10x: 10x Devotion with Rev. Caz Minter

Good morning, church. I am so, so glad to be with you tonight. I'll do an official installation. I think that's when I'm officially pastor. So this one's a freebie.

I can say whatever I want. This is not there yet. So I am glad to be with you and to be studying the 10 commandments together. It's a good day to be the church, to be together, to gather together and sing and be just ushered into the presence of God, to read the word, to pray. It's just an incredible thing that we get to do every week as we gather for worship.

Would you pray with me as we open the scripture? God, this is your word. You've given it to us, and we long to hear your word. We need it. So speak to us this morning.

May we hear your voice, grab ahold of our hearts. And and, father, would you would you give us your Holy Spirit to live this out? We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Well, we're looking at the 10 commandments.

This comes from the... You know, this is the Old Testament. The story actually comes up two different times. The first time is when the people of Israel are... They are...

They they had been slaves in Egypt, and and God raises up Moses and leads them out of Egypt with the plagues and the crossing of the sea, and and then they're in the wilderness. And and God gives them the 10 commandments there. And then later, they're getting ready to go into the promised land. This is a generation later. And they're...

As they're getting ready to go into the promised land, it's... We're reminded of those commandments again. So we actually see the 10 commandments in two different places in the Old Testament. Now, you need to understand how this works because the commandments are really... They're they're a covenant.

They're they're sort of setting the boundaries of what the relationship is gonna look like. These are people that have been led out of Egypt, but they were they they didn't really know. They they they kind of have a vague idea of who God was, but they didn't have a real sense of who God was and that God would care for them. And and so here they are in the wilderness wandering, and they're just not sure what's gonna happen next. Though though their lives had been in slavery, at least in slavery, or at least that was their logic that you see in the scripture, at least in slavery, they they knew how things were gonna work, but here they didn't.

And so God gives Moses the law. He he gives Moses the law to give to the people. He gives them these commandments and the law, and and this is really a setting of the relationship. This is saying, I'm gonna be your God, and you're gonna be my people. And this is how it works if we if we do this well together.

It's a determine the relationship talk. I don't know if you ever had one of those. I've got college kids in my house, and every once in while I say, you know, are you dating anybody? And they'll say, I don't know. And I'll be like, you don't know?

What is that? You know, What do mean you don't know? You somebody needs to sit down and say, What is this? That's really what was happening as we get to the 10 Commandments. God was saying, This is what the relationship looks like.

I'll be your God. You'll be my people. I will take care of you. I'll guide you and direct you. You'll follow me and obey me.

And and and this is this is what God is giving them. Now in Deuteronomy, this is the second time the commandments come up and the and the law comes out. In in Deuteronomy chapter 30, we get this little glimpse, though, of how the spirit in which God gives them the law. So if you have your Bible with you, you can use one in the pew. It'll be on the screens as well, but but you can follow along.

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

In Deuteronomy chapter 30 and verse 19, this is what he says. This is God speaking to the people of Israel as they're getting ready to head into the promised land. He's reminding them of the covenant, of the of the law. And he says, this day I call the heavens and the earth as witness against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now.

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

He's begging them, now choose life so that you and your children may live. He gives them the law and he says, this way, if you live this way, this is the way of flourishing. Live into this flourishing. Please choose this. If you choose the other way, if you choose to live your own way, it will lead to death and destruction.

It it will... And in a minute, we'll see it'll lead to that generationally. It it will lead to brokenness that is generational brokenness. So don't choose that. Reminds me of, learning to discipline kids.

Cammy and I have four kids and two older ones and two younger ones. So those are second try. You know what I mean? We get to do it all again. We we got better.

You know? And and and so we're we're always learning. And and we'll read a book on parenting, trying to figure things out, trying to trying to parent well. And at some point, we were doing this parenting thing where you're supposed to give your kids decisions. You know?

