Written in Stone - Pastor Pete Wright

Hey there, this is Jen Wade, part of the core team here at Springs Church.

We just want to say thank you so much for joining us and listening to our podcast.

We are praying that it encourages you and it inspires you.

And if you'd like to find out more about Springs Church, please visit our website springschurch.co.uk.

Here's today's message.

If you have your Bible, would you just jump your way to Exodus chapter 20?

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

We'll be coming to that chapter a little later on.

Before we do, a little introduction.

We all have people in our lives we admire, correct?

I mean, when you look around this room, there's plenty of people in this room that I really, really admire.

One of them is not here today, it's his birthday weekend.

Ginger bass playing, lovely guy, Ben Wade.

He's 30 years old, not today, yesterday, 30 years old, 30 years young.

And I put a little post about him last night on Facebook and Instagram, just the modern way.

And I said something along the lines of, he might be 10 years younger, but I don't half look up to that guy.

All of us have people in our lives that we really look up to, correct?

And he might have been a teacher who was massively influential on you, real confident, really encouraging.

You might have a kind of influencer, an online influencer that you find really, really helpful,

got some great advice and has been really inspirational.

Anyone got any business heroes, any businessmen, businessmen been heroes?

It all like dragons, den of things, man, you feel well, it's inspirational.

Maybe you've got business leaders who have inspirations to you.

What about sports personalities?

Anyone got any sports heroes?

What sports heroes have we got?

Studio call, good, back wall.

Anyone else? No sports heroes?

Say again?

Laurie McElroy, yeah, what is that man say?

He's very good at talking, he speaks to music.

He's very good at talking, he speaks to music.

Anyone else found a project that you've ever owned?

People's favourite?

Yeah, I've got to be honest, I've been a diamond-penning fan a lot of my life.

I think he's remarkable.

I even think my favourite number is the number 23, because that was his number at Real Madrid.

I don't know, I've just not been to do a favourite number.

Yeah, it is actually, yeah, we've had a talk, but actually it is a favourite number.

It's 23, it's my favourite year.

We have people we admire in our lives, and I think when you've really got someone you admire,

because you're not a biographer, you're a reader, you're particularly intrigued about what makes people tick.

What makes people tick?

What makes people get out of bed in the morning?

What makes these inspirations do what they do?

One common trait among highly successful people, are you ready to be highly successful?

One common trait among highly successful people is their devotion to something called, oh no, discipline.

One trait that is common to highly successful people is their personal discipline.

The way they order their wives, other than the fact that Jack here has gone to the gym his whole life,

but now the gym has come home to Jack, and he's disciplined in what he does.

He's an inspiration, there is discipline in what he does.

People who are serious about their bodies are disciplined about what they're allowed in, what they don't allow in, I know.

People, highly successful people are disciplined, they stick to a set of values that they're devoted to.

They practise, practise, practise.

I think one of the things I'll talk about David Beckham, I'll just stop for one second.

So the story's going, he did the first person at the training ground in the morning,

and then he trained the whole session with all the rest of the team, but long after everyone had gone,

he'd been practising his free kicks for hours on his own, with a load of footballs, with no one watching,

so that what he practised in private became his excellence in public.

In fact, James Ward Price is about to beat David Beckham's all-time premier league free kick record in the next couple of years.

But I love the fact that he did it time and time and time again, so that when it mattered, he was able to step up.

It's interesting, isn't it?

An online recruitment consultant, I don't know if you're up for a job this morning, but I'm going to give you a little something.

An online recruitment consultant agency with a legacy of helping the employer brand,

source of unparalleled talent, work for solutions, but put people first.

They released an article, this online recruitment consultant,

it's called 10 Things That Highly Disciplined People Have In Common.

Are you ready for these 10 things?

Look, the 10 is important for us this morning.

10 things. One, highly successful people keep their eye on the prize.

Two, they live and die by deadlines. I didn't die by a few deadlines at the university when I was 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning

finishing my essays before the 9 o'clock deadline.

Two stories. Seems to get my best views at that time.

