Sunday, March 5, 2023 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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of the Ten Commandments and remove them from their context and place them over to the side.

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You know, there's been a lot of encouragement, which is good, in church life.

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We've been reminded time and again that we're not supposed to take Bible verses out of their context. And that applies to the

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Ten Commandments, too. So, these are ten words given to Israel, a summation of the covenant that God made with Israel at Mount Sinai.

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They're very specifically connected to Israel. And as such, being a part of this covenant, ultimately, they speak of Christ.

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So that's why our title is Ten Words About Christ, and we've been talking a great deal about that. All right, well, let's read, beginning in verse 1.

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And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

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You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

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You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments.

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Once again, as we read the Ten Commandments, in their context, with the attending verses, rather than just simply seeing the short, pithy sayings on the wall hanging, we are reminded that this is the way it works in the

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Old Covenant. We are reminded of Moses leading the children of Israel to Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, on either side of Shechem, where the curses and the blessings of the

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Old Covenant were pronounced. This is the way it works in the Old Covenant, that the children and the children's children, and even their children's children's children suffer for the sins of their forefathers.

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That's the way it works in the Old Covenant, that the nation was punished for the sins of Manasseh, generations after Manasseh.

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But in contrast to that, very clearly, in Jeremiah and other passages, it says in the

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New Covenant, in the New Covenant, although the fathers will drink, will eat sour grapes, the children's teeth will not be set on edge, because it's going to be something different in the

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New Covenant, you see. So those are just reminders about where we're at and what we're dealing with. Now let's remind ourselves of the definition of the biblical redemptive covenants, and by that we're talking about the covenant that God makes with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel, with David, and ultimately looking to the

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New Covenant. A definition here is a restoring and revealing relationship the

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Creator formalizes with man. So remember that the covenants God starts making are after the fall, after their exile from the

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Garden of Eden? That's when God starts making covenants with his special creation, those who are made in his image.

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It's a revealing relationship, because the covenants he makes were not only about that particular time.

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When we read the latter prophets, and we read the New Testament, time and again, they point back to these covenants, and they say this was about Christ.

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For example, in Galatians, Paul says, it says that the promises were to Abraham and to his seed, and if we were just sticking with Genesis, holding on to Genesis and nothing else, and saying,

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I'm going to ignore everything else, we say, well, that would be Isaac. And Paul says, and to his seed, singular, that is

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Christ. You see? So it's a revealing relationship. It's not simply about that time and place, but it's speaking of someone greater.

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How many times did Jesus say, someone greater has come? Something greater is here. Now this is a relationship that the creator formalizes with man.

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Now God had a relationship with Noah before he made a covenant with him. God had a relationship with Abraham before he made a covenant with him, and so on.

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But God formalizes those relationships in a special way. Usually there's worship involved, and sacrifice, there's promises, there's a sign given.

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The sign of the rainbow, the sign of circumcision, the sign of the Sabbath, the sign of the temple.

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And he formalizes this with man. Now just to be clear, when we're talking about these covenants, there are other covenants that we can find in the

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Bible, and covenants that people talk about as they speak about the

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Bible. Okay? So there are covenants such as personal covenants we read about. Remember a covenant that Jacob made with Laban?

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So they agreed before God that they would not attack each other and try to get vengeance on each other?

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They had a really bad relationship. And they decided, look, here's the thing. We have every reason to be at each other's throats, but we're going to put this landmark here, and you're not going to come over across this way and come after me, you know, kind of stab me in the back at some dark night, and I'm not going to do that to you.

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So they made a covenant. Remember David and Jonathan made a covenant with one another, okay? So there are personal covenants that are made.

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Also, biblically, we can talk about societal covenants. Marriage is a covenant, right?

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We think about the family. We think about the church. We think about the way we're supposed to love one another and how we're accountable to one another under the authority of God.

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We talk about a covenant within the local church. I think it's a good thing if our magistrates would put their hand on a

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Bible and swear before God and before witnesses that they would be righteous and just and would not use their positions for tyranny and for selfish gain, right?

