Five Act Story

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1.4.09

Several of you are going to try to read through the Bible this year
so I wanted to give you two ideas

2 Timothy 3:16

Have you ever heard this one?
“The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.”
In other words: We do what the Bible says.

This sounds very Biblical and faithful.

The fact is every Christian ignores many commandments in the Bible.

Every Christian picks and chooses what he is going to obey.

AJ Jacobs’
The Year of Living Biblically:One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

“As I write this, I have a beard that makes me resemble Moses. Or Abe Lincoln. It’s not a well-manicured, socially-acceptable beard. It’s an untamed mass that creeps up toward my eyeballs and drapes below my neckline. I’ve never allowed my facial hair to grow before, and it’s been an odd and enlightening experience.

But I mean no harm. The facial hair is simply the most noticeable physical manifestation of a spiritual journey I began a year ago.

My quest has been this: To live the ultimate Biblical life. Or more precisely, to follow the Bible as literally as possible. To obey the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love my neighbor. But also to abide by the oft-neglected rules: To avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers. And, naturally, to leave the edges of my beard unshaven (Leviticus 19:27). I am trying to obey the entire Bible, without picking and choosing.”

If you shaved your beard this morning, you broke a commandment.

We all know Leviticus 19:18 “love your neighbor as yourself” but what about other commands from the same chapter?

Leviticus 19: 9, 19, 26, 27, 32
My guess is you all ignore these commands.

Jesus said “do not pray in public”
Do you ignore this?

Jesus also said “whenever you pray, recite this prayer..” and gave us the words to use.
Do you ever pray with other words?

“Wash one another’s feet”
John 13:14
Do you obey this one?

“give up everything you have”
Lk 14:33
“heal the sick and raise the dead”
Mt 10:8
“do not charge interest”
Lev 25.36
What about these?

Sometimes we claim we are keeping a commandment when we are not.

For example, Tithing
How many of us have heard preachers preach that the Bible commands people to give a tithe? They tell youto give 10% of your money to the church and say that is “obeying” God’s commandment to tithe. But those who give 10% to the church are not really obeying the commandments in Deuteronomy to tithe (12, 14, 26)

from Generous Giving website
“The tithe was an offering of one’s agricultural income to the Lord as an expression of thanks and dedication. In the Old Testament agricultural economy, tithes were paid not in cash, gold or goods but in crops or livestock, for only the agricultural fruit of the promised land was to be tithed—not other forms of income. Although today we commonly think of the tithe as “10 percent” , apparently there are three tithes in the Old Testament, two every year and a third every third year, or an average of 23.3 percent of one’s annual produce from the land. Israelites who had become poor and lost their land or those who had moved to cities and engaged in non-agricultural trades almost certainly would have been exempt from tithe under Old Testament law. In the Old Testament and in early Jewish literature, tithe was not applied to all but only to landowners in Israel, who tithed off the increase of the land, i.e., what God’s promised land produced for them. Accordingly, there is no record of tithing from servants and other non-landowners, widows, sojourners and others in the land since these all received from others. (Except the Levites) Nor is there any evidence that tithe applied to all money/income, such as artisans in the cities or those who lost their land and became day laborers. The three tithes in Israel were used for three main purposes: (1) to support the Levites who were not given land of their own, (2) to provide a meal for community celebration and (3) to provide for the needs of the poor.”

one of the 10 commandments is “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy”
which is explained as meaning do no work from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday

None of us do this
some of us ignore this commands
and some of us take Sunday off and go to church and call it Sabbath
but that is not the literal commanment that God gave Israel

We claim to obey the Bible but we don’t really
we claim to obey Jesus but we don’t really

we can either become radical literalists or admit that we pick and choose
We all pick and choose which commands to obey.
That is my point.
None of us doing what the Bible says simply because it says it.

BUT how do you know you are not to obey a certain commandment and you must obey another commandment?

Genesis 17:9-14
Circumcision commanded
Galatians 5:6
“in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value”

Even the Bible disagrees with itself.
but that is because Paul knew he was in a new ACT of the story
He was living in Act 5 and God had commanded Israel to circumcise in Act 2

1. Read the Bible as a Story with Five Acts

creation –Gen 1-2;
fall –Gen 3-11
Israel –Gen 12- Malachi
Jesus –Gospels
Church –Acts & Epistles
(There is another act coming as well sometimes called New Creation)

We live in the fifth Act
and so we are at a different point in the story than Genesis or Moses or the prophets or even Jesus

When you are reading a portion of the Bible
know where you are within the overall drama,
know which act of the story you are in

there are things that are appropriate for one act that are not appropriate for another act

compare to a crime drama
you can’t arrest the man
until you gather some evidence in an earlier act
you can’t gather evidence until the man has actually committed the crime in an earlier act

every word of the Bible is not a “timeless truth” for everyone everywhere
the receivers of these words obey them in their Act

even our Act will end
there will be no reason to pray or read the Bible in the new creation, marriage vows will be finished

we are not being disloyal to parts of the Bible
we are being loyal to them as what they really are — one Act in a larger Story

we must live as those
who know that 4 acts came before
and we are moving toward a 6th act

the NT epistles are the most directly addressed to us

*But even when dealing with the NT epistles we must remember that every command is directed to a certain people in a certain culture

and we must try to understand the spirit of the command,
because the specific letter of the command is often culture-bound

1 Peter 3:3
no gold jewelry, fine clothes, or elaborate hairstyles
1 Thessalonians 5:26
Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss
Colossians 3:22
Slaves obey your earthly masters in everything
1 Cor 11:6
every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head

Another problem in the NT is that many commands are so general that we need spiritual wisdom to know how to obey them in our culture and situation
commands such as “love one another” and “clothe yourselves with compassion”

2. We need discernment from the Spirit to know the expression of a commandment in our culture

Mother’s Day

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5-14-06

Instead of preaching the normal
Ode to Mothers, praising them
And they do deserve such praise
I want to do something else

many of you who are mothers are living every day right now
trying to raise your children
I want to honor you by offering you
some help, some encouragement,
some Biblical counsel on raising your children

Deuteronomy 6:4-7

Love God– how?
By keeping his commands on your heart
And teaching them diligently to your children, talking all the time5

So here we are not Jews
Not under the Jewish Torah being referred to in Deuteronomy 6
What are we to be teaching our children?

Romans 13:8-10
Paul tells us here that
Love is the fulfillment of the law
Therefore, we can conclude from that
what we are to be teaching our children diligently
Is to love others

Our first and greatest priority is to teach our children
To serve and honor God by loving others
To teach them how to love others

My daughter is only going to be happy
when she is serving God by loving other people
If I truly want to help her then everything I do must be to that end
Too often we are trying to teach our children to be moral
But not teaching them to love others
And our children become little devils
There is nothing worse than a moral person without love

We are to be teaching our children to love everyday,
talking about it all the time
There ends my sermon proper

I have this one point from Dt. and Romans
Now I want to move into a lengthy application to our lives
The product of my own prayer and reflection on this in my own life

Richard Baxter said that preachers preach sermons
and then by other words and actions cuts the throat of the sermon.
I want to talk about ways that I believe we are cutting the throat of our teaching.
I am going to be sharing with you
what I have been doing wrong

1. We are spoiling our children with stuff and lives of luxury

We teach them they are the center of the universe, to give to themselves
That all this stuff is the essence of what is important and good
We teach them by our actions that life is about enjoying all these things
If you want to teach them love
Take away their stuff
and stop giving them stuff
I have spoiled my children
It is no surprise that they are products of the American consumerist mindset
Feeling like they deserve a high quality of life with all the extras
Spending all their time giving to themselves
Loving themselves
Feeling deprived when they don’t get everything they see around them
Dreaming of more to give themselves

Do we want our children to be part of the American culture?
Our kids are more American
than they are disciples of Christ.
What controls their lives?
what Jesus taught about sacrificial love
Or what they see on TV and what their friends do and have?
We must be deliberately subvert the American way of life

2. The quality time we spend with them often encourages selfishness
we flood them with stuff and entertainment,
we stuff them with treats
And take them out for fun
Mommy gives you what you want
Mommy loves you and wants you to love yourself
and give yourself everything your little heart desires
Let us spend time with our children and talk to them,
talk to them about love,
Let us take our kids with us to help other people,
work side by side with them helping others
Show them how to love others

A ballet school is not like most schools
In most schools the teacher stands up there and talks and talks
The kids take notes
In ballet the teacher shows you how to do it
She does it for you, you try it, when you don’t get it, she shows you again
Let us do this with our children
Show them, let them try it, show them again

We often say we need our quality time with our children
And so we cannot spend time helping other people
Why not take the kids to help?
You are showing your children what really matters.
They will remember what you believed in.

3. We discipline them with harshness and anger
This cuts the throat of all our talk of love
I am not saying be lax on discipline
Discipline must be strong
But the way we do discipline will not teach them love
unless our manner is gentle and kind

When we act in rage and fury
When we overpower and domineer them
fume, and sputter, treat them coldly

4. We allow siblings to bicker and hurt one another

This must be absolutely outlawed
And the consequences must be swift and severe.
This must not be tolerated.

5. We ignore our children distracted by selfish pursuits

Don’t bother mommy, she is doing this or that,
We are teaching them selfishness by example
We are teaching them that what we really care about is ourselves
We are saying daddy cares more about this than you or other people

6. we spend such long hours at work that our job appears to be the most important thing

They get the message that work is first
Before God, family, love
They get the message that above all else
We need enough money to have all this stuff

7. Speaking unlovingly about others in the presence of our children

They hear all that we say, not just the teaching
If we teach love, but speak without love
Children smell hypocrisy
They get the message
“We say this but we do this”
They learn that hypocrisy is normal
They learn to say the words Mom and Dad says
But to do what Mom and Dad do when no one is looking

8. the movies and television and books
ourchildren are watching, reading are teaching them not to love

We need to speak against the hero if he acts without love, if he seeks revenge
We must speak against it.

9. We use the teaching of truth to teach hatred

We teach our children to hate Muslims, Mormons, Homosexuals
When I taught at CCS with those children from good solid Christian homes
They hated these people
When teaching truth also teach love

10. We hate our enemies and they see it

Do your children know who you hate?
They must see us love our enemies

11. We let our children live the easy life without work

We must give them jobs to do to love the family
Show them this is their way of loving and serving everyone else in the family

12. When we pray with them we pray trite prayers focused on self: give me

As a family pray together:
“Who do you want us to love?”
Make it clear this is our mission

and Pray for your children:
that they would serve God by loving others