#052 - S4:10 - Exodus 20:1-11

Veronica and Erika slow down and spend the entire podcast discussing Exodus 20:1-11.  Using Dennis Prager's book as a guide, they show how the commands are bigger and more in depth than normally taught.  

Questions to Consider:

Why does God give commands?

What are things that can be an idol based on their definition?

How are you doing "carrying" God's Name as you go about your day?  Are you honoring His name as you carry it?

How do you honor the Sabbath?

You can join us on our Facebook page called "The Context and Color of the Bible" as well as Erika's website erikavanhaitsma.com.

In order to prepare for this study we used the following books or articles:
Exploring Exodus by Nahum Saran
Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom by Dennis Prager
The JPS Commentary on Exodus by The Jewish Publication Society
Messiah - Issue 24
Exodus: Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible by Thomas Joseph White, OP
Exodus: A Mentor Commentary by John L. Mackay
Shadows of the Messiah by First Fruits of Zion, book 2
Miqra Journal - Winter 2003

Music: Tabuk by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4453-tabukLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

Exodus 20:1-11

Erika:  Do you ever want to dive deeper into the Bible but you just don’t know where to begin? Or even struggle to feel like you have the time?  When you read the Bible, do you get frustrated, because you know there’s so much more in there, you just have no clue how to get it out?  Or maybe you just want to know the Bible better and you’re looking for any resource that can help.  Then this is the podcast for you. Welcome to the Context and Color of the Bible podcast. We are two sisters, I’m Erika, and I’m Veronica.  We love to study the Bible and help others understand it better.  When it comes to our own study of scripture, we have found that in bringing back the context of scripture, it adds to our understanding, it really adds color to the black and white pages of the text.  Welcome to the book of Exodus.

Erika:  Well Veronica, this is season four, episode ten.  

Veronica:  Woo hoo!  Do you know what day it is today?

Erika: I do, because you wrote it down for me.  This will be released on November 8th.

Veronica:  Which is my birthday!

Erika: Oh yeah, happy birthday!

Veronica:  Really?

Erika: On the day we do this podcast it will be.  I always forget, is it the seventh or the eighth?  I don’t know why my brain will not click.  Happy birthday, would you like to share how old you are?

Veronica:  Am I going to be 43?  44?  

Erika: How old are you going to be?

Veronica:  I’ll be 43.  Yes.

Erika: You don’t look a day over 41.

Veronica:  Oh thanks.

Erika: No, you look great.  You really do.  But, happy birthday. We are talking about Exodus.  Exodus has forty chapters in it.

Veronica:  Yes it does!

Erika: You are older than the book.

Veronica:  We’re on chapter twenty!

Erika: We are flying!  We actually are flying in this book.

Veronica:  We are halfway through.

Erika: It’s been an amazing journey so far.

Veronica:  But we’ve slowed down.

Erika: We have a lot to cover.

Veronica:  Yes.

Erika: At this point.  The covenant.

Veronica:  Yes, I didn’t realize.  

Erika: There’s a lot in here.  And again, we owe a lot of our thoughts in this episode and the next one to Dennis Prager’s book.

Veronica:  Yes, we are not stealing his ideas.

Erika: We are giving full credit to the man.

Veronica:  You can always look at our show notes to see all the resources.

Erika: Yes, right.  But we’ve taken a lot from him for this one.  Because it’s amazing.

Veronica:  I know, I didn’t know there was so much in the ten commandments.  

Erika: We are going to open it up first to why we just want to talk about it? Why is God giving these commands to Israel?  Why does God give commands at all?  And one thing that as I studied and wrestled with this myself, I was struck by how every society, Veronica, wants to do things right.  People want to be happy.  I don’t care where you go, what culture, everybody wants to be happy and successful.  But the problem is, every society struggles with, what does that mean?  What does that look like?  If you go to tribes down in the Amazon or South America or in Africa, a lot of times, we think stealing or murder.  You know I’m thinking of the Yanomamo tribe that lives like “I want something the next tribe has, I kill them and I take it.  But then I’m living in fear that they’re going to do the same thing to me.”  But that’s how it works.  If I want it, I just take it, and that’s what makes me happy.  But it really doesn’t end up making me happy, it terrifies me because then they’re going to kill me and take my stuff.  And so, God, in giving us commands is telling us, here’s what is good.  Here’s what will actually make you happy when we live life the way God created the world to work.  So this isn’t God putting a blanket on our fire, trying to ruin our fun.  This is God teaching people here’s how the world works and here’s how you be good. Here’s how you do good. Here’s how you get happy and successful.

