What Makes the 10 Commandments Special?

Bow, shout, not. What do you think of when you hear those words? Well, probably the 10 Commandments. Even if you know very little about the Bible, you've likely heard Dao Shama Kill, Da Shama Steel,

honor your mother and father. The 10 Commandments are everywhere. They're in our movies, are literature. They're even engraved on public monuments. The 10 Commandments are central to our life now.

The more importantly, they were central to the story of ancient Israel. But surprisingly in the Bible, they're not introduced as the 10 Commandments. Instead, they're called. Ah, set it, a delivery, which means the 10 weren't. So this new podcast series is on the 10 words.

So they're not 10 Divine Commands dropped out of heaven for all people of all time. They were spoken at a moment in time in place in history in the context of a relationship. After God gives the 10 words, he gives hundreds of laws, to ancient Israel. 613 to be exact.

And these laws are about all sorts of things,

“from what animals to eat, to how do we treat widows and orphans?”

But the 10 words come first and they're treated as foundational. These 10 are also the only ones that are said to be written on the two tablets, etched on stone by the finger of God. The stories inviting us to see these 10 as a uniquely pure expression of the will of God. For his people.

The 10 words are so central to Israel's identity that they become this ongoing litmus test for how well they are relating to God and others.

The prophets take the 10 Commandments as this essential base of the covenant partnership.

How do you know if Israel's doing well or not? How are you doing with the 10? Let's not even talk about the hundreds. Let's talk about the 10. In many of the teachings of Jesus, including the similar amount,

he references and builds on the 10 Commandments. And when the rich young ruler asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life, guess where he points him. Jesus says, "Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't bear false witness on your father or mother."

The 10 function as this foundational statement of immense expansive wisdom. In Jesus' mind, these 10 show you the way to life of God's new creation. Today, Tim Mackey and I begin a new series on the 10 Commandments, or as we'll call them the 10 words. Thanks for joining us.

Here we go. Hello, Tim. Hmm. John Collins. Hello to you.

Today, we begin a new journey. We do. It's an exciting day.

I mean, this is always exciting days when we start a new series.

So we are doing a series that has been long requested. Both externally by people in our audience, but also internally by our people on our team have been encouraging us to move towards this topic theme in the Bible. Yeah, we're starting it today. Hmm.

This is the 10 Commandments. Yeah, which isn't a theme. The 10 Commandments is just their 10 laws. Yeah, in the Torah. That's right. But you're also going to show us how the idea of the command of God is a theme.

That's right. So we'll look at that. Yeah. And then we're just going to go through the 10. And I kind of imagined, here's what I expect.

Hmm. I expect all 10 of the commandments to themselves become little mini-themed journeys. Hmm. Yeah. Yep, ways of thinking about the story of the whole Bible.

Yeah. Yeah. Probably the 10 Commandments rank up there among the most well-known things associated with the Bible. Even for people who haven't grown up around the Bible, they don't read the Bible. It's not a part of their family history, personal, whatever journey.

They probably know. They know about the 10 Commandments. There's this thing called the 10 Commandments and that it's in the Bible. Probably. And in terms of Christian culture, it ranks up there with like the Adam and Eve story.

Jesus serving on the Mount in the 10 Commandments. Hmm. Yeah. Just kind of the basic.

“But surprisingly, it's hard to remember all 10.”

Oh, right. It's hard to remember 10 of anything. [laughs] They kind of as this isn't it. Yeah.

Seven is a little easier. Like a phone number. Yeah. About 10, right? There's some brain science principle I work with.

Oh, I think. Okay. But anyway, 10. It's hard to remember all 10. Do you want to do pop quiz right now?

Put you in the hot sea. Oh, boy. Well, I just, you brought up this point. Yeah, you could help illustrate it for me. Yeah, yeah.

I'll be a live illustration of how. [laughs] John Collins, what?

“Do you remember what the 10 Commandments are?”

I'm okay. Should I do with Balshouts or do not?

See, I don't even know what the first one is.

Okay, spoiler alert.

I failed miserably.

So we're not going to listen to me, fumble, through it.

