God Gives the Ten Commandments

Prepare

Lesson Preparation

CCome On In

AStudying God’s Word

Optional Supplements

PowerPoint

Studying God’s Word

Introduction

Our last lesson was a bit of a downer in that we looked at how the Israelites were constantly complaining and grumbling against God, even in the midst of his provision of all that they needed.

• • Write on the board, “What is the connection between the law and the gospel?”
  What attributes of God did we see on display in our last lesson? God was faithful to his promise to free the Israelites, and his immutability was displayed in his keeping his promises. We also see his power over nature in his bringing the quail and in his ability to provide manna for all of the people every day.

  We also saw how the events of the Exodus, especially the provision of bread and water, was connected to Jesus. We want to be aware of how the Old Testament points us forward to Christ. Just as God provided bread for the physical sustenance of the Israelites, Jesus calls himself the Bread of Life, providing himself—our eternal bread—as spiritual sustenance. All who eat of his body and drink of his blood will have eternal life. This is a truth that we celebrate and remember as we take communion.

  As we continue to walk chronologically, we are jumping over a couple of events. When we looked at Exodus 17, we talked briefly about Moses striking the rock at Meribah to provide water for the people. But we did not look at the first battle the Israelites faced. The Amalekites were descendants of Esau, and they brought an army against the Israelites. Joshua marshalled an army while Moses, Aaron, and Hur watched from a nearby hill. While Moses held the staff of God up, the Israelites prevailed. When the staff was lowered, the Amalekites prevailed. So, Aaron and Hur helped Moses by holding up his hands until sundown, and the Israelite army prevailed. Again, God had provided for his people.

  Moses built an altar there, naming it Yahweh-Nissi—the Lord Is My Banner. It was God who had gone before his people, bringing victory in the battle. After the Amalekites were defeated on this day, God promised to blot them out in the future. We will see them pop up several more times as we work through the text.

  In Exodus 18, we read an account of Moses being reunited with Jethro, his father-in-law. After witnessing Moses’ laboring to judge all of the Israelites in view of God’s commands, Jethro advised him to pass on to trustworthy men the role of acting as judge over the people, reserving only the most difficult cases for himself. This was the beginning of the governing of the Israelites.

  Our lesson today takes us into Exodus 19–20 and the giving of the Law to the Israelites. We are going to try to unpack the purpose of the Law for the Israelites and how we relate to God’s law today.

Hearing the Law

As the Israelites moved further south and east, they moved toward the place where Moses had spent 40 years tending sheep. We are going to begin in Exodus 19 and go through the basic timeline of the arrival of the children of Israel at Mount Sinai. If you have ever watched movies portraying these events, this section of Scripture might sound funny. But we have to keep the Bible as our authority . . . not Hollywood. I am going to ask several of you to read small sections, and I will describe the information between the passages. This will give us a quick fly-over view of the events.

Let us remember as we read Exodus 19:1–6 that the Israelites left Egypt on the fourteenth day of the first month. Have someone read the passage.

(Summarize 19:7–15.) In verses 7–9, Moses came back from the mountain and reported God’s words to the elders. They agreed, and Moses returned to the mountain with the affirmation. In verses 10–13, God commanded that any creature that touched the mountain should be put to death. God told Moses to consecrate the people for two days to prepare them to hear from God.

Let’s have someone read 19:16–20, where we find out what happened after the two days of consecration. Assign a reader.

In the remainder of the chapter, God sent Moses back down the mountain to warn the people again about approaching the mountain. At this point, God spoke to the people and delivered what is known as the Ten Commandments directly to the people.

Most of chapter 20 is the delivery of the Ten Commandments, and we will get back to that section after we finish our overview. Will someone please read Exodus 20:18–21? Assign a reader.

After this, Moses again returned to the mountain, and God delivered to him the civil laws recorded in chapters 21 and 22. Look at chapter 24, and I will read verses 3 through 8. Read the passage.

Moses recorded all of the things God had told him on the mountain, explained them to the people, offered a sacrifice, and affirmed the covenant with the Israelites by sprinkling them with the blood from the sacrifices. After this, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and 70 elders went partway up the mountain, where they saw God in a limited revelation and ate the covenant meal in his presence.

