Ten Words to Live By - Introduction

TEN WORDS TO LIVE BY

by Jen Wilkin

Today, Saturday 12 October 2024 I had the privilege of listening to Jen Wilkin at the Irish Women's Convention.  I make no apologies for copying out the words from Jen's book as they came alive to me and gave so much meaning to what I read and heard.

INTRODUCTION

This book is an exercise in remembrance.  In Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 an ancient people in a distant land were give the aseret hadevarim, the Ten Words. What the Torah and the rabbis called the Ten Words, we know as the Ten Commandments.  Given to Moses on Mount Sinai, inscribed on tablets of stone by the very finger of God, these 10 laws were intended to serve the Israelites as they left behind pagan Egypt and entered into pagan Canaan.  They comprise the moral law of the Old Testament, undergirding its civil and ceremonial laws.

Moses assured those people, the nation of Israel, that obedience to these Ten Words would result in life and blessing:

"So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left.  Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess."

Deuteronomy 5 verses 32 and 33

The Ten Commandments are perhaps the best-known example of moral law, informing law codes into modern times.  Though most people know about the Ten Words, few can actually enumerate them.  When the Ten Commandments are not forgotten, they are often wrongly perceived.  They suffer from a PR problem.  They are seen by many as the obsolete utterances of a thunderous, grumpy God to a disobedient people, neither of whom seem very relatable or likable.  Because we have trouble seeing any beauty in the Ten Words, forgetting them comes easily.

Christianity is about relationship but while that faith is personal it is also communal.  We are saved into special relationship with God and thereby into special relationship with other believers.  Christianity is about relationship with God and others but it is also unapologetically about rules, for rules show us how to live in those relationships.  Rather than threaten relationship, rules enable it.

At this point Jen gives us the example of 2 classrooms - one teacher who asks to be called by her first name and has no set rules or boundaries for her pupils while the other is referred to by her title (Mrs Jones) with rules posted on the bulletin board.

Without rules, our hopes of healthy relationship vanish in short order.  Jesus said "If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

Legalism - something that blighted the Pharisees.  In our zeal to avoid legalism, we have forgotten the many places the beauty of the law is extolled for us, both in the Old and New Testaments.  

"Blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord." 

Psalm 1

While legalism is a blight, lawfulness is a blessed virtue, as evidenced in the example of Christ.  The Pharisees were not lovers of the law; they were lovers of self.  This is why Jesus says that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees we will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5 verse 20).  Legalism is external righteousness only, practiced to curry favour.  Legalism is not love of the law, but is its own form of lawlessness, twisting the law for its own ends.

When the Scriptures condemn lawlessness, as they repeatedly and vehemently do, they condemn both the one who ignores the law and the one who embraces it for self-righteous ends.

"Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness"

1 John 3 verse 4

What is lawfulness - Christlikeness.  To obey the law is to look like Jesus Christ.  While legalism builds self-righteousness; lawfulness builds righteousness.  Obedience to the law is the means of sanctification for the believer.

Before God speaks the law to Israel from the top of Sinai he speaks deliverance to Moses from the burning bush.  Israel was in the throes of bitter toil.  400 years in Egypt had rendered them slaves with no hope of freedom.  But the bush speaks.  Yahweh makes known his plan of great rescue.  Moses is to go to Pharaoh with a request "Please let us go a three days journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God." Exodus 3 verse 18

Let us go.  It will become the refrain of the next 16 chapters of Exodus. 7 times Moses will bring the words of God to Pharaoh "Let my people go that they may serve me, that they may make a feast to me in the wilderness." (Exodus 5 verse 1; 7 verse 16; 8 verse 1, 20; 9 verse 1, 13; 10 verse 3)

A feast in the wilderness.  An act of worship.  Bitter servitude to Pharaoh had made blessed service to God an impossibility for Israel.  How could they serve both God and Pharaoh?  Obedient worship to the King of heaven cannot be offered by those enslaved in the kingdom of Pharaoh.  Let us go.

But Pharaoh is a stubborn master.  Why would he release them to serve another master when they are serving him?  With 10 plagues.  Yahweh breaks the rod of Pharaoh and delivers his children through passageways of blood and of water.  Ten great labour pains and a birth; the servants of Pharaoh find themselves reborn into their true identity as the servants of God.  Let the feasting begin.

But hunger and thirst are their first companions and they grumble against God. He meets their needs with living water and food from heaven, a foretaste of the provision awaiting them in Canaan.  And at last they draw near to the foot of the mountain, the place God has called them to for the purpose of worship, sacrifice and feasting.

God descends in thunder and lightning and gives them not the feast they expect but the feast they need.  He gives them the law.  The law of Pharaoh they know by heart, but the law of Yahweh is best a distant memory to them after 400 years in Egypt.  He does not give it when they are in Egypt, for how could they serve two masters?  No instead, he waits graciously giving it at the point they are finally able to obey.  Come to the feast.  Come famished by the law of Pharaoh to feast on the law of the Lord.  Come taste the law that gives freedom (James 1 verse 25).

Many years later, Jesus would speak to his followers of their own relationship to the law.

"No one can serve two masters.  Be born again by water and blood. Hunger and thirst for righteousness.  If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed.""
Matthew 5 verse 6; 6 verse 24; John 3 verse 5; 8 verse 36

Jesus shows himself to be the true and better Moses, leading us to the foot of Mount Zion to trade the law of sin and death for the law of love and life.

It is for freedom that Christ, the true and better Moses, has set you free.  We are moved from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, from the dehumanizing law of the oppressor to the humanizing law of freedom.  We find ourselves of the wilderness of testing nourished on the bread that came down from heaven, longing for a better home. 

For those in the wilderness, the law is graciously given to set us apart from those around us, and to point the way to love of God and love of neighbour.  The Ten Words show us how to live holy lives as citizens of heaven while we yet dwell on earth.  For the believer, the law becomes a means of grace.

Rules enable relationship.  The Ten Words graciously position us to live at peace with God and others.  The Great Commandment, the one which Jesus says sums up all 611 of the general and specific laws of the Old Testament, bears this out:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself."

Luke 10 verse 27

The Great Commandment is the underlying principle for all right living.  Not surprisingly the Ten Words follow the same pattern of Godward lawfulness first and manward lawfulness second.  The Ten Words are encouraging words, meant to give us hope - hope that we will live rightly oriented to God and others, hope that we will grow in holiness.  They are not given to discourage but to delight.  They are no less than words of life.

These are not words for everyone!  For the unbeliever, obedience to the Ten Words can yield only the deadly fruit of legalism.  As the author of Hebrews makes plain "Without faith it is impossible to please God" Hebrews 11 verse 6.  These words bring life only to those who have been joined to Christ through faith.  Our relationship has been purchased by the perfect obedience of Christ to the law.  The life of Jesus fulfils the prophetic words of Psalm 40 verse 8 "I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."  

He who delighted in the law of God offers it to those who trust in him, that they might delight in it, as well. And so that they might please God.  With faith, by the power of the Spirit, it is possible to please God.