The Statutes of Liberty

So you've heard the phrase, in New York Harbor, there stands a lady.

So in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty stands with torch held high.

She actually faces out to the Atlantic Ocean, not to the shores of our country.

And all of the countries beyond that, and with her back turned toward the country that she honors.

That Statue of Liberty was presented to us by the French people, the French government.

She holds high the hope of liberty, not just to the United States, but to the entire world.

In 1986, the Statue of Liberty was refurbished when President Reagan relit the

Torch of Liberty on July 3rd, 1986.

Massed choirs sang the words of Emma Lazarus's tribute to our nation and the

statue standing before our nation's open door.

The words are these, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning

to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lap beside the golden door.

These words are sung to those in other nations, those outside of that.

And we look at that, and we look at the things, and we wonder oftentimes,

and this is just Just an extra one, extra comment with no fee.

We wonder sometimes if we as the Christian church are doing what we're supposed to be doing.

I wonder when we gather together, if we are more concerned about what's in our

environment than we are those that are on the outside of our doors.

We should be reaching to those who are outside.

In the book, The Gospel and the American Dream, dream historian

bruce shelley wrote these words in one hand

liberty holds the torch of freedom and in

the other the tablet of law the torch

challenges the forces of darkness and tyranny the tablet of law reminds us that

liberty degenerating into license is but just another form of slavery he goes

on true freedom for others is only possible in a community of civic virtue.

That's the message of the Ten Commandments. God brought a despised group of people out of bondage.

They would not experience true liberty, however, by merely trading one form of bondage for another.

Deliverance from Egypt's tyranny

could easily be replaced by servitude to selfish and personal passions.

They were leaving the slavery of Egypt's pharaoh, but were entering a wilderness with no boundaries.

And the wilderness with no boundaries is both frightening and chaotic.

I've told you this before and told others, but teachers understand that when

they're in school, if they give their students certain boundaries,

the students actually appreciate that.

We know that if we are given certain boundaries on where we are to go,

everything is pure and nice and good.

For instance, if you didn't have the boundaries of the lanes in your highway

as you're driving down the road, if you didn't have those boundaries,

you might end up in chaos, right?

And so the same thing goes for us. Friends, God is not a cosmic killjoy.

His Ten Commandments were not given to limit and destroy the freedom of his people.

The purpose of God's law is deliverance, not domination. nation.

The purpose of his law is to give us boundaries from which rightful living,

righteous living, is governed.

And we can know that that's good. When you have a child, if you tell the child

don't touch the stove, you don't say don't touch the hot stove,

you say don't touch the stove.

Because you know that at some point or other, that stove is going to be hot.

And so you just tell a young child, don't touch the stove. It's not safe.

That's a boundary that you need to govern for your children.

Obedience doesn't enslave, it saves.

And so the Ten Commandments are God's statutes of liberty.

The background for the Ten Commandments begins in the wilderness.

And for 400 years of bondage to slavery in Egypt, it had ended.

In fact, the Scripture tells us from the day that Jacob entered Egypt to the

day that Moses led them out of Egypt.

The Israelites had spent 430 years in Egypt, and much of that was in slavery.

The children of Israel left one alien culture to enter another.

Soon they would be surrounded by people who worshipped strange gods in strange ways.

Sexual perversions were the part of this false religion and false worship.

The temptation for Israel was to compromise their beliefs and to blend their

faith with the false religion of the pagans, and that would be constant.

God met his people at Sinai in the desert between Egypt and Canaan,

and he gave them these words.

You probably know them quite familiar. It's found in Exodus 20, verses 1 through 17.

Exodus 20:1–17

It says, and God spoke all these words. I am the Lord your God who brought you

out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol

in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

You shall not bow down to them or to worship them.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing

the children for the sin of the fathers to

the third and fourth generation of those who hate me

but showing love to a thousand generations

of those who love me and keep my commandments you shall not misuse the name

of the lord your god for the lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses

his name remember the sabbath day by keeping it holy 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 animals, nor the alien within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that

is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land of the Lord

your God has given you. We used to repeat that to our girls all the time.

