Ten Commandments Bible Study ~ Week 7

9 July 2009 at 12:54 am (Bible study, Christian life, Christianity, Ten Commandments Bible Study)
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“You shall not commit adultery.” Exodus 20:14

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Again, another commandment that is simple and to the point. However, Christians don’t seem to struggle with the meaning of this commandment quite like we do with “You shall not murder.” But do we really understand the meaning of the 6th commandment? Does it simply mean not to have sex with someone other than your spouse? Or not to have sex outside of marriage? Does this commandment only apply to our physical relationships with other people? What about emotional adultery? Spiritual adultery? Can we commit adultery against God?

God refers to Israel as an unfaithful wife in the harshest of terms in the Old Testament. Here are just a few examples:

“Do not make treaties of any kind with the people living in the land. They are spiritual prostitutes, committing adultery against me by sacrificing to their gods. If you make peace with them, they will invite you to go with them to worship their gods, and you are likely to do it. (Exodus 34:15)

During the reign of King Josiah, the LORD said to me, “Have you seen what fickle Israel does? Like a wife who commits adultery, Israel has worshiped other gods on every hill and under every green tree. (Jeremiah 3:6)

When the LORD first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute,* so some of her children will be born to you from other men. This will illustrate the way my people have been untrue to me, openly committing adultery against the LORD by worshiping other gods.” (Hosea 1:2)

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes the concept of adultery and makes it very personal — from the eye, to the hand, to the very inner places of the heart. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” (Matthew 5:27-30)

Obviously, based on the words of Jesus, both single and married people can break this commandment. The women of Grace Chapel were asked the following question: “How can you be guilty of breaking this commandment without being married?” Here are some of their thoughts:

  • Through lust or impure dating relationships
  • Lust is adultery so anyone can break this commandment
  • You can commit spiritual adultery towards God when devoted to someone or something else
  • Through fantasizing or giving yourself to other things/idols instead of to God
  • By viewing pornography
  • Lusting after someone who is married
  • Anything that compromises purity of heart, mind, or body is committing adultery

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For Week 8, please read Chapter 7 on the Seventh Commandment. Following are discussion questions to prepare you for our next meeting:

  1. What motivates people to steal?
  2. How is a thief injured by stealing?
  3. How are theft and lying alike?
  4. How are theft and murder related?
  5. What is the good news of this commandment?

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Ten Commandments Bible Study ~ Week 6

2 July 2009 at 9:22 pm (Bible study, Christian life, Christianity, Ten Commandments Bible Study)
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“You shall not murder.” Exodus 20:13

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This commandment is simple and to the point, yet Christians continually struggle to determine what exactly this commandment means for us. Does it mean “to kill” or “to murder”? Does this commandment apply to animals? Suicide? War? Does it apply to the accidental killing of another person? Does it apply to the government’s killing of a convicted criminal? Does it apply to the unborn? These are extraordinarily difficult questions that many people believe are not up to our government to decide.

God ordains and even orders the killing of others in many stories of the Old Testament. Is He allowing Israel to break the fifth commandment? According to Hauerwas and Willimon, “All life is God’s. In the Bible, when killing is done, it is done under the agency of God, not by individuals or in service to the state, for only God is to kill and to make alive.” (page 80)

How is this commandment fleshed out further in the person of Jesus Christ? Jesus makes no attempts to soften or simplify this commandment, but makes it more comprehensive by including anger, insults, and demanding reconciliation from the offending parties. “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser…” (Matthew 5:21-25a)

The women of Grace Chapel were asked the following question: “How can you be guilty of breaking this commandment without killing a person?” Here are some of their answers:

  • You can murder someone’s reputation, hate them, wish they were dead, or even simply dead to you and out of your life.
  • The New Testament says that hatred of someone is equivalent to murder.
  • Hate kills a relationship. Then love can’t be shown as God would have you do.
  • You can take a person’s reason for living or his livelihood, or demean him.
  • You can be hateful towards someone in thoughts, words, or actions.
  • If you hate someone you have already committed murder in your heart.
  • It is possible to “kill” the image of God in others without slaying the person.

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For Week 7, please read Chapter 6 on the Sixth Commandment. Following are discussion questions to prepare you for our next meeting:

  1. Why is sexual conduct taken so seriously by God?
  2. What does this commandment prohibit besides adultery?
  3. How can you break this commandment without being married?
  4. Why does our culture make this commandment so hard to keep?
  5. What does this commandment mean to those who are single?

