Loving YHWH By Honouring Your Parents & Loving Your Neighbour

[0:00] on. Anyway, good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a nice day out there, and everyone's in good voice. Okay, just in case. There we go. My notes are still here, so we're in business. Well, as you know, if you've been coming regularly, you're in a series in Exodus, and last Sunday you came to chapter 20, which was the beginning of the Ten Commandments, and today we're going to carry on with those. I think you looked at the first four last time.

[0:38] We're going to be looking at verses, specifically verses 12 to 17, and in your church Bibles, I think that's page 56 or 57, and I just looked it up, and I said, well, if you can read that print, your eyes are a lot better than mine. So that's all about all you say about that.

[0:58] You know, I realize that there are many people in society today, even within the church, who would say that the Ten Commandments are really just an Old Testament affair, that they belong to a God of wrath who demands from his people, and then he punishes them when they fail, whereas the New Testament offers a God of love, forgiveness, and grace through Jesus Christ, and those are common views both inside and outside the church. But one of the main points we need to know with regard to the Ten Commandments is that the God who spoke these words to his people at Mount Sinai is the God who delivered, redeemed, and saved them from slavery in Egypt. Therefore, it was the God of salvation who imposed his law upon his people, and we shouldn't fail to see that the grace that saves preceded the law that demands. And you see, the people were not given the law so that they might be saved. No, they were given the law because God had already saved them. The law of God is the way of life that he sets before his covenant people, and his people are to seek obedience to his law out of their love and gratitude, which is inspired by the redeeming, saving love that he has shown to us.

[2:33] And if we think about the Ten Commandments from a New Testament perspective, the good news of salvation in Christ is, in large part, the promise of a transformed, a new life. But transformed into what?

[2:50] You see, the Bible's answer to that is transformed into a life according to God's law, summarized here for us in the Ten Commandments. And that is, we are saved to keep the commandments of God. It was the Lord himself who said, if you love me, then you will keep my commandments. And as the 19th century Scottish missionary and preacher, one of my favorites, the rabbi John Duncan put it, the best preaching is always, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and keep the Ten Commandments. You know, for generations, that was accepted wisdom by almost everyone. We need to know and live by the Ten Commandments.

[3:36] But sadly, you won't hear that that often these days, and you'll probably hear it less and less as time goes on. Last week, Cal took you through the first four of the commandments, and I hope you noticed that the Ten Commandments actually divide quite neatly into two sections.

[3:53] The first four are about God. In a sense, they are our duties to God in thought, word, and deed. Well, Numbers 5 to 10, which we're going to look at this morning, could be headlined as our duties to society in thought, word, and deed.

[4:11] They set out the parameters for our obedience, and as Jesus would instruct us in the New Testament, they show us how we are required to think about God, and how we are required to think about our relationships with other people.

[4:27] And our focus this morning, as I said, is going to be on the commandments 5 to 10. Those are verses 12 to 17, which are our commandments requiring, or actually regarding society and how we are to relate within it.

[4:41] Let me just make one point before we begin, is that our duties to society are important, and they do occupy six of the ten spots on the list.

[4:53] However, our duty to God always and absolutely comes first. Over and above all our other duties, it's never to be confused or to be merged with any other duty that we feel we may owe to anyone or anything or anyone else in the world.

[5:11] And as Jesus himself placed duty to others below his duty to God, we must realize that our obedience and our love of God is a distinct thing, and it must always come first.

[5:28] So I'm going to read now, and let me pray for us, and then I'm going to read. So let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, we come to this portion of our worship now where we have our Bibles open in our laps.

[5:40] Your word in front of us, and it's to you and you alone we turn to help us, to help us understand, to open our hearts, open our minds, and to make these words on the page come alive, meaningful to us, so that we might change.

[5:56] And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to start at verse 1, but I'm going to sort of summarize the first 11 verses. You can follow along in your Bible. It'll be easy.

[6:06] But then when we get to verse 12, I'll read verbatim from that point. 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.

[6:19] 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.

[6:32] You shall not bow down to them or serve them. 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.

[6:44] Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

[6:57] Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.

[7:07] 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.

[7:25] Well, may the Lord bless the reading of his word. Well, if you look there at verse five where we begin and it enjoys, yes, it enjoins respect for, did I say verse five?

[7:37] I meant commandment five, sorry. Actually, we begin by Moses enjoining respect for parents. Duty towards parents is the most binding obligation of duty toward God that we have after our duty to God.

[7:54] The commandment is not only addressed to young children, but it's actually addressed to people of any age with parents. It also seems to me that it's a sort of transition commandment.

