Rules to Bless not to Bind (Exodus 20:12-21)

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Welcome

Roughly 10 years ago I was with my dad and we were shopping for a gift for my little brother.

Neither of us are that talented at gift-giving… so we went to Buckle, the Affliction t-shirt bejeweled jean store… it’s terrible now that I think about it

We ended striking up a conversation with one of the workers… he asked us what we did for work… I was a pastor, my dad ran a faith based non profit…

He looked the way many people do when you tell them that… a mixture of nervousness and awkward silence… like I wasn’t sure if he felt sorry for us or what…

But then he finally looked at us and said, “I‘ve got it, I know exactly what you should get him…”

Which we were relieved, and he takes us to a clothing rack and pulls out a hoodie that reads, “OBEY!”

Which I thought was hilarious and summed up how he interpreted our worldview, as religious people.

“OBEY!”

This is how many of us view faith in God… it all boils down to rules, rituals, and duties. Do the right thing, you’re in… do the wrong thing and you’re out.

And I think even us here today, many of us in this room would call ourselves Christians, we examine a text like Exodus 20 – and we reflect on the famous 10 Commandments passages and are left with a vague curiosity and this weight…

“what does God want from me?”

“what is all this in service of?”

“am I here to follow rules?”

“is this the extent of my interaction with God… try to follow rules?”

I don’t know about you, but that’s not incredibly inspiring… and I don’t think it’s inspiring the world around us either.

So today I want to try and examine the purpose of these commands… and maybe just maybe we will see them as good!

Think about that for a second… We focus so much energy on being right… but how is our rightness good? If gospel means good news… what is the good news about following rules?

Let’s stand together and read the scripture passage together.

Exodus 20:12–21 ESV

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. “You shall not murder. “You shall not commit adultery. “You shall not steal. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.

Here’s the big idea: “God’s rules are aimed at our joy and flourishing.”

God’s aim is to bless us not to bind us up.

God is after our flourishing, not our suffering.

God is inviting us into the life of the Trinity… God has always existed as Father, Son and Spirit… never alone, never without, never lacking… always overflowing, always enoug….

That is why God is not a narcissist… God knows how to give love because God has always existed relationally…

And we are made in his image, needing relational wholeness… craving it!

God made us to welcome us into his perfect relationship so that we could partake in his perfect love!

“God’s rules are aimed at our joy and flourishing.”

A World Without (Moral) Rules

In terms of relationships — Anyone who examines our world for any short amount of time will notice things aren’t as they should be…

I recently logged back into Twitter after a near 7-10 year hiatus… I’m not kidding, after 15 minutes of hanging out in Twitter, I was not surprised people are so anxious and exhausted!

It felt like an overwhelming flood of negativity… I probably shouldn’t have been, but I was most shocked by the level of conspiracy and contempt people were showing towards one another.

People would never talk like that to each other in person.

You would think that freedom would lead to freedom…

Define: FREEDOM: the absence of coercion, or constraint in choice or action…

but our culture defines freedom as radical autonomy, we all create truth for ourselves and no one is accountable to anyone… this is said to create love and a sense of freedom… but it seems like it is actually fostering a deeper sense of suspicion and distrust towards one another.

We live in a society without rules… and we all think we’re right, and we only listen to people just like us

we can cater all of our information so that it comes from people just like us

And we question and blame and show suspicion to anyone outside our current group.

There are many denominations of churches, right?

And I don’t believe all of them are sociopathic nasty people…

All of these churches aren’t trying to manipulate people into believing a lie…

I think most people are trying to do their best to help others’

And yet, we think we’re right and everyone else is wrong, right?

It’s a fascinating hypocrisy.

I am not saying truth doesn’t exist… but, at times, I am afraid we have become more interested in being right than being like Jesus.

Jesus hung out with people different than him

Jesus wasn’t generous

Jesus showed immense grace

Jesus displayed meekness in the face of power

Jesus sacrificed for the betterment of his enemies!

Jesus was radical!

It’s obvious that us making up our own rules isn’t working out super great…

I look around and I see a lot of confused people...

Like, we struggle to talk to each other anymore.

Religion, politics, even sports now… I was watching an NFL game this year and a family member of mine was saying, “I don’t watch it anymore… the NFL… it’s all like political and stuff now…”

He seemed shocked by my questions but all I asked was, “oh yeah, what do you mean?”

He pointed at their helmets… the helmet read, “choose love.”

Now I felt dumb… because I don’t know where I transported to, but I grew up thinking that was pretty good.

But I guess nowadays, “choose love” elicits fierce anger and outrage.

It’s crazy. We don’t know how to talk to people who are different than we are and it’s sad.

It’s not working!

We need rules.

Why do we need them… I am glad you asked.

Why We Need Rules

Here’s what I believe to be true:

God gave the Israelites the 10 Commandments because without them they were literally going to destroy each other!

The rules were given so the people would not destroy each other.

God told the people to go, subdue the earth, fill it… lots of freedom!

And we filled it up… but we weren’t very good at getting along and being nice neighbors.

Cain and Abel were brothers, of Adam, and Eve… and that didn’t go real good either…

Left to our own devices, we don’t do very well.

