commandments

Don’t Take the Lord’s Name in Vain

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Exodus 20:1–4, 7 says, “And God spoke all these words, saying.” We need to take note that what follows is the beginning of the Ten Commandments spoken by the voice of the Lord. This is His preamble to the constitution of grace. “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” Verse 2.

He is your Deliverer and He is delivering you out of darkness into His light. He is cutting you free from the cord of the wicked that binds you. He says to listen and learn from the holy principles of His universal government, the constitution of His grace, His divine directive that sustains and maintains all that He has created. His commandments are ten promises of what He will do in your life if you will just surrender control over to Him.

“You shall have no other gods before me.” Verse 3. I will cause you to know my love for you and to understand My power. I will be your Father and will be the object of your worship when you come to know me.

“You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.” Verse 4. He is delivering you from false worship. You will not be like the pagans who create their own gods rather than to worship their creator God. Your life will be marked by reverence for Him in contrast to being marred by malice, deceit, vanity and emptiness.

“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.” Verse 7.

There are serious consequences for breaking the third commandment and taking God’s name in vain. Why are we held guilty if we take His name in vain? What acts do we commit that amount to taking His name in vain?

To understand this we must understand the majesty of the Lawgiver as Nehemiah did when he said in Nehemiah 9:5, 6, “Stand up and bless the Lord your God Forever and ever! Blessed be Your glorious name, Which is exalted above all blessing and praise! You alone are the Lord; You have made heaven, The heaven of heavens, with all their host, The earth and everything on it, The seas and all that is therein, And You preserved them all. The host of heaven worships You.”

God says to fear, stand in awe and reverence of His glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 28:58).

The Bible refers to God by many names and all reflect His character and represent the glory of God, including His word in His law which is a transcript of His character.

God revealed His glory to Moses. This is a conversation that God had with Moses after Moses had swung those first tables of the Ten Commandments to the ground and broke them. In Exodus 33:17–23, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.’ And he replied, ‘Please show me Your glory.’ Then God said, ‘I will make all My goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ But He said, ‘You cannot see My face; for no man can see Me, and live.’ And the Lord said, ‘Here is a place by Me, and you shall stand on a rock. So it shall be, when My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by. Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.’ ”

Continue on in Exodus 34:6, 7:

“And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children unto the third and to the fourth generation.’ ”

What was Moses’ response to this revealed glory? In verse 8 it says, “Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.”

God proclaimed His name as referencing His glory, His character. That is why His name is so exalted.

David wrote,

“I will worship toward Your holy temple, And praise Your name For your lovingkindness and Your truth; For You have magnified Your word even above all Your name. In the day when I called, You answered me, And you strengthened me with strength in my inner self.” Psalm 138:2, 3.

Why does God magnify His word even above His name? Because, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1. He became flesh and tabernacled among us. We have to recognize the majesty of the name of God, which represents His character.

When we take His name in vain, we are slandering His character. Do any of us take God’s name in vain?

We need to look at the spirit of the law and not just the letter. I would have never thought that I took the Lord’s name in vain. As I studied this, I found myself asking God to forgive me. The beauty of getting deep into the word of God is that the more we study His law, the mirror, we realize there is dirt on our own face and we recognize our great need for a Savior. Hebrews 4:12 says, “The word of God is alive and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even to the point of judging the intentions of our heart and our thoughts.”

There are four categories in taking the name of the Lord in vain.

When we first think of someone taking God’s name in vain we think of the ungodly, disrespectful, unbelieving, sacrilegious person who uses God’s name as an irreverent byword—a curse word.

Swearing falsely is also taking God’s name in vain; not performing our oaths to the Lord.

Becoming wearied by the requirements of true worship and offering less than our best to God is taking His name in vain.

Hypocrisy—dishonesty, double-minded behavior, insincere, empty talk, not walking the talk, deceitful rebellion against God’s governing regulations; in other words, disobedience. That is taking God’s name in vain.

Ungodly and Irreverent

The first category is the ungodly, irreverent people who use His name as a byword.

At the last company I worked for before going into full-time ministry, the director was a computer programmer. This man used God’s name in vain and that irreverent byword all throughout the day. Everybody was very intimidated by this man because if you got on his bad side, he would not help you and without his help, you could not do your job because he was the program computer developer.

I was so grieved that I could not help but speak up. When I told him what the name of the Lord meant to me and how I felt when he did this, rather than respecting me, he got worse. As he ignored my request I realized that this is the one who God would say is an enemy against God. Psalm 139:19, 20 says, “Oh, that You would slay the wicked, O God! … For they speak against You wickedly; Your enemies take Your name in vain.”

Each time he would do this I determined in my heart that I was not just going to let it go by. Every time he would use the name of the Lord in vain around me I would say, “The name of the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. Give glory to His holy name.” Psalm 48:1; I Chronicles 16:29. I want to tell you that this irritated him to no end.

Finally, one day he came to me and said, “I am tired of you doing that.” I said, “You have got to be kidding. You are upset by me saying this?” I sat and talked with him more and this man became a good friend and he did not take the name of the Lord in vain anymore. Not just around me, but he quit taking the name of the Lord in vain around others. God gave me favor with this man.

As Christians, we are to be especially careful to reverence God’s name. We need to take caution not to use His name as a byword in careless phrases as, “Oh my God,” or “God only knows,” or “I swear to God.” We need to be careful not to use His name lightly in jesting. People are sending a lot of jokes about Jesus and Satan and they will say that they are so cute. Please don’t send those to me. They grieve my soul, because the name of the Lord is great and greatly to be praised and we need to give glory to Him that is due glory.

As Christians, we need to be careful never to offer a prayer in a robotic jesting manner, casually repeating canned and clever phrases. That is taking His name in vain. Prayer is a great privilege and when we come to Him we should pause for just a moment as we think about this great God who tells us we can call Him Abba.

Jesus taught us in Matthew 6:9 how to pray. He said, “In this manner, therefore pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed it be Your name.” What does it mean to be hallowed? It means to be kept holy. Jesus was saying, “Our Father, your name is to be kept holy” and Jesus did keep it holy.

When He was praying in the garden before he went to Gethsemane, in John 17:11, He said, “Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are one.” It goes on in verse 25, “O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me.”

Jesus addressed His Father as holy and righteous. Should we not also likewise worship in the same manner?

Swearing Falsely

The second category of taking God’s name in vain is swearing falsely, not performing our oaths to the Lord. Leviticus 19:12 says, “You shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of the Lord your God: I am the Lord.” God wants us to be serious. Let our yes be yes and our no be no.

Jesus said, “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.’ But I say unto you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No.’ For whatsoever is more than these is from the evil one.” Matthew 5:33–37. How cautious we need to be.

Becoming Weary

The third category of taking His name in vain is when we become wearied by the requirements of true worship and offer less than our best.

As I studied this out I thought, Lord, I let my schedule get so crammed that sometimes I am going off to do a revival series somewhere and I am studying on the plane to get the message and I feel sometimes that I am giving God less than my best.

God is speaking about offering polluted things beginning in Malachi 1:6–10: “ ‘A son honors his father, And a servant his master. Then if I am the Father, Where is My honour? If I am the Master, Where is my reverence? Said the Lord of hosts To you priests who despise My name. And yet you say, ‘In what way have we despised Your name?’ You offer defiled food on My altar. But say, ‘In what way have we defiled You?’ By saying, ‘The table of the Lord is contemptible.’ And when you offer the blind as a sacrifice, Is it not evil? And when you offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it then to your governor! Will he be pleased with you? Will he accept you favorably? Says the Lord of hosts. But now I entreat God’s favor, That He may be gracious to us. While this is being done by your hands, Will He accept you favorably? Says the Lord of hosts. Who is there even among you that would shut the doors, So that you would not kindle fire on My altar in vain? I have no pleasure in you, Says the Lord of hosts, Nor will I accept an offering from your hand.”

The priests and the people had found God’s requirements for sacrifice and worship contemptible. Are we not a holy nation, a royal priesthood—is this not also applicable to us? When they found the requirements for worship contemptible, God found their acts of worship contemptible. In fact, He said, Who among you would shut the door—shut the door to the church? Don’t kindle an offering in vain to me. I would rather the doors be shut. God help us!

Have we forgotten the reverence due a holy God? Have we become so overly familiar with Him that we forget to stand in awe and honor of the Almighty God? Has church become a social club? Do we come to honor Him in truth and spirit, or do we come to be entertained, or even worse, to be wearied, because the sermons are too long? Do we criticize the message from Scripture when we are called to magnify the word of God?

God says,

“ ‘For from the rising of the sun, even to its going down, My name shall be great among the Gentiles; In every place incense shall be offered to My name, And a pure offering; For My name shall be great among the nations,’ Says the Lord of hosts.” Malachi 1:11.

God is telling them that He has a solution. If His people won’t correct their behavior He will raise up a people who will worship Him with gratefulness and purity in their hearts.

“But you have profaned my name, In what you say, ‘The table of the Lord is defiled; And its food is contemptible.’ You said also, ‘Oh what a weariness!’ And you have sneered at it, Says the Lord of hosts.” Malachi 1:12, 13.

The priests profaned and perverted sacred things. They provoked God by profaning His holy name, taking His name in vain. They may have started in full-time ministry with the right heart and the right spirit but they became polluted with pride. They sneered at the offering in which they were to give—they thought it too little, too plain for them, contemptible. They thought that they deserved more because they served in the temple.

Continuing on in verses 13, 14,

“ ‘You bring the stolen, and the lame, and the sick; Thus you bring an offering! Should I accept this from your hand?’ Says the Lord. ‘But cursed be the deceiver Who has in his flock a male, And takes a vow, But sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished—For I am a great King,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘And My name is to be feared among the nations.’ ”

The people had reckless disregard for the holy ordinances. The sacrifices they brought and the sacrifices that were accepted were substandard. It was not their best. They felt, it was enough just to come to the altar of sacrifice and they did not need to bring an acceptable offering. Surely they did not need to read their Sabbath School lesson before they came to Sabbath School.

He is a holy God whom we should worship in holiness, reverence, spirit and in truth. They had become wearied by real worship. God said, their offerings were offered in vain. He was not pleased with their acts of taking His name in vain.

As Christians in our home, are we blaspheming the name of the Lord, taking it in vain? Do our children see us arguing, fighting and not loving in character? Do they see us doing the very things that we tell them not to do? That is taking God’s name in vain.

Wherever you go, people are watching. If you get impatient in line and you think you are entitled to better treatment and you get all puffed up, you are taking God’s name in vain. You are profaning the name of the Lord and that causes people to blaspheme the name of God.

Hypocrisy

The fourth category is hypocrisy: dishonesty, double-minded behavior, insincere, empty talk, not walking the talk, deceitful rebellion against God’s governing regulations.

The Strong’s Concordance defines vain as emptiness, vanity, falsehood and nothingness, emptiness of speech, lying and worthlessness of conduct. That is taking God’s name in vain.

Jesus in Mark 7:6, 7, 9, 13 says, “He answered and said unto them, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. In vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ He said, All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your own tradition. Making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

How cautious we need to be that we are not taking God’s name in vain.

The following Scripture should compel each one of us to check our spiritual pulse. In Matthew 7:21–23 Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name? And in Your name have cast out demons? And done many wonders in Your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ ”

To these who thought they were in full-time ministry, doing the work of the Lord and professing the name of the Lord, Jesus says, “I don’t know you.” Professing the name is not what qualifies us for heaven. Obedience through His grace and by His divine power qualifies and equips us to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Those who called on Him were calling on Him in pretense only. They were not walking in obedience or in surrender to God. They were not really His followers, because they did not practice the Father’s revealed will. They were deceiving themselves into thinking that their own form of worship was enough. Yet they refused to practice His will.

Paul writes, “The Lord knows those who are His. Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” II Timothy 2:19. If we profess the name of the Lord, we must live according to the profession. We need to depart from our lawless ways; otherwise we are nothing more than hypocrites who are taking His name in vain and practicing a useless religion.

“Therefore shall you keep My commandments, and perform them: I am the Lord. You shall not profane My holy name, but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel: I am the Lord Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord.” Leviticus 22:31.

By His grace He has promised to sanctify us and we will not then hypocritically take His name in vain. God’s commandments become His promises of what He will do in us if we will surrender to Him.

It is all about coming to the Lord and surrendering and saying, “Father I need you; I recognize my sinfulness. Work in me to will and to act according to your good purpose.”

“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace towards me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was in me.” I Corinthians 15:10.

The grace of God is more than His unmerited favor. Jesus Christ, your gift from God, is your only hope of glory. The Holy Spirit is the second greatest gift of God who works in us and allows God to do abundantly more than we could ever think or ask. And the word of God, the sanctifying, transforming power of the word of God, is another gift of His grace.

Do we call Him Saviour and refuse to accept His gift of salvation by grace? That is taking His name in vain. We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do the good works that He prepared before Him that we should do.

He says in I John 2:3–6, “Now by this we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, I know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought also himself to walk just as he walked.”

Do we call Him Lord and refuse to do as he commanded? If so, we take His name in vain.

Shelley Quinn’s sermon was taken from the Ten Commandment Weekend, 2008 series aired on 3ABN. For more information contact www.3ABN.org.

Honor your Parents

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The Ten Commandments are not a very popular topic these days. Judges get in trouble for trying to put the Ten Commandments in the courtroom. The Ten Commandments are not extremely popular. The truth is that the Ten Commandments are not a legalistic set of regulations for us. These commandments were written by the finger of God. He wrote them as an expression of His character so that we might know Him. It is more important to view the commandments in that way than any other.

