Sunday, May 21, 2023 PM

The Ten Commandments as Covenant and the Image of God

Well, let's open our Bibles to Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5. Aren't these little ribbons nice? Isn't it helpful to have these little ribbons on your Bible? Well, sometimes all you need is just one.

So, we're going to look up Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy 5, because those are the two passages where we have the Ten Commandments recorded for us. All right, let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for the day.

Thank you for the opportunity to read your Word, to think about the meaning of the Ten Commandments in light of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray that you would help us to glorify you as we think of Him, and we pray these things in His name.

Amen. All right, so it's been a little bit since we've been in our study about the Ten Commandments, and we want to think of the Ten Commandments in light of our Light, who is Christ. So, the Ten Commandments could be summed up as ten words about Christ, and we've been thinking about these commandments as the quintessential testimony of God's covenant with Israel.

A great way to sum up God's covenant with Israel that He made with Israel at Mount Sinai is the Ten Commandments. They are called the covenant, and they are placed in the ark of the covenant. They are called the testimony, and they are placed in the ark of the testimony.

That's not all that God said to Israel when He made covenant with them, but it's a great summary of it. It functions very well. They could easily get to any part of the covenant by thinking about the Ten Commandments.

That's how well that they were written. And as we think about the Ten Commandments that God gave to Israel as the quintessential expression of His covenant with them, we are to be reminded that this is one of many biblical redemptive covenants.

And what is that? It is a restoring and revealing relationship that the Creator formalizes with man. After man sinned, after Adam and Eve sinned, we read with Noah and with Abraham and Israel and David and with Christ that God makes covenants with His special creation, those made in His image.

And these covenants that we read about restore something that was lost in the garden. Restore something that was lost in the garden. And these covenants that God makes with man reveal something about God's salvation, reveal something about how God does His work.

It's a relationship that the Creator, the One who is in charge, the One who made us, gave us life, and defines us, He formalizes with man. Sacrifices and signs and special promises given. And we see that whether God is dealing with Noah or Abraham or Israel or David and so on.

So that's what we've been talking about. And to understand what goes on in the Ten Commandments as God's covenant with Israel, we understand that it has something to do with restoring the image of God and revealing the One who would come, the image of the invisible God, Christ.

So we're thinking about the image of God. You and I are made in the image of God. Nothing else was made in the image of God except for people. People are made in the image of God. And we think of that, we think of these relationships that we have.

We are relational mediating servant. When you think of the Ten Commandments, they have to do with how to love God, how to love each other, and how to handle the stuff that God put us in charge of. Every single one of the Ten Commandments relates to one of those things because it has to do with the image of God.

Every covenant that God makes has to do with that, with the image of God, that we are in relationship to God and one another in the world that God has made. And we are up to the Fourth Commandment now, thinking about the commandment referring to the Sabbath.

And we've spent a lot of time thinking about the first three, which have to do with worship. Worship God alone, no other gods. And don't worship God with a graven image. Don't try to craft something that you see in the created order and say, hey, that's God or some other God to worship.

First two commandments. The third commandment is do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Since we're not going to use images to worship God, how do we know who God is? By his word, by how he reveals himself through his word.

He gives us his name. And in his name is all that he has said, all that he has done, all that he is. So when we worship God, we don't use images, we use his name. So it's very important that we don't use his name poorly, flippantly.

The Fourth Commandment in Exodus and Deuteronomy

Now we come to the Fourth Commandment. Exodus 20, verses 8 through 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 to see in all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. We have the commandment given again in Deuteronomy chapter 5. And of course it sounds a lot like the one given in Exodus 20, but there's going to be a few differences.

We're going to talk about a little bit of that tonight. The similarities, which is mostly the same, and then there's a few differences. See if you can hear them when I read Deuteronomy 5, verses 12 through 15.

Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. 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 ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

So we're going to think about, first of all, what's the same between the fourth commandment in Exodus and the fourth commandment in Deuteronomy. By looking at what's the same, we're going to get the basic gist of the commandment.

And then when looking at what's different, we'll see some emphases that will help us. So what's the same? The Sabbath day must be kept holy. The Sabbath day is to be kept holy. The idea there is that God says to Israel, here's how you're going to operate.

When Saturday rolls around, which is the seventh day of the week, they didn't call it Saturday, they called it seventh day, or Sabbath. When the Sabbath comes, you're going to set that apart, you're going to treat it differently than everything else.

That's kind of what a priest does, consecrates things and sets them aside as holy, as special. And this day was meant for God's purposes, not for man's purposes. And so man was to rest. Now there were other Sabbaths that would be described in God's covenant with Israel, but those Sabbath years or those Sabbath weeks and those kinds of Sabbaths that would come up are not being talked about here.

