Again, I want to extend a welcome to you and particularly those of you who are here visiting
for graduation weekend.
We are glad that you are able to join us this morning.
You know, trajectory is an important thing.
I don't know if you're a fan.
I know this is dating me, but if you haven't seen it, it's Oscar worthy.
Apollo 13 is a great movie with Tom Hanks.
And for those of you who are younger, pull it out of some archive and go watch it.
One of the things, it's about this tragedy of Apollo 13 and how the launch created a
problem with the mission and how they sought to rescue the astronauts and bring them home.
And in the midst of the crisis that was happening in Houston as they were trying to solve multiple
problems of failing systems and failing vehicles and limited resources, one of the things they
realized was that if they didn't get their trajectory right, as they sought to take this group of
men flying through space in this little piece of metal around the moon and bring it, slingshot
it back to earth, if they didn't get the trajectory right, they would be lost.
It's graduation weekend.
And for some of you, this is a time of transition.
For all of us, the question of the trajectory of our lives is always an important one.
The Westminster Catechism gives us an answer to the question, what is the trajectory of our
lives as God designed it?
The chief end of humanity is that we would glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
If I might translate that into 21st century language, the whole purpose that we are here
is that we would focus our lives on the worship and display of God's glory in our lives.
We are here for God.
But friends, we know how easy it is for us to not do that, don't we?
Think back over your last week.
How much was God the center of your life in your everyday comings and goings, wakings and
sleepings, working and playing, recreating?
We don't treat God the way He deserves.
We don't make Him the proper focal point of our trajectory of our lives.
We often diminish Him and make Him less than He truly is.
We often ignore Him or dismiss Him when it's inconvenient.
Often we don't trust Him, perhaps because of our past disappointments, perhaps because
of our fear of future uncertainties.
Sometimes for those who have grown up in church, we become familiar with God and in becoming
familiar, we diminish Him.
Sometimes we make God about us.
And we think that God is there to make us happy and to serve our purposes and to make our lives
great.
As we look at a passage this morning in Exodus 20, we're continuing in our series in the book
of Exodus.
And as we look at this passage this morning, I want you to know that as we think about these
things, I don't stand before you as one who knows the answers or who has done this perfectly.
In fact, this week has been a struggle for me because I realize how much I need this message
and this word as well as you.
But if you would, turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus 20, page, I forgot, 61 in the Pew Bibles
if you need to look at those.
We're going to begin a two-week series on the Ten Commandments, which is probably a very well-known
part of the Bible.
Well, you've probably heard them before, so we're going to read them again in just a minute.
But remember where this comes in the story.
In Exodus, in chapters 1 through 18, there is this grand story of deliverance.
God has come, and with a mighty hand and with great works, He has shown His power to deliver
His people.
And not only to deliver His people from slavery in Egypt, but to deliver them into His own
possession and in His own care as He has now delivered them from Egypt and has led them
through the wilderness, providing for them in ways that miraculously showed His commitment
to not only deliver them, but to sustain them as His people.
And so He brings us, then the story brings us to the foot of Mount Sinai.
And in chapter 19, if you were here with Greg last week, we explored the question, what does
it mean to be God's people?
What does it mean to look at Him and to come to Him on His own terms and to understand the
pattern of grace and law that He calls us to be His people by His grace and to live according
to His instructions?
We come to chapter 20 and the beginning of the instruction of the giving of the law.
We'll continue to explore this as we look at it in the chapters in the weeks to come.
But let me quote a great Bible commentator who says this about the Ten Commandments just
to orient our thoughts a little bit about the law before we jump into our passage.
He says this,
This is the way we are to think of the Ten Commandments, not as cramping restrictions on a fullness
of life that we might otherwise have enjoyed, but as the very gateway to the fullness we seek.
As God gives us the law, what He's doing is instructing us on how to live as His people,
how to live and to flourish under His rule and under His.
But what that means is that we live according to the patterns and according to the current
of His created purposes for us and His redemptive purposes for us.
And so as we receive the law, we receive it hopefully not as a restriction, but as instruction
to teach us who don't know God as well as we ought, how we ought to live as people who
do know God.
So that's where we are as we come to Exodus chapter 20.
We're going to focus this morning on the first four commandments, but I'm going to read a good
part of the chapter for us to get the context.
