Scripture: Exodus 20:1-17; Luke 12:13-21; Matthew 5:18; Colossians 2:9-10; Micah 6:8; Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18
The Ten Commandments are a starting point, not a destination; their power lies not in the words but in the covenant God who freed Israel and raises us by grace, calling us beyond minimal law-keeping to be rich toward God by loving God and neighbor.
Illustrations: covenant-stained-glass-windows, sainte-chapelle-paris, egyptian-glass-beads, colleagues-old-window-upkeep, donor-in-stained-glass, college-freshman-bible-reading, maimonides-613-commandments, eight-decalogue-numbering-systems, mixed-fibers-vs-murder, wesley-almost-christian, never-murdered-but-fail-to-love
August 3, 2025
Exodus 20:1-17 Luke 12:13-21
The Ten Commandments
Then God spoke all these words, 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 an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water underthe earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. Remember the Sabbath day and 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; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it. Honor your father and your mother, so 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, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” - Exodus 20:1-17
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” - Luke 12:13-21
I want you to take a moment and look around the sanctuary. There are a series of 12 stained glass windows circling us and two up behind the altar. Over the next few weeks, we are going to do a series on each of these stained glass windows, what they represent, what they point to, and how they shape our worship experience at Covenant UMC.
They were designed by a stained glass artist in Brady, Texas, back in 2003. The technique of stained glass has gone back for centuries. It is older than most written languages. A Greek historian recounts a legend of the discovery of Stained Glass.
The earliest known manmade glass is in the form of Egyptian beads from between 2750 and 2625 BC. Artisans made these beads by winding a thin string of molten glass around a removable clay core. This glass is opaque and very precious.1
Some of my favorite Christian art is stained glass, like Sainte Chappelle in Paris.
I know colleagues at other churches who have nightmares about stained glass windows, because they’re 100 years old, are enormous, and difficult to maintain, as well as letting in all sorts of air, It’s a rough situation.
One of the lovely things about our windows here is that they’re small and contained and specific, and, in a way, timeless. They’re not filled with things. They’re not too busy. They’re focused. There’s not a picture of a donor in the stained glass window. walking hand in hand with Jesus, which I have seen before in both a church built in the last 20 years, as well as a church built 500 years ago.
Our series starts with the Ten Commandments. We have here a representation of the Ten Commandments. The original tablets would not have had Roman numerals. In fact, they aren’t even numbered in Scripture. The phrase Ten Commandments isn’t found in the Bible. If they had been numbered, it would have been in Hebrew letters, which Hebrew arithmetic started with the Hebrew alphabet. So aleph would be one, bet would be two, and so on and so forth.
One of the big personal discoveries I made when I first read through the Bible, when I was a freshman in college. was that in the Bible, the Ten Commandments aren’t that important. Growing up, I was taught in a confused way, and I don’t really blame the preachers I had because it was the air they breathed. I was taught that when Paul or Jesus talk about the law, they talk about the Ten Commandments. That is not what a Jew in 1st century. Roman Palestine was talking about.
Instead, the law was and is every word of the five books of Moses, Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Maimonides, a thousand years after Jesus, divided Torah up into 613 commandments, but there were many Jews who were frustrated with Maimonides for doing this, because by even numbering the commandments, it took away from the whole. He was a focusing on the trees instead of the forest.
Leaders in the Early Church began to differentiate the ten commandments from the rest of the Old Testament. These are the commandments that come from the voice of God. As well, a few of them are mentioned by Jesus, even though, as many of us know, Jesus sums up the law and the prophets with the love commandments. One from the Deuteronomy, you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, then from Leviticus, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
But it really wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation that the Ten Commandments were truly lifted up on their own pedestal, so to speak. Yet there was still disagreements. There are at least 8 different numbering systems of the Ten Commandments that have existed in the past, whether you follow the Septuagint, the Talmud, the Ashburnham Pentateuch, the Samaritan Penteteuch, Calvin, Augustine, Luther, or Modern Catholics.