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Follow-up thoughts on head coverings…

27 June 2009 at 3:44 pm (Christian feminism, Christian life, Christianity, In His image, Responding to God)
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I feel blessed to have a pastor who occasionally visits my blog! Mike recently read my post on head coverings and I Corinthians 11. I thought he had really good feedback and caused me to think about some new aspects of the issue. For example, I now feel more comfortable viewing my long hair as a covering and may choose to wrap my hair up on my head if I don’t feel like wearing my scarf (although I love my scarf – lovely light blue embroidered silk from Vietnam). I definitely agree that the focus is on a woman developing a submissive spirit and the demeanor of servanthood.

Here is some of what he had to say:

I am so grateful that it is your heart’s desire to submit yourself to all that the Lord has in His Word…. that being said the idea of the head covering has been read in a few different ways (you may know the discussion).  The covering of the head and the length of the hair seems to me to have been invariably tied together as referenced by the “cutting off of the hair” comments for a woman who prays or prophesies without a covering.  V. 15 goes so far as to say that the long hair is given the woman “as a covering.”

Therefore, my best reading of the text is that the “covering of the head” was a reference to the way in which the hair would be wrapped back over the top of the head as a certain kind of covering.  A couple of examples of this kind of impropriety that was perceived to accompany a “nonsubmissive woman” might be the woman in Numbers 5:18 who has her hair “loosened” as part of the test of her fidelity to her husband as well as what was culturally perceived to be the scandalous activity of the “woman with a sinful past” in Luke 7 who “let down her hair” and wiped Jesus’ feet with her hair and tears.

I think the point for me is that there is a universal principle of a submissive spirit that is a beautiful thing for women in light of God’s economy of servanthood, being highly cherished in a community where sin is truly put off and greatness reserved for those who love and cherish servanthood and submission.  That being said, in our world these days, … there are very few, if any, cultural markers that actually work to indicate this sort of beauty.  In our day, the broader culture just doesn’t understand the value of submission from a Kingdom perspective.  In  a word, wearing the hair in a certain way does nothing more than communicate “hairstyle,” unlike the 1st century world.  It seems to me the very closest equivalent to a “submissive spirit” for our day must be primarily demeanor-driven.  I wish it were more concrete than that; however, I find the pluralistic world in which we live and the confluence of the multiple symbols and icons that convey multiple meanings to us in our day make it very difficult for us to ask women of Christ to: 1) wear their hair in a certain way or 2) if one concludes this to be some sort of covering (which I don’t), to wear a covering as a mark of obedience to the text of 1Cor. 11.

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Ten Commandments Bible Study ~ Week 5

25 June 2009 at 2:19 am (Bible study, Christian life, Christianity, Ten Commandments Bible Study)
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Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:8-12)

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Our parents were the first ones to love us, the first ones to teach us about Jesus, and the first ones to teach us about what it means to worship God. They kept the Ten Commandments while we were watching them with a child’s eyes.

Yet before our parents loved us, God loved us. The fourth commandment reminds us of this, and also that we must love our parents and obey our parents as we love and obey God. We can understand all notions of fatherhood and parenthood from what God tells us about his Father in heaven.

It is important to see the relationship between the commandment to obey the Sabbath and the commandment to honor our father and mother. “Even as the third commandment tells us that we must live in time as a gift, rather than as an arena of our achievements and assertions, so the fourth commandment commands us to live as those who know their very being is a gift. Our lives are not self-derived. The self-made man or woman is a lie.” (Hauerwas & Willimon, page 69)

Here are thoughts from the women of Grace Chapel on what it means to honor our parents: show them respect, be dutiful in taking care of them, respect them and love them even if you don’t agree with them, obey them always as long as it doesn’t go against the word of God, submit to them as an act of humility, pray for the will of God to be active in their lives, remember their authority over you, love them because they are the parents God gave you.

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For Week 6, please read Chapter 5 on the Fifth Commandment. Following are discussion questions to prepare you for our next meeting:

  1. Why did God give us this commandment?
  2. How does anger fit into this commandment?
  3. Is this a simple commandment? Why or why not?
  4. How can you be guilty of breaking this commandment without killing a person?
  5. What is the key to keeping this commandment?
  6. Does this commandment relate to suicide? War?

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Ten Commandments Bible Study ~ Week 4

19 June 2009 at 3:41 am (Bible study, Christian life, Christianity, Ten Commandments Bible Study)
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Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. (Exodus 20:8-11)

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Sabbath is God’s gift to humanity. With the sabbath, God has given us back time because time is not our own. God intends for us to have consecrated time to remember who God is and to remember who we are – part of His creation…part of His original work. On this day we are called to remember, recall, recollect.

