Living Every Day in God's Authority

Our Most Gracious Heavenly Father, we truly thank Thee, Father, for the day You've given us. Thank Thee for Your protecting hand. We thank Thee above all for the free gift of salvation. And Father, we pray this morning, if there's anybody here in the congregation that does not know You, through the faithful preaching of Your Word, Father, we pray that they'll find the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. Lord, we pray for the people of Iraq. Lord, it doesn't surprise us, Lord, they've taken prayer out of school right here in America. Lord, they've taken the commandments out of government places. And Lord, it's happening. And we as Christians need to stand firm on the Word of God and not be ashamed of the Gospel. Lord, may our prayers be every day with America and also the foreign countries, the Christians that live there. Lord, be with them. Help them, Lord, to not deny You. But Father, even when You call them home, Father, they'll be in heaven someday. Father, we just pray the United States will take a stand and fight for the freedoms of America and not only for the world. But Father, we know You're coming soon. And Father, these things are taking place. And Father, we just pray that for the message You've laid upon the Doyle's heart, and Father, through the faithful preaching of Your Word, Father, we pray that You'll meet every condition here this morning because we ask these things in Jesus' precious name. Amen. I want to read from Deuteronomy chapter 5, if you'd like to find that in your Bibles. I want to begin reading at verse 12. This is a passage of what we call the Ten Commandments. The people of Israel at this point in their history had been slaves in Egypt for 200 years, 400 years. They had been around people who didn't worship the God of the Bible, but who worshiped idols and many, many different kinds of gods. They had no relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There was no Bible for them to read. The history that they had was simply the stories told about the past. Now God collected them, brought them out of Egypt to be His people. They didn't know very much about this God. There wasn't anything written down for them to know. They only had stories that had been told to them. They were trying to figure out what this God was like. They knew about the gods of Egypt. Four hundred years is a long time to be in a place where other gods were the norm of the nation. Now God is trying to make this people into His own people. He brought them through the water of the Red Sea, brought them to the foot of the mountain, and here He begins to tell them the contract He wants to make with them. If you will be My people, He said, I will be your God. I will guide you. I will provide for you. I will protect you. And I will make you a great influence in the world. The promise to these slaves was overwhelming and powerful to them. What was this God like? What was He supposed to be doing? So they gathered at the foot of the mountain. Moses went up and he came back with these Ten Commandments. There are several books that explain in detail what each of these commandments are to mean in terms of everyday practice. But these are the fundamentals, the very basics, sort of the summary of what's to take place. But there's a pattern to these commandments. The first one is to say, you are to recognize Me, Yahweh is My name, as your God. You're to recognize that I made all the world and everything in it. I have ultimate authority over everything that there is in the world. That's the first commandment. You're to recognize that I am the Lord, your God. I am the creator of the world. I am the owner of everything. I am in charge. Before you begin any kind of job or anything that you're going to do, you have to know who's in charge. So when someone comes up and tells you to do something, you need to know, do they have the authority to do it? Or is this just someone who has no authority? So God starts this whole relationship with them, saying, the most important thing is you recognize My divine supreme authority over everything in the world. If you recognize that, then we're going to be okay. Then He said, and not only should you recognize My authority, but I expect you to obey it. I want you to do the things I tell you to do, I want you to think the way I tell you to think, and I want you to live the way I tell you to live. You're to have nothing in your life that takes the place of what I tell you. If I tell you something is right, you don't listen to anybody else that tells you it's wrong. If I tell you this is something you should do, you don't pay any attention to anyone else that tells you there's something else you should do. You always listen to Me. Have no other gods before Me. He means nothing to control your thinking or your choices but Me. The third thing that He told them, the third commandment, was He's saying not only am I in charge, but you're never to insult Me or to degrade Me. If you're the leader of someone and you're being treated with disrespect and people don't listen to you, I want everywhere you go for the people to recognize that you are My followers and you respect Me. Now we talk about this in terms of cursing, saying, okay, I hit my thumb with a hammer and I say, okay, God, would you damn this hammer to hell? Like you're ordering God around. That's why cursing is wrong. Everything you do, I want you to do in obedience to Me. Now these three are sort of a package, a way by which we establish God in the place of significance in our life. And the next thing He says is, if you've done this, I want you to remember Me. Don't forget Me. Now they hadn't had a habit or a history of knowing about God like many of us. In the very earliest days, we'd known something about God. We know something about who He is. They were trying to figure out who is this guy, all the other people we've lived around worship different idols and gods and all kinds of circumstances. Who is