Week 6: The Ten Commandments (Exodus 19-20) Discussion Questions
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1 Week 6: The Ten Commandments (Exodus 19-20) Discussion Questions 1. Have you viewed the Ten Commandments as relevant to your life? In what way? Do you think that you ignore any of them? 2. How do you see the commandments as relevant to the church versus the world? Read Exodus 19: How is this chapter (and the next) a key part of Exodus and in the life of Israel? 4. What has God done for Israel so far? Why does God tell Moses to remind the people of this (v.4)? 5. What is a covenant? In what way does this passage emphasise the relational nature of it? 6. What does God expect of the people of Israel (v.5)? 7. If they are obedient, God promises that they will become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. What does this mean? 8. If we remove the context of covenant from the commandments, how are we at risk distorting these important commands? (Try to recall the three common distortions as shared in the sermon.) Read Exodus 20: How are these first four commandments an expression of loving God? 10. Why is the first commandment so critical? How do we run the risk of having other gods? 11. Which one of the four do you find personally challenging? 12. What would be a modern way of expressing a Sabbath? Do you think this is relevant today? Why? Read Exodus 20: How are these six commands an expression of loving neighbour? How are they also a form of loving God? 14. How by keeping the commandments can we be distinctive for God s glory? Try to each think of a different commandment each, and how this might be manifested in your workplace/school/university/club. 15. Why are the commands an important source of freedom, community, and love? Read Romans 8: As we strive to be the people of God obediently, how does this passage encourage us even when we make mistakes? The Anglican Church of Noosa
2 Talk 6/9 (Exodus Series): 3/11/13 Exodus 19-20: The Ten Commandments by the Rev d Adam Lowe INTRODUCTION \\ EXODUS BACK STORY Well this is a big passage. And because of that, we re not going to move through it in a expositional way (verse-by-verse), we re going to come at it from a different angle. What we need to understand is that this chapter sits at the heart of the entire book. It s fundamental to the entire story and identity of Israel. So far a. Genesis ends with the family of Jacob in the wrong country because of famine. b. Exodus 1-18 continues the story by getting the descendants of Jacob out of Egypt. c. And then the people spend the whole of Exodus right through to the end of Leviticus at Mount Sinai. It s only a period of two years, but it s crucial. So chapters 19 and 20 are critical to this entire narrative from the covenant being made right through the to the entering of the promised land. Therefore if we have any chance of understanding the commandments, we ve got to recognise that their context is covenant. We often think of Sinai as the moment when the covenant came into being, but there was already covenantal relationship between God and Israel. 2
3 INTRODUCTION \\ COVENANT IS THE CONTEXT Do you recall what that covenant was? Abraham (Gen 17:6-8; 15:17-18) Isaac (Gen 26:24) Jacob (Gen 35:11-12) And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham's sake. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you. But when God made the covenant with Israel s ancestors, it was 99 percent a commitment on God s part - a promise about something God was going to do, he s already delivered on some of that with their rescue. But there were no specific requirements on Abraham except that males be circumcised. That all changes with these ten words - God is initiating the process whereby the covenant will be fulfilled and it now requires the commitment to become mutual. 3 INTRODUCTION \\ DISTORTIONS OF THE COMMANDMENTS If you ignore that, if you come to the ten commandments and rip it out of its context, then inevitably we get three distortions. a. Just for the Jews, not for Christians. This is a long time ago - surely this isn t for us after all we ve been freed from the Law, haven t we? But actually, the commandments are not like the other laws - this is God speaking directly to his people. And as we ll explore a little, when Jesus talks about the commandments, he doesn t abandon them - he actually intensifies them. b. God is a kill-joy. You know - all of those thou shalt nots God is just trying to spoil all of our fun. He s being too controlling. He s putting all of these limitations on us. But as we ll see, these commands aren t rules to oppress us, they re to free us. c. Stairway to Heaven. Perhaps the most dangerous of all - sometimes people think they re moralistic code, that if followed, our righteous behaviour will set us free. This is a common sentiment - I hear all the time people being described as good Christian people because they follow the commandments regardless of relationship with God. 4
4 Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at Notre Dame, has conducted extensive research on religious belief, especially with younger adults in America. And when summarising where most of America is at with religious belief, he coined the term moralistic therapeutic deism. Deism means there is a God, but he s not connected to my daily life Morally therapeutic because its founded on the belief that if I live a pretty good life, then it s God s job to meet my needs. That s what you end up with when you disconnect relationship with God from his standard from right-living. In the chapter before the commandments, God tells Moses to get the people ready for his presence - that s the culmination of the entire rescue story so far. And this is what he tells Moses to tell the people. You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites. (Exodus 19:4-6) Obey my voice, keep my covenant, be my people, be a holy nation. The giving of the ten commandments is much more like a marriage ceremony than a law court, but the partners aren t equal. {BLANK} 5 COVENANT FREEDOM \\ OVERVIEW So briefly, I want to give us three ways of thinking about these commandments that we might go away, and prayerfully meditate on them more. 1 The first way is covenant freedom. Immediately, God twice reminds his people that he is rescuing them - brought out from Egypt. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3) Yet, they are not yet free because true freedom is something far beyond the physical confines of a place - true freedom is a thing of the heart and it comes about by being bound in covenant to God. Think about it, God could have set them up wonderfully prosperous with giant castles and all that jazz, but they still would not have been truly free. These ten words that he speaks to them are ten words of freedom - freedom to be the people whom God has 1 I m grateful to David Short for this helpful way in thinking about the commandments and our response. 6
