Lesson 12

The Decalogue – Deut. 5:6-21

 

We’ll continue with the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments.  From chapters 5-11 and chapters 12-26 you have the Law proper, all the stipulations of the Law, thou shalt not do this, you shall do this, if so and so gets caught doing this then they should do this, etc. all of the laws.  The thing we’ve emphasized again and again is that this is not just irrelevant material.  This is the way of life for believers.  It was not a way of salvation.  No one was ever saved, EVER saved by keeping the Ten Commandments.  Never in the entire history of man has any member of the human race ever been saved by keeping this Law.  This Law was the way of people for had already been saved, the people who had come out of Egypt. 

 

So the Law was actually the phase two of Israel. When you understand this you want to under­stand something else.  When we divide it up between chapters 5-11 and chapters 12-26 we said the first part dealt with the heart; the second part dealt with the soul.  And we used the two terms that the Bible uses, “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all soul.”  What do those two terms mean?  Loving the Lord with all thy heart emphasizes the mental attitude, what goes on on the inside, not on the outside, like most Christians think.  What goes on on the inside is the issue. The Christian life in the New Testament as well as life in the Old Testament is primary fought right here, right above the eyebrows.  That’s where the battle occurs, not in society, not in the outward things.  It always begins in the mind.  By the way, if you suffer, always remember that your suffering primarily is mental suffering.  You meet people that go through physical suffering but it’s the mental suffering that is the worst of all kind of suffering because you never can get rid of this, as long as you are conscious it’s there with you.  Mental suffering, therefore, is the worst thing.  And you will see how there are many, many points in the Law which anticipate modern psychology in many of its aspects. 

 

The soul, unlike the heart, the soul emphasizes the outward working of the inward mental attitude.  The soul was used, in this sense, in the Old Testament, for both body and soul together.  The technical word “soul” meant the immaterial part of man, but when it’s used this way, “with all thy soul,” it’s used as it’s used in Gen. 2:7, the large use of the word soul, just for a man. We might translate this “love the Lord thy God in your mental attitude and with your whole person.”  And when we add that “with our whole person” we mean in all the details of life. 

 

So beginning in chapters 12-26 take in every little detail of living. We are going to cover a man from the time that he’s a baby until the time that he dies, in his business relationships, in his married life, in his relationship with government, in his relationship with his children, all these details.  But I want you to notice before Moses goes into the details he spend 5 chapters developing the mental attitude before he gets into the details because the battle is up here in the mind, not out in the exterior circumstances.

 

Showing that these first five chapters deal with the heart we want to notice the setup of the five chapters.  Chapters 5-11 all have an order to them.  In chapter 5 we meet the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.  In chapter 6 we meet the concept of loyalty.  In chapter 7-8 we deal with further aspects of the Christian fight, the battle, and we deal with the problems of fear, etc.  Finally in chapters 10-11 draw the whole thing together.

So you have a rough outline, there’s a progression here.  Now if you’re a believer that has had some background in the Word you know that you just can’t come to a passage of Scripture and take it out of context.  You should get a running start and ask yourself, wait a minute, Moses, what’s the idea of starting this section on living the Christian life with a series of dos and don’ts.  I thought the Christian life was supposed to be lived by grace.  We want to ask that question tonight because Moses starts out his whole phase two with a list of absolutes. 

 

So to resolve this and point out why he does this we want to examine once again the problem of law and grace.  If you want to translate this into a less offensive term just translate it by “will of God.”  That will be clear to you what this shift is in the Christian life.  The goal of the Christian life is doing the will of God; the means is grace.  There are two mistakes that you can make. Every believer has a tendency to make one of these two mistakes. 

