October 12 & 19, 2008
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR TODAY – PART 1
Exodus 20 (The Message)
1-2 GOD spoke all these words: I am GOD, your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of a life of slavery.
3 No other gods, only me.
4-6 No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim. Don't bow down to them and don't serve them because I am GOD, your God, and I'm a most jealous God, punishing the children for any sins their parents pass on to them to the third, and yes, even to the fourth generation of those who hate me. But I'm unswervingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments.
7 No using the name of GOD, your God, in curses or silly banter; GOD won't put up with the irreverent use of his name.
8-11 Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to GOD, your God. Don't do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days GOD made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore GOD blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day.
12 Honor your father and mother so that you'll live a long time in the land that God, your God, is giving you.
13 No murder.
14 No adultery.
15 No stealing.
16 No lies about your neighbor.
17 No lusting after your neighbor's house—or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey. Don't set your heart on anything that is your neighbor's.


If College Students Wrote the Bible:
The Last Supper would have been eaten the next morning -- cold.
Forbidden fruit would have been eaten because it wasn't cafeteria food.
Paul's letter to the Romans would become Paul's email to abuse@romans.gov.
Reason Cain killed Abel: they were roommates.
Reason why Moses and followers walked in the desert for 40 years: they didn't want to ask directions and look like freshmen.
Instead of God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh, he would have put it off until the night before to get it done.
The Ten Commandments would actually be only five -- double-spaced and written in a large font (A personal “thank you” to Jim Crim for these!).

We are going to dig into 4 commandments today – the first 4 – as these commandments address a personal relationship with God. Next week we will look at the last 6 commandments. The last 6 commandments address a relationship with others.

Commandments Addressing Relationship with God
• No other gods
• No idols
• God's name
• Keep Sabbath holy

Commandments Addressing Relationship with Others
• Honor parents
• Do not murder
• Do not commit adultery
• Do not steal
• Do not give false testimony
• Do not covet

It is really interesting that Jesus, when questioned about which commandment was the greatest, summed up the commandments in like fashion:
“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and most important command.

And the second command is like the first: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’
All the law and the writings of the prophets depend on these two commands.” (Matthew 22:34-40) NCV

The Ten Commandments address a relationship with God and a relationship with others.
I ask you, is there any greater quest than the pursuit of a relationship with God?
When Scottish theologian John Baillie taught at Edinburgh University, he made it a practice to open his course on the doctrine of God with these words: "We must remember, in discussing God, that we cannot talk about Him without His hearing every word we say. We may be able to talk about others behind their backs, but God is everywhere, yes, even in this classroom. Therefore, in all our discussions we must be aware of His infinite presence, and talk about Him, as it were, before His face." Unknown.

Such thinking is in keeping with the first commandment: No gods beside me! God is numero uno – the one and only. The first commandment sets God up as the number one relationship to nurture. God first – this is commandment number one. There is no better place – no other place to begin.

H.G. Wells was never particularly religious, but after he had studied the history of the human race and had observed human life, he came to an interesting conclusion: "Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honor. But all these things fall into place and life falls into place only with God." Unknown.

There are many things that we can explore in place of God. Commandment number one bids us to recognize that God is and that God deserves to be in first place in our lives.

Commandment number two is closely related: make no idols/have no idols. Worship nothing besides God. Place no one or no thing in the place of God as our object of devotion. Idols take many forms. We can idolize people to the exclusion of God – even Christian people. We can idolize things to the exclusion of God – things from money to material. We can idolize ourselves. These will never cut it as a lasting source of peace and strength.

Commandment number 3 is placed perfectly here. God first. Worship no other. Don’t misuse God’s name. The ancient Jew had an utter respect for the name of God. They had such a respect for it that they did not pronounce the name that God used to introduce himself to Moses: Yahweh. They wouldn’t say it. They would get to it and call it “the name.” There is a reverence and an honor there that goes beyond what most of us are use to. Maybe it is a bit much, but they knew that invoking the personal name of God was major business. We must always speak about God in terms of respect and honor. So many times we are capable of using His name vainly – without thought or coarse talk and even in anger. Someone so great deserves our greatest respect.

