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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to comm.church for more information.
Speaker 2:Today, we're continuing our walk through the Exodus, and today we find ourselves at the 10 commandments. So a pretty big and a pretty iconic moment to look at today. I think it will be a lot of fun. But as always, let's start by looking back at where we were last week before we press forward. Because last week, Scott took us through the wilderness.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of an interesting section of the story. Right? The Israelites leave Egypt with a lot of fanfare, walls of water, miraculously parting and then crashing down on pursuing enemies. Drama. Only to lead into a boring stint wandering around looking for the way out of the desert.
Speaker 2:Dull. That's not to say though that this section is completely void of memorable moments. There is that miracle bread, this manna that God provides every morning for the Israelites to eat. By the way, one of the quirks of Hebrew that I've always just really loved is that God provides this strange bread like food. It's described as something like a cross between coriander and honey wafers, which honestly sounds kind of good.
Speaker 2:I would try it at least. But in English, we leave this word manna untranslated in our bibles and that's because the Hebrew word literally means something like, what is this stuff? And so, if you have ever read the Hebrew scriptures and thought to yourself, what is going on here? Just know that the writers and the editors of the bible themselves also had that reaction from time to time. Like, what is this stuff?
Speaker 2:Anyway, still miracle bread is not enough. And the Israelites grumble for meat. And they say, things weren't great in Egypt, but at least we weren't vegetarians. And to be honest, I kinda took that one a little personally last week. There are a lot of good plant based options available, although to be fair, ancient desert life may have afforded fewer options.
Speaker 2:I don't know who's to say. God, however, is more gracious, less petty than I, and so miracle quail starts showing up now every day, just walking around asking to be cooked along with that coriander honey bread. Still, these rats continue to complain and Moses actually names the area where they have camped Massah and Meribah. And those words mean quarreling and testing. But, it's not that the people start arguing with each other and they think God is testing them.
Speaker 2:It's actually that they begin quarreling with and testing God. And, that's a really interesting idea. Because as Scott pointed out last week, arguing with the divine, I mean, testing God, if you want to call it that, that is a very Jewish thing to do. In fact, all through the scriptures, not only is divine argument recorded, it's, I mean, encouraged. So it's good to question God.
Speaker 2:It's healthy to be honest with your complaints. It is holy to notice where the world is not what it should be. And so, I really appreciated this distinction Scott made between the sacredness of questioning God and the refusal to acknowledge the goodness of God. Because those are different things. You see the problem here in the wilderness is not complaint.
Speaker 2:There are things that are worth complaining about. The problem here is this steadfast commitment to live in the mode of scarcity. Nothing is ever enough. And listen, assuming we're not talking about greed and avarice, it's it's okay to want for more. To want more justice, to want more freedom, to want better for those who've been pushed to the edges.
Speaker 2:That's what Exodus is about. It's the whole point of the story. But, if you can't see the goodness around you, even when it is as unmissable as miracle bread and birds that want to be eaten, then the truth is you're probably going to have a tough time noticing goodness even when you get what you think you want. You see the lesson of the grumbling in the wilderness is not to accept things without complaint. The lesson is to celebrate what is good and be grateful for what you have precisely so that you can begin to work to make things even better.
Speaker 2:And sometimes our gratitude is the prerequisite for the change that needs to happen next. So, be grateful but keep pushing for a better world for everyone around you. Now today, we get to the rules. But first, let's pray. God, we come today both grateful and motivated.
Speaker 2:Having watched and wrestled, having attempted to glean something of your character in these stories. And we trust today that there are lessons to be learned and insights to be had. The truths to be taken hold of in our lives for sure. But, we pray that beyond any of that today, we would begin to see something of your passion and your compassion in the world. So, as we look back at passages as iconic, perhaps even as familiar as the 10 commandments, We ask that you are present to us, helping us to see past rules and regulations and commands and instructions to glimpse your heart and your invitation and your grace that undergirds the story.
Speaker 2:In that, may our gratitude for you turn slowly into action on behalf of each other. May we seek out your grace as clearly seen as it is in Jesus knowing that this is who you've always been. Knowing that this is the purpose that you have always been inviting us to embrace. And may this Exodus tale then move us to participate in new movements of liberation for those around us today. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 2:Amen. Today, it's the Decalogue or as it is often better known, the 10 Commandments. And, I think it's both appropriate and actually important that we tackle this passage this far into this series. Because the 10 commandments are unfortunately a set of ideas that have somewhat frequently been disassociated from their context. You may have heard this, but the Texas Senate recently passed a bill that would require every public school in the state to display the 10 commandments starting next year.
