Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 21, 2021 | Exodus - The Ten Commandments

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February 21, 2021 | Exodus - The Ten Commandments · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
0:03
SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting today online or in person, welcome.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: We're in a series on the book of Exodus, subtitled Breaking Us Out and Inviting Us In.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: And we're doing an Exodus Challenge.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: It's not too late to join us.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: We're reading four chapters a week.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: And some of us are doing devotionals online that I'm writing, four of them each week.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: And we'll be done by Palm Sunday.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: Hope you'll join us.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: We finished the first 28.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have read to the first 28 chapters?
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: Way to go.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm so proud of you.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: And Saul Those Hands in College Avenue Building.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 29 to 32.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: So we're in the last 12 chapters of reading.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: But this morning I'm going to tackle one of the most famous chapters in the Old Testament.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: It's up there, excuse me, with Genesis chapter 1 and Psalm 23.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's heard of Ten Commandments, whether or not any whether or not you know that they're in Exodus chapter 20 or not.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: They're also in Deuteronomy chapter 5.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: And so this is very famous.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, not very many of you, have seen the movie because the movie's so old.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: But so when I was young, they used to make Charlton Heston jokes and Ten Commandment jokes, but I don't think we do that all that much anymore.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: So it used to be though, every school child, you know, in America knew these by heart when you go back and you read in the early 1900s.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't just a church thing, it was a school thing.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: But that stopped a long time ago.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: And gradually people have forgotten what they are.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: According to a USA Today poll, 60% of Americans can't name even half of the Ten Commandments.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: So my question to you is I'm not going to give you the time to write them down.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: I wonder how many of them do you think you know of the Ten Commandments?
2:09
SPEAKER_00: We're going to go through them all today.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Do you think you know them all?
2:13
SPEAKER_00: That would be interesting.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one out of seven Americans actually does almost one out of seven, knows them all, but one out of seven.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, one out of one out of four people can name um all seven ingredients of a McDonald's Big Mac.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: And one out of three people can name uh all six children on the Brady Bunch, but only one out of seven people know all of the Ten Commandments.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: And yet, if and yet in the surveys that they take, the Pew survey a couple years ago, when asked uh do you favor or not favor posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings and in schools, 80% of Americans said, Yeah, yeah, I'm in favor of that.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: So the real problem is we don't have them inside us anymore.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: We don't really know them anymore, but we kind of like seeing them up.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna look at the Ten Commandments today, and uh there's there's a lot of humor on the Ten Commandments.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh there's some of my favorite, some of my favorite bits of humor.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, one of them was this one.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: After seeing Moses' response to the Ten Commandments, Mrs.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: Moses used stone tablets for all her honeydew lists.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Thou shalt, one, pick up bread and milk on your way home, two, take out their garbage, three, not eat junk food, four, not play Xbox, five, walk the dog, six, mow the grass, seven, not go golfing, eight, not Twitter, nine, not dilly-dally, ten, kiss me.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: I I thought that was pretty cute.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: And there's Moses looking at his wife's uh honeydew list.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Or um or one that maybe you've heard is that uh uh that answers the question of why the Jews, the Hebrews back then, why the Israelites got the Ten Commandments that God first went to the Egyptians and said, Do you want a commandment?
3:57
SPEAKER_00: And the Egyptians said, What's a commandment?
3:59
SPEAKER_00: God said, Well, it's like uh thou shalt not commit adultery.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: The Egyptians said, No way, that would ruin our weekends.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: So then God went to the Assyrians and said, Would you like a commandment?
4:08
SPEAKER_00: And they said, What's a commandment?
4:09
SPEAKER_00: God said, It's like thou shalt not steal.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: And they said, No way, that would ruin our economy.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: So then he went to the Jews and he said, Would you like a commandment?
4:16
SPEAKER_00: And Jews said, How much do they cost?
