Exodus - 20:1-17

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

Well, today we are, we are going to look at something that has

shaped morality and ethics in the world for thousands and

thousands of years. At this point, if you don't know

what I'm talking about, I'm obviously alluding to the 10

commandments. We get to read God's law as

originally given from his mouth. And so as we take that in, let

me just say this, some of you may not have the 10 commandments

memorized. That's OK, because I just read a

statistic recently that said Christians or people who profess

Christ, only about 48% of them actually have the 10

commandments memorized. Now, I'm not a big memorization

person. Like if you ever talk to me, I

might speak sometimes in Bible verses and they're like, oh,

where'd you, where's that from? And I'm like, man, I don't know.

That's Google. I know it.

I, I can't, I did not memorize where it was directly from.

That's who I am. Well, here's the deal though.

Even if you don't have those things memorized, I'm willing to

bet that they are self-evident enough that you know them.

So here's what I mean by that. Let me take you back in time for

those of us who are, you know, not tiny.

Let me take you back in time a little bit.

There was a time in your life, I have no doubt, when you had a

toy and what happened was somebody came and took that by

force as if it was their own. That child, that toddler knows

that the law exists. And how do I know that?

Because they start to get angry and maybe they'll throw punches

or maybe they'll just start crying.

But they know the law is real. They know morality matters

because they are hurt by something that shouldn't have

happened to them. The law is real.

It's it's the Bible tells us that the law is an objective,

unmovable anchor for morality. Now, I understand that a lot of

secular humanists and even atheists, they'll tell you that

the laws or the rules or the commandments that we ought to

follow as human beings, those things are rather, you know,

they ebb and flow. And it depends on what culture

it is and it depends on what time frame you live in.

And, and it depends on your feelings, how you feel

determines what you ought to or ought not to do.

I'm telling you that is a load of garbage.

That is a load of garbage, and even a toddler knows that that's

trash because of the example that I just gave you.

There is a real moral objective law that has to be adhered to if

in fact, we want to live the lives as God designed us to live

them, right? OK, so where are we going with

this? We are going to the place where

hopefully as we hear the, as we hear God's commandments, as we

hear his law, hopefully we're going to end up in a place where

it's not like, it's not like we walk out of here and we're like,

alright, checklist, I got it. And, and now I'm going to check

these boxes and I'm going to do the law just right to make sure

that God is happy with me. Can I tell you a reminder from

last week that God saves his people before he gives them the

law. Therefore, the law is not what

saves them. It's not why God loves them.

So if we think we can perform the law to make God happier with

us, He already loves you. Let me just give you the spoiler

alert for the end. He already loves you.

The law is built for the things of human flourishing.

And I'll, I'll get into that in a minute, but I don't want us to

walk out of here with a checklist, OK?

And the other thing I'm not going to do today, I'm not going

to like go through each of the 10 commandments and explain them

to you because I trust your intelligence.

I trust the fact that when God says, hey, don't murder, you're

like, oh, I get that. I understand that one.

If you don't understand that one, I am a police chaplain.

I've got some friends I would like to introduce you to.

They would love to talk to you about not murdering.

It's important. Now how are we going to look at

this text today? I want to give you a pretty like

clear line of logic. What this is going to look like

is first of all, we need to understand why we have the

commandments in the 1st place. That is because we live in a

world where everything is so relative and your truth is your

own and blah blah blah. It's garbage.

I'm, I'm promising you it. It doesn't work.

And so we need to understand first and foremost, why we have

the commandments. Second, we want to see the

structure of the commandments. And that sounds a little

academic, a little tea tree, but I promise it matters.

God doesn't do anything randomly or by chance.

There is a reason. It's structured in the way it

is. And then third, we're going to

see the ultimate Commandment Keeper preview.

It's not you and it's not me either.

Even though I have the microphone and I get to stand on

the stage, it's not me. All right, so there's your

spoiler alert for the day. We're going to read from Exodus

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

chapter 20 verses one through 17.

