God's Boundaries for Abundant Living - No Gods But God, Part 1

Are you working too many hours even neglecting your family do you allow others to take advantage of you or would you like some help getting boundaries that restore your joy, peace, and your priorities today were to begin a journey together to discover 10 boundaries. God is established, you to enjoy life at its best state.

Welcome to this Thursday edition of living on the shipping trip serves as our Bible teacher on this daily international discipleship program begins a series called God's boundaries for abundant living fresh look at the 10 Commandments over the next several weeks will learn how to better value boundaries.

God put in place for our benefit and then how they can help us experience a life of blessing without your strip with his first message know God's but God Exodus chapter 20 I have four quick questions to ask question number one. Have you ever had anyone walk up to you that you didn't know very well and get about 3 inches from your face and started talking and then you unconsciously start backing up and they just keep moving forward, and the result was discomfort that they invaded your space. It was just kinda weird question number two had ever gone to a family picnic or a corporate picnic and play volleyball with a group of people you didn't know and had one person on your team that no matter where the ball went like it's coming right to you and they knock you out of the way as they actually take the entire side and they hit everybody's ball and on good days it's a little irritating on bad days, you start to get mad. Question number three. Have you ever been driving little more serious. Down the road and you don't know whether the person was drunk or were they dropped a CD or something and looked down for their answering the phone call but as you're driving a car that is left of center, and you at the last second have to jerk and go off the road and then jerked back on in your hearts going up like this and thinking all my lands and it went from fearful to danger to outright anger is your response ever happened to you for the question. Have you ever had a parent or child, or a boss or a close friend ask you to do something and you knew you didn't want to do it. It wasn't a moral issue.

You didn't have to do it you knew in your heart. It wasn't the right thing for you, but they kept pushing and pushing and talking and talking and made you feel guilty enough until you said yes and then afterwards why you are doing it you want. Boy I hate this is makes me anyone ever all four of those things have one thing in common.

There was a violation of boundaries.

Each one of us has boundaries or space and that boundaries or space is what we need in order to have healthy growing relationships in your space on the volleyball court.

We all have personal space and boundaries. You have your side of the road and they have their side of the road and when they cross into your side of the road and whether it's the relational road to the physical road when someone violates your boundaries. It produces anything from a mild irritation to discomfort to anger to fear toward breaking off a relationship a boundary.

Quite simply put, is this. It's where one person stops and another person starts. It's where one thing stops and another thing starts and where the one stops and the other starts is called a boundary and boundaries are often given by markers or verbally boundaries are created by the word no no you can't stand that close to me know you can't hit the ball in my space. No, you can't drive your car on my side of the road and no you can't make me do your agenda. If it's not God's will for my life, no matter how guilty you try to make me feel boundaries are essential for all of us. Boundaries are essential for health boundaries are so essential for relationships boundaries are essential for you to do life in a way that honors God and you ready for this God has boundaries.

You know there's a book I had a chance.

About eight or 10 years ago to be at a conference about 10 pastors of large churches and we all had similar pressures and we all got away in a little cabin for about three days and Henry cloud came who wrote the book on boundaries.

We had a good time just talking about how hard it is. As a senior pastor to keep boundaries to protect your family and your personal life and boundaries were you work out and keep your health because there's so many pools and so many demands as I talk with Henry cloud.

I was amazed us and where did you get all this stuff and he had some theological trainings that you know where I got it. He said I did about a three year internship and I did it in a mental health ward and I just watch people after people after people after people trying to live their life to please everyone and all the psychological damage that it did and as I kept reading through the time in my life. A real struggling time they set off and I would go away for 56 hours a day and do nothing but read the Bible, read the Bible, read the Bible, read the Bible and I saw how clearly God outlined boundaries in one of most important times God lays out boundaries is in the Old Testament. When was to take a people and make them distinct and help them understand help them understand who he is where he stops and how they need to stop in relationship with one another and where you give room for other people start in the title of the series is called God's boundaries. The fresh look at the 10 Commandments. If you go ahead and pull out you will study guide teaching handout I want to dig in with you and take a fresh look at the 10 Commandments but look at them through the perspective of boundaries when boundaries are broken relationships falter. Ruben Shelley in a book called written in stone ethics from the heart writes this when looking back at the 60s experiment in the 70s and the 80s and at the heart of all that is going to say is that boundaries were destroyed.

