Sunday, February 5, 2023 PM

We're going to come back to our study, our ten words about Christ. We're going to be thinking about the Ten Commandments in the context of all of Holy Scripture. How do we read Moses? How do we read the Ten Commandments?

We think about the way that Paul says that when we're in Christ, we get to read Moses with veiled faces. What is that like versus reading it with the veil on? How is it that we're supposed to read all of Scripture in the light of Christ?

We're thinking about the Ten Commandments, and we're going to make a little more progress on the First Commandment tonight. A lot of extra. Remember that the Pharisees and the scribes, the Sadducees were thinking about God's work in the Scripture and following the Scripture.

And Jesus talked with them and indicated that there is a right way to interpret what Jesus taught in the New Testament. A place for us to practice reading. And we're going to work on the law. We've asked a few questions about the law already.

The law have parts. Yeah, there's ten commandments. Some parts of the law are to be obeyed, but other parts of the law are not to be obeyed. Do we ever run into that? Filled by Christ, but other parts are not.

As you read through the Gospels, how does Jesus talk about the law? Does he reference Christians, other parts you can leave behind? In Romans chapter 9 and 10, Paul has some things to say about his fellow Israelites.

Remember that Paul was one of those guys who had all those credentials. A Pharisee, a Pharisee. Of resume. Here's what he says in Romans 9. To the flesh. Who was over all the eternally blessed God?

Amen.

Israel, the Law, and Righteousness by Faith

So how does he talk about the history of Israel? Well, we have the covenants. We're going to talk about some of those tonight. He talks about the giving of the law. The giving of the law. Now, when God spoke to his people Israel at Mount Sinai or otherwise, perhaps through his prophets, throughout their various generations, how did God talk about his law and how the people of Israel were to relate to his law?

What would he tell them more than once about the law?

Okay.

Obey and there's blessing. Disobey and there's cursing. Which parts were they to obey?

Yeah. Yeah.

All of it. All of it.

There were some parts that they got in trouble for disobeying any part of the law. As we recall, Leviticus says that those who have the law have to live by the entirety of the law. James points out that in the economy of the law, if you break one, you've broken the whole thing.

Guilty of all for breaking one law. At the end of Romans chapter 9, flowing into chapter 10, we read the following. What shall we say then that Gentiles... This is verse 30 of chapter 9. What shall we say then that Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained to righteousness?

The righteousness of faith. All pursuing the law of righteousness.

Why?

Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone, and a rock shall not be put to shame. So they tried to attain to righteousness by pursuing the law rather than trusting in the Messiah, trusting in Christ.

Chapter 10, verse 1. Brethren, my heart and I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but are not knowledgeable... Paul went to school with all these... ...fairly knowledgeable about God's law.

Incredibly knowledgeable about the scriptures, about the prophets, the kethudim, the writings. They were educated, but Paul says their zeal is not according to knowledge, for they, being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

Well, I thought they were submitting themselves to the law. Did they not concern themselves with the law and submitting themselves to the law so much that they were willing to add all sorts of commandments to the law to make sure that they never crossed one of the commandments?

They fenced the law with extra, extra, and extra to make sure they never violated the law. But Paul says they did not submit to the righteousness of God. He explains, verse 4, the end of the law. The question, does the law have parts?

This has impact on the way that we understand this verse in Romans 10. Christ is the fulfillment of the law, the completion of the law, but if the law has no parts, it means he is the fulfillment of all the law, not parts of the law.

So Christ is the fulfillment of the whole law, including the Ten Commandments. Christ has fulfilled the Ten Commandments. All right, so why we're coming at the words about Christ. He's the end of the law.

He's the fulfillment of the law. He is the fulfillment of the law unto righteousness for all who believe in him. Righteousness that is reckoned to us by faith, righteousness given to our account, and then he leads us into our life.

Can we get Toby and move him? All right, so let's move on to the first commandment. We're going to come back to Exodus chapter 20. Exodus chapter 20, and we're going to look at those first three verses again as we think about the very, very first commandment.

And God spoke all these words, saying, You shall have no other gods before God had delivered Israel up out of Egypt, and his victory exposed all the false gods in Egypt. And he worshiped, so he says this, God's promised it.

Ten words in the creation account, even as we have ten words in this covenant at Mount Sinai. And the ten words are,. And then God said, then God said, then God said. With ten words, he created all of creation in six days, and did so in a way that left no room for any other god to operate.

