THE BIG TEN

THE BIG TEN Exodus 20:1-17; Matthew 5:17 September 14, 2008 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction The Big Ten is the oldest Conference in collegiate sports in the United States. With actually eleven member universities in the Midwestern region from northwestern Minnesota to eastern Pennsylvania and south to the extreme tip of Illinois these schools are marked by the highest levels of academic and athletic performance. Some schools are closer to our hearts, of course, for lots of reasons and, let’s face it, some teams are just plain better than others… This morning, and for the next few weeks, I’d like us to consider another Big Ten – God’s Big Ten: the Ten Commandments. Written originally by the finger of God Himself and delivered to His people by His favored servant Moses, the words on these two etched stone tablets have been celebrated throughout history as the foundational moral principles for every civilized society. A business man who was renowned for his ruthless behavior once told Mark Twain, "Before I die, I want to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mt. Sinai and read the 10 Commandments aloud on top of that mountain." Twain, in his gritty wit said, "I have a better idea. You could just stay in Boston and obey them." This Fall we will study the commandments one by one with a view to understanding more about the God we serve and His love for us that prompted the giving of each one. Along the way, we will cover not only the historic meaning of the commandments to the people of Israel, but also the even grander purpose for the Law as revealed in the New Testament. One of the things we will be looking at is how Jesus clarified and magnified the meaning of the commandments as He spoke the words of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). There He gave us God’s deeper meaning on the Law and the commandments. He seemed to know in advance that when He gave us the divine author’s “spin” it would upset and perturb some of His listeners. In fact, what He would soon say would so outrage particularly the most religious in the crowd, that it would plant the seed of hatred and antipathy that would in three years time blossom into murderous rage and impale Jesus on the cross. Knowing how potentially explosive His teaching on the Law would be, Jesus began with these words, recorded at Matthew 5:17-18 : Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, no the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Then, as if to punctuate the centrality of God’s revealed Law, He adds – Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices ad teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:19-20) Picture what is going on here. God the Father authors the ten commandments; now, millennia later, God has sent His only begotten Son, the perfect representative of Himself, to communicate the full, express meaning of those commandments and we’re about to listen in. I mean God so vested Himself in the incarnate Jesus as His perfect communication that He inspires the apostle John to speak of Him as “the Word.” Don’t you imagine the Republican National Committee fretted over that acceptance speech that Sarah Palin delivered last week? Can you imagine the painstaking care that was exercised in making sure that every turn of phrase, every adjective and every planned gesture was just right? This is an infinitely more critical message Jesus brought to mankind, of eternal and cosmic consequence. And He is perfectly prepared to deliver it, emphasizing the precise meaning the Father wants delivered. It was clear from the very beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry that He was bringing to humankind the clear, climactic and culminating word from Father God. Hear the opening words of the magnificent book of Hebrews: In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:1-3) I suppose that before we move any further into the topic we should read the commandments. [webmasters note: Exodus 20:1-17] May we stand for God’s Word? And God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the LORD you God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to thousands who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not misuse the name of the LORD you God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 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. 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. Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. My guess is that reading through that text new and fresh might have raised some questions, old and new, concerning the ten commandments. Those questions are part of the reason for this series. Another key issue is how we Christians are to relate to the ten commandments without becoming legalistic and lessening the grace of God, but also without falling off the other extreme and diminishing the obvious importance of the commandments or our obligations to obedience. We will address these questions. Jesus fulfills the Law and the Prophets This morning as I inaugurate this series, and by way of introduction, I thought it advisable to go right to the Christian connection to the commandments and investigate this doctrine of Jesus’ being the “fulfillment” of the Law and the Prophets. This expression—Law and Prophets—meant to the Jewish audience to whom the gospel of Matthew was primarily addressed, all of the Old Testament scriptures. In the passage in Matthew 5 Jesus was speaking primarily about the Law, and in particular the ten commandments. Correspondingly, the rest of chapter five draws on several of the individual commandments as illustrations in His teaching. What was it that Jesus meant when He said, I haven’t come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them? In what specific ways did He bring fulfillment to God’s centuries old message through the patriarchs and prophets? There are three ways in which Jesus fulfilled the Law: He KEPT the Law, He PERFECTED the Law and He ENABLED BELIEVERS to OBEY the Law. 1. Jesus fulfilled the Law by keeping the Law In his great book entitled Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote: No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it. Jesus, fully man and fully vulnerable, faced every manner of temptation that you and I will ever face, and more. Yet Hebrews 4:15 tells us, yet he was without sin. The only one in the entire history of mankind to be sinless. And when He completed that difficult assignment, he fulfilled the Law by maintaining righteousness before God through obedience. He was obedient. That may seem redundant—of course He was obedient if He was able to face temptation and yet not sin. But wait! The next chapter of Hebrews tells us more: during His life on earth He prayed with loud cries and tears, and was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect he became our eternal salvation. (5:7-10) Jesus did what God called every person to do, to honor, love and obey Him as their Maker and Father. In this, the Bible says, Jesus pleased His heavenly Father. At Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit of God visibly descended on Him, and the audible voice of God was heard from heaven saying, You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased. [webmasters note: Matthew 3:17] Jesus fulfilled the law through submissive obedience. And Philippians 2 teaches that precisely because he humbled himself in that level of obedience, becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name… (2:8-10) Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets in a magnificent way—one that goes far beyond fulfilling Christmas prophecies. He is God’s fully-approved, sinless, suffering servant. He was in His 3—plus years on this planet what none of us has been. 2. Jesus fulfilled the Law by perfecting the Law Jesus honored the Law of God. In Matthew 5:18, Jesus said in no uncertain terms the Law of God, including and especially the ten commandments, will outlast time and creation, every letter of it will be completely fulfilled and not one word of it will be unnecessary, unaccomplished or lost. In a world where we’re imposed on by telemarketers, hucksters, fly-by-nights and loud commercials, with everyone trying to snooker others with another angle, there is one sure Word you can count on. It’s right there in your Bible. When all else fails, the Word stands. God said, Heaven and earth will pass away but my Words will never pass away.  [webmasters note: Matthew 24:25] Jesus affirmed the law of God and fulfilled it. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus brought fulfillment to the Law by giving us the fuller understanding of what it meant. He said being righteous in the sight of God was more than mere action, it was a matter of the heart and motives. “Thou shalt not murder” was more than simply not killing someone else—it is diminishing others by hating them, slandering them, even simply not loving them. Adultery isn’t just sinful when it is acted out; we fail when we entertain the temptation to lust. To please God we must go beyond simply loving those we like loving; we are called to love, pray for and serve the unlovely, including our enemies. In His teaching Jesus shows us how deep our sinfulness goes, by illustrating the real meaning of the Law’s demands and how far short we fall really fall in living up to His holy demands. In short, Jesus fulfills the Law of God by revealing its perfection—and our imperfection. In this way, Jesus framed the Law in light of the big plan of God. He first had to give us the bad news about our utter failure to measure up to the righteousness of God. Then, and only then, will we be ready to accept His forgiveness and salvation. Have you ever tried to convince someone of His need for Christ as his Savior when he didn’t believe he was a sinner? In order to ready us to accept His gracious forgiveness, we need a firm wake up call, showing us in no uncertain terms our lostness. Enter, the Law, in its clear severity. When you and I come face to face with the real story of the Law’s demands, only then are we convinced of our