4:18
SPEAKER_00: And God said, Nothing.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: They're free.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: So they said, We'll take ten.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: So anyway.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, but more to the point, uh, I like the cartoon that I mentioned in my devotional and so forth, which and I think on the teaser for the sermon that that went out online, which is which shows the cartoon picture of Moses holding tablets on the top of Mount Sinai and looking up to God and saying, I posted them on Facebook and haven't gotten any likes.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: And so here are the Ten Commandments, and there's a reason why, uh no surprise why they don't get any likes today, because they're just too, you know, in your face.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: And they deny us, they deny modern man the freedom that he wants.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: Thou shalt have no other gods before me, thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Those two sort of go together.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Notice that thou shalt not, most of them are thou shalt not, of course, but then you have uh four and five are positive.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh keep the Sabbath day holy.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Six or five, honor thy father and mother.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Six, thou shalt not kill, seven, thou shalt not commit adultery, eight, thou shalt not steal.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: It's not what it's, you know.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh nine, thou shalt not bear false witness, ten, thou shalt not covet.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: So those are the Ten Commandments.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually gonna work my way through those today.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see uh how they apply and how they drive us to Christ.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is uh uh an artist's rendition.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: I uh gave one of my grandsons a choice of a lot of pictures.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: He thought this was the best rendition.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: It's got people at the bottom, whether or not you can see them.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Here is uh a scene of Mount Sinai.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: It was covered with clouds, there was lightning, we're told in chapter 19, there was fire.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: In fact, um, so God actually spoke these Ten Commandments, not to Moses up there.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: He didn't hand him the Ten Commandments at this time, that came later, okay, in the tablets.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: He actually spoke for the one and only time from the mountain to all the Israelites.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: Then God spoke all these words.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: By the way, in the Bible, they're never called commandments, they're always called words, the ten words, and that's where uh in Greek, that's why it's called the Decca log, Decca Ten log words.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, and that's why uh uh Jewish people call them the ten words, everybody else calls them the ten commandments, okay?
6:44
SPEAKER_00: So uh, and God spoke all these things, and he spoke in the same way that he had spoken to Adam and Eve, same way he'd spoken to Noah, same way he spoke personally with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Now he is actually speaking to the Israelites, and if you have your Bible open, Exodus 20, you'll see that right after the ten commandments, the people say, We don't ever want that to happen again.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: That was so scary and so frightening from now on.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Please, Moses, you let God talk to you, you talk to us.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Really interesting.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: That apparently was very, very frightening.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: I've tried to think about what that must have sounded like to scare them so bad, but they didn't want to endure it anymore.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: They said, if we have to listen to that anymore, we will die.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: You know.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think they just meant like, if I have to have any more Brussels sprouts, I'll die.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: I think it meant, sorry about that, that just popped out.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: But if you like sprouts, we'll go cauliflower.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but anyway, I think what that meant is we'll literally die.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Something about that voice was so freaking, but why did God do that then directly?
7:46
SPEAKER_00: The answer is, of course, that God wanted them to know that this was important and that he was speaking to them directly, and that no future generation could ever say, well, you know, that was just, you know, that went through Moses.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: Who knows what God really said?
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Right?
8:01
SPEAKER_00: No, this was direct, this was, you've heard it right from my lips.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: So that's how the chapter begins, and then in verse 2, God begins with a prologue, a preamble.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: And and uh I'm not gonna get into it, but the whole thing is in the form of an ancient treaty, which always began between a king and his conquered vassals.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: It always began with a statement of what the king had done for them in the past.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: And so he starts I am the Lord your God who, here's what I did for you, I saved you.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: The Ten Commandments, listen, are given to a redeemed people, right?
8:35
SPEAKER_00: They're not given to lost people to tell them how to be saved, they're given to saved people to tell them how to live.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: So he gives them to Israel.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: So and this is, by the way, always part of an ancient covenant.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: You name yourself and you name the other partner.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
8:55
SPEAKER_00: So it's between God and the nation of Israel.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: He never gave it to the Gentiles.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: So here's command number one do not have other gods before me.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: And you're really familiar with this one, right?
9:09
SPEAKER_00: And uh there were about during the ancient times, at this time, in I think 1400 BC, but whether it was 1400, 1200, that's the argument, doesn't matter.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: There were about 20 other, shall we say, supreme deities that Israel was aware of.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
9:28
SPEAKER_00: There was Ra in Egypt, Zeus and Greece, you know, on and on and on.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and so God says, you know what?
9:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't want you to have any other gods.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: There are no other gods, really, besides me.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: There are small g gods, we read that in the Bible.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: There's a big argument about this in Old Testament scholarship right now.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: It does seem as though there are there are other gods to a certain extent, but no real gods besides Yahweh God.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: And so God's first command is there are no other gods besides me.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: And how this, you know, we have to we have to look at this, even though it's the law to Israel, and say, how does this apply to me?
