Ten Words: A Study Through The 10 Commandments...Week 1

We are starting a new series this week…I’m calling it “10 Words: A study through the 10 Commandments.” While the name probably gives it away, I’ll tell you anyway; we will be studying the 10 Commandments. We will examining them one by one, similar to how we did the Egyptian plagues. We will be answering a number of questions, such as,

Why did God give the Israelites the 10 Commandments?

Do we still need to follow the 10 commandments?

Which Commandment is the most important, or are they all the same?

What separates the 10 commandments from the other laws of the Old Testament?

How many of the 10 Commandments are found in the New Testament?

Why have the 10 Commandments become a political issue?

Let’s pray, then we will get started.

PRAY

The reason I decided to cover the 10 Commandments after the Egyptian plagues is because God gave them to Moses not long after the Jews were freed from Egyptian slavery. Few of us have ever stopped to think about how much these Commandments have shaped the world around us. The very foundation of western society, everything from our laws to our justice system was formed with the 10 Commandments in mind…regardless of how imperfect they might be today.

Many people mistakenly look at the Ten Commandments as a set of rules that, if followed, will guarantee entrance into heaven after death. In contrast, the purpose of the Ten Commandments is to force people to realize that they cannot perfectly obey the Law (Romans 7:7-11), and are therefore in need of God’s mercy and grace. Despite the claims of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16, no one can perfectly obey the Ten Commandments (Ecclesiastes 7:20). The Ten Commandments demonstrate that we have all sinned (Romans 3:23) and are therefore in need of God’s mercy and grace, available only through faith in Jesus Christ.

Historical Information

In the ancient world, was there anything like the 10 commandments? Is there another example of people claiming that their gods gave them a set of standards to live by? The answer is both yes and no. As far as a monotheistic faith, where people believe in one God, who communicated to the people to institute a set standard of conduct…the answer is no. The 10 Commandments were the first. However, we do have law codes that make distinctions between right and wrong, earlier than the 10 Commandments.

The Code of Ur-Nammu

The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving law code. This text was written on clay tablets in the Sumerian language and is reckoned to have been produced towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC. The Code of Ur-Nammu may be divided into two parts, the first is the prologue and the second is the laws themselves. Apart from being the oldest surviving law code, the Code of Ur-Nammu is also important as it gives us a glimpse of the way justice was conceived in ancient Sumerian society. The laws are arranged in casuistic form of if-(crime), then-(punishment) — a pattern to be followed in nearly all subsequent codes. For the oldest extant law-code known to history, it is considered remarkably advanced, because it institutes fines of monetary compensation for bodily damage, as opposed to the later lex talionis (‘eye for an eye’) principle of Babylonian law; however, murder, robbery, adultery and rape were capital offenses.

Two major difference between this ancient code of laws and the 10 Commandments

The author

The Bible says that the 10 Commandments are from a divine source

2. The intent behind the laws

The 10 Commandments were less about behavior and more about the heart

Most scholars believe that God gave Moses the 10 commandments about 3 or 4 months after they were freed from Egyptian slavery…so it was not long. Think for a moment about the situation that the Israelites were in.

Upwards of 2 million people left Egypt, with all of their animals and worldly goods. All the people knew, aside from the stories passed down to them by oral tradition was Egyptian culture. All they knew were the Egyptian gods and goddesses. They knew nothing about God or how to live for Him. Imagine you are Moses and Aaron trying to teach the people about Yahweh, that there is only 1 God, the creator of the universe and humanity. It make sense that God would have given the Israelites the 10 Commandments so soon after leaving Egypt. The people needed a set of principles to live by.

Let’s do a quick overview:

The first four commandments deal with our relationship with God. The last six commandments deal with our relationships with one another. The Ten Commandments are recorded in the Bible in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21 and are as follows: The first four commandments in the Bible is as follows:

1) “You shall have no other gods before me.”

This command is against worshiping any god other than the one true God. All other gods are false gods.

2) “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 worship 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 generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

This command is against making an idol, a visible representation of God. There is no image we can create that can accurately portray God. To make an idol to represent God is to worship a false god.

3) “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses His name.”

This is a command against taking the name of the Lord in vain. We are not to treat God’s name lightly. We are to show reverence to God by only mentioning Him in respectful and honoring ways.

4) “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens 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.”

