Introducing the 10 commandments.

Welcome to Hope, everyone particularly welcome if you're

new to Hope or actually we've got some super alumni, Jonathan

and Helen visiting. So for those of you who don't

know Jonathan, Helen were here several years ago and really key

elders in helping to build the church.

So it's really great to have you guys here and and welcome if

you're new to hope. My name is Chris and this is

Alice and we're some of the pastors here and we love this

church. We love this community.

We love the adventure of following Jesus and the

challenge of it. You know, the, the IT feels like

a big challenge and it but it feels like that exciting thing.

I want to I want to keep giving my life to.

And so starting a new year and Alice is going to be speaking to

us on her. I'll let her introduce her new

theme and I'll just pray and let's pray and then we'll well,

we'll hear from Alice. We also just want to say also

just want to have more time at the end of our second-half to to

pray for each other. I'd like to just build that into

being more of a rhythm. So we're aiming to finish a

little bit like around 12:00 so that the finish the teaching by

12:00. So that then there's time in

those last 10 minutes to if you want to pray for each other or

or come to the front and be prayed for.

Want to be want to be making that more intentional in the way

that we are as gathered church like this.

Say, Lord, thank you that we get to be here and we come to

worship you, Jesus, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Creator of

everything, bringer of life. And we pray that as Alice speaks

to us, teaches us this morning that your reality, your truth,

your life becomes more real, more present and powerful in us

to change us for the everyday and for the eternal.

Amen. Welcome, everyone.

It is your favourite 3 words. This is like Marmite, isn't it?

Hands up. Who loves the New Year's

resolution? Probably, actually, by now.

Apparently you don't anymore. No one does.

We're too late. But on January the first.

Who loves it? Dan.

I saw it. Yes, thank you.

Who hates them? Yeah.

There you go. Nothing like a bit of drama.

So what I love about Chris is he's really into saving the

planet. But it wasn't you.

OK. It's very small print.

Extremely small. OK, so I came across this

hilarious article which lists the top 150 most popular New

Year's resolutions. So do we want to try and guess

some of them right now? Just shout out some what was

that one? Drink less, lose weight, stop

smoking, exercise, stop. You should write the article

guys. Who are these people getting

paid for this kind of thing anyway?

I didn't want to bore you with the top 150, which I slightly

did at home every I was on my own.

I was talking to myself by the end of that conversation.

So we will do the top 15 health and fitness.

Should we all just exercise? Drink more than the right stuff,

water you know. Eat veggies and fruit.

Cut down processed foods. Get enough sleep each night.

Practise yoga, meditation, take the stairs, try a new work out,

reduce sugar. It's quite tiring, isn't it?

It's quite tiring being this kind of person.

Learn to cook healthier meals. Join a community fitness class.

Commit to a daily 15 minute walk.

Complete a 12 week beginner strength programme.

Hit a daily step goal of 8000. Track it.

Scheduled annual physical, dental and skin checkup.

Didn't think of that one, did we?

Skin checkup by March and personal development.

Read a new book every month. Start a journaling habit.

Learning new lengths. Sorry for those listening

online, it's quite intense. There are 150 of them.

I'm trying to get 330 in about one minute.

Take up a new hobby. Attend workshops and Seminoles.

Practise public speaking. That'd be good.

Volunteer for recalls. Develop better time management

skills. Practise gratitude daily.

Learn a musical instrument. Build a morning routine that

sets a positive tone for the day.

Take a social media break once a week.

Do a 30 day creativity challenge, run a weekly.

Oh, it's just it's gone. The tech was like, I can't bear

this. This is unbearable.

Hands up. Any of you who kind of resonated

with a few of them actually are thinking, Yeah. 11:50 I had my

last slice of chocolate cake at the Davies and I have not had

chocolate since midnight. It was brilliant.

I'm feeling quite good on it actually, because I actually

haven't. I think by now if you failed,

it's just worse than not even trying anyway.

OK, so let's just move on from that because it is exhausting.