10:08
SPEAKER_00: Because 2 Timothy 3.16 says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: Even those that for those of you reading the devotionals, you'll notice even the details about what high priest's clothes are supposed to be like.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: Somehow there's lessons there for us.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: All scripture is given by inspiration, profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in life, so that we may become perfect, thoroughly furnished to all good works.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: And so the question is, how do we apply commandment number one?
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is we shouldn't have any other gods.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: And you say, but I don't worship Baal, I don't worship the Hindu Vishnu, I don't worship these things.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: But of course, a God is defined, right, in the Bible, as as what your thoughts.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: I love what Tim Keller says there.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: It's anything, anything that takes the place of God.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: And he says, let's get really specific.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: The true God of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding your attention.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: So I decided, even though I hate that quote, because it's so convicting, so convicting, especially the week before the Super Bowl it was.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: And so Lord, please, you know, all I care about is what didn't happen.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: So um, true God of your heart.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: What do your thoughts effortless, what do your thoughts effortlessly go to when there's nothing else demanding your attention?
11:32
SPEAKER_00: And God says, I want to be first in your heart, I want to be the God of your life, I want to be the most important supreme being to you.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Now, connected with that is the fact that in the ancient world, of course, they loved idols, and anybody loves idols.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Idols are there, they're you can hold them, you can see them.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Every other nation had a God you could see.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: So you can make them, you can, yours can be prettier than your next door neighbors, you can set it up, you can set up candles, you can offer, you can kneel down and you can see them, and it's so much easier to worship when when you've got the idol in the in the church or wherever it is, and you can set that up.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: And they're often erotic, and they often, most of the gods in the ancient days said, you know, we encourage you as part of worship to have sex with people outside of your family, and so I mean it's just it's just it's just a mess.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: And God said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm an invisible God.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: God, we don't want an invisible God.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: We want a visible, we want someone we can see.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's why a little while later we're gonna find out when Moses is up the mountain.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: They go, let's build a golden calf.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, because that'll be at least where the invisible God's on top of, okay?
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And God, and but then by the end of the time, they're bowing down to the calf, and God says, I can't handle that.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm an invisible God.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't want you seeing anything and worshiping it.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: So he says, Don't make an idol.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: And the word in Hebrew, pessel, just means any physical thing.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
13:00
SPEAKER_00: Whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth, do not bow and worship to them.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: And it's for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Jealousy sometimes is a righteous, holy thing, only if you're jealous for something you own, right?
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay, because the tenth commandment is gonna say, don't covet something that belongs to someone else, and yet God here uses a different word, but he says, you know, I'm jealous, and that's why to a certain extent, jealousy is a wonderful thing when it means uh you're not willing to share something that you possess, something to your wife, your husband, your child, or whatever else.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: So uh so because the Lord says, Lord says, I'm a jealous God, I'm really jealous when I see you worshiping another idol.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: So please stay away from idols, though they are tempting.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: By the way, Francis Chan just put, and you know, we when we start thinking about what things we, our thoughts go to that we worship, you know, let we let we can name them together.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: We could have a really good discussion here because for me, sports would be pretty high and would be a danger for some young people.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: It might be computer, right?
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Cell phone, Xbox.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: Francis Chan just recently put out, you know, a real slam where he said he thinks a lot for a lot of Americans get this.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: He said it's their family.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: They actually idolize their family.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: That's how they break the first two commands.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: They idolize their family because what happens, he says, I've seen so many kids in California that he used to minister to.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: He says, they're so fervent for Jesus before they became Christian, before they got married.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: And he says, you know, there was, they were 1 Corinthians 7 all the way.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: When I'm not married, I've got all this time to serve Christ.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: And all they did was witness on the on the beaches and do everything else.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: And then the moment they got married, and the moment they had children, everything is family.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Family comes first.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: They don't come to church anymore.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: If anything in the family, you know, precedes that.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: And and this is Francis Chan.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, Francis Chan is always out to convict us, you know.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: That's that's he's even worse than him, Keller in that way.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: So uh, so so but you know, I thought, you know, is there truth to that?
15:05
SPEAKER_00: And and there may be truth to that, right?
15:08
SPEAKER_00: Beware lest you put your family even in front of a God and in front of the mission God has given you.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna stop there.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, number three, do not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: Now I know it's the thou shalt not swear, blaspheme, something like that.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: And so we take that as being, and it is uh um using the name of the Lord your God in vain.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: That means attaching it to infin um uh you know to emptiness, which is the silly excuse the Phelps family uses for being able to use four-letter words that aren't don't have God in them, and that's just fine.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, they can they can say the you know stuff that makes it makes you cringe, but and they say we're not breaking the command.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: The command actually has to do with the name of the Lord.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: And and the truth is you should be more shocked, you should be more shocked when someone says, Oh my God, than when they use, let's say, uh one of the four-letter words that starts with letters that I won't mention.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
16:09
SPEAKER_00: So uh, because that this is the this is the command.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: God says, What's you know, when you carelessly, lazily attach my name to something that's not important, you diss me, you demean me, you're misusing it.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: So don't just casually use my name.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: Be very careful uh uh of of the way you use my name.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: And I'd say that that goes to not just God, because we don't misuse the name Yahweh, nobody uses that in a anymore on a basketball court.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: Oh Yahweh.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: No, um, but they certainly use oh JC, right?
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Or God or something.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Let's be careful of that.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: No, just don't do it, right?
16:50
SPEAKER_00: Because the Lord will not leave anyone unpunished who misuses his name.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's uh that's uh uh and then we get to number four, which is a unique command stuck right here in uh in what's called the first table of the law.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh remember the Sabbath day, uh this is the um English word which comes from the Hebrew word which is Shabbat, which just means stop or a stoppage, Shabbat, a stoppage of work.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: So the Sabbath day, uh Saturday, remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: You are to labor six days, and here's the reason for it is he goes back to creation.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: You are to labor six days in all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: You must not do any work.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: And so this is so interesting because this immediately lets us know something, and that is that since you and I are worshiping on the Lord's Day today, and almost all Christians do that, Seventh-day Adventists worship on Saturday because of this command.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: But you and I worship on the Lord's Day, meaning we're not keeping this command because Shabbat was never changed to Sunday.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: Um so it lets you know that, okay, we're somehow the early church, you know, uh did not feel as though it was bound by this command.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: It's like Greg Glory says.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have heard of Greg Glory.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: He's a pastor, used to be a world-famous youth pastor in the West Coast.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Now he has harvest fellowship or something, a church of 300,000.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, and he travels all around and he's great.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: And I really love, I really like him.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: He's just, and he's very biblical.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: And he's one of the things he was saying not long ago is there are three reasons Christians do not keep the Sabbath.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: Number one, he said it's the only one of the Ten Commandments not repeated in the New Testament.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: Number two, Jesus never taught anyone to keep the Sabbath, and third, the apostles never taught anyone to keep the Sabbath.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: And he's right.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: The other nine commands are repeated in the New Testament.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: This one is not.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: Now, I think there's a much more basic reason why the Shabbat command uh is not a command that applies to you and me.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: In other words, we're not disobeying the fourth command today.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: And I and that's this God never gave the Sabbath to Gentiles, but declared it a special sign, S-I-G, and sign of his covenant with Israel, as he clarifies a couple of times in this book.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: He says, uh, this will be a the Shabbat, there will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: And then in verse 17 of chapter 31, it will be a sign between me and the Israelites together.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: Every covenant, every covenant has its own sign.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: Can you name what covenant has the sign of the rainbow?
19:32
SPEAKER_00: That was the covenant with Noah, right?
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And what covenant has the sign of circumcision?
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Covenant with Abraham, right?
19:40
SPEAKER_00: And this is the number seven.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: This is the covenant with Moses.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: And that's the sign, okay?
19:46
SPEAKER_00: And and uh this the this is the sign, communion.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: The table of the Lord is the sign of the which covenant?
19:55
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant, right?
19:56
SPEAKER_00: This is the new covenant in my blood.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: He says, drink this cup, and whenever you do, you celebrate the new covenant in my blood.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: And then uh, and then of course, I think the ring, we would probably say, is the sign of the wedding covenant, with this ring, I the wed.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: So so there are signs that each of the covenant has, and the Shabbat command is the sign of the covenant that God made with his Old Testament people, Israel.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: But here's an interesting thing.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh here in Exodus, God gives a reason uh that's different than the reason he gives in Deuteronomy.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: He goes back to creation and says, in six days the Lord made all these things, in other words, he worked, but he rested or stopped working on the seventh day.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: So I ask a question that people have asked and discussed, you know, for years.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: Does the reason given here, which is creation, which applies to everybody on earth, does that imply that a rest one day and seven rule is for everyone?
