It’s a common Christian misconception to think the Old Testament is all about an angry, vengeful God, while the New Testament has a monopoly on love and grace. Often people will point to “all those rules and commandments” to support that kind of thinking. In this sermon, we look at the Ten Commandments, where they sit in the story of God’s love for God’s people and how they guide us to live in that love.

Exodus 20:1-17

The manuscript appears below.

Before we rode camels most of the way up and then finished the journey on foot we paused at St. Catherine’s Monastery, a 1,500 year old Christian community, to remind ourselves of the story that had brought Moses to the mountain.

The delivery of the law took place not too long after the end of the enslavement of the people of Israel by Pharaoh in Egypt. We’re talking a couple of months, not years. Not too long ago the waters of the Red Sea had been parted dramatically, God’s people rushed through on dry land, and the Egyptians were drowned behind them. No longer would they live under the threat of Pharaoh.  No longer would they work for the “abusive, brutalizing king of Egypt who practiced and exploited a concentration of power and wealth.” They were liberated. They were free.

And yet, almost immediately, the people had started to bicker, and a pattern emerged. Complaining that there was better food in Egypt the Israelites were given manna from heaven and quail to eat every day.  Whining that there wasn’t enough water, they watched as Moses struck a stone with his staff to make water stream out. 

They started on such a high note – worshiping God as soon as they set foot on the shore of the sea, but after that it had largely gone downhill.  The Israelites were constantly fighting with God, fighting with the locals, and fighting with one another.  The life they were experiencing didn’t seem like what they thought freedom would be like.

And so, like the manna that fell from the sky, the quail that appeared each day, the water the gushed forth from the rock, the deliverance from enemies in Egypt and across the Sinai desert, the Ten Commandments, the first of God’s law is given to God’s people. 

Let’s listen to that gift.

Exodus 20:1-17

Too often in the history of Christianity we have thought we can dismiss not just the Ten Commandments or other laws of God, but sometimes even the entire Old Testament, saying that these were things written for a different time, for a different world.  We come to the dangerous conclusion that the God of the Old Testament is angry and vengeful while the God of the New Testament, the God we know in Jesus the Christ, is the God of love, the God of grace, the God of forgiveness.  The law, the Old Testament, we wrongly try to tell ourselves, is fine history or origin story, and it may be good for others, but it says nothing to us about how to live the life of faith.  It says nothing about God’s grace.

This thinking is at best misguided, and more directly just plain wrong.

A rabbi teaching adult education at one of my previous congregations once pointed out something essential that has stuck with me for years. Answering this question about whether or not the God of Hebrew Scriptures is loving and graceful, a question he was often asked by Christians, he said, “First God saves the Israelites, then God gifts them the law.  First grace, then the commandments.”

God saves God’s people before we ever even realize there are commandments to be received and followed.  God led the people out of slavery not knowing whether or not they would worship afterwards, and certainly before they had a chance to learn and understand the Ten Commandments.  God didn’t say, “If you follow, then I will love you.”  Instead, God said (even in the Old Testament), “Because I love you and have called you my people, because I have saved you from slavery, this I give you to show you can live with one another and me forever.”

Scholar of the Hebrew Scriptures, Dr. Walter Brueggemann put it this way: 

The Ten Commandments are strategies for staying emancipated once you get away from Pharaoh. This new strategy, first of all, says you have to honor God – that’s the first three commandments – to the exclusion of every idol, every “ism” such as racism, or sexism, or nationalism, or the worship of stuff that is rare or precious or attractive or beautiful or empowering.

The new strategy means in the Ten Commandments to take the neighbor with utmost seriousness. So, the last five commandments are all about the neighbor and treating neighbors with legitimacy and dignity and viability and especially disadvantaged neighbors – not to violate the neighbor for the sake of greed.

And between these two commandments of honoring God and taking the neighbor seriously, at the center of the Ten Commandments, is Sabbath day. Keep Sabbath: take a break from the rat-race of busyness and exhaustion and do not let Pharaoh define your life.

