In the 90s there was this movie called The Unforgiven. It was Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning movie, and in it there's a sheriff, played by Jean Hackman, Hugh's just a bear of a man, and the sheriff is over a town in the Wild West where there's just all kinds of violence and awfulness, and a bounty has been put on one of the men in this city in this little village, and a bounty hunter start coming in, and Jean Hackman finds the first bounty hunter and he grabs him, and he knocks him to the ground, and he starts kicking him, he's big old cowboy boots to the ribs, kicking him, and he starts talking to him saying, you think I'm kicking you, don't you? I'm not kicking you, I'm talking to you, I'm talking to every bounty hunter lined up behind you.
In this town, verbal mean, on the ground, a cowboy boot, 2020, cowboy boot last week. Star off with the great news that we now have murder hornets, the coronavirus has taken over 70,000 Americans, that racial killing was investigated and covered up by authorities in Georgia, just dismissed, that well-known pastor, wonderful and gifted preacher takes his own life. This is if the year is just talking to it, just talking to it. You're in control of nothing. You are in control of nothing but your own character.
I've been reading a book by John Ortberg on the keeping your soul, and he talks about driving out to see Dallas Willard, and Dallas Willard was his mentor and his wonderful teacher of God's word and a teacher of philosophy, and Ortberg would come to him often times when he would be at the edge of burnout, at the edge of wanting to quit, frustrated with himself and frustrated with his church and with his inability to really see anybody changing in this church. And he comes to him one time, just kind of at the end of his rope, that why am I not seeing any progress, why is nothing happening that I expect to see happening, and Dallas Willard says, you must arrange your days so that you experience total joy, contentment, and confidence in your everyday life with God. And John says, that was not the question. I was asking you about my church, well I was asking you about my job, I was asking you about all these other things, and well Dallas looks at him and says, arrange your days so that you experience total joy, contentment, and confidence in your life with God. And he says, but how can I be content in a world like this, how can I be confident with my own skills, let me down all the time, how can I have joy in a world of heartbreak and sadness, and Dallas will tell him, and said, did I say anything about being content with your circumstances? Did the words come out of my mouth that you should have absolute confidence in your own abilities? Did you hear me say anything about having joy in the nightly news? I said arrange your days so that you have total joy, contentment, and confidence, and confidence in your everyday life with God, and he says, begin to think about it. And he realizes, he started thinking of two groups of people, and I think you know these people. There are people around us who experience joy and confidence and contentment with much less than we have. I got the absolutely unparalleled joy of seeing my mom rolled out onto her front porch for the final time, and to watch her look over the Palmer'sville highway, with all the serene dignity that a queen would use surveying her kingdom, and know that there's no contentment greater. At the same time, I've known so many, with wealth greater than they ever had any reason to expect, but spirit of paranoia, that people are just out to get them. Anger, frustration, burnout. And I think Dallas Willard is on to something here. I think he is on to Deuteronomy 6. I think he understands what God is calling us to, and he's saying to us, if you want to become that beautiful, contented soul, that God has redeemed you to be. If you want to become what God has bought you and purchased you to be, then arrange your life so that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your might. We stand as we read this great text from Deuteronomy 6. We're going to study the Ten Commandments over the summer, but I'm kind of doing the parentheses today, the bookends. Yesterday we did, last week we did the prelude, the prologue, I'm the Lord your God, he brought you out of the house of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, and today we're doing the epilogue of the other bookend. This is how you get these commandments down into your soul, down into your heart, so that you experience the life, the beauty, the joy, the contentment, the peace that God wants for you to experience. He says this, now this is the commandment, the statutes, and the rules, that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you were going over to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your day is maybe long. Here therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord your God of your fathers has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey. Here O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might, and these words that I command you today, shall be on your heart, and you shall taste them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise, you shall bind them as a sign on your hands, and they shall be as frontless between your eyes, and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. This Father reading of God's Word may all men, may we give heed to it, all men are like grass, and all of our glories like the flowers in the field, the grass withers and flowers fall, but not God's Word. God's Word stands forever, you