Jesus and the Ten Commandments

The tale is told of an ancient king who devised an experiment to discover what language a child would speak if left to develop on his own. The king ordered that two babies be taken from their natural parents and raised by deaf mutes. They were deprived of contact from anyone who could talk. The result was that neither child learned how to speak at all.

If that story sounds like something that could only have happened in a by-gone age, think again.

Back in the 1960’s, American educators devised a similar experiment, only on a much larger scale. Instead of two children, the test included tens of millions. The subject of the experiment was not language, but morality.

A small but powerful group of educators wondered what would happen if children were allowed to make up their own minds about right and wrong. The educators began the study with good intentions, confident that children would learn to develop right values on their own.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. We are now seeing in our society, and in our schools, what happens when children make up their own morality, without adult guidance. In the 1940’s and 50’s, the biggest behavior problems in school were gum-chewing, running in the halls, and talking in class. Nowadays, teachers worry about assault weapons, drugs, rape, and robbery.

The National School Safety Center reports approximately 525,000 attacks and robberies occur in public high schools, not each year, but each month. Nearly 3 million crimes are committed on or near public school grounds every year.

But still the experiment goes on. They give it noble-sounding names like values-clarification, decision-making skills, learning how to think critically. But underneath the fancy labels, it is all the same. It is a non-directive approach whose basic assumption is that adults should not tell students what is right and wrong. Let them decide for themselves.

I am thankful that God did not take a similar approach with us. 3,400 years ago, a man named Moses stood on Mount Sinai and received with trembling hands two stone tablets on which God had inscribed ten absolute statements of right and wrong.

All claims to the contrary, this law code did not represent the end result of a process of moral evolution in the human race. We did not invent these principles; they were revealed to us from heaven. They did not rise from within us; they came down from above, from the King of Righteousness himself.

Unlike the educators of today, God did not assume that somehow or other, his children would come up with a sound system of morals and ethics on their own. Quite the contrary: God knew that we wouldn’t, so he clearly spelled out His values for us in the code of behavior that we call the Ten Commandments.

We have spent the past 12 weeks studying these commandments, and the principles that underlie them. We have explored together how they apply to our lives today. We have seen how relevant they are, and how desperately they are needed in our society. Now we are at the end of our study, but we want to review what we have learned, and try to sum it all up.

There are three reasons why God gave us the Ten Commandments:

1. To teach us about Himself

2. To teach us about ourselves

3. To lead us to Jesus Christ

Each one of the Ten Commandments teaches us something about God Himself. Let’s think through them one more time:

Commandment #1 - You shall have no other gods before me.

This tells us that God is unique; that he and he alone is God. There is no other god in the universe, so we shouldn’t live our lives as though there were.

Commandment #2 - You shall not make for yourself an idol.

This tells us that God is a jealous God. He deserves and expects our exclusive loyalty. He doesn’t want anyone or anything else to get in the way of our undivided, single-minded devotion to Him, because that’s the way he loves us.

Commandment #3 - You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.

This tells us that God’s name is special. It is precious. It is to be honored, because it represents him. God’s reputation is perfect. So we, who bear his name, had better be careful that we don’t live our lives in such a way as to bring that name into disrepute.

Commandment #4 - Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

This tells us that God is a God of order. He created the world in six days and he rested on the seventh in order to show us that we ought to pattern our lives the same way. He wants us to order our weekly schedules so that we can devote one day in seven to Him; a special day for worship and for rest.

Commandment #5 - Honor your father and your mother.

This tells us that God is a sovereign, all-wise God. He knows what is best for us. He chose our human parents for us; a relationship we had nothing to do with initiating. God placed us in our family. When we honor our parents, we acknowledge and thank God for His wisdom and sovereignty over our lives. To honor parents is to honor God.

Commandment #6 - You shall not murder.

This teaches us that God is love. We so easily allow hatred and resentment to dominate our relationships with other people. So often, we find ourselves wanting to simply eliminate the people who create difficulty for us. But if God had done that, none of us would be here, would we? God has a better way; it is the way of love.

Commandment #7 - You shall not commit adultery.

This teaches us about God’s creative genius. When he created us, he made us male and female. He designed us as sexual beings in order to fulfill each other, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And that fulfilment comes only in the marriage relationship. If we seek that fulfilment outside of marriage, we go against God’s created purpose, and we reap a harvest of devastation in our souls and in our bodies.

Commandment #8 - You shall not steal.

