Commands for Life Given to Noah and Abraham
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What pattern emerges after Eden about God giving commands to preserve life?
The commands of God are meant for life. Last week, we looked at the first command of God in the Bible called a mitzvah. And it's in the Garden of Eden story when God invites humans into the abundant life of the garden. And he tells them, eat up, enjoy. But he also teaches them how to discern good from bad. And to do that, they need to learn to listen to his voice. Today we'll look at the second time the word command is used in the Bible. It's in the story of Noah and his instructions to build an ark. And this command is also about finding and preserving life.
Make a box, cram it full of life, go into the box, stay there, and you will stay alive. So the ark is presented as a little Eden refuge.
So in the first command, Adam and Eve fail. But in the second command, Noah succeeds. And this leads us to the third person to get the command of God, Abraham. And Abraham's response is, well, complicated. Sometimes he does the command, and sometimes he sort of does them.
So Abraham's story is really giving us an in-depth portrait now. He does the command, so it does lead to the preservation of his life and a lot of blessing, but also he doesn't do it completely. And that leads to also a bunch of heartache now. So it's like a third variation on a human relating to God's commands.
All of this leads up to God giving Abraham a seemingly impossible command. Surrender back to God the life of his son. And when Abraham obeys this command, it doesn't lead to death. It leads to more life.
When human beings trust and obey the command, what they find is that what looked like death becomes this passageway to the gift of life. Not just life for themselves, but then life for all these other people.
All of these stories are inviting us into a posture of trust, to listen to God's voice, and to expect that the commands of God are for life.
On Abram's best day, when he trusts God and when he actually acts on that trust by surrendering his own family's future, what he finds is that keeping the command leads to life.
Now we're looking at the theme of the commands of God because this all leads us to the 10 commands where God gives Israel at Mount Sinai 10 words of how to be mediators of life in the world if they can listen to his voice and keep his commands.
The Ten Commandments are God's invitation to preserve life. You're images of God, so when you do what I say, you will both increase our own partnership and intimacy, and it will be what's good for you and good for all the people around you.
That's today on the podcast. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hello, Tim. Hi, John. Hi. We are in this series on the Ten Commandments.
We are. But to set the Ten Commands, the famous ten, in the context of the biblical storyline, I brought us back to the beginning to God's first command, like the actual word command is used in the Garden of Eden story. Yeah. The one command. The one that was also part of two. You had one job.
Yeah.
Eat, eat. Yeah. Actually, the one command had three parts. It had two basic elements to the command, which, yeah. One was eat from all the trees.
Yeah.
First of all, just enjoy.
Enjoy the trees. And then the second is, but the one tree, the tree of no good and bad. Yeah. Don't eat of that one. Yeah. That's right. That's the command.
From the day you eat of it, you'll die. So God's command is about instructing you on the way to life. Eat from all the trees. Do what will lead to life. And then the flip of that is there is one thing that will not only not lead to life, it will lead to the end of your life. And so don't do that thing. There's one do, there's one don't. But both of them are about protecting, preserving... And finding life. And finding life, yes. And that really, we could just... That's it. God's commands are guiding His creatures who have less wisdom... Towards life. But the goal of the command is to teach you the way to life so that you begin to really own and appreciate that for yourself, not just because God said it, but because you realize it's true, true for you.
So there it is. So the humans don't follow that command.
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