Exodus 20:1-3 God s Top Ten Keep God First 1 Rev. Brian North July 12 th, 2015 This morning we begin a new series of messages that will take us through the summer. This series is titled, God s Top Ten and will go through the Ten Commandments. Today s message will serve largely as an introduction to the Ten Commandments, while touching on the first Commandment as well, and then next week we ll talk more about the first commandment as we look at the second, because they are closely connected. The Ten Commandments are, in some ways, one of the most mis-understood parts of the Bible. They are seen by so many people as a list of rules that put strict boundaries on life so that there s no joy in living. They re seen as fun- that suckers. That s how people perceive them, oftentimes. I think, however, people with that view of the Ten Commandments haven t really looked closely at what the they actually say, because: Many of them are moral and ethical boundaries for life that most anyone would agree with. Take for example, the command: Don t commit murder. That seems pretty universally accepted, and for people who don t follow it, society has agreed that there should be severe consequences. Or, Don t steal. Most people in their right minds would agree with that, too. Don t commit adultery. Even in a world where sexual ethics have loosened an awful lot, most people still do not believe that adultery is ethical. Don t lie. What parent tells their kid that it s ok to lie? Again, lying is frowned upon by the vast majority of the world s population. There s four out of 10 that people can affirm pretty much no matter what. Honor your father and your mother and Don t covet other people s stuff are two that maybe some people wrestle with a little bit, but even these two aren t really stealing anyone s fun in life. I mean, honor your parents seems fair enough, and certainly no parent is ever going to disagree with it and while it s fun to look at other people s homes or cars or boats or vacations or other things that might be better than what we have, I think most people realize that coveting that stuff all the time really isn t a fun way to go through life. So that s 6 out of 10 where by-and-large, most people would agree that these set up boundaries in life that actually are good, and that crossing them actually sucks joy out of life and leads to problems and
complications in life. 2 Now: The Ten Commandments are grouped into two categories, both of which deal with relationship. The six I just mentioned deal with our relationships with people. They provide some common-sense boundaries on how people are to interact with one another, so that we would have good and healthy relationships with one another. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, of course. Take marriage, for example. Following these six rules will help you in your marriage. But if all you do is follow these six, your marriage is still going to be in trouble. For instance, if your wife says to you, Gee honey, I just haven t felt connected to you lately, like there s some distance between us, because we haven t been able to sit down and talk...and I guess, to be honest, I haven t felt loved because of that emotional separation. If your wife says something like that to you, and you respond, Well, gee sweetie, I m not sure what the problem is. I mean I haven t stolen from you haven t lied to you or committed adultery or even coveted the guy s wife next door. What else do you need to feel loved? That just isn t going to fly, right? I mean, with that kind of response, she just might break the 6 th commandment: Don t murder. So these six are the basic, foundational rules for getting along with the people in our lives, and most of the world would actually affirm these as good and needed. In fact, if anything, when you take a look at them, you have to kind of question, Did the Israelites need God to give these to them on stone tablets in order to follow them? Seems like common sense. So those are the six that deal with relationships between people, and they come as numbers 5-10. The first four commandments also deal with relationship, but with them it s our relationship with God that they address. And I think that s where the rub is for people who have a problem with the Ten Commandments, because they don t want to acknowledge God. People don t want to keep the Sabbath holy because they don t want to dedicate a day to the Lord. The idea of rest is great. In fact, most people would happily rest for all seven days if they could get paid to do it. My family just spent the last week on vacation, and it was fantastic. But setting it aside as a day particularly dedicated to the Lord and rejuvenating our relationship with Him is something that does not sit well with people. A huge
