The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 20, verse 14. So just one short verse, but this will be our sermon text for this morning.

Exodus 20:14, and this is the inerrant and infallible word of God. You shall not commit adultery.

And let’s turn to the New Testament for our New Testament reading from Matthew chapter 5, verses 27 through 30. Matthew 5:27 through 30. You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

You can turn back to Exodus 20. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

The commandment that we are looking at this morning may be of all the 10 Commandments the one that presents for us the most challenges as Christians today. And that’s true not only because of the way in which the Commandments applies to our lives personally, but perhaps even more than that, or at least another challenge equal to that, is that the more that we affirm and embrace all that this commandment teaches, the more that we will find ourselves at odds with the culture and the world around us.

There’s no biblical teaching that our increasingly pagan and secular society finds more disagreeable and more objectionable than the Bible’s teaching on sexual morality, sexual ethics. And one question that confronts us as Christians today is when it comes to matters of sexuality, will we allow the word of God to inform us of what is right and wrong in this area, or will we be conformed to the prevailing, the dominant views of our society?

As a Christian, are you prepared to take your stand on the word of God and to believe, to accept, to embrace what it teaches on matters of sexuality, no matter how unpopular, no matter how difficult that teaching may be? Are you willing for the sake of the truth of God’s word to be considered in the eyes of the unbelieving world, not just old fashioned and prude because you adhere to what the Bible says about sexuality, but in the eyes of the world increasingly, are you willing to be seen as even ignorant, bigoted, hateful, even an enemy of the public good?

A faithful stand on the seventh commandment puts us in a place where we will be the object of the scorn and of the hostility of the world around us. The very things that we affirm about sexuality in matters of marriage and sex and so on, the very things that we affirm to be good and right, those are the things that the world affirms and declares to be evil and wrong and vice versa.

And this turning upside down of right and wrong, according to the scriptures, this is characteristic of the world in which we live, a world that has fallen from the grace of God, a world under the curse of sin. Isaiah says in chapter 5, verse 20, that there are those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. And so the place that we start with as we consider the seventh commandment is when it comes to our understanding of marriage and sexuality, how do we know what is truly good and sweet and light? Well, we know because of what the word of God declares to us. And this is where we must take our stand, no matter how contrary it may be to the spirit of the age in which we live.

And with all that in mind, as we approach the Seventh Commandment, there are a couple of ways that we could approach this commandment. One way, which is perfectly legitimate, and we’ll touch on it, is that we can see it as a command for personal purity and chastity in sexual matters. And of course, that’s what this command does refer to. This commandment forbids any kind of sexual immorality in thought and word and deed.

But another way to consider or to understand the seventh commandment is not to consider just what it forbids, but more positively, what does this commandment seek to protect and preserve? And the answer to that is, is that this commandment affirms and seeks to protect the sacred institution of marriage. The commandment says, “You shall not commit adultery.” And the most straightforward reading of that is that this commandment is forbidding that a husband or a wife have sexual relations with someone other than their spouse. That’s because there is a sacred union between a husband and a wife. And the act of adultery destroys that bond, that union.

And so the first truth that we’ll consider today as we look at the seventh commandment is the truth that God has given it to us in order to protect, to preserve, to uphold this institution, this relationship that God has given to us for good, that is the marriage relationship, the marriage union, the union between a husband and a wife. So that will be our first truth that we’ll consider today, that the Seventh Commandment preserves and protects the marriage union.

Now, the world at large still upholds, at least on the surface, the ideal of lifelong marriage. That’s still considered something that most people would consider to be good. However, as we all know, as a society, in reality, in practice, we are not really that committed to that ideal at all. Most of you probably know that we happen to live in the city that was once known as the divorce capital of the world. If you wanted to divorce your spouse, all you had to do was move here to Reno, live here for six weeks, and become a resident. And then after six weeks, you could file for a divorce, which would be legally binding in the rest of the country.

And the reason why Reno lost its claim to fame as the divorce capital of the world is only because the rest of the country eventually caught up with Reno. And so once the entire country allowed for quick and easy divorces, Reno was no longer the special place to come to. But that’s where we are today. It’s indicative of, as a society, how lightly we take marriage and how lightly we take divorce. And so we fail to uphold the ideal of lifelong marriage, but we also fail to uphold the ideal of faithfulness in marriage. Again, this is more in practice than it is on the surface in words.

If you ask people, is adultery a good thing? Nobody’s going to say yes. Everyone’s going to affirm that adultery is wrong. A husband, a wife should not be having an affair with others, but our actions speak louder than our words. Several years ago, there was a website devoted to facilitating adulterous relationships between married men and women. The website was called Ashley Madison and its slogan was, “Life is short, have an affair.” And we might think that this is a website out there on the dark edges of the internet, but it wasn’t. It was extremely popular for what I saw.

Apparently 37 million people had an account with this website. And when all of the names of the people who signed up on the website were leaked, it turns out that there was at least one, perhaps more prominent Christian leaders who had an account with that website. And so no matter how much we may as a society give lip service to the ideals of marriage and faithfulness, we don’t really take marriage and adultery all that seriously. We certainly don’t take marriage and adultery as seriously as God does.

In the book of Job, we read this. “If my heart has been enticed toward a woman and I have lain in wait at my neighbor’s door, that would be a heinous crime. That would be an iniquity to be punished by the judges.” And so adultery, according to the scriptures is called a heinous crime. And it was a heinous crime in the Old Testament. The penalty for the people of Israel, for someone who was caught in adultery, it was capital punishment. That person was put to death.

Now, of course, in the New Testament age, we are not called to put adulterers to death, we’re not called to put anybody to death, but nevertheless, in his teaching, our Lord Jesus did not lighten or lessen one bit the gravity and the seriousness with which the Old Testament dealt with marriage. In fact, Jesus affirmed just how absolutely sacred the marriage bond was intended to be by God.

In his days, the Jews had an ongoing debate and argument among themselves over what constituted a just cause for divorce. And there was one party, one school of thought, that had a very permissive view of divorce. In fact, it was not unlike our own view of divorce today, and that was a man may divorce his wife for virtually any reason whatsoever, even if he did not like her cooking, that was just grounds to seek a divorce. And in response to that, Jesus said this, he says in Matthew chapter 19, verse 9, “I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery.”

And so according to Jesus, according to our Lord, if a man divorces his wife for anything less than unfaithfulness on her part, and then he gets remarried, he is guilty of adultery. And he is guilty of adultery because he is supposed to have remained married to his first wife. He had entered into a lifelong commitment with her. He had made a sacred covenant with her. And so in a sense, in God’s eyes, by divorcing and remarrying unjustly, he was guilty of committing the sin of adultery.

Now, there is way more that we can say about marriage and divorce in the Bible’s teaching about these subjects, depending on the circumstances. These can be very, very difficult subjects that require a tremendous amount of biblical and pastoral wisdom. And we do have to read the words of Jesus in the light of other biblical teaching as well. However, the fundamental point that Jesus was making is very clear, and it’s absolutely foundational for understanding God’s will for marriage, and that is that God meant marriage to be a sacred, permanent bond, a lifelong union, a bond that is inviolable, unbreakable.

And so Jesus put it this way, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” And so according to God’s design, the marriage between a husband and a wife was not to be broken up. It was to be a lifelong union that was not to be torn asunder. And why is this marriage bond so important? Well, first of all, it’s important because God deems it important and anything that God values has infinite value in itself, but it’s also important because marriage is foundational and necessary for any semblance of a functioning society. It is the most basic building block of human society. Before there were even parents and children, there was a husband and a wife. Before there was a community or government or human society, God created the institution of marriage. And so any sort of functioning society that hopes to have some measure of order and peace will be built upon the stability of marriage. And so if you want to destroy society, destroy the institution of marriage. And in large part, we can say that we have seen that happen in our own society. We see all around us the wreckage, the destruction of broken marriages, broken homes, broken lives as a result.

Well, marriage is also important because it is a gift of God. God has created marriage. He has given us marriage for a good, to be a source of blessing, joy, and happiness. Those who enter into marriage and seek to honor God in it, marriage is meant to be, for them, a source of great happiness. Proverbs 5:18 says, “Rejoice in the wife of your youth.” And since marriage is something that is so important, so good for human flourishing, is it any wonder then that when marriages break up, the result is always grief and sorrow, wives suffer, husbands suffer, children suffer, society suffers, when the marriage bond is treated as anything less than a sacred union to be kept for life.

And so, with all that in view then, when God says, “You shall not commit adultery,” He is looking out for our good. He is protecting and preserving that which brings us blessing and good. He was protecting the sacred institution of marriage. And let’s take a closer look at this institution that God created to be a blessing. As you know, when God created all things on the sixth day, He created Adam. And we learn then in Genesis 2 that Adam, initially, he was all alone on the earth. He had the animals, of course, but there was no human companion for Adam.

And when you read through the Genesis account, chapter 1, every time God creates something, or almost every time he creates something, he says that it is good. But then when he looked at Adam, he saw that there was something that was not good, and that is that Adam was alone. Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him.” And so God went on to make Eve out of a rib from Adam, and Eve was Adam’s wife. And so Genesis 2:24 says, “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” And so here is the first marriage.

It was God who officiated this first marriage between the first man, the first woman, between Adam and Eve. And because this is God’s marriage, because this is God’s institution, because this is the very first marriage, it is normative for every other marriage that is to come. And so what that means, first of all, is that marriage is between one man and one woman. Now it’s true, when we read on in the Bible, there are many, many instances of polygamy, men having more than one wife, but that was man’s invention, not God’s. God may have tolerated it, but he certainly did not approve it and bless it as his design for marriage.

And so marriage is between one man, one woman, and also marriage is between one man and one woman. According to God’s design for marriage, according to marriage as God created it, according to marriage as God defines it, it is impossible that a man can be married to a man or a woman to a woman. And so in the eyes of God, there is no such thing as a same-sex marriage. It simply does not exist. Marriage is between one man and one woman.

And God’s design for marriage is that it is the one and only relationship in which a man and a woman may have sexual relations. Genesis 2:24, again, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.” Now that phrase one flesh, it has a broader meaning. It does encompass the whole comprehensive union of a husband and wife sharing their lives together, becoming one in life together. But primarily in the first place, what that term refers to is the actual physical or sexual union between a husband and a wife. And so sexual relations between a husband and a wife are good. They are a gift that is given to us by God along with marriage, as part of marriage.

Unfortunately, in the history of the church, there have been some perhaps well-meaning but misguided theologians and Christian teachers who have taught that there is something wrong or with sexual relations between a husband and a wife, it’s a necessary evil, that kind of thing, but not according to the scripture. There is nothing impure or wrong about sexual relations between a husband and a wife. Again, that is an aspect of marriage that is a gift, that is a blessing from God.

And what all of that means is this, is that God never intended, it was never part of God’s purpose and design that there should be sexual relations between two people apart from the bonds of the marriage covenant. God created marriage so that sexual relations and marriage go hand in hand. These are two things that God hath joined together, but in our sin we have torn them asunder. And that is really the essence of sexual sin. It is isolating sexual activity from the marriage covenant, the marriage bond in which that is supposed to take place according to God.

Now, of course, there is far more to marriage than the physical relations that a husband and a wife have. That one flesh relationship means that a husband and a wife, they share their lives together. They are partners together. They live together. They love one another. They give themselves to one another. They make sacrifices for one another. And so God’s ideal for marriage is a covenant relationship, that is a relationship founded on a promise of lifelong fidelity, a covenant relationship in which each person gives himself and herself to the other in mutual love and service, and that includes giving their bodies to one another.

And with that in mind then, with that in view, we can see that anything of a sexual nature that is contrary to or that disrupts or destroys the marriage union between a husband and a wife, anything that goes against God’s design for marriage is condemned by the seventh commandment. And so on the surface, the seventh commandment, the first thing to say is that it condemns adultery. Because adultery is a violation of the marriage covenant, the Old Testament had much harsher penalties for adulterers than it had for those who had sexual relations outside of marriage. As I said earlier, the Old Testament penalty for adultery was death.

What is particularly wicked about adultery is that it involves breaking a promise. A man promises to be faithful to his wife. A wife promises to be faithful to her husband. So when one commits adultery, he or she becomes a traitor, a betrayer. He or she has committed an act of treason. And so actual adultery destroys the marriage bond.

But the seventh commandment also forbids other kinds of sexual sins because they also are contrary to or contradict God’s design for marriage. And one such sin would be what the older Bible translations call fornication and what the new Bible translations or the newer ones call sexual immorality. Both of these terms, fornication, sexual immorality, these are translations of a word in Greek that refers to any sort of sexual activity outside the bonds of marriage. And so what that means is, is that no matter how committed an unmarried couple may be to one another, no matter how much they may be in love with one another, no matter even if they are engaged with one another, sexual relations outside of marriage is sin. It is called sexual immorality. It is stealing the gift that God intends to give us only in that covenant bond of marriage.

And for that reason, though sex outside of marriage does not directly destroy the marriage union like adultery does, nevertheless, it is an attack on marriage. It weakens and diminishes the meaning of marriage. And I have to say, just based on my experience as a pastor, that there are many, many young Christian people who have been taken in by the world’s false ideas and false ways of understanding sexual relations or sex. The world says things like, it is just natural, it is just a biological impulse that everybody has, and it’s not only unhealthy for you to suppress that, but it’s wrong for you to suppress that. If you’re in love with your boyfriend or girlfriend, if you’re both consenting, then it’s fine to have sex together. And likewise, it’s perfectly normal, it’s perfectly acceptable to live together before you get married, because how else will you know if you’re compatible and really ready to be married? And we hear these things. We hear them all the time. Not only explicitly, but it’s the message that we receive from shows and from movies and so on. This is just the way that our society looks at sexual relations. And it all sounds very plausible.

And if we’re honest with ourselves, we want to believe these things to be true. But I want to say to the young people, don’t listen to the world. Listen to the word of God. Save yourself for marriage. Save yourself for marriage, not just for the sake of your purity now, but also for the sake of your future marriage. Your future marriage will be on a much stronger footing the more faithful you are today, before you get married, to keep God’s will for you, that is to abstain from sexual relations.

Now the term sexual immorality, though it does primarily refer to sexual relations between a man and a woman outside of marriage, what we call fornication, it also encompasses every other kind of sexual sin that the Bible either explicitly or implicitly condemns. And so the seventh commandment also condemns by implication, homosexuality, prostitution, incest, pedophilia, and the list goes on and on. These are all sins that are forbidden by the seventh Commandments. And like all commandments, the seventh commandment is spiritual. That means that it reaches down into our hearts. It applies to the thoughts of our minds, to the inclinations of our hearts, to the desires that arise from within us.

Jesus showed us just how deeply the seventh commandment reaches into our hearts. We heard his teaching from Matthew chapter 5. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” And so if you are married and you lust after another person in your heart, you have been unfaithful to your wife or your husband according to the teaching of our Lord Jesus. And so the challenge to preserve the integrity of your marriage, the strength of your marriage, begins in the heart. It really begins with the eyes.

Remember how David’s adultery with Bathsheba began. In 1 Samuel chapter 11, we read that David was walking on the roof of the king’s house and he saw from the roof a woman bathing and the woman was very beautiful. David first saw Bathsheba and then in his heart, he lusted after her. And then, of course, as we all know, after that, David committed the act of adultery with her. David sinned by looking and lusting. And the essence of lust is that it is self-centered. Lust is self-centered. It is an act of self-love. Another person becomes merely an object to gratify my desires, but the essence of marriage is other-centered. God gave you your sexuality to be used as a gift to another, that is to the man or to the woman to whom you will be married to or are married to, the one to whom you have committed your life to.

And of course, today, as we all know, so tragically, the sin of lust is compounded by the fact that we live in a time in which pornography is absolutely rampant. It is so easily accessible online. We can be anonymous. It is affordable. And the statistics of how many men and women regularly view pornography are not only staggering, but dismaying. According to one study, 44% of all men and 11% of all women said they viewed pornography in the last month. And so nearly half of the entire male population we can assume, perhaps on somewhat of a regular basis, or even recently, have viewed pornography. Percentage is less for women, of course, but still, 10%, 11%, that’s an incredible amount. And from what I could tell from other studies, the percentages of practicing Christians who say that they have viewed pornography regularly, or use it regularly, or viewed it recently, is just a fraction less than the general population. I think it’s fair to say, especially when it comes to men, that pornography is an epidemic, not only in our world today, but in the church today.

And the danger of pornography is not just that it makes you impure in heart and thought, but the regular use of pornography actually rewires your brain. It actually deforms your character. It makes you less able to give yourself an intimacy and self-sacrificial love to a spouse in marriage. Those who are regular users of pornography often find that they are incapable of engaging in an actual relationship with a living human person.

And so God gave us the seventh commandment to promote and preserve and protect marriage. And like every commandment that God has given us, we can only begin to keep it by the grace of God. But just as a matter of practical counsel, one thing that you must do to have any hope of keeping this commandment is to put to death sexual sin before it grows out of control, to nip it in the bud, to kill it while it is still small. Because sexual sin always starts small and it grows from there.

David did not wake up one morning and say, “I think I will have an adulterous affair.” But he was going about his business. He saw Bathsheba bathing. He looked again. He lusted after her. And if he had confided to a friend at that point, if he had said to a friend, “I have to confess to you a sin. I saw the wife of Uriah bathing. I had lust in my heart for her.” If he had done that, he wouldn’t have taken the next step that he did.

The apostle Paul says, “Flee from sexual immorality.” Run from it, flee from it. Just like Joseph fled from Potiphar’s wife. You cannot play with fire without getting burned. And one way to fight against the sin, one way to begin to kill it while it is still small is to bring it out into the open. All sin loves secrecy and darkness. But this sin, sexual sin, thrives particularly when it is kept secret. And so if you struggle with some kind of sexual sin, find a trusted Christian friend, confess your sin, ask for prayer, have him or her help you to be accountable. Men, if pornography is a problem for you, talk to someone you know and trust about it. You can talk to me about it, but don’t keep it hidden, because hidden sexual sin only grows stronger.

There’s a positive side to this commandment as well. I’ll touch on this briefly, but for those of you who are married, the positive side of this commandment is that husbands and wives, you are to commit yourselves to one another, to love one another, to work and pray for the growth of your marriage relationship, to tend to one another, to care for one another emotionally, physically, and so the seventh commandment is meant to protect the marriage union between a man and a woman.

That’s the first truth. But there’s also another union that this commandment is meant to protect, and that is the union between a Christian and Christ. That’s the second truth that we’ll take from this commandment this morning, that the commandment protects the union between Christ and the Christian. The Bible teaches us that there is an inseparable connection between how we conduct ourselves sexually and our spiritual condition.

At the evening service, we’ve been going through 1 Corinthians, and we know from what we’ve read so far that in that congregation, there were problems with sexual immorality. We could probably practically say that for every congregation since then, that there have been problems with that, but it was a serious problem in the Corinthian church. And when Paul addresses this issue with them, he reminds the Corinthians of what it meant that they were Christians, that they belong to Jesus Christ. And so let me read 1 Corinthians 6, verses 15 through 18. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.”

Now, there is some challenge in understanding exactly what is meant by some of these things that the Apostle Paul says here, but one thing that he does indicate that seems to be clear is that sexual immorality strikes at the very heart of who we are as Christians. And that’s because as a Christian, you are united with the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as a husband and wife are united as one in marriage, so as you belong to Jesus by faith, you are bound to him, you are united with him. There’s a sense in which you are one with him. He is your bridegroom, you are his bride. And for this reason, when you as a Christian sin, by joining yourself sexually with someone other than your spouse, you violate that spiritual union that you have with Christ himself. You disrupt, you break up that communion that you have with God the Father through Jesus Christ. Sexual sin strikes at the very heart of that relationship that we have with God through Jesus Christ. And for that reason, I’ve never met a Christian who was thriving spiritually, who was filled with the joy and peace of Jesus Christ, who was serving others, and at the same time was engaging in habitual sexual sin.

In the very nature of the case, Christians caught in sexual sin will suffer spiritually. They will drift from Christ. They will drift from the church. And for this reason, what the seventh commandment seeks to protect is the most precious thing that we have, and that is our union with Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

The apostle Paul also wrote this to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6, 9, and 10. He says, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” So Paul, he lays down the truth. He says to the Corinthians, pray for the great. I’m paraphrasing what Paul says, or perhaps putting words in his mouth, but pray for grace, for repentance, because there are those who do not inherit the kingdom of God, and they include the sexually immoral, adulterers, homosexuals, and so on.

But then he says this, in verse 11, he says, “And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God.” And so what Paul is saying here is that there is hope, there is good news in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is hope with God because in the grace that he has given us in his son, he is able and he does forgive sexual sins. God is able, he does forgive the one who has broken the seventh commandment. If your faith and trust are in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have been washed, you have been sanctified, you have been justified. And so what that means is no matter what your past is, no matter how you have grievously sinned in this way, no matter how you have broken the seventh commandment, whether in action or whether in heart, if you are trusting in Christ, in the sight of God, you are pure, you are cleansed, you have been purified from the stain and the guilt of sexual sin. It is gone from you. You have been washed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

“And such were some of you.” And if you have come to Jesus Christ for forgiveness, you’ve also come to the one who can bring healing and wholeness and integrity to you if you have been damaged by sexual sin. It is just for sinners like you and me for people like you and me who have broken the seventh commandment, who are guilty of sexual sin, that God has extended his grace and his mercy and his love to us in his son, Jesus Christ. He has given us a son so that we may find forgiveness in him. And at the same time, we may find in him the hope of healing, restoration, wholeness, and integrity.

And so as we consider the seventh commandment and perhaps how we are convicted and the ways in which we have broken it, look to Jesus. He is the one who forgives, purifies, and cleanses, and there’s hope with him. Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 20, verse 13. And this is the inerrant and infallible word of God.

Exodus 20, 13, you shall not murder. 

And for our New Testament reading, we’ll hear from Matthew chapter 5, Matthew 5, verses 21 through 26.

Matthew 5, 21 through 26. And these are the words of Jesus. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Well, as you know, the question whether or not the Ten Commandments should be posted in public places, in schools and so on, this question has generated much controversy in recent years. And much of the opposition to the idea of posting the Ten Commandments is the notion that the Ten Commandments are the unique expression of just two religions, Judaism and Christianity. And so that posting the Ten Commandments would give preference to just one or two religions and not others. And it is true, of course, that the Ten Commandments are given to us in the scriptures of what we call the Old Testament, that is, the Jewish people, and of course this is our Bible as well, and so the Ten Commandments are contained in our holy scriptures.

However, the commandments, or many of the commandments at least, give expression to moral ideals that are embraced virtually throughout the world and by virtually all religions. The commandments say, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness. Most people will agree that adultery, stealing, and lying are bad things, that these are immoral things, things to be condemned. And perhaps the one commandment of all 10 of the 10 commandments that everybody agrees on, at least in theory, not in practice, but at least in theory, is the sixth commandment, you shall not murder. In the abstract, in theory, nobody says it’s right or good to commit murder. And that’s because God has deeply ingrained in our consciences the truth that it is wrong to unjustly take away the life of another human being.

And at the same time, though everyone agrees that this is a good thing, you shall not murder, virtually all people, when they read the list of the Ten Commandments, will say to themselves, well, I’ve kept this commandment at least. I haven’t killed anybody. So people not only agree that it’s a good commandment, but most people will say, I have kept this commandment. In fact, this is often the very thing that people tell themselves or tell others when they are reasoning or arguing, that they are basically good, moral, decent people. You’ll hear somebody say something like, well, I’m not perfect. Nobody’s perfect. I’ve said lies before. I’ve cheated on my taxes. But hey, it’s not like I’ve ever murdered anybody. And so keeping this commandment, at least superficially keeping this commandment, qualifies us in our minds, in our natural way of thinking, as being good people. But that way of thinking is the result of a very superficial reading of the Sixth Commandment.

The Sixth Commandment covers much, much more than the actual crime of murder. And the more you see, and we will see, all that the Sixth Commandment applies to, the more we will see that we live in a world that has a profound disregard for the sanctity of human life, a world in which this commandment is broken regularly. And what should be even more convicting for us is the fact that as we plumb the depths of the meaning of this commandment, we all have to admit that one way or another, we have broken this commandment. We have not kept the six commandments.

We may not be guilty of murder according to the laws of the states, but according to God’s law, God’s law which applies to our thoughts, our hearts, our words, we are guilty. We are guilty of breaking the six commandments. And so today as we consider this commandment together, I want us to see both the breadth of the commandments, how wide it is, how much it covers, as well as the depth of the commandment, how it speaks to the inmost thoughts and desires of our hearts.

And so first, the breadth of the commandment. This will be our first lesson. The sixth commandment is very broad. As you can tell, we just heard the sixth commandment read. thou shalt not murder, or you shall not murder. It is a very short commandment. In fact, in Hebrew, it is only two words long. And the traditional English rendering of the sixth commandment is, one we’re all very familiar with, thou shalt not kill. But the more modern versions, including the version I read from, say, you shall not murder. And the word murder is really a better translation than the word kill.

Biblical Hebrew has about eight different words to describe killing. And the word here in the sixth commandment in Hebrew is a word that is never used in a context that describes killing in an act of war or killing as the result of a judicial sentence of death that has been handed down. In other words, the Hebrew word in this sixth commandment refers specifically to a certain kind of killing, and that is unlawful, unjustified, unauthorized killing. And so a more accurate translation is what the modern translations say, you shall not murder, you shall not murder.

And that brings out a very important distinction that we must understand in order to make sense of the Sixth Commandment. And that is the Sixth Commandment is not a blanket prohibition against the taking of human life in every conceivable circumstance. There were times when the Israelites were not just permitted, but in fact, they were commanded to kill people. God required the Israelites to put to death the people who lived in Canaan, when he sent them into the promised land to take possession of it. And the law in which, or the law that God gave to Moses to govern the nation of Israel, in that law there were certain crimes for which the just punishment for that crime, according to God, according to his law, was that that person should be executed. And so it’s definitely not correct to say that God has prohibited every instance of killing. The key question is whether or not a person’s life is taken in an unlawful or unjustified way.

And today as well, there are occasions when to kill another person is permitted or warranted according to the word of God. One such occasion is self-defense. You see this principle in the Bible in a verse such as Exodus 22 verse 2. If a thief is found breaking in, and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no blood guilt for him.” In other words, the person who defended himself in a home invasion, who defended himself against the attacker invading his home, when he fought back and killed the invader, he was not guilty of murder.

