Love Your Neighbor

Robert Frost famously said, good fences make good neighbors. And of course, he is speaking tongue in cheek. He is writing against the idea that neighbors need fences. Fences are used productively for many reasons. You want to keep animals in. You want to keep the animals in a pasture. You want a fence. You want to keep certain animals out of your garden. You put up a fence. If you have enemies that are going to attack you, you put up a fence. You do not need a fence for a neighbor. In fact, fences do not make good neighbors. A neighbor isn't someone who wants to put a boundary or a barrier to keep a neighbor out. A neighbor is someone who looks over and says, I'm going to help my neighbor. I'm going to do something for them. It's not someone who says, I'm going to protect myself from them. I'm going to go out of my way for them. This morning, as Brian prayed, and as Sam has introduced, and as we've sung, we're going to be looking at the Ten Commandments, and we're going to be looking at the second half, what's called the second table. The first half of the Ten Commandments, they have to do with our relationship with God. They're very unique to the church, because we know God's name, we've been delivered, therefore we're called to worship Him. These six commandments, They're also unique to the church. They're unique to God's people because God's delivered people are supposed to live in such a way that the other nations come and they see God's righteousness and God's wisdom in the way we relate to one another. But we can also see they're fairly universal. If we consider the six commandments in terms of how humans relate to humans, how neighbor relate to neighbor, we can see they're universal. So the Ten Commandments, we can think of them, we can summarize the Ten Commandments. Love God, love your neighbor. Today we're going to be looking at those concerning the neighbor. They're universal because of this. Everybody can recognize them. Every parent believes they deserve honor. Everyone wants to live No one wants to be murdered. Everyone who's listening wants to hear the truth. Everyone who owns property wants to keep it for someone not to take it. Every spouse wants to marry someone who will be faithful. The problem is this. Every child wants to assert his own will against his parents. Everyone has anger, and some act on it with their words and even murder. Every speaker is tempted to embellish or to hide some form of the truth for self-preservation or appearance. Every person covets what somebody else has. Every spouse has lust, and some act on it in adultery. We recognize that we want those commandments to be obeyed. We want those to treat us as a good neighbor. But what we fail to do is realize that what the calling is is for us to recognize we're supposed to be the good neighbor. It's easy for us to count others' offenses against us rather than realize how short we fall. As we look to the Ten Commandments, we're in Deuteronomy 5. This is found on page 150 in your Pew Bible. If you didn't have a Bible and you would like that one, please take it with you. It is the word of God. Please take and read. Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law. These 10 commandments have already been given in Exodus 20. When we went through Exodus, I spoke to each one of them. So we had 10 sermons on the 10 commandments. I'm now doing it from a 30-feet view, looking at it from above to consider the big picture. God called a people out of Israel, called them out of slavery, delivered them, made them his own nation, made them his own special people, said, you're my treasured people, now this is how you live. I've saved you, now live according to my commandments. I'm your king who's delivered you, he says. Well, that generation, they failed. They failed over and over again. They rebelled against God. They were a stiff-necked people. They were hard-hearted. They continued to serve and worship other gods. So God, in His justice, He let them die in the wilderness. We're in Deuteronomy. It's the second giving of the law, the second time God has given these 10 commandments, and it's to the second generation, so that that next generation they'll enter that promised land. They'll be that nation, God's people. Now, we have to make sure we understand what this law is intending to do. The law was not intended to redeem God's people. That may seem obvious, but we have to make sure we say that. They're already redeemed. They're already delivered. They're already given a new identity and a new purpose and a new future and a new life. Now they're given God's expectations for how they can worship Him. You see, the law is powerless to give new life. The law is powerless to give new life. God gives new life. The lamb that is slain preserves and keeps and gives us new life. The law is how we worship that lamb, how we recognize He is our Savior and our Lord and our King. What we have to realize is we're called to love God and we love our neighbor. We only really do it when we realize that God first loved We love God because He first loved us. Now this is for Israel. This is for a specific people, in a specific time, going to a specific land, to be a specific kind of nation. Now, here we are at the church, thousands of years later, is this for us? Are these six commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, honor your parents, do not steal, do not lie, do not covet, are these still for us? Absolutely. Not only do they always reflect God's character, but these commandments are all repeated in the New Testament. Every single one of these commandments are repeated and even intensified for us. We are God's treasured people. We are his delivered people. He now demands our allegiance. You have to realize is when we think about these commandments, you can look around. because it's about how we're going to relate to one another. We look around because it's about how we love and treat one another. Primarily here in the church, if we can't