RCL: Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22 Exodus 20:1-17 This week’s Old Testament reading begins with God reminding the Hebrew people that God has delivered them from slavery in Egypt. God’s nature is to liberate. God desires to set God’s people free, both physically and spiritually. The Bible teaches us that true…

RCL: Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22 Exodus 20:1-17 Moses and the Israelites have finally reached Mount Sinai. They’ve escaped their bondage in Egypt, and now God will lay out the expectations for their covenantal relationship. But before handing down the Decalogue, or the laws as the Israelites would understand them to…

Exodus 20:1-17 The recitation of the Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, will likely be familiar to listeners of this week’s Old Testament reading, and many might have images of a technicolor Charlton Heston descending from the mountain, tablets in hand. But what’s striking in this reading is that God—not Moses—is speaking directly to the Israelites. Hearing…

Exodus 20:1-17 This week’s Old Testament reading is the first instance in the narrative of the exodus of Israelites from Egypt in which the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) appears. It appears again in Exodus 34, immediately following the making of the golden calf, when Moses carries the tablets down from the mountain. In this narrative, the…

Exodus 20:1-17 This is one of the two Old Testament passages containing the Ten Commandments, the other being Deuteronomy 5:6-21. The text itself does not make clear how the verses are to be divided into ten, and so they have been numbered slightly differently among different Christian denominations and Jews. But however they are divided,…