Exodus 20:1-17;23-26 • Roadsigns to Jesus

Listen to the audio version of this message with the player below.

Sermon Notes

Transcript

(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

 Let me ask that you would look in your Bibles at Exodus chapter 20. There is not a more profound passage in all the Scripture describing God's rules and rescue.



 Exodus chapter 20, the Ten Commandments, would you stand as we honor God's Word? I'll begin right at the beginning of Exodus chapter 20.



 And 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." That is the first command. There are nine more coming, and we'll get to them. But for now, let your eyes go to the end of the chapter and see where the other bookend is of what God is teaching. Verse 22, "After the Ten Commandments, the Lord said to Moses, "Thus shall you say to the people of Israel, you have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold, and altar of earth you shall make for me, and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you.



 If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones.



 For if you would wield your tool on it, you profane it.



 And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it." Let's pray together. "Father, for Your Word we thank You, but there is no question in our hearts that this same word that guides us in Your ways has led many astray.



 Help us to not be crushed by the commands, but use them as road signs to take us to our Savior.



 This we ask in Jesus' name, Amen." Please be seated.



 If you can imagine, I were showing you in this very moment a skull and crossbones. What would be the first thought that came to your mind, seeing a skull and crossbones? Please don't say, "I know the answer is Jesus, but it sure sounds like a pirate to me."



 I confess that if you were to see a skull and crossbones on a flag, you might think either Jack Sparrow or the Jolly Roger.



 But if you were to see a skull and crossbones in a warehouse, even today, you would think hazardous material.



 If you were to see a skull and crossbones under a kitchen sink or in a garage or workroom, you would think there's something that's poisonous.



 It was not always so.



 Centuries ago, the symbol of a skull and a crossbones was carried by those who set bones and carried healing medicine to those who were dying. The skull and crossbones were the symbol of medicine and of doctors who would bring life. But when the great plagues began to move across Europe, causing the death of millions, if somebody showed up at your house with a skull and crossbones, the message was most likely,



 death comes here.



 And the symbol that was intended to show life instead became used as a symbol of death.



 Something very similar is happening in these Ten Commandments, even according to an apostle. The apostle Paul says in Romans 7, "The very command that was intended to give me life became death to me. It crushed me. I began to recognize that path to God that was to be made by the commands. I could not live the commands that were intended to be life became death to my soul."



 And yet the same apostle who says those words will a little while later reflect on these commands and he will say, "The law was a schoolmaster to lead me to Christ."



 Now how do you get from rules of death to a road to life?



 Important question as you consider these commands. We will not get it right until we first consider the lead up and then the law and then the love that is undeniable, the context of it all. What is the lead up? Verses 1 and 2, "And God spake 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." The first thing that God reminds these people is, "I have redeemed you. I am for you." That's really all that's been going on to this point in the book of Exodus. Remember?



 You were in the land of plagues, but the plagues did not touch you. You went through the red sea waters, but the waters did not touch you. The Egyptian army came after you, but the army did not touch you. There were storms on the mountain, lightning and thunder by the holiness of God.



 But He did not hurt you.



 You got manna in the morning. You got water in the wilderness. God has provided for you wonderfully. You know all of that. That's the lead up. But what do you also know happened in the lead up?



 The same God who was redeeming these people was a God dealing with people who at every turn would grumble and complain and doubt, threaten and blame the leadership, and ultimately put God on trial.



 What have you done for us lately?



 And yet out of all of that, God speaks of His redeeming love. "I brought you out of the land of Egypt." And it's not even in the past tense. Verse 2 right at the beginning, "I am the Lord your God. I redeemed you. You turned on me, but I am still your God." Which means what? You are still mine. He has not turned away. He's not walked away. He's not said. It's over between us. He is presenting to us the standard pattern of the gospel, love before law. Yes, there is a way to follow God in obedience, but we'll get it all wrong if we think that following God is the way to get His love rather than to have the love first. Just understand it this simply. What does God not say in this passage of the Ten Commandments? He does not say, "You obey me, and I'll let you out of Egypt."



 What does He say?



 "I have redeemed you. You are mine.



 Therefore walk with me." It is a pattern that distinguishes Christianity, what distinguishes the commands from any other faith. I will tell you, there are scholars, you may have them in colleges nearby who will say there is nothing particularly unique about the Christian faith. I mean, you just take the Ten Commandments as an example. We have our moral code. Virtually every religion has its moral code, and most world religions have a pretty similar moral code. They think adultery is wrong. They think that murder is wrong. They think that lying is wrong. There's really nothing special about Christianity. And if all you do is you look at the commands, you pretty much have to agree. I mean, even the ancient Near East about this time through the Code of Hammurabi had very similar standards.



