Where will you shelter from God’s justice? Under works? Family? Ritual? Who shields you from God’s judgement? The Bible names only one mediator between God & men, the man, Christ Jesus. All who come to him are never shut out. Do you have a storm shelter?
Join us as we examine Exodus 20:18-21 and consider how the Ten Commandments lead us to understand our need for Christ.
My dad was “old school.” A child of the depression, he believed firmly in the value of child labor – especially mine. I had weekly chores for which I was paid if I did them in a way that passed his rigorous requirements. But the pay was meager, especially when compared to the gratuitous, labor-free allowances received by most of my middle-class peers. During the summer I mowed the grass for $2 per mowing and in Fall I raked 1.3 billion leaves working pro bono. Now, as an adult with a healthy work ethic and the ability to appreciate the value of money, I am thankful my dad was “old-school.”
But at the time, my thoughts were not so charitable. As I mowed the grass with a rickety push mower, my friend was playing ball while his mother did the mowing. “Now that was liberation I can get on board with,” I thought. I recall thinking, “Daddy treats me like a slave.” And I had to ‘slave away’ at yard work under a broiling Georgia summer sun, while my friend lived a carefree childhood of leisure and comfort.
Had I paid attention to the numerous passages in the Bible which speak about the work and attitude of slaves, both actual slaves and those who like me fancied themselves to be slaves, perhaps I would have gained a heart of wisdom. But like many who hear the Bible’s teaching on slavery, slaves, and masters, I foolishly relegated it to a collection of things in the Bible which have nothing to do with me. In the same way, Christians often view the Bible’s teaching on slavery as an antiquarian embarrassment in our present enlightened age.
But slavery is not an ancient problem. And our attitudes toward work are often a daily struggle. Consequently, the Bible deals honestly with the issue of slavery. And with all the subtle forms it takes. While many today are impatient with the Bible’s apparent lack of forceful denunciation of slavery, this critique fails to recognize that the Bible is thoroughly opposed to slavery, as we know it, from beginning to end.
Yet Scripture is imminently aware that many labor in difficult, oppressive, and evil circumstances. And so, the Bible also prescribes pastoral instruction and care for those who labor in service to others. Many of these pastoral exhortations to slaves and masters, employees and employers instruct us how to do our work, no matter what the conditions, “as unto the Lord.”
And above all, the Bible’s instruction to Christian slaves illustrates how we are to serve our Lord. We delight in calling Jesus ‘Savior,’ and rightly so. But if He is our Savior, then He is also our Lord. Christ delivered us from the slavery of sin, but as Christians we are his bond-servants, transferred from one kingdom to another. Paul points this out explicitly.
For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise, he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ.
1 Corinthians 7:23
God spoke the Ten Commandments directly to the people at Sinai. Then he called Moses to come up the mountain to receive the Book of the Covenant. This Book, recorded in Exodus 21-24, included needful reminders, examples, and illustrations of how God’s covenant people are to apply the Ten Commandments to their daily lives. And while some of these examples apply specifically to the circumstances of ancient life, how they are unpacked has application for us today.
God’s first concern was purity of worship, but his second, pressing concern was the condition and care of slaves. Speaking to a nation of recently emancipated slaves, God demonstrates his concern for those who are vulnerable and oppressed. He calls his people to be a covenant community characterized by gracious and tender care toward those who are ‘at risk’ socially and relationally.
Far from evidencing repressive institutionalized racism, classism, or any other -ism, the Bible’s teaching on the care of the oppressed is more progressive than the ‘wokest wokist’ can imagine. It is care rooted in grace, forgiveness, and the gospel, not an egalitarian denial of depravity. And what it means by ‘slavery’ extends far beyond the narrow confines of what that word conjures in our minds and experience.
Far from a theological embarrassment, God places instruction about the care of slaves first in his application of the 10 commandments. This is not an editorial blunder but a call for Christians to live out their faith in gracious ‘life together.’ This week we examine Exodus 21:1-11 and consider what the Bible teaches about slavery and what this has to do with us.
We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship. Get directions here or contact us for more info. Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.
Covetousness, discontented desire, is ‘ground zero’ for all sin. It detonates evil in our hearts that poisons intentions, words, actions, relationships, and vocations. The 10th commandment warns us about it. But how carefully have we guarded our hearts? Join us as we examine the 10th Commandment and consider the warning against covetousness.
