Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 - Struggling with God: When you don't like the rules

The Israelites have journeyed from Egypt to Mt Sinai, they consecrated themselves and on the third day Moses brought them to the foot of the mountain to meet their God. I can almost see the Israel as a young ancient eastern bride meeting her future husband for the very first time. She comes shyly, curious about this one with whom she is about to covenant to live for the rest of her days. Who has the match maker chosen for her? What is he like? Is he kind? Is he just? Is he handsome? She comes expecting to gain some understanding of who this person is, so she can have a glimpse of what perhaps the rest of her life will be like. Instead of merely getting to see her new husband, and perhaps exchange polite pleasantries, under the careful eye of Father, Mother and match maker, she gets a first hand look at the marriage covenant, the papers, the agreement. Her father does not make the agreement for her on her behalf, but the husband with whom she is covenanting to live, comes to her with the terms of the covenant. He tells her directly what it will mean to live in covenant relationship with him. What it will mean to be his bride and what is expected of her. What their life together will look like.

What we have here is the heart of the covenant, the heart of what it means to live as a covenant people, what it looks like when a group of people come together and join themselves with God. When people come together, and live as God is calling them to live this is the way that community will live.

The people who live in covenant relationship with God will, worship God and God alone, will have no idols, will not wrongfully use God’s name, will remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, will honor father and mother, will not murder, will not
commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or covet. Jesus summed it up well, “You will love the Lord God and you will love your neighbor.”

These are the great commandments, this is the heart of how a community desiring to join together and join themselves with God will live. These 10 commandments, because that is what they are, they are not suggestions, guidelines, or statements; they are the articles of the covenant. God says, “This is how a community living with me will live.” These are the legal guidelines of the relationship which God is building with these people. These commandments are in a sense legally binding on the community which desires to join itself in relationship with God.

As wonderfully interesting, awe inspiring and fundamental as these covenant stipulations are, the people’s response is what catches my attention. Did you notice it when I read it? One of the hard things about coming to a passage which I have heard in one form or another since I was perhaps 3, maybe even younger, is that it is hard to not come to it with every Sunday School lesson, devotional, Bible Quizzing study sheet, Bible Study summary, and sermon which I have heard over the years all echoing in my head fighting for my attention to tell me what I already know about these nearly memorized words of holy scripture.

But this time, something immediately jumped out at me, and that was the people’s response to these words spoken to them by God. (If you read on into the next chapter it is very clear that God spoke these words, directly to the people, out of the thunder wrapped cloud that had descended up on Sinai.) Their response is to request that Moses speak to them instead of God. They did not want to hear what God had to say. They did not like what God had to say, or how God had to say it and wanted instead to speak through an intermediary. They did not want to deal with their God themselves they wanted a go between someone to run interference.

Last night a tremendous crime against humanity was committed in Stella’s bedroom, Cidra was hit in the face with Stella’s new ladybug light. As best as we can tell, Stella, enthralled with the light which shines stars on her ceiling in an attempt to stay off her fear of the dark, she picked it up and was spinning it around the room. In comes Cidra, who’s face manages to get in the way of the spinning Stella and her bug. What happened in the room does not really matter, what happened down stairs in the office is what I want to talk about today. Mike brought the children down, one by one to get them to explain to him how Cidra had managed to get hit by the lady bug. Mike was stern with them. When Daddy is being stern and serious for some reason it causes them to shy away and clam up. They don’t want to talk to Daddy when daddy is being stern. The funny thing is when this happens it does not matter what daddy has to say, at that point they would be willing to talk to anybody else other than Daddy.

This is exactly what the Israelites are doing in this passage. They do not want to talk to God themselves. Here God is offering to have a personal, relationship with the entire community, the likes of which have not been seen since God walked with the Adam at the dawn of creation. God is willing to descend upon the mountain at whose foot they are standing and speak directly to them and let them know what it means for them to be God’s people and for God to be their God, but they want nothing to do with it. They do not want to talk to God. They do not want a direct relationship with the God of universe. They are not sure about a God who comes up on a mountain in a cloud, with thunder and speaks to them sternly about the seriousness of the covenant they are making together. It is easier when they feel somewhat removed from the God with whom they are dealing. It is easier to deal with this God when they meet God at the rock and Moses makes the water flow. It is easier when God uses Moses to turn the bitter water sweet or in their minds remove things one more step and begin to the think that it was the staff of Moses that caused the waters to part so they could pass through on dry ground.

