Michaelangelo’s Moses, Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

Built in to his sermon series on Deuteronomy 5–11 for Sovereign Joy Baptist Church, Dr. DeRouchie recently completed a mini-series on the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:6–21. The sermons include:

1. A God-Centered Life That Exalts Christ: A Sermon on Deuteronomy 5:6–15
2. Confronting Idolatry, Part 1: Applying Commandment 1 in Deuteronomy 5:6–10
3. Confronting Idolatry, Part 2: Applying Commandment 1 in Deuteronomy 5:6–10
4. Representing God Well: Applying Commandment 2 in Deuteronomy 5:11
5. Resting in God Well: Applying Commandment 3 in Deuteronomy 5:12–15
6. Honor Your Parents: A Sermon on Deuteronomy 5:16
7. Give Others Their Due: A Sermon on Deuteronomy 5:17–21
8. The Ten Commandments To and Through Christ: A Biblical-Theological Sermon on Deuteronomy 5:6–21

You can listen to them here.

The post Sermons on the Ten Commandments appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

It is Mother’s Day, which gives Christians many opportunities to express godliness. Today, we should thank God for supplying us mothers who carried us and bore us rather than aborted us. We should, whether man or woman, be grateful for any modeling our mothers gave us to understand rightly what a woman is and what she ought to be. Some of you today need to entrust to God your longings to be a mother. Other need to cast upon him your griefs in losing a mother or in not being able to have a biological child. Others should ask him to enable you to be a wise mother or to help you love and/or honor your mother or mother-in-law. Still others should pray to God for your own mother’s wellbeing or for the wellbeing of your wife who serves as the mother of your kids. As your pastor, I encourage all of you to pursue godliness this Mother’s Day in whatever form it should take.

This is our final sermon on the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5. That there are ten repetitive, concise statements (Exod 34:28; Deut 4:13; 10:4) suggests that God intended them for easy dissemination and memorization, matching our ten fingers and toes. To this end, years ago, my wife Teresa and I put the Ten Commandments to song to help disciple our own children. And today, to recall from where we have come, I want us to sing this song together. We’ll use the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” On this Mother’s Day, if you are a mother or a son or daughter of a mother, I want you to follow along and sing with me.

As seen in figure 2, the Ten Commandments provided the outer boundaries for Israel’s relationship with God. So long as Israel lived within these boundaries, they as a people would flourish, enjoying all the covenant blessings of God’s provision and protection––their crops would grow, their wombs would produce, and their enemies would be kept at bay. However, if they rebelliously stepped outside the circle of these commands, they would experience God’s just discipline and curse manifest in the removal of provision and protection. Deuteronomy 11:26–28 captures this old covenantal structure with these words: “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey … and the curse, if you do not obey.”

Fig. 2. The Old Covenant’s Circle of Blessing

Today, I want you to see that the old covenant was doomed for failure. The proneness of mankind to leave the right path made curse inevitable for Israel. I also hope you treasure Christ more, believing he is the only way to enjoy righteousness and life. He does what Israel could not do, and all who are in him secure the blessings of righteousness and life that were otherwise out of reach for every mere human. Yet as Christ fulfills Moses’s law, summarized in the Ten Commandments, he also recasts the law from an instrument of death to a guide for living. Today’s message has four points, and I have put each on the screen to help you track.

1. Moses’s Law Required Perfect
Obedience for Righteousness and Life

Through the Ten Commandments and the rest of the law that followed, Moses directed Israel how to love God and neighbor. By obeying God’s law, Israel would be counted righteous and live. Moses said, “It will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment” (Deut 6:25). He also charged, “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live” (8:1; cf. 4:1; Lev 18:5). Righteousness and life were the goals and not the grounds or bases of the old covenant relationship. Moses declared,

See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, … then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. (30:15–18)

Throughout Deuteronomy, Moses regards obedience to the law the means for being counted righteous and for enjoying life. Yet disobedience would bring death.

2. Israel Disobeyed, So Moses’s Law Destroyed Them

Death is what God would bring to Israel. The old covenant law would condemn them because they were stubborn and would continue to be, making their future rebellion certain. Hear Moses’s words in Deuteronomy 9:

Know … that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD. (Deut 9:6–7)

“Unrighteous, stubborn, rebellious”––these are the terms Moses uses to describe those he shepherded for forty years. I praise the Lord Sovereign Joy is not like that congregation! Building off these realities, Moses commanded, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn” (10:16). Israel’s hearts were sick, and Moses says, “Take this knife and fix yourself!” How successful would doing open heart surgery on yourself be? You would die! And this would happen to Israel so long as they sought to acquire righteousness and life by works. We can’t obey perfectly or fix our problems independently. We need outside help. Until God would overcome their spiritual disability, they would remain stubborn, rebellious, and unbelieving, resulting in condemnation (Deut 29:4; cf. 30:6). The old covenant law would ruin them.

Yahweh says this much in 31:16–17:

Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers. Then this people will rise and whore after the foreign gods among them in the land that they are entering, and they will forsake me and break my covenant that I have made with them. Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they will be devoured. (Cf. 4:25–28)

Moses then adds, “I know how rebellious and stubborn you are. Behold, even today while I am yet alive with you, you have been rebellious against the LORD. How much more after my death!” (31:27). Moses is clear that the old covenant would culminate in Israel’s destruction, and the rest of the Old Testament testifies this happened. Israel entered the Promised Land, but centuries of rebellion resulted in ruin. They experienced the curses of the covenant, climaxing in exile and death.

Reflecting on these features, Paul stresses that “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Rom 7:12; cf. 2:20). Nevertheless, he also says, “The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me” (7:10). In God’s ultimate redemptive purposes, the law of Moses bore a “ministry of death” and “condemnation” that would be superseded by the new covenant’s “ministry of righteousness” (2 Cor 3:7, 9).

God gave the law to give “knowledge of sin” and by this to show that “by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight” (Rom 3:20; cf. Gal 2:16). No mere humans can be declared right before God by means of obedience to God’s law, because no mere humans can perfectly meet the law’s demands. As Paul says, “All who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them’” (Gal 3:10; cf. Deut 27:26). Nevertheless, God sent his perfect Son “to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal 4:4–5).

3. Jesus Is Our Only Hope for Righteousness and Life

Whereas in the old covenant, Moses wrote of “the righteousness that is based on the law” (Rom 10:5; cf. Lev 18:5), the prophet looked ahead to the new covenant, seeing in it “the righteousness that is based on faith” (Rom 10:6–9; cf. Deut 30:12–14). Israel’s inability to keep the law perfectly should have made them hope in this day and that God would, in fulfillment of his pledge, provide an unblemished substitute to satisfy the law’s requirements and secure for all in him the righteousness and life the law promised. This is what happens in the gospel.

What we need is to “be found in [Jesus], not having a righteousness of [our] own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil 3:9; cf. Tit 3:4–7). Paul says “that Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works” (Rom 9:30–32). He then adds, “The end of the law is Christ for righteousness to everyone who believes” (10:4).

From the beginning, the goal and end of Moses’s law was Jesus for righteousness. No mere human could perfectly keep the Ten Commandments for righteousness and life. So, God met his own demands through Jesus’s perfect obedience and sacrifice. “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (8:1, 3–4; cf. 5:18–19; 2 Cor 5:21; Col 2:14).

Before treating the Ten Commandments as guides for life, Christians should first see them pointing us to Jesus as our source of life. Moses law helps us celebrate Jesus’s justifying work, by which he declares us right with God and gives us lasting life. Yet there is more. “Now that you have been set free from sin and become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life” (Rom 6:22). In this realm of progressive holiness, the Ten Commandments shift from pointing us to Jesus to guiding us through Jesus in right living.

4. Moses’s Law as Fulfilled through Christ Still Guides Christians Today

The Ten Commandments are part of the old covenant, not the new, and Christians are under the law of Christ, not the law of Moses (1 Cor 9:20–21; cf. Gal 6:2; Heb 8:13). Thus, none of the Ten Commandments serve as a direct authority or guide for believers today. Yet these sermons have shown that, through Christ, all the Ten Commandments still instruct us in the way they clarify God’s unchanging character and values, anticipate and magnify the person and work of Jesus, and portray the far-ranging scope of love for God and neighbor.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus stresses that Moses’s law still matters when considered in view of his teaching and ministry. Jesus says that he did not come to “abolish” the Old Testament but to “fulfill” it by realizing in his life all that it called for and anticipated (Matt 5:17). For Jesus, there is lasting significance in the Old Testament when considered in relation to him. One way this is seen is in how we approach Moses’s law, which is the focus of his next statements.

Truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (5:18–19)

Jesus’s followers must still do and teach Moses’s commands, but only in view of how Jesus fulfills them. Consider figure 3.

