TEN 11: Set Apart for God
TEN: A Look at God's Unwavering Commands • Sermon • Submitted
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B: Exo. 20:1-17
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Opening
Opening
Good morning! I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor here at Eastern Hills, and I’m thankful that we get to worship together as a church family this morning, whether you are here in the room or online. Welcome to our Family Worship service on this the last Sunday of August (can you believe that September starts on Wednesday?).
I would like to take a second and thank a group that I don’t know receives a lot of notice or a lot of thanks: our safety and security team. They so faithfully serve every week to be kind of a first line of welcome in our parking lot, they patrol the lot during service to help keep our vehicles safe, and they are just a great group of service-minded people. Next time you see one of them in their safety vests, would you just say a quick “thanks” to them? I know it would mean a lot to them.
I’d also like to thank the deacons for getting our Lord’s Supper celebration ready this morning. I’m looking forward to administering this ordinance with them a little later in the service.
Next week, we are going to start our next sermon series, called “Rise.” In this series, we will be looking at some of the psalms of ascent, found in Psalms 120-134. While we will not be covering every one of those psalms, I’m looking forward to us spending four Sundays on these beautiful works of poetry in Scripture. I hope that you are as well.
I really only have one announcement to make this morning: On Sunday, September 19, we will have a special guest here to share in our Family Worship service: author and speaker Jonathan McKee. Jonathan is a great guy who has been here before, and I’m glad that we’re able to have him back. If you were here the last time Jonathan came, you’ll remember how clear, relevant, and applicable his teaching is. He has written over 25 books and speaks and trains parents, students, kids, and ministry leaders regarding trends and culture internationally. Jonathan will be preaching our Family Worship service that morning, and will follow up with a no-cost workshop called Parenting Generation Screen that evening at 5:30 here in the sanctuary, sponsored by our children’s and student ministries. Then, as a bonus to our ministry work here with Eastern Hills Christian Academy, he will be doing a special presentation for our middle school students on Monday morning. I hope you’ll plan to be here for both Sunday events that day, and that you’ll use Jonathan’s visit as an opportunity to invite those in your circle who have children in their lives to come and be taught some tools for helping those kids navigate the world of screens that we live in today. Both parents and their children are invited to come, and both will benefit from Jonathan’s teaching.
But this morning, we are tackling our final message in our series TEN: A Look at God’s Unwavering Commands. If the feedback that I’ve received from this series is any indication, we’ve all been really convicted as we’ve considered the broader application of God’s Ten Words that He spoke to the Israelites from Mount Sinai in Exodus 20. I had originally planned on ending this series last week with the Tenth Commandment, but I received some great feedback that suggested a recap would be helpful, and as I prayed about the Lord’s Supper this morning, I was inspired by the connection between the reason for the Ten Words in the life of Israel and the remembrance that we celebrate together as we take the Lord’s Supper. So if you are able, let’s stand in honor of the Word of God this morning and read through the Ten Commandments again in their entirety, beginning in verse 1 of Exodus chapter 20:
1 Then God spoke all these words: 2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. 3 Do not have other gods besides me. 4 Do not make an idol for yourself, whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. 5 Do not bow in worship to them, and do not serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, 6 but showing faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commands. 7 Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God, because the Lord will not leave anyone unpunished who misuses his name. 8 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: 9 You are to labor six days and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates. 11 For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy. 12 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. 13 Do not murder. 14 Do not commit adultery. 15 Do not steal. 16 Do not give false testimony against your neighbor. 17 Do not covet your neighbor’s house. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
PRAYER, including Ernest Carrillo’s family, LuAnn Cortese, Karen & Mary Gleason
The Ten Commandments are still valid commands to follow in our lives: not because they save, but because we ARE saved. We who are in Christ are called to a higher obedience than merely following a set of rules, as we are called to imitate the Lord Jesus Christ in everything, but the Ten Words still speak of that obedience. They speak to how we view God and each other. They speak to how we should order our lives, our families, our jobs, and our government. They speak to our motives and our actions. They speak to our trust and our lack thereof. They are still meaningful for the church and should be meaningful for society.
