The Knowledge Project, Ten Commandments Series: My Relationship with God

We are jumping into the second week of the Knowledge Project and tonight we're discussing the concept of our relationship with God. How many know that's important? Amen. Exodus 24 and 12, I want you to hear the word of the Lord. This is the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount and be there. I will give the tables of stone and a law and commandments which I have written that thou mayest teach them. Come up to me into the mount and be there. It seems simple tonight, but the opening here I would remind us if we desire to receive from God, we've got to be there. Wherever there is, that's where we have to be. Now obviously with Moses there is a specific location on the mountain that he is referring to, but by extension tonight I think there's application for all of us here. We want to receive from God, we've got to be there. We've got to be

here Wednesday night at 6.30. We've got to be here Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. There's got to be a place of devotion in our lives and in our homes where we meet with God. And this is what the Lord tells Moses, I need you to come up to me. You're not just coming up a mountain, you're coming to me and I need you to be there. Now he already said come up to me, why the emphasis a second time on being there. I think human nature has not changed in a few thousand years and it's possible to be physically present but emotionally absent. And he was telling Moses, as much as I need your body in the right place, so too I need your mind in the right place. Moses come up here and meet with me, and this is a pattern we find all through Scripture. All the way back to the Garden of Eden when he comes looking for

Adam. He says, Adam where are you? Evidently there was a place that they were accustomed to meeting that Adam was not. Later in the book of Genesis we would read of Abraham and the Scripture would say of him he had gone out to the place and time where he had stood before the Lord before. And so the pattern again is evident in the life of Abraham. He had a meeting place and he had a meeting time. Of Moses it said that God invited him saying there is a place by me. And so you see in God's pursuit of relationship with us he's always called us to a place. Now I thank God that we're part of a church family that has a corporate invitation, a corporate place multiple times a week. But I would challenge us tonight that that is not sufficient. That each of us personally must hear the call of the Spirit and have a place where we meet with God

and God talks to us. As we look this week and next week over these what we would call the Ten Commandments. It's important we understand what we might call the division of them or how they're broken up. The first four commandments which we're going to look at tonight in length focus on our relationship with God. The next six commandments focus on our relationship with others and the order is imperative. I want you to consider the necessity of a foundation of a house and now consider the necessity of the truth of God and the building of a life. The first four commandments speak to us of our relationship with God because this is really the building block of everything not only in our life but in all the world. If we are to mix the order up we can allow our relationship with others to dictate our relationship with God. But if we build first on these four commandments that speak to us of

our relationship with God then it is of certainty that our relationship with God will dictate our relationship with others. And so tonight we're going to look at these first four. But first I want us to consider the narrative of Exodus 33. Many of you have probably read this before and if not we will not read it at length but I will summarize the story. The Lord comes to the people of Israel and this is a time that they have waited considerable length for. They're nearing this place of promise, they're closer than they've ever been and now God tells them a rather surprising thing. He offers to send His angel to drive out every enemy and to deliver on His promise that He would take them to a land that flows with milk and honey. The contingency though comes in verse 3 when God says these frightening words, I will not go up in the midst of thee for thou art a stiff-necked

people. That is a scary reality because now here they stand on the verge of prophetic fulfillment of promise from God that they have waited a long time for and God presents them with a scary choice. The frightening reality is this, that it's possible to receive promise without presence. Plainly said, I would say it like this, you can feel the blessing of God in your life and have no relationship with Him. This is what He's telling Israel. I told you I was going to do it and I honor my word even above my name. So I'll give you what I said I would give you, but just know this, I'm not going with you. So now you have a choice to make. Is the priority of the pursuit of God in your life what He gives you or just Him? Is it ultimately about relationship with God or the benefits of that relationship? And now here Israel is faced with this choice because God

says you're a stiff-necked people. You're obstinate and not obedient. You resist me and my command and because of that if I was to go with you I would have to consume you. I promised you the land. I said I would give it to you and I will but I'm not going with you. So Israel now the choice is yours. Are you going to choose to stay here and have relationship or are you going to choose to have your promise and no relationship? And while this is going on as we move through Exodus 33 the scenario of Israel is quite troubling. The Bible would tell us that Moses had moved the tabernacle out of the camp of the people. This was a physical sign to the people of God that God was grieved with their sin and their unbelief. And so now with that tent of meeting pitched outside the camp anytime somebody desired to meet with God they had to leave where

they were and come to Him. Sounds a little bit like repentance. God had separated Himself from the people. This is what it is to be holy. It's what it is to be separate. And Moses being that prophet of old and ministering in the tent of meeting the Bible said when He would go there the glory of the Lord would descend like a cloud and when it would happen the Israelites would come to the door of their house and watch this meeting place. But there's a big difference between watching somebody encounter God and encountering God for yourself. Of Moses the Scripture said this, the Lord spake to Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend. It's quite a statement. The Lord spake to Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend. This is what we're after and this is what's available. This is ultimately what God desires is that there would be a people that would turn their

