March 9 – Exodus Week 10

Main Focus: God’s law shows us the culture of the people who follow him.

Last week we saw God prepare his people to receive the Law; this week he starts laying it down. We’ll read the Ten Commandments (and Israel’s frightened reception of them), then turn to two passages in Romans to better make sense of things. The first bit of Romans will help us understand how to relate to the Law in light of salvation through Christ, then the second bit will give us a test case of how we apply that understanding. Keep in mind, Old Testament Law is a big topic, so we’ll just scratch the surface together.

First, Exodus 20. The giving of the Law at Sinai will extend through Exodus 23, but the whole of the Mosaic Law up through Deuteronomy is essentially an expansion of the Ten Commandments (with an added caveat on those civil laws regarding the Nation of Israel; consider those an expansion of the Ten Commandments as realized in the land promise). For example, the first and second commandments strictly charge Israel to worship no other god but Yahweh; thus all the laws around the sacrificial system, purity laws, and prohibitions against idolatry all stem from these commandments. Similarly, “do not steal” is expanded into all the laws about making restitution, like if your sheep falls into my well.

This expansion occurs with all the commandments, though you’ll see two primary emphases both in the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Torah: true love of God and true love of neighbor. In the Ten, the first four deal with the former while the last six deal with the latter. In discussion we’ll ask how these commands show us God’s values, and you can’t beat Jesus’s summary: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 22:37-40). God highly values true worship of him, marked by total devotion, and true love of neighbor that goes so far as to ensure relational and physical wellbeing.

Then in discussion we’ll start shifting gears by asking how the Ten Commandments expose our need for forgiveness. Not a single person in your group can say they’ve kept them all perfectly, and this is one thing (among others) we should feel when we read the Law, that God’s values and expectations for us exceed our capacity as sinful people. As Protestants, we’re quick to jump to the solution found in Christ on the cross, which of course is the only solid ground on which to arrive. However, we shouldn’t bypass the tension we’re meant to experience reading God’s Law. We can never live up to God’s good and perfect standard and that’s not something we can simply brush off—something has to be done about this.

We’ll then read Romans 3:19-31 to see the answer found in the gospel of Jesus, which will also give us some input on how to read Old Testament Law as those forgiven in Christ. There Paul explains fully and clearly that no one can be made right in God’s sight through obeying God’s Law, not because the Law is broken but because we are. Our only hope is forgiveness in Christ, and similarly, we shouldn’t brush this off either—this is real cause for celebration. Additionally, the passage gives us two helpful comments about the Law. First, the Law bears witness to Christ and God’s plan of redemption (3:21), and second, the gospel doesn’t overthrow the law but instead upholds it (3:31). We’re saved through faith in Christ, not law keeping, and yet the law still has benefits for us in teaching us about God (as we did with our earlier question) and teaching us how to live according to this faith we have in Christ, which is perfectly consistent with Jesus’s repeated exhortation to not just hear his words but to obey them (Matt 12:50, Luke 6:46, John 14:15, John 15:14; cf. James 1:22, 1 John 2:3-4).

We’ll finish by turning to Romans 12:8-10, where Paul uses several of the Ten Commandments to illustrate what obedience to Christ looks like. Keep in mind, this is an example of how we apply the law to our lives today; again, we can only scratch the surface of this topic in a single discussion. However, love of neighbor is an excellent test case, and we’ll close by asking how we think God is leading us specifically in this area. Perhaps that will come from a point of conviction someone had earlier reading the Ten Commandments, or perhaps the Lord is laying something else on their heart. Either way, we all have room to grow in our obedience to Christ’s call on our lives.