They're supposed to have a decision to, you know, to make. That's not... My preferred way is just I say to do that, and then that's what you do. Right? Like, that's how I like to parent.

Do that, you know, and then you do... But, but we're supposed to give them decisions. So Cammy's always reminding me, you know, give them a decision. So I'd get ready to say, hey. You know, do this.

And, and she's like, no. You gotta give them decisions. So I say, okay. Here's the deal. You can do this and live, or you can or you could do that, and the worst punishment you've ever...

Which one do you choose? You know? Which which choice do you want? That's kinda what God is doing to to the people, the people of Israel. Choose life, he says.

And if you do, if you do, it leads to flourishing. The, the first half of these commands, the the 10, the first half all deal with their relationship with God, and so he's orienting them towards himself. And the second half, how do they deal with each other? And we'll get to that in a few weeks as we, go forward. So, God brings Moses up onto this mountain.

They're they're in the wilderness. They've just come out of Egypt, and they're in the wilderness, and and and they're a little lost. And God brings Moses up to the mountain to give him the commands, to give Moses the law, and now he's gonna go back down the mountain and give that law to the people. And while he's up there, God is inscribing the law on these tablets. And I want us to go back and just look at what he inscribed.

So this is Exodus chapter 20, and we read it just a minute ago. Exodus chapter 20, and, and we're gonna pick it up. This is just what we call the second commandment. Exodus chapter 20 verse four. So, it says this, you shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth, beneath, or in the waters below.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention Exodus 20 · chapter mention Exodus 20 · chapter mention

Now that's creation language. Right? He's going back to the creation story where he separates out the heaven and the earth, and he's saying, don't create an image of a God. Verse five, you shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I am the Lord your God and a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. He's giving them these commands.

He's saying this is the way of life, and if you choose a different way, it it will impact you, it will impact your family, it will impact your children and your children's children. Generational generational brokenness. But but if you choose life. He says, I'm a I'm a passionate... That word jealous is often translated even passionate.

I'm a passionate God. And if you choose life, I'll give you... If you choose to follow me, I will give you life. Now when he says, don't don't make any image, the old King James... Some of you might be familiar with the 10 commandments in the old King James.

It it uses this word. It says, You should make no graven images. Graven images. That's not a word we use that often. But he's saying idols.

Don't make idols. Idols were common at the era, at the time. They were they were all over. In fact, we found all kinds of idols all over, archaeologists have, all over that part of the world from back in that era. And it was common.

That's what people did. They would they would make an idol. In in fact, they they use one word for it always is the Salem. The Salem was a... Was this word for an idol that they would make.

Then they had this ceremony, and after the ceremony, they would begin to worship that idol. They would put their worship on it. And it's what all the people in all the world around the Israelites did. But when we get to this text, we would expect the the text back there to be saying, well, you're you're... Don't make a Salem.

We would expect that to be the idol word that's used. But something's going on behind the scenes in in the text. It doesn't use the word selem. It uses the word passel. Passel's not the word that you would expect there.

As they looked all over the the ancient Near East, that word doesn't come up, passel, but the scripture uses passel. Well, passel's a little different. I mean, it is an idol word. It's like making an idol, but it's emphasizing something. It's it's a hand carved idol.

What's it saying? Well, the text is being really clear. Don't make gods yourself. Don't handcraft gods. Do not do not make gods.

They're empty and powerless and will lead to destruction. And so the Old Testament second commandment right here is do not hand carve little gods. And you say, okay, you know, I I get that. I mean, they they they shouldn't do that. But guys, this is a this is a huge thing.

Now I want you to see, what happens right away because it's crazy when you start to look at this in the story. Moses is up there on the mountain. God's talking to him. God's writing the tablets out by hand, and God's going a little slow for the people of Israel. They're not...

They're they're they're a little impatient, And they start to wonder, what's gonna happen to us? And they start to feel lost again. And they start to feel the anxiety of I've gotta make something happen. So let's look at this story together. It comes up just a few chapters later in Exodus chapter 32.

