Top Ten

Top Ten

Exodus 20:1-17

November 3, 2019 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Leo Tolstoy is one of the twentieth century’s most famous authors, best known for works like War and Peace and Anna Karenina—neither of which, I admit, I have read, but I have seen the movies! Anyway, early in life, Tolstoy joined the army, sowed his “wild oats,” and wrote broadly on issues he believed would spread enlightenment to his culture. In the midst of all of that, he held himself to a strict moral standard. He gave up things like tobacco, hunting, alcohol, and meat to try to make himself a better person. He wrote a list of rules for himself and believed that by following them to the letter, he could make himself into a perfect person. He studied everything he could put his hands on, trying to achieve intellectual perfection. He did exercises to enhance his strength and agility, trying to get to physical perfection. His goal, he once admitted, was not trying to be perfect in his own eyes or in the eyes of God. Rather, his hope was “to be better in the eyes of other people.” Then life happened to him. His brother Nicholas died at age 37. He came into contact with human evil. Suddenly, his pursuit of perfection seemed pointless. What was the use, if it could all fall apart so easily? What did all of his rules, disciplines and habits matter if life was meaningless (cf. Brooks, The Second Mountain, Kindle edition, pgs. 26-27)?

Many of us treat what we know as the Ten Commandments the same way Tolstoy treated his own self-made rules and disciplines. We’ve believed that if we just follow these rules, if we just “do” this “top ten” list of God’s most important rules, then life will go well for us. And then, like in Tolstoy’s experience, life happens and it’s easy to wonder what the point of it all is. We kept the rules, we did the right things, why didn’t life work out the way we think it should? Well, perhaps it’s because that’s not what these ten commandments were (and are) for.

This morning, we’re continuing our look at the life of Moses, the reluctant prophet, and I know I keep saying this, but this morning we come to one of the most important events in his life. One of the titles often given to Moses is “lawgiver,” though he doesn’t really give the law so much as communicate the law from God to the people (cf. Enns, NIV Application Commentary: Exodus, pg. 412). These people, you most likely remember, were once slaves to the most powerful nation on earth at the time, Egypt, and through a series of spectacular, miraculous events, they have escaped, led by Moses, former prince and former shepherd. Now this group of people who have only known one way of life. They’ve known Egypt. For generations, they’ve known how the Egyptians lived life and they’ve known how the Egyptians commanded them to live their lives. As I said a couple of weeks ago, the easy part was getting the people out of Egypt. (It only took ten plagues and a sea crossing.) The hard part is getting Egypt out of the people. If they are going to survive and succeed, they will need a different way of life than they have had in slavery. If they are going to become God’s people, they’ve got to look more like their God than the Egyptians gods they have been used to. And so, at Mount Sinai, God gives the people a set of laws to live by, but the point is not ever the laws. The point of all this is God himself.

So the Hebrews have been on the road for a while now, out of Egypt, through the sea, and now they have camped at Mount Sinai. It’s also called the Mountain of God, or Horeb, and is generally believed to be the same mountain where God called Moses through a burning bush (3:1). It was during that encounter that God had told Moses, “when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain” (3:12). So Moses has led the people to this place, this mountain. This is the mountain we have used in the graphics for this sermon series, or at least this mountain is the traditional site of Mount Sinai. Rachel and I traveled there in 2012. We left Jerusalem early in the morning and traveled down to the desert, then all along the Dead Sea until we crossed the border into Egypt. Our Israeli guide and bus driver could not take us into Egypt, so we had to unload all of our luggage and pull it through this no-man’s-land between the two countries. It was one of the most unsettling feelings I’ve ever had; we’re walking along with people from both sides staring at us, out in the open and I’m thinking, “What did I do, bringing my twelve-year-old daughter here?” Once on the other side, we got on another bus (this one with an armed guard) and we made another long journey through the desert to a small town called St. Catherine. Just outside of that town is a monastery, also named St. Catherine, and that monastery encompasses the traditional burning bush. It stands at the foot of the traditional Mount Sinai. We arrived around sunset, but the sight was still impressive. Sinai is an imposing, craggy mountain. It was hard for me to imagine Moses, as an 80-something man, climbing up and down this mountain to talk with God. I mean, my dad is 81, and he’s in pretty good shape, but he wouldn’t want to climb this mountain four times in just a few days, which is what Moses did (cf. Vander Laan, Fire on the Mountain Discovery Guide, pg. 150). Most people who climb it, which we did not get to do, start in the middle of the night so they can make it to the top before the sun comes up, before it gets hot. It takes three hours or so to make the summit (cf. Hamilton, Moses, pgs. 109-111)—for a person in fairly good health. Remember: Moses was 81 when he made at least four climbs to the summit. Each time he received more instructions from God, and on one of those treks, he received ten words for the people down below.

