Last week, I wrote you concerning the Ten Commandments, saying that God didn’t give us just Ten Commandments, but eleven. My original intent in writing the article was to provoke you to take into consideration all the commandments of God, and not just the Ten. This is because so much attention is paid to the Ten Commandments, that we forget the other Commandments, especially those found in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Many of those Commandments concern God’s prohibition against witchcraft and other evils that He truly hates–activities that have become so imbedded in the fabric of our society that most of us don’t even know that they are actually sins.
Cigarettes, for example, are actually a type of recreational drug, and recreational drugs are a form of witchcraft the Bible calls sorcery. Sorcery is forbidden in Deuteronomy 18. You have probably never heard this, but it is absolutely true. If all of God’s Commandments were considered important, especially by the Church, cigarette addiction would be treated the same as drug and alcohol addiction, which are sins.
While writing the article, my focus shifted to the fact that so much attention is paid to idolatry in the form of worshipping statues, that we forget that God’s very first commandment was to worship no other gods before Him–including people and things. Consequently, we, as a society, have set up many gods before the Lord Jesus. To rectify this, we should begin by focusing more on the first, and most important commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). In so doing, not only would we be able to discern any false religion or doctrine on the landscape, but we would also be able to discern the false gods we set up in our own lives.
We should then take a look at the rest of the law; for we would quickly see that not only society as a whole, but even many of us in the Church are breaking many of God’s laws, and we are paying the price for it.
True, God gave us the Ten Commandments; but He didn’t stop there.
TSM
Great pair of articles; yes, today there are so many sins practiced even within churches, it’s no wonder the Holy Spirit has departed most of them some decades ago. And it was HE who told me that, very quietly, 1 Sunday morning as I was walking into the church I’d been attending, for regular worship service. Smoking, including pot, or other drug use, adultery/fornication, homosexuality in all it’s varied stripes, and IDOLATRY big time; science is the big 1 these days, after self, wealth, or power. Thanks for writing them. Of course be warned; I get called EVERYTHING but a Christian for speaking this truth, and I’m sure you will as well.
I’m not at all concerned with what people think about what I say or about being called names, as long as what I speak is the Gospel truth. As the Lord Jesus said, “For so did their fathers unto the prophets.” We’re in good company, Sandra Lee!