He? What is He like? What is He going to do? How is He going to treat us? What can we expect from Him? All those questions they had. Now I've told you who I am. I want you to remember Me. That's what the Sabbath day was really all about. So He said, observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox or donkey or any of your animals, nor the aliens within your gate, so that your manservant or maidservant may rest as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. That therefore is kind of a conclusion. Since all the other things are true, this is what you must do. You must remember this day and make it special. This is a time of worship. What the Jews did with this day was very common. They looked at the things all the way through the instructions God gave them, began to make lists of all the things that they were not supposed to do, all the things that they were supposed to do. I read one time that there were 613 different regulations with regard to this day alone. Many different things. How can we keep this day like God tells us to? How much work can we do? How much can we do before it becomes work? So they measured out how many steps you could take on the Sabbath day, what you could do about your meals on the Sabbath day. All kinds of regulations, mostly things that said what you shouldn't do and what you should. The behavior patterns. This is not the focus of the commandment. The commandment is to remember who God is. I want you to remember who I am. I want you to remember the mighty power with which I made the world and the universe. I want you to recognize my supreme authority. I want you to recognize that everything I say is right and true so that it becomes the guideline of your life. The Jews went to the Sabbath. On the Sabbath day, they would go to the synagogues or the temple, wherever they lived close enough to, and there they would hear the reading of the Scripture. There they would say prayers. All day long, they were to reflect on this one event, this important thing that happened to them. Now when Jesus came on the scene, he was different than the people in this story. For Jesus didn't grow up in a world where there was no knowledge of the real God. He grew up in a family from the earliest days who knew who God was, and they talked to him about it, and he learned about it. From the time he was a child, he knew the stories of the Old Testament, so he knew who God was. Whenever he started the ministry of work that he had, he was baptized, and when he came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit of God came on him. The Old Testament people did not have the Holy Spirit of God. All they had were the stories. All they had was what was written. Now Jesus has the Spirit of God with him. Remember, the point of this is to acknowledge and remember who God is. So Jesus had every day with him, not only when he went to the temple to read, but every day with him the very presence of the one who wrote the Old Testament to guide his thoughts and decisions. Jesus explained in his life the secret to what he did. He said, I only do what the Father tells me to do. I only say what the Father tells me to say. He means every single day. You see, the focus in this passage in the Old Testament was to set aside one day in which you could focus completely on God. That day was a critical day. For Jesus, he changes everything. Now it's simply not one day that we're focused on the attention of God, but every single day and in every action he was acknowledging the authority of God. I listen to you and your voice is a command to me, so I do everything you tell me to do. I listen to your voice when I meet someone and I don't know what to say and say, what should I say, Father? And you tell me. Every minute of every day and not one day. Jesus in all of his ministry did not emphasize the Sabbath day as a special event, because suddenly things have changed. Now the Spirit of God is in his life. He began to teach his disciples, of course, they observed the Sabbath day, it was a part of their culture and religious life, but when Jesus left, his disciples gathered in Jerusalem and he said, don't do a single thing. You go to the upper room and you wait until the Spirit of God comes on you. And then you start. And they waited and they waited. And in that room, the Spirit of God descended. There was visual evidence of it being there and experiential evidence of it being there. They knew that the Spirit that had guided Jesus was now in them and they set out to do what Jesus had told them to do. Now they had the Spirit of God with them. Paul, in describing how you live this life with Christ, he said, pray without ceasing. Not on one day of the week, but every day of the week. What he asked is, acknowledge me. So you get up every day and you acknowledge the supreme authority of God. You say, you made the heavens and the earth and all that's in it. You made me and you call me to this place and the work that you've given me. I acknowledge your authority. I will honor you as the ruler of the universe. I will not disgrace your name. Now guide me today. So we read in Hebrews about this great rest, the Sabbath rest. It's not a Sabbath rest that takes place one day of the week. It's a Sabbath rest that takes place every day of the week. It's not that we're to acknowledge Sunday as a Sabbath that's holy and the rest of the week as if it's not. For they are all holy days because God owns them. He made them. And each of us who belong to him are to live on every day of the week the same as we would live on Sunday or for the Jewish people the same as they would live on Saturday. Suddenly the transformation has come. The change is here. Now instead of being acknowledged one day of the week in which the Jews said you can't take more than this many steps, you can't do these things, you can't do these things, you can't do the other, now the spirit of God is within us. And every day of our lives we do what he tells us to do. We acknowledge his authority. You