40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 85 (Exodus 20:3-7)

Episode Date: June 13, 2017

It's time for the ten commandments! Well, it's time for the first two anyway. What does it mean to have no other God's before God's own face? Are all images forbidden no matter what? What does it mean to take the Lord's name in vain? Is God really jealous? Chad Bird and Daniel Emery Price talk about all these things. There may be more going on in the first two commandments than you think and some things not going on that you thought were. Check it out!

welcome to 40 minutes in the old testament i'm daniel emery price joined by chad bird Chad, what's going on, bud? Hey, here we are. I'm good. Good. Started off with a good week, good Monday. This is Tuesday, isn't it? It is Tuesday. Yeah, it is Tuesday. Tuesday morning. Yeah, ready to rock and roll.

I think this is all about the Ten Commandments today, is that right? Yeah, you've just been thinking about those Ten Commandments all last week. Every day as I kept all ten of them perfectly, they were at the forefront of my mind. Yeah, I figured this is how we're going to do this, this episode, is me and you were going to talk about how it is that we have examined these words and have accordingly applied them to our lives. Yeah, I thought basically we could just hold up our own lives as an example for other people to follow. Describe how we have kept all 10 and then simply say, go and do likewise. Yeah, I think that's probably right. that's probably right

that's why some people say the Ten Commandments are a mirror I'm like no they're really not for me they're more like a portrait this is what I look like oh yes you know that it is it is frightening how often the Ten Commandments are used

as basically a if you really are serious about your Christian life And if you're really devoted, I mean, if you're completely into this, then this is who you're going to be. Yeah, I mean, I actually think it's interesting how Christendom, in America anyway, there's a segment of Christians that really want the Ten Commandments everywhere, right? So they want them in the schoolhouse and they want them on the courthouse wall and maybe like a monument out in City Hall, the Ten Commandments. And I just think it's interesting because you never hear them being like,

you know what would be really great to have in the courthouse or on the city hall? What if we had Romans 5 out there? That would probably be good. I know when I go to the courthouse, I don't want to take commandments on the wall. But that's our nature is to say, man, if we could just set up some law in some prominent places, we probably – like everyone would probably just start behaving better. and then we'd have the society we want. Now, it's true enough that if everyone obeyed these Ten Commandments

that we'd have a better society. The problem is just putting them up didn't work for Moses, and I don't think it works for us either. Yeah, the narrative in Exodus is actually one of the best stories that exemplifies the effect that the commandments have and the people's reaction to the Ten Commandments, because as we will see in the following chapters, right after the Ten Commandments are given is when you have, of course, the story of the golden calf. So it's not as if the Ten Commandments were given, and for quite some time,

the Israelites were able to keep them and to follow them with their whole heart and to align themselves and their relationships and their worship in conformity with them. No, it's more, it's really in some ways a parallel to the first three chapters of Genesis where you get to Genesis 2 and everything is great. And then you get to Genesis 3 and everything goes to hell. It's pretty much like that here in Exodus as well. You have the giving of the Ten Commandments and then immediately after that, everything falls apart. You have false worship, you have false gods, you have a misuse of God's name, and at least some accounts suggest that there was some kind of sexual immorality taking place there.

So, right after the law is given, the law is broken. Just like right after Adam and Eve are created and placed into the perfect paradise, they end up breaking the law of God. But so even the narrative in which the Ten Commandments is located tells us what kind of effect the law has on us and how unable we are to keep it. Yeah, and what's also interesting is we kind of think like, oh, I mean, if you've read it, you know this isn't the case. but um you think like okay so god's gonna give him the ten commandments and then you know moses is gonna go down and get his people yeah there's like multiple chapters of uh of more of like a lot more law than just the ten commandments i mean there's there is like this law is pretty elaborate in its in its giving yeah there's uh well we'll see this beginning already in

in the next chapter in chapter chapter 21 where more or less what you have is the is the 10 commandments expanded out or the implications of some of the commandments drawn out and applied to all kinds of legal situations and servant master situations and marriage situations so we what we have in the ten commandments is kind of the the bare bones if you will and then flesh is put on them as the the book of exodus continues so there's an expansion or at least if not an expansion of the law at least a deeper probing into all of its all of its implications and god doesn't since god's got moses attention there he decides yeah i'll go ahead and like tell you a bunch of stuff about tabernacles and Ark of the Covenant

and how I want these priests to be dressed and all of it. Just, hey, while we're here, let's just cover it all. That's right. That's right. Yeah, we'll see a lot of that in the rest of Exodus. And even sometimes a repetition. There's quite a bit of repetition that you see, especially with the building of the tabernacle and the blueprint for that in the final chapters of Exodus.