What is going on here? Why is it that every year we all

go through this sort of panic at the at the time of year where we

really need about another month, don't we?

Just another month before we maybe practise Lent?

Like do you think there was some wisdom in that ancient

tradition? We are sort of saying to

ourselves every single year we could do better, we should be

better, we need to improve ourselves.

There is something too much or too little about each of us and

therefore we need to resolve to change and become better people.

And This is why every year people set New Year's

resolutions, why by about now most people have failed, and

consequently why so many people hate them.

They kind of expose the sense of lack of happiness or contentment

or sense of failure in US or disappointment.

Now, I'm not in any way saying from a Christian perspective,

there isn't a telos, an end, that we are designed to become

like Jesus. So that sense where this is all

the image of God, all of us want, having this sort of

desire, this inherent desire to be better is something that

God's put within us. However, the weight and the

burden and the feeling of failure and self disappointment

and self hatred is not God's design for us, quite the

opposite. And that's what we're going to

get into. But I noticed this isn't just

something within ourselves, but there's sort of something of

this malaise, this sense of we need to do better or be better

in society as well, this sense of unravelling.

And I'm going to use one particular example.

I've pay, I love paying attention to patterns.

And I just began to see this pattern a few years ago.

A friend of mine who works in Tesco's just casually remarks,

there's just quite a lot of petty theft, quite a lot of

people steal stuff. And I kind of clocked that and

what a hassle that is and how you manage that.

But thought, you know, there's always been in every cultural

society kind of, I guess people are maybe more vulnerable or on

the edges or maybe have addictions and so on.

And, and, and this kind of stealing is, is kind of part of

what people do. So I kind of thought, gosh,

that's really challenging to work with, but also, you know,

it's part of life. So this day I started to notice

it and then I noticed just hanging out with young people,

just talking. Just much more of a blurriness

or casualness around who owns what possessions, where the

boundaries are. I guess stealing isn't like a

word that has as much currency as maybe when I was growing up

and we used to go. Is it stealing to record the,

the kind of songs onto your own radio, onto your own cassette?

You can tell who's my age and above because you're like, yeah.

And everyone else is like, no, what are you talking about?

Yeah. And you were like, is it

stealing to do? And we'd think about those

things, you know? And so I kind of thought, why do

I think anything differently to anyone else?

Because I have 3 words, two in the Hebrew do not steal.

That's it. Those 3 words in something

called the 10 commandments in something called the Bible,

which probably most people have never heard of or have no

relationship with. And so I thought that those 3

words have really helped me in a lot of the decisions I've made.

I have a sense of ownership, possession, boundaries.

There's so much to that. So then I thought last year we'd

been looking at what is the good news and Bill's going to carry

on going into Romans, and we're still doing the Trinitarian

faith course. But I wanted to kind of launch a

new series, which will take about two years because I speak

about once every month or six weeks on the 10 commandments.

We're going to go through each one.

I'm introducing it today and looking at all the kind of

aspects of it. Because the thing I noticed,

sorry I forgot to say this actually is this wasn't just me

anecdotally, sorry, there seems to be data to back up this

epidemic. Shoplifters get away with

stealing every minute and theft epidemic.

That was from the Telegraph in December.

The new breed of shoplifting entrepreneurs fuelling EU KS

petty crime problem. 12th of December 2025 and then earlier

in the year in the Guardian. Shoplifting offences in England

and Wales at highest level ever recorded total increase to over

half a million last year, official figures show.

But retail retailers fear data severely underestimates

problems. Sorry.

So the point I'm making it this I wasn't just anecdotally seeing

this suddenly last year, it just became this this kind of pattern

or a different agreement within us as a society as to what

constitutes socially acceptable behaviour.

Because we agree how we're operating, we agree and there's

a different agreement, the agreement of how we operate as a

society and what's acceptable, what isn't is changing.

I had another interesting conversation with our a church.

We're kind of, as you know, growing in friendship with, in

partnership with Fatima. And she is the, the ocean Fatima

lead this church. And we were looking at the, and

it's some event with the late queen and I can't remember what

it was. And I always, it's just so

eccentric, isn't it? We, we have eccentric practises

that we do with our royal family.

