The Life Giving and Life Guiding Eternal Principles Behind Each Commandment

I did use the preacher's outline in sermon Bible commentary for the preparation of this message today. I began the message last week, and I'm going to continue it next week. It's going to be a three-parter. Originally, I envisioned this to be a two-part sermon. It's going to be a three-part sermon. But let me begin at the beginning.

I want to do a little bit of a review from what we had last week. We've got some folks who were not here last week. We are going through, verse by verse, the book of Deuteronomy. The book of Deuteronomy is not some old, musty book for back in ancient times. It's a book that speaks to our day-to-day. The book of Deuteronomy talks about preparing a people for a kingdom. In their case, it was the nation of Israel, preparing the nation of Israel for that particular set of circumstances. We today are preparing for the kingdom of God.

The various lessons to be learned in the book of Deuteronomy help us today as well. The book of Deuteronomy is composed of three sermons that Moses gave to the children of Israel. Sermon number one goes from chapter 1, verse 1, to chapter 4, verse 43.

In that section, the theme for that section, that first sermon, is what God did for Israel. We're now into Moses' second sermon, starting in chapter 4, verse 44, and it goes all the way through chapter 26, verse 19. So if you thought I had long sermons, this is a long sermon. You know, 22 chapters worth. The theme for what we're at right now in the book of Deuteronomy is what God expects of Israel, what he expects of Israel. Now, when I saw that what was coming up next for me to go and expound and explain was Deuteronomy chapter 5, obviously we know what's in Deuteronomy chapter 5.

There's a discussion there, a reiteration of the law of God. Law, as we said last week, is the foundation of society. Law is the glue that holds people together. It's law that controls behavior of people, telling them what to do and not to do, giving them guidance, giving them guidelines. The law enables people to relate together, to work together, to build together. The benefits that flow from the law are almost innumerable. Now, Moses is standing with the children of Israel just the other side of the Holy Land on the east side of the Jordan.

They are right across from the huge fortified city of Jericho. And there are certain lessons that Moses wants to get across to the children of Israel. And there are certain lessons that God wants to get across to the children of Israel. Certainly among the lessons is the law of God. Now, you and I realized that if we were to summarize what God's law is all about, it's a law of love. Both Old Testament and New Testament show God's law is a law of love. I'd like you to turn to Matthew 22. I used this last week.

I want to use it this week. I'll use it next week as well. It helps me launch today's new material. Let's go to Matthew 22. We want to start in Matthew 22, verse 35. Then one of them, a lawyer. Now, he wasn't the kind of lawyer that you see on the TV today. There was no TV back in those days. But he was the kind of lawyer that dealt with the law of God.

One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying, Teacher, what is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind. This is the first and the great commandment.

So last week, for those who are here, what I did is I went through commandments number 1, 2, 3, and 4. And what I wanted to show through those four commandments and the commandments we'll have hereafter is what is the thinking of God behind each commandment? What are the eternal principles?

And as I said last week, I'll say again this week, and I'll say next week, I'm not trying to limit. If I say, Here's a principle we find behind commandment number 1, that doesn't mean that's the only principle that's there. You know, I've got to limit my time just because of being able to only speak for an hour.

You may meditate on this and come up with a good many other eternal principles behind each and every one of these commandments. But last week, we took a look at how we should love God. Commandment number 1 shows our supreme loyalty is to God alone. That is what God wants us to understand behind commandment number 1. Our supreme loyalty is to God alone. Now, we can have loyalty to our husbands or to our wives. We can have loyalty to our kids or grandkids. We have loyalty to our country. We can have loyalty to any number of things. But nothing. We must not have any loyalty in our life more than a loyalty we have to God. That is supreme. That is number 1.

Commandment number 2 governs the true worship of the true God. That's what God was thinking when he put that commandment together. The true worship of the true God. No idols worship God the way he needs to be worshipped properly. Commandment number 3 regarding the keeping God's name, not taking in vain. Commandment number 3 teaches us two different virtues. Honor and reverence.

I covered what honor and reverence was last week. Those are two virtues God wants us to understand as we keep the third commandment. The fourth commandment teaches us three different values, three different virtues. Again, I'm not saying this was an end-all. These are just three I covered last Sabbath. The fourth commandment, dealing with the Sabbath, teaches us the virtue of holiness, the virtue of sanctification, and the virtue of consecration.

