Last summer, we were riding around Turkey in a tour bus with roughly 45 of us on board and that one day we spent about nine hours on the bus to walk around ancient ruins in the Biblical cities of three of the seven churches for about two and a half hours. So there’s a lot of bus time to kill and we happened to have two of our better known Adventist archeologists, Dr. Michael Hasel from Southern and Dr. Randy Younker from Andrews on board with us and so part of the killing of time in between stops was queries about the archeology of the region and so forth and it spread to other places. One of the questions that came up was “when we’re digging something up, how do we know what tribe, what group, you know, what nationality it is”, and well here in Turkey, it’s easy because the Anatolians dominated the whole area so there wasn’t a lot of turn-over. But in the Middle East, it’s a different story. There’s been a lot of turn-over of cultures and civilizations and it can get a little trickier then to know who is who, particularly when you’re in the border area.
And furthermore, the challenge of trying to figure out from an archeological perspective who was or were the ancient Israelites. Of course, a number of scholars today outside the Adventist church don’t even think there was an ancient Israel. David and Solomon are mythic figures, etc., etc. And so those who are trying to uphold some semblance of tradition are saying, “how can we prove they were Jews back there in those days?”
And looking particularly at sites from around the era of the judges, a theory arose that has a fair amount of evidence to support it. Though it’s not air-tight. That there would be a definitive way to tell if a village that they were digging was Jewish or non-Jewish. Israelite or non-Israelite. And that comes from an analysis of the bones of animals that they dig up because they would slaughter animals to eat. And the bones would go to the dump. We find their dumps and we dig it up and find the potsherds and so forth, and there are people whose whole scholarly specialty is to identify ancient animal bones. This came from a rat, this came from a pig, that came from a dog, etc., etc. Sounds like an exciting specialty. So using that profession two experts in this field started to do some surveying and they find a pattern that, again it’s under criticism, but it seems to working, according to our archeologists.
They find villages where most of the animal bones that they dig up, probably 80 percent or so are pig bones, because they ate a lot of pig. And thus 75, 85 percent of the bones were pigs. But you can walk a kilometer away, across the valley in eye-site to another village and you dig that village up and only three to five percent of the bones are pig. The rest of them are other kinds of what we would call clean animals. And so, the theory is we can tell the Israelite village because of the lack of pig bones. Whereas the pig bone then would have been a Philistine type village. I found that very interesting, because a couple of years before going to Turkey, when we opened our museum when Dr. Dever was here launching the grand opening of our archeology museum, he definitively stated, “We know that the ancient Israelites were not mono-theists” because when we dig up their villages we find all the little idols that they were worshipping at home. I find it interesting that these people weren’t eating pig, but they were still worshipping idols. It seems like something is askew there. And this describes a phenomenon then that I call Pig-bone spirituality.
Pig-bone spirituality is where we focus on some distinctive, like not eating pork, and it’s very obvious that we don’t practice eating the pork. No pig bones, etc., etc. When we go out to eat at the restaurant we don’t order the one that has pig in it, you know, etc., etc. Everybody knows we don’t eat pork. Or whatever. We keep the Sabbath. We don’t work on the Sabbath day. We find something distinctive and we kind of hang our hat on it, but other parts of our life, major parts of our life, probably more significant even than the pig, like the little idols are completely and utterly out of phase with God’s revealed will.
We had a person I knew of who left her husband, Adventist person, left her husband of 30 or 31 years, and ran off with an old high-school acquaintance who had been divorced three times. Was living in an openly adulterous relationship, and she’s emailing her son who has left the Adventist church, living over-seas, twenty-seven years old, chastising him for not keeping the Sabbath. He emailed back, “um, what about you, and the seventh commandment?” Pig-bone spirituality, where we grab on some little distinctive and kind of give ourselves a false assurance, even as we really don’t pay attention to major issues that God has given us.
Pig-bone spirituality then focuses on compliance with a code of rules but fails to recognize God’s fundamental rights and His claims on us. The rich young ruler complied with the letter of the law. “I’ve kept them all since my boyhood.” Yet Christ found an area of selfishness where his heart was not in surrender to God. Christ quoted Isaiah to describe the people of His day. “You honor Me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me.” Pig-bone spirituality. Pig-bone spirituality then focuses on compliance instead of character. Commitment instead of surrender. It then can comply with the ten commandments without actually “keeping” them. Now how is it that one can comply with the ten commandments and not even be “keeping” them. I think the answer is, that we can comply with the letter but miss the moral orientation of the decalogue.
What I’d like to do this morning with you, is look at the decalogue in maybe a light that you haven’t thought of before. To look at the moral orientation, and not merely the code of conduct, and see what the implications are for our lives.
