Adam Hamilton - Jesus and the Promise of the Ten Commandments Today: Words of Life

It was 2:00 A.M. , pitch-dark with a sky full of stars, as we began our hike up the barren mountain. At 7,700 feet, it was not the highest mountain Id ever climbed. But climbing it in the dark, with no light except the occasional flashlight from a passing guide, was an interesting challenge.

Hundreds of people make this hike to the summit in the darkness every day. They come from all over the world: Christians, Muslims, Jews, and people of other faiths or no faith. They come to what feels like the end of the earth, or perhaps its beginning. They come to hike three hours up the holiest mountain on earth, walking in the dark so they can watch the sun rise from the place where God met Moses and spoke to him the ten words, as they were originally knownwhat we know as the Ten Commandments.

How do we know this was the mountain? We dont. Scholars have suggested other locations. But from at least the third century A.D. , and perhaps long before, people of faith have come to this mountain believing it was the biblical Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb, or simply The Mountain of God.

As I ascended the mountain in the darkness, I imagined the eighty-year-old Moses making this journey, not once but at least five times. After God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, Moses led them to this place, for it was here that he had first heard God calling to him from a burning bush, instructing him to lead his people to freedom. Reluctantly, Moses followed Gods command, and God used him to liberate the Israelite slaves in dramatic fashion. Three months later, they made camp at the base of Mount Sinai, and Moses was called to meet the Lord on the mountain.

During one of these encounters, shortly after the Israelites arrived at Sinai, God said to Moses:

Im about to come to you in a thick cloud in order that the people will hear me talking with you so that they will always trust you.Go to the people and take today and tomorrow to make them holy. Have them wash their clothes. Be ready for the third day, because on the third day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai for all the people to see. (Exodus 19:911)

The writer of Exodus continues:

When morning dawned on the third day, there was thunder, lightning, and a thick cloud on the mountain, and a very loud blast of a horn. All the people in the camp shook with fear.The LORD came down on Mount Sinai to the top of the mountain. The LORD called Moses to come up to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. (Exodus 19:1620)

After telling Moses that the Israelites shouldnt come near the mountain, God sent Moses down again, this time to fetch his older brother Aaron. Two hours down, three hours back up. Finally, with Moses on the mountaintop, Aaron waiting somewhere nearby, and the children of Israel listening below, Exodus tells us, God spoke all these words:

I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You must have no other gods before me.

Do not make an idol for yourselfno form whatsoeverof anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. Do not bow down to them or worship them, because I, the LORD your God, am a passionate God. I punish children for their parents sins even to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. But I am loyal and gracious to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Do not use the LORD your Gods name as if it were of no significance; the Lord wont forgive anyone who uses his name that way.

Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy. Six days you may work and do all your tasks, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not do any work on itnot you, your sons or daughters, your male or female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you. Because the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Honor your father and your mother so that your life will be long on the fertile land that the LORD your God is giving you.

Do not kill.

Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal.

Do not testify falsely against your neighbor.

Do not desire and try to take your neighbors house. Do not desire and try to take your neighbors wife, male or female servant, ox, donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor. (Exodus 20:117)

Within these twenty-one verses, there are 311 words, at least in the Common English Bibles translation above. There is some debate as to how these words should be divided; in other words, what exactly constitutes the Ten Commandments. Jews number them one way, Catholics and Lutherans another, and most Protestants have yet a third way of counting them. In this book, well use the division of the commandments used by the Eastern Orthodox Church and most Protestants, focused primarily on the Exodus version.

Note that Exodus calls them wordsnot commandments. The account also says that they werent written on stone tablets at first but instead spoken by God from the mountain to his people in the valley below. Only after they were spoken did God write them on stone tablets for Moses to take to the people.

The first four words address how the people of Israel, and later all who looked to the commandments for truth, were to live in right relationship with God; how they were to honor, and to avoid dishonoring, God. The remaining six words speak to how human beings are to live in right relationship with their parents, with their families, and with their neighbors.

Exodus 32 tells us that the ten words were inscribed onto two stone tablets. It is customary to imagine that the first four commandments, related to honoring God, were on the first tablet. The next six, involving how we relate to our neighbor, were on the second.

Regardless of how one numbers them or which account you are reading fromExodus or Deuteronomymy intent in this book is to show that the Ten Commandments are so much more than a relic from history or an ancient set of dos and donts. When you look at each of the words, the principles that lay behind them, and the way Jesus spoke to them and lived them, youll find that they are far more relevant to your life than you imagined. Far from being burdens meant to rob us of our joy, they are words of life: guideposts and guardrails aimed at helping us experience the goodness and beauty that God intended.