Exodus 20:1-11
Bibliography: Culture Shifts, Lesson 4
Over the last several weeks we have been exploring the changes that have taken place in our culture over the last forty years. Many have begun this new year with commitments (New Year Resolutions, if you will) to strive towards being more perfect followers of Christ in the midst of these cultural shifts we have experienced. With this in mind, our Bible lesson this evening is a part of an ancient code dictating Christian behavior. Hear these words:
Edoxus 20:1-11
You’ve seen the commercial. The guy is standing in the middle of the desert. The hood is up on his car and steam is coming out of the engine. While he’s bending over the car, a tow truck pulls up behind him. Inside are two “bubbas” who may have a whole brain between them.
We know who they are. Their the best mechanics you’re going to get when the nearest garage is a hundred or more miles away.
But the guy with the broken down car doesn’t get it. He ask for quotes from their three top competitors.
Its a commercial for an insurance company called Progressive which suggests, not only is a selection to choose from of any commodity the way we want it, but it is our right.
Car insurance, home loans, religion, ethics.
Whatever it is, there are choices - options - available to us, and the one we choose is the one that will have meaning for us.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that the truth we seek holds meaning for us, therefore we chose it. I am suggesting we will make our choice of a sea of ‘truths’, and the truth we select, we will adopt its meaning for our lives.
It sounds confusing, I know, but lets see if we can’t get a handle on the mind set we live within and this way of determining meaning and truth.
There are three ideas or principals that guide and shape our choosing in the 21st century, when determining between right and wrong, truth and untruth.
The first is that we have no values. Now I don’t mean that we have thrown all morality to the wind. I don’t mean to suggest that we live in a time when their is wide spread belief that all behaviors, attitudes and beliefs -good or bad, productive or destructive, are acceptable, although sometimes it might seem that way.
In history, particularly over the last several decades in our culture, there have been certain characteristics that define each era. With each era there has been a code, an ethical code that was understood and followed by that era. But down through the decades, failure of those codes or rules to organize society and make it better, has led to repeated rejection of those universal rules and values.
We are a culture today with no universal value system. In fact the only value we have is that we have no widely accepted values. In this “Progressive” generation (if I can borrow the name of the insurance company), each individual determines his/her own code of ethical, moral behavior, determining which values to accept and which ones to reject.
The second principal we follow, however, is that our personal happiness is the number one determining factor in choosing the values we accept and reject. My generation is a generation that grew up watching television. For years advertisers have been telling us what will make our lives easier, what will give us pleasure is what we need.
By the time we are sixteen, by conservative estimates we have watched 245, 280 commercials. From our impressionable years on, these commercials have been convincing us that our personal happiness is what is most important, the goal of our life.
This second principal is heightened to the extreme by the third guiding principal, which is that the here an now is all that we can rely on. I would think one of the effects of 9-11 was to reinforce the uncertainty the future holds.
In the 1960’s the traditions or past of parents was rejected by their children. Traditional ideals and values held by the WWII generation conflicted with the social and political events surrounding the Vietnam War. Reason, logic, and education had not made our world a better place. The past has no viable truths for us.
Neither can we count on the future. Before we reach retirement age, those of my generation will have 2 to 3 careers. Those of my children’s generation will have 6 to 7. Gone is the idea that one will stay in a job for 30 years and retire on a company pension. The world of rapid change we live in technologically and the rapid turnover rate in the job market creates a culture that is fluid and in a constant state of flux.
We struggle to keep up with change as it happens. We haven’t had time to digest and determine how the latest technological advances will influence and impact our lives when the next one comes along. Airplanes crash into buildings we expected to always be there. Countries advance and go to war with one another. The economy plummets. Companies collapse, closing manufacturing plants, and layoff thousands of employees.
We must get the most from the here and now because the present is all we have. The past is invalid, and the future is uncertain.
This is the world of decision making we live in today.
*****
Our Bible lesson this evening is one that stands in total opposition to the world we have just described, in an appealing way. It is a story with a past that provides a viable future. It is the story of a group of people who had one major element in common...they were trapped, enslaved by the culture they lived in and there was nothing they personally could do about it to rise above it and improve their situation.
The past that impacts their future is the story of their liberation from slavery. The God who created them, loved them, heard their cries in oppression, and freed them from the hands of evil people. But life did not become easy. Oh no, life became more difficult.
Their task masters had been cruel, but their task masters had been responsible for their food, shelter, and care. The Israelites were free. God had freed them. But now they were faced with the responsibility of choosing where to place their loyalty and dependance.
