The Ten Commandments Part 1 (Exodus 20:1-11)
Full Transcript.
"One of the most famous passages in all of the Bible, and for that matter, in all of literature, is the Ten Commandments as recorded in Exodus chapter 20. The one that's recorded in Exodus chapter 20 has been said that the influence of these Ten phrases on Western morality and law is beyond calculation. They have come to be recognized as the basis of all public morality. We're all familiar with the Ten Commandments. It seems to me that almost everybody Christian or otherwise has some sort of vague familiarity with them. But I would like to suggest that our familiarity with the Ten Commandments is sometimes vague and not exact. What I want to do is, now that we have come to the Ten Commandments in the series on Exodus, is look at the Ten Commandments and see precisely what they are saying. So, will you turn with me to Exodus chapter 20? I'm going to begin reading at verse one.
1 And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
(Exodus 20: 1-11)
I'm going to pause there for just a second and talk about the division of the Ten Commandments. As a matter of fact, there are two ways to divide the Ten Commandments. Most are familiar with one way, but actually, there are two ways.
One way has to do with an older Jewish view that says there were two tablets, and there were five commandments on each tablet. The second view is a newer Christian view that was started by Origin and then popularized by Augustine, who says there are two divisions in the Ten Commandments. There are four commandments, and then there are six commandments. The first group have to do with our relationship to God and the second have to do with our relationship with each other. In other words, they are divided not numerically, but they are divided by subject matter.
Which is the correct way to do it? Well, I'm going to suggest that perhaps we ought to follow what Jesus said when asked what the greatest commandment is. He said it is, “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, and the second is likened to it, that you should love your neighbour as yourself”.
It seems to me that the Lord himself divided the Ten Commandments into two parts based on subject matter. So, I'm going to follow that division. Notice that I only read the first four. What I'm going to do in this episode is discuss the first four. And in tomorrow’s episode, we will discuss the last six. These four all deal with our relationship to God. And if you wanted to summarize them, Jesus did it for us. It is that we are to love the Lord our God. So that seems to be what he said was the point of the Ten Commandments was. With that in mind, let's go back to verse one, Exodus 20 verse one. And the Lord spoke all these words, saying..."
“1 And the Lord spoke all these words saying”.2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
(Exodus 20: 1-2)
"Let me pause for just a minute. Who is the speaker? That's pretty evident, right? It's the Lord. Well, what's interesting about that is that later in the Old Testament and twice in the New Testament, we're told that angels were somehow involved in communicating the Ten Commandments. How? I'm not exactly sure, but Deuteronomy 33, Galatians chapter three, and Hebrews chapter 2 all say that angels were involved somehow in this transaction. At any rate, Moses says God spoke. He may have spoken through angels, but God spoke, and . In this case, it was an inaudible voice. And Moses listened and took note. Verse three is the first commandment. I think verse two is not the first commandment. It is the preamble to the Ten Commandments. But notice the introduction. 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.'
He identifies himself. First of all, he says. 'I am the Lord,' and you'll notice that's in all capital letters, indicating that in the Hebrew text, that this is Yahweh. They used to pronounce it Jehovah, but it's the personal name of God. 'I am God. I'm your God.'
The second thing he says is, 'Let me tell you what I've done. I am the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt, I have brought you out of slavery.
The Ten Commandments were not given to people so that they could be redeemed. That's very clearly stated at the beginning. They were given to people who were already redeemed. They were already delivered from slavery. They were already set free. So, the Ten Commandments are not given to save, in the case of the Old Testament. They were given to people who were already saved.
Very interesting. There is a place, according to Paul, for the law, convincing us that we were sinners. But nobody gets saved by keeping the Ten Commandments. We get saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
Let me pursue just verse two for a second. It is rich. One Jewish author says that it is that verse that establishes ethical monotheism. Polytheism is the idea that there are many gods, which the ancient world was full of. Remember Egypt? They had all those ten plagues directed against their gods. Monotheism is the idea that there is only one God. Hinduism has over 3 million gods. It was Judaism in the ancient world who first established that there is only one God.It is these verses that establish that there is one God, and he is an ethical God. It will go on to show that this one true God revealed here is the source of morality. Morality, as an objective code of identifying right from wrong and that right and wrong, does not come from human opinion. It emanates from God and therefore transcends human opinion.
The other idea disclosed here is that this single creator God wants us to treat other human beings morally. This also identifies the importance this creator God puts on freedom. Notice verse two says, look what did I do for you? I brought you out of the land of Egypt. I brought you out of the house of slavery. This statement teaches the importance of freedom. God did not say, 'I am the Lord your God who created the world. You better listen to me.' He said he is the God who took them out of slavery, into freedom because it is only by living in freedom and having a free choice that human being can choose to respond to him.The giver of the Ten Commandments says, in effect, 'I took you out of slavery into freedom, and these Ten Commandments are a way to build a free society.' The law when correctly applies, frees you up. If any of you play a musical instrument, then you know there are laws rules to follow which will allow you to play it. I can't just crash bang every note on the keyboard. I am restricted to certain rules, right. The law frees me up to play it. Therefore, rules can liberate.
