Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Would you join me in prayer?
[00:00:02] God, you are worthy of our praise.
[00:00:05] God, we thank you that we have the opportunity to be in your presence. That no matter how holy you are, how powerful you are, how mighty you are, God, you welcome us into your presence this morning.
[00:00:16] God, thanks for loving us. Thank you for being a greater God than anything we could have brought with us this morning. God, we are in wonder and awe of you. We praise you. We love you.
[00:00:27] God, would you be with me as I. As I open your word? God, would your word speak true this morning? Lord, would your spirit be present and would you encourage us? Would you fill us with your life this morning as we read your word?
[00:00:38] God, we praise you in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:00:48] As we've been engaging in these stories with Moses, we find ourselves at a mountaintop moment. And as we heard from the teenagers this morning, they got to share about their mountaintop moments. Because mountaintops in the Bible are places where we encounter God, where we get to see that the power and God's presence and all of who God is.
[00:01:15] And we even sang songs this morning that praise God, that pointed to who he is, that just help us sit in awe and wonder of who God is.
[00:01:24] Last week, Pastor Tim shared that the Israelites, they finally found themselves at a mountain they brought out of slavery. And they're at a mountain. What's the name of that mountain?
[00:01:33] Mount Sinai. Right. And they get something at Mount Sinai. They get the ten Commandments, right?
[00:01:41] And so at this mountaintop, they are there and they're seeing the awe and power of God. And this mountaintop experience, they are encountering God. And like I shared, these teenagers that we talked about, their mountaintop experience was going to Salt Lake City where we loaded on buses and drove 15 hours in one day. And we showed up and we've got 10,000 people worshiping. And that's a powerful moment where these teenagers, a lot of times they're in schools or they're surrounded by a culture that's. That's pulling them to. To do things, maybe how they would want to do them or, or the cultures tell them, do whatever you want, but then they get into a spot where they're surrounded shoulder to shoulder with people worshiping God, who are all pursuing the same God. And that is a powerful mountaintop experience that helps them understand that they're not alone, that the God that they worship is doing things in the lives of people all across the US and the world.
[00:02:31] They got to see that they're not alone. They got to gain a fresh understanding of who God is of his power. They got to experience the reverence and a fear of God as we sat in wonder of him at Nazarene Youth Conference.
[00:02:46] They got to get a respect of who God is. And in the midst of all of that, they experience God's love in powerful and profound ways that now they get to come back and bring that to our youth group and to our church.
[00:02:58] See our teens, they didn't want to leave nyc. It was such an awesome experience. They didn't want to come home, not just because the ride was long, but because they didn't want to come back. They enjoyed everything about it. But the problem is, as the speaker said and our teens mentioned, when you're up on the mountaintop, no matter how beautiful it is and how great it is, you can't stay living on top of a mountain forever.
[00:03:16] At some point we have to descend back into the valleys and. And the problem with the valleys is the valleys are messy, right? The valleys are difficult. The valleys bring emotions and anxiety and broken relationship and the hurt and chaos of everyday life.
[00:03:36] One of the speakers said, and the teens alluded to this. He was the one that painted the picture. He says, hey, you go to the mountaintop, you, you wonder at God at the mountaintop to be refreshed and reminded of who he is. So that when you descend to the valleys and your life is found in the valley, as we walk with God in the valley, mountaintop experience is designed to help us escape for just a little bit. So maybe this morning at church is a mountaintop experience because you, you've got a chaotic life and you came here and you're like, one day a week, I'm going to set aside a couple hours to be in the presence of God and to hear his word and be refreshed.
[00:04:11] I don't know, what are some of your other mountaintop experiences?
[00:04:15] Maybe some of you, you're thinking back to the camp that you went to in middle school or high school or elementary school and all the things you experienced. Or you can remember your camp crush that was awkwardly sitting next to you and all those goofy memories, right? Or the times that you went down to the altar every single night because you want to make sure you were forgiven.
