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FIRST & 10 SERMON SERIES
WHO’S IN THE HOUSE?
JANUARY 24, 1999
ED YOUNG
Well, at first glance, this Fourth Commandment seems rather out of place with the big ten. There was our sovereign God communicating the commandments to the Prince of Egypt, Moses and in the altitudes of Sinai, He is talking about thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery. He was talking about these important things and then all of a sudden He brings up this Fourth Commandment, this directive about a special day. As I read this I said to myself, “What was the deal? Did God lose His cosmic concentration? How did this one crack the top 10?”
I will read it for you. Exodus 20:8. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” During our study thus far we have seen that God is really into remembering. He has told us to remember His position, His priority, to honor His name and now He is telling us to remember His day by keeping it holy. What was going on here? Why did our God give us this advice?
God knows us. He knows us so well because He fashioned us and made us in His image. He has a keen insight into what makes us tick and how we are to do life. So God simply says stop working and start worshipping. God says stop pursuing all of the vocational stuff and begin to pursue Me. God says get into My rhythm. In our modern day vernacular we would say, don’t diss God’s days. Don’t diss God’s day. God commands us to worship Him with a portion of our finances and He commands us to worship Him at least one day out of seven. But we have got to ask ourselves, in these modern day times, does this really apply to my life with all the problems, pressures and stresses with which we are dealing. Does this really pinpoint some areas in my life? Can this fourth commandment really help me? Obviously it was written thousands of years ago. The recipients of this commandment were the Israelites, God’s chosen people. They were a nomadic group. They were fugitives on the run. For the Israelites a good day was simply staying alive. If their hearts were beating, then everything was great at the end of the day. God’s people, like many of us, struggle with this directive.
Later on in the Old Testament, Jerusalem was captured by the Babylonians. The Babylonians deported the best and brightest Jews from J-town all the way to Babylon. Part of that group was a man named Nehemiah, a real leader. And after a period of time, God miraculously allowed Nehemiah and some of his brothers to return to Jerusalem, God’s city. When Nehemiah hit the city limits, he was appalled. He was shocked. He was staggered. He couldn’t believe that the Jews were doing their own thing on God’s day instead of God’s thing and he told them they were desecrating the Sabbath. He said they were dissing God’s day, not giving Him his due during that twenty-four hour period. He said they were to be breaking away to think about Him and to take inventory in their lives.
Where is Nehemiah today? As you look around our culture, we are involved in the same thing, aren’t we? It is almost as if our enemy has diabolically diagrammed a system to keep us away from the church, away from keeping God’s day holy. Right now, you can go to any soccer field or gymnasium and it is packed with children’s teams and adult leagues kicking and shooting and playing their way into oblivion. Stores and malls and markets are open right now. It is amazing, isn’t it, just to think what has occurred to the Sabbath? We have kleeted it in our culture to such a degree that it has become just an average, ordinary day to most people. And sadly, going to God’s house for worship and giving Him his due and spending a quiet day unplugged from work is not the in think to do any more. It is not hip. It is not vogue. This Fourth Commandment seems to be the first thing that is most easily blended into our complex culture. Where is Nehemiah when you need him the most? We, like the Jews, are doing our own thing on God’s day, instead of God’s thing.
Technology is great. I love it. But technology has lied to us, wouldn’t you agree? Technology in the form of cell phones and beepers and faxes and computers was supposed to make our lives less cluttered. Have you heard that? That is a lie. It is not true. Think about the office place. You have all these conveniences, but it has increased the pace of work. It has increased it to such a fever pace level that now we have brought the office into our automobile. Do you remember the days when driving your automobile you could chill and relax, listen to some music and catch up on the news? Now, though, you have got things buzzing and ringing and even faxes coming across the dashboard of the car.