Last week I said I was going to take all six commandments that are left today. After I was finished with the first three, I said that's enough. I've already have too much material. So we'll go through three commandments today and three more commandments next Sabbath. Today we'll go through commandments number five, six, and seven. So let's begin by, well, let's begin right here in Matthew 22. We've read through verse 38. Let's look at verse 39. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So the next six commandments deal with how we are to love our neighbor and the values that we need to incorporate and be thinking about in our hearts and our minds as we love our neighbor. Now let's turn to Deuteronomy chapter five. And you will want to put a marker there in Deuteronomy five because we'll be coming back to this on a number of occasions. Deuteronomy chapter five and verse 16 gives us the fifth commandment. Deuteronomy five verse 16. Honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God has commanded you that your days may be long that it might be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. So here we've got the fifth commandment which deals with honoring our mothers and fathers. What is an eternal principle or virtue that we see here? It's one that we don't see being understood or practiced or esteemed in our society or in our world today. The virtue is a respect for authority. Respect for authority. That's what God wants us to learn from the fifth commandment. That's one of the things he wants us to learn. Put it that way. Respect for authority. And I want you to think about something. The first four commandments deal with our duty to God, how we love God. Once we've shown our duty to God, what is the very next thing in God's mind that he views as being important? We honor God first. Then the very next commandment is we honor mom and dad. We honor mom and dad. The Hebrew word for honor means to respect, to esteem, to highly regard, to set apart, and count as distinguished.

Now, some of you are thinking ahead as I look at my audience over in Ann Arbor.

Some of us in the room had parents that weren't very honorable. Some of us in the room may have had abusive parents, parents with all sorts of issues. There may be some of us in the room who have a very hard time with the concept of honoring a mother or a father. So what do we do about that? Well, we're going to get that in a little bit. But let me not stay with the negative here for right now. Let's continue on. The family is the basic unit of society, the foundation of society. If we have honor and respect for authority, then our society will go forward the way it needs to be going forward. And yet we have a society today that's decaying. We've got a society today that is going down and it's going down quickly. And a large part of this is because there is a lack of respect for authority. I was doing a lot of research for the sermon today, and I can't give you a lot of the research of this. As I was thinking about it, it was just so mind-numbing and so negative. But one stat that I thought was interesting that helps me underscore a point here. 40% of all children born in this country are born out of wedlock. 40%. Two children in five born out of wedlock. What does that do to the family? What does that do to respect when you've got so many fathers who are absent, so many fathers who aren't there, or so many mothers have to be single moms? What does that do to the family unit? It does a great deal of harm to the family unit. We'll get to more of that as we go through the sermon. So let's take a look now and break this commandment down a little bit.

God has established for us to respect authority. Let's turn our attention now. Put a marker in Deuteronomy 5. Let's go to Ephesians 6. Now we want to take a look at, well, what do we do if mom or dad or mom and dad just simply weren't honorable people? What do we do? Do we keep that commandment? Does God give us a pass on that commandment? How do we keep that commandment? Well, God wants us to keep it. How do we do it? How do we do it as Christians under those kinds of circumstances? And you know, more and more we find that to be the case in our society. People have parents, moms or dads or both who are not honorable. What do we do? How do you tell somebody to honor a dishonorable parent? What kinds of things would you do? God tells us we must. How do we do that? Ephesians 6, verse 1, parents obey your children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise.

As big as and important as those first four commandments were, this is the first one with promise. There's something to do with if you do this properly, your days will be prolonged, you'll be blessed. But again, the question is, because I think we have a pretty good understanding of how to honor our parents properly, but what about the unhonorable parent?

Well, there is a major principle here that we're going to see, well, we can use for this, and as we go through this whole commandment, affects other areas of our lives. And that is, we must honor and respect the office of parent. Honor and respect the office of parent. Jesus Christ tells us we are to love everybody, even our enemies. And it certainly could be said that if you've got an abusive parent or a parent that didn't do well by you, in one sense, they weren't too friendly toward you, it could be said that they were an enemy. But Christ says, there's a certain line that I as God, that I as Jesus Christ, am going to draw. And you need to stay on the right side of that line. And one of the things you do is, you don't have to be in the right side of that line. And one of the things you can't do, we have to get our attitude in gear. And we can't hate anybody, not even our enemies. We can hate their behavior. The adage is true. We don't hate the sinner, but we hate the sin. That's true. And by saying that we must watch our attitudes, that's not saying we condone what a parent has done. We're not saying it's okay. We're not giving them any kind of a pass. But we are saying, okay, God tells us, Christ tells us, we aren't to hate anybody. So that's the first thing we do. We have to get our attitudes properly calibrated. Secondly, we will have, perhaps, occasion to deal with a parent, who maybe has shown themselves to be dishonorable in the past, maybe currently in the present. What do you do? Well, we refrain from derogatory remarks. We treat them with courtesy and respect, because that's who we are. We can't always be thinking about who they are. We're thinking about who we are. We are people of honor. We are people who, by our actions, want to be respected in a proper and right way. We want to be a light to the world. We want to be good Christians.

We should pray that God will help our parents, who may be in that situation, to understand the error of their way. Maybe then they can be reconciled to God, and then after being reconciled to God, they can be reconciled to us. So, again, honor and respect the office of parent.

Thirdly, as I mentioned a moment ago, we should conduct our lives in a way that honors them. We have a family name. Mine is Delisandre. What is your family name? We want to bring honor in a proper way, as Christians, to our family name. And by bringing honor to our family name, our own proper behavior can bring honor to a dishonorable parent that they never would have earned on their own. So when God tells us that we are to respect and honor our parents, we respect and honor our parents, not necessarily to obey. They may ask you to do things that are against God's law. We obey in the Lord. But we must honor and respect the office of parent.

