Matthew 11:2-11

We started the season of Advent by reminding ourselves that it is a season of preparation – specifically we found that it is “a waiting place” as we await the coming of the Messiah;

He who came that first Christmas,

He who comes to us now in our need,

and He who will come again to gather us unto Him.

Last week we saw that “everything is going to different ” because Jesus has come, is coming and will come into our lives.

Today, in our windup of this season, as we prepare to celebrate the season of the Christ we will see just how different life really can be, because Christ has entered in.

Isaiah paints a picture of a desert which blooms; of strength which comes to the weak and of courage which comes to the fearful.

In his vision of the Messianic Kingdom He says that the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will leap with joy and the mute tongue will shout for joy.

There will be streams in the desert and the burning sand will bubble with springs.

He describes the Highway of Holiness upon which the ransomed of the Lord will come with singing into Zion.

It is a dramatically changed landscape ….

It is a picture of restoration – of hope springing forth, right at the point of hopelessness.

Deserts harbour rivers,

Blind, deaf, lame and mute people have their senses restored.

A path going nowhere becomes a Highway to heaven.

It is a metamorphosis …

The dictionary describes metamorphosis as “a profound change in form from one stage to the next in the life history of an organism”.

Metamorphosis seldom comes without a struggle – when the Kingdom comes amongst us, it does not begin with the singing, or with gladness and joy.

It begins with sorrow and sighing … but once the Kingdom comes … when we enter Zion, according to the prophet, then everlasting joy will be upon our heads and the gladness and joy will overtake us …. and finally the sorrow and sighing will flee away.

We want to resist the struggle. We don’t want to repent, we are reluctant to confess our weakness and failure – but these things are necessary if we are to discover the fullness of the life in the Kingdom of God – where Christ reigns in our hearts

Let me tell you a story …

A man found a cocoon for a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly.

He took a pair of scissors and snipped the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. Something was strange. The butterfly had a swollen body and shrivelled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and deformed wings. It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand, was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the small opening of the cocoon are God`s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life.

If God allowed us to go through all our life without any obstacles, that would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. Not only that, we could never fly.

The promise of Advent – the coming of the Messiah – is about the complete change which Jesus brings into our life.

Deserts which bloom, blind people who see, lame people who walk, deaf people who hear and so on …

That’s the promise of Advent … but there is also the journey of Advent. And sometimes that can be quite painful.

Did you notice that John was in prison when he sent his disciples to Jesus with the question, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”

He had previously known the answer to that question. Just last week we reflected on John’s comments about the Messiah and the baptism of Jesus – He had heard the voice from heaven – “This is my Son. in whom I am well pleased”, he had seen the Spirit descend upon the Lord.

But now he is suffering in jail and he needs reassurance – “Are you the One?”

This happens in the midst of our own struggles … we begin to question what we had previously held to be true and firm. Our faith does get shaken in the struggle, we do begin to wonder.

But this is the time to hold fast. Here is the push forward – like the butterfly. This is maturity, when we look beyond the present moment into the hope of God’s promise.

Jesus does not respond to John’s question with a simple “yes”. That would be grim comfort for a man in prison.

Instead our Lord points beyond the present, into the promise which is already being realised. He points to the restoration, the metamorphosis, the hope fulfilled.

The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the outcast are invited in, the deaf are hearing, the dead are being raised and the poor are discovering good news – This is the promise of Kingdom come.

I believe that John would have been greatly comforted by Jesus’ response. He would have seen beyond the walls of the prison, beyond his imminent death, into the realised promise of God which had been revealed in Christ Jesus.

John was no weakling – no reed swayed by the wind. This was not a man who sought the comforts and graces of life – fine clothes and king’s palaces.

No, John was the messenger of the Kingdom. And he, perhaps more than we realise, knew about the struggle which was needed for this message to be realised. He knew that it required repentance; he knew that it required the chopping down of fruitless trees and the burning of chaff.

In a sense, John would have known in Jesus’ response that his own end had come. The message he had come to deliver was now realised – now he had nothing more to offer, he was chaff in the wind.

Has the Kingdom come upon you this Advent? Are you ready for the coming of the Lord?

Not just for another celebration of Christmas, with all its joyful singing and sharing … Are you ready for Christ to enter your heart and life? Are you ready for Jesus to return? Will he find you expectant and ready to burst forth from the cocoon?

Matthew 3:1-12

Advent is the season for the preparation of the coming of the Messiah – He came to us in the Incarnation: we celebrate Christmas;

He enters into our lives every day: we celebrate this in our baptism, at the Communion Table and in worship & prayer;

He will come again: we prepare ourselves in confession and repentance.

Because Jesus has entered into our lives we are changed, the world is changed … everything is different!

In that document which we call “Merredin’s Creed” but which actually was formulated at a Parish Camp just before I arrived in the Parish we say:

“The thing about Jesus for us is:

We are totally different; it’s who we are now

He is our all, always with us every day

There is nothing else as good

He is our reason for living, our comfort, our peace

He gives our life purpose and hope

He has captured our hearts, we are held

God is a real person in our lives

This is true, with the answers to our questions

Our lives make sense

This is the only way we have spirit communion with God

Oversees our soul, gives us direction.”

Because of Jesus, the world can never ever be the same again.

In the beginning, Adam walked with God – they shared a sweet communion.

Then sin came …

WHY? Because man wanted to be equal with God; he wanted the wisdom to choose his own way – he chose the way of selfishness.

Adam was separated from God, and mankind, as a whole remained separated. Only a few who chose to submit themselves to the way of God were able to share this sweet communion with the Almighty: Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and a few others.

But then came Jesus … and suddenly everything is different.

Isaiah, another of those who walked with God, gives us a few pictures:

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; and from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

He us telling us that out of the barrenness will come forth new life. He goes on to speak of the Messiah …

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him

He will judge with righteousness

The poor and the needy will get justice

The wicked will  be destroyed

The prophet speaks of the radical change which will happen with the coming of the Lord. Then in verses 6-9 he tells us that this change will affect not only our relationship with God – in the case of both believer and non-believer, righteous and wicked – but it affects the whole of creation …

The wolf will live with the lamb

the leopard with the goat

the calf with the lion … and a little child will lead them

All the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.

Because of Jesus everything is different …

Of course, not everyone believes that.

I didn’t for the first 27 years of my life.

We celebrate the coming of Jesus into the world at Christmas. Its a wonderful celebration – we share gifts and Christmas pudding; we put up trees and lights; we send cards to absent friends.

We might comment about the commercialisation of the Christmas Festival but the truth is that all the world stops still – even those who don’t believe. For a little while we forget our antagonisms and we have a taste of the peace and goodwill which marks the season – and the coming of the Messiah.

When I came to faith 34 years ago, it was like Christmas in July! My life changed dramatically, everything was different.

But how …

Well, there was the voice – I heard the Lord speak to me audibly. That was a pretty moving experience.

But more than that – there was the repentance.

John the Baptiser came, as one preparing the way of the Lord, and he called people to repentance.

And people came from far and wide – they left the cities and the highways to trek out into the desert.

They came because they needed a sea change.

Their lives were going nowhere … oh yes, they were busy with the things of life. They were working hard and making money but life still seemed empty – there was something missing.

Certainly that was my story.

John comes into each of our lives – perhaps he is there with you today – and he calls us into a new place.

Prepare the way of the Lord … make straight paths for Him.

He calls us to repentance.

You cannot claim the way of self righteousness and still be open to the coming of the Lord into your life. This is the “wall”,  the barrier which Adam erected between mankind and God.

Repentance means that we tear down that “wall” – it is no longer “I” that sits on the “throne” of my life.

Repentance is about submission to God – it is not about weakness but about recognising the One who is the Lord.

When Adam was banished from Eden it was so that he could not find his way back to the Tree of Life and thus live forever in his self-righteousness.

But notice what John the Baptiser says, “The axe is at the root of the trees, so that every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

What is he saying?

First, he is speaking to the Pharisees – challenging their self-righteousness.

But, I believe, he is also speaking of a newness of life for those who choose to acknowledge Jesus in their life. There is only one tree which produces good fruit – and that is the Cross of Christ. All others are distractions and temptations which lead to the deception of self-righteousness.

John calls us to the baptism of repentance but tells us that another comes after him who will baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

It is the promise that Jesus will change our lives forever.

In my 34 years of walking with Christ, I have struggled much as  the axe came down on the trees of my self-righteousness. Oh yes, there are still many trees in the forest but I know that each day I can see a little clearer and a little further.

And when He comes again – perhaps just to meet me when I die, or perhaps when He comes in the flesh for all mankind, there will be no other trees in the forest – just one – the Cross on which my Saviour died to pay the price of my sin.

Everything is different because of Christ.

On Jordan’s bank the Baptist cry announces that the Lord is nigh; come then and hearken, for he brings glad tidings from the King of kings.

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36.44

Today is the first Sunday in Advent, the start of the church year. This is the season when we begin the preparation for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But it is not simply a preparation for Christmas – that is the celebration of only one way in which Jesus comes to us.

