Understanding the Ten Commandments

Do you approve of this silence? Is that the main part for you? Okay. The rest of it, you're going to have to suffer through the rest of it. I would like to ask that you add Wendell Hinkson and his family to your list for prayer. And I forgot to mention that in the prayer time. In our small group, we're looking at the Ten Commandments, and I suppose you know that for many people, the Ten Commandments are sort of a difficult thing for them to accept. I just ran across on the internet somebody who was talking about the Ten Commandments when I was looking up something, and there was a guy named, I forgot his name, I'll probably be mad about that, Christopher Hitchens. He didn't say he was an atheist, he said I'm an anti-theist, which means he's against God. So he was explaining why one by one the Ten Commandments were outdated and ridiculous and he didn't want to, thought they were foolish. Then I read in the article, there was another article by a fellow who was talking about he needed to, we needed to redo the Ten Commandments. See, tone that down a little bit, so we get a little echo, okay? He said, there's no way over two millennia old, anything over two millennia old can be perfect, and Yahweh clearly failed to write these rules with the modern age in mind. Internet bullying, drivers cutting you off, people wearing Google Glass inside your local vegan tea emporium, which is why I think they need to be refurbished. Just given some light tweaks, really, so the average decent human being can avoid damnation in 2014, ready? Let's get some improvements. The old First Commandment, I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me. The new First Commandment, I am the Lord thy God, you know, if that's your thing. I don't get why Yahweh has to be so harsh right off the bat. Before we even get to the stuff about not killing other people, he's demanding your loyalty and threatening you if you dare to spend a week hanging out with ganache. God is a poor tone setter. Also wars start when people try to enforce this commandment in foreign lands. My version is far more inviting, more McGonagish. It's a warmer way to get things started, like offering a tray of stuffed mushroom caps to guests when they come through the door. See God? There are people who think that the Ten Commandments are harsh and narrow and demanding. And they are. But the context of the Ten Commandments is missed by most people who do these kind of things. They don't understand what the Bible is about often, and they don't understand why the Ten Commandments are given, and they don't understand what God is doing with them. But they are fundamental to the Scriptures, fundamental to the Bible, fundamental to the Old Testament, fundamental to the New Testament, because they are the foundation stone in which our relationships with God and those around us are described and built. The Ten Commandments have a context, and it's important for us to understand the context before you can understand exactly what's going on. God had made a promise to Abraham that he would make of his descendants a great nation. And so years went by as the nation of Israel grew in popularity. God had taken them to Egypt to protect them from a drought so they would all not die. And then, as time went on, they became slaves in Egypt. Four hundred years they were there, slavery, harsh, bitter for them. They began to pray to God to ask him to do something to relieve them of what was taking place. And he heard that prayer and responded, sent Moses to help them. And here's a group of people, thousands of them, maybe hundreds of thousands, we don't know exactly the population. They were all imprisoned in this place, treated harshly by those people who were their owners or who were in control of their lives. God came with one man, and he decided to set them free. Now Egypt was at that time one of the greatest, if not the greatest, military power in the world. God began to do things that would make the people of Egypt anxious for the Israelites to leave. He did one miracle after another, after another, after another, until finally the last miracle was done and Pharaoh said, you can all go. The neighbors around them were so glad to see them go that they gave them gold. They gave them their family treasures. I know these seem like strange stories to us, but an Egyptian this last year filed suit to get the money back that the Egyptians had given to the Israelites when they left. It was true. They gave them money to leave. They left and God wandered them around a little bit and put them then by the Red Sea. And then they heard a noise in the distance and looked out and saw the chariots and the armies coming to take them back. They changed their mind. They didn't know what to do and God told Moses, just lift your hands and he lifted his hands and the Red Sea parted and they walked across on dry ground. The enemy armies came, the water came and smothered them and they died. Then God led them across a very barren countryside where there was nobody who lived there. Because these were slave people. They were not used to leadership. They had no training in military skills. And if he led them where places where people could fight them, they would not live. They would not be able to make it. So they were traveling through territory that was barren. It wasn't long before they ran out of water. They were overwhelmed. Why have you done this to bring us out here with all this desert with nothing to be able to drink? God said to Moses, take the rod I gave you, go up to the rock and strike it. He did and water gushed out of the rock. I don't mean it tripled, I mean it gushed. There were thousands of people and