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Jul 17, 2022

Life Begins at Redemption

Life Begins at Redemption

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Life in Ten Words

They’re far from being a mere set of rules. It’s better to think of the Ten Commandments as if vows spoken between spouses as personal commitments for the sake of finding all that marriage means and offers. Like such promises, faithfulness to the Commandments is a way to life. We begin listening to this vision for life in simplest terms, in ten words or less, by considering the linchpin for them all–the command from which all others flow. Life begins, we’ll find, at redemption.

readings & scripture

PREPARATION: Psalm 119:41-45, 48
LEADER: Let your steadfast love come to me, O LORD,
your salvation according to your promise;
then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me,
for I trust in your word.
And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth,
for my hope is in your rules.

ALL: I will keep your law continually,
forever and ever,
and I shall walk in a wide place,
for I have sought your precepts.

I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love,
and I will meditate on your statutes.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:) Westminster Larger Catechism, Q.98, 103-104
Where is the moral law [summarized]?
The moral law is [summarized] in the ten commandments, which were delivered by the voice of God upon Mount Sinai, and written by him in two tables of stone; and are recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. The four first commandments containing our duty to God, and the other six our duty to man.

Which is the first commandment?
The first commandment is, Thou shall have no other gods before me.
What are the duties required in the first commandment?
The duties required in the first commandment are, the knowing and acknowledging of God to be the only true God, and our God; and to worship and glorify him accordingly, by thinking, meditating, remembering, highly esteeming, honoring, adoring, choosing, loving, desiring, fearing of him; believing him; trusting, hoping, delighting, rejoicing in him; being zealous for him; calling upon him, giving all praise and thanks, and yielding all obedience and submission to him with the whole man; being careful in all things to please him, and sorrowful when in anything he is offended; and walking humbly with him.

CENTRAL TEXT: Deuteronomy 4:44-5:7/ Romans 1:18-21
Deut. 4:44 This is the law that Moses set before the people of Israel. 45 These are the testimonies, the statutes, and the rules, which Moses spoke to the people of Israel when they came out of Egypt, 46 beyond the Jordan in the valley opposite Beth-peor, in the land of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon, whom Moses and the people of Israel defeated when they came out of Egypt. 47 And they took possession of his land and the land of Og, the king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, who lived to the east beyond the Jordan; 48 from Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, as far as Mount Sirion (that is, Hermon), 49 together with all the Arabah on the east side of the Jordan as far as the Sea of the Arabah, under the slopes of Pisgah.

Deut. 5:1 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. 2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. 3 Not with our fathers did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today. 4 The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, 5 while I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the LORD. For you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain. He said:

Deut. 5:6 “‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Deut. 5:7 “ ‘You shall have no other gods before me.

Rom. 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excus to e. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

BENEDICTION: 2 Corinthians 13:14
LEADER: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

ALL: Amen!

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Exodus 19-20
  • Deuteronomy 4:1-7
  • Deuteronomy 4:20, 24; 6:15
  • Isaiah 42:8; 45:21; 48:11
  • Matthew 19:16-20
  • Hebrews 2:14-16
  • Hebrews 10:24-25
  • 1 John 5:21

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Be honest: have you ever loved, desired, or depended on something…perhaps more than it was worth? What was it like? What did it take to realize how much worth you’d placed upon it?  
  2. What are your first thoughts or associations you have when you think about the Ten Commandments–positive or negative? Why those?
  3. Re-read Deuteronomy chapter 4, or earlier if you like. How does that context help you understand what gives rise to this restatement of those ten “words” first issued at Mt Sinai?
  4. The first commandment has some prefacing words just before it’s spoken. How do those words function in our understanding of the command?
  5.  Why would you say the first commandment is first? How do the rest of the commandments relate to this one?
  6. There is one principle stated in the commandment, but limitless implications or applications. Finish this sentence, if the LORD is God and we are to have no other gods before him, then. . . . 
  7. Are you someone who likes (and can) sit quietly to reflect–or is that the equivalent of getting a root canal? Why? If “communing” with God is coming to reflect and also delight and rest in who God is, what do you think that takes to experience that? Why might that be something more than an experience, but something critical to our following Jesus?

ILLUSTRATIONS

InView Media Album 07.17.2022

QUOTES: 

  • Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. . . . . There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us.  C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 
  • One has a god when a finite value is worshipped and adored and viewed as that without which one cannot receive life joyfully. Thomas Oden
  • The Decalog was representative of God’s love in that its injunctions, both negative and positive, led not to restriction of life, but to fullness of it. It demanded a response of love, not because obedience would somehow accumulate credit in the sight of God, but because the grace of God, experienced already in the liberation from Egypt and in the divine initiative in the covenant promise, elicited such a response from man in gratitude. Peter Craigie
  • The woman who makes a dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. The man who makes alcohol his chief good loses not only his job but his palate and all power of enjoying the earlier (and only pleasurable) levels of intoxication. It is a glorious thing to feel for a moment or two that the whole meaning of the universe is summed up in one woman — glorious so long as other duties and pleasures keep tearing you away from her. But clear the decks and so arrange your life (it is sometimes feasible) that you will have nothing to do but contemplate her, and what happens? Of course this law has been discovered before, but it will stand re-discovery. It may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. “First and Second Things,” C.S. Lewis
  • For the distinction between Christians and other men, is neither in country nor language nor customs. For they do not dwell in cities in some place of their own, nor do they use any strange variety of dialect, nor practise an extraordinary kind of life. This teaching of theirs has not been discovered by the intellect or thought of busy men, nor are they the advocates of any human doctrine as some men are. Yet while living in Greek and barbarian cities, according as each obtained his lot, and following the local customs, both in clothing and food and in the rest of life, they show forth the wonderful and confessedly strange character of the constitution of their own citizenship. They dwell in their own fatherlands, but as if sojourners in them; they share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign country. They marry as all men, they bear children, but they do not expose their offspring. They offer free hospitality, but guard their purity. Their lot is cast “in the flesh,” but they do not live “after the flesh.” They pass their time upon the earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven. They obey the appointed laws, and they surpass the laws in their own lives. They love all men and are persecuted by all men. They are unknown and they are condemned. They are put to death and they gain life. “They are poor and make many rich”; they lack all things and have all things in abundance. They are dishonoured, and are glorified in their dishonour, they are spoken evil of and are justified. “They are abused and give blessing,” they are insulted and render honour. When they do good they are buffeted as evil-doers, when they are buffeted they rejoice as men who receive life. They are warred upon by the Jews as foreigners and are persecuted by the Greeks, and those who hate them cannot state the cause of their enmity. To put it shortly what the soul is in the body, that the Christians are in the world.“Epistle to Diognetus,” anonymous

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