Speaker 2:Now, the governor trumpeted this as a win for quote religious freedom. The thing is, the very first line of the 10 commandments says, you shall have no other gods before me, which kinda sounds like the opposite of religious freedom if we're being honest here. In fact, this is probably less about religious freedom and more about Christians wanting to impose their ideals, which to be honest is not very free. And, I say Christian very specifically here because even though this passage comes from the Hebrew scriptures, as a general rule, you will find very few Jewish persons that support this kind of imposition of the text. And the reason for that, at the risk of generalizing here, is that Jewish people tend to understand the 10 commandments don't function in a vacuum.
Speaker 2:They come from a time and place, and they come from a particular narrative with a specific people without which they risk losing their meaning. And this is precisely why we're talking about the 10 commandments six weeks into our conversation about the exodus. Because if we forget the king who forgot his past, or we forget the midwives who started a quiet revolution, without the plagues and the water and the wilderness, without all of that, the rules are just rules. And, they lose their status as the good gift of a generous God. I like this quote from Andrew Sloan.
Speaker 2:It's possible to take the 10 commandments out of their canonical context and look at them as isolated abstract sets of religious and moral commands. And many people do that, but it is still a mistake. You see in Exodus, God descends onto a mountain to give the commands to Moses, but the commands themselves don't just drop out of the sky. They emerge as part of an unfolding narrative, a relationship between this particular God, Yahweh, and this particular people, Israel. The rules are part of a moral vision that God has for the world, but a vision that starts by listening to the cries of the oppressed.
Speaker 2:And to lose that context is to lose the point. So today, need to talk about all these words and finding the right tone and the first nine and then finally the promise of it all. But let's start at Exodus chapter 20 verse one. This is what we read. And God spoke all these words.
Speaker 2:I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt out of the land of slavery. And now, here we go. Our first command, verse three, you shall have no other gods before me. Now, what's kind of interesting here is that already we can see everything that we've already been talking about. Verse one, God spoke all these words.
Speaker 2:I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. And yet today, for the most part, Christians for some reason like to start the 10 commandments in verse three. Remember that Texas school bill? Well, it does not start with the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery. It starts with you shall have no other gods before me.
Speaker 2:Naturally, the 10 commandments get a little tricky here because different traditions break them up slightly differently. However, the only tradition that doesn't start in verse three is the Jewish tradition. See, in the Talmud, no other gods before me is the second command. The first is to remember the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery. And that's precisely the point.
Speaker 2:The problem with a lot of Christian readings is we want to divorce the rules from their narrative and it doesn't work. If you don't read the rules in the voice of the God who responds to slavery with freedom, then you run the risk of finding yourself enslaved to the rules that were meant to set you free in the first place. Steve Chalk, in his book, The Art of Living Beautifully, tells a really good story that I like that illustrates this. He's on this radio debate on the BBC and he's English, so I guess he gets those kind of invites. But, the presenter at one point is kind of antagonistic toward religion and so she turns to him and she asks like, why is your God so miserable?
Speaker 2:I mean he's such a downer about everything. Don't do this and don't do that. Don't desire what other people have. Don't lie. Don't commit adultery.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's kind of pathetic for a supposed God of the universe to care about all of that, isn't it? What's his deal? Chalk responds and he says, is that true? Does God really say all that? Did God really actually say don't commit adultery?
Speaker 2:Well, of course, the presenter says, exasperated, it's right there in the 10 commandments at which point Chalk responds, oh, now I know what you're talking about. I just didn't recognize it because of your tone. I guess I've just never heard it that way. And, I really like that one because I do appreciate the dry British sarcasm, but also because, I mean, of course says God says don't commit adultery. We all know that, but we should also know it's not just because God thinks adultery sounds like a lot of fun and God wants to be miserable about it all.
Speaker 2:It's because adultery hurts people, and it injures us, and it tears at us, and it diminishes the intimacy in our lives that we need. Don't murder people. It's not a miserable downer. It's meant to ensure that everyone can flourish. But, this is why you have to read in context.
Speaker 2:Because God doesn't start with the rules for all the things that God has always wanted to ban. God starts by listening and then responding to our pain. Exodus begins with the God who hears the cries of the episte and then responds by looking for a leader, By bringing resources to support him. By revealing God's name. By leading God's people to freedom.
Speaker 2:By providing food and then better food. By demonstrating that this God wants the best for this motley crew of former slaves now set wild upon an unfamiliar terrain. And so then, when the rules do finally come, they are received by that people not as the restrictions of a downer God, but as the very promise of salvation that comes from the God that's already rescuing them. You see, before the commands were ever set in stone, they were set in a story. And without the story, the rules just don't work the way they were meant to.
Speaker 2:Which is why when Jesus comes along some fifteen hundred years later after the Exodus is set, and probably five hundred years at least after it was written down, and he starts saying things like, well, you've heard it said, you shall not murder. But I tell you that anyone who's angry is subject to judgment. That's Matthew five twenty one. Or you've heard it said, don't commit adultery, but I tell you anyone who looks lustfully has already committed adultery. That's Matthew five twenty seven.