He also comes amongst us now, in the every day – most notably in Word and Sacrament, but also in His constant Presence with us, for before His ascension He said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” We know the Presence of Jesus when we pray, when we need comfort, when we cry out to Him.

But Jesus will also come amongst us again, in the flesh, to judge creation and to bring the time of peace and joy which Isaiah so eloquently presents to us today.

“In the last days,” He says, “the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

We are in the last days; the end is coming – we can be certain of that. But when will it be?

Its not for us to speculate on the time – even Jesus said that only the Father know the time and hour. But we can be prepared.

We have been affected by several tragic deaths in the Wheatbelt in the last few months. Lives suddenly ended on the highway of life. There have also been those who, having lived their lives, long and as well as they were able, passed on from this world into the next.

Last Sunday afternoon a little girl, fell off the tractor her grandfather was driving. Not even four years old, she died under the rear wheel of the machine. It is a family tragedy.

When each of these people were born and growing up, living their lives, they had no idea when that life would end. We do not know, and more than that, we are not going to know.

As Jesus said in our Gospel text, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

The desire to know the end is very much part of our society. People spend millions on psychics, tarot cards, fortune tellers and astrologists in order to get a glimpse into the future. I am not sure what the total spend is but a report in the London Telegraph this week (which, incidentally was covering the Eurozone financial crisis) said that Italians spend eight billion dollars a year on fortune telling.

If we know what the future holds, if we knew when the end would come, we would pretty much do what we like now, knowing that we could always do the rush at the end to get everything right at the last moment. We would know what to do with our savings, our possessions, our superannuation, our purchases …. Life would be a breeze.

The problem is that not one of us even knows if we will see today’s sunset.

In our gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus is speaking of the ordinariness of His coming. People will be eating and drinking, getting married, working in the field and in the kitchen.

He came in an ordinary way when He was born in a stable in Bethlehem. He comes in an ordinary way into our lives every single day – perhaps that is why we often do not even comprehend His Presence.

And He will come in an ordinary way when He comes again – two men working in a field, one will be taken and the other left; two women will be grinding with a hand mill, one will betaken and the other left.

And this tells us something about the way in which we should be prepared for the coming of Jesus – we should focus, not on the end times, but on the purpose which God has for us and the world right now.

Martin Luther said that if he knew that the world would end tomorrow he would still plant an apple tree today. Live your life as if it will never end, prepare your heart as if it will end in a few minutes.

If we knew when the end was near, the temptation would be to hole up in a bomb shelter and wait. We would create a fortress mentality, guarding ourselves against the enemy – the unbelievers, the homosexuals, the wicked, the drug addicts and alcoholics, the bikies … in fact, everyone who we do not agree with, because we are pretty sure that God doesn’t agree with them either.

Instead, however, God calls us to live in the midst of uncertainty. It is only in that uncertainty that we discover the certainty that Jesus Christ is in the midst of it with us.

When we stop trying to figure out “when”, we will have the energy to listen to “what” God is calling us to do today.

Advent preparation is about removing the “noise” from our lives so that we can see and hear the coming of Jesus amongst us today. Jesus spells this out very clearly in the next chapter of Matthew – the text we used last week.

In the Judgement scene of the condemned, they say to Jesus, “‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”

Jesus often comes to us in the least of our brothers and sisters. In the form of those who we do not, in our assessment of ourselves, consider to be equal with us or deserving of God.

The danger is that we will miss His coming to us in the busy-ness of our religious preparing, or our self-righteous attitude.

If we ignore, or trample, our neighbours today we will not be ready to to welcome Jesus when He does come into the ordinariness of our lives today, or when He returns in all His glory.

We are to live in constant readiness – not in personal righteousness – but in attentiveness to the Holy Spirit who is always with us.

If this were your last day on earth, how would you spend it?

THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A MOMENT…

If you aren’t spending it that way, why not?

As you know, I have been preparing and working out the plans for next year in our Parish. As I have been doing that I have become much aware of how much of what we are planning is about preparing to know Christ’s Presence with us now, and when He comes again.

Focussing on worship – do you realise how much of our worship is actually focussed on rehearsing our death? Each time we come together, we remind ourselves and encourage each other with the promise and hopes that carry us through the difficult time of death.

“This is a foretaste of the feast to come.”

“The Lord bless you and keep you.”

“The peace of the Lord be with you.”

And so much more!

Worship is not only about the adoration of God, it is also about community – these are the things of eternity.

We are also focussing on the Scriptures and Prayer. This is the communication of heaven. God speaks to us through His Word; we speak to Him through prayer. We need to know the language of heaven before we get there.

(Our family once flew into Paris from New York. It was a long flight that began in Los Angeles and we had planned to spend a few days resting up and seeing the sights before going on to Johannesburg. The problem was that the travel agent had messed up our hotel booking and it was the Mayday weekend and all of France had descended on the capital. There  was literally “no room at the inn”. And we couldn’t speak the language. We could speak English, Afrikaans and a bit of Zulu but those were all irrelevant to a Frenchman. Its going to be like that for us in heaven, unless we learn the language of heaven now through the Scriptures and prayer.)

And we are wanting to be more involved in outreach and mission – to be able to give water and blankets and Christ’s love to the least of these.

We are heightening our awareness of Christ’s coming. We are, as Paul says in our text from Romans, “recognising that the night is almost over and the day is nearly here.”

We are “understanding the present time, waking from our slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.”

Yes, we are living in uncertainty, but that uncertainty is about things that really do not matter. Our certainty is built on the One who is with us and who will continue to be with us always.

Advent is about refocussing and regrouping. It is a time to take stock of our lives for living it well in the midst of uncertainty.

Christ came as a baby and we celebrate. Christ will come again, of that we are assured. Christ comes in our midst today, right where we are living at the moment.

And so we begin Advent – “preparing for the revelation of Jesus in the joy and sorrow, the laughter and the tears, the comedy and the tragedies of our daily lives here and now.” (Edward Peterman)

The first murder on planet earth was when Cain killed his brother Abel out of jealousy and the anger which comes with it.

Today we look at the 6th Commandment – You shall not murder. This commandment may not be the most frequently violated of all the commands, but when this one is disobeyed, more is broken than the law. From the beginning, human life has been sacred to God because we are made in His image.

God values the lifeHe gave us, but from the beginning human beings have sold it at a bargain price. Besides Cain’s murder of his brother Abel, Genesis records many other acts of violence. And the Bible records hundreds of murders. And they didn’t stop with Revelation. History records millions. We are a murderous people.

There is however more to the sixth commandment than a way of measuring how far the human race has fallen from the ideal. None of us is guilty of murder. Probably none of us has even been tempted by it. But that doesn’t mean we can breeze through this commandment as if it has nothing to say to us. As with all of these commandments from God, there is more than first meets the eye.

First I want to look at several things that are not prohibited by this commandment.

First of all, it is significant that the commandment God gave was not “Thou shalt not kill” but rather “Thou shalt not commit murder.”
The Hebrew word that is used here is very specific and refers to murder.
It’s obvious that God didn’t intend to prohibit all life-taking, because the penalty for murder under the law of Moses was death. So if this commandment meant that you could never take a person’s life, then you couldn’t have someone punished for murder. There is a definite distinction made in the Bible between killing which is lawful and killing which is unlawful. Lets look at some of these…

Justifiable homicide
The law of Moses said there were certain times when a person was justified in killing another person. Suppose, for example, someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night. You wake up and discover him, there is a struggle and the thief is killed. According to the law of Moses, that type of killing didn’t fall under the sixth commandment.
We read in Exodus 22:2 “If the thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed.”

War
The Bible is clear also that the same God who told the Hebrews not to murder often sent them into war and told them to kill. And nowhere in Scripture New Testament or Old, are soldiers told to give up their military careers in order to be faithful to God. I would assume, then, that there are at least occasions when a person would be justified in taking a life in times of war.

Capital punishment
The Old Testament not only permitted but required the death penalty for certain crimes.
This is the only law which is repeated in each and every one of the first five books of the Bible. God commanded the death penalty be given for murder, rape, kidnapping, and several other crimes.

When we look to the New Testament, when Jesus was on trial before Pilate, He never challenged the state’s right to execute criminals. Rather, Jesus acknowledged that right and told Pilate that his authority came from God (John 19:10).
In Romans 13:4, Paul makes it clear that the authority of the government to punish wrongdoers comes from God. “For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.”

Well, enough of what the sixth commandment does NOT say. Let’s talk about what it does say and, more importantly, why it says it.
God says, “You shall not murder.” What is the message or the principle that God is trying to get across to us in this commandment?
Basically, God is saying that human life is precious, it is sacred, and we ought to have the utmost respect for all human life.

First, because we are made in the image of God.
In every other act of creation, God said, “Let there be,” and it was so. “Let there be light.” “Let there be plants.” Let there be birds and fish.” God spoke and creation occurred.

