Thursday Night Bible Study

Exodus 20:1-11 (Click title for audio access)

"God In Relationship" • 2.17.11 • Calvary Christian Fellowship, Thursday Night Bible Study

Intro.

- The nation of Israel has been out of bondage for just over three months. Their physical journey has led them to the base of Mt. Sinai.

- Their understanding of how to live before God and with each other is a journey of another sort. Looking back upon chapter 18, we saw Moses trying to stand before each of these people.

- He wanted to help them understand, but was limited in his time. It was time for the Lord to communicate to His people, to give them a key to living a life before Him and with each other.

- Enter in the 10 Commandments, a national statement of standards that govern one's life with God and one's life with each other.

- Tonight, we'll look at the first 4 commandments, those which speak specifically to the relationship that God expects from His people.

Text

• Exodus 20:1,2 : "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 bondage.'"

- Consider those words: God spoke! Without His communication to us, we would know nothing about Him. What is amazing is that we know only that which He chooses to reveal about Himself.

- Imagine how much more we will discover about Him when we spend eternity with Him!

- The bible asserts from the very beginning, that God speaks. All of scripture comes from the mind and heart of God and was then communicated to and through human authors.

- This is called "verbal plenary inspiration" meaning that the contents are completely His.

- What we have read and are about to read are the words, thoughts and desire of God.

- What is about to be presented is predicated on the following presupposition: I am the Lord your God! That is who He was to Israel. He is the Almighty One, object of worship and allegiance.

- He had proven that by delivering them out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. You might wonder why it is that God keeps reminding them of this.

- Repitition is God's favorite teaching tools. At the same time, God's people often forget their true state without Christ.

- You and I would be lost, eternally condemned, justifiably subject to wrath had it not been for Christ who was condemned by men, unjustly murdered, receiving in His body, the full wrath of God!

- He did that so we could be brought out of bondage, out from under the rule of the world system that would oppress and enslave us. It is true for us principally and in reality.

- For the people of Israel, standing in the shadows of Mt. Sinai, this was their history! God wants them to remember. He wants us to remember as well.

- He doesn't want us to remember for the sake of guilt over our past, or out of dutiful obligation. He wants us to see the length that His love and concern went to on our behalf.

- When we see that, we'll look at His commands in their proper light. He is the Father of this nation, the one whose concern led Him to the most dramatic rescue of their whole lives.

• Exodus 20:3 : "You shall have no other gods before Me." : The world in which the ancient Israeli's lived was filled with various idols.

- Having looked through the earlier part of Exodus, we saw God's judgments upon each of the Egyptian's god through the plagues. Those are the gods that were now behind them.

- However, Egypt was not the only nation with multiple gods. Virtually every nation followed after gods of their own making.

- As we continue our study through the Old Testament, we'll become acquainted with Baal, Ashtoreth, Molech, and Mammon.

- As the people went forth into those nations, there would be a temptation to honor those deities, most of which were worshipped through sexual expression and even human sacrifice.

- There were two issues at hand that made this more difficult. First, most of the local nations were polytheistic. They had no problem worshipping multiple gods just as Egypt did.

- As in Egypt, the other nations believed that there were gods of the sky, the sea and the fields.

- It would be natural to add gods to the roster. After all, when in Rome...

- The second issue was the problem of henotheism, which reflects the belief that certain gods were stronger in certain areas. Baal, the god of fire, was especially strong on Mt. Carmel for example.

- The community of God's believers were to believe, trust only in One true living God and to worship only Him. They were not to have God and then other gods. He was to be their all in all.

- This first statement is a recognition that a very real temptation would exist. They would face this difficulty, but that they were to fight against it.

- They were not to buy into the belief that other gods could help them when they came into a new area. They were not to believe that the real God would co-exist and tolerate being along another.

- God will have no other competition. He has no equal and His people must not honor another.

- God wants to be trusted exclusively. He wants to receive our worship exclusively.

- The Lord says, "you shall have no other gods before me." The words "before me" can also be translated, "in my presence" or "before my face."

- God is telling these people that they are to have an awareness of His presence. They are to live with the conscious awareness of His presence.

- The Lord was allowing them to dwell in His presence. There at the foot of the mountain, God's people were standing in His presence.