How about on the home front? We have all these conveniences like vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens and dishwashers. If you study it, you will see that Americans are spending less time on housework than ever before. So what are we doing with all of the time saved? We are spending it in certain areas. A lot of us are jumping from activity to activity, over-scheduling and over-challenging and over-stimulating our children. We are doing this in such a rapid fire pace that we have taken the Fourth Commandment and blended it into our scenery. We just say, “I appreciate it, God. Thanks for the advice but I will just go ahead and forgo the Fourth. I am going to diss Your day. I am going to do my own thing, not Your thing, my thing.” Does that sound familiar? Does that sound like I am talking to you?
It’s tough, isn’t it? We have got to be intentional about it to keep God’s day intact. But you have got to remember something. Our God is a God of love. He is a God who is concerned about our wellbeing and He has given us these directives, the ten principles for our good so that we can discover His awesome plan and agenda for our lives. Don’t ever think that the Ten Commandments are limiting, stifling items that hem you in and keep you from being the person that you should be. Just the opposite is true. When we live by these guidelines, when we stay within the guardrails given to us by God, himself, then and only then will our lives soar. That is why God says, every week stop what you are pursuing and begin to pursue God. Don’t diss His day. Honor God as God. God has a rhythm going on, doesn’t He? One, two, three, four, five, six we work. Seven we worship Him, chill and relax.
Well, let’s look at God’s mentality behind this. We have kind of done the broad-brush thing. Why did He give us this Sabbath stuff? Let me give you two quick reasons. First, it is for our own good. I just touched on it a second ago. Jesus said these words in Mark 2:27: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Isn’t that cool? The Sabbath was made for me, not me for the Sabbath.
In a staff meeting this past week, the head of our Athletic Ministry told me that right now we have 56 adult basketball teams just in the Fellowship Church. We rent Coppell High School from about
1 PM Sunday afternoon until about 8:30 and games go on all that time. We have got A leagues, guys who can rattle the rim every time they touch the ball. We have got co-ed leagues and I hear a lot of women, especially those who played college basketball, are just shaking and baking on the men and tearing them up. We also have B leagues, C leagues, D leagues, whatever. We also have something else in our Athletic Ministry with which I have been involved. Tae Bo classes. Have you ever seen that infomercial with Billy Blanks? It is a combination of boxing, the martial arts and dance. I decided the other day to get into Tae Bo, so I joined the group in one of our classrooms. I have got decent rhythm but, man, I was out of it. I was tripping over myself and everything. I was looking at the other people and they were out of rhythm, too. But I finally figured out something. I just stayed with the instructor. Wherever she would go, I would just follow her and do exactly what she did. I began to get the rhythm when I followed the instructor.
What do I believe God is saying? God is saying to you and to me, follow Me. He is our instructor. He knows us better than anyone. We need to get into His rhythm. Stop working and start worshiping. Don’t diss God’s day. It is for your good and my good. Yet we go so fast. We feel that if we don’t cram in every activity that we will miss something in life. Hey, you are going to miss life itself if you don’t do this Fourth Commandment stuff. So this commandment is for our own good.
Also, it is to build our faith. God gave us this day to build our faith, whether it is Saturday or Sunday, it is to build our trust in God. Think about it. We are shutting down for a day. We are not working. We are doing some recreation. We are worshiping. We are spending time with our family and friends, but we are not working. Yet God can supernaturally multiply your life and mine when we give God his due.
In the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, chapter five, we have God’s chosen people, the Israelites, once again, ready to close the deal on this incredible tract of land, the Promised Land. Right before they were to walk into this land, here is what Moses did. He took them aside and said, “Hey, remember number four, number four of the big ten. It is important.” Moses knew that the Israelites would be tempted to dis God’s day. He knew they would be tempted to work long hours and try to make more and more money. And he also knew that neighboring nations would trash talk the Israelites. “How can you survive not working one out of seven? This God thing?” Remembering the fourth is great advice because God supernaturally multiplies your time, your resources, your life and your purpose when you stop and honor Him.
