God's Commandments: Are They Good for Us? - Andre Bercot

Again, when we think about grumbling, that we're not truly grumbling about the circumstances in our life or our family, but we're ultimately grumbling towards God and His goodness and wisdom. Grumbling, whining, complaining are ultimately the heart's response to God, not to our circumstances. It shows a lack of faith in God and His kingdom and is instead focusing on what I want now. That's why we grumble. We don't—we're not getting what I want now.

I want to begin my sermon on telling a story, a true-life story. My brother, as you all know, is a psychiatrist. During his medical residency in the fall of 2020, he was a resident doctor at a military hospital.

He did not tell me much about his experiences there, but he did—a certain particular patient stood out. This patient was a Vietnam War veteran. He was constantly haunted by flashbacks from his time in Vietnam. My brother told me that this veteran was suffering from severe PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder.

My brother said that every time he would see this person, he would constantly tell my brother about how he regretted what he did in Vietnam, the horrors that he suffered, and what a terrible experience it was. I thought about this. My question is, why? Is this how God intended humans to live and to act? Which brings us into my message. God's commandments, are they good for us?

So we're going to look at this sermon in more or less two parts. They kind of overlap. I'm just going to talk briefly about God's commandments and some of the reasons that people give why we don't need to obey them. And then I'm also going to look at four specific commandments that are ignored by the Christian world that we live in.

In quotes. I know it's not a quote in Christian world, but in quotes. When I say God's commandments, I'm specifically talking about the teachings of Jesus and His apostles found throughout the New Testament. And in my message, I'm going to use the terms interchangeably: God's commandments, the teachings of Jesus, or the teachings of the apostles. So I might use one or one or one of those phrases.

What are some misconceptions that we hear why people don't want to follow God's commandments? And this list isn't exhaustive. This is some stuff I thought about. One of them, the one of the ones that we always hear is, you have been told that the teachings of Jesus and His apostles are to show us how depraved we are, that we will never live up to His standard. We're humans. We're fallen.

John Wesley made a comment that relates to this idea, and I'm just going to share it to you. He said, "So that instead of being zealous for good works, they are a stink in their nostrils, and they are infinitely more afraid of the works of God than of the works of the devil."

But that's how people act, that they're too scared to follow God's commandments. It's better to follow the works of Satan.

Another one that I've heard before, the teaching of Jesus and His apostles are part of the Mosaic Law. I've even heard that the Sermon on the Mount is not the first part of the Gospel of Jesus, but instead is the last part of the Mosaic Law, and that the Mosaic Law was "done away with." I've also heard that we are in the church age. We live under grace.

In the time of the millennium, then we'll need to follow the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, but we're under grace right now. And then there's one last one I was going to share, and I think this is what actually hits home for most people. It's by William Law, a quote by him.

Some people perhaps object that all these rules of holy living unto God and all that we do are too great a restraint upon human life, that it will be made too anxious a state by thus introducing a regard for God in all our actions, and that by depriving ourselves of so many seemingly innocent pleasures, we shall render our lives dull and easy in melancholy. And I think in reality that's probably the real reason. We want to live to the flesh.

God's commandments, the teaching of Jesus, the teaching of His apostles mess us up. And so that's the reason. I really think that's the true reason, the real reason why people don't want to follow God's commandments. I think all the other theological things they justify by theology, but I think that's the real reason.

But I want to say this is what I believe the commandments of God are. As I said, I think the teaching of Jesus and His apostles are for today, not for a future age, but for us today. They show us what God's eternal values, His eternal truths are. They show us how to live and how not to live. And in the end, God's values are the only values that matter. The values of this world don't matter. The values of "theologians" don't matter. God's values are the only values that matter in the end. Also, I would say God's commandments were not given to us to make our lives dull and melancholy, as William Law said, but instead are given to us for our well-being, to bring true joy and happiness in our life.

And one final thought of them is that our obedience or lack of obedience to God's commands are a direct correlation or show a direct correlation to our relationship with God. I'm just going to share three verses here.

