We have been for 11 weeks working through a series on the 10 Commandments and we
we finished tonight. Derek last week looked at the 10th Commandment and
tonight is a bit of an epilogue to the series. The modern modern person looks
at the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20 and says that the 10 Commandments are rules
that suffocate a person's freedom. They are a boundary, they take away freedom,
they don't give it and the Bible comes and says the exact opposite and we said
this from week one that the Bible comes and says the 10 Commandments are the law
of perfect freedom and the reason for that, the reason the Bible can say that
that the 10 Commandments are freeing not restricting is because they reflect
to God's character. Now if you look at the first four of the 10 Commandments, the
table one of the law, they basically tell you to love God and God loves God
better than anyone else does and if you look at the second table of the law
commandments five through ten it says basically to love people and God loves
people better than any people do. So God loves himself and God loves people. Table
one, table two, see the 10 Commandments reflects God's character and God, if God
exists and he does then that means that he has to be the most free being that
there is and true freedom, what is true freedom? Well we learn that when we look
at God true freedom is the ability to not be able to do some things,
you know? There are things that God cannot do. God cannot cheat, God cannot
lie, God cannot blaspheme, God cannot be unfaithful, he can't do any of that. He's
not able and that means true freedom is not the ability to make choices as you
wish. True freedom is the ability to be the very thing you're meant to be and
so when you look at the 10 Commandments you're being called, you're being asked,
not just to obey the 10 Commandments but to actually reflect God's character.
True freedom, not restriction but freedom. Freedom is not choices, it's not the
proliferation of choices, no it's the ability to be like God, to be the one
you were made to be. Okay so tonight you were made to be like God, that's the
really the big picture, the big idea of the 10 Commandments to reflect God's
character and that is why Paul says this incredibly outrageous thing that he
says in Ephesians 5 1, he says, imitate God and this is not an idea that we talk
about very often, especially as Protestants, we don't speak about the
imitation of God. It sounds dangerous, how could a human being imitate God and
yet Ephesians 5 1 Paul says imitate God. So let's think about it, it's really the
summary of the whole of the 10 Commandments. Immitate God, first you're
created to imitate God and then secondly, recreated to imitate God. Alright so
let's think about that, first created to imitate. Alright I just want to say and
point out this is a command, so you see it right there in Ephesians chapter 5
verse 1, therefore be imitators of God. It's a command, the word to imitate here
is the Greek word mimesis and it means in English just to mimic, to copy, to
follow after and another way to translate it is to talk about models.
So every single one of us grows up in this world and we need models, we need
people that we look at and recognize as role models in our lives and you come
across the Bible and you see that the Bible gives you lots of models in this
life. So if you were with us last week, last Sunday morning in Mark chapter 12
Jesus pointed at a poor widow and said look at her, she follows God when she
gave her whole self so follow her. So we need models in this life, sometimes the
Bible says David is a model, sometimes Ruth is a model, there's all sorts of
models across the Bible. Another way that the New Testament talks about this is
to use the Greek word icon. So icon is translated in your New Testament as
image but it can also be translated as model in a way, an image, a way of doing
something, something you can follow, something you can copy. I wonder who you
think are the biggest icons of Western history. I was thinking about this this
week. I think it's got to be Elvis Presley, I think it's got to be Princess
Diana maybe, Michael Jordan, someone might add Taylor Swift, you know,
Leonel Messi, you would have your list, right? You would contradict my list. The
Bible comes and says that every single one of us needs models and the reason
models, icons, that very literal Greek word exist, is because we were made to
mimic. We were made to copy, we were made to look at something and try to
image it ourselves. And the Bible looks at the icons of Western history and says
every one of these human examples, these human icons, they're great in their own
way but a true icon, a true object of mimicry, someone we're supposed to
follow, is only good. A human being is only good to follow is if they are
imitating God. That's what Paul says. Imitate God and really look to people,
look around and imitate those who are imitating God. And so Paul says something
unbelievable. He says, follow me, imitate me at one point in his letters as I
imitate God. He says that. It's outrageous but he says this is exactly what
we're made to mimic. We have to have people to look out and to follow and to
mimic. Now how? Well verse one and two, he says imitate God and then you see in
verse two, walk in love as Christ loved us. And that means that he's taking this,
making this a bit clearer. Verse one, imitate God. Verse two, as Christ Jesus
loved us. Now what he's doing there is saying to you, here's how you imitate
God more specifically. Imitate Jesus Christ. So if you want to know how to
imitate God, you look at the life of Jesus and you imitate Jesus's life. Verse
two, love like he loved. Now this is where it gets really dangerous. This is
where we have an instinct, maybe you have an instinct tonight, to push back and to
say, the imitation of Christ. There's been lots of books written with that
title and it seems dangerous and there's a few reasons why. There have been three
basic models in the history of Christianity for what it means to
imitate Jesus Christ and all of them have been one sided and that's why we
feel instinctively that this idea of imitating Jesus can be dangerous. The
first of these models that developed a few hundred years into the life of the
church was the ideal of becoming a martyr. And what happened here was people
looked at the Gospels and they said, look Jesus, Jesus takes his life, he
gives his life away in physical death, he suffers physically and that means the
best way in this life you can imitate Jesus is if you're willing and you take
it all the way to the point where you give your life away physically for him.