Three, people clearly define their goals.

Highly successful people lead with their mind over their mood.

You can over-react if you find it interesting.

Highly successful people, highly disciplined people set boundaries and revel in routine.

That's 5 or 6.

They work at developing habits.

Number 8, they take care of themselves.

Number 9, highly disciplined people avoid temptations.

Let's talk that again.

Number 10, highly disciplined people commit.

Highly disciplined people are committed to what they're going after.

I'm excited when I look at the life of Jesus because I reckon Jesus would have been a great candidate for this recruitment consultancy

with the legacy of helping the employer, outsourcing power and talent, work for solutions that put people first.

Sounds a bit like Jesus.

I find that Jesus, he kept his eye on the prize.

The scriptures say, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

I reckon that Jesus did indeed live and die by the deadline set by the Father in heaven.

He was born when he was meant to be born and he died when he was meant to die for us.

The scriptures say that just at the right time, Christ died for us.

The Lord lived and died by deadline.

He had clearly defined goals. He said, I have come that they may have life to the...

Oh, he knew what he was doing.

He always led with his mind over his mood.

He said, Lord, if it's possible to take this cup, this sacrifice, this death on the cross away from me, please do it.

But if not the case, your will, not my will, be done.

He led with his mind over his mood.

He reveled in routine and overt holy habits.

He told that Jesus took himself away every morning to a solitary place so that he could just speak with his Father.

Jesus set boundaries.

He clearly chose who it was right and wrong to be around that at different times.

Jesus took care of himself when he needed quiet, he removed himself from the noise.

When he needed sleep, he slept.

Even on a boat in the middle of a storm, this guy was going to get shook on.

Jesus never gave in to temptations.

And Jesus was committed, real committed.

So committed that a 12-year-old Jesus was one day in the temple and he said,

Mom, Dad, I wasn't lost, don't you know? I must be about my Father's business.

Imagine if John were there and he came up to us and we were like, where are you? You lost me, don't you know?

I must be about my Father's business.

You can't argue with that, can you? You can't argue with that. Yes, yes.

Sorry.

As you read the scriptures, you get to see how brightly and how brilliantly Jesus honored God and treated people.

Are you with me this morning?

Jesus was just incredible, phenomenal.

Now, perfect. Jesus was perfect.

Never once, now listen to this guy, never once did Jesus compromise holiness for the sake of some sort of shortcut towards his calling.

Never once did Jesus compromise his calling.

In his heart, he always said, not my word, but your word, don't cry.

Never once did Jesus compromise the word of God to be more palatable for a non-Christian public.

But never once did he compromise his compassion for those same people who were far off, just to appear holy in front of the religious authorities.

He didn't compromise.

Never once did Jesus compromise his character to give into the stuff his flesh was craving.

Wow. Jesus lived a what life? Hello?

I know it's the morning, come on.

He lived a perfect life, literally perfect in all of his ways.

But if Jesus did perfect, you've got to ask what did he live perfect towards?

If someone was a perfect teacher, there's a whole bunch of teaching standards that they've got to meet to be a perfect teacher.

If someone was perfect in their finance, they've got to have a bunch of standards to bring them up to how good they are in their finance.

What was the standard that made Jesus perfect?

What standard did he live up to?

The standard that he lived up to was known as the law of God. Have you ever heard of that?

Sometimes it's referred to as the laws of Moses.

The standard that Jesus was perfect according to is found in 613 different laws in the first five books of the Bible.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, 613 laws given by God, ceremonial laws, civil laws and moral laws

that Jesus perfectly nailed every single second of every single day of his 33 years on planet Earth.

Is that incredible? Some of you struggle not to break the speed limit this morning.

And here we've got Jesus fulfilling 613...

Now these laws, written in the first five books of the Bible, they were descriptive and written laws, commands of God

that taught us what it would take to be pure enough to have a relationship with God.

And if you can nail all of these laws in every single waking moment of your life,

then you might just have a chance, a shot at being pure in God's sight.

Does that feel a bit heavy?

It does.

See these five books are known as the Torah in Judaism.

