Sunday, August 13, 2023 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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When we look at the Ten Commandments, we've talked about how it's very traditional to think about the commandments as two tablets or two tables of the law, and to look at the first four commandments as having to do with how we relate to God, that we are to love

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God supremely, and the second table of the law, which deals with how we are to treat one another.

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And when we think about the fifth commandment, we see that this is traditionally listed as the very first commandment of the second table of the law, honor your father and your mother.

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And so here we are told we have a bit of a transition, a new focus in the law, here we've learned how to love

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God supremely, now it's time to think about how to love others rightly. And I can see the value in teaching in that way, and yet we are given three different axes in our relationships, being made in the image of God.

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And so when we think about the Ten Commandments, we are very often being confronted with not only how we are to love

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God, not only how we are to love others, but also what we're supposed to do with the stuff

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God gave us, and what we're not supposed to do with the stuff God gave to others, such as stealing and coveting and so on.

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And so, also we notice that the fourth commandment, as all the commandments, we are to love

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God, honor God, fear the Lord, and he should be foremost in our thinking, but the fourth commandment is very much about how the

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Israelites were to run their households, it was a household commandment. A lot in there about how you're not supposed to make your household work and labor seven days a week, but to rest one day a week, recognizing the

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Lord is our provider and to trust him. So I think a better way of looking at the commandments and their structure is to keep track of how it begins and how it ends.

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You have a two -part kind of in the beginning and a two -part at the end. At the beginning, we have the first and second commandment where you shall have no other gods before me, and then you shall not make for yourself a carved image, right?

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And they're very closely related, very closely related. But you can break the second commandment without breaking the first.

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And the example of that was right there when Moses came down the mountain and Aaron had made a golden calf, and he was saying, behold, your

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God who brought you up out of Egypt. He wasn't saying Chemosh brought you out of Egypt, breaking the first commandment, but he was breaking the second commandment, making a graven image to worship and say, this is

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God. Now, at the end of the Ten Commandments, we also have a kind of a two -part ending, a two -part beginning and a two -part ending, and we can hear that in verse 17 of Exodus 20, you see that there.

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It says, you shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall 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.

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Now, if we were going to count the you shalls and the you shall nots, and we were to count how many there are, we'd be surprised to find that there are 11.

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Well, we've got 11 you shalls or you shall nots. That looks like 11 commandments to me, but God calls it the

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Ten Commandments. And so, Roman Catholics will count that two -parter that we just read as two commandments, but we count as two commandments at the beginning, the number one, number two, they count that as one.

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Protestants count it differently. But as I say, the reason why for that is you can, if you're guilty of coveting, you're guilty of coveting.

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So we count that as the same commandment, but there is a biblical example of breaking the second commandment while not breaking the first.

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So you can clearly see that those are two different commandments, and that's why we divide them up that way. But I think it's important just to observe how you have a two -parter at the beginning and a two -parter at the end, and it's all about upon whom are we setting our desires.

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And didn't Paul call idolatry covetousness in the New Testament?

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How these things are kind of sewn together, they have a symmetry to them. And as you begin to move in, you see a concentric symmetry in all of the

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Ten Commandments. The next commandment after talking about the worship of God is what?

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Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Don't lie in the name of God.

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The commandment that comes right before the coveting two -parter is what? Don't bear false witness about your neighbor.

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Don't lie with God's name, don't lie with your neighbor's name. Goes together, doesn't it? The fourth commandment, remember the

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Sabbath day, to keep it holy, you don't have to work seven days a week. Trust God, He's provided for you.

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He redeemed you up out of Egypt, Deuteronomy 5 says. So, don't work seven days a week, rest on the sixth, trust

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God to provide for you. Well that corresponds to the one right before, the commandment right before do not bear false witness is you should not steal.

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If you're trusting the Lord, you don't have to work 24 -7. If you're trusting the

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Lord, you don't have to steal. See how those go together? He's concerned about having enough.

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And then, the fifth commandment, where we're kind of driving towards and understand the fifth commandment as we look at how

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God's dealing with the people of Israel, honor your father and your mother.

