ORDERED FREEDOM (Exodus 20-24)

Freedom flourishes best in a society where trust prevails and the principles behind freedom are intentionally handed down to the next generation. This sort of trust and influence comes only in a committed relationship with God through Jesus Christ where obedience is the priority. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

In this segment, I want to continue looking at the rebirth of freedom in honor of America's 250th birthday. And I've entitled this Ordered Freedom. Most of you probably have played the game Monopoly. Have you ever thought about its most debated rule? The most debated rule in the game of Monopoly, hands down, is the free parking jackpot. Now, house rules say that all taxes and fines are put in the center of the board. We play that way in our family, and whoever lands on free parking gets the jackpot. The problem is that's not the official rule. In fact, some of us probably have a lot of monopoly money to give back when it's all said and done. You know, to feel good about playing any kind of game, the rules have to stay the same. I mean, I don't think anybody likes playing a game if someone's always changing the rules. You can't play Monopoly that way, or life. And I'm not talking about the game of life. I'm talking about life in reality. Life requires order. Life demands trust. Things like character and ethics and trustworthiness, faithfulness, honesty, loyalty, reliability, dependability, and predictability are all essential to a free society. We can't feel free if things are not constant. Freedom is impossible without trust. If America's 250th birthday is to be a rebirth of freedom, I've been saying that we have to get back to the Exodus pattern. I'm talking about the book of Exodus in your Bible. The book of Exodus gives us various principles of freedom. Because God knows how to make free people. God engineers Israel's freedom from 400 years of Egyptian bondage. What Israel cannot do for 400 years, God does. And we learn from the book of Exodus that freedom results from things like, number one, faith in God alone. Number two, obeying his rules. Number three, understanding the personal nature of sin. And number four, that freedom is not free. God knows how to free people and build a free and happy nation. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, Psalm 33 says. In this segment, I'm going to give you two other principles that are embedded in the Exodus pattern. Principle number five is that freedom must be ordered. What do I mean by that? Well, freedom thrives in a high trust society. It dies in a low trust society. When trust breaks down, freedom shrinks. I mean, you know this. Maybe you've worked for a boss who constantly wants to look over your shoulders. He's constantly pointing things out that you're doing wrong or maybe imposing more rules, micromanaging at every turn. How do you feel when that happens? You're more constricted, restricted. You feel claustrophobic, hemmed in. Freedom shrinks. I don't think it's any surprise to any of us that we now live in a low trust society. How do I know that? Surveillance cameras? Big brothers everywhere. I mean, if we can't trust you, we have to watch you. This is not freedom. And we are rapidly moving towards a culture of suspicion, which demands excessive watching. I mean, if trust is high, watching is low. If trust is low, watching is high. In China today, they have over two billion watching cameras. America has 85 million and growing, one for about every five individuals. So the question is, how do we create a high trust society so as to keep and expand freedom? Or how can we safeguard against becoming a culture of suspicion and control? And I believe that God gives us the answer in the book of Exodus. You see, on Mount Sinai, God gives ten laws to lay out Israel's personal rights and responsibility. The first four of these laws relate to loving God, and this is absolutely paramount. It is the priority to love God. You don't have any other gods before him, you don't make any grabian image of him, you don't take his name in vain, and you remember the Sabbath day. The last six of these Ten Commandments relate to loving others. You've heard this before. Honor your father and your mother. You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet. And each of those sins that I've just mentioned in the Ten Commandments, these last six of the Ten Commandments, each of those sins violates trust. They have to be done in secret, under cover. The people are at the base of the mountain, and they are terrified. They are shaking in their skin. The mountain is quaking, fire, brimstone, thunder, lightning. I mean, everything seems to be becoming unhinged. There's a trumpet blast that's getting louder and louder. You can picture the people just covering their ears. And at the end, they want Moses to speak to them, not God. Exodus 20, 19 says that if God speaks to them, they're going to die. And then all of a sudden, the narrative abruptly ends in Exodus 20 and verse 21. Now it might be good to have your Bible open at this point in the book of Exodus and notice what's going on. From Exodus chapter 20 and verse 22, all the way through