But let's move past that. We're talking about this Fifth Commandment dealing with respect to authority. We learn that, hopefully, positively, as children. We live in an atmosphere, you know, I lived in an atmosphere where growing up my parents weren't in the church.

But I don't know, maybe you disagree with me, but I consider myself kind of a well-adjusted person.

My folks weren't in the church, and yet they taught me a great many things that were very stabilizing to me as I grew up. And I honor and respect them to this day. I mean, my dad was not a churchgoer. I think I may mention the very first time I ever gave a sermon that dad was able to stay in the audience long enough to listen to a sermon that he had to go out and get a smoke. You know, he was just that kind of a guy. He didn't care much for religion. Mom dragged us through every church under the sun. She cared for all kinds of religions. And eventually, God called me on my own. But, you know, we learn from our parents, and as we learn proper respect for authority from our parents, then that carries on into the next stage of life, which is our husband-wife relationships. And there's a certain authority there, respect for authority we need to have. We're in Ephesians chapter 6. Let's look at Ephesians chapter 5. In my Bible, it's just right across the page here. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 22, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church. He's the savior of the body. So here we have a proper respect from a wife to a husband. And this proper respect really stands us in good stead throughout all of our lives. Now the wives might say, well, hey, isn't respect a two-way street? I say, absolutely. Take a look at verse 21. Ephesians 5, 21, submitting to one another in the fear of God. So husbands are to love and respect their wives. Wives are to love and respect their husbands. It's something that we learn. If we learn that properly, we have a tremendous benefit. A tremendous benefit. Let's expand out. We're talking about respect for authority. We've talked about the family constellation here. But let's expand out to not just our physical family, let's expand out to our spiritual family.

Because there is respect for authority we must have within the church. And over the years I've been in the church, that's taken a tremendous hit. And it's taken a tremendous hit because, again, we've had people who have not been respectable. We've had people who have not been honorable, and it's taken a real hit. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't respect the office of elder, the office of deacon, the office of deaconess, the office of somebody who is not ordained, but maybe an older man or an older woman in congregation. And by virtue of the life they have lived, they are worthy of honor and respect, what they've accomplished in their Christian life.

We need to have that kind of respect in the church. Let's go over to 1 Timothy, chapter 5. 1 Timothy, chapter 5, verse 17. 1 Timothy 5, 17. Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine. Elders be worthy of double honor. Now, we're not talking about something that's wrong. This is in the Bible. This is the word of God.

A proper kind of honor and respect. You respect the office of elder or deacon or deaconess because God has ordained for those offices to be in the church. Now, once again, verse 17. Elders who rule well. Now, some elders don't rule well. Some deacons don't do their job, or deaconesses don't do their job properly. Brethren, as you know, I've discussed with you on a number of occasions. My ministry has revolved around having to follow people who weren't what they should have been.

You know, my first, when I was here in Michigan as a local church elder, I was hired by the church in the summer of 1984, and they said, well, we really need you in Raleigh, North Carolina. The fellow there has got 600 people to pastor. He's all by himself. He leaves the house at 10 o'clock in the morning and comes home at 12, 10 o'clock at night or midnight.

He really needs some help. So, sell your house and get down there in three weeks. So, I sold my house in three days, and I was down in Raleigh, North Carolina. Five and a half years, a wonderful experience. And then I got the call in 1989 to go to my next assignment.

They said, well, you know, Randy, we need you in a certain area. We need you to get there as soon as possible. So, I got a phone call. It was five days before the Feast of Tabernacles. They say, you're going to be, the truck is going to be at your house just after the Feast, and you're going to be on that truck and gone. So, I was told five days before the Feast, you're moving, several states, two days after the Feast, truck's there, and we're going. You know, there was no special, let's have a nice dinner for the De La Sandro's.

Let's give them their present. No, no, they mailed the present. We're gone. Several years coming to go, I get another phone call. Randy, we need you over in this area tomorrow. I said, tomorrow?

He said, yeah, he did pretty good last time, moving pretty quickly. I said, well, I can move pretty quickly, but that's a little too quickly. So, I said, I've got a wife to take care of. I've got my kids still in school. You're going to want me to go there in March. My kids still need to finish school. I said, okay, we'll give you a week. So, I took nine days.

I filled up my van, my computer, all my notes, and off I went and got a little one-bedroom apartment and was working in that area 12 hours a day, just visiting people, doing nothing but listening, because the pastor there was using his teenage children as spies. He would send his teenage children into other homes that had teenage children, find out what was going on. Then, during services, he would simply call for somebody and say, well, I'd like to see somebody after services. And after services, that person would go into a room.

All the deacons and elders would surround him, and they'd get yelled at so loudly that everyone else in the room would hear it. And I had men in that congregation who were service veterans who literally had diarrhea at the thought of coming to church.