As an infant, Jesus would have learned to read with these five books of the law containing how many rules?

613.

As a boy, Jesus would have gone to synagogue, he would have gone to the meeting of the religious faithful,

every single Shabbat, and he would have heard all of these books taught.

He would have learned to read using these laws. He would have heard these laws discussed constantly.

It's most likely that Jesus, the twelve year old, Jesus the boy, would have started to have got his understanding,

his earthly understanding of all things God and the Lord studied in his book of the sisters at synagogue.

Jesus the twelve year old was teaching these scriptures with wisdom beyond his years in the temple in Jerusalem.

At twelve years old, he's teaching his elders what all these laws are actually going to make.

It's almost like he had some insider information.

Jesus, who is the Word of God, who is the Word of God in flesh, perfectly lived out his living Word.

Why?

Now we've got a problem, because God in heaven loves the Son, wants you to send His only Son.

But our problem is this, that we cannot live out these laws.

God knew that we could not live out these laws every second of every day,

so instead what he did was he came to earth, his body in flesh, in the name of Jesus.

He grew and Jesus lived out these laws perfectly, so when the time came for him to be sacrificed,

to take away our sin, he was the perfect sacrifice that would release us from the burden of these laws.

I want to encourage you that Jesus came to make religion very simple indeed.

Not 613 tick box activities that you better nail for the words of your judgment.

Jesus brought down to two things, love God and love your neighbour as yourself.

We'll come to that in one minute.

Let's see what Jesus had to say about these laws of the Old Testament,

because it's not like we've heard that to him, it's what he said on the screen, Matthew 5, 17-20.

It should be revealed.

Jesus says, don't think I've come to get rid of all these laws, abolish them, things that the prophets say.

I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Therefore, whoever relaxes one of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

So whilst our salvation does not rest on us fulfilling all of these laws,

these laws are still to be embraced and to be recognized and to be pursued.

Because Jesus, pure and light, fulfilled all of the Old Testament law, he was pure in sacrifice, pain, his grace is what enables us to be saved.

Not following these laws no more.

Jesus was asked one day, it was asked one day, Matthew 22, some religious leaders were trying to quiz him,

look at him, think he's so perfect, getting out of all these religious laws.

What do you think is the most important commandment before he touched on it?

Teacher, which is the most important commandment?

Jesus replied, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.

This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it, love your neighbour as yourself.

All the law and the prophets hang on these how many?

Two commandments.

Not two suggestions, not two good ideas, but everything that is holy rests on these two things.

Love God and love your neighbour as yourself.

613 commandments, summed up in just two, love God and love your neighbour as yourself.

What's really beautiful is this, that love God and love your neighbour as yourself, beautifully overview the first ten commandments ever given to us by God.

Have you heard of the ten commandments?

That's where we're going, the ten commandments.

Let's look at these ten commandments.

Exodus chapter 20, if you've got your Bible and your Bible there, in verse three.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

This is what God says, these are the commandments for the Deity of Jesus.

So I very much wish you.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make to yourself a carved image or any likeness or anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth below you.

Or that is in the water below you.

You shall not bow down to them to serve them by the Lord your God, the genus God.

Visiting the iniquity of the fathers of the children of the third and fourth generation of those who hate them.

But I shall steadfast look to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Number three, 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, keep it holy.

Six days you shall labour and do all your work.

But the seventh day is the Sabbath the Lord will not.

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

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

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

Did you know that you weren't made to observe the Sabbath?

But the Sabbath is actually made to be.

The commandment is to take the break from you.

But by honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God has given you.

You shall not murder in the sixth, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbour,

you shall not cover your neighbour's house, you shall not cover your neighbour's wife, his servants, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour's today.

The ox and the donkey, your neighbour's car, I imagine.

Are you going to get us now?

All together.

Yeah, all together.

So here we have these ten commandments.

These ten commandments.

I don't understand it, that Jesus was living up to, or to be perfect, he filled every one of them, 613.