Yeah, and I only say that because it would be easy to forget, as we work our way through all of that, that the golden calf does happen right on the heels of the giving of the Ten Commandments. It might seem like it's much, much later, because we're going to be talking about a whole lot of different things, but it's not. It's the next thing. It is the next thing. That's exactly right. Yeah. So there was no there was no honeymoon period in which God and Israel married, if you will, in chapter 20. And then for several weeks, everything went great. It's more like God and Israel married in chapter 20. And then the next day, Israel went out and slept with another God.

Right. So it's like there was adultery the day after the wedding. I mean, it's that extreme as far as the infidelity of Israel goes. So the giving of the law never guarantees the keeping of the law. The giving of the law, in fact, in many cases, exacerbates the desire to break the law, as we'll talk about as time goes on. Yeah. All right. So shall we jump into it? Yeah, let's get back into it. So last time we only had about 10 minutes to talk about the Ten Commandments, which, of course, is not enough. So what we did is we talked about the various divisions in which we actually end up with 10 commandments.

There's there's the Jewish reckoning. There's the general Protestant reckoning. And then there's the Lutheran slash Roman Catholic numbering of the commandments. So we talked about that. We also talked about how the eschatological nature of the commandments, that in Christ, the commandments go from being simply a must into this is who you are. So that in Christ, his keeping of the commandments is reckoned to us so that we actually, in him, in his obedience, we actually are keeping the commandments, not in and of ourselves, but in and through him. So we talked about that. And so we'll get back into the actual commandments themselves today. So there's, as most people know, they're usually divided into what are called the two tables or the two tablets. You'll even see this, of course, pictured sometimes where you'll have Moses holding up the two stone tablets and you've got five on one and you've got five on the other.

We do know there were two tablets of stones, but we don't know exactly, of course, how they were arranged on there. they certainly weren't arranged where you had like the first three on one and the last seven on the other or something like that because there's just way too many words in this there's way more words for the first three than there are for for the last the last seven so anyway that what they were they were actually engraved on the stones you have two tables and this becomes uh for for us just a kind of way of of dividing up the different commandments into the the two foci the two ways these are our focus so one the first three are are god focused they define how we are to to believe in and to worship god and then the last seven and i'm using the lutheran

slash from the Catholic numbering here, for those of you who might not be used to that, the last seven are then geared toward our relationship with the neighbor. So those are what we're sometimes referred to as the two tables of the law. And I do think it's worth pointing out something which is obvious, but that isn't always made explicit when we're talking about the Ten Commandments, but which I think is significant. And that is that every single one of the commandments are not concerned with us simply as individuals in our own individual personal life. Instead, every commandment is directed toward someone else.

So the first three are directed toward God and the last are directed toward toward the neighbor. And the reason this is significant is because God isn't simply concerned with us in our own little bubble as individuals, because that's not who we are. All of us from the moment of birth are connected to others. We are born from a mother and there was a father involved. So immediately upon our conception and birth, our identity is defined in terms of relationship. so I'm a child of a mother and father and then maybe I have brothers and sisters and then as I as I grow older I have friends and I get married so I have a spouse and have my own family now so we we never exist as simply individuals in our own little bubble instead we are always

in some way directed toward others and so the commandments speak to that basic human reality either it's directed toward god or it's directed toward toward the neighbor and the reason i think that's significant to point out is because we live in such a radically individualized society that we don't always think of ourselves as part of this bigger matrix of humanity that is also then joined to god who who created us so you got two tables of the law every single One of the commandments is outwardly focused toward someone else, be that God or be that your neighbor. So let's jump into the first commandment, which is verse 3 and following. The basic is verse 3, and then the next two or three verses pull out some implications of that.