And I was like, what do you think of that?

And she immediately said, talking about some sort of big

event where there's a parade and everything.

She immediately said that gold was stolen.

I thought the gold in the carriage was stolen.

So I've been paying attention to this word stealing and thinking

about it. And she had her take enlarged my

understanding of what that phrase do not steal means, which

is something else I'll address in that talk in about 18 months

time. Because for her, she said there

aren't gold mines in this country.

Now, I don't know the history of gold trade.

I don't know whether fair prices are paid for gold.

I imagine she's right. I imagine there's exploitation

and the fact that the gold from wherever the gold mines are,

which aren't in this country, ended up on her carriage.

I haven't investigated that. But her instinctive emotional

response to an event that I thought was just cringy and

eccentric was that was stolen. So we are going to look at every

level for, for those on the right, personal responsibility,

those on the left, systemic responsibility to offend and

hopefully mobilise this all. So there we go.

So I called this a happy, fulfilled and flourishing life

in 10 steps, introducing the 10 commandments.

And when I say that I don't at all mean a superficial, I

thought about this word happy a lot.

I don't mean a superficial kind of self focused how to be happy

in a like a self help kind of way.

I meant actually to be happy, actually to live life on this

earth with a degree of peace and contentment and joy and

well-being. And it just like life aligns the

incongruence and dissonance we all feel just is restored to a

sense of congruence. So I don't at all mean that

people don't suffer deeply and terribly.

They do, absolutely. And the Bible is full of ways of

stories of people who suffer deeply and terribly and ways to

lament that and to go through that, that place of unbelievable

pain with God. I also don't mean that this is a

quick fix. If you do 10 things, you will

get happy. This is a way of life.

This is an orientation to a way of life that eventually produces

the kind of person that lives in congruence in this world.

Just things work, relationships, work, finance, just things work

the way they're supposed to do. In the context of being an evil

age and at war in the unseen realm.

We don't have any control over a lot of things in our lives.

We think we do. We've been told we do.

But we do have agency. And this is going to engage with

that part of us that actually has agency within the context of

a world where we didn't choose, where we were born, who we were

born to, where we live with lots of things we didn't choose.

But within the confines of those limitations, we have genuinely

been given agency. We've genuinely been given a way

to live that I can either lead as I we will look at in a bit

life or death, happiness, fulfilment and and a sort of

sense of flourishing or a, a, a sense of deep sense of a kind of

bitterness, regret, pain and cynicism.

There are there are two ways to live within the agency we've all

been given, given the limitations of our context.

And so in in order to access this life, as Jesus says, there

will be, it is a way of self denial.

It is called we. We are designed to take up the

cross of the old nature which cannot live into this every day

face difficult choices, uncomfortable feelings, the

necessity of self denial. In another word, short term, we

will face short term pain in order to get to this long term

pay gain of actually being a happy, fulfilled and flourishing

individual and society. And when we hit that moment,

remember society's unravelling. Just remember why this isn't a

game or a drill. I've given you the most

innocuous example I can. Petty thieving.

I could give you a lot worse examples on all of the tango

moments. Society's unravelling.

That means me, I am, I'm part of society.

We aren't individuals having our individual self fulfilled life.

We are an integrated individuated within a community

of people who are seeking to live a happy, fulfilled,

congruent and prosperous life. The 10 Commandments wasn't given

to an individual, it was given to a community.

It's and we will discover why. Happiness, My happiness very

much depends on how I live well with other people.

In fact, it's it's probably totally dependent on how I

manage my relationships with God and other people.

So this isn't about quick fix and it's not about saying sad,

mad or bad things don't happen to good people.

They do and they do regularly. But it is saying within the

agency we have, we can choose to live a life marked by

flourishing or marked by destruction and regret.

So you might think, why the 10 commandments?

We've already just literally had our tech shut down at the 115

years resolutions. Why another 10 things to do to

to, you know, overwhelmingly burden of us.

