“THE STATUTES OF LIBERTY”
(Exodus 20:1-17)
In New York Harbor the Statue of Liberty stands with torch held high. She faces the Atlantic Ocean and the old countries beyond, with her back turned toward the country she honors. She holds high the hope of liberty, not just to the United States, but to the entire world.
In 1986 the Statue of Liberty was refurbished. When President Reagan relit the torch of Liberty on July 3, 1986, massed choirs sang the words of Emma Lazarus’ tribute to our nation and the statue standing before our nation’s open door:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
In The Gospel and the American Dream, historian Bruce Shelley writes, “In one hand Liberty holds the torch of freedom and in the other the tablet of law. The torch challenges the forces of darkness and tyranny. The tablet of law re-minds us that liberty degenerating into license is but another form of slavery. True freedom for others is only possible in a community of civic virtue.”
That is the message of the Ten Commandments. God brought a despised group of people out of bondage. They would not experience true liberty however, by merely trading one form of bondage for another. Deliverance from Egypt’s tyranny could easily be replaced by servitude to self and personal passions.
God is no cosmic killjoy. His Ten Commandments were not given to limit and destroy the freedom of His people. The purpose of God’s law is deliverance not domination. Obedience does not subjugate; it saves! The Ten Commandments are God’s “statutes of liberty.”
I. THE BACKGROUND FOR THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Four hundred years of bondage were ended. The children of Israel left one alien culture to enter another. Soon they would be surrounded by people who worshiped strange gods in strange ways. Sexual perversions were a part of this false worship. The temptation for Israel to compromise their beliefs, and to blend their faith with the false religion of the pagans would be constant.
God met His people at Sinai, in the desert between Egypt and Canaan:
And God spoke all these words: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. "You shall have no other gods before me. "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or wor-ship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth genera-tion of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand genera-tions of those who love me and keep my com-mandments. "You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the sev-enth day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, nei-ther you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your an-imals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heav-ens 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. "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giv-ing you. "You shall not murder. "You shall not commit adultery. "You shall not steal. "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor" (Exodus 20:1-17).
The Ten Commandments are God’s gracious guidelines for human behavior and relationships. All over the world they forge a foundation for law and morality. Every culture founded on ethical standards includes injunctions such as these, whether expressed biblically or not. They have never been recalled, rescinded or reversed. They apply in a computer society as well as they did when written in stone at Sinai. They are valid among every race and strata of people.
The Ten Commandments tell us how to experience ultimate freedom. The first four show how to relate to God. The others teach us to relate with one an-other. They deal with the great issues of life and death, sex, family, work, neighbors, and honesty.
God’s intention in the Ten Commandments was liberty for all humanity. God offers a glimpse of His heart in Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God’s chosen people were at the edge of a new adventure. His plan for them was good. He yearned to prosper them, to fill them with hope and ensure their future. He issued these warnings to protect them, as a father warns his children.
II. THE BONDAGE OF UNRESTRICTED LIVING
Harry Emerson Fosdick’s name is associated with liberal Christianity. In retirement, he admitted some of the error of his earlier thinking:
In my callow youth I reached the conclusion that we had so far spiritually progressed that we could center all attention on Paul’s positive ethic, “Love is the fulfilling of the law,” and that we need no longer stress the negative “Thou shalt not.” I take it back. I know human life better. I wish those Ten Commandments could be blazoned in every market place, in every schoolhouse, in every church.
Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Thou shalt not covet.
Most people, like Fosdick in his earlier years, want nothing to do with the Ten Commandments. My friend, Steve Rexroat says, “To hear them tell it, God came down to check out human happenings and then made up His ten-point program to wipe the smiles off our faces.”
The gray shadow of situational ethics sweeps our generation. God’s “You shall not’s” affront our relativism. We are taught that all values are equal, and that notions of bad and good are merely class distinctions. Lasting values and timeless truths are thought impossible in an enlightened society.
Some secular writers now mourn the absence of absolutes. Allan Bloom’s best-selling critique of American higher education, The Closing of the American Mind, proposes no answer to the problem, yet he sees the crisis clearly. His analysis is right on target when he says in the introductory paragraph:
There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the student’s reaction: they will be uncomprehending . . . The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight but a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they see it.
A riot of relativism has led America into a cultural cul-de-sac. James Patterson and Peter Kim measure the moral convictions, habits, and opinions of American citizens in the book, The Day America Told the Truth. This national survey reveals that there is “absolutely no moral consensus" in our nation today. Only thirteen percent of Americans indicate that they believe the Ten Commandments are binding. “Everyone is making up their own personal moral codes, we are the law unto ourselves,” the authors conclude.
When asked if there were any beliefs they would be willing to die for, forty-eight percent responded, “no.” Asked what they would be willing to do for $10 million, twenty-five percent said they would leave their family; sixteen percent would renounce their American citizenship, and seven percent said they would kill a stranger. For $10 million! Similar answers held when the amount was dropped to $5 million and $3 million! The study shows that our culture is inhospitable to Christian faith--if that faith is anything but a watered-down civil religion with a tip of the hat to the Almighty.
