The 10 Commandments were given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, also called Mount Horeb. These commandments, which are often referred to as “The 10 Words” are the keystone for every religion that falls under the general title of Jewish or Christian.
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So, if God gave these 10 commandments to everyone who worships him, why is it that within Christianity, when they list the 10 Commandments, the first commandment that God gave is missing?
“What do you mean, Steve? The first commandment is there, and it says that you shall have no other gods before me.”
You’re right, that is what it says, but that isn’t the first commandment!
I did an Internet search for “What are the 10 Commandments” and this is what I got on the first “hit”, which are the first 2 commandments:
I am the Lord your God. You shall not have strange gods before me. You shall not make to thyself any graven thing; nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. You shall not adore them nor serve them.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
In fact, I went through the first 10 or so results and not even one of them- NOT ONE! – had the first commandment listed.
So, what is this missing, mysterious first commandment? Am I telling you that it isn’t “Thou shall have no other gods before me?”
Yes- that is EXACTLY what I am saying!
Here is the listing of the first commandment, directly from the Torah, which is what God told Moses to write down (Exodus 20):
After searching far and wide on the Internet, I finally found this when asking for the Hebrew commandment from the Torah.
The first commandment that God gave to Moses is NOT about having any other gods before him- that is in the second commandment. The first commandment, the very first thing that God, himself, thought to be the most important thing to learn is that he is the LORD, our God, who brought us out of slavery!
So why is it that Christianity, which is supposed to be worshipping the same God Jews worship, have not just rejected, but totally erased from God’s commandments the first one he gave, and replaced it by splitting the second commandment into two different ones?
The probable answer, if you ask me, is that by the end of the First Century the original Messianic Jews who accepted Yeshua as their Messiah had died off, and the number of Gentiles accepting Yeshua (at that time being called Jesus) overwhelmed the Jews within this movement, which was being transformed into a totally new religion.
You see, because of the political issues the Jewish population was having with Rome, these new Gentile Believers did not want to be associated with the Jews. As Roman citizens (supposedly) worshipping the Roman gods, they were safe; however, worshipping as the Jews did meant they would probably be considered by Rome as Jews, and that put them in a tenuous position.
So, the Gentile leaders of what was now called Christianity started to change their form of worship, beginning with celebrating the Shabbat on Sunday (which was a Roman day of celebration) and rejecting most of the Jewish lifestyle, such as kosher laws and the Holy Days. Later on, by the time Constantine got involved, Christianity became a totally different religion.
Knowing the history, we can understand why these Christians wanted to seem separate from the Jewish population, and the best way to do that was to remove any reference to being God’s chosen people. By removing the first commandment and replacing it with the first part of the second commandment, they completely disassociated themselves from the God of the Jews.
Later, when they decided that Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit were really all the same entity, they could justify worshiping Jesus as God without violating their first commandment.
The result is that today, Christians have no relationship at all to the God of the Jews and within most of the different Christian religions, they have replaced Adonai completely with Jesus.
I don’t know about you, but from what I have read in the Gospels about Yeshua (Jesus’ real name) and his devotion to his father, I would guess that what modern Christianity has done probably doesn’t go over very well with Yeshua, and especially not with God.
I can’t speak for either of them, but I am pretty sure that God doesn’t like the idea that men changed his commandments, and I’ll also bet the farm that Yeshua is teed-off that men have replaced worship of his father with worship of him.
I have often seen or heard Christians saying that when a Gentile accepts Jesus as their Messiah, they are now a spiritual son or daughter of Abraham, yet in the very same breath they reject the God of Abraham by rejecting his Torah worshiping Jesus.
Worse than that, if you can get any worse, they profess to follow the 10 Commandments but have deleted the first commandment, which is the one that tells us who is our God!
How can anyone say they worship God by deleting the commandment that tells us who he is?
That’s a question I really can’t answer.
Oh, yes, we know that they didn’t want to be associated with Jews, but that doesn’t excuse removing one of his 10 commandments.
In Matthew 7:21-23, Yeshua says that many who call him “Lord” will not enter the kingdom of Heaven. More than that, Yeshua will say he never knew them! How can that be?
Well, maybe it’s because they erased a commandment God gave, replaced God’s Holy Days with man-made holidays, and worship him instead of his father?
Maybe Yeshua will reject those who are totally obedient to whichever sect of Christianity they follow because by doing so they reject nearly everything God said to do?
Maybe God will reject Jews obedient to the Torah but who have rejected Yeshua as their Messiah?
It’s not my call who God will accept or reject; but, based on what God tells us in the Torah, on what Yeshua taught, on how mainstream Judaism has taught us to reject Yeshua, and how Christianity has rejected God’s commandment and (within many Christian religions) even replaced him with his son, well…I believe it safe to say that those things ain’t gonna please either God or Yeshua.
And when the Acharit HaYamim (the End Days) are upon us and we find ourselves in front of God on his Throne of Judgment, when we say “But, Lord, that is what they told me I should do!”, I believe he will say something to the effect of:
“I understand that is what they told you to do, but it is what I say that counts!”
When we come before God for judgment, and Yeshua is standing to the right of God, he will either say “This one is mine, Father” or “I never knew you.”
So, you can choose to follow the religion of men, or you can choose to obey God, and that decision will determine which one of those statements you will hear.
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That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