Anyway, you shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.

You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's

wife or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

The Ten Commandments are God's gracious guidelines for human behavior and relationships.

All over the world, they forge a foundation for law and morality.

Many people want to look past them and say, well, God has given us grace so we can do as we please.

Wrong. Every culture founded on ethical standards includes rules and laws like

these, and even based on these commandments, whether or not they want to admit that they are biblical.

The Bible says that against these commandments, no law has ever been written.

You will not find a law in a book anywhere that says it's legal to murder your

neighbor. It just isn't going to happen.

And they have never been recalled, rescinded, or reversed. They apply in a computer

society as well as they did when they were written in stone at Sinai.

They are valid among every race and strata of people.

The Ten Commandments tell us how to experience ultimate freedom when we live

in a community with others.

The first four commandments show us how to relate to god the others teach us

how to relate to one another they deal with the great issues of life and death

sex family work neighbors and honesty,

god's intention in the 10 commandments was liberty for all humanity not binding

them up God offers a glimpse of his heart in Jeremiah 29,

Jeremiah 29:11

verse 11, when he says, For I know the plans I have for you,

plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.

God's chosen people were at the edge of a new adventure. His plan for them was good.

He yearned to give them, to prosper them, and to fill them with hope and ensure

their future. God wanted his people saved.

To be his. In fact, we remember that from previous messages where God has called

us to be a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation belonging to God.

God's chosen people were at the edge of a new adventure. His plan for them was

good, though they didn't always see it that way.

He issued them warnings to protect them as a father warns his children.

The second thing we see in this is that that there is a bondage to unrestricted living.

Sounds unfamiliar. You know, if I should have freedom, I should have freedom, right?

There should be no bounds. But there is bondage, actually, when we have unrestricted freedom.

Emerson Fosdick, Harry Emerson Fosdick's name is associated with liberal Christianity.

In retirement, he admitted some of the error of his earlier thinking.

He said this, In my callow youth, I reached the conclusion that we had so far

spiritually progressed that we could center all attention on Paul's positive ethic,

love is the fulfillment of the law, and that we need no longer stress the negative, thou shalt not.

He went on to say, I take it back. I know human life better than that.

I wish those Ten Commandments could be emblazoned in every marketplace,

in every schoolhouse, in every church. church, thou shalt not kill,

thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not bear false witness,

and thou shalt not covet.

If we had these laws ever before us and in us, life would be great with each other, wouldn't it?

If we treated each other—oh, it seems like there's a verse that says,

do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I'm just thinking that. That's someplace in there, right?

Most people like Fosdick in his earlier years want They want nothing to do with

the Ten Commandments. They don't want anything to do with rules.

In fact, if you watch the children, you'll find out that oftentimes they will

stray as far as they know they can get until mom comes and grabs them off the platform.

By the way, my dad and mom did that to me too, just so you know.

There was one time when I was very small,

and dad was pastoring in Barron, and I don't remember this, but mom was leading kids' time downstairs,

and I was sitting with one of the other grandparently-like ladies in the church,

and apparently I was—well, anyway, my dad stopped a sermon,

came down, picked me up, took me outside.

I won't tell you what he did, but he brought me back in, and I was quiet the rest of the service.

Anyway, just so you know, most people like Fosdick in their earlier years want

nothing to do with the Ten Commandments.

They think that the commandments are kind of some outmoded intolerance.

Steve Rexroth says, to hear them tell it, God came down to check out human happenings

and then made up his 10-point program to wipe the smiles off their faces.

The Scripture sums it up in two places, when it says that man was given over

to the lusts of his own flesh, and where it says that men fell into derision

when every man did what was right in his own eyes.

We talked about that in kids' time a few weeks ago.

The Scripture says that every man did what was right in his own eyes.

Can you imagine if every one of us determined what was right for us and tried

to extend what was right for us as an imposition on somebody else.