20:54
SPEAKER_00: And some people are very strong on that.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: And others are not so strong on that.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: Others would say, well, you know, rest in the New Testament is the faith, rest life that Hebrews talks about.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: You ought to rest every all seven days.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: But I have no problem with saying that, you know, we need to stop work and and and we need to have a day that's different from the others.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: But but we need to put it into perspective.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: I'll move on from this really quickly by saying the New Testament church shifted from the seventh to the first day, the Lord's Day, to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: And connected with that, Israel's Sabbath, remember, was a day of rest and was enforced by the death penalty.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: You can't really say you're keeping the fourth commandment and throw away parts of it, like the death penalty.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's Day is a day of worship instead of rest and is a voluntary response to grace.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Now, I grew up in a family where my grandmother believed that the Lord's Day was sort of the Shabbat and would come over for, uh she lived a mile away, and she'd come over and eat.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Eat with us for lunch, but she had to go back to her little home a mile away because she could not stand to watch us kids play in the afternoon.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: She really believed that as in the early 1900s, you should just sit on the couch and read the Bible or another Christian book all afternoon.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: It should be a day of rest all day long.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: My dad happened to have written his doctoral dissertation on this subject, and he disagreed with her.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, that's the Shabbat command.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: And it is the key that unlocks the question of whether or not you and I are under the Ten Commandments today, and the answer is no.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: Fifth, honor your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: Now, this command was applied then and should be applied today, because it's repeated, as you know, in Ephesians 6.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Depend in ways depending on how old you are, right?
22:56
SPEAKER_00: When you're 10 years old, this probably means absolute obedience to your parent.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: But when you're 20 or when you're 30 years old, of course, it doesn't mean that anymore.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, this command was primarily given to people who had aging parents, and that's why God connects it with, you know what, if you do this, then I'll give you a, as a nation, he's not talking to individuals living long, as a nation, I'll give you a long life in the promised land.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: So I just say that this is so applicable today when you have so many folks uh in America who are living longer lives, and we have parents who are who are a burden at times.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: Pharisees uh in the New Testament, the book of Matthew, Jesus just nailed them once.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: He said, You guys, uh when you're when your aging parents ask you for help, you say to them, Well, I'm so righteous that I'm giving all my money to God, and that's more important than helping you out of poverty.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus just blasted them for that hypocrisy.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: And so I would say that for many of us listening to me today, uh, this should be interpreted, this should be applied in the way that it was meant to be applied primarily to early Israel, which is take care of, honor your aging parents by helping them and caring for them.
24:24
unknown: Okay?
24:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh now we get to the commands.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the shortest verses in the in the Bible, only six letters long, um, in Hebrew.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: Do not murder.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of people like to keep the King James Version, which is thou shalt not what?
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Thou shalt not kill, because then those people who are pacifists or other things, they can say, well, it's clear that God does not want us ever to go to war, and he doesn't want us ever to practice capital punishment, and in fact, no violence should ever be done anywhere at all.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: And of course, what the it's a little silly since in the, you know, within 20 verses, God will be saying, I want you to kill anybody who doesn't obey these commands.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: I want you to stone them to death.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but so so the word ratsah here, murder, means it means to take an innocent life.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: And it would include taking your own life and suicide.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: And it would include euthanasia.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: You can't take someone else's life like that.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh lives are permitted to be taken when the government sanctions it legally by going when you're going to war or capital punishment.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: But do not murder.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: So there's notice the right to life here, right here.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: So there's four rights in the Ten Commandments, the right to life.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: Here's the right to a home.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Do not commit adultery.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: All right, which you know led to the famous joke about Moses coming down from the Mount Sinai the second time, getting the Ten Commandments for a second time, and then saying, you know, I argued with him, folks, but uh, you know, I I I did get him from 15 commands down to 10, but the seventh commandment, he left, did not commit adultery in there.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: So I'm sorry about that.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of uh um humor about this.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: And here's the problem we have with this, right?
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Our day today sanctions adultery.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh you go to a high school class today, and you tell them that the president of the United States has had sex outside of marriage, uh, which is adultery, sex, uh, with someone else's wife or husband is adultery, is this definition of adultery, and they'll go, well, that's no big deal.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's because the sexual questions have moved.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: They've moved to incest, bestiality, homosexuality, and so forth, right?
26:37
SPEAKER_00: And and so the question is why didn't God include something more broad?
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Why didn't He include premarital sex in there?
