10 Commandments

Class reunions are interesting experiences. First, I have never gone back to my high school reunion because I lived outside the will of God back then and didn’t leave an honorable record. I figure I didn’t need to pick at old wounds.

So, the only class reunions I have attended are with my classmates at Johnson University. In my day, they called it a Bible College, but they say times change and we need to change with it. I’m not always sure about that idea.

But I will say it was nice to see many of my old classmates. But to be honest, they all look a lot older than they used to look. So, I got out the old yearbook and couldn’t believe that skinny red-headed kid that graduated back in 1973.

So much had changed and yet, some things never change.

This morning, we are going to take another look at our lives not from the mountaintop looking down but from the valley looking up.

I think you will be pleased with what you see.

Invocation

Almighty God, we come this morning to worship you and know that our efforts are weak at best. We do not comprehend your majesty or power. We see you from our mortal frame. Reveal yourself to us this morning in some small portion through your Word and your Son. Amen.

Message

You must wonder how it felt for Moses when he returned to the place where God spoke to him out of a burning bush.

Back then, he was surrounded by a flock of sheep. This time, two million people followed behind him.

In one of the great miracles of all time, God had parted the Red Sea for the Hebrews to escape the Egyptian army and then closed the sea around that army to destroy it. No one would ever forget that day.

Now it’s two months later and the Hebrews are now camped around the mountain of Sinai waiting for God Almighty to give the commandments by which they would live as a nation. Their constitution.

But things were a little dicey at that moment. God was residing on the mountain and all they could see was that it was covered with smoke and filled with fire where God had descended.

The whole mountain shook violently, and the scriptures say the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was giving His law to Moses, and it was scaring everyone so much that they put up barriers around the mountain to keep people from wandering to close and being killed.

These commandments, the Law of God, was not meant to be a ladder for the unsaved to climb their way into heaven. It was a glimpse into the person of God and the pattern of life He intended for His people.

God was not saying, “I’m giving you these commandments, so that by keeping them you may become my people.” Keeping any law, even this law, could not save them.

What God was saying was, “I am giving you these commandments because you are my people.”

Even now, God has not given us His commands in order to save us but because He has saved us, we should keep these laws.

The Law tells us how people who belong to God ought to live.

Somewhere along the way, a lot of Sunday schools classes gave the impression that God tried to save the Hebrews with the law and because they couldn’t do, God threw that plan out the window and sent His Son instead.

They look at the Old Testament as a colossal failure and see the New Testament as the remedy. God tried to work with mankind with the law but then decided to work with man by His grace.

There are even people who believe that we should have nothing to do with the Old Testament as it was a complete failure with mankind.

That is not only a complete misunderstanding of the Bible, but also a complete misunderstanding of the plan of God.

The whole Bible is a book of grace. God had one plan from the beginning to the end, and it all fits together.

God didn’t promise the Messiah after the Old Testament. He promised the Messiah in the very Garden of Eden when He said the Redeemer would crush the head of the serpent on the very day that sin entered the world.

Remember this: God has always saved His people by grace and through faith. We see that in the flood of Noah and the story of the Exodus.

There is only one God and there is only one story.

The Hebrews saw that two months ago with they witnessed what the power of grace could do at the Red Sea.

The Law was meant for people who have experienced the grace of God and by that grace have become His people.

Because we have experienced the grace of God at the cross and in the empty tomb, the Law has special meaning for us as well.

The apostle Paul would call sin as ‘breaking the law’ in his Roman letter. We would agree with that for sure.

Then the apostle John called sin the ‘falling short of the glory of God’. Some would be tempted to see this as a conflict or a contradiction, but it is not. It is a revelation.

If sin is both the ‘breaking of law’ and the ‘falling short of the glory of God’ are the same, then the Law is a picture of the glory of God. It’s simple math.

You have to chew this one over a little bit in your mind. Who was the only person to every fulfill the law and never sin? Jesus, of course. And who is the perfect image and glory of the only God? Jesus.

All I have to do is take the 10 commandments and work them backwards to get a glimpse of the very nature of God.

When God declared that ‘you should have no other gods before me’, it wasn’t a suggestion, it was a fact. There are no other gods because He is the one and only God. There is no one like Him.

You see how this works. Take that commandment which was stated as a ‘do not do this’ and if you look in a mirror, you will learn something about God.

When He told them that they must not make any graven images of Him, He was stating that no created thing could ever begin to describe Creator and would only confuse them about His greatness and glory.

I mean, how can you make an image of a being who creates countless nebula that are thousands of light years across. It’s not just a waste of time to try. It is an insult to the glory (the majesty) of our Creator.

Now let’s take a look at the commandments He gave about how we should treat one another. They too give insight to the character of God.

When He told us to honor our father and mother, He was describing how He looked upon us and how He felt about us. All fatherhood, all motherhood, in fact, all authority derives from the very nature of God.

The idea of a family was not an afterthought of creation, it was the seed from which all mankind would grow. Destroy the family and you destroy yourself. We are in His image and to discredit the family is to discredit God Himself.

Why should you not commit adultery? Because God is absolutely faithful, and infidelity has no place in the person of God.

Why should you not steal? Because God has promised to provide for you and to not steal is to deny that He will be there for us.

Why should you not lie? Again, you see the character of God revealed. God is truth and the thought of a lie is impossible with Him.

Why should you not covet or envy? Because God is His very nature is at peace and content in Himself. Envy reveals us, not Him.

God affirmed in the Law given at Mt. Sinai that He was content with His people. He loved them as He had made them and all they had to do was look at these laws and see what He was like and what they should be like.