“However, we thought, how would other people in the office do with the pop quiz?”

Of what are the 10 Commandments? So we're walking around about Project Office. Here is Danny. My mother. It takes care of our patrons.

I'm John. How many of the 10 Commandments do you think you know? I hope I could say them all. Do not lie. Do not steal.

Do not covet. Do not commit adultery. Is that in there? Yeah. And I haven't read that for a while.

This is the sound stage. And Luke should be in there. Okay, man. How confident do you feel about listening to 10 Commandments? Oh, shoot.

No, they're gods before me. Sabbath day. A Bayer parents. Shown up murder. Shown up steel.

Is that? Oh, oh, Lord's name in vain, right? Isn't that one? Yeah. One of my missing.

Faring Pulse witness.

Oh, everyone's got to forget that.

Faring Pulse witness. Who even knows what that is? Oh, this is Rose. Hey, John. So I'm going to set you up to fail.

I'm sorry. Oh, no. We're going to try to list as many of the 10 Commandments as you think you might know. There's definitely a shout-out kill on your parents. No idols.

No bearing false witness. Did I say lying? Is that all? There's no lying. Yeah.

Tank Commandments. Yeah. Can you list them? All 10? You seem like a guy knows them.

Really? I am a P.K. after all. Yeah. I think the love you're God. God.

Yeah. No idols. Yeah.

Which do you kind of seem like the same to me?

Ooh, bonus points. Some people think that's one command. Oh, man. Get me on this podcast more often. Oh, it's my bugger site.

“How many of the 10 Commandments do you think you know?”

I think I can confidently do like four. I'm going to start with the easy one. Do not murder. Don't want to kill anybody. Do not covet.

Honor your mother and father. No other gods before me. Okay, there's the four coffin at once. Don't commit adultery here. And blank from there.

Good job. Fifty percent. That isn't F. Here's the third. Hey, John.

Okay. Tank Commandments. How many do you think you know? I think I can get a passing group. Okay.

Let's go. No other god before me. Okay. No grave and images. No name and vague.

Keep the Sabbath. Honor your father and mother. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Okay.

Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Last one. Do not covet. Your neighbors helped me.

No. Wow. Do I win anything? Uh, yes. What is his prize?

I won't leave my desk. I have mine. That's what I think it's gonna be.

“Okay, so here's the quick list again in order.”

No weather gods before me. Number one. Number two. Do not make idols. Number three.

No carry. The name of the Lord in vain. Number four. Keep the Sabbath. Number five.

Honor your father and mother. Number six. Don't murder. Number seven. Don't commit adultery.

Number eight. Don't steal. Number nine. Don't offer false testimony. And number 10.

Don't covet. That is, don't desire. What belongs to your neighbor. Correct. Number three.

Number 10. The big 10. Here's an interesting factoid for the majority of the history of these commands being in the Bible of both Jewish and Christian traditions. For the majority of their history, they are not called the 10 commandments.

Oh, that's a modern innovation in history of referring to them. The majority of their Christian history as long as it's been in Greek, which is still how many followers of Jesus refer to them today, as called the Decalogue, which comes from a compound Greek word Deca, which is 10, and then Logos, which is word. The 10 words.

10 words. Yeah. Decalogue. That's cool. Yep.

The 10 words. And that is actually a Greek translation of the Hebrew way of referring to this, which in Hebrew is the Acerate Haddevarine, which means the 10 words. And the reason why that title has lived on in both Jewish and Christian traditions is because it's how they're referred to in the Bible.

That's actually what the Bible calls them in the word. Yep. Yeah. Totally. So just real quick, Exodus 34, verse 27, the Lord said, "Demoses write down these words and

He's referring to the words that were spoken, like the 10 words, write down these words, hadevarine, for in accordance with these words, I've made a covenant with you and with this real." So Moses was with the Lord 40 days and 40 nights, didn't read or drink water, and he wrote on the tablets, the words of the covenant, the 10 words, but it gets translated in the

Bible, English, just commandments, and so this is repeated, but it's not technically 10 words, there's many words. Oh, right. Okay. So in Hebrew, Devar is the singular, downerine, matters.

