The Perfect Ten for Life
God’s Perfect Ten
The Perfect Ten for Life
Exodus 20:1-17
 
There are about ten weeks between now and the end of August, and as I was looking at the calendar and thinking and praying about what to do on Sunday evenings through the summer, God impressed me to do a study on the Ten Commandments.
 
That is a timely subject, not just because it fits nicely on the calendar, but because of the shape in which we find our society. These Ten Commandments touch on every problem we have in America.
 
So for the next several weeks we’ll be studying from Exodus chapter 20 where we find the listing of the Ten Commandments. .
 
I realize there is a danger to preaching on the 10 Commandments because someone is sure to say, “But as New Testament believer’s we are not under the law.”  And that is true.
 
But I want to make it very clear that when we say we are not under law, this does not mean that there are no rules. This is not to suggest that we live in a kind of anything goes mode. I do not mean that at all. We just couldn't have a universe if there were not certain rules - certain fixed standards.
 
There could be no mathematics if there were not laws of mathematics. There could be no physics if there were not laws of physics. All of us understand the importance and the necessity of rules.  Rules are absolutely essential.
The question of the day, however, is whose rules will you follow? In fact, it is that very thing that has sparked much of the debate about public displays of the commandments in America. 
 
A few years ago the case of Alabama's Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and his fight to keep a two-and-half-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments in Alabama's Judicial Building came along.
 
Judge Moore was ultimately suspended for refusing to remove the monument and on November 14, 2003, workers removed the monument and placed it in a back room out of public view.
 
In most cases, liberal organizations like the ACLU and the Americans United for Separation of Church and State have succeeded in having public displays of the Ten Commandments removed. We are privileged to have been able to keep the monument that is on our state capitol grounds.
 
Yet if we aren’t careful there can be a greater emphasis on protecting the Ten Commandments than there is in keeping the 10 commandments!  I don’t know that God is all that impressed when we fight over the right to display them and then ignore them in our conduct and behavior. 
 
Even if the time comes when we can’t publicly display the Ten Commandments in our halls, they should live and abide in our hearts.  They are ever up-to-date and current. 
 
 
 
I want to go on record and say that the Ten Commandments are not obsolete. They are absolute! Furthermore, the Ten Commandments are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago when God gave them to Moses and the children of Israel.
 
Actually, there were three parts to the law of God in the Old Testament.  There was Jewish societal law, Jewish religious law and Jewish moral law.  Every so often someone will look at the Old Testament and pull out a law and ask if this is how God’s people act?  Should we stone homosexuals in the street or put to death disobedient children?
 
Their societal law provided for both of those.  But in American society we follow American societal law.  And the societal and religious requirements that were in place in the day of Moses are not binding on us.
 
But there was one aspect of their law that is binding on every society in every age and with only one exception, it has never changed and that is God’s moral law.  And what we find in the Ten Commandments are God's divine principles upon which any orderly society is built.  They never go out of date or lose their significance and relativity.
 
In fact, the Ten Commandments were not only given by God on tablets of stone, but the Bible teaches they have been written on the heart in the human conscience down deep inside of man.
 
And we must realize the Lord God does not change His rules just because one of his creation thinks they are out of date.
I believe that the Ten Commandments are essential for a person to have a healthy, happy and a holy life.
 
For that reason, I want to take the next few weeks and look at the Ten Commandments. I want them call them God’s Perfect Ten.  And by the way they apply to every facet of life.
 
The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 12:13; "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man."
 
 If you will notice, the word "duty" is in italics in your Bible, meaning it was added there by the translators. If you remove the word "duty" it reads, "Fear God, keep His commandments: for this is the whole of man." Solomon is speaking of a whole person and the kind of life that is lived if a person is whole. If you want to be a whole person, keep the commandments of God. Solomon tells us that keeping the commandments of God make a person whole!
 
To put it another way, the commandments of God are the secrets to a healthy, happy and holy life.
 
Listen carefully to Deuteronomy 5:29, "O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!" (Italics mine). The word "well" means to be happy, successful, and right.
 
