2024 03 04 Exodus 20:1-17 • Psalm 19 • 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 • John 2:13-22
Theologians
refer to these readings we’ve had over this Lenten season as, the Noahic
Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, and the Mosaic Covenant. The Law that God handed down to Moses forms
the Mosaic Covenant. While the Noahic
and Abrahamic Covenants were God’s promise to his people, the Mosaic Covenant
is the first time we find an emphasis on our actions in the 10 commandments.
In all of
these covenants we receive revelations about God’s redemptive plan for mankind,
but more than that, we receive revelations about the nature of God. God promises to never again destroy all
mankind in the Noahic Covenant… A covenant of mercy and grace. God promises to make Abraham the father of
nations and that through him all the nations would be blessed… another covenant of mercy and grace. And then we get to our Mosaic Covenant.
At this historical
point where the law was given, the people of God knew that they had God’s
favour and they knew his power, because God had saved them miraculously from
slavery in Egypt, but on that mountain when the law was handed down, they
learnt a whole lot more about the nature of God.
These
Israelite people of God had been born in Egypt.
Their lives had been one of hard labour and slavery and although they
were known as Israelites, they were part of the Egyptian way of life and that
involved all the cultural aspects, including the worship of other gods. In fact, it is suggested that the plagues
that God sent when Pharaoh wouldn’t let the people go, were specific to the 10
gods of Egypt. Each plague showed God’s
authority over these other “so called” gods.
Some of the rituals to serve these gods, were a long way from the
goodness of our God, and those Israelites would have been involved in those
rituals. The people certainly knew very little to nothing about Yahweh, the God
who makes covenants with His people.
The first
commandment God gave was “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the
land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before
me.” It is kind of like God
saying, “Let me introduce myself…. That
power display you witnessed…. That was me…. Even though I am all powerful I am
your very good news, because I rescued you and care for you…and you do not need
to appease me like you did the other gods…. But don’t test my patience by
trying to serve both them and me” It is
a clear command given to a people who were used to having many gods.
Some of the
rituals involved with those other so called gods were not rituals that
benefited society or individuals. They
were in all ways destructive and they were in fact a lie. If we accept God’s
word when He tells us that He is God and there IS no other, then to serve other
gods is, in fact serving either our own imaginations in the least, and demons
parading as gods in the worst.
During Lent
we hear the ten commandments proclaimed each week, highlighting God’s law, and
to us it is all quite familiar, but can you imagine how it must have been for
those Israelites, hearing them for the first time?
Our God is
so far beyond the holiness and goodness of anything that the people had ever
experienced, it was actually hard for them to comprehend and it took them some
time to actually accept…. In fact, I reckon it took them about 40 years. Forty years of the people doubting and
testing God and forty years of God showing them His might and His power…. And
His love. Most importantly, I need to
tell you about God’s love.
Many years
ago, I read a book by Francine Rivers called Redeeming Love. The book is Christian fiction and I highly
recommend it. It is set in the early
Gold Rush days in America. The two main
characters are a Godly man named Michael Hosea and prostitute, nicknamed
Angel. The author paints a very sad
beginning to the book, where evil and abuse take centre stage. Finally, Angel is rescued by Michael. Michael marries Angel to save her, nurses her
back to health and although Angel is grateful, she can’t accept the love that
Michael offers. It is foreign… it is not
the way that her world operates. She
even goes back to her old life and needs to be rescued again.
What struck
me about the story was this inability to accept all the good that was offered,
not because it wasn’t wanted, but because it had never been experienced before,
she didn’t know what it was or how to accept it. I do believe the Israelite nation needed the
forty years in the desert to grow in their understanding of the goodness and
love of God – and often, so do we.
The Law of
God forms the Mosaic Covenant, and a covenant is an agreement between two
people, much like a marriage contract.
In the same way that the character, Michael, in the book, married Angel
to rescue her, God rescued the Israelite nation and made that covenant of love with
them, but they had a hard time accepting it, and God gave them the law as part
of that contract, to help them understand.
In this
covenant of the Law God showed them what love was like… love doesn’t murder. Love doesn’t commit adultery. Love doesn’t steal. Love doesn’t bear false
witness against a neighbour. Love
doesn’t covet your neighbour's house. wife, slave, or ox, or donkey, or
anything else. In God’s love He orders a
time of rest… keep holy the Sabbath. He
commands that we honour our parents.
Why? Because this is what love
is. God always desires good things for
his people and good things come when follow God’s way. It’s not rocket science – it is simple and
God made the commands, not to restrict us, but to give us a framework for
society and a framework for love to thrive.
Our Psalm
tells us that the law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of
the LORD are sure, making wise the simple.
In the beginning of the Law, it was obvious that it was to revive the
soul. Think about it; these people were
slaves in Egypt and the first thing this all-powerful God commands is that they
have a day of rest. A nation who knew no
rest was given a holiday each week – a HOLY- day. Have you ever noticed the make-up of that
word?
Some of the
so-called gods called for human sacrifice, but our God commands that you shall
not murder. Many of the rituals with the
false gods were performed to gain wealth and power, but our God commands that
we do not covet. The Israelites had been
so damaged in their understanding of life that God had to spell it out in the
commandments and it was really Good News!
The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul.
If mankind is
willing, we can know God through His creation.
The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims
his handiwork. Day to day pours forth
speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are
there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the
earth, and their words to the end of the world. I have heard people who know
more about science than me, talk about the intelligent design evident in
creation. These people say that it is
obvious to them that God created, yet the world is full of those who proclaim
it is because of science that they don’t believe. Might I suggest that it is because they are
suffering the same condition as those Israelites? When we are more exposed to the evil in the
world, the hate and jealousy, we find it almost impossible to accept that
anything can be different. A meme that
popped up on facebook recently captures this idea; “We cannot force someone to
hear a message that they are not ready to receive, but we must never
underestimate the power of planting a seed.”
Our reading
from Corinthians speaks of the rejection of the message in this way; “For the
message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us
who are being saved it is the power of God.”
The power of God is extreme, but no human is a puppet and change can be
immediate or gradual and sadly, more often than not, it is a very slow
progress…. Forty years or so???
So, the
question for us is this; if it is so hard for people to accept the Good News
about God because they are so used to bad news, what can we do? What is our part?
It is a
marathon and not a sprint. Bringing
about change in peoples’ perceptions of the church and God is something that
happens gradually, but only one bad incident of failure to embody the goodness
of God, and it will propel us back to the start. This is what we are up against when there are
Christians who lie, cheat and abuse their positions of power.
This is why
Jesus was upset about the market place in the temple. The very place where people were meant to
encounter the mercy, grace and love of God, they instead experienced cheating,
lying and abuse. It mis-represented
God. That is why Jesus was so
angry. It destroyed peoples’ trust in
God and gave them a warped image of who God is.
Do we
understand that the law was made not for judgment, but to bring people freedom? God wants us to be free. Jesus came to set the prisoners free –
meaning that he wants us to be free from those things that weigh us down. He wants us to live in all the goodness that
he initially created, because he loves us.
The law was
made for this, but we couldn’t perfectly keep the law… and it made us aware of
how we all fall short of the Glory of God.
But, God made a way to set us free from even the bondage of the law….
Jesus came and kept that law perfectly… not just the letter of the law, but the
heart of the law. Baptised into union
with Jesus, we too are reckoned as one who keeps the law. This is God’s love on a whole other level.
This week
let us pray for the love of God to be so evident to us, that God’s love then
becomes manifest through us to those we meet, breaking those chains of burdens
and setting people free. Amen.
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