Exodus: The First Commandment and the Gospel Exodus 20:1-21
Last study we looked at the 10th plague inflicted upon the Egyptians, namely, the death of all the first born in the land. God graciously provided escape for His people by the Passover of the Lord. The blood of the perfect lambs which were shed and applied to the door posts of God’s people were spared from the curse of death and the Hebrews exited Egypt and miraculously were led across the Red Sea on dry ground. God redeemed His people by His mighty hand and all the hosts of Pharaoh were destroyed in the Red Sea just as God had destroyed all of His enemies in the days of Noah and the flood.
God first revealed Himself to Moses through the burning bush and revealed the essence of His Everlasting character through His name, Yahweh in Exodus 3. In Exodus 3:12, God promised to again bring Moses and God’s people to the same mountain of God, saying: "I will certainly be with you. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain."
It is at this same place at Mount Horeb (or Mount Sinai) in the Sinai Peninsula that God appears again to His people in Exodus 20:
1 “And God (Elohim) spoke all these words, saying: 2 "I am the LORD (YHWH) your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 "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; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor 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 generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. 7 "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain. 8 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” (These first four commandments are the First table of the law; they define our relationship with God, Himself and explain in part the character of Yahweh (the LORD.)
Verse 12 (The fifth commandment begins the Second table of the law, the section of the Ten Commandments which deals with our relationship to our “neighbors”. They teach us about God’s moral laws for community.)(5th) "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. 13 (6th) You shall not murder. 14 (7th) You shall not commit adultery. 15 (8th)You shall not steal. 16 (9th) You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17 (10th) You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's."
18 Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. 19 Then they said to Moses, "You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die." 20 And Moses said to the people, "Do not fear; for God has come to test you, and that His fear may be before you, so that you may not sin." 21 So the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.
What a terrifying privilege to have the Creator Sovereign Everlasting God (Yahweh) speak to you! This visitation by God is not fable or fantasy but fact. The same God who created all things powerfully and orderly in Genesis by the word of His mouth, speaks His everlasting law in Exodus 20. The same Yahweh who made a covenant with Abraham, then with Isaac and Jacob, this same God speaks again and gives His Law to all the people of Israel. This law would transcend both the Old and New Testaments.
Functions of the Law
I want to look at several functions of the Law, especially the Ten Commandments. In Genesis, God created all things in an orderly fashion but sin broke the relationship between man and the Creator and order between human beings. The God who created, now gives the Law in order to create peace and order among the peoples of the earth, but the law does even more than that: The law is a mirror, which reflects God’s Righteous character while accentuating man’s sinful character in inability to honor God and live in harmony with his neighbor. Man has failed miserably, not because the law is not good, but because man is sinful to the core. Essentially the law teaches us that we need a Savior because we do not and cannot keep God’s Perfect law perfectly.
How wonderful that God did not abandon His creation and creatures. He comes and speaks laws which are actually good for them. The law sets a civil societal framework in order to restrain evil. The law restricts and restrains people from exercising the worst of our sinful natures and God-ordained authority punishes those who harm their neighbors. (At least they are supposed to. As bad as the world is sometimes, without the restraint of law and the innate placement of gracious God-given norms, the world would be exceedingly worse.
The law benefits sinful society as a whole. I don’t know if there is a nation on earth which does not endorse commandments 5- 9: honoring parents, punishing murderers, thieves, frauds, liars (perjury) and honoring marriage to some degree. But the law has a special purpose for believers in that it guides believers in pleasing and honoring God and their neighbor in their lives. For believers, the Law is no longer a heavy task-master but rather the evidence of a loving God who sent Jesus into the world to do what we, sinners, could not do: Obey God perfectly.
God’s law for the believer is a sort of Divine “calling card”. God Himself came down to give the law and later to provide the Savior who could keep the law. For us as believers and children of our Heavenly Father, it is a kind of “family code”. It is what we desire to do joyfully because obedience pleases our God; Living by the “code” doesn’t save us because Jesus already has, but heart and life obedience demonstrates our love to God and neighbor. And living in harmony with God’s law also gives us a life of peace. The Ten Commandments show the beauty and glory of Jesus who lived them and also of who we are becoming and some day will be.
The First Commandment
We look at the first commandment in verses 1-3 of Exodus 20: “And God (Plural Hebrew word, Elohim) spoke all these words, saying: 2 "I am the LORD (YHWH) your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 You shall have no other gods before Me. Here the God (Elohim) of Creation is the one God who identified Himself as Yahweh, the “I AM WHO I AM”, the God who neither needs nor depends on anyone ever. No one has ever given Him anything at all for His eternal existence. Now, whether you believe in Him or not, you have nothing without Him and you depend on Him for every single aspect of your existence, even if you do not acknowledge Him.
Here God is speaking covenant stipulations, “Covenant Code”, if you will, to His Covenant family: At Mount Sinai, God is speaking to the people whom He created and whom He redeemed from the hands of their captors, the Egyptians. But He is speaking to us as well: We are people of the covenant, too, by faith. We are children of Abraham through faith in the work of the Messiah. We answer to and are responsible to the God who created us, who has sustained and provided for us, and who has redeemed us through His Son. In the Old Testament when God was Israel’s deliverer, He was their Savior, so not only did God redeem Israel from captivity, but He would deliver His people from sin through His Son. God’s function as deliverer in the Old Testament would be fulfilled in Jesus in the New. It is why the LORD can say, “I am the LORD, YOUR God.” Isn’t it staggering that the Holy God of Heaven calls Himself, “your God?” God says, “I am your God.” God’s people belong to Him by right of His creation and redemption.
Because God is the creator of all life, both physical and spiritual, and because we as His children are dependent on Him for all things, God commands that “you shall have no other gods before Me.” It was all too common in ancient times for countries to worship many false gods, but remember that all the peoples of the earth originated by God from one man and one woman. It was man who broke relationship with God and turned to gods of his own imagination and making. Many began to worship the creation instead of the Creator.
Fallen man disregarded the very nature of the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God. The words “before Me” call us back to those infinite qualities of God. Literally those two words could be translated “before My face” or “in My presence”. They remind us of the God who is not only eternal and self-sufficient, as in the “I AM”, but also of the transcendence and the immanence of God. (God is “outside” of time and space while at the same time “present” in time and space.) God appears at Mount Sinai to make this known, that He is close at hand and that He alone is deserving of the praise, worship, and adoration of His people.
There is a Latin phrase which comes to mind in this case: “Coram Deo”, meaning, “before God”. To live “coram Deo” is to live one’s entire life with the realization that it is lived in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God alone. That is what is stated later in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 KJV, which would later be called the “Shema” is given to Israel: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” became Israel’s great confession of their monotheistic faith, and was (and is) recited in morning and evening by Jews.
Though the Hebrew can be translated several different ways, the verse affirms God’s uniqueness and His singularity: There is ONLY ONE GOD. God, the LORD is our God, He alone is the LORD and He is LORD alone, the only ONE true God.
There should be nothing and no one in a person’s life which takes priority over the Lord God since He is God alone, and He alone creates life, gives eternal life, and is able to save from sin and death.
The First Commandment and Jesus
Shortly after Exodus 20, Moses reminds Israel of their responsibility in Deuteronomy 10:12-13: "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?”
Later Jesus answered a question concerning the most important commandment in Mark 12:28- "Which is the first commandment of all?" 29 Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is (Jesus quotes the Shema): 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
Loving God with your heart means loving Him from the root of our being. Loving God with your soul is loving God passionately, not grudgingly. Loving God with all of your strength is loving God with all the power and ability that you have in you; Loving God with your mind means studying His Word and God’s very character and nature as revealed in His Word. Do we love God perfectly? No. That is why Jesus came to pay for our sins, our shortcomings regarding God’s Law; But His sacrifice makes us all the more desirous of walking in obedience before the face of God and His Spirit both empowers us to do God’s will and convicts us daily of our shortcomings.
May we examine our hearts and our lives before our Great God and Savior, recognizing that we live “coram deo”, living before His holy presence. Amen
OUTLINE
I. God’s purpose in giving the Ten Commandments.
A. Commandments 1-4 teach us about the Character of Yahweh.
B. Commandments 5-10 teach us about God’s moral laws for community.
C. The law is a mirror, reflecting God’s Righteous character and man’s sinful failure.
D. The law sets a civil societal framework to restrain evil.
E. The law guides believers in pleasing God in their lives.
II. I am the Lord Your God…you shall have no other gods before me.
A. God speaks covenant stipulations: God created and redeemed the people to whom He is speaking.
B. “Coram deo”: “before God”, living all of life with the realization of God’s presence.
C. The “Shema” of Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”
D. The LORD is our God, He alone is the LORD and He is LORD alone. Deut 10:12-13:
E. The First Commandment and Jesus- Mark 12:28-31