But the creation of human life was different. God said, “Let us make man…” God didn’t just speak us into existence as he did everything else. No, he made us. We are the closest thing in all creation to God. We are the only part of creation made in the image of God.

I like the words of T. S. Eliot who said, “…There’s something in us, in all of us which isn’t just heredity, but something unique. Something we have been from eternity. Something… straight from God.”

Second, human life is valuable because of the price that was paid
I once visited a member of a congregation and found that he collected comics. What’s a comic worth? Well, I’m sure if you added up the material cost, it might be around a dollar. But if you’ve got a rare comic that everybody wants to buy, it might be worth several hundred dollars. You determine the value of something by what someone is willing to pay.
That concept is important, because it tells us exactly what a human life is worth. And God considered our lives so valuable that He was prepared to give the live of His earthborn Son so that we could live in eternity.

The sixth commandment is about more than just murder. Which is a shame because I was beginning to feel pretty self-righteous because I’ve never murdered anybody. Ultimately the sixth commandment has to do with the respect I have for people and the value I place on their lives.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ’You shall not murder,’ and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ’Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ’You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.” (Matthew 5:21-23)

I think what Jesus is saying is that when we get this angry with someone then deep down inside we’re thinking that this person doesn’t deserve to be alive. In that instant of anger, we’re saying, “I don’t want to have anything to do with this person….as far as I’m concerned my life would be better if his life would end.” And perhaps we have been at that point more often than we’d like to admit. If we’re not careful, we can live our lives motivated by anger and hatred.
But I would suggest that the principle of the sixth commandment even goes beyond that. It is a call to respect people and care about them.
That means that if we want to see the true value of human beings, we need to see them from God’s perspective. Because the only way to truly cherish the lives of other people is to see each and every person the way God sees them: made in his image, and worth more than the life of his only Son.

Let me give you an example of how we might do this – you might remember the story of Terry Schaivo. This is a quote from Wikipedia..

Theresa Marie Schindler “Terri” Schiavo was an American woman who suffered brain damage and became dependent on a feeding tube. She collapsed in her home on February 25, 1990, and experienced respiratory and cardiac arrest, resulting in extensive brain damage, a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS) and 15 years of institutionalization. In 1998, Michael Schiavo, her husband and guardian, petitioned the Pinellas County Circuit Court to remove her feeding tube. Robert and Mary Schindler, her parents, opposed this, arguing she was conscious. The court, after 7 years of deliberation  determined that Schiavo would not wish to continue life-prolonging measures. She died at a Pinellas Park hospice on March 31, 2005, at the age of 41. Some have since maintained that her death constituted judicial murder.
It seems to me that not only physicians but the rest of us are smart enough to know the difference between protecting, enhancing, and empowering a human life with reasonable hope of recovery and merely prolonging the process of dying. Skill and technology that help our recoveries are admirable and ethical; the same skill and technology used to prolong our dying are unnecessary and ill-advised.
Maybe a key issue here is our common insensitivity which fails to see that what is best possible treatment for a person lacking higher brain function is not always the most treatment possible. The idea that an emotional observer’s faint hope of another’s recovery is better than peer-reviewed medical judgment under extensive court scrutiny over several years is simply irresponsible.

Death is sometimes an ally instead of an enemy. Perhaps death itself needs to be reconsidered by all of us. It is not an absolute evil. It is sometimes an instrumental good for those without reasonable hope of recovery. Sometimes the real evil lies in forcing someone to endure existence that is no longer really life.

However at the root of the Sixth Commandment is God’s concern for how we treat each other.
And any time we violate the dignity of a human being we are treating that person with contempt
Any time we permit our anger to seethe and boil without resolution, we devalue not on the relationship we share with that person, but also that person’s life.
Any time we dismiss someone out of prejudice, dislike or disrespect, we fall under the condemnation of the sixth commandment.

To Jesus, every human being is a brother and sister. And because we are members of the same family, the human race, we have a responsibility to each other. In Genesis, with the memory of his brother’s blood still fresh in his mind, God confronted Cain. “Where is your brother?”

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain asked. God said to him, “The blood of your brother cries out to me from the ground.”

Yes, Cain, you are your brother’s keeper. And so are all of us.

The challenge of the sixth commandment is not simply to avoid the taking of human life, but to value the life that God gave … to treat it with dignity and the deepest respect.

One day a rabbi was seated next to an atheist on an airplane. I know sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.… but it’s a good story.

Every few minutes one of the rabbi’s children or grandchildren would come to his seat to see if he needed anything – food, drink, something to read. They’d just come and check on him. The atheist commented, “The respect your children and grandchildren show you is wonderful. Mine don’t show me that respect. ”

“Think about it,” the rabbi said. “To my children and grandchildren I am one step closer to the God who created the Hebrews, the God who spoke to us at Sinai. To yours, you are merely one step closer to the apes.”

That story, in a not-so-subtle way, communicates an important message. Being the people of God has a profound impact on how we treat other people, especially the ones closest to us. It stands in stark contrast to the bumper sticker that says, “Be nice to your children; they’ll choose your Old Age Home ” Or the one that reads, “Honor your father and mother; they haven’t made their will yet. ”

The fifth commandment is unique for several reasons. It is one of only two positively stated commands. Last week we talked about the other, Remember the Sabbath day.

It is the only command that comes with a promise, that you may live a long and happy life.

And it stands in an important location in the list. The fifth commandment is a transitional command.

The first four addressed how human beings are to relate to God. The last six address how human beings are to relate to each other. Just as the first command is foundational for the other nine, so the fifth command serves as a basis for the last six. Its placement in the list suggests that the home is the primary source of values, ethics and morality. Just as a failure to honor God with exclusive allegiance keeps us from obeying the other commands, so a failure to honor our parents results in an inability to honor any other human being. In other words, if we don’t show respect and love to our families, we will struggle to show honor and compassion to our friends, neighbors and strangers.
There were three reasons that this command was needed.

1) Remember that the ones who were addressed by God through Moses were just released from 400 years of slavery.
They had lived in a culture that devalued age, as you got older it was harder to work and if you could not work, you were worthless. We do the same thing today. It’s called early retirement.

2) They lacked the social structure that would provide for people in need.
That’s why there are so many commands about how they were to provide for the poor and even for strangers who were living in their land. There were no retirement plans or pension funds; so older people had to rely on their children when they could no longer care for themselves. But God knows that we are inherently selfish, that’s why the New Testament is filled with Commands to Love one another, Care for one another, Give preference to one another, look out for the good for one another.

3) It is the first command with a promise.
God says that those of us who will honor our parents will have long life and health. Now I don’t believe that there is some king of mystic magical connection between long life and loving mom and dad. I have known scoundrels who have lived long lives and know people who loved their family dearly die at a young age.
But that’s not the promise. Guess where children learn to honor their parents? From their parents. If an adult doesn’t honor his parents then he is teaching his children not to honor him.

One of Grimm’s fairy tales is about a little boy who lived with his father, his mother, and his elderly grandfather. The grandfather was feeble and his hands shook. When he ate, the silverware rattled against the plate, and he often missed his mouth. Then the food would dribble onto the tablecloth. This upset the young mother, because she didn’t want to have to deal with the extra mess and hassle of taking care of the old man. But he had nowhere else to live.

So the young parents decided to move him away from the table, into a corner, where he could sit on a stool and eat from a bowl. The young mother said, “From now on, you eat over there.” And so he did, always looking at the table and wanting to be with his family but having to sit alone in the corner.

One day his hands trembled more than usual; he dropped his bowl and broke it. The young father yelled, “If you’re going to eat like a pig, you’re going to eat out of a pig’s trough!” So they made the old man a wooden trough, put his meals in it, and told him to eat out of it. And he did.

Not long after that, the couple came upon their four-year-old son playing out in the yard with some scraps of wood. His father asked him what he was doing. The little boy looked up, smiled, and said, “I’m making a trough, to feed you and Mamma out of when I get big.” The next day the old man was back at the table eating with the family from a plate, and no one ever scolded him or mistreated him again.

If we are going to truly honor our parents, there are three things we must do.
Respect Them
Paul said, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother.” (Ephesians 6:1-2a).
Children are to obey their parents. But honor or respect is more important than mere obedience. It’s possible to obey without showing respect. You can do as you’re told and still be rebellious at heart.

It’s like the little boy who was standing in the back seat of the car, riding down the road with his parents. His parents told him to sit down and put on his seat-belt because they were concerned about his safety. His father told him once, then twice, then a third time. His mother looked back and asked him to sit down. He defiantly said, “No, I will not sit down!” His father told him if he didn’t sit down he would give him the spanking of his life. So the boy sat down. But then he said, “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside.”

There’s obedience, but there’s no respect.

We tend to honor people whom we think deserve it or earn it – we honor great athletes with awards, we honor successful politicians with positions of authority, we honor successful people with plaques. But God says that we are to honor our parents not just because of what they have done, but simply because of who they are. This may be a hard pill for us to swallow, but God didn’t say to honor your parents if they’re honorable. Nowhere does God say that respect must be earned before you have to give it. God simply calls us to honor our parents simply because they are our parents. Nowhere in this commandment does it tell us that we are to honor them because they are great parents, or even good parents. We are to honor them because of the position they hold in relation to our lives.