The ten commandments signal, perhaps for the first time in human history, that you cannot be a free people if you do whatever you want. Freedom comes from moral self-control. There is no other way to achieve it.' If we don’t have self-control and moral freedom, this freewill thing is not going to work. Or, to say the same thing another way, Jesus said, 'He who commits sin is the slave of sin.' You may think it’s freedom to do whatever you want, but it's slavery, and pretty soon other people’s so call freedom will begin to encroach on you ability to do what you want to do. Freedom is in fact doing what God said, living according to His moral law. If you don't, you're going to be a slave to a guilty conscience, not to mention all the other things that can come along with it. It's very clear that the Lord says, 'I'm giving this law to a free the people who would otherwise become slaves to si, That is interesting stuff, I feel.
What are these laws? Well, let's look at those first four that talk about our relationship with the Lord. He says in verse three,
'You shall have no other gods before me.'
What does that establish? I just said that I believe this establishes monotheism, that there’s only one God. And if it does that, it by nature means it eliminates polytheism. This verse establishes that the Lord is God, and there are no other gods, above or before me. The Egyptians had gods all over the place, and this eliminates the idea of polytheism. But, let me suggest that it also eliminates idolatry. This is what surprised me when I studied the commandments I noticed that the very next verse says. "You shall not make for yourself any carved images." I’m going to get to that in a second, but right now, I want to point out that verse 3 eliminates idols, as other gods. So, this eliminates polytheism and idolatry, in one sentence. What is it says is that God says. "I’m the one who delivered you. I’m your God, and I’m the only God you ought to know." Later will tell us that the sum of these first four commandments is to love God, but I think it would include that we are to praise Him, we are to pray to Him, we are to worship Him. As a matter of fact, I think that might be another good way to summarize the Ten Commandments. The first four are talking about love reverence, and the last six are talking about respect. If He is the only God, and we are to have a sense of awe about being in his presence.
John Calvin said the purpose of this commandment is that the Lord’s will alone is to be preeminent among His people and to exercise complete authority over them. To effect this, He implores us to put away from us all sin and superstition, because those things either diminishes or obscures the glory of the one true God. In forbidding us to have strange gods, He means that we ought to transfer to Him everything that belongs to Him: adoration, trust, invocation, and thanksgiving, and not waste it on false Gods or man-made idols. "When anything else is worshipped besides God, bad things happen. Even good things can be twisted into bad things when God is left out.
Let me give you three quick examples
Classical music as an example, something that can and raise their spirit can be used for evil purpose. Think about the nazi’s and their use of the music of Wagner. The great Hollywood director Stanley Kubrick vividly made this point in his 1971 film, "A Clockwork Orange". In it, men rape and murder while they play classical music in the background.
Education is another example. Even education, in and of itself, divorced from the higher ends of God and goodness, can lead and has often led to great evil. Many of the best-educated people in Europe lived in Germany between the wars and it was they who supported Hitler and the Nazis.No better explanation of this is found in the writing of Auschwitz survivor Vicktor Frankl, who wrote.
“I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other Academy in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers”.[i]
And almost all of the western world supporters of the genocidal regime of Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao in China were highly educated. There is nothing about a Ph.D. that guarantees a person will be wiser, kinder, or more ethical than someone with only the most basic academic ability or education.
His third illustration is love.
You heard me right, love when as a principal when placed above and obeying God, not seeing it as emanating from God means that even an wrong expression of love can leave to evil. When people put love of country above love of God, they are capable of committing terrible evil." I wonder how many people have put the love of something or someone ahead of God. God said, "I redeemed you; I saved you from slavery. Now you shall not have any other gods above me."
In verse three, the second commandment he starts to get specific, very specific. You shouldn’t make a carved image of a bird that flies in the air, a beast that roams the fields, or a fish that swims in the sea. What’s that all about? All my life, I’ve understood this to mean you shouldn’t be an idol worshipper, right? An image is an idol, right? That is not what he’s talking about, and that didn’t hit me until I studied the book of Exodus in detail. Idolatry is already covered and eliminated in the first commandment. So, if the second commandment is about idolatry, it’s just repetition.
The second commandment is saying, "Don’t make an image, even out of me, the command is to love him, meaning have a relationship with him, not carve something out of wood or stone and worship that. This is not talking about idolatry in that way, that second commandment say, "Don’t reduce me to just the level of those other false Gods by making an idol out of me. That’s the only way this commandment makes sense. And by the way, many commentators have said that. So, he expands it by saying "You shall not make an image. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, for I am the Lord your God. I am a jealous God. This says if you don’t have a relationship with me you are just then making an idol of me, and you are not loving me, you are hating me."
In fact, he says, "If you do that, I’m going to punish you in the third and fourth generation." Wow, you mean the children get punished in the sense that the fathers did. I think this is just recognising the practical reality, if the head of the house goes in that direction then the future generations will likely follow down the same path.