And these are all from the first year from John, and the last one's from 1 John. These first two just talking about God's commands and our love for Him. John chapter 15, verse 9 through 11. "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I've kept my Father's commands and remain in His love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." Linking our keeping God's commands that we will remain in the love of Jesus and of His Father. A similar thought in John chapter 14, verse 23 and 24. "Jesus answered and said to him, 'If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.

My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father who sent me.'" Again, the same idea. If we keep God's word, it shows that we love Him. And as I said, opposite, if we don't, it truly shows we don't love Him.

And one last one from 1 John chapter 2, verse 3 through 6. "Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commands. He who says, 'I know Him,' and does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked."

Again, the correlation. If we say we love God and we don't keep His commandments, then we're a liar.

William Law made this other comment about keeping God's commands. As I said, therefore our true joy, our true contentment, our true happiness. "He that is endeavoring to subdue and root out of his mind all those passions of pride, envy, and ambition, which religion opposes, is doing more to make himself happy even in this life than he that is contriving means to indulge them."

Isn't that so true?

Isn't this what we want? It's true joy and contentment. I know someone might say, "I'm already satisfied. I don't need to follow Jesus' teachings. I'm already happy." But I would like to show you that by my examples of disobedience to God's commands, that I don't think you can be truly content and happy in your life without following the teachings of Christ. Remember, His teachings were given to us for our good. So I'm going to look at four areas of teachings of Jesus and His apostles that have been more or less completely disregarded by the Christian world that we live in.

The first one is one that I spoke about about a year ago about uncomplaining. I'm just going to just read a verse on that. Philippians chapter 2, verse 14 and 15. "Do all things without complaining and disputing that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world." And why I'm talking about this again is not because I spoke about it a year ago, is that about five weeks ago we were driving to Chambersburg to go to the train show that was near Target over on 3rd Street or something. There's a little model train show that you might have seen the signs, and I would recommend going to it.

But we were running late, and I started to complain, saying, "Boy, we're running late." Then we got in the car, and we went to Route 11 off of Clearfield and turned south to go to Chambersburg. And immediately we got behind one of those big tractors. I'm not sure if it was a combine or the manure spreader, but the same difference. And I had to say, "Boy, there has to be a tractor in our way. We're running late. Are we going to be able to make it to the train show?" And Elizabeth looked at me and said, "Are you aware that you've been complaining and grumbling a lot the last couple of weeks?

It makes everybody pretty upset, including me." I thought about what she said, that my complaining had discouraged her and made everyone in our family more upset. And this cut me to the heart. So I thought about again, when we think about grumbling, that we're not truly grumbling about the circumstances in our life or our family, but we're ultimately grumbling towards God and His goodness and wisdom. Grumbling, whining, complaining are ultimately the heart's response to God, not to our circumstances. It shows a lack of faith in God and His kingdom and is instead focusing on what I want now. That's why we grumble. We're not getting what I want now. So of course I was grumbling because I want to get to Chambersburg, and these tractors are in our way.

So another teaching that is, like I said, completely ignored by the Christian world we live in, covetousness and the related idea of helping the poor. We'll just look at it, like I said, briefly. These are some of the things to think about. This is Matthew chapter 6, verse 24. "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon."

Think about the world we live in. We know the world completely ignores the teachings of Christ in this area. You just have to, I think, get on your smartphone, get on the computer, look at the newspaper if you still can get one, look at a magazine, go to the store, look around us. It's like it's completely ignored. The world says, "Make as much as you want and keep it to yourself."

I do know some people give a little bit in the world, but it's usually for so they can get their name in the paper. Andy people even do this, and they go into debt to show how rich they are, so they can get fancy cars, fancy houses, you name it.

And like I said, yeah, I say completely against what Jesus is teaching. But what I thought about this is this thought here too. By the juvenile Roman satirist, you might be familiar with him, but it says, "No deity is held in such reverence among us as wealth."

