- Whose rules?
We live in an age where people largely believe that they are free to think and behave anyway they feel like behaving. Western society or culture having rejected God and divine revelation “has now largely rejected the concept of objective truth, at least when it comes to big issues, such as meaning and morality”[1]. For many people truth is a relative thing. You have your truth and I have mine and what I feel is true for me is how I’m going to live.
For many the rules or laws that govern western society are no longer tied to timeless truths of Creator, but they are normative truths, things that most people believe to be true and self- evident at the time which are always open to being reshaped or even repudiated. What is right today won’t necessarily be what will be right tomorrow.
This is part of the reason that Christians are increasingly regarded as being narrow minded and bigoted because we believe that the Creator has revealed himself and spoken to us telling us not only who he is and who we are but how we are to relate to him and others. We not only have a God who creates but also speaks and legislates what is right for us to do and what isn’t. If you’re a believer, it’s his wise words that are meant to govern our lives rather than us coming up with our own truths and drawing our own conclusions as to what is right and wrong.
- The ten words
In the reading today in chapters 4 and 5 Moses reminded the Israelites of the words that God had spoken to them that were to meant to govern and shape their lives in the Promised Land. These words are often referred to as the ten commandments but oddly they are never referred to as the ten commandments in the Hebrew text of the OT. A more accurate translation would be the “ten words”[2]. In our English translations where the “ten words” are referred to in the OT text (Exodus 34:28, Deut. 4:13 and Deut. 10:4) the translators have preferred to translate phrase as the “commandments” and that isn’t wrong. These ten words are commandments. But what we should also perhaps realise is that these ten words are more than just commandments as the Lord also provides reasons and promises for following what they say.
The ten words or commandments stand here at the head of Moses’ second speech in the book of Deuteronomy. In verses 44 to 49 of chapter 4 we are reminded of when Moses preached this second sermon and what this second sermon was about. The editor wrote in verse 44 and 45…
Deut. 4:44-45
“This is the law Moses set before the Israelites. 45 These are the stipulations, decrees and laws Moses gave them when they came out of Egypt 46 and were in the valley near Beth Peor east of the Jordan, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon and was defeated by Moses and the Israelites as they came out of Egypt.[3]
In one sense this perhaps could be thought of as the heading for the whole of the second speech which doesn’t end until chapter 29 and verse 1. The word that has been translated “law”, was a word that “denoted ‘teaching’ in a very general sense”[4]. It could also have been translated as “instruction” and it perhaps should be understood in this way. They are more than just a list of legal codes but instructions about why and how they were to keep them. What Moses was doing there on the banks of the Jordan was he was teaching the next generation how these ten words were to govern and shape their lives as God’s people in the Promised Land.
The ten words stand at the head of this speech because they were foundational to the covenant (agreement) that God made with the Israel in which he committed himself to their God and the Israelites to be his people (see Ex. 19:1-8). From these ten words all the regulations and stipulations, decrees and laws that would govern them as a nation will derive.
Today we are going to begin the first of a two-part study of these ten words or ten commandments from chapter 5 of Deuteronomy. In chapter 5 and verse 1 we are told that the Moses summoned Israel and told them that they were to hear, learn, and be sure to follow the decrees and laws that he was declaring to them. Hearing the word of God is never just a matter of knowing what God says, but a matter of really listening and learning and being careful to do or follow what the Lord has said. This is what he has always called his people to do.
