Pastor Ralph Douglas West - The God of Direction | Exodus 20

0:02 This is the day the Lord has made. We rejoice and we are glad in it. Come on. If you really believe that the Lord can do anything, you have to believe that you know. Let me say it one more time. Do you really believe that God? I do too. I believe He can do anything. Thank you choir and thank you for our children this morning for how they encouraged us. These are not performances, by the way. I think you know that. I say that maybe to those who are new in Christ and there's been such a value placed on entertainment. These are not performances. These are acts of faith by people using that gift for the growth of the body of Christ.

1:00 Exodus chapter 20 introduces us to another great chapter of the Bible. In this series, Exodus 20 is where you find the Ten Commandments. For those of you who are Bible readers, you pick up that this is a repetition. the commandments will reappear on different occasions. But it is Exodus 20 that I want us to focus our attention on primarily as this great chapter in the Bible.

1:43 Let me read one line to get us going this morning and cover the majority of this chapter. And God spoke these words, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. This is the word of God. I want to tag this text this morning, the God of Direction. When you open the box, the instructions are inside of it. The nation gathered at the foot and the base of the Lincoln Memorial Monument. 61 years ago the largest crowd gathered to hear in person and virtually the new Moses who had come to address the nation over segregation joblessness human inequality He used as his text that morning the preamble of the Constitution as well as excerpts from the Declaration of Independence.

3:22 The New Moses, Martin Luther King Jr., took the pulpit and used these two documents that had been written and he stressed for all the people. that these were unalienable rights that had been bequeathed and gifted from an eternal God, using then references from the whole understanding of Genesis chapter 1, chapter 3, Genesis chapter 2, and now Exodus 20. and he described this document in a term of a promissory note that had been marked insufficient funds.

4:17 61 years have passed since that announcement and on the ballot in the next few weeks remains to be the thesis in America the subject of freedom. For not just some people, but for all people. But that's one side. The other side is that there is on the ballot a battle for patriotism that morphs itself into a kind of political nationalism. My goal is not to talk about them, but to hear what these commandments have to say to us, to help us direct our attention on how we ought to view God and how we view humanity. Because when you open the box, the instructions are on the inside.

5:21 Typically, when we come to chapter 20, most of us are so busy with thou shalt not until we forget thou shalt. It came home to me when two boys at the local church, they were members of the Boy Scouts, and they had been working on crafting their knots in the basement of the church, and they constructed a knot that they had not seen before. They couldn't even unravel their own knot that they tied. And one wise boy scout asked his friend, what shall we call this not? And he thought and said, based on context, in the church they said, let us call it the thou shalt not.

6:24 That's the way many of us when we approach the Ten Commandments, we see it as a guardian knot not to be untied. This morning I want to invite you with me and Moses and the Hebrew children to hear what they saw and heard that particular day from the thunderclaps of the mountains when they gathered at the base of a mountain waiting for Moses to speak words unto them. Now, when I say time does not permit, that's not, I'm saying this again for people who are new in our fellowship and who are watching. That's not a preacher colloquialism.

7:17 but the only way you get the backdrop of chapter 20 is to hear what was going on in chapter 19 because it's in that place where Moses will be summoned and the elders to come up to God. And in the ninth verse, I'm going to come to you in a dense cloud so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you. Then Moses told the Lord what the people had said. Chapter 20 reveals to us something very interesting that almost sounds controversial because chapter 20 when it begins with the identification of the one who has delivered the Hebrew children out of the bondage of Egypt and is leading them and giving them directions it begins with grace.

8:32 I heard a preacher whining on television once. We couldn't live up to the law, and so the law was done away when God gave grace. And that's about the way you think, and that's about the way I have preached and overlooked the importance and the significance of the law. I know this is going to be very difficult for many of you to make the leap to believe that grace preceded the law. Primarily because we are so Pauline in the way that we think until we just got to have law. In fact, some of you are so law-binding that you ain't been happy since you gave your life to Jesus. And here grace precedes the law.

9:33 Verse 2, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Here are the words of the God of the oppressed, the God of liberation, the God of emancipation that says, I graced you first. I hear what you're saying. Pastor West, here you go again, wanting us to use our mind to think about God. just give it to the way that has been given to me all these years it's nothing new it's just shining the light in an area that we often overlook that God's grace preceded even his law grace is a gift from God grace is God giving you something that you did not deserve grace is God looking after you when you didn't know how to look after yourself.

