Ten Commandments

As a reformed church, the church that stands in the tradition of the reformation five hundred years ago this year, we rejoice in God's grace and forgiveness. We rejoice that God has given us forgiveness by His grace, by His incredible mercy, but we only know what this grace is and how costly and valuable it is in light of another aspect that perhaps we often simply assume we take into consideration, and that is God's law. That is the ten commandments as a summary of God's law, and I'm happy this morning to introduce to you the fact that we will be doing a series, a study on the ten commandments over the course of the next few weeks and months. And as I was reflecting and working through this week, that is one thing that really struck me. We only know God's grace because we know God's law.

We only know how to live now as God's free people because we know what we have been asked to do in light of this grace. We know that what we've been empowered and enabled, what it is to live in light of God's forgiveness and grace. So this is an important thing. This is an essential thing in the life of a Christian. And so it is a great privilege and a great honour for me to share this with you.

So we're going to turn to Exodus 20, and we're going to, like I said, be spending the next few weeks in this. And as you turn to that, I wanna just remind you that the ten commandments, in no uncertain terms, what we have here in the old testament has affected much of how the world operates today. From our Australian justice system to the way that we govern our international business law, the ethics and the morality of the ten commandments has infiltrated all spheres of our economic and legal world. Yet today, in unprecedented ways, we are finding more and more that the world is beginning to distance itself from this law. I think, you know, it's always hard to really be able to determine what generation is the worst because we only live in this generation.

But if we are students of history, we see laws and morality and ethics changing for the first time in thousands of years. Even recently, as I was studying business law at university, my lecturer, who is an active practising barrister too, said that today's Australian law, or just Australian law in general, is an evolving thing. It is being drafted in such a way that it evolves and that it merely, he says, reflects the standards of modern society. And I guess, even now, we intuitively understand and know this. If we today vote to change the definition of marriage, which has been an assumed law, we believe, a natural law, if we were to change that, if we were to vote to change laws on gender identification, if we can vote to change these, what have been thousands of years of pretty fundamental areas of identity, we find a system open to the changing standards of a society.

We're not talking here about changing standards of council regulations for a height of a roof. We're talking about things that impact us ethically as well. We are talking about things that resonate very deeply with the human personality. Now today, our world is silently, I believe, teaching us a very pragmatic understanding of moral objective law. Whatever works for you, works.

Do whatever works for you, and I will not interfere in that. Whatever you believe is right. In other words, like I said, for the first time in many generations, we believe that truth is relative. But as Christians, and what we'll learn and be reminded of over the next coming weeks, we believe that there is one moral code. There is one code of God summed up in the ten commandments that is not only something to objectively watch, but is sewn into the fabric of human existence.

There is not many moral codes. There is one. There is no subjective evolving law that is open to interpretation and the changing of times. There is one unchanging objective morality by which mankind is called to live. Now again, as reformed people, as a person personally convinced of reformed theology, we also believe in the cohesiveness of the entire bible, that there is one story taking place, that there is one promise that runs throughout the bible.

We don't believe in different ages. Even though there is an old testament and a new testament, it really is the one testament. It is the one covenant. There is people and teachers that will say that there is an age of the law of God, and then there is an age of the law of grace, and the two are different. The two are at odds with one another.

But that is not what we believe. But we'll see as we look at the ten commandments that they are as relevant and as important today for the church as it was for the people of Israel, the old testament church. Now we have to do a little bit of just understanding the context before we jump in. We believe that, well, we read in Genesis three that Adam and Eve, in Genesis three, ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and then became aware of what sin was. In other words, at that moment, they understood in some way the immutable law of God.

And at that same time, sin entered the world and made sure that every single descendant of Adam and Eve would be corrupted. And although we could inherently know the law, we would never be able to fulfil it. What is right and wrong has become so complex in our world today because what is right and wrong is now determined by us. Not even so long ago, there was a story of a baby abandoned by their mother and having died of hypothermia. And the mum was charged with murder.