He set the theme of the 60s was antiestablishment in the protest against government, family, church, people who assume that God was dead, sank into self-destructive heir of drugs, uninhabited sex and moral anarchy. Next we moved into self absorbed decade of the 70s Tom Wolf dubbed it the decade of me and its bestsellers were looking out for number one and winning through intimidation. We endured then the golden age of greed, the decade of the 80s athletes gambled on sporting events, Wall Street kingpins were jailed for insider training officials and government were caught in sex, drug and influence peddling scandals now and later the 90s and the early 21st century were faced with a crisis of ethics. Once what we took for granted is common decency is now in common. The utterly outrageous has become ordinary or you believe that don't you. If I see one more reality TV program for the latest one trading spouses.

The obscene is commonplace. Our code of ethics is eroded in such a massive scale that we become cynical about morality. We sense that something is terribly, terribly wrong with the spiritual fabric of our world since 1960. Listen carefully.

Violent crime in America has increased more than 500% Justice Department study in 1987 predicted that 8/10 Americans will be a victim of a violent crime in their lifetime. Crime is so prevalent in America that Americans have altered their lifestyles out of fear whole sections of major cities are considered unsafe. I've been were policemen of said don't drive in that area town.

We can't guarantee any protection. One fourth of the population had put in home security systems.

Shoppers worry about where to park at shopping malls, women carry Mason their glove compartments and purses more and more people were carrying guns and newspapers and talkshows document the fact that crime is the most important subject on people's hearts, he wrote that before terrorism begin to occur. What I want to suggest is that we did experiments in the 60 where we cast off restraint or boundaries, and the overwhelming consensus in our day is we need a moral compass. We need a Northstar we need a roadmap. We need a foundation for truth as someone wisely said we did our own thing in our own thing is doing it to us. But the problem in our world. Our current dilemma is which boundaries you may have heard William Bennett a few years ago, wrote a book on virtues and it's very politically correct to talk about ethics. Ethics courses popped up in the mid to late 90s and all kind of business schools.

The problem is when you get specific. No one can agree on what is right and what is wrong. As Francis Schaeffer said when you remove absolutes, and there is no right and there is no wrong that people will begin to erode all kind of boundaries we've eroded boundaries about marriage. We've eroded boundaries about right and wrong.

We've eroded boundaries about what is life and what is death and things that were unthinkable 30 or 40 years ago. Now we have live babies in the eighth or eight the half month that are perfectly healthy being aborted because the boundaries been shifted and we say that's not a real person until they come out of the womb. Now we say, if people are useful to society. We kill them prematurely and we give it a fancy name because the boundary between what is life and what's of value has been changed and will. Here's the deal unless we get clear on the boundaries that God has set were in trouble. In fact, I know were in trouble when instead of Billy Graham or a Christian leader telling the world that we need to have boundaries, it becomes Ted Koppel you know Ted Koppel, Mr. Nightline himself.

This is a quote out of his address to the University of Duke at the graduation Ted Koppel of Nightline says our society finds truth to strong medicine to digest in its purest form.

Truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder.

It's a howling reproach what Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not the 10 suggestions. They were the 10 Commandments. Notice he says they are not were the sheer brilliance of the 10 Commandments is that they codify in a handful of words acceptable human behavior, not just for then or now.

But for all time. Now that that's not a preacher that is a man at Duke University who has a nighttime talk show looking at our world and saying something's gotta change.

