I think it is important to approach
the 10 Commandments the way we are today.
That is, not reading just them, but the whole story that leads up to
them. For when you read just them you
get the idea they are simple list of ten dos and don’ts. But when you put them in their broader story
you understand them far more deeply.
We’ve been following the Israelites
from slavery and now into the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula. Last week we encountered the somewhat
terrifying text where God asks them if they will be his chosen people. They say yes, but we are wondering if it was
a decision made out of devotion or out of fear.
Indeed if it was fear it was justified, for look at how our text
begins. Limits are set between the
people and Mt. Sinai. And at the
appointed time God comes upon the mountain.
There is thunder, lightning, thick clouds and trumpet blasts. God’s presence is blinding, deafening, and
completely overpowering. It is as if the
fabric of the earth cannot withstand it and is coming apart. It creates a fear which penetrates to the
toughest of people and leaves them trembling and terrified. And just as you think it cannot possibly grow
more deafening, more blinding, or more terrifying it does. And then it does again and again and even
more terrifying still. God’s presence
creates fear beyond imagination.
We should never make the mistake of
trying to tame God. The ancient
Israelites knew that. Sometimes the love
of Christ makes us think we can domesticate the all-powerful, all-knowing, and
ever-present creator of this universe.
Nothing, nothing ever has and ever will be able to put up any resistance
to our God whatsoever. God is God. Always and forever.
In the midst of this terror something
unexpected happens. Theologian Walter
Brueggemann notes this, “The terrible, holy God of Sinai is always at the brink
of “breaking out” against Israel and spilling over in self-aggrandizing
destructiveness. We are, in light of
that danger, hardly prepared for the proclamation of the Ten Commandments in
this next unit. The God who threatens to
break out in inexplicable rage instead breaks out in magisterial command.” (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 1, Pg.
839)
In my opinion that is key to understanding
the Ten Commandments. That sets us up to
see a progression forming. The Ten
Commandments are usually broken into two tablets: one concerning relations to
God and one concerning relations to neighbors.
If you remember in art they are often depicted as four Roman numerals on
one stone tablet and six on the other – not divided equally as five and five.
I do not believe the scene of God’s
terrifying presence is intended to frighten the people into obedience. It is a statement of reality. God’s power and presence is so infinite that
not even something as tough the nuclei of atoms in the rocks can bear his
presence. With that in mind, hear the
first four commands: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land
of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself and
idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on
the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth...
“You shall not make wrongful use of
the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses
his name.
“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it
holy…”
All of these commands are in light of
God’s presence and in light of God’s creative work. God is infinite. Do not turn elsewhere for everything else is
false hope. Do not make a graven
image. Nothing made by human hands of
created matter can contain or express the unlimited power of God. Here are Walter Brueggermann’s words again,
“The command asserts that nothing in creation is usable in making God visible
or available. God’s sovereign mystery is
discontinuous from everything and anything in creation. The propensity to encapsulate God in creation
leads to an attempt to retain for ourselves control over some piece of
creation… To imagine that anything in
creation could possibly embody the creator God is a result of ‘futile thinking’
and ‘senseless darkened minds’”. (New
Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 1, Pg. 843-4)
Continuing with the commands, do not
use God’s name wrongfully, for you are calling upon a power you do not
understand and cannot control. At its
worst are those who seek to do things in God’s name that are not God’s will,
but are their own wills. God does not
take lightly those who use his name for selfish ends. And yet this command does direct us to use
God’s name. We should invoke God’s power
and sovereignty when we seek to build up, to be constructive, and when we try
to improve. What football coach would
start a second string quarterback when the first string guy is healthy and
ready? Similarly, don’t attempt to do
things on your own when God’s big power is there for the connecting.
I want to make an interesting jump
before going on to the second table of the commandments. Consider the final verses of our reading:
“You need make for me only an altar of earth and sacrifice on it your burnt
offerings and your offerings of well-being, your sheep and your oxen; in every
place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you. But if you make for me an altar of stone, do
not build it of hewn stones, for if you use a chisel upon it you profane it.”
What an interesting teaching following
after the centrality if the 10 Commandments.
To be honest, no one knows exactly what this means, but I feel a sense
that in light of God’s majesty and creative power that we began with, God does
not want humans thinking they can improve upon God’s own materials to create
worship sites. For God the purest form
of a worship and sacrifice site is for the materials to reflect the forces of
nature – the world’s own creative and shaping techniques: water, wind, geologic
processes, perhaps even natural decay.
In time this would change. The
temple would be built in Jerusalem, but even then, there was a command to hew
all the stones and cut all the wood off site so that the sounds of human
changing would not take place on the temple sight.
We humans have this arrogance that we
can improve on things. Don’t get me
wrong, with my own engineering background I’m not suggesting we should go back
to living in caves and become hunter gatherers.
But we do tend to get impressed with our own constructive
abilities. We love building and improving:
skyscrapers, sports stadiums, and cathedrals name just a few. There’s also a micro sense too. Remember the old DuPont ad campaign? “Better
living through chemicals.” As if life
could be better through human manipulation.
I think God laughs, perhaps scoffs, at our feeble attempts at
improvement – at making things holy.
And now we conclude with the final six
commandments – the ones about human relationships. Do you understand the progression that has
taken place? First acknowledge God’s
sovereignty. Because of that be in right
relationship with God. And because of
being in right relationship with God, now you have the foundation in place to
be in right relationships with others.
The second tablet: honor parents,
don’t kill, steal, have out of bound sexual relationships, lie, or crave things
that don’t belong to you is not a set of virtues on its own, but built upon
God’s own revelation.
Again Walter Brueggemann, “The second
tablet is not just a set of good moral ideas.
It contains conditions of viable human life, non-negotiable conditions
rooted in God’s own life and God’s ordering of the world. Thus it is important to ‘get it right’ about
Yahweh, in order to ‘get it right’ about neighbor.” (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 1, Pg. 839)
In other words, to say things like the
Bible’s moral codes are simply based on fairness and decency is to miss the
point. To say that Biblical ethics are
about being a good person is also to miss the point. The Bibles moral codes are based on God’s
creative work and respecting God’s sovereignty.
When you know who you are before God, then and only then are you ready
to truly know who you are with others, and who they are before God and you.
May you fear and love the Lord,
knowing that God is infinitely powerful, but also gracious, merciful and
abounding in steadfast love. And may that
serve as the foundation for all your relationships everywhere.
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