Speaker 2:Or you've heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I tell you that's just a start. That's five thirty eight. You've heard it said, love your neighbor. Hate your enemy.
Speaker 2:I tell you it's exactly the opposite. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Matthew five forty three. The reason he can do that, the reason he can change the rules and still be fully within the tradition of Jewish teachers remember, is the sermon on the mount.
Speaker 2:This is when everybody loves Jesus, not when they're mad at him. All of that stuff would come later. The reason he can do all of that is because the 10 commandments were always set within a story that was still unfolding. In fact, just before Jesus goes into all of those, you've heard it said, but now I tell you examples. He actually starts the whole section by saying, do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
Speaker 2:I've come not to tear down but to fulfill. And, that word fulfill is the word plero in Greek. It doesn't mean fulfill as in fulfill my duties and check the boxes and follow the rules. It's actually a word that was associated with the image of filling up a pitcher of water. It's actually a great image for reading your bible.
Speaker 2:God has this pitcher in mind and it is slowly being filled up. More and more of God is slowly being poured in throughout the story until finally in Jesus it runs out over the top with grace. And, like, honestly, that's a great image for whenever you find yourself stumbling through some of the more difficult or maybe even some of the more violent passages in the Bible, that is not who God is. That is the story God is using to fill up our image of God in Jesus. So, I haven't come to tear the story down.
Speaker 2:I've come to fill it up. And that's why in Exodus, God is slowly showing more of God's self, slowly inviting Moses to discover, slowly inviting the Israelites to trust, slowly building a story that will one day lead to a people and a nation and a Jesus and a new kind of kingdom imagination for the world. But if we, some three thousand years later, removed from the whole context of the story of the Exodus, wanna jump back just to the rules and we say, this is how God wants society to function. Without understanding those words in the context of a God who intervenes to free the slave, we will miss the point of the story. The 10 commandments are an expression of a growing relationship between God and Israel that is founded on liberation, and without that, the rules are going to fall flat.
Speaker 2:Which is why some rabbis actually think maybe the 10 commandments itself is a bit of a misnomer. I've used this term already, but often the 10 commandments will be called the Decalogue. And that just means the 10 words. But part of the reason for that nomenclature is that there is a legitimate question about whether this foundational text and these words given on stone were even all commandments to begin with. Now, we've already seen some of the discrepancies between Jewish and Christian readings here.
Speaker 2:For many Jewish readers, the list starts not with the command to keep no gods before God, but with the invitation to remember the God who brought you out of slavery. Very different starting point. But look at how the words unfold here. The commands as they are often delineated are, you shall have no gods before me, and you shall create no false idols. By the way, in the Talmud, those two are mashed together as the second command because they start with the remembering.
Speaker 2:Right? But then third, for most Christian lists, is don't use the Lord's name in vain. Four, remember the Sabbath. Five, honor your parents. Six, don't kill.
Speaker 2:Seven, don't commit adultery. Eight, don't steal. And, nine, don't lie. Now, the final command is a bit of a three parter here. Feels a bit like cheating.
Speaker 2:God promised 10, but God was on a roll and got to the end and realized there were some bonus content, so it all got mushed together here. But the final command reads this way, you shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his servant or ox or donkey. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor. So here's the question.
Speaker 2:Do you notice anything different about the first nine and the last one? I'll list them again here. No other gods. No false gods. Remember the Sabbath.
Speaker 2:Honor your parents. Do not kill. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not lie.
Speaker 2:You shall not covet. Do you hear it? Because it's subtle here. And honestly, I don't think I ever would have picked up on this without reading Jewish interpreters, but the first nine commands are all external actions. Think about it.
Speaker 2:Keep the Sabbath, honor your parents, don't kill anyone. Theoretically, if I could watch you closely enough, keep tabs on you day and night, I could determine with a reasonable degree of accuracy whether you have been faithful to all of those commands. But 10, you shall not covet. I mean, what do you do with that? Like, Who decides if you have broken that command?
Speaker 2:I mean, if I see you with one last long lingering look at my ox, do I get to take you record over that? What if you just learn how to hold unhealthy desire and toxic jealousy very quietly out of sight away from view? In that case, does the whole command just fall flat and we ignore it? Well, a lot of rabbis wrestled with this, precisely this, and concluded that well, maybe it's not a command at all. Let me go, once again to Nahum Sarna here.
Speaker 2:But he writes that the Hebrew stem, that means the form of the word, focuses on a specific subject of desire, the site of which stimulates the craving to possess it. However, because of an inherent ambiguity in the usage of that Hebrew stem, the meaning of this present command has been a matter of some dispute. Complicated by such questions as whether desire itself or its avoidance can ever really be commanded or legislated, and whether there can actually be any liability for mere intentions or feelings. He goes on to note that the Midrash on this passage rules that one is only culpable when external actions accompany any of these covetous feelings. In other words, when you break one of the first nine commands.