It can refer to the spoken word, but it can also refer, it's a meta word, referring to abstract category of thing. Yeah. It's kind of like a word thing. Okay.

Interesting. The same word for word and thing is one word in Hebrew, just Devar. Okay. There's the separate word for command, mitspa, and so it's a bit of a misnomer to call them the 10 commandments, but they are commandments.

“But they are commandments, so it's not like wrong, but I think we miss something.”

Okay. I don't see what we're missing. Okay. Well, let's talk about that one. Right.

So, first of all, let's just note, in the history of English Bible translation, the pioneer

is John Wickliffe in the, like, 14th century, we're like in the mid-late 1300s. Yeah. It was the Wickliffe Bible that made that myth. Okay. To translate us commandment.

So the difference is important, though, because every mitspa in Hebrew command is a word is spoken word, but not every word is a command. Right? No, everything that God says is a command or not everything someone says is a command. Both.

Right. Yeah. Okay. We speak a lot of words, not all of them are commands.

“So I think it's just interesting that these 10 words are referred to.”

When the first time they're referred to as a bundle, it's a thing.

They're referred to as devar, which means that they're words spoken in the context of a covenant partnership. And if we're going to see, the 10 commandments don't come out of nowhere. They occur at a moment in God's relationship with a group of people that he invites into a covenant partnership.

But the point is that the word used to describe these 10 things isn't command. It's words. Words spoken from one person to another in the context of making the partnership. Now, those words are going to be about the terms of how we relate, like when a couple is getting married and they say their vows to each other, those are words.

And they're binding on each other's behavior, right? When I said my vows to my wife, like in our wedding, those are words that I was putting on myself. We don't call them the marriage commands. No, we call them vows.

Come vows. Things that I'm going to do. Now actually, it's a little different because in my wedding, I said what I was going to do. And then she said what she was going to do.

She didn't tell me what to do. And I didn't tell her what to do. And that is what the 10 words are. It's God telling Israel. That is real.

What to do. Yeah. And God doesn't say, in that moment, what God's going to do, that we does in the many words around the 10. So I'm not saying commands is wrong.

I just want to introduce this little point. They're not referred to as the 10 commands in the Bible. You're saying there's something significant, the Bible itself doesn't call them commands, calls them words. Doesn't call them commands in the first context of the being named.

We're going to flesh out why command is one way you can refer to these words. But they're introduced as words. Yep. And that language gives you, it sounds like, a little bit of freedom to step back and

“then ask yourself, what's the context for these words?”

Yeah. What's the story we're in? Totally. The 10 words were spoken at a time in a place, in a context. And a constant interplay we're going to be seeing is that these 10 words were seen and

intended to have a broad universal invitation to all people of all places to think about the will and purpose of God for a human life. But at the same time, these words appeared out of a moment in a story with God in a particular people at a time in place in history.

And that's also a crucial part of what they mean.

Okay. So they're not 10 divine commands dropped out of heaven for all people of all time. They were spoken at a moment in time in the context of a relationship. But what God said in that moment with that one people actually has immense wisdom to offer all people of all times.

So maybe what I'm after here is that these 10 words occur within specific context and to really get their full significance, I think, means honoring that story and seeing what they mean there first. Yeah, I think I'm also hearing that by using this new language, it's an opportunity to think about them in a fresh way.

When you talk about them as commands, you think about them as a checklist. But when you talk about them with this new language of the 10 words, now you're open to thinking about them in a new way, perhaps a way of being, a way of relating to each other

Yeah, so it might feel new. My point is that this is actually the oldest way, it's to call them in the 10 words, that actually what God calls them, it's what the narrator of the Torah calls them. But for us, it's new. And I guess maybe it's also the dynamic of translation that we've talked about, how to translate

ancient biblical texts in other languages in the modern languages, and that's a dynamic process. And sometimes what have become familiar ways of referring or talking about things in the Bible, things can become unfamiliar, or as some co-workers say, it's the familiarity kills wonder. And the unknowing is the way back.

