1. FOUNDATIONS FOR FREEDOM
The editor of a newspaper was interviewing a man who
applied for the job of being a rewrite man. "Are you good at
condensing"? the editor asked. "Sure", was the snap reply.
"All right then, take this and cut it short", he said , as he
handed him a copy of the ten commandments. The applicant
was momentarily startled, but then he took his pencil, wrote
briefly, and handed it back. The editor looked at it and said,
"Your hired!" He had written one word--don't.
This story illustrates the popular misconception about the
ten commandments. They are seen as negative, and can be
summed up in the philosophy that says thou shalt not enjoy
life. Whatever you like, don't do it. Now it is true that 8 of
the 10 are negative, but as we shall see, this is for a very
practical reason. Jesus summed them up, not with a don't,
but with a twofold positive do. Do love God with all your
heart, and do love your neighbor as yourself. The first four
commandments deal with loving God, and the last six deal
with loving our neighbor.
But if these most famous laws in the world can be stated
positively, why were they given in a negative form
originally? Those who do not care to look for an answer just
dismiss them as being irrelevant for a positive thinking
world. They claim the negative nature of them leads to
excessive negativism. This is illustrated by the mother who
said "Go see what Johnny is doing and tell him to stop."
One little boy under this kind of atmosphere thought his
name was Johnny don't. There have been many Christians
who have measured their piety by the number of things they
don't do. The Pharisees were experts at this sort of thing
also, and they were able to compile a list of several thousand
things they did not do. It was a negative religion.
Too many negatives lead to a life of emptiness. The
absence of evil is a good thing, but when good is also absent,
one is not living a life pleasing to God. Jesus told of the man
who had all of the demons that possessed him driven out,
and all was swept clean. All the evil was gone, but no positive
good filled the vacuum, and the result was the evil returned
in greater power than it had before. Those who try to live on
negatives often take great falls into sin, for negatives are just
not a good foundation. The negative is only of value when it
is a means to a positive end.
A missionary in Africa was trying to explain the Ten
Commandments to an old native chief. "You tell me I'm not
to take my neighbors wife?" "That's right" said the
missionary. "Or his ivory or his oxen?" "Quite right!"
"And I must not ambush him on the trail and kill him?"
"Absolutely right" said the missionary. "But I cannot do
any of these things," said the savage, "I am too old. To be
old and to be Christian are the same thing." This illustrates
how weak a mere negative religion and morality would be.
Righteousness would be equivalent to inability. If negative
become ends in themselves, then one becomes more and
more Christian the less he is able to live, and death would
bring perfection. This is, of course, nonsense. Negatives
cannot be ends in themselves, but must be means to a
positive goal.
We fail when we lose the positive, for it is the positive that
gives authority to the negative commands. People demand
to see the positive value in having their freedom limited by
prohibitions. If you say don't, they want to know why, and
the why had better be positive if you expect people to respect
the authority of the negative. Robert Kahn, a Jewish Rabbi,
points out that the Declaration of Independence has this
great positive statement-"All men are created equal and are
endowed by their Creator with rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." Then, in order to preserve these
positive values, a Bill of Rights was a appended to the
Constitution. When you read them you notice they are of a
negative character. The gist of each is-
Congress shall make no law
The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed
No soldier shall be quartered
the right--to be secure shall not be violated
No person shall be held to answer.
No fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined
Excessive bail shall not be required
The enumeration of certain rights shall not be Construed
These are the eight negatives of the ten amendments called
the Bill of Rights. They are negative commandments for the
preservation of positive rights. We see from this, that when
negatives are the means to positive ends, they do not destroy
our freedom, but become foundations for freedom. Without
these negatives to protect us we would be far less free as
Americans.
Now if we go back to the Ten Commandments, we see the
same principle involved. It is almost as if the Constitution
and Bill of Rights were patterned after the 20th chapter of
Exodus. In Exodus 20:2, we see the positive statement of
God, which gives authority to His Commandments, and
which is the basis for their existence. "I am the Lord your
God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage." God did not impose this list of laws
upon a people to suppress them and their liberty. They were
the gift of a wise God to a people He had set free, and who
He wanted to remain free.
John Locke said of the law, "The end of the law is not to
abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom."
This was certainly God's intention in giving the Ten
Commandments. If oppression and suppression was His
motive, He could have done no better than to have left them
in their bondage in Egypt. The whole atmosphere
surrounding the Ten Commandments is one of positive
liberty. Liberty so new and fresh and complete that it could
only lead to chaos and disaster without the limitations of
law. All of the negatives are like the Bill of Rights negatives.
They are to preserve the great liberty which God had given
them.
By forbidding murder, for example, all are free to live.
By forbidding stealing all are free to possess property
without fear. Each negative is for the protection of a
positive value. Freedom is dependant upon the limiting and
the guiding of man by law. Total freedom is a paradox, for
it leads to total bondage. Total freedom is when every man
does what is right in his own eyes, and has no responsibility
for the rights of others. It is absolute individualism, which is
anarchy.
During the French Revolution they took the not out of the
Ten Commandments, and they put it into the creed. They
had, thou shalt kill, steal, commit adultery, lie; and I do not
believe in God the Father Almighty. The results of this
misplaced not was one of the worst periods of history. The
anarchy and blood bath, that came because of the absence of
this not, was a classic example of the positive value of
negative limitations. Remove the negative and you destroy
the power of the positive. This is true in many realms of life.
If you take the negative cable off your battery the positive
cable will not start your car. The two must work together to
achieve a positive goal. That is why negative laws are also
needed to achieve positive goals in human society.
When the Ten Commandments are seen in the proper
perspective they become foundations for freedom, and not
hindrances to freedom. They hinder and restrain only that
perverted freedom which leads to bondage. If there is a
world where all goes well without respect for life, property,
and purity, it has not yet been discovered, and until some
space traveler charts it on the map of the universe, the Ten
Commandments will be relevant and essential to the good
life and best society.
Cecil B. DeMille, in preparing the script for his well
known production of the Ten Commandments, caught
something of the meaning of God's eternal Word when he
said, "Our modern world defines God as a "religious
complex" and laughed at the Ten Commandments as old
fashioned. Then, though the laughter, came the shattering
thunder of great world wars, each more terrible than the last
and a blood-drenched world, no longer laughing, cries for a
way out. There is only one way out. It existed before it was
Engraved upon the tables of stone. It will exist when
stone has crumbled. The Ten Commandments are not rules
to obey as a personal favor to God. They are the
fundamental principles without which mankind cannot live
together. Armies are mighty, atom bombs are mighty.
Ideologies born of blind pride and passion are mighty. But
the truth of God is mightier than all, and it shall prevail."
Remove the laws that limit the earth to its orbit around
the sun, and you gain a liberty which would hurl it into
extinction. We are only free to live and breathe as we do,
because of the limitations of law. So it is with the Ten
Commandments. The New Testament does not repeal them,
but rather, lifts them to an even higher level by summing
them all up in love. Paul in Gal. 5:13-15, gives us a perfect
example of the necessity of the law being fulfilled in love.
"You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use
your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one
another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single
command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep
on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be
destroyed by each other." This shows us that the Ten
Commandments are as essential for the survival of the
Christian Church as they were for the survival of Israel. The
only difference is, the New Israel stresses the positive aspect
of love in the fulfilling of them.
When they were given to Israel, they were given to a very
immature and undisciplined people. They had been slaves
for hundreds of years, and were not an advanced and highly
civilized people. Negatives are necessary on this level of
development. We see this in raising children. When they
are young and immature, and do not understand ideals and
positive values, you are limited to saying "no, no" to guide
them. The positive replaces the negative only as they
become mature. This is the pattern we see in God's dealing
with men. The Old Testament has a focus on the "no, no",
but the New Testament focus is on the "yes, yes." The more
mature people become in their relationship to God the more
valuable and precious the commandments become. An
unknown poet put it-
"The truth that yesterday was mine is larger truth today;
It's face has aspects more divine, it's kinship fuller sway
For truth must grow as ages roll, and God looms large upon
the soul."
When we see the Ten Commandments from the true
Biblical perspective, we see them as gifts of grace. They
came from God who first delivered Israel, and then gave the
law to preserve that liberty He gave them. The origin of the
law is God's love. The goal of it is that we might love Him
who first loved us, and our neighbor whom He also loved.
As given to Israel, however, they were exclusive and not
universal, for God had delivered and redeemed only Israel.
The Ten Commandments as given in Exodus were only for
Israel, but since the coming of Christ they are universal, and
all men are obligated by them, especially those who believe.
Jesus died for the sins of all men. He became the universal
Savior, and now all men can be led out of bondage to sin and
Satan by faith in Him. This becomes the New Testament
basis for obedience to the Ten Commandments. All who
have been delivered are obligated to express their gratitude
by obeying the laws of their Deliverer.
Laws become the foundation for freedom. Obedience to
God's laws is our expression of love to Him who first loved
us and set us free. Love and law are partners in the
Christian life, and they work together for the good of man.
As we study the Ten Commandments, we must be aware
that we not just studying what was relevant to ancient Israel,
but what is relevant to our daily life. What is old is not
obsolete just by being old. The laws of nature are very old,
but I never heard of a movement to stop keeping them. I
never heard any parents say, "my folks always told me not to
touch a hot stove, but that is old fashioned. I let my kids
touch the hot stove, and don't push any of that old stuff on
them." The reason some things are old is because they are
essential for all generations. The law of gravity is as old as
time, but just as fresh and new and vital to life as it was on
the first day of time. The Ten Commandments are old, but
they will never be outdated. Break them today, and it is just
as foolish as trying to break the law of gravity today. D. L.
Moody said, "The commandments of God given to Moses in
the mount at Horeb are as binding today as ever they have
been since the time when they were proclaimed in the
hearing of the people."
We are saved by faith alone in Jesus Christ, but saved
people must still obey the laws of nature and the laws of
God. Law does not save, but there is no way to live a life
pleasing to God, and one that leads to happiness, apart from
obedience to law. The very angels of God, who never sinned,
live in obedience to God's law. In Psalm 103:20 we read,
"Bless the Lord ye His angels that excel in strength, that do
His commandments, harkening unto the voice of His Word."
The Christian sees the Old Testament law as a means of
fulfilling the New Testament law of Christ, which is the law
of love. It is not a way of being saved, but a way by which
we express our love to God for being saved by grace. Our
freedom in Christ, limited by our obedience to the Ten
Commandments, will lead us to live a life worthy of our
Lord. The greatest freedom in life is the freedom to please
God. Thus, in studying the Ten Commandments, we are
studying the Foundations For Freedom.
2. THE LAW AND THE CHRISTIAN
An angry group of citizens shouted at their small town
mayor-"Every city car that passes through here breaks the
law by breaking the speed limit. You've got to do something
about it, and do it fast." "Don't you worry," said the mayor
with confidence. "I'll raise the speed limit to 150. Let's see
them beat that!"
This mayor had an easy solution, which would effectively
element lawlessness. All you have to do is change the law, or
redefine lawlessness. You can just change the definition of
lawlessness and get rid of it. This is a process that goes on all
the time in our culture. What was once a bad thing is no
longer a bad thing because it has been defined as no longer
bad, but acceptable. Relativity is real, but when it enters into
the realm of morality it becomes very dangerous. Men use it
to change what is evil in God's eyes into what is acceptable
to men. Or, on the other hand, they change what was once a
virtue into a vice. For example, the young girl who brought
her Bible to school was sent home, as if it were a crime.
It is no wonder that there is confusion about the law, for
it is no longer stable as it once was. It is full of loopholes, so
that not all are treated equal, and it can be changed any day,
so that what was wrong yesterday can be right tomorrow.
The average American is skeptical about the law, for he
knows it is often just an arbitrary will of the majority
imposed on the minority. Much of the lawlessness of our day
is due to the laws protection of injustice. The law can protect
and defend evil as well as good. It can be an instrument of
oppression and slavery, as well as a force for freedom. Every
dictator and tyrant controls his people through law. Abuse
of the law is as common as its legitimate use.
Even in the church the law of God was abused. The
Puritans in Salem, for example, were determined to legislate
the Kingdom of God into reality, and they were going to
make the New Jerusalem on earth. These were some of the
Sabbath laws they madeNo
one shall run on the Sabbath or walk in his garden.
No one shall make beds, cut hair, or shave.
No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath.
No food or lodging shall be given to any Quaker or other
heretic.
And they were not just kidding either. Disobedience was not
tolerated, but met with heavy penalties.
Roger Williams, one of the heroes of freedom, was a
minister in Salem. He objected to the use of law in regulating
matters of conscience. He said this is contrary to the doctrine
of Jesus Christ. This was an attack on their system of law,
and they pronounced the sentence of banishment on him, for
the audacity to question their law. He was able to escape and
by the help of friendly Indians get to what became known as
Rhode Island. It was there that Roger Williams established
the first place on earth with total religious liberty. He also
established the first Baptist church in America there.
He became a hero of freedom, and he is studied in all the
secular history books. Yet, he became this hero by being
lawless. He rebelled against the laws he felt were unjust both
in the church and the state. He started the long hard battle
to get the laws of the state and the church to leave men free
in the realm of their religious beliefs. You cannot make
believers by means of the law. This is a personal act of choice
and faith, and not a matter you can legislate. Many
Christians through the centuries have ended up in prison,
just like Peter in the New Testament, because they refused to
obey laws that interfered with their obedience to God. They
were seen as lawless, but in reality they were being loyal to
the highest law, the law of God.
Christians have recognized what observant men of all
ages have noticed, and that is, that law that is a respecter of
persons is an instrument of evil, whereas, law that treats all
men equally is an instrument for justice. Benjamin Franklin
said, "Laws like to cobwebs, catch small flies, Great ones
break them before your eyes." An 18th century saying of
similar thought goes like this-
"The law doth punish man or woman
That steals the goose from off the common,
But let's the greater felon loose
That steals the common from the goose."
In other words, there is a duel standard in which the weak
and poor must suffer the full penalty of the law, but the rich
and powerful can escape it and even become heroes in doing
so. Pope said, "All look up with reverential awe, At crimes
that 'scape, or triumph o'er the law."
The Christian must respond when asked about his view of
the law, that it is a realm where every situation must be
evaluated by itself. If the law is just and consistent with the
absolute law of God's revelation, the Christian is bound to
defend it. If the law is unjust and is itself a violation of the
law of God, the Christian is equally bound to be lawless, and
defy that law for the sake of freedom and loyalty to God.
The heroes of freedom in church and state have been those
who defied unjust laws.
All of this means that there is nothing more relevant to
our day than a depth knowledge of God's law. It becomes
the absolute guide and standard by which the Christian
must decide where to stand to be a true defender of freedom.
We dare not decide on the basis of the world's standard, for
it is completely relative to the values of the world. The
Christian is not lawful or lawless by his relationship to any
of man's standards, but by his relationship to God's
standards, which are summarized in the Ten
Commandments. You might be thought of as a perfectly law
abiding American citizen, and yet be a lawless rebel in
relationship to the law of God. You may never murder or
steal, but be filled with hate and covetousness, which the law
of God forbids. On the other hand, you may end up in
prison because you do not obey the law of the land that
demands prejudice and hate.
Lawful and lawless are terms that must be seen in
relationship to the revealed Word of God to have any
significance for the Christian. The Church has always
recognized this and that is why Orthodoxy has never even
suggested that the New Testament has eliminated the Ten
Commandments. They are still vital guides for the Christian
life.
Luther said, "He who destroys the doctrine of the law
destroys at the same time political and social order...."
Calvin wrote, "We must not imagine that the coming of
Christ has freed us from the authority of the law; for it is the
eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must, therefore, be
as unchangeable as the justice of God." John Wesley wrote,
" The moral law, contained in the Ten Commandments and
enforced by the Prophets, he (Christ) did not take away. It
was not the design of his coming to revoke any part of
this...The moral law stands on an entirely different
foundation from the ceremonial and ritual law... Every part
of this law must remain in force upon all mankind, and in all
ages."