[00:04:34] There's just something powerful about being at camp, that those were a mountaintop experience where you get away from everything and we're with God.
[00:04:40] Or maybe it's a retreat you've gone to as an adult, where a couple days and a week and you went away somewhere, a men's retreat or A woman's retreat or 50 plus. And you got to just be reinvigorated by being in the presence of God before going back to everyday life.
[00:04:54] Some of us, our mountaintop experiences are when we get to go on a vacation with our family. Families are good things, right? God created family. And sometimes when we're away and we're hanging out at the beach or in the mountains, or we're just traveling in a car together and we're celebrating life, you get to taste the goodness of God as he created the family and all the joys that relationship brings in the family or some of us. I'm a competitive person. I like playing sports. For me, when I'm competitive and I'm playing sports, sometimes I can feel the goodness of God because that's something he allows me to do. When we play basketball or softball or when we're out, maybe it's hiking or whatever it is when we're doing those things that just bring us life and refreshment, we get to experience God.
[00:05:32] Maybe you're an outdoors person and you're literally sitting on top of the mountain, kind of like Pastor Brian is this morning as he leads mountain church. He's up the mountain, and people are sitting in the presence of God, appreciating the beauty of everything around.
[00:05:47] Those mountaintop experiences are good. Maybe sometimes it's a small group of friends that you gather together. And when you're with those friends, you are encouraged, you're enlightened. They might call you out on some things. They might tease you because they love you. Anybody have a friend that loves you enough that they tease you? And they know the things that can poke your buttons a little bit, but they only do it because they know you guys are close enough. Those are good friendships, right?
[00:06:08] But at some point, we have to go and leave church. We have to leave our friendship gatherings. We have to leave the mountain. We have to leave our campsites. We have to go back into the valleys that are difficult, that are hard. We have to go back into places that sometimes might not be easy to follow God. So the question that we have to answer is, how do we find life in the valley?
[00:06:31] I would suggest to you that God knows that valleys are tough and they're difficult. And I think that is why God gives us scripture.
[00:06:38] In our story this morning, Moses and the Israelites, they have come to the mountaintop where they see God and they see. Pastor Tim shared. Lastly, the thunder and the lightning. They hear the voice of God and they're, like, fearful of God, right?
[00:06:51] But they're not always going to be at that mountain. At some point they're going to leave that mountain. They're going to go into the land that God has called them into. And. And they're not going to see the thunder and lightning of God right there. And so as they go into their valley, God is going to give them some instructions or perhaps we might know them as, as commandments of how they should live their life.
[00:07:14] Let's pause for a second. We're going to be talking about the Ten Commandments. It's going to be in Exodus 20. If you want to open there, you can. We'll be in a couple different spots. It'll be on scriptures or on screen as well. But before I even jump into them, if I had to ask you, and don't raise your hands because I don't want to embarrass anybody here.
[00:07:28] How many of you could name all 10 commandments?
[00:07:33] Just some of you are getting really nervous in your seat right now. Like, I didn't study for this, right? Others of us, you got the song playing your head that you learned in Sunday school, that you know it all and you've got, you got some finger trick that you remember. Like wherever it is, the Ten Commandments, it might be something that we've heard a lot or maybe we don't know them very well at all, but maybe. Let's ask another question. What is a commandment anyway?
[00:07:56] I don't know about you guys. When I think of commandment, sometimes it just comes across as harsh. Like somebody's commanding me to do something. I don't want to do that, right?
[00:08:03] Commandment. Maybe we think of rules that we have to follow, that if it's a command, it's a rule.
[00:08:09] And maybe you associate the Ten Commandments with these are moral teachings, that they're good things. If I just follow enough of them, I'm going to be a good person and God's going to love me and I can live this good life and I'll be a good moral person. Person.
[00:08:24] But what if a command wasn't always something that's inherent, inherently bad, Right? What if command was something that instead of being a negative thing, that it actually was something that introduces us to life?
