Directions for Life /
Based on Exodus 20:1-17 and Mark 12:29-31 / Delivered on March 11, 2018 to
Hudson UMC
Hymns: We Are Called, Be
Thou My Vision, They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love
Exodus 20:1-17
20:1 And God spoke all
these words:
20:2 “I am the LORD your
God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
20:3 “You shall have no
other gods before me.
20:4 “You shall not make
for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth
beneath or in the waters below.
20:5 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 parents to the third and fourth
generation of those who hate me,
20:6 but showing love to a
thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
20:7 “You shall not misuse
the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who
misuses his name.
20:8 “Remember the Sabbath
day by keeping it holy.
20:9 Six days you shall
labor and do all your work,
20:10 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 male or female servant, nor your
animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.
20:11 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.
20:12 “Honor your father
and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is
giving you.
20:13 “You shall not
murder.
20:14 “You shall not
commit adultery.
20:15 “You shall not
steal.
20:16 “You shall not give
false testimony against your neighbor.
20:17 “You shall not covet
your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or
female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Rev. Dawn told me she
didn’t expect me to fit tightly within her sermon series on grace and covenant
but, me being me, I wanted to have our messages fit together. I struggled at first to determine how the Ten
Commandments fit into a series on God’s covenants. I went back to chapter 19 to give me a
running start at them and there it was.
Exo 19:3-8: Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD
called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the
descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ‘You
yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’
wings and brought you to myself. Now if
you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my
treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to
the Israelites.” So, Moses went back and
summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the LORD
had commanded him to speak. The people
all responded together, “We will do everything the LORD has said.” So, Moses
brought their answer back to the LORD.
There is the covenant
language! This was just prior to Moses
meeting God on the mountain and receiving the tablets. Then it hit me that the place these tablets
were stored was within the Ark of the Covenant which traveled with the people
wherever they went and when Solomon finally built it, the Ark of the Covenant
was kept in the inner-most spot in the Temple, the Holy of Holies. The Ark or the Covenant symbolized God’s
presence with the people. The Ten
Commandments were within that presence.
I like that symbolism.
Moses came down from mount
Sinai with two tablets. The first dealt
with how to have a right relationship with God, and the second tablet dealt
with how to have a right relationship with your fellow citizen. This is the split Jesus gave in his telling
of the greatest commandment. First it
was to be in a loving relationship with God, and the second was to be in loving
relationship with your neighbor. Rev.
Dawn included this great commandment from Jesus last week. Here it is from Mark.
Mark 12:29-31 “The most
important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God,
the Lord is one. 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.”
I’m going to be looking at
these commands in three different ways:
Through the eyes of a
sinner
Through the eyes of a
lawyer
Through the eyes of God
First through the eyes of
a sinner.
We look at the list of
rules and most often think in two different ways. Either we feel shame for our failure or feel
superior looking at our neighbors who appear to be failing worse than us.
As humans we tend to
compare ourselves. If there is a
standard we look to see how we’re doing against it. If there is another person with us we check
out how we compare to how they are doing.
The joke about two people running away from a bear comes to mind. One says, “You can’t outrun a bear” and the
other replies, “I don’t have to outrun the bear I just have to outrun
you.” Obviously, that’s not the goal but
we go there. We think has long as
there’s someone doing worse and they haven’t been struck by lightning, then
we’re safe. We go into survival mode
first and foremost.
I’m betting the moment I
understood what the ten commandments said, I tried to give myself a score. I’m betting that you did too. Because we see we don’t meet all the
expectations of the law we feel shame. We
see the law as something that makes us worthy or unworthy. If we feel we are doing well obeying, then
God must love us because that would be fair.
If we don’t feel so good, especially when we’re told even thinking about
breaking one is equal to breaking one, well then, we hope God is looking in the
opposite direction and we can hide from Him.
Treated in this way the commandments can cause separation from God due
to our shame. That’s not what was
intended.
Moses didn’t receive the
tablets until after the people were liberated from bondage and fed in the
desert by God’s manna. God didn’t wait
to provide his love until after they obeyed, and he doesn’t withhold his love
if we fail today. God’s love continues
to be poured on us through his grace, not because we deserve it, but because we
exist. That would be that Prevenient
Grace that Rev Dawn preached about with Noah and the rainbow. The law was instruction in how to live as a
child of God, not how to earn becoming one.
The daily devotional The Disciplines
brought out a quote recently that speaks to this. “There’s nothing you could ever do that would
make God love you more, and there’s nothing you could ever do that would make
God love you less.” The law wasn’t sent
to cause us to feel scared, or shameful, or fear separation from God. Yet when we see the commandments through the
eyes of a sinner that is often what happens.
There were a few times in
scripture where someone who felt they were especially law abiding bragged to
Jesus. In most cases they were the
Pharisee, or lawyers of the community.