For Protestants, the point of lifting up the Ten Commandments was to differentiate the law that Christians should follow from Torah, from all the rest of what was described as ceremonial and ethical laws that we don’t need to follow anymore. This was another breakthrough I had reading the Bible from Genesis to Exodus. There is no separation in Leviticus, in Numbers, in Deuteronomy, in Exodus, in Genesis, between moral law, ceremonial law, or dietary law. There’s no separation. It’s all law. Don’t mix fibers in clothes is on the same footing as don’t murder.
When Jesus says, For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.2, the law here is the whole thing.
The Ten Commandments aren’t the central texts of the Old Testament, as they are often portrayed to be, but there is deep power here. The power of the Ten Commandments is in the covenantal relationship between God and the people of Israel. God the Father resurrected the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt as God the Father will raise Jesus Christ from death on the cross. The Ten Commandments mark the word of God speaking to Moses and kindling a new covenant. The word of God spoke these words to Moses, and we Christians call the word of God by another name: Jesus.
Now this brings me to our gospel reading for today. which is not about the Ten Commandments, but about misunderstanding the law. It is the parable of the rich man at the storehouse. There was a rich man who did well in life, he accumulated a lot of stuff. So much stuff that he had to build more storehouses for his stuff. But God said, to him, you fool, this very night, your life is being demanded of you. In the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God.
Another way to translate Torah is the way. It is the gift of God, the creator, to the people of Israel, for them to follow a way in order to love God. As Christians. we see that way is fully revealed in Jesus Christ. This is the line from Colossians.
For in Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him
The fullness of Torah, the fullness of the Way of God, dwells in Christ and is witnessed to us in Christ. Not the minimum, the fullness.
Getting back to the parable, the rich man probably followed every one of the Ten commandments. There is no reason to think he didn’t. And all that following got him right to where he was that night. His life was taken from him. There’s nothing in the Ten Commandment that keeps him from gathering enormous amounts of wealth, and ignoring his neighbors, and ignoring God.
The Commandments start off with a declaration about God’s existence, then not having idols, taking the Lord’s name in vain, remembering the sabbath, and honoring mother and father. This the first table. The second table is the other five: You shall not murder, shall not commit adultery, shall not steal, shall not bear false witness, shall not covet your neighbor’s house or wife.
And still, the man Jesus speaks about gathered too much stuff and wasn’t rich towards God. The Ten Commandments don’t get us to the good life. They don’t get us to holiness. They don’t save us. They don’t even get us to being an almost Christian, in John Wesley’s language.
They are a starting point, not a destination. Their power is not in the words themselves. but in the God who freed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and will free us from slavery to sin and death through Jesus Christ. When Jesus summarized the law, he wasn’t summarizing Ten Commandments (they are already fairly succinct), instead, he was summarizing the first five books of the Bible. Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. It doesn’t take long to realize that the Love Commandments are much more difficult to follow than the Ten Commandments. I can confess that I have successfully not murdered anyone my whole life. I must also confess that there are times when I haven’t loved my neighbor as myself. It is a different challenge.
They also transform us. We could not end up like the rich man in the parable if we followed the love commandments.
And yet the words of God the Father to Moses on Mount Sinai still resonate today.
When we walk into our church on Sunday morning, and we see the Ten Commandments over here, it means something. It points to the God who brought the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. I am the Lord, your God, I am one. That means something here in this holy place. God, the father, raised Jesus from the dead, having previously raised Israel from Egypt.
And God can raise us from the dead places we find ourselves in. We don’t earn our salvation through works or the law but by grace alone. God raises us when we don’t deserve it. And God can raise our loved ones. We are not lost or alone. We are found by the God who is love, who gave words to his people from a mountaintop log ago, who still has words for us today. Be rich towards God. What does that look like? It isn’t the minimum. It isn’t a starting point, even as great as the Ten Commandments. I think the Prophet Micah points us in the right direction
And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
If the rich man had done this, his life would have turned out differently. When we do this, by grace, our lives turn out differently.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.