Dear Friends,
How do you feel about the 10 Commandments. Be honest now. Some people hate them. They complain that the 10 Commandments tell them to do things they don’t feel like doing and that they forbid what they want to do! Have you ever felt that way? If so, today’s devotional will give you some good food for thought. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Exodus 20:1-17 (ESV)

  1And God spoke all these words, saying,

  2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

  3 “You shall have no other gods before[a] me.

  4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands[b] of those who love me and keep my commandments.

  7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

  8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

  12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

  13 “You shall not murder.[c]

  14 “You shall not commit adultery.

  15 “You shall not steal.

  16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

  17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

“…The love of God may be clearly see in reference to all of us in his giving us a wise and judicious law. That law of the ten commandments is a gift of great kindness to the sons of men, for it tells us the wisest and the happiest way of living. It forbids us nothing but what would be to our injury, and it withholds from us nothing which would be a real pleasure to us. The commands which say, ‘Thou shalt’ or ‘Thou shalt not’ are like the boards, which you sometimes at bathing-places, bearing the words, ‘Dangerous! Keep so many yards away from this spot.’ God does not make laws denying us anything that would really be for our good. There is a poisonous berry growing in your garden, and your child has been told that he is not to eat it. If he is a wise child, he will understand that it is your love to him which has told him not to eat of that poisonous berry. If you had no care about him at all, he might eat what poison he chose; but, because you love him, you say to him, ‘My child, do not this, and do not that, because it will be to your serious injury, and possibly your death, if you disobey.’ We ought to see the love of God in the gift of the law, but nobody ever does that till he is led to the love of God in other ways.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit LI, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1905), p. 519]