Now, of course, when we think about that in terms of our day and age, there have to be clear boundaries drawn that would constitute a situation where lethal force is necessary as an act of self-defense and the state has to define those boundaries. But as far as God’s law is concerned, the principle is clear enough that it is lawful for a person to defend himself from an attacker or to defend an innocent person from an attacker and to use even deadly force if that is necessary in order to protect his life or someone else’s life.

Another instance in which the Bible allows for the taking of human life is capital punishment. Capital punishment is when a state or government, after a due legal process, puts a person to death for a crime that he or she has committed. And as I said, under the law of Moses, or the law of God that was given to Moses for the people of Israel, the death penalty was instituted for certain kinds of crimes. And the biblical provision for capital punishment was not just tied to the temporary existence of the nation of Israel as a political entity. In other words, the death penalty that we read about in the Old Testament was not one of those civil or judicial laws that was given to the people of Israel under the old covenant, but that are no longer in effect with the coming of Christ and the new covenant.

Rather, the Bible grounds or warrants or sanctions the death penalty, not in the nation of Israel, but in the universal and changeless nature of man. And that is what is most true about humanity. What is most true about you and me as human beings is that we are made in the image of God. That just by virtue of being a human being, we bear the image of God. And therefore, God’s justice demands that if someone unlawfully destroys an image bearer of God, he himself must be put to death.

This is from Genesis chapter 9 verse 6. Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image. What this verse is saying is that murder, the unjust taking of a human life, is such a heinous sin in the eyes of God. It is such a heinous attack against the image of God in man that divine justice demands that the one who is guilty of murder must forfeit his own life. To put it another way, capital punishment is really an affirmation of the sanctity, the dignity, the value of human life, of a human being. It upholds and reinforces the truth that the life of a human being has incalculable worth because God has created us in his likeness. He has put his image in us.

A third circumstance in which it is lawful to take away a human life is in a situation of war. In Romans 13, 4, the apostle Paul says this about the governing authorities, he says, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Now, this is speaking of the authority, the God-given authority that a government possesses or the state possesses to use even deadly force when it is necessary in order to protect innocent life, in order to carry out the demands of justice. But this verse also applies to governments using force against other nations when that is necessary in order, again, to preserve or protect innocent human life. And so, biblically, there are times when a nation is justified in waging war against another nation.

Now, there are certain conditions, and theologians throughout the history of the church have thought very carefully about what conditions make for a just war, but there is such a thing as a just war, and in such a war, a person, including a Christian, may, with biblical warrant and without guilt, even kill another human being in the course of fighting that war. And the really important thing is we consider these various circumstances in which taking a human life is not breaking the sixth commandment. The really important thing to see that is in all of these circumstances, killing is done only for the sake of preserving human life. Because we live in a world that is cursed by sin, because we live in a world in which there are dangerous and murderous people, in which there are dangerous and murderous nations, sometimes the only way to protect human life is to use deadly force against those who are a threat against innocent human life.

God’s will is that we promote and protect human life. God is the God of life. He is the creator of life. He is the one who is the eternally living one. He is the author of life, the sustainer of life. His gift to us in Christ is eternal life. And so in this world, in this fallen world, there are times in which it is necessary to kill, but only in order to preserve and protect life, not to destroy it.

We’ve seen what the sixth commandment does not forbid, but now let’s ask what is forbidden by the first commandment or the sixth commandment. First of all, the sixth commandment forbids all unjust intentional killing, intentional killing. This would include what we call murder. That is premeditated, calculated killing, killing in cold blood. It also includes what we call manslaughter or voluntary manslaughter. That is when a person in a fit of rage, in the heat of the moment, without planning or forethought, kills another human being.

And as we all know too well, murder has been endemic to the human race ever since the fall. It wasn’t long after the fall that the first sons of Adam and Eve, that there was murder. Cain killed his brother Abel. He murdered his brother, his brother’s blood cried out to the Lord from the ground, and ever since then, this evil of murder has been a plague on humanity. Just in the last 100 years, the world has seen staggering numbers of people murdered by nations waging unjust wars, by genocide, by massacres, by terrorism, by mass shootings, and so on. The blood of the slain continues to cry out from the ground, and the sixth commandment teaches us that a just God hears its cry.

But the commandment also condemns unintentional killing as well. This would include what we call reckless homicide or involuntary manslaughter, that is, causing the death of someone because of your thoughtless or careless or reckless behavior. You see this principle worked out Deuteronomy and the laws of Israel. In Deuteronomy chapter 22, verse eight says, when you build a new house, you shall make a parapet or a wall for your roof that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house if anyone should fall from it. And so if someone built a house in the old days in Israel and they failed to put a wall around the top of the house and someone fell off it and died, they would be guilty of their death. A modern example would be drunk driving. A drunk driver is not intentionally setting out to kill anybody. But if he does kill someone, he is guilty of breaking the Sixth Commandment. Just like with the Israelite home builder, because of his irresponsibility, because of his recklessness, a human life has been cut short. And therefore, he is guilty of a kind of murder.

Now, thankfully, we do have laws against these kinds of killing. Thankfully, there are laws against murder, manslaughter, reckless homicide, and so on. However, there are other forms of the destruction of innocent human life that are not only common, but they are even sanctioned by the law. And to some degree, they even enjoy public approval. And the most obvious kind of that legal but wrong kind of killing is abortion.

Now, there are many complexities, many challenges surrounding the whole issue of abortion. Many women are pressured to have an abortion by their boyfriends or by their families. The crisis of an unplanned pregnancy, the fear of shame or disapproval may lead a woman to make a decision which she knows in her heart is wrong. And the church must show compassion and grace both to women in crisis pregnancy situations and to those who have had abortions. We must proclaim the truth that in Jesus Christ there is the promise of forgiveness, there is the hope of healing for those who have taken part in abortion.

But at the same time, as the church, we must be very clear and uncompromising as to what the word of God says about this, about abortion, and that is this. To intentionally destroy a human being in the womb of his or her mother is a violation of the sixth commandment. To put it very bluntly, but truly, abortion is a kind of murder. And the reason for that is because from the time of conception, the baby or the fetus in the womb is a distinct and unique individual, human being, a person created in the image of God.

Psalm 139.13 says, for you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. And science confirms this biblical truth. Of course, we don’t look to science as an ultimate authority as to what is right or wrong. Nevertheless, science does confirm the truth of what the Bible says. According to the findings of science, what is conceived in the womb is nothing other than a full-fledged human being, a unique individual who has life and who will grow and develop to be a person just like you and me.

Now listen to this paragraph from the website of the American College of Pediatricians. It says this, the predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception, at fertilization. At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated, zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic state, and that’s referring to the fact that the first few days, a human being who is conceived is simply one cell, a zygote. But in its zygotic state and in its adult stage, the difference between the two is one of form, not nature. Form, not nature. Just as we are far different in form as adults than a newborn infant, so we are also far different in form from a baby that is conceived in the womb, but not in nature. We are all human beings. We all bear the image of God. We are all persons created by God.

So if, as the Bible says, science agrees, if what is conceived in the womb is a unique and individual human being, if the unborn baby is just that, a baby, a child, a teeny tiny but true human being, then he or she has the right to live just as much as you and I have the right to live. And so abortion is a violation of the six commandments.

Another form of killing that is sometimes or someplace is legal, but it’s always wrong, is euthanasia. Euthanasia is actively ending the life of someone, a person who is dying or who is suffering greatly because of some disease. It usually involves the terminally ill or the elderly. And in theory, at least, euthanasia is carried out with that person’s consent. Now, like abortion, there are very many tragic and sad circumstances in which euthanasia might take place. And we all need to be sensitive and recognize that the suffering that those people are dealing with who might consider this is tremendous and great. We should be compassionate concerning that. Nevertheless, because euthanasia is actively ending a human life, proactively terminating human life for that reason, it too is a violation of the sixth commandment.

Now things can get quite complicated in medical ethics with our technology because it is possible to keep a person alive much longer today than it was in the past when that person would have succumbed to death by natural causes. We can keep people living on life support, so it’s not always clear what life support or what level of life support is ethically required. But a helpful principle is to distinguish this, or between these two things. There is a difference between the termination of treatment and the termination of life. When a patient is terminally ill, an artificial life support system, such as a respirator, or the only thing keeping him alive, then taking him off life support may be the right decision. That isn’t a form of euthanasia. It’s merely withholding an artificial means of keeping a person alive and they will succumb to natural or death by natural causes unless God intervenes. But the opposite of that would be withholding food and water from a patient in order to actively end his or her life. And if you remember about 20 years ago, this was exactly what happened to the famous case of Terry Shavo, who the courts of Florida ordered that food and water be withheld from her so that she would die. That is breaking the Sixth Commandment. That is actively putting someone to death.

Another way to break the Sixth Commandment is by suicide. And again, we are dealing with a very difficult issue. People who contemplate suicide, they’re obviously dealing with an unbelievable amount of pain, hopelessness, despair, that they would consider ending their lives. But at the same time, we must be clear, there is no question that the sixth commandment condemns suicide. It, too, is an unlawful act of killing. God has not given us the right to end our own lives or to take our own lives any more than he has given the right to us to take another person’s life. And though suicide is a sin, it is a terrible sin, I don’t believe it is the unpardonable sin. I believe that even true Christians have committed suicide, and it is a grievous sin. They will have to answer to God for that. But I don’t think the act of suicide necessarily means that a person was not saved. Obviously, we never want anybody, including a Christian, especially a Christian, perhaps, to ever consider taking their own life. However, we ought not to despair that just because someone did that doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t a believer.

But another matter related to suicide is the question of taking care of your body. God has given us a body to live in. He’s given us a body for life in this world. And there are certain habits and addictions that are so destructive to our body that over time, we may die from them. It’s almost a kind of slow form of suicide. And so the Sixth Commandment requires us to be good stewards of our bodies and of our health. To use the language of our larger catechism, the duties required in the Sixth Commandment are a sober use of meat, drink, physic, which is medicine, sleep, labor, and recreation. In other words, the Sixth Commandment calls us to take care of ourselves, to take care of our bodies. And so unhealthy habits, self-destructive behavior, these are also a violation of the Sixth Commandments.

The sixth commandment is very broad. It’s very wide. Not only prohibits actual murder as a crime, but it forbids every way in which human life is unjustly taken away. The commandment is also very deep and the most challenging, the most heart-piercing interpretation of the sixth commandment comes from our Lord Jesus himself, which we read in Matthew’s gospel.

Let me read part of that again. Jesus said, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council, and whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. And so what Jesus is saying is this, it’s not just the person who physically murders someone who was guilty of breaking this commandment, but anyone who has ever been sinfully angry toward another, anyone who has ever insulted another, is guilty of breaking the sixth commandment.

And so the sixth commandment, like all the commandments, it reaches down into our hearts. It applies to our inmost desires and feelings and thoughts, and it condemns us. When you feel that sudden surge of anger towards another person, that sudden flash of hatred at that moment, at least in your heart, you may not have expressed it in words or even thought it in words, but with your heart, you’re thinking at that moment, I want that person dead. I want that person dead. And because the commandment reaches down into the attitudes and motives of the hearts, any thoughts or desires, any words or actions that are born of this sinful anger, this hatred that resides in our hearts, they are a violation of the six commandments.

And so anything that tends to harm or to diminish human life is against this commandment. This would include any kind of abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse. It would include demeaning and insulting words. The sixth commandment would even condemn racist attitudes. If I harbor in my heart any animosity, any hatred against a group of people because of their race or their ethnicity, even if I don’t harm anyone or even say anything against anyone, but even in my attitude, my mindset, I am breaking the six commandments. And so anything that comes from the heart that tends to harm or diminish or belittle an image bearer of God is against the six commandments.

And one of the principles of interpreting the commandments is that when a commandment forbids something, the opposite is commanded. And so the sixth commandment not only forbids us to murder or to harm other people, but the positive implication of that is that we are to do all that we can to further the life of others, to love others as we love ourselves. The Heidelberg Catechism describes this very well. The question is, is it enough then that we do not kill our neighbor in any such way? Is it enough to keep the commandment that we refrain from killing our neighbor? Here’s the answer, no. By condemning envy, hatred, and anger, God tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to be patient, peace-loving, gentle, merciful, and friendly to them, to protect them from harm as much as we can, and to do good even to our enemies.

And so the question that faces you and me is this, can you honestly say that you have kept the sixth commandments? Can you honestly say that you have done all that you can do to love your neighbor, to further their welfare, to do what promotes their life at all times? Can you say that you have never felt hatred or anger towards another person? If you have hated in your hearts, if you have raged against someone in your hearts, you have broken the sixth commandment. If you have ever insulted or bullied or have been cruel or hurtful to another person, you have broken the sixth commandment. And by definition, whoever breaks the sixth commandment is a murderer.

The problem is we don’t like to think of ourselves this way. We don’t like to consider ourselves as guilty of murder. Or we don’t think that we are, we like to tell ourselves that we are not capable of committing murder. But the capacity of our hearts to deceive ourselves in this knows no bounds. One of the most notorious killers in the history of New York City was a young man by the name of Francis Crowley. His nickname was Two-Gun Crowley, gives you a hint of what kind of character he was. During a three-month crime spree, Crowley either murdered or attempted to murder several people. And when he was finally caught after a two-hour gunfight with police, the police found a note in his pocket that he had written during the gun battle, in case he died, and it said this, to whom it may concern, Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one, one that would do nobody any harm. Now, no one can say of his own heart, it would never do nobody any harm. We are all guilty of breaking the sixth commandment, and insofar as that is true, we are all guilty of murder.

But the good news is that there is grace, there is forgiveness for lawbreakers, for sinners, such as you and me. Let me read to you a passage from Luke’s gospel. This is from Luke chapter 23, verses 18 through 25, when Pilate is deciding what to do with Jesus. Verse 18, Luke 23, but they all cried out together, away with this man and release to us Barabbas, a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder. Pilate addressed them once more desiring to release Jesus, but they kept shouting, crucify, crucify him. A third time he said to them, why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no guilt deserving death. I will therefore punish him, release him. But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified. And their voices prevailed. So Pilate decided that their demand should be granted. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will.

And so Jesus, the righteous one, the innocent one, the one whom even Pilate recognized, was not guilty or deserving of punishment. He was given over to die that most terrible death, death by crucifixion. And the one who was truly guilty, guilty of insurrection, guilty of murder, was let go, he was set free. And in the eyes of God, you and I belong in the place of Barabbas. We should see ourselves in the place of Barabbas. He stands for all of us. And his freedom then is a picture of the freedom that God has given us for the sake of his son, Jesus Christ, that Jesus died the death that we deserve, that Jesus bore the guilt that is ours, that Jesus was given over to crucifixion, and the judgment of God, the judgment that we deserved, but we have been set free. We have been released from that condemnation. We have been declared innocent and righteous in the sight of God.

And if you belong to Jesus Christ by faith, though you have been guilty of breaking the sixth commandment, you too, like Barabbas, you have been set free by the death of Jesus Christ. So believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Put your hope and trust in Him. Know that He suffered, He died in your place on the cross, and you are forgiven. Not only forgiven in the ways in which you have broken this commandment, but all the commandments, all the law of God, you are forgiven. You have been set free from condemnation, you have been received into the presence of God. You have been clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ because of his suffering, his death for you. And you have been given the gift and the promise of eternal life.

Isn’t it wonderful that in response to our guilt, in response to our murderous ways and the ways in which we have hated other people and hurt other people, God has not condemned us, but he has given us grace and mercy and forgiveness in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

The post The Sanctity of Life appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 20, verse 12. Exodus 20, verse 12. And this is the inerrant, the infallible, the holy word of God.

Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

And for our New Testament reading, we will read from Luke chapter two. Luke chapter two, verses 41 through 52. This is the one passage in the gospels that tell us about the boyhood of Jesus. And we learned in this passage that Jesus, though he was and is the son of God, as a boy, he was submissive to his parents. He kept the fifth commandment. So Luke chapter two, verses 41 through 52. Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover, and when he was 12 years old, they went up according to custom.

And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the group, they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances. And when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem searching for him. After three days, they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress. And he said to them, Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house? And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her hearts. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You have probably seen the bumper sticker that says, question authority. To be sure, there are times when we do need to question authority, but the slogan on that bumper sticker captures very well the general mindset of many, many people today, and that is a mindset that sees all human authority as suspect, and a mindset that says that every institution in which some people have authority over others must not only be questioned, but often that authority must be resisted and rejected.

Almost everywhere you look today in our world, there is a crisis of authority. Children rebel against their parents at home. Teachers at school often struggle to maintain order in their classrooms. Employees threaten to intimidate management through strikes or work stoppages. Political protesters become violent, destroying property, attacking law enforcement. And you see a crisis of authority in churches as well, when church leaders have no meaningful oversight over their congregants, or when a Christian refuses to acknowledge, at least by his actions, that no other Christian has any right to have any spiritual authority over him.

Let me read to you a quote from a very famous person that you know about, and I’ll tell you who wrote this after I read the quote. This is what he wrote about children in particular or young people in particular and their lack of respect for authority. He says, “youth today have luxury, or they love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, no respect for older people, and talk nonsense when they should work. Young people do not stand up any longer when adults enter the room. They contradict their parents, talk too much in company, guzzle their food, lay their legs on the table, and tyrannize their elders.”  Well, that was written by none other than the philosopher Socrates, in 400 BC.

And so it’s not just in our time that there is a crisis of authority, but every time and place has had its problems with respect for authority. And the problem is timeless because the problem stems from our own hearts. It is because of our sinful nature, because by nature we rebel against authority. We do exactly what the bumper sticker tells us to do. We question authority. And not only do we question authority, if it’s not to our liking, we reject it.

And of course, our problem with authority began long before today, long before the time of Socrates. It started first in the Garden of Eden. The very first people who questioned authority were Adam and Eve. At the temptation of the serpent, Eve began to question the perfect goodness of God. She began to suspect that God was withholding from her something good. And then both she and Adam acted on that doubt, that suspicion. They rejected the authority of God. They disobeyed his command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And their rebellion against God’s authority not only led to their death, but their rebellion plunged the entire human race into a world of sin and misery. And that’s where we are today. And we are just like our first parents, Adam and Eve. The natural inclination of our hearts is to question authority, even to reject authority and to reject the various authorities that God has placed over us in this world.

Praise the Lord. God has given us a much sure word, a much better word for us concerning authority than a bumper sticker slogan, He has given us His fifth commandments. And the fifth commandment, as we heard it read just a few minutes ago, specifically addresses children. Let me read the commandment again, Exodus 20, 12. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. And so the commandment on the surface is concerned with children honoring their parents, however, the scope of the commandment extends beyond that, way beyond that. It extends to all the lawful authorities that God and his providence has placed over us in this life, not just our parents, but authority at work, at school, in the government, in church, and in other places as well.

Today, as we look at this fifth commandment, we’ll do it in three different ways. First of all, we’ll look at the commandment’s teaching, specifically with regard to children and parents. Secondly, we’ll consider the broader implications of the fifth commandment. And finally, we’ll consider three reasons why we should keep this commandment. Three reasons beside the obvious reason, because God commands it. But we’ll consider three reasons in addition to that, why we should, why we must keep this commandment.

So first, children and parents. So as we are moving our way through the Ten Commandments, we have come now to the Fifth Commandment. And so we are leaving what has traditionally been considered the first part of the Ten Commandments, Commandments 1 through 4. The second part of the Ten Commandments are Commandments 5 through 10. And these two sections of the Ten Commandments are traditionally referred to as the two tables of the law. And so the first table of the law, Commandments 1 through 4, these have to do with our relationship to God or our dealings with God. And then the second, Commandments 5 through 10, have to do with our relationship or our dealings with other people.

And the fifth commandment is something of a bridge between the two tables of the law, between the first table and the second table. Because standing behind the authority of any human being that God places over us, standing behind that authority is the authority of God himself. And so if we submit to human authority, we are really submitting to God’s authority. If we reject human authority, we are rejecting the Lord’s authority over us. And so in that way, the fifth commandment really has to do both with our relationship to the Lord and also our relationship or dealings with other people.

And so the fifth commandment says, honor your father and your mother, the verb that is translated honor in our English Bibles comes from a Hebrew word that as a noun, it literally means weight. It’s often translated “glory”, but the word means weight. And so to honor somebody is to treat them as weighty, as a person of great substance, a person of great importance, in the same way or in the opposite way to dishonor somebody is to treat them lightly, to treat them as though their persons, their concerns are trivial or inconsequential. And so the commandment is saying to children, children, you must treat your parents as people of great importance, people of prestige, people who are very weighty in terms of their role in your lives.

And it’s important to see that God takes this whole matter of children obeying parents extremely seriously. God takes it much more seriously than we do. We tend to take it as just a matter of fact that children, particularly adolescent children, teenagers, that they will disrespect their parents. We consider it, well, it’s just a part of growing up. It’s just part of being a teenager. I mean, how many TV shows or movies have you seen in which there is a sullen teenager and he has nothing but ingratitude and disrespect for his parents and yet this doesn’t shock us. It’s portrayed as normal. This is just the way that kids are. But according to God and his word, dishonoring parents is anything but normal or acceptable.

Let me read a passage from Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy Chapter 21 verses 18 through 21. If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, And though they discipline him, he will not listen to them. Then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives. And they shall say to the elders of his city, this our son is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst and all Israel shall hear in fear.”

Now, thankfully, that punishment is no longer in force for the church today. If it was, some of us may not be here today, but it shows the seriousness of the commandment. The seriousness with which God takes the honor, the respect, the submission that is due to our parents. We may brush off a child’s disrespect for his parents by saying, well, kids will be kids. That’s just the way that teenagers are today. But in God’s eyes, dishonoring parents is a very grievous sin.

Now, we’re going to consider how it is that children are to honor their parents. But before we do that, I want to speak first to those of you who are parents. So if you’re a parent and you were thinking, I’m so glad my kids are here today to hear this sermon, how badly they need to hear it. There is words for them, but there are words first for you, dads and moms. The fifth commandment really speaks to parents as much as it does to children when we consider the implications of all that the commandment means.

Insofar as this commandment is given to us by God, and he gives us his commandment as his people, it assumes that as parents, we are doing our part, that we are being faithful, that we are faithfully training and instructing our children in the truth and the ways of God. In Ephesians chapter six, right after Paul tells children to obey your parents and the Lord for this is right, he goes on to address fathers. He says in chapter six, verse four, fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. And so Paul is drawing out what is implied in the fifth commandment, what is truly there, and that is this, that God is not only concerned for the way in which children are to relate to their parents and giving them respect and honor and so on, but God is just as concerned for the way that parents relate to their children, that they have duties that they owe to their children as well.

And so what does this discipline and instruction in the Lord look like? Well, it’s more than making sure that your kids are here on Sunday to worship the Lord. Obviously, that is of vital importance, but there’s more to it than that. Listen to what the Lord says in Deuteronomy 6, verses 6 and 7. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise. And so here is a picture, not just of parents taking their children to church so that they can be taught the things of God, but the parents are teaching their children the things of God at home.

It is a whole life training. It is not just imparting biblical knowledge, which that is obviously part of the training, but it is teaching children how to live wisely, how to live according to God’s word, what to believe according to the scriptures. And in this whole life training that takes place not just at church, but at home, your example as a mom or a dad is just as important as your words. And children are very observant. They see things. And as parents, if we are not sincere in our faith, if we are hypocritical, if we do not live out our faith, what we profess to believe at home as we live it out on Sunday mornings or in the world, We may fool other people with our piety, but we won’t fool our children. They will see right through that. They’re watching us. And one author said, although children don’t always listen to their parents, they never fail to imitate them.

And so we who are parents ought to feel the weight of this commandment as much as children ought to feel the weight of it because God has given us the responsibility to exercise our authority that he has given us over our children for their good, for their spiritual profits, for their growth and grace. We are to be God’s instruments to lead them to Christ and to do so in instruction, but also by example in humility.

And with all that in mind, I wanna say a word to fathers especially, if you are a father with children at home and you are not leading your family in some kind of family devotions in which you are reading the word with your children, praying with your children and with your wife as well, your whole family, if you are not leading your family in that way, now is the time to start. This is of such vital importance for the good of your whole family, especially your children, that you not only take them to church, but that you bring church to them at home as well daily and leading them in the worship of God.

And speaking of parents, it also needs to be said that the respect and honor that children owe to their parents is going to look very, very different. The whole situation has changed when one or both of the parents are guilty of abusing their authority by mistreating, abusing, or neglecting their children. In those kinds of domestic abuse situations, it’s not just a simple matter of children obey your parents. One or both of the parents may be doing such serious harm to their children that there is some kind of intervention necessary by other lawful authorities for the good of the child, to protect the child’s well-being. But with that in mind, everything that I say about the fifth commandment doesn’t assume that situation in which the parents are abusing their authority. But what I say about the fifth commandment now, as I speak to children, is assuming a typical family situation, not perfect parents, but parents who are faithfully seeking to raise their children in a way that pleases God.

So having said that, Let’s turn to the children. Children, how do you honor your parents? Well, first of all, for young children, you listen to your parents. And if you are a child here, if you are a young child, I’m speaking directly to you now. God is speaking to you through his word. You listen to your parents, you do what they tell you to do. You show respect, you say please, you say thank you. When you want to do something or you want something and they say no, you don’t argue with them.

Older children, for those children who are older, you also listen to your parents, but you also talk to your parents. And you remember that your parents are wiser than you. They know better than you. They’ve been around many more years. And it may dawn on you someday that somehow your parents got a lot smarter recently. It’s not that your parents have gotten smarter, but you have. And you may not see it now, but one way that you honor your parents as an older child is that you take seriously their counsel, their advice. They have wisdom that you don’t yet have.

Adult children, you continue to listen to your parents. Although you are an adult now and you take responsibility for your own life in a way that you didn’t when you were a child, you still have parents in your life. You still listen to their counsel. Remember, your parents know you better than anybody else, and they may have some wise things to tell you. And for adult children whose parents are growing elderly, when your parents are old, when they’re infirm, you do what you can to take care of them. This is one way that we honor our parents. When they are old, we do what we can to help them out in their old age.

Proverbs 23, 22 says, listen to your father who gave you life and do not despise your mother when she is old. Someday, your parents, or perhaps that day has already come, but someday your parents might need your care as much as you needed their care when you were a child and they were caring for you. And so you honor your parents when you care for them in their weakness when they age. And so the commandment is not just for children at home living under the authority of their parents, but the commandment is for all of us as long as we have parents living in this world.

