I pray.
Have me blessing you, O'er and O'er,
Come and pray to me.
When the darkness closes in one,
Still I will say,
Blessed be the name of the Lord,
Blessed be your name.
Blessed be the name of the Lord,
Blessed be your glorious name.
The land that is meant to rule,
Which brings all that by their soul,
Blessed be your name.
Blessed be your name,
Found in the desert plains,
Come through the dawn with your name,
Blessed be your name.
Have me blessing you, O'er and O'er,
Take back your faith.
When the darkness closes in one,
Still I will say,
Blessed be the name of the Lord,
Blessed be your name.
Blessed be the name of the Lord,
Blessed be your glorious name.
Blessed be your name,
The sun shines down on me,
The world of essence should be,
Blessed be your name.
Blessed be your name,
The road marked with suffering,
Was made in the offering,
Blessed be your name.
Have me blessing you, O'er and O'er,
Take back your faith.
When the darkness closes in one,
Still I will say,
Blessed be the name of the Lord,
Blessed be your name.
Blessed be the name of the Lord,
Blessed be your glorious name.
Come and take away,
You can come and take away,
Our heart will choose you,
Our flesh shall be your name.
Have me blessing you, O'er and O'er,
Turn back your faith.
When the darkness closes in one,
Still I will say,
Blessed be the name of the Lord,
Blessed be your name.
Blessed be the name of the Lord,
Blessed be your glorious name.
I'm so happy today about recent events,
because yesterday Erin did manage to get married to his bride,
and Caitlin got married to her groom,
and now they're husband and wife,
and praise God for that.
That's close to what wasn't quite like childbirth,
but it was quite something else.
It was a little bit more like death of thousands of deaths
than childbirth, which is like death
getting hit by a roller coaster or something.
But praise God, we made it through,
and thank you for the support,
prayer support and whatnot,
and we're very pleased.
We had a lot of good positive comments,
a lot of witnessing that went on,
and talking from the sermon to the mini-sermon,
and a lot of people talking about God at the dinner afterwards,
so that was kind of cool.
That's what it's supposed to be about.
We'll come back together at this inspirational moment,
and I want to encourage you to remember to pray for one another.
We have been in lots and lots of attacks,
in health and in different ways.
We've been pretty blessed overall,
but there's been lots of attacks,
so pray for one another.
We'll pray for ourselves,
but also pray for our world, which is struggling
as we open up for a prayer together.
Father in heaven, you are an awesome God,
a greater God,
and you're not the God of the deists,
as you say, you just set it running and let it go,
but you are the God on the throne.
You're the God of all creation.
You're the God of love.
You're the God who is love.
You're the God who gives.
You give infinitely, abundantly, above and beyond
that which we can imagine.
We are grateful for all that you've done.
For at the same time, we confess to you,
we recognize that we deserve something less
than all the blessings that we get.
We do this in the work of the grace of Jesus,
and it would be hell for eternity.
We are grateful for your forgiveness.
We ask for it again today,
in any way that you fail me.
Thank you that it's available to Jesus.
Thank you for this place.
Thank you to those who came this morning
to work and to serve and prepared a lesson
and prepared a sermon for your word,
to those who protected your word,
to those who rewrote and copied copies
for thousands of years
so we could have it in its inherent form
for us to read, for us to study,
for us to learn from today.
Thank you for protecting your people,
for providing for us,
and giving us the blessings that you have received,
for making us strong to overcome
things like illnesses and relationship troubles
and getting injured and changes in finances
and inflation.
Lord, we see that in our church.
We've always been blessed.
We're grateful that it continues.
We're asking now, Lord, to bless our world.
I know that that's a big ask
because you don't want to bless folks
that that blessing will keep them from coming to you.
And so we're asking, Lord, to give people
what they really need.
For those who will wake up, give a wake-up call.
For those who want to serve you,
give them strength to do so.
For those who are endeavoring to become faithful,
help us stand true and do what it is
that you have us to do.
Be found faithful.
For those who are encountering difficulties
in this world, whether it be everything
from ailments to temptation,
demons and evil spirits,
and everything in between and everything else
that can go on that list,
we ask you, Lord, give us enough light.
Give us enough strength.
Give us enough faith to see our God at work
and to join you wherever you are working.
Bless this service, Lord,
because we worship you today.
We have more reason to worship you.
We are not the complainers who died in the sand.
We are the glorious children of our God, recreated,
being recreated daily in the image of Christ.
Help us stay focused and put our eyes
where they belong on the shepherd.
The sheep follow.
He is our glorious good shepherd.
Thank you, Jesus, for your sacrifice
in making this possible.
We pray all this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
He's on me.
Alright, would you stand and join us?
It's up to me.
I can do it this time.
Alright.
Stand in line.
It goes.
Everyone means forgiveness and this I will say to you all,
the love of nation.
The Savior, He handles the mountains. My God is fighting to save. He is fighting to save.
Forever after our salvation, we will stand strong for the great.
Jesus, conquer the great.
To make me as you find me, all my people will follow.
I give my follow, everything I believe in. Now I join my own.
The Savior, He handles the mountains. My God is fighting to save. He is fighting to save.
Forever after our salvation, we will stand strong for the great.
He is fighting to save.
The Savior, He can move the mountains.
My God is fighting to save. He is fighting to save.
Forever after our salvation, we will stand strong for the great.
The Savior, He can move the mountains.
The Savior, He can move the mountains. My God is fighting to save. He is fighting to save.
All right, you are already on your feet.
If I would have some young people that would like to join me at the front, this morning.
A little too much yelling song here.
Come on, come on, come on. Give me some young people.
Get up here.
Good morning Tyler. Good morning, good morning. All right, here we go.
All right.
Get up here.
Good morning, good morning.
Good morning.
Good job, good job, good job.
Good morning.
It's an inspirational moment. I get that. It's a subliminal message.
All right. Well, so I just want to remind you of this quick thing about prayer and then we'll move right into it.
So this is your last run up. The drum roll is rolling right now.
Thinking about how the Lord would have you to share this morning.
So I have an opportunity through Bless Every Home website to and you can sign up and you can get the addresses and the names first and last name usually whoever's listed on the house of the house around you.
You can do 25 houses, 50 houses, 250 is the maximum houses of people around you whose names and addresses you would get.
I get emails and it's been a blessing to me for about 100 houses right around and during COVID I was able to go out and deliver letters to those houses and know the names of the people that I was in.
It's not always accurate because if people just move and things like that might not be accurate, but you can do that and then it's free.
So you can get a little prompt and get it as often as you want.
If you only want to pray once a week, then they'll send you an email once a week reminding you to pray and if you want to pray for five people once a week, then they'll put five names in there, five names and addresses of people that live nearby you.
And if you want to pray every day, I pray Monday through Friday generally speaking for people that live around me.
So if you want to do that, you'll walk this free. I bless every homeless website. I can send you a link to sign up if you want to do that or I can sign you up.
Some people in here are already signed up. I don't know if you've looked at it recently, I'm going to encourage you.
Also, this is a somewhat new thing we've talked about before, but you can get the list on paper if you don't want to do it by email.
They'll give you the list of the names and addresses. Now that would be, that could be useful like if you want to send out a little card or a little letter or a little notice to let your neighbors know that you're praying for them, then you can do that.
So you can take the 50 houses nearest you, get their names and addresses. Now, you know, if somebody just moved, then it won't be the right name, but otherwise they get their names and addresses.
And then you can send out a little card or you can drop it off, put it in their door handle, whatever, and tell them, hey, I'm praying for you, just let me know and I'll pray for a specific request for you if there's something that you need.
In my prayer life, there has been nothing more impactful than when we have seen actual requests come true.
Now, obviously that's cool when it's cancer. The guy who was at the light station who had had a job in 16 years was sleeping on somebody's couch and off and on doing drugs and came to the light station and asked us to pray for him to get a job.
Left the light station and that day got a request to come drive forklift and he had to do a drug test and he had used drugs like four days prior to that and he was like, oh no, I won't pass the drug test.
And he not only got the job, but passed the drug test, which was scientific, it should not have happened. And then that led him to quit the drugs, work full time and provide for himself.
So that wasn't miraculous healing from cancer, but it's definitely a miracle. We see those things all the time.
So they'll give you a specific request and you pray for them. There is a wide open door to talk about Jesus.
Why did God, I prayed for that for so long and nothing happened and you pray for it, something happened. Why did that happen?
You say, well, you know, it doesn't always happen that way, but it has happened on a fairly regular occasion. I pray to my Jesus, pray to my God through Jesus and he answers.
So I encourage you to take a look at that if you like. I can definitely send you the link.