Then I moved here. And you have not been a problem, but the problem was the person that I had to replace, because at one point, the Detroit and Toledo Church Circuit was one of the largest church circuits in the Midwest. We had 120 people in Detroit.

You see 120 people in this room? We had 120 people in Detroit. We had 120 people in Toledo. Some of the people in this room were giving me phone calls saying, hey, Mr. D, we've got issues here. Can you come out and help us? I said, well, I'll call the home office.

And finally, by the time they were able to get me over here after a couple of years of trying to work with who was here before me, I got here. We didn't have 240 people. We had 60. 60 between two churches. We lost three quarters of the people. So I know when the Bible talks about elders who rule well, there are people who do, people who don't. But you know what? We still respect the office. We still respect the office. You know, after a service in Ann Arbor, somebody came to me with a very interesting thought. A person just a little younger than myself. You know, Mr. D, it's kind of interesting you're talking about this aspect of respect for authority. When you think about who is in charge in society right now, throughout society, in large measure, it's the flower children, the hippies of the 60s, the 70s, the people who back in their day had a total disdain for authority. Now they aren't the authority. And what are they doing with it? How are they handling it? How is society now that's in their hands? What are they doing? Well, it's crumbling. I thought that was an interesting thought. But again, and this person realized, yes, we must, even though people around us who are in charge in leadership positions are not doing what they should do, we have to be people who have a respect for the office, in this case, the office of the church. Let's move past this. We went from a family to the church. Let's look at government. Romans 13. Romans 13. Romans 13, verse 1, Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. And the authorities that exist are appointed by God. So this is why we say, you know, I don't just bring these things up. I don't make these principles up on my own or out of whole cloth. Here we see a principle in chapter 13, verse 1. We respect the authority because God has behind that authority. Again, that's something God endorses what the authority is doing. That's a clear difference between what God has put in place and what is righteous before God in His eyes. We have to understand that. I mean, when I see what is becoming of this country, it saddens me to see what's happening in this country. You know, again, I can't repeat all the things that I did research on, but I thought it was interesting in this country.

We're talking about civil authority. We're talking about the powers that be.

In so many cases, we have a very liberal society. And in so many cases, it's like only 20 percent of the people believe in God, believe in the morals that you and I would believe in. People who in Hollywood, people who make the TV shows. One of the studies I was seeing said that I think it's only like 15 percent of people who make movies and TV shows believe adultery is wrong. That's why you have what you see on TV and the silver screen. You know, if a relationship isn't working, I get to simply move to another one. Maybe you have several at one time. You know, they don't view it as being anything wrong. But again, respect for authority. God has put, and you fill in the blank, the city, the mayor, the state senator, the congressman, the president, whoever, God has put them in charge. It doesn't mean we need to agree with everything they do, but we do need to show respect. We need to be people of respect. Lastly, we've gone from the individual to the family, to the church, to the government. Let's take a look in the workplace. 1 Peter 2.

1 Peter 2. Do you just sit around at work singing kumbaya?

Your boss is the most wonderful person you've ever met in your life.

Do you make up songs for your boss? Is there such a wonderful person? 1 Peter 2. Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear. Notice now, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh. God realizes life's tough out there, and we need to respect the office. We need to be people of respect, not people of disrespect. 2 Peter 3. There's a very important reason for that. Let's conclude this section, this commandment, by turning to Colossians 3.

Colossians 3.

Colossians 3, starting here in verse 22.

Bond servants obey all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men please, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. Notice where it's heading.

We are people of respect because God says we need to be people of respect.

And whatever you do, do it hardly as to the Lord and not to men.

This is something we have to keep in mind in the family, in the church, in the government, in the workplace, whatever we do, we do to the Lord and not to men. Knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the reward of your inheritance, for you serve the Lord Jesus Christ. We serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there will be no partiality.

So again, it's a very important thing that we understand what this fifth commandment entails. It entails a lot. And the mechanics behind it, in my view, is it shows a respect for authority. And that is sadly lacking in today's world, a respect for authority.

Let's move on to commandment number six of the middle one of the three we'll be going through today. Go back to Deuteronomy chapter five.

And we see this commandment here in verse 17. Deuteronomy 517, where it says, You shall not murder. You shall not murder.

Now, I took some time this last week. I did some research.

I looked at every one of your names who attend here locally on a regular basis.

I don't remember seeing any mafia bosses.

I don't think any of us here are paid assassins. So do we get a pass on this? Do we get a pass on, you shall not murder?

Let's remember something behind this commandment. We've got a second generation. Now, their parents all died in the wilderness because of their hard-heartedness, not wanting to follow God. They all died in the wilderness. But they still remember. They were kids. And they remembered what happened at Mount Sinai.

They remember that they, you know, some of them will remember that they were slaves in the Middle East. They were slaves in Egypt.

Human beings were viewed not that much differently than animals.

