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Exodus 20:1-17 Deuteronomy 5:1-21
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Welcome to Redeemer Community Church's First Theological Coffee House of the summer. We've done this for the last 2 summers, and this is gonna be the format of this evening. And the reason we do these, I wanna do, 1 a month for the next 4 months. Our next one is June 15th and a counselor named Gordon Bowles is gonna be teaching that. It's gonna be on marriage and the gospel.
Jeffrey Heine:He is an excellent counselor. If you are single, it doesn't matter. Married or single, do you want to come to hear Gordon talk on May June Sorry. June 15th. Is the music still on?
Jeffrey Heine:No. Okay. And let me tell you the format for tonight. Tonight's topic is we're gonna look at the 10 Commandments and Christ. We're gonna look at both of those and and how Christ and the 10 commandments work together.
Jeffrey Heine:And I'm gonna talk for probably about an hour or so, maybe a little less, maybe a little more, depends what I I feel like or how sleepy you get. And then we'll take a break and let you guys ask questions. If you want, you know, a better answer than I would give on the fly, you're welcome to come up and talk to me in the break and, you know, give me a little heads up. I'm also not gonna get into the nitty gritty. If if you're wondering, like, about the Leviticus little pus bumps with white hairs and stuff like that, We're we're we're not going there, you know.
Jeffrey Heine:There'll be a lot of I don't knows. But we are gonna look at the 10 commandments and we are gonna look at Christ. And our goal for this, our goal for all the coffee houses is worship. That's it. It's not confrontation.
Jeffrey Heine:It's not, you know, see if we can stomp one another. It's if we can learn together about God's word. So ultimately, we could be better worshipers. And so with that, let me pray, and then we will get started. Word.
Jeffrey Heine:Now we ask for clarity and wisdom and power as we open up your word. I pray that you would write it on our hearts, That these would not just be written in stone, but they would be written on our hearts. So, Lord, give us insight, into your heart and character tonight so that we might better worship you. And we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Jeffrey Heine:I thought a good place for us to start is to actually read through the 10 commandments. So I wanna read through the The 10 commandments are found in 2 places in your bible. They're found in Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5. And what you have, the reason they're in those two places, Exodus 20 is right at the start of Israel's history. It's it's when they were just brought out of Egypt and it's like, here's the law.
Jeffrey Heine:Deuteronomy 5 is when they are about to go in after 40 years of wandering and stuff. They're about to go into the promised land, and they're reminding this next generation of the law. And so it it tells the law again in Deuteronomy 5. But we're gonna read from Exodus 20, and then we'll go from there. Can everybody hear me fine?
Jeffrey Heine:Alright. Good. Alright. Exodus chapter 20 verse 1. And God spoke all these words saying, I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Jeffrey Heine: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 3rd 4th 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.
Jeffrey Heine:Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 6 days you shall labor and do all your work, but the 7th day is a Sabbath to the Lord, your God. On it, you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in 6 days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the 7th day.
Jeffrey Heine: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 of the Lord your God has given you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.
Jeffrey Heine: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. So that's the 10 commandments right there. Now before getting into the specifics of the 10 commandments, and seeing how Christ dealt with them and how Christ fits in with them, I thought we would take a step back and just ask and answer a few fundamental questions.
Jeffrey Heine:Maybe first look at also the structure of these Ten Commandments so we we have a better understanding of it. So we're gonna start with the most basic question you can when coming to this. Why in the world is the 10 Commandments something worth studying? Why why are we here on Wednesday night in the coffee house looking at the 10 Commandments? Are they are they better or, you know, the any of the other laws that are in the Bible?
Jeffrey Heine:You know, why is it that, that we're not in here studying about clean and unclean animals, you know. And that that's gonna be our topic for tonight, or, looking over rules about when you can charge interest if you give a loan or when you can't charge interest if you give a loan, you know. And and I'm sure it would have been more exciting. We could have packed people in here for that. But But we're looking at the 10 Commandments.
Jeffrey Heine:What what makes them so special though? And I guess we we give them prominence because the Bible gives them prominence. The Bible puts them out for us in a very unique and different way for us to look at. You know, when God delivers the Israelites from from slavery in Egypt, he heads straight to Mount Sinai. The entire mountain is consecrated so much.
Jeffrey Heine:It says, if any of you touch this mountain, you're dead. Okay? So you can't touch it. Just Moses. Come on up here.
Jeffrey Heine:Moses comes up to the top of the mountain. There's there's smoke. There's fire. There's earthquakes. People are saying, you know, they're just they're covering their ears.