 What's different?



 The pattern.



 God says, "This is not what you do to have a relationship with me." He said, "I have a relationship with you. Therefore follow these commands." It is the gospel pattern, it is the gospel order that distinguishes not just Christianity,



 but everyone who claims it and every relationship we have within the body of believers. What does it mean for parents? For parents it means that if I want to reflect this gospel pattern, I want my children to know that they obey because I love them, not to gain my love.



 I've said to you more than once how Kathy and I were changed, even our adulthood, even after I was a pastor, of understanding the gospel's influence upon our families, and at some point having to change the way that we talk to our oldest son, that I would say to my son at one stage, "Colin, you're a bad boy because you did that."



 Very easy to say, but what was I saying?



 What you do determines who you are. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad child.



 We had to say, "That's not the gospel." The gospel says we are in a relationship that produces works, not in works that produce a relationship. "Colin, don't do that.



 You're my son, and I love you.



 I want what you do to be based on a relationship.



 I don't want a relationship to be based on what you do." It affects our marriages. It affects everything in our lives which is so conditioned by contracts.



 Friends who say, "I will love you if you do what I expect." Bosses who say, "I will meet your needs if you meet my expectations." Spouses, sometimes girlfriends, sometimes boyfriends, "I will meet your needs if you meet my expectations."



 But Christian marriage says what?



 For better or for worse, I will love you, not based upon what you do, but upon a commitment to a relationship so that even if you do not meet my expectations, even if you fail in what you promise to do, I will love you.



 Love before law. Love comes first. I will care for you even if you are selfish. I will love you, forgive you, even if you do not deserve it because it is our witness.



 What did Jesus say?



 I will love you.



 And Paul says, "Christ died for the ungodly while we were yet his enemies. Christ died for us."



 Love before law.



 If we don't see that, we will begin to make these commandments conditions for the love of God rather than responses to the love of God, and these very commandments will drive us from God rather than drive us to God. And so God says first, "Remember the lead up. I have loved you. I have redeemed you. And now that you know that, yes, there is a law. There is a good and safe path. After all, how did Jesus explain these very commands to us?" Somebody was testing him. Which is the greatest of these commands?



 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. What comes first?



 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second commandment, he said, is like under the first. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love comes first. Understand, it's the love that's going to contextualize everything else. And those two statements, love of God and love of neighbor, are actually the basis of the Ten Commandments. We sometimes talk about the two tables of the Ten Commandments. The first four of the commandments are about loving God. The second six, about what it means to love neighbor. And understanding that they are really telling us how to love God and neighbor is helping us. Well the first commandment, this is verse 3, "You shall have no other gods before me." Why? What's that about?



 Is God just kind of petty and small?



 No, His Word says there are no other gods.



 For you to honor and worship others is to pursue something that cannot help you and actually will one day hurt you. And so you don't put anything above God, not company or prestige or person or what others think you should do or what expectations you yourself have. Nothing comes before God.



 The second command begins to unfold that a bit more. The second commandment is in verse 4, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image of any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth." Now God is not against statues and He's not against duck decoys that you can't carve those things. That's not the point.



 The point is verse 5, "You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.



 But showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my command." You shall not bow down to the things of earth, to the things of your creation. You shall not bow down to a better house. You shall not bow down to a better job. You shall not bow down to what others think you should do. Don't serve the career. Don't serve your body in such a way that if you don't get what you want, you get the person you want, you don't get the thing you want, you're going to be unhappy.



 When God says, "Why not make an image of something else?" Often good things that then become worshiped. Because He says, "I'm a jealous God." Now jealousy is a bad word in our culture. We think, why would God identify Himself as jealous? I mean it isn't jealousy, the green-eyed monster that destroys relationships with suspicion.



 But when God is jealous, He is jealous for a relationship with us. And He begins to express why it is so important. I mean here is gracious warning to His people saying, "Because the sins of the children or excuse me, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me."



 Listen, if it's a just universe, if it's a universe that just makes sense, there is cause and effect.



 And there are consequences.



 When God with love warns His people, "If you turn away from Me, if you make other things your God's and by doing that you begin to dishonor Me in such a way that other things are getting what you..." Then there are consequences. Don't you write... Our own statistics would say it.



 Abusers raise abusers.



 Addicts raise addicts.



 Child molesters raise children who know Him. No boundaries.



 Workaholics create driven children or children who drop out and want none of it.