their animals who drank from that water. Not a bucket full or two buckets full, but a river of water from a rock. They came a little bit further, their supplies ran out. You couldn't pack enough to last all that time they were going to be in the desert. They were distressed. What are we going to do? We don't have crops. We don't have bread. What are we going to do? Moses prayed to God and the next morning they looked out across the landscape and there was bread everywhere. They could pick up the bread and eat it and it tasted sort of sweet. I don't know, it was kind of like donuts maybe for the breakfast. They found every morning this bread in their yard for 40 years. Then they complained because all we ever get to eat is bread. Why don't we have some meat? God was annoyed by their lack of confidence in him and then he sent quail, quail so deep that it was almost to their knees as far as they could see in any direction. He wanted them to get sick and tired of quail, which they did. Then God led them to Mount Sinai. All this is leading to the Ten Commandments. He brought these people before him and he said, I have a deal to make with you, a contract I'd like to make with you. You 400 years you haven't known me or you haven't been around me and you never talked to me and I haven't talked to you, but now I'm fulfilling a promise I've made with Abraham, your forefather. And Abraham agreed to live in obedience to everything I asked him to do. And I told him someday I'd make you a great nation and here's my contract with you. I will guide your life as I did when you were in Egypt and led you out, as I did when you crossed the Red Sea on dry ground, as I did whenever you needed food and I made bread rain, as you did whenever you ate the wonderful quail that I sent to you. I will guide you step by step in your life. I will provide every need you have as I did with the food and as I will protect you as I did from the great Egyptian army. You left Egypt and were free people and not one sword was drawn on your part, not one arrow was shot on your part, not one spear was thrown on your part. The greatest army in the world was destroyed and you did not one single thing about it. I've shown you I can guide you. I've shown you I can protect you. I've shown you that I can take care of you and defend you. Now the promise I made to your forefathers that I will make you a great and powerful nation has yet to be concluded. So this is what I will promise as your God. I will guide you, I will provide your needs, I will protect you and I will make you a great and wonderful nation. That's my part of the contract. Here's what I ask of you. I ask you to do every single thing that I tell you to do. This is our deal. God met with Moses on the top of Mount Sinai and he gave him these ten commandments. The people of Israel were gathered at the bottom. They never had freedom on their own and they were kind of wild as people are when they turn free and they have choices to make on their own. They were making all kinds of choices, choices they wanted to make, choices like their neighbors made. They didn't yet have any instruction from God and God was on the mountain telling Moses exactly what it was and the ten commandments was what he gave to Moses. But the very beginning of these ten commandments are critical. For you can't do all the things that God wants you to do unless you have absolute confidence in the person giving you the instructions. So the ten commandments began with one crucial command. In the book of Deuteronomy chapter 5, Moses is telling them the commandments that God has given to him. These instructions were given because they are critical to letting them know what God requires for his help. Now this is a clue to us. Somebody complained that the ten commandments are not what you could force on another nation. You're right about that. The ten commandments are not given to everybody. They weren't given to the Babylonians. They weren't given to the Greeks. They weren't given to the Romans. And they weren't given to the United States. They're given to the people of God. The ten commandments are only for the kingdom of God, not for some political world out there. The beginning of this is between individuals and God, between the people who belong to God and God. The very first one of these is the entrance unto the kingdom of God. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You are to have no other gods before me. Now God did not ask that the people of Israel believe in him blindly. He could have given this ten commandment, this first commandment, when Moses first came to Egypt. He could have called them all together and said, the Lord your God asked that he be the primary and only source of authority for you. Well they didn't know anything about him. They had no idea who he was or what he could do. How could they pledge allegiance to one that was so far away, unknown to them? But now they've already seen what he could do. They saw the miraculous power to free them from the government of Egypt. They saw his miraculous power to free them from the armies of Egypt, bearing down on them with certain death ahead or slavery. They saw the provision of water that he made that was impossible for anyone else to do. They saw this mysterious bread fall from heaven as no one else had ever seen before or since. They saw what God did with the quail that came when they complained about meat. Now they are ready. That's why he begins it, I am the Lord your God. The word Lord in the Bible, when we read it and it's always capitalized, when it is always capitalized, it stands for the personal name for God. So it's really like this, God's personal name is