Jeffrey Heine:They're running away. People are terrified. And then you have God himself writing these Ten Commandments. It says with the with the finger of God, he writes these Ten Commandments on stone tablets. He he doesn't write them on paper, you know, or clay.
Jeffrey Heine:These things are written in stone. And you don't have anything else like that. And then even after Moses smashes them, he's like, alright, well, we gotta do it over. We need these commandments in stone and then and these commandments were the commandments that were carried around in the ark of the covenant. And so they they do have a very unique place within scripture, apart from the rest of the law.
Jeffrey Heine:And so although you have within your first five books of your Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, what we call the Torah, or what we call the law, all of that. The Torah is a little different than law. Torah is more of, has more of instruction or living the right way. That's that's kind of what it means. This is how you live the right way, the Torah.
Jeffrey Heine:But within that, kind of encapsulating all 5 of those books and all those words, they are encapsulated in these 10 words, these 10, commandments. They are called the 10 words. That's what if you've heard the phrase decologue, 10 words. And you find out a couple of times in the Old Testament, in Exodus 34 and in Deuteronomy 10, it says, when god gave us these ten words and I don't know if this just saying, you know, they were very succinct, probably very much like, you know, do not steal, do not murder, which which is just not murder in Hebrew. And then we we had them fill in maybe some explanation around some of those to broaden them up a little bit.
Jeffrey Heine:But they were small enough, like 10 words to fit on 2 tablets. And, so let's look at the structure. You know, that's why why we study them, because they are important. They are central in the Bible. But let's look at their overall structure.
Jeffrey Heine:Why why are there just 10? Why why aren't we talking about the 14 commandments, you know, or the the 2 commandments or the 100 commandments of God? Because certainly there could have probably been a 100 commandments. And what you find is, I believe that the difficulty in writing any kind of law is if you make it super short, it's gonna be so abstract. It's not gonna have any hands or feet.
Jeffrey Heine:You're not really going to know what to do with it. But if you make it too detailed, then it's just so exhaustive. Nobody can know it. I mean, really, every little rule, every little part of your life is gonna be guided by the the teniest rule. And so you you gotta strike this balance between the the abstract, yet it's got enough flesh on it that you can you can do this.
Jeffrey Heine:You've gotta strike the right balance. For for instance, you know, today, you might have a law that says somewhat abstractly, you are to love public property or government property. Or maybe they would probably say you are to respect government property. And I'm like, great. That's that's a very abstract law.
Jeffrey Heine:How does how does that law carry down? So that's that might be too abstract, so you might have something underneath it saying, you are not too litter on public property. Because that's a way you would show respect. And then if you wanted to work out the particulars of this, you could say things like, because people might have questions, when am I allowed to throw a cigarette outside of my car window on public property? And so you might have these rules.
Jeffrey Heine:It's like, and you're not allowed to throw a cigarette out on, you know, out of your window onto the grass. Or you are not allowed to throw away your paper cup on the ground. And you're not allowed to take a little paper from a straw and to throw it away on the ground. And you could have endless rules if you wanted to, but it would be exhaustive. I mean who could who could bear that?
Jeffrey Heine:So you can't have just respect respect public property, and at the same time you can't have every little microscopic rule. And you need to somehow strike that right balance. I I think God is doing the same thing here. I mean, he he's working with sinful people. He is using words to communicate the law.
Jeffrey Heine:And so he's striking this right balance where he can't be too abstract, and yet he's not gonna give tons and tons of particulars. He he could have just said with the abstract, you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and you're to love your neighbor as yourself. Abstract. There it is. You do that and and that's all I want you to do.
Jeffrey Heine:You're gonna please me. And if he had just put that forward, he would have been right because that is right if you were to love the Lord your God with all your heart and your soul and your mind. And if you were to love your neighbor as yourself. You're you're going to be following God. You're going to please him.
Jeffrey Heine:A matter of fact, several places Jesus actually summarizes all of the law by quoting those two places, those two verses, which actually aren't one of the 10 commandments. Anybody know whether you shall love the Lord God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind comes from? Anybody? So Deuteronomy 6. Right after the commandments are given in Deuteronomy 5, you have almost this summary statement.
Jeffrey Heine:Here it is. You've just heard all this law. Be careful to do this law. You shall love the Lord God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself actually is in Leviticus 19 of all places.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, it's just it's just like way out there in Leviticus land, and you you gotta stumble on it when you're going through your Bible reading plan. But it's nestled there in a chapter that goes through a lot of the Ten Commandments. It goes through a whole bunch of them, especially ones concerning other people. And it kinda gives this summary statement, love your neighbor as yourself, and you're gonna fulfill all these others. And so those are 2 true statements or 2 abstract statements.
