The 10 Commandments as Wisdom

We are going to talk about the Ten Commandments. These are the most well-known rules in the whole Bible. Maybe the most famous rules in all of human history. Yeah, they are really famous. But if we take time to look deeper, what we're going to discover is that the Ten Commandments are actually not just rules. Really? Yeah. In fact, every command in the Bible is way more than a command. What do you mean? So let's think, for example, about the first time in the Bible that God tells anybody to do anything. It's what God says to humanity when He creates them in Genesis 1. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the land. That's right. But notice it's not actually called a command. It's called a blessing. So this first command sets the tone for all of the commands to come. Every command in the Bible is an invitation to find life. That's nice, but how? Right? Like, don't we need rules to tell us how to find life? Sure, but rules only get you so far. I mean, what we really need is a way to discern between right and wrong and good and bad in any of life's complicated situations. And this is what the Bible calls wisdom. Okay, how do I get wisdom? Okay, so now we have to check out the second command in the story of the Bible.

And what you see is it is all about a search for wisdom. Okay. So this is after God puts the human in the garden. In Genesis chapter 2, we read this. Yahweh God commanded the human saying, From every tree of the garden, you will surely eat. Which, real quick, includes the tree of life. Nice. So enjoy the tree of God's own life that will never end. Great. Eat up. I like this command. But it continues. But from the tree of knowing good and bad, you will not eat from it. For in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die. Okay, so there's a tree. It teaches good from bad, but don't eat it? What's going on? Yeah, this story is super dense and it's a riddle. It's inviting us to meditate on what is the command really all about? Now, let's turn the command over. There's actually two parts to this command. We have this negative command, not eating from the tree of knowledge. But notice that is matched or balanced by this positive invitation to eat from the tree of life. I mean, the whole premise is that all the trees look beautiful and good. Yeah. So how do I know the difference between the tree that will kill me and the tree that brings life? It is only because God's telling me. Okay, so real wisdom comes from listening to God's voice and that leads to life. Instead of taking wisdom on my own terms, which leads to death.

Exactly. That's what the story is saying. Okay. And it's this story that is setting the stage for every command to come in the Bible. And there are a lot of commands coming in the Bible, like hundreds. Rules and statutes and laws. But every one of them is actually just like this first command, which is an invitation to hear God's voice and find life. To do that, we have to meditate on the commands, turning them over and pondering how each one invites us to discover life and the wisdom of God within the command. This is actually what the author of one of the Psalms is trying to tell us. How good is life for the one who delights in the Torah of the Lord? And on his Torah, they meditate day and night. Torah here means instruction and is often translated as law. They will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruits in its season. Yeah, this is so cool. So living by God's wisdom doesn't just mean that I get to eat from the tree of life. It's that I actually become a tree of life to others. It's inviting us to live in a radical and bold way that brings us life, but also shares that life with others. Yeah, so this is the invitation with the 10 commands. We get to meditate on them and find life. Yes, yeah. And we can think of them as just a list of 10 rules, you know, like a moral checklist. But if we take time to meditate on them, turn them over, we will discover there's a whole universe of wisdom and life in every single one of these most famous rules in the Bible. Happy new year and hope you have a Merry Christmas!