So Exodus chapter 20. In the... in the studies that we've been
doing in the book of Exodus so far. We've been moving through
some of the chapters and following the Lord's people as they have
left Egypt and entered into the wilderness. And we've seen a
number of incidents, including last week the battle that the
Lord's people, the children of Israel, had with Amalek. That was in chapter 17. In chapter
18, Moses tells us about a visit that he had from his father-in-law,
Jethro. And Jethro brought Zipporah,
Moses' wife, and his two sons to meet with Joseph in the wilderness. And then in chapter 19, God leads
the children of Israel to the foot of Mount Sinai. And there he speaks to them by
Moses, the servant of God. And God tells Moses that he is
to tell the people, and this is chapter 19 and verse five
and six, now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed and
keep my covenant, Then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me
above all people. For all the earth is mine, and
ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So in chapter 19, Moses, on God's
behalf, speaks to the people and brings these words to them. If ye will obey my voice indeed
and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure
unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine and ye
shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And Moses carried that word from
the Lord to the people. When the people heard those words
from the Lord. They all agreed and we're told
that the answer was sent back by Moses to the Lord, all that
the Lord hath spoken we will do. and Moses returned the words
of the people unto the Lord. So the Lord had said in chapter
19, if you will obey me and keep my covenant, then I will treasure
you as a peculiar people and the people agreed to do that. So as we move into chapter 20,
we are given a list of those things which the Lord would have
the children of Israel do to keep his word. And this chapter
20 is really quite a famous chapter in the word of God. And it's
a list of 10 laws that are given. Primarily these are the 10 laws. Sometimes they are called the
Decalogue. or Ten Commandments, which I'm
sure you've heard about. Sometimes they're called the
moral law. And the Lord gave the people
these laws as a standard, or his standard, for their conduct,
his will for their lives. And these Ten Commandments are
the basis of moral law and government for all men and women. Although
as a set of rules they were only given to the children of Israel. So that when the children of
Israel in the previous chapter had said, all that the Lord has
spoken we will do, these were the principle laws for moral
living that they were agreeing to obey. And these are the words
the Lord spoke to Israel at Mount Sinai. So we're going to read
in Exodus chapter 20 and verse 1. And God spake all these words,
saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of
the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt
have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee
any graven 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. Thou shalt not bow down thyself
to them, nor serve them. For I the Lord thy God am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. and showing
mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not take the name
of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him
guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath
day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and
do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord
thy God, In it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son,
nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy
cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six
days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that
in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed
the Sabbath day, and hallowed it, honour thy father and thy
mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the
Lord thy God giveth thee. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt
not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear
false witness against thy neighbour, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's
house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant,
nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything
that is thy neighbour's. And all the people saw the thunderings,
and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain
smoking, and when the people saw it, they removed and stood
afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak
thou with us, and we will hear, but let not God speak with us,
lest we die. And Moses said unto the people,
Fear not, for God is come to prove you, and that his fear
may be before your faces, that ye sin not. and the people stood
afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where
God was. Amen. May the Lord bless this
reading to us. The first thing I would like
us to note is how the Lord identifies himself when he begins to speak
to the people here on Mount Sinai because I think that it's quite
important that we realise what the Lord has done here. He describes
himself, he identifies himself as the Lord thy God. And he does so in three distinct
ways. He says, first of all, I am the
Lord. I am the Lord. So before he goes
on to say thy God, we should note this statement, I am the
Lord. And this is true for all men
and women. and all nations of the earth,
not just the Jews or the children of Israel as was. God is creator
and ruler and king of the whole world and has the right to govern
and act and dispose of all that he has made as he sees fit because
he is the Lord. I am the Lord. And so this is
the first way in which God reveals himself. He reveals himself as
the creator God who is king and governor of all the world and
all that is in it. He has the right to be honoured
and served and obeyed as the Lord. The second thing he says
is that I am the Lord thy God. And that is a particular relationship
that the Lord had with the children of Israel because it's a covenant
relationship. He was their God in covenant
because of promises that he had made to Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob. Now, I'm sure you remember that.