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They should make a covenant with those whom they are supposed to be serving as a civil servant, right?

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So we're talking about the spheres of governance in our world, the family and the church and the state. Covenants are a good thing, very good thing, and the more that those covenants are broken, the more disastrous the society.

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Also, now there are something called theological covenants. Now these are expressions that theologians use to try to gather together a lot of ideas about the

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Bible all at once, okay? So they're not things that you're going to find talked about expressly and specifically in the

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Bible, but they're theological terms trying to grab a whole lot. So they'll talk about things like the covenant of works and the covenant of grace and the covenant of redemption.

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We're not talking about those things, okay? We're talking about when we read in the text, God made a covenant with Noah, God made a covenant with Abram, God made a covenant with Israel at Sinai, God made a covenant with David.

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That's what we're talking about. We're talking about ultimately where Jesus says, this is the new covenant in my blood.

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We're talking about those expressions in the scriptures. That's what we're focusing on. Now, given that the

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Ten Commandments are said to be in Exodus, a summary of God's covenant with Israel.

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There are the 10 words, they are called the testimony, they are called the covenant.

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Once they are placed inside the ark, the ark is called what? The ark of the covenant, meaning the box that carries around the covenant.

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The ark is also called the ark of the testimony. Why? What's inside? Well, the testimony was placed inside.

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When Moses came down the mountain, he had two tablets. And as was customary in that time, in the

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Caesarean treaties of that time, the conquering king would make a copy of all of the laws that he said his vassal people are to live according to.

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He'd make a copy for himself and a copy for them. So we don't have two tablets where five are written on this tablet and five are written on this tablet, like you see on the pictures that hang on the wall.

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All of them were written on this tablet, contract. All of them were written on this tablet, another contract, in a sense.

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You'll notice that when you do any legal paperwork, how many copies? Everybody gets a copy. You get a copy.

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They get a copy. Someone else gets a copy. Copies everywhere. Why is that? Well, this is a legality issue, making sure everybody has the same words.

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And so, trying to understand the Ten Commandments, we have to understand them inside the biblical covenant that is made between God and Israel.

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And then we have to understand that these biblical redemptive covenants are all related to one another and ultimately testify to Christ.

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That's why it's ten words about Christ. We've talked about the commandment itself, do not make for yourself a graven image, to bow down and worship it.

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We've talked about how God is not against images per se, because he instructed his own people to make lots of images that were all over the place, in the tabernacle and temple and so on.

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What he said was, do not make a graven image to bow down and worship it, which is exactly what

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Aaron did with all the gold earrings. He made a golden calf and said, hey, behold your God who brought you up out of Egypt.

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That was breaking the second commandment. Now, we've looked at the creation, we've gone back and thought about creation, and we see that God is not against images in his creation.

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He specifically makes man, male and female, in his own image.

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He created us in his own image. This is not an image to be worshipped, this is the image that worships.

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We were made for worship. We were made to love God supremely, to bring glory to his name.

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That's the purpose of the image of God. Now, we're going to turn our attention to the fall, and we're going to be in this column right here.

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Let's turn in our Bibles to Genesis 3. Genesis 3, verses 1 -7, is a familiar story.

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Many have studied it, many have written on it. I find it to be a passage of inexhaustible resources.

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It doesn't matter where I am in the Scriptures, thinking about the nature of sin, and who we are made in God's image, and the perils of turning our backs on God, every single passage that I find is only clarified and helped by looking at this passage as well.

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So what do we find here? The serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. He said to the woman,

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Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

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And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden,

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God has said, You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.

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Then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

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So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

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She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves coverings, and then they hid from the

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Lord. What was the essential temptation?

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Adam and Eve had been made in the image of God. God has blessed them and said, You may eat freely of all the trees in the garden, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you may not eat of it.

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Satan plants the seed of doubt that God is perhaps not so good as he sounded. Perhaps he's holding things back from you.

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Eve responds by saying that the only tree we can't eat from is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or touch it.

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Maybe that was Adam's addition when he was teaching her the ropes of the garden. But in any case, what was the temptation?