I know the way back. Yeah, an unknowing sometimes means finding other words to translate old biblical concepts. So we hear them in a new way. And you want us to unknow these 10 commandments in a way. Yeah.

These are very familiar. And I don't want to overstate this because one way to think about them is God commanding a group of people and telling them what to do. Yeah. That is one way to think about it.

Hey, everyone. Stop killing each other. Yeah. So, how about this? Let's just let that point be.

Yeah. And let's see if it bears any fruit later. Bears any fruit throughout the conversation.

The first title for these 10 things within the Bible itself before got rebranded.

We're got rebranded by John Wickliffe in the English translation tradition. This 10 commandments is the 10 words.

“Do you know that the Bible that had calmed the 10 commandments?”

I didn't know that. Yeah, it's a mis-translation. Oh, my goodness. So what's the real thing? The 10 words.

10 words. Wow. I got a word for you. I know that they're not introduced as the 10 commandments in the Bible. I didn't know that.

Do you know what they were introduced to us? Oh. So you guessed. God's greatest hits. The 10 greatest hits?

Yeah. The 10 life lessons. The 10 words. Yeah. The 10 words.

They're called the 10 words. Wow. Okay. Did you know that the Bible doesn't introduce them as the 10 commandments? What do you think it is?

The 10 articles of Confederation. One unique thing about this list of 10 words is that they are repeated two times in

the Torah and the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

The list of 10 is found in Exodus 20 verses 11 to 17. And then it's also found in Deuteronomy chapter 5. So remember, Deuteronomy is Moses' speech to the second generation that came out of Egypt. And he's actually reminding them the significance of the moment that their parents' experience, but they were kids.

Yeah. So you know, kind of like reminding them of this thing that happened. Do you find we're both in the child raising years? Our kids are in the teenage era. Do you find yourself reminding them of things from their early childhood that they have

already forgotten? Yeah, I was just talking to my oldest about his kindergarten experience. And I realized he had largely forgotten a lot of it. Yeah, I'm interesting. And it's only bad.

I've forgotten about my parents' experience. Yeah, it's totally. But I didn't realize how early that begins to fade from the memory.

“I think that's what I'm trying tension to.”

Yeah. I've noticed that too. Certainly, I don't remember vast amounts of my childhood, but I was really struck by how early that process begins. Right.

Like you just said. Yeah. So anyway, Moses is reminding the children of the Exodus generation what they experienced when they were all of Mount Sinai three months later. So he repeats the 10 commandments, almost verbatim, but not identical.

We'll talk about that along the way. What's interesting is they're, remember, they're referred to within the Bible by God and the narrator as the 10.

But the narrator or God when God says them in Exodus 20 doesn't say number one, the first

command, the second command, kind of like the seven days of Genesis that each end with day one, day two, day three, yeah. The numbering isn't given, yeah, explicitly, you gotta do yourself. You gotta do it yourself, and incidentally, it's kind of hard. Yeah, and we talked about this too.

Yes. So some traditions, Jewish and Christian have taken, don't have any other gods and don't make idols as a twin expression of a single command.

“But if you do that, you have to go find nine more, and there is something very interesting.”

The last command, do not covet the verb, do not covet is repeated twice in that command. Yep. That's right. And it's either don't covet your neighbor's wife, and do not covet your neighbor's house or donkey, ox or, so you can split those into two, right?

So if you take no other gods and no idols as one, you can actually find nine more things

in the list. You can split covet into two. Yep. That's right. Take no other gods and no idols as separate as one and two, and then you just bundle

together the two repetitions of do not covet as a single command. All that to say is there's actually 11 verbs. Oh, 11 sentences, but they're called the 10. Okay. So that's interesting.

Here's another thing that sets them apart, actually within the story itself. There's, we know hundreds of commands that God speaks to Israel in Mount Sinai. These 10 are the first. These 10 are also the only ones that are said to be written on the two tablets. Yeah.

The famous stone tablets. Okay.

I've wondered about that.

“Like are the rest of the commands written on other tablets?”

