Deuteronomy 5.6–7
The first of a series of sermons on The Ten Commandments preached at Nedlands Anglican Church 6th August 2023
In 58 years of ministry I have never taught on the Ten Commandments. Whyever not, when we were taught that the three basics everyone should learn by heart are the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments? The reason is simple: I thought nothing needed to be said. They are obvious. Everyone agrees with them. What was there to say?
But something has crept upon us. Suddenly they are not obvious. Not everyone agrees with them. “Judeo-Christian morality” is commonly spoken of as something outdated—even evil—and no one protests. There is now much that needs to be said.
Today we will focus on the first commandment:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt; you shall have no other God’s but me.
This is the first of ten; together they make up the introduction to God’s covenant with Israel. This covenant is the constitution God gave to Israel when he rescued them from Egypt and made them his own nation. They were the only “nation under God,” in the ancient world. God was their king, and these were his laws.
I should emphasize here that the Ten Commandments are the introduction to a covenant which God made with his people. They were not established by a constitutional commission, nor by a referendum, nor were they imposed by a conquering power—though in a way they were. God claimed this people as his own, but he did not conquer them, he saved them. And then he laid down the conditions for their continued relationship with him—assuming that was a good thing.
As we come up to a nation-wide referendum on enshrining an aboriginal voice in our founding document, we Australians are thinking of our constitution. I realized I had never read it, so downloaded it with a few questions in my mind. I wondered whether there was any mention of God. Were the first settlers, the British, given any special privileges? Is there anything which discriminates against Aboriginal people. On these last two questions: no, there is nothing that gives special privileges to anyone, and nothing that discriminates against Aborigines. It is a constitution in which everyone is equal. However, the first thing that hit me as I read the constitution for the first time is the lack of anything like the Ten Commandments, setting out the duties of citizens—or their rights as in the American constitution. But there is an introduction, and it mentions God. This surprised me.
Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth …
God is also asked for help in the oath which government ministers must recite:
I, A.B., do solemnly swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Her heirs and successors according to law. SO HELP ME GOD!
But is God still the God of our nation? And let’s be clear, we are talking about the God of Israel; it was this God the founders of our constitution had in mind when the wrote the constitution. But he is hardly our God today. How often are we reminded that we are a multi-cultural, multi-faith society? How often do you hear God spoken of on the ABC, other than blasphemously? How often is the fact of his ownership of the land brought into our discussions about the rights and wrongs of European settlement? What place does he have in our school curriculums?
Anyway how did it come about that Israel’s God got a mention in our constitution in the first place?
That is a long story, known to many, and I won’t repeat it. Let me just say that when Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, and was appointed by God as its king, and sent his followers to declare his kingdom and the amnesty that accompanies it all all nations—to all who will accept him as their king— he set a ball rolling that eventually led to England and most of Europe accepting this and writing constitutions and laws consistent with it. King Charles III was recently crowned as a Christian king–at least, that was the meaning of the words they said over him. Australia is heir to that tradition. When I was young most people accepted that Israel’s God was our God, and his commandments came with it.
But, as I said, something has crept up on us. Many of my generation are bewildered to find that we are no longer what we were—no less bewildered than the aborigines of two hundred years ago were to find their culture no longer that of the country. How has it happened?
In 2002 I was in Sydney for six months, living close to Sydney University. There is a large bookshop in King St Newtown that stocks a lot of student textbooks. I was surprised to find new editions of most of Friedrich Nietzsche’s works, and wondered what courses were prescribing them. Nietzsche was a German philologist-philosopher towards the end of the nineteenth century. He complained that the European intelligentsia, though they had ceased to believe in God, still hung on to Christian. He mocked Christian values as “slave morality;” in enshrining weakness as a virtue, he said they were the slaves’ revenge on their masters. Nietzsche was the first philosopher to take seriously what he called “the death of God”; if God is dead, then man should take charge of himself and become “superman.” I had read The Gay Science (which is nothing to do with homosexuality, though I suspect it’s where they got their modern name), and hadn’t got far before I realized much of it was the inspiration of Nazism. How noble is it to be able to inflict pain without any qualms, says Nietzsche! The German SS were fed on his ideas. So, I wondered why Australian university students were reading this stuff. The answer is clear: they (or their teachers) didn’t believe in God, and were exploring the implications of a world without him. And that is now mainstream with the ABC and in our schools and universities, so we can hardly take the Ten Commandments seriously anymore as a statement of everyman’s obligations—especially, “I am the Lord your God who redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt, and you from death and hell.” The reality is, just like Israel before us, we have abandoned the one who was once our God, and gone elsewhere.