OK? That is when the God by voice

gives the law for the first time.

And so follow along with your Bibles if you want to, or you

can follow along on the screen. It will be moving for you.

So we read this in Jesus name because it is His word.

And God spoke 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 heaven

above, or that is in 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 the iniquity on the fathers to the children, to the

3rd and the 4th generation of those who hate Me, but showing

steadfast love to thousands 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, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all of your work.

But the 7th day is a Sabbath day 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, the sojourner who is within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and

all that is in them, and rested on the 7th day.

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

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

neighbour's house. You shall not covet your

neighbour's wife or his male servant, female servant, ox, his

donkey, or anything that is your neighbour's here in this reading

of God's Word. May it be blessed forever.

OK, so first and foremost, why the law?

Why the why the commandments in the 1st place?

I talked about this last week a little bit, so I'm not going to

go really long on this idea, but the reason why we have the Law

in the 1st place is for human flourishing.

Again, God already shows His love and His care for us before

the Law is ever spoken into existence.

He already loves us. And that goes for the

Israelites. That goes for you and me.

It is not the law that makes you righteous before God.

I have to say that again, it is not the law that's going to make

you righteous before God. That alone belongs to Jesus

Christ, correct? Amen.

Very good. So with, with, with this human

flourishing, when the commandments are followed,

obviously everybody wins. And I don't need to take you

through all 10 commandments. But if you think about it this

way, man, if I, if I start with loving God with all of my heart,

soul, mind, strength, everything else can flow out of that.

And, and therefore I, I can love my neighbor well, I can love my

family well, I can do all of these kinds of things much

better than I can on my own. If I'm just trying to get the

checklist right, It starts with my heart, right?

And we'll get into that in more in a minute.

Now, I also want to tell you that the foundation of the law

as God gives it is for organizational purposes.

It is to create a nation. Think about it this way.

If you have a nation of people who don't, who do not have a

common law in the land, that land is not going to survive

very long, right? When they're not common laws, we

tend to get hurt. The common people get hurt.

I'll put it to you this way, and I'm going to and I'm going to

pull forward right to this moment in our culture and our

society. Our government right now cannot

agree. They cannot agree for however

many days it's been. They are stuck.

They cannot agree on law and policy.

Therefore, what's happening is people are being hurt.

If you are one of those people who's been affected in a

negative way, whether that's because of finances or your job

or whatever, because they can't get it right, well, you know

what I'm talking about to a very personal level.

So The thing is, the law, it keeps us standing straight.

It keeps us in the right position as a nation.

Well, what happens when we don't agree?

We become kind of tilted and we're off balance.

And when we're tilted and off balance as a nation, then people

get hurt, then people get hurt. Now, I'm not trying to get into

an argument about politics, but we have to recognize that God

gives us laws, anchored morality for a specific reason, for the

flourishing of his people. When that fails, well, we see

the results. All right.

And then third, the, the law is there to act as a mirror.

I, I want to read chapter 1 of the book of James.

He talks about the law as a reflective surface, the law as a

reflective surface. And So what does the law do?

It looks at me, warts and all. It looks at me and says, you

know what? Here's where you've fallen

short. There's where you've fallen

short. Got to get that worked out.

It does that right. And, and, and I, and it's true,

I feel a little bit better now than I did at the 9:00 service.

But I'm telling you, when I wake up in the morning and I'm like,

kind of, I'm going to give you a visual.

You probably don't want it, but I'm giving it to you anyway.

And I'm kind of like just waking up and I'm like, why am I awake

right now? And I look up at the mirror.

I'm like, oh dude, too soon, Too soon.

Let's not do that right now. Like let me get in the shower.

Let me do something with this because I sleep and then like

the pair on my face is like going sideways and I look

insane. So the mirror, that's what the

law does it it exposes those things in us that God says no

to. And we need that.

We need that because again, otherwise what, what do we do?