may be seated. If we want to become the beautiful people, the contented souls, the peaceful hearts that God has redeemed us to me, and we've got to get these words down into us, we've got to order our lives so that we are experiencing God totally. The first thing I want you to see is this is a holistic demand, it's a holistic demand. God's giving the Ten Commandments, He's told them, you're my people, I'm your God, I'm the Lord, that should be enough, this is what I want you to do, these are the keys to life. These are the keys to life, right, and the illustration we're probably going to use every week because I walk my dog every day, so she reminds me every day, yesterday I was out walking and I had to cross a hundred and first, there's traffic coming, but just on the other side of that, a hundred and first was a dog park and she could smell it, she was straining at that leash, straining at it, like don't wear it, where do you think you're going? You're going to get run over in one second, this leash that you think is just killing you, is the only thing between you and being a fuzzy, wuzzy pancake, and God gives us this law, and He says keep it, and so we're like glad us, we keep it, I don't like it, I'm going to pull against that leash, I hate it, every time you get the leash out, I'm going to run away and let you know, I don't like it, and He says, no, it's not good enough, you're going to love me, if you want to keep this law, really keep it, you're going to love me with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, you're going to love me, you're going to love all of me, and you're going to love me with all of you, it's not enough, it's hard to talk about really, it's hard to explain what God's doing here, and do it correctly, in this culture because God was providentially at work, it's not like He just picked something and chose it, He had already designed for this to happen, but there were things called suzerain vassal treaties, now aren't you impressed by those long words, and glad that I spent all that money going to seminary, suzerain was a Lord, he was owned property, in these days, basically a kingdom would have been about, you know, the size of a small town, a small village, one property owner, he owned it, he would build walls, his property which would be on the outside of the walls would be worked by the vassals, the peasants, and they would sign treaties, and it would renew those treaties every year, and in that treaty, the suzerain, the Lord would say, you can, you can, you can, you may live on my land, and when enemies come, you can come in behind my walls, and I will protect you, and you can eat the bounty of the land, but you can't, you know, basically a lot of the walls are the similar to the Ten Commandments, you're not going to sell me out, you're not going to let other warlords into this land, you're not going to betray me, you're not going to kill each other, you're not going to steal from me, you're going to pay your tide to me, pay your taxes to me, and they would even write in these laws, and I want you to love me, I want you to call me Father, I want your faithfulness, in the same way, the Lord did that, so they would understand what he's talking, meaning when he's talking to them now, and he's saying, it's not enough, it's not enough for you to say, I'll do it, but I'm going to hate it, I want you to love me, I want you to love me because I'm the only thing in the world worthy of your love, I want you to love me, and loving me is great safety, it's similar to marriage vows, really, you know, couples, I know couples have been married for a long time, and every now and then they'll talk about it, you know, we've been married for 38 years, welcome, congratulations, praise the Lord for longevity, 38 long miserable years, that does not mean just because you stayed together for 38 years, just because you've not committed adultery for 38 years does not mean you've kept your marriage vows, go back and read them, where the marriage vows to love and to cherish, have you cherished each other, are you making her feel cherished, are you making him feel treasured, that one, if I did your wedding, I know that was your vow, to love and to cherish, God is saying to us, it's not enough to obey, I want you to obey and to love, and I want you to love me with all of you, with all of you, this is interesting, when we read the Old Testament, when we read the New Testament, we see different groups of people being affected in different ways through this, right, when Jesus is walking in Jerusalem, when he is around the teachers of the law, they thought it was enough to love the Lord with your body, and it didn't really matter what was going on with your soul, right, and so thing, external things, like keeping the Sabbath and going to Tabernacle, going to temple and making sacrifices and being circumcised and keeping the feast, that was what was important, and Jesus had to say to them, no, it's what's in your heart that matters, who cares if the outside of the cup is clean, the inside of the cup is what matters, if inside of your heart is jealousy and greed and selfishness, if you hate the immigrant, if you look down upon the poor, if you despise the sick, then you're not holy, and it offended them greatly, we know those, we know that's still a struggle today, you know, I grew up knowing people who knew the Bible so well, such a really a dissonance in my mind, in my heart, for decades, not only as a child, but all the way into my young adulthood, people who knew the Bible so well, and hated African-American so much, how's that okay?
