To many believers, one of the most prominent passages from the Old Testament is the giving of the ten commandments in the book of Exodus to God’s people. This passage is considered important as the main law for the people of God to follow both then and now. However, just as the children of Israel, we, too, often fall into the same problem in response to God’s law — “all the people answered together and said, ‘All that Jehovah has spoken we will do’…” (19:8; 24:3). When we hear God’s words, we hear something to do, something to follow, taking His speaking as something remote to us, outside of us. Yet, in this critical juncture in the book of Exodus, God is not giving an objective law to His people; actually, chapters 19 through 23 are a very specific kind of law — it is a marital covenant between God and His beloved.
The journey out of Egypt was only the beginning; the Lord patiently led them all the way through the wilderness to arrive at the mountain of God. It is here, at this stage of their journey, that God meets with His people and reveals Himself to them for an intimate relationship. In Exodus chapter 20, what the children of Israel were given was not a physical law for them to follow but a picture of who God is: “I am Jehovah Your God” — “love Me and keep My commandments” (v. 6). Our God is a Person, using His words to speak forth who He is to us for a relationship in love! In these words is the specific nature and attributes of a person; our God in His love is presenting Himself as a husband to His wife.
Today, when we hear the Lord’s words or read His words, how do we receive it? Do we take it as a dead knowledge to us, an objective, religious law to follow, or do we see in the light of His words the Lord’s pursuit after us to be His? The Word is indeed a love letter to infuse us with Himself to make us one with Him. God is not satisfied with just rescuing us from the world as He did the children of Israel. He is seeking a relationship only between Him and us, to belong to Him: “Now therefore if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My personal treasure from among all peoples, for all the earth is Mine” (19:5). The obeying and keeping is not a doing, but a receiving of this Person into us as a marriage: the two shall be one.
If our relationship to the Lord is only legal, we will have no way to meet the standard of our God. Yet, within the commandments is the answer to fulfilling this marital contract: love Him and keep His words. If we fail to receive the Lord’s words as His substance to constitute us but take it as a law to follow, the Lord will always remain remote to us, never coming into a mingling as a marriage. How do you receive your husband’s words to you? Without love, there is no expression of marriage and no way to “keep,” which is to uphold, guard — and live out! — the words of our husband. Are we married? What is our testimony? Today, as we take His words into us in love — not to do — and enter into this divine marital covenant, we are becoming constituted with His substance to express Him as His counterpart. His words are no longer a black and white law to us, but a marriage covenant forever binding God and us as one.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 12/22/2023, not reviewed by the speaker.)