But knowing that we couldn't do that on our own, Jesus came, lived a perfect life,

and what we need to do is just be embraced, love God, love people, and the ten commandments expected you to.

If you take a look at the commandments, you will notice something incredible.

The first five commandments are all to do with how to love God.

And the second five commandments are all about how we relate with and love people.

It's incredible.

When Jesus, thousands of years after these commandments were given, said the most important thing was love God, love your neighbour, yourself.

He wasn't making it up on the fly.

He wasn't just coming up with it off the top of his head.

His heart and his head would have been found in these original ten commandments.

Love God, love people.

Why ten? I don't know.

But in Jewish numerology, number ten is the number of completion.

It's really important. This is a really important set of ten.

What I find interesting is there are two groups of five.

Love God is five more. Love people is five more.

In Jewish alphanumeric language, number five is the number of grace.

And I'm excited about that, because there's grace for us as we pursue loving God in our lives,

and there's grace for us as we pursue loving people in our lives.

What an incredible thing these commandments are.

So when Jesus taught that these important commandments, love God, love your neighbour, yourself,

he was not making something new.

He was ratifying what had already been spoken.

What had been spoken in the Old Testament, especially in the ten commandments, still matters to us today.

Still matters to us today.

Love God, love people was the message the day that God gave Moses those commandments, and it still is today.

These ten commandments have been central to the church for the last 2,000 years.

They've been central to discipleship for the last 2,000 years.

They've been central to the way that particularly Western society and its laws have been placed.

So over the next weeks what we're going to do as a preaching is we're going to one by one,

we're going to look at unpacking these commandments and what do they mean for us today?

What does it mean for us today?

And we're going to co-operate with the teachings of Jesus and we're going to go deeper,

and we're going to chase after living in those that honour God, honour people. Is that okay?

And just to finish off today's message, let's give a little context to when these first commandments,

these ten commandments first appear. Is that okay?

We've got to ask first of all, what were the people of God the Israelites called to?

They were called to be light to the world, demonstrating what it meant to be children of God.

Can I ask you today, do you know what you're called to be a Christian?

Jesus said, I'm the light of the world, but now you are the light of the world.

We have the same calling since we've been adopted into the family of God.

Who had God just set these Israelites free from?

Because you may not know the Bible, but just before God gave the ten commandments,

the people of Israel, His chosen people in those days, had been in captivity and slavery in Egypt

for hundreds of years, and God had just saved them out of slavery. Wow.

So God had got His chosen people to be a light to the world, but they've been enslaved.

Do you know what you've been saved from?

You've been saved from the sin and have been made a slave to sin, and you've been saved from the fear of death.

You have been brought out of your Egypt, which is a light away from God,

and brought into a promised land which is called the Kingdom of God, adopted into the family of Hebron.

Wow. So they've come out of Egypt, and they're in a wilderness, but where are they heading?

God's people, before they had these commandments, were heading to something called the promised land,

a place to call home.

Can I ask you, church, where are you heading? Where are we heading?

You've been called to be light. You've been saved out of slavery and sin and death,

and we're heading to something called the promised land.

Do you know the scripture says that you are a citizen, not Great Britain first?

If you're a Christian today, you're a citizen of heaven.

Isn't that incredible? Just happened to be British, hasn't it?

Wow. We have another kingdom from another place.

Who would God set His people free from?

And then lastly, how did God want His people to live where they finally reached this place called the promised land?

He gave them the ten commandments.

When you come into your freedom, when you come out of your slavery,

in order to shine brightly, embrace my priorities, and you will shine.

You will be my people, oh yeah.

I'll just start by posting it as a community.

He wants us to make His priorities our priorities,

because then the one who is right begins to shine very brightly in us and through us.

I'm just going to finish with these scriptures.

Why bother looking at the ten commandments for a little while?

It's very Sunday school.

Well, a lot of people in the scripture do not know this is Thursday.

The Lord is near and perfect.

But John chapter 14, verses 15 to 17, Jesus said these words.

John 14:15–17

He says, if you look, if you look, it's not a plea.

If you look, you'll be healed.

It's just knowledge questioning.

