Ronald Regan once said, “I have wondered at times, what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had had to run them through the United States Congress.”
Gettysburg Address: 286 words.
Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words.
U.S. Government regulations on cabbage sales: 26, 911 words.
Ten Commandments: 179 words.
Jesus’ summary of the Ten Commandments – 40 words.
Understanding the Ten Commandments certainly is not rocket science. The Ten Commandments are succinct and elegantly simple. They make no illusions, they don’t dance around the issues, they get right to the point and, really, they don’t require a lot of interpretation do they? You shall not steal means, don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to you – even a four year old clearly understands what that means.
I think the difficulty our society has with the Ten Commandments doesn’t fall along the lines of interpretation; The difficulty our society has with the Ten Commandments falls along the lines of application…
A businessman known for his ruthlessness was talking with Mark Twain and announced, “Before I die, I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; There I will climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud from the top of the mountain.
“I have a better idea”, replied Mark Twain, “You could stay in Boston and keep them”.
We need to understand that here in chapter 20 of the book of Exodus, that what is being said by God is not in any way new, the truth behind the Ten Commandments is not new, it is only now at this point in Israel’s history that they are being revealed directly from God.
If we go back to the beginning of the Scriptures in Genesis we can ask, “Has it ever be right to lie, or steal, or to give false testimony?” Of course not. Biblically, what we read this morning is nothing new. The Ten Commandments are universal biblical truths that do not have a expiration date nor do they have a date of inception.
For us here this morning, my guess is that we would all agree that the Ten Commandments are a wonderful gift from God and that they are very powerful in their application. I don’t think that any of us here need to be convince of the validity of the Ten Commandments – but we as Americans may carry with us some misconceptions about the Ten Commandments.
Probably the biggest misconception about the Ten Commandments, especially in our society is that they are the pathway to salvation. In other words, if a person keeps the Ten Commandments, then that person will somehow be justified when they stand before God, they will earn entrance into heaven.
If we go out on the street and ask almost anyone on the street, “Do you think you will go to heaven – and what will they most likely say?
“Yes, I think I will go to heaven, because I am a good person”.
If you press them further, and ask why they think they are a good person, they will almost universally refer to the Ten Commandments. They will say something like, “I’m not a murderer. I’m not a thief. I try to be a good person”. Does this sound familiar?
If you have your bibles open to our Scripture this morning, Exodus 20, take a look and see…..where does it say that keeping the Ten Commandments will get you into heaven? Can you find that?
You can stop looking now, because it is not there.
The Ten Commandments are not the pathway to salvation, the Ten Commandments are not what determine the good, the bad and the ugly. Even more, the fact is, only one person in all of history has been able to fully keep the Ten Commandments – Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. We read in Rom. 3:10-12, As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
Paul tells us in Romans 9:31-32 that, “Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. 32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works”.
See, first the Ten Commandments are not the key to salvation, and second, no human being has been able to fully keep them….ever.
What the Ten Commandments do, is they reveal to us how far short we fall; They reveal to us that we are in fact, incapable of living up to God’s standards; They show us our need for salvation by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We see from the person of Jesus Christ that salvation comes in terms of relationship. Relationship is what will save us, now in our time, and also then, in Moses’ time.
Another misconception about the Ten Commandments is that they are a code of conduct. The Ten Commandments are not merely about conduct or good citizenship, they are about relationship. God gives the Ten Commandments to the Hebrews only after He has established a relationship with them. He gives them these commands not as an abstract set of concepts, but as a way to act in relationship with Him and with each other. The Ten Commandments are about how to act in relationship with God and each other. Part one of the Ten Commandments is about human relationships with God and part two is about human relationships with each other.
So when we act out the Ten Commandments, we act them out in relation to God and in relation to each other. We do NOT act them out as abstract concepts. I guess the easiest way of putting it, is that we are to act out the Ten Commandments in love to God and in love each other, for since they are all about relationship, what’s the point of keeping the Ten Commandments without love?
It is like folks who write thank notes because it is the right thing to do, not because they are genuinely thankful. Who needs that?
See, it is out of love that I don’t steal from others, not because it is the wrong thing to do – Paul tell us in 1 Corinthians 13, that without love, we are nothing, and I say to us this morning that adherence to the Ten Commandments, is nothing without love. Without love, it is useless.
Let me ask you this: Don’t you know people who are moral and appear to uphold the Ten Commandments, but are complete jerks to everyone around them? That’s what I’m talking about.
Another misconception we may have about the Ten Commandments is that this was more of the same for the Hebrews, that the Hebrews had already been living the Ten Commandments all along, and now God was reaffirming what they were living. It was not. I think that we may imagine the Hebrews being in complete agreement with what they heard that day on Mount Sinai. We may imagine that they already knew each of these commands in one way or another and this was just a reminder, a reinforcement of what they already believed. Not so. More likely, for the Hebrews who heard God speak that day, these were new ideas, these were revolutionary ideas. These were ideas many may have never considered before.
