Exodus 20:1-17<\/p>\n\n\n\n
March 26, 2000<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every morning when I open up my SF Chronicle, I can\u2019t avoid seeing and reading the regular stream of violence and horror that happened in the Bay Area and in our world every day. Let me read some to you\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A group of San Francisco eighth-graders hatched an elaborate plan to poison their teacher with nail polish removal. The girls had a signal: two coughs and a sniff. That meant the nail polish remover should be poured into the teacher\u2019s water bottle. Fortunately Matthew Podwoski, a language arts teacher was back at the James Lick Middle School this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Denver, a homeless teenager has been found guilty of manslaughter in the beating death of a homeless man, one of a series of attacks last year that sent a wave of fear through the city\u2019s street community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Authorities now believe that about 530 people were burned alive in southwestern Uganda last week by their religious leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments. Relatives of the deceased believe that when members asked for a refund of their donations and money was running short, the mass murders were to avert a rebellion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wonder if there ever has been a day in our world when there was not one bad thing done against another person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And when you turn on the TV today, you encounter more of the same things you find in the papers: violence, adult content, and raunchy language. Green Acres and the Cosby Show have given way to the Simpsons and South Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for parents to block the kind of objectionable programming that they don\u2019t want their children to see, there\u2019s a new technology being installed in all new TV sets sold next year called the V-Chip. It\u2019s not important for us to know how this chip really works, but for some kids, it\u2019s a parent gimmick to keep kids from having fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The V-Chip is the latest Silicon Valley invention to do what the Ten Commandments did for the Israelites in Moses\u2019 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When our judicial system deals with so many crime-ridden cases a day, a judge in Alabama fights to have the Ten Commandments on the wall of his courtroom in order to say that the law enacted in his court is based upon the law of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Public posting of the Ten Commandments is probably not a bad idea. Certainly no harm can come from keeping the world\u2019s most respected moral code in constant view. But who are we kidding? Is this stopgap measure going to lower the crime rate, curb the violent impulse, reduce teenage pregnancy? No way. It didn\u2019t change behavior 3,500 years ago in the Sinai wilderness, and it won\u2019t do it today in our postmodern wilderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others defend the commandments as a means of calling America back to basic morality, a universally valid code of conduct, those unbending absolutes upon which all people of good will can agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While one can understand such desperate acts in the face of this morally chaotic society, this may be a misuse of the commandments. The commandments so displayed on the walls of U.S. courtrooms are not the same commandments of the God whom Christians worship as the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is not easy to rip the Ten Commandments out of the Sunday context and try to apply it in the society out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the context. Israel is in slavery in Egypt. Before Moses, a murderer minding his own business in Midian, a bush bursts into flame. There\u2019s a voice:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their<\/p>\n\n\n\n
cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that<\/p>\n\n\n\n
land to a good and broad land\u201d (Ex. 3:7-8).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is no deistic \u201cunmoved mover\u201d of a God. Here is a God who hears, intrudes, acts, calls. God says to Moses, \u201cI am going to deliver my people and guess who is going to help me?\u201d Moses protests; God insists. Moses is told to go to Pharaoh and tell this most powerful man on earth to let the Hebrews go. Why? Because God is against slavery? No. God demands freedom from Egyptian slavery so that the Hebrews may go out into the wilderness to sacrifice\u2014to worship God.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The hard-hearted Pharaoh resists. There are negotiations, confrontations, frogs, plagues, gnats, and much death. Finally Pharaoh relents saying, \u201cTake your flocks and your herds, as you said, and be gone\u201d (Ex. 12:32) Israel leaves toward the desert. There at last they are liberated, free at last!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, not quite. The Hebrews have been liberated from Egyptian slavery in order to become enslaved in God\u2019s plan. They are called into the wilderness to worship God. But it has been so long since anyone has worshipped the true God that they have forgotten how. Is worship of the God of Israel high church or low? Should incense be used? What about the kinds of robes we should be wearing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n So \u201cThe Lord summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up\u201d (Ex. 19:20). There the Lord opens the conversation by reminding Moses of what has been done for Israel, thus indicating who God is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the<\/p>\n\n\n\n house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me\u201d (Ex. 20-2-3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n God was reminding Israel, \u201cI paid dearly for you. You have been brought out of slavery, not in order to be free from all expectations, but rather in order that you might more fully belong to me, that you might worship me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n How to worship? Here begins the list of the commandments. \u201cDon\u2019t have idols.