Bulletins - Beth El Shalom

New Wine
- - Numbers 31:3HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN
- - Numbers 31:1–8HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN
- - Ephesians 6:10–20HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN
New Wine
Shema & V'ahavta
Another In The Fire
I. Introduction: What happens when your rights and my rights collide?
What I love about our country is the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights is what protects individual rights. Or to say it another way, the Bill or Rights protected the citizen of the US from “the misconstruction or abuse of powers.” This stops the government from becoming say like China or Russian or North Korea. We don’t wake up and Thank God of this every day but it is a big deal You should know these 10 Bill of Rights and what they protect
1. Speech
2. Press
3. Assembly
4. Religion
5. Bear Arms
6. Due Process
7. Jury trial
8. Search & seizure
9. Cruel & unusual punishment
10. Quartering of soldiers.
This, the last one, brings up an important point. If the Bill of Rights was written today, we would add some other things, like the Right to Free Wi-fi. Free Education, Free Health-care, Free from Government Interference, Free to Post any hideous or nasty thing on social media, etc.
The founding fathers were smart, they foresaw this so they wrote the 9th amendment:
9th Amendment of the Constitution: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others (other rights) retained by the people.
Updated Version of 9th Amendment: The right to do what I want when I want with whom I want as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s amended ninth amendment rights.
Here is the problem: If you give people rights without responsibilities, things go horribly wrong.
Examples:
a. Lost Car Rights as Teen because you were irresponsible.
b. Privacy rights lost: Door removed from room because you were irresponsible.
Here is the point: Individual rights must be coupled with individual responsibility.
1. In a nation with rights without responsibility it turns into anarchy. Liberty without responsibility actually undermines liberty. Liberty can actually gobble up liberty. If everyone demands individual rights without taking responsibility for their individual liberty everyone looses their liberty.
Here is the thing we need to ask, “So, why is there no Bill of Responsibility?”
the guys who wrote the founding documents, it is in all their writings. The authors assumed moral guardrails; they assumed a level of responsibility among the people of America. We had just come through the revolution. They were not all Christians, but they were almost all Theists or Deists. They believed in God and They had three assumptions. Here they are:
Three Assumptions
a. A consensus of conscience
b. Divine accountability
c. Individual expression governed by concern for other individuals.
3. Number 3, individual rights were expressed in relationship to other people. It is not like today where it is “My rights are about me, me, me.” No that is not it.
Preamble of the Declaration of Independence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
a. These rights came from God and among these is … there was an assumption that God gave us these rights.
b. Don’t miss this, we are all accountable to God for how we express our individual rights. They believed that we as individuals are accountable to God for our individual rights.
5. John Adams, I picked him because he never owned a slave. Think about these words he said:
“Our Constitution was only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” - John Adams
a. “It is wholly inadequate” – in other words, “if there is no moral consensus and divine accountability then this grand experiment of individual will fail.
b. This experiment fails without accountability God. Liberty will devour liberty. My rights will come into conflict with your rights.
When my rights infringe upon your rights who’s to say who’s right?
1. When rights collide, the courts decide.
2. That is not what the founding fathers wanted because that means the courts have to create law, after law, law.
3. They have to cover every eventuality. That is why we keep creating more laws. And we do this because Americans keep looking away from God and looking for loopholes “aha, got you laws.”
The problem with the Law
1. The law represents the minimum requirement.
a. Ex: speed laws
b. Ex. Drinking and driving
c. Where is the line? The limit
d. Without divine accountability, we will just always say what is the bare minimum or maximum without going to prison.
2. The law doesn’t inspire greatness, excellence or virtue.
a. Driving laws don’t make you a courteous driver.
b. Tax laws don’t make you generous.
c. Civil laws don’t make you civil.
d. HOA laws don’t make you a good neighbor.
e. Assault and Battery laws don’t make you a better husband.
f. And a marriage certificate will not make you a better wife.
g. Free speech will not make you kind with your words.
h. Laws are powerless to inspire. You have the right to sleep with as many people as you want to because there is no law in our country to inspire you to covenantal marriage or fidelity.
i. That is not the job of the Law. So where does that come from.
3. So here is the really bad. Just give it to you straight today:
The result: Individual rights regulated by law.
a. Free to do whatever you want.
b. Facebook take off your clothes.
c. Protest the national anthem or a soldier’s funeral.
d. This is recipe for you and I to be as selfish as you can imagine. Because it will be all about power and me, and more of me without thought or concern for you. And in the end:
The strong rule the weak.
Women are a commodity.
Men are marginalized.
Children are victims.
If it’s legal, it’s moral.
Law informs conscience.
The nuclear family gets nuked.
There is hope, it is you and me! There are at least 60% to 80% of people who claim to be Christians. And our conduct as Christians has the ability to bring about more change than any court, or leader, or law can do. We have more to do with the future of our nation than our leaders. I need you to hear me it is important that you pay attention to laws being passed, who is appointed to courts, our leaders. But hear me even more clearly, you and I have more to do with shaping the moral landscape of our country than any of these things. While everyone else is looking for the bare minimums we are turning to the Bible, to Divine Accountability. We will be the ones to ensure that freedom does not turn into anarchy, that liberty does not gobble up liberty.
