Welcome everybody. I want to share a funny story with you this morning. I was given a cup by a friend of mine that I had the privilege of baptizing this spring and I was also given the same coffee mug by my mother recently and On the coffee mug it says the same thing and I have one for my office and one for home It says be careful or you might wind up in my sermon and I can't help but wonder if people that are close to me Actually, I know my kids do and I'm pretty sure my mom does too Worry that something they're going to say or something that they're going to do or something they've done is going to wind up as one of dad's sermon examples So to my family and friends this morning, I want you to know it's not just you that I do this to this morning I'm going to do it to my neighbor That could be her in the back right now Jo and I have lived in the blessed to live in the same house for 25 years now We've raised our kids there. It is our home.
We love it. We love the neighborhood And one of the things about our house is that it has always had a fence in backyard Which when you have a dog is a huge blessing the house when we bought it 25 years ago How to pool in the backyard, which we didn't really want but you know it was there and we liked everything else about the house I will make a pause here. There is no greater money pit than a 35 year old pool in your backyard So you can avoid that you should but we've always had a fence because we had pool and as you all know You have to have them 10 12 years ago or so Most of our backyard we live in a community called Nestling Woods most of our backyard was woods And so we decided to reclaim some of the art So we cut a lot of the trees down which meant we had to expand the fence around the property line And so on the areas of the house that faced the neighbors driveway or the side street We put like the nice white vinyl fence right number one it looks nice And number two this way we don't have to see our neighbors parked in the car while we're sitting at the parking lot We're sitting at the pool on the other areas of the house though that faced the woods and kind of the open green area We put up one of those black vinyl chain link fences You know and the goal of the black vinyl chain link fence against the woods was because it kind of blended in like when you Looked it from a distance you couldn't even see the fence you just saw all the woods around it So you can enjoy the view that was all well and good and we enjoyed it that view for quite quite a few years Until my new neighbor moved in this guy. I have no idea who the heck this guy thinks he is I actually do he's a nice young guy with a nice young family But somehow he thinks he has the right to to also put up a fence around his backyard Can you imagine this right and so this guy moves in and he puts up a black vinyl chain link fence right next to my black Vinyl chain link fence and then not only is it do that he does two other things which I'm still struggling with the first is He doesn't tie his fence.
You know the shared property line. He doesn't tie his fence into my fence. No, no He puts his fence right up next to my fence and then he buys a fence that's two feet higher than my fence Right and so so no longer does my fence just you know the woods just kind of disappear into the fence and the view now I can show you a little bit of a picture with this now It kind of looks like a double insulated prison yard minus the barbed water right Like that's what I'm looking at most of the time Now I know that fences have lots of purposes right and since I have a pool I know that my neighbor and I have a shared purpose for our fence Which is to keep kids and he has two young kids to keep his two really sweet cute kids out of my pool That's what a good fence does right it keeps what's yours kind of in and safe within its bounds It protects it it keeps what's bad out right away in this example of my neighborhood right for my neighbor It keeps my dog moose and his publicly dropped donkey diamonds right out of that guy's yard It keeps the bad out the dangerous elements on the other side of the fence now Here's the interesting thing about our fence line It's become a little bit of a neighborhood talking point a little bit of a joke when some of the guys get together Since my neighbor didn't tie his fence into our fence right It makes you realize one needs to think about where we put fences if you've ever put a fence up If you've ever put a boundary of some kind up right especially You're gonna do a fence You know that you don't actually put the fence right on your property line you set up the fence the boundary kind of Inside of your property line right in the in the safe zone You want to make sure that you don't go on to somebody else's property right? You don't want to we set up boundaries and areas in the safe part of the area You don't want to get too close to the areas that aren't safer in this case for a fence that aren't mine And since I set up my fence in my yard about a foot a foot a foot and a half inside my property line And since my neighbor didn't tie into my fence, but instead he built that monstrosity and I'm joking because it's a neighborhood Joke that we talk about since he set up his fence about a foot and a half into his property line or so guess what we created This is what we've created here this That's that's what we have right now, right?