And I would say that we can see that in the world we live in. That's one of the deities they hold as wealth. But unfortunately, it's also seen in the Christian world. Even Christians here in the United States want to climb "the American ladder." I'm assuming you know what I'm referring to, that something has been taught about 100 years, that the new generation is more wealthy than the previous generation.

And it's something that, at least in the United States, has happened probably since the late 1800s type thing, that usually you keep going up the ladder, you have maybe not more things, but you leave a higher standard of living than your parents did or your grandparents. Or the other thought I've read, how many Christians will tell you that, "Look at all the stuff that God has blessed with me, blessed me with, my business, my big home, my rich fancy cars." And then I think, "Okay, if you read the teaching of Jesus where he says," it seems like a complete contradiction when people say that God blesses us all with these things.

I remember reading the book, Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Some of you probably have read it. In it, if you remember, she has a Christmas celebration. She gets one penny. I think she and her two sisters, Mary and Carrie, get one penny, and they're so excited. That's worth maybe 35 cents in our money today. You can't get an exact. Would we honestly be happy if someone gave us 35 cents like she was squealing in that book? I don't think any of us would be, to be honest. And I was going to say, I think with this mentality that the world has crept into the "Christian world."

I had to reflect on a quote that I remember hearing Brother Lynn Martin from Shippensburg say. I had got a cassette tape from him on some of his teachings, and on that cassette tape, he made the comment, "You may have a whole house full of chairs, but you can only sit in one chair at a time."

I thought about the truth of that statement. Like I said, the world that we live in, everything you want to hoard, live in fancy stuff, but you can only use one thing at a time. It doesn't matter if you have, like you said, a whole house of chairs or whatever. William Law makes this comment about this idea of this being wealthy.

It, referring to religion, tells him that this world is incapable of giving him any other happiness, and that all endeavors to be happy in heaps of money or acres of land in fine clothes, rich beds, stately equippage, referring to carriages, obviously, and show and splendor are only vain endeavors, ignorant attempts after impossibilities, these things being no more able to give the least degree of happiness.

And that's the truth. The material world cannot give us ultimate happiness, not ultimate satisfaction.

And the related concept, I said, is we see this covetousness laying up for ourselves riches. Jesus also taught in Matthew chapter 6, verse 19 and 21, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure or treasury is, treasure being, you think of a pile of things, treasury being where you can store things, there your heart will be also."

And I was thinking about this teaching of Jesus and where he's using the word that we should lay up for ourselves treasure in heaven, referring to helping other people. If you read other scriptures, it talks about that very clearly. Then I've heard statements like this in "The Christian World." To give abroad is termed hate at home.

Is that what the Bible says? That if I help someone, either in the United States or around the world, that's viewed as hate. You're judging where I share my money. When I think about what Jesus said and the Sermon on the Mount, the story of the rich young ruler, the parable of the unjust steward, that we're supposed to be sharing with everybody, both locally and around the world. The Christian world forgets you're to love your neighbor as yourself, which includes everybody, not just the people in the United States, but everybody.

The Christian world, unfortunately, takes this from the world as well. You take care of your needs first. If you have anything left over, then maybe you'll share a little bit with the poor. I'm not saying that's what people say, but that's how they live.

But if you think about helping the poor, it's a vital ministry and is linked to our salvation. Just remember what Jesus said in the parable about the sheep and the goats. He said that one aspect of how we're going to be judged on Judgment Day is how do we help, as he said, at the least of these, my brethren.

I thought about this too. Here in the US, most of us have never truly seen someone who is starving to death. I'm not saying there's nobody in the US who is starving to death, because I think there probably are, but we've never seen them. I've seen people standing at Walmart holding a sign, "I need food." They're usually not looking like they starved to death.

But if you think about it, there are people around the world and probably here in the US who are truly starving to death, but we don't see them. And if you remember the old adage, "Out of sight, out of mind."

So we don't even think about that because we don't see them. We see the people who are holding a sign saying, "We'll work for food."

The co-lo's thought about, like I said, covetousness and wealth and helping the poor, William Law makes this comment. So that money that thus spent is not merely wasted or lost, but is spent to bad purposes and miserable effects to the corruption and disorder of our hearts and to the making us less able to live up to the sublime doctrines of the gospel.

