Well if you would turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 20. You can find that on page 61 in the pew Bibles. Exodus chapter 20.
We turn this morning to some of the most familiar words in the Bible, some of the most familiar words I think we could say in human language – the Ten Commandments. But it could be that we are not as familiar, we are not as accustomed to associating the law of God with the love of God. In fact, we may even be prone to think of rules as being incompatible with the sharing of affection, that law and Gospel are somehow contrary to one another.
When Molly and I left on our honeymoon nearly twenty-five years ago, one of my favorite memories was walking behind another newlywed couple in the concourse of the connecting airport. And this couple had gotten married the day before as well, and they were wearing matching airbrushed honeymoon t-shirts, and they were perfect! On the t-shirts there was this image of two gold, interlocking gold wedding bands, along with the words, “Dale and Teresa – May 25, 2002,” and in quotes, “Set in Stone.” It was great. You know, back then I would have never, but today, I don’t know – maybe I would wear that, because it was classy! “Set in Stone.”
We have been talking about the love of God for the last few weeks. We can very much say that when we come to the Ten Commandments, the love of God for His people is set in stone. Last week, Rupert looked at the gift of love and focused particularly on the love of God as demonstrated in the cross of Jesus Christ. But this week, we are going to look at the bond of love, and particularly how that impacts our relationships – our relationship with God and our relationship with one another. And I want us to see two things from the Ten Commandments this morning. I want us to see, number one – in real time; and then number two – for real life. The Ten Commandments are given in real time and for real life. So with that in mind, let’s pray and ask God’s blessing on the reading and study of His Word.
Our Father, we come before You this morning, we come before Your Word, we come before You as those who are under authority and who have a responsibility to You. And yet, we go astray and we cannot even hear rightly what You have revealed to us, what You have revealed to us in Your truth and in Your love. So we pray, speak Lord, for Your servants listen, that You would give us the gift of Your Spirit to understand and to apply Your words into all of our lives, that You would help us to see Jesus. And we pray this in His name, amen.
Exodus chapter 20, beginning in verse 1:
“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 generation 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 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, 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 the heavens and the 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.’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
First – in real time. The Ten Commandments, they are not given in a vacuum. You can’t make a copy of them and put them on display as some sort of badge of virtue. You can’t pluck them out of the Old Testament and use them as a tool by which you hammer and condemn someone else. You can’t even do that to yourself. And to think that as if they are too demanding and the only way of dealing with them is either to be crushed in despair or to dismiss and disregard them altogether. No, the Ten Commandments are a part of a story. They have a history. There is a timeline on which you can find the Ten Commandments. And it’s not for the faint of heart. Verse 2 says, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” You know there is a certain wisdom in teaching and in preaching, there is a certain wisdom in not making many references to movies or to TV shows because very often that can, in some way, promote or even lead someone to something that has explicit or graphic content, something that might numb our consciences in some way, or that may cause someone to be desensitized by real violence and pain as we find it in real life.
But you see, what we read in this prologue, verse 1 and 2 of chapter 20, this prologue or preface to the Ten Commandments, it is as graphic and disturbing as anything that we might find on the TV or movie screen because Egypt, Egypt was a place of infanticide and ethinic cleansing. Now remember that the king, the pharaoh, he ordered that all the newborn male Hebrew babies be thrown or discarded into the Nile River because the Hebrews were nothing but slaves. They were slaves to be kept down; they were slaves to be kept in subjection by whatever means necessary. And slavery for them, for the Hebrews, it meant ruthless beatings. It meant being struck down and bloodied and bruised. It meant multiplying the output that was required of them without increasing the time in which it was required to do. And it means crying out, crying out in anguish to God for help.
