On the highway the other day and flipping through the radio dial, I came across a Seventh Day Adventist preacher in the middle of a sermon. Within five minutes, he had made two errors that revealed either his biblical incompetence or his spiritual presumption.
So I turned him off.
In the first instance, in trying to make the case for Christians today keeping the Sabbath, he equated the Ten Commandments with all our Lord’s statements in the Gospels about “keeping my commands” and “breaking these commandments.” In John chapters 14 and 15, for instance, several times our Lord says things like, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (14:15,21,23 and 15:10,14). That preacher said Jesus was referring to the Ten Commandments.
Not even close.
Jesus was not talking about the Ten Commandments! He was talking about His own teachings, those found throughout the gospels. If you need proof, consider that when someone asked Jesus to name “the greatest commandment” (Matthew 22), He listed two that are not part of the “Ten”–loving God supremely (Deuteronomy 6) and loving one’s neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 19). So much for Jesus being fixated on the Ten Commandments the way that preacher is.
He must be so disappointed with Jesus.
As a matter of fact, nowhere does the Bible call those ten laws of Exodus 20 “The Ten Commandments.” That is what we call them. The Hebrews called them the “ten words.”
Furthermore, nowhere does the New Testament make the Ten Commandments binding for believers today. Not in a single place. Keep reading
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