[00:08:38] Sometimes I think we think when. When God sets out commands, He. He gives us these boundaries and things. Hey, don't do these things. Like, I don't want to listen to you, God. I want to do my life how I want to do it. I don't want to listen to any boundaries because that's just going to restrict me, and I want to go have fun and do all these things that.
[00:08:53] But what if we serve a God who knows us? He knows every single hair on our head. He loves us immensely. He created the whole world and knows everything in it. And he says, because of all of this, I know you and I love you, and I don't want to put commands on your life to restrict you.
[00:09:09] What if these commandments that I'm giving to you, what if I am putting those boundaries in place so that you might experience greater, more abundant life?
[00:09:19] I think the commands in Scripture that we see, the instructions, the words of God, lead us into deeper life. If you're not sure if you believe me, I want to explore a couple stories before we get into the Ten Commandments, just to see. Are there any place in Scripture up until this point in the story where God has given commands? He's given instructions, he has presented his word for people to decide, do I want to follow this or not? And do those words lead to life?
[00:09:46] So to start with, we go back to Genesis and creation and Adam and Eve. And some of the first things he says to them is, I want you to be fruitful and multiply and rule over the earth.
[00:09:56] Does that sound like a thing that leads death or fruitful and multiply? That seems like a pretty good thing, right? You're supposed to multiply, have babies, be fruitful. If there's anything that leads to life, that is the definition of leading to life, right?
[00:10:09] That's a good thing. So God gives a command and it reduces them. It leads them to life. But then he says something else. He gives them another command, and this command has a negative command with it. Ooh, I don't know if I like negative commands. This comes From Genesis, chapter 2, verse 16 and 17, when God has placed Adam and Eve in the garden, and there's all of these good things around them, all of these fruit trees, everything they could imagine, all these blessings they could experience, all these good things that lead to life.
[00:10:42] And it says, the Lord God commanded the man, you're free to eat from any of those trees in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly.
[00:10:56] Now, does that sound like a command that's going to lead to life if you're going to do this and you're going to die? I don't think so. Right. That seems pretty opposite of life.
[00:11:05] And so he gives them the instruction, you can have all of these Good things. But the one thing he tells them not to do, he's telling them not to do it because he knows that thing's going to lead to death. That's not going to lead to anything positive, anything good. It's going to cause them to encounter a future death. So I'm going to put this boundary on your life so that you can experience fullness of life and not do the things that lead to death. I would suggest that God's instructions lead to life.
[00:11:32] Shortly after that, we get to Noah. And if you know a story of Noah, the whole world had gotten way downhill. Everybody had chosen evil, corruption, greed, all this stuff. The world was evil. So much so that God says, I gotta start fresh. I gotta wipe it all out. And he goes to Noah and he says, I'm gonna ask you to do something. It's gonna sound kind of crazy. I'm gonna. I'm gonna ask you to build this. This boat. And it's gonna take a long time. And everybody around you is probably gonna look at you and think you are crazy.
[00:11:59] But if you're wise, you're going to obey my instructions. Because if you do, it's going to lead to life. Here's what it says. Genesis, chapter 6, verses 17 and 18, it says, talks about how he's going to bring the flood waters on the earth and everything on earth will perish, but I will establish my covenant with you and you will enter the ark. And from that point on, Noah and his wife and his sons and their wives have a choice to make. Do we obey God's instructions or not?
[00:12:29] And later we see in chapter seven, verse five, that says, noah did all that the Lord commanded him.
[00:12:35] Did that command lead to life or death for Noah and his family life? Right? They could have chosen to obey or not. God says, I am going to give you an instruction. You get to choose what you do with it. But I'm going to. If you want to live, you will obey this command so that it will lead you into life. All these other people have decided that they want to pursue their own ways and therefore it will not lead them into life. God's instructions lead to life.