Isn't the whole point of Jesus and Paul and the New Testament

that we don't have to kind of look at that anymore?

Well, there's a man called Marcian who was a church father.

There were many people who contributed to what we now

identify as orthodoxy, and he was someone who actually said we

should get rid of the whole Old Testament.

But actually that was that People said, no, that's not

true. That's actually heresy.

We need the complete testimony of God, the Old and the New

Testament, in order to really understand what God is saying to

us. So there's something in this

that still speaks to us today and we will see that neither

Jesus nor Paul nor any of the New Testament writers declared

these obsolete. In fact, they told us we now

have the Spirit and the heart condition and the change in

order to fulfil not just the letter of these commands, but

actually have a heart of change. One little example is Paul says

do not steal. Do you remember?

He's echoing, He's echoing in one of his letters, this

commandment. But so stealing is this way of

life that leads us to destruction.

But work hard so that you with your hands so that you may give

generously to those in need. That's the spirit of do not

steal. So much better than limiting our

sense of what we can and can't do and where our boundaries, our

possessions are to literally releasing spirit of generosity

in the world. So every single one we will look

at with these questions, what each commandment meant to the

original ancient Israelite audience, how Jesus interpreted

each commandment in his teachings, how Paul understood

them in his letters, how we can apply them today.

That's just really good practise for anything in the Bible in the

1st 2/3 in the Old Testament before Jesus comes.

It's just to think how Jesus understood them, how one of his

his followers who who really changed took on what he said

Paul and really changed the direction of our understanding

of what it is to be a follower of Jesus.

Paul, how he understood them in his letters and any others who

speak into that and then how we can apply them today.

So this is the image in a 19th century old painting.

I once heard that recently heard they think the amount of

Israelites might have been the size of a small town, which is

10s of thousands of people. But people think because of the

way numbers are written down that it's millions of people at

this mountain. And then God gives these

commandments. So I'm actually going to ask you

to because it's this isn't too, this isn't a test to catch

anyone out or see what you know or don't know, but in your

tables to get a pad of paper and write down to tablets because

they all ten were repeated on 2 tablets for emphasis.

They weren't split into two fives.

So they get 2 pieces of paper of the tablet each and try together

in your group to see if you can write them down just quick.

FYI I couldn't. I can't off by heart so I'm not

expecting anyone to. Then I'll give you the scripture

and we can see if we can do so. It's 10 commandments on two

different tablets. Right.

If you feel like you've you've kind of vaguely, this isn't

again, about right or wrong. Don't worry, we're not post post

postmodern. There is actually a right

answer, but it's not about finding your value and whether

it's right or wrong. Can you just put your hands up

in your table if you feel you've kind of done a rough sketch of

the 10 brilliant pizza's table? Any other?

Yeah, it doesn't matter if you haven't got all 10, just what

you can do. So I just, I'm just trying to

basically if someone's just chatting about what they did at

the weekend, that's what I'm trying to ascertain who's

actually working on this. You are, I mean, you are

focused. So if I bring it all into land

now, should we try and say between us what we think we they

are? In my day, you got a red tick in

a cross or whatever, but now it's green or purple, isn't it?

It's just everyone's a winner. OK, so does anyone want to say

what they think? Shout out a few and we'll

literally put the slide up because this is about everyone

working together, not about knowledge puffing up.

Sorry, do not steal. Whoo.

Can you imagine at this point if I said actually, that was just

my opinion? No, do not.

Still is in there. Brilliant.

Any other ones Love. Oh, do you want to expand a bit

on that love? God.

Yeah. Any.

Any. OK, That's good.

That's fine. That's fine.

That's good. Yeah.

Any. No other gods.

Brilliant. Don't Cove it.

Brilliant. Yeah.

On the Father and Mother Sabbath.

This is great, guys. Oh, Sabbath, don't use the

Lord's name in vain. Very good.

Has anyone counting? I never count on these things.

Do not murder. Thank you.

