Tarnished Silver
How to Deal With God • Sermon • Submitted
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· 7 viewsJesus rescued us to restore us to the image of God He created in us.
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When Renee’ and I were married - it will be 38 years ago this Friday, we had communion as a part of our ceremony.
In fact that day was such a blur of activity, one of the few things I remember is getting choked on the communion bread.
We used a common loaf and the preacher pulled off a piece for me that was as big as the state of Montana.
My mouth was dry to start with and I got choked.
Well the preacher prayed and ended up praying for all of the missionaries around the world by name to give me time to get unchoked.
But eventually I did and we got all I do-ed and here we are.
The point of this story is the chalice we used for communion.
It was a simple, silver plated chalice that we took home and eventually put in a drawer and eventually it ended up on a shelf in my office.
It has tarnished a bit over the years and I’ve had a few folks try to get the tarnish off.
But it won’t come off - the tarnish is a little too deep.
The tarnish has been a bit of a nag to me - the chalice was beautiful - it represents something very special - and I let it get tarnished.
Here’s the point - Jesus came to rescue us - to remove the tarnish of sin.
Jesus rescued us to restore us to the image of God He created in us.
Let’s talk about that.
The Ten Commandments have been greatly maligned by society and the church.
Society thinks it wants anarchy - they use other words but that’s really what it is.
And the church wants - well, some of what the world wants.
And it would have been perfectly in God’s rights to toss the whole mess out.
But He didn’t.
Instead, He sent Jesus who understood perfectly the image of God.
He didn’t make some new way to see the image.
He simply did the old rules so the image would be plain.
He did the old rules the way they were written in the spirit that they were written in.
We make a lot of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus and we should.
But without Jesus living a perfectly sinless life - perfectly doing the law in the spirit the law was given - if He hadn’t done that, His death, burial and resurrection would be meaningless for us.
What Jesus did was come and show us by his life what our inner being looks like.
We were designed in the image of God.
What makes us work best is living like our heavenly Father.
Quick background - you remember a few weeks ago we were studying the second commandment - “You shall not make for yourself a carved image....”
And remember we said that any image we create to represent God diminishes God because nothing we can imagine can contain God.
But, we said this too - if you truly want to see God, the closest thing you will be able to find is you.
We said that and kind of dropped it there - but it turns out that’s a trifle more important than we thought.
Remember this from Genesis 1:27?
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
He specifically said male and female.
Men and women look differently - so the image of God can’t be what we see on the outside.
It has to be what He created on the inside.
And the 10 commandments show us what that inside looks like when it is untarnished.
The first 3 commandments introduce us to God as the only God, and how amazing He is and how holy - how different from anyone and anything He is.
The next 2 commands give order to society.
And the next 5 commands tell us how to love our neighbor with the 10th commandment pointing to our biggest challenge.
We studied Malachi and in Malachi 4:4, the Lord said:
“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
Now we know why Malachi told us to remember the law.
God is showing us the tarnish so we can come to the one who can make us clean.
Exodus 20:13-17
“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.”
You are created in the image of God.
Our obsession with looks, wealth, power, fame, sex - you name it - whatever we are chasing is us working to polish the tarnish off of our most precious possession.
Which is us, the image of God in us.
This image got tarnished by sin.
But there is an awareness in each of us that there is something valuable underneath all of the tarnish.
So we go looking for it.
But the Lord has put it right in front of us if we’ll stop and listen.
We search everywhere for meaning when God says there is only one meaning - to love Him and be loved by Him.
There is no other starting place than Him.
There are lots of things that we think look like Him but He says they don’t - so don’t even try.
He says that knowing Him is so much the answer to our hunger that we shouldn’t ever speak or act in a way that would try to prove Him wrong.
He says that uniqueness you feel is correct - you are unique.
You are different and as a body we are different and we are supposed to put that difference on display by taking one day a week and reflecting on how He is making us unique.
Your hunger for community is a hunger for God’s design.
A close family - parents, children, relatives that you can count on and love.
A church family that supports the raising of godly children and that commissions called by God singles to a life of loving fathers and mothers, cousins and nieces and nephews and friends and pointing them all to the one who will clean off their tarnish too.
That’s the first 5 commandments.
Commandment six says, Exodus 20:13
“You shall not murder.
In the original Hebrew, this is two words - Don’t kill.
It means what it says but man have we gone crazy with it.
We’ve used this to argue against capital punishment.
We’ve used this to argue against abortion on demand.
We’ve used the to argue against war.
But what does it mean?
You shall not murder simply means, no person acting on their own accord has the right to take the life of another person.