Fig. 3. The Law through the Lens of Christ

Jesus’s teaching and ministry are like a lens through which to consider the lasting significance of Moses’s instruction. Some laws seem unchanged before and after Christ, whereas others hit the lens and get “bent” in various ways. Jesus’s coming maintains (with or without extension), transforms, or annuls various laws.

1.  Jesus maintains some laws without extension.

When moving from the old covenant to the new, Christ’s teaching and ministry reaffirms some of the law without any alteration. Thus, Jesus identifies sins flowing from the heart like “evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, [and] slander” as things that defile a person (Matt 15:18–19; cf. 19:17–21). Similarly, Paul stresses to the Roman Christians: “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Rom 13:9). Laws that are maintained without extension are those where obeying them looks the same in both the old and new covenants. Thus, adultery is prohibited both before and after Christ, and the law itself is not altered in any way. All but the Sabbath law in the Ten Commandments seem to be of this nature.

2.  Jesus maintains certain laws with extension.

“Extension” means that through Jesus certain commands in the old covenant apply in new ways or to new people. For example, through Jesus (Matt 10:10), Paul extends Moses’s charge to allow oxen to eat grain while they are working (Deut 25:4) to the need to pay solid wages to ministers. “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages’” (1 Tim 5:17–18; cf. 1 Cor 9:8–12). Similarly, Moses’s requirement that low walls (or parapets) be built around the perimeter of flat roofed houses to guard against accidental injury (Deut 22:8) equally requires that Christians put a railing around a deck, salt an icy sidewalk, or add a baby gate at a stairwell. Through Christ, the moral principle in the law is maintained with extension. When the old covenant law includes cultural or situational details that are different from our own, we heed Jesus’s words at the end of the parable of the good Samaritan and “do likewise” (Luke 10:37), applying the principle in fresh contexts.

3.  Jesus transforms some laws.

Jesus’s person and work fulfill certain laws in a way that their continuation is radically transformed––still applicable but in a newly realized way. This is how I interpreted the Sabbath law (Deut 5:12–15). Thus, Israel’s 6+1 weekly pattern reminded them of their mission to see rest in relation to God realized once again on a global scale, and what Israel hoped for Jesus fulfills, declaring as “lord of the Sabbath,” “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28; 12:8). The last day of the week is no longer the Sabbath, but instead every day Christians enjoy rest in relation to Christ, even as we hope for when that rest will be final and complete. Likewise, in Moses’s law, the charge “purge the evil from Israel” related to enacting the death penalty on criminals (e.g., Deut 22:22). However, in 1 Corinthians Paul applies the charge to a local church’s practice of excommunication as the climax of church discipline: “Purge the evil person from your midst” (1 Cor 5:13). Thus, the old covenant law still applies but is transformed within its new covenant context.

4.  Jesus annuls some laws.

Jesus’s teaching and ministry actually puts an end to certain laws. For example, in relation to Moses’s charge that Israel could not eat unclean animals (e.g., Lev 20:25–26), Christ, having defeated the unclean serpent, now declares all foods clean (Mark 7:19). And with such awareness (Acts 10:14–15), Peter knew this implied that he “should not call any person common or unclean” (10:28). Although Jesus’s fulfillment of these laws means he rescinded the dietary restrictions, we as his followers still benefit from the commands by considering what they tell us about God and Jesus’s victory over all that is unclean.

Conclusion

Within the old covenant, Moses’s law functioned to identify and multiply sin (Rom 3:20; 5:20) and to condemn Israel (2 Cor 3:9), thus showing their desperate need for Jesus. In condemning Israel, the law also condemned the world, for if Israel, with the law, could not glorify God rightly, the rest of the world without the law has no hope of living his way (Rom 3:19). Truly, “by works of law no human being will be justified” (3:20; cf. Gal 3:16).

In God’s purposes, “the end of the law” was always “Christ for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom 10:4). God made righteousness and life the goals of Moses’s law, not the grounds. Yet Israel could never attain what they were seeking (9:30–32; 11:7–8). But when Christ, the perfect Righteous One, came, he secured righteousness and life for all who are in him. Before the law becomes a gift to guide us, the law must first kill us, showing us that believing in Christ alone is our means for right standing before God. We react harshly to our spouse; we express impatience with our kids; we prioritize things over our relationship with God and thus engage in idolatry; we let our eyes lust or our hands steal or our mouths lie. All these acts fail to align with God’s law and thus reveal our need for a Savior. The law leads us to Christ for justification and life.

Yet having “been set free from sin” and having “become slaves of God,” “the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life” (6:22). That is, Jesus died and rose not only to justify us but also to sanctify us, not only to free us from sin’s penalty but also to free us from sin’s power. He “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Tit 2:14). Through Jesus, you can respond to your spouse and kids with gentleness and patience. Through Jesus, you can curb laziness and prioritize prayer and Bible reading. With Jesus’s help, you can value what God values and love what God loves, keeping your eyes from lust and your heart from coveting and your lips from speaking deceit. Through Jesus, Moses’s law moves from being a law that kills to a law that guides.

The Ten Commandments still matter for believers today. Memorize them to instruct your kids and/or to apply them in your life. Let these ancient laws move you to Christ and guide you through Christ. Let Moses’s law help you treasure Jesus by celebrating his justifying work, wherein his perfect obedience to the law reconciles you to God, and then by cherishing his sanctifying work, wherein his blood-bought power helps us love God and love neighbor faithfully and truly. Pray with me….

The post The Ten Commandments To Christ and Through Christ: A Biblical-Theological Sermon on the Law in Deuteronomy 5:6–21 appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

Tonight we’ll meditate on a single verse of Christian Scripture, and I invite you to find 1 John 4:10 in your Bible or in a Bible from under a chair in front of you. You can find the page number for 1 John in the table of contents in the opening pages of the printed text. We’ll consider several passages, but we will keep coming back to 1 John 4:10. It reads, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Pray with me….

Hell is a concept few people think about much. Many individuals irrationally think that if God exists and is good, then he could never send people to eternal torment in hell. I say that hell must exist because God is good. The very presence of hell declares that God is fully just in his dealings, giving people what they deserve. He is a good judge who shows no partiality but instead assesses guilt in accordance with the offense.

We glorify what we revere, and a being of infinite worth deserves maximum glory. Yet all of us “fall short of the glory of God,” failing to give him his due. Justice is about giving to others what they are due, so in not honoring the supreme Lord of the universe as we should, we show that we are unjust in our dealings. Yet in his directing wrath towards us, he shows that he is just in his. Any offense against an infinitely glorious God demands an equally infinite punishment, and this is why hell exists and is right and proper.

A potential injustice exists, therefore, in the fact that God would, in love, pardon anyone. How can he remain just and yet forgive sin? Love is no longer good if it counters what is right, and God will not––cannot––love in an unrighteous way.

In Exodus 33:6–7, God speaks about himself, declaring, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.” How is it, then, that God can lovingly forgive “iniquity and transgression and sin” and yet “by no means clear the guilty?” How can both be true? How can God remain just and yet justify the ungodly (Rom 4:5)? To answer this question leads us to a central reason that God sent Jesus to earth with a mission to die, and this brings us to our verse.

1 John 4:10 provides a vital component to all Christian teaching by using the language of propitiation, which relates to the appeasing of God’s wrath, in this instance, by means of a substitute sacrifice. We read, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” How do we know true love? This verse says it is not seen in how we have acted toward God; indeed, we have all failed to love him as we ought. Instead, it is seen in God’s own remarkable, costly grace in sending his own Son to earth “to be the propitiation for our sins.” God’s just and necessary wrath against our sins gets redirected toward Christ at the cross. Christ’s act, thus, propitiates God’s wrath, allowing it to be satisfied on him so that we can know God’s love.

Proverbs 17:5 declares, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD.” God cannot work against his own character. For him to be a good judge requires that he must affirm, denounce, and punish sin, and we “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). Indeed, “the wages of sin is death” (6:23), and all of us “were dead in our trespasses and sins” and “by nature children of wrath” (Eph 2:1, 3).

Nevertheless, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). That is, he died in our stead, taking the wrath upon himself that we deserved. “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). God counts our sins to Jesus and counts his righteousness to us. As we read in 1 John 3:5, Jesus came “to take aways sins, and in him there is no sin” (cf. Heb 4:15; 1 Pet 2:22–23). Jesus was able to operate as our substitute sacrifice, because he himself was unblemished. Every mere human in this world deserves God’s curse “for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them’” (Gal 3:10). Yet “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us––for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (3:13; cf. John 3:14–15).

At the cross, God offered Jesus “to bear the sins of many” (Heb 9:28; cf. John 11:51–52). Jesus was our substitute wrath-bearer, our propitiation. And therefore, the apostle says earlier in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And now, continuing in 1 John 2:1–2, if any Christian “does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

We cannot do enough to please God. Because he is supremely worthy of all loyalty and praise, failure to honor him even in one matter is worthy of eternal damnation (Jas 2:10). Nevertheless, “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted righteousness” (Rom 4:5).