You couldn't worship a god of the moon, or a god of the river, or the god of the wind, or anything like that, because God was the one, the one true God was the one who made it all. There's no room for any other god to operate, no availability for any other god to receive glory.

And we begin to talk about, in connection to the nature of what it means to be made in the image of God, that we have responsibilities, we are in relationship to God, and to one another, and to the created order.

When God made man in his image, he made us to love one another, love others rightly, and to steward the creation in righteous authority. That mankind stands in that unique intersection, and no other creature does.

So from the very beginning, we were created in the image of God to worship God alone. Now the fact that that commandment shows up first and foremost, in the covenant that God made with Sinai, is just a clue that what he's doing with Israel out in the wilderness, has to do with what was already there from the beginning in the created order.

As he is helping to, as he is working with this sinful nation, and the sinful people, teaching them what it actually means to live in his image. First and foremost, let's get this straight, there are no other gods to worship.

Now, let's not flip it upside down, and say that the Ten Commandments were given to Adam in the garden. They weren't. The Bible says the law was given 430 years after Abraham, and Abraham was like 2 ,000 or so years, or 4 ,000 years after creation.

So, what we're looking at here is the commandment, worship no other god. The principle for that is laid down in creation, and we see Adam and Eve sinning in the garden, and they violate this relationship that they have with God.

In what way? They disobeyed him. What was the temptation? Why did they disobey? They want something they didn't have? Satan said, don't you want to be like God? Well, they were already made in God's image.

What Satan meant was, don't you want to be like God, determining for yourself good and evil? So, in this sense, Adam and Eve begin to worship the self rather than God, a different God. We will determine for ourselves good and evil.

We will reach forward and take hold of autonomy, and by sinning against God, what then happened to the relationship with one another? How did that immediately manifest, the relationship with one another, after they sinned against God?

What happened to the relationship with each other? They started blaming one another. They hid from one another in more than one way, and then they blamed one another. And then God described what was going to happen, and there was going to be tension and problems in the relationship between man and wife.

So, immediately, we see the image of God affected by sin, because they sinned against God, everything else fell apart. This is why it's the first commandment. When God is teaching the people of Israel, this recapitulation of Adam, bringing him to a garden, a land of milk and honey, where they're going to walk with God and commune with Him as God begins to teach them what it means to be in the image of God, the very first thing they've got to get right is worship God alone.

Now, immediately, the relationship between them breaks down, and then what happens to the relationship between those made in God's image and the created order? You ever step on a thorn? You ever try to garden and it all dies?

Yeah, okay. So, all of a sudden, the relationship of the one that God made in His image, because they're sinning against God, then the relationship with one another falls apart, and the relationship to the created order has trouble as well.

I did it my way. The partner poem is Invictus. Have you ever read the poem Invictus? Okay, so, as soon as all these problems are manifest, God does give a promise, does He not, about a Savior who is to come in Genesis 3 .15.

But after we see the effects of the fall, and we move through Genesis 5, and we have this lineage from Adam and Seth and Enosh when men begin to call upon the name of the Lord, and we move through those first ten generations, and we get to Lamech who has hope that his son will bring rest, and so on and so forth, and we begin to focus our attention upon Noah.

For the very first time, we come across a word in the Bible, and that word is covenant. Now, that's important to our discussion about the Ten Commandments for the following reason. Now, the Ten Commandments are sometimes called the Old Covenant.

They are also the Ark. Remember, the Ark is made of gopher wood or related with gold, upon which was the mercy seat. The place within the Ark is called the Ark of the Covenant. Sometimes it's called the Ark of the Testimony because both of those terms were used of the Ten Commandments.

So, if we're going to understand what the Ten Commandments are, we have to understand that they're called a covenant. And we just read in Romans that God gave the covenants, plural, to Israel, to his people.

Well, what were they? So, that's what we're going to think about. Now, as you read through your Bibles, as you read through your Bibles, you are going to find there was a covenant with Noah, and you can also call it a covenant with creation because that's how God said it in Genesis 8 and Genesis 9.

And then he made a covenant with some pagan out of the land of Ur, some idolater from the land of Ur, Joshua says, by the name of Abraham, right? And there's a lot of chapters we can look at, but I'm just giving you the basics where you can go read it for yourself and there's a lot of attending material.

Genesis 15 and 17 are a great place to go read about the covenant that God makes with Abraham. And then after that, God makes a covenant with Israel. You really should read all of chapter 19, you know, before the Ten Commandments.