are the creator of heaven and earth and the one who rules everything. We will do the things you tell us and no one can stop us and we'll not do what anyone else tells us, only you. We will always honor and acknowledge your name as a supreme ruler of the universe. That's what he told them they should do. And then he said to them, now on this very special day I want you to remember what I've done for you. That's what the Sabbath was really all about. You had been slaves for 400 years and you couldn't get out. The pressure of your owners was so powerful and strong that you were put under terribly difficult circumstances. You couldn't get out of this. But I heard your appeal to me and I came to you and I brought you out of slavery. The miraculous power that caused the Egyptians to say we don't want you here anymore was the hand of God. They came to the Red Sea and the water was parted by the hand of God. They came to where they had no food and manna rained down from heaven, the hand of God. They came to the place where there was no water and water was made to squirt out of a rock to feed thousands of people and animals, the hand of God. I want you to reflect on this Sabbath day, all that I've done for you. I want you to realize what it means for me to be your Lord. Because when you see all these things you've done, I've done for you, then you can face the circumstances you have today with courage that I have both the power to help you and the wisdom to help you. Remember you were slaves in Egypt. Remember how you cried for help. Remember how you could do nothing on your own. Remember the great mystery that I performed before you to deliver you from the hands of your enemy. The Lord brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. The Sabbath was a day to remember the mighty power of God and the deliverance that he provided. When Jesus came, he began to proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand. This was a new thing. The kingdom of God is at hand. That's how he sent his disciples out to announce it. The king is now here ready to do for you what you've seen done in the Old Testament. The miraculous events that Jesus did was to show to the people there the power that God had to change them. He fed thousands with just a little bit of food. He walked on water when the danger was there and calmed the storms. I want you to see the amazing power of God, not simply in the past. That's what the Israelites were to remember, the power of the past. Jesus said, it is here today. The miraculous, mighty, delivering power of God. And what I ask of you is you come and enter the kingdom of God. The world where the king is in charge and he has mighty power to deliver you. What are your problems? Money? He has everything. What are your problems? Enemies? He's stronger than any of them. What are your problems? Health? He can cure you. Whatever your problems are, he has the power to get you through it. Jesus came proclaiming, not the past, which of course he affirmed, but that the kingdom of God is now right here in your mouth, in your mind. You can say, God, deliver me from the life that I have. And he can take your life, no matter how bad it's been, and transform it. The crippled man is able to walk. The man who had no food is able to have food. People who are controlled and possessed by addictions and demons are set free. The power of God to be able to celebrate. Jesus focused on the events that were going on in the lives of people and demonstrated by his own life the action and the power that was available. For the followers of Jesus, they watched all this and it was impressive to them. But what really changed them was, they watched Jesus buried in a tomb. They thought that he was dead forever. And then the news came, he is alive. They didn't believe it. No one's ever done this before. He can't be alive. They rushed to the tomb to discover it was empty. From that time on, they changed from worshiping on Saturday to worshiping on Sunday, the day of Jesus' resurrection. Every time we gather, it is a declaration of remembering what Jesus Christ did. He died on the cross, was buried in a tomb, and raised from the dead. He has power over life and even death. And so the believers who are followers of Christ started worshiping on this day, the first day of the week. It's not the Sabbath and it never intended to be like the Sabbath of the Old Testament. It is a new day, the day of the Lord. That's what they called it, the day of the Lord. Not a day in which we look backwards always, but a day in which we come to recognize the authority of God. What has he done to deliver us? So you all have stories. I used to be this way, but now I've been changed. I used to think this way, but now I think differently. I used to treat people in a different way. I'd lose my temper, but now I've learned patience, love, joy, peace, patience. All these qualities that are gifts of the Spirit have transformed us from the inside out. Now we are to remember this, what God has done to change us. This day is for us, not the rest of the world, but for us. Those who have experienced the power of God to change who they are, to make their life different, that's what the day is for. But it's not simply this day that that happens, it is every day. It is every day that we are to remember what God has done. Paul said, we are to pray without ceasing. He didn't mean 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but that there was never to be moments in our life when prayer was not a part of what we were doing. The guidance of God to help us. What Jesus wanted us to do is to live in a world conscious of his power all the time. And so to follow Paul and what Jesus did, whenever he had a decision to make, he went away and prayed, sometimes all night. Those were holy times. You don't have to wait till Sunday for holy times to come to you. You kneel before God, you lay before God, you stand before God, and you pour out your heart to him, and you tell him what your