God Does This
Notes
Transcript
I suspect many of us don’t know Dot Bragg.
Ms. Dot is one of the sweetest ladies you’ll ever meet - she has the sweetest smile and the sweetest disposition.
The first time I met her she acted like we had known each other forever.
Ms. Dot was the organist here for years and years and her husband T and I think it was his brother, owned an appliance store.
Right here in Gray, located where the little park is located now across the street from the church office.
Downtown Development dedicated a plaque this week to the memory of that family and to the store that was a mainstay of Gray for years upon years.
I encourage you to walk across the street and see it sometime and maybe explore the area.
It is important to remember where we came from and how we got were we are.
A gentleman said something at the dedication that kind of resonated with me.
I made it into a question: “Why is Jones County an oasis between our arrogant neighbors of Bibb County to the west and Baldwin County to the east?
The gentleman made a few valid points - not the least of is the fact that we have a dynamite Sheriff in Butch Reese that makes sure much of the evil gets pushed back.
But I have a deeper insight I believe into what makes our community what it is.
It’s God.
God does this.
And if we are not careful, we will lose this.
I got my mind blown again this week and I suspect I am about to challenge a few of you.
We are going to talk about the 10 commandments over the next 3 weeks - we kind of have to.
Remember Malachi 4:4?
“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
If remembering the law of Moses is one of the last things the Lord said in the Old Testament, then maybe we need to remember them.
So here we are.
If you are like me and you’ve been in the church since the dinosaurs roamed the earth, then you are fairly familiar with the 10 commandments.
We used to talk about them all of the time - not so much anymore - but we once did.
And we know all about them - only we don’t.
I would be willing to wager that I ran across something this week that you either don’t know or have forgotten.
And I can say that with a high level of certainty, because I didn’t know it.
Neither did a couple of other folks I quizzed.
So let me ask you - when did we first hear the 10 commandments?
I don’t mean their location in the scripture - they are in a couple of places but the first place is Exodus 20 - I mean, when was the first time we heard the 10 commandments on this earth.
I suspect every one of us would say when Moses brought them down from Mt. Sinai - also called Mt. Horeb.
And we’d all be wrong.
The first time anyone on this earth heard the 10 commandments is when God Himself spoke them to the Hebrew children at Mt. Horeb.
They were gathered at the base of the mountain.
This is how Moses described the scene: Deuteronomy 5:4-5
The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire,
while I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord. For you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain. He said:
God spoke the 10 commandments first to all of the Israelites standing at the foot of Mt. Horeb.
This so terrified them, that they begged Moses to never let that happen again.
And it didn’t - Moses went up on the mountain and the Lord gave Moses two tablets with the 10 commandments engraved on them.
But now that we know that - it makes something the Israelites did even worse.
Remember that Moses stayed on the mountain so long with the Lord that the people figured Moses had died.
So what did they do - what was the first thing they did as a community?
They made a calf out of gold and proclaimed it their god.
They did one the first things that God told very plainly not to do.
But they did it anyway.
In less than a couple of months, they forgot.
Their faith wavered.
This God they had heard from was frightening and totally unmanageable.
So they built something they could manage and they said it was god.
They wanted to control their world and they forgot.
They forgot how they got to where they were.
They forgot that God does this.
Exodus 20:1-7
And God spoke all these words, saying,
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,
but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
“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.
There is a lot that we could talk about today.
In level of importance, I believe I would rank the 10 commandments right behind Jesus.
Jesus showed us who God is - if we see Jesus we’ve seen God.
The 10 commandments is the written description of who God is - so we could talk for a long time.
But today we’re going to limit ourselves to 4 things God does.
God does this.
He does the choosing.
He does the delivering.
He does the establishment of boundaries.
He does the enforcing.
So God does this: He does the choosing.
I think one of the overarching principles we see all though the Bible is that God chose us, we did not choose Him.
Yes, we can plainly see God in the world around us, but if He didn’t tell us who He was - we’d all be worshipping the gods of plants and animals.
We’d be talking about nameless great spirits and spirit animals.
But God chose us.
For 400 years the Hebrew children had been slaves of Egypt and the Egyptians were cruel task masters.
When God came to Moses at the burning bush, He told Moses He had heard their cries because of their taskmasters; He had heard their cries.
But something He didn’t say intrigues me.
He didn’t say He heard their cries out to Him - only that He heard their cries.
Because of God’s love for them - He heard their cries.
Again, think of a baby.
When the baby is wet or hungry or hurts and it cries - why is it crying?
Is it crying specifically for it’s mother or father to come fix the problem?
Or it is crying for anyone to fix it’s problem?
When the baby is a baby, will not the hands of a grandmother soothe the baby as good as a mama sometimes?