love one another who has the same identity in Christ, how can we ever think we're going to love our neighbor who rejects Christ? So the way we're going to think about these is we're looking at one another, but we're also realizing this is part of our worship to God. He demands it. So we're looking from above. We're going to take kind of a 30-feet view here. We're not going to look at all the particulars. And so to do that, I want to introduce you, there's three traditional uses of the law. First, they teach us about God. God's law reveals God's character. So one of the first things we always want to do when we look at the law is say, what does this teach me about God? The second use of the law is that it restrains our sin. It reveals what sin is so we know what sin is, and it keeps us from sin, and even more so, it convicts us. And so the law not only tells us who God is, it tells us what He expects. It tells us what's out of bounds. And thirdly, it equips believers to know how to live, how to worship, how to please God. I'm going to modify these slightly, not because I think they're in any way wrong or need correction, but to make a specific point clear. So here's four questions that will outline our sermon. I'll make it more simple. If you don't get these questions down, it'll be fun. First, what do these laws teach us about God? Second, what do these laws teach us about our sin? Third, how do these laws point us to Christ? Fourth, how do these laws point us to worship? To make it much more simple, the four points are our God, our sin, our savior, our worship. Our God, our sin, our savior, our worship. First, let me read. our commandments. I will begin in verse 16. I need to make sure I identify who's speaking. Look at verse 6. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Yahweh, the delivering God, the one true God, He is commanding His people. Verse 16, honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God has given you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife and you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, his male servant or his female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's. These words the Lord spoke to all of your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud and the thick darkness with a loud voice and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. And as soon as you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders, and you said, Behold, the Lord our God has shown us His glory and greatness. And we have heard His voice out of the midst of the fire. This day, we have seen God speak with man and man still live. Now, therefore, Why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore, we shall die. For who is there of all flesh that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have? And we still lived. Go near and hear all the Lord our God will say and speak to us. All the Lord our God will speak to you and we will hear and do it. And the Lord heard your words when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. Oh, that they had such a heart as this always. to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever. Go and say to them, return to your tents, but you stand here by me and I will tell you the whole commandment and the statutes and the rules that you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land that I am giving them to possess. You shall be careful, therefore, to do as the Lord your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the ways the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, that it may go well with you, that you may live long in the land that you shall possess. First, our God, You hear that, verse 24? Behold, the Lord our God has shown us His glory and greatness. That's where we respond to the Ten Commandments. That's where we respond to God speaking. Well, when God speaks, we can only say, behold, His greatness, His glory. It's amazing here, God speaks. and it brings about the proper effect, reverence. That's really what we're getting at here with the word fear. Now there is a real fear, there's a trembling because God has spoken and as you heard, they're kind of amazed. Still alive. I just heard God and I'm still alive. That's amazing. Because they recognize they're sinners. They've never heard of a God who speaks in such a way and the people still live. There's a fear. There's a reverence. And God is speaking. You don't need to add to His Word. You should not take it away because His Word is sufficient. What's amazing here is He wants to be known. He wants to be loved. He's spoken so that we can know Him and we can love Him. Second thing we see about our God, He cares. He cares. Again, this isn't rocket science, but these are helpful things that we need to remember. He cares. He knows that we're all sinners and left alone. We're going to continue in our rebellion against Him. We're going to keep fighting and killing one another. He cares. He wants to say, stop murdering. He wants to hinder our sins so we're not as evil as we would be. He's not some distant deistic God. No, He sees us. He watches us. He wants to change the way we're going because we're destroying ourselves and one another. He cares. In many ways, we see this as God's giving us a bill of rights. We've talked about that before. God is giving us a bill of rights so that we recognize the rights of others. Others have the right to live. Others have the right to the truth. Others have the right to their property. Therefore, don't steal, don't murder. Your parents have the right to be honored. Do not dishonor them. Now, it's important God gives each of us these rights. They're God-given rights. God is the one that said all life is sacred. All life is set apart. All life has value. Therefore, do not murder. God is the one who says, you're deserving of truth. I created you with ears and a mind and a heart so that you could hear the word of God and believe you have the right to truth. He cares about our rights that He has