The Ten Commandments
God gave His law to a people already redeemed.
What are the Ten Commandments — and why were they given? The Ten Commandments were not given to Israel as a ladder to climb into God's favor; they were given to a people God had already redeemed, as the moral framework for a liberated nation in covenant with its God. In this sermon on Exodus 20, Dr. Toby Holt works through each of the Ten Commandments, explains their original context in the Sinai covenant, and shows why Jesus said He came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it — and what that means for how Christians relate to the law of God today.
Select a chapter to play the audio from that moment, or “Read” to jump to that part of the transcript below.
Questions This Sermon Answers
The sequence is theologically crucial: redemption precedes law. God did not say "Keep these commandments and I will bring you out of Egypt." He brought them out first, then gave the law. The preamble — "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" (Exodus 20:2) — establishes that the commandments are given to a people already in covenant relationship with God, not to people trying to enter one. This is the Reformation's central insight: we obey because we are saved, not to be saved.
Reformed theology identifies three uses: the civil use (restraining evil in society), the convicting use (revealing sin and driving sinners to Christ — Galatians 3:24), and the normative use (guiding the Christian life). Luther emphasized the second use; Calvin emphasized the third. Westminster Confession 19.6 affirms that the moral law is "of great use to the regenerate, to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin, and the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve."
"You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3) demands exclusive devotion to Yahweh — not merely first place among competing loyalties, but the elimination of all rivals. "Before Me" in Hebrew means "in My presence" — in the sight of God, no other god may exist. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 46 states that the first commandment requires "knowing and acknowledging God to be the only true God, and our God; and to worship and glorify Him accordingly." Anything that displaces God as the supreme object of trust and devotion — money, status, relationships, self — violates this commandment.
The fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8–11) commands one day in seven to be set apart for rest and worship, grounded in God's rest at creation. Reformed theology has consistently held that the principle of one-in-seven is moral and perpetual, though the specific day shifted from Saturday to Sunday at the resurrection (the Lord's Day). Westminster Confession 21.7–8 affirms that Christians are bound to keep one day in seven as a holy Sabbath — spent in public and private worship, rest from labor, and works of necessity and mercy.
The third commandment (Exodus 20:7) is broader than avoiding profanity. Taking God's name "in vain" (Hebrew: shav, meaning emptiness or worthlessness) means using God's name lightly, falsely, or for trivial purposes — including casual swearing, false oaths, hypocritical religion, and any use of the divine name that does not honor who God is. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 54 adds that it also prohibits "professing the name of Christ, or owning themselves His people" while living inconsistently with that profession.
Jesus summarized the entire law in two great commandments: love God with all you are, and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37–40). The first four commandments express love to God; the last six express love to neighbor. This is not a reduction of the commandments but their concentration. The commandments are not arbitrary rules but the practical expression of what love to God and neighbor looks like in the concrete circumstances of human life. Every sin is ultimately a failure of love.
The tenth commandment (Exodus 20:17) prohibits covetous desire — not only the external act of theft but the internal attitude that precedes it. This is the commandment Paul says "killed" him (Romans 7:9–10), because it exposed the sinfulness of the heart, not merely the hand. The commandment against coveting is God's claim over the interior life — the claim that holiness is not merely behavioral compliance but heart transformation. It is this inwardness that Jesus expounds in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:17–48).
Jesus said: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17). Christ fulfills the law in three ways: He kept it perfectly where we failed; He bore its penalty on the cross; and He writes it on the hearts of His people by the Spirit (Jeremiah 31:33). The commandments are not abolished for Christians — they are internalized. The Christian keeps the law not to earn God's favor but because God's Spirit produces in them the desire to walk in His ways.
1. Law and Gospel
The relationship between law and gospel is one of Reformed theology's central concerns. The law reveals what God requires; the gospel reveals what God provides. The law diagnoses; the gospel cures. The law condemns; the gospel justifies. Westminster Confession 19.6–7 carefully distinguishes the uses of the law while insisting that it is not contrary to grace: "The law is not of faith," yet "the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith." The Ten Commandments are rightly understood only within the gospel framework the Exodus establishes.