On the other side of the fence, you have the apostle Paul, in Corinth, and the Corinthians, man, they love them some Christianity, get forgiven, get your soul right, it's all that matters, they're saying was that your soul's like a pearl, and you know what, you can throw a pearl into the middle of the pig's dying, you can wash all this dirt off, it's not gonna hurt the pearl, so what you do with your body, it doesn't really matter, and Paul actually had to say things like, guys, you can't go to orgies, he had to put that into writing, I just have a hard time fathoming that, you know, if I were to go away for a while and have to write back to River Rose, okay, you only need to stop having sex parties, he had to put that into writing, because he was saying, it matters what you do with your body, it's not just a simple thing, well I love the Lord, so what never does it make, it matters, you can't join your body to a prostitute, don't come to church drunk, that would be a funny thing for me to write to you, I feel like, you know, by the way, don't get wasted at the Lord's supper, what's going on with your body matters, the Lord is saying, I want you to love me with all your mind, all your heart, and all your body, your mic, your strength, it all matters, I want all of you, and we said, well that's hard,
I want to respond and say, well Lord, how can I love you with every part of me, when every part of me is broken, and we have to work through the rest of scripture to see the answer to that question, and the first thing we see is that he has to give us renewed hearts, that threats and punishment, rewards and punishment were never enough, it was never enough, I have, if you ever talked to your children about their hearts, sometimes you get this, you get it, right, I uh, one of my boys, when he was about four, looked at me with his huge just tears, and his utter broken heartedness, and he said, daddy, your spankings don't work, I said, I got a bad actually, a lot of anger in my heart at that point, it wasn't that hard maybe, man, what do you mean my spankings don't work, they don't work, what was he saying, I still want to do bad things, I said, well do I need to spank you harder, he said, I guess, I was like, okay maybe I went in the right threat, why are you saying telling me my spankings don't work, and you just started bawling, you said, I can't stop being ugly, do you know that feeling, through the Old Testament, you almost get the feeling that Israel is finally brought to their knees, after about a thousand years of trying to keep this law and failure, and failure, and failure, and you can almost feel them cry out as a culture, we can't stop being ugly, and God speaks to them through the prophet Jeremiah and the prophet Ezekiel, and he said, I'm going to make a new covenant with you, and I'm going to take that hardest stone out, and I'm going to give you a soft heart, and I'm going to sprinkle water upon you and make you clean, and I'm going to write my law in your hearts, and I'm going to enable you to do what I call you to do, I'm going to change your desires from the inside out, so that you want to do what is right, I'm going to change the natural direction of your heart, so that you want to follow after me, so that you want to come after me, and Jesus, when he's walking the earth and he's getting ready for this day to come, he explains to the sweet Nicodemus, unless you're born of the water and born of the Spirit, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven, you have to be born again, you have to be given a new heart, what does that look like in our experience, it looks like when we see Jesus, and we get this glimpse that he's for us, for us, when we have the cross clearly portray before our eyes, and we have Jesus crucified before our eyes through the reading of the gospel, and God suddenly unveils all the beauty of Christ and shows him to us as all together, lovely, it changes our hearts, there's a silly little scene, and I don't know, one of Harry Potter's, there's this little elf, a little house elf called Dobby, and he shows up and he is trying to keep Harry Potter from getting into trouble and makes trouble because it's a children's book and that's where they go, but in the story, Harry does something kind for Dobby, and humans never did our witches in wizards, whatever, never did any kind for house elves, they were the slaves in the story, and he does something kind, and Dobby starts to cry, and he says, and Harry says, what's wrong, and he says, I had often heard the greatness of Harry Potter, but no one had ever told me that he was good, and that's kind of what happens, you grow up and you hear the greatness of God, God is great, and we're the fear of the Lord is put into our hearts, where we fear his eternal holy spankings, and we hear of his rewards, but then suddenly that day comes when you feel that the Lord sees you, and he sees you for all that you're broken, and he sees all your shame and all your sin, and he loves you, and on that day you realize that he's good, and your heart changes, and he becomes someone that you can trust, and someone that you follow,