 Our actions have consequences. And anything that is honored above God Himself has consequences in lives of one after another after another. For generations, we know that. I mean, look at our culture right now, roiled by the sexual scandals and the suits that are being brought against the church as people are saying, "This did not just affect me for a month. It did not just affect me for a year. This has affected my whole adulthood. This has affected my marriage. This has affected my children, what was done to me." And we know it's true. There is cause and effect of what walks away from God in rebellion or hurt. It's just evident to us. We say, "What's the great sin of our culture, of American culture? It was slavery."



 And here we are a century and a half later, the third and fourth generation past the great sin, and we are still experiencing the effects as a culture struggles for fairness and oppression and justice. And if we ourselves do not consider what it means to correct the sin of forefathers, effects, consequences still happen.



 It is dire warning, but right there with it is hope. Verse 6, "But," says God, "even though there are consequences to the third and fourth generation, but I will show steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments." As though God is saying, "Yes, it is true that addicts raise addicts and abusers re-abusers and molesters raise children who know no boundaries, but I can stop that." The cycle does not have to continue. The past does not define the future. God is saying to hearts that are committed to Him, "I can break the pattern of the world. I will show steadfast love to thousands of those who love me." Yes, third and the fourth generation are affected apart from God. But then He says, "But turn to me, and here are a thousand generations." As though the grace of God is outweighing a thousand times what sin can do to people and to their families. It's giving us hope again.



 I may have been abused. I may have been hurt. I may have done the hurt. But I don't have to repeat the error.



 The cycle can stop with me because God promises He will show steadfast love to thousands of those who love Him and keep His commandments. There is a way out.



 And it's because that way out is so important to us that God begins to explain His importance in our lives. The third commandment. Verse 7, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will now hold Him guiltless, who takes His name in vain." Listen, I must tell you, I don't think God is particularly concerned about your vocabulary. That's not the issue.



 The issue is the God your lips label is the God your heart knows.



 And so if the only way God comes out of your mouth is to curse or extract meanness or damnation to people, then the God that you need or your family needs in time of hurt and difficulty and pain, you say, "God, you don't even know." And so He's saying, "Honor me. Count me as holy, even in the way that you speak, so that when you need me, you will know me."



 The fourth commandment, very similar, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." A legalist begins to take out his notepad and begins to add, "Well, how many hours?



 How many days per month? How much do I have to do this? How much time in church do I got to spend?"



 The person who is lawless simply says, "You don't need to do that at all. Don't worry about it."



 But what if love drives you?



 What if you long for a relationship with God to know Him, to celebrate Him, to bask in the wonder of people being transformed by His grace? Then worship does not go out of fashion because somebody is treating it legalistically. Your heart needs time in a relationship to build and grow and love and celebrate that relationship, which is what we do in worship. And that doesn't go out of fashion, which is why God says, "Remember where this got started. Six days, the Lord labor, the seventh day He rested, not because He was tired, because He is demonstrating to His people, you can rest from your striving. I can provide more for you in six days than you can provide for you in seven days. And in doing that, we are learning to rest in the provision of God and not we only." Verse 10, "The seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord. On it you shall not do any work." You or your son or your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, your livestock, the sojourner who is in your gates, it's reminding us that our worship has impact on others too. And one of the reasons that we protect worship, I know that we're not an agrarian society, we may not say, "I don't got to spend the whole day," it's not really the point.



 The point is that our worship affects those that we love.



 And so we gather and we set example and we become part of celebrating the goodness of God because we know if we don't spend time in a relationship, the relationship will make no sense to our families and to those who know us later when they themselves need Him. Remember the Sabbath.



 Commandment number five moves to that second table of the law. Verse 12, "The first commandment with a promise that your days may be long upon the earth." Now what does that mean?



 Obedient children never get sick.



 Obedient children never have accidents.



 Is that what that means?



 No, think of it. Here is Moses getting from God the commands that will be given to the whole nation. And he's saying, "Honor your father and mother that your days may be long upon the land, that the covenant promises of God may extend through your nation." And even Moses begins to recognize and speaks for God saying, "Look at the consequences to the nation how little longevity they will be for the rule of God and the land if children do not honor their parents." Do we know that is true? In a nation where half of our children do not know both their biological parents in the house, where children not only do not always honor father, they could not do it.



 And we look at the reverberations through our society and recognize as Brian Livingston and their elder prayed during the service earlier, the devastation upon a land that does not know the Lord.



 Honoring father and mother has repercussions that we should understand.



 The sixth command, "You shall not murder." That's verse 13. And I know we can all think, "Phew, well, there's one that does not apply to me." At least I hope most of you think it does not apply to you.



 Actually does it apply to us?



 Jesus will explain it a little bit later, we'll see, in a way that does apply to us. Why not murder?



