Firm Foundations: Week 4

You doing well. You know what, if you were here last week,

you are probably relieved that the air condition is working again. Me and all

the pregnant ladies were miserable last weekend and it was hot. Let me tell

you, it's been a crazy weekend here at the church. Let's see,

we have Thursday night service and then last night was the Arabic services. It

was there Eastern and so they were here a lot of them until after midnight

last night because they'll have a long service, then they'll have their feast.

And right now over in the Spanish service, we got two couples being married

right now in their service. And so there's two couples who came to Christ

and they're part of the ministry and they're like, hey, let's just get

married, and they're like, hey, let's just do it here. And

so it's just an exciting Isn't that cool? Isn't that cool? Well,

today we're continuing on in the Ten Commandments, and this is the fourth week,

and so now this is that week where I believe there's a lot at

of things that we're going to talk about that could be very convicting or things

that you have to process and you might struggle with and so let us pray

and ask God for a humble heart. Got A as we dive into your

word today, maybe we have humble hearts, hearts that are open to receive

your word, to sit under your authority. But also Father that we will

allow you to shape our hearts for your glory in Jesus name. Amen.

Now at the beginning today, I want to share with you a story that's

probably what I would consider in one of the most shameful moments in my life.

And just a little background as we get into this story. My junior

year I had a above four point zero averages. I took weighted classes and

all that stuff, and by the end of my junior year, when it

came to the last quarter, I have fallen off the map or off the

cliff academically. And matter of fact, there was some classes like one class

in particular or I had AAA and then I was felling it the last quarter.

Now here's why. I discovered illegal substances and I enjoyed illegal substances,

and so I did that all through the summer. I was able to hide

it from my family for the most part. And then at the beginning of

my senior year. I'm still seventeen years old, maybe seventeen and a half,

and I entered into this program where they let me go to school for

two periods a day. Then I was released if I wanted to go work

a job, and that was the program. So I entered into that.

Well, I didn't work until the evenings, and so I would leave school

every day and go hang out at the pool hall with my friends and we

would just enjoy our herbal afternoons and have a good time, and then I

would go to work. And my family didn't catch onto this for a while,

but then my mom and dad discovered I don't know how, but they

discovered that I have fallen off the cliff academically. So behind my back,

they went to the advisor at Monroe High School and they had all of my

classes switched back, and then I came to school that day, got called

down to the advisory office and then they gave me my new schedule. And

let me tell you, I was beyond angry. And I had never experienced

that much anger in my life. You need to know this about my family.

I have up to that point, I had never spoken back to my

dad. I felt like my dad was the scariest man on this earth.

You did not talk back to my parents. But I knew that I did

not want to go back to that old schedule. And here's the thing,

here's why. Because I wanted to do only what I wanted to do,

and my life was all about my pleasure, okay, and I was the

lord of my life. And so every single day revolved around nothing but my

own wants and my own desires, and so yes, every single day I

wanted to get up, I wanted to go playpool, I wanted to laugh

all day, and I wanted to do drugs and do my own thing that

I was enjoying that part of my life. Well, I had to figure

out how to get my old schedule back. And this is where the shameful

part comes in. And it's shameful because of how much I respect the military.