Veronica:  Because ultimately, we have to have something to point to, to direct us, to guide us.

Erika: Yes, otherwise, it’s like trying to get to a destination without a map.  I know I want to get there, but I have no clue how.  Well I’ll get lost so I’ll need that map.

Veronica:  I’ll run into people with other ideas.

Erika: Maybe it’s behind me, maybe it’s to the left of me.  I need a map.  

Veronica:  So it’s a good thing God’s giving the ten words.  Do you want to talk about the ten words?

Erika: No, I think you can.  You have a better grasp on that.

Veronica:  Well, in Hebrew, it literally means “the ten words.”  First Fruits of Zion said “it could be more loosely translated as the ten matters.”  Because with the ten commandments the Jews actually start with the first one, let me grab my Bible.  I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  That’s not a command, but that’s number one for them.  So you have, if you look between the Jews and the Christians….

Erika: A little difference in the way we number the…we all have ten.  But what exactly are those specific ten, is a little bit different.

Veronica:  And it says…and God spoke all these words.  Chapter twenty, verse one.  So, a better idea would be to think, not commands but “words, matters, foundations, principles.”  And First Fruits of Zion says the ten matters summarize the six hundred and thirteen commandments of the Torah but they cannot be separated from the Torah or from each other.  You cannot say well I only go with the big ten and you get the rest.  In Deuteronomy you can almost lay out part of Deuteronomy linking to the ten

Erika: It’s almost like Deuteronomy is….

Veronica:  The framework…

Erika: Yeah, Moses takes the ten commandments and then expounds on them and like chapters, I can’t remember anymore…

Veronica:  I think it’s five through twenty six….

Erika: Yeah, five and six are the first commandment, chapter seven and eight are the second commandment.  And it’s like, he’s just like breaking them down saying ok what does it mean that the Lord redeemed us, what does it mean no other images, what does it mean no idols.  Yeah, there’s a lot.  They’re so interconnected.  

Veronica:  So with that, the first one is I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery….do you have any…

Erika: I think, one more thought I want to just say is that as we talked about last week, on the one hand this is the picture of a husband and wife, so in a marriage contract, both duties are spelled out, what the groom will do and what the bride will do.  You have that picture but you also have a king and his people image as well.  And this, a lot of the covenant ceremony also fits that, where you have a king spelling out to his people, here’s what I expect of you, here’s what you’re going to do.  Now that I’m your king and you’re my people, here’s how you live and as I was studying this I wrote, Israel was graciously chosen, lovingly redeemed, tenderly led.  God showered her with blessing, kindness, grace, mercy, now Israel is being told why and what the correct response is to be.  There isn’t a thought outside of obedience.  This isn’t a question of whether or not they should obey, the question is of course we are going to obey after all that God has done for us, here’s what we’re going to do.  Here’s what obedience to God looks like and all of this is predicated on the idea- I redeemed you out of Egypt so this is how I am going to start this matter, these words.  I get to tell you how to live because of what I just did for you.

Veronica:  Right.  Here’s what I did…

Erika: Right, as a reminder…. I’m your king.  I’m your husband.

Veronica:  I have the authority.  I have the right to say this.  But with that, He’s saying I have the right to say this but let me remind you of  something.  Yes you’re my treasured possession whose on eagle’s wings but let me remind you I brought you out of slavery.  Don’t ever forget where you came from.  Don’t get all haughty and arrogant and don’t even look back to Egypt and say, oh, Egypt is so great because they built the pyramids.  Well, how were they able to do that?  Using slaves.

Erika: Yes, we can enjoy visiting the pyramids, but remember how they were built.  

Veronica:  So all of this, Egypt’s great, but Egypt has slavery and it was unkind and it was bad.  You are my treasured possession but you were slaves.  But as I’m laying this all out to you Israel and giving you the global job of being priests to the world. Remember where you came from.  Because that will then affect how you treat others.

Erika: When you get slaves Israel, if you remember you were once enslaved, you will treat yours a bit better.

Veronica:  So with that Erika, the next one, the next word or matter, you shall have no other gods before Me.  You shall not make for yourself an idol in any form.

Erika: I think the idea is God already has made something in His image.  In Genesis one, God creates mankind in His image.  So we’re already representatives of God on this planet. 