2. The Perpetuity of the Moral Law
Westminster Confession 19.3 affirms that the moral law — summarized in the Ten Commandments — "doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof." The ceremonial and civil laws of Israel were temporary, fulfilled or abrogated in Christ. But the moral law, grounded in God's eternal character, is permanently binding. Calvin writes: "The law was given by Moses... yet it was not given to abolish piety and righteousness... [but] to maintain and confirm it." The Ten Commandments are not Jewish heritage — they are universal moral reality.
3. The Law as Mirror
Luther described the law's second use as a mirror that shows us our sin. Paul writes in Romans 3:20: "By the law is the knowledge of sin." The Ten Commandments do not merely regulate behavior — they expose the depth of human corruption. Who has truly had no other gods? Who has never coveted? Who has kept the Sabbath perfectly? The law's comprehensive demands drive every honest person to the conclusion that they need a righteousness not their own — the alien righteousness of Christ imputed by faith.
4. The Text: Exodus 20:1–3 (NKJV)
"And God spoke all these words, saying: 'I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.'"
Continue studying: explore the full Book of Exodus sermon series, or browse the complete Reformed Sermon Archive.
About The Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt serves as the third President of New Geneva Theological Seminary (Colorado Springs, CO), founded 1993. An expository preacher with over 1.9 million sermon downloads on SermonAudio.com, Dr. Holt brings over 17 years of pastoral experience to his verse-by-verse Bible teaching. New Geneva offers fully online, Westminster Confessional theological education — M.Div., Th.M., D.Min., and other degrees.
Summary. In this sermon on Exodus 20, Dr. Toby Holt of New Geneva Theological Seminary teaches that Israel first received the Ten Commandments directly from the voice of God at Sinai, revealing both His holy authority as Lawgiver and mankind's inability to approach Him through the law. Because the law can only teach and condemn but never save, the people cried out for a mediator, pointing beyond Moses to Jesus Christ, the better Mediator of the new covenant who alone opens the way to God at Mount Zion.
Introduction: What Really Happened at Sinai
In Exodus 20, while the people were gathered at the foot of the mountain, God spoke. Specifically, He gave them a set of laws that we refer to as the Ten Commandments. What were these commandments, and what was the people's reaction to them? That will be the focus of today's study.
If you were to ask the average Christian to describe what happened at Sinai, what do you think they would say? If they were to describe what happened from the moment the people left Egypt and the Red Sea parted, and they went through the wilderness, and then they arrived at Sinai, how would they describe what happens from that point forward?
Well, most people — most people summarize those events in this way. They say this. They say, all right, God's people were led by Moses through the wilderness. They arrived there at the mountain, and once they got to the mountain, Moses told the people to wait here, and he put Aaron in charge, and then he went up the mountain.
And when he got up the mountain, he met with God, and he was there a little bit too long for the people's taste — 40-odd days — and the people got restless. And as they got restless, they figured they got to worship something, and so they worshipped — what? The golden calf. They worshipped the golden calf.
And meanwhile, while they're worshipping the golden calf, Moses is up on the mountain. He's meeting with God. God's giving the commandments. He's got the tablets of stone.
He comes down the mountain, and he hears a ruckus occurring in the camp. It sounds like partying, and in fact, when he comes down, it is a party. They're worshiping the golden idol. What does Moses do?
He takes the tablets of stone. He throws them down. He throws down the Ten Commandments that were given him to give to the people. He breaks them, and then it's only later that he goes up and gets a second set, and at that point, the people get the Ten Commandments.
Our understanding of how the Ten Commandments were conveyed from God to the people usually, usually in broad evangelical circles, looks something like that.
Continue reading the full transcript 33-minute read · 14 sections · every section links back to the audio
Correcting the Popular Chronology of the Commandments
And the reason why is because our theology throughout North American evangelical Christendom has been fueled more by Cecil B. DeMille than by the pages of Scripture. You see, what I just described, the events happened. Everything I just said happen in one way, shape, or form. The problem is the chronology.
When the events happened and in what sequence. The chronology is quite a bit different. First of all, you have to know this. When Moses went up the mountain, he didn't go up just once or just twice to get the commandments at these different intervals.
He went up the mountain seven different intervals. He was going up and down, up and down to talk with God at regular intervals. Mount Sinai was the original stairmaster. Moses was going up and down and up and down.
He was really getting a workout talking with God. So that's the first thing you need to realize. There's a lot of intervals when he goes up and meets with God on the people's behalf. The second thing you need to realize is this.
