Well, I was talking to Chuck Michael this morning, and he informed me that there was a, he had prayed for me last night, he told me, and he informed me at that time that there was a good possibility that this morning I could preach up a storm. Now, in the likelihood that is the case, let me give you some instructions, okay? If we do get a storm morning and somewhere we do have a weather radio on, okay? If it gets serious, we will sort of each side go into the adjoining hallways, not either side, walk out that door, turn right, walk out that door, turn left. There's some hallways here that are really well protected. Your children are going to be taken care of in the other building in a similar manner, in a similar manner. So, not to worry, there's no need to go running out, our people are instructed, so everybody should be taken care of in the event that comes upon us rather quickly, all right? So, just want to put your minds at ease with respect to that. Just in case Chuck was right and I do preach up a storm, which by the way would be the first time. I'm happy to preach a cloud by everyone's in a while. But anyway, you know, this morning was a great morning. I got off to a late start this morning, absent-minded me. I had an appointment here at 9.30 and I had forgotten that I had an appointment at 9.30, and we were scheduled to interview Louis Mark Leiford, 7-year-old Mark Leiford, to hear his profession of faith, and he gave a wonderful, credible profession of faith this morning. So, we're happy for both Bill and Bernadette Leiford, and for Mark is a great day for him. We're going to be bringing him up in next week, I think, so you can all hear his profession of faith. But it's such a wonderful thing to hear children articulate their profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we've had a wonderful opportunity to do that with a lot of kids here at Covenant for the Tuning Church, and it's just a great thing to see children profess their faith in Jesus Christ. And as we were doing this, John Boardman was assisting me. You know, we try to do this in the mouths of two and three witnesses and let everything be confirmed. So, at least two elders here, the profession of faith. And as we do this, John Boardman asked Mark a couple of questions. He said, what does it mean to you to follow Jesus? And he said, you know, to follow Jesus means to obey him. And I thought, you know, I mean, he didn't even hesitate, you know, it just came right out of his mouth. And I thought, you know, what? You know, I think if I were to ask seven, eight, ten adults the same question, I'm not sure that that's the first thing to think of. And yet, Mark came right out. What does it mean to follow? It means to obey him. And then right after that, John followed up, and this is okay. Well, man, what does it mean to obey him? And he says it means to do what he says. And he's right. But, you know, so often, I think, you know, we complicate things, don't we? You know, this is what I think Jesus meant when he's, you know, we talked about the faith of a little child, you know, that our faith is to be like a child's faith in some respect and some regard in some way. And this is a wonderful example of that childlike faith that so often, you know, we, we stray away from the simplicity of the gospel and the simplicity that is in Christ. And, and to our, sometimes to, you know, our own chagrin and our own misery, and to our, sometimes unfortunately, even to our own demise. And so, you know, I just wanted to think about that. You know, what does, you know, the idea here is the child understood that God requires something of us. Now, we all understand that we can't meet God's requirements. We can't meet God's standard. The God's standard is perfection. And you and I cannot at all, in any way, shape, matter of form, measure up. And that's why we needed Christ. That's why we needed a Savior. We needed somebody that could measure up someone that could not only die for our sins as Jesus did, but somebody that could live the perfect life that we are unable to live, which Jesus did as well. He, in other words, kept the law and he kept it perfectly, which is what the law requires. And he did it not for himself. That's, that's what we need to understand is that Jesus didn't keep the law for himself so much as he kept it for us, for our sakes because we're unable to keep it. But yet, and still sometimes here's where we go wrong. Sometimes we understand that we comprehend that we understand what Christ did. We understand what Christ requires. We require obedience. What does it mean to follow Jesus? Obey him. And what does it mean to obey him? It means to do what he says. We understand that about God. We understand that about Christ. We understand what's required. And we understand that Jesus didn't for us. But then too often we stop there and we fail to realize that the law that obedience is still in play, that we are required to keep the law. And sometimes I forget, you know, that, you know, you want to, if you want to know, in other words, let's look at this way, if you'll want to know how you're doing. If you ever want to know how you're doing as a Christian, how am I doing as a Christian? What kind of progress are I making as a Christian? If you want to know how you're doing, the best place to take a look at how you're doing is by looking at the moral law, by looking at the Ten Commandments, by seeing what God has said and commanded, requires as well. See, we could say it just like Mark and we want, you know, what does it mean to follow God? What does it mean to obey him? What does it mean to obey him? It means to do what he said. Well, what did he say? Isn't