26:42
SPEAKER_00: He just included one slice, which is which is uh sleeping with another person's ruining another person's marriage by sleeping with her spouse.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: And um and the answer has to be the Ten Commandments are given by God because he cares about his covenant people and marriage, and Aristotle said the same thing.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is the bedrock of the family, and the family is the bedrock of society.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: And if marriage falls apart, then the family falls apart, and then society falls apart.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: And God has a covenant community, he's concerned about his covenant community, and therefore, to God, this is the prime sin.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Any sin that breaks up the family, which this is an attack on marriage, it breaks up the family, breaks up covenant community, which Israel could not exist as a covenant community if uh without the family.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, we're gonna find the same problem with the ninth command, thou shalt not bear false witness.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
27:42
SPEAKER_00: It just seems seems too narrow, but God has a reason.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, what else do we say about do not commit adultery?
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Let's go on.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Um just looking at the time.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Do not steal.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: This is the most straightforward and the easiest of all the commands.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: It includes things like embezzlement, right?
27:59
SPEAKER_00: It includes things like fraud, includes robbery, includes uh uh any kind of theft.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Don't take anything that belongs to someone else.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Number nine, do not give false testimony against your neighbor.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: What I said was it has the same problem as number seven.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: Why are we just talking about perjury?
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Why does God only focus here?
28:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh, because this is not against lying in general, right?
28:21
SPEAKER_00: Other verses condemn lying in general, just as other verses condemn bestiality and homosexuality in the Bible.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: But in the Ten Commandments, you have this little narrow slice.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: I don't want witnesses in court giving false testimony.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: People have a right to a reputation.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't, you I'm not gonna allow you to go into court and slander someone because you have a deal, you know, in your lawsuit and you're gonna make money off of it or something.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: Why is God so narrow?
28:49
SPEAKER_00: And the answer there, of course, is the same kind of an answer.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: God is establishing an ordered covenant community.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: And if you can give false evidence, if witnesses can go into court and lie about other people, then you lose the system of justice.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: And if you lose justice, you lose an ordered society.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: And society becomes chaotic, so he doesn't have a covenant society.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: And so uh we expand that, of course, to include other verses that say that all lying is wrong.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: So there are a number of hints that this was given to a specific people, right, at a specific time.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: And the final commandment is the real flyer, because it doesn't have anything to do with the outside.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: It's an absolutely unique command in all ancient law codes because it's about what's in your gut, in your heart.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Do not desire, and that's all that the word covet means, do not desire your neighbor's house.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: Don't desire his wife, male or female servant as ox or donkey or anything that belongs to him.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Notice it's it is okay to desire things.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: It's okay for you to desire to own a house, it's okay for you to desire to have a car, to desire a wife or a husband, or an ox or donkey, whatever.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: That's okay, but you mustn't covet something that belongs to someone else.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: And Paul complained in Romans chapter 7.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: He says, I kept all the commands perfectly until I got to number 10.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: He said, that number 10th command, do not covet, he says this in Romans 7, is the one that drove me to Christ that caused me to realize that I was guilty and that I needed help because I couldn't control what I wanted.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't control my motives and my heart.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: Why does God put this in?
30:27
SPEAKER_00: Because God cares not just about what you do, he cares about what is in your heart and what you want.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: So uh just to modernize the Ten Commandments, uh, this is a popular cartoon nowadays, thou shalt not COVID thy neighbor's thy neighbor's wife.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Um and and by the way, here's I found this cartoon, which is more modern, also uh quite revealing.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh so actually it's not this one, it's the next one.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: So Moses asked the question in this one so are these guidelines, management proposals, or written in stone policies?
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Answer, of course, they were written in stone policies, but they are not written in stone today.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
31:13
SPEAKER_00: These things, a number of these things, uh uh, you know, trash today, uh, no right to life in some places, no right to private property in some countries of the world, you know, government, the state controls everything, and thou shalt not steal, basically, is a command that says that's wrong.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: The king and the government can't own everything.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: We have to have private property.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: So but so the point is here, are these written in stone policies?
31:38
SPEAKER_00: And God says yes.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: The world says no, but it has new commandments.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
31:44
SPEAKER_00: The eleventh commandment, thou shalt socially distance and wear a mask.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: This guy's wearing a mask.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: And I bet you would agree with me that in some places today in our country, people would get far more upset if you're not wearing a mask than if they knew you were committing adultery.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Am I right about that?