It is but like keeping money from the poor to buy poison for ourselves.

Another teaching that is completely lost in the Christian world is the teaching of Jesus on divorce and remarriage.

This is this one verse about it, Matthew chapter 5, verse 32. "But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery."

Jesus and his apostles taught against divorce and remarriage. If you look at history, divorce and remarriage was forbidden in "all the world," including "the secular world and the "Christian world" up until about the time of the Reformation," which would be in the early 1500s. Things started to change, but it was very small changes, but they kept changing. Divorce was still very rare, even among Bible-believing Christians since the 1950s and 1960s. I have two stories in my own family, immediate family, not about divorce and remarriage.

One of my relatives, then these are about divorce and relatives, divorce and remarriage. One of my relatives was divorced, wanted to get remarried. This was probably the early 1940s during the World War II era, maybe shortly after. And they were part of the American Baptist Church. And that church at that time period said, "No, we will not remarry you." But this person went to the local United Methodist Church and got remarried and was able to be part of their church. This was like a 1940s type thing. And I have another similar person who was, I think, part of like a congregationalist church who was able to be divorced and remarried and be part of the church, a very rare exception.

But as I said, up until the late 40s, it was uncommon to have divorce and remarriage in the Christian world. But in the 50s and 60s, the laws in the states that we live in here in the United States changed. By the end of the 1960s, it was very easy to get divorced and remarried. And the stigma with being divorced and remarried went away, "in the world." And guess what? The Christian world copied it and accepted divorce and remarriage. I know Anabaptists don't, but the "Christian world" that we live in accepted it.

I was talking to my parents who were members of a conservative evangelical Bible church in the 1980s. They had been in their early 19s when my parents were in their early 30s. My dad said, "Out of the young couples I hung out with in that age group, all but my parents and one other, everyone else has gotten divorced and remarried from that time period."

A very horrible statistic. Here's some statistics about divorce and remarriage here in the United States. What I was able to find, they said the first marriage in the United States, approximately 40% will end in divorce. That's a pretty high amount. But if you think about the second, if you get remarried, about two-thirds of those then end in divorce, even much higher. And if you get married a third time, then it's a 70% end in divorce. And then this statistic, it says about 40% of the children in the United States will experience parental divorce by age 18. That means 4 out of 10 children, parents will get divorced and remarried.

It's a very horrible statistic. Some other thoughts about that. From the United States Department of Justice website, it says the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is if they were raised by both a father and a mother or just by a mother.

Children from single-family homes are more prone than children from two-family homes to use drugs, be gang members, be expelled from school, be committed to reform institutions, become pregnant as teenagers, and to become juvenile murderers. These statistics, I would say, are staggering, but it's not surprising that the world doesn't follow the teachings of Jesus. But what's horrible is that the "Christian world" that we live in went along with the world and accepted divorce and remarriage.

One final one I want to look at that the Christian world has ignored is a teaching of Jesus about loving our enemies.

This is from Matthew 6:43 and 44. "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you."

As we have learned, the early Christians universally taught that war was wrong. It wasn't a question. It was universally taught. If war was wrong, you wouldn't join the army. They didn't have a "draft" in the time of the Roman Empire. But after the time of Constantine, which was the early 300s, the Council of Nicaea being 325, the church started to change its views on Jesus' teachings of non-resistance and loving our enemies. It adopted the "just war" theory. It even rationalized the persecution of "heretics." And who's to define what a heretic is?

One of the main proponents of just war and persecuting heretics was Augustine. And here's one of his quotes about how he justified this. Augustine even said this, "It may be supposed that God cannot authorize warfare because in latter times it was said by the Lord Jesus Christ, 'I say unto you, resist not evil. But if anyone strikes you in the right cheek, turn to him the left also.' However, the answer is not that what is required here is not a bodily action, but an inward disposition."

