Dr. Rodney Plunket

     This morning we begin a five-week study of what are referred to as the Ten Commandments.  The Ten Commandments are listed in full only twice in the entire Bible.  They are found first in Exodus (Ex) 20:1-17 and a second time in Deuteronomy (Dt) 5:6-21.

     A good question to ask is why are we doing that; why are we spending five weeks on ten commandments found in full only way back in the second and fifth books of the Old Testament (OT).  The OT literally has hundreds of commandments.  Why, when there are so many commandments back there, are we going to focus upon these ten?  What, you might ask, makes them so important?  In response to such a question I would point to five biblical facts which reveal the elevated status ascribed to the Ten Commandments.

The first fact is that the Ten Commandments were verbally given to the Israelites in a way that sets them apart; no other commandments were given to the people of Israel in the way that the Ten Commandments were given.  Exodus 20 is the chapter which reports God’s giving of the Ten Command- ments.  There the very voice of God speaks out loud the Ten Commandments to all the people from the top of Mount Sinai.  That is the only time that the OT reports God speaking out loud to all the people of God at the same time.  And God’s speaking of the Ten Commandments was such an awesome experience that the people reacted with fear.  Listen to what the Bible says happened immediately after God spoke the Ten Command- ments to the people:

When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die” (Ex 20:18-19).

So the way in which God first presented these commandments reveals that they had an elevated status within the overall body of commandments given to Israel.

The second biblical fact which makes clear the elevated status of the Ten Commandments is that they were written on the stone tablets which were created on the top of Mount Sinai (Ex 34:28; Dt 4:13; 10:4).  Those stone tablets were then placed inside the OT’s most sacred object, the Ark of the Cove­nant.  The Ark of the Covenant was in the Tabernacle’s Holy of Holies, and over that Ark God was enthroned (Ex 25:22; 1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 6:2); God’s very presence was there.  So where the Ten Commandments were placed also reveals there elevated status within the overall body of commandments given to Israel.

The third biblical fact which reveals the elevated status of the Ten Commandments is the way they are referred to in two OT verses.  In Ex 34:28 we read that God “wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.”  And in Dt 4:13 we are told, “[God] declared to you his covenant, . . . , that is, the ten commandments; and he wrote them on two stone tablets.”  Israel’s “covenant” with God was central to who they were.  These two verses indicate such a tight unity between the covenant and the Ten Commandments that on there own it sounds as if the Ten Commandments are the sum total of that covenant.  However, the overall biblical presentation reveals that the contents of the covenant include more than the Ten Commandments.  However, the language used in these verses makes very clear that the Ten Commandments are somehow a central or core summary of the covenant as a whole.  And by the way, references to the stone tablets elsewhere in the OT provide additional support to such a perspective (see Ex 31:18; Dt 9:9, 11).

The fourth and fifth biblical facts that reveal the elevated status of the Ten Commandments both have to do with the kind of references to them that are found in the New Testament (NT).  None of the first four of the Ten Commandments are referred to in the NT, but the final six are all referred to there.  Each one of commandments five through ten are cited in at least two NT verses; and one of them, the seventh commandment prohibiting adultery, is cited in seven NT verses.  But the mere fact that they are referred in the NT is not, I think, the NT’s most explicit indication of the Ten Commandments’ elevated status.  That indication comes through the way the Ten Commandments are referred to in the NT.

Matthew (Mt) 19:16-22; Mark (Mk) 10:17-22; and Luke (Lk) 18:18-25 all tell the story of Jesus’ dialogue with a wealthy young Jewish ruler.  During that dialogue Jesus listed several of the Ten Commandments, and the way He used them makes clear that He viewed them as central or core commandments from God.  Paul treats several commands from the Ten Commandments in a similar way in Romans (Rm) 13:9.  So the fourth biblical fact that reveals the elevated status of the Ten Commandments is that they tend to be viewed in the NT as cen­tral or core commandments.

The fifth relevant biblical fact is that in both Mt 19:19 & Rm 13:9 several of the Ten Commandments are listed and then connected to another OT commandment.  And the commandment to which they are connected is the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.”  The connection to that commandment is an indicator of elevated status because in Mt 22:34-40; Mk 12:28-44; & Lk 10:25-28 Jesus makes clear that the commandment to “love your neighbor” is second only in importance to the command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.”  But that is not all; in both Rm 13:9 and Galatians 5:14 the apostle Paul says the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” sums up all of God’s commandments.  And in James 2:8 that command is referred to as “the royal law.”  The connecting of such an important commandment to the Ten Commandments further confirms and highlights the NT’s view of their elevated status.