What does this tell me about the Father? What does this tell me about God? I find that God is very interested in your relationship because the first four commandments have to do with your relationship with God. The fifth Commandment is where it turns. People say that the last six commandments have to do with our relationship with others. I would like to give a third division. The first four pertain to our relationship with God. The last five involve our relationships with others. But the fifth commandment is specifically focused on the home.

The fifth commandment is concerned with your relationship with father and mother, with children, with the family, because the family is the core of society. In fact, it is good to view this as concentric circles; it begins with our love for God in the inner circle. From there we expand to another circle which is family. We need to love God; we need to love family. Then we go one more circle and that is to love everyone else as well.

We see this same pattern in the gospel commission. Jesus told His disciples they were to start at Jerusalem (The Acts of the Apostles, 32) which is where they lived, where the first church was established. Start in Jerusalem and spread the word throughout the city. Then go to Judea, which is the country in which they live, and then to Samaria, their closest neighboring country, and then to the uttermost parts of the world. We start with God and then we move out like concentric circles. The gospel begins at home and then we move out. That seems to be God’s plan.

He asks how you could love others if you don’t even love the people He gave you to live with on a day-to-day basis. We have here God’s pattern for relationships. God says that good relationships have boundaries. A relationship without boundaries is codependent and extremely unhealthy. There are boundaries in my relationship with you.

All human relationships must have boundaries. My wife has commandments that I did not realize until I got married. One commandment is, Thou shalt have no other girlfriends before me. Another commandment is, Thou shalt not take my name in vain, either in my presence or away from me—talk nice about me is what she is saying. Those commandments are not a burden to me. I have more joy keeping those commandments because I love her and they are not a burden or a legalistic requirement of me at all.

Our relationship has boundaries. She has boundaries for me and I have boundaries for her and without those boundaries we would have an unhealthy relationship. There needs to be a set of expectations that we have in relationships. That is what the Ten Commandments are all about. God tells us that the Ten Commandments are boundaries for your relationship with me. There are boundaries for your family and boundaries for the rest of the world—it would be nice if you do not kill the people you love.

Don’t take from the people you love the things that belong to them; respect their property. These are boundaries for relationships. Don’t bear false witness; don’t trash their character. Every relationship must be governed by boundaries or the relationship becomes unhealthy. When you are raising children, you have boundaries for them. There are things you are trying to teach them because you want them to grow up and become responsible human beings. You want them to understand what a healthy relationship is all about.

One of those boundaries is found in Exodus 20:12. It says, “Honour your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God has given you.” One of the things God does is to put men and women on the same level. This was a new thought for that time because it was a very male dominated society.

In order to understand this passage better we need to understand a concept of the Eastern mind, especially the ancient Eastern mind, and it still exists today. This commandment could also be translated as, “Be sure you don’t shame your father and your mother.” A very strong motivating force in the Eastern mind is the idea of shame avoidance—saving face. It is difficult to understand any of the parables that Jesus taught without an understanding of this basic concept of shame avoidance. We will do anything to avoid shame personally and also collectively as a society. That was a key in the Eastern thought.

Remember the parable of the man who received guests into his home late, unexpectedly, and he had nothing in the house to feed them? He goes over to his neighbor and he bangs on the door and he says, “Give me some bread so I can feed my guests.” The man says, “Leave me alone; I am in bed; I have my children in bed with me” (Luke 11:5–7). We really don’t understand that parable here in the West. We think it means that God is reluctant to answer our prayers, but if we keep knocking on the door, eventually He will answer. That is not what the parable says.

In the East, when someone came to your home, not only were they the guests in your home but they were the guests in the entire community. It would be a point of shame, not just for the man who received him into his home, but for the entire community to not meet the needs of the guests. For this man to go to his neighbor and knock on the door and say I have a guest; I have nothing to feed him; help me out, Jesus was saying, Who would not get out of bed and give him the bread? After all, he would bring shame on himself, upon his neighbor and the entire community. Of course, he is going to defend his name; he is going to honor his reputation; he is going to honor his community by getting out of bed, getting the bread so that he will have something to feed his neighbor. By the way, what the man was asking for was primarily utensils. In those days the food was put into a common pot, usually a stew, and they would take flat bread and dip in the common pot, so the bread became the utensil. So for one man to refuse to do that would bring shame upon the entire community, and no one in their right mind would do that.

The point of Jesus’ parable was when you ask for something in His name, God will always honor His name. He would not think of doing otherwise because of the concept in the Eastern mind of shame avoidance. I am going to avoid shame. That is what the fifth Commandment is based on; do not allow your parents to experience shame. Do not shame your mother and your father.

One way in which your mother or father could be shamed in their old age is especially through poverty. Poverty was seen in that mindset as a point of shame. Don’t allow your mother or father to be impoverished in their old age; you take care of their needs. Do not bring shame upon their gray heads.

Do you remember when Saddam Hussein was captured? The allies understood the importance of villages, especially in the Eastern culture. They understood the importance of shame and shame avoidance. In the photographs we saw of him being examined by a doctor and checking his hair and beard for lice, he looked old and tired and he was opening his mouth as they peered in for opium. It was to make this god-like figure experience shame in the eyes of those people he ruled over. It was a mental image they wanted to place in the Eastern mind. They were very intentional about that because they understood the concept of shame avoidance because now he looked like an old, poor, haggard man, filled with vermin. It was all about shame avoidance.

How shameful would it be for your father or mother to not have enough food to eat or to live in poverty while you have enough to eat? The commandment is telling you that you have a responsibility for your father and mother. You are to take care of them in their old age and make sure they have exactly what they need. You do not shame them. Why do you do this? The family is the core of society, so that you may live long in the land that the Lord your God has given you. That promise does not mean that if you take care of them and be respectful to them that you will live to a ripe old age. It says that your community or your society will be established and you will keep the land that God has given you as a community. I will keep the core of your community strong as long as the family values are strong.

We see the disintegration of the family today. We can see that society is crumbling and standards are melting away. Anything seems to go and it starts with the home. This is why God said that the very first commandment that deals with human relationship is, “Honor your father and your mother.” Take care of the family relationships and make sure that they are in good shape and if you will do that, your society will remain strong. Your community will remain strong.

Another way in which we are to honor our father and our mother is by the way we talk to them. When our children were small, we wanted to make sure that we did not get any back talk. I have been to the store and I have seen children smart mouthing their mother and I want to go over and take the child by the nap of the neck. When our children were small, I remember one of them saying something smart to her mother and it was my job when I heard that to intervene and my wife would intervene when they spoke that way to me. When I heard her speak that way to her mother I told her to wait just a minute, that I would not allow any man on the street to speak to her mother in that way and why on earth would I allow my own daughter to speak that way. You will not speak to your mother in that way. We had no problems after that. I also spoke to her mother with gentleness and kindness and our children were respectful. They did not grow up with mother and father screaming at each other. We wanted our children to be able to emulate our response to each other. Everybody gets irritated but we need to choose our words well. Remember that every word you say trains someone else.

I wanted my children to learn to honor their mother, so I had to honor her. I wanted them to learn to honor their grandparents so I had to honor them. I wanted my children to honor men and women who are older than they and to treat them with gentleness and respect, which means that I have to model that. What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear a word you say. If you say one thing and do another, no one spots a hypocrite faster than a child. All of our children need to learn how to honor father and mother. That does not stop when they leave the house.

I have seen people treat their parents who are in their 50s, 60s and older as if they were children. I have seen them speak disrespectfully to them as if this was just a child with no sense. I have seen them roll their eyes when they take so long to get up or to move from one place to another. There was a time when you were pretty slow too. There was a time when you messed your britches and when you drooled and someone took care of you. We have a responsibility to care for father and mother and to show them dignity and respect regardless of their age.

A man and a woman live their lives searching for some manner of dignity and respect in the world. They do business, they hold a job, they raise a family, participate hopefully in church and at the end of their lives when they should have earned all of this respect, all of a sudden their children treat them as if they do not have a lick of sense. The parents have lost all of the respect they spent their lives trying to earn. This is a society that worships youth and hates old age.

I remember hearing an actor answer a question about who his hero was. He said his son, who was four years old, was his hero. His son had not battled some dread disease and survived or was not a child prodigy. He was just a normal four year old. He spoke of that child as being his ideal and he did not want to teach his child anything because he thought he might spoil that purity. He wanted to be like that child. This is life upside down. Your boy needs a hero and that should be you, dad, because you teach him values. You show him the way to live as a man. You show your daughter what it is to have a man love her appropriately. You don’t worship youth; you train youth.

We respect our elders by recognizing that they have something of value to give us. Honor your father and your mother.

We honor our father and mother by living lives of dignity, respect, purity, truth and honesty. When you are a man or woman of integrity, you give honor to your father and mother. I met a young man who was sharp, well-spoken and he seemed to live by good values. He seemed to have his head together and he seemed to know where he was going in this life. He knew what he wanted to do and what he wanted to accomplish. He knew who he was and what life was all about.

I was so impressed with him that I made a comment to my wife that someone had taught this young man well and that he must have come from a good home. When I had an opportunity to talk with this young man, particularly about his family, I found out just the opposite was true. His father, when he was a child, had been very abusive of the boy and before he had reached his teenage years, his father had abandoned him and he had not seen him in years. His mother was a drug addict and after his father left he saw a long procession of boyfriends move into the house and move out. They had taught him nothing but yet, somewhere along the line, someone had influenced him so that he had become a young man of integrity and dignity. Do you realize that the choices this young man made honored his father and mother who really did not deserve it or may not even be aware of it? And as you have chosen to live lives that honor God this will bring honor to your father and mother.

Honor comes from a root word for heavy or weighty, giving weight to. This can be taken in a positive way. When you consider a weighty matter, it would be something of significance, some substance or value. So when you add weight to this matter you are adding significance, substance and value. That is a positive way of looking at honor. The negative way of looking at honor is when it becomes a heavy burden to carry.

If you grew up in a home where father and mother did their best to care for you and raise you right and they made their mistakes along the way just like any other parent, then this matter of adding weightiness and substance to their lives is a positive command. Now you can respect them, their wisdom, their stories and their history and that becomes a part of your story and adds credence and value to your life, weight to your life. You are honored to give significance to their life at the time of anniversaries, birthdays, retirement and by visiting them. You are there to give honor to your father and your mother.

My family used to run a nursing home and there are a lot of people who were simply placed there and abandoned until they died. You never saw son or daughter or grandchildren; nobody came by until we sent the notice that they had died and they needed to pick up their things. To treat them positively is to add weight to their life and to show up, to be there and to love them and celebrate the moments with them and to thank them for what they have done for you. That is the positive way of looking at the commandment.

There is also a negative side to this. Not everybody grew up in a loving home. Many grew up in homes that were extremely abusive; they were abandoned or molested. This happens in American homes with far too great a frequency. What about those people whose lives have been negatively impacted by a dysfunctional family, a family that told them they were not good enough or abused them? What do you do with a father and mother in that circumstance? That is when the weight of honoring father and mother becomes heavy.

The commandment does not say to honor your father and mother unless your father was a louse, worthless or abusive. How do you honor that father? A work of reconciliation has to be done in your heart first. You need to not gloss over the pain in your life as though it never happened, but to acknowledge it. The only Christian option is to forgive. Forgiveness does not mean that what they did didn’t matter, or what they did was right, or that it did not hurt you. Forgiveness means that what you did was wrong, it hurt me and destroyed my life but I have chosen not to carry the resentment or anger around with me anymore. I lay it at the foot of the cross and I extend to you the same grace that was extended to me. I choose to forgive you. Forgiveness is not an emotion but a decision.

Ephesians 6:1–4 tells us that there is a second side to this: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother (which is the first commandment with promise); That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

Do you see the principle here? God never gives privilege without responsibility. Fathers and mothers have the privilege of having God command that our children honor us. The responsibility is that we live lives of integrity and be honorable people.

Jesus will give you the strength that is necessary to honor your father and your mother and to be a father or mother of integrity that your children can honor and love. This is God’s law, not a legalistic requirement. It is a glorious privilege that He wants us to have appropriate boundaries for healthy relationships, relationships with Himself, relationships with the greater community and relationships at home.

Michael Tucker’s sermon was taken from the Ten Commandment Weekend, 2008 series aired on 3ABN. For more information contact www.3ABN.org.

Thou Shalt Not Kill

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God says that if you will obey my voice and keep my commandments you will be a special treasure to me above all of the people of the earth. He said if you would do those things, it will be well with you. He asks that you and I walk with Him, follow Him in all that we do.

The Ten Commandments are ten great eternal principles that never change. Those are principles that God gave to guide, direct and to lead your life. They must not be viewed as rules. They are laws, they are principles but they are not rules. Many people have a tendency to look upon the Law of God as rules. When you view God’s law as a rule, it causes you to become legalistic and you will always be looking at other people to see if they measure up to the rule. Jesus and the Pharisees had conflict because of their persistence in coming to Him with some rule that they had made up regarding one of the commandments. Jesus would then give a principle which made them so mad that eventually they figured out how they could kill Him.

The sixth Commandment is, “Thou shalt not kill.” Exodus 20:13.

Genesis 9:6 says, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” This tells us that God made man in His own image and that means that you are special. There is not another individual anywhere in the vast universe of God who is just like you. You are one of a kind, unique!

If the life of an individual who is not saved or does not know Jesus Christ is taken, then that person is eternally lost. Throughout eternity there will never be another person like that one. This is a tremendous loss. You should not take something that you cannot restore and you cannot restore a life.

