Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] The fact of the matter is we can sort of look at the 10 Commandments as don't tick God off list, you know, and it's not that at all.
[00:00:18] But to set the context for this, I want to read the words of the Apostle Paul from Romans chapter 3.
[00:00:26] For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are.
[00:00:34] So there's something more at play than just do stuff, right.
[00:00:38] It's not that at all. This gift of this list isn't to be followed so that we can get in the tribe or stay in the tribe.
[00:00:48] That's not what this is about.
[00:00:51] It points the way to how to relate to God and then how we are to relate to one another.
[00:00:58] We're gonna be looking at Exodus chapter 20, but before we get there, in chapter 19, God is speaking to Moses and he says this now, if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth, for all the earth belongs to me, and you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.
[00:01:20] The Ten Commandments are not then given in the next chapter as a, you know, a reason for their deliverance. It's actually the result of their deliverance. They've already been delivered. God has already set them free from slavery in Egypt. And now he's saying, now in order to continue this freedom, this is how we're going to operate. This is how your life will work best. He didn't say, if you obey me, I'll deliver you from Egypt. He'd already done it.
[00:01:53] They were free.
[00:01:56] Likewise, we walk in a relationship with God not so that he will love us, but because he does love us. And the Ten Commandments were given not as a new list of rules from a new master that benefited the master.
[00:02:14] It was a list that said, this is for your benefit. This is how you can live free lives.
[00:02:22] When I opened my heart to Jesus, I was forgiven, set free, adopted. But it wasn't the end of my integration into this community of faith. It was the beginning.
[00:02:36] I had some things in my life at that point that I didn't really realize were going to need to be changed.
[00:02:42] And so, you know, there was this process of change that I was entering into. And I didn't really fully understand that or appreciate it when I made those first steps toward Jesus. But what I found is that the habits and hang ups and fears and doubts that I had, that I was entering into a lifetime process of being set free. I was free now. I was learning how to live free. It's a lifetime process. My wife has assured me. It's certainly ongoing.
[00:03:15] Exodus 19.
[00:03:17] God was inviting them into a special relationship with God.
[00:03:22] God invites Israel into a covenant, an alliance.
[00:03:27] He's offering freedom.
[00:03:30] Now, this is the beginnings of a fulfillment of another promise that happened 430 years before this encounter with Moses.
[00:03:40] It was a guy named Abram.
[00:03:43] Abram is really kind of. This is the beginning of the Jewish people. As you look back at that first promise, it begins in Genesis 12. You can look at it on your own, but God is speaking to Abram and he says, I'm going to make you into a great nation. All the peoples of Earth are going to be blessed through you.
[00:04:07] Now. Later, he says, all right, I want you to go. You're going to hit the road. You're going to move. I'm not telling you where you're going. Just start moving and I'll let you know when you get there. And this is where he's leading them, to the promised land. There's the next part of this promise.
[00:04:25] In Genesis 15, it says, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham that day and said, I have given this land to your descendants, as he's looking out over what will become Israel. But you have this generational promise. And now it's hundreds of years later, 430 years between these two events, the promise to Abraham and these 10 commandments that are given. But these commandments are there to define and redefine how to live free. Now that they are free.
[00:04:58] I needed some. Some change to happen. But if I had fully appreciated all that would be changed and all that would happen in my life, I would have ran quicker to it instead of, you know, change is tough, but God has done amazing things.
[00:05:18] The first four commandments are all about how to relate to God. And the last six are all about how we're to relate to one another.
[00:05:27] It's all for our benefit.
[00:05:29] The Ten Commandments are not a don't tick me off list.
[00:05:33] They're for us.
[00:05:36] Well, free people embrace relationship.
[00:05:41] Not some new religion, not some new list, but a relationship with God. He's inviting them into this alliance, and he demonstrates his commitment to it. His. He goes first. He says, I'm for you.
[00:05:55] Now what's left is our decision. My decision. The people of Israel had a decision to make. Okay, I'm. I'm all in.
[00:06:03] Now. Will you trust me?
[00:06:05] Will you Follow me. Are you all in?
[00:06:08] And here it is. The first commandment. Exodus 20. God spoke all these words. I am God, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of a life of slavery. No other gods, only me.
[00:06:20] This first commandment God gave was for them to trust in no other gods. Small G, don't put your trust in a bunch of other systems or religious trappings, just me.
[00:06:38] He demonstrated that he was God.
[00:06:40] The key to their continuing freedom was to walk in this relationship, not just the idea of following a list.
