St Theodore's Sermon <Date?>

	St Theodore's Wattle Park

Sermon of the Week 31/5/98

The Ten Commandments
Ex 19:1-20:21

One of those tricky questions that Christians face from time to time is the question of what to do with the 10 commandments. That is, to what extent do the 10 commandments still apply to us and what is there place in our religious and secular life? Clearly they were of central importance to the people of Israel. But what about Christians? Well, we'll think about that question in a moment.

We come today to the central moment of the Exodus and the seminal event for the forming of the nation of Israel. The people have been in the desert for about three months. They're free and going along well. And now the time has come when God will renew his covenant with them. Significantly, they've arrived at the same place where Moses was first called by God to go and bring the people out of Egypt. That is, Mt Sinai, or Mt Horeb, probably 2 different names for the same mountain. Not that that's so important. What matters is the nature of the covenant he's about to make with them. It's not actually a new covenant. It's simply a renewal of the covenant God made with Abraham some 400 years before. We'll talk more about the renewal of the covenant next week, but for now, suffice to say that God had promised Abraham that he would make him a great nation, would give him a land, would make his name great and that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him. So now he was renewing that covenant. The nation was indeed soon to be a great nation. God was taking them to the land he'd promised them, and through them, all nations would be blessed. Have a look at what God says in 19:3-6. (Exo 19:3-6 NRSV) "The LORD called to Moses from the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: ⁴You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. ⁵Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, ⁶but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation."

First he reminds them of how he's defeated the Egyptians and carried them, as it were, on Eagles' wings. Their rescue and their survival in the desert thus far are the result of God's goodness to them. But it's all been for a reason. God has a purpose for them that's twofold. First, to make them his treasured possession out of all the peoples. This is a special term used of the King's special treasures. You see, if you were a King in those days, everything in the land was yours. So you owned everything. But of course if you think about it, that meant that you really owned nothing. Like the song about the democratic King in the Gondoliers, "When every blessed thing you hold is made of silver, or of Gold, you long for simple pewter. When you have nothing else to wear but cloth of gold and satins rare, for cloth of gold you cease to care - up goes the price of shoddy." Well, they overcame that problem by the King having what were called his "Special Possessions". Things that belonged to no-one else, that he could call his own. That's the idea behind God calling the people of Israel his treasured possession.

But secondly, they were to be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. That is they were to be a nation who would form a bridge between God and the other nations. This is the first time the idea of Israel being a light for the nations crops up. They're to be a people who are different from those around them. That's what holy means. Their difference isn't meant to exclude the other nations. Rather, they're to show by their life together what God's ideal for the nations is, and that life is to be so attractive that the other nations will want to come and join them.

So how were they to show that they were different? How were they to show the nations what it meant to be in relationship with the living God? By obeying God fully (v5). Obeying what? Obeying God's law which he was about to give them.

So 3 days later they assemble at the base of the mountain, and suddenly the mountain is surrounded by cloud, there's thunder and lightning and a deafening blast of trumpets. And everyone trembles. In fact they're so scared they keep well away and tell Moses they'd prefer him to do the speaking to God, and just tell them what he says. So the stage is set for God to tell the people how he wants them to live. The preliminaries are over. The people are convinced that God is a God to be reckoned with; an unapproachable God of power and might. But at the same time we discover that, paradoxically, he's a God who wants a special relationship with his people. He wants to know them personally. The image he's used of their rescue is a very personal one. It's that of a mother eagle carrying it's new-born eaglets to a new and safer nesting place. So what he's about to give them aren't just the new rules for life. They're a provision that will allow the people to remain in personal relationship with God. You may have noticed as we read through ch 19 the repetition of the phrases go up and go down or descended. It's a marked feature of this passage that God comes down to meet with the people and that Moses goes up to meet with God. It's a movement of mutual coming together of two parties who are totally separated by an insurmountable gulf, and yet God bridges that gulf.

And the laws he gives them are intended to maintain that bridge. They're a set of ground rules for life under this covenant with God - rules for relating to God, and rules for relating to one another. Let's have a quick look at them.