God is not interested in cloning. He creates. Man clones because he cannot create. God is not interested in having a bunch of people running around that look alike, speak alike, or act alike. God is interested in you being a distinct, special individual just the way He made you. David talked about this in Psalm 139:16: “Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed; and in your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there was none of them.” David said that God knew you before you were ever born. Life, for that reason, is special.

The last six commandments relate to loving your neighbor, whether it be your parents or the neighbor next door. In Romans 13:9 it says, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, You shall not covet; and if there is any other commandment, it is all summed up in this, namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

The neighbors next door, no matter how ornery or difficult they may be, are special and there is nobody else like them. God brought them into existence and therefore you and I need to treat them with respect and love because they are special.

The law was not given to give you power to overcome or to help you. It was given to show you a direction on how you should live and which way you should go. In Hebrews 7:19 it says, “For the law made nothing perfect, on the other hand, there is a beginning of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.” There is something to help you and me because the law was not given to make anything perfect. The law is going to tell you that you are guilty. There is a better hope offered to you and to me.

In Romans 5:20 it says, “Moreover the law entered that the offence might abound (in other words, it points out sin). But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” Unfortunately, many people do not understand grace or what is involved in grace. Remember the rich young ruler who came to Jesus? He said, “Good Master, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him: “If you would enter into life, keep the commandments.” And the young man responded saying that he had done that from his youth, “what lacketh I yet?” Jesus said if you want to be perfect, go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor and come and follow me (Luke 18:18-22).

What would you do if the Lord told you to go home and sell everything that you have and come and follow Him? Jesus was homeless, and did not know where the next meal was coming from and He said, I am not very well liked and the establishment would like to kill me, but sell everything you have and follow Me. How many of you would? Why would Christ ask that young man to do that? Because it was the only way that this young man would understand grace. All his life he had everything he wanted. He was not dependent on anybody. He was very wealthy and he turned away because he had great possessions. The only way he could understand grace was when he was totally dependent upon God. So with you and me; we have to be in a position where we are totally dependent upon the Lord.

What does the sixth Commandment mean when it says, “Thou shalt not kill”? In the original translation it says, “Thou shalt not murder.” The Hebrew meaning for the word kill or murder also means premeditated. That means I thought about it and then took that person’s life.

There are certain emotions that you and I have and if we do not take care of them they can cause us to commit murder. Let’s look at a few of these.

Envy—This can cause you to murder somebody. Do you remember the case in the Bible of Ahab? Right beside the palace was a vineyard owned by Naboth. Ahab was envious because he wanted that vineyard. He went to Naboth and told him that he would trade another piece of land for it, but he wanted that vineyard. Naboth told him that it had been in his family for many generations and that he did not want to sell. Ahab then offered him more than the vineyard was worth, but he would not sell it. He was so envious that he went home and moped and sulked and went on about it until Jezebel asked him what the problem was and then she took care of it. They murdered Naboth. Read about it in I Kings 21. Envy can cause murder. If you have a problem with envy, you need to look at it very, very carefully.

Hatred—If you hate your neighbor, if you hate your parents, or your brother or sister, you have an emotion that can get you into trouble and cause you to commit murder. Remember the experience of King Saul? He hated David. He did everything he could think of to take his life. Even when time and time again, it was shown him clearly that David was loyal and that he was not trying to take the kingdom, but Saul hated him so much that he continually attempted to take his life. If you hate, it can cause you to commit murder.

Anger—Uncontrolled anger can put you in situations where you will take a person’s life. If you cannot control getting angry, then you need to look at it and do something with that anger because that is dangerous. Cain killed his brother Abel because he was angry because God showed respect to Abel’s sacrifice but not his own. Anger must not be permitted to rule our lives.

Revenge—Revenge is wanting to get back for something that happened to me. I am not happy when hearing something on the news about somebody killing another person because others want to take revenge. When Samson’s wife was killed by the Philistines he said that he would go out and revenge himself and went out and killed over 1,000 of them. The spirit of revenge cannot be allowed to lead or guide the life.

I will never forget a time when I was holding a meeting and a lady atttended, with her was a young man, probably in his 30s. As we got acquainted one night I asked her about him. She said, “Brother Cox, that man killed my father. I went to the prison and told him I forgave him.” She told me she studied with him and brought him to Jesus Christ. When he got out of prison, he has been like a son to me ever since. This lady did not permit revenge to rule her life.

The Scripture does not tell us to be hateful, revengeful or angry. It says that you and I are to be kind, tenderhearted, loving one another (Ephesians 4:32).

Outside of shooting them or stabbing them, there are many different ways to kill people. In 1971 there was a song written called Killing Me Softly with His Song. Over the centuries, the preferred method for killing people was to poison them. Remember Nero who poisoned his mother who died rather quickly. Napoleon was poisoned for months before he died. In fact, poison still kills today and in many cases it is self-inflicted. What would you say to the Lord if He were to ask you, “Why did you commit murder?” You would say, “I did not murder anybody.” He would say, Yes, you committed suicide by slowly poisoning yourself by using tobacco. Every cigarette that you smoked took 11 minutes from your life. You committed suicide. How are you going to answer the Lord?

What about drugs? How do you answer the Lord when you are taking poisons and putting them into your body? The average age of a drug addict is 30 years of age. The same is true with alcohol—it does not kill you quickly; it just pickles you over time.

These poisons that are being used today we find almost acceptable and that it is all right to smoke and to chew and to use alcohol. This is not acceptable with God. To say that you just cannot quit, then you are saying that the grace of our Lord is not capable. Are you trying to say that if you turn your life over to God that He can’t take care of you and take you off those things? Would you tell God that, when He is there ready to help you?

We are talking about what God wants us to be and what we ought to be. There are some people who dig their grave with their teeth. There are women who are loving, kind and sweet wives who are absolutely fantastic cooks. The foods they fix are fabulous and they do that for their husbands, day in and day out. He sits and enjoys it and eats, not realizing that it is absolutely killing him. Look at 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own?” The statement is very true that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But if you prepare a wonderful meal day in and day out, and set that before him, you are asking for real problems; you are going to kill him.

I was invited to speak at a retirees’ convention. When I got up to speak and looked out across the audience of about 200 to 300 people I couldn’t believe what I saw. Ninety percent of the people in that audience were women. All of the husbands were dead. When I went through school, I worked as an orderly in a hospital and I noticed a rather strange phenomenon because a day or two before Thanksgiving or a day or two before Christmas the patient load in that hospital was way down. You could walk down that hall and there was vacant room after vacant room. The evening of Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day when you walked back through those halls every room was full and there were patients in the halls and it is because of what we eat. There has to be limits. The sin of this age is probably the gluttony of people. We need to stop that because it is killing us.

Cannibalism—When you come home from church and you sit down at the table for dinner and you eat roasted pastor or roasted brother or sister in the church you are practicing cannibalism, which is murder. Next time you think you are going to start in criticizing a pastor or a brother or sister, write down on a little pad that you just committed murder. You are not to kill. That is like that song Killing Me Softly with His Words. Step by step I put them to death. God simply says, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has inherited eternal life” (I John 3:15). It is impossible to hate a brother or a sister and still make it into God’s kingdom.

The Bible says that hate, anger, revenge and envy and all those emotions come out from your heart. In Matthew 15:19–21 it says, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” All of that comes out of the flesh. In order to keep from being that way, you cannot be on the throne. You do not have any choice about being on the throne because you were born there. Little babies can get on that throne quite easily; they are born that way. The choice to be made is whether or not you will get off it. God gave you a will so that makes it possible for you to make a decision that you will not ruin your life.

If you stay on the throne, then there are certain things that are inherited and called the works of flesh. Look in Galatians 5:19–21. It says, “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousy, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, reveling, and such like: of the which I tell you before, just as I also told you in time past, that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” You are born into this world only flesh. You need to make a decision of whether you are going to stay on the throne or let Christ reign there. Each must make that decision.

God has given each person a mind that is very smart. Your mind is a big filing cabinet which takes everything in that you hear, taste, see or touch and files it away perfectly so that anytime you want to you can pull it out and think about it. There is a lot in there you have not thought about for a long time, but if the right word is said or the right thing is done, it is immediately brought forth.

I was born in Chicago and lived the first nine years of my life there. I had never been back as far as spending any time there. I wanted to go back to the community where I was raised. I just wanted to go back and see what was there. I could not believe it, but when I walked back into the community all of the sounds and smells just flooded my soul. They were there after all of these years. Your mind files everything away very carefully.

If you are on the throne and running your own life, then you will put things into your mind that should not be there. These are the works of the flesh. You will watch the television and watch programs that encourage violence, hatred, murder, pornography and all of that will be stored in your mind. Then, you can think about it any time you want to. That produces what the Scripture calls emotions. The Bible says that when it comes to the emotions, you and I have to be very careful because it says, “Out of the heart … [Mark 7:21-23].” Heart refers to the emotions. It says to, “Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it springs the issues of life” [Proverbs4:23]. What does that mean? It means that your emotions cause actions—cause you to do certain things. That is why it says to watch your emotions, take care of them because that will cause you to do certain things.

If you permit envy or anger or hatred or any of those things to dwell in your life, those emotions could cause you to commit murder. The only way you can take care of this is by making the decision to put Jesus Christ on the throne.

When you make the decision to put Jesus Christ on the throne, He then makes the decision as to what goes into your mind, because He is in control. Therefore, He is the One who is calling the shots and I am going to read those things that are good and right. The Scripture says that whatsoever things are lovely, pure and of a good report, think on these things and that produces the fruits of the Spirit (Philippians 4:8). It says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law” [Galatians 5:22, 23]. Those begin to operate in my life. That is how the Holy Spirit comes in and takes control of your life and changes it.

You must make the decision whether you are going to let the Lord run your life or you are going to run your own life. If you are going to run your own life, then I will assure you that the works of the flesh will be present, but if you turn it over to Christ, then the Holy Spirit will come into your life and He will do His work in your life. The only way that takes place is at the foot of the cross. Day by day I have to come to Him at the foot of the cross and turn my life over to Him and let Him work in my life.

Are you willing to put Christ on the throne and let Him control your life and let Him do His work in your life so that the fruits of His Spirit might be manifested in you?

Kenneth Cox’s sermon was taken from the Ten Commandment Weekend, 2008 series aired on 3ABN. For more information contact www.3ABN.org.

Immorality Before Crossing the Jordan

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“Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Exodus 20:14

God said in five words what others take many thousands to explain.

Martin Luther’s right hand man, Melanchthon, once said that the Bible must first be understood grammatically before it can be understood theologically. In other words, we must first determine what the words are, then determine what those words mean individually and only then can it be determined what those words mean compositely. Only after that groundwork has been done can we then deduce a theological meaning.

The word Thou is of the second person pronoun which can be either singular or plural. In other words, it is you, the second person. The word shalt, or shall, in the more familiar English, is a strong assertion or an intention, you shall.

The word not is added to any auxiliary verb in the English language and forms the negation of that verb. You will not do this. The word commit means to carry out, to accomplish.

The fifth and final word is adultery. Mr. Webster defines adultery as a violation of the marriage bed via sexual intercourse, unchastity. God therefore commands that you will not violate the marriage bed, you will not be unchaste, you will not be immoral. You will not be licentious. It is very interesting to note that the very command, you will not do this, implies that you can. What would be the purpose in God commanding something that we could not do? When we talk about the moral law of God, God is asking us either to do or not to do that which we are capable of doing.

In the Hebrew text this command is even clearer, because it is stated in just two words: no adultery. We have already modified this statement into the English, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” In the Hebrew it simply states, “No adultery.” Is that unclear? The essence of the command is, “Do not be sexually involved with anyone who is not your spouse.” Often we take a very narrow view of adultery, and I have had people say to me that they cannot break that commandment because adultery is only violating the marriage vow, so if they are not married, how can they violate the marriage vow?

The essence of this command is to prohibit any sexual involvement outside of a marriage commitment. This commandment can also be violated by those who are not married. Jesus utterly affirmed this in Matthew 5:31 where He intensified the command: “Furthermore, it has been said, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” “You have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart.” Verses 27, 28. Jesus does not diminish the requirement of the law; He does not take away from the letter or the spirit, but He magnifies it and says, You thought it only pertained to the literal act, but I am telling you, you can be found guilty of this command somewhere between your ears.

Immorality is widespread today and it has become a major problem even in the Christian church. Not only are there blatant affairs going on, but many are looking at magazines and computer screens depicting every imaginable thing. People’s lives are being ruined, families are shattered and children are left with little or no direction with no proper role models to follow and it is happening all within the private confines of their own perverted imagination.

Jesus says in verse 32, “I say to you, That whosoever divorces his wife for any reason except for sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery.” Our definition of adultery is the violation of that marvelous union that God has instituted. Whoever marries a woman who is divorced without proper Biblical grounds commits adultery. Jesus magnified the law when adding that if you look on a woman to lust after her, and if you divorce a woman for a non-Biblical reason, that is the proliferation of adultery. Jesus in no way diminished the command, but He intensified it.

Jesus said, “Out of the heart proceeds all these evil thoughts, murders” (Matthew 15:19), which is commandment number six. And then He says, “adulteries, fornications,” referring to the seventh commandment. Jesus used two words to encapsulate this. He then goes on to say, “thefts” referring to commandment number eight. “Thou shalt not steal” and then, “false witness,” which is commandment number nine. This is very interesting; Jesus here describes commandments six, seven, eight and nine in a single word, except in the case of “Thou shalt not commit adultery” where He uses the words, adulteries and fornications. Here again Jesus is letting us know, as He did in Matthew, chapter five, that the command, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” is not simply something a married individual can do. It involves the whole umbrella of sexual vice and impurity. He uses two words, adulteries, which is the Greek word for the violation of the marriage bed and the word fornications which is the word for porneo, pornography.