Jeffrey Heine:It's but they're too general for us really to know how that applies to our lives. And so God fleshes this out a little bit more by giving us 10 rules to help explain really those 2. But you have to read all 10 of the commandments in light of love. All of them have to be seen in light of loving God and loving your neighbor. That's the lens you put on to see these.
Jeffrey Heine:Many theologians, I mean from the earliest centuries, actually broke up the 2 the 2 tablets of the law into they they said one of the tablets was about loving God, you know, commandments 1 through 4. And then the other tablet is about loving your neighbor, commandments 5 through 10. We don't know if it was like that or not. I mean, we really have no idea. But it's a good way of thinking of them.
Jeffrey Heine:You you do see those 2 those 2 ideas there. But there still is a difficulty with having only 10 laws, 10 very short laws, because there's gonna be some circumstance which is gonna come up, and you're gonna be like, well, how do I applaud apply these 10 laws to this? It doesn't really seem to fit in. For instance, we have you shall not murder. You shall not murder.
Jeffrey Heine:It seems pretty straightforward. Alright. You're not to go out and kill anybody. Now what if though somebody breaks into your house at night and you hear them coming in your room, are you allowed to shoot them or not? Who would say yes?
Jeffrey Heine:Anybody? Yes. Alright. I I keep a machete underneath my mattress, just so you know, if any of you are thinking. You would be right.
Jeffrey Heine:There's a there's what we would call, case studies that are in Exodus about this. We have the same thing today. You know, that's the the case study is you're allowing you cannot flip the cigarette out your window. It it gives a particular circumstance and so what you have in Exodus and in Deuteronomy is after these ten laws, you have case studies. And so what you find in Exodus 22:2 is that, yes, you're allowed if somebody breaks into your house, you're allowed to kill them if it's nighttime.
Jeffrey Heine:If it's daytime, you're not allowed to kill them. That's murder. Anybody wanna explain why? I mean, it doesn't really go into any more particulars. I I can only think this is pure pure Joel.
Jeffrey Heine:That so grain of salt. Is that night you don't know? You don't know the intentions of somebody breaking it. So because you could even kill the person by accident. It could be somebody you knew.
Jeffrey Heine:It might even been a friend. But if they're in your house at night, you're excused from it because you you did not know. But in the day, apparently, you can see your attacker and you can, assess the situation better. You can flee, maybe you could see it coming. I'm not really sure, but it makes the distinction between the 2.
Jeffrey Heine:Nighttime, okay. Daytime, wrong. Let's do another scenario. It's the Sabbath day. You're driving in your car, and you see somebody, who has a flat tire on the side of the road.
Jeffrey Heine:And it's an old woman, and she's trying to figure out a jack, trying to do this, and you're you're like, what do I do here? What do I do? Okay. Well, I need to be I need to be guided by love. You know, I I've got that abstract.
Jeffrey Heine:I need I need to love god. I need to love my neighbor. And so, so I'm gonna I'm gonna help them out. Who here would help out if it was the Sabbath? Are you gonna help out an old lady who who's has a flat tire?
Jeffrey Heine:Alright. People are like, they haven't y'all are like, I'm guarding myself right here. Well, I I would say, you know, good call. Yeah. Because you're you're loving your neighbor there.
Jeffrey Heine:But somebody might say, well, wait a second. Yes, you're loving your neighbor as yourself. That's good. But what about loving God? He says to observe the Sabbath and to not work on the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Jeffrey Heine:So out of love of God, I'm not gonna do this. And so you you seem to have, was like, well, okay. You can make an argument for both. So so what do you do? Well the Bible has case studies.
Jeffrey Heine:And so you're gonna go and you're gonna find, you know, like in Deuteronomy 22, where it's gonna say, hey, if a person's, you know, cart falls in a ditch, you know, help them out. Like, okay, makes sense. And so you have all all of these around the 10 commandments. You have your general principles. You have you're to love the Lord God with all your heart and your soul and your mind, and you have that you're to love your neighbor as yourself.
Jeffrey Heine:It's fleshed out more in these 10 very precise commandments that encapsulate all of the law. But even with those 2, there's gonna be like, well what about this? What about this? And so that's why afterwards you have a few chapters in Exodus going through case studies and you have several chapters in Deuteronomy going through case studies. In those for those ambiguous situations.
Jeffrey Heine:And that's what you're gonna find in the law. Now kind of understanding the structure of the law and and, you know, how this is set up, another more basic question is just to ask, well, why do we try to keep this law? Do these commandments save us? Is that is that what it is? They are they gonna save us?