Graduations, weddings, and birthday parties! We receive all kinds of invitations. Some bring excitement. Some apprehension. Many bring both. As a boy, my neighbor’s dad occasionally invited all the neighborhood boys to hockey games at the Omni. We coveted these invitations. Especially when ‘miracle-on-ice’ Olympian, Jim Craig tended goal for the Atlanta Flames in his NHL debut.
But there were other invitations that were not so exciting. Like the one from Mr. Parker, my elementary school principal, to bring my parents to his office for a conference. Confident this spelled my doom, I fretted for weeks. I was sure my less-than-stellar conduct grade was on the docket. But when the dread day arrived, the conversation was not about my failure at all, but an invitation to be part of a new course he was developing. Invitations can be stressful, even when we are invited to something good.
As a younger man I attended an evangelical church which concluded every service with a ‘walk-the-aisles’ invitation. I worked for months to convince an unbelieving friend to visit our church. When he finally accepted, I asked him later what he thought of the experience. “I found it all very interesting and helpful,” he said, “except for that ‘uncomfortable time’ at the end.” The ‘Anxious Bench’ had proved too much and he never visited again. Invitations, especially those that relate to our spiritual lives, create tremendous anxiety and fear.
When God gave the Ten Commandments, he spoke to directly to the people. Out of thick darkness, fire and lightning, he spoke in a voice like thunder. The people were terrified of the sound of his voice but even more by the words he spoke. Beforehand, they swore they would do whatever he commanded, but when he spoke, his voice and his law brought terror.
At Sinai, they were confronted with the contrast between God’s holiness and their uncleanness. Between God’s perfect law of liberty and their enslaved lawlessness. And between God’s sovereign right to judge and the judgment they deserved. To their credit, they did not run away from God. Rather, they sought a mediator to speak God’s words to them. They understood that without a mediator they could never approach the Lord and live.
On behalf of the people, Moses drew near to the Lord in the thick darkness where God began to unpack his gracious law. And just as the Ten Commandments begin with worship, so God’s explanation of the law to Moses begins with instructions concerning worship. Why? Because worship is the invitation for men to draw near to God through the means he has provided.
God desires fellowship with us. He made us to “glorify and enjoy him.” But our sin separates us. Our law-breaking erects an impenetrable barrier. Any invitation to draw near to a holy and just God rightly creates anxiety, uncertainty, and even terror. Yet no sooner had God spoken the law, then he provided a way for lawless men to come to him in grace, repentance, and faith. The prophet Isaiah wrote.
“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
Isaiah 55:6-7
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
Every page of Scripture invites us to draw near, to be restored, to engage the purpose for which God made us. Your sin is a barrier, but God has provided the sacrifice. How will you respond to his invitation? Will you ignore it? Decline it? Dread it? Or will you joyfully accept it?
Join us as we examine Exodus 20:22-26 and consider God’s invitation to draw near. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship. Get directions here or contact us for more info. Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.
Arkansas has only two seasons, December and Tornado Season. And even December may not be twister-free. Locals always have a plan for cover. When the sirens go off, the church basement becomes a community center for both man and beast. Every school opens its saferoom. Those outside towns have storm shelters. We all have multiple weather apps on our phones. And we know how to program those old NOAA weather radios as a backup.
Our storms follow well-travelled paths. Past destruction and regrowth surround us. Silent reminders that a tornado is not to be trifled with. Its fury is prodigious. Its power is immense, destroying everything in its path. It shatters, dissembles, disintegrates, and strews the debris of broken lives over vast areas of space and time. Deafening and terrifying, every warning of its approach tells us to “seek cover immediately.” Only the most foolish of fools refuses the offer of a sturdy storm shelter.
Yet our instinct and experience with tornadoes does not translate to our spiritual lives. Like the spiritually blind Pharisees and Sadducees, we “know how to interpret the appearance of the sky but cannot interpret the signs of the times.” No storm we will ever encounter is more deadly than the judgment of a holy God for our sin. Our refusing, despising, and disregarding his law is the perfect storm from which no man-made shelter can protect us.
Whenever God spoke directly to men in Scripture his voice was deafening and terrifying. Time and again, he spoke out of a storm. The Psalmist likened his voice to a tornado that breaks the cedars and strips the forests bare. At the foot of Mount Sinai, even Moses trembled as God spoke to them out from
“a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken [directly] to them.”
