## Introduction

Well, today we begin a new 7-week summer series that bothconnects to the book of Ecclesiastes and our theme for the year andwe are titling this series “Love the Commandment.” Today is anintroduction message to the series so it’s more conceptual in nature.

Here’s how our new summer series ties into the book ofEcclesiastes. If you back out and just look at the man Solomon, youreally have to admire him. He was serious about being happy. Hewas willing to work to be happy. I mean, he wanted it! He was on aquest. And you read the book of Ecclesiastes and you realize, thisguy tried everything. He spends his entire life pursuing wisdom andknowledge, women and sexual experience, money and power,parties and feasting, music, buildings, and projects. He tried it all.And all along the way, he’s journaling, meticulously and honestlyobserving the impact of his decisions. He’s letting us know theresults of his happiness experimentation.

And the reason this is so incredibly helpful for us 3500 years later isthat just like Solomon we are all born with the same fundamentalmission. We too are wired to be happy, and we can learn from hisdead-end pursuits. If we are wise, we can leverage all his hedonismexperiments and get the shortcut. And this is a massive, significantadvantage over starting from scratch. Let me explain by way of

analogy.

My wife Lisa likes shopping at World Market. And every once inwhile they have this game where they hide five little golden bellssomewhere in the store and your job is to basically go in and findthose hidden bells and if you do you get a gift card of some amount.So I went in with her one day to help her look for one which shouldbe worth several thousand husband points. And I go into the storeand there are literally 70 million items in this store. I can’t evenbelieve my eyes how many nick-nacks there are. Plates, canisters,wine, chocolate, kids toys, baskets, furniture, and random fooditems. So I just start looking. Maybe it’s under this pot, nope. Onedown, 69,999,999 items to go. Maybe it’s under this rug. Surprise.Not here either. And I instantly just get so discouraged.

Well, imagine if an employee came up to me and said, “I’ll give you ahint. All 5 bells are hidden right here in the porcelain section.” Nowthat’s massively helpful. Here’s someone who knows that the prizeisn’t found where everyone else is looking; instead, it’s right here inthis tiny little section.

This is what Solomon is doing for us. He’s saying, life is like a storefilled with millions and millions of trinkets all calling out to you. Come,here. Happiness might be found here! And in order to verify that theprize of happiness is not found in those trinkets, you have to pick itup and handle it and test it. And that takes time and there are justtoo many things in life to try. There’s not enough time in life to try allthe things that claim to make you happy.

That’s why Ecclesiastes is such a goldmine. Solomon gives us ashortcut. He’s the employee telling us where to look. He tried withmore passion, energy, and resource than anyone else I can think of,

and at the end of his life-long hedonism experiment, he claims tohave finally found it. He says, let me just save you some heartacheand a lot of time. And his summary is short and so easy: it’s whatKirk preached on so helpfully last week. He gives us the end of thematter.

Fear God and keep his commandments.

I’m going to argue that this is the same thing as saying, love Godand love his Commandments. It’s just looking at it from a differentangle.

We used the analogy a few weeks ago of an electric car battery todescribe the type of fear we are to have for God. A 300volt DCbattery is so dangerous. It could kill you instantly if you cross it in thewrong way. But it is so powerful if you follow and respect the design.It can power you down the road for hundreds of miles, control thetemperature inside the car, give you music to listen to, etc.

So you fear the battery and keep the commandments. Why?

Because you recognize that the battery makes the rules and setsthe laws for how to receive its benefits. You love all the benefits, butyou are in no position to tell that battery how it should give you thosebenefits.

So you fear the battery and obey the rules is another way of saying,you love the benefits of the battery.

After all of Solomon’s hedonism experimentation, you know what hesaid, “God’s way can’t be improved upon. You are in no position totell God how he ought to dispense his benefits. You need to fear aGod who has told you the way those benefits are to be experienced.”

If I want the benefits of an all-powerful God on my side, I have tokeep his commandments. And it is because I love God and want tobe in a right relationship with this loving God that I love thecommandments of God.

