The Ten Commandments 2025

 Friends, it’s another week of Stump the Preacher 2025, sermons requested by you and then researched and delivered by me. This week’s request came from our friend Terri, and she wanted to hear more about the ten commandments! Specifically, Terri had these questions: were these rules written just for the Hebrews, in their context, or are they general life advice? The answer to that question is “yes”, and you’re invited to stay to hear the rest! Terri was also curious about why the ten commandments are in the Bible in multiple different places, with different wording? Great questions, Terri! This is what Jesus meant when he advised us to love God with our whole MIND.

Oh boy, the ten commandments. The very first time I ever preached on those was back in 2012, in my first pastoral appointment, back when I was a wee baby minister. Back then, I commended the flock I was preaching to on their incredible bravery in listening to a sermon on this topic. 13 years later, y’all are no less brave. Preaching, or even just publicly talking about, the Ten Commandments, comes off as controversial. And not because of the actual content of these words. I assure you, I could find far greater controversy in the Bible. I could have some fun up here testing that theory. Rather, this topic comes off as controversial because of this never ending public dialogue about whether these rules, shared by our Christian and Jewish friends alike, apply to all of secular society, and whether these rules should be posted in schools, courtrooms, and other public buildings. In 2024, Louisiana became the first and only state to legally require the posting of the Ten Commandments on a poster in every public school classroom, but fifteen other states have drafted similar legislation. I long for the innocent days of yore, when I was nine and I memorized the ten commandments in Sunday School and earned a candy bar. But also, back in those innocent days, I rattled off the line “thou shalt not commit adultery” with absolutely no understanding of what that meant, with this implicit agreement with my teachers that I wouldn’t ask and they wouldn’t have to tell me. So it wasn’t the best, or most responsible, teaching of the ten commandments, all things considered.

To Terri’s first question: the history of these rules is complicated, as is any other theological topic. The Ten Commandments were first dictated to Moses by God on Mount Sinai over the course of “forty days and forty nights”, or the length of time I spend on the phone with my mom according to my kids. In a close read of the text, it seems Mount Sinai was considerably shorter than Mount Everest because, while Moses was talking to God, the Hebrews at the base could see smoke, thunder, and lightning at the peak. When Moses tried to come down to relay how it was going with God, the Hebrews were willing to hear, but also said, “yeah, bro, why don’t you stay, like, on that ledge, this ‘I’m talking to God’ stuff is freaking us out and we don’t want to catch it if you come down here.” All that said, the first we as the readers hear of the Ten Commandments comes shortly after the great exodus from Egypt, and in the context of a very long conversation between Moses and God about how life must be for the Hebrews if they are going to survive, with topics ranging from government structure to what Moses’ outfits should look like. It’s fair to say that the very first purpose of the ten commandments was to keep the Hebrews from killing each other. Have you ever gone on a long road trip with your kids? Yeah, now add 40 years to that. In the desert. On foot. After a slave revolt. “Don’t covet your neighbor’s ox” may be hard to apply to our world, but it prevented a knife fight from breaking out 5,000 years ago.

But the story evolves from there. As we know, things don’t go smoothly for Moses and the Hebrews. Moses comes down from Mount Sinai all excited to teach everyone the ten commandments only to see his brother at base camp leading the Golden Calf Conga. Moses gets so angry that he throws and breaks his tablets, the first written record of the ten commandments. Shortly after that fiasco, God appoints a special tent for chats with Moses. God instructs Moses to make new tablets, to try not to hulk out and smash them this time, and reiterates the ten commandments, but this time puts them deeper in the context of protecting the Hebrew religion and culture from getting lost while the Hebrews interact with neighboring tribes. “Remember, while you chat with the other kids in the sandbox, who you are.”

And the story keeps going. God gives many more laws to Moses and the Hebrews, and there are varying points where these laws sound similar to the ten commandments: “don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.” And God adds many laws that modern Christians and our reformed Jewish friends don’t tend to keep, but that our more conservative Jewish friends do still uphold, laws about unclean food, inappropriate clothing materials, and improper farming. Were those rules meant to apply for all of time? Or is it ok for me to eat pork and shellfish now? Right in the midst of these teachings about not mixing unlike elements in life, God also tells Moses not to let men be with men the way they are with women, and some of our friends now take those words as God saying that being gay is a sin. Pastor Natalie thinks that’s a huge misinterpretation, but what I really need you to hear is that the way we read and teach this stuff matters, because it affects real people, right now.

After all of Leviticus and Numbers go by, Moses proclaims the ten commandments one more time, in Deuteronomy chapter 5. At this point, many years have passed since Moses first received the ten commandments. He’s no longer teaching these rules to the folks who left Egypt with him, but rather to their children. He’s nearing the end of his life, and God has told him the end of the line is coming, and he won’t be setting foot in the promised land. These are among the last teachings he ever imparts on the folks he’s been leading in the desert. 

So, were these rules meant to keep the Hebrews out of trouble, or are they for us, too? Yes. They protected our ancestors at a time when they were such babies in the world that God needed to cover all the outlets and put gates in front of the stairs. But they also protect us, in a world where we get into a lot of danger by straying from our identity and our core beliefs. But, also, we don’t need to keep hearing these words the way Moses first heard them. Moses repeated these rules three different ways for a reason, because the folks around him needed to hear them differently. The same is often true for us, and that’s ok. The ten commandments can cause a lot of confusion and misunderstanding for us otherwise, if we don’t breathe new life into them. Honor my father and mother? What if our parents are no longer living? What if our parents weren’t exactly Mike and Carol Brady? Don’t covet your neighbor’s ox? Ok, cool, my neighbor’s livestock is pretty unappealing to me, but man am I jealous that they have the new iPhone. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain? What does that mean, and did I break that one the last time I stubbed my toe on the couch? Because that really hurt. Don’t kill? Where does life begin?

To that end, I’m concluding this sermon by sharing a modern rewording of the ten commandments that a friend and colleague of mine named Anne Blaedel penned several years ago:

1. Practice Loyalty to the Sacred

2. Remember every image of God is only a glimpse

3. Do not use God's name to do harm

4. Do not allow productivity to dominate life

5. Care for those who have cared for you and honor those who have paved your way

6. Do not be unnecessarily destructive

7. Be faithful to the commitments you make

8. Do not take what does not belong to you

9. Do not hinder justice from coming to fruition

10. Do not use power over others to get what you want

Amen.