Exodus 20:4, commentary and pictures

Thou shalt not make any carved image or likeness of anything in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth, nor bow down to them nor serve them as worship. It forbids making an image to represent God and forbids making an image to worship in His place, including images claimed as mere symbols of the true God, for the Creator cannot be likened to what He made. Beyond carved images, anything that divides the affections or takes supreme love, delight and obedience from God becomes an idol that must be put away. Christ Himself spoke it at Sinai with audible divine voice, not of human composition, and later upheld, explained and restored its full meaning. It belongs to the complete perpetual immutable moral law binding on all people until the end of time, which Christ's death did not abolish but magnified, honored and vindicated.

Wording and Sinai Setting

Thou shalt not make any graven image or any likeness of anything in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth, and thou shalt not bow down to them nor serve them as worship. It is the second commandment, belonging with the first against idolatry and guarding even its least approach, since idolatry leads to sin and rebellion even to human sacrifice.

God spoke it from Mount Sinai in the third month after Israel left Egypt while encamped before the mount, after deliverance from Egypt, division of the Red Sea, proving in the wilderness, bearing them on eagles' wings, and their covenant promise to obey. Christ Himself spoke it at Sinai as Teacher and Redeemer with audible divine voice, not of human composition, and the Father and Son were both upon the mount, while Christ later knew, upheld, explained, and restored its full meaning.

It was proclaimed in awful solemnity and grandeur with power and glory — thunder, lightning, trumpet waxing louder, cloud, thick darkness, tempest, smoke, flame, devouring fire, earthquake, trembling mountain and bare rocks — to show its sacredness, importance, permanence, majesty of the Ruler, human nothingness, and need for obedience. Israel stood afar off in terror and asked Moses to speak lest they die. God drew near in mercy in a thick cloud that separated Him from sight so the people would not be destroyed by His glory yet could hear His voice, and He chose not human habitations or palaces but the foot of Sinai surrounded by His created works, far from all man had built in pride, that Israel might realize man's utter insignificance before the Almighty.

Israel was required to prepare by washing clothes, showing its sacredness calls for cleanliness, order, purity, and care for physical as well as moral well-being, and its lessons last till the close of time. The verse is part of the plain, clear law expressing the character of the Sovereign of the universe, covering whole duty, to be obeyed, studied in jots and tittles, set forth clearly, urged upon congregations, rulers and subjects, printed plainly and kept in sight in every house.

The tablets and mountain setting connect the verse with law written by God's finger on stone, represented on stone tablets, later written a second time, kept in the sacred ark hidden in a cave because of Israel and Judah's sins, with rocky mountain and tablets signifying unchangeableness. Because minds blinded and debased by slavery and confused by Egyptian idolatry could not grasp its full reach, additional precepts through Moses were given to explain, illustrate, apply and guard it, and even then God could not fully reveal Himself, with Moses alone permitted to draw near.

The verse belongs to direction given to the church after deliverance to be held in highest regard and lived by, with minute judgments and statutes written by Moses in a book simplifying its principles of duty to God, neighbor and stranger.

Origin Transmission and Permanence

The prohibition of graven images belongs to the law of ten commandments that God Himself spoke with audible voice in the hearing of all the people when He came down upon Sinai enshrouded in glory and surrounded by angels, after delivering Israel from Egypt, dividing the Red Sea and proving them in the wilderness. He wrote it with His own holy finger upon tables of stone to remove all possibility of mingling human tradition or practices of men with His holy precepts, because Israel had witnessed so much idolatry in Egypt that they had confused ideas of His law and were prone to forget. It is guarded by the judgments and laws Moses was required to write as God bade him, giving minute directions to draw erring man to obedience to the moral law he is prone to transgress. It is not new at Sinai but part of the same moral law whose principles existed before humanity was created and governed the angels, first given to man in Eden at creation, made known to Adam and Eve and given to Adam after his fall, preserved by Noah and in the ark, and observed by Abraham. Because Abraham's descendants broke the covenant pledged by circumcision to be separate and perfect and went into idolatry and bondage in Egypt, and because the children of Israel lost sight of the law during their years of bondage, God proclaimed His law anew from Mount Sinai and engraved it on stone never to be lost.

Israel was entrusted as depositary of that Eden law, a transcript of God's character revealing the principles of His government, to pass it to later generations and make it known to all peoples, nations and tongues. Obedience to it was meant to make Israel an example to other nations of true righteousness and of the benefits of living by the principles that govern heaven, hedged about and distinguished from every idolatrous nation. The laws given through Moses illustrated these ten precepts, and together with them formed the foundation of Israel's national law and set the condition for the fulfillment of God's promises to Israel.

Moses recorded it at the beginning of written revelation, after twenty-five hundred years in which knowledge taught by God was communicated and handed down from father to son through successive generations, in an inspired book opening sixteen hundred years of writing from Moses, the historian of creation and the law, to John, the recorder of the most sublime truths of the gospel. Joshua later repeated this law of Exodus 20:1-17 to Israel together with the statutes and precepts Moses had recorded, with blessings for obedience and curses for disregard.

It is God's spoken law and transcript of His character, holy principle and part of Himself, written by the finger of God on tables of stone to perfectly reveal His will concerning His people so none need mistake, definitely made known as the laws of His kingdom and principles of His government. It expresses His eternal unchangeable character, righteousness and will, as unchangeable as His eternal throne, grounded in His character and not to be lowered to fit human desires. Because God is great and holy and a jealous God, He will have only holy men who strictly observe that law honor Him by teaching it to others.

It belongs to the complete, perpetual, immutable moral law, as old as the world, defining duties to God and to other people and remaining binding through all time on all people until the end of time, not optional or subject to human choice, not to be amended, dropped or abolished. It is immutable and unchangeable, the only standard of character, satisfied with nothing short of perfect obedience, making known God's holiness and expressing God's goodness by declaring what the Creator expects from His creatures. To make it void is grave national offense in proportion to light rejected, and it is the object of Satan's constant work to make of none effect by persuading men that God has abrogated law. Israel's worship was clearly defined, and its rites and ceremonies helped keep the commandments in remembrance and guard against violation, while the statutes helped preserve God's people from idolatry and from adopting the ways of surrounding nations.