Jeffrey Heine:And the answer to that is no. Absolutely no. There for 1, you can't keep them, okay? And you're you're not gonna be able to keep them, so don't try to depend on them to save you. But 2, if you look at Exodus, you realize salvation was already given.
Jeffrey Heine:And that is the heading for all ten commandments. Look at Exodus 20 verse 1. Says, 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. So God's already redeemed them. He's already brought them out of slavery at this point.
Jeffrey Heine:He does not give them this law beforehand and say, hey, I'm just gonna kinda watch, see if you keep these up, you do a good enough job, I'll think about, you know, getting rid of pharaoh for you. I'll I'll think about saving you. He doesn't He saves them first. He redeems them first and then He gives them His laws. Like, now that I have saved you, here's how you live.
Jeffrey Heine:And and these laws reflect my heart. You want to know me now? This is what I am like. This is my heart written out in words for you. So so now you you know how you can worship me, you know how you can praise me praise me, you know how you can be like me as as you follow these things, that they won't save you, I've already done that.
Jeffrey Heine:And so it's very important to realize that at the start, otherwise, this law is gonna be this crushing weight on you. Now let's move to Jesus. Now that we've looked at the structure, the structure of the law, let's talk about Jesus and these commandments. Because I believe that these commandments, their ultimate purpose is to point us to Jesus Christ. As the living word of God, just who Jesus is, is the living word of God, as God in flesh, in human form, Jesus can be seen as the embodiment of these words.
Jeffrey Heine:His life, who he is, he is the embodiment of these ten words. If if these ten commandments reveal the heart of God, that's what they were for. It's like, here's my heart. Here comes Jesus who is God, and so he is obviously gonna have the heart of God. And so when we look at Jesus's heart, we're gonna have a much greater understanding of the 10 commandments.
Jeffrey Heine:When we see how he lived, when we see the things that he taught, we can't understand really the 10 commandments, unless we look at the life of Jesus, the Lord God who wrote them. And what we have is when Jesus came into this world, 1400 years after these commandments were written, he set a new standard of what it meant to keep them. Actually, I would say he set a new standard of what it meant to be human. BB Warfield is a famous theologian. He gives this great illustration, I'm gonna rip off him.
Jeffrey Heine:He says that Jesus was the new plumb line. Y'all know what a plumb line is? It's if you need to make sure like a masonry wall is straight or something, you just hang a string with a with a weight at the end of it, and it's perfectly straight. And what you had before Jesus came on the scene, you had people thinking they were upholding the law, thinking they were obeying the law, thinking they were upright. And then Jesus comes, he's the plumb line, and everybody realized they were like this.
Jeffrey Heine:Everybody. They realize, wait a second. They're they're completely slanted. I'm not upright at all. I thought I was keeping the 10 commandments until Jesus came in here.
Jeffrey Heine:He's the embodiment of the 10 Commandments. Jesus, he judged people, or people felt condemned when he just simply was in the room. Because he was the plumb line and everybody was sideways. He didn't even have to say a word, just through his actions and his presence, people realized they were not walking uprightly. And so Jesus' actions teach us how we're going to live these commandments.
Jeffrey Heine:He's the one we have to look to. He's he's the plumb line for us to understand these things. When Jesus went up on the mountain, and he met Elijah, and he met Moses, and he was transfigured, Very similar story to when Moses went up the mountain and was transfigured, received the law. They're almost identical stories here. Jesus did not come down the mountain with new stone tablets.
Jeffrey Heine:It's like, okay. Talking to my father. We've we've we've got Ten Commandments 2nd edition. All right? You've all gotta buy into this.
Jeffrey Heine:He didn't he didn't do that. What you did have up there is the father saying, not I'm giving you new new law, but this is my beloved son. Listen to him now. Listen to him. He's gonna tell you my heart.
Jeffrey Heine:You don't have to you don't have to have the words here anymore because now you're going to hear it from my son, Jesus. Listen to him as he gives it shows you my heart, as he shows you this new law. So now let's, let's walk through some of these commandments. Wow. All right.
Jeffrey Heine:We'll walk through. Let's look at the first commandment. And what I'll probably do is talk about what what each one of them means and then what Jesus teaches about them. And and then we'll take a break and have some q and a. First commandment, you shall have no other gods before me.
Jeffrey Heine:With each of these negative commands, you can also make it a positive, meaning I am the only god you should worship. Right. Not only is it negative, you shall know other gods before me, but I am the only God that you should worship. Now for this group of people, it would have been very important coming out of Egypt in which there's a god everywhere. You know, there's river gods, there's sun gods, pharaoh's a god.