But this doesn’t only work historically. “Pharaoh” and “Egypt” aren’t just some long ago realities and the wisdom of the Ten Commandments doesn’t only apply to an ancient people wandering in desert trying to find their way back to a homeland they have been away from for generations.

We may not know (in this country, in this time) a single, human Pharaoh who enslaves and demands our worship and controls our time and productivity and relationships. But we do know the kinds of powers and principalities, as Paul puts it, that grip society in similar ways:

that keep some in poverty while others enjoy lavish excess, 

that demand our attention to work 24-7, 

that drive us away from each other through competition for resources that are perceived as scarce, 

that paint some people as dangerous and less-than-human, people to be feared and kept at arms’ or highway’s distance. 

We may not have a single, human Pharaoh threatening our lives, but we can still find ourselves living as those who are controlled by Pharaoh-like forces, which is why God’s gift to God’s people starts with a bold declaration of who God is and the freeing grace God gives freely.

Again from Dr. Brueggeman:

I am the Lord your God.

I am the Lord of the Exodus.

I am the God who emancipated you.

I am the Lord of new promises.

It is an announcement that the world is under new governance. That new governance is detailed in the Ten Commandments. They are rules for freedom and justice that contrast with the bondage and injustice of Pharaoh. The covenant at Sinai is a warning that if you do not keep these commandments, you will be back in the grip of Pharaoh and his insatiable demands.

Back to having to produce on demand,

Back in the rat-race of production and consumption,

Back in fear and anxiety and alienation,

Back in hostility toward the neighbor.

This isn’t meant as threat or punishment, but what some parenting styles call “natural consequences.” The gift given at Mt. Sinai declares that there are new possibilities for life beyond the pressures of anxiety and fearfulness and greed, and the way we nurture that life, the way we participate in it, the way we proclaim it and demonstrate it to the world is by  honoring God first, living in peace with others, our neighbors, and stepping out of the death-dealing, creation-harming, endless pursuit of more for mine to rest in the abundance of God.

In the Exodus, God’s people were given the gift of freedom, but even in those first days, it didn’t exactly go well.  They don’t know how order themselves, to treat each other, to relate to God.  They don’t seem to understand that freedom is not for thoughtless, careless living, but the consequences of their actions now may even be felt by their children, grandchildren, and beyond.  They don’t seem to understand that life as God’s people means treating others as God’s people, too. Things we still struggle with today.

Yet in the midst of this slavery to ourselves, our attitudes and entitlements, slavery to self-centeredness – God delivers grace in yet another form.  God gives God’s people the law to show another way to live.  

God’s commandments were NEVER intended to be a way for the Israelites or US to earn a relationship with God.  Obeying the law was NEVER the way to get God to save us.  God’s commandments don’t tell us how to get God’s love, they tell us how to enjoy it forever. 

There is in the Jewish Passover celebration a particular blessing that is repeated whenever something takes place in the meal that is specifically commanded in Scripture, as opposed to a tradition that has developed over time.  For example, in various descriptions of the Passover meal in Exodus and Deuteronomy there is a command to eat unleavened bread.  So, before that bread is eaten throughout the meal, the following prayer is said:  

Baruch atah, Adonai, eloheynu melech ha’olam, kidshanu b’mitzvotav
Blessed are you, Adonai/Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who makes us holy with your commandments.

Like the Passover prayer says, the Ten Commandments make the people holy, but not in that holier-than-thou way. They connect us to the Holy One.  They tell us for what we have been freed.  They give us a vision of what life in God’s realm looks like.  They aren’t heavy burdens to bear, but are pictures of what God intended for the Israelites when they were led through the parted waters of the Red Sea, what God intends for us who have been led through the waters of baptism into life as God’s people. 

We are liberated for life with God, for community.  We experience God’s grace so that we can live in God’s presence, in God’s vision, with God’s people in peace.  God shows us how to do this, what life according to the divine will looks like, how it is ordered, how people are treated.

And this is for what we have been saved. Not to follow an irrelevant checklist or rules, not to try to earn God’s grace.  We have been saved to be in relationship with God and with others.  We have been saved for love.