Some say we no longer need the Ten Commandments. The truth is we can't do without them.
They are the secrets to being a whole person. They are essential if we are to live a healthy, happy and holy life.
 
Understanding this, we realize that the Ten Commandments are relevant and important. So tonight I want to begin by laying a foundation for our study by considering the Ten Commandments as a whole. Next week we will begin looking at them one by one. As we think about The Perfect Ten for a Whole Life, first think with me of the:
 
1. Requirements
 
Vance Havner used to remind people that the Ten Commandments were 10 commandments, not 10 suggestions. We need to be reminded that the Ten Commandments are not recommendations. They are expectations! They are laws--God's laws--that are to be obeyed. As we look at these commandments God gave, let me suggest a two-fold purpose they serve in our life, a purpose that gives us reason for whole-hearted obedience.
 
First, they have been given to us for Guidance.
 
The Ten Commandments are heaven's road map that gives us a spiritual and moral direction in a world that is lost and blindly traveling in the wrong direction. You could think of them as road signs on the highway of life that say, "This is the way to go."
 
I was recently reading about the navigation and positioning system commonly called GPS. At a cost of $12 billion, the U.S. Department of Defense developed the Global Positioning System, a system of 24 satellites and their ground stations.
Using GPS, one's position can be calculated to measurements better than a centimeter. GPS has found its way into cars, boats, airplanes, farm machinery, and even laptop computers. Many commercial fisherman use GPS to guide them to their best fishing holes so they down have to wander around searching. The Ten Commandments are God's GPS. They navigate us in the right direction.
 
We live in a day and time of moral relativism, the belief that there are no moral absolutes. An alarming survey by the Barna Research Group discovered that many Christians are ambivalent toward moral absolutes.
 
In a survey of 4,000 people, only 32% of professing Christian adults believed in moral absolutes. That's less than 1 in 3 Christians. It was found that 33% of professing Christians took their moral issue cues from other sources than the Bible. Only 26% based their ethical and moral decision-making upon the Bible. When it came to teenagers, only 9% believe in moral absolutes, less than one out of ten.
 
The accepted word for today is "tolerance." By being tolerant, our society proposes that all ideas are morally equivalent, that truth is relative, that everything we have learned about morality in the last 4,000 years of recorded human experience is now negotiable.
 
First of all, let me say, there are moral absolutes. Secondly, these absolutes are non-negotiable. And thirdly, the Bible is the source for these absolutes. The Ten Commandments are an example of such absolutes. They proclaim loudly and explicitly, "This is the right way, walk therein!"
So God gave us the Ten Commandments to guide us in the right paths.
 
They have also been given to Guard us from the wrong paths.
 
Just as there is a right way, there is also a wrong way. There are paths that God commends and there are paths God condemns. The "Thou Shalt Not's" of the Ten Commandments guide us in the right direction, and as well, guard us from going in the wrong direction. Just as they serve as 10 signposts that say, "This is the right way," they also serve as 10 signposts that clearly say, "This is the wrong way!"
 
Several years ago the cover of Newsweek magazine was emblazoned with the word Shame. Under it was the question, "How do we bring back a sense of right and wrong?" The implication being that we live in a society where there is no sense or clear understanding of what is right and wrong.
 
At an alarming pace we are becoming a nation in which what was once viewed as wrong is no longer viewed as wrong in the present. The claims are that we are a changing culture. Let me be clear and say that contrary to how many in our day feel there is still such a thing as sin. There are things that the Bible plainly, clearly, and firmly declare as sin. Regardless of how our society may think and feel, or what courts may say about this and that, if the Bible declares something as sin, it is sin! If it was sin in the past, it still sin in the present. Sin will always be sin!
 
 
The attitude in our society is that we are the ones who determine our code of ethics. We decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. We are autonomous beings and it is nobody else's business what we do, especially in our private life. However, our society is forgetting one major truth. There is a God in Heaven. He is the One who determines our code of ethics. He calls the shots and says what is right and what is wrong and it is His business!
 
