Commandment One

The First “Foundational” Commandment in the Torah

Using the word “foundational” in the title may set me up for questioning because what I propose as “foundational” will most likely not be common for all people. Unfortunately in this world we live in, not many people can come to agreement about anything and this includes those in the congregation of Yeshua. It seems as though we have been inundated with post-modernist thought which makes it a bulky walk to find truth, especially biblical truth. What I hope to accomplish in this paper is to bring to light the foundational first commandment of the Torah which has overarching implications for our entire walk of faith. It is here that we either stay on the straight path of the upward calling of Christ or veer, ever so slightly, to the right or the left of truth and thus Yeshua. I hope to bridge the chasm setup, however unintentionally, between the God of the Torah and Yeshua our Messiah.

We will first look at the commandment which is found twice in the Torah.

Exodus 20:2
2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

Deuteronomy 5:6
6 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

The commandment is to know that God exists. This is the foundation to believing God which leads us to love of God and obedience to Him. Without knowing that God exists, we will not obey His commandments and thus we cannot love Him according to Yeshua in John chapter 14 verse 5. We must start at the base of the mountain, the Ten Commandments.

Most of us are very familiar with the Ten Commandments and some of us could even recite them from memory or at least get the basic ideas expressed. I want to propose to you that there are Eleven Commandments given by God to Moshe; one non-imperative and ten imperatives. This is high speech for there is one implied, foundational, command that is not a direct “thou shall not” as opposed to the other ten that are positively telling us not to do something. Let’s look at the passage in Exodus and see what we find:

Exodus 20
1 Then God spoke all these words, saying,
2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 "You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.
5 "You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,
6 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
7 "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.
8 "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 "Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.
11 "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
12 "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you.
13 "You shall not murder.
14 "You shall not commit adultery.
15 "You shall not steal.
16 "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
1 7 "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

Traditional commentary and preaching has us start counting commandments at verse three, but I believe we would be better suited to start at verse two.

2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

The non-imperative command it is to believe God is who He says He is and the proof is that He is the One who brought Israel out of Egypt and out of the house of slavery. This picture has great meaning for us today as believers. What house were we in before Yeshua called us to life?

Romans 6:16
16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?

We are slaves to the one we obey and in the case of the unregenerate, we obeyed sin. Sin is the master of the one who is not been adopted into the House of God. In a sense, they are still living in Egypt and have not been brought out by the strong arm of the LORD; they missed the Exodus.

Paul pulls no punches as to our state before the Exodus of our hearts:

Romans 6:20
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

Then after we become sheep in the flock of the Aleph Tav (Yeshua):

Romans 6:18
18 and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

So you can see how we can use the Exodus as a picture of what happens to every believer at regeneration; they are brought forth from the house of slavery into the House of God and thus must know God exists first and foremost. No person that has been truly regenerated would say they follow Yeshua and yet do not know Him. They would then be apostate and thus prove that their regeneration was an illusion. This would we as ridiculous as saying we love our wives or children and yet we do not know them. To know God is to love God and to love God is to obey God. This is exactly what Yeshua taught His disciples:

John 14:15
15 "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

At this point is where are stared asking, “What commandments is He talking about?” What I had been taught was, love God with all your might, soul, strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. This explanation was satisfactory for me until I was freed from Old Testament phobia. The biblical context is the crucial here to answer that question and Yeshua gives us the context as He has just finished explaining how He and the Father are one. Look at verses seven through eleven:

7 "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him."
8 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."
9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
10 "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.
11 "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.

This passage laid me flat because there has been a separation between the Father and Son subtly taught to me throughout my walk of faith. It is in every sermon, book, and conversation about the bible I had previously engaged in before God revealed a Messianic way of seeing His word. Half-truth is not truth and men are teaching half-truths today and heralding them as truth. They are splitting churches out of ignorance and we need to pray for them.

This does not excuse us from the facts of the Bible that clearly state that Yeshua and the Father are one and that when Yeshua says, “…keep commandments.”, He is talking about the Torah He gave with His Father. He did not come to abolish, but to make full the Torah. He said that not the smallest letter would pass from the law until heaven and earth passed away. Heaven and earth are still here, right? The warning for us at this point comes from our LORD’s mouth in Matthew:

Matthew 5:19
19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

We would do well to teach and keep all of His commandments. There is no separation in agenda between the Father and the Son; there is no plan “B”.

According to the Bible, Yeshua is the same God that gave the commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. He was part of the “Us” that made us in His likeness and image. And He does not speak on His own initiative, but the Father does His work through the Son; they are inseparable. One cannot look upon Yeshua without seeing God the Father. Why?

Colossians 1:15
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

2 Corinthians 4:3-5
3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,
4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

At this point we need to summarize: the commandments we are to keep are the Torah and in doing this we love Yeshua. And to keep the Torah we must know that God exists and thus we prove that the first and foundational commandment must necessarily be “To know that God exists”.

I fear that a great many professors of faith in the Messiah know that He is Messiah and know about the idea of Yeshua of Nazareth, but they do not know in the depths of their soul that He exists. How can I say this? They do not obey Him and keep His commandments. They give lip service of how they should be obedient and then, as James says, forget what they look like after leaving the mirror. How are we to know Yeshua our Messiah?

Knowing translates to believing:

John 3:16
16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

The Greek for “in” used in this verse is eis and it means “into” or the idea of entering into a place of destination. We must believe “into” Yeshua and we shall not perish, but have eternal life. It is more than conceptualizing an idea of Messiah or getting to the door of salvation and hanging out there. We must enter into our Messiah. We must enter into this new life and become new creatures; new creatures with new lives and new obedience to a new King who has new rules for a New Kingdom in a New Age. When you live in a city, you obey the rules of the city and when you live in your Father’s house, you obey your Father’s rules for the house.

John 14:2
2 "In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.

Before I finish and forget about it I also want us to look at the Hebrew word for “Egypt” so that we can see more of the ties to us from that great work of God.

The Hebrew word for “Egypt” is “Mitsrayim” that shares a primitive root word with a like word that can mean, hostile, formative, and distress. Out of our hostility to God and our distress in separation from the One who knit us in our mother’s womb did God deliver us. We are in distress now as we wait on our King to deliver us from the hostility of the world.

All of the above set aside; it will mean nothing to us if we first do not believe that YHVH exists and see with the eyes of our heart the great distress He has brought us out of. By His strong arm were we brought out from our own personal Egypt and by His Son’s strong arm will we be brought out of our distress in this age into His house where He has prepared a place for us.

I pray for understanding and humility to accept the truth of God’s word even if it means not agreeing with men of power and stature.

Ba˙tish˙ba˙chot me˙hul˙al me˙lekh Adonai at˙tah Ba˙rukh

Blessed (are) You LORD, a King to be praised in adoration