Jeffrey Heine:There's all these gods everywhere. And so right at the start, God pulls them aside and says, just so you know, all those things there, not gods. Not before me. It's like, I I alone am God. He's God's saying he's to be first in all of his all of our lives.
Jeffrey Heine:John Calvin says this, to have no other gods before God means that we are not to transfer to another what belongs to him. And I think that's really good. We are not to transfer to another what belongs to him. And so all praise and all honor belong to God. Affection belongs to God.
Jeffrey Heine:All of our trust belongs to God. And if we transfer that to any other thing, we have broken this first commandment. And this is important for us to understand because as humans, you were created not only to worship something, I would say you were actually created worshiping. You you cannot help but worship. We're made worshiping beings.
Jeffrey Heine:It's not like you could shut it off. What God is saying here is, now that you are made worshiping, you're always gonna give your affection someplace. You're always gonna trust in something. You're always going to think something. It needs to be me.
Jeffrey Heine:Me and nothing else. Now how did Jesus fulfill this commandment? Well, for starters, if you want to look at Matthew chapter 5, Matthew chapter 5, famous story, Jesus tempted in the wilderness. Sorry. Matthew 4.
Jeffrey Heine:And we have Jesus is in the wilderness. He's fasted 40 days 40 nights and Satan tempts him and says, if you're the Son of God, command these stones to become bread. And Jesus says those famous words, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God. This is actually an attack of this first commandment because they're saying, you want me to put my trust, you want me to put my trust in someone other than my father. Like, that the reason I I can stay alive if I just eat.
Jeffrey Heine:He's like, no. No, not at all. He's saying, we don't live by bread alone, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. That means we live because God says live. A lot of people misunderstand what's going on there, but that's what Jesus is saying.
Jeffrey Heine:No, I understand. The reason I'm alive, the reason I've been able to fast for 40 days 40 nights without food or water is because God said, live. There's no other reason for it. So I'm gonna trust God, and I'm not gonna trust in turning this rock into food. So you see Jesus honoring that first commandment.
Jeffrey Heine:You you see this We'll just look at the last one. You see this most obviously in the last one when, you know, Satan's like, hey, I'll give you the world if you just fall down and worship me. Jesus like, be gone. You shall worship the Lord your God and him only will you serve. Will you serve.
Jeffrey Heine:Later Jesus would say things like, you know, he lives to do the will of his father. He says, my food and my drink is to do the father's will. I I'm all about the first commandment. I think probably the best place in which you wanna see this first commandment realized in the life of Jesus is on the cross. When Jesus is on the cross, and it seems like everybody or everybody has left him, You know, that he he's got no friends, he's got no possessions, he's in horrible pain.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, he he's basically he in hell on the cross. What he cries out is, my God, my God. He he says, I still believe in the first commandment. I'm not gonna call out to anybody else, but even though I feel absolutely forsaken, my god, you are my god. And so even in that pit of despair there, Jesus keeps this.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's look at the second commandment. We're not to have any images, or I would say stated positively, is that we are to have spiritual worship. Spiritual worship, not not through some image. So this shows us right off the bat here that God is spiritual in nature. We don't we don't worship through things, or try to make the representation of him.
Jeffrey Heine:And John chapter 4, Jesus says, you're to worship me in spirit and in truth. He's he's talking some about this commandment right here. Jesus regularly went away to pray. Pray is is when you are worshiping, just in spirit. And Christ would do that regularly.
Jeffrey Heine:He he also went and he gathered with people and, and worshiped collectively with the people of God. I love in Luke when it describes him going to this to the synagogue one time. It says, he went to the synagogue as was his habit. I love that little line, as was his habit. Jesus was in the habit of going and meeting with the people to worship God, to spiritually worship.
Jeffrey Heine:He had an entire life of worship. It's just, this is, this one's free. It has nothing to do with the Ten Commandments. But I see in my life and I see in the lives of others, we we like to put up a number of excuses into why we would not be part of a church family or a church home, full of hypocrites, don't like the teaching, I don't really get anything out of the teaching, all this stuff. Do you think Jesus could have had those same arguments?
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, do you just do you think Jesus might have been able to say, walk into a room be like, I'm in a room full of sinners, you know. Or, gosh, I'm really the teacher. Just, you know, He really didn't teach me. I counted 20 heresies, you know. Jesus could say that, but he was in the regular habit of going and worshiping with the people of God.
Jeffrey Heine:What a model for us that Jesus felt that was worthwhile. This commandment also, is given because any representation of God would distort him. It wouldn't fully communicate who God is. Let's say, this might have been the issue with the golden calf in in Exodus 32, but we wanna we wanna show that god is strong. So we're gonna make a golden bull.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, that shows that he's strong. The problem with that is you're comparing God's power to the power of a bull. Like really? Really? Like there there's nothing that you can make, nothing that adequately expresses who he is.
