Words of Cleansing

Fr Richard Healey reframes the Ten Commandments as declarations of freedom and love, rather than as strict rules. The commandments were given to the Israelites as they escaped slavery, symbolising a covenant of mutual commitment between them and God. The priest explains the physical form of the commandments and the significance of having two copies. The discussion then focuses on the first two commandments, emphasising the importance of worshipping God correctly and honouring His name. The sermon connects these ideas to the Lenten season, urging the congregation to cleanse themselves of false beliefs and deepen their relationship with God.

(00:00:00) – Oh my gosh, this is my idea of a great time to be had on a Saturday night. Being able to hear the Ten Commandments proclaimed in church. I mean, come on, does life get any better than hearing laws and commandments and rules and regulations? Surely that’s where we all get such joy and excitement. No. Am I the only one? Come on. Look. Come on. And so many battles have been fought over these things. Surely they’re worth getting a little bit excited about. But I think we need to first perhaps clear up some misunderstandings and misconceptions about these so-called commandments. Because in Scripture, that’s the first thing. Nowhere are they actually called the Ten Commandments. These are introduced as the ten words that are spoken. And who were they addressed to? To Moses? Yes, but it’s to the whole community who are gathered there, the whole nation and what is just happened to them. They have been released from slavery. They have been set free from persecution and oppression, and they have made their way through the waters of the sea with the mighty power of God being evident there and then they’ve journeyed for the space of two new moons, perhaps about a month or 40 days.

(00:01:45) – And they’ve arrived here at the place where the Lord revealed himself to Moses, where he was instructed to go and to set this people free. And now he’s done it. He set the people free, and he’s brought them back to this place to worship, to be set free from all that has gone before them. And so these instructions, these teachings, these words that are spoken, are spoken in love to this community. They’re not commandments. They’re not things that just conscript them into service. These are the declarations of the freedom that they’re meant to experience now that they have been set free from slavery. So that’s why that first sentence is so crucial to hear and remember: what is the context of these ten words that are spoken into this community? That I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, set you free from slavery, from the yoke of oppression. I am the one who has brought you here. And so it’s in that context that we’re meant to hear the words that follow. Now, we’ve often pictured these massive tablets of stone that Moses was presented with.

(00:03:15) – I mean, I didn’t know whether Moses had been doing some weight lifting off on the side, but if you’ve ever attempted to pick up a stone, you kind of think that it probably wasn’t this massive kind of stone that Moses was carrying out. In fact, in the Hebrew, there are only 171 words that form these ten words of Exodus 19: verses 1 to 17 in our scriptures. And you could write those 171 words on a small stone tablet that’s not much bigger than your hand. So it’s a little bit easier for Moses to be able to carry these two tablets of stone down from the mountain. And why are they two? It’s not because there’s volume one and volume two. There’s not two different sets. So there’s not the first part of the commandments, the ones addressed to our relationship with God, and the second set of commandments that are related with words that are related to our relationships to one another. It’s two copies of exactly the same thing, because this is what we call a suzerain treaty. And so when you make a covenant commitment, there are two copies of the teachings, what each party is making a commitment to.

(00:04:43) – And each person would then keep a copy of what is being agreed to. If it was between the different deities, then they would be kept in the temple. But Yahweh doesn’t need to keep a copy for himself. So he entrusts both copies of these words to Moses and the Israelite people for them to hold and to cherish forever. And the first commandments really give us a guide into what these are all about. The first commandment is about the right worship of God to honour the Lord. How do we serve God? How do we give ourselves in our hearts more fully and more completely to the wonders of God? And we’re told, don’t make any idols. Well, how do we understand that? Surely we need to look first at where does that word idol or image first appear? And as usual, those powerful words first appear in the very first chapter of Genesis in Genesis 1:26 and 27. We are told to be the image bearers, to be the very presence of God in the world that we are called to be, the ones who will be the bearers of God’s image in the world.

(00:06:12) – To mirror God into the world. To offer our worship of God as an example and model for all of creation to be caught up in that same love and that same devotion. So there’s no need to create any other idols, because if you want an image of God, look around. We are the image bearers of God who gather today. We are the ones who are meant to be the representatives of God. And the next commandment is a follow up of that. We’ve often translated it really badly from the first English translation of this text in the King James, it’s you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Awful, awful. Translation even at that time. They knew that the Hebrew would. There is not take, but bear or carry. You shall not carry or bear. The name of the Lord shall honour the Lord by bearing his name. Well. And if you read just a couple of chapters later, there’s a description about how we worship, about how you set up the temple, how you establish all of that life of God.

(00:07:32) – And there’s very detailed descriptions about what the high priest shall where when the high priest goes in to offer sacrifices on behalf of all of the community, and he will have this turban that has the 12 different stones representing the 12 tribes that are gathered there, and in the centre of his turban. In the centre of all of that is the name of the Lord. The name of the Lord will be inscribed upon his head with the in Hebrew. If you want to say the property of someone you know, if you write on in a book, a library book, and you have maybe X libraries or from the library of this person in Hebrew, you simply use one letter, the letter lambda, lambda, whoever that the person’s name, lambda Yahweh, is what the high priest had on his head. And so he was the one who was bearing the name of the Lord. He was carrying the name of the Lord, on his very person. And so it’s a reminder that when we worship, we’re meant to be about offering our hearts to God as the image bearers of the Lord, being that very representation of God in the world, that we’re meant to do all of that with honour and devotion.

(00:08:44) – It’s not about cursing or swearing or any of the things that we’ve reduced this commandment to, because I guess when they first wrote the English translation, they were like, well, how do you bear the name of the Lord? Usually. And they hadn’t read the rest of the text clearly enough. And, well, I guess we bear it in our tongues, we bear it in our mouth, and there’s a certain truth to that. But that’s not what this teaching, this particular word of instruction is about. And so as we can see that each of these commandments, each of these, these laws, each of these instructions, each of these words that are spoken, are meant to be for us a deeper way of coming into a relationship with God, a new way of experiencing the love of God, a new way of being freed from all of the slavery, all of the idols, all those things that have held us back in the past. And so you can see that when we get to our gospel reading tonight, as Jesus needed to go into that place and to cleanse it of all of those false images, all of those false ideas that had developed and grown up, so many of us carry so many false ideas about our faith.

(00:09:59) – Ideas that have come from bad translations or bad teaching in the past, and there’s this need to be cleansed of all of those things that do not give us the freedom to enter into worship with God. The Lord is loving us so preciously and so deeply, and calling us into this deeper relationship of covenant with him. And that’s what this season of lent is, is all about renewing our commitment, renewing our relationship with God, finding that place where we can set all of those things that no longer serve us well, to set them aside, to be freed from all those slaves, all those idols, all those things that prevent us from being loved more deeply and more fully by God. That Jesus will come and he will make that cord and cast out and dry that every idea, everything that does not lead us more closely into that love and into that precious relationship with God. So let’s allow the Lord to cleanse us and to free us so that we indeed can worship him more fully, that we can bear and carry the name of the Lord joyfully and wonderfully.

(00:11:10) – As we enter more deeply into this friendship with God, the God who’s calling us into that covenant, the God is renewing that desire and that love every day before us. And let’s allow God to bring us into a place of deeper freedom so that we can indeed be the image bearers of God and serve and worship him well during these days.