Christ's death did not abolish but magnified, honored and vindicated it, confirming its binding claims, and it remains immutable and endures throughout eternity and forever. Satan sought to make people believe it ended with Christ's death, yet Christ upheld the law and died to vindicate it, so people who know His life and sacrifice are still accountable for obeying it, and obedience to that law is a condition of salvation showing the law could not be abolished. Claims that God's law has been abolished wrongly relieve the consciences of those who practice image worship, while the command against making and worshiping graven images remains in force.

It is distinct from the rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic dispensation, for sacrificial offerings and ceremonial specifications only shadowed forth the death of the Son of God and when type met antitype they were no longer binding, but the ten commandments remain binding under the gospel dispensation to be kept in spirit as well as in letter. Christ gave statutes and precepts to guard and explain the Ten Commandments repeated at Sinai, and these were not temporary types but remain binding in every age.

Like every Thou shalt not it contains or implies a promise and safeguard of mercy: obedience brings blessing, happiness, purity, lasting joy and life, while disobedience brings danger, unhappiness and the evils that follow transgression. Received in Christ, the law works purity of character and lasting joy, revealing God's unchanging principles of righteousness and His care to shield people from harm. The words of that Father's law spoken at Sinai are conditions of life, and obedience gives people access again to the tree of life which the first parents forfeited through disobedience. Its restrictions and requirements of what must and must not be done are to be understood and obeyed as the voice of God, as a matter of principle not merely under compulsion.

Christ does not lessen its claims but kept it and showed obedience possible, enabling those who accept Him as Saviour and partake of the divine nature to follow His example, and human traditions must not set aside God's commandments. God's grace does not permit transgression, and Christ's sacrifice atones for sin and enables believers to obey the law He gave at Sinai. The law reveals God's holiness, justice and righteousness but cannot pardon or save breakers, so sinners needed Christ as mediator, though Israel did not understand He was their appointed mediator without whom they would have been consumed. The ten precepts were given in great love to order conduct and restrict men to what increases real happiness in this life and the happiness of fellow creatures, as foundation of all civilized national and domestic government, perpetual and unchangeable as God's character with not even the smallest claim abolished. Christ took human nature, passed over the ground where Adam stumbled and fell by transgression, and by perfect obedience redeemed that failure, proving man can keep the law and through His merits be a final overcomer, so true righteousness includes both the letter specifying how to walk to please God and the spirit pointing to Jesus as atoning sacrifice through whose merits the sinner can fulfill its requirements in perfect harmony of law and gospel.

It is the higher law put into the mind and written in the heart, by which God is God to His people and they are His people, whose wisdom and authority are supreme, the only authority to be acknowledged and obeyed, lying at the foundation of all right and righteous laws for nations and families in heaven and on earth. Those who frame laws for the nation should understand what is written in it, and it belongs to present truth to shine with full rays and to be set forth clearly and distinctly just as God spoke it at Sinai amid awful grandeur, urged upon rulers and subjects as changeless and eternal as the throne of Jehovah with solemn injunctions and binding claims. He who has it written in the heart will live by every word of God and conform to every good law of the land, but will sooner disobey all men than deviate in the least from God's commandment, for when rulers conflict the only question is whether to obey God or man, requiring obedience to God rather than men even refusing to violate conscience by engaging in war and obeying military officers when opposed to every principle of faith. Its precepts reveal God's supreme authority above earthly rulers, and persistent disobedience is met with judgments intended if possible to awaken people to sin, while obeying means working in harmony with the Lord and disobeying means working with the great rebel.

It expresses God's righteousness and serves as rule and standard of righteousness by which character is compared with God's requirements, and righteousness means living God's law as Christ lived it. It is a moral mirror revealing faults and showing what sin is, whose claims are binding so transgression requires repentance, as David repented after a prophet exposed his sin and relied on Christ's blood for pardon, showing true obedience consistent with pardon through Christ. When a person abides in Christ, thoughts, purposes, feelings and actions are brought into harmony with it. People could use it to see faults and repent, but those who reject its requirements are condemned by it.

Its original of ten commandments written by Jehovah's finger on two tables of stone is kept in the ark in the most holy place in heaven, where Jesus entered in 1844 after shutting the door of the holy place, and opposition to this present truth tries to open what Jesus shut and close what Jesus opened and shut people away from the ark and its law. That law given in Eden at creation, proclaimed on Sinai and written with God's finger is kept in the ark of His testament in the temple of God in heaven as symbol of God's presence. It stands with the whole commandments joined to the faith of Jesus as basis of the third angel's message embracing the first and second angels' messages, present truth to be proclaimed everywhere with distinctness and power. Keeping the commandments distinguishes sincere worshipers from opposers and transgressors, marking the obedient as commandment-keepers who wear the God-given seal and receive eternal life, while transgressors face judgments symbolized by lightnings and voices and thunderings and earthquake, and to profess Christ while breaking it is transgression and sin which the third angel's message lifts the voice like a trumpet to show. Its lessons taught at Sinai carry influence lasting till the close of time, never to be lost sight of by old or young.

It perfectly reveals His will and kingdom principles for all peoples as standard of righteousness by which people will be judged, with obedience a prerequisite of salvation and its principles determining sentence of life or death. Its principles will stand to witness against the world in the day of judgment and decide the destiny of every soul, remaining the standard hidden until judgment sets and books open and every man is judged according to things written, when tables of stone will be presented to show terms of salvation are obedience to the perfect law, leaving none with excuse for sin. It remains God's standard of character to be displayed in authority at the final judgment, when its precepts shown plainly to all leave transgressors guilty and without excuse. With the last six it makes the unswerving standard of God's Word where God's will must be paramount and first principles of holiness are learned, so to disobey is to walk strange forbidden paths, deny the Saviour when service is due, and step from beneath Christ's bloodstained banner to the enemy's black banner, for which every man will meet the Judge and receive reward of works with no excuse unless converted and cooperating with God.