So that’s where the title of the series comes from. Love theCommandments of God. And this morning, we have one goal withfour points. The goal is for you to realize that you have very likelybeen thinking about the commandments of God in the wrong way.

What’s being referenced here is motive. Why are commands given?Whose interest does the command giver have in mind? Most peoplethink of God as a cosmic kill-joy. They think of him saying, “I’ve gotthe power to inflict misery. I’m bigger and stronger than they are.Let’s see how miserable can I make these people.”

Now to be sure, we can certainly conceptualize a category ofcommands designed to benefit. Parents will often give commands totheir kids to protect them.

Don’t touch the fire, stove, outletDon’t play too many video gamesDon’t be late for your interview

These commands are given not to restrict and inhibit freedom, but toenhance freedom. There is a recognition that forces exist in theworld that will innocently draw them in a direction that will result intheir harm.

Without commands, the human gift of curiosity will result in gettingburned or shocked.Without commands, the human desire to be loved and accepted willresult in being corrupted by bad friends.Without commands, the gift of rest and entertainment will result inindolence and sloth.

So these are all commands issued for the good of the child. Thesekinds of commands are given to protect us from certain aspects ofour human composition being exploited to our harm and detriment.

So we can certainly conceptualize a type of joy that would beselfless.

Selfish Commands

But that’s not always why commands are given. Some commandsare given with an entirely different motive all-together. I recentlypurchased a little box of chocolates and I put it on top of the fridgeand I said, “Nobody touch these chocolates. These are dad’schocolates.” Now I said that because for the past 6 months Iwatched my children descend like locust upon any and all food andespecially chocolate. Not cool.

So this command was not given for their good. It was given for mygood. I was restricting them from the joy of chocolate so I couldexperience the joy of chocolate. They knew that and so theypromptly ignored my command and I came home to a box with twochocolates left.

Here’s the point. From the perspective of my kids, both commandsfeel restrictive. Sometimes the commands are given for my good.Sometimes the commands are given for their good. And sometimes

it is both. We have experience with both types of commands.

Now here’s the million-dollar question: when God gives a command,what type of command is it?

Isn’t this the crux of it all? You cannot get any more central to theproblem of the human condition than this. This is the grand problem,the greatest problem of all. If you can crack this nut, you’ve solvedthe matrix. You’ve discovered the theological Higgs Boson. You’vedeveloped a cure for theological cancer. When God gives acommand, what’s his motive?

Think back to the garden. God told them the reason he was givingthem a command.

God said, “Don’t eat of this fruit, because in the day you eat of it youwill die.” God tells Adam and Eve what his motive was. He doesn’tsay, obey me because I told you so. He says, “I’m giving you thiscommand because I don’t want you to die. I want you to live. I wantyou to flourish. I want you to have freedom and joy and happiness.And if you eat, all these good things will be taken away.”

And Satan slithered up and slyly said, “God doesn’t care about yourhappiness. That’s just a smokescreen. God’s hiding chocolate fromyou because he’s selfish.”

Now that thought had never crossed their mind. Which is it? Is thatforbidden fruit chocolate or poison? Is the motive behind thecommand selfish or selfless?

Well, God tells us over and over again in his word that the reason hegives us commandments is that we might have life!

This verse will blow your mind. If happiness for the creature isknowing the creator…if you agree with that premise, then this versewill blow your mind.

In other words, the commandments form you into a shape where

you can receive the blessing of God himself. Wow. That’s powerful.That’s not designed to kill your joy. That’s designed to create joy!

God’s commandments are designed for your joy.

Why do we need all these commandments? Aren’t there a fewextras? Why so many? God tells us in that his word, which in Psalm119 is a synonym for command, statues, etc., the law is a lamp.

Commands exist to illuminate a dark world. God tells us that hiscommands are like a map to help us navigate in a world where thedirection is not immediately apparent.

Here’s an example. If I was to drop you off in the middle of a giantcity and tell you to walk until you find the airport, you might try todeduce where the airport was based on your experience in othercities, but it would only be slightly educated. You could easily bedead wrong. It’s very likely you’d have some reason for why youchose a certain direction and it could be a good deduction, but youcould easily be going in the exact opposite direction. But if you founda sign with an arrow, there would be no doubt.