But because the mom comes over and over again - she makes herself known - eventually the only person who can kiss a boo-boo away is mom.
They cried out in pain - they were oppressed and they were treated badly.
Their Father heard their cries.
He chose them.
He chose Moses to lead them.
Moses brings them out of Egypt to the foot of Mt. Horeb.
It was there that God spoke directly to them - like a mom speaks directly to her child.
His presence was fearsome.
It was an awe-inspiring, terrifying moment.
They knew they were in the presence of an unknown, unmanageable God.
He was different from any god they had experience in Egypt or anywhere else.
And He spoke - directly to the people.
And He established a covenant with them - and you know what that covenant is.
We’ve studied it.
I will be your God and you will be my people.
I will do my part.
And I expect you to do your part.
I will deliver you - from sin, from death, from hell.
But you must do your part - then it was to follow the laws.
Today - trust Jesus as Savior and then strive to follow Him to the best of our ability.
God proved He was choosing them by doing two things:
He revealed Himself - He spoke directly to them.
And He delivered them.
He rescued them.
How many times - how many people have we heard - maybe it was you - who cried out to God.
“If you are there, God help me. God save me.”
And God does.
God does this; He does the choosing.
God does this: He does the delivering.
Exodus 20:2
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
This is how you are free, the Lord said - I did this.
Now think - I need you in this conversation - the Lord did something for Israel that no other God has done for their people.
Think about this - in all of your studies of all of your subjects in all of your life, have you heard any where at any time of any people in any place that had an Exodus story like the Israelites?
No, you haven’t.
There are lots of religions.
There are lots of so-called gods in this world.
Go to some eastern homes and they’ll have little statues of gods all over their house.
Has their god delivered their people like our God delivered His people?
You aren’t going to find it - because it is not there.
Our God delivers us.
Now notice people - what is the purpose of these laws?
They are written to deliver us from sin - sin being living contrary to God’s design.
It’s what we defined the other week as wickedness - living contrary to how God designed life to be lived.
He gave the law and the sacrificial system, but He went one step further.
When these laws had done their work proving to us that no matter how hard we try, we can’t keep them.
At the right time, Jesus came to die for the ungodly.
To deliver us from the bondage of sin.
A bondage that we cry about all of the time.
How many heartbroken tears have been shed - not in a moment of prayer - but in a moment of crisis.
A husband, wife, child dies.
A husband, wife, child leaves.
Dreams are destroyed - families fall apart.
Hearts break with cries and sobs and pain.
And this scripture says what?
That God hears and hurts for our pain.
So he delivers us - he makes a way for us to be redeemed and restored.
He makes a way for a ruined life to become a new life.
That’s how Jesus delivers.
God used Moses to get them to the promised land.
God’s plan with Jesus is to get us to a new heaven and a new earth.
A land we do not see - a land we do not know where it is.
But God will deliver us there.
We follow by faith.
We remember His commands and do them to the best of our ability.
We remember that what He is delivering us to is better than what anyone else can deliver.
God does this: God does the delivering.
God does this: He establishes the boundaries.
In verses 1 and 2 God spoke - He wants us to know - He is not a secret and He’s not holding secrets.
The 10 commandments are a mirror.
They show us who God is.
They show us what we can expect from Him.
They show us His own perfection.
And these will never change - we can take them off of every building in the land and destroy every monument, but it doesn’t matter.
Jesus said, “Matthew 22:37-40”
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the great and first commandment.
And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
This is who God is.
This is how to love Him.
Jesus said so.
So here we go.
Commandment 1: Exodus 20:3
“You shall have no other gods before me.
I’d love to explore this but we don’t have time - but I want us to go home thinking about it.
In their day, every culture had 3 types of God.
Their country had a god.
Their family had a god.
Each person had their god.
So even the most focused person worshipped three gods.
You can see how YHWH threw them a major curve ball.
There is only one God.
He is the God of all nations, He is the God of all families and He is the God of every person.
The first words out of God’s mouth to His people on earth let them know - you aren’t going to be like everyone else.
If you follow YHWH, you will be different from any culture, any family, any person on this earth.
Get ready - this is how I roll.
I am to be the only God you worship - ever.
Commandment 2: Exodus 20:4-6
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,
but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Now stop for a minute here and forget idols you’ve seen, fat happy Buddha's, Hindu gods, Native American totem poles - forget all of that and any idea of what those things might represent.
The Lord is saying here, make no images of anything to represent him because nothing compares to him.
You cannot capture the essence of God in any image.
In fact, whatever you create cheapens God because God is more than you can create.
Think of it this way.
Think of the pictures of Jesus you have seen.