need to come to Christ in humility and repentance. Jesus explained the full demands of the Law. And then He demonstrated the destructiveness and evil of sin by hanging on the cruel cross for our sins. The innocent One being beaten and crucified on behalf of all of us, the guilty ones. God the sacrificial lamb, and we the pardoned ones. A young boy was a troublemaker in his Catholic school. He’d undergone all manner of discipline, but hadn’t learned his lesson. One day, after a particularly rebellious behavior, the teaching nun picked up her heavy ruler and called him to the front of the room. The rest of the class fell silent as they realized the class cut-up was about to get his knuckles rapped. The nun told the boy that his disruptive behavior must mean that she was not a good teacher, and she handed him the ruler and told him to hit her across the knuckles five times for punishment. Shocked, he said he couldn’t. “But you must. Justice demands punishment.” She held her hand out in front of him. The boy raised the heavy ruler and dropped it across the back of her hand. She flinched in pain as her knuckles turned beet red. “Four more times,” she said. He hit her again, and quickly another time. Her knuckles were bleeding now. “Twice more.” He raised the ruler high above his head, now driven to hurt her for his embarrassment, and slammed the ruler over her injured hand with a loud crack. “Again,” she insisted. He raised the weapon again, twenty others looking on holding their breath, horrified. The boy shook, then dropped the ruler and wept aloud. He hugged his teacher, sobbing, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Jesus demonstrated the severity of the Law’s demands by taking our punishment unjustly on Himself—the clearest, most compelling image of how holy and just the Law is, how guilty we are, and how deep is the saving love of God. Oh, yes, Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. Paul taught in Galatians 3:24 that the ultimate purpose of the Law of commandments is to serve as a tutor—showing us the depth of our need and leading us to Christ as Savior. There, in the grace of the suffering Christ we can be justified, not by living up to the demands of the Law—we’re way past that kind of righteousness, but by humbly receiving the forgiveness He has lovingly provided for us. The message of the Law’s demands must be plain and severe. That’s why Jesus said in Matthew 5:20, I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Only through the hard truth of the Law can we learn our need for Him. In this Jesus fulfilled the Law. 3. Jesus enabled believers to obey the law It is a hard thing, but necessary that sinners be shown the reality of their condition before our holy God. He had to show us the impossibility of us ever saving ourselves. He had to impress on us what Romans 8:7 says so clearly: the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God, or can it do so…Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. To come to Christ, we must first learn from the Law our dreadful condition. But the incomparably good news is that once we submit to Christ through repentance, He makes His sacrifice effective for our sins and forgives us by applying His suffering and death to our account! His grace at work in us then changes us. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us! (Galatians 3:13) And what was promised through the Old Testament Prophets comes to pass—He gives us a new heart—one that is able to trust Him and follow Him. Then we are able to receive the higher appreciation of the Law—the Royal Law, as James puts it. That royal law is the love of God at work in our hearts, changing us, renewing us, recreating us after the image of Christ and enabling us to live for Him in a state of continual forgiveness. It is then we learn more fully to love God and to love others. And the Bible promises us that as we learn the Royal Law, we no longer need the hard tutoring of the Law of commandments. Why? Because, as Galatians 5:14 puts it, the entire Law is summed up in a single command: love your neighbor as yourself. Now our obedience flows from God’s grace and doesn’t have to try to buy it from Him! Believers are radically changed people. When we become redeemed and renewed in Christ, the old passes away and all things become new. We can be a new creation! It is no longer an impossible thing for us to live for God and be pleasing to Him. He has given to every believer His Holy Spirit, indwelling them and empowering them to live the new life in Christ. It’s like dying and rising again to a brand new life—a life that will last for eternity. To redeemed and renewed believers Paul can write: So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.  [webmasters note: Galatians 5:16] Our God and redeemer has fulfilled the law for us! Hallelujah! Obedience flows from grace—it does not buy it Obedience is the fruit and proof and sustenance of a relationship with the God you already know. Christian, use the Law not as a means of earning God’s favor, but as a barometer of your life lived out in gratitude to the God who saved you by grace, in a sincere desire to imitate the righteousness of God and in a concerted commitment to let your light shine before others so they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Also, remember the promise to the Israelites concerning keeping the commands of God: “so that we might always prosper and be kept alive.” (Dt 6:24) Most people really believe that the Christian commandments (for example, to love one's neighbor as oneself) are intentionally a little too severe—like putting the clock ahead half an hour to make sure of not being late in the morning." —Soren Kierkegaard w. h. auden and louis kronenberger, eds., the viking book of aphorisms Last year Promenade Pictures released the animated movie The Ten Commandments. As part of their marketing, they commissioned Kelton Research to poll 1,000 people on their recall of Big Mac ingredients vs. Commandments. It appears that Ronald is keeping Moses in bondage. Eighty percent of Americans knew the Big Mac had two all-beef patties while just over 50 percent knew “Thou shalt not kill” was a commandment. Only 14 percent knew all 10. Even those who attend church or synagogue at least once a week have a bit of trouble naming them all. The top two mentioned commandments — Thou shalt not kill and Thou shalt not steal — were recalled by 70 percent and 69 percent respectively. The Big Mac was more memorable — 79 percent knew of its all-beef patties and 76 percent knew it came with lettuce. Religious people get all bent out of shape if the Ten Commandments are pulled off courtroom walls, but they aren’t able to pull up the Decalogue themselves. Sharply captured by one news-post, “It’s enough to make McMoses throw his two all-beef tablets to the ground!” ++++++++++++++++++ What the law tried to do by a restraining power from without, the gospel does by an inspiring power from within. Catherine Booth. "William and Catherine Booth +++++++++++ TREASURE IN THE MUD A number of years ago, there was a geologist by the name of Dr. Williamson who was doing some work in the country of Tanzania. One day, he found himself driving in a deserted area, slipping and sliding along a rain-soaked road. Suddenly his four-wheel drive vehicle sank up to its axles in the mud and got stuck. Pulling out his shovel, Dr. Wlliamson began the unpleasant task of digging out of a mud hole. He had been at it for a while when his shovel uncovered something strange. It was a pink-like stone of some sort. Being a geologist and naturally curious about rock formations, he picked it up and wiped away the mud. The more mud he removed, the more excited he became, and could hardly believe what he saw. When the stone was finally clean, Dr. Williamson was beside himself with joy. He had discovered a diamond. Now, any diamond at all would be a surprise in that situation. But Dr. Williamson found what became known as the famous pink diamond of Tanzania. That stone today sits in the royal scepter of Great Britain, and Dr. Williamson is famous around the world for his find -- as accidental as it may have been. SOURCE: Alan Smith in "Parable of the Treasure" on www.sermoncentral.com. +++++++++ Compare the impersonal feel of the IRS tax code to the care and nurture of a parent telling a toddler he or she cannot run into the street. We’re to remember that God’s decrees are a communication of God’s love, hopes and protection for us. “I made you. I love you. I know what will satisfy you and what will leave you longing.” Fourth, understanding and applying the Ten Commandments means we walk a fine line between legalism and antinomianism. On the one hand, obeying this code earns us no additional favor or merit with God; the Decalogue is about our sanctification and not our justification. On the other hand, we cannot be cavalier about the law, assuming it has no further connection with the gospel beyond freedom. James held law and gospel in tension, reminding us that we know we are people of faith if we live as people of faith. We’ve heard of the demonstrations and legal battles waged by “America, Bless God!” chanters as they bemoan the removal of the Decalogue from public places. Yet, is there a better way to put the commandments on display than by living lives that are consistent with the teaching of the commandments? Golf is simple. You hit the ball with your clubs down the fairway and eventually into the little cup. Golf is simple. I am not saying it’s easy, but from this perspective, it is simple. In the broadest terms, Jesus brought this message to humanity: Obey God. Obeying God is simple. It’s not easy. But it is simple. Live down the middle of God’s moral fairway, onto the green of His required righteousness and into the cup of His favor. Mike Seymour, Buck Breckle and I had the singular pleasure of getting out for a round of golf this past week on an absolutely beautiful day. Temperatures hovered around 70 degrees, the sun shone just enough, a breeze stayed constant enough to keep us cool but not aggravate a slice. It was a