The Ten Commandments - Sunday Sermon Review

Our church is studying through the Bible in a year or so. Our pastors are choosing topics to focus on as we go along. This Sunday our pastor spoke on the Ten Commandments. I usually like to take notes as the pastor speaks and then share them with you here. Perhaps you will be blessed as I was.  So we will begin with the verses from our text - Deuteronomy 5: 1-22 Please take time to read the passage, and then I will share my notes that I took as the pastor spoke.

truthaboutsundayworship.com

Deuteronomy 5:1-22And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.3 The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.4 The Lord talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire,5 (I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to shew you the word of the Lord: for ye were afraid by reason of the fire, and went not up into the mount;) saying,6 I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.7 Thou shalt have none other gods before me.8 Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth:9 Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,10 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.11 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.12 Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.13 Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work:14 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.15 And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.16 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.17 Thou shalt not kill.18 Neither shalt thou commit adultery.19 Neither shalt thou steal.20 Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour.21 Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's.22 These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.

Now I would like to share my notes that I took as Pastor Ben spoke.

The book of Deuteronomy is a farewell speech from Moses. 

The Israelites had come to the Promised Land but due to fear and unbelief, therefore God made them turn back into the wilderness to spend 40 years there.

Now Moses knows that he is about to die and Joshua will lead the people into the Promised Land.

Moses is renewing the Covenant that God made with the people.

For a better understanding of a covenant we can look at marriage. Marriage is a good picture of this - you are pledging your life to one another. It is about loyalty. God is has pledged His loyalty to the people and the people have pledged their loyalty to God.

The core or heart of the covenant is love.

We ask the question - What does it look like to love God?  God uses the Ten Commandments to teach us what this loyal love looks like in action.

The Israelite people prayed Deuteronomy 6:4-5 two times each day. And they still do this today.

Deuteronomy 6:4-5 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:

 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

This is the heart of the covenant. The Bible teaches us what this loyal love looks like - this is what the Ten Commandments are. They flesh out what it looks like to love God. 

The Ten Commandments are not about earning salvation.  The people were saved by grace just as we are today. 

It is a covenant - not a contact. 

A contract is a list of things you must do.

The Ten Commandments diagnose our hearts, the depth of our love for God. 

Deuteronomy 5: 12  Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.

God wants us to take one day to set apart for Him, a day of rest. Jesus died and then rose on the first day - therefore we take Sunday as a day of rest today. 

When Jesus died and rose, it was a pivotal point in time, everything changed.

There is a principle of rest. We need to rest. God calls us to make rest a regular part of our lives.

Two Reasons For Keeping the Sabbath

1) Because God created the world in 6 days, and rested the 7th day. We are to take one day a week - stop trying to get ahead, from making that next sale. Remember our life and everything we have is a gift from God. 

Giving God a day a week that we rest is an expression of our trust.

How precious is God to us? - Do we treasure Him? Our giving is an expression of our trust in God.

Put God first, Don't have idols.

2) God is concerned about how we treat one another... He wanted the slaves to have a day of rest. ( verse 15 )

Our relationship with others matter to God.

Our covenant with God includes how we treat others - Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself.

The commandments are about diagnosing our hearts. We need to examine ourselves.

Are we honest people?

Integrity, sexual purity, we will not view other people as sexual objects for our own gratification.

The Old Testament deals with issues of justice, how to treat strangers, protection for women in marriage break ups.

Our covenant will propel us into being engaged in bringing justice to our world.

Our Covenant includes:

1) Loyalty to God - our relationship with God

2) Our character

3) Social Justice

Thought for the week - ”Being deeply loved gives you strength; loving deeply gives you courage.” ( Author unknown ) 

We will now take a break from our Through the Bible in one year series and will focus on Romans and then Lent.

You may also be interested in a post I wrote sometime ago titled  " Overview of the Ten Commandments" Please link to post here - Overview of Ten Commandments

Biblical Repentance....

We see the need of repentance in our own personal lives. We see the need of it in our churches and on a national level. If we want to see God withhold His Hand of judgement in our lives and in our churches and on our nation, we need to come to Him in humility and repent - turn from the wickedness and seek the Lord God with our whole heart.
But what is repentance? Repentance is a change of mind to the point where it changes your actions. It is a point of turning. You are going in one direction - you come to the knowledge of sin and you make a complete change and turn from it. You seek forgiveness from that sin with a determination to not repeat again.
In the Old Testament we read many places where it uses the word repent to describe how God withheld the punishment he was going to inflict on people when they turned from their sinful ways. A good example of this is in the story of Jonah. Jonah preached to the people of Nineveh saying that God would destroy Nineveh in 40 days if the people continued on in their sin and in Jonah 3: 10 it says  And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.
The story of Jonah is also a good one to show us what real repentance from sin looks like. It is not just saying "oh sorry God I messed up" and then continue on without any further thought and next thing you know, you are doing that very same thing again and the quick "sorry God"  did not change you at all.
Our sin grieves the heart of God and in the story of Jonah, God was grieved over the sin of the people in Nineveh. In Jonah 1:2 God says to Jonah - Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. Jonah did not go as the Lord God instructed and he had that whole experience inside the belly of the great fish. But in Jonah 3 God again sends Jonah to the city of Nineveh.and this is the message he brings -  Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. At hearing this the people acknowledge their sinful ways and turn to the Lord for forgiveness. Jonah 3:5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. Here we see that the realization of their sin brings sorrow to their hearts. They believe God's message - God is Holy and we have sinned against Him.
Jonah 3: 8-9  But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

Repentance involves your mind, your emotions, and your will.
1) Mind - within your heart you must be convicted that God has the authority to tell you what is sin. You must believe the Bible when it tells you what God considers to be sin. The Ten commandments tell us the heart of God. I would encourage everyone to read my blog post on the Ten Commandments. If anyone reading this doesn't know what grieves the heart of God, Galatians 5: 19-21 tells you
¹⁹ Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
²⁰ Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
²¹ Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

2) Emotions - You become broken and ashamed of your sin. This definitely involves crying out to God for mercy and you grieve over your sin and for most people this would involve the shedding of some tears.
3) Will - You need to have a plan of action. You need to plan how you together with the help of God are going to make this change happen. This involves making things right with other people. This involves prayer, burying yourself in the Word of God, seeking Him with your whole heart. You hate the very sin that you used to love because now you see it as God sees it. You hate the sin and want no part in it at all.