The Israelites didn't have to wait way down the road to get the Ten Commandments. They didn't have to wait for Moses to go up, get the first set, break those, then go up, get the second set, and then deliver those. That's not how it worked.
The Law Delivered First by the Voice of God
Rather, the people received the Ten Commandments from the very start. On the third day, they showed up. And they received the Ten Commandments not on tablets inscribed by the finger of God, although that would happen later. The first time they received the Ten Commandments, they received it by His voice.
That's what we just read. That's what we just saw. The people of Mount Sinai, they're meeting with God. The fire has come down and it's charred the top of the mountain.
There's lightning and thunder and trumpets and all these different things. And at the start of chapter 20, God speaks to the people. And the first time they encountered the Ten Commandments, they encounter it from the voice of God Himself echoing and reverberating through the clouds. Let's hear what God told them.
Let's revisit, starting with verses 1 and 2, and then again we'll work our way through. So chapter 20, verse 1. God spoke all these words. You see this?
God spoke it. Not singularly just to Moses at some later date, but to the people. God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, corporately, not just the God of Moses. I am the God of you, my people, who I've chosen and rescued out from Egypt.
I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Divine Revelation: The Law Emanates from God's Throne
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
— Exodus 20:2 (NKJV)
So verse 1 begins with revelation. God spoke. The commandments we received were not commands we found somewhere or washed up on the beach. God revealed it.
God spoke. See, at other intervals, when God has spoken, more regularly He's used prophets. More regularly He's used apostles. But in this time, He Himself spoke to His people.
Now, what should we infer from that? Well, at a minimum, we should infer this. Whatever He said must be really important. If the clouds part, so to speak, or fire's burning a mountain and a voice comes from heaven — if a voice comes from heaven, the voice of God Himself — then whatever is being said must be really important, must have a special magnitude, and I think that's true in this case.
In this case, the magnitude is that God is giving a law, a covenant, a set of commands. Beyond that, He wanted them to know that the laws that they were being given emanated from the throne of heaven itself. You see, where we live in North American evangelical Christianity, we got a lot of laws that govern us.
There's things in this church. There's polity of the church. There's things in our society. There's the laws that govern traffic.
There's the laws that govern our taxes. There's laws all over the place. Now, the vast majority of the laws that we're under come from a human source, a human source that might be flawed, that might apply the laws inconsistently. But in this case, God is making clear through His own voice: these laws are Mine.
They come from Me directly to you. This is an authoritative standard that is not derived by the opinion polls of men governing other men. But these are the laws of God on high governing the entirety of mankind. So that's what he's doing by speaking.
Now, what is the first thing He does when He speaks? That's the reason why He speaks. But what does He say when He speaks? Well, first off, He identifies Himself.
He says, I'm the one who took you out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Now, that should have been obvious, right? Why did He have to say that?
Well, here's the thing. Remember the context. At this time, the people had spent the bulk of their lives in a very polytheistic society, a polytheistic society in which there was all manner of different gods, and these gods had different jurisdictions. You could have the god of one region, the god of another region, god of the mountain, god of the field, god of the ocean, and the like.
So as the people travel from one place to another and suddenly in this place in Sinai they encounter this mountain on fire, their theological training, as bad as it was, steeped in Egypt — their understanding might have been that the God here might be different from the God who got us out of Egypt.
And God clears that right out of the gate and He says, I am the Lord, your God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and I am the one who took you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, and have brought you here. So He identifies Himself as the God who heard their prayers in Exodus, one who brought down the ten plagues, who parted the Red Sea, and has brought them to this point.
The First Table: The Exclusive Worship of God
“You shall have no other gods before Me.”
— Exodus 20:3 (NKJV)
All right, let's look at verses 3 through 11, and here we see the commands, or at least the first set. Verse 3: You — you, my people — you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that's in heaven above, that's in the earth beneath, or it's in the water under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, those who love Me and keep My commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
The Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days, six days you shall labor and do all of your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, not your son, not your daughter, not your male servant, not your female servant, not your cattle, not your stranger who's within your gates.
For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that's in them, and He rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and He hallowed it. All right, let me stop there. With the time that we have available this morning, we're not going to dive into each of the commandments individually.
I'm contemplating that for a future series in which we'll work through each of the commands in order to explain all the various nuances and application that we find there. So what we're going to do instead this morning is we're going to summarize the two tablets of the law. The two tablets, meaning those commands that were given here that have application between how man is to relate to God, and those commands that involve man's interaction with his neighbor.