And Jesus himself, our Lord, laid down an example for us in keeping the fifth commandment. We read from the New Testament, from the Gospel of Luke, how Jesus, as a child, he honored his parents, Luke 2.51, and he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And Jesus also provided for his mother when he was about to die, as he hung upon the cross. In John 19, we read this, and this is Jesus as he is being crucified. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, woman, behold your son. Then he said to the disciple, behold your mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own home.

What an amazing thing that is, that here is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, accomplishing that mission that God had given Him to do, to accomplish our salvation through His suffering and death upon the cross, and He is hanging on the cross. He is enduring the horrific shame and pain of the crucifixion. And not only that, He is bearing in Himself the wrath of God for sinners, and yet, He still is concerned for his mother. He keeps the first commandment. He makes arrangements for his mother to be taken care of by the Apostle John. And so from childhood to death, Jesus honored his parents. He kept the fifth commandment.

And he was the son of God. He was sinless. He was perfect. He was holy. Mary wasn’t sinless. Joseph, his, we could say his earthly father, not his biological father, but Joseph was not sinless. And yet he submitted himself to them. He honored them. He respected them. And the good news of that is that he did it for you and me. We have all failed to keep the fifth commandment. We have all failed to render that respect and obedience to our parents that we should. We have failed to respect and honor the authorities that God has placed over us. But if your trust and your hope are in the Lord Jesus Christ, his keeping the commandments perfectly, not just the fifth commandment, but every commandment, his perfect obedience is counted as yours. God considers the obedience of Christ, the righteousness of Christ as your very own. Jesus, by his obedience, this is part of what he did for us, for our salvation.

Now, the fifth commandment’s not just concerned with parental authority, but the fifth commandment is concerned with every God-given authority that we have in this world. Again, work, church, government, school, et cetera. And this is our second point, how the commandment applies to other areas of life. And so the commandment goes beyond the concerns of the language of the commandment itself. But it does specifically address the authority structure of the family because this is where, this is the nucleus of a society, of a community, this authority structure at home. And if that is undermined, if that is threatened, then every God-given authority is threatened. Augustine said, if anyone fails to honor his parents, is there anyone he will spare? And so that’s why the commandment to honor authority goes to the very heart of the issue where it all begins and that is the honor that we are to give to our parents.

But God is the source of every lawful human authority. Romans 13 one says, let every person be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God. And so wherever there is lawful, legitimate authority that is placed over us in the providence of God, it is the will of God for us as Christians to honor that authority, to submit to that authority. Romans 13, seven says, pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, and honor to whom honor is owed. So this is a comprehensive command. There is nothing left out of this command.

As children, we owe honor to our parents, of course. For you who are students, you owe honor, respect to your teachers. If you work for an employer, you must honor him or her. We also must give all due respect and honor to the civil government that God has placed over us. And you notice that Paul, when he speaks about Christians submitting to the government, he doesn’t qualify it by saying, only honor those leaders that you think are doing a good job, or only respect the leaders whom you voted for. As a Christian, it is our duty to render respect, obedience to all lawful authorities, even if we didn’t vote for them, even if we vehemently disagree with what they are doing.

Now, of course, no human authority is absolute. There is only one absolute authority that we must obey at all times, no matter what, and that is the authority of God, the authority of Christ over us. You recall in the book of Acts, when Peter and the apostles were commanded by the Jewish leaders not to preach or teach in the name of Jesus Christ, their response was, we must obey God rather than men. And that is true for us as well. If any human authority demands of us that we disobey God, at that point, we must render obedience to God above that person. But until then, we must honor those authorities that God has placed over us.

And I don’t have to tell you that this is easier said than done. Obedience, respect, honor to those authorities that we are under is difficult. It is not easy. It does not come naturally. And one reason why that is the case, because it means that we are called to submit to give respect and honor to people who are very imperfect, people who are flawed in many ways. This will not come as a shock to you, but children, your parents are not perfect. They are not perfect people. They have their weaknesses, they have their flaws, they have their shortcomings. Neither are your teachers perfect. Your boss is not perfect. That’s probably not news to you. Your church leaders are not perfect. Your government officials are far from perfect. If we had perfect sinless people over us all the time, keeping the fifth commandment would be much easier than it is. And so it is difficult.

But let me give you now, this is our third takeaway from this passage. Let me give you three reasons for keeping the commandments. And again, the main reason why we keep this commandment is because God commands it. But let me give you three other reasons. First of all, God is the source. God is the source of all legitimate authority.

Again, in the commandment, we are to honor our father and our mother. And that word honor comes from the word that refers to weightiness. And when that word is referred to God, it speaks of his glory. God’s glory is his, his infinite weightiness, significance, importance, his grandeur, his majesty. And we are to give all authority to our parents or to other, or all honor to our parents or to other authorities because their authority derives from this supreme authority of God himself. And so maybe there is someone in authority over you. It was very difficult, and it is very difficult for you to honor him or her, to respect him or her. Perhaps that person is not a believer. He does not share your faith in Christ. Perhaps he or she is very self-centered, very self-serving, very insensitive to you and your needs, very unfair, very difficult to honor.

Well, how do you honor somebody in such a situation like that, well, you remember that ultimately you are rendering respect, honor, not to that man or to that woman, ultimately, but to God, to God himself. As you honor that person, you are giving your ultimate honor to God. And so in God’s providence, he has placed that person over you. So that’s honoring, respecting and submitting to them. You are submitting to the rule of Christ over you, God’s rule over you.

And remember, God’s rule over you is perfect. You have in God as a Christian, you have in him a father in heaven who loves you with a perfect love, who is working out all things for your good, who cares for you, who cares for your soul. And he and his providence has placed this difficult person over you for your good. And as you render honor to them, you are really rendering that honor to the Lord.

In Ephesians, Paul tells slaves that as they obey their masters, they are, he says in Ephesians 6, 7, rendering service with a goodwill as to the Lord and not to man. We don’t have time right now to get into the Bible’s teaching on slavery. I hope to address that as we go on in Exodus. But the point that we take away from Paul’s instruction is this, that when you render service and honor to those in authority, it is as to the Lord and not to man. Even slaves in Paul’s day could know that they were serving Christ. They were honoring Christ in the way that they honored their earthly masters. And so you are really honoring God by keeping the fifth commandment.

Secondly, keeping the fifth commandment leads to freedom and blessing. There is a promise attached to this commandment. And let me read the commandment as it is given to us in Deuteronomy chapter five. So the 10 commandments are in Exodus 20. They are also in Deuteronomy chapter five. Deuteronomy 5.16 says, honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Paul mentions the same promise in Ephesians chapter six. He says, children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that he quotes from Deuteronomy, that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.

Now, this isn’t, and an absolute promise that every single child who honors his father and mother is guaranteed a long life in this world. It is a general promise. Generally, when we seek by the grace of God to keep the fifth commandment to honor our parents, God will bless that in some way. And when you consider that if your parents are truly seeking to lead you in the way of knowing and serving Christ, you will find blessing in this life by walking in that way. It will go well with you. But even should God be pleased not to give a long life to a son or a daughter who is seeking to obey this commandment, still there is the ultimate promise of eternal life and glory.

But notice that the Lord gave this command and the promise to the Israelites before they came into the promised land. And so the promise had to do with their coming into the land of Canaan, the promised land that God had willed to give them. And that land was to be a place of true freedom. In the promised land in Canaan, the Israelites would be free forever, if they were faithful, they would be free from slavery. They would be free to worship and serve the Lord. And so the Lord’s concern with this commandment as he gave it to the people of Israel was that in keeping it, the Israelites would find true freedom. They would enjoy that peace, that freedom, that life, that it only comes when we submit ourselves to God and serve and worship Him.

And in the same way for you as a Christian, though this commandment does bind you in some ways because you are commanded to obey and to submit to human authorities, nevertheless, the promise in this commandment is a reminder that God’s concern for you, what he wills for you is that you experience the true freedom, the true life that comes by serving Christ and obeying his word. And so this commandment is really a commandment that is meant to give us true freedom, even though in a earthly way, it does bind us to submitting to earthly authorities. But this is where the gospel turns everything upside down.

You can be the lowliest person in the world with everyone above you in authority, but if you know Jesus Christ, you are truly free. Or you can be the greatest ruler of the world having to answer to nobody and ruling over all people, yet if you do not know Christ, you are a miserable slave. And so there is true freedom in knowing Christ, serving him, submitting to him by faith. And so this promise is a reminder then that God’s will for you in keeping this commandment is not bondage, but freedom.

Thirdly, Jesus himself kept the fifth commandment. And I said earlier that that’s good news for you and me, because part of our salvation is that the righteousness of Jesus, what he did, where we failed, his perfect obedience, where we failed to obey, is counted as ours, as our very own. So we are counted righteous in the sight of God for the sake of Jesus because of his obedience. And of course, we are also counted righteous in the sight of God. We are forgiven because Jesus offered his self as a sacrifice to take away our sin.

And so Jesus lived for us, he died for us for our salvation, but he also lived for us to set an example for us, an example for us to follow. And this is a reason for you and me to keep the commandment. Listen to Philippians chapter two, verses five through eight. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

And so Jesus, who from all eternity was equal in power and glory with his father, he set aside that outward divine splendor, he made himself nothing, he became man, he became a servant, and he submitted to human authority as man. He was under the authority of his parents. Jesus paid the temple tax. Jesus became a servant to his disciples when he put on the servant’s garments and he washed the feet of the disciples. But in doing so, Jesus has forever dignified and ennobled the role of a servant, the one who is under authority. And so there can be nothing intrinsically undignified or inhumane about submitting to human authority, whether it is your parents or other human authorities, because Jesus himself, the son of God, did so himself. When he became man, he placed himself under human authority. So there is nothing dehumanizing about it, or undignified, or humiliating about it. The Lord himself placed himself under human rule.

And therefore, when you keep the fifth commandment, though it does mean humbling yourself before others, you are doing something that is worthy of the greatest praise and honor, because you are acting in a Christ-like way, you are imitating your Savior, Jesus.

Let’s bring this to a conclusion. The grace of God in the gospel, as we think about this commandment, God’s grace to us in Christ includes the wonderful promise, the reality that though we are called to be servants and to submit to all human authority, God has made us in Christ. He has truly made us lords. We could even say that in Christ, you are the Lord of all. And there’s a sense in which God has brought all things in subjection to you. And that is because of the promise that God works out all things for your good. God is working out all things for your good. Even those authorities over you that are difficult to, honor and respect God is using them for your good for your salvation and in this way what the Apostle Paul says is true for all things are yours whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future all are yours and so in that sense as a Christian that you may be under the rule of others you are truly in Christ the Lord of all all things are subject to your God brings all things together for your salvation, so they are subject to you in that way.

And it’s only when you take that truth to heart, it’s only when you understand and believe that in Christ all things are yours, then you can truly then submit to, obey human authorities with patience, with forbearance, with hope, and so know who you are in Christ. Know who your true Lord and master is. It is your savior, Jesus Christ. Know that you are serving him. Believe in his promises. And as you do, by the grace of God, you will find grace to willingly honor, to submit to whoever it is that God has put over you in authority in this life.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 20, verses eight through 11. And this is the inerrant, the infallible word of God. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord, your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Let’s hear from the New Testament. Our New Testament reading is Mark chapter two. Mark 2, verses 23 through 28. Mark 2, 23 through 28.

One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain field, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? And he said to them, have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him. And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

We are working our way through the Book of Exodus, and we are working our way, therefore, here in Exodus 20 through the Ten Commandments. And today, in our walk through the Ten Commandments, we have come to the one commandment that is the most controversial among Christians. Christians have long debated exactly how or even if the fourth commandment applies to us as Christians today, and exactly how we are to keep this commandment. One Dutch theologian of the last century estimated that in his country, the Netherlands, 10,000 families had serious arguments about what is not and what is permissible on the Sabbath day. And he calculated that that works out to about half a million quarrels per year over the Sabbath day. And my guess is if that were someone to attempt to do such a count today among Christians in our nation, he would find that the number of arguments over what’s permissible on the Sabbath would be far lower, much closer to zero perhaps than half a million. And that’s not because all Christians today have come to a universal agreement on how to keep the fourth commandment and how it applies to us, but rather it’s because by and large, the church in our day just doesn’t give too much thought to the fourth commandment at all. We don’t give much thought to what it means to keep the fourth commandment is probably the most neglected, the most ignored of all the 10 commandments that God has given to us.

Now, I wouldn’t say that when families were fighting over the meaning of the fourth commandment, that those were the good old days. I’m not in favor of more arguments in Christian homes. However, I do think the church would do well to give much more thought and attention to the fourth commandment, even if we don’t come to a universal agreement on how we are to keep it. Nevertheless, at least we would be wrestling with the meaning of it, taking it more seriously. The fact that we don’t have disagreements over the fourth commandment reveals just how little importance that we attach to it. In fact, for many Christians today, Sunday has become virtually identical to Saturday, just another Saturday with the exception of a couple of hours for church in the morning. And I believe that, sadly, this is one very visible way in which the church has capitulated to the secular spirit of the age. Just like for the world, for unbelievers, so for too many Christians, Sunday is not the Lord’s day, but it is my day.

Now, like all the Ten Commandments, God first gave the Sabbath commandment to the people of Israel. And the commandment itself, as we just read the words of it on the surface, it is very simple, very straightforward. The Israelites and their households were not to work on the Sabbath day. The seventh day of the week, that was to be a day which they were to rest from their usual labors. The word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word, which means to stop or to cease, to desist. And so the Israelites, they would cease their ordinary labors on the Sabbath day. And that’s how they kept the Sabbath day holy. But as we’ll see, there’s more to this commandment than merely the rule to rest on the seventh day of the week. The fourth commandment is a sign as well as a commandment. It was a sign to the Israelites of the great truths concerning God and the salvation that he accomplished for them. And so the commandments to the Israelites and the commandment for us is both a sign and a commandment. It is a commandment and a sign.

And those will be the two points that we use to consider this commandment today. And so first we’ll consider the fourth commandment as a sign. What did it signify for the Israelites? And what does the fourth commandment signify for us today? So first we’ll consider what it meant for the Israelites as a sign. With the people of Israel, the fourth commandment signified something both that was past and something that was future. And so first it was a call to remember. It was a call to remember what God had done for the Israelites. It was a call to remind the Israelites that God was their creator and their redeemer. Look at verse 11. Verse 11 says, for in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. And so here in Exodus, when we have the 10 commandments given to us for the first time in Exodus, the ground or the basis for the fourth commandment is the work and the rest that God himself did. And so God created the universe, all things, the heavens and the earth in six days, and then on the seventh day, he rested. He ceased from his work. And therefore the Israelites, for that reason, in order to image God, to be like God, they were to work six days and then they were to rest, to cease from their labors. And as they did so, as they did this week after week, they would be reminded that they served the God who was the creator of all things, that the God whom he revealed himself to the Israelites, who made himself known to them, that he was the author of life, the giver of life. They honored the Lord as the one in whom they lived and moved and had their being.

But this fourth commandment was also meant for the Israelites to be a reminder to them, not only that God was their creator, but also that God was their savior, their redeemer. The second time that we read the 10 commandments after the book of Exodus is in the book of Deuteronomy. And there, Moses, when he restates the 10 commandments, he gives another reason why the Israelites were to keep the seventh day holy. This is from Deuteronomy 5, verse 15. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. And so the Sabbath day then, as they heard it from Moses, the ground or the basis for the fourth commandment was not only that they were a created people, but they were a saved people. They had been redeemed, saved by the power, by the grace of God, when he delivered them from their bondage to slavery in Egypt. And so the Sabbath then was a weekly reminder to the Israelites of who the Lord was, that he was both their creator, the one who gives them life, who sustains their lives in this world. He was also their redeemer, the one who had delivered them from Egypt, who set his love upon them, who rescued them from their bondage to Pharaoh.

And so the Sabbath was a sign for the Israelites to look to the past, but it was also a sign that pointed them to the future. The Lord also intended the fourth commandment to fix the eyes of the Israelites upon what was to come, that in the future, God would bring them into the land of Canaan, the promised land. In Deuteronomy 12, verse nine, Moses refers to the promised land as the place where the Israelites would find rest. They would find rest in the promised land. And the rest that they would find there would be rest from their bondage to slavery in Egypt, rest from their wilderness wanderings. And so the Sabbath was meant to point the Israelites forward to the promise of God that he had made to them that in Canaan, in the promised land, they would find their rest. However, even entrance into the land of Canaan was not the final or the ultimate rest that the Lord had promised the Israelites. The book of Hebrews sheds light upon the fourth commandment for us so that we can understand the full meaning of it. And according to the book of Hebrews, the true rest that God held out to the Israelites was the rest, the eternal rest that would be theirs of the world to come. Resting in the presence of God, resting from their struggle with sin, rest from living in a sin-cursed world, the rest that the New Testament calls eternal life. And so the fourth commandment pointed the Israelites to the promise, ultimately, of eternal rest with the Lord. And so it was a sign for the Israelites that pointed them forward to salvation. Not only the rest that would be theirs in the land of Canaan, but the eternal rest, the eternal salvation that God had promised to give to his people.

Now, having considered what the fourth commandment meant for the people of Israel, let’s consider what does it mean for us today as Christians? Well, just as God gave this commandment to the Israelites to be a sign to them of what he had done for them in the past, what he would do for them in the future, so for you and me today, the fourth commandment is a sign both of God’s dealings with us in the past, but also of his promises to us for the future. But before we consider that, I want to make a more fundamental point, a more essential or basic point that I hope all of us, if we’re not agreed on now, that we will be. And that is this, that the fourth commandment is still valid for the church. It hasn’t been abrogated, it hasn’t been canceled or voided. It is still very much in effect, in force for us as Christians today. The words that we heard from our Lord Jesus in the New Testament reading, these words that he spoke concerning the Sabbath would be very, very difficult to understand if by his coming into the world, he meant to do away completely or abolish the fourth commandment. Jesus said in Mark chapter two, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And then he said in verse 28, so the son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath. It is strange to consider that Jesus would claim his divine Lordship over the Sabbath only in order to abolish it, to get rid of it. And it’s also strange to think that Jesus would take away something that God had given to us for our good. The Sabbath is made for man.

And why would Jesus then as Lord of the Sabbath take away this gift that God has given to you and me for our blessing? And so as Christians today, we still have 10 commandments. We don’t have nine commandments, but God has given us 10 commandments written in stone, written with his finger. And so the fourth commandment is just as binding on us today as it was for the people of Israel under the old covenant. And as a sign, the fourth commandment functions in the same way for the church today as it did for Israel, that is, it points us to the past of what God has done for us, but also to the future of what God will do for us. And as for remembering, as for pointing us to the past, what the fourth commandment reminds us of as Christians, as the church, is not so much God’s great work of creation, which of course is still in the commandment. And so yes, we are still to think of God as the creator. Nevertheless, what God is pointing us towards as we look to the past with the fourth commandment is not so much his work of creation, but his work of recreation. And God’s work of recreation began on the day in which he raised the Lord Jesus from the grave for our salvation. Because Jesus was resurrected on the first day of the week. As Christians, the day that we now remember and keep holy is not the last day of the week, but the first day of the week. Not Saturday, but Sunday.

The day on which God raised up Jesus from the dead. On this day, something more significant, something more momentous, took place that was even greater than the work of creation itself. And that is God was beginning on that day, on that resurrection day, God was beginning his greater work of recreation. And this is what the resurrection is.

It is the beginning really of all that God has promised us in the scriptures of the coming of the new heavens and the new earth. The end of the ages, the coming glory, the world that is to come. All of this really began on the first Easter morning when Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. And so, in the forward progress of God’s work of salvation through history, the fourth commandment remains the same, but the day is changed. We look back to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and so we worship on the first day of the week. And accordingly, Sunday, the first day of the week, was a special day, a holy day in the eyes of the church from the very beginning. It was the day on which the church met for worship in the scriptures. In Acts 27, chapter 20, verse 7, we read that on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, that Paul instructed the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verse two, on the first day of the week, each one of you is to put something aside and store it up. And most importantly, perhaps in the book of Revelation, the inspired apostle John, he tells us in chapter one, verse 10, I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day. And that could be no other day, but the day that the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead. And so, here’s one day that is called in the scriptures, in the New Testament, the Lord’s day. And that of course is the first day of the week, the day that is holy, that we are to keep holy. And so for us, our Sabbath rest is not on Saturday, but on Sunday. In the words of our confession, the Lord’s Day is the Christian Sabbath. It is the Christian Sabbath. The theologian B.B. Warfield, he put it this way, he said, Christ took the Sabbath into the grave with him and brought the Lord’s Day out of the grave with him on the resurrection morn. And so for us as Christians, the fourth commandment points us back to the great work of God’s recreation, that work of recreation that has begun with the resurrection of Christ from the grave. But as with the Israelites, the Sabbath also points us ahead to look forward to what God will do for us. And what we are looking forward to is not different from what the Israelites were looking forward to, and that is the day of eternal rest. The day that we will have the fullness, the completion of our rest in Jesus Christ, our Savior. Hebrews 4.9 says, so then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. And what Hebrews calls the Sabbath rest is nothing other than the eternal glory, the eternal life that God has promised to give us in Jesus Christ, that He will bring us into on that day. And so on the day of our resurrection from the grave, that will be that eternal rest that we will enter into in fullness when we are free from sin, when we live in this new heaven to new earth in which there will be no more sin and death forever. That is the goal of our salvation. That is heaven. And that is what the fourth commandment points us to, that eternal rest. And it will be a rest, a rest from all the struggles, the temptations, the sufferings, the spiritual warfare, the shadow of death in which we labor and strive as people living in a sin-cursed world. And at this point, we need to ask ourselves, is this the rest that I am hoping in and looking forward to? Is this promise of eternal rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. Is this your hope? Are you trusting in Jesus Christ as your savior from sin and death, and as the one who promises to give you this everlasting rest? Perhaps there are some here today to whom the Lord Jesus is calling out, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I’m gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only one who can give us true rest from our struggle with sin, from the fear of death, from the guilt that is ours. He can give us true rest and he promises to bring us the fullness, the perfection of this rest one day when he comes again in glory, but even now, He calls you to come to Him, to come to the Savior Jesus, to find even now that rest that will be yours in fullness in the life to come. And if you have come to Jesus Christ by faith to receive that gift of rest, you have received the greatest gift in the world. You have received the Lord Jesus, the forgiveness of your sins, but he has also given you so many other gifts along with Christ. He has given you the gift of the Sabbath day, the gift of the Lord’s day, a day in which you can rest from your work, a day in which you can turn your thoughts to the Lord Jesus Christ and to worship him and to find your contentment, your joy in him. And so for us, the fourth commandment is a sign of God saving work for us in the future. And it is also, or it’s a sign of God saving work for us in the past, what he has done for us in Christ, but also of the hope that we have for the future. So it’s a sign. But the fourth commandment is also a commandment.

God tells us what we are to do. And this brings us to our second main point, the fourth commandment as a commandment. And the question is, as Christians, how are we to keep it? How do you keep the fourth commandment? How do you keep the Lord’s day holy? And inevitably, when we ask this question, all kinds of particular specific questions come to our mind. Can I go out to eat on Sunday? Can I travel on Sunday?

Can I watch sports on Sunday? Can our family play Settlers of Catan on Sunday? Or do we have to only play Bible trivia on Sunday? Now, instead of me standing here and telling you the answers to all these questions, or at least what I think the answers are, I want us to consider together some biblical teaching concerning the fourth commandment that, Lord willing, the Spirit of God will guide you or will use to guide you in your thinking about how you are to keep the Lord’s day holy. And this, Lord willing, will help you as you consider, well, what does that look like specifically in terms of these activities that inevitably we have questions about?

So first of all, one thing that you must keep in mind is this. The Sabbath day is a gift from God.

It is a gift. God did not give the Israelites the fourth commandment to burden them, to inconvenience them, to make their one day in seven a drudgery or a chore, but he gave the Israelites the fourth commandment, the Sabbath day, in order to be a blessing to them, a gift, a day of rest from their work. The Lord did not give as the world gives.

The Lord did not give as Pharaoh gave. There’s no doubt that Pharaoh did not give the Israelites any rest, but the Lord did. And like every gift from God, the Sabbath day is a good thing. It is intrinsically good because it is from God.

Jesus said in Mark chapter two, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And Jesus was speaking specifically to those who had taken the fourth commandment and had turned it from a gift to a burden. They cause it to be a burden for the people of Israel. And Jesus says, no, the fourth commandment is good.

Man was not made to keep it, but it was given for man’s blessing. The Sabbath was made for man. God knows our frame. He knows our limitations, our weaknesses. He knows it’s simply not good for you and me to work seven days a week without a regular break. Nor if you are an employer, is it right for you to demand unceasing labor from those who work for you? And so you have to remember this, that the Sabbath day is meant for your good. It is a gift from God, a blessing from heaven.

Secondly, the Sabbath day is meant to be for you a delight. Consider the Israelites. If they took the Sabbath day seriously, and when you read through the New Testament, you find out that woefully, they did not take the Sabbath day seriously, but if they would, if they did, how could it not have been a delight for them? How could they not have rejoiced as they rested from their work on the Sabbath day and remembered that God was their Savior, that He had delivered them from Egypt, that He was the source of every blessing and good thing for them? How could it not be a delight for the Israelites? In fact, the Lord tells the people of Israel in Isaiah 58, He tells them to call the Sabbath a delight. And the same thing applies to us. How can we not find delight in the Lord’s day, in our Christian Sabbath, if we take it seriously? If we cease from our work, if we devote ourselves to God, to worshiping Him, and to remembering that He is our Savior, that He loves us in Jesus Christ, that He is the source of every good gift and perfect gift. How could it not be a delight for us? And so the Sabbath day is basically a good thing. It is meant as a gift to give us rest. It is meant to be a delight, to rejoice, a day to rejoice in God’s goodness and grace to us. And I have never met a Christian, and I don’t think I ever will meet a Christian who has ever or ever will regret that he made an effort, that he prioritized his week and his time in order to keep the Sabbath day, the Lord’s day, holy, to rest, to worship him. There is great blessing in keeping the fourth commandment.

With that in mind, let’s ask the question, how do we keep the Sabbath day holy? Well, first of all, just on the basis of what the commandment says, we keep it holy by resting. That means you take a break from your usual everyday labor. You don’t devote the day to it. This is the first concern of the fourth commandment, to cease, to desist from your usual work. And I would include in that schoolwork as well. If you’re a student, that is your work. And so you rest from your studies on Sunday.