We fall into a Society of relativism where, well, I don't

know, you can kind of do what you want and I'll kind of do

what I want. And, and no, there is an

anchored moral truth and we have to have that in order to thrive

and survive as a nation and as individuals.

But let me just tell you, as I have before already this

morning, we will not be justified by the law.

The Bible is very clear about that.

We will not be justified by following the law.

There is a young man who later in the Bible, and we'll talk

about him in a little bit, he got so close, he got so close

only to leave sad. And he learned the hard way, as

some of us sometimes need to do, that the law will not be the

thing that justifies us. That is not its purpose.

It is absolutely not its purpose.

That's why we have Jesus Christ. Now let me get into something

that's a little bit different. I hope that there are people who

leave this morning. They're like, I never thought of

it that way. If I, if you don't, you're

either smarter than me or you're not paying attention because the

law is set up in such a way that it, it's, it's logical and it

works out. So here's what I want you to

notice that the thoughts, words, indeed that kind of encompass

the law. Well, those are the things that

encompass the actions of our life as we think, as we talk, as

we do. That creates who we are as a as

as an individual, right? That is how we move through

life. Well, notice how in the first

table of the law, the first table is what we call us and

God. The second table of the law is

us and our neighbors, those people around us, vertical us

and God, horizontal us and our neighbors.

Well, what happens is it inverts itself.

So the first table of the law, it's thoughts, words, and then

deeds, and then on the other half of the table it's deeds,

words, and thoughts. Have you ever noticed that?

Maybe you haven't. I hope that's interesting to you

because I'm going to keep talking about it.

Now we start with thoughts with God.

Why? Why?

Well, thoughts would be a similar word in the Bible to

your heart position. The Bible talks about the heart

not as the physical thing inside your chest, but it's the it's

the seat where all of your emotions and your thoughts come

from. So what happens first with God

is it has to start with our thoughts or our heart.

It has to start with worship and recognizing who he is and

everything else can flow out of that.

After that, then we're ready to speak.

When my heart is aligned correctly with God, then I'm

ready to use my mouth. Not before then, because if I

use my mouth before my heart is right with God, I will probably

mess that up pretty bad. And in fact, I do and I have a

lot. I do not keep the law, surprise,

surprise. So when my heart is right with

God, then I know how to speak about Him and to him correctly.

I know how to do that then. And, you know, we then kind of

move into the deeds. Now, I think it's really

interesting that the first deed that is talked about is actually

a deed that's more passive. It's an action that is sometimes

a lack of action. And that's a good thing.

So when we get to deeds finally, after our thoughts are harder in

the right position, our our words are honoring to God, then

we move into instantaneously rest.

Isn't that crazy? Isn't that cool, man?

I think God is in favor of weekends.

I just believe that the reason why is because he tells us the

first deed we are to do, the first action is to rest.

Now what that rest looks like is worship.

So some of you like your Sabbath.

Your day off is today and you're doing the right thing.

You're starting that with worship.

Maybe you started it with coffee first, but you're still here

worshiping. And that's a, that's a great

start to your week, right? Well, then what happens is we

move over to the human element, the second table of the law.

And like I said, it inverts on itself.

So why does it do that? Well, it's because let me put it

to you this way. I've heard this before and I

love it. God doesn't need your good

works, but your neighbor sure does.

Isn't that, isn't that the truth?

Here's the thing. Your neighbor, I'm sure, cannot

read your mind. And when you use words with your

neighbor, somebody on the horizontal plane, often times

those words fall short. They fail to do what they're

supposed to do. Some of you are probably highly

empathetic people, and there are moments in your life where

you're like, I don't, I don't have words for this.

This is too much. And that's OK.

Maybe we ought to just keep our mouths shut sometimes.

Maybe so as we think about deeds coming first when it as in

relation to our neighbor man, Saint Francis gets the credit

for this, but it wasn't really him who said it.