It's kind of no man's land the other neighbors laughing We refer to it as the DMZ the the demilitarized zone that separates north and south Korea, right? Now here's what's interesting about our little DMZ right since fence is right boundaries exist when you see the fence You know it shows you who's is who's right whose yard is who's who's in a sense responsible for what the DMZ strip The DMZ strip in our neighborhood is kind of the place where chaos rains. I don't know whose it is I don't really know who's responsible for it. I don't even know what's actually in that area anymore I mean I do a little bit I as you can see I put my big ladder in the DMZ Now, I don't think my neighbor watches online So I'll share a couple of other things when I empty the grease pan from my grill I dump it over the fence in the DMZ When I do a poop walk in the yard I toss some of my findings over the fence into the DMZ When when I have to figure out a place to put some of my pool chemicals I sometimes they make their way into the DMZ nobody mose it nobody fertilizes it well except for moose's contributions You don't want to be cute.
I want to accidentally walk through the DMZ. You don't know what you might step in right? Nobody knows whose it is nobody takes any responsibility for it and since there is no one in control of it It's just a mess chaos rains in that strip of land. Why do I tell you this story?
Well, not just because it impacts my visuals and my property values I tell you about it because as I thought about this new series we're entering into it I thought about our lives and and this concept of boundaries that I want to talk about over the coming weeks And and how we so desperately need them right in our lives my neighbor and I our fences provide what I think is almost a perfect Example of a lot of things. I'll explain it in a moment last year during one of the series I don't remember which one it was I must have touched a nerve because I had several people week after week Come up make an appointment phone call email and they began to ask questions pastor John I have a question about My relationship with a difficult person. I have a question about a relationship with my spouse or with my in-laws I'm struggling with my kid. I don't remember the series But but I know how quickly those kind of boundary relational dysfunctional questions come up especially for believers Especially for believers.
I think as Christians we struggle with boundaries more than any other kind of subset of people ever, right? Not just not just because of families and friends not just with boundaries with acquaintances But Jesus comes along and he says I want you to love everyone always And by everyone always he doesn't just mean our families and our friends and our acquaintances. It's even people like our enemies One time this is a big ask one time Jesus keeps saying you should forgive as you've been forgiven And so one time somebody comes up and asks them a boundary question about forgiveness Anybody remember that in the scriptures? You know the scriptures how many times should I forgive my brother and Jesus comes up with this preposterous answer 70 times seven Almost like you know essentially saying there is no end to the amount of forgiveness which you must display right?
And so when I get up here every week and I preach to you the message of love and I hope I do a good job about that week After week that our calling card is love that should be what we're known for We if you listen to it every week because you are involved in dysfunctional relationships in your life And that's because you're a human being and all of us have them if you don't you might be the dysfunctional person in somebody's relationship Right, you're sitting there going on I don't have any dysfunction or always it It causes us to begin to ask boundary questions, right now Let's be perfectly honest right most of us in our community in this community in Chester and Randolph and Mendon and Long Valley These are hard to charging high achieving we will knock it out and get it done communities Right and because that's where we live and that's who we are Where was I I was just out of town recently in in some community way outside of the Northeast here and people are just like so slow Right and you're like could you please move like I never have that experience here? It's like somebody's driving right right up behind you like in everything we because of this is who we are and this is how we live Just in everyday English we suck at boundaries We're not good at them. We don't like putting them down almost anywhere, right? And then you come along and you add faith our faith to it and Jesus is command to love everyone always and it's like How do I do this?
Look, I want to read a story of some of your lives And it's based on well, it's based on experience you get up at the crocodile on you try and grab a few minutes for yourself I don't know what your routine is everybody's got their own Maybe you try to grab a few minutes of the today show right or or you want to kind of spend some time with with the Lord or Center yourself quiet yourself So you try to grab a few minutes of quiet times 15 minutes, maybe that's what you can spare You got to get the kids up. They don't get up easy and you got to get them dressed make them at least presentable Come back downstairs after arguing with the kids because they don't want to get up and you're gonna make them their breakfast, right? Somebody messes up the timeline somewhere and so in that ridiculously compressed few minutes somebody screwed it up And so now everybody misses the bus and I know what happens in my house when everybody missed the bus That is very loving my kids used to say just don't miss the bus don't miss the bus because when you miss the bus now What happens now? I got to drive you to school and I'll have a lot of time because I got to get to work right so now somebody misses the bus and Somehow you now need to go get choured and dressed and ready for work and then you got to drive somebody to school And so you get them there late again And you pull up and depending if you're if you're if you're a woman You might be trying to put your makeup on in the rear view mirror You know as you're as you're pulling up or if you're a guy clean up the coffee You spilled on your pants and and after receiving the judgmental look from dropping your kid off late at school again, right?
