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Church of God-eim    PO Box 3332 . Modesto, CA 95353    www.cog-eim.org

The Ten Commandments
Are they written on your heart?

On Friday, August 22, 2003, Judge Roy Moore, the chief justice of the Alabama state supreme court, was suspended for his refusal to obey a federal court order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama courthouse.

Two days earlier, on Wednesday, August 20th, a plywood barrier had been placed around the monument in order to shield the eyes of any unsuspecting courthouse patron whose sensitivities might be offended by viewing such an open display of moral certitude.

In spite of the fierce determination of Chief Justice Moore and his supporters, on Wednesday, August 27, the 5300-pound monument, which had been on display in the state Judicial Building for two years, was loaded on a pallet and moved to a locked storage room near an employee lunchroom.

To many, this was a very sobering event…to see the Ten Commandments moved from a hall of justice by the order of a United States Judge. Many religious leaders were stunned, and expressed concern for the future of a nation that would formally order the law of God removed from the halls of justice. Ironically, many of these same religious leaders have ordered the removal of the Ten Commandments from the tenets of their churches. These days, you will not find one church in ten that teaches its members that God demands they keep His law, including His Ten Commandments. They will say something to the effect: “Christ kept the law for us; therefore, obedience to the law is unnecessary.”

Some secular leaders and anti-religion advocates are determined that no hint of religion should be found in anything associated with the government. It is this mindset that has led to the removal of the monument in Alabama and steered other court decisions that have banned prayer at school graduations. The complete removal of religion from government is the stated goal of such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

On the other side of this battle are tens of thousands of individual church members and their leaders. They are devout people who are not asking the government to establish a religion, but they do want it to recognize the existence of God and the value of Christian moral principles. Their leaders believe there can’t be a moral government if it does not have the law of God as its foundation. Their contention is that the two cannot be separated if you desire the nation to continue. The irony is incredible. Religious leaders who declare we separate religion from government at our own peril, long ago separated their religion from following the laws of the God of the Bible.

To illustrate the difference between much of Christian religion’s teachings and the teachings of the creator God, let’s go back to the beginning of the book most religious leaders of the western world site as the source of their belief -- The Holy Bible.

Genesis, chapter one, takes us through the first six days of the creation account. On each day of this, the recorded history of creation, God brought the earth’s environmental and ecological systems into existence. Each day of creation was a step toward preparing the earth for the crowning achievement of God’s creation – man himself -- whom God would make in His own image, in accordance with His own likeness. Man was created on the sixth day of the creation week. God then blessed both Adam and Eve, instructing them to be fruitful and to fill the earth.

To the casual reader, it may appear creation was completed with the end of the sixth day. That, however, is not the case. The creation account continues through the third verse of the second chapter of Genesis. Let’s read the first three verses of chapter two, and it will become obvious that the seventh day of creation week was included as a day of creation:

Genesis 2: 1-3 Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

We are told that God did three things on the seventh day. He rested from all His work; He blessed the seventh day; and He sanctified the seventh day. What does it mean when scripture tells us that God blessed the seventh day? It means that God invoked a blessing upon that particular day -- the seventh day of the week -- making it a special blessing for man -- and He only invoked a blessing upon that day, none other.

We are also told that God sanctified the seventh day. The word translated “sanctified” comes from the Hebrew word “Qadash”. Qadash is an important Hebrew word. Consider the following definition of this word:

Qadash – Qadash signifies an act or a state in which people or things are set aside for use in the worship of God, i.e., they are consecrated or made sacred for that purpose. They must be withheld from ordinary (secular) use and treated with special care as something which belongs to God.

Do you grasp the importance of what God did on the seventh day? God created the Sabbath day. He created it by resting on it and sanctifying it. He set it aside, consecrated, and made it sacred. He set this day apart from the other six for man to worship Him. It was created a blessing for man. This day, the seventh day, is to be withheld from ordinary use and treated with special care as something which belongs to God: no man or group of men or group of nations can set apart and make holy any other day. God alone has sanctified the seventh day as the one upon which man is to worship Him.

Just as clever attorneys and activist judges have stood the constitution of the United States on its head and falsely interpreted it to support a woman’s right “to choose” to kill an unborn child, so have countless religious leaders stood the Bible on its head and declared that people are free to worship God on the day they choose. These religious leaders have made no distinction between what God has sanctioned and what He has not sanctioned; and their actions are in direct contradiction with the Bible and the God they claim to represent.

The seventh day Sabbath didn’t begin with Moses and the Ten Commandments. God created the Sabbath on the seventh day of the creation week. Man cannot take God’s blessing and sanctification out of the seventh day. Man can, however, despise and profane what God has made holy. But the cost of doing so is great, and those who have taught others to ignore the distinction between the holy and unholy will give account to God. Just as some judges and attorneys have read rights and restrictions into the Constitution that are not there, so have religious leaders added to and taken away from the word of God. Consider what God says in the book of Ezekiel concerning this negligent and presumptuous approach to His word:

Ezekial 22:26-28: “Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things; they have not distinguished between the holy and unholy, nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean: and they have hidden their eyes from My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. “Her princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, to shed blood, to destroy people, and to get dishonest gain. “Her prophets plastered them with untempered mortar, seeing false visions, and divining, lies for them saying, “’Thus says the Lord God’, When the Lord had not spoken.”

Notice especially in verse 28, the prophet Ezekiel says the teachers were putting words in God’s mouth, teaching the people lies. Have you been taught a lie concerning the seventh day Sabbath? If the church you attend observes the first day of the week instead of the seventh day, ask your minister why, and watch how fast he can sound like an ACLU attorney.

On that two-and-a-half-ton granite monument in Alabama, next to the Roman numeral IV, are the following words:

“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.”

Notice, God said to remember “THE” Sabbath Day, not “A” Sabbath day. This commandment sets apart a very specific day. God did not leave it up to man to worship Him on a day of his own choosing.

The Fourth Commandment points back to the events of creation week. Please note: this particular commandment begins with the word REMEMBER. God is telling us to both remember and observe the day that He blessed and sanctified. We are told to keep it holy. God made it holy, we are told to keep it that way, to separate it from all the other days wherein we carry out our mundane activity.

Now let’s read the Fourth Commandment in its entirety:

Exodus 20: 8-11: “Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

Notice verse 11 says the LORD rested the seventh day, blessed it, and hallowed it. Does the Bible tell us elsewhere to ignore what God has blessed and sanctified? Of course not.

The zeal of many who have rallied to Judge Moore’s cause is admirable; however, there is a disconnect between their passion and their adherence to what is carved into that granite monument next to Roman numeral IV.

It would be very inspiring for God-fearing Americans to see the Alabama monument on display again. However, something more pleasing to God would be to see the Ten Commandments written upon the hearts of each and every human being on this earth. Then the great moral code of God would indeed be the foundation for a righteous world and its government.