Week 5 (The Law & the Land) – Day 1: The Ten Commandments

Day 21 – The Ten Commandments - Exodus 19:1-20:21

This reading is extensive in content.  We have the theophany or God’s appearance to the Israelites.  We also see that Moses is the mediator of this meeting between God and the people.  This Mosaic Covenant formed at this time will be the basis of God’s relationship with humanity for the following 1200 years or so.  Jesus will fulfill this covenant from both God and humanity’s side.  While some attribute are very different than our relationship with God today, it is still worth reading.  Particularly for its manifestation of God’s holiness, which as I’ve mentioned earlier, we seem to forget.  The meeting on the mountain reminds me of Annie Dillard’s statement form her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk:

"On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no-one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return." 

What do you think about her statement?  What do you expect in worship

            I also want to comment about the Ten Commandments.  We see the Commandments less as a tool of condemnation than as a teaching tool.  For us, the commandments are more markers of a life in which the Holy Spirit is at work.  But we really limit their meaning if we woodenly follow them without really delving into them. 

            I’d like to share some of John Calvin’s approach to the Ten Commandments.  I will use a simpler one for the example: “You shall not murder.”  (v. 20:13)  Sounds simple, but difficult enough.  First Calvin notes we need to expand the meaning.  For example, do we, in our heart wish ill on someone, do we gossip, do we deal with others through anger, etc.  Do we provide opportunities for others to sin, placing their eternal life in jeopardy?  Becomes a little tougher!  Then Calvin says we need to reverse the meaning.  In other words, do we take actions to save life?  Do we provide food and shelter?  Do we ensure safe conditions?  Do we uplift people nurturing them in the faith, to ensure they know of Jesus?  Calvin takes a holistic view of murder both physically and spiritually.  He also takes a broad view of both our individual responsibilities but our responsibility to wider society as well. 

Well there is so much more I’d like to discuss: idolatry as more than worshipping a golden idol.  Not many golden idols around but what do we place in front of following Jesus as a disciple?  These are idols.  Or what about keeping the Sabbath.  If God could takes a rest for a day, why do we find it so difficult today?  And as the commandments point out, our actions on the Sabbath affect others.  When we go out and do something, we force others to work, whether they may want to or not  (I know some of you are on the “receiving” end of this.)  Thus this commandment always talks about rest for servants. 

I hope we start to think about the Ten Commandments in more than just a wooden list of behaviors, and more about how they are a starting point, not the ending point, for living out the words: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)

In Christ,

Randy