In the Ten Commandments God has given us a set or spiritual and moral codes that enable us to determine what is right and wrong. What God has said is wrong is absolutely wrong. What God has said is right is absolutely right. Case closed! They are more than suggestions or recommendations. They are commandments! Since they are given to us by God, they call for our whole-hearted acceptance. Since they are commandments, they call for our whole-hearted obedience.
 
So first of all, God’s Perfect Ten for Life deal with requirements.  They also address
 
2. Relationships
 
As you look carefully at the Ten Commandments you see that they are divided into two sections. The first four commandments address our relationship with God. The final six addresses our relationship with man (our relationship with one another). The Ten Commandments give us instructions on how to develop and deepen these relationships. They guide us in how to promote and protect these relationships.
 
 
Now that should be familiar to us if we are followers of the teaching of Jesus because He said the greatest commandment is to “ love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
 
Then He said, “The second is very much like the first: Love your neighbor as yourself”.
 
Jesus just grouped the Ten Commandments into two sections. Number one - love God with everything you have. God-centered commandments.  Number two - love your neighbor as yourself. Man-centered commandments.
 
Now those are two Distinct Relationships
 
First, there is our relationship with God. This relationship is addressed in the first four commandments.
 
In the first commandment we are told, "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" (Exo. 20:3). We are to acknowledge that He is the one and only God.
 
In the second commandment we are told, "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" (Exo. 20:4-5).
 
There is to be no rival to His place in our heart and life. He is not only the one and only God, but He is to be the one and only God in our life.
 
 
 
In the third commandment we are told, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" (Exo. 20:7). God's names are descriptions of His person and nature and the understanding of His names deepens our appreciation of who He is and what He is.
 
In the fourth commandment we are told, "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...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" (Exo. 20:9-11). We are to seek to do His will and find His pleasure in all that we and especially as we worship.
 
All these commandments address our relationship to God. The next six address our relationship to one another.
 
In the fifth commandment we see parental relationships. We are told, "Honour thy father and thy mother" (Exo. 20:12).
 
In the sixth and eighth commandments we see social relationships. We are told, "Thou shalt not kill" (Exo. 20:13) and "Thou shalt not steal" (Exo. 20:15).
 
In the seventh commandment we see marital relationships. We are told, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exo. 20:14).
 
In the ninth commandment we see personal relationships. We are told, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" (Exo. 20:16).
In the tenth commandment we see material relationships. We are told, "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" (Exo. 20:17).
 
There is our relationship with God and there is our relationship with one another.
 
Now notice:  they are distinct relationships, but that are also Dependant Relationships.
 
Even though these relationships are two distinct and separate relationships, they cannot be divorced one from the other if they are to be enjoyed and successful. They are dependant on one another for the maximum enjoyment of each other and the fulfillment of each other.
 
Please note that it is our relationship with God that is first addressed. First and foremost is our relationship with God. The fact that our relationship with God is first addressed reminds us that the Lord is to be first in our life and in all the relationships of life.
 
Jesus made an interesting statement in Luke 14:26, "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
 
At just a mere reading of what Jesus said it would seem that Jesus was saying that in order to be a disciple we must hate our father, mother, husband & wife, etc.
 
However, we know that would not and could not be the case. The word "hate" that He used actually means "to detest," but by extension it means "to love less."  What He was saying is that we are to love the Lord more than anyone else. It is not that we are to hate father, mother, and wife, but we are to love them less than the Lord. In all the relationships of life, the Lord is to be our first love.
 
If there is anyone or anything that is first in your life then you are living in disobedience to God. The Ten Commandments by their very order command that we place Him first in our life.
 
Putting God first in our life is motivated by all He has done for us. The Ten Commandments begin with the words, "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" (Exo. 20:2). Seeing that the Lord has delivered us from the bondage of sin and Satan, putting Him first in our life is nothing less than an expression of our gratitude. Why would we give Him anything less?
 
Furthermore, if the Lord is first in our life, it is revealed by our keeping of the first four commandments. If He is first we will have no other gods before Him. If He is first we will remove any idol that is a rival to Him being first in our life. If He is first we will not dishonor His name. If He is first, on the Lord's Day we will be where He has commanded us to be, doing what He has commanded us to do.
 
