For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws.—James 2:10

The Ten Commandments were not given to make us holy; they were given to show us that we are not holy. The commandments were given to show us that we need Jesus. The Bible says they are like a schoolmaster (kind of an old King James word). The idea is that of a disciplinarian. The commandments were given to say, in essence, “You can’t do this on your own.”

They are like a moral mirror. When you look at them, you say, “Uh-oh. I’m not measuring up.” Every one of us has broken the commandments.

Someone may say, “Yeah, that might be true, but I haven’t broken that many. I’ve only broken a couple of them.”

Maybe. Or maybe not. The Bible says, “For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws” (James 2:10). If you have broken even one commandment, it’s enough to keep you from God and to separate you from Him.

The commandments were given to drive us into the open arms of Jesus. That’s why Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

Have you ever been carrying around something that was very heavy and had someone say, “Here, let me take that from you”? That is what Jesus is saying. “Let Me lift that load. Let Me ease your pain. Let Me give you relief. Right now. Come to Me,” He says.

That is the message of what happened at the Cross. He died for our sins and paid the price for every wrong we have ever done. And if we will turn from our sins and believe in Him, then we will be forgiven.

And He said to them, “Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.—Mark 6:31

The Sabbath is not a legalistic day that we as believers have to observe, but it is a great idea to take some time off and focus on the Lord. For many of us, that day is Sunday. I love to see Sunday set apart as the Lord’s Day, just like the early church did.

We should make our first priority to worship with God’s people. Maybe we will do some fun stuff afterward. But we shouldn’t let anything stop us from getting together and worshiping and putting the Lord first. I think God will honor that in our lives if we do.

Even Jesus took time off. In Mark we read,

Then the apostles gathered to Jesus and told Him all things, both what they had done and what they had taught. And He said to them, “Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. So they departed to a deserted place in the boat by themselves. (6:30–32)

I love that. “Lord, this happened. That happened.”

“Have you guys had lunch yet?”

“We are too busy to eat.”

“Come on. Let’s get some lunch. Relax a little bit. You need to chill. You need to recharge. Come aside with Me.”

If we don’t come aside, then we will come apart. During the next 24 hours, your heart will beat 103,000 times, and your blood will travel 168 million miles. You will breathe 23,000 times and inhale 480 cubic feet of air. You will move 750 muscles and exercise 7 million brain cells. No wonder we all feel tired. We’re constantly going.

The principle of the Sabbath is taking time off, recharging, and focusing on the things of God.

So Pharaoh said, “I will let you go, that you may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness; only you shall not go very far away. Intercede for me.”—Exodus 8:28

It would have been tempting for Moses to compromise with Pharaoh. But God had told Moses to go three days’ journey into the wilderness (see Exodus 3:18), and Moses would accept nothing less. I love that. Moses was a stickler for details.

So many good believers have been brought down by the same strategy that Pharaoh used. “Oh man, pray for me. Intercede for me.”

It’s like when a Christian guy decides to do a little so-called missionary dating. He says to himself, “I will reach her for the Lord. We’ll talk. I’ll bring up my faith. I’ll get her to go to church with me.”

So they go out to dinner. He brings up his faith, and she doesn’t respond all that much. So he talks a little more about his faith the next time—and a little more the next time. Finally they agree to go to church together. But somehow dinner just went a little bit longer than they thought it would, and they don’t make it to church.

You don’t bring people to Christ by making concessions. If you come down to where they are, why would they want to go up to where you were? Stand your ground. Have some conviction.

Jesus said, “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you” (John 15:14). If God says something, He says it for a reason. He says what He means, and He means what He says. We need to do what He says as He says to do it.

Here is the bottom line: If you want to be a Christian, then be a Christian. If you don’t want to be a Christian, then don’t be a Christian. Either go for it or don’t go for it. Make a decision and do it.

Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. —Hebrews 3:12–13

Where is one of the easiest places to get a hardened heart? Any place where God’s people gather. It isn’t in a bar or around a bunch of people who are doing wicked things. No, the easiest place to get a hardened heart is where you hear the Word of God being taught. Knowledge brings responsibility. And the same sun that softens the wax hardens the clay. The same message that transforms one life can cause another to say, “I don’t believe.”

If you go to church or a Bible study week after week, hearing the Word of God but refusing to believe it, you can actually get an irreparably hardened heart. I am not saying that you shouldn’t go to church. But I am saying that you should go to church with the right heart, with an open heart. Otherwise, you could get a hardened heart. You could be judged by the very message that should have set you free.

That’s why preachers’ kids and others who were raised in the church are often some of the most notorious sinners. They’ve taken God’s Word for granted and hardened their hearts against it.

The J. B. Phillips translation of Hebrews 3:12–14 says, “You should therefore be most careful, my brothers, that there should not be in any of you that wickedness of heart which refuses to trust, and deserts the cause of the living God. Help each other to stand firm in the faith every day, while it is still called ‘today’, and beware that none of you becomes deaf and blind to God. For we continue to share in all that Christ has for us so long as we steadily maintain until the end the trust with which we began.”

May God help us to keep tender hearts.

“A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.”—Matthew 16:4

There are people who know God is real. They know God is powerful. And they know God changes lives. But their hearts are so hard that they won’t believe in Him.