10:40 Grace has given you liberation and freedom. You remember? Israel is in slavery. The proper term, the Hebrews are in slavery. They are in bondage. They are making brick without straw. God says in Exodus 3 in a burning bush he summons Moses up into his presence and he anthropomorphically discusses what he has witnessed with the Hebrews. In chapter 3 he says these words to Moses, I have seen their misery. And then he says, I have heard their cries. And then he says, I am concerned about them. When you get through with that, that ain't law, that's grace. That when grace comes, when God comes to us, he sees us in our condition of hopelessness and says that I have come to emancipate you out and break the chains that have bound you.

12:04 Grace. He gives Moses as a gift of grace. He gives the 10 plagues as a gift of grace to say to the power structure, Pharaoh, let my people go that they may go into the wilderness and that they may worship me. not just free for freedom's sake but your freedom is that you will worship God that you would love God with all of your heart and with all of your mind with all of your soul and with all of your strength and love your neighbor as yourself Passover was a gift God giving them a preview of a coming attraction that I will pass over those who have been covered with my presence and then the Red Sea, a gift. It looked like an impossibility and anything that we cannot control typically is an impossibility but there are no things impossible with God.

13:09 And he opens up the Red Sea and they cross over. Grace. And how shall they journey at night? They have no LED lights. They have no lunar light. And he says, I'll give you a sun, a sun that will brighten up a fire that will brighten up your night, not just for vision, but also from the protection of the wilderness. Wow, I will be the one that will protect you. And then in the day in this hot desert where the ground floor can reach 120 degree Fahrenheit, I would be a cloud over you during the day to shelter you from all of the heat. but where shall we eat where shall we get food and God said in creation I had already mapped out places I have dug wells that you will not dig and I have planted trees that you have not cultivated and in your life you don't stay back in the wilderness you come to Houston and you say how are the ways that God has graced my life?

14:25 All you have to do is look at yourself right now and think about the different ways that God has been good to you. Grace preceded even the law. And so when we look at these laws, typically people see them as to be rejected, to be refuted, they're oppressive. And this is the way we've preached them, haven't they? I've preached them that way. Even though my sermons I always noted as laws that liberate. But when you get through law, we are so big on law. I'm not talking about now criminal law in America. I'm talking about biblical law.

15:17 And we run to Paul. And heaven forbid if you say anything negative about Paul in church. Then you're not a Christian. You can talk about Jesus, but you can't talk about Paul. Thank you. I've heard people talk like that. And so here, here, these laws, come on up here, Moses. I want to talk to you as the God who has liberated you. The God who has set you free. The God who has made a way out of no way. and God speaks these laws. In one scene, you know, the tablets will be replaced and there'll be two tablets. Where Moses will receive on tablet one, words about God.

16:21 More specifically, remember this, relationship to God. Tablet two, relationship to humanity. You can't have one without the other. Many of us do good on God. We don't do so good on others. And so when Moses came down the mountain, what was going on at the bottom of the mountain, the people were sick. That's why he had to bring two tablets. That's from Pastor Wes Tuscala. And so these Tablets come down And there's a relationship between This is very important God And Humanity When Martin Luther King had gathered at the largest crowd, to come hear him speak.

17:51 It was not just a good speech. In many ways, it was God's prophetic utterance to America. And you know, you would have thought that the church had really embraced it. The one time that the black church really, really failed was during that period in history. Now that 61 years have passed, everybody was involved. But I'm here to tell you that ain't the truth. because there were those who were so busy with tablet one, long as they could get God, long as I could just do God, then I wasn't worried about humanity.

18:41 And then there were those, if I could just get humanity right, then, you know, I'll slip some God in there. God never separated the sacred or the secular. We are to live whole people to love God and one another with the same energy and with the same intensity. See, the way you clap, you don't believe that. And I understand it because we have been so Europeanized in the way that we think about God. That if we think different from the Victorian preachers and the white evangelicals, then you must be doing something wrong. I'm here to tell you, God created all people to love him and to love one another.

19:39 I know I'm picking my words. I know exactly what all people. All people. To love him and to love one another. But I hear what you're saying. Pastor West, see here's where I cannot agree with you. Because in our vocabulary, law and grace are antithetical. That's right. In your vocabulary. and and doesn't the grace proceed or that grace replace the law that's what they say Jesus never said I have come to abolish the law Jesus never said I have come to destroy the law pick up your bible stop listening to somebody else read it for you and interpreted you stop quoting somebody else.