First, note that they're to get their relationship with God right. No doubt they'd been used to a multitude of Gods to worship back in Egypt, but now they were to learn that there was only one God to be worshipped. All the others were false gods. Similarly they were not to make idols to aid them in worship. The creations of human hands have no place in the worship of the true and living God who created all things. God is far too great to be limited by the imagination of the human mind. Their worship wasn't of some unknown being, but an expression of a personal relationship they had with the invisible God who'd yet revealed himself to them. Nor were they to use God's name in an empty or false way. To invoke God's name was to invoke God himself in all his holiness.

The fourth commandment is interesting because it seems to span the gap between the laws that are to do with our relationship with God and those that are to do with how we relate to one another. The people are to remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy: that is, it was to be different. It was to be a day on which they were not to work. Nor were they to ask other members of the household to work - not even the slaves or the animals. Rather it was to be a day for the community to rest, to enjoy creation just as God did, and by implication, to worship the God who made it all.

Then we find a set of commands that outline how people are to relate to one another. You see in order for them to form the sort of ideal community that God desires for all peoples, and for them to be a sign to the other nations because of their life together, how they relate to one another will be just as important as how they relate to God. So, they're to show in their relationships with one another the same grace and love that God has shown to them, in rescuing them from Egypt, and in persevering with them despite all the grumbling we talked about last week. To use a new Testament picture, as God's adopted children, they're expected to exhibit the family characteristics of love and graciousness to one another. So how will they do that? By honouring their parents, by preserving and valuing life, by faithfulness in marriage, by respect for property, by respect for truth and by being satisfied with what God has given them.

But let's go back to the question we started with. How do we as Christians, living under the New Covenant, approach these commandments? We're no longer part of the covenant under which they were given. We're now part of the new people of God under the Lordship of Christ. Paul tells us we've died to the law. It no longer has a hold over us. So what do we do with it? Do we forget it and do whatever seems right at the time? Or do we continue to consider it normative for the Christian life? Well, let me suggest 3 things that Jesus did with the law.

First he said he hadn't come to abolish the law but to fulfil it. That is, the new covenant doesn't do away with the 10 commandments as the Christian's guide to doing God's will. But in fact, Jesus shows us much better than they do, by his life and example what it means to fully do God's will.

Secondly, Jesus showed how the current interpretation of the law was in places mistaken. So he and the disciples were walking through the fields one Sabbath and because they were a bit hungry they plucked some heads of wheat and ate them. When the Pharisees accused them of breaking the Sabbath law he reminded them that the law was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. That is, the laws that had grown up around the Sabbath rest had actually robbed people of the ability to enjoy God's creation on that day. The day of rest had actually become a burden greater than the other 6 days of work put together.

Thirdly, Jesus took the law and reinterpreted it, to flesh it out - to show how it should be interpreted for his time. So the prohibition against murder, he says, covers even the expression of anger against another. The prohibition against adultery is expanded to include lustful thoughts. He told the Pharisees that tithing was no use unless it was accompanied by a desire for justice, mercy and faithfulness. What Jesus did was to show that it wasn't good enough to have a nice neatly coded set of laws to regulate our lives. What we need is to behave the way God would. He said it's not what goes into a person that defiles them, but what comes out of them. You see he knew how good we are at putting on a righteous mask. I mean if you look around the church today you'll see a whole crowd of people who are experts at looking good, looking like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, looking like they're coping - some better than others. We're all well trained at it. But what we've discovered in the past few years is that the occurrences of moral failure are just as prevalent among Christians and even high-profile Christians as they are among non-Christians.