 

The first mistake you can make is what we call legalism.  That unfortunately has been made in most fundamentalist circles in the last 20-30 years and has alienated, by and large, society from fundamentalism because society has identified fundamentalism with legalism.  What is legalism? Legalism is making the Law not only the goal but making it the means; I am spiritual because I in the flesh keep the Law.  And if you’re intelligent you’ll realize that if you interpret the Law the way it’s supposed to be interpreted you can’t keep it, so therefore legalism inevitably does two things.  The first thing that legalism does it reduces the Law in quality; in other words it lowers the standards.  It always does this; legalism always does this. 

 

For example, there is the idea that you’re not spiritual unless you have a visitation program.  What they want to do is to get away from the personal aspect and make it impersonal.  Let’s have a program out there and as long as we participate in the program we’ve made our points.  We have members of our congregation who are very, very sick, and it’s interesting to watch.  I go over there and visit, and others go visit, and it’s remarkable to me that not one of these people was ever pushed or shoved into going to visit by anyone in this congregation, they just did it of their own volition which is a marvelous demonstration of spirituality as it should be without a program, without all the human gimmicks. 

 

So the problem of legalism tends to reduce the standards, tends to say spirituality is just a matter of going to some place Thursday night, spirituality is not going to some place, spirituality is doing this and they have a list of trivial things.  I don’t do this, I don’t smoke, I don’t dance, I don’t do this and that, etc. and they reduce spirituality to this when spirituality can’t be reduced to this because spirituality is a mental attitude.  And it’s far larger and far more profound than this.

 

The second thing that legalism does, the idea of pride gets working because a person who is a legalist is not in fellowship, can’t be in fellowship because they’re out of the will of God, therefore pride takes over and they want to start spiritual bullying.  The way they do is it they erect some standard over here; they can keep the standard but they love to push it on to someone who has trouble.  For example, some person may have an area of weakness of stealing.  This person does not have an area of weakness of stealing; he could walk through Fort Knox and never be tempted.  But this person, Y, has a weak area.  This person says “thou shalt not steal” and he says all sorts of things and makes Y feel like a real clod because Y has an area of weakness. 

 

Another thing is that he takes some standard that is not in the Word of God and makes it absolute, and this is probably one of the worst area of legalism.  And this is what has disqualified the concept of absolutes in our society because people have made things absolute that aren’t absolute.  For example, in 1 Cor. 8, 9 and 10, you may not be aware but there is situation ethics in the Bible.  There are some situations you’ll walk into and it’s wrong.  Other situations you walk into and it’s right, and you have to have the discernment to figure out which one it is. 

 

By the way, there is no absolute about not drinking in the Bible.  It may shock some of you that have prohibitionist tendencies but that is not an absolute in Scripture.  You can’t find it in Scripture.  The prohibition in Scripture is don’t get drunk and that’s the only one you can find. If you go to Europe you see Christians drinking, of course they’re drinking a lot less powerful stuff than is served in the United States but nevertheless you’d see them drink.  Why?  Because if you drink the water over there you wouldn’t last five minutes.  Therefore we have people in Europe who are believers who love the Lord and will drink.  This is not an excuse to walk out of here and say Charlie Clough said I could tie one on, go out and get skunked.  That’s not what I’m saying.

 

What I’m saying is that these people erect absolutes that are not absolutes.  They’re saying this is the absolute for everybody and it is not and can’t be.  So the only way you can knock down these bullies is to know the Word of God.  And when you meet one of these people you just chop them down because these people inevitably do not understand anything but a confrontation.  You have this in any Christian group, a person who is trying to run the show by imposing his own personal private standards on everyone else. We do not tolerate this because this is error and heresy; it’s called legalism. 

 

We have an opposite tendency.  People in reacting against legalism say well I live by grace and then they get over into licentiousness.  Licentiousness differs because it makes grace, which was the means, it now makes grace the goal.  And grace can’t be a goal because it’s content-less, it doesn’t tell you to do anything; it’s just empty, it’s a vacuum and you fill it up with what you want to fill it up, you do what you want to and you call it grace. That’s nonsense.  So here we have the opposite route, here people are making grace the ultimate, there’s no dos, no don’ts, no will of God in the Christian life, it’s just how you feel.  If you wake up in the morning and you feel like you want to do something and you do it, no problem.  And this is grace, misconstrued. 