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t steal.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t have sex with other people\u2019s spouses.\u201d The notion of worship for God is peculiar in comparison with other gods. Some gods are into war, or sex, or gold. Here is a God who wants a holy people, a family where everyone is a minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n God said to Moses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep<\/p>\n\n\n\n my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy<\/p>\n\n\n\n nation\u201d (Ex. 19:3-6)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The important word here is \u201ctherefore.\u201d Because a people has been saved by God, therefore<\/em><\/strong> this people is to be a nation of priests. When Exodus says that Israel is to be a \u201choly nation,\u201d it means a people set apart, \u201cresident aliens.\u201d When it says \u201cpriests,\u201d it means that Israel exists for the sake of the whole world, to intercede, to make a sacrifice, and to mediate, to live in such a way, in obedience to the commandments, that other less enlightened and obedient peoples will say to themselves, \u201cSurely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!\u201d (Deut. 4:6).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This description of Israel found in Deuteronomy is repeated in 1 Peter describing the early church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God\u2019s own people,<\/p>\n\n\n\n in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of<\/p>\n\n\n\n darkness into the marvelous light\u201d (1 Peter 2:9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The phrase, \u201cin order that\u201d has the same meaning as \u201ctherefore.\u201d Because Jesus has saved us from our sins, \u201cin order that,\u201d \u201ctherefore,\u201d the way we live as God\u2019s own people teach the world the meaning of God\u2019s love. By the grace of God, even Gentiles like us have been brought into Israel\u2019s vocation to be priests to the world in the name of God and Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ten Commandments are made for all people, but the way the people discover that is by seeing how the commandments are lived out in the people of Israel and the church. Through our joyful obedience and worship of the true God will others come to know the meaning of the commandments for their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ten Commandments must be read and lived within this understanding as our vocation of a saving God. Today we live as those who have been chosen by God, called, claimed, possessed, owned by God that we might proclaim, in word and deed, what God has done. We live by the commandments as a way of worshipping the true God. When we thus worship the true God, we show forth to the world the sort of people God is able to produce. Our little lives are caught up in the great purposes of God for the world. We become commandeered for purposes beyond ourselves. We, for whom lying, deceit, falsehood, and even killing come quite naturally, are transformed by our obedience into a people of the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We, who were slaves, have become free. But that does not mean that we are free from all attachments, free to \u201cdo our own thing.\u201d As one of the Jewish prayers put it, \u201cWe were freed from being slaves to Pharaoh so that we might become slaves to the Torah.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The commandments are not general guidelines for humanity in general. They are a counter-cultural way of life for those who know who they are and whose they are. Their function is not to keep American culture running smoothly, but rather to produce a people who are, in our daily lives, a sign, a signal, a witness that God has not left the world to its own devices. We have the Ten Commandments because we have been delivered and redeemed by God. We are delivered and redeemed by God because we have the Ten Commandments. The commandments are both a gracious reminder of who we are and an abrasive prod to be who we ought to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Christians talk about morality, we begin by talking first about the church, by what it means to worship God. As a community of forgiven people, we keep coming together to worship God. This is why the commandments make sense to us and through us it makes sense for the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But before the Ten Commandments are about us, they are about God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know someone by the way the person speaks. Some say they can still tell that I am from Boston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know the true and living God because this God has refused to stay aloof, unconcerned, and out of touch. Our God could have stayed on Mount Sinai, hidden in the clouds, silent. Instead, the true God called Moses to him and had him write down what would please God. Our relentlessly self-revealing God has spoken \u201cten words\u201d to us and is thereby known to us. Before the words, and behind each word, is a God, the sort of God who tolerates no rivals like Pharaoh, a God who does not leave us alone to stumble aimlessly in the wilderness but graciously gives us the law \u201cfor our lasting good, so as to keep us alive\u201d (Deut. 6:24)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not the God that the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments tragically took 530 lives in Uganda last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The God who gives us the commandments wants us to have \u201clasting good and wants us to be alive.