Monday 23 Jun 2008

Monday Reading: Exodus 21:1-17
 
Key Verse: Exodus 1:1
1  And God spoke all these words, saying,
 
Devotion:
There is nothing new about the Ten Commandments. You may well think that they are about 3500 years old, but these are the things that God designed into our very being. But, because of sin, we have allowed them to corrupt our lives to such an extent that they become part of our lives. Why else would God have personally spoken these words and written them on tablets of stone other than to bring them back into our memory. Just because Jesus has died for our sins and we have forgiveness for everything that we have done and everything we will do; it does not mean that we have the right to flout God’s Ten Commandments. He constantly reminds us of His laws so that we will bring them back into our lives.
 
We are born into sin… What does that actually mean? It means that we are born into a world where we are introduced to and experience sin all the time. It’s not a case of us having to go our and learn how to sin, we just do go out and sin. We try it out for ourselves because that is what we start to think about. Cain did not go on a course to learn how to kill someone before killing his brother. He did it because of the thoughts that went through his head, the jealousy and feelings of wrath.
 
We have been given these Ten Commandments so that we will be able to realise just what we are doing wrong. It does not stop there because the more that we find out about God’s will in our life, the more that we find that we do wrong. The more that we find that we do wrong, the more we feel down and depressed about what we do. With those sort of feelings spinning around our heads is it little wonder that we turn away from God just to try and get away from those feelings? People do not want to feel bad about what they do, they want to have some excuse about the things they do wrong, something that will allow them to get off the hook!
 
Jesus has given that to us; but we have to seek out the truth and accept it into our hearts before we will understand that Christ came into our lives to save us and not to condemn us!
 
Points to Ponder:
What rules get you down?
 
Do you find excuses to not go to church?