Broadway Christian Church
Columbia , Missouri
Morning Worship
August 29, 2004

Prayer of the Day

Gracious God, you created us in love for love, yet in our striving and searching to find fulfillment in life, we have often wandered away from you and the life you propose for us.  May we, in this hour of worship, get a glimpse of a way that really works.  Receive, we pray, the worship we offer with joyful and grateful hearts.  Amen.

Scripture - Exodus 19:3-6

Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel:  ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.  Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.  Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’  These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”

Message
A Way of Life that Works
Rick Frost

How to get into this text is always a challenge.  Let’s see if I can help.  I’d like to play a little game with you this morning.  In just a minute I’m going to ask you all to stand up.  Now, I know you just got comfortable, but consider it Broadway Christian Church’s contribution to your physical fitness program.

Here goes… Everybody who can, please stand up right now.  Now, if you were born before 1930, please sit down.  Now, if you were born before 1950, please sit down.  Now, if you were born before 1970, please sit down.  One last time.  If you were born before 1990, please sit down.  Good.  Everyone take a seat.  Wonderful.  What a wonderful cross-section we have of folks at Broadway Christian Church.  Not every congregation is so blessed.

Now I have a hand exercise.  Everybody here, regardless of your age, if you saw the movie Cecil B. DeMille created called The Ten Commandments, please raise your hands.  Very good.  Thank you.  Isn’t that amazing? 

I learned something just recently about this masterpiece.  When that movie was made, it was not offered to the general public as entertainment alone.  Indeed, they say that the creator of it had a much higher purpose that was at work.  It was something really important.  It was something DeMille and his 1950s audience agreed upon.  If you were born before 1950 in America, in all likelihood, you believed this story we’re going to talk about in the Bible today – the story about God and Moses and the Ten Commandments – was central, key, basic, and fundamental to the way of life of this nation.  Did you know that?  You also, in all likelihood, believe that ongoing obedience to God’s law is absolutely crucial to the continuation of that life here.  You’ll have to talk with someone who was born before 1950 to see if that is true. 

This very day, I’m not so sure those who share life in this community… those who share life in this country… those who share life in this culture… share such a belief.  I’m not sure they share these core values.  Perhaps it will change.  Indeed it may change, because the Bible says over and over and over again that when people, at any time in history, encounter the Spirit of the Living God, things change.

Now when Moses, the man God used to free the Hebrew people, ascended Mt. Sinai to encounter the living God, Moses was a liberator.  That is a good thing.  You remember that story, don’t you?  The Hebrew people were enslaved to the Egyptians over 2500 years ago.

For generations, his people had lived on a promise.  They had lived on a covenant.  That’s what a promise is.  The promise was one the Creator of all that is made with some very unusual people – Abraham and Sarah, desert dwellers.  Do you remember that promise?  The promise was made to Sarah and Abraham that “your descendents would be plentiful as the grains of sand on the beach.”  Their kin would multiply.  They would have lots of kids – tons of relatives.  They would fill the earth with their people.  But more importantly, this family would not just fill the earth, but they would have a special relationship with God – with the Creator of all that is.  They would be God’s showpiece, his showcase.  The whole group would show all the rest of the world how to live as God intends people to live.  If they did that, the result would be they would be given a promised land.  They would be given a wonderful, productive, full land flowing with milk and honey, with all of the blessings, with all the good things that make for the good life.  That’s what the Bible says.

In Moses’ day, the promise that had been made for centuries to the people of Abraham and Sarah was beginning to come true.  Here were a people who were once slaves.  All of a sudden they found themselves free.  They were on their way.  They weren’t there yet, but they were on their way to a new land, a free land, a wonderful land.

However, something was still missing.  It was something Moses went up on the mountain to get.  Do you remember what that was?  Moses went up on the mountain, and when he came back again, he carried two stone plaques.  Engraved in those stones was, as you know, the laws of God.  You’ve seen them.  You’ve read them.  You’ve memorized them since you were children.  There are ten of them, one for each finger of a child’s hands.  Even a child can remember it – short, to the point, four “dos” and six “don’ts.”  They cover everything important between people and God, and people with people.  Do you have any questions?  Here are the answers.  Right here, blasted in stone.  No fine print.  Everybody can see it.  It is open for everybody.

It was awesome.  It was huge.  It was electrifying.  Do you remember the look on Charleston Heston’s face?  His hair was out to here.  DeMille had to do something for special effects.  It was electrifying – his encounter with God on the mountain.

But what a change took place after that day.  You see, for centuries the relationship between God and God’s people was all about grace.  It was all about love.  No laws, just love, just grace.  God had made promises to people like Noah, to people like Abraham and Sarah, but he asked absolutely nothing in return.  Did you know that?  Now, all of a sudden, the “I shalls” of God stopped, and all of a sudden, the “you shalls” start.  The promises God made to Moses now have obligations.  Chosen people, showcase people, are expected to behave in chosen ways.  According to the scholars, for the very first time in recorded history, formal religious law comes into the picture.  Did you know that?  I didn’t know that.  I think that’s amazing.

The question today is:  Why?  Why not?  Why then?  Why Moses, and a bunch of ex-slaves out in the wilderness in the little country that nobody knows or cares about?  Why them?

Well… according to the tenth chapter of the book of Exodus, the law that God gives God’s people is there because God’s promises that have been around for a long, long time are starting to come true.  They’re not true yet for them, but they are starting to come true.

