Past Sermons: Individual Entries Archive

Biblical Rocks in Our Lives - Commandments

Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:1-22

Do you remember what it felt like when you finally got your license and you were able to drive a car? After all those years of being shuttled from place to place, having to ask for a ride from folks who held your social fate in their hands, of having to plead and sometimes beg so you could go where you wanted to go, finally you had this document that said you were free at last!! What did that feel like? Do you remember?

Or when you graduated from high school and it dawned on you that whatever happened the next fall would be entirely up to you, that no law would be telling you what you had to do or where you had to go, and you were in charge! Yea! You could say to the Man, “Hey, I’m the man now!”

Or when you moved out of the house for the first time and you were intoxicated from the knowledge that if you wanted to go to bed at 3 a.m., by golly, you’d go to bed at 3 a.m.! If you wanted to eat stale cheerios and cold hot dogs for dinner, then that’s what the menu would be! And if you wanted to have 30 close friends over for a ‘social engagement’, well, you there was no one to give you an unreasonable argument about noise or damage or anything else. Free at last, thank God, I’m free at last!!

We can all remember those times of life when whatever constraints we had labored under were removed, and suddenly we were free. It is a giddy time, and time of no small excitement, when every door seemed open to us and every possibility within reach. We were energized.

It is that feeling that surely must have been rampant among the Israelites when the text we’ve just read was written. Four hundred and thirty years they lived as slaves (Ex. 12:40). Every morning when they awoke they knew that whatever they were going to do that day, it would be decided by someone else, and Egyptian. Most days meant making bricks and mortar, working in the hot sun to build cities like Pithom and Rameses, or back-breaking work in the fields. There were very few days of lounging in the hammock, sipping lemonade and watching ESPN. On the plus side, you never had to take those aptitude tests in high school, you know the ones that ask you a number of questions then tell you that you would be a good doctor or lawyer or plumber? You didn’t have to decide what you were going to do. Your future was mapped out. Your father was a slave, your mother was a slave, your grandparents, your great grandparents, your great, great grandparents…

But then one day, after 430 years of this existence…freedom. “The king called for Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Get up and leave my people. You and your people may do as you have asked; go.” (Ex. 12:31) Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last.

And you all know what the Israelites did in the years following the granting of their freedom. They wandered in the desert, physically, but they also wandered in a spiritual desert. Being free for the first time in generations, they used that freedom to do whatever they wanted. Why? Because one of the first things we do when we get our freedom is to push that freedom to the limits. It has always been that way, it will always be that way. Even today, we continue to believe that a life without limits is more fun, more fulfilling.

The great philosopher Woody Allen once said, “There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.” Tug McGraw, a pitcher for the Mets and Phillies, once said, “Ninety percent of (my salary) I spent on booze and women, and the other 10 percent I wasted.” Freedom is fun. Throw off your shackles and let yourself decide what YOU’D like to do!! Can I get an amen?

The problem is, and I think we know this, the problem is that we are being pulled in a lot of different directions in life. Daily choices are difficult when you’re free, because there are so many of them. And on any given day, feeling any particular way, I’ll make a decision that may or may not be good for me. The poet Carl Sandburg said, “There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.” Which one is going to decide what to do at any given time? The eagle or the hippopotamus?

I don’t know which one wins when you decide, but I can tell you this: the Israelites were free for a mere three months, ninety days, and there were hippopotamuses everywhere. Here’s one example, from Exodus 32: “Early the next morning, the people…sat down to eat and drink and then began to party. It turned into a wild party!” So it should come as no surprise when you read the Bible to discover that a mere ninety days after they attained absolute freedom, we find Moses reminding the Israelites that some choices lead to life, and some to death. We read a moment ago, “Moses called together the people of Israel and said: “Today I am telling you the laws and teachings that you must follow, so listen carefully. The LORD himself spoke to you out of the fire…(and said) I am the LORD your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt where you were slaves.” And after what that, what follows is what we have all come to know as the Ten Commandments.