ear towards the Lord. That they would fix their eyes on the beauty of the Lord in the pursuit of relationship. Now at the ending of this story in Exodus 33 there is an interesting course of events. The Bible would tell us that when Moses comes out of this encounter with the Lord and he begins to return to the camp that Joshua who the Scripture identifies as a young man says he departed not out of the tabernacle. Have you ever considered why did he stay behind? What was it that captured the attention of Joshua that when Moses had finished his ministry the conversation had ceased that Joshua didn't leave? Did he feel the weight of glory? That's what the word glory means weight. It's those times in the presence of God it was like that I wasn't here last Wednesday but I saw the live stream. It was like that when Midweek Bible study kicked off last Wednesday night. And about 25 minutes in

you could tell Pastor was wrestling as it's just going to keep going or am I going to teach? What is that? It's the weight of glory because when the weight of glory settles upon you you just can't do whatever you want to do. You move a little bit slower when you're bearing the weight of glory. Is this what captured Joshua? Was it this encounter, this weight in God's presence that kept him in the house of the Lord? Did he hear the audible voice of God? Was he just steps away? But was he close enough to hear God and Moses talking back and forth that it captured his attention and now he's seeking that kind of relationship? Whatever it was I know this, his hunger for holy things was stirred. There was a desire burning inside of him for something more and when Moses left, Joshua stayed. What he was exposed to in the shadow and in the service of that elder prophet captured

his attention, stirred his hunger and caused him to pursue for that kind of relationship for himself. This is the generational church. This is the life of Moses, the sharing of ministry and service in the house of God by one generation to another generation. Moses didn't require Joshua to stay, but what Joshua was exposed to by invitation and by presence of that elder, stirred something inside of him to say, I see how they walk with God. I want to walk with God like that, too. I heard how she prayed, I want to be able to pray like that, too. I saw how he worshiped on Sunday. I want to worship like that, too. This is the power of the generational church. What Moses lived, what he invited Joshua into, exposed him and burdened him and awakened him to the possibility of this kind of relationship with God. How many are thankful for a pastor in a church that believe in the generational church? This

is the culture of new life, and I thank God for it. Well, tonight we're going to look at these first four commandments. These four speak to us about our relationship with God. Next week, the next six, which speak to us of relationship with others will be considered, but I reiterate tonight because it is imperative we grasp this. The order is of utmost importance. God must be first, and this is the first commandment. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. We know this Scripture. It's recited often in our midst, preached and taught, and even more so among the Jewish believers. They would recite it every morning and at bedtime every night. It's called the Shema, which means here, Deuteronomy 6 and 4. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. This does not only mean that God is indivisibly one in His nature and that He is God by Himself, but it means that there is no other God. The prophet

Isaiah expounded on it many times in his writings, and I prayed it tonight. I pray it frequently, but there's none above Him. There's none beside Him. Heaven is His throne and earth is His footstool. This is powerful because the height of the kingdoms of man, the glory of all that man can accomplish is still at the feet of Jesus Christ. They can build the tallest buildings. They can amass the greatest wealth, but it still is at His footstool. Deuteronomy 4 and 35, it said unto thee it was showed that thou mightest know that the Lord He is God, for there is none else beside Him. There is only one God. Ephesians 4 and 5, there is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. Revelation 22 and 13, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. This is clear. There is no contradiction of the oneness of God in the Scriptures. Now, I think it's important that

we understand this tonight because He is not merely, I would say it to you like this, it's one thing to know about Him. It's another thing to know Him. And if we're talking about having a relationship with Him, we've got to know Him. Not just know about Him, it's not about regurgitating information that you've heard or you've read, but you really have to know Him. And so, we understand that there is no contradiction between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Bible would give us a principle of biblical interpretation, line upon line and precept upon precept. And so, when we seek to interpret or to understand the Scripture, we know this, that the revelation God gives us of Himself in Genesis chapter 1 isn't going to contradict anything He shows us in Matthew chapter 1. Anything He says in Deuteronomy 6 is not going to contradict anything we find in John chapter 6. It's line upon line, precept upon precept. It's building

one on another. And so, considering the idea of the oneness of God tonight, if we think back to that Old Testament, there was a tabernacle in the wilderness that God gave a pattern to Moses. They built that tabernacle. It was built of three divisions, the outer court, the holy place and the most holy place. One day a year, that high priest on the day of atonement would bring the sacrifice and he would enter into that holy of holies where he would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat. And when the Lord accepted the offering, the shekinah glory of God would inhabit that mercy seat. One day a year, one man got to feel that kind of presence. Now, we understand God was not a man. He was not an earthly figure. He was a spirit. This was His presence. It was His glory. Now, when we get to the New Testament in John chapter one, the Bible says that in the beginning was