[8:07] It's the first of the commandments to deal with our duties to society, but notice that it specifically refers to the family, which says to me that our duty to society and others begins with our duties to the family.

[8:23] And if we consult our Bibles, we find that, well, the family is ordained by God from the very start of Genesis, and it continues on throughout the New Testament as foundational to the kingdom of God.

[8:36] So if we take the numbering of the Ten Commandments literally, we have duty to God first, duty to the family second, and then duty to society third.

[8:48] And it was the prophet Ezekiel who said that the honoring of parents is the key to social stability. And an interesting point here is, I mean, notice the equality given to both parents.

[9:02] The same honor is given to both the mother and the father. Now, the next four commandments, six to nine, are related in the sense that they are neither new nor unique to the Ten Commandments.

[9:18] To murder, to commit adultery, to steal, to tell lies about people have always been forbidden in many, many societies. Look at verses six, seven, and eight.

[9:29] They uphold the three pillars upon which society rests. The sacredness of human life, the sanctity of marriage, and the right to possess property.

[9:40] And verse nine prohibits perjury in the law courts, and I'm sure that could be extended to including injuring a person's good name by making false statements about them.

[9:52] But what makes these unique is their connection to the image of God. If you look back in Genesis five, it teaches that Adam was made in the likeness of God.

[10:04] And then the next we're told that Adam had a son in his own likeness, which means that God and his image continues down through the generations. It may be distorted and deluded by sin and by our fallen nature, but still it continues.

[10:21] And James makes the point in his letter that when we recognize the divine image of God and others, our brothers and sisters, we should control our thoughts and words and deeds toward them because, well, the idea of the image of God actually binds all of these commandments together.

[10:42] You see, we're drawn to God in devotion, honor, loyalty, and obedience because of who he is, what he has revealed to us, the image of himself that he has shown to us.

[10:56] While at the same time, this glorious nature is reflected no matter how imperfectly, no matter how stained and potmarked the reflection is in those who have been created in his own image.

[11:10] And James asked the question, how can the same tongue that praises God also curse his image? And now that brings us to the 10th commandment.

[11:21] And anyone who has thought seriously about the 10 commandments realizes that the 10th is not simply just another commandment like all the others. It's not just one more part of the obedience that God requires of human beings and specifically of his people.

[11:38] The commandment is, as the old writers used to say, a mother commandment. And they call it that because the sin of covetousness is a mother sin. This is a sin that becomes the root of the other sins that are forbidden in the 10 commandments.

[11:56] And the fact that it's placed last in the list is, well, some indication of its special character. Think of how covetousness, which is the desire for things that God has given to others, but not to you, produces the other sins.

[12:13] The man who commits adultery and violates the 7th commandment has obviously coveted his neighbor's wife in the first place before committing the actual adultery.

[12:25] Therefore, he breaks the 10th commandment before he breaks the 7th. The man who steals and violates the 8th commandment broke the 10th when he initially wanted something that belonged to somebody else and not to him.

[12:37] And that's obvious enough. But the same is true of the man or woman who violates one of the first four commandments about our duties to God. The Apostle Paul makes this point in Ephesians 5 when he writes, For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous, which is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

[13:06] You see, Paul identifies covetousness as idolatry, the worship of idols rather than the one true God. So break the 10th and you will have in the nature of the case broken the first and second and the third and the fourth as well.

[13:24] And Paul's reasoning is hardly difficult to understand, is it? The covetous person worships and serves the things that he or she desires. In other words, they love them more than they love God.

[13:39] And they don't honor his wisdom either because in his wisdom, he has determined and provided how much of the world's goods a person should have. And yet they desire to have more.

[13:52] You see, the 10th commandment is more than just one more rule. It serves as a witness to the fact that the law of God governs not only our outwardly behavior, but also our thoughts and our motives, our hearts as well.

[14:08] Still, it's been possible for vast multitudes of human beings, both inside and outside the church, to indulge the illusion that he or she has kept, say, the 6th or the 7th commandment because he or she has never actually murdered anyone or never slept with another person's spouse.

[14:27] And that kind of wooden and superficial understanding of the law was commonplace in the Judaism of the Lord's day. It was the reason, for example, the rich young ruler could say with perfect confidence that he had kept all the commandments since his youth.

[14:46] And it was also the same understanding that fueled the apostle Paul and his anger toward Christianity when he first encountered it. In Romans 7, Paul explained precisely what it was that revealed to him the full extent of his self-confidence, his disobedience to God, and the full measure of his sin and guilt.

[15:08] It was, he says, the 10th commandment. Think about it. The 10th commandment revealed to Paul that he was not the righteous man that he thought he was.

