This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. This is week four, day five of our look through the book of Exodus. So Exodus chapter 20 today. We're looking at what you do to deal with the small things, the irritations of life. How do you live the life of freedom? And we've reminded ourselves in order to do that, you have to constantly consider God's care. You have to realize I'm not going to carry the burden alone. In these verses in Exodus chapter 20, we're reminded that one of the ways to live the life that God's put in front of us is to obey God's direction. If I don't obey the direction God has given me, then obviously the freedom that I want to live out is going to be constantly falling apart. And there's no better chapter to talk about God's direction than Exodus 20. These are the Ten Commandments. So today we're going to try to do the Ten Commandments in ten minutes as we speak through what these commandments were, but also what they mean in my life, in your life today. Just a very quick look at the Ten Commandments and what they mean. Now, I don't know that we can talk about the Ten Commandments without reading them. So let's walk through them one at a time. Exodus 20, 1-17 is where you find the Ten Commandments in the Bible. And God spoke all these words, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth or beneath in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commands. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. Remember the Sabbath. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that's in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land that the Lord is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Those are the Ten Commandments. Now obviously as believers in Christ we don't live by commandments, we live by faith. These commandments can't offer you life, but they can direct your faith. We in one sense don't keep the commandments as believers in Christ, we fulfill the commandments. It's not a matter of I've got to keep this list of rules in order to make God happy with me. You realize pretty quickly that you can, especially when you see what Jesus said about them. You realize it's love and not legalism that's the means for fulfilling these words. In fact as you take a close look at the Ten Commandments they actually point us to the two great commandments that Jesus gave us, the greatest commandment and the one that's just like it. The greatest commandment Jesus said is love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. The first four commandments of the Ten are about how you love God. And Jesus said the second is just like it, you love your neighbor as yourself. Six through ten or the last six commandments are how you love your neighbor. Love God? Love your neighbor. How do you love God? Just walk through these very briefly with me. How do you love God? Don't have other gods. That's the first commandment. A betrayal of a relationship with God is what we're speaking of here, thinking somehow I can replace him with some other god in my life, whether it's money or fame or whatever it is. That's the thing I'm serving instead of God. Don't do that. How do you love God? No idols. Second commandment. Now this command does not forbid symbols of worship. God's going to have them build symbols of worship later like the angels that were a part of the ark at the tabernacle. But they forbid objects of worship. Worshipping things. Worshipping an image. Any image would weaken God in their eyes. Worshipping any image would localize God in their eyes. That's where God lives. Worshipping any image would give them the idea that they were possessing God. I own this little God. I can put him on my mantle, on my bookshelf. No idols, God says. No misusing his name. By the way, our idols are not little things we put on our bookshelves. They usually have more to do with the business we run or the clothes we wear or the car we drive. Anything that makes us feel more powerful because we have them. No idols, God says. Third commandment. No misusing his name. Don't take my name in vain. Vain means nothing. To use God's name as if it were meaningless is the breaking of the third commandment. Our goal as believers is the exact opposite of that. Hallowed be thy name. Glorified be thy name. Fourth commandment. Do remember the Sabbath. No other gods. No idols. No misusing his name. Do remember the Sabbath. The single positive command reveals, I believe, a practical step by which you can carry out all the others. You want to not have other gods? You want to not have idols? You want to not misuse God's name? Then take a day a week to think about who God really is. Because I don't know about you. If I don't think about who God really is, I can really easily start to trust it in myself. So in one sense, the celebration of the Sabbath reminds you that his name is holy, that he's above all idols, that he alone is to be worshiped as God. You do remember the Sabbath. You love God. And then beginning with the fifth commandment, you love one another. How do you do that? You honor your father and mother. In one sense, this one positive action in the last commandments, the set that talks about how we relate to each other, is a key to fulfilling the rest we're going to read. The family is the place where you learn to love. So if I'm going to, as we're going to read in a minute, not steal and not covet, where