Paul makes a statement that should inform how we respond to our nation and being de-coupled from Divine Moral Authority. How we should respond to personal freedoms. How to be responsible when you have all these rights all these freedoms. (Example: kid who first gets into car and sees the odometer) we all want to use freedoms for personal advancement but…
How you use your freedom matters (Gal 5:13-15)
A. Galatians 5:13 For you were called to be free, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.
Galatians 5:13 HCSB
For you were called to be free, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.
1. Don’t ask the question: how low can I go? Or how much until I get in real trouble?
2. The Law is powerless to make you “love one another.”
3. The Law just draws a line on what you can and can’t do.
4. The law just draws a line on how selfish you can be. Use your freedom to do something for other people. You have the right not to but why wouldn’t you. Then he leverages something that was at the core of Israel’s thinking in Leviticus:
B. Galatians 5:14 For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Galatians 5:14 HCSB
For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.
1. Instead of “I can do anything I want!” Think rather
2. Treat my wife the way I want the future husband of my daughter to treat her.
3. People I work with
4. People who have hurt me
5. Look at people and say, “how can I love this person?”
6. Listen if we did this collectively as a nation, we would not have to have law upon law upon law. Because when a nation looks up and says, “How loving does God want me to be today?”
7. Think about what this would look like. People being nice (picture it). You are saying that is silly and a childish vision of reality!.
8. No it is not this was once considered BASIC. And Let me tell you why Paul said, “if you don’t do this, if you forget that you are a community…let me tell you what it will look like. Here is what it will look like
C. Galatians 5:15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.
Galatians 5:15 HCSB
But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.
1. Metaphor: You will become like ravenous dogs.
2. Our greatest threat, right now, is not UFOs or anything from the outside coming in to topple our country.
3. Americans are America’s biggest problem because we leverage our rights against everyone else. Because my rights matter more.
4. Here is the thing as a nation we have more rights than any other country in the world but without any moral compass those rights will become our undoing. We will devour ourselves in our quest to be individual. The church and only the church can turn that around. Not by becoming a voting block but an obedience block.
5. How? By exercising my freedom for your sake
Application: Four Statements about freedom and responsibility
Do what’s just, not what you can justify.
1. How can I help?
2. God answered that question by sending His son to die.
Do what’s responsible, not what permissible.
1. If you are not willing to take responsibility for the outcome of a decision don’t do it.
2. Somebody has to become responsible for your irresponsibility. Let’s just stop being irresponsible Christians.
3. It should not be said among us: Not that’s my right BUT rather we should be people who say that is my responsibility.
Do what’s moral, not what’s modeled.
1. Immorality is undermining the integrity of our country.
2. We cannot continue on our immoral path. You must stop taking your moral cue from the people around you.
3. You are already paying for a culture that has said “I can do what I want when I want because it is my right.”
4. If you are a follower of Jesus the sexual ethic is so clear: the marital ethic of the body is so clear.
Do what honors God, not what honors yourself.
1. This is not complicated. Add: What would be most honoring to God?
Conclusion: You know this answer intuitively: it is self-evident. It goes back to the founding father’s idea about individual rights. Go back and research N. Carolina racist incident in Aug 2015 and families forgiveness. Rev. Anthony Thompson
The Charleston church shooting (also known as the Charleston church massacre) was a mass shooting on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine African Americans were killed during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Among those people who were killed was the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney; three victims survived. This church is one of the oldest black churches in the United States.
The morning after the attack, police arrested Dylann Roof in Shelby, North Carolina; the 21-year-old white supremacist had attended the Bible study before he committed the shooting. He was found to have targeted members of this church because of its history and stature.
Pastor Anthony Thompson's wife, Myra, was brutally murdered at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston along with eight others on June 17, 2015. No one could have anticipated what would happen next. Pastor Thompson stood in front of the killer, in our court of laws and did something the Law is powerless to do, listen to what he said:
“I forgive you,” Anthony told Dylann. “And my family forgives you. But we would like you to take this opportunity to repent. Repent. Confess. Give your life to the One who matters the most: Jesus Christ, so that He can change it and change your attitude. And no matter what happens to you, then you’ll be OK. Do that and you’ll be better off than you are right now.”
D. This is what we, Christians, are supposed to being. We can do better, to love as God loved us in Christ. That is what Pastor Thompson modeled.
E. What last thing and I am done. John Adams saw in the future and thought I am going to write a letter to you folks in the 21st century. Here is what he said:
“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.” – John Adams

[1] https://decisionmagazine.com/the-transforming-power-of-biblical-forgiveness/
- - Galatians 5:13HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN
- - Galatians 5:14HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN
- - Galatians 5:15HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN
Touch The Sky

Numbers 31:3HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN

Numbers 31:1–8HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN

Ephesians 6:10–20HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN

Galatians 5:13HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN

Galatians 5:14HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN

Galatians 5:15HLYSCRPTRSLVRSN