Yahweh. I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I am Yahweh. You know who I am. You know what I can do. You've seen how I can work with things. Now I have authority and power. Now what I ask you, I ask you if you will have no other gods before me. This is the beginning of our relationship. Now the word gods is used as a small letter in all caps because it refers to circumstances that we don't see in our time. Every nation, people around Israel had their own God. They believed their God was theirs and sometimes only ruled the area or territory in which they lived and if they got into another country, their God would be powerless to help them. But they believed there were many gods, all gods all around them. Now he is saying, I want you to have none of these gods who control your life except for me. I am asking for complete total allegiance from you to me. So that everything I tell you, you believe it. Everything I ask you to do, you act on it. I want to have complete authority and control of your life. He starts this before he tells them what the other things are. Because he wants them to understand that obedience to all the things he asks for them come from one source. Do I trust this God? Do I trust him to have wisdom to guide me? Do I trust him to give me what I need in the time that I need it? Do I trust him to stand between me and the dangers that I face? If you don't have that kind of confidence in God, then whatever he tells you to do, you are going to stop and say, well, I know you say this, but I have this idea. Which one should I take? You have to have in this situation that say, there is no other God in the world, no other circumstance in the world that would cause me to question what you tell me you want me to do or what you tell me is right. And this beginning, the relationship between the people of Israel and God becomes cemented. What God is asking is unconditional allegiance to him, unconditional authority to him. When I read someone saying, well, this God is very narrow, Christopher Hitchens, I thought of a military school and how they train people to fight. When you look at the stories, I have never been to basic camp about how the commanding officer makes them do ridiculous things for a long period of time. If he were standing and watched that, he would say, this is ridiculous how demanding they are of the people who are there. But if you talk to people who are involved in this training, they say, we want our soldiers to do what they are supposed to do when we tell them without any questions. Everything depends on their obedience, their blind obedience to what we say. They have to trust that we have their best interest at heart and the goal for the army at heart. They have to believe that our plans are worth following. And then we can demand the most strict and demanding obedience. God cannot accomplish his purpose in the world without people who believe that he is smarter than they are, without people who believe that his plan is better than theirs, without people who believe that no matter how difficult or impossible the thing is they are asked to do, if they do it, it will work out right. They have to believe that even though God asked them to do something that seems impossible, if they try, his ability and his wisdom will allow them to accomplish that. If we don't have that kind of confidence in God, we can't fulfill our side of this contract. If you doubt him, if you think maybe he's not quite right, if you trust yourself more than him, you're never going to be able to live as God wants you to. You can see it in all of the stories of people I'm sure who got out in the desert and found that there was no food left. I would be shocked if there weren't some of them who tried to go back to Egypt. I would be shocked if some people, whenever they heard the armies roaring behind them and the water ahead of them, didn't run and hide somewhere else and missed the whole thing. Now if I'd have been there and seen the armies coming, the water over there, and said what should I do, I would have said, run, run for your life. That's the only thing I would have known. But if God said I want you to stay here, I'm going to take care of it, I would have had to change from what I thought was the wise response to what God said was the wise response. When Jesus came to tell us how to become followers of his, he used the same idea behind this same command. He said if any of you want to come after me, you must deny yourself. You must say I can't trust my wisdom, I can't trust my judgment, I can't trust my strength, I can't trust my assessment of the circumstance. I have to give up the ability to be able to say I know what to do. You must then take up your cross, he means then you begin to make your choices based on what I tell you to do, even if it's hard, even if it's painful, even if it's costly. You must believe in me enough to say I'm going to do what you tell me is right, no matter how hard and painful and impossible it seems. And then you must act the way I act. You must talk the way I talk. You must live the way I live. And if you do that, you will find life in all of its fullness. Jesus' command to his disciples was the very same as this first command. You must let nothing in this world control your behavior and your choices except me. Jesus, as in the Old Testament, we have examples of how he did this, in the New Testament Jesus also gives us examples. He started with his disciples. They all had families, they all had jobs, they all had lives. They were respectable people, people intelligent enough to run their lives and make their choices. But he came to the fishermen and said, would you lay down your nets, leave your family business and come and follow