The Ten Commandments, Again

Deuteronomy 5

            Moses recounts the giving of the 10 Commandments. Three things stand out to me.

            First, in verse 3, Moses says that the Lord did not make the covenant with their ancestors. Probably he means that the Lord didn’t make the covenant with their ancestors only. That is to say, the covenant binds Israel through many generations—until the promise is fulfilled. To be part of Israel is to be part of that covenant. In the same way, to be part of the Church is to be bound by what the Lord says. (Just this morning, I stumbled on an article online, “The 40 Reasons I’m No Longer an Evangelical Christian,” in which the author listed a bunch of things he doesn’t believe anymore. I’m pretty open to these kinds of critiques, because I think they highlight weaknesses in how Bible-believing Christians cast their message. However, my thought this morning was, “Your problem isn’t with the Church; it’s with the New Testament”—a point the author happily conceded later in the piece. We’re simply not allowed to pick and choose which parts of the Lord’s words we like and which parts we don’t like.)

            Second, there’s a notable change in the 3^rd Commandment. In Exodus 20, the command to observe the Sabbath was embedded in God’s creative work. “In six days, the Lord created the heavens and the earth, and He rested on the seventh day. You, too, rest on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:8-11). Here the Sabbath is embedded in Israel’s former slavery. The Israelites’ history is mired in brutal work for the Egyptians. The Sabbath is a weekly reminder that the Lord saved them from that. I like how some concepts in the Bible are multivalent, that is they can be understood in multiple ways. The Sabbath can be understood both in terms of creation and in terms of the exodus out of Egypt. Similarly, Jesus’ death can be understood against the background of the Passover, in which case we preach about freedom and release, or against the background of the Day of Atonement, in which case we preach about forgiveness and propitiation.

            Finally, it struck me again today how unique Israel’s experience of God was. Just like yesterday, when Moses had wondered, “What other nation has a God like ours?” so today, Moses recounts the Israelites’ experience, that they had seen God in His fiery glory and heard His words. Much later in Israel’s history, this sense of their own uniqueness led to a complete misunderstanding of their purpose. By Jesus’ day, they had largely forgotten that they were to be a blessing to all the peoples and were largely focused on their own uniqueness, that they were God’s favorite people. The lesson remains for the Church today: to learn to rejoice in the nearness of our God in Word and Sacrament and yet never to lose sight of the fact that we are called to invite all sorts of people into that presence with us.