The Developmental Sequence

Developmental Sequence

One way to read the first 5 Commandments is as a progression in our relationship with God. Doing #1 makes doing #2 possible, building faith-based relational skills. All that is wrapped up in #4, the Sabbath, as foundational to #5, honoring parents. It's taking rest to another dimension: will you trust God in this context, and lean on His ability to work here too? Do you accept every aspect of how He can parent you? If you do, then you can avoid the interpersonal problems that produce the results that the next 5 Commandments warn you about.

The preamble provides God's identity, so we know who He is and what to expect of Him. The 'therefore's’ are what He expects, what He can personally enable you to do. He's already done this nationally: leave Egypt to worship Him; now leave your slavery to live in covenant with Him personally.

Romans 7:25

“Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”

The Ten Commandments start with who God is: I am your deliverer. Keeping these will keep you in the delivered condition. Otherwise, you'll return to the house of bondage condition.

This list of the Ten Commandments comes from Exodus chapter 20, where the Ten Commandments are first given.

1 – “You shall have no other gods before Me.”

Only worship God. No one else has the ability God has already demonstrated, so no one else has this right to speak into your life.

2 - “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

Idols depict the nature of the god's life. Small gods with a few areas of power and authority versus the true God who has no limits and can only accurately be represented by nothing. He is so immensely capable that ‘nothing’ is the accurate representation of Him. So don't use an idol and misunderstand the huge God outside that tiny box.

3 - “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

Taking a name in vain is equivalent to 'valuing' it as empty in nature, ie, powerless. The second Commandment tells us nothing can adequately represent Him, the limitless God; meaning, there isn't anything He can't handle. So don't think He’s powerless in any area of your life. He is able. All the promises of God are ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ in Jesus Christ our Lord.

2 Corinthians 1:20

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.

‘Takes His Name’ is a Hebrew idiom. To take on the name of someone was to serve as an ambassador. You are acting in a way that brings honor to His name, living up to the fullness of the life He offers. You must value His power to live His life.

4 - “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”

#1 through #3 prepare you to Rest. Our loving God's unique ability to handle everything means we can take the secure approach towards life. We actively rest in faith in a weekly practicum that step-by-step increases our ability to be centered in Him.

Moses told Israel the Ten Commandments twice, with two different reasons to observe the Sabbath. In Exodus 20:11 because God is Creator, and in Deuteronomy 5:15 because God is Deliverer. Looking at it through these 2 eyes we get a depth of vision and relationship that shows God creates deliverance from everything that potentially threatens me. Since He has prepared for me a Feast in the midst of my enemies, I will fear no evil. I will celebrate His Lordship as I surrender my all to Him.

5 - “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.”

How far does His Creative Deliverance extend? Into the very times in which you live, right down to the ability to shape your personal life. Psalms 139. Respect those He entrusts to participate with Him and you in your journey. Respect how He is parenting you and all that He employs in this. Only by resting in His deliverance love can we allow Him to Father us into the maturity of our full sonship, until we walk in His nature, as Jesus does. As He is, so are we in this world.

1 John 3:2

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

1 John 4:15-17

15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.

16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.

This is the conclusion of the revelation of God in your life and how it builds you to live in the fullness of your humanity, walking with Him into all your situations. Be secure in His love and ability, knowing He is actively parenting you, fitting you for your future. This is how the Spirit’s fruit comes to maturity in your life, so you have something to offer those He sends you to serve.

It is important to see God is building us to be fully human. Scripture uses several animal nature references for those who are trapped in sin. The typology in Revelation is that Satan’s forces are pictured as animals. “Beast” is a word often used for systematized evil. Maybe asking ourselves, where is the humanity in this? is a helpful question.

Without the development of God’s worldview, you will do some of the following things to others. Without the security of a healthy relationship with God, as built thru the first 5 Commandments; you'll feel incomplete, hurting & alone; irrationally driven to take desperate measures to gain security, even devolving to the point where you are hopping from one fig leaf security moment to another.

If we walk the Way of Commandments 1 – 5, God equips us to heed the call of the challenge to a more upright life in community; crippling our ability to violate the cycle of Commandments 6 – 10. Without completing the 1 – 5 divine relationship process, you will violate some of 6 – 10 on some level in your life circle; stuck in a repeating nightmare.

If you can't do #6 effectively enough to medicate your conscience (ie, murdering to avoid truth) you'll sink into doing #7 - adultery, the trading of your original God covenant for a cheap imitation idolatry covenant. This devolving can progress until you reach #10, the manifestation of the full collapse of the human soul. All you naturally began with as one made in God's image has been systematically deconstructed until you are just a raging jealous animal. You desperately crave the image you turned your back on, but refuse to obtain by walking in God’s Commandments Way.