 Because every human being is made in the image of God and as a result of being made in God's image wholly unto Him.



 Special needs, senior, unborn, made in the image of God and life is honorable to God. And so He says to us, to our society, and to all, "Do not murder because life is precious."



 And we must consider what that means and how we deal with other people in protecting, defending them, their livelihood, their future, their families, our calling as God's people. Seventh commandment, verse 14, "You shall not commit adultery."



 No commandment receives more challenge or consensus in our culture. The challenge we all know, "You shall not commit adultery." Oh, there's those antiquated Christians again with their prudish standards that you're only supposed to have sexual expression within the bounds of a marriage between a man and a woman.



 The consensus is almost everyone, not everyone, almost everyone in this culture believes that if you are married, you should be faithful to your spouse.



 Look at the news. Look at who's being attacked. Look at who's being made fun of.



 People who are married who have sexual relationships outside of marriage. And you think, "Well, why is that?" Because if what the cultural challenge is, which wide limits sexual expression, you know, it's just kind of chemicals and biology and feels pleasant. I mean, why limit it?



 Then why object to it if someone who is married expresses their sexuality outside of marriage? Something deep in us knows that to give your body to another person is not just something physical. It is emotional. It is spiritual.



 As even the Apostle Paul says, "Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit." It's not something to unite to somebody who will allow you to profane what God... I can't explain to you entirely what it's about. But deep down we know it. If it's wrong for married people to have sexual relationships outside of marriage, then there was God speaking to young people, to older people who are not in a marriage at the moment to say, "I'm protecting you. And your soul and your relationship and your future."



 Count it joy. Count it pure what God is preserving for your future. And as a consequence of understanding that purity, that relationship that God intends for intimacy in a marriage relationship, God is saying to every single one of us, "The culture may just ridicule you for some sense of the importance of sexual purity." But God is saying, "I support you. You are doing something that is profoundly holy and good, and for that reason, protect what God intends to also use to protect your own future as His family, as His people, as a married person that He is making."



 Eighth commandment, "You shall not steal." Verse 15.



 Such a short commandment with such huge implications.



 You shall not steal. Well, that ought to be easy unless you're talking to WorldCom or Lehman Brothers or Volkswagen or Napster or Lance Armstrong or Martha Stewart or every single one of us who has pirated a software or music download of some sort.



 God is saying something quite simple, "If it's not yours, do not take it."



 If it's not yours, do not take it.



 Even if it is someone else's reputation. We sometimes want to take gossip and put it under the ninth commandment. Most commentators put gossip under the seventh. If you are stealing somebody's reputation by idle talk, by just letting their reputation be ruined by what you are stealing from them.



 We've commended the church here about its giving, but recognize what will the New Testament say. Those who are not supporting the work of the gospel are robbing whom? God.



 It's recognizing what is ours to give is to be given.



 We cannot take, however, what God never intended us to have. That in whatever form we do it is stealing.



 The ninth commandment, verse 16, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, false witness or fake news."



 You know, we can snicker, and I meant to make you snicker a little bit, but recognize what's happening in this nation right now. What is happening? We are roiled and upset. We are so torn apart as a nation about one simple question, what witness can we believe for a Supreme Court nomination?



 Can you recognize how not just news sources, but an entire nation and families and their children are being torn apart by somebody not telling the truth?



 And that doesn't just happen in the news. That happens over and over again as we are not careful to protect the truth of God.



 The tenth commandment, "You shall not covet," verse 17, "In modern terms, thou shall not covet the higher market value of your neighbor's home, or the better decor that is on HD HGTV.



 You shall not covet your neighbor's main squeeze, nor his media room, nor his BMW, nor his or her Facebook post, however doctored and perfected they have been made."



 The strange thing about the coveting one is it's the last of the commands, and it's the first that is clearly only attitude.



 Did you catch that? Everything before has either been an action or some combination of action and attitude. But you get to the tenth, and you kind of go, "Oh, it's only about attitude." And you recognize what the Apostle is doing is not putting a period, but a launching pad.



 Because now he's saying it's not just the legalistic what you do that's being counted, but what's in your heart as well that has to be considered in terms of obedience to God. What that means is you're now very glad that I got to the last commandment. You go, "Phew, we got through those."



 And the reality is God is just getting started.



 The ten commandments are not this kind of high hurdle that we're supposed to get past. The ten commandments are actually the floor of God's expectation. You want to know the ceiling?



 Turn to Jesus. We play these games in our minds about what Jesus actually, you know, he's the gentle Jesus making mild, he doesn't really care.