Value Their Advice
Another way we honor our parents is by valuing their advice. Proverbs 13:1 says, “A wise son heeds his father’s instruction…” That’s not always an easy thing to do because most of us have gone through a stage where we didn’t think their parents know much of anything at all.

I was like most teenagers; I believed that my parents were stupid. But I’ve learned something over the years. Just because I had more education than my parents it didn’t mean that I was smarter. There are some things that nobody learns except by living, having experience, failing at some things and bouncing back.

Let Them Know You Appreciate Their Efforts
There are some things that are just proper and right. One of those things is showing honor to the man and woman responsible for bringing you into this world, feeding you, taking you to the dentist, sitting up with you when you were sick, and doing the million and one other things that go with being a parent. So God says, “Honor your parents.” It’s the right thing to do. Even after children have grown up and have families of their own, they still have a responsibility to honor their parents.

There is a popular trend today in psychology to blame all of a person’s problems on the mistakes of his or her parents. “You can’t help the way you are,” the thinking goes. “It’s not your fault. Your parents messed you up. You’re the victim.”
The Bible doesn’t say that parents are perfect nor does it say that our honoring of our parents must be based on how much we approve of the job they did with us. In this commandment God is saying that we should make our parents feel treasured simply because they have done so very much for us.

They bought and cleaned our clothes. They made sure we got all the necessary shots and check-ups. They gave us a home and food. They provided us with transport and counseled us when we had a problem.

At birth we are solely dependent upon adults for nurture. The moment we came into this world our parents kept us warm and fed us and protected us and many years passed until we were old enough to care for ourselves – so of course we should be grateful! Think of the financial burden that parents bear. Its huge! Somewhere I read that it can cost up to one million rand to raise child today.

I heard about a boy who was talking to a friend at school. He said, “I’m really worried, my dad works hard to provide for the needs of our home. Mom washes the clothes, prepares the meals, and keeps the house clean.” His friend said, “Well, what in the world are you worried about?” The boy replied, “I’m afraid they might try and ESCAPE!”

We owe our parents a huge debt of gratitude. They deserve our honor for the simple reason that they have done so much for us!

I have no doubt at all that what has helped me more than anything else to honor my parents’ efforts is being a parent myself. This is the hardest job I’ve ever had. It’s difficult and it’s costly, not just in terms of finances, but of time, energy, and emotions.

If we can honor our parents for nothing else, we can honor them because they took on a difficult job. I encourage you to let your parents know that you appreciate what they’ve done for you.

I want you to see that this command of honoring your father and mother is so special that it has a promise attached to it. What is that promise? “…That your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.”

Paul quotes this command and he says, in Ephesians 6, that this “is the first commandment with promise: ‘that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.’”

How we treat our parents not only impacts them, it also impacts us. There is a blessing or a curse for us based on our treatment of our parents. To honor or fail to honor our parents is a choice that takes us down one of two roads. The choice is ours.

It is important for us to honor our parents and the time to do it is now. The day will come when we will be unable to show them the honor that we would like to give.

Some of you don’t have your parents with you any longer. I hope you don’t have to look back and say with regret, “You know, I never told my father how much I loved him. And as many times as I was in her house, ate her delicious cooking, and received her unfailing love, I never told my mother how much I loved her.”

If you still have your parents but have been reluctant, embarrassed or simply thoughtless about giving them explicit statements and expressions of your love, don’t make the mistake so many others have lived to regret. Spend time with them. Drop them a note or call just to let them know you are thinking of them.

One last word — a challenge, really — to those of us who are parents: be honorable. Even though our honor isn’t based on our worthiness, we still need to live a life that makes it easy for our children to honor us.

We are to be teachers of what is good and right. We’re to teach our children the values that build character and the God that defines those values. And we’re to model for our children God’s values and his integrity and unconditional love. If we take our role as God’s authority in the home seriously, we have reason to hope that when our children leave home they will always choose to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with their God.

The principle at the heart of this fifth commandment is this: make family a priority.

Let’s begin again tonight by reading the 10 Commandments found in Exodus 20:1-17.

And God spoke all these words:

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.  5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,  6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,  10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.  11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.  13 “You shall not murder.  14 “You shall not commit adultery.  15 “You shall not steal.  16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
The 4th Commandment.

“Remember to keep the Sabbath holy…. the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.”

What does the Sabbath mean?

In verse 11 we read that God rested on the Seventh day and blessed the Sabbath, so we assume that the Sabbath day was Saturday or the Seventh day. But Sabbath doesn’t mean seven; Sabbath means “to rest from labor.”
God commanded that the Jews observe this day of rest every week.

And God was very serious about this commandment – “you Jews need to take a break, prop your feet up, and rest for a while. I don’t want you doing ANYTHING on this Sabbath day.”

It doesn’t sound as serious as “Thou shalt not commit adultery” or “Thou shalt not murder.”

When God says, “I want you to take it easy for a while” what would you suppose would be the penalty for not doing that?
Probably nothing..

But as with every command God wasn’t joking. In Exodus 31:14 it says, “Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it must be put to death; whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from his people.” That’s pretty scary! If you don’t stop and rest one day a week, you will be put to death. That’s pretty heavy!

Why the Command is necessary
1. God knows how important it is that humans rest.

In a recent study several soldiers were observed in various conditions to determine at what stage they achieved the maximum level of output. It was discovered that after seven consecutive days of hard work, each soldier’s performance dropped. But the most interesting thing was that even though the soldiers’ performance level dropped, the soldiers themselves were unaware of it. They thought they were still operating at maximum level.

Many of us think we don’t need to rest, we think that it would be lazy to take a break every now and then. But God knows the importance of rest. God made us. He knows how much this body can handle. And he knows that if we don’t take time to recharge our batteries, that we will very quickly destroy ourselves.

2. God knows how much humans don’t want to rest.

Parents fully understand this, because we see the same resistance with our children. Have you ever watched young children fight sleep? They whine and cry; keep themselves busy, running and playing so they can’t fall asleep. But whatever they’re doing, no matter how frenzied their efforts to stay awake, they’ll insist they’re not tired. There are times when a mother or a father simply has to make a child rest.

God knew that man needed rest from his labor, and he also knew that man would resist it. And if God had said, “You know, you guys really ought to take a break every now and then,” there’s not a single one of us who would have taken Him seriously. But we tend to listen when God says, “Either you stop and rest for a while or I’ll kill you.”

1. The Sabbath was a sign of God’s covenant with Israel

   God had promised to provide for Israel, and they had promised to be obedient to God.

There were two things which stood as symbols of that covenant – Circumcision, and the keeping of the Sabbath.

When other people living around the Israelites noticed that the Jews didn’t do any work on the Sabbath, it would provoke questions in them. Everyone else worked seven days a week. You had to if you were going to survive, or at least that’s what they thought. “Why do you Jews only work six days a week and refuse to do any work on the seventh day?” To which, they could respond that they did this as a testimony to the fact that they belonged to Almighty God and that they were trusting in Him to provide for their needs.

4. The Sabbath was a test of the Israelites’ faith in God

The Jews were farmers and so God, knowing how crucial timing was to a farming culture would surely make an exception to this rule for those times of the year when the crops were being planted and harvested. Surely they could work right through the Sabbath and then make up for it later when they were just sitting there watching the crops grow. Right? …..Wrong!

This law was a test of their faith. Was their faith in their own ability to get that crop in the ground and then harvest, or was their faith in God, the one who made the crops grow in the first place?

In my previous congregation, a man came to see me. He owned a nursery but his life was falling apart. Business was bad, his fiancé had left him and he had turned to booze. I spoke to him about Jesus and he was baptized. He joined the worship group and came to practice every Thursday evening but couldn’t come to church on Sundays. But then one Sunday he was there with his guitar. After the service I spoke with him and he told me that he was closing the nursery on Sundays. He had been reading the Bible I gave him when he was baptized and felt convicted. I told him that he was crazy –Sundays are the best days in the nursery business. I suggested that he take Mondays off instead but he was adamant. It was a turning point for him –the business picked up dramatically, his fiancé came back and they were eventually married. He passed that personal test of his faith!
The problem is that we sometimes don’t have enough faith in God to really believe that He is going to meet our needs, protect us, and carry our burdens. If we don’t work those extra hours, then we’re just not going to be provided for. So we work and we wear ourselves out seven days a week because we just don’t believe that God can take care of us.
But God is serious about this commandment. He’s not just messing around.

By the time of Christ, the Sabbath day was kept with a vengeance by the Jews. By then it had become such a distinctive feature of the Jewish religion that anyone who knew anything at all about the Jews were aware of their strict refusal to work on the Sabbath day.
However it came to symbolize legalism at its worst. The Jewish rabbis had taken God’s command to absurd extremes.