Idolatry and the Exclusive Claims of God
Now this first set of verses that we just read deals with how we approach God, deals with our interaction with our maker. As I was thinking through the best way to summarize how our relationship with God is supposed to be, what it's supposed to look like, there's a lot of words that fill in the blank, but the one that kept popping up to me is the word exclusive.
God does not want to be one item on the buffet of your life choices. He didn't want to be one God among many gods that you might turn to at different hours. No, He didn't want that. And He doesn't want to be just a God who's a satellite in orbit of you, who you only reach out to now and again.
Rather, in these texts, we see that He desires to be the exclusive object and focus of your life. The very first commandment: you shall have no other gods before Me. Now, on the one hand, is that appealing to idols of stone and wood and the like? Well, sure.
We're going to see that more when it gets to the graven images. But you shall have no other gods before Me — also within that can be inferred any other priorities, anything else, anything. If you take anything and you subject God to it, if you take anything in your life, you make God a secondary concern, then what you've done is make that thing God.
And that is idolatry. So we see here, He says, don't do it. We're going to have an exclusive relationship. This is the way it works.
I made you, I'm the creator, you're the created. Our interaction is supposed to be exclusive and nothing is supposed to get in the way. Don't let it happen. The second commandment is an extension of the same principle.
He says, don't be making any graven images. Don't be making any graven images. Don't give your worship to any false gods and false idols because, why? Because I'm a jealous God, which He has the right to be if He's the only God.
If He's the only God and He's made all things, then He absolutely not only has the right, but the prerogative to be jealous for His own glory. He wouldn't be God if He was anything less. So right out of the gate, again, we're not going to expand, explore all these to the degree that we will at another interval, but right out of the gate, God says, I want to be front and center in your life.
In fact, that's My intention, and it should be your intention as well. And I'm going to give you commands that will give you the structure by which you'll see Me as you should see Me and approach Me as you should approach Me. And I will not play second fiddle to anything made of wood, and I will not play second fiddle to any priority that might cloud the picture or get in the way.
Loving God with Heart, Soul, and Mind
Now, to prove that that's the greater point in these commands, remember Jesus was asked, you know, which is the greatest command? And He summarized. He summarized the commands. Jesus said this, that this first tablet of the law can be summarized in this way.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Exclusive. Jesus summarized all this. This is: love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind.
The first four commands, we see He's uniquely worthy of this. He's uniquely worthy of our praise. His glory is not to be shared with anything else. His very name is to be hallowed, His holy days to be revered.
In these commandments, God is placing Himself and His priorities at the front of the line. He's declaring His preeminence over our hearts, our lips, and our calendar, and He's asserting His rightful place at the apex of our affections. And He's telling us, clear the deck of anything else. Lest you lose that in reading the commands, Jesus made it very clear.
He says, look, this is what it boils down to. This is what it boils down to. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your soul and your mind.
Self-Examination: Is God the Apex of Your Affections?
Not the easiest thing in the world to do, and yet that's the standard. That's what we are called to do. Now, before we move on, let me ask a personal question. As you think about your Christian walk, does it sound like that?
For many of us, for most of us, maybe all of us, the answer is no, at least not to the degree that we'd like it to be. See, here's the thing. We can go through life. We can come to church for week after week.
We can even be raised in the church, grow up in the church. We can spend most of our life in this sort of setting. And yet we can come to see the things that we do as matters of faith and our worship and all the like, we can see these things and we can see God Himself as the shiny satellite that orbits the decaying planet of our life.
But we get so focused on what's here that we seldom look to what's there unless our situation absolutely requires it or it happens to be Sunday morning. For many of us, our faith, even God Himself, is this satellite in orbit of us. And it's only when it tracks back into our vision that we see and apprehend God Himself for who He is.
You know, it's like the moon. Every now and then you see the moon, you go, oh, the moon! How do you look at the moon? I think we did this just this week.
The moon was awesome. Oh, look, the moon's wonderful today. If you're not careful, that could be your approach to God. Every now and then he pops up in your radar.
You go, hey, look, the moon — or in this case, God. Oh, let's worship God. And God says, no, I am not something that tracks in your vision every now and then. I'm supposed to be the center, the apex of that.