Veronica:  He already put His image on something.  He doesn’t need something else to put His image on.  

Erika: Right! We’re the image.  How we live should represent Him.

Veronica:  You shall not have any other gods before me.

Erika: We had a fascinating pre-recording conversation about this.

Veronica:  Well, Dennis Prager brings up, we don’t often have idols anymore. What we think of as idols.  There’s the big ones, we always know, you know, this is popular in churches….money, looks, sports, wealth, status….and that’s great but Dennis Prager brought up that education, art, and love can be an idol.

Erika: Reason and religion.

Veronica:  Yes, and I was struggling with that and wondering how do we  communicate that without just reading his commentary word for word to you.  Erika, I can’t remember how you said it, but the idea of the renaissance brought out great works of art, but always their art had a goal of glorifying God.

Erika: It was for a higher purpose, it was to make the people better.  If you listened to it, if you looked at it, it was to take your thoughts, your heart, your emotions, and elevate you to something higher, something better.  

Veronica:  And education does that.  It can.  If education in itself is just to make you smarter, more educated…it can be an idol. Ultimately, Erika you said it earlier when we weren’t recording, if it’s pointing you back to God, then it’s not the idol.

Erika: An idol is anything we consider noble, beautiful in itself Dennis Prager says.  Anything we live for in itself.  You know, as a homeschool mom, Veronica, we could live just to educate our children and we could look at the end goal being, as long as they get to college and get a job, we’ve succeeded.  As long as my children turn out okay in society, I’ve succeeded. Well then education becomes the idol.  But if the point of my keeping them home to teach them is so that I can draw them closer to God, so I can train them and raise them up to be better image bearers for God.  

Veronica:  To bring glory to His name.  To point to Him.  So if education’s not pointing to God, if art’s not pointing to God, if even religion, music, is not pointing to God…

Erika: I mean, look at all the classical art that is still around…the music from that period.  That they say listening to actually makes your brain smarter.  But on all those pieces of art and on that music they would write, wasn’t it solo deo…to the glory of God.  And look at the art, or the things we call art today.  I mean what, somebody put a toilet out and said that was art.  I mean, the art that we have today, when you remove God from anything, it can become an idol.  If it’s in and of itself, it can become an idol. 

Veronica:  Which to me, was just fascinating that this idea of you shall have no other gods before me…I never thought, if it’s not pointing you to God, it can be an idol.  Because I really went with the idea of what’s consuming my time, what’s consuming my resources, what’s consuming my thoughts…but just twist it a little bit and go, if it’s not pointing you to God, maybe it’s an idol.

Erika: And then you can say…oh, I can have a lot of idols in my life and not realize it.

Veronica:I’m going to move us onto verse five.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.  And let’s just real quick hit on that idea of jealousy.

Erika: I learned this in college, I had a friend explain it to me, which was fascinating.  Jealousy and envy are the opposite of the same idea.  But jealousy is the appropriate form, envy is the negative.  You are jealous of what is yours.  So I have the right, as a married woman, to be jealous of my husband’s affections.  If he were to start looking at other women, flirting with other women, kissing other women, I would be jealous and that would be appropriate and good.  Now, if I envy the way another woman is treated by her husband, if I envy the way another woman looks, if I envy another husband, that’s wrong.  That’s not mine, that doesn’t belong to me, I envy what other people have.  I am jealous of what is mine.  So when God calls Himself jealous here, that’s appropriate and good, it’s not a negative thing.  You are jealous of what is yours.  We are God’s and He has every right to be jealous of us and for us.  And our heart, our devotion.

Veronica:  Because then it goes on, a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.  And showing to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commands.  And what we want to bring up, this is not a literal, you are not being punished because of what your great grandfather, nor are you being blessed because of your great great great great grandmother because if you trace those back a thousand generations, how many grandparents and which grandparents would you be picking.  And if you’re being punished because of your great great grandfather, well why do I bother?  Nothing I can ever do changes, he’s done and gone.  And there are actual verses in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel talking about God saying I’m not punishing the father for the child’s sin or the child for the father’s sins.  But what, Erika, why would God include that, that’s what I found fascinating and you had it in your notes.

