Introduction to the Ten(der) Commands - Why Do What God Says?

Together with you.

And I've thought about what I wanted to do with this first set of messages.

And as I prayed and thought, I settled on the tender commandments.

The tender commandments.

And I'm going to emphasize the love of God and the good purposes of God in giving us his word, in commanding us.

But I want us to see this is a tender word from God.

This is a love letter written in stone.

The heart of God for our good and for his glory is expressed through the tender commandments.

I doubt most people really tend to see it that way.

We don't think about it that way, perhaps, but uh, Lord willing, as we go through the coming weeks, we'll begin to see the tenderness and the goodness of God where he says, do this, don't do that.

This leads to life, this makes life work, and this leads to destruction.

Oh, oh, my children, go this way, don't go that.

The tender commandments of God.

One of the most familiar Bible passages, probably anywhere, both for believers but also for people out there, although you may not find them any longer in the courthouse or wherever.

Yet there's something about the Ten Commandments that most people have some understanding of, and it speaks to us as human beings.

Today is an introduction to a series that will take us through until the middle or the end of October.

It's almost Halloween, folks.

What I'm going to do today is just give an introduction and to deal with the question why do what God tells us to do?

Why do what God tells us to do?

And then for the next ten Sundays, I'm going to take one each week, one of the Ten Commandments, the Tender Commandments, and just simply open it up.

Just simply seek to expose it.

Bible exposition, where the Bible, Lord willing, becomes alive in our soul and we see it and we engage with it and it transforms our life.

And then at the end, I'll do a concluding message, and then I'll skip town for a week.

So that's kind of the plan.

Because I'm going to handle one of the tender commandments each week, if you have a pulse, you will be able to know what's coming up the following week.

And I would encourage you to come prepared, to come having read it through, to come having thought, what does this say?

What does this really mean?

I'm not sure I understand this.

Or what am I, even better, what am I supposed to do with that?

So that you will come prepared and ready to hear God's word and you're already there.

We ought to prepare ourselves as we come on Sunday morning for that.

It is my hope, and it is my challenge that you will prayerfully and intentionally prepare to come on Sunday morning.

And it is my hope, and it is a challenge to you, that you will find at least one thing from each of these messages that you can take with you through the week and meditate on, cogitate on, think about, and look, God, how am I supposed to do something with that this week?

The simple fact is there are three people who will determine whether you really get anything out of these messages, or if you only survive to Halloween.

Three people.

The Holy Spirit, me, and you.

The Holy Spirit, one of the ministries, one of the assignments within the divine trinity, the community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, part of what the Holy Spirit does, part of his calling and task, if we can put it that way, is to open the eyes of our heart, to take the word of God.

And when we hear it, when we read it, that there's something within that causes us to resonate and respond.

That is a work of God.

And you can be sure that the Holy Spirit is going to do what he sets out to do.

The second person that affects what you do or don't get out of all of this is me, like it or not.

And let me just simply say, I take opening God's Word in the congregation very, very seriously.

And I make a commitment to you, but really to God, to do everything I can by way of preparation, to understand rightly what God is saying here, and to find the best way I know how to communicate it and to apply it in my own life.

I will never ask you to do something that I am not seeking to do myself.

You can count on that.

But the third key in this equation is you.

And so I would just ask you to do your best to be ready, to hear, maybe to memorize the Ten Commandments as we go through it.

That you come prepared and engaged.

If you don't get anything out of this, it'll either be your fault or mine.

We know it won't be God the Holy Spirit's fault.

So I will do my part.

Will you do yours?

Just a simple, honest question.

Well, today, as I said, I want to uh to just focus on the question why?

Why be commanded?

Why respond uh with a heart of faith when God tells us what to do?

The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, and we're going to read them in a moment, are very well known.

Um it would be interesting to take a poll and see how many spontaneously, without a whole lot of forethought, could come up with seven or eight of the Ten Commandments just like that.

I'll bet you, I'll bet you it'd be harder than we think.

We think we know them.