And so there came a season in the church in church history where people were
chasing martyrdom. They were really seeking it and it created levels of
Christians. You know you can only really be a you can only really have
assurance that you're gonna go to heaven if you become a martyr and so people
chase after it and it created classes of Christians. Now we have something similar
in our day, you know there are normal Christians and then there are missionaries,
you know, and then there are missionaries and then there are the
missionaries that go to North Korea, right? There's classes, this is how the
idea of purgatory developed, you know there's levels. How can we really be sure
everybody did everybody only the martyr really deserves it, right? It's a
model, it's one-sided. It's an idea of imitation of Christ that
kind of missed it actually. Now there's a second way that's one-sided that came
along and it transferred from the martyr to the monk and the monk looked at
Jesus's life and said well it's not really about his physical suffering by
itself, it's about his solitude. So Jesus went out into the desert, remember for
40 days and he starved and so the monk said I need to do the same thing, I need
to go out into the desert, I need to starve, I need to take away the goods of
this life like Jesus, he was homeless, I have to be homeless and so they followed
his example in exactly the same ways and he said so that look there's normal
Christians and then there's the monk, there's classes and this is the real
imitation of Jesus. Now there's the martyr ideal, there's the monastic
ideal but then the third one that developed much more recently in our
history is the modern ideal and in the modern ideal people look at the
gospels, the modern person, the modern person looks at the gospels and says the
imitation of Christ, that's it. Jesus, you know the gospel is not good news, the
gospel is this, that Jesus is my example. Jesus came into the world so that I could
imitate him, so that I could follow him as an example. You see the modern
rationalist looks and says Jesus is not my savior, he is my example and so
Christianity is nothing but imitation. If I imitate Jesus, he'll teach me how to
have the best life, how to be a good person, how to be ethical, so Jesus is a
great ethical example but he's not a savior. Now we've got these three models
of imitation throughout world history, church history and that's why people get
nervous about this idea of the imitation of Christ and yet we come to
Ephesians 5.1 and Paul says imitate God and here's how, imitate Jesus and so we've
got to say, we've got to say okay what do you mean and so the Reformation came
along and says this, let's just lay it out, he says, they said look here's what
the Bible teaches, the Bible says Jesus can only be your example, you can only
imitate Jesus if he is first your redeemer. He has to be your redeemer if
you want him to be your example and if he is your redeemer then he also has
become your example and so if you look tonight to Jesus as redeemer, Paul comes
along and says now imitate him, imitate him but how? Before we get to that let me
just say where's Paul getting this? Paul is getting this I think from Genesis
chapter 1, Genesis chapter 1 that's the very beginning by the way, verses
26 to 28 where God makes us and he says I've created you in my image, in my
likeness, it's the very same idea. God said I created you in my image so you're
made to image God, you're made to imitate God, it's the very very same
notion. One way to think about it is that to imitate God means to be like a
mirror, an image, to image something means that you are a living mirror. Okay
what, how does a mirror work? I don't really know to be honest but you can take
a mirror and I know this that whatever you stand a mirror in front of the mirror
reflects the thing that it's facing right? You stand in front of a mirror, a
mirror reflects you, you put a mirror in front of anything else and the mirror is
going to reflect that thing. God says in the beginning you were made to image, to
reflect, to mimic, to mirror God, made in God's image to image God, you're made to
mimic, you're made to look at models and copy and that means that you're always
in life going to put your heart, the mirror of your heart, you are a mirror,
you're a walking mirror in front of something and whatever it is that you give
your attention to most, that you're most attuned to, you will begin to reflect.
