Exodus 20: 1-19

MARRIAGE AND WEDDINGS

A man and woman wish to be together for the rest of their lives. As the music plays, the people gather in their best clothes and celebrate their union as bride and groom. In the service, as witnesses look on,  they face each other, join their right hands and exchange their promises to each other as husband and wife. The promises are worded many ways but the intent is the same: “to forsake all others,” “to have none other before Thee,” “to be a loving and faithful wife, loving and faithful husband.” Then they exchange rings as signs of their promise in God’s name. They are pronounced married and then there is a great, joyful feast and everybody lives happily ever after.

The image of marriage runs throughout Scripture as a metaphor for God’s relationship to his chosen people, so keep the idea of marriage near and at hand as we engage the text.

GOD WANTS TO DWELL WITH HIS PEOPLE

God desires to be with his people, but there are some built-in obstacles.

1. God is holy. People are not holy; they are far from holy. Humankind fell with Adam and Eve, and the relational distance created by that fall is what we call sin. All humanity suffers that great distance from God and we’ve become so accustomed to our distance that to draw close to God would destroy us. The ancients knew this: if they were to see God’s glory, they would die. If our eyes of our souls saw God, our souls would be irresistably drawn up and out of us in order to be with God, and the body would fall down lifeless.

We think of God’s holiness as goodness, but we forget that we are so comfortable in a sinful environment—so at home with our distance from God—that although we think we want to be near God, the actual experience may not be comforting. It may be terrifying. It is fully possible that in our fallen state, God’s goodness so utterly good that we couldn’t bear it.

2.  Our sin is God repellent. Yes, we think we’re quite wonderful, but sin cannot be tolerated in God’s presence. Our sin is like deadly radioactivity and we are unfit to be in God’s presence. 

There’s a Hebrew word—tamei—that is always translated to the English as “unclean.” We’ll hear it a lot as Moses receives instructions on what the Israelites must do in order to have God’s presence among them. The problem is that unclean isn’t exactly what tamei means. For something to be tamei, it is repellent to God—it pushes him away and makes his nearness impossible. Since it wasn’t at all about hygiene—and I need to emphasize this—we might think of it as radioactive. To all appearances, nothing looks wrong with Fukushima Daiichi or Chernobyl, but we know that radiation is still very high there. We cannot go there, we cannot dwell there—the place to us is intolerable, toxic, tamei.

3. God is omnipresent. We get this, but the ancients did not. God is everywhere and in all places, but the Israelites came from a world where deities were localized and contained in temples. Even once they came to understand and believe in God’s omnipresence, they still needed the comfort of knowing God was with them in a specific and local way. This not only confirmed their chosen status as God’s people, but it reassured them that as God resided nearby he would be readily available in times of need. We understand this well and may feel the same way, and it is another reason idolatry is so attractive. We’d like to capture and encapsulate God’s power and presence into a temple, a relic, a talisman, or souvenir. In order for Israel to be reached, they have to be met; and this is exactly what God provides to have happen.

Given these obstacles, God has to lay down some guidelines for the people if he is going to dwell in their tabernacle. 

THE MOSAIC COVENANT

The commandments of God are not given simply to make people happier or to ensure domestic tranquility. The rules given by God are not a clever strategy for guaranteeing cultural survival. We diminish them in thinking of them in that way. They may in  fact be good for us, but they are not given to us for our personal health or flourishing—that is a fringe benefit. The commandments’ chief purpose is to provide a way for holy God to be in relationship with fallen humanity. They are rules of the relationship like a prenuptial agreement. They determine the boundaries and qualities in order that the relationship take place and continue ahead.

They are very much like wedding vows, as we’ll see as we look at them.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

1. You shall have no other gods.

As in a marriage, wherein a man and a woman vow to each other to “forsake all others,” here is a definition of faithfulness. In a world of polygamists, this was the first step toward serious monotheism.

2. You shall have no idols.

The pagan world worshiped idols, which were manmade incarnations of the gods. The Lord tells Israel they are to do things differently. For the first time, God shall be known as God without imagery. God is to be known, served, and worshiped as invisible. No manmade constructions about who God are to be tolerated. People still prefer their made-up ideas about God to God’s self-revelation, which means idolatry is still a major problem, even if it doesn’t resemble the ancient kind.

