Introducing the Ten-der Commandments Exodus 20:1-2 For some time I have felt the Lord prompting me to preach on holiness and yet I have had a caution in my spirit in that often when preachers preach on holiness folk begin to lose sight of grace and judge other members of the bride of Christ. Earlier this year a group of us went to listen to an Anglican evangelist called Canon J.John and it was there that things began to evolve in my mind about how to deal with this topic wisely. What I have decided to do is to take us through the ten commandments over the next couple of months and to do so in a way that it would be easy for seekers to understand and follow. I am going to try some of J.John s jokes and advertise the series in the community. Today though, I want to talk to you as my family. I just want to remove some wrong perspectives that modern western Christians often have of the ten commandments and hopefully help you see that they are in fact God s ten-der commandments as we unpack vs 1 and 2 of Exodus 20. The Ten Commandments 20 God said to the people of Israel: 2 I am the LORD your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt where you were slaves. The children of Israel had been enslaved in Egypt, living in bondage for 400 years. You know the story well. They cried out to God and the Lord raised up a deliverer for them, a man named Moses. Moses went to Pharaoh and told him; that the Lord says let my people go. Pharaoh was a very slow learner but eventually he lets the Israelites go, these people who had lived in bondage, and who had no real sense of identity or experience of freedom for 400 years. About 3 million of them set out through the desert towards the land of Canaan which would later become the land of Israel. On the way the Lord stops them at the base of a huge mountain, Mount Sinai in the north of modern Egypt today, and speaks audibly to Moses a message for the whole nation, a message for the whole of humanity in reality. Mount Sinai is a very strange looking mountain. It is kind of rectangular in shape; many people have said that it looks like a giant pulpit standing 7000 feet tall. From there God gave to the people a mighty sermon, the ten commandments. And we are going to unpack each of them over the next three months. As we do can I challenge you and your families, to memorise them, to discuss them over your meal times and to talk about them together because as we shall see the ten commandments are really the ten-der commandments that will help each one of us do well in life.
Before we invite the community to come along and join us over the next little while, and I try to make the messages very simple and free from Christian Jargon I wanted to share some thoughts just with you first by way of introduction. You see many believers have what I believe are wrong attitudes or a wrong perspectives on the Law, the commandments. I want to address those briefly and then encourage you to see the benefit of trying to get to all of these teaching sessions over the next little while. WRONG BELIEFS ABOUT THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: 1. THEY ARE A WAY TO IMPRESS GOD Have you ever heard someone say something like this: Hey, I don t need the church, Christianity and all that born again stuff I am a good person. I live by the ten commandments. People often say things like that but think about the foolishness of such a comment for a moment. What they are really saying is that they support charities, they do good things, they don t hurt people etc etc but do they really live by the ten commandments. The commandments if they are understood correctly are about a whole lot of outward activities, ways of behaving but really they are about inward attitudes. Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount; Jesus said 21 You know that our ancestors were told, Do not murder and A murderer must be brought to trial. 22 But I promise you that if you are angry with someone, you will have to stand trial. If you call someone a fool, you will be taken to court. And if you say that someone is worthless, you will be in danger of the fires of hell. 27 You know the commandment which says, Be faithful in marriage. 28 But I tell you that if you look at another woman and want her, you are already unfaithful in your thoughts. When Jesus was teaching that being angry was like murdering someone he wasn t speaking about being angry at injustice he was describing anger that is unjustified and puts down the other person. Now that being said; which one of us has not been unjustly angry at someone at some stage or for that matter which one of us has not looked at some one of the other gender lustfully at some point. Jesus would say we are guilty of murder and immorality. We have not kept those two commandments. Paul wrote to the church in Galatia in chapter 3 of that book that the law, the commandments were given to us as a school mast to show us that we are not in fact good people, not even one of us and that we need a saviour. Ray Comfort s teaching on that is just superb.