Erika: Right. I wrote that this is from a different commentary.  Because conduct affects not only ourselves, but our families and our descendants.  It’s the home that is the primary training ground for the next generation. And so you actually as a parent set up success or destruction for your family based on how you raise your kids and how you act in the home.  And if you have an abusive father, you are much more likely to have an abusive child, who is then going to raise up abusive children.  So I think what God is doing here, Veronica, is saying, hey, how you act in the home matters because you are going to set up your kids for success or failure.  They still have a choice.  But you help your kids when you raise them up well.  You put them on the path to succeed, to do well in life…

Veronica:  If they chose to stay on it…

Erika:  Right, that’s their choice  but at least you planted their feet on that path and then you can influence your family for decades and generations to come or you can set up your kids, what did Dennis Prager say, a father in jail is likely to have a child that ends up in prison.  You know, as a parent, you have a huge responsibility and I think as kids, we need to recognize how we were raised and how that is influencing us today.

Veronica:  And also, but not to say, you’re stuck.  You had bad parents, you’re stuck on this road.  The whole point of Exodus one through eighteen was God redeeming them out of that bondage so there is encouragement and hope there but also the warning to the parents of…

Erika: This is serious.

Veronica:  Be the role model, be the example….

Erika: That you want your children to be.  Yes.  That’s the only point we think of this.  Not that God Himself is going to enact, but there’s natural consequences in the way God created the world to work.

Veronica:  Right.  So moving on, you will not misuse the name of the Lord your God.  For the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses His name.  

Erika: This one was fascinating Veronica because of the Hebrew.  Do you remember what the Hebrew literally says?

Veronica:  To carry?

Erika: Do not carry God’s name in vain.  And who carries God’s name?  Anyone who claims to be acting in God’s name.  So, no atheist, Dennis Prager writes, no atheist activity is nearly as effective in alienating people from God and religion as our evil religious people.  And I thought, how true.  I know, unfortunately, so many people who have been very hurt by the church and by other believers.  

Veronica:  Yes.  People acting in God’s name.  Or people you think of in society who go out there and start going, well God’s going to condemn you, I’m a Christian, here’s the Bible verse and you just go….

Erika: This earthquake happened because of this sin…

Veronica:  Yes, please don’t take God’s name and start…

Erika: Waving it around like a hammer or a judgment.  You’re not God.

Veronica:  What I appreciated, what Dennis brought out, was it’s more than just using God’s name as a curse word verbally.

Erika: Right. I don’t say OMG, therefore I’m fine.

Veronica:  Right.  But even the idea of using it in the common way.  Being careful of, oh thank you God that you did this.  And not having that reverence behind it.  But this was no, the idea is if you’re doing something in the name of God, I think of the inquisition and the witch trials or the crusades, yes, how many times things were done in God’s name.  Oh the black mark on the church.

Erika: On the believers, on the body of Christ.

Veronica:  Yes, so therefore, if you are going through the day, if you’re proudly proclaiming I’m a Christian, if your bumper sticker is proclaiming it…

Erika: If you’re wearing a t-shirt or cross earrings or a necklace…

Veronica:  You are carrying God’s name, so your actions are representing God’s name to the world, so it’s so much bigger than just a curse word.  And I like, that’s what Dennis Prager keeps doing with all these commandments.  Just taking them…

Erika: They’re bigger.

Veronica:  Bigger.  And more full.  And so you go, if the world could just do these ten, take these ten matters, you wouldn’t need the other six hundred and three.  So one more for today Erika.  Or maybe two, we’ll see.

Erika: It’s interesting Veronica, you mentioned if the world could do this… Because God uses the language and culture of Israel to express these words but the truth He’s giving is timeless.  The morality that comes from them is boundless.

Veronica:  Universal.

Erika: Universal, yes, but He uses a specific vehicle to teach us, to get us to this point of going, oh what does it mean to take God’s name in vain?  He wrote it in Hebrew originally, but what does that mean for every culture, every nation, every society….if everybody lived this way, our world would be transformed.  But it starts with us.  I can’t change my society, but I can change how I act.  I can be different.  I can live like this and I can affect my corner of the world through this.  You know, I got so frustrated with people jumping on Facebook and all over, oh we need to change these laws, and yes we need to have just laws, one hundred percent, but I can’t always be responsible for changing laws.  I do my part, but I am responsible before God for how I live.  And it’s easy to look at a law and say that needs to be changed so I can do the right thing.  No, I can still do the right thing whether or not that law is right, I still can choose to live justly even in an unjust society.  But it’s easier to look at something else and blame them, rather than looking at myself and how am I living?  All right, what’s the next one?

Veronica:  Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  Six days you labor and do all your work. We talked about this earlier, God’s not saying labor or working for money is bad.