After this, God called Moses back to the mountain and told him he would be given tablets of stone with the Commandments and Law. This was Moses’ first 40-day stay on the mountain. While he was there, he received all of the instructions for building the tabernacle. Chapters 25–31 describe these details, but we’ll have to wait for two weeks to look at those more closely.

• Who knows what happened next, as Moses was on the mountain for 40 days? The Israelites built the calf and worshipped it as the Lord.

At this point, God delivered the tablets to Moses. Will someone please read Exodus 31:18? Assign a reader.

After describing the worship of the golden calf, God told Moses to go back down to the people, and he threatened to consume them. Moses interceded on their behalf, and God relented from his plan to kill them all. As Moses came to the camp, he broke the tablets in anger. Moses met with God in his tent and later went back to the mountain for the second of his 40-day stays on the mountain. He returned to the camp with the two new tablets, which were later placed in the Ark of the Covenant. We will look at those events more closely in our next lesson. But let’s stop and think a bit about what we have just read.

• How much time had passed between the Exodus and the receiving of the Law? They left on the fifteenth of the first month, at the full moon, and arrived at the mountain on the third new moon (19:1). In the Hebrew reckoning of time, this is likely the beginning of the third month (the meaning of new moon), not three new moons after the Exodus. If each month has 29–30 days (remember they would have used a lunar calendar), then there had been one full cycle and then 14 more days to the new moon (29 + 14 = 43). The date of the delivery of the Law in Exodus 20 is placed on the third day of consecration. This means it was approximately 46 days from the day they left Egypt to receiving the Law. This corresponds with the later law concerning the celebration of the Feast of Weeks (later known as Pentecost) seven weeks after Passover (Deuteronomy 16:9).
• Where did all of these events take place? Near a mountain named Sinai (also called Horeb) in the Sinai Peninsula. The exact location and identity of this mountain are not clear, though there are several likely candidates. God had told Moses that he would return to this mountain to worship there with the Israelites (Exodus 3:12).
• Thinking about your past understanding of the events of the Exodus, what misconceptions about this account did you recognize as false as we went through this overview? Discuss student answers. It is likely that movies like the Ten Commandments (old and new) and others have distorted their understanding of the actual history, especially the timing of the delivery of the commands to the Israelites.
• When the Israelites were worshipping the golden calf as the god that delivered them from Egypt, did they know it was wrong to worship an idol? Absolutely! Not only had they just received the Ten Commandments directly from God, but also the idol worship in Egypt had been condemned by God.
• In what forms did God reveal himself to the Israelites? As a pillar of cloud and fire, through the stormy cloud that covered the mountain, in lightning and thunder, speaking directly to the people, and through the words and writings of Moses.

Discover the Truth

God had led the Israelites out of their bondage in Egypt to the base of Mount Sinai. There he delivered the ordinances for the nation of Israel—and the people affirmed their obedience to God. But as we saw before, it wasn’t long until the people were in rebellion against God. The sad thing is they knew better.

Let’s take some time to look more closely at the commandments God gave the Israelites as a covenant with him.

Breaking the Law Activity

• How many of you can name all of the Ten Commandments in order? Allow discussion. Very few will probably be able to.

  Pass out the Breaking the Law worksheets. The Israelites had heard God’s commands, and a matter of days later . . . well, I’ll let you find out what happened. Use this worksheet to think about each of the commandments in Exodus 20. Read over the section and then think about what we have seen with the Israelites from Moses’ return to Egypt up to the second set of tablets (chapter 34). Record how they broke the commands. We will discuss them in a few minutes. Have the students work in groups to complete the worksheet.

• Slide #16
  What are the commands that the Israelites had not broken? There is no mention of stealing or murder and no direct reference to violating a Sabbath. Whether or not they had been adulterous depends on our understanding of the phrase “rose up to play” in Exodus 32:9.

  It is interesting that all of the commands except coveting carried the death penalty in certain circumstances, as explained in the later writings of Moses. God was not giving a set of suggestions, but a framework for holiness. God’s perfect and holy character was the standard the Israelites were to meet.

• Was it possible for the Israelites to obey the law? No, they all had a sin nature inherited from Adam and could not help sinning (Romans 8:7–8).