Finally, we arrive to the fourth commandment and the last commandment in the category of a relationship with God: remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. What is the Sabbath? It is the 7th and last day of the week. For the children of God, this was Saturday. It marked the day of rest after God spent 6 days creating the universe. It was meant to be a day of reflection upon the creative power of God. It was meant to be a day of rest – a stepping away of the busyness of life. On the Sabbath, the created rest in the sweet stillness of the creator’s spiritual embrace.

The early Christians moved the Jewish Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday because Sunday was the day of resurrection – the day that God completed his saving work. The question is, do we observe a Sabbath today? The issue is not so much of it should be Saturday or Sunday. The issue is – is it observed at all? If not, why not? And if we should, why?

Many of you remember the blue laws, right? Businesses by and large were closed on Sundays. Sunday was observed in our culture at one time as a day of rest. Culture no longer honors it. Christians, too, rarely honor it. In some cases, it does not even seem practical, because many people have to work on Sundays.

So, is this commandment irrelevant today? If this one is irrelevant, perhaps others are irrelevant, too. Well, let me approach it this way. The church used to persuade culture what to do. Many of you remember a time when sports never dared to interfere with Sunday services. Not true today. Now, culture persuades the church. If we could recover a sense of the Sabbath in Christian circles, where possible, imagine the profound change that would take place in our society. If we could somehow take Sunday and truly treat it as a holy retreat, WOW, we would move closer to God and greatly impact the businesses that are active on Sunday. By the way, Chick-fil-a is not open on Sundays. Never has been, and as along as Dan Cathy is the president of the company, it won’t be. Chik-fil-a’s founder Truett Cathy believed that God would bless Chik-fil-a so much that it would more than make up for the loss of business Sunday during the regular work week.

That is bold living – great faithfulness – counter-cultural stuff here. Imagine if we have a day to bath in the rest of God through personal reflection, Bible study, prayer, family gatherings, worship and discussion. Man, it would recharge us.
But Brian, is this practical. My family would never go for it. I have to work. I have to catch up on all the stuff I did not do during the week. My kids have games! I know. I’m right there living in the same circumstances. Let me suggest that everybody needs a Sabbath – and if it is not Sunday, it ought to be a day of the week. It might take massive change, but everyone deserves a day off for the sake of body and soul. Maybe, maybe it has to start as a block of time on Friday night, or Saturday morning or Sunday evening when the family knows that you are into personal time with God. Ya, that might be radical, but sometimes pursuing a relationship takes radical change. And if God is the greatest relationship to be pursued, then I would offer it is worth everything.

The 10 commandments were the forerunners to showing humanity that it had a need for God. It showed that without God, humanity was doomed to whittle away in sin and rebellion. AS a matter of a fact, the 10 commandments are effective in proving that all sin because no one keeps the commandments perfectly. That is why Christ was needed. He is the utter fulfillment of the first 4 commandments, as his death and resurrection opened the door fully to that personal relationship with God. God provided the help that we needed in Christ. His forgiveness covers our law breaking and helps us to live to please God. God had this in mind from the beginning. We got to see the full plan.

Do you know God through Christ? We talk about it all the time in church. The danger is that sometimes we become to familiar with that message and it puts a glaze in our eyes and a yawn on our face. We almost need an electric paddle to shock us awake.

God has given us that wake up call today. The 10 commandments provide that measuring stick to check out your walk. How are you doing? Is God first. Is there something that you have placed above God? Have you misused the name of God? Have you carved out some time for you and God to get to know each other better. These are the messages of the 4 four commandments – relevant 3 millennia ago – relevant today. Amen.


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR TODAY – PART 2
If you think your family has problems, consider the marriage mayhem created when 76-year-old Bill Baker of London recently wed Edna Harvey. She happened to be his granddaughter's husband's mother. That's where the confusion began, according to Baker's granddaughter, Lynn.

"My mother-in-law is now my step-grandmother. My grandfather is now my stepfather-in-law. My mom is my sister-in-law and my brother is my nephew. But even crazier is that I'm now married to my uncle and my own children are my cousins." Campus Life, March, 1981, p. 31.