It doesn’t matter if you intentionally kill someone.
Or if you accidentally kill someone - it doesn’t matter.
What matters is, no person acting on their own accord has the right to take the life of another person.
So does that mean no capital punishment?
No, Paul tells us in Romans that the state “does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
In Genesis 9:6, the Lord says:
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.
Because we are created in God’s image, the person who unjustly takes the life of another forfeits their right to life as well because of God’s decree.
They are not acting of their own accord - they are acting on the instruction of God.
What does that mean about abortion?
This week in the Supreme Court, they argued about this very thing.
No one actually came out and said it, but Justice Sotomayor bumped up against it.
The unspoken question is, is an unborn child a person?
Justice Sotomayor equated the pain response of an unborn baby to the pain response of someone who is brain dead.
Her implication being, neither the unborn baby or the person who has no brain response are fully a person.
But this command doesn’t know such nuance.
What do you see?
They are a person.
Then no person has a right to take their life.
It’s not as simple as that.
Yes - yes it is.
Exodus 20:14
“You shall not commit adultery.
You may not have physical relations with anyone who is not your spouse.
Sounds pretty simple but it does reach out a bit.
With the way this is worded, you could make an argument that this applies only to married couples and physical relations in any other context is fine.
But no because - God instituted the family as the bedrock of society.
In God’s economy, unless he specifically calls someone to singleness, there is an expectation that everyone will have a husband or a wife.
And in that case, every female is some man’s wife and every man is some woman’s husband.
Everything fits together in God’s world.
It’s a funny thing - in a very sad way - that in ancient civilizations.
Not Godly civilizations, but most civilizations, adultery was referred to as “the great sin.”
It’s only since we’ve gotten so civilized that we quit calling it that.
There is no telling how many acts of adultery we have witness on television and in the movies.
And I know it’s all make believe, but watching it normalizes it - it desensitizes us to it.
So that when it happens, it’s sad, but it’s no big deal.
But the Lord said - because we are created in His image - and He is faithful and true.
We will be the most content when we are faithful and true as well.
It’s the whole reason God uses the symbolism that He does.
The Church is the bride of Christ.
We are devoted to Him and Him alone.
We aren’t going to run around on Him with anyone.
And He’s the groom - with eyes for no one else other than us.
What does Hebrews 13:5 say?
Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
And that’s the image you and I were created in.
Commandment 8 - Exodus 20:15
“You shall not steal.
Stealing is taking something that does not belong to you.
This verse is what establishes our property rights.
You and I have a right given to us by God - unalienable - you can not give it away nor can any one take it away - we have a God given right to own things.
Now think of this in light of our society and all of it’s talk of equity.
We are going to tax the rich so the rest of us can have what we want.
But this verse doesn’t say this is bad policy- it says it is immoral.
It is stealing - it is taking something that does not belong to you.
Commandment 9 - Exodus 20:16
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Don’t lie and don’t lie anywhere.
Our entire legal system is based on honorable people who will tell the truth about what they know.
And God takes this very seriously.
Listen to this: Deuteronomy 19:17-21
then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days.
The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely,
then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you.
Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
You want judicial reform - put this in place.
If the prosecutor lies to get someone the death penalty, then the prosecutor gets the death penalty.
If a witness lies to get someone convicted and thrown into prison for life, the witness gets thrown into prison for life.
The Lord isn’t kidding with this.
The Lord knows because he designed the system that justice requires honorable people to act honorably.
And that includes those who don’t want to get involved.
Leviticus 5:1 says, “
“If anyone sins in that he hears a public adjuration to testify, and though he is a witness, whether he has seen or come to know the matter, yet does not speak, he shall bear his iniquity;
If you witness something and you don’t speak up and it was important - you are made to confess that before everyone and you had to make a special offering to God.
You can see the effects of ignoring this commandment in society right now.
With the 2020 election - with the Coronavirus - something’s not right.
Too many people have been caught in too many lies - and look at what it has done to our country.
Look what it has done among friends and family.
If we are not honorable people who tell the truth, order cannot be maintained.
Chaos is the result - and we are seeing it.
We were created in the image of God.
We’ll be best served by striving to live in the image of our Father.
Finally, commandment number 10, Exodus 20:17
“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.”
Ok, so I’ve been wrong.
When you read something, pay attention to what it is saying.
This commandment does not say “You shall not covet.”
I’ve taken it to mean that and that’s not correct.
Covet means to desire.
There are things that are permissible to desire and there are things that are not.
I covet my wife and my children.
I covet their safety and happiness.