So in various ways this is translated. literally it's this there shall not be to you other gods before my face that's the literal Hebrew there should not be to you other gods before my face which we sometimes abbreviate to you shall have no other gods or you shall have no other gods uh before me or or besides me but in the hebrew the accent is on uh or the the literal translation is there should not be to you other gods before before my face so the first commandment is of course god directed and it concerns first of all god himself and then secondly all those who would seek to usurp usurp his throne i like the way that that luther talks about what it means for us to

to have a god and this is it this is from his uh from his large catechism this couple sentences here i think really really give us a great way of thinking about what it means to have another god because sometimes we think just too crassly you know that well if i'm not going to the worship service of another religion or if i'm not bowing down to some idol then i don't have that i don't have a problem with this of course it's far more far more uh reaching than that this is what luther says a god a god is that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in every time of need to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe him with our whole heart the trust and faith of the heart alone make both god and an idol so you have the true god and then you have

a whole limitless pantheon of those who seek to take away the fear and the love and the trust that we are to direct toward toward god i think it's it's interesting you know you're talking about the Hebrew there, and when we hear you shall have no other gods before me, what I've heard so many times is God saying you can't have anything, you can't put anything

above God, right? Because the language, when we translate that before me, is in other words, you can't put anything above me. But that's not really what it's saying, because if that's what it was saying, it would be

like, look, you can have other gods, just not just like any gods that are like above me yeah i mean there's a hierarchy here right right as long as i'm king we're good i mean you can have like you know princes you can have all these lesser gods no it's not that's not what he's saying it's not it's not just a matter because i've never heard you guys say this like hey you know you know an idol is anything you put above god and i'm like well not necessarily i mean you can have multiple gods there's religions that have lots of gods lesser gods and ultimate god like he's he's saying you should i shall you should have no other gods before my face which is saying i don't want to

see you having any other gods of any kind that's exactly it that's exactly it yeah so he's his face is is everywhere so anytime there's idolatry taking place it's before his face so don't be doing this while i'm looking and i'm looking all the time everywhere right it's not it's like hey Well, I see that that's a little bit of a god there, but it seems like he loved me more. Yeah. He's just a puny god. So as long as most of your devotion is toward me, then we're good. Yeah.

That's not what that's – when you read, know the gods before me, think in front of me. Right. Which would be – Don't be doing this in front of me. Right. And I'm everywhere. Right. So I'm going to see what happens.

Yeah, so this is a call for complete exclusivity. So nothing else is to be that in which there's some sort of competition over our faith and our love and our trust. And the thing about the First Commandment is that if we could keep it, if we could keep the First Commandment, then we would keep all the other commandments. But since we break the First Commandment, then we're inevitably going to break all the other commandments. So I've said before that there really, I mean, we talk about Ten Commandments, but there really only is one commandment. it's this first one so if if i truly feared loved and trusted in god above all things there's no way i would misuse his name or i would break the sabbath day or i would dishonor my parents and so forth but because my heart is not completely right with god because i am a practical polytheist

That is to say, because as a sinner, I'm always in some way gravitating toward some other false God. In some way, the the knees of my heart are bowing before an idol because that is happening. Therefore, I am going to, in one way or another, break all the other commandments. And it all it all goes back to the state of my heart. so if my heart were wholly devoted to god completely trusted to him completely feared him and completely loved him then i would be the person that god wants me to be and therefore i wouldn't ever commit adultery or steal or covet or or anything else but you can kind of think of it as a uh sort of like a real long elaborate mathematical equation my wife is taking the

