Three months after leaving Egypt, the Israelites reach Mount Sinai. God calls to Moses from the mountain and tells him to tell the people that if they obey Him and keep His covenant, they will be His "treasured possession". The Israelites had been shown favour by God before - He had brought them out of Egypt, after all - but that was because of the promises He had made to their ancestors, Abraham and Jacob. This is the moment when the Israelites themselves become a chosen people. I think the phrases God uses are really important. When He calls them His treasured possession, it doesn't mean that of all the people He only likes them. You may cherish one particular thing above all others, but it doesn't mean you stop like everything else. God never stopped caring about the rest of His creation. And it's interesting that this promise comes with a condition - God will favour them only if they keep His commands. God will prize them above all other peoples only if the prove themselves more worthy. However, that doesn't mean that His love was conditional, only their status. God also calls Israel "a kingdom of priests". If all of the Israelites are priests, then who is their congregation? It must be everyone else. God hadn't forgotten everybody else - He wanted to use Israel to reach them, to bring them into the covenant too. It's not God' fault if the Israelites selfishly kept God's promises to themselves.
Moses gives God's word to the people and they promise to obey Him, so He tells Moses to tell the people to consecrate themselves because He is going to appear to them. God also tells Moses to set limits around the base of the mountain because if anybody touches the mountain while He is there, they will die. He is very definite on this point and seems most anxious to make sure it is understood. I'm not entirely sure why the people couldn't come to near to God, though I think it's probably something to do with Him being so awesome and them being so lowly and sinful that neither of them could stand the presence of the other. Whatever the case, I think the most important point is that God wanted His people to see Him and experience something of His power, but He also wanted to keep them safe. Things are different now, though. Our sins have been washed away and we have been raised up, so that we can now enter the presence of God without fear. More of that later.
So the people consecrate themselves and gather around the base of the mountain, and God appears in great fire and smoke preceded by thunder and lightening. He certainly knows how to put on a show. And then He delivers to Moses the Ten Commandments. These seventeen verses are some of the most important and well-known in the whole Bible, but maybe because of that they are often skimmed over. They're so familiar that they can sort of fade into the background of our minds, but I think it's worth spending some time really looking at what they are and what they mean for us:
You shall have no other gods before me. To some, this may sound like a slightly redundant commandment. There are no other gods - when it comes to supreme divine beings, God's the only one - so how could we have any other gods, before Him or otherwise? The answer is we can't, but maybe that's not what this commandment is about. If, as in yesterday's passage, we understand 'gods' to mean something along the lines of 'rulers', then what God is really saying here is "You shall have no higher authority than me". God is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, the big boss, the head honcho. It is His law that we obey, it is He who we most respect and revere, and it is from Him that we seek guidance and protection. No man has more power or authority than God, and all human leaders are under Him.
You shall not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. The first commandment was about who we obey and where our loyalties lie. This second commandment is about who we worship. The word 'images' is sometimes used in place of 'idols', but there is a clear distinction. There is nothing inherently wrong with making images (or objects or ideas for that matter) but they can become idols when we set them in place of God and begin to worship them, and that is what this commandment forbids. And notice God says we are not to make idols of "anything". This isn't just about worshipping statues of other (false) gods. It's about our attitudes towards everything - cars, shoes, money, power, fame, relationships...the list could go on. We should value nothing higher than God. But there's more here than just the commandment, because God goes on to say that He is a jealous God and that He will punish sinners' children to the third and fourth generations, but He will love to a thousand generations of those who love and obey Him. I don't believe God really does punish children for the sins of the father, I think what this really means is that God's anger is nothing compared to His boundless love.
You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. Although the word is not used in this verse, this commandment is essentially about blasphemy in its widest sense. The word blasphemy originally comes from Greek words meaning "I injure" and "reputation"- in essence, it is anything that injures God's reputation. That can include demeaning Him by using His name flippantly, making false promises in His name, attributing evil things to Him and seeking to excuse our own sin by claiming we were acting in His name. Taking the Lord's name in vain is often seen as a lesser crime because other than causing offence (to those dismissively described as sensitive) it doesn't appear to harm anyone, but is that really the case? Many writers, including Thomas Aquinas and the authors of the Book of Concord, have described blasphemy as the greatest of all sins because it is an offence specifically directed at God. He has feelings too, and we need to recognise that and make a conscious effort not to hurt them.
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. This is the one that puzzles me the most. Not the commandment itself, but our inability to keep it. We're constantly complaining about how tired and busy we are, and here is God telling us to have a day off and just relax, and yet we don't listen. For intelligent beings, we can be incredibly dim at times. We clearly haven't quite got this one yet, so let's look for a moment at what God actually says. God tells us not to work on the Sabbath because he made the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. This tells us three things. 1) The only instruction is not to work. Somewhere along the line, so many Sabbath laws were invented that it became a nuisance and a chore, but here all God says is "don't work". In other words, chill out. That's all. 2) God made the entire universe in six days, so we have no excuse for not getting all of our work done in that time. We don't need to work every day, and we can afford to take a day off. 3) Even God rested. I very much doubt that He needed a break, so I can only presume that He took a day off simply because He wanted to. I don't know what He did during that time, but I'm sure He really enjoyed it. Taking some time out to relax and have fun is a good thing, and we shouldn't feel guilty about it. We have permission.
Honour your father and mother. It is often noted that this is the only commandment that comes with a reward - "so you may live long in land the Lord your God is giving you". I think it is this addendum that is the key to understanding the commandment. Family was hugely important to the Israelites - you only need to look at the number of genealogies given in the Old Testament to see that. Society was built around the family, and it was family that defined and preserved the nation of Israel as history, culture and religion were passed down from parents to their children. They could only live long in the promised land if the people remained united, and that could only happen if families held together. This was about more than just the people respecting their parents, it was about community. We should naturally honour our parents as fellow human beings, and as the people who brought us into the world and cared for us when we were most vulnerable, but we should also think a little wider and consider how we respond to society at large.
You shall not murder/You shall not commit adultery/You shall not steal/You shall not give false testimony about your neighbour. I'll treat these four together, because they all come under the general heading of "Be nice to other people". God doesn't give any reasons for instating these laws, and I don't think He needs to. They form the basic principles of any moral code anywhere at anytime and I don't think many would argue with any of them. Plenty of people break them, but mostly they do so in the knowledge that they are doing something wrong. But why is it wrong when we can gain a lot from committing any one of these acts? Well, you could argue that it's about maintaining a harmonious society, but that's only part of it. Deep down the vast majority of us know that we should treat people the way we expect to be treated simply because it's right. We were made in the image of a loving God, and it's hardwired into us to care about others.
You shall not covet. This is an interesting one, because jealousy has no direct victim. Being jealous of someone doesn't hurt them, so why forbid it? Well, it can lead to murder or adultery or theft, which can all in turn lead to lies, so maybe God forbids it as a preventative measure. I think that's probably part of it, but I don't think that's the whole story. Because covetousness does have a victim - the person doing the coveting. Jealousy leads to dissatisfaction with our own lives, which can eat away at us and make us miserable and angry. It can also lead to us neglecting and losing what we do have. Maybe God warns us against it because He is trying to protect us. That may explain why we shouldn't be jealous, but didn't God just describe Himself as a jealous God? Isn't that a little hypocritical? It puzzled me for a long time, but with a little guidance, I've come to believe that this is because God is jealous for us out of love, whereas we are jealous out of greed. God's motives are faultless while ours leave a lot to be desired, and that is the difference.
So, in brief, there are the Ten Commandments. Just ten laws we have to follow. Should be easy, right?
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