the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. That Word is in the Greek, logos, that means the thought or the plan. So in the beginning, God had a plan and the plan was with God and the plan was God. This is to say that all the way back at the beginning of Genesis, God had a plan because He knew there can't be relationship without choice. But if I give you choice, you're going to mess up. But I love you enough and I want relationship enough that I'm going to give you choice. I'm going to let you mess up and I already have a plan to deal with it. That's why Paul writes of Jesus and he said that he was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Now you go back to Genesis one, two, three, you don't find the lamb being slain. What do you find? You find the plan. In the beginning, God had

the plan and it was with God. He didn't consult with anybody else on how to do this. He didn't need the help of Gabriel or Michael or Lucifer. No, the plan originated in the mind of God. And when it came time to fulfill the plan, God Himself did it. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And so 13 verses later in John 1 and 14, the Bible says, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. That word dwelt is the Greek word for tabernacle. And so it would be to say the Word, the logos, was made flesh and tabernacled among us. Now I understand in 2023 to North Americans, tabernacles don't mean a lot to us except from our understanding of Scripture. But to Jews, in the time of Jesus Christ, if you started talking about the tabernacle, what were they going to think of? The tabernacle of Moses. This was

their history. This was their identity. It was the origin. It's the formation of who they are. And so this is what John is telling us. The same glory that showed up in the Holy of Holies once a year in that old tabernacle is now tabernacled in this earthly tabernacle in the body of Jesus Christ. So it's important you understand this because Jesus is not one part of God. He's not just a piece of God or one person of multiple gods. It's why Paul said, for in him, in Jesus dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. It's why Paul said in 1 Timothy 2 and 5, for there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. So just as that one God used that tabernacle of Moses as a meeting place in the Old Covenant, in the Old Testament, in the New Covenant, he used that earthly tabernacle of Jesus Christ to be the avenue by which

all people, all people could experience the glory of God. And it's not just one day a year. And it's not just on Sunday morning. And it's not just on Wednesday night. You can feel it on your drive to work. And you can feel it on your sleepless night. And you can feel it on Saturday morning and on Thursday any time you want. He made it available. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. So it's not enough to just have knowledge about him. You have got to be in relationship. You have got to know him. And you know where you're going to find him right here. And now listen, I know it's a bestseller and I know some people teach it as a history book. And they talk about it's, it's historical. This is not just a history book. This is the God Breathe book, divinely inspired. I don't just read this to learn about ancient Israel. I don't just read this to

learn a little bit about history. When I open the pages of this leather-bound book, I know it's just white paper and black letter, but I'm telling you the only true God starts speaking to me. And I know it sounds crazy because these words were written thousands of years ago and preserved with great care, but, but there's something supernatural about this book. And when I open it up right here in Terahod in 2023, he starts talking to me and I read this to meet with him. So Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Plainly said tonight, this is to make Jesus the most important relationship in our lives. That nothing and no one comes before him and everyone and everything comes after him. That what he says to me and about me dictates everything in my life. It's at Exodus 3 when he says to Moses at that burning bush, you tell him the I am that I am has sent me

the self-existent one. The one whose existence depends on nobody and nothing. And so it should be of no surprise then that in Hebrews 11 and 6, the Bible said that when we come to God, we must believe that he is. Did you catch that? I am is the first person self-declaration. He is is the third person statement that points you back to the I am. He said I am. We say he is. So if you come to God, you can't just believe whatever you want to believe. You can't call him whatever name you want to call him. You can't say whatever you want to say about him. If you're going to receive, if you're going to diligently worship, and you're going to believe that he is, that is to believe that the he is, is the I am, that Jesus Christ is the Almighty God. This concept of monotheism is not only important as a matter of faith, but in the

development of history. Historians agree that the current standard of ethics in the modern world stems from Jewish ethic. The Greeks gave us the natural sciences, philosophy, and art. The Romans gave us governmental structure and engineering. The Persians gave us poetry and astronomy. The Chinese gave us paper and printing and gunpowder, acupuncture and more philosophy. But the historical fact is that all of these cultures, and even those unmentioned tonight, sustained and even glorified attitudes and behaviors that today we universally find abhorrent. I tell you tonight something you're probably already aware of, but our society is quickly unraveling. The moral degeneration is happening especially fast. If you're interested in reading, I would encourage you to look up the book, The Marketing of Evil, how radicals, elitists, and pseudo-experts sell us corruption disguised as freedom. The author details in great length how there has been a systematic moral degeneration over the last several decades documented in great detail. Topics like abortion, murder, pederasty, social responsibility

