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The Big Ten: Your Clear Number One
Pastor Rollan Fisher
It is with the Ten Commandments that God’s covenant with the Israelites began.
Ancient rabbis identified 613 separate commandments throughout the entire Law of Moses, which consisted of the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
The Ten Commandments are the principles upon which the 613 Laws are based.
The first four focus on man’s relationship with and reverence towards God, with love for God as their ultimate theme (Deuteronomy 6:5).
The latter six give instruction regarding man’s relationship with other human beings, exhorting us towards the “golden rule” (Leviticus 19:18).
*In essence, in the Ten Commandments, you see the two greatest commandments to which Jesus referred given practical application (Matthew 22:35-40).
Focus: You will experience the freedom of the Lord when Jesus is first in your life.
Where God Belongs
Distorted Images
True Freedom
Where God Belongs
When God is not first in our lives, we will be enslaved to lesser, harsh things.
All that God requires of us is predicated on the fact that He heard our cries of desperation (whether silent or loud) just as He heard the Israelites’ cries when they were groaning in slavery.
The Israelites were in bondage in Egypt.
We were in our slavery to sin and the resultant consequences.
Exodus 20:1-6
And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
The first commandment deals with who or what god has priority in your life.
“You shall have no other gods before me.”
When gods are mentioned in Scripture, it was referring to any manner of rulers that lorded over people’s lives.
The question is what has received the priority of your time, attention and affections before and above Jesus?
What has that produced and why is it detrimental?
*The commands of God always place Jesus first in your life for your good.
People deceive themselves to believe that they experience greater freedom without the commands of God.
However, from anger and hatred to insecurity and fear to lust and an inability to forgive, without Christ, we are all enslaved to the frailties of our carnal fallen nature.
Ironically, all of the commands and law of God are meant to truly set humanity free.
James 1:25
But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
Distorted Images
Distorted images of God enslave rather than free us.
Whereas the first command deals with God’s place as priority, the second deals with idolatry and what we are in fact, serving.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God,”
Though all of humanity was made in the image of God, today we are encouraged to reshape God in our own image, according to the whims of our changing culture, reflecting our preferences and the loudest voices in a distorted society.
This is the essence of idolatry.
*An idol is made whenever we substitute God’s direct, self-revelation and commands for a caricature of God we remake in our preferred image.
The damage done is palpable personally, relationally and societally.
To that point, in his 2009 publication Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters, Timothy Keller states:
“When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger.”
Yet the good news is that at this point we see God’s jealousy enter in.
God’s jealousy is for our benefit.
He will not be reduced to a caricature in any extreme nor be hijacked for any human cause.
He is jealous not only for his own honor, but jealous to keep us from harm because of his love for us.
A life of disobedience brings about generational curses, where we and others are damaged by the idols that we worship.
A life lived in obedience to God brings generational blessings.
It is only through the cross that Jesus redeems and redirects family histories to bring us from generational curses into generational blessings.
When we serve God as He’s revealed Himself rather than as we’d like to remake Him, it leads to our freedom.
True Freedom
*The commands of God lead to true freedom.
John 8:31-36
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
*Think about it.
When has anything that you’ve ever put before God ultimately turned out for your enduring good?
Career? Your physical appearance and looks? Romantic relationships? Finding identity in the success of your children?
Ultimately we become obsessive about these things, they become task masters to us, and we end up in slavery to them in our souls.
*Idolatry always takes more from us than it gives.
It offers false hopes and promises that are temporary at best and must be fed constantly to simulate life.
Jesus, however, invites you into his finished work where you are freed to neither hunger nor thirst for fleeting pleasures in your soul.
Life in Christ always gives more than we can ever repay.
“Nothing but God ever completely satisfies, because the soul was made for God. Don’t starve your soul.”
-Billy Graham
*When we serve God first and before all things, everything important in our lives is put in their right place and in the right order so that rather than being life-draining, they might be life-giving.
This is true freedom.
This is where we’ll pick up next week.
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2021