This teaches us that God is our provider. It tells us that, if we walk in the path of God’s righteousness, God will provide for all of our needs. We do not need, therefore, to try to supply our own needs by taking that which God has given to someone else.

Commandment #9 - You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

This teaches us that God is truth. There is no shadow of turning with Him. There is no duplicity in Him. God has nothing to do with lies and half truths. When we lie and speak evilly about our neighbor, we will be judged by the righteous judge.

Commandment #10 - You shall not covet.

This teaches us that God is our sufficiency. He is our all in all. If we chase after material things or relationships or position in life to satisfy our deepest inner longings, we will be disappointed. As Augustine said of God, “Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” He is our only source of contentment.

So the Ten Commandments reveal to us the character of God. They teach us what he is like. But they also teach us what we are like. They teach us, quite simply, that we are sinners. They teach us that we do not, indeed, that we cannot come within even a hundred miles of beginning to measure up to them.

So if the Ten Commandments represent God’s standard of behavior for us, we find, when we examine ourselves in light of them, that we have all fallen far short of that standard.

Which one of us has never told a lie? Which one of us has never coveted something that belonged to someone else? Which one of us has truly and consistently, throughout our lives, given God first place? None of us has. Yet the Bible says that if you break just one of God’s laws, you’re guilty of having broken them all.

Galatians 3:10-11 All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law. Clearly no one is justified before God by the law

So the Ten Commandments turn out to be a standard that none of us can meet. Does that mean that there’s something wrong with the Ten Commandments? No. It means there’s something wrong with us. Paul said in Romans 7:14 “the Law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual.” The problem is not with God’s Law, the problem is with us.

Many of you women know what it is to make roast beef for Sunday dinner. You put the meat in the pan, put the pan in the oven, set the timer, and off you go to church. Now suppose one Sunday you do that, and the pastor preaches a little longer than usual. The service ends late.

You rush home, and you find that your pot-roast is really well-done, almost overcooked. So you put on your oven mitts, and you pull the roasting pan out of the hot oven. Then you stick a big meat fork into the pot-roast to pull it out of the pan. But the meat is so well-cooked that the fork just pulls out of it. You try again and again to lift that roast out of the pan with the fork, but it just won’t come. It keeps falling back in.

Now here’s the point: The fork isn’t the problem; it is plenty strong enough to hold that roast. The problem is that the meat is too weak to hold the fork.

That’s exactly how it is with us and the Ten Commandments. Paul, in Romans 8:3, tells us that the Law is powerless to save us because it is weakened by our sinful nature. The Law can hold us, but we can’t hold the Law.

So that leaves us in a dilemma. God has given us a code of conduct, and we find that we cannot measure up to it.

Have you ever been driving in your car and made a wrong turn into a one-way street? You’re driving along and all of a sudden, you notice that all the parked cars are facing the other way! Then you come to an intersection and you notice a sign on a lamppost with an arrow pointing the opposite way. That’s when you realize that you’re going the wrong way.

That’s what the Ten Commandments are for. God gave them to us to tell us that we’re going the wrong way. They are there to tell us that we’re sinners, and if we’re ever going to be right with God, we’re going to have to get turned around.

Paul said “If it weren’t for God’s Law, I never would have really understood what sin is. I thought I was doing ok, going in the right direction, until I really came to grips with God’s Law. Then I realized that I was going the wrong way.”

But did simply knowing that fact make Paul turn around? No. He couldn’t turn around by himself. None of us can. It’s like our steering wheel is locked. All we can do is go down that street the wrong way, getting farther and farther away from God in the process.

We see the direction signs going by, pointing us in the other direction, and we say “Yes, I know I’m going the wrong way, and I’m really trying to get turned around. I’m really trying to get my life straightened out.” But the harder we try, the farther away we get.

The apostle Paul tried harder than most people. He was a Pharisee. He had made it his life’s ambition to live a righteous life. And all it got him was farther away from God. He was a bitter, angry man when we meet him in the book of Acts. He stood by while they stoned Stephen. He hunted down Christians and arrested them and had them executed. And he thought he was doing God’s work. But he was getting farther and farther away from God. Until he met Jesus Christ.

You see, the third and most important purpose of the Ten Commandments is to bring us to Jesus.

When Jesus Christ came, some people thought he had come to do away with the Law. But he said “No, I have not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”

The Ten Commandments are the perfect expression of God’s righteousness. They are absolute. They are not going to change. God hasn’t changed his mind about any of the things written in the Ten Commandments. He hasn’t rescinded any of them. So Jesus didn’t come to do away with the Law. He came to fulfill it.

