God's 10 Commandments List Our Primary Sins

You can read God's 10 commandments to the Jews in Deuteronomy 5:6-21. The Jews/Israel, God's chosen people, were supposed to set a spiritual and practical example for the rest of the world for how God wants us to listen to Him, obey Him, and share His ways with those around us.

I've placed alternating red comments between the verses of Scripture, to illustrate how we humans continually seek to have our own ways instead of obeying God's ways, how we love our sin instead of loving God. Even the most ardent believer of God's Word and His Christ, frequently finds herself or himself straying into "the sin that so easily besets us.", as the Bible says. We cannot please God without repentance, faith, and letting Him do His holy work through us, for if we seek our own ways and gain above His glory, then we make ourselves into our own idols.

Here are the commandments of the Self-existent, the Eternal One, for which the word LORD is a translators' convenience:

I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

⁷  Thou shalt have none other gods before me. 

Unless we guard ourselves, we have this urge to make all sorts of things into false gods, including things, people, our hobbies and jobs, even religion or religiosity. If we don't trust and obey God's Word then we need to look at and cast out that which we have idolized.

⁸  Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: 

People have been painting, sculpting, modeling, photographing, and capturing images of all manner of things on this Earth and beyond. Right there we prove that we are trying to hold onto and worship bits of life, instead of living it as God says to do.

⁹  Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, 

We, humans, do not fear God in a righteous way, but superstitiously, yet we neglect to rightly judge our own sins and put them aside. We capture and manufacture all sorts of imagery, and we adore them, sell them, entice others to partake of them. Thus we serve the inanimate objects of our own creation (often for the love of money) making them gods over us, instead of putting aside their influence and our lust, that we should serve THE one and only living God.

¹⁰  And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.

¹¹  Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 

Over and over I hear people verbally ejaculate three letters, "omg". They vainly throw it about to let out emotion, and hoping, superstitiously to dodge using God's name in vain, even as they prove that they are driven by emotion to use it in vain.

¹²  Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee.
¹³  Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work:
¹⁴  But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.

¹⁵  And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day. 

The Sabbath, for the Israel of God, was both historically significant and prophetic of the coming of God's Christ. From their release from bondage in Egypt until the advent and completed suffering and physical death of Christ on Calvary's cross and His bodily resurrection, the Sabbath was the rest that God prescribed for the Jews and all who would follow God's Old Testament ways. However, with the resurrection of Christ and His ascension, now it is faith in Deity and Person of Christ and His completed work for that the Scripture says is the only hope, peace, joy, and Sabbath for real believers. It is not worldly rule keeping that gives us rest, but the very Person of Christ, in whom we place our trust. He is our Sabbath. If we think to earn sabbath points with God without trusting God's only living resurrected Christ, then we are sinning against what God has provided for our redemption.

¹⁶  Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Every time we say or do or think anything unholy against our parents, we break this, and God hates our rebellious behavior. 

¹⁷  Thou shalt not kill. 

We lust and hate, as Jesus said, killing/murdering those around us because of our spiritual and emotional and mental intemperance. The Law forbad the Jews against pre-meditated murder, but Jesus warned that the root of the problem is deep in our self-serving sin nature. Even the Old Testament warns that our "heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked...." Yet, the worldly mantra is for people to "follow your heart", for the world wants us to sin against God, and thus keep us enslaved to worldly lusts.

¹⁸  Neither shalt thou commit adultery.

¹⁹  Neither shalt thou steal. 

Adultery and stealing are, like lying, hateful things against those who are the victims of our sin. Again, Jesus showed us a higher standard than whether we broke this law or that law. Instead He challenged us to examine our underlying lusts and motives, and to be honest with ourselves, for we surely do not fool God. How many times a day do we not tell the truth? How many times do we lust after someone or something, or even steal a lingering glance or pocket something that is not ours, including stealing time from employers or not fully obeying and serving them?

²⁰  Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour. 

Lying, rumors, tale-bearing, gossiping, are all false endeavors and hateful things in the eyes of God, for we speak out of turn, not knowing the whole truth of the situation, and worse that we should be willing to speak falsely against a neighbor that we might somehow profit, whether to feel important for having a story to spread or because we shall receive some other earthly gain.

²¹  Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's. 

"Keeping up with the Joneses" is a horrible proverb and curse in our society, yet one of the driving lusts of advertising and the idol of modern life. Those pursuing this road curse themselves with discontent, anger, frustration, stress, and zero peace with God, for God shall not bless those who seek selfish interests above His commands.

   

The choice is yours, how you want to believe and live, and where you want to spend eternity. Will you believe on false teaching or trust what God has said?

God says you must trust His Christ and His salvation.