What Image Worship Means

The command forbids both making an image to represent God and making an image to worship in His place, even when the image is claimed to be only a figure or symbol of the true God. Jeroboam violated it by making two golden calves as visible symbols of the presence of the invisible God and setting them at Israel's worship centers. Those calves presented an idolatrous symbol of the Deity, echoing the heathen representations familiar from Egypt and inviting the people to bow before images and adopt strange forms of worship. Before Sinai people already broke this law by making precious objects into gods, teaching their children likewise, putting the Creator aside, glorying in their handiwork, and setting idols in groves and beneath trees and fruit trees, misusing God's benefits and turning places of true worship into idolatry. Before the Flood they adored nature instead of its Creator, taught children to bow to graven images, and set up idols with statuary in groves and gardens to draw false worship, and in Noah's day those who knew God and His law claimed sculptures and works of art honored Him while forgetting the Creator and turning people from His word.

It forbids representing the Creator by any creature or image and worshiping Him through them, because He is incomparable and cannot be likened to anything He has made. God gave no visible likeness of Himself, so the calf at Sinai that represented the glory of the invisible God by the likeness of an ox repeated Egyptian idolatry, when the cloud and fire and revealed glory on the mount already showed His presence and no further image was needed. Human-made pictures of heavenly things mingle the sacred with the common and cannot match the pictures God Himself can impress on the mind. Representing God by graven image, beast, animal or reptile dishonors the infinite God by reducing Him to what is no greater than human beings or their handiwork, blinds people to His power, majesty and glory, abandons the truth that humanity was made in the Creator's image, and opens the way to unrestrained evil passions and Satan's influence.

Material representations lower the mind's conception of God, turning it from the Creator toward created things, and degrade, corrupt and debase those who worship them toward sensuality and other sins. True worship is in spirit and truth by living faith rather than imagination, and it is Christ, not a human-made representation, who displays the character of God so that beholders looking to Him in His attributes may see the attributes of the Infinite and be changed into His image. Image worship gives the honor due the living God to human-made objects or created beings, and changing the object does not remove the idolatry. This includes the sun, moon, stars, animals, and wood and stone deities of Egypt, the Roman ensign treated with religious respect in the temple, and images of saints, of Christ, and of Mary with burning candles and prayers offered to them, which is heathen idolatry continued with only the object changed and shows minds controlled by superstition and darkness where reason loses sway.

By forbidding false gods it by implication calls for worship of the true God alone, presenting His pledge to every living soul accustomed to having many gods. The world's idolatry is disloyalty to its Maker and Preserver. Israel broke the ban making the golden calf while Moses was forty days away, imitating Egypt's gods with their ornaments, proclaiming it the god that brought them from Egypt, building an altar to it, proclaiming a feast, offering burnt offerings and sacrifices, eating and drinking and rising to play in shameful rioting and drunkenness. This was direct transgression of commands recently proclaimed with God's own voice amid thunderings, lightnings and earthquake as His solemn covenant, adding insult to Jehovah, and rejecting the continued manna and the cloud and fire that showed God had not abandoned them.

Aaron at the people's demand made the calf though Israel had heard the ban directly and solemnly promised obedience, and he should have stood firm for the law, reminded them of the covenant, and resisted the request for a god to lead them instead of yielding and using his influence to lead them into idolatry. After Sinai Israel kept breaking it, clamoring for gods to lead back to Egypt when Aaron failed to stand firm, then gradually going into idolatry in Canaan despite messages, warnings, reproofs and judgments. Continued breaking brought loss of protection, defeat by enemies, scattering as captives, and wrath tearing down idol altars, splendid buildings, beautifully arranged gardens, groves, consecrated altars and even human sacrifices detested as abominations, with lightning scattering ruins to make idolaters tremble and know their destruction was called for, though pardon and healing remained on return. The ark holding the law was not itself a god but represented the living Creator, with prosperity or adversity sent according to obedience or transgression of the law it contained.

Heart Idols Beyond Images

The prohibition reaches far beyond carved figures to anything that divides the affections or takes away supreme love, delight and obedience from God, and such a thing becomes an idol that must be put away. As one of the first four commandments it allows no affection to be separated from God and permits nothing to share the place of supreme delight that belongs to Him, requiring undivided love, obedience and devotion. Loving God supremely in this way guards against breaking it, sanctifies the affections, and bears fruit in love for other people, with its principles to be cherished and obeyed from the heart and not merely taught in theory.

Anything that absorbs heart and mind displaces the living God and defiles the soul with idolatry in practice, even without a carved image, for God claims the whole heart. Needless display of dress is an example of conduct that can violate this duty, along with making anything the object of undue thought and admiration so that it absorbs the mind, including pride or money. True worship is in spirit and truth by living faith rather than imagination, and God distinguishes true heart-service from such idolatry, which is spiritual adultery. Idols claim the heart and affections and keep God from being honored and reigning supreme, so worshipers of the true God must sacrifice every idol and put away everything that separates them from Him. This means loving the Lord with all heart and soul and strength as the first and great commandment, allowing no separation of the affections, as necessary to advance in Christian experience.