that the next question? See, what does it mean to follow God if he's to obey him? What does it mean to obey him? It means to do what he said. Well, then what's the other, what's the next question that follows? Is that logically follows? This is, well, what did God say? Right? Well, and we have that here. What God said. In fact, in chapter 20 of the book of Exodus and verses one through 17, we have the exposition here of the Ten Commandments, given to Moses on Mount Sinai. This is what God said. It's sort of a summary of what he said. Jesus went on the further summarize what he said, right? Jesus, you know, said all the law can be summarized in two parts. You know, love the Lord, but I got all that heart, mind, strength and so forth and to love your neighbor as yourself. That's a summary of the law. Okay? The Ten Commandments is sort of a larger summary of the law. This is what we call the moral law. This is what God said. And so we're to, we're to, if what it means to follow God is that we obey him. What it means to obey him is we do what he said. And what he said is right here for us in plain English. Look what it says in verse one of chapter 20. And God spoke all these words. See, this is what God said. This is what God said. Now, let me tell you why I'm doing this. So one, I sort of had a long range plan to do the Lord's prayer, to do Ten Commandments, to kind of do those side by side, because there's a lot of similarities between the Lord's prayer and the Ten Commandments. There are arranged a lot of like, you know, the first half of the Lord prayer points, it's upwards, it points to God, right? Second half of the Lord prayer points horizontally, it points to to us. You see, God's people, well, Ten Commandments are arranged in much the same way, the two, they call them the two tablets, if you will, right? The first part of the Ten Commandments point us up, the point is towards God. The second half points to what God requires of us one to another. And so we have these two tables, if you will. These two registers, if you will, of the Ten Commandments. And so this tells us what God said about what is required if we are to follow Him, you know? And here's why I'm doing this, because I have been receiving phone calls this past week, a week before I met with some people from the church, and over and over again, you are telling me that you are really struggling with some things. And of course, we all are, just one degree or another, right? But you have told me you're struggling, you're wrestling with sin, personally. Some of you have told me that you're wrestling with things of a sexual nature or pornography or in your marriage and your personal life. Some of you are wrestling even with drugs or other kinds of addictive behaviors. And I realize, you know what? We need to go back to what God has said to the guide that he has given us, to the design that he has given us, you know, of how to live the Christian life. If you want to know how to live, this is the Christian life, the moral law. That is the Christian life. And I really felt because of that, you know, we need to go back now. So so some of you told me that. And I know, I know these things because you've told me, for for others of you, I know these things because who you, the person you told told me, you're supposed to laugh, that was supposed to be fun. Sometimes you tell other people some things and they come and tell me, I don't know why it is, but you know, if you did it, I usually find out about it. And it's pretty hard to keep a secret from your pastor. I just, you know, have to tell you, I know some of you are really nervous now. But this may be realized, you know what, we've got to address this. And so we're going to address this. We're going to be looking at the 10 commandments over the next 11 Sundays this morning. We're going to do the preface. And then the 10 following Sundays, we're going to look at each of the 10 commandments. We're going to do a series on this. But the first thing I want you to see here is look, let's go back to this. What, what did God say? See, what does, what does it mean to follow God? It means to obey him. Right? What does it mean to obey him? It means to do what he says? What did God say? And that isn't interesting. The 10 commandments begin right there. It begins by saying and God spoke all of these words. Now, when it says that God spoke these words, what it means is that God is the author of these words. God is the author of these words. He, they originate with God. God has spoken. He is the author of these words. And because he's the author, what that means is that these words have authority. If you think about it, the word, the word authority is derived from the word author, or another way to look at is the word authority contains the word author. See, the idea of authority comes from the, from the idea of author. God is the author of these words. And therefore these words have authority. And so what I want you to see is that these, these words are authoritative. They are the authoritative rule for all of life and faith for all of life in our practice. So what does that mean? They're authoritative rule for the Christian life of how do they live the Christian life? See, God spoke all of these words. These are spoken by God. They are his words. They have authority. And because they're spoken by God, because God is the author, then we ought to hear them. And when I use the word art, I don't use it just in passing. There, there is an awtness about this. We have an obligation to hear these words. They're spoken by God. Because they're spoken by God, then we have an obligation to hear them. And we have an obligation to believe them.