It's no surprise that in the heavens to come there is no sun, there is no moon — or at least it's spoken of in that context, because God is the light. At that point, there's no confusion of these things. And yet in our present day and age, our temptation is to see God as this thing that rotates in and out of our field of vision and to treat him as such.
The first tablet of the law says, clear the deck of all the other stuff. Clear the deck of those things that are getting in the way. I am supposed to be the apex of your affections. And if you chafe at that — and I know in this room that some, maybe all of us do to a degree — if you chafe at that, then you really have not apprehended Him for who He is.
And the moment that you do, you'll understand why He's worthy of this. It may have to happen on the other side of glory for us to fully understand that. But a day will come when we'll understand this in its totality. We will understand that there's no other light that is as bright in the heavens above or earth beneath as that in our Savior.
All right, let's look at our next verses.
The Second Table: Love Expressed Toward Neighbor
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.”
— Exodus 20:12 (NKJV)
Verses 12 through 17. Remember, this is all going on with God's voice speaking. There's fire on the mountain. All this is going down with people hearing His voice thundering across the valley.
He has just shared these commandments that deal with how to relate to Him, and then we get to the next verses, verses 12 through 17, that talk about how to relate with one another. So, verses 12 through 17: Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
It's interesting — there's a promise associated with that command. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's. You know, there's a commentator that said that our love for God can be demonstrated by the way we love His people.
You see, it's one thing for us to come even into church and say, I love God, but I sure have the problem with the people three pews away, or I sure have the problem with other people either in the church or our community or what have you. God says, look, look, if you love Me, then that love bears its fruit in the way that you love others, including people who can be unlovable.
Is there anyone unlovable here? I speak as one. In Romans 13, the Apostle Paul said, he says, let no debt remain outstanding except this debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The law is not simply the strident set of commands — do this, don't do that.
The law is not simply a strident set of things, boxes to be checked. The law is a means, when it is fulfilled, by which we express our love for God and for the people He has placed in our lives. You can't keep His commandments without loving His people. If you have problems with people, be they in a church or your family, your community, what have you — if you have trouble loving people.
And people can be unlovable, but if you have trouble with this, then it's an area to work on, because the expression of love we have with God finds some of its best fruit in the way that we love some of the hardest people to love. And you know, here's a newsflash. In the eyes of God, you and I have got to be really hard to love.
Why? Well, think of how much we rebelled against Him. Dear heavens, if you think you've been offended by someone, be it in church or any other setting, if you've been offended by someone at Walmart, for the love of Pete, think about how often you've broken the laws of a holy God, and yet what has He given you?
Patience upon patience upon patience, mercy upon mercy upon mercy, forbearance, all these things. The love you have for God should manifest itself in your willingness to reach out your arms to people who might have hurt you, who might have stepped on your toes, might have offended you, and express to them the love of Christ.
Forgive as we have been forgiven. So we see that here in these verses, these verses that appeal to how we should interact with one another.
The Law Reaches the Heart, Not Just the Hand
Love is the driving focus. Now with that said, as we look at the individual laws again, I'm not going to go through each one of these six, but I would reiterate something that Brian read in the text earlier. Just because you never killed anyone or what have you does not mean that you have not broken this commandment.
God repeatedly says that it's not simply a function of the action by which we sin, there's something about what's going on in the heart, what's going on in the heart and mind. Looking at someone with lust in one's eyes is a breaking of the command. I wish that person was dead is a breaking of this command.
And in that sense, we've broken the whole lot of what we see here. And God says here, simply put, He says, knock it off. He says, it's important how you treat Me. It's important how you approach Me.
It's important that you revere Me. It's important that you treat Me as holy. It's also important how you treat the person two pews back, how you treat your co-workers. Again, we can lose sight of that.
At the base of Mount Sinai that day, you had a bunch of strung out people. They didn't know what was going on. They didn't know what the future held. They were all stressed out.
I think they needed to hear these words. I think they needed to hear about how to bear up one another. I think they needed to hear how to interact and treat one another. I think they needed to know that there was principles by which they were to govern themselves now that they were out of Egypt.
And I think they needed to open their hearts to their neighbors at this time. I imagine it's probably true for us in this room as well. All right, let's move on. Again, at another interval, we'll dive into each of these commandments, but let's move on to see what happens next.
Remember, today we're looking at all these events in the context of God's interaction with His people. So let's see how this interaction begins to wrap up in verses 18 through 21.