So God, who is around the whole time… trying to love and serve us, his creation… gives us these commandments as a means for our own flourishing.

They aren’t meant to rob us of anything.

The rules are meant to be a blessing to us!

Can you imagine a world without rules?

Anarchists crack me up… someone who is into ANARCHY… they’re railing against governments and police and institutions… etc

Bring me any anarchist… and I bet if we stole their stuff and held them against their will… the moment they were able, they would call the police, right?

It’s easy to be an anarchist when everything is going pretty good…

But the moment you hold someone against their will, they want justice!

We have this innate sense of right and wrong… of good and evil… We cannot escape it.

The rules keep us safe! And that is the point.

Out of abundant mercy, God gave us these 10 commandments. They are a blessing.

Read the list… are there really any bad ones?

Who in here loves murder? Who wants their stuff stolen? Who wants people saying bad stuff about them? Who wants someone else to sleep with their spouse?

If you come across the dude who’s like, “we need more murder! Let’s steal each others stuff!”

Like, everybody is backing away from that guy, right?

I mean, these are pretty good. God knew what he was doing.

Bring me someone who doesn’t want rules… I’ll quickly show you a liar… and the litmus test is this, “take his stuff and ask him how he feels about it.”

I have yet to meet someone who gets real excited to get his stuff stolen.

“You know what I’m gonna do this weekend… Try and get my stuff stolen from my house. Can’t wait. We’re gonna keep the doors unlocked, make a facebook post (or Tik Tock or whatever the kids are into nowadays), it’s gonna be great! Love it. Looking forward to it.”

I heard a conversation between a couple people recently….

It went something like this… The first person asked the question, “do you believe in right and wrong?”

The second person responded, “no, we make all that stuff up. No such thing. Good and evil don’t exist. Every person should determine what they think is right for themselves.”

The first person responded with something to the effect of, “well okay, so I want to hit you. I think it’s right. I feel pretty good about it. So that’s fine, right… Hey man, it’s my truth.”

The other guy didn’t like that very much but also didn’t really have much to say about it…

Right, because who’s to say… He can’t tell the other person he’s wrong if there is no such thing as right and wrong.

And this is where that argument falls apart.

We need rules, because rules are actually good for us.

God’s Glory and Our Good

Please hear me out… God is not trying to cause you harm.

The first 4 commandments give us direction for how we should relate with God.

The last 6 commandments give us direction for how we should relate with each other.

They are all aimed at our flourishing and God’s glory!

God is a giver of good gifts…

God made us with the capacity for love

God made us with the capacity to make choices

God made us to be in relationship with himself and with his people

These are gifts! This is good news! This is our purpose!

Ultimately, we are made for good and we are made by a good God!

God is wise

God knew without rules we would die

God knew without his divine intervention we would destroy ourselves and others

Human beings have a phenomenal capacity for good, as we are all made in God’s image, but we also have the ability to choose what is evil and that is evident in our world.

God in his immense wisdom, gave us these truths, these commandments… For our good!

When we break these commandments, when we try to hide and sneak and think we’re pulling one over on God, we are really just harming ourselves and others!

The rules are good news!

God knows what we most need

Every human being has the need to be safe, to belong and to know that they are loved

These rules make those needs a reality

They are meant to keep us safe!

And it’s sad that so many of us misunderstand the rules!

Just like the worker at the buckle store that my dad and I met — we deduce religion to a set of rules…

God becomes a taskmaster, like the Egyptians, trying to crush us and cause us harm…

Trying to strap us down with burdens we cannot bear!

We must acknowledge that this is a misunderstanding and is false!

Jesus says in Matthew 11:28

Matthew 11:28 ESV

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Wow!

What an invitation!

“Come to me… those of you that are tired, weary, burdened, heavy by the demands of the world around you… I will give you rest!”

What a beautiful invitation!

Here’s the big idea: “God’s rules are aimed at our joy and flourishing.”

God’s aim is to bless us not to bind us up.

God is after our flourishing, not our suffering.

APPLICATION/REFLECTION:

Do you view God as a taskmaster or a loving father?

I think many of us, when we think of God, we think of the Egyptians.

We see God as the same way…

But he is not… He is not a taskmaster…

Reflect on the purposes of the commandments.

Are they there to harm or to help?

Rules, when they are instituted correctly, are put in place to help and not to harm.

Rules are in place to reinforce freedom, not to bind us.

A post-Christian world needs to hear that God’s message is not only correct, but it is good.

The Christian worldview around sex, marriage and the like were understandable to non-Christians 100 years ago.

Now, the message is not only offensive, it is misunderstood and unintelligible.

If we want to make sense to the world around us, we need to quit assuming the world understands our message…

Listen, they don’t.

My non-Christian friends don’t understand Christianity… and I find it interesting that when we explain it, we often just share the rules and we expect people to think it’s good news.

And then we interpret their pushback as persecution and start feeling self-righteous about ourselves…

People are motivated by beauty… we do what we desire. Until the message of Jesus is good + beautiful, it will not move people.

And the message of jesus is the most beautiful story ever told. And what is even more amazing about it, is that it is true.

Let’s pray