These convictions have been stated by the great Christian
leaders of this century as well. Spurgeon said, "First, the law
of God must be perpetual. There is no abrogation of it, nor
amendment of it. It is not to be toned down or adjusted to
our fallen condition; but every one of the Lord's righteous
judgements abideth forever." And D. L. Moody said, "Jesus
never condemned the law and the prophets, but He did
condemn those who did not obey them. Because He gave
new commandments it does not follow that He abolished the
old. Christ's explanation of them made them all the more
searching."
These quotes from outstanding representatives of the
Christian Church make it clear that Orthodoxy has always
considered the Ten Commandments to be an absolute
revelation perpetually binding as long as earth shall last.
Those who criticize them as being old and obsolete for our
day fail to see their depth and perpetual relevance to all
ages. They say the old morality is stagnant like a puddle that
has set until it stinks. In Christian Reflections, C. S. Lewis
refutes this fallacy in a way worthy of being quoted, even
though it is a lengthy paragraph.
"Space does not stink because it has preserved its three
dimensions from the beginning. The square on the
hypotenuse has not gone moldy by continuing to equal the
sum of the squares on the other two sides. Love in not
dishonored by constancy, and when we wash our hands we
are seeking stagnation and putting the clock back, artificially
restoring our hands to the status quo in which they began
the day and resisting the natural trend of events which
would increase their dirtiness steadily from our birth to our
death. For the emotive term 'stagnant' let us substitute the
descriptive term 'permanent.' Does a permanent moral
standard preclude progress? On the contrary, except on the
supposition of a change-less standard, progress is impossible.
If good is a fixed point, it is at least possible that we should
get nearer and nearer to it; but if the terminus is as mobile
as the train, how can the train progress toward it? Our
ideas of the good may change, but they cannot change either
for the better or the worst if there is no absolute and
immutable good to which they can approximate or from
which they can recede. We can go on getting a sum more
and more nearly right only if the one perfectly right answer
is 'stagnant'"
This is the Christian attitude toward the law of God. It is
permanent, absolute, and it is the standard by which we test
the validity of all other laws. If they are unjust and are a
hindrance to man's legitimate freedom the Christian is to
oppose them as Jesus did the laws of the Pharisees. Law is
good and vital to man's happiness and welfare, but law is
only absolute when it is God's law. The Ten
Commandments are God's law for all men in all ages.
If an atheist says the Sea of Galilee is North of the Dead
Sea, it is just as true as if a Christian says it. If a thing is
true it makes no difference who says it. If an evil man says
two plus two equals four, it is not less true because he is evil.
A godly man cannot make it more true, for it is an objective
truth evident to all.
The Ten Commandments in some form are seen all over
the world in every culture. You can find laws from ancient
Egypt to modern India, which are just different versions of
the Ten Commandments. They are the universal top ten, for
they deal with issues that are relevant to all men. Civilized
men the world over, though fallen and lovers of sin, know
that there are some things that need to be forbidden to make
life tolerable.
The Mohammedans consider them just as sacred as do
the Jews and Christians. There is nothing on which so many
of the people of the world agree. They are no less true and
valuable when quoted by a pagan. They cannot save man,
but the fact is they help control man and his evil nature. It
is obedience to these top ten that keeps the world going.
Every culture that rises above the barbaric does so because
people are regulated by these laws. Millions of pagans have
a life with some degree of meaning and peace because they
live in the midst of neighbors who do not kill, steal, or
violate their mates.
The problem is, it is only the second half of the ten that
man obeys. The first half deals with God and loyalty to
Him. Here man is weak and this leads to humanism.
Humanism is faith in man without faith in God. It is the
result of a split in the Ten Commandments. Man has
developed a split-level world where he has cut himself off
from the top of the top ten. Until he gets the two halves of
these ten united he will be divided in his inner being and be
a civil war. Humanism fails, not because it is not full of what
is true, but because it deals with only half of reality and
leaves the greatest half out of the picture, which is God.
3. THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
EXODUS 20:1-3 And God spoke all these words: I am the
Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the
land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.
In the book, The Doctor Of Crows Nest, and old doctor
Ferguson fell in love with the hands of young Barney Boyle.
"You must be a surgeon, Barney," he said. "You've got the
fingers and the nerves!" Barney was hesitant, but the
doctor pointed out all the advantages and the help he could
be to others. He concluded, "Ah, boy, God knows I'd give
my life to be a great surgeon. But He didn't give me the
fingers. I haven't the touch. But you have! You have the
nerve and the fingers and the mechanical ingenuity; you can
be a great surgeon. You shall have all my time and all my
books and all my money; I'll put you through! You must
think, dream, sleep, eat, drink bones and muscles and sinews
and nerves! Push everything else aside! He cried waving his
great hands excitedly. And remember!.... here his voice took
a solemn tone...let nothing share your heart with your
knife."
Here is an earthly example of the motivation behind the
first commandment. God had great ambitions for Israel. He
wanted a people who would be an instrument of His grace
and love to all the world. Though them He would bring into
the world the Great Physician, who alone would succeed as
an effective surgeon against sin. God had great plans, just
as the doctor did for young Barney, but both God and
doctor Ferguson had the same obstacle to overcome, and
that was the free will of man that can choose, not only less
than the best, but even the worst. Barney could choose to be
a bum and waste his gifts, and Israel could choose to go a
whoring after other gods and bring disgrace upon the name
of Jehovah. As a matter of fact, that is exactly what
happened, and it proves the point that free will is the basic
problem in the God-man relationship. Until the will is
submissive there is no way that man can be successful in
fulfilling the plan of God.
God must win our obedience to the first commandment
or the rest of them become meaningless. If we are not
absolutely loyal to Him and Him alone, we will not be
concerned about being loyal to His standard of morality. Dr.
Ferguson said "if you want to be a successful surgeon you
must let nothing share your heart with your knife." God is
saying in this first commandment, "if you want to be
successful in living a life pleasing to me, let nothing share
your heart with you love for me." In other words, make me
your first priority in all of life. All other loves, such as family,
friends, and neighbors must be subordinate to your love for
me. Love for God must be first and foremost, always.
Thoreau said, "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say,
let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a
thousand-simplify, simplify." God will not settle even for
two or three, however, but demands we simplify down to one
ultimate loyalty. This is what the first commandment is all
about. Let's look at the implication of this first
commandment.
The first implication of this commandment is that God
has made man free to defy His sovereignty. God does not
impose the benefits of His acts of grace upon man without
their consent. By shear power God brought Israel out of
Egypt, but He did not by shear power compel them to
acknowledge Him as their God. For their good He
commands that they do so, but the very existence of the
command implies that they have the freedom to do
otherwise. Tbey demonstrated their freedom time and time
again by defying this first commandment. The whole history
of the sufferings of Israel is the history of their disobedience
to the first commandment. Yet, God did not by shear force
ever compel them to obey it as he compelled the water of the
Red Sea to separate. Taking Israel out of Egypt was simple
compared to the task of taking Egypt out of Israel. The first
was a matter of power, but the second called for the
cooperation of man's will.
God's sovereignty does not play the same role in the
moral and spiritual realm as it does in the physical. He does
not force men into submission. The poet wrote-
And He that looketh wide and high,
Nor pauses in His plan,
Will take the sun out of the sky,
Ere freedom out of man.
In the very giving of the law God respects man's freedom,
but He gives them the law as another act of sovereign grace,
knowing that if they use their freedom to choose His will
they will find what is best in life for themselves. Israel will
become degraded, like all the surrounding nations, if she
does not freely choose to obey the law of God. When the
Jews chose not to follow the law they entered into the
bondage of fear and foolish superstition. They became
idolatrous and immoral, and only after the wrath of God
sent them into captivity did they finally learn how to use
their freedom to choose loyalty to God.
Freedom, which is man's greatest asset, is also his greatest
problem, until he learns to yield it up to God. Obedience to
the first commandment is not forced on us, but for those who
are looking for a shortcut to Gods best this is the
commandment to obey. We are free to be fools, but God
gave us the history of His people's response to this
commandment to help us avoid the folly of trying to find
happiness apart from obedience to it.
God honored man as the only creature on earth that has
the ability to choose to obey or defy His commandments.
God in His sovereignty has determined that He will not force
you to do His will, but He will require you to pay the price of
choosing wrong. The chemist can do as he pleases with his
chemicals, but if he does not respect the laws of chemistry he
may suddenly find himself leaving his lab by the way of the
roof. We are equally free to defy the moral laws of God, but
we are not free to escape the judgement that will result from
our bad choice. All of life revolves around the choices that
we make. We are not responsible for the outcome, but we
are responsible for the choices we make. Bonaro
Overstreet's oft-quoted words speak to this issue.
You say the little efforts that I make
Will do no good: They never will prevail
To tip the hovering scale
Where justice hangs in the balance.
I I don't think
I ever thought they would.
But I am prejudiced beyond debate
In favor of my right to choose which side
Shall feel the stubborn ounces of my weight.
The first commandment is God's calling to man to choose
Him and His will as the first priority in their lives. This
choice is the key to their own happiness.
The second implication we want to consider is that this
first commandment implies that there are other gods. That
sounds shocking when you hear it for the first time, but it
becomes a commonplace piece of information as you read
the commentaries. This first commandment clearly forbids
other gods being worshipped, but it does not state that there
are no other gods to be worshipped. It only states that for
Israel there is to be only one God. He was the only God, but
the existence of other gods is not denied. If there were no
other gods, what would be the point of forbidding anyone to
worship them?
When we consider the polytheism all around Israel, we
know the many gods who were worshipped were not
objectively real, but they were very definitely subjectively
real. They captured the loyalties of men, and did so with
Israel as well. In other words, non-existent gods are still very
real and God has to compete with them for man's loyalty. If
the false gods of the pagans were not a real threat to Israel's
right relationship to God, He never would have bothered to
make their exclusion a part of the first commandment.
God is actually the author of a gods are dead movement.
He seeks to get them excluded from the consciousness of His
people so that they die from neglect. God is all for any
movement that kills off and eliminates some of the millions of
false gods men have created. It sounds strange, but as
monotheists, who believe in only one God, we must
constantly be on guard against all kinds of real non-existent
gods. What is all amounts to is that there is only one capital
God, but a multitude of small gods which run all the way
from figments of the imagination to objectively existent
fallen creatures such as Satan, the god of this world.
The problem of non-existent gods hit the early church
and though Paul knew they did not exist, he also recognized
that some Christians believed in them because of their
former lives of idolatry. For the sake of these Christians the
stronger Christians were not to eat meat offered to a
non-existent god, because the god was real to the weaker
Christian. In other words, it is possible for a Christian to
believe in the actual reality of other gods. Paul says in I Cor.
8:4-7, "So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We
know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that
there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods,
whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many
"gods" and many "lords"), yet for us there is but one God,
the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we
live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom
all things came and through whom we live. But not
everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to
idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having
been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak,
it is defiled."
We see then, that both in the Old Testament and the New
Testament there is a process of education necessary to bring
men to the point of recognizing one, and only one, God. God
did not start by saying there are no other gods, but rather,
do not put other gods before me. If you are talking with
someone and they inquire about Allah and the gods of other
people, do not waste your time trying to disprove the
existence of these gods. Even as non-existent gods they have
great influence. Your primary task is to point them to the
God of revelation and urge them to put their trust in Him.
The issue is not whether there are other gods or not, but
whether or not they have surrendered to the God who has
provided their Savior in Jesus Christ.
The Bible does not try to prove God's existence, but urges
men to put their faith in Him and obey His revealed will.
Clovis Chappel says you could be out on the desert dying of
thirst and find evidence that water is somewhere nearby, but
the evidence will not save you without a drink of the actual
water. No one can live on proof of the existence of water.
They need to experience the life giving qualities of actual
water. So it is with God. Proofs of His existence are no
more satisfying than proofs of the existence of water. Men
must respond to God's revelation in faith to experience the
reality of God. Thomas Hardy sat in a church service and
felt so lonely because he had not responded in faith to the
God of the worshippers. He wroteHeart
of mine knows not that ease
Which they know, since it be
That he who breathes "all's well" to these
Breathes no "all's well" to me.
God breathes His all's well only to those, who out of a
multitude of gods, and possible ultimate values, will choose
to put Him first. Even though He is the only objectively
eternal God, yet men must choose Him above all the
influential non-existent gods to gain His salvation.
In Japan, those who respond to the gospel are often so
grateful for the knowledge of one God after having eight
hundred thousand to choose from. It gives unity to life, and
with one God to concentrate upon they can get to know
Him. This is one of God's major purposes in this first
commandment. God wants to be known, and the best way
for man to get to know Him is by concentration on Him
alone as ones ultimate relationship. We will focus on this in
the next chapter.
4. CONCENTRATION COMMANDED
A salesman who was growing more and more nervous
about his travel by air went one day to see a statistician.
"Can you tell me what the odds would be against my
boarding an aircraft on which somebody had hidden a
bomb?" he asked. He replied, "I can't tell you until I've
analyzed the available data. Come back again in a week."
The next week the worried salesman returned and asked if
the answer was ready. "Yes," said the statistician, "the
odds are one million to one against you getting on an aircraft
with one bomb on it." "Those are good odds," said the
salesman, "but I'm not sure they are good enough for me. I
travel a good deal." "Well then, if you really want to be
safe, "The statistician counseled, "carry a bomb with you.
My calculations indicate the odds are one billion to one
against your boarding an aircraft with two bombs on it."
This is obviously crazy advice, but the statistics are
correct and they reveal how you can prove anything with
statistics. The jump of the odds from one million to one
billion also points out what a radical difference there can be
between one and two. Upon close examination we find the
most radical transition anywhere is the jump from one to
two.
Elton Trueblood, the outstanding Quaker theologian,
points out some things of interest here. He says that the step
from two to three is relatively slight, but the step from one to
two is enormous. Why? Because when you go from two to
three you are going from one degree of plurality to another,
but when you go from one to two you leapt out of one
category into another totally different, not only in degree but
in kind, for you leap from singularity into to plurality. For
example, if a man has two or three wives or any number
beyond this he remains in the same class-he is a polygamist.
But if he has one wife he is a monogamist. To go from one to
two is a change in class, but to go from two to any other
number is only a change of degree within the same class. To
go from two to any other number is just a change in
quantity, but to go from one to two is a change in quality.
One is the most unique of all numbers, not only because it
is the beginning of numbers, but because it represents a class
all it's own. Singularity refers to one, and one only, but
plurality refers to all the rest from two to infinity.
Trueblood says, "There is more essential difference between
one and two then there is between two and a million." This
is more than an interesting fact of mathematics, it is an
important theological truth. One is the great theological
number, for ultimates are characterized by singularity, and
they call for undivided concentrated commitment. Paul in
Eph. 4 says, "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you
were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us
all..."
Christianity is characterized by oneness, and we find this
is also central in the Old Testament. The most basic text of
Judaism is Deut. 6:4, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is
one Lord." One God is the foundational doctrine of the
Bible, and that is why commandment number one deals with
the fundamental issue of oneness. God prohibits a plurality
of gods and demands singular and concentrated devotion to
Himself. No other category but oneness is acceptable. He
will tolerate nothing but that unique class of number one.
The Old Testament emphasis is on the prohibition of
polytheism. The New Testament emphasis is on the positive
concentrated devotion to the one God. Both have the same
goal, but before one can concentrate he has to get rid of his
divisive loyalties. Let's look first at the Old Testament
emphasis which-
I. PROHIBITS COMPOUND DEVOTION: It might be
hard for us to conceive in this day of growing atheism and
anti-religious attitudes, but one of man's basic problems has
always been that he is too religious. Man's tendency has
always been to believe too much rather than too little. The
result is, his religion distorts all of reality and becomes a vice
rather than a virtue. Doctor John Baillie says, "A pagan is
not a man who does not believe in and worship deity, but a
man who believes in and worships too many deities." The
pagan is too religious. He has no unity of life, but is a
shambles of disunity, tossed about by fears and uncertainty.
