The instant some people hear anything about Christianity they begin to conjure up negatives. For too many being a Christian is defined by what they are not allowed to do. “I don’t drink and I don’t chew and I don’t go with girls who do.” For too much of the world, being a Christian is a joyless, dry, negative thing, for fuddy-duddies and straight-laced biddies and folks whose faces might crack is they were to dare a smile.
But being a Christian is nothing like that. Being a Christian is about living in fellowship with God and doing what fellowship calls for. Being a Christian is finding deep and authentic freedom and joy in a relationship with God.
This morning I have good news, great news. The good news is that God has come near. He draws us close to Himself, and then He offers us liberty and joy. I have wonderful news – that in Jesus Christ, the word made flesh, God has approached us and is offering us something life-giving, fulfilling, hope-bringing. Today I celebrate about what God is doing in Jesus Christ. He is drawing near to us, so that we may draw close to Him and may live free! Good news!
To do that, I am going to what may seem a strange place. It may seem odd that if I want to talk about God’s gift of freedom, I would go to Mt. Sinai, where the Ten Commandments were given. If I am to speak about God’s gift of freedom, why would I use a Scripture that speaks of commands and expectations? Why would I, if I want you to feel free, select a Scripture that says, over and over again, “Thou shalt not”. It sounds like it’s all negatives, all demands, no joy. But just wait. Let’s put it into context. Let’s see what God was doing at Mt. Sinai when He gave the Ten Commandments.
I
First, notice that the Lord’s deepest investment is not in commands, but it is in His people. His deepest concern is for us. He wants a direct, face-to-face encounter with us. God wants us to be in fellowship with Him.
Moses gathered the people, and said,
The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. Not with our ancestors did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today. The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the fire. (At that time I was standing between the LORD and you to declare to you the words of the LORD; for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up the mountain.)
The Lord spoke face to face. You see, God is profoundly invested in having a relationship with us. But our issue is that we are afraid. We are anxious. We do not go up to the mountain to encounter Him, because we are afraid. And so the Lord our God comes to us and reaches out to us. He goes out of His way to connect with us – not to punish us, not to threaten us, but to love us.
But I say again that our issue is that we are afraid and anxious. The more I read the Scriptures, the more I am persuaded that the heart of sin is fear and anxiety. I know it is customary to speak of pride as the core sin, and that has its place. But I believe, not only as I read the Bible but also as I read people, that the heart of sin is that fear and anxiety. We have not trusted the love and the care of God. And so we do create a legalistic religion. We invent a religious program that is so full of do’s and don’ts, thou shalts and thou shalt nots, that all the joy is squeezed out of it. All the spontaneity is destroyed. We take what is intended to be a relationship of love and joy, and we make it into a contract of legalities and lovelessness.
I know about this. I’ve been there. I remember as a teenager, getting into that smugly self-righteous mode. One night my parents wanted to play a card game that required four people – my mother, my father, my brother, and me. But I loftily announced that as a Christian I didn’t play cards, thank you very much. The fact is that I not only revealed my anxiety, but I also broke up everybody else’s fun at the same time. I had defined being a Christian as a list of the things I didn’t do. But I didn’t have a clue about a relationship with God.
The good news today is that instead of do’s and don’ts, instead of the shalts and the shalt nots, being a Christian is being in relationship with God. It is a face-to-face encounter with our creator. The most fundamental question I can ask you today is, “Do you know Him? Do you know the Lord, up close and personal?” I do not ask you whether you know Christian doctrine or whether you are a church member. I do not ask whether you keep certain rules or even whether you are baptized. After all, lots of folks who have been baptized are nothing more than wet sinners. And why? Because they have adopted a religion of demands and negativity rather than developing a relationship with the living Lord. So I ask again, “Do you know Him? Do you know the Lord? Before you talk about how you behave, do you talk to Him personally?”
The good news of Advent is that in Jesus Christ, God is drawing near to us, so that we may draw close to Him, and live in fellowship.