The reason I'm thinking this small, I was taking this university course right now. It's a math course. And so she talks a lot about the math she has to deal with. And some of these are very long, elaborate mathematical equations. And the thing about a mathematical equation is, say there's, you know, 20 steps to solving it. Well, if you mess up. In the very first step of the process, everything else is going to be wrong. So that first mistake is going to affect everything else. so it's like that with the first commandment if it's not kept perfectly then everything else is not going to be right either because our heart is always going to be going astray going after

other gods going after other people's spouses going after other people's possessions coveting and everything else yeah that that's the the gist of it another part of this i guess we should mention is that verse 4 talks about the prohibition against making idols or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters underneath the earth. And so you have in the Old Testament this very strict prohibition against making any sort of image of the divinity it was strange it was it was very strange in the ancient world for the jews not to have an image of their god in fact uh the uh when when some of the enemies of israel conquered jerusalem and went into the holy of holies and found no image of a divinity in the

holy of holies they were shocked because everybody has an image of their god this was this was everywhere in Egypt, the Israelites would have seen the images of gods and goddesses all over the place, as was common also when they got to, when they got to Canaan. It was common in the, in the Greek and Roman world as well, where the, where the early Christians lived. So the images of gods were everywhere. So for the Jews, for the Israelites, not to have an image of their, of their God was very counter-cultural, very different. But that was, that was the prohibition. And the reason that's given later in Deuteronomy is that the people heard the voice of God, but they never saw an image of him. So they only heard the voice.

They didn't see him. And so they can't make an image, an image of him. Now, what I love about this is that what is commanded, what is prohibited in chapter 20 of Exodus, finally kind of makes sense when you get to the New Testament. Because back then, there was no image of God. God did not reveal himself to them in some sort of visible way that could be depicted. but with the coming of christ with the incarnation all of a sudden we do have the image of god we don't just see some some image appearing to us we actually have a flesh and blood man he is the image of god incarnate and so now we don't have to make some some make up some image

of what god looks like we know what god looks like it looks like a human being it looks like a man he looks like jesus of nazareth who was born and lived and crucified and resurrected that is our that's our image of god and that's why in in most christian churches anyway throughout the centuries uh there have been depictions of christ understood not as in any way breaking this commandment but instead as in some way the fulfillment of what had been prohibited in the past because with the coming of christ with the incarnation we don't make an image of god and said god has made himself into the image for us the true image of what god is and what he looks like yeah if you take the prohibition for images also as just don't make these images

and you don't have it connected to worship which it obviously is it's connected to idolatry and worship um and idolatry isn't idolatry without worship that's what makes something an idol is that you worship it right and that doesn't mean necessarily that you physically bow down to it but um but you worship is more than just you know you know uh getting down on your face before something but um if if you decide you're gonna take a take a strict stance right there and decide that you know i don't know like a crucifix is off limits or a painting of the resurrection or the ascension is off limits because it's a depiction of god you also can't like paint animals or carve animals or i mean it's he says not to make any graven images of anything in heaven anything on earth like you

can't make any images of anything so that would mean like every painting of a fox is a horrific sin which of course no one believes i don't think but there are people that would have a problem with you know depictions of the crucifixion or something like that because of the god part and and what this is saying is that now if you were to take a crucifix and then worship it that would be that would be a breaking of this commandment and the same way that if you carved out a calf and worshipped it that would be a breaking of this commandment that when the israelites go and make a golden calf which they're breaking a law they don't even know about uh that just tells you how we are um so they they make a goal a calf and then they worship it

Well, we know, like, well, that's idolatry and breaking of the commandment. There's a dairy farm not far from me, and they have a huge bronze cow outside the driveway to this dairy farm. Well, they're not doing the same thing the Israelites. I've never went out there and seen every morning all the people that work on the farm, all worshiping this thing. they've they've made the same image but one of them is breaking the commandment and one of them's not uh and so i think that you you have to look at the thing use a little little reason and uh

and be linguistically honest with it and say like okay so obviously this is talking about not making graven images of things in heaven of god or of animals or anything else and worshiping them. But having an image itself is not, that's not, that is not a violation of the commandment. We see that God even prescribes certain images to be made. God's like breaking his own law when he makes them fashion a bronze serpent

and stick it on a stick. Well, that's an image of something on earth below, but it's obviously not a breaking of the commandment. God tells them to do it. And you see him tell – when they make – we'll see the Ark of the Covenant instructions, and we'll see angels being depicted on the Ark. Well, that's an image of something in heaven above, and it's not a breaking of the commandment because you're not worshiping the image of the angel on the Ark. So I think just – when you look at it honestly, it makes sense. And so if you had, you know what, if you had a picture of Jesus or whatever and you liked it and somebody told you that you couldn't have it, I would tell them to be a little more honest with the text.