5 made us to be - freedom from coveting and lies, not freedom to indulge or be true to ourselves. And so, through these words is how they must learn freedom. Note the first four commandments - no other gods, no idols, not to misuse the name of God, and the keeping of the Sabbath - note their orientation is all towards God. But also note - out of all the commandments, the one that gets the most attention is the keeping of the Sabbath. Because God knows that the only way to be free from the tyranny of being successful and productive is to put the tools of the work that you serve down. In my previous work as an Organisational Psychologist, I saw this time-and-time again - I see it myself too. God knows how easy it is for us to worship our own performance. You re a slave again. Sabbath causes us to put down our agenda and listen to God s. Freedom is the shape of loving God and one another - and that s why he gives the commandments. 7 COVENANT COMMUNITY \\ OVERVIEW The second way of meditating on the commandments is covenant community. This is such a monumental event. God gathers them as a congregation - and for the very first time he speaks to them. And what were the words prefaced with? I want you to be a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation - an alternate society (cf. Exodus 19:6). Those two descriptors are ways of saying the same thing twice. They re to be unlike any other nation - holy, in the world but not of it. And not ruled by kings, but as priests, they are to be ruled by God. By describing them in this way, it helps remind them that their entire identity is distinguished by their relationship with God. And just as God works differently, we are to be a people who look different, distinctive. In our workplaces we should be distinctive. The way we parent should reflect our relationship with God. The way we use our resources, should all reflect the reality of being a people set apart for God. This is an amazing vision - at Sinai, God isn t creating a whole heap of goodie-two-shoes individuals fit for heaven, but he is creating an alternate city who relate to all the issues of life differently when it comes to resources, relationships, and power. 8
6 So this isn t about ticking boxes. This is not just about coming along on a Sunday. This is about being a community bound together by our relationship with God. It means meeting together, keeping each other accountable, opening our life to the Word of God, asking our friends to speak into our lives and asking, how can we be different?. 9 COVENANT LOVE \\ OVERVIEW The third way of meditating on the commandments is covenant love I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me. This commandment lies underneath all other nine. When we seek the other nine, we are putting God first. Idolatry is not cutting down a tree, it s a matter of the heart. We prefer the object, we make it more important in our life than the Lord. That s why in our last series, Mark described idolatry as the sin beneath every sin. And of course the real danger are in the good things - like serving others - but if that becomes distorted and the other person s opinion of me is more important than God s opinion, I have put them before loving God. The last command is a helpful diagnostic You shall not covet your neighbor s house. You shall not covet your neighbor s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor (Ex 20:17) 10
7 It s got to do what we love you can look like you re keeping the law, when your heart is actually riddled with coveting. We see that in the rich man in Mark 10 - he thought he was keeping all the law, but his heart that chased wealth told the true story. If you want to understand the commandments, you ve got to recognise their relational covenantal context. Freedom, Community, and Love. And friends they are so relevant to us today. I see ten commandments for all sorts of things on the web - travelling with kids, fitness, or diet. Only last week, Lech Walesa (Polish Nobel Peace Laureate) said: We need to agree on common values for all religions as soon as possible, a kind of secular Ten Commandments on which we will build the world of tomorrow And as good intentioned as he was, this will never work. Because if you separate covenant, if you separate relationship with God, it s just a powerless and burdensome list. {blank] 11 So what do they say to us? CONCLUSION \\ TODAY a. From God the Father. They express commands for us that transcend every social framework. They re the permanent expression of God s moral will. Of course, there only one problem - we break all of them. We ll read with sadness what Israel does next with a golden calf. Built into the commandments is a longing for something better, actually someone better who can obey them and cleanse us. At the end of the Old Testament God foreshadows a new covenant: This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. (Jeremiah 31:33) b. From God the Son. Jesus intensifies the commandments but he also Jesus fulfils them. When he claims the Passover for himself, he says: my body given for you do this in remembrance of me - and then when he takes the cup us says of the wine - this is my blood of the new covenant for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus takes all of our disobedience and places it on himself, and then he takes his perfect covenant obedience and transfers it to us. 12
8 c. From God the Holy Spirit. When we place our trust in Christ we enter the new covenant and he writes the law on our hearts by the Holy Spirit. As he wrote with his finger, he now writes on our heart. And what is the mark of the Holy Spirit? Obedience. The commandments shows us what it is to please our God and be his people without fear even when we don t get it right. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2) We are his people - and as we live in Christ in obedience, we know the truth of his freedom, community, and love. So let s live distinctively for his glory. 13
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