Jeffrey Heine:So don't try. Worship him in spirit, because anything you make is gonna be a false representation, and in this you you kind of have this hint, you know, you got to hear this whisper of God saying, hey, wait 1400 years, and I'm gonna give you the exact representation. Okay? Don't put up a fake one. I'm gonna give you the exact imprint of my nature when I'm going to come in flesh.
Jeffrey Heine:And so this commandment here, Jesus is, he embodies this later. This commandment points to Christ, in which Colossians 115 says, that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. Hebrews 1 3 says that Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. Let's look at the 3rd commandment. You shall not take the Lord's name in vain.
Jeffrey Heine:Stated positively, you're to honor the name of the Lord. To understand this, you have to know, you know, what is a name? A name is a person's character. It's a person's reputation, and this is what we are to honor. And this means so much more than, alright, you're not supposed to say, you know, a swear word with Jesus's name, you know, or a swear word with God's name.
Jeffrey Heine:You're it's not less than that, but it but it certainly is a lot more than that. This means that we're to be honoring God's name at all times. And so one of the ways I think we dishonor that is when, when we bear the name of God as his children. We're Christians. We are Christ ends.
Jeffrey Heine:We we bear the name of Christ. And so if we do not fully represent him well, we dishonor him. When we don't faithfully communicate His heart, we dishonor Him just like if any of my children who are named Brooks go out there and they do horrible, horrible things. It shames me. So one of the ways that we don't keep this commandment is just simply through sin.
Jeffrey Heine:Every time we sin, we're dishonoring the name of God because we bear His name. The people of Israel had the name of God, and they misbehave, and so they poorly reflected on his name. We also break this command, I believe, when we pray for things, and we say, I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. And you just prayed for some of the most unbiblical things you could ever pray for.
Jeffrey Heine:But we we say, but but I prayed it in the name of Jesus, and Jesus it's like, I don't want to be associated with that at all. It's taking the Lord's name in vain. And this is actually a capital offense. This was so severe, and ironically, that's one of the accusations that went against Jesus and had him killed, was that he was a blasphemer. He was a blasphemer.
Jeffrey Heine:Now Jesus teaches us about this commandment in so many places. We're just gonna look at a couple. 1 in the Lord's prayer. Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It's like the very first thing he says.
Jeffrey Heine:My father, our father, may your name be adored. May your name be treasured. May it be may be revered. That is my heart's desire above all else. It's at the very start of the prayer he taught for his disciples.
Jeffrey Heine:You find in John 17, when Jesus prays again, and he's doing what we call the high priestly prayer, he prays this. He he says, Father, I have manifested your name to the people you gave me. Then he prays, holy Father, keep them in your name which you've given me. And so God or Jesus, he he cares so much about the name of his father that he is revealing it correctly to these people. It's his heart desire to to to communicate faithfully the name of God.
Jeffrey Heine:And we don't if you want to do an interesting study, we don't have really the time to do it, but if you want to compare John 17 to verse 11 about when he says, holy father, keep them in your name, compare that to like Ezekiel 192021. Because I think Jesus is contrasting there or pulling that out. There you have, the Israelites are accused by God of profaning his name. Said, you have profaned my name. You haven't kept this commandment.
Jeffrey Heine:And then he says, but for the sake of my name, I'm not gonna allow it to continue. I'm gonna save you. And it uses the language, I will keep you. I will keep you for my name's sake. And here you have Jesus praying here.
Jeffrey Heine:He's like, father, keep them for for for your name. For not you know, not because they've done anything, but, you know, just just because of your name and the the saving power of your name, preserve them. We also have Jesus as the one who reveals to us the triune name of God. When he says baptized in the in the name, the singular name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit. Alright.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's look at the 4th commandment. Remember the Sabbath, keep it holy. This commandment is the only one that was really specified before Mount Sinai. They were already asked, or not asked, told to obey this commandment. You know, like when they were gathering manna and stuff, it's like, oh, but you don't do it on the Sabbath.
Jeffrey Heine:You don't work on the Sabbath. We already saw the Sabbath principle laid out in Genesis. And this commandment, I think it teaches us trust in God. It's one of the reasons it's there. And of course, it's there because God knows we need rest.