To go a little deeper here, I am referring to something in the Old Testament called the manna principle. Turn to your neighbor and say manna. I want to give you a brief lesson. Manna is some incredible stuff. Again, I am hitting on the children of Israel because they are wonderful examples. Why? Because they are human beings like you and me. God, as His children were doing the wilderness-wondering thing, began to feed them from heaven. He sent bread-like substance that would fall in the mornings called manna. Today in certain parts of Israel manna still falls. I have eaten some before. That is a whole other story. I am not lying. God instructed them to pick the manna up very quickly, just enough for the day. If they didn’t pick it up before the sun came up it melted. So remember they had to collect the manna in the morning and they could only collect enough for one day. Well what do you think God’s people did? They wouldn’t collect enough for just one day. They were collecting a lot, stuffing it in their pockets and socks. But after a day it would spoil and everyone could tell which Jews were the greedy Jews because they had this stench about them.
Well, then God instituted the Sabbath. Back before the resurrection of Christ, it was the seventh day. He said, “Hey, children of Israel, collect manna daily but before the Sabbath, collect a double portion of it and don’t even think about going out and looking for manna on the Sabbath day. God said that He would miraculously multiply the manna so that they would have enough to eat on the day they didn’t work and didn’t collect any. God did that for His people. God also does the manna thing in your life and mine when we give Him his due on His day, when we say, “God, I am going to stop working and start worshiping.” When we do that, God begins to do a work in our lives. Isn’t that exciting? You can see that all the way through the Old Testament, all the way through the New Testament, all they way until 1999. The Sabbath is for our own good. The Sabbath builds faith. That is powerful stuff from a loving God.
I want to talk about application right now. We have to ask ourselves how we can apply this to our lives. We wonder, however, how we can really make it real. How this can revolutionize your life? How can I am this a part of my daily living? How? How? How?
I want you to get involved in some R and R. Based on the authority of the scripture, I want you to get involved in some R and R. The first thing we are to do when we hit the Sabbath is, we are to remember God. We are to remember God. Now what does it mean to remember God? If you look in both the Old Testament and the New, people always gathered together in large communities to worship God. They worshiped God in the temple and in the synagogue in the Old Testament and ultimately in the New Testament, they worshiped in the local church. I want you to look around for a second because the local church is the most important entity in the universe. This is where it happens. This is where God makes His manifold wisdom easy to understand. This is where God gives us these transforming principles that can change our very lives. God loves the local church. Every time we come to church, God has something awesome He wants to say to you and to me. That is how much God loves us.
I love what it says in Exodus 20:10. “But the seventh day is a Sabbath ….” to golf? to antiquing? to decorating? No. No. No. “…to the Lord, your God.” Yet I laugh when men tell me this one. They say, “You know, Ed, I get more praying done on the golf course than I ever do in church.” Ha, ha, ha. I like that one. “Lord, keep this one on the fairway.” “God, I need a birdie on this one to beat my friend.” Please, Lord, help me to read these greens.” Don’t even go there. We are to go to church because something supernatural happens when people gather together and worship God. Corporate worship inspires our individual worship.
Here is what I think will happen one day. One day, when a lot of us die and go to heaven, God will sit us down and say, “You know, you received Me in your life. I gave you the gift of salvation but you didn’t do much with it.” Remember, becoming a Christian is a decision and after the decision comes development. But God will look at some of us and say, “You were so into all of the activities of life, so busy with traveling, so busy with the teams, so busy that you dissed my day and didn’t make church a top priority. You didn’t honor My day and I had some incredible things to say to you, something life-changing to say to you, something about your marriage to say to you, about child-rearing to say to you, about your career to say to you, about your finances to say to you but, you missed it.” Don’t let that be you.
