LIFE MATTERS IN GOD
Deuteronomy 5:1015
January 12, 2014
We started this vision series last week in the book of Deuteronomy. Last week we did an overview of this series and the book of Deuteronomy, which is a book of law. I told you last week and I will reiterate it throughout the series, that God’s laws are not arbitrary or the equivalent of hoop-jumping to appease a capricious deity. God’s law is a gift. God’s law paves the way to life. Last week, I told you that God’s law should not be viewed as barriers on the road but rather guardrails. They are divine gifts that shape and protect you on the journey of life. It is a way for our Father to look out for our best and to passionately protect us. I want to show you a video that beautifully illustrates this point.
(Video of boy crashing into tree)
OK- so that wasn’t the best example. As it turns out, that little boy is just fine. The boy’s uncle posted this video on YouTube and now it has millions of views. There are several things to learn from this video, namely that once this man’s wife, also known as the boy’s mother, saw this video, I am certain he will not be allowed to take the boy to the park for quite some time. More than that, one of the most amazing things about the video is that the father says, “Don’t crash into the tree.” And then the little boy proceeds to do exactly that. Why did this little guy crash? Now this could be just poor steering on the boy’s part, but he seems capable and he has plenty of time to miss the tree.
As it turns out, there is a phenomenon called target fixation. Target fixation is something that affects both kids and adults. You become so obsessed with the dangerous object in your path that you run right into it. If you were to put yourself in the little boy’s mind, his train of thought probably went something like this: don’t hit the tree, don’t hit the tree, don’t hit the tree. And of course…he hit the tree.
When it comes to faith and sin, it is easy to crash. Paul said it so well, “The things I don’t want to do - I do. The things I do want to do - I don’t.” Essentially, he is saying, I see the trees and I crash into them anyway. As it turns out, we all have a bit of spiritual target fixation. Even as followers of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit of God, we can still crash. The Bible is calling out, don’t crash into that tree. Our friends are calling out, don’t crash into that tree. The Holy Spirit is calling out, don’t crash into that tree. And yet, how many of us have still crashed? I know I have. And I know that I want 2014 to look different. How can we avoid the crashing into the tree?
We are in the second week of our vision series called Life Matters. Just as a reminder, vision needs to be properly defined. When it comes to vision and organizations, vision is your preferred future. It is a glimpse of a future version of your organization. As I told you last week, Jesus gave the vision for the church in all times in all places: to make disciples by going to them, baptizing them and then teaching them. That is the Vision (big V) for every church. So, we are tasked with figuring out how we will carry out that Vision. In our context, with the resources we have, with the language we use, what is the best way to make disciples at SFC in 2014? We believe there are three steps to discipleship here at SFC: Life in God, Life with Others and Life for Others. Over the next 6 weeks, we will spend two weeks on each of these life goals, these building blocks of discipleship.
Today we will be focusing on Life in God. Knowing God and worshipping him are essential for discipleship. In fact, everything flows out of that. If you have life with others, and life for others but you don’t have life in God, then you don’t have life. So these next two weeks are quite important. A big part of life in God is sanctification. Simply defined, sanctification is sin being cut of your life making you look more and more like Jesus. Essentially, sanctification is crashing less and less. But that is hard. Some of us in this room are really struggling today. And you are wondering if 2014 will look any different from 2013? Or will the same sins keep tripping you up? Will you fall into the same patterns? Will the same addictions keep you ensnared? Some of you are exhausted today. You have struggled and struggled and yet the same sins have a hold of you. Maybe for some of you in this room, your anger is always one step away from boiling over. You have tried meditation, you have tried exercises but you still find yourself yelling at the people you love most. Will 2014 be different? Some of you are waging a constant battle with a substance or food addiction. You have tried quitting cold turkey, you have tried self-help and yet you still find comfort in the very thing that is hurting you. Will 2014 be different? Some of you are struggling with some form of immorality. You have tried avoidance. You have tried behavior modification. And yet you still find yourself crashing on a regular basis.
Deuteronomy 5: 1-5
Will 2014 be different? Let’s look for some answers today? Just as a reminder or if you weren’t here last week, let me tell you where we are historically and chronologically. It’s sometimes hard to remember how the Old Testament fits together. Let me give it to you in five or so sentences: God reaches out to a man named Abraham and says, “I will bless all of the world through you.” Abraham has a son named Isaac who has a son named Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel. Israel has 12 sons including a son named Joseph who becomes a powerful man in Egypt and he brings his brothers to live with him there and they thrive for many generations. Unfortunately, the sons of Israel become enslaved in Egypt until they are led out some 400 years later. The sons of Israel, now in the millions, are given the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai but they disobey God and must wander through desert for 40 years until the unbelieving generation passes away. That brings us to our passage today. Forty years have passed and God is leading this new generation into Canaan, the Promised Land, but before they go into the land God is renewing the covenant with them and giving them the law again. That is where the name of this book comes from Deutro–second and nomos-law. God is giving them the law for a second time.
Moses reminds them in verses 1-3 that this law was made with their fathers but it was and is really being made with them. In a sense, he is making sure they understand that their faith has to be made their own. You aren’t born into a relationship with God. It has to be your own. And now he is going to give them the Ten Commandments. We are only going to focus on the first four this week. The Ten Commandments are really two parts. The first four are about our relationship with God and the second six are about our relationship with one another. We will address the second half of the Ten Commandments two weeks from today. Today we are talking about Life in God, so we are going to focus on the four commandments having to do with our relationship with God.