Exodus 32 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 32. This happens while Moses is with God on the mountain, and and God is writing the tablets out. This is what it says. Chapter 32 verse one. When the people saw that Moses was taking so long in coming down the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, come, make us gods who will go before us.

Exodus 32 · chapter mention

As for this fellow Moses, who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what's happened to him. I kinda like that language. They're like, Moses who? You know, that that fellow. Yeah, he just led you out of Egypt, but he's gone.

I don't know. He's not here, and we've got to get this thing going on. We're here. We're unprotected. We we...

It's out of our control. Verse two. Aaron answered them, take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me. So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol, cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool.

And then they said, these are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. Now, the text is pointing something out. It's it's a repeat of what we already saw, actually. He he wants you to know that they put the gold in the fire, but as they took it out of the fire, listen to the emphasis, they they they handed it to him, and he made it into an idol, cast it in the shape of a calf, and he fashioned it with a tool. What's the text highlighting?

He made this with his hands. It's something that he made because they were they were trying to move things forward. They were they were trying to take control. They they they wanted to make things happen for themselves. They wanted a God that they could see and touch and and and maybe even control.

Get... A God that they could get to do the things that they thought needed to be done. Now Moses is told by God, go back down the mountain. And, it doesn't go well. Okay?

This is... Go a little bit further forward. This is verse 19. Still chapter 32, but in verse 19. Says, when Moses approached the camp and he saw the calf and the dancing, because they were worshiping and dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain.

Now, what tablets? Those are the ones God hand wrote, God's handwritten tablets. Moses was very angry. I think maybe he went too far. You know, I don't know.

That's a lot to smash, God's handwritten tablets, but, but he smashes them down in just anger. And then verse 20, and he took the calf the people had made, and he burned it in the fire. And then he grounded into powder, And then he scattered it on the water, and then he made him drink it. Did Moses like this calf? Not really.

Right? Not really. He was like, we're gonna... There's not gonna be any trace of this calf. And he says, he says to Aaron, what did these people do to you that you led them into such great sin?

And Aaron responds, do not be angry, my lord. Aaron answered, you know how prone these people are to evil. Now Aaron goes on and he starts to describe the interaction he had with the people. And in verse 24, I want you to listen to how Aaron describes it. Notice what Aaron left out.

Listen. So I told them, whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off. And then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf. Slightly edited story. You know, he missed the I made this by hand with a tool.

It's just kind of what comes out of the fire. Now in the fifteen hundreds, there's a reformed, the old reformed theologian John Calvin is writing, and he's reflecting on scripture, and he's reflecting on humans. And he gives us this sort of a paraphrase of what he said, but he gives us this, the statement, the human heart is an idle factory. What's he saying? It's not this that idols were these things, you know, back then, four thousand years ago that people would make and it was a, you know, was a gold thing and they put.

You probably don't have one of those. You probably don't have a little statue that you put somewhere. Some of you some of you might have an idol that you drive around sometimes, and then you park it, you know, carefully in your garage. You might, but but but, but we probably don't have that. But Calvin says, no, no, no, no.

This is way deeper than that. And that that's a physical representation. But our heart tends to make our own gods. Like like, we get anxious. We we we we get worried that things aren't in control.

We're we're to driven by that anxiety of what's gonna happen to us, and we wanna make things happen. Back in 2009, my wife and I moved our family to Austin, Texas to plant a church. And it was the kind of plant that you shouldn't do. We... It's what they call a parachute job.

So they brought us there, and they... You know, we were dropped into a a community that we didn't know with no one. We didn't know anybody there. We had a little bit of money, but we were watching that, you know, dwindle, and we had to just start a church. And so you do that by going to the soccer field and trying not to be creepy.

Right? You're like, hey, my name's Caz. You wanna be in a church with me? You know? How do you feel about driving a trailer and setting up a soundboard?

