There is an Author Behind the Law - Patrosky Anderson

This is week 2 of our sermon series on The Ten Commandments! Today we explore God's command not to take his name in vain, and touch a bit on the command to keep the sabbath holy.

Brick by Brick is the official podcast of Renovation Church, featuring weekly Sunday messages and powerful deep dives into the theology, meaning, and the real-life impact of God's Word. "It's where faith gets built, one truth at a time."

We exist to help people Find, Follow, and Be Like Jesus. Be sure to follow the podcast so you never miss an episode!

Giving: https://renovationchurch.churchcenter.com/giving

Social Media:
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@renovationchurchmi
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/OurRenovation/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/renovation_churchmi/
Church Center - https://renovationchurch.churchcenter.com/home

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I am the God who loves you. I am the God who set you free. And so, am I not a good God? Why would I want to tether you down? And so he he reorients their mind to the fact that look, I don't forget this. I am your God. And I am the God who loved you, and I'm the one who set you free. And then he goes on to say, and because of that, you will have no other God before me.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Hey everyone, welcome to the Brick by Brick Podcast from Renovation Church, where faith gets built one truth at a time. In this sermon episode, you'll listen to our most recent Sunday morning message. So whether you're new to faith or have been walking with Jesus for years, there's something here for you. So kick back, hit play, and let's build this thing together.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

This morning, we are going to uh continue this look at the Ten Commandments. Okay? I'm gonna open this up in prayer, and then I'd like to just dive right in. The hope is that um, well, let's let's pray. Father God, thank you for today. And all joking aside, um I don't I don't take for granted where I live, Lord. And so I thank you for the blessings that you have given us, Lord, and the ways that we were able to celebrate those blessings. Father God, I thank you for that, Lord. Um I I don't celebrate these without also knowing that um Christianity is a global brother and sisterhood, Lord. And so we pray for those around uh the world who don't get to experience the freedoms that we do here in this country, Lord, and we ask for grace for them, Lord God. Uh grace upon grace, Lord. And uh while we also simultaneously thank you for the grace that we have, Father God. And so in Jesus' name, Lord, we know that we can do both those things. And um, I pray that as believers, Lord, we hold those two things in tension, Father God, as we celebrate you and we praise you, we give you glory and honor. Here now, would you give us eyes to see and ears to hear your word in Jesus' name? Amen. So the Ten Commandments, right? Arguably, probab, arguably, probably the most um the most known uh of the commands of God, uh, I think they are probably even among non-believers, a lot of non-believers know the Ten Commandments. I do think though that for a lot of non-believers, um, they would say that the Ten Commandments, not all of them, because if you look uh at some of the statistics, they kind of they kind of trend doing one of these things. But those commandments that are like do not steal, right? Don't murder, those ones, even non-believers would say those are just simple, good, good and simple um rules for life. And so I think because of that, a lot of people, a lot of people just know the Ten Commandments. I think even respect the Ten Commandments. Um, as believers, though, we understand that you cannot separate the Ten Commandments from the Word of God. Uh you you cannot separate the Ten Commandments from God Himself. We looked at last week, um, just a small recap, we looked at last week that the Ten Commandments came from God uh Himself. Personally, when he descends on the mountain, he calls Moses up, right? And then he gives the Ten Commandments to Moses, to the people, essentially, through Moses, but with a purpose. And the purpose was to set his people apart. These were not just a simple uh do's and don'ts uh rules. The primary reason for the Ten Commandments was that he was creating this culture that he desired uh to be set apart, right? And so because of that reason, and I said this last week, you can take the Ten Commandments at face value. But I do think that we as believers are also meant to not only take the Ten Commandments uh at face value, but we are meant to dive into the Ten Commandments, knowing that they come from God themselves, understand that the Ten Commandments comes from a God who desires to know his people, have his people be set apart. And so there is a heart context that comes with the Ten Commandments that we are also called to lean into. Does that make sense? Uh we introduced this idea of you have the letter of the law, but you also have the spirit of the law. And these two things are not in competition with these, with each other. The spirit of the law, how many guys have ever heard that? That wasn't the first time you heard that, right? The the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Only two people raise their hands, but I trust that you just you had a rough night last night. You just don't want to raise your hand. But the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Um, and I gave I gave a couple examples uh last week, and I love seeing people's faces when you give some and they're like, ooh, that's kind of sketchy. So I have another one. Um, and this one comes from Leviticus. Amazing book. How many Leviticus people out there? Pastor Steve, it's gotta be your favorite. I think a lot if you're doing a Bible plan