You heard, read twice, it was about the seventh day. One day, the last day, the seventh day out of the week was especially being focused on here. And the Sabbath day, the seventh day, it says, is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.

That's said in both Exodus and Deuteronomy. The order referred to is that of the creation week. God made everything in six days. And on the seventh, he rested. So when you think about the created order, you realize that God is the ultimate goal of creation.

It wasn't light, it wasn't land, it wasn't lambs, it wasn't man. God, God is the culminating aspect of creation. When all was said and done, he said it was very good, and God rested. Seventh day, final word about the creation week was all about God.

So God is the goal of creation. It is meaningful to us and to Israel that once God's work was completed, he rested. Now, notice the specific instructions given here to Israel about how they were to keep covenant with God.

In that seventh day, in it you shall do no work. You shall do no work. Now, of course, when you give a rule to children, first thing they want to know is all the exceptions. And when we get to that portion of our study about the Sabbath day and the life of Israel, we're going to look at just how specifically and completely God said no work.

He was very serious about that. To remember and keep the Sabbath in this covenant that God made with Israel comes down to this. Do no work on the seventh day because of what God has done. Do no work on the seventh day because of what God has done.

Both in creation, which was the reasoning given in Exodus 20, and because of delivering them up out of Egypt, which was the reasoning given in Deuteronomy 5. And he really does mean no work. We'll get back to that later.

But notice it says you or your household. You or your household. Nobody in your household should be doing work. Now, it's interesting, as everyone is listed there, you have the idea of God speaking to the heads of the households.

He's talking to the men who are responsible for their households. But he says, you shall do no work, you nor your son, daughter, male servant, female servant, cattle, strangers, nobody in your household.

Think about that for a second. First of all, the wives are all wondering where's the wife. The two have become one flesh. So if God tells the husband, don't you work on the Sabbath, he knows that means his wife too.

So that's covered. The children of the household are to do no work. And the slaves that are owned by the household do no work. The cattle, your ox, your donkey, so on, no work. The stranger, what would a stranger be doing there?

Well, of course, there was no hotels, motels, so on. People traveled, you were hospitable, you brought people into your home. If they happen to be there on a Sabbath, guess what? Guest, we're doing no work today.

So this is a very specific instruction. And it reminds me of something. This list, you, your son, your daughter, your servants, your cattle, your household. Where else in the Ten Commandments do we find that kind of a list?

Listing all the members and the parts of the household. The Tenth Commandment. Do not covet. Isn't that interesting? Verse 17 there in Exodus 20, you get down to the Tenth Commandment. It says you should not covet your neighbor's house.

You should not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's. Isn't that interesting? It's important for us to see this connection for a few reasons.

First of all, both the Sabbath Commandments and the prohibition against coveting, both of those give us a description of the human household. Well, there's a man and his wife. And look there, there are their children.

And there are the servants that are working for them. Oh, there's all their animals, the beast of burden, the ones that will plow the fields, the ones that will carry the grain. Oh, look, and there are the guests in their household.

We have descriptions of the human household. And in both cases, both God and mammon. If you work your household seven days a week, are you trusting God to provide that harvest? Are you trusting in working your household to the bone to provide for yourself?

Right? Remembering that Israelites were to remember, I don't have to work my household seven days a week, nonstop, 24 -7, just trying to make ends meet. Why do I have to do that? Because God made everything.

And he made it abundant, and he made it good, and he provided. Why don't I have to work everybody like a slave in my household to get things done? Because God delivered us from slavery. We don't live in Egypt anymore.

You see? It's about trusting God, being fixed on God rather than on mammon, on material, on wealth. So working your household seven days a week is not trusting God. And by the way, coveting your neighbor's household is not being content in God.

You're not trusting God there either, are you? Work your family seven days a week, not trusting God. Coveting your neighbor's stuff, you're still not trusting God. Right? Interesting. Secondly, it's important to see the connection here because both of these commandments about coveting and remembering the Sabbath day, they have applications which impact our worship of God, but neither is directly about the practices of worship.

Right? The prohibition against coveting, it's related to worship, that we would not be idolatrous, but it's not particularly about how we worship like the first three commandments are. Also, the instruction to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, often this commandment has traditionally been interpreted as the practice of worshiping God one day out of seven, but it doesn't actually say that in the text.

It's not actually there. When we read it out loud more than once, we realize, this commandment just says don't work. It doesn't say anything about how we go about worshiping God like the first three do.