That's that's good. Adultery.

Coveting adultery. Did someone say only your father

and mother keep the Sabbath? Don't lie.

I think that's it, isn't it? Anyone got any other ones?

Because you never know. This could be a moment of

increasing 11 commandments. Just doesn't sound as good

though, does it? 10 is 10 is good.

OK, let's see how we've done. Do you want to do a drum roll?

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out to land of

slavery. 1 You shall have no other gods than me.

So we'll come to Duncan's thing in a minute because he picks up

on how Jesus interpreted it. Very good two very similar.

There's a repetition for emphasis.

Do you remember I said there's two lots of 10s on the tablets?

Can we all just say repetition for emphasis?

The literally I was like, why do they keep repeating stuff for

emphasis? Because are we listening?

Are we listening? He God repeats himself a lot for

emphasis. You shall not make for

yourselves. This is number 2, an image in

the form of anything in heaven above or in the earth belief or

in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them

or worship them. This is brilliant 'cause this

takes us right into another cultural context.

I've only ever met one person in my kind of the community here

who genuinely believed and bowed down to physically are the gods.

That's not something that's generally in our practise here

within walking distance of this community.

There are either secular people, Muslim people who do not, who

hold two kind of variants of that.

And this was actually a Hindu friend and I could tell.

I think that is part of our actual practise.

It's very rare. So we have to remember this is a

cross cultural journey we're taking.

This isn't normal to hear these words.

We don't hear the word gods in our culture, although in some

ways we do in, in kind of fiction and, and movies and

stuff. But we don't, we definitely

don't have this idea of bowing down and worshipping an image.

So that's really good for us because it reminds us we're

going on a bridge to another culture and we need to have the

humility and curiosity to listen well what it meant for them.

Then come back, back over the bridge to apply what it means

for us. Now, you shall not misuse the

misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold

anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

Some people have called that the blasphemy laws.

We will explain why that's maybe not quite what it means, or it's

a much fuller command. Remember the Sabbath day.

Honour your father and mother so that you may live long in the

land the Lord your God has given you.

You shall not murder, you shall not convince adultery, you shall

not steal. You shall not give false

testimony against your neighbour.

You shall not covet your neighbour's housewife, male or

female servant, ox, donkey, anything else that belongs to

your neighbour. So those are the 10.

Give ourselves a round of applause because we actually got

them. Between us, we got them and

we're working in community, so we're all we all got them.

So when Moses gives these 10 commandments, how it would have

been understood is a basically a marriage covenant.

He was initiating a marriage ceremony.

Sorry. God was through Moses with the

Israelites. They'd just been birthed as a

new nation. They'd had a dramatic freedom

from slavery in Egypt. They'd they'd been literally

gone through the waters, the parting of the Red Sea,

representing the waters of death and come out as a new free

nation and and they meet God in the at the mount of Sinai and

Moses mediates between them gives them about 600 people

think that's 613 laws of which these 10 actually a better way

to understand them is words because commandments has a bit

of a connotation for us that doesn't quite express it.

So 10 words that you can basically hang every single one

of the ethical commands of the 600 on.

So there were two kinds of commands in the.

Anyone remember the geeky number I just gave you?

Just checking 613, There are two kinds of commands, ritual and

ethical of the ethical commands, basically how we treat God and

each other. All of them can hang on the 10

commandments. So that's why we look at these

because they basically, Oh yeah, so God gave the Israelites

people, Jewish people think when they're adding up the number of

commands that there were 613. Don't get caught up on that.

So the 10 commandments begins and then they give a lot, then

they give a lot more, and then they give a lot again.

In fact, they give the 10 commandments twice with slight

variations. We'll come to that.

So it's complex, but you can still hang all the 10 ethical

commands, sorry, all of the hundreds of commands that are

ethical, not ceremonial, but ethical on the 10 commandments.

And a covenant in the ancient world was essentially where two

parties could become one in the way they got, they had each

other's backs. So an empire could make a

covenant with a small country, and it basically said to that

small country, we'll protect you, we will provide for you, we

give you weapons, we'll give you food, We'll give you anything in

the event of hostility or threat or famine.

