You’ve heard that the Ten Commandments are ten promises. Can we show this from the Bible? And what kind of promises are they?

<p>You’ve heard that the Ten Commandments are ten promises. Can we show this from the Bible? And what kind of promises are they?</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Ouachita Hills College

Scott Burgess

God’s Ten Promises

All right. Well, tonight we're going to have a talk that shouldn't, the title shouldn't sound too surprising to us as Seventh Adventist. Let's pop it up here. 10 Commandments. Okay? But hopefully we can get some some new insights here. So my first thing I'm gonna ask is this. When you hear 10 Commandments, notice I put them in blue right there. What comes to mind when you think of 10 Commandments? Don't have to be original here. Two Tablets. Two tablets. Okay. I heard something else, but I couldn't make it out. Yes. Love. Love. Okay. Very good. All right, anything else? Love two tablets. What'd you say? Mount Sinai. Okay, very good. All right, these are all true. I'd like to share with you this text right here, Deuteronomy four verse 13. It's this is where Moses is rehearsing what happened there at Sinai. And he tells the people he, that is the Lord declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even 10 commandments. And he wrote them upon, there it is, two tables of stone. What I'd like to highlight is this notice here how the Lord calls his 10 commandments. A what? Covenant. Okay. So we're gonna bring out that aspect this evening. Now, when you think of covenant, unlike Jeremiah 31, this tells me something about the covenant God made. God says, I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel, with the house of Judah. And then he goes on, he says, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of there it is the land of Egypt, which my covenant, they break, although I was a husband unto them, Seth the Lord. Now notice right there we can learn something about, he's talking about Sinai, right? But according to this, this first right here, you'll notice I've hidden it in blue. So you can't miss it. What kind of a covenant are we talking about? Yeah, it's a marriage covenant. That's right. And then in verse 33, it says, this shall be the covenant that I will make with the House of Israel after those days, Seth the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts and will be their God and they shall be my people. Now, his covenant also of course, involves the law. That's where we're going with the 10 Commandments right there. But you can see how in these three verses in Jeremiah 31, he's tied together marriage as a covenant with his law, which is also a covenant. Now there it is, marriage covenant. That's what the 10 Commandments are. So some of you may have made that connection before, but if not, that's a good way to look at it. And if you're studying with people out there and sharing some truths with them, you know, depending on their background, they might shy away from the 10 Commandments thinking, oh dear, are we going down a legalistic path or something? But most people are not gonna have a problem looking at marriage. And let's see, what kind of marriages does God like? How long does he like marriages to last? Ah. See, you can approach it in that way. If you show the 10 Commandments are that, then it's a little easier to swallow that. Oh, maybe, you know, they go on forever. Let's see what else we can learn here. Notice Exodus 20 verse two. As we look at the 10 commandments themselves here, let's just see if we see things in it that suggests it's a marriage besides just the verse that told us, yes, it's a marriage. So the introduction to the 10 Commandments, verse two says, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought the out of the land of Egypt, out of the house. Of what? Okay, I brought you out of bondage to bring you into bondage right? Now that doesn't make any sense. Okay? The first commandment says this, thou shall have no other god's before me. Okay? So here's a thought. If this is a marriage, then God's saying, I want to be the number one in your life. That's kinda how a marriage works, right? At least from the bride's perspective, you, you, well, you should have only one husband, and he is to be the man, let's say, of your life, right? Yes. Okay. I was gonna say, this is gonna be a tough crowd tonight, but okay, alright. Right. But now the second commandment, notice this. It says, thou shall not make unto the any grave and image. Thou shall now bow down myself to them, nor serve them for I the Lord thy God am. What a jealous God. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children under the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and showing, I know it says mercy, that you normally see, unfortunately, that's not what the word means. It actually better means covenant faithfulness. You can look that up. I'm not changing the Bible, I'm just trying to make it accurate. Covenant faithfulness under thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. So notice he is a jealous guy to what makes him jealous, but those who make a graven image, right? So he not only wants to be number one in our lives, he wants to be the only one. If we go around making something else, it's like making another husband. And he says no. And that arouses his jealousy. So again, this goes along with the whole marriage idea. Notice the third commitment. Thou shall not take the name of the Lord, thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him. Guiltless that take if His what? That's one of those things that we recite it so often and you may not think about it, but in terms of marriage, does that make sense? Right? Jesus says, if we marry him, I will give you a new name. And then he, he says, it's my new name. Well, that's marriage. And here, if you take his name in pain, yeah, are you gonna accept his name? The Bible says there in Isaiah chapter four, it speaks of a time when it says seven women will take hold of one man and saying, well, let, let's just have, eat our own bread and we're our own apparel. Only let us be called by thy. You know, can we just sort of fake it? Can we get the benefits of being a Christian but live like the world? And God says, no, that's vanity. Okay, so we take our husband's name, you know, and follow that. Okay, let's go on the next commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth the sea and all that in them is and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it. Okay? That's familiar territory, right? Question. Anything there that strikes you? Any, anything about a husband there that might be a harder one to figure out? Right? Don't see anything about a name. Jealousy. Only one, right? That's a little darker, right? Hmm? Shall we dig? Yes we will. Okay. Notice that little word right there in six days the Lord did what he made. Now that may not, that may not trigger anything, but I think the next slide will, shall we take a peek? Yes. Good. All right. Isaiah 54, 5, fourth thy what? Thy maker is thine. And guess what? Maker is the same as maid. Dear, check it out. The Lord of hostess, his name and thy redeemer is the holy one of Israel, the God of the whole earth. Shall he be called? Does the Sabbath have something to do with marriage? You better believe it. Okay. Thy maker is thine husband. But when you put that together, the 10 Commandments, I'd say that's maybe the most explicit commandment about marriage. The others are hinting at it. This is just plain. Now here's the thought for you for seventh, the Adventist. This is a well known verse. Revelation 1412 says, here is following the three angels messages. Here is the patience of the saints. Here are they that keep and they keep two things, the commandments of God and they, what's the other thing they keep? Doesn't say they haven't. They says they keep it the faith of Jesus. Hmm. It's God's commandments. I would argue it's Jesus' faith. But I might point out something else here. You may have been in your studies, you may have come across this, but if not, I'll toss it out there and you just can check on it. Many scholars, Adventist, and non-ad Adventist alike are coming to see, especially like in Paul's writings, that a lot of times where it says faith, that's the noun that goes along with belief. It's not always faith. Sometimes it could also be, there's another noun that's very similar in meaning to faith. It ends in fullness. Faithfulness, let's plug that in for a second. They keep the commandments of God and the what? Command. Ooh, but now wait a minute. If the 10 commandments, cuz we know those commandments are that God gives us here, if those are a marriage covenant, would it be a stretch to suggest that maybe faithfulness has something to it? If we love God, we will keep his commandments right? Won't that show that we're faithful to Jesus? Ah-huh. I would argue I wouldn't get in a fight over it, but I would argue that yes, probably that. Well I would certainly, we have to have Jesus faith. But I think what we're really depending on is his faithfulness. And he's gonna give us the same kind of faithfulness that he has, which that's the kind I long to have. Now back to Deuteronomy four 13, that's where we started. He declared unto you his covenant, which it commanded you to perform 10 commandments. And he wrote them upon two tables of stone. Okay, now we looked at the 10 commandments, right? Well let's see, let's test your knowledge here. Sometimes we return to the 10 commandments as the deco. What? The deca log. And that's one of those words. You've just heard it. Have you ever thought about what deca log means? What does deca mean? 10 A deca gone is 10 sided. What's a log Word? Yeah, it's the Greek word logos. Like Jesus is the word, right? The decalogue is the 10 words. It's 10 words. But here's a thought for you. Notice I just, we just changed commandments to words because that's what it literally says. But I just did something else. Now, I didn't just put up the Scott Burgess translation here. I said 10 promises. Now you might think, oh yeah, yeah, I've heard that before. Yeah, yeah. Can we show it from the Bible? Yeah, you're probably think, well I wouldn't ask if we couldn't, but yeah, actually you can. If you, if you're into taking notes, jot down the next two verses. This'll show you cuz this will make a point to be like, whoa, really? Notice one kings 58, 56. This is where the chapter where Solomon makes the prayer dedicating the temple. And he says, blessed be the Lord that has given rest unto his people. Israel, according to all that he blue word there, what promised there have not failed one word of all his good promise. Promise, which he promised by the hand of Moses' servant, I'll just let