[00:06:48] They were free, they were no longer slaves. But they had old ways of thinking.
[00:06:54] They had old patterns of behavior that had been entrenched.
[00:07:00] And it's just like us sometimes, our old ways of thinking, our old ways of doing life, we hang on to them instead of saying, okay, God, you first.
[00:07:12] How should I respond?
[00:07:13] God wanted to deliver them though from the counterfeit gods that could never deliver what they ultimately sought.
[00:07:21] Abandoning the small G. Gods were essential to the embracing this relationship. And then free people live into their restored identity.
[00:07:31] They had this generational promise with a guy named Abram, and that promise was still moving, it was still in play.
[00:07:42] But they, they didn't understand their identity.
[00:07:47] After 400 years of slavery, the children of Israel struggled to fully trust in God's grace in their life.
[00:07:53] After their deliverance from Egypt, God set about restoring their identity.
[00:08:00] And then as you read the Old Testament, you'll see that the children of Israel just continued to cycle through identity crisis as they would live in such a way where they would lose sight of whose they were and then look for other sources for wholeness, happiness.
[00:08:18] They would just look to achieve security without putting God first.
[00:08:27] Same thing we do, we struggle in the same way.
[00:08:30] And living into our new identity is an intentional decision.
[00:08:35] My daughter and her family recently came home from Hungary.
[00:08:41] They adopted a four year old. And we landed in their place the same day they got home from Hungary.
[00:08:49] We got to know her, but guess what? She's fully in our family. The papers were signed in Budapest and she came into our family. She's in.
[00:09:00] She's completely in. But the process of integration is just beginning. But there's not like, well, if she doesn't do well, she's out.
[00:09:10] Back to hungry for her.
[00:09:13] No, she's in, but she's in a process. In a new country, a new language, new people.
[00:09:22] Likewise, when we accept God's invitation of relationship, we're in, but now we're learning to live into that. I'm all in. Identity free people also recognize authentic Value.
[00:09:36] They're able to see something and say this is, this is immensely valuable.
[00:09:45] I come from, from a super athletic family on my brother in law's side.
[00:09:57] His dad was a pitcher for the then New York Giants when they played in the Polo Grounds back in the 50s. He was a 20 game winner I think two or three years and then went on spent the rest of his career as a coach in the Giants organization.
[00:10:15] Well, when my brother in law was a little kid they lived in Forest Grove. And then in the summers they would, he would fly and spend the summers in New York and he would be a bat boy and he had a little Giant's uniform and what he would do is he would go to the other dugouts of the teams that were coming, all the stars, he would get their card and then he would go over and they would all sign it for the cute little kid in the Giant's uniform. So fast forward to he's 18, scholarship to the University of Oregon to pitch Go Ducks.
[00:10:57] God's favorite team.
[00:11:00] Should we just pray for the Ducks today?
[00:11:05] So he's, you know, moving and he's married to my sister, she's 16. And we won't get into why they're married at 18 and 16.
[00:11:19] But his mom calls him up and says, you brother is moving into your room. Nine kids and what do you want me to do with these baseball cards? You see he had three shoeboxes of signed baseball cards of most of the greats of the 50s.
[00:11:41] And he said, I don't have room for them.
[00:11:45] And so she thought that meant please take them to the backyard and burn them in the burn barrel.
[00:11:53] That is the reaction I hope for.
[00:11:57] That hurts my soul.
[00:12:01] The nostalgia, the history, the millions.
[00:12:08] But you know what? That was just their life and they didn't. They're just bubblegum cards.
[00:12:15] You're a married man now.
[00:12:18] Gone.
[00:12:19] Didn't see the value.
[00:12:22] We're tempted to secure our happiness when we change our value filter.
[00:12:30] We end up looking for that fulfillment, that peace, that satisfaction in our lives by compromising what's really valuable and chasing after what is not. And this idea of putting God first, idea that that can be like, well, what if he doesn't want what I want?
[00:12:50] Putting God first. I'm going to trust him, but I need this, that, the other thing. And we're afraid he's going to withhold.
[00:12:58] Instead of trusting him.
[00:13:00] I caught this clip on YouTube of a kid that was faced with one of these challenges. Check this out, I think you'll enjoy it.
[00:13:17] Two out of the box. Oreo cookies, huh?
[00:13:25] Are you sure?
[00:13:27] That's $10,000 cash.
[00:13:33] Do you want the Oreo cookies? Are you sure? Yes.