Hmm, sounds like what's happening now, isn't it?

The gray shadow of situational ethics sweeps over a nation.

God's thou shalt not affront our relativism. We are taught that our values are

equal and that notions of bad and good are merely class and cultural distinctions.

We've had pastors in the past who have declared, and even present,

who have declared that the Bible is not the living word of God and we need to

rewrite it for today's what we believe is right today. Day.

Boy, I don't know if I want to be those pastors on Judgment Day.

Lasting values and timeless truths are thought impossible in an enlightened society.

Some secular writers now mourn the absence of absolutes.

Alan Bloom's best-selling critique of American higher education says it's called

The Closing of the American Mind, proposes no answer to the problem, yet he sees the crisis.

His analysis is right when he says the introductory paragraph.

He says, there is one one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of,

and that is that almost every student entering the university believes or says

he believes that truth is relative.

If this belief was put to the test, then one can count on the student's reaction.

They will be uncomprehending. The reality of truth is not a theoretical insight

but a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they seem to think.

In fact, the idea that truth is relative flies out the door when one tries to

make sense and relative truth of scientific or mathematic fact.

Nowhere in the world does 2 plus 2 actually equal anything but 4, actually.

But if truth is relative, then you can make 2 plus 2 equal whatever you want it to be.

And in fact, some theologians talk about that with Jesus when he fed the 5,000

on the hillside with five loaves and two fishes.

Some theologians said that mathematics of five loaves and two fish doesn't work out for 5,000 people.

So what really happened is when this boy brought his five loaves and two fish,

then everybody else feel guilty and brought out their picnic baskets. baskets.

You know, if the Word of God said there were five loaves and two fish,

there were five loaves and two fish.

And when it says that Jesus lifted them up and prayed, and they became enough

to feed the 5,000 men plus women and children, they fed the 5,000 men,

women, and children. That's just all there is to it.

The riot of relativism has led America into a cultural cul-de-sac.

Jane Patterson and and Peter Kim measured the moral convictions,

habits, and opinions in a book they titled The Day America Told the Truth.

Their national survey reveals that there is absolutely no moral consensus in

our world today. Here's what they find.

Only 13% of Americans indicate that

they believe the Ten Commandments are absolutely absolute and binding.

They go on to say everyone is making up their own personal moral codes.

We are a law unto ourselves, the authors conclude.

When asked if there were any beliefs they would be willing to die for. 48% responded no.

They yet asked what they would be willing to do for $10 million.

Get this, for $10 million, 25% said they would leave their family.

16% would renounce their American citizenship.

And an astonishing 7% said they would kill a stranger.

And interesting, that was for $10 million, and the numbers didn't change when

they changed it to $5 and $3 million.

The study shows that our culture is inhospitable to Christian faith.

If that faith is anything but a watered-down civil religion with a tip of the

hat to the Almighty, our relativism spawns a deluge of statistics documenting a spiraling crime rate.

Philip T. Yancey once wrote, and wrote recently in the Christianity Day,

They said, visit any magazine rack and you will see a vivid and vivid display

of the morality and the values honored in our society.

Fortune, money, European travel and life and their clones present the advantages

of the wealthy and the economic and economic success.

He goes on to say, cosmopolitan, esquire, bodybuilder, swimsuit,

and other rows of soft porn titles flaunt our obsession with image and physical appearance.

Then come the racks of true crime stories, gothic romances, and soap opera digests

that satisfy our hunger and our thirst for unrighteousness.

With keen perception yancey goes on to add the

people we praise and strive

to emulate and feature on the covers of our popular

magazines are not the fulfilled happy balanced persons we

might imagine our heroes are have brought the bought the gospel of relativism

and prosperity and are just as miserable as we are i read of another celebrity

this last week who committed suicide because his life was not happy.

What has this freedom achieved? When historians look back on the waning days

of the 20th century and the beginning of this 21st century, what will they say?

What will they talk about us as people?

They may report that our standard of living was the highest ever known.

They may say we were in the healthiest generation of all mankind.

