The Ten Commandments have been used in a variety of ways even within the Bible. As a summary of the moral law based on the very order of creation you might use the Ten Commandments to show an unbeliever that they are a sinner in need of forgiveness through Jesus Christ. As a believer who is thankful for being saved from slavery to sin and death by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you might look at the Ten Commandments as a guide for training your conscience to make decisions that are pleasing to God. These can be good ways to use the Ten Commandments. I have even advocated using the Ten Commandments in these ways in my preaching and teaching from other passages of Scripture. But today we are going to go in a different direction because of the context of our passage. Here in Exodus 20:1-21 the Ten Commandments were not addressed to an unbeliever. Actually, they are not even addressed to individual believers. Here in Exodus the Lord was speaking to the people of Israel assembled together and now is speaking to His church. God speaks all these words to a community that He has saved from slavery and death. And all these words are not even primarily about you but about God and what He will do through you together. The commandments reveal something of the character of our God, but in particular they reveal the passion that the Lord has for His people and through His people the world. It is the passion of a bridegroom for His bride.
Also as a bonus below is the audio of this message preached at the Niagara Gospel Rescue Mission that evening, only missing less than a minute at the end where the battery gave out:
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God wants an intimate relationship with His people where He is the husband of a pure bride.
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The Lord was very passionate about this relationship with Israel. He said that they will have no other gods in His presence (“before me” is meant in the sense of “in His presence” not in the sense of priority that He is to be first and other gods are to be second and third and etc.). He wanted the people of Israel to have an exclusive relationship with Him – they are not to have any other gods on the side. He even described Himself in the second commandment as “a jealous God.” You might not think of jealousy as a positive attribute, but a holy jealousy is important in an exclusive relationship like marriage. God was passionate about His people and wanted them to be passionate about Him such that He continues this commandment with language of hate and love – “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.” It is because the Lord wants an intimate relationship with His pure bride that among the commandments regarding how the people of Israel were to treat each other that He says, “You will not commit adultery” and also “you will not covet your neighbor’s wife.” The Ten Commandments were designed then so that Israel would come to know God better – to “know” being first a relationship word. Yet instead of being intimate with God we are told at the end of this passage that the people stood far off while Moses drew near to where God was – Moses tells us that the people were afraid instead of having the right kind of “fear” – the same word used in Scripture to describe the “respect” of a wife for her jealous husband.
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The Ten Commandments are then the Lord’s love story for His church. For the Lord loved His church by bringing her out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And the Lord loved us by saving us from slavery to sin and death through His death and resurrection. Such is the passion of the Lord to have an intimate relationship with His church. We don’t strive to keep the Ten Commandments in order to be saved, for He has already saved us. Thus now in Christ we draw near to God on the invisible Mount Zion today without being afraid but respecting the Lord as our husband. He is jealous for that relationship – wanting His church to have no other Lord or gods. And these Ten Commandments describe His church as the pure and spotless bride that He will make her.
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God will make His people into that pure bride as a witness to the nations.
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One way that the Ten Commandments in Exodus show this is through the theme of Israel as a new creation. When God spoke from heaven in Genesis 1, He brought order out of chaos to the creation. When God spoke from heaven on that mountaintop in Exodus 20, He was bringing order out of chaos to His new creation Israel. The Ten Commandments tell us what God is like – therefore they show us what it looks like to be re-created in the image of God. When God tells Israel that they will remember the Sabbath day the reason given in Exodus is the pattern of creation for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and rested on the seventh day. Among other things this pattern means the people of Israel were called to participate in this new creation work. The next commandment mentions the Promised Land, which was a new Garden of Eden. Thus they were a new creation community saved to make all things new. This is another way of saying they were remade into the Lord’s pure bride as a witness to the rest of the earth.
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The Ten Commandments then are the Lord’s description of what He is doing through His church. They describe His church as His treasured possession or a special people. It is for this reason that they are to treat one another as treasured by God. The church is a holy nation different from the rest of the nations – different because the nations worship many gods and use idols but the church will worship the Lord alone and only the way He wants to be worshiped. The church is a kingdom of priests witnessing to the nations not only with her words by also through her lifestyle – including resting for the Lord’s day and then participating in the work of new creation for the next six days. The Ten Commandments are not about you doing the law but about what God is doing through you together. God is transforming His church in order to witness to the nations. He can only marry a pure bride and so the Lord Jesus Christ died for her sins and she will be His spotless bride. As the apostle Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5:25-27). Amen.
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