Connect to the Truth

Now that we have examined these commands from God, there are a lot more things to consider. As we read the Old Testament, we need to consider how we bring ideas from the Old Covenant into the New Covenant. Different denominations have different ways of thinking about this. All agree that the standard of the law is unattainable for any person—except one. Jesus was the only man who was able to perfectly obey the righteous standards of God. So, in that sense, we can set aside the law and compare ourselves to Jesus. If our obedience doesn’t match his own obedience, then we have fallen short of being righteous in God’s eyes. And we all know that we have not met that standard.

The Two Tables

So, let’s look at a few passages in the New Testament to help us make the connection to this Old Testament passage.

Matthew records an instance of Jesus interacting with the Pharisees in Matthew 22:34–40 with respect to the Law. Have someone read the passage aloud.

• What was the intention of this group? They were trying to test Jesus (verse 15 says they were trying to “entangle him in his words”).
• What did the Pharisees mean by referring to the Law? They were referring to the commands of the Old Testament, their Torah.
• What similar phrase did Jesus use? He referred to “The Law and the Prophets” as a figure of speech to include all of the writings from the books of Moses, the Law, to the later writings of the Prophets. It would be like our saying from Moses to Malachi or Genesis to Revelation.
• What two commands did Jesus use to summarize the Law? Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.
• When Jesus answered their question about the Law, did he refer to the Ten Commandments? Not directly. The first is a quote from Deuteronomy 6:5 which follows the repeating of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5. The second is from Leviticus 19:18 in the midst of defining many of the commandments for the Israelites.
• Which of the Ten Commandments are related to loving God rightly? The first four commandments are about the right worship of God, and so are closely related to the summary Jesus gives as the greatest command.
• Which of the Ten Commandments are related to loving others? The last six deal with relating to others and showing them love.

  There is a relationship between the first four of the Ten Commandments and the “great and first commandment” given by Jesus. Likewise, there is a connection between the last six and the “second” command. Sometimes these are referred to as the two tables of the law, one connected to worshipping God and one connected to relating to people. A set of vertical commands relates to God, and a set of horizontal commands relates to other people.

Many people have a misunderstanding about the purpose of the law under the Old Covenant. Many believe that the laws were given to the Israelites as their plan of salvation—if you keep the law then you will be righteous and accepted by God. But let’s read what the Apostle Paul had to say about the law in Galatians 3:21–29. Have someone read the passage aloud.

• Was the law sufficient for salvation from sin? Verses 21–22 make it clear that obedience to the law cannot give life, but life comes only through faith in Jesus
• What does Paul say is the purpose of the law? The law was a guardian until Christ came to provide justification.
• Do we remain under the guardianship of the law? We are no longer under the guardian once faith in Christ has come.
• What was the relationship between the law and sin? The law held us captive (as a jailer might) until faith in the Savior was realized. Paul also uses this idea in Romans 7:7–12, noting that he would not have known that coveting was a sin if it had not been written in the law, specifically in the Ten Commandments.

Discover the Truth

From these passages, we can clearly see that the laws written on stone were written to show the exceeding sinfulness of sin. There is no way that the Israelites could perfectly obey even these ten of God’s commands, let alone the hundreds of others that would be spelled out in the years to come in the wilderness. The law exposes how far short we fall when our lives are compared to the perfection of God’s character. But it was given for that purpose—to show us that “no one is justified before God by the law, for ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (Galatians 3:11). Even if we pare it down to love God and love your neighbor, none of us can do that perfectly—and that is why we need a Savior.

The Ten Commandments, or even the two commandments, can be used in an evangelistic way, to help others see how they fall short of God’s standard. As we show people their own sinfulness in the mirror of the law, we can ask the Holy Spirit to convict them of their sinfulness and ask the Father to draw them to himself, and to give them to his Son who died on the Cross for sinners. The law is our ally as we proclaim the gospel—a gospel of faith in Jesus rather than a perfect obedience to the law.

Application

As we consider the Ten Commandments and how they functioned for the Israelites and for us today, we see that they represent the character of God and the standards of obedience that he requires. While the tablets given to Moses by God were a testimony (a written expression) of the covenant he made with the Israelites at Mount Sinai, they are still instructive for us today. This is true because they reflect God’s character.

Christians of various denominations over the last 2,000 years have disagreed about how the Ten Commandments apply to us under the New Covenant. But what all of the positions do agree upon is that these commands are not some arbitrary set of rules that God made up. They communicated directly to the Israelites (and to us today) that God is holy and that he alone is to be worshipped. And they teach us how to relate to other image bearers of God. Jesus reminded the Jews of his day that the two tables of the Ten Commandments (and the rest of the commands) reflect this—love God with all of your heart, soul, and mind and love those who bear God’s image as much as you love yourself.

