The Ten Commandments (Exodus): Every other religion says it’s what you do that saves you. But in the Exodus, Israel learned that Yahweh God was different. He rescues people by grace and then gives them a law to joyfully obey in a relationship with him. This law reflects God’s heart for flourishing life, faithfulness, truth, and justice and was a law of love for God and neighbor. Recorded on Jan 5, 2025, on Exodus 20:1-21 by Pastor David Parks.
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This message is part of our Exodus series called Journey to Freedom. Exodus is a story of liberation — of God working to rescue and redeem a people for himself, freeing them from slavery and leading them to the land he promised to the family of Abraham and Sarah. Exodus is also a picture of the gospel and the Christian life. In Christ, we, too, are freed from captivity to sin and death and led through the wilderness of life by God’s Word and Presence as we make our way to the Promised Land of the world to come. Join us as we make this journey to find true and lasting freedom.
Sermon Transcript
Since September, with a little break for Christmas, we’ve been working through the book of Exodus in a sermon series called Journey to Freedom. As we’ve said, Exodus is a story of liberation, of God rescuing and redeeming a people for himself. After freeing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, Yahweh God led them through the desert wilderness by his word and his own holy Presence as they made their way to the Promised Land of Canaan. The Israelites struggled and grumbled and had so much to learn, but Yahweh proved faithful and good. Before Christmas, we learned that God’s great, big beating heart behind this whole Exodus project was to have a real relationship with people — people who were separated from a holy God by their sin — but people who were still greatly loved and precious to God. So at Mount Sinai, Yahweh God invited Israel into a covenant relationship. Out of all the peoples of the world, they would be for him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Today, we’ll consider one of the most famous passages in the Bible: the Ten Commandments. Now, I preached a whole series on the Ten Commandments two years ago. If you’d like more teaching on this, you can always go back and watch or listen online if you’d like. But since we’re going to preach a sermon today and not a series, we have a lot of ground to cover, so let’s jump in. If you have your Bible/app, please open it to Exodus 20:1.
One: Exodus 20:1–3 (NIV), “1 And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the Lord [Yahweh] your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me.” When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was (out of the 600+ commands of the Mosaic Law), he quoted Dt 6, “Love the Lord [Yahweh] your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Dt 6:5). But he said the second is like it, to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18b). Jesus, and many other rabbis of his day, believed the whole of the Law could be summarized by these two commands: Love God and love people. As we work through the Ten Commandments, you’ll notice the first four commands are “vertical.” They’re about loving God. The remaining six are “horizontal.” They’re about loving people. Here, Yahweh says that the first thing to know about his world and his way is that there is only one God, the Creator, the Maker of the heavens and the earth, and everything in it. There was no pantheon of gods/goddesses like everyone else worshipped at the time. Those were human creations, idols. There is only one, and he will not share his glory with anyone/anything else. What use is it to sacrifice or give your life to something that isn’t real and has no power to do anything about your problems or fix this broken world?? In contrast, Yahweh had only ever given faithful, loyal love to Israel. He created them, revealed himself to them, saved them, and was forming them into his people. They were to simply love him and be faithful to him and him alone in return.
Two: Exodus 20:4-6 (NIV), “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.” So Yahweh God had already said there were no other gods. So, the second command isn’t so much a prohibition against worshiping other gods, but rather, it’s about how God wants people to worship him. Israel should not make images or objects to worship (images such as, oh, I don’t know, a golden calf?). But remember, the Israelites were, for all practical purposes, Egyptians. They were freed from Egypt only a few months ago, a place where they and their ancestors had lived for over 400 years. So they would’ve looked and thought and spoken a lot like Egyptians. Most Egyptian gods (and other gods at this time) were associated with something in creation: an animal, the sun/moon/stars, the emperor, and so on. Temples were full of these images. Now, even though people had made them, they bowed down in worship of them. But why would God not want his people to use some sort of image in their worship of him? What difference would it make? The answer lies in who God is. He is personal and near, he speaks and has a name. He’s not limited to one nation or location; he is universal and infinite. He’s just as much the God over Egypt as he is over Israel. And Yahweh God is not part of his creation; he is the Creator, who is transcendent over all. So, representing this God with an image of a created thing, even a created thing representing power/wisdom/life, would shrink God down to something that can fit within creation. This would distort people’s understanding of who God is. And a distortion in your understanding of God’s character/nature results not in true worship but in worshiping a god of your own making, an idol. This is the opposite of what God wants for his people. God doesn’t want people to worship him because he really likes worship. God wants a real/personal relationship with people who actually know him. And when you truly understand who God is, worship is the only appropriate response.
Three: Exodus 20:7 (NIV), “7 “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” Now, this command runs in two different directions, one pointed inward, and the other pointed outward. This command forbids us from misusing the name of God internally, within our own hearts and minds. This means we must be careful that our thoughts and emotions about God are true and appropriately respectful because of who God is. However, this internal care should flow out into how we relate to others. Israel was supposed to fulfill the role of the priesthood for all the nations on the earth. They were supposed to bear the name of God and accurately represent him to the world. They had received the revelation of his word and the divine name. But it was never intended to only be about Israel. Israel’s blessing was designed to be a light to all the Gentiles. As such, it would never be appropriate to use God’s name as a curse or to “swear to God” about something that wasn’t true, though, of course, those things are not good or right. But this command goes way beyond that to guide and guard how we think about God and represent him in all of life.