With the awareness that propitiation refers to how a substitute bears the wrath that was due another, hear Paul’s words in Romans 3:23–26:

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

God’s saving love is not cheap. Indeed, it was amazingly costly, requiring the life of his own Son. Yet God “loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). If you will believe in Jesus, confessing your sins and turning from them to embrace Jesus as Lord, God will count your sins to Jesus and count his righteousness to you. This is the good news. This is love.

Good Friday reminds us of this good news of God’s love that allows him to justify the ungodly because his Son bears the wrath that we deserve. Jesus being our propitiation is the only justifiable reason that God can simultaneously forgive “iniquity and transgression and sin” and yet “by no means clear the guilty” (Exod 34:7). Thus, Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Because Jesus propitiates God’s wrath, you and I can be saved from hell. This makes this day that recalls Jesus’s sacrifice Good Friday.

Hell exists because God is good; forgiveness exists because God is love. I urge you today to receive the love of God today. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). John continues, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (3:46). There is only one way to the Father. Jesus must stand as the propitiation for your sins, and this is accomplished only by believing in him.

Tonight, to all in this room, God is proclaiming the means for enjoying his mercy. If you believe in God’s Son, you will have eternal life. But if you do not believe but disobey the Son, God’s wrath remains on you. I urge you, before the eternal judge, that you turn from your sins and trust God’s provision of a substitute wrath bearer in Jesus. He is our only hope in life and death.

Hell exists because God is good; forgiveness exists because God in love sent Jesus to be the propitiation for our sins. Do you receive God’s love today? Good Friday is only good for you if you do. Otherwise, God’s wrath remains on you. You can enjoy salvation from this wrath today by embracing Jesus as your Savior and Lord.

If God is dealing with you as you hear this message, I invite you to talk with me after the service. Let us pray….

The post Delivered From Divine Wrath: The Display of Divine Love In Christ’s Death (1 John 4:10) appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

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GIVE OTHERS THEIR DUE LOVE
A Sermon on Deuteronomy 5:17–21
Jason S. DeRouchie, PhD (4/12/2026)

This is now my seventh sermon on the Ten Commandments as found in Deuteronomy 5. As I have preached through these Ten Commandments, I have preached Moses’s law more often from Jesus than to Jesus. Yet the law bears both functions: getting us to Jesus and then guiding us after we have met him. It crushes under the weight of our inability and then guides us once God becomes for us in Christ.

For Israel, this law of Moses was to kill, to destroy (2 Cor 3:7, 9), helping them see their need for Jesus (Rom 3:20; 5:20; 10:4). The law itself declares, “It will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment” (Deut 6:25), yet no mere human is able to obey fully, and therefore no mere human is righteous. Instead, “cursed if everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them” (Gal 3:10; cf. Deut 27:26). This is why it took one who is not a mere human but the God-man to come in our stead.

Hearing Moses’s law should have broken Israel and moved them to see their need and embrace God’s provision of a substitute. Yet they should have also known that the blood of bulls and goats could not forgive their sin (Heb 10:4), and so they would be forced to hope in the one to whom their sacrifices pointed, the one whose perfect blood would satisfy God’s just wrath against our iniquities (Isa 53:5, 12; Rom 5:9; Gal 3:13; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 John 4:10) and whose righteousness validated through the resurrection would secure our justification (Rom 4:25; 2 Cor 5:21). Thus, we can preach Moses law in a way that gets us to Christ.

Yet through these sermons, I have been talking to a gathered community of saints who have already encountered the living God and already come to Christ as their righteousness. On this basis, having a God who is already for you 100%, we find that the law of Moses can still guide us in paths of righteousness. The only sin we can conquer is forgiven sin, and standing on Christ and considering how he fulfills the old covenant law, we are in a position to move ahead from Jesus and benefit from Moses’s law as a guide for Christians. That is what I mean that I preach from Jesus rather than to Jesus.

Today, we come to the last six of the Ten Commandments. We have covered Commands one through four, each of which stands independently. These final six, however, Moses here groups together by linking each with the conjunction “and” (the Hebrew וְ). Following the prophet’s lead, today’s sermon focuses on all six of these commandments as a group that expresses how mature followers of God should live for the wellfare of others over themselves. Read with me Deuteronomy 5:17–21…. Pray with me….

Never Murder (Deut 5:17)

The fifth commandment forbids the murder of another human being and thus stresses the need to value and show dignity for every human life (Deut 5:17; cf. Exod 20:13). As our own Member Affirmation of Faith says, “We believe that all humans bear intrinsic and equal value as those made in God’s image and that every human life is valuable from fertilization to natural death” (#14).

The verb translated “murder” in Deuteronomy 5:17 (Qal רצח) is a neutral term meaning to “slay or kill” a human (Num 35:12), yet it most commonly refers to criminal behavior performed by persons against the community by purposefully (i.e., intentionally; Num 35:16–19, 21, 31; Deut 22:26; Judg 20:41; Job 26:14) or accidentally (i.e., negligently or recklessly; Num 35:6, 11, 25–28; Deut 4:42; 19:3, 4, 6; Josh 20:4, 5–6) killing another person. The Bible has categories for justifiably putting others to death when one is defending himself (Exod 22:2–3; Matt 26:55; Luke 22:38) or others (Acts 7:24–25; cf. Ps 82:4; Prov 24:1),[1] when a relative avenges the death of a family member (Num 35:12, 21, 25–28; Josh 20:3, 5; cf. Josh 21:13, 21, 27, 32, 38),[2] and when the government rightly uses the sword (Rom 13:4), whether through just wars (Deut 7:2, 16; 20:13–17; cf. 2:34; 3:6; 25:19; Josh 6:21; 8:2, 26; 10:40; 11:14; 1 Sam 15:3) or through the death penalty as retributive justice for capital crimes like premeditated murder (Gen 9:5–6; Exod 21:12, 14, 23–25; Lev 24:17; Num 35:16–21, 30–31, 33; Deut 19:11–13, 21; Matt 26:52; Rev 13:10).[3] However, what this fifth of the Ten Commandments prohibits is any form of unlawful homicide, whether by premeditation or negligence.

Growing out of the principles of human dignity and justice evidenced and taught in the creation covenant (Gen 1:26–28; 9:5–6; cf. 4:8–11, 23–24), Paul notes that, from the fall, humans have been “filled with all manner of unrighteousness” including “murder” and that, “though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Rom 1:29, 32). Today we live in a culture of death that devalues the precious lives of the unborn and the elderly. Yet one’s stage of development does not determine the value of one’s life. Size, level of maturity, environment, and degree of dependency are unjustified grounds to assess who can live or die. Abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide are all the intentional killing of innocent human beings and are, therebore, reprehensible, morally evil acts of murder. When a culture affirms murder and governments legalize murder in the name of woman’s health or the love of a sufferer, they open themselves up to “the wrath of God [that] is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18). To Christians, God continues to command: never murder.

And Never Commit Adultery (Deut 5:18)

The verb rendered “adultery” (Qal נאף) in Deuteronomy 5:18 (cf. Exod 20:14) refers principally to illicit, consensual sex with a woman who is engaged or married to another man (Lev 20:10; Job 24:15; Prov 6:32; Jer 7:9; 23:14; Ezek 16:38; 23:45; Hos 4:2).[4] This sixth commandment highlights the value of sexual intimacy in marriage and the need to respect every married man’s sole right to such intimacy with his wife. From the moment the first man declared of his bride, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” and the two became “one flesh” (Gen 2:23–24), Yahweh God affirmed that sexual expression was solely for the context of marriage between one man and one woman in lasting covenant relationship.[5] The author of Hebrews charged, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Heb 13:4).

Why is sexual morality and the sanctity of the marriage bed so important to God? It’s because the union in marriage of one man and one woman represents the intimate relationship Yahweh makes with his people in the old covenant and that Christ has with his Church in the new. Within the Old Testament, Yahweh’s relationship with his people was always akin to a marriage, and one way we see this is in how Judah’s idolatry is regarded as spiritual adultery. Thus, Yahweh declares of Judah, “Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree” (Jer 3:9; cf. 5:7; Ezek 16:32; Hos 3:1). Every husband is to love his wife “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:24), and every man must guard himself from violating another man’s marriage bed. The proper display of the glory of Christ is at stake, and every person who engages in adultery denounces the sanctity of human marriage and belittles the glory of Christ. To Christians, God continues to command: never commit adultery.

And Never Steal (Deut 5:19)

In contrast to the justifiable taking of plunder in times of war, to “steal” (Qal גנב) in the seventh commandment (Deut 5:19; cf. Exod 20:15) refers to secretly or unexpectedly taking something belonging to another and doing so without permission or legal right and without intending to return it (Lev 19:11; Josh 7:11; Prov 6:30; 9:17; 30:9; Jer 7:9; Hos 4:2; Obad 5; Zech 5:3).[6] This prohibition assumes that personal property is justified and that other people’s property and very lives are to be respected and preserved rather than claimed.