But you should read Exodus 19 through 24 because after you finish with the Ten Commandments in chapter 20, all kinds of rules and extra commandments and instructions come after that and it just kind of flows all the way to the chapter 20 covenant.

This is how we're going to run things. So, it's not just the Ten Commandments, it's everything that comes with it, right? Because the law doesn't have parts. So, there's a covenant with Israel, and then we have a covenant with David.

You can read about that in 2 Samuel 7 and Psalm 89. And what's very interesting about each one of these covenants is that all of them are stitched together in Jeremiah 33 in the promise of the New Covenant.

The promise of the New Covenant. All these are stitched together to talk about the New Covenant and the New Covenant is talked about Isaiah 55, Jeremiah 31 through 33, Ezekiel 36 through 37. It's getting too low for me to write, but then you can...

Galatians 3 and 4. The interesting thing about all of these covenants is that you remember what was affected by the fall. The original God created us in His image to love Him supremely, love each other rightly, and steward the creation in righteous dominion.

And that's what was solely disrupted by... This was the life God gave to us. He breathed the breath of life into mankind, and this was the special creature that He made in His image. And when sin came in, death came in, and it was after this that God started talking about covenants in the Bible.

And each one of these covenants deals with this intersection of three relationships. What was the problem that God addressed here? The problem was all of the violence that had filled up the earth, all of the death and destruction.

I mean, humanity was unraveling and coming apart, and God put an end to it all, but He makes a covenant with Noah. He makes a covenant with creation, and He says, Here's how you're going to relate to Me.

I'm the judge of all the earth. I say how this is going to go down. And He judges the entirety of the earth because He's the creator. And He tells Noah, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. He says exactly what He had told Adam in Genesis.

He says that to Noah. And Noah worships God and offers Him sacrifices. He loves God supremely. He then tells Noah, Here's how humans are going to relate to one another. If a man sheds man's blood, by man his blood must be shed.

So God institutes civil government. Here's how humans are going to relate to one another in righteousness. So dealing with this relationship. And then God makes promises concerning the created order, and then tells Noah, Well, it's time to get back farming.

And He does. Doesn't do all that well in some cases. But He gets back farming because God told him, Get back to business, what you're supposed to be doing, made in My image. So the issue was these relationships were disrupted.

God makes a covenant. And tells Noah, Okay, here's how you're going to operate even though we're in a world of sin. He says in Genesis 8, The heart of man is evil from his youth. But here's how we're going to operate.

And so He talks about a covenant with Noah in creation. And then we get to Abraham, which in Genesis chapters 10 and 11, the issue is the division of all the nations, the separation of all of the nations.

The fact that the image of God is now at war with one another, and split up and all over the place. So what does He do? He makes a covenant with Abraham in which He says, In your family all the nations will be blessed.

So the problem is division and separation. So He makes a covenant with Abraham and promises that through His seed, all the nations will be blessed. It will be a gathering back in of those who have been separated apart.

And when He talks to Abraham, He says, I will be your God. You will be My people. You're going to worship Me. And so He addresses the vertical relationship. And then He talks to Abraham about how He's going to relate to the nations.

How the nations are going to relate to Him. Oh, you and Sarah don't have a child. I'm going to give you a special child. So He talks about the human relationships. And then I'm going to give you a land.

I'm going to give you a land to your descendants. And I want you to walk the length and the breadth of the land. And He did. And Abraham built altars to the Lord wherever he went. And then God makes a covenant with Israel.

And we're looking at that in Exodus. We look at the Ten Commandments. And what does God say to them in the law that He's given to them? You're going to love Me supremely. You're not going to make idols and pretend like I'm an idol.

And you're not going to take My name in vain. And you're going to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy because I'm the one who provides for you. So you're not going to make an idol out of the land that I gave you or the work that you're going to do.

And you're going to honor father and mother.

And you're not going to murder.

And you're not going to commit adultery. And you're not going to steal. And you're not going to lie against your neighbor. And don't covet anything that they have. So He's addressing everything there is about being made in the image of God.

Why those things? And throughout all the law, telling them how to worship Him with the sacrifices and the ceremonies and so on. How to take care of the crops. Don't sow this crop with that crop. And you let your fields rest every seventh year.

And all of those things. And let the slaves go every seven years. And at the year of Jubilee all the land goes back to who it belongs to. And here's how you relate righteously to one another. Everything in the law is all about living in the image of God.