given us. We don't boast of these rights, we thank God for these rights. Secondly, or thirdly, sorry, he speaks, he cares. God has expectations. God didn't send his son to shed his blood so that we could enjoy sin. God sent his son to seek and to save sinners so that they could repent and live the life that God intended for them to enjoy. A life in him, a life of obedience. He commands us. He has expectations. We can look at the specific commands. What do these specific commands teach us about God? He says to honor your father and your mother. We can reflect here that God himself has order. He's created our society to have order. There's authority structures. First and foremost, parent to child. And as we look at the fullness of Scripture, we see that God in Himself has an authority structure. Father, Son, Spirit. Notice the Son never sends the Father anywhere in Scripture. The Father sends the Son. There's a proper order. And our families are ordered around the same order of God. Ephesians 4 tells us every father is named after the Heavenly Father. Our families are supposed to reflect the great truth of God. We can see that authority structure is good. It's not part of sin. It's not part of the fallen world. It's good. Secondly, do not murder. God created life. We cannot take it. God says that life matters. The youngest to the oldest, the most rebellious sinner and the most godly saint, all of life matters. It's actually amazing when you think about the fact that God says, do not murder. He is committed to life. He's so committed to life that he himself chose to come down to be murdered so that we'd have new life. God is committed to life. He wants us to live. Do not commit adultery. God expects covenant faithfulness. This is good news. There's a number of promises in Scripture. God is the ultimate promise maker. He's the promise keeper. He expects covenant faithfulness. He expects us to keep our promises. We can be thankful that He keeps His. He is faithful. Do not steal. Every good and perfect gift comes down from God. He determines who gets what, and it's always wise and righteous. He is the one who bestows upon us all the blessings. This means we should be thankful for what we have and what our neighbors have that we do not have. Do not lie. We know that God is truth. He reveals his truth. These are the things we know about God. Now we need to think about ourselves. These things have been revealed to us so we know something about God. He's a God of truth, a God of life, a God of coveted promises. Now we need to think about ourselves. We need to think about our sin. When we look at the law, we realize that it's warning us from being as bad as we could be, or should be, or would be, rather. We need to realize that it reveals to us our own sin. The law is like a plumb line. It shows us how crooked we are. What the law tells us is that everybody is guilty of every command. You make sure we pause there, because that's a significant, bold statement. Everyone is guilty of every command. You might say, I've never taken anybody's life. Maybe not, but we know from the rest of scripture, we know from what Jesus teaches that this law is really getting at is that if we have anger, we're culpable of murder. If we have anger and we use our words, we're murdering. We may not have stolen physical property, but have we taken credit for something we did not do? Have we slandered somebody to take away their reputation? Have we honored someone who's in a position to be honored? Have we robbed them of God, of the position that God's given them? Have we lied? How often do we lie to ourselves? I deserve better, right? How often do we lie to ourselves? I deserve better. Or maybe it's the other half of that. We lie to ourselves and we belittle ourselves. I have no value. My life has no meaning. I have no purpose. That's a lie because God gives your life value. The two most powerful and pervasive lies in the church, one, God will love me if I'm good enough. That's a lie. God loves you because he loves you. The second one is God could not love me I'm not good enough. That's a lie, because God loves you, because he loves you. It's important to see that these laws do not have the power to change us. These laws only have the power to convict, correct, and condemn us. They're a plumb line. I feel the need to define what a plumb line is. If you're building a fence, You want to make sure all the posts are in line. You should want to make sure all the posts are in line. And if you just try to eyeball it, I can pretty much guarantee you they're not going to be in line. I see a couple people have built a fence, and they're agreeing with me. So what you do is you take two stakes and you tie a line. That way, those two stakes that are far apart, I put a stake here, I put a stake there at the door, and I draw a line, and it'll be plumb. It'll be straight. You see, if you try to build a fence on your own and then you put a plumb line, you'll see how crooked that fence is. You'll see that it's got a bend in it. You'll see that that one post kind of sticks out a little too far. You'll see how crooked it is when you compare it to the straight line. God's law is the perfect straight line. And if we compare our thoughts, our desires, our words, and our deeds to that straight line, we see they're crooked. We see they're bent way out of shape. We see they're bent against God. We see they're completely misaligned. See, the power of the law isn't to align. The power of the law is to help us see We're missing it. We've gone astray. We're crooked. The power of the gospel is what makes us straight. The power of the gospel that says, I will forgive your bent heart against me. I will forgive you for being out of line with the law. I will forgive you for the offense that you've made against my laws. I will give you new life. And then we try to begin, we try to start lining our lives up so that we worship him. The law shows us we're rebellious, we're guilty, we're judged. That prepares