This commandment Jesus describes, is as broad and does not just refer to adultery between married people. This commandment covers all kinds of sexual perversity and immorality. I don’t think anyone would disagree with the fact that we live in a sex-crazy, sensual, seductive society. Our culture is sex consumed.

God made man to be a social creature, and not be alone. The vast majority of us are social beings with a desire for a permanent relationship in which to share the most intimate experiences of life. God gave man the institution of marriage as a haven of safety, a place of sacred trust, in which to enjoy and to satisfy this most basic longing to be one with another. The oneness that a man shares with his wife in mind, body and soul is designed to be a type of the oneness that Jesus desires of His people, giving all to that relationship and forsaking all others.

Primarily there are two groups of people that fall into sexual sin, which is plainly forbidden: the unmarried, that is to say the single, whether never married, or married and divorced, and the unhappily married. As a general rule, those who are happily married in a wonderful, mutual, godly relationship are not usually the people who fall into sexual sin. This does not mean that they are immune and cannot fall, but it does mean that the people who are generally struggling with sexual sin are either single, or they are unhappily married. A happy, contented marriage will not only solve the problem of adultery, but it also solves the problem of pornography.

This is not to say that there would not be some who would remain single. Jesus did say and Paul agreed that there were certain people who could receive the gift of celibacy and these people are in the minority, but to those who desire companionship, the Apostle Paul advises in I Corinthians 7:9, “It is better to marry than to burn.”

Pornography has grown into a multi-billion dollar per year industry, destroying morals, people and marriages along the way. Internet pornography has not gotten any worse in terms of its substance in the last twenty years, but it has just become more accessible. Previously it used to be only available in the more seedy places, in truck stops, along the wrong side of the tracks and the red light district. Some people had the victory over pornography because they were afraid of being seen in these places, but now it is readily available in the public library or right in the living room of your own home. The percentage of pornography related Internet usage is off the charts and, incidentally, the top Google search words are all porn-related.

Tragically, pornography has become too accessible, and almost impossible to escape. Regular advertising of general products now often use sexual innuendos with suggestive pictures plastered on billboards and simply going through the checkout at local grocery stores makes it difficult to ignore the numerous magazines advertising the sexual exploits of the rich and famous.

But what a blessing to be able to have victory over the curse of a sin that is completely accessible!

Just as the children of Israel were on the borders of the land of Canaan preparing to cross the Jordan River Satan attacked with one of his most effective weapons—ungodly licentious adultery. Women were brought into the camp and the men became far too familiar with them, causing many to lose sight of the Promised Land.

When Satan’s temptations are the strongest and the most accessible, that is the time when God’s people will stand the strongest. It is of no great virtue to have victory over an inaccessible temptation, but it is a tremendous honor to God when standing strong in the face of overwhelming temptation. Licentiousness is the special sin of this age. I believe that the person who is committed to the lifestyle of pornography is in an absolute violation of their marriage vow.

This is distinguished from the person who falls and makes a mistake and stubs his toe and utterly repents. If you are struggling with this sin, you need two things. You need Biblical spirituality and you need genuine accountability. The Bible says the flesh lusts against the Spirit (Galatians 5:17). You need the Spirit in your life. Jesus said in John 6:63, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you, Jesus said, they are spirit, and they are life.” You need to daily be filling your tank with spiritual food. If you find that you are failing and falling and fumbling, it is likely because you have not filled up your spiritual tank with true spiritual words from Jesus. His words are spirit and life. You need accountability.

The Bible says in II Corinthians 10:3–5, “For though we walk in the flesh [that means we are stuck in these bodies], we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses, the pulling down of strongholds. We are destroying speculations, and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” Spiritual food is needed to fuel the spiritual energy in your tank if you are going to get the victory over these specific temptations, which are the sin of our age. No one is immune to sexual temptation. You would need to be wiser than Solomon, more godly than David, stronger than Samson, and that seems unlikely.

It is a proven fact that men are primarily driven by their eyes and they are visually stimulated. This is why Jesus said in Matthew 5:28, “If a man looketh on a woman …” He constituted men that way. The Bible says, “God made Adam.” Genesis 1:27. But when it comes to Eve the Hebrew text says, “He built her.” The temptation for women is to build castles or have fantasies. Women are more likely to watch soap operas and read romance novels where all the characters are beautiful, rich and famous, leaving her discontented with reality. While women are castle-building, dreaming up the ideal life, and the men are looking around being driven sensually or visually, you can see what happens when a conflict arises in the marriage. The woman starts going her way, looking for that perfect man bearing flowers to come and sweep her off her feet. And the man starts to go his way and he is looking for a woman who is looking to be swept off her feet, and these two collide neither recognizing in each other what they need because they think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Men have the ability to size up a woman in one second with just a passing glance. So, the advice I have for men is simply this: Stop looking! There are way too many lookers. Make a covenant with your eyes to turn them away and stop looking! Jesus said, “Husbands, love your wives.” Ephesians 5:25. Learn the true meaning of love and you will never be happier than with your wife.

For women, stop being dissatisfied with your husband. Maybe he doesn’t have six pack abs, and maybe he doesn’t bring you roses every single night, but get over it! You are his helpmeet, the one God has chosen to help your husband meet his potential. You have the power to make your home a sanctuary where peace and love reign if you will but take seriously your God given responsibility to your husband and your children. Learn the meaning of grace; learn the meaning of forgiveness and your home will be a haven where angels love to dwell.

Beloved, I suggest to you a simple remedy for a good marriage: It is the five “Cs.”

Get converted—Figures show that the divorce rate is going down, now at about 42%, but research shows that it is because fewer people are getting married. Think about it. Marriage is a Christian institution and it is understandable not to expect unconverted people to do well in a Christian institution. So, if you want a good marriage, get converted. If two people are genuinely converted in a marriage, they cannot get a divorce. The reason for this is that God hates divorce and He would not lead two godly people, two converted people, to do something He hates.

Be committed—Not for a day, not for a year, not for a decade, but be committed for life.

Learn to compromise—You want the blue car and she wants the red car —you get the black car.

Have a little compassion—My advice to newlyweds who come into my office is, “You worry about the compassion, and the passion will take care of itself.”

Have a healthy dose of communication—Spend time talking together. There are many resources available that are excellent tools to help you develop your communication skills. e.g., Love and Respect, by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs.

Beloved, in closing, I just want to appeal to your hearts. Some of you are divorcees and God does give Biblical grounds for divorce. I believe in my heart He gives only one single ground for divorce on Biblical grounds and that is the violation of the marriage bed, adultery. In the book, The Adventist Home, 341, God sent a message through His prophet because we were mistaking the plain words of Jesus. It says, “Nothing but the violation of the marriage bed can either break or annul the marriage vow.”

Nothing, nothing, but the violation of the marriage bed can annul the marriage vow. Is that clear enough? Is there any confusion there? Now, if you have been divorced on Biblical grounds or even non-Biblical grounds, and you want to start anew, you want to start afresh, the good news about our God is that He meets you where you are. But grace is not a license to sin.

I stand before you here today as a man who has been happily married for almost ten years and I can say in the fear of God and with absolute candor, I am more in love with my wife today, ten years later, than I was the day I married her. She is more beautiful to me. She is a fantastic mother. She has put up with all of my idiosyncrasies. She is a godly woman. Perfect? Not yet—close, but not perfect yet! But I would invite you to give your marriage to God, give your struggles to God, give your sexuality to God, and I would close with five simple words: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

David Asscherick’s sermon was taken from the Ten Commandment Weekend, 2008 series aired on 3ABN. For more information contact 3ABN.org.

Be Honest!

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“We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and his teaching in our past history.”
Selected Messages, Book 3, 162

In 1844 when this great movement began, it was started with young people. At that time James White was 23, Ellen White was 17, J.N. Andrews was 15 and Uriah Smith was 12. At the age of 23, Uriah Smith became the editor of the Review and Herald. I praise the Lord that the generation that is alive before Jesus comes will not only be of older people or middle aged people, but of young people also. Ellen White tells us that before Jesus comes there will be a renaissance of primitive godliness that has been unsurpassed since the beginning of human history. With a generation of rightly trained youth, we will soon see the imminent return of Jesus.

We believe that these Ten Commandments are the golden standard for ethics and morality in this life and also for the life to come. I believe the Ten Commandments transcend culture, society and also any ethics that we present during the 21st century. There is a story titled, Of Two Thieves. In this story there were two brothers who were known about town to have decadent, immoral behavior. Through a series of events, one of the brothers suddenly died. The other brother went to the pastor and asked him to preside at the the funeral for his brother, but with one condition: “You can say anything you want under the eulogy, but sometime during the sermon I want you to call my brother a saint.”

The pastor thought for a little bit and said, “Listen, I could use that money because we need a new roof on our church. I tell you what; it is a deal. Somewhere during the eulogy I will call your brother a saint.” The day of the funeral came and the church was absolutely packed with individuals who knew the character of the man lying in that box. The pastor got up to speak. He said, “The man that you see lying in that box was the most debased, decadent person that we could ever think of because of every rotten, stinking thing he has done. But compared to his brother, he was a saint.”

If we use each other as our point of morality, that is exactly what will happen. Unless we have a transcendent, moral absolute for determining our moral ethics and behavior, we need something outside of us to show us where we stand in the moral landscape.

I praise the Lord for the Ten Commandments.

“Thou shalt not steal” [Exodus 20:15]. Stealing is defined as the illegal taking of another person’s property without that person’s freely giving consent. Have you ever wondered why stealing is a sin, because all we are dealing with is possessions? The difference between a gift and something that is stolen is that one is freely given while the other is taking without consent. When somebody steals from another, they dehumanize that individual and disregard their God-given freedom of choice. I believe everyone has in some way been affected by stealing and it causes something to happen within us.

I grew up in Washington D.C. and this is typical in every large city. One Friday night when we got home, all of the lights were on in our home and all of the doors were open. My dad turned to us and said, “Why don’t you stay in the car; I need to check this out.” Our house had been simply ransacked. Every valuable possession that we could think of had been taken. Another time we were ransacked, our television was stolen, which turned out to be a blessing. Once we came home and someone had taken a chain saw from our storage unit and sawed through a door, taking our possessions.

When you have been robbed or mugged, there is a feeling of not only anger, but a sense of having been violated. Something within you cries out that this is wrong and somebody has disregarded your freedom of choice and entered into your private space. Stealing in the 21st century has become more sophisticated with the advance of technology. There are now different types of stealing which include: embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, mugging, trespassing, shoplifting, intrusion, fraud and one that is huge right now, identity theft. This is where people take your social security number and your mother’s maiden name and then take out loans or even commit crimes in your name. Often this is not discovered until applying for a loan and being denied, then finding out that someone has done all of these things. It then sometimes takes years to clean up your record. Some individuals have had to change their name and their identity, rather than go through the hassle of cleaning up their past.

Stealing has also become more impersonalized, meaning that no longer are people just stealing from one another, but also from corporations as well as organizations.

I heard the story of a man visiting Florida from Brazil. While there, he received a parking ticket in Miami for $20. He took that ticket home to Brazil and returned the bill with $22 in cash and mailed it to the city of Miami. The clerk of the city of Miami realized that he had overpaid his bill by $2 and instead of returning that $2 in cash, he wrote a check for $2. When the man received that check in Brazil, he got a bright idea. He took that check and scanned it onto his computer, changing the $2 to $2 million dollars and deposited it into his bank account. The check cleared. He virtually swindled $2 million dollars from the city of Miami. Because there is no extraditing agreement between the United States and Brazil, he got away with it. This may be impersonal stealing, but from a biblical standpoint, whether stealing from an individual, a corporation or a city, stealing is still considered stealing.

According to some statistics, four million people each year in America are caught stealing. For every one caught, thirty five go undetected. A hundred and forty million shoplifting incidents occur each year out of a population of three hundred million people. Furthermore, seventy percent of shoplifters are in the middle income bracket, twenty percent are in the high income bracket, and only ten percent are considered poor. Thirty percent of all business failures each year are the result of internal theft. Security officials estimate that nine percent of all employees steal on a regular basis and seventy five percent of those working in retail stores steal to some degree, taking three times as much as shoplifters. Hotel managers count that one out of three guests steals something. Frank Abignail, the former infamous con artist, stated that businesses lose four hundred billion dollars per year to fraud. That is twice the budget of the U.S. military. The amount is enough to pay off Social Security for the next hundred years. A third comes from employees stealing from their employers. Stealing has become so pervasive in western society resulting in low ethics. Honesty is not being taught and stealing is not even considered stealing anymore.

So what can I do if I have stolen in the past and how do I make things right with God as well as with our fellow man? I believe Jesus is coming very soon and there is going to come a time when there is no longer intercession in the heavenly sanctuary and all of those unconfessed sins will remain and the opportunity to make right with our brothers and sisters will be gone.

What is the solution? The first step in making things right with God and our brothers in relation to stealing is found in Acts 2:37. Peter had just been converted sometime previous to this and received the Holy Spirit and he preached this glorious sermon: “Now when they heard this [the sermon], they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Men and brethren, what shall we do?’ Then Peter said unto them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.’ ” Acts 2:37, 38.

Notice that the first word out of Peter’s mouth was repent. The Biblical definition of repentance is a sorrow for sin and a turning away from it. Have you ever committed a sin in your life that you have not felt an ounce of remorse for? I remember before I came to Christ, I would commit sins and I would enjoy them, not feeling an ounce of sorrow. What are we to do if we don’t feel any remorse for what we have done? I remember growing up and getting into heated debates or in arguments with my younger sibling. My parents would try to mediate, getting us together demanding that we would say sorry to each other. I would say, “I’m sorry.” But is that true repentance?