I also find it funny that most people that are against crucifixes are totally down with nativities. Yeah. A little bit of inconsistency there. Baby Jesus, that's fine. Crucified Jesus, no. It's all out. I think that just speaks to the offense of the cross. I love Jesus in a manger.

Peace on earth, good will towards man. I love it. There's angels and there's donkeys. You've got all this stuff there. You've got carved images of people and animals, a little baby god and an angel, and everyone's all about it. And then when you're like, how about a crucifying god?

They're like, ah, that's offensive. As long as it's cute, we're okay with it. I don't like it ugly and inglorious. That's right. And I prefer cuddly Jesus over crucified Jesus. Yeah, I think most of us do. Yeah, so, I mean, as you said, there's plenty of instances in the Old Testament where God actually requires there to be depictions. You see this in the examples you gave.

You also see it in other parts of the tabernacle. there were cherubim images of cherubim woven into the veil that hung between the holy place and the most holy place there was a giant washing basin that was between the uh the tabernacle and the altar or later between the temple and the altar and it was upheld by these oxen bronze oxen so you had even in the temple itself you had depictions of of animals but like you said it's not the image itself it's not the the depiction of animals or angels or anything like that that's that's the issue it's the worship that is directed directed toward them so it goes on you should not worship them or serve them because i the lord your god am a jealous i'm a jealous

god and this this element of jealousy is a hint at what we see very often in the old testament and which i alluded to earlier that god's relationship with israel is often just depicted as the relationship between a husband and a wife which we see also of course in the new testament where christ is the bridegroom and the church is the bride so the marriage relationship comes to be a dominant metaphor for god's relationship with his people and he's saying here that if you engage in idolatry it will have the same effect as it would have if a wife commits adultery against her husband he's going to be the jealous husband who seeks to punish and just like god is going to be the jealous god who as he goes on to say visits the iniquity of the fathers

on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me but shows loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my keep my commandments yeah it's important when we when we say you know jealous god uh we don't look at jealousy that's not a word that we think of as like a positive thing you know we're like we're like well i mean god doesn't like it when people get jealous i mean it's not i mean that's probably i mean that jealousy is probably a sin so like we what is that about and we think about that in in jealousy in uh and more more in line with envy or uh or even pettiness uh and it's not saying that god is an envious or a petty god but jealous in the good way in in the way that if my wife sees me talking to somebody

and she's immediately jealous well that's probably that's petty that every if every time i had a conversation with anyone else if she got super jealous that would that would be a that would be a petty thing that's not how god is but if i never spoke to my wife and she saw me giving all my attention to this other person and she was jealous about it well that's what she ought to be in fact i should want her to be that's the sign of somebody who loves you is that they would be jealous for your affections and if you're giving all your affections to another well they're going to get jealous and in that scenario that jealousy is not a sin that is how she ought to feel it's actually right that she feel that way and uh and so it is with god yeah there's i think if we want

to consider divine jealousy maybe uh a better word would be zealous which is actually another way of translating this particular hebrew word kana jealous or having ardor for something or zeal for something it can't have the negative idea of rage but uh that's just restricted to to uh uh to human beings but yeah it's it's this idea of jealous in the sense of driven by a zealous love which wants the entirety of of us right well i mean all zeal means really at its root is passion right um and so if you if you look at it as god is a passionate god uh yes he's passionate about his creation his people uh and that's a good thing i mean again i kind of want my wife to be passionate about me yeah i think most human jealousy is completely directed back toward the

self but the the jealousy of god is directed toward us that is he's jealous for us or zealous for us or passionate for us because he knows what's best for us and he knows that if we go astray we're going to be the ones who end up getting hurt and so it's a jealousy that seeks to protect us from that which would which would do us harm and might cause you know irreparable harm between us and and himself so that's why his his zeal and his love are are closely related because they reach out to protect us yeah i am i am uh i am passionate about my daughter not walking into the street without without looking both ways i'm i'm zealous about that uh it is that sort of thing right where he's he's fairly passionate about us not uh going after a bunch