You you get back into the car and you race down towards the train station You got to find a place to park to get on the Morris Essex line because you've got an hour hour and a half commute to work On the way to work There's no time for really doing any any decompressing because you've got your computer open you're trying to nail down the last pieces of the Presentation that you have for a board meeting that morning. It's something that could have been and should have been ready for days But I mean let's be real there wasn't really time to get any that done you get to work, right? You get there you find out the project you asked your team to have completed for you in preparation of this It's it's riddled with mistakes. There's typos everywhere.
It's gonna make you look silly They have not held up their end of the bargain and then your boss comes They're all stressed out of your team your boss comes and tells you hey They just move the board meeting. It's not gonna be at 930 It's been moved to 430 which now means that somebody's gonna have to pick up the kids from school and get them to their games Slash practice slash tutors slash dance class slash private lessons You get home as the Sun is beginning to set to find your neighbor waiting in the driveway for you because her and her husband have had yet Another fight and you're the only one that she can talk to you talk her off the cliff head back into the house And you're greeted by the same question you're greeted with every night not how was your day? Not what need what could I do to help get some things done around here? What's the same question you're greeted with every night?
What's for dinner? The male husband equivalent of this story is coming home to your wife who's been sitting around with babbling children all day Just waiting for you to come home and have one adult conversation in the day and you walk in and she just wants to talk And you just want to go to the couch But the phone rings in at your mom and she says she misses the kids and insinuates that it's been weak since you brought her grandchildren To see her and she wants to know if when you bring them over tomorrow if you wouldn't mind taking her prescriptions up You know the phone with your mom the the door just opens just swings open There's no knock at the door and your mother-in-law she pops in because she called earlier and since you weren't home She didn't want the kids to go hungry which of course she makes sure that you know her concern about her grandchildren going hungry You got a text from your boss asking you to make changes to the presentation you made have them ready by the morning He always does that it's like no off time for him You sit down with the kids after dinner and dishes and you do their homework. They say something about they don't do math like that anymore There's something called new math which makes no sense to you They're not trying you are now crying Your wife tells you to stop yelling at the kids you look over the dogs throwing up on a living room carpet The landline which never rings is ringing and leaving a message reminding you that the shut off date for the electric bill You forgot to pay as the following Tuesday You get the kids to bed combination of guilt and worry begins to creep in about the fact that you didn't collect their phones again Like you said you would you didn't do the devotions that you said you promised you were gonna start doing them this week You sleep down the stairs you make the 10,000 school lunch of your lifetime you realize you forgot to get cold cuts So you're hoping peanut butter and jelly will do but you realize that could trigger a peanut allergy alarm in the lunchroom the next day But you have no choice you Slake up the stairs you stare at your spouse who's already asleep in snoring in the bed You realize you haven't had any time with each other alone in weeks intimacy is like a distant memory You don't have to sleep with all of the coming reward of getting to do it all again tomorrow and tomorrow is Tuesday Does this sound familiar to anybody? And then you come to church on Sunday and you just want to relax Pastor John gets up and says do you realize what hangs in the balance if you don't volunteer to bring the kingdom of God to your community?
You need to get in a small group and this is our lives right? I mean to varying degrees. It's all of our lives and the reason is actually this is the amazing part It's so easily diagnosable the reason is it's a boundary problem And since this is that story comes easy because it was for many years my life and to one degree or another still is my life Right and since I had so many people coming up to me last year and asking me like how much is too much? When is enough?