us to receive the gift of life, which is Jesus Christ. The law is our tutor. It points us to Christ, the truth. Now let's look to Christ, our Savior. We've seen our God, our sin, our Savior. When we look at the law, we will really see we've missed every one of them. Christ came to fulfill the law because we could not. He was the one who actually fulfilled the law. He's the faithful Son. Not only did He always honor His humanness, father and mother. Even more so, he's a faithful son who was always about the business of his father. He did what the father told him to do. He was obedient even to the point of death, death on the cross. He's a faithful bridegroom. He's committed to his bride, his church. Even while we are faithless, even while we're being unfaithful, he remains committed to the promise he made to redeem us in love. He's a speaker of perfect truth. He never lied. This is one of the hard things he said. I came to seek and save sinners. I came to seek and save sinners. You know that's hard. In order to be saved, you have to say something about yourself. I'm a sinner. The most gracious word God will tell you. The most gracious thing God will help you see. You're a sinner. Here's my Savior. Jesus came and He provided us His truth. This is a glorious thing to be under God's truth, to be bound to it. It's sufficient and it's good. Jesus never stole anything. He never murdered anybody. Actually, we can look at this one a little deeper. He was murdered. He was stolen from. You see, when they nailed Jesus Christ to the cross in our anger against God and our rebellion against God, we put him to death and he submitted himself to that so that he could forgive us for our anger and for our murder and for our lying and for our stealing. Jesus Christ had the right to be worshipped and glorified, and they nailed him to the cross. They robbed him of the right to be worshipped. Instead, they mocked and spat upon him. There's actually an amazing contrast we see in scripture. The first murder is between two brothers, Cain and Abel. God warns Cain, your sin's crouching at your door. Cain doesn't listen to God. Cain murders his brother. God comes to confront Cain. Your brother's blood testifies against you. It was a testimony that you're guilty and condemned. Here's the good news, brothers and sisters. Hebrews 12 teaches us, tells us, that the blood of Jesus Christ is a testimony greater than able. His blood says you're not guilty. Because He died in our place. He died for the guilt we, we have, so that He took upon the judgment of God. All the sins we have committed, they cry out, guilty. But the blood of Jesus Christ is a testimony greater than anything we've done. He cries out, not guilty. So big picture, we need to pull back. We have been delivered by the Savior. We have been forgiven by the Savior. We've been redeemed by the Savior. Now He is our King and commands us. So now we move to our worship. Again, we do not worship so that He will save us. We worship because He has saved us. Let's look at these specific commandments first. Verse 16. Honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God commanded you that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land of the Lord your God is giving you. He's purchased them with His blood. Now He calls them to obey and the first neighbor commandment is children, honor your parents. This command is repeated in Ephesians 5. This is for us, church. Paul makes it very clear. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother. This is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. The foundation for children obeying parents is this command, honor your father and your mother. What does it mean to honor? I think we can summarize it with a few words. First, honor's personal. Honor is personal. It's the way you relate in love to those who love you. Children, your parents love you. You're honoring someone who intends your best interest. It's personal. Secondly, it's positional. God placed your parent over you. They have a position of authority. It's a position for you from God to be under a parent so that you can honor them. Third, it's practical. It should change something in the way you talk, the way you act, the way you do what you do. Fourth, it's preferential. This is a matter of the heart. You give them the right to speak. You prefer, when you honor someone, you prefer to listen rather than to speak. Now that goes against every possible aspect of our sin nature. To prefer to listen rather than to speak. That's what it means to honor your parents. You prefer what they intend. You prefer their wisdom. Another word is deference. This is a good word for all of our children to learn today. Deference, you defer, you put forth a posture that says, they're in authority, what they say matters more than what I think. You defer, you trust them. Because God put them over you. God designed them for you. God doesn't make mistakes. He believes and they do know better than you. To defer to your parent is to say, my parents are wiser than I am, I should listen. Your relationship with your parents, and I'm speaking to everybody here, doesn't have an age cutoff, should be one of deference. When your parents ask you to do something, the reason you do it, children, is because your parents said to. That's deference. When your parents speak, we are called, you are called, to obey fully, quickly, and happily. We are called to obey fully, quickly, and happily. Let me try to back up for a moment. Honoring your parents is the training ground for how you will worship God. Training for worship is taking place right now while you're in the home, because this is what God's going to say. Obey me. If you can't humble yourself and submit yourself to the parent now who God has placed over you, your worship is not going to be full when you leave the home. Here's the real difference, and I'm sorry parents if I'm making too little of what we do here. As parents, we're trying to train the heart, but mainly we're