Human relationships are fraught with confusion and misunderstanding. Sometimes such trouble leads to terrible conflicts – even war.
The Carnegie Technological Institute has stated that 90% of all people who fail in their life's vocation fail because they cannot get along with people. Lloyd Perry, Getting the Church on Target, Moody, 1977.

Perhaps these “Ten Commandments of Human Relations” might help lower this statistic:
1. Speak to people. There is nothing as nice as a cheerful word of greeting.
2. Smile at people. It takes seventy-two muscles to frown, only fourteen to smile.
3. Call people by name. Music to anyone's ears is the sound of his/her own name.
4. Be friendly and helpful.
5. Be cordial. Speak and act as if everything you do is genuinely a pleasure, and if it isn't, learn to make it so.
6. Be genuinely interested in people. You can like almost everybody if you try.
7. Be generous with praise, cautious with criticism.
8. Be considerate with the feelings of others. There are usually three sides to a controversy: yours, the other fellow's, and the right one.
9. Be alert to serve. What counts most in life is what we do for others.
10. Add to this a good sense of humor, a big dose of patience, and a dash of humility, and you will be rewarded manifold through life. Adapted from the Bible Tract Bulletin.

Last week we discussed the first 4 commandments which address a personal relationship with God_______. The last 6 commandments address a personal relationship with others__________. This will be our focus today.
5 NOs:
No murder
Thou shalt not kill – Hebrew has 7 words for killing; if any of the 7 could mean premeditated murder, this is the word. Deliberate and intentional violence is definitely present in this verb. It is important to realize that this “shalt not” does not apply to hunting, defending one’s home from attack, accidental deaths, capital execution and war. It does apply to self-murder or suicide, all accessories to murder and to those who have the authority but fail to use their authority to punish known murderers.

No adultery
Adultery is straight forward; it applies to men and women. To intrude on another person’s spouse, even if the affection is returned, is a violation of a sacred trust. It is perhaps the ultimate in deception. It cuts to the soul. It dishonors the covenant of love.

No stealing
Originally this commandment was directed toward kidnapping. This prohibition recognizes that God owns all things, so it is up to God to give material or to take it away. When we usurp God’s role and take something for ourselves that does not belong to us or that we have no right to, we steal from God and violate our relationship with our neighbor. Jesus made it clear that all are our neighbors.

No lying
Truth telling is the very nature of the creator. God’s word is truth. When we lie, we put ourselves at odds with God, whose character is truthfulness. This applies to trials and to everyday relationships.

No coveting/lusting
The root meaning of this word is to desire earnestly or to long after. It is sin to yearn for something or someone that belongs to someone else. It is an emotional robbery. It is a selfish state.

1 DO:
Honor your mother and your father
My Dad’s Uncle Don passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was my Dad’s favorite Uncle. They both shared the same sense of humor. My Dad’s Aunt Jane told Susan and I that she knew Uncle Don would make a good husband because she watched the way he treated his mother. He took great care of her. He honored his mother..
Parents are to be revered, respected and honored in the Lord, but at no time is their word to rival or substitute for the word of God. God always comes first (see the 1st commandment!).

Remember that God gave us these commandments as boundaries. He showed us what he expected. It was a loving heart that shared them. And while there are consequences to breaking them, God’s love still reaches out to soothe the repentant heart.
As we think about these commandments in terms of our relationship with God and our relationships with others, lets think about these important words:
The SIX most important words:
"I admit I made a mistake."

The FIVE most important words:
"You did a good job."

The FOUR most important words:
"What do you think?"

The THREE most important words:
"After you please."

The TWO most important words:
"Thank you."

The ONE most important word:
"We"

The LEAST important word:
"I" Source Unknown.

When “I” is the focus, the ten commandments become a blur. When “I” is center stage, the ten commandments are broken. An exchange of “Him” for “I” and “We” for “I” goes a long way in keeping the 10 commandments, pleasing God, others, and even self. They become guidelines, a roadmap, if you will, of living out the Christian life. And remember, the Christian life is a life given to Jesus, in hopes of pleasing him and reuniting in heaven above. Amen.