It says they arrived here on the 3rd new moon which gets them here about 7 weeks after the Exodus out of Egypt. Again think about that. They are about half way to the Promised Land after 7 weeks, but the next half takes them almost 40 years.
The other thing significant about this timing is that their arrival at Sinai corresponds to the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. This feast is 50 days after the feast of first fruits, we see this in detail in Leviticus 23. Now the feast of first fruits corresponds to the Passover Lamb. The feast of Weeks is about the giving of the Law just as Pentecost in the NT is the giving of the Holy Spirit, or the Law written on our hearts. So this very much parallels what we see in the NT with Jesus being the first fruits of the dead to rise, and then 50 days later, the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
This is also the official beginning of the Israelite people’s formal worship system, just like in Acts it was the beginning of the formal Christian church.
The first thing we see God say to the people is in verse 4. He starts with saying, “You have seen how I delivered you from the Egyptians, how I bore you up on Eagle’s wings and brought you to myself”. Again the parallel can be how God delivered us and brought us to himself through Christ. “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”.
Now I want to point a couple things out here. One is that this is always a two way covenant between God and his people. God cannot break a covenant once he makes it, but we certainly can. And like everywhere in the Bible, our part of the covenant is to obey God’s voice. In fact there is no such thing as a one way covenant. Promise yes, but not covenant. Covenant is an alliance, a pledge between people or even treaty.
I have heard some preachers say that it doesn’t matter what we do, God will always keep his side of the covenant. I think that is false teaching, and we see the truth over and over in the Bible. He uses the word if both in the OT and NT – if you… then I….
And you, those who keep the covenant, will be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Now the other thing I want to point out is that we are not priests and a Holy nation to the world, but to God. In 1 Peter 2 where this is restated, it says that we are a people for his own possession.
Now the other thing I want to say may be a little controversial. I am not a believer in replacement theology where the NT church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen people. I actually believe that the nation of Israel as an actual political entity never was who God made the covenants with in the first place.
If you read very carefully through all the Scripture relating to this, it was always those Hebrew people who kept the covenant with God who were chosen and were a holy nation. The initial act of confirming this covenant was to be circumcised, and now it is to be baptised. But it didn’t end there, it continued with obeying all that God commanded. Israelites who did not obey, were not spared, they were not given any preferential treatment, and often were judged even more harshly than Gentiles.
In fact the word nation here in Exodus is actually the word used for Gentile nation. That, with the emphasis God makes about all the earth being his, leads me to the conclusion that this was a statement of inclusion. That all people who obey the commands of God, including the rabble or mixed multitude, could be part of this kingdom and nation. It was never exclusively Jewish. The other proof of this is how we see Gentile people like Rahab, and Ruth, and others who are used by God in the line of Jesus.
I fear that we have been led astray somewhat by being told that the actual nation of Israel is the center of God’s plan. The biblical facts are that anyone who believes in Jehovah God and his messiah Jesus is a true Jew, which really means a people group descended from Jacob who was renamed Israel. The word Israel literally means “God prevails” and comes from a root word, “he will rule as God”. Israel is nothing more than people who are under the rule of God who has prevailed through His son the Messiah Jesus.
This is confirmed in the NT in 1 Peter 2 when the leader of the Jewish Jerusalem church calls all Christians a priesthood and holy nation because we have allowed ourselves to be sold into his possession, and this is not by birthright or geographical location. The writer of Hebrews tells the Hebrew people that all these OT things were copies of the real thing that was to come in Jesus. That includes even the actual city of Jerusalem and the holy place or temple.
Galatians 3:28 tells us there is no longer Jew or Gentile, in fact there never really was. A true Jew was as the devout Jew Paul says in Romans 2, not even one who is physically circumcised, but one whose heart has been circumcised by the Spirit. For circumcision is and always was only of value if a person obeys the law. A Jew is one inwardly, not outwardly.
This is in no way anti Semitic or anti anybody. It is simply a fact that whether you are Jewish, Arab, Japanese, or anything else, you are part of God’s chosen race, a holy nation, a priesthood to Him, if you obey the voice of God and participate in the covenant with him. The truth is like all other races, the Jewish people still to a large extent reject Christ, and that is the only determinant today of whether or not you belong to God.