They were bred so they would be strong, so they would work hard. And if they weren't strong, they couldn't work hard, they were kind of kicked to the curb.

Human life was cheap.

And I believe that is exactly what God has here as something for us to consider.

The virtue here of respect for human life. That's what God is thinking about, I believe, when he's looking at verse 17, you shall not murder. Respect for human life.

When you take a look at what's happening in the world, it's over the Middle East, over in Syria, almost every night you turn on the news and you watch what's happening in Syria, you see people being shot in the street. How many times do you have to hear the disclaimer, what you are about to see may be disturbing to you. And you see people dead and bleeding in the street. You see people's bodies being dragged away.

You see where people have bombs strapped to their body, they go into a public place, they blow themselves up, and all the innocent people around. There is a lack of respect for human life.

But notice God's perspective. Let's go to Galatians chapter 4.

Galatians chapter 4.

Why does God respect human life so much?

Galatians chapter 4 and verse 19.

My little children, for whom I labor in birth again, until Christ is formed in you.

Christ is formed in you.

This is something that is so near and dear to God's heart. It's precious. Life is to be precious.

God made us in His image.

God made us in His image. For the purpose of creating His own character in us. For the purpose of us no longer being human, but being God.

And if we take life, we take something that's not our right to take.

God gives and God takes. And yet in our society and our world, we settle our differences with war.

We settle our differences with criminals who don't want to play by the rules. They don't want to work hard like you work.

They will not only break into your house to steal things, but they may take your life as well if you get in the way.

And too many people view abortion as just another type of contraceptive. Well, you know, I just... We don't want a kid now, so I'm just going to make an appointment with a doctor and we'll just abort that child.

Now, I could spend a lot of time here with the most obvious issues, but I'm not going to.

The more obvious issues about murder would include premeditated, deliberate killing. You know that's wrong. I don't need to spend a lot of time with that. Abortion. You know that's wrong. War. Suicide. Mercy killing. All those things you understand are wrong and shouldn't be done. But I would like to go to some of the less obvious issues.

Issues you and I may not think about, and yet the Bible refers to them as murder.

We can murder with our passion. And every one of us in this room is capable of doing just that. And I would dare say, I would dare say, probably everybody in this room has done that.

Now, maybe you have gone through your whole life to this point and never hated anybody.

But if you've ever hated somebody, you've murdered them.

Now, that's not my thinking. Let's take a look at 1 John 3 and verse 15. 1 John 3 and verse 15. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

Years ago, those of you who attend here on a regular basis know I enjoy science fiction. Years ago, in the original Star Trek series, there was a very interesting episode.

What's his name? Goshen. I forget his first name is. He was a person who would impersonate people. I think it's Frank Goshen.

Play day, an individual in one of these episodes where half of his body was black and the other half of his body was white.

And he was from a planet where everyone in that planet half their body, you know, their right side was white and the left side was black.

And they were at war with another planet.

And people couldn't understand why they were at war because they looked alike.

Both half were white and half were black.

But the reason they went to war is because the one planet, they were white on the right side, and the other planet, they were white on the left side.

See, people will take differences, and they will magnify them, and they will use them as reasons for hate.

About a week or so ago, we were doing some shopping, Mary and I, and as I like to do, I wandered over to where they were selling CDs, movies. I'm always looking in the cheap bin. What movie can I find for five bucks? And I didn't find anything there, but I did find something that I had not seen in a long time. It was a miniseries that came out in the mid to late 70s called Roots.

And some of you, especially some of you younger people, that probably was before you were even boring.

But if you've never seen a miniseries called Roots, I would suggest you get that.

Mary and I are going through that series right now, and it's a, in many ways, a heartbreaking thing to watch.

Roots is a story, Alex Haley was a gentleman who, a black man, who had traced his roots from modern America all the way back to Africa back into the 1700s.

And Roots is a story about him, you know, his original ancestor that he began with, Kunta Kinte, who was an African, I forget what part of Africa, but he was captured, sold into slavery. And you see through the course of the movie how he has to make the passage on the ship, what happens right around the time of our American Revolution. And it goes through several generations.

And as you watch that movie and see how black people in this country were treated, you just, you do want to cry. And you probably do cry.

Most recently, a show, a movie that came out that I've seen twice, it's been an excellent movie, I highly recommend, it's called The Help.

If you've not seen a good movie, you want to see that. That's a good movie to see.

The Help is a movie about a number of black women who were maids in the 1960s in Mississippi. Now, you may think you understand how some people live, but you watch that movie.

I won't go through a lot of details here, but it was a tremendously moving movie.

The point I'm getting at, 2008, we elected Barack Obama. 96% of the black people in this country voted for Mr. Obama, and I understand that. But he would not have gotten in had a majority of white people not voted for him.

Now, because so many white people voted for him, so many white people voted for Mr. Obama, he became president.

And some people think, because he was voted in as president, that somehow discrimination and prejudice and racism is gone.