We think we know what they mean, but but why be commanded?

I don't know, the whole, there's there's all kind there's a whole range of responses when people know that God has given them instruction.

And um the spectrum uh, I just picked two characters out of uh history and the contemporary world, James Madison or Ted Turner.

Um James Madison, the father of the Constitution, said this we have staked the whole future of our politics upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.

Isn't that interesting?

James Madison said, this whole crazy experience of not being told what to do by a dictator or a king is based upon the ability that we have as people to respond to what God is telling us to do.

Now, quite the opposite extreme of that would be Ted Turner.

I don't know how many of you are all that familiar with Ted Turner.

He was the founder of CNN, he was a media mogul.

Uh you check your uh uh channels uh on the cable, and three or four of them have his name with uh TNT or uh a whole bunch of different things.

Ted Turner took quite the opposite opinion.

At one point he said, We are living with outmoded rules.

In other words, that's old time stuff.

He said, the rules we're living under are the Ten Commandments.

Interesting that he said that.

This was probably 20 years ago.

I'm not sure people uh would still say that.

But he recognized, even though he thought it was outmoded, that those are the rules under which we're living.

And he said, but I bet nobody pays much attention to them because they're too old.

When Moses went up on the mountain, there were no nuclear weapons, there was no poverty.

Today the Ten Commandments don't go.

Nobody likes to be commanded.

Well, he's actually on to something there.

Not that they're too old, but nobody really likes to be told what to do.

Do you?

Well, come and talk to me.

I'm happy to tell you what to do.

I just hate to be told what to do.

I think all of the rules that I make are great.

But the rules that somebody else makes, I'm not so sure.

We don't like to be commanded.

Um we don't like to be told what to do.

That's that's what got Adam and Eve into trouble in the garden.

There was this this sin, this break in the relationship with God when they said, I want to do what I want to do, and you can't tell me not to touch that tree in the middle of the garden.

I'm gonna do it my way, by golly.

And God said, Great, do it your way.

But oh, what consequences there are when we go our own way.

But this resistance to being told what to do is rooted deep within our being, deep within our heart, so that we are inclined to just do what you want to do.

I uh uh was a teenager in the 60s, and we had all kinds of wonderful, meaningful uh music.

I don't get the music today because what we had was uh deeply meaningful, like it'sy bitsy teeny weenie yellow polka dot bikini that she wore for the first time today.

How many remember that?

Wasn't it deeply meaningful?

Ooh, e ooh ah ting tang walla walla bing bang.

So don't complain about the young people today in their music.

One of the choruses or phrases from popular music in the 60s that I remember was, do what you want to do with whoever you want to do it with.

Just do your thing.

Just do your thing.

That is the not only the culture of the 60s or the culture of today, that's deeply rooted in the human heart.

The interesting thing about this is that God commands us anyway.

Isn't that interesting?

I don't want to be commanded, and yet I have to wrestle with the fact that God could really care less whether I want to be commanded or not.

He just simply says, Oh my dear son, go this way, don't go that way.

Not because he's an evil dictator or just because he can.

Uh young people, that's what we tend to think when we ask the question, when a teenager asks the question, but why?

And your parents say, because I said so.

Um The only one for whom that is really and always the right answer is God, because God said so.

And that ought to be enough for us.

God commands us anyway.

Well, what I would like to do is to remind you of a simple fact that God loves you enough to not just give you what you want, but to give you just what you need.

God loves us enough to give us precisely what we need, not precisely what we want.

And all too often there's a huge difference there.

And a key part of life, a key part of the Christian life is to, in those times in which we were to, God, why are you doing that to me?

Instead of approaching it that way, say, God, you have a good purpose in this.

What is your good purpose?

Oh, help me know, because I do want to go in the way you want me to go.

All right.

Let me just uh read Exodus chapter 20, verses 1 to uh uh 17.

Exodus 20:1

Um we'll be beginning uh this passage next week and continuing on.

Exodus 20, um, Genesis Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament.