Has anyone in the world other than Jesus ever impressed God by keeping the ten commandments? I don t think so because no one other than Jesus has ever kept the ten commandments. Then people say well I have only broken one commandment I have kept the other nine, so that is a 90% pass an A plus rating. But James wrote in James 2:10 James 2:10 10 If you obey every law except one, you are still guilty of breaking them all. But think about this for a moment. One sin makes you guilty and totally different from a 100% pure and holy God. And, I think the reality is that if you sin in one area then that will usually lead to sinning others as well. Say I steal car. I will most likely have to lie to try to cover up the fact that I stole his car and if I get caught then I might end up getting unjustly angry and so theft leads to lying and then to murder. Imagine you were on a cruise liner and you hit a reef and the alarm bells go off and you are told to climb into a life boat. You would be so happy that you were safe but suppose you looked down and saw that the floor of that life boat was made up of 10 boards and 9 of them were perfect but 1 was rotten. As your boat hits the sea that rotten board begins to disintegrate and your boat begins to flood. Then to your great relief you hear a helicopter hovering over your head; you beauty. And down comes the rope with a chain attached to it and shacked onto the chain is a sling which you climb into. The seas around you are rough and full of sharks you are feeling really happy until you look at the 10 links on that chain. Nine of them are really good but one is faulty. Shark bait. It only takes failure in one area and the consequences are the same. God is not impressed with 60% or 70% or 90%. It all results in shark bait. Only Jesus achieved 100%. Sadly another misuse of the ten commandments has been the way that preachers and Pharisees have used them to: 2. THEY ARE A WAY TO OPPRESS PEOPLE When God gave the ten commandments like take one day off a week to really worship and be refreshed, He commanded that as an expression of His love for us so that we would stay close to Him and have some time out. People, Preachers and of course the Pharisees have taken commandments like that which are freeing and easy and helpful to us and put a whole lot of rules on top of them. On you day off, your day of rest you can t mow the lawns. Or you shouldn t watch sport on TV or you shouldn t do this or go there. Preachers and of course the experts at doing this the Pharisees have often made a rest day, a worship day a really hard day for many people. And Father never intended that to be when He gave the command to rest and worship one day a week.
3. THEY ARE NO LONGER HELPFUL; ITS ALL ABOUT GRACE I sometimes fall into this trap. If the law is the school master and it s done its job in us and has convinced us that we are not good people and we need a saviour then why bother going back to a passage like the ten commandments? Let me give an explanation to an often misunderstood passage. Matthew 5: 17-19 17 Don t suppose that I came to do away with the Law and the Prophets. I did not come to do away with them, but to give them their full meaning. 18 Heaven and earth may disappear. But I promise you that not even a period or comma will ever disappear from the Law. Everything written in it must happen. 19 If you reject even the least important command in the Law and teach others to do the same, you will be the least important person in the kingdom of heaven. But if you obey and teach others its commands, you will have an important place in the kingdom. Jesus said, if teachers tell you to ignore the commandments or even to break the commandments they will still be saved but they will have a very low place in heaven. Conversely if you and I learn the commandments, live by the commandments and I suggest share the commandments you will be given an important place in heaven. The ten commandments are still important today. Jesus said that He gave the commandments their full meaning. I believe that Jesus fulfilled the law, the commandments in three ways. Jesus fulfils the commandments/ law: (i) Through His life lived perfectly. The only one that has ever kept all 10 commandments and the inward intention of the ten commandments of course is Jesus. Judas who lived with Jesus would say I have betrayed innocent blood. Pontius Pilate who judged Jesus life would say I find no fault in this man. Jesus fulfilled the law through His life. (ii) Through His death The law sentences Russell Watts to death. It sentences you to death. The bible says that the soul that sins will surely die. For the wages of sin is death. On the cross of Calvary the One who had never sinned became sin for us and took upon himself our punishment and died in our place. The requirements of the law have been fulfilled in Jesus death.
