YouTube video sermon

Exodus 20:1-21

Let me invite you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn with me to Exodus 20. Hopefully, all of you will recognize this as the Ten Commandments. But I’m not going to preach on each of the commandments this morning. In fact, I did a sermon series back in the fall of 2021 where I preached an individual message on each of the Ten Commandments, and if you’re interested, then you can check those out on our church’s YouTube channel. No, this morning, I’m going to focus primarily on verses 1-3, but I want us to have the full context, so that’s why we’re reading down to verse 21.

1 And God spoke all these words, saying,

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate Me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments.

7 “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

13 “You shall not murder.

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

15 “You shall not steal.

16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

18 Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off 19 and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of Him may be before you, that you may not sin.” 21 The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.

“Our Father and our God, we thank You for the enduring quality and eternal nature of Your holy Word – a message that is authoritative for our lives and provides us with everything we need to know You (personally) and walk in obedience and faithfulness to Your will. This morning, we echo the prayer of Augustine, when he said, ‘Oh, Lord, Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.’ Bless us now, we pray, as we listen for Your voice, and Father, may I decrease in order that You may increase, for we Jesus’ sake. Amen.”

I enjoy studying history. I enjoy learning. So, I was surprised to learn that our Pledge of Allegiance is really a rather recent innovation. I don’t know how many of you may be familiar with this, but the earliest pledge to our nation’s flag was penned in 1887 by Captain George T. Balch, a Union Army officer of the Civil War. It read as follows: “We give our heads and hearts to God and our country; one country, one language, one flag!” Balch’s pledge was favored by many schools and the Daughters of the American Revolution. Five years later, in August 1892, a guy by the name Francis Bellamy composed a pledge for publication in a popular children’s magazine called The Youth’s Companion. His pledge went this way: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Sounds a little more familiar, but still not quite the pledge of today.

Now, the interesting thing to me is that Bellamy criticized Balch’s pledge for being “too juvenile and lacking in dignity.” The irony is that Bellamy was a Baptist minister, and yet his pledge didn’t include any mention of God like Balch’s pledge.

Fast forward to 1923. The National Flag Conference called for the words “my Flag” to be changed to “the Flag of the United States,” so that new immigrants would not confuse loyalties between their birth countries and the US. The words “of America” were added a year later (1924). Finally, Congress officially recognized the Pledge for the first time, in the following form, on June 22, 1942: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

The words “under God” wouldn’t make their way into the pledge until 1954, when President Dwight D. Eisenhauer attended a worship service held at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church and listened to a sermon by Rev. George MacPherson Docherty calling for the addition of “under God” to the Pledge. As a result of Docherty’s sermon, the next day President Eisenhower and his friends in Congress began to set the wheels in motion to amend the Pledge. And thus, on Flag Day (June 14, 1954), the pledge that we recite today was signed into law: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

“Well, pastor, thank you for the history lesson and a brief walk down memory lane, but what does any of that have to do with Moses and the Ten Commandments?” I’m glad you asked. See, there’s no denying that those of us who have gathered here this morning take great comfort and assurance in the idea that our nation would be under God’s providential care, protection and blessing. And yet, in just the span of 69 years, our country seems to be a nation without God.

Similarly, the Israelites had been rescued and redeemed from Egyptian slavery by the mighty power and hand of God. They had been delivered through the waters of the Red Sea. They had experienced God’s provision of water at Meribah and Marah. They had been nourished by manna from heaven and seen a great victory over the Amalekites at Rephidim. They finally arrived safely at the foot of Mount Sinai and responded to God with these words, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do.” And just like America, the Jews would shortly forget about all that God had done for them, and as a result, they would spend 40 years wandering around in the desert.

Is it just me (this morning), or does it feel like America is wandering around in a desert? If so, it’s because we’ve forgotten God and His Word and all that He’s done for us. Like Israel, with our lips we’ve said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do,” but we’ve failed to believe it in our hearts. We’re no longer one Nation under God. We’re simply one Nation… So, this morning, in the time that we have left, I want to remind us of the God that we’ve so easily forgotten.

God’s Word Reveals Him To Be Personal

Look back at verse 2, “I am the LORD your God…” That’s a familiar phrase, isn’t it. For those of us that attend church, for those of us that read the Bible, for those of us that call ourselves Christians, we read it over and over in the Bible. “I am the LORD your God.” And I tell our Bible study groups (regularly) that one of the concerns that I have with our study of the Bible is that we read it so much and we’re so familiar with it, that many times we don’t really appreciate what’s being said.

Do you see the personal pronoun “your”? That’s the second person singular. It’s not the third person plural. You say, “Oh boy, the pastor has gone woke on us. He’s talking about preferred pronouns.” No, it lets me know that God isn’t addressing the entire congregation of Israel. He’s addressing each of them individually. It’s as if God came down from the mountain and walked over and pointed at each of you and said, “I’m YOUR God.” Whether God said that to the entire congregation or whether He said it to each Jew individually, nothing changed in principle, rather it’s the way that they received the message. The Jews would’ve understood that in the Hebrew.

It’s personal. It’s dramatic. No other god does that. You won’t find that in the Qur’an. In fact, one of the primary attributes and qualities of Allah in the Islamic religion is that He is transcendent. To make a claim that God is personal is akin to blasphemy. Buddha didn’t do that. Buddha didn’t want to be bothered with anybody. Zoroaster (Zoroastrianism) doesn’t believe that. None of the 330 million gods of Hinduism were personal. No other God is a personal God like our God. “I am the LORD your God.” It’s a personal word to each of us, and it means that God cares for us and knows us.