We lived in a land of freedom and could do whatever we chose with an abundance

of entertainment devices. vices.

However, if you look closely, you will also discover that we have more people

who are consumed with alcohol and drugs than any previous generation.

We have ingested more sleeping pills, more stimulants, more prescription drugs,

not to mention pot, cocaine, and other mind-altering drugs in epic proportions.

Just look at the streets of some of our major cities, and you will see them

littered on the streets and on the sidewalks.

Why is that?

Because we've forgotten to live for the Almighty.

We think everything is consumed in our own pleasures, and our own pleasure lasts for only a moment.

If you look more closely, Adam, you see that even our children are being influenced by this.

More is caught than is taught.

If we want to teach our children and the next generation, it behooves us to

live in such a way that they will catch what we're doing, not hear what we say.

What are the benefits of God's law? Well, first, it is a compass for direction.

Ten Commandments point us to which way we should go.

They give us our bearings. So many drifting people would have their lives dramatically

transformed if they took the commandments seriously.

During World War II, American planes flew from British air bases to missions over Germany.

Germany finding their way from

home to base was often difficult because of horrible weather conditions.

What's interesting enough, and as you'll know at that time especially,

churches had tall stately spires wherever they were, and they dotted the English landscape.

And it was on those overcast days and those times of weather not permitting

that these American pilots used the churches to guide them home.

And as planes descended through a gray sky, the churches told the pilots if

they were on the right direction.

Sounds like a moral thing, doesn't it? Our world is in a moral fog.

The spiritual weather is horrible. The Ten Commandments are the spires of the

churches that lead us to what is righteous living and lead us home.

There's also a thermometer of love. Jesus stated this very clearly when he said,

if you love me, you will obey what I command, and if anyone loves me,

he will obey my teaching.

In Psalm 119, the psalmist wrote, I delight in your commands because I love them.

Oh, how I love your law. I meditate on it day and night.

Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble.

Another one, Another one, those who truly love the Lord know that he commands because he cares.

The commandments are also a mirror of reality.

They give us a true look at ourselves. We like to measure ourselves through

comparison, and we can always find someone with whom we compare favorably.

In fact, you know, we often think in school, the kids ask, want to know,

is this test graded on a curve?

Am I going to be graded based on what everybody else does?

Teachers among us, do you do much of that anymore? Grading on the curve? I don't think so.

It's being graded on what's right and wrong, what's correct and incorrect.

But oftentimes we want to know that. We want to have our life graded on the curve.

Well, just think, the publican said, I am so not, so better than anybody else.

Thank God that I'm not like him, the sinner.

And the sinner says, Lord, I am such a pitiful sinner. Be merciful on me.

You know, we compare ourselves to others, or Christians do, and what we need

to be doing is comparing ourselves to the holiness of God.

Search my heart, O God, and know my wicked ways. See if there is any wicked

way in me, and cleanse me from those ways.

The late J. Vernon McGee said this, There must be shedding of blood for sin.

You have a mirror in your bathroom, which is a picture of the law,

and there is a basin underneath the mirror. You do not wash your face with the

mirror. It only reveals the dirt.

Just so the law is the mirror that reveals our sin.

And beneath that mirror is a wash basin that we know that all of the sins of

our life are poured into and washed away by the blood of Christ.

There's a song that goes like this. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins,

and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain.

You know that song, right?

Lose all their guilty stain, lose all their guilty stain,

and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain.

How precious are the words that Christ's blood has caused us forgiveness and redemption.

We also know that the Ten Commandments are a guardian for good.

Imagine that you and I have fought the traffic jams unsuccessfully and we're

now seated with 60,000 screaming fans at Lambeau Field.

Of course, it can't be a Sunday because if it were a Sunday, we'd be here, right?

It is the last game of the regular season between the Packers and,

you know, that other team that seems to represent the NFC Black and Blue division

in the playoffs, oftentimes. times.

To our surprise, we discover the field is not set up with the traditional football lines.