Our relativism spawns a deluge of statistics documenting a spiraling crime rate; a sexual revolution with its promiscuity, venereal disease, abortions, illegiti-mate births, divorce and AIDS; rampant dishonesty in business and government; drug abuse; and alcoholism. Our society is scarred by moral disintegration.
Philip Yancey wrote recently in Christianity Today:
Visit any magazine rack and you will see a vivid display of the values honored in this world. Fortune, Money, European Travel and Life, and their clones present the advan-tages of wealth and economic success. Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Body Builder, Swim-suit, and several rows of soft-porn titles flaunt our obsession with image and physical appearance. Then come the racks of true crime stories, Gothic romances, and soap-opera digests that satisfy our society’s thirst for unrighteousness.
With keen perception, Yancey adds, “the people we laud, strive to emulate, and feature on the covers of those popular magazines are not the fulfilled, happy, balanced persons we might imagine.” Our heroes have bought the gospel of relativism and are as miserable as we are!
What has this “freedom” achieved? When historians look back on the waning days of the Twentieth century, what will they say? They may report that our standard of living was the highest ever known. They will say that we were the healthiest generation of all humankind; we lived in a land of freedom and could do whatever we chose with an abundance of entertainment devices. Future generations may believe that we lived in a promised land of milk and honey.
If they look more closely they will also discover that we consumed more alcohol and had more troubled drinkers than any previous generation. We ingested more sleeping pills, stimulants, and prescription drugs, not to mention the pot, cocaine and other mind-altering drugs used in epidemic proportions. They could look at the thousands of abortions performed daily in this country, or the children whose values were shaped more by the culture than the living God. And then I wonder if they would really call us free?
III. THE BENEFITS OF GOD’S LAW
A. A Compass for Direction
The Ten Commandments are a compass. They give us our bearings. So many drifting people would have their lives dramatically transformed if they took the Commandments seriously.
During World War II American planes flew from British airbases to missions over Germany. Finding their way home to base was often difficult because of horrible weather conditions. Churches with tall, stately spires dotted the English landscape. On overcast days the American pilots used the churches to guide them home. As planes descended through a gray sky the churches told the pilots if they were on the right course.
Our world is in a moral fog. The spiritual weather is horrible. The Ten Commandments are God’s signposts to show us the way home.
B. A Thermometer of Love
Jesus stated this clearly when He said, “If you love me, you will obey what I com-mand” and “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching” (John 14:15, 23). In Psalm 119 the psalmist wrote, “I delight in your commands because I love them” (v. 47); “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long” (v. 97); “Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble” (v.165). Those who truly love the Lord know that He commands because He cares.
C. A Mirror of Reality
The Ten Commandments are a mirror of reality to give us a true look at our-
selves. We like to measure ourselves through comparisons. We can always find someone with whom we compare favorably. Even as children we were prone to say, “But he didn’t do it!” or “But she did it too!” The Ten Commandments show us that God uses a different standard. And we all fall short. That is why the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was necessary.
The late, J. Vernon McGee said:
There must be shedding of blood for sin. You have a mirror in your bathroom, which is a picture of the law, and there is a basin underneath the mirror. You do not wash yourself with the mirror; it only reveals the dirt. Just so, the law is the mirror that reveals our sin. And beneath that mirror there is a wash basin.
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood.
Lose all their guilty stains.
D. A Guardian for Good
Imagine that you and I have fought the traffic jams successfully and are now seated with 103,000 screaming fans in the Rose Bowl. It is New Year’s Day 1996 and we have come expecting a great football game between UCLA and whoever the Big Ten Conference sends as a sacrificial lamb. To our surprise, we discover that the field is not set up with the traditional football lines. Some players wear helmets and toss footballs, while others wear shorts and kick a soccer ball. Some swing baseball bats as others dribble basketballs. The whistle blows to signal the beginning of the game and each player plays the game of his own choice. We are in for a chaotic afternoon!
Games without rules are unthinkable. Even worse is a society without laws. Try commuting through Los Angeles if there are no traffic guidelines. Submit to surgery at the hands of a physician who never earned a standard degree, but bought his at a degree mill because he liked the sound of Doctor in front of his name.
There are some “don’ts” which set us free. My twin granddaughters just turned three. We have survived the "terrible twos"--a world of “no-nos.” “No-nos” are a lifestyle for two-year-olds. I can’t imagine anyone being more loved than Alyssa and Kelsey Padgett. But their lives are filled with “nos” and “don’ts” and negative vibes because they are so well loved. The nos and don’ts that teach them to not pick up a pretty flaming coal, or play with an electrical outlet, or to run in the parking lot, are statutes of liberty to preserve and protect their best interests. The Ten Commandments are statutes of liberty to guard your good.
First Message in a Series on the Ten Commandments