Deuteronomy 5:6-15
There is some commentary here but here are the four commandments, 1) Have no other Gods before me, 2) Do not create idols, 3) Do not take my name in vain, 4) Keep the Sabbath.
In 1982, Ronald Gainer, a retired justice department official, sought to figure out how many federal laws were on the books. With a team, he tried to scour 23,000 pages of federal law and calculate how many laws we have. Ultimately his team gave up because of how many permutations of each law there can be. For example, you could read laws about trafficking and producing drugs, but then there are countless permutations based on different drugs, whether you made them, trafficked them or made them and trafficked them with each drug having different penalties and rules. So, instead of following all of these permutations, they made a conservative estimate and said there were some 3,000 federal criminal laws. And that was 32 years ago. It’s easy to hear that and be overwhelmed. In fact, John Baker, a retired law professor, in Louisiana said, "There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.”
That’s why the Ten Commandments can be quite refreshing. There are ten. The problem with the Ten Commandments isn’t knowing them, although some people do struggle with this a bit, the problem is that even though we know them, we still crash. That’s why God starts with these four, instead of having an infinite list of endless permutations and caveats for every possible sin in the world. He gives us these four. And they have a central message; love God with all that you are.
These four commandments are in place to help you love God better. They are not boxes to tick to prove that you love him. Rather they are tools to help you love him. That is the mistake many people make when it comes to God’s law. I know of pastors who tell their congregations that they can give dolls to their children as long as the dolls don’t have faces drawn on their heads. In order to keep the second commandment, there are Christians in America whose children are carrying around creepy looking faceless dolls. Do you think that is what God had in mind when he said, “Don’t have idols, graven idols.” The point was, don’t create anything that will take my place. Don’t bend your knee before anything else but me. These are not laws to be kept in strict obsessive literal interpretations but rather they are tools to help you obey the greatest commandment, the summation of the first 4 commandments: love God with all that you are.
In a similar fashion, when you hear the commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain, there are some very specific literal obsessive ways of holding that, ways of ticking the box while missing the point. Conservative and orthodox Jews will not speak or write the name of God. They will write the word God as G-d. In other circles, some parents take great efforts to make sure their kids never use the actual word “God” as an emphatic or expletive-like term. Now both of these are good exercises and efforts at honoring the literal word that represents God’s name. But I would contend there are millions of Christians who have never once said, “Oh, God…” but they have still taken his name in vain countless times. In the ancient Near East, a name is more than something you call someone. It was aligned with their personhood. Their name was more than a way to address them; it was aligned with their personality, disposition…with knowing who they really were.
One thing I really never enjoyed in college or high school was group projects. You know what I mean? Were you ever in a completely dysfunctional group? In your mind, your group presentation would be succinct, thought provoking and sharp. But by the end it had become some horrible diorama or shadowbox that is just pathetic. If you have ever been a part of such a horrendous group project, then maybe you have thought or said something like, “Don’t put my name on that.” That has less to do with your name being the thing you are called, and has everything to do with your personhood being attached to something so heinous. And you are thinking, “Don’t put my name on that.”
I think we take the Lord’s name in vain when we falsely represent him. I think there are people who work in this Valley who are very public with their Christianity, they might even keep a Bible on their desk at work or have a Bible verse framed in their office. But they are the most ruthless, graceless, mean-spirited people you might meet. And I can only imagine God saying to them, “Don’t put my name on that.” Or a father who reads the Bible with his kids every morning but applies none of it in the way he treats them and God is saying, “Don’t put my name on that.”
These first four commandments are about loving God with all that you are. There is a possibility you could keep all of them quite well without knowing or loving him. But, they were designed to help you love him. That is why when it comes to the Sabbath Jesus was so adamant that the Sabbath was created for man and not vice versa. The Sabbath was created as a spiritual stop sign, a moment at the end of each week for you to get off of the treadmill of life and luxuriate in your Maker’s presence. It allows you to relax in his graciousness, to slow down and enjoy him. The Pharisees completely missed this. They made it about refraining from certain activities and very specific interpretations of what constituted work and they missed the one activity they were supposed to be doing - worship.
All four of these commandments are about loving God with all that you are, which brings us back to our original query. How can we crash less in 2014? Some of us have those trees that we keep running into. How can 2014 be different? How can we grow in our Life in God? I was reading more on target fixation and there is a mantra among riders of motorcycles and bikes alike: “Look where you want to go.” They know you could end up crashing if you fixate on the danger in front of you. The powerful and simple truth is to look where you want to go.
This is true in your faith journey too. Many Christians are worn out trying to get rid of sin in their lives. They have crashed into the same tree 1,000 times and they are embarrassed, tired and ashamed. I want to tell you today to look where you want to go. There is a reason that the Ten Commandments starts with four laws to help you love God more, to help you love him better. Because when you love him more, you love sin less. When you love him more the things of this world become strangely dim. Look where you want to go.
In the New Testament, Jesus summarizes this concept perfectly.
John 3:14-15
I have shown you this passage before. Jesus refers back to an event when the sons of Israel were wandering in the desert and they were stung by snakes. Moses is told to create a bronze serpent and lift it up. If the people will look up at the serpent, they will be healed. This almost sounds like a pagan practice but it was a precursor to Christ and a way to better understand faith. The Israelites were in deep pain and anguish, probably unlike anything they have ever experienced before and now this deliverer tells them to do something foolish, look up. For people who have been repeatedly stung, the last thing they want to do is look up. I am sure they thought the wiser thing to do would be to look down, look for more serpents, the things that sting them. But it was an act of faith to trust in God’s way, to look up. To look where they wanted to go.