But the law sets a standard that is too high for us to reach! We cannot perfectly obey the law in our corrupted human nature. Since the Fall, mankind has been bent toward sin. The law shows us how often we fall short of God’s perfect standard. Since we have sinned and the wages of sin is death, we need a way to escape God’s just judgment for our sin. We need someone who would be willing to take the penalty of our sin and live a perfect life of obedience to all of God’s law.

But who has ever perfectly obeyed the law? And who would be willing to bear the punishment for others, especially if he had no sin of his own? Of course, Jesus is the answer to both of these questions. As we look at ourselves in light of the Ten Commandments, we see our own sinfulness. But praise God that Jesus came down in humility to obey the law in our place and present himself as the sacrifice for our sins. We can look to the law and its demands and know that Jesus has provided rest for all of those who find themselves weary with trying to keep the law to please God. All those who repent and put their trust in what Christ did in their place can have their sins wiped away and Christ’s righteousness credited to them. He has atoned for their sins, and they have been raised to new life in Christ just as Jesus rose from the dead after sacrificing his life for them. Now we are free from bondage to the law and have the Holy Spirit in us, giving us the desire and ability to please God with our actions. Consider reading Romans 8:1–11 (or further) as a praise to God.

Let us make sure that we think of how we can apply these ideas as we leave and go out into the world we live in. We want to make sure that we are not merely hearing the Word, but seeking to be doers of what we read in it.

• Slide #23

  Slide #24

  Slide #25

  Slide #26

  Slide #27

  Slide #28

  Slide #29
  Many people claim that Israel borrowed a law code from the surrounding nations. Based on what we have learned today, how would you respond to a claim like this? We must take them to the text and show them that God revealed these things directly to the Israelites and then gave Moses the details to record and relate to the rest of the people. We can support this with historical information, but we must look to Scripture as the authority on the topic.
• Have you ever heard the claim that you can’t love others unless you first love yourself? How do Jesus’ words in Matthew 22:34–40 show that this is a false idea? While this passage is often used to support that idea, especially in line with modern psychology, a careful look at the text shows that Jesus mentions two commands, not three. If you must love yourself first, that would make three commands, and the text clearly says there are two. In fact, we often love ourselves so much that we won’t show love to others. We are so selfish with our own time, money, and desires that we won’t meet the needs of others.
• In the past, we have talked about sharing the gospel using a bad news/good news approach. How could you use the Ten Commandments, or other commands of God, to connect the bad news of sin to a person’s life? The commandments help people understand how far short of God’s standard of perfection they fall. Paul describes the Law as a tutor that shows us our need for a Savior. It is only through his perfect obedience and death on our behalf that we have any hope of being restored to perfection from our fallen state.
• How could you use the Ten Commandments as a way to occasionally examine your own heart and confess your sins to God? You could read through the list, confessing your failure in each area and asking God for forgiveness and then for strength to put those sins to death.
• Why is it important for us to understand that obeying the Law can never make us righteous in God’s eyes? Trying to keep a list of commands can become purely legalistic. It is not wrong to obey God’s commands, but if we think that God loves us more or that we are holier because of the things we have done, we have missed the message of the gospel. It is only by Christ’s merits, his perfect obedience, that we can claim any merit with God. We can use the Law to expose sin and bring conviction, but we must completely lean on Christ for our justification before a holy God.
• Rather than allowing us to compare ourselves to others, what does the Law force us to recognize? People tend to justify themselves by comparing themselves to people like Hitler or Stalin. The Law helps us point to the true standard—God’s holiness. No one has ever been morally perfect except for Jesus. We can help people understand their need for God’s grace by pointing them to the proper standard rather than a standard they have devised in their own minds.
• As you consider the Ten Commandments, are there any that you believe may not apply to Christians today? Discuss this idea, especially in light of the Sabbath command. Understand what your church teaches on this issue as you engage the students.

Group Prayer

Be sure to pray with your class before you dismiss them.

• Praise God for his holiness and justice.
• Ask God for wisdom in using the law to proclaim the gospel.
• Thank God for revealing his character to us in the law.