But does it matter? “Not everyone is a Christian,” we were once were told. “Stop imposing your morality on us!” And we stopped. Does it matter for us as a nation, then, that God is no longer our God?
Well, when Israel turned its back on God, disaster fell on them. I am presently reading the Book of Jeremiah. No other nation has changed its gods, he complains, though they are idols. But Israel has abandoned the true God over and over. And isn’t that true today? Our leaders, and not only our leaders, have abandoned a Christian understanding of marriage, taken over a Christian hospital so they can enforce their murderous practices, are participating in spirit practices (smoking ceremonies), and are making laws without any regard to the will of God. Jeremiah wept as he foresaw the disaster that was approaching. Israel broke its covenant with God, abandoned his laws, and defiled its land, so God would leave them to themselves, and eventually that led to destruction by the armies of Babylon.
When I closed Jeremiah and took up the newspaper and read of the astounding growth of the military machine in China, I was frightened. Back in 2002 when I was in Sydney, I mentioned to a friend my surprise when I went past the bus stop outside the university: all the students waiting there were Chinese. His reply was interesting. “How do you know that God will not give Australia to the Chinese?” he said. “Do we deserve to keep it?” Are we any better than Israel was when the Babylonian holocaust fell on them?
But, uncanny as the resemblances are, it would be wrong to make a direct application of Jeremiah to our own situation,. We are not God’s chosen people, and there are many in our land who continue to love and honour the creator God and his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. There is also much that is good in our values and national life. The rise and fall of nations is in God’s hand, and we know he often preserves an evil nation for many hundreds of years for his own purposes. The first Christians lived in a pagan world ruled by a pagan government, where the exposure of newborn children to be eaten by animals was routine. Rome lasted for a thousand years. The early Christians had no interest in subverting the ruling powers to establish a Christian empire; their mandate was to rescue individuals from the judgement everyone must face. What happens with China, and the future of our nation is in God’s hands.
More to the point for us, is what St Paul says in Romans 1; there are many other consequences of abandoning God. He speaks of God’s anger against the people of his day for their injustices, godlessness, and suppression of truth. They chose not to know God and withheld their thanks, and God turned his back and gave them up. It was as though he said, “You do not want me, so you can see what that is like.” As a result they became stupid, says Paul. They embraced all manner of false beliefs, and lost all sense of morality. As G.K. Chesterton observed of England in his day, “When people cease believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.” And that, surely, is where we are today. “They claimed to be wise, but became fools,” says Paul. Their sexual confusion was just one symptom God’s judgement on them. The present gender-confusion is understandable when you realize that the loss of God means the loss of any reference point. “Man is the measure of all things,” is the slogan of humanism. But when humans have nothing but themselves to measure themselves by, they soon become lost. “Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them up to a depraved mind … they are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice … gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, boastful, disobedient to parents, senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless … They not only do such things, they approve those who do them.” In another place Paul describes the former life of his fellow-Christians as “hating and being hated.” (Titus 3)
Going back to Nietzsche, the one thing that made sense to him in the absence of God is what he calls “the will to power.” “Might is right,” the ancients used to say. Morality, rationality, reason, are only good as they allow you and your group to dominate; you can discard them as soon as they don’t work for you. Communism came to power in Russia through the efforts of a multitude of idealistic young longing for a better world, but as soon as the Bolsheviks took the levers of state, they shot the very ones who helped them and were now a nuisance. Right became what the party said was right. When people decry the evils of Judeo-Christian morality, or traditional Western culture, you need to ask what they propose to put in its place. And they won’t tell you, because without God everything devolves in the end to a struggle for power. This is where we get, when we turn our backs on God. So, when you despair of the slogans, the vilification of those with another point of view, the absence of reasoned debate, the “cancelling” of opposing voices, understand where it is coming from, and understand it is God’s judgement already upon us. For when we abandon God’s way, we abandon the way to freedom and happiness. I wish I had more time to explain this.
But let us come back to ourselves. We are Christians. We now identify with the Israelites whom God saved from Egypt. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt”—we embrace these words and feel they are in some way addressed to us. We look to Jesus risen from the dead, who brought us in to share in Israel’s future. We are saved by his life-giving death. Like burning sticks we have been snatched from the fire. “All authority in heaven and earth had been given to me,” he said. We call on him as our Lord, and he calls on us to pay attention to his teaching and to stay away from idols.
Listen to how Joshua addressed the Israelites in their new land:
And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve … But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24.
And listen to these words of John in his first letter:
And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. 1 John 5.
God created and saved us; he is the source and centre of everything. Keep him at the centre! I intend next week to ask what is wrong with picturing God.