- Love the Lord your God (words one to four)
When the Lord Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment in the Law, the Lord Jesus replied that the first and greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Matt 22:37). The Lord was quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 5. But the Lord didn’t stop there with his answer. He said that that was the first and greatest but that the second was like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”[5] He went on to say that all the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments (See Matt 22:36-40). In one sense the 10 commandments could be divided up in this way. We have first four commands that are about loving God and the remainder that that focus on our obligation to love our neighbour. On writer has put it this way, “Basically, the ten commandments assert that God’s people have two great areas of obligation – to God and their fellows.”[6]
Today we want to look at the first four commandments which describe that obligation to love God with all your heart, soul and mind. But before we look at the first commandment, we need to notice that verse 6 supplies the reason why Israel was to learn and follow these commandments. The one who had spoken these ten words was the Lord their God, the one who had rescued them from slavery and had brought them out of Egypt of the land of slavery. They were to follow the words of the Lord not so that he might save but because he had saved them. It was how they were to respond to the God who loved them had freed them so that they might become his people, his treasured possession. He had carried them out on eagles wings and had brought them to himself (see Exodus 19:6, Deut. 4:37). As the apostle John wrote, “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19). By his grace the Lord had saved them and made them his people and as his people they were to keep his covenant by following these words.
#1. Don’t have other gods beside me.
The first of these words recognises the exclusivity of worshipping the Lord as God. This commandment means that you can’t worship other things and still be worshipping God. We can’t have other gods on the side.
You can’t elevate the importance of other things so that they rival God’s sovereignty in your life. It is his will that it is to be done. He must be first. God demands our total allegiance. He brooks no rivals. As he says a little later, “for I the Lord your God, am a jealous God.” He is right to be jealous for we owe him all our love and affection because he made us and save us. If I came home and told my wife that I’ve decided to spend the weekends with another woman, but she shouldn’t worry because I’ll spend the other days of five days of the week with her, Kylie would be right to be jealous and say that she wasn’t going to put up with it. There is a right sort of jealousy.
This command first is a statement of exclusivity. You cannot worship God and at the same time give something else the importance that only God should have in your life. He is not interested in being one god among many gods. Only the Lord is God. The way that the CSB expresses verse 7, I think makes it clear: “Do not have other gods beside me.” The Lord is God alone.
The Lord Jesus made a similar point when he said that no one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Then he went on and applied this principle to the love of money. He went on to say that you cannot serve God and money (see Matthew 6:24).
God can’t come second to your love of anything else, be it your wealth, your career, your pleasure or leisure or your studies or even your wife or your children. We just don’t fit the Lord in around all the other things that we have going on in our lives. God isn’t to just to be a piece of your life that you squeeze in when you have time left over from all the other things you’ve got going on. He is to govern our lives and shape the other things that we do. The Lord was effectively saying that you either only worship him, or you don’t worship him at all. In the same way either Jesus is Lord, or he is not.
#2 Don’t make your own image of God
The second word is about not making your own image of God.
Deut. 5:8-10
You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
This command was not just ruling out the sort of idolatry that the nations practiced who made idols and worshipped false gods, but it was also prohibiting the use of idols in the worship of the Lord, their God. They weren’t to come up with their own idea of what God was like. In chapter 4 Moses had explained exactly why they were not to do so. When the Lord appeared at Mount Horeb in person, they didn’t see him, they only heard a voice. The Lord spoke to them out of the fire. But the fire wasn’t the Lord. The Lord had no form. God revealed himself by speaking his ten words. It was his voice they heard. This was the way he made himself known. Therefore, Israel wasn’t to use images or idols to represent the Lord.
Sadly, Israel had done exactly those forty years earlier while Moses was up the mountain being given the two stone tables with these 10 words engraved on them. The people became restless and impatient when it all took longer than anyone expected and so they urged Aaron to make gods for them. They wanted a god on tap, answering to their beck and call. Sadly, Aaron gathered all their gold jewellery and from it he made a golden calf and built an altar in front of it and announce that the next day that there would be festival to the Lord. But to represent the God who made this universe and everything in it and who had powerfully saved them out of Egypt as a calf was to diminish God’s glory and to try to domesticate and manipulate the living God.
We are not to come up with our version of what God should be like that we find acceptable to us so that we can worship him the way that we want to worship him. That’s just another form of idolatry. As Kevin DeYoung as put it…
“If the first commandment is against worship the wrong God, the second commandment is against worshiping God in the wrong way”.