Supreme love for riches breaks it by setting the heart on earthly treasure and loving possessions better than God and better than heavenly treasure. That idolatry also shuts the eyes to the wants of fellow men, so failure to love neighbor as self follows and the last six commandments are broken too. The command to sell what is owned and give to the poor tests the idol directly and proves whether eternal life is prized higher than riches. An attachment becomes an idol when it takes the place that belongs to Jesus, as when a woman's love of smoking her pipe had become so controlling that she would give up heaven rather than give it up while still claiming to belong wholly to God. Romantic choice breaks it when passion of the natural heart is headstrong, rash, unreasonable and defiant of all restraint, leaving God out of its plans and putting the chosen person supreme, while true love keeps it by taking God into all its plans and remaining in perfect harmony with the Spirit of God, pure, holy, reasonable and clear-sighted, showing modesty, simplicity, sincerity, morality and religion in every step toward marriage instead of absorption in each other's society to loss of interest in prayer and religious service.

It applies also to anything that absorbs the thought and affection God calls people to direct toward His work, including the care of a child when it prevents a minister's wife from joining her husband in labor for saving souls. It reaches to the intents and purposes of the heart and demands purity in the most secret thoughts, desires and dispositions, requiring supreme love to God and love to neighbor as self, without which the highest profession of faith is mere hypocrisy. Unwavering obedience to it is more pleasing to God than mere professions of loyalty or words of praise and is the only safety, securing divine favor, happiness and prosperity, with every jot and tittle to be kept and the whole world to be judged by it. Perfect obedience is claimed from every soul, and whoever keeps the whole law yet offends in this one point is guilty of all, for the least deviation by neglect or willful transgression is sin exposing the sinner to the wrath of God.

A picture becomes an idol not by mere making, but when it is worshiped or loved and trusted in place of God. Anything earthly that people desire and trust to help or benefit them becomes an idol when it draws them from God, divides their affections, diminishes supreme love for Him, or prevents complete confidence and trust in Him. Anything that comes between a Christian and wholehearted service to God takes the form of an idol, so grievous idolatry can exist within the church even when it is not worship of a carved image. The enduring standard spoken at Sinai remains the same in the gospel and forbids giving the heart's love and devotion to created things in place of the Creator. Pride lifting itself up unto vanity breaks it by leading a person to make a god of himself, and the gospel sanctifies the soul by expelling that self-love. Sanctification and conversion require that self not seek the supremacy, and that sanctification be both preached and lived, while faithfulness to God in supreme love makes a person true to neighbor and able to love neighbor as self, and pointing people to this law lifts the standard until by grace the idol erected in the shape of a false sabbath is cast down.

Pictures Photographs and Expense

The prohibition reaches pictures of Christ, angels and other spiritual things, since false representations misrepresent them and turn attention away from God while misusing money needed for missionary work. Photographs and other pictures fall under it when attachment to them becomes idolatry or disregards divine instruction, and when images displayed on walls or shelves take honor due to God they are to be removed. Believers are to restrain the desire for such images, not teach children to prize perishing pictures or to idolize people and earthly things, and to direct the money instead toward helping the poor and making instruction about God available to others.

Multitudinous picture-making and accumulating pictures in the home breaks this charge and makes idolaters, especially spending much money on photographs and illustrations. Such spending is a species of idolatry because it consumes means that should support missionary effort or draws the heart away from God, and unless there is decided reform this picture-making will continue to increase. Photographs that come between the soul and God and have no power for good are picture-idols to be put out of sight, since keeping them robs God of honor and does not help spread the truth. Money spent on pictures, picture-taking and magazines should instead be used for His glory to help the poor, spread knowledge of God and carry truth into new territories, with books kept affordable to those who need them.

What is forbidden is image worship, not every picture or likeness, for God Himself used pictures and symbols to teach the prophets through sight so people could understand, and prophetic history was shown to Daniel and John in symbols to be set out plainly. The command does not require destroying every image, must not be used to burden consciences, and personal judgments about it must not be made a test of obedience, though pictures can be misused and excessive spending on them diverts means from God's work where the line between picture-making and sin can be difficult to determine.

Corruption Prophecy and Faithfulness

Adoration of images and relics in Christian worship was gradually introduced to give converts from heathenism a substitute for the worship of idols and to promote their nominal acceptance of Christianity. To complete that introduction Rome expunged the second commandment from the law and divided the tenth commandment in order to preserve the number ten. That system of idolatry was finally established by decree of a general council, the Second Council of Nice in A.D. 787, fulfilling the prophecy that the papacy would think to change times and laws.

Omitting the commandment from devotional books and changing the numbering of the others alters God's commandments to fit existing practices. Catholic catechisms do not teach it as a separate obligatory commandment, declaring that its whole significance is contained in the first commandment. That position disclaims intentional change of the law at this point, unlike the change of the fourth commandment to Sunday for the seventh day. That trampling upon God's commandments is sin because sin is the transgression of the law, and proves the right to the prophetic title mystery of lawlessness.

The papacy has attempted to change the law of God by dropping this commandment and by so changing the fourth commandment as to authorize observance of the first day instead of the seventh day as the Sabbath. The plea that the ban on image worship is unnecessary because it is included in the first, and that the law is given exactly as God designed it to be understood, does not stand. Its omission is not the intentional, deliberate change of times and law foretold in prophecy. The change in the fourth commandment alone exactly fulfils the prophecy, claimed on church authority alone, openly setting the papal power above God, so that obedience to the law as thus changed gives supreme honor to that power and is a mark of allegiance to the pope in place of God.

Breaking God's commandments is the special characteristic of the beast and therefore of his image, so keeping God's law and violating it makes the distinction between the worshipers of God and the worshipers of the beast. Opposition to the commandments is aimed at getting rid of the Sabbath commandment. When professed converts kept their idolatry under Christian names and the church united with them, the foul leaven of idolatry corrupted Christian faith and worship with unsound doctrines, superstitious rites, and idolatrous ceremonies, and the church lost her purity and power. Merely changing pagan idols into images of Jesus, and even of Mary and the saints, still breaks the commandment and brings that leaven.