A sign is like a command. A sign tells you the destination is not here,here, here, or here. It’s here. If you want to end up at the airport thenI am going to massively restrict you. You can’t go in any otherdirection.

Here is the way, the direction, and the path.No man can come to the airport except through this path.There is no direction under heaven whereby men might find theairport other than this direction.

A command is a pointer to human flourishing and fulfillment, which,after all, is what we are all after. Is that not what Solomon was tryingto find? Solomon was trying to find happiness. Solomon was afterhuman flourishing. He was this lusty stallion that wanted it all. And atthe end of his life, he gives us his conclusion. Keep thecommandments of God.

This is a huge help in understanding the heart behind David’sauthoring of Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is this long poem about howmuch David just loves the law of God. Here’s just a three versesample!

It’s the longest Psalm in the Bible and it’s just this non-stop gushing,emotive, outpouring of praise for how much he loves the law of God.

I remember when I was younger reading Psalm 119 and thinking,man, there’s no way he really believes that. He’s just saying thatbecause he has to. He’s just giving lip service so that God will bepleased with him, but I bet in his heart of hearts he really wishesthose laws didn’t exist.

But now I understand. David needs that map. David needs that light.And so do we.

Without God’s map, we are left in darkness. We are hopelessly lostas to what you live for. If you feel lost in life, maybe it’s because youhaven’t been looking at the map. Maybe it’s because you haven’tbeen obedient to the commandments.

I love the commands of God. I believe them with all my heart.

There is safety in those commands.There is protection in those commands.There is freedom in those commands.There are direction and purpose in those commands.

Now I’m going to take a wild stab at something here. I’m going toguess that you don’t think of all of God’s rules in this way. Sure, youcan concede some of the commands of God are for my good, “Don’tkill your neighbor.” I can see that one. I’m not sure whimsical murderwould be good for our society. But there are other commands thatyou have a harder time loving. “Don’t love money?” We hear thatone and we think, “God, I think you might be hiding chocolate fromme.”

I’m just going to go out on limb and conjecture that you don’t love allof God’s rules and laws and commandments the way Daviddescribes in Psalm 119. I’m guessing you don’t think of God’s rulesas nectar sweeter than the honeycomb.

Now listen carefully. This is such a vital connection to make in yourmind. If you don’t believe that God’s laws are honey, there is onlyone reason you think that. You don’t love that rule because youreally do believe that God is trying to restrict your freedom and joy.

You think God’s hiding chocolate from you.

Now the purpose of this message today is to inspire you. I mean tomassively inspire you. What if you changed your perspective andchanged what you love? Instead of chafing at the commands of Godor being indifferent toward them. What if you began to love thecommandment?

What if you saw the commands of God not as restrictors of joy butsigns which point to your eternal joy which happens to also be God’seternal glory?

That’s Solomon’s conclusion: fear God and keep hiscommandments. God is worth loving so love the commands that getyou to him. Love God’s law.

It’s my guess that you don’t thirst after God’s rules as you should.Picture it this way. If you were trying to speed to the airport to catch

a flight, wouldn’t you be just so attentive to every arrow you couldfind along the way? Wouldn’t you just thirst and hunger andinstinctively long for hints that pointed you away from wrongdirections and toward the right direction? How many miles? Whichroad do I take?

Do you approach the law of God like that? Or are youinconvenienced when you are happily traveling along and you see asign that alerts you to your wrong trajectory and you are annoyed? Ikind of like this other trajectory.

Have you ever typed in an address on your phone and it startsgiving you audible prompts on where to turn? And you don’t mindthose prompts until all of a sudden you decide along the way thatyou are going to make a detour. And then the phone just goes wildtrying to reroute you.

At the light, make a U-TURN.In 1/4 mile turn left.You are going the wrong way.You’re an idiot.What are you doing?

And it won’t stop talking. And you feel like yelling at your phone. I’mnot interested in that destination right now!