Within the old covenant, God counted the theft of material goods as a civil offense concerning private disputes between citizens or organizations; in such instances justice demanded return or restitution two to five times the value of what was stolen (Exod 22:1, 4, 12 [21:37; 22:3, 11 MT]; cf. Gen 30:33; 31:19, 30, 32, 39; 44:8). However, the same verb is used of man-stealing, most commonly in relation to the capital offenses of “kidnapping” (Exod 21:16; Deut 24:7) or “abduction” (2 Sam 19:42); in these instances, the theft of a human life required the death penalty for the perpetrator.[7]

Jesus associates stealing with the devil, when he declares, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Having come to Jesus, Paul asserts, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Eph 4:28). Stealing reveals a discontentment of the soul and a lack of trust in God knows what you need and will provide. With Paul, we must affirm, “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:19), and with Paul we must learn “the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (3:12–13). To Christians, God continues to command: never steal.

And Never Bear False Witness against Your Neighbor (Deut 5:20)

The eighth commandment addresses just dealings when one serves as a witness in a legal proceeding. When justice is on the line, truth must prevail.  “And you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Deut 5:20; cf. Exod 20:16).[8] False testimony can easily destroy, for as Proverbs says, “A man who bears false witness against his neighbor [אִישׁ עֹנֶה בְרֵעֵהוּ עֵד שָׁקֶר] is like a war club, or a sword, or a sharp arrow” (Prov 25:18).

Justice is about giving to people what they deserve, and this principle is built into the very nature of creation with humans made in the image of God, of whom Moses says, “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he” (Deut 32:4). And again, “He 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” (10:17–18; cf. Acts 10:34–35). The call of this commandment is to live justly, even as God is just (Exod 21:1–3; Lev 19:15–16; Deut 16:18–20).

After reflecting on the dangers of showing partiality (Jas 2:1–7), James notes, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (2:8–9; cf. John 7:24; 1 Tim 5:21). For those who testify falsely, Moses warns later in Deuteronomy:

If a malicious witness [עֵד־חָמָס] arises to accuse a person [לְעֲנוֹת בּוֹ] of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness [עֵד־שֶׁ֫קֶר] and has accused his brother falsely [שֶׁ֫קֶר עָנָה בְאָחִיו], then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. (Deut 19:16–21)

With this, Revelation 21:8 warns: “As for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” To Christians, God continues to command: never bear false witness against your neighbor.

And Never Covet Your Neighbor’s Wife (Deut 5:21a)

The ninth commandment in Deuteronomy partners with the charge against adultery by prohibiting “coveting” (חמד) a neighbor’s wife (Deut 5:21a; cf. Exod 20:17). A “neighbor” (2-רֵעַ) is someone nearby (cf. Gen 15:10), usually one within your community that you would count among your people (Lev 19:18). The verb translated “covet” means to “desire” and consistently relates to a longing to obtain something. The object of desire is almost always tangible or material,[9] but context alone determines whether a subject’s craving an object is sin. Negative objects of desire include the forbidden fruit of the Garden (Gen 3:6), another’s house (Exod 20:17), another’s wife, servants, or moveable property (20:17; Deut 5:21a), land (Exod 34:24), silver and gold from an idol (Deut 7:25), Yahweh’s war spoils (Josh 7:21), the forbidden woman’s beauty (Prov 6:25), unjust gain (12:12), large trees (metaphorically of foreign influence, Isa 1:29), and idols (44:9).

Significantly, desiring or coveting is an internal act of the heart (Prov 6:25) involving a premeditated choice (Isa 1:29; cf. Mic 2:1) that God alone can judge until it goes public in outward action (e.g., in “taking” [Deut 7:25; Josh 6:18 LXX; 7:21] or “seizing” [Mic 2:2]). At this point in the Ten Commandments, however, the focus is that evil desire is itself sin, regardless of whether wicked deeds follow.[10] Specifically, Moses asserts that wishing another man’s woman was yours is evil (cf. Lev 20:10; Deut 22:24; Prov 6:29; Ezek 18:6, 15; 22:11). Jesus will go so far as to say that “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt 5:28). To Christians, God continues to command: never covet your neighbor’s wife.

And Never Desire Your Neighbor’s Property (Deut 5:21b)

The tenth of the Ten Commandments prohibits “wanting or craving” (אוה) the moveable and immovable property belonging to a neighbor. Whereas Exodus 20:17 uses the verb “covet” (חמד) twice, in Deuteronomy Moses varies his prohibitions with a synonym: “And you shall not desire [or want] your neighbor’s house, his field, or his male servant , or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Deut 5:21b). The book of Proverbs tells us that wicked people are always longing for more, whereas the righteous person gives and keeps giving (Prov 21:26). Some crave for and acquire wealth, possessions, and honor yet never enjoy them, says the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, and this is a great evil (Eccl 6:2; cf. 5:19 [18 MT]). This prohibition in the Ten Commandments refers to a discontented soul that remains ever unsatisfied.

In contrast, “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim 6:6). So, we must heed the charge of the author of Hebrews: “Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for [God] has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’” (Heb 13:5). And as Paul says, the rich are “to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasures for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life” (1 Tim 6:18–19). To Christians, God continues to command: never desire your neighbor’s property.

Conclusion: A Call to Servant-Leadership, Not Male Domination

As I bring this sermon to a conclusion, I want to reflect on the portrait of leadership Deuteronomy’s version of the Ten Commandments displays. Changes made to the Deuteronomic Decalogue suggest that after forty years in the wilderness Moses is intentionally confronting abuses to headship in the community. We already saw this in command three. In Exodus 20:11, Moses elevated God’s rest on the seventh day as a reason Israel needed to keep the Sabbath. This is never mentioned in Deuteronomy, however, as Moses instead recalls how the Israelite community was a slave in Egypt to clarify why household heads must ensure that every household member down to the male and female servants gets to rest (Deut 5:15).

Similarly, in Exodus 20:17, the charge not to covet a neighbor’s wife is embedded in a list of possessions after a neighbor’s “house,” but in Deuteronomy 5:21 the “wife” stands alone. As Daniel Block has said, this implies that the Deuteronomic version of the Decalogue reveals “a deliberate effort to ensure the elevated status of the wife in a family unit and to foreclose any temptation to use the Exodus version of the command to justify men’s treatment of their wives as if they were mere property, along with the rest of the household possessions.”[11] Indeed, this is the first of several examples in Deuteronomy that stress how the community must value and protect its women.[12]

What I am proposing is that the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy affirm the patricentric nature of Israelite society, in that they are addressed to male heads of households who are themselves under God and called to lead by serving, honoring, and looking out for others’ welfare, including their family members and neighbors. That is, the Ten Commandments define biblical leaders as those who must preserve other’s rights and not their own. Love of others and not love of self is what drives the Decalogue.

The United States has a Bill of Rights that ensures essential individual liberties for citizens such as freedom of speech, press, and religion and the right to private property and speedy trial while limiting federal power. The Ten Commandments are set up similarly but draw attention away from self to the rights others have as those made in God’s image. Paul speaks in a similar way in Romans 13, when he writes:

Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to who revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom 13:7–10)

In a way distinct from any other creature, humans bear a capacity to reflect, resemble, represent, and revere God, and this fact establishes human worth and clarifies why, for example, the murder of the innocent demands the death of the perpetrator, “for God made man in his own image” (Gen 9:6).[13] Every one of the Ten Commandments is shaped with the deepest conviction that Yahweh and those made in his image are the highest values in the universe. The Decalogue is about God not only in the way the laws themselves portray his character but also in the way they display his worth by calling humans to respect his divine rights and those conferred on everyone made in his image.

Fig. 1. Deuteronomy’s Ten Commandments as a Bill of Others’ Rights[14]

The biblical communities in both the old and new covenant are a collection of families at the center of which is the father or male household head. The layout of the Ten Commandments defines his role as leader principally as love for God and neighbor––not self-exalting but other serving. By focusing on the rights of others, the Deuteronomic version of the Decalogue confronts present or potential pride, self-elevating power, and abuses by a household head toward God, wives, other household members, and property. And if the male head could love Yahweh and neighbor rightly, the rest of the community would follow in line.

May God grant Sovereign Joy to be a community in which male servant leadership flourishes and where its members recognize that love fulfills the law and that we owe love to each other as we display God’s character in our lives and as we value each on another as those made in God’s image. “‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does not wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom 13:10). Pray with me….

[1] See also Neh 4:13–14, 17–23; Esth 8:11; 9:1–2, 5, 10.

[2] The old covenant specifies that the blood vengeance can happen before or after the congregation has rendered a judgment but can only justly occur while the original manslayer is outside a city of refuge and before the high priest alive at the time of the slaying has died.