Let’s ask a simple question. To who were the ten commandments given? A number of ways we could answer that question, right? If you want to be the most literal, you open up… By the way, what chapters in the Bible have the ten commandments in their entirety? Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy five. I do a pop quiz on some of my classes. Name the ten commandments and give me the two places in the Bible that their together as a unit. Currently in my ethics classes, about 60 percent of the class can name all ten commandments. About 85 percent will get nine of the ten. So that’s the good news. The bad news is only about 60 percent, 85 percent I should say get eight of the ten and about 60 percent get all ten. Only maybe ten percent of the class will get the ten in order, but at least they got all ten in there. And so, we’ll give them credit for that. I wonder how we’d do if we had that pop quiz today? We claim this is the foundation of our morality, but if we don’t even know what it is how can it be the foundation of our morality, right? So, a little refresher course here today. We’re not going to go through all ten. I’ll get more to that in a second.
But to whom were these commandments then given? If you look at Exodus 20, the opening introduction here with the first commandment, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” Who is He talking to? The Hebrews. The ancient Israelites. So we could say, God gave the ten commandments to the Israelites, ancient Israelites. Would that be true? Yes. What’s the possible problem with that? That was for them, not for us, right? So as good Adventists, we will go to the New Testament, James and Paul and say, “see, Paul and James treat the ten commandments as binding on Christians, so it’s applicable to us who claim to be Christians as well.” So far, so good. What’s the possible problem here, though? “Us” can keep it impersonal, right? It may even turn into they/you. You all supposed to keep the ten commandments. But even if I go the final step and say, “I need to keep the ten commandments”, the danger is that we play pig-bone spirituality with a compliance mind-set instead of a character mind-set.
So looking at it from a moral perspective, instead of an ethnic or cultural perspective, to whom are the ten commandments given!? Who is this “thou” that shouldn’t steal? Who is this “thou” that shouldn’t commit adultery? Who is this “thou” who’s supposed to keep the Sabbath? Who is this “thou” who’s not to have any other gods before them?
I would like to suggest that this “thou” is a free, moral agent, who has the power and ability to make choices that violate other people’s rights. You see, if you look at the ten commandments, the ten commandments do not talk to me about my own rights, right? The ten commandments talk to me about other people’s rights. “Thou shalt not steal.” I don’t steal from myself if I’m stealing, right? I steal from someone else. I’d be violating their rights. So the ten commandments are addressed to Steve Bauer as a free, moral agent who is capable of violating your rights, and in a nut-shell, what they say is, “Bauer, you need to deny yourself and restrain your desires, and your wishes to respect your neighbor’s rights and privileges.” That’s a character orientation, you follow me?
Now! Have you ever thought of God as having rights? I would suggest that God has rights by virtue of being God. The first three commandments focus exclusively on protecting God’s rights from the violation of my free choices. The fourth commandment is a transition commandment that protects three classes of beings. God, neighbor, and one more we’ll get to. And then, commandments five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten are designed to protect my children and neighbors, my fellow humans around me, their rights, from my violation. So the fundamental orientation of the ten commandments is a call for you and me to learn what we read in Phillipians two, to be like Jesus, to empty self.
Let’s look at these commandments then, and see what we can digest out of them.
Exodus 20, the first three verses. “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 slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me.’” God has a fundamental right of priority in our lives. He has a right to be the supreme priority of my life and that right is based both on creation, because He made me, His purpose is for me to be oriented back to Him, and based on redemption, since Christ purchased mankind with His blood, He owns us both by creation and by redemption, and that gives Him certain rights to make claims on us and God has the right to be first priority in our own lives. This right is so powerful that God has the right to be Supreme authority even over my own life. Right? Revelation, “They loved not their lives even to death.” This is why we have martyrs. Because God’s glory, and God’s rights, and God’s claims become more important than even my own existence. Now that’s a serious claim, isn’t it?
Not only that. Christ says that if you love mother and father and son and daughter, etc., more than you love Me, you’re not worthy of Me. Now I don’t think it’s necessarily either/or, but when the claims of family contradict the claims of Christ, which one takes priority? God says, “My claims take priority”.
Now what does this mean in real life? And I’ll be frank, I wrestle with this on a regular basis. It’s so easy to fall into pig-bone spirituality. Is God really first in my priorities? If so, why do I have such a hard time finding time for prayer and Bible study? I struggle with that like everybody else does, right? Our lives are full. To overflowing. And it’s difficult to fight that priority and seek God first. One thing that does help me when I can go to bed on scripture, it’s easier to wake up on it, and be ready to go back into it. When I go to bed on Monday night football, I just don’t wake up with the same orientation the next morning, you know?. Maybe that would be helpful. This is a serious issue. I suggest that God has a right not to be put into second fiddle by our leisure time choices. I just read an article this week in the news claiming that the average American spends 28 hours a week surfing the net and watching movies and TV. Now I’m not sure where they find 28 hours from, but these are the folks that pastor Gettys or I or Carlson or somebody goes and makes a pastoral visit and we say, “How is your spiritual life going? How is your devotional life doing?” “Oh, I don’t have enough time to have adequate prayer and Bible study”. They can spend 15 and 20 hours a week doing this other stuff though. Does God have a right to get the first priority slot? And if it means missing the favorite TV program, God is higher.