Well, you talk to any black person here in the room, or anyone that you know, and you ask them, is discrimination gone? Is prejudice gone? Is racism gone? Of course it's not. And all of that— And it's not just a matter of black-white. You can have racism between all white people. You can have somebody like what's happening with poor Mitt Romney.

Oh, he's rich! And so you have the rich white folks and the poor white trash white folks. And there can be this animosity between the groups. Or you can have, in various races, some got darker skinned, some got lighter skinned. All sorts of reasons for people to have hatred in their heart.

So, brethren, I ask you, have you been a murderer? Have I?

It's something that we need to think about. We can hate. We can murder with our passions. We don't even have to leave a chair. We don't have to move a muscle. And we can be murderers.

There's another way we can be a murderer, and that's with our words.

With our words.

Proverbs chapter 18.

Proverbs chapter 18.

And verse 21.

Proverbs 18.21.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Death is in the power of the tongue.

And not only can we say things that, you know, with gossip, with slander, with innuendo, we can talk about somebody and leave out certain key facts that, if we do, it puts them in a much horrible light. But if we tell them all the truth, well, you know, maybe it's a little bit easier for people to understand where they're coming from. But we can do that if we're not careful. Gossip, slander, innuendo. Again, if any of us have been guilty of that, we can murder with our words. And today, today we can really be effective assassins.

Because today we've got the internet. We can get online. We can put things all over, either for good or for ill. And we can murder with our words.

How about our actions?

Let's take a look at some things you may not have thought about. Let's go over to James chapter 4 for a moment.

James chapter 4. Now, you'll have to bear with me for a couple of minutes as I explain what I'm getting at here. James chapter 4 and verse 17. James 4, 17. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. So we may know what we should be doing in certain areas, but if we don't do it, that's sinful.

By some of our actions or some of our inaction, we could be neglecting our fellow man and acting in a murderous way. We can be driving down the road and we want to start texting.

I've talked a little bit earlier about if I get taken out by a semi, we want this church to keep on going forward. Well, why is that? How many times have I almost knocked off the road by somebody who was on a cell phone and they're coming across? They don't know how fast they're going. Sometimes they're 10 miles over, sometimes 10 miles under, or they're texting, or they're doing their hair, they're doing their makeup.

You know, I do an awful lot of driving.

I've probably driven over a million miles in my career. I've seen everything. I remember one time driving down the highway, some guy was playing. He was driving the car. He was by himself. He's got his left leg out of the window. I mean, from his knee out of the window, he's strumming a tire. I don't know what he's driving with. I don't know if he's got his knee propped up there. I don't know how in the world the guy's driving, but he's got a leg out there, and I don't know how in the world he positioned himself for that. Must be double jointed. He's got this leg out there. He's strumming the thing. He's driving his car. He's going all over the place. I've seen people eating, you know, bowls of soup or cereal. I don't know what was in the bowl. They're eating stuff. But you know, you get in an accident, you take somebody's life. That's murder. That's murder. There's other actions we can take that damage or lessen life. And when we damage or lessen life, that's a form of murder as well. And we can be just as susceptible in the church as anybody. Overdrinking. Overdrinking. Drugs. Anything that we can be addicted to, which brings unnecessary risks, risks a lot of harm. I won't go any further than that. I think, you know, I'm struck pater. You know, I remember when I first came in, I'm not much of a drinker. I guess I'm not much of a drinker because as I was growing up, people I knew, I knew too many people who drank too much. Now, in my life, I can honestly say I've never even come close to getting drunk. Never wanted to get drunk. Never been on any kind of a, I've never taken one drag of a marijuana, not one. Call me what you want to, but that's never interested me. But growing up, I knew a number of people who were alcoholic. And when I saw them making fools of themselves, that was not something I wanted. So I don't drink much. But when I, you know, when I first started coming into the church, especially when I go to the Feast of Tabernacles, when I was a kid, back when I was 18, you know, a thousand years ago. I remember going to the dormitory there at the feast and seeing all of our young people, you know, how many bottles of booze could they put on a wall? How many bottles could fit on a windowsill? And I remember walking past the trash bins, all these church families, you know, case upon case of bottles of beer and various hard stuff.

Now, there's nothing wrong with drinking in moderation. But some of our people take this to an extreme. And I'll just say that. When we get to the place where we've got to have, we have to have alcohol at a function, then something's wrong. And as a pastor, I tell you, that's wrong. We shouldn't be like that. One last thing regarding this sixth commandment, another type of way we can murder. And you might not have thought of this. So I found over here in Ezekiel chapter 33. Let's go over here. Ezekiel chapter 33. We can be a murderer if we fail to warn the world of what's coming.

Ezekiel 33 is a very famous section of scripture dealing with the watchmen.

We have people in our Church of God culture who feel that they no longer need to preach the Gospel, no longer need to deal with prophecy. Because, well, that's all. Mr. Armstrong did all that years and years and years ago, a generation ago. We don't need to do that. And so all we need to do is prepare the bride. Now, I don't find that anywhere in the scripture. But what I do find in the scripture is this. Let's take a look at Ezekiel chapter 33 verse 6.

