The Hand Of God, Sept. 21, 2014

The Hand of God

 

Exodus 20:1-17

Grace Presbyterian Church

September 21, 2014

Rev. Dr. Richard E. Miller

Constitution Day  Weren’t the celebrations last Wednesday great? With ceremonies, songs and speeches? With flags, parades, and fireworks? As a certified Son of the American Revolution, I was filled with great pride.

How about you? How did you celebrate? You didn’t? I’m a bit surprised because I thought everyone was celebrating Constitution Day. “What’s Constitution Day?” you ask. It celebrates that day of September 17, 1787 when fifty-five delegates from twelve of the thirteen states met in Independence Hall in Philadelphia to ratify the United States Constitution. [Rhode Island did not participate.]

Actually, there were no celebrations or parades or speeches last Wednesday, but there should have been. After all, our Constitution created the foundation for our government so that we, one nation under God, may live with clear guidelines for how we live together. I believe the Hand of God guided those delegates in their meeting that day.

Commandments  But this wasn’t the first time the Hand of God guided his people. This morning and in the weeks to come, we’re going to take a closer look at the 313 words of the Ten Commandments. 313 words. Really very short. Yet it seems that all great words of wisdom are short. The proclamation that “God is love” has three words.  The Lord’s Prayer has 66 words. The Beatitudes have 141 words. The Gettysburg Address has 286 words. The Bill of Rights has 463 words.

And, oh my goodness! My sermon this morning has 1,801 words. Maybe I should cut it back to 313 words. Then we’d be finished with worship seventeen minutes early! Well, maybe another time.

The Decalogue  I’d like to start looking at the Ten Commandments by sharing a few facts about them. First of all, they are also known as the Decalogue. “Deca” meaning ten, and “logue” from logos meaning word. Thus we could call them the “Ten Words.” And these “Ten Words,” in one way or another, have been the spiritual, moral and ethical foundation for three major religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

How the commandments came into being  Second, let us refresh our memories as to how these commandments came into being. It all started when God sent Moses to Egypt to lead the Israelites to freedom after over 300 years of slavery. Their destination was a place called the Land of Milk and Honey, or the Promised Land.

It was like a Shangri-La, a paradise or utopia where they would, in their minds, live happily ever after. It was, as scriptures tell us, a land with flowing streams, a land of wheat and barley, of olive trees and honey where you will lack nothing. [Deuteronomy 8]

However, to get to this Land of Milk and Honey, the Israelites had to cross the vast wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula, an area of 23,000 square miles. To do this, they took used their GPS - God’s Positioning System. God led them by going before them as a cloud by day and as fire by night. God provided them water to drink and manna and quail to eat. Finally, the Israelites reached Mount Sinai, a mountain rising 7,497 feet into the air.

Moses ascended the mountain where God said to him, “Say to the people, “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.” [Exodus 19] When the people heard these words, they responded “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.”

it was a relationship in which God said, “I will be your God,” and the people responded, “We will be your people.” At this point, a covenant relationship had been established between God and his people.

Then God gave them the conditions of their covenant relationship in the form of the Ten Commandments. And suddenly, the tired, raggedy group of former Egyptians slaves who had no identity of themselves as a people, and no idea of God, became the chosen race, a priestly kingdom, a holy nation. All because God gave them the Ten Commandments.

And their goal as a people of God was to show their thanks to God for their deliverance from slavery by following God’s commandments. However, we must remember that they followed the Ten Commandments not to gain favor with God for they already enjoyed his favor. Nor were obeying the commandments a means of obtaining their salvation, for God had already saved them. Instead, they obeyed the commandments out of gratitude for God’s favor and for their salvation.

Closer look at the Commandments  Now let’s look a bit closer at the commandments themselves. I don’t know if you noticed as we were reading them that the first four commandments address our relationship with God - worship no other gods, do not bow down to idols, do not misuse the name of Lord, and keep the Sabbath day holy. The last six commandments deal specifically with our interactions with one another. Honor your father and mother, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness against your neighbor, and do not covet anything that your neighbor has. Thus, both our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationships with each other are addressed.

What Do You Think?   Now that we’ve refreshed out memories about these commandments, what do you think of them? Are they simply musty old laws buried in the sands of time that have little or no relevance to the modern world in which we live? Are they, as some people think, “wet blankets of pleasures”? In a way, I can understand why such thoughts exist because eight of the ten commandments say, “Don’t do this,” or “Don’t do that.” They stir up memories of our youth.

“Don’t stay out too late! Don’t forget to do your chores! You can’t go out and play until your homework is done! Don’t chew with your mouth open!” On and on the “don’ts” of our childhood could be listed. And we easily end up identifying with the little boy at his first day of kindergarten. When the teacher asked his name, he said, “My name is ‘Don’t Willie’”  By and large, we human beings hate being told what we should do or can’t do. It takes all the fun out of life because it infringes upon our freedom and happiness.

Great Joy However, I suggest this morning that the Decalogue is a source of great joy. Why? The commandments give us boundaries and guidelines of appropriate behavior with each other and provide a way for all people to live together in happiness. They point us in the direction we should go. One person noted: “The law is not over us to condemn us, but under our feet to be a guide for our path.” [Richard E. Phillips]

This observation echoes Psalm 119:105 which states: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.” Thus, God’s commandments bring order out of chaos and safety out of danger.

Take Them Seriously  What about us today? How much do the commandments of God mean to us. Recent Gallup Poll showed that 84% of Americans believe that the Ten Commandments are a valuable guide to life. That’s sounds pretty good until another survey revealed that only 30% of people polled could name even three of the commandments. It is important that we take these commandments seriously rather than being like the person who said, “It is important to learn the commandments so that you’ll know how to break them properly.”

And the the commandments are not, as some people think, “Ten Suggestions for a Better Life” or “Ten Ways You Should Consider”. Nor are they the “Ten Habits of Highly Successful People” or “Ten Ways to Climb the Ladder” or “Ten Ideas That Might Work For You.”

 

Sometimes we trivialize them. It’s like the father who was giving his teenage daughter a lecture on her wild behavior. “Do you know what happens,” he concluded, “when you break one of the Ten Commandments? “Sure, Dad,” was the reply, “You still have nine left.”

Love God and Neighbor  Now if you can’t remember each of the Ten Commandments, Jesus made it easy for you. He was asked by a Pharisee, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? He said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” [Matthew 22:36-40]. What this means is simple. If we love God with all our heart, soul and mind, we will follow the first four commandments. It is because of our love for God that we worship only him, refuse to follow the gods of power, money, sex, and materialism, and remember the Sabbath Day. And if we love our neighbor as ourselves, we will follow the next six commandments. It is out of our love of our neighbor that we remain faithful to marriage covenants and refuse to steal, or murder, or covet what our neighbor has.

We must remember also that following the Commandments are not a means of salvation, for we have already been saved. They are not a means of making God love us more, for God already loves us fully and completely. Instead, we follow the commandments as an expression of our love for God.

So the Ten Commandments are gifts from God, not wet blankets thrown over our happiness, for with them order emerges out of the chaos in our lives and our society. Let us remember and celebrate these commandments as God’s promises to us for a life free from all that hurts and destroys by which our lives are conformed to the rhythm of God’s gracious will. And always remember, the Ten Commandments are not multiple choice! Amen.