March 23, 2026 - Exodus 20 & Psalm 66

We read Exodus 20 and Psalm 66, then slow down to see why the Ten Commandments are called “ten words” and how they function as a governing constitution for God’s newly delivered people. We also trace the thread from the two great commandments to the Decalogue and hear Psalm 66 echo the Exodus story with praise and prayer.

For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compassbiblesv.org. Keep reading. Keep growing. God’s Word is a lamp to your feet, and a light to your path. 

Transcript

elcome And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bybreeding Plan, where we are seeking to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength with God's word lighting the way. I'm Josiah Smith, lead pastor of Compass South Valley. Today is Monday, March 23rd, 2026. Listen intently to God's written word. Exodus 20. 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 slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 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, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's. Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning, and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid, and trembled, and they stood far off, and said to Moses, You speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us lest we die. Moses said to the people, Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin. The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. And the Lord said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the people of Israel, You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. An altar of earth you shall make for me, and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you. If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it. Psalm sixty six. Shout for joy to God all the earth. Sing the glory of his name, give to him glorious praise. Say to God, How awesome are your deeds, so great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you. All the earth worships you and sings praises to you. They sing praises to your name. Come and see what God has done. He is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man. He turned the sea into dry land. They passed through the river on foot. There did we rejoice in him, who rules by his might forever, whose eyes keep watch on the nations, let not the rebellious exalt themselves. Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept our soul among the living, and has not let our feet slip. For you, O God, have tested us, you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net, you laid a crushing burden on our backs, you let men ride over our heads. We went through fire and through water, yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance. I will come into your house with burnt offerings, I will perform my vows to you, that which my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble. I will offer to you burnt offerings of fattened animals, with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams. I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul. I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened, he has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me. Well, Exodus 20 is perhaps one of the most significant passages of Scripture in all of the Bible. This is where the well-known Ten Commandments are given. Now, the words Ten Commandments can actually be somewhat of a misnomer. Of course, they are, in a sense, binding and commands by God. But often, even here in verse 1 of chapter 20, it is said, and God spoke all these words, saying it even Moses later on, when he reiterates the Ten Commandments, as we call them in Deuteronomy, he says the same thing. He calls them words. And the reason why that's significant is because these are less rigid laws, like we might consider uh laws in our country that talk about tax laws or property laws or any number of things that, of course, are binding and are necessary to obey. Actually, the ten words or the ten commandments serve more as a constitution rather than the nitty-gritty of all of those specific laws. So if you want to make it analogous to the United States, that's our context here. Um, the Ten Commandments for the nation of Israel, the ten words, as it says there in verse one, are the sort of unifying constitution for the nation that God has formed and has newly delivered. I mean, that's even how he starts in verse two. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And he brought them out in order to constitute them and to create this sense of a constitution as a nation. Now, of course, the constitution serves as a sort of governing document. And even in our country, all of the laws, all the specific nitty-gritty laws that both we have federal laws and state laws and local laws, and all of those nitty-gritty kind of uh all the detail laws that you might see and interact with and need to take heed to listen to and obey, they they are all sort of subservient, or perhaps maybe a better way to say it, is they flow from the governing constitution. And that's the idea here with the ten words, the ten commandments. It's the governing kind of unifying constitution for the newly formed, newly delivered nation of Israel. And again, that is significant because all of the rest of the laws, the 600 and whatever laws that we often refer to, when we refer to the law, are similar to kind of the nitty-gritty laws of the United States. They are all uh kind of serving the broader governing document and constitution of these 10 words. So they're highly significant. Now, I want you to notice the structure of these words. Now, of course, Jesus, if you fast forward to the New Testament, he talks about all of the law and prophets are hung on two commandments. That's love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's the first one. And the second one is to love your neighbor as yourself. So if we're going to rank these kind of by hierarchy, we see those by Jesus' own declaration being the most important. All of the law can be summarized in those two laws. So you could put those kind of at the top, and then we have the ten commandments, and then we have underneath that, if we're kind of talking about a structure similar to the United States with a constitution and then the laws underneath it, we have the two laws at the top, the ten commandments or the ten words, and then we have all of the rest of the 600 laws that get fleshed out uh later on, specifically in the book of Leviticus and in other places, of course, in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. So here we have that the Ten Commandments as we commonly refer to them, and they are broken down essentially to kind of summarize the two great commandments love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. So the first four commandments all expressly speak to that first great commandment. It starts there in verse three. Here's the first commandment: you shall have no other gods