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10 Ways to Look After No.1 by Reverend Murray Spackman, Vicar. Sunday 13th August, 2006 Ex 20:1-20 Today, we begin a sermon series entitled “Prophetic voices for our times”, and in this series we want to take a closer look at some of the prophets in the Old Testament; some of the well known ones and some of the not so well known ones, and we want to examine their messages and discover their relevance for us today. It’s a big ask for a short time, but I want to attempt it. Today we begin with one of the earliest of the prophets, and perhaps the most easily recognized – and that is Moses. Without going into details, Moses lived about 1500 years before the time of Jesus Christ. I wont go into the details of Moses birth, his upbringing in the Egyptian palace; his call by God to lead the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt and into the Promised land. I will assume you know all that! If you don’t, read again the Book of Exodus. Three months after Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt, and the crossing of the Red Sea, they come to Mt. Sinai, in the desert, and there again God continues to speak to Moses and the people in a way which would re-define them no longer as slaves but as a nation. This is like the Gallipoli moment for Israel. And it is there, on Mt. Sinai, that Moses receives the Ten Commandments from God. Exodus chapter 20 is where we find this recorded. If there is ONE event which we most associate Moses with, it is most probably the giving of the Ten commandments. So this morning I want us to think about those commandments for a few moments and ask, “If this is God’s Word through the prophet Moses, is it still relevant for us today?” - are these commandments applicable to us, or are they totally outdated? After all – we are looking back some 3500years. We don’t talk about the Code of Hammurabi, or the Proclamations of the Pharaoh’s as being relevant for us today, so why the Ten commandments? So lets have a look! In Ex 20 we have Ten commandments given by God to Moses as the way in which the Israelites are to live and shape their lives. ( print up 10 commandments) Some people choose to divide them into two groups, suggesting the first 5 commandments relate to our relationship with God, and the second five, our relationships towards others. I would like to suggest that the Ten commandments, while they are about our relationships with God and with others, are also very much about ourselves, about caring for ourselves, about how we are to live out our lives – and they are therefore very much about how to look after No.1! —and that means you and me! Often we use this term - No.1 – in a selfish and self centred way. But this morning I want us to think of it more generously. I want us to think of it as simply a light - hearted phrase meaning, caring for ourselves as God wants us to. When Jesus told us to “love your neighbour as yourself”, he was assuming that we look after ourselves, and he didn’t tell us we ought not do that, did he?. When I have finished making a piece of furniture in the workshop, I take a great deal of care when its time to move it out of the workshop. It’s all too easy in the excitement of getting it into the house to knock it against the workbench, or the door, and bruise or chip the corner. So if someone is helping me to move it, I give them very careful instructions as to what to do, how to handle it, where to move. That’s what the Ten Commandments are for us, who are the pinnacle of God’s creation. God is so excited about his creation that he wants to be sure that we don’t go and mess it up. So He gives us the Ten commandments on how to look after ourselves and how we might come off best in all those relationships, including our relationship with God, and how best to look after others as well. So let us look at, as an example – the First commandment – which, of course you all remember – “I am the Lord your God – worship no gods but me.” This commandment makes perfectly good sense once we come to know what God is really like! It’s as though God is saying through these commandments, “Its in your own best interest that you come to know me and put me first in your life! No one else, nothing else, no other little self-made god can do for you or care for you as much as I care for you, and your life wont be complete without me! For 3500 years God has been telling us that same message through a whole succession of prophets, and then 2000 years ago, one day, in the small village of Bethlehem God finally slipped into this world, almost incognito, in the person of Jesus Christ, and through all that he said and did, most fully revealed the heart of God to us. Then one Friday morning he finally climbs the hill called Golgotha, the place of the skull, and there, out of supreme love for us , He takes our sin upon himself and suffers and dies in our place. Now when we think of God going to that extremity of love for us, then surely we should ask ourselves – “ Why would I choose to serve some other self-made inferior object of worship, when there is a God who loves and cares for me so overwhelmingly? (You may not be feeling very loved this morning; you may think that all your friends have deserted you, and that you cant get any lower. I want to remind you that God still loves you, and cares for you. He is vitally concerned for you and for your good). But God says that as long as you strive to put something else in His place – you will find nothing but dissatisfaction, you will be short-changing yourself, you wont be caring for yourself – for No.1.- as well as you should.. So, this morning, begin to take better care of No.1 by obeying this commandment. Now each and every one of the commandments we can read as part of the prescription for our total health and wellbeing, - They are all good for No.1! For example – the fourth commandment “Keep holy the Sabbath Day”- Now I think that’s an easy one to consider as being very relevant for today! You don’t have to have your ear very close to the ground to hear how many homes, families, and individual lives are breaking apart because people don’t look after Number One properly by keeping this commandment. One day of the week is seldom observed as a day for Rest and Relaxation. The chronic sickness of today, someone said, is “hurry sickness”. We are just too busy ! - perhaps too self-centred, to stop, and rest, and let our souls catch up with our bodies, and we suffer, and our society suffers, as the result. “Do not commit adultery” is another commandment intended to help us look after No.1! If I choose to slide into an adulterous affair then the first person I am going to destroy will be myself,- my integrity, my honesty, my reliability, my word, my promise – those qualities I might have spent a lifetime carefully building, will all be destroyed in an instant. Next to destroying myself I will destroy the heart and soul of the person I was married to, and my actions will seriously affect the lives of any children I have. And next to that, I will destroy the character of the person whom I have committed adultery with. If I want to look after No.1, I will keep and guard this commandment with great care. Do not steal; do not accuse anyone falsely; do not covet … these and all the rest of the commandments God has given us to help us look after ourselves. Have a read through them again sometime soon, and think them over. So what did Jesus think of the Ten Commandments? Did he disregard them, or perhaps disprove of them? Some in his day thought he was doing that, but when they tried to trap him by asking “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”, rather than falling into their trap and choosing just one of the ten, and thereby exalting that one above all the rest, Jesus replied “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” ‘And the second’ – he says – ‘is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” And then Jesus made an interesting comment – he said - “The whole Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets, depend, or hang, or stand, on these two commandments.” (Mtt22:34-40) Love for God and love for one’s neighbour in fact embraces all the specifics of the Ten Commandments, but these two great commandments go even further. They go deeper down into the spirit of the Commandments. The two Great Commandments are the foundations upon which the other Ten stand. Jesus made this quite clear when he said, for example, that its not just a matter of not committing murder ; – you re breaking the law in spirit if you are angry and revengeful towards someone. You commit adultery if you look at someone lustfully! Jesus more than affirms the Ten commandments and the necessity for them. But He also shows us that there is more required if we are to truly care for No.1 – We don’t just need some external laws or commandments to follow, we need a new heart, a changed heart, which has built-in to it the desire and longing to know and love and serve God, and to love and serve and care for one another. When we are changed by God’s grace on the inside, then the Ten commandments become not a burden of laws to follow, but a biography of God’s love for us. This morning, as we offer ourselves in worship, let us again make that inner surrender of our hearts to God’s love, most clearly shown through Jesus Christ. Let us give thanks for the timeless relevance of the Ten commandments for our lives; and let us embrace the commandments as God’s Love Letters for us. |