And Moses will say later in the book of Deuteronomy, he will say that, “The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. He brought us out with great deeds of terror and with signs and wonders.” What did that look like? Well, it looked like plagues and deep distress for the Egyptians. It looked like the bloody sacrifice of a lamb in each home of the Hebrew people with the blood smeared over their doorframes. It looked like judgment and the death of the firstborn in the homes of the Egyptian people. It looked like a pillar of cloud and fire and parting the Red Sea and swallowing up the Egyptian army in the crashing waves. And it looked like thunders and lightning and the smoke that wrapped around Mount Sinai. And Moses sang in Exodus 15. He said, “You have led in Your steadfast love the people You have redeemed. You have guided them by Your strength to Your holy abode.” Did you catch that? Did you catch it? “You have led in Your steadfast love the people You have redeemed.” You see, redemption is costly love.
Think about the story of Hosea, the prophet Hosea in the Old Testament. Hosea took Gomer to be his wife. They had a family, and she left him. And it was for another man. She was rightfully his, and yet when Hosea was called and in love, he went to take her back again. He had to buy her back for fifteen shekels of silver plus some. He redeemed her, he brought her back in love, and yet it cost him something. And you see, when God spoke all these words to Israel at Mount Sinai, He could point to all that He had done in steadfast love to bring them out of Egypt, to bring them out of the house of slavery. You see, the commandments of God, they flow out of the love of God, and grace leads us to obedience. Love precedes the law. Relationship comes before the rules are given.
What kind of love? Well, it’s a love that’s tenacious and it’s a love that’s tested. It’s adamant and unyielding and fierce. We could even say that it is a dreadful love. In a few weeks, David is going to begin a series on the Song of Solomon, and in the Song of Solomon we read these words about love – “Love is as strong as death; jealousy as fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.” And we read something about that, don’t we, here in Exodus chapter 20. In fact, it’s really the only characteristic or attribute of God that is specifically given in these verses as an adjective connected to the noun of God’s name. In verse 5, what does it say? “I am a jealous God.” You see, He is fiercely loyal to His beloved.
And you may know, there’s the famous scene, there are the famous lines from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – “‘Is he quite safe?’ ‘Of course he isn’t safe, but he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you.’” God’s love isn’t safe either, but it’s good. And here’s why that matters, because there will be a time when every one of us, every one of us will be up against something that is far too big for us, far too intimidating. It may be going on right now. There may be something right now that has you overwhelmed and absolutely exhausted. You can’t go around it, you can’t go over it, you can’t go under it; you have to go through it. But to know, to know that the love of God is absolutely committed to do whatever is necessary for the good of His beloved. And in fact, He has, and He’s done it for His people, the people of Israel, in bringing them out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of slavery. This is no soft and timid love. This is no fleeting or fickle love. No, this is an unyielding and omnipotent love. And drastic times call for drastic measures and man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. And if God is for us, who can be against us?
Do you know what, do you know what is maybe some of the best words in the Ten Commandments? It’s the little English pronoun, it’s really just a Hebrew suffix – “your.” And five times in these verses we read that He is the Lord “your” God – verse 2, verse 5, verse 7, verse 10, verse 12 – “your God.” You are His and He is yours. It’s a new identity. They have been taken from being slaves to a son, like adoption; from not a people to the people of God. And it is a committed and a personal love, a covenant love, like a marriage. And it’s based in real time events, in tangible and graphic demonstrations of His steadfast love for His people. And these commandments, they are, in a sense, God saying to His people, “I want what is best for you. I want you to prosper. I want you to experience blessing in the land that I am giving you to inhabit.” This is the way, this is the way to a life that is good spelled out here for you in these words.
And it’s for real life. So first – in real time. Secondly – for real life. You can Google it. The Ten Commandments have been in the news this week. Here are some of the headlines. USA Today – “Teacher Asks Supreme Court to Hear Case on Ten Commandments in Schools.” FOX News – “Ten Commandments Belong in Texas Schools.” The Wall Street Journal – “The Texas Activists Putting the Ten Commandments Back Into American Classrooms.” Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, others have recent laws that require or allow the display of the Ten Commandments in their public schools. In the Texas law, it says that a poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments must be in a size that is legible and that it is placed somewhere in the classroom that can be seen from anywhere in the classroom, and that it is at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall.