I'm one of those guys when I see somebody in a uniform, I'll

walk over and say thank you for your service. And I have high regard

for those in the military. But I felt like my big move, the

only move I had, was to go to the local recruiter's office. And

I went to the Marine recruiting office. I got all the papers, and

then I came home that night and I said to my mom and dad,

I know you switched my schedule back. I am going to sign up for

the Marines. You will never see me again and you'll lose your son if

you don't change my schedule back within twenty four hours. And my parents were

completely shocked because I had never spoken to them like that. But again,

when you are your own god, it's surprising what you will do to get

what you want. And this shows you how evil I was. I was

so evil that I did not care who I heard it, who I manipulated,

who I lied to, who I deceived, as long as I got

what I wanted. So my mom and dad they were scared of death of

me going off to the military, and so the next day they changed my

schedule back. Now, so they changed my schedule back, But guess who's

stuck with the dumbest schedule on this earth. Me. I go to school

for two periods a day. And then about a month and a half after

I had this confrontation with my mom and dad, I was out with my

friends. We were at the pool hall. We've been partying all day and

on the way back. I was in the back of this suv and all

of a sudden, out of nowhere, and I still can't explain it,

Christ changed my heart changed my heart. All of a sudden, I went

from being my God to wanting him to be my God. And it was

a dramatic conversion moment. I still don't understand it fully. Well again,

now I've come to Christ and I have this really dumb schedule, but I

was feeling maybe a call to ministry very quickly. And so my youth pastor

said, well, since you only go to school those first two periods,

why don't you spend your second semester with me and I'll teach you how to

be a pastor. And so, for forty hours a week my second semester

of my senior year, I was learning how to be a pastor. And

here's a cool thing. During that time, because I had all this time,

and there wasn't enough work for me to do, because there were some

things I couldn't do, I just read the Bible for hours every day.

I couldn't get enough of Jesus. And then multiple times a day I will

go up to the altar and I would pray and I would pray, and

I would pray, and then all of a sudden I noticed something that as

I fell deeply in love with Jesus, I became crazy about Jesus. I

do and I wanted nothing in my else in my life but Jesus. Something

crazy happened out of my love for Jesus. All of a sudden, I

started to love people in a way that I had never loved people. I

wanted people to forget me, So all of a sudden, I start going

around to people everybody can think of that I has sinned against my parents and

anyone else, and say, hey, please forgive me, Please forgive me,

please forgive me. I did evil. I was so evil, But

Christ has changed my life and so I was dramatically changed. And so here

it is. I'm going through this internship. I'm fall love of Jesus,

and I find myself loving people more than I ever have, and I just

want people to come to Christ know Christ. And then at the beginning of

the summer, I am at my elementary school and I am practicing my golf

swing because I got some new golf clubs. And around the corner came one

of my enemies, and let me tell you. This guy. He was

a punk, he was a drug dealer, He was always getting in fights.

He hated me because I had a lot of black friends. And my

black friends would often spend the night at my house and I was always bringing

them into our all white neighborhood and we would play basketball, football together.

And he hated that I had black friends, and he kept threatening me,

uh and had other people threaten me that if I kept bringing black people around

that you know, I was gonna be harmed. And so there were several

times we got face to face and people broke up. But we hated each

other. We hated each other. And so here I am. I've been

following christ for six or seven months and he comes around the corner and it's

just me, him and a big golf club. And I turned and I

looked at him, and I was extremely shocked at the emotion I had.

It wasn't fear, it wasn't anger. I looked at him, and this

is crazy. But all I could think was I love you, I love

you. And so I said to him, I put the golf club down,

I said, hey, cause he kind of got into a stance like

what's going to happen? And I said, listen, man, you're not

gonna believe this, but I got saved. My life is changed, and

I am in a relationship with Jesus Christ now and I would love for you

to forgive me. And I would just love for us, you know,

to let go of the past. And let me tell you something. If

you could have seen the look on his face, he looked even dumber than

usual. Sorry, Lord, And I reached out my hand. I said,

can we even let bygones be bygones? We shook hands and he left.

Now here's the important thing. The reason I tell you this whole,

big, long story is because one that was the moment in my life where

I knew that I had truly been transformed by Jesus completely. But I want

you to follow the sequence in my life. The sequence in my life was

I had another God and that God was me. But then I was changed

by Jesus, and I fell deeply in love with my Jesus. And out

of fallen deeply in love of my Jesus, naturally I started to love people

on another level. As we go through the Ten Commandments, did you know

the Ten command are meant to be transformative? They were being given to a

people who have been following a pagan theology, a pagan religion, and the

Ten Commandments originally given we're meant to be transformative, and so we've walked through

them the last few weeks. Think about this. The first one that we

talked about was thou shall have no other gods before me, and so it

was about making God number one in your life, making God thou shall have

no other gods before me, and so it's about get rid of those idols

in our life. And then last week we talked about what we talked about

the sapath being holy in other words, a day, one day week that

is God's day, not our day. It's God's day that he wants us

to draw near to him so that he can love us, so we can

worship him, so we can come together in deep unity and love. And

then today you'll see that as we come out of following whatever God we followed.