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The temptation was, don't you want to be like God? Well, hang on, aren't they made in the image of God already?

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Yes. But in what way were they not like God? Well, they were not like God in the following way.

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They were not allowed to determine objectively what is good and what is evil.

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The knowledge of good and evil. They were not in charge of that. They were not in charge of the dictionary.

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God was. That was the temptation. And so it's improper worship for them to elevate themselves as the image to the status of the creator himself.

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They were not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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They were not to desire it. But Eve does desire it. It's desirable to make one wise.

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This is the same word that is used in the Ten Commandments for coveting.

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It's the exact same word in Genesis 3 .6, as you find in Exodus 20, when it comes to coveting and the desire that she had.

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Now, exalting the self above God is a common form of improper worship. As we live in a world today that's all about the self, exalting myself, uplifting myself, well, that's an improper worship.

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We are to exalt God. We don't exist for ourselves, we exist for God. Her desires were unrestricted when

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God told her that they should be restricted. He gave her all these other trees to eat from. You're not allowed to eat from this tree.

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But then she began to desire that which was forbidden to her, meaning she did not restrict her own desires, but began to desire that which

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God had forbidden. And the upshot of it is that God's promise came true and the day that they ate of it, they died.

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Death in the Bible is not nonexistence. Death in the

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Bible is the severing of all those relationships which define life. As soon as they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what happens?

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They're hiding from each other and they're hiding from God. Right? All of a sudden, that which used to characterize their lives as full of life, that's gone and now it's death.

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They're hiding and they're separated from each other. Jesus said that the devil, the serpent,

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Satan, was the father of lies and he was a murderer from the beginning. Jesus says, what was

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Satan doing in the garden? But murdering Adam and Eve through his deceptions. So let's look at that.

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Improper worship, unrestricted desires, they come together and what is the result?

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It's murder. Now it's very interesting that as we move forward in the text towards the covenant that God makes with Noah, what do we find?

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We find a story of Cain and Abel and we find that Cain and Abel are bringing sacrifices to the

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Lord. Now what's the problem? What's the problem in the story of Cain and Abel when they bring their offerings to the

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Lord? Right. So there's something wrong with Cain's offering, right?

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It's something right with Abel's offering. Now, it's not so much that Cain didn't bring the right thing, it's that when he realized he didn't bring the right thing, he didn't repent.

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He didn't change. He just got really, really upset and his countenance was fallen and God warns him about a desire that seeks to consume him.

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Okay. Well with improper worship and unrestricted desires, what's the result? Murder.

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Cain murders Abel. Moving forward in the story, we have the beginning in Genesis chapter 6.

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We read that there's some problems going on in the antediluvian, that's very fancy saying before the flood.

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It's like saying antebellum before the war, antediluvian before the flood. Okay. There's some problems going on in this antediluvian society.

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The sons of God look upon the daughters of men and that which was restricted to them, they desired and they went unto them.

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And then what was the result? Well, God says, my spirit will not strive with men any longer, their days are 120 years.

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Whereas before in Genesis 4, 26, we read that, you know, Adam begot a son and then he begot a son named

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Enosh. And then men began to call upon the name of the Lord. And that's a good thing. The sons of God are worshiping

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God. There's good worship. They're calling upon the name of the Lord. But now all of a sudden, God is saying, my spirit's not going to strive with these any longer.

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This is going to be done. Judgment in 120 years is the timeframe. And then it's going to be over.

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Why? Why? What's going on? Well, with unrestricted desires and improper worship going on, they're no longer calling upon the name of the

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Lord. Genesis 6, 11 says the earth was filled with violence.

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The earth was filled up with violence. Same kind of violence that we read about with the Lamech descendant of Cain, who was killing people and boasting about it.

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A lot of violence in the earth. And so what we have is unrestricted desires, improper worship.

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And what is going on? Murder, violence, death, destruction. The destruction of those made in God's image.

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When we get to the covenant that God makes with Noah, after seeing all this improper worship, what do we see in Genesis 8, 20 through 22?