 And yet if you had been at that sermon on the Mount where he's doing the sweet things, look at the birds of the air. They don't sow or gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father cares for them. Look at the flowers of the field. I tell you, even Solomon of all his glory was not a raid like one of these. And if the flowers of the field, which today are and tomorrow are cast into the fire, are so glorious, doesn't God care for you? Oh, wouldn't you love to be there?



 Except for what he said about the ten commandments.



 I mean, that was the bulk of the sermon.



 You have heard it said that you shall not murder, but I say to you, if you are angry with your brother and call him a fool, you will go to hell.



 I didn't say that, Jesus said that.



 You have heard it said that you should not commit adultery.



 I say to you, if you even look at another person with lust in your heart, you've already committed adultery, and you will not be in the kingdom of God.



 Wait, Jesus, you can't mean that.



 He absolutely meant that. And he's just getting started. For he will say to his brother James later in the New Testament, listen, you tell them that if they just break one of these commandments, then by implication they've actually broken them all.



 And then he will say to the Apostle Paul, and Paul, you tell them this, there's no temptation taken any one of you, but such as is common to humanity, which means there is no sin out there the seeds of which are not already in my heart and your heart. If you had been at that beautiful, sweet little sermon on the Mount, I am telling you, you would have been crushed.



 You would have said, I came to get some comfort. I came to get some assurance. I thought you were going to undo the law. And Jesus, I didn't come to abolish the law. I came to fulfill it, and not one jot or tittle of the law shall change until the kingdom of God comes. This is here. It is for you. And we would say, how can anybody stand them? God, what are you doing to give a message to us that will crush us and destroy us?



 And Jesus comes down from the mountain and begins to heal people who cannot help themselves,



 a leper, a paralytic, a senior citizen, a demon-possessed man.



 And Jesus is showing us something about the gospel that was hardwired into the commandments from the very beginning.



 I read to you at the beginning of the sermon, the end of the Ten Commandments, we hardly ever get there.



 If you really understood these commandments, attitude and action, they would crush you. And you would say, somehow God has got to provide some rescue, some repair. He's got to make a way out here.



 Verse 24.



 An altar of earth you shall make for me, and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen, in every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you.



 I know these people, God says.



 Here's my holiness.



 Here's their record.



 They're going to be in trouble.



 And so I have made a way back to myself. It's going to be by sacrifice, by one substitute for another, the penalty that's actually due. But they need to understand something. The substitute that's going to come is not of their hands. Verse 23. You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make yourselves gods of gold. You cannot purchase my affection with silver or gold.



 That's not going to work. And if you make this altar to me for the sacrifice, don't even carve on the stone. Don't even chop the stones up. If you put your hand to it as though it's your work, it cannot show my grace.



 And so God says to his people, when you make an altar, don't you even touch the stones in such a way as to show your hand is your savior.



 Instead we read the last verse which causes us to kind of snicker, you know. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar that your nakedness be not exposed on a week. And they would. That's kind of funny.



 Except God is saying, "Regard me as holy.



 Regard me as the one who can deliver you by my holiness, not by anything in your part.



 Because not what you purchase and not what you perform is going to make you right with me."



 And when my heart knows that, I long for that kind of God.



 And I actually want to honor him.



 As Jesus came down from the mountain, we read these words in Matthew 8.



 When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him.



 And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him saying, "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean."



 And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, "I will be clean."



 What happens when you read these Ten Commandments and recognize that Jesus only intensifies the obligation?



 Oh God, you know how unclean I am.



 You know how wrong my heart as well as my actions. Is there any way back to you? Can you make me clean?



 And he said, "From the beginning I was teaching you.



 I can.



 I will. Not by the work of your hands.



 You can't bribe me.



 You can't leverage me.



 But if you will by faith trust I have made a way by the work of my son, you will be clean."



 And then what do our hearts say?



 Show me how I can walk with you now.



 Show me how I can honor you. Show me a way that's safe and good. Teach me your ways, oh Lord.



 And he says, "Okay, I have.



 This won't gain my love, but you can respond to my grace and know my love even more richly in every day of your life."



 Father, so teach us your ways that you who taught us your holiness so clearly would also teach us how that holiness was met by the sacrifice of a son as he took the penalty that we deserved and in doing so not only quenches the wrath that would rightly fall upon us, but teaches us of a compassion that makes us clean.



 And in doing so makes our hearts yearn for you.



 Our lives long for the ways that are safe and sweet.



 So teach us those.



 And by your spirit that renews our hearts' affections for you, lead us in the way that is good for us, for family and friend and coworker. Teach us your ways, oh Lord, that we might honor you through the love that you have shed abroad in our hearts. This we ask in Jesus' name, amen.