God is recognizing all the sin problem in the life of those He has made in His image. But then gives them this covenant to live by that manifests the image of God if they would follow it. If they would follow it.

And every aspect of that covenant that He makes with Israel in some fashion pertains to a shadow that is fulfilled in Christ. The promise to Abraham and to his seed. His seed is Christ. That's what we're told.

Noah, Lamech said, may He give us rest. We have a son Noah, but it wasn't Noah. It was Christ who gives us rest. And all the creation is given to Him as an inheritance. So now we come to the covenant with David.

And in the covenant with David, David wants to build God a house. He wants to build God a temple and worship Him. And God says, well actually, here's how you're going to worship me. And your son is going to build the temple.

And I promise you an everlasting heir who will reign forever on an eternal throne. And here's how he's going to reign, what it means for the people, what it means for the nations. And when you walk through every single one of these commandments, and with David and the promises about the stewardship of the kingdom.

So he's going to deal with all of the aspects of the relationship and the image of God. We know who the true son of David is. Every single one of the covenants that God makes is dealing with his people at one stage or another.

In which he's saying, here's how you live in my image to my glory. And every one of those, the mediators come up short. Noah gets drunk, Abraham tries an offshoot with Hagar. We know how well Israel did.

And then we know what David ended up doing and what Solomon ended up as. Don't we? And so every single one of those covenants that God made somehow comes up short. But they don't come up short because God's promises are true.

And all of God's promises in Christ are yes. And so throughout it all God makes promises and he keeps them in Christ. And he gives signs such as the rainbow and circumcision and the Sabbath and the temple.

A sign in all of the covenants. And guess who ends up fulfilling the rainbow and circumcision and the Sabbath and the temple? Jesus does, right? So God makes these covenants that pertain to the image of God.

And then they're stitched together for us in the latter prophets in the Old Testament itself. They're saying, hey all these pertain together to speak of the Messiah. And so that's why there's so much joy in talking about the new covenant in the scriptures.

And when we consider the supremacy of Jesus Christ, the preeminence of Jesus Christ. How is he described for us? He is the image of the invisible God. He's also called the last Adam, right? So we're trying to locate the Ten Commandments where they show up in that grand story.

They're part of the covenant that God made with Israel. They're based upon his character so there is good value there. Ultimately they're talking about how Israel was to live in the image of God. But the image of God is revealed in Jesus Christ.

He's the fulfillment of the law. He's the end of the law. So that's the goal when we're trying to locate the text. So remember about interpretation is about three rules of real estate. Location, location, location.

We read about the first commandment in God's covenant with Israel in Exodus 19 -24. That's that location. We then locate it in the sense of where it is in God's dealings with mankind. And then we locate it in the larger picture of Christ as the fulfillment.

The Meaning of Covenant and the New Covenant in Christ

So let's end with a working definition of covenant that we're going to pick up on next time. And then we're going to come back to that definition and work it some more. And then we're going to see how the first commandment is significant.

The principle of the first commandment, how it's significant in how God dealt with Noah and how God dealt with Abraham. We'll see in the life of Israel how important that first commandment is. We'll consider in God's promises to David how that works out.

And then we're going to consider in the new covenant, how does Christ teach this truth? That there is only one God and you must worship him only. Because ultimately, it's not about us keeping covenant instructions to Israel.

Being in Christ, we follow him and he leads us into all righteousness, which will certainly mean that we worship God and God alone. We'll see how that works out. For now, the definition of covenant, we're going to work with this.

Restoring and revealing relationship that the Creator formalizes with man. So we're going to talk about that more next time. But here's the definition for covenant. Restoring, looking back to the image of God, what was lost.

Why is he dealing with mankind in covenants anyway? Because of what was lost in the fall. So a restoring and revealing relationship. The covenants he makes is not about simply looking backwards, but aren't they about looking forward?

Revealing Christ who is to come. Relationship, God is the one who has made us in his image to relate to him rightly. So it's a restoring and revealing relationship that the Creator, he's the one who owns us, he's the one who designed us, he's the one who defines us.

So it's a restoring and revealing relationship that the Creator formalizes. And there were sacrifices, and there were rituals, and there were signs, and miracles, and all kinds of things that he used to formalize these covenant relationships.

A restoring and revealing relationship the Creator formalizes with man. And then we'll test this definition ultimately against where covenant is most clear in Christ. So that's where we're heading. And I hope that's been helpful.