When God delivered the children of Israel from their centuries of slavery in Egypt, their first important destination was Mt. Sinai. There, in the presence of God’s holy, majestic glory, the sons of Abraham received His moral law. His Ten Commandments--do’s and don’ts which perfectly summarized the Lord’s expectations for them, and for all humanity.
The Ten Commandments are timeless. They are universal. They apply to all people, in all societies, cultures, and eras of history. They are unchangeable, simply because God Himself never changes.
The Ten Commandments are absolutes. They provide no exceptions. God is the only God. Idols are never permitted. Adultery is always wrong. So is stealing. So is giving a false testimony against your neighbor. God’s commands show us how perfectly holy God is. They also reveal how wicked the human heart can be. That’s your heart and mine.
But the Ten Commandments are also loving. Our Creator is a holy God, and He is also a God of love. God knows love, and He knows how to love His creatures. He loved the Israelites, and He loves you and me. That’s why God gave us His holy law. God intends for us to be holy-- happy and holy. King David wrote Psalm 119, a song that sings of his love for God’s laws, “O how I love your law--it is my meditation all day long!” David understood that God wants His children to be good children and to learn the goodness of their Father in Heaven!
There are things God wants us to treasure, to love, and to value; things that characterize Him, and His loving and faithful children. All these values are reflected and protected by His Ten Commandments. I want to take some time to name some of these, because they are truly Christ-like values. If we love the Lord Jesus Christ, who perfectly obeyed all of God’s commandments, we will be growing in our desire to be more like Him.
Commandment One: You shall have no other gods before Me.
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus--this supreme Being is the one and only true God. Jesus told the woman at the well, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Faith is the first value I wish to point out to you today. Hebrews 11:6 tells us, “without faith it is impossible to please [God].” There is a new category on the polling lists, called the “nones.” Not “nuns” in the Roman Catholic sense, but people who, when asked what church they belong to, check off the box that says “none.”
How sad that so many people are losing faith. Faith in the Father above who created and loves and provides for and cares deeply for them! How can a person come to know and love and enjoy God, if they don’t even believe in His existence? This makes it all the more urgent for Christian people to share our faith. How often do you and I take time to strengthen our faith in God, so we’ll be willing and able to speak about Him to others, praise Him for His wonderful works, and tell the good news about His salvation through Christ?
Commandment Two: You shall not make for yourselves any graven image...to bow down and worship it.
True worship is the second value I want us to consider. Just as there are false gods and the true God, there is also false worship and true worship. Sinful men and women use their imaginations to dream up pictures of what they think God must be like. The Lord made it clear in His law that this is an evil and wrong thing to do. To worship the true God in a true manner is not a matter of imagining what He looks like--rather, it’s approaching Him with a heart of awe, praise and gratitude for who He is and what He has done.
While faith is a very important value to the Lord, true worship is also necessary to please Him. God is not a nebulous force or a remote, uninvolved Being. He is a Person who thinks and feels and loves and speaks to His creatures. He gave us His word to tell us clearly what He’s like and to instruct us in proper worship. Psalm 100 tells us, “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name. For the Lord is good.” A good God certainly deserves our thanks. He deserves for our worship to be true worship.
Commandment Three: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
This commandment reminds us of the important value of reverence. There are many who claim to be Christians today--who believe in the true God and even worship his true representative, Jesus Christ--and yet fail to revere Him. They treat Him as a buddy or “the man upstairs,” or they worship flippantly, with very little awe, or wonder, or what the Bible calls “the fear of the Lord.” But God wants His children to understand how great and awesome God truly is. So great and majestic and holy that even His name is to be considered unique and special.
When we mention God’s name, or the name of Jesus, God’s Son, even in casual conversation, we should do so with the utmost care and reverence. God is holy and so is His name. Everything connected with Him should be treated that way. In our age of comedy, irreverent humor, and crude joking, with people using fouler and more profane language, let God’s faithful children be known for their reverence, especially in the way we speak about the Savior whom we love: Jesus, who never uttered a coarse or irreverent word, who always spoke with grace and truth.