Right. We don't know. No. What we're told is that they were written on scroll. Oh.

Okay. Like separate. So there's something about these 10 that are set apart. They're etched on stone, and interestingly, they are etched on stone by the finger of God. Very interesting.

So back to Exodus 34, where Moses was up on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. And what we get was, and he wrote on the tablets, the words of the covenant, the 10 words. So what we heard was Moses was there with Yahweh, 40 days and 40 nights, and he wrote on the tablets. Okay.

So interesting, then, is when you get to another moment in the story, and it's when Moses goes down from the mountain when the people have made the golden calf. Break in the first. Yes. That's right.

Exodus 32, 15. Moses went down the mountain. The two tablets were in his hand. Okay. Tablets written on their two sides on the front, and on the back, it's double sided.

Very interesting. So that little detail has spawned the whole history of discussion. And how were the 10 distributed on the tablets? Yeah. Interesting.

There's no easy way to do that. If you just have two tablets, single sided, five and five. Five and five. Five and five. Right.

But we're explicitly told it wasn't five and five on each because they're on front and back.

“It's like, is it two on the front, is it three on the back?”

So it could be that it's all 10 on each. You got a copy. You got one tablet with all 10, one tablet on each. So it could be that, and there's a rabbit hole, there's precedent, trthinking that. Okay.

And it makes sense. Yeah, there's like Israel's copy, and there's God's copy. Okay. Well, we're next to all that, however. Exodus 32, 16.

Those tablets were the work of God. And the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. So that's actually saying somehow, these tablets were uniquely inscribed. And this links back to the end of Exodus 31 when Yahweh finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai.

He gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony tablets of stone written by the finger of God. Now what does that mean written by the finger of God? This is a great mystery. Yeah. But the story is inviting us to see these 10 as like a uniquely pure expression of the will of God

for his people. So much so that it's unmediated. I mean, Moses the one carrying it down. Right? Right.

That Moses didn't carve it in. Yeah. Finger of God. Yeah. Carved it in.

The divine agency was uniquely intensified in the writing of these 10. Interesting. I mean, this is probably the thing that sets the 10 apart the most. Okay. Really hearing a pristine pure statement of the will of God in these 10 in a way that's

different from all the other hundreds. Remember, we've had discussions like when we're talking about Deuteronomy and they'll be these laws and it's like, well, if a guy is fighting with another guy and they stumble

and fall and then they end up like hitting a pregnant woman sitting, but here's what you

do. Yeah. Sometimes people are screwed up, they're going to do terrible things to each other.

“And what does God's will look like as a form of damage control in an already bad situation?”

But the 10 commands kind of work upstream of all that and they're just, they're working at almost the source of human reflection about right and wrong and good and bad. And this finger of God description is I think trying to draw our attention to that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it seems like these 10, there's something pretty grand about them that

sets them apart. It's a shorter list that feels like it gives a pretty complete picture of what it means

That's right.

“Now, that doesn't mean Israel's not going to need any other laws kind of dig in deeper.”

Yeah. But there's something about the 10. Something about the 10. And so think about what they cover. They cover the human relationship to God, don't have any other gods.

Yeah. Carry his name. Yep. Carry his name. Don't worship idols.

Keep the Sabbath because the Sabbath belongs to God. Okay. Let's we'll get there later on in these conversations. But the Sabbath is something that belongs to God and you're doing right by God when you keep it.

When you keep it.

So the first four are all explicitly in relationship to God.

Five is this interesting hinge, honor your father and mother. So you're relating to humans. Your father and mother. Yeah. But then it says, so that life will go well for you in the land.

And as you read on to the Torah, it's God who will give goodness in life to the people of Israel and the land. So that could have bred honor God so that life will go well for you in the land. Exactly. Interesting hinge where the way that you honor God is by honoring father and mother.

It's an interesting hinge. So first four are how you relate to God. And then the fifth is this hinge where how you relate to God is bound up with how you relate to humans, specifically the two humans who burst you into the world. Yeah.

And then it pivots. The last set of five are about how you relate to your neighbor, other humans. So don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't offer false witness, and

don't desire what belongs to your neighbor.