Now I know some people look at the Ten Commandments and see rules, regulations, do’s and don’ts that restrict and restrain and bind us. How can we be free when we have to follow all these commandments? Most of us, at some time or another, have seen these rules in a negative light. Or as the acerbic writer H.L. Mencken once wrote, “Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you will always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.”

But I’d like to cast them in a positive light this morning. I’d like to suggest that what we have in the Ten Commandments are God’s protection for us, the guidelines for life that rescue us from death. These rules, these laws of life, are the rock on which we build our lives if we want them to last. These commandments are the words Jesus lifts up when he says, “The wise man’s house did not fall, because it was built on rock.” The commandments are how we know God loves us.

That became clear to me when I read something that R.F. Smith wrote about ten years ago. Dr. Smith was the pastor of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church in Huntington, West Virginia. He wrote, “She was about three when it happened. And our youngest. Being the youngest she perhaps needed extra assurance. But the youngest to the oldest in every family asks the same question many, many times. Maybe not in the same way, but they ask it. The conversation went something like this: "Daddy can I go out and play?" (It was raining cats and dogs.) "Surely," I said, putting her on a bit. "You can go out." "But it's raining out there," she protested. "I know." “But I'll get wet," she argued. "Yep, you probably will," I calmly said. "I might get sick, too!" she explained. "That could happen," I guessed. And then, with a real trace of hurt in her voice, she said, "You don't love me!"

Interesting how Dr. Smith’s daughter instinctively knew, at the age of 3, that love meant setting limits to protect her. When the Israelites experienced freedom after 430 years, the Lord God did not leave them alone to their own devices, but God watched over them, guided and guarded them, and gave them these commandments written on stone, so they would be a rock that would protect his people through all of life. When you don’t care what happens to somebody, you say, “Go ahead, do whatever you want.” When you loves someone, you have their best interests at heart. In his latest book called The Jesus Way, Eugene Peterson, my absolute favorite theologian, says it better than I am able. Peterson grew up in Montana, on the Western range. He writes, “One of the chores to which my friend was routinely assigned by his parents was what they called "riding fence." It was mindless work: he simply rode his horse along the barbed wire fence that enclosed the cattle, looking for breaks or weaknesses. When he found one he repaired it. There were miles of fence. Some days he would ride for hours without finding what he was looking for. My friend told me that cattle are the dumbest members of the entire livestock family, but in one thing they are absolutely brilliant: they have a genius for finding a hole or weak place in a fence. And the moment they find it they are through it, leading their sister cows and brother bulls after them into dangerous terrain where they have no skills for protecting themselves or avoiding calamity. You then have to spend the next two or three days rounding them up and returning them to where they belong and can be kept alive. My friend called cattle the idiot savants of the livestock world. And so it was necessary to "ride fence" to protect the cattle who didn't know enough to take care of themselves but were absolute geniuses at finding a hole and escaping from the confines of the community where there were adequate provisions for keeping them healthy.”

Let’s not push the analogy too far. You and I are far smarter than cattle. Right? But we share this in common with them: we have a genius for finding a hole or weak place in the fence God has provided for us. And we are always wiggling through those holes, inviting our brothers and sisters to come through with us, because, after all, we’re free, and we like to sing ‘don’t fence me in’ and doesn’t the grass look a bit greener over there? But maybe we should stop from time to time and ask ourselves, “Why is this fence here?”

Commandments. Written in stone. The biblical rocks our God has placed around us to protect us. Tough words. Tough to follow. But true words, good words, and words of life. When Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as governor of California in January of 1977, he said these words in his inaugural address: “For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems that are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is there are simple answers. They are just not easy ones.” These are simple words, given on a mountaintop to a people who had recently been given freedom. These are simple words given by a God who loved his people fiercely and forever. These are simple words. But they are not easy.

Posted on August 30, 2007 01:53 PM