I decided last year that when the new year kick off this church here I was gonna I was gonna take a look at the biblical concept of boundaries in our lives What what are we missing and what I discovered and I didn't realize until I began looking into it over the last couple weeks is How profoundly biblical the concept of boundaries is and how the reason we are in the mess We are is because we have just dismissed this concept We don't even see it as a godly or Christian concept. We it's like we think you can't say no You can't put any kind of boundary on anything right? Most of us in our stress out lives in our struggling relationships We know we need a boundary we should have one but if we're honest Yeah, I like I don't know this is a triggering event for you. I don't even like talking about boundaries I don't like saying no to anybody which if you know me is true.
I don't like saying no Some of us don't like talking about boundaries because they've been used against us in hurtful ways, right? People have put up boundaries not just to protect themselves But almost punitively right to try to hurt us or to punish us for others This is one that I struggle with oftentimes people use boundaries as a means to shirk responsibilities Have you ever had somebody do that to you? I was when in my prior life when I used to lead a team at the bank I had a group of young guys fresh out of college working for me and it was a young guy I was 21 years old sat across for me and When you start your career finance, it's kind of known in the corporate world that the finance field especially when they put young people to work There are no boundaries like you work like dogs right like dogs And so they're like it's like a competition to see who could stay the latest right and so the guy across for me I it's you know he's working for me. It's worth 58 459 5 o'clock Whoo my here is briefcase clothes lock and he gets up and I said Doug where you going?
It's five o'clock John family first. I look at him like dude You're 21 you live with your mom and play video games when you get home I I don't understand what you're talking about right and so he was using like a cool thing right like all my family first I even have one but he was just using his creating a false boundary right to just shirk his responsibilities Anyway, right I think for those of us that are followers of Jesus We want to walk in the ways of Jesus so much We want to be these people full of love and grace and mercy and acceptance and oftentimes especially when it comes to sending boundaries and relationships It can seem unbiblical to do so by goal this morning over the next couple of weeks We're gonna get into the various boundaries. We need to set in our lives, right? We're gonna talk about all the tough topics I hope but this morning is this is so foundational this morning's purpose is to convince you that for Christians bound for those that want to be like Jesus, right boundaries are not not only not on biblical.
They are absolutely essential Here's the basic premise for the whole series. How do you know if you have a boundary problem in your life? Simple, it's just like my backyard you have a problem everywhere in your life where chaos and disorder reign you likely have a boundary problem My neighbor and I we have the DMZ right there is a boundary problem there. It is not a safe place It's a mess nobody's taking responsibility for it.
Somebody should it is somebody's responsibility. We're just not sure who's right Nobody's claiming it the boundaries are all messed up. They're improperly set misplaced Which is gonna lead us to a definition this morning of boundaries I like the one Henry Cloud and John Townsend in their book boundaries used and I know you know that book by By Cloud Henry Cloud and John Townsend. It's it's a super popular book I'm gonna be leaning into it a lot over the coming weeks.
It has sold four million copies This will give you a hint that we struggle with boundary problems, right? There's actually another book that came out I think last year by Lisa Turkhurst called Good Boundaries and Good Bies another fantastic more current resource for those of you Who want to do a little bit of homework, so what is a boundary? Well, you know me? I've never I've never had a good prop That I didn't want to use to set it up.
So what is a good boundary? Well? Here we go This will be our little kind of like a play toy over the next few weeks a good boundary is simply this right? It's a fence.
It's it's it's a line it kind of it marks it defines. It separates what's mine and what's yours? In every area what's my responsibility? What's your responsibility?
What is my stuff and what is your stuff a boundary keeps my stuff Stay safe, right from others it keeps the bad things out the things that I don't want to impact my heart and my soul Remember we were reading proverbs together all summer, right? Do you remember above all else Solomon said to his son above everything else? I told you there's one thing that's super important guard your heart Boundaries help us to guard our hearts. They keep the good stuff in and the bad stuff out, right?