Speaker 2:So you covet, but you're only guilty when you commit adultery because of that covetousness. Or you covet and then you're guilty when you lie, or you covet then you steal, or you covet then you kill, or you covet then you refuse to rest, or you refuse to allow those around you to rest. The point being, the last line isn't a command at all. It's the promise of the first nine. If you can do this, then you won't become this.
Speaker 2:And again, if the Decalogue is meant as this expression of this slowly budding relationship between the God who saves and the people that God liberates, then it makes sense to me that rather than just a list of commands, what God was trying to say all along is maybe something more like this. If you can keep me and my freedom at the center of your life, And if you can stay away from idols that box me off and close me down, if you can keep to only using my name when you really mean it, if you can honor and even enjoy rest, not just for yourself, but for everyone around you. If you can respect your parents, if you can refrain from the killing and the cheating and the stealing and the lying that characterized your experience of oppression, then what I will promise in return is a life that is free from the kinds of unhealthy desires that will drive you mad. The kinds of desires that will slowly turn you into the kind of people whose clutches I just brought you out of. In other words, this is God saying, if you can learn to trust me, then you will be jealous for nothing.
Speaker 2:And by the way, when Jesus comes along years later and he starts with the Decalogue and he says things like, you've heard it said, don't commit adultery. But I tell you, anyone who looks lustfully has already committed adultery, that word lustfully there, it's the word epithumio. And, yes, absolutely in Greek, it can be used to talk about sexual lust. So it's not necessarily a bad translation. But do you know what epithumio's primary meaning in a Hebrew context is?
Speaker 2:It's covet. Epithumio is the specific word that is used to translate the tenth command in the Septuagint. Jesus is not saying sexual desire, even lust, are bad in and of themselves. They're not. They're normal.
Speaker 2:He's saying if you just follow the rules and you don't let them sink into your heart and change who you are, then you won't see the benefit of the promise on the other back end. You might not have an affair, but you'll still end up as the kind of person who will covet another human being as if they were a piece of property you could buy and sell, and that's not good for either of you. In fact, I would argue that here Jesus is very explicitly, very intentionally trying to tie together the promise and the command. When you live like this, you will become like this. And he's reminding us that when we divorce the rules from the relationship, we don't see the benefit in our lives.
Speaker 2:And this is why Jesus' words specifically are why even something as simple and seemingly straightforward as a list of rules always needs to be read in its context. The rules are a response to the salvation that has already come to find us. They are not the way for us to find it. And I can't speak for you, but I know that for me that dramatically changes the way that I hear and I read and I receive, perhaps what we could say, are the stuffier parts of the Bible. Because look, maybe you're here because you have some sense that there is life and there is gift and there is goodness in spirituality.
Speaker 2:Except then you keep finding your experience of church and religion being dominated by rules and drudgery. That's because we forgot the story. Or maybe you have this sense that somehow the universe itself cares about you, and yet your understanding of God is expressed in Christianity often seems dominated with judgment and measurement, that's because we lost sight of the narrative. Maybe you've longed for an image of God that cares, not just about the rules, but about you and your well-being. That's because you were made by that God for that kind of flourishing, and sometimes we just want to make God so much smaller than the divine really is.
Speaker 2:But Exodus is the reminder that everything is gift, Even the commands, because that's the whole point of the story. The movement from slavery to freedom, from oppression to liberation, all of this is part of one driving narrative. And when we lose sight of that larger picture, then sadly, even a story of liberation can turn slowly back into a burden that we put on each other and we use to weigh each other down. But that would be a shame since God is so absolutely dead set on your salvation. Let's pray.
Speaker 2:God, for all these different ways, these stories, these rules, these commands and narratives that you have passed down, preserved, and handed to us to learn from. We ask that in the midst of all of that, we would see not just the words, but your heart and your grace and the shape of the story that you are forming, not just for us, but for everyone around us. That we would become so captivated by this idea of freedom, of liberation, that we would begin to sense it in our own lives and then work to help those near us find it as well. God, for all the ways that we have been trapped in rules that someone has put on us, and they have stopped serving us, and they have forced us to start serving them, We are sorry, and we ask for some help. To get free, to reimagine, and to come back to your warm embrace of grace.
Speaker 2:It welcomes us and helps us see all things through new eyes. May that kind of grace and peace and love and kindness then characterize every encounter we have with those near us. And in that, might we contribute to more freedom, more liberation, more exodus for anyone who is pushed down and away in our society around us. May that be our story, and may that lead us all back to your table. In the strong name of the risen Christ, pray.
Speaker 2:Amen.