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>

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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-day Adventists. Let's pop it up here. 10 Commandments, okay. But hopefully we can get some new insights here. So my first thing I'm going to 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. 2 tablets, okay. I heard something else, but I couldn't make it out. Yes? Love, okay, very good.

All right. Anything else? Love, 2 tables. What did 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 4 verse 13. 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, 2 tables of stone.

What I'd like to highlight is this. Notice here how the Lord calls his 10 Commandments a what? A covenant. Okay. So we're going to bring out that aspect this evening.

Now, when you think of covenant, I like 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, saith the Lord." Now, notice right there, we can learn something about...

He's talking about Sinai, right? But according to this verse 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, saith 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 3 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. 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 going to have a problem looking at marriage. And let's see, what kind of marriages does God like?

How long do you like marriages to last? Ah, so 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 2.

As we look at the 10 Commandments themselves here, Let's just see if we see things in it that suggest it's a marriage besides just the verse that told us, yes, it's a marriage. So the introduction to the 10 Commandments, verse 2 says, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee 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? No, that doesn't make any sense.

Okay, the first commandment says this, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Okay, so here's a thought. If this is a marriage, then God's saying, I want to be the number 1 in your life. That's kind of how marriage works, right? At least from the bride's perspective, you should have only 1 husband and he is to be the man, let's say, of your life, right?

Yes? Okay. I was going to say, this is going to be a tough crowd tonight, but okay. All right. But now, the second commandment, notice this.

It says, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. Thou shalt not bow down myself to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto 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 unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. So notice, he is a jealous guy. And what makes him jealous? Those who make a graven image, right? So he not only wants to be number 1 in our lives, he wants to be the only 1.

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 commandment. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his what?

That's 1 of those things that we recite it so often you may not think about it but in terms of marriage doesn't make sense. Jesus says if we marry him I will give you a new name and then he says it's my new name. Well that's marriage and here if you take his name in vain, are you going to accept his name? The Bible says there in Isaiah chapter 4, it speaks of a time when it says 7 women will take hold of 1 man. It's saying, well, let's just eat our own bread and wear 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, follow that.

Okay, let's go on to the next commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. For in 6 days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." Okay, that's familiar territory, right? Question, anything there that strikes you?

Anything about a husband there? That might be a harder 1 to figure out, right? Don't see anything about a name, jealousy, only 1, right? That's a little darker, right? Shall we dig?

Yes, we will. Okay. Notice that little word right there. In 6 days the Lord did what? He made.

Now that may not trigger anything, but I think the next slide will. Shall we take a peek? Good. All right. Isaiah 54 5.

For thy what? Thy maker is thine. And guess what? Maker is the same as made, check it out. The Lord of hosts is his name, and thy redeemer is the Holy 1 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 with 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 a thought for you. For Seventh-day Adventist, this is a well- known verse. Revelation 14 12 says, following the 3 angels' messages, Here is the patience of the saints. Here are they that keep, and they keep 2 things, the commandments of God and they, what's the other thing they keep? Doesn't say they have it, they say they keep it.

The faith of Jesus. It's God's commandments? I would argue it's Jesus' faith. But I might point out something else here. You may have 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-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? Ooh. But now wait a minute, if the 10 Commandments, because we know those are the commandments 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?

Uh-huh. I would argue, I wouldn't get in a fight over it, but I would argue that yes, probably, 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 4.13, that's where we started. He declared unto you his covenant which he commanded you to perform 10 commandments and he wrote them upon 2 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 Deca-what? The Decalogue, and that's 1 of those words you've just heard it. Have you ever thought about what decalogue means?

What does deca mean? 10, the decagon is ten-sided. What's a log? Yeah, it's the Greek word logos, like Jesus is the word, right? The decalog is the 10 words.

It's 10 words. But here's a thought for you. Notice 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? You're probably thinking, well I wouldn't ask if we couldn't, but yeah, actually you can. If you're into taking notes, jot down the next 2 verses.

This will show you, because this will make a point to be like, whoa, really? Notice 1 Kings 8.56. This is where the chapter where Solomon makes the prayer dedicating the temple. 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 hath not failed 1 word of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of Moses his servant. I'll just let you look it up. But the word that's translated as word is identical. The Strong's 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 failed 1 word of all his good word. But you see the translators there recognized the word was a promise. So this verse just shows you word and promise together. There are places where the Hebrew word, davar, word, is promise. And this is 1.

There's another 1 here. 2 Chronicles 1.9, Now O Lord God, Let thy, literally word, but look it up, thy promise, King James, unto David, my father, be established. For you have made me king over a people like the dust of the earth and multitude. Word, there are places in 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? It'd be a big mistake, right? But instead of like commandments in the sense of like orders, like here's today's marching orders, oh yeah, yes sir.

No, if there are promises, that makes a whole lot more sense in terms of marriage. Deuteronomy 4.13, 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 2 tables of stone. By the way, stone doesn't go away, right? Well, he's not supposed to. I mean, within earthly approximations, it doesn't go away.

And so these promises endure forever. He says, I will enable you forever to keep these commandments. You can forever be faithful. I bet you all that the 50, 51, whatever it is percent of Americans whose marriages are tanking and that divorce, wouldn't they love to know that there is a promise of a marriage that doesn't fail? You go through something like that you'd 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? Let's see here. So there's your marriage covenant. Okay, we already alluded to this, John 14, 15. What does he say?

If you'll love me, what? Now the way that's worded, it sounds a little bit like the kind of the whip thing, like you better keep them, I'm ordering you. But some Greek manuscripts, and I do believe it goes along with the whole general tenor of Scripture, they change 1 little letter. An ah becomes an 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 going to wind up doing this. Wow. That sounds like something a husband might say, a loving 1. And guess what?

This is in what chapter, John, chapter 1. 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 are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have 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 stay 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. 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, 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? Accept his marriage proposal? Now, you realize the Israelites of old, they said, all that the Lord has said, we will do. And then they wound up dancing around the golden calf.

I've mentioned this before, but our marriage ceremony sometimes leave a little something to be lacking. It's like, do you so-and-so take to so-and-so to be your wife? And then vice versa, do you take so-and-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 want to have a new covenant I do with the Lord? Yes, okay. So He is faithful and He is faithful to keep you faithful.

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God’s Ten Promises

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