Okay, but here’s the thing – When God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses, He didn’t give them to him to display them. He gave them to them to do them, to obey them. In other words, the commandments are for real life. This is spoken to a people who are both coming out of and going into a land that was littered with many gods and idols. In fact, even as God is speaking these words to His people on Mount Sinai, what will they do? They will make a carved image of a golden calf and bow down and worship him.
These commandments are coming to a people who were forced to work and work and work as slaves and to never rest. They are husbands and wives and fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and sisters and brothers. They are keepers of livestock. They are shepherds who were despised by the Egyptians and they’re carrying with them the spoil of their tormenters. And they’re going to the land that will be their possession. In fact, these commandments in which one of them, verse 13 says, “Do not murder,” they are given to one, to Moses, who earlier in his life had killed an Egyptian for beating a fellow Hebrew and then he hid the body in the sand and ran so that he would not be discovered. All that to say, the commandments fit. They fit. They fit the conditions and the demands of the people to whom they were given. Their waywardness and their wellbeing, their stubborn sins and their deepest desires are met head on in all of these words.
You know how it is when you’re doing a search online and you can oftentimes filter the results by different factors like newest to oldest or lowest price to highest price or one option is usually relevance, the relevance to your key word. Well there’s a relevance of these words in Exodus chapter 20 to human life in all of its messiness and in all of its beauty. In fact, a modern, secular historian had this to say about the Ten Commandments when he was writing the story of the Jews some years ago. He said this:
“There is nothing to add really, nothing to subtract. If I can peer through the midst of history and see the begrimed, straightforward faces straining upward toward the terrors of Mount Sinai, if I can imagine this immense throng of simple souls trudging through the whole of history, all the ordinary people down the ages in need of moral guidance and all the incredibly various situations and cultures that this planet has known, it must be admitted, it must be admitted that it would be fairly impossible to improve upon the decalogue, the Ten Commandments as we have them. The sins it catalogues are the great sins, and those it does not mention explicitly can be deduced from it. And even today, there are few who do not know that if we were to keep these commandments in our world it would be an entirely different place. And yet, for all our resourcefulness, we have never yet managed to do it.”
We don’t do it very well, do we? But that doesn’t mean that they are not doable. Yes, everyone has fallen short. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That’s why we need a substitute; that’s why we need a righteousness that is outside of ourselves, and “the just live by faith.” But still, still there is something concrete about these Ten Commandments. They speak to our head and our heart, yes, but they also speak to our hands and to our feet. And they have to do with our actual relationships – relationship with God but also with the people sitting next to us on the pews. They deal with our work and our money, our rest and our words. And this is God’s ideal for us. J. I. Packer put it this way – “What is God’s ideal? God’s ideal is a God-fearing community marked by common worship and an accepted rhythm of work and rest, plus an unqualified respect for marriage and the family, for property and owner’s rights, for human life, and for truth and honesty in all relationships.” That pretty much covers it, doesn’t it?
And what Packer says is that what is held out for us is the hope of shalom, of peace. A shalom that is not just the absence of war and trouble and sin and rebellion against God, but a shalom that is also justice and prosperity, good fellowship, health, and an all around commitment to well being under God’s gracious hand. The choir sang it for us, didn’t they? “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God.” All that to say that the commandments are given to real flesh and blood to be kept in real time and space. And God’s ideal for us, it is not some mystical path. It’s not some vibe that we are trying to pursue.