There was a study conducted not too long by the University of California, San Diego where they swapped participants cell phones and were able to produce accurate “lifestyle portraits”, predicting such facts as the owner’s diet, their preferred shampoos and soaps, their health and even places they recently visited. Listen to what the research paper said:

Medications detected on phones included anti-inflammatory and antifungal skin creams, hair loss treatments, antidepressants and eye drops. Foods included caffeine, citrus, herbs and spices. Even months after their application on skin, sunscreen ingredients and DEET mosquito repellant could be detected on phones.

Based on the molecular evidence found on cell phones, the researchers learned certain habits of each participant: their medications, their preferred cuisines and their use of either high-end or low-end cosmetics.

“All these little clues lead to a composite lifestyle sketch of the individual,” said Dr. Pieter Dorrestein, lead investigator and professor of the School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Let me tell you something – when God says, “I am the LORD your God” He knows you better than that. He doesn’t need to check out your molecular structure or your DNA, He put it all together in the first place. And even though He “knit us together in our mother’s womb” (as the psalmist says Psalm 139:13), He still comes to us in a personal way and tells us that He is our God.

God’s Word Reveals His Grace

As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, sometimes we tend to think that grace is only found in the pages of the New Testament, but that’s not true. Look at the second half of verse 2, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” That’s grace. Time and time again, God is described in the pages of Scripture as the God who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and the reason is because it reminds the Jews of exactly how God did that.

Cast your mind back to the story of the Jews. They’re in Egypt, they’re in bondage, and God brings all of these plagues on the Egyptians and what was the last plague? (Death of the first-born.) The Lord struck down the first-born of every person and even the animals. And the only way to avoid that plague was to take a lamb and kill it and put the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and over the lentil, and the Lord would pass over that house. That’s where we get the Jewish festival of Passover. That’s the whole idea, right there. And it’s a perfect picture of what Jesus Christ has done for those who have trusted in Him by faith. When our time of death arrives and Satan reaches out to grab us, we are safe in the arms of God. Why? Because of the blood of Jesus. Because of Calvary. Because of the empty tomb. Because of what Jesus did – not what we did. That’s Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

So, God saved them. He redeemed them. He brought them out of the house of slavery, and He set them free to do His will. In Deuteronomy 6, when Moses is talking to the next generation of Israelites, those that will eventually cross the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land, listen to what he says to them, “And [God] brought us out from there, that He might bring us in and give us the land that He swore to give to our fathers.” He brought us out in order to bring us in. He brought us out of sin and slavery and bondage, in order to bring us in to Him.

It’s grace before law. It’s grace before instructions. It’s grace before requirements. What if that was the other way around? What if God said, “Here are My commandments, and if you keep these things, then I’ll come back and save you, I’ll redeem you, I’ll rescue you, I’ll deliver you but not until then.” What would happen then? We’d end up in a devil’s hell. Why? Because we can’t keep God’s standard of perfection. God says, “I’m going to save you by My grace.”

God’s Word Reveals His Way Of Life

Look at verse 3, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” That’s the first of the Ten Commandments. By the way, the first four are vertical (having to do with our relationship with God) and the last six are horizontal (having to do with our relationships with other people). You might remember when the Pharisees tested Jesus saying, “‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And [Jesus] said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets’” (Matthew 22:36-40).

That’s what this chapter is all about – how to love God and love my neighbor. And right here, God kicks this whole thing off with Him at the top, Him in the position of authority and priority. Listen, if I’m out of fellowship with God, then it’s because I’ve taken God out of the position that He should rightfully occupy. Dr. Phil Ryken is the current President of Wheaton College, and he was responding to some research published by Princeton Seminary titled Religion is gaining ground, but morality is losing ground. This is what he wrote:

How can people be more interested in God and at the same time less willing to do what He says? The only explanation is that people do not know the God of the Bible, because if they did, they would recognize the absolute authority of His law. Respect for God always demands respect for His law, and wherever people have a low regard for God’s law, as they do in our culture, it is ultimately because they have a low regard for God.

There was a day and time when the Ten Commandments were posted in most schools and courthouses across the country. You could find monuments that had references to them, but we’ve grown up, haven’t we. We’ve realized that these instructions from God are for poor simpletons of a bygone era, and so we’ve taken them down. We don’t encourage our children to learn them, much less expect our teachers, educators and business leaders to know them and live by them. And aren’t we in such better shape now that the Ten Commandments are gone.

God said, “You shall have no other gods before Me,” and what have we done? We’ve just removed God and put ourselves in His place. We know better. We call the shots. We can handle society better. We can manage government better. We can educate children better. We don’t need God; we’ll just be the god and relegate His way of life to the rubbish bin. We stopped praying before meetings and reading scripture to our friends and colleagues. We stopped attending church on Sundays and started attended sporting instead. We’re just one Nation, no longer under God, because we’ve chosen to do it our way.

There was another nation like America. It too, had simply become on nation – no longer under God – but it had a king who desired to follow God. He built a house of worship to the Lord and prayed to God and sought God. And this was the Father’s response, “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”  May we, this Fourth of July, take time to humble ourselves in the presence of our mighty God, and pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways, that He will hear from heaven and forgive our sin and heal our land.  Then, perhaps, we can once again recite our pledge with confidence and truly believe that we are one Nation under God.