We used to have a tree in our back yard in Canberra. It was a Chinese Silk tree. And it looked beautiful. It had delicate pink flowers in Spring and provided pleasant shade in Summer. But it was infested with borers. And one day one of it's largest branches just fell off. Well, if we're not careful we'll end up like that tree. We may look beautiful on the outside but if we're slowly rotting on the inside it only takes a strong wind and we're likely to fall right over. What Jesus says is that we're to obey God's will right down at the roots of our being. Paul puts it like this (Rom 12:2) "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect." As a church we need to strive to reinterpret and reapply God's law in the face of a culture that has a romantic, even sentimental view of the religious life, particularly in the face of a culture where spirituality is 'in', but where spirituality has lost its substance. We need to rescue spirituality from the ethereal and essentially empty concepts of the new age mystics and give it the substance that comes from a personal knowledge of God and of his will for human life. We need to be the new Israel who show to those around us how God wants people to live under his authority, just as Jesus did. And that won't be easy. You see, people don't think of practising honesty and justice as an exercise in spirituality. We don't think of being faithful in marriage as essentially a spiritual act. But listen to what Paul says in Rom 8: (Rom 8:5-9 NIV) "Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires... ⁹You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you." So if we're interested in true spirituality we'll show it by being those who are constantly striving to do his will, to do what God's Spirit desires.

Paul goes on later in Romans to say this: (Rom 13:8-10 NRSV) "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself." And let's not forget that loving our neighbour as ourself includes loving those we find unlovely. So what he's saying is that the law hasn't been done away with. Rather, it's been taken up in Christ's law of love.

So the 10 commandments still stand as a guide to what God's will is for his people; not as a simple set of rules to be followed, but as a basis on which we can deal with the many complex and ambiguous situations of life, as we seek to apply the love of Christ to our lives. But as you think about the commandments, here are 3 questions I'd like to leave you with that you may find helpful to ask: What does the commandment ask or forbid us to do? Why did God ask us to do it or forbid us from doing it? In what way is our current situation similar to the situation addressed by this particular commandment? The last question is the hardest of the 3 I think, but if we can answer that, then we'll find it easier to apply the commandments to our current life. Remember that the purpose of the commandments is so we can understand how God wants his people to live. If we can understand that, and if what controls our decision making is our love for God and for one another, then perhaps applying the commandments to today becomes a little easier.

Let's pray that on this Day of Pentecost, God would so fill us with his Spirit of love that we'll be able to know his will, and more importantly, be able to do it, whatever situation we find ourselves in.