He is at the mercy of gods everywhere, and never knows for
sure how to placate them or gain their favor.
Paul in Rom. 1 says that one of the worst curses that ever
befell man was when God gave them up to worship their
manifold gods. As too many cooks spoil the soup, so too
many gods spoil life. When you have gods galore and even
more, your devotions are divided. There is no basis for unity
in the individual or society. Chaos reigns within and
without. Every man creates his God in his own image. Too
much religion can be more of an enemy to mans unity than
no religion.
The Jews came out of Egypt where there were many gods,
and they were headed for Canaan where there were many
gods. The only hope for Israel to become a unified nation
was to prohibit them from giving devotion to the plurality of
gods they would encounter. Even two gods is one too many,
for it divides man, and man cannot be divided in his
ultimate loyalties and be happy. Jesus said that we cannot
serve God and mammon. You will love the one and hate the
other he said. A compound ultimate devotion is a
psychological impossibility.
This is a universe and not a multiverse. The planets
revolve around a single Sun, and so it must be with man. He
cannot have a duel or plural center and be happy. He must
have a single center, a single devotion, a single God.
Oneness is the only category into which ultimate value will
fit. Science confirms monotheism by revealing the unity of
all creation. There is only one Creator of this unity, for all
is regulated by one system of law.
Now you might think that this commandment is not
relevant for our day. The choice now is not between one
God and many, but between one God and none. Atheism
and not polytheism is the great competitor for mans loyalty
today. Gods Word prohibits the jump from one to two, and
God demands that His people reduce their devotion to one
God, but the atheist wants to reduce even further and have
no God at all. Even one is one too many for them. But
atheism is really only a subtle move to get back to
polytheism. Even the atheist and unbeliever has values
which become the object of his highest devotion. For some it
is the state, or money, or pleasure, or power, or fame, but
every man has his gods, and if he does not have one, and one
only, he will have several. Oneness alone is ultimate, and if
man goes either way, ahead to two or more, or back to none,
he opens himself up to an infinite number of gods. No God
and many gods leave a man in the same boat. Atheism and
polytheism both leave men empty, for neither provides for
an ultimate loyalty. Man only rejects the one true God
because of his foolish desire for a plurality of gods, and this
is as true today as it was in the ancient world, and it leads to
the same problem of lack of unity.
Civilized men in America are polytheist and their
broadminded message is, "All gods are the true god, and
everyone is a prophet." Everyone makes his own god in his
own image. The effect of this plurality of gods demanding
devotion is the same as it has always been. There is a
breakdown in unity, a loss of standards of morality, and it is
every man for himself. There is no longer a single voice to
follow, but a host of voices calling men to go different
directions. Man's nature cannot stand this disunity,
however, and so there is a desperate effort to find a cause
that will satisfy the craving for oneness. Man needs oneness
even if he rejects the oneness of God. He searches for a
single ultimate loyalty to which he can give undivided
devotion. Conrad Aikin in Time In The Rock, expressed the
mind of those caught in the whirlpool of plurality, but
recognizing the need for a single cause to give life unity and
meaning-
We need a theme! Than let that be our theme:
That we, poor grovellers between faith and doubt,
The sun and north star lost, and compass out,
The heart's engine all but stopped, the time
Timeless in this chaos of our wills-
That we must ask a theme, something to think,
Something to say, between dawn and dark,
Something to hold to, something to love.
Man's very nature cries out for a single ultimate
loyalty--something to hold too, something to love.
The First Commandment is God's merciful attempt to
help man avoid the painful search for a way out of the
darkness and despair of a plurality of devotions, to the light
and love of a single devotion. Even with this prohibition,
however, Israel failed time and time again before she learned
the truth stated by H. G. Wells, "Until a man has found God
he begins at no beginning, and works to no end." After
much suffering for disobedience, Israel finally did forsake all
other gods, and escaped the disunity of compound devotion.
So when we come to the New Testament we see Jesus
emphasizing the positive aspect of the First Commandment
which-
II. PROMOTES CONCENTRATED DEVOTION:
Jesus said the First Commandment is that we are to love
God with all our hearts, minds, and soul. The negative
aspect of the command is its exclusiveness. It excludes all
other gods and demands that they be eliminated. Positively,
it is an inclusive commandment, for it calls not for just one
aspect of our devotion, but for all aspects of it. It demands
that the plurality of our nature be united in an undivided
concentrated devotion. Our whole nature is to be united
around the oneness of God.
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.
Concentrated devotion is the fundamental principle
necessary for all success. That is why it is the First
Commandment. If we do not start here we will get nowhere.
God knows that concentration is essential and that none will
be able to keep His law and be pleasing to Him if they do not
acquire the singleness of devotion required by this First
Commandment.
If a man cannot have a concentrated devotion to one
God, how can it be expected that he will be able to be
committed to lesser loyalties? A man who fails to obey the
First Commandment is likely to break all the rest, for they
are a unity and all depend on the first. Jesus taught that if
we love God with all of our nature the rest of the
commandments will fall into place and be fulfilled in love. A
small boy reading a well-known hymn read it wrong, but the
wrong reading was still a basic truth. He read, "take my life
and let it be concentrated Lord on thee." Emerson said,
"The one prudence in life is concentration, the one evil is
dissipation."
Vance Havner, like many others, is convinced that the
weakness of Christians today is the result of their dissipated
devotion. He writes, "there are not a few saints today who
spread themselves out too thinly. They are taken up with so
many good concerns that too many irons are in the fire.
They attack along a front so long that they never advance
anywhere. They would do more if they did less." Aaron
Crane, and efficiency expert wrote, "the mind cannot
successfully attend to two things at once, for a part of the
mind can never accomplish as much as the whole, and
divided attention always causes inefficiency in some
direction." That is why Paul said, "this one thing I do," and
not these twenty things I dabble at.
God is the greatest efficiency expert and that is why He
demands concentrated devotion. He knows that a divided
devotion creates an unstable life. A young man was
proposing to his girlfriend and he said, "I am not wealthy
like Jerome, and I don't have a yacht and convertible like
Jerome, but my darling I love you." The girl responded, "I
love you too, but tell me more about this Jerome." She had
a divided devotion, and when you offer a divided devotion
you offer a mutilated devotion, and we do not want that kind
of devotion even on the human level. How much less does
God want it? His nature demands the whole of our devotion
and so does our happiness.
During the Civil War the Southern States kept making
offers to Lincoln. They offered to give up more and more
territory if the rest would be allowed to remain independent.
Lincoln, however, met each new offer with refusal, and at a
Conference he placed his hand on a map so as to cover all
the Southern States, and gave this ultimatum, "Gentlemen,
this government must have the whole." Lincoln demanded
total unity with no exception. "A nation divided against
itself cannot stand," he said, and God says the same of the
soul. A soul divided in its loyalties cannot stand, and that it
why He demands that our devotion be concentrated on one
God--Himself.
Arthur Sweltz in New Directions From The Ten
Commandments, tells about the movie, Save The Tiger.
Jack Lemmon plays the role of a man who lived during
World War II. He accepted good and bad in life as his
parents had and their parents before them. Now he feels
lost, however, for the routine of life had been shattered. He
says, "There are not rules anymore, just referees."
Everything is relative, but relative to what? He had lost his
foundation and life becomes very insecure without a
foundation. That is why God gave man this First
Commandment. He begins his letter to His
people--exclusively yours. He does this, not only because He
is the only God, but also because the gods those men invent
rob them of the freedom they were meant to enjoy. In a
maze there are many ways to go, but only one leads to
freedom. God in this First Commandment is putting up a
sign, which says, in the maze of life this is the way to go. He
does not do it to make life limited, but just the opposite, to
prevent men from dead ends, and lead them to freedom.
Man has only two choices--he can follow the God who made
him, or follow the gods he makes. The one leads to life and
freedom, and the other to bondage and death.
This First Commandment is a law of love, for God knows
we cannot be happy in split-level living with dual or multiple
gods demanding our devotion. The law is God's
preventative love, whereas the cross is God's redeeming love.
If I say to my son,"thou shalt not go near the river," that is a
law of love given to prevent him from danger and death.
But if he defies this law of love and goes and falls in anyway
and I leap in and save him, that is redeeming love. In the
law God warns, but in the cross God rescues and redeems.
Love is the motive behind both.
The law could not redeem man anymore than my
prohibition could pull my son out of the river. God had to
give His Son to redeem us and save us from the
consequences of sin, but after being delivered, the law still
stands as a law of love to prevent further folly and falls.
After I rescue my son from the river, he still needs to heed
the command to stay away from it. The law is even more
meaningful now, for he knows the dangerous consequences
of disobedience.
So it is with the First Commandment of God. The
Christian can appreciate and experience its great value more
than ever. He can avoid the dangers and unhappiness that
comes from lack of concentrated devotion to one ultimate
and absolute God. Let us, therefore, concentrate our
devotion, and make the choice that G.A. Studdert-Kennedy
made in his poem-
All war must end in Peace. These clouds are lies.
They cannot last. The blue sky is the Truth.
For God is love. Such is my Faith, and such
My reasons for it, and I find it strong
Enough. And you? You want to argue? Well,
I can't. It is a choice. I choose the Christ.
None of us can do everything in life, but all of us can do the
most important thing in life--we can make this choice, and
by such concentrated devotion obey the First
Commandment.
5. RELAXATION COMMANDED
A young boy was visiting his uncle on a Sunday when a
new neighbor knocked at the door. When he answered it,
and learned that he wanted to borrow the lawn mower, he
conveyed the message to his uncle. The uncle said, "If he
mows his lawn on the Sabbath he'll be breaking the Ten
Commandments. So go and tell him that we have no lawn
mower."
When a man will lie and break the Ten Commandments
in order to keep someone else from breaking them, one
suspects the compelling motivation is not a humanitarian
heart, but a selfish one. Besides breaking the law of God
himself, the uncle did not prevent his neighbor from doing
so, for one does not keep the Sabbath by the mere negative
fact of lacking a lawn mower. Obedience to the fourth
commandment is a matter of one's attitude and relationship
to God. No amount of legislation and coercion can give to
men the essence of the value of the fourth commandment.
Law and force can retrain a man from doing many things,
but it cannot compel him to keep the Sabbath holy as a day
of rest and worship.
One of the perpetual problems of our nation is the
problem of the church and state in relation to the law. This
was no problem in Israel, for the church and state were one.
A crime against God, which we would call a sin, was a crime
against the state. It was an act of treason against the ruler of
the land, and, therefore, punishable as a crime.
In America a sin is not necessarily a crime. Over half of
the Ten Commandments can be broken, and it is of no
concern to the state as far as the law goes. We feel it is not
within the jurisdiction of the state to legislate on matters of
religion. The New Testament makes it clear the Pharisees
legislated the blessings of the Sabbath right out of existence,
and made it a burden. Jesus refused to be bound by man
made laws for this day. He said the Sabbath was made for
man, not man for the Sabbath. It was a gift of God for
man's benefit, and so He threw overboard the legalistic
legislation, and used the Sabbath for teaching, healing, and
doing good. They, of course, hated and despised Him for His
lawlessness. They sought to kill Him as a Sabbath breaker,
but Jesus refused to be bound by legalism.
The Puritans were also infected with this germ of
legalism, and in some ways, in spite of their greatness, and
powerful influence for good in our nation, were just like the
Pharisees in their strictness for details. Richard Brathwaite
wrote,
To Brandbury came I, O profane one!
Where I saw a Puritane one
Hanging of his cat on Monday,
For killing of a mouse on Sunday.
Whether this is fact or fiction, we have many actual laws
on record that show they meant business when it came to
keeping the Sabbath. One of the Pilgrim fathers drew up a
code of laws for the state of Massachusetts, and this was one
of them. "Whosoever shall profane the Lord's Day by doing
any unnecessary work,
by unnecessary traveling or by sports and recreation, he or
they who so transgress shall forfeit forty shillings, or be
publicly whipped; but if it shall appear to have been done
presumptuously, such person or persons shall be put to
death, or otherwise severely punished at the discretion of the
court."
If such laws were in force today, America would be a
different nation, especially on Sunday. But Christians would
be the first to protest such legislation, and they should be,
for this is not the purpose of government to legislate religious
conviction. The state has no right to impose the conviction of
any group on the rest of the citizens. We would not want the
Seventh Day Adventist conviction imposed on us, forcing us
to worship on Saturday. Nor do they want ours imposed on
them. It is true that forcing people to take a day off for rest
and worship would be good for them, but so would it be
good if they got to bed early, drank a lot of juice, and ate
lettuce, but who would want these to be matters of
legislation? To get the full value of what God intended by
this fourth commandment one must chose to obey it with a
free and committed will.
This is one of the two commandments that is stated
positively, but it also has a negative aspect which we want to
look at briefly before looking at the positive. The negative
aspect-
I. PROHIBITS PERPETUAL LABOR.
It is important that we see the limitation of what is
prohibited. Pleasure, laughter, and recreation are not
prohibited. It is the labor of life that is to halt on this day.
It is to be a day off for everyone, even the slaves, so that it is
a day of rest and happiness for all. By prohibiting work one
day in seven God made all men in the community equal in
their dignity before Him. All had the equal right to rest and
worship. All had the right to have time to develop their
souls, and maintain the health of their body. This
commandment was God's greatest gift to man in the Old
Testament, for it alone gave every man equal freedom to be
what God wanted them to be.
The Sabbath is God's testimony to, and preservation of,
the dignity of man. H. Cohen, a Jewish author, writes, "The
Sabbath became the most effective patron-saint of the
Jewish people. The ghetto Jew discarded all the toil and
trouble of his daily life when the Sabbath lamp was lit. All
insult and outrage was shaken off. The love of God, which
returned to him the Sabbath each seventh day, restored to
him also his honor and human dignity even in his lowly
hut." Another Jewish author said, "There is no Judaism
without the Sabbath." The Sabbath played a major role in
the preservation of Israel in her exile.
This gift of one day in seven free from labor was not just
for the good of the Jews, but for the good of all men. Jesus
said it was made for man, and just for Israel. The Jews
recognized this also, and Cohen writes again, "Had Judaism
brought into the world only the Sabbath, it would thereby
have proved itself to be a producer of joy and a promoter of
peace for mankind. The Sabbath was the first step on the
road which led to the abrogation of slavery." By prohibiting
perpetual labor God guaranteed that every person would be
free from the tyranny of materialism, and free to give a
portion of his life to develop his eternal soul, and the higher
faculties of manhood.
Life has changed a great deal from Biblical days, and we
do not put in the hours of toil to earn a living as men use to,
but the fact remains, we can still be so busy,
even if we only work five days a week, that we are slaves to
the flesh, and servants of the tyrant of materialism. We are
not to worry about the letter of the law, for life is too
different for that to have meaning today, but the spirit of the
prohibition of perpetual labor is still relevant and essential
for the Christian life. It is wrong to be so busy that our
physical health and spiritual life is neglected. God demands
that we take time off from the business of making a living in
order to live. An old Negro spiritual captures the idea.
Slow me down, Lawd, I'se agoin too fast,
I can't see my brother when he's walkin past,
I miss a lot of good things day by day,
I don't know a blessing when it comes my way.
We must slow down and obey this negative aspect of the
commandment which prohibits perpetual labor if we ever
hope to gain the benefits of the positive aspect which we
want to consider next, and which,
II. PROMOTES PROFITABLE LEISURE.
You will notice that nothing is said about worship. That
comes in as a logical consequence, but the essence of the
command is for relaxation. To keep it holy does not mean to
worship. It means to keep it separate and distinct, and
different. It means to keep it a day dedicated to God. This
includes worship, but all the emphasis is on rest. You might
think that all this fuss about relaxation is majoring on a
minor. Why should one of the Ten Commandments, and the
longest one at that, be a command to relax?
God made us, and He happens to know what is essential
to the well being of our body, mind, and spirit. Many tests
have been taken that prove relaxation must balance out
exertion if one is going to have a healthy life. Man's whole
system rebels against continuous monotony and endless
repetition-what we call being in a rut. God built the need
for diversity and variety into our very being. Then He gave
the gift of the Sabbath that we might satisfy that need.
Neglect of this leads to the inability to relax, and the result is
we become irritable and depressed. A problem that could be
handled with ease ordinarily becomes a major calamity
when we are exhausted. We become sarcastic and
pessimistic about life. Women easily cry, and men easily lose
their temper, and if you could add up all the sorrow that
comes to life due to lack of relaxation, you would realize the
importance of this fourth commandment to all of society.
Man needs a day of rest from toil and release from
tension. He needs a day on which he can renounce the
temporal and be receptive to the eternal. An English doctor,
George Newman said, "Most people stand in greater need of
rest than of movement. There is an excess of noise, clatter
and meaningless activities." Thousands of quotes from
authorities in many fields demonstrate, beyond a shadow of
a doubt, that one day of rest in seven is a must for those who
are interested in good health. God is concerned about our
bodies. Jesus spent a good many of His Sabbaths healing the
bodies of people. We should be concerned also, and practice
God's prescription for good health.
A day of rest is not only essential for the body but for the
mind as well. Doctor Crichton Browne said, "We doctors
are now constantly compelled in the treatment of nervous
diseases to prescribe periods of absolute rest and complete
seclusion. Some periods are, I think, only Sundays in
arrears." If we do not take periodic rest, or if we do not
grant God one day in seven on the installment plan, we may
have to pay it all in one lump sum by enforced rest through
illness. For example, the people of Israel spent four hundred
and ninety years in the promise land and neglected to obey
God's law of letting the land rest one in seven years. They
let seventy Sabbath years pass by unheeded, but they only
hurt themselves, and gained God's judgment, for they were
carried away into captivity for seventy years, and the land
got its seventy Sabbath years of rest. II Chron. 36:20-21
says, "He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped
the sword......To fulfill the Word of Lord by the mouth of
Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed it's Sabbaths. All the
days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy
years.
God takes the need for relaxation very seriously.
Everything needs rest, even land and animals. It is just a
basic principle of life, and not to obey God's command to
relax is to try and defy the laws that govern both physical
and spiritual reality. The only alternative to obedience is to
suffer the consequences. A Jewish author said, "This is the
meaning of the Jewish Sabbath, to give to man peaceful
hours, hours completely diverted from every day life,
seclusion from the world in the midst of the world."
This is essential for us as Christians. We can never be
in the world but not of the world if we never find seclusion
from the world. Vance Havner wrote, "It is high time we
learn that in this nerve-wrecking maddening modern rush,
we have let the spirit of the times rob us utterly of mediation,
devotion, and rest. There is no depth to us. A lot of our
Christian life and work is frothy, superficial, and thin.
We are growing mushrooms, not oaks. We spread ourselves
too thinly, striking everywhere and hitting hard nowhere.
We Christians often lead dissipated lives, squandering our
energies in a multitude of good things but becoming so
exhausted that none of it counts for much."
The Jews used one day in seven to develop their mind
and soul. It was their chance to read and grow in wisdom.
It was a day to let their spirit catch up with their bodies that
they might be whole men again. You would not find them
wasting the day in idleness. Philo, " Moses did not give the
name of rest to mere inactivity."
They were active, but in away that added variety to life, and
gave their inner man a chance for expression. Modern man
still has not learned what the Jews had to learn the hard
way. The result is increasing heart attacks, mental illness,
and ignorance of the Word of God. Body, mind, and spirit
all suffer where the fourth commandment is not obeyed.
Lord Dawson in a lecture on Some Varieties of Headache
said, "So often the day of rest sees the same strenuousness
and feverish activity as the day of work. It is relaxation that
is needed and its ark requires study."
One of the reasons Christians often have serious mental,
physical, and spiritual problems is due to the angelic fallacy,
as Dr. Bob Smith called it. It is the false idea that we are
angels rather then men, and that we do not have to obey the
laws of God concerning the limits of the human body. No
matter how spiritual you are, if you push yourself and do not
get adequate rest, you will be an irritable person. You will
not need a den in your house, for you will growl in every
room. You will be hard to live with, and a poor testimony
for the Lord. You will let Satan trick you with the angelic
fallacy. This is the very trick he tried on Jesus. He told
Jesus to jump off the temple and God would save Him.
Jesus knew that was tempting God for He had to live by the
laws of the flesh, and walk down the stairs like everyone else.
Satan says to us that we do not need to waste time in
relaxation, and when we listen and obey him we miss the
benefits of God's plan of relaxation.
The guy who says the devil never takes a vacation and so
why should I, is not being super spiritual, for that is the
angelic fallacy. Satan doesn't need a vacation, but we do, for
we have the limitations of flesh. If we do not obey the
limitations we suffer the consequences. Dr. David H. Fink in
Release From Nervous Tension says that the first step to help
is learning the technique of relaxation. Man is the only
creature that finds it so hard to relax that God had to make
it a command.
Worship goes hand in hand with relaxation, for it takes
us into a different world where we escape the tensions and
pressures of time. Worship has physical and mental, as well
as spiritual values. It aids the body in relaxing. William
James, the dean of American psychologists wrote and essay
on the Gospel Of Relaxation. He pointed out the folly of
men in trying to solve all life's problems by mental and
physical labor when the answer to many of them is found in
rest. He wrote, "The way to success, as vouched for by
innumerable authentic personal narratives, is
by...surrender...passivity, not activity--relaxation, not
intentness, should now be the rule." Studies show that
nearly all the discoveries in research laboratories come as
hunches during a period of relaxation.
It is a great paradox, but we will never get as far as God
wants us to go unless we stop. Standing still is the key to
moving forward. Those pioneers who traveled across the
country without a let up saw their animals and wagons
break down from over use, but those who took a day off to
rest, in obedience to the fourth commandment, were able to
press on and reach their goal. God's law applies to us today,
and either we learn to relax, or we will pay the penalty.
Rest is one of God's greatest gifts. Salvation is a form of
rest. Jesus said, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest." You don't have to
labor and work your way into favor with God. You need
only to surrender to Christ and rest on His finished work.
The peace and security of salvation is found in rest and not
labor. Just as the peace of sleep does not come by clinging to
the bed, but by surrender and relaxation upon the bed, so
salvation does not come by our striving, but by trust in
Christ and resting upon His promise. The Sabbath is a
symbol of our faith and rest in Christ. Obedience to this
fourth commandment is our way of saying we trust in Christ
and rest on Him, and not in our own labor.
6. IMAGINATION COMMANDED
Back in the 60's eight wrestlers took their own lives because
world champion 37 year old Gohlam-Rexa committed
suicide. Three of them left notes saying they could not stand
the death of their idol. Almost every time a well-known
person takes their own life some of their worshipers do the
same. Idolatry is alive and well in our world today. We are
deceived if we think idolatry is not a modern problem. It is
one of the most common sins of our day.
So often we connect sin with sex, as if sex was the major
area of human sin, but in the Ten Commandments that is
number 7 on the list while idolatry is number 2. From God's
perspective idolatry is a greater danger than immorality
because idolatry is the cause for immorality. Men would not
be so immoral if they did not idolize sex.
When man takes a real but relative value, and makes it
absolute, he perverts it. That is why idolatry is mans
greatest problem, for by it he ruins, destroys, and perverts
all of the good things of life. By absolutizing the relative, or
by putting the good in place of the best, man distorts reality
and lives a life out of balance with the laws of God. True
faith is faith in the truly ultimate--it is faith in God.
Idolatrous faith is a putting of ones trust in some finite
reality which has been raised to the level of the ultimate.
If sex, science, the state, society, or superstars are made
the ultimate values in our lives, they become idols. The
result will be we will take these valid values and turn them
into monsters of evil, for nothing can be God but God
without leading men into one kind of hell or another.
There has been some progress in the history of idolatry.
Modern man is not quite so conspicuous about it. He no
longer bows before idols of wood and stone. He has become
far cleverer in disguising his worship. The poet reveals one
area of this higher level idolatry.
The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone.
The Christian in his wisdom
Bows down to gold alone.
Man has become more sophisticated in his folly. His
idolatry is on a level that sometimes is almost noble. The old
gods have been destroyed and their temples burned.
Centuries ago, Edwin, the ruler of Northumbria in Britain,
accepted Christ and called for an uprising against the useless
gods in the temple. The high priest galloped towards the
temple in the sight of all the people, and he hurled a lance
into the interior where the idols were. When this sacrilege
remained unpunished, the people at the command of this
daring challenger of the gods proceeded to overthrow and
burn the temple. These days of the glorious overthrow of
visible idols are over, but the battle against idolatry
continues in full force.
Erich Fromm, a social scientist, in his book, The Sane
Society, writes, "Is it not time to cease to argue about God,
and instead to unite in the unmasking of contemporary
forms of idolatry? Today it is not Baal and Astarte but the
deification of the state and of power in authoritarian
countries and the deification of the machine and of success
in our own culture."
William Jennings Bryan pointed out long ago that some
forms of idolatry are on such a high level that they produce
good, and that is why we are blind to their dangers. The
man whose god is gold is often very industrious, zealous, and
clever, and we praise him for these qualities which lead him
to his success in his idolatry. The man who worships fame
and does his best to attain it may do much good for the state
and community. Therefore, we respect his form of idolatry.
We are impressed with any form of idolatry that succeeds,
and so we tend to idolize success. As we study this
command, therefore, we must recognize it is Gods Word for
us today and not just a record of His Word to others of the
past.
Like the First Commandment, this one has a negative and
a positive side to it. And, again, the Old Testament
emphasis is on the negative, whereas, Jesus emphasized the
positive. The negative must come first, however, for as we
said on the First Commandment, all other gods must be
eliminated before concentrated dovotion can be given to the
one true God. So also, sensual idolatrous worship must be
eliminated before man can worship God truly in spirit and
in truth. Let's consider the negative first which-
I. PROHIBITS IDOLATROUS OR SENSUAL WORSHIP.
Idolatry is basically the worship of the visible and,
therefore, God prohibits any image of any likeness of
anything in heaven, earth, or sea to be an aid in worship, for
the aid tends to become an object of worship.
It is important that we recognize that true worship is
what is being protected by this Second Commandment. The
First Commandment was to eliminate worship of all false
gods, and the Second is to eliminate all false forms of
worship of the true God. In other words, it would be
possible to be monotheist, and obey the First Commandment
by having no other gods but Jehovah, and yet be an idolater
by worshipping Jehovah in the form of some idol. This is
exactly what happened while Moses was receiving the Ten
Commandments. The people in their craving for a visible
god melted all their gold and made a golden calf to represent
Jehovah. Aaron proclaimed a feast to the Lord, and they
worshiped and sacrificed to the golden calf as the god who
brought them out of the land of Egypt. It was a symbol of
the true God, but this is what is being forbidden by this
Commandment, for it reduces God to the level of a visible
thing.
This same thing happened when Jeroboam divided the
kingdom and established a new worship in Israel. He did it
so the people would not have to go into the southern
kingdom of Judah to worship at Jerusalem. He was not
advocating the worship of other gods and breaking the First
Commandment. He was breaking the Second
Commandment by setting up idols to represent the true
God. In I Kings 12:28 we read, "So the king took counsel,
and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, you
have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods,
O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt."
Idolatry, we see, can be either a visible substitute for the
invisible God, or a visible representation of Him who is
unseen. In either case idolatry is involved only when worship
or service is an issue. You are not to bow down or serve them
is stressed over and over in the Old Testament. Lev. 26:1
says, "Ye shall make no graven image, neither shall ye set up
any image of stone to bow down to it." Deut. 16:22 says,
"Neither shalt thou set up any image which the Lord Thy
God hateth." Ps.97:7 says, "Confounded be all they that
serve graven images."
Even if the image represents your idea of the true God, it
is wrong and folly to worship it, for God can only be
dishonored by such an image. It is absurd to bow to what
represents God when the One it represents is ever present.
No mate would be pleased if they were ignored while great
respect is given to their picture. Thomas Watson, the old
Puritan, has a delightful rebuke to those who defend idols
because they remind them of God. He says this is as if a
woman should say she keeps company with another man to
put her in mind of her husband. There is no way to justify
any use whatever of any representation of God. It took Israel
a long time to learn this. Watson wrote, "If you search
through the whole Bible, there is not one sin that God has
more followed with plague than idolatry. The Jews have a
saying, that in every evil that befalls them, there is an ounce
of the golden calf in it." God is a jealous God, and He will no
more tolerate an idol than any man would tolerate his wife
keeping the picture of a lover on their bedroom dresser. God
demands loyalty of His bride, and this means no competition
with visible images of any kind.
If you apply this Second Commandment to all contexts,
regardless of their relationship to worship, you have the
extreme position the Jews finally came to, as well as the
Mohammedans and some Christians. Art and sculpture were
forbidden entirely. There have been great musical geniuses
like Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn, but who ever
heard of a great Jewish artist or sculptor? Their temples are
without any paintings or statues. Some Christians have even
refused to have their pictures taken because it produces an
image. This extreme position has no support in Scripture. It
is, in fact, an idolatrous exaltation of the Second
Commandment to a level above the Word of God. A Jewish
saying goes, "The Torah warns us not to make idols of God's
commandments." This is what the extreme view of the
Second Commandment does. It makes an idol of the
command against idols.
God in this commandment prohibited sensual worship,
but He did not prohibit art or sculpture. All of the statures
of famous people in capitol buildings and parks are not idols,
for they are not objects of worship. If people bowed to them
and worshiped them they would be, but this is not likely a
problem. Images are not idols unless they are connected with
worship and service. God commanded that two images of
Cherubim be set up to overshadow the mercy seat in the
Holy of Holies. He also commanded the image of the serpent
to be set up on a pole so that people could look at it and be
cured when they were bitten. It just so happened that this
image did become an idol to people and it had to be
destroyed, but it was a legitimate image authorized by God.
People can take what is not an idol and make it one. They
can worship any picture or any statue, but this does not
make them a violation of the Second Commandment in
themselves. They can be just as legitimate as the serpent God
commanded be set up for good, but people can abuse the
good and make it evil. Until they do so, however, the good is
still good. The creative arts are to be enjoyed. God used
creative men to make His temple filled with beautiful images
on the walls. He is not opposed to creating beauty in things.
He is only opposed to images being used to represent Him,
and thus used as objects of worship. The reason for this will
be clear as we consider the positive side of the
commandment which-
II. PROMOTES IMAGINATIVE OR SPIRITUAL
WORSHIP.
Jesus gave us the positive side when He said, "God is
spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in
spirit and in truth." God cannot be reduced to an object.
True worship depends upon the imagination, for where
anything visible is an object of worship, even if it represents
the true God, it is idolatry. One of the reasons there is no
authentic picture of Christ is, no doubt, the danger of
idolatry. And if we had even one sliver of the real cross of
Christ it would be held in reverence and be considered
priceless, when in reality it would have no more value than a
broken matchstick. Man has this tendency to reverence
things, however, and to give to them the devotion due to
God alone. The Second Commandment is given to protect
man from this tendency, and lead him to a high spiritual
concept of God.
God is Spirit and He does not want sensual worship. He
wants spiritual worship. Jesus said we are to love God with
all our minds and souls, and this calls for a committed
imagination. Imagination is essential to effective Christian
worship. Leslie Weatherhead wrote, "The imagination, we
must remember, is not only a faculty by which we may
conjure up something that has no existence in reality, but by
which we may apprehend a reality which cannot be seen. If
it is scientific to use the faculty of sight to make sure of the
presence of a visible person, why is it unscientific to use the
faculty of imagination to realize a unseen presence?"
If you ask what imagination is you enter a vast field of
investigation. Alex Osborn said, "It is a tough question
because that word is wider than a three ring circus tent and
covers wild beasts as well as tame." It has over 50
synonyms. Like so many things that are hard to define and
talk about, we know about the imagination by experience.