Now I am not saying to be up here every single weekend, to never miss church. But I am saying that the minimum worship requirement should be at least three out of four weekends a month. It has got to be. If it is not, we will slowly begin to drift along the seas of relativism. I don’t know about you, but if I miss a couple of days of individual worship with God, or a weekend, I can tell it. I can feel that slow, methodical drift. We are to remember God.
_________58:13-14, “If you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you’ll find your joy in the Lord and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.” Hey, parents, every time you model consistency in church attendance, every time you have your children and your students up here so they can learn at an age appropriate level the difference that Jesus Christ makes, you are speaking volumes to them. You are giving them a gift that money cannot touch. On the other hand, parents, every time you model inconsistency, every time you kind of pick and choose and look to see what else is out there you might do instead of church, you are modeling to your children that God is inconsistent and you are giving them an inconsistent view of our consistent God and helping them miss what God wants to say to them through Children’s Church, through Jr. High or High School activities.
This past Wednesday we had 219 junior high students here for worship. Isn’t that amazing? Yet, I had a parent tell me the other day, “Well, you know, this youth stuff just doesn’t fit into our schedule.” I said, “Doc, man, you have got it all wrong. Since when does God fit into your schedule. We fit into God’s schedule.” Every sacrifice, every act of discipline, every time we are up here, it is worth it. How many times have I been greeting people in the lobby and had person after person say that they had almost slept in instead of coming to church. I can always fill in the next little sentence. And I am so glad I did. How many times have I heard that? I am so glad I did. We have got to remember God on His day. We have got to worship Him consistently and rhythmically and regularly. Do you have a burning desire for worship? Do you?
Thursday night I was in Los Angeles speaking at a church known as The Dream Center. It is in a very, very crime infested and rough area of Los Angeles. As I was walking to this old gym that has been converted to a church, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Before I even walked into the auditorium, I saw a gauntlet of seventeen guys who, I was told, were former gang bangers, pimps and career criminals who had been radically delivered from the streets and from their former lifestyle. They were giving me high fives before I walked in. They were cheering, “Come on, preach it, Ed. I can’t wait to hear what God is going to say through you. Ed, we are fired up.” This was before I got in. I am not a very emotional guy but I started to get teary eyed. Everywhere I looked I locked eyes with someone who had been radically changed. Wow. I wondered what it was going to be like inside.
When I walked into this place, I saw a church like I had never seen before. Talk about a melting pot. There were some Armani clad, Hollywood types there. But the lion’s share were people like I had never seen in my life. There were groups of teenage prostitutes who had been picked up by buses on Sunset Strip and brought to the church. There were people who had been involved in all the crime and sin. While the band was playing ethnic music that just rocked the house, everywhere I turned I saw someone who had either been delivered from a hellish existence or someone who was presently involved in it. People were freaky in there.
And these people are desperate, from the loneliness street person to the leader of the 18th Street Gang. They are desperate for worship. They wouldn’t miss worship. They were hanging on every word, every note of every song. Why? Because they give God his due. Because they know how to remember God as God. They understand how to respect his position, his priority, his name and his day. And I thought, what is it like in Dallas/Ft. Worth? What is it like in our church? What is it like in people who walk through the doors of Fellowship Church? Do they have that same mentality? I asked, do I have it? Do I?
I always laugh when people tell me this. “Man, Ed, Fellowship Church is really big. It is a big old place, man. There are a lot of people at the Fellowship Church. I heard you got 7,000 people coming on the weekends. Wow, that is really big.” Well, if you do just some casual studying of the New Testament, a lot of the early church mentioned had 50,000 to 75,000 people in attendance. They worshipped together in large communities on the weekends. So our church compared to those New Testament churches is a little punk church. Small church. Don’t worry about the size. You worry about your life and the size of your heart. God will take care of the rest.
When you come to worship God, don’t just stop at the corporate thing. Corporate worship is commanded. Hebrews 10:25. “Do not turn your back on the gathering together of believers.” Corporate worship is in stone. We have got to do it. You can’t do this one on one thing with God. Also, though, we are commanded to worship Him daily. And when I worship Him both daily and corporately, that is when everything clicks. That is when I have octane for true and successful living. So, remember God on his day. Don’t turn your back on worship.