You're a living mirror, a walking mirror, you have to mimic, you have to image, you
have to copy, you can't help but do it, it's in our very DNA, it's down in the
depths of our bones. That's why the very first commandment is, God says at the
beginning, have no other gods before me, right? Because if you, the mirror of your
heart stands and is most attuned to anything creaturely, if that's the thing
you focus on most, most you will start to image it, you'll start to reflect it,
you'll start to become it. You worship whatever you're thinking about the most,
you worship whatever your mind is most attuned to, your heart is most attuned to
and whatever you worship, you become like that thing. That's a universal reality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great writer and poet, he says, he wrote about this, he
said this, a person will worship something, we may think our tribute is
paid in secret, but it will come out. That which dominates our imagination and
our thoughts, that, sorry let me read that again, that which dominates our
imagination and our thoughts will determine our loves and our character.
Therefore, it requires us to be careful what we worship, for what we are
worshiping we are becoming, he said. Now Charles Darwin, in late in his life he
wrote an autobiography, he wrote about his own story and he says something
really interesting about this. He talks about in his autobiography how he used
to love poetry and music and how he used to be, he used to reflect often on the
world of his own emotions and how he was attuned to his own psychology and he
writes about how he loved to read Shakespeare and the beautiful lines of
Shakespeare. He says I took great pleasure in poetry and in Shakespeare, but
then he writes 20 to 30 years later I cannot read a line of it, it nauseates
me, why? And he talks about this, he says I spent 30 years in deep analytical
scientific obsession day in and day out with collecting facts and analyzing
them. He says my mind has become a machine for grinding general laws out of
large collections of data and he says I've lost my taste for poetry, I've lost
my taste for music, I've lost my taste for the world of the emotions and he says
it's because I stared at scientific data day in and day out from the time I
woke up to the time I went to bed for 30 years and now he says the loss
of this ability to read poetry, to delight in music, he says is the loss of
happiness, it was injurious to my moral character in fibrling to the moral part
of my character. Now you see what he's saying, you got to get underneath it a
little bit to connect it with what we're talking about, he says you know he
regrets it, he's regretting it and he's saying he's realizing that he's saying I
spent my entire life worshiping science, that's all I did. Now science is a very
good thing but he's realizing he wasn't balanced, he put his heart in
front of scientific data all day all the time and it's not just that he did
science, he became it, he became a machine, he couldn't do anything else, it's
all his mind could think about, you see whatever you are standing in front of
most often, whatever your heart is looking at, attuned to, you will become, you
will reflect it until you become it, you become what you worship, it's an age old
truth. Now that means here that Paul is saying you're not being invited to
imitate, you do imitate, you do mimic, you do image, you have to, the question is
who, what, what is it that your heart is most attuned to, most standing in front
of most often, that is the very thing that you're becoming. Now secondly that
means we need to be recreated in order to imitate rightly, we need to be recreated
in order to grow in the imitation of God. How do we do it? Let me give you two as
and we'll be done. They're right here in what Paul says and here they are. In verse
one and two Paul says be an imitator of God and that means imitate Jesus Christ.