to the poor and the physically sick. Now as Christians who believe this is the Word of God, we don't buy in to every cultural narrative and wind of doctrines surrounding these things. So the question must be asked, well, where then did those values come from? And historians agree there is only one source, the Torah, the first five books of your Bible. Consider Abraham tonight. He was the young family member of an idol maker working in his shop in Ur of the Caldees when the Almighty God calls him out, calls him to a journey of faith and discovery and revelation of who this one God is because God desired relationship. Now Abraham is commissioned by God on this journey of rediscovery to that original ethic, but he didn't do it on his own. The base historians say that made this sustainable is monotheism. Without Abraham's base to ethics society has no stability. Any institution can be shaken to the ground by the changing circumstance

and the winds of human desire. In ancient Greece, the institution of marriage bordered on collapse due to their gender preference. In Rome, the family unit gradually dismantled by growing promiscuity. Institutions ordained by God that should have nurtured human spirituality in many societies became corrupted into bloody orgies and worship of senses. In many instances, such as in the Far East, even still today, poverty was allowed to grow to unmanageable proportions, while a select few individuals or families amassed an immense concentration of power and wealth, communism, all due to the void of a sense of social responsibility. So only once the building blocks of society stand upon the solid ground of the one who created everything in the first place can a sustainable society develop. That shall have no other gods before me. I tell you tonight, Jesus is the only God and we must live and serve him as if it is so. Commandment number two, that shall not make unto thee any graven

image. Leviticus 26 and 1, ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image. Neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land to bow down unto, for I am the Lord your God. It seems plain enough. Now, the first commandment was who we worship. The second commandment is how we worship. When we establish the fact of a singular deity, a one God that gives him the right to reserve how he wants to be worshiped. We don't get the liberty to pick and choose or to change it to our personal accommodation or preference. And this is the Lord telling his people, there's something I don't want you doing. 1 Corinthians 6, 9 and 11, hear this from the New Testament, know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor feminine, nor abusers of themselves of mankind, nor thieves, nor covetousness,

or drunkards, or revilers, or extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you are washed. You are sanctified. You are justified in the name of who? The Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. First, John 5, 21, this is plain here and now, little children, keep yourselves from idols. There are some who, in their attempt to decipher the relevance and the applicable nature of this Old Testament to 2023, misunderstand how we should interpret Old Testament Scripture. There is what we could call, for simplicity's sake, three divisions of Old Testament law. There is the civil law, there is the ceremonial law, and there is the moral law. The civil law is the historical law as it related to the people of Israel and their natural or national identity. Just as we have the laws of the state of Indiana, the laws of the United States of America, Israel, as a country, had a civil law. But

then there was the ceremonial law. These were the laws as it pertained to the house of God, to the acts of worship or service in the presence of the Lord. So God required certain decoration or decor, ornamentation, the high priest would wear and certain clothing they could or could not wear. There was a certain order that things were to be done and why? Because God gave them ceremonial law. And then there is moral law. There are places in the Scripture where God will speak a commandment to his people, and you will find this statement. It is an abomination unto the Lord. Now the Scripture is clear. The prophet of old said it like this. He said, I am the Lord and I change not. The writer of Hebrews said Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So the Bible is telling us that the nature of God never changes. And so if 5,000 years ago or 6,000 years ago,

God said to do this is an abomination to my nature, and my nature has never changed, it's still an abomination today. People might ask, well, what about that Scripture when Jesus said I didn't come to destroy but to fulfill the law? Then did he fulfill? He fulfilled the ceremonial law. The civil law is disregarded to us today. We don't live in ancient Israel. The ceremonial law has no relevance. Now there's still many, many principles that we can glean from and we can learn from. But do you know why when you came to church tonight you didn't have to bring a goat? You know why there's not blood spilled all over this altar area? Because as the writer of Hebrews said, Jesus was the sacrifice once and for all. He fulfilled that ceremonial law. But that moral law as it pertains and flows from his nature is still relevant. So that shall not make unto the any graven image. Here's the reality of life

in that ancient eastern world. God had brought them out of Egyptian captivity and now they find themselves in this land of promise surrounded by tribes and cultures in entire countries that practice idolatry. Their concept of God and their belief of the spiritual world is fashioned in the form of wood structures and stone structures and God knew if I don't give you a law as a boundary to prohibit you from trying to make me like them and trying to think you can be in relationship with me through that, you'll fall prey to their methods. We see the weakness of human nature when they come to the prophet of old and they say, Samuel, we want a king. Every other nation around us gets a king. Why don't we get a king? Well, you have a king. He's just not a king you can see with your eye. It's the Lord of glory. But God knew the tendency of human nature was to look at

the world around it and this gravitational pull of the powers of the world and the immoral sway of culture eventually corrupted their minds and hearts and so God says, hey, I told you who to worship now I need to tell you how to worship. Don't make any graven images. We find a store in the Old Testament where the Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant in battle and they bring the Ark back to their camp and they set it in their temple, not the temple of God, their temple built to idols and false deities. Within it was an idol by the name of Dagon. They put the Ark of the Covenant next to this idol and those Philistines come back the next morning and to their surprise the idol Dagon is falling over in his face down before the Ark of the Covenant. They picked that lifeless idol back up and stand it on its feet only to come back again the

morning after he had fallen again. But this time his hands and his head have been broken off and placed in the doorway of the temple. What was God telling them? God was saying, your idol is not a real God. It's a lifeless idol whose hands cannot work, whose mouth cannot speak. And I tell you today, though our idols are so different than what they would have been for ancient Israel, our world is full of them. God issued this command as a means of preservation of truth and the purity of their faith before him as they would navigate that idol ridden world. And today our idols are rarely made of statues of stone or wood, but there are worldly ideas, activities we partake in, possessions we accumulate, and lifeless as they are, we can easily identify them by the value we ascribe by honor given, time invested, and money spent. And idol is anything I put before God. Idolatry is a dangerous thing because

it tells God I'm putting my trust in this and in doing so we choose to trust in something that cannot speak and cannot work. It's a lifeless God. I think perhaps the most significant idol of the modern day was addressed by Paul in Colossians 3 and 5. He says, and I read from the amplified version just the conclusion of the verse after listing, let's read it all. So put to death and deprive of power the evil longings of your earthly body with its sensual and self-centered instincts, immorality, impurity, sinful, passion, evil, desire, and greed, which is a kind of idolatry because it replaces your devotion to God. How is greed identified? How does one discover the manipulative and subtle power of greed in their life? Well, you just start measuring where honor is given, where time is invested, and where money is spent. Paul said in the New Testament they sacrifice to devils. That's strong language. The reality was is they were

sacrificing to idols, to statues of stone and wood. But Paul said that idol is a devil. It's a spirit. Here's the principle. Behind every idol is a spirit. Can I tell you there are many people that battle unnecessarily in their lives by their toleration of an unwelcome spirit because they let an idol in their life. To sacrifice to idols is to allow the influence of the spirit behind that idol into your life. And of all ten commandments that God put his finger in those tablets of stone and wrote, this commandment is the most repeated in all of Scripture. It's the only commandment that contains both a consequence and a promise here tonight. God promised to visit the iniquity to the third and fourth generation. That is a humbling thought. This is to say tonight that if we tolerate and worship an idol in our lives, our great grandchildren will pay the price for it. God was serious about these things. Commandment number three.

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Leviticus 22, 31, and 32. Therefore shall ye keep my commandments and do them. I am the Lord and do them and do them. That's a good two words to underline. He didn't just say and know them. Know them is the introduction to doing. The reason you know or you learn is so you have the means to obey. Keep my commandments and do them. I am the Lord. Neither shall ye profane my holy name, but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel. I am the Lord which hallow you. Exodus 27. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. What does it mean to take the name of the Lord in vain? There's much to consider here. First, I would say we have to consider the biblical significance of what a

name even means. No doubt there's probably some here tonight that in the naming of you or your children the meaning may have been considered. But time and culture has changed greatly and I would dare say probably at least half of us in here were given a name or gave somebody a name that we just liked. I'm guilty of it. You know my oldest got a family name and the next two they just got names we liked. Someone suggested the name Sawyer or Finn and we thought I think I kind of like that. But in ancient biblical culture this was not the case. Names carried deep meaning. Someone's name would tell you a decisive thing about that person. It was so much more than a label by which you would distinguish one person from another. It was an expression of that person's reality. It was a revelation of their identity. So when he says to Moses, I am that I am. It's telling us

who he is. He is the self-existent God. He depends on no one. He needs nothing to be who he is. He's sovereign. He's exclusive. He's all by himself. And so there's depth to this concept of a name. It's so much more than a word of identifying one among many, but it's to identify the nature of the one. So the meaning of this phrase in Exodus 20 and 7 to take the name of the Lord in vain, it becomes increasingly clear when we just look at the word vain in other Old Testament scriptures. Jeremiah said, in vain have I struck your children and they took no correction. He said, in vain you beautify yourself, but your lovers despise you. In vain the refining goes on for the wicked are not removed. So what he's saying is you're taking action. You're doing something, but it's all in vain. The outcome doesn't change. You tried to correct your children. Nothing happened. You tried to make