He closes that speech at that commencement by saying there is a harmony and inner peace to be found in following a moral compass that points in the same direction, regardless of fashion or trend as you turn the page. What I like to do with you is look at God's boundaries for abundant living. So often we think of the 10 Commandments we been informed far more by Charlton Heston and a movie that we are Scripture, we have a picture of a very angry God with lightning bolts coming out of the mountain steaming down on people and put putting something on some stone tablets in order to make people do what they're supposed to do and what I want to tell you is that is an un-biblical position of what the Scripture has to teach is that just as there is a double yellow line on a curved road that is it a boundary that says do not pass so that you can be protected. God gave the 10 Commandments. Just as there is a boundary that says that when people get so close.

You need enough space for your own protection. Linda let alone the germs. God set out boundaries like guardrails that go around a winding road to protect and provide key grace and direction and help and what I want to do in the next 10 sessions together is I want to look at God's boundaries whose purposes for abundant living. Who's Who is rooted in grace, who longs for you to have the best in relationships, longs for you to know him who longs for you, not only to have a vertical relationship with him, but a horizontal relationship with one another that is deeper and better than you could ever dream, and so on one tablet. He put boundaries or commands about your relationship with him and on another tablet. He put boundaries about your relationship with other people and so let's look at boundary number one were literally, it's called the 10 words. It's referred to the 10 Commandments in other places it talks about the law but literally it's 10 words as we dig in together. You'll notice on the inside of your notes. There's three things you need to understand to understand what's going on in the 10 Commandments. First is who gave us the 10 Commandments, second wind, to whom did he give them. And third, why did he give them so let's start with the who we got Exodus chapter 20 verses one and two and I put them on your notes and God spoke all these words and he said I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. Notice they didn't come from a summit or seminar of worldwide leaders.

They came from God. Notice, secondly the food that gave them is that LORD that is Yahweh or Jehovah of the theologians call it that tetra Graham and on. It is four letters with no vowels in Hebrew. It was too holy or too sacred and the best that the theologians can come up with is the core Hebrew word of the verb to be.

I am that I am the everlasting one. So first, what we learn is who gave them there is an eternal one and second you notice I the Lord God gave you personal pronouns. God is eternal. He's outside of time, but he's also personal and intimate.

He says I Yahweh, the Lord your God, and third notice it's in the context of grace. The 10 Commandments didn't come out of some blank slate where God said, I am God. Do this it came after he delivered Israel. The Israelites lived in a world of Egypt for 400 years they were over 1500 gods, their kids grow up with 1500 competing God saying this is true, and at the top of all the gods was Pharaoh. If you study carefully you learn that those 10 plagues each. Those were the 10 top gods in Egypt and when Moses was given power by God to defeat each one of those plagues and finally Pharaoh and Pharaoh's son. It was a way where God was letting his people know I am superior to all the gods in all the world I am the Lord your God, who delivered you, they seen the Red Sea part. They see the enemies and the hardships they see the Red Sea close back over they are talking about a God who said I love you I care for you I delivered you. I'm for you. Now I want to give you some boundary.

I want to show you how to live in such a way where you can enjoy the deepest best relationship with me possible and the deepest best relationship with one another and see here's the problem of the 10 Commandments. I mean we think about them being on walls.

These are the most revolutionary 10 words in the history of mankind. They have shaped law they have shaped relationships how we think, how the world thinks is rooted in but you know what before they came.

They were around they went around God is giving this truth to his people out of his love and out of his mercy so they could experience him and experience instead relationally people not going left of center, and God didn't want the discomfort and irritation and the fear and the anger and the pain when boundaries are violated with him or with one another. So the first thing to understand is who gave him they come from an eternal God who is personal, who is loving and then notice the last line who is all-powerful.

