Exodus 20

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This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

Father God, we thank you so much for your word. We pray that, although sometimes difficult, you would be with us as we work out. This means pray that you would take my word and church.

First glance. You might be forgiven for thinking that today's passage is about rulers. Where we're at. Moses, the collective Israelites out of Egypt. They successfully given pharaoh on his arm in a slip.

And now they account for the foot of Mount Shina. I mean, in the previous chapter, Exodus 19, how God started to speak to Moses via a cloud on the top of the mountain, and how he did Moses instructions bring the people to the foot of the mountain. Whilst only Moses thought of God. Once you get to the top of the mountain, I'm going to focus on the ten books that we historically know as ten Commandments, probably the best known rules in history.

However, with our intentions, we all need a framework on which to base our life. We need some rules to prevent us doing bad things, but we also need some to codify the way we do things, to ensure we all make things the same way. Some rules are pretty obvious. So imagine for a minute, if we didn't have rules on how to drive a car, how would you know which side of road you wanted to be on? Which way round around would that be?

Whatever speed you should do, it wouldn't seem to be enough to suggest to all the drivers that they simply use common sense, because however careful we are, we all need to be doing things a certain way. Driving rules are straightforward, saying this to keep us safe. But as with other types of rules, there are consequences for breaking points. There's a loss of your licence.

And some of you might know, I work in a school. We've got a lot of rules. Some are for safety, some will just ensure that it still runs. Now, over the years, it only seems that rules increase in Europe, don't they? The highways don't get stronger, and we've certainly got more and more rules in schools.

Rules seem to increase as we begin to challenge the disciplines. Amazing to start with them in ways they weren't meant to be. Look at the law of the country. We get new ones every year, commonly is always making more lawyers. But does it make us more law abiding?

I'm not admitted. It does seem to me that for humans, we're not always great at keeping rules, especially ones that don't think us. And here's a spoiler if you read on in Exodus from today's passage, it's not long before people are making an idol in the shape of a golden calf, despite being told not to.

So I guess I would ask you today, first of these questions, do you keep the ten Commandments? And I bet you're answering that. Of course I do. And yet it's a bit more complex than that. And we'll go on to say, we've got ten commandments.

Hebrew means ten words given to Moses, relay to the people of Israel, Mount Simon. It's God's covenant for the people of Israel. Follow these simple rules. And I guess it's kind of like God's response for people that perhaps needed a bit of guidance. Some of them started to go off the rails.

They were worshipping the false God and they were living in ways not pleasing to God. And these words are an expression of how to be devoted to God, but also how to live with those around us. But we've got some of the context. The covenant between God and Israel, which contains not only the Ten Commandments but mostly the jewish law, is a covenant that occurred in a timeline that went from creation by Noah and Abraham all the way through to be fulfilled by Jesus. This is a covenant that's merely a point on the road on our way from the garden of Eden to full salvation in Christ.

One scholar I read said that this law for Israel is nearly a babysitter. It's like a guardian until Christ comes. And it's certainly true that the Old Testament points to the time of being temporary. If you read Jeremiah 31, it explains it. Father Jeremiah 31 says, the days of coming declare to then I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and made them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant. So I was a husband to them, declared, this is the covenant I will make of the people of Israel. After that, he praised the Lord, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbour or say to one another, know the Lord, because they will know from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

So we know that God intended the covenant with Israel, which he chose to take command to be temporary. We know from the New Testament that Jesus. Jesus creates a new covenant between all believers, not just the Israelites. Jesus says at the last supper in Luke 22, so he scatters the new covenant in one month, which is called out. And Paul, when writing to the Corinthians, says he has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter for covenant, for the letter kills that the spirit is right.

The old covenant answered that by having the ten commandments from the rest of the jewish law. He is soon preceded by Jesus. Paul teaches us that he's letter to the Hebrews. He quotes a bit from Jeremiah and he says by calling this covenant new, he has made the first one obsolete. And when he got pursuit of.

This is why Paul can explain to the Galatians, for example, that they could be believers without following the old jewish requirements of circumcision. They were no longer subject to the old covenant. So thankfully, the new covenant removes all the old jewish laws, including the need for circumcision, for animal sacrifice, the need for stage of certain foods and the needle, to worship in certain ways. But what about the ten Commandments themselves?

Our passage today gives us really I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Just in case people were unsure why God should be afraid.

I am God, the one who got you out of the first month. You shall have no other gods before me. So God establishes the basis for the commandments. They're not arbitrary rules, but ones that come from God, who got them out of Egypt and deliver them. The call to have no other gods is the call to follow El Nikhim, to recognise that only he has that redemptive power and only he can be our soul.

The second command warns against creating and worshipping falsehood. And of course, this isn't just false gods like Saint Romans ended up following. God knows how much we like, how easily we can get distracted by anything and everything that takes our practises. We're challenged not to let anything take the place of God in our lives, to avoid anything that holds us from him.

And then the people are told not to take the name of the Lord in value. That's very self explanatory. And it's important we don't let our language detract from the power and majesty of God. God deserves our respect. As the fourth commander, remember the Sabbath, keep it holy that people were directed specifically to sacrifice the day to be with God.