But you've got to be unconditionally loyal to us.

You know, we have those kinds of trade agreements now.

We can kind of resonate with them.

But they would call down the gods to curse.

The violation of that covenant so often would be a penalty

would be death. Then you had other covenants

which were mutual parties, say between 2 tribes, where they

would come as one and again cover each other's backs.

But they were mutual and equal. There wasn't a power dynamic

between them and they would cover each other's backs in the

again in the event of hostility or threat.

And then you basically have an individual king who would have a

covenant would say a very loyal servant or an individual.

And again, that same dynamic would happen, but again, that

servant would have to give all his loyalty to the king.

So this is a normal language for the ancient world.

And there already have been some covenants by this point in the

story of of Israel and the story of the Hebrew Bible.

So this is a a covenant, but this is kind of the big

covenant. This is like the covenant that

kind of. I just find it difficult to use

this word anymore. Trump's just Trump's other

covenants, just hard. I need a better word anyway.

I think Abraham's covenant's extremely profound, but this is

this is big and it takes virtually 4 books and it's

basically God saying I'm going into a marriage covenant with

you, Israel. I will give you provision,

protection, identity. You will flourish, you will

prosper in every way. You will show the world what

true humanity is. You will, we will recover Eden

if you live by these commandments and regulations

I've given you. And people talk about this not

as a way to get to God. This is already an act of grace.

People think grace is in the New Testament.

It wasn't. It was in the old.

It was freely given to them, their salvation and their

rescue. Already freely given to them

when they couldn't do anything about it.

They were enslaved in Egypt. They couldn't overcome their

slavery. Yahweh, God intervenes.

He breaks, sets them free from slavery, brings them through the

waters and births them as a new nation.

So this is a gift. These commandments are a gift

and instruction. Now that you've been set free,

this is how you are to live and you're to show the world what

it's like to embody human flourishing.

And so we will look at what that means that the, the, the kind of

the extent and the depth of what that means to be for these

ancient Israelite people to be in this kind of covenant with

God. Now, these are normal practises.

Everything that is being kind of called out or critiqued or

exposed were normal practises in ancient Egypt and our normal

practises in the world beyond in terms of we'd have to culturally

interpret them. And he's essentially saying I

don't want you to live like that anymore.

So all of them would have an understanding or a history or

maybe even practises around them and they were called out of it

into a new way of life. And when we get to the New

Testament, neither, none of them, Jesus, James, Paul, none

of them say these are obsolete. In fact, all of them say they

call this like the royal command.

They say it's summed up in the royal command to love God and

love your neighbours yourself, which is what Duncan's referring

to. And we often think when we think

of the 10 commandments, we think of that because God, Jesus sort

of sums them up. And then James and Paul and John

and Peter, when you see it, you see it everywhere you see it.

And some of their teachings, their parables, they'll quote

different ones of them and they, they are really showing up.

These are still ways to live ethically in the world.

And we're going and, and they're going to help us understand what

that means for us now spirit filled people.

But the essentially, if you look at them, you'll see the first

four or five are upward, depends how you interpret the fifth one.

But the first four certainly are upward and the last five or six,

depending on the on your father and mother's bit of a hinge are

are horizontal. And essentially it's seen as one

command, love God and love your neighbours yourself in that what

the the understanding is the extent to which we love God is

actually really shown by how we love our neighbour and how we

love our neighbour is revealed in how we treat them according

to this framework as new spirit filled people as people who who

work hard with our hands and give generously to those in

need. That marks us as people who show

the world what true humanity is. So that's why Jesus says Paul

says James says they can say these are summed up in that

royal command. Can we just say that together?

See if we've got that? Love the Lord, your gold with

all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your

neighbour as yourself. He takes two different verses

from the Torah. The law puts them together and

says that sums up everything, and it particularly sums up the

10 commandments. In another words, What word does

do Jesus and Paul and John insert into this list that

actually isn't in this list, but it is in the Torah?