The People Tremble and Beg for a Mediator
Verse 18. Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking. And when the people saw it, they trembled and they stood afar off. Then they said to Moses, Moses, Moses, you speak with us, you speak with us, and we will hear, but do not let God speak with us, lest we die.
Let me stop there. The people — there's been fire and smoke and trumpets and lightning and thundering, and the ground is shaking. Whatever you picture to be the ultimate sign of God's presence, whatever comes to your mind, multiply that times 10, 100, or what have you, and you have this moment. You have God showing up in real time and real space, the very heat of His holiness being felt by those who are gathered.
And then His voice breaks through, offers these commandments, and their reaction to this is, dear heavens. Moses, don't let that happen again. Moses, you go up and talk to Him. You go up, not us.
If that happens again, we can't survive the encounter. So that's what we see here in verses 18 through 21. The people witnessed all these things. They said to Moses, you speak with us and we'll hear.
Do not let God speak with me, lest we die. And Moses said to the people, he said, do not fear. God's come to test you, that His fear may be before you, that you would see His holiness, and that you'd remember it. If you had this encounter, maybe, just maybe, that would affect and inform your decisions next week, the next month, that you saw this.
So Moses said to the people, do not fear. God has come to test you, that His fear may be before you, so that you may not sin. Sometimes God startles us with things that go on in our lives, which prompt us to turn from behaviors that were wrong, not healthy, or sinful. Verse 21, so the people stood far off, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.
All right, as we said earlier this morning, the first time that the people received the Ten Commandments, it didn't come on the tablets of stone. If you learned nothing else today, I hope you learned that. The first time that the people received the Ten Commandments, it wasn't like Cecil B. DeMille and Charlton Heston told us.
It happens somewhat differently. They didn't come through the tablets and His divine finger inscribing upon them, but rather they came through His voice as it thundered from the mountains. And in verse 20, we see it was intended. It was intended to be an impressive sight.
The authority of the law was to be yoked to the identity and the authority of the lawgiver. If someone from the kindergarten class comes in when we let out from church and walks up to you and gives you a law as to how to drive your car when you leave the parking lot, are you going to heed it?
I'm not. Why not? Because there's no authority. In this particular case, the presence of God showed up in such a way as to demonstrate that He had the authority to lay down the laws and that they were subject to Him.
That was the point. That's what's intended.
The Purpose and Limits of the Law: It Cannot Save
And we see that there in verse 20. However, I think there was another point beyond that. I think there's another point. You see, the law has a lot of advantages to us.
The law is not a bad thing. The law makes us more like the lawmaker. If you do what God has told you to do, if you do what God tells you to do, you know what you'll be? You'll be more godly.
Surprise! If God tells you, hey, do x, y, z, do these things, when you do these things and you study them and meditate upon them and act upon them, you become more godly. When a righteous lawgiver gives you things to do and you do them, you become increasingly righteous as a result. Your standing before God does not change.
You're saved, and yet God uses His law and our obedience to it to continue to strengthen us and remake us more and more, day by day, in His image. So it has a good objective. There's a lot of benefits and advantages to His law, and we could focus on them in another interval.
But with our remaining moments, I want to mention one of the disadvantages of the law, and it's significant. For all the ways that God's law teaches us, for all the ways that it makes us in His image, it cannot save us. It can only condemn us. The law of God cannot save those who are born dead in their sins and trespasses.
For you and I, and for the people at Sinai, the law is what? It's this fiery, thundering barrier that says you may not approach God because you have transgressed. The law to us is a fiery, thunderous barrier between God and man. It's forever teaching, it's forever correcting, yet it's never ever redeeming.
You see that the law is good and it's wonderful. We are to meditate upon it. And yet the law in of itself does not have the capacity to save it — even if you spend the rest of your days keeping the law perfectly, which you won't, but even if you did, you still stand condemned on your own.
Why? Because of all the sins you've committed in times past. You cannot horse trade this. You cannot offset good deeds through bad deeds.
That's not the way that it works. And to us, if all that we had was the law of God, the law would be this fiery barrier that says, don't approach the mountain. It says there's no road to the top. You touch it, you die.
That's the law, independent from grace, independent from Christ, independent from that which we need. The law is forever teaching, it's forever correcting, yet never redeeming. And I think the people saw that, and so they were scared, and I think they were meant to be. Because that would be this state of our last man, woman, and child if God didn't do something else.