You know? I mean, and and that was... Those were awkward conversations. And and, but we were like, okay, this is what we're supposed to do. And we felt really called to.

It was a great thing. And so we leaned in and we were working so hard. And we launched with a whimper. That's how we launched. It it really was a whimper.

And we launched this church. And then about two weeks in, we had grown it even smaller than the whimper we started with. That was... It was, it was tough. And we started to realize just how tough this was.

And we're we're trying to invite people. We're inviting everybody. We knew it was, man, the pressure on that just felt so immense. And every week, you know, I would count how many people were there, and slowly people started to come. It took time, but a little...

You know, a person would come here and there. But these were new Christians, new followers of Christ. They were just checking things out. So they wouldn't come every week. They would come one week, and I wouldn't see them for three weeks, and then they'd be back.

And I'm worried the whole time. And it started to it started to just just get difficult. It started to eat at my heart and my soul. And I I didn't realize it, but but my wife did and people around me. And they're like, Caz, you're moods, the way you treat the family, the way your...

Just your mood itself is tied to the number of people that come through the door on a Sunday. And you're just watching that. And I started to realize that what was going on in me is that my career became what really defined me. And I had to do everything I possibly could for that little that little church to be successful because otherwise I feel like a failure. That was where my purpose was.

My career and the success in that career, my purpose was all wrapped up in that. And my heart was held by that. And it it got tough, guys. It got ugly. And there was another pastor nearby, another church planter.

His name is Matt Doebler. Matt really saved me. Matt said, hey, let's get together on Monday mornings and have coffee. And I said, as long as you pay for the coffee, because I'm church planner and it's not, you know, I don't know if we're gonna have... I don't know if I'm gonna have salary.

So, know, yeah. And and Matt, met with me every Monday for two years. And every Monday, Matt would look at me and he would say, Caz, who are you trying to please this week? Caz, who are you who are you living for? He he would look at me and and he would just remind me of the grace of the gospel, and he would say, Caz, the grace of the gospel is for you.

And he would just remind me, you are God's beloved. You're God's son, and he loves you. And you're called to faithfulness, not success. He just kept reminding me of who I was, and more importantly, whose I was. It was such a powerful thing because it began to turn my affection back toward the one who called me rather than the the pressure cooker of having a good career that just can't fail at all costs.

It was in that moment that I started to realize what idols really look like. Because I had made my my career, my success in in in my business, I had made that an idol. I mean, I didn't mean to make it an idol. It just sort of happened, you know? I put it in the fire and this came out, you know?

There's a pastor, a pastor, an old pastor and theologian named Tim Keller, who used to write about this and speak about this. And Keller wrote a book even on counterfeit gods that's really, really helpful with these things. And he gives a definition of what an idol really is, biblically speaking. He says this. He says, an idol is anything that you look to for what only God can give you.

If I'm looking to my career for hope and a sense of purpose and a sense of satisfaction, that's an idol. Now when Keller really starts messing around with me is is when he he goes a little further because he goes, it's not the obvious thing. You know, you might have things in your life that you you kinda idolize, but you know that's probably bad and you probably shouldn't, and so you get that. He says, that's not the dangerous stuff. The dangerous thing is that most idols most often are good things that have been made into ultimate things.

Guys, that gets me. You know, the career that I'm called to, that's a good thing. But when you make it an ultimate thing. And if you are looking to your if you're looking to your career to fulfill the... What only God can give you, that's gonna let you down a 100% of the time.

But see, I had used my tools and carved out and I didn't even I didn't even notice. I talk to parents all the time and and families, just, you know, and and and you know what happens very, very often? It's just it's just common. They want their kids to to be successful, but somewhere along the way everything starts to turn towards making those kids successful and happy. And all of a sudden, that's where they get their purpose from.