me. Leave your family for three years? Abandon your business, your family business, which was prosperous and successful? Leave any source of income and your family and not see them for three years? Who would do that? Who would do that? You have to believe that I am the Messiah sent from God. If you don't believe that, you'll never make that kind of choice. But he asked them to do it. You must believe that obeying me is more important than doing what your family wants. I don't know if their father objected to giving up their business. I don't know if their families objected to them leaving, but they had to. No matter what your family say, no matter what your friends say, I am asking you to leave them and follow me. So they gave all of their time to Jesus. Time is a precious commodity. It's your life. That's all you have every day. And they gave it up. When Jesus came to people and they were interested in what he had to say, he made it clear to them that he alone had the power to tell them what to do. And he expected them to have nothing in their life that would take the place of what he said they should do. A man came to hear what Jesus had to say and he said, I want you to come and follow me. Can you imagine Jesus saying to you, I've chosen you to be one of my followers. Come and follow me. The man said, you know, I love everything you're doing. I like what you say, but I have a father who's very ill or maybe even dead and the funeral is coming up and I have an obligation to take care of my family. Now here's the contrast. The social obligation to take care of his family and Jesus' instruction, come and follow me. The man said, I want to follow you, but I think I should go back and take care of my family and my father first. Very few people in the world would think that wasn't an important thing to do. But Jesus said, I want you to trust my judgment. It's more important for you to leave your family behind where people who are not called by me can take care of them and you have an assignment to follow me. He asked them to put aside their social obligations to their family and to do what he told them they should do. We all have parents, we all have children, we all have relatives. And sometimes the choice between serving and following God and doing what our family and relatives want us to do and what we desire to do, those conflicts come into play. If Jesus tells you something's important to him and he wants you to do it, you should never say, no God, I can't do what you want because of my family. Nothing in this world, even your family, should control you more than me. Jesus met a man one time who wanted to go to heaven. He said, I really like what you have to say and I want that more than anything in the world. Jesus said, well keep the Ten Commandments. He said, oh I've done that since I was a little boy. I've done it all my life. Jesus looked at him and knew that he'd kept most of them. Then committed adultery, didn't lie and steal, obeyed his parents. But there was one commandment that was a problem. So he said, I want you to sell everything you have, this is God speaking, and give the money away to the poor. You're to have nothing in your life that controls you more than me. So God said, here is what I ask of you. Will you sell everything you have, give it away and come and follow me? Jesus never asked this of anybody else as far as we know. He never asked anyone else to do this. He never required it of anyone else. But here was a man who was willing to do almost everything God wanted except let God control his money. He didn't trust God for that way. He thought, what's going to happen if I get rid of all my money? I'm not going to have any security, I'm not going to have any way to take care of things. I can't see any way my life can succeed if I do what God tells me to do. I know what that's like. And sometimes you're going to find as you commit to follow Christ and he asks you to give money to an offering, you say, what? I can't afford that. Remember the story. If you make your decision based on what you give, on what you think you can afford instead of what you know God has asked of you, then you see you're not keeping the first commandment. I want you to do with your time, with your family, with your money exactly what I tell you to do. And if your personal interests or the people around you stop you and say, wait a minute, you can't do that. And if you in your own mind say, this makes no sense. I can't do it because I trust my own judgment better than yours, then you're doing exactly what God said you should not do. You're letting gods of this world control your actions and your choices. What God really wants is for someone to say, I give my life to you, Lord. Whatever you want, I'll do for you. When you get up every day, he wants you to start your day saying, God, whatever you have for me to do today, I'll put aside anything else I'm planning to do what you've told me to do. Just let me know what you want. When you plan your week, you say, okay, God, what do you want me to do? You want me to be in Sunday school and church and Wednesday night, visitation, whatever it is. Those are yours. You mark those off first. They're God days, days he's chosen from your life. And when you do that, I'll tell you right now what's going to happen. When you start, you'll say, I can't do that. I've got so many things to do. I can't possibly give that much time to God. That's the cross. God wants us to see that in our own strength, without him, what he asks of us is impossible. But with him, it is not only possible, but victorious. He wants whenever you sit down with your money and begin to pay your debt, you ask first of all, God, what do you want me to do with