We can’t worship God in any way that we choose to worship him. God’s reveals how we are to draw near to him and acknowledge him. On the Mount of transfiguration when the disciples saw something of the glory of Christ, they heard a voice come from the cloud that had covered them says, “This is my Son, whom I love listen to him” (Luke 9:35, Mark 9:7, Matt. 17:5). The Lord Jesus would later tell them that he is the way the truth and life and that no one comes to Father except through him (John 14:6). He is the way that we come to Father. He is the way that we worship God.
Our way of worshipping God just doesn’t cut it. It is idolatry and its offensive It’s arrogant in the extreme to say I’ll worship you, but I’ll do it my way, not your way. I’ll do it on my terms, not yours. I don’t like what you have revealed about yourself, so I’ll create my own version of you and my own way of worshipping you so that you say and do those things that suit me and the way I like to think about you. When we come to God we come to him on his terms, not ours, his way not our way.
#3 Don’t misuse the name of the Lord.
The third commandment has to do with the misuse of God’s name.
Deut. 5:11
You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.[7]
We are called to honour the name of the Lord, to praise his name (Psalm 72:19). Paul wrote that whatever we do, whether it is words or deed, that we are to do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father (Col 3:17). To praise his name is to honour him. To misuse his name is dishonour him. It is to treat the Lord as though he is nothing. To use his name willy-nilly as though it means nothing and counts for nothing is to cheapen his name and dishonour the Lord. That why it isn’t appropriate for believers to be crying out, “Oh my God” as though God’s name is brought out at the drop of hat to express surprise or disappointment. The same is true for using the name of Jesus. One day every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth will bow the knee to his name. His name is something that we are not to use frivolously for that is to demean or cheapen his precious name. God has graciously revealed himself to us and given us his name so that we might know him and be able to call out to him in prayer and praise. It is to be treated as holy. As the psalmist has written in Psalm 8…
Psalm 8:1,
1 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! [8]
It wasn’t given so that we can express our surprise or disbelief or disgust at something as though his name has no significance. The Lord Jesus taught his disciple to pray “Hallowed be your name” (Matt 6:9). Of course, this is not the only way we can misuse God’s name, but this is quite a common way that people in our culture misuse the name of God and we need to be careful not to join in with them at this point. Maybe over morning tea you could discuss some other ways we might misuse the name of the Lord.
#4 Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
The fourth command had to do with keeping the Sabbath day and setting it apart from all the rest. That’s what it means to keep it holy.
Deut. 5:12
Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you.
How Israel was to set it apart from the rest was by ceasing from their work on the seventh day which is explained in verses 13 to 14. It wasn’t just the Israelite who wasn’t to work, it was their ox and their donkey, their male and female slaves and the foreigners who lived among them.
For the Israelite it would have been perhaps very easy to give themselves a day of rest, but not give it to their slaves or workers. But Moses made it clear that this gift of rest was to be applied to everyone within Israelite society whether they were a servant or free, a child or an adult and whether they were an Israelite or a foreigner or even one of their beasts of burden.
The seventh day was to be a Sabbath to the Lord. Observing the Sabbath reminded the Israelites of a couple of important things that they needed to remember. Firstly, that it was the Lord who is the Creator and sustainer. He made the heavens and earth and then he rested on the seven-day (see Ex. 20:11; 31:17). This Sabbath rest is something that he wants his creation to enjoy with him. The story of the Bible in one sense is how after the fall we will enter that rest. Stopping work, one day in seven reminded them of this as well as reinforcing the fact that they were totally dependent on the Lord for what they needed. Secondly, it reminded them that it was the Lord who had saved them out of Egypt. In Deut. 4:15 the Israelites were told that they were to remember that they had been slaves in Egypt and the Lord had brought them out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. With Israel the Lord set up this weekly pattern of resting and remembering God as their Creator and their redeemer.