The 10 Commandments are not some arbitrary set of rules that God tossed out to us. They were a direct reflection of His character and nature.

The greatest challenge for the people of God has always been to reflect that character of God in their lives and in their world.

When you stare long enough at these commandments, you begin to see the wonder and glory of God.

There is another purpose to God giving the 10 Commandments beside revealing the glory of His person. He also gave the 10 Commandments to reveal the struggles facing all mankind.

As much as God fulfills these commands, mankind struggles with them.

Let’s look at it from a parent’s perspective. I don’t have to tell my children watch television, get online or go play. They do that naturally.

No, the commands we give to children have to do with where they struggle. Like, ‘clean up your room’, ‘pick up your clothes’, and ‘don’t hit your brother’.

To be honest, some parents can give these commands to their children without even having to look up. They know them so well.

Jesus knows us as well. That’s why when they asked Him about the law, he summed them up to make it easier to remember.

He told them the most important commandment was to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all you soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’. He backed that one up with another command to love your neighbor as yourself.

Here was a glimpse of what a true believer looked like. They love God and their fellowman. What a perfect picture.

But like the 10 Commandments, Jesus was also pointing out the two places we will struggle the most as Christians.

He was saying, “You will struggle to love God with all your heart, and you will not find it easy to love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.” Ouch, Jesus is so right.

As much as we want to love or think that we love God, it is seldom with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength. If you doubt me, let me ask you, “When was the last time you told God how much you loved Him?” Be honest.

It’s not that we dislike God. It’s just we are more focused on ourselves that we tend to forget Him now and then.

That’s why it is harder to worship God than you think. Today, we will sing songs, give an offering and take of His cup and bread. But how deep with that worship go. Will you bear your soul to Him? Will you love Him for who He really is?

And what about our language? How easy it is to use His name in a way that does not honor Him or worse, defiles Him.

The truth is that we struggle to speak about God in a way that truly honors Him. Far too often, we don’t speak about Him at all with others.

Even the command to keep His Sabbath has fallen to the wayside. We are too busy and involved to actually set a whole day aside to worship Him and rest in Him.

No wonder we have real battles with authority. If we won’t bow before Him, who else in the world will we submit to?

Like the tip of the iceberg, our struggle to be like God meant us to be, ends up in ways that are so far from Him. Lies, anger, and hostility toward our fellowman are all signs of how far we have drifted.

One pastor called them the battle of our lives. I might call them the battle for our lives.

How about purity? God said that you should not commit adultery, but Jesus took it a step farther and told us we would struggle with keeping our very thoughts and mind clean.

When we think those immoral thoughts, we do not show the character of our Savior. No, we reveal the very character of our soul. Who of us can claim victory there?

Even being honest is a challenge sometimes. It is so easy to distort the truth, to exaggerate a story, to misrepresent the way things really are. Well, let’s be honest. It is just too easy to tell an outright lie.

But do you know the one commandment that strikes at the heart of all of us? It was when He told us not to covet what others have. Now that’s a real battle.

Every young person dreams of the day they can have a car, a home, a family, and a future. But no matter how well they do, they struggle when they see someone else doing better who does not work as hard as they do.

It is hard to be content in this world. It is too easy to say I want just one more thing. The world knows this and tempts us every day to consume, consume, consume.

These are the battles of our lives, are they not? They are the great struggles that we all face to some degree or another.

The psalmist was right. His Word is like a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. It shines into our souls, and when we look at what God is saying to us, we know that the real battle is within our hearts.

Look what all those Hebrews did when Moses shared the law with them. They declared, “We will do everything the Lord has said.”

But when you read the rest of the Old Testament, that promise looks more like a rather sad joke.

They never got a mile from Mt. Sinai before they began to break every one of those commandments.

Perhaps that is one of the hardest reasons for God giving us the Law: the Law shows us who we really are.

The Law brings us bad news, yes. But the law also is good because it shows us the truth. It makes us realize how much we need God to help us be like He intended.

That’s what the Pharisees missed when they met Jesus. Remember what Jesus said? “You diligently study the scriptures, yet you refuse to come to me.”

The first reason that you and I need Jesus Christ is not so you and I can have a richer, fuller and more satisfying life. Oh, He gives us that, but first reason is that we are sinners, and we need the grace of Jesus Christ.

I told you last week that the true Shepherd wants to deliver you to His Father safe and sound. To do that, He needs to bring us to the point that we can begin to live according to the law of God.

The Christian life is not a matter of believing in Jesus and then trying your best to live according to the law.

No! God’s promise is that when you believe in His Son, His Spirit will come into your life and give you the power to be what you were meant to be.

Remember the promise of God spoken by Ezekiel. (36:26-27) “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove you heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

Charles was a man who was serving time in prison because he was a thief. Stealing had been his lifestyle and he was good at it. But one day he was caught, and his world changed. It changed in ways he didn’t imagine. You see, he found a Bible in that prison, and he read it. He found Jesus Christ and was never the same.

But when the day came for his release, he was scared. Most of his old friends were crooks and it would be easy to fall into those old patterns.

The one thought that haunted him was the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not steal’. Study as he may, he kept coming back to that statement, “You shall not steal”.

Then God’s Spirit moved in him, and he saw this command in a new light. It wasn’t just a command not to steal. Now it was a promise from God, “You shall not steal”.

Don’t you see. Those 10 commandments are 10 promises from God. With His help, you will not lie, you will not steal, nor will you commit adultery. His Spirit will change your very heart. Now that is grace!

Benediction

Ezekiel 36:26-27

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove you heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”