Sadly, this is the problem—the question that I opened the series up with back on Father’s Day: “Do the Ten Commandments even matter anymore?” For many in the world and in the church, the answer they would give is “no.” But they are still meaningful, because as we have seen throughout this series, the Ten Words are way more comprehensive than we might originally think as we just read through them. They don’t merely challenge us with an outward obedience, but to reflect upon what is going on inside, in our hearts, in the places where only God knows what’s really going on. I’m going to try to summarize each message in the series in one sentence each:
In the First Word, we saw that God says that He is to be our only God, because anything and everything else that we might try to make into our god will only fail us, because only God is God.
In the Second, we found that we are prone to idolatry: that we tend to make other things ultimate in our lives instead of God, and just as idolatry has its consequences, so does faithfulness—so we should want to be found faithful.
Our study of the Third Commandment showed us that we who are Christians literally bear the name of Christ, and so we have a responsibility to honor that name by how we speak and by how we live.
The Fourth Commandment on keeping the Sabbath was given as a reminder to God’s people of their dependence on Him, for refreshment of both our bodies and our souls, and as a promise of renewal of all things in God’s timing in the future.
In the Fifth Word, we saw that God was connecting His authority to those He has placed in authority over us, namely our parents, and that the concept of our honoring our parents and obeying them helps shape and define our attitudes in the remaining commandments.
The Sixth Commandment taught us the connection between anger and murder, and how we are to see other human beings first as those who bear the image of God, and are thus worthy of honor and dignity.
Looking at the Seventh showed us that God designed marriage to be a faithful covenant for life between a husband and wife, and adultery is a violation of not just the covenant between the two married people, but of God’s covenant in the Ten Words as well.
“Do not steal” reads the Eighth Word, and when we considered that command, we found that perhaps we are more prone to stealing than we thought, but also that the flipside of this commandment is that we should be engaged in productive (not necessarily income-creating) work so that we can give to those in need.
Our study of the Ninth Commandment revealed to us some ways that we bear false witness beyond lying in court, and we saw that we should speak the truth in love, and always T.H.I.N.K. before speaking.
And finally, last week we saw that our “desire-ers” are broken, and that the solution to our heart’s bent toward coveting was to learn, as Paul did, to be content in our relationship with the Lord and His provision in our lives, remembering that the Tenth Word also reveals our need for God Himself to save us because everything else falls short, which brings us back to the First commandment again.
God is to be our only God, because He is the only One who is real, He is the only One who creates, He is the only One who saves. He is the only God who is worthy of glory, our worship, our adoration, and our praise. He is the only One who has the right to be our God. And in the Ten Words, God was defining the terms of His relationship with His people: His covenant given through Moses.
The Covenant-Making God
The Covenant-Making God
And so God gave the Ten Words as the opening instructions or terms for what we now call the Mosaic or Sinaitic Covenant. This covenant was kind of a specialization or continuation of the covenant that God had made with Abraham back in Genesis: that the Lord would bless those who bless Abraham, would curse those who curse him, and that all the peoples on earth would be blessed through Abraham’s line. This covenant that God was making with Israel had a particular purpose: we might think that since the Ten Commandments are a set of rules to follow, this covenant was started in order to make the Israelites “faithful” or “nice” people. But no. It wasn’t just to make them “nice” people, but to make them “different” people; “set apart” people; “HOLY” people; people who represented God to the nations, and through whom the ultimate fulfillment of the promise to Abraham would come: the arrival of the Messiah.
In the giving of the Ten Commandments, which summarize the rest of the Law, God was drawing a line around His people Israel. Whereas the nations around them, including the Egyptians which they had just left, were polytheistic (meaning they had many “gods”), Israel had just the One true God, who claimed to have complete authority over everyone and everything everywhere at every time. Whereas the nations around them had their “gods” embodied in physical idols, statues that needed to be carried and controlled by people, Israel’s God led them in a pillar of fire and smoke which settled on the mountain that HE chose, not the people. Whereas the nations around them had prophets who would speak for their “gods,” using the names of their fake gods to justify their choices, Israel’s God spoke for Himself, thank you very much. Can you see the Ten Commandments forming the line that separated the people of Israel from the other nations? And that line was based on the covenant.
