Exodus 20:1-2

20 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

We are at Mount Sinai and here, in chapter 20, we finally hear—directly from the Lord himself—the words He wants His people to live by. This is the central event in Israel’s founding—the Ten Commandments. So it’s interesting that the Bible itself never uses the phrase “The Ten Commandments”! Yes, in most English Bibles you can find the phrase “the Ten Commandments” but that is a deliberate gloss by Bible translators. In Hebrew, the phrase is always “the Ten Words.” (The same word can also mean “things,” so it could also be translated as “The Ten Things.”) If you look at Exodus 34:28 in the ESV translation, you’ll see “the Ten Commandments” printed, but you’ll also notice a little textual note 1 and if you look to see what it says you’ll see printed there 1 "Hebrew the ten words." For familiarity, I usually refer to the “Ten Commandments” but somehow I like thinking of them as the Ten Words or the Ten Things, too.

There are 613 laws in total in the Torah. A good way to think of the Ten Commandments is that they are like a prologue or preamble to the Law. The Ten are guiding principles that reveal God’s heart to the world.

All of the commandments are in the second person singular. That is, they are addressed to “You yourself.” So, when the Lord says “I am the Lord your God,” He is in effect saying, “I am your personal God.”

At the burning bush, the Lord identified Himself in relation to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Here, they are not mentioned. Now, it’s just about the Israelites who have been brought out of slavery. It’s as if history has started over.

The very first statement the Lord makes is about freedom. He says, "I brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” They have been set free for a purpose, and they ought never to forget it.

The Law is not a new kind of slavery, but rather it is freedom because it is instruction on how to live the right way. Modern Christians—due to a longstanding misreading of the New Testament—often sneer at the Law. This is a heartbreaking development of which we ought to repent. The Law is God’s great gift to His people. Note that the Law is given only after they have been saved. In other words, the Law doesn’t save them—rather, it shows them how to live well now that they have been saved.

I love this image from Carmen Imes:

“Imagine that your community is planning to build a new playground with easy public access, right beside a busy intersection. Wouldn’t it be odd if someone argued that children would have more fun on this playground if there weren’t any fences to cramp their style? No, putting a fence between the cars-in-motion and kids-in-motion just makes sense. It ensures that children can play freely without fear of harm. It provides parents with a respite from watching their every move. A good playground includes physical boundaries. These ensure that everyone can have fun and fewer children end up in the emergency room. The fence is a gift! A playground with no fences isn’t really freedom; it’s an accident waiting to happen.

“Israel’s laws are the fences within which life can flourish. They make possible a distinctive way of life so that other nations can see what Yahweh is like and what he expects.” -Carmen Imes, Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters

Because the Law is loving instruction on how His people ought to live, it represents God’s character. The people are to be a kingdom of priests, and the Law is how they will do it. The Law is their mission, but not the point in itself. This is the error that Jesus faced in His time. Some of the Jews—like the Pharisees, e.g. —had come to see a punctilious keeping of the Law as the point of living. Rather, the point of the Law is to help Israel fulfill its mission as a light to the nations.

Jesus says that knowing the truth will set you free.

31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” [John 8:31-32]

One way to think about the Ten Commandments and the Law is that they are a revelation from the Lord about the truth and how to live by it. And, therefore, they show us how to live as free people.

The Holy Spirit has been given to the church to enable us to keep God’s Law. The Father sent the Son to die for His people, thereby freeing them from the Egypt of sin and death. Those who trust in Jesus are set free to live in the Promised Land of His presence and the Spirit now makes it possible for them to live freely and obediently.

Ezekiel was an Old Testament prophet during the time of the Babylonian exile. Israel had worshipped idols and forsaken the Lord, and the consequence was their captivity in Babylon. But the Lord didn’t abandon them, and Ezekiel foresaw a time when God would rescue them and change their hearts so that they could live freely and obediently:

24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. [Ezekiel 36:24-27]

What follows this passage is Ezekiel’s famous vision of the valley of the dry bones (Ezekiel 37) when what seems impossible—dry bones coming back to life—actually happens!

With the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church at Pentecost, the impossible has happened! The Ten Commandments therefore are a great gift to us, and they are words to live by. We shall see that they address the essential parts of life and offer guidance to show us how to think about life and what’s important.

Jesus famously summed up the greatest commandment like this:

36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” [Matthew 22:36-40]

Jesus has perfectly summed up the heart behind the Ten Commandments. What the Ten do is show us what it looks like to love God and love our neighbors. The first few speak specifically about loving God, and the second batch about loving our neighbors. Together, these Ten are the great commandments.

I am looking forward to reading through them with you. I’ve found that focusing on these Ten regularly and meditating on their meaning has been changing the way I think, and my prayer is that the same would happen for you.

Let’s GO.