before me. There is no other God, there is no other deity, there is no other anything for the nation of Israel, and of course for us today that we are to worship, that we are to consider our God. So that's the first commandment, of course, that unifies really well and flows from the great commandment to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second commandment of the ten words says something similar: you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. So, of course, again, another second commandment of these first four that directly ties to the great commandment to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the third commandment we see again doing the same thing, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. And then the fourth commandment remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to your Lord God. On it, you shall not do any work, you are your son, and it gives all of those specific details for that. So those first four words, those first four commandments, connect and tether to the first great commandment. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the next six commandments really connect to that second great commandment, which is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. So in verse 12, here's the the first of the six honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God has given you. You shall not murder, that's the seventh, you shall not commit adultery, or the rather the second of the six, right? 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 or your neighbor's wife, and all of these things. So the last six of these ten words really connect again and tether to the overall governing two laws that Jesus says, all of the law of prophets, hang on. To love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then again, to love your neighbor as yourself. And of course, you should be thinking about the ten commandments or the ten words as a constitution that is governing the nation of Israel as a whole. And so all of the rest of the laws that can sometimes be difficult for us to sludge through in the Old Testament, you need to remember those are kind of the nitty, gritty laws that connect back to and really flow from these ten commandments, or sometimes called the decalogue, that the ten words that are spoken here right at the beginning. So it stands at the beginning of all of the rest of the laws that are to come, and it governs the manner in which the rest of the laws will be given. And they, in some sense, all reflect these ten words, and they're gonna reflect and connect back to the two great commands, whether it's loving God or loving your neighbor. So there's lots of continuity here, and of course, there's some specifics to the nation of Israel. God brought them out of Egypt to call them out from the world, to make them a holy nation, a royal priesthood, as we have talked about. And this is part of that being set apart, being set apart, being given this specific governing document, the decalogue, the ten words, the ten commandments, so that they could live life in a very specific kind of way and showcase that they worship a very specific kind of God, the one true God. And of course, that is the first command. You shall have no other gods before me. So a great chapter, a great thing for you to really understand just the breakdown of how all of that works and really this sets the trajectory for the rest of what we're gonna read, of course, in Exodus, uh, but then even after that, Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy. So that's gonna be helpful for us to keep in mind. Now, as we transition to Psalm 66, we see another psalm of the choir master or to the choir master, it says, a song, a psalm recounting the awesome deeds of the Lord. So it starts in verse one shout for joy to God all the earth. And you can hear throughout this psalm Exodus imagery. You can hear about deliverance, you can hear about how awesome are the deeds of the Lord. So great is your power, it says in verse three, that your enemies come cringing to you. Come and see, verse five, what God has done. He is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man. He turned the sea into dry land, they passed through the river on foot. There did we rejoice in him, who rules by his might forever, whose eyes keep watch on the nations. Let not the rebellious exalt themselves. So, of course, you can hear the image the imagery, uh, the Exodus imagery being reiterated here. That becomes one of the most prominent things that we see not only in the Psalms, but throughout the scriptures as a whole. They were, of course, every year were practicing, remembering that at the beginning of the year, with the Day of Atonement, with the feast of unleavened bread, as we were talking about earlier in Exodus. And so they were reminding themselves constantly of who God was, who God is, and what God did in the life of their nation, the covenant that he made with them and kept with them, and even showed his grace and his mercy and his provision by providing the quail at night and a manna in the morning, all of these things. And then there's connection, even to Exodus 20, uh, to the response: I will come into your house with burnt offerings, I will perform my vows to you, that which my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble, I will offer to you burnt offerings of fattened animals with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams. And this connects to the end of Exodus 20, where there's laws about altars, how they were to be built, and how sacrifices were to be made. Now that's just the beginning. We'll see some more detail of that later on. But of course, we see that here in Psalm 66 as well. So some great continuity between Psalm 66 and Exodus 20, and another good reminder to reflect on the awesome deeds of the Lord. Even in verse 16 of Psalm 66, it says, Come and hear all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul. I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity or sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened. He has attended to the voice of my prayer. So I hope today you can just reflect on the reality of, of course, the law being instituted, the Mosaic covenant here in Exodus 20, the decalogue, the ten words, the ten commandments that stands right at the beginning. It stands as the governing document for the nation of Israel as a whole. That'll hope you make sense of the remaining 600 or so laws that we will see throughout the rest of the Pentateuch. And then here in Psalm 66, seeing some connection to the way that this psalm is praising the Lord and recounting his wonderful deeds in the Exodus event and even talking about the sacrifices that were instituted in Exodus 20. Well, thanks for joining us on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast. For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass Bible SV.org. Keep reading, keep growing. God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.