For us, we look at the Ten Commandments as the basis of our law, as the bases of our morality – we look at them as the basics of a moral code; For the Hebrews, the Ten Commandments are not the bases of their morality, they are the pinnacle of their morality. This is revelatory, this is revolutionary. This just blew them away.
See, they were former slaves, who for generations had lived in a pagan culture. Living in that pagan culture they had absorbed pagan ways of life, pagan morality, pagan ways of dealing with each other in relationship. So on the very first commandment, the people are blown away - “You shall have no other gods before me.” Who had ever heard of such a thing? Know, that to those gathered at the base of Mount Sinai, this is a concept that just doesn’t make sense. If we take just the first commandment as an example, we see how revelatory this was for the Hebrews.
The Egyptian pagan culture had a multitude of gods. In Egypt one would serve a variety of gods as each of the gods would have a specific purpose, health, good fortune, fertility, protection and so on. One would want to cover their bases and so they would serve this multitude of gods.
When we think of gods in the ancient middle east, we may think of an elaborate shrine and a fairly large image within the shrine. But as a matter of practicality, most people were not wealthy enough to have an elaborate shrine or a large idol. What was more common, was for people to own what is known as household gods. Now these household gods could be large, but for the average person they were quite small, usually about the size of one of those green army men many of us used to play with….or still do.
Most were quite crude, made of brass or iron and maybe covered with sliver or gold. These were small enough to fit into your pocket. Archeologists have found thousands of these. In King Tut’s tomb 32 household gods were found in one cabinet alone. Most of these household gods are found buried under the entrance of the houses of common people. When someone would build a house or move into a house, they would go to the market and buy one of these gods and bury it at the house entrance. They were supposed to help protect the house from danger, violence and evil spirits.
Understand that the people knew that the little image they had in their pocket was not the actual god – after all, all their neighbors had one too. But they knew that it was an image that was created to represent the deity. They believed that this representation they had in their pocket, this representation, no matter how small it was, held the power of the deity. They believed that devotion to the deity would bring them blessings and good fortune, and neglect of the deity for bring about disaster.
Probably every single household gathered at the foot of mount Sinai had a collection of these household gods that they had for years, maybe even handed down from generation to generation. And now, they are just supposed to give them up, cast them aside? I mean how do they even worship this God Yaweh, they don’t even know what He looks like?
They have depended upon these gods all their lives, and God is now asking them to just give them up. This would be very frightening to them, for the would fear retribution from these gods when they stopped serving them.
Back in Egypt the ten plagues brought upon the Egyptians by God were specifically enacted by the Lord God to mock the gods of the Egyptians. When the Nile is turned to blood it shows God has power over the god of the Nile. When the sun is block out, it shows God has power over the sun god Amen-Ra. Each plague shows the impotence of the Egyptian gods. The people gathered at Sinai should know better since they saw the results of the plagues first hand, but this is all they have known, they had great difficulty giving up their cultural beliefs.
Some scholars will claim that Moses got the idea of this first commandment of only one god from the Egyptians, and that he is now passing this on to the Hebrews, but this is nonsense. We see that Pharaoh Amenhotep IV commanded that Egypt worship only one god, Amen-Ra, who was the sun god. But Amenhotep IV, did not say that there was only one god, he said that we will only worship one god, one god among many.
In contrast, the Bible claims that there is only one God. The Bible claims that though people worship others gods, there are no other gods – there is in fact only one God. This is a completely different concept than that of the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV. After the untimely death of Amenhotep IV, Egypt went right back to the worship of many gods.
Notice that it is the Hebrews are to have no other gods. There is no reference to those who are outside the relationship with God. God is concerned with those He is entering into relationship with. Again, this is because the Ten Commandments are not a rule book – they are a relational contract. A contract committed to love and not just the right thing.
When we look at the Ten Commandments we need to see them, not as simply the basis of our morality, we need to see them as a law of revelation, a law of liberation, a law of relationship in love.
If you and I look at the Ten Commandments as abstract concepts we apply to life in order to be better citizens, then we are in danger of making the Ten Commandments cold and lifeless. The Ten Commandments are relational and only make sense, and only have real power when applied in terms of relationship.
The intent of the Lord God with the Ten Commandments, is to give short easily remembered and easily understood rules for relationship – These commands are to be carried out in love.
Let us the approach the Ten Commandments with the original intent, the intent of love, the intent of love within relationship. Then, any perceived burden of the Ten Commandments we have will fall away from our eyes and they will become a great help in our lives, rather than a hindrance.
Amen