We have an obligation to love them. We have an obligation to know them. I wonder what would happen if I asked you right now to pull out a pen and a piece of paper and write down the ten commandments. Could you do it? I mean, if you close your Bibles, this isn't an open book test. If you close your Bibles, could you from memory write down the ten commandments in order to think about that for a minute? Think about what that says. If you've seen that new TV show on Fox, that Jeff Foxworthy is hosting, are you smarter than a fifth grader? See, I bet our fifth graders here could do it. I bet they could write down the ten commandments if we ask them to. On the spot, see, just like Mark this morning, you know, what, you know, what does it mean to follow Christ? It means to obey him. I mean, he's got it. Comes right out. I bet the fifth graders could do this. But see, what, what happened? Are we smarter than them now? Have we surpassed them somehow? Do they need something as children that we don't need as adults? Are we recommending something to them that somehow, as something that is authoritative for them, that somehow doesn't apply to us? Is that what we're doing here? If this is God's Word, if God spoke these words, if he is the author of these words, then we should hear them. And look how they, look how they are punctuated. Well, you just remember, look how God, you know, we always teach children, you know, about, you know, proper grammar, proper punctuation, you know, being careful on how we write and so forth. And, and that's important. And I want to belittle that. That is important. But look at how God punctuate stuff. You know, I mean, you know, if you, if you look at all chapter 19, what's chapter 19, chapter 19 says, you know, when they were appearing on this mountain, when God appeared on this mountain, when God was speaking to Moses, it was punctuated, if you will, with thunder and with lightning and with fire and with smoke and with earthquakes, this is God speaking. There wasn't anybody present at the time that thought otherwise. All those people that were present thought that this is God speaking. That's an interesting today that, you know, with respect to God speaking, we usually fall into one or two or three different categories, right? You have people that, that don't believe that God ever speaks. For one, sometimes those people don't even believe that God exists. And therefore, so God doesn't exist and God doesn't speak. The new group people that, well, God does exist, but he does so in sort of a remote way that God exists, but he is, he is so far away, if you will, and so unapproachable, that he does not interact with his created order. And so God is there, as Francis say, for you to say, but he's silent. He doesn't speak. And then you have another, another group of people, Christians, you know, who think that the God's, of course, God speaks all the time. Right? You probably have friends, I have friends like this every time I see them, every time I talk to the phone, every time I get email from God told me this, God told me that, God told me the other thing. God's always talking to these people. You know, I feel like, I feel like the guy on the Verizon commercial sometimes, you know, we're my friends who are like this, you know, they've got the network, right? The helicopters, the big satellites, you know, they got the, they got 300 employees that follow every place they go, so they always got a signal. You know, these guys are dialed in the God. You know, I'm like, I'm like the little guy with all the cardboard cut out, you know, and I got the little, you know, circa 1950, little satellite dish, you know, and a transistor over here. You know, because I can hardly, I can hardly get a signal when I'm in church to get the guy. And these guys apparently, they hear from God all the time. Now what I want to point out though is, is that these two kinds of people have more in common than you might first think. The people who don't believe that God does speak and the people who hear from God all the time. And that is, is that they take God's speech, they take God's communication or God's revelation to us in both cases for granted. The former take it for granted that God doesn't speak. The latter take it for granted that God speaks all the time frequently. I just talked to him a few minutes ago. In both cases, they take the speech of God for granted. Now traditionally, and more classical Protestant expression of God's communication to his people, we believe that God speaks to primarily through his word, through the word of God. And what this says is that God has spoken. God spoke all of these words. And they are recorded for us here in the scriptures. We believe that this is God's word. First to Israel as they came out of Egypt into the wilderness through Moses on the mount. God spoke to these people. But look at their response. See here, you know, here, here are my friends, right. And your friends too probably, you know, God spoke to me yesterday. God spoke to me today. God said this. God said that. God said the other thing. You know, or you got, you got, you got, you got the other side of the coin too, where, you know, where people who are sort of skeptical say, you know, if only God would speak to me. If God would just speak to me, then I would believe. See, it's all I need. I just need God to speak. If God would speak, I believe. And so there's this sort of anxiousness to have God speak to you. But look at, look at this. You know, one thing you find out about, about these people is that they, they weren't anxious. You know, once they experienced God speaking, they weren't anxious to repeat that. Look at what it says in verse 18 of chapter 20 says, when the people saw the thunder and the lightning heard the trumpet and saw the mountain and smoke, they trembled with fear. And they stayed at a distance. And they said, the Moses speak to us yourself. And we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die. That always puzzles me about, you know, people who are really anxious to have God speak to them. I don't think I've heard John frame says before I don't think you really know what you're asking for.
But if this is the word of God, God is the author that these words have. They are the author, they are the authoritative rule for life and faith and practice. And they are still relevant to us as Christians. And so we need to hear them. We need to believe them. We need to love them. We need to remember them. I'm a forgetful person. I don't know if you're like me or not, but I'm a forgetful person. And it seems the older I get, the more forgetful I get as evidenced by my being late this morning for my point of mark. I forgot. And I know the words already out. So I'm going to go ahead known up to it.
