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By Pastor Glenn Pease
CONTENTS
8. PRESERVATION OF MARRIAGE COMMANDED
9. PRESERVATION OF PROPERTY COMMANDED
10. PRESERVATION OF TRUTH COMMANDED
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.
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 made‑
No 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.
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 wrote‑
Heart 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 $90,000 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.
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.