Liberated To Serve – The First Commandment

Liberated to Serve

The First Commandment

Exodus, 20.2, 3; Deuteronomy 5.6, 7

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”

Saved from fear to hope.

The writer of Hebrews says that men live their entire lives in the fear of death (Heb. 2.15). We see this all around us, don’t we? The way death is euphemized – “passed on” or “crossed over” or “no longer with us” as well as the great lengths people go to keep from getting old, or, at least, from thinking that they’re getting old. We are slaves to death, just as surely as Israel was a people enslaved to the Egyptians. But God delivered Israel out of captivity, setting a stamp of ownership on them and drawing them to Himself – just as God delivered us from death to life in Jesus Christ and stamped His own Name on us: Christians. This is not a condition we could achieve on our own. Only God Who made us and is eternal and unchanging can accomplish this work of deliverance from death to life. And He accomplishes it not so that we can continue to live according to the ways of death that caused us a lifetime of fear and uncertainty. He saved us so that we might really live, and the Law of God is nothing if not a manual on how to really live (Lev. 18.1-5). So if we want to really live, free of the fear and lifestyle of death, then we need to focus our worship on the one true God and receive from Him whatever He is pleased to command us, for this is where we find hope and peace and joy in being alive.

Do you agree that people are afraid of death? What evidence of that can you cite? Why does this make the Gospel such good news?

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.