With our study series on the Ten Commandments, it’s perfect timing to focus on today’s Old Testament text from Exodus. The reflection from the children’s message showed that there is so much more to the Commandments than a legal checklist. The narrative in Exodus before chapter 20 paints a fuller picture.
Pharoah had enslaved God’s people under harsh labour. Imagine yourself in this situation. Pharoah neither knew the true God nor cared about him. He saw God as a rival, and cruelly oppressed God’s people, not permitting you to go and worship the Lord. Pharoah’s heart, devoid of the love of God, showed itself in his harsh will to control, dominate and oppress. The people are beaten, and forced to work harder, with no prospect of the situation changing. You recognise your powerlessness. There’s nothing anyone’s able to do to bring about an escape from this political superpower.
What gloom and hopelessness! In despair God’s people turn against their own leaders, Moses and Aaron: “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” Moses goes to the Lord and laments: “Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all” (Exodus 5:20-23). Can you hear the anguish in those words?
But then, God speaks: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’” (Ex 6:6-8).
Moses and Aaron were in the 80s when they went to speak with Pharoah. It was not in their own power or strength they would triumph. God showed his people he was their only hope. In this passage of promise, it is God who takes the initiative to personally visit, speak, listen, and rescue. Your hopes rise. You hold your head up as you see God’s mighty works, when he exposed the powerlessness and futility of all the deities of Egypt, by bringing plagues upon the land. Things that were worshipped were rained down in such an abundance that it caused chaos. Things that were seen as life-giving were stifled. The last plague was the plague of the firstborn, by which God brought judgment on all the gods of Egypt, but passed over the homes of his people marked with the blood of the Passover lamb. Then he brought them to a place where they would again see their only hope in him. Hemmed in by the sea and the pursuing Egyptian army, there was no escape. As you hear the thunder of the seas before you, and the thunder of horses and chariots behind, God shows that with him all things are possible. He parted the Red Sea, suspending walls of water. You can barely believe it as you scurry along dry ground.
By the time we get to today’s text at the beginning of chapter 20, it’s important to reflect on all this. God had chosen his people, gathered them, and rescued them. He has done this for no other reason than his great love for them and his faithfulness to what he promised. Look at the words at the beginning: ‘I am, the LORD your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” God gives his commandments after he has freed his people—not before.
“I am the Lord your God”. God is speaking in relational terms with his people. He is declaring himself to be their God, binding himself to them. The commandments are not a pre-requisite for salvation with God and favour from him, they are the framework for how the people God has already saved are to live with him and for him in true freedom, as they prepare to enter the land he had promised to give them.
Every person is unique and precious, created in God’s image, knitted together in the safe haven of their mother’s womb. God has even counted every single hair on each person’s head. He doesn’t want harm to come to anyone, so he gave the fifth commandment. Because words can hurt more than knives, God gave the eighth commandment too: to not bear false witness, because he wanted his people not to gossip but speak well of each other, to not conceal the truth but to defend others’ reputations. He didn’t want his people hurt by rejection and unfaithfulness. He gave the gift of sex not to be distorted and abused, but kept within the security of marriage as he established it in the beginning, where husbands honoured their wives and wives their husbands, so that children could grow up in the environment of a family home of commitment without conditions. He didn’t want his people to be subject to disorder and chaos, so he commanded children to honour their father and mother, that they might grow up to know the Lord and his ways. He wanted their homes and property protected, so he commanded the people not to steal, or covet their neighbour’s wife, or workers, or property and possessions.
Living as God’s people can only come from living with God. God is a jealous God—he had chosen his people and wanted them all to himself, for no other reason than that he loved them. He didn’t want them to run after the cheap and nasty imitations of neighbouring nations, because then they would only end up enslaved again. Why did God want them to have no other gods? Because nothing and no-one else could do what he had just done for them.
In commanding his people to not use his name in vain, God gave them a personal connection with him. He was personally available to listen to them. And he wanted them to listen to him, as he spoke life-giving words to them. They were to honour the Sabbath day, resting with God each Saturday. The foundation for this commandment is rooted in creation, where God himself rested on the seventh day, and Adam and Eve’s first task in life was to do nothing but rest with God.
What does this Old Testament text teach us about God and how does it relate to our lives? We all want to be loved, don’t we? Who doesn’t want to be cared about and cared for? Who doesn’t want their property protected, and their reputation defended? Who doesn’t want their children to respect their authority, and their children to grow up with blessing? Who doesn’t want their spouse to remain faithful?
The commandments are the shape of love, concerned not only with the self but others, as we live together with God as his people. But human beings are not so good at loving, not God’s way, anyway. Like God’s people of old, we too were in a desperate situation—an oppression even greater than what Israel experienced. We were in bondage to sin, death and hell. We needed a rescue, and we were powerless to bring it about ourselves.
It was while we in slavery to these powers that God promised his faithfulness to you too—not because we deserved it, but because of his grace. To you God did not veil himself in a cloud by day and a pillar fire by night. He has veiled himself in the flesh and bone of Jesus—the Passover lamb that was crucified to free us from slavery.
Jesus tells a story about this in today’s Gospel reading. God had sent his prophets to the vineyard—the people of Israel. Through them he called the people to bear the fruit of repentance and obedience that comes from true faith. But throughout Israel’s history God’s people didn’t want to listen. They even stoned the prophets (Matthew 23:37) and killed God’s only Son.
The Gospels show us the dark reality of what was done to Jesus. What is perhaps most shocking is that Jesus allowed nails to be driven through his hands even for those who rejected him and longed to do away with him—all because he challenged their sense of righteousness and taught them that keeping rules, customs and traditions was no basis for entering the kingdom of heaven. In the parable, Jesus continued: “Therefore I tell you the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will bring forth its fruit.”
That is why we are here today. Because of God’s grace. The people of God are no longer restricted to Israel, but people of all times and places, through faith in Christ and his righteousness. Paul said in Romans 5 (6-9):
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!”
Today, here, you enter the Sabbath rest again—on Sunday morning, the morning of Jesus’ resurrection which he accomplished for you. You meet with your risen Lord who speaks to you through his word and serves you at his table. Through these God brings all the forgiveness, life and salvation that he won for the world on the Cross to you personally. He forgives you for every single time you have broken his commandments. He loves you apart from your performance, with absolutely no strings attached; no disclaimers in fine print. He declares to you: “I am the Lord, your God.” His precious blood has freed from the condemnation of the law and the expectations and judgments of others. With the true bread from heaven he strengthens you for the journey to the place he has prepared for you in heaven. As he does, may God our Father pour out his Spirit abundantly upon us, to open our ears to his word, so that we know we are saved by God not by rules, and to open our hearts to live the commandments—as people who have been freed to love others as we love ourselves. Amen.