Maybe for you it was your career, success, money and relationships.

I don't know. But as we shift into a having God be the number

one in our life and having a number one spot in our life, and

then as we turn to follow Him in discipleship and love him. Naturally,

we shift into the third section of the Ten Commandments, and that's the Relational

Commandments, and it's the commandments to talk about how do we live together in

unity? And so that's what we're gonna be doing today. We're gonna be

looking at these three movements of transformation. And now here's what I want to

do simply today. I want to start out. What we're gonna do is

we're gonna just, first of all, just jump in look at him,

and then we're gonna go deeper. Okay, here we go, Exodus twenty,

the Relational Commandments. Here we go. You shall not murder, you

shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false

testimony against your neighbor. Now, first glance, you're like, Okay,

what does this have to do with loving others? But what we will see

as we get to this section of the Ten Commandments, we will see a

call to treat others like we would want to be treated. For instance,

do not murder, we don't harm others, don't commit adultery, and we

don't fool around on those that we love. Don't still, we don't take

advantage of others, don't bear false witness. We as Christians, we're people

of truth, we're people of character. We're just having people that people can

trust an account. And so each of the ten commandments, I want you

to think about this, they represent a category, almost like an umbrella policy.

So the first week we said, thou shalt have no other gods before

me. But by the end of the message, we understood that we have

to fight off all these other things that try to take the top spot in

our life. It's about having God number one on ours. Today. As

we talk about thou shalt not murder, you will see it. By the

end of it, there is a call to forgiveness, a call to reconciliation.

So we're gonna look at these commandments, these relational commandments, as a

whole, and here's what you're gonna find. The relational commandments call us to

love and honor those that we're in a relationship with. Secondly, as we

do this, we're gonna naturally become a people of peace. In other words,

the relation ship commandments are a guide to avoiding conflict with others. As

we follow these relationship commandments, it's gonna get rid of the conflict in our

lives. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna look at each commandment,

and then we might jump over to a thousand years later where Jesus took

it to another level, and for some of them, we might jump all

the way three thousand years later and talk about how it applies to us today.

So let's go ahead and just jump right in and look at him again.

You shall not murder. Now, that's straightforward and easy to follow.

Just don't kill someone. Pretty easy commandment, right, don't kill someone.

But as we look deeper, and as we go deeper, this commandment is

expressing the Hebrew in two words, never murder. But as we look deeper

into the Hebrew, what we see is that never murder is the equivalent to

never murder or someone for personal or selfish reasons. So no Israelites could decide

on their own that they had the right to in someone else's life. So

there's no retribution killing. If someone has wronged you or hurt you, you

don't on your own get to go and kill them. Now. Now,

this would also extend into the life of an unborn child, so it is

clear no killing other people. But then we see that as we look at

the whole Bible. We see that there seems to be a caveat for four

different areas where killing is you know, not punishable as a sin. One

would be a just war, your tribes being attacked by another tribe, You

can defend your tribe. Number two, if you live in a system where

there's a court system and there is a system set up where if someone murders,

well, then that person will be put to death. If that's a

system you live on, it it's not you personally deciding put them to death,

but it's a group who's decided. And then there's two of them that

well, that could come into any of our lives at any moment. And

that is where we have to protect ourselves from someone else attacking us, or

we protect weaker people who are being attacked. We were talking about how complex

this issue is today and I was talking with Jordan and David, our children's

pastor and youth pastor, and we were talking about especially how they see themselves

as those who are supposed to protect our children, and you know, and

Jordan just started getting like round up. You know, he's a former powerlifter,

and Jordan's like if anyone even looks at my kids. No, he

was like, he was like, and they were talking about like I will

take them down. Someone comes over there. I dare to them, come

over there. They will not hurt our kids. And I'm like, yes,

that's why you hire cowboys. That's why you hire cowboys. They will

rope you up and they will brand you. Do not mess up our kids.

So, but that's the point where you can protect others, all right.

So as we look at the Bible, it seems like it says,

all right, not for personal reasons, not for selfish reasons, but there

are some reasons. Okay. Now you might think, now, James,

how does this even apply to me? I don't plan on killing anybody soon.