Here is the next R. Refocus. Remember God and refocus. We refocus on ourselves. We recalibrate. We rethink who we are, what really makes us go and flow. For example, how many of you have worked in a store during inventory. It is not that fun, is it? It is the time when you have to account for everything in the establishment. That is what God challenges us to do on the Sabbath. While we worship God as God, we are to take stock. We are to ask ourselves some tough questions. “God, are my spiritual shelves empty? God, is this relationship really stocked? God, do I need to order some more endurance or some more power? God, help me, show me, tweek me, change me. God, I am clay, You are the potter. Show me how you want me to act and function in life.” Boy, there is power in doing that breaking away to remember God and refocus on ourselves.
Part of remembering God’s day is also being with family and friends. Part of it is finding a recreational pursuit that relaxes you, whether it is a walk in the park, riding around in the pickup truck, shooting baskets, fly fishing, whatever it is, find something that presses tranquility into your soul. Find something that you do differently. Remember, God said that He worked and then He did something different on the seventh day. He rested. And we are to do something different on the seventh day. But it is not called the seventh day for us anymore is it? Sunday is the first day. And we celebrate Sunday, why? Because Christ came back from the grave on the first day. That is why believers do it.
But again, I say, don’t get into all that legalistic stuff. I can’t pick up this cause it is considered work or I can’t walk over there and throw a pass to my son. Don’t get into a legalistic trip. Many of the people in Jesus’ day were so legalistic on the Sabbath they had everybody wigging. They were freaking out. They had crazy rules that they actually listed in a book called the Mishna.
Remember God and refocus on yourself. Psalm 62:5, “I find rest in God. Only He gives me hope.” What did God say after creation? It is bad? It is so-so? What did He say? It is good. God said, it is good. So He worked and He looked back over his shoulders and said, it is good. That is part of refocusing. We have to mirror the character and nature of God. After we have worked, once we have disengaged and begun to worship God as God, we need to look back over our shoulders and do an account, an inventory. We need to ask ourselves this one question. Is it good? It is good in my relationships? It is good in my walk with Christ? Is it good in my thought life? Is it good in the places I go? Is it good? Because, if we can say it is good, can give ourselves a high five, man, it is good. But if not, we can begin to work on some areas and that, my friends, is the importance of number four.
Before we close I have got to warn you. This Sabbath stuff is not easy. It is tough. You know what the difficult thing is for me and I am a pastor having gone to Christian school, graduated from seminary, and completed some doctrinal work? I have studied the original languages and grown up in a pastor’s home, but do you know what is difficult for me? Praying. Praying is a challenge. Some can’t believe that. But it is difficult. Do you know why? The enemy knows what happens when Ed Young begins to pray. The enemy knows what begins to happen when we individually worship God. The enemy knows when Ed Young goes to church and rubs shoulders with other brothers and sisters. The same is true for you. That is why it is hard to pray. That is why it is hard to read the Bible. That is why our minds begin to wander. Satan knows that he better get us thinking about something else. That is also why we have so much competition for number four. The enemy is not going to just sit back and dangle his toes in the pool, sipping Perrier saying, “Go ahead, worship God.” He is not going to do that. But this is why Satan is stupid. Every time he attacks you and me that is the tip off. Now you should know what is really important. The Fourth Commandment is real big. That is why it is tough. I just wanted to share that with you for a minute.
So how do we make the fourth real and relevant and pure. Simply to do the R and R thing. Remember God and refocus. I am telling you something, friends, when you do that, when I do that, our lives will have a spark, a direction, a purpose, a spirit of peace and tranquility that this old world can never, ever offer or even come close to. So don’t forgo number four. Give God his due on his day because you will be glad that you did.