[15:20] And yet it was true that he had never broken into somebody's home taking their stuff. He'd never slept with another man's wife and as far as he knew he had never taken a life with his own hand.

[15:32] But then literally, without warning, the Holy Spirit brought the 10th commandment home to his heart. Here's what he writes in Romans 7. If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.

[15:46] For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

[15:59] I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. You see, it was the law and specifically the 10th commandment that exposed Paul, the proud Jew, to his own heart as a moral sewer.

[16:21] And on the outside, Paul had appeared to be what he had always thought he was, a righteous Jew, a man whom God would certainly approve all his good works.

[16:33] But the 10th commandment settled into his conscience and it forced him to admit that on the inside, in his heart, he was a mass of selfish desires and passions which were deeply offensive to God.

[16:49] His heart was, he now realized, as John Owen, the English Puritans, described it as, a standing sink of abominations. And Paul was enough of a Bible scholar to know that God looks upon the heart and he judges the person according to what he finds there.

[17:09] Out of the heart flow the issues of life. He knew that God is never fooled by an attractive exterior that hides the inner life of envy and ill will, lust, pettiness, and relentless selfishness.

[17:25] The Lord looks deep down to the bottom of human action and he's always concerned with our motives. And it was the 10th commandment that first showed Paul the enormity of his problem with sin and it was also the 10th commandment in time that led Paul to see that Jesus Christ was his only hope for peace with God.

[17:51] That he needed someone to take away his guilt and to cleanse his heart and he came to the understanding that God had done this for him through the life and the death and the resurrection of his son, the Lord Jesus.

[18:05] As Paul wrote, it was the 10th commandment that provided the path for him to become a Christian and it's had the same effect upon untold numbers of people ever since.

[18:21] I mean, no other commandment exposes in such terms the universal human problem with sin or the state of moral failure, the defective nature of human life.

[18:33] No truer words I think have ever been spoken than Jeremiah the prophet when he said, from the least to the greatest, we are all greedy for gain.

[18:45] I mean, have you ever wondered why well, for so many people in the world, no matter what they have, there's still never enough recognition, never enough pleasure, never enough money, never enough security, never enough contentment, never enough good health.

[19:03] So on. And why is the satisfaction when we do have those things, why is that initial satisfaction so fleeting?

[19:15] I mean, why can we not just be content with what we have? Well, the answer is found in the 10th commandment, as it lays bare the human condition, the human heart, and the absolute necessity of a radical solution.

[19:33] As Jeremiah says, from the least to the greatest. We are all greedy for gain. You know, I sometimes say at least nine out of ten of people are like Faust.

[19:44] You remember Faust, that highly successful and yet dissatisfied man? Faust, people are like Faust who would sell his or her soul for more money. a bigger house, a better job, a better husband or a wife, better children, a greater name, more power.

[20:03] Covetness rules the world. And we see that evidence even within ourselves and our own families. And it's a daily fact of human life.

[20:14] I mean, just think, just think for a moment about the astonishing power of the human imagination. We daydream. But what are our daydreams about?

[20:26] Are they daydreams that drive us to our knees for prayer of a citywide revival in Glasgow? Or are they daydreams that excite us about knowing and experiencing God more and more in our lives?

[20:41] Now, those questions are probably unfair because I think most of us would have to admit that much of the time our daydreams revolve around covetousness. Dreams of having some measure of success.

[20:55] A new car. A new mobile home. Winning the lottery. More affection. Better children. The holidays. Someone to love, maybe. Whatever they might be, are they dreams of a different life other than what God has given to you?

[21:13] And just think about the films we watch. I mean, so many of them are simply exercises and covetousness. Their stories appeal to us precisely because they enable us to imagine ourselves in a world where we have more of this or more of that.

[21:30] Something other than what God has actually already given us. Or advertising. You know, the advertising profession would be a moot profession without the covetousness of our hearts.

[21:41] I mean, advertising corporations all over the world know the human heart. And so they constantly appeal to our covetousness. In every country, in every language, the message is always the same.

[21:56] You should have more. You should have this. You shouldn't have to live without this. In fact, your neighbor already has one and you should have one too. And to make this possible, for a limited and only, we're going to put this on sale at a price you can afford.

[22:12] You see, which means we are bombarded with this stuff all the time. And as Christians, we need to take stock from time to time so that we don't forget the terrible reality that is exposed by the Tenth Commandment.

[22:27] And if we think about it like this for a moment, what a wonderful thing it is to believe in Jesus and to trust Him to forgive us our sins and cleanse our hearts.