Now, of course, it's about trusting God and honoring God, and that has something to do with worship, but it's not directly about the practices of worship. If it were, we'd have to establish that from other passages, which we're going to go hunting for those in due time.

This commandment sometimes gets kind of caught up and says, well, on the Sabbath day, you know, everybody went to church. Israel did. No, they didn't leave their tent. If you go read it, they didn't work at all.

They didn't have a go to church on Saturday thing in the Old Testament, in the Old Covenant. They didn't have that. So the fourth commandment, we'll call it worship adjacent, but it's not actually about the practices of worship.

Also, the fourth commandment is in parallel. If you remember that all the commandments, the commandments work as a chiastic parallel centered around do not murder, and the fourth commandment is in parallel with the eighth commandment, which forbids stealing.

If a man is trusting in God's provision by resting in him, then he does not have to steal. It makes sense. Resting in God's provision alleviates the anxiety and the anger, which fuel theft. So both of those commandments are the fourth and the eighth are concerned with possessions and what one does with them, your own possessions and your neighbors.

So they're related. Also, keeping the Sabbath day, it's important for us to think about how this is connected to the coveting prohibition because when we think about the Sabbath day commandment, we read it out loud, we just let it be in and of itself what it is.

We just read it out loud and think about it and meditate on it. Keeping the Sabbath day holy is primarily expressed by how a man orders his household in light of his creator and redeemer. That's what that commandment is about.

You do no work, oh Israel, oh Israelite. Not you, not anybody in your household. Don't you do any work. So why? Because God created you and he brought you up out of Egypt. So keeping the Sabbath day holy is about how a man orders his household in light of his creator and his redeemer.

What does he do? He brings his household into submission to his God before commandment five. He brings his children into submission to himself and their mother. You see how that works? The fourth commandment is not about the practices of worship.

It's about bringing the family into submission to God, bringing the household into submission to God. Then the children are called into submission to the parents. First things first, then the other thing.

It has far more to do with managing a household than any kind of religious service. Although, Sabbaths were often called for during religious festivals. But that's not the same thing as what's being described here.

Also, this just makes better sense. This is a commandment having to do with a household. It makes better sense than the focus on, when we think about the animals and labor in this command, often interpreters have a hard time figuring out where that fits in with going to church.

What about the animals and so on? How does that relate? And when we think about the fourth commandment as well as the tenth, in relationship to God as our creator and redeemer, Israelites, they're told, don't make your household work, in the idea of loving God supremely as your creator and redeemer, don't make your household work seven days a week.

They're going to rest, so have right relationship to your household and to the things that you own, the stewardship of the created order that's been entrusted to you. So the Sabbath commandment has everything to do with the image of God, being restored unto rest and right relationship to God, and certainly anticipating the Sabbath rest that Christ brings.

So those are the similarities. Those are the similar themes that we find from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. Those are similarities, but now what about the differences? When we compare how the commandment begins in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, Exodus begins with remember, and there's a different word used in Deuteronomy meaning observe.

The first is the idea of mark in a mindful manner, circle this date on your calendar. The other one is guard in a keeping manner, meaning I'm canceling stuff now, not just circling and reminding myself, but I'm guarding this space and this time from anything else intruding.

So there's an intensification of the command, and also in Deuteronomy, the commandment says, as the Lord your God commanded you, meaning the second generation is being reminded, hey, at Sinai, this is the way that God said to keep Sabbath.

As God commanded you, so you are to keep this commandment of the Sabbath. And in Deuteronomy, because there's an intensification going on and a clarification going on, it's not just cattle like in Exodus 20, but it's ox or donkey or any cattle, just to be clear.

Quit trying to find ways around it. In other words, you know how parents give you a rule, and then you have to come back and say, to be specifically at all the little things that, and it's an emphasis in Deuteronomy about the male and the female servant.

They're not supposed to work either. Remember that they are to rest as well as you. Why? Because of your redemption from Egypt. Remember, God brought you up out of Egypt. They used to be slaves in Egypt.

Now that they have been brought up out of Egypt by the mighty wonders of their good creator, they are to trust in him for their provision. They are not slaves of men, but they are the people of God. So Sabbath rest for the household recognizes trusting in God rather than trusting in self and trusting in stuff.

So this is very important. This is a commandment about family, how a household is to operate in light of who God is. That's the fourth commandment. Any questions or thoughts so far? In the creation, we have the first mention of the Sabbath in Genesis 2, verses 1 -3, where we read, Thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished.

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made.

It's a cadence there. You can just hear it repeated over and over and over again. So on the seventh day, God Sabbathed. It's turned into a verb. He Sabbaths. He stopped his exertion. He took his repose.