It's also in the app on the sign up page, there's a page with all the current events under contact us.
It's also on the website, trick website, where in the app you can grab that and you can click there and sign yourself up. If you do that, you'll be signed up on your heart charge.
If I have a vision or desire, I would like to get, and we're going to work on this on the third one, I would like her to get, I would like to get every house in Toledo being prayed for.
That's my goal. So we're going to start promoting that. I'm going to start promoting that. We're going to start promoting that civilization.
And so here, you know, because a lot of people know they can sign up for car warriors and then the goal would be, and they can sign up for as many as they want, whatever, and then the goal would be to get every house being prayed for.
What do you think might happen? What might God do if we can get every house in Toledo being prayed for? That would be awesome. What God might do would be phenomenal.
All right. What about you? What did you see this week? What touched your heart? Would you read the description? Arjun?
So over the last couple weeks, I've been taking Jason and Caleb with me to the gym to try to get Jay.
And the first time I went, Jason was really excited about it, he was really happy. He really wanted to go. Like the whole week he was asking about it.
And then I got there to pick him up and he didn't want to go. And I told him, I was like, look, it's not about, I don't care if you want to go or not.
I said, the fact is you made a commitment, so you have to at least try it. And I got him to finally get in the car with me and I told him, if you don't like it, that's fine. You don't have to go again.
And I asked him what the problem was, and he told me that he didn't want to make me mad. And I was like, why would I be mad at you Jason?
And he said, well, because I didn't want to go. And I'm like, dude, the whole reason I got mad is because you told me you wanted to and then you tried to change your mind at the very last minute.
And it's almost like, son, you can't be afraid to fail. And then I started thinking about that over the last couple weeks when we were going out to the gym.
And every day we're there, Jason and Caleb, I can see them improving and improving and I can see myself improving.
And it goes to show that, you know, in our walk with praise, if we are afraid to fail, we're not going to go any further.
Even as Christians, even as what you would consider, I guess, a mature Christian, if you are not afraid to take that next step, that next leap with the possibility of failing, then how are you going to know if God's not going to do something?
You have to be willing to take those chances. You have to be willing to sacrifice that moment to realize, I guess, to let God do his work to show you that, you know, even if you don't make it, even if you don't quite get to that goal, look at the stuff you've learned on the way.
And I think as Christians, especially, we need to understand that as we try to serve people and help people and spread the word that, you know, we might not get to everybody, but we can learn a lot on the way of how to do it and how to do it better.
And with God's help, we can definitely see how what most people consider a loss is still a win for us.
I was thinking about how back in the day we had a blonde and a little, and we remember the memorization of the kids.
And we had one child come up, try to say a verse, and they wouldn't get it, and we needed two helps. They'd go back and study some more, come back up, next child come up, try, get two helps, so they couldn't get it, they'd go back.
And because they were working through the same set of verses, you're hearing the verses over and over and over again.
And then we were encouraged to work through the books as well at the same time, and you'd say a verse and try to do it with no helps, and we might have to say to another leader or sometimes to a kid, they were like, let me do that sometimes.
And the point is, while all that was going on, we were really helping them learn, but the truth is, we were learning.
Some of the verses that are from that era in my life have stuck with me until now, you know, and then sermon writing, right? Sermons.
And every time I preach a sermon, I've had to adjust every single time.
Like guys on the internet who are on my Facebook groups and stuff, and they'll say, when I write a sermon, it really impacted my life.
It's the first time that ever happened.
Huh, that's interesting how long you've been preaching.
Because I've been preaching since before 2006, I was writing in 2006, so about 2004, and I have yet to write a sermon that didn't crush me.
You know, it's like God breaks you and then molds you back into a shape that can actually deliver the sermon.
That's kind of like how a sermon already goes.
And so, I think I talked with this a little bit, I think you will always be served best when you're serving others.
And if you're afraid to serve others, because you're afraid of what they'll do, how they'll respond, and they won't be satisfied with it or whatever, then you're not going to be serving others.
And if you just keep serving yourself, and there's nothing bad about taking care of yourself, nothing bad about working on yourself, you're going to keep doing that.
You're going to hold somebody else along, and it'll make somebody else better in the process.
It's not efficient. It's not.
Whatever you can do, you're only going to do for you.
But if you can take somebody along, and now you've got what you can do for them, and what they can do for them, and what they can do for somebody else, multiply, multiply.
And that's the whole idea of Christianity, is multiplying servants.
This is one of the reasons why as a church we believe everybody should serve.
It's good stuff. Anybody else? Jason?
So, I live Friday and Saturday.
Me and my dad went to a farm, and this man came on, and the name of the man really struck me.
It was called the Ashes to Noo.
And what struck me is that we all came from the ashes.
We didn't, God made us from the ashes. He made us out of the imagination, out of the picture in his mind.
He made us in the picture of the mind.
And each one of us has one very unique thing that is impacted in our life that other people made that other people cannot have.
I would say probably more than that.
We are unique. Our equality, this is the mistake that the world makes.
The mistake the world makes is they want to take one and make it one.
One is one because it's identical.
So now you're going to be like this person, so we're going to make women to be like men, because that's the only way they can be equal.
That's the mistake that the world makes.
Every person is unique. We are equal because we are unique.
You cannot be equal if you are not unique because other people have uniqueness.
The only way you can be unique is to be, or the only way to be equal is to be unique.
That's the key.
One whole person, one unique person.
Now mind you, you need integrity because otherwise it's really messy.
It falls apart. The parts that are good fall away.
The parts that are bad take over and get emphasis, that kind of thing.
You need integrity to be one whole person.
And when you're one whole person, you need ashes to be unique.
That's the problem. That's good stuff.
Alright, who else?
Anybody else?
Alright, Deacon Tony, would you pray for us as we transition here?
And then we're all going to pray along with you and then we'll just get God to the work.
We'll be good.
I'd like to thank you for another day of goodness.
It's a pleasure to come to you and gather in worship.
It's a pleasure to hear from you.
It's actually a pleasure to be with us here and do a lesson for you.
And it's a pleasure to be here with you.
Of course, bring your mind something that you need to know that we will talk this about and discuss with us.
You said you were pretty in the middle of the day.
Who did you say you were?
You had to hear people.
I just asked where to be and there's few of those that could be here and just didn't come.
Working with hearts and minds, also a real interview.
Thank you for your presentation.
Ten thousand reasons.
There's a mix up in the counting.
Ten thousand plus.
Sing the song boldly.
Matt Redmond is out of London.
Oh my soul, oh my soul, worship your holy name.
Sing like never before.
Oh my soul, worship your holy name.
The sun comes up, it's a new day for me.
It's time to sing your song again.
Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me.
Let me be singing when the evening comes.
Bless the world, oh my soul, oh my soul, worship your holy name.
Sing like never before. Oh my soul, I worship your holy name.
Your vision well and your soul through anger. Your faith is great and your heart is kind.
For all your goodness I will keep on singing.
Ten thousand reasons for my heart to fight.
Bless the world, oh my soul, oh my soul, worship your holy name.
Sing like never before. Oh my soul, I worship your holy name.
On that day when my strength is failing me.
The end was near and my time has come.
Still my soul will sing your praise unending.
Ten thousand years and forever more.
Bless the world, oh my soul, oh my soul, worship your holy name.
Sing like never before. Oh my soul, I worship your holy name.
Bless the world, oh my soul, oh my soul, worship your holy name.
Sing like never before. Oh my soul, I worship your holy name.
Worship your holy name. Lord, I worship your holy name.
Sing like never before. Oh my soul, I worship your holy name.
Worship your holy name. Lord, I worship your holy name.
I am not skilled to understand what God has willed, what God has said.
I only know what is right here.
Stands one who is my Savior. I take him by his word and lead.
Christ died to save me, that's our reason.
And in my heart I'll find the name of Him to be my Savior.
That He will reign in flesh, not life, and come for sin, woman to God.
He'll crown His strength so once did I, before I was my Savior.
My Savior God, my Savior man, my Savior's always there for me.
My God, He is, my God, He is always to be. My Savior God, my Savior man, my Savior's always there for me.
My God, He is, my God, He is always to be.
Yes, living time is like the rain, not shrink my solace from this rain.
That He will reign to be my King, one time to be my Savior. That He will reign in flesh, not life, and come for sin, woman to God.
He'll crown His strength so once did I, before I was my Savior.
My Savior God, my Savior man, my Savior's always there for me. My God, He is, my God, He is always to be.
My Savior God, my Savior man, my Savior's always there for me.
My God, He is, my God, He is always to be. My Savior God, my Savior man, my Savior's always there for me.
One single drop of rain, your salty tears became the ocean.