The Bible tells us that we are to repent, have a sorrow for sin and a turning away from it. Repentance is often a barrier that keeps us from coming to Christ, thinking that we must first feel that remorse. One of the misconceptions in relation to repentance really deals with our response to the law. Luke 19:1–5 tells about a man who was a professional thief. In his relationship to Jesus you will see how this mode of repentance exactly works. “And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house.” At this point Zacchaeus had not repented. Nor had Zacchaeus made full restitution. “The chief publican longed to look upon the face of Him whose words had brought hope to his heart.” The Desire of Ages, 553.

In one of my favorite books is the following statement: “Just here is a point on which many may err, and hence they fail of receiving the help that Christ desires to give them. They think that they cannot come to Christ unless they first repent, and that repentance prepares for the forgiveness of their sins. It is true that repentance does precede the forgiveness of sins; for it is only the broken and contrite heart that will feel the need of a Saviour. But must the sinner wait till he has repented before he can come to Jesus? Is repentance to be made an obstacle between the sinner and the Saviour?

“The Bible does not teach that the sinner must repent before he can heed the invitation of Christ, ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.’ Matthew 11:28. It is the virtue that goes forth from Christ, that leads to genuine repentance.” Steps to Christ, 26.

Repentance is a gift. Without the Lord, we can’t even feel sorry on our own. I can tell you there have been instances in my life where I had to come to the Lord just the way I am and say, I love the sin, I enjoy the sin, I feel absolutely no remorse for the sin, help me to be sorry because I am not sorry. Give me the gift of repentance.

“Many are inquiring, ‘How am I to make the surrender of myself to God?’ You desire to give yourself to Him, but you are weak in moral power, in slavery to doubt, and controlled by the habits of your life of sin. Your promises and resolutions are like ropes of sand. You cannot control your thoughts, your impulses, your affections. The knowledge of your broken promises and forfeited pledges weakens your confidence in your own sincerity, and causes you to feel that God cannot accept you; but you need not despair. What you need to understand is the true force of the will. This is the governing power in the nature of man, the power of decision, or of choice. Everything depends on the right action of the will. The power of choice God has given to men; it is theirs to exercise. You cannot change your heart, you cannot of yourself give to God its affections; but you can choose to serve Him. You can give Him your will; He will then work in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure. Thus your whole nature will be brought under the control of the Spirit of Christ; your affections will be centered upon Him, your thoughts will be in harmony with Him.

“Desires for goodness and holiness are right as far as they go; but if you stop here, they will avail nothing. Many will be lost while hoping and desiring to be Christians. They do not come to the point of yielding the will to God. They do not now choose to be Christians.” Steps to Christ, 47, 48.

The first step is coming to Jesus just the way that we are. We may have stolen in our lives and may not even feel an ounce of remorse or repentance for what we have done, but we can come to Jesus just the way we are, give our wills to Him, believing that He will create within us a clean heart.

An illustration of how repentance works in relation to stealing is found in Luke 19:5–8: “And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, that he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.”

After Jesus had come into Zacchaeus’ life and into his heart, he stands up and says, “I want to make amends for what I have done—to make restitution for the things I have stolen.” I praise the Lord that Jesus accepts us just the way we are, because He loves us too much to leave us in that sinful condition.

Stealing not only deals with the sin between us and God, but it also deals with the sin between us and our brothers and sisters whom we have wronged. In this illustration, once Jesus had changed Zacchaeus’ heart he made restitution, giving back what he had stolen.

Once, I got involved with a group of individuals and we would steal on a regular basis. It got to the point that stealing was so common that it would not even bother me. In the beginning my conscience bothered me a little, causing me not to sleep at night, but the more I stole, the less it bothered me. That is the way the conscience works: the more you sin, the more your conscience becomes seared.

At one time I was involved in bike racing with a friend. One day we looked out in the parking lot and there parked was a vintage girl’s bike, a racing model. We eyed it for a few weeks and the bike was still there. So, we figured that since the owner did not claim it, we would. We backed up my friend’s van and put it into the van and took it to the woods, stripped it of all the components that we desired and threw the frame out into the woods to rot. We just went on our way and it did not bother me at all. As my life went on, years went by and I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ and Jesus accepted me just the way I was and I began my Christian walk with Him. A few days later when I got up to have my morning devotion, the Holy Spirit came to me and reminded me of the bicycle that I had stolen many years ago. He told me that I was forgiven for that, but He wanted me to go back, and as much as is humanly possible, make it right.

I said, Lord, you have got to be kidding; that was years ago. What about forgiveness and all of these things you promise in your Word? I must go back to make that thing right! How humiliating! I fought the Lord for days. During those days my devotional life went downhill because I was resisting the Holy Spirit. I knew I had to make it right if I wanted to progress in my Christian experience. I went home and found out the name of the individual from my friend and then got out the yearbook and looked her up. I went back home and found her telephone number and called her. My heart was beating very fast. When a lady answered I said, “Hello ma’am, is _____ home?” She said, “No, but she is my daughter; can I help you?” I asked her if her daughter owned a bicycle and she said, “Yes, she did and someone stole it and it was a horrible thing. Do you know where it is, or what happened to it?” I told her about my friend and me stealing it. She asked me if there was any way I could restore it because it had so much meaning to her. I told her it was impossible, but that whatever it would cost to restore that back into her home, I would pay it. When I got off that phone I felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted from my shoulders.

The Bible tells us that being justified by faith we have peace with God. God ultimately forgives us, but because it affects another individual we are called, as much as is humanly possible, to restore the loss and make that thing right.

“If we have injured others through any unjust business transaction, if we have overreached in trade, or defrauded any man, even though it be within the pale of the law, we should confess our wrong, and make restitution as far as lies in our power. It is right for us to restore not only that which we have taken, but all that it would have accumulated if put to a right and wise use during the time it has been in our possession.” The Desire of Ages, 556.

We are living at the very end of time. If God is convicting you about something in your life that you need to make right, then do not hesitate; make it right. Soon, Jesus will cease intercession in the heavenly sanctuary and by God’s grace I want to have a clear conscience on that day.

It is the goodness of God that motivates us and drives us to repentance, not guilt or fear of judgment.

In Asia, in times past, there used to be a custom called matchmaking. The families would take two individuals and unite them in holy matrimony irrespective of the individuals’ choice. There was a story of two families who were very close to each other and they decided that if one had a boy and the other a girl they would arrange to have them married so their families would be united through holy matrimony. As fate would have it, one had a girl and the other had a boy. True to the pact, before they moved far from each other they decided that they would go ahead with their plan. The day of the wedding came, and neither the boy nor the girl had ever met each other until the night of the wedding. After the ceremony the young man was curious to see what his bride looked like, as she had been covered by a veil throughout the ceremony. He reached over and anxiously pulled the veil from her and much to his sadness she was so unattractive that he ran out of the room in a rage, angry at God and at circumstances for putting him in this predicament. He now was compelled to live with the woman because they did not believe in divorce back then. Even though her outside appearance was not the most attractive, on the inside she was beautiful. He would come home in a rage, angry at God and the world and she would respond in the most Christlike manner. She did everything she could to make a pleasant home, showing her love toward him. They had a daughter, and as time passed they got older in age. One day as he was looking outside he noticed that he was losing his vision in one of his eyes. They were quite distraught and went to the hospital. The doctors told him that if he did not receive a cornea transplant in his eye he would lose total vision. So they looked all over the country for somebody who would donate a cornea. They just about gave up all hope of finding one when suddenly they got a phone call and there was a cornea for transplant and the surgery was a complete success. They came home for a celebration, all three of them. The wife had prepared his favorite meal and before they were about to sit down the daughter said to her mother, Why don’t you tell him? He said, tell me what? At that point he turned his wife toward him and he noticed that she had a patch over her right eye. She had given a part of herself for him. This woman, whom he had abused emotionally and mistreated for years, had given a part of herself for him, unconditionally.

Did her love change his behavior? Yes it did. The Bible says that it is the goodness of God that motivates us to repentance. When we see what Christ has done for us, it motivates us to change and to make things right, not only with our brothers and sisters, but with God. God is asking us to do this right here and now.

Jesus is about to come, but before He comes He will have a people who will keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus (Revelation 12:17). We can truly thank God for the gift of His grace which leads us to repentance.

David Shin’s article was taken from the Ten Commandment Weekend, 2008 series aired on 3ABN. For more information contact www.3ABN.org.

Honor has Lost its Integrity

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We live in a world abounding in contracts, lawsuits, counter lawsuits, a world teeming with word processors, with delete buttons and faulty memory, but lacking in one crucial commodity—men, real men. By that I mean both men and women who would be true to their word like the needle to the pole. Our world has discovered the mystery of the atom but it has forgotten the Sermon on the Mount. We live in a world of both nuclear giants and moral midgets. The churches, the business world and even the Marines are looking for a few good men.

My maternal grandfather was a cattle rancher in Cuba. My grandfather was like Lorne Greene in the series Bonanza. At my grandfather’s ranch you could ride your horse a whole day and not see the end of it and there were thousands of heads of cattle. My grandfather was not a terribly educated man, except for the fact he was self-taught and very naturally intelligent. He was not a man of many words. I had precious few times with him, as I only lived a few years of my infancy in Cuba. My father was a businessman, so he liked the city and did not see the charm of the ranch and only once in awhile would he take me to see my grandfather, but I remember those times well.

The only thing I can remember my grandfather ever telling me is something that I remember still to this day. He said, “If you speak all the time, people will not remember what you say. You must be economical with your words. If you are economical, they will be memorable and if they are memorable, they are useful. If they are useful, they will do somebody some good.” I remember grandfather getting off his beautiful white horse and grabbing me and lifting me on top of those wooden fences. He looked at me as if he was going to speak and I thought, the world is going to come to an end; my grandfather is going to speak! I looked at him as I waited for the words to come. He said, “My boy, be a man of your word.” By that time the Fidel house was already dispossessing him of everything he owned and he may have been thinking of that, but he said to me, “The only thing no one can ever take away from you, the treasure that you will always possess, is your word. When you give your word, you are giving your own soul.”

My grandfather did not know the slogan save the trees, but he did, because he never used paper. He did not need paper. When it came to doing a contract with someone, there was no need for paper or a notary public or a lawyer. He only entered into deals with real men who he knew were real men. He would look them in the eye, shake their hand and the deal was sealed. We need that today. We need the power of the word. We need our word to become real. We need to be one with our word. We need to be known by what we say.

Two of the Ten Commandments speak about how we use the tongue. The third commandment says if we believe the good news of Jesus Christ, we shall never be guilty of taking the Lord’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7). The ninth commandment becomes a wonderful promise to the one who understands and believes just how good the good news is. You will never bear false witness (Exodus 20:16).

I once wrote a book on the Ten Commandments, which was published by Pacific Press. It is titled Ten Promises of Miracles and by God’s grace 150,000 copies have been sold. I believe that the Ten Commandments, rightly understood and connected with the understanding of the gospel through the New Covenant spectacles, which is how God sees them, are not harsh, impossible rules to obey. Instead, the Ten Commandments will be seen as ten promises of God to you. The problem is that the world has been taught a gospel less than Ten Commandments. It is as if somebody gave you a wonderful Cadillac, which looks great, and when you get into it, it is so plush, but there is no motor in it. There is no gas tank. There is no radiator. Other than that you will like it, it will not take you anywhere. It is like those wonderful gifts that you buy for your grandchildren that they have seen on television. They are all excited about it, but you did not read the small print which would turn what could have been a wonderful experience into the worse you can imagine. The small print says, “Batteries not included.” Without the batteries, without the power, it simply does not do what it is supposed to do.

The world has been told that the Ten Commandments do not come with the batteries included, because it is gospel-less and only the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). I am going to show you where the batteries are located.We obtained thousands of prints of the Ten Commandments and after being shown how beautiful they were I was asked, “What should we do with them?” I said, “They have to go into the trash.” They just stared at me in disbelief. I said, “You forgot the batteries. You have the Ten Commandments without the batteries. That is not going to help anybody.” Now we have a new poster of the Ten Commandments which includes the battery. The battery is already part of the commandments. Let me explain.

Look at Exodus 20:1: “And God spake all these words, saying …” From here on it is all God’s words. This is where the Ten Commandments actually start. Then God continues, “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” Those first words are the batteries. The Ten Commandments begin with an expression of the gospel and it reminds us of who the deliverer is. The Ten Commandments come with a Saviour, the One who first took little Egypt out of Egypt, and now, by His sacrifice on the cross, has taken spiritual Egypt out of Egypt becoming the Saviour of the world. That very fact is the battery power of the commandments. Do not leave the batteries out. Never start with the third verse. The Ten Commandments start after the word saying.

Here we are reminded that we have a God who is a Deliverer. It states here what God did for His people. Sometimes He went against their will and some of them wanted to go back to Egypt. He stepped in and took them out of Egypt. He physically took them out of bondage and put them where the air was pure and where the light was illuminant, where they could breathe freedom. God put the people in a free place and said to them that this is my magna carta; this is my declaration of independence. This is what I promise my citizens. This is what I will do. I pledge myself to perform this gospel work in your life. Jesus did the same thing on Calvary; God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.

He liberated us from the world, freed us from the bondage of sin. If we believe and want to be a citizen of the free kingdom of God, He will then give us the magna carta, the ruling documents of freedom and promises, the batteries so you can live your life and be free.