He says I brought you out of Egypt, the land of slavery and then the command, the commands you have shall have no other gods before me. So winded occurrence of whom open your Bibles if you will to chapter 19 of Exodus and in the first 36 verses we get a little background on who when were they given and to whom. It's in the third month after the Israelites left Egypt, so they been through all this preparation and let my people go in the 10 plagues in all the chaos and all the pain and finally their set free and then they think they're gonna die and then they get to the waters edge, and got opens the Red Sea and so they been about three months there just literally starting to get a little sensitive a daily rhythm. You know the fire in the cloud and its leading them and so they been three months to the very day they came to the desert of Sinai, and after they set out for rough but rough iodine. They entered the desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain and Moses went up to God and the Lord called to him from the mountain said this is what you're to say to the house of Jacob, and what you to tell the people of Israel. You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, God of power and how I carried you on Eagles wings and brought you to myself, a God of compassion see in their day that Eagles wings woods very quickly was a word picture that they they and their day would've been out in nature and seen how a mother eagle would take those eaglets and fly and then tilt the wings and drop them and they would flatten flapping and then just at the last second swoop under and take care of. He's giving them a picture of I'm, I'm the God of the most awesome power you've ever dreamed of, but I'm a God who cares for you as a people. The way the eagle cares for its eaglets. You yourselves are seen what I did to Egypt how I cared you on these eagle wings brought you to notice the goal myself. Now, if you obey me fully and keep my commandments been out of the nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine. You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

These are the words to speak to the Israelites when three months after the deliverance crew to a people in bondage for 400 years to Israel and notice his treasured possession.

These are words of life and grace and encouragement. These are words you going to be a kingdom of priests. These are words are saying to a group of people all the earth is mine. I created it.

But a part of my plan. You are special and I'm gonna bring you to myself. For me this isn't about me giving you a straitjacket of rules and you gotta keep these rules. I am going to give you these boundaries in order that you can share with me at an intimate level. What no person has ever experienced, and then will learn from later in Scripture that I want to take this nation and I want to take it like a piece of cola taken through a process where you become a diamond in the rough and when I give you my law and my presence and my power all the world will see through this diamond, the glory and the glitter and the beauty of the God eternal on this planet and that was the skull and so is in a given words of life is going to give them the 10 words the 10 boundaries so they can have a relationship with him in a relationship with one another.

Why did he give them notice in chapter 20.

Skip down to verse 20 Moses said to the people. Do not be afraid that member that the mountains and shake check in now the smoke is gone up lightning bolts. Basically by this time there saying hey Moses, if God wants to talk again you talk to them.

I think we got the message. He scared us to death. Moses says that. Don't be afraid God has come to test you. Why so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.

Verse 21.

The people remained at a distance while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was God gave these 10 words to reveal himself. How do you know God's character of purity. The 10 words, the 10 Commandments. How do you know what God wants for relationships.

The 10 words, the 10 Commandments God gave these to reveal himself and he gave them to protect the people and to protect us from sinning when you miss the mark. That's what sin is when you miss the mark in relationships when you miss the mark with God was always the result doesn't bring pain doesn't bring fallout doesn't bring chaos if not it's not just a matter don't have sex before marriage do you think God knew about herpes. You think God knew about HIV-positive you think God knew about age when he gave that command you think God knew about all the psychological studies we've done that when we find the people live together before they get married but the sexual satisfaction in the marriage is much less than those who don't.

But the divorce rate is 50% higher, but the chances of being a one-man or one-woman mate really goes down people live together. Why do you think I gave these rules because out of his mercy and his love and his grace. He knew what would protect us. Sin always brings death. Death is separation and pain and chaos. These are not 10 laws that are a straitjacket you got to doing because there's a big God. And he's so big he can make everyone do what he says these are the 10 words of an ultimate all-knowing, all powerful, eternal father who is absolutely holy and pure and knows you and loves you and your children and loves you and your marriage and in your singleness, and in your teen years and your sunset years and is given words of life that if you obey them. It will keep you from sin. It will allow you to know him and will allow you to meet God in ways beyond what you never drink right back. If you're just joining us, you're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram chips message, no gods, but God is from his series God's boundaries for abundant living. Strip explained today rather than a harsh list of prohibitions Commandments are actually life-giving instructions from a heavenly father who loves his children. God's boundaries for abundant living provides a high view of God that will give you a new appreciation of your relationship with creating a solid foundation for every aspect of your life. If that's something you'd like to learn more about. We want to help for limited time, the CDs for God's boundaries are discounted and the MP3s are absolutely free.