One tiny grain of sand turned into hell, the world and your emotion.
You're on the other side of this small star, close enough to hold me in your arms. At night, I lift up my heart and I hide my own eyes.
You are maker of each moment, father of my hope and freedom.
Oh, my Adam and Eve, once in a faithful love, we sound upon the rock of ages.
We turn our own souls, we turn to serve your Lord in the way of life.
You come across the mountains and the seas, answer from the deepest part of me. At night, I lift up my heart and I hide my own eyes.
You are maker of each moment, father of my hope and freedom.
Oh, my Adam and Eve.
You are maker of each moment, father of my hope and freedom. At night, I lift up my heart and I hide my own eyes.
You are maker of each moment, father of my hope and freedom.
Oh, my Adam and Eve.
It happens occasionally that we will be worshipping and something strikes me and I just have to look it up and I was blessed right there and that was pretty cool.
I'll talk about that some more later. So, I will tell you as I went to write this sermon, I was kind of super excited.
I even posted on Facebook, the New Heights Facebook page or something about it because we are heading into the Ten Commandments.
And how can you not get excited about the Ten Commandments?
The Ten Commandments have been the foundation of all law essentially in what would be called a civilized world.
There are only a couple of other law codes that have ever existed that have really captured justice and righteousness.
And as a general rule, they all failed, fell apart or just kind of dwindled away over time.
One of the most famous is Hammurabi's Code. You may or may not have heard of that.
It was written a long, long time ago as well.
And in Hammurabi's Code, I might not be saying his name quite correctly, but anyway in his Code, if you stole, you lost your hand and so on.
It was a very, very stern code. However, they developed a society with enduring lack of crime.
They had crime, still existed, but it was small, small by comparison to societies all around the rest of the world.
The Ten Commandments do a similar thing, but I submit to you they do it in a different way.
Most people have thought, in fact I ask around and I ask everybody, you know, when I say the Ten Commandments, I didn't ask everybody.
I ask a bunch of people, when I say the Ten Commandments, what's the first thing that pops into your head?
And so I'm going to ask somebody right now. When I say the Ten Commandments, what's the first thing that pops into your head?
RG, don't ask. I have you on my list. Ron, when I say Ten Commandments, what's the first thing that pops into your head?
The first law. Okay, the first law. Nicole, when I say Ten Commandments, what's the first thing that pops into your head?
First thing. Don't think about it. Julie, what pops into your head when I say Ten Commandments?
Rules to follow. Okay, rules to follow. Brother Tony, Deacon Tony, what pops into your head when I say Ten Commandments?
The laws of God. The laws of God. Okay, and absolutely all of those things were very true in the day that the Ten Commandments were published.
The day that they came out. Now I'll remind you that in Deuteronomy, we are not studying the day that the Ten Commandments were published.
They were actually put out in Exodus. Now, I'll ask you this. Who wrote the Ten Commandments?
God. Okay, God originated the Ten Commandments and the first set of the Ten Commandments, he did write.
And Moses brought them down on tablets from the mountain, right?
This is one of those, I told this story to Ariana about two months ago, it was part of the promotion, she went, what?
I mean, she was just blown away. Moses carried the Ten Commandments down off the mountain, but what did he find when he came down?
Did you remember?
The worship of idols.
Yeah, they had begun to worship idols. Aaron cast a silver and gold oxen thing, which may have been an ox statue, and they were worshiping it.
And then they had begun to party, and historians think that there was illicit sex, like they were going around having sex with each other, stuff like that.
They were celebrating, and probably alcohol, whatever. Basically, it developed into a big pagan worship, which often included those kinds of things.
Misuse of drugs and sex, basically. And Moses comes down, he sees that, and he takes those Ten Commandments on the tablets that God wrote, and what did he do?
He threw them down.
Boom, he threw them down.
And then proceeds to, there's a correction that takes place of the Israelites, it's very fierce, very fierce correction.
And then he proceeds to go back up on the mountain, and the second Ten Commandments, who wrote those ones? Physically wrote them.
Moses here.
Okay? So God gave the Ten Commandments, he wrote with his own hand, to Moses.
But then Moses, basically I'm paraphrasing here, but he freaked out, and threw the Ten Commandments down the ground and broke them.
And when he saw what all the people were doing, right?
Then he goes back up on the mountain, there's a huge correction of the people, in fact, like they killed each other with swords at the command of God, and the lead by his proclaims, and all that.
But then Moses is back up on the mountain, and the Ten Commandments are written in Moses' hand. He wrote them.
Okay? And so that's the story in Exodus, and then they are given to God's people.
That had become their story.
The fact that they could not endure under God's commands had become their story.
Moses had become their mediator.
Okay? So Moses got the Ten Commandments, was bringing them to them, saw that they were clearly already breaking them.
I mean, imagine you write the commandment, one of which we'll read today, which says, have no other gods, don't worship false idols, and they'd come down and find them doing exactly that, right?
So Moses' response, his breaking out, if you will, was because he saw they could not endure the commands and the rules that God was giving them.
Now, by the time Deuteronomy 4, which we preached through over the last three weeks, by the time of Deuteronomy 4, Moses had realized that there was something more to the Ten Commandments than what meets the eye.
They are the rules, they are the fundamental law, that's all accurate and true.
But what God was up to, obviously, and now we can see it from this side because we know Jesus lived a sinless life, got on the cross for sins, and fulfilled the law, right?
So we see it from this side. But Moses was just getting it.
He was just understanding that God was doing something so much more significant than giving us rules to live by.
The question that I'll pose to you, and then we're going to go to the text, the question I'll pose to you is this, is are the Ten Commandments still rules to live by and laws today?
That's the question. Now, it's a hotly debated question, so you can formulate the answer in your own mind, but we need to be educated by the text.
Okay? Alright, so grab your Bibles and go with me if you would. We are actually at the end of Deuteronomy chapter 4.
Say, whoop!
Amen!
Alright, thank you. Somebody's out there. I'm glad to hear that. One day I'm going to do that, and there will be nobody.
I'm going to have to, the people are going to think I'm just standing up here talking to them myself.
Okay, so we are reading beginning in 44. I will not be breaking down everything in 44, but in order to say we've seen everything, we already talked about this in the recent three weeks, but this is sort of like a recap, okay?
And then when we get into 5, that's new text for us. Alright? So we're going to read 44. It says,
Now this is the law which Moses set before the sons of Israel. So there it is. It is the law. That's right.
These are the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances which Moses spoke to the sons of Israel when they came out from Egypt, across the Jordan in the valley opposite Beth-Pior in the land of Sihon, king of the Amorites who lived at Heshbon, whom Moses and the sons of Israel defeated when they came out from Egypt.
So basically that's where they were, that's what he did. Notice that it is, there's a nice little list there that could be preachable, testimonies, statutes, ordinances. It's fine, okay?
Moving on, 47. And they took possession of his land and the land of Og, king of Bishon, the two kings of the Amorites who were across the Jordan to the east from Eroar, which is on the edge of the valley of Arnon, which is like a river Arnon and a valley Arnon there.
Even as far as Mount Sihon, that is, Hermon, as called by other people, with all the Ereba across the Jordan to the east, even as far as the sea of the Ereba at the foot of the slopes of Pisgah.
Now notice this technically means they took all that area and they now rule it. There are only two things that are significant I don't want you to forget as we go into this.
Number one, that's not the promised land. So all this that they've taken, all this amazing stuff that God has already done, they're still on the east side of the Jordan River. They have not taken not a square foot of the promised land.
Okay? Second thing to notice in there is that the Amorites, the larger part of their kingdom is on the west side of the Jordan in the promised land.
So when they go in there to fight, they would have to fight the Amorites. And if God had said, oh, we're just going to leave them behind on the east side in a very prosperous, well fortified, etc. area,
then when they went in to fight the Amorites on the west side of the Jordan, they would always have these guys at their back.
And having the enemy at your back when you're fighting an enemy is a mistake. A two front war is always a mistake, it's very dangerous.
And so God systematically turns over all the land on the east side of the Jordan. And there, Moses gives all of that which he gives, the testimony, statutes, and ordinances, over to the Israelites.
But mind you, this is a recap. Okay? Now, chapter five, this is new text to us today for sermonizing.
It says, then Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, hear, O Israel, the statutes and the ordinances which I am speaking today in your hearing, that you may learn them and observe them carefully.
Now that phrase there, observe them carefully, basically means do them well. Okay?
So the original language is saying, like, you're going to do this, what I'm telling you to do, and you're going to make sure, take heed, be careful, do a good job, do them well.
So the purpose or intent of Moses as he gives us what he's about to give us, and what he's been giving for that matter, because there are some in the previous chapters, that they would learn them,
in other words, we're going to absorb them, understand them, put them in us, and then observe them or do them well, practice them carefully.
First two, the Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, with all those of us alive here today.
Now, did he make it with their fathers? Well, yes, he did. So what does he mean when he says that he didn't make it with their fathers?
He's talking about what people will tend to do, which is kind of put it off on somebody else. That's somebody else's job. That's somebody else's, they need to take care of that.
You see somebody struggling with a bird. Oh, they really ought to fix that, right? What he was reminding them was, don't do that.
Don't say this is your father's covenant or your father's God. This is your covenant, your God, the younger generation that survived the desert, survived the wanderings, right?
God said would go into the promised land. This is your covenant. Now, very easily we could say, and we'll come back to this later, we could say that that statement right there of all the statements we're going to read today applies to us as much as any.
This is our covenant. Now, we have a new covenant. We'll talk about that later. We have a new covenant. But the bottom line is this is a covenant between God and human beings.
And we are human beings, therefore, it's not our father's God, it's not our father's God's rules. This is our rules. This is what we are supposed to be paying attention to as rules and laws, if you will.
I understand there's more. We'll get there. So the Lord spoke to you face to face at the mountain from the midst of the fire.
While I was standing between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord, for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up the mountain, he said.
He's going to go on talking here for a minute, telling us what God said. But I want you to get there.
Notice that that whole little bit that I just read is all about Moses acting as translator and mediator for the people.
And there was one count on one thing that was keeping them from going face to face with God, from being with God, from drawing near to God, from hearing what God was saying.
One. You hear it? What was it? Not rhetorical. It was one thing in the verse that said why they didn't go up the mountain face to face with God. Why was it?
They were afraid. Was there fear? All right.
Beautiful illustration that R.J. gave of this sermon during the inspirational moment was talking about Jason being afraid that his dad would be mad at him.
Right. The way I got the story was that his dad would be mad at him because he couldn't do well enough.
And I think that's how I got it from Jason. He was afraid that he would get there, not do a good enough job, and his dad would be mad at him.
Now, I'll tell you right now that that is the plight of every son who loves his dad. Hands down, that's true.
Trying to do what my dad wants me to do. I'm 52 years old. Unless you read in the fitness app. Some days I'm 51, some days I'm 53.
But I'm literally 52 years old. OK. So the point is I'm still to this day, because I understand that the commands were not given to children.
They were given to grown people. And so I understand as a grown person, I'm still trying to honor my dad.
I still want my dad. And I do that primarily because I want my dad to draw closer to God because I love God.
And I understand that my heavenly father is really my father. My dad is my dad. He's the earthly dad that my dad that my God gave me.
But my father is in heaven and he wants a closer relationship with my dad. And I don't want to get in the way.
So I'm trying to do everything that I can to make my dad proud of me, happy with what I would do, etc.
Now, if I have to choose between the two, I'm going to choose my God. And I have had to in the past, in the years past, choose between what my dad want,
especially when before he gave his life back over to the Lord, before he kind of came back into the kingdom advance.
I had a lot of times I said, I'm sorry, Dad, that's just not what God want me to do. And I had to do what God wanted me to do.
And I last night after the wedding, after the reception, we're sitting outside and Aaron was explaining to Kyler and Carson that they should always do what their dad wants them to do.
He said, he said, your dad's I've heard him from a distance. He didn't know I was even there. And he said, your dad's very wise. Your dad's been around for a long time.
He's seen a lot of things. You should always listen to your dad. And he said, well, he said, unless your dad tells you to do something that God would not have you to do.
So always choose God over your dad, but always choose your dad unless you know for sure God is telling you to do something else.
It was like I was teaching it myself. And he made me feel good, but he didn't even know I was there.
This is the way Moses was with God. But clearly, I mean, is this the way the Israelites are with God?
No, that's not the way the Israelites are with God. That's not the way they're approaching their relationship with God at all.
Right. And so they needed a mediator. They need somebody to stand between them at that time.
They were afraid to go up in the mountain because they're afraid of what God would do.
They knew. I mean, when they transgressed and Moses ran out of the town, they killed thousands of men.
The Levites, he said, the Levites strap on your sword, go through and kill your brother, kill people in the camp, all through the camp.
Thousands of men died because of what they strayed. God is scary.
We did that sermon before consuming fire. OK.
He said, the Lord spoke to you face to face. I was standing between you and the Lord at that time.
And I declared to you the word of the Lord, for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up on the mountain.
And this is what the Lord said. And this is Moses's recapping of the first part of the Ten Commandments.
We're now going to read. It says, for I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of slavery.
He identified himself. I am. God is the pre-existent God.
He was pre-existent before the Israelites went into slavery.
But he is the pre-existent God who brought them out of slavery. He chose them to be his people.
He could say the same thing of us. He brought us out of slavery.
You know, we can unpack that a little bit. You can look at what your slavery is.
When I was at the reception yesterday, there was a woman there and she was bemoaning the behavior of somebody else in her life who had been.
She felt like disrespectful. And she was saying some negative things about him.
And I felt the Holy Spirit provoked me. And I said, well, let me stop you right there.
I said, you know, I don't think we need to go there. So let me encourage you to say, he probably did.
She said, he said this and it was kind word, but he didn't mean it. I know he didn't mean it.
And I said, maybe he meant it in the moment. Think about this.
People say things in the moment that they mean and then later they don't mean them. Right?
But in the moment, he meant it. I said, but realize he's got prison bars. He's trapped.
He can't really live out what he's saying because he's not free.
Well, that's what God did for us. He freed us up to line up our speech with our actions, with our faith, with our relationship with him.
Across the board, we became free. He broke open the bar, severed the chains and made us free and able then.
As the Israelites were not primarily because of their fear, but notice that while it was primarily because of their fear,
it was because of their attachment to the things of the world that they had experienced.
Remember, they came out of a nation that had dozens of gods and now they're going to go down to just one.
Yes, they were God's people. And for over 400 years, they tracked back their lineage and so on.
But the bottom line is that they had lived a completely different lifestyle their entire lives.
And they were young, under 20-ish when they went to the promised land the first time.
And then they're now all of their adults have died off. This is rough stuff.
And they're supposed to put all of that out of their heads and just believe and just follow and just do what God wants them to do.
So, yeah, they were terrified. Right. Now, their parents were there then because that was that ish that incident of them at the mountain
where they didn't go up on the mountain because they were afraid. Their parents were there then.
And surely their parents were saying, oh, for me, as for me, my house will follow the Lord.
But we know that it's Joshua that actually puts them in check on that later and says, you better you have to decide.
Follow God or don't follow God. But stand on the fence won't get it done.
So, but as for me and my house, I'll follow the Lord. That's that's Joshua that does that later.
So whether there were any men in that day, Joshua was young,
whether any men in that day who were really saying that about their household is unknown.
But we know there was fear and they weren't coming to God and they weren't get it from God.
And God could say then rightly, I am the Lord.
That means I will tell you that word, their Lord is actually Yahweh.
I will tell you, Creator God, I made everything. I have that kind of power.
And I exercised my power in some small way, really.
But I exercised my power to bring you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
And then he goes on to say, for that reason, because of that logic, that's the overarching.
That's the title page, if you will. He says, you shall have no other gods before me.
Now, that's that that commandment has been misused so often because what we say is we're not going to put anything up over top of God.
God is going to be the most important thing.
So it's going to be, you know, God, family, church, hobbies.
Or for some people, it's God, hobbies, family, you know, and we start prioritizing.
And so long as God is on the top, I'm OK.
But that's not actually what God was saying. Right.
This have no other gods before me. And that's a little G notice means have no other gods in my presence.
Nothing else that gets anything like that kind of authority.
Nothing else that gets your praise. Nothing else that gets your worship.
I want you to think about when you're talking about how good something is, you understand you're declaring the value of it.
It better be different than what you're doing when you're with God.
And it better be not marginally different. It better be way different.
So when you have things that you like, things that you engage in, things that you do at the moment in time at which you start thinking that that thing is important or valuable as part of who you are.
You may have to go, OK, hold up. Check this.
The Bible says no gods at all in God's presence.
Nothing that I declare is worthy or valuable, even remotely like God.
Verse eight says you shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.
OK, so this is literally talking about an image, a thing, a figurine, a statue, whatever.
And in other words, you can't make an eagle out of silver.
You can't do any of that. Right. Now, this is where the doctrine of what's called iconoclasts comes from.