They like the God they only see through Moses, they like the God they only hear through Moses, they like the words of God when it is passed down through Moses, besides it is a whole lot easier to grumble against Moses than is this great, mighty, powerful God who speaks commandments from a cloud with a voice like thunder.
God is scary and the commandments that are the way of life of those who covenant to live in relationship with God are harder than they sound. The people knew this. They heard the words of God that day. They saw the agreement; they saw the marriage covenant and wanted an intermediary to speak on their behalf to shelter them from the reality of what it truly means to live as the people of God, to be the bride who God was calling them to be. In many ways, God was too much for them; too big, too powerful, too demanding, to loving, too caring.

God was not merely giving them rules about how to worship, rules on how to sacrifice. Being the people of God was harder than cutting of a nearly unnecessary part of their body that nobody could see anyway, being the people of God meant that they had to change the way the lived their lives. Being the people of God did not merely affect their “spiritual” life, how they worshipped, where they worshipped, who they worshipped and what they did when they worshipped, it affected every part of their lives. It affected how they spoke, what they said about others, their familial relationships, what and who they wanted, and what they did about what and who they wanted. It affected how they lived in relation to God and it affected how they lived in relation to every other person around them. This was not just making an agreement about which God they choose to worship, this was about adhering to a new way of life.
God does not call us to simply live by a new set of rules. God does not merely call us to come to church on Sundays and make nice with the people of God we encounter there. God does not want just our spiritual lives. God does not merely want our worship. God wants us to completely change our whole lives. To change how we interact when we are not at church, God cares about who we worship, why we worship and when we worship, but God also cares about how we treat others. God does not want us to speak wrongly about God, but neither does God want us to speak wrongly about others. God loves us and desires our honor and praise, likewise God expects us to honor our parents. God love us and is a jealous God, God will not share us with other gods, and thus God wants us to assume that other people are just as jealous about those whom they love and that they do not wish to share those whom they have covenanted to love with us. Nor are we to desire their stuff, or take it. And on no account are we to haul off and kill them for just any reason. God does not merely care about who we worship, and when we worship, God cares about all our relationships, who we are when we are not worshipping, how we treat others when it is not the Sabbath, these things matter just as much to God as our focused allegiance and love.

These “rules” are not easy. And many times a God who is all up in our business is not easy not an easy God with whom to be in relationship. It may seem easier to pull away to desire an intermediary, to put space between us and God, so that we don’t have to really deal with the reality of the relationship, so we don’t have to deal with the reality of what is required of us. To put the church between us and God, allow the manual to be our guidelines. To set up a system that allows this relationship to be easier, more manageable, a system that does not quite require so much out of us. We don’t want to be direct in contact with a God who gives so much and asks so much. Who wants to have a finger in every aspect of our lives, who wants to have a say in all that we do and in how we act with each and every person in our lives. Who cares what we say, what we do, and how we act toward others. These rules, these expectations, these commandments demand too much. Let us find an easier way.

These ten commandments; only worship God, do not have and idols, keep the Sabbath holy, do not speak wrongly about God, honor your parents, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not speak wrongly of others, do not murder, and do not covet. Sound easy, but they are more than just a check list, they are a way of life. They are the backbone, the heart, the inner workings of a relationship with God. This is about loving God and loving neighbor, as a way of life, a complete and utter change that requires us to wholly commit all aspects of who we are and all the relationships in our lives, whether they be who we worship, our parents, our friends, our neighbors, they guy who pumps our gas or that lady we pass every day on our way to work, all our relationships, every part of our lives is handed over and given over to a new way a life, a way of life that may not be easy but a way of life that is what living a community that is in relationship with the God of the universe is.