How? The first thing we need is, here's the first thing, a realist self-
understanding, okay, a realist self-understanding. Just before Ephesians
five one and two, Paul talks about putting away the old self, being honest
about the condition of your heart, being honest about what you're worshiping in
this life. He says you got to put away the old self and we need a realist self
understanding if we're gonna ever be imitators of God. There are two main ways
in other words that you can look at the Ten Commandments, let's bring it back to
the Ten Commandments. There are two main ways, you can look at the Ten Commandments
and be wrong, not really see what the Bible is trying to do with the Ten
Commandments. Here's the first way, you can look at the Ten Commandments after
this 11 weeks we've been going through it and you can say you know I haven't
always been a perfect person, I know that. I've made mistakes but I'm not a liar
and I'm not a cheater and I'm not committed adultery and I'm not murdered.
I don't steal, you know, I don't watch TikTok videos at work. I don't steal time
from my employer, you know, I'm generally speaking a pretty good person and I saw
one pastor call this, this is a Saint Nick theology, right, because you look
at the Ten Commandments and you say I want to obey the Ten Commandments, I want
to be a good person and I want to be a good person for goodness sake. It's good
to be good, it's good to be moral, it's good to chase after goodness for goodness
sake, you know, that's a wrong way of looking at the Ten Commandments, right,
in other words you say you know you better watch out, you better not cry, you
know, he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, so you better
be good for goodness sake. You read the Ten Commandments and you say I want to be
good for goodness sake, I want to be moral, I want to be a good person, that's
Saint Nick theology and you begin to say is that God or Santa, right, and you see
the first wrong way to look at the Ten Commandments is say I was made, here it is,
let me make it simpler, I was made to be good, I was made to be a moral person and
Paul's coming and saying no the Ten Commandments don't exist because they're
telling you you were made to be a moral person, a good person, they tell you you
were made to imitate the God who made you, you know you don't exist for goodness
sake, not at all, you exist for something much greater than goodness sake, but for
God's sake you're made to imitate the living God, the God who made you, see, now
there's a second way to be wrong about the Ten Commandments and this is where
imitation can be dangerous, this idea, here's why, it's the rich young ruler
understanding of the Ten Commandments, so in Matthew chapter 19 Jesus meets with
this rich young ruler and he says to the rich young ruler, the rich young ruler
says what must I do to get eternal life and he says if you want to have eternal
life you've got to obey all the commandments, all ten of the commandments
and the rich young ruler says you know well I've never murdered
anybody, I've never, he goes through the list and said and he said I think I'm
okay, I followed all the commandments from my youth and so Jesus says, Jesus says
now go and give away all your possessions to the poor and follow me, now the rich
young ruler had asked what must I do to get eternal life, you see he looked at
the Ten Commandments and it wasn't I want to be good for goodness sake, it was I
want to get to heaven for goodness sake, what must, how did the Ten
Commandments get me to heaven, that's, it's for heaven's sake that I'm here to
obey the Ten Commandments and it's almost as if Jesus gives into that, Jesus
says yeah obey the Ten Commandments and you will and you say this isn't the
gospel that I've been reading until Jesus says now go give away all your
possessions to the poor and come and follow me and you realize what Jesus was
doing, you know this guy said I've obeyed all ten of the Ten Commandments and he
says well go give away your possessions and he can't do it, why? Jesus is trying
to get him to see he never got past command number one, so you don't have
any other gods before the Lord, you see this rich young ruler had been
staring at money, at stuff his whole life and that's why he's named rich young
ruler, his name is wealth, his name is stuff, his name is material, you see he
had let the mirror of his heart stand in front of stuff for so long he had become
stuff and Jesus is trying to say you don't see your need, you never got past
commandment number one, now look here's the way to grow into imitating God, you've
got to be a realist, you've got to say tonight the first thing the Ten Commandments
do is show me I never got past commandment number one, I never did, you
show I've looked at things in this life, I've pointed my heart at stuff, at
creaturely things and I've they've become my God, I never got past commandment
number one at all, I know I have a need, I can't imitate God, I never did, I never
did, you've got to be a realist, one theologian talks about this, he says
that you know the modern person looks and he says Jesus is a really great
example and then he says you know the modern person says Jesus I read the
Gospels I see what a great example Jesus is, this is what it looks like to obey
the Ten Commandments, this is who I want to be and the theologian says go and try