Jeffrey Heine:We need rest. But also teaches us trust because most people think they have to work constantly or I'm not gonna make it. And when you have to put it aside one day of work, you have to trust God to take care of you. And so it reminds you, okay, God's the one who's ultimately in control of my life, not me. And so I need to put aside some of these things.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, so I I know some of you feel like if you if you close your computer and and not check email, you know, puppies and kittens are gonna explode all around the world or or something. It's just it's like it's you you can't imagine the horrors that would happen if you if you did that. And God's like, you know what, you got to do it. Trust. Take take time off.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus is actually accused of breaking this commandment when his disciples are picking up grains. And he says, actually, just so you know, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. I'm the one who created this thing, just so you know. I'm Lord over it. And I think this is what Jesus means, if you wanna turn to Luke chapter 4.
Jeffrey Heine:We're actually gonna look at some of this this Sunday as well. Luke 4, Jesus's first sermon. Luke chapter 4. Jesus's first sermon, found in verse 18, when he says, the Spirit of Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
Jeffrey Heine:The year of the Lord's favor is the, the year of jubilee. That's what it is. It's, you find it in Leviticus 25. And what what God has done is he set up every 7th day you rest. But not only that, every 7th year, there's to be a special rest in which you can't farm for an entire year.
Jeffrey Heine:You just eat off the produce there. You're you're to scale back. And then every 7th, 7th year, so after 49 years, there is this ultimate Sabbath, the year of Jubilee. That's when you guys, you just shut down. You are you're you're not working.
Jeffrey Heine:If you have some servants, you release them. Yours to get rid of a lot of your property. I mean, it's just it's total chaos and pandemonium, but it's it's this release to the captives. It's the year of Jubilee. And so, when Jesus starts his ministry, he's saying, hey, I am the ultimate Sabbath.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm just like that year of jubilee is now being fulfilled in me. Right. I wanna go through these next 6, hopefully, somewhat quickly. Alright. I want to go through these next 6, hopefully somewhat quickly.
Jeffrey Heine:5th commandment, honor your father and mother. This is really about honoring all god given authorities in your life. Not just really your father and your mother. You can pick this up a lot in the Apostle Paul and Peter's thinking when they talk about submitting to your authorities, honoring the Emperor. Basically, the people that are appointed by God over us, we honor.
Jeffrey Heine:We we we respect. In Jesus' life, you see this throughout, in which he submitted both, not only to his heavenly father, but also to all the earthly authorities. He submitted to them even when he was being treated unjustly. You see him honoring his mother, even at the cross, in which one of his last words is about his mother, and wanting to take care of her. And so you can see in the life of Jesus how he fulfilled this.
Jeffrey Heine:6th commandment, do not murder. The positive of this would be promote life. Meaning do everything you can to promote the life and the welfare and the joy of others. I like to think of this verse kind of like gardening, in which you know, you're you kind of get your hands dirty, and you you really you kind of water, and you get the right fertilizer, and you do all of this to to bring out the potential, to really bring out the life in something. And that's what we're to do.
Jeffrey Heine:We're to seek that in others. We're to invest in others, and we're to work ourselves in their lives, and we're to to water, and we're to fertilize, and we're trying to make something beautiful and alive. Jesus, he said, the thief comes only to steal and to kill and destroy, but I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. Later he would say in John 14, I am the way, the truth and the life. So of course Jesus keeps this because everything he did was life giving.
Jeffrey Heine:Everything. Let's go ahead and go to 7, because I want y'all to have a break and be able to ask questions. If y'all want more of 6, just ask me in the q and a. 7th commandment, don't commit adultery. We're depositive.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus expounded on this in the sermon of the mountain. He says, I tell you, if you have even a lustful thought, you've committed adultery. Okay. So this is not just what happens physically. This is what happens in your heart.
Jeffrey Heine:It's interesting to think, well, how did Jesus fulfill this? Because Jesus, despite what the DaVinci code, you know, tells you, Jesus never took a bride. He remained single all of his life. However, through throughout the bible, marriage is always seen as this picture of God's relationship with us. This is throughout.
Jeffrey Heine:You see that adultery is when you go after idols. And so what we see in Jesus's life throughout is that, he was the only faithful man to God. And he set the standard of what actually marriage should look like, and you find that in Ephesians 5 when Paul is explaining marriage. He's like, hey, you wanna know what marriage is? Look at Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Like Jesus God is the one who made marriage in order to represent his love for us. And there's a there's a lot of parallels, if you study the life of Adam and the life of Jesus concerning marriage. We can't go into all of them, but just as Adam had to be put to sleep and he woke up to find his bride, you have Jesus having to be put to sleep, having to die. When he wakes up, he finds his bride. Just as, you know, it had to be pierced in the side, Adam had to be pierced in the side in order to get the rib to form his bride.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus had to be pierced. And and you can make a lot of these comparisons and see the the first man, and then you can see Adam, or Christ the second man, and how they both got their brides, and how Jesus lays down His life and loves His bride with total faithfulness, His bride being the church. 8th commandment, do not steal. The positive of this is be generous. And you see this in Christ's life.