God spoke all, by the way, you will find that I am loath to put Bible passages on the screen.

It's not because I'm too lazy to write them out.

I want us to be in the habit of looking here, not up there for God's word.

To be seeing it here in our Bibles, to be adept at turning to passages and reading them because this is where the authority is.

The authority is not up there, the authority is not here, the authority is here.

So let's open our Bibles and let's read God's word.

Let me just read this for you.

And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above or on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting an iniquity on the fathers of the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, six days you shall labor and do your work.

But the seventh day is a Sabbath, is a rest to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, your livestock, your sojourner who is with you within the gates.

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day.

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

Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, you shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not cover your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.

Oh dear people, God says, go this way.

Don't go that way.

I'm the creator of life.

I'm the one who rules the world.

I'm the one who wrote the rule book.

Don't be so foolish as to go your own stupid, foolish way.

Go the way.

This is life.

This is the way life is meant to work.

Oh, please avoid that and embrace this.

Tender, tender commandments.

Well, I want to suggest two tender commandment truths.

Um, if you get these two and integrate them into your thinking so they're just like the lenses of your glasses.

If you don't have glasses, get Bible glasses, where the truth of God is the way you see the world around you.

Two tender commandment truths.

Every command that God gives us is designed either to provide us with something good or to protect us from something harmful.

That is a profound thought.

Every time God says do this and don't do that, it's either, and sometimes both, to provide us with something good or to protect us from something harmful.

Why would we want to reject that?

How foolish.

God, when he says something to us, do this or do that, is either saying, Here, let me provide you with something good, or oh, please, let me protect you from something harmful.

Tender commandments.

A corollary to that is you can ignore God's commands, but you'll only harm yourself by ignoring God's commands.

There are uh uh three brief verses that I want to have us look at for a moment in light of these uh two tender commandment truths.

Um Proverbs, Job Psalms, Proverbs, uh Proverbs 14, verse 12, which says, there is a way, there's a path that seems right to a man, but the end of it is the way to death.

Proverbs 14:12

That's a fascinating thought.

There are paths, there are ways that seem right to us, but they don't accomplish what we really want.

They ultimately destroy us.

And just because we think, just because I think something is right only means that I think it's right.

It doesn't make it right.

When God says, this is the way of life, go there, that's because that's true.

So there's a way of thinking and a way of responding and a way of living and a way of relating to other people, and a way of relating to our stuff, and a way of relating to our future and our kids and the issues within our own soul and heart.

There's a way that seems right to us, but be careful, my friends.

So often the way we want to go is a way that only leads to death and destruction.

Adam and Eve, the classic example of that.

Walt, the classic example of that.

Scott, Chad, we're all examples of when we go our own way, it doesn't accomplish what God wants for us or what we most truly want.

Uh another um uh key verse is uh Jeremiah, and I have these verses um marked in my Bible.

I I typically use a pencil and I make a little mark in the margin.

I don't do it with bold colors and all kinds of notes.

Do it your own way.

I just find, if I'm not careful, I read my own notes or read the notes of the editor of the study Bible instead of really paying attention to what God has said.

So I just make a little note in the margin.

Jeremiah 29, 11.

This is God speaking, for I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord.

Plans for your well.

Welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

What is God up to when this event takes place and God allows this to happen in our lives?

What is he doing to us?

Well, he's trying to bless us.

We just don't get it.

That his plans and his purposes for us are for good and not for evil.

So we need to focus on that a great deal.

And then thirdly and finally, Isaiah 55, 8 and 9.

My thoughts are not your thoughts.

You know where this is going, folks.

My thoughts are not your thoughts.

Neither are your ways my ways, and this is God speaking.

My thoughts, says God, are not your thoughts.

My ways are not your ways.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are your ways, my ways, higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

So some simple thoughts here.

Every command that God gives is either to give us something good or protect us from something evil.

And I would just challenge you to lay a hold of that, to take that thought, write it down, embolden it, emblazon it in your thinking just for this one week.