The Ten Commandments rightly understood are ten promises. This is good news, not bad news. God is not a stern lawgiver, dishing out the theories of impossible-to-obey rules. He is a Saviour from breaking those commandments. The only way the commandments can be kept is because of the Saviour. The only way the commandments can be obeyed is to allow Jesus to be in control of your heart. He is your battery. Christ is the Saviour of all men and especially of those who believe (1 Timothy 4:10). This country is free to everyone, but especially to those who cherish it.

Breaking the ninth commandment is a sin, unfortunately, for which many people will lose their soul. When God says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,” Exodus 20:16, He means that we are never to tell a lie, not even one of those white lies. It commands never to give a false impression, even by a nod of the head. It forbids all gossip, including damaging the reputation of a person by remaining silent while he or she is being accused of something and you know differently and it is possible to speak up to save that person’s reputation.

We are to “speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates.” Zechariah 8:16. All false witness somehow comes from its true origin, Satan. “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:42. “Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight.” Proverbs 12:22. They are His delight!

“A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape.” Proverbs 19:5. We read that God actually hates “a lying tongue, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies” (Proverbs 6:17-19). But remember that even though God hates lying, He loves the liar and wants to save him. There are people who are as sincere as any of us, who bear false witness and have no idea of what they are doing. They are among those for whom Jesus prayed as He was being crucified, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34.

Sometimes parents unwittingly teach children to tell lies. Some people are color blind and cannot tell the difference between a red light and a green light, which can cause accidents. Though a judge would not be merciful in such a case, God is merciful to those who do not know the difference between right and wrong and He sends His Holy Spirit to teach the people.

Children in schools today are being taught that the universe is a random universe, that this universe, one among billions of universes, just happened to have everything lined up right, exactly the way it needed to be to sustain life. It is just an object of chance, like the roll of the dice! We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Scientists have had to come up with a theory to explain the incredible order of our universe. But there is no mystery. The universe is the way it is today because God made it that way to suit life. God created things just the way they needed to be. Scientists call it the big bang theory. But they are running away from the real big bang. It scares them! When the big bang happened, the elements spread so quickly that it had to have been faster than the speed of light and according to Einstein, nothing goes faster than the speed of light. For the universe to be what it is, there is only one explanation, which science does not want to accept: the big bang had an author, and His name is God.

In the last few verses of the Bible there are three warnings that tell us that whosoever loveth and maketh a lie will not be able to enter the eternal kingdom (Revelation 22:15). Fiction, which makes up the subject matter of most books and movies today, is just lies. It is not only a serious thing to make a lie, but the text says it is equally serious to love a lie.

Truth, according to Biblical principles, is very clear. We are invited to turn from fables and turn to the truth and be God’s delight. He loves those who are His true witnesses. “Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that … speaketh the truth in his heart.” Psalm 15:1, 2. But, “He that hideth hatred with lying lips, and he that uttereth a slander, is a fool.” Proverbs 10:18. In other words, smiling at someone, slapping him/her on the back, shaking his/her hand and yet hiding our hatred for him or her deep in our heart is acting out a lie and breaking the commandment. Even if it means costing your job, you may need to confront that person and be honest and truthful in all your dealings to be clean and ready to live in the heavenly kingdom.

What it boils down to is that it is impossible for any of us mortals to obey this commandment unless we are truly converted deep within. This commandment goes to the core of all things. The core of God is His Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). God is one with His Word. The same is true with us. We can never escape our words. Once words are spoken they can never be unspoken and they always have either a positive or negative response. You will be remembered by what you said, even if it came out differently from what you meant to say. For that reason the counsel is to let your words be few. This reminds me of Romans 3:10. It says, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.” Psalm 141:3. “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me.” Psalm 139:23, 24.

When children would say bad things to me when I was a boy growing up in the south of Florida, Mom would say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” This is such foolishness! There are times when people have said things to you that you would rather have had a broken bone that would heal far more easily than the hurt of words. Some of us are an emotional mess, having stored in our minds those words that we have heard as children, whether it be wittingly or unwittingly. The brain has a heart. When the Bible talks about the heart, it says, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” Matthew 15:19.

When we say that a person has a big heart it is not referring to the physical condition of the heart, which would be a serious medical condition, but the mind wherein lies all the thoughts and feelings, which is called the hypothalamus region. Jesus says that the evil thoughts are right there. When bad words are spoken and terrible things happen to you it is stored in your subconscious, in the basement of the hypothalamus, so to speak. Sometimes things are so tragic that you have put them into the subconscious, which can be very dangerous. God wants to cleanse these inner temples, our hearts. In fact, the promise of the gospel is a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26). It is a cleansing out of the hypothalamus so you can be true and faithful. Part of the hypothalamus region controls the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system which regulates the inner organs. The pancreas and other internal organs do not depend on conscious decisions but are controlled involuntarily to do their work. This is why hanging onto stress or other negative emotions can cause physical sickness. To enjoy true health one must have a happy heart that trusts in the Lord at all times.

I visit a health center every so often where I have seen people go in terribly sick, in wheelchairs, etc., and come out running in a few weeks. I finally turned to the doctor one day and asked him, “Is there anybody who does not heal or get well here?” He said, “Oh yes, the people who cannot forgive. One of the things we teach those who come here is to write letters to the people with whom they have a problem, because that is often the reason for their sickness.” When God says to forgive, He not only is doing it for the benefit of the person who hurt you, He is doing it for your own sake, to help you.

This commandment is a promise from God to make you a true witness. It is impossible for you to be a true and faithful witness and also a false witness. It is a promise from God to make you a person of integrity, one who is always true to your word. It is a promise to make you one who will reflect the character of Christ and be a witness and a light wherever you are.

Frank Gonzales’ sermon was taken from the Ten Commandment Weekend, 2008 series aired on 3ABN. For more information contact www.3ABN.org.

Bible Study Guides – Before the Mirror

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January 16, 2011 – January 22, 2011

Key Text

“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” James 1:22.

Study Helps: The Great Controversy, 582–592; Patriarchs and Prophets, 303–314.

Introduction

“The very principles of the law must be planted in the heart.” The Signs of the Times, October 29, 1896.

1 First Commandment—How may we be breaking the first commandment even while professing to keep the law? Matthew 19:20–22; 6:24; Philippians 3:18, 19.

Note: “Anything which tends to abate our love for God, or to interfere with the service due Him, becomes thereby an idol. With some their lands, their houses, their merchandise, are the idols.” “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 2, 1011, 1012.

“Mammon is the idol of many. Its golden chain binds them to Satan. Reputation and worldly honor are worshiped by another class. The life of selfish ease and freedom from responsibility is the idol of others. These are Satan’s snares, set for unwary feet.” Testimonies, vol. 5, 83.

“The sin of this age is gluttony in eating and drinking. Indulgence of appetite is the god which many worship.” Counsels on Diet and Foods, 409.

2 What warning is given to professed believers who worship false gods? I John 5:21. What will be the end of those who practice idolatry in any form? Galatians 5:20, 21.

Note: “It is as easy to make an idol of false doctrines and theories as to fashion an idol of wood or stone.” The Great Controversy, 583.

“Thousands are following after the gods of this world—after riches, fame, pleasure, and the pleasing fables that permit man to follow the inclinations of the unregenerate heart.” Prophets and Kings, 177.

3 Fourth Commandment—What kind of obedience do God’s commandments require? Psalms 40:8; 119:4; 19:7.

Note: “Obedience is not a mere outward compliance, but the service of love. … Instead of releasing man from obedience, it is faith, and faith only, that makes us partakers of the grace of Christ, which enables us to render obedience.” Steps to Christ, 60, 61.

4 How does God view partial Sabbath keeping? James 1:22–25.

Note: “You make the keeping of God’s law a matter of convenience, obeying or disobeying as your business or inclination indicates. This is not honoring the Sabbath as a sacred institution. You grieve the Spirit of God and dishonor your Redeemer by pursuing this reckless course.

“A partial observance of the Sabbath law is not accepted by the Lord and has a worse effect upon the minds of sinners than if you made no profession of being a Sabbathkeeper.” Testimonies, vol. 4, 248.

5 Besides rest from secular activities, what else is covered by the fourth commandment? Isaiah 58:13; Matthew 5:20; 12:12.

Note: “God has given men six days wherein to labor, and He requires that their own work be done in the six working days. Acts of necessity and mercy are permitted on the Sabbath, the sick and suffering are at all times to be cared for; but unnecessary labor is to be strictly avoided. ‘Turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and … honor Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure.’ Isaiah 58:13. Nor does the prohibition end here. ‘Nor speaking thine own words’ [verse 13, last part], says the prophet. Those who discuss business matters or lay plans on the Sabbath are regarded by God as though engaged in the actual transaction of business. To keep the Sabbath holy, we should not even allow our minds to dwell upon things of a worldly character. And the commandment includes all within our gates. The inmates of the house are to lay aside their worldly business during the sacred hours. All should unite to honor God by willing service upon His holy day.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 307, 308.

6 Sixth and Seventh Commandments—What are ways by which the sixth commandment is often broken? I Corinthians 3:16, 17; I John 3:15.

Note: “All acts of injustice that tend to shorten life; the spirit of hatred and revenge, or the indulgence of any passion that leads to injurious acts toward others, or causes us even to wish them harm (for ‘whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer’ [1 John 3:15]); a selfish neglect of caring for the needy or suffering; all self-indulgence or unnecessary deprivation or excessive labor that tends to injure health—all these are, to a greater or less degree, violations of the sixth commandment.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 308.

“The spirit of hatred and revenge originated with Satan; and it led him to put to death the Son of God. Whoever cherishes malice or unkindness is cherishing the same spirit.” Sons and Daughters of God, 61.

7 What light did Jesus shed on the seventh commandment? Luke 16:18; Matthew 5:27, 28. How are many ensnared?

Note: “This [the seventh] commandment forbids not only acts of impurity, but sensual thoughts and desires, or any practice that tends to excite them. Purity is demanded not only in the outward life but in the secret intents and emotions of the heart. Christ, who taught the far-reaching obligation of the law of God, declared the evil thought or look to be as truly sin as is the unlawful deed.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 308.

“He who finds pleasure in dwelling upon scenes of impurity, who indulges the evil thought, the lustful look, may behold in the open sin, with its burden of shame and heart-breaking grief, the true nature of the evil which he has hidden in the chambers of the soul. The season of temptation, under which, it may be, one falls into grievous sin, does not create the evil that is revealed, but only develops or makes manifest that which was hidden and latent in the heart.” Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, 60.

“If the body is serving lust, the mind cannot maintain consecration to God. To preserve a sanctified mind, the body must be preserved in sanctification and honor. The mind will then serve the law of God, and yield willing obedience to all its claims.” The Review and Herald, March 8, 1870.

8 Eighth Commandment—What instruction did Paul give in connection with this precept? Romans 13:8, first part.

9 How far-reaching is the eighth commandment?

Note: “The eighth commandment condemns manstealing and slave dealing, and forbids wars of conquest. It condemns theft and robbery. It demands strict integrity in the minutest details of the affairs of life. It forbids overreaching in trade, and requires the payment of just debts or wages. It declares that every attempt to advantage oneself by the ignorance, weakness, or misfortune of another is registered as fraud in the books of heaven.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 309.

10 How is our stewardship of the Lord’s goods related to the eighth commandment? Malachi 3:8–10.

Note: “Covetousness is an evil of gradual development.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 496.

“This evil exists not in the world alone, but in the church. How common even here to find selfishness, avarice, overreaching, neglect of charities, and robbery of God ‘in tithes and offerings’ [Malachi 3:8]. Among church members ‘in good and regular standing’ there are, alas! many Achans. Many a man comes statedly to church, and sits at the table of the Lord, while among his possessions are hidden unlawful gains, the things that God has cursed. For a goodly Babylonish garment, multitudes sacrifice the approval of conscience and their hope of heaven.” Ibid., 497.

“A tithe of all our increase is the Lord’s. He has reserved it to Himself, to be employed for religious purposes. It is holy. Nothing less than this has He accepted in any dispensation. A neglect or postponement of this duty, will provoke the divine displeasure.” Counsels on Stewardship, 67.

“The command to pay tithe is so plain that there is no semblance of excuse for disregarding it.” Evangelism, 250.

“Let none feel at liberty to retain their tithe, to use according to their own judgment. They are not to use it for themselves in an emergency, nor to apply it as they see fit, even in what they may regard as the Lord’s work.” Gospel Workers, 225.

11 Ninth and Tenth Commandments—What are the implications of the ninth commandment? Colossians 3:9.

Note: “False speaking in any matter, every attempt or purpose to deceive our neighbor, is here included. An intention to deceive is what constitutes falsehood. By a glance of the eye, a motion of the hand, an expression of the countenance, a falsehood may be told as effectually as by words. All intentional overstatement, every hint or insinuation calculated to convey an erroneous or exaggerated impression, even the statement of facts in such a manner as to mislead, is falsehood. This precept forbids every effort to injure our neighbor’s reputation by misrepresentation or evil surmising, by slander or tale bearing. Even the intentional suppression of truth, by which injury may result to others, is a violation of the ninth commandment.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 309.

12 What does the tenth commandment forbid and how easily can it be broken? Exodus 20:17; James 1:13–15.

Note: “Covetousness has taken its abode in the hearts of professing Christians. Those who have all for which heart can wish, live for self-gratification, while the poor lie at their gates, unnoticed and unhelped.” The Youth’s Instructor, April 17, 1902.

“The tenth commandment strikes at the very root of all sins, prohibiting the selfish desire, from which springs the sinful act. He who in obedience to God’s law refrains from indulging even a sinful desire for that which belongs to another will not be guilty of an act of wrong toward his fellow creatures.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 309.

