PRESCRIPTION FOR ETERNAL HEALTH

  Yesterday my video for Facebook Live was about eternal healing. Herein is both the video and the text of the commentary. If you misunderstand the Ten Commandments, and why they remain significant to this day, Jesus somehow got a lawyer to persuade himself.

KEY VERSES:

25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said unto him, “What is written in the law? How readest thou?” 27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. 28 And He said unto him, “Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.” 29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:25-29)

  In the key verses, there we have a lawyer who wanted to do what lawyers are noted for. The lawyer tempted Jesus. Lawyers want to trip-up those who testify to the truth. I have said before, in college lawyers surely have a course in “Trip-up 101” followed by “Advanced Tripping-up.” Fo  r what purpose would they lawyer want to do that? To prove to himself and standers-by that Jesus is a fraud; that He is not God in the Flesh.
  The lawyer knew Mosaic Law and God’s Law. I make a distinction because Moses wrote the regulations for righteous living, but God wrote His Law with His own finger (Exod 31:18).
  It is to be noted, that God’s “finger” is Himself manifested, and it was Jesus who wrote the Ten Commandments. That is validated by His speaking the Word encompassed in the Ten Commandments. We should know by now that the Word is Jesus (John 1-3,14).
  The Law is introduced by, “And God spake all these words, saying…” (Exod 20:1) then the sayings of the Words are written. They were what we call the Ten Commandments.
  Jews rightly call the subsequent precepts “The Ten Words.” As “precepts,” they are the Ten Prescriptions for eternal life. The “Ten Prescriptions” are for the healing of the soul and are the way to unify the spirit and the flesh; “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mat 26:41b).  Rather than commandments, the Ten Words should be looked on as ten things that Christians are willing to do in gratitude to God. Philemon wrote, “… that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly” (Phil 14b). Hence, the Ten Words should not be done by compulsion, but voluntarily. That is what the lawyer should have understood and Christians as well!
  To get the idea across, Jesus tested the lawyer. He basically asked, “What does the Law say about that and what is your understanding of it?  The lawyer was bright and well-studied. He referred to God’s statutes, just as any lawyer would in modern times. He could have merely answered, “God’s statutes in Deut 6:5-6 and Lev 19:9-18,” and us modern readers would have understood. Face it, most of us thought that Jesus was the first to pronounce the Greatest Commandment and the one like unto it. Another lawyer, or possibly the same one asked,

³⁶ Master, which is the great commandment in the law? ³⁷ Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. ³⁸ This is the first and great commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Mat 22:36-40)

  Jesus told that lawyer that “all the Law” is about loving God and loving others. The Greatest Commandment is broken into two parts: God-centered and people-centered. If the Ten Words are examined the first four sayings of Jesus are God-focused, and the last six neighbor-focused. The point is that Jesus said those sayings millennia before. God wrote them down for Moses and Moses wrote them down for us in Deut 6:5-6 and Lev 19:9-18, and made them statutes as well as prescriptions. Again, they are Ten Prescriptions for eternal well-being. In the key verses, Jesus said to the first lawyer, “This do, and thou shalt live,” in reference to loving God and neighbors.
  To lawyer number two, Jesus said, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and Prophets.” Jesus stated that the Law always was reverence for God and compassion on others.
  Lawyer one, getting technical, sought to trip-up Jesus more. Just who is a neighbor? With that, Jesus operationalized “neighborliness” with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The lawyer likely understood it before he troubled Jesus to repeat it in the process of tripping Him up. The lawyer quoted scripture. Scripture at that time was the Law and the prophets. He turned to the Old Testament Law, commencing with,

⁵ And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. ⁶ And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: (Deut 6:5-6)

  Love must be from the heart, not from rules, and it should be with the entire being. After that follows a repeat of the first four commandments using much the same words. Then after he asked who “neighbors” are, he should have, and likely did know, the answer to that, and continued Advanced Trip-up:

⁹ And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.

¹⁰ And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them (the crops) for the poor and stranger: I am the Lord your God.

¹¹ Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.

¹² And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord.

¹³ Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.

¹⁴ Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord.

¹⁵ Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.

¹⁶ Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour; I am the Lord.

¹⁷ Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him.

¹⁸ Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord. (Lev 19:9-18)

  My point is that the commandments should not be seen that way; they should be seen more as privileges or ways to please God. The concept of “cheap grace” is believing in God without honoring Him for it. The Ten Words are essentially how to show gratitude to God for recreating. Lawyer one asked, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus was surely thinking; Marvel not; ye must be born again! And what would be the new person’s attitude at that simple thing? Show gratitude by willingness to live the Ten Words as a demonstration to God that your person has been transformed!