you look it up. But the word that's translated as word is identical. The strongs number is the same as for promise. And when it says promised, that verb is the exact same root as the word word. So he shall you say all that he worded there is not filled one word of all his good word. But you see the translators, they recognize the word was a promise. So this verse just shows you word and promise together. There are places where the Hebrew word, devar word is promise. And this is one, there's another one here. Second Chronicles one nine. Now, oh Lord God, let thy literally word but look it up thy promise. King James unto David, thy my father be established for you have made me king over a people like the dust of the earth and multitude word, they are places. And our translations where they put word as promise, why can't we make the 10 commandments? 10 promises? See, it's not like, think about it. If it's a marriage covenant, do you go into a marriage expecting your husband to say, okay, do this. You think, whoa, what did I do? You know, be a big mistake, right? But instead of like commandments in the sense of like orders, like here's today's marching orders. Yeah. Yes sir. No, if there are promises that makes a whole lot more sense in terms of marriage. Deuteronomy four 13, he declared unto you his covenant marriage, covenant of love, which he commanded you to perform. Even 10 promises. Like he's saying, I, you will be able to do this. You can rise from the sludge that you're in to being a child of God, to being the bride of God. And he wrote them upon two tables of stone by the stone doesn't go away, right? But he's not supposed to. I mean within earthly approximations it doesn't go away. And so these promises endure forever says, I will enable you forever to keep these commitments. You can forever be faithful. I bet you all the the 50 51, whatever it is, percent of Americans whose marriages are are tanking and that divorce wouldn't they love to know that there is a pro, a promise of a marriage that doesn't fail. You go through something like that, you'll be thinking, yeah, this stinks. Wouldn't it be nice to know that you can have somebody who will never be unfaithful and he can cause you to become faithful? Wow. Let's see here. So there's your marriage covenant. Okay, we already alluded to this. John 1415, what does he say if you'll love me? What? Now the way that's worded, it sounds a little bit like the kinda the whip thing. Like you better keep 'em. I'm ordering you, but song Greek manuscripts and I do believe it goes along with the whole general tenor of scripture. They change one little letter, an awe becomes an eh. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. That doesn't sound like whipping, you know, like you better do it. He's just saying this is a statement of fact, you're gonna wind up doing this. Wow, that sounds like something a husband might say a loving one. And guess what this is in what chapter? John Chapter one 14. If you go back to the beginning of John chapter 14, let's see, that sounds like a promise, but look at the beginning of John 14. He says, in my father's house there are many mansions. If it were not so, I would've told you, I go to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will do what? He's making a promise. I will come again and receive you or take you unto myself. Literally that where I am there you may be also study it out in the Bible, you take a bride here the chapter is all about him promising to come get his bride. And then later he says, by the way, let me tell you how you and I will get along. If you love me, you're gonna keep my commandments and I'm gonna be happy to take you home forever. Wow. So yeah, he's coming to take his bride. This it, everything fits. Notice Hebrews 10 23. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering going back and forth. For he is faithful that guess what promised He makes promises and he doesn't ever break them. We have an expression in English. If somebody is particularly dependable, he's as good as his what His word. But in the Bible, the word is a promise. So there you go. So my question for you tonight, see we kept it nice and short, will you say I do today to the Lord except his marriage proposal. Okay, now you realize the Israelites of old, they said, oh, that the Lord has said we will do. And then they wound up dancing around the golden calf. You know it is, I've mentioned this before, but our, our marriage, our marriage, so many certain, sometimes leave something you be lacking. It's like, do you so-and-so take to so-and-so to be your wife? And then vice versa, you take so so to be your husband. We say, yes I do. We're saying the same things that they did when they failed in their marriage. But maybe if we say by God's grace, yes, I will be faithful until death do us part. So we want that new covenant experience right there. So do you wanna have a new covenant? I do with the Lord? Yes. Okay. So he is faithful and he is faithful to keep you faithful. This media was brought to you by audio verse, a website dedicated to spreading God's word through free sermon, audio, and much more. If you would like to know more about audio verse or if you would like to listen to more sermons, please visit www.audio verse.org.

Back to Menu

God’s Ten Promises

Description

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine