Deuteronomy 5:1- 22

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning we're at Deuteronomy chapter 5 verses 1 through 22, the 10 Commandments revisited, second time, maybe a little bit revised. Let's have some coffee, we'll pray, and we'll get into God's word. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. What a joy and a blessing it is to serve you. What a joy it is to get to read your word. Father, please help us to understand it. Please help it seep into our hearts. Let it change our lives. Let it determine our steps. Father, we pray that we would follow after you. In Jesus' name. Amen. All right, Deuteronomy chapter 5, the first 22 verses. And Moses called all Israel and said to them, "Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your hearing today, that you may learn them and be careful to observe them. Jehovah, our God, made a covenant with us in Horeb. Jehovah did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, those who are here today, all of us who are alive. The Lord talked with you face-to-face on the mountain from the midst of the fire. I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord, and you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up the mountain. He said, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods beside me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, 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. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments. 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. 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 an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's. These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly in the mountain from the the of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness with a loud voice, and he added no more. And he wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me. Well, we need to ask ourselves our three questions. A, what is this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do? So, A, what is this about? Well, Moses calls the people again together, right? They're They're This is the second part of his speech in Deuteronomy. He says, "Guys, listen up. Shema. Listen. Hear." Right? That's what he says in verse one. He's going to say this again in 6:4 with the great Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. And he's going to continue on and and then he's going to say one more time, right? So, this is This is a setting off part, right? Listen up. God made a covenant between you and him. Not with our fathers. This covenant was different, right? He came into a covenant with Abraham. And it was covenant that endured to the Jewish people, to them standing there. But this was in addition to above, beyond that. It was a covenant that he specifically made with the people of Israel, showing God's character based in his redemptive work. Look at how the Ten Commandments starts with the preamble. For I, the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Right? It is God as their redeemer who brought them up out of Egypt, who's giving them this promised land. He is their head. He is the Lord. He is their king. He is the covenant maker with them. And so, they're to serve him. How are they to serve him? Well, of all the different laws, these are the only ones that he wrote out in stone. The rest of them, they're laws that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai differently, but these 10 stand above the rest. These 10 specifically show God's nature and the moral what the Westminster Confession of Faith calls the moral law of God. It's breaking broken down into the 10 words, the 10 Commandments. Now, in Protestant tradition, we specifically say the first four are regarding men's duty to God and the first and the last six are six are regarding God or men's duty to one another. Right, so for the first four, you shall have no other gods before him. Secondly, no idols. No creating anything and bowing down to them. No bowing down to the sun. No bowing down to the stars. No No making graven images and bowing down to them. No No making of things that represent God and then bowing down to those, right? That's what they're going to do with the golden calves. Here's your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And God says, "That's not what I'm like." Right, no no idolatry. None of that. I'd say that could also apply even into icons today. I'm an I'm an iconoclast, right? I don't think we need to have pictures of Jesus or pictures of the crucifixion or pictures of God. No, right? This is what the second commandment is getting at. But don't take his name in vain. Right, that's the third, right? We don't treat it uselessly. We don't We don't treat it with contempt. We don't treat God's name with emptiness, but with all the holiness and reverence that it deserves. Why? Because he is our covenant king. And how do we show him that he is the one who has redeemed us? We remember the Sabbath day. Right, the fourth commandment. He says, "I'm the God who created heavens and earth." That's why he says it in Deuteronomy chapter 20 when he gets to the fourth commandment, right? For the Lord created the heavens and the earth in six days, but on the seventh he rested. Therefore, Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Right, And so weird to do that also. But here Moses says, "Remember, this is where it's revised just a little bit by Moses in verse 15, and remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day." Right? The Lord has brought you and made you his people. He's given you rest. So, rest. And if you got if you got animals, let them rest. And if you got other people who work for you, let them rest. And I know there's going to be a bunch of people who are going to be going, "Well, I'm not sure this this applies in the new covenant era." I would just encourage you to think about the Lord's day and and and I I I'm one of those who is convinced that from the beginning of the world until the resurrection of Christ, the Sabbath was on the last day of the week, the seventh day. But from the resurrection of Christ until the end of the age, it is the Lord's day, the day that Jesus rose again from the dead. I think that day moved because there was a new creation, a new beginning, a new hope, a new reality of this redemption. And then the second tablet comes along. Honor your father and your mother. Right? Don't kill. Don't commit adultery. Don't steal. Don't bear false testimony against your neighbor. Right? Be truth tellers between man and man. Don't covet, right? Learn the art of contentment. Know that what God has given you for you is good for you. He gives something else to your neighbor, your friend, your relative, your co-worker, that's fine. God gave that to them. Don't go chasing after what they got. You won't find happiness there. You're just listening to a Harvard professor who has written a whole bunch of books on happiness and so many of us in our American culture are driven by this violation of the 10th Commandment, wanting more and more of our other neighbor's stuff. And the more and more that we want things, the less we actually have happiness. When we put our time and our effort and our energies into those things rather than into people and our relationship with God, we actually decrease our levels of happiness or we increase our levels of unhappiness cuz we're always trying to attain something else. I could tell you right now there's always something more to attain. But my question is, do you have the Lord? And do we learn contentment in the Lord? Right, this is what this whole section is about. These 10 Commandments are pointing us to taking joy in who our sovereign redeemer is. That's what they were supposed to be doing. They were supposed to be learning, this is what God was like. I was so scared of him. He spoke out of the cloud. He's never done this to anybody else. No other nation has these laws like what God's given us. Nobody else has this amazing story of redemption like God has given us. So we follow him and we love him, right? That's what Moses was trying to get them to do in Deuteronomy chapter 5. These are the words which the Lord spoke to all your assembly in the mountain from the midst of fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness with a loud voice and he added no more. And he wrote these down, right? It's the Lord who with his own finger wrote these on the tablets of stone and gave it to the people. I'm going to skip over B, best verse. You can let me know what the best verse is. I don't know, maybe I won't. Maybe I I I'd probably say, "Okay, uh verse two." But then I don't want verse three, but then I would do verse four. Okay. I can't do this. I'll just tell you what I actually have underlined in mine. I have this last part of verse 22. And he wrote them on two stone two tablets of stone and gave them to me. That's what I have written down, but I would be well persuaded by underlining something else. Last seek calling, what are we called to do? Do you follow your covenant king? These 10 moral laws still stand. They display God's character and his nature, his redemptive work. Who he is as a as a God of justice and of order. We doubtless jealous for his glory and for his name. Who desires his people to recognize him as his covenant king. Will you follow him? Will you love him? Will you keep his commandments? Not out of a not out of a slavish obedience trying to trying to earn his love. But will you love him with a true love? Will you go in his ways? Because he's gone before you and has redeemed you. Jesus said, "If you love me, keep my commandments." Guess which ones he talks about all the time. The ones we find even here echoed in the Old Testament. So, we are those who love him. We follow him. Because he's redeemed us by his grace. Transformed us into new creations. So, we follow with him. We follow after him. Because of who he is and because what he has done for us. Let's pray. Lord, you are an amazing covenant king. Heavenly Father, what an amazing gift it is to be your children. Lord, we pray that we would follow after you. We pray that we would love you. Lord, these commands are all encompassing. They're difficult for us, Lord. We can't keep them in and of ourselves, but we thank you for giving us Jesus Christ who though he was tempted in every way as we are, yet he was without sin. Thank you for our covenant champion and king. Lord, please conform us more and more to his image. In Jesus' name. Amen. May God bless you as you seek to follow him and love him with all your heart. I'll see you next time. Bye.