Dec 20
13
Baptist Catechism 47
Q. 48. What is the preface to the Ten Commandments?
A. The preface to the Ten Commandments is in these words; “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” (Exodus 20:2)
Q. 49. What doth the preface to the Ten Commandments teach us?
A. The preface to the Ten Commandments teacheth us, that because God is the Lord, and our God and Redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all His commandments. (Deut 11:1)
Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 10:12–11:1
“And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the LORD your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven. You shall therefore love the LORD your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.” (Deuteronomy 10:12–11:1, ESV)
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Please excuse any typos and misspellings within this manuscript. It has been published online for the benefit of the saints of Emmaus Reformed Baptist Church but without the benefit of proofreading.
Introduction
As you know, in the weeks and months to come we will be learning all about the Ten Commandments. We believe that the Ten Commandments summarize God’s moral law. And we believe that God’s moral law applies to all men. All men have this law written on their hearts. All men are bound to keep it. And all men will be judged by this law on the last day, if not in Christ. More was said about this in previous sermons. But I do hope that you would agree with me that God’s people — those who have been redeemed by God, and who bear his name — do have a special kind of obligation to obey their God.
Really, this is what the preface, or the introduction, to the Ten Commandments teaches. And this is the message that our catechism is trying to get across. If we are in Christ — if we have been rescued by him and washed clean by his blood, then we have a special kind of obligation to keep God’s law.
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Catechism Explained
Question 48 of our catechism asks, “What is the preface to the Ten Commandments?” A preface is an introduction that sets the tone for what will follow. And the answer to question 48 is simply a quotation of Exodus 20:2: “The preface to the Ten Commandments is in these words; ‘I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2). That is how the Ten Commandments are introduced in Exodus 20:2.
By the way, you have probably noticed that the English found in our catechism is old English. That is because this document was written a long time ago, originally in the 17th century. Parents, you are free to modernize the language for your children if you like. As a church, we have decided to retain the original because altering foundational documents such as catechisms and confessions can be tricky. If you wish to memorize the preface to the Ten Commandments, or the Ten Commandments themselves using the language of the ESV or some other modern Bible translation, that would be fine. The point is that we learn them, and hopefully put them to memory.
But let us think about Exodus 20:2 for a moment and the preface to the Ten Commandments that is found there. What was the setting? Who was speaking? And to whom? These are important questions.
Well, if you know the story of the Exodus you know that it was God who was speaking. Moses had gone up on Mount Sinai and had received the Ten Commandments from God. The scriptures tell us that these words were written tablets of stone by the finger of God. And Moses brought these tablets down to the people of Israel who, not long before this, were rescued from Egypt. If you wish to know more about that story, you should read the second book of the Bible, called Exodus.
So these words that we are considering are God’s words. And were delivered in this form to Israel. These were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The small clan of Jacob has grown to a very large multitude over the span of hundreds of years as they lived and eventually suffered in Egypt. At the time of the Exodus, God rescued them. He brought them out from Egyptian bondage through Moses his servant. He brought them out by sending 10 plagues. He led them into the wilderness and when they were trapped with the Red Sea on one side, and the army of Egypt on the other side, God led them through the Sea by parting the waters. The Hebrews walked on dry land through waters of judgement, and as the Egyptians pursued them, the waters of judgement fell upon them and consumed them.
That is the setting. In brief, this law was given by God to Israel, whom he had rescued out of Egypt to be his chosen people. The first words spoken were, “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2).
This Exodus story should sound familiar to you for two reasons.
One, it should sound familiar to you because you know your Bible and the story of the history of redemption that is found there. It is important that we know this story and that we teach it to our children. God did really rescue the Hebrews out of Egypt through Moses, and he did really give them his law.
Two, this story should sound familiar to you because you have experienced it yourselves, spiritually speaking, if you are in Christ.
Christ is like Moses, only greater.
And through him, God has redeemed us. He has rescued us, not from Egypt, but from Satan himself, and from his kingdom. As Paul says to the Colossians, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,” (Colossians 1:13, ESV)
You too have passed through the waters of judgement. At your baptism you were brought through the waters, having been washed clean by the blood of the lamb.
In Christ, you are God’s chosen people, “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9, ESV).
Friends, the Exodus that the Hebrews experienced so long ago was a type or picture of the greater Exodus that was to come, when Christ rescued his elect from the domain of darkness by his shed blood.