And his rest was taken in direct relationship to the work that he accomplished. So God blessed the seventh day. He set it apart from the other six days. It was special. God set it apart because he rested.

He ceased from his creating work. It's hard for us to imagine, but God in his triune oneness, persons of the Godhead rested and blessed and sanctified the seventh day. God rested. So it is good for us to recognize how the creation week culminates in God's own glory.

When we get to see God resting, we see God as the ultimate focus. So man's existence is derived from God. We are ultimately absolutely dependent upon God, but God is self-existing. We're just the creature.

He's the creator. So as we behold God's rest in the creation week, it is a marvelous matter. It is to create. It is to incite marveling in our hearts. It's to compel us. It's to edify us. It's to instruct us and simply to boggle our minds.

Here's why. Later on, when Moses was describing to Israel how keeping Sabbath was the sign of the covenant that God made with him at Sinai, Moses wanted them to understand what was going on, so he explained it this way.

In Exodus 31, verses 16 through 17, he said, Therefore, the children of Israel shall keep Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever.

The rainbow was the sign of the Noahic covenant, circumcision the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, Sabbath the sign of the Israel's covenant at Sinai, and the temple the sign of the Davidic covenant. So Sabbath was a sign between him and the children of Israel forever.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. God was refreshed. So as we're trying to figure this out, what did God do with himself on the seventh day?

He was refreshed. The Hebrew word is nephash. It's a verb of the noun nephish. Genesis 2, verse 7, The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

So God nephashed into the nostrils of man the breath of life, and he became a living nephish. God ensouled man, thus he was a living soul. So having done that, then he made Eve and brought her to Adam as his wife, and then he rested on the seventh day, and Moses says, and then God was nephash.

God was refreshed in and of himself. Now, when you read the commentaries on Exodus 31, and I've searched them all, nothing hardly at all was written, other than something to the equivalent of the academic version of wow.

Nobody has anything on it. Nobody does. What does it mean that God was refreshed? The word is used as the idea of catching your breath, recovering your strength, getting your second wind. How does that apply to God?

How can this word be used of God? When he spoke all things into existence by his eternal word, did he get winded? No. When God sent forth his spirit to hover over the face of the waters and give life to all creatures, he didn't lose his strength, did he?

No. But all things having been made by the word, and nothing had been made apart from the word, there was rest afterwards in the Godhead. And his spirit, God's spirit, had gone forth and returned to him in the creative acts, and now there was rest.

But more than this we cannot say. Psalm 104, the creation psalm, beautiful psalm. Verse 24, O Lord, how manifold are your works, and wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your possessions, this great and wide sea, in which there are innumerable teeming things, living things, both small and great.

There the ships sail about. There is that Leviathan which you have made to play there. These all wait for you, that you may give them their food in due season. What you give them they gather in. You open your hand.

They are filled with good. You hide your face. They are troubled. You take away their breath. They die and return to their dust. You send forth your spirit. They are created. And you renew the face of the earth.

May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works. And the Lord said, It is very good. And he rested on the seventh day. These are not matters that can be explained. They are matters to marvel at.

Driving along through the Bible, scenic overlook. Pull over. Observe. Be in awe. You don't get out your laser and try to measure the distances. No. You're in awe. Look at the glory here. So in the ceasing action of the word and wind, of God the Son and God the Spirit, a shalom persists.

A rest persists in the Godhead and in the creation. Rest comes when all is as it should be. When everything and each thing is very good, right in its ways, right in its place. Relationally, when everything is perfect, then all is at rest on the seventh day.

God says it is very good. Takes his rest. When everything is very good, right where it should be, right in its relationship, when all is right, God rests. God has made all things, and on the seventh day, all things are home where they're supposed to be in proper relationship to each other.

All things are home, relationally right, and thus at rest. They're home. And the Sabbath was observed weekly, each man and his household in their home. Shut her down. Nothing to fix, nothing to do. Be at rest.

So in Genesis, the pattern of the previous six days is broken by the lack of the formula, the evening and the morning were the next day. The evening and the morning were the next day. We come to the seventh day, we don't get that.

Right? So this rest is a culmination of all the relationships being right, all the things being very good, and it's not interrupted until the fall. It's only interrupted by the fall. It wasn't interrupted by the first day coming back around.

So the pattern that God establishes in the life of Israel, of course, is restorative and revealing. He's getting back to the image of God with them. And even as the tabernacle harkens back to the Garden of Eden, and the sacrifices harken back to the skins God clothed Adam and Eve with, and the ceremonial cleanliness laws and food laws harken back to God's instructions to Adam in the Garden about food.

So also the Sabbath laws harken back to the created order, to the creation, to Eden, when all the relationships were right and all was very good. Harkening back to when things were right between God and man in the world.

So, and we can see that just from reading the Genesis account. When you move from Genesis 1 to the rest of Genesis 2, the Sabbath story in verses 1 through 3 is a hinge in between God ordering all of creation with Adam and Eve correctly and rightly, and then him doing some more on a personal level throughout chapter 2.

The Sabbath as God's rest only makes sense if relationally all is as it should be. All is as it should be. When the relationship is not good, God keeps working till it is good. It is not good for the man to be alone, so he keeps working.

Let's have a parade. Let's drum this into Adam's head. Let's put him to sleep. Take out a rib. Make a woman. The work's not done if the relationships are not good. Not good for the man to be alone. The work continues until all is very good.

Then the rest. You see? I can't wait for the rest of the study, but we're going to test the notion that Sabbath, being primarily defined by God's rest from God's work, as it is defined in creation, has to do with the image of God being right relationally, especially as we look at the Fourth Commandment being about the household.

Because God is your creator and redeemer, love him supremely, everyone in your household is going to rest. Love them rightly. And don't work your fields or your animals and so on. Steward the creation responsibly in the light of God.

So when all the relationships are right, then we are at rest. That is the meaning of the Old Testament shalom, peace. It's the idea of going home, everything back in its place where everyone should be and everything should be.

As we move forward through Noah, Abraham, Israel, David, and the New Covenant, we're going to examine, is the Sabbath day, is the Fourth Commandment, primarily, adjacently, or even principally about setting aside a day to worship God?

It's a question to ask. That is very traditional. The question is, can we find it in the scriptures? To what degree? How do we understand it? And of course, the Christians set aside Sunday to worship because Jesus rose from the dead on that day.

And they get together weekly and rejoice. Probably met at night because they had to work during the day, which explains why poor Eutychius fell out the window. Paul wouldn't finish the message. Didn't want to stop talking.

But nonetheless, they would set aside the first day and they would worship together because of Christ risen from the dead. So our goal is to walk through the covenants to Christ and look at relationship and rest, look at Sabbath and Shalom, and see what we find.

That's the goal moving forward. Any questions or thoughts as we close? Yes. You're fine. John called it the Lord's Day. Called it the Lord's Day because of the day that Christ rose from the dead. First day of the week.

First day of the new creation. So it makes sense to worship there. We are the beneficiaries of a long tradition that read the Ten Commandments just slightly different than I'm teaching and thus instituted blue laws so that there was no work or business on Saturdays or Sundays established in the formation of our country.

The British called the American Revolution the Presbyterian Revolt because the Presbyterians were the leaders of getting our nation to break away from England and thus they had a big hand in understanding of how the country was to be run.

And again, we are great beneficiaries from it all. One thing that they saw, again a little bit different than how I read the Bible, is that they saw that the blessings and cursings out of Deuteronomy 28 were still active and viable for the U .S. of A.

Okay? Right? So, when you were sworn into public office and you took the oath of office, your hand was on an open Bible to the blessings and curses that God gave to Israel in His covenant with Israel and these were declared as binding to the United States of America.

Right? It was a different understanding of how to read the Bible. Now, they were God-fearing, serious men and were still blessed by all that they did but I don't think the Bible tells us that we're under the blessings and cursings of Israel but that Christ has borne our curse and that we're in Him.

Now, Christ is in charge of all the nations and so we should still submit to Christ so we may be splitting hairs at some level but am I happy that Saturdays and Sundays are still inscribed as days off?

Yes! That's good. That's a good thing. And I think as we move forward, we're going to see how just how the Sabbath commandment is fulfilled in Christ as we have with the other ones and we're going to see what does that mean for our rest throughout our walk of life.

One more thought because sometimes we have these questions. How are we to apply the Ten Commandments in Christ to us? Remember that everything that God commanded was full of wisdom and that wisdom is fulfilled in Christ so there's a lot of wisdom to this kind of pattern of work and rest.

Apply the wisdom to it. The wisdom is good. It's not just wisdom that the law has to offer to us in Christ but also worship in that it is prophecy. The law is prophecy. It prophesies of Christ. It's ten words about Christ.

So, when we're looking at the Sabbath and we see it fulfilled in Christ, we're not done. There's something to that. There's some way that Christ wants us to live. There are some ways that he wants us to think.

And, of course, it's wise to not work yourself and your family 24 -7 rather than trust God. If that makes any sense. Well, let's close by singing the doxology together.