I know that many of you have been told that last Sunday, I forgot my mother. I pulled into the, I, you know, I was parked up back there, you know, and I told mom, I'll pick you up under the clock tower. And I went to get the car. And I got in the car. And I was all the way down by 426 and Mitchell hammock.
Now I might have got to save. If I got the Mitchell hammock in 426, I might have got to save if I had remembered then that I had forgotten my mother. But I still didn't know that I had forgotten her.
Unfortunately, I got a phone call and somebody said, Jim, did you forget something? And I'm looking in the car. I'm looking. I got my Bible. I got my phone. I got my earpiece. I got everything. I said, no, I don't think so. Is that well, your mother? Yeah. I forgot my mother. That kind of forgetting, we're all used to. We all do it one degree or another. Some of you are much better at remembering than other people like myself. And sometimes I forget in a selective, you know, it's like our hearing.
But there's another kind of forgetting that I want to point out to us this morning. And that's moral forgetting. See, some forgetting is mental. Other forgetting is moral. Do you see over and over again in scripture throughout the Old Testament? One of the, one of the commands that is repeated over and over and over again is do not forget what God has said. Don't forget what the Lord has done. Don't forget. Don't forget. Don't forget. Don't forget. It's not a mental lapse that they're talking about here. This kind of forgetting is not mental. It's moral. And if God has spoken, if God has said this, if God has given us the moral law, then we better not forget it.
We need to know it and we need to remember it. We need to practice it if God has said it.
Now in our confession this morning, we saw that this, this, what is called the preface in verses one and two, the preface to the to the to the commandments. Tell us three things about God. And God spoke all of these words and he said, I am the Lord. So the first thing that we see is that the the preface of time command teaches us that God is the Lord. God is the Lord. He is in charge. John frame again in his book. And by the way, if you want to read a great summary of this exposition, we sold John's little book on theology, a systematic theology here. That's a great resource. But also his book on the Christian life, which is available. I think online is still on third mill, part of it is still up on there. You can read about an exposition on other 10 commandments, which is, you know, which is a great resource and a great tool to teach us about 10 commandments and teach us about the Christian life. And John, one of the things that John brings out about this word Lord is that it usually communicates three things about God. It communicates first of all that God is in control. God is in control. This is, you know, refers to the idea of God's sovereignty, that God is in charge of everything. I don't know how many of you remember in 1981. I think it was in March 30th when Ronald Reagan was, it was attempted to be assassinated. If you, you know, went alive then, certainly you knew that Reagan, there was an attempt, the attempt of assassination in life of of Ronald Reagan. And Alexander, hey, General Alexander, hey, was his secretary of state at the time. And some of you remember the news story when, when, you know, after Reagan was, was shot and they weren't sure whether he was going to make it or not. And there was this chaos because President Bush 41 George Herbert Walker Bush was away out of town. In fact, he was flying in the air, I think, when this happened. And so he couldn't come back to the White House immediately. And so the press was saying, you know, basically, you know, who's in charge here? Who's running things? Where do we go? The president, the president obviously has been incapacitated. The vice president of the Riles, who in charge, and Al Hague stepped forth without even missing a beat and he said, I'm in charge here. And of course, the press had a field day with that because constitutionally he wasn't in charge, meaning that he wasn't the next in line to file the president if the president is incapacitated. It's either the vice president or the speaker of the house as, if you know your constitution and you look at 25 and so forth, it tells you what the line of succession is there. But Al Hague, right up to the front, he said, I'm in charge here. And of course, everybody took that to mean that Al thought he was next in line to be the president if the president was incapacitated and the vice president was unavailable. And so the press just had a field day and they really made a fool out of the guy. And but, you know, according to Al Hague, he was just saying, look, I was talking about the day-to-day operations in the White House. I'm in charge of what's going on inside here. Well, I say that, you know, say this because people made, you know, everybody was sort of laughing at Al Hague and it's been made into a mockery of some sort over the years. There's, you know, there's a movie about this whole situation made out and made Al Hague to look like a buffoon, which I assure you he was not four-star general served under three different presidents. The man was anything but a buffoon.