And here is the point that we are making this evening: As God’s people we have a special kind of obligation to obey him, for he is our God, and we are his people.
Question 49 of our catechism explains this using the preface of the Ten Commandments: “What doth the preface to the Ten Commandments teach us?” Answer: “The preface to the Ten Commandments teacheth us, that because God is the Lord, and our God and Redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all His commandments.”
Why are we bound to keep all of God’s commandments? Three reasons are given, and each one of them is very important.
One, “we are bound to keep all His commandments” because “God is the LORD”.
In the very first words of the preface to the Ten Commandments God introduces himself, saying, “I am the LORD”. The Hebrew word translated as LORD is YHWH. He is the one true God — the one and the only. The self-existent, eternal, and unchanging one. He is the Creator of all things in heaven and earth, seen and unseeing. Why must we obey God? Because he is the LORD!
You will notice that this reason does not only apply to God’s redeemed, but to all people. All people are obligated to obey God — to worship and serve him — because he is God! He is our Creator. This is true of all men, even of those who deny his existence and blaspheme his holy name. God is the Creator of all things, and he is the Sustainer of all things. All are obligated to obey him.
You know, over the past few years the phrase “not my President” has grown in popularity in our Nation. And every time I hear it or read it I think, what a silly thing for an American citizen to say. I understand what they mean. They wish to express their strong dislike for the President. And they have the right to do that. But what a silly way to say it. What I hear is this, my dislike for this President is so strong that I must deny reality and create a little reality of my own in order to function. Everytime I encounter the phrase I think, no, he is your President. That is the reality. And saying “not my President”, or living as if he is not, will not change a thing. He is your President, in reality.
And this is how many live in relation to God. Many will say with their mouths or in their hearts, “not my God”. But this does not change the fact that he is. He is our God. He is our Creator and Sustainer. We live in his world. We breathe his air and eat and drink the food and water that he has mercifully provided. We are “bound to keep all His commandments” because “God is the LORD”.
Secondly, we are “bound to keep all His commandments” because God is “our God”.
And no, this does not contradict what I have just said. There is a sense in which God is God to all, even to those who say, not my God. But there is also a sense in which God is “our God”. We belong to him and he belongs to us in a special way.
As you are reading through your Bibles, be on the lookout for phrases like this: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Phrases like this are peppered everywhere from Genesis to Revelation. For example in Jeremiah 33:31 God speaks of the coming New Covenant when he says, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33, ESV). And Revelation 21:3 says, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God’” (Revelation 21:3, ESV).
So while it is true that God is the God of all men, it is also true, now that man has fallen into sin and God has determined to redeem a people for himself, that some have God as their God in a special way.
And please hear this: having God as your God does not lessen your obligation to obey him. To the contrary, the obligation is now greater. You are his. He has set love upon. You are his child. You bear his name. It is only right that you worship and serve him from the heart. This was true of the nation Israel of Israel under the Old Covenant. And this is true for all who have faith in Christ in the Covenant of Grace.
Why are we bound to keep all of God’s commandments? Because “God is the LORD, and our God”, and thirdly, he is our Redeemer.Not only is God God. And not only is he our God. He is our Redeemer.
This was true of ethnic Israel in an early sense. God had redeemed, or rescued, Israel from earthly bondage, and so he said “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
But this is true for you and men and all who are in Christs in spiritual and eternal sense. God has redeemed you, not from Egypt, but from the domain of darkness and the power of the Evil one. He has redeemed you, not through Moses and by ten plagues, but through Christ and by his shed blood, of which the blood of the ram spread upon the doorposts of the houses of the Hebrews was a sign.
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Conclusion
I have been using the word “obligation” a lot in this sermon. Why should we obey God? Well, because he is God, and more than that, he is our God! We obey him because it is right that we do. We are obliged to obey him. But there is another word that we might use, and that is the word “gratitude”. We are to keep his commandment because we are grateful for all that he has done for us in Christ Jesus by his mercy and grace. We are to obey God because we love him and are grateful for all of his gifts. You can hear the appeal to grateful and loving obedience to God in that Deuteronomy 10:12ff passage that we read at the beginning of this sermon. Go back and read it for yourself sometime soon to see.
For now, let us recite Baptist Catechism 49:
“What doth the preface to the Ten Commandments teach us?
“The preface to the Ten Commandments teacheth us, [repeat now after me] that because God is the Lord, and our God and Redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all His commandments. (Deut 11:1)”