The Israelites left Egypt behind - and entered the desert of Sinai. Life hadn’t gotten easier. Life had just gotten more difficult. They were now a people without a homeland. There wouldn’t be anyone now to provide them with food of any kind. Who would feed them now? In the desert one could die of thirst and dehydration. Terrible things could happen to them. Who would they turn to? Who could they depend upon to help them now (because once again they were unable to improve or rise above their situation)? These were the questions the Israelites asked as they began a journey through the wilderness.
The Israelites reached back into their past to a God who had been active in human history from the beginning of time, and whose deliverance they had just experienced.
In the third month of wandering in the desert, the Israelites come to a mountain called Sinai. They have certainly been on a journey. Each step they take is a step of determining their loyalty. Will they continue to follow God?
Moses, the leader of the Israelites, ascends to the top of the mountain and there God provides Moses and the Israelites with a code of ethics through which to live out their loyalty and relationship to God. It is in response to way in which God has revealed Godself through liberation. It is a way in which to continue to experience and know God.
This code of ethics is known as the 10 Commandments. They are basically divided into two parts. The first four instruct us on a relationship with God. The next six instruct us on person to person relationships with other people. Tonight, we look at the first four commandments. As we examine more closely the direction we are given in relating to God, these first four commandments will influence and direct how we live out the next six in relating to those around us.
The 10 commandments speak to the times we live in and the high importance placed on having options and alternative choices.
The first commandment calls for a commitment of Israel’s loyalty and worship of the one true God. Ironically, they too lived in a world in which there were many options to choose from. The Egyptians they left behind had a variety of gods that dictated different aspects of their lives. In the first commandment, God calls the Israelites to make a choice to follow God, and have a relationship with him only.
As Christians, we express our belief in the God’s liberation for us through the grace we receive in Jesus Christ. In the Christian faith, we choose to follow the commitment given first to the Israelites. When we embrace God as our Creator and Savior, we embrace the covenant made on the Mountain of Sinai. Our loyalty and worship is pledged to the one true God who created all, who saves us from what we could not save ourselves from - certain death, a living death, life that is meaningless without God in it.
God provides us with salvation as God saved the Israelites. This covenant is our covenant today, our response to what God has done for us.
These first three commandments:
..have no other god before me...
make for yourself no idol in the form of anything in heaven or earth...
...do not misuse the name of the Lord your God...
address this idea of having options and choices in determining what holds value for our life.
We break them repeatedly when we suggest there are viable choices to Christianity in determining truth for our life,
when we suggest or believe our life has a holy side and a separate secular side where God doesn’t enter into the equation,
when we compromise the ideals God holds for us, when we pick and choose the parts of God’s Word - God’s plan for our life in order to justify our own wants and desires.
We live in a time of no values, except those we choose to make valid for our life,
and we fool ourselves into believing there is an alternative truth. Even faithful Christians are often lulled into believing what our culture suggests to us.
And so, our money market account, our retirement, our kid’s college fund becomes our God.
We develop idols in the form of our home, our lawn, even our family values and what we hold as our ideals.
We misuse God’s name, not only in the form of foul language, but when we use our church affiliation, our relationship with God to advance our own personal goals,
when we treat it trivially,
when we fail to be a servant, striving rather to be great in the name of Christ.
*****
Perhaps we discard these first three parts of the covenant because we neglect the fourth part:
...remember the Sabbath and keep it holy...
Most of the 10 Commandments address what should not be done, but this commandment comes from a positive perspective, addressing what should be done. It follows a pattern put before us in the creation of the universe. For 6 days God went about the work of creation, but on the 7th day God rested and reflected on what God had created, on the life God brought into being. In the same manner, the 4th Commandment directs us to set a side one day in 7 as a Sabbath day - blessed by God and made holy.
Neglecting Sabbath participation is one of the first things we lose in the fast paced world we live in. Already so many elements of our life rely upon around the clock attention - health care & emergency services. We rely upon law enforcers, fire departments, and hospitals to be staffed and ready at a moment’s notice if ever and whenever we should need them. And rightly so. In Jesus’ day, he was at odds with the Pharisees. They didn’t agree with him that healing was an appropriate action for the Sabbath day.
The problem is, we have difficulty differentiating what is appropriate behavior for the Sabbath and what isn’t, not to mention trying to be faithful to one particular day of the week when our work force doesn’t really recognize any difference in the day of the week, simply because of its name.
We work, and work, and work, neglecting any effort at Sabbath entirely. You are here this evening. You know keeping this commandment - remember the Sabbath and keeping it holy - doesn’t necessarily happen only on Sunday.
Sunday, Monday, Wednesday - it doesn’t matter. What is important is regular weekly Sabbath observance.
In our fast pace culture, we have to strive to find moments for Sabbath observance. It is difficult for us to get away for an hour of worship, much less set a whole day aside. Yet I would caution that in this rapidly changing world, we need an entire 24 hour period of rest and retreat more than ever before.
Dorothy Bass describes for us what happens when we observe the Sabbath:
Jewish liturgy and law say both what should be done on Shabbat and what should not. What should not be done is “work.” Defining exactly what that means is a long and continuing argument. All week long, human beings wrestle with the natural world, tilling and hammering and carrying and burning. On the Sabbath, however, Jews let it be. They celebrate the world as it is and live in it in peace and gratitude. Humans are created too, after all, and in gratefully receiving the gift of the world, they learn to remember that it is not, finally, human effort that grows the grain and forges the steel. By extension, all activities associated with work or commerce are also prohibited. You are not even supposed to think about them.
What should be done? Specific religious duties do exist, including worship at synagogue and reading of the Torah. But the holiness of the Sabbath is also made manifest in the joy people expect to experience on that day. Taking a walk, resting, talking with loved ones, reading—these are good too.
Listen as she describes a typical Sabbath evening in a Jewish home:
In observant Jewish homes, Shabbat begins each Friday night at sundown as a woman lights the Sabbath candles. It is a festive time; people dress up, the best tableware and food are presented, guests are welcomed. Everyone turns toward the door, singing to greet Shabbat, which Jewish hymns personify as a loving bride who brings inner delight and as a beautiful queen who gives order and peace. Traditional prayers are prayers of thanks; indeed, mourning is suspended in Shabbat liturgies. Many families sing or read together after the meal. They will gather again the next evening for another meal at which they will bid farewell to the holy day. Finally, parents will bless their children and give them a bit of sweet spice so that the taste of Sabbath peace will linger on their tongues.
As she describes the joy and peace of Sabbath keeping, I long for that. I need that time, away from the world. I suspect we all do. We need that time to take the weight of the world off our shoulders, to slow down the pace at which we are traveling, to renew and reflect on our relationship with God, to reconnect with our loved ones and the love of God. We need Sabbath time.
Christians cannot keep Sabbath as Jews do. We know God most fully not through the perpetual covenant God made with the Israelites at Sinai but through Jesus Christ. Yet we also honor the Mosaic commandments, and we stand in spiritual and historical kinship with the Jewish people, of whom Jesus was one. In an authentically Christian form of Sabbath keeping, we may affirm the grateful relationship to the Creator that Jews celebrate each Sabbath, and we may share the joyful liberation from drudgery first experienced by the slaves who left Egypt. But we add to these celebrations our weekly festival for the source of our greatest joy: Christ’s victory over the powers of death. For Christians, this victory makes of each weekly day of rest and worship a celebration of Easter.
Our failure to keep that day holy - set aside - brings about the ‘mediocritness’ given to the first three commandments concerning our devotion to God.
We cannot count valuable what we do not treasure above all else, and take time to honor and remember.
The message we find in these first four commandments is this:
God desires worship that sets God’s people apart from the surrounding culture. We are called not to be entrapped by the many truths out there. They are empty, having no past, offering us no hope for the future.
God wants to be in a relationship with people. That’s what the 10 Commandments are all about. They are not simply a list of “do’s & don’ts” like parents setting limits for their children, although limits are a part of the 10 Commandments. Through following them, we come into closer communion with God. We come to know God better. The 10 Commandments are a way for us to be in relationship with God.
These first 4 commandments set God a part from the idols the Israelites were tempted to follow. In the same way, God is set a part for us from the competing voices we are bombarded with in the commercials that tempt us to believe all choices available to us are equally relevant, based upon how happy those choices will make us.
But God is different. God is the one who brings us up out of slavery to our culture, providing for our salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Loving us that much to be one among us, to suffer with us, to free us from slavery to the sinful things we do.
Finally, God is not an object to be used for human purposes. We cannot pick and choose the elements of the Christian faith we wish to keep, discarding the ones we feel don’t fit us. We cannot combine it with elements of other faiths or elements of secularism to create our own path, and still have a true relationship with God. We must not forget that the 10 Commandments call us into covenant faithfulness to follow God and God alone.
So as we struggle to be faithful followers of God, in the midst of our culture, this is the message for us about the nature of God revealed to us in the first four commandments.
Our invitation is to embrace them, striving to be faithful to them, to claim them as a vital part of who we are as Christians.
Hear an ancient song writer tells us from the Psalms how the commandments of God provide meaning for him in the midst of the culture he lives in:
The law of the Lord is perfect; it gives new strength. The commands of the Lord are trustworthy, giving wisdom to those who lack it.
The laws of the Lord are right, and those who obey them are happy. The commands of the Lord are just and give understanding to the mind.
They give knowledge to me, your servant;
I am rewarded for obeying them.
Psalm 19:7-8, 11
In Jesus name, Amen.