So first three commands are about Israel's relationship with God. The last one are about how they live with each other. Number five, my personal favourite honour, your father and mother. Parents, you put a vital role in bringing out the next generation of faith. But we as children, and then from here, the commandments switch from do's to don't.

Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't give obsessions, don't cover anything that belongs to somebody else. The first thing that strikes me about that is that these ten words, these commandments, they are not by any means the pinnacle of what we should aspire to. These really are the lowest common denominators, aren't they? They've been distilled down to their most basic. If you turn it around, it's almost saying the least we can do is not kill someone.

If they upset us, the least we can do is not steal from each other. The least we can do is not worship any other gods. And perhaps you notice the other thing, that whilst only the first four commandments deal with how to, they're by far the biggest amount of words, and I am sure of the commands actually talk about how the Israelites should relate to God and they're the basis for the others. The do not is very short and sharp. The do not so designed to rein us in from our natural system.

God knows we're the same humans that couldn't. God knows we're liable to harm you, even to avoid. God knows we are liable to steal and cheat and tell our truths about our jewishness. He knows that we look at other people and want what they have. Unfortunately, he knows all.

And so he asks us to follow these simple rules, which was designed to help the Israelites take good life and bring them back for the slippery slope that they started to go there. So all the people had to do to follow the rules that God had laid out, which we know from reading on in the Bible that they did, because it wasn't long before Moses brother Aaron was making the dog in calf and declaring it to be a dog, which brought God's punishment on down. Aristotle had promised him to cope on that side. But what does all that mean to us? Well, Jesus himself tells us how important the commandments are, too.

I want to take you to Matthew five, the story of the servant on marriage. Jesus has just spoken about the attitude, remember the blessed and poor experience. And then he makes it clear that he's helped us in his writing. But to build on the ancient law, he says, do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfil them.

He hasn't come to rip up the rules. He has come to explain them to us, to help us understand them. Jesus tells us that the commandments mean much more than what is written, that there is a spirit of the law as well as a letter. Jesus provides us with a new way of looking at these laws, a way that makes much more sense to us once we know Jesus.

Jesus takes our understanding and turns it from a simple kickbox exercise. Have I learned anyone? To a much more nuanced position where anger or harbouring the grudge is wrong? Matthew 522 but I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgement. Jesus is saying that anger and forgiveness in us is just as wrong, and he emphasises that reconciliation and love for those around us because that is essential.

Jesus, in detailing and expanding the meaning of these commandments, moves the way we look at them from something that should be obeyed to something that should be lived. We're challenged not just to look at our actions, but the motives that lie behind the actions does occasionally cause us to go no further than Matthew 22. You might remember that that is the story of Jesus being questioned by some religious teachers of the time. They were trying to trip him up as usual. One the so called expert in the law, which is the greatest commandment to which students replied, 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 neighbour as yourself. All the law and prophets hang on these two commandments. Now, you might notice Jesus doesn't actually quote veting the word from Exodus, but instead he quotes from deuteronomy six love the Lord your God with all of the heart and the Lord.

This isn't Jesus giving us new rules as much as we focus on the old ones. And the beauty of his reply is that, yes, he answered the question and gives us a second most important commandment as well. But he explained to Adam's stroke the light in which all of this should be seen. What I mean by that is, if you consider the meaning of each of the commandments in the light of what Jesus says, you can see how we're really faithful. Interpretation.

Rules always need interpretation. Jesus solves the problem for us of how we can interpret it, make sure God and those around us the heart of whatever we discovered.

So there is Exodus 20 about rules taken on its own. It isn't for the Israelites it was. It was a rule book with consequences if those rules were broken. But in the light of our salvation through Jesus, it's more of a point as a better word. The commandments taken on their own are almost like those faiths God's people have to get through on the way to something better, on the way to the next bit of God's master plan.

When Jesus came along to clarify his order, now we know the commandments are merely the least we should be in jew. And despite the commandments being contained in a covenant that no longer applies, of course we should follow some. Jesus said so. However, we live in ages of new customers. We have the benefit of Jesus, and we can look oppression, those lords, through the lens that is Jesus.

However you interpret the ten commands is up to you. If you consider all of these in the light that you love God and you love your fellow human, you want to follow. I will go as far as to say that the love of Jesus and an obedience to those who principally rules that asks us to live by means. She wants me to consider the. Put that back in terms I can understand.

Yes, we still need to be told which arm is a road to drive on, but we don't need to be told not to pay a cut somebody off or drive dangerously, or to become impatient for the learning driver.

Looking at the commandments with the ledgers of Jesus, we are changed from a procedural rule, following people to a people of love. That is the key to the history. How does that look? Like a gun.

So, with adultery, marriage is between two people, not everybody else. Two people.

Eight. This is not sealing. If you seal and you get behind bars, not sealing. This is there. Nine is.

Oh, nice about false testimony. So again, you've got five. You've got your other five. And then there's one person left out. Why?

Because, actually, if I want to love my lord, my God, then this is a helpful mirror for me to hold up. How am I in Paris? Character? And we're going to do that as we come to our profession before God. Because, as Phil rightly said, all of us have fallen short of God's glory.

All of us have broken these laws. None of us love.