 

So these are the two ways you can go, you can go the licentious route or you can go the legalistic route, the two are open. And you always find believers rocking between one or the other and these are just two heresies that are balancing one another and they’re both wrong because they both confuse the fact that God has a defined will and He has a defined means for getting there.  He has His goals and He has the rules.  He has the score that He wants you to attain and He has the rules of the game by which you attain the goal.

 

Now we deal with the Law and I want you to understand when we come to the Ten Command­ments nothing is said about how to keep them.  Nothing is said about how to keep them; don’t worry about it, that’s covered in grace.   God will take care of that.  Don’t get confused, the Law is not saying you can keep this by your own flesh, by your own power.  All it’s saying is this is what God wants you to do, this is His ideal. 

I want to stress this because we have a heresy that’s coming up in our day, it’s slow now but it’s coming up and increasing all over in our society and that is relativism.  Some people have run across this relativism and have pointed it out for years to the American public.  But it’s the heresy of relativism that there are no absolutes, nothing is absolute, everything is relative, and you see immediately this starts undermining authority. There’s no base for authority, there’s no base for government, there’s no base for parents, there’s no base for any kind of authority because every­thing is relative.  This is why the college campus is having such a problem.  It’s very ironic how the birds come home to roost.  For years and years the college campus has been the place where Christianity has been downgraded and maligned and now notice where the riots are breaking out—on the college campus and I say the birds have come home to roost because these are the people that have destroyed the absolute and they are reaping the benefits.  For years these college campuses have done nothing but destroy the absolutes of Scripture; once you destroy absolutes you destroy authority; once you destroy authority you have anarchy.

 

Now we come to the Ten Commandments and we want to understand that these were dictated by God and are absolutes.  They are absolutes to Israel and they are absolutes for us but we have to understand when we start interpreting them, we have to identify how they were given to Israel and how they apply to us.  But the important thing about the Ten Commandments is simply this, that they show you that God had a defined will, that He does say there are certain things that are wrong and certain things that are right.  And by the way, most people in this part of the country make this error: they set up their absolutes and they call it morality and they say there’s my absolute.  And I say if that’s what you have done and you have set up your little sweet system of morality without setting it on top of the person of Jesus Christ, that system is false, and the left-wing student on the college campus that’s rioting can rightfully come up to you and say why should I obey you and you have no answer.  You have no answer whatever, all you can do is say I think this is the way things should be.

 

Therefore morality is not the solution. The solution is the standard erected on the supernatural base of the Word of God.  That’s where morality sits and that’s the only possible way you can defend absolutes.  If you start knocking off standards, if you get into this line that you hear so often, oh, it doesn’t matter what you believe, it matters what you do.  If you believe that way it’s going to be a short time before someone comes along and takes your morality and tosses it to the wind because it does matter what you believe.

 

We left off with the 1st and 2nd commandments.  Tonight we begin with commandment #3.  This is the commandment, “thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”  What does this mean and what doesn’t it mean.  The first thing, it is a word which means “thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain” means literally thou shalt not raise up to vanity the name of the Lord thy God.  What does this mean?  This is not the official word for “swear” in Hebrew.  That word is shabah and shabah, is the Hebrew word for swear, and that is what Moses would have written had he meant “swear.”  This is not “swear,” this is nasah, which means to raise up, and nasah means to raise up and includes oaths but it includes a far greater area than just a formal oath.

 

The first thing is that it does not mean that is against oaths.  Certain people have come to this over the ages and say the Bible says thou shalt not raise up the name of the Lord thy God in vain and this means if I go into a court I can’t put my hand on the Bible and swear.  One of the commen­tators pointed out that Richard Nixon is a Quaker and for years the Quakers held this position that you cannot swear in the name of God and Nixon broke that precedent when he accepted the Presidency and was inaugurated, he did swear on the Bible.

