The First Words of Freedom: A Sermon on Exodus 20:1-17
Preached at Blue Ocean Faith Columbus on Sunday, November 2, 2025
Reminder: I never stick completely to my written sermon. This isn’t a transcript, but the written sermon I was using when I preached.
PART ONE: Understanding the Ten Commandments
Friends, seeing more and more calls to place the Ten Commandments in public schools, government buildings, and just about anywhere else conservative politicians can think of, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Ten Commandments and what they really mean. Do we really understand them? Do we really understand why people are so ready to read them as the end all, be all of God’s word and neglect the Beatitudes? Do any of us really know how we can live the Ten Commandments out in our lives today?
With those questions in mind, I want to spend the next few weeks looking at the Ten Commandments, a few at a time; what they continue to teach us; and how we can apply them in our daily lives.
Before we dive into any of the Commandments specifically, we need to talk about what we’re actually looking at when we read the Ten Commandments. Because here’s the thing—and I need you to hear this—these aren’t just rules. These aren’t just “thou shalt nots” handed down from an angry God in the sky trying to control us.
Repeat after me: These are words of liberation.
Let’s look at our text. Listen for a word from God in Exodus 20:1-17 NRSVUE:
Then God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord, your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses their name.
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work; you, your children, your slaves, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.
Honor your parents, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s spouse, slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
This is the word of God for the people of God.
Before we get any further into this, let’s get our bearings.
Historically, these commandments come to a people who have just escaped slavery. They’ve been brick-makers for Pharaoh. They’ve known suffering, they’ve known hunger, they’ve known what it means to have their children torn from them. And now, three months into freedom, standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, they’re about to learn how to be free people.
See, Egypt had laws, but those laws served Pharaoh. Those laws said: you exist to produce, to serve power, to make the rich richer and the powerful more powerful.
But God’s law? God’s law is different. It starts not with “thou shalt not” but with “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out.” It starts with liberation. With rescue. With relationship.
From a literary perspective, the commandments are structured in a precise way. The first four deal with our relationship with God. The last six deal with our relationships with each other. In their very organization, God’s saying to us: “You can’t love God if you don’t love your neighbor, and you can’t truly love your neighbor if you don’t love God.”
And here’s something else: these aren’t suggestions. The Hebrew is direct, absolute. “You shall not.” Period. Full stop. There’s a clarity here, a firmness that says: This is what it means to be God’s people. This is the shape of freedom. This is how you stay free.
Theologically, the Ten Commandments reveal the character of God. They show us a God who cares about everything: our worship, yes, but also our rest, our relationships, our property, our sexuality, our speech, even our thoughts and desires. This is a God who wants all of us, who claims all of life as sacred ground. These commandments create the conditions for community. You can’t have a functioning, flourishing community if people are murdering each other, stealing from each other, lying about each other, and coveting what each other has. You can’t build the beloved community on a foundation of idolatry and unfaithfulness to God and to each other.
The Ten Commandments are God’s blueprint for how a liberated people stay liberated. We need to understand that the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land isn’t just geographical. It’s spiritual. It’s psychological. It’s communal. You can take the people out of Egypt, but getting Egypt out of the people? That’s the work of a lifetime. That’s the work of the commandments.
PART TWO: The First Two Commandments
I want to turn now to the commandments themselves. Over the next several weeks we’re going to focus in on each commandment by looking at three dynamics:
1. What the commandment meant to the Ancient Hebrews. How would they have interpreted the language and the calling from God?
2. What the Bible says about the commandment. The Ten Commandments are not static. They don’t just appear once or twice and are never mentioned again. The Bible speaks to and refers to them throughout the rest of the text. We need to understand that tradition.
3. How can we apply the commandment in our lives? The Ten Commandments are significant, and their influence is felt still today. How can we faithfully, progressively, and practically live them out in 2025?
The First Commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”
What It Meant to the Ancient Hebrews
Ancient Egypt was full of Gods. The Egyptians had gods for everything: gods of the Nile, gods of the sun, gods of the harvest, gods of the afterlife, gods of war, gods of fertility. At times even the living Pharaoh was considered a god. As is the case in many polytheistic religions, individual cities, powerful families, and areas often had their own gods or versions of gods. And these gods weren’t just spiritual ideas. They represented and legitimized real power. When Pharaoh spoke, he did so with the authority of the gods.
