Exodus 19: 16-25Life with God: Meeting God If you have your Bibles I'd invite you to turn with me to Exodus chapter 19. As we prepare to look at our text, the first thing that I want to remind you of is where we are. We are before the mountain of God. We’re in the wilderness of Sinai and we are about to see God's covenant established and confirmed with His people. You cannot understand Exodus 20 rightly without understanding what God teaches in Exodus 19, because Exodus 19 provides the context and it provides the background to the commands that are made in Exodus 20 and indeed all the way to Exodus 24. If you do not understand the various themes stressed in Exodus 19, you will misunderstand the role of the law in the Christian life. You’ll misunderstand the role of the law in…

Exodus 20:1-2Grace Before Law If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Exodus 20. Today we are beginning an exposition of what has been called in the English language for the last 500 years, the Ten Commandments. In the Hebrew Bible this section is known as the Ten Words or the Ten Pronouncements, but as begin to study them together it's important for us to remember that we live in a day and time that doesn't like law. We are very suspicious of law. We have an anti-authority spirit about us. We live in a day and time where the law is regarded as something impersonal, abstract, distant, tyrannical, restrictive and threatening and we need to realize how the mindset of the age impacts us in our thinking about biblical law. That's one reason why we chose to…

Exodus 20:3#1 No God But God If you have your Bibles I'd invite you to turn with me to Exodus chapter 20. Today we come to the first word of direction in the ten words, or Ten Commandments. We've spent a number of weeks in Exodus chapter 19 and in Exodus 20 verses 1 and 2, giving introduction to these ten words and now we finally come to what Jesus called the first and greatest commandment. I want to say two or three words of introduction. First I want to remind you that there have been divisions amongst people as to how the commandments themselves ought to be numbered and divided. Jews and Christians number the commandments differently. Protestants, Lutherans, and Catholics number the commandments differently. The content, of course, is the same. The debate is how should these be…

Exodus 20:4-6 #2 No Idols If you have your Bibles I'd invite you to turn with me to Exodus chapter 20. For the last few weeks we have been studying in Exodus 19 and 20, giving background to the ten commandments. Last week we finally came to the first word, the first command, the first directive. We said a number of things about. We said that it's a command for the New Testament church. This isn't just something for the misty past of the Old Testament, this isn't just and…

Exodus 20:7#3 — Do Not Wrongly Take God's Name If you have your Bibles I'd invite you to turn with me to Exodus chapter 20 and the 7th verse. For the last few weeks we have been looking at the Ten Commandments themselves. Before that we tried to give some sort of a context for the ten commands by looking at Exodus chapter 19, and the first two verses of Exodus chapter 20 so that we could appreciate this setting of God's household instruction which we call the Ten Commandments.…

Exodus 20:8#4 – The Command (Blessing) We Love to Hate If you have your Bibles I'd invite you to turn with me to Exodus chapter 20. We're continuing our study through the ten words which God spoke to Israel and which he gave to Moses, these ten commands. And we've come to the fourth command. It is the commandment we love to hate. Really, it's the blessing we love to hate. We chafe under the fourth commandment. And we rarely relish the fourth commandment, much less delight…

Exodus 20:12#5 — Honor Parental Authority If you have your Bibles I'd invite you to turn with me to Exodus 20, as we continue to make our way through these ten words. These ten commands, spoken by God Himself directly to His people at Sinai, recorded by Moses in his five books of the law are given to us for our instruction, Paul said, “Upon whom the ends of the ages have come for our profit, for our reproof, for our correction, for our training in righteousness.” God's word…

Exodus 20:13#6 – Do No Immoral Killing. If you have your Bibles I'd invite you to turn with me to exodus chapter 20. We're continuing in our study of the ten words this morning. Those ten commands which are the summary expression of the moral law of God, spoken by God Himself to the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai. But once again we are coming to a command that had its origin in revelation to the world long before Moses and Mt. Sinai. For this commandment which is set forth in the…

Exodus Commandment # 7 — The Scarlet Letter If you have your Bibles I'd invite you to turn with me to Exodus 20:14. We're continuing to work our way through the ten words, the ten commands, which are the summary of God's revelation of His moral law to the people of God in the Old Testament. They came from God 's own lips to His people at Mt. Sinai. We are in the second table of that law. The first four commandments are known as the first table of the law. The second six…