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How are you going to relate to your parents? How are you going to relate to father and mother? It's a very family -oriented type of instruction, and that corresponds to you should not commit adultery.

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How are you going to relate to your spouse, husband and wife? So, I'm mentioning that because we're really working towards at the very, very heart of the

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Ten Commandments is this, you shall not murder. You shall not murder.

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And the emphasis on the sanctity of human life, that you ought not to murder one another, is so deeply important, so deeply ingrained to everything else that we're going to, everything else we've been looking at in terms of creation and the covenants on to Christ.

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So, thinking about honoring your father and your mother, we saw that the commandment promises that their days will be long upon the earth, that things will be well for them in the land.

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God's saying to the children of Israel, you need to honor your father and mother so that I will bless you in your land.

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It's a commandment with promise. We looked back at the themes of creation and the curse, noticing that God gave instruction after he made

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Adam and Eve in his image, he gave them instruction to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

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How is that going to work? What does that look like? Well, it doesn't look like one man and many women.

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It doesn't look like one woman and many men.

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Looks like there's one man for one woman in a marriage, and then they have children, and then they grow up and they have families of their own.

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It's a very structured multiplication of families, multiple authority structures.

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And so God declares that pattern from the very beginning. And that necessarily involves how children are going to relate to their parents.

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We thought about some of the things that the Lord said about parenting in the curse in Genesis 3, and began talking about how do children relate to their parents, and we started looking at the covenants and the story of Noah and how

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Ham dishonored his father, and how this ended up bringing a curse upon his own son,

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Canaan. And so now we're moving forward and thinking about the covenant that God made with Abraham.

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And remember, what was Abraham's main complaint? What was Abraham's main concern? Didn't have an heir.

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He's an old man and his name means father of many, and how embarrassing, he's the father of none.

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And God makes some promises, here we're going to give you a land, I'm going to make you a great nation, and he says,

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God, I don't even have a child, how's that going to work? Now the Lord does miraculously give

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Abram and Sarai this promise and a son, changing their names to Abraham and Sarah, and gives them the son of promise named

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Isaac. And then what did God instruct

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Abraham to do with his son Isaac? Go to a place that I will show you, well that sounds familiar.

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Go to a mountain that I will show you, and he takes him up Mount Moriah, and we have this story for us in Genesis chapter 22.

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In Genesis chapter 22 and verse 6, we read,

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So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son.

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And he took the fire in his hand and a knife, and the two of them went together.

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But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, My father, and he said, Here am I, here

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I am my son. Then he said, Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

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And Abraham said, My son, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering.

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So the two of them went together. And they came to the place of which God had told him.

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Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order, and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

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Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. None of that's going to happen without the cooperation of Isaac, him trusting his father and honoring him for that whole process.

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Now, the promise, of course, that God gave the promise of the seed of the woman who would come and defeat the enemy had been handed down all the way to this to this moment.

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And Abraham is bearing that promise forward. Here is his son. Here is the son, a son of promise.

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And he is called to sacrifice his own son. Of course, we know what happens in verse 16, the angel of the

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Lord stopped him. And then in verse 16, the Lord says, By myself,

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I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son.

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Blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.

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In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.

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So, in the relationship that God formalized with Abraham and the promises that he gave, again, the attention is on a promised one, a promised son who would come, a promised seed who would come and bring all those blessings upon the nations of the earth.

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And Isaac doesn't say a lot, doesn't seem to do a lot, but we see this vital relationship.

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It causes us to stop and ponder on the relationship between Isaac and his father and how

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Isaac honored his father. And indeed, he honored his father. In Genesis 25, when

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Abraham died, Isaac and Ishmael came together and they honored their father who had died.

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In the covenant that God makes with Israel, I want you to see kind of the reason why

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God says what he says to them in his fifth commandment. Let's go to Deuteronomy chapter 6.

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He says to Israel that they are to honor father and mother so that your days will be long in the land that I am giving you, so that things will be well with you and you will live long in the land that I have given you.