in uh a year, you will stall out in Leviticus. I guarantee. I get people coming all the time and they'll be like, it's it's that Leviticus, man. It's I'm like, I I suggest that you go from the Gospels, I suggest you do it backwards. I would go from the Gospels and then do the new the Old Testament. Because then when you do that, you understand the Old Testament, right? But that's just um, but some of you guys are like, nope, start to finish, you stall out uh in Leviticus. But it is it is some fun reading. But in Leviticus, man, there's some doozies in there. And I think that if you just read Leviticus with the understanding of like the letter of the law, it has led to a number of heated online debates, be honest. People are just throwing Leviticus at each other like rocks. And it's like, you just want to jump in there, but I wouldn't dare do it, but you just want to jump in there and be like, ah, you don't understand the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. And again, these two things, they don't, they don't war against each other, they complement each other. Turn your Bibles to Leviticus chapter 11. Because you often see um in the book of Leviticus, God is is doing essentially what he's doing here in the Ten Commandments is He's he's laying out the book of Leviticus is for the priests, right? And he's he's saying, like, this is the way we have to orient ourselves as I try to take this group of people who are who are in, right, for all intents and purposes, they are a new people that God is pulling out. And he's saying, no, no, we have to live a life that is set apart. And so because of that, he creates a number of um, you know, sexual ethics, he creates a number of ways of like raising kids, uh, how we treat one another. And a lot of times you will hear people throw these at these one-liners at each other, and they oftentimes come from this book. Um, and it'll go something like this. Oh, you think that? Well, then you shouldn't. What about this? And and you're just kind of playing that game. One of the funniest ones that I hear a lot, actually, is it's like, oh, you believe that? Then why do you like football? You guys ever read that? You guys ever heard that? Why do you like football? And I'm like, football? And then like, in Leviticus, it says this. And so let's just read what it says. But let's understand it from both the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Leviticus chapter uh 11, verse 1. It says, The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, say to the Israelites, of all of the animals in the land that live in the land, these are the ones that you may eat, right? He says, You can eat any of the animals who have divided hoofs and uh that chew the cud. No idea what that is. I had to Google it. And that's like what the cows do. Apparently that's a thing. We're out here chewing cud. You get at your local grocery store. I'm from Texas. They got there's a lot of cud chewing in Texas. I just didn't know what it was. Uh in verse four, it says, um it, but but get this. He says, Look, there are some who who chew the cud, uh, and this is where you stall out. It's like some they chew the cud, but they don't have the divided hoof. You may not eat those. And then he says, the camel, the camel chews the cud, but it does not have divided hoofs. It's ceremonially what? Unclean. And he goes on and he lists all these animals, and he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like he knows human nature. And he said, Yeah, yeah, I know that one does this, but it doesn't do that. And and I said what I said, I meant what I meant. So it does this, and I do this, and I know you're gonna ask me about this one. And so he's laying down um this uh idea of like you cannot do this and you cannot do this for the sake of you being what clean. Is it not? It's so that you can be clean, and he's saying, Don't do this and don't do this so that you can be clean. And this is the this is the argument that I see thrown out. It says in verse 7, it says, And the pig, though it has a divided hoof, he says it does not chew the cud, it is what unclean for you. Not unclean, but it is unclean for you, because he's taking his group of people and he's pulling them out of the culture, and he's saying, You are set apart. He's not demonizing, vilifying the animal. He's saying, For you, I'm pulling you out and I'm calling you to something different. And so this animal is unclean for you. It says you must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses. We all know what a football is made out of, right? And so I've heard people say all the time, like, oh man, like you, you don't you don't think this sexual ethic is here, then why do you like football, right? You can't pick and choose. And then I'm like, no, no, no, no. You you don't understand the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Because if you go by just the letter of the law, right, Paul says if you break one rule, you you're you're you break one law, you're a lawbreaker, right? And so the letter of the law would say that, man, you cannot play football. That's why the Lions have the record they have. They're all just Christians doing their best to stay clear and unclean. They're doing their best to stay clean, but all joking aside, why does this no longer apply to us? Because the purpose is for us to be what? Clean. How are we made clean now? Thank you, Jesus. That's why when Peter goes into a trance and then the the sheet comes down and the voice tells him to get up, kill, and eat, he says, No, no, I have a problem with that because he was still on the old mindset. He was still stuck to the law, and Jesus was saying, No, no, no, don't call anything unclean that I've made clean because you're on a whole new system now. You're now operating by the spirit of the law. It doesn't do away. Christ didn't say, like I come to do away, right? But you now have to take in