	Contact us	Preaching Program	Home		Last Week's Sermon

	One of those tricky questions that Christians face from time to time is the question of what to do with the 10 commandments. That is, to what extent do the 10 commandments still apply to us and what is there place in our religious and secular life? Clearly they were of central importance to the people of Israel. But what about Christians? Well, we'll think about that question in a moment.
	We come today to the central moment of the Exodus and the seminal event for the forming of the nation of Israel. The people have been in the desert for about three months. They're free and going along well. And now the time has come when God will renew his covenant with them. Significantly, they've arrived at the same place where Moses was first called by God to go and bring the people out of Egypt. That is, Mt Sinai, or Mt Horeb, probably 2 different names for the same mountain. Not that that's so important. What matters is the nature of the covenant he's about to make with them. It's not actually a new covenant. It's simply a renewal of the covenant God made with Abraham some 400 years before. We'll talk more about the renewal of the covenant next week, but for now, suffice to say that God had promised Abraham that he would make him a great nation, would give him a land, would make his name great and that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him. So now he was renewing that covenant. The nation was indeed soon to be a great nation. God was taking them to the land he'd promised them, and through them, all nations would be blessed. Have a look at what God says in 19:3-6. (Exo 19:3-6 NRSV) "The LORD called to Moses from the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: ⁴You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. ⁵Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, ⁶but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation."
	First he reminds them of how he's defeated the Egyptians and carried them, as it were, on Eagles' wings. Their rescue and their survival in the desert thus far are the result of God's goodness to them. But it's all been for a reason. God has a purpose for them that's twofold. First, to make them his treasured possession out of all the peoples. This is a special term used of the King's special treasures. You see, if you were a King in those days, everything in the land was yours. So you owned everything. But of course if you think about it, that meant that you really owned nothing. Like the song about the democratic King in the Gondoliers, "When every blessed thing you hold is made of silver, or of Gold, you long for simple pewter. When you have nothing else to wear but cloth of gold and satins rare, for cloth of gold you cease to care - up goes the price of shoddy." Well, they overcame that problem by the King having what were called his "Special Possessions". Things that belonged to no-one else, that he could call his own. That's the idea behind God calling the people of Israel his treasured possession.
	But secondly, they were to be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. That is they were to be a nation who would form a bridge between God and the other nations. This is the first time the idea of Israel being a light for the nations crops up. They're to be a people who are different from those around them. That's what holy means. Their difference isn't meant to exclude the other nations. Rather, they're to show by their life together what God's ideal for the nations is, and that life is to be so attractive that the other nations will want to come and join them.
	So how were they to show that they were different? How were they to show the nations what it meant to be in relationship with the living God? By obeying God fully (v5). Obeying what? Obeying God's law which he was about to give them.
	So 3 days later they assemble at the base of the mountain, and suddenly the mountain is surrounded by cloud, there's thunder and lightning and a deafening blast of trumpets. And everyone trembles. In fact they're so scared they keep well away and tell Moses they'd prefer him to do the speaking to God, and just tell them what he says. So the stage is set for God to tell the people how he wants them to live. The preliminaries are over. The people are convinced that God is a God to be reckoned with; an unapproachable God of power and might. But at the same time we discover that, paradoxically, he's a God who wants a special relationship with his people. He wants to know them personally. The image he's used of their rescue is a very personal one. It's that of a mother eagle carrying it's new-born eaglets to a new and safer nesting place. So what he's about to give them aren't just the new rules for life. They're a provision that will allow the people to remain in personal relationship with God. You may have noticed as we read through ch 19 the repetition of the phrases go up and go down or descended. It's a marked feature of this passage that God comes down to meet with the people and that Moses goes up to meet with God. It's a movement of mutual coming together of two parties who are totally separated by an insurmountable gulf, and yet God bridges that gulf.
	And the laws he gives them are intended to maintain that bridge. They're a set of ground rules for life under this covenant with God - rules for relating to God, and rules for relating to one another. Let's have a quick look at them.
	First, note that they're to get their relationship with God right. No doubt they'd been used to a multitude of Gods to worship back in Egypt, but now they were to learn that there was only one God to be worshipped. All the others were false gods. Similarly they were not to make idols to aid them in worship. The creations of human hands have no place in the worship of the true and living God who created all things. God is far too great to be limited by the imagination of the human mind. Their worship wasn't of some unknown being, but an expression of a personal relationship they had with the invisible God who'd yet revealed himself to them. Nor were they to use God's name in an empty or false way. To invoke God's name was to invoke God himself in all his holiness.
	The fourth commandment is interesting because it seems to span the gap between the laws that are to do with our relationship with God and those that are to do with how we relate to one another. The people are to remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy: that is, it was to be different. It was to be a day on which they were not to work. Nor were they to ask other members of the household to work - not even the slaves or the animals. Rather it was to be a day for the community to rest, to enjoy creation just as God did, and by implication, to worship the God who made it all.