Hebrews 12:18-19
Every sense of the people was filled with the terror of God’s holiness and majesty. Every commandment made clear the impossibility of law keeping as a way of righteousness. And the thick darkness, rolling thunder, and flashing lightening underscored the deadly consequence of failing to do all that God commanded. In their terror, the people of Israel sought a storm shelter.
They cried out to Moses to mediate with God, saying “you speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” Before the Law was given, they hastily confessed, “all that the Lord has spoken we will do.” But faced with God’s consuming glory, they realized their need for a mediator. And so, we read “the people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.”
Our God is a consuming fire. For him to look upon us without a sufficient covering means certain, eternal death. Our only hope is for a shelter, a mediator, who can endure the blast of God’s justice. Unbelieving men seek flimsy shelters “calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb.’” But Scripture invites us to shelter under the True and Perfect Mediator, Jesus Christ.
Jesus entered the thick darkness of God’s justice on the cross. He shelters us under the righteousness of his perfect obedience and the satisfaction of his perfect sacrifice. No other shelter will do. Where will you shelter from God’s judgement? Under your works? Your family? A faithless ritual? What mediator can you trust? The Bible tells us there is only “one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus.” And “whoever comes to [him he] will never cast out.”
Do you have a storm shelter that can weather the ultimate tempest? Join us as we examine Exodus 20:18-21 and consider how the Ten Commandments lead us to understand our need for Christ. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship. Get directions here or contact us for more info. Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth! Is this what the 9th Commandment requires? How much truth? And who may hear it? May we ever conceal it? Does the Bible ever allow or condone explicit lying? And what does the Bible require about truth-telling? Join us as we examine the 9th Commandment in Exodus 20:16 and consider what the Scripture says about truth-telling.
The 8th Commandment is simple. Never steal! We get it. But what if it means more than shoplifting, embezzlement, or failing to return a neighbor’s borrowed tools? Join us as we consider what the 8th command teaches about economics, faith, & true riches.
‘Ground Zero’ is the central point from which a catastrophe radiates. The phrase first appeared in 1945 at the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. ‘Ground zero’ described the point of reference from which all effects of the blast were measured. Less than a month later, Hiroshima became ‘ground zero’ for the first strategic use of a nuclear weapon. The destruction was indescribable. Over one hundred thousand people were killed in the blast. And many suffered the ongoing effects of radiation poisoning. And the phrase ‘ground zero’ became proverbial for the point of catastrophic impact.
Every generation has a ‘ground zero.’ For our generation, ‘ground zero’ is the site of the World Trade Center towers in NYC. The horror of the 9/11 attacks and the images of the towers collapsing is indelibly inscribed on the consciousness of our generation. We still remember where we were “when the world stopped spinning that September day.” The fear, uncertainty, pain, and loss that followed were without parallel in our history as a nation. The shock waves from our ‘ground zero’ are still felt.
But there is a more terrible ‘ground zero.’ One that unfolded with an even more catastrophic effect. While it had no mushroom cloud or live TV coverage, it proved more destructive and deadly than either Hiroshima or 9/11. In a quiet garden with a seemingly harmless act, sin and death entered the world and ushered in every wickedness, depravity, violence, abuse, oppression, hatred, and unfaithfulness the world has ever known.
Even the creation groans, longing for redemption and release from the curse unleashed by the Fall. Every sin, every sorrow, every fear, every privation, every affliction in your life and in the lives of every man and woman, boy and girl who have ever lived are shock waves radiating from this ‘ground zero.’
We read about it in Genesis 3.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Genesis 3:6
This account includes an interesting word – “desire.” It is a word we later find in the last of the Ten Commandments. Usually translated “covet,” it is the same word that describes Eve’s heart as she prefers the serpent’s word over God’s. Eve desired what God had withheld. She liked the reality Satan proposed. Eve desired what God said would bring death. She desired what she wanted. Not what God wanted for her. After all, “the heart wants what the heart wants.” And Adam desired it too. He was with his wife but made no effort to protect her or guard her from covetousness.
Covetousness, discontented desire, is ‘ground zero’ for all sin. It detonates evil in our hearts that poisons intentions, words, actions, relationships, and vocations. The 10th commandment warns us about it.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.