You will know you have repented when you see these Fruits of Repentance in your life:
1) Absence of rationalization - you are no longer looking for a way to justify what you have done, or blame it on others or explain it to make it seem like no big deal. There is an absence of phrases like - "everyone is doing it" or " the devil made me do it", or "I just couldn't help it", or " it's just how I am and you will just have to accept it", etc
2) Genuine Sorrow, Heartbrokeness - You are genuinely sorry for what you have done. Even if you get the chance to do that sin thing again, you will not do it because now you hate it, the very thought that you did it other times sickens you. As I mentioned earlier you are grieving over your sin.
3) Open Confession of Sin - You are no longer trying to hide it. It is out in the open now. You have stepped away from that former lifestyle. You need to confess this to the people close to you and sometimes to your church. You are accountable to God.
4) Restitution - You want to make things right with those you hurt. You are willing to do whatever it takes to make things right. We see the heart of one who wants to make restitution in the story of Zacchaeus  Luke 19 verses 8-9 :  And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.  And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham.

So again I say we see the need of repentance in our own personal lives. We see the need of it in the churches and on a national level. If we want to see God withhold His Hand of judgement in our lives and in our churches and on our nation, we need to come to Him in humility and repent - turn from the wickedness and seek the Lord God with our whole heart.

The Ten Commandments - Ours Today!

The Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses are the basic instructions for living found in the Bible. We are not saved by keeping them. We are saved through faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross where He died in our place. But the Ten Commandments are still very important because they clearly and simply show us what God expects from a person who says that he belongs to the LORD.  I would like to go through the commands and see what we can learn for our everyday lives.  The Lord Jesus says in Mark 12: 29-31 :  And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
³⁰ And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
³¹ And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

So Jesus says we are to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  As we look at the Ten Commandments we will see these exact two points over and over again within every one of  the Commandments:
So what are the Ten Commandments and where are they found in the Bible. They are written for us in Exodus 20.

Commandment 1
There is only One God - There is no other
Exodus 20: 2-3  I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me

Commandment 2
Worship only God - God requires our complete devotion and loyalty that is 100%.  We cannot be divided in our loyalty. We cannot love both God and the world at the same time.
Exodus 20: 4-6   Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;    And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 
   
Commandment 3
Keep God's Name holy and with honor. If we are claiming the Name of Christ and say that we are Christians and we still live in sinful lifestyles, we are not giving the Name of the LORD the honor that He deserves nor are we keeping it holy. Also we are not to use the Name of the LORD as a swear word to just to express surprise or horror. We are to honor the Name of the LORD keeping it only for Him.
Exodus 20: 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain

Commandment 4
Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. Since the Lord Jesus Christ rose on the first day of the week, that is on Sunday, we now have Sunday as our Sabbath Day. It is a day to rest, and to focus on our Lord with more intensity, to be with our family, and to refrain from doing unnecessary work. We are not to work nor are we to have others working in our businesses on a Sunday.  Things that are needed like preparing food or providing medical help or other physical supports for people must obviously continue to be done even in our Sabbath.
Exodus 20: Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Commandment 5
Honor your parents - your Father and Mother  Children show honor and respect to parents by obeying them, doing what the parent asks, and not talking back or lying etc. As adults we still need to honor and respect our parents which then looks more like a solid friendship with our parents and we take care of them as they become elderly.
Exodus 20: 12  Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Commandment 6
Never kill another person. This includes things such as abortion and euthanasia or mercy killing. God is the giver of all life and only He is the One allowed to end a life. God does not allow murder.
Exodus 20:13  Thou shalt not kill.

Commandment 7
Do not commit adultery - This is a big one in our day and age. Christians are not obeying Christ in this matter. Men and women while being married are getting involved with another person, affairs and sex outside of marriage. Pornography and lust are also included in this commandment. God will judge those who take part in sexual immorality.
Exodus 20: 14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Commandment 8
Do not steal - this speaks very clearly. We are not to take what belongs to another person. This even includes stuff that no one will ever notice such as pens or paper in the office.
Exodus 20: 15 Thou shalt not steal.

Commandment 9
Do not tell lies. Lies are used to cover up. The Lord says that everything will be revealed. There is nothing hidden that will stay hidden no matter how much lying is done to cover it up.
Exodus 20: 16  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

Commandment 10
Do not want or desire anything belongs to another person. This includes many different things - job, possessions, house, car, money, fields, a woman, or a man,
God gives us all that we need and we are contented with His goodness to us.
Exodus 20 : 17  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

So we can clearly see that if we love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and we love our neighbor as ourselves, we will have fulfilled all of the Ten Commandments of God.  If we are living with the love of Christ in our hearts we will not be lying to people or about others, we will not be living in immorality, or taking what belongs to others, we will not be killing other people. So we can see that God's way is truely the right and only way to live a good life.
God has given us these instructions in the Bible in order to help us to live a good life. God's Word helps us to have a more enjoyable and fullfilling life.