Erika: Yes, right, it’s a good thing.

Veronica:  He gave you six days to do it.  But on that seventh day, on that Sabbath day, remember, and remember is not just a memory or a thought.  It’s a call to action.  Remember the Sabbath day, on the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord.  First of all, we are going to go back to creation.  Sabbath is not just to the Jews because it’s outside of, it comes before the redemption from Egypt, the exodus.  All of us are created beings.  And therefore, being a created being, I look to my creator to see, how do I live?  And He says, you take a day.  I rested.  You take a day to rest.  And it’s not a vacation day.  It’s a day to be with family and to be with God.  To commune with Him.  But I like that, He goes on and says…

Erika: To do different activities…

Veronica:  Yes.  Make it set apart.  Different.  Do not do any work, neither you, your son, your daughter, your manservant, your maidservant, or your animals.  So right there, God goes, you know what?  You were slaves in Egypt, you are no longer slaves in Egypt, you are free, you have the freedom to take a rest day every seventh day.  But in that, there is a teaching there that’s going to address slavery because we do see slavery.  And that trips people up.  You do see slavery in the Bible, and I’m not going to get into that right now, but in that slavery, however you picture it…

Erika: God said, let them rest.  That’s huge.

Veronica:  Yes, they are people.

Erika: Right.  They were made in My image and deserve to rest as well.  

Veronica:  And your animals. So you go, okay, God’s looking and setting down a foundation.  

Erika: We treat people with dignity.

Veronica:  And He doesn’t say, just My people.  Your manservant, your maidservant, your animals, nor the alien within your gates.  So if they, if people truly in the past comprehended what honoring, remembering the Sabbath day meant, it automatically elevates every person regardless of skin color to be made in God’s image.

Erika: And to be able to rest and remember Him and actively worship Him.  And it breaks down barriers because if I and my slave are worshipping God together, that would really break down barriers.  It would be hard to beat you on Monday if on the Sabbath we worshiped God together.  It sets up a relationship.

Veronica:  Do you think we can grab one more?

Erika:  A couple of thoughts I wanted to add…

Veronica:  So that’s a no.  

Erika: Short answer.  The Sabbath, the Jewish people see the Sabbath as kind of the wedding ring of the marriage ceremony.  It is specifically, I agree with you one hundred percent, it is for everybody, but in the way, the Sabbath is Friday night through Saturday night, it’s a sign.  It’s the sign of this covenant.  And it’s, so it’s considered the wedding ring for Israel.  And it’s a fascinating thing to realize, I don’t think any other nation on earth at this point had a day to rest.  A day where you would put aside cares and worries and you would focus on your God every week. Like, they had festivals, but to weekly be pulled back into this remembrance of who God is and what He did for me and I get to rest and let Him run the world.  I don’t have to make the world turn, God makes the world turn.

Veronica:  I can put my to-do list aside.

Erika: Yeah, this is huge.  No other nation did this.  And in fact, during the days of Jesus, the Jewish people for decades, maybe centuries were persecuted and mocked mercilessly because they took a day to rest.  They were called lazy.  They were considered pathetic.  You know, because if every other shop is open in the village market, except for the Jewish shop, well that’s pathetic, why are you resting?  Everybody else has to work, why don’t you have to work?  So this was a huge thing that actually set Israel apart from the nations and was not always an easy thing to do.

Veronica:  Well and you just think of your enemies.  Okay, I know every seven days where you’re going to be, what you’re going to be doing, what you’re not going to be doing…

Erika:  Right, and there were times in history people would attack them on the seventh day, specifically to…

Veronica:  Because they were vulnerable, they thought.  So, that is one through four of the words.  Trying not to call them commands anymore, calling them words.  Thanks for joining us.

Erika: We took more than ten words to describe them.  

Veronica:  We did. But come back next week because we are going to finish up the ten words and I honestly think the next ones are even more fascinating.  Those were the ones, I’m pleasantly surprised how long it took us to go through these because I thought we’ll skim through these real quick.  So, the next ones are exciting.

Erika: We’d love to hear what discussions you guys are having.  What things you guys think.

Veronica:  What sparked a conversation…you can do that on our Facebook page, the Context and Color of the Bible.  You can also find Erika’s website, there’s a section on your website for comments.  Whatever one is easier.  Erikavanhaitsma.com  If you’re not on Facebook.  Thanks for joining us, talk to you next week.  Bye!