Obedience meant refusing to unite with professed Christians who brought that idolatry into the church, preserving purity even when refusal brought pressure to yield to ceremonies and image worship, persecution, and death. Keeping the commandment means refusing compromise, maintaining fidelity to truth, and worshiping God alone. Removing it from the law helped establish the worship of images and relics in Christian practice. Through ages of darkness and apostasy faithful Waldenses held fast rejection of all image worship as idolatry, with keeping the true Sabbath, denying the supremacy of Rome, and resisting her corruptions as the apostate Babylon of the Apocalypse, even under hatred, persecution and death.

Keeping it means refusing to bow to an image even under threat of death, praying to God in secret and worshiping Him at home rather than attending mass. In the Netherlands under Charles V and Philip II this refusal was made a capital crime punishable with death by the stake, placed alongside reading, hearing, preaching, or speaking about the Bible, praying to God in secret, and singing a psalm, and thousands perished for it. Faithful obedience held firm through torture and burning, with wives comforting husbands at the stake and maidens going to burial alive, the scaffold, and the fire with courage, and home worship in its place meant kneeling to pray for enlightenment of mind, pardon of sins, and for the sovereign and magistrates.

Pointing people to this law lifts up the standard and casts down the idol erected in the shape of a false Sabbath until by grace and power that idol falls. Treating Sunday as sacred and reverencing it elevates a human institution and is a form of idolatry. To set aside any of these commandments and present in its place the observance of a day that bears no sanctity, the Sunday sabbath set forth to be observed as the Lord's Sabbath, is to usurp an authority that infringes upon His divine prerogatives and will be dealt with by Jehovah. To obey such a human law compels men to transgress the laws of Jehovah, and human enactments that conflict with the laws of God do not bear the stamp of divine approval.

Its ban on idols applies to Sunday, which is an idol to be dealt with cautiously where prejudice is strong, without needlessly arousing opposition by working on Sunday. Refraining from work on Sunday where it advances the work is not receiving the mark of the beast, and Sunday can be used for genuine missionary work. When efforts compel transgression believers must stand firm and not violate God's holy day, for the final issue of the Sabbath question has not yet come. It is part of the law that Christ Himself proclaimed from Sinai and that still binds. To profess belief in Christ while violating it is transgression and sin, and with the Sabbath question as the great test for this time it must be proclaimed with power and with a certain sound as part of the third angel's message, among the commandments that churches violate even while professing faith in Christ.

Duty to God and Neighbor

This commandment belongs to the first four of the ten, written on the first table of stone, which set forth duty to the Maker and sum up supreme love to God, while the last six define duty to fellow men. Those first four require that God alone be placed above everything as sovereign of the universe and exalted as omnipotent, identifying the true and living God as Creator of heaven and earth. They cannot be set aside apart from the rest, for all ten are linked like a chain and to violate this one precept makes a person a breaker of the whole law, yet they remain distinct as the governing principle requiring implicit obedience. Their purpose is expressed in love for God with the whole heart and love for neighbor as oneself.

That love to God is not passion, nor fruitless faith in His existence and power, nor cold acknowledgment of His boundless love, but a living active principle manifested in willing obedience of all His requirements with all heart, soul, mind and strength. Christ gave these first four as principles of heaven for His people to follow, and keeping them makes people one with Christ who gave His life as a ransom to free them from slavery to sin. The lawyer's conviction that he had neglected them included his failure to love and serve God supremely as the law requires. They define the human duty to God as a standard of obedience proclaimed at Sinai.

Faithfulness to God required by them is what makes a person true to his neighbor and able to love his neighbor as himself, while being false to God in this duty makes true faithfulness to neighbors impossible. Obedience to this first great principle of supreme love, the principle most disregarded, is necessary in order to obey the second great principle of loving neighbor as oneself, and obedience to the first four leads to obedience to the last six. Keeping them makes manifest duty to fellow men in tender pitying love toward everyone for whom Christ died, relieving the oppressed. It consecrates the obedient soul to be a missionary, a laborer together with God and one with Christ, deriving zeal and energy from the Chief Missionary with wisdom pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy, sowing the fruit of righteousness in peace.

Together the ten contain the whole duty of humanity, and other scriptural commands amplify their principles. Keeping the Sabbath commandment is connected with preserving the world from idolatry, and those who acknowledge the commandments and keep the fourth must live by the principles of all ten. Truly keeping the Sabbath means obeying every precept, for it stands with this command against making images for worship and with remembering the seventh day as the Sabbath of the Lord on which no work is done, because in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and rested the seventh day and blessed and hallowed it, which blessing has not been removed and is to be taught to children that they may honor God and serve Him. That Sabbath is the covenant clasp uniting man to God and to fellow man.

Hearts defiled with sin fail to keep these first four precepts and are instead marked by selfishness and faultfinding. Disobedience to them with the other first commandments greatly dishonors God and leaves defilement to be cleansed away, joined with dishonest dealing and sharp, scheming, worldly-policy plans. It calls for purification through self-examination, thorough searching of heart, righting of wrongs, and restitution made not only in word but in deed. The Pharisees treated these first four pointing out duty to God as more important than the last six concerning duties to others, and Jesus showed that this emphasis left them deficient in practical godliness and in conduct toward others. Following right principle means faithfully doing this commandment together with the other three first commandments and the last six, which is eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ, appropriating all embraced in the atonement made on Calvary, so that those who receive Christ as Saviour have Christ standing by their side and are given power to become sons of God.

Keeping all ten including this marks God's distinct people delivered from Egypt to serve Him and obey His commandments, with prosperity or adversity sent according to obedience or transgression, and Israel's prosperity depended on obedience to these precepts framed by God rather than any human mind. Keeping them as the standard marks them distinct from those who worship the beast and from pleasure-loving professors who disregard His law, and the dragon makes war on them because of their obedience. The law's knowledge was preserved after idolatry had caused many to lose knowledge of it, and it remained a lasting expression of God's will. The bond of God with His people is presented as sacred as marriage, so idolatry is spiritual adultery and God's opposition to it is called jealousy.