Review and Thought Questions

1 In what ways may professed believers be guilty of idolatry?

2 How is the fourth commandment often violated?

3 What implications of the sixth and seventh commandments are sometimes unnoticed by mere surface readers?

4 What are the requirements of the eighth commandment?

5 How can a person tell a lie without uttering a word?

©2005 Reformation Herald Publishing Association, Roanoke, Virginia. Reprinted by permission.

Bible Study Guides – Denominational Dangers

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January 9, 2011 – January 15, 2011

Key Text

“Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.” Ephesians 5:6.

Study Help: Early Writings, 107–110; Patriarchs and Prophets, 117–124.

Introduction

“If in defiance of God’s arrangements the world be allowed to influence our decisions or our actions, the purpose of God is defeated.” Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 16, 17.

1 What was the greatest denominational deception in the days of Christ? Matthew 23:1–3. How are many professed Christians caught in the same snare today?

Note: “The greatest deception of the human mind in Christ’s day was that a mere assent to the truth constitutes righteousness. In all human experience a theoretical knowledge of the truth has been proved to be insufficient for the saving of the soul. It does not bring forth the fruits of righteousness. A jealous regard for what is termed theological truth often accompanies a hatred of genuine truth as made manifest in life. …

“The same danger still exists. Many take it for granted that they are Christians, simply because they subscribe to certain theological tenets. But they have not brought the truth into practical life. They have not believed and loved it, therefore they have not received the power and grace that come through sanctification of the truth. Men may profess faith in the truth; but if it does not make them sincere, kind, patient, forbearing, heavenly-minded, it is a curse to its possessors, and through their influence it is a curse to the world.” The Desire of Ages, 309, 310.

“Oh, it is a great deception, a fascinating delusion, that takes possession of minds when men who have once known the truth, mistake the form of godliness for the spirit and power thereof.” Testimonies, vol. 8, 249.

2 In what danger are those who profess the present truth but are not sanctified by obeying it? Ezekiel 33:31.

Note: “Instead of leading the world to render obedience to God’s law, the church is uniting more and more closely with the world in transgression. Daily the church is becoming converted to the world.” Testimonies, vol. 8, 119.

“If some who profess to believe present truth could understand their true position, they would despair of the mercy of God. They have been exerting all their influence against the truth, against the voice of warning, against the people of God. They have been doing the work of Satan.” Ibid., vol. 5, 103.

“These transgressors of the law claim everything that is promised to the children of God; but this is presumption on their part, for John tells us that true love for God will be revealed in obedience to all His commandments.” The Acts of the Apostles, 563.

3 How serious is our condition if our works do not correspond to the truth that we profess? Matthew 11:23, 24; 23:12.

Note: “The Redeemer of the world declares that there are greater sins than that for which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. Those who hear the gospel invitation calling sinners to repentance, and heed it not, are more guilty before God than were the dwellers in the vale of Siddim. And still greater sin is theirs who profess to know God and to keep His commandments, yet who deny Christ in their character and their daily life. In the light of the Saviour’s warning, the fate of Sodom is a solemn admonition, not merely to those who are guilty of outbreaking sin, but to all who are trifling with Heaven-sent light and privileges.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 165.

“ ‘When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:3. Not all, however, would be ensnared by the enemy’s devices. As the end of all things earthly should approach, there would be faithful ones able to discern the signs of the times. While a large number of professing believers would deny their faith by their works, there would be a remnant who would endure to the end.” The Acts of the Apostles, 535, 536.

4 Through what types of religious leaders can Satan work most efficiently? Ephesians 5:6; Titus 1:16.

Note: “Satan has many agents, and they are ready to present any and every kind of theory to deceive souls—heresies prepared to suit the varied tastes and capacities of those whom he would ruin. There are cheap fallacies for those who are easily led into error, and who desire something new, odd, or fanciful, which they cannot explain intelligently, or even understand themselves. A mysterious, disconnected set of ideas is more in accordance with their minds than the plain truth, which has a ‘Thus saith the Lord’ for its foundation. …

“Those who belittle their profession of faith by conformity to the world, show that they despise the riches of the grace of Christ. They cry, ‘The grace of Christ! we are not saved by works, but by Christ;’ but they continue in sin—continue to transgress the law of God. They act as though they considered it their privilege to live in sin that grace may abound. But every indulgence in sin weakens the soul; it welcomes Satan to come in and control the mind, making the individual his effectual servant. …

“Some profess Christianity year after year, and in some things appear to serve God, and yet they are far from him. They give loose rein to appetite and passion, and follow their own unsanctified inclinations, loving pleasure and the applause of men more than God or His truth. But God reads the secrets of the heart. Base thoughts lead to base actions. Self-righteousness, pride, and licentiousness are far-reaching, deep, and almost universal. These are the sins for which God destroyed the inhabitants of the old world by a flood of water, and they are corrupting the churches in these last days.” The Signs of the Times, March 27, 1884.

5 How can the true character of religious leaders be determined? I John 2:3, 4.

Note: “If men do not feel the weight of the moral law; if they make light of God’s precepts; if they break one of the least of His commandments, and teach men so, they shall be of no esteem in the sight of heaven. We may know that their claims are without foundation. They are doing the very work that originated with the prince of darkness, the enemy of God.” Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, 145.

6 Examples—In many points some who profess to be commandment keepers are actually commandment breakers. Here are some examples. Please take time to study each one in more detail:

  • Health Reform (I Corinthians 9:25–27)

“Men and women cannot violate natural law by indulging depraved appetite and lustful passions, and not violate the law of God. Therefore He has permitted the light of health reform to shine upon us, that we may see our sin in violating the laws which He has established in our being. All our enjoyment or suffering may be traced to obedience or transgression of natural law.” Testimonies, vol. 3, 161.

  • Dress Reform (I Timothy 2:9)

“When we see them [Christian sisters] using God’s time and money in needless display of dress we cannot but warn them that they are breaking not only the first four, but the last six commandments.” Testimonies, vol. 4, 632.

  • Labor Unions (Isaiah 8:9–12)

“These [trade] unions are one of the signs of the last days. Men are binding up in bundles ready to be burned. They may be church members, but while they belong to these unions, they cannot possibly keep the commandments of God; for to belong to these unions means to disregard the entire Decalogue.” Selected Messages, Book 2, 143.

  • War and Bloodshed (Matthew 26:52)

“War and bloodshed are carried on by nations claiming to be Christian. A disregard for the law of God has brought its sure result.” “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 7, 974.

“In the army they [God’s people] cannot obey the truth and at the same time obey the requirements of their officers. There would be a continual violation of conscience. Worldly men are governed by worldly principles. They can appreciate no other. Worldly policy and public opinion comprise the principle of action that governs them and leads them to practice the form of rightdoing. But God’s people cannot be governed by these motives.” Testimonies, vol. 1, 361.

7 How does Satan try to keep us from obeying God’s law? James 2:10.

Note: “From the very beginning of the great controversy in heaven it has been Satan’s purpose to overthrow the law of God. It was to accomplish this that he entered upon his rebellion against the Creator, and though he was cast out of heaven he has continued the same warfare upon the earth. To deceive men, and thus lead them to transgress God’s law, is the object which he has steadfastly pursued. Whether this be accomplished by casting aside the law altogether, or by rejecting one of its precepts, the result will be ultimately the same.” The Great Controversy, 582.

8 How does God see unfaithfulness in the church? Hosea 2:2.

Note: “His [God’s] authority should be kept distinct and plain before the world, and no laws are to be acknowledged that come in collision with the laws of Jehovah. If in defiance of God’s arrangements the world be allowed to influence our decisions or our actions, the purpose of God is defeated. However specious the pretext, if the church waver here, there is written against her in the books of heaven a betrayal of the most sacred trusts, and treachery to the kingdom of Christ.” Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 16, 17.

Review and Thought Questions

1 What lamentable confusion do professed believers in the threefold message make? Why cannot God accept their work?

2 How can we become presumptuous in our knowledge of the truth?

3 What should we know of those who take a lax stand toward the law of God and/or ignore the writings of the Spirit of Prophecy?

4 In which fields of human behavior and activity is the law of God often violated?

5 What object is Satan steadfastly pursuing? How? What are the consequences?

©2005 Reformation Herald Publishing Association, Roanoke, Virginia. Reprinted by permission.

The Number Ten – How Significant!

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The number ten appears to be very significant in our society as well as in the Bible. Here are several secular examples. In baseball there are at least ten players on the field all the time including the batter. In basketball there are always ten players on the court, five on each side. In the world of blackjack the ten, queen, king and jack are all worth ten points. In bowling a strike means you knock down all ten pins. In the Olympics, ten is the highest score that you can get. In math, ten is the base of the decimal and metric system of measurement. Ten is the atomic number of neon. The glow of a neon light and the atomic blast are similar but just smaller and less potential. Interstate 10 in the United States is the longest interstate from California to Florida. The smallest coin in the United States is a dime and it is worth ten cents.

Let’s now look at Bible examples. The flood covered the earth until the first day of the tenth month after which the mountains became visible. Abram had given a tenth of his possessions to Melchizedek as gratitude for all of God’s blessings to his life; thus the tithing system which is also one-tenth. After being in Canaan, Sarai became impatient with God and gave Hagar to Abraham in an attempt to fulfill God’s promise, and it happened when they were in Canaan in the tenth year. From Abraham back to Noah, are ten generations. From Noah back to Adam are ten generations. God would have saved Sodom if only there had been found ten righteous there. Ten plagues fell upon Egypt. Laban changed Jacob’s wages ten times when he labored for Rachel. Joseph sent back ten male and ten female donkeys to his father in Canaan with provisions from Egypt during the time of the famine. Joseph died when he was 110 years old. The Jews observe an annual ten days of repentance beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur. In Judaism, ten adults are required for a prayer service. Naaman took ten pounds of silver and ten changes of clothing when he went to be healed of his leprosy. God took ten tribes from Solomon and gave them to Jeroboam.

The number ten is very significant. Hezekiah prayed for a sign and the Lord made the shadow go back ten degrees as evidence that He would prolong Hezekiah’s life. The number ten appears only once in the entire book of Job. Jesus taught about the ten virgins, ten talents, ten coins and ten lepers. There were ten curtains in the tabernacle held up by boards that were ten cubits in height supported by ten bases. In the sanctuary there were two cherubim that were ten cubits tall and the distance from one wing to the other was ten cubits. Under the cherubim was the ethical Decalogue of the Ten Commandments of God. To remember the law, God gave everybody ten toes and ten fingers.

Ten is a very significant number, which brings me to my first point. If God did not think that we needed Ten Commandments, He would not have given us ten. If you do not believe that we need ten, cut off one of your fingers or one of your toes. When somebody tells you that we don’t have to keep the Ten Commandments, just take your scissors and give me a finger or a toe. I believe that God intended for all ten to stay intact.

Ten Commandments are very significant. That is why Moses, the faithful servant of God, said in Deuteronomy 4:13, “And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.” The following are three very important facts that come to the forefront about the Ten Commandments:

  1. God declared the Ten Commandments, which simply means that they did not come from the lips of man; therefore they cannot be modified by the lips of man. We may not like what God said, but we do not have the authority to change what He says.
  2. God commanded; He did not suggest the Ten Commandments. They did not come from man’s mind; therefore they cannot be modified to fit man’s thinking. We may think that the word command is too strong, but God’s law is not ten suggestions, ten opinions, ten options or ten menu items. It is the Ten Commandments.
  3. God wrote the Ten Commandments. They were not e-mailed, faxed, borrowed, photocopied or plagiarized. In other words, God wrote them with His finger. He did not inspire them; He wrote them.

My mother gave me a book many years ago that I still read to this very day. It is not so much the content of the book that is important to me but that my mother’s signature is there. She passed away in 1991, and every time I lend that book out to somebody, I tell them not to keep it, because I cannot buy another one like it. It is not the content, but the inscription of the giver that makes that book special. So it is not just the commandments, not just ten laws, but the fact that God took the time to write them with His own finger. I would suggest to you that they are a lot more valuable than baseball cards or signed pictures. People always ask me for my autograph on my CDs, and I always tell them to forget my signature and read the Bible verse under it, because if you forget me, you have lost nothing, but if you forget God, you have lost everything.

The inscription of God is there to let us know that when God takes the time to autograph something, it has to be important. It is suggested by eBay that to determine the value of a document four things need to be done:

  1. You must determine how long the person who signed it has been around. How does that tend to make the Ten Commandments valuable? David says that, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God [Psalm 90:21].” God has been around for as long as long can be. On that basis alone, eBay could not even price the Ten Commandments to sell. There is not enough money on earth to buy the commandments of God, because based on the longevity of the One who wrote them and signed them, they are valuable beyond our ability to buy.
  2. You must determine the value of an item. Is it historical? The commandments are as old as time. Is it personal? Paul said they are the law of God (Romans 7). The commandments of God are very personal.
  3. You must assess the integrity of the document—What was it signed with, pen or ink that can fade? If the inscription is faded, the document begins to lose its value. God took care of that when He wrote His law on stone and signed it with His own finger. To this day it is signed with His own blood. As a matter of fact, there is one original on the table of stone, and everybody has a copy of it. He wrote it in your mind and put it in your heart. You cannot sell it. You can be irreligious, and the commandments of God will remind you in your darkest moments that what you are about to do is not right. What commandment are we talking about? “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.” Exodus 20:17 (NKJV).
  4. You must establish the present condition of the document. To arrive at its dollar value, eBay suggests that you must determine how much it has changed since it was written. God says, in Psalm 89:34, “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.” God does not change, and His commandments do not change.