[3] Other crimes worthy of the death penalty include the following: kidnapping (Exod 21:16; Deut 24:7); rape (Deut 22:25–27); sustained insubordination to parents (Exod 21:15, 17; Deut 21:18–21); religious malpractice like Sabbath breaking (Exod 31:14–15; 35:2; Num 15:32–26), false prophecy associated with following gods other than Yahweh (Deut 13:1–5; 18:20), idolatry (Exod 22:20; Lev 19:4; Deut 13:1–18; 17:2–7), child sacrifice (Lev 20:1–5), witchcraft (Exod 22:18; Lev 19:26, 31; 20:27), and blasphemy (Lev 24:14–23); sexual offenses like adultery when married or engaged (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22–24; cf. Gen 38:24), concealed premarital unchastity (Deut 22:20–21), rape of an engaged girl (Deut 22:25), prostitution of a priest’s daughter (Lev 21:9), incest (Lev 20:11–12, 14), homosexuality (Lev 20:13), and bestiality (Exod 22:19; Lev 20:15–16); false witness in a capital case (Deut 19:16–21). While a ransom could be paid for some capital offenses, no ransom was allowed in cases of premeditated murder; the violator was always to be put to death (Num 35:31).

[4] Deuteronomy strongly distinguishes between adultery, which includes mutual consent and demands the death penalty of both parties (Deut 22:22, 23–24), and rape, which is a form of abuse and demands only the death of the violator (22:25–27). Deuteronomic law fights for the protection and value of the vulnerable. For more on this, see below.

[5] For an argument that these verses elevate sexual intimacy as the covenant sign of marriage, see Gordon P. Hugenberger, Marriage as a Covenant: Biblical Law and Ethics as Developed from Malachi (Baker Books, 1994).

[6] By extension, it can even refer to a storm “stealing” away the life of the wicked (Job 21:18; 27:20). W. R. Domeris notes that גנב specifically refers to “secretive stealing and cheating” (e.g., Gen 31:27; 2 Sam 19:3 [4 MT]), whereas גזל (“to rob”) denotes “taking something by force.” W. R. Domeris, “גָּנַב,” NIDOTTE 1:863. On the distinction between “stealing” and “robbery,” with the latter being specifically against the weak, see Leviticus 19:11, 13 and Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, NICOT (Eerdmans, 1979), 267–78.

[7] In two instance, the verb “to steal” is cast as a justifiable action in contrast to the evil schemes of enemy rulers: (1) the “stealing” of Saul and Jonathan’s bodies after their death in battle at the hands of the Philistines (2 Sam 21:12) and the “stealing” of Joash from the rest of the king’s sons who were about to be murdered (2 Kgs 11:2; 2 Chr 22:11)

[8] Very literally, this eighth commandment prohibits anyone from ever “answering” (ענה) “a witness of falsehood” (עֵד שָׁוְא, Deut 5:20) or “a witness of a lie” (עֵד שָׁקֶר, Exod 20:16) against his neighbor.

[9] The only partial exceptions are the words of God, which are “coveted” more than gold (Ps 19:10 [11 MT]), and scoffing, which scoffers “covet” (Prov 1:22).

[10] While the promise in Exod 34:24 that “no one will covet you land” connotes that no one will devise plans to take the land and act upon it, the verb חמד only denotes an internal desire. So, too, William L. Moran, “The Conclusion to the Decalogue (Ex. 20:17 = Dt. 5:21),” CBQ 29 (1967): 544.

[11] Daniel I. Block, “‘You Shall Not Covet Your Neighbor’s Wife’: A Study in Deuteronomic Domestic Ideology,” JETS 53.3 (2010): 156.

[12] Block notes Deuteronomy evinces a high concern for widows (Deut 10:17–18), invites women to participate in worship (Deut 12:12, 18; 16:11, 14; 31:12), requires the release of female slaves (15:12; cf. Exod 21:2–11), exempts new husbands from military service (Deut 20:7), guards the rights of captive brides and second-ranked wives (21:10–14, 15–17), stresses the authority of the mother over a rebellious child (21:18–21), protects a wife who is falsely accused of lying about her virginity (22:13–21), assumes the innocence of female victims of rape (22:23–29; cf. Exod 22:16–17 [15–16 MT]), shields a divorced woman from abuses from her previous husband (24:1–4), and secures the integrity of families and estates through levirate marriage (25:5–10). Block, “‘You Shall Not Covet Your Neighbor’s Wife’: A Study in Deuteronomic Domestic Ideology,” 160–67. For a detailed analysis of all relevant texts in Deuteronomy related to the role and restrictions of the head of the household, see Rebekah Josberger, “Between Rule and Responsibility: The Role of the ’āb as Agent of Righteousness in Deuteronomy’s Domestic Ideology” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2007); cf. Rebekah Josberger, “For Your Good Always: Restraining the Rights of the Victor for the Well-Being of the Vulnerable (Deut 21:10–14),” in For Our Good Always: Studies on the Message and Influence of Deuteronomy in Honor of Daniel I. Block, ed. Jason S. DeRouchie, Jason Gile, and Kenneth J. Turner (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 165–87.

[13] My former student, Dr. Matthew Rowley, established the following syllogism that clarifies why the concept of human rights is nonsensical apart from beliefs in God and in human being made in the divine image: If we give up the biblical God, then we give up the imago Dei. If we give up the imago Dei, then we give up inherent or conferred human worth. If we give up human worth, then we give up human worth violations (since a worthless thing can’t be violated). If we give up human worth violations, then there is no real enforceable wrong done by a human to another human.

[14] Adapted from Block, “‘You Shall Not Covet Your Neighbor’s Wife’,” 145–46.

The post Give Others Their Due Love: A Sermon on Deuteronomy 5:17–21 appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

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HONOR YOUR PARENTS
A Sermon on Deut 5:16
Jason S. DeRouchie, PhD (02/22/2026)

Today’s sermon seeks to clarify the meaning and lasting significance of the fourth of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy––the call to honor parents. In Deuteronomy 5:16, Yahweh charges the Israelite community to honor their parents and then motivates this expression with dual promises: long life and good life in the land that God was giving them. Read along with me as I read Deuteronomy 5:16…. Pray with me.

Three Preliminary Observations

Three preliminary observations are noteworthy when interpreting this command. First, notice that no age-range is given. Those Yahweh calls to honor parents are the very household heads he just told to ensure that their son and daughter and servants rest on the Sabbath. The very ones he’ll tell not to murder, commit adultery, or desire a neighbor’s house are the ones who must honor Dad and Mom. God ordained that whether through procreation or adoption, we all have parents. And Yahweh here tells Israel that parents deserve honor from their sons and daughters, regardless of the age or stage of these progeny.

Second, this command is not bound to the old covenant era, for the need to honor parents is part of nature’s law and thus is necessary in all cultures and all times. This is clear in the fact that Jesus reaffirms the command, “Honor your father and mother” (Mark 7:10; 10:19), as part of his kingdom ethic, and Paul charges, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother (this is the first commandment with a promise), that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land” (Eph 6:1–2). Furthermore, the apostle attaches the principle of honor to creation order itself, saying at the end of Romans 1 that, “though [those in the world] know God’s decree that those who practice such things [like disobedience to parents] deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Rom 1:30, 32). Just as God as creator and sustainer deserves honor, so too do our parents, who naturally operate as secondary procreators and sustainers. Yahweh uses a similar argument at the head of the book of Malachi when he writes, “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear?” (Mal 1:6; cf. 2 Sam 10:3).

Third, Yahweh does not say that honoring parents is conditioned on whether our parents are honorable. Some parents do disgraceful things, so in a sermon like this we must consider what it means and does not mean to honor parents, how we do it faithfully, and why we must show honor even to those who are dishonorable.

These things stated, let me read the verse one more time: Deuteronomy 5:16…. We will now approach this verse in reverse order, considering first the motivation to honor parents and then the call and nature of doing so.

A Long and Good Life in the Land:
A Motivating Promise

Throughout Scripture God uses promises to motivate how we are to live. What we hope for tomorrow changes who we are today, especially when the goal can only be reached by a certain pattern of life. The Apostle Peter says, “[God] has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Pet 1:4). We battle sin and become more like God by believing his promises.

In this fourth of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, Yahweh gave a two-part amazing promise to motivate the Israelites to honor the dual leaders of their homes. When recalling this command in Ephesians 6, Paul is even explicit that “this is the first commandment with a promise” (Eph 6:2). Moses urges his people to honor parents “that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you” (Deut 5:16). Scripture consistently portrays a long and good life as a fruit of covenant loyalty to God. Thus, in 5:33 the prophet synthesizes the hope of all the commands when he says, “You shall walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land you shall possess” (cf. 4:40; 6:1–2; 11:8–9; 22:7; 25:15).

