Priestly Kingdom: Standing in the Presence of God

Have you seen those billboards that have popped up next to major thoroughfares that say things like, "If you keep taking my name in vain, I'll make rush hour longer," or "What part of ‘Thou shalt not' don't you understand?" and signed simply, "God"? It is interesting stuff.[i]

No doubt you are familiar with the political controversies concerning public displays of the Ten Commandments on government property. Anyone who has been breathing oxygen over the past few years knows about Judge Roy Moore, the now-removed chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and one-time candidate for the U.S. Senate, who waged and lost a stubborn fight to keep a Ten Commandments monument in his courthouse. Now whether you are a supporter or not, do you realize just how much this monument of his weighs: 5,280 pounds, or just over 500 pounds per commandment.

Judge Moore lugged this hefty monster around from one public appearance to another on the back of a flatbed truck. Joshua Green, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, notes that whenever the truck returns to Alabama, "a 57- foot yellow I-beam crane that spans the ceiling of the Clark Memorials warehouse drops down to retrieve the Rock from its chariot, and even this one—a five-ton crane! —buckles visibly under the weight." I know that Jesus once scolded the Pharisees for neglecting the weightier matters of the law, but somehow this I-beam-bending version of the Decalogue seems way out of proportion.

In the popular religious consciousness, the Ten Commandments have somehow become burdens, weights, and heavy obligations. For many, the commandments are encumbrances on personal behavior. Most people cannot name all, but they are persuaded that at the center of each one is a finger-wagging "thou shalt not." For others, the commandments are heavy yokes to be publicly placed on necks of a rebellious society. For such an understanding the Ten Commandments, a two-and-a-half-ton rock sitting on bed of a truck is a perfect symbol. We've forgotten that Babylonians' gods were heavy idols that had to be trucked around. "These things you carry," Isaiah jabbed, "are load are loaded as burdens on weary animals" ()[ii]

In many ways, these commandments have become for us a heavy burden that we carry around our necks or upon our shoulders. At times they have become the litmus test for determining who is in and who is out of the kingdom of God. Like Santa Claus, we believe that God has a good list for those who know and keep the commandments, and a naughty list for those who tend to ignore or break them. And like that jolly fellow, we like helping God check that list more than twice.

However, we forget that Paul, the Pharisee among Pharisees was able to keep them to the letter, but after experiencing the grace of God in Jesus Christ, admits that the very fact that he was a keeper of the law to the letter made him a sinner. The Ten Commandments did not provide him the favor of God that he sought. It is impossible to do and misses the point of them altogether.

Last week’s sermon was a preface for this miniseries on the Ten Commandments. My point in that sermon was that before we can begin to look at the Ten Commandments in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, we must first hear the words of promise that are found in chapter nineteen. There, God reminded the people of not only who he was, and what he had done for them: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.[iii]

Before God lays claim on our behavior he first enters a relationship with us. When the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, found themselves enslaved under the tyranny of Pharaoh, in Egypt, he heard their cries for help. God came to them, raised up from them a leader, and through that leader displayed power and might. In doing so, he gained the peoples freedom, led them out of Egypt to the foot of Mt. Sinai. He refers his delivering them as being lifted up and carried on eagle’s wings. Now, he calls them his treasured possession, his precious people. He is their God. He is their savior. He is their deliverer. And he looks upon them as a people to be cherished.

Not only that, but he will set them apart from the other nations as a holy people, a chosen people, God’s special nation whose purpose is to reveal to the world God’s love, grace, mercy and power. As all the nations would be blessed through Abraham, so the nations will come to know God through this new covenant people. They will have a special place among the nations not to lord it over them, but to be a witness, a light, a beacon of salvation for the world.

How will they do that? By being a Priestly People. Peter in his letter to the churches called them the Priestly people, and the reformers referred to the church as the Priesthood of all believers. We are all priests. The church is a priesthood of believers.

What does a priest do? A priest represents the people before God, and God before the people. The priest stands between the two. The nation of Israel and the Church stand between God and the world. We represent the world as we stand in the presence of the Almighty, and we represent the presence of the Almighty to the world.

And we do that through adherence to the Ten Commandments. Because they represent the character of one who is a priest for God, they are not to be understood as burdens, or a litmus test of good behavior. Rather, they are the characteristics of one who is in a relationship with, one who has covenanted with God.