He said somebody said preach the Gospel at all times and if

necessary use words. Preach the Gospel at all times,

and if necessary, use words, deeds first.

When it comes to the horizontal, when it comes to you and me,

let's act. Let's, let's show the love of

God first, and then we can start to talk about it, right?

OK. And that's where we get into

words. I don't have to tell you, but

I'll just say it out loud just in case nobody knows.

Lying is bad. You probably shouldn't lie.

It's not good, right? Let's just get that on the open.

Don't lie, good gravy, help yourself out.

And especially when it comes to our neighbor, you know,

especially when it comes to other people.

Why is that and so important when it comes to other people?

Because every single person you talk about is an image bearer of

God. Every single one.

Therefore, you do not have the right to slander somebody who is

made in the image of God. Can I tell you that if you stop

and you analyze all the words that you say in any given day,

if the majority of them are negative and they're about other

people, first of all, the Bible would call you a gossip, and

that is not a compliment. But second of all, recognize

that you are talking about somebody made in his image.

How dare you? How dare me?

We have to use our words wisely. They're powerful.

You want to know why no words are powerful?

Because they build up and they kill and they destroy.

They have the power to do both. And we know words are powerful

because when God created the earth, he didn't do so with

magic fairy dust. He did it by speaking.

Words are powerful. Use them well.

And then finally we have thoughts now, our thoughts with

our neighbors again. I'm sure that they cannot read

your mind, but the thoughts around here are built on the

fact that man, when, when my neighbor is doing well, when

somebody around me is doing well and I look at their car,

whatever, it's not my job to be jealous of that.

It's not my job to want that for me.

It is my job to take care of my family and make sure that I'm

providing what they need. And as we have sang so well this

morning, when I go to God first, when I go back to step one, when

I go back to step one and my heart's in the right position,

then and only then will my thoughts be what they need to be

to live a healthy and prosperous life.

The Bible says out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth

speaks. So if your heart is overflowing

with something that's less than godly, you know you've been

feeling it with the wrong thing. Go back to step one.

Mm, hmm. That's how that works now,

thoughts, words, deeds. And I, I didn't talk about the

on your mother and father thing, but it actually encompasses all

three things. And I spoke about this briefly

last week where it's like, hey man, if I can create a healthy

household where we are being LED in worship of God, where we are

honoring him and what he wants, then we all move out into the

world and we become better citizens.

But it starts there. That's why thoughts, words, and

deeds all fit in that one that kind of sits right in the middle

of the commandments. It's really cool how God

designed it, isn't it? I don't know if you ever thought

about this, but when I discovered this, I was like,

whoa, man, that is really cool. I never thought about it that

way. Now we have to say then the why

of the law, how it's structured, how it moves, and how it changes

us. We have to say then that the law

is good. I, I wrote this down on here

because I, I just love this and hopefully we can all repeat this

at least in our hearts if we don't have it memorized.

The law of the Lord is perfect. Reviving the soul, the testimony

of the Lord is sure making wise the simple we could all use a

little bit more of that now the ultimate commandment keeper,

because I think we've pretty well established it's not us.

I, I mean, I could have stopped after the very first commandment

and we all would have had to have like pled guilty out of the

gate. We would have and if you're

telling me anything different, well, you're just lying to me

and then you broke another commandment.

Good job. No, we don't do that.

We don't love the Lord with our heart, soul, mind, strength and

therefore out of out of that lack of that we, we, we sin, we

sin, we fall short. So who then doesn't sin?

Sunday school answer. It's Jesus.

It's Jesus. He's not the one who sins.

He is perfect. And you know, the Jesus's

interaction with the law is really interesting.

I can't get into all of it. But as he preaches the Sermon on

the Mount, he actually takes the law and he puts it on steroids.

He increases it so much that then you look at it and you're

like, this is really, really impossible.

I can't do this. There's no way.

Who can save this wretched man? Well, the person who gives it is

the one who also covers it. Let me let me share and then

I'll close up kind of with this. I want to share a short story

with you of a man who got so close he was doing so good.