God is jealous: He does not promise His blessing to parents and children who transgress His requirements and hate Him, while He shows mercy to thousands of those who love Him and keep His commandments, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him. Children may suffer the consequences of their parents' wrongdoing, but are not punished for their parents' guilt unless they share in their sins, sin often passing on through inheritance and example. By forbidding false gods this commandment also implies that the true God alone is to be worshiped and served, without altering His written word, turning from sin and bringing mind and heart under His discipline. Representing the Eternal One with material objects lowers the mind's conception of God, turning attention from the Creator toward created things and degrading those who worship them, while true worship is in spirit and truth by living faith rather than imagination.

Obedience in Daily Life

The command means exactly as it reads and must be believed and carried out as directed, revealing the divine will and answering whether a person can be saved without keeping the Sabbath. Scripture is to be searched to see if these things are so, with earnest desire for truth, prayer for opened understanding, and a mind willing to grasp every ray of light even when opposed to past belief, for doers of the commandments have right to the tree of life and entrance through the gates into the city. It belongs to the authoritative law proclaimed at Sinai which people must humbly acknowledge and obey.

It must be studied by everyone professing to keep God's commandments and obeyed in truth and righteousness with every other command. Obedience is personal daily duty, and disregard of God's law is sin that can discourage others from accepting its claims. Its principles will stand to witness against the world in the judgment day and decide every soul's destiny.

It must be obeyed and cherished from the heart, not merely assented to in theory or taught to others. Its pure principles are to be loved with transforming power, meaning purity, supreme love to God and love to neighbor as self. Where this inward obedience is lacking truth loses vitalizing power, sin strengthens, the life is a lie, and there is no strength, confidence, or efficiency for God's work. This requires opening mind and heart for truth to enter and conscientiously surrendering every habit, practice, and sin that closes the door against Jesus. Such obedience sanctifies humanity and holds back skepticism.

Reading the written commands alone does not profit unless their truth enters the heart and illuminates the mind. The heart and mind must be brought into harmony with God through experimental obedience, for God's law is to be written on each heart and honored in practical life, not merely observed outwardly. The ten demand old-time reverence in hearts, manifest the foundation of faith, enforce every holy precept, and awaken individual responsibility to act just, pure, and true in order to be regarded true in God's sight. They call for reform in the churches in practical godliness rather than the world's ways. The world's fashion is not the standard, for Satan makes heavy yokes binding people to the world because they are not in conformity with the ten holy precepts, while Christ breaks those bonds so people can obey God.

Its great principles are clear to seekers of truth as a sufficient and complete standard that no human message or lower standard should replace. The moral code of the ten, together with the ceremonial law, serves as a schoolmaster to bring people to Christ. Christ defended the great precepts given at Sinai against human traditions and petty rules devised by people. The ten are the words of the living God, of greater force and value than men's precepts and teachings. Customs, maxims, and traditions handed down through rabbis, scribes, and Pharisees must not be made all-essential above them, for putting human teachings above them keeps followers from advancement, from supplying lack of knowledge, from becoming efficient workers, and hinders spiritual education. Teaching men's precepts as of more value than Jehovah's pure truth, with Thus saith the Lord set aside, keeps disciples back from the advancement they might have made.

Learning this law directly from God is the highest education, above all teaching from human unsanctified teachers who refuse obedience, for it came from the highest grandest court pronounced in awful grandeur from Sinai. Obedience to all the commandments is that higher education, and every truly sanctified soul living the Word is educated and taught of God Himself. Its words carry divine authority from the Lawgiver requiring obedience, and giving no heed while claiming sanctification shows refusal to render what God requires. Urging excuses for evading its requirements proves claimed sanctification spurious, and claiming "I am sanctified" while setting up a self-imagined standard of self-righteousness in its place is false sanctification. The law requires spiritual perfection unattainable alone, but provision is found through union with Christ and His merits.

It is God's law for His household on earth and rules guiding parents and children, to be followed without swerving and strictly obeyed. Families professing faith must obey it even when temporal business competes for attention, for it is lasting counsel written on stone and placed in the ark of the testimony. Parents are to educate children in these commandments when rising up and sitting down and going out and coming in, and universal obedience with such home teaching would end thefts, robberies, murders, and the filling of jails and prisons. To love God and keep His commandments is the whole duty of man, for not one precept is done away but all stand immutable and eternal because the Lord's law is perfect, converting the soul, and a perfect thing cannot be improved but must be respected, reverenced, and obeyed. God requires order, for there is order in heaven, and requires every family disciplined to orderly ways. Parents stand in God's place and must speak as God speaks in plain firm Thou shalt and Thou shalt not, saying No decidedly without loss of temper and meaning it, refusing uneducated will, disorder, destruction, and handling things for amusement, and quenching undesirable habits at first appearance to train neat, cleanly, orderly, self-controlled, obedient children. Learning to obey a mother's exactly stated requirements, with her word as law in the home, trains respect for this Thou shalt not.

God commanded Israel to have the words of the law embroidered on a ribbon of blue in the border of garments to remind them of duty to love God supremely and neighbor as self. Works directly contrary to the law show departure from primitive purity and simplicity even when outward appearance expresses exalted devotion and sanctity, for outward display without obedient lives is not true devotion. It belongs to the sacred directions in Exodus 20 to be made widely known and obeyed, as holy law written by God on stone that must not be made ineffective. Its binding claims must be advocated, for unfaithful conduct by advocates gives enemies occasion to reproach faith and brings perplexity and discouragement upon those just seeing light upon the fourth precept, leaving a blot never fully effaced. Transgression pollutes the earth and will bring judgment wrath of a pure holy God, and when a watchman shows by deportment that prevailing polluting sins attract him his crime is very aggravating.