That's how he justified what he just said. Did you catch what this is saying, that bottom sentence? We can do whatever we want as long as we have the right attitude in our hearts. We can love a person and persecute them. We can love a person and kill them in battle.

Doesn't matter. As long as we have what's right in here that we love them, we can do whatever we want to that person. Pretty sneaky there.

But isn't this an example of the end justifying the means? Or the idea that our ultimate goal, if it's morally important, we'll do whatever we need to to make it happen, including changing the teaching of Jesus to fit what we wanted to say.

I would say, how could the Christian world sink so low as to justify killing other people, justify warfare and persecuting "heretics"? Who is it, like I said? Which all these statements, all these actions are completely inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus and his apostles.

There's some other thoughts about this idea that we're looking at here, warfare and things.

In World War I, which we've looked at, that was from across the 1914 to 1918, approximately 20 million people were killed throughout the world. That's a lot of people. But what makes that number even more staggering is that all the participants in World War I, except for Turkey being Muslim, were "the Christian world." United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Germany all claimed Christianity.

But in World War II, the numbers are even more staggering. About 70 million people died in World War II. And except for Japan, which "has an emperor-type worship," and the Soviet Union, who was officially atheistic, all the other countries, again, were "Christian nations."

But what are some of the implications of this? As I shared in that opening story, that Vietnam war veteran and his suffering from PTSD. PTSD, as I was studying, can have these symptoms: depression, anxiety, horrible flashbacks, irritability. A lot of them want to avoid social contact because it can trigger a bad memory in their mind. I heard a brother shared with me that his relative would play static music on his radio to help prevent those triggers.

In World War I, this was called shell shock. They didn't really know what it was when soldiers came home from World War I, but they started to learn in World War II. There's some stories I heard about this PTSD.

Two soldiers, British soldiers on patrol in Burma, a Japanese sniper fired at them. The bullet missed the first soldier, hit the second soldier, and killed him. So the rest of the life of the first soldier, the first other British soldier, he had flashbacks that he was meant to die, not his buddy.

I had a relative who landed on D-Day, which would be June 6, 1944, and I think served in D-Day in the Battle of the Bulge, who in the end of it decided that Christianity was false because he was sent over with American pastors blessing the troops, and at the same time, German pastors blessing the German troops. I probably won't say this correctly, but it's this idea. Here's a thin belt buckle on a German soldier. It says, "Gut mit uns, God with us."

And like I said, both sides were claiming that. I read this story about a Vietnam War veteran. You go to Vietnam, you're actually a human being. You fight for a year and you spend a year in the bush. You literally turn into an animal. You don't even realize how much you have changed since you come back. I come back, I hear car noises. I hear horns. Your nerves are shot. Not sure what's going to happen. You're scared to death of everything.

I have read similar soldiers about U.S. soldiers coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan who hear a backfire in a car or some type of other loud noise, and they hit the deck or hit the ground because it triggers a flashback of an explosion that they experienced when they were in the battlefield.

As I thought about these stories, these stories weren't meant to belittle or put down the soldiers, but to show the evil effects of war. I did not want to dishonor these veterans, but at the same point, I'm not lifting them up as heroes.

Many of them were drafted and had no choice, never hearing about non-resistance. As we know, the U.S. government in World War I had one of the best propaganda machines ever. It had the Committee on Public Information, had President Wilson make the comment, "Make the world safe for democracy again." So I said, "I'm not judging these people."

As I would say, "God did not create man to kill other humans." We just remember the story in Genesis of what happened when one murder, when Abel, I mean, when Cain killed Abel and the bad things that happened there.

One final objection that I often hear about following the teaching of Jesus, "I can't obey them perfectly. Why should I even try?" And this one last comment by William Law, "We cannot offer to God the service of angels. We cannot obey him as man in the state of perfection could. But fallen man can do their best. And this is the perfection that is required of us. It is only the perfection of our best endeavors, a careful labor to be as perfect as we can."

So I hope I could at least give you some ideas of why I would say God's commandments are good for us. As I said, show us how we should live. And by following them, we can experience true joy, happiness, and contentment in our life.