So let's read Exodus chapter 20 together.
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.
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.
You shall not bow down to them or serve them.
For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the
children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing steadfast
love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not take the Lord, the name of the Lord your God in vain.
For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
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.
On it you shall not do any work.
You or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your livestock
or the sojourner who is within your gates.
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested
on the seventh day.
Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
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.
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.
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the
trumpet and the mountains smoking, the people were afraid and trembled and they stood far off
and said to Moses, you speak to us.
We will listen.
But do not let God speak to us lest we die.
And Moses said to the people, do not fear, for God has come to test you that the fear
of him may be before you and that you may not sin.
The people stood far off while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.
And the Lord said to Moses, thus you shall say to the people of Israel, you have seen for
yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven.
You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold.
An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your
peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen.
And in every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you.
If you will make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool
on it, you profane it.
And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.
Now these are the rules that you shall set before them.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you for your word.
We thank you that you have not left us to grasp at seeking to understand you on our own wisdom
or by our own imaginations.
But God, you have revealed yourself and you have spoken to us so that we might know what kind
of a God you are.
And Lord, we pray this morning that you would give us ears to hear and hearts to receive
your word.
Lord, that your spirit would be at work amongst us as we look into this word together.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
To be God's people is to make him truly first in everything in our lives.
Truly first in our hearts and truly first in the pattern of our lives.
This is the main idea of the first four commandments that we're going to look at.
If you look at the ten commandments, it's fairly clear there are ten of them.
There are actually ten words technically as they're described.
And it's very easy to split them up.
The first four are about our vertical relationship with God primarily.
And then the second six are more about our horizontal relationship with one another.
And yet all of them are about what does it mean that we are God's people?
He's giving instructions.
These are principles, foundational concepts of what it means to be God's people.
So we're going to spend a few minutes this morning looking at the first four commandments.
And I'm going to lump them together.
We're going to start first by looking at commandments one and two.
And seeing that being God's people means making God first in our hearts.
That is, the thing that we worship, the thing that we love the most,
the thing that we set our heart upon is to be God himself.
Look with me again.
God says, you shall worship no other gods before me.
You shall make no images for my worship.
And if you think about the context that God was speaking this word into,
think about what the Israelites had known for 400 years.
They had lived in Egypt, a land full of graven images,
a land full of idols, of statues that were bowed down to
and worshiped for various things in the transactional nature of ancient religion
where you offered to a particular image, a particular God,
a particular act of worship, and he gives you something that you want.
Fertility, long life, healing, crops, children, success in battle.
And God spoke this word knowing that these people were going to enter into the promised land
where similarly the Canaanite religions would be characterized by a similar kind of idolatry.
And God comes and says, if you are to know me and to worship me right,
you must do it differently than those people do.
And recognize, too, that God isn't simply saying to Israelites,
hey, I'm your God, everything else is excluded.
You can't build those statues and bow down to them and worship other gods.
But he's also saying you can't worship me by using statues and images as well.
And I don't know about you, I didn't think this week,
you know, I wonder if I should just build a statue.
You know, life is kind of hard.
My worship, my life with God, my relationship is a little dry.
I think I'll build a statue so it'll help me to worship.
It's not a common impulse in our modern culture, is it?
Right?
But recognize how much it was for the people of Israel.
For 12 chapters later, what will they do as they sit at the foot of Mount Sinai,
as God reveals himself in these very words to Moses?
What do they do?
They make a golden calf.
Why?
Not to worship some other god, to worship this god.
They think God's given us all this bounty.
Let's make an image so that we can worship this god.
God says, no, you may not do that.
Why does God care so much?
Well, first of all, as we see in verse 5, he says, I am a jealous god.
I want your worship to be for me alone.
This is where the images of citizenship and marriage come in as analogies for how we relate to God.
What spouse wants to share the affection of their partner with another?
What country says, sure, you could be a citizen of our country and five others.
You can fight in their army, work in their government.
It doesn't matter.
It's not a big deal.
Now, in our fallen world today, we might start to think, well, okay, we might hedge our bets on some of that
because all those institutions seem pretty fallen.
But in their ideal, in what they were meant to be, in what they were made to be,
God is saying, I want you to be wholly mine.
And it's not based on a jealous grasping.