The Law as a Fiery Barrier Between God and Man
We would forever be looking at a fiery mountain and a voice on top, but the path to Him would be impassable it touched the mountain we die long before these people had ever heard the Decalogue on Mount Sinai. They'd broken all the law's demands. They'd fallen short time and time again, and they knew it.
They knew it. And so the people saw this fire and this holiness. They saw this on the mountain. They saw the fire and the holiness there, and they knew they were falling short of the holy character of the one on the mountaintop.
The people saw the fire on Sinai as something that prohibited their approach to God, and it did. It did. And if it prevented their access to God at Sinai, then what would have made the future any different for them? So they begged Moses here.
They said, Moses, clearly there's something between God and us. In fact, it's probably for the best that there is. Moses, you be our intercessor. Moses, you be the mediator.
You got to talk to God. If we encounter Him based on the rabble that we are, we'll die. We can't survive this encounter. They begged for a mediator between God and man.
You see this. They understood something about His holy character at that point. And they, through the commandments, understood His expectation upon them. And furthermore, they understood that they'd broken those commandments.
There was nothing but fire in front of us. And they said, we can't pass it. Somehow, Moses, you, you go. You be the mediator.
You be the intercessor between God and man. Wanted someone to stand between God and themselves. And initially, they settled on Moses. Initially, they settled on Moses.
However, although Moses could talk with God on their behalf, he could not make them righteous, and he could not atone for their sins. Moses was a man of flesh and blood, just like them, with his own sins. And although he was given the opportunity and the blessing and the privilege to talk with God on their behalf, he could not atone for the sins of his people.
The Better Mediator: From Sinai to Mount Zion in Christ
They needed a better intercessor than Moses. The people needed a better mediator than Moses. And the coolest, most wonderful thing, what we call the gospel, the good news is this: that in time, they got one. In time, they got a better mediator.
They got a better Moses. They got a better intercessor. As we close this morning, I want you to listen to these words from Hebrews chapter 12. Remember, the book of Hebrews was written from a New Testament perspective.
After Christ had come, died and raised again, it was written to a Jewish audience in order to express to them their own past through the lens of what Christ had done. Hebrews 12, listen to this. For you, you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire.
You didn't come to that mountain. You have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire and the blackness and darkness and tempest and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word not be spoken to them anymore.
You haven't come to that mountain. But you've come to Mount Zion. This is a heavenly name. You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly of the church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, and to God, the judge of them all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant.
See what the author of Hebrews said? He says that yes, based on God having given laws and based on you having broken the laws, you and I would have had the same problem that they had at Sinai, the recognition that there is a God, but the inability to access Him because we have broken His laws, and we have no one to pay the price except we ourselves.
The author of Hebrews is telling Christians in the first century, and he's telling all of us that the good news is that there's a second mountain. And furthermore, there's a second mediator. There's a second mountain. You and I are going to Sinai, so to speak.
There's a second mountain, and there's a second mediator, and His name is Jesus Christ. As Christians, we don't come to a mountain that we climb by our own works. If that was the mountain, we'd never get to the top. Rather, we are ushered to the top through the mediation and intercession of one who bears us on eagles' wings, and that is the personal work of Jesus Christ.
And that is true of even the greatest transgressor who turns to Him in faith. The thief on the cross, who his own society was happy to be done with, to the point they put him on a cross to die. He had done virtually nothing right and everything wrong, but he looked to the man to his side.
In his final moments, he trusted in Him. He says, Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom. And Jesus looked at him and said, truly, this day you will be with Me in paradise. That thief, like you, like me, like Moses, we do not ascend to God through Sinai.
We do not ascend through Moses. We do not ascend through the old covenant based on the law. We ascend through the person and work of Jesus Christ and the new covenant that was ushered in through His blood shed on Calvary. This morning, it's a good thing to remember God is holy and it's a good thing to remember his law.
And it's a good thing to apply his law and to practice and teach and implement his law in all those areas of our life. It's a good thing for us also to acknowledge that he is a consuming fire of lawbreakers. But we close with this thought: the good news that we're here to worship and to celebrate and rejoice in this day is that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the penalty for our sins has been paid in full, and we now have full and unfettered access to the very top of the peak, to the top of Mount Zion.
The barrier is down. The path is clear. The future is bright. Let's pray.
More in The Book Of Exodus
Continue the verse-by-verse series.