[00:13:37] Okay, go ahead. And I look at the decisions of my life when the value filter was just not operating well, and I think how many times I went for the Oreos.
[00:13:53] How many times did I make a really bad decision and pursue something that could never fully satisfy?
[00:14:02] We've all done it.
[00:14:04] We all have to check the value systems that we have in our lives.
[00:14:10] When I recognize the value offered in this invitation to freedom.
[00:14:16] The immense value of what God is offering us can't be compared to anything else. But do we really believe that?
[00:14:24] Or do we have a different filter in play? In our lives we can sometimes measure our value by false metrics.
[00:14:34] It doesn't work out well.
[00:14:37] When fear or worry move into our lives, then we can continue to make even worse decisions based on those compromise.
[00:14:47] When we measure our value by false metrics, we're really pursuing small G gods.
[00:14:52] Things that might be good in and of themselves, but if we put an immense amount of trust in them and put God second, then they become something more. Here's just four examples of categories.
[00:15:06] The metrics that just don't measure up if you pursue them.
[00:15:11] Appearance, affluence, achievement, and approval.
[00:15:19] If those become what drive us, we're going to end up lacking.
[00:15:27] I mean approval.
[00:15:29] There's never enough approval because all you need is one nasty comment on social media and you forget about the pages of other things that have been wonderful.
[00:15:40] Never enough achievement. Somebody always breaks the record.
[00:15:46] Affluence. Boy, that can come and go in one bad economic cycle.
[00:15:53] Appearance.
[00:15:58] I mean, if my goal is when I walk into a room, I want the ladies to go hot, then I have to spend all my time at assisted living facilities.
[00:16:11] It's my only shot.
[00:16:16] They become small.
[00:16:20] Sorry to put that visual in your mind.
[00:16:24] The problem with all of these categories is that they're unstable, unreliable sources of security.
[00:16:31] The only solid foundation for identity is understanding how much you matter to God.
[00:16:39] Do you really believe it?
[00:16:41] Do you really believe how all in he is toward you?
[00:16:49] If you can begin to see it, it's transformative.
[00:16:53] God sees you through eyes of forgiveness and restoration. God has your picture on his phone.
[00:17:02] There's never been a moment in your life when God didn't love you, when he didn't see you and he didn't care for you. Never.
[00:17:11] You're his treasure and he is the ultimate value. And finally, free people surrender to grace, not religion, not a list of rules.
[00:17:24] Not doing everything right.
[00:17:27] The Bible says that all have sinned and all have fallen short.
[00:17:31] We all know we're on that list.
[00:17:34] I know I fall short as a parent, as a husband, as a friend, as a human being.
[00:17:43] At times I don't measure up to my own standards, let alone God's standards.
[00:17:51] Neither do you.
[00:17:52] Thank God for grace.
[00:17:55] He's saying, I'm giving you this, this is the best way to live.
[00:17:59] But now when you don't achieve it, come to me. Because then grace flows, grace flows.
[00:18:08] Jesus is way more interested in liberating us than condemning us.
[00:18:14] It was surprising to me that following Jesus wasn't about doing everything right.
[00:18:20] That shocked me as a new Christian. It was about growing in a relationship of love and acceptance. And it's taking, taking me many, many years to really believe, fully believe that he loved me. Even when I was messing up, he still loved me.
[00:18:38] I was still in the tribe.
[00:18:42] This invitation into freedom is powerful, but we have to accept it.
[00:18:50] We have to say I choose to believe it. Even if you don't feel like it's true, you know, sometimes you just have to tell your feelings. If they contradict what God says about you, tell them to go to hell.
[00:19:03] Just do just, you know, every now and then you just need to flush them a little thing, just pull your earlobe thought gone.
[00:19:13] Just don't buy it.
[00:19:17] Me first thinking though, leads to isolation and a self imposed prison as it's going to be all about me. And I've got to grab and I've got to hold and I've got to get and I can't trust.
[00:19:30] It actually imprisons us, it doesn't free us because we're built for relationship with God and with one another.
[00:19:37] Our identity as sons and daughters, as deeply loved people by God, that's empowering.
[00:19:49] This offer of adoption, this alliance, is of the utmost value. It's the most valuable thing ever.
[00:19:58] This invitation.
[00:19:59] Wow.
[00:20:01] The path to freedom then is surrender, not gutting out perfection.
[00:20:08] John Ortberg wrote a book called the Me I Want to Be. And in it he uses the 12 steps of AA to demonstrate the power of surrender. I'll read just a section.
