Hope Lutheran Church in Vance also meets at the American Legion in Manning, SC. They only record the gospel and sermon, which you can see on their YouTube Channel or here!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QmaSPfby1RQ%3Fsi%3DoKM9DCUNe6zMyAJW

Exodus 20:1-17, NRSV

¹God spoke all these words:
 ²I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³you shall have no other gods before me.
 ⁴You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, ⁶but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
 ⁷You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
 ⁸Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. ⁹Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁰But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. ¹¹For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
 ¹²Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
 ¹³You shall not murder.
 ¹⁴You shall not commit adultery.
 ¹⁵You shall not steal.
 ¹⁶You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
 ¹⁷You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

The Ten Commandments are probably some of the more familiar verses of the Bible for Christians and non-Christians alike. We have signs of them in our homes, and display them in public places. At first, it might seem like there’s not much more to say about them than, “Do this” or “Don’t do that.”

Let me tell you, years of teaching the 10 Commandments to God’s people has left me with a much more nuanced understanding.

For example, I was teaching a Sunday School class one time that had everyone from middle schoolers to their grandparents. I asked them to talk in small groups about which commandment they thought was the hardest to fulfill. The group of seniors in the back was mostly widows, with one man among them. They talked for a minute and Jerry yelled out that these ladies were having a hard time not committing adultery. The class cracked up, of course. Then one of the youth admitted that he had a hard time not stealing from his brother. The look on their mom’s face was priceless. Myself, I find it hardest not to talk badly about other people, taking Martin Luther’s understanding of “do not bear false witness.”

Then there are other questions: why does God ask us to do and not do these things? Why is this the big 10? Shouldn’t not killing people be a given? And why do we talk about commandments, anyway, if we’re saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ?

Let’s look again at where we find this chunk of Scripture and what God is saying through it. First, we are in the wilderness. God has brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. They’re heading to the Promised Land, but first they’re at God’s holy mountain learning how to be God’s people. This is baby believer boot camp.

The Israelites have been enslaved for generations. They haven’t had to govern themselves. They haven’t been able to follow the God of their ancestors. Now that they’re free, they’ve got decisions to make that they weren’t able to make before. They have to figure out what to do with their newfound free will.

Where does God start with them? Not with, “Listen up!” but with “Here’s who I am.” “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

God doesn’t come in guns blazing, telling the people that they better get right or be liable to hellfire. (Not that God can’t or won’t do that, but he doesn’t lead with it.) God starts with establishing that they’re connected, that God cares for them, that they have seen God’s glory and good news.

Then God starts talking about what being in that holy relationship is going to mean on the part of humanity. It means that we keep God first. It means that we take care of each other. It means that just relationships with each other are part of our covenant with God.

Because that’s the real question, right there. Why should we pay attention to these or any other rules, if our salvation is through Jesus? If Jesus has paid the price for our sin already, what does it matter if we keep running up the tab?

What we see in the 10 Commandments—and in the rest of the rules God lays out for us—is a vision of how this would should be. We see a place where marriages are sacred, where people choose to think the best of each other, where neighbors protect each other’s property rather than coveting or stealing it.

That’s a life worth living into. For we who are being saved, it is a chance to live in God’s kingdom in this life. We don’t have to wait for the kingdom to come at the end of days. We can live holy and productive lives now, by the power of God at work in us.

Now, I’m not saying that all these commandments are going to make sense. We might look later on, when kosher laws prevent people from eating cheeseburgers, but let’s start a little closer to home. What about the Sabbath?

God establishes that the seventh day of the week—which Christians moved to the first day of the week in honor of Easter—is a holy day to the Lord. It gets three whole verses, as opposed to, say, murder, which gets one.

“Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.”

Think about what this means to a people who have been enslaved. Instead of being forced to work 7 days a week, they are commanded to rest for one.

Think about what it could mean for us, if we took it seriously. What would it mean to have a whole day where we chose not to do paid work or housework? Where we lived our lives so that others could have the day off, too? We wouldn’t check our work email or do a load of laundry. We wouldn’t mulch the flowerbeds or get our shopping done. We would nap and talk with friends, read books or talk walks or do whatever it is that feeds our souls. Rest is a mandate from God that we have decided doesn’t work for us.

Think about that for just a moment. The world as God designs is involves rest for all people. Not just for those who deserve it. Not just for those who believe. But for everyone. It was built in from the beginning of time that we are meant to play as well as work.

I wonder what other blessings God has for us in these ways of living life. How else might the world be better if we rejoiced in doing what God asks of us?

We could also talk about what isn’t mentioned in the Ten Commandments. Perhaps the most important thing that isn’t there is consequences. Those will come, but it’s not where God starts. God starts with relationships, remember?

And God ends with relationships. When humanity fails, time after time, to keep God’s law, the world keeps falling apart. When God sees that we are in a bigger mess than we can possibly fix on our own, what does God do? God sends his Son so that we could be in relationship. God comes to be one of us, to show us how life can be lived, to show us how to die and, ultimately, to show us how to rise again. God’s ultimate desire is to be with us forever. It’s what God built into the Garden of Eden. It’s what Jesus makes possible for us. The goal is always, always for us to be where God is.

God chooses relationships along the way, too. Wherever we are, God is there. When we suffer, God suffers alongside us. When we rejoice, God celebrates, too. This is how it is meant to be. In baptism, God makes us part of God’s family. In communion, Jesus becomes part of our very selves. We are with God and God is with us.

God wants what is best for us and knows what’s best even better than we do ourselves. After all, God is the one who built our very cells. We can trust God’s teaching and God’s word, even when it doesn’t make sense, even when we don’t like it. God is good all the time. As we learn, alongside the Israelites, what it means to be God’s people, we learn that we can trust the God who brings us into freedom.