So, when God says, “You shall have no other gods before me,” it’s a direct challenge to the entire Egyptian worldview and every empire worldview that would come after it.
The vast majority of the nations and peoples the Hebrews will come into contact with—Canaan, Assyria, Babylon, etc.—had their own pantheon of gods too. A key element of many of these mythologies is that the gods were surprisingly human-like. You could argue with them. Buy them off with offerings and bribes. You could make deals with them. You could even play them off each other. You could make a deal with Baal for rain, a deal with Asherah for fertility, and a deal with Molech for military victory. You could hedge your bets. You could diversify your spiritual portfolio. And if they didn’t come through on the deal? If your god or gods didn’t do what you asked them to do? You could always go find a new god.
But our God says: “No, I’m not one god among many. I’m not a regional deity you consult for specific needs. I’m not a god you can manipulate. I’m the Lord God. I’m the One who liberated you. I’m the One who heard your cries in Egypt. I’m the One who split the sea. I will not share your loyalty with statues and idols. Sure, you can deny me and run away, but I’m all you’ve got and I’ll be here waiting when you come back.”
Yes, this is an exclusive claim. But it’s not exclusive because God’s insecure. This exclusivity is one of intimacy. It’s the exclusivity of a God who says: “I know what happens when you divide your heart. I know what happens when you try to serve multiple masters. You end up serving none. You end up enslaved again.”
What the Bible Says About It
This commandment comes up throughout Scripture. We hear it echoing in the words of the prophets, psalmists, and Jesus.
Isaiah 44:6-8 says: “This is what the Lord says: ‘I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God. Who then is like me? Let them proclaim it. Let them declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come…You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.’”
In 1 Kings 18, the Prophet Elijah faced down 450 prophets of Baal. In verse 21 he asks the people, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” (Spoiler: It doesn’t turn out well for the 450 prophets of Baal.)
Jesus speaks to this commandment at least twice. First, in Matthew 6:24 Jesus says: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
Second and more importantly, in Matthew 22:37-40 he says, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Jesus demonstrated what the First Commandment is really about. It’s not just about avoiding carved images or foreign deities. It’s about the orientation of your whole life. It’s about who or what gets your allegiance. It’s about who has the final say.
Living It Today: Confronting the Idols of Our Time
I doubt any of us actively bow down to statues or worship pantheons of other gods. Maybe you do. But we still have our idols. The most dangerous idol for many of our Christian siblings right now is Christian nationalism.
Repeat after me: Christian nationalism is idolatry.
It takes the flag and wraps it around the cross until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. It says that to be a “real” Christian you have to be white, heterosexual, at least middle class, and able-bodied. It doesn’t hurt to be male too. It also says that to be a “real” American you have to be Christian. It says that God blesses America above all nations—as if God plays favorites, as if God doesn’t love immigrants as much as a person born in the United States
Christian nationalism says: worship a small god in a small box who fits our ideal of what godliness is and while you’re at it also worship this nation, this flag, and the version of history where we’re the heroes and never the oppressors. It says: God brought you out of Egypt, but make sure you keep other people in their Egypt. Keep them out. Keep them down. Keep them separate.
Friends, this is not the God of Exodus. This is not the God who heard the cries of an enslaved people and said, “Let my people go.” This is a false god. This is Pharaoh in a flag pin and a cross necklace.
The First Commandment demands that we ask: Who is our God? Is it the God of liberation who brings people out of slavery? Or is it the god of nationalism that wants to build walls, ban people, and legislate who gets to be fully human?
And while we’re on the topic of Christian nationalism, let’s talk about one of their favorite phrases: “traditional family values.” It’s become an idol too.
The God we find in Exodus didn’t bring people out of slavery so they could create new categories of “clean” and “unclean,” “in” and “out,” “worthy” and “unworthy.” Jesus didn’t die on the cross so we could decide whose love is legitimate and whose isn’t.