Commandment Four: Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.
This commandment, of course, has to do with joining and attending a church that preaches Christ and believes His Word. But it also concerns rest and labor. God chose to engage in both of these valuable things, even though He had no need to do so! Think about it… God has no need of work to make Him feel useful, and never needed rest. Yet, He chose to create a universe, along with this delightful planet on which you and I dwell. He built something lovely and useful...then rested from His work. Then He ordered mankind to do likewise.
God is not simply interested in what you and I do… He also cares about what we are and what we shall become. By giving us a special day to rest from labor, devoting ourselves to listening and learning, praising and worshiping, meditating and appreciating our blessings, God means for us to become more like our Master. Jesus was a true human being who “grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52). Let us do likewise, treasuring the blessing of fruitful labor, as well as the refreshment of rest and growth in God’s grace.
Commandment Five: Honor your father and your mother.
“Honor” is a word that many associate with the armed forces. They say that this or that soldier served and died with honor. To have honor is to treat things and people with the proper dignity and respect. It is born from a heart of gratitude--the heart of a person who has received gracious, valuable things from someone else that he didn’t necessarily deserve.
Our treatment of others is something God is very concerned about. One of the two most important commandments, according to Jesus, is “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, “treat him or her with the same honor and dignity you treat yourself with.” Of course, we learn this kind of love first in our homes as we grow up under the loving care of our parents. We can’t truly claim to love our parents unless we are honoring them. We’ve received our very lives from them, as well as from our Heavenly Father. To honor them is to merely pay back a debt we owe to them.
When you think about it, there are many, many people and groups and churches and other institutions which are worthy of our honor--which have helped and nurtured and made us what we are today. Hebrews 11 gives a roll call of people God considers worthy of honor because of their faith--their devoted trust in His promises. Those who take the time and effort to honor others, are being faithful to their honorable God.
Commandment Six: You shall not murder.
Faith...true worship...reverence...labor and rest...honor...LIFE! We can see how these important values tie together and lead into one another. We are expected to worship, reverence, obey and honor the very One who, along with our father and mother, have given us life. And life itself is a most important value. The taking of an innocent life has always topped the list of the worst crimes imaginable. It is treated by God and by true society as a capital crime, punishable by the death sentence. But life and death are only an issue, remember, because of sin. “By one man,” the Bible says, “sin came into the world, and death by sin. And so death passed upon all men, because all sinned.”
When Adam and Eve disobeyed and ate the forbidden fruit, God could have carried out the sentence of death immediately, but He didn’t. Rather, he let the couple continue their physical lives for 900 more years! How kind of Him! God is kind and patient. He wants His image bearers to have every possible opportunity to repent and turn back to Him. This life we live on earth is a lot shorter now than it was for Adam and Eve, and yet, God has given us much more information about the life to come after this life ends!
We know now that death is not the end, and that our existence will be everlasting--either in a place of wonderful blessings, or one of unending suffering. With heaven and hell in the balance, each person must do all he or she can to make the best use of the opportunities God gives in this life. Never take this important value--this divine gift--for granted. Faithful children of God take grateful advantage of all the promises and opportunities God gives them… and they encourage others to do the same!
Commandment Seven: You shall not commit adultery.
The gift of marriage, like the gift of life, is a tremendously valuable treasure we should never take for granted. Marriage is meant to be a picture of God’s loyal, loving covenant with His people! And yet, so many people are using their sexual natures in ways that God never designed or approved of. The seventh commandment protects every person, as well as society, from physical, emotional, and spiritual devastation!
When we add impurity to a food or a drink, we say that it is “adulterated.” There are places in the world where the water is tainted and unfit to drink. It will make you sick. To treat a gift of God in a way that cheapens or pollutes or adulterates it, reveals a heart that is in rebellion against our kind and gracious Creator. God put us on planet earth as stewards of His good gifts. He wants us to “be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it,” as He said to Adam and Eve. If you and I want to honor Him and be faithful to His call, we will keep our lives, our marriages and our relationships as pure and pleasing to Him as we are able in a fallen world.