And so for that reason, if you choose to do any kind of regular work on Sunday that you could with a little forethought, a little planning, do another time during the week, you are not keeping the fourth commandment. Now we do have to say, we have to add some qualifications to this. There are certain kinds of work that must be done all seven days of the week. For example, hospitals, they have to keep running seven days a week. Police officers have to keep working seven days a week. Unfortunately, sickness and criminals don’t take a day off. The utility companies, they have to keep providing power all seven days of the week and so on. Also, any kind of work of mercy, for example, visiting the sick, practicing hospitality, that kind of work is not breaking the Sabbath, but those works of mercy are really honoring the Sabbath because you are showing forth the love of Christ to others. And of course, that’s something that God commands us to do all seven days of the week. And so there is necessary work that must be done on Sunday. There are works of mercy that we do on the Lord’s day. But if you are working or studying on Sunday only to advance your career, to achieve your conception, your goal of what success is, to increase your income, if this is why you work on the Lord’s day, that’s exactly the kind of thing that the Lord is telling you not to do on the Lord’s day. But you are to rest from that work. God has given us six days to work. He requires that we set apart one day, one day for Him.

He gives us six days. One is for the Lord, a day for us to rest from our work, devote ourselves to his worship and service. And so you keep the Lord’s day holy by resting from your usual work, but also by worshiping the Lord on Sunday. Notice how the commandment says, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. And in Leviticus chapter 23, we read this, six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places. And so what the Lord requires of us in the fourth commandment is that we are to rest and worship. It is the Lord’s day. Rest does not mean sleeping in, sitting on your couch all day, watching movies, but it’s a day that’s to be devoted to the worship of God. And obviously one, crucial way that you keep the fourth commandment, one way that God requires us to keep the fourth commandment is that we come to church for worship on the Lord’s day. Hebrews 12.25 or Hebrews 10.25 says, let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another in all the more as you see the day approaching. Now I recognize that everybody’s life situation is different. There are some life circumstances that may prevent you in some way from devoting the entire day to the worship of God on Sunday. But I do want to mention, of course you know this, but I want to remind you that here at Mount Rose, we do have an evening service on Sundays, at least on most Sundays. And if the Lord’s day is truly the Lord’s day, and not just the Lord’s half day, then what better way to devote the whole day to Christ than to make evening worship a regular Sunday routine. And I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. You may be thinking to yourself, that’s not practical. It’s not possible for us, our family, to come every Sunday evening to worship God. Well, why don’t you try to come once a month?

Or maybe once every two months. You might find that as you get into the routine, the habit, it becomes easier for you to do.

Now let’s go back to the question of what exactly can I do or can I not do on Sunday? Can I do this thing?

Can I do that thing? Well, the first thing to do before you try to answer those questions is this. Ask the Lord that he would fill your hearts with these truths from the scripture that we have already heard. The truth that the Lord’s day is a gift to you, that it is for your good, that the Lord’s day is meant to be a delight. A day to set aside your work, to give your full attention to the God who loves you, the God who has saved you from sin and death, that God gives you one day in seven to worship Him, to grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Savior, the one who is the inexhaustible source of every joy and every blessing. And when the Lord puts you in that place where your heart is filled with a desire to worship Him, where you are rejoicing in Him, where you are in that place spiritually, where you desire to worship God, where you long to come to church, where you long to be blessed by the grace and favor of God, where you are looking forward to serving and worshiping God with His people, when you are in that place, then these specific questions tend to answer themselves. They kind of work themselves out. Because instead of trying to figure out what you can do on Sunday, or maybe it’s more accurate to say what we can get away with on Sunday, what you are really trying to figure out is, how can I make the most of Sunday? I want to be worshiping God. I want to be at church. I want to be in the gracious presence of my God and Savior to find my joy and delight that He gives to those who genuinely seek Him. And so, when your heart is there, then these particular questions become much easier to answer. And another reason why we should want to keep the fourth commandment is because this is one way in which we bear witness to the world of the truth of the gospel. And I believe that as we, as the church, as we have forgotten the fourth commandment, as we have abandoned the fourth commandment, we have robbed ourselves of a wonderful means of testifying to the world of the truth of the gospel, the truth of God. The reason the unbelieving world has no interest in a day that is set apart to God is because those who do not know God, they seek their lives entirely in this world alone, naturally. This world is all they have. And so they seek their life in this world, in this life. And if your life is only in this world, if your life is only in this present age, then each and every day must be for you a never-ending pursuit, a restless pursuit, an anxious pursuit to somehow to seek and to find your happiness in this world, to somehow get as much out of this world, out of this life as you possibly can. And so there can be no rest from work. There can be no rest from seeking your own desires, your own pleasure. There can be no rest from recreation.

For the unbeliever, the Sabbath is literally a waste of time. Because that’s one day out of seven that he has taken out of the world when his life is in the world. But the Sabbath day then, for us who know Christ, it is our witness to the world. That there is a greater life than this world offers, that there is something better, far better, that we have life in the God who created us and who has redeemed us in his son, that our life is not in this age, in this world, but our life is hidden with Jesus Christ above, that we are not of this world, but we are citizens of a heavenly country. And so we gladly devote one day of the week, not to pleasing ourselves, not to advancing our own interests, not to increasing our wealth, not to becoming more and more productive, not to squeezing everything we can out of this world, but one day in seven, we rest in, we worship, we enjoy the loving, the merciful God who does not give as the world gives, but gives us true life, abundant life, eternal life. And I believe that if the world saw that, if they saw the church devoting themselves in that way, to the Lord’s day, at least some would say, I don’t know what these Christians have, but I know I don’t have it and I want it. And so I know the reason to keep the fourth commandment is that it is one way that we bear witness to the world of the truth of the gospel.

Let’s let the Lord have the last word this morning. This is from Isaiah chapter 58, verses 13 through 14. If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, and from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly, then you shall take delight in the Lord. And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 20, verse seven, Exodus 20, verse seven. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. 

Let’s turn to the New Testament for our New Testament reading from Philippians chapter two, verses one through 11. Philippians two, one through 11.

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

Go ahead and turn back to Exodus chapter 20, verse seven. This is our sermon text for this morning. And again, this is the third commandment as we are working our way through the 10 commandments. Everybody in the world has a favorite word. It’s a word that always catches your attention, a word that is music to your ears, a word that is truly precious to you. And I know what your favorite word is. Your favorite word is your name. And your name, of course, is more than a mere word. It’s more than a simple label that we use to distinguish you from other people, but it stands for what kind of person you are. Your character, your identity is wrapped up in your name. And so that your name becomes invested with everything that makes up who you are as a person. Your name carries that with it whenever it is sounded.

And it’s the same with God. God has a name as well. And His name is not just a word, a mere word that we use to refer to God, but it is a symbol that stands for the nature, the character of God. Everything about God, everything that is true about Him, His transcendent glory, His holiness, His grace, His love, this is all wrapped up in His name. As one person said, God himself is present in his name. We sang from Psalm eight earlier and David in that Psalm in verse one, he says, “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth?” He could have said, “How majestic are you in all the earth?” But he says the same thing when he says, “How majestic is your name in all the earth? You have set your glory above the heavens.” And it’s because the name of God is invested with and carries with it all that is true about God, His holiness, His majesty, His greatness. Because that is true, God has given us the third commandment.

Again, verse seven, Exodus 20, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not hold them guiltless who takes His name in vain.” Whatever we do with God’s name, whether we curse it or bless it, we are doing to God himself. And our attitude toward the name of God, whether we reverence it or whether we use it flippantly or carelessly, that shows us what is our attitude towards God himself. Now, one distinctive feature of the third commandment, and if you are reading very carefully, you may have noticed this, but unlike the first two commandments, the Lord, he refers to himself in the third commandment in the third person. He doesn’t say, “You shall not take my name in vain.” Obviously that is true, but the commandment says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” And God gave us the commandment in this way so that our attention would be focused on the name of God. So rather than just saying my name, he tells us, he reminds us what is his name and his name is the Lord. That is his name. We could say that is God’s proper name, at least in our English Bibles, it is the Lord. That was the name that he revealed to Moses back in Exodus chapter 3 at the burning bush. We looked at that several weeks ago, but let me read a couple verses from chapter 3.

This is when Moses is hearing from God at the burning bush. Verses 14 and 15, God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, I am, has sent me to you.” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.” 

And so what is God’s name? It is the Lord, the Lord. In our English Bibles, the Lord stands for the actual name of God. And we went over this several weeks ago, but I think it would be helpful to go over this again. When you are reading your English Bibles, when you are reading the Old Testament in your English Bibles, you’ll notice that the word Lord is given to us in two different ways. One way that we read the word Lord, or the way that it’s printed, is with a capital L and then a small o, small r, small d. And when you see that, that is just a generic name that means master or overseer or something like that. But then you also see in the Old Testament the word Lord with all capital letters, capital L, capital O, capital R, and capital D. And that word, that Lord, is the English rendering of the Hebrew word that is the very name of God, the name of God that he gave to Moses at the burning bush. Now, nobody today knows exactly how In Hebrew, God’s name was pronounced. We have a guess, and our best guess is that it’s pronounced something like Yahweh. In Hebrew, there are four consonants that make up the name of God. Sometimes it’s called the tetragrammaton because it’s made up of four different letters. Our best guess is that we pronounce it Yahweh, or that’s how it would be pronounced in Hebrew. And by the way, when we sing our hymns and we see the word Jehovah, without going into all the details, essentially that’s a kind of a misspelling or a misunderstanding of how to pronounce God’s name. It’s not Jehovah, but it’s closer to Yahweh. And the name itself means I am, I am. And God’s name, because it is I am, it refers to the truth that unlike everything in creation, unlike us, unlike everything that God has made, God’s existence does not depend on anything outside of himself. He is eternally self-existence. God always was, he always will be. We are dependent upon God for our existence, but not God. He is self-existing. He is I am. And so in English then, Yahweh is Lord, capital L-O-R-D. And so whenever you say Lord, you are saying the name of God. 

So what exactly does the third commandment mean when God says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain?” Well, one thing that it doesn’t mean is that we can never speak or use the name of God. As you probably know, there are some Jewish people who out of fear of breaking this commandment will simply not ever say the name of God or even write out the name of God. They might refer to God’s name as simply the name, but they will not speak his name or say his name. And the reason they do that is because they don’t want to even come close to breaking the third commandment. Now, when you compare that extreme caution with the name of God to how his name is so carelessly and thoughtlessly and profanely used by so many people in our world today, there seems to be something to that approach. Let’s treat the name of God reverently. Let’s not even say his name. However, there is no biblical prohibition against writing out or saying God’s name. Taking the Bible as an example, we would say that God wants us to speak his name. He wants us to use his name. In the scriptures, we hear people in the Old Testament, the saints, using the name of God, saying the name of God all over the place. His name is throughout the Psalms. The Psalms were sung by the people of Israel in their worship of the Lord. They spoke his name, they sang his name in thanksgiving and praise and so on. And so following that, we have to say that God wants us to speak his name. He wants us to use his name. Of course, in a way that honors him. And so the third commandment does not prohibit the use of God’s name, but it prohibits the misuse of God’s name. In Hebrew, the commandment literally says something like this. “You shall not lift up or take up the name of the Lord your God for nothingness.” The word in vain is a word that means nothingness, vanity.

And of course, God is the opposite of nothingness. God is infinite in glory, in majesty, in greatness. The Hebrew word for glory is weightiness or heaviness. And that of course is the opposite of nothingness or vanity. And so to use God’s name in any way that is not consistent with his gravity, his glory, his majesty, is to equate the name of God with vanity or nothingness, it is to say that God is nothing or nothingness. And of course that is to take his name in vain. Our shorter catechism puts it this way. “What is forbidden in the third commandment?”

“The third commandment forbiddeth all profaning and abusing of anything whereby God maketh himself known.” Now in the original setting in which this commandment was given to the people of Israel in the ancient Near East, there were basically three different ways in which the people of Israel or other peoples may have taken the name of the Lord in vain. And we’ll briefly survey those three ways, and then we’ll see how in our modern context, in our day and age, we can basically take the name of God in vain in those same three ways. 

So first of all, God’s name could be misused in sorcery. So a sorcerer was someone who would take the name of God in vain when he would use it as part of his repertoire of divine names that he would recite in order to carry out some purpose or agenda that he had as a sorcerer. And so he would speak some kind of a magical incantation involving the names of gods or the name of the true God in order to heal sickness or to defeat an enemy or to foretell the future. But you can see the problem with that. The sorcerer was not using the name of God in order to praise God, to worship Him, to honor Him, but he was using the name of God as a kind of formula in order to control or to harness the power of God to accomplish his own purposes. 

We see a very good example of that sorcery in the New Testament in Acts chapter 19 when the seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva, they attempted to use the name of Jesus in order to cast out evil spirits from a man who was demon possessed. And so they were not really honoring the name of Jesus. They did not believe in Jesus. They weren’t using the name of the son of God in order to worship and to praise him, but they were trying to harness the power of the name of Jesus in order to exercise dominion over these evil spirits so that they could cast them out of this person, and they were using the name of God, in this case, the name of Jesus, in vain. And of course, as you know the story, they found out the hard way that that was a very bad idea. The evil spirit and the man in whom they were trying to cast out, the evil spirit, attacked the sons of Sceva. They fled out of the house naked and wounded.

But that was an example of sorcery, a misuse of God’s name. The Old Testament says that this kind of misuse of God’s name in sorcery is an abomination, an abomination. 

Secondly, God’s name could be misused in false prophecy. When you read the Old Testament, you read the prophets over and over again, the prophets will preface what they say from the Lord by saying, “Thus says the Lord,” “Thus sayeth the Lord.” The problem was that the false prophets, when they said anything, they said the same thing at the beginning, “Thus says the Lord.” And when they did, that is the false prophets, they were taking God’s name in vain because they were attaching to the name of God, words that God did not speak. And so they would attach God’s name to what was a lie, what was false. And of course that was condemned by the Lord.

Deuteronomy 18:22, “When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.” So any kind of false prophecy in the name of God was taking his name in vain. 

Thirdly, God’s name could be misused by taking a false oath. Often in the Old Testament, a person would confirm an oath that he made or a vow that he made or he would certify the truthfulness of his words by using God’s name to back him up. He would say something like, “As the Lord lives, I will do so and so,” or “May God do so to me and more also if I do not do so and so.” And by saying that, the person was using God’s name. He was appealing to the character of God, the nature of God, the integrity of God, to back up his vow or his promise or to certify the validity of his words. But if that person then failed to fulfill his oath, or if he spoke words that he knew were untrue while invoking God’s name, he was taking God’s name in vain. And the Bible condemns that as well, Leviticus 19:12. “You shall not swear by my name falsely and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.” 

So those are the ways in which people in the old covenant in the context in which this commandment was given could take the name of God in vain. And in a minute, we’ll see that we can do essentially the same thing. It just looks a little different today. But before we see that, It’s important for us to see, it’s crucial for us to see that in addition to the Lord, which is the name of God that he gave to Moses, now with the coming of his son, God has given himself, he has revealed to us a new name for himself. And of course, that new name of God is Jesus Christ. Again, The word in our Old Testament that is God’s name is Lord, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D.

And Lord is the English rendering of the Hebrew Yahweh. Now before the coming of Christ, sometime BC, I forget exactly what year, the Jewish people, they translated their scriptures from Hebrew into the Greek language. And whenever they came across the word Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures, they would translate that into Greek with the Greek word kurios, kurios. And then later, after the coming of Christ, when the New Testament was written, and of course it was written in Greek, the authors of the New Testament used that very same word to refer to Jesus, kurios. And what that means is, is that for the New Testament authors, That is the New Testament authors who each one were inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. For them, Jesus, the man Jesus was one in the same as the Lord of the Old Testament. And so Jesus is Kurios. He is Lord.

He is Yahweh. He is the incarnation of almighty God whose name is the Lord. He is the one who spoke to Moses from the burning bush and revealed his name and said, “I am who I am.” And so everything that was revealed about God in the Old Testament, everything that is true about God that is given to us in the Old Testament is also true for Jesus. And that’s what it means to confess that Jesus is Lord. It’s not just to say, I believe that Jesus was an extraordinary man whom God had given extraordinary authority, that he is Lord in some sense like that. But to say that Jesus is Lord, to confess that he is Lord is to say that Jesus is one and the same as the God who revealed himself in the scriptures as Yahweh, as the Lord, the creator, of heaven and earth, the sovereign God over all things. 

Earlier, we heard from Philippians, and let me read some of those verses again. Philippians 2, nine through 11, speaking of Jesus. “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” The remarkable thing about that passage, and this is a well-known passage to us from Philippians. But the remarkable thing about that passage is that Paul is quoting words that God himself spoke in the Old Testament about himself. 

In Isaiah 45:23, God himself says this, “By myself, I have sworn from my mouth has gone out in righteousness, a word that shall not return to me, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.” 

And so what the Apostle Paul does in Philippians is he substitutes Jesus, the name of Jesus, for God, for God himself. And so to bow the knee at the name of Jesus, to confess that Jesus is Lord is to bow the knee to God and to swear allegiance to God. And so everything that the third commandment says about the name of God, the Lord, applies equally to the name of Jesus Christ. 

And so with that in mind, let’s go back to those three ways that God’s name was taken in vain in the Old Testament and see how they apply to us today. 

So the first way was sorcery. Sorcery was the first way that God’s name was taken in vain. Again, the sorcerer tried to use God’s name as a means to harness or control the power of God in order to accomplish his own agenda. And today, in a similar way, anytime somebody uses the name of God as a sort of holy seal of approval, or uses the name of God in order to endorse or promote his own agenda or desires that are not biblical, he is acting out of the same spirit of sorcery that was condemned in the Old Testament. You see this, for example, when somebody claims, with no biblical support, but somebody claims that His political agenda or her social agenda is God’s will, or that this is what Jesus would want. 

I remember several years ago, there was an ad campaign that was sponsored by a Christian environmentalist group. And the ad asked the question, “What would Jesus drive?” So instead of what would Jesus do, what would Jesus drive? And the obvious implication was that Jesus would not drive a big gas-guzzling SUV, but rather he would choose to drive a much more fuel-efficient car. And of course, on one level, it’s just absurd to claim that Jesus would favor a certain kind of car to drive, but it’s more serious than that. It’s actually blasphemous to attach the holy name of Christ to advance a political or social cause that the Bible says absolutely nothing about is taking God’s name in vain. This came to my mind as well as we were watching the World Series and you see fans in the stadium praying that their team will win. Let’s not make God a fan of your favorite baseball team and pray that he’ll give the victory to your team. That’s essentially taking God’s name in vain. It’s a kind of sorcery. 

Perhaps on a more personal level, When we pray and ask God for some particular blessing or provision, we must always say, as Jesus himself said when he prayed to his father, “Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done.” Because if we don’t say that, or at least we don’t have that submission and attitude in our hearts, when we pray to the Lord, we can so easily want to use the name of Jesus to try to get what we want from God even if it’s not the will of God to give us that. And we can come very close to using the name of Jesus as a kind of incantation, like a sorcerer would use the name of God. And so these are modern forms of sorcery by which we can take God’s name in vain. 

The second way that God’s name was taken in vain was by false prophecy. The false prophet said, “Thus says the Lord,” when the Lord had not said so. And that spirit of false prophecy is what lies behind every so-called Christian teaching that clearly contradicts what God has revealed to us in the scriptures. And so, for example, whenever you hear somebody declare that God wouldn’t condemn anybody to eternal damnation, or that Jesus will save all good people regardless of their faith or religion or lack of faith, or that God wants us to be healthy and wealthy, that is attaching a false teaching to God and using His name to endorse it, and that is taking God’s name in vain. And so any teaching in the name of Christ that is contrary to scripture, any teaching that denies the truth of the gospel, that is a form of false prophecy that is breaking the third commandment. 

Now there are false teachers who do this very wrongly, very sinfully, but there are also genuine believers in Christ who genuinely seek to honor him, and yet they can stumble in a very similar way. A well-meaning Christian can say something like, “God told me to do this,” or “God wants me to do this,” or “God revealed to me that this or that will happen.” And that too, even though the person may be sincere, that too is a form of false prophecy. 

When my sister was suffering from cancer many years ago, my aunt told me that her son, who was very young at the time, so he was concerned for my sister. But nevertheless, my aunt told me that her son said something like, “Mom, God has told me that Meredith is going to live.” Well, my sister didn’t live, and so whatever it was that made him think that God had told him that, it wasn’t God, and it was a kind of false prophecy. And that kind of thinking is not just irresponsible because it may confuse or hurt other people, but it’s really dishonoring God. It’s pretending to speak for God when he hasn’t spoken. It’s taking the name of God in vain. 

The third way that the ancient Israelites could break the third commandment was by making a false oath in the name of God. And as Christians, we all make promises or vows in the name of God from time to time. For example, when you publicly professed your faith in Christ, you promised that you would be a faithful disciple of Jesus. You made a vow before God and in God’s name. Or when you presented your children for baptism, when you became a member of the church, when you got married, you made certain promises in the name of God, with God as your witness that you would fulfill your word. And if we make such vows insincerely with reservations, or if we break our vows, we have taken God’s name in vain. 

Another way that we can take God’s name in vain that is similar to making a false vow is by using the name of God or Jesus in a thoughtless, careless, irreverent way. And this is the first thing that comes to mind when we read the third commandment, the way in which God’s name is used as a swear word, to express happiness or anger or surprise or outrage. And so you hear this all the time.

People say, “Oh my God,” “OMG.” Or they’ll say, “Jesus Christ,” in a way to show their surprise or anger. Or they’ll say, “For God’s Sake,” or “For Christ’s Sake,” and so on. The list goes on and on. You know what I’m talking about. And if we were to just go by the number of times people use the word or the name of God or Jesus in their everyday conversations, we might think that we lived among the most pious and most spiritually minded people that ever walked the face of the earth. But of course, it’s a very sad commentary on the spiritual condition of our society, that the holy name of God, the holy name of Christ is used in such a thoughtless, careless, flippant, disrespectful way by so many people day after day in their everyday conversation. And here I believe the warning attached to this commandment takes on a special significance because a person in this life can easily get away and people get away all the time with taking God’s name in vain. If you break the sixth commandment, you probably won’t get away with it. If you commit murder, you probably will go to prison. If you break the third commandment, nobody cares. You won’t get arrested. You won’t get charged with any kind of criminal violation. It’s no big deal. But it is a big deal. God sees it as a very serious offense. And though we may not experience any kind of punishment from men, God hears and he will judge. And that’s why it says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” And so you may get away with taking God’s name in vain in this world, but God hears and he will judge those who use his name in a way that dishonors him. 

And so we can break the third commandment in very similar ways, such as sorcery, false prophecy, a false oath, and so on. Now one of the principles in interpreting and understanding the Ten Commandments is that when a commandment like this one, the Third Commandment, when it forbids something, by implication it commands the opposite. And so there is a positive commandment in this commandment, as well as a commandment against something. And so if the third commandment forbids us from taking the name of the Lord in vain, what does it command? Well, it commands the opposite. And that is that in all that we do, in everything that we do, we give honor and glory and reverence and praise to the name of God and the name of Christ. Colossians 3:17 says, “And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” In other words, since we as believers in Christ profess the name of Christ, all that we do must be worthy of that great name. And that is true, first of all, in our worship. It is in our worship that this commandment has particular relevance to us because in our worship, we say the name of God, we confess the name of Christ, we use God’s name to praise and to worship him. Psalm 100 verse four says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name.”

The only way that we can truly bless the name of God and to honor God by using His name is when we come into His presence and worship when our hearts are filled with thanksgiving and praise. If not, you are speaking God’s name in worship, but you are not really giving God the glory that is due to His name. And we’ve all experienced this. We’re in church, we’re singing a hymn to God, we’re supposed to be praising Him, and we’re mouthing the words of the hymn. Maybe we even know it by heart. But in the meantime, in your mind, you’re drifting off to a conversation that you had yesterday, or you’re struggling in your heart with bitterness or anger against somebody for some reason. All the while, you are using the name of God to praise Him and also taking the name of God in vain. You are not really giving God the glory that he deserves when you use his name in that way in worship. 

And going beyond worship, the third commandment deals not only with what we do here on Sundays, but the third commandment deals with the entirety of our lives. All that we say and think and do as believers in Jesus Christ, We do in the name of Christ and therefore we either glorify him by honoring his name or we take it in vain. Phil Riken said, “The very name of Christ is associated with everything we do. Our reputation is a reflection of his reputation. So we should always make it our name or our aim to honor his name.” Paul said of the unbelieving Jews in Romans chapter two, 2:24, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” May that never be said of us, that the name of God is blasphemed because of our sin, because of our hypocrisy. May it never be said of us that the name of God is held in dishonor or disrespect by unbelievers who do not know him because of our sin and our failures. And so, I hope that as we have been unpacking this commandment that what you’ve been able to see by the grace of God is that the third commandment has so much more to say than to simply say, “Don’t use God’s name as a curse word.” Or “Don’t say, ‘Oh my God,’ when you’re surprised.”

Because when we think about it, we break this commandment every day because we fail to give him due honor as we bear the name of Christ. We don’t worship him as we should. We fall far short of giving God the glory, the honor, the praise that is due to his name. And this is one of the reasons why we’re going through these 10 commandments to see how the law of God applies to all that we do, all that we think, our words, the intentions of our heart. It’s comprehensive, it’s thorough, it’s spiritual. 

But when it comes to the name of God, the good news is that God’s name has everything to do with salvation. God’s name has everything to do with the hope of salvation for us sinners who do take his name in vain, who fail to keep this commandment. The name of God again is Jesus. And Jesus is the Greek form of Yeshua or Joshua. And what it means is Yahweh saves or Yahweh is salvation. Literally the name of God is salvation. The name of salvation. God has revealed himself to us in his son, Jesus Christ. He has made himself known to us in the savior. And in the preaching of the gospel, he makes his name known in the world so that sinners like you and me for those just like us, you and me who have broken this commandment, who have broken all the commandments, that there may be salvation and hope and redemption in his great and glorious name. He has given us the name of Jesus that by faith in his name, we might be saved, we might be forgiven. Acts 4:12, “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” You could put it this way.

When it’s all said and done, the greatest honor that you can give to the name of God, the best way for you to magnify, to honor, to bless the name of God is to believe, to believe in the name of Jesus Christ for your salvation. To hope in His name, to trust in His name, to believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that He died for you, for your sin, that He was raised for you, for your salvation. This is how we begin to keep the third commandment, by coming to the Son of God by faith, confessing His name, acknowledging that He is our Savior, that He is Lord. And it is by this same faith in Jesus Christ that God gives us the grace to keep or to grow in keeping this commandment. And the promise that Jesus makes to you and me is this, that if you confess, if you confess the name of Jesus before men in this world on the day of judgment, Jesus will confess your name before the Father in heaven. He will confess you and your name as one for whom he died that you may enter into eternal glory. 