Before giving the Ten Words, God declared what the covenant would look like, and what it would mean:
3 Moses went up the mountain to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain: “This is what you must say to the house of Jacob and explain to the Israelites: 4 ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now if you will carefully listen to me and keep my covenant, you will be my own possession out of all the peoples, although the whole earth is mine, 6 and you will be my kingdom of priests and my holy nation.’ These are the words that you are to say to the Israelites.” 7 After Moses came back, he summoned the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. 8 Then all the people responded together, “We will do all that the Lord has spoken.” So Moses brought the people’s words back to the Lord.
Let’s just put it this way: the Israelites were weird, strange, odd In their day and culture. And they were supposed to be. That was the whole point. They were not mighty, but they didn’t need to be: they were God’s covenant people. He set up the arrangement, and they agreed to it. All they needed to do was believe it was true, and then walk in it.
Did this passage from Exodus bring any New Testament passages to mind for any of us? It did for me. Consider 1 Peter 2:4-10:
4 As you come to him, a living stone—rejected by people but chosen and honored by God—5 you yourselves, as living stones, a spiritual house, are being built to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture: See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and honored cornerstone, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame. 7 So honor will come to you who believe; but for the unbelieving, The stone that the builders rejected— this one has become the cornerstone, 8 and A stone to stumble over, and a rock to trip over. They stumble because they disobey the word; they were destined for this. 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
The living stone that we come to, the One through whom God makes us (the church) into a spiritual house, is none other than Jesus Himself, the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. In Him, we have entered into a new covenant that makes us a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. This covenant doesn’t make us nice people—it should make us different people. People who belong to God, people who proclaim His praises into the world because we have been called out of darkness and into light. People who see themselves as one in Christ, because we all have received and all continue to receive His mercy together. If we are in Christ, we have been marked off by God by the blood of Jesus as those belonging to Him, those who are to be different than the nations around us.
God knows who is and isn’t His, even in this room right now. There’s no hiding. There are only two types of people: lost or found. Blind or Seeing. Dead or Alive. The lost, the blind, the dead are all those who have never surrendered their lives to God through believing in what Jesus did on the cross for them. See, our sins separate us from God. And we can’t do enough to make that right, because ANY amount of sin is too much sin. As we’ve studied the Ten Commandments, I’ve been convicted so greatly by my sin… even sin that I thought I didn’t have in my life, I found it hiding in there. And as I said last week: I know that I need a Savior, and I know that Savior is Jesus.
He lived perfectly, never sinning, so that He could take my place in punishment as He received the judgment that my sin and your sin and our sin deserves: death. And He died on a cross for you and for me. But the story didn’t end there, because Jesus is the powerful Son of God, and yes He died, but because of the power of God, He didn’t stay dead. According to the witness of Scripture, He rose from the grave and will never die again. When we surrender to Jesus, it’s really pretty simple: we give up trusting in ANYTHING else to save us from the death we deserve, and we trust only in His death in our place. We give up trusting in ANYTHING else to get us to heaven, and we trust only in the fact that Jesus defeated death in our place so that we can live forever. See, it’s a surrender because we give up. We don’t do anything to earn it, anything to deserve it, anything to make God love us. We just stop trying to go our own way in our sin, and we follow Jesus instead, as Lord over our lives: lock, stock, and barrel. That’s how we’re saved. And I pray that by the work of God’s Spirit right now in this place or online, there are those who are surrendering to Christ in their hearts. Trust in what Jesus did for you, and surrender.
So God knows who are His. And He has provided a visible sign of this covenant, a means of His people marking themselves off from the rest of the world, and declaring to that world and to each other that we belong to Christ.
The mark of the church
The mark of the church
In a few moments, we are going to take the Lord’s Supper together, also called Communion. There’s nothing special about the elements that we’re going to be taking. It’s not the elements that are important, but the practice. The time together. The looking around the room and seeing that we belong to each other and to God through faith in Christ. In the Gospel of Luke, we see that before His death on the cross, He took what we call the “Last Supper” with His disciples, which we now commemorate with the Lord’s Supper. At this last supper, He was instituting the new covenant with those who belong to Him through faith:
19 And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 In the same way he also took the cup after supper and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
He was about to take our place in death, and Jesus took these two elements: the bread and the wine, and He gave them a new significance—they represented His body and blood, broken and spilled for our sin. Those who have trusted in Christ now have the visible, physical reminder of what Jesus did for us, and whenever we come together to take the Lord’s Supper, we are essentially marking ourselves off to each other and to the world: declaring that indeed, we trust in Christ for our salvation. That we are a part of that chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation that Peter wrote of in 1 Peter 2. That we are weird, strange, odd when compared to our prod an the culture around us. That we have been marked off, set apart as God’s representatives in the world, just as the Israelites were in the giving of the Ten Words.