Exodus chapter 23, God gives a bunch of other laws. And the narrative doesn't start again until Exodus chapter 24 and verse 7. Now, in the middle, they're sandwiched in the middle between Exodus 20, 22 and all the way through Exodus chapter 23. God gives these other laws on things like the just treatment of slaves, murder, honoring parents, stealing all over again, justice when injured, restitution for losses, various laws on sexuality, sorcery, worshiping other gods, mistreating sojourners, charging interest, not returning a cloak, giving in pledge, cursing a ruler, tithing, eating dead animals, lying, rescuing your enemy's animal when it's in trouble, taking bribes, worship times, all of that's discussed in Exodus chapters 20, 21, 22, and 23. And you say, What is this? Why is this happening? Well, what God is doing at the foot of Mount Sinai is He's simply elaborating on the Ten Commandments. And by the way, this is true social justice. If you want a definition of social justice that's accurate, go to the Scriptures. This section, by the way, is called the Book of the Covenant. Exodus chapter 24 and verse 7 says, Then he, he being Moses, took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of all the people. And they said, All that the Lord has spoken, we will do, we will be obedient. You say, Well, what's going on here? Well, as Jesus' death and resurrection is the founding event for Christians, the Sinai covenant is the founding event for Jews. And God is laying out here, right at Mount Sinai, the terms of his covenant with Israel. Now, what is a covenant? A covenant is an agreement or a promise that's based on and emphasizes an ongoing relationship of trustworthiness, a little bit more than a contract, a little bit more personal, a little bit more relational. You see, Israel is not founded by force or bloodshed like many nations. It is organically linked through blood. And I'm talking about lineage type of blood. And beyond that, Israel is founded on a binding common agreement or covenant between its people and their God. The covenant forms what Paul would later call the Commonwealth of Israel in Ephesians 2.12. A commonwealth is a voluntary association of sovereign states, or in this case, tribes, twelve tribes of Israel, and they team up on economic, social, and other issues for the common good. Israel, then, is a covenant commonwealth. This covenant is a promise that establishes how persons or individuals and tribes should relate to each other. Israel, then, is a God-ruled commonwealth. God gives Israel freedom, but Israel in turn must use their freedom to create a just and compassionate society as defined by God. This Sinai covenant is unique. It's unique from all other covenants in no less than three ways. Let me hit on these before we leave this area. And the first is that God himself was a partner in the covenant. In the ancient world, the gods never covenanted with humans. But here is the Lord, I am who I am, and he covenants with Israel. Moses said in Deuteronomy chapter 4, what other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him. In Psalm 147, note is made of the fact that God has revealed his rules to Israel and to no one else. They are in a special relationship. God himself is not only the partner, he is the originator of the covenant. He's the initiator of it. The second thing that's unique about this covenant is that it was made with the entire nation of Israel. This isn't a covenant that's just signed by Moses or other national leaders. No. What Moses does is he reports all the terms of the covenants to all the people. And Exodus says, all the people answered together and said, All that the Lord has spoken, we will do. Exodus 19 and verse 8. That stated again, as I said a moment ago in Exodus chapter 24. And this is really close to we the people. This covenant was consented to. The people had to pledge allegiance to Yahweh. It is a mutually agreed upon promise, and it is a promise that replaces the need for undue regulations, control, and scrutiny. The third thing that's unique about the Sinai Covenant is that it was for all the people on all things at all times. It applied to all Israel as long as Israel stood. And it related to things like work, rest, farming, what they wore, what they ate, how they did business, how they treated the poor and stranger, how they worshiped, you name it, there is not one area of life that is untouched by this covenant. It helps us understand something. Social order does not come from personal power. Power belongs to God. Israel had no single or absolute human authority. Even when they got a king, they had an early version of the separation of the powers that we enjoy in our country today. For Israel, the three crowns of authority were the king, priests, and prophets. Among the pagans, a king was a god. But in Israel, God was king. In Israel, order is not kept by political leveraging of private interest groups. Order comes from collective individuals being responsible, where each person respects the other as made in God's image. People with integrity, as Israel illustrates, makes a bigger impact on social order than politics. I'm gonna say that again. People with