Sabbath is tied to Creation. God rested from His work of creation on the seventh day to designate the work as good, and to recognize the goal of perfect rest – reflection, perfection, recognition of God’s intention for life. “The third commandment is a reminder that we have been created for no higher purpose than the worship of God.” (Hauerwas and Willimon, page 58)

Observing the sabbath faithfully is a witness to the world. How we choose to observe the sabbath will set us apart from a world that strives for more work by showing that life must contain a balance of work and rest, and this balance is the gift of a gracious Creator. How we choose to observe the sabbath will teach our children about self-discipline and what it looks like to use our time intentionally to worship God faithfully.

Here are thoughts from the women of Grace Chapel on how to spend the Sabbath day: church, reading the Bible with family, prayer, silence, spiritual conversation and fellowship, meals together, relax, spend time with loved ones, taking a walk and admiring nature, worship, reflection, serving others, volunteering in the church service, Bible study…add your own ideas to the list!

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For Week 5, please read Chapter 4 on the Fourth Commandment. Following are discussion questions to prepare you for our next meeting:

  1. Why did God give us this commandment? What is the need?
  2. What does it mean to “honor”?
  3. What qualities does good parenting require?
  4. What are the benefits of following this commandment?
  5. What does it cost to follow this commandment?
  6. Does this commandment have any limitations? If so, what?

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Ten Commandments Bible Study ~ Week 3

11 June 2009 at 2:06 am (Bible study, Christian life, Christianity, Ten Commandments Bible Study)
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You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. (Exodus 20:7)

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God gave us the gift of His name. This name gives God a tangible identity – He is no longer a mystery, but a God with an identity. This God seeks a personal relationship with His creation and we can no longer make “God” mean whatever we want. The name of God shares His character, nature, power, passion, and authority. Knowing God’s name allows us to honor, worship, and glorify Him in the most appropriate way. This is an incredible and awe-inspiring gift.

Through the second commandment, God is saying that we cannot make Him part of our lies. We can no longer avoid the truth to save our own skin, we can no longer allow our prayers to be insincere, and we can no longer seek to flatter our Christian brothers and sisters because it is easier than discipling them. Christians must not only live truthfully but we must also speak truthfully.

Pride, fear, confusion, selfishness, habit, anger, ignorance — all of these very human qualities cause us to break this commandment. The challenge of keeping this commandment is that we must go against our very nature. We must learn simplicity of speech and integrity of relationship. Not taking the Lord’s name in vain means that we are committed to speaking truthfully to God, to ourselves, and to one another.  (Hauerwas and Willimon, p 46)

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For Week 4, please read Chapter 3 on the Third Commandment. Following are discussion questions to prepare you for our next meeting:

  1. What is the purpose of the Sabbath day?
  2. How is the Sabbath tied to Creation?
  3. Why is rest so important to God?
  4. What work can’t be avoided on a Sunday?
  5. What activities should we participate in on Sunday?
  6. How is obeying the third commandment a witness to the world?

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Ten Commandments Bible Study ~ Week 2

4 June 2009 at 12:48 am (Bible study, Christian life, Christianity, Ten Commandments Bible Study)
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You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am  jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.  (Exodus 20:3-6)

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God loved us enough to speak to us. He loved us enough to not only tell us His name, but also to own us, call us into relationship with Him, tell us how to worship Him, and hold us accountable. We understand the God of Israel by understanding His commandments, and to understand the commandments “perfectly” is to understand that they cannot be read in isolation from one another.

Through the first commandment, God is saying that He desires our complete and utter devotion. By placing God on the throne of our lives, we open ourselves up to the movement of the Holy Spirit and enable the kind of relationship and communication that God desires with us. We realize that we are not attempting to get something out of God but we are instead “bending our lives toward God.” (Hauerwas and Willimon, p 34)

Our God reacts intensely to those who disobey this commandment. He is jealous because He is sovereign. He has a particular and passionate desire for relationship with us and expects our very particular and passionate worship of Him in return.

Note that this is a commandment with consequences, both good and bad. By following this commandment, we are promised God’s steadfast love to the thousandth generation! By failing to follow this commandment, our iniquity will result in our children being punished to the third and fourth generation.

What are the “costs” of following this commandment? In the western world, the costs are often social — we may not look or sound like those around us. Our behavior may result in our isolation from others who do not know Christ. In other parts of the world, the cost may be death. What are the costs of not following this commandment? Sin itself is the punishment.

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For Week 3, please read Chapter 2 on the Second Commandment. Following are discussion questions to prepare you for our next meeting:

  1. Why did God give us His name?
  2. Why is knowing God’s name such a great gift to us?
  3. How do we rightly or wrongly use God’s name?
  4. What causes us to break this commandment?
  5. How are we hurt by abusing God’s name?
  6. What are the public consequences of keeping this commandment?
  7. How would you explain this commandment to a child?