We spent a lot of time thinking about these three men, the patriarchs
and their journeys in those olden times and how the Lord made promises
to each of them. But these children of Israel
Remember that Israel is the new name that God gave to Jacob. So Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Jacob
had his name changed to Israel and now these are the children
of Israel. This is the nation that came
from Jacob. So they were under the benefits
of the promises that had been given to the patriarchs. and
they were bound to the Lord on the grounds of those covenant
promises. So when the Lord says, I am the
Lord thy God, we see that he is first Lord, as creator and
governor, and thy God because of these covenant promises. And the third way that the Lord
describes himself is to go on and speak of the indebtedness
of the children of Israel to him for their personal deliverance
out of Egypt. because he brought them out of
bondage from under Pharaoh and under the slavery that they were
in. So this three-fold relationship
between the Lord and his people is what is set before us here. And what we discover in Scripture
is that that three-fold relationship continues and is most fully seen
in the case of God's elect people. So that we who have faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ, not just the children of Israel, but all
men and women, boys and girls in all the world who have faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ, we see God as our creator, to whom
we owe creator rights, and to whom we owe gratitude, for the covenant blessings that
we have received in the covenant of grace that was obtained by
the Lord Jesus Christ as our representative. And also we see
that the Lord has given us a personal deliverance and salvation because
he has brought us out from that bondage of sin, our bondage to
Satan, and he has made us his new covenant people. And as we
come to these 10 commandments, it is always good for us to see
them with the gospel eyes of that new covenant understanding. It is good for us to understand
with a view to the Lord Jesus Christ and what he has done for
us as our surety. When we think about these commandments,
if we merely see these commandments as rules for living and commands
to be obeyed, then we shall find that they do not lead us to life,
but that they bring us to death and condemnation, because we
will fail to keep them. We will fall short of what is
called the letter of the law, so that we can't even do the
things that the law says on its surface, but we will also be
transgressors of the spirit of the law. Now let's just think
about these laws for a moment or two. There seems to be a split
in these laws that are set forth before us here. And these are
sometimes called the two tables of the law because they were
given later, they were written later in stone and given to Moses
to give to the people on two stone tablets. And the split
between these Ten Commandments appears to be in, first of all,
our duty to God, or towards God, and secondly, our duty towards
our fellow men and women. so that the first four commandments
speak of the uniqueness of the one true and living God and our
duty to serve and worship him and the next six commandments
speak about our relationships with our fellow creatures. However,
let me just mention something here. It's a split that is not
to be taken too rigidly. Because as we see in the second
part of these laws, or within the sixth, idolatry is really
a form of spiritual adultery. And we steal from God if we do
not honour God and his word. and we despise God's providence
when we envy what he has given to someone else. So that in all
of these laws, we have a first obligation to God and that should
be understood. These laws that we've just read
together were the basis of God's relationship with the children
of Israel. And they were a summary of the
principal duties and obligations that God gave to them. However,
it is also good for us to know that they were not the only laws
that were given to Israel. There were many, many more laws
given about all manner of things. about how the people were to
be dressed, about how they were to prepare their food, about
lots of sacrifices and rituals and ceremonies, about washings
and cleaning and about relationships with their servants and marriage
and and lots of different rules were given by God. And indeed,
as we go through these first five books of Moses, we'll discover
that there are lots and lots of rules and regulations and
laws given. But what appears from these laws
is that they are very demanding and very rigorous. In fact, while
the people were quick to say that they would obey all God's
laws, they soon discovered that these laws cut across their personal
will to act as they pleased. And they discovered that they
never did keep God's laws and they never could keep God's laws. So even these Ten Commandments,
people might think, well I can obey those Ten Commandments.
But what the children of Israel discovered is that they could
not. And what everyone who tries to obey these commandments discovers
is that they cannot either. And these laws always condemn
those who try and fulfil them. And that was the problem. You
see, God didn't say it's okay to keep nine of these laws if
you only fail in one of them. Or he didn't say it's okay to
keep them most of the time but nobody could keep them all of
the time. And in the New Testament James tells us Whosoever shall
keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of
all. So that if we break one of these
laws, it's as if we've broken everything. If we trespass in
one, then we're guilty of having broken them all. And Paul tells
us that it's not possible to find peace with God by trying
to obey God's laws. And the Lord Jesus Christ himself
explains why no one can be perfect or justified. which just means
to be made holy or made righteous, by the law when the Lord gave
his Sermon on the Mount, because there he explains that true obedience
to the law is not outward conformity to the Ten Commandments, but
it is a heart obedience to God, which no sinner can ever have. God's law can never make a person
holy because sin is in our very nature. And the law always ends
up condemning us and showing us how far short of God's glory
and holiness we fall in our own words and in our own deeds. Now this isn't to say that these
laws are not valuable. They are valuable. The Bible
tells us that they are holy, that they are just and that they
are good. They teach us about God's holy
nature. They teach us what God requires
of man. They teach us about our own inability
and failures. but they can never make us righteous
and they can never make a sinner holy. And that is why we must
always approach God by faith. Faith in the work of Jesus Christ
and not on the basis of our own works of righteousness or our
obedience to the Ten Commandments. We need forgiveness for our sins. We need mercy, not judgement. We need grace to trust in the
saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross. This was the reason
why the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, because no person
by themselves could ever reach the standard of God's holiness,
the standard that God required. And those who tried to obey the
law, like the Old Testament Jews and the religious Pharisees and
the scribes and the priests, all they found was that it made
them into hypocrites. made an outward profession but
in their hearts they were really disobedient and they needed God's
grace just as much as anybody else. The Lord Jesus Christ came
into the world to rescue and redeem a people that God had
chosen to save. And no one can save themselves. And everyone, because all have
sinned, everyone is guilty under God's law. But the Lord Jesus
Christ proved that as the Son of God and the Son of Man, He
was able to keep the law perfectly. And the spotless Lamb of God
became a worthy substitute for sinners. He took our sin. He took our guilt. He took our
condemnation for breaking God's law onto Himself. and at the cross he delivered
God's elect from the law's judgement. Now while the law finds us guilty
because of the wrong things that we do, the grace of God gives
us life for Christ's sake and we have peace with God because
the Lord Jesus Christ has died in our place and taken our punishment. The Apostle Paul says, for the
wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord. We do not try to earn peace with
God by obedience to his holy law, but by grace we trust rather
in the cleansing blood and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus
Christ for us. Paul says again in Ephesians,
for by grace are ye saved, through faith, that is, faith in the
work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that not of yourselves, it
is the gift of God, not of works, not of our works' obedience to
the law, lest any man should boast. May the Lord bless these
thoughts to us and help us in our understanding of these things. Amen.