It's not God seeking to simply control his people.
But it's based on the grace that he has already shown him.
Look back with me at verse 2 of chapter 20.
Do you see what he says?
Because I have redeemed you.
Because I have brought you out of the land of slavery.
I have rescued you to be mine.
Worship me.
Worship me alone.
And he's really serious about this.
You see in verses 6 and 7 that there's a result if you don't do this.
And for those of you who read this the way I read it the first time and think,
well, that doesn't seem fair.
God's just extending punishment from generation to generation for no good thing.
I want you to read the verse again carefully.
The end of verse 5.
Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children of those who hate me.
The point here is not that God is going to punish you because your grandfather hated God
and you are trying to love God and you are still reaping those consequences.
The point here is that you will be punished as you are a part of a generation
that refuses to worship God and rejects him.
And yes, we know that these things are often passed down from father to son,
from generation to generation, from parent to child.
And so it may be that the apples don't fall far from the tree
and therefore God's judgment will.
But recognize that what God is saying here is,
if you are going to be my covenant people,
I really expect you to be committed to this.
I really expect you to be wholehearted in it.
Because what I have done is called you into a covenant relationship with me.
Because I love you.
And I want to show my steadfast love to you for thousands of generations.
Friends, we know that our hearts don't do this very well.
As John Calvin said, our hearts are idol factories.
Human culture, ever since the fall in the Garden of Eden,
has created other things to worship other than God.
We confuse the distinction between creator and creation.
And rather than trying to worship an unseen God,
which can be challenging sometimes,
we worship a seen God by making idols out of them.
And if they're not physical idols that we shape with our hands and bow down to,
they're idols of our hearts.
Things that we look to, to be our provider, to be our protector,
to be our justification, to be our identity,
our careers, our families, our successes.
And we cling to these things.
But the God of the Bible is one who has come and said,
I am a spirit.
You cannot see me, but you can know me.
Because I am a God who has revealed myself in my words.
Think about that.
As God is meeting with his people on this mountain,
he is manifesting his majesty through great signs and wonders.
But there is no manifestation of God himself.
What there is, is words.
God gives us words to know him.
God allows us to worship him and to know who he is
because he speaks to us.
And friends, we know that God in his graciousness knows our weakness.
And in the fullness of time,
the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
And we have beheld his glory.
The glory as only the son of the father,
full of grace and truth.
Friends, we know today as we gather
that the God of the Israelites in Exodus 20
was the God who came in Jesus Christ
to be our savior and our redeemer,
to work a greater redemption for us
and to make a greater people of God.
The fulfillment of all that the story in Exodus points to
will come in Jesus.
And so, friends, this morning as we look at these first two,
have no other gods before me.
Do not worship any other thing.
I simply want to ask you,
what do you worship?
What is the thing on your lips most often?
Where do you run in times of trouble?
What do you trust in when everything else falls away?
What do you rejoice and exult in on your best days?
Friends, God is meant to be the answer
to all of those questions in our lives.
He wants us to experience the Copernican revolution in our lives
whereby we as the self are unseated
from the center of our solar system
and God is put in place.
It's the center of gravity
and the one who is the life-giving force.
As we relate to him rightly,
we find our place in the universe.
This is what God has called us to,
to make him our God above all other things.
So if the first two commandments tell us that,
to love God with all of our heart
and be wholehearted in this God-centered life
that he's called us to,
the next two commandments help us make it practical
in very real ways.
Look with me in verses seven and following in chapter 20.
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.
What's in a name?
Your reputation, your significance,
your lineage, your identity.
We live in a world where names are cheap,
where presidential debates can descend into name-calling
and cheap words.
But throughout history and certainly in the scriptures,
a name was the badge of who you were.
It was your reputation.
It was your person.
It was your character.
In fact, the New Testament talks about
the word glory or weightiness
to be connected with a person
and a person's name.
And when God says this,
he says,
you may not call me your God
and you may not claim to be my people
if you are frivolous or empty
in the way that you use my name.
Now, for most of you,
and for me too,
I grew up in church.
What does the third commandment mean?
Well, you don't curse.
And you don't use God's name when you curse.
That's sort of the simple,
and you know what?
That's right.
That's exactly right.
We should never use God's name
simply because we're frustrated or angry
because we want to call down judgment on someone else.
