The Beauty of the Fence

Deuteronomy 5:1-7

November 2, 2025 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I don’t know if you know or not, but I have a dog, the best dog in the world no matter what Pastor Rick says. Barnabas, or Barney, is a 4-year-old American Cocker Spaniel and he is very vocal. There are dogs who live on either side of us, and one of his favorite activities is to go out and chat with his neighbors. When I let Barney out in the back yard, he will run from one side to the other, talking to his friends. At least that’s what I imagine he’s doing anyway. But I can let him out in the yard and he can do whatever he wants. I don’t have to worry about him because he is kept safe by the fence.

Two dogs before Barney we had another cocker spaniel named Gideon. Gideon was an English Cocker Spaniel and barked with a British accent. He lived to be seventeen years old, and we had him for fifteen of those years. Shortly before we moved to Portage, Gideon became both deaf and blind, so moving to a new home and a new yard was pretty hard on him. But he adapted and came to love that yard. In fact, it was a rather large yard, and I think he believed he was just running free out in the open because he couldn’t see the fence around it. And yet, especially in his condition, the fence kept him safe and contained. In fact, I could leave him outside, where he loved to be, during the day because of the fence.

Many of us have a fence around at least part of our yard. Fences are made to keep some things in and other things out. And most fences have a gate in them somewhere that you can let things in or out. But mostly fences are made for protection, safety, and for marking boundaries. That’s the beauty of a fence. It’s a simple thing that does so many different things. And you may not have thought of it this way, but in the Bible there is a fence as well. It’s called the Torah or the law, and the design of the law was to define the people of God—who was in and who was out. Those who kept the law were in; those who didn’t were “out.” And it was meant to keep the people of God safe. Stay inside the fence and you won’t have to worry about being lost.

This morning, we’re continuing this series of messages about the value of the Old Testament to those who follow Jesus. Why did Jesus say that he came to fulfill what we call the Old Testament and not to abolish it (cf. Matthew 5:17)? Because so much of these pages are made up either of law themselves or the people’s reactions and responses to that law, some people just want to ignore these books. But Jesus said none of it would disappear until the end of time (cf. Matthew 5:18). So Jesus saw value in the law, which means we should pay attention to them. And at the top of the list—literally—are what we call the Ten Commandments—the original “Top Ten” list that Moses downloaded from the cloud onto a tablet. (Just getting all the puns out of the way at once.)

Now, God had given these commandments to Moses about forty years before the passage we read this morning (cf. Exodus 20:1-21). Quick recap of the story so far: the group that became Israel, the Hebrew people, had been in slavery for a long, long time in Egypt. They asked God to rescue them and God sent Moses, who confronted Pharaoh (king of Egypt) and eventually led them out of slavery into the desert. Yeah, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but we really don’t have time this morning to get into the details. Anyway, after they miraculously crossed the Sea, they came to a place called Mount Sinai—which, by the way, if you go with me to Israel and Egypt next year, you will get a chance to visit. Yep, shameless plug. Anyway, Sinai is where God originally gave Moses these commandments—twice. Moses broke the first set of tablets because he was angry with the people and so God patiently wrote them for him again. Then there were some other things that happened, but mainly these people kept forgetting how to be the people of God. So God told them they would spend forty years in the desert because that’s how long it would take to shape them into his people, to get them to live his way (cf. Numbers 14:34). It’s been said that getting the people out of Egypt was easy; what was hard was getting Egypt out of the people. And so a journey that should have taken about 11 days ended up lasting forty years.

Moses also had a little incident involving water that changed his life (cf. Numbers 20:1-13). The people were thirsty, demanding water, and God told Moses to speak to this particular rock so that water would flow out. But Moses, as was often the case, got angry with the people and so instead of speaking to the rock he took a stick and struck the rock. Now why was that a big deal? Well, it’s because if Moses had spoken to the rock like God told him to, God would have gotten the credit for giving the people water. But instead, Moses hit the rock and took the credit for providing water. Moses took the glory that should have gone to God. And because of that, Moses, who faithfully led this people for forty years, was told he would not be allowed to set foot in the Promised Land. He would die before the journey was over. And that brings us, then, to the book of Deuteronomy, or “Second Law.” It’s really Moses’ Last Will and Testament, his last speech to the people, and near the beginning of that book we find Moses reminding them of the Ten Commandments.