We have this faculty in us. Someone said that a bee stinger
is only three tenths of an inch long--the other two inches is
imagination. Imagination is that faculty that has been called
the eye of the soul. In itself it is no more virtuous or skillful
than the physical eye of the body. It too must be developed
and trained or it can be very faulty. But this is the faculty
which is to supply the images for the worship of God rather
than the eye of the body.
If you object that mental images can be as faulty as metal
ones, you are right. But the mental image is fluid, and can
be changed by increased knowledge and maturity of
understanding. A physical image is fixed and tends to hold
back growth in our understanding of God. The image
degrades God and limits God to the sensual, whereas, the
imagination is a wide-open field for advancement allowing
man to penetrate deeper and deeper into the unseen realm o
spirit and truth.
The Second Commandment was given to help man escape
the bondage of the flesh, and to rise to the high level of
spiritual fellowship. God often cannot get through to men at
all because of their dead imagination. They are slaves of the
invisible, and have no capacity to see the vision of spiritual
values. Jesus said that we must become as little children to
enter the kingdom of heaven, and certainly one of factors
involved here is the imagination. Children are open to the
world of spirit. Reality is not shut up to the physical and
visible for them. Macaulay said, "He who, in an enlightened
and literary society, aspires to be a great poet must first
become a little child." He is only echoing Christ, and is
adding his testimony to the evidence that says man can
never rise to the highest level of his nature if he loses his
childlike imagination. God wants man to worship Him on
this highest spiritual level where his imagination plays a
major role.
Napoleon said, "Imagination rules the world." Arthur
Brisbane wrote, "Like color and perfume in a flower, the
fruit of a tree, imagination is the highest, noblest attribute of
a human being. It is the quality that sees truths by intuition,
that carries the mind flying through space, the forerunner of
all useful, material achievements of human beings." If
imagination is essential for material progress, how much
more is it essential for the advancement of the spirit?
The materialist likes to think he deals only with the facts,
as if imagination, hope, thought, and prayer were not as
much facts as bricks and bones and sticks and stones.
Imagination is one of the greatest facts, for it allows man to
reach out beyond his five senses into the supersensual realm.
When men refuse to use this faculty for worship, and instead
bring God down to the level that can be grasped by their
senses, they break the Second Commandment.
All arguments, therefore, that seek to justify the use of
images because they make it easier to worship are arguments
in defense of the very thing that is forbidden. No doubt,
there are impressive statues that could stimulate awe, but
they would then become the objects of adoration and detract
from our adoration of God. Ernest Thompson wrote,
"History has shown that the use of any material symbol in
worship is attended by two dangers. The first is that men lift
the symbol up to the level of God; the second that they drag
God down to the level of the symbol." A visual image soon
becomes an end rather than a means. There is a subtle shift
from faith to sight. If you must see anything to feel you have
worshipped God you are in danger of the most subtle kind of
idolatry.
True worship comes from within, and is dependent upon
a sanctified imagination. The Second Commandment is a
call to forsake the dependence upon the sensual and climb to
the higher level of spiritual worship. If you reduce God to a
material image you reduce Him to time and space and have
a man made god, not the God of Scripture. A material
image of God locks Him into a static unchanging form and
reduces the infinite to the finite. The essence of this Second
Commandment is that God if infinite and it not to be locked
into any finite form. He must be worshiped in spirit and in
truth so that He can keep on growing in our minds as we
gain more light about His nature. We are never to limit His
unlimited nature, but be ever open to grow in our awareness
of who God is. That is why imagination is essential to
authentic worship, and why it is commanded.
7. SANCTIFICATION COMMANDED
During the Civil War one company of soldiers adopted a
rule that every man who swore would be required to read
aloud a chapter from the Bible. While that rule was in force
one private read all of Genesis and Exodus and was starting
on Leviticus. The one recording the experience said he had
a fine prospect of finishing the Old Testament before his
three months enlistment was up. If ever there was a good
thing done for a bad reason, this was it. I suspect that the
Bible societies could scarcely meet the demand if this rule
was in force today. Swearing and using the name of God
and Christ in vain are so common today that it is hardly
even shocking anymore.
Swearomaniacs are allowed to run loose everywhere in
our society filling the air with pollution as dangerous to the
soul as carbon monoxide to the body. Profanity is one of our
greatest air pollution problems. It is highly contagious, and
young people grow up becoming infected with it almost
unconsciously. When I was a chaplain at a county jail I
asked the men to think about why they swear so much.
Every one of them agreed, they picked it up as children from
their parents.
Modern novels and films spew the poisonous germs of
profanity into the stream of our consciousness at a
frightening rate. If somebody is not swearing somewhere in
a movie it is supposedly unrealistic. As a matter of fact, it is
unrealistic to portray the lives of typical people without
profanity. Anyone who works among the public is aware of
the impure vocabulary of modern man, and regrettably,
modern women also. It use to be in poor taste to swear in
the presence of a lady, but now days she is liable to beat you
to it.
Young people are exposed to profanity from every angle.
And English teacher assigned a composition to be written
containing 250 words. The next day one boy stood up to
read his, and said, "My uncle was driving his new car one
day and he had a puncture. The other 236 words are not fit
for publication." It is not likely that the teacher would let
him get by with this, but it is also true that God will not let
the uncle get by with his profanity. The Third
Commandment has a concluding statement that says, "For
the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in
vain." We are not dealing here with a trivial matter, but one
that is extremely important from God's point of view. The
Third Commandment has to be taken seriously in our day,
for it is as far from being obsolete as sunshine and oxygen in
this dark and polluted world.
The implications and applications are two numerous to
cover in one message, and so we will be limiting ourselves to
a practical explanation of what is involved. Like the
previous commandments, this one is in a negative form, but
we will see Jesus give it a positive side. Let's consider first
the negative emphasis which-
I. PROHIBITS PROFANITY OF SPEECH.
You will notice that out of ten commandments two of
them deal with sins of the tongue--this one, and the ninth,
concerning false witness. Here it is our tongue in
relationship to God, and in the ninth, it is our tongue in
relationship to man.
The first thing we need to see concerning taking the
name of God in vain is that it is a serious sin. The tendency
is to think that after all, this is a minor matter in a world
plagued by war and crime and immorality. This attitude
reveals the degree of our deception and the superficial
nature of our understanding concerning the cause of mans
depravities.
People often swear and say they mean nothing by it.
They think that eliminates them from danger, but that is the
very thing that is forbidden. To use Gods name in vain
means to use it in an empty and meaningless way. If you
mean nothing by it, you confess you have used it in vain.
We ought never to use the holy name of God except when we
mean something by it, and something worthy to be identified
with His great name. What is more empty and worthless
than men constantly asking God to damn someone or
something? Does anyone really think that God will follow
through? All they do by this empty use of God's name is
heap to themselves damnation. The person who uses God's
name in vain is saying that God is an empty meaningless
word.
All other sins are by-products of the loss of respect and
reverence for God. Once a man loses the sense of the holy
and the sacred he has broken down the only restraint that
can keep him from following his fallen nature to its logical
conclusion. If a man uses Gods name in vain, and curses
with the holy name of Christ, you can count on it that he will
also lie, steal, cheat, and do any evil he feels necessary to
accomplish his end. Nothing is sacred to a man who does
not even hold the name of God to be sacred.
God forbids in the Second Commandment that any image
be used to represent Him. God makes himself known
through His names, which reveal His power, holiness, and
purpose. To use His name in vain is a sign of contempt for
Him and His plan of salvation. Let us no longer think of
profanity as a mere minor matter, a mere social blunder, an
embarrassment. Profanity is a serious sin that leads to every
other sin by causing the swearer to lose respect for what is
right and holy. The Jews said, "Be careful, remember that
the whole world trembled when God gave the Third
Commandment." The seriousness becomes clearer if we
consider a parallel on the earthly level.
Why does the law of the land prohibit disrespect for the
flag of the United States? Is it not due to the fact that once
you permit the highest symbol of the land and its heritage to
be treated with disrespect, you open the door to every form
of disloyalty? If a man despises and treats lightly the highest
symbol of our country, then there is no end to the extent he
will go in defiance. God's name is the highest symbol of His
Person, and to use it profanely is to be guilty of an evil worse
than wiping your feet on the Stars and Stripes. Yet, we hear
it done daily without shock, offense, or rebuke. A man who
uses the name of God in vain does as much to undermine the
foundation of our freedom as a nation under God as the man
who burns the flag.
Arnold Toynbee, possibly the greatest historian of our
age, wrote, "Of the 22 civilizations that appeared in history,
nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral
state the United States is now in." One of the most patriotic
things American Christians can do is to make it known to
those who blindly desecrate the name of God the seriousness
of this thoughtless habit to there own souls and the future of
our land. If ever there was a Biblical truth with serious
political implications, it is this Third Commandment. People
who would never dream of spitting on the flag show the
same contempt toward the name of God. Calling their
attention to the folly of this could save them from being their
own worse enemy.
Profanity is not only a serious sin, it is a senseless sin.
Some sins against the laws of God bring a temporary gain or
satisfaction, but swearing is useless. It is all the more
offensive and damnable just because it is a sin without
temptation. All other sins appeal to some desire and lust
within us, but using God's name in vain is to be a rebel
without a cause. It is pure foolishness.
On record in the U.S. War Department is the following
general order issued by George Washington in New York,
July 1776.
“The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish
and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a vice
heretofore little known in an American army, is growing
into fashion. He hopes the officers will by example as well
as influence, endeavor to check it, and that both they and
the men reflect, that we can have little hope of the blessing
of Heaven on our arms, if we insult it by our impiety and
folly. Added to this, it is a vice so mean and low, without
any temptation, that every man of sense and character
detests and despises it.”
General George Washington
In this order Washington states the two points we are
considering. He says it is both serious and senseless. Robert
Kahn, a Jewish Rabbi, points out the senselessness of
profanity by describing some poor benighted souls he knows
who are so bankrupt in vocabulary that they must describe
everything by the same word. He writes, "If they wish to tell
you how fast a car was going, they say it went as fast as hell,
or if they are trying to describe how slow the car in front of
them is going, they say it was going as slow as hell.
Something as wide as hell, narrow as hell, tall as hell, short
as hell, hot as hell, cold as hell, rich as hell, poor as hell, old
as hell, young as hell. Now tell me, he concluded, isn't that
dumb as anything?" Such thoughtless profanity is
intellectual insanity.
Saying "hell" is not directly taking God's name in vain,
but it does so indirectly as does all such foolish speaking, for
it brings disrepute upon the name of God when spoken by
one professing faith in God. The New Testament says we
will have to give an account for all foolish language, and it
says that by our words we shall be justified and by our
words we shall be condemned.
The negative prohibition is for the sake of the positive
goal of a sanctified life in all areas. The most crucial area is
the area of speech, for if a man can conquer his tongue and
use it for the glory of God, the rest of his nature will also
submit. In James 3:2 we read, "If any man offend not in
word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the
whole body." Speech, therefore, is the key test of a man's
character. If it is profane, foolish, and offensive to both God
and man, you know his life and relationship to God is also a
mess. This means that the sanctified life is one where the
tongue is a servant of righteousness and a blessing to God
and man. Thus, we see the positive aspect of this command
which-
II. PROMOTES PURITY OF SPEECH:
When we go to the New Testament for the positive, it
does not mean that the Old Testament does not contain the
positive, for it does. It is an obvious conclusion to come to
that if you are not to take God's name in vain; you are to
take it reverently. In Lev. 22:32, we find the negative and
positive clearly stated together. "And you shall not profane
my holy name, but I will be hallowed among the people of
Israel." It is there in the Old Testament, but in a remote
place. Jesus, however, puts it in a conspicuous place for all
to see by making the first petition of the Lord's
Prayer--"Hallowed by Thy name."
The Christian does not fulfill the Third Commandment
by a mere negative refraining from swearing. We must
fulfill the positive goal of hallowing the name of God by
using it in a reverent, holy and fruitful manner. Silence is
not the goal, but purity of speech, which is backed up with
purity of life. The Third Commandment amounts then to a
commandment of sanctification.
The Jews finally came to see the implication of this
commandment for all of life. The Jewish Talmud says, "If
any act, though permitted by law, may provoke the
defamation of Israel and of God, then, in spite of its abstract
legality, it becomes a great sin and crime." Unfortunately
they did not always practice what they knew, and Paul tells
us the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles
because of the Jews. They honored God with their lips, but
profaned His name by their lives. Purity of speech is itself
profanity if one's life makes mockery of the words. All the
pious talk in the world is a taking of God's name in vain if
the tongue does not truly express our hearts and our walk.
Leighton, in expounding on the phrase hallowed be Thy
name says, "This is the most effectual sanctifying of His
name by way of declaring it holy, when His people walk in
holiness. Though you tell the world that He is holy, they
know Him not; they can neither see Him nor His holiness,
but when they see that there are men, taken out of the same
lump of polluted nature with themselves, and yet, so renewed
and changed that they hate the defilement of the world, and
do indeed live holy lives in the midst of a perverse
generation; this may convince them that there is a brighter
spring of holiness, where it is in fullness, from which these
drops are that they perceive in men; for seeing that it is not
in nature there must be another principle of it, and that can
be no other than the holy God. Thus is His name hallowed,
and He known to be holy by the holiness of His people."
This means that the Third Commandment, when fully
obeyed, leads to the sanctification of all of life. Our speech is
to be a true expression of a life being lived for the glory of
God's name. It means that we must speak the truth and
avoid all lies, slander, and false witness. Our honestly must
be obvious, and men ought to trust our word without oaths.
As Jesus said, "Let your yea be yea and your nay, nay." Yes
or no ought to be sufficient for one who honors the name of
God.
Oaths are involved here. If you use the name of God to
confirm some statement, or swear it is the truth in Gods
name, and your doing it to deceive, you drag His name down
to the level of evil. Anyway in which we identify the name of
God with what is less than righteous is taking His name in
vain. In the Old Testament if a man let another keep his ox
when he went on a journey, and the ox was stolen or ran
away, when the owner returned the man who kept the ox
could only swear by the name of God than he did not steal it
himself. There are no witnesses and no evidence if he if
lying, and so no judge can find him guilty. But the point is,
God will not hold him guiltless for taking His name in vain,
and using His name to cover evil. You can fool man and
outwit justice, but be sure your sin will find you out. God
will not be outwitted and you will pay for your misdeeds.
The Second Commandment forbids the linking of God to
any fixed image. This Third Commandment forbids that we
link His name with any idea that is unworthy of His nature.
Many who would never dream of reducing God to an idol
will reduce Him to a curse word, which is equally vile. We
double any sin that we do if we link the name of God with it.
If we are prejudiced, that is a sin. If we say we are
prejudiced because God wills it or it is God's plan, thus
seeking to justify our sin by linking with the name of God,
we sin doubly, and double will be our condemnation.
If you take a man's name and put it on a plaque in
Westminister Abbey, or some hall of fame, you bring honor
to that person by what you do with his name. If you write it
on the gutter or in some disgraceful place, you show
contempt for the person who bears the name. If a business
can get the name of their product honored among the
purchasing public they can get rich. If their products name
gets a bad reputation they can go broke. So much depends
upon a name. That is why one Commandment out of ten is
so concerned about the name of God. If Satan can get a
person to show disrespect for the name of God he has
accomplished a major step in his strategy for leading that
person to damnation. On the other hand, if we can bring
men to respect the name of God and honor the name of
Jesus, we are well on the way to leading them into a saving
relationship to Christ.
The Catholic Church once had an organization called The
Holy Name Society. The had five rules that governed them.
They were, 1. To labor as individuals for the glory of God's
name, and to make it known to those who are ignorant of it.
2. Never to pronounce disrespectfully the name of Jesus. 3.
To avoid blasphemy, perjury, profane and indecent
language. 4. To induce neighbors to refrain from all insults
against God, and from profane and unbecoming language.
5. To remonstrate with those who use profane language or
blaspheme in their presence.
