Bible reading: Exodus 20:1-18.

The Hebrews have left their slavery in Egypt and are gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai.

God spoke, and these were his words: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you were slaves. Worship no god but me. Do not make for yourselves images of anything in heaven or on earth or in the water under the earth. Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the Lord your God and I tolerate no rivals. I bring punishment on those who hate me and on their descendants down to the third and fourth generation, but I show my love to thousands of generations of those who love me and obey my laws.

“Do not use my name for evil purposes, for I, the Lord your God, will punish anyone who misuses my name.

“Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. You have six days in which to do your work, but the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to me. On that day no one is to work—neither you, your children, your slaves, your animals, nor the foreigners who live in your country. In six days I, the Lord, made the earth, the sky, the seas, and everything in them, but on the seventh day I rested. That is why I, the Lord, blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.

“Respect your father and your mother, so that you may live a long time in the land that I am giving you.

“Do not commit murder.

“Do not commit adultery.

“Do not steal.

“Do not accuse anyone falsely.

“Do not desire another man’s house; do not desire his wife, his slaves, his cattle, his donkeys, or anything else that he owns.”

When the people heard the thunder and the trumpet blast and saw the lightning and the smoking mountain, they trembled with fear.

Message.

I wonder how many definitions there are of the word “tablet”? I can think of six. The first that comes to my mind is the sort that you buy at a chemist: a small solid piece of medicine, in fact a pill, such as Paracetamol or Aspirin. A second meaning, now rather obsolete, is of a block of writing paper; while a modern one is the idea of a tablet as a small, portable computer – I don’t have one, but my grandchildren are dab hands with them! There are two other meanings of “tablet” which are a bit more obscure. One will be familiar to folk born north of the Scottish border: “tablet” is a kind of sweet similar to fudge but with a grainier texture (Moira gets cross when  we go to a fudge shop and discovers that what they’re selling is really tablet). You won’t know the other meaning unless you’re knowledgeable about railways: a ‘tablet’ is a token which the signaller gives to a train driver when they are about to enter a section of single-line track. It’s the proof that there won’t be another train coming down the line in the opposite direction.

So we have five meanings of “tablet”: pills, writing paper, mini-computers, Scottish sweeties and a safety device for trains. But there’s one more, which I think is probably the basis for all the others: a tablet is a ‘flat slab of stone, clay, or wood, used especially for an inscription’. Tablets are, of course, used as memorials (the Romans were keen on them), but you’ll also find them lining the walls of cathedrals. The ancient Babylonians used tablets made of soft clay for writing on: the ones that survive, usually inscribed with cunieform script, contain letters, hymns to the gods, mathematical formulae, astronomical almanacs and business records. And, of course, when tablets of this kind are mentioned Christians and Jews think of the two stone tablets (a much more durable medium than clay) containing the Ten Commandments which, the Bible tells us, were given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.

It’s not easy for us to believe the story of Moses going up the mountain, communing with God for forty days and nights, and coming back down with tablets of stone engraved by God’s own finger. It seems to fit more into the category of myth or folk-tale than history – although it is presented as historical fact. This means that other explanations have been given for what was going on. We can, I hope, quickly dismiss the notion that Moses met with aliens on the top of the mountain! However there are folk, including some Christians, who cannot accept that these divine encounters ever took place. They’d say that what actually happened was this: that the leaders of Israel codified their laws and then “wrote back” (or made up) a story give them divine authority and “clout”. I don’t agree with this idea as it’s pretty clear that something happened out there in the desert, an event which the writers of Exodus struggled to put it into words. That “something” was so significant that it has defined the essence of Jewishness ever since; it has also shaped Christianity and, to a degree, Islam. I believe that our God is a speaking God, and that he not only spoke to Moses and his people in the wilderness, but that he spoke repeatedly throughout the Bible story which begins, “God said, Let there be light” and that he still speaks through his Spirit today. God spoke to Moses; and that meeting has had an incalculable effect on the history of the world.

There’s a lot I could say about the Commandments; but there’s one thing which is fundamental to our understanding of them. It’s this: these Commandments aren’t an arbitrary set of rules handed down by God, nor are they merely guidelines about running society in a just and sensible way. I think that, first and foremost, they are about the relationship between God and his people. We can hear this in their first words, which aren’t “Do this” or “Don’t do that” but, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt”. This isn’t the way that legal documents usually begin, it’s a declaration by a God who loves his people and who wants to remind them of how he has acted on their behalf. For the Hebrews, formerly slaves in Egypt, have been set free by God and will soon enter their Promised Land. They now need to know how they should live. The Commandments (and the multiplicity of other Jewish laws) tell them that and also define the relationship with their divine lord and master.