32:02
SPEAKER_00: They'll come and they will blast you if you are not wearing a mask.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: They would never say anything to you, even if they knew that you were committing a horrific sin against your wife or husband.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: So, um, what's our takeaway today?
32:16
SPEAKER_00: What's our takeaway?
32:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, I have two takeaways.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: The first one is love God and love your neighbor.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: Why do I say that?
32:25
SPEAKER_00: For a great theological reason.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: Pharisees came to Jesus in Matthew 22, and they they were they were they were they were trying to catch him and trap him, and they said, Teacher, what's the greatest commandment in the law?
32:36
SPEAKER_00: The Torah, the 613 commandments that the Jews have counted in the Torah.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered, Love the Lord your God.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: He's quoting Deuteronomy 5 here, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: This is the first and greatest commandment.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, and the second is like it.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Now he quotes from Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: And then get this.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: He says, all the law, right, and the prophets hang on these two commandments.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: So he's saying that you can collapse all of the Old Testament, 613 commandments, into these two.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: And then when you go back to the Ten Commandments, you see, yeah, you can do that.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: That's the first four commandments.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: You shall have no other gods.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: No idols, nothing before me.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Don't diss my name.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: Keep Shabbat.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: That's loving the Lord your God.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: But then all the others are loving your neighbor as yourself.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: Honor your father and mother, no murder, no adultery, no false witness, no stealing, no coveting.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: Give other people the right to life, the right to a home, the right to a good reputation, the right to private property.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: That's how you love them, right?
33:48
SPEAKER_00: So, so those are the two great commandments, and by the way, there's a third level, as Jesus implied.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: All the other 603 out of the 613 commandments in the Pentateuch, all those other commands are captured in these ten, and these ten are captured in these two, and therefore the takeaway is when you leave today, you don't have to memorize all ten commandments, right?
34:11
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do that and make sure you're following them.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: Just love God.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Ask, am I loving God?
34:17
SPEAKER_00: With all my heart, soul, mind?
34:19
SPEAKER_00: See first in my mind, and number two, and love your neighbor.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: The other application is keep running, keep running.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: That's what the law was here for.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: Keep running to Christ and to grace.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: Keep running from the law to Christ and grace.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be really quick.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: I preached a whole message on this, uh, messages and series before.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: I'll just repeat the main points.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: I'll not stop, won't even quote the verses.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Number one, this Mosaic law was a good thing.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: David said, Oh, how I love thy law.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: It's my meditation all the day.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: Paul said the law is wonderful and good, it's beautiful.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Number two, the Mosaic Law was given to Israel only.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: That's what Psalm, that's what repeatedly.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't ever given to you and to me, Gentiles.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: The bad news is that the Mosaic Law had a huge weakness.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: It just couldn't be kept.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: It couldn't be kept.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: You just simply you just bounced around and you never could get out of it.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: You never could, you never could keep it.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: Now, what happens is people love legalism, they love laws, they love rules because they can feel proud if they keep them and their neighbor isn't.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: And those rules then make them feel guilty if they break them.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Pride and guilt bounce back and forth, and that's the problem with any law, but that's the Mosaic law.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: Paul said, I tried, tried, tried, I couldn't keep it.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: But the good news is the Mosaic law was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: Christ himself said that in Matthew 5, Paul says it and so forth.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it came to its fulfillment in the perfect Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: Now listen, this is quick.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: But some people say, you know what, I'll just drop out part of it, but I think it still should be the code of my life.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is, and what they do is they divide it up into the moral law, the Ten Commandments, the civil law of Exodus 21 to 23, and the ceremonial law.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: And they say, well, the ceremonial is gone, the civil law is gone, but not the moral law.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: But it was an indivisible unit.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: Never, it's all mixed together in the Bible.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: Never did it get divided up.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: So when the Mosaic law passed away, being fulfilled in Christ, it passed away in its entirety.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: So it is no longer a code of life, including the Ten Commandments.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: That was quick, I'm done with that.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: And so the question is why then read it and study it and preach it?