Its holiness brought clearly before the people made many tremble at transgression, leading to grief and repentance, for transgression is sin regarded with horror. Persistent refusal brings divine judgments intended mercifully to awaken transgressors to sin and peril. Defying it insults God and belongs to wickedness He will punish, for its holy commands express the just claims and supreme rulership of Jehovah as Ruler of the universe. Breaking it stands among transgressors following the originator of rebellion, gathering gain by deception and fraud, yet God deals with compassion, long-sufferance, and tender mercy, forbearing while repentance is possible, restraining His own attributes, giving increasing light and opportunity as with Nineveh. Toward those leaving transgression He shows mercy and forgiveness, but forbearance has a rapidly approaching end, and He will arise to punish the wicked in violent crime-filled cities with destruction and death upon persistent bold defiers. Disobedience carries definite penalty annexed, sure to follow transgression, for retributive justice never fails and plain Scripture cases prove it and warn against disobedience. Departing from its plain principles of heaven is disobedience, and Israel's recorded idolatry transgressing definite law warns that penalty is sure.

Its principles must govern business dealings and be brought into transactions between men, and disregarding them and treating falsehood as truth misrepresents God's character. It is plain principle of heaven and will of heaven carrying weight under which every soul must bow in humility and contrition, and departing is sin to be called by its right name. Those disobeying while claiming to do heaven's will stand on the brink of ruin and need cleansing from all sin and glossed-over iniquity through Christ's blood to open blinded eyes. All business is to be done according to the first four to be obeyed and revealed in life work, for the commandment is life whose restraining influence restores God's moral image by keeping the soul in touch with the Creator. Profession of belief in Jesus does not allow passing over offensive sins or endorsing evil works. The great holy merciful God will never league with dishonest practices nor vindicate injustice, forbidding unjust dealing, advantage-taking over those under jurisdiction, determining to bring individuals to one's terms to rule or ruin, and all oppression, injustice, and wickedness. God's cause is free from taint of injustice and gains no advantage by robbing God's family of individuality or rights, and using the plea of God's cause to justify such acts presents robbery for burnt offering, strange fire God does not accept, without prosperity. It must be practiced in every line of work especially by those in responsible positions, being in touch with God for fine keen clear perceptions of equity, watching praying working with eye single to God's glory in sight of heaven, loving God supremely and neighbor as self, representing God's cause with tender pure true compassionate heart like Christ's, with pure heart clean hands adopting Christ's maxims. It forbids making God's cause excuse for oppression, suffering, injustice, deception, double dealing, or selfish sharpness for financial interest. Keeping it keeps human imperfection out of truth's cause, honors God, prevents betrayal of Christ, and keeps stumbling blocks from precious souls lest they stumble to ruin. Conduct must not distort law, dishonor Him, or place stumbling blocks.

Violating God's laws whether physical or moral is sin against the Creator, for the Decalogue's precepts are as truly divine as laws governing the body. Violating natural law through depraved appetites and lustful passions is also violation of God's law, and health reform reveals the sinfulness of breaking laws established in human being. The ten have been lightly regarded, and obedience would have prevented the curse of disease now flooding the world. Continually breaking nature's laws breaks God's law, bearing on use of body and mind, and Christianity enjoins obedience to physical law insisting on its sacredness as truly as the Decalogue. Temperance is needed to serve fully, for continual transgression brings disease, suffering, and premature death obedience would have prevented. God's moral and physical laws are alike divine, inscribed also on nerves and fibers and in the body, with promise in each prohibition. Obedience safeguards against wrong habits, brings health happiness peace joy, draws closer to Him, and preserves or recovers health, while disregard encourages disobedience contributing to violence, theft, and social disorder. He does not force obedience, and perfection of character requires familiarity with His word as protective hedge against results of transgression. Respecting and obeying the ten precepts governing mankind purifies self and protects home from vice, and meditation reveals wondrous truths. Respect would prevent much distress and misery, and people are free in Christ as they obey. Transgressing ancient binding requirements is sin, and treating commands as arbitrary or dead gives license to violate and keeps requirements out of sight. Turning from light on simple eating, dressing, and body laws to avoid reproach blunts conscience and leads to shunning duty and violating the ten. Those rejecting known duties on simple dress and physical and moral laws will violate the ten to avoid reproach, unwilling to endure the cross and despise shame in harmony with natural law. Abusing or neglecting self and injuring constitution or health violates moral obligation, since the second table summed in love to neighbor as self rests on prior self-love requiring self-protection, and God authors physical as truly as moral law so violating life and health transgresses as truly as breaking the ten. Violating health laws is as truly sinful as breaking the commandments.

It calls for moral courage under contempt never lost sight of by old or young. Safety lies in wholehearted belief in what God said, and those choosing their own path and leading others away, with those following them, are guilty. It is given to every man to be obeyed, binding everyone to one standard with no exemption by responsibility or position. It is binding plain and decided upon every soul, kept through Christ's merits by helpless souls hanging upon Him, bringing harmony with heaven. Refusal does not annul it but works harmony with evil, and opening heart to its truth involves a cross and choice between Christ and the world, creating division even in families and neighborhoods as some yield to the Spirit and others turn away, requiring refusal to remain in darkness for unity's sake. People violate it turning from known duty to avoid hardship or reproach, though its authority reaches beyond outward conduct. The lawyer had kept neither first four nor last six required for eternal life, yet convicted under Christ's searching test he tried to excuse sin and show the command too difficult to parry conviction and vindicate himself instead of confessing. Whenever God's will opposed his own, the transgressor despised and transgressed this Sinai law.