regard to your kingdom? How do you want me to spend the rest of this money? How does it please you? And live by what he tells you. He wants to be able to allow you to manage your family exactly as God wants you to. Now, you're not controlled by yourself or your uncles or aunts or cousins or whoever they are. You're controlled by God. They may put a lot of pressure on you to do some things, but you stop and say, God, what do you want me to do? This first commandment is the key to living for God, making sure that he is in charge of your thoughts, your choices, and your actions. You're to let nothing else in this world control you, your time, your family life, your vocation, your money, nothing other than me. And if you do that, I will promise you this, I will help you with every choice you make so it'll be a good one. Now sometimes when he gives you choices and you make them, they don't look good, like leaving Egypt and then finding yourself trapped between the ocean and an army. Sometimes they won't look good, but the times it looks worse for you are the times you'll discover the greatest miracles. You know, the people of Israel have never discovered the power of God to walk across on dry ground if it hadn't been for that situation. So don't get alarmed if you follow God's instructions, but it looks like it's led you to disaster. Just sit back and say, boy, I don't know how this is going to turn out, but it's going to be a good one. It's going to be one of those where the ocean opens. God wants us to be able to experience those things. I want you to let me control your choices that you make, and I will give you good ones. I will provide for you. It won't always be the way you think, but he'll provide for you. I will protect you. You don't need protection unless you get in dangerous circumstances. He doesn't mean you're never going to get in dangerous circumstances. He means I'll protect you when you are. And don't worry about your reputation or your life. When your life is over, you'll look back on it and say, I'm amazed at how great a life God has given me and the influence I've had to change the people around me. It all starts here. Let me alone control your life, and then you will live. Could you bow your heads, please? If you've made this commitment to Christ, I simply ask you to look at yourself. The promise to follow Christ is different than following him. Does he control your time and your money and your family life and your behaviors? Just ask him, and he'll point out the times that you do not follow him, if there are any. Get back on track. Straying off the road means disaster. It may look like it's really going well with you, but without being on God's path, it always ends in disaster. Maybe you're trying to live your life doing the best you can. You work hard, long hours, try to do the best with your money, try to make the right choices in your relationships with people, but you can tell it's not winning with you. You go back here to this place. Do you get up every day and give God the best time of your day? Are you doing with your money what he wants? Are you living your relationships the way he wants you to live them? There's no life apart from this. If you've never done this, I want to encourage you to make this promise to God. I give you my life, and nothing in the world will keep me from obeying you. That's my plan. You'll never succeed in that completely, but he doesn't want you to give up the passion to do it. That's what he wants. Do you want to follow him? Do you trust him that way? I want to ask this morning, you simply say these words, Lord, I accept that you're greater than I am, that you're the most powerful force in the universe. Today I pledge to you to give my life in obedience and submission to you. Control my thinking. Control my choices. Control my lifestyle that I might find life. This morning you may already feel that you know what God wants to change in your life. I want you today to make that promise to God. You can do that right where you are sitting there. You may feel a need to come and say openly and publicly to me, today I know what God wants, and this is the choice and decision I've made. I'll pray with you. Others will be here to pray with you too, if you choose to talk to them. But this is primarily a time for God. You are to do nothing, you are to let nothing in your life control your choices except me. So if you think he wants you to do something and you choose not to do it because you're afraid, you'll be embarrassed, you'll be emotional, you're letting yourself say no to God. This first commandment will give you life. Do what you know God wants you to do. Our pianist plays, I'll be at the front, others will be here for you if you want to come and share with us a promise you're making to God, commitments you know he wants you to make. I'll be at the front, others will be here if you want to come and share with us a promise you're making to God, commitments you know he wants you to make. Would you stand please for a moment of prayer? I'd like to ask as we end this time, and I don't want everybody to do this because you don't have to, but if this is a promise you've made to God, I'd like for us to say together in unison, I will have no other gods before you. I'll lead you and you'll start with that. I will have no other God but you. Lord, you've heard our promise. Give us the ability to keep it, the confidence and trust to obey. In the name of Christ we ask it, amen. Amen. Great is the Lord almighty, he is Lord, is God indeed. Great is the Lord almighty, he is God supreme. Great is the Lord almighty, he is God supreme. Great is the Lord almighty, he is Lord, is God indeed. Great is the Lord. Great is the Lord.