[00:13:03] And then we get the story of Abraham where God says, I'm gonna bless you. I'm gonna make you in a great nation. And he has all these opportunities to either obey God or to choose to do things his own way. And it starts this rollercoaster effect that. I talk about this a lot in scripture, the Old Testament. Sometimes people are following God and then they disobey God, and then they get called back to God and it's this up and down. But when we are obeying God, we experience the fullness of. Of life.
[00:13:26] But there's other times when Abraham's like, no, I'm not going to wait for this. This child that you promised me, God, I'm going to do things my own way. I'm going to take my wife's servant, I'm going to sleep with her. I'm going to get a child. How I want to do this thing. I don't want to listen to God's instructions. God's words where he said, I would be blessed with a child. And when he chooses to do things his own way. And I listen to God's words now, pain and corruption and hurt and chaos and disorder that enters the world because he has chosen to be disobedient to God's instructions.
[00:13:57] As we approach the Ten Commandments, we have to be reminded that God's instructions lead to life.
[00:14:02] And they are, they are wisdom for us that we to decide, hey, are we going to follow these? Are we going to apply these to our life or not? And even last week, Pastor Tim, as, as he was reading, he reminded us that the Israelites there at the base of this mountain, seeing all of God's power. And God says to them in Exodus 19, 5 and 6, he says, now if you obey me and you fully keep my covenant, then out of all of the nations, you guys are going to be my treasured possession.
[00:14:29] Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
[00:14:35] You don't have to follow me. You don't have to experience this goodness of life. But I'll tell you what, if you do, you're going to be mine. You're going to be my treasured possession.
[00:14:47] God is setting them up for the instruction he's about to give. And a lot of times we think of them as commands. But actually in Exodus, it talks about how they are the words of God and we are invited, and the people of Israel were invited to reflect on them and decide, am I going to apply these to my life so that I can experience life abundantly? It kind of reminds me of what Jesus says in the New Testament. You know, Jesus came to fulfill the law. He says, the thief comes only deal, kill and destroy. But I have come so that you might have life and have it abundantly. Right.
[00:15:25] You know, part of the reason we talk about it every Sunday when we get up here and we stand here and we say, Hey, I want you to connect with God, to know Him. I want you to connect with each other so you might live in freedom. Part of the reason we say so that you might live in freedom is because we believe that the words of God lead us into life. And we encourage us to get into groups of people that will be together and will be reading the Word of God. And as we apply the Word of God to our life, it's going to lead us into freedom from all the sins and things that, that distract us from God and all these people that love God and we're pursuing him together, we can experience the freedom of knowing God together.
[00:16:00] That's part of where this comes from.
[00:16:02] And so as we read this, I invite you to, to approach the Ten Commandments with a reflective heart.
[00:16:10] Not so much that God's saying, I hate you, I want to limit all your fun and good stuff in life, but more of a, I know you and I love you and I see things that you don't see, and I'm more powerful than you could ever understand. And so because of that, I'm going to put some parameters so that you might experience abundant life.
[00:16:30] And you might be also asking, okay, well, this is the Old Testament. These are just the Ten Commandments. They don't apply in New Testament. Well, first of all, nine out of ten commandments are explicit, explicitly addressed in the New Testament. And so we're going to look at them in the Old Testament as well. And as I already said, part of Scripture is wisdom, literature that as we read them, we constantly reflect on what God's Word says so His Spirit can speak into our lives and remind us of maybe some new understandings that we need to come to about who God is.
[00:16:56] So with that, I invite you to read the Ten Commandments with me. It's going to be a lot. I'm not going to be able to cover everything. But we're going to invite God to speak to us this morning as we read something that maybe you've read a hundred or a thousand times before.
[00:17:10] But I believe that God's Word invites us into new life. So let's see what life he's inviting us into this morning.
[00:17:18] So Exodus, chapter 20, starting in verse one. And I'm going to read it out of the New American Standard Bible. It's a little different version we use. It's a word for word translation. So if it sounds a little funky to you, it's okay. It's just to help us understand maybe some of the nuances of the Ten Commandments verse 1. Then God spoke all of these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of slavery before we even get the first commandment. What does God do? Hey, let me remind you. You guys were slaves. Nothing was going right for you. You were in slave slavery. And I did some miraculous things. I showed up in all of my power and wonder, and I brought you out of slavery and into newness of life.