Let’s look at these scriptures through the eyes of a lawyer.
Through the eyes of a
lawyer
The Pharisee were the
experts in the law. They made the words
of God more detailed to make sure they could judge compliance more
accurately. It makes me think of the case
law documents judges put out after each trial to help others after them see how
they judged a person as guilty or innocent.
Judging others is the name
of their game, so being as detailed as possible about what would be OK and
not-OK is important. The focus is still
very much on the sinner and their relationship to the law, but in this case, it
is judgment of another not self-reflection.
Looking at the commandments
through these eyes reminded me of the portion of my career I spent writing
information security policy. I created
policy for two different large corporations.
When the policy was first created it was just a few pages long. Then Audit got involved. They wanted more specific wording “to bring
clarity”. The clarity was for them to
more easily judge whether the rule had been broken more than for the person
reading the rule to understand it.
Adding more detail at times moved the end goal out of sight. The end goal was to protect information. Having a large book of rules caused people to
just do a word search for what they wanted to do and if it wasn’t explicitly
listed as forbidden they figured they couldn’t get an audit finding on it –
even if it obviously lessened information protection. They lost sight of the true goal. The goal became not getting an audit finding
instead of the goal being to protect information.
The lawyers sometimes were
responding to the people’s request to provide more detail. If God was going to punish them for not
obeying the sabbath then they wanted to know exactly what to do and what not to
do to stay on God’s good side. So, they
created a whole group of rules around what defined “Sabaoth rest”. Jesus broke those rules quite often so
obviously they weren’t what God intended.
The word Torah is often
translated as “Law” but it can also be translated closer to “direction” or
“teaching”. This brings me to my final
exploration.
Through the eyes of God
It may sound presumptuous
that I’m claiming to describe what God thinks.
No, He didn’t come to me and write on my computer screen with a flaming
finger. Christ gives us the mind of God
by his example, and other scripture supports these thoughts. I’m also relying on the nudges of the Holy
Spirit from time in study and prayer. I’m
going to take you down a path that many scriptures have led but ask you to take
it more seriously.
I don’t think God meant
for us to feel shame, or to judge each other based on how well we followed the
laws he gave us. The intent was not to
provide a way for us to make sure we kept God on our side. The intent was to give us direction in how to
stay connected to God and how to treat each other. From the eyes of both the sinner and the
lawyer it feels like the main interrelationship is between the person and the
law. From the eyes of God, the key
interrelationship is between the person and God and the person and their
brother.
The first three
commandments can sound like God has an ego problem.
You shall have no other
gods before me.
You shall not make for
yourself an image.
You shall not misuse the
name of the LORD your God.
The truth of the matter is
that God is where we get our strength and if we desire to connect to God
nothing else can be in the way. The
analogy I go to in my head is of a power outlet. I need to plug in my lamp if I want it to
light my room. If I move anything,
especially something with weight, in front of it I can no longer reach the
outlet and my lamp stays dark. Sure, I
could use an extension cord, but that doesn’t last as long and most often can’t
provide as strong a current as the source outlet. That extension cord could be seen as an idol
in some creative ways, but I’ll try to hold myself back.
These commandments are
more like our parent’s command to “eat your vegetables” than you’d think. God wants to provide us with strength for the
journey. The psalms understood this.
Psa 118:14 The LORD is my
strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.
Paul understood this and
he wrote the Philippians.
Phl 4:13 I can do all
things in him who strengthens me.
The first commandments
protect us from losing connection to the source of our strength. They are given from a loving God that wants
to support us directly. He does not go
against our free will so if we put things between us he doesn’t remove
them. Our life is much easier when we
can “plug in” to God’s strength though.
The fourth commandment has
to do with resting. Back when I was
young I thought my Mom and Dad put me to bed, so they could get some kid-free
time. Little did I know that it was for
my health, so I could grow and thrive!
Without sleep my brain didn’t work as well and my body couldn’t have
those wonderful growth spirts. The
fourth commandment is one of the hardest for me to follow, but it is the one
that needs no poetic analogy. We’ve got
work to do. Get some rest!
It is interesting to me
that the commandment to honor your parents is considered part of the first
tablet, the one dealing with how to have a right relationship with God. God is the great creator. Your parents created you. To practice respect for those that created
you is to respect the great creator.
This isn’t limited to biological creation because how you raise a child
also creates who they become. My parents
kept me alive and taught me my first life lessons. Respecting them is training for learning to
respect my Father through Christ.
The remaining five
commandments have to do with how we treat each other. We see the law as a benchmark. God sees the law as a path to walk through
life. We’ve got our eyes on the wrong
end game. The point isn’t to check off
how well you fulfill each law. The point
is to understand how to love. We often
miss the “why” of the law. It was created
to provide direction in how to love. In
this way it dovetails into the Sanctifying Grace Rev Dawn spoke of last
week. It gives us guidance in learning
to live and love as Jesus did. He was
our example of how to love like God desires. Love binds us together as a Holy people.