fun-sucker for a lot of people is keeping the name of the Lord holy, and not misusing it. One of my daughters had a friend over a couple weeks ago, and I couldn t help but notice that she frequently used the phrase, Oh my gosh. And it was so refreshing because most kids let alone their parents don t. Unfortunately, it s the exception, rather than the rule. People see the no idols rule as a huge stumbling block to embracing the Ten Commandments, too. Occasionally, the idols are of an explicitly spiritual nature like a golden statue of Buddah or something like that but a lot of our idols are stuff like our bank accounts, or the car we drive, the boat we own, or the home we live in. They are the things that symbolize what is actually our god. Here on the eastside, they tend to symbolize things like power, status, and prestige. And that brings us to: The first commandment: You shall have no other gods before me. For people who have a negative attitude toward the Ten Commandments, and see them as sucking all the fun out of life, I think in the end, it really starts with this one. The six that have to do with our relationships with other people are not so difficult to agree with. And numbers 2, 3, and 4 about our relationship with God are problematic for some people, but they re only problematic because of this first one: You shall have no other gods before me. It s seen as a restriction on life. We want other gods. We want to put other things up at the top of our list of priorities. We want to put our career there, or wealth, or the attention of others, our social status, or any of a number of other things we d like there, most all of which are born out of a sense of pride. Pride is the key stumbling block to following this first commandment. Pride gets in the way, and we believe that we are the reason we have successes in life, that we are the reason we have the talents we have, that we are the reason we have the accomplishments and the accolades and everything else that s good in life. We want to have as our god things that we have a degree of control over. We can t control the God of the universe, but we can have some measure of control over the things we tend to put in His place. And that s a matter of pride. 3
4 But here s one of the things that s awesome about the Ten Commandments: they re not a list of rules for life that come out of the blue. There s a context for them. And it s the context that gets us out of this place of pride, and conveniently, the context is summarized in the verse right before the first commandment, in Exodus 20:2 when God says, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery (Exodus 20:2). This verse is key to understanding the Ten Commandments, starting with the first one, and then all the rest that flow out of it. There are two things to highlight from this verse. First, and connected to this idea of our pride getting in the way of acknowledging God: It is clear that God has brought the Israelites out of Egypt. He is the one who s delivered them out of slavery. He s the one who has done this, not themselves. It s not that they had no part in it, obviously, they did. But with out the Lord, it wouldn t have happened. This is God s act of grace, and the commandments that come out of this are an extension and continuation of that grace. In fact, in their day, and we find this out from documents from the Ancient Near East from 3,000-5,000 years ago or so, when a king and his army conquered another country, the king would produce a document that pronounced his triumph over the other people. I am your king who conquered you, who now rules over you. It was a declaration of victory, and laying down of the new law for the people who had been conquered. In this verse, however, we see God not proclaiming triumph over people, but rather proclaiming grace for people. It s about God s action on behalf of the Jewish people, not over and against them or over and against other people it s about what God has done for His people. And that is all grace. Secondly, we see here the personal nature of God, and the relationship between God and His people. I am the Lord your God And it s not your in the sense of ownership of course. We don t own God. It s about relationship. There s a personal connection. That personal connection then gets emphasized when we get into the commandments, where they are spoken not to you in the plural sense, but you in the singular. You, Jim You, Barbara You, Bob You each of you, individually you shall have no other gods before Yahweh, your God. God s Top Ten is for you and
me as individuals, not just you collectively. This isn t a y all or all y all as though God is from Texas or as if God only cares about the community as a whole and not the individual. Rather, God is deeply invested in, and cares deeply about, the individual person and seeks to shape our response to His grace. He seeks to keep each of us on the straight and narrow path in relationship with Him, and then in our relationships with others as the commandments continue. I m curious: How many of you would say that you lament that the Ten Commandments, and our Christian faith more broadly, have lost their place in our society? Most of us, it looks like. If the Ten Commandments (and the Christian faith) are ever going to return to a place of prominence in our community, it will have to begin with individuals like you and me living by them, and living out our faith. It s going to happen one Christian at a time. If we want the Ten Commandments to return to a place of prominence in our community, it won t happen through governmental legislation; it won t happen through some grand proclamation by some famous singer or actor; it won t even happen through a church mailer or advertisement in the community or a sermon series that uses game show graphics to communicate the Ten Commandments. It will happen because