do I learn that first? By honoring my father and mother. So love one another. First, honor your father and mother. Second, no murder. Love, love for others makes murder unthinkable. The action of murder. And many of you would think, well, of course I wouldn't murder. I would never break that commandment. Jesus in one sense ups the ante on this one for us in the Sermon on the Mount. He teaches us that the attitude of our hearts is just as important as the action when it comes to these commandments. So he says, you've heard it said, don't murder. I say to you, don't hate. Don't hate. The attitude behind it is hatred or anger. No murder, but also no hatred, no anger towards others. No adultery. The Seventh Commandment. Now there's the action of adultery that we think about here, how it tears families apart, how it tears you apart, but there's also, Jesus said, the attitude of lust. Don't look just at the actions on the outside. Also look at what's going on in your heart. No adultery. Eighth Commandment, no stealing. The action of stealing, but that begins with the attitude of greed. I've got to have more. That's what creates that action so many times in our lives. Sometimes it's also the attitude of pride. Sometimes people steal because they're not willing to ask somebody else for help. I've got to get it all myself. It's the attitude of pride, the attitude of greed that results in stealing. Ninth Commandment, don't lie. No bearing false witness. The action of lying, but the attitude behind that is the attitude of selfishness. I'm going to use you to get what I want. That's why we lie, to get some praise or something out of somebody else. So we lie to them to get something from them, and it's really selfishness. And then the tenth commandment, no coveting. That's the action of chasing after what somebody else has. And behind that is the attitude of jealousy, the feeling that somehow, or envy, the feeling that somehow I deserve what everybody else has. Rather than being able to rejoice in what they have, I deserve what they have. And looking through these ten commandments, as you and I think about loving God and loving others, we're not just to keep these commandments, we're to fulfill them. And you fulfill these commandments, you see in the New Testament, through love. In fact, Galatians tells us, if you love, you're going to fulfill them all. Jesus strengthens our hearts as we fulfill these commands, listen to this, to do more than just not do the wrong thing. He strengthens our hearts to do the right thing, to live in a different kind of way, a new kind of way. So just looking at some of the commands that have to do with how we love other people, let's see how that happens. The commandment against murder is fulfilled in your heart, my heart, and our willingness to lay down our lives for one another. Not only do I say I won't take your life, but I say I'm willing to lay down my life for you, for my family, for a fellow believer. That is fulfilling this law. That's living the Jesus way. The commandment against adultery. It's fulfilled in submitting to one another in marriage. It's not just I'm not going to have an intimate relationship with somebody outside of marriage. It's I'm going to serve you within the marriage. You see, Jesus isn't just about not doing wrong things. Jesus is about flipping our lives upside down so you and I can live in a new way of freedom. The commandment against stealing. It's fulfilled by our love and giving to one another. Not only do I decide I'm not going to steal from you, but instead I'm going to give to you. I'm not going to give to meet the needs in your life. I'm no longer going to see you as a way for me to get my needs met. I'm going to see us in relationship meeting each other's needs. The commandment against false witness is fulfilled by my love towards you and using words that build you up rather than words that tear you down, words that lie to you. The command to not covet is fulfilled by instead of wanting what somebody else has, rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep, living life together. That's what Jesus does for us. That's how he begins to fulfill these Ten Commandments in our lives. Now I know we walked through this so quickly, but one final thing. Don't fail to see this. Loving God came before loving man in this list of ten. And in Jesus' list, first it was love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Then it was love your neighbor as yourself. Apart from a loving commitment to God, a loving commitment to God in Jesus Christ, you and I haven't even taken the first step to loving others. But you love God, and then out of that grows this love for others. And so Lord, we pray today, help us to love you, knowing that you love us, and out of that love for you, for what you've done for us, I pray that not only would we be able to obviously keep the commandments, not do these things that would hurt others, you'd protect us from those temptations, but I pray even more that we'd be able to fulfill these commandments, to live the Jesus way, the way of serving others and giving to others, the way of letting go of what I want because I realized, God, you have met my needs for love. Lord, help me to live in a new way today. By the power of Jesus, I pray for this, amen. Next week, we're going to continue to see together God's guidance for freedom in the challenges of life.