Jeffrey Heine:He freely gave of everything. He would give up his time. He would give up his possessions. If he didn't have anything, he'd make food and give it out. I mean, Jesus is giving constantly.
Jeffrey Heine:You don't ever see Jesus going around just taking. He doesn't do it. He's always giving. 9th commandment, do not lie or bear false witness. So the positive of that is always be truthful.
Jeffrey Heine:This is this carries with it not only the the idea of your to not tell a lie, but you are also to you're also to want to honor the reputation of those around you. That's why it says, like, not to falsely accuse. You want to honor the reputation of those around you. You're you're to not ever even let a shadow, shadow of dishonor come from your lips about another person. You don't do that.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus, of course, fulfilled this perfectly. You know, he would say a number of things. Like he would he would tell, people who said, if you abide in my word and are truly my disciples, you're going to know the truth. You will know truth. Not falsehood.
Jeffrey Heine:Not everything you've been clinging to, but truth, and that's gonna set you free. One of my favorite verses that speaks a whole lot about Christ in this area is from 1st Peter 222, in which Peter says he committed no sin, neither was there deceit in his mouth. You think about it, Peter traveled with Jesus everywhere. They were on the campfire together, they would know, sleep in homes together, they're on the road together all the time. And to think after all of that constant communication, Peter says, never, never did I hear one deceitful thing from his mouth.
Jeffrey Heine:It's unbelievable. 10th commandment, thou shalt not covet. Or stated positively, live content lives. Live in a continuous state of thanksgiving. We all hate this commandment.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's be honest. Alright. Let's just, you know, we we all hate it, Because it goes straight for the heart, unlike the others that start with the action. This was like, forget action. You know, you could just be sitting here, hands folded, and you could be coveting.
Jeffrey Heine:Straight for the heart. No commandment, I think, was seen more readily in the life of Jesus than this, not coveting. He didn't have a house. He didn't have a wife. He didn't have any of those possessions.
Jeffrey Heine:He could have had them all, but he didn't. He didn't even have a tomb. You know, it was in a borrowed person's tomb. He could have been, you know, like the pharaohs around him, the the kings around him, he could have had a palace, or he could have asked his disciples to start working on that giant pyramid, you know, some tomb. He could have done all that, but no.
Jeffrey Heine:Not at all. He could have used his miracles to make himself rich. He could have used his miracles to, you know, to make his reputation go all around the world and just done all the dramatic for that. But Jesus only used his power to serve others. It's remarkable.
Jeffrey Heine:He could have used it all for him, but he was the exact opposite of coveting. He always used the power that he had to help others. So so if you wanna understand what this commandment means, you have to look at Jesus. To not covet is to use the powers that you have to improve the life of others, not to take the things you like from the life of others. You're constantly working in your words and in your deeds to improve what the other people already have.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright. Summary, I wanna take a break. In all these commandments we see, Christ keep them perfectly. He exegetes them, if you will. He explains them through the way he lives and through the words he says about them.
Jeffrey Heine:He's the new plumb line. He comes in and you're like, wow. I didn't understand the commandments at all. I didn't know what not coveting meant until I saw you, Jesus. I I had no idea.
Jeffrey Heine:I didn't know what not murdering meant until I saw you, saying, hey, if your enemy even hits you, don't get angry, just turn your other cheek. I I didn't even know that. He's the new plumb line. And this is extremely important to us for two reasons. One, it shows us how we should live.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus is an example to us. First Peter tells us that. Christ is an example. He's not only an example. He's much more than an example, but he's certainly not anything less than an example.
Jeffrey Heine:And so we have to look at Jesus, and how he fulfilled these ten commandments, so they could be part of our life. And also, it's important for us because as Christians, we like to talk a lot about the imputed righteousness of God on us. How Jesus gives us his righteousness. And usually when we think of that, we go straight to the cross, and we kind of think of this passive obedience of Jesus on the cross. But actually his righteousness came from his entire life.
Jeffrey Heine:His entire life lived keeping these commandments. All the places we fail, fell, Jesus did not. He kept them. And so, he lived the life that we should have lived, and he died the death that we should have died. It reminds me of Romans 5:19, it says, for as by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners.
Jeffrey Heine:So by the one man's obedience, Jesus, the many will be made righteous. And so when we see the Ten Commandments, we see the life that we should have lived, but Jesus lived in our place. With that, let's