NIV Application Bible Podcast: Episode 3 (Exodus 20)

• We don’t follow these rules because we’re trying to earn his favor. We follow these parameters because they’re for our good. They’re they’re for us to have peace and promise. Welcome back to the NIV Application Bible podcast. Man, this is already getting to be fun, isn’t it? And it just gets better and better and better and better.
• We’re looking at the book of Exodus today. And sometimes you hear Exodus, you think, “Oh, this is going to be hard.” It is filled with hope. Now, secondly, when I say Ten Commandments, some of y’all are going to flinch. I mean, maybe when you think of the Ten Commandments, you just think, “I am in so much trouble.
• ” That’s what my little girl thought when I brought Missy home from Haiti. Um, English, uh, she had to learn English when she was almost 5 years old. And so she would get nervous when she didn’t get the laws of English just right. And then compound that with the fact that she was in a Christian school.
• She came home from school one day in the first grade and she said, “Mama, I’m scared.” And I said, “Why are you scared, baby?” And then she explained in kind of, you know, rudimentary English, still some creole thrown in that her class, her Bible class had talked about the Ten Commandments. and she told me she was afraid she wouldn’t get the rules right.
• And I thought and thought and thought, how can I explain to Missy the context of these parameters and promises that we call the Ten Commandments because I grew up in church speaking English and I thought they were punitive rules for a long time, too. And I thought, I’m going to take her to the bowling alley.
• We’re not big bowlers, but I found the best illustration for the Ten Commandments at the bowling alley. You know how they have those felt bumpers for little kids? They bring those felt bumpers down so that their balls won’t land in the gutter. We bowled that night and I said, “Baby, that’s what the Ten Commandments are.
• The Ten Commandments aren’t rules the way you’re thinking of rules. The Ten Commandments are like those felt covered bumpers.” Because God’s plans for us, his sons and daughters, they include promise and hope. But sometimes we don’t bowl very well and he knows we’ll land in the gutter because if we follow our crooked hearts, sometimes we get in trouble.
• So he established these parameters, these these boundaries, if you will, that will help our our balls grow go straight so that we actually win the game of life. And you see that here in Exodus chap 20. Some people wse when they hear that because the beginning of Exodus 20 is where God gives his people those promises and those parameters we call the Ten Commandments.