When we say, “traditional family,” what are we really saying? When members of the Ohio General Assembly propose a bill calling for recognition of “Natural Families Month,” what are we calling “natural” and “unnatural?” Are we talking about the families in Scripture? Because Biblical families are messy. Abraham had a wife, who he occasionally called his sister, and had a child with his wife’s servant. Jacob had two wives and two concubines. David had a man stationed at the front lines of combat in the hopes that he’d be killed and David could have his wife. Solomon’s sexual conquests are well documented. Ruth and Naomi had a relationship so intimate that Ruth said, “Where you go, I will go; your people shall be my people and your God, my God.” David and Jonathan “knit their souls together.” Jesus’ family fled persecution and became refugees.
Whose “traditional values” are we defending? Is it the tradition of Scripture, with all its complicated, beautiful, and imperfect families? Or is it the tradition of 1950s America, a manufactured nostalgia for a time when only certain people got to be fully human and many people lived secret, repressed lives?
Some of the people who shout the loudest for “traditional family values” have some of the least traditional families and marriages.
Here’s the truth, church: God isn’t asking us to defend an idol of “traditional family values.” God’s asking us to defend families. All families. Transgender people who need their parents and families to see and love them. Queer families who are told their love doesn’t count. Single parents doing their best to raise children on their own. Grandparents raising their grandchildren. Extended family stepping up and stepping in. Immigrant families being torn apart. Families formed through adoption. Chosen families created when biological families don’t love people like they should.
The first commandment calls us to ask: Is our God big enough for all of this? Or have we made God in our own image, small enough to fit our prejudices? Because here’s what God is saying: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt.” Not just you. Not just people who look like you, who love like you, or who pray like you. All of us. Everyone crying out for liberation. Everyone yearning for freedom. Everyone trapped in systems that dehumanize and destroy.
God still hears the cries of the oppressed. God still breaks chains. God still leads people to freedom.
And if we’re going to worship this God, then we can’t worship the idols of nationalism and exclusion at the same time. We have to choose.
The first commandment is an invitation to freedom. Real freedom. The freedom that comes from worshiping the God who liberates, the God who welcomes, the God who says, “I see you, I know you, I love you, and I want all of you.”
The Second Commandment: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
What It Meant to the Ancient Hebrews
For the Ancient Hebrews, this commandment was radical. Every other nation had images of their gods. You could go to the temple in Babylon and see Marduk. You could visit a Canaanite shrine and see Baal, carved in wood or stone, covered in gold. These statues were often more than just images or representations of gods, they were held to be the god itself.
Therefore, these images gave people a sense of control. You could see your god. You could carry your god with you. You could manipulate your god. You could put your god where you wanted, when you wanted.
But our God refuses to be contained. Refuses to be controlled. Refuses to be made manageable.
Why? Because the moment you make an image of God, you put a limit on God. You freeze God in one form, one expression, one way of being. And the God of the Bible is the God who IS. The God of becoming. The God of movement and mystery. The God who shows up in a burning bush and a pillar of cloud and a still small voice and ultimately, in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.
When the Hebrews would later build the Temple, the Holy of Holies—the inner sanctuary where God’s presence was said to dwell—contained no image. Just the Ark of the Covenant. Because God cannot be reduced to what our hands can make. Yet, we should be careful here, because images of God are not the only problem. Yes, the Holy of Holies was said to be unadorned, but it was a finite location. It put a limit on God who is limitless. It also enforced the idea that only certain people could access God who is as close as our next breath.
What the Bible Says About It
The second commandment isn’t just about physical statues. Throughout Scripture, it becomes clear that we make images of God in our minds too. We create mental idols: pictures of who God is and what God wants that serves us rather than transforms us. The people in Jesus’ time had made an image of God as the enforcer of purity codes, the keeper of boundaries, the rewarder of the righteous, and the punisher of sinners. And then Jesus showed up, eating with tax collectors and sinners, touching lepers, welcoming children, honoring women, and the people were confused because Jesus didn’t fit their image of God and the Messiah.
