Left Out

This is the message from the WOW (Worship on Wednesday) service in Gettysburg.  The Bible verses are Exodus 20:1-17.

On these Wednesday nights, we've been doing messages based on Old Testaments stories.  You really cannot do a series based on the Old Testament without discussing the Ten Commandments, which we just read.

The Ten Commandments are considered to be the cornerstone of our religious faith.  In fact, some people would go farther than that, and also say that they are the cornerstone of our legal system.  You've probably heard some of the arguments about whether it should be allowed to post the Ten Commandments in courthouses or other public buildings.  Pretty much everyone who claims to be a Christian would agree that the Ten Commandments are very important.  Even if we don't always obey them, we still all agree about how important they are.

The way I've generally heard the Ten Commandments preached is for the pastor to talk about what the Commandments say and then to talk about how far short we fall from obeying them.  And that's perfectly legitimate, of course.  We do all fall short of obeying the Ten Commandments, and sometimes we need to be reminded of that.

Tonight, though, I'd like to take the opposite approach.  I'd like to talk about how far short the Ten Commandments fall.  What I mean is that there are people who consider the Ten Commandments the be-all and end-all of our Christian faith—everything you need to know to be a Christian in just a few sentences—and I don't think that's true.  Again, the Ten Commandments are good, and they're important, but there are some important things about our Christian faith that are left out of the Ten Commandments, too.

So what I'd like to is read the Ten Commandments to you again, and this time I'd like you to think about what's not there.  Think about what's left out.  Think about the important things about our Christian faith that are not included in the Ten Commandments.

So here they are:

1)  You shall have no other gods before me.

2)  You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.  You shall not bow down and worship them.

3)  You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name

4)  Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God.  On it you shall not do any work.

5)  Honor your father and your mother.

6)  You shall not murder.

7)  You shall not commit adultery.

8)  You shall not steal.

9)  You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

10)  You shall not covet your neighbor's house.  You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, of anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Okay.  Those are the Ten Commandments.  What's left out that's important to our Christian faith?

Love.  That's right.  Love, and mercy, and forgiveness.  And probably some other stuff, too.  Those things are all really important to our Christian faith.  And yet they don't appear in the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments are a series of rules.  Some things that we're supposed to do, and some things we're not supposed to do.  And that's okay, as far as it goes.  Rules can be good, and rules can be important.  A society without any rules would fall apart pretty quickly.  The things the Ten Commandments tell us to do are all good things to do.  The things the Ten Commandments tell us not to do are good things not to do.

But the thing about the Ten Commandments is that we're never told why we should do these things or not do them.  God, through Moses, just says, “Here are the rules.  Follow them and you won't get into any trouble.  Don't follow them and you will get into trouble.  That's the way it is.”

The thing to remember is that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses somewhere around fourteen hundred or fifteen hundred B. C.  That's roughly three thousand, five hundred years ago.  In some ways, people were still pretty primitive back then.  In some ways they were not—I don't mean to sell our ancestors short—but in some ways they were.

It seems to me that it's sort of like when we're little kids.  Our parents, and our teachers, will give us rules to follow.  Do this.  Don't do that.  And when we're really little, we're not told why these are the rules.  We're just told, “Here are the rules.  Follow them and you won't get into any trouble.  Don't follow them and you will get into trouble.  That's the way it is.”

And when we're really little, we accept that.  Partly we accept it because we trust that our parents and our teachers love us and know what's best for us.  Partly we accept it because we really don't have much choice.  Our parents and our teachers are bigger and more powerful than we are.  They can punish us if we don't follow the rules.  So if we don't want to get punished, we do what they say.

For a while.  As we get older, though, we don't accept it so well any more.  We start to think we have some power and intelligence ourselves.  And so we start to ask, “Why?  Why do I have to do this?  Why can't I do that?”  And if we don't get answers that we like, answers that satisfy us, we start doing things our own way.

And that's what happened in Old Testament times.  At first, the people accepted the Ten Commandments without question.  But after a while, they started asking the question, “Why?  Why do we have to do these things?  Why can't we do those things?”  And when they did not get answers they liked, answers that satisfied them, they started doing things their own way.

The thing is, of course, that we have the ability to ask these questions before we have the ability to understand the answers to them.  As we're growing up, and we start asking why we should do certain things and should not do certain other things, there are answers.  And they're good answers.  But because we have not lived long enough yet, because we don't have enough life experience yet, we don't want to accept those answers.  We decide to do things our own way, and we get knocked down, and we have to suffer the consequences of doing things our own way.

That happened in Old Testament times, too.  The people questioned the Ten Commandments, and the other laws that came from God.  There were answers for why they should follow the rules, but they did not want to accept the answers.  So they decided to do things their own way.  And they got knocked down.  And they had to suffer the consequences of doing things their own way.

And this was still going on in Jesus' time.  Some of you remember the story of when Jesus is talking to some people and someone comes up and asks him, “Which commandment is most important?”  Just the fact that they would ask that question tells us that people were starting to have questions about the Ten Commandments.  Because if you'd asked Moses that question, “Which commandment is most important”, he'd have looked at you like you were nuts.  He'd have said “They're all important.  They come from God.  God engraved them on stone tablets.  God did not say focus on this one and don't worry about the others.  They're all important.”

Did you ever wonder why Jesus came along when he did?  I mean, Jesus could've come to earth at any point in human history.  Why that particular point?  Well, there are probably lots of reasons, and
only God knows what they are, but I suspect one of the reasons Jesus came along when he did is that at that point, at least some people were far enough along that they could start to understand and accept the answers to the questions that they had.  And Jesus, of course, was able to give them those answers.

When Jesus answers this question about which commandment is most important, he does not cite one or two of the Ten Commandments and say, “This is the most important.”  Instead, he says the most important commandments are that we love God and that we love our neighbors.  He says nothing else is more important than that.

Jesus supplied what was left out of the Ten Commandments.  Jesus supplied the love.  And in other things Jesus said, he supplied the mercy, and the forgiveness, and all the other things that are so important to our Christian faith.  Jesus did not say, “Here are the rules.  Follow them or else.”  Jesus said, “If you love God, you'll love the people God created.  If you love God and love the people God created, you'll follow the rules.  Not because you have to do it or else.  You'll follow the rules because you want to, because that's the best way to show love to God and to the people God created.”

The Ten Commandments are important.  We should follow them.  But the most important thing is that we love God and love the people God created.  If we focus on doing that, the Ten Commandments, and all the other rules, will take care of themselves.