Every Christian should be a member of such a society,
whether formally organized or not, for it's goal is a
fulfillment of the Third Commandment. The implications of
this commandment covers the whole of the believers life.
The Jews were led to make this unforgivable sin in Judaism.
A life of disobedience to the Third Commandment was
equivalent to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. The point is,
profanity is no trivial matter. For the glory of God, for the
salvation of souls, and for the good of our nation, we need to
respond to this call to sanctification and purity of speech and
in all ways honor the name of God.
8. PRESERVATION OF MARRIAGE COMMANDED
Actor Eli Wallach figured that his son who was
approaching his teens was sharp enough to grasp some basic
facts of life. So he called him in, and gave him the
time-honored story about the birds and the bees. When he
was all finished the boy said, "You know in a rudimentary
fashion, the process you've described isn't too dissimilar to
human reproduction."
Parents are often naive about the sex knowledge of their
children. They pretend that in a nation where teenage girls
get pregnant by the millions, and where sex promotion oozes
out of every pore of society, and where its rays flood every
realm of life with its omnipresent radiation, that they still
walk in the dark concerning the mechanics of sex. It is time
that we wake up to the fact that we have been living in the
midst of a sex revolution. Pitiram Sorokin, the great
Harvard sociologist, says of this revolution: "It is changes
the lives of men and women more radically than any other
revolution of our time."
This revolution is just as serious as political and economic
revolution, but it goes almost unnoticed because it is so
private. Sorokin writes, "Devoid of noisy public explosion,
its stormy scenes are confined to the privacy of the bedroom
and involves only individuals. Unmarked by dramatic
events on a large scale, it is free from civil war, class struggle,
and blood shed. It has no revolutionary army to fight its
enemies. It does not try to overthrow governments. It has
no great leader; no hero plans it, and no politician directs it.
Without plan or organization it is carried on by millions of
individuals, each acting on his own."
Time does not permit the examination of all the evidence
of the decay of the American culture. But let me give you
one example. During the early period of Greek and Roman
culture the figures of their deities and heroes, and especially
of women, were completely draped from head to foot. In the
decadent stages of their culture these same figures appeared
nude, designed to stimulate the sex drive. The same pattern
was followed in music, the stage, and literature, until sex
dominated the culture, and brought them to ruin. It is the
same old story over and over. Sex is a beautiful servant, but
a beastly master. Yet in spite of all the history of man's folly
and its consequences in relation to sex, the American people
are traveling that same road. It is true, "All men ever learn
from history is that men never learn from history."
The seventh commandment is not just relevant; it is
essential for the very survival for our culture. As important
as it is, however, the church has not given it an adequate
place in its teaching. D. L. Moody said, "I would to God I
could pass over this commandment, but I feel the time has
come to cry aloud and spare not." Most preachers feel like
Moody, but the difference is most do pass over it. I read 36
different preachers, scholars, and professors, on this
commandment. All but a handful beat around the bush and
just preached a gentle sermon on marriage and family life.
To deal with it realistically you must be frank almost to the
point of embarrassment.
There are those who feel you should not preach on the
seventh commandment at all for fear of giving people ideas.
These objectors know the power of sex, and know that a
sermon on adultery could tempt the listeners to the very act
that is condemned. I have read sermons describing David's
affair with Bathsheba, and wondered if the authors purpose
was to stir up jealously in the reader that he was not David,
rather than pity for David that he was a victim of
uncontrolled sex.
The objectors have a point, but it is dulled by the fact
that the Bible itself is not shy on the subject of sex. It is so
frank and specific in parts that it stimulates the same
emotions as a sex novel or seductive film. There is no point
in trying to pretend sex is an incidental and insignificant
part of life. It is a major and powerful force in the life of
every healthy human being. It is the area of the greatest
temptation to sin. R. H. Charles writes, "Other sins, such as
theft, arson, perjury, murder, make no appeal to the normal
healthy mind. You may read countless tales of such crimes
in the daily press and not be tempted in the lease to become
a theft, or incendiary, a perjurer, or a murderer, because in
healthy minds the desire to leading to such crimes are
absent, and the tales of such crimes create only abhorrence.
But it is otherwise in regard to the sins of the flesh. Every
healthy human being is influenced, and rightly influenced,
by the attraction of sex."
This being the case, as we all recognize, we must follow
the advice of McAfee who said, "One must plead for a pure
heart even when there is danger that the very plea will stir
up impure depths." Our primary concern is not to give a
lecture on sex education, but to stress the Biblical attitude
toward sex. The attitude we have and convey to others,
especially to our children, is more important than biological
information. Even the Kinsey report concluded that
imparting all the facts about sex to people does not in itself
determine how they will act in the use of sex. It says that
attitude alone determines patterns of behavior. The parents,
by their attitudes, are the real determiners of the sex
behavior of their youth.
You may never sit down and explain sex to your child,
but you are teaching attitudes all the time, and this is what is
the determining factor. In his book, How To Tell Your
Child About Sex, Clyde M. Naramore, the well known
Christians psychologist writes, "Parents often say to me Dr.
Naramore do you know of a good book about sex education?
Our boy (or girl) is nearly 13 and we want to tell him the
facts of life. Questions like this would be humorous if they
weren't so unfortunate. Evidently these parents do not
realize that they have been giving their children sex
education for years. The very fact that they have not talked
with them tells these children that sex is something to avoid
discussing. And of course, 13 years of age is much too late to
begin. By then, some of the most important and most
impressive years of life have already passed."
The implications of the seventh commandments would get
us into all the realms of sex behavior, but for now we can
only look at the primary purpose of the commandment. The
positive principle underlying this negative forbidding of sex
relations with any other person than your mate is, the
preservation of marriage. Next to a man's life his most
precious possession is his wife. To take either his life or his
wife was punishable by death in the Old Testament. Israel
could not survive, nor can any nation, where there is a lost of
respect for life and marriage. Obedience to this
commandment involves a development of the highest respect
for marriage, and a deep sense of loyalty to one's mate. The
marriage vows of forsaking all others, and keeping yourself
unto him or her alone are not just thrown in to lengthen the
service, they are the most solemn vows two people can make
to each other.
Adultery is so evil, because it is a breaking of a major
promise of life. When you get married you promise not to
have sex with anyone else. You do not promise that you will
never notice another man or woman. You do not promise
you will not lust after another person. You do not even
promise that you will not feel romantically attracted to
another person. All of these things may happen in the
course of life. If they did not, there would be no need for the
promise. The promise that you make in marriage is that you
will keep yourself just for each other so long as you both
shall live. It is a commitment to devote all of your sexual
energy to the loving of your mate. That is a marital right
every partner has a right to expect. However sexual hunger
is provoked, a mate is to release that energy only with their
partner. That is God's plan and it is a beautiful plan.
Why then do so many chose to release their sex energy
outside of marriage. Dr. Leon Saul in his book, Fidelity and
infidelity, after a great deal of research, came to this
conclusion: "....I do not think that a man or woman carries
on an outside affair that pains his spouse and children,
damages them, in some part destroys them, unless there is a
powerful undercurrent of hostility against them, however
conscious or unconscious this may be." In other words, the
same emotion that makes the sixth commandment necessary
is what makes the seventh necessary-hostility. It will make
you kill your neighbor, or kill your marriage. Hostility
toward your mate is what allows people to permit lust to get
out of control. If you are not hostile toward your mate you
will keep lust under control. People full of anger wish to
hurt someone, and they will be strongly tempted to hurt
their mate by infidelity.
On the practical level this means that mates have an
obligation to go all through life enriching their relationship.
They need to learn how to communicate so that hostility is
dealt with, and never permitted to go unresolved. Many
studies reveal that middle age people become unfaithful
because they feel a need to demonstrate that they are still
attractive to the opposite sex. This hunger to be attractive
would not get so out of hand if mates would build each
other's self-esteem, and continue to be sexually romantic. A
dull, boring, routine sex life is a sin, and a violation of the
seventh commandment, because it produces the factors that
lead to its violation. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and
loving mates will so satisfy each other that there will be no
reason to be tempted by adultery. What can Satan do if
everything he has to offer you in sin, you already have
within your marriage?
Paul gives Christians the key to reducing the risk of
immoral sex in I Cor. 7. Paul's advice is for every mate to
make sure that the sex drive of their partner is satisfied on a
regular basis. This may vary greatly, but whenever the
desire is present, it should be satisfied. This may call for
learning a great deal about sex technique. Most all of the
cases I know where a Christian mate becomes unfaithful, the
basic cause is right here. They were not sexually satisfied,
and it could have all been prevented by better understanding
of the need and way to satisfy it. Adultery appeals to a
hunger, and there is little danger if that hunger is already
met in marriage. Paul is saying that if you have rocks in
your bed, you have rocks in your head, for you are giving
Satan a foot in the door to destroy your marriage. Mates
must give a lifetime of thought and action to keep the
romance of sex a vital part of their relationship.
Marriage is similar to conversion in that, in conversion
we make a commitment of our lives to one Lord, and in
marriage we commit our lives to one mate. Sex and
salvation are linked all through the Bible. God had His
bride of Israel, and Christ has His bride, the church. Any
disloyalty and idolatry in these relationships is called
adultery. The marriage bond of two people is the very first
human relationship. Adam was created first, and so the God
man relationship was the first relationship with man. Then
Eve was created, and the first fully human relationship was
that of man and wife. Next to life itself, therefore, marriage
is the most sacred possession we have.
God's first gift to Adam was life, and His second gift was
a wife. It is not, cleanliness is next to godliness, but
marriage is next to godliness. To treat it lightly, or to shatter
it through an act of adultery is to be guilty of the worst of
sins against God, man, and society. Adultery is wrong not
because sex is wrong, but because sex outside of marriage
shows a disrespect for the highest human bond. It
murderers this highest relationship, and the murder of a
marriage is just as serious as the murder of a person. This
does not mean that adultery is the unforgivable sin, for Jesus
had compassion on the woman caught in the very act. He
forgave her while condemning the men who wanted to see
her punished. He knew the hearts of men, and knew that
everyone of them had lust in their hearts. Jesus said that
those without sin should cast the first stone, and they all left,
for everyone of them was guilty.
We cannot have a stern inflexible attitude toward those
guilty of this sin. Christians who are suffering because of a
blunder in this area of life need to recognize that marriage is
the basic value to be preserved, and if it can be, both
partners are obligated to work for a healing of the shattered
bond for all they are worth. I have talked with a number of
people guilty of this sin, and not a one understands why they
were so foolish. Everyone of them regrets it, and would give
anything not to have fallen. Christ forgives, the mate
forgives, but the hardest part of all is to forgive yourself.
The scar remains, and can become a cause for conflict at any
time. Nevertheless, the Christian attitude is to be one of
striving for the preservation of marriage. There will be a
Sahara desert period to go through, but the struggle will pay
off, and with the attitude of high respect for marriage, the
two can arrive again at the oasis of happiness. If the grace
of Christ can heal the broken relationship of God and man,
it can heal the next highest relationship also, that between
husband and wife. One of the most important things you
can do for the glory of God, for the strengthening of the
church and nation, is to obey this seventh commandment for
the preservation of marriage.
9. PRESERVATION OF PROPERTY COMMANDED
The teacher said to the little boy who had stolen an apple
from another boy's lunch pail, "Don't you know that you
broke the eighth commandment?" "Yes," he responded,
"But I figured I might just as well have the apple and break
the eighth commandment as covet it and break the tenth."
The truth that is immediate evident in this incident is that
the human ability to rationalize about sin, and even use the
Scripture to support it, is unusually keen. A mother caught
her little girl in the cookie jar after she had been forbidden
to take any. The mother said as she caught her in the act of
petty thief, "What commandment is being broken here?"
The little girl said, "Suffer little children to come unto me
and forbid them not."
It is this keen ability to rationalize that makes us fearful
of the new morality line on the eighth commandment. We
do not disagree with the principle that the lesser of two evils
is the best choice. If the little boy who stole the apple would
have followed this principle, he would have chosen to be
guilty of coveting rather than stealing. Often we have been
guilty of leading people to sin by teaching that all sins are
equal. A person with this attitude easily yields to temptation.
He figures if he desires to sin, and that is as bad as doing the
sin, then he has nothing to lose by acting out his desire, for
he is already guilty.
It is important that we give our youth protection against
this kind of reasoning. There are degrees and various levels
of offense. Some are punished by death, while others require
only fines or restitution, and still others are resolved through
repentance. A sin such as coveting remains a matter
between you and God, and it can be forgiven by confusing,
but to act on the coveting, and steal, becomes a crime against
man. This calls for a settlement on that level, plus
repentance before God, and it can involve imprisonment as
well as restitution. All sins make you a sinner, but only some
sins make you a criminal. All violations of the Ten
Commandments are not equal. There is such a thing as a
lesser of two evils.
If a man is going to shoot his neighbor, and I know it, and
steal his gun, I turn stealing into a virtue, for I preserve life
in obedience to the sixth commandment, and I prevent an
unjust killing. If a busload of school children is stalled on a
track, and a train is coming, there are many ways in which I
might steal, or be destructive to the property of others in
order to stop the approaching train. It could be as minor as
taking a sheet from a nearby wash line, and running down
the track waving it. I could be as radical as taking
someone's car and stopping it on the track to halt the train
before it hit the bus. In any case, you would be a hero, and
what ever you did would be considered a virtue rather than
a vice.
The problem comes when people pervert this reality. For
example, what of the man who stole from his neighbor
because he loved him? Love is the absolute he argues, and
so he reasons that his neighbor is becoming too materialistic.
So, in true love for him he decides to remove the false
foundation of materialism that he is resting on. He begins to
steal his possessions in the hope that his neighbor will began
to seek a more spiritual foundation for his life. Such is the
power of rationalization.
The logic of the new morality has hit our nation at a time
when it is least needed. Stealing has already been so
minimized as a serious moral offense that it is fast becoming
the All-American sport. Everyone is playing the game. In a
article titled, Stealing Their Way Through College, it is
brought out that the major problem of the National
Association Of College Stores is the problem of shrinkage.
They haven't determined if the motive is love or not, but
students from every kind of college and university are
relieving them of millions of dollars worth of merchandise
without paying for it. I once counseled with a girl in a
Christian college who stole several hundred dollars worth of
clothing and cosmetics in one semester.
In one large Ivy League University the bookstore loses
,000 a year to student heisters. The worse case was that
of a divinity school graduate student caught lifting a Bible.
If he would have gotten by with it, he might have considered
it an answer to prayer. This is just how weak the American
conscious is on the matter of stealing. Youth is on a shop
lifting spree, but the facts indicate they are only following
the example established by adults. It is fantastic the amount
to stealing adults do. In Luther's day he said, "Only a small
portion of thieves are hanged. If all were hanged where
would we get rope enough?" In our day, the statistics
indicate we would also run out of trees on which to hang
people. It is so universal that almost everyone is guilty in
some degree.
S. J. Curtis, a professional security consultant, says there
are more than 150,000 shopliftings a week, costing store
owners billions annually. A report in the Chicago Tribune
Magazine said that 90% of this is done by housewives, and
1/4 of it is done in the Christmas season. Stealing has
become a part of the American way of life to millions of
average citizens. It use to be that when an officer
apprehended a youth in the act of thief, he would burst into
tears. This day is gone, and now the typical response is one
of arrogance and defiance, as if they had a right to engage in
thievery unhindered. So low is the level of respect for the
property of others that even the police have decided to play
what's yours is mine. Police scandals are not uncommon,
and where insurance is involved even the robbed join the
game.
Ralph Smith, in the book The Tarnished Badge, tells of
how policeman who burglarized stores were rewarded by the
owner. One owner, not knowing the investigating officer
was the one who robbed said, "Here, take this radio home to
your wife, it's insured, and I'll simply include it in the thief
list." Even if the policeman had not been the original thief,
both he and owner were thieves in robbing the insurance
company.
