How Many Commandments Do We Need?

By Pastor Ed Evans

Scripture: Exodus 24:12-18

24:12 The Lord said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction."
24:13 So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God.
24:14 To the elders he had said, "Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them."
24:15 Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain.
24:16 The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud.
24:17 Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.
24:18 Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.

The title for this sermon comes from a bumper sticker I once saw.

It said, "1. Love your God.

"2. Love your neighbor.

"How many other commandments do you need?"

And I thought, well, he has a point.

The 10 Commandments as we know them, as commonly cited in Exodus 20:2-17, are ten moral and religious commandments from God for the Hebrew people, after they had been freed from Egyptian slavery. They form part of the 613 injunctions, prohibitions and commands which make up the Mosaic Code, those religious laws under which Christians no longer live, being covered by the shed blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ as their savior.

So, do we now ignore the Ten Commandments?

You might be interested to know that a UPI news story from Feb. 2, 1997 reported that "only 68 of 200 Anglican priests polled could name all Ten Commandments, but half said they believed in space aliens."

And then there's the old joke about not being able to post the Ten Commandments in courthouses and legislatures, because you cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal,' 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,' and 'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians. For some it creates a hostile work environment.

And of course, there are people standing in line looking for fame by attempting to discredit the Ten Commandments. For example, some claim the Ten Commandments bear a striking resemblance to the Egyptian "Book of the Dead." After all, the Israelites had just come from captivity in Egypt when God gave the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments to Moses. It's interesting they should see that correlation, however there is a slight problem with that theory, in that the Book of the Dead didn't appear until three centuries after the Ten Commandments.

Elements of the Ten Commandments also show up in the Muslim Qur'an, sort of. Muslims believe the Qur'an is the revealed word of God dictated by the angel Gabriel to the prophet Mohammed. Elements of the Ten Commandments show up in fourteen verses of the Qur'an.

At one point in the Qur'an it appears to urge the Ten Commandments of the Hebrews be followed, but the actual text is left out: "007.145 "And We ordained laws for him in the tablets in all matters, both commanding and explaining all things, (and said): 'Take and hold these with firmness, and enjoin thy people to hold fast by the best in the precepts'..."

Then, regarding keeping the Sabbath, the Qur'an, at 16:124, says the Sabbath day of complete rest was only required for Jews.

If you wonder what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had to say about the Ten Commandments, which warn us about sinning against God, first you should know that in John 8:36 Jesus says, "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." Then throughout the books of the New Testament Jesus mirrors what the Ten Commandments say, loving the Lord your God, keeping the Sabbath, not committing adultery, not swearing falsely, honoring father and mother, and so on.

Nearly 1,400 years after they first appeared, Jesus summed up all 10 Commandments for us in Matthew 22 of the New Testament. Jesus had been confronted by the so-called experts in religion of His day, when they asked, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

Matthew 22:36-40 quotes Jesus as replying, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

His first response contains all of the first four commandments brought down from Mt. Sinai by Moses. The last six are then contained in his final statement, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

There are those today, among the Jews, who live every moment of their life attempting to keep every one of the 613 injunctions, prohibitions and commands of the Mosaic Code.

There are Christians who commit themselves to living by the spirit of the Ten Commandments, recognizing we are flesh and blood, and prone to sin, as Paul wrote, even when we don't mean to do so.

Then there are Christians who are content to live within Jesus' two new commandments, loving God and their neighbor.

Which one should you do? Well, I don't know you well enough to advise you, but I can tell you the story of three boys and how they turned out.

The first boy I got to know right after I graduated Marine Corps boot camp and was stationed at the colorful El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, near Santa Ana, Calif. That is also near the very first Disneyland in the world, and since it had just opened when I got there in 1959, many of us worked there after hours as cooks, maintenance men and clean-up crews. Extra money and lots of girls to meet, including Annette Funicello!
Four of us rented a beach-front apartment on Newport Beach, and were living the high life. One of the four was sort of a loner, pretty much kept to himself, not a team member. Three of us had spoken of growing up with our families, average American families and lives filled with school and church. Not so with the fourth man. That was not his experience, and he avoided talking about his family. One day when the local police pulled his car over for speeding, they popped the trunk and found bags of coins that had been stolen from local laundromats. He was kicked out of the Marine Corps and went away to prison. We never heard from him again.

Many years later another Marine and myself found that one of our younger Marines was borrowing office cameras and pawning them. No family roots, no spiritual background, he seemed to be without ethics altogether. He was discharged from the Marine Corps. Years later I learned he had gone to prison in Oklahoma for burglary, was gang-raped and committed suicide.

Another young man about that time had grown up being kicked around from family to family, doing poorly in school, and barely graduated high school. But an elderly gent from a local church had taken an interest in him and got him to going to church regularly. Wanting to go to college but without good enough grades, and knowing he would never have the money, he joined the Marine Corps. But before joining, he had given his life to Christ at a weekend camp for church teenagers. Growing up he had been exposed to what he knew to be accepted ethics and morals, and his experience among other Christians at church solidified that for him.

Throughout his time in the Marine Corps he would stray from what he knew God expected of him, and the Holy Spirit would call him back. For many years his was an "up and down" relationship with God, but the Creator of the Universe would not let him go, would not turn His back on the young man,

Three young men, two with little or no spiritual background, no ethical path to follow when tempted to do wrong; one young man who leaned heavily upon the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Can such fundamentals as the Ten Commandments, make that much of a difference? Can spiritual guidelines be enough to keep a young man on the right path, away from deadly and dead-end temptations?

There are no guarantees. The son of a preacher, growing up in a Christ-centered home, still has free will and the ability to make those decisions that will eventually destroy him and his life.

The scriptures advise us, in Proverbs 22:6, "Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it."

If only the mothers and fathers of our families across America had done that, we would have fewer societal problems today. As individuals before God, as a society, as a nation, a knowledge of the Ten Commandments, and an adherence to the spiritual guidance given by Jesus Christ would have us in very different times.

This is true because our relationship with Jesus Christ is not about keeping rules, obeying laws, or even about keeping from sinning, even though that is an element of it. Our relationship is about obedience, doing those things the Father has told us to do.

The German preacher Dietrich Bonhoeffer, murdered by the Nazis for his opposition to Adolph Hitler, has written, "Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will."

How do we know God's will for us? Prayer will seek His will for us, and we will find it in scripture. That's where we find Exodus 20 and the Ten Commandments, as well as Jesus' statement in John 13:34-35, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another."

And yet, if we love one another, how do we allow the bad behavior, the poisoning of the well of youth, the evils that go on in our own society, our own nation against the weak, the poor, the disenfranchised?

Pastor Bonhoeffer, writing more than 70 years ago in a national crisis similar to our own, told us, "Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christians should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong."

How many commandments do we need to make that happen?

Amen.

Here They Are, the Ten Commandments -- God's Revelation in the Old Testament:

ONE: You shall have no other gods before Me.

TWO: You shall not make for yourself a carved image -- any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

THREE: You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.

FOUR: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

FIVE: Honor your father and your mother.

SIX: You shall not murder.

SEVEN: You shall not commit adultery.

EIGHT: You shall not steal.

NINE: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

TEN: You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.