And as you go through this week in which God is on the throne, that you would recognize that He is seeking your good by instructing you, that you may joyfully be commanded by God.

You can only break yourself against them.

Isn't that a wonderful thought?

You can't really, in the truest sense, break the laws of God.

We just destroy ourselves against them.

And he goes on and he says, you might as well attack Gibraltar with a pop gun.

That's obviously antiquated now.

As go against the laws of God, it doesn't work.

If you jump off a skyscraper, you don't break the law of gravity, you break your neck.

Okay?

So what we want to do is get a hold of how life works.

And for that, we go to the author of life.

So when we don't do what God tells us to do, who are we hurting?

Precisely ourselves.

We're not hurting God.

Even though none of us like to be commanded, I would challenge you, as I challenge my own heart, to welcome the commands of God, because what he does is always and only good.

What he says is always and only true.

And if we align ourselves with anything else, we're we're asking for trouble, and we will get what we're asking for.

Well, uh a couple of uh thoughts and then we'll uh we'll conclude here.

Um why obey the tender commandments of God?

There is there is a wrong but very popular reason, and there is a right but largely neglected reason.

There's many reasons, but I just want to underscore these two.

It is not in order to get right with God.

When God tells us what to do, we don't obey God in order to get right with God.

Now, getting right with God is incredibly important.

But the way to getting right with God is not to just do the Ten Commandments or the 637 laws of the Old Testament or whatever.

It was never intended that way.

The essence of the gospel has to do with getting right with God.

The theological term is justification.

That means to be declared to be in a right relationship with God.

And there's something deep within us that makes us think that if we do this and if we do that, and if we do that, then each time we do what God wants, he smiles a little bit more.

And if we do enough of that, eventually, when we get to heaven, he'll have a big smile on his face and oh, welcome.

As though doing what God wants us to do is the way we build a relationship with God.

No, justification, the theological term, is we get right with God not through our works, but through the work of another, through the work of the cross, the work of Christ on the cross, to bear the penalty for our sin, to take the frown of God, the wrath of God fully upon Himself, that we might receive by grace through faith the smile of God, because Christ has taken what we deserve.

That's justification.

So if we ever start thinking that by doing what God tells us to do, we're gaining favor in God's eyes.

That is absolutely wrong.

It is logical, it is plausible, it makes sense to us, it just happens to be a lie.

We get right with God through the work of Christ on the cross and through faith on what someone else has done for us, not what we do ourselves.

The process of growing in our faith, sanctification, becoming more and more like Christ.

We don't grow in our faith by doing this and by doing that and by doing that.

Sanctification is an act of God that changes us from within, so that we want to do what God wants us to do.

The work of the Holy Spirit is to transform our heart so that our wanted doer has been transformed and we do what He wants us to do because that's what we want to do.

And that too is through faith.

The book of Galatians is filled with this.

Why do what God tells us to do?

Actually, it's not a bad response to say, I'll do what you do because you say so.

God has all the right in the world to tell us what to do.

He is God.

We are not.

And it is our stance in life that we just do what God says.

It doesn't have to make sense to us, it doesn't have to feel good.

That's we could talk about that a whole lot, and probably I will.

Not this morning.

What I want to suggest is there is a thought that we will find in verse after verse after verse after verse that will help us.

A right reason to obey God, the Ten Commandments, or anything else, is that it may go well with us.

I want you to turn for a moment to Deuteronomy chapter four.

Now there's a whole series of verses here.

I don't have time to talk about them.

I'm just gonna just kind of run through them.

Deuteronomy chapter four, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Old Testament.

God is giving the law of God to the generation that had not received it when Moses came down from the mountain.

He's repeating, as it were, the law of God, including the Ten Commandments.

And what he says to us time after time, what God says is do this that it may go well with you.

Instead of taking the time to turn to each of them, let me just read these.

Deuteronomy 4, verse 40.

Deuteronomy 4:40

Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, and here it is, so that it may go well with you, and your children after you, and you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you.

I've put a little pencil mark after these verses, that it may go well with you.