Now that we are able to appreciate more fully the central importance of the Ten Commandments, we are ready to look together at the first two of those commandments.  In the movie “City Slickers” there is a central scene in which the old cowboy Curly (played by Jack Palance) and Mitch (played by Billy Crystal) are away from the others all of whom are involved in a big cattle drive.  Curly is referring to city folk like Mitch when he says,  “You spend about fifty weeks a year getting knots in your rope and then you think two weeks up here’ll untie ‘em for you.  None of you get it.  You know what the secret of life is?”  Mitch says, “No, what?”  Curly says, “This,” and holds up one finger.  Mitch says, “Your finger?”  Curly says, “One thing, just one thing.”  Mitch says, “That’s great, but what’s the one thing.”  Curly answers, “That’s what you have to figure out.”  Curly leaves it up to each person to find his or her “one thing.”

If you listened carefully to our Scripture Reading this morning, you heard the first two of the Ten Commandments tell us what “the one thing” is for everyone.  We do not have to “figure” it out.  We are told what it is, and it is not a thing at all.  It is God, the living God, the living God who delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt.  And that same living God is the One who through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ can deliver us all from sin’s damning oppression.  Listen to how the first two of the Ten Commandments focus upon God as “the one” who is the center/the foundation for the whole of our lives.

The first commandment is clearly fundamental to all of the Ten Commandments.  It says, “You shall have no other gods before me.”  Walter Brueggemann, one of the world’s leading OT theologians, is clearly right when he says that the first “command requires Israel to mobilize all of its life, in every sphere, around one single loyalty” (“Exodus,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck and others [Nashville, Abingdon, 1994], 1:841).  And Brueggemann also notes an insight from the theologian H. Graf Reventlow (Ibid.), an insight which led me to the awareness that this commandment may also serve as a declaration of the banishment of all other gods.  Israel can serve God alone because through the exodus from Egypt God has made clear that all other gods have been banished.  There is no reason to be distracted by them.  They have been overcome by the living God who with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm has delivered the people from Egypt.  God frees us from being jerked around by this god or that.  God frees us to have one single loyalty, one single loyalty to God alone.

The second commandment is very similar to the first.  It tells us not to make or worship idols.  We may think that biblical references to idols are not relevant to us today.  Well, there are still many places where actual idols made of metal or wood are worshipped, but there may not be anyone here who does that.  The problem that most of us have with idols is more difficult to confront because our idols are rarely of the metallic or wooden sort, but our idols are just as carefully formed and shaped.  They are placed, however, in the unseen places; they are placed within our hearts, our minds, our spirits, and our souls.  And from those seats of internal power they rule and oppress just as surely as the graven sort rule and oppress those who worship them.

In Dt 6:4 we read, “Hear, O Israel!  The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!”  I believe that is a statement of monotheism.  I believe that is a declaration that there is but one God and that one God is the God of the Bible.  I believe that the first two commandments of the Ten Commandments, in effect, build upon that monotheistic foundation.  These two commands say that this one God must be the one God in our lives.  There is one God and that one God must be Number One!

One evening about seven years ago my family and I were sitting at the dinner table.  My daughter Callie was a sophomore at Texas Tech and had not yet declared a major, and Margaret and I were talking with her about the need to do that.  The problem was that Callie did not know what major to declare.  She said, “I want to choose something that I can think about day and night.  I want some­hing that will consume me.”  Younger brother Chad said, “But Callie, your job is only from 8:00 to 5:00.  After that’s the fun stuff.”  Chad’s view has grown, but what he said as a ninth grader accurately expresses the fragmentation that many live with today.  They work.  They play.  They sleep.  They eat.  But nothing ties the whole together.  They have not found their “one thing.”  They have not found “the one thing” who is really the one all-consuming God.  They have gods “before” the real God.  They have idols that they shape and form and worship.  They have not allowed the all-consuming God to banish those false gods.  They have not allowed the all-consuming God to set them free to serve the living God with the whole of their being.

Their lives are like unconnected pieces of fabric.  Their lives cannot be worn as a garment, because the pieces have never been sewn together.  When there are no other gods before the living God/when there are no idols ruling within our hearts, then the pieces of our lives come together and form a garment which can be worn to the glory of our God.

Do you wear that garment?  Has your life come together as a result of giving your “single loyalty” to God?

Please come to God and find the one thing, the true ground, the central hub for your life.  Come to God and be consumed by the wonder of God’s vision for your life.  Come to God and receive a life that the world cannot shake.

We want to introduce you to the living God.  If we can serve you in any way please come to the front now as we stand and sing.

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