of false gods and destroying ourselves yeah that's his uh that's the the love side of that's love drives his jealousy i guess this is one way we could put it so that's the uh that's the first commandment there you go i think it probably i think it takes about 35 minutes to uh to cover that but that's okay because it is it is the most most important it is it is the chief it is the chief yeah so uh let's move on uh to uh to the second and and the second like the first and like the third is is directed again in our relationship with god but in this commandment that if the if the first commandment concerns the heart making sure the heart is right with god then the second commandment is centered on the lips so how we how we speak and literally it would be translated

that we usually say you shall not take the name of the lord your god in vain or you shall not misuse the name of the lord your god or something like that the hebrew has that you shall not lift up the name of the Lord your God to vanity or to emptiness. So it's this idea of in some way either in what we teach or in how we worship or in how we take an oath or how we conduct business or any other sphere of life to use God's name in such a way that it is not reflective of who he is and what he says is true. So we're always attempting to cover up our evil with good. None of us says, you know, I'm going to do a lot of evil things today.

You know, we might actually be going to do a lot of evil things, but we cover them up. We put makeup on them to make them appear as if they're something else. We rename our sins so that they become something which seems to be good, because none of us likes to think of himself or herself as someone who is explicitly engaged in something which is wrong. Instead, we like to twist it around to where it in some way becomes right. And oftentimes what we'll do is we will in some way use the name of the lord to cover up what we're what we're doing and i they uh the most common use misuse of of god's name is when we say wrong things about him you know what nobody likes nobody likes it when people go around spreading stories about them

that are not true or taking a true story and twisting it around to mean something else i just said i'm in you don't say yeah i'm into that but the thing is that is what happens when god's name is misused through false teaching so it'd be just like you know if if uh someone is going around twisting my words and saying well chad says this or just making up stuff that i never said or never meant and say well that's what you know that's what chad believes that's That's what he said. It's like that when we say something which is false concerning God's word. We teach something false concerning him.

We're spreading lies. We're twisting things around in order and then saying that this is what God says, putting his name on it, putting his authority behind it. So the second commandment is most commonly broken through saying wrong things about God and his word. so the uh the flip side of that is that you shall not misuse god's name well then how to use it rightly well you you use it rightly by by praying by praising by by giving thanks by by right teaching so there's always a kind of a positive and negative side to these commandments uh on the First, it's, well, don't have any idols, don't worship them. But the positive side is believe in me, trust in me, fear me.

So likewise with the second commandment, the negative part is, well, don't use God's name in a vain or a wrong or a false way. But the positive side is, well, use it in a right way. Well, how do you do that? Well, you pray. You pray the Lord's Prayer. You pray the Psalms. You pray other prayers. And you praise him.

You give thanks even for trivial things. Thank God for a nice day. Thank God I avoided that accident. Thank God we're getting along at work. Whatever it is, you're attributing the good to the source of the good. So you're giving thanks to him. You're to sing songs about God. That's a way in which the name of the Lord is used rightly.

To teach and preach his word is to use it rightly. So all of these are ways in which God's name is used in the positive, positive way. You're not suggesting that the name of God has been used to justify our own desires sometimes. No, that would never happen. I was thinking this morning, actually the first time this commandment was broken was in Eden, when Adam said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit. so already then god's name is being misused by adam because he's attributing his wrong actions to in some way god it's god's fault uh so that's that's just the way that's the way things uh

continue to go today yeah you see the devil you see i wouldn't even say maybe it happens even before that when the mouth of the serpent when he says has god really said yes right yeah when god has said and you're like did he say like that's uh like like don't put words in his mouth and don't take words out of his mouth yeah yeah and that's it man we're out of time we're out of time so uh we got through uh two of them kind of and uh you know i think i think i think we'll probably get through the rest of the rest of the 10 next week they they're a little more um a little more self-explanatory as we as we get to the second table but and uh and so yeah we look forward to finish it up next week. Chad, thanks for

hanging out, man. Yeah, man, thank you. See you next week.