he becomes someone that you follow, there's a story I've heard many times, I've heard so many times I forgot who is about, I apologize, but it was a pastor about 50 years ago or so who had taken in a teenage boy, and the boy was just a wreck, and I kept disobeying, and he kept pushing up against the rules of the house, and showing disrespect to the pastor and to his wife, and just after want weeks, and weeks, and weeks of forbearance, and dealing with him, and trying to discipline him, trying to show forgiveness to him, and trying to train him, the pastor loses his temper one night at the dinner table, and back ends him across the face, and the boy gets up and goes up to his room, and the dad goes up to the room and stands outside the door, and not the dad of the pastor, knocks, and knocks, and the boy won't ever say anything, and finally the pastor gives up, and he goes back down, and goes into his office, and he begins to pray, and he said, I just wept, I wept, and I wept, I'm such a failure, Lord, I'm so sorry, why can't I get through, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, and the boy changed after that night, he changed, and began to try to obey, it was difficult, the difficult path, it wasn't lightning, but the direction that he was going changed, and he began to desire to be obedient, and began to be kinder, and more gracious, and more appreciative, and ended up graduating from high school, and doing well, and he said, years later, I went to him, and when we were talking about our paths, and I finally got up the courage, and I said, why did I have to hit you to get through to you, and he said, he looked at me, and he sneered, a sneer I hadn't seen in years, and he said, hitting me did not get through to me, I went upstairs and packed to leave, and I came downstairs to find you to tell you that it was time to take me back to the orphanage or wherever, and he said, I stood outside your office door, and I heard you crying, and I heard you praying,
and that's when the Lord showed me your heart, that's kind of a picture of what rebirth looks like, when we look at the cross, and we see Jesus there crying out for us, and experiencing the abandonment of God for us, and weeping tears for us, and shedding blood for us, we see his heart, and it enables us to say that we can trust him, we can trust him, and our heart is renewed, but it doesn't change everything, doesn't, doesn't make it easy, it's not a magic wand, why our hearts are changed, but our bodies and our minds are still weak, you can think of it like this, your heart is your, and God says he wants us to love him with all of our souls, all our might and all of our minds, our souls, our hearts are the things that make decisions, the decision making, the will if you want, call it that, okay well you know this about yourself, your will is the weakest part of you, your will is strong from like, well I don't know, from that first cup of coffee, till about lunch, it's about it, right you know that, I am a living testimony to the toxic power of sugar, I know this, right my mind knows it, I am a third generation, well not yet, I will be at some point, type two diabetic, if I am true to my family, I know that it's coming, I did a little experiment on me in January and I went five weeks with no sugar and my heart rate dropped by a fourth, my mind, sugar bad, heart, no sugar, body, heart weak, your body strong, body says sugar good, body says addicted to sugar, heart says okay, my mind begins to justify, well I have been sad and sugar does make me happy, all right, our bodies are weak, our bodies are strong, our minds are hearts are weak, and so what do we have to do? He says you have to train yourself, you have to practice, what does Dallas Willard say? He says organize your day, arrange your day so that you are experiencing contentment, joy and confidence in the Lord, where does he get that, that we are not preaching Dallas Willard, we are preaching the Bible okay, what does God say? He says these words that command you should be on your heart, teach them diligently to your children and what, talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up, they shall be for you a sign on your hands, so whenever you begin to use your hands, they should be as frontless between your eyes, like my word be, the goggles through which you view the world and write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates, practice, we're calling this the laws of freedom and the law becomes freedom as it becomes natural to us, as it becomes natural for us to practice. My wife has a saying, she says I hate