20:32 Read it for yourself. God gave you a mind to read that. He said, I come from this tribe. I didn't come to destroy the law. I come to fulfill the law. I come to make the law better. Now I'm aware, Jesus would say, how religionists have taken the law and used it as a yoke around the neck of many people. I understand that how people have used the law and how the Pharisees subdivided the law in the categories that nobody first could memorize and secondly that they could not keep. But I didn't come to do that. I come to put flesh and blood on the commandment. The commandment to love God with all of your heart, mind, strength and soul and body. and your neighbor as yourself.

21:30 You can never love God with the totality of your being without adding the second commandment and that is to love your neighbor as yourself. That's what Jesus said to us. And the moment that we love neighbor as self, that's where life gets better. That becomes one, theologically, the fulfillment of the promissory note that had been marked insufficient. There is no bankruptcy in God's grace. Just a lot of forgery. And when you're trying to write grace on a different kind of account, you never get what God has available for you. Come on up Moses Come talk to the God who has set The nation free And he gives them at this point This law These laws I'm not going to read the laws to you today I know that's what you thought I was going to do I'm not going to read the laws together You read them read the laws I'm looking now at the borderlands of the law the larger the broader picture of what these laws look like and these laws are so significant to these people they loved them and venerated them so much you know what they did?

23:05 they wrote them on the walls for those of you who are new in the faith that's Deuteronomy 6 and they saw them in their garments and they put them on their foreheads and they memorized them. Put them to memory. they memorized that thou shalt not have other gods before me they memorized thou shalt not make unto you any grave they memorized thou shalt not take God's name they had to get that right before they could get anything else right this morning you and I do better when we have a broader vision of who God is how great thou art And so Moses receives these laws that God gives to him.

24:14 Sarah Jewett, in a beautifully written book on Maine, she calls it the country of the pointed furs, gives some insight on how these laws work. as an ascending writer she's going to see. Captain Elijah Tilly, for those of you who have read and remember the book.

24:39 And on her way to see him, she noticed throughout the field, scattered, white, trimmed in gold stakes, with no symmetry, just out in the field, colored in the same texture as the captain's house. When she finally gets to Elijah Tilley's house, you can imagine just hearing that part of the story, you wanted to know what in the world was going on with all of these stakes randomly placed throughout the field.

25:24 Elijah said to Sarah, it says, when I bought this preacher, this piece of land and overlooking Maine, I noticed when I was out plowing, my blades kept hitting rocks. Initially, I kept plowing, hitting rocks, changing blades, dulling blades, breaking blades, that I thought, wait, what I need to do is put a stake where rocks are. and so I painted them white so people could see them trimmed them in gold like my house so your eyes would be drawn to them and I put them there and hopefully that when I'm off the scene people will keep the stakes there and keep them bright and keep them trimmed in gold and that way when they walk out of the field when they want to cut the yards plowing the field plant, they know where the rocks are.

26:30 And if they know where the rocks are, they know how to avoid them. these commandments are not here to restrict your life these laws are here to liberate your life that if you know what to avoid then you know how to navigate through life to love God and to love his Sabbath and to love parents and not to take what does not belong to you and not to get involved in activities that compromise your ethics and your integrity when you know where these stakes are. It helps you to live a happy life and a productive life. You know, there's a theme that's been in my head that I want to tell you.

27:24 It's been there for the last, I guess, couple of years. a theme that I notice run through the scriptures that helps me understand how all of this works. That I notice that reading through the Bible, that God has never come to us to restrict us or to refuse us, but he's come to release us and to make us new. Let me say it one more time. And I want you to think about all of the Bible that you know, All of it. One verse, ten verses, doesn't matter. All of what you think you know about God. That God has not come to us to restrict us or to refute us. That God's coming to us has always been to renew us and to release us. That God always wants more for us than even we want for ourselves.

28:21 God doesn't just liberate the Hebrews. He says, I'm going to give you a land flowing with milk and honey. And I'm going to give you a place where you can go and you can worship me. That you can worship me in spirit and worship me in truth. I'm just about done now. that's why we love these words that are given to us these words help us understand the psalmist better blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly or standeth in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of the scornful but whose delight is in the law of the Lord and in his meditation or in his law, he meditates both day and night and he's like a tree planted by the rivers of water yielding its fruit in its own season and its leaves shall never wither away.

29:27 That's what gets you, whether you know that verse or not, you sit down and people say, why do you read this? and some of you are very much akin to me now. I'm not trying to read everything new. I'm going back revisiting all of the things that I want to know more about God and deepen my relationship with him. Preach, Pastor West. You preaching whether you know it or not. I got the witness to myself if you won't help me. because I'm not a devil made me do it kind of preacher but anytime God's word, God's name, God's authority, God's power there the enemy's number one goal is to distract you in any way that he can because he doesn't want you to be released, renewed and set free he doesn't want you to enjoy the joy of what it means to be a Christian you got people here this morning been Christian for years and still not happy to be a Christian.