[22:39] But unless we reckon with the full extent of our sinfulness, we will eventually come to take His mighty gifts for granted and fail to treasure them for what they are.

[22:53] You see, we all know what our overwhelming desires are. We all know only too well what occupies our idle thoughts. Which is why from time to time we must put ourselves to the test so that we never forget how pervasive the sin of coveting is.

[23:13] We must come to Christ anew every day keeping short accounts with Him and remain conscious of our great need to do so. So this morning, let's, let's, you and me, take the light of the Tenth Commandment down into the darkness of our hearts and see what we find there.

[23:36] You know, what do I think about when I'm alone? When there is no external influence to control my thoughts, what is it that comes unbidden to my soul's attention?

[23:50] What is it I truly desire and so think about first and foremost? And what is it that God desires in me and in my life?

[24:01] You see, search your heart. Number your desires. Measure the strength of them. Because this has to be a conscious effort because your heart will never offer itself up for inspection.

[24:15] It will never press you to think about this. You see, you must search it out for yourself because the primary reason why Christians remain so covetous as they do is because they stop looking at it as sin.

[24:30] we start to accept it as just normal behavior. But listen, Christ will never reign supreme in a heart that makes peace with the restless desire for something else other than Him.

[24:49] You see, the law shows us our sin and therefore our need for a Savior. And that's great, but that is only one purpose of the law.

[25:01] See, once we have acknowledged our sin and confessed it to God, once we have turned in faith to Christ to take away our guilt and our sin and to give our hearts a new desire to serve Him, we must then turn to the Holy Spirit living within us to empower us to rid ourselves of these sins.

[25:21] sins. It's the power of the Holy Spirit that empowers our efforts to replace our sins with righteousness. And with regard to the Tenth Commandment, the righteousness that is required is contentment.

[25:36] We read in Romans 7 that it was the realization of the raging covetousness in his heart that had prepared Paul for faith in Jesus Christ.

[25:48] Well, in Philippians chapter 4, Paul tells us what the Holy Spirit is doing to him now. He said, it's teaching him to be obedient to the Tenth Commandment.

[26:00] He says, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. And how does Paul define contentment?

[26:11] Well, to know and accept the decisions, the situations that the Lord has made for your life. And just think about Paul, a proud man, educated man.

[26:25] And as a younger man, I believe he would have never imagined the kind of life that he would actually eventually end up living once he became a follower of Christ. But we all know what happened to Paul and it's obvious that he began to know and accept the decisions the Lord had made for his life.

[26:44] And our calling is not to spend our days wishing for something more than what God has set aside for us. No, our calling is to make the most of our physical and our material resources, our talents and our time for the glory of God.

[27:04] So, well, what is to be done? Well, as we've been saying, we must learn, as Paul did, to be content with what we have. You know, the Lord Jesus taught us much and often about how to become champions of contentment.

[27:22] Think about it, from his teaching about how hard it is for the rich to get into heaven to the other end of the spectrum where he teaches about the unsearchable riches that are in him.

[27:36] Well, he taught us how to discern between the vanity of the world's pleasures and the glories of eternal life. And if we look at these Ten Commandments as a whole in the context of eternal life, well, we see the connection very clearly in the whole of the book of Exodus.

[27:56] Yahweh was Israel's God. Yahweh was her king who loved her and called the nation to himself. He had intervened and exercised his mercy and tremendous power as he saved Israel from the cruel slavery in Egypt.

[28:14] And the people were on their way to the land that he had promised them. And the Exodus, as you know, was the great redemptive event of the ancient world.

[28:25] It defined Israel's life and her relationship to God. And the Bible also teaches that the Exodus was the anticipation, the foreshadowing of a still greater redemption to come which was accomplished by Christ on the cross.

[28:41] And it's through the cross where we find the full measure of the meaning of the Exodus. You see, Jesus loved us first. Like that old children's song, Oh, how I love Jesus because he first loved me.

[28:57] Well, we love Jesus because he loved us first. And it's because of his great love that he redeemed us from the bondage of sin and death. And he's brought us into this glorious freedom of eternal life as the sons of God in a land that is fairer than day.

[29:18] And as we love him, we want to do his will, don't we? You see, Yahweh wasn't a great king who conquered a nation in battle and then imposed his will upon subjective people who had no choice except to obey.

[29:36] I mean, that's not even close. What Jesus says is, if you love me, then you will keep my commandments. See, Jesus is a savior who loved his people in spite of their lack of love for him.

[29:50] He redeemed them at a great cost to himself and he enters into covenant with them not to get something from them but to give them something wonderful, real life, eternal life.

