Sunday, July 27, 2003
Sermon:
The Ten Commandments
#4Making God the Priority in Your Calendar!
Matthew 12:1-29; Luke 17:1-21; Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-14NIV
8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”Matthew 12:6 NIV
20Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”Luke 17:20-21 NIV
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.Exodus 20:8 NIV
12 “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you.Deuteronomy 5:12NIV
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This Sundaywe continue our summer sermon series which focuses on The Ten Commandments.
Sermon Series on the Ten Commandments
July 6 / #1 Only One God is Worthy of Worship / Mark 12:13-34July 13 / #2 God Cannot Be Contained / Colossians 1
July 20 / #3 Bring Honor to God’s Name / Ephesians 1
July 27 / #4 Physical Rest enables Spiritual Recharge / Matthew 12:1-29
August 3 / #5 Honor Your Parents / Matthew 15
August 10 / #6 Respect Human Life / 1 John 3
August 17 / #7 Be Aware of Sensual Warning Signs / 1 Corinthians 7
August 24 / #8 Respect the Property of Others / Matthew 16
August 31 / #9 Tell the Truth / James 4
September 7 / #10 Applaud the Prosperity of Others / 2 Samuel 12
This morning I would like to begin with an exercise. It’s an exercise for the hand and fingers. For those of us who still have use of our hands and fingers, I would like us to try this exercise.
Place your hand in front of you and wiggle your pointerfinger. Now ask your thumb and pointer to touch. Command your hand to make a fist. Tell your hand to open up and spread out your fingers. You can put your hand down now.
Now, let me ask you a few questions about this exercise. Were you surprised that your fingers did what you asked them to do? Assuming that you were not, why not? Was it not because your hand is attached to your body and that your head is the command center of your body?
How would you feel about your hand if it did not obey you? Is it not upsetting to you? Is it not discouraging when you want to eat something and your hand refuses to take a hold of the fork, poke it into the bite sized piece of meat, and bring it up to your mouth?We expect our hands and fingers to work for us, to do what we ask them to do. Rarely do we ever thank them. They simply do what is expected of them.
Here is the last part of the exercise. If you have access to a pen or pencil, take thatwriting instrument and with your writing hand write thisstatement on a piece of paper, maybe your bulletin: “I am to Christ as my hand is to me.” “I am to Christ as my hand is to me.”
Being a Christian is likened to being a member of the Body of Christ. When we surrender to Jesus Christ as Lord, confessing to Him that we are by nature rebellious and that we have willfully chosen to go our own way, but now by faithaccept His forgiveness and submit to His leadership, we becomes members of His body.
By virtue of Jesus Christ being God and having given His life as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, He has the rightful position of Head of the body into which we are grafted. The Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 7:23 (NIV) that:
23 You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.
The price Christ paid to set us free from slavery to sin was the price of His own life.
In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NIV), Paul asks:
19 Do you not know that . . . You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. . . .
We belong to Christ. To accept His invitation to be forgiven of our sin, we enter what is called the Body of Christ. Paul speaks of this analogy in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 (NIV)
12 The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
14 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. . . .
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
Thus, my analogy of the hand being a servant to the head. “I am to Christ as my hand is to me.”
The Apostle John quotes Jesus making the same point with a different analogy. In John 15:5 (NIV), Jesus says,
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.
In a nutshell, there you have what the Christian life is all about: being attached to Christ in a life sustaining way. The Christian life makes sense only as we are attached to Christ as a branch is attached to the trunk or the vine. The Christian life does not make any sense if we are detached from Christ.
If Christ is the vine, then we are the branches.
If Christ is the head of the household, then we are the members of His family.
If Christ is the head of the body, then we are the members of the body.
If Christ is Lord, then we are His servants.
When we accept God’s invitation to enter His family, we surrender to Christ as the Head of the family. Jesus Christ is Lord; He is Master in God’s household.
This sounds good. But, how do we actually live this way? Aren’t the commands that God gives us just a tad bit unreasonable? For instance, let’s look at Luke 17:3-21(NIV)
“If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. 4 If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
That is a huge request. We read in Matthew 18:21-22 (NIV),
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
In response to this high expectation of Jesus,
5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
They were probably thinking, “Weneed big faith to be able to doa big assignment.” But, what is Jesus’ response?
6 He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.
In essence, Jesus is saying, “you don’t need big faith to obey My big commands. You just need a little faith, faith the size of a mustard seed.”
When faced with a big command or a big assignment, break it down to small steps and start with the first one. That first step is mustard seed faith. Move in the direction of obedience and you will be met with God's power to keep obeying.
We can become overwhelmed with an assignment because of its enormity, its huge size. But, if we can figure out the first step, then, we are on our way. Therefore, move in the direction of obedience and God will meet you with His power to keep you going.
As believers in Christ, we already have the Holy Spirit who gives us the power to take the first step of obedience. He will also give us the power to keep on obeying.
Continuing in Luke 17, at verse 7. Here is yet another picture of what it means to be a Christian, to be a member of the Body of Christ. Though He is asking His readers to take the perspective of a master, Jesus really wants usto think of ourselves as the servants in this story.
7 “Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? 8 Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9 Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”
When I had you do the exercises with your hand and fingers, I commented that we rarely thank our hand for obeying our commands. Do you see the parallel in this story? The servants are to the master as our hands are to our mind. Our hands are alive because they are attached to the body. Our hands live in gratitude for the life they have in the body. They serve in gratitude. Our hands are saying,“thank you.”
The foundation of our service to the Lord is gratitude. We are eternally grateful for what Christ has done for us by inviting us into His family, into His body.
To make this point again, Luke highlights yet another story that shows that gratitude is the foundation of the Christian’s life.
11 Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance 13 and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”
14 When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.
Did you catch that? . . . as they went, they were cleansed. Faith is trusting enough to obey. These lepers trusted Christ enough that they heard the Lord’s instructions and took the first step. As they took the first step, that mustard seed faithstep, something happened. Verse 14 says, they were cleansed.
You don’t need big faith to tackle the big assignments. Simply take the first step and God will meet you to refuel your faith. This story of the lepers illustrates moving in the direction of obedience and you will be met with the power to continue to obey.
But, that is not the whole story. Jesus wants something attached to our obedience. Let’s see what that is. Luke 17:15.
15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16 He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.
The missing response is grateful worship. Such a response requires of us to assess all that we have in Christ. It is so easy to take our wealth in Christ for granted. When that happens, we fail to say “thanks”; we fail to live in gratitude to God.
Only one leper returned to say “thanks.” We know that he was a Samaritan. I suspect that he was the only Samaritan. The others may have somehow felt they deserved what they got. The Samaritan knew he did not.
17 Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
There is no question here that God did the healing. But, He also was tying the healing to the person's obedience. Thus, He could, "Your faith has made you well." God healed them. But the healing did not happen until there was mustard seed faith, the first step of obedience, moving in the direction of obedience. It was at that point that God met their faith with healing.
At that point, God was expecting to hear grateful worship from the lips of the healed.
When we combinethese two stories that follow the disciples’ request to have their faith increased, when we connect the analogy of the servants with that of the lepers, what we hear loud and clear is that God is the One to be thanked, not the slaves nor the lepers. Both servants and healed lepers live in gratitude for what God has done for them, giving them life and health.
Finally, attached to this mustard sized obedience and grateful worship, Jesus summarizes His teaching by saying that the kingdom of God is within us.
20 Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”
The Kingdom of God is anywhere His rule is welcomed, anywhere He is invited to be the rightful Lord that He is.
The Kingdom of God is not visible. It is not an event. It is not a physical object. It is, however, something that is going on within people. What is it?
What we have just read prior to these verses tells us what is the Kingdom of God. It isobedience or faith the size of a mustard seed and living in gratitudeand praise to our Master Jesus Christ! It isJesus as Lord of our lives!
What, you may be asking, does this have to do with the fourth commandment?
We find the fourth commandment in Exodus 20:8-11 (NIV)
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 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 manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 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.
Keep in mind that Jesus has summarized the first four commandments by saying, Love the Lord your Godwith all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. In other words, the first four commandments have been given to us to preserve our love for God. That includes the fourth commandment. It is a gift to us that when received will enhance and strengthen our love for God. The Ten Commandments will help us love God and love our neighbor. They are gifts to us.
It is also vital that we hold on to our understanding that we are like the hand of the body and Christ is like the head. Jesus Christ is our Lord when we become members in His family. He is our Head when we are members of His body. In this context, we see that God cares for the health of the entire body by prescribing regular periods of rest and worship. The Sabbath rest is not given as a punishment for following Christ. It is not given to be a burden. It is given for our wellbeing and to help us love and worship our Creator. But, we do need to trust God in order to obey it.
Time does not allow for me to compare and contrast the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day. Let me simply give you my conclusion. Since Christ is the fulfillment of the Sabbath, we no longer need to keep the Sabbath as a believing Jew would prior to Christ’s resurrection and ascension. However, I believe the principle of the weekly Sabbathfor rest and worshipisimportant to incorporate into our lives. Furthermore, I believe that Jesus transformed the Sabbath into the Lord’s Day. In many ways it is an entirely different day from the Sabbath. In many ways it is like the Sabbath.
The weekly sabbatical is not just for those who have nothing better to do on Sunday than go to church and take a nap the rest of the day. The weekly sabbatical is for the entire human race, and particularly for Christians.
In the text I asked you to read this past week, we find that Sabbath keeping had become controversial. It appears that the legalistic Pharisees had missed the intention of the fourth commandment and placed an inordinate amount of attention on what constituted work that should not be done on that day.
Let’s put the fourth commandment in the context of marriage. If we translated the commandment to help the love relationship between a husband and wife, here is how it might read.
Husbands and wives, remember that you need to spend time together regularly to keep your love fires burning. Have a weekly date where you can schmooze over each other, tell how much you appreciate the other and just have some fun together. Face it, leading a family is a big job. But, if you do not take regular time-out breaks, you will lose sight of your goals. So, get your calendar out and mark the times you will reservefor each other. You can be sure that not only will those times be blessed, but so will the rest of your week and so will your family and friends.
God has given us marriage so we can understand His covenant relationshipwith us.
But, the Pharisees missed the relationship aspect and went on a power trip trying to get everyone to conform to their version or their interpretation of the commandments, particularly the fourth.
Notice Matthew 12:1-8 (NIV)
12 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”