36:38
SPEAKER_00: Because number one, it reveals things God loves and hates.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: And number two, get back to our main point, it shows us our need of Jesus Christ.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther, or not Martin Luther, but D.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: L.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: Moody said 130 years ago, the law tells me how crooked I am.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: But grace comes along and straightens me out.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: Or again, Tim Keller.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Religion says earn your life.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Ten Commandments do.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: Secular society says create your life.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, my life for your life.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, I grew up with a lot of bees at home.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: We had beehives and stuff.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: And do you know that uh if you put a bumblebee in a uh in a coffee can, you know, just as an illustration, that it'll stay there until it dies because it just keeps trying to get out the side.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: Not a regular bee, it'll fly straight up.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: Bumblebee will just bang against the sides and try to get out the bottom, and you're standing there and you're looking.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful bee, and you want to say, look up, look up, look up, you know.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: But it won't.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: You have to turn the coffee can over, set it free.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I feel like God probably would say that to people who who love the law, who worship the law, who follow the law, who think the law is the way to get to heaven, as many people do.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: He looks down and says, just look up, look up, and they're banging back and forth.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: They can't keep it, they're trying to keep it, they keep failing.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: When they keep it better than the next door neighbor, they're proud.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: And when they when they blow it, you know, they feel guilty.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: And God says, No, look up, look to me.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: I've got the I've got the redemption for you, the salvation for you.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: So um let me close with this.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, as you know, Carrie Livgren uh of TVC was fabulously successful uh singer, writer, guitarist, and so forth.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: Kansas, dust in the wind, carry on wayward sign.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: And he was searching for uh for a new life, right?
38:42
SPEAKER_00: He was searching to find to find freedom and redemption and spiritual truth spirituality.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: And he had this wonderful conversion.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: I'll loan you the book of his testimony, or you can ask him.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: And so, in a sense, he, like all of us, had a B C and an A D in his life.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
39:04
SPEAKER_00: B C is before Christ.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: It's the law of Moses, okay?
39:08
SPEAKER_00: That'll not get anybody to heaven.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: Christ comes, he dies on the cross, and anyone who believes in him, the Bible tells us, has an A D, has an after autonomy, after Christ, and that's how you're saved, right?
39:22
SPEAKER_00: Through Jesus Christ.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: When the group uh Kansas broke up finally, they sung all their tunes.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: Carey still had music in him, and so he started a group called A D.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: He understood there was a past life, but he had a new life, and he wanted to share that life with people.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: And he put out three albums.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: His last one was called Prime Mover.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: It was uh just before the year 2000, I think.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: And uh the reason I put this up here is that I've got his stuff.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: I love his, I love all of his stuff.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: And um the album cover, one of the album covers for his last AD album called Prime Mover, looks to me like Mount Sinai.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: So I've talked to him, and it basically he wanted to portray the end of the world and doom and the need to come to Jesus Christ.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: And it this is sort of a volcano.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: But I said when I was talking with him this week, I said, Carrie, it looks like Mount Sinai.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: Give that to me.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Yeah, yeah.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't find a Mount Sinai, so that's why I have that.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: And I said, uh I love the fact that it's modern because so much of the modern world is living by rules and living by laws, and they're not God's laws, but they're living by rules and living by laws and hoping that they can please God somehow or go to paradise as a result.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: But it's not working because the law hovers over them and the law is going to be their doom.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: I said, that's just a I love that city.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: He said, just want you to know it's Seattle.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so that's the city of Seattle, but that's the picture of the modern world.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: And Mount Sinai hovers over the modern world like all law hovers over the world.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: And if the world tries to keep the law, it finds that it cannot.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: It's caught in the B C, but it needs to move to the A D, it needs to move to the Lord Jesus Christ.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: And I I selected some words from this album which portray the message here, and I'll end with them.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Portray the message that I think was is our takeaway today.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: Kerry wrote, and saying, There's no changing the rules.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: There it is.
41:29
SPEAKER_00: The law just sits there.
41:31
SPEAKER_00: God's law.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: There's no changing that.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: The stakes are forever, and the time is now.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: So he says, Don't wait till it's over.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: Today is the day if you'll turn.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: Then one of the last songs on the album goes, On your cross I died, justice satisfied.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: If you stay there in the shadow of Mount Sinai, if you stay in the shadow of the law, if you constantly try to please God by what you do, you know what?
41:58
SPEAKER_00: The rules will not change.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: They'll break you and they'll send you to hell.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: You desperately need to look up, to get out of the coffee can of the of the law.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: Look up to God, look up to his son Jesus Christ, look up to the cross and die with him on that cross to your old self and to your old life and say, Lord, I I trust in you.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: I trust in you to save me.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you for these commandments and thank you for your son Jesus Christ, who saves us and delivers us from uh from our performance standard, delivers us to a new life of grace in your son Jesus, in whose name we pray.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, folks.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: You were very patient.