Keeping the commandments
We are all familiar with the expression, "keeping the commandments." But do we all fully comprehend what this involves? Let us consider some of the requisites.
I. REMEMBER THE COMMANDMENTS. "Lay up my commandments with thee." The Law was treasured in the ark. It is important that great principles should be so impressed upon our minds as to perpetually haunt our memories, and recur to our vision in critical moments. The school task of committing the ten commandments to memory will not be enough. The text does not refer to the Law of Moses, but to parental instruction. Great Christian principles are what we need to treasure up.
II. LET NOTHING TAMPER WITH THE COMMANDMENTS. "Keep my law as the apple of thine eye." We cannot bear the smallest speck of dust in the eye. The slightest wound is most painful. Let us beware of allowing the least injury to the healthy condition of the law within us. Moral scepticism is most dangerous.
III. BRING THE COMMANDMENTS TO BEAR ON DAILY LIFE. "Bind them upon thy fingers." Thus they will be always before us, and brought into contact with practical affairs. It is useless to keep the Law only in the closet. It must be carried with us to the workshop, the marketplace, the senate house. How many people's religion never reaches their fingers! Like men with feeble circulation, they have cold extremities.
IV. CHERISH THE COMMANDMENTS AFFECTIONATELY. "Write them upon the table of thine heart." This means impressing them upon the whole being—understanding, memory, affection. The secret of feeble circulation at the extremities is defective action of the heart. If we are to obey the Law we must pray that God will "incline our hearts to keep" it.