The Mishnah, which gives us a written record of Jewish tradition in the time of Christ, includes 1,521 rules on how a person could break the Sabbath. Among these are such things as separating two threads, writing two letters of the alphabet side by side, tying a knot, reading by candlelight, and so on. As if that weren’t enough, each of these prohibitions generated debate as to what constituted an offense of its kind. For example, could you put in your false teeth or was that considering carrying a burden? Some rabbis said you could, but others said it was wrong.

But the command was never intended for such absurd purposes. Jesus tried to put things back in their proper perspective by saying in Mark 2:27, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” God meant for the Sabbath to bring peace and rest.

The Jewish legalists had taken a beautiful commandment and turned it into a harsh and hateful ritual. They took a day of rest and turned it into a burden. From the start, God had intended it to bless his people. It was a time when families and friends could be together, a time when devotion to God could be shared, a time when the spirit and body could be refreshed. But instead, the Pharisees made the Sabbath something that absolutely wore people out trying to follow all their guidelines.

Like all of God’s laws, the Sabbath was designed not to be a burden, but to be a delight. It was designed not to inhibit freedom, but to protect.

So today let’s close with the three things the Sabbath law protects.

First, ironically, it protects the dignity of work.

Notice that vs. 9 of Exodus 20 says, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work.”

Contrary to what many of us think, work is not a result of the sin of Adam and Eve. In the garden, God gave Adam a job to do. He was to tend the garden and keep it. Work was a part of the world God called good. So when God gave the Sabbath regulation, he wanted to be sure we understood that he was not condemning work, but rather he was giving us a way to protect the dignity of it.

It doesn’t matter what you do, it always seems that your work is never done. And after awhile, if we aren’t careful, our work becomes toil. There is all the difference in the world between work and toil. Hard work gives us that good, tired feeling at the end of the day. Toil just makes us tired. Meaningful labor leaves us satisfied. Toil leaves us drained.

The Mishnah says that even if you can’t get all your work done in six days, on the Sabbath, you should live as if all your work was done. The Sabbath was a way of dignifying labor. And imagine what those people felt when they heard God decree this command. They’d been slaves for 400 years.
And slaves don’t get days off. Taking one day out of seven to rest and focus on God protects the dignity of work.

Second, it protects the dignity of human beings.

Did you notice that the command includes slaves? “On the Sabbath you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.” Everyone and everything was to take a break from work.

Why? Human beings have always judged themselves and others by what they produced. They did it then. We do it now.

We equate busyness with importance. The busier you are, the more important you are. We virtually celebrate our crowded schedules and unavailability to our families and our early mornings and our late nights because we have come to believe that an idle person is a worthless person. If you aren’t out there burning the candle at both ends then you can’t be a very important or successful person.

Our dignity is determined by busyness.

So God said, “One day a week, stop it. Just sit down and stop trying to prove how big you are by how much you have to do. Even I, who created the world took a day of rest. And you are not more important than me.” God wants us to realize that who we are is not the same as what we do. He wants us to understand that our worth as human beings isn’t tied to our productivity. We are valuable because we exist in his image.

I once heard that Busy was an acronym for Being Under Satan’s Yoke. And as I see my diary fill up each day I believe that’s right. And I have no excuse to say that I’m doing God’s work –He won’t let me do that.

Third, and most important, the Sabbath was designed to protect our relationship with God.

If all we ever do is work we not only lack the time to reflect on the nature and glory of God, we begin to lose our need for him. If I, by my skill and energy and power and knowledge can carve out of this world a life of ease and comfort and success, why do I need God?
Soon I begin to imagine that God is dispensable, and that I am indispensable. They need me, the people at the office or at the hospital or at the church or at the school. If I’m gone, what will they do? We become seduced by our own sense of importance.
Taking a day away from the world of demands and deadlines and expectations is God’s way of saying, “Dip your hand in a bucket, then pull it out and see what an impact you made.”

It isn’t that we aren’t important to the people who count on us and to whom we are responsible. The point is that the most important responsibility we have is to God. The Sabbath is a holy place in time where we remember our need for him, the unquenchable necessity of his presence.

That’s why taking a Sabbath from work has to include God. Rest without spirit is the source of corruption. A Sabbath is more than a day off. It is a day away from the world. A day in which we remember who God is and who we are. A day in which we get our priorities back in line. We recognize that God is the indispensable one, not us.

There is a story about a meeting between Satan and his minions. He asked them, “What’s the most effective thing we can do to wreak havoc and pain on the earth?”

One said, “Tell them there is no God.” Another said, “Convince them that they’ve wandered too far from the right path to ever return.” Still another said, “Convince people that there are no consequences to their behavior.” They all agreed that these were great ideas. But a voice came from the back and said, “What if we convinced them that there is plenty of time.” And Satan loved it.

Time is the first thing God ever declared as holy. If we think that attending to our relationship with God is something we will get to someday then we treat time like one more commodity among all the other things we think we control. We de-sanctify it.

I know that the Sabbath day isn’t binding on us any more. But the principle is. We need to redeem the time we have, because we never have as much as we think.

Today I wonder how do you spend your time? Do you fill your time BUSY – Being Under Satan’s Yoke or do you take time to be still and know God?

Today Jesus’ invitation is still offered. “Come to me, all of you who are tired and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Accept my teachings and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your soul.”

A couple of weeks ago, we were having our lunch like any other normal day, and we received bad news.

Terrible news, the kind all parents have nightmares about.

Our old friends in Narembeen had lost their youngest son in a dreadful car accident the previous evening.

It was in truth an horrific accident with Adrian left dead, and the others in the car critically injured and lost,…… unable to explain to anyone where they were, ………so they waited while the emergency services frantically searched for them through the night.

What followed was a harrowing week for our friends as they tried to deal with it all and arrange for the funeral.

But as often happens in these situations, tragedy bought the best out of everyone. They were swamped with love……… from their church family

from their actual family………. and from the community.

The sheep were crutched, the paddocks were sprayed, meals were delivered along with a constant stream of visits, phone calls and messaged of support.

The funeral was like nothing I’ve experienced before.

It was a big one, maybe 6-700 people.

The church was full, the church hall via a video link was full,

there were people crowded outside.

The service had moments of abject misery as his siblings gave eulogies but as the service progressed a picture emerged of an amazing young man who had excelled in all areas of life, from his career, his church life and mission activity, sport, community service, philanthropy, and social activity.

A procession of over 100 cars proceeded to the cemetery where we were greeted to a 100m  long guard of honour made up of police, fire brigade, St Johns ambulance, players from at least four teams in the hockey association, work mates and possibly more.

All this for a man who turned 21 just 3 weeks before his death.

This was a death that made you think a lot about life.

For those of you who know me well you will understand that mornings are not my best times.

You could say I’m a bit fragile in the mornings.

It takes a lot of concentration for me to get dressed properly.

It drains me ……coping with the complexities of boiling the kettle for my cup of tea, …………and choosing which breakfast cereal to eat, which spread to put on my toast.

If it wasn’t for my darling wife, helping me through this maze of morning activity I could end up out in the paddock half dressed, hungry and very disoriented.

If you have this mental picture in mind can you imagine my shock the morning after the funeral to read this on Luke’s nutri-grain packet.

“When the time comes ………

will you be ready.”

Repeat………

Now this is heavy, this is real heavy.

My eyes are now wide open and clear.

I’m grabbing the packet and reading it again to make sure that’s what it says.

I’m rushing around trying to find someone else to read it to make sure it’s not a dream ………that God is not talking to just me in some divine revelation.

But no, it was there all right.

There’s nothing like the death of a friend to make you think a lot about life is there.

It’s interesting how God works.

The lectionary reading for today comes to us from Philippians 3:4-14

I noted with interest that a lot of sermons are written on this passage, I saw a list of 158 one site on the net.

Because I’m not a great biblical scholar I like to read other sermons to give me an idea on how others interpret the passages.

But in this case, perhaps because of my recent experiences , I think they all kind of glossed over the passage a bit.

It was the lead into a motivational pep talk for a new years day service drawing on that theme Paul develops ;

in pressing on……..in striving towards the goal.

It’s a valid theme ….to refocus, to rededicate…. but there is more to it I think.

Much more.

If you read the book of Philippians, Paul clearly has a soft spot for the church in Philippi.

He has visited them several times and grown to love the congregation there.

In verse 3 of chapter 1 he say’s

“I thank my God every time I remember you”

Isn’t that awesome!

What an endorsement of the people from a guy like Paul.

Although I have often wondered what Paul would have been like in the flesh.

I had a friend called Ray in my youth.

He had a kind of restless energy and he was full of zeal.

He was relentless in his efforts to drive us to greater levels of commitment and service to Christ, or to football, or to cricket, or whatever it was.

You had to admire him, and he was a good mate, but he really could drive you mad.

I think Paul might have been a bit like that.

When he was with you ……..life was like an extreme sport……

just full on and dangerous

And when he moved on everyone took a breath and rested.