In Romans 1, Paul warns about people who “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.” But the exchange isn’t just about statues. It’s about exchanging the truth of who God is for a version that serves our agendas, confirms our biases, and justifies our systems.
We see this throughout the Bible, across history, and today: people trying to make God into something controllable, something predictable, something that endorses what they already want to do. Every single time, God breaks the mold.
Living It Today: Breaking Our Mental Idols
Friends, we need to talk about the images of God we’ve created. Because some of these images are keeping us from seeing what God is doing right now in the world. I don’t just mean white “God” and white “Jesus” with their European features, pale complexions, and male gender. I mean the ideas, the conceptions, the many things we’ve substituted for God.
One of the most dangerous images we’ve created is the image of God as the defender of the status quo. God as the one who says, “Keep things the way they are. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t make trouble. Stay in your lane.”
But that’s not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is disruptive. The God of the Bible is always showing up where people don’t expect, calling the outcasts and the people who don’t think they qualify, and liberating people who others would prefer to keep oppressed.
We’ve made an image of God as someone who cares more about who people love than whether people are loved. We’ve made an image of God who cares more about protecting borders than protecting people. We’ve made an image of God who looks like us, thinks like us, and votes like us. And we’ve compounded that sin by saying that anyone who doesn’t fit that image must not know God or believe in God.
The second commandment is calling us to break the false images. Not just the ones in temples, but the ones in our hearts and minds.
What does this look like practically?
It means that when someone says, “God would never accept LGBTQIA+ people,” we break that image. We say: “Actually, the God I serve is bigger than your boxes. The God who created humanity in infinite diversity, who through Jesus welcomed everyone the religious establishment excluded; that God cannot be reduced to your narrow image.”
It means when someone says, “God blesses America above all nations, so we should close our borders and turn away refugees,” or simply implies that God wants to “make America great again,” we break that image. We say: “The God of the Bible was a refugee. Jesus was a refugee. The God who said, ‘I was a stranger, and you welcomed me’ cannot be squeezed into your nationalistic idol.”
It means when someone weaponizes “traditional family values” to exclude and harm, we break that image. We say: “The God who is love itself, who invented family and community, who expands our understanding of kinship beyond bloodlines; that God will not be used to tear families apart or deny the love that binds people together.”
See, the second commandment protects us from making God too small. It protects us from domesticating the Divine. It protects us from turning the God of liberation into the god of the empire, the God of love into the god of exclusion, the God of justice into the god of the status quo.
And yes, God is described here as “jealous.” But this isn’t petty jealousy. This is the jealousy of a lover who knows that when we give ourselves to false gods, we hurt ourselves. We diminish ourselves. We settle for less than the abundant life God wants for us.
God is jealous for our freedom. God is jealous for our flourishing. God is jealous because God knows that these images, these idols, will ultimately destroy us.
And notice what God says: punishment to the third and fourth generation for those who reject God, but steadfast love to the thousandth generation for those who love God. God’s love outweighs God’s judgment. This is a God whose default setting is love. Whose fundamental nature is grace. Whose deepest desire is relationship with us; real relationship, not a relationship mediated through images we control.
CONCLUSION: The Call to Freedom
Friends, these first two commandments call us into freedom. Real freedom. The freedom to worship the God who liberates, not the idols that enslave. The freedom to encounter the living God, not the manageable images we create.
This freedom has implications, too. It means we can’t stay silent when legislation tries to erase our Queer, Trans, and immigrant siblings. It means we can’t stand by when immigrants are demonized and dehumanized. It means we can’t tolerate a Christianity that baptizes racism and calls it faithfulness.
Here’s my charge to you today: Go and break some idols. Not with violence, but with love. Not with condemnation, but with truth. Not with exclusion, but with radical welcome.
Break the idol of nationalism by loving your immigrant neighbors.
Break the idol of “traditional family values” by affirming and celebrating all the beautiful ways people love each other and create families.
Break the idol of white supremacy by actively working for racial justice.
Break the idol of respectability by showing up, speaking out, making good trouble.
And as you break these idols, remember you’re not destroying faith. You’re making room for the real God. The God who is bigger than we can imagine. The God who liberates and loves and calls us into abundant life.
Amen.