This is a command to set aside the Sabbath (Saturday, the last day of the week) as a day of rest dedicated to the Lord.

5) “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”

This is a command to always treat one’s parents with honor and respect.

6) “You shall not murder.”

This is a command against the premeditated murder of another human being.

7) “You shall not commit adultery.”

This is a command against having sexual relations with anyone other than one’s spouse.

8) “You shall not steal.”

This is a command against taking anything that is not one’s own, without the permission of the person to whom it belongs.

9) “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”

This is a command prohibiting testifying against another person falsely. It is essentially a command against lying.

10) “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.”

This is a command against desiring anything that is not one’s own. Coveting can lead to breaking one of the commandments listed above: murder, adultery, and theft. If it is wrong to do something, it is wrong to desire to do that same something.

For those familiar with the story, it’s normally told as though God spoke with Moses, so Moses goes up to Mt. Sinai, where God gives him the Commandments. While Moses was up on the mountain, the people become restless…thinking Moses had died, so they have Aaron fashion a Golden Calf for them to worship. Before I explain what is wrong with that…think about the god’s and goddesses of Egypt. Many of them were represented by an animal form…that is why they asked Aaron to make the calf…again, that is all they knew.

There is a problem with this telling of the story though. For example, in Ex. 20, God tells Moses to gather the people …so Moses obeys and everyone assembles at the foot of Mt. Sinai. It was at this point where God first speaks the Commandments to the people of Israel. Not only that, but between Ex. 20 and Ex. 31, God also lays out many other laws…including instructions on how to make the ark of the covenant.the story of Moses going up the Mountain and God inscribing the commandments on stone doesn’t happen until Ex. 31…while the story of the Golden Calf happens in Ex. 32.

What appears to happen is that after God spoke to the Israelites, God then Commanded Moses to climb the mountain, so God could write the laws down.

Exodus 31:18

“When He had finished speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, He gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God.”

So, before Moses went up the Mountain, God had already spoken the commandments to the people of Israel.

I think that is enough context. I’ve decided to approach each of the commandments in 2 general areas:

What the commandment would have meant to the Israelites when it was given (O.T. meaning).

What the commandment means to us (N.T. meaning).

Now, let’s go ahead and start in on the first commandment.

The First Word!

Exodus 20:1–3

“Then God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before Me.”

O.T. significance of the first Commandment!

As I mentioned before, the first 4 commandments are about our relationship with God, while the last 6 are about our relationship with others. What truly sets the 10 Commandments apart from other ancient codes of law are the first 4 laws or instructions. No other known list of laws prohibit people from worshiping other gods. If God needed to drive anything home to the Israelites, it was that Yahweh is the one true God, and that nothing or no one is His equal…and that is exactly how this commandment begins…by God reminding the Israelites that He is the one who delivered them from Egyptian slavery, not Moses or Aaron.

The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 2: Exodus (No Other Gods)

Though we do not list verse 1 as one of the Ten Commandments, there is a sense in which a commandment is implicit. We are to know and acknowledge God as the One who has delivered us, and as the first word of the Bible says, as the One who created us. So the commandment is: “Know Me! Acknowledge Me! Remember Me! I am the Lord your God.”

The first commandment is also repeated in the 5th book of the Bible:

Deuteronomy 6:4–5

““Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

This first commandment is affirmed in a remarkable sentence, which for the Jew is the heart of the Torah: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one!” (Deut. 6:4). The Jews called this the Shema, and it is the word most often on their mouths in worship, and to that description of God is added the word, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength”

This was a radical break from other deities. For most people back then, you worshiped the gods, made sacrifices and simply hoped that they were pleased with you. There was no way to determine what made them happy or angry. Not only that, but the gods were ranked, in order of importance, depending on their function.

From our last series, in addition to everything else we’ve talked about, in regard to the O.T., the worship of gods and goddesses was the absolute norm back then. For that society, the question was not if you were going to worship a “god,” the question was, which god would you worship. Every culture had their own deities. The reason that God started with commands that concerned the people’s relationship with Him was because, in Israel, lawbreaking was first of all an offense against the Lord, not just a disruption of order or an offense against other people.

In a very significant way, God gave the O.T. law to the people of Israel, in order to show them what right and wrong looked like. However, it’s a misnomer that people did not know right from wrong before the 10 Commandments. Since the fall, humanity has always had an inborn sense of what is right and what is wrong. The ancient law codes, from outside of Israel confirm that. Not only that, but we can look at characters from scripture, before the 10 Commandments or the rest of the law was given having a sense of good vs evil.