- Soon, there would be a moving temple called the Tabernacle where God's presence would rest wherever they went.

- The people are to trust only in Him and to live consciously in the awareness that they were given the privelege of having God's presence with them on Earth.

- In our sophisticated arrogance, we tend to think that this is a given now that we are Christians living in the 21st century.

- A god was anything that was trusted in. What do you trust in when the finances are low? What do you trust in when there is a medical diagnosis?

- Is that Doctor more knowledgeable than God? Is that lending institution greater than God?

- Are you aware that you live in the presence of God daily by the power of His indwelling spirit? Is God being forced to share a room in your heart?

- We laugh at these gods that existed in the Old Testament. We'd never worship Baal, the god who represented sensuality. Certainly nobody worships sensuality anymore!

- "I would never worship Ashtoreth!" Ah, but you might worship romance! Molech? No, but entertainment might get in there. Do I need to mention Mammom, the god of materialism!?

- Yes, their names are gone, but what they represented is very much alive!

- "You shall have no other gods before me!"

• Exodus 20:4-6 : "You shall not make for yourself a carved image—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 nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments." : The second prohibition is like the first. Within it, God prohibits making idols for worship.

- The difference is this: The first command is an injunction against worshipping false gods. The second injunction is against worshipping the real God in a false way.

- Most idols were made of carved wood, though many were made of metal and were represented by birds, or fish. Dagon for example, the Philistine god, was represented by a fish.

- These are images of gods that other nations would worship. Men were guilty of joining the creation and the creator. God is distinct from His creation.

- As a result, there is no beast or part of the creation that should be identified with Him.

- No part of the created order was to ever be objectified or worshipped. They are created for His good pleasure and to point to Him as the magnificent creator.

- The Eagle in all it's grace in movement, points to a wonderful creator that brilliantly conceived it's design and capabilities.

- No earthly idol or image, should be worshipped at any time and that is what God asserts would happen. An object would be made, then bowed before, then served!

- God gives us the reason why He prohibits this: He is a jealous God. He will not share your affection with another. He wants all of your heart, as well as mine.

˚ "God’s jealousy is love in action. He refuses to share the human heart with any rival, not because He is selfish and wants us all for Himself, but because He knows that upon that loyalty to Him depends our very moral life . . . God is not jealous of us: He is jealous for us.” Alan Redpath

- Think of it like this: God sees what a life filled with other gods and other allegiances leads to. As a loving Father prohibits his son from touching fire, so also does God prohibit idolatry.

- What does it lead to? An abased life and a horrid legacy! The sin of idolatry passes down.

- God visits, or "oversees" the iniquity of the Fathers upon the children until the third and fourth generations. What does that mean?

- Does that mean that God continues to punish people for their sins long after the Fathers are gone? Does this refer to some sort of generational curse?

- What He is saying is that once a life of idolatry is lived out, the consequences of that sin can affect generation after generation.

- This is for those who hate Him or those who are His enemies. Consider the flow of thought here. Somebody who makes an idol, who worships something created, hates the Creator.

- He or she who bows their knee to another entity proves a hatred toward God. Because of that, the children of God haters eventually share in the sin of their parents.

- The effect of idol worship causes deep generational problems.

- On the other hand, to those that love God and keep His commandmens, He shows mercy.

- Please note the significance of those words that are spoken together: Love God and keep His commandments. Jesus would later say that keeping His commands demonstrated love for Him.

- Now, this is an interesting thing principally for us to consider. When a person makes an image, even if that image were to represent God, it would be condemned by God.

- We might wonder why that's the case and it's simple: God, in all of His totality, defies any image that we can make of Him.

- We might make an image representative of His love, but then we mistakenly omit HIs justice. Others make an image of God in their mind as one who is just, but leaves out His love.

- This leads to a line that I hear often: My God would not ________.

- At that point, sometimes a person needs to say that that person's God is not the real God, but an image of God made in our likeness, which is the essence of idolatry.

- Idolatry is to make a god according to the attributes that I accept. This is a sin which has radical repercussions!

- Let me go a step further. I was listening to Dave Rolph talk about this and found it fascinating. An image may be something related to nature or an icon in our mind.

- At the same time, we make icons out of services, pews, worship, when we believe that God can only meet us at certain times, in certain seats, during certain songs.