Keep his decrees and commands which I am giving you, that it may go well with you.

Remember what God is doing, he's seeking to bless us, to give us that which is good, and protect us from that which is harmful.

Chapter 5, verse 29.

Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me, says God, and to keep my commandments always, so that it might go well with them.

The heart of God is being revealed.

Chapter six, verse three, hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey, so that it may go well with you.

Chapter six, verse eighteen, do what is right in the Lord's sight, so that it may go well with you.

Chapter twelve, verse twenty-eight, be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may go well with you.

Now even I can figure out from those verses what he's trying to say.

The question is, is that are those the glasses that I wear?

Well, a lot more that I could say about that, and there's other verses as well.

But just by way of closing, uh, what do we do with this?

If we don't do something with it, then all we are is hearers of the word of God and not doers.

And I'm really inclined after this series of messages to turn to the book of James for a number of months and just open up the book of James because it becomes very, very clear there.

We've got to do something with it.

And I will try each week to suggest some things that come to my mind as being very important to do.

One, I think we should really ask ourselves in the midst of our lives, and the moments of our lives, and the Monday mornings, and the times of doubt, and the times of pain, and the times of disappointment, and the times of grief.

God, I know you're working for my good.

It feels awful.

And some things may at a certain level be awful, but God uses that which is awful for good.

And if we could begin to see those parts and those moments of our week, last week or this week or today, God is still on the throne and begin to say, Lord, what good are you trying to give me or what harm are you trying to protect me from?

It's not just a mechanical thing that you do, not just a little mantra you go through, but if we wrestle with that in the midst of sorrow and confusion and brokenness and sin, then we look to God and we say, God, you have good purposes.

Oh, I want to know those and understand those.

And it transforms the way we deal with difficult things in life.

Uh second, um, to begin to ask ourselves, how am I hurting myself with my disobedience?

Do a little self-analysis.

How am I hurting you know you wrestle with sin.

I mean, you look like you've got it all together.

It's really pretty impressive.

But I know better.

Because the guy in the mirror to me is pretty impressive.

But I know better.

And when we wrestle with sin, it helps if we could just ask ourselves what if I go down this path, what harm uh will this bring to me?

How am I heart he hurting myself?

Just take that thought, perhaps, this week and and play with it, cogitate, write it, think it, look at life through that thought.

And then finally, and we'll be done, I'm gonna encourage you to make what I would call a tender commandment commitment.

Now that's a big mouthful, a tender commandment commitment.

Uh I put in the uh the bulletin a little uh commitment card.

You are not going to turn this in for me, and you're not even gonna turn it in.

This is not a commitment you're making to me, if you make it.

But I would challenge you before God with things like the following.

With God's help, I will memorize the Ten Commandments.

I'm gonna be memorizing them this week.

I've memorized them in the past, but boy, do I need to go over them again.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a whole band of us, a band of brothers and sisters who in the weeks ahead are just in a self-help group for memorizing the Ten Commandments, that'd be wonderful.

Uh I'm not asking you to sign this and give it to me.

Uh I don't need to know what your what your commitment is.

But if you this week or at some point decide you do want to memorize that, just drop me a note, let me know so we can we can pray for each other, and uh maybe there'll be a band of people here just working on that in the weeks ahead.

Second of all, as I've said, prepare myself in advance of each Sunday message by reading, studying, and reflecting on the passage, and then finally look for practical ways to apply at least one truth from each message this week.

I would encourage you to make before God for your good.

You're not helping God, you're helping yourself.

A tender commandment.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we so desperately need your help to do what you have commanded us to do.

Unless you work within us and give us the right motives, and it'll just be done more legalism.

But you've given us a new heart.

There's a new covenant, there's a new thing that you are doing, that you put the laws of God on our heart.

And Lord, may that gracious work be richly manifest in our midst, I pray, in Jesus' name.

Well, in response to those things that we have been reminded of this morning, I'd invite you to stand and open your hymnals to number ten.

We will sing together, Oh, worship of the King.