What words I've repeated twice. Love.

So what God does when Jesus comes, he reveals the agape love

of God. He just reveals the beauty of

God, the ways of God. He reveals what God's like and

and he he reveals the triune nature of God that we are to go

in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit.

And in that interrelationship we bear the image of God and we

live as God's designed us to live.

So that's why in some ways we even have a fuller understanding

and a richer understanding and a deeper understanding that maybe

the ancient Israelites would have had as they first received

it, because we have a fuller revelation of the Godhead in the

revelation that God is love. Now, as I said, the commandments

are given twice and this the first group of people say,

woohoo, we're in, we love this, yes, but tragically, immediately

worship, immediately violate at least one of the commands, if

not quite a few in worshipping a kind of idol statute just after,

in fact, during the receiving of the 10 commandments, they're

doing it. It's a bit like having sex with

someone else on your wedding night.

Unbelievable violation of faithfulness and covenant

loyalty to God at that moment. And so they say, yes, we want

to, we're up for it. But actually, tragically, they

don't live into it. They wander in the desert until

they die. Their generation of the children

who experienced going through the promised land rise up and

they are adults and they're mature and, and there's a moment

when they then go into this land that God has promised them to

show them what it looks like to inhabit, to be part of human

flourishing. And this is not a comment on the

modern political discussion around Israel and Gaza.

This is an ancient Israelite context.

We will get to that. But I think it's really

important you understand the language of promise for the

ancient Israelites was about a language of covenant of, of

recovering Eden that had been lost and showing the world how

it was to live into human flourishing at that time, 3000

years ago. So they get to the brink of the

promised land. They're given the 10

commandments again, which are there are some variations and

we'll look at that where it's relevant to the particular

commandment, notably Sabbath. But at the end of this,

Deuteronomy is like a whole covenant document.

It's the, it's the stronger partner is God saying to the

weaker partner, ancient Israelite, I want to be one with

you. If you obey my commands that

I've repeated and set before you, you will flourish.

And if you don't, you won't. And so we would just look at

this and how this kind of is what God's still inviting us

into, this way that is marked by life or a way of life that that

is marked by death. Now what I'm commanding you

today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.

It is not up in the heavens so that you have to ask who will

ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey

it. Nor is it beyond the sea, so

that you have to ask who will cross the sea to get it and

proclaim it to us so we may obey it.

No, the word is very near you. It's in your mouth and in your

heart, so you may obey it. See, I set before you today life

and prosperity, death and destruction.

For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in

obedience to Him, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws.

Then you will live an increase and the Lord your God will bless

you in the land you are entering to possess that.

If your heart turns away and you're not obedient, and if

you're drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I

declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.

You will not live long in the land you're crossing the Jordan

to enter and possess this day. I call the heavens and the earth

as witnesses against you that I've set before you life and

death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so that you and

your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God.

Listen to his voice and hold fast to Him, to the Lord is your

life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to

give to your father's Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

So essentially we can be Oh sorry, that's in Deuteronomy.

Google the offer of life and death 3030.

I would actually read from about 27 onwards to the end.

The whole thing is stunning to meditate on that choice that he

keeps saying and the consequences of our actions or

their actions. So basically it's humans versus

zombies. We never need to watch a zombie

movie again. Not that some of us might ever

want to in the 1st place. Because actually what this is

saying is we are the living dead.

If we don't live into the the the life that God's designed us

to live, we're all just living this shadowed existence.

We're all just living this incongruent lives that we just

know doesn't quite add up or work or fit.

And he he's sort of, he's inviting us into a way of life

that is just marked by health and flourishing in, in our, you

know, in our spirit. So this is very popular book

that some of you might have heard of called Atomic Habits.

And what's really interesting about what we think, why we

think this book's so successful and returning back to New Year's

resolutions and this idea of how we land this and how we put this

into practise in our lives, is he actually says that we need to

change our identity in order to live out the life we want to

live. If our habits are congruent with

our conviction about our identity, then we will grow into

the person we want to be. So a New Year's resolution

saying I want to quit the alcohol, but the identity we

have is I really struggle with drink.

