Sermon Tone Analysis

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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.

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.