the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. And I think those of us who don't understand that, we get caught up in these tit for tats with various things in the Bible and we wield them at each other when the reality is, no, no, no, we're already clean because we understand that the whole purpose of this was to make us clean. And if Jesus is our sacrificial lamb, then does that not make us clean once and for all? And so why would we go back? Why would we ever go back to reading the Bible just based on the letter of the law? That doesn't make sense. Another example of someone who was just trying to read the letter of the law is when Jesus says you've got to love your neighbor, someone who was, they even said he was an expert in the what? The law. He stood up and he says, Well, who's my neighbor? Why? Because he was just wanting to say, look, if you just give me a nice, clean to-do list, I'll just do that nice clean to-do list, and then I'm good. And then Jesus hits him with this parable, this elaborate story where you actually have to think, where you actually have to understand, where you actually have to pray through things, where you actually have to hit your prayer closet and say, God, wow, what if the person that I most identify with is less like my neighbor, and the person that I least identify with, they're the ones that resemble my neighbor. Oh, God, everything is turned upside down. And Jesus says, I didn't come here for you. I came here so that my spirit would saturate the earth. And you got to grab a hold of that. Does that make sense? And so when we look at the Ten Commandments, I want us to not just see them as a list of do's and don'ts. We also want to understand that the Ten Commandments is connected to an author. It's connected to an author. And that author has a heart. And that heart is for you. And you would be doing yourself a disservice if you just stopped short and looked at them simply as the letter of the law. But if you try to actually push in and say, God, what is not just the letter of the law? Because I want to be clear, you cannot do away with that. You cannot. You cannot. But is it very simplistic if you stop there? Do you not want all of God? Do you not want all that he has for you? Right? And when we do that, it will help us read the Old Testament, A, um, and not get completely lost. And then B, it'll help us not get bogged down in passages like the pig skin one, right? Because it's like, really? Are we gonna spend our time fighting about that? Man, I'm clean. I'm clean. I ain't got time to, you know what I mean? Okay. Um last week we talked about some of y'all are just like, oh my gosh, that is why the lions lose so much. You gotta let it go, man. Move on, move on. This is their year. Um last week we talked about how um you know God brings the Israelites out of slavery, right? Out of slavery from the Egyptians, and he reminds them of this fact, right? Right before he gives them the Ten Commandments, he says, um, he says, I am the God who delivered you from slavery. And he doesn't say that um just to say, look, I did this for you, and so you need to do this for me. And so here are these 10 things that you need to do uh for me. No, I think it would make more sense when we view God as a loving God that he actually, what he's saying to the people is that, look, I'm about to give you some things that in your own human nature and understanding might feel like these things are gonna pin you down. These things are gonna make it look like everyone in the culture is going this way, and yet you have to be a people who are going this way. And I know that that's gonna feel a certain kind of way, but I want you to understand that I am the God who delivered you. I am the God who loves you, I am the God who set you free. And so, am I not a good God? Why would I want to tether you down? And so he he he reorients their mind to the fact that look, I don't forget this. I am your God, and I am the God who loved you, and I'm the one who set you free. And then he goes on to say, and because of that, you will have no other God before me. And that's why no one else can do for you what I've done for you. And here's the bold claim I would make to you. If there is another God in your life who can do for you what Jesus has done for you, you should go follow him. Or it. Right? Trust me, if there is another God out there who can set you free, who can turn your life around, who can take you from death to life, you're in the wrong place. And I think you should go follow that God. I know how it sounds, but I'm telling you the truth. If you have found something else better than Jesus, go follow it. No. But God says, remember what I've done for you, and you cannot put anything above me. And then he goes on, right? In Exodus, turn to Exodus chapter 20, verse 7. And he says, the second command. The second command, he says, you shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven or above or on earth beneath the waters. He says, You shall not bow down to them or worship them. Or I, the Lord your God, or for I uh the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing the children's uh for the sins of the parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me. Verse six, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who who who love me and keep my commandments. The letter of the law is very clear there, is it not? We are not allowed to create images and worship them. Why? Because you can't capture the goodness and the glory and the majesty of God. You cannot capture that and put that into an image anyway. Why would you even try? To even try is to reduce God down to the very thing that He created. That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense, nor can you create anything and worship it. Why? Because He is God and He requires all of our worship. The Bible says that He's a jealous God, meaning He won't share the