Obeying it forbids taking an advance step in Freemasonry for ambition and pride of honor, because receiving the higher degree gives up truth for honor, puts a man in bondage to worldly honor, and ruins the soul, requiring cutting loose, conversion by the Spirit, and standing with God's people. Belonging to trade unions and combinations disregards the whole decalogue, for those unions are controlled by Satan's cruel power pledging men to deprive neighbors of freedom and rob poorer classes of just advantages in buying and selling, and obedience is the world's test. It is the physician's standard measuring daily life, with no condemned tradition custom or practice followed. Living by this direction given from Sinai after deliverance from Egypt, held in highest regard, keeps physicians from looseness, carelessness on chastity, and liberties with women, so all living by it may be safely trusted. It forbids risking God's displeasure by letting trifles attract mind and eye and absorb attention due Him, to be studied in this day of test. It rebukes those in sacred temple responsibility weaving selfishness into sacred things and using common fire instead of God's sacred kindling, calling for the Spirit to convict hearts. With the ten expressing God's will and transcript of character, an order is set apart to minister, conduct sacred services, speak His words, and reveal His will in plain language setting forth motives prompting obedience. Fear and love of God lead to cheerful hearty obedience not only for His glory but for highest good in harmony with heaven, and Scriptural truth and righteousness will be His people's power.

Because Israel would not obey, prone to forget God and His claims, added ceremonies and ordinances were given to keep Him in remembrance and stir minds to obligation, unneeded had they obediently loved to keep the commandments. So now special testimonies awaken professed peculiar treasure to duty, sinfulness, and fearful danger in neglecting God's word, unneeded if requirements were obeyed. Israel grew lax in commandments including the Sabbath, and God permitted punishment upon that generation. Many returned Israelites and descendants disregarded plain Sinai precepts with indifference and sin, undermining others and keeping heaven's blessing from resting richly, without this particular precept identified as the one violated. Though chosen blessed and given opportunities, the Jews heard Sinai yet failed to serve faithfully and ultimately rejected Jesus. Christ who spoke it from Sinai later defined its principles for practical life. His voice in the temple cleansing was the same clear ringing voice proclaiming Sinai, which priests and rulers transgressed by unfair transactions, extortion, robbery, and unholy traffic in outer courts. Christ affirmed these Sinai commandments as God's law required, not nonessential.

It presents principles of holiness, justice, and mercy from the mount. Communicated direct from heaven in Israel's wilderness journeyings and plainly stated, it is a lesson for today to be read and understood, recording sacred morality, justice, reverence for God, and respect for man made in His image. Its Sinai principles require firmness as rock, yet loyalty stands with allowing lovers of God to follow diet convictions without forcing all to see alike on foods such as butter, and differences of opinion must not barrier brethren or create disunion. Keeping it fashions character in divine likeness, freeing the garment from spot wrinkle and defilement, making partakers of divine nature escaping worldly corruption through lust, exemplifying Christ, revealing God's character to whom every knee should bow, showing unbelievers what heaven's family members are to be, and preparing the redeemed in this earthly school for heaven's higher grade to enter gates and eat the tree of life for healing of nations. The Father's will made known in the ten, given in Eden when morning stars sang and sons of God shouted and spoken audibly from Sinai, must be done rather than merely professed, for profession, prophesying, casting out devils, and wonderful works do not save without obedience. Sin is its transgression, disharmonious character bears evil fruit marking false professors, and hearing and doing builds on rock standing through rain floods wind while hearing without doing builds on sand falling greatly. The Sinai law of love binds to God's will and service, not enslaving to arbitrary restraint but guiding from self-inclination into Satan's service toward high noble elevating willing cooperation. The first four with last six must be kept in unselfish fidelity and pure devotion rather than self-exaltation, improving every lent talent to God's glory with faithful zeal. Those doing so will be rewarded with the prepared eternal place in proportion to devotion, while careless indolent selfish misappliers not keeping them cannot receive it but are rewarded by life's accurate record. Men are not their own but bought with a price, to be tried by these ten holy precepts as Christ's kingdom laws and standard to reach, for God is jealous testing obedience. Man sinned with death as penalty, but Christ bore it securing present probation to prove value in sight of Him who gave His Son for everlasting life. Loving God and keeping them defines duty, and failure shows His love absent within. Christ came to represent the Father and is example in keeping them as transcript of character, and it is life to obey with no excuse for transgression. Those claiming God's childhood yet misrepresenting Christ by disorderly self-willed behavior, setting own will and opinions as standard, oppose Christ's will and transgress Jehovah's law, finding life hard. Subjects must represent their Sovereign's character without trimming commands to ideas or convenience, bringing selves into subjection to law rather than law to selves. It is safe to be on the Lord's side committing temporal and eternal interests to Him whose wisdom power love engage for the obedient, while hosts register names among loyal and true. Keeping them reveals love for the Supreme Ruler and purifies even as He is pure, for every provision against sin is made, given amid thunderings lightnings trumpet and smoking mountain so people stood afar pleading Moses speak lest they die, with Moses answering God came to prove them and set fear before them against sin, afterward written by God's finger on two stone tables given to Moses. As a father at head of family requires regulating laws bringing order and happiness when respected and confusion when not, so this Ruler of the universe must be respected and obeyed, and obedience shows whether doctrine is of God. The ten form the hedge around God's vineyard distinguishing Israel of God from all nations. The covenant by the one true living God required worshiping no strange god and keeping sacred distinct from common. During Moses' forty days the people should have meditated and obeyed covenant terms, turning from idolatry and teaching children, but lost faith and failed to keep it. Belonging to law spoken after deliverance with freedom to keep precepts, it marked faithful worship of Jehovah, and setting aside the Sabbath could make people forget the Creator and worship other gods. Its requirement calls for heart and mind in harmony with God. The law condemns every unrighteous act, and Christ perfectly fulfilled its precepts so through faith His perfection covers repentant obedient transgression. The second command against irreverence stands with the seventh-day Sabbath together, for truly keeping the Sabbath means obeying every precept and disregarding none. Exodus 20:1-17 gives the whole law where Sabbath keeping means obedience to all, with this command on the first stone table among first three showing duty to God while last six show duty to fellow man. Those reverencing the Sabbath keep the graven-image ban with other first commands, and the Sabbath as covenant sign is the golden clasp uniting man to God in supreme obedience and to fellow man. The Sinai standard shows beauty and safety of obedience bringing peace and prosperity and warns of disobedience linked to present turmoil, binding everyone with no exemption by position.