And so the Eastern Orthodox Church thinks that everybody that's in the Christian church, everywhere else in the world that has crosses representing Jesus's crucifixion or has, you know, the open Bible, the cross above it like we have there or three crosses on a hill like we have here.
All of that would be considered sin because we're using representations of what we believe and they take this to the extreme to say you shall not make for yourself an idol means you can't have any image like that.
We already know we can't know exactly what Jesus looked like.
By the way, you have a picture of Jesus in a kid's book preaching to kids.
Anybody ever notice how American pictures of Jesus look like?
Because he's Caucasian, right? Sometimes he's blonde, Caucasian blonde.
Right. That's what Josh Maddahl calls a Scandinavian Jesus. He's Caucasian blonde.
Not not true. He's Mediterranean type looking. Right. He was with the call oxidant.
But he was so what you didn't have slanted eyes, but he had olive skin and dark hair because that's where he was born.
That's the blood he came from other than God. Right.
God could have made him a Scandinavian Jesus, but that would have made him stand out.
That would have made him pretty. And the scripture says he wasn't that he was ordinary.
So he would have fit in right where he was at. But the writers in the Bible, they didn't describe what he looked like.
Why do you think they did that? Because they don't want you to worship what he looked like. Right.
And so basically the problem with creation is we get into something good. We like it. We see it. It's magnanimous.
It's great. It's glorious. It's beautiful. It's shiny. Whatever. And we start making it into an idol.
He says don't do anything like that with what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.
You shall not worship them. In other words, don't declare their worth. Don't bow down to them.
Don't let them be in charge of you in any way. Don't serve them.
Notice that's anything on the earth, heaven or water in the water under the earth.
If you make an image or an idol of it, have a picture of it, have a thing. Right. You can't do that.
You shall not worship them or serve them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.
He says visiting the iniquity, that's the sin, and it can be sins of ignorance.
Iniquity can include sins of ignorance. So it's not wickedness, not you doing it after you've been told not to,
but the sins or iniquity, the cross and the line like transgressions.
Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children.
Notice that every time a dad does something wrong, his kids pay.
And on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me.
Now notice you can say, and elsewhere in scripture it says that that's not the economy of God.
He doesn't do that anymore the way they were thinking he did it.
But I'm here to tell you right now, if you sin against God, the price that you pay in your life,
that will be replicated and magnified in the next generation.
Look at the people who have walked away from the Lord. Look at what happens after.
Now people who don't know the Lord aren't Christians. It's a different thing.
Because then that person becomes born again, then they sever their ties from the teachings of their parents who were not godly.
The woman who down here was from Walbridge, Ohio, who sued and went all the way to the Supreme Court.
So that her son would not have to pray in school.
You understand that Ohioans, the lady from Ohio, I think her name was Margaret, but I might not get that right.
Anyway, from Walbridge who went to the Supreme Court to sue so that her son,
because their family was atheist, would not have to pray in school.
And the Supreme Court ruled and took prayer out of schools.
When that happened, it was a woman right down here in Walbridge who did it.
Her son grew up, became born again and became a Baptist preacher.
The very one she sued so he wouldn't have to pray in school is a Baptist preacher now.
So there will be a disconnection. Getting born again changes everything. All old things pass away.
But if you're a follower of the Lord and you continue in iniquity in your household, your children will be affected.
And then even if they manage to grow up and get beyond you, and they finally put behind you the stupidity that you embraced as a Christian,
they will still have remnants of what they're going to be scarred or they're going to be hurt or they're going to have memories.
You can't just ignore what you're doing in life and think that this lie, children are resilient. That's a lie.
They're resilient, yes, but so are you. They're no more resilient than we are.
They're actually absorbent. They take stuff into them and it becomes part of their personality for the rest of their life until God changes it.
And so we have to realize that's what he's talking about.
And then if I do that to my kids and my kids do it, if I picked up one false doctrine now,
one thing about Christianity that I say is true that isn't and I teach that to my kids.
Now I've got three grown married children and they'd be teaching that same false doctrine to their kids because they bought into it in my household.
And then their kids would go on. And plus it drifts further from further from God automatically because the Antichrist spirit of the Antichrist is always at work in the world.
So they would be further and further away.
And that's what he's warning these things that you're doing that are not godly, that are not holy, that are not right by him.
He's saying automatically it happens that to the third and fourth generations for those who hate me,
but showing loving kindness, get this, but showing loving kindness to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments.
Notice it's two things and they go together.
Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Love me and keep my commandments. I will show loving kindness to thousands.
Even it doesn't matter what you did before.
So here's an image of being born again in the Old Testament.
If you're living outside God's will, not doing what God made me to do.
And one day you go, look, I recognize God is going to make way for me to do this.
And I'm going to start living for the Lord.
Now God shows his love to you in manifold many ways, so many ways because you love him and are keeping his commandments.
We're almost done with the text.
He says, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Doesn't matter how common it becomes.
Doesn't matter if everybody else doesn't.
It doesn't matter if you boil it down to OMG.
You don't take the Lord's name in vain.
He's saying there is a purpose for calling on God.
God is a real person.
And if I was in this room and I stubbed my toe and I said Tommy Mitchell, Tommy would look and see what's going on.
And that's what God does.
Every time somebody spews his name with venom in their mouth.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
For the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain.
You think that's not going on in the world?
All these people who are using the name of the Lord in vain even now.
Don't do it.
Twelve, observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
But the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God.
In it you shall not do any work.
You or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.
That's like a stranger from another place.
So that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well.
This is one of the hotly debated questions in New Testament Christianity.
Because very early on in the first hundred years after Jesus' death, burial and resurrection he came back to life.
Christians began to worship on Sunday.
It was the first day of the week.
It was the day that Jesus came back to life.
This is resurrection Sunday.
We worship on the first day of the week because that's the day that Jesus was found to be alive.
And the Sabbath command still exists in Scripture.
Guess where in the New Testament it says you no longer have to practice the Sabbath.
You won't find it.
You can search, read the whole thing beginning to end, you won't find it.
Now that's a problem isn't it?
You say, well but our Sabbath is Sunday.
No, not unless you make it so.
What is the purpose of resting?
What is the purpose of not working?
And by the way a lot of people do a lot of work on Sunday.
I do work on Sunday.
So I know Sunday is not my Sabbath.
Many of you as I look around this room work on Sunday.
Not for money most of the time.
But there's work that's being done.
So what God was saying was as the Lord rested after six days he created and rested,
that was an ordained command back to Genesis.
And the bottom line is there needs to be a period of time in which you say no.
So then you just sleep 24 hours right?
No, you're awake but you can't work so what can you do?
Well what you do is you focus on God.
So that's the command of the Lord.
It still exists to this day that there needs to be a time.
You say but I am most in touch with the Lord when I am working.
If there is work that you can do that is not physical in any way
and your mind can truly be focused on God.
Which means if any minute you needed to you could crack your Bible open and start reading.
And during that Sabbath you should be doing that.
And you're praying all the time and so on.
Nothing's going to distract you.
Then you could probably call that a Sabbath.
This was all about focusing on God.
That's what the Sabbath was all about.
He says, he goes on, he says,
And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.
And the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm.
Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.
Do you know why that phrase, you can just imagine right?
Why that phrase, why is he telling them that the Lord their God brought them out of Egypt by a mighty hand
and has done everything that they have done so far as part of the teaching about the Sabbath.
Do you know why? Think about it for a second.
Because what's one of the number one things that will keep you from practicing a Sabbath?
You got things to do.
Right? You got work to do.
You got problems that arise.
Things that need to be overcome.
But who overcomes your problems?
Who gets the job done?
When you mow or fix or start and finish a project successfully, who is doing that?
That you?
If it's you, it's only you in part.
Trust me, I know because I've taken a project that should take me no more than an hour and had it take me 12 hours.
I've taken a project that should take me like six hours and it takes me an hour.
I'm like, oh, what if I try this? Oh, boom, done, just like that.
I'll never forget an inspirational moment that Deacon Tony Brister shared when we were on Main Street talking about a particular bolt trying to get off on the car.
I'll probably mess up the details, but I remember it very like the teaching of it like it was yesterday.
And he was saying how he just got to the point where he just couldn't do it.
He tried everything. He had people helping him and then the people were gone.
He was all by himself and he's just like, I just can't give up. I just I can't.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
And he prayed and he asked God and he tried one more way, a slightly different way.
And it came off.
God is the one fighting for us.
God is the one who must get the glory.
God's system is there is a time to stop your work and trust in the Lord.
Rest in the Lord.
Has anybody noticed a slightly higher occurrence of insects or animals this year?
It's all over, isn't it?
Like we literally walking over to the Great Eastern Shopping Center to go to Myers and you had to step around baby frogs because they were all over the sidewalk over there.