By the way, these are never called the “ten commandments” in the Bible. They are called the “ten words,” probably at least in part because Exodus 20 begins like this: “God spoke all these words…” (20:1). These are words, directions, instructions given—to whom, then? These ten words are pretty clearly directed at the heads of the families who were then expected to guide their family to live in this way (cf. Goldingay, Exodus & Leviticus for Everyone, pgs. 79-80). But to simply take this as a list of individual behaviors is to miss the larger context. These words are addressed more broadly to a people, a community. Certainly, individuals were expected to live in certain ways, but the first goal of these words is to transform the larger community. If individuals live in a certain way, the community takes on a particular character. And if the community were to take on this sort of character, then those around would see something of God’s nature lived out through the people. The main goal of these ten words is not to control behavior; it is to tell us and the world something about who God is. The only way many in the world will ever know what God is like is if his people demonstrate what he is like by their—by our—lives (cf. Enns 411, 431-432).

So what do these ten words actually say? Obviously, we don’t have time this morning to go in depth with all ten individually, so what I hope to do in the time remaining is to give you some overall guidance on how to read these words, and then we’ll talk about what relevance they still have for us today. An in-depth exploration will have to wait for another time. Now, the first thing we need to know is that there are ten of them, and though we call them “commandments,” there is more here about what we shouldn’t do than what we should do. Eight of the ten are written negatively (Dunnam, Communicator’s Commentary: Exodus, pg. 248). We might call them the “don’t do’s” or the “thou shalt nots.” Sometimes you will see them represented on two tablets, but not evenly distributed. That’s because four of the ten deal with our relationship with God, and the other six deal with our relationship with other people (Dunnam 248). The order is important; we cannot get our relationships with other people right if we don’t first get our relationship with God right. But it’s also true that if our relationship with people isn’t right, our relationship with God will be affected. The two are inseparable, which is why Jesus says the greatest command (singular) is to love God and to love people (cf. Matthew 22:37-40). That sounds like two commands, but it’s not. It’s two sides of the same coin, or two sides of the same stone tablet. At the very center, these ten words are about relationships because we were made for community. We were made for each other. And life simply works better when relationships are running smoothly.

One more thing before we run through the commandments themselves: these things are not wrong just because Moses said so. They’re not wrong just because they are written in the Bible. They are wrong because that’s the way the universe is wired (cf. Dunnam 252). They are wrong because no culture, no society, no world can survive if adultery, murder, stealing and so on are allowed to be practiced without restraint. This is the kind of God we have pledged ourselves to—a God who knows best how the world works, how human relationships work, how we can thrive. The question for us is: will we believe and trust that he knows best? So, now, let’s look very quickly at these commandments, these “top ten” words.

As I said, the first four deal with our relationship with God. “You shall have no other gods before me” (20:3) is about priority, and it would have been especially important to those who just came out of Egypt where Pharoah himself was a god. It’s equally important to us who are surrounded by gods grasping for our attention. “You shall not make any idols” (20:4-6) is part of getting Egypt out of the Hebrews. In Egypt, all of the gods were represented by statues or paintings, but this God they met at Sinai demanded that there should be no physical representation of him, lest they begin to think the power of God was in the thing instead of in God himself. You can think of this as another part of having nothing else in first place, not even a cross or church building or some other religious symbol because those things have no power. Then we hear, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God” (20:7), and for most of my life, I have heard that interpreted as, “Don’t cuss. Don’t use ‘Jesus’ or ‘God’ as a swear word.” Now, that’s good advice, but that’s not really what this word was getting at. In the ancient world, to know the name of a god was to have some measure of power over it. It was believed you could use the name of the god to manipulate the god and get what you wanted. “Misusing the name of God” happens when we try to use God to get the things we want. It’s like the prayer I heard during a prayer meeting many years ago: “God, there are enough of us here that you have to give us what we want.” Now, let’s be honest: many of us pray similar things, or at least react badly if things don’t happen the way we think they should. What will happen if your prayers (whatever they are) aren’t answered the way you think they should be in this week’s election? Don’t misuse the name of God means don’t try to use God’s name to manipulate him. He is God; we are not. And that is why we “remember the Sabbath day” (20:8-11). One of only two positive commandments, this one seeks to break up our self-centeredness and, in some ways, force us to take a break in the week to spend time with God. I am terrible at this. I am fairly disciplined at taking a day off, but I’m not so good at making it a sabbath, a day of rest dedicated to God. Usually it’s just a day when I catch up on everything I’ve neglected during the week, while the thing I have neglected the most, my soul, goes untended. I wonder how you do on making time for sabbath.