Within Deuteronomy, life and good are covenant blessings, whereas death and evil are covenant curses, and the community’s experience of blessing or curse depended on whether they would obey (30:15–20; 32:47; cf. 28:1–14, 15–68). Some scholars interpreting Deuteronomy treat the promise of lengthened days and wellbeing more as a general principle with exceptions, for as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, “There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing” (Eccl 7:15; cf. 8:12–13). Others simply treat this promise as a hypothetical reality never fully enjoyed by a disobedient people but that, nevertheless, supplied a foretaste for eternal life.

In contrast, I propose that the provision and protection God promises was an absolute promise of eternal life that would have been enjoyed by any who perfectly obeyed (cf. Lev 18:5; Deut 4:1; 6:24–25; 8:1). Like Adam in the garden, whose obedience could have resulted in lasting life but whose disobedience resulted in exile, Israel was called to obey but would instead walk in unrepentant sin and experience death, not life (Deut 4:25–26; 31:16–18, 27; cf. Ezek 20:11, 13, 21 with 37:1–14). Nevertheless, Moses envisioned a day when life would triumph (Deut 30:6; 32:39), when Yahweh’s word would be in the mouth of a new prophetic mediator (18:18), and when the new covenant community would listen to him because the same word would be in their mouths and hearts (18:15; 30:8, 14; cf. Rom 10:5–9). Jesus is this mediator who represents Israel, obeying where they failed. He perfectly honored his parents (Luke 2:48–49; John 19:26–27), including his Father in heaven (Luke 22:42; cf. John 13:31–32; 17:1, 4; 21:19). Thus, he secures the long life and wellbeing for himself and all who are in him.

Deuteronomy itself anticipates this when, in 17:20, we learn that that the ideal king, ultimately embodied in Jesus, must “not turn aside from the commandment … so that he may lengthen days in his kingdom, he and his children, amidst Israel” (author’s translation). Then, Isaiah adds in 53:10 that, if Jesus, Yahweh’s servant, will heed Yahweh’s will to the end and operate as a guilt offering for sinners, then “he will see offspring, he will lengthen days, and the will of Yahweh will prosper in his hand” (author’s translation), thus realizing in himself the promise God gave both to Israel and her king (cf. Ps 21:4; 23:6; 91:16; Prov 3:2, 16; 28:16). Paul notes that God’s promise to Abraham and his offspring was that “he would be heir of the world” (Rom 4:13), and this global inheritance is likely what he is envisioning in Ephesians 6:2–3, when he charges children, “Honor your father and mother … that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” The “land” to which Paul refers is not the limited land of Canaan but the greater world-wide inheritance that is secured through Jesus and that will be realized in the newly transformed earth (Gen 22:17–18; 26:3–4; Isa 65:17–18; Dan 2:35; Heb 11:13–16; Rev 21:1–2, 9–11). This land will be enjoyed by those who, with the Spirit’s help, honor their parents. Or, as Jesus says in Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Giving Honor: What Does This Entail?

We’ve addressed the motivation for honoring parents. Let us now consider the first part of the verse and reflect on what honoring parents entails. The verb rendered “honor” (Piel כבד) at base means “to make heavy” or “to ascribe weight” to something and so, by extension, it grows to mean “to dignify, respect, honor, or glorify.[1] Thus, a king should honor the one who gives him victory (Num 24:11), those visited from heaven ought to honor the messenger (Judg 13:17), people are to honor wisdom (Prov 4:8), servants should honor their masters (Mal 1:6), and those honoring God will be honored by him (1 Sam 2:30).

With respect to honoring parents, we gain a sense of what it means by considering its opposite. “Cursing, insulting, rebuking, reviling, shaming, despising, treating with contempt, doing violence against, and bringing reproach against” are all expressions that describe a failure to honor parents or the aged, and Yahweh declares that all who practice such things deserve to die. Thus, we read “Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death” (Exod 21:17; cf. Lev 20:9; Prov 20:20). And again, “The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures” (30:17). Recalling Moses, Jesus also says, “‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die’” (Mark 7:10).[2]

More positively, honoring parents takes three principal forms in Scripture. We honor parents by (1) revering, (2) respecting, and (3) recognizing and returning. Let me unpack each of these.

Revere

We should revere our parents for the office they hold and because they have been seasoned with more life than us. Thus, Moses charges, “Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father” (Lev 19:3), and “You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the LORD” (19:32). The children of the wife of noble character in Proverbs “rise up and call her blessed,” thus revering their mom (Prov 31:28). Joseph was the second most powerful man in Egypt, yet he still “bowed down with his face to the earth” when his father Jacob arrived (Gen 48:12). If placed in a comparable position today, how many children would honor their father in like order? Even Solomon, perhaps the most powerful of all Old Testament kings, “bowed down” before his mother Bathsheba when she entered the royal hall (1 Kgs 2:19). To honor our father and mother means that we will revere them for the office they hold and because they have been seasoned with more life than you.

Respect

We should respect our parents as instruments of potential wisdom, and if you are still a child who is dependent on your parents for food and shelter, this respect also requires that you obey them in the Lord. The book of Proverbs opens with Solomon asserting, “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching” (Prov 1:8). Indeed, “My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, … then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God” (2:1, 5; cf. 3:1; 4:1, 20; 5:1; 6:20). “Hear, my son, and accept my words, that the years of your life may be many” (4:10; cf. 7:1–2). “A wise son hears his father’s instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke” (13:1; cf. 15:5; 19:27; 23:19).

Scripture seems to distinguish the form respect takes based on one’s station in life. When Paul says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and your mother’” (Eph 6:1–2), he clarifies that the children are not any sons and daughters but specifically those whom a fathers could provoke as they “bring up [their children] in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (6:4). Similarly, writing to Timothy as pastor of the same Ephesian church, Paul stressed that the elder “must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church” (1 Tim 3:4–5). Children are those still under the watch care and responsibility of parents, and it is these children who have the responsibility to honor parents by obeying.[3] Yet God calls all sons and daughters, even when we are no longer children, to honor our parents by respecting them as instruments of potential wisdom.

Recognize and Return

Finally, we show honor to parents when we recognize the gifts they’ve supplied us and the sacrifices they’ve made for us and we return some of their investment. This recognition and return happens in two ways.

First, we are called to care for our parents as they age, and this includes using our own financial resources to meet their needs. In Mark 7 Jesus confronts the Jerusalem leaders on their failure to honor parents in this way. Building on the old covenant rules on vows that were absolutely binding (e.g., Num 30:1–2), many were declaring property that they could have used to support aging parents to be dedicated as an offering to the Lord, likely to be donated to the temple after death. Jesus says to the Pharisees,

You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, “Honor your father and your mother”; and, “Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.” But you say, “If a man tells his father or his mother, ‘Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban’” (that is, given to God)—then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do. (Mark 7:9–13; cf. Matt 15:1–9)

A similar example comes in 1 Timothy when Paul stresses the need to care for widows. He first highlights how our familial responsibilities extend to our relationships with others, especially in household of God. “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity” (1 Tim 5:1; cf. 3:15). He then writes,

Honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God…. But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Tim 5:3–4, 8)

Within the framework of “honor,” Paul recognizes certain obligations or demands. In the light of how much parents invest in the raising of their kids, we as sons and daughters need to “make some return” to our parents when their own needs arise.

A second way we give some return to our parents is by living in ways that gladden and bless them rather than shame or sorrow them. In this manner, we honor them. Solomon notes, “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother” (Prov 10:1; cf. 15:20). “He who does violence to his father and chases away his mother is a son who brings shame and reproach” (19:26). “There are those who curse their fathers and do not bless their mothers” (30:11). Nevertheless, “Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old…. The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him. Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice” (23:22, 24–25). Twice Solomon emphasizes how the facts that “your father … gave you life” and “your … mother … bore you” obligates you to seek their joy. He even adds that this obligation extends into their later years: “do not despise your mother when she is old.” How you and I live elevates or denigrates our family name, and we honor our parents with joy by being sons and daughters who live righteously, successfully, and faithfully as adults.

Summary

So, in summary, Scripture gives us three ways to honor our parents. (1) We revere them for the office they hold and because they have been seasoned with more life than us. (2) We respect them as instruments of potential wisdom, and if still a child, this respect demands obedience in the Lord. (3) We recognize the gifts our parents have supplied and the sacrifices they have made, and we return some of their investment by caring for them in their old age and by always living in ways that bring them joy and blessing, not grief and shame.

But What If Our Parents Are Dishonorable?

But this now raises the question. Are we still called to honor dishonorable parents who stand hostile to Christianity or who have acted shamefully, even despicably abusing their children?