[00:18:02] So as I give you these commands, just remember where I brought you. And these aren't commands to restrict you, but they're to keep you from going back into the slavery that I have brought you out of.
[00:18:12] We have talked so far in this series that all of us, there's things in our lives that. That we are slaves to that sin, that. That draws us away from God. And as God sets us free from those things, we're not to go back to those things. We are to pursue the new life God has for us. So as we read the Ten Commandments, we are to remember that God has brought us out of these things, and part of these commands are to keep us from going back into the slavery he has set us free from.
[00:18:37] So the first commandment, when we understand that, after we have that. That perspective now, God says, you shall have no other gods before me.
[00:18:49] Which seems pretty simple, right? No other gods. But one of the things in our culture is, is we have a culture that says we're supposed to tolerate and accept everything and everybody has an equal path.
[00:18:59] You know what? You go to church here and you might serve your God, but I'm gonna go see truth in the God of the Hindus, or I'm gonna go pursue the God of Muslims. Or maybe I'm gonna take a little bit of these things, I'm gonna mesh them together into this syncretistic religion that says I'm just gonna pull what makes me feel good. And that's how I see God. But God says, that's not what I'm calling you to. I am the Alpha, the Omega. I've created everything. You can't choose what to follow. I am the one that sets the parameters for this world. I designed everything. I am the only way into life. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not elevate any other thing above me.
[00:19:36] Jesus says I'm the way, the truth and life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me. God is the only God that is worthy of our worship.
[00:19:46] That's kind of the idea where we get monotheism from Whether there's one God. But I do want to highlight something here. The word gods. There in the Hebrew, the word is Elohim.
[00:19:56] And Elohim sometimes refers to God himself, but other times, Elohim is a word that can mean any spiritual being.
[00:20:04] Now, that might be kind of weird for some of you. Like, I thought, there's only one God. We only serve one God. The Bible is clear that it's not that there is a spiritual reality that is playing out in the world around us. Just because we can't see or hear or touch, it doesn't mean that there is not a spiritual reality happening.
[00:20:19] In fact, New Testament talks about how our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. That's from Ephesians or Colossians says, for in Jesus, all things are created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.
[00:20:41] There's a very real spiritual reality that is around this that God says, you know what? There might be angels, there might be demons, there might be spiritual reality that's happening. But in the midst of all that, I want you to remember I created everything.
[00:20:53] And there's gonna be things that's gonna pull out your attention, that's gonna want you to worship those things because they seem like they have power and influence. But I created all of that, and you are to worship me and me alone. Nothing else will lead you into life. You should have no other gods before me.
[00:21:11] So I just ask, is there anything in our lives that we are placing above God?
[00:21:20] And speaking of that, let's go on to the second commandment. Because the second commandment says, you shall not make for yourself and an idol, right? Maybe some of yours might say a graven image. And the rest of it goes on to say an idol or any likeness in heaven above or on the earth beneath or on the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers of the children of the third and fourth generations to those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments. That second part is identifying that our decisions impact our generations to follow, that if we pursue idols, it's going to impact people beyond us. Our sin, our choices we make now is a ripple effect, and it impacts the people around us.
[00:22:07] But the question I want us to wrestle with is, what in the world is an idol?
[00:22:14] Or maybe it's more specifically here. What is a graven image?
[00:22:19] We might be familiar with some stories of scripture where they'll, they'll take things they might fashion a little like wood carving that the people worship, or maybe the golden calf, right where they build this golden bowl to worship. And that's supposed to somehow represent God. God says, I don't want you to do any of that. There's, there's no possible way that you could take me. God of the universe, all powerful, awe inspiring. I'm holy. I, I'm, I'm perfect. There's, there's no way you could take all of attributes and kind of squish them into this little golden object and say, this somehow represents God. And when I look at this thing, I see God and I'm worshiping God.