I just really struggle with it. That does not is not conducive

to the kind of person who is it has a habit of health around

alcohol. His point is in the book just

from a psychological point of view.

But if if he read that person, say, redefines themselves as I'm

a fit, healthy, energetic person, they are more likely to

have habits around their lives that are conducive to being the

kind of person that it has a healthy habit with alcohol,

which is exactly resonates with what we know is true

theologically. What we believe really, really

believe is how we live. What we believe is exactly how

our life choices are informed about what we think about

ourselves is how we live. And that's why the biblical term

repeatedly is repentance, because that's a change of

mindset about what's actually real.

Now what? What James Clear can't offer is

the cross I I say that with great sadness.

He can't offer the means by which we can actually change our

identity. But we've been given that, the

world's been given that, the world's been given an atonement

by which we can say, like Paul said, don't get drunk on wine,

but be continually filled with the Spirit singing and praising

songs to God. He can bring a replacement where

even this incredibly successful book can't.

It's still managing the chaos of the human condition, still

managing the zombie state. But we have been given a new

identity in Christ. Therefore we can live into these

things. So I just want us as we're

responding now to think of 1 area and we were going, we're

going to ditch New Year's resolutions, New Year's

reorientation. We're going to reorientate

towards reality in the way we think about ourselves.

So we're not going to say I'm trying to lose weight.

We're going to, we're going to say we are so deeply loved by

God that we, we just want to steward ourselves and, and

honestly think more about other people.

Or I'm going to try and reduce my screen time, but I just feel

terrible about it all the time now.

I am a self controlled, thoughtful, patient person.

This isn't manifesting. This isn't self actualization.

This is reality. This is the new creation.

This is the good news. We've actually been given a

nature that's congruent with reality and we just need to have

a change of mindset and move in agreement with that or move out

of agreement with that. So what I'd love us to think

about, and I think this kind of fits in what it, since the

spirit was doing this morning with Meredith's, which I didn't

know she's going to do, cast your cares upon God because he

cares for us is to kind of think of 1 area.

And this is obviously extremely tender and vulnerable, but one

area where we're like, actually, this is, this isn't flippant.

This isn't I'm trying to learn a new hobby or start a musical

instrument to find myself as a musician when I Can't Sing in

tune like that's this is actually really hard.

This is a hard area of my life or a hard relationship or just

something that is is painful. But here it feels like there's a

promise of restoration in this age.

There's a promise of new creation now that the Kingdom of

God is available to us now. When Jesus healed people, he

really healed them when they couldn't see, they really could

see when they were delivered from torment, they really were

delivered from torment. Now it isn't something that we

we basically operate and unbelief.

I'm just going to ignore that now because maybe hopefully

it'll happen then. It's actually, it's actually

complex that isn't it, because that's true to a certain extent

in the full resurrection, but also it's partly it's a way of

protecting ourselves from the disappointment that we won't get

healed now. And So what I want us to think

about is maybe an area where we're believing a lie about

ourselves to reorientate what is God?

What does God say about us in that area?

What how does he actually define us?

And then our repentance is I come into agreement with who I

really am. That's what I want us to do now

in this ministry time. So I'll just finished with this

sentence. Yeah.

If we really believe that God is good, God is love, and God has

our best interests at heart, if we really believe that we really

believe that God is good, God is love, and God has our best

interests at heart, then we will identify happily as his people,

His precious children, His beloved, and we will trust him.

We will want to live out his ways.

Thank you, Alice. So let's just have we got 5

minutes or so to respond to that.

And you might like to do it in just quietly on your own, you

and God, or you might like to share some of that with someone

near you or you might like to come to the front.

Alice and I happy to pray if you'd like that.

Let's take a little bit of time to respond.

So howdy, spirit, please prompt us, and not just with what Alice

has been teaching, and show us what you're saying to us

individually. Amen.