So this commandment calls me to deny some of my desires, even of good things, because they get in the way of God as first priority. But not only should God be first priority, He should also be first authority. We do not hear about the kingdom of God any more in Christian preaching very much. But God is a governor. And the whole sin problem is a debate over who’s going to govern the universe. Thus the issue of surrender and not just commitment. “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” And so this commandment calls me to restrict my own sense of liberty and be submissive to God’s authority as revealed in scripture. And through His prophets.
The second commandment. We’ll just summarize that here. We are not to make carved images, etc., etc., to make physical representations of God. That would box in our concept of Him. So it seems like also, then we should be careful not to make to strong of a mental construct that becomes a mental idol that again boxes us in. God has a right to be high and mysterious and not fully fathomable. And too often, we treat God as if we’ve got Him all figured out. We know exactly what His thinking is, and generally we no longer have a Father in heaven, we have a senile grandfather in heaven who just wishes everybody had a good time.
But God has a right to be viewed with awe and mystery like Isaiah, who saw God high and lifted up, and said, “woe is me!” Now it’s not that He’s not our close Friend, but we need to also preserve, it’s a both/and, that high and lifted-up-ness and I fear today, we tend to lose that and be all in the one ditch. God has a right to be infinite and not to be boxed in by our opinions and logic and thinking.
Third commandment. “Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Now traditionally, we like to apply this commandment to our mouth. Right? Don’t use foul language. And I think that’s true but incomplete. It is true that God’s name and title should not be dragged through the mud in anger, in angry expressions, etc., etc. We need to treat that name with respect. And out of that I think we can extrapolate a little further the verbal violence that comes with obscene language, is also not fitting of the name of Christ. Which leads me to the bigger picture. If we are not going to take the name of the Lord in vain, then what does it mean to take the name of the Lord? I would suggest that this is a marriage metaphor. And we, as the bride of Christ, when we get betrothed and married to Him, the bride takes her husband’s name. In this case, we take the name Christian. Now, if a bride takes her husband’s name, but continues to flirt and date and sleep, etc., she took the name and took those claims upon herself vainly because she doesn’t honor them, right? And when we take the name of Christ upon us, we are taking upon ourselves certain claims, including that claim of exclusive priority and affection. And when we live lives of double standards, and lives that do not recognize the exclusive claims of Christ, we have taken His name in vain. It’s doing us no good.
This does not refer to the person who’s struggling to grow in Christ and finds certain obstacles difficult. This is more the person who doesn’t want to cooperate and hear about God wants to do. We want to be saved but do our own thing with no accountability. Taking the name in vain. God does not always instantly transform, but is transformation underway.
God’s reputation in part depends on those who claim to be His. Let’s not drag His reputation through the mud. And so this commandment challenges me to restrict myself in moments of anger and passion and whatever else, that I would honor God’s holiness above my felt need to act in ways contrary to that holiness.
We come now to the fourth commandment. This is that transition commandment. And we know this commandment well as Adventists. God with His right of priority and exclusive claim, thus has the right to say, “I want you to dedicate a full day, not to your business and not to your interests, and business, but to Me and My interest and My business.” Now folks, if we live to self during the week and we hit a 24 hour period where self is to be laid down and God is supposed to dominate the picture, it’s going to be a miserable day. You can’t wait for it to get done so you can get back to your own business. But if you’ve been living this principle of self-denial all week long, and oriented toward being a blessing to others instead of self, when you come to the Sabbath and turn that blessedness toward God, “how can I be a blessing to God?”, it’s another wonderful day.
Now I want to unpack this a little bit. God has a right then, for me not to be plotting and planning my work and my business on His holy day. God has a right for me not to forget Him while I read Golf Digest or Model Airplane magazine or something like that. Or the newspaper, etc. God has a right for me to be fully focused on Him, resting as if all my work were done and there is nothing to worry about. And so, God says, “I want you to deny yourself and restrain yourself with those secular activities and plans and pursuits and give Me a full attention day of your time.”
But the commandment does not stop with God’s claims, because you and I are in a position of power over people in our lives. And so, the Sabbath rest is also extended to those people over whom we have power in our lives. Starting with our children. Remember in the agrarian society, children were out working on the farm, so you don’t take the Sabbath out of the fields but make your child keep working out there. You don’t take the Sabbath out of the fields and make your servant keep working out there. They are entitled to the same Sabbath rest that you are entitled to. Which is why I don’t schedule my flights for vacation on Sabbath, because I don’t want to be the cause of the airline people having to work on Sabbath. Which is why I don’t eat in the restaurant on Sabbath. James Kennedy preached applying this to Sunday, Coral Gables. He said he went out to eat after church with his wife on a Sunday, trying to show come spiritual concern. It was a little intimate place where they cook the food right at the table in front of you, and he said to the chef, “Were you able to get to church this morning?” And the chef looked at him and said, “No, because I have to be preparing food for people like you.” He says, “I’ve never eaten out on Sunday again.” He got the right idea, wrong day. Then he held up Chic-Fil-A who stays shut on Sunday, so that their employees don’t have that conflict between church and work. Right idea, wrong day. The point is, as employers or as people capable of hiring people to work for us, God says, “restrain your desire to get everything done the way you want it, when you want it, etc., and give them the opportunity to have the same Sabbath rest you enjoy.” Now if they choose to use their liberty amiss, I can’t control that, but at least it’s not because of me.
A third class here is the animals. The animals, of course, are very vulnerable, we have great power over them, and the animals were also to be given a Sabbath day’s rest in the agrarian, you know, before tractors and so forth. And I think there’s a principle there for us today. I think we could be much more sensitive about not causing undue suffering and pain and sorrow on the animals. To be gracious to those over whom we have power, and not to damage, hurt and exploit them unnecessarily.
You see, the principle is that as a free moral agent, in a position of power over others, I am to be Christ-like and use that power to be of service, instead of being an exploiter and a consumer.
Finally, I want to take just a look at one of the commandments about neighbors, just to see, give you an idea of applying the principle at the human level.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Marriage mirrors the exclusivity of claims between two people that is found in the first commandment where God has exclusive claims on us. There are exclusive claims that are a God-given right to affection and commitment that are the God-given right to every person in this world. Humans as the image of God are entitled to that marriage relationship, if they can find a suitable partner. But even singles have a right to these exclusive claims, though not yet married. The problem is, that when we act like we have exclusive claims when they have not been established, we then violate that exclusivity. When we start getting physically involved when there isn’t the permanent bond first established by default, that is a non-exclusive expression of affection because it’s not restricted to the marriage relationship.
And the implication is that when we get tired of each other, we can break off, go find someone who suits our fancy a little more and enter another relationship with similar expressions, etc., etc. Unless you have established that legal bond, you do not have an exclusive claim. And thus, if we try to enter those expressions of love without first establishing the permanency of the exclusive claim, we are violating the fundamental right to have exclusive claim between two people, in a marriage relationship.
To put it another way, my neighbor has the right for me not to try to steal his wife’s affection from him. And even if I found her highly attractive, there are rights and privileges involved that God says, “restrain your desire and honor that. Don’t pursue that which is off-limits.”
And I suggest to you today, that just as we have a major failure to honor God’s exclusive claims on the life, we see a symptom of that in the failure to honor the exclusive claims of marriage, both as single people and as married people, who get involved in other things.
I cannot say much except to say, the average affair lasts 18 to 24 months. Then they run out of tingles. Usually what people are attracted to is not the person, but a character trait that is missing in their own marriage or relationship. And so they pursue that issue outside the marriage. And so doing, they violate the claim. If you can separate the issue that you’re attracted to from the person who possesses the character trait, it can help you reduce the sense of attraction, because you can say, “I’m not attracted to them. I’m attracted to this.” And that immediately makes at a much more manageable issue to restrain yourself over.
But the point is, that the claims of marriage match the, mirror the exclusive claims of God in the first commandment, and this is why marriage is usually used as the metaphor of God’s relationship to His people.
So we can see then that the ten commandments actually are an expression of the character of God. Because Christ manifests that character in our scripture reading by emptying Himself and taking the form of a servant. By laying aside His rights and privileges in order to come to our level and be a blessing to us who never deserved it. In like manner, the ten commandments call us to the same life of grace, and pig-bone spirituality misses that point. It’s busy keeping the code, but it misses the life of unselfish grace.
Pig-bone spirituality then is self-centered. The ten commandments call us to be self-emptying, so that it is no longer my will, but Christ’s will and other’s rights and privileges that take first priority in my own life.
Hymn of Praise: #83, O Worship The King Scripture: Philippians 2: 1-8 Hymn of Response: #570, Not I, But Christ
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Sermon at McDonald Road transcribed by Steve Foster 4/18/07