What we're gonna be seeing the coming weeks is what happens when we have boundary problems in our lives We're gonna start next week and probably for a couple weeks with relationships because those are the hardest But then we move on to things like time and kids and money you name it Boundary problems arise especially in relationships when people violate boundaries Sometimes it's me that violates the boundary and goes over into your yard and sometimes it's you that violates the boundary and comes in my Yard sometimes my neighbor has a tree that drops all of its crud in my yard He's responsible for it But somehow it keeps becoming my problem, right? Or when I begin to go take responsibility for the stuff that's supposed to be being getting done by my neighbor God Put quite simply God is a God of boundaries and his people made in his image are called to be like him Let me show you what I mean You see boundaries before the dawn of creation in the scriptures give you a little theology here Okay, God is eternal he has always existed But we believe is that God exists in what we call a Trinitarian form, right? God exists eternally in three co-equal persons, right? God is three persons each person is fully God and there is one God and yet those three persons in the Trinity have very different roles and Responsibilities in a sense there are bounds in which they play their roles You see the creation of the psalmist said let all the earth fear the Lord let all the people of the world revere him for he spoke And it came to be he commanded and it stood firm So what is God's role in creation God the father spoke the creative word to bring it into existence?
Jesus John's disciple walked walked with Jesus here's what he said about the Jesus he knew through Jesus all things were made without him Nothing was made that had been made it was Jesus the son who carries out the decrees of creation by the father And then you see in the creation story the presence in the role of the Holy Spirit now the earth was formless and empty Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters In some way the Holy Spirit is apparently sustaining and manifesting God's presence in his creations three distinct persons three distinct responsibilities By the way, you see this in terms of our salvation if you want to look at theologically God plays a role in sending the Sun The Sun accepts the responsibility from the Father right and comes and dies to take our sins away And then said the Sun himself says it's better if I leave because then the Holy Spirit will come Distinct personhood distinct responsibilities You see boundaries in the Godhead you see boundaries in his creation and God says go through the creative story Let there be light and there was light God saw the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness He separated the light from the darkness there is a boundary that exists that you experience every day between the light and the dark And then God said let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water So God made the vault and separated the water under the wall from the water above it and it was so God called the volts guy Separation the story continues God said let the water under the sky be gathered to one place let dry ground appear And it was so God called the dry ground land and the gathered waters he called seas from the dawn of creation God is a God of order He has been separating things creating boundaries between one thing and one and another one purpose and another one responsibility another You see it when he calls the Israelites to be his own people he separates the Israelites He calls them out to be a people unto himself. He calls them to separate from the other nations He wants them to look different to live in a peculiar way before others Super interesting statement in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah spoken by God regarding the boundaries and creation God said I made the sand a boundary for the sea and everlasting barrier it cannot cross the waves may roll but they cannot prevail They may roar but they cannot cross it There's imagery involved in this statement because in the Bible the sea always represents something The first image given in the Bible actually is that the Holy Spirit I read it to is hovering over this chaotic Formless water in the scriptures the sea is often used to convey a state of uncreation a state of disorder It's uninhabitable unwelcoming oftentimes the sea doesn't just just Reflect chaos it reflects evil Interestingly enough, it's a super fascinating study Literally could preach a sermon on it in the new creation God's going to bring about a reunification of the waters in the peace and security of the river of life What are contained within proper boundaries super cool stuff again? What's my point where chaos and evil a bound in your life? It is usually where there is a lack of boundaries It's not just in the current in the Trinity.
It's in the creation It's built into human purpose and design to live within certain boundaries Then God said let us make mankind in our image in our likeness So that they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures That move along the ground God gave us Things to rule over right a purpose. We had a specific role to play in creation just like the Trinity itself We had a job that we were given things that we were to do and there were things that we were not to do Right there was a boundary set up in the garden What was the very specific boundary and the Lord God commanded the man you are free to eat from any tree in the garden But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you eat from it You will certainly die stick with me super interesting Maybe the most interesting point this morning super interesting about the concept the biblical concept of boundaries This is the first recorded conversation between God and man Think of all the things that if I was going to say to you what do you think God would be a first thing that God would say to his creation? What's the first the first words between man and God? I mean I think if you didn't know you'd probably say well I think you would say something about how much he loves him right?