II
But now, you did notice, of course, that the Ten Commandments follow this declaration about face-to-face encounter. You did notice that there are some thou shalts and some thou shalt nots. By no means today am I suggesting that being a Christian is “do whatever you feel like doing.” In no way would I want you to walk out of here believing that there are no demands and it’s all a squishy me-and-my-Jesus business. It’s not. Not at all. There are expectation about being a Christian. There are behaviors I need to pay attention to. So the Commandments, because we do not always understand what that means. We need to be instructed. We need to be guided.
A young couple came to a minister and asked him to marry them, right there on the spot. No waiting, no planning, no counseling, no orange blossoms, no bridesmaids, and no wedding march. Just please marry us right now. So he sat them down and starting asking them questions. “What can you promise each other?” They came up with a list of things, and he added to it. They agreed. “What do you think you need to avoid? What are some of the things you must not do if you are going to be married?” Together the three of them made that list too. After about an hour of conversation, the couple said to the minister, “So when are we going to repeat our vows?” And he said, “You just did!” They married when they committed heart and mind to some boundaries. It wasn’t about rules the minister read out of ab book. It was about their personal commitments to boundaries.
Do you see? To be in a relationship is not to be without boundaries; to be in a relationship is to have very clear and committed boundaries. But those limits are there not simply because they are rules that have to be obeyed. Those limits are there because God wants us to have a positive, successful life. God knows that we need to be instructed. But God also knows that if we are to live His way, we need to receive His law in love. We need to know and to feel, way down deep, a desire to live His way. It’s not enough just to live the rules; let’s find the joy in the rules. It is there.
Let me frame this another way. The Ten Commandments – do you suppose that mean old God sat up in heaven and said, “Let me command some things that will frustrate them and make them unhappy. Let me invent some rules just to keep them from having any fun. Let me see, they like money, so just to make them unhappy, I’ll tell them they can’t steal or covet. And, oh, they love to rebel against their parents, so, just to frustrate them, I’ll tell them they have to honor their fathers and their mothers. What else? Oh yes, my, they love that sex thing, so I will really mess up their psyches and forbid adultery.” Do you think that’s the way God operates, just thinking up rules to give us fits?
No, not on your life! God sets boundaries so that we can live positively. God sets rules so that we can live happily. God knows that if we kill and steal and covet and lie and all the rest, we will damage ourselves. We will of course hurt our brothers and our sisters, but we will also hurt ourselves. And so God gives us these Commandments, so that we may live in joy.
When we understand that, keeping God’s ways becomes a gift and not a burden. When we grasp how much God loves us – that He loves us so much He does not want to see us go out there and hurt ourselves – then we discover that doing what God wants us to do does not frustrate us. It fulfills us. It’s not a burden; it’s a gift.
Take the matter of tithing, for example. No one can read the Bible and not understand that a tenth of our income belongs to God and is to be contributed to Kingdom work. That’s not even under debate, it’s so clear. But, sad to say, many of us think of giving a tenth of our income to the Kingdom as a burden. We groan about how much it is, and we say we cannot afford it. We’ve got bills to pay and tuition and retirement, and tithing would just be an intolerable burden.
But the issue is that we are looking at it from the wrong angle. Tithing is a response to a loving God, who empowered us to earn an income in the first place. Tithing is a privilege and a joy; it’s not a tax. It’s not a burden. God loves us so much that He permits us an opportunity to share in the Kingdom. God loves us so much that He allows us to have a stake in what He is doing. I cannot speak for others, but I can tell you that for the more than forty years of our marriage, my wife and I have given more than a tithe of our income to the churches where we’ve been members. We chose to do it; we did not think of it as something we had to do. You’ll notice that we did not starve, our children were educated, our mortgage was paid, and our car notes were retired. For us, it has not been a “have to” but a “want to”, and it has worked wonderfully well.
Yes, the God of Mt. Sinai issued Ten Commandments. Not Ten Suggestions or Ten Timid Tentatives. But it is not because God wants to make life hard for us. It is because He loves us and wants to show us the paths in which we can walk toward joy. And when we perceive His love, it is not what we cannot do, must not do, shall not do that matters; it is what we are able to do, allowed to do, freed up to do. Praise God, we are free to follow Him! And it is no burden.