You'll find God's boundaries resources on our website LivingontheEdge.org or if you prefer to talk with one of our customer care representatives give us a call at 1-888-333-6003 will trip it only think about the 10 Commandments I think a lot of people imagine an angry God just waiting for us to mess up what resource do we have the good help people get an accurate view of God and then really see these Commandments as the living boundaries.

He set up for our good will Dave you need understand that God's boundaries come out of his heart and his heart is as a father that wants to protect his children and until you hear his voice and tell you really understand personally not what someone else says about the Bible. But until you get into the Scriptures yourself and hear the Holy Spirit speak compassion and protection and encouragement in your heart.

It's very difficult to see the 10 Commandments as anything more than than rules I have to follow and what we all know is we can't, in and of ourselves. And that's honestly why we've created free video resource called how to hear God's voice in Scripture it's five brief online videos where I literally walk people through step-by-step how to get into God's word.

I just find so many people that they just come at you and I tried reading the Bible and I just don't get it I or you and I REITs only chapters and it's just performance what we want you to know is that there's an easy clear way.

There's a daily pattern of spending time with God, and you can learn to hear his voice and when you do kill direct your life is people who say have never open God's word and say I don't know where to begin this video series will help you start sort of that point Eddie and begin to hear God's voice and learn to study Scripture for yourself. We were really excited about putting this in people's hands and it's absolutely free will is online video course how to hear God's voice in Scripture really is a great resource from Living on the Edge with your opening the Bible for the first time or you've been reading it for years. What Chip shares take your ability to discern God's voice to a whole new level. You can do these five video sessions on your own time at your own pace as your relationship with God deepens your confidence will increase and you'll actually begin to look forward to spending time with them. Just go online to LivingontheEdge.org to check out this free video resource and take your next step toward hearing God speak to you through his word will now here's Chip to wrap up today's program as we launch on this brand-new journey together.

I hope that you will really lock on with me and studied the 10 Commandments and I pray that you'll see them like never before.

You know when I was a kid I grew up in, and I heard the 10 Commandments and you know I was that little boy that you know they took to church until I didn't have to go anymore and and and the 10 Commandments were like these big heavy things that were on the wall and you know what they are big and they are heavy, but what we forget is that there given by God of grace. The God who when he gave them in the that there was thunder and lightning and they heard his voice and the people trembled. He was putting up guardrails in a very evil world to protect them from all the things it would destroy their lives. He knew that they worshiped other gods they'd be destroyed, but he knew that if they would create idols or would not obey the things that he laid out he was giving them away to live that would produce intimacy and joy and prosperity.

And that's what the 10 Commandments were designed to do. In fact Jesus in the sermon on the Mount does a lot of work to explain.

You know you have heard it said and what he talks about is how people took the 10 Commandments and put them as balls and chains around people's necks and whites that they couldn't hold any setting of the spirit of the 10 Commandments, the spirit of God's truth.

It was really to liberate.

It was really to protect.

And so we have a really great time and I want you to know that we all struggle with idols and we talked about this in the idol can be your wife, your husband, your job money. Your looks, your body, it can be all kind of different things but none of those things can deliver. And so what we talk about here Living on the Edge a lot is becoming a Romans 12 Christian being a grace oriented relationally connected follower of Christ, and so these guardrails of the 10 Commandments are the Old Testament picture of this is what's best for you.

In Romans 12 what God does. He says look here's how it plays out in your relationship with me, with the world with yourself, with believers and with unbelievers. If you want to take a long time and go to the website download the message notes for this message for free. Let me encourage you to do that. Let's go on a journey together will strip just suggested one of the best ways to get the most out of this series is to download his message notes and use them as you listen Chip's message notes contain his outline. Scripture verses and much more must evolve chips message notes are completely free. Just go to LivingontheEdge.org and click listen now for this free download whether you use them for your own personal study or for your small group will gain new levels of understanding, will be sure to join us again tomorrow is to continues our series God's boundaries for abundant living. Until then, this is very brief saying thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge