Depending on the condition of our heart and our attitude toward it, the law of God is either something negative or something very positive to us. The people of Israel were brought by God to His mountain not to be given “a set of laws and commandments for them to obey in fear and respect to God” but to fellowship with God and see a revelation of who God is.
The law was given in a very positive situation: the people of Israel were led by God to Mount Horeb, and here He showed them who He is: He is a loving, righteous, holy, pure, and jealous God, and they are His people.
First of all, Moses came to Mount Horeb before, and here he saw the vision of the burning thornbush; the fire was mingled with the thornbush and burned on the thornbush yet without consuming it. Now again, God led His people to Mount Horeb so that they would be a corporate burning thornbush infused with God – yet not being consumed by God.
It is very important for us as God’s spiritual people to realize that the law is the living word of God to infuse His substance into His loving seekers to make them His testimony for the fulfillment of His eternal economy.
If we come to the law with the intention to “do all that God has said”, we will be exposed, we will fail, and God doesn’t accept our efforts; but if we love the Lord and come to Him to seek Him in His word, we will be infused with His element and substance and we will become His testimony, His corporate expression, the living out of what the law says.
May the Lord remove any veils of religion and religious concepts regarding the law of God so that we may have a turn and be the Lord’s loving seekers as we come to the law, to His word!
May we be those who come to God’s word not to get more knowledge or merely to know what God says but to fellowship with the Lord by opening to Him to be infused with His element so that we may become His testimony, His corporate expression on earth.
The Law is the Living Word of God to Infuse His Substance into His Loving Seekers
God did not intend that the law given by Him through Moses would be merely a set of rules, commandments, precepts, and ordinances to which His people would comply and strive their best to obey.
Rather, the law was given in the fellowship of God with Moses, and the law is the living word of God to infuse His substance and element into His loving seekers to make them His corporate testimony, His expression, for the fulfillment of His eternal economy.
The Ten Commandments are ten words (Exo. 20:1; 34:28, literal translation); the law is the words of God breathed out to infuse His element into His people. The entire Bible is the breathing out of God, the God-breathed-out word (2 Tim. 3:16); on His side, God breathed out His word, and on our side, we need to breathe His word in through the exercise of our spirit.
The fact that the Ten Commandments are called ten words means that they are not merely laws for us to obey, decrees of divine legislation, or commandments to be kept at all time; rather, God’s ten words are the breathing out of God so that His loving seekers (His people) would receive them in and become His corporate expression, His testimony on the earth.
The law is spiritual – the same in essence, nature, and substance as God, who is Spirit (Rom. 7:14; John 4:24). If we approach the law (and God’s word in general) without having the proper attitude, that is, if we come to the word of God and intend to fulfill it the best we can, we will fail and fall in sin. Sin takes advantage of the high, spiritual, wonderful law of God and arouses our flesh to try to obey God’s law with the result of killing us.
But when we exercise our spirit and turn our heart to the Lord when we come to His word, we will be exposed by Him (on the negative side) and at the same time His element will be infused into us. We need to be the men of God who enjoy the breath of God by having an open and warm heart toward the Lord and an exercised spirit to contact Him in His word.
May the Lord save us from being law-keepers and make us loving seekers! Moses was a loving seeker of God: he spent 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain with Him, and he received God’s words; at the same time, God infused His substance and element into Moses, and his face was shining!
It doesn’t really take 40 days to write down ten words on tablets of stone and then memorize them; what God did in this time was to infuse Moses with Himself. Moses could cast down the two tablets of stone with God’s word inscribed on them and break them, but he could not get rid of the infusion he had received during his time of fellowship with God on the mountain.
If we try to keep the law we will succeed now but later forget about it, but if we spend time with the Lord in His word and allow Him to infuse Himself into us, we can never forget or get rid of God’s element infused in our being. Hallelujah!
Lord Jesus, we want to be Your loving seekers coming to You in Your word to contact You, enjoy You, and allow You to infuse us with Your element to make us Your testimony for the fulfillment of His eternal economy! Lord, we come to Your breathed-out word to breathe You in and gain more of Your element. Infuse us, Lord, and transfuse Your element into our being as we pray over Your word. We are Your loving seekers and we desire to primarily spend time with You and be infused with You! O Lord Jesus, we love You!