Commandment Eight: You shall not steal.
When we talk about marriage and family, we are talking about belonging. Ownership is a value that God is very concerned about. God owns everything that He created. That includes all of us in this room, this town, this country, this planet, this universe. “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all”--we all belong to Him! When you and I say that something, or somebody, is ours, we are saying that God is sharing His value of ownership with us. We can say we “own” things because we are owned by God.
Owning something is not a license to abuse or pollute or destroy the thing we own. God expects us to treat what we own with care and love and wisdom. So, then, ownership of property, or “ownership” of spouses and children within marriage, is not simply a right… but a responsibility. And a major part of that responsibility is agreeing to guard the ownership claims of other people. That is why stealing is wrong. Ownership is an attribute that God has shared with us as stewards of this earth. It is a valuable gift that enhances and gives meaning to our lives. And just like adultery spoils marriage, stealing denies and pollutes another of God’s gracious gifts to mankind.
Commandment Nine: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Notice how the commandments flow from one to the next. Murder is an attack on life. Adultery is an attack on marriage, the means of life. Stealing is an attack on ownership, which gives purpose to life. And now, perjury or lying under oath is an attack on truthfulness, which gives dignity to life. If I knowingly tell a lie about you, accusing you of a crime or a sin, I am attacking your reputation, your good name, perhaps even your freedom or your life! Sometimes, even a mere accusation is enough to spoil a person’s dignity in the eyes of others.
Part of Jesus’ ordeal during His trial and crucifixion, was the way He was falsely accused and ridiculed by those who wanted Him dead. The leaders and officials who were supposed to uphold justice and protect the innocent, were the very ones who lied about the Son of God. Ironically, when He stood before Pontius Pilate, Jesus told Him that He’d come into the world to testify to the truth, and all who believed the truth would accept His words. Pilate’s response? He asked “What is truth?” We live in a world where many around us are not only telling lie after lie, they are actually believing the biggest lie of all--that eternal life can be gained without trusting in the God of truth, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Commandment Ten: You shall not covet anything that is your neighbor’s.
Why do adulteries, murders, thefts and lies take place? All of them begin in the heart of a sinner. All of them begin with a sinful desire. When I look into my own heart, I can see many desires and longings that I wouldn’t mind telling you about. But honestly, I also see a great many thoughts, ideas, desires, that I would never want you to know.
Like the other prohibitions we’ve met in the Ten Commandments, the one against coveting is a protection against an attack. But it’s an attack on myself. Coveting is an attack against my own contentment. Against my own peace of mind. If I am eaten up by envy and jealousy because one of my neighbors has a better home, or a nicer car, or a more beautiful spouse, or a more important job, then what happens to my gratitude for all that God has given me and done for me? It is hard to remain thankful when I am resentful about the possessions of my neighbor.
But there’s an even more important point about this commandment. Unlike the other ones, this one has to do with something that no one except God can see or hear. It is a matter of the heart--of the spirit within a person. God has told us that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” In other words, life is more than earthly possessions and relationships and activities. Life is eternal and beyond this world. It flows from the very words of our Creator.
So, you can see that we’ve come full circle. This final commandment is a rule that forces me to look at my hidden heart and ask myself, “Am I longing after some other god or idol to fulfill me, rather than trusting in and worshiping and serving and enjoying to one true God?” This brings us back to Commandment One: You shall have no other gods before Me.
- Faith in God
- True Worship
- Reverence
- Labor and Rest
- Honor
- Life
- Marriage
- Ownership
- Truthfulness
- Contentment
God’s moral law is a strong protector to all of these incredible values. None of us has been faithful to keep that law perfectly, and that’s why all of us need a sinless, sin-bearing Savior: The Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son, whose precious blood cleanses us from all sin.
MNA
11/21/2016
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