Exodus 20:17
Following hard-hitting commandments against murder, adultery, theft, and lying, a warning against covetousness hardly seems climactic or even necessary. Yet, a desire for what is not and cannot be ours is ‘ground zero’ for all sin. Our sin is not merely an unavoidable consequence of our circumstance, our need, our limitations, or our ignorance. It grows out of discontented desire. In his very practical pastoral letter, James, the brother of Jesus writes.
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1:13-17
The final commandment is no mere appendix. It represents ground zero for holiness, obedience, faithfulness, and Christlikeness. The moral law, summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments reaches not only to our outward actions, but to the very depths of our inward thought-life – our hopes, aspirations, desires, plans, intentions, joy, and contentment. And to break this commandment is to break all the others. Discontented desire, covetousness, is indeed ‘ground zero’ for all other sins in our lives. Perhaps this is why the Proverb warns us.
Above all else, guard your heart,
Proverbs 4:23
for everything you do flows from it.
And Jesus points out that every violation of the law begins with the heart when he warned.
For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.
Matthew 15:19
What is your heart condition? Are you living Coram Deo? Join us as we examine the 10th Commandment and consider the dangers of covetousness. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship. Get directions here or contact us for more info. Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.
We all love high-profile trials. Whether real or fictional, we can’t get enough. Nothing spells “ratings” like the televised proceedings of a sensational trial. Recently it was the ‘Murdaugh murders.’ A generation ago it was the O. J. Simpson case. Even the Trump impeachment proceedings and the January Sixth Commission hearings turned the interminable boredom of CSPAN into Nielson gold.
What rivets our attention to the drama of a trial? Is it knowing the stakes for both the accused and the accusers? Will celebrity litigators dazzle us with technical wit and articulate witticisms? Will witnesses crack under pressure? Will the defendant sit stone-faced – cold and unemotional? Or will his countenance give inadmissible testimony of guilt? Or maybe it is simply our desire to know the truth and see justice done?
We have watched enough courtroom drama to be familiar with the swearing in of witnesses. They must swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” To lie on the stand is itself criminal. Perjury carries stiff penalties for the perjurer. But carries an even higher cost for the innocent when justice is perverted. We rightly view a false witness with utter contemp.
But how concerned are we about bearing false witness in the larger arena of our work, our relationships, our commitments, and our financial dealings? What is our responsibility regarding truth outside of the courtroom? What does the Bible require regarding truth-telling? How much truth must we tell? Who has a right to hear the truth from us? Is there ever a time when we may conceal the truth? Or a time when the Bible allows, condones, or affirms explicit lying?
These questions seem simple on the surface. But when we examine in Scripture the actions of many heroes of the faith and God’s response to their prevarication, we wrestle with legitimate questions regarding God’s nature and character, Christian ethics, and what is required by the Ninth Commandment.
Abraham shaded the truth in regard to his wife because he feared unbelievers. Rahab lied to the king of Jericho to save the lives of the Israelite spies. The Hebrew midwives appear to have lied to Pharaoh and then received God’s blessing. How to we come to grips with these passages and reconcile them to the ethical demands of a Holy God who calls His people to holiness?
The Ninth Commandment says simply, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Like every other command, however, this one is paradigmatic. In condemning false testimony, it gives the worst-case-scenario and by implication includes every other form of falsehood and inductively instructs us to love and promote truth. Everywhere in scripture God is declared to be a God of Truth. And Jesus is, himself The Truth. While the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth. Truth is important to God. And as Christians we are called to imitate our Heavenly Father, ‘as dearly loved children.’ The Ninth Commandment is about much more than avoiding perjury. The Westminster Shorter Catechism expresses it concisely, but completely.
77. What is required in the ninth commandment? The ninth commandment requireth the maintaining and promoting of truth between man and man, and of our own and our neighbor’s good name, especially in witness bearing.
78. What is forbidden in the ninth commandment? The ninth commandment forbiddeth whatsoever is prejudicial to truth, or injurious to our own or our neighbor’s good name.
Westminster Shorter Catechism
Join us as we examine the Ninth Commandment in Exodus 20:16 and consider what the Scripture says about truth-telling. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship. Get directions here or contact us for more info. Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.
We all face defining moments. Decisions that set a trajectory for life. Lines in the sand which once crossed allow no retreat. Belief in Jesus’ resurrection is just such a line. Your response to the resurrection will define you? How will you respond? Join us, as we examine Matthew 28 and consider how our response to the resurrection defines us.
Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church 