yourself more beautiful, but they still didn't love you. He said, in vain you have used many medicines, but there was no healing for you. You tried, you took the pills, you did the procedure, but nothing happened. It was all in vain. There was no effect. So what does it mean to take the name of the Lord in vain? Well, just consider what Jesus said in Matthew 15 when he quotes Isaiah 29 and 13. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me. They're saying the right thing with their mouth, but they're living the wrong thing with their heart. And this, he said, was vain worship. So it's possible to sing the songs, to pray the prayers, to give the offering, to be present in the house, but your heart not be full of pure and undefiled affection for the Lord. It's possible to honor him with our lips, but our heart be

far from him. And this is vain worship. If the heart is not filled with true affection, the words mean nothing. So this is about respect. It's about honor. It's about not trivializing and making trivial the holy, not being irreverent towards the sacred things of God. It's to come with the right attitude, with the right perspective. This is why the Proverbs would say, the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom, because the starting point is right here. If this isn't right, it doesn't matter what happens here. You can know what this says in mind, but not live this in heart, and nothing happens. I sat in a university class many years ago to a man who taught from this book for four months and didn't know anything about the oneness of God, or Jesus named baptism, or the beauty of holiness, or the fellowship of living a life full of the Spirit. How does that happen? Because it's possible to come to

this book and to come to God with the right lips and head knowledge, but not invest our heart. Now there was a strict application with this commandment to the Old Testament people, and how they treated the name of God on their lips. The only time Jews would actually pronounce the name of God are when praying and when studying Torah. Any other time they would use a nickname or another title such as Hashem, which means the name, because they didn't ever want to utter the name of God irreverently. And in the event somebody in their presence would ever utter the name of God by mistake or without what they deemed to be the right attitude and right affection, somebody would jump in and say, who is worthy to be praised? So it'd be like, you know, you sitting there at work tomorrow afternoon just having the time of your life working away and someone says, oh my, and you turn around and say, he's

worthy to be praised. I know you're probably not going to do that, but maybe you should. Maybe next time somebody takes the name of the Lord in your presence, you ought to just speak up and say, yeah, he's been good to me. And such was the custom of the Jews because with such care and such reverence and such honor they had towards the Lord in his name, because it wasn't just a name to identify him, but it spoke of who he was. It was his essence. And so essentially what he's saying is to take the name of the Lord in vain is to claim him in name, but deny him in nature. Well, yeah, I'm a Christian. Well, you don't really live like it. You just took his name in vain. Oh, but I've never swore. I've never, I don't say that, no. But if you claim his name on your life and you don't bear his nature, in fact, the word in

this verse take, it literally means to bear. It's the same word you find in the Old Testament when it speaks of Aaron, the high priest who would bear the precious stones upon his chest. What precious stones were they? One tribe for each of the 12 tribes of Israel on his breastplate. And when he would come into that holy of holies and the glory of the Lord, the light, the pure light of the presence of God would shine. It would sparkle through those gemstones. It would radiate beautifully through that holy place. And now with the weight of those stones on his chest and the glory of the Lord reflecting in that room, Aaron is reminded of the burden and the responsibility he has towards God and towards those tribes. So what does it mean to bear, to take the name of the Lord? Not in vain, but to take it up rightly. It means to live with a burden of responsibility that I understand.

When I came into covenant with God, when I got baptized in Jesus' name, I bear him now. Not just with my lips, but with my life. And I have to live as if it's his nature in me and working through me and radiating from me. I can't just do what Dan McLeod wants to do because I bear the burden on my chest. I bear the name of God on my life. So it's not my nature anymore. I've got a decrease so he can increase and his nature can be seen. But the Jews, I'm telling you, they were so careful about this. And ancient Israel, in fact, still today, Jews that are devoutly religious, they won't swear in a court of law because of this scripture. They'll have an attestation and some documentation they'll provide to the court, and then they will come in and they will affirm. I affirm that everything I say is the whole truth. But I'm not going to swear

because to swear requires that it be done. A covenant is always done in the name of the greater party. And I can't just, I can't take, no, I can't call on his name irreverently. But in ancient Israel, when they would enter into this solemn oath, one between the two, they would make the statement in Hebrew using Adonai, which was a title referring to him, not the name itself. And it would mean as the Lord lives. So we find this in scripture when Jonathan convinces Saul not to kill David and Saul swears he says, as the Lord lives, he shall not be put to death. What this means is that if David dies at the hands of Saul, now Saul also deserves to die because the Lord lives. It was a binding, an agreement, a means of accountability, a burden of responsibility, that the heart of the worshiper, that the reverence of attitude would be present in the life of the one who desired