But it wasn't his first conversation with the creation he loved was about boundaries But what I think you're gonna see in this series over the next couple weeks is right in order for love to be possible Right love exists where good boundaries are given and respected and are in place You are free God says to him you are free think about what boundaries do for you boundaries exist And they are given it is so counterintuitive Okay, the whole world is fighting against boundaries because they want to be free But the reality is it is in boundaries that we find our freedom boundaries promote freedom Good boundaries are what actually promote love and safety and security and freedom in our lives you ever read that a jet ski down the shore? I don't know if you have if you have one of the first things they tell you is okay, you can go out here, right? And I'm just thinking about the notion city Maryland where I went all the time the bay out there is called the big Assal woman Bay, which is a story for another day It's a funny name, but you can go out there on the big asshole But you got to keep the jet ski within those flags and so you know if you're me because I'm always pushing boundaries I'm like well, why do I get what happens if I go outside there? He goes one number one.
I'm gonna come out yet. You want to take your jet ski away He said and number two he goes there are sand bars everywhere out there He said if you go outside of these flags he goes you're likely to be going 50 miles an hour hit a sand bar and go flying and kill yourself So if you stay in the boundaries, you could go as fast as you want have as much fun as you want Don't go outside the boundaries. You know, I could you might die See that's what good boundaries do imagine Adam's life in the garden if God doesn't give them boundaries if Adam's just sitting there Imagine I'm walking around the garden like you know, like a minefield like can I step here? Can I go there Adam's hungry is looking around?
Can I eat of that tree? Is that like is that safety? Is it not safe to eat? Boundaries are what gave out of his freedom boundaries are what how we experience the love of God, right?
It prevents him constant fear and worry, right? That's chaos and disorder One thing I remember when I was raising my kids and we'll talk about I think kids in a coming to be struggling boundaries with our kids Incrometalies now interesting study done at school children focused on a family used to promote it all the time Educators in California decided that they were gonna remove the chain link fence from around a school playground, right? This was back in the 70s and the thought was that the fences right promoted these feelings of confinement and restraint So they pulled them down because I wanted the children to be able to run free and not not have to deal with it And do you know what they discovered once they pulled all of the fences from around the playgrounds down? The children all just huddled right at the center of the playground.
They didn't know where it was safe to go anymore Conclusion children need boundaries conclusion Christians human beings need boundaries Second interesting thing the story there was in the garden only one boundary. Did you catch that just one you can eat of any tree in the garden This is all yours just stay in here. It's all yours. There's just this one tree over here.
That's not yours The tree of the knowledge of good evil. That's mine all of this is your stuff out of my man I made it all for you. It's all your responsibility right because good boundaries define who's responsible for what this is all yours It's your responsibility you take care of it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that is my responsibility I take care of that. That's my thing.
It's not your thing It is God's responsibility to determine to define for man what is good and what is evil what is right and what's wrong Which one seems through the proper lens what you realize is right when sin enters the world the brokenness of our entire world All of the raping and pillaging and murder and war all Comes from a boundary issue Adam not content to stay within his own bounds started looking into his neighbor's yard and deciding I'm going to take that too He had a boundary problem, right? How many messes have you made in your life by doing that exact same thing? Oh I can help you're not really you know, I know you I know you don't really know you're doing Let me come over there and show you you don't seem to be doing well in your life. Let me comment rescue you Yeah, here's another interesting thing about boundaries boundaries they exist for our freedom But not just for our freedom they exist for our safety Why does God create this boundary for Adam because he loves Adam?
He wants to keep Adam from dying God knows what's gonna happen if Adam eats of the tree all the pain and the evil and the hurt and brokenness in our world It all exists because of the boundary violation and that's the thing about boundaries Okay, this is why we don't like them But you have to remember any boundary that you put in place that is a God honoring boundary is not a punitive Boundary God does not set up boundaries in our lives to punish us God was not using boundaries to hold Adam back to keep him down. He wasn't holding out on him He wasn't punishing him with the boundary you may have experienced that in your life You're never going to see your grandchildren again. That's the boundary. I'm saying that's a punitive oftentimes a punitive boundary, right?
