Exodus 20:1–17

Series on Catechism: The Ten Commandments

¹And God spoke all these words, saying,

²"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

³"You shall have no other gods before me.

⁴"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.

⁵You 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 the fourth generation of those who hate me,

⁶but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

⁷"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.

⁸"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

⁹Six days you shall labor, and do all your work,

¹⁰but 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, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.

¹¹For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

¹²"Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

¹³"You shall not murder.

¹⁴"You shall not commit adultery.

¹⁵"You shall not steal.

¹⁶"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

¹⁷"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."

Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, "All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do." O really? Did they realize what they were agreeing to? "All that the Lord has spoken we will do?" We don't have to think twice to realize just how hopeless was their promise. These Ten Commands can be boiled down to the two chief commandments: love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself. "We will do it. We will be obedient," we say.

Really? With our all? And from the depths of our being? Have you ever tried it? To love God with your all, I mean? Have you ever really tried to give God your all and to love Him alone? Have you ever tried to make it your only desire to do his pleasure and to enjoy his presence? Is your ONLY fear the fear of causing Him displeasure? Go ahead, try it! Let me know how it goes!

I'm afraid you and I would end up about as successful as the people of Israel who made that promise and then immediately broke it. No more did they say they would have no other gods before him than they were begging Aaron to make a god for them. Their entire journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land was anything but love for God and neighbor. They grumbled, complained, and distrusted God all the way. But yet they had said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do," and so the covenant was sealed with blood.

The law was the covenant God made with his people. "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt." You shall be my people and I will be your God. It was a legal contract binding God to his people and the people to him. In the New Testament God uses the language of a bride and a bridegroom. He says that Jesus is the groom and we are the bride. The covenant God made with Israel is the same thing. It is, in essence, the marriage certificate. It established the relationship between God and man. They were now bound together forever as man and wife are bound together. Their disobedience to his law was nothing other than unfaithfulness to the marriage vows. God often referred to them as "unfaithful and adulterous people."

So how are we to understand these commandments? They make us holy; setting us apart for God, binding us to him as a bride is bound to her husband. They set us apart from committing adultery with evil, with the lust of the world and with self love. They bind us to loving and serving God above all things. They tell us how we are to live in the world today; how to live and act as God's children. They are our identity as children of God for they spell out how a child of God acts and thinks and lives.

And in-so-far as they set out what God requires of us and how his children are to behave, we fall flat on our face, just like the Israelites fell flat on their faces. The commandments point out all too clearly just how bad we are. Like looking in a mirror, it shows us what we are really like.

It shows us that we have not loved God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. We have not given God our all. It shows us just how apathetic we are toward God. We just don't God that seriously. In fact, we often think that taking God seriously, giving him our all, being completely dedicated to him is just a little over the top. It borders on becoming a "religious fanatic." We surely don't want anyone to think we are "religious fanatics." So sometimes we just don't want to have all that much zeal for God. We hold back and are apathetic toward God and religion. Too much of anything is bad, we know. Therefore, too much prayer, too much Bible, too much worship, too much God in our lives is something to be avoided.

We also become apathetic toward sin itself. We don't want people to think we are "religious fanatics" so a bad word here and there won't hurt. A dirty joke now and then will let others know we aren't going overboard with this religion stuff. They already know we go to church so we have to be sure they know we aren't religious to an excess. We think a few small sins won't hurt us. God won't really get that mad. He'll forgive us. After all, he knows we are just humans. And we don't think he would really send us to hell. He is a loving God!

Just try telling Jesus that! He was the only begotten Son of God. He was perfect in every way. He had been completely dedicated to doing his Father's will and never strayed from it one iota. His Father loved him and was well pleased with him. He said so at his baptism. Even so, that night, before he was betrayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, he knew exactly what was in store for him. And as he peered into that cup of God's wrath which his Father was pouring out for him to drink, he trembled in fear. His agony was so great that he sweat drops of blood. Why? Because he thought hell wasn't all that big a deal? Because he thought God was such a loving God he wouldn't really throw him into hell? No! It was because he did know just how serious a matter sin was. He did know exactly how horrific, how painful, how lonely hell really is. It was because he knew that God really did punish sinners and the punishment was so terrible that he himself shook with fear and fainted in anguish, gripped with torment and filled with distress.