Closing
Closing
The Ten Commandments still have meaning for us as God’s children, those who are saved through faith in Christ. Our obedience doesn’t make us saved, but saved people should want to obey the Lord, even if we do so imperfectly because of our flesh. We are called to walk as children of light, as Paul said in Ephesians 5, testing what is pleasing to the Lord. Throughout Scripture, God tells us what is pleasing to Him, and a good indication of the state of our hearts is our willingness to look at and consider those passages, such as the Ten Words. I pray that this sermon series has been as much of a challenge, conviction, and blessing for you as it has been for me.
Christian: Before we take the Lord’s Supper this morning, examine your heart during this time of invitation as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11. Are you harboring some sin that is keeping you from fellowship with God and your brothers and sisters in the church? Confess that and deal with it before the Supper.
For you who have never trusted in Christ: Today, I have shared with you the message of the Gospel, the “Good News” of what God has done for you through Jesus’ death and resurrection, in as clear a way as I know how. Without Jesus, you’re lost and dead, but you don’t even realize it. Surrender to Christ this morning, even right now, and trust Him to save you. We would love to talk with you about that decision if that’s you this morning. While the band plays in just a moment, come and let us know about that surrender, so we can pray for you and get you some resources and make time to help you as you start this new spiritual journey of faith. If you’re online, you can reach out to me at bill@ehbc.org to let me know that you belong to Christ through your surrender to Him in faith today, so that we can help you with resources and maybe even in finding a church home if you’re not in or around Albuquerque.
And finally, if you believe that EHBC is a church family where you can plug in, connect with other believers, grow in your faith, and serve the Lord, and you want to talk about joining the church in formal membership, please let us know about that as well, so we can set up a time to sit down and answer any questions that you might have about the Eastern Hills, and so we can talk and get to know each other a little better. If you’re online in the Albuquerque area and would like to talk about church membership, send me an email.
You can also use this time of invitation to give online as the Lord leads you, or if you prefer to give physically this morning, you can use the plates by the doors as we exit at the close of service.
PRAYER
Lord’s Supper Celebration
Lord’s Supper Celebration
Call down the deacons to serve.
As the deacons come, I want to say that if you are not a believer, please do not take the Supper this morning. I don’t say this to offend or exclude, but according to Scripture, taking the Lord’s Supper is a declaration of the truth of the Lord Jesus’s death on the cross, and a reminder of the covenant that those who believe in Christ have entered into. If you don’t believe in Christ, then you are not in the covenant, but please know that we love you and are so glad you’re here. We would relish the opportunity to answer any questions you have about the Gospel. Hopefully our taking the Supper is a testimony to you of the unity and love that we have as believers, and will itself be a testimony of Jesus’s love to you.
Today, through taking these elements together, we are declaring as one family what Jesus has done for us by His blood, and declaring to each other and to the watching world that we have entered into that new covenant by faith.
Distribute the bread to the deacons.
Luke records that Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to His disciples.
Have someone give thanks for the bread.
Luke then records that Jesus said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.”
Distribute the cup to the deacons.
Luke records that Jesus also treated the cup in the same way after supper.
Have someone give thanks for the cup.
The Scripture records that Jesus said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”
Send the deacons back. Pray.
Gideon’s Presentation (10 minutes?)
Gideon’s Presentation (10 minutes?)
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading: Isaiah 18 today. I know that this is a really heavy part of Scripture, where there’s a lot about judgment and such. This is a part of the prophetic message for God’s people and for the nations around them through Isaiah. Trevor and I talked about this, and we both find it encouraging that these passages show that no one who God determines to judge can escape that judgment… but also we can be encouraged that Christ took our place to rescue us from it. The clouds of Isaiah will eventually lift! Keep reading!
Instructions, including Gideon giving at the doors and visitors coming to see me down front.
Benediction: The New Testament summary of the Ten Commandments:
29 Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. 31 The second is, Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these.”