integrity, individual responsibility, make a bigger impact on social order than politics. That's something that we need to hear today. The covenant in Exodus becomes then the principle and the pattern for how the same freedom can be reputed in our day and time. And the Exodus pattern promises the greatest potential for the ongoing trust and freedom or any social order of any social or political system in the world today. By the way, the the Hebrews had two words for freedom. One of those words is Hafesh. Hafesh. It's the idea of freedom from, or sometimes what we refer to as negative freedom. It's used of a slave's freedom from bondage. God frees Israel from Pharaoh, from slavery, from Egypt. The second word the Hebrews had for freedom was Herut. And that is not used in the Bible, but the idea is certainly there. This is the idea of freedom too, or what we might call positive freedom. We're not just free from something, we're freed to something. God made Israel free to be in relationship with Him, free to be under covenant with Him, free to obey the law. Freedom is not just permission to do what we want. Freedom is the power to do as we ought. Freedom is limited to what respects the equal freedom of others. Freedom is for all of us to do what God defines as good to all other people. This is why freedom can be its own obstacle. Because I can use my freedom in a way that further enslaves myself and others. The reality is that slaves do not by nature know how to be free. You take someone who's been incarcerated for a number of years, loss of freedom, and then they get out of jail. Oftentimes they re-commit crimes because they don't know how to handle life in the free world. Someone has said freedom is like fire. As long as it stays in the fireplace, it provides warmth. Freedom is like nuclear energy. As long as it stays in the reactor, it provides power. Freedom always requires some form of containment. And the covenant is freedom's container. God is giving Israel a container for their freedom. Negative freedom is only a stepping stone to positive freedom. In the Exodus model that we're talking about here, Israel is the radical picture of a society held together not by power, but by free consent of each citizen to be bound individually and as a nation by a moral code growing out of a covenant with the God who freed them. In short, Israel is liberated to love. This is true freedom. It's ordered freedom. Freedom must be ordered. Now on to principle number six in the Exodus pattern. The Exodus revolution shows that freedom is based on vital ingredients. Freedom number one comes from God. Number two is based on God's rules. Number three admits the reality of sin. Number four, it must be one. And number five, as we said just a moment ago, it must be ordered. But then number six, freedom has to be passed on. It raises the question, how does this kind of freedom move from an individual to a wider culture? And then the other question is, how does it stay in that culture once it's there? I want you to think for just a minute. The Egyptians built the pyramids. The Babylonians built the ziggurats, which are kind of like big pyramids. The Greeks built the Parthenon. The Romans built the Colosseum. But you know what? All of them. The Greeks, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Romans, they're all gone. But the Jews are still here. Despite being exiled, scattered, abused, despised, persecuted, hated, the target of genocide and holocaust, the Jews have survived. How? Well, obviously it's the hand of God. But on a human level, I believe the secret to their survival is education. You see, Moses didn't talk a lot about freedom. He didn't talk about a lot about the hardships that they had escaped or the hardships that lay ahead of them. He didn't even talk much about the land of promise. But what he did stress to the people is the duty to pass on their history to the generations yet unborn. Why, even before Israel left Egypt, Moses repeatedly tells Israel that when your kids ask why you do this crazy thing of killing this lamb and roasting the meat and eating it in haste and eating it with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, when your kids ask why you do this or why you believe this, you tell them, Exodus 13, 8, it is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt. They need to know what Egypt is. They need to know about your sufferings there. They need to know about what God did to free you from there. And this is how they passed on the knowledge of having an ordered and free society that endures. You see, freedom moves from an individual to a culture when we refuse to cave into the current culture. Please hear me. We have to live different in order to make a difference. There are too many of us who think that if we just blend into the culture, that somehow, somehow, the culture is going to like us. They're going to be impressed by us. No. We have to live counter-culturally. Israel, in Deuteronomy chapter 17, was forbidden to go back to Egypt. In Leviticus chapter 18 and verse 3, God through Moses tells Israel, you cannot adopt the ways of Egypt, and you certainly cannot adopt the ways of the land of Canaan where you're going. They