Having said all that, I believe there will be a day where there is a revival among many Jewish people where they will finally see that Jesus is there awaited Messiah. Not because of who they are but because they have God’s word which leads to Jesus Christ.
All right check out the next part. God tells Moses he is going to come down to the mountain in a thick cloud on the third day and if you touch the mountain you will be instantly killed. So they all consecrated themselves and the Lord came down with thunder and lightening and a loud trumpet blast. That sounds a bit like a foretaste of his final coming doesn’t it.
God allowed Aaron to come up with Moses, but everyone else was forbidden.
And here’s how God begins chapter 20, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery”. I think it’s perfectly sound for us to say also, that he is the God that sent his son Jesus Christ to bring us out of the slavery of sin and death. So when we establish who He is, we get the most basic instructions that have never been cancelled or revoked. In fact Jesus only strengthened these commandments.
So here they are the Ten Commandments: I am going to read them in our language.
1. You shall have no other god that turns you away from me. The Hebrew word for god here includes ruler or judge. So you shall not be ruled or accept anyone else’s judgement above mine. I am the final authority in your life. There is no competition.
2. You shall not turn me into some meaningless man made thing. I am the invisible God of the universe and I will punish those who are my enemies, and show steadfast love to those who love me and keep my commandments. Every other culture was religious and they all worshipped man made images. He says he is a jealous God and that jealousy also infers zealousness for us and our well-being. Notice also his punishment lasts for three or four generations, but his love lasts for thousands of generations.
3. You shall not make my name nothing or meaning less. In the Jewish culture they are still very careful not to even mention the name God. The idea here is not just dishonouring his name, but actually using it in a way that makes His name meaningless or vain. When we use his name we must always be reverent of His greatness and majesty. I think we even need to be careful in our prayers that we are not just tacking his name thoughtlessly on the end of our prayer without really acknowledging that we are addressing and witnessing for this awesome God whenever we say his name.
4. You shall remember to have a day of intermission from work like I did. This one has caused a lot of controversy over the ages. What is the Sabbath day? When God created the earth, was there Monday Tuesday Wednesday and so on? All we know is that we are to do our work in six days and one of the 7 days we are to devote to rest and fellowship with God. I doubt that it really matters whether it is Sunday or Saturday, or any other day. In our culture it has traditionally been set up as Sunday, so that often becomes the easiest and most reasonable day for this. But 7th Day Adventists believe that Sunday worship is the mark of the beast set up by the Catholic Church.
I think God knows how caught up in our business we can get and how that can draw us away from God, so he made the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath. He simply wants us to take a day off and focus on Him.
The next six commandments are pretty straight forward and relate to our treatment of other people.
5. Do not intentionally be a burden to your mother and father, so that you may have a long and God blessed life. Treat your parents with respect and submission when young, and provide for them and look after them in their old age. Make sure you do your best to make their lives easy, and God promises to bless you. You are not just doing this for your parents, but for God. This is the only command with a direct promise attached to it.
6. Do not kill anyone either in a premeditated way or by carelessness or negligence. Of course we know that Jesus strengthened this command to include anger and insults.
7. Do not commit adultery or idolatrous worship. Jesus also strengthened this one to include even looking at a woman other than your wife with lustful intent.
8. Don’t steal.
9. Don’t speak lies about your fellow man. This is especially with a judicial emphasis and includes lying about someone in a way that will get them in trouble. Many criminal and even some civil penalties included death in that culture, so a lying testimony could greatly hurt someone. But I think this even applies to not taking responsibility for our own actions and instead blaming someone else so that we can avoid the consequences.
10. Don’t desire or take pleasure in anything that belongs to someone else. In other words, get your own. Again coveting or taking pleasure in things that others have is probably the number one motive for stealing and murder even today. Watch any kind of crime drama on TV, what are the primary motives they usually look for? Money and sex.
I think its OK to see something someone else has and say, hey I gotta get me one of those, but you don’t take pleasure in it until you get your own, and if you can’t get your own, you put it out of your mind.