When he wrote the church a letter all the elders had to sit down for a week and absorb all the stuff that he was saying, all the deep and meaningful.

They had to brace for the verbal serve, the not very subtle illustrations of where they had gone off the rails.

This was Paul the apostle, Paul the theologian, evangelist  and crusader.

There was some debate in the commentaries I read,….. but general agreement that when Paul wrote this letter he was in prison.

It is quite likely he was in prison in Rome where he was for held for 2 years and waiting for the outcome of his trial, which probably was going to be bad.

Philippi is about 6 weeks travel from Rome so it’s not that easy for the congregation to support him and not that easy to pass messages on.

Paul knows that his time is possibly up, and these are likely his last words to his friends in Philippi.

When you put it this context, this is not about new years resolutions.

This is about life and death.

This is messages on the nutri-grain box

“When the time comes will you be ready.”

In the verses leading up to our reading Paul is addressing an issue which has arisen in the congregation and it is the trend of self justification.

If I understand the issue correctly it is a timeless issue.

If we’ve done this good deed, if we’ve acted that way, if we’ve observed this ritual or custom then we are a child of God.

Paul then challenges them, and by association us,

In verse 4:   Look if you think you are justified by your actions,

Whatever you’ve done …….. I’ve done more.

If you think you’ve been a good person,  I’ve been better.

If you think you’ve got a superior background , I’m better connected.

“But do you know what !”  he says……..

“I   consider   all   that   I   was ………rubbish”

Some commentators suggest in trying to understand the meaning of the original word “skybalon” that the best modern translation of the word is “muck”.

Muck is kind of sticky and clings to you. You have to shake it off !

What is he talking about ?

You will remember Saul the zealous Jew… persecuting Christians in the pursuit of righteousness.

He has a close encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, …and his life is turned on it’s head.

He becomes the apostle Paul, evangelist and missionary.

“All that stuff I counted as important, I now count as loss for the sake of Christ” he says.

“I have no righteousness of my own that comes from doing good things

But I count only on the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

The things he thought important has been completely turned on its head

In verse 10

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection………”

Remember my friends ; Paul can sense the end !

He understands his time is not long.

This is not a time to mince words

This is not a time to give false hopes

Paul is trying to get his friends to focus on the big things, the important things.

And that is getting their relationship with God right .

In the context of eternity….. there is nothing more important.

And what’s changed for us today !

I’ve been thinking about it as I prepared for today.

I’m not as tough as Paul.

I find it hard to dismiss a persons attempts to live a good life as rubbish or muck.

But I did start to see that we live very much in two parallel realms.

As ordinary humans we live in the world as we know it. We work and strive to make money, to raise our kids as best we can.

We work even more to build up a nest egg in the hope of a comfortable retirement, and all the while trying to be a good person.

This is normal…………

But there is another realm.

That is the world of eternity.

Sooner or later we will all be experiencing that personally.

It’s something none of us can escape from.

Some of you might be young like Adrian.

You might be 95

But most of us are so absorbed in the realm of living this life ….

that we continue to ignore or put off dealing with the big issue of God …. and our eternal future with him.

We are not ready

We are not prepared.

We have not taken the job seriously of finding out what God wants from us.

I have to ask you today

Are you ready

Are you prepared.

If you’re not .. then when are you going to do something about it.

Make an appointment with David.

He is awesome at helping work through some of these issues.

Make use of him.

In the last section of our reading  today, Paul talks about “pressing on toward the goal”

This is not some half baked new years resolutions.

This is the line in the sand.

This is an acknowledgment that although he is forgiven in Christ and he is confident of his eternal reward ………he strives on.

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead…….

I press on …….toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

I thought long and hard about how to finish this.

Because it’s not all about misery and bleakness.

It’s about embracing the eternal love of God offered to us,

It’s about understanding his eternal promises to us.

It’s about then setting a path forward ; God’s path…….in obedience,

not in cowering submission,…. but in confidence and purpose and assurance.

This may not be relevant but I want to share some of Winston Churchill’s more famous defiant words during WW2.

This was Churchill willing the nation to press on toward the goal.

Note the determination in his words.

His first statement in Parliament as PM

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

A few weeks later at Dunkirk

“We shall not flag or fail, We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France

we shall fight on the seas and oceans.

And we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds

We shall fight in the fields and in the streets

We shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.

A few months later

“Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey

Hardship our garment, constancy and valour our only shield

We must be united, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible”

The following year..  addressing Hitler.

“We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will.

You do your worst……. And we will do our best”

And later in 1941 addressing a boys school.

“Do not let us speak of darker days, let us speak rather of sterner days

These are not dark days ; these are great days

The greatest our country has ever lived

And we must thank God that we have been allowed,

Each of us according to our stations

To play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.”

If you have drawn that line in the sand.

If you are ready to press on with God  , can you then join me in reading this statement that I read on the wall of the church hall at Adrian’s funeral..

If you are not ready then remain silent.

The choice has been made

There is no looking back

I have stepped over the line

I won’t let up, back up, give up or shut up

My focus is clear,

My path straight

My God reliable

I am a disciple of Christ.

In Lewis Carroll’s book “Alice in Wonderland”, Alice was having a conversation with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare one afternoon. And the March Hare scolded her, saying, “You should say what you mean!”
Alice said, “I do — at least, I mean what I say — that’s the same thing you know.”
The Mad Hatter says, “It’s not the same thing a bit! You might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”
The March Hare adds, “You might just as well say “that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!”

We know that it’s not the same thing, and as Christians we need to say what we mean and we mean what we say, especially when it comes to God. Today we are looking at the Third Commandment .

“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

The very name of God is sacred. The Jews took this command so strictly that they avoided pronouncing God’s name altogether. They were so afraid of using it in vain that it got to the point where it was pronounced only once a year, that was by the high priest on the Day of Atonement.

A class of students were studying Hebrew under an orthodox Jewish rabbi. One day the students were reading the Hebrew text out loud. One of the rules of the class was that when you came to the name of God you were not to pronounce what was in the text. You were to change the name to “Adonai” which is Hebrew for Lord.
Well, one of the students inadvertently pronounced the name of God and upon hearing it the rabbi put his hands over his ears and ran from the classroom. No one saw him for several days. When he finally surfaced again they found that he considered himself so unworthy of hearing the name of God that he spent days in prayer asking for forgiveness.

Now, that’s probably a little extreme. What’s the big deal? In fact, you might even wonder why the name of God is even mentioned in the third commandment. Why didn’t God just say, “I am the Lord, and you need to take me seriously”?

After all, as Juliet said to Romeo, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…”

And there is a degree to which that is true. The four-legged creature we call a “dog” could just as easily have been called a “zuffle” and it really wouldn’t have made much difference.
But, in another sense, Shakespeare was very, very wrong. Names do make a difference.

In the scriptures, the significance of a person’s name defined their life. A name wasn’t just a label. It stood for the person, revealed his character and identified his role. And sometimes they needed a name change.

In Genesis 17, God said, “No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations.”

When twins were born, they were given names the names Esau which means red or hairy and Jacob which means grabber or deceiver — which is very fitting for his whole life. But, following a wrestling match with God, the Lord gave Jacob a new name: Israel, which means “one who struggles with God.” And that name eventually became the way of identifying the entire Hebrew nation — they were a people that struggled with God.

When Simon came to Jesus, Jesus said, “You are Simon, the son of Jonah. You shall be called Peter (which is translated, a stone).” (John 1:42).
Those passages let us know that their names were significant statements about the purpose of their lives.

Now look at this can of Coke. If you look good enough at this you will see a little TM after the name, which stands for Trademark. Even though we use the word Coke to describe nearly every kind of soft drink, the name Coke is the sole property of the Coca Cola Company.

What do you think would happen if I took a cup of water, added some caramel coloring to it and some sugar and then slapped a Coke label on it and tried to sell it? I would get sued because I had put the same name on my product that was on their product. Well, what’s the problem with that? What’s so important about the Coke name?

The name stands for everything that they are as a company – their entire reputation – is wrapped up in that name. So we can understand why they would get upset when someone uses that name in an inappropriate way.

Now if we can understand that about a can of Coke, how do you think God feels when we use His name in an improper way?

The last part of Exodus 20:7 says that God will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name.

So how do we take God’s Name in vain
There are at least two different areas in which the name of God can be used “in vain”.
1. We can misuse God’s name through our speech
One of the things God was concerned about was the use of His name in the taking of vows. In Leviticus 19, God said, “And you shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.”
It’s as if God was saying, “Don’t you ever use my name in any oath you don’t plan to keep. Don’t ever claim to tell the truth or make a promise on the basis of my name, and then fail to fulfill that promise! My name is too holy to be attached to anything empty or untruthful.”

God’s point is that when a person uses His name to take an oath and then neglects to do what he said he would do, he smears the name and reputation of God. You’ve proven that you don’t take him seriously.