Is that how you feel toward the directions that God gives you? Whenwe read God’s Word and listen to the voice prompts and directionsthat come out of it and you realize you are off course, does it annoyyou? Yeah, I know I’m off course and I don’t care. I’m not interestedin the destination that this command takes me. Stop annoying mewith it.

Or are you more like the man who is straining with all his might tryingto get to the airport as fast as he possibly can and welcomes anydirection that gets him there sooner?

Let me just put a thought experiment in your mind. What if you triedto follow all God’s commands with that sort of intensity? What wouldthat do for your life? What if you put down everything in your life andreevaluate what you are doing with only these directions in mind?

Rejoice, Praise, Worship.Do Not Be Afraid.Do Not Be AnxiousGive Thanks.

Here’s the hope for this short summer series. The hope is that withthe Spirit of God working through his Word, you would believe forperhaps the first time, that God’s plain path, this path you’ve beentaught your entire life, the path you’ve walked by every day, is a paththat you have never seriously tried.

The hope would be for you to admit, I’ve never really loved thecommands of God and because of that, I’ve never really obeyed thecommands of God. I’ve been a half-hearted creature toying aroundwith obedience. I kind of read my Bible but only because I have to. Idon’t see it as the path to life. I’ve been wandering aroundreluctantly stumbling into arrows but if I’m honest, I kind of getdisappointed when I discover an arrow pointing in a directiondifferent than I’m traveling because I like my direction. I certainlyhave not been following arrows. What if I realized that thecommands are all arrows that point to Jesus Christ, the one thingthat will satisfy the deepest needs of my heart? Fear God and keephis commandments.

Maybe you just think you’ve tried, but be honest, have you?

Every year, millions and millions of people visit the Grand Canyon.And they peer over the edge, snap a selfie or two, and zoom off.And if you ask one of these drive-by tourists if they have seen theGrand Canyon, they will respond with confidence: “Absolutely. Youshould definitely go; it’s worth a peek. I’d maybe budget 30 minutesor so. It’s cool, but there’s really not much to do.”

This is how many approach the living God. Yeah, I’ve read the Bible.I’ve peered over the rim and yeah, it’s amazing. Deep stuff. I knowit’s great and all, but don’t get you’re your hopes up, there’s not aton to see. Sure, if I’m in the area, I’ll swing by and peek over the rimbut prepare yourself to get quickly bored.

Their lack of interest is a function of their failure to invest the energyto descend into the depths. They know there is probably more to seeif they were to hike to the bottom, but man, that sounds like a lot ofwork. They think they know what it’s like. They imagine it in theirhead and their mental conception of what it’s like is just not worththe energy.

And so they snap the selfie, post it to Instagram, and never drinkfrom the life-giving springs on the canyon floor, springs they never ina million years even dreamed existed. They leave robbed of the thrillof discovery for those who walk the path of life. They drive awaylonging for and seeking vitality. How sad that it was right beneaththeir nose. The whitewater thrill of shooting through the belly of theearth and the jaw-dropping, ever-changing beauty of the hundredsof thousands of polished sandstone cathedrals could have beentheirs but instead, all they got was a view they had already seen athousand times before through other people’s pictures.

The goal of this series is to surprise you by the obvious – to get youexcited about investing in truth tested by time. Are you ready for anadventure in the obvious?

Are you ready to walk down a trail you think you know well, but intruth, you have never really tried? Do you thirst to obey God?Are you ready to press truths of God’s Word into your daily affairsand experience never-before tasted rich joys? Are you longing forfurther direction on the path of joy?Are you ready to experience God himself by choosing him? Let’sgo!

What are the commands of God? These are easily determined bylooking at a special tense in the Greek language called theimperative tense. The imperative tense is the tense that appeals tothe volition and asks you as the reader to bend your will to the will ofanother. It’s the tense that asks you to conform to another andsurrender decision making power into their care. Every childinstinctively feels the force of the imperative as he looks upon theunbending, pointed finger of a parent that says, “Take out the trash.”

