Bible Study Seven Day Challenge Day 2

THE CHALLENGE     A seven day study in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17)

                                 and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew Chapters 5, 6, and 7).  

If you did not read the challenge passages, it’s not too late!  Just sit down, read them through and jot down your thoughts, impressions and questions.   I suggest doing so as a prayer, relating the scriptures and thoughts to your life, your loved ones, and the world around you.  

There is hardly a more valuable study than this one, examining the 10 Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.   This could well be called God’s Curriculum for Christlikeness.   

You may notice that the beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-11) in a sense parallel the 10 commandments, but they do not replace them.  The beatitudes are not specifically concerned with rules of behavior, rather they speak to the basic attitudes of life that those in God’s Kingdom can have.  “Blessed are” can also be translated “Happy are” or “you’re happy/blessed when”.   They speak to the kind of life that is available for anyone in God’s kingdom.   The Kind of good Life that God offers is not dependent on circumstances.    

Resist the temptation to read the first 10 verses of Matthew as things to do in order to find happiness.   They are decidedly not that.   They are dispositions to be chosen and embraced, by those whose lives are given over to God.   Notice that they don’t tell us to do anything.

 

Question           Are you able to view the Exodus commands as God’s Grace in preventing
                         us from seeking our happiness in something other than God himself?   They
                         protect us from seeking false gods and as they tell us that (lust, coveting,
                         deceit etc.) cannot ever provide us with what we need.   That provision can
                         only come from God.  
                         

                         Are you able to see the beatitudes not as “be” “attitudes” as if they are 

 something we must do to attain the blessings, rather as attitudes to adopt
 because God has already given us all the blessings listed and therefore we
 can be happy?   

Action Point     Jot down your thoughts and questions in the form of a prayer to God.  Mark
                         each entry with the date of your prayer and the scripture reference it’s
                         attached to.   In doing so you are engaging in the practice of spiritual
                         reading (Lectio Divina).  You are also beginning a Bible based prayer
                         journal, one which in catalyzed by the Bible rather than whatever comes
                         into your mind without Bible directed prayer.

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