We read just the very beginning of that reminder this morning. At this point, Moses is about 120 years old, and yet his mind is still sharp and he still remembers all that has happened to him. Most importantly, he still remembers the words God gave him for the people. The people gathered before him, however, were not (for the most part) at Mount Sinai (cf. Goldingay, Numbers & Deuteronomy for Everyone, pgs]. 109-110). Or if they were, they were infants and toddlers. The whole generation of Israelites who had left slavery in Egypt had died off (cf. Numbers 14:21-23). From the original Exodus, only Moses, Caleb and Joshua are still alive at this point, so the people standing before Moses are the kids and maybe the grandkids of those who left Egypt forty years before. I’m trying to imagine what it felt like to stand before this group, knowing that all your friends and even your enemies are gone. You’ve outlived them all, buried them in the desert, and now you’re teaching the next generation. I had a teacher friend who said when she started having the grandkids of the children she had first taught show up in her class, she knew it was time to retire. Maybe Moses is a bit like that. But before he goes, he needs to tell this new generation what it means to be God’s people. He needs to ensure that the faith will be passed along.

The next generation is so very important in every community of faith. It’s often said that the church is always one generation away from extinction, and while I believe Jesus’ word that his church will prevail throughout all time (cf. Matthew 16:18), that doesn't mean that individual churches will. It’s imperative for us to teach the next generation, to pass the faith along to our children and grandchildren. Mount Pleasant, we are at a crossroads, as most of you know. Ginger Pruitt has been our beloved children’s minister for eighteen years, and she is retiring in just about a month. She deserves it and she’s earned it. I don’t think a soul here who knows what Ginger has done would deny that. And so for the last couple of months we’ve been looking for someone to fill that position. I hear people talking about replacing Ginger; we are not replacing Ginger. We are looking for the person who can build on the fantastic ministry Ginger has built here. But it’s been hard. There is a drastic shortage of people who are answering the call to children’s and youth ministry these days; we’re told that’s true all across the nation. The experts we’ve talked to say it may be a year or so before we can find the right person. And I don’t know why God is making us wait. I don’t know that answer. I do know, however, that regardless of whether there is a hired children’s minister or not, we are still called to pass the faith along to the next generation, just like Moses was doing in our passage this morning. It’s up to us, and that might mean that some of us who haven’t volunteered to help with children’s ministry before need to step up. Maybe some of us have thought our time downstairs was done because our kids are grown, but God is now saying, “Church, it’s up to you.” How important is it that the next generation be taught the stories of the Bible and come to find faith in Jesus? Is it important enough that you would be willing to give some of your time to share your faith with the next generation? I wonder: are there some Moseses here today who believe it’s vital that the kids and grandkids learn the story?

Because it’s not just our story. It’s not just the story of our parents and grandparents. It’s their story, too. Moses sets about in this book to renew the covenant that God made with the previous generation at Mount Sinai, which here he calls Horeb, just another name. He puts it this way: “The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. It was not with our ancestors that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today” (5:2-3). Wait a minute, these folks weren’t even alive then. Doesn’t matter, Moses says. “Whether the people then standing before him were individually at Horeb was not important” (Kalland, “Deuteronomy,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 3, pg. 52). When God makes a covenant or enters into a relationship with a people, it’s applies to every generation after them until God ends it. Even though they weren’t there, they were on God’s mind when he made these promises and laws. This covenant is with them, and with us as well. Remember what Jesus said? Nothing of the law would pass away (cf. Matthew 5:17-20).