Jesus goes a step further. In the 1st century the Jews had established an informal system of oath-taking. If you swore by God, you were bound to it. But if you wanted to get out of your vow you could make it you promise on something or someone else. For example you could say, “I swear on my mother’s grave.” Then when you wanted to get out of it, you could later follow up with, “Ha, ha, she’s still alive!”

The Pharisees believed that the closer your vow was to God, the more seriously you had to take it. But the further away from God and his name you moved, the more latitude you had with the truth.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:37, “But let your ’Yes’ be ’Yes,’ and your ’No,’ ’No.’

- Another way that we misuse the name of God is in profanity.
There’s a verse in Isaiah 52:5 where God is mourning the plight of his people. As he lists the evils of that day, he says, “My name is blasphemed continually every day.”

Sound familiar?

We hear it in movies, on television, at work or at school. We’ve all known people who get angry or frustrated and use God’s name to condemn whoever he sees as the source of his problem.

What in the world could be more unholy than condemning someone or something in the name of the God who desires for all men to be saved?
When we take the name of God and misuse it, we reveal something about ourselves — either we misunderstand the nature of God, or we just don’t care about him.

“God” and “Jesus” have become adjectives.

Most people will say, “I didn’t mean anything by it.” But the point God wants to get across is that we shouldn’t utter God’s name unless we do mean something by it, because his name does mean something. And we ought to have respect for that which is holy.

This is the third command that tells us how important God is to our lives. He’s not just “background noise” in our lives. He is the reason for our lives.

Kentucky Fried Chicken Founder Colonel Sanders said, “Becoming a Christian cost me half my vocabulary.”

2. We can misuse God’s name through our lifestyle.
When God gave his covenant to the Jews, the nation of Israel carried around the responsibility of bearing God’s name. The Jews became God’s people. That meant, among other things, that they bore the responsibility for carrying God’s name to the rest of the nations of the world.

When others looked at Israel, they saw God’s people. They got an idea of what God was like. They carried God’s reputation with them just like every can of Coke carries the reputation of its parent company.

When I was at school the headmaster would tell us over and over again that we represented the school. How we acted reflected on the whole school and affected the reputation of the school.
In the same way, the actions of Israel reflected on God and God’s name because they were God’s people. They had a responsibility to live up to their role as the bearers of God’s name.
Listen to what Paul says in Romans 2:21-24: “You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? For “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.””

God’s name was blasphemed because of the way they were living. They were teaching all the right things, but they weren’t living it. And as a result, God’s name was taken in vain.

In Malachi 1:6, God says, “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am the Father, where is My honor? And if I am a Master, where is My reverence? says the LORD of hosts to you priests who despise My name. Yet you say, ’In what way have we despised Your name?’”

God says, “You’ve despised my name, you’ve taken it in vain.” What was their response, “What are you talking about? How have we done that?” And so God goes on to explain that they despised his name by not living lives of righteousness. These people had shown contempt for God’s name, but it wasn’t through their words; it was through their actions.

The Israelites were supposed to bring their best animal as a sacrifice. Specifically, the sacrifice was to be a one-year old male lamb that had no blemish or spot, no broken legs, and no disease. Instead, they were bringing the leftovers – the ones that they and no one else wanted.

God says in vs. 8, “Try offering them to your governor!” What they were bringing to God supposedly to honor his name was something that their public officials would have laughed at and been offended by.

God’s name was supposed to be lifted up and magnified in Israel so that the rest of the world would see what a great God they had and magnify Him. But instead, Israel through its actions had thrown mud on God’s name so that the rest of the world laughed at their God rather than praising Him.

You see, anyone can talk about God. When someone sneezes, we easily say, “God bless you!”

But faith isn’t just talking about God. Christianity isn’t about words; it’s about a relationship.

That’s why this command talks about our sincerity to God in terms of using his name with reverence. God is holy. He deserves our reverence and our worship — not just our words, but our genuine, sincere faith and worship. When we talk about God, we need to mean what we say.

This commandment is calling us to authentic faith. God doesn’t want you to merely say that he’s number one; he actually wants to be number one. When it comes to God, we need to “practice what we preach.” After all, if you’ve given your life over to Jesus, you bear his name. When you call yourself a “Christian,” you’re saying that you are his representative. Your actions are a reflection on his reputation.

Sometimes God may need to say to us, “Change your life or change your name?” We cannot call ourselves a “Christian” and act like the world.

If we are to bear Christ’s name, then our lives must have a quality about them that reflects the meaning of his name.

As Christians, we carry around the name of Christ wherever we go. We are the people of God. Wherever we go and whatever we do reflects back on God and how the world thinks of Him.

Using God’s name in vain is more than a ban against cursing.

And it shouldn’t cause the kind of extremism experienced by Jews, who are afraid to speak the name of God at all, lest they misuse it in some way.

This third commandment is an instruction to use God’s name with reverence and to mean what we say. It is a call for sincerity in our relationship with the Lord.

Ultimately, the question we need to answer for ourselves is this: “How much respect do I have for God and His name?” Am I using the kind of language that is going to bring honor to the name of God? Even further, am I living my life in such a way as to bring honor to the name of God?

Names are important. Acts 4:12 tells us, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

And God spoke all these words:

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.  5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,  6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,  10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.  11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.  13 “You shall not murder.  14 “You shall not commit adultery.  15 “You shall not steal.  16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

When we read the second commandment our immediate temptation is to arrogantly dismiss it. Christians today don’t have a problem with little wooden or stone idols so why not move on to something a bit more relevant. Technology and scientific explanation have made idol worship something you read about in History books.

We know better than to worship the Egyptian sun god, we can flip a switch and get all the light we need.

We now know that rain is caused by the evaporation of water. Winds blow these clouds of water vapor over the land mass where the vapor condenses and falls to the earth. The storm god, no longer gets credit or blame for the weather.

So at first look the second command seems unnecessary. Of all the temptations we struggle with, having little idols is well down the list if it makes the list at all. And yet the Bible seems to obsess on this subject. Biblical writers mentioned idolatry more than they mentioned any other commandment.

Why does the Bible spend so much time condemning such an apparently weak sin?

One answer to that question is that the Old Testament is a cycle of the Children of God following God, prospering, turning to idols, being captured, following God, …

But the appeal of idols wasn’t the only reason the Bible worries so much about idolatry. Perhaps more than any other commandment, the second law of God illustrates the powerful connection between what we believe about God, and how we live. What people think about God shapes their behavior. If we reduce God down to a manageable form, we not only diminish His stature, we shrink ourselves.

No one explains the connection between bad theology and bad living better than Paul in Romans 1: 18 – 25. (Read)

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,  19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools  23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
The text goes on to show that failure to obey the second command leads to a lifestyle that violates every other command. Because people worshipped created things rather than the creator, because they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and animals and reptiles, they became people who were incapable of keeping any of the other commandments.

The Bible spends so much time condemning idolatry because not only is it our favorite sin, it is the Pandora’s box which unleashes every other sin.
You are probably thinking right now, “This is not our problem. We know better. Our sins are much more sophisticated, much less superstitious.” Aha! So then let’s talk about the Second Commandment itself. What did it actually forbid?

The first commandment forbids worshipping anything other than God.

The second commandment takes that one step further by forbidding us to worship God under any false form.

This is exactly what the Israelites did when they manipulated Aaron into fashioning the golden calf.

In Exodus 32:1-4 we see the whole story.

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.”  3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.  4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
Notice that they said, “These are your gods who brought you out of Egypt.” In vs. 5 Aaron says, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.”

It isn’t that they were not giving God the credit for their Egyptian deliverance. Their sin was in reducing god to the form of a calf. For four hundred years the only authority they had known was an authority they could see.

First there was Pharaoh, who was considered a god by his own people and by his own decree.
Second to Pharaoh there had been a host of idols in the land of Egypt. They had been surrounded by symbols and structures of authority that they could see with their own eyes and experience with their own senses.

Even Moses, their new authority figure, was visible and audible. He was flesh and blood. Now he was on the mountain and had been out of sight for a month. With all the fire and thunder and smoke he was probably dead. As far as they were concerned any authority that you couldn’t see was no authority at all. They craved something tangible, visible, and manageable so they persuaded Aaron into casting the calf.

I always thought that when the Israelites bowed down to the golden calf they were worshiping the calf. But according to Exodus 32 they were worshiping God as a calf.

So the sin of idolatry isn’t limited to just calling a statue God and bowing down to it; It is any attempt to shrink God to a manageable, controllable, predictable form and we are all guilty. Let me suggest two ways in which we practice idolatry today.

1. Secular Idolatry
Secular idolatry has little or no religious devotion. There are no rituals to sustain it, no ceremony or service, and it lacks any clear structure. People are involved in secular idolatry when they search for meaning, success, happiness, security, peace or wholeness in anything other than God himself.

We assume that a physical, material object or person will do for us what only God can do. We turn to these physical things because we can see them; to touch them, control them. We trust them because they are available to our senses in a way that God is not.