But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and if people are not warned and the sword comes and takes any person from among them, he's taken away in his iniquity but his blood I'll require at the watchman's hand. If we don't have a work that does a warning message to the world, then the people's blood in this world who we don't warn is on us.

Verse 7. So you, Son of Man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Therefore, you shall hear a word from my mouth and warn them for me. When I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way. That wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I'll require at your hand. Now, again, we've got people who will sit in their homes. They feel I don't need to be a part of any organized group.

They're free to do what they want to do. But if I were in their situation, I would be concerned. I would be breaking this principle right here. So commandment number six deals with respect for human life. Let's go to the very last one we want to cover today, commandment number seven. We'll cover eight, nine, and ten next Sabbath. The commandment number seven, let's go to Deuteronomy chapter five again to read the commandment here. Deuteronomy chapter five and verse 18, you shall not commit adultery. You shall not commit adultery. Men and women were designed by God to be together, to need each other. Marriage is a natural union between a man and a woman.

Between Adam and Eve. Not between Adam and Adam. Not between Eve and Eve.

We've got God's Word here that tells us what a marriage should be composed of, how you start a family. It's been divinely ordained. We say that in our wedding ceremony.

Antonio and Julia had a very beautiful wedding here not long ago. They think it was a beautiful wedding and I would agree. And it was a man and a woman. That's the way God wants it. And I'm sure they're enjoying their relationship and that's the way it should be. That's the way God has ordained it. And yet here in this country, maybe you're aware, maybe you're not aware, but in June, our government declared June to be a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender pride month.

Our government decreed that. In June of 2011, the LGBT, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender pride month. God says that's an abomination. And yet we're saying, well, that's something we should take pride in. What does commandment number seven deal with? Commandment number seven, the guts, the machinery behind this deals with the purity of a marital relationship. The purity of the marital relationship. It is Adam and Eve. It's not Adam and Adam or Eve and Eve. It's Adam and Eve. Purity in a marital relationship, not the lesbian lifestyle. Mary, earlier today, thought she heard an advertisement for some place in Florida. You know, what is that one place there in Florida? What's it called? No, the other one. Is it the common? Not the commons. The village. The villages. Villages. Where, you know, all the people come and, you know, it's a nice sort of a thing. Well, now they want to have the equal time for the, I guess, the gay lesbian group, where now they're having a special place where if you fit in that lifestyle, oh, we want you to come because we've got things for you right here. How horribly abominable. Let's take a look at Genesis Chapter 2. Let's see what God's word spells out here in Genesis Chapter 2.

Genesis, you know, Genesis Chapter 2. Very beginning of the Scriptures, right? Genesis Chapter 2.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother. This is verse 24, Genesis 2.24. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Man and woman, established from God from the beginning. Very clear. No ambiguity.

And yet today, if you say something in public, if you're on radio or TV and you espouse this, people will say, well, you're so intolerant. You're bigoted. You're uninformed. You poor idiot. You know? And you have to take a look here with Christ. You know, Christ is going to have his own say on this. Matthew Chapter 19. And in my Bible, this is mostly in red lettering, talking about the very words of Jesus Christ. Matthew Chapter 19, Verse 3.

The Pharisees also came to him, testing him and saying to him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? Well, no, it's not. It doesn't mean that divorce isn't granted in certain cases because it is. Verse 4. And he answered and said to them, have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female? So here we've got further elucidation. Some people might say, well, I'm the wife. Well, wait a minute. You're the wife. You're, you know, he's a male and you're a male. How are you the wife? No. Here we see God says, he made them male and female. God is very specifically showing them what is what in terms of the relationship, the makeup of the relationship. You know, I am a part of, I'm a counselor for what we call prepare and enrich. It's a very valuable service. It's a company that's headquartered out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

When people are thinking of it, many of you young people who have gotten married in a church probably went through and did the prepare a rich survey. But it's a group of people who have got their doctorates in marital relations. They put together a survey of 165 questions. It's very complete. It goes through about 12 major areas of life. If people are wanting to get married, we'll say, let's take the survey. What the survey will show is how much you've been conversing about each of those 12 areas. You know, roles, family and friends, you know, children, various other things. How much talking you've done. Now, the survey is not there to tell you whether you should or should not get married. It's there to tell you how well do you know your intended, your future spouse. And if you get some really low scores, well, maybe that should indicate you should take some more time and get to know your spouse better. But it's interesting, the last time, well, not the last time, but a while back when they redid the survey, they made us all retake our credentialing. And they're going through the page. They're showing us what's what on a page. And at the very bottom is a little, you know, these little computerized tests that you do. And the bottom is a, you know, a little box and it has, you know, A and B or A or A and B or one or two. And so I raised my hand and said, instructor, what's that little box down there for? It's not really noted. Oh, that's in case both of the people you're working with are men or both women. And you can assign one of them number one or one of the number two. No. God said He made them male and female. Verse five, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and a two shall become one flesh. So they're no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. So Jesus Christ here makes it clear that God from the beginning intended that marriage should be a monogamous and a permanent relationship between a man and a woman. He wants purity in the family. Let's go beyond this. Let's go backward in the scripture a little bit to Matthew chapter five. Matthew chapter five verses 27 through 30. Matthew chapter five verse 27. You have heard that it was said of those of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

So here we have something else here. God's law sanctions sex within marriage only.