With the coming of Jesus, Christians are no longer under the old covenant and the Law of Moses. Paul wrote that he is free although he is not free from God’s law, but under the law of Christ (see 1 Cor. 9:21 and Gal 6:2). In Christ we are part of the new covenant and not the Mosaic covenant although there are lines of continuity between the two because Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law. With regards to the Sabbath, Paul refers to the Sabbath as a shadow of the things to come, the reality being found in Christ (see Col. 2:17).
The Sabbath day finds its fulfilment in Jesus. When the Lord Jesus was accused of breaking the Sabbath because his disciples had picked some heads of grain while walking through a field, the Lord didn’t quibble with his accusers about their interpretation of the Law, he said something remarkable. He said that he was the Lord of Sabbath (see Matt 12:8, Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5). This day that Israel had been remembering was his day. It look forward to him because he was the Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath pointed to him for he would be the one who would ultimately give God’s people rest. In him we become part of the new creation. The Lord Jesus called the weary and burdened to come to him and he promised that that he would give them rest, rest for their souls (Matt 12:28-29).
We now keep the Sabbath by coming to him for we find our rest in him. You don’t keep the Sabbath unless come to him. You will never find rest for your soul without him, no matter whether you put aside a day of rest once a week or not. Thus, for Paul whether you keep the Sabbath or not is up to you (see Romans 15:5). It is not an obligation for we are no longer under the old covenant, and we find our Sabbath rest by coming to Christ and putting our faith in him. The writer of Hebrews says that we who have believed have entered that rest (see Hebrews 4:3). This doesn’t mean that resting one day in seven is something that isn’t wise to do or that we shouldn’t do. There is great wisdom in doing this, but we must remember that ultimately enjoy rest for our souls in him who gave himself for us.
- Listen, learn and be careful to follow
The idea or concept that there is not only one God who we are to listen to who tells us how we ought to live is for many is not only foreign but also offensive to many. But this is exactly what Moses reminded the Israelites of before they crossed over into the Promised Land. They heard God speak ten words that were to govern their lives and they were to listen, learn and be careful to follow them. They were to obey them for he was calling them to love the Lord with all their heart, soul and strength (see Deut. 6:5-6) .
This is also true for us today. We need to listen and learn and follow our God who has spoken his words. Because we are to love the Lord, it his words that are to shape our lives. There are lots of voices out there telling us what we ought to think and do, but it his voice that we need to listen to, learn from and obey. We are to have no other gods beside him. He tells us how we are to worship him. We can’t come up with our own ways. It is his Son that we have to listen to and believe for he is the way the truth and the life. We find rests for our souls in him and one day every knee will bow at the sound of his name.
For many people, Christians are increasingly being regarded as narrow minded and bigoted because we believe that it is God that determines what is right and wrong, what is good and what is evil. He tells us what we should and should not do and increasingly that marks us out as different to the surrounding culture just as it was for the Israelites. But this isn’t a bad thing. The laws God gave Israel weren’t given to kerb their fun or to make life hard for the Israelites but were to bless them and make them a blessing to others. The words of God are life. Moses told the Israelites that they were to “observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all the decrees and say, “surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Deut. 4:6). In this way they would be a light to the nations and that is what we are also called to do by listening and learning and being careful to follow all that God has declared to us.
[1] Vaughan Roberts, “Transgender” Location 174 of 728
[2] As one writer has pointed out that is why the Ten Commandments are sometimes referred to as the Decalogue because the word “deca” in Greek meant 10 and “logos” meant “word”.
[3] Unless otherwise indicated all Scripture quotations are taken from the 2011 edition of the NIV, Zondervan electronic edition.
[4] J.A. Thompson, “Deuteronomy” TOTC, page
[5] This is a quote of Leviticus 19:18.
[6] Thompson, page 114.
[7] The New International Version (Dt 5:11). (2011). Zondervan.
[8] The New International Version (Ps 8:1). (2011). Zondervan.