gorgeous day—which we proceeded to ruin with inferior play. Buck and I shared a cart and at one point got to talking about how complicated hitting a golf ball correctly really is. All of the minute muscular movements, timed perfectly and interacting in sync with every other movement. Maximizing the torque of the swing by bringing backswing, hip, knee and footwork together in just the right harmony. Choosing the proper club, sighting the trajectory of the ball flight, lining up just right, keeping the head down and the eye on the ball, convening the swing, gaining club head speed, and of course follow-through. It is a complicated issue, making a good golf shot. And then you set up and do it again. And you try to get the ball into the cup within the prescribed number of strokes known as “par” (which, incidentally, Buck accomplished 7 out of nine times on the back nine, and, by the way, Charlotte parred twice on vacation). If you end up in the sand on a shot, you’ve made your chances of succeeding at par much harder. Hit it deep into the woods, even tougher. Plop one in the water, take the penalty stroke—well, you’re pretty sure par will be out of reach. You have to know the fundamentals of making good shots and you simply must execute very well on every shot in order to par. On the course of God’s righteousness scores are not relative. Either you par or you don’t; there are no bogeys, double- or triple-bogeys. If you don’t hit par, you’ve lost. The Bible says that we human beings have all come short of the glory of God (or “par” righteousness). We’re in the woods with four sand bunkers in front of us and 300 yards of water to cross, and we know we’ve missed par. "If half a million white guys commit each year to work for racial harmony, to spend more time with their kids, to pray instead of striking out, to work on an imperfect marriage rather than seeking solace on Sunset Boulevard, who's worse off? Maybe I'm missing something, but this sounds like progress to me." --Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker on the Promise Keepers phenomenon The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts. --John Locke The legislators of Texas passed a law that each automobile licensed in the state must have an inspection sticker on the driver’s side of the windshield. They made that law because some of us are careless about keeping our cars in safe operating condition. The law is for the good of the owner of the car and for the others who might be jeopardized by its operation. So the law is for the good of all concerned. Suppose that our legislators should pass another law requiring a green star sticker on the passenger side of the windshield. They explain the purpose of this law: “We made this law just to let you know that we have the authority to legislate. We want you to get this sticker simply because we say for you to get it.” That would be an arbitrary, despotic law. And after the next election, there would be some new faces in the legislature! Law must originate from authority in order to have validity; yet just laws are not arbitrary expressions of authority .... Author and speaker Jill Briscoe recalls: In Croatia I was asked to speak to a church gathering for about 200 newly arrived refugees. Refugees from this area of the world are mostly women because the men are either dead or in camp or fighting. This group of Muslims, Croats, and a few Serbs had fled to a seminary on the border of a battered Croatian town. The town was still in danger of sniper fire and bombing, but the church had escaped because there were apartment buildings between it and the guns. Attackers had tried to fire shells over the apartment buildings to the seminary, but they hadn't managed to do it, so it became the refugee receiving and feeding place. We worked all day visiting with the refugees. At night a service was held in this huge, old church, and I had to speak. I didn't know what to say. Everything I had prepared seemed totally inadequate, so I put my notes away and prayed, "God, give me creative ideas they can identify with." I told them about Jesus, who as a baby became a refugee. He was hunted by soldiers, and his parents had to flee to Egypt at night, leaving everything behind. I could tell the people began to click with what I was saying. I kept praying like crazy. I continued telling them about Jesus' life, and when I got to the cross, I said, "He hung there naked, not like pictures tell you." They knew what that meant. Some of them had been stripped naked and tortured. At the end of the message, I said, "All these things have happened to you. You are homeless. You have had to flee. You have suffered unjustly. But you didn't have a choice. He had a choice. He knew all this would happen to him, but he still came." And then I told them why. Many of them just knelt down, put their hands up, and wept. I said, "He's the only one who really understands. How can I possibly understand, but he can. This is what people did to him. He's the suffering God. You can give your pain to him."       [Back to Top]