Aside
from the cross, there is quite possibly no image or symbol in all of
Christianity that is more widely-used or well-known than that of the Ten
Commandments. Especially here in the
south, it’s not uncommon for us to ride by various buildings and businesses and
see a bronze statue with two curved tablets with the Roman numerals for 1-10
written on them. As a side note, this is
usually done incorrectly, seeing as the two stone tablets were actually
carbon-copies of the Commandments. After
all, the Commandments were in essence a contract between God and Israel. Therefore, each party was to be given a copy
of the contract, and so each tablet contained all ten of the commandments and
not just half of them. Either way, it
doesn’t take anything away from the meaning of the Ten Commandments as they
apply to the Christian faith.
Now,
we will spend the next ten or so weeks, maybe even more, looking at each of the
Ten Commandments and seeking to find the meaning behind each of them. We will see that with each command, there are
actually two commands. There is a
command against something, but there is also a command to take certain
actions. For example, not only are we
not to commit murder, but we are to do all that we can to prevent it as
well. However, our time for looking at
each commandment will come. For today,
what I want us to focus on is the condition and circumstances surrounding
Israel at the time of the giving of the Ten Commandments. It is my hope that in doing so, it will help
us to gain a sense of clarity and understanding in our own approaching,
understanding, and applying of the Ten Commandments to our lives today. I’m hoping that we will see the premise and
reason behind the Ten Commandments instead of just seeing them as a list of
do’s and don’ts and a way of keeping score as it pertains to our faith and
salvation.
Our
text for today is the preparation of Israel for the receiving of the Ten
Commandments. God is telling the people
of Israel that what He is about to give them are the ways in which they are to
live in order to remain faithful to His covenant with them. We find in verse 8, that the elders of Israel
responded to God by saying, “All that
the Lord has spoken we will do.” In
other words, they were saying that all God had to do was to tell them how they
were to act and they would do it down to the very letter of the law. Now, obviously, we know that although they
may have wanted to obey all that God commanded them, the reality of the
situation is that they did not and were not able to do so. We also have to remember that we are looking
at this through the lens of the New Testament, through the lens of Christ. As we get deeper into our study of the Ten
Commandments, we not only need to pay attention to the actions that we are called
to have as a result of them, but also the amount of forgiveness for failing to
keep those commandments that is found in Jesus Christ.
I
want you to notice how so much attention is given to Israel making themselves
ceremonial clean. They were to cleanse
themselves and prepare themselves both physically and spiritually for coming
before God. The people of Israel were to
set themselves apart from sin and their ordinary daily routines in order to
dedicate themselves more fully to God.
They were to get their hearts and minds ready to meet with God. There is a certain mindset that they had to
have. They were not just working this
time before God into their schedule, but this was the epicenter of their
existence as of that moment. Nothing
else in their lives was of any consequence at that moment aside from coming
before God. The impending encounter with
God was their focus and nothing else.
How true should this be about our worship and daily time with God? How much should be center our lives around our
time with God instead of our time with God just being worked into our schedules
like it’s just some other task or item on the to do list.
Then,
beginning in verse 16, things begin to get very real for the nation of
Israel. “On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and
a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the
people in the camp trembled. Then Moses
brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at
the foot of the mountain.” When I
read these verses, I get chills just thinking about what that must have been
like. Israel had been wondering in the
desert for a while after being delivered from slavery in Egypt via that
miraculous scene at the Red Sea. They
had been told that God was coming and that they would hear Him speak with
Moses. They had been making themselves
clean (both physically and spiritually) in preparation of God’s arrival. Finally, the sky begins to darken, and a
thick cloud forms on the mountain in the midst of thunder and lightning. Then, Moses, the leader of Israel and
covenant mediator between Israel and God, comes to the people and tells them
that it is time to meet with God. It was
time for them to see the magnitude and the glory of the one who delivered them
from slavery in Egypt, even if it’s only a glimpse of that glory. Now, the rest of this chapter has to do with
setting up limits as to how far up the mountain anyone other than Moses could
go. You see, the people of Israel were
so eager to meet God (or at least they thought they were) that God had to
forbid them and threaten them with death if they got too close to him. I’m going to hold off making any comments
about this here and save them for the conclusion of our look at the Ten Commandments
in a few months, but I want to finish setting the stage for what is to come for
Israel, and what we are going to begin seeing starting next Sunday.
The
Ten Commandments were given to Israel through Moses by God as a way of leading
them to a life of practical holiness.
Through the Commandments, Israel could see the nature of God and His
plan for how they should live. They were
the laws given by God as to how we are to live in community with one another
and still honor God along the way.
However, somewhere along the way, even before the time of Jesus’ coming
to earth, the Commandments had become corrupted from their original
purpose. They were seen as a means to
prosperity. It was thought that obeying
each one of these commandments was the way to earn God’s protection from
earthly troubles and disasters. The
keeping of the Commandments became an end in-and-of themselves, and not just the
means to fulfill God’s ultimate law of love.
Sadly, there are many Christians today who view the keeping of the Ten
Commandments as the means by which we are saved. We can ask these folks what it means to be a
Christian and they will give an answer that somewhere along the way says that
being a Christian is about keeping the Ten Commandments.
As
we look at the Ten Commandments in greater depth and we begin our study of the
Law, I want to warn all of us against falling into this common trap. We cannot look at the Ten Commandments as the
end-all-be-all when it comes to being a Christian. The Ten Commandments are designed for guiding
and shaping our living within a Christian community. Ultimately, looking at them through the lens
of Christ, we will see just how far short we have fallen for keeping what is
required with each commandment. As we
see the great chasm that exists between what is expected and what is achieved,
hopefully we will see with even greater clarity our need for Christ. After all, Jesus fulfilled this Law down to
the very smallest of details. What I
want all of us to do in preparation for this study is to take time and truly
give thought to how many shortcomings that we have that the grace found in
Jesus Christ overcomes. I want all of us
to see that, like Israel, we are given exactly what we are to do, but yet we
still fall short every time. However,
unlike Israel, we know that there is one who has lived this Law to perfection
and paid the price that was owed for our breaking of it. Let us rejoice this day, that Jesus Christ
has fulfilled the Law on our behalf.
Glory be to God; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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