it, give it a shot, try to go and imitate Jesus and you'll immediately
become a realist about yourself and he goes on he says Jesus Christ felt his
emotions deeper than the rest of us, his intellect was stronger than ours, his will
was unshaken in the face of all temptation and he says to see Jesus
truly is to experience judgment on our conscience, to know our powerlessness, to
truly imitate him indeed if he is only an example to you he comes to judge you
and not to save you, only when we know him as redeemer or do we dare look at
him, do we ever dare look at him and consider him our example, he says that
when you really look at Jesus and you say oh I want to imitate him you become
a realist, you know that in that moment you're judged that that's the first thing
the Ten Commandments come to teach you, what does Paul say here? Paul says
Jesus Christ came to give himself up in verse 2 as a fragrant offering and
sacrifice to God, now let's just put it plainly as this theologian did, he says
there is no way you are ever gonna become what you were truly made to be an
imitator of God, an imitator of Jesus unless tonight you know Jesus Christ as
your redeemer first, you have to come to him tonight as your redeemer no matter
how many times you have tonight is the night to come to him and say Jesus
you're my redeemer if you want to step out tomorrow and become he be your
living example, Jesus Christ gave himself up as a fragrant offering for you that
means Jesus Christ was judged in your place, when you when you look at his life
you say I deserve judgment, when you look at the Ten Commandments you have to
say I deserve judgment I'm a realist I never got past commandment number one
and only then can you see that the judge who was judged in your place has come
to be your redeemer, have you ever been to camera obscura across the way here I
took the kids to camera obscura last Christmas time and you know you go in
there and they have all these funhouse mirrors and they're all they're all
curved right and you they they show you you know they show you who you really
are no well actually yes right a funhouse mirror are you a realist about
yourself your heart is a funhouse mirror it's meant to reflect the living God and
it's all curved and bent and curved in on itself and pointing back at you you've
replaced them with looking at all sorts of your heart as a tune to all sorts of
other things and you've become them we're made to be perfectly flat beautiful
mirrors images of God and we're funhouse mirrors Jesus Christ came to be judged in
your place for the fact that you are bent in on yourself curved in facing the
wrong direction now that means lastly and we'll close with this that means that
if you know Jesus Christ is your redeemer tonight you can move forward from
here growing in this idea of the imitation of God with an adopted
self-understanding here's the very last thing you see this in verses in verse
one he says be imitator of God verse one imitate Jesus verse two and right in
between there's that little clause as beloved children so he reframes this
idea of imitation this is what the three models of imitation martyr monk and
modern rationalists all missed and that's this idea that in order to truly
imitate God imitate Christ you've got to know yourself to be adopted adopted
into his family a son or a daughter of the living King and here's the last thing
the only way that you can imitate God is if he is your father not your judge and
that means when you come to Christ as redeemer here's the big idea you now
have access to God how do you grow in the imitation of God the imitation of
Christ and it's all about this you now redeemed by Jesus have access to God
access think about the way a child has access to their father you know
sometimes sometimes in the middle of the night children get thirsty they
forgot to bring water to their bedside and they wake up in the middle of the
night and their mouth is parched and they want a drink I've had that happen
once or twice and you know what happens you're asleep and a child comes and
they said they wake you up and say I'm so thirsty now imagine the access that a
child has to their dad to their mom you know when a little child comes and says
I'm thirsty a mom and a dad say you know they might do it slightly reluctantly
but they get up and they go and they get that child water now if you're if
your colleague if your employer if your employee at 3 a.m. knocked on your
front door and said you know what I woke up in the middle of the night and I was
so thirsty and I just thought maybe you could help me get some water you know
you might do it because it's such a strange encounter at 3 a.m. you might
go to the kitchen and bring this one but you say what are you doing here you know
status is everything you say you do not have the status to come to my house at
3 a.m. and ask me for water the there's only a few little creep little people
that can do that in all the world right and that's my children nobody else can
do that you see when when you look at the Jesus Christ and He's your Redeemer
you're adopted you have access you can come to God like a little child thirsty
in the middle of the night for water now look let's put it together Paul says in
2 Corinthians 3 17 and 18 this is what he says the spirit of the Lord is freedom
spirit of the Lord when you have the spirit of the Lord you have freedom and