Let’s do a software search on all imperatives in the Greek NewTestament where God is speaking to man. Boom, that was easy. Inseconds, that spun out over 1700 results. Thank you, Logos BibleSoftware; you just saved me about 100 hours! Now with ahighlighter and a pencil, let’s begin examining the results.

I’m working on a bigger project in this regard, so I literally did thiswork.

So I got out my pencil and the first imperative in the New Testamentis Matthew 1:20, ‘Behold’ as in “Behold, an angel of the Lordappeared to Mary.” This isn’t God talking to us directly. It’s the angelin the midst of a narrative commanding Mary.

It can be a bit intimidating to think about obeying all thecommandments of God. Wow, there are hundreds of them. I get alittle lost. It’s a bit overwhelming. So what I tried to do was look forpatterns and groupings in the commands. Are there headingsbeneath which these commands fit? And I discovered somethingthat for me was very helpful.

Rather than thinking of commands as individual things that need tobe remembered and obeyed, think of the commandments of God asdispositions of the heart. Think of these commandments as ways inwhich the heart leans.

Jesus summarized all the commands of the OT as fitting under theheading, “Love God and love men.” Well, that’s helpful.

So we want to do a similar sort of thing. When we read the NT, thereare hundreds and hundreds of commands. There are ways in whichwe can group those commands.

In the following weeks, we are going to look at four dispositions ofthe heart, disposition that capture all the commands of the Bible.

You can think of the commands of the Bible as fitting beneath thesefour headings.

1. Believe/Repent. These commands have to do with what you believeto be true. They have to do with your worldview, nature of reality,presuppositions, assumptions, and expectations. These aredirection commands.

2. Seek/Guard. These are movement commands. Because youbelieve that happiness and fulfillment are to be found there, you arenot there and so it’s time to move. You’re going there and becauseyou want to go there so badly, you are guarding against things thatmight prevent you from getting there.

3. Serve. These are saturation and cultivation commands. A seed willone day provide you with a meal, but in order for it to do so, youhave to cultivate it. And similarly, Christ will provide you with joy, butyou have to serve him for that to happen over time. There is workthat is done in the heart as you serve him that shaped you into acontainer for the joy of God.

4. Consider. There is a giant set of commands in Scripture to help youevaluate your experience in light of the truth you’ve believed,sought, and served. Because much of our joy in life is future, it canbe easy to get discouraged so God often reminds, helps us toevaluate and look beyond the present.

So that’s the subject of the next four weeks.

Choose Your Own Adventure.

I want to leave you with a thought. Did you ever read those chooseyour own adventure books? You’d read along and then it would say,

“Do you run for your life or stay and fight?”

I want you to think of the imperatives of the New Testament aschoose your own adventure. You get to the commands that say, beanxious for nothing, do not love the world, rejoice. What you do withthose commands, in a very real way, determines your very destiny.

I’m going to end on a bit of a technical note. There’s another aspectto the imperative tense that’s important to consider. There’s a reallywell know Greek Grammar written by Dana and Mantey and theydescribe the imperative tense this way:

This is so helpful! When God issues imperatives it’s an appeal of hiswill to our will but it is very far removed from reality since there is noguarantee that we will obey the command. Will I submit my will tohis, trusting that God will reward me for doing so?

Here’s the point: your reality is determined by whether or not you

obey the commands. If you bend your will to the commands of Godyou experience one reality, and if you don’t, you experience adifferent reality. If you are not experiencing soul satisfaction in life,there’s an explanation.

Change your attitude toward God’s commands! To love thosecommands like a man straining to get to the airport as soon aspossible.

To choose to love God is to choose to obey him. All of God’schildren should love his commandments. In fact, John says it isevidence of whether or not you are his child at all.

The logic here is so simple. How can you say, “I really want to get to

the airport,” and then ignore a sign that tells you where the airportis? You don’t want to get to the airport.

And similarly, if you say, “I want to be a follower of Jesus,” and thenhear a command of Jesus and say, “Nah, I don’t want to do that.”Well then, you don’t want to follow Jesus.

That’s why Jesus said,

Do you see how the words “Fear God and keep hiscommandments,” from Solomon relates to “Love God and love hiscommandments,” from the apostle John?