Christians like you and me live by them, and then connect with other individuals around us, and introduce people to this God of grace. Then, the Ten Commandments will once again be seen as a blessing and a Top Ten list worth clinging to and allowing to govern our lives. In preparing this message, I came across a quote from Ronald Reagan, from about 13 years prior to his election as President that I thought was insightful in thinking through this. Regan said, We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions (Ronald Reagan). i God s Ten Commandments are for you and me individually, and we are accountable to God and His Top Ten. And through our individual response, we then collectively will impact the world around us and impact the Kingdom of God. You and I are to have no other gods before us. Many in the 5
world today reject that. In fact, to paraphrase Reagan, a lot of people would say that it s not society that s broken, it s this commandment that is broken, and that it needs fixing or rejecting. But it s not the commandment that is the problem, it s individuals. Too many have rejected God and rejected his Top Ten. And unfortunately, that includes people in the church. Some Christians write off the Old Testament, including the Ten Commandments, as though none of it is valid. But that s not what Jesus believed. For instance, Jesus was asked about the Commandments. Specifically, he was asked which one was the greatest. In response, Jesus said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matthew 22:37-40). In that response, Jesus summarizes the Ten Commandments in their two groups the first four that are concerned with our relationship with God, and the rest that are concerned with our relationships with other people. Jesus affirms the Ten Commandments. Jesus further said that he didn t come to abolish the law. It s still relevant. It s the measuring stick by which you can tell if you are loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and whether you are loving your neighbor as yourself. They are still important and necessary in our lives. I want to wrap this all up with a story. During the days of the Gold Rush, a young man and his bride set out across the country to make their fortunes. Somewhere along the way, they drank some contaminated water, and the young bride became ill and died before they could reach Fort Kearney in Nebraska. Heartbroken, the young man took her body to the highest hill and buried it, using the wagon bed to make a coffin. He drove down some wooden stakes to mark the grave, thinking that he would go on West and later come back. But the more he thought about it, the more he was certain that he couldn t go on. He said to himself, I ll forget where this is; I will never remember it. So, he retraced his steps all the way to St. Louis, Missouri. He found a stonecutter and had him prepare a tombstone engraved with the name Susan Hale along with the date of her birth and death. 6
He tried vainly to get someone to haul it back for him, but all the wagons going west were already overloaded, and no one would help him. Finally, he bought a wheelbarrow, put the stone in it, and walked those weary miles back toward Fort Kearney, and set the stone upon her grave. It s a tender story, isn t it? He had amazing dedication to his wife. And he knew that there was something important he must never forget a sacred spot that he himself must always remember. And it s the same with the Ten Commandments. They re set up so we would never forget the importance of some things. God gives them to us with good reason. And the first of them is to keep the Lord God first. No other gods before Him. How s that going for you? Who or what is at the top of your list? Is there something else? If you re not sure, then looking at the other commandments may be an indicator: If we re struggling with any of the other nine commandments from Sabbath keeping to the ones that outline loving our neighbor if we re struggling with any of them, then probably this first one is out of whack and something else has become our God. I suppose, in the end, each of us has to judge for our own selves about what s first in our lives. But maybe it would be helpful to get some input in regards to that from a person or two in your life who you trust and who know you well. Maybe they ll be able to share their observations about your life in regards to whether or not there are idols in your life, or your Sabbath observance, or whether you ve stretched the truth or seem to be coveting or stealing or breaking one of the others. And those ultimately come back to this first one: Keeping God at the top of the list having no other gods at the top not money, power, leisure time, status, prestige, or anything else that might try to creep into the number one spot. Let s keep this God of grace, who redeems us, who saves us, who forgives us of our sin and loves us in spite of it, whose word is a light unto our path and lamp unto our feet, who created the universe and put you here in Kirkland and here in church today let s keep Him alone at the top. No other gods before Him. Let s pray Amen. i The Politics of Imprisonment : How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders; By Vanessa Barker, Assistant Professor of Criminology, Florida State University; p. 66 (found at books.google.com). 7