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What does honoring father and mother have to do with remaining in the promised land? So that's explained in Deuteronomy 6.

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So Deuteronomy 5, we have the 10 commandments given. Deuteronomy 6, what do we read?

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Verse 1, now this is the commandment and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the

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Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson all the days of your life.

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So you see how God is saying this is not just for your generations, but it's for the next generation, for the generation after that.

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This is the covenant that I have made with you and you are to repeat these commandments and they are to be handed down carefully, remembered and followed generation upon generation and you're going to observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess.

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So obedience to God, faithfulness to his covenant in the land that he has promised them.

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You your son, your grandson. Verse 3, therefore hear oh

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Israel and be careful to observe it that it may be well with you that's straight from the fifth commandment in Deuteronomy 5, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly as the

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Lord God of your fathers has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey. This is in the shape of the image of God.

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This is in the shape of the image of God that when they have all of their relationships right, when they are properly submitted to their creator, then they are communicating that with one another generation after generation and then they are prospering in the land being fruitful and multiplying in the land that God has given to them.

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So this entire covenant that God makes with Noah or Abraham or Israel or David are always in the shape of the image of God.

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Then we have the famous verse, the Shema, verse 4, hear oh Israel, the

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Lord our God the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength and these words which

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I command you today shall be in your heart. Now watch this, verse 7, you shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.

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You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

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So what words did he command them that day? Ten commandments.

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That's what was supposed to be in the foremost of their minds, that was supposed to be covering their houses, the content of their religious education in their homes, everything that they were supposed, they were to be thinking about the parameters of the covenant that God made with them because if they did remember and if they were faithful and if they did keep his covenant then they would be greatly blessed and they would be fruitful multiply in that land.

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Everything is going to go great for them. Now what happens when they didn't do that?

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What does it look like if they didn't do that? What are some of the symptoms that would start popping up?

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Big fat messes over and over again. And you don't have to wait to read about Jehu to find one of those big messes, right?

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In Judges chapter 2, just listen to this verse, Judges chapter 2 and verse 10.

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When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the

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Lord, nor the work which he had done for Israel. That's what happens.

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That's what happens. It was then that the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the

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Baals and they forsook the God of their fathers who had brought them out of the land of Egypt and followed other gods from among the gods of the people that were all around them and bowed down to them and they provoked the

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Lord to anger, so on and so forth all the way through. And then what happened? You see those cycles in the book of Judges where they are constantly dispossessed of their land, they're running for the hills, they have no peace, they're not being fruitful, they can't multiply, everything is a big fat mess.

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So in that regard, when God gave instructions, honor your father and mother, he's given the commandments to this first generation and they are to teach them diligently to their children so that their children have to honor their father and mother to receive that instruction.

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And if they truly honor their father and mother, they're going to receive that instruction and hold fast to it, like Solomon said to his son, they would put the chain about their neck and the crown upon their head and they would bear those instructions proudly and keep them and treasure them like the treasures that they were, if they really honor their father and mother and then they will be teaching that to their children.

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Even after the mother and father were perhaps dead and gone, they would still be teaching it to their children, to their children's children and the honoring of the parents you see is a preservation of Israel to stay in the land.

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That's why it was important. Now, when we think about that, what is it that we are to be teaching our children?

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What is it that we want them to remember? What is the crown that we want to be on their heads?

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And what is the chain of gold that we want to be treasured and kept about their neck?

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What is it that we want to lay on them for them to hold fast to so much so that they would teach that to their children and to their children's children and so on?

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It's the gospel of Jesus Christ, the word of God. Think about how careful

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God was with Israel to say, here is my covenant, now treasure it and teach it to the next generation so that they would teach it to the next generation so they would teach it to the next generation, right?

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Well, as there's a glory to the old covenant, isn't there? There's a weight and there's a brilliance to the old covenant.

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How much more so the new? How great was John the Baptist? But even the least in the kingdom of heaven is more privileged than he was.

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Someone greater than Moses is here. Now he is the end of the law and the righteousness for all who believe.

