Deuteronomy 10:1-5 – Make loving God central in life

The Ten Commandments given by God were meant to be the foundation on which the people of God were to build their lives. They were God’s given standards to mark them out as His covenant people. But as Moses was receiving the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments which God had given earlier orally, the people were already breaking them at the base of Mount Sinai. At the urging of God, Moses hastened and returned to the people and saw exactly what happened as God had said. In his indignation, he smashed the two stone tablets for the people had already broken their covenant with God. Moses knew how serious their sin was. They had literally broken the commandment not to have any other gods before the Lord. They had the gall to make a golden calf to represent God when He had already warned them not to make Him look like any of His creatures. 

Moses knew God wanted to have a people who could rightly reflect Him. The Ten Commandments when adhered to would rightly reflect God. Seeing how grievously the people had violated and sabotaged God’s plan, Moses interceded for them. Deuteronomy 10:1-5 show us that God heard his pleading, forgave the people, and was giving them another opportunity to make good their wrong. What a marvelous God! So he asked Moses to hew two stones and go up to the mountain so that He could write the Ten Commandments again on them. He also instructed Moses to make a chest made of acacia wood to temporarily store the two new stone tablets. Moses did as God had instructed. He went up to the mountain, returned, and placed the set of stone tablets in the chest of acacia wood that he had made.   

The fact that God had the Ten Commandments written again show how central they were supposed to be in living for God. Knowing them will help us to conduct our lives and live rightly for God. The Lord Jesus had summed them up into two critical commandments. He said that we must love God devotedly and wholeheartedly and we must also love our neighbors as ourselves. While loving God is an intensely personal matter, it is also an important matter. It is because the degree to which we love Him will determine the degree of our ability to love our neighbors. Always make sure that our vertical relationship with God is rightly aligned. It will make our horizontal relationship with others more attainable. So love God with all our hearts, minds, soul, and strength, then we will be enabled to love our neighbors as ourselves!