So what's not covered in the ten?

“Like really, what area of human relationships isn't covered?”

You're saying if we came up with any sort of scenario of like something going awry, human relationship, you could bring it back to more in relationship with God. Yeah. That's because of one of these ten. Yeah, essentially.

Okay. Maybe I'll just throw that out there to say, though, be a cool thing to meditate on, go for a round or a walk, hang out with some friends. What about road rage? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Ah, okay. It's fantastic. I think if we have learned how to meditate on the commands from Jesus, he would say that falls under the wisdom contained in denominator. And you are raging at someone on the road and you're hatred for them is spilling up

out of you. Yeah. Yeah. Verbal abuse. Yeah.

Which could turn into the fist, finger, the total shouting.

Yeah. That's right. That's a type of content. Yeah. In fact, here, I was going to say this later, but I'll bring it up now.

Okay. I was really helped by an excellent book by he revival scholar Patrick Miller, just called the Ten Commandments. He was written near the end of a long, very productive career as a survival scholar. And he saved his book on the Ten Commandments for last.

Okay. It's a radical book. In his introduction, he names kind of the persistent, challenging issues that Jewish and Christian communities have had in interpreting the Ten Commandments and making them relevant throughout history.

And one of those is noticing that the commands have both an explicit meaning. But then each of them also contains an implicit meaning. So some commands are negative. They're prohibitions. Don't do X.

Don't make idols. Yeah. Don't have any other gods. Don't murder or don't commit adultery. But some of them are positive.

So do honor your parents. Some of them have both. Do remember the Sabbath. Don't do any work on the Sabbath. Okay.

So what that invites you to begin thinking is that any negative command also implies a positive. And then every positive command implies a negative as it were.

“So not worshiping other gods, the inverse of that is do give your total allegiance, right?”

To God. So don't worship other gods seems very clear and focused. But once you flip it, it's like a wide open world. What does it mean to give your allegiance to God? Yeah.

That's a bigger way bigger. Yes. So do not murder. Do make it one of your main concerns to protect the well-being of your neighbor, protect the life and well-being, which is way more open-ended.

That's the key. That's the key. That's the key. Yeah. So when you go from negative to positive, the positive just like really opens it wide up.

When you go from positive to negative, it usually goes from general to specific. Makes it feel very simple. Yeah. So it's just saying that the commands have an implicit and explicit meaning.

And in a way, once you flip from explicit to implicit.

When you allow yourself to flip, yeah.

“Do not murder into how do I respect and love an image God in others, which is the opposite”

of destroying their life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now you're in a much grander territory.

Yeah. Do not commit adultery. That is taking advantage of and ruining someone else's covenant partnership with marriage. So if you flip it, do proactively support, encourage, create a culture where marriage covenant partnerships can thrive and be healthy.

Mm-hmm. Interesting to flip that one. Once you do that, all of a sudden the ten cover almost everything.

“What do you think the difference between a commandment and a word is?”

A word sounds much more like a sage, it's wisdom, it's intentional to live by as a deeper reason than commandments, you know, kind of point in your finger at you. It makes it a lot more simple and less right or wrong structure attached to it. Got a thorny word that we kind of put when we say laws come in and that's kind of a scary intense word.

Around that part of the Bible, it often feels very lawful, it's like here are the laws you have to follow. To change that mindset of it's not necessarily a law but words to follow. It feels just as important but less like I'm following a set of rules but more of a guideline from how I live in my life.

Within the Hebrew Bible, these ten are brought up regularly, so Joseah, for example, the Prophet Joseah chapter four reads, "Children of Israel here, the word of Yahweh, Yahweh has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There's no faithfulness, there's no loyalty, there's no knowing God in this land."

So the covenant has been violated. There's swearing and lying, there's murdering, there's stealing, there's adultery, it's all breaking out and bloodshed, follows bloodshed. So that's a little short, let's write there. You list what four or five of them?

