|
The following discussion complements Section 18 in Stephen Travis' The Bible in Time.
The Basic Plot
Before we address the decalogue, let's remind ourselves of the Big Picture. The basic plot of the Old and New Testaments is this: Abraham's seed is God's solution to Adam's sin. In other words, the children of Abraham have been chosen of God to serve as his collaborating agents to help remedy the wrong in the world, the multi-layered disruption of Shalom so creatively depicted in the Adam and Eve narrative.
The programmatic example of this is placed as the capstone of the Bible's opening book of Genesis. Joseph, though betrayed again and again, remains faithful to God. From the depth of his jail cell he eventually is raised to great prominence and uses his privilege to save an expanding circle of people from starvation and death: his own family, then the nation of Egypt, then all the nations of the ancient world. Joseph becomes the prototype of the role his descendants are to play in the world. Though humbled by their adverse circumstances, they are to stay true to God, remain faithful, and wait for the reversal of their fortunes. When blessing again comes their way they are to emulate Joseph and channel that blessing to others, first their own people, then all the nations of the earth. This will then fill the promise God made to Abraham, their father (Gen 12:1-3):
The Exodus Narrative
What's going on in this second book of the Pentateuch? Ancient Israel, the beloved son of God, starts off thriving, fulfilling part of Adam's creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply. Then anti-life forces (as depicted in the story by Pharaoh) intrude, bringing murder, oppression, and slavery in their wake. YHWH hears the cry of his people and exerts his strong arm to confront their enemy and his. As we saw last week, God's provides just what they need: a gracious exchange (the lamb), a mighty deliverance (their liberty), and his abiding presence (his law and tabernacle). Now that they have been freed, the people can pursue the path to their intended role in the world--serving as God's kingdom of priests in the world, his holy nation. They are to learn to be distinctive from others for the sake of others. That is God-like (Christ-like) holiness.
How Can We Be God's Distinctive People?
Good question. Sure, they were God's beloved, cleansed and forgiven, adored and adopted, set free from captivity, privileged with God very presence, and flanked by his promises. But HOW were they to live? They had just spent hundreds of years in captivity, belittled, deprived, oppressed, and dehumanized. They were just scrambling for survival, to keep their selves and their children alive. If they were to function as God's beacon of light for the watching world to see, the model nation for others to emulate, wouldn't they need some guidance, some basic instructions? Precisely. And this is where "the law" comes into play. These instructions are given to answer two major questions:
Motivating Reasons to Rightly Respond
Positive Reasons: Why Obey?
Negative Reasons: Why Not Disobey?
Two Ways: Your Choice
God makes it clear that there are Two Ways that the nation can go. There is the way of loving loyalty and blessedness and there is the way of disloyal rebellion and cursedness. Read Deuteronomy 28. It couldn't be stated more clearly. This chapter encapsulates the heart of the Mosaic Covenant.
Connect the Dots of the Covenants?
How do the two ways of Israel's Mosaic Covenant tie into the Abrahamic Promise? Excellent question and critical to answer aright.
The Abrahamic covenant promised that Abraham's family over time would serve as God's means of restoring Shalom to all the people groups of the world. Remember that Shalom is wholeness in multiple dimensions: spiritual, psychological, social, ecological. It is the condition that prevails in a community who is right with God, with self, with others, and with the created order. This is the answer to the multi-layered disruption that has long characterized the human race. Think about it: agents of Shalom can mediate Shalom to others only if they themselves experience Shalom.
Let me illustrate. Let's say there's a down-town, inner-city apartment complex that is riddled with crime, drugs, gangs, and broken families. The moms who live there are either addicted or scared and lonely or both. The kids are susceptible to gang influence because the have no other group of support. A local church wants to move 5 or 6 of their own families into the apartment complex in order to begin a transformation. By living among the broken families and single moms, these socially-minded church families can begin to love their new neighbors in tangible, constructive ways. They hope to start a preschool for the little ones and after-school tutoring and sports programs for the older children. They can help the moms find resources and help them develop a sense of community. They can build trust and friendships. In time, with long-term commitments and patience and prayer, they might begin to change the disposition of the apartment complex and turn things around. Do you think it matters what kind of families the church chooses to place in the apartment complex? Would the plan be effective if the families that moved in as the representatives of the church were themselves drug-dealing criminals with violent tendencies? What if the families moving in were all sex offenders? Would the program likely succeed? Wouldn't you want to families who moved in to model the very traits and behaviors they hoped to cultivate in their neighbors? Agents of Shalom can mediate Shalom to others only if they themselves experience Shalom.
The promise was first given to Abraham in Gen 12, to which he responded with prompt and entire obedience. When YHWH said "Get up and go" Abraham got up and went. God was seeking a willing, faithful collaborator and it appears he found one in Abraham. When God promised a large family, Abraham trusted God, a critical response if he was to be right with God (15:1-6). A quarter-century later (in chapter 17), YHWH said to Abraham, "I am El-Shaddai--God Almighty. Serve me faithfully and live a blameless life. I will make a covenant with you..." See the pattern? God is gracious and promises to bless Abraham. Abraham offers the fitting response--he is obedient, trusting, faithful and upright. It is a man like this (it is a people like this!) that God will bless with Shalom and who then can mediate Shalom to others. The final story of Abraham makes this clear. After rendering obedience to an excruciatingly difficult command, Abraham proves himself faithful. Because God's covenant blessing is an entailment of obedience, God responds, greatly relieved, with these words of affirmation: "Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.” There's no mistaking it now. The outworking of the blessing on Abraham's family (the nation of Israel) is contingent on their emulation of Abraham's faith and faithfulness. But of course. Agents of Shalom can mediate Shalom to others only if they themselves experience Shalom. And you cannot experience Shalom by following the broad way that leads to destruction.
