Sermon Central
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"Rules And Boundaries Give Meaning To Sports And Life"
Contributed by Ray Ellis on Oct 21, 2002 (message contributor)
Summary: Take away rules and you have no game in sports. Take away God’s commandments and Rules and you have chaos and life implodes.
Rules and Boundaries Give Meaning to Sports and Life.
-Practice setting Boundaries for Your Life-
It is the rules and boundaries that make sports an exciting game. Take away the rules and boundaries and you have no game. Even so in the Christian life God’s commandments are given for our own good. God gave us boundaries to keep us safe and remove confusion from our lives. Without rules and boundaries your life would be in constant chaos and all relationships would implode.
To play tennis you first need to know the rules and then play by the rules. You can go out on a tennis court and hit the ball but unless you know the rules of the game you’re just hitting a tennis ball with a tennis racquet. You’re not really playing tennis.
There are 4 points to a tennis game – Love is zero, the second point is 15, third point is 30 and the fourth point is 40. You have to win by two points so after 40 your have either duce, add in or add out.
To play the game of tennis you need to know where to stand to serve. You need to know where to serve and the difference between singles lines and doubles lines. In scoring you always call the servers score first.
God has set boundaries for your own good. When you know the boundaries and practice them you enjoy a fun filled life. When you know and practice boundaries you enjoy freedom and security.
I. Boundaries Give Freedom
Jesus said in John 8:31-32, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
What is a boundary? One description of a boundary is a legal description of property. A legal description gives the beginning and end of our property. This past week we found the Title to this property in our safety deposit box at Wells Fargo Bank. In the title we have our legal description of our 3.2 acres of property owned by the Willow Vale Church. The legal description defines the property owned by the church. We are limited to build only on the land we own. To go beyond the boundaries would be to break the laws of the city and county.
God has given everyone the freedom to choose. You can choose to stay within His boundaries or go outside His boundaries. It is in that true freedom to choose that you find authentic love.
Freedom defines love.
Whether it is your relationship to God or to others if you take away freedom you take away love. It is only when you are free to chose and disagree that you are free to love. When you live without freedom you live in fear and love dies. You cannot actually love someone if you don’t feel you have a choice to love or not to love.
It is possible to live without boundaries. The devil will try to fool you into thinking that living without boundaries is the way to freedom.
You may say the Ten Commandments are not relevant today. Ted Turner, owner of CNN New Network, and TBS television said in a speech: “The Ten Commandments are out of date.” He offered to replace the Ten Commandments with his own version which he called the Ten Voluntary Initiatives.
Breaking outside of boundaries can be dangerous. One of the sad times in our children’s life happen in Florida when our little dog, “Brownie” got out our fenced back yard and ran out into the street and got run over by a car and died. The dog’s desire for freedom cost him his life.
#Can you imagine what would have happened if the captain of the Titanic had said to the people when he knew the ship was sinking, “Everything on board this ship is free. Take whatever you want it is free.” The people would have said, “We are not looking for free stuff, we are interested in staying alive.”
USA Today report: Research on the sinking of the Titanic has concluded that a series of slits, not a giant gash, sank the Titanic. The 900 foot cruise ship sank in 1912 on its first voyage, from England to New York. Fifteen hundred people died in the worst maritime disaster of the time. The most widely held theory is that the ship hit an iceberg, which opened a huge gash in the side of the liner. But an international team of divers and scientists used sound waves to probe through the wreckage, buried in mud two and a half miles deep in ocean water. Their discovery? The damage was surprisingly small. Instead of the huge gash, they found six relatively narrow slits across the six watertight holds. Small damage, below the water line and invisible to most, sank the Titanic.