[00:20:21] In which of the 12 steps does it say, now try really hard not to drink?
[00:20:25] In which of the 12 steps does it even say, now decide not to drink?
[00:20:29] Amazingly enough, the most powerful tool against the most powerful addiction in the world never asks people to decide to stop doing what is destroying their lives.
[00:20:38] Instead of mobilizing the will, its followers surrender their will. Try to overcome the Problem by your will, and it will beat you.
[00:20:46] Surrender your will and sobriety becomes possible. Surrender, which we think means defeat, turns out to be the only way to victory.
[00:20:54] This is not just the case with alcohol. It is true with other addictions, with habits, with brokenness, and with sin in General.
[00:21:04] Surrender.
[00:21:06] Romans 12:2 says, Let God transform you into a new person. By changing the way you behave?
[00:21:15] Nope, by changing the way you think.
[00:21:21] How do you think about you?
[00:21:23] Do you see the value that's being offered to you?
[00:21:27] Do you know whose you are?
[00:21:34] Philippians 2 says, For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.
[00:21:40] Those are choices. You come to places in your life where the light goes on. You go, oh, wow, I didn't understand that. And so there's then my part that's like, oh, okay, now what's my part? I choose to step into it. I choose to begin again, maybe begin for the first time, to walk with and trust in God.
[00:22:07] I don't know where you're at, but has the filter gotten clogged at all?
[00:22:13] You know, have we been distracted by some small G gods out there that want to hover around and tell us how important they are, or are we able to say, okay, God, you first.
[00:22:29] God chose us for freedom.
[00:22:32] Freedom from guilt and shame, freedom from our sins, and freedom from sins that have happened against us.
[00:22:41] He wants to free us from all of that.
[00:22:46] I want to ask you, is there a choice you need to make today?
[00:22:51] Maybe you've never opened your heart and said, jesus, I don't understand all this, but I want to move toward you today.
[00:22:59] I want to begin a surrendered life.
[00:23:03] It's for your freedom. It's of the ultimate value.
[00:23:07] I hope you'll see it for what it is.
[00:23:10] Not an attempt by God to suppress and control you, but rather to free you to be fully who you are and who you were created to be. Or maybe you'd say, you know what? I've done that. But, man, life happened and it's gotten complicated.
[00:23:29] And I've made this choice and that choice, and I'm not even sure God would want me.
[00:23:36] He does.
[00:23:38] He wants you.
[00:23:40] What will you do with that? I want to give you a moment to think about it. But I want to ask you, if you are there, you need to make that choice to respond. I think there's pivot points in our lives where you make a choice and it becomes even more than you thought it would be.
[00:23:58] I made a choice to come to Jesus. I had no idea the life that I would get to live, the freedom that I would begin to experience. I didn't understand all that when I made that choice.
[00:24:11] But I ask you to trust, trust in God's great love for you, that he understands, that he knows and that he cares. I'm gonna ask you to do something, if you would. If everyone just close their eyes, just to give a sense of privacy to the people around you. Is this a pivot point in your life where you just need to make a choice and you might even be thinking, well, I'll just mess it up. Yeah, you probably will. And then you run back for more grace?
[00:24:40] If you're saying, I need to make that choice and identify fully with God, he's all in.
[00:24:47] I choose to trust. I choose to follow. Maybe for the first time, maybe you need to begin again. I'm just going to look across the room, and if you're saying, mike, include me in that prayer. You're going to pray, just lift your hand and you're saying, all right, I'm taking this step, just looking across the room. Okay, that's great. Just lift them up.
[00:25:06] Not so much for me, but so that there's a point of decision for you. That's great. All right. Jesus, pray for all of us today that we would fully identify with you, that we would learn to walk in this grace that you offer, that we would begin to see ourselves restored, loved, redeemed, and at peace.
[00:25:40] In Jesus name we pray.
[00:25:42] Amen.
[00:25:43] In Psalms 51, after David has done another great series of sins to complicate his life, he comes to God. He says, created me a clean heart, O God, restore within me a sense of being brand new.
[00:26:02] Last week, Pastor Evan said something profound.
[00:26:07] And I know you're probably thinking, I don't recall Evan saying anything profound last week, but what he said was that grace flows to the lowest places.
[00:26:21] And if you think, well, no, I've got some places that are so hurting that grace couldn't get there. Not true.
[00:26:29] Receive his grace.
[00:26:31] Amen.