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 20, verses four through six, Exodus 20, verses four through six. And this is God’s inerrant and infallible word. Let’s hear the word of God.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

And let’s turn now to Acts chapter 17 for our New Testament reading, Acts 17. In this passage, Paul is in Athens, and it was a city that was teeming with idols. One person who lived at that time said, in Athens, you are more likely to bump into a god than a person. And Paul is speaking here in this passage to the ruling council of Athens, the Areopagus. And he proclaims to them the truth of the gospel. So we’ll hear his sermon. This is chapter 17, verses 22 through 31.

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. That they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is not actually far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being. As even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance, God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world and righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. You may turn back to Exodus chapter 20 for our sermon text this morning.

I think we’ve all had the experience of visiting some place of incredible beauty and wonder, and we take a bunch of pictures, and then we go to show our friends or our family the pictures that we took of the place that we visited. And what we find there is that what’s depicted there in the picture is a very disappointing version of what we were so impressed with when we saw it in person. And so in our pictures, the Grand Tetons look like little hills off in the distance. The Grand Canyon doesn’t really seem all that impressive. Niagara Falls looks like just a big waterfall way off in the background. And so we end up saying to our friend, “You know, you’ve really got to see this in person. The picture just does not do this justice. You have no idea how amazing this is until you actually see it in person.”

And that is essentially the problem with making an image of God. No matter how impressive the image that someone may make of what they think God looks like, it cannot truly convey the infinite majesty and beauty and glory of the living God. And that’s the reason why God forbids making images of himself, because in one way or another, an image diminishes or obscures the glory of God. And there is nothing more important to God than his own glory.

There are many ways that physical images take away from God’s glory. And this morning, as we consider the second commandments, I want us to consider three aspects of God’s character or his nature that are either contradicted or challenged by making and worshiping an image of God. First of all, God is spirit. Secondly, God is sovereign. And third, God is jealous. And so those will be our three lessons this morning.

First of all, God is spirit. You’ll notice that there’s a close relationship between the second commandments and the first commandments. They both have to do with worship, worshiping God. The first commandment in verse three says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” This means that the Israelites, they were not to worship any other gods than the Lord, Yahweh, the true God. And then the second commandment says in verse four, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.” This means that the Israelites were not only to worship the true God and no other God, but they were to worship the true God. They were, well, they were not to worship the true God with an image or likeness.

So there is some overlap between the first and the second commandments. Both of them have to do with idolatry. But the second commandment isn’t primarily concerned with the worship of other gods in the place of the true God. Instead, the second commandment forbids worshiping the true God by means of any visible representation of him. And so with the first commandment, God tells us whom we are to worship, that is the Lord. And then in the second commandment, God tells us how, how we are to worship the Lord. One person put it this way, “The first commandment tells us to worship the right God, and the second commandment tells us to worship the right God in the right way.”

Now all the pagan peoples that surrounded the people of Israel, or that would surround them when they ended up in the land of Canaan, the pagan Egyptians out of whose land that they came, not only did they serve a vast number of gods, but they made images of all their gods. They made all kinds of physical representations of the gods that they worshiped. And just as the Lord in the first commandment demanded something of the Israelites that was very unique, that is that they were to worship Him alone and no other gods, they were to have exclusive allegiance to the Lord alone in their worship. So with the second commandment, the Lord demands of the Israelites that they are to worship Him only according to His will, only as He has commanded them. That means, first of all, that they were not to make images of God or of God rather.

And the most obvious reason for the second commandment is that we cannot make an image of God. God’s nature transcends everything in creation because he is the creator. He is uncreated. He has no form. Jesus said in John chapter four, “God is spirit.” Our confession says he is a most pure spirit. And for that reason, no one has seen God, no one can see God in such a way that they could capture his likeness or they could capture his appearance in a likeness or image of him. First Timothy 6:15 and 16 says, speaking of God, “the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and glory or eternal dominion. Amen.” So the Lord is invisible. He cannot be seen. He does not have any kind of form that we can, that we could represent in an image.

Even when the Lord came down to the Israelites here on Mount Sinai, although he came with these terrifying signs and wonders, the trumpet sound, the smoke, the fire, the earth trembling and all of that, he did not appear to them in any kind of visible form. Moses later in Deuteronomy, he’ll say this about the Lord’s coming down to the people of Israel on Mount Sinai, Deuteronomy 4:15 and 16, “Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully, since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you, at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves.”

So they saw no form of God. We saw in our New Testament reading in the book of Acts that when Paul spoke to the Athenian philosophers at the Areopagus or before the Areopagus, after God or after Paul had seen all the idols and the images that the people of Athens had set up all over the city. You’ll notice that Paul doesn’t tell the Athenians, “Look, you are guilty of breaking the first commandments. You shall have no other gods before me.” Now that was true, of course. The Athenians were guilty of breaking the first commandment. They had all kinds of idols that they served. But rather Paul focused on the second commandment. He focused on the impossibility of reducing the true God into an image or an idol. He says in verse 29, Acts 17, “Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine image or the divine being rather is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.”

In other words, what Paul was saying to the Athenians is this, “You idol makers, you are attempting to do what is impossible.” And you’re making all of these idols out of gold and silver and stone. You are trying to reduce or diminish the true God who is uncreated, who has no form. You’re trying to reduce them into this image. You’re trying to take the creator and portray him by something in creation. And you cannot do that.

And the problem with this kind of image making is that though it tries to represent God and to convey something that is true about God, an image or an idol actually does the very opposite. It says what is untrue about God, it proclaims what is false about God. Phil Reichen, put it very well, he said this, “An idol makes the infinite God finite, the invisible God visible, the omnipotent God impotent, the all-present God local, the living God dead, and the spiritual God material.” Because of God’s nature as God, as the creator, because he is spirit, because he is invisible, He is infinite. He is living. He is all powerful. Any man-made representation of God is by necessity a misrepresentation of the true God. The Puritan Matthew Henry said this, “An image is a teacher of lies.” And for that reason, God has forbidden us to make an image of Him and certainly to worship an image of Him.

When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in John chapter four, when his conversation with her turned to the topic of worship and where God was to be worshiped, Jesus said this to the woman. He said, “The hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth for the father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. And as we consider the second commandment, we can say this, that the Father, that God has always sought worshipers who will worship Him in such a way, worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. And yet up to the coming of, up to the time of the coming of Christ, that seeking of worshipers was limited to the people of Israel.

But now that God has sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world, God has taken that search for true worshipers who will come to Him through Christ and worship Him in spirit and truth. He has taken that into all the world and He is seeking throughout all the world through the preaching of the gospel, those who will come to Him by faith in Jesus Christ to worship Him in the true way that He has commanded, not with images, not with idols, but in spirit and in truth, and whoever comes to Jesus Christ by faith, whoever bows before the Lord Jesus Christ and acknowledges that he is the Son of God, he is Lord, he is Savior, and worships the Father through him, he has become a true worshiper of God. And that is the worship that God desires from you and me, a worship that is by faith, A faith that does not respond to, a faith that is not informed by an image, an idol, this false representation of God, but a faith that responds to the proclamation of the word of God, the proclamation of the scriptures.

According to Romans, true faith, saving faith, is faith that comes not by seeing, but by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. If we could put a twist on a common phrase, a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to salvation, when it comes to worship of the true God, a thousand pictures of God are not worth one preached word of God. And so this is the worship that truly brings God the glory that belongs to him, not bowing down to an image of God, not thinking of God in terms of a form or an appearance that comes to us through an idol, through a representation, an image, But true worship that brings God glory is that when you, by faith in Jesus Christ, with your whole heart and mind, thank Him and praise Him and magnify His name for all who He is, for all His works, His works of salvation, especially in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the true worship that honors God for who He is. And to make an image, to make an idol, to say this is what God is like, that is the false worship that God condemns here in the second commandment. And so God is spirit.

Secondly, God is sovereign. There’s more to the second commandment than just the fact that God is spirit and therefore he cannot be imaged or represented in any form or any idol. However, it would be a mistake for us to take that truth from the second commandment. And it would be wrong for us to say that therefore God has nothing to do with images whatsoever. God does encourage us to think of Him in terms of metaphors that use very vivid imagery. For example, in the benediction in Numbers 6, Moses says, “The Lord make His face to shine upon you.” So we think of God in terms of His face shining upon us. We don’t picture in our minds what that might look like, but we use that metaphor to know that God is personal. He knows us. He loves us. His face looks upon us. His face shines upon us. Psalm 91:4, “He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings he will find refuge.” Here’s an image of a bird protecting her young, and this is the way in which God protects us. We sing the hymn, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” Of course, God does not have arms like we have arms. Nevertheless, we use this image to picture the care that God has for us. In the Lord’s Supper, God gives us representations of the body of Christ broken for us, the blood of Christ shed for us, and the bread and the wine that we take part in in that communion. And as we’ll see, God has given us the supreme image of himself in the person of his son, Jesus Christ. So it’s not as though, although God is spirit, that he has nothing whatsoever to do with images in making himself known to us, but we are not to make an image and to worship an image of him.

But there’s another important reason why God has given us the second commandment, and that is God is sovereign. God is sovereign. And to understand why this is so, we need to understand something about the nature of idolatry. People don’t make representations, whether it’s out of wood or metal or stone or whatever, people don’t make idols of their gods because they think that they are depicting or portraying what that God actually looks like. For example, the God Baal, he was often depicted in the likeness of a bull, but that’s not because anybody thought that Baal actually looked like a bull, but rather the bull was a symbol of strength and fertility, which was associated with Baal. And it was that strength and power of fertility that the worshipers were seeking to capture, to contain in the image that they would make of their God, of Baal or whatever God it was. And once the presence and power of a deity was localized that way in an image or in an idol, in whatever shape it took, then the idea was that you could then have control over that power, that you could make God do your bidding, that you had some control over the, the power, the fertility, whatever it was you were seeking for from that God.

In a similar way, you see something along these same lines, for example, in a vampire movie. What is it that always overcomes the vampire? It’s the cross. And it’s not because of the particular shape of the cross, but in the movie at least, The power of God is supposed to be contained in that cross. And when it’s shown to the vampire, he backs away. And this was the exact reason why the Israelites were tempted to make images of God. And sometimes the Israelites did make images of God. King Jeroboam, you’ll remember from the Old Testament, he made two golden calves. And he made golden calves not because he thought that the Lord resembled a calf, but because he didn’t want everybody in the northern kingdom going south to Jerusalem to worship God in Jerusalem at the temple. And so he made these golden calves so that he could localize the presence of the Lord and keep his presence there in the northern part of Israel so that people would not flee to the south.

There’s actually another example of this in the Bible that doesn’t even involve making an image of God, and yet the same dynamics of idolatry were very much in play. And that’s in 1 Samuel 4, when the Israelites, they’re about to go into battle against the Philistines, and they come up with the idea that if they only take the ark of God with them, they are sure to defeat the Philistines because the power of God will be present with them. And so they were trying to use God for their own purposes, to control his power, to manipulate God. And of course the Lord taught the Israelites a very, very hard lesson that day. They learned from their utter defeat at the hands of the Philistines that the Lord will not, he cannot be manipulated in that pagan idolatrous kind of way. But that’s really at the heart of idolatry, seeking to capture the power of a God in order to use it for one’s own purpose. And the problem of doing that is that it denies the absolute, the free sovereignty of the true God.

And the question really comes down to this. Is God under our control or are we under the control of God? The answer is obvious. It is God who is omnipotent. It is God who created all things. It is God who created us. He gives us life. It is God who commands us to obey His will. It is God that uses us to accomplish His purposes. He is not there to accomplish our purposes. And so making an image of God in effect is to try to put God on a leash. One theologian said this, “God will not be captured, contained, assigned or managed by anyone or anything for any purpose.” And that’s really what’s at the heart here of the second commandment.

Now, today in our culture, we may not be tempted to make a visible representation of God and to try to harness God’s power in that way, but there are some teachings out there that essentially amount to the same thing. For example, from time to time, the idea will become popular that if you only say a particular prayer, over and over, kind of like a mantra, then God will bless you. He’ll be forced, in a sense, to bless you. Or if you just can muster up within yourself enough faith, then God promises that He will do what you want Him to do. He will heal you, He will prosper you, He will make you rich. But this is the very same kind of idolatrous idea that is behind making an image of a God or of God, to try to control Him, to manipulate God. But because God is sovereign in his power, he is sovereign in his will, anytime we seek in some way to harness or to control him or to have him serve our purposes, we are breaking the second commandment.

Another aspect of God’s character that is challenged by image-making is that God is jealous. He is a jealous God. This is what he says in verse five. He says, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.” Now, when we see the word jealous, it usually brings up for us a negative connotation. We think of envy or covetousness, I’m jealous of that person’s car or whatever. But with God, jealousy is a completely positive trait because it refers to the zeal that God has to guard, to keep, to protect, to preserve, that which is good, that which he values, that which he loves. There is a human analogy to this. A husband loves his wife. He is jealous for his wife. He does not want his wife to give herself to another man. And we would not condemn that. That’s a good jealousy. That is a righteous zeal that a husband has for his wife, that she belongs to him alone and not to anyone else. And that is what is meant by the word jealousy here in the second commandment.

Well, what does God have jealousy for? What is his zeal for? Well, mostly God is zealous for his own name. Isaiah 48:11, “My glory, I will not give to another.” But God is also jealous for his people. God loves his people. And his love for his people is an intense divine love. It is a jealous love, a love that is zealous, just like a husband is jealous to have the exclusive love of his wife. So God wants nothing to come between him and the people that he has chosen for himself. He wants his people to worship nothing other than himself. And so, therefore, to make idols, to make an image of God and to worship it is really spiritual adultery. It is unfaithfulness to the Lord. And that’s why God attaches this strong warning to the second commandment for those who would make images.

Look at verses five and six. The Lord says, he says, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Now, what we read this morning that’s attached to the second commandment, we might misunderstand it. We might think that God here is a God who acts in a way that is capricious, that is unjust, arbitrary, that he chooses to punish the future generations of those who sin against him, and it’s sort of, unfair way, but we know that God is fair and just in all of his dealings with us.

In Deuteronomy 24:16, it says, “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.” And so what does it mean here that God will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations? It means that God in his sovereign rule over all things, he brings it about that when a father, or we might by implication say a parent, father or mother, when they break the second commandment, when the father fails to worship God according to his commandments, according to the revelation he has given us in his word, more often than not, that sin will be imitated by his children. And that sin will be imitated by his children’s children. And so, although each one of us is responsible for our own sins and not for the sins of others, including our parents, parents who break the second commandment, or we might we might just extend that to any of the commandments of God, but parents who break the second commandment, they set their children along a path in which they also will transgress in the same way, and so receive the same judgment, and it’s in that way, in that sense, that God visits the iniquity of the father upon the generations that come after him.

Now, of course, God is merciful, God is gracious, and he does make mercifully exceptions to this rule. Sometimes God intervenes in this pattern of generational unbelief in order to bring someone to himself, someone who comes from a family in which there was no faith in Christ, in which there was no true godliness. But God does want us to take this warning to heart. As parents, especially as fathers, where our heart is, where our faith is, our walk with the Lord, our faith or our unbelief will have consequences for our children. And this warning is especially for fathers. The father exercises an outsized influence in the spiritual life of his children. This is not to deny or to diminish at all the importance of the role of mothers, especially of godly mothers. Mothers are obviously influential as well. The people who have studied these things will tell us that spiritually speaking, in general, as the father goes, so go the children. If the father leads his family in the worship and service of Christ, his children tend to follow. If a father does not, even if his mother is a godly woman, the children often do not grow up to be highly committed to their faith.

Now, again, this is a pattern, a rule that has been recognized. There are exceptions to this. This doesn’t mean that every father whose children have gone astray means that they have been ungodly or unfaithful. It doesn’t mean that at all. It doesn’t mean that God cannot use a godly mother to bring children to faith in Christ, but there is a pattern that the father is the one who sets the tone and his faithfulness or lack of it will have an outsized influence on his children. And so as fathers, we especially need to take this warning to heart that our sins will be passed along in a sense to our children.

But there’s not just a warning here in this commandment, but there’s also a wonderful promise as well. Look again at verse six. The Lord says, he shows steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. Your version may read the thousands generation, to the thousandth generation. But notice how the promise is so much greater in its scope than the warning. With the warning, God says he will visit the iniquity of the fathers to the third and fourth generation, but then with the promise of God, with God’s steadfast love, he will bless the descendants of those who keep his commandments to the thousandth generation. And so what this means is that God will honor and bless the faithfulness and worship of his people to a far, far greater degree than he will bring judgment upon those who are not faithful, who do not offer him acceptable worship by faith in Christ.

And this is part of the wonderful character of God, that yes, he is just, he is strict in his application of his commandments, his justice. And yet when it comes to his mercy, when it comes to his grace, his love for his people, he is generous, he is extravagant, he is overflowing in grace and mercy towards us. And so God is jealous for his people.

God is also jealous for his own worship. Let me read to you from our Shorter Catechism, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, number 51, the question, “What is forbidden in the second commandment?” The answer is, “The second commandment forbiddeth the worshiping of God by images or any other way not appointed in his word.” And so what the confession or the catechism is saying here, rightly, is that the implication of the second commandment, what is meant by the second commandment is not just a prohibition against the use of images to worship God, but that God has not commanded in his word, or that we are not to worship God in any way that he has not commanded in his word. Any way that God has not positively revealed to us as the way that we are to worship him is forbidden.

Notice how verse six ends, God shows steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. And that has to do with worship, to keep his commandments and worship. And so what the second commandment forbids then is that we would worship God in any way that he has not commanded us in his word. And to do so is tantamount to making an image of God or an idol of God. For example, you remember the tragic story of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron and Leviticus, how they were consumed with fire from heaven, that the Lord destroyed them with fire in a moment because they had worshiped him in a wrong way. Well, what was their sin? What did Nadab and Abihu did? Did they make an image of God? Did they make an idol? No. Did they blaspheme God? No. But listen to what the scriptures say. Leviticus 10:1, “Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.”

Now, scriptures don’t tell us what’s going through the minds of Nadab and Abihu when they do this, but I think we can safely assume that they had good intentions, that they wanted to honor God, to give glory to God, but they came up with this way to do it that God had not commanded them. And so they used this unauthorized fire. But because the Lord had not commanded His people to worship Him in that way, He struck them down. They had broken the second commandment.

And so what the second commandment means for our worship of God is simply this, that we need to follow the scriptures in seeking how we are to worship God. We don’t just go to the scriptures and say, “Okay, if God has not forbidden this, we can do it.” But we go to the scriptures and say, and ask, “What has God commanded us to do in worship?” There’s a reason why we do the things we do here on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings at Mount Rose. And it’s not just because Presbyterians have always done it that way, so we do it that way too. No, we believe we do what we do because God has commanded us to do this in Scripture. And so our worship service includes the Word of God, the reading and preaching of God’s Word, prayer, singing praises to God, taking part in the sacraments. We believe that these are the ways that God has positively commanded us to worship Him in the Word of God and acceptable worship that pleases and honors God includes these things, these things that He has commanded.

And I think it’s good to add this, that true worship of God is not just seeking to include the things that God has commanded us, but it means that all that we do in worship, that we give God glory and praise to Him from the hearts, from the hearts. To go back to the illustration of a snapshot of Niagara Falls, It doesn’t do justice to the majesty of it when you see it in person, but anything less in our worship of God, anything that is less than what God has commanded, but anything that is less than a worship that comes from the heart, that gives thanks to God for his grace to us, comes into his presence with true faith, with reverence and awe, giving glory to God for who he is as our creator, our redeemer. Anything less than that really also doesn’t do justice to who God is, to his greatness, his glory, his grace. And that is the kind of worship that God is jealous for from his people. That is the kind of worship that he desires for us to offer to him. Of course, we can only do so by the grace of God. But when we make an image of God, we provoke that jealousy.

So according to the second commandment, we are not to make images of God and all that that means. But isn’t it wonderful that God has given us an image of himself. We don’t make an image of God, but he’s given us an image of himself, a living image. And that is in his son, Jesus Christ, the incarnate son of God, the Lord himself who came to us in the flesh. Colossians 1:15, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul writes of “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” Hebrews 1:3, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” John 14:9, “Whoever has seen me,” Jesus says, “has seen the Father.”

And Jesus came in order that we might become as he is, that we might become true image bearers of God. Now, since we already are image bearers of God, just by virtue of the fact that God created us as human beings, every single human being bears the image of God, simply because God created us that way, and that is not completely taken from us. Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image after our likeness.” But in another sense, we have defiled God’s image because of our sin, because of our rebellion, our pride, our self-love, because of the evil of our thoughts and our words and our actions. We do not reflect God’s image. We do not faithfully, truly, express or reflect the righteousness, the holiness of God. And in that sense, we fail to bear his image.

And so if we are to be what God created us to be, if we are to be the true bearers of his image and his likeness, we need to be remade. We need to be recreated without sin, renewed in righteousness, renewed in holiness. And of course, that is what Jesus Christ came into the world to do. He came into the world for that purpose, that by His obedience to suffering and death, that the guilt of our sin might be taken away from us, that we would no longer be condemned by God. He came to take away the uncleanness, the pollution of our sin, and He came to take away the power of sin over us, so that by His Spirit, as He works in us, we can die to sin, we can live to righteousness.

And He does this gracious work in us. The Lord Jesus Christ, by His Spirit, He does this work in us to form the image of Christ in us as we look to Him by faith, as we set our eyes by faith, not on a physical image, but on the Christ who is revealed to us in His word. 2 Corinthians 3:18. “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” And so by the grace of God, the more that you look to Christ by faith, the more that your eyes of faith behold the glory of Christ as he is made known to us in the scriptures, the more you are changed into his image by the Spirit, And the more that you will worship the Father, not by an image, but as an image, as a true image bearer, and the more and more in that way will God be glorified through you. And that is the goal. That’s what it’s all about in our worship, the glory of God, that He would receive all the praise and the honor through us as those who by His grace now bear His image in Christ.

Let’s pray.

The post Acceptable Worship appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading, like I said, it’s just one verse. It’s verse three of Exodus chapter 20. And this is the infallible, the inerrant word of God. So Exodus 20, verse three: “You shall have no other gods before me.”

And our New Testament reading is 1 John chapter five, 1 John chapter five, verses 19 through 21. Verse John 5:19 through 21: “We know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true, in his son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You may turn back to Exodus chapter 20. As you know, we are going through the 10 commandments, or we’ve just started going through the 10 commandments. So today our focus is on the first commandment. And that’s why we just heard verse three this morning.

We live in a time in which we are constantly faced with a bewildering array of options that we have to choose from in life’s little decisions, in life’s big decisions. For example, when I was a kid and our family needed to buy a phone, things were pretty straightforward. We’d go to the store and there’d be about five models to choose from and we had to choose. Of course, they were all landline phones. And we had to choose between a rotary dial and a touch-tone dial. That was a big choice. Some of you will remember that. We had to choose the color of the phone. And that was about it. It was pretty easy.

But today, when you go to buy a phone, and of course I’m talking about a cell phone, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of phones to choose from. You have to decide what you want. Do you want a smartphone, a dumb phone, a flip phone, a foldable phone? Which operating system do you want? You’ve got two families of phones to choose from. What size of phone do you want? How much memory do you want it to have? What features do you want to come with it? You have to choose a case. You have to choose a color. You have to choose the accessories that you want. And then you have to choose a carrier. Are you going to go with one of the major carriers or one of the discount carriers? Then you have to figure out what plan is best for you: an individual plan, a family plan, prepaid plan, a postpaid plan. How much data do you need? Do you want international calling and texting?

And the decisions go on and on. And then once you do have your phone, you have to choose from the app store some apps out of the thousands that are available that you want to download on your phone. And so when it comes to even a relatively trivial and unimportant decision such as a phone, you have dozens and dozens of decisions to make and we face the same kind of array of options when it comes to the much bigger, more consequential decisions in life. Where should I go to school? What classes should I take this semester? What should I major in? What job or career should I pursue? Where should I live? If you have children, the decisions just keep coming at you. How should we educate our children? Are we going to send them to school? Are we going to homeschool them? Where will they go to school?

And the list goes on and on and our lives are filled with endless choices to make among a seemingly infinite number of possibilities. And that includes what is the most important, what is the most consequential decision that you and I will ever make in this life, and that is whom or what will I worship? Which religion will I follow? Will I choose no religion at all? Who or what will be my God, or my gods, or my goddesses? Our world is one of extraordinary religious pluralism and there are as many religions and worldviews that we can try out as there are sneakers at the mall that we can try on.

A woman called me once on the church phone, and as we were talking, I asked her about her church background, and her answer literally sounded like a classroom lecture on comparative religions. She had basically tried out just about everything that was out there. And this, at least, is one area that we have in common with the Israelites in Moses’ day. They certainly did not have as many choices in their lives on a day-to-day basis as we do, but they did have a huge variety of gods to choose from while they were still in Egypt. They had a whole smorgasbord of deities that they could worship. There were the gods of the fields, the gods of the rivers, the gods of light and dark, sun gods, storm gods, gods and goddesses of love and war, and the list goes on and on.

And then after their exodus from Egypt, as the Israelites were preparing to enter the land of Canaan, they would be brought into a place where they would be surrounded by pagan peoples who also worshiped a whole host of different deities. There were the Baals and the Asherahs and the Molechs and then all the other gods and the goddesses of the Canaanite people. And so the Israelites, as they came out of Egypt, as they were preparing to enter the land of Canaan, they were a people who would be and who were surrounded by literally or virtually innumerable gods and goddesses, all who clamored for their service and their worship.

But of course, the people of Israel, they belonged to the Lord. They belong to the true and the living God, the creator of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God who set them apart in love, the God who chose them, the God who heard their cries, who rescued them from their oppression and misery in Egypt.

And from the perspective of the Lord, from God’s perspective, the choice that faced the Israelites was very simple. It was very clear. And it was this: either you serve and worship me alone, or you don’t serve and worship me at all. That was the choice. It was very straightforward. Either you worship the Lord, the true God, or you don’t worship him at all.