Yeah, swearing and lying are bound up and don't offer false testimony. The same ideas, same words for murder, steel, adultery and in fact, those three are next to each other in the ten. Jeremiah, century and a half later, after Joseah, is in the Jerusalem temple, haranging, haranging. Yeah, yeah, I picked up that word recently.

Yeah, what does that word mean? It's kind of like you're critiquing someone in a kind of louder way to get other peoples attention in on the criticism, haranging, haranging, you're criticizing loudly to get people to participate. Yeah, you want to create some peer pressure around this situation.

That's a good word, yeah, haranging, so he's haranging specifically the leaders of Israel that are in and around the temple and he says, "You are relying on deceitful words without benefit, will you go on stealing, will you murder, will you commit adultery, will you swear falsely, will you make offerings to the ball, will you go after other gods, whom you haven't known and then come stand before me at this temple, which is called by my name and say,

yeah, we're good to go, we're safe doing all the stuff, yeah, always good with us, so

you can see the logic of how he's operating here.

“The point is that the prophets take the 10 commandments as kind of this essential base,”

like base camp of the covenant partnership. How do you know if Israel's doing well or not in maintaining faithfulness to the covenant partnership? How are you doing with the 10? How are you doing with the 10?

Yeah. Like, let's not even talk about the hundreds, let's talk about the 10. Yeah.

Jesus himself referenced the 10 in arguably the most important condensed form of moral reflection

in Jesus' house, unlike what is good and what is bad in the sermon on the Mount and we actually spent many months working through these things. So you've heard it said, don't commit murder, and Jesus says, that's right, and then he says, and I say to you, whoever has road rage, that his neighbor is guilty, right, of breaking one of the 10, he quotes adultery in the same way.

There's an interesting story when a wealthy guy comes to Jesus and says, what do I need

And Jesus says, why are you asking me this question? Why are you asking me about what is good? Listen, there is one who is good, source of all goodness, implied my father, but if you really need me to tell you something, I'll tell you, keep the commandments, now he doesn't even say the 10, he just says, keep the commands, which could be all of them.

Yeah.

“And that's why the guy says, well, what's once?”

And Jesus says, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't bear false witness on your father and mother.

I don't always start with those, but big 10.

Yeah. So he quotes six of the 10, no, excuse me, five. That's five. Yeah. He focuses on the human relationship.

Yes. Yeah, he quotes on the hinge with on your father and mother, and then on the second set. Yeah. So clearly, for Jesus, this is also based camp, like all reflection about what is good

and not good for Israel needs to go back to the 10. And just in case, we're tempted to think this is just a Israel thing, the apostles, you know, that Jesus commissioned also regularly referred to the 10, Paul the Apostle. Does this, like in Romans in Romans chapter 13, he'll say, listen, these commands, don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't covet, those all are valid.

And then he says, if there is any other commandment, then it is summed up in this statement, you will love your neighbors yourself. So he wants to go from the hundreds to the 10 to the one, to the one, yeah, yeah, which is what Jesus to move that Jesus pulled, yeah, that's right, yeah. So Paul quotes on your father and mother, when he's writing to children in the house

churches of Ephesus, that's interesting, letter to the Ephesians. Like, as my point is, just this, the 10 have a vital foundational status, both within He revival and in the teaching of Jesus and in the teaching of the Apostles. So for what it means for followers of Jesus today, to be looking at all Scripture as a unified story that leads to Jesus, the 10 are important.

They're an important home base for ethical moral reflection.

“And they've played a key role in church history in teaching people like, what is good?”

And so when you think of them as just commands, it's really focusing on, so I check these off the list, you know, I want to make sure I'm doing them. It's kind of like the rich young ruler just being like, I want to make sure I got the checklist done. Yeah.

And when you think of them as words, this thing that you started showing us about, you can invert them. Yeah, flip over. Flip them over. And you can mind them and you can find this kind of deep wisdom in them, like, calling

it a word kind of gives it more space for that. Yeah, have a wider, yep, wider, significant. And then you can see what Jesus is doing then. You've heard it said, do not commit murder. If you think of that as a command, then that seems pretty cut and dry.

Let's think of it as something bigger. Yeah. As a word. Yeah. And let's flip it over.