- It was akin to the thought that one would sit with the love letters that a spouse wrote, but would shun the spouse when they came to be with them.

- That is the danger of idolatry: When Jesus comes, if He does not fit our profile, then we are in danger of rejecting Him for the sake of our idol that represents Him!

• Exodus 20:7 : "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." : Both the NIV and the ESV employ the word "misuse." "You shall misuse the name of the Lord."

- One version that I read, the Darby translation, I believe says it best: "Thou shalt not idly utter the name of Jehovah thy God."

- As a covenant person, they were not to use the word "God" without a direct association to a formal and direct conversation.

- His name was to be held in appropriate holiness, set apart, held in reverance. This would have an application for using His name as a curse word.

- Using His name blasphemously or to bring a curse upon someone is to use His name in a worthless or vain way. This is true, but I think that there is something much more.

- We can look at the word "take" and alternately consider that to mean, "to bear." To bear the name of God, to hold it up as a banner, refers to representation.

- These people were going to be known as people of the Almighty God. They were going to bear His name, as the name "Israel" means "Governed by God."

- They were His image bearers by birth and His name bearers by covenant. The application then would appear to be this: Nobody is to lightly represent Christ!

- Their lives were to be worthy of the name by which they were called. The name of God implies a standard of living, which is revealed in the scripture that He spoke.

- To call oneself by His name is to declare that all that He says applies directly to me! I take His name in vain if my heart does not represent His interests.

- I take His name in vain if I do not hate what He hates and love what He loves.

- I take His name in vain if I am willing to do what He prohibits and unwilling to do what He commands! His name, meant to imply authority, is worthless in that condition.

- It is not worthless intrinsically. It is considered worthless by a person who lives in disobedience. As a result, God will not hold that person guiltless.

- To bear His name is to recognize that there is an authority outside of oneself. To bear His name is to say that you are in compliance with all that He reveals.

- If that is vain to you, you will not be held guiltless! A person in such a condition will be held accountable for what they knew, when they knew enough to name God as their God.

- If you name God as your God, then you must live that out in truth.

• Exodus 20:8-11 : "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger 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 the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." : The final injunction that the people of God are to take to heart, is the requirement to set apart the Sabbath day.

- It shall be a day that is set apart for one reason: To rest! That's what Sabbath means. It's simple: You shall do no work!

- In it's inception, the Sabbath day was not a day to worship. By New Testament times, it became that way, and became an antitype of it's origin.

- The Sabbath was Saturday, which to them was the final day of the week.

- Because Israel counted days as beginning with the evening prior, a Sabbath would begin Friday night at dusk and conclude Saturday evening at dusk. No work would happen then.

- It's worth mentioning that the church of Acts never met on the Sabbath. They met to commemorate the Lord's resurrection, which took place on the first day of the week, Sunday.

- Those who believe that they are keeping the Sabbath on Saturday by worshipping on that day need to take stock of how much work is happening to make that worship service happen!

- I digress...

- By the word "you," God includes a man's entire house, from His children to His servants, to His cattle and even a visitor within His property!

- There was no distinction. This was for everyone. Everyone was to rest.

- The 7th day was to be something entirely different than the rest of the week.

- God gives them the reason: He worked 6 days and rested! He did not need to rest. He was not tired. He simply ordained by His own action that the seventh day would be for resting.

- Because He did it, that day became holy. They were to treat that day in the same way.

- God wants rest to be a part of His covenant with His people. For the Israeli's, this would be a physical, literal day of the week.

- In their history, they were to take God at His word and enjoy one day where they did not work to produce something for themselves.

- For you and I, in Christ, it's wise to have a day of rest. Our bodies need it. Our minds need it. But the rest that God is calling us to is not physical or literal, but typical!

- Jesus Christ is our Sabbath rest. We are to enter into Him and be at rest from any work that we would do to provide salvation for ourselves.

Conclusion

- A few notes to conclude our evening. God begins with our relationship to Him. This is the basis for all other relationships.

- It's worthy of our time to examine ourselves in light of these principles, not because we can gain salvation by keeping them, but because we have salvation, we can keep them!

- Are there other gods before the Lord? Are there images that we love more than God? Are we idly using His name to endorse behavior that offends Him? Are we resting in His Son?

- Let us ponder and be convicted in our souls.