And yet at the same time, in the same state, a baby can be aborted up until birth. What is the difference? The difference is that one is in the womb and the one has left the womb. That is the difference. Change in law is determined by us.

Change in morality is determined by us. And so we begin to find a slippery slope of corruption in our evolving laws. Yet Christianity says that there is a blueprint by which the world was made to exist and that there is a system by which human beings thrive. And we're going to read that this morning. So let's turn to Exodus 20.

Exodus 20, verse one. And God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall not have any other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them.

For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not hold guiltless anyone who takes His name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the Sabbath day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and 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. Honour your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that your God has given you. You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. You shall not covet your neighbour's house. You shall not covet your neighbour's wife, nor his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour's.

Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled. And they stood far off and said to Moses, you speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us, lest we die. So far our reading. We're going to do an overview this morning of the ten commandments. We have to because it is so intense.

And over the coming weeks, we'll take one of these commandments a week and work through it. Like I said, it is a summary of God's law, and so we will flesh out what God's will is for human life in the coming weeks. Today I wanna understand how the ten commandments fit into the wider story of the bible, and we wanna see the pattern of what the bible is trying to teach us. We see something happening every time, however. There are four things that these commandments do every time.

Let me get my grammar right. And as we study the commandments over the coming weeks, I'd like us all to be reading it, to be memorising, to write these commandments out, to put it on the fridge, to know them, to remember them. But four things we see from God's law every time we hear it. The first thing we see in the ten commandments is revelation. The barrister I mentioned, as I was studying with him, said this, that a law reflects the mind, the personality, the priorities, the values, the likes, and the dislikes of the law giver.

What we find in the ten commandments are a summary of all the laws that would eventually be fleshed out in large chunks of the first five books of the bible. The Pentateuch, it was called. Exodus 21 right through to 30. The book of Leviticus. Sections of Numbers and Deuteronomy.

These are the fleshing out of what is first mentioned here in Exodus 20. The ten commandments are, in other words, the condensed versions of some 613 laws that would be passed on to Israel. And each of these 613 laws reflects something of God to God's people and to Israel. And as we study over the coming weeks, we'll take into account and think about the wider literary context of Exodus 20. And we'll see as we gain a deeper and more accurate understanding of what is happening here, the story of God rescuing a people.

Remember, this is in light of the exodus, the fleeing out of Egypt. God rescues a people, and now He says, I want you to live free. And we may think of a different word when we think God giving laws to live by, but God gives laws to His people for the first time to be free. And so what we see in the law, the first thing we see God doing when He gives His law to His people is that He wants them to know who He is, what His character is like. God wanted Israel to know Him more closely.

Because, again, in the story of Israel, God chooses Israel for no reason. God chooses Israel, the tiniest of all nations, He says, to show His glory, to reveal His grace, to make known to the nations what a merciful God He is. There is no reason for God to choose and rescue Israel. And God rescues them through mighty signs and wonders. That's often repeated in the story, isn't it?

By a mighty hand, I brought you up out of Egypt. By signs and wonders, I led you through the desert, God says. But here in Exodus 20, in the middle of the desert, after the ten plagues, after the parting of the Red Sea, after all that, Exodus 20 is the pinnacle of His revelation. And it is the law. And He says, this is who I am through it.

And when we read the law as Christians, we have to remember to read God into this law. And so when we read in a few weeks' time when God says do not steal, we have to remember who is this God who says this. Well, He is a God who is generous. He is a God who is fair. He is a God who will never rob.

A God who will never defraud. He is a God who will not cheat His people. He will never hold out something wrongly. He is a God who's not out for Himself. He is a God who feels no need and no appetite to short change.

The one who is overflowing with generosity and kindness. This is the God who says, you shall not steal. So the ten commandments before anything else is revelation. How does it start? I am the Lord, your God.

I am Yahweh, your God, and this is who I am. So the first aspect of the ten commandments is revelation. The second thing we see is confrontation. Think about it this way. What kind of people needed to receive the ten commandments?