And you call someone a fool when you hate someone. Yeah. Aren't you breaking that command as well.

And suddenly, yeah, these become basically.

Yep. Yeah. That's right. The ten function is this kind of, like, foundational statement of immense, expansive wisdom about what is the good.

In Jesus' mind, these ten show you the way to life of cuts in your creation. When the guy says, oh, yeah. What must I do to inherit eternal life? And inherit, yeah, life of the A of God's new age of infinite life in abundance. What's the kind of life patterns and habits that lead to that outcome that allow me to

participate now? It's so funny because you could think of the ten as, like, simplifying life. But the way Jesus thinks about it is so full. Right. Okay.

So we didn't finish that story. But in Jesus' mind, meditating on the ten should have, is to just let this guy to realize he was, he's trusting in his stuff too much.

“And you're like, whoa, how'd you get there from the ten?”

Yeah. And then as he goes on in the sermon on the mount, we find out that how you relate to your stuff, which he calls mom-man, the thing in which you trust, is in competition to your loyalty to God.

And so all of a sudden, the first command don't have any other gods.

And Jesus' mind should have led this guy to realize I need to get rid of some of my stuff.

I need to get rid of all of my stuff. Oh, my stuff.

And in my mind, we might go, whoa, how'd you get there from the first command?

“But I think that's what it means to see the ten as the core of it's the diamond with so”

many facets. It's the jewel that every time you flip it, turn it from negative positive positive negative. You look at these ten facets of the diamond and you will see the whole of a human life unfold out of these ten.

That seems to be how Jesus viewed these commands and he's not alone in that. We've also used the metaphor of base camp a few times and it's a cool metaphor. Yeah. Generations of climbers have tried all the approaches to some of this thing. But this base camp reflects the wisdom of the generations, the best way to the top.

You really want to get to the top? Yeah.

You need to start and turn it in.

Yeah. Start from here. Not over there. Not on the other side. But you don't end up here.

You don't end up with just like checking off the ten. You end up in a pretty cosmic place. Yes. You're giving away all your stuff. Yeah.

Or you're doing some pretty radical like that. Yeah. Yeah. So again, maybe just we could conclude by flipping each of these. When the guy says, what must I do to obtain eternal life, what he's asking is, what are

the kinds of human behaviors that participate in or that anticipate what kind of world God has in store in a fully restored creation?

“What's the kind of life like what kind of life will we lead?”

So well, we won't kill each other. Okay. But flip it over and you're like, what would a creation look like where the life of every creature, one of the central focuses of every life was to protect and value and support every other life?

The ten commandments are a way of thinking about the life that we will lead in the creation. Yeah. The ten words. The ten words.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week we'll continue in the study of the ten commandments. Now before we go directly to the ten commandments, read them one by one, we're going to do a short study on the theme of the commands of God. What does it mean to listen to God's voice?

What does it mean for God to tell humans what to do?

“And it just so happens, the first time God instructs humans about anything is on page one”

of the Bible. But it's not called a command. Be fruitful, do multiply, do fills land, subdue it, and rule it. They're called blessings, words of blessing.

So the first directives God gives to the humans are essentially imitate the divine life.

So the first time God tells anybody what to do, it's a blessing. Bible Project is a crowdfunding nonprofit and we exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. Everything that we make is free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you.

Thank you so much for being a part of this with us. Hi, my name is Ryan. Emily, Aaron, Carrey, and we are from the colony Texas. We first heard about Bible Projects a couple years ago when our pastor used one of the videos in his sermon and ever since we have been using the Bible Project videos and podcasts

in our family, Bible Studies and I even used some of the videos in my personal science at a private Christian school and I used the videos for a lot of the lessons about environmental issues. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. Bible Project is a nonprofit funded by people like me.

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That's one of the tools I get to help build. My favorite thing about working at BibleProject is getting to see behind the curtain and discovering that this group of people truly practices what they preach from top to bottom. We don't just study the Bible, we live it out in our company practices. There's a whole team of us that help make the podcast happen every week for a full list

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