talented people, you see talented people sit down in a piano, watch it easy, sit down in a piano, and immediately music starts to come out, and I think the piano is broken because when I sit down behind it it doesn't do that, because I have a practice, I don't know what to do and it's so stiff, I try to dance, and the teacher is like one, two, three, one, everything's so stiff and my legs are so sore after 10 minutes of dancing, because I'm so stiff, there's no freedom, no practice, as you practice, as you talk of it, as you talk of the law throughout the day, when you rise up, and when you sit down, it becomes your nature. When Dallas-Willard says this to John Ormerg looks at him and goes, well I've been struggling pretty good with a quiet time for 30 years, and Willard says I didn't say anything about a quiet time, oh my gosh, quiet time, the tool for guilt, beats people up, and it best to just, you know, as a check mark you make, and you say you feel better about yourself through the day. I'm talking about arranging your entire day, what does God say, here, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord is one, so therefore get up, read your Bible for 10 minutes, and forget it, no, he says, be constantly in conversation about this word that I'm teaching you, the Benedictine monks put this into practice, with eight prayers a day, starting with their prayer, I love the original, the first one, it's called the vigil, you begin praying when you go to bed, and you just pray, when you fall asleep praying, you wake up and you say, man, that's about the only one I'm good at, and I know what you're saying, you're saying yourself, Ricky you really want to become like monks, you want us to pray all the time, I almost said, well it won't hurt your soul one little bit, it won't hurt you a bit to pray a little more, to put a little discipline into our life about when we pray, but more than that I'm talking to you about training your mind, and I want to ask you, what is your prayer, you have one, you know that right, everybody has a go-to prayer that they pray every day about 40 times, most of them have been turned into country music songs at one time or another, poor poor pitiful me, or you know Eor's prayer, from when to poo, Eor's prayers, yeah that's what would happen, yeah things like this always happen to me, why is me, why me, woe me, sorry I got that backwards, woe is me, or why me, right that that that constant refrain that we keep saying to ourselves that we believe deeply that somehow we're different, and everything's against us, and when what the Lord is telling us to do is to change the way we talk, to begin to talk to your soul, to ask your soul questions, you know sometimes I don't, I never, I never just kind of wake up in the morning going, I'm angry today, but I find myself, you know, envisioning, I'm a daydream about kicking my dog, and I think hey, I think I'm mad, I must be mad, but then to go that next step and say, so why are you angry, and then to go the next step of releasing the things that I'm angry about, and receiving the Lord's grace, the receiving is goodness, what's your prayer, what do you pray, do you pray, why me, or do you pray, oh, I love the refrain, people use it all over the world, but I've only heard it in African-American churches, God is good all the time, reminding each other, God is good all the time, you pray, Lord, give me the surrender to accept the things I can't change, you pray, but what are you saying to yourself, you say, with some of my friends that they've learned over the years, even when the very worst things happen to them, it can't be because God doesn't love me, can't be that, all this in Jesus too, we've got to learn to recite to ourselves, to remind ourselves, when do we do it all the time, when we're walking, and when we're working, and we're coming home, and we're going to bed, and we're getting up, reminding ourselves, the Lord is with us, and He loves us, and He's for us, and He's in us, and He is crazy about us, and He's given His own son for us, so whatever I face today, it can't be because the Lord doesn't love me, it's training, you see, we're training our hearts, we're training our minds, we're training our bodies, because we're going to be saying something to ourselves constantly, let's at least learn to say the truth,
He loves me so much He gave His own son for me, how will He not with Him give us all things, let's learn to say the truth to ourselves, until we believe it, please pray with me, my Father, you know us, you know us well, you know that we were born with crooked hearts, that did not want to follow you, that did not believe that life can be found under your word, or under your sight, Father, we pray that You give us grace, to train our bodies, and to train our minds, to believe what is true, and to practice what is good,
praying Jesus name. Amen.