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Proper worship. Moses, I'm sorry, Noah comes out of the ark and he builds an altar to the

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Lord. It was a sweet -smelling aroma to the Lord. He receives it and he blesses Noah and makes promises to Noah as part of the covenant.

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And new instructions, all right, Noah and your descendants, as you're fruitful and as you're multiplying and filling the earth, now you get to eat the animals.

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You get to eat the animals, just like in the Garden of Eden. You may eat of all the trees of the garden, but of the one tree you may not eat.

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Very similar in Genesis 9, all the animals, you can eat all these animals, but you cannot eat them with their blood.

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Right? See, there's a restriction on the desires, you see that? And in the

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Noahic covenant, with proper worship and restricted desires in place, we have those instructions about that which restrains murder, which is what?

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Capital punishment. If a man sheds another man's blood, by man his blood must be shed.

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Capital punishment. To restrain the murder, to put a cap on the violence that had filled up the earth prior to the flood.

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So do we see what's going on so far? We come back to the fall, what was the problem? Improper worship and unrestricted desires, ends in death, can't enable the same thing.

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The antediluvian society, the same thing. So then God, first time we read, that God makes a covenant with man, what does he address?

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What are the issues he addresses? There needs to be proper worship, there needs to be restrained desires, so that there's going to be a restraining on the murder and the violence, the destruction of the image of God.

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First thing that happens, right out of the box, as far as God making covenants. And we're going to make a connection between that and the

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Ten Commandments in a moment, but first of all, let's think of a couple of stories about Abraham. Because the covenant that God makes with Abraham stands between God's covenant with Noah and God's covenant with Israel.

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So before we get to Israel, we have God dealing with Abraham. So let's do a little Bible trivia. God makes a promise to Abraham at the beginning of Genesis 12, and he talks about how, you know,

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I'm going to bring you into a new land, give you new land, I'll make you a great people, and I'm going to bless those who bless you, and I'm going to curse those who curse you.

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His promise is going to be to Abraham and to his seed. And then a famine hits. And Abram flees to Egypt with his wife and all that he possesses.

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He flees down to Egypt. Now what is Abraham's concern about what is going on in the land of Egypt?

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He's concerned about something. It's a safety concern. Yeah, it's like,

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I'm thinking there's a pretty good chance I'm going to get killed. Why? Because there's going to be unrestricted desires for his wife.

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Correct? And why are there unrestricted desires sure to be found in the land of Egypt?

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Because there's no fear of God in the land. Right? There's improper worship.

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Where there's improper worship, there's unrestricted desires. What is the likely result? Murder. Why are so many cities in America murder capitals in the world?

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Made in God's image, why would anybody be killing anybody else? Doesn't it come back down to the fact that there's no fear of God for their eyes?

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Isn't that why their feet are swift to shed blood? Isn't that what Romans 3 says? What's the problem?

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There's improper worship, thus there is unrestricted desires, and thus the cities are filled with murder.

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That's what it is. It isn't a lack of quality government education.

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I'm sorry, I just said an oxymoron. The problem is that there's not proper worship, there's unrestricted desires, and therefore there's a bunch of murder going on.

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So that was his concern in Genesis 12. And then what about the final test of Abraham?

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The final test of Abraham was what? Where he really proved his faith.

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His son. Isaac has been born, the promised heir is here. He's supposed to take

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Isaac up Mount Moriah. And what is he supposed to do on the mountain?

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That's right. Now Hebrews tells us he was a man of such faith that he knew that God's promises would still be true even if he sacrificed his son because God could raise

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Isaac from the dead. That's what's going on in the heart of Abraham. He's walking up that mountain. But what do we see?

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Abram worships God properly. He fears the Lord, thinking of him first, thinking of him most. Isaac says, where's the sacrifice, father?

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He says, the Lord will provide. And he does not desire his son more than God.

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He does not have disordered affections and desires. And then rather than Abram being forced to murder his own son, actually his hand is restrained and God provides a substitute sacrifice.

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So you see the pattern continuing. Now, after all of that, we come to the

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Ten Commandments. So we looked at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and here we come to the

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Ten Commandments. And we've talked about how they're structured. And how they're structured as so many things in the

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Hebrew mindset is structured in concentric parallels that move towards a center.