We use those pictures to help set a mood sometimes - to remind us about Jesus.
But now answer me this - are there any descriptions of Jesus anywhere?
We can guess He looks middle eastern but do all middle easterners look alike?
We know better than that.
And because we’ve created images of Jesus that people use in worship - now we have folks arguing about a white Jesus and a black Jesus.
God saw that coming a mile away - and He said “don’t do that.”
God is so much more than we can imagine - anything we do to try to make Him manageable lessens who He is.
In fact, there is only one thing in all of creation that can legitimately come close to the likeness of God.
And that is us
Genesis 1:26
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
One of our 4th grade Awana students is grappling with a pretty deep theological question.
If God knew Adam and Eve were going to sin, why did He create them like He did?
And Genesis 1:26 is the answer.
He created us with reflections of His attributes - and one of those attributes is freedom.
It is better to be loved freely than to be loved under compulsion.
The Lord created us free to love and free to choose - just like He is free to love and free to choose.
That’s as close as we get to seeing the Lord until He comes.
But it won’t stop us from trying.
We want what the Israelites wanted with the golden calf.
We want to create something we can control to get it to do what we want it to do.
And that’s not God.
Commandment 3 - Exodus 20:7
“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.
Yes, it means we should not use the Lord’s name as a curse word, but no, that’s not all it means.
In Hebrew, this literally says, “You shall not bear up the name of your God to falsehood (or emptiness).
This word is a prohibition against false oaths and false vows.
In other words, don’t pretend to be a Christian and do unChristian things.
To swear that you are following God and then not, well, it’s a lie.
Jesus said don’t make any kind of vow in God’s name - simply let your yes be yes and your no be no.
If you represent God by wearing His name, a vow becomes unnecessary because you are the vow.
You carry His name and you won’t want your actions to reflect badly on the one who delivered you.
We are to never take God so lightly that we’ll let Him be diminished to make ourselves look better.
Ouch.
So God does this: God establishes the boundaries.
And God does this: He does the enforcing.
In verse 5, God says that He is a jealous God.
That doesn’t sit well with us because we know jealous people - maybe we were the jealous person - and jealous people aren’t pretty.
They tend to be unreasonably demanding - to the point of being consuming.
But God’s jealousy is different.
God is committed to maintaining the promises He has made to us to be our God and we be His people.
He knows what will hurt us and what will make us better.
He does not want us to suffer unnecessarily.
So He says He will punish the sin of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.
He’s not saying He will punish your children because you are a cad.
He saying if you raise a cad, He will punish your child for the same sins that you commit.
The Lord does not accept the argument, “Well, you didn’t know my daddy.”
Doesn’t matter - you have the choice on what you are going to do.
Your mom or dad may have been a louse - but you don’t have to be.
That’s up to you.
This has to be a wake up call for you parents as well.
How you raise your child has eternal consequences.
How you raise them sets them up for success or failure in the eyes of the Lord.
This is also a warning to children, too.
If you mom and dad act like heathens, it doesn’t stand in God’s eyes that you have to be just like them.
If you follow in their footsteps, don’t be surprised when you reap the same consequences.
In verse 7, the Lord says that He will not hold guiltless the person who uses His name in vain.
That’s insanely scary.
That means that God determines to punish this sin however he wants to punish this sin.
It could be chastisement - it could be death.
His choice - but know - the Lord will not let His name be taken in vain unpunished.
But what God wants to do if found in verse 6 -Exodus 20:6
but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
The first love - God’s love to thousands - not 3 or 4 - but thousands of generations, that love means He will be loyal to them forever.
He will never leave them or forsake them.
He will forever be their deliverer.
The second love - our love - those who keep His commandments does mean what we think it means - it is our inner attitude of affection and desire for the Lord - we want to love Him.
This is what the Lord wants to do - it is His heart’s desire.
But, the Lord will do it all.
God does this.
This is what God does.
He chooses.
He delivers.
He establishes.
He enforces.
God does this.
Forty days or so after hearing the voice of God Himself, saying these words directly to them, the Israelites did exactly what the Lord said not to do.
And they did it on purpose.
Intentionally.
And we’d been no different if we had been there.
We are helpless before sin.
We can’t stop ourselves.
We are bound by it - it is our master and it rules us.
Sin dominates us.
It’s goal is to rule us until we die and it will.
Unless...
Unless we trust in the name of the Deliverer.
Unless we trust in the one who sent Jesus to deliver us.
Unless we commit our lives to Jesus for delivering us.
Because once we commit ourselves to Him, we become His forever.
And He will be jealous for our love.
We have forgotten this.
We must remember or we stand to lose a lot.
We are created in His image, we are free to choose.
Church, what will our choice be?