then he says this you can come and behold God with an unveiled face you have
access and you will be transformed into the image of the Lord from glory to
glory by degree you see what he says he says when you have when you know
yourself adopted you have access and when you have access you can come
behold God face-to-face and this is then you will be transformed by degree in
this life you want to imitate God you want to become like Jesus it says come
and behold the God that has given you access like a son like a daughter
daughter here's the secret you want to become like God you want to imitate God
become the one you were made to be like to imitate Jesus it says come and
behold him approach him be face-to-face with him with God quantity time really
is quality time spending time with the living God beholding him face-to-face
it's worship that's the secret beholding God coming to him face-to-face I had two
illustrations to close only have time for one let me give you one there's a
wonderful story a true story about I told this about a year ago but this
you'll we're gonna keep hearing this illustration it's too good not to use
on an annual basis a story of a man named Joseph Merrick you know the story
he was called he was called the elephant man in his time he lived in the 1880s
and 90s and he was an Englishman and he was born in the south of England and
he was born with a disease that really disfigured his body in many ways he was
born with tumors growths all over his body and he ended up being sold into a
carnival show a traveling carnival you'd pay money to observe him in that
19th century all very true a movie's been made about him with Anthony Hopkins
and one of the things that happened is later in Joseph's life he got treated
he was nearly beat to death by his carnival master and he got treated by a
doctor in a hospital in London and the doctor eventually forms a relationship
with Joseph and takes Joseph into his home and invites him over with his wife
the doctor and his wife hosted Joseph for afternoon tea and Joseph Merrick the
elephant man comes to afternoon tea and he's there and he shows the doctor and
his wife a picture of his mother and it's his only possession he's got it the
clothes on his back he's got a little picture of his mom and he says the
doctors you know he's very curious he wants to see Joseph's mother he wants
to know you know is this disease something he inherited by genetics or is
it just him and his mother did not have the same disease and the doctor says
you know she's a she's a wonderful woman I'm sure and Joseph says well if only
she could see me now amongst all these friends these friends the doctor and his
wife he says maybe she would want me and so you see his mother had abandoned him
because of his disease and he said in this moment you know he had a friend he
had a he had a couple that loved him and he said if only she could see me now you
know if only she could see me now listen he needed a mother he did he needed a
mother his mother if she would have stuck with him that would have that would
have helped him so much but let me say this even his mother even his mother
even the best of circumstances even the dearest of friendships could not fully
and finally make him whole all right you were created let's come back to the
beginning you were created to image the God who made you and that means you were
made above all else to behold the living God face to face you were made for God
and that means no matter what you faced in life and boy did Joseph have a hard
life the most important thing that we all need is to hear God say to you you're
my son you're my daughter Joseph needed that above all else he needed he needed
to hear my son God the father say that to him my he needs you need more than
anything tonight just to hear God say to you my son my daughter and for you to
behold him face to face and when you behold him you will take on his
character the very thing you were made for let's pray together Lord we asked
tonight that you would make us conformed to the image of the son which is just
means to imitate Jesus and we give thanks tonight that no matter what our
life situation and no matter how broken it's been that we can have tonight the
thing we need above all and that's to be named adopted a status a status so
precious to be able to come before you with total and utter access all because
of our Redeemer Jesus and so as we close this Ten Commandment series we don't
want to walk away thinking Lord that the Ten Commandments are all about our
morality or our goodness or anything like that or even earning our way
to heaven far be it we want to come tonight and know that the Ten Commandments
exist to show us what it looks like to be conformed to the image of the one we
were made who we were made for and by and unto and so we asked tonight Lord that
you would give us your character only because you've given us redemption and
the Son so I pray tonight for somebody that they would find redemption and hope
tonight in Jesus Christ judged in their place in the way they failed to image you
Lord he did and yet he died so we pray tonight for somebody that they would
find hope and redemption in Jesus Christ and further for all of us Lord that you
would teach us what it means to imitate Jesus Christ and his character and we
pray these things in Christ's name Amen