However, then he says, "But I will show mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments." If you respond to him, he shows mercy. If you don’t, he will not hold your guilt against you. What I believe this is telling us is that relationship needs to be spiritual, not material. And how many religions want to make their religious system something material? " You got to have an image. You got to burn incense. You got to do spin a wheel, it becomes something external." And so, what is being taught here is that worship of God is spiritual and internal, not material, and external. That’s the way you truly love the Lord. False worship robs God of His glory and paint a false impression of who God really is, which is why he hates it so much. No likeness of any creative thing, no matter how skilfully made, can possibly fully reflect the nature of God. In fact, such images hinder the face, the majesty, and the greatness of our God.
It is bad enough to have an unflattering picture of yourself going around. It is worse yet to have a poster circulating with your name and someone else's picture. It is even more intolerable for someone to take your picture or name and put it on something that is totally contrary to all that you are. It's a bit like your photograph accidentally appearing in the newspaper as the image of someone who had done some terrible thing. That is why God detests images. They mislead men, they give false views of God, and nothing is more destructive than that.
But our problem today is not mainly carved images; it’s mental idols. We form mental pictures of God. People constantly say, 'I like to think of God as a great father in the sky. I do not like to think of Him as a judge.' But our thinking may have nothing to do with God’s true character. I shudder when I hear the way some people speak of God. Some people use their image of God to justify the most terrible of act, even terrorism. That is why any false image of God, in any form, is forbidden by Him, because it can even become dangerous and inspire great evil, In God’s name. Humanities conception of God is irrelevant. God revealed Himself through his word, and through the life and person of Jesus and we should take our understanding of Him from those things. What the second commandment is saying is, 'Don’t misrepresent God.'
The third commandment is relatively simple:
'You shall not take the name of the your God in vain, for God will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.'
This is really short, sweet, and simple. The word 'in vain' means empty. Don’t use it in an empty way. I can think of two things that do that. But first, let me say that this sometimes gets applied to taking an oath. I do not think the Bible forbids us to take an oath, even in the name of the Lord. Just don’t take it lightly when you do it. Rather, this is saying, 'Don’t use the name of God in an empty and irreverent way.' And remember, I said it, the overarching theme of these four commandments is to love God and show reverence to God. Tthis one just really gets at that.
The two ways I think we violate this is: One, is when people curse, and misuse the name of Jesus? The second way I think we violate this is people will say something like, 'As God is my witness, and they uses his name to give authority to something they actually really don’t plan to do at all. That is what using the name of God in an empty and irreverent way. That’s what this is forbidden. The name represents the person. And so, what we’re really getting at is reverence for God, which I think permeates all four of these commands. The ultimate purpose of which is to teach us how to love God.
There’s one more. He says in verse eight.
'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath.'
The word 'Sabbath' means rest. And you shall keep it holy, you should set it apart. On this day, you should not work. Did you notice the one command in the Ten Commandments nobody ever talks about it, it gets skipped over but it also adds. "Six days you shall labour and do all your work." I don’t think we often if ever point that part out. Regardless, the point is work, do all your work within in six days, and the seventh day rest.
What was the point of this? Well, he just says, 'I don’t want you to do anything.' And I mean by that, not you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, your cattle, or the stranger within your gates. And he says, 'Because the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that’s in them, in six days, and He rested the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath and hallowed it.' So, he says, 'The reason I want you to do this is because I did the same thing, and I want you to follow me.' Verse eight says, 'You shall keep it holy,' and verse 11 says, 'hallowed it,' and it’s the same Hebrew word. 'I want you to keep it holy.' But why keep the Sabbath? Well, let me make a couple of suggestions. If you work six days, why are you working? To provide for yourself, right? Food and shelter and clothing. If you’re going to stop working, or maybe you won’t. To take a day off is a sign of trust. By doing so you are saying 'I’m going to trust God to provide for me. I don’t have to work seven days a week to get it done. I’m just going to trust the Lord.
Let me go a step further. I think that if you didn’t work, what would you do? The answer is, it’s meant to confirm your family relationships, your friendships with other people, but especially the family.' Jesus told us that the first greatest commandment is to love God, meaning putting Him first in everything we do. That means loving Him and not misrepresenting Him, not misusing His name, but revering Him, honouring Him, and trusting Him seven days a week.
So, the question all of this should raise in your mind is, do you love the Lord? Well, let me give you a test. I, we just did, I gave you four of them in fact. But like Jesus lets now boil it all down to one. You ready? Here is the litmus test. Jesus said, 'If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.' If you want to know how much you love the Lord, ask yourself, are you obeying him. Because in the New Testament Jesus said the commandment was to love Him, and if you love Him, you’ll obey Him. If you don’t obey Him, you’re not doing that. Amen
[i] Viktor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: introduction to Logotherapy (new York: Knopf 1982), xxi.