Jesus maintains the charge to “honor your father and your mother” (15:4; 19:9) and stresses that our enemies––even when coming from within our own household––deserve our love (Matt 5:44; 10:36). John Piper has noted seven biblical reasons why honor should be extended, regardless of whether the object is honorable. I will simply list them here, but I will send out to all members a link to his Ask Pastor John podcast titled, “How Can I Honor My Parents If I Don’t Respect Them?”[4]

1. We must honor those made in the image of God, knowing that how we treat the creation informs our view of the Creator (Jas 3:9–10).
2. We should honor those who are, by nature, our source of life or older; whatever is more seasoned demands more honor (Lev 19:32; Matt 15:4). “Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old” (Prov 23:22).
3. We ought to honor all people, especially the leaders whom God appoints. “Honor every. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor” 1 Pet 2:17; cf. 1 Thess 5:12).
4. We honor others whose work is valuable to us: “Esteem [your leaders] very highly in love because of their work” (1 Thess 5:13).
5. We honor those who serve us (1 Thess 5:13).
6. We honor what is weaker. Like treating fine china with care, husbands are called to “live with [our] wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel” (1 Pet 3:7).
7. We honor even the dishonorable because we are to emulate Christ’s own grace toward us when we were dishonorable. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves…. Having this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who … emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:3, 5–7; cf. Rom 5:6, 8).

Jesus said that those who fail to revere, respect, and return honor to their parents are “rejecting the commandment of God” (Mark 7:9). This means that to dishonor parents is to dishonor God. Whether child or adult, may we commit with the help of Christ to honor our parents, revering them for their office and seasonedness, respecting them as instruments of potential wisdom, and returning some of their investment by caring for them as they age and by living in ways now that make them glad. As we do, we will walk in the hope of enjoying every provision and every protection on the new earth in the coming age. Let us pray….

[1] The related noun כָּבוֹד can refer to “wealth” (Gen 31:1; Isa 61:6), “reputation, importance” (Gen 45:13; Isa 8:7), “glory, splendor” (Ps 66:2; Hag 2:3), and “honor” (2 Chr 26:18; Hab 2:16).

[2] See also Deut 27:16; Prov 19:26; Isa 3:5; Ezek 22:7; Matt 15:4; 1 Tim 5:1–2.

[3] In alignment with several old covenant texts (e.g., Exod 21:17; Lev 20:9; Deut 21:18–21; 27:16; Prov 20:20; 30:17; Matt 15:4; Mark 7:10), Paul stresses that from creation humanity’s has recognized that those who are “disobedient to parents” deserve to die (Rom 1:30, 32; cf. 1 Tim 1:9).

[4] John Piper, “How Can I Honor My Parents If I Don’t Respect Them?” Ask Pastor John, Aug 23, 2021; https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-can-i-honor-my-parents-if-i-dont-respect-them.

The post Honor Your Parents: A Sermon on Deuteronomy 5:16 appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

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RESTING IN GOD WELL:
Applying Commandment 3 in Deuteronomy 5:12–15
Jason S. DeRouchie, PhD (02/08/2026)

Physical and spiritual rest are gifts from our gracious God. Rest often includes ceasing from striving or from work or movement to relax, recover, refresh, or renew ourselves. We step away from this life’s cares or activities to restore our souls or to regain strength, health, or energy. Rest often involves being placed or supported to stay in a specified position or state. It can also mean to be based on or grounded in something. Thus, rest often comes only in a context of stability and dependence. God often strips us of all secondary supports to remind us that our hope and help are alone in him. We find rest in being still and reminding our souls that he alone is God and that he is our God.

Returning to our sermon series on Deuteronomy 5–11, we are taking extended time to unpack the lasting significance of the Ten Commandments for Christians. Deuteronomy 5:12–15 supplies Moses’s command to Israel to keep the Sabbath holy, and today we seek to consider how Jesus fulfills the Sabbath and what this means for us in relating this law to our daily lives. With so many cares and stresses battling our church and the lives of our members, I sense God’s kindness in elevating before us a passage addressing rest and trust. Follow along as I read: Deuteronomy 5:12–15…. Pray with me….

The Sabbath command is often confusing to folks. The New Testament is explicit that we must not engage in idolatry, not bear God’s name falsely, honor our parents, not murder, not commit adultery, etc. Indeed, the law of Christ in the new covenant reaffirms all nine other commands. Yet the New Testament is silent about keeping the Sabbath, leaving it for many a mystery as to what its significance is for Christians. Does the Sabbath continue as a new covenant ordinance? If so, does it retain its former shape and significance, not allowing people to work, or has it somehow been transformed? Is Sunday the new Christian Sabbath, and if so, what does this mean?

My desire today is to summarize the purpose of the old covenant Sabbath, consider how Jesus fulfills Israel’s Sabbath hopes, and clarify the lasting significance of the Sabbath for the church. My greatest hope is to remind our souls that we can rest now that Jesus has come.

The Purpose of the Old Covenant Sabbath

Sabbath was a sign of the old covenant, and its violation resulted in the death penalty. In an earlier sermon I proposed that the Sabbath supplied Israel a weekly pattern of anticipation that is now realized in Jesus. Israel would work six days and then trust God to supply on the seventh, making rest their weekly goal and reminding them of their mission to see God’s blessing enjoyed and rest realized in relation to God across the world. That to which the old covenant Sabbath pointed Jesus now fulfills, reestablishing and securing sovereign rest for all who are in him.

Deuteronomy 5:14 says that Israel’s Sabbath was “to the LORD” (cf. Exod 16:23, 25; 20:10; Lev 23:3; 25:2, 4) in that it displayed him as exalted over all things. The weekly Sabbath emblemized a future reality in which both Israel and the world were to hope. That is, Sabbath keeping served as an eschatological symbol, capturing the goal of the old covenant, for which it was a sign. Within the framework of covenantal thought, the Sabbath pictured the blessing of “life and good” that would come to all who were faithful, and violating the Sabbath equally symbolized the curse of “death and evil” that would come to all unpardoned covenant breakers (Deut 30:15–20). This is why breaking the Sabbath was a criminal offense deserving death (Num 15:32–36).

Jesus Fulfills Israel’s Sabbath Hopes

Jesus saw himself as establishing God’s kingdom and as the source of mankind’s ultimate rest. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father…. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:27–30). Directly after this assertion, Matthew includes the story of Jesus allowing his disciples to pluck heads of grain on the Sabbath and then declaring himself “lord of the Sabbath” (12:6, 8). Such a testimony was an overflow of the fact that not only was “the kingdom of heaven … at hand” (10:7) but also “the kingdom of God has come upon you” (12:28; cf. Luke 17:21).

Jesus’s redeeming work brought Israel’s global Sabbath mission to fulfillment. He is the one through whom the world is blessed (Gen 22:17b–18; Acts 3:25–26; Gal 3:8, 14), and by his victorious resurrection he inaugurated the end-times Sabbath rest as a culmination of his new creational work. Jesus stands superior to Moses (Heb 3:1–6), and those of us in him have already entered rest, even though we await its full consummation (4:3–10).

The Sabbath Command’s Lasting Significance

How should we think about the Sabbath today? As the sign of the old covenant, the Sabbath pointed toward a goal. It stood at the end of every Israelite’s week and symbolized sovereign rest as life’s aim. In contrast, for believers, Christ has already inaugurated the fulfillment of God’s sovereign rest, as the “shadow” now finds its “substance” in Christ (Col 2:16–17). Already God has put “everything in subjection to him,” leaving “nothing outside his control”; nevertheless, “we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (Heb 2:8; cf. Matt 28:18; 1 Cor 15:25–28). The period of the church includes an overlap of the ages, wherein believers are truly but not yet fully enjoying Sabbath rest under Christ’s lordship seven days a week (Matt 11:28–29; Heb 4:8–11; cf. Acts 2:34–36; Rom 15:5–6). Because we already “share in Christ” (Heb 3:14), we have already entered the Sabbath rest he secures (4:9–10), but we also persevere in faith for the day when what Christ has already accomplished will be revealed fully at the future consummation.

In the new covenant there is not one specific day as opposed to others that marks the Sabbath (cf. Rom 14:5–6; Gal 4:9–10; Col 2:16–17). Christ’s resurrection initiates an eschatological shift from old creation to new (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15), from Sabbath anticipation to Sabbath realization. Now, all week long, those in Christ enjoy Sabbath rest fully, though not finally.

Like the early church, our corporate worship follows a 1 + 6, gathering on the week’s first day to recall for our souls what is true and to ready us for all that follows (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2). We gather on Sunday because this is the day Jesus defeated death (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1), thus initiating on that resurrection Lord’s day the Sabbath for which Israel longed (Rev 1:10). On that first day of the week, light dawned into darkness, God initiated new creation, and God’s kingdom in Christ became visible. Sunday worship reflects that inaugurated nature of rest that we relish the remaining part of the week. It also nurtures within us hope for the day when our faith will become sight (2 Cor 5:7) and when the rest we already taste will be completed through the removal of all evil, pain, and death at the glimpse of our Savior’s face (Rev 21:4; 22:3). As we presently delight in Sabbath rest every day of the week, we magnify Christ’s curse-overcoming work, even as we continue to pray, “Your kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10).

To help us consider the significance of the Sabbath Christians now enjoy, I have observed at least fourteen ways that Scripture calls us to rest in Christ. I pray they will move your soul to become satisfied and hopeful in Jesus.