[00:22:53] That's going to be a completely imperfect, imperfect, incomplete picture of God, right?
[00:22:58] We're not supposed to make any graven image.
[00:23:01] And the second reason why we're not supposed to make an image, because God already made an image. You guys know the image that God has already created?
[00:23:09] It's you and me.
[00:23:10] In the beginning of scripture, he says he made man and woman. We were formed in his image.
[00:23:17] Now, we may not ever perfectly reflect the image of God, but I sure hope that as I go about my life and I'm loving others, as I'm trying to pursue God, as I'm applying the wisdom of the Ten Commandments, that when people encounter me, I hope they get a little piece of who God is.
[00:23:30] And I know that I'm imperfect. So that's why I put myself in a body of believers, that my imperfections can be filled in by the people around me. That as we walk together, hopefully as a church, we are reflecting the image of God.
[00:23:43] We're not to make any other images because God already made an image and that is us. And it's part of our job to reflect God's image. Well.
[00:23:51] So I would just ask, how are we doing at representing the image of God?
[00:24:02] Third commandment says this. You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God in vain. For the Lord will not leave him unpunished. Who takes his name in vain.
[00:24:14] Now, if you're like me, you grew up with this one and you understood that, okay? I'm not supposed to use the Lord's name. I'm not supposed to say God and then add something after it.
[00:24:23] I'm not gonna say that because you're. It's already in your minds, right? But we're not supposed to frivolously attach things to God's name. And I would agree, I think that is an inappropriate way to use the name of God. To attach anything unholy to God or how we speak about God is probably not representing his image well.
[00:24:41] But if we were to stop and say that is all this commandment is talking about, I think we are missing the point.
[00:24:48] Because the word where it says you shall not take the name of the Lord, that word there is NASA. And that actually means to take up or to carry.
[00:24:57] So I want you to picture for a second that as Christians, as believers in Jesus, what we are doing, if we are trying to apply the wisdom of this commandment to our lives and we are saying that wherever I go in life, I am carrying the name of the Lord with me. It's almost like I have a name tag here that says I am representing God. And so that if I am interacting with somebody out in the world and I'm saying, yeah, I go to church, I'm a Christian, I love Jesus, and then everything I do to them is mean and disrespectful and rude, am I carrying the name of God? Well, no.
[00:25:31] In our modern culture, maybe we think of it as defamation, where if you speak something that's false or defamatory or you write something, whether it's libel or slander, anything that tarnishes a name can be people can sue people over it. Right. And so as a Christian, if we're to be representing God, everything we do should be done in a way that does not tarnish the name of God. I'm to carry God's name. I'm literally to take it up as I go out into the valleys of life, the messy valleys. And I leave the mountaintop here this morning. We're going to go out into life this week. It's going to be messy and there's going to be people I don't like and I'm going to be engaged in situations that aren't going to be easy. My goal is to, as best as I can, carry God's name and reflect it well, because I'm an image of God and I'm carrying his name with me into every single interaction I have.
[00:26:23] Part of why we need to reflect on these 10 commandments or these 10 words is because by abiding by them, it not only brings us into a more life giving relationship with God, but it also helps us carry the name and introduce others into life giving relationships with God as well. So I asked the question, how are we doing carrying the name of God into our everyday life.
[00:26:46] Fourth commandment, Exodus 20:8 says, Remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all of your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it, you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle, or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. There's a lot that could be said about this that I can't do justice on, but a few points to point out with. First of all, there's this understanding that God created everything in six days. And what did he do on the seventh day?
[00:27:28] He rested. What did he do on the eighth day?
[00:27:32] He's still in his rest, right? God created everything. He set it in motion. He gave it design, he gave it purpose. And then he's ruling over these things and he is entering. Part of his rest is saying, everything I have made is good, is operating how I have designed it to do.