were not to do business with them. They were not to align with them. They were not to marry them. They were to kill them. Deuteronomy 7, verses 1 to 5. Look it up. Now the principle here is not a license for violence against our culture. That's not at all what we're saying in our day and time, living in the kingdom of God under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That's not how we relate to the world. We don't react in violence. The application is, however, we are to think and to live very differently. Translation, let me put it down in a way that all of us can understand. If we're going to refuse to cave into the culture, number one, don't bomb an abortion clinic. But number two, don't walk in a pride parade either. We have to live and think differently. Refuse to cave into the culture. That's how freedom moves from an individual to a culture. That's how it spreads. But then how does it remain in a culture? How does freedom remain in a culture? It remains in a culture when we keep teaching these principles and living them out no matter what. It must be intentionally transferred from generation to generation. Regarding God's commands, you've heard this before. Moses tells Israel, you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. There are some people When they leave church on Sunday morning, if they ever go, they don't open their Bibles until the next time they come to church. That may be next week, or two weeks, or three weeks, or a month from then, or even longer. They do not talk about these things in their house. They don't talk about them when walking with their children, or when they lie down at bedtime, when they get up in the morning. These things are not bound on their hands or worn between their eyes. God's word is not written on the doorposts of their houses and on their gates. It's absolutely forgotten. And you wonder sometimes if that's you that I've just described, you wonder why your kids don't get it. I don't even mean to be harsh. But teach your children God's rules. Teach why they matter and how to live them out. Talk about them at dinner time. Talk about them on the day to day in normal daily discourse and discussion. At bedtime, in the morning, at the breakfast table. It doesn't need to be regimented or forced upon your children, but you just naturally talk about things like, I wonder what this passage means, or wonder what God thinks, or what what this characteristic of God is all about. The mysteries of God. Have you noticed? We always talk about how boomers are different than millennials and millennials different than Gen Z and go on and on. In my mind, that's only an indication that we've lost the battle. Because Israel's law and Israel's history, Israel's story transcends generations. It's the story that binds together the past, the present, the future into a unified living tradition that links together all generations. Now, why do you do this? Why do you teach these things to your children intentionally? Moses says, so that when God has made you fat and sassy and free in the land where He is giving you, take care lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Deuteronomy 6 and verse 12. It is a temptation and a likelihood that when you are so blessed, you forget the Lord. You see, I think God has given Americans a pretty good thing. Our blessings are not from our own hand. They're God given. And God needs to be honored and thanked. But I also think that there's some very messed up thinking in our culture right now that's ruining our understanding what God has given to us. Do not misunderstand what I have been saying in these lessons the last couple of weeks. I'm not interested in saving America. I can't save America, nor can you. I am, however, interested in saving Americans from sin through the blood of Jesus Christ in the preaching of his word. You see, that's the real problem, and it's the root of all of America's problems. America is losing its freedom in part because we have forgotten our story, our history. A history where biblical ideas have had a huge role in shaping the freest, most powerful, richest country the world has ever known. That history is being attacked and rewritten right under our noses. It is being denied and replaced. And you have to ask the question: what is to replace it? Like Israel. We preserve our freedom by handing down our story. And so let's get our story straight, both our biblical story and our national story. And let's tell our story without hanging our heads. Glory in the victories that God has given us. Admit defeats that could have been avoided. Celebrate what's noble and heroic, and humbly learn from dismal failures of things like racism and slavery, abortion, and inequality. To keep a country free, you need an army. To keep a society free, you need schools. To keep a soul free, you need Jesus Christ. And the link is this a free soul leads to a free society, and a free society leads to a free country. The main school for all of this, the main classroom, it's not the church, it's the home. Freedom must be handed down. And freedom is never stronger than our teaching of it. So teach it. Teach it diligently, teach it accurately, teach it well.