In Colossians 3:5 Paul says, “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”

All these things are “idolatry”. They declare that the invisible God is not enough. They offer something we can touch and see and, ultimately, control. All of these are sensual desires – they pander to our senses and while we think we can control them, they actually control us – they become our god.
When we equate financial success with personal worth we have pushed the abundant life Jesus promised to a number at the bottom of our bank statement. Salvation is no longer freedom from sin, but freedom from financial problems.
God’s promise of contentment gets replaced by the world’s promise of abundance. Financial success becomes a desirable objective and we ease our consciences by claiming that God wants his people to prosper.

Secular idolatry turns a house into a modem day status symbol and a vehicle into a chariot of the god who drives it.

Of course we know it is God who sends the blessings, but we turn the blessing which we can see and touch and taste into an idol. And then, when we lose the tangible things we also lose our faith in God. It is the gift we love and trust and turn to, in secular idolatry, not the giver.

2. Sacred idolatry.
Where the secular form of this sin has no religious flavor, sacred idolatry is flooded in the language and structures and trappings of spirituality.
Remember we said that idolatry is nothing more than an attempt to reduce God to a manageable size. For the Israelites, immature as they were from 400 years of Egyptian religious and cultural propaganda, God had to be made as small as a calf. But our spiritual idolatry is more elaborate. God is reduced not to the crude image of a cow, but to a sophisticated system of doctrine and tradition.

Our churches and theology today are not heaven on earth. They are a misguided attempt to grasp holy things by means of the hints earthly things can provide, and by the misinterpretation of the words of Scripture in order to suit a secular religion.
We reduce God to our culture, our system, our church, our tradition and in doing so we have walled Him in within the confines of a man-made temple we call truth. And the very doors which are intended to invite others into the truth of the Gospel now keep God locked outside..

God was too big to be represented in the golden calf.
He was too big for the traditions the Pharisees had built up like a hedge around the law.
And he is too big to be confined to our particular way of expressing our faith. The only physical thing that was big enough to perfectly represent the image of God on earth was Jesus Christ. He is, Paul said, the exact representation of the Father.

Perhaps that why the Bible spends so much time condemning idolatry? God didn’t want us trying to figure out what he looked like. He wanted to reveal Himself in the person of Christ. Jesus was God’s self-portrait. Any human effort to depict God is doomed to be a crude, inadequate representation. God is just too big to be confined to any human idol, no matter how spiritual it may seem.

We can talk about this in theory, but until it becomes uncomfortably personal we have not yet begun to understand the second commandment. Remember, the pronoun “you,” in each of the commands is singular. God means for these commandments to be taken personally. So let me ask two questions….
1. What is the source of your sense of worth?
If your answer refers to anything that can be bought, sold, owned, driven, lived in, worn, or held in your hands, you’ re looking to the wrong god.

If it can be inscribed on a plaque or stenciled on the door of your house or etched on a piece of paper; if it has a birth date or will die on some unknown future date, if it is subject to the effects of time, if it is limited by space, you have shrunk God to a manageable size.

2. What is the source of your security?
If your answer refers to any thing that cannot survive the fire, which God will send at the sound of the last trumpet, you have placed your confidence in an idol.
If your source of security is membership in a particular church or how well you follow a system of doctrine, however rooted in scripture it may be, you have reduced the infinite, indefinable, omnipresent God to a limited, describable, parochial deity.
If God is contained within the structures of our theology and doctrines he is too small to offer any eternal security.

Try to understand why we do this…We try to make God manageable so that we can serve him.

But that just leads to idolatry. God is huge, scary, and like nothing on this earth, but it is only when we try to seek Him out. Really seek him out can we begin to understand the matchless love of our Father for His children.

We saw that …

1. They are rooted in a relationship.

They are like the wedding vows between God and His people.

God pledges his power and love and promises and presence to His people and in turn, He expects loyalty to himself and compassion toward others. They are descriptions of how we are to live in relationship with God.

2. They outline human response to the grace of God.

Before God ever commands us to do anything or to refrain from doing anything, he first saves us. He didn’t give the Ten Commandments until He had rescued the people from Egypt – only then, did He give them instructions on how to live. The Commandments are our response to God’s grace.

3. They move our faith from the abstract to specific behaviour.

Almost everyone will tell you that they believe in God, but its the obedience to God that turns faith into a reality. The Ten Commandments give us guidelines for moral and ethical behaviour.

4. They set a personal responsibility for the well being of the community.

The “you” in each of the Commandments is singular; they require a personal response and it is only as we take personal responsibility for our own lives that we begin to set the example for the whole community.

5. They illustrate the connection between our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationships with each other.

The first four commands describe our relationship with God. The last 6 describe our relationships with each other. When Jesus answered a question about which was the greatest command. He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this; Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

What Jesus did was summarize the Ten Commandments. Love God. Love your neighbor.

Each week I want us to hear all of the Commands.
So lets read together Exodus 20:1-17.
And God spoke all these words:

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. 13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

The first commandment starts with an absolute truth.

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”

It begins by telling us who God is in relation to us.

I am the Lord your God!

It specifies why we should obey him?

I brought you out of Egypt! I saved your from bondage and slavery.

It tells us what He want from us?

You shall have no other gods!

Why did Israel need such an obvious and elementary introduction to the commandments?

We’ve got to remember that Israel had been in Egyptian captivity for 400 years. For 400 years Israel had been subjected to Egyptian culture, religion, economy and oppression. And the most important thing to remember is that Israel had no religion to sustain its identity. They came to Egypt a handful of people running from a famine.

All the ritual, all the stories that we know of Israel didn’t exist until after their enslavement. They had been completely indoctrinated into Egyptian culture. The only thing they knew about God was his name.
There were no stories. No songs. No scriptures. Nothing to shape and mould their faith. So God began with the basics. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt. I am your saviour. Your deliverer.

Then God issued the first command. You shall have no other gods before me.

The idea of having only one God would have been a completely new thought to those people. The Egyptians served many god’s and interestingly enough, each plague of Egypt was a direct assault on one of those gods. The Nile was worshipped as a god, so God turned it to blood. The sun was worshipped, so God darkened it. The first born was worshipped. So God killed it.

The Israelites had been completely surrounded by a polytheistic culture for as long as any of them could remember. So when God demanded exclusive loyalty, it was a revolutionary idea.

And, I guess, its a pretty revolutionary idea today as well.

Why did God want complete allegiance?
Divorced parents face a particular kind of problem one time or another. In almost every situation the children will try to play one parent against the other. If mom won’t let me have what I want, then maybe dad will. And because the parents feel guilty about the breakup of their home they are vulnerable. If one says no he or she is the bad guy.
The kids end up loving you for what you give them, not for who you are. God didn’t want that kind of dysfunctional thinking. In this first command God is saying, “This is going to be a one parent family. I’m your father and mother. If you need anything you come to me. If you want to know how to live, you come to me. I am all you need to make it.”
This first command is absolutely foundational to the rest. God could have begun simply by saying, “Take a day off. Be nice to your parents. Don’t kill each other. Etc. Etc. Etc. ” But then the obvious question would be, “Why?”

Why should we do certain things and avoid others? If there was no ultimate standard of authority outside our own feelings there would be no reason to recognise the laws as anything but an arbitrary list that could be dismissed any time we feel like it.

Today there are those who want to keep the Ten Commandments, The Scriptures and the God of the Scriptures out of our culture.

I understand exactly why they want to do that; I know why they oppose the Ten Commandments.

Perhaps, in their subconscious they understand something about the Commandments that we don’t. They don’t mind the parts about stealing and killing and lying. Everybody pretty much agrees with those. They don’t really mind the part about being kind to your parents. Most everybody finds that comfortable – after all don’t we put special emphasis on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. The part which the opponents of the Ten Commandments can’t live with is the first command; you shall have no other gods before me.

They understand how powerful that command is. They understand that if you recognise the sovereign, exclusive authority of God then you can’t merely dismiss a commandment just because you don’t feel like obeying it. If there really is only one God, if he really is the only saviour of the oppressed and enslaved, then he must be obeyed.

So what does that say about us if we casually tell a lie or tolerate an untruth? What if we don’t hold to our marriage vows? Or if we indulge thoughts of covetousness? Does it not say that we need to go back to the first commandment and ask ourselves, “Have I allowed another god to take the throne? Is self ruling where God should be? Or Success? Pride? Sex? Work?

If we will honour God as the only God in our lives, it won’t matter whether the Ten Commandments are formally recognised by our culture or not. They will be posted everywhere a Christian goes. And the testimony of our lives will be impossible to silence.

Today we need to ask ourselves who is our God?

And if we are really honest with ourselves not all of us will be able to say YHWH. There are many of us who simply want to keep God happy by doing the bare minimum, but we also struggle to keep the God of self happy.

You see, in the struggle between God and self, neither ends up happy.

God demands exclusive allegiance to Himself. He doesn’t do that in any kind of authorative or punitive way. He does it out of His love for us that brought Christ to the Cross. He demands allegiance because He knows the right way for us to live and He wants the very best for us.