	Then we find a set of commands that outline how people are to relate to one another. You see in order for them to form the sort of ideal community that God desires for all peoples, and for them to be a sign to the other nations because of their life together, how they relate to one another will be just as important as how they relate to God. So, they're to show in their relationships with one another the same grace and love that God has shown to them, in rescuing them from Egypt, and in persevering with them despite all the grumbling we talked about last week. To use a new Testament picture, as God's adopted children, they're expected to exhibit the family characteristics of love and graciousness to one another. So how will they do that? By honouring their parents, by preserving and valuing life, by faithfulness in marriage, by respect for property, by respect for truth and by being satisfied with what God has given them.
	But let's go back to the question we started with. How do we as Christians, living under the New Covenant, approach these commandments? We're no longer part of the covenant under which they were given. We're now part of the new people of God under the Lordship of Christ. Paul tells us we've died to the law. It no longer has a hold over us. So what do we do with it? Do we forget it and do whatever seems right at the time? Or do we continue to consider it normative for the Christian life? Well, let me suggest 3 things that Jesus did with the law.
	First he said he hadn't come to abolish the law but to fulfil it. That is, the new covenant doesn't do away with the 10 commandments as the Christian's guide to doing God's will. But in fact, Jesus shows us much better than they do, by his life and example what it means to fully do God's will.
	Secondly, Jesus showed how the current interpretation of the law was in places mistaken. So he and the disciples were walking through the fields one Sabbath and because they were a bit hungry they plucked some heads of wheat and ate them. When the Pharisees accused them of breaking the Sabbath law he reminded them that the law was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. That is, the laws that had grown up around the Sabbath rest had actually robbed people of the ability to enjoy God's creation on that day. The day of rest had actually become a burden greater than the other 6 days of work put together.
	Thirdly, Jesus took the law and reinterpreted it, to flesh it out - to show how it should be interpreted for his time. So the prohibition against murder, he says, covers even the expression of anger against another. The prohibition against adultery is expanded to include lustful thoughts. He told the Pharisees that tithing was no use unless it was accompanied by a desire for justice, mercy and faithfulness. What Jesus did was to show that it wasn't good enough to have a nice neatly coded set of laws to regulate our lives. What we need is to behave the way God would. He said it's not what goes into a person that defiles them, but what comes out of them. You see he knew how good we are at putting on a righteous mask. I mean if you look around the church today you'll see a whole crowd of people who are experts at looking good, looking like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, looking like they're coping - some better than others. We're all well trained at it. But what we've discovered in the past few years is that the occurrences of moral failure are just as prevalent among Christians and even high-profile Christians as they are among non-Christians.
	We used to have a tree in our back yard in Canberra. It was a Chinese Silk tree. And it looked beautiful. It had delicate pink flowers in Spring and provided pleasant shade in Summer. But it was infested with borers. And one day one of it's largest branches just fell off. Well, if we're not careful we'll end up like that tree. We may look beautiful on the outside but if we're slowly rotting on the inside it only takes a strong wind and we're likely to fall right over. What Jesus says is that we're to obey God's will right down at the roots of our being. Paul puts it like this (Rom 12:2) "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect." As a church we need to strive to reinterpret and reapply God's law in the face of a culture that has a romantic, even sentimental view of the religious life, particularly in the face of a culture where spirituality is 'in', but where spirituality has lost its substance. We need to rescue spirituality from the ethereal and essentially empty concepts of the new age mystics and give it the substance that comes from a personal knowledge of God and of his will for human life. We need to be the new Israel who show to those around us how God wants people to live under his authority, just as Jesus did. And that won't be easy. You see, people don't think of practising honesty and justice as an exercise in spirituality. We don't think of being faithful in marriage as essentially a spiritual act. But listen to what Paul says in Rom 8: (Rom 8:5-9 NIV) "Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires... ⁹You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you." So if we're interested in true spirituality we'll show it by being those who are constantly striving to do his will, to do what God's Spirit desires.
	Paul goes on later in Romans to say this: (Rom 13:8-10 NRSV) "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself." And let's not forget that loving our neighbour as ourself includes loving those we find unlovely. So what he's saying is that the law hasn't been done away with. Rather, it's been taken up in Christ's law of love.
	So the 10 commandments still stand as a guide to what God's will is for his people; not as a simple set of rules to be followed, but as a basis on which we can deal with the many complex and ambiguous situations of life, as we seek to apply the love of Christ to our lives. But as you think about the commandments, here are 3 questions I'd like to leave you with that you may find helpful to ask: What does the commandment ask or forbid us to do? Why did God ask us to do it or forbid us from doing it? In what way is our current situation similar to the situation addressed by this particular commandment? The last question is the hardest of the 3 I think, but if we can answer that, then we'll find it easier to apply the commandments to our current life. Remember that the purpose of the commandments is so we can understand how God wants his people to live. If we can understand that, and if what controls our decision making is our love for God and for one another, then perhaps applying the commandments to today becomes a little easier.
	Let's pray that on this Day of Pentecost, God would so fill us with his Spirit of love that we'll be able to know his will, and more importantly, be able to do it, whatever situation we find ourselves in.

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