And if there's other activities outside of marriage, it is sinful. It is not appropriate. It is not to be done. It is immoral. And by saying this, we show, Christ is wanting to show here that he wants this marriage relationship to be totally pure, even in thought, not just in action, but in thought. We don't stray any way, shape, or form in our relationship.

Of course, when you take a look at the damage that is done by disobeying the seventh commandment adultery, the damage is just awful. 1 Corinthians 6.

Time is running here, and I need to chop a little bit out of the sermon. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 18.

Notice that Paul says here that the church in Corinth was a church that was very much into a very sexual-oriented society. They had the temple prostitutes and so forth. Notice what Paul says to them, flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. So damage is done here to the individual. Damage is done to the children, and society is damaged. There's damage all around.

When you take a look at what's happening in the homes in America today, and there are those in this room who could speak to what's happening in the home today much more eloquently than I can, who spent a career dealing with that. But when you take a look at what happens when you've got a broken family, you've got people who will become so many times economically disadvantaged.

Dad runs off. Mom's got to rear the kids and somehow get income to come in as well.

Sometimes that doesn't work out so well. Criminal activity begins to take place. The poor mom, you know, she can't get much productivity at work because she's dead tired. She's raising kids. She's working. She's trying to do the job of two parents.

Then there's all the various issues that happen to the kids.

There are the scars from disillusionment with the family. There is anger. There is depression. There is bitterness. And many times the kids, as they grow up, they are wanting to get revenge.

And they have, in many cases, the kind of well-adjusted people that they would want to have been because of what they went through as kids. I remember years ago, in a place I was pastoring, we had a young lady that was just, you know, everything was going for her.

She was in the church. She was baptized. She was a wonderful young woman. At that particular point in time, she was in her mid-20s, you know, a converted person, always there in church, always at the Bible studies, asking good questions, studying her Bible, you know, very much into God's way of life. She had a wonderful job. She had, you know, she had a college degree, wonderful job, wonderful career, and owned her own home. And to boot a beautiful young woman with a great deal of personality. And one day she and I were talking, and she said, I bet you you wonder why I never go out. And in that particular area, there were plenty of people for her to go out with. And I said, well, yeah, I kind of wondered. I didn't want to bring it up. It's not really my business. It's your business. Well, Mr. D, I just, I watched what happened to my parents and what they went through in their marriage. And I just don't ever want to risk that. I just don't want that for me. And it really, really hurt me because here was a young woman who had so much to give, set so much to offer, yet her whole mind and heart was scarred as a result of the seventh commandment being trampled on.

And we've got too much of that in our society. Now, on the other hand, from a positive perspective, let's go back to Genesis 2. Genesis 2.

You know, I guess in some ways, maybe I've shown some of the negative side of some of this. Maybe we understand by looking at the contrast.

Kind of a warning message in some ways. Genesis 2 and in verse 18, and the Lord said, it is not good that a man should be alone. I will make a helper, comparable to him. You know, how much do we respect the fact that God gave us marriage? He gave us a mate. And all the beautiful things that that means.

We've got somebody we can converse with. We've got somebody we can bounce ideas off of. We've got people to share our lives with us and us with them and all the beauty that's there. You know, the iron sharpening iron situation. We had a sermon at this morning by Alex Henderson over in Ann Arbor. Most of our young people sitting back there know Alex and Rachel. And you know, Alex was saying that, you know, he was, he gave a really fine message, but he was saying that he wanted to come up with what he felt was just the right scripture to end with. And he was having a hard time. So he said he and his wife Rachel were sitting there and they're thinking about what scripture they can use. I thought, isn't that, that's the way it should be.

Husbands and wives thinking like that, talking like that, sharing like that. That's the beauty when you have purity in that relationship. And that relationship, as we say so often in our, in our wedding ceremony and other sermons and sermonettes, that when you've got a strong marriage, God is very much a part of that relationship. And if he's not a part of that relationship, then there are going to be some issues. Last scripture I want to quote for today is over here in the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes chapter 4.

So the bottom line for Alison and Rachel is she helped him. They helped each one another and he had a very fine message today. Ecclesiastes chapter 4 verse 9, Well, brethren, between last week and this week we've gone through seven of the Ten Commandments. We've taken a look at some of the thinking, I believe, the thinking God had in mind when he put together these commandments for our betterment, the eternal values, the eternal virtues of these laws. So next Sabbath we will finish the study by going through Commandments number eight nine and ten.