Sunday Sermon Snippet Oct 19
“I am Yahweh, your God…” Exodus 20:2
This weekly posting of the Sunday Sermon Snippet comes from Sunday’s sermon on Exodus 20, entitled, “No Other Gods Before Me (part one).”
My aim in the sermon was two-fold. First, to simply inspire you to know (with a fun activity we shared together) and have memorized The Ten as a pathway to a flourishing life. Second, to help us all realize the remarkable and stunning opportunity that Yahweh could be our God, that our hearts could be sold out in love to him, and what that kind of loving relationship would look like, lived out, on a daily basis (that’s where The Ten come in).
See the sermon snippet below on my attempt to unpack what it means that Yahweh is “your God.”
And if you’d like to check out the whole sermon, just click here.
Grace Before Law
…this is SUPER important to note: before God gives commands, he makes sure we know how to receive them. He wants to get our minds and hearts in the right place — to create there precisely the kind of soil ready for him to plant the seeds of obedience so that prosperous, joyful living will grow up, rather than suffocating self-righteousness or grumbling going-along or, worst-case, rebellion. Here’s what God says first:
Exodus 20:2 I am Yahweh your God.…
In this one verse, Yahweh is telling us who he is, and what he has done. First, who he is. “I am Yahweh your God.”
I think the first question we need to ask ourselves is, “Is he? Is he my God? Truly?” For, brothers and sisters, friend, here is the heart of a true and deeper obedience. The kind of chest inflating, heart bursting, can’t-believe-I’m-this-fortunate and feeling it deep in my bones resounding proclamation that Yahweh is my God! The kind of thing that gets you dancing and skipping and rejoicing.
You know the other way this is said positively, later in the story, by Moses? Deut 6:5 “Love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
Family, this is so critical. “Obedience is relationally conceived.” (T. Fretheim) It is because of our relationship with Yahweh, because we’ve got pride and joy and jubilation about the mind-blowing we-won-the-lottery kind of attitude about the fact that he is our God, it is because we’ve entered into a covenant of love, it is because of all that that we want to obey! To follow his words and do what he says. It is because of Love — love flexed with all our hearts, all our souls, and all our strength — for our God.
So that’s the first thing Yahweh tells us — who he is.
Now, the second thing he tells us is what he has done….Exodus 20:2 I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.
We’ve seen this before, but we’ve got to keep noting it, because we so easily lose sight of it: God is the one who rescues us. God is the one who brings us out of the place of slavery and of bondage. The work of their rescue was his alone — Ex14:14 “Yahweh will fight for you, you must be still” — just as the work of our rescue was his alone — Jesus, on the cross, and his dying declaration: “It is finished.” This is why we noted a couple of weeks ago: “Religion is I obey; therefore I am accepted. But Christianity is I am accepted; therefore, I obey.”
OK, so now we’re ready to actually hear the first commandment which is the basis for all the other commandments. What we will see is that this commandment is all about worship. We’ll see that a breaking of any of the other commandments actually includes and starts with a breaking of the first one. All the other laws are essentially a drawing out of this law. A law based on covenantal love….
If you’d like to check out the whole sermon, just click here.