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And his righteousness is supreme and perfect. So, when we think of this passage in Deuteronomy 6, we immediately sense, oh, we need to treasure

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God's word. We need to have the word of God constantly being talked about when we rise up and we lie down, the word of God just kind of structuring our whole household and that's true.

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But in particular, remember God was saying to Israel, put your attention on the covenant

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I made with you. In the context, he's particularly talking about the Ten Commandments, the covenant he made with Israel.

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So when we read that, we certainly need to treasure God's word and we understand the profitability, the goodness of the

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Ten Commandments, but you see, it's about the covenant that God has made with us. What do we want our children to think about?

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What do we want generation upon generation to be fixed upon?

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Hey, thou shalt not murder, that's a good one. But the grander, yeah, that's the summary of the law, two hinges upon which the law and the prophets turn, but the law and the prophets are fulfilled in Christ.

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So think about this. In Deuteronomy 6 and in verse 6, and these words which

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I command you today shall be in your heart, you shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.

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You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

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Now I've read the Ten Commandments and you've read the Ten Commandments and we read them in context, okay, and this was

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God's covenant with Israel. Now are we going, now, what do we want, what do we want as a sign upon our hand and frontlets between our eyes on the doorposts of our houses and on our gates is not

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God's covenant with Israel, but God's covenant with Israel as it's fulfilled in Christ in the new covenant.

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That's what we want. Because the righteousness that Christ brings and calls us to is superior to that of what was given before, far greater, far deeper, far more true because he has come.

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You know, so that's what we want to be on the sign of our hand and the frontlets between our eyes, what we do, what we think about, how we perceive things, defining our houses and on our gates is our

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Savior, Jesus Christ. Where will he lead us as the Good Shepherd, paths of righteousness for his namesake, correct?

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If we follow Christ, not only will we never break any of the principles of the

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Ten Commandments as they were given to Israel, not only will we not ever break any of those principles underlining moral principles there, but in following Christ, we will know and experience a righteousness far greater than anybody in the old covenant ever experienced or had because we're following the end of the law, the fulfillment of the law, and in our love for one another as Christ has loved us, we too,

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Paul says, are fulfilling the law. We're not just keeping the law, that's old covenant stuff, right?

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That's silver in the age of Solomon, you know what's better than keeping the law? How about fulfilling it, right?

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Which we are said to do in Christ as we follow him, as he is our righteousness and that he is shaping our lives out of who he is.

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That's what we want our children to know, to remember, that's what we want to instruct them in, is following Christ, to think of him first, to think of him most.

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Now next time we're going to talk about how it is that Jesus himself, how he relates to God the

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Father, how it is that he calls us to relate to God as Heavenly Father through him because he comes as the perfect son.

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He comes as the perfect son who honors his Father. That's what we'll look at next time.

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Any questions or thoughts? Let's be close. I think that the righteousness that Christ displays is superior to that that Israel displayed.

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So in that sense, what he's calling us to is something more deep, more thorough.

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For example, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount straight up quotes

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Ten Commandments and then summarizes commandments from the Old Covenant. And then he says, but I say to you, not because he's in disagreement with it, but he's saying someone greater than Moses is here.

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So, you know, there's a lot of men who have never committed physical adultery.

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But Jesus says, what I mean is don't lust after a woman in your heart.

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You see, there was a superior nature to it, so yes. It's even

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God loves a cheerful giver, not a dutiful tither, right?

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Coming to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest, not make sure one day out of seven you don't do nothing.

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It's something far more intense going on. Yeah. Well, the indwelling, he gives us the strength, the old

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Christian people didn't have. Holy Spirit indwelt the temple of the

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Old Covenant, and he indwells the temple of the New Covenant, which is us, personal, yeah.

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Living stones. Yeah. Do I do what the king says, or do

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I do what I want to do? In the home, the practice of teaching children to honor their father and mother is the basic catechism for teaching them to honor the king, honoring the authority of one greater than they are.

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All right. Well, let's go ahead and close by singing the doxology together. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

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Praise him, all creatures here below.

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Praise him above, ye heavenly host.

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Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.