just affecting behavior. We pray that the heart is trained while we're working on behavior, but we basically teach our kids not to do things they shouldn't do. We teach them not to say things they shouldn't say. And we hope that a heart regenerate will be formed, but if you can't do the things your parents tell you to do, and not say the things your parents tell you not to say, what happens when God really starts wanting to work on your heart? to say to repent of real selfishness. All the adults are saying, yeah, the things my parents always say, that was easy obedience. When that layer, those layers of onion, like an onion of sin, parents are dealing with the first few layers. God sees the heart, and he says to repent of the idols. If we can't honor parents, As part of our worship, we're not going to truly worship God when he calls us to full and hearty repentance. Parents, who and how you honor is training your children. I remember a sermon a number of us heard at a convention recently, and a mom came into a pastor's office, a pastor selling the store, and he says, my children don't respect me. OK, well, how's your marriage, he says. Wife's kind of offended. Why do you care about my marriage? It's about my child. No, I want to know about your marriage. How's your marriage? Well, he does this and this and this. Says, well, sounds like you don't respect your husband. And he walked the lady through to realize that her children are learning not to respect those in authority or to respect others because she doesn't respect others. They were learning this dishonoring from their own parents. If your child is rebellious and refuses to honor, ask yourself, what kind of conversations do they hear about those who've been put in place of authority over you? How are we responding to honor? Anytime our children are in sin, we have to first ask, what have they learned from me in that sin? Another way I want to apply this command, Christ has created a new household, Paul calls it, the house of God. We are now all brothers and sisters in Christ. There's a new household order. We are called to honor our heavenly father, and we do so by obeying his commandments. And one of the chief commandments that makes it very clear, we honor God by loving one another. We honor God by loving one another. As we think about this command to honor, a verse to remember, Romans 12.10, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor. I ask you, who do you honor? Who do you give deference to? Are you teaching your children to defer, or do they just see someone who's always fighting? The next command, command six in the Ten Commandments, do not murder. We can go to Matthew five here. Matthew five, beginning in verse 21. Here, this is after Christ has said, I will not remove any part of the law, fulfill it all. Matthew five. This will be found on page eight, 10, if you're using a pew Bible. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. Whoever says you fool will be liable to hell fire. So if you are offering, your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you. Leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. Three very simple observations. Anger makes us guilty of murder. This is in verse 21. Anger makes us guilty of murder. Secondly, anger breaks our relationships. Verse 22. Our anger, it breaks fellowship. It breaks union with neighbor. It makes us bad neighbors. Third, the scariest part. Anger hinders our worship. He says, don't enter worship. If there's some anger between you and another brother, don't worship. We see the same thing in our Lord's Supper command. Take account of the members of the body before you partake of the blood of Christ, who is your head, who unites you. We're supposed to recognize our relationships have a lot to do with our worship. James 6 tells us, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covenant cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. Now if somebody asks, what causes fights and quarrels? Well, that guy did this. Somebody asks you, what caused the fight and the quarrel? Our first answer is usually what the other person did to us, isn't it? James says, when somebody asks you what a fight and a quarrel, what is the source? He says to start looking here. It's the passion at war within us. As John said as he read our scripture, we're called to mortify sin. We're called to put it to death, to put it off. Colossians 3, put away all anger, wrath, malice, and slander. Ephesians 4, 26, be angry and sin not. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. If you let it linger, it's going to destroy you. Ephesians 4, 31 to 32, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. Notice it's not just a negative. Do not be angry, be tenderhearted. I also want to warn you, be careful to claim righteous anger. Christ was righteous. He had righteous anger. We are unrighteous. Something our anger tells us about our relationship to God or how we view God. If we're angry with God, first, we don't trust that he causes all things to actually happen for a purpose. We're saying that his grace isn't sufficient. Secondly, our anger, especially when we try to take it in our hands, what we're saying to God is that I don't trust you to be the vindicator. I don't trust you to be the just judge. Our next command, do not commit adultery. There are two commands about family. It's quite interesting. This is all about being a nation. A nation needs strong families. A nation needs committed families that don't commit adultery. A nation needs children to honor their parents. Here again we see Jesus speaking to lust. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, but as I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right eye causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell. Marriage has been given to us by God. We're to honor marriage. We're to honor the covenant that God has given to us. One of the things we have to see from scripture, and it's very straightforward. Sex was given to us by God, and it's good in its proper place. in the marital union. It's meant to be celebrated. It's meant to be glorious. God unites a husband and a wife. God uses it to procreate, to make further images of himself in human beings. It's glorious. But we're crooked. We're perverse. We take what God gives as a good thing and we twist it. We use it for our own selfish ends. We live in a culture that is sexually charged. We must be on guard. Jesus is simply saying, he's saying something very, very clear and very blunt. If your right eye causes you to stumble, cut it out. In our culture, we need to be able to put up blinders. We need to set certain boundaries so that we are protecting ourselves of thinking about what God has given us as good properly. But here's the problem. I don't think anybody here wants to move off the reservation and live in a cave. There's no way to put up enough blinders to not have this culture's sinful, sinful ideas penetrate our minds and our eyes and our hearts. through our ears. There's no way to put up enough blinders. This is why we must constantly see ourselves and our spouses through the lens of Scripture. We must constantly see ourselves and our spouses through the lens of Scripture so that we see that we do not have the freedom to be promiscuous in our thoughts. We don't compare ourselves or our spouse to some other person or some idea imposed upon us by our culture. Very clearly, we keep ourselves from images that cause us to lust. If you're tempted, be very clear, cut off whatever is tempting you or it will drag you straight down into hell. Wherever you go that tempts you, don't go there anymore. Whenever you're on your computer at a certain time and it's constantly tempting you, stop. Because if you continue in that sin, it can and will drag you straight into hell because it's destructive. He doesn't miss words here. Save your whole body from going into hell. How you pursue your wife, your husband, how you think of others, it has great spiritual ramifications. Do not steal. Do not steal. Recognize the right of others to their property. Ephesians 4.28, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. This is great. It's not just don't steal. There's a command to do something. We love commands to do something. Just tell me what to do. Work so that you can give. Stop stealing. Stop taking what's not yours. Work to be generous. Redeem so that we now see labor can be good. Work can be good because we can take what God gives us from that work We can give. There's other ways to steal than just property. As I've already said, slander and gossip, that steals reputations. Not showing deference steals someone's right to have an authority and a place of authority. We're called to live as people who give and do not take. Command nine, do not lie. Many Christian traditions consider lying one of the greatest sins, or the greatest commandment here, because Satan and his lie led us first into the fall. Something I want to point out about Satan's lies, or all powerful lies, they're powerful because they're usually half-truths, or they're very powerful because they actually aren't a direct lie, they're more of a question. Has God said One of the most powerful lies that you can hear from somebody is putting a question in your mind so that you start questioning what God has said or what he will do or other people. We have to be on guard against the lies of Satan that are slippery and dangerous. The best way to be on guard against lies, know the truth. Be committed to the truth. Give deference to others when they're speaking the truth to you. Ephesians 4, 25, therefore having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. We are members one of another. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only that which is good for building up. Would you speak the truth to build up. The last commandment, do not covet. This is really the heart commandment. You commit adultery because you covet. You steal because you covet. You murder because you covet. This is the idol factory. We do not thank God for what he's given us. We do not thank God for what he's given others. In Mark, the Gospel of Mark tells the story of Jesus and a rich young ruler. The man comes to Jesus and says, what do I need to do? I've obeyed all the laws, I've never murdered anybody, I've never stolen, I've never lied, I've kept all the laws. Jesus tells him specifically, this isn't a universal law, this isn't a universal command, he tells this man specifically, sell everything you've got and give it to the poor. The man walked away with his head down, crushed, because he was a man of great wealth. See this man, He had kept all the laws. He had been a nice guy. He had been a good neighbor. When you look at it technically. But what Jesus did, he put his finger right on the idol. He put his finger right on the heart. He helped him to see that he had not kept the first and most important law. Have no other gods before me. This man's wealth was his greatest God. What Jesus did was to put his finger right on the chief idol. Friends, this is where all our sin starts, when we have other gods before us. When we do not recognize we have been redeemed, we have been forgiven, now we're called to obedience. Let us love God and love our neighbor because he has first loved us. Will you pray with me? Father, thank you for speaking and caring and revealing our sin. Lord, for those who are overwhelmed with how they can see their lives are crooked, help them to see the power of the gospel to save sinners. Lord, I pray that you would help us all to meditate tonight, today, with other believers, throughout the week. Help us to think about your law and reveal to us where our lives are not lined up. May the power of your Holy Spirit enlighten us, to point us to Christ. Give us, Lord, the heart to obey your commandments. Give us a strength and the commitment and the perseverance to walk according to your ways for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.