Christians get caught up in stealing, and hardly even
know it. They feel free to steal music and literary material
that is copyrighted. Employees steal over three billion a year
from their employers. Fifteen percent of our cost for most
everything is due to the need to regain the losses from
stealing. Seventy percent of inventory loses are by
employees, and only fifteen percent by shoplifting. It is an
inside job. It is so easy and so popular. Studies show that
when the top management people are honest, the employees
are too. But if these top people are not honest, it is
contagious, and will spread to all below them. The rich are
into it too. I read of a highly respected woman who fired her
maid because she was caught stealing her Waldorf-Astoria,
and Conrad Hilton towels. Believe it or not, 500,000 grocery
carts disappear from supermarkets every year.
Time does not permit us to consider the endless ways by
which people steal. The reason very few sermons are
preached on this commandment is that when you get
through examining all of the ways it is violated, practically
everyone is guilty and stands condemned. Robert Kahn, the
Jewish author writes, "Not one of the Ten Commandments
is so frequently broken, bent, skirted, evaded, sidestepped,
or ignored. There are hundreds of ways to steal.... The
dictionary contains dozens and dozens of nouns, adjectives,
and verbs that have to do with dishonest dealing with
property. You can steal by burglary, by larceny, by
embezzlement. You can steal by robbery, by highjacking, by
shoplifting, by picking pockets, by plagiarizing. You can
gyp, lift, loot, nip, pinch, pluck, pilfer, snitch, snatch, and
swindle."
Really, all of the commandments are dealing with some
form of stealing. If you do not keep the first, you rob God of
His right to first place in your life. If you do not keep the
fourth you rob yourself of God's blessing of rest. If you do
not keep the fifth you rob mom and dad of the honor do
them. If you break the sixth you rob men of life. If you
break the seventh you rob your mate of a happy marriage.
If you break the ninth you rob men of their reputation.
Almost all sin is some form of stealing in which you rob God,
your neighbor, or yourself of some great value. If you think
you are not a thief, it is because you have thought in too
narrow a range about this commandment.
You may not steal your neighbor's property, but you may
still be a thief of his time. If you waste people's time when
they prefer to get on with other obligations, you are stealing
a part of their life. There are people who are committing
murder on the installment plan by stealing a chunk of other
people's lives almost daily. If it is mutually acceptable there
is no problem, but if you take a person's time, and they do
not will to give it, it is stealing. If you do not pay a man for
service performed in a reasonable time, it is robbery. The
Old Testament demanded that a laborer be paid the very
day he worked. To withhold it was considered a serious sin.
History is filled with businesses who have gone bankrupted
because customers did not pay for their service or product.
It is a wide spread form of stealing.
The paradox is, this is the one commandment that has
almost universal acceptance. All peoples condemn stealing
in principle. Even a thief hates to be robbed. Why then is it
so prevalent in practice? Because of ignorance about the
nature of property, which leads to a loss of respect for
property. When there is a loss of respect for life, murder
increases. When there is a loss of respect for marriage
adultery increases. When there is a loss of respect for
property stealing increases. Force is futile, and will never
solve the problem. Men will only cease to steal when they
come to understand, respect, and obey the principle behind
the eighth commandment. That principle is, the
preservation of property, or the right of ownership.
Someone said that stealing is of the devil because
property is of God. It would take hours just to read all of
the passages in the Bible that deal with God's concern for
the rights of all men to own property. The whole economic
system of Israel was set up to make sure no one could get a
monopoly and deprive others of their ownership of land.
Land was distributed to all the tribes according to their
number, so each family got a share. There would always be
those who failed and went into debt to others, but every 50th
year was a year of Jubilee, and all land was to be returned to
its original owners so that no family would ever be
permanently dispossessed. This was an ideal, and was often
violated, but we see what God intended. Every man was to
have property he could call his own, for only then could he
be a good steward of what God had given him. Any society
that deprives people of their right to own property denies
them of the God given right to be God's stewards.
In the New Testament we find that the followers of Jesus
were often property owners. Mary and Martha and Lazarus
had a lovely home where Jesus enjoyed staying. Mary
sacrificed an expensive jar of perfume to anoint Jesus. It
was her own to do with as she chose. The early churches
began in the homes of the more wealthy disciples. Without
the property holders in the early church there would have
been great handicaps, but they were there, and gave their
possessions to build the church. The success of the church
has always depended upon the right of Christians to own
property, and to devote that property for the extension of
God's kingdom on earth.
In the 14th century the Catholic Church tended to feel
that non-believers had no right to private property. One
author wrote, "He who is not subject to God, justly loses and
unjustly possesses all that he has from God." This lead to
the church taking the property of unbelievers. The same
thing happened in the Spanish Inquisition. The church
became wealthy by theft. Since the church controlled the
government, it was legal theft. The official Catholic position,
however, is that private ownership is a universal right. Saint
Thomas Aquinus, their master theologian, said, "Unbelief in
itself is not incompatible with the right to own and to
rule...." Pope Leo the 13th in 1891 said, "Every man has the
right by nature to possess property as his own."
This has always been the Protestant position, assuming
that the property was gained in an acceptable manner. No
man has the right to retain what he has gained by theft.
Legitimate ownership is to be respected by all men however.
This principle was so basic to a sound society that God
demanded of the Jews that they even respect the property of
their enemy. In Ex. 23:4-5 we read, "If you meet your
enemies ox or ass going astray, you shall bring it back to
him. If you see the ass of one who hates you lying under its
burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it, you shall
help him to lift it up." Respect for property was so
important that God judged all of Israel, and condemned to
death a whole family, because Achan stole from an enemy on
the battlefield. The preservation of property is important to
God because it is important for the good of man.
In the Old Testament every farmer had an obligation to
leave the corners of his field unharvested. This was his
contribution to the welfare system for the poor of his day.
The Christian steward is to acknowledge God as the rightful
owner of all his possessions, and seek to use them in a way
that pleases God. If the right to own is not God given, but a
man made right, then man can also deprive men of this
right. This is the philosophy of Communism. Stealing is
wrong because ownership is right, and ownership is right
because God has ordained it. Obedience to the eighth
commandment, like all of the rest, is essential to the good
life, and the good society. The most patriotic thing
Christians can do is to live by the principles of the Ten
Commandments.
As Christians, we know we are not saved by the Ten
Commandments, but by personal trust in Jesus Christ as our
Savior. Yet we dare not overlook the fact that a corporate
salvation, in terms of being saved from the loss of our
national blessings and freedoms, depends upon the moral
character of the people. Had there been ten righteous men
in Sodom, it would have escaped the wrath of God. Let us
never underestimate the importance of any man's obedience
to the Ten Commandments. Everyone counts, and so let us
pray that we will be the salt of the earth, and avoid the many
ways of stealing. Bernard Shaw said, "A gentlemen is one
who puts more into life than he takes out of it. Otherwise he
is a thief." May God help us to be as concerned as God is
for the preservation of property.
10. PRESERVATION OF TRUTH COMMANDED
An unusual trial took place in London in 1670. The
defendant was none other than the founder of Pennsylvania,
William Penn. He was the leader of the Society Of Friends,
known as the Quakers, and he was charged with inciting a
riotous, seditious assembly. Parliament had made the
Quakers an object of persecution, and the judges were in
accord with the conspiracy against this religious minority.
The jury was ordered to agree on a verdict of guilty before
the trial began. Fortunately, the jury had a mind of its own,
and returned the judgment, guilty of speaking aloud on
Grace Church Street. For this, of course, there was no
penalty.
The judge was outraged, and refused to accept the
verdict. He sent them back to reconsider. When they
returned again with the same verdict in writing, the judge
lowered the boom on them and said, "You will not be
dismissed until we have a verdict acceptable to the Court,
and you shall be locked up without meat, drink, fire and
tobacco, and no one may communicate with you. We will
have the verdict, or you shall starve." The jurors in
defiance, after several days of imprisonment, reversed their
decision to not guilty. The judge became increasingly brutal,
but could not break them. The Court finally dismissed the
jury after fining them forty marks per man, and
imprisonment until paid. William Penn was jailed on a
contrived contempt of court charge, and returned to the
Newgate Prison.
This historical incident demonstrates that loyalty to the
truth does not always lead to immediate justice.
Nevertheless, it is the only hope of ever having justice at all.
Those who refuse to bare false witness in obedience to God,
rather than lie in obedience to the state were actually the
greatest friends of the state, for when all such people are
gone, the state has no future, but that of enduring the wrath
of God.
The courts require witnesses to swear to tell the truth.
They make it a crime not to tell the truth. So the truth is
absolutely essential to any system of justice. Every nation
has recognized this, and that is why perjury is universally
condemned and severely punished. God knew Israel could
not be a united people, and a representative of the God of
justice, if truth was not honored among them. Therefore, we
have the ninth commandment, which makes the preservation
of truth one of the basic principles necessary for a good
society. The whole legal, social, and moral fabric of society
will unravel in utter chaos without the thread of truth
running through it.
This is another reason why Americans have good reason
to fear for the future of our nation. The credibility gap is a
big topic in our day. It means that there is so much lying
going on that we don't even know for sure if the credibility
gap is a fact or a lie. Spurgeon said, "If all men's sins were
divided into two bundles, half of them would be sins of the
tongue." Just listen to a partial list of the sins of the tongue.
Lying, calumny, slander, misrepresentation,
contumely, insult, scurrility, railing, detraction,
whispering, backbiting, false witness, deprecation,
vilification, insinuation, abuse, tattle, insolence,
sneering, taunting, jives, jeers, defamation, libel,
satire, sarcasm, lampoon, censoriousness, slashing
criticism, surmising, attributing motives, and last
but not lease, gossip.
That is an impressive array of weapons which the tongue
has to use in the battle for evil. These weapons are not just
used by politicians, but by everybody. Paul writes to the
Christians at Corinth in II Cor. 12:20, "I fear that perhaps I
may come and find you not what I wish.....That perhaps
there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness,
slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder." The church has
never been without its storehouse of sins of the tongue.
Therefore, the study of the ninth commandment is directed
at ourselves, and not just those of the world. Let's consider
first,
1. PERJURY. This is a voluntary violation of an oath. The
subtlety with which men can bare false witness is amazing.
A case reported in a popular magazine revealed how even
the truth can be used for bearing false witness. The case
dealt with a will that was being contended based on the
deceased not being right in the head. Testimony was given
that he put his head between the curtains dividing the living
and dining room and cried, "Baaa, I'm a billy goat." This
way true, but as further probing brought out, it was while
playing with his grandchildren. True statements designed to
mislead are just as much lies as outright falsehoods.
No system of law will lead to justice when perjury is a
common practice, and this seems to be the case in our land
today. Mr. Samuel Untermyer says, "Perjury has become so
general as to taint and well-nigh paralyzed the
administration of justice." A judge of the supreme court of
New York declared, "We have reached the point where we
merely try to find out which side is lying most." Law and
justice cannot operate without morality. As the church has
less and less influence in America, the standard of morality
falls lower and lower, and the result will be that the values
that made us great will eventually be completely eroded. If
the practice of false witness was limited to the courts it
would be bad enough, for God hates injustice. But it is not
confined to the courtroom. It evades all of life so that people
in general feel no guilt at all in practicing-
2. MISREPRESENTATION. There are numerous ways to
bear false witness through misrepresentation, and
advertising agencies are experts on most of them. It is a
science, this technique of deceiving people into thinking they
are getting a bit of paradise with every box of soap or every
brand of beer. This aspect of false witness we could go on
blasting for the rest of the hour, but that would be a waste of
time. Let's look at the way you and I play lightly with the
truth.
Almost all of us like to speak with authority, and so we
tend to give the impression that our opinion is supported by
a world wide pole. We throw out judgments and evaluations
of people, groups, and ideas, without a shred of first hand
evidence, or personal research. We appeal to that world
famous authority on all matters-They.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote,
Have you ever heard of the terrible family They,
And the dreadful venomous things They say?
Why, half of the gossip under the sun,
If you trace it back, you will find begun
In that wretched House of They.
When we as Christians speak with no more authority
than an appeal to They, we are salt without flavor, and do
nothing to strengthen the grip of truth in our society.
Henry A. Luce, editor-in-chief of Time, Life, and Fortune,
said, "The most dangerous fault in American life today is the
lack of interest in truth." There are very few people who
prefer truth to their prejudices, and other self-centered
values of life. My perspective is all that counts. Life is
competitive, and so I must advance at the expense of others.
To misconstrue, misquote, or quote out of context, or
exaggerate, or anything whereby I cause another to lose
favor, is legitimate in the task of winning favor for myself.
This is the attitude of people in general, and Christians do
not stand out as impressively unique and different.
Christians have been far more influenced by materialism
than they are aware of. Biblical morality puts persons on the
highest level of values. All of these last commandments are
concerned with protecting the rights of persons. Jesus
summed them up in the statement of loving our neighbor as
ourselves. The commandments we have been looking at deal
with the tangible man: His family, his wife, his life, and his
property. It is easy to observe if you have killed him or
stolen his car. But now, with this commandment, we have
entered into the realm of his personality. If you hit him with
a car or piece of steel, the scar will show, but if you speak lies
against him, there is tangible or visible injury, it is a matter
of the spirit. You have attacked the inner man when you
break this commandment. Honor, reputation, and dignity
are invisible, but very real values that you can steal from
him by mere words. Shakespeare wrote,
Who steals my purse steals trash;
Tis something, nothing--
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.
The danger of libel lurks everywhere for new reporters.
If someone is arrested and they write an article which says
Murderer Captured, or Forger Arrested, and that man is not
found guilty of the crime, he can sue the reporter for libel,
for he bore false witness against him by calling him a
murderer or forger, when there was no such thing proven.
The courts have said a man reputation is to be protected,
and the only way you can escape libel is to prove what you
have said is true. If you speak the truth, however unpleasant
it may be, you cannot be sued for libel.
Materialism focuses on the value of matter. It's stress is
on accuracy in dealing with things. We must, of course be
precise in a scientific world, for inaccuracy can cause a great
calamity. We would not tolerate a scale or ruler that bore
false witness to weight or length. Yet, when it comes to
persons we feel no such urgency to be totally accurate. We
can speak about persons carelessly, haphazardly with
unfounded implications and sloppy thinking in general. Our
words often reveal our true value system. If we care more
about being accurate when we speak of atoms than of
people, we are materialists at heart, and Christians morality
is only a veneer.
There is nothing sacred about protons, neutrons, velocity,
and mass, yet men will stop at no sacrifice of time and effort
to be accurate in their description of them. Yet, they will
speak lies and bear false witness against another person who
is of infinite value, and made in the image of God. Men
would not think of putting an inaccurate label on a chemical
in a lab, but they think nothing of putting a slanderous label
on a person whom they don't even know, just because it suits
their prejudice to do so.
May God help us to avoid both the practice, and the
being a victim, of this kind of false witness. It undermines
the whole concept of the value of persons and truth. We can
be a party to the evil of false witness by giving ear to slander
and then passing it on. It is unfair to draw conclusions
about people from second hand sources, for the party
through whom you receive the information may be a false
witness against the person in question. It is even immoral to
draw conclusions from first hand information that the
person himself would not consent to. We dare not draw
conclusions from labels, unless the person using them defines
what he means.
People do not always follow out their beliefs to their
logical conclusion. Therefore, it is false witness to hold them
accountable for all that their views could lead to. A person
may believe that it is okay to persecute heretics, but this does
not prove he would do it. It works the other way too. A
man can believe it is essential to control his temper, and yet
be a hot head himself. Conviction and conduct do not
necessary coincide, and it is wrong for us to assume they do,
and declare it to be so in anyone's case where we do not
know this to be a fact. R. H. Charles says it is even false
witness to state a fact about another's conduct or conviction
if the basis for it is an exceptional situation. He writes, "We
should not strain a man's words to his disadvantage, nor
draw conclusions from any unfortunate expression that may
have fallen from his lips in some passing heat or some
unguarded moment."