It may be helpful to consider this devolving a growing resistance to redemption. As we tear apart the structures of normalcy, we become more resistant to redemption. If we are hell-bent on absorbing the pleasures of sin it’s going to take a deeper, more powerful intervention for God to turn us back. Maybe this is why the Book of Revelation pictures the last days depravity in a systematic developmental way.

6 – “You shall not murder.”

Murder, people’s 1st response to the unacceptability of their way of life, is the main sin mentioned before the Flood. Murder the one who's way of life reveals the weaknesses in yours. Cain and Abel. There are several ways to 'kill' others, besides the physical. Jesus pointed this out in the Sermon on the Mount. Think high school…

Keep Commandments 1-5 and you will avoid violating 6-10. It may seem off that this cycle begins with murder. That seems to us to be the most extreme. I’m looking at this as the nature of the disease. Murder is an extreme application of anger. It can be one moment of distress, without a change in one’s mindset. We easily get angry, and it can escalate into murder, if we nourish its one-track application. Indeed, murder is so simple that our law system allows many mitigating excuses for its judgement, with a variety of consequences.

I think God is looking at the depth of the wound the person experiences. It’s a structural design view. We get angry and murder, but sin can become more devastating to you, much more than momentary anger. It can systematically dismantle who you are and your wonderful potential. It can strip you of all your ‘created in the image of God’ elements. That is going down the road of depravity.

I’m thinking this is the first of the 6-10 sequence, which is represented as the first community sin in the Bible. Cain killed Abel, so he is banished, expelled from community love. In our new nature as humans after the Edenic Fall this is our ‘amateur’ sin response. It will get much more serious, deep, and painful as we ‘mature’ in our sin-ability. Indeed, it took the human race 2,000 years for God to say ‘Enough!’. He sent a Flood to end it. We became so convoluted that we were irreparable.

7 – “You shall not commit adultery.”

Adultery, violating covenant to make an alliance with another. Switching sources; switching identities. If you can't 'successfully' do #6, instead of repenting and going for the more excellent way the other person is modeling; you drop your standards and ally yourself with someone that requires a different type of self-sacrifice, some version of idolatry; yielding shame instead of righteousness. You are developing a victim mentality and moving into slavery, with its fruit of bitterness.

8 – “You shall not steal.”

Stealing, for when your Commandment #7 covenant source doesn't provide the resources to satisfy your full spectrum of needs. Disillusioned, you abandon the substitute covenant and all systematic world views. You are a lone ranger now, striking out on your own, getting whatever you can however you can, for your body, soul or spirit to satisfy the warping of your needs that your downward spiral creates. A perverse view of life develops with cynicism. Perverseness becomes the dominant theme of your personality.

9 – “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

False witness. The life of a physical, spiritual, emotional thief is HARD. The misery of a failed life plan is intense. Becoming a false witness; dashed hope turns to cynicism, warping your worldview, compounding your sense of victimhood. You now undermine those more upright. Resorting to discredit, character assassination, blame, slander, judging and despising those whose life exemplifies a responsiveness to His call.

Lying becomes a way of life. Jealousy is creeping in. Now the person lives a false testimony of life's Truth. With the back fully turned on all that makes us human, taking on the beast nature life. The law of the jungle is all that remains, get whatever you can get, however you can get it.

10 – “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

Jealousy. The conclusion, after our energy is spent on getting nowhere as a false witness. Even lying as a lifestyle can’t cover the pain of the boat load of shame.

Despair, a broken cynic beyond repair. The person is just left with our true original motive, stripped of all hope: wanting, but not willing to pay the price. Won't walk with God by dying to self’s methods, trusting God’s love and ability, to be resurrected into full glory.

Sadly, the person winds up dead anyway. An intense craving lurks below the surface, easily accessed with a super sensitive trip wire, exposing full-blown rage. The nature of fully aged despair transforms into jealousy. Now the hair-trigger personality is just a ticking time bomb - anything can set the abused, battered, cornered beast off on a vicious attack.

Sadly, this is what we now often see in the USA in news stories. People who with the slightest provocation go ballistic and launch an all-out stream of rage on strangers, a have-not person obliterating their paper-thin reality by demolishing someone who has, so they are on equal footing. Its fig-leaf morality. The jealous one momentarily relieves his tortured soul, finding a perverse moment of ‘equality’. The cycle is complete as the jealous resorts to murder, taking life instead of giving it, proving his craving for living in God’s image; yet refusing to surrender to the laws that make it possible.