spotlight with anything else. With anything else, and why should He? He's beneath Him. Why should he? Why should the Creator share the spotlight with anything that He created? You know, sometimes we gotta just get that in our minds because we love to go to God and but God, what about this? What about that? And it's like He's like, yeah, I made that too. Why would I why would I share space with that? It's it's it's beneath Him. So the letter of the law is clear, but the spirit of the law, the Spirit of the Law tells a much deeper picture, doesn't it? The spirit of the law tells us that the consequences of sin or the consequences of obedience they last much longer than you or I. That's what it says. Many people believe, hear me when I say this, many people believe that the sins of their parents, or their parents' parents, or their parents' parents, or even their parents' parents. That's what the word says. They believe that that has nothing to do with it. And I would say to that person, you need to read your Bible. Is that not what it says? For I the Lord am a jealous God. What? Punishing the children for the sins of who? It's okay to say it out loud. For the who? For the parents. That's what it says. And we live in a culture that says, no, no, no, no, that was them, and this is me. But we serve a God who said, no, no, no, no, no. I am a jealous God, and I will punish the children for the sins of the parents of the third and the fourth generation for those who hate me. That's what it says. You see, the spirit of the law lets us know what the heart of God is. And the heart of God says, no, no, no, no, no. Some of you may feel like that's unfair. I don't know what to tell you. This is the word of God. The reality is that our ancestors back to the fourth generation produces punishments on us. How do we break that? It's right there. We have to love God. Because when we choose to love God, we essentially shift the trajectory of our family from punishment to receiving the love and the blessings of God. But church, can I just tell you this? Ignoring the past sins of your ancestors, thinking that they have nothing to do for you is simply unwise. Do it if you want to. But I'm telling you, scripture says, no, no, no, no, you can't just keep going along to get along, thinking that the sin that they committed does not have a punishment for you. The word of God is clear. And therefore, you have to, you have to, you have to turn things around. You have to change. You can't be like, well, my father taught me how to we do that. And this is just how we that doesn't work. That doesn't work. God says you have to change and you have to shift to loving me. And here's the reality sometimes when you shift and you Start to do things differently, it causes you, it causes a break, it causes a shift, it causes like a schism there, it causes this fracture that happens between you and your family. But sometimes we have to do that. My heart goes out to people in other countries who've decided to follow Jesus, and because of that, they're all alone. And we somehow think that we live in this Christian nation, and so we can do the things that we do, and it does not force us to break away. But I'm telling you, sometimes we have to look critically at our past and say, that's not me, for I'm his and he is mine. And that's gonna cause me to break away. And that's the spirit of the law as well. And I know for some of you you're like, uh, take it to your prayer closet and pray about it. That's just the wisdom that I see in scripture. And then from there, he goes on and he gives them uh this third commandment. He says, You shall not take the Lord's name in vain, right? The Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes my or his name in vain. And this command is often misunderstood, right? Because a lot of times we think taking the Lord's name is vain is like um saying the Lord's name and then putting like a cuss word at the end. Any of you guys grew up like that, thinking like that's what taking the Lord's name in vain was? That's that's not that's not what it means at all, right? You you the word take, the Hebrew word is nasa. The word take, which which means to pick up, to carry, to bring, right? And and the word vain is the word shav, which means emptiness, it's purposeless, it has no meaning. So what he's saying there, he's saying that you shall not pick up the Lord, carry the Lord's name with you, right? And take it with you to emptiness, to bring about emptiness. Here's a good example of that, right? You Google, I don't know, moving, a moving truck, a moving van or something, right? And then the one that catches your eye is like Christian Brothers Moving Company. And you're like, oh sweet, they're not gonna break my stuff. And if they do, they're Christian, they're gonna like pay for it, you know, because they're Christian. So you choose those. Because at the minimum, you're like, oh, you know, I want to support, right? So you choose Christian Brothers Moving Company, and they're the worst. They're the worst. They're cheating and scamming more than anybody else. That is a good example. What they've just done is they've took the Lord's name in vain. They picked up the Lord's name, they carried it, we're Christian Brothers Moving Company. Does that make sense? We're Christian Brothers Moving Company, and and we're using the Lord's name so that it could gain something for me, but at the end, they actually made God look bad. They brought his name to emptiness, right? And God says, no, no, no, no, I will not let that stand. The spirit of the law says this that God cares about Himself, He cares about His image, and He cares about how we represent Him in the world. Think about this. Nobody made you put Jesus is my Lord and Savior bumper sticker on your car. Like nobody made you do that. You did that on your own. But here's the thing: since you did that, slow down. Since you did