That was Pharaoh. We read again and again in Exodus that Pharaoh hardened his heart. Exodus 8:15 tells us, “But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and did not heed them, as the LORD had said.” Later we read, “Now the LORD said to Moses, ‘Go in to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants, that I may show these signs of Mine before him’ ” (Exodus 10:1). That isn’t a contradiction; it’s just two sides of the same coin. It’s true that Pharaoh hardened his heart. But it is also true that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

Does that mean that Pharaoh had no choice in the matter? No. You see, God gives each one of us freewill. He will not violate that freewill, but once we have made our choice, God may, in effect, strengthen us in that choice.

The word hardened could be better translated “strengthen” or “stiffen,” and that is what was happening in Pharaoh’s case. He decided that he did not want to believe, and his heart got harder and harder and harder. Pharaoh had more than enough evidence to be convinced of the truth. Think about it: Pharaoh saw miracles—big miracles. Pharaoh heard the word of God. And that knowledge brought responsibility. To turn from the truth is to become entrenched in darkness more thoroughly than ever.

Sometimes we think, If I could just perform miracles, I know that all of my friends would believe in Jesus. They wouldn’t. Miracles won’t cause them to believe, but the message of the gospel will.

So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” —2 Corinthians 5:20

When I would hunt snakes as a kid, I would never pick them up by the tail. I would use my foot to pin them down by the neck, being careful not to crush them, and then I would carefully pick them up, holding them right behind the head. I would never pick up a snake by the tail, because a snake could turn around and bite.

When God told Moses to throw down his rod, which became a snake, and then pick it up by the tail, it was a step of faith. Most likely the snake was a cobra, the symbol of Egypt. I presume it was this type of snake because it was common in that part of the world. It also has a venomous bite. If you are bitten by a cobra, you have a serious problem on your hands.

So God told Moses to take the symbol of Egypt and grab it by the tail. He was effectively telling him, “I don’t want you to be afraid. I am going to defeat this serpent. I am going to overpower Pharaoh. I am going to do it through you, so overcome your fears, step forward, and go for it.”

Moses was called to represent God to a pagan culture. And we have been called by God to do the same. The United States is becoming increasingly pagan, and I mean that in a descriptive, not derogative, sense. There is belief in false gods and in many gods. It seems like there is belief in every god but the right God.

The Lord has called Christians to represent Him and has given us authority: we are His ambassadors (see 2 Corinthians 5:20). And as ambassadors of Christ, we are charged with bringing His message to the world.

So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”—Exodus 3:4

As far as we know, Moses hadn’t heard from God for 40 years. Then God spoke to him and called him. And how did He do it? Through a burning bush. It was not uncommon for a bush to catch fire. A bolt of lightning could have caused that. But Moses had never seen a bush that perpetually burned. God was doing something out of the ordinary that got Moses’ attention. And then He spoke.

Notice what God said to Moses: “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). When we hear those names, we think of them as great patriarchs of the faith—and indeed they were. But let’s consider each one for a moment. Abraham certainly was a man of God, but he had serious lapses of faith. Isaac was blessed, but he often didn’t listen to the Lord. And Joseph’s faux pas were legendary. Yet these men were powerfully used by God.

It’s as though God was saying, “Moses, I am the God of men who have failed. I am the God of ordinary men who have accomplished extraordinary things. Moses, if I can use Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then I can surely use you. Are you up for that? Are you ready to go? I am aware of what is happening to my people in Egypt.”

Moses was 80 years old. That is past retirement age. Yet God was saying, “You are just where I wanted you to be. You are just the man that I want.”

It seems that God goes out of His way to choose the most unlikely candidates. God sees your potential, even when you don’t. God sees you for what you will become in the days ahead.

“We are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives.” —Philippians 3:20

My granddaughter Allie is a little homebody.

She will come to visit Cathe and me, and will be so excited (we have lots of toys and fun things for the grandkids to do), but without warning, Allie will just say “home” and walk out the door!

Have you ever felt that way? Like everything this world offers just leaves you cold? We each have a longing deep inside of us for “home.” This world is not our home, but it is our location at present. One day, we will truly go home.

The Bible says of our lives on earth, “We are here for only a moment, visitors and strangers in the land as our ancestors were before us. Our days on earth are like a passing shadow, gone so soon without a trace” (1 Chronicles 29:15 NLT).

When you become a Christian, you become a citizen of heaven, your real home. Philippians 3:20 says, “But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for Him to return as our Savior” (NLT).

We long for something that this earth can never deliver on. That’s why we will always be a bit “out of tune” with this world and all it celebrates—because we, as followers of Jesus, know there is something more. Much more.

Heaven should draw us, engage us, pull us in its direction. We should long for it. As Augustine wrote, “You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.”

Thus, we see this world for what it is: empty, temporal, and passing.

1. M. Bounds said, “Heaven ought to draw and engage us. Heaven ought to so fill our hearts and hands, our conversations, our character, and our features, that all would see that we are foreigners, strangers to this world. The very atmosphere of this world should be chilling to us and noxious, its suns eclipsed and its companionship dull and insipid. Heaven is our native land and home to us. And death to us is not the dying hour, but the birth hour!”