[00:27:45] And so for you and I, part of the way we experience rest as we do the things that God has gifted us to do, we work, we play, we interact with our family. As we do those things well, we are entering into the rest, the goodness of God's creation, the design of God's creation. Part of rest is experiencing that creation in its full functionality as God intended us to experience.
[00:28:06] The second thing I would highlight from this is that, you know what? God created things in six days and he rested. And part of that was to set up a picture for us to remind us that no matter how much I want to control my life, no how matter how much I want to be God, I'm not God, right? I'm not fully in control. And there are some times where I need to step back and I need to rest and I need to remind myself that God brought me out of slavery. He set me free. Just like it says here, that even the slaves on that seventh day of rest would be able to be free. That we can experience rest and freedom. Because I'm not God, and I need to remind myself of that. And I need to trust in the one who is bigger and. And greater than me.
[00:28:47] Those are the first four commandments. We got six to go. But there's a transition that happens here where those first four, they all have to do with our relationship with God. And so I just want to pause for a second as I, I've said a lot and it's, it's hard to think through these things, like how in the world am I supposed to apply these? I thought, man, if I just didn't use the Lord's name, weird and, and if I just, you know, if I just tried to show up to church and I just tried to follow these checklist things, but this is a whole lot broader than what I expected.
[00:29:13] That's good. Scripture is wisdom literature inviting us into an ongoing pursuit of God. So I just want to pause and pray and just allow God to speak for a moment into your life. And then we will continue quickly through the remaining commandments. Would you pray with me, God? We pause and we just reflect in our relationship with you, Lord, if there's any way that we have introduced idols into our life, if there's any way we are not carrying your name well in our life, Lord, if there's any way we are not resting in your goodness and we are not experiencing your rest, God, would you help us to do those well?
[00:29:48] Would you speak into our lives, Lord? Convict us of any areas we need to step into new life, Lord, I pray that as we hear from you, God, we would experience your life giving presence.
[00:30:00] God, let us not leave from here without being changed by you ladies. At your feet, Jesus name, Amen.
[00:30:07] At the end of the service, there will be a chance for you to pray. And I would just encourage you, if God spoke a new life in you, be prepared to come and share that with somebody. We would love to pray with you. But before we do that, we have five more. And so the fifth commandment, here we have, it switches from our relationship with God to relationship with people.
[00:30:25] And he says honor. Or the fifth commandment is honor your father and your mother so that the days may be prolonged in the land in which God's given you.
[00:30:33] I don't have a lot to say other than to ask, how are you doing at honoring your parents?
[00:30:38] I'm a parent now. I have a daughter that's almost three months old. I have a seven and a half month, seven and a half year old stepson. And I get to experience what it means to be a father. But I also have to ask the question, how do I honor my parents in this stage of my life?
[00:30:52] Or maybe we ask the question, how do I help the next generation understand why it matters to honor their parents?
[00:30:58] What have I learned that I can pass along?
[00:31:01] I think when we honor our parents and our families well, we reflect the image of God, as we honor what God has designed for life.
[00:31:08] The sixth commandment. Maybe you'll get a breather here. It says, you shall not murder.
[00:31:13] How we doing?
[00:31:14] We feeling good?
[00:31:16] Now, some of us are like, oh, this one's easy. But you know, the problem with this is Jesus in the New Testament says, oh, I'm not just gonna stop there. You have heard it said that you shall not murder. But I tell you what, that if you are even so much as angry with your brother or sister, man, you're gonna face judgment.
[00:31:30] Well, that's a whole new level. Jesus. Come on.
[00:31:33] Part of the Ten Commandments. Again, we are reflecting on any attitudes, anything in our life that is distracting us from life. And if an attitude that leads us into anger is pulling away from God, then we need to be able to address that.
[00:31:45] You know what? Even if you have murdered somebody, I'm thankful that we have a God that loves us enough that he forgives us. And he says, there's nothing you can do that can pull you away from me.