that, keep your hands inside your vehicle. Because nobody made you pick up the name and carry the name of Christ. No one made you do that. You did that on your own volition. And so now you have to steward that. You cannot take the Lord's name in vain. You cannot carry it to Shabb. You cannot carry it to emptiness. No one made you do that. And here's the thing: nobody made you except Christ. Nobody is making you follow Christ. But now that you are, carry his name with honor. Carry his name with respect. Carry his name knowing that when people see you, you are in many cases the only representation that those who are lost are gonna ever get of Jesus Christ. And you cannot take his name in vain. He's telling the Jewish people when you go out and you conquer and you do these things, you do it in my name. And so you cannot carry my name to emptiness. And likewise, church, if he's the same yesterday, today, and forever, there is a call upon our lives to say, hey, no, no, I'm a Christian, I'm a believer. That's what we're doing. When we take communion, when we get baptized, it's this public declaration. But when you do that, no one's making you do that. But when you do it, do it well. Don't do it for your gain. Because here's the thing: you will always fall. You will always fall. You do it in God's name, you point people to Christ, and He's the only thing that will stand forever, unblemished. Amen. We cannot take the Lord's name in vain. And then the last one, I just want to touch on it really briefly because I want to do something much longer for this. But the the fourth one, he says, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Don't just remember that it's out there. Honor it by keeping it holy. And he goes on to say that on the sixth day, you shall labor, do all your work, but on the seventh day, a Sabbath, um, you need to give a Sabbath to the Lord your God. He says, You'll do no work, neither you, your sons, or your daughters, your female, male servants, the animals, the foreigners who reside in your towns. He says, uh, for the sixth day of the Lord was made, uh, he made the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that's in them, and he rested on the seventh. That for the Lord has what? Blessed the Sabbath. This is the only thing I want to say about the Sabbath. He's blessed it and made it holy. So God is telling you that there is a day out of the seven-day week that we have that he is choosing to bless. And how many of us, myself included, every single week fly right past that blessing? We do, don't we? Because in this culture, there's just no room for us to rest. But what we have to realize is that God blessed a day, and if we would just like enjoy it, live into it, I think we would experience that same blessing. I'm guilty of it too. I can see my wife smiling right now. And so, but why would we do that? We do it all the time, right? And and that's all I want to say about that because I want to do, I want to like dive into the Sabbath for a couple weeks because I just think that there's so much there to resting that has fallen by the wayside in our culture that that I think God is crying out for us to retap into his heart, which is to give us margin and give us rest and give us health. And I think it's found in finding a Sabbath. As we go through the rest of these commands, it's very important that you understand that I can't say this enough, and someone will still email me. You cannot do away with the law. You just can't. What I'm inviting you to do is understand the spirit as well. Because when you bring those two together, what you get is you get a loving God who's instructing you from a place of seeing you be better. And that's much different than a God who just wants you to do or don't. And if you can understand what it means to understand fully the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, it should impact the entire way you read scripture. Hopefully, it makes it feel more robust and you better understand the author of scripture. Amen. So we started today by asking you if you did not know Jesus, would you be willing to accept him, meet him today? After that, what normally happens in the church is that you would then be baptized. Jesus commanded his disciples to go out and make disciples, right? To share their faith, introduce people into this family, into this understanding of Jesus Christ. And then from there, he said, then baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost. And that's what we're gonna do now. And then from there, they live in community together, right? Through the through the elements, which is what we did. And so throughout every Sunday, at the end of every message, whether I speak, Pastor Steve speaks, a guest speaker, we've asked them to open the time up that if anybody would like to be baptized, you can. We're gonna leave this up and we're gonna baptize people, right? We have shirts in the back while we're worshiping. You can just be like, oh, I'm a medium, go in the back, get yourself a shirt, and then when the message is over, come on up and we're gonna baptize you. Amen. To be baptized, you must believe in your heart that Jesus Christ, born of a Virgin Mary, lived a sinless life, died on the cross for your sins, rose again three days later, now seated at the right hand of the Father. He is in relationship with you and I to bring us back into, through the process of sanctification, to bring us back into right relationship with him. First through our belief, then through our confession, and lift it up in our community. Amen. If that's you and you would like to get baptized, you can do that here and now.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Thanks for tuning in to the Brick by Brick Podcast. We're so glad you've joined us on our journey to build faith one truth at a time. Be sure to follow us so you never miss another episode. We've got plenty more coming your way.