Some players wear helmets and toss footballs, while others wear shorts and kick a soccer ball.

Some swing baseball bats as others dribble basketballs.

The whistle blows to signal the beginning of the game, and each player plays

the game of his or her choice.

Oh, that would be chaos.

It's kind of like the movie where we see these visiting tribes and stuff like

that. They're different actions and stuff they do.

Games without rules are unthinkable. We would not think of that at all.

You would not think of a football game without rules.

Although, sometimes basketball refs are actually watching a hockey game.

But anyway, just saying, I won't point out any refs, but games without rules would be unthinkable.

Even worse is a society without laws.

Can you imagine trying to navigate Madison if there were no traffic guidelines?

I mean, I do not like driving in cities at all.

And I know some who already drive as if there aren't any traffic laws.

Not among us, of course, none of you guys, I know that. but can you imagine

if everyone was alive allowed to drive as fast as they wanted in whatever lane,

or sidewalk that they wanted without any

stop signs or stop lights the only one rule would be pedestrian beware i was

told of one guy who went to a major city to ride to go to some meetings and

he got in a cab and and sat down in the back seat of the cab and the driver

took off he told him where he's going,

he took off, and there was a green light up ahead for him.

And the driver of the taxi stopped at the green light and then proceeded.

And he went up, and there was another green light, and the driver stopped and then proceeded.

Another one came up, and there was a red light, and the driver just went right

on through the red light. He says, what are you doing? You stop at the green lights.

But you don't stop at the red lights. He says, yeah, but I don't know if my

brother is coming the other direction.

So if his brother is going through the red lights, he's on a green.

He wants to make sure that he stops for his brother going through the red.

That's the way we kind of think in this society. We have no rules a lot of times.

I can't imagine, well, actually, driving in Madison without rules would be like,

well, driving in Madison.

Can you imagine submitting your body to surgery at the hands of a physician

physician who's never earned a standard degree, let alone a degree in surgery or training in surgery.

We would think that's absolutely ludicrous for us to go under the knife of a

surgeon who's not trained to do what the surgeon is going to do for us.

And yet every society requires rules to help us get along and to govern what

right relationships are, and yet we kind of to look at those as frivolous.

There are some don'ts which actually set us free. Not one of us as parents sets

rules for our kids because we're killjoys.

We set the rules of boundaries for safe living.

Within those rules, our children could be confident that they would not be harmed.

Otherwise, and outside those boundaries, are rules and chaos.

You know, well, Johnny did this us well if johnny jumped off the empire stilt

building would you do it too you know no we wouldn't we would know the laws

and the in the boundaries and all those type of things,

so too god has given us boundaries he's given us the 10 commandments not as

a killjoy but as a a life of freedom for us and today that same set of commandments

is a tablet for protection protection,

a prescription for right living and safe living.

Scripture says, love the Lord your God with all of your heart,

with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength,

and love your neighbor as yourself.

It also says, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Christ didn't come to abolish the law. He came to fulfill it.

And then this I would leave with you. When we became a Spirit-filled and Spirit-led

follower of Christ, we will no longer.

We will not obey the law and do good to gain our salvation. We will obey the

law and do good because of our salvation.

When we are truly filled with the Spirit of God and led by the Spirit of God,

those Ten Commandments aren't going to be a thou shalt not.

They're going to be, I have the freedom to live as Christ has me to live,

to love others, to do for others, and to love God with all of our heart,

soul, mind, and strength.

They're not a binding of us.

They're a boundary to give us safe living.

Oftentimes people don't like rules.

And I have found that sometimes adults act more like second graders than second graders do.

Let's worship the God in fullness. Heavenly Father, as we look at your Ten Commandments,

we know oftentimes the words, thou shalt not, seem to be so inhibiting.

And we know that you gave us those rules and laws laws, not to be a killjoy,

but to give us a freedom to serve you and live for you in righteousness and holiness.

Father, somehow help us to measure ourselves by your rules, but also by your

grace. In Jesus' name, amen.