But isn't it interesting though that the same people that were critical of Alexander General Alexander Hague for stepping forward and saying, I'm in charge. Do that every day. I mean, that really is the human predicament in some ways, isn't it? That really is sin, isn't it? It's the idea that I'm in charge, that I am defying God's authority as Lord and every day, and I wish I could just say that this was true of unbelievers, but every day we as believers do the same thing. We wake up every morning and instead of acknowledging God as the Lord, as the one who is in control, as the one who has absolute authority, we step forward without thinking, without hesitating, and we proclaim, if not by our words, by our actions, that we are the ones who are really in charge.
And what has that accomplished? Well, one of the things that it's accomplished, folks, is that we have made a big mess.
You know, if you look at the world today, I think, you know, I'm an optimist by nature. I'm not a pessimist. But if you look at the world and you honestly look at it and critically look at it, I think we all agree that right now world affairs are a mess. If you look at our country and I love our country, but if you look at our country and you look at it honestly and critically, we'd have to say it's a mess, morally speaking, it's a mess. If we look at our families, I think if we honestly look at them, many of us would have to agree that we have made a mess out of the family. And if you look at your own personal lives, and I encourage you to do so, I know that many of you, and you've told me, or the people that you have told, they've told me that in many cases our personal lives are a mess.
And the reason why they are a mess is because we think we're in charge. What this commandment tells us, what this preface to the commandment tells us, this is that God spoke all these words. And he said, I am the Lord, I'm in charge. I believe in what I'm asking you to do today. Those of you who profess to follow God and to follow Christ, I'm asking you to think about the words of that little seven year old boy today. What does it mean to follow God? It means to obey him because he's in charge. What does it mean to obey him? It means to do what he said. I am the Lord, and notice he says, your God, Martin Luther said that the religion consists of the right application of personal pronouns so that we can say my God so that God can look at us and say, you're my people. And we can look at God and say, you're my God that is the essence of what a covenant is. It's the idea that we are God's people and that he is our God. That's the essence of the covenant. I am the Lord, your God. God has entered into an agreement with us. He's entered into covenant with us. He is our God and isn't it interesting? You know, one of the most common things I hear and one of the most careless things I hear people say in slang and you've heard it too. And if you're like me, you've said it too. It's, oh my God, right? Whenever we have a little surprise or a little shocked or we get some news about something so often the first words out of our Mauser, oh my God. And what's interesting to me is you know, the truth about what those words contain. My God, except we don't say it with any reflection or with any thoughtfulness about what it really means. We say it carelessly
and yet there's profound truth in that expression. This is my God. And I am his child. I am his son. I am his daughter. And I think we need to grasp that understanding of what that means and what that says, that we are his people, that we are his children. I am the Lord, your God. So tell us that he is the Lord, it tells us that he is our God and it tells us that he is our Redeemer. I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. And what this tells us is, folks, is that you know, if we go back to the, you know, those two questions, you know, what does it mean to follow God? It means to obey him. What does it mean to obey him? It means to do what he says. If we go back to those questions, what this is telling us, what this preface is telling us is that this is based on grace.
The commandments are based by grace. We don't win favor with God by keeping these commandments as such. We, we already have his favor and therefore we obey these commandments. These commandments are preface with grace. I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. God had delivered his people from the largest, most tyrannical, most totalitarian empire in the world at that time. And he brought them out of slavery. And he brought them to a place where they could worship him. Grace was first, we obeyed because God has given us grace. He's delivered us. And how much more for us who've not just been freed from some sort of political enslavement, but we have been freed from the bondage and the enslavement of sin and Satan. And he has set us free. He has given us liberty. He has given us freedom. He's given us life everlasting and eternal life. I am the Lord, your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the land of slavery and bondage. He is our deliverer. And this grace becomes the motivation, you see, for our obedience. And so I commend this study to you this morning over these next several weeks. Read these commandments. Study these commandments. Memorize these commandments so that when
someone asks you, what does it mean to follow God? You can say what Mark said. It means to obey him. What does it mean to obey him? It means to do what he says. What does he say? He says that I am the Lord your God. And I have brought you out of the land of bondage and slavery and given you freedom and life eternal. Father, we do give you thanks and praise for your grace because you have delivered us out of our bondage from sin and Satan. You have set us free. You've given us liberty and you've given us life. Not because we merit it or deserve it. In fact, we probably merit it and deserve it less than most. But in your grace, you have set us free and brought us out of our slavery to sin and Satan. We praise you for that. Lord, help us now. Not out of a desire to win more of your favor or more of your love, but out of a grateful heart to live holy lives, righteous lives, lives that hear what you have said, that hear and believe and love and obey and remember your words, your commands, your moral law. Lord, let that change us from the inside out. Let your church again once again be a holy people before holy God. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.