And all that even though he had not sinned one small bit. He had never strayed one foot from the path of his Father's will. All that he suffered because He was taking our place. He was suffering for OUR sins, not for HIS. He was suffering because WE don't give our all to God. WE don't put him first. Because WE are so apathetic about our faith.

And we think that it is no big deal. We think that going to church, worshipping God, praying without ceasing, being in communion with God through his word is not that big a deal. We even shove it to one side and keep it as a separate part of our life. It is something we relegate to Sunday morning or just when we have time. Let's not get too fanatic about our religion. Giving our all to God, making God the center of our life and the purpose of our life is going overboard. Making worship the central and focal point of our week is overdoing it. Allowing our life and everything we do to grow out of our relationship with God is excessive religiosity. Seeking to please God in everything we do is a little too much. Giving God our all is going overboard. Let's just give him what is convenient, what we have in excess, what doesn't hurt too much, what doesn't cost us, what we can spare.

But there was one person who did give God his all. He served God even when it wasn't convenient, even when it did hurt and when it did cost him. It cost him everything; it cost him his life! He gave God his all by giving us his all; by being born, living, suffering, and dying all for us. He gave is all by doing his Father's will at all times, without compromise. That person is the one who in our Gospel reading today was zealous for the house of God. He gave his all for God. That was his zeal. He didn't compromise with this world or the things of this life. His every thought, word and action was doing the will of God. He was 100% zealous to do God's will and to please God in everything he did. His only purpose was to please his Father. He never swerved from that purpose. He set his face on complete obedience even when He knew that it would result in his death and suffering in hell. That night in the garden, under such agony and torment, he prayed, "If there is any way of doing this some other way, please take from me this cup of suffering. But if not, then I am ready and willing to face this death, this suffering and pain, this eternal punishment, this hell, if that is your will." Yes, so zealous was he for the Father, that he was willing to suffer hell if that were his Father's will.

And how wonderful it was that he did! Because he did it for us! Complete devotion to God means loving our neighbor as ourselves. It means giving our lives as a sacrifice for others; suffering for them, carrying their loads and burdens. It means living in our vocations as husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, citizens of the community. And in loving us as himself, that zealous one, Jesus, carried our load of sin: He suffered such torment and pain all because we are not that zealous for doing the will of God. We are not that committed or dedicated to pleasing God or doing his will. We are not zealous about helping our neighbor in need. We are too apathetic. We don't want to be that religious. We don't give God our all as commanded in the 10 Commandments. We don't, so we deserve that hell and torment and suffering. We deserved that rejection, that agony, that death. But in his zeal for his Father, he suffered all that for us. He did all that in our place. He did it because we don't.

And because he obeyed the 10 commandments for us, it is done. Because he was zealous in our place, now, when God looks at us he sees us as being zealous. Because Jesus kept the law for us, God sees the law as having been kept. Because Jesus gave his all for God on our behalf, God sees us as having given our all for him. So now those 10 commandments instead of just telling us how to live, describe what God sees when he looks at us. In God's eyes they are a description of how we live our lives. For in our baptism we are clothed in Christ. In Holy Communion Christ comes into us and dwells in us and we are hidden in him. Therefore when the Father sees us he sees the 10 commandments fulfilled perfectly. Not one jot or iota of the law is left undone. It has been obeyed perfectly and that obedience is what is poured into us by Christ in our baptism. Into that obedience we are united when we sup on the body and blood of Jesus.

Those 10 commandments tell us what the child of God is like. They are a description of a child of God. And in Christ they describe us; made children of God in baptism. And just as the children of Israel said, "All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do," so in Christ we too say, "All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do." For they are already done for us by the Son of God. And as the Father said about Jesus, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," so he says about us who are in Christ, "You are my beloved children in whom I am well pleased."

Amen.