Just three months earlier, God had completely stymied the Egyptians, led the Hebrew people out of the evils known as slavery and into the goodness that you and I know as freedom.  The modern translation of what God said to Moses goes something like this: “Because I have done what I have said I would do, now it’s your turn to show what you can do.  If (underline the word “if”) if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall (in the King James Version) be my peculiar treasures.”  Peculiar!  That’s us.  “You’ll be my peculiar treasures.”  No coercion. Not strong-arm God forcing people to do anything they don’t choose to do.  “If you’ll obey my voice…  It’s up to you.  I can spell it out for you, but I can’t choose it for you.  It’s your call, but I want you to know that if you do, you shall be my peculiar treasures.”

Wonderful!

Folks, it’s pretty clear, I think.  This is conditional language here.  Those who know their Bibles have heard it before.  Jesus said to his followers, “You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15).  It’s not automatic.  You have to do something.  It makes sense.  We know about that.  It’s the way life works.

Another question for today:  What if we don’t?  What if we choose not to listen and follow God’s voice?  What if we don’t do what Jesus commands?  What about all that unconditional love we’ve heard about and we’ve been taught since we can remember?  What about our crying need to have someone in eternity willing to look right straight into the mess we humans can and do make and say, “You know, it’s OK.  It’s all right.  I know it’s a mess, but I still love you.  I’ll always love you no matter what.”  That’s unconditional love, isn’t it?  Do you see the problem here?  Which is it?  Is the Creator of all that is a God of promise, of grace, or a promise of law?  A God of law?  Folks, the Bible says God is both of these things.

I love my kids.  I love them dearly.  You love your children.  I know you do.  That never, never changes, but that doesn’t mean that anything goes, does it?  Well, sometimes it does.  But that’s human, isn’t it?  We’re talking about God here.  God made a covenant, a promise.  God made a promise to God’s people, but a promise without law is like a tent without tent poles.  Without poles, the tent is just sort of this amorphous thing – this bag.

The Creator knows, folks, there are ways of life that work, and the Creator also knows there are ways of life that don’t work.  You don’t need me to tell you about the ways that don’t.  The whole point of the promise in Scripture is to give the people a way that really works.

So, God said, “Here.  Here are ten rules for a way of life that really, actually works.”

1.      You shall have no other God but me.  OK.  Why?  Well, God was jealous.  Jealous?  God is jealous of our affections, and because not only is God jealous, but other gods simply can’t do for us what the Creator does.  “I am the one,” says God, “who gave you life.  I am the one who sustains your life today.  I’m the one who does and will judge your life.  I am the one who can, will, someday redeem your life.  I am the Lord your God, and you shall not give anyone else my place in your hearts.  Not anyone.”

2.      No more idols.  No more passionate devotion to people and things that can’t carry the mail.  Besides, you look silly bowing down and scraping to things that you and others have made.  People?  They’re only human.  Who are you bowing down to?  And more than that, you really don’t need them because you have me.

3.      Don’t throw my name around.  Do you like it when someone steals your identity?  Do you like it when people mess with your name?  I mean, a name is a powerful thing.  It’s a very personal thing.  The fact you know my name at all is a sign of our closeness.  Don’t abuse it.

4.      Keep the Sabbath.  It’s a holy time, and it’s not just holy for my sake.  It’s not for my sake.  It’s for your sake.  One day a week you should stop working.  I have a friend who said, “I’d rather tithe than have Sabbath.”  I said, “Well, we can work something out there.”  One day a week – just one.  Why?  So that you’ll remember something.  You need to remember that you are more – every single one of you are more – than what you do.

5.      Honor your father and your mother.  Whatever kind of job they did on you, they are still your roots.  Love them because if you lose them, you lose your place in my story.

6.      Don’t murder.  Do not murder.  I know it may seem strange to you, but all of life is absolutely precious to me, including yours.  So remember, don’t murder.  You didn’t make it.  There’s no right that you have to take it.  Do not murder.

7.      Don’t mess around with marriage vows.  Not your own or anybody else’s.  Sticking with one person is the best chance you’ve got, friend, of growing up.  I love that.  Besides, having an affair is an invitation to an awful lot of pain and tragedy.  Don’t do it.

8.      Don’t take what doesn’t belong to you.  Life may not be fair.  It’s not fair.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t be.  Don’t take what doesn’t belong to you.

9.      Don’t give your word on things you know are not true.  Tell the truth and think twice before you move those lips.  OK?

10. Stop thinking excessively about things that others have that you don’t.  1) You’re going to resent them sooner or later, because you don’t have it, and 2) You’re going to resent yourself someday, because they have it, and you don’t.  Learn to want what you have, and pretty soon, you’ll have what you want.

I don’t know about you, but I struggle with all ten of those – every single one of them.  But I’ve also had some victories, and so have you. 

“Here they are,” he says.  “Ten rules, ten limits, that describe a life that really works… that describe a life that is really worth living.  Sink those ten posts down in the center of your campground.  Hang your tent over them and go out and have a good life.  But if you ignore them, if you break them, if you avoid them, you need to know that you’re flirting with your own destruction.  So, here… Take them, learn them, obey them, accept them as a gift from me,” says the Lord.  “I really want you to have a good life, a way of life that really works, for if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my peculiar treasure among all the peoples.”

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

God of the Promise, thank you for the constant promise of your love and our salvation.  Help us to walk responsibly as your people.  May we know and share your unsurpassed peace as we walk in the light that your law provides.  Amen.