Thousands and thousands of them.
Seen more lightning bugs this year than ever before. More snakes in my yard ever before.
Yesterday, not yesterday. Yeah, yesterday morning before everything got started, I saw two hawks chasing a squirrel in my backyard.
Hawks, I'm talking wings like this and they come down and the squirrels run through the backyard.
He's running like a madman trying to get away from him.
They come the first one took a pass at him, missed him.
Second one took a pass at him, missed him and the squirrel got up the tree and he got away.
The hawks in my backyard.
I've lived in that house for the better part of 45 years with some little gap.
Seventeen months while we lived in Michigan.
So I've lived in that house for 43 of the last 45 years.
I've never seen a hawk ever.
And now they're sitting in the trees in my backyard chasing squirrels in my backyard.
Last, early last year and into the previous year, we basically gave the earth the Jubilee.
We rested, we polluted less, we used less, etc.
And so the animals are all, you know what this planet would be like if for every seventh year we just, if everybody stopped planting and whatever,
you wouldn't need fertilizer anymore.
Everything would change.
You've got to rest. There was a brother that posted on Facebook.
So you want to be, have more energy, you can rest.
Now I also understand that it's not about the rest because Proverbs also says a little rest, a little slumber and destruction comes upon a man, right?
So I'm not talking about becoming lazy or resting when you're supposed to be working, but you've got to orient your rest.
If you rested that one day, truly rested and recharged, then you could work all day long, sun up to sun down the rest of the six days and you wouldn't get tired.
If you really would let the Lord refuel you.
And that's what they're saying. It's God who fights for you.
It's God who gives you success.
You're not going to get any more success, but trying to eke out a little bit more time to do a little bit more work.
That is not the economy of creation. God made it. He knows how it works.
Notice that he extended that to everybody that's under your control.
The stranger staying with you, your ox, right?
Everybody's, so you can't like, my neighborhood when I was growing up, there was a man who lived down around the block.
He's still there now. I don't know if he still practices it or not,
but he wouldn't go to the store on Sunday. He wouldn't eat out on Sunday.
He wouldn't pay somebody to do anything on Sunday because he did not want to be a part of somebody else not having the Lord's day off.
Now, I think that's extreme. But what I'm saying is if it's under your control in your household,
somewhere in your week, put a period of time where you're focused on God.
Is it going to fail sometimes?
The standards are given in the scripture for why you can not do it, right?
You can haul an ox out of the ditch. You can rescue a bleeding friend.
You can stop for the guy that's dying on the side of the road. You can do all those works on that day.
But the truth is you probably won't encounter very many of those things because you'll be focused on God.
Okay? It's still there.
It doesn't have to be Saturday only as we'll see in a minute, but it's still there.
The command to rest and focus on God.
So that takes us through the end of our text for today, the 15th, and we're going to stop there.
Now, I broke it there on purpose.
What are the first four commandments that we just read all have in common?
All those commands, what do they all have in common?
Okay, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Don't make any idols.
It's all about God. It's all about keeping God first. It's all about being close to God.
It's all about how we relate to God.
Some great theologians have broken down to say that there are probably four commands on one tablet,
six on the other, and the first four are about how we relate to God,
and the other six are about how we relate to mankind.
If you look at 16, it'll say honor your father and mother.
We're going to go into talking about relating to people probably next week if the Lord so leads.
The bottom line is this is about how we relate to God.
Okay, there's a few things I want you to see in the text and two other texts that we'll use before we're done.
The first one is, as we talked about, these are commands and rules.
Will you get there? Will you get it done by following the commands and rules of God?
Now, we know that Jesus said, he who loves me follows his commands,
but we also know that Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of the book of Matthew
are what's called the Sermon on the Mount.
At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is talking about what it's like in the Kingdom of God.
He says, blessed are the poor, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the gentle, and so on.
Then he goes down and talks about how they are not meant to be like other people.
They're supposed to be different. You are the salt of the earth.
If the salt of the earth loses its tastelessness, how will it be made salty again?
It's good for nothing anymore. Throw it out, trample it underfoot, and so on.
So you are the light of the world. The city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
You're supposed to be different.
Nor do men light a lamp and put it under the peck measure, but on the lamp stand,
that's a basket basically, so that it gives light to all who are in the house.
You're supposed to stand up. You're supposed to be known as different.
What was he doing with the law code again in the Old Testament?
He was showing them how to be different.
He was giving them a set of structures, teachings that they could follow
so that they would be a different society, so that all men would be drawn to the Israelites in the promised land,
and they could all then, through the Israelites, come to know God.
That was the goal. So he's setting that up.
And here it is again in the New Testament.
But then he says this in 16. He says,
Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works
and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
So basically, stand up, be a light, so that they can see that you're doing the right things,
and they'll glorify God who is in heaven.
But 17 says, Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets.
I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.
In other words, he didn't come to wipe out the Old Testament.
He didn't go away. In fact, the Gospel is far more included in the Old Testament than it is in the New Testament.
The only reason it's so obvious in the New Testament is because it's all about Jesus,
and he was alive in the New Testament.
But if you look at the Gospel, it's way more times as it's shown in the Old Testament
than it is in the New Testament, which is probably because the Old Testament is twice as large.
He says, Do not think that I came to abolish or wipe out the law or the prophets.
I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.
So what's the difference between abolishing and fulfilling?
If I have a cup, I've got five cups lined up here, and I'm filling them with water.
And I take the first four cups I fill with water, and I get to the last cup,
and I look at what's left in the pitcher, and there's only a little bit, and I go to fill it.
I can't fill it. If I want all of those cups to be filled, I'm going to have to abolish the fifth cup.
That's the image. All I have to do is take the cup that's mostly empty and put it down.
Now all the cups are filled. But that's not what Jesus did.
He didn't come to wipe out any portion of the Old Testament. He didn't come to take away anything.
Now, if anything, he packs it with meaning.
And further on in chapter 5, he will actually go on to say,
Well, you know how it was said, thou shalt not murder. That's in the second half of the Ten Commandments.
When actually, what I'm saying to you is, if you hate your brother, that's the same as if you murder.
You know how it said, don't commit adultery. I'm saying to you, if you lost after another,
you've already committed adultery with that person in your heart.
So he makes the Ten Commandments mean even more.
But the fact that he adds that meaning and causes it to mean even more should take us somewhere.
It should help us to see what Moses was really supposed to be doing.
And here it is. Jesus says, Do you think that I came to abolish the law of the prophets?
I did not come to abolish it, but to fulfill it.
The laws of the Old Testament, they're not rules. They're not statutes.
They're not limited to being laws or things that you are supposed to follow.
In fact, you're not supposed to follow the Old Testament.
Ooh, that hurts. Don't take that snippet out and put it on Facebook, right?
You're supposed to follow Jesus. You can put that one on there.
The laws in the Old Testament were framing the work that Jesus would do.
They were setting it up and painting a picture. This is hugely important.
He goes on to say, For truly I say unto you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the law until all is accomplished.
He says, Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches others,
shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
But whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
So he was looking at the law of God and saying, I didn't come to wipe it out. I came to fulfill it.
Now, anybody who takes some piece of it and says, Oh, that's just too hard,
or you don't actually have to do that, or let me alter that slightly so that you can be okay
without you don't have to struggle too much.
You may be sitting here right now going like, there is no way that I could have a Sabbath.
There's no way that I could take 24 hours in any week, even if I broke it down into eight hour periods.
There's no way that I could do that and make that time about God and not work and so on.
That's offensive. You're offending me with that message.
That is not even what I think it's calling it to.
Jesus said he did not come to abolish, but to fulfill the law.
Therefore, the law remains. You can like it or you cannot like it, but it remains.
Jesus fulfilled it means something different. It means something bigger, greater.
Right? Remember how they wouldn't go up onto the mountain because they were afraid they would offend their father?
They were afraid that God the Father would destroy them in his wrath
because they knew they were not righteous.
Remember how when we talked about in my sermon on God as a Consuming Fire,
that Moses was showing the people, he was beginning to understand and showing the people
that the God of heaven had a way for people to not be destroyed.
If they had a heart for him, even though they were imperfect, they could not be destroyed.
And that way was in Jesus. They were beginning to get that.
Well, that's what Jesus is talking about here. That's what Moses was talking about.
Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments and so teaches others shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
That's not what Jesus did. He stepped it up and made it stricter in a way.
But whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
So who is great for sure in the kingdom of heaven? Well, Jesus. Duh.
He is great. He is God the Son. And he is also 100% human.
Lived a sinless life. And then great in the kingdom of heaven.