3. You shall not misuse God’s name.

God reveals himself as one who is not subject to human interpretations or definitions. God is self-defining. God alone names himself. There can be no human naming of God, as if he were subject to our beck and call.

The chief misuse of God’s name in antiquity was as a credit rating. Two ancient Mesopotamians making a business deal would hold right hands, exchange promises, and then exchange gifts in the name of their local deity before the deal was sealed. This is the covenant formula and we still see it in the marriage ceremony. This commandment disallows Israel from using God’s name for the sake of their own credit. Likewise, we should understand this to mean that whenever God’s name is used for secular purposes or personal gain, it is being misused and taken in vain.

4. Honor the Sabbath, keep it holy.

Honoring sabbath holds a special place in Jewish piety because it is the only commandment that is humanly useless, by which I mean that neither the survival of the  race nor individual flourishing is guaranteed by its observance. “But wait,” you say, “if we worked seven days a week we’d all burn out and be miserable!” True, but that can be accomplished by relaxing on any day of the week.

The sabbath gives Israel a means of loving God back because the only reason to obey it is obedience per se.

5. Honor your parents.

This may have had less to do with making children obey their parents than it did caring for parents in their old age. Honoring them and defending their welfare and dignity once they grew older was likely the first and chief concern.

6. Do not murder.

Do not murder. Clear?

7. Do no commit adultery.

Do not violate the marriage covenant, just as Israel was not to violate this Mosaic covenant.

8. Do not steal.

Don’t steal.

9. Do not bear false testimony.

While this may have technically referred to perjury and false legal testimony, we can say without distortion that any untruth can be understood as false testimony. 

10. Do not covet what others have.

Ask the average American to name the ten commandments and this is the one no one remembers. We tend only to use the word covet when referring to this commandment. I would encourage us to think of this in alignment with the church fathers, who named envy as one of the seven deadly sins. So let’s hear this as  Do not envy.

Consider: how would it feel if you envied absolutely no one and nothing? Go ahead—you see nothing anyone else has that you really want, and looking at others, you feel no envy when looking at anyone else’s life.

Pretty good, right? Contentment is pretty close to happiness. Americans in particular do not think of life without envy as a formula for happiness. Count the commercials during the Super Bowl today and consider how many of them are patently designed to invoke and inflame envy? What? You’re satisfied with you life? You shouldn’t be, because you are using a 6-year-old iPhone! Come on! Get with it!  If coveting is a sin (and it is), then advertising is one of America’s most possessed industries. It is a peculiar and unusual people who seek to live beyond envy. And it should be us.

STIPULATIONS

These commandments are often thought of as a universal commandment to all human life, but that is not their original intent. Let’s be clear: these commandments are the stipulations in the covenant between The Lord and Israel.

They are necessary because God can’t abide with sin and these stipulations enable a covenant relationship to occur. They are the conditions Israel must observe and obey if The Lord is to remain with them.

They are like marriage vows—or better, the betrothal vows which secure a relationship before it comes to maturity.

These commandments were made for Israel and for the covenant with Moses. I am absolutely certain that not one person here today is living their life by hoping in and adhering to the Mosaic covenant.

WHICH COVENANT?

We don’t need to. The good news of Jesus Christ includes this understanding: that Christ himself did in fact fulfill all the terms of the Mosaic covenant (something Israel could never do), and offers us the receipt of completion as a free gift.

By his sinless life, he clears the high bar that Israel—indeed, all of humankind—could never clear in their own power.

The covenant with Moses is not the Christian covenant. We respect it and acknowledge its holy purposes and value. If we obey, and we should, we do so out of sheer gratitude, not obligation.

Jesus gathered with his disciples at a table much like this one, he lifted the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them saying, “Take, eat. This is my body which is given for you.” And in the same manner he took the cup, blessed it and said to them, “This cup is the NEW COVENANT sealed in my blood for the remission of sins.” We live by the new covenant established by Jesus Christ himself. Its stipulations are simple: “Love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.” This is our covenant. †