to walk with God. And the fourth commandment where we finish tonight, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Leviticus 19 and 30, you shall keep my Sabbath in reverence, my sanctuary, I am the Lord. Leviticus 23 and 3, six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest. And holy convocation, you shall do no work therein. It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings. Six days shall that work. I know the commandment is about the Sabbath, but you can't get into the Sabbath without the six days. God requires work. This is a problem today. It's especially a problem since 2020. We were in Canada last week and I hadn't been there in a while and we went to a restaurant. We used to frequent. And well, let me just tell you, I think since COVID, people don't want to work. This is a problem. Everybody wants the rest. But God said, you don't get

to the rest until you do the work. Let me tell you something, a working culture honors God. A working life honors God. The seventh day, he said though, it's a Sabbath of rest in all your dwellings. So the reach of this commandment was not just to the corporate body. It was not some corporate assembly. No, God said the reality of this word has got to reach into the recesses of your home. It's got to impact your family. The New Testament in Acts 13, we see the Jews were gone out of the synagogue. The Gentiles that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. Genesis 2 reiterates the pattern of construction in the hell on the seventh day he rested. When you read the Old Testament scripture, there's a place there where it said on the seventh day, God finished the work. You think, well, wait a minute. I know we created on day one, two, three, four, five, and six, but

I thought on the seventh day he rested. What work did he finish on day seven? What did he create on day seven? He created rest. Six days must a man work then rest. The principle was this, God said, toil with the cares of this life for six days, but one day is for me. That Sabbath is holy unto me. See, there's always a portion God reserves for himself. Ask Adam, you can have all the trees in the garden, not that one. Seven days in the week, six, you can do what you please, work hard, have fun. That day it's for me. Hey, make all the money you can, buy what you want, live how you want. But that first 10, that's mine. There's always a portion reserved that is holy unto the Lord. This was the principle of the Sabbath. Exodus 35, six days shall work be done. On the seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a Sabbath of

rest to the Lord. Whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death. Strong. You say, well, preacher, do we have to keep the Sabbath like that? No, we don't because that was a ceremonial law. But there is a principle here with clear application to new covenant believers. Hebrews 4, 9, and 10, there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. Thank God. There is a rest available to us. For he that is entered into his rest, speaking of Jesus, he also has ceased from his own works as God did from his. Our rest is in Jesus Christ. He is our Sabbath. I'm going to tell you, when we were in Israel in March, Shabbat starts on that Friday evening, from sundown Friday night to Saturday night. I'm telling you, when we walked up to that western wall Friday night, you could hear the roar of prayer coming up over that wall before you could ever see the people. It was an experience.

I will not soon forget. It was a portion. God said it was reserved to me. Well, Jesus fulfilled that. So what then brought the shift from the practice of the Jews from sundown on Friday to Saturday night to the Christian practice of gathering on Sunday, which is the first day of the week? Because that's when Jesus rose. After the resurrection of Christ and the New Testament, the Christians, the early believers adopted a practice of gathering on that day for worship, because that was the day of his resurrection. It was the first day of the week. Under that old covenant, God said, toil and rest at the end. But under the new covenant, God says, I want the first portion of your week. This is your rest. He said in Mark 2 that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for you. God put a principle in this that would govern and protect our lives

from the unnecessary cares of life. I would say it to you like this, that yes, we have to work. God commanded work of Adam before the fall. Now, the difficulty of work increased in the curse, but the reality of work existed before the fall, because a working man honors God, because God works. Before Adam ever toiled the soil, God did. Before Adam was ever going to put seed in that soil, God did. And so what he was saying was, Adam, you bear my nature, you bear my name when you work like I work. So your work honors me. But we're not just beasts of burden. While we must work, we should not live to work. We're not aimlessly and heartlessly chained to routine. Your purpose in this life is not to punch a nine to five to build somebody else's empire. Yes, your work honors God, but you know what the Sabbath does? It un-chains you from this world. It un-chains

you from the cares of life, and it reprioritizes your mind and your values and your heart by entering into the rest of Jesus, by prioritizing the first day of your week to come to the house of God. Let me challenge your thinking tonight. I would guess this evening if we inquired of you tonight to talk to me about your calendar for the next week, the default of most working people would be to talk about Monday. What do you have going on next week? What's your week work look like? Well, Monday, Tuesday, these are the hours I work. This is when I'm done. The planning of your week doesn't start with Monday morning. The planning of your week starts Sunday morning at 10 a.m. It's the Sabbath, and it doesn't end at 12 o'clock when you walk out those doors. The day is the Lord's. It's a day to worship with the body. It's a day to have particular time with Him.