Who needed to be told you shall not steal? Thieves. People who would treat one another unfairly. People who would shortchange others. People who would try to work the system in their benefit at the cost of the other.

Israel, the old testament church needed to be alerted to their unjust and greedy impulses, which radically take hold of them. When we come to God's law, we are confronted with the hard truth that we are worse than we think we are. We are confronted that we are indeed very flawed creatures, and not the throwaway line of, oh, no one is perfect. Not the throwaway line of, you know, I'm not as bad as the rest of them, but rather you understand the concept of living so horribly wrong that God needed to break the continuum between time and space. The barrier between the supernatural and the natural to come into our world and to give us this law.

We were that needy for God's moral code. We were, in other words, never going to sort it out and figure it out by ourselves. That is confronting. For people who had grown up, remember, in the so-called utopia of the world, the greatest empire and civilisation the world had known, with very definite laws and structures and universities and places where you could study. Israel came out of that and were confronted with the truth, you don't know anything.

If you don't know My law and if you don't live by it, you know nothing. So the ten commandments are confronting to the church, to us as humans. This is followed closely by what the law does after confrontation and that is it gives instruction. Just before we get to the ten commandments, we read in Exodus 19. Again, I'm stating the obvious.

Exodus 19 comes before Exodus 20. And God says to Moses, right. The time has come. You are to leave this place. I have brought you out of Egypt, and now what I want to do, I will do.

The thing that I've been planning this whole time, I'm going to do right now. You will know Me more fully, and you will become a revelation of My love to the whole world. This is what He says. Have a look at Exodus 19, verses five and six. God says, now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all peoples.

For all the earth is Mine, and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. God says the whole earth is Mine. Every nation is Mine, but you are special. You will be for Me a kingdom of priests.

Now what did priests do? Anyone wanna wager a guess? What did priests do? They stood between God and the people. Right?

They mediated. They brought the people to God. They represented the people to God, but they represented God to the people as well. And this is who Israel were going to be. How?

God introduces the ten commandments and says, you live this way and they will know who God is. You live this way and you will show them God. The law was given to Israel to live physically and spiritually healthy lives to the glory of God. It was instruction on living a life that is so well balanced and so wholesome that they were to be a light for the nations, to see what a healthy society really looks like, to see what healthy ethical individuals really look like. And through them to be drawn to God.

Exodus 19, verse six is the same as Matthew 28:18-20. Jesus gave the great commission. You are to go into the world baptising them, teaching them to obey. This is exactly the same in the Old Testament. Each of these ten commandments charts for us a path to walk by that is good.

When we are commanded not to steal, it guides us to be more generous. It tells us to be fair. It guides us to more honesty. It guides us in moderation, how we use our money, how we act as stewards of God's gifts. When we are told not to steal, we pay our bills on time.

In that vein then, it also stands to reason that if humanity does not obey God's laws, humanity will not function as it was intended. We start breaking down. GK Chesterton, a great Catholic writer at the turn of the twentieth century, wrote with his tongue firmly embedded in his cheek, no man can break the ten commandments. No man can break any of the ten commandments. He can only break himself against them.

In other words, we don't break, really, God's law because that always stands. We break ourselves against it. And that leads us to our fourth point, our final one this morning, and that is that the ten commandments is a promise. If we read the story of Israel a bit more, and you don't have to read too far, but we see Israel receiving the ten commandments and then immediately going about breaking them. Moses is not even down from the mountain and they're building idols.

And we see that as the story throughout the Old Testament over and over and over again. The law of God is not obeyed. But then there comes a wonderful moment in the Bible, in the Old Testament, where God says, you will know My law so well. You will live it in such a way that it is written on your heart. It is so a part of you.

Through the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31:31-34. A time would come, God says, where He would write His law on people's hearts. He will move each of these commandments from the tablets of stone onto tablets of the heart. From the pages of the bible to the page of our mind. A time is coming, He says, when you'll remember Mount Sinai, you'll remember the ten commandments and how they were given out, and you know that that is a covenant promise that was made.