We cannot begin to consider the many other ways we
must avoid false witness, but we can see it calls for constant
evaluation of our values, and constant vigilance over our
tendency to follow the values of the secular society. The new
morality says that it is not always wrong to lie, deceive and
give false impressions. There is some Biblical basis for this
perspective, but it is the exception and not the rule.
Solomon acted like he was going to divide the baby, and by
doing so, he forced each of the two women to show their
true colors, and thereby, discover the true mother. Could
the woman who was lying about the baby accuse Solomon of
immoral deception? Not hardly. Rahab told a lie to protect
the spies of Israel, and she was not condemned for her
deception. From these situations the idea has developed that
when a person has no moral right to the truth, it is legitimate
to lie to them and deceive them.
Law enforcement justifies deception of criminals on this
basis, that being criminals, they have no moral right to the
truth. The problem is, it contradicts the right to be
considered innocent until proven guilty. Who determines
when someone has no moral right to the truth? There is no
doubt that sometimes withholding the truth is beneficial for
the cause of good, but it is risky to make this judgment in
very many situations. The early Christians could have saved
their lives by denying Christ. It could have been a mere lie
and act of deception to put incense on an altar. These acts
could have been done to deceive the pagans who were
persecuting them. The chose, however, to die rather than to
lie to those who had no moral right to the truth. They chose
to suffer the consequences of truth rather than gain the
cheap victory of falsehood. Eldon Trueblood wrote, "The
only possible excuse for falsification of any kind is that of
loyalty to persons, in that they might be harmed if the
falsification did not occur."
Technically the ninth commandment is not dealing with
lying in general, but with the specific type of lie called false
witness. This lead to the death penalty in the Old
Testament. So all can agree that false witness is an absolute
wrong, but the issue of whether it is ever right to lie is open
to debate. The example is frequently cited of
the angry criminal or madman who is demanding some
information, and if he gets the wrong answer he is going to
kill someone. In that situation it seems only right that he
should be lied to, for the preservation of life. In the case of
war no one has an obligation to tell the enemy the truth
about secrets of his side of the conflict. If a thief asks where
your valuables are, are you obligated to tell him, or would a
lie be permissible? What right does one who is breaking a
commandment have to your cooperation in doing so? By
your obedience to one you aid him in breaking another. We
can see the question, is a lie ever justifiable, is a complex
issue, and every Christian has to be convinced in his own
mind about what is right.
There may be cases where a lie is the lesser of two evils,
but to stress this among a people who are not loyal to the
principle of the preservation of truth is to play right into the
hands of the relativist and rationalists. They will pervert it
for the service of evil. Long before the new morality men
have considered the idea of the necessary lie. That is, a lie
that is necessary to avoid violating a major, or earlier, moral
obligation. It is a lie that may be necessary for the
preservation of life. Those who held this view were aware of
its dangers and abuses. The fact is, it is rare, and to
rationalize that it is a tool that can be used often makes one
a dangerous person. Let us pray with the poet:
O let me never speak
What bounds of truth exceedeth;
Grant that no idle word
From out my mouth proceedeth;
And grant, when in my place
I must and ought to speak,
My words do power and grace,
Nor let me wound the weak.
If this is not our prayer, it had better be our practice, for
by our words we shall be justified, and by words we shall be
condemned. I have no doubt that one of the greatest causes
for Christians to suffer judgment will be the violation of this
commandment. I read widely and I know it is a major
Christian weakness to bear false witness, and try to make
other Christians look bad. My own feelings are expressed by
that old saint Dr. A. B. Simpson who said, "Rather would I
play with the fork lightening or take in my hand a living
wire, with it fiery current, then speak a reckless work against
any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts
which thousands of Christians are hurling on others, to the
hurt of their own souls and bodies."
Most Christians go their whole life and do not break some
of the commandments, but it is not likely that anyone even
gets through childhood without breaking this one. We talk
so much about other people. We are all mini versions of the
National Enquirer. It makes us look better when we put
others down. It makes us feel better to know bad things to
say about others, especially when we are jealous or envious
of them. The paradox is, though it is the most frequently
broken commandment, it is seldom to never confessed.
Tampering with the truth is so much a part of life that we no
longer even feel guilty about it. One little guy asked his
mom, "Do people who tell lies go to heaven?" She said,
"Certainly not." "Gosh," said the child, "It must be awful
lonesome up there with only God and George Washington,"
A student was asked to define a lie and he said, "A lie is an
abomination unto the Lord, but a very present help in time
of trouble."
It is important that we recognize this is a popular sin, and
that all of us are guilty in one way or another. It is
important that we recognize we are masters at rationalizing
when we defend our breaking of this commandment. If we
are aware of these things we will be more likely to feel some
guilt, and be more in conformity to God's purpose for this
commandment, which is the preservation of truth.
11. LAST BUT NOT LEAST
A French taxi cab driver once played a joke on Sir
Arthur Conon Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. He
had driven Sr. Arthur from a station to a hotel, and when he
received his fare he said, "Merci, Mr. Conon Doyle." "Why,
how do you know my name?" asked Sr. Author. "Well sir,"
he replied, "I have seen in the papers that you were coming
from the South of France to Paris; your general appearance
told me that you were English; your hair had been clearly
last cut by a barber of the South of France. I put these
indications together and guessed at once that it was you."
Sir Author was astounded and said, "So little evidence to go
on. This is very remarkable." "Well," said the driver,
"There was also the fact that your name was on your
luggage."
This clue, though mentioned last, was far from the least.
Often this is the case, and we have a saying to express it, "
last but not least." Sometimes we save the best for the last.
However, we also tend to associate the last with the least.
We attach degrees of merit and value to position. The
bottom man on the totem pole is a phase we use to describe a
negative position. When a list of names is made up, it is
necessary to put them in alphabetical order or someone will
be offended by being further down the list, or most
humiliating of all, they could be last on the list. Last is
associated with least so often, this could be interpreted as a
slam at your personal worth.
This is subjective nonsense, of course, but it is a fact, and
therefore, it is good for us to see the last from another
perspective. We ought not to have a stereotyped negative
attitude about last things on a list. This false attitude has
affected peoples interest and concern about the last
commandment. It is the commandment least preached on.
After indexing hundreds of volumes of sermons I have not
found a single sermon on this text. I must confess that I also
felt a tendency to by pass it. If it was the fourth or fifth I am
sure this feeling would not arise, but being tenth and last, it
gets associated with the concept of the least important. It
takes a conscious effort to overcome this false perspective,
and discover that the last is not the least. This caboose on
the train of duty is of primary importance, and is essential if
we hope to live the righteous life.
Paul in the great love chapter writes, "Now abideth faith,
hope, love these three, but the greatest of these is love."
Love is last, but it is not least. It is, instead, the greatest.
The last days of Jesus are the days of greatest value, and
they fill the bulk of the Gospel records. More sermons are
preached on His last words than on all the others. It is the
last, the end, the conclusion, the climax, that gives meaning
to all that has gone before. The last is not least in God's
listings of values.
So it is with the last of the ten commandments. It is not
least, but goes deeper than the rest. It gets to the heart of
the matter of sin by getting to the heart of men of sin. This
commandment takes us behind the scenes to the very origin
of sin. If we heed this one we can nip sin in the bud before it
bears any of its bitter fruit. This is the commandment of
prevention. Moody called this the root extraction. It gets at
the root of sin which is covetousness. Paul said that the love
of money is the root of all evil. It is not money that is evil,
but the love of it. The covetousness that turns one to an
idolater. If a man does not stop sin at its root, he will be led
to violate all of the other commandments. A Jewish
commentary says, "He who violates the last commandment,
violates all of them."
If covetousness is not brought under control it will lead to
idolatry, for desire becomes the highest value in your life,
and thus, your God. If you fail in number ten, all of the
others will break like ice sickles cut loose from their base.
Paul calls the covetousness man an idolater in Eph. 5:5, and
in Col. 3:5 he writes, "Evil desire and greed, which amounts
to idolatry." Naboth's garden was coveted by Ahab. He so
desired it that he murdered to get it. Coveting will lead to
stealing, lying, or murder, for there is no other way to get
what doesn't belong to you except by one sin or another.
There is no non-sinful way to satisfy a desire for someone
else's wife or property. If sin is conquered at the point of
coveting, it prevents all of the other sins. That is why this
last is not least, for it is at this stage that one can gain the
victory over all the temptations of Satan. Let the devil get
his foot in at this point, and he will soon have you under his
foot. We keep our foot on his neck when we are fully aware
that our desires are the main battle field.
The Hebrew word for covet does not just mean to admire
or to wish to have. It means, says Andrew Greely, "To lay
plans to take." It is not wrong to admire a neighbor's wife
or possessions, or even wish you had equally desirable
things, but it is forbidden to lay plans to possess what
belongs to others. Once this sin of coveting gets a hold on a
culture, it is doomed. Israel came to this point, and had to
suffer the wrath of God. In Jer. 6:13 the Lord says, "For
from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for
unjust gain, and from prophet to priest, everyone deals
falsely." Covetousness became their god, and God rejected
them in judgment. Billy Graham said, "The great sin of
America is greed and avarice." These are synonyms for
covetousness. If this be so, we stand at a place of high risk.
Temptation and desire are two different things. I may be
tempted to take something not my own, but not want to do
it. I chose not to yield to temptation. Temptation is the step
that precedes coveting. Temptation is no sin at all, but if I
yield to it and begin to covet, then I am in the realm of sin,
but still in territory where victory can be gained without
loss. I have let Satan get his foot into the door, but have not
yet opened the door. Temptation is the knock at the door,
and coveting is letting him get his foot in. When you invite
him all the way in, that is when you fall into sin. So you can
see how important it is to begin the battle before you get to
the stage of coveting.
This commandment reaches where the long arm of the
law can never reach. Man can never make laws concerning
his internal nature. He is limited to suppressing and
punishing external conduct. God alone can forbid coveting,
for God alone can see the heart, and He alone can change it.
This last commandment is really the bridge that spans the
gap between the Old Testament emphasis on external
conduct, and the New Testament emphasis on internal
motives. The more we consider the implications of this last
commandment, the more we will recognize that it is last but
not least.
Pliny the Elder, centuries ago, said, "From the end spring
new beginnings." So it is with the end of the
commandments. Their principles thrust us into a whole new
world of beginnings, and endless adventures in the war
against sin, and the crusade for Christ likeness. One of the
adventures is to explore the reality of the positive side
of this vice which can also be a virtue.
I. THE VIRTUE OF COVETING. This is actually essential
to a full Christian life. Not recognizing this could lead to the
Buddhist view that all desire is evil, and the good life,
therefore, is to eliminate desire. The Christian view is that
desires are of God, and when they are fulfilled in accordance
with His will, they comprise the basic joys of life. Paul in I
Cor. 12:31 urges believers to covet earnestly the best gifts.
Jesus urged us to hunger and thirst after righteousness. We
are to have strong desires for all the good gifts of God. We
say sometimes, "I covet your prayers." We mean by this, we
earnestly desire the value of your intercession.
We are to covet our time and use it wisely for eternal
values, and not waste it. Joseph Addison wrote, "Nothing
lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched
and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where
covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals." He was
right, but he overstates his case, for there are other areas
where coveting is a virtue. In fact, it is right to covet
everything that can be legitimately obtained and liberally
used for the good of man and the glory of God.
It is the coveting instinct that makes man rise above the
animal in his progress. Henry George in Progress And
Poverty writes of man, "...he is the only animal whose
desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never
satisfied. The wants of every other living thing are
uniformed and fixed. The ox of today aspires to no more
than did the ox when man first yoked him. The sea gull of
the English Channel, who poises himself above the swift
steamer, wants no better food or lodging than the gulls than
circle around as the keels of Caesar's galleys first grated on a
British beach. Of all that nature offers them, be it ever so
abundant, all living things save man can take, and care for,
only enough to supply wants which are definite and fixed."
Man is made to climb higher and higher, and he could not
and would not do so without the desire to acquire the more
that God would have him reach for. All the vast resources of
God's creation would go unexplored, and we would live on
one dead level materially and spiritually without desire, or
the virtue of coveting. It is a sin not to covet the higher
things that God has for us. But we need to look further at
the negative side.
II. THE VICE OF COVETING. The evil is not in the
desire, but in the way the desire is satisfied, or in the desire
being focused on an object one can never justly possess. If I
see a picture on your wall, and like it, and desire one for my
wall, and go and purchase one, that is not a sin. But if I
desire to possess your picture, then I am guilty of the sin that
is forbidden. This desire leads to theft, or even other sins
such as lying or envy. When the desire to possess is also the
desire to dispossess another, it is the vice this commandment
forbids. Even if you don't act on a forbidden desire, it is an
inner sin, and to be aware of this, and to fight the battle on
this level, would enable us to avoid all of the sins that violate
the law of loving our neighbor as ourselves.
David could have avoided all of the sins of adultery, lying,
murder, and all the heart aches these brought, if he had
obeyed this commandment, and nipped sin in the bud when
it was just inner desire. Edward VIII of Great Britain
abdicated his throne for a woman he coveted. Archbishop
Temple said, "The occasion for Edward's choice ought never
to have arisen. It has happened to many a man before now
to find himself falling in love with another man's wife. That
is the moment of critical decision, and the right decision is
that they should cease to meet before passion is so developed
as to create an agonizing conflict between love and duty."
As soon as you desire anything that is not able to become
yours by legitimate labor or purchase, recognize you are on
dangerous ground, and move. This vice of coveting is really
only a good thing gone after the wrong object. Or it can also
be a good thing gone to an extreme. For example, it is good
to desire to eat; it is a sign of health, but it is a sin to be a
glutton. Here is a good gift of God which by excess has
crossed the line dividing virtue and vice. This is true in
many ways. It is good to rest, but a sin to be lazy. It is good
to be calm, but a sin to be indifferent. It is good to be
courageous, but a sin to be careless. So also, it is good to
desire many things,
but a sin when those things belong to others.
We cannot begin to cover all of the evil this world suffers
because of covetousness. Most all wars can be attributed to
this sin. James says this is the cause of war, and some, like
the Fredrick the Great, were even honest enough to admit it.
When he was going to declare war he asked his secretary to
write the proclamation. The secretary began, "Whereas in
the providence of God...." "Stop that lying," Fredrick
thundered. "Simply say Fredrick wants more land."
Seldom is it admitted like this, but this is the origin of war.
If men are convinced that this life is all there is, and that
materialism is all they can hope for, they have nothing to
lose by fighting a war to get all they can. Materialism is a
philosophy and covetousness is the driving motive to fulfill
that philosophy of getting all you can regardless of who it
hurts. This sin is the greatest vice, for it leads to all other
sins. Finally lets consider-
III. VICTORY OVER COVETOUSNESS. Law can never
gain the victory. The rich young ruler obeyed all the
commandments, but he could not escape the clutches of
covetousness, and so he was still a slave bound by the chains
of sin. A man can go far under the law, but he can never get
passed this last hurdle. It is a catchall that condemns all
men as hopeless sinners. All law can do is punish sin, it
cannot prevent sin. The law can do as the ancients did with
a man whose covetousness led to strife and war. They
poured molten gold down his throat. This got rid of the
patient, but it did not cure the disease. If the fountain is
polluted, it is the fountain that must be cleaned, and,
therefore, this last commandment thrusts us right into the
New Testament plan of God.
Sin originates in the heart where the law cannot touch.
Therefore, man needs a new heart. Oehler, the theologian
wrote, "The fulfillment of the law is only complete when the
heart is sanctified." We know that only the blood of Christ
can cleanse the heart and dissolve the clot of covetousness
that threatens to destroy us all. The love of Christ does not
suppress desire, but lifts our desires to a higher level so that
we can set our affections on things above. We may at times
still lust for the lowly, but we counteract that by coveting
God's best-the fruit and gifts of the Spirit. This last
commandment shows us where the real sin problem lies, and
compels us to submit to the only known cure which is faith
in Christ. Thus, it leads the famished soul from the husks of
the law to the feast and abundance of the Gospel. As
number ten, it comes at the end, but though it is last, it is not
least.