So—four words designed to connect us with God, then six words designed to connect us with each other, to help us see God in each other. The six begin with what is, perhaps, the most basic relationship any of us have, or at least it’s the first relationship we all have: the one with our father and mother. And the word here is “honor” (20:12). Now, as a father, I’d like to interpret that word as, “Do everything they tell you to do,” but that would be less than honest! Okay, it would be a lie. “Honor” was a huge word in ancient near eastern culture; it’s still a big idea in the middle east today. The Hebrew word means giving value, treating with respect, recognizing their worth as children of God (cf. Hamilton 117-118; Dunnam 261). We’re going to come back to this commandment in a few weeks, because I know it’s not always easy to do this, especially with parents who have been abusive or neglectful. Here’s the quick bottom line: you can’t control or change the way your parents have treated you, but you can control the way you treat them. We can show honor even if we don’t believe they are worth honor. We do this in part because it is an example to our children of how things should be, of how God desires it to be. “Honor your father and mother,” God says, “so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” As Paul points out, this is the first command with a promise (cf. Ephesians 6:2).

And from that foundational relationship, we move to four commands or words directed toward the larger community. Words six, seven and eight are only two words in Hebrew: “No murder” (20:13), “No adultery” (20:14), and “No stealing” (20:15; Dunnam 263). Clear and to the point. God is not messing around here. By the way, many of us may have learned that first one as “thou shalt not kill,” but the word is much more specific; it describes killing someone without warrant (cf. Goldingay 81). All three of these break society, break community. Murder takes a life; adultery steals a marriage; theft destroys commerce and someone’s livelihood. Then we add to that list “don’t lie” (20:16); lying can steal a person’s reputation or destroy their life. When we engage in these things, we harm others and we put ourselves at the center of the world. And we not only harm those who are directly affected; we harm others as well. A neighbor of mine in another community decided to run for office. He ran on a platform of being a strong Christian, of reforming the city, of making a real difference. I believed in what he stood for and supported him. However, once he was elected, he began abusing the authority that had been given to him. Lying and stealing were hallmarks of his administration, and not only were those of us who knew him hurt, the entire body of Christ was harmed. The community was broken. There’s a reason these words come directly from God; there’s a reason they are so important. No murder. No adultery. No stealing. No lying. Community is more important.

Then we come to the final word, which is directed at our motives. Even before we engage in any of the actions just mentioned, we desire, we covet. God says don’t (20:17). Jesus himself restates this command in his sermon on the mount, in several different ways. When he talks about adultery, he says even looking at a women lustfully is the same as adultery (cf. Matthew 5:28). And he says that being angry with a brother or sister is as bad as murder (cf. Matthew 5:21-22). In other words, the intention is where sin starts. The heart is what matters. Jesus’ half-brother James picks up on this same idea in his letter. He writes, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (4:1-4). The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.

So, yeah, that’s a really quick trip through the ten words, but I wanted to get to two more quick questions before we turn to the communion table. The first is this: do we still have to follow these ten words? I mean, after all, these are Old Testament laws, and aren’t we people of grace, not law? Yes, we are saved by grace and not by following the law, but here’s how that Old Testament law thing works for people of grace: we live the way God calls us to live because that shows the world what kind of God we serve. We live this way as an act of gratitude to God for the grace he has given us, for the way he has loved us. Rather than looking for loopholes, we should be looking to live in ways that better demonstrate our love for God. Jesus said he did not come to abolish the law; he came to fulfill it (cf. Matthew 5:17; Dunnam 248).

And that brings us to the biggest mistake we make as believers in regards to these ten words. These words, these commandments are for us, for God’s people. God did not deliver these words to the Egyptians, or to the Canaanites, or to the Moabites. He gave these words directly to his people. We make a mistake when we expect the world around us to abide by God’s standard for life. We should rightly be concerned when God’s people don’t live this way, but when the world doesn’t live this way, it should not shock us nor should it cause us to point fingers at them. What kind of message does that send? It says we will never accept you until you get your act together, but Christian faith is not a matter of proper conduct. We come to Jesus and he cleans us up, not the other way around. As one scholar put it, “To single out the Ten Commandments and set them up as a standard for conduct for unbelievers or American society in general indicates not only a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Ten Commandments, but of the good news itself. Christ died and rose to provide another way” (Enns 432-433).

It is that “other way” we remember and celebrate when we come to the communion table. When we take the bread and receive the juice, we remember how Jesus gave his body and his blood, how he gave his very life to save us from sin. We often think it would be much easier to just follow the top ten rules and then we’d get in good with God. But how many of us could keep them perfectly every time, every moment, every day? Grace may be hard for us to grasp, but it’s far easier to live into. And grace is what Jesus offers us at the cross. Grace is what Jesus offers us at the table. So, as we rehearse the story, as we bless these simple, ordinary elements, as we come forward to receive these two tokens, let’s be thankful for grace. Let’s be thankful that Jesus came, not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it and to offer us a place in his family. So come to the table, people of grace, and give thanks for the one who loves us even when we don’t get it all right. Let’s pray.