Verse three: “You shall have no other gods before me.” And this is what the first commandment’s all about. For the Israelites, whom would they worship? Would it be the Lord or other gods? For us, whom will we worship? Will it be the true God or other gods? And so as we look at this first commandment, we’ll ask these two questions. First of all, what does the first commandment mean for the people of Israel then? And secondly, what does the first commandment mean for you and me today as believers in Jesus Christ?

The best place, I think, to start with the first commandment is the phrase “before me.” Verse three, again, “You shall have no other gods before me.” The phrase is a little ambiguous. Does it mean that the Israelites were not to put any other God in front of the Lord? As long as they put the Lord first, was that okay then if they had other gods, just as long as the Lord was number one? Or, does “before me” mean that the Lord was demanding an exclusive allegiance to himself? The Israelites were to have no other gods, period. In other words, is the Lord demanding that he have the first place among gods, or that the Israelites serve and worship him as only, or their one and only God, and worship him alone?

Well, in Hebrew, the words “before me” are literally “before my face.” And what that expression implies is, and what it means is, to have another God and to worship the Lord at the same time is to provoke God to his face. It is an offense to him. To worship anything other than the Lord was to insult the Lord, the God who created them and who redeemed them. And so in the first commandment, the Lord was not just demanding the first place in the hearts of the Israelites, but he was demanding their absolute, their exclusive allegiance and fidelity to him and worship of him as their God, as their Lord. We might say, “You shall have no other gods beside me,” or “over against me.” And so the commandment categorically forbade any god or idol to occupy the place of the Israelites. They were to give their entire devotion and worship and obedience to the Lord and to Him alone.

And in commanding this, the Lord did something that was absolutely unique among the various gods and goddesses of the ancient Near East. He did something that was unusual. It was unique to him, and that is he demanded that his people worship him alone, that they have no other gods. None of the gods and the goddesses of the peoples of the ancient Near East in Moses’ time put that same demand on their people. As long as they worshiped them, that was fine. They could go and worship other gods as well, but as long as they brought their worship of this particular god, that’s what they had to do.

Now part of the reason that the Lord commanded this exclusive devotion of his people is because it was the Lord alone, without the help of other gods, but the Lord alone who rescued his people out of their slavery in Egypt. Last week we looked at the preface or the prologue to the Ten Commandments. Verse two: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” And because the Lord was their God, because the Lord alone brought them out of Egypt, he was alone to be worshiped by the people of Israel.

But God’s zero-tolerance approach to having other gods was more than that. It was not only because he alone brought them out of their slavery from Egypt, but also because of who he is. He alone is the true and living God. He is the God of whom it is written, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Just before God gave the 10 commandments to the people of Israel, he declared to them through Moses in Exodus 19, verse five, “All the earth is mine.” And since He alone is the true God, the living God, the creator and Lord of all, He alone is worthy of the devotion and the worship, not only of the people of Israel, but of all creation. All creation owes to the Lord, to God, worship, praise, service, obedience, because He alone is God.

And yet, the question remains in the first commandment, when it says “You shall have no other gods before me,” what are these gods? Who are these gods? The first commandment seems to suggest that though the Lord demanded the worship of him alone, that in some way there were other gods that had some kind of existence that the Israelites were not to worship. So does the first commandment suggest that there’s some reality to other gods besides the true God? Well, the answer is yes and no. It is no insofar as the Bible is very clear that there is no other God but God himself, but the Creator, the God of the Bible, the God and Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. There are no other deities that have any kind of existence or reality whatsoever. Isaiah 45:21: “There is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a savior. There is none besides me.” 1 Corinthians 8:4: “Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence and that there is no God but one.” And so on the one hand, no, there are no other gods besides the Lord. False gods, they have no true existence. They are not real.

But at the same time, there are other gods in the sense that it is very real for someone to take the service, the worship, the affection that is due to God alone and to give it to another entity or another thing, even if that thing does not truly exist. And when that happens, that thing, whether it is some part of God’s creation, whether it is the pure product of man’s imagination, whatever it is, it has a certain reality because it is worshiped as a God.

And this is what the Bible calls idolatry. Idolatry is making into a God that which is not a God. Idolatry is serving and worshiping and trusting in some created thing or perhaps even some imagined thing rather than worshiping and trusting in the Lord, the true God. And idolatry is very, very real. Romans 1:25 speaks of the natural, what people do in their own belief. “They exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”

You can put it this way: God gave the first commandment to the Israelites, not because the existence of other gods is real, not because other gods truly do exist, but because idolatry is real. And so an idol has no real existence, but idolatry does. And that idolatry was a very real temptation, a very real problem for the Israelites. We learn from the prophet Ezekiel that while they lived in Egypt, the Israelites did in fact take on the worship of the gods of the Egyptians. Ezekiel 20, verse eight: “But they rebelled against me and were not willing to listen to me. None of them cast away the detestable things their eyes feasted on, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt.” And so while they were still in Egypt, the people of Israel worshiped the idols of Egypt. And then when they were taken out of Egypt, that propensity for the Israelites to worship false gods and not the true God, that did not leave them. It was still very much with them.

As we go on in the book of Exodus, we’ll see in Exodus chapter 32, how the Israelites, they make a golden calf and they worship it. And they say, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And so, idolatry was so much a part of the Israelites, their makeup, that in fact, when you read the Old Testament, you could actually read the Old Testament as just one long story of how the Israelites failed to keep the first commandment. How time and time again, they forsook the Lord and they worshiped and served other gods, idols. And the problem, of course, was that the Israelites were sinners. They were sinners. And it was just in their nature to forsake the Lord and go after other gods.

And of course, it’s easy to see in the Israelites as we read about them doing this, but we need to also turn our attention to our own hearts. And when we do, we’ll find that we are no better than them. We are no different than them. All human beings, every single human being ever since the fall of Adam and Eve are born with this tendency, this propensity to worship the creature rather than the creator, to make false gods and idols and to worship them rather than worship the true God. That is what we are by nature. We are idolaters. And there is nothing that comes more natural to us than that—to worship something other than God. And this is why this commandment is just as crucial for us as Christians today as it was for the Israelites then.

And so this is the second question that we’ll ask of this verse: what does the first commandment mean for Christians today? Now, of course, we are far, far removed from the time of Moses and the Israelites. They were tempted to serve these gods of Egypt, and later they would be tempted to serve the gods of the Canaanites. Today, you would have a very hard time, unless you happen to be in a museum, to find an idol of Baal or Asherah or Molech. Those particular gods have come and gone.

However, there are plenty of idols in our world today, and they exert exactly the same kind of influence on our hearts as the idols in the Israelites’ day exerted on their hearts. And that is, idols draw the attention, the affection, the worship that we are to give to the Lord alone and cause us or lead us to place that affection and devotion and service on some false God, something other than the Lord, than the true God.

And so we make gods out of all kinds of things. We make gods out of wealth and possessions. We make an idol out of personal comforts. We make a god of physical pleasure, of security and safety. We make idols out of fame and power. We are tempted to put our trust and hope in a politician, a leader, a man, rather than the true God and in his promises. We look to human power and wisdom to save us instead of relying on God and in his promises.

We have all kinds of idols. Perhaps the greatest idol of all in our day is the God of self. We make ourselves our own little gods. Oscar Wilde said, “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” And who of us hasn’t felt the temptation of this lifelong romance to devote myself, to pleasing myself, to serving my interests, to loving myself, to pursuing my desires. I make myself and my desires my own little God when I say, “I will decide what is right and wrong for myself.” “I will be my own moral compass.” “I will choose what is right for me, what is wrong for me, and no one else will tell me what to do.” “No religion will tell me what to do.” “No God will tell me what to do.” “I will choose my own path.” “I will follow my own way.” This is very much the spirit of the age. This is where we think. We all want to say with Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way.” “I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway, and more, much more than this, I did it my way.” We live in a culture that exalts and glorifies the individual choice and personal freedom that we think we have an inalienable right to, to choose and do whatever seems right to us, no matter what others may say, no matter what some tradition or religion may say. In fact, you could say that in our supposedly secular and modern and non-religious world, there is nothing that is more sacred, there is nothing that is more hallowed than the absolute autonomy of the individual.

And yet, according to the scripture, this is nothing but idolatry. This is worship of the self. And whether we make an idol of ourselves or whether we make an idol of something outside ourselves, this is what we do by nature. We all desire life and contentment and purpose and meaning. And by nature, naturally, we do not seek those things and the God who created us and the God who alone can give us true life, true purpose, true significance. And instead we seek these things and the things that God has created or in the idols of our own imagination. And when we do, we become idolaters.

John Calvin famously said that our hearts are idol factories. The manufacturing sector is going very well. It’s alive and well. We are turning out idols all the time. John Calvin also said, “Every one of us from his mother’s womb is expert in inventing idols.” And even as Christians, as those who have come to know the true God by faith in Jesus Christ, we still feel in our hearts the struggle, we experience this conflict within us. We feel the pull, the draw to give our affections and service and devotion and worship, adulation, not to the true God who created us and redeemed us, but to some creature, to some thing in this world.

And it’s not hard for us to see what has become an idol for us if we are willing to give honest answers to some kinds of questions. What do you delight in? What is the treasure of your heart? What do you think about when your thoughts are free to roam? Where do your thoughts land? What is it that you want that will finally make you happy? What do you fear the most? What would you hate the most to lose? What habits are hard for you to break? How do you spend your money?

And so the first commandment still very much speaks to you and me today, because in it, God commands you and me to put our wholehearted trust reliance and hope in him alone, to serve and to worship him alone, to seek in God alone, the life, the joy, significance that we seek in so many other places.

For the Israelites, their worship and devotion was to be given wholly to the Lord, in part because it was the Lord who redeemed them from their bondage. It was God who brought them out from their slavery in Egypt. The Lord made himself known to them in his mighty signs and wonders, the things that he did in bringing them out of the land of Egypt and speaking to them through Moses. It is the same God who now demands our absolute devotion to him today. And yet he has made himself known to us today through his son, Jesus Christ. And in Jesus Christ, we have a far greater redemption than the Israelites had from Egypt. And if your faith, if your hope are in Jesus Christ, by His obedience, by His suffering, His death and resurrection, you have been redeemed. He has saved you. Just as the Israelites were brought out of Egypt from their bondage to Pharaoh, so you have been rescued from your bondage to sin and death, from spiritual death, from condemnation. Jesus Christ has delivered you from that. He has freed you, brought you true freedom and liberation.

And so, just as the Israelites were to give their wholehearted service and worship to the Lord who saved them out of Egypt, so you are to give your wholehearted devotion, worship, obedience, and service to the God who has rescued you, the God who has come to us in His Son, Jesus Christ. In the New Testament reading that we read from 1 John, just before John tells his readers, and he leaves them with these final words, “little children, keep yourselves from idols.” But just before he says that, he says in verse 20, and he’s speaking of Jesus, “He is the true God and eternal life.”

For us as Christians, we could put it this way: “You shall have no other gods before Jesus.” “You shall have no other gods before the God who has come to us in His Son, Jesus Christ.” And it’s for this reason that the first commandment, also as we understand the first commandment in the light of the coming of Jesus Christ, it absolutely rules out the popular idea, the attractive idea, that all religions are essentially the same, that all spiritual paths lead to the same God, that anyone who is genuinely, sincerely following the dictates of his religion or philosophy will end up at the same place. No. What the first commandment says is anyone who does not serve and worship God through his son, Jesus Christ, anyone who does not come to God through Christ, he is breaking the first commandment, he is worshiping an idol. And so no matter who or what his God may be, no matter how sincere his belief may be, no matter how ancient his religion may be, if a person is not worshiping God by faith in Jesus Christ, the one in whom God has revealed himself to us, he is not worshiping God at all.

And Jesus himself said the very same thing when he said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This is the Lord’s commentary on the first commandment. This is what Jesus has to say about the first commandment: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

How about you? Have you come to the Father through Jesus Christ? Have you repented of your sin and put your trust and hope for salvation in the Son of God, in Jesus Christ alone? Is He your Savior? If He is, then you have God as your Father. And you have come to know the true God who says, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

One thing that the first commandment means for you and me as a Christian is that we are called to walk by faith. This is a command for us to daily walk by faith. Sometimes when we read the 10 commandments, the first commandment is pretty easy. We kind of look at it as kind of a given. We take it for granted. “Of course, I don’t believe in any other gods than the God of the Bible. He is the true God, I believe that. I’ll put a check mark by the first commandment. Let’s go on to the second, see how we’re doing there.” But this commandment requires of us far more than just that we believe that the God of the Bible is the only true God, that we have no other gods before him. But we are to think, we are to feel, we are to speak, we are to act, we are to live according to that truth. We are to think God’s thoughts after him. We are to delight in what God delights in. We are to hate what God hates. We are to find joy and hope in the promises of God. And when we suffer, we are to suffer with patience, with steadfastness, trusting in the Lord, that he is working even in this affliction to fulfill his sovereign purposes for me. And so in every circumstance of life, whether good or ill, the first commandment directs us to acknowledge the sovereign hand of God, to submit to his gracious rule over us, to hope in his word, and that’s what it means to walk by faith, to live as though what we believe is really true, that there is no other God but God, that he is our God, that he is ruling over us for our good.

And because the first commandment, along with every other commandment of God, requires of us not 85% conformity, or 99% conformity, but perfect 100% conformity to that commandment. Anything less than perfect trust in God, anything less than wholehearted worship and service and obedience to God at all times, in every circumstance, anything less than perfect submission to His will, all the time, anything less than that is sin. And with that in mind, this is a good time to remind ourselves that although this is what the law of God requires of us, the same law cannot enable us to keep it. Only the spirit of Christ, only by the grace of God can you and I begin to keep this commandment or any of the commandments of God.

And so when you hear the first commandment and when you begin to realize all that it means for you, all that it requires of you, how it is a commandment that bears upon you moment by moment, day by day, to have, to hold up God as the true God, to worship Him alone. As you understand it, the response that you should have, the first response is not, it’s not, “Now I know what I need to do. According to the first commandment, I am going to try harder to keep it.” but rather your first response should be this: “I give thanks to God that his son, Jesus Christ died for me.” That with God, there is grace. There is forgiveness that I’ve broken this commandment. I break this commandment daily. Nevertheless, there is mercy and forgiveness with Jesus Christ. And then your next response should be, “I’m so grateful to God for His mercy and grace. I’m so thankful for this forgiveness in Christ. I’m so thankful that God has made Himself known to me, that I want to please Him. I want to know Him better. I want to serve Him. I want to worship. I want to give myself, my life, my entire being to His worship and devotion and service. And I will look to my Savior Jesus for the grace and the strength to keep this commandment.”

And God gives us grace. And as he gives us his spirit, as he gives us grace to keep this commandment, what you will find is that in keeping this commandment, you will find that that is the way to true freedom. That is the way to true freedom. What idolatry is, is bondage. Idolatry is slavery. Whenever we give ourselves to serve and to worship and to pursue some other thing other than God himself, we become a slave to that thing. You see it most clearly, of course, in an addiction, an addiction to a substance such as drugs or alcohol, even an addiction to social media or compulsive shopping, whatever it may be, it is a kind of slavery. It is devoting yourself, giving yourself to this thing, to be its servant, its slave. And it becomes your God. Galatians 4:8: “Formally, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.”

But the first commandment is the way of freedom. The first commandment is the way of freedom because God commands us to worship him exclusively, to worship the true God who is a God who gives us freedom. God is all about freedom. His salvation is freedom for his people. It was for freedom that the Lord set the Israelites free from their bondage to Pharaoh. And it was for freedom that the Lord forbade the Israelites after he rescued them from Egypt to have any other gods before him because he wanted them to walk in that freedom. And it is according to Galatians 5:1, “for freedom that Christ has set us free.” So the truest freedom is the freedom to devote yourself wholeheartedly, entirely, unreservedly to the knowledge and the service and the worship of the true God. And so that’s why God commands us in the first commandment to have no other gods before him. But it’s also why he has given us his son, Jesus Christ, that we may experience this true freedom, this true joy in life of having the true God as our God, both now and forevermore.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 20, verses 1 through 17, Exodus 20, 1 through 17. And this is the inerrant, the infallible word of God. Let’s hear God’s word.

And God spoke all these words saying, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

“Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

For our New Testament reading, let’s turn to Romans chapter 13, Romans 13, verses eight through 10. Romans 8, Romans 13, 8 through 10. “Owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. You may turn back to Exodus chapter 20.

As a Christian, you are well aware and you have heard many times that you are called to pursue a life of righteousness, to strive for holiness, to please God, to be Christ-like. In fact, this morning we heard again, in our reading of the law, the words of our Lord Jesus, who told us that the first great commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, to love our neighbor as ourselves. And so we know these things, and yet that raises the question, or the question is, specifically, what does that look like? What does a righteous life look like? What is a holy life? How are we to please God? How do you and I love God with all our being? How do we love our neighbor as ourselves?

And the answer to those questions, the question of specifically, what does righteousness look like? The answer to that question is given to us in the law of God, in God’s commandments. Now, God has given us his commandments or his law in many places in scripture, in both the Old and the New Testaments, but God has been pleased to give us a summary of his commandments, of all that he requires of us as those who are not only his image bearers, but as those whom he has redeemed to honor him. He has given us all that he requires of us, his law, in ten relatively short commandments, or as the Hebrew refers to them, the ten words.

And these are the Ten Commandments, which the Lord himself, unlike other parts of his law or parts of his speech to his people of Israel, these commandments were given by the voice of the Lord himself. They were written by the finger of God himself on tablets of stone. And in these Ten Commandments, which God has given us, we are given a picture or a description of what righteousness looks like, what a holy life looks like. Here is what it means, as we look at these commandments, here’s what it means to love God with all our heart and soul, strength and mind. Here’s what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And Lord willing, in the weeks to come, we will examine each of the Ten Commandments. We will take one at a time and we will begin to unpack at least a little bit of what each commandment means for us, what is required of us according to each commandment. We could spend several sermons on each commandment so we’ll only scratch the surface, so to speak, but we will look in detail at what each of these commandments require of us.

But today our text is only the words that the Lord spoke right before he spoke the first commandment. And that is the words that he spoke in verse two. These are considered the preface or the introduction to the Lord’s or to the Ten Commandments. And as we look at verse two and the words that the Lord spoke there at the same time, I want us to consider together just so that we can begin to understand better the nature of the law, its purpose, why God has given it to us. And so we’re going to consider what has been called the three uses of the law, the three uses of the law today.

And the first use of the law is this, that the law of God leads us to Christ. The law of God leads us to Christ. Now, one way that the law of God leads us to Christ, or at least points us to Christ, is that it is a reflection of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. So in order to see that, we need to understand that what the law does is that it expresses the character of God. We can say that that is true about any law that is given by anybody. The law that someone or a government gives tells us something about the lawmaker, tells us something about the character, the nature of the one who makes that law.

For example, in the United States we have laws that protect free speech. And what that tells us is that as a society, we value the importance of the freedom to speak, even if we’re speaking against the government. That’s something that is enshrined in our constitution and in our laws, because that is something that we value. And so we learn something about the society that makes that law when we look at the law. And when it comes to the Ten Commandments, the law of God, they are an expression of the character of the Lord who gives us the law. They are an expression of his perfect righteousness, his perfect holiness, his purity.

To give just one example, the seventh commandment forbids adultery. And this is a reflection of the truth that God is faithful. God is faithful. And he is faithful to his promises that he makes to his people. He cannot deny himself. He cannot go back on his word. He keeps his promises. And therefore he gives us this commandment that we too are to keep our promises, especially the promise that we make to our spouse. And so in that way, this commandment tells us something about the character of God who gave it to us.

It is for this reason that every sin that we commit is really, most basically, a sin against the Lord. Because when we break God’s law, we are attacking the character of God that is expressed in that law. We are acting contrary to the person of the Lord who gave us that law. One great example of this that we see in the scriptures is King David. When he sinned terribly and committing adultery with Bathsheba and then having her husband Uriah killed, he broke the seventh commandment. And very obviously he sinned against Bathsheba. He sinned against Uriah. But even more fundamentally, David’s sin was against God himself. And so he says in Psalm 51.4, “Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” Well, David knew that he had sinned against people as well. But he says, when he goes to God, “It is ultimately against you, O Lord. You only have I sinned and done what is evil.”

And since the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, since Jesus Christ is the Son of God, is the incarnate Lord, since he is the radiance of God’s glory, the law then, even these Ten Commandments reflect specifically the holiness and righteousness of Christ. The one who gives us these commandments is none other than Christ himself, the same Jesus that we read about in the pages of the New Testament. He is the same Lord who appeared to the people of Israel on Mount Sinai and who wrote these commandments with his very finger and gave them to the people of Israel. And so when we look at the Ten Commandments, when we consider the law of God, we need to see by faith that they are revealing to us the righteousness, the holiness, the character of Jesus himself.

So that’s one way that the law leads us to Christ, but another way that the law leads us to Christ is this. The law of God shows us our sin, the depth of our sin, the wickedness, the evil of our sin, and it shows us, therefore, our need, our desperate need for a savior. This is why, as we saw last week, the Lord gave the law to the Israelites in the way that he did, and that is with these terrifying signs of his presence and of his power. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai with thunder and lightning and smoke and fire, with the piercing sound of trumpets. The very mountain itself trembled in the presence of the Lord. The Israelites trembled with fear in His presence. And God made himself known to the Israelites in this dreadful way when he gave them his law because he wanted the Israelites to take his commandments very seriously. He wanted to impress upon them the truth that to transgress the commandments of God, to break God’s law, is to transgress against a God who is holy and to incur his awful wrath.

But when we go on in the Old Testament, we see that God at Mount Sinai, he gave other laws to the people of Israel. He even gave them laws that gave them hope for forgiveness. The Lord gave the Israelites laws for a priesthood, for animal sacrifices. And these animal sacrifices, these blooded sacrifices enabled the Israelites to draw near to the Lord to worship Him, knowing that though they were sinners, though they were guilty, that there was some atonement for their sins, some expiation for their sins, so that they could come before the Lord, knowing that they are accepted by Him despite their sin and guilt. And God wanted His people to know through these animal sacrifices that they were to prepare for, to expect, to hope for one who would be a true and perfect sacrifice, who would offer not the blood of bulls and goats, but offer his own blood as man in order to make atonement for the sins of the people of God. And so in giving this law, it was God’s will to lead his people to see their need for Jesus Christ, their need for the coming Messiah, the Savior, who would take away their sin forever.

And as we go through each of the Ten Commandments, what I pray and hope that the Lord will do is to impress upon our hearts as we read these commandments, the absolute perfection, the holiness, the righteousness that is demanded of us by God who gives us these commandments. He demands nothing less than perfection from us. And I pray that by the Spirit of God, by the grace of God, we will experience that conviction of heart that we have broken these commandments. Even if we have not broken them externally in the very acts that they describe, in our hearts we have broken these commandments. We have not fulfilled them perfectly. We have so badly missed the mark. But as we are convicted by the Lord of that, my prayer is that we will also be led to the Lord Jesus Christ, to the one in whom there is forgiveness and grace and mercy, because we have broken his commandments.

And this is where the gospel comes in. We hear the law of God. We recognize its righteousness, that it comes from God, that he rightfully requires this of us, and at the same time, we recognize when we consider ourselves that we have broken his commandments. And so we are condemned by the law. But at the very same time, God reveals to us his son, his son, Jesus Christ, that in Christ we have a savior who has taken that condemnation for us. That when Jesus suffered upon the cross, when he died upon the cross, he was bearing in himself the wrath, the condemnation of a holy God against you and me for our sin. Your sin, my sin, Jesus bore it there at the cross. He became a curse for us. Galatians 3.13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”

And so as we hear the law of God, as we are brought under that conviction by the Holy Spirit, we turn to the One, to the only One who can save us, who gives us life, who gives us forgiveness, who makes us right with God forever, and that is His Son, Jesus Christ. And so the wrong way to hear the law is to hear it and to think, “This is what I must do to be made right with God.” That is the wrong way to receive the law of God. But we hear it and we recognize, “We’ve broken it. We cannot keep it. We have not kept it. We need forgiveness.”

One preacher put it this way. The law is a mirror in which we see a reflection of ourselves in our sin and guilt. And then he says, “How do we use a mirror in everyday life?” If we look in the mirror and we see our face and it is dirty and needs to be cleaned, we don’t take the mirror off the wall and try to clean our face with it, but we use soap and water to cleanse our face and to clean ourselves. And in the very same way, all the law can do is show us our need for cleansing. We cannot be cleansed by the law. We cannot be forgiven by the law. We cannot be made right with God by it, but we can flee to the one whom God has given us for that purification and forgiveness, His Son, Jesus Christ.

And so the deeper then that we understand the law of God, the more that we penetrate the depths of it, and the scripture invites us to do that, to see the law, these commandments, not just what they describe on the surface, but to go under the surface, to go deep, to see how it penetrates the heart and the thoughts of our hearts. But as we do so, the more we see the divine purity and the perfections of God in the law, the deeper the understanding of our own sin will become. But at the same time, by the grace of God, the deeper our understanding and appreciation of the grace of God will be, and the greater our love and devotion to Christ will be as a result. And so, in this way, God uses the law in order to draw us to Christ, and to reveal to us the magnificent depths of the grace of God in Christ, the love of God for us, the forgiveness that we have in Him.

J. Gresham Machen said this, “Men would have little difficulty with the gospel if they had only learned the lesson of the law.” People don’t understand the gospel because they don’t understand the law. He said, “So it always is. A low view of the law always brings legalism in religion. A high view of the law makes a man a seeker after grace.” And that’s what we want to be, seekers after grace as we study the commandments that God has given us. So that’s the first use of the law, that God uses it to lead us to Christ for salvation.

The second use of the law is this, the law of God restrains sin in society. There are times when it seems like the world is coming apart at the seams, when there are acts of such unspeakable evil and wickedness that are so shocking, so reprehensible, so disturbing that we wonder at times if the powers of sin and evil are about to engulf the world entirely. And perhaps there have been many of us in the last several weeks that have felt that way as we have seen the events in the news. But even in the darkest of times, even in times when evil seems to triumph, God is still sovereign over all things. We have a God who is infinitely good and infinitely powerful. He is sovereign over all things in this world. And by His grace and by His goodness, He restrains evil from breaking out. He restrains sin from running its full course. He keeps evil and sin from bringing total chaos and ruin to the human race, which it would if God had not kept it in check. And one way that the Lord does this is through His law. The law of God serves to keep people from being as evil and doing as much wickedness as they would otherwise do. In other words, God’s law restrains or subdues the power of sin in the world.

