A little while after the incident at Meribah, the Lord leads Israel into the Wilderness of Sinai to set up camp. Once they set up here, the Lord tells Moses that he wants to make a covenant with Israel and wants to make them his “treasured possession” and “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:4–6). The image of “kingdom of priests” suggests that part of the reason that the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt is that he wants them to be an entire nation that proclaims who he is and helps the nations around them to know how they too can worship the Lord. In the New Testament, Peter picks this image up and applies it to the church, telling all believers that since the Lord has saved them, they have the responsibility to “proclaim the excellencies” of the God who saved us (1 Peter 2:8–10). God saved Israel (and us) with the purpose that they would tell others how to experience his blessing and salvation as well.
When Moses conveyed this to the people of Israel, they whole-heartedly agreed that they would do all that the Lord had said (Ex 19:7–9a). The Lord then tells Moses to prepare the people to experience his presence on Mount Sinai, being sure that they are all properly consecrated, and that none of them actually come near to touch the mountain, since God’s holiness would overwhelm and destroy them (vv. 9–15).
We see the Lord descend mightily on the mountain with clouds, smoke, and fire. As he descends, he calls Moses alone to come up to speak with him. We see later on that the people were so terrified by what they saw and heard that they only wanted to hear from the Lord through Moses. To hear directly from the Lord would be far too overwhelming for them and they were scared they would die (Ex 20:18–20).
Upon the Mountain, Moses receives laws and instructions from the Lord about how Israel was to walk with God in the covenant being established. Chapter 20 contains the first ten Laws, known today as the Ten Commandments. These laws are really summaries of the many more laws that will be given in Exodus through Deuteronomy, as many of the additional laws really spell out specific situations that may fall into these broader terms. These commands themselves can also really be summarized by what Jesus says are the two greatest commandments: Love the Lord with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself.
The first four commandments really have to do with relating to God: Worshipping him alone; not worshiping idols or carved images; not taking his name in vain (probably encapsulates using his name flippantly as a curse word, but so much more, such as using his name in legal oaths or to make people think we are holier than we are); and lastly keeping the Sabbath. This Sabbath command is interesting, because it is really the only command from this passage that is not reinforced in the New Testament. In fact, Paul seems to be clear that Christians are not obligated to follow it (although I believe it is a helpful principle to observe if we are able; Jesus himself states that it was created for the benefit of people, as long as we are not legalistic about it as the Pharisees were). The remaining six commands deal with relating to fellow people: Honor your parents; don’t murder; don’t commit adultery; don’t steal; don’t lie; don’t covet.
As we talk about these commandments, it’s important to remember that even Israel was not saved by keeping these. These laws are given to show the way that God created us to live rightly before him, as we seek to bring life to the world around us. But the New Testament also tells us that the Laws really served to show how incapable any person is of being righteous before God. All along, even under this covenant with Israel, people were saved by hoping in God’s faithfulness and promised Savior. And as we’ll see in weeks to come, many of these Israelites seem to have failed to do that.
As a fun teaching aid, I shared the memory device that helped me learn the Ten Commandments in order when I was a young child. I’m not sure whom the credit belongs to for these drawings. They were taught/given to me by my mom, but she received them from someone else.