III
And so, how right and wonderful it is that after Moses gives the people the Ten Commandments he gives them also the Great Commandment. He gives them something that wraps up this whole thing about how we should live and what we should do. And it becomes not so much ought and should and must and required. It becomes a wonderful, warm, spontaneous outburst of the heart. Listen, after the Ten Commandments, the Great Commandment:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them .. Fix them on your head, write them on the doorposts of your house.
Go tell how wonderful the Lord is! Go tell how great it is to live in fellowship with Him. Go tell somebody, anybody, this one great truth: that God is love, God loves us, and we are called to love Him. Go tell somebody that He who made us is not willing that one should perish, lost in shades of night. Go tell someone that fellowship with God is not defined by thou shalt nots, nor is it bound up with the burden of all the things you must not do. No, life is defined by what love calls for and is bound up with what a loving heart wants to do in response to Him.
Do not walk out of here today, wagging accusing fingers at someone, “You ought to go to church, because God expects it.” Go tell him instead, “Worship is a wonderful experience, given by God for your joy and for His.” Do not go to your neighbor and list all her wrongdoings and threaten her with judgment if she does not straighten up. Go instead to tell her about the power, the joy, and the freedom that living in Christ brings. When she responds to that, the other behaviors will soon disappear; she won’t even want them anymore. Go tell. Go tell the good news.
Go tell the good news of freedom, because in Jesus Christ God has drawn near to us and shows us the freest man who ever lived, bound by no rules, and yet choosing freely to live as a man for others. Go tell the good news of salvation, because in Jesus Christ God has brought hope to everyone who feels hard pressed to do what he ought to do, and at the same time, has brought way and truth and life to those who care little about what they ought to do. Go tell that! It’s good news!
Go tell it on Mt. Sinai, the place where the law was given, that God, in whom we live and move and have our being, has come near to love us and to permit us to love Him. All you need is to acknowledge before Him your emptiness and your anxiety, your fear and your pride, and then trust Him to love you out of all of that. Go tell it on Mt. Sinai, that there is life beyond rules, there is freedom beyond thou shalts and thou shalt nots, there is liberty beyond must and don’t and cannot. There is, in Jesus Christ, ultimate liberty and joy unending. There is in Jesus Christ, God’s great “Yes” for us. Go tell it.
Go tell the good news. Go tell it to children, some of whom have been made to tremble because adults have threatened them within an inch of their life if they do not shut up and obey. Go tell the good news of liberty to young people, who are often so filled with self-hatred that they can hardly breathe. Go tell it to young parents, who are so determined that their children will make no mistakes that they quash their spirits. Go tell it to seniors, who fear they can never make up for all the mistakes of past years. Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills, and everywhere, that Jesus Christ frees you, restores you, forgives you, makes you new. Go tell that. It’s the best news yet.
Go tell the good news, tell it everywhere. Go tell it to the Muslim, whose faith is captured in rules and observances, and who thinks that Mohammed supersedes Jesus, there is in Jesus only the joy of man’s desiring. Go tell it to your Jewish neighbor, who has waited for centuries for Messiah to appear, that what she has looked for is nearer than breathing and closer than hands and feet. Go tell it to the Buddhist down the street, who looks within for enlightenment, and it comes not; and to the Hindu over the way, who bows down before grotesque images, that the Lord our God is one god, calling us to love Him and not be afraid of Him. Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere, that God is come in Jesus Christ, who is like no other in all history.
And yes, go tell it too to that tradition-bound, hard-boiled, negative, strict ultra-Christian, whose deep anxieties kill all joy and whose profound fear squeezes hope out of everything. Tell even him that he cannot measure up, but it’s all right. Tell him simply this: that while he was a sinner – because he was a sinner – Christ died for him, the godly for the ungodly. And let us come to this Table to remember and to celebrate. Go tell it on the mountain, that God’s great gift, God’s eternal yes, that Jesus Christ is born.