I’m going to take this one
step further. It may sound a little
crazy at first, but I believe scripture supports it. The definition of “sanctify” is “to set apart
or to declare Holy.” I believe when we
love each other we are showing love toward God because God is part of who we
are.
1 John 4:11 Dear friends,
since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:12 No one has
ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made
complete in us.
God is within us. There is a part of each of us that is God,
that is the divine nature in our human form.
Here is a segment from Matthew chapter 25 that also makes me believe in
this way.
Mat 25:37 “Then the
righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or
thirsty and give you something to drink?
When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and
clothe you? When did we see you sick or
in prison and go to visit you. “The King
will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these
brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
I’m beginning to see that
very literally. We are part of God. We are part divine. We have been called members of Christ’s body
with Christ as the head. To act unkindly
to your neighbor is act unkindly to God, and to yourself. To see our neighbor as separate from us is an
illusion. We are one in the spirit, one
with each other, and one with God.
Scripture tells us there is nothing we can do to separate us from the
love of God. Just perhaps that is
because God is part of us, not some separate being. We are one.
Here’s the analogy that
sprung to mind for me. Did you realize that our bodies are half us, and half
microorganisms, mostly bacteria? For a
while they thought it was 10 to 1 meaning 10 times the number of bacteria to
human cells but new science has dropped that to 1.3 bacteria for each 1 human
cell. Still I am less than 50%
human. Before you say yuck I’d like to
remind you that you are also in the same condition. Yet I consider myself 100% ME! Most of us even help populate our little
inner village by eating yogurt after taking antibiotics for example. All of this makes me who I am and keeps my
body functioning properly on this planet.
We must start seeing
ourselves like an organism, not just an organization. We are the inner village of the body of
Christ. Loving each other strengthens
the community. Building each other up empowers
the whole group. Looking at the
commandments as “law” draws us into thinking they need a judge and jury. What Jesus taught was that sin required a
gentle physician to help heal the sinner which healed the overall body.
When we have a problem in
our body we can’t function well. We
often end up sleeping more and not able to go to work while the illness travels
through the system, until the body’s defenses kick in. If the disease is serious we’ll pull in a
doctor to help us heal. We have dis-ease
within the body of Christ sometimes too.
This causes us to work less effectively.
We focus on the problem, the differences of opinion, and lose sight of
the work God has called us to do.
We may need rules from our
heavenly Father to teach us right from wrong in the beginning, but hopefully as
we mature in our faith we can see the reasons behind them. Being in harmony isn’t something we do to
prevent God’s anger. Being in harmony is
how we strengthen the body of Christ to do God’s work in this world. Through God’s grace we can grow in our understanding
until we are like the Corinthians.
2Co 3:3 You show that you
are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but
with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of
human hearts
The commandments are
directions to help us along until our vision aligns with God’s. The commandment to love God requires us to
love our fellows. The relationship to
track progress on isn’t between us and the commandments. The relationship is always between us and
God. God doesn’t let anything come
between He and us. For our wellbeing, He
asks us not to let anything come between us and Him from our side. God is the source of all strength. We would be foolish to block that flow. The core of these commandments from my study,
is to love and support each other so we can respond to God’s call together as a
strong and thriving body.
Don’t block your source,
get enough rest, respect the folks that kept you alive, and be nice to your
sister and brother. We’re even closer than
family in God's eyes. We are one.
I wrote a children’s song
I hope helps us remember this message.
It is not about keeping score.
The lesson is to learn how to love.
https://soundcloud.com/darci-strutt/how-to-love
My son I hope you know how
much I love you
And I hope you also know I
love your sister too
I need you to listen, I
don’t want to say this twice
When you two are together
treat your sister nice
Daddy I need more so I
know what to do
Can you explain how I
should see this through
Dad wrote out examples of
how being nice would look
He tried not to go
overboard or create a book
Don’t pull your sister’s
pony tails; that would make her cry
Don’t touch her favorite
toys or her blanket hide
I hope this is a help,
please learn from this list
Or I may need to punish
you if you behave amiss
I didn’t pull her pony
tails instead I pulled her bangs
And it wasn’t even on the
list me scaring her with fangs
So really you can’t punish
me; the list I did obey
If you want to punish
someone look in Mommy’s way
She pulled sister’s pony
tails; the hair brush made her cry
She took her favorite
blanket in the clothes washer to hide
Daddy you don’t seem
pleased that I obeyed the list
I’m guessing there was a
point there that I might have missed
I can imagine God the
Father feeling just like this poor Dad
He gave us some
directions, but we treat our brother bad
We missed the lesson in
His words from above
The reason why he gave
them was to teach us how to love
Amen