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Ten Commandments Bible Study ~ Week 1

19 May 2009 at 3:21 am (Bible study, Christian life, Christianity, Ten Commandments Bible Study)
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“It is not so much God who reveals to us the Ten Commandments, but the Ten Commandments that reveal God to us.”

We kicked off our study of the Ten Commandments tonight at Grace Chapel! For the next several weeks we will be reading through the book “The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments in Christian Life” by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon. This book will challenge us to understand God in a new and powerful way — as a God who loves us enough to not only tell us His name, but who wants us to know how to properly worship Him in speech, rest, parenting, relationship, marriage, speech, and many other ways.

We hope you will study along with us online!

**For women of Grace Chapel – there will be no meeting on May 25 due to the Memorial Day holiday.**

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For Week 2, please read the Introduction and Chapter 1 on the First Commandment. Following are discussion questions to prepare you for our next meeting:

  1. Through this commandment, what is God saying He wants from us?
  2. Why is God a jealous God?
  3. What are the benefits of following this commandment?
  4. What is the purpose of following this commandment?
  5. What are the costs of following this commandment?
  6. Why is God so passionate about our obedience?
  7. What are modern idols that people worship?

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Head Coverings Links

13 May 2009 at 10:41 pm (Christian feminism, Christian life, Christianity, In His image, Responding to God)
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Thanks to the Those Headcoverings blog for linking to my most recent post. Those Headcoverings is a blog discussing headcoverings of all kinds: Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and nonreligious. For those interested, there is also a link on that blog to the Called to Cover webring for Christian women who have felt the Holy Spirit’s leading to cover their head.

As women created in His image, may we continue to be led by the Holy Spirit in all that we do!

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Head Coverings: Taking I Corinthians 11 Seriously

11 May 2009 at 12:08 am (Christian feminism, Christian life, Christianity, In His image, Responding to God, Uncategorized)
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For those who have known me for awhile, this may be a surprise…

I have recently started covering my head during prayer at church.

This decision came after looking closely at Scripture, a lot of prayer, and many discussions with my husband. I feel like writing about this because I am interested in what other women have to say – women who are already covering their heads, women who would never even consider covering their heads, and women who are just interested in engaging in the conversation with me.

I should preface by saying that I grew up in a family with a very strong “female” presence and I learned feminism from my mother. She grew up in the 1950s, got married and had children early, and looked on as women across the country burned their bras, marched for the Equal Rights Amendment, and fought for reproductive choice. I know that she has always wondered what her life would have been like if she would have grown up in a big city, gone to college, and been part of the feminist movement. But in her own small way she instilled feminist ideals in me. I remained a feminist activist well into adulthood, taking classes in Women’s Studies in college, marching for choice, working for Planned Parenthood, etc. But things have slowly been changing since my relationship with Christ was reconciled about 8 years ago.

I believe that there is the world’s definition of feminism, and there is God’s definition of feminism. I believe that if we claim that God’s word contains everything we need to know about living in this world according to God’s will and God’s design, then He has everything to say about who women are, our nature, our role and place in the world, and how He plans to bless us as His unique creatures. But that’s the subject of another post…

What does I Corinthians 11 have to say about women covering their heads? It says this:

(3) But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.
(4) Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, (5) but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven.
(6) For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head.
(7) For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.
(8) For man was not made from woman, but woman from man.
(9) Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
(10) That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
(11) Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; (12) for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.
(13) Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? (14) Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, (15) but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.

The Greek word for “head” used in all of these verses is kephale, literally meaning a person or animal’s head and metaphorically meaning anything supreme, chief, or prominent (a husband in relation to his wife; Christ as Lord of the husband and the church). (Thayer’s)  God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, and the husband is the head of the wife. The Greek word for “cover” is katakalupto, meaning to cover up or to veil or cover oneself wholly. (Thayer’s)

Men should not cover their heads, since they are the image and glory of God and covering their heads would dishonor the One who is supreme over them (God). Women are called upon to cover their heads because they are under the authority of man, and to have their heads uncovered would dishonor the one who is supreme over them (husband). The head covering is the symbol of this authority.

So why am I choosing to cover my head during prayer? I believe that no part of God’s Word is void of meaning or significance. I don’t believe that this part of the Word is simply “cultural” or has been over-ruled by the modern feminist movement. I believe that there is blessing in this practice.

Will I forever continue to cover my head during prayer? Not sure yet. But I am confident of this: God is aware of what we do and the intention of our hearts. My only goal is to learn more about Him and thereby learn more about myself as a woman created in his image. I hope that by choosing to walk with God in a certain manner, even for a season, I will receive His blessing and experience His majesty.

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