1. Rest by trusting God to supply your daily bread. In the wilderness, God withheld the gift of manna on Saturdays but supplied double on Fridays in anticipation of the Sabbath to remind Israel that he was the one who supplied their needs every day of the week. God could give or take away at will, and he was working for them through their laboring and working for them during their resting. So, even when we have savings in the bank for tomorrow’s needs and have strength to engage in all necessary tasks, we must continue to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt 6:11), ever recognizing, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (Jas 4:15). And in this season where Sovereign Joy is praying for a senior pastor and the provision to pay him and praying for a more extended, non-transient, healthy core so we have a stable, mature base from which to send and support those who go, may we be a people who depend on God to meet our every need. We will rest by trusting God to supply our daily bread.
2. Rest by ceasing from anxious toil. The psalmist declared, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for [the LORD] gives to his beloved sleep” (Ps 127:2). Working and guarding the ground was part of humanity’s responsibility before the fall (Gen 2:15), yet after the fall that labor became toilsome and humans’ physical bodies began breaking down (3:17–19). Those in Christ have now regained citizenship in paradise (Phil 3:20) where we already enjoy the presence of God the judge and Jesus the mediator (Eph 2:6; Heb 12:22–24). And having been freed from the curse through Christ’s Sabbath-initiating, blessing-securing work (Gal 3:13), we do not lose heart, even in a care-filled world. Indeed, “though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor 4:16). In Christ we can engage our relationships, parenting, schooling, homemaking, or public square job without carrying the strains, worries, or fears associated with the cursed world. “The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:5–7; cf. 1 Pet 5:6–7). Our souls can be at rest even while we are working. Rest by ceasing from anxious toil.
3. Rest by obeying God in faith. Through Israel’s journey in the wilderness and through their tenure in the promised land, God motivated obedience by promising that all who followed him would find rest (Exod 33:14; Ps 95:6–11). Yet because they did not believe, they failed to obey and experienced punishment (Num 14:8–11; 2 Kgs 17:13–15). When Christians entrust our future into God’s hand, what we hope for tomorrow impacts who we are today, shaping our decisions, desires, patterns, and pleasures. We find rest in God’s will, ways, and purposes. Our lives are not like the thorny soil of which Jesus said, upon hearing God’s word, “the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things enter and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19). Do you know the uneasiness that comes when walking in sin? In contrast, walking in right paths supplies a steady and clean conscient. We rest in God by obeying God in faith.
4. Rest by celebrating that the living God is your King. Moses called Israel to keep the Sabbath holy in a way like how Yahweh God rested on the seventh day (Exod 20:11). After God finished creating the universe including his earthly kingdom, he refreshed himself through a rest of sovereignty, wherein the world was rightly ordered and at peace with him (Gen 2:1–3; Exod 31:17; cf. Ps 132:7–8, 13–14). By restoring Sabbath rest in Jesus, God reasserts his sovereignty as the one from whom, through whom, and to whom are all things (Rom 11:36). Already “God has made [Jesus] both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36); already Jesus is seated at the Father’s right hand “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Eph 1:21); already God has “put all things under [Jesus’s] feet and gave him as head over all things to the church” (1:22). Nevertheless, we still await the day when “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev 11:15). The true King has already secured Sabbath rest for us, and we will enjoy it fully when Christ returns. If you are part of the church, let your future desire become present delight and rest by celebrating that the living God is your King.
5. Rest by being assured that you are right with God and at peace with him. The fall disordered the world, replacing Sabbath rest with chaos and requiring God to initiate his redemptive purposes climaxing in Christ. Thus, Jesus claimed, “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17). Yet through our spiritual rebirth, God reestablishes our proper place in his world by helping us revel in his kingship over all (Ps 47:2; Zech 14:9). Righteousness is about right order in God’s world, and right order exists where he is at the top. Justice is about giving to persons what they rightly deserve, and the greatest injustice in this world is the failure to give God the glory he deserves. All mere humans fall short of this glory (Rom 3:23), but Jesus––the God-man––was perfectly righteous because he lived for God’s glory in all things (Isa 50:8; 53:11; John 17:4; 1 John 2:1). Therefore, Jesus could be a just substitute for us, bearing on the cross the wrath we deserved and making a way for us to be forgiven (Rom 3:26). For all who believe, God counts our sins to Jesus and counts his righteousness to us (Isa 53:11; 2 Cor 5:21)––“not … a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil 3:9; cf. Tit 3:4–7). And having “been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). “There is … now no condemnation” (8:1). We enjoy life, not death, so do not let your failures result in despondency. In Jesus, you can rest by being assured that you are right with God and at peace with him.
6. Rest by knowing God is the one who sanctifies you. Through Israel’s 6 + 1 rhythm of life, God tested them to see whether they would walk in his law or not (Exod 16:4) and to teach them that he was the one who could make them holy (31:13). Jesus died and rose not only to justify us but also to sanctify us. Through seasons of suffering and uncertainty, God tests our faith and obedience in the way gold is purified through fire. He heats us to strengthen us and to shape, prod, and whittle us into the holy likeness of his Son, and by this he shows us his love (Rom 8:28–29). Those who have been declared righteous in Jesus prove themselves new creations by living righteously, doing all in Christ’s name and for his glory (1 Cor 10:31–33; Col 3:17, 23; 1 John 3:3). Yet the only sins we can conquer are those Christ has already addressed at the cross. So, knowing that we have been declared righteous in Christ means that the King is even now one hundred percent for us and will give us all we need (Rom 8:31–32). Indeed, because Christ, who has all authority in heaven and on earth, is with us (Matt 28:18, 20), our souls can be still (Ps 46:10). God has promised that “among those who are near me I will be sanctified” (Lev 10:3) and he said that in the new covenant era he would show himself holy through the lives of his people before the eyes of the nations (Ezek 36:23). So, pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name … on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:9–10). And approach God, trusting in his provision of the substitute, and see your life transformed. As you pursue holiness today, rest knowing that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6). Rest, being certain that “he who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thess 5:23–24). Rest by knowing God is the one who sanctifies you.
7. Rest by remembering that the God who is greater than all redeemed you. In Deuteronomy’s version of the Ten Commandments, Moses stresses Israel’s freedom from bondage in Egypt to emphasize the need to let everyone in the Israelite households cease from work the last day of the week (Deut 5:15). Thus, Sabbath rest symbolically portrayed redemption accomplished and liberation from enslavement and pointed to the great redeemer and liberator. Israel had been impotent under Egyptian oppression, but Yahweh interceded with an arm stronger than Pharaoh and his gods. Thus, the Sabbath celebrated God’s supremacy to save, free, and remove fear of evil powers. Through the new exodus, Christ delivers us from a greater enemy and thus supplies a greater freedom. Jesus “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Tit 2:14). Whereas we were once “slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness,” we are now “slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification,” whose end is “eternal life” (Rom 6:19, 22). Because the Spirit of God in us is “greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4), we can rest, knowing that when we “resist the devil,” “he will flee” (Jas 4:7). Indeed, “if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom 8:31–32). Brothers and sisters, do not let sin have an upper hand in your life. Rest by remembering that the God who is greater than all redeemed you.
8. Rest by extending the grace you enjoy to others under your care.
9. Rest by finding refreshment in God and his gifts.
10. Rest by embracing that you are home, no longer in exile.
11. Rest by settling into paradise and enjoying God’s presence and people.
12. Rest by being confident you are safe in God, protected from every enemy.
13. Rest by rejoicing that you receive and extend God’s international salvation.
14. Rest as one who knows all these blessings come in Christ alone.

Conclusion

As the sign of the old covenant, the weekly Sabbath dramatized for Israel that the goal of their existence was that they and the redeemed from other nations would enjoy rest with God, which included absence of toil, the blessing of his presence, complete redemption, perfect provision, and freedom from all enemy hostility. In Jesus, these hopes are realized. If you are among the saints today who have been bought with the Passover Lamb’s blood, you are among the redeemed who get to delight in his deliverance and all it means for you. Amid a care-filled world, we can know peace. His presence remains with us, and he is constantly speaking over us that “there is no condemnation.” The greatest power in the universe is now working for us, ensuring that no evil force will have the final word in our lives. In short, because Jesus has fulfilled Israel’s Sabbath hopes, you and I have rest and hope today. We have hope that God will supply our every need according to his riches in glory. We have hope that we our selfishness can be slain, that tomorrow will include fresh mercies, and that a future is coming when there will be no more terrors, toils, or tears. The Sabbath realized means Christ reigns now, that Satan’s time to deceive and destroy is short, and that full rest is coming. Let your desire for that ultimate rest generate true delight in rest today. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body” (Col 3:15). Because the substance of the Sabbath belongs to Christ (2:16–17), he realizes rest for you and me, even amid the brokenness of this age. Rest in Christ.

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