What did he do as his triumph? What did he do as his great? He served everybody by sacrificing himself on the cross.
Verse 20 then says, For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.
The scribes and Pharisees in their day would have been the closest thing that they knew to somebody who knew all the law, let alone followed it.
They understood that they didn't know all the law and they didn't follow all the law.
They were trying, but they didn't. And Jesus said, Unless you have righteousness greater than that, you will not see the kingdom of heaven.
So the first thing I want you to see in there is that the laws that were laid out in the Ten Commandments, as Jesus says, they didn't go away.
They didn't. Now you're looking at it and you're going, but see I lied or see I don't feel I don't know how I can do that.
I'm not measuring up. I'm coming up short to this picture of what it means to truly be holy.
And therein is Jesus. That's when he shows up. There is a part of the world that doesn't do that.
They don't look at the Ten Commandments. They don't look at what God told them to do.
And they don't frankly even care. Or if they do, they're literally going, well, see, well, it says don't lie.
So if I do lie, look at all the benefits I can get. Right.
They know they use it as the exact opposite of what they're supposed to be doing.
And they do what they want to do, what their flesh requires them to do and so on.
Jesus is saying, no, this law of God, these rules and laws that were laid out for the Israelites, they were good.
Not as good as me. Right. So if you try to follow the law and you fail, you will go to hell for eternity.
Paul even says it very clearly. That's the measure that you use is am I following the law?
You will go to hell for eternity because you will not follow it perfectly.
But if you try to follow Jesus and in loving the Lord, then try to keep the commands of the law to the best of your ability, wherever you're at and so on.
Then, yes, you will grow. You will get a little better at this, a little better at that.
Now am I saying then to you what I stand up before you and say, OK, that means you don't have to have a Sabbath then?
No, I'm not going to do that. If you want me to stand up here and say you don't have to have a Sabbath because Jesus is Lord and he saved you and grace will cover it,
then you will never hear me say that you can sin willy nilly if you want to and Jesus will cover everything that you do.
Because the moment you want to sin and do all of that and ignore the Ten Commandments, then I think maybe you're not saved anyway.
So you come here, you listen to the word, you study the word at your house, you do Bible study, all that kind of stuff.
You do that so that you can better follow Jesus.
And better following Jesus essentially amounts to being more like Jesus. And did Jesus keep the law?
Oh, yes, he did. So there you go. Jesus is our perfect example.
This law is not abolished. It has a purpose. Yes, it had a purpose to paint a picture.
That's the second thing. When I was yesterday at the wedding, we had a couple of snafus as we were getting ready for the wedding.
We were missing a few things like that. And I had to drive into BG.
We went into BG to get a couple of parts that we needed and some natural petals for flowers because we found out we couldn't use the synthetic ones that we had.
And as I'm driving up there, man, my phone just wasn't working good.
Like I couldn't get navigation. So I go on my phone and I said directions to Floriana's flowers in BG.
And it came up with some stuff that it took a really long time. And I pushed the button for directions and nothing happened.
Literally like the little bar moved like a centimeter and then just sat there.
And then we were just a fraction more. I couldn't get navigation.
Well, fortunately, I kind of know the world a little bit in that part of the world.
And so I knew BG was south of me. And so I headed south.
Right. And then as I'm driving south, I saw a road that I know is in BG.
And I was 95 percent sure that BG was to my left, which would be east.
And so I turn left and I followed that road right into BG. And that's how I found BG.
Now, if I didn't have some knowledge, rules and understanding of the way the world is connected, I couldn't have done that.
I couldn't have got to BG because the navigation wasn't coming up. Right.
I could have called somebody because I had phone service, but I couldn't have GPS.
I couldn't use my maps, at least not for directions.
The Old Testament was like that.
God is explaining this is the way the system works in order so that you can find where you're trying to get to, which was Jesus.
Your soul, my soul, the longing in all human souls is for someone that will fill that vacancy, someone that will be with us, someone that we were meant to be in relationship with.
And I have a great relationship with my wife, but my relationship with Jesus was the relationship I was created for.
When my DNA was woven together somewhere in there, and they may never find it in writing, but somewhere in there was woven into it a desire to be in relationship with God.
And the Old Testament was that, pointing to the way, it was the directions that I needed.
It was the steps that I could get there.
When they preached the Old Testament and the New Testament at East Salido Baptist Church as I was there for the first six months and I was still not a Christian, I could feel it.
Can't you feel it?
When you read the Old Testament Commandments, when we read that commandment that says, mark out a day where you focus on God, can't you feel it like you're kind of going like, oh, I want to do that.
I mean, I want that to be the way it is because I want to spend time with God, but I kind of can't.
I mean, that's not the way life works.
That's not what I think is right.
It's not what I think I can do with my time and so on.
The Old Testament was like that.
God was teaching us understanding how it works.
However, something else happened after I got done in BG and I had to get back there.
I didn't remember the way.
I hadn't marked out the way.
So that's us as imperfect humans trying to do what's right.
You might even get up one day and go, oh, well, this is what I'm supposed to do today and start doing what you think you're supposed to do and realize you totally forgot what you were supposed to do.
We're human.
We're imperfect.
We make a lot of mistakes.
I couldn't find my way back to where I had the stuff that I bought.
And of course, navigation wasn't working very well at all.
Like I tried to pull up where I was supposed to be.
I wasn't coming up.
But here's what I could do.
I could pull up a map like an actual map on my phone and I could shrink it and enlarge it.
So the navigation was working enough for me to see the map, but not enough to get directions.
Well, funny thing about that is my wife and I have permanently shared our locations with each other on Google Maps.
If you haven't done that, you're a married couple, you haven't done that, I would highly recommend that.
Not only does it add accountability, but on top of that, it can be very useful at certain times you're trying to find your spouse.
OK, and so I pulled it up and there's my wife's face at the park down there.
That's Eagle Park, what place is called Stone, Old Stone Fort Park, whatever.
Yeah, Thompson Stone Hall.
And there it is.
And I brought it up, I opened it up a little bit larger and I could say, OK, so if I take this road down here and I turn on that road right there, I'll be headed right toward my wife.
You see the picture?
But the picture, the standard, what we're looking for is not my wife.
And it's not the standard of an Israelite.
It's the standard of a Christian.
You share your location with Jesus.
Open yourself up completely and give Him all that you are.
And then invite Him in to touch every area of your life.
And every time you start to take something for yourself, first ask yourself, does Jesus want me to have it?
Should I really give it to Jesus before I take it for myself, before I enjoy it, before I do it, before I serve it, before I mark it, before I think it's important?
Always do that.
And then you'll always be able to find your way to Jesus.
You say, well, that's kind of weird because the New Testament talks about Him being in us.
And yeah, I get that.
But then I also understand that James, in the book of James, he said this.
He said, Submit therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Be miserable and mourn and weep.
Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and He will exalt you.
See, we're living in this world today where people are like, I just, ah, man, I just can't.
And according to what the world says, I shouldn't have to.
And according to God's rules, I'm not going to follow them all anyway.
And we've got those funky rules that were like cultural rules or medical rules or things like that over in Leviticus and stuff.
And so some of those things don't apply anymore, like whether it's an immortal sin to have a tattoo
or whether it's an immortal sin to wear clothing made from two fabrics.
Those things were for their day.
And so if I'm going to ignore that one, I may as well ignore the command about the Sabbath too, right?
Or the command about worshiping or declaring the work of something else too.
Here's what you need to do.
You need to follow Jesus.
And when anything or anything at all comes up that looks like it's important, check it versus following Jesus.
If it consumes so much of your time that you're having trouble finding time to read your Bible,
finding time to pray, then cut it out or cut it down because it's becoming an idol in your life.
Moses wrote the Ten Commandments, was beginning to understand that an imperfect people,
see when they wouldn't go up on the mountain because they were fearful, Jesus was going to take care of that.
And that's what he did.
Just like you were able to say to your son, and most fathers in here, most dads in here,
most people who have ever dealt with a little child probably had a similar instance,
you can say, it's okay.
It's going to be okay.
Let's just do what's right now.
That's what God was doing for us through Jesus.
How many times do you hear Jesus say, your sins are forgiven.
Now go therefore and sin no more.
Let's get our stuff in order.
Let's do it the right way.
Don't look at the Ten Commandments as rules or laws and say, well, if I follow that, God will be pleased with me.
You're missing a step.
The Ten Commandments and all of the commandments of the Old Testament are directions to Jesus.
You follow those directions by coming to Jesus.
You have Jesus as your Lord.
You get forgiven of your sins.
He fulfilled it on the cross.
He lived sinlessly and then died.