It's a day for your family to be together and be in the presence of God, detached from the cares of life, and detached from toiling with the reality of this world. And in doing so, we emulate God's rest on the Sabbath, when He, the Creator of all things, ceased working on the world. During those six days of creation, God showed His masterful handiwork over the universe by actively creating and changing. But then there came a day in which He relinquished everything to rest. And this is the principle of the Sabbath. Our Sabbath is Jesus Christ. Now, you can enter into that Sabbath any day, anywhere, any time, and thank God for it. Because I'm telling you, there's been some times in my life in the middle of my week, when I needed a Sabbath on a Tuesday. I came home from work on Thursday, and I desperately needed a Sabbath right then. I couldn't wait till sundown, because who He is. And because

of that tabernacle of flesh, and because of that crucifixion, and burial, and resurrection, and the release of that Holy Spirit that was poured out upon all flesh, He is my rest. But the principle of the Sabbath holds true. Thousands of years removed, I tell you, without question, it is without debate. Every single one of us needs to honor the principle of the Sabbath. I know there are seasons of intensity and seasons of relief, but in times of discouragement and frustration, in times of weariness and battle, when it seems like everything is against you, when you're struggling to make sense of life, and you're not sure if you have the strength to press on another day. When all the idols you're interacting with as you go about your business and your daily routine, all the spirits and evil in our world that wars against your faith so violently, it's the Sabbath that you enter into that realigns your life with His Spirit. And for

the Jews, you could ask them, preparation for Sabbath never begins on the day the Sabbath begins. What's that mean? It means the preparation for the Sabbath doesn't start the morning of Sabbath, because all the Old Testament laws, I mean, there's all, even today in Israel, on Shabbat, they've got elevators that won't stop on every floor, because they're not going to push the button on the elevator on the Sabbath. They wouldn't turn their lights on and off. Now it's 2023, they've got smart, and they've got technology, they've got time lights in their houses now. But back then they didn't. All of the inconveniences that it brought, they weren't able to cook, they weren't able to do this. What did that mean? It meant they were required to prepare for the Sabbath well before the Sabbath. What are you trying to tell us, preacher? Here's what I'm trying to tell you. Your preparation for this Sunday doesn't start Sunday morning. And if your preparation for

tonight started when you got in your car to drive here, you probably missed the first 20 minutes of the Bible study, because you were trying to get your mind into alignment and process your emotion and get that weariness out of you. What are you saying, preacher? I'm saying that if you want to get, if you want Sunday to be as powerful as Sunday can be, start getting ready tomorrow. If you want Sunday morning to be a little easier, take a little time on Saturday and put in the preparation so you can reap the full benefit of that spiritual Sabbath God put in your life. Because I'm telling you, when you're working those six days, Monday through Saturday, you're battling in the spirits of the world, a war against you, and it's hard. I tell you, it's just hard sometimes. But when you walk in here Sunday morning and the church body alongside of you enters into the rest of God, that Sabbath, that

Holy Spirit refreshes us and strengthens us, and it realigns our spirit so I can move into the next week with the right thinking and the right strength and the right rest, because Sabbath realigns our lives to His spirit. Thank you, Jesus. Stand together with me. These four commandments are about relationship with God, about who we worship, about how we worship, not only the act of worship in the moment but in the living of our lives and the treatment of His name and how we bear it in the Sabbath, it is our protection. Would you lift up your hands to the Lord? Thank you, Jesus. I pray Lord right now a spirit of revelation over our minds. Let the spirit of God seal the word of the Lord into our hearts and spirit now. In the name of Jesus, Lord above all, we want to walk with you. We want to be in relationship with you. We want to feel the weight of your

glory. We want to hear the voice of God. Talk to us like you talk to Moses. Oh God, let our heart be captured like Joshua's was captured in the name of Jesus. Lord, you said you were going to take out the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, the heart of flesh that's tender, easily moved, easily touched by the finger of God, sensitive to the gentle nature of your spirit. I pray Lord, tonight that the Word of God would give us an increased sensitivity to your spirit, that the still small voice of God would become easily discerned in our lives. It's easily overlooked if we're carnal but it's easily discerned if we're spiritual. I pray Father that you would help us be a people that walk in the spirit, know the mind of the spirit, hear the voice of the spirit in the name of the Lord Jesus. Thank you Father. Thank you Father. Thank you Father. Pour out the

rest of God on your people this night. Pour out the strength of God on this house. Let every household, let every dwelling place feel oh that spiritual Sabbath. I pray Lord the angels of God would go with us. I pray they would feel the atmosphere of our home. In the name of Jesus, every lying spirit, every foul spirit, every deceiving spirit, every work of the enemy gone. We cast it out now. We need the Sabbath to realign our thinking, realign our values, realign our strength, realign our vision. In Jesus mighty name we pray. In Jesus mighty name. Would you clap your hands to the Lord? If we get these right, our relationship with God, then those next six, our relationship with others become a whole lot easier. The Lord bless you. Thank you for being in the house of God tonight, greet one another and fellowship your dismissed in Jesus name.