[00:31:56] Next one we have, you shall not commit adultery, Right? I shall not pursue sexual gratification from somebody other than my wife.
[00:32:03] And some of you might be saying, man, that's hard. Cause, man, sex is one of the most appealing things in our world. It's one of the most tempting things in our world. And some of you are like, man, I'm doing great, man. This is a struggle. Wherever you're at on that, guess what? Jesus raises the bar again, right? Jesus says, well, okay, maybe you're doing fine with that. But guess what? If you so much as looked at a woman lustfully, man, you're guilty. And just to prove how important this is, if you've gone that far, I want you to gouge out your eyes and get rid of them so that nothing causes you to stumble. Now, does Jesus actually want us to tear out our eyes?
[00:32:35] No. He's using hyperbole to help us understand that it is more important to suffer physical damage than to do something that pulls us away from the life that God offers us.
[00:32:48] Next commandment, you shall not steal.
[00:32:51] That could be a big things that can be small things in our culture today. Maybe that's an intellectual thing, right? That I'm stealing somebody else's idea and taking credit for it Because I want to make a name for myself. I want the glory versus my life is to be an image of God reflecting his glory. So I will not steal big or small, intellectual or tangible things.
[00:33:12] You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Again, our system works on that, I have to be truthful. We are called to be agents of truth, to represent truth in the world. So if somebody is accused of, we will not slander their name. We will not make up something false. We will not do anything that damages a person's relationship with other people or with God.
[00:33:33] How are you doing with these things?
[00:33:36] The last thing that says the last commandment is that we shall not covet. And it gives a whole list of those things. But what it comes down to is covet is the word for desire. We shall not develop an unhealthy desire for. For anything that's going to lead us to break one of these other ten words of God.
[00:33:57] And if there is an attitude or desire in life that is pushing us into any of these other things, we need to invite God in to remove that thing so that we can get back into proper relationship with God and experience the life God has for us.
[00:34:13] We're going to sing a song in the moment, and here's the deal. We've gone through the Ten Commandments and we've raced through these, but these are wisdom that God is inviting us to consider for our lives.
[00:34:25] We've had many mountaintop experience that we're here. We've heard from God's word, we've received his word, and now we get to figure out what do I do to apply it to my life. Because in a moment, we're gonna go out into the valley and we're going to speak God's truth. And if the band wants to get ready, you're welcome to come. We're gonna go out to a valley where we have to live out these truths. And it's gonna be hard, it's gonna be messy. It is going to be difficult.
[00:34:53] But we serve a God who loves us enough that says, here is some of my wisdom. I have given you some instructions. I am inviting you to partake in those instructions so that you might experience life.
[00:35:06] My question for us is simple.
[00:35:09] We've had ten instructions.
[00:35:11] Which of these ten words spoke to you today? Maybe you've heard the Ten Commandments a hundred times, but God's always working. And which of these words was new and fresh? What area is God inviting you to experience new life?
[00:35:25] And if one of these touch your heart, there'll be Dan Bishop and Pastor Diane and myself will be down front. We would love to pray with you. We would love to just share with you in the new life that God's inviting you into.
[00:35:36] And while we open that up for prayer, we're gonna sing a song called what a God. And part of that song says, I thought you, speaking of God, would show up for perfection.
[00:35:46] Because what kind of God looks for the lost?
[00:35:50] And it says, they say it's over for a sinner. Although you say, God, no, it's not. No, it's not.
[00:35:57] You may have broken every single one of the Ten Commandments. You may have never stepped into the life that God has invited you to, but today, God is inviting you into new life. So as we sing, as we praise God for all of his awesome wonder and power, know that this God loves you. He offers forgiveness. And he says, I'm inviting you to experience new life.
[00:36:18] So, God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for inviting us to new life. God, if there's anybody here this morning, would your spirit speak as we worship God, would you walk with them into new life, into wholeness of life? God prepares this morning. Go to the valleys. We love you. We praise you. In your wonderful name we pray. Amen. Let's worship and let's pray.