30:35 Don't even really know. I'm not, listen, listen. You know me well enough. I don't have to qualify my character. You know I say it because I love you. But I watch people still looking at substitutes trying to compensate for only what belongs to God. Look, give God some of your space beyond just right now. This is your reasonable service. I'm almost through now. grace precedes the law the Lord give us these tablets because we're sick Don't be like Putin was. Putin was sitting on the front porch when her dad came home from work and asked his wife, said, what's wrong with Putin?

31:36 She's mad. What's she mad about? She found out there's a law called gravity and she don't like it. They're not just physical laws. They're moral, ethical, and spiritual laws that God has put in place. Not... to refuse us, laws to release us, words to renew us. and Moses went up and he received these words that God had given to him to show us how we live in community with one another When Martin Luther King stood that day in August 28th of 63, later on in an interview, he would be asked about the dream and he said, sometimes I feel like it's become a nightmare now.

32:47 So how do these words help you and I to improve the world around us? One of the ways that it does it Is to tell people when you open the box Just read the instructions They're right inside of it This is what leads to life Abundant life Life filled with meaning And life filled with purpose These instructions that God has given to us, these are the words that make us live better to be whole. The Witt Talmadge and I'll close with that is a preacher of another generation in the late and just the first days of the 20th century pastored in New Jersey Talmadge he was a great preacher and on an occasion and he had gone out to the Rockies in Colorado.

34:05 And looking up at Sangre de Cristo, I had to say that I had to study Spanish all summer. That's about the only thing I got. These sacred mountains of the blood of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ, he's looking at it. And he noticed on one side that there is an ominous storm gathering around and his attention is drawn through to the storm,

34:45 the thunderstorm, the lightning. The thunder claps, a torrent of rain coming down the mountains. And suddenly Talmud says, a prevailing wind came and blew that storm over San Gre de Cristo.

35:10 He said, oh no, not over that. over the sacrifice of Christ, the blood of Christ, and a torrent of rain was there. And then something happened. The wind blew. it away.

35:32 Thomas said I didn't make nothing of it at first to be honest about it. And then it dawned on me a cloud had come in over Mount Moriah and there was a substitute. a cloud had come in then over Mount Sinai.

35:55 And here were the directions. But then he said, that wind must have blown to Mount Calvary. Well, there is redemption. That when everything else happened, when all of the storms have passed by and they meet up at Calvary, God is able to turn our storms into that which is able to redeem us, renew us, release us. here at this mountain that you and I have visited together this morning we don't walk away here anymore when your friends tomorrow that's why I don't go to church it's because all them thou shalt not say you ain't never read them for yourself Thank you.

36:54 Read these words and read these laws. These are laws that liberate us. And when the law got to be too much, God said, you ain't got to read them today. I'll put them in flesh. And the word became flesh. And we beheld the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. and now we know what those words look like so the next time when somebody's talking and they're saying to you about well that's why I don't read the Bible all that stuff that they heard somebody else say you tell them say you've never met the living word because if you've met the living word you would never say that you want to know and I close how God looks you want to know what God looks like how God talks what he acts like you want to know how God not politics and politicians do you want to know how God looks at marginalized people and broken people and hurt people not not your arrogance not your sophistication, not your education, not your ideology, not your philosophy.

38:21 I said, do you want to know how God looks and how God talks and how God treats those who are broken? You ain't got to look far. Just look at Jesus. And however Jesus treats people, that's how God treats them. He is God in human form. I gotta stop now Our Father we thank you For your word We thank you for Jesus Christ Thank you for the choir reminding us That Jesus can do anything Anything So now we thank you for your word to us To remind us that grace comes before this Lord you have given us these two tablets to remind us of our intricate relationship with God and humanity and that you've completed your work on a hill called Calvary thank you for what you have said and what you continue to say to us and to one another teach us Lord to love one another as we love ourselves.

39:40 People that are different than us. People who have been identified as others. Help us love humanity. And when we find it hard and we get religiously arrogant, help us to look in the mirror of the word and say, oh my goodness, God loved me in spite of me. How dare I not love somebody else? Teach us how to do it, Lord. it's in your name we pray and all God's people say together Amen praise God today church real quick for those of you who want to unite