Genesis 4:4–7

“Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.””

Cain had a sense that God did not accept his sacrifice and then plotted to kill his brother.

If God was only concerned about the traditional ideas of right vs wrong, He would have started with You should not murder or steal or lie. There is a difference, however, between the type of right and wrong that allows a society to function (things that we do to get along with others), vs a right and wrong as it relates to our creator and how to live righteously before Him. God says that the number one thing that the Israelites had to understand, in order to live rightly, before the God that freed them from slavery was to make sure that He (the Great I AM) is number one in their lives. God knew that if they got this one right, the rest would be much easier to understand and practice.

Pantheism to Monotheism

That is a slice of what “Have no other God’s before me” would have meant to the Israelites. It would have been a tremendous shift in their worldview....one where there were multiple gods and goddesses, each serving a different functions to exercising faith in Yahweh, the one true God, creator of heaven and earth and everything therein.

N.T. significance of the first Commandment

Today, many people look at these ancient civilizations, and instantly deem them as less sophisticated and even ignorant....I mean, how could anyone believe that the sun in the sky was a god? But the reality is, we are no different today…the objects of our worship is the only thing that has changed.

Most Christians understand that the principles behind the 10 commandments are still for today. I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to argue something that is already understood well. That said, there can be some confusion behind why the ten commandments are still for today, yet the vast majority of the law is not. That is a fair question…however, to understand the answer, one must understand the purpose behind the law…meaning, why God gave the law in the first place. This is why we started with the O.T. significance of the first commandment.

The purpose of the first commandment, as well as the parts we do not observe today was to teach the Israelites how to live for God . Additionally, the law was put into place to show humanity that apart from God, true righteousness or simply “being a good person” is not enough. Once Jesus arrived, He made His purpose clear:

Matthew 5:17–20

““Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

When Jesus refers to the “righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, He is talking about those who think they follow the law…but in fact, do not understand the law at all. To the Pharisees, if a person kept each individual commandment, then God was pleased, regardless of the persons heart or intent behind keeping the commandments. Jesus says that our righteousness does not come from keeping each individual commandment…rather, it comes from our heart and our motives.

This idea is not new to the N.T.; even in the O.T. we see men like David, who declared that what God desires is a broken and contrite heart, not sacrifices. It wasn’t until Christ though that this understanding of the law took hold.

Mark 12:28–31

“One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.””

Here in Mark 12, Jesus is speaking with the Jewish leaders…the scribes and Pharisees. They are trying to trap Jesus into saying something against the law, so they can accuse Him of blasphemy…which was considered a capitol crime among the Jews. After Jesus answered a couple of questions, one of the men asked Jesus which of the commandments is the most important. Again, this was a difficult question, as all aspects of the law were viewed equally…which, BTW, is not necessarily how God designed it. So, Jesus answered the man by combining all of the commandments into 2 statements

To love God first.

To love your neighbor as yourself

Jesus says that loving God above all and loving your neighbor are what the law is all about. The religious leaders understood the first, but were blind to the second. The importance of loving our neighbor is scattered all throughout the N.T.

Why is it important that we continue keeping the 1st Commandment? Because it is the first commandment that it keeps our hearts in check.

Psalm 139: 23-24

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.”

When we read, “You shall have no other gods before me,” we ask ourselves the question, “Am I putting anyone or anything above God today?” We remind our hearts that He is overall and in charge of our lives and that is a safe and blessed place to be.

Martin Luther

“Whatever thy heart clings to and relies upon, that is properly thy God.” Security, position, power, social prestige, love of country, love of family, profession, Job—it is not uncommon for any of these to replace God as our first commitment

In short, God demands that those who claim to belong to Him keep Him first at all times and above everything in their lives. When we do this, when we keep God as the number one object of worship and obedience, the other commandments…just like with the Israelites, become clearer and better understood. God does not desire for us to simply follow right from wrong…anyone can do that. God desires that our hearts and minds be dedicated to Him, without reservation or distraction. Similar to the ancient Israelites, who constantly fell short of the law, we too constantly fall short of keeping God number 1 in our lives.

Thankfully, our righteousness is found through our faith in Christ and not the perfect keeping of the law.