But this commandment is much more than that.
This commandment is to say,
if you are going to say that you are God's people,
you are taking up the name of this God
and you are saying,
this is who I am.
This is the family that I have belonged to.
Again, the marriage analogy,
I am joining in with you
and I am taking your name
and I am being yours fully and completely.
we have hitched our wagon to him
and we will follow him to the end of the road.
This is what it means to be God's covenant people
and therefore to take his name seriously
is to not use it in an empty way in our lives,
to not use it without substance.
Friends, we live in a culture today in America
where there are,
depending on where you're from,
depending on what part of America you're in,
there are parts of America
where Christian is a social category.
There are parts of America
where Christian is a political category.
But friends,
we must understand that when the Bible talks about Christians,
it is those who have identified
with the name of Jesus Christ.
And therefore,
we must not take his name lightly in how we live.
We must not be afraid
to identify with him publicly
and to say,
yes,
I am one who has been bought
by the blood of Jesus Christ.
I am one who has been saved
by this Savior.
Even when you may be misunderstood,
even when you may be rejected,
even when you may,
it may cost you much.
Friends,
the third commandment
joins us.
It tells us
that we are to take up that name
and to live according to it.
And that in our words,
we are to speak reverently
and joyfully
and gladly
and worshipfully
about God.
Not only
are we to worship God,
not only
are we to make him
first in our words,
but we are also
to make him
first in the way
that we use our time.
As we look at verses
8 through 11,
we see the fourth commandment.
To take the Sabbath,
to take one day
out of the week
and to set it aside.
Set it aside
from the regular work.
And we've already seen this
in the story.
Do you remember
when God gave manna
in chapter 16,
17,
chapter 17,
when God gave manna,
he instructed them,
six days you go out
and gather it.
And on the sixth day,
gather extra
because on the seventh day,
you won't need to
because I will have
provided for you.
And there's all this,
oh,
and if you try to save it
on other days,
it'll go bad.
And if you go out
and do it on that day,
it'll go bad.
God gave all sorts
of specifics,
but we've already
seen this happen.
And in that story,
we see God
asking his people
a couple of questions.
Do you think
that you know
better than the Lord
how to provide
for yourself?
Do you think
you know better
than God
what you need?
For the Sabbath rest
is a rest
from our regular work
so that we might
be renewed
personally
and spiritually
in our worship
of God
so that we might
take one day
out of the week
and trust
that God
will provide
for us
as we take
a break
from our regular
work.
And friends,
it's not a break
so that we can
play Fortnite
for 14 hours.
Okay?
This is not
a Sabbath.
Nor is it
doing hobbies
while your spouse
takes care
of everybody
else all day.
But it is
setting aside
your regular work
as best as you can,
as much as possible
so that you
can focus
on the Lord
and remember
his goodness,
enjoy his creation,
take a nap,
sing songs,
be with friends.
Now look,
I know some of you
are in medical
residency
and you don't
have control
of your life.
You don't get
to say,
I can't work
on Sunday
right now.
Okay?
I get it.
Some of you
are moms
of newborns.
Where's the
Sabbath rest
in that,
right?
I mean,
seriously.
Okay?
But here's the thing.
The pattern
is still
the same.
And for the rest
of us,
we really have
no excuse.
Do you really
think you know
better than the Lord
what you need
to do
to be successful,
to accomplish?
So what does
it look like?
Unplug.
Unplug from your
devices,
unplug from your
regular schedule,
unplug from your
phone,
turn off your
email notifications,
get out into
creation if you
can.
Be with God's
people as much
as you can.
Friends,
if nothing else,
and I say this
particularly to those
of you who are
graduating and
moving on,
observe the
Sabbath by making
it a commitment
to be with God's
people every week.
Go to church.
It's not optional.
It's a part of
Sabbath observance
to be with God's
people.
And you're going
to go out into
a world that is
going to trample
all over that.
And your work
group is going
to say,
can you come in
on 9 o'clock
on Sunday mornings?
And your ultimate
Frisbee game
down the street
is going to say,
hey,
we're playing
at 10,
why don't you
come over?
And your sports
teams,
as you have kids,
are going to say,
oh,
we've got a
weekend tournament
and the game's
at 8.30 and we
got to be there.