If there is something or someone else that is more important to us than God, it only reveals He is not first in our life.
If pleasure, power, and possessions are the chief pursuit of life, it only reveals He is not first. If we dishonor the name of God and on the Lord's Day we allow things to keep us out of the House of God, it only reveals He is not first in our life. We can spin it anyway we want to and make excuses, but if we do not keep the first four commandments it reveals this one definite fact--the Lord is not first in our life!
 
Now watch this:  the order of the relationships described in the Ten Commandments suggest that if I have a proper relationship to God, I will have a proper relationship to man. If the Lord is first in my life it will affect every other relationship. If the Lord is first in my life:
-       I will honor my father and mother.
-       I will not kill.
-       I will be faithful to my wife.
-       I will not steal.
-       I will not bear false witness.
-       I will not covet.
 
The flip side is; if I do not honor my father and mother, it reveals He is not first. If I kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or covet, it reveals that the Lord is not first in my life.
 
Furthermore, it is only when these relationships are in their proper order that each is made meaningful and profitable. When I am rightly related to God, it enables me to be the kind of husband, neighbor, and friend I should be. All my relationships with others is enhanced, strengthened, and made meaningful because of my relationship to God. If the Lord is not first, all other relationships are weakened and robbed of the potential of maximum enjoyment.
 
The simplest way I can say it is that my relationship to God strengthens my relationship with others. My relationship with others shows my relationship with God.
 
Thirdly and lastly, let me say a word about:
 
3. The Results
 
Some seem to think that the Ten Commandments are a set of rigid standards that becomes a ball and chain to the one who keeps them. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are actually a doorway into experiencing and enjoying life at its highest.
 
In fact, it would be right to refer to them as the pathway to freedom.  If you want to live a life that is free, then follow God’s commandments.
 
Keeping the Ten Commandments doesn’t put you in  bondage, but liberates you. If you don't believe what I am saying, look at those who have chosen to step outside of the boundaries the Ten Commandments place in our life.
 
The people that are in bondage are those who have ignored the warning signs of the Ten Commandments have proceeded to travel paths God has forbidden. Oh, they thought that living their own life in their own way they were really free. But were they?
 
Ask the fellow whose body screams for another drink or another injection if they are free. Ask the person who lost their home and family over their infidelity if obeying the flesh is all it claims to be.
 
Ask the man behind bars that did not live by the simple standards God gave if the path he chose to take was the best to take.
 
In 1631, a pair of printers named Barker and Lucas published in England a handsome volume of the Bible, as well it should have been, for Barker and Lucas were the King's printers. But it had one little flaw: a three-letter word, not, was missing from the Seventh Commandment, making it read "Thou shalt commit adultery." The King was outraged and the careless printers of the book that became famous as "The Wicked Bible" were fined 300 pounds, which effectively put them out of business.
 
If you take the "not's" out of God's commands it will always lead to ruin. But on the other hand, obedience to God's laws liberates a person. Just ask the person who has honored God and allowed God's standards and laws to be the guide of their life if they regret doing so.
 
Look at those who have homes that are happy and strong. Look at those who have lasting and meaningful relationships with others. Look at those who have lived clean and moral lives that are absent of guilt, regret and the scars of sin. Is there bondage there? Absolutely not! It is those who disobey God's laws, such as we find in the Ten Commandments that are not free. Keeping the Ten Commandments leads to a life of real freedom!
 
And when you live a life of freedom in God, you find satisfaction.
 
 
 
Listen:  Contrary to public opinion, God did not give us rules and regulations to harm us. He gave them to help us. As we have seen, keeping the Ten Commandments guards us from the very things that will defeat and destroy us. God gave us the Ten Commandments to protect us! They were given to protect us from the fruits of sin, the lies of the devil, and even from our own selves.
 
The Ten Commandments are The Perfect Ten for Life. To keep them makes us a whole person. They result in a healthy, happy, and holy life.
 
They may take them down in the courthouse, but we must never take them out of our life!
 
May God help us over the next few weeks to not only become better acquainted with the Ten Commandments, but also revive them in our hearts to lead us into the kind of life for which they were given.
 
Let’s pray.