(iii) Through His resurrection the Law is being fulfilled now. On the third day He rose again. He is alive. Where is He living right now? The apostle Paul wrote that there is a great mystery about how this works but the reality is that once you join God s family Christ, the hope of glory is in you. He s inside of you. You could often see how concerned Paul was for the very messed up church in Corinth by the way he worded his letters. In 1 Corinthians 7 he is addressing the issue of Christians sleeping with partners that they are not married to and he says to them. Man don t do it, it s a terrible thing, don t you realize that Jesus is in you through the Holy Spirit and so when you sin, when you sleep with that prostitute or that person you are not married to you are taking Jesus into that sin as well. Paul is horrified. Don t these Corinthians know that Jesus lives in them and where they go He goes and is at work in and through them. Paul begs them not to sin, to put a holy God the son into that situation. Is Holiness an important topic in the modern church. I think it is. Why? Because Jesus is still fulfilling the law, living by the ten commandments through you and me. Christ Jesus the One who is Holy and perfect lives in you and me and He still has a desire to bring us to that place of freedom and holiness, to fulfil the Law through us. Look with me at vs 2 of Exodus 20 and consider these two reasons why we should want to learn, live and share the commandments preached by God from that lectern on that day. 2 I am the LORD your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt where you were slaves. WE SHOULD DESIRE TO LIVE BY THE TEN COMMANDMENTS BECAUSE OF 1. WHO HE IS God doesn t say. Hey you people, you meaningless ants, listen up. He says I am the Lord your God. Can you hear the tender tone in those words your God. People I have a message for you that will help you live well, it s the best way for you to live so you will be happy and successful, this is the manual on human living, it s me, your God, your maker, your personal deliverer speaking. I am the Lord your God. I don t believe that God gave the Law to make life hard. Quite the opposite life will teach you if you don t take His Word for it that if you live according to the commandments you will do well, you will have no regrets, you will prosper and if you do your own thing there are going to be consequences. Oh, people will tell you that they don t take a day off to worship and rest or they don t need to remain faithful to their spouse or that they see no problem with foul language or
1 John 5:3 a white lie here or there. But the reality is the God who made you, who knows you better than anyone else said this is the best way to live, so that you will do well and not get hurt. I see so many people who are suffering the consequences of shallow relationships. So many people argue that homosexuality is OK, its natural and yet aids, a disease caused by homosexuality, is rampant and people thinking they are OK spread the disease for years before they discover they have it. God s rules, His commands, keep you free, keep you out of trouble, they protect your life and when you disregard those commands you will suffer sooner or later, you may not be aware of the disease in your soul for a while but it will become evident one day. There is a tenderness in the ten commandments they are given because of the maker s love for us and followed, lived because of our love for Him. 3 We show our love for God by obeying his commandments, and they are not hard to follow. We Christians don t HAVE to obey God s commandments we GET to. Its freedom and joy and the most natural response to a God who first loved us and set in place guidelines for how to live successfully and prosper in this life. They are ten-der commandments. Secondly why should we desire to live by the ten-der commandments? Because of who He is; He is our God who knows us best and what is best for us and 2. WHERE WE HAVE COME FROM 2 I am the LORD your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt where you were slaves. Egypt in bible prophecy is a symbol of the sinful life. These Israelites like us have been in bondage, we have been in sin. We didn t know right from wrong and so Father gives these ten-der commandments to teach us a life style we don t know. It s as if he says Kids I want you to do well. I don t want you to suffer. I want you to prosper and not get hurt and not to have regrets and consequences to sin therefore I your God want to tell you how to live and how to live well. There is a new life, a new day, a new way of living and listen kids, here are the key points. Listen, learn, live and share my ten-der commandments. I don t think that the ten commandments are the tough God who seems so different from the gracious God of the NT. Instead, in reality the commandments are an expression of grace, and expression of His love. They teach a people like you and I who have been in slavery to sin, how to live well, how to live wisely, how to live in freedom and prosper in this brief life.
May the law that was once fulfilled in Jesus be also fulfilled in us and we let Christ live through us and may those that we invite to these simple upcoming services find in us a freedom, a joy and a love that comes from living God s way.