You'll never ever, ever be able to be at the place where you never had a sin in your life
because you already had a sin in your life.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
But you can be at the place where Jesus is Lord of your life.
He has forgiven you.
And you can now try to follow the commands.
And when you fail, rather than thinking God's going to be ticked off at you, mad at you,
He will resist your way because you're doing what's not good for you.
That's the wrath of God, His resistance against doing what's not good for you.
But He's not going to be ticked off at you.
He loves you.
He sees you as His child.
Now, I've been spanked.
I've been corrected by my parents when I was a kid and by my God after I got saved.
And if you decide to willfully go a direction that God doesn't want you to go,
He will chastise you and correct you and bring you back in line.
Don't look at the...
Like, I don't want to read the Old Testament commands
because every time I do, I find something there that I'm supposed to do that I can't seem to do.
And I don't really want to try hard because I feel like I'm going to fail anyway
and then God's going to be mad at me.
Rather, I was talking to a young child in our church this week.
And they said, you know what's so cool?
And I said what?
I said when you read the Bible, if you think about it a certain way, it's all so interesting.
Now, is that how you feel about reading your Bible?
Or have we forgotten that this is a picture from cover to cover of our Jesus?
It's a picture cover to cover of our Jesus.
And you may never get to know what His eyes exactly look like or His hair color or the shape of His face.
But you can know Him exactly the way He is by studying His picture.
And you can get to where He is doing what He is doing by following His picture.
And the rules, that's what they were about.
They're a recipe on how to follow the picture.
I'm encouraging you today to draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
The side benefit, by the way, is it says resist the devil and he will flee from you.
So if you think in your house or in your life or in something you're going through,
there seems to be a force that's at work against you.
Here's how to conquer it.
Resist the devil and draw near to God.
He doesn't like God.
And He's not going to come against you or in you or in your life and mess with you if you're on the highway of holiness doing what it is God would have you do.
The rules were a picture of our Jesus.
They're a guide and direction on how to live for those who didn't know Jesus.
And then once you know Jesus, they're a picture, they're a guide and direction to Jesus so you can know Jesus.
And then once you know Jesus, you're now free to try to live them out.
And if you fail, you have nothing to fear, which just should mean you can try all the harder.
You can face it.
Face your greatest weakness and overcome in Jesus.
They were a picture of how to live that leads us to Jesus.
And in Jesus, we can follow them to the best of our ability with no fear.
And Moses was beginning to understand that that's what the Israelites needed.
They were afraid.
And what they really needed was God.
By the way, when Moses got saved, how did he get saved?
Did he get saved by following the law?
Did he get saved by the sacrifices in the temple?
No.
He got saved by believing in Jesus.
It's not by name.
By believing in Jesus, the way that God would make.
And everyone who's ever been saved got saved by believing in Jesus.
Why?
Because the picture of Jesus was clearly drawn, not in the shape of his face, not his shoe size,
but the picture of Jesus was clearly drawn in the Old Testament for those who loved God.
God always found a way for them to understand what God was going to do.
And it's the same way for us today.
So I would encourage you if someone is talking to you about the Ten Commandments to say,
those were directions so that we could see who Jesus is.
So I'm saying, but you don't follow the Sabbath the way you're supposed to.
I understand.
I'm working on that.
I'm trying.
I know you lied once.
Yes.
I repented of that lie.
I turned back to the Lord.
I try never to lie.
I know you might take something that doesn't belong to you.
I see you talking on your phone on the clock like you're supposed to be working,
and you're talking on your phone with your buddy about whatever,
and you're stealing time from your employer.
Yes, that's true.
I see what you're saying there, but I'm working on that.
I am an imperfect being, but I am following the Lord the best I can.
I'm trying, and I'll try even harder now that you pointed that out to me.
Rather than looking at people and saying how stupid they are,
we need to look at people and realize they just haven't got the picture of Jesus yet.
Or maybe they have.
And you might talk to them like the lady that I talked to with Tony Paco's
or a couple of other times has come up where they really did have the picture.
They already knew.
And that's the moment when you come in and say, you know that God whom you are reading about?
I can tell you who he is.
I can tell you how to get saved like Philip did with the Ethiopian,
like Paul did in the Areopagus.
You can say, I can tell you.
I get, I see that you're seeing the outline of someone,
and let me tell you who that person is now.
But if you go into them and you say, look, you're supposed to have a Sabbath.
You're supposed to do this. You're supposed to do that.
Now I see what you did there. You're going to hell.
It's not about the directions to hell.
It's about the directions to Jesus so that everybody can go to heaven.
I would encourage you to use it that way.
And I want to try to use it that way.
I'm going to pray for us briefly and then we're going to have the praise team come and lead us in a song.
If you've been convicted today by something that we discovered in the text,
I would ask you to commit today to follow what it is that God is saying to you.
Look for that Jesus because he's incredible.
He makes it so that our God is no one to be afraid of.
We love him and are called according to his purpose.
Father in heaven, thank you so much for the history that went on before Jesus came.
The power and authority that you exercise to write the truth of salvation.
And I guess the reality is it's in every plant, every tree, in every breeze, in every person.
It's written in our DNA.
And mankind has now just in the last couple of decades gotten to the point where they can begin to understand
that DNA is there, it's the language by which everything functions.
And if that's not horrible testimony of a creator God and an intelligent God that put us all together,
only a fool could believe otherwise for a man with great faith in something that's fruitless.
God, I thank you that you wrote this world.
You wrote all creation.
Think about the blades of grass blowing in the wind, how they testify to the awesome glory of our God.
Think about the heat in the room and how it testifies to the awesome glory of our God.
Think about your word, the Ten Commandments, and all the commandments of the Old Testament.
It's said that there are 800 commandments, categories, really 1500 commandments,
but 800 commandments, categories in the New Testament.
In the short New Testament, 800 commands, all founded on the commands of the Holy Spirit.
Are they a picture of Jesus?
We believe they are.
Lord, help us.
Beat our Lord.
Teach us.
Set us on the right track.
Help us adjust and make our life something that brings you glory.
You know that the adjustment is in you, and the victory is in you,
and the overcoming enemies in you, and overcoming tasks in you,
and health and strength and intelligence and finances, it's all in you.
We can do nothing except that which we do to you.
And I thank you that that picture was painted long ago, thousands and thousands of years ago.
And there have been men, some of them worshiped in heaven now,
that we might be one.
And we might come to your holy mountain not as they did fearful,
but as a child of living God, owning every rock and every breeze,
having plenty of all that we need knowing that you will take care of us.
Lord, enlarge our hearts, enlarge our minds,
to trust, to trust in God.
You didn't write a song or a story,
but you wrote the directions to salvation.
In and on.
All of history, all of your Word, it's all there.
So that we can come in this present moment,
commit ourselves to Jesus first,
and following you,
and best we know how these days, as our understanding grows,
probably a little better, a little better, a little better,
that an imperfect people, purified by your grace,
can see the picture of a perfect Savior.
Lord, help us.
That there's somebody in this room who has not committed their life to you,
somebody in this room who has not committed a personal relationship with you,
or there's somebody in this room who has not attempted to grow near to you,
growing this high,
and what we ask of you,
to just do what you did.
We know you're a close-girth company, and they're gone the other way.
We've been working on you today,
and ask the Lord, all of them of yourself,
to remove our bars, break our chains,
set us free to approach you,
and to live for you the best we know how.
And when it gets scary,
and we're asked to do something that makes us feel shaky,
help us to remember always that you are not shaky.
You are solid ground,
our strong fortress,
our protector and our provider,
our guide and our Savior,
and you are preparing a place for us in heaven for eternity.
Help us to remember that,
and we face our greatest challenges.
And you are our God,
and you alone are our God,
and you've been showing us the way,
and it culminates in Jesus.
We praise you for what you're doing,
in Jesus' name,
Amen.
Ask the grace to come forward,
and lead us in our closing hymn today,
and if the Lord has touched your heart in some way,
you respond,
and you walk forward,
stand where you are,
and get my attention.
If you're online,
feel free to put in a comment.
If you're listening to our podcast,
feel free to put a comment below.
Share the gospel with anyone who will listen,
because the Adherent who gave to Jesus
is going to rip out of creation since the beginning,
and if you come to Him,
then His command to spread the word
should bring you free.
Stand with us and sing this song.
Oh, draw me close.
Good choice.
Draw me close to you.
Never let me go.
I've made it all down now.
To hear you say that I'm your girl,
you are my desire.
No one else will have to know,
because nothing else could take your place.
To feel the warmth of your embrace,
help me find a way,
bring me back to you.
You're all I want.
You're all I've ever needed.
You're all I want.
Help me know you are near.