Well, this is where Jesus comes in a picture. See Jesus takes

it as step further. Jesus goes from a sin committed by our hand to

talking about the sins committed in our hearts. Let's look at this in Jesus'

famous sermon Sermon on him Ount, here's what he said. He says,

now you've heard it said to the people long ago, you shall not murder,

and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you

that anyone who is angry with his brother sister will be subject to judgment,

okay, in other words, if you have bitterness, anger, hatred towards

your brother's sister. But then he goes again, anyone who says to a

brother or sister, raka, and now that's like a bad word back.

Then you're profaning them, you're taking her name through mud. And he says,

you're gonna be answerable to the court. And he says, and anyone

who says you fool will be in danger of fire and hell. In other

words, if you are just again trashing someone, you hate someone, and

you have these bad, nothing but negative thoughts towards them, he says,

Hey, that's not what we do. But what does he call us to

do instead of killing someone, instead of being angry at someone, instead of

detegrating someone, instead of trashing someone, instead of being bitter towards someone.

Jesus takes it from the king like, Hey, not only do I say

don't kill I'm telling you to look at verse twenty four, go and be

reconciled. Go and be reconciled to them. So Jesus, by the way,

who's God. He reinterprets the law. In other words, Jesus says,

hey, and here's why Jesus can reinterpret the wall, because Jesus represents

the heart of God. If you want to know who God is, and

all you've been studying and looking after years is the Old Testament, and that's

the God in your mind. And I mean remember that God is read feeling

himself from time to time to time. But if you want to know who

God is, you look at Jesus because he represents the very character and nature

of God. You want to know who God is, look at Jesus.

So Jesus reinterprets these laws. It says, listen, and only should you

kill someone. I'm calling you to forgive others who have wronged you. And

I'm calling you, if they're mad at you, to do everything you can

to be reconciled to them. And let me tell you how this might look

today. Years ago, or received an email from an old friend and apparently

there have been some significant bitterness towards me that I was completely unaware of.

And they sent an email that was really about the size of a college essay,

and I outlined everything that I had said or done wrong over many years,

and by the way. I had no idea that they felt this way.

It was the most painful thing I had ever read in my life.

It was agony to read through this, breaking down every issue. And let

me tell you something. I don't know if you've ever been out of breath

after reading something like that, but it took my breath away. It was

so painful. I was like, all right, the relationship's over. I

don't agree with most of the assessments. So how do we even fix this?

Because if I go to this person and say all right, let's work

through this and let's talk about this item and this item and this item and

this item, here's what's gonna happen, It's just gonna make it even worse.

And so I thought, all right, this relationship's over. For a

whole week, I kept praying, asking God, God, what do I

do? How do we fix this? What can I do? And then

in this moment, finally at the end of the week, as I prayed

and prayed and prayed, God just spoken to my heart, humbly, yourself,

don't defend yourself. Ask for forgiveness. So I wrote an email and

I said, please forgive me. I love you. Can we start again?

And this person was so mood by that that they responded back asking for

forgiveness, and they ask for a clean slate as well. And let me

tell you something, for the last sixteen seventeen years, our love has grown

and grown and grown and grown for each other. See, sometimes you just

can't hash out all your differences with someone. The only thing you can do

is humble yourself and ask for forgiveness or give forgiveness. See that do not

murder command. We see it as like, WHOA, that's pretty high.

But Jesus says, those of you who have My Holy Spirit in you,

I'm not just calling you don't kill somebody. I'm saying love others, forgive

them, be reconciled. That's what a Christian does. See, this commandment

to not murder can be interpreted today as reconcile with those that you have anger

toward. Now, let's continue on with the second commandment, and let's look

at this. You shall not commit adultery. Now that seems pretty straightforward,

right. We can understand why this is one of the relationship commandments. If

you want to ruin a relationship, sleep with someone beside your spouse, or

sleep with someone else's spouse. I'm gonna promise you conflict in your life,

I promise you. Yet the Bible is gonna go on to define not only

adultery, but the Bible gets parameters for any sex outside of marriage, which

means that any sexual relationship outside of marriage that is not between a man and his wife