needs are. And he comes to you with guidance, wisdom, direction. And so you remember the power and authority of God and who he is. And you remember how he's used that power to change you. And then you look at the circumstances around you and say, as he's changed me in the past and circumstances of my life, so my future now is under his control, and it will be different than it appears to me today. Remember what I've done, the great power that I've done in your life. Not just on the seventh day, but every day that you live. And then he told the Israelites, this day is not just for you. Remember I do want you to set aside this time to rest, but I also want to remind you that as you labor and do all your work, the seventh day is a time of rest for you. But on this day, your son or daughter, or your manservant or maidservant, even your animals, your ox or your donkey, or any other animals, those people who are foreigners in your city or your community or your nation, your servants, your men and women, they may rest too. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and I delivered you, and so I want you to be conscious of all the people around you and take care of them. The Sabbath day was a day given to help others. That's what Jesus had a hard time convincing the religious leaders of his day. He saw somebody who was very sick and he wanted to heal him, but it was a Sabbath day and he knew what they would think. For their law said you can heal somebody so long as he's just about to die. But if he's in agony but not going to die, tell him to wait another day. Jesus said to them, this is the Sabbath, the Lord's day. Let me ask you a question. Do you think God in heaven would prefer me on this day to do something bad, let someone suffer in their agony, or to do something good, heal them? What do you think? They couldn't answer because they knew the question and they also knew that answering the question correctly would mean that it would violate some of their laws. It meant that they had made the Sabbath into something it was not supposed to be. It was not supposed to be about gathering together and doing only things for ourselves. But remember, your maidservant and your manservant and your slaves and the foreigners who are in your country and the people around you and even your animals, take care of them. Give them rest and care. The Sabbath was intended not only to refresh the people of Israel but also to care for those around them. So Jesus came and the greatest conflicts he had in his ministry was when he went to people who were in desperate circumstances and he helped them. They said, this is not what the Sabbath is about. You don't do work. He said, it's exactly what the Sabbath is about. We do the work of caring for people. So now we have a different picture of the Sabbath. For we see Jesus, he says, when you look around you, you're to see that any time you find a person in need and you help them, you are keeping the principle and the heart of the Sabbath. So when you come, not to church, but every day of your life and you see someone who's weary and burdened and their life is filled with troubles and you stop to say to them, God can help you and you give them the help that God can give them, you have kept the Sabbath principle. It's every day. Every day is a Sabbath day for us. Every day is a day in which we acknowledge the authority of God. Every day is a day for us in which we remember what he's done for us. Every day is a day for us in which we do what we can to help those who are around us in the name of Jesus Christ. Jesus changed this so powerfully and dramatically that the people who were experts in the law could not recognize the real Sabbath as Jesus lived it because they'd so distorted it. It's easy to do, you know, you read the Old Testament, it tells you things you shouldn't do and things you should do. As a boy I had a great aunt, she was Aunt Hattie. We'd go over to her house, she lived across town, she had a huge house but she only lived in about three rooms of it and the other rooms were all closed off, you know, it's like a great mystery. What's in those rooms? I don't get to go in there. But she had games, you know, she had rook games and they were worn out cards. She was very frugal and also very wealthy. So we played with these cards that the orings were worn off of them, the numbers were almost worn off of them, rook cards, and she had Chinese checkers and we'd play that and she had, I forget, some other games that we played, dole maids or whatever. But when you went to Aunt Hattie's house on Sunday and you said, Aunt Hattie, I'd like to play some cards, she said, no, this is the Sabbath day, we don't do that. So you sat on the porch in the swing all day long. The worst day of the week for me, eight-year-old boy. She was trying hard to keep the Sabbath by rules of what you don't do. I said, what got Jesus in such trouble? He didn't see the Sabbath as a set of rules telling us what not to do. He saw it as a set of rules that allowed us to do what was really important. You know why he didn't want them to work? If you get busy working, it's true right now for you, if you get up in the morning, you go straight to work and you work until you come home to go to bed, when are you going to pray? No time. When are you going to read the Bible? No time. These people needed time to be able to sit down, they had no Bible, no Holy Spirit, and reflect on God, so they had to give calendar time to that. The same is true for us. You can't stay close to God if you don't get up every day and talk to him, and listen to him, and find directions for your life. You'll find after a while you've drifted pretty far away from him, and you have to come back and some experience comes to you and you recognize, I'm not walking with God. He wants us every morning to get up in the morning and say, God, this is your day. I want to live it in obedience to you. You are the ruler of the world. I remember that. Lord, I can look back on my