I covet your prayers every week so the Lord will teach me and grow me and give us His word weekly.
I covet a deeper relationship with God - deeper today than yesterday and deeper still tomorrow.
There is nothing wrong with coveting those things because those are things I can have.
But remember the command about stealing?
I am not to covet anything that belongs to someone else - and the Lord is specific in case we try to weasel through the rule somehow.
“You shall not covet…anything that is your neighbors.”
I think this command is last because I think this command prohibits us from doing things that will undermine the other 9.
I covet something about my neighbor so I lie about him.
I covet my neighbor’s possessions so I steal them.
I covet my neighbor’s marriage - so I go after his wife.
Isn’t this the gist of Jesus’ argument in Matthew 5:21-22?
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
You get angry about something and you won’t let it go - you covet your anger.
You want to be mad.
The problem is the mad often escalates into action.
Covetousness - wanting what we want that is not ours to want - infects everything.
I covet something that would help my parents, so I dishonor them.
I covet possessions so much that I work seven days a week, ignoring God completely.
I covet my reputation so much that I don’t stand on Christian principles anymore.
I covet the comforts of God’s creation so much that I make idols of so many things.
I covet control so much - I covet my unrestrained freedom so much, that I become god rather than God.
In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul says:
We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,
Take every thought captive.
Do not allow yourself to covet anything that is not yours to have.
We were created in the image of God and the Lord has given us everything we need for peace and contentment.
Why does He do this?
The Lord covets our love.
Jesus rescued us to restore us to the image of God he created in us.
This is where we need to get really serious about something for a minute.
Should we attempt to follow the ten commandments?
Absolutely.
To do less is to deny God and to deny the image of God in us.
These 10 commandments are the reflection of His perfect personality - and if these things make Him happy, us being created in His image will find our happiness in the same place.
But it doesn’t take much digging to find out how hard this is for us.
As stinging as it is, every person here and every person watching on live stream - we are all liars - every last one.
And if we went down the list, the picture wouldn’t be very pretty.
And even if you’re good enough that you’ve only broken one, James 2:10 says,
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
There is no second and third runner ups in sin.
Either you win or you fail.
And this is where we typically say that Jesus died to fix all of this - but that’s not the full story.
Yes Jesus died.
But the Son of God who is God - who created us with His Image stamped in us - Jesus lived.
He lived a perfectly sinless life - and we go - yeah, that’s right He did - without understanding that if He had not, we would not be rescued.
Can you imagine - Jesus never coveted something that was not His to covet.
And He owned nothing - “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Mt 8:20)
I told you this story a long time ago.
I went to a Sunday School party - Sunday. School. - to someone’s house.
It was a nice house.
In fact, it was everything I had ever wanted in a house.
I left the party miserable.
I was consumed by covetousness.
And I knew what I was doing and I knew it was wrong.
But it gnawed at me.
And I could have rationalized and said, “I don’t want THEIR house - I just want a house like theirs,” but that’s a lie-ish.
If I had a house just like theirs, we’ll doesn’t that take some of the specialness out of their house?
I would be stealing a little something from them, wouldn’t I?
I felt so guilty and angry at myself - because I have been so blessed - the Lord has been so good.
But for a moment, I wanted more and I was a little bit twerked at God about it.
Maybe you are holier than I am and you’ve never done that - I expect many of you have though.
And if you haven’t done that - well, you’ve done something else.
But see, Jesus didn’t.
The lady caught in adultery in John 8 was more than likely brought before Jesus naked.
They would have done that to shame her and I expect the men enjoyed what they saw.
Jesus scolded them with simple words, “the one without sin throw the first stone.”
And when they were all gone, Jesus told her to, “go, and from now on sin no more.”
And never once, never once, did Jesus lust.
The man born blind, the lepers, sick children, a sick mother-in-law, a dead child.
He didn’t covet fame and fortune.
He coveted them all seeing the image of God in each of them.
He only wanted them to see the fullness of what God created them to be.
And he was murdered for that.
Jesus lived a perfectly righteous life which was absolutely necessary.
If He had sinned, He’d just been another dead man.
But because He didn’t sin, I am rescued.
He took my sins to the cross and the grave.
And He gave me His righteousness.
So that now when I am tempted to covet the beautiful house,
And even if I do covet, I am reminded.
I was created for so much more than that.
Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
We were created in the image of God.
Each and every one of us Jesus has or will rescue.
He rescued us to restore us to the image of God He created in us.
He knows how to remove your tarnish.
So go your way, follow Him and don’t worry about sinning any more.