So sort of everything is driven by their kids being successful and happy. And suddenly, what is a good thing, you should help your kids to thrive, but what is a good thing can become an idol. And when it goes poorly, and that's when they usually come and talk to me, it goes poorly and all of a sudden, the anger and the rage and the depression and they can't let it go. Those are things. If there's anything in your life that if it's taken away or goes poorly and all of a sudden you can't even control the emotions, that's a sign.

This is an idol. So what do you do with that? If it's your career or or your family or... So many people I know that the sort of the idealized American dream, right house and maybe a boat, maybe a maybe a lake cottage or something, you know, like, it becomes an idol. And I have bad news.

Those idols are empty. They're empty. In fact, there are several different words that are used for idol throughout the scripture kind of translated that way. And one of the major ones is empty. It's like an empty image.

Idol, something that is empty, is powerless. That is so true for the the gods that we tend to make in our own lives. We tend to make these empty images, and we serve them. Now, what do you do about it? How do you change it?

Well, Moses smashed it, ground it up, put it in the water, and then made everybody drink it. You know? And not a bad plan. Right? You you you turn away from it.

You you turn away from these idols. You you put them away. You do need to do that. That's important. But the second part of the story is this.

After the the commands are given to the people and it goes poorly and and but God God has grace for them, and and he gives them the commands again. And and then after the commands, he has them build a tabernacle, a tent. And there were people that lived in tents. And then there's this incredible scene in that passage. You should go read it sometimes.

Unbelievable. God sort of comes down the mountain, and they see this physical manifestation of God moving into the tent. He moves into their neighborhood. He gets close to them, and he offers them relationship with him. Guys, idols get ahold of us.

We don't notice it sometimes, but they grip us, and they're hard to turn away from. You should. You should just... You should push them away. But the the best way to do that is to not just turn away, but to turn towards God.

That you would begin to lean in to this God who has given you grace, who loves you, who reaches out in his affection toward you. And if you can turn your heart and begin to reorient your heart towards an affection with God, that begins to fill this void. That begins to lead you in the way of life. You see, the second commandment comes after the first one. That first one, remember, was don't have any other gods before me.

It was be close to this God. He's the Lord your God. Lean into that relationship. And so the second commandment, if you want to get it right, it says turn towards the first one. Get close to God.

Let go of making your own idol, and devote yourself fully to Jesus. In the New Testament, we see in Philippians, there's the song that we think is probably one of the earliest songs that the church sang, And it gives us the gospel story. And it goes like this. It says, Jesus... We don't know how the the...

You know, we don't know the music to it, but it says, Jesus, being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing, and that word nothing is also translated empty. He emptied himself, taking on the very nature of a servant, becoming obedient to death, even death on the cross, and then God glorified him. Now the song says that we should follow in this example. We should empty ourselves.

We should give up making our own idols. We're empty. If we if we recognize it, if we see it, the way we're often living leads towards emptiness. And recognizing this emptiness, give it up and let God lean in, grab hold of you, and lift you up. Because our God specializes in lifting up empty people, filling us up, giving us purpose, and and sending us on mission with him.

Today, what I wanna do is invite you into a relationship with the living God. And you may say, you know, I I I know Jesus is God, and I I'm I'm down with all that. But but this is more. This is a step further than just just saying, yeah, that's right. I want to invite you to say, no, no, no.

I wanna make Jesus the Lord of my life. That I'll serve him and follow him, that I'll lean into this relationship with him. Because the scripture tells us if we live that way, well, that's how you have a blessing to a thousand generations. But if you choose to be driven by the aisles you've created, you're gonna find brokenness, not just for you, but for your family and for your children's children. So choose life.

Would you pray with me? God, the the idols are hard. Sometimes I don't even see them. Would you help me to recognize the idols that I've made? Would you help me to see the idols that I'm living for instead of living for you?

And then, father, grab hold of us. Grab hold of each one of us with your incredible grace. Draw close to us. Father, today, we wanna make you lord of our lives. We pray this in your holy name.

Amen. Would you stand with me? We sing together.