So the text doesn’t say whether or not Moses is reading these Ten Commandments off the original tablets or if he’s reciting them from memory. I kind of get the impression he’s doing it from memory because he’s lived with these laws for forty years now. He knows this law by heart, and I mean that in more ways than one. He knows it, to be sure. It’s committed to long-term memory. But more than that, Moses has lived this law out. He truly knows it in his heart; it’s a part of him. So he quotes God directly: You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make or worship any images of God or creation. You shall not misuse the name of God. Keep the Sabbath. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony. And you shall not covet anything your neighbor has (5:6-21). Now, while these are on one level very simple laws, they are also tremendously deep in meaning and in the way they affect (or should affect) our lives. We spent two weeks discussing them in the Bible Breakdown class and probably could have spent more time. And so the rest of the law in the Old Testament—613 commands by many people’s count—is meant to explain these ten. But it is these ten that are meant to provide a fence around human life, and if we stayed in the fence, life would go the way it was meant to go and people would be able to live together in peace. In other words, we would have a very different world than the one we have today.

God wants obedience. God expects obedience. God deserves obedience. He designed this life and he knows how it is best lived. But God wants more than joyless obedience. It’s like when someone gives you a gift that they obviously have put no thought into, something that has no relevance to your life, something that really demonstrates they don’t really know you. If obligatory gifts or thank yous don’t mean much to us, think about what they mean to a God who sees and knows all. That’s not what God wants. He wants us to obey because we love him. He wants us to realize how much he loves us. He loves us so much that he put a fence in place to protect us, to care for us, to make sure we could have the best life possible (cf. Kalas, The Gospel According to Leviticus, pgs. 39-40).

But we are not saved through our obedience to the law and neither was Israel. When they received then Ten Commandments, and in the passage we read when Moses reiterated the Ten Commandments, they had already been saved. They had already become God’s people. For us, we have already been saved if we have received Jesus as our savior. What he did on the cross has already saved us. Our obedience does not earn our way into heaven, no matter what some politicians and preachers try to preach. Our obedience to God’s law is our response of love to God for saving us. The fence is a gift meant to keep us from danger, to keep us from becoming lost again. Within the boundaries of a right relationship with God and a right relationship with other people, we will find a fulfilling life. As Pastor David Kalas put it, “God sets us free to live happily, safely, and robustly within those boundaries” (41).

Or, as the great African saint, Augustine, once said, “Love God then do what you will.” That isn’t permission to do whatever we want regardless of the fence. It’s actually an invitation to see the beauty of the fence. When we love God, truly love him, we will want to do what he commands. When we love someone, we want to make them happy, we want to do whatever we have to in order to be in relationship with them. Don’t tell me you haven’t changed by being in relationship with someone, whether that’s with your spouse or a friend or your children or even your church family. When we love someone, it changes us. Love God first, then do whatever you want because at that point you will want to do what he wants you to do. The psalmist put it this way: “I run in the path of your commands, for you have broadened my understanding” (Psalm 119:32).

Barney has never once complained about the fence, and I’ve noticed that even now, on those times we let him out the front door where there is no fence, he stays close by. He knows he has a good thing going. He knows where he is cared for, where his food and water is, where his comfy bed is. He knows where the treats come from! He knows that if he is going to thrive, if he is going to stay safe, he needs to stay close to his master. In the whole wide world, there’s no place he would rather be.

Jesus’ disciples learned a similar thing. One time, when people were leaving the larger group of Jesus’ followers, Jesus turned to the twelve disciples and asked, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” And Peter, who often spoke for the whole group, said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:67-69). Peter and the rest knew that in the whole wide world, there was no place they would rather be than close to their master. There was safety and salvation in walking in his way, in staying inside the fence. And that’s why it was so distressing when Jesus began telling them he was going to have to go away, that he was going to be killed. Peter, again most likely speaking for all of them, tries to correct Jesus. “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you!” (Matthew 16:22). But Jesus kept repeating the message, even to the last night they spent together. And on that night, in the midst of the Passover meal, he told them one of their number was a betrayer but all of them would fall away (Matthew 26:21, 31-32). So he gave them a meal, a practice, that was meant to remind them not only of his sacrifice but of his presence. It’s called communion or the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist, and theologians debate what it means and how Jesus is present in these simple symbols of bread and cup. What we know is this: in some way, believers for two thousand years have come to this table and known the presence of the master. And they’ve also known, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there is no better place to be. As we come to the table this morning, I pray you experience and know that to be true. There is a beauty in the fence because it keeps us close to the master. Let’s pray.