Now if you were to look up the top ten best selling Christian books of last year, of 2025, almost half of them have some element of Christian mysticism to them – some element of the Christian life that is all about disconnecting and being contemplative and picking up on God’s rhythms. Some of those books are on your bookshelves, probably. Some of them are on my bookshelf. I came across a quote some time recently, it was from 45 or 50 years ago, and this man said that, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.” Now that’s surely, obviously an overstatement and for effect, but someone could get the impression that the Christian life has to do with eliminating distractions and spending time in solace and solitude. Or maybe it’s sauna and cold plunge and breath work that will do the trick. And one of us are immune from focusing on the therapeutic, that what matters is feeling good. None of us is immune from thinking that we can distill the Christian life down to the practice of prayer and Bible study and that we fill our weeks more and more with church activities.
But what did C. S. Lewis say? He said that, “I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them.” Well the Ten Commandments give us something to do in concrete, tangible, practical, clear and objective ways. And at their heart, at the heart of these commandments is one simple principle. What is it? It’s love – love for God and love for neighbor. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul.” “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus said. “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” This is a love that is not merely a feeling but it’s an action, it’s a commitment, saying, “No” to ourselves and our pride. It’s saying, “No” to making idols of people and things. It’s saying, “No” to allowing our preferences to dictate our worship. It’s saying, “No” to constant work and worry. It’s loving our neighbor by honoring authority and respecting life and being faithful in marriage and being generous with the resources God has given to us. It impacts how we speak and how we look with our eyes. And this is a love that does not hold the two tables of the law in contrast to one another.
What do I mean by that? There are two tables of the law, two aims in view here. There’s one that is vertical and one that is horizontal, but those are never to be held in distinction to one another. For example, our love for God should not cause us to mistreat our neighbor. Our zeal for God should not be used as an excuse to hate or slander or dismiss or avoid someone else. In fact, a love for God calls us to love even our enemy. And on the flip side, our love for someone else should not compete with our loyalty to God. That’s called an idol. And when we look for more in a relationship than it was meant to give, oftentimes what it does is it crushes the other person and it crushes ourselves as well because we’ve put them in the place of God in our lives, a place that they cannot bear. And that’s why our anger oftentimes exposes our idols.
On Sunday evenings, we are looking through, preaching through the gospel of Mark. And I caught myself this week – maybe it’s an occupational hazard – but I had to catch myself when picking up on some of the storytelling in the gospel and some of the nuances and the allusions and the subtle techniques of the gospel writer. I had to catch myself not to be so fascinated with the literary design and the genius of the gospel writing that I fail to be fascinated most of all with Jesus. Because He’s the heart of the Gospel and He cannot be missed. But when it comes to the law, when it comes to the Ten Commandments, they are simple, they are comprehensive, they are practical and they are genius, but at the heart of them is love. And we have to see in these words from Exodus chapter 20 an ethic of love.
And Jesus too. We have to see Jesus here. Because the same love that looks like pestilence and blood and the Passover lamb and passing through the waters of the Red Sea, it is the same love that looks like lashing and being spit upon and being betrayed and denied and abandoned and thorns and nails and spear and cross and the shedding of blood, the blood of the Passover Lamb. And suffocation and thirst and, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” and a cold, dark tomb. That is the ultimate expression of love. It is Jesus ‘death on the cross. And it’s graphic and it’s drastic and costly. It is a love that redeems at a price, a love that redeems us from the bondage to sin. It’s a love that redeems us from the curse of death. This is love; drastic circumstances call for drastic measures, and it is a love of Jesus for sinners, for law breakers like you and like me. He laid down His life and took it back up again. It is His death and resurrection, the death and resurrection of Jesus in real time. It is a love that gives us a freedom. It is to give you shalom, a peace that passes understanding. To give you life, eternal life as a gift from God merely to be received by faith. And it is Jesus who says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we bow before Your wisdom and power and grace this morning and we ask that You would help us to see Your love in new and fresh ways in the words that You have revealed to us, in the commands that You have given to us. And we ask that as we see the cross of Christ and the good news of the Gospel that You would give us, by Your Spirit, and out of gratitude for Your love, the motivation and the ability to follow You in keeping Your commandments, that we would glorify You in all that we do. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.