But that is not a God boundary God uses boundaries to promote freedom and safety and security and life They are for our good and when we set proper God honoring boundaries in place they do that same thing for us and for others another interesting concept in in the scriptures There's one boundary and when the boundary was violated when Adam steps out of his yard into his neighbor's yard into God's yard And starts messing around with God's responsibility. You know what Adam created. Don't you a little DMZ a little DMZ right? He created chaos and chaos begins to reign in the world This is his experience on a daily basis And so chaos when Adam trespasses interesting word right when Adam trespasses the boundary and he goes in and he begins messing around with something That's not his responsibility violating violating the God's boundary chaos begins to rain sin begins to rain and it begins to spin out of control And shortly after that, there's not one boundary.
There's ten and shortly after the ten. There's not ten There's six hundred plus because we're sin abounds where brokenness abounds boundaries are incrementally required for safety security and life and freedom And so you need to begin to see that in your own lives and the places where chaos is increasing it is likely boundaries need to be increasing And of course we're gonna talk about this a little bit next week if boundaries are gonna be effective boundaries are gonna have to have Consequences that are associated with them if you eat of this tree, you will surely die However, think about the consequences. I'm gonna be ever thought this through. Why was the consequence death?
Was it purely punitive or was it that the consequence for breaking the boundaries? Was put in place because God loved Adam so much he didn't want him to exist in all of us to exist perpetually in in in horrendous chaos and brokenness The consequence was there in a sense to provide an opportunity for redemption without the consequence that opportunity didn't exist And so this is the journey. We're gonna be on in the coming weeks next week We're gonna pick it up with perhaps the hardest kind of boundary boundaries in our relationships especially for Christians because it's just hard for us We want a lot of them we want to have grace and we want to forgive and we need to have all those things But that doesn't mean there's not boundaries in our relationships Paul wrote to the Ephesians right and he said to the Galatians he said carry each other's burdens and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ We read that right and we think if we're honest I mean I imagine coming to church day last week I told you right what hangs in the balance and you need to give your life to this church Well, I don't have time You know why you don't have time because you got improper boundaries said you come to this church this week and passage on goes Oh, by the way, the Bible says carry each other's burdens and this way you'll fulfill the law of Christ And I mean if you're just a living breathe breathing in the bean you got to go come on dude I can't even carry my own burden like I'm barely getting by you want me to take on somebody else's burden carry somebody else's burden My life is a mess already. I don't need their net mess Well next week we're gonna get to what that verse actually means there's actually just within a couple of a couple words a boundary placed on that Did you know that it's not just like oh, yeah, you're responsible for everybody else's problems go take everybody's problems on That's not what that verse says we're gonna get to it next week.
So for any of you rescuers out there Any rescuers I can save him feel like you're overburned with a weight of dysfunction and the responsibility of others people who just let their Leaves fall in your yard Maybe you keep winding up in somebody else's place taking on their responsibilities next week's gonna be for you But in the meantime in the meantime before we get there know this God is not a God of Chaos our lives are not supposed to be the way that most of us live them spinning out of control the natural law of the universe It's interesting. It's a law called entropy and it essentially states that all things are tending in the universe towards disorder Nothing moves towards order everything moves towards disorder more specifically the second law third Thermodynamic states as one goes forward in time the net entropy the degree of disorder of any isolated or closed system will always increase But that is not the story of our God The one I shared with you this morning that's what God is in fact. It's one of the great arguments of a creative design This is not the way the world would naturally work if it wasn't a create to work So here's your homework just a couple of moments of reflection which I know you go off for heaven's sake I don't have any time for moments of reflection a couple of moments of reflection this week Where in your life does disorder just rain just break you look and you go off Mess Where is things with your time your money your emotions your energy specifically for the next week or two your relationships? Where is this water raining and then I want you to ask yourself a very honest question to a little self-inflammatory The scripture say you should examine yourself.
Do I have a chaos problem? Or is the truth this I have a boundary problem because God who made you in his image the reality is the truth is he's a God He's a God of boundaries and he wants his people to be made in that image too. Let's stand close this