I will be your God if you will simply be My people and love Me and obey Me. God will forever be theirs, He said, but they broke their end of the bargain. They could not maintain these laws of the covenant, the contract that was signed that day. But Jeremiah says a new covenant will come. Not new in that it replaces, new in that it fulfils.

And this time, God upholds both ends of the bargain. He makes a promise on our behalf, but it will be a promise kept by Him. And that is where Jesus comes in, friends. That is the promise of the ten commandments as we read it. And there is even in the ten commandments promises.

Right? The fifth commandment, honour your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land I have given you. The second commandment, do not create idols because those who hate Me, they will be cursed for three and four generations, but those who love Me for a thousand generations, I will bless. Promise. But the ultimate promise is fulfilled in Jesus.

Thanks to the finished work of Christ on the cross and the endless power of the Holy Spirit. This law that was firstly lived out by Jesus on our behalf, and then secondly, forgiven and cleansed from us our rebellion and our inability to live that law. This is first seen in the ten commandments, the promise. Yes. For all our existence as a church, the ten commandments will be revelation.

It will show us who God is. It will be confrontation in that it will show us our inconsistency and our error prone ways. It will be instruction for us how to live God-honouring lives, but ultimately, it reminds us of the promise of one who would come to live it perfectly. And that Christ came to live that life that we should have lived and to receive the consequences of our broken vows. In 2 Corinthians, as we wrap up, 2 Corinthians 3:7-9, the apostle Paul writes this about the ten commandments.

He says that this law broke us, not because it was imperfect, but because we were. And he says, by rights, God should not have accepted our half-hearted attempts of being obedient to Him. They were half-hearted. Like a bad marriage covenant, we broke our vows and therefore our relationship with God leading to our separation from Him. But when Christ came, He fulfilled the promise that was inherently built into the law.

And when Jesus was finally revealed, something glorious happened. Paul says that it's the law of God that brought death because it revealed our inability to do what is right and good, yet this law, he says, came with so much glory on that day that the people of Israel hid their faces from Moses because of the reflected glory of God and said, go away from us. If on that day, this law that really brought death shone so much glory of God, how much more glorious is the law of Christ? How much more glorious is the gospel of endless power, of fulfilment, and enablement to live this life that God wants us to live. In Exodus, God took His people Israel, small, broken, unable.

A very foundation for the incapable world. And by His sacrifice on the cross, by the promise already invested in the ten commandments He has made possible for us to live our lives to the glory of God. So as we work through the next ten weeks, remember that the law shows God's character. He shows us how much He loves us, what He is like.

Shows that He is a God who is of incredible righteousness. We are instructed to live His way. We are confronted by our weakness and our sin, but ultimately, we are also humbled and comforted by His promise of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Lord God, we pray and we thank you, Lord, for this wonderful truth that you do not leave us to our own devices.

Lord, that you do have a wonderful life in mind for us. And God, where there are so many voices, where there are so many attempts to sell us a lifestyle, to sell us a way of living, Lord, it is almost overwhelming. And, Father, we know and we've experienced it. We know it from experience that if we choose anything but You, if we choose any life that is not grounded in Your will, we break ourselves. And so, Lord, we pray that as we come to know Your word, as we have it sown into our heart, as we have it written on the pages of our mind, Lord, I pray that we will come to live lives that are so glorious, so enriching personally, but such a wonderful testimony of Your power and Your grace, Lord, that not only our fellow brothers and sisters will be blessed by it, Lord, but those around us will receive this blessing.

Lord, that we may be a nation of priests. And so, Father, we pray for Your enabling. We thank You, Holy Spirit, that we can pray that You can will create a steadfast heart in us, a clean spirit, and that You will do it. And, Lord, we pray and we continue to ask for Your guidance and Your leading and Your instruction in this. And, Lord, we hold out finally to that promise where we will be perfect one day.

And that these things that will attempt to entangle and ensnare us will finally be dealt with, and we'll be finally rid of it. Lord, what a wonderful image. What a wonderful truth. What a wonderful hope. And we look forward to it in Jesus' name. Amen.