Now the next part is interesting (Read 20:18-21). The people heard the thunder and lightning and they didn’t want anything to do with God they were so afraid. “You tell us what he says Moses”. Twice it says the people stood far off, and Moses drew near. Again Moses corrects them and encourages them to have their own relationship with God. This is my translation of what he says: “Your gonna die anyway, don’t be afraid of dying, he is trying to prove himself to you with his awesomeness so that you obey Him and don’t sin, so that you can eternal life”. That word test in there really refers to proving oneself.
Finally God gives a few more details of commandments 1 and 2, he says, “Don’t you go making gods of silver and gold or anything man made. Make an altar out of the earth that I have created, and make your offerings there. I will bless you for making an altar of remembrance for me. If you do happen to make it out of stone which I also created, make sure you don’t alter it by carving or using any tools on it. Let it just be a stone the way I have made it.
Again he is making it very clear that nothing we can do or create will come close to representing God. And notice that last verse in chapter 20. Don’t build anything too high that you have to go up steps, just so nobody can see up your robe. A little lesson for modesty in how we dress in worship perhaps? Basically avoid anything that might take attention away from God.
Now, we are Christians no longer bound by the Law right? What does that mean? What is Paul saying throughout his letters? Are the Ten Commandments null and void? Let me see if I can clear this up a little very quickly.
First in the book of Romans, Paul says we are slaves to righteousness. Are we to sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! He goes on to clarify in Romans 6 and 7 that the law applies while a person lives, so if we die with Christ, we have been released from the law just a like a woman is released from the law of marriage if her husband dies.
Then he says that the law is not sin, but it allows us to know what sin is. He says he delights in the law of God in his inner being. The point is, we have been released from the covenant of the law. Initially it was obeying the Law that saved us and made us part of the covenant people. Now it is through belief in and obedience to Jesus, as he replaced the law as our mediator to God.
The only laws that are not applicable to us today are the ones that would determine our relationship to God by being part of the OT covenant. That includes things like circumcision, and the ritual worship methods of sacrifice and such, some of which we will hear about next time.
However, the moral laws like the 10 commandments and the principles behind the other societal laws are still in effect and are simply God’s design for social order and success in the world. In fact most of our laws in North America are originally based on the bible. And if you’re following the news, the Supreme Court in the US just put same sex marriage in the same place as traditional marriage, legally. What are we doing? We are rewriting God’s laws. That frightens me.
I don’t think anyone would argue with keeping the last 5 commandments, but the first five are a little more questionable. But let’s get in context especially with the first 2. If you were hearing these commands sitting at Mt Sinai where idol worship was the in thing in other cultures that you would come across, it would be simple to know what you are not to put before God. They didn’t really have any other kinds of cool man made things to enjoy.
But now imagine these commands in our language in our context. They didn’t have hockey, but we do. They didn’t have TV, but we do. They didn’t have money making jobs to go to for the most part, but we do. They didn’t have the ability to fly to Hawaii, but we do. Do you see my point? We all put many things before God, we have many man made idols that we worship.
In the fall I am going to take us through a program created by the guy who did the Not a Fan program. It’s called gods at war, and it will give us a good picture of the gods that we worship that war for our allegiance today in our culture. It looks really good.
I think it’s fair to say that we have been kind of slack in the next three commandments as well. We maybe don’t have the reverence we could for the names of God. We have let the idea of a Sabbath day slide considerably. And I’m not sure we honour our parents as well as we could. Those are all commandments that God has given to bless us.
And that is the key. God loves us and wants to bless us. The Israelites were terrified of God, and Moses is trying to tell them they don’t have to be if they obey Him. His love and blessing come through our obedience to his design. He designed it so that when we lived his way, we would invoke the best for our lives and our societies.
Salvation is a free grace based gift that comes from accepting that we are sinners, repenting, and accepting the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But blessing and success on earth comes from mass obedience to God’s design. Individual obedience helps, but unless it is on mass, the world will still deal out the garbage that even the obedient have to deal with. Human nature only wants to submit to our own rules, many of which go against our creators design for our good.
So now we take a couple weeks off and when I return from vacation we will wade through the rest of the instructions they received at Mt Sinai and see how important worship is to God.