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The first two commandments are about proper worship. Hasn't that been the theme? Hasn't that been the need?

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Proper worship. Ever since the fall, the concern has been about proper worship. Well, it's

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God alone, no other gods before me, and no, we're not going to use idols to worship. So the form of it, there's the forms of it, but then there's the actual worship, who you're going to worship.

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And when you get down to the last commandment, you read twice, thou shalt not covet

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X. In Exodus, it's that you should not covet your neighbor's house.

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In Deuteronomy, it says you should not covet your neighbor's wife. And then a second go around of saying do not covet happens right after the first.

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But in both texts, in Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20, it says do not covet this one very important aspect of your neighbor's possessions.

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And then it says also do not covet, it says it all over again, thou shalt not covet, and a big long list of other things that belong to the neighbor.

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So this is saying the restricted desires is your neighbor's wife beautiful?

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Is his home grand? Are the things that he possess very worthy? Okay, those don't belong to you.

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Those things might be in and of themselves attractive, but you are not allowed to desire them for yourself.

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Off limits, restricted desires. Hasn't that been the issue? Where there's been unrestricted desires, okay?

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So proper worship and then restricted desires. And what does Paul say in the

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New Testament about covetousness? Covetousness is idolatry.

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Paul knows this. Paul knows there's a connection between the first and the last. Now, when you go into the rest of the 10 commandments, what do we find?

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Commandment number three, do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Do not carry it around with emptiness.

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Do not lie, bear false witness against your neighbor. So no falsity with God's name and no falsity with your neighbor's name.

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Don't be false about who God is. Don't be false about who your neighbor is. Remember the

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Sabbath day to keep it holy. Why? Because God brought you up out of Egypt and God created everything in six days and rested the seven.

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So don't you think God can take care of it? Do you have to work 24 seven? No, you don't.

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Rest, trust God. He'll provide. Oh, by the way, also connected to Sabbath is don't steal.

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Why? Why would you not steal? Well, why would you steal? Because you don't trust God to provide.

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Correct? So God provides, God provides. Don't steal from God.

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Don't steal from your neighbor. Right? Moving a little bit closer in. Honor your father and mother and don't commit adultery.

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Family, family. Family, family. Family. Right? So we begin to talk about what does it mean to be made in the image of God?

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Male and female, he created them. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

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We're getting really close to the core of what it means to be made in the image of God. And at the heart of the 10 commandments, no murder.

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So what is the 10 commandments about? The 10 commandments is about addressing what does it mean to be made in the image of God and how we're supposed to live in the light of being in the image of God.

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What was the problem? What is God addressing with his covenants?

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He's addressing the fall with his covenants. Where there was improper worship and unrestricted desires which resulted in murder.

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Again and again and again and again. This is the concern. This is the focus. So when we come to the 10 commandments, we think of the second one and we see how it's connected to the last one and how it's connected to the middle.

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Now, we're going to think about next time how it is that idolatry, breaking the second commandment, how idolatry is the

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Achilles heel of the life of Israel. How often do we find that's the problem? Okay, a lot.

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And then we're going to think about how, we're going to look in the life of Israel and we're going to see idolatry and we're going to see how it's connected to everything else that is disastrous in the life of Israel.

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We're going to think about the role of the king in connection to the second commandment. You can think about the differences between Manasseh versus Josiah when it comes to the second commandment.

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And then we're going to see how all of these covenants point forward to Christ and how does he handle this reality?

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That we are not to be worshiping images, but as the image of God, we are to worship him.

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All right, so that's the goal. Hey, we got through the whole board. All right, well,

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I hear a lot of activities swarming around us and we're going to have truth group here in a little bit coming in here to have their meal.

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So I'm going to go ahead and close this with the word of prayer, okay? Heavenly Father, we thank you for the night that you've given to us.

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I thank you for the truth of your word. And we pray that you would encourage us, help us to hold fast to our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and recognize the need for proper worship of him. Pray these things in his name, amen.