn't want Him to be their God so He gave them up and gave them over to all the gods of the world. Remember Satan told Eve, 'If you do what I told you you'll be like the gods; like the angels.'
"Out from among those idol-worshipping Gentiles God chose Abraham and said, 'I'm going to make of you a great nation. You're literally going to be my nation in the earth; the only one I keep relations with. I'm going to demonstrate to everyone on the earth what it's like if you're a nation that has me as your God. They've got all these other gods out there and I'm going to show them all what a bad deal they made when they took them.'
"Israel is God's representative nation in the earth. It's through them that all the other nations of the earth will be blessed and God's will and structure is going to be spread out to the other nations.
*****
"My early teacher when I was young, Brother Roy Lange of Mobile, Ala., had a little booklet about, 'The Bible's biggest IF.' God said, 'If you will keep my covenant then I will make you a peculiar people . . . '
"He'd already promised them to do that. Had they not been filled with human pride and hubris, they would have been wise enough to say, 'No, no, no, we can't do it.'
"He brings them out of Egypt and into the wilderness, and on five different occasions in Exodus 16-18 He put them into situations where they couldn't help themselves and He stepped in and helped them.
"By then they should know, 'We're not able to do this. He delivered us, now He's provided for us.' When God came along and said, 'If you keep my covenant . . . ,' wisdom would have said, 'Man, you already promised us this. This is on you.' But they didn't do that. Look at Exodus 19:8: [8] And all the people answered together, and said, All that the LORD hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the LORD.
"Big mistake, big mistake. The rest of that chapter demonstrates what happened and the alienation that that causes.
"The way you have liberty today is by standing fast in the freedom and the life that Jesus Christ gives us by His grace. Israel has to wait for that liberty in the kingdom. It's one of the things God's provided us now. If you go back under the law system seeking to gain the capacity to be used by God for the purpose He created you, you frustrate God's grace.
"Nine of the 10 Commandments are repeated by the Apostle Paul. The only one he says not to do is the sabbath. It's the only ceremonial commandment and it has no meaning for us today.
"All the right things the law demanded, the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us. All the things that God would require of us we can't do anyway. When we walk in the identity God has given us in Christ, it gets produced as a the fruit of the Spirit. That's where liberty for us comes from."
(new article tomorrow)
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