And so on and so
forth.
We live in a
culture that no
longer recognizes
Sunday as a
separate.
You're going to
have to be ready
to be different
and stand out
from your peers
to take that
rest.
Some of you
work in labs
where you think,
I can't tell
my PI that.
I'll get fired.
There are
challenging things
we have to face.
I will not say
you have to,
therefore,
not work on
Sundays.
The New Testament
does not tell us
explicitly that this
is what all
believers must do.
But it is a
principle based
in the very
fabric of
creation itself
that God
created the world
in six days
and then he
rested.
He didn't do it
because he was
tired.
He didn't do it
because he needed
a break
or he was
overwhelmed.
He did it for
us.
He did it so
that we would
enter into a
rhythm of rest.
And so that we
would know,
as Deuteronomy
will point out,
that the Sabbath
is also the
freedom from
work,
the work that
we do as we
seek to justify
ourselves in the
world by how
well we do,
how well we
succeed,
and how well
we progress
in the world.
So friends,
this is what God
calls us to in
the first four
commandments.
To truly be
God's people
is to make him
first in all
things,
in our hearts,
in our worship,
in our identity,
in our words,
in our use of
time,
and to honor him
as God in all
of these things,
to make him the
center around
which our lives
find their
orbit.
And of course,
we know that the
problem with this
is that we do
this so poorly,
don't we?
Like the church
in Ephesus in
Revelation 2,
we wander from
our first love.
We grow cold
in our affection.
We grow weary
in our obedience.
We want so much
to be accepted
by others
that we lose
sight of what
God has called
us to in his
people.
Our efforts to
be law keepers
will fail.
And if we try
really hard,
it will crush
us.
But as we do
that, it brings
us, in fact,
to the very
sweetest part
of what this
passage in
Exodus points
us to.
Because it points
us ahead to
another time,
to another
covenant, to
another promise.
We read it
earlier in
Ezekiel 36.
this covenant
prepares the
world to know
that we can't
be law keepers
on our own.
And that God
is going to have
to intervene and
do something.
And God himself
and Ezekiel
promised that he
would.
And in the
person of Jesus,
he did.
He came,
and Jesus came
to be the law
keeper for us.
To perfectly
worship God
and to love him
above all things.
And as he lived
this life of
perfect obedience,
he did this for
us.
And then he did
that, not only
that, but then
he offered
himself in
our place to
take the penalty
for our sin that
separates us from
God.
So that by his
life and death
and resurrection,
we might be
God's new
people in a
new covenant
relationship with
God based not
on our works,
but based on
his gracious
work for us
in Christ.
And with this
new covenant
comes one
wonderful things.
He gives us
a new heart
that can now
love God in
ways that we
never could
apart from him.
He gives us
his spirit to
live in us
so that we
actually know
the laws and
that we long
to please God
because God's
spirit lives
within us.
Friends,
this is what
the Ten
Commandments
points us
towards.
It points us
towards Christ
who did all
these things
for us so
that we might
be God's
people.
So that we
might be like
the Thessalonian
church at the
end of chapter
one who
turned from
idols to
serve the
true and
living God
and to
live our
lives for
his glory.
This is the
trajectory and
this is our
hope.
We pray this
will be true
for you,
for me,
today.
Let's pray
together.
Lord, thank
you for this
word.
Lord, thank
you that you
have created
us for
yourself and
though we so
often fail,
Lord, you
graciously draw
us back again
and again.
Lord, I pray
for those this
morning, Lord,
that you may
have convicted
that they
haven't made
their life
about you.
Lord, they
have made
empty the
name of
Christ and
the work of
Christ on the
cross for
them.
I pray, Lord,
that in this
conviction that
they would turn
to you in
their need and
find grace and
know, Lord,
that they would
know salvation
is in Jesus.
Lord, I pray
for all of us
that you might
prick our
consciences to
see the places
in our lives
where we don't
put you first,
where we have
made other
things more
important, where
we have
worshipped other
gods, where we
have bowed down
to other things
to play God
in our lives.
Lord, help us
to repent of
those and,
Lord, in
turning from
them to find
you to be the
God who has
delivered us
from slavery,
from slavery to
sin, rescued us
and called us to
be your people.
By the grace of
Jesus, we pray.
Amen.