But how did he do that? Two ways:

#1 - he lived a perfect life. His life was a living fulfilment of the Ten Commandments. He was the first and last and only person ever to live his whole life without breaking any of the Ten Commandments. Think about that for a moment.

Jesus said “I have come to do your will, O God.” And he meant more than just to die on the cross. He meant that he had come to live out God’s will in every area of his life. In every relationship. In all of his activity, from the day he was born until the day he died. Jesus’ life was a perfect expression of God’s righteousness. He kept every one of the Ten Commandments.

#2 - The second way that Jesus fulfilled the Law was that he paid the Law’s penalty on behalf of everyone who ever broke the Law. You see, the Law says that when you sin, when you break God’s law, you have to pay for it with your life. You cannot have fellowship, as a sinner, with a God who is holy and sinless. Your relationship with God is cut off. And not to be in relationship with God is death - more than just physical death, it’s spiritual death - eternal separation from God.

That’s the terrible consequence of sin. And we’re all under that penalty, because we’ve all, at one point or another, broken God’s law.

But then comes Jesus, who has lived a perfect life. He’s not under that penalty. In fact, he’s the only person who’s not under that penalty. And he steps forward and says “I will pay the penalty on behalf of all those who deserve it. I will exchange my righteousness for their guilt. I will take their legal guilt all on myself. And I will give them my righteousness in exchange.”

Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

Now you have to understand that there are two kinds of righteousness. There’s earned righteousness, which is the kind you get when you keep the Ten Commandments. And we’ve just seen that the only person who ever had earned righteousness was Jesus Christ.

But then there’s another kind of righteousness. It’s bestowed righteousness, which you can have given to you by someone who has the right to give it.

Maybe this illustration will help. In academic circles, there are two kinds of doctorates. There’s an earned doctorate. To get an earned doctorate, you have to complete a required course of study that takes several years. You have to pay several thousands of dollars in tuition fees.

You must attend many classes and seminars. You have to pass all your tests. You have to write a doctoral dissertation and defend it before an examining committee. And when you’ve successfully completed all those things, the university will award you a Ph.D. You will have an earned doctorate.

Now when it comes to perfect righteousness, the only person who has an earned doctorate is Jesus Christ, because he’s the only one who completed the curriculum. The rest of us dropped out way back in the first week of class!

But there’s another kind of doctorate. It’s called an honorary doctorate. The university can, for whatever reason it chooses, confer upon a person an honorary doctorate. You don’t have to enroll in that university. You don’t even have to set foot on their campus.

You don’t have to attend classes or write examinations or defend a dissertation. The board of chancellors of the university will simply decide to award you an honorary doctorate. And one day, they will put upon you the robe and cap of a doctor and give you a diploma that says Ph.D.

When you receive what Jesus did for you in dying on the cross, he gives you an honorary doctor of righteousness degree. Not because you deserve it, but simply because he has chosen to do it. He has the right to do that. It’s his prerogative. God gave Jesus degree-granting privileges.

Now here’s the point. Unless you let Jesus do that for you, you will never come into relationship with God. You’ve got to realize that if you are depending upon getting an earned doctorate in righteousness by keeping the Ten Commandments, you’re never going to make it.

You’ve already disqualified yourself. Your doctoral dissertation is full of holes. God’s never going to accept it, because it is far beneath his standards. There’s only one way in, and that’s through Jesus.

And when you accept what Jesus did for you, by faith, he gives you your doctor of righteousness degree. You are now right with God.

Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

But then something amazing begins to happen. God begins to work on you, and He starts building real righteousness into your life.

When you and I were still working on our own righteousness, we really didn’t understand what true righteousness was all about. But as soon as we give up the do-it-yourself project and let Jesus make us righteous, he starts to form true righteousness in us.

Paul says in Romans 8:4 that now that you are living according to the Spirit, the righteous requirements of the Law begin to be fully met in your life. Before, when you were trying to do it under your own steam, you couldn’t keep the Law anymore than a crocodile could sing soprano. But now that you’ve got the Spirit of God living in you, now you can do it, by the Spirit’s power.

The Ten Commandments were never intended to get us to God. They were intended to show us just how far from God we really are. They were meant to show us that, if we are ever going to have a relationship with God, it’s going to have to come about some other way. And of course, that other way is Jesus. In fact, he is the only way.

Romans 3:20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

Are you trusting Jesus to make you right with God?