John the Baptizer knows this. He knows that his contemporaries can be true to their calling to be Abraham's children, with Abraham's mission in the world, only if they share Abraham's trust and fidelity.
First-century Israel would be divided in two: those who share Abraham's character would with Jesus be endowed with the Spirit and become the nucleus of the new Israel, the kingdom of priests, the holy nation to bless all the nations of the earth. Those who refuse the share Abraham's heart and ways would draw on their own heads the fiery consequences of their own misbehavior. This is an outworking of the Abrahamic covenant. This too is an outworking of the Mosaic covenant.
The Mosaic covenant makes explicit what the Abraham covenant implied. It takes the faith and faithfulness of Abraham to reap the promised blessings and to assume the role of blessing-sharers, priests of Shalom to the world. If you prefer to "opt out" of this arrangement, if you refuse to follow in the footsteps of Abraham you will forfeit the blessings and derail the mission, Israel's mission, actually God's mission in the world. Jesus said much the same to his generation. There is a narrow road which leads to life, life for you and life for others. There is a broad road which leads to destruction. Which will you choose? The choice that Jesus puts before his peers is the same choice that Moses provided 1,500 years earlier.
But don't forget the prelude. Antecedant to the "two ways" is the abundant GRACE of God, adoring, adopting, sacrificing, delivering, leading, instructing, abiding. It is this magnificent grace from God that invites a fitting response from us. This is what a two-directional mutually-involving covenantal arrangement is all about.
Exodus 20:1-2
These ten words are gifts from God. These are his wise and loving instructions to help direct a long-enslaved people in how they can function as God's people, how they can function as a harmonious community, in a way that is good for them, good for their neighbors, and honoring to God.
Note again the prelude of grace. Before elaborating some basic guidelines of community behavior, God reminds his beloved people of their story, of how they came to this place at this time. "I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery."
The Covenant Formula
The first part of this is called the covenant formula, a blessed refrain that is repeated throughout both Old and New Testaments. It emphasizes the mutual relationship between the Shepherd and his sheep, between the Parent and his children, between the King and his subjects, between the Lover and his beloved, between the Liberator and his liberated, between the Savior and his saved. Here it is, and if God had not himself asserted it, this might be hard to believe.
He says it. Startling as it is, we might as well accept it. Put it in your own words: "YHWH you are our God and we are your people." This entails an others-directed obligation. God is our God, which obligates him to us, to look out for us, to provide for us, to protect us, to secure our future, to keep his promises to us. But it goes both ways. We are his people, which obligates us to him, to trust him, to follow him, to collaborate with him, to obey him. The covenant formula opens the Mosaic covenant (Exodus 20:2) because it is the basis for all that follows. If God is our God, then such and such follows, as a matter of course. If we are his people, then such and such follows, as a matter of course. (This was how covenants between Kings and subjects worked in the ancient Near East, so it was a familiar cultural concept.) This central relationship not only provides the entry into the Mosaic covenant, but it also provides the entry into the new heavens and earth as well. Note the striking relational image. Note also the "my people" language. From Revelation 21:1-3.
Wow--here it is again, headlining the new creation in all its glory. God and people, linked in love, like groom and bride. He is our God; we are his people. It's all about relationship, a mutually-serving, mutually-enhancing relationship. God gives to us, and we respond to him. Simple.
The Rehearsal of Grace
Before God spells out what a national response would look like, he reminds them of what he has done on their behalf. Ah, the prelude of grace. "I, YHWH, your God, rescued you my son from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery." A good story is worth rehearsing, especially when such a rehearsal stirs gratitude, warms the affections, and inspires trust, love, and obedience. This could be one reason why Jesus instituted a liturgy of remembrance that we call the Lord's Supper, as a way to bring to mind God's gracious exchange on our behalf, his mightly liberation of us from slavery to self and destructive ways, and his abiding presence among us to guide us and empower us. Rehearsing this part of the story should stir our gratitude, warm our affections, and inspire our trust, love, and obedience.
Their Cultural Context
Just a word here about the way God accommodates his instructions to the situation of his audience. We saw this in Genesis 1-2 where God accommodates the ancient science of the day in order to communicate truths of far greater significance. Here too with the decalogue. These “ten words” are given by God to a particular people (his liberated nation) at a particular time (13th century BC) in a particular culture (ancient Near Eastern patriarchal agrarian culture) for a particular purpose (to foster loyalty to YHWH and maintain the integrity of the community so that the nation could function as a kingdom of priests in their world). Though many elements transcend that day, these 10 words accommodated the particularities of that people and their culture. I'll make but two observations:
The Heart of the Ten Words
As Stephen Travis says, with the ten words "God is providing boundaries within which the people are to live. Within these boundaries there is freedom, not imprisonment, because these laws protect society from behavior that would destroy it" (p. 45).
Why is the command to exclusive loyalty to YHWH placed at the top of the list?
Do you notice that the 10 words point in two directions?
Why are these two directions so closely linked?
What does Jesus do with the ten words? See Luke 18:18-22.
What does Paul do with the ten words? Listen to his counsel to Rome.
|