Sermon at Saint Margaret’s Anglican Church, Budapest (2026.10.04)Pentecost 19 (Proper 22), Year A

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4-14; Matthew 21:33-46

Earlier this week when I mentioned to Fr Frank that I intended to preach on the 10 Commandments, he raised an eyebrow, thought for second and slowly responded: “Um, okay, I guess… Just make sure it’s not ten sermons…” 

His quizzical look perhaps stems from the same reason bookstores rarely have endcap displays featuring modern takes on the 10 Commandments: 10 Secrets to Happiness or The Top 10 Strategies to Living Your Best Life. That’s just not how we think about the 10 Commandments.

Weirdly, Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, is a Psalm filled with joy and delight for God’s Law. It has 176 verses divided into 22 stanzas, where each verse in a stanza begins with the same letter, and each stanza moves consecutively from the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet to the last (from Aleph to Tav). 

You can almost imagine some poor Hebrew kid who got caught with his hand in the honey cake jar, and as a punishment his parents made him write out 176 sentences extolling the goodness of God’s commands!

Yet, as hard as it might be to believe, the Psalmist genuinely loved the Law of God, and the only thing stopping him from writing more was the length of the Hebrew Aleph-bet.

My hope this morning is that our attitude to the 10 commandments might become more like Psalm 119. Instead of viewing them as boring, outdated, or unrealistic, that they would begin to cherish them – perhaps even desire to hang them on the doorframes of our homes…

The first verse begins, “Then God spoke all these words…” (Ex 20:1). 

While we commonly refer to these verses as the 10 Commandments, the Hebrew expression is actually “words” – the 10 words of God. That’s why the fancy Latin name for them is the Decalogue – the “10 words”

To further complicate things, there are 13 verbs, not 10, and various ancient rabbinical traditions differed as to which of the 13 are the 10 key words (commandments), creating slightly different numberings of the 10 Commandments.

As interesting as those theological and linguistic discussions are, the idea of the Decalogue – the 10 Words of God – anticipates something far more profound. Psalm 119 worships God’s Word in a way that seems to personify it. Strikingly, the first chapter of the Gospel of John refers to Jesus as the Logos – the Word of God, the Word made flesh. Just as the 10 Words of God framed and mediated Israel’s relationship with God, Jesus now frames and mediates our relationship with God. 

We are told that Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it. Jesus in the New Testament doesn’t stand in opposition to the Law of the Old Testament. Instead, Jesus is the full incarnation of the Word of God, not just 10 Words. He is the Word made flesh, “the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb 1:3).

In other words, the 10 Commandments, the 10 Words, express in part the very nature of God. But we are getting ahead of ourselves…

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:2).

The order of events is important. First God saved/delivered Israel from bondage – and then he gave them the Law. The 10 Commandments weren’t a means of salvation – “If I do my best to keep the 10 Commandments, hopefully God will let me into heaven” kind of thing – but rather a framework for maintaining a right relationship with the God who had already saved them. 

Even more striking is the grammar. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt…” God speaks in the first-person, “I”, and addresses the listener in the second-person singular. I am the one who brought you as an individual out of bondage.

Furthermore, God doesn’t say to worship him because he is the most powerful god or the Creator God, grounding worship philosophically or theologically. Instead, he calls us to love and worship him because of what he has done for us, delivering us from the various bondages and entanglements we so easily find ourselves in. 

God calls his people to remain faithful to Him, to love and worship Him alone, because he first loved us.

On Wednesday night, we had a fascinating discussion about each of the 10 Commandments, what they mean, why they are significant, and what our world would look like if our societies reflected these 10 Words.

Take “You shall not commit adultery” (Ex 20:14). The APA estimates that 20-40% of all divorces are directly linked to infidelity or adultery. Each year there are just under one million divorces in the EU & the UK, with another 750,000 in North America and a staggering 5.5 million in Asia, S. America and Africa. In Denmark it costs €100 to file for divorce; in other countries the legal and administrative costs can exceed €20,000.  If you do the math, the direct global expenditure for divorces due to adultery adds up to a staggering €15-20 billion in legal bills – each year. 

Furthermore, one study on wealth found that divorce typically destroys 77% of an individual’s personal net worth due to forced asset liquidation and dual-household premiums. This indirect wealth destruction skyrockets the financial cost of adultery to an estimated €200 billion each year. 

If for just one year no one committed adultery, the money saved could feed the world’s 345 million people facing acute hunger for a decade!

Of course, that does not capture the human cost of adultery – the emotional, relational, and psychological harm it causes in both the couple as well as the children. 

Or take another simple commandment, “You shall not steal” (Ex 20:15). 

Each year, we spend around €200 billion globally on locks and physical security systems, and another €400 billion in cybersecurity. That’s over half a trillion euros. Additionally, the estimated global cost of cybercrime and digital theft adds an astonishing €10 trillion in economic damage. That number is so big it is hard to put it into perspective. If you started stacking €1 coins in a single tower, it would not just reach the moon but would go to the moon and back 66 times. You could buy whole continents with €11 trillion. 

It doesn’t take long to realise that if our society was indeed a reflection of these 10 words, not only would they be lands flowing with milk and honey, but there would be a lot fewer tears. Instead of crime and corruption, our nations would be marked with truth and justice; they would be places of shalom, of human flourishing.

No wonder the Psalmist had such a deep longing for God’s Law.

Far from being a list of outdated and unrealistic “Thou shalt nots,” these 10 Words of God picture a different way of living – a society that is marked by loving God with our whole hearts and our neighbour as ourselves. 

Just imagine what our would be like if it not only reflected these 10 Words of God but was marked the fulness of the Word of God, the Word made flesh. We catch glimpses of it in the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). 

The older I get, the harder that statement hits, especially in light of the world around me, and indeed within me. 

And like the Psalmist, the more I long for God’s Word to be realised in our midst.

Amen.