I need to go a bit further. Over the last few weeks there’s been a word that has cropped up over and over again: it’s the word “covenant” which, I’ll remind you, is a form of contract between two parties which includes both obligations and potential penalties. (You might recall that I mentioned rental agreements where the tenant agrees to pay the rent on time and not smash the house up, at pain of being evicted; while the landlord agrees to keep the property in good order). So God made a covenant with Noah: “I won’t ever again send a flood upon the earth; the seasons will follow in their order each year”; and another with Abraham: “I will give you numerous descendants who will have this land as their eternal home”. Here we have yet another covenant: God gives his laws to his people; and, as we find out again and again later on, he will bless those people and make them prosperous if they keep the laws but trouble will come (they may even be booted out of the land) if they don’t. Both God and the Hebrews have their part to play, although the relationship cannot be an equal one.

So that’s the first main point I’d make: God spoke and then gave the Ten Commandments to the people, thereby setting up a covenant relationship. I next want to think about the word “commandments”. I’m doing this because it’s a word which can provoke very negative reactions; people today often see laws as a set of restrictions to their freedom, a list of “thou shalt nots” which makes them respond, “Hang on a minute – you haven’t got the authority to tell me what I can and can’t do, I’ll behave as I think fit, thank you very much”. (The way many people responded to the new 20mph speed limit shows that – although I grant you that it wasn’t implemented well). I’m afraid that churches – certainly some of the Welsh chapels – have a reputation of being critical and censorious institutions which love to criticise and even stop people who are doing things they enjoy.

But a moment’s thought should make us realise that it’s silly to be so negative about laws. After all, many of them are there simply to make sure that life regulates itself in an orderly fashion, as living together in communities is a complicated business! So just think, for example. of the chaos and carnage that would ensue if we had no traffic laws; or consider how the entire world of business would collapse if there were no rules governing financial transaction; or think about how our health would suffer if there were no food hygiene regulations. We may chafe at red tape; but these laws are beneficial; yes, they may restrict us to some degree but they also help society to run smoothly.

If we do a bit more thinking, we realise that the Ten Commandments are concerned with principle, not detail. The books of Leviticus and Numbers contain inordinately precise, even tedious, rules about tending your fields, about preparing your food, about how to respond when someone has a deadly disease, or about sorting out property disputes with your neighbour – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg (not that the ancient Hebrews would have ever seen an iceberg!) If you are like me, you probably skip over those passages because, to be honest, they don’t seem to be very relevant to us; they set out civil, criminal and religious law for a society very different to our own.

But the Ten Commandments don’t contain those details. Rather, they are the foundational principles which underpin all the other, more detailed laws; they are the basic parameters which defined the sort of society that Israel was supposed to be (that sounded good, didn’t it!). You might say that these Ten Commandments work in much the same way as a nation’s Constitution or Charter: they provide the basis on which everything else is built. So – and this is important– if we see them in this way then we realise that they don’t have to belong to a specific time and place. They, in fact, are God-given guidelines which can be applied to any society, anywhere, at any time. It’s not easy to work out how they should be applied today; that’s where we need good scholars who can dig into them and rightly relate them to topics such as marriage, euthanasia or AI, to name but a few.

I began by mentioning various meanings of the word “tablet”. You’ll remember that one of them was a Scottish sweetmeat; however the Hebrews were not asked to eat the stone tablets which Moses brought down the mountain as they, of course, were indigestible and tooth-shattering! Or were they? For if we stop thinking of the Commandments as a legal code, a list of dos and don’ts, and start seeing them as words of guidance from a caring God, then I think they do become a form of spiritual nutrition, words not just of law but of love and life itself. The Psalmist said that he regarded God’s laws as “sweeter than honey” (a comment I don’t think we’d ever make about the Highway Code!); equally Jesus himself told the Devil that “people do not live on bread alone”, but on the words of God. These Commandments aren’t cold and hard and legalistic: to the Israelites they were as full of nourishment and life as the manna from heaven, the physical food which God gave them in the desert. They still offer life to us today.

I hope that I have helped you to see these ancient laws in a new light this morning; not as cold and dusty restrictions, nor as mere authority imposed from above. I hope that you can now see them in a different way: as sensible, broad and just principles given to us by God our Creator to regulate human society in the best way possible; and as heavenly food which will provide the best possible nutrition for that society (and for the people within it). But above all I hope you can now understand that the Ten Commandments exist to establish and then sustain our relationship with the living God. He was the one who spoke in the beginning, who spoke at the time of Moses, who spoke through Jesus and who, we believe, still loves to speak to his people today. Let’s listen for his voice of love!