[30:07] But notice the order. It's fabulously important for anyone to understand the word of God in the Christian life. redemption, salvation, freedom first. Then, and only then, the law to obey.

[30:24] You see, Christians don't keep the commandments so that they can be saved but because they have been saved. And their obedience is twofold. Firstly, it's an act of thanksgiving.

[30:37] An act of thanksgiving for the wonderful salvation we have. and then, it's an act of confidence in the goodness of God. And the fact of the matter is, there is no other covenant, no other promise like this.

[30:54] This is a covenant between the living and true God and his people. And it's a covenant set in the context of redemptive history which points directly to the grace and mercy of God.

[31:07] God. And our answer to God's show of grace should be obedience. You see, the Ten Commandments are actually a gift to us from God.

[31:20] They teach us how to live with him and with one another. How to live and enjoy life to the utmost. The Ten Commandments, in other words, are the rules that prevail in God's family.

[31:34] the family into which we have been adopted by the grace of God. The rules that teach children how to serve God and, at the same time, how to be happy, loving, and living with each other.

[31:49] And all of this is confirmed in the life and the teaching of the Lord Jesus. He was himself a man of the Ten Commandments. He obeyed them. He ordered his life according to them.

[32:02] He also spent a considerable amount of time teaching his disciples about the Ten Commandments, clearing away their misunderstandings and deepening their appreciation of what the law actually required.

[32:15] I mean, for example, his searching, exposition of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount actually served to give new life and a deeper authority to the Ten Commandments.

[32:27] See, Jesus saw them as headings of general areas of duty, duty fulfilled not only in actions but in thoughts and attitudes as well.

[32:40] He famously observed, for example, that the Seventh Commandment forbidding adultery must be kept first in one's thoughts before it's kept in one's behavior. But even more importantly, he gave immortal expression to the principle that was already taught in the Old Testament but never so clearly until he said it that the Ten Commandments can be summarized into two.

[33:06] To love God with all your heart, your soul, your strength, and your mind and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. In other words, the Ten Commandments are, well, they're instructions in how to love God and how to love one another.

[33:27] You know, most people, even Christians, find it hard or unnatural to regard all these thou shalt nots as the language of love. But you see, unless love is to be nothing more than simply a feeling, then love must be transposed into meaningful actions.

[33:45] But what actions? I mean, precisely how must love demonstrate itself? Well, real love demonstrates itself in loyalty, honesty, concern for others, practical care for others, their welfare, their property, their reputations, and their very lives.

[34:05] And that is exactly what the Ten Commandments teaches. How to love God and how to love one another. And when that is understood, then a person begins to understand what Augustine meant when he said the Ten Commandments is the instrument of ten strings.

[34:23] He's saying that Ten Commandments make beautiful music. In fact, he said, they are a love song. The fact is everyone has rules.

[34:34] Whether he or she thinks about them, no one lives without rules. So the real question is not shall we have rules? But are these rules good or bad?

[34:46] Are they wise? Are they foolish? Do they match reality? Will obedience to them make my life better or worse? Do they have authority?

[35:00] Or are they just a fleeting opinion of one person or one culture which means they'll just be here today and gone tomorrow? You see, in our time and place here in the 21st century, we may struggle to understand why we should love the law of God as the Bible tells us to, but if we love life, and if we love God and if we aspire to love one another, then we ought to love the law of God because it teaches us how to love with integrity and how to love in ways that really matter.

[35:37] But in our struggles to obey, well, we may wonder how John could say the commandments of God are not a burden, but you know if we take care to live a godly life, a useful life, and a fruitful life for the kingdom, then it shouldn't be difficult to see that the commandments of God are no more of a burden than wings are to a bird.

[36:02] God's people throughout the ages, especially the wisest among us, have always known that it is an immense privilege to know how to live, and how to live so that a human life comes into its own, so that it becomes what it ought to be, which is a life that pleases God, which is the source of that life in the first place, and the God who promises to bless it if we offer it back to him.

[36:33] You know, no wonder Moses instructed Joshua as they stood on the edge of the Jordan looking at the promised land. Moses wasn't going, as you know, and he turns to Joshua and he says, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, so that you may do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good effect.

[37:01] Let's pray. Father, forgive us for turning aside to pursue the broken and failed promises our world offers as it tells us, here is where contentment can be found.

[37:16] Here is what will satisfy your heart. Please forgive us our idolatry, and as we reprint, we pray that you might bring us to the fountain of living water himself, your son, our savior, the Lord Jesus, so that we may drink until our hearts are utterly and truly satisfied.

[37:39] And we ask this in his name. Amen. Amen.

[37:50] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[38:00] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[38:11] Amen. Amen.