And this is evident even in Exodus chapter 20. If you look at verse 20, Exodus chapter 20, verse 20, we read this, Moses said to the people, Verse 20, “Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.'” And so one of the reasons then that God gave the law to the Israelites was to keep them from sinning.

And one way that God uses his law to restrain the outbreak of evil in society is through the witness of our conscience. In Romans chapter two, the apostle Paul is speaking of the unbeliever. What he says is true of the believer as well, but he speaks of the unbeliever specifically. He says in Romans chapter two, verse 15, “They, that is unbelievers, they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.” And so what the apostle is saying here, what the scriptures are saying here is that there is inscribed of the heart of every human being, a copy of the Ten Commandments, that God has put his law upon our hearts. And he does that through our conscience, through our conscience.

And this is why that even those who have never heard of the gospel, of those who have never read the Bible, those who have never heard or read of the Ten Commandments, they can do good things. At least if we’re speaking on a relative human plane, even unbelievers can do good things. And this is why it’s the case that even in societies that have little or no Christian influence, there still will be in those societies generally accepted morals that more or less are consistent with the Ten Commandments. And so, for example, as far as I know, as far as I can tell, no matter where you go in the world, it will be generally accepted that certain things are wrong. It is wrong to steal, it is wrong to lie, it is wrong to kill, and so on.

A more specific example, in the nation of Japan, I doubt that you could find one person in a hundred, if that, that would be able to tell you what the Eighth Commandment says. Hopefully we all know what the Eighth Commandment says. “Thou shalt not steal.” And yet, despite that, if you leave your wallet on a subway in Tokyo, the chances are very good that somebody’s going to turn that into the authorities, and the chances are very good that your cash will still be in it. I don’t think that that would happen on the subways of New York City. It’s different there. But it shows that even in societies that are not Christian, or they have not had a Christian influence, there’s still a moral sense of what is right and wrong.

Another way that God in his providence uses his law to maintain some sense of order and stability in society is when human governments make and enforce laws that reflect the justice and the righteousness of God’s law. Of course, no human government does this perfectly, but generally speaking, most governments have laws that more or less are conformed to the moral code that God gives us in the Ten Commandments. And so in Romans chapter 13 verse 4, when the apostle Paul is speaking about civil government or a civil ruler, he says, “He is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

Now, Paul was not speaking of an ideal Christian government. He was speaking about the Roman government at the time. But he was saying that God has ordained this government, as evil as it may be in some respects, to maintain some semblance of order in society by enforcing laws which have some reflection, at least, of the law of God. And so when a government punishes thieves and murderers and other wrongdoers, God uses that threat and that dread of punishment to restrain evil in a society. And so again, the law cannot save a single human being. No one has ever been redeemed or saved by the law of God. Nevertheless, this is a second use of the law, that God puts it on our hearts. Governments make laws that reflect it in some way in order to restrain sin, to restrain evil in society so that evil does not break out and we have total chaos. That’s the second use of the law.

The third use of the law, and this is the use that John Calvin referred to as the third and principal use of the law, and that is this. The law shows us as Christians how we are to live lives pleasing to God. And this is where we want to consider verse two here. And so before the Lord gave his commandments to the Israelites, he said to them in verse two, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

Now what’s significant about that is this, that God gave his law to a redeemed people, to a saved people. First, God gave them grace. That’s what we’ve been looking at as we’ve been going through Exodus, the power, the grace of God in delivering his people out of Egypt. He defeated Pharaoh, he defeated the Egyptians, he rescued his people from their bondage there, their slavery, and now, having brought them out of that slavery, he gives them a law to keep as his people.

Now, what would be the opposite of that? What if God worked differently than that? What if he, in response to the cries of the people as they cried out for mercy to the Lord because of their bondage in Egypt, what if the Lord said to his people through Moses, “Okay, you people of God, you Israelites, here’s my law, here are my Ten Commandments. You keep these commandments, and once you keep them perfectly, then I will bring you out of Egypt. I will save you from your bondage to sin or your bondage to Pharaoh there.” Well, we know that if that was the case, first of all, the Israelites would still be in bondage to Egypt. We know that they would never have kept God’s law perfectly. But not only that, their salvation would have depended on their keeping the law of God. Their salvation would be based upon their obedience to the law.

But that’s not the case. It’s certainly not the case with us as well. First, God gives us grace. God is merciful to us. He comes to us in our sin, our misery, our bondage to sin, to the powers of evil. He comes to us and He saves us through His Son, Jesus Christ, through the obedience of Christ, through the death and resurrection of Christ, through the power of the Spirit of Christ. He delivers us out of the kingdom of darkness, and He brings us into His kingdom, the kingdom of light and life and peace and forgiveness in His Son, Jesus Christ. So He saves us from our sin, and then He gives us a law to keep. He gives us a law to keep.

Another way to put this is this, that for those who are in covenant with God, they are bound to obey his law. Verse two says, “I am the Lord your God.” This is covenant language. The covenant is that arrangement by which God makes us his God, or he makes us his people and he becomes our God. And so the people of Israel are the people of God, and because they are in covenant with God, they must keep the terms of His covenant, which are obedience to His commandments.

And we too, as believers in Jesus Christ, are in covenant with God. The covenant that God has made with us is a covenant of grace. We are saved by grace. We are not delivered from our sin and guilt by the obedience that we bring to God, but by the obedience of Jesus Christ. And yet we are in covenant with God because we belong to him by faith in Jesus Christ, because we are his people. Therefore, we are bound to obey him, to keep his commandments, to keep his word.

In fact, you could say that this is why God saved us in the first place, that we would be his servants. You remember in Exodus when Moses went to Pharaoh to demand that Pharaoh release the Israelites, that he let his people go, that they were to do so in order that they would serve the Lord. “Let my people go that they may serve me.” And in the very same way, you have been redeemed through Jesus Christ, you have been saved in order that you would be servants of God, to obey Him, to keep His commandments. Ephesians 2.10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

But at this point, someone might say, “But wait a minute, doesn’t the Bible say that we are not under law but under grace?” And understood properly, of course that is true, that is wonderfully true, that is gloriously true. We are not under law in the sense that we are not under the law as a system or a means by which we come to God and are saved by God, no. We are not under law as a means of salvation. Romans 3.28, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” In that sense, we are not under the law.

However, the Lord who died for us, the Lord who gave his life for us, that we might be justified apart from works of the law, he is the same Lord who said this. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.” Now, whatever precisely Jesus means when he says, “I have come to fulfill the law,” what it does not mean absolutely is that he has come to abolish the law, that he has come to get rid of the law for us so that we are no longer under the law of God. He says explicitly, “I have not come to abolish them.”

Still, someone may say, “Well, that’s all very good, but as Christians, shouldn’t we just let love or the Holy Spirit be our guide in knowing exactly how we are to render obedience to God’s will? Why should we give so much attention to the letter of the law? Why are we going to spend weeks looking at the Ten Commandments and exploring all that they mean for us and all that they require of us? Won’t that just make us moralistic, legalistic Pharisees?” That way of thinking reminds me of a cartoon I once saw. Moses is standing on the top of Mount Sinai, and he’s looking up to God, and he has the tablets of God in his hands, and he says to God, “We were kind of hoping to just let conscience be our guide.”

Now, thankfully, the Lord has given us a conscience. He gives us a conscience to remind us of what he requires of us, but the problem is we cannot do that. We cannot rely upon our conscience to guide us in how we are to render to God the obedience that He requires of us. For one thing, we so easily silence our conscience, we sidestep our conscience in the way in which we deceive ourselves.

A great example of this comes from one of the places where we have missionaries in Uganda. We have missionaries in a very rural area of Uganda called Karamoja. Traditionally, I don’t know how much they do this anymore, but traditionally, the Karamojan, the Karamoja people, their worldview is that God has given them all the cattle in the world. And so when they go out to raid cattle from another tribe, they’re not actually stealing cattle, they’re just reclaiming for themselves what rightfully belongs to them. And so in their minds, they’ve convinced themselves that what they’re doing is right even though it is truly evil, but they can silence their conscience that way.

We can do the same thing. For example, we may tell ourselves, “I know I should tell the truth to this person, but I cannot do that, because if I tell the truth to this person about this particular matter, it will probably ruin our relationship, or it will put me in a very awkward position. I will look very bad.” And so I justify using deceit by saying, “I have to lie, I have to be deceitful in order to protect our relationship or to protect myself from some difficulty.” And when we do that, we sidestep our conscience or we silence our conscience. And so we need explicit words from God as to what is right and what is wrong. We cannot rely upon our conscience.

Another reason we cannot do so is because our conscience is not fully informed apart from the revelation of scripture. For example, if God had not revealed in his word that he has given us one day in seven, one day of the week in seven days that are to be devoted to him for rest and to worship the Lord, our conscience would not reveal that to us. We would not know about that. We would not know the Fourth Commandment, that we are to keep the Lord’s day holy. Or if God had not explicitly commanded us in the Second Commandment that we are not to make images of God, the first thing that we would do in worshiping God is make images of Him, because that is what we do by nature.

And so even as redeemed people, even as those to whom God has given new hearts in the Holy Spirit, we cannot rely upon our conscience alone to direct us in how specifically we are to please and to honor God. We cannot rely on the idea of love alone to guide us. We cannot rely on the Holy Spirit apart from the word to direct us, but we need the word of God, the commandments of God to show us how we are to render to him that obedience that he requires. And that’s why God has given us his Ten Commandments.

And so here’s the dynamic of how the law of God works in our lives as Christians. First, the law leads us to Christ. We recognize our sin. We see how we have broken his law. And so we flee to the Son of God, to the one who saves us. But then, as those who have been redeemed, as those who have been saved and justified and given the promise and the assurance of eternal life with God forever, out of gratitude, out of joy, because of this great salvation, we desire to serve and to worship this wonderful God who has redeemed us. And so out of that gratitude, we go back to the law to learn how we are to do that, how we are to please God, to honor Him, to express our thanksgiving to Him for His grace and His mercy to us in Christ.

And so that is the third use of the law. It directs us, it leads us in the way that we are to live lives pleasing to Him as His people, as His redeemed people whom He has saved by grace. As a final word on this subject of the positive use of the law in our lives as Christians, I want to leave us with this thought, that the scripture assures us that there is blessing in keeping the law. We ought not to look at the law and see only oppression, drudgery, a misery, that’s certainly not how the psalmist saw it. Psalm 19, 11, speaking of God’s commandments, “Moreover, by them is your servant warned. In keeping them, there is great reward.” There is blessedness in walking in the way that God reveals to us in his commandments.

Now, of course, this is all of grace. It’s all of grace. Any obedience on your part or my part in rendering that we might render to God in keeping his commandments. This is ultimately the fruit of the spirit of God in us, producing that obedience. And yet God promises to bless obedience to his revealed will. As one author put it, the obedience does not just bring blessing, but obedience is a blessing. It is a blessing. It is good, it is delightful. It brings blessing and happiness when we walk in the commandments that God has given us in his word. God has set out in his word for us the path in which we are to walk. And that path is visible only in the light of these Ten Commandments of his law for us. As we saw from our reading in Romans chapter 13, this is the path of love. This is the way of love, how we love God, how we love our neighbor. We do so by keeping his commandments, by his grace. This is how we love our neighbor, by walking in his law. And there is blessing in doing so. And as we continue from here, as we look at the Ten Commandments, I want us to remember God’s design for His law. We are not saved by it, and yet as God’s redeemed people, He gives it to us for our good. And there is blessedness in walking according to the law of God when we do so by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and enabled by His Holy Spirit. And may we grow in that as we look at these commandments.

Let’s ask the Lord for His blessing. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word.

The post The Law of God appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 19 verses 16 through 25, and this is the infallible, the inerrant Word of God. Let’s give our attention to God’s Word. On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and very loud trumpet blasts, so that all the people in the camp trembled.

Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai to the top of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.

And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to the Lord to look, and many of them perish, and let the priests who come near to the Lord consecrate themselves, lest the Lord break out against them.” And Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for you yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set limits around the mountain and consecrate it.'” And the Lord said to him, “Go down and come up, bringing Aaron with you. But do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord, lest he break out against them.” So Moses went down to the people and told them.

Let’s turn now to Hebrews chapter 12 for the New Testament reading. We will turn back to Exodus. That is our sermon text this morning. Hebrews chapter 12, verses 18 through 24. And in this passage, the author of Hebrews compares what took place in Exodus, what we just read about, with what takes place when we, as the church of Jesus Christ, gather for worship.

Hebrews 12:18-24: “For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, ‘If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.’ Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’ But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. There is nothing that you and I do in this life that is more important or more consequential than what we are doing right now today in this room. And that is worship. Worship, giving praise to God, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, exalting Him, magnifying His name. This is the reason why God created us. He created us to worship Him. And as Christians, we know that this is the reason why God has redeemed us, so that we would be His worshipers, to glorify Him, in praising Him, in magnifying Him. And we will spend an eternity doing this very thing: worshipping God, glorifying His name.

And so for all those reasons, the question of how we are to worship God, the question of what we are to believe concerning the worship of God, these are among the most important questions that you and I face in this life. And these are the kinds of questions that our passage this morning from Exodus addresses. There is much for us to learn here in this passage concerning the worship of God.

In this passage, Moses describes for us what took place when the Lord led the Israelites to Mount Sinai. If you recall, the Lord commanded the Israelites through Moses that they were to consecrate themselves for two days. And then on the third day, the Lord would come down on Mount Sinai. He would come in the sight of all the people. And so in verse 16, we pick up with the third day, the day that the Lord comes down on Mount Sinai. The people, they consecrated themselves. However, no matter how faithfully they may have consecrated themselves or prepared their hearts, clearly they weren’t truly ready for what was about to take place when the Lord would come down on the mountain.

No matter how much they may have looked forward to and anticipated the Lord’s coming down, perhaps seeing him in a way they have never seen him before, hearing his voice, they looked forward to that. The experience is quite different from what they may have imagined, because the whole experience left them absolutely terrified.

And we’ll look at this passage and as we do, what can we learn from this passage about worshiping God, about the worship that we bring to the Lord when we meet and gather like we are now for worship? Well, two lessons. First of all, we must worship God with reverence and awe. So that’s the first lesson. Secondly, and this lesson comes from reading this passage in the light of New Testament teaching, and that is this: that in Jesus Christ, you and I, we can approach God in worship despite our sin. We can approach God in worship with perfect confidence, knowing that in Jesus Christ, the Lord receives us and he receives our worship. So those are the two lessons.

First of all, you and I must worship God with reverence and awe. You’ve heard of the expression, a mountaintop experience. Maybe some of you have had an experience like that when you’ve been to a camp or you’ve been to a conference and you left with such a renewed zeal and passion for Christ and for serving the Lord. When we speak of a mountaintop experience, it’s an entirely positive thing. It’s a good thing. For the Israelites here, this was the opposite of a mountaintop experience. You could say that this was their mountain bottom experience. Their encounter with the Lord here was anything but exciting. Rather, it was a terrifying, it was a dreadful experience.

When I was a young boy, our family lived in Southern California. And of course, we had to make our visit to Disneyland there. And I can remember the first time that we went to Disneyland. I was probably nine or ten years old, something like that. And there was a ride there that was almost brand new. It was called Space Mountain. And at the entrance to Space Mountain, there was a sign there. The sign, as I remember it, Just a little bit of what the Israelites must have felt when they came to Mount Sinai that day as they stood at the foot of the mountain. When the Lord descended on the mountain, their hearts were filled with dread. They were nearly overcome with fear and terror.

Even before they got to the base of the mountain, while they were still in their camp, the text tells us that the people trembled at the thunders, at the lightnings, at the thick cloud and the trumpet blast. Hebrews 12 tells us that the sound of the trumpet and the voice of God was so terrifying that the people of Israel begged Moses that no further messages be spoken to them.

What the people of Israel had already experienced up to this point. They were familiar with God doing mighty works in their presence. These were the people that saw God accomplish all his signs and wonders of the land of Egypt and all of the incredible ways that he brought destruction upon the people of Egypt. They had witnessed God’s almighty power in the parting of the Red Sea and bringing them across the sea safely. They saw the Lord as he appeared to them in this pillar of smoke and fire as he led them through the wilderness. But none of that prepared them for what took place here. None of that really was like what happened here on Mount Sinai, that God himself came down on the mountain. They heard the voice of God speaking to them from the mountain, and what they saw and heard left them in abject terror.

Even Moses himself was frightened by what he saw. Again from Hebrews 12, Hebrews 12:21, “Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.'” And part of the fear that the Israelites felt And so this mountain was engulfed in smoke. The Lord was on top of the mountain in a blazing fire. The whole mountain trembled. The ground shook under the feet of the Israelites and the noise, this piercing trumpet blast from heaven, it got louder and louder until God finally spoke in a voice that sounded like thunder. That would be terrifying for anybody to experience.

But as dreadful as those signs were that accompanied the Lord’s presence, what made them really awful, what made the whole experience truly frightening was this: that those signs all pointed to an even more awful reality, and that is the holiness of God. The holiness of God, that was what was being revealed to the Israelites on that day.

Now the Israelites knew something about the holiness of God. We saw back in chapter 15, after they were brought through the Red Sea, that they lifted up this song of praise to the Lord, the song of Moses. Exodus 15:11, “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” But when they sang that song, did they have any idea of what they were saying? Do they have any idea of just what it meant that the Lord was majestic in holiness? What they saw on the mountain was something that gave them a true understanding of what the holiness of God is all about. And it left them in fear.

At Mount Sinai, God gave the Israelites a revelation of who He is, His character, His nature as God, the Creator, the Holy One, the One who is supremely holy. And because God does not change, what was true then is still very much true today. That Almighty God is the same God. He is the same God today whose presence then inspired such fear in the hearts of His people.

We know this to be the case because throughout the Bible, God is made known to us. He reveals himself to us as a God who is holy. In the last book of the Bible, in Revelation, as the Apostle John is given a vision of God in heaven, he describes what he saw in this way in Revelation 4:5. “From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder. And before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God.” And then the Apostle John saw the four living creatures crying out day and night, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.”

And that same holiness, that perfect righteousness, the purity of God that is God’s and belongs to him that inspires such fear in the hearts of men. This is the same holiness that the Lord Jesus Christ himself possesses as the incarnate Lord, as God in the flesh. Again in Revelation, when John sees the exalted Christ in heaven, he says that his eyes were like a flame of fire, his voice like the roar of many waters. In other words, John describes Jesus in much of the same way that Moses describes the Lord here in Exodus. And the reason for that is because they’re one and the same. The Lord who came down in this, with all these dreadful signs, with the trumpet and the thunder and the lightning, and inspired such fear in the hearts of the Israelites, this is the very same Lord who has come in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.

But that raises the question, why is this holiness of God so terrifying for us? We know that God is good, and yet why does the perfect righteousness, the purity, the holiness of God fill our hearts with dread? Well, it’s for the same reason why it was so terrifying for the Israelites. It’s because of our sin.

God is infinitely righteous. He has a purer eyes than to behold evil. His holiness is like a devouring fire that utterly consumes all that is unholy and unrighteous. And we in ourselves, apart from the grace of God, we in ourselves are unholy. And therefore, in our sin, we know that we cannot come into the presence of such a God without being consumed, without being destroyed by his perfect righteousness.

In this passage, the Lord tells Moses to warn the people that they are not to break through. They are not to go further than what is commanded in order to get a closer look at the Lord, as it were. Because if they do, they will perish. And that’s exactly what Isaiah thought would happen to him. You know that passage from Isaiah 6? When the Lord made himself known to the prophet Isaiah, he beheld the glory of the Lord in the temple. He heard the seraphim crying out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.” And Isaiah was overcome. He said, “Woe is me, for I’m lost! For I’m a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” And so there is for us as sinners the sense that if we come into the presence of God in all of His holiness and righteousness that we are undone, that we are lost.

Now as believers in Jesus Christ we know that our sins are forgiven. We know that we are covered with the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ but nevertheless even as Christians, we are still sinners. We are justified sinners, nevertheless, we are still creatures. And God is the Creator. He is God. We are not. And therefore, when we come into His presence, when we come into the presence of God to worship, to worship Him, we must never forget this truth, that He is majestic in holiness. And so we come to Him in a spirit of reverence, humility, and awe.

And that’s what this passage from Hebrews 12 is teaching us as the author of Hebrews reflects upon what took place to the Israelites back in Exodus. What we’ll see in a minute that the author of Hebrews is really contrasting our worship today as Christians with the worship that took place or with the Israelites experience before the Lord here in Exodus. But he’s also saying that there is a fundamental continuity between the people then and their experience and us today as the church as we worship the Lord. And that continuity has to do with the character, the nature of God. God always will be, He always has been, He is today a God who is holy, holy, holy.

In fact, when you read Hebrews 12, you might even say that there’s even an intensification of the majesty, the glory of God as we come to Him in Christ compared with the Israelites’ experience. The Israelites, they came to an earthly mountain, but we come to the heavenly mountain, Mount Zion, Jerusalem. And so if it was true for them, how much more true it is for us. As Hebrews 12 says, “Let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

And so that’s how we must come here on Sundays. We come to worship God. We come not casually. We don’t come into his presence irreverently, flippantly. But we come knowing that we are entering into the presence of a God who is called a consuming fire. So we come with reverence and awe.

In our passage in Exodus after Moses went up to the mountain, the Lord in verse 21 told Moses to warn the people not to come up to the mountain. But Moses had already given the people this warning. Last week we saw that Moses gave the command to the people of Israel from the Lord that if anyone even touched the mountain, whether man or beast, they were to be stoned or to be shot with an arrow. And so Moses figured that the people of Israel did not need to hear this warning again. And so Moses said to the Lord in verse 23, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for you yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set limits around the mountain and consecrate it.'” In other words, Moses was saying to the Lord, “Oh Lord, that’s not really necessary that we warn the people again, because they’ve already been warned. They already know that they’re not supposed to come up to the mountain.”

But the Lord’s response to Moses was not, “Oh, that’s right, I forgot. We don’t need to warn them again.” The Lord’s response to Moses was, “Do it anyway. Warn them again.” And so we did.

Now why did God repeat these instructions to the Israelites? Why did He impress this warning upon them multiple times? I believe it’s because God knows the heart of man. He knows that in our sin and in our pride, the first thing that we are likely to forget about God is that He is righteous and that He is holy and that because of our sin, we cannot come into His presence and live.

There are truths about God that naturally we love more and we tend not to forget them. We love that God is a God of mercy and grace and compassion, that he is a God of love and we should love these truths about God. Our hearts should be filled with gratitude and joy and wonder that God is merciful. He is compassionate and kind. But we quickly forget the truth that God is not like us. He is not just a compassionate and kindly person who is just like us, who happens to be almighty in power? No, He is the Creator. There is something absolutely distinct about God that makes him distinct from us. He is holy.

And we forget that. And we forget and we don’t want to be reminded that in the light of the holiness and righteousness of God our own sin appears in all of its depravity and evil. And we live in a culture today, we live in a time and place in which the default understanding of most people and therefore what tends to be our default understanding as well is that God is not a holy God. But he is a kind, a tolerant, a non-judgmental God. We like to think of God as a God who winks at sin. A God who gladly accepts all kinds of people, all kinds of lifestyles. A God who wants us, above all else, to be happy and to have the things that our hearts desire. People like to think a lot of things about God, but the truth of His holiness, His righteousness is not one of them.

And for that reason, because generally speaking, as a society, we have no real consciousness of the holiness of God. Therefore, as a culture, we have profaned everything that God has consecrated and made holy. In other words, let me put it this way. In our thoughts, when God isn’t holy, nothing is holy.

And so, we take his name in vain. We take the precious, the sacred name of God and of his son Jesus Christ and we use it as a curse. We drag it through the mud. We desecrate it. We’ve taken God’s gift of sexuality and by our promiscuity we have cheapened it and trivialized it. We have taken the sacred institution of marriage and have degraded it. We have taken human life itself and we have desecrated its sanctity by elevating our own comfort and convenience over it.

And for this reason, and this is just one reason, but for this reason, because the world has no conception of the holiness of God, the last thing that we want to do as a church is to worship God in a way that fails to acknowledge this truth about Him, that He is pure and righteous and holy. The last thing we want is a worship service that treats God lightly or irreverently, a worship service that is centered upon ourselves and our own experience, a worship that substitutes entertainment for worship. The worst thing about all of that is, of course, that we are failing to worship God for who he is.

But not only that, such worship fails to make known to a world, a world that profanes what is sacred, such worship fails to make known to this world that the God who created all things, the God who has revealed himself to us in his son Jesus Christ, the God who has created us and called us to be his servants and to worship him, that above all else this is a God who is full of glory, righteous and majestic and holiness.

And this really gets to the gospel, doesn’t it? This really relates to the message of the gospel that we proclaim as a church. The gospel message is not, “God wants you to be happy. Therefore he gave us his son Jesus Christ so that we can be happy in this life and then we get to go to heaven when we die.” But the message of the gospel is this: that God has sent his son Jesus Christ into the world to save us from sin and guilt because he is a God who is righteous. He is a God who condemns us for our sin. He is a God who cannot abide with us unless we are purified and cleansed and he sent Jesus into the world so that we as sinners might be made right with God. That is the message of the gospel. And that message is hollowed out of its meaning if in our worship of God we treat him in a way The first lesson that this passage teaches is that we must worship God with reverence and awe.

The second lesson is this: is that in Jesus Christ you may approach God in worship with the perfect confidence and assurance that he accepts you and your worship.

What happens right after this passage, and this is where we will camp out for many weeks, is that the Lord, he declares his law to the people of Israel. He gives them his Ten Commandments, and then he gives them all kinds of other laws that the people of Israel are to keep. And so, the giving of the law then comes in the context of the Lord’s revealing himself to his people in this way in which he makes known to them his holiness, his righteousness with these accompanying signs that bring terror into the hearts of the Israelites.

And why does God do that? Why does he not simply give Moses the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone and he can deliver them to the people? Why does he do it in this fashion in which he shows himself in all of his frightful holiness? Well, he did so in order to impress on the hearts of the Israelites, to impress on their hearts, to impress on our hearts in the strongest possible way, that apart from the grace of God, the law of God only leads to death.

Now, the Bible does say that the law is good. Romans 7:12, “The law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” And as I said last week, and as we’ll look at next week as well, God gives his law to a people whom he has redeemed, to his saved people, a people whom he first loved and saved, he gives them the law. However, however, the law in itself, when it meets us in our sin, it is not good. By that I mean, it is not good for us. Rather, the law, when it comes to us in our sin, it only brings condemnation and death. And that’s because the law demands perfection. The law demands absolute conformity to all that God commands, one slight deviation from the perfect, holy, righteous law of God, and we are condemned as lawbreakers.