If you do have a problem, you'll keep my commandments.

It's just what you do.

And I'll ask the Father, and he will give you the helper to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth.

The world cannot receive him, because he perceives you or knows you.

He doesn't view them, because he dwells in you and will be with you.

Why?

There's no way we can look to the perfect Holy Requirements of the Lord.

But because we have the fills of the Lord Jesus, where He's Holy Spirit in our lives,

we can be led by the Holy Spirit to all righteousness.

We can work out as we go along now, we've got a Savior by our side, the Spirit is.

John chapter 16, Jesus says, I'm going to encourage you this morning,

John 16 · chapter mention

some of you sitting in church thinking the Lord's finishing me.

This is what he says, I still have many things to say to you, and you can't bear them all now.

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you up into all truth.

The second thing this morning, especially my thoughts, I said that's a lot.

The God gave me so much.

And so John said, Jesus, you also sent your Spirit to help us in our pursuit of you.

So that's the balance point.

I'm going to encourage you this morning, that what it takes to have relationship with God is very, very costly.

That cost was the life of Jesus.

He died on the cross and made a way to push our sins to one side and allow us to call it relationship.

He was far away.

In the fourth book, Jesus, Moses repeats the Ten Commandments,

because Moses is about to die, he doesn't actually get to live in the promised land.

That's another guy's job, Joshua.

And God, he gets Moses to repeat the commandments, like going to your promised land.

I need you to remember what I was commanding you to do.

But before Moses repeats the hard truth of the Ten Commandments, I think it's in chapter 16,

I think it's in chapter 4 of Deuteronomy.

God tells his people that there are some cities called the cities of refuge.

And the explanation that we have about the cities of refuge is due to God says to his people,

listen, not if you mess up, but when you mess up,

there are going to be three cities of refuge that you can run to for safety.

And even if you don't know, but you didn't realise it,

you'll get fair healing and you'll be treated with quietness.

And I got really interested, as I do, I wonder what the names of these cities mean.

These three cities of refuge, these places to run to,

just in case, or when we do mess up, we've got somewhere to run to,

the first city was called Biza, everyone say Biza.

Biza, full of Ethers, right?

Biza, Biza translates this name, it means rough God, unrefined God, remote fortress.

So if we struggle to follow God, before we get wiped out while we can't get,

there's a place of refuge for you unrefined bits of God, valuable and beautiful as you are,

a remote fortress that you can run to for God.

The second city is called Ramboth, also Ramboth.

Ramboth means this, dispute Laversoy.

Right?

Dispute Laversoy.

And then the third city was called Golan, have you heard of the Golan Pikes?

Golan means their captivity, their rejoicing.

You came here in fear, but you will go out rejoicing.

And this place, Golan, was in an area called Bashan, Bashan made proof of it.

And it was in a region called, the region of the Manasites.

The Manasites means causing to forget.

Oh Lord, we want to chase after you, we want to follow you, but God, thank God,

he knows how sometimes weak we are to follow him and pursue him with all holiness as we want to.

But just before the truth of the Lord is read out for a second time,

there's a grace called cities of refuge.

And if you are gold this morning, you may well be unrefined gold,

but the Lord wants to refine you at a remote fortress where you are protected.

And where he refines you, the dispute between you and God is Laversoy.

What was captivity becomes rejoicing, and out of that place you can become fruitful again.

He causes himself to forget many of our sins.

Did you notice that grace and truth was not a new testament to Jesus' idea?

It's all the way through like a stick of rock.

If you follow the Lord diligently and pursue him with all of your heart,

you will find constantly not truth and then grace, but it's always grace and then truth.

Oh, we are so accepted. Come on, let's stand to our feet this morning.

We are so accepted, we are so loved, we are so pursued by God,

and we can be pursued here without fear, we can step into this holiness with joy,

and we can embrace the priorities of God, and we can see fruitfulness within our lives,

we can see how our past is good, and we can move towards it.

Thank you Jesus.

Thank you, bless you all. Thank you God. Thank you God. Thank you God.

God bless.