You can shift them around and make them appear to change, but as far as God’s copy is concerned, they are the same. Regarding the copy in your heart, no matter in what order you put them they are still the same.

God made sure that no matter where you are, whether you want to turn your ears or close your eyes, the commandments of God are with you.

At the very outset of the tenth commandment the law reveals its age. The word covet lets you know that it is not a contemporary commandment. How many times have you talked to somebody, and they have said, “Well, I covet that tie” or “I covet that job”? We don’t use the word covet very much. That is why in the newer Bible translations, the word covet is substituted with the word greed. Don’t be greedy; be satisfied.

The truth of the matter is that the tenth commandment is not exclusive, because if you just take the beginning and the end, it reads as follows: “Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor’s.” If there is something that somebody else has and you cannot afford it, just get it out of your mind. Coveting what is not yours is how the commandment begins.

Sometimes the tenth commandment seems to supplement the eighth commandment, which says, “Thou shalt not steal [Exodus 20:15].” The fact of the matter is that the tenth commandment is the door that leads to the violation of the other nine. I believe that is what Jesus meant when He said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Mark 12:31 (NKJV). Paul says, “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” Galatians 5:14 (NKJV). If you love your neighbor as yourself and you don’t want him/her to steal from you and you won’t steal from him/her. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you won’t covet his wife or her husband and you won’t want him to covet your wife or you. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you don’t want him/her taking your house, and you won’t take his/her house.

Paul brings out another overlooked truth about the tenth commandment. He refers to those seven words, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” as one word. In other words, the Ten Commandments are also known as the Ten Words. The tenth commandment is not only the tenth precept of the Ten Commandments; it is the last Word of the Ten Words.

To summarize commandments one through nine, I believe that the reason God put the tenth one there is so the tenth commandment could be the last Word of the nine Words that went before. It is as though God is saying, “If you have any doubt about anything I have said, I place this one here as the last Word.”

The tenth commandment is a sin detector. If you are labeled by society as a criminal or a transgressor of any law, the transgression or the crime has to be obvious. Somebody has to see it. How can you declare me guilty of something you cannot detect or see? Like an inconspicuous carbon dioxide smoke detector, the tenth commandment monitors the silent activities of the mind, going way down to the subculture of human thought. It does not say you have to do the deed and that is the only way you are guilty; it goes down to the point where the motive begins to be born. It is like a divine MRI; it detects the hidden sins of the human heart before they become obvious to everybody else.

It is the stealthy operation of this commandment that I believe gives birth to these verses in Scripture. The wise man said, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” Proverbs 23:7 (NKJV). It says, “as he thinks”—not as he does. Before it becomes an act of stealing somebody’s car, wife, money or house, it is born in your thoughts. Jesus said, in Matthew 15:8, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.” It is detecting what is below the surface, not just what is being seen by everybody else. In other words, you can go to church and pray to God all you want, but the Lord He sees what is happening on the inside. This commandment goes way beyond what people see.

Paul says, in Romans 7:25, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” Let’s put that in proper context. There may be some people who cannot break free from a habit or a sin, but they are saying that in their minds they are in harmony with God’s law but need to be delivered from the very act. Then, in reverse, there are people who appear to be delivered from the very act, but in their minds they are serving the law of sin. You cannot judge anyone solely on what you see. When you meet people, they always put their best foot forward, but I am always concerned what they are going to do with that other foot. The tenth commandment is not only a sin detector, it is a character detector as well.

Remember when Saul fell as king and God called the sons of Jesse to be consecrated? The ones who looked qualified were not qualified. The one who did not look qualified, was the one who was qualified, and Samuel said that we look at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart. See 1 Samuel 16:7. This means that people who look righteous are not always righteous. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart.” Jeremiah 17:9, 10, first part. Sometimes you can put on your Christian costume when you go to church, but God knows what you are thinking and why you are there.

The tenth commandment suggests that ungodly thoughts will eventually become ungodly actions. When we lived in New York City, my wife and I were involved with people who liked to go roller-skating. At that time there were random shootings in the city. We noticed a very unassuming guy who looked the part—you have to be careful with people who just look the part, because one of the deceptions in the last days is that Satan is going to show up, and he is going to look the part. Ministers preaching from pulpits all over the world look the part, but they are not living the part. One of our sisters in the faith said that anybody can preach a good sermon, but it takes somebody else to live a good one.

At a seminar I gave on family life, one person who attended said to me, “Do you know why I enjoyed this seminar? It was not what you said; it was what I saw between you and your wife. It was not what you said about valuing older people, but you brought your 81-year-old mother-in-law with you on your vacation. So when you said to me, ‘Don’t wait until they get older to tell them that you love them,’ you are doing it by example. How often does she travel with you?” I told him that whenever she is not sick, we take her with us, because the day is going to come when she can’t go, and I do not want to be standing there at the funeral saying, “Oh, if I had only, had only, had only.” I believe people cry hard at funerals because they did not work hard before the funeral. We would rather send flowers than carry them ourselves. So when people look godly, it really does not mean a whole lot to me.

Some of the meanest e-mails I have received are from people who are religious. It was religious people who screamed for Jesus to be crucified. It was the secular power that tried to get Him out of it. When church and state unite, there is no greater persecution than when religious people get involved. So to appear to be religious is of no value whatsoever in the sight of God, but to live a righteous life is. This does not begin on the outside; it begins on the inside.

This commandment goes way, way down. That is why the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of body and soul and spirit (Hebrews 4:12). The Bible says it “is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of man’s heart.” Hebrews 4:12. I believe that is why people sometimes do not read their Bible, because when they read their Bible, it tells them about themselves. Even now people are challenging ministers whether or not they can preach it straight. I preach straight sermons, and people ask me why. I tell them that my job is not to get them comfortable but to get them into the kingdom.

People nowadays want those sermons about portfolios and how many stock options they have. But their stocks cannot get them into heaven, not even being religious on the outside with all of their possessions. I knew somebody who was very wealthy and I called this person on something on the way he was living. He took me to task saying to me, “How dare you talk to me that way.” I told him the way he was living was sin, whether he was rich or poor.

The Lord says, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.” Luke 6:45.

The tenth commandment reminds us that we may not always be under the jurisdiction of man, but we are always under the jurisdiction of God.

The tenth commandment is a dissatisfaction detector. This commandment detects discontent. Paul tells us, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” Philippians 4:12 (NIV). Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5 (NIV). If you have God, you have all that you need.

You must be content. The definition of godliness has been misrepresented by the church. “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” 1 Timothy 6:6. Notice what it does not say. It does not say, “Great gain with contentment is godliness,” and it does not say, “Great gain with godliness is contentment.” It says, “Godliness with contentment.” Be content to be godly for from that comes great gain. Our lives do not consist in all the abundance we possess, and when Jesus comes, we cannot take it with us.

Nobody has ever been put in jail for what he has thought, but many will be kept out of heaven because of what they think. The problem with the antediluvian world was that every intent of the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually (Geneses 6:5). It was their thoughts that led them to sin. It was what they thought and then what they did.

Wrong thoughts entertained promote a wrong desire, which in time gives birth to a wrong action. We may refrain from sin because the social and civil penalties are heavy, but in heaven’s sight we may be as guilty as if we actually committed it ourselves, because the tenth commandment goes way down deep. What is the prescription? David tells us in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”

The tenth commandment is about discontent. It is having an inordinate desire for something that does not belong to you. That is why the Bible says that God will not just work on the outside, “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13 (NKJV). This basic commandment, the tenth, reveals the profound truth that we are not the helpless slaves of our natural desires and passions. It sums up the Decalogue by affirming that man is essentially a free moral agent. So the next time you see something you want, think about the real cost. The next time you see someone you want, think about the real cause. The next time it begins to boil up in your heart that you are just not happy, think about the fact that Jesus did not die for your stuff, He died for you.

“Thou shalt not covet.” I want to go home to heaven. We need to get to the place where we are tired of sin. We need to get to the place where we know that with all of this covetousness we have wasted many precious years. We must get our eyes fixed on going home to be with Jesus. We must get to the place where we realize that we need His cleansing blood. The only answer to the violation of any of the Ten Commandments is the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.

Now is the time we need to unload the world and put on Jesus Christ in every aspect of our lives and covet nothing that will keep us out of the kingdom of God. Let each of us pray for a heart of contentment—content to be godly, content to be loving, content to be kind and content to support one another in this final, trying hour of this earth’s history.

Pastor John Lomacang’s sermon was taken from the Ten Commandment Weekend, 2008 series aired on 3ABN. For more information contact www.3ABN.org.

That Which was Lost is Found

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“Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”

Luke 15:1, 2

After the Pharisees and scribes had murmured against Christ and the work He was doing, He, knowing their hearts, told a series of parables that are recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Luke. Each one of these parables—the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son—conveys the same principle and was told in the presence of the Pharisees and scribes who were so actively impugning Christ’s work.

In Testimonies, vol. 3, 99–104, there is a presentation of these three parables which clearly indicates that the object of each one was to open the eyes of Christ’s listeners to the fact that when a sinner, represented by the found sheep and coin and the returning son, turns from his sinful ways and returns to Christ, there is to be rejoicing, not condemnation.

Another possible explanation for these parables is that the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son could be understood to represent this world. According to the Spirit of Prophecy, of all the created worlds, this is the only one that has eaten of the forbidden fruit and been lost (see Christ’s Object Lessons, 190, 191). As we return our allegiance heavenward, what if the angels treated us just as the son that remained at home treated the prodigal? Surely Christ will say to them, “It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.” Luke 15.32.

While both of these interpretations are applicable, there is perhaps a third interpretation for the parable of the lost coin. We read Christ’s words, “Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” Luke 15:8–10.

In the parable, it was a woman who lost one of ten coins. In Scripture, a woman is used to represent the church. Thus the first point for us to note is that the church has lost one of ten pieces of silver—interestingly, the same number of coins as the number of commandments.

Does the word of God provide a hidden treasure in this parable?

“Those who desire to find the treasures of truth must dig for them as the miner digs for the treasure hidden in the earth. No halfhearted, indifferent work will avail. It is essential for old and young, not only to read God’s word, but to study it with wholehearted earnestness, praying and searching for truth as for hidden treasure. Those who do this will be rewarded, for Christ will quicken the understanding.” Christ’s Object Lessons, 111.

In Psalm 12:6, we read, “The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.”

In Proverbs 2:1–5, the Bible records the enlightening words of Solomon: “My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.”

In these texts, the Hebrew word translated as words can also be translated as commandments. When we compare scripture with scripture, an interesting interpretation of this parable begins to unfold. Is it possible that the lost coin also represents a lost commandment as well as a lost sinner and a lost world?

How did the woman find the lost coin? She lit a candle to shed light on her search. In Psalm 119:105, we read, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”

Therefore a suggestion for an alternative interpretation to this parable might be that the church lost one of the ten commandments and by searching for it in God’s word, they found it.

In 1885, Ellen White preached a sermon in Grimsby, England, in which she spoke of how Sabbath reform in the early Seventh-day Adventist Church came about as a result of the proclamation of the third angel’s message:

“The open door in heaven reveals the temple of God, in the most holy place of which is the ark, and in this ark is the law of ten commandments written with the finger of God on tables of stone. The light that shines forth from the open door attracts the attention of the people of God, and they begin to see what that ark contains—the law of ten commandments. They are seeking for light, and as they trace down that law, precept by precept, they find right in the bosom of the decalogue the fourth commandment as it was instituted in Eden and proclaimed in awful grandeur from Sinai’s mount, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it’ [Exodus 20:8–11]. They then see that instead of observing the seventh day, the day that God sanctified and commanded to be observed as the Sabbath, they are keeping the first day of the week as the Sabbath. But they honestly desire to do God’s will, and they begin to search the Scriptures to find the reason for the change. Failing to find this, the question arises, Shall we accept a truth that has become unpopular, and obey the commandments of God? or, shall we continue with the world, and obey the commandments of men? With open Bibles they weep, and pray, and compare scripture with scripture, until they are convinced of the truth, and conscientiously take their stand as commandment-keepers.” The Present Truth, November 3, 1885.

Can we not conclude, then, that the parable of the lost coin was in one sense a prophecy about finding, through searching the word of God, the lost commandment that clearly shows the seventh day as the true Sabbath?

In searching God’s word, comparing scripture with scripture, we find a surprising number of references from Christ Himself regarding the commandments as a whole and the implications of keeping them.

“If ye love me, keep my commandments.” John 14:15.

“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” John 14:21.

“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.” John 15:10.

“Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men. … Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.” Mark 7:7–9.

From these texts as well as from many others, it is clear that Christ kept His Father’s commandments and exhorted His followers to do the same. Let us look at one example in God’s word of Sabbath-keeping that should confirm to anyone who doubts the importance of finding the lost piece of silver, the lost commandment.

In Luke 23:50–56, there is a clear indication of faithful—and maybe even surprising—obedience to a commandment that many today seem to have lost. “And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counsellor; and he was a good man, and a just: (The same had not consented to the counsel and deed of them;) he was of Arimathaea, a city of the Jews: who also himself waited for the kingdom of God. This man went unto Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. And he took it down, and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid. And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on. And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.”

Doesn’t this story make it clear that if we want to serve our Lord, we must do so according to His commandments? May the world soon realize that there is indeed a lost coin, a lost piece of silver, a lost commandment that must be found and returned to its rightful place in our lives if we truly love the Lord.

“For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.” I John 5:3.

John Pearson is part of the Steps to Life team. He can be contacted by email at: johnpearson@stepstolife.org.