life, how you've delivered me from so many difficult circumstances. How you've provided so many things for me. You are the God who rescues and saves his people. God, I want to ask you as I'm walking around this day, to show me the people who need to know your love and your help, and I will help them. That's how we begin. Our Sabbath day happens every day, like it did with Jesus, and like it did with Paul. It's not a bunch of rules about what you can't do. The rules that tell you what you can't do simply say, don't let things of life interfere with remembering me, acknowledging my authority, and doing my work. Now who doesn't keep the Sabbath day? The person who says he's a follower of Christ, but has no time to pray. The person who says he's a follower of Christ, and has no time to read the Bible. And the person who says he's a follower of Christ, but does nothing for the kingdom of God. That's the Sabbath violator. Every day. You can come to church on Sunday, listen to the sermon, go to Sunday school, and think you're keeping the Sabbath, but not necessarily. What God intends are three things to saturate our lives. Acknowledging his supreme authority over everything, remembering what he's done to rescue us and redeem us, and doing the work that he gives us to do. That is the Sabbath day that the Bible presents. Don't think that you can do it one day, and then take the other seven, six, and do what you want. It is as Jesus teaches us every day. I do what the Father tells me all the time. I say what the Father tells me all the time. And what Paul taught us, pray without stopping. It's constant. We live every day this holy day, because we belong to God, and because we are his children, we are holy. The Sabbath principle is to live the holy life every day. Let me ask you, have you ever come to a time in your life when you said, I believe that God rules the universe, and I pledge my life to live in obedience to him every day the rest of my life, as best I can? Have you ever come to the place in your life where you said, God, I'm going to do what you tell me to do, even if I don't like it, even if it hurts, even if it's deadly? That's my promise to you, because you are the ruler of the universe. I promise you, God, that I will never forget what you've done for me. Do you make a habit of listening to God and remembering the things he's done for you? Once you've had this transformation, he wants you to regularly remember what you used to be and how he's changed you, so you can see that the future is going to be different. And then he wants you to serve him, work for him. That's what this is about. It's a lot like Jesus' description of what it means to be a follower of his. Deny yourself, take up your cross, and do what I do. Every day. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment? In your own mind, can you say to yourself, I have given my life to recognize God's supreme authority over me. I have told God that I will do whatever he wants, as best I can, from now to the end of my life. If you've never done that, then you don't know what life is really intended to be in this earth. You can do it now. If you believe that there is a God, you can say to him, today, I want you to change me. Take me out of the life that I have, and give me the life that you want me to have. You do it this way, saying, God, I promise you, I will acknowledge you as the boss, the ruler of my life, every day, from now until I die. Whatever you tell me to do, I'll try my best to do it. Whatever you want from me, I'll give it as best I can. In that moment, your life will become different. If you've made that promise to God, is your life a life of Sabbath-keeping? Do you have a regular time every day? You don't have to do it in the morning. You can do it at night, during the middle of the day, wherever it is, in which you take time to acknowledge the supreme authority of God and think about who he is? Do you spend some time thanking God for how he's changed you? Do you spend some time every day saying, God, show me what you want me to do for others? That's the Sabbath life. I want to challenge you, if you don't have a time every day and you do that, that you make a promise to God that you're going to. Experience what it means to live this life with him. I don't know what God wants for you. He's probably told you more than one time. But if you know what it is, I want to ask you in these moments of quietness that you listen to the supreme authority of the world. If he tells you to do something, you do it. It may be to commit your life to him, it may be to become a member of the church, it may be to take a job you know he wants you to do. It may be to stop some things in your life. We're talking about God. Are you going to say no to him? In a moment of quietness, the instruments are going to play. I'll be here, Carl will be here, Debbie will be here. If you know what God wants, the supreme ruler of the earth is saying to you, this is what I want you to do. Do it. Your life depends on it. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Please for a moment of prayer. There is no one like you in all the world, the power that you have. The world sometimes takes you for granted, insults you constantly. But we are a people who honor you, the ruler and creator of all the universe. We recognize that you have changed us by your power. You've delivered us from the grip of Satan and the power of sin. We celebrate that. We ask this day and every day, all of our lives, that you would show us the people around us for whom you sent us into the world, that we might share you with them and that we might help them to find the fullness that you provide. We've come this day to worship you. And we wake up every day to worship you. For you are the Lord and we cannot forget you. In the name of Jesus, we give thanks for all you've done for us. Amen. We will close today the way we began, with This is the Day. ♪♪♪♪ This is the day, this is the day that the Lord hath made, that the Lord...