\u201d He is also the God who would give us Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having the commandments in our lives signals to us that this thing between us and God really matters. When we claim to be \u201ca chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God\u2019s own people,\u201d we have the responsibility to be partners with God in reclaiming our lost society. God is calling each one of us, not just certain leaders to help turn the world toward obedience, on how we have sex, how we handle property, and how we watch our words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n God speaks to each one of us in simple, direct words we can understand, addressing us where we live, where there are real issues about daily living. Here is a God who loves like wives and husbands love one another in marriage. God gets jealous for us. The relationship between us and God is not one of abstract, high-flown principles and ideas, it is a relationship between God who loves and a people who are loved enough to be told how, when, and where to return that love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know what I mean here. You\u2019ve been there before. How many times have you found yourself advising your teenage child to go and apologize to Dad after a disagreement? You might offer suggestions about how to begin to talk, or when might be the best time, or giving him a big hug afterward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n God gets jealous for us when we don\u2019t worship him. He helps us by giving us the Ten Commandments to show us that in this very close relationship he wants to have with us, these are the things that will make the relationship good and long lasting, make us stay alive. This loving God who delivers his people out of slavery so that we can worship him gives us a Savior born of a virgin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bending toward God<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I think you and I would like to see stronger crime legislation and more guilty verdicts when it comes to the violence we see in America today. But posting the Ten Commandments in the nation\u2019s courtrooms, I\u2019m afraid won\u2019t do it. Installing V-Chips in all the TV sets won\u2019t do it either. Just like stamping our coins with \u201cIn God We Trust\u201d and the Senate chaplain praying at the beginning of each session haven\u2019t made our country any more Godly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we recognize that we are \u201ca chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God\u2019s own people\u201d as the church of Jesus Christ, we begin to act a certain way because we believe a certain way. Our behavior arises out of our relationship to God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After seeing the Karate Kid, the movie, I wanted to be like Mr. Miyake. I wanted to learn how to raise Bonsai. So for Christmas, Lauren bought me a Hawthorn bonsai with 13 little trees. When she saw it, it still had some yellow and orange autumn leaves that reminded her of the Fall foliage colors in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of you know that Diana Ming Chan is an expert in bonsai. She came over during our holiday open house and recognized that I needed help with my new Christmas gift. She sat down, eye level, and started to clip and pinch back the undesirable growth. She told me that this big one is the \u201cpapa\u201d bonsai and this one is the \u201cmama.\u201d And they have 11 children! Next with old wires I had, she started to wire and bend back each tree so that they would grow straight up. She taught me to not have the branches cross the other trunks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was my first and only bonsai lesson. I only know the overall picture of what my Hawthorn bonsai should look like. I will still need to learn when and how to repot, what to feed the soil, how to pitch buds, how to cut the leaves and prune the branches, when to wire, and shape my bonsai to remain a work of art. You see, I appreciate the beauty of bonsai\u2014\u201cmeaning planting in a tray,\u201d but I still have a long way to go to learn how to maintain its harmony with me. Just like I want to bend the branches and the trunks of the bonsai to maintain its artistic balance, I see my life bending toward God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The beauty and good news about our relationship with God is that God wants us to worship him. God said, \u201cI am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.\u201d I\u2019m not saying that we bend the rules to fit our lifestyle, but that when we know in our hearts that it is God who is our Lord, we bend our lives toward him. Our obedience and knowledge of the Ten Commandments begin in the Sunday morning worship of the church. Here is where we affirm that God brings life out of death, order out of chaos, light into the darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like my bonsai being bend to reflect its beauty, we first come to God as his royal priesthood, God\u2019s own people bending our lives toward God. And knowing all of the things I still need to know about maintaining my bonsai is like the rest of the Ten Commandments. Learning to be more obedient, more faithful, and even more moral will come because the commandments (how we ought to live) rest upon our worship of God (who is God) in our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this season of Lent, we bend our lives toward the Living God, free from the slavery of human bondage only to become enslaved as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us pray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n O God, we give thanks for the teachings of the Ten Commandments and pray that we worship you and you alone as our Lord. Continue to help us to bend our lives toward your plan in the world. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Exodus 20:1-17 March 26, 2000 Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco. V-Chip Every morning when I open up my SF Chronicle,The Commandments and the Church<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
The Commandments are about God<\/h6>\n\n\n\n