When a couple enter into a marriage arrangement, we refer to that as a covenant. The couple make promises to one another—promises of fidelity, support, commitment, and love. These promises are not burdens to be endured, but elements of a relationship based upon love and devotion. The same can be said about the covenant we have with God that is outlined in the commandments. God has made his vows to us. These are the vows that we make before God.

represent the first tablet of the relationship. It is the vertical commitment that we make with God. Lets look at these first eleven verses.

The first commandment says, "You shall have no other gods before me" (v. 3). On its face, this sounds like the plaintive cry of a god who is afraid of being ignored or supplanted, like a teenage boy who is terrified that his girlfriend might dump him — a pretty wimpy god. But this is not about God; this is about us. "I am the Lord your God, the one who freed you to live life to the fullest. You do not need any other." Because of who God is, what God has done, is doing, and will continue to do on our behalf, we do not need to go traipsing after other sources of security. The one who created all things, and has power over all things, is on our side, working for our well-being.

The second word fall right into that same vein. We are not to make or have any idols. We do not need them. The god who has liberated you is not about to abandon you when you are in need. You do not need to carve a hunk of wood to show off to your neighbors what a neat God you have because, quite frankly, some people will end up worshiping that and doing themselves and their neighbors more harm than good.

The third word probably has been the most misinterpreted of all: "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God" (v. 7). Or in the language of the King James Version, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." Be careful of misunderstanding this one. Despite what your grandmother told you and that billboard to which we referred earlier, this is not a rule about not using God's name as an expletive. This is one more description of a truly liberated life. You see, in bygone days, people would, in the conduct of normal business, swear by the name of God that they would do this or not do that. Such swearing was the equivalent of a guarantee that this verbal contract would be carried out. Unfortunately, people being people—and appalling sinners at that—folks would be tempted to engage in such promises knowing full well that they had no intention of following through. Fraud. God says, "No." People knowingly defrauding one another is not part of a truly liberated life. The command could have just as easily read "Do not defraud" as "Do not misuse my name." Let you yes be yes and your no be no.

The final commandment that we will look at this morning is a troubling one for everybody: "Remember the sabbath day by keeping it holy" (v. 8). No, this has nothing to do with being in synagogue on Saturday or church on Sunday. It does not mean no ball games, no picnics, no fun, as some of us were taught. This is not an insecure deity's way of insisting that we set aside some "God" time. Instead, this is one more word of freedom.[iv]

The Sabbath was the first fair labor law. Not only were the heads of households to rest, but also the working poor (sojourners?), slaves, and even the animals were to be given rest. Keeping the Sabbath, first and foremost, is about lives that are captured by a God who keeps faith with us and who keeps on intruding graciously into our lives.

The reason we keep the Sabbath, according to Deuteronomy, is that our people used to know what life was like when we had a lord named Pharaoh who did not allow days off. Put yourselves in the feet of the Exodus generation. For years they served Pharaoh, a burdensome master who gave no days off and when complaints arose, who said, “Now make bricks without straw.” God graciously intruded into that reality and said to the people, “You will no longer serve Pharaoh, you will serve me. And to serve me means that once every seven days, you, your kids, your workers, even your animals get the day off.” Why? Because God’s gracious intrusion into human existence was not a one-time event, but a regular, ritualized reality.

And this gracious reality extends beyond only one day a week. In the Old Testament laws, God offers a series of other sabbatical laws. Once every seven years, the land is given a rest -- “the seventh year you shall let it rest … so that the poor of your people may eat.”[v]

These are not burdens, or heavy weights to carry around. Rather, they are what being in a relationship with God looks like. It is one of fidelity, of freedom, of loving that which first loved us. These are the principles of keep faith with the one who is faithful to us.

To be in covenant with God then, means that we are his chosen people whose vocation is to be a priestly people by showing the world our devotion to the one who is not only the source of life but also the source of salvation and the object of our hope.

As we continue with this miniseries, we close with the words, “to be continued.” Until next week. May God’s face shine upon you. Amen.

[i] “Handling Freedom”; David Leninger,

[ii] “Dancing the Decalogue”. Thomas Long,

[iii] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), .

[iv] Leninger

[v] Commentary on , Rolf Jacobson

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