So this comes out of Matthew chapter 19.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

It's commonly known as the rich young man or the rich young

ruler. It's just a short little bit,

but it's highly impactful if you understand it.

And behold, a man came up to him saying, teacher, what good deed?

What good deed must I do to have eternal life?

And he Jesus said to him, why do you ask me about what is good?

There is only one who is good. If you would enter the enter

life, keep the commandments. It's funny that Jesus like

doesn't say, hey man, just believe in me.

He's going to play along with this guy for a minute.

He said to him, which ones? And Jesus said, you shall not

murder, good start. You shall not commit adultery,

you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness on your

father and mother, and you shall love your neighbors yourself.

The young man said to him, I have kept all of these, what do

I still lack? You see how he feels it.

He feels that there's something missing, even though he can

justify himself. What do I still lack?

Jesus said to him, If you would be perfect, go sell what you

possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in

heaven, and then come follow me. When the young man heard this,

he went away sorrowful because he had great possessions, or you

might say great wealth. Friends, this whole interaction,

it just points to the fact that when our hearts are in the wrong

position, we will absolutely assume that we can do this

thing, life well enough to earn God's favor.

And I just got to tell you unequivocally, that is never

going to happen. It is not going to happen.

You will never be a good enough person to earn God's love.

And that's the point. You don't have to be.

You don't have to be because He sent his one and only Son to

take the burden off of your shoulders of the law.

Now does that mean that we don't follow the law to the best of

our abilities? Of course we do because that is

for human flourishing. That is the way God designed us.

But to think in a self-righteous prideful brain that I could do

what only Jesus can do. Man, I'm I'm just going to walk

away sad like the rich guy. I'm just going to walk away

really sad. Friends, we have to recognize

that Jesus is perfect, adhere to the law exactly as he was

supposed to, and yet he didn't keep that for himself.

He could have. He could have said, well, I've

given you guys the playbook. I've given you guys the example.

You wrote all these things down about my life.

Now go and do likewise. Good luck.

But He didn't, did He? Instead, He traded places with

us. He said, I'm going to take my

perfection, I'm going to take my righteousness, I'm going to take

my honoring of God, and I'm going to give it away to all of

you. And then He did just that when

He was hung on a cross and gave His body and blood for our sins.

That's how that works. He gives us His righteousness.

In fact, the Bible tells us He covers us in his righteousness.

We are covered with the rightness towards God, not

because we can follow the law perfectly, but because He

already did on our behalf. That should give us great peace.

That should give us great assurance that it's not about

us. You make that mistake far too

often. You make it about us.

We feel too great about ourselves.

We feel too bad about ourselves. We kick ourselves around and

what we don't realize what that we're doing is we're letting the

devil win. We're letting him win.

Don't let him do that. Don't let him beat you down

because you're not following the law the way that God has

prescribed. He already loved you before He

gave the law. If you've been struggling with

that, I'm going to pray in just a second.

And I want you to pray with me that God would release you from

these terrible thoughts of I have to do more.

I have to try harder because that's just not what Jesus says.

Jesus said I did more and I tried my hardest and it's

enough. Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, you are good and you are gracious.

You are full of mercy and steadfast love.

Your grace wins because Jesus Christ gave everything.

Lord, I pray today that if there are people, hearts, people made

in your image in this room that are suffering and struggling

either with pride or with being downcast in their soul.

Lord, would you lift up our souls to meet you where Jesus

is. Lift up our hearts, Lord, so

that we can be free. Lift up our souls so that we

might glorify you, the Maker of heavens and earth, or lift us up

to the foot of the cross that we might believe and that we might

walk out of this place as free people because of what He's

done. Father, we give you all the

glory because you have done everything possible to bring us

home. Lord, we bless your name and we

pray all this in the name of King Jesus our Lord, Amen.

Thanks for listening to ERC Sundays.

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