Pray-reading the Word of God to Breathe in God’s Element into us and be Infused with God
The Lord has in these last days been recovering the matter of pray-reading the word of God. How can we come to God’s word – which is God’s breath – and have the right heart and attitude? It is by first turning our heart to the Lord and then exercising our spirit to contact God and receive Him as Spirit and life in His living word through our prayer.
When we pray-read the word of God we realize that every word is inspired by God, contains God, and is so wonderful! All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable – when we exercise our spirit to pray-read the word, the breath of God with God’s element comes into us and nourishes us, supplies us, teaches us, convicts us, corrects us, and instructs us in righteousness so that we may be men of God with the breath of God, complete and equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
In ourselves we are NOT able to keep the commandments in the Old Testament (Exo. 19-20) or in the New Testament (John 14:21, 23), but when we abide in the Lord and experience Him abiding in us, we are infused with Him and the word of God is fulfilled and lived out in us spontaneously (Rom. 8:4).
By pray-reading the word of God we breathe in God’s element into us and are infused with what God is; this causes us to live Christ and become God’s living expression, His living law, His living portrait (Eph. 6:17-18).
We need to practice praying over God’s word in many ways and at many times during the day so that we may receive the infusion of His element and live Christ to be the living expression of God. The law shows us a picture of God, and we as God’s people can become God’s living law – His lived out law – by loving Him and exercising our spirit to pray-read His word so that He in us would fulfill the law and make us a living portrait of God.
God’s word is not something objective like a newspaper or a history book; God’s word is Spirit and life (John 6:63) and can infuse God’s element into us as we spiritually breathe in the breathed out words of God.
Lord Jesus, we admit that we cannot keep the law and commandments in the Bible in ourselves; we come to You and we abide in You so that You may abide in us and infuse us with Your element to make us Your living testimony. Lord, we come to You as Your loving seekers to pray-read Your word and breathe in Your element so that You may be infused into us and we may thus be enabled to live Christ! Oh Lord, make us Your testimony for the fulfillment of Your eternal economy!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, brother Andrew Yu’s sharing in the message for this week, and Life-study of Exodus, msg. 52 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Exodus (2), week 1 / msg 1, The Law – the Testimony of God Revealing him to His People and the Living Word of God to Infuse His Substance into His Loving Seekers.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# Will you be a loving seeker? / Not a poor, dead law keeper? / We can read His word day by day, / Infuse us Lord, we pray. (Song on being a Loving Seeker of God)
# It is the breath of God for us to breathe, / That as our portion God we may enjoy; / Receiving it by spirits exercised, / Our need is met, His wealth we may employ. (Hymns #799)
# Take time to behold Him, gaze oft on His face, / Receiving His Person, and grace upon grace. / By His pleasant shining, infused we will be; / Our faces will glow with His light, radiantly. (Song on Breathing God in)
About aGodMan
Commandments are requirements that we must keep and fulfill. God’s words, however, are His breath, for God’s speaking is His breathing. By speaking, He breathes something out of Himself and into those who hear His word. The fact that the Ten Commandments are called ten words means that they are not simply laws for us to obey. These commandments are not just so many decrees of divine legislation. God did not merely give His people ten laws, ten commandments; in fellowship with them He uttered the ten words. If the commandments were nothing more than laws, God’s people could do nothing more than try their best to keep them. But since the Ten Commandments are also God’s words, the very breathing of God, it is possible for those who seek God in love to receive these words into them as God’s very breath.
In the light of this, I would ask you to consider Moses’ experience of spending forty days in communion with God on the mountain. When he came down from the mountain, he had something more than ten commandments inscribed on two tablets of stone. He was a man who had been thoroughly infused with God’s element. During those days of communion on the mountain Moses experienced a divine infusion, the infusion of God’s substance into his very being. However, this matter is not given its rightful place by Christians, who mainly say that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and that when Moses saw the children of Israel worshipping idols, he threw down the tablets of stone in anger and broke them. The Bible indicates that Moses had received not only two tablets of stone, but that the very element of God had been infused into him and caused his face to shine. Although Moses could cast down the two tablets and break them, he could not get rid of the transfusion he had received during his time of fellowship with God on the mountain. (Witness Lee, Life-study of Exodus, msg. 52)