And so all the terrifying signs that accompanied the Lord’s descent on the mountain, all these signs that accompanied His giving of the law, the cloud and the thunder and the lightning, these were like the warnings that I spoke of earlier on Space Mountain. “If you have ever committed a sin, do not come near. I am a holy God. If you have entertained ever a single thought that was selfish or lustful or covetous, do not come near. If you have not loved God perfectly with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, if you have not loved your neighbor perfectly as yourself, do not come near, because if you do, you will perish.”

Now this truth of the uncompromising nature of the law of God and of the holiness of God that stands behind it. This truth of the law’s demand for perfect obedience on our part, perfect conformity to all that it says, this should convince us beyond all doubt that we could never hope to come to God on the basis of our own righteousness or goodness or works. And so Mount Sinai stands forever as a warning to all who would seek to establish their own righteousness before God. You cannot do it. You cannot do it. You cannot be saved. You cannot have any hope of heaven on the basis of your own goodness or your own decency or because you have such high moral standards, or because on the balance when you evaluate your life, you can see that you’ve done more good than you have done bad. No. The perfect law of God, that law that is the expression of his own intrinsic and infinite holiness, it demands perfection. And as sinners and lawbreakers, the only thing that the law can do for us is to condemn us to the judgment and to the wrath of God forever.

And this is why, because the law comes to us in this way in our sin, this is why, at times in the Bible, the law will be spoken of in a completely negative way, even though it’s also called good. But sometimes the entire Old Covenant, that is, all of God’s dealings with his people before the coming of Christ, is spoken of in a negative way. And it’s not because there was no grace under Moses. The people of Israel who truly believed in the Lord, who believed in the coming Messiah, they were saved in the same way that we are saved: by faith in Christ. But you see, the law was so central to the old covenant that the entire ministry of Moses is sometimes identified in scripture with the giving of the law and with the condemnation that the law brings to sinners. And so it’s for that reason and in a similar way in the book of Hebrews.

The author of Hebrews tells us over and over why the new covenant that is given to us in Jesus Christ is superior to the old covenant given through Moses. That covenant could not save us if we hoped to attain righteousness by keeping the law. And so when we come to Hebrews 12, the author is saying, as those who belong to Jesus Christ by faith, you are in a far better place than were the Israelites under the old covenant when they came to the Lord at Mount Sinai. They came to Mount Sinai. They came to the law. It was foreboding. It was terrifying. But you, Christian, you have come to a far better mountain, to Mount Zion, which is nothing less than heaven itself.

Hebrews 12:22 and 23: “To the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to innumerable angels and festal gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.” And the reason why you and I come to this better place, not to Sinai but to Zion, to heaven, the reason we come there is because unlike the Israelites in Exodus we have a better mediator, not Moses and his law. But our mediator is Christ, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Verse 24 in Hebrews 12 speaks of “Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.”

Moses and his law could only bring condemnation and death, but Jesus came into the world to give us life by laying down his life, by taking our sin and guilt upon himself on the cross, so that by faith in him we might be forgiven, that we might come to God through him and join the worship at heaven with angels and saints. And so if your trust is in Jesus Christ, He is your Savior from sin and death.

And there is a warning here. If your trust is not in Jesus Christ, if you are not resting in Him, if you have not come to Him as your only Savior from sin and guilt, if you are still somehow trying to establish your own goodness before God on the basis of what you do or on the basis of how decent or good you are, the warning is, there is no hope for you in that. The law can only condemn you. The law condemns those who die in their sins. And so come to Christ. Come to Jesus, the new mediator, the one who offers his own life for you, that you may live.

And so as a Christian, by the grace of God, you have been given a wonderful gift. Again, God is the same God that He was in Exodus chapter 19. He is holy, and yet you come to Him covered with the blood of Christ. And so you can have perfect confidence, perfect assurance, that no matter how terrible your sin may have been, no matter how wayward and evil you may have lived, nevertheless, in Jesus Christ, you can come to God with the perfect assurance of knowing that He receives you, and he receives your worship as well.

And perfect though it is, Hebrews describes in this passage in chapter 12 this glory of our worship of God through Christ. I love this passage because it shows us what’s really taking place here. You know, if anybody comes into our worship service what they see is pretty ordinary. They see a pretty ordinary worship service: ordinary people sitting in ordinary pews. You sing ordinary hymns. You pray ordinary prayers. You hear an ordinary sermon from an ordinary pastor. However, by the grace of God, what is actually taking place here when we gather together in the name of Jesus Christ is anything but ordinary. It is extraordinary because God, as it were, If you’re a baseball fan, you know it’s playoff time and you know if you’ve ever experienced in person going to a game, baseball or football, and there’s thousands of people cheering and the home team wins and there’s jubilation and rejoicing and it’s just magnificent, but then an hour later everyone’s gone home and the stadium is dead quiet.

But not in heaven. In heaven there is a sound of jubilation, exaltation, rejoicing that will go on forever and ever and ever as long as Jesus is in heaven. There will never be silence, but there will be praise and worship for all time. And by the grace of God, that’s where you and I are when we come to meet with him in our service of worship. We are those that Hebrews 12 describes that come to the heavenly Jerusalem.

Jesus said in John 4, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.” And here is the kind of worshippers that God seeks, those who worship Him in the splendor of holiness, and those who worship Him by faith in Jesus Christ His Son.

Let’s pray.

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Our Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 19, verses 1 through 15. And this is the infallible and inerrant word of our God.

On the third new moon, after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. They set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain saying, thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the people of Israel, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. 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. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.

So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the Lord commanded him. All the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has spoken we will do. And Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord. And the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you and may also believe you forever. When Moses told the words of the people to the Lord, the Lord said to Moses, Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day. For on the third day, The Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. And you shall set limits for the people all around, saying, take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot. Whether beast or man, he shall not live. When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain. So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people. And they washed their garments. And he said to the people, be ready for the third day. Do not go near a woman.

This will be our sermon text for this morning, so you can keep your place there. 

But for our New Testament reading, let’s turn to 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 9 through 12. Part of this was also our New Testament reading from last week as well. But the apostle Peter, he draws directly from our passage this morning in this passage in 1 Peter 2 verses 9-12 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

As you may probably know, the tallest mountain in all of North America is Mount McKinley up in Alaska. Depending on who the president is, sometimes it’s called Denali, but whatever you want to call it, it is a very, very tall mountain. It’s just over 20,000 feet high. But what’s most impressive about Mount McKinley when you see it is that the height from the base of the mountain to the very peak of the mountain is 18,000 feet, which I understand makes it the tallest mountain in the world if you measure it from the base to the peak. And so, if you’re ever up there and if you’re blessed to have a clear day, which usually is not the case, but if you’re able to see the entire mountain from a good vantage point, You can see that the whole mountain from base to peak, and it is a very impressive sight. It is a truly imposing presence. It towers over the entire landscape for hundreds of miles around.

And in our passage this morning, we learn about another mountain, Mount Sinai. And scholars don’t know exactly what mountain In the Middle East is the biblical Mount Sinai, but whatever mountain it is, it is not nearly as tall or physically imposing as Mount McKinley. Nevertheless, in different ways, Mount Sinai is just as imposing, just as dominating as Mount McKinley is. In a metaphorical sense, Mount Sinai towers over the landscape of the Bible. It was here that the Lord appeared to His people in a way that left them terrified. He came down in a thick cloud with fire and smoke and thunder and lightning, and there was a piercing trumpet blast. It was here that the Lord made His covenant with His people. It was here that the Lord gave to Israel the Ten Commandments, and He spoke to them in a voice that thundered. In the landscape of the scriptures, Mount Sinai towers as this great mountain of God. And it also towers over our spiritual landscape because Mount Sinai stands for the law of God. It represents the holy, uncompromising, perfect moral law that condemns us for our sin. And it is from that condemnation that we must be saved. And so in our sin, Mount Sinai towers over our conscience as the law of God that demands justice, condemnation.

But praise the Lord, we have one who has saved us from the law of God. We have the Lord Jesus Christ. And in our passage today, as we’re working our way through Exodus, We have come, along with the Israelites, to the foot of this towering mountain, the mountain of God, Mount Sinai. And so we will spend much time here at the foot of the mountain. This morning, we will focus our attention on the words that the Lord speaks to the people of Israel through Moses in verses 5 and 6. And as we continue on in Exodus, we’ll consider everything that takes place at this mountain. But for today, we’re going to focus on what God told the people of Israel as they prepared to come nearer to Him, to draw closer to Him by coming to the foot of the mountain. But in these verses, particularly verses 5 and 6, the Lord tells the people of Israel that as his people, they will be three things, or they are three things.

First of all, they are his treasured possession. Secondly, they will be a kingdom of priests. And thirdly, they will be a holy nation. And so these are the three points that we will consider this morning. But before we begin that, let’s consider the background to this message by looking at verses one through four. In verses one and two, Moses describes for us how the people come to Mount Sinai. So it’s three months after the Exodus, three moons after the people have been brought out of Egypt. We’ve considered some of their wilderness wanderings. Now they have left Rephidim and they’ve come into the wilderness of Sinai. And of course, that is where Mount Sinai was, the wilderness of Sinai. And even though the ultimate destination for the people of Israel is the promised land, it is Canaan. That is why he brought them out of Egypt, to bring them into this promised land. Nevertheless, in the book of Exodus itself, it is Mount Sinai that occupies the bulk of the book of Exodus.

This is the concern that we’ll have as we continue through Exodus, what takes place at this mountain. This is where the Israelites will hear the voice of God. This is where they will receive God’s commandments, where he will enter into a covenant with them. In fact, they will end up spending about ten and a half months at Sinai. This is where they will build the sanctuary. This is where they will receive not just the Ten Commandments, but all of God’s laws for them as a people. But when they first arrive there, it is Moses who goes up on the mountain. And the Lord tells Moses this in verses 3 and 4 about halfway into verse 3 we read this the Lord speaking to Moses thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the people of Israel you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles wings and brought you to myself And so the Lord has taken the people out of Egypt. They’re about to draw near to Him. And then in verse 5, He calls them to obey His voice, to keep His commandment. And we’ll look at that in a moment. But first of all, in this way, in the words that the Lord says to Moses to tell the people of Israel, verses 3 and 4, He reminds them of what he has done for them. He has rescued them out of their bondage in Egypt.

He doesn’t explicitly talk about the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea, but all of that is surely comes to the minds of the Israelites when they are reminded of how they have been brought out of Egypt, that God rescued them with these signs and wonders, that by his almighty power, his grace, he brought them out of Egypt. And he uses this wonderful image of an eagle carrying its young on its wings and describing how he brought them out of the house of bondage. Many of you, I’m sure, have read the book The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. And there’s that wonderful scene in The Hobbit in which Bilbo Baggins and his fellow hobbits are about to be killed by the evil goblins. And then out of nowhere, these eagles come flying to them and rescue them by picking them up and delivering them to safety. And it’s that picture of an eagle lifting her young out of danger that the Lord uses to describe the way He delivered His people out of Egypt and carried them to safety. And this picture speaks of the sovereignty of God, the power of God. It reminds the Israelites that their salvation was entirely because of His grace and His power. They did not rescue themselves out of Egypt. They were doomed to destruction. They would surely have perished had the Lord not brought them out. And so He reminds them of that. And he brought them out to take them to himself, to make them his people. And now he’s about to draw near to them, to speak to them on the mountain.

And so in verse five, the Lord calls his people to obey his voice. He says in verse five, Let’s stop there for a minute, verse five. And notice the order in which the Lord tells these things to the people of Israel. First, He speaks to the Israelites of the grace that they have received from Him, of the salvation that is theirs because of His mighty power. He says in verse 4, I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to Myself. And it is only after telling them how he has saved them, how he has been made his people, or they have been made his people. Only then does he say in verse 5, obey me. He says, now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant. you shall be my treasured possession and so the order is this first salvation first salvation and then the command to obey his voice the call to obedience and this is the way in which God works with us as his people first is salvation first God saves us through his grace through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ first he saves us he brings us to himself and then He commands us to obey His voice, to keep His commandment, to keep His covenant.

We’ve seen this over and over again, and this is one of the lessons that the book of Exodus teaches us. This is what the Spirit wants us to take from this book, at least partly, and that is that we are to see ourselves as the Israelites were in Egypt, helplessly in bondage. By nature, because of our sin, we are enslaved to sin. We are helpless in our captivity to sin and evil. We cannot rescue ourselves. We cannot free ourselves. Just like the Israelites, we’re under the tyranny of Pharaoh. But through the death and resurrection of Christ, through what God has done for us in His Son, Jesus Christ, through what the Lord has accomplished for us He has saved us from that bondage. He has brought us out from under the tyranny of sin and death forever. He has carried us on eagle’s wings and brought us to Him. And now, as those people whom He has loved, those whom He has redeemed, those whom He has rescued, He calls us to obedience.

And so, as Christians, like the Israelites then, so you and I, as the people of God, we are commanded to obey His voice. to keep His covenant, to entrust ourselves to Him, to walk according to His law. Again, we are not saved by any obedience that we render to God. First, we are saved by the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ, by the perfect life that He lived, by the death that He suffered for us. And even by the Spirit of God, by the grace of God, as we begin to render to Him that obedience that He requires, our obedience is never complete or perfect, and yet He calls us to obey His voice. And as we keep His commandments, however imperfectly, as we do so out of a heart that is filled with gratitude to God for His salvation, it is in that way, by walking before the Lord by seeking to keep His commandments, that we fully enjoy all the blessings of communion with God, of knowing Him as our God and Savior. And so we are saved entirely by the grace of God, but we are saved in order to keep His commandments, and in keeping His commandments, in keeping His covenant, in walking with the Lord by His grace, seeking to do His will, it’s in this way that we find the fullness of that blessedness, that peace, that joy of knowing Christ as our Lord and Savior.

And so the Lord calls His people to obedience, and then He promises them in this passage what they will be as they keep His commandments. First of all, He says that they will be His treasured possession. And this is our first point then. that is the church of Jesus Christ, you and I are God’s treasured possession. He says in verse five, now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples for all the earth is mine. Do you have a treasured possession? Think of what is most near and dear to your heart. And apart from your loved ones, obviously, who are your most treasured possessions in that sense, but what is it that you own that you would hate to part with? Is it something that you inherited from your parents? Is it a new car that you purchased recently or your home?

Robin and I have talked about what we would try to save from our house should it ever catch fire and the photo albums are at the very top of the list. We are old enough to still have actual prints of pictures saved in photo albums and so if there’s ever a fire in our house after all the living creatures obviously are out of the house we will go in to rescue those pictures and if we do rescue those successfully I will go back in and start saving my books. And so we have our treasured possessions in our home that God has his own treasured possession. When you consider the fact that according to verse five, all the earth belongs to God, that whatever God treasures must be a true treasure. Whatever God says, this is my treasure, this is what I delight in, that must be something of near infinite value and worth simply because it is God who treasures it, it is God who values it. and that treasure is his people.

Of all the worlds that God has created, of all things in his virtually infinite, his vast universe, of all things that he has made, it is his people, his church, whom he delights in, whom he loves, whom he treasures, the people whom he has chosen in eternity. The people for whom His Son laid down His life, those who will be with Him in glory forever. This is what is near and dear to God’s heart. It is His people whom He loves and treasures. And the Bible expresses this truth in different ways. And one way that the Bible expresses this is to compare the relationship between Christ and His people as that of that fills the hearts of a groom on the day of his wedding as he sees his bride walking down the aisle. There is nothing in all the world that fills him with more delight and happiness than his bride. And that is the way that the Bible describes Christ’s thoughts towards us as his people. He delights in us.

We are his bride whom he loves. I know the way that the Bible describes this is that we are the children of God the Father. You who are parents, you know how much you love your own children. You love your own children more than life itself. You would give up anything for the sake of your children. and multiply that love by infinity, and you get a sense of the love that God has for his people in Jesus Christ. You can see, or begin to see, you get a glimpse at least of just the depth of the divine love that the Father has for us as his sons and daughters. And so, as those who belong to Jesus Christ, we are God’s treasured possession. brings up a question that it is good to ask ourselves. Do I treasure what God treasures? Do you treasure what God treasures? Do you love what He loves? Do you delight in that which He delights in? When you look at one another as fellow members of the body of Christ, as brothers and sisters in Christ, do you see what God sees? That this is a treasure, a delight, that these brothers and sisters are those whom God himself loves, and therefore I too should love what God loves.

And as we see others in the church in this way, as we see them as God sees them, as the apple of his eye, as his treasure, we cannot but begin to treat one another with the care, with the respect, with the love, that is due to those whom God loves and cares for and delights in. 

After the Lord calls his people his treasured possession, in verse 6 he says that they will be a kingdom of priests. A kingdom of priests. When I was in seminary, it happened to be in an area where a lot of Catholic people lived, and a lot of times when people found out, when I told them that I was a seminary student, A lot of times they said, oh, you’re going to be a priest. I said, no, I’m married. Not going to be a priest. I’m actually going to be a minister, a pastor. I’m a Protestant. But what I could have said was actually, I’m already a priest. And I have been a priest from the moment that I put my faith and trust in Christ. And I could have said that because that is true for every single Christian. as one who belongs to Christ by faith.

You are a priest of God. And what that means is, is that by virtue of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on your behalf and through Christ, you have free, unfettered access to God the Father, to Almighty God. You can come into the presence of God through Jesus Christ. You do not need a human priest to mediate. You can lift up your prayers to God through Jesus Christ. You can know that you are received and heard by the God who loves you, by the God who joyfully accepts you in His Son Jesus. And also as a priest, through Jesus Christ, you are one who brings your sacrifices of praise and worship to the Lord. Again, not through a human priest, but through Jesus Christ, you render to God that sacrifice that glorifies Him and that pleases Him, a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise. 1 Peter 2.5, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

And so just as the Israelites, in part, fulfilled their calling and their role as a kingdom of priests by worshiping the Lord, so you and I, as Christians, as those who are priests of God in Jesus Christ, we fulfill our role, in part, by coming to the presence of God to worship Him, to offer to Him our sacrifices that are acceptable to Him through Christ. And when you consider who we are in that light, that we are those whom God has created and redeemed to be his priests, to worship him, to bring him sacrifices in the sense of thanksgiving and praise, when you consider who we are in that light, It impresses on us just how important it is that we do what God has called us to do, to worship, to worship. This is why we come here on Sunday. This is a non-negotiable for us as Christians, a top priority, to worship together. My dad often used to describe somebody who would do something very, very consistently, like a friend who played golf every weekend, he would say he does it religiously. Well, how many people would say of us they go to church religiously? But that should be so true of us. There should be nothing more important to us, if we can be, to be with the people of God, to worship Him because we are His priests. He has created us and redeemed us to be His worshipers.

But there’s even more significance to this phrase, the kingdom of priests. It means even more than the fact that we can come to God through Jesus Christ, that we are called to worship Him. It also has reference to the role that we have in this world as His people. and then this promise that the Lord makes to Israel that they are to be a kingdom of priests what we see here is the beginning of the fulfillment of the promise that God made to Abraham way back in Genesis 12 verse 3 the Lord said to Abraham I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed And so the Israelites, as part of their calling as the priests of God, were to be in the world a blessing to the nations of the world, to the peoples of the world, as they worship the Lord, as they bore witness to the truth of who God is, as the true God. And the nations would be blessed through them as they saw that example, and as they too, by the grace of God, would come to know the true God and also to worship Him. And the same is true for the Church of Jesus Christ today. We can say it in truth, and this is not, we’re not somehow making ourselves look good by saying this, but we can say it truly, we are God’s gift to the world as the Church.

Because it is through the Church, it is through the Church that the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ the Son of God is made known. It is God’s will that this message of salvation be made known through his people, through the church. And it is through the church that the knowledge of God spreads throughout the world. And so it is through the church now that God’s promise to Abraham is more and more being fulfilled that all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. But even short of salvation and the knowledge of God, the church has been the means by which the world has been blessed due to the presence of God’s people in the world. When you consider it historically, the world has received incalculable benefits by virtue of having the people of God in the world, the rule of law, the dignity of man as God’s image bearer, the care of those who are weak, of those who suffer, The abolition of slavery, these are all values that derive from Christianity. And these are values that have spread into different parts of the world, but they come through the church. And when you consider that, what a privilege it is that you and I have been called to be a part of this kingdom of priests. What a privilege it is to be a priest of God in the world. 

Thirdly, the Lord tells us, or the Lord tells Moses to tell the people of Israel that they will be a holy nation, a holy nation. Groucho Marx once sent a telegram to a Hollywood club that he belonged to. And this is what he wrote in the telegram. Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member. And that kind of describes our relationship to the church, doesn’t it? God says that the church is a holy nation, and we would love to be part of a holy nation, but we know that because of our own sin and unholiness, if a society that is holy accepts us as members, it’s no longer holy as it once was. But what this phrase, holy nation, refers to first of all, and most of all, is the fact that God’s people are set apart from the world.

That is what makes us holy, is that we are distinct, we are set apart from the world to belong to God. And so holiness, first of all, does not refer to the amount of inherent righteousness or holiness that is in us by the grace of God, but it refers to the fact that we are devoted to God, that we belong to Him, that we are distinct from the rest of the world. So we are holy in that way. And that is why the Lord goes on to tell Moses in this passage that the Israelites were to consecrate themselves before they came into the presence of God. They were to wash their garments. They were to refrain from marital intercourse. And this is how they were to show forth that they belong to the Lord, that they were holy. These things were not sinful in themselves, of course, but at least for this season, they were to do these things to to manifest their belonging to the Lord. So it’s not that God chose Israel to be His people because they were holy. God did not choose Israel to be His people because they were more numerous than other peoples, because they were more gifted than other peoples, because He saw in them something better than the rest of the world. He certainly did not choose them to be His people because He saw that the Israelites were more righteous or holy than other people in the world. but he chose them out of his good pleasure, his goodwill, to be his people, and he has made them holy by choosing them, by setting them apart from the world.

One British journalist put it this way, how odd of God to choose the Jews. And the same is true for you and me and Jesus Christ. How odd of God to choose us. to belong to Him. But at the same time, because we are set apart to belong to a holy God, we also are to be holy in the sense that our lives are to reflect the righteousness, the purity, the holiness of God. So God did not choose us because of our holiness, but because He chose us, we are to be holy. We are to strive for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Now, the wonderful truth of the gospel is that in Jesus Christ, we already possess that perfect righteousness and holiness. It is already ours by virtue of the imputation, the reckoning of it to us through the gospel. However, at the same time, we are to strive for holiness. We are to die to sin. We are to repent of sin, to live lives that please God, that are righteous and holy according to His Word.

In 1 Peter, the passage that we read from 1 Peter, it’s obvious how Peter just lifts this language right out of the Old Testament and applies these same descriptions to the church of Jesus Christ. He says in verse 9, 1 Peter 2, You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, and so on. Now, Peter is writing to a people who are living in a pagan and a morally bankrupt world. He was writing to former pagans who once shared in the corruption, the worldliness, the evils of that society. And so the Greco-Roman world in which Peter was writing, it was filled with evils that were rampant. You name it, adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, slavery, all the abuses connected with slavery, abortion, infanticide, all of that was just part of the world as it is today. And so Peter was writing to a world, to Christians living in a world filled with ungodliness, wickedness. But Peter’s message to them was to be holy, He says in 1 Peter 1, 14 through 16, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.

So Peter says, don’t be the people you once were. Don’t be the people that surround you in this fallen, corrupt worlds, but be holy. And then later in the passage that we read, 1 Peter 2, 11 through 12, he says, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. So what Peter is doing here, he is connecting the holiness, the righteousness of the people of God to the salvation of others who do not yet know God. And he says that as a result, in part, by the holy conduct of God’s people, this will result in those who are unbelievers now giving glory to God on the day of visitation, which means that the holiness of God’s people will be used by God as a means to bring others to faith in Jesus Christ so that at the return of Jesus Christ they will give praise and thanks to Christ for the holiness and the righteousness of the lives of the people of God whom they once reviled. Because God used that holy conduct on the part of God’s people to bring them to faith in Christ.

And then Peter goes on, if we were to read further along in 1 Peter 2, he goes on to show them what that holy and honorable conduct looks like in very ordinary ways. They were to show forth that they were a righteous people. They were to submit to all lawful authority. They were to honor Christ in their marriages. They were to be united in love. They were to return blessing for evil. They were to be ready to suffer for righteousness sake. And he says more. And so what Peter’s saying here is this, that as God’s holy nation, when we look out at the world and we see the sin and the evil that is ever present in the world around us, our first priority as a church, our first priority as the people of God is not to denounce the sin and the evil of the world. Now, of course, there is a place for the church in her prophetic calling to call sin, sin, to call evil, evil. Again, as we find ourselves in this world surrounded by those who do not know Christ, in a society that is filled with the very same kind of evils that Peter knew all about, living in that Greco-Roman world, our first priority is not even to call the world to repentance and faith in Christ. That is not our first priority, even though that is the mission of the church. That is what we are to do in this world. We are to make disciples of all nations, but that is not even our first priority.

Our very first priority, as those who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, is to pursue holiness and righteousness in our conduct in the world, at home, at work, and in the church. Because if we do not, if we ourselves are not pursuing this holiness that is God’s will for us, then when we call sin, sin in the world, we are only hypocrites because we have not forsaken that sin ourselves. And by the same token, if we do not pursue holiness as the people of God are preaching, the gospel will sound hollow and false. because we will fail to bear testimony to a gospel and the power of God that saves us from sin if we are not ourselves pursuing righteousness. And so we can put it this way. With this fallen world full of perishing souls, what this world needs from us as the church most of all, first of all, is for us to be the church. for us to be the people of God whom he has called us to be. A people who are pursuing righteousness, forsaking sin, living righteous lives in our homes, in our marriages, in our dealings with one another. This is what the world needs us to be.

The world needs us to be a colony of heaven here on earth. A place where there are true demonstrations of love and righteousness. A place where Jesus Christ is truly worshipped in spirit and truth. Of course, we need to proclaim the gospel. But this is even more basic. And this is how, as the church, we will most profoundly influence the world. We want to see the world change. I know you want to see the world changed. that the world would be most influenced by us as the people of God, as we are obedient to the call of God, to pursue holiness, pursue righteousness, beginning in our own hearts, beginning in our marriages, beginning in our life as families, in our life, in our dealings with one another, by being the holy nation that God has made us to be and calls us to be. Again, verse 12 from 1 Peter, Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Let’s pray.

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