Four: Exodus 20:8-11 (NIV), “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.” Just as God established a new way of relating to him in life/worship in the first three commands, so he would want them to learn a new way of relating to him in their work/rest. These former slaves would have to learn how to live as free people. The Hebrew word translated Sabbath means to cease or to rest — to stop working. The fourth command says God’s people should work and rest like God. They should keep the pattern for work and rest that God modeled in his work of creation in Genesis 1-2. The Egyptians had a ten-day week, and other cultures had different ways of measuring time, but the reason we have a seven-day week to this day is because of this command. The Lord made it clear his people would do all their work in six days, but on the seventh day, they would rest. This day was to be a sabbath to the Lord your God, a rest day holy to the Lord. Every week, everyone needed to stop working to rest, worship, and enjoy their relationship with God. The seventh year was to be an annual Sabbath where servants were freed, and even the land rested. For the seventh Sabbath year, the Year of Jubilee, all debts were forgiven, and the whole nation would rest and celebrate. This was all supposed to be a blessing. God’s people were to work hard and do good work, but they weren’t created only for work and productivity. The Sabbath was supposed to be one of the distinctive marks of Israel and Israel’s God to the world. Every other god demanded their people do more and more to earn a blessing. But Yahweh commanded his people to rest in him.
Five: Exodus 20:12 (NIV), “12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” In Genesis chapter 1, the original blessing of God for human beings, sometimes called the “creation mandate,” was to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. God wanted a world filled with his image-bearing people. To do this, in Genesis chapter 2, God established marriage as the best context for this blessing of children. Marriage is where one man and one woman enter into an unconditional covenant relationship for life — two become one, no matter what. This kind of marriage was the best way to provide a safe and loving environment for having and raising kids. In Deuteronomy chapter 6, Moses says parents are primarily responsible for teaching their kids about God. Prophets, priests, and others would certainly help, but it was the father and mother who were to provide regular instruction about who God was, what he had done, and how they were to live as a result. So here, God’s command to honor your father and mother is to honor the whole system of human life and flourishing that God gave us through his wisdom and grace. If you honor the way life is supposed to work and honor the ones who raised you and instructed you in the faith, it will go well for you in the Promised Land. Now, this is no longer a perfect world, and I regularly talk with people struggling to honor their parents when their parents are not acting (or maybe never have acted) in honorable ways. This can be very painful, but our family members are often the first neighbors we must learn to love as ourselves. But if we learn to do this, then in general, life will go well.
Six-Nine: Exodus 20:13-16 (NIV), “13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” I think these commands are fairly easy for us to relate to. Most people would get 100% on an ethics test on whether murder, adultery, stealing, and lying are wrong. But I want to share something that totally changed my understanding of the law: The negative prohibitions of the law always correspond with a positive attribute of God or his will for his world. For example, the negative prohibition against murder corresponds with God’s desire for the flourishing life of every one of his creatures. It’s not that God wants a society where you’re good so long as you don’t murder anyone. That’s a very low bar. The command against murder is rooted in the fact that God wants a society/people who are concerned about the flourishing life of every other person. He wants marriages of perfect faithfulness. He wants people who do justice and live/walk in the light of truth. Think about a society like that! It would be so radically different than anything we’ve ever experienced. But this is what the new heavens and earth will be like: a whole world of love for God and love for other people. What a beautiful world that will be.
Ten: Exodus 20:17 (NIV), “17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” The tenth command is a very strange law when you think about it. Because there’s really no way for us to judge when someone is guilty of breaking it. We can tell if coveting leads to quarreling or fighting. We can tell if coveting leads to breaking other commands, such as the commands against theft or adultery. But we really can’t tell what’s going on in someone else’s heart. Only God can know for sure. So, this is a curious command because it seems that it has no way of being enforced. How could a judge or jury find them innocent or guilty? So why did God include this in the Ten Commandments? Because God doesn’t want superficial obedience. God doesn’t want people who honor him with their lips while their hearts are far from him. God doesn’t want people to love their neighbor in what they do but not in the thoughts and attitudes of their hearts. God wants all of our lives, from the inside out, to be transformed into the likeness of Christ! So, this must include our hearts. The tenth command forces us to examine our hearts and deal with the unhealthy, unhelpful, and unlawful desires we might find there. It’s really brilliant in the context of a relationship with God. Ultimately, God is the judge of his creation.
Exodus 20:18-21 (NIV), “18 When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance 19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.” 21 The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.” This is God’s word. So, the first half of the Exodus story starts with God rescuing Israel from slavery in Egypt. The second half (and really the whole rest of the Bible) is God rescuing Israel from themselves. This is what the Law is all about. The Law was intended to guide and shape Israel as they learned to be God’s people. It was intended to limit sin and instruct people in the way of righteousness. Now, some people bristle at the idea of anyone being able to tell them what they can or can’t do. But as the Creator, then obviously, God can set the rules for his creation. Only the manufacturer can write the owner’s manual. But as their Savior, Israel owed Yahweh God everything. His saving work should’ve made them want to obey him. He had already proven himself to be good and faithful to them time and again. But, as we’ll see in a few weeks, obedience to the Law would be a greater test than any they faced in the desert wilderness. And they would need to be rescued once again. As we close, it’s critical for us to remember the order of what happened. First, Yahweh God rescued his people; then he gave them the law. God rescued his people from slavery in Egypt, not because of their goodness or their potential, but purely because of his grace. And then he gave them the law. Salvation comes first; obedience comes second. Every other religion in human history basically says it’s what you do that saves you. But Yahweh is different. He rescues people by his grace and then gives them a law of love to learn to obey. A law that reflects his heart for how life ought to work. We must understand this because this is the same pattern God repeats in the new covenant relationship he offers in Christ. The gospel is not a list of rules to follow to get God to love/bless/accept us. The gospel is the good news that God has already done everything needed for our salvation in Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection from the dead. So, for us today, just as if we were standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, Christians have been saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus and are now given a law of love. Following Jesus means learning how to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves from within a loving relationship with the one true and living God, our creator, our savior. Let us pray.
