You shall not covet | Exodus 20:17

So this morning we come to the very last commandment in our Decalogue series, which we've been going through for the past couple of months, looking at the moral law of God given to his special covenant people.

Now, through the weeks, we've seen that the law has a structure to it, in that the first four commandments is our responsibility towards God, whereas the preceding commandments is our responsibility towards our neighbour.

The Westminster Confession of Faith calls this the first and second tables of the law, in that the first table's thrust is geared in helping us to know what it is to love our God, while the second table's thrust is geared towards knowing how we are to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.

Now in saying all of that, it's not like the first table is disconnected from the second because as we've seen, to truly love God will never lead someone to want to damage his image bearers in any which way.

So we might say loving God properly will never result in us wanting to rob, kill or destroy another.

It's all connected in that sense.

All this to say, to obey the first table will have an effect on the second table, which as we've seen through the weeks, will actually have a profound effect on our witness in this world.

And that's something else that we've explored in this series, isn't it? And that's that our individual obedience to the moral law of God will not only have an effect on those around us, but on our witness to a watching world of what it looks like to be a people who are in covenant with the living God.

To say that another way, as we walk in obedience to God's revealed moral instructions, we will look different to the world in that we will be reflecting something of the character of our God out to them, which in turn will testify of what it looks like to have life and freedom and joy in Christ.

Decalogue, brothers and sisters, it's God's revealed character to his special people.

And it's something that he wants us to obey, to walk in, and to live out in our new spirit-filled, blood-purchased, born-again lives.

Because as we do so, we will not only honour our Heavenly Father, but also testify to the world of his saving grace that he has accomplished for his people as we look more and more like his son Jesus, the one who came and fulfilled these moral standards perfectly.