 

“Take the name” here doesn’t prohibit this and to show this you just have to turn to Deut. 6:13; this proves to you that the commandment is not prohibiting swearing in the name of the Lord thy God in the official sense.  “Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shall swear by His name.”  So that proves, right in the context of the book, that He is not prohibiting swearing. So what is it prohibiting?  It is prohibiting false swearing.  This is one thing that it’s prohibiting, it’s prohibiting perjury.  Turn to Lev. 19:12 and here you see where perjury is absolutely forbidden.  So this commandment does prohibit perjury.  This is the false use of God’s name in court.  “And you shall not swear by My name falsely, neither shall thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.” Here you have perjury absolutely forbidden. 

 

Is that all this commandment prohibits?  No, that’s one thing the commandment prohibits.  What it prohibits also is a use of God’s name which would indicate that you despise His character.  We would say a flippant use of His name.  I want to give you a very surprising application.  Raising the name of the Lord thy God in vain or to vanity would apply to a Christian organization which uses the name of Christ and has no further relation to Christianity than the man in the moon.  That is a violation of this commandment.  That’s one you probably never thought of but this is the whole point of this thing. When you “raise up” it means you take for a standard the name, “the Lord thy God,” and if you take that standard and do not produce, and you do not bear testimony to him in a truthful way, then you are violating this commandment.  That’s what it means. 

 

To put it in modern terms I would say if you want to identify with Jehovah, don’t be a phony.  That’s basically what it’s talking about.  “Don’t raise up the name of the Lord thy God” means to take as a banner the very word “raise up” in the Old Testament meant to raise up as a banner.  Don’t raise up the Lord’s name as a banner and then raise it up to vanity.  If you’re going to parade under the name of Christianity you make sure you have a testimony.

 

This goes in our day for a local church.  This is why I’m so insistent that this local church be careful in its business finances and not be sloppy about it because this would be a violation of this commandment: raising the name of the Lord thy God up and being sloppy.  That’s taking His name and using it in a vain way.  Or any other business relationship; we just cannot afford this and this is why we are so insistent that we be run in a business like way, which most people don’t associate with spirituality but nevertheless it is.

 

Now we come to the next commandment, commandment #4 and this is the famous commandment of the Sabbath day.  Verse 12, “Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee. [13] Six days thou shalt labor, and do all thy work,” now we get immediately into the Sabbath day issue and to see this issue look carefully at verses 14-15 because I want to show you that Moses changed this commandment when he gave it the second time.   Verse 14, “But the seventh days is the sabbath of the LORD, thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger who is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.”  Notice the last phrase of verse 14 where you see that purpose clause, the word “that,” the last part of verse 14.  There’s the reason given in Deuter­onomy, "“hat thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou, [15] And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out from there through a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.”

 

The reason for keeping the Sabbath is for a testimony that we are a redeemed people.  That’s the reason here, but if you turn back to Exodus 20:11 you discover another reason is given for keeping the Sabbath.  “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; wherefore, the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

 

Here we have the Sabbath problem.  The first thing to notice about the Sabbath day is that it is to show the principle that once God works, He is finished, or you might say it is the principle of God’s finished work and the finality of His work.  When God assumes to do a task and He does it that is it.  When He created it, it was all over in Gen. 2:1-3 and so we have creation is all finished.  And this is something that people who criticize Genesis have never learned.  You cannot criticize Genesis 1 scientifically because science deals with an assumed finished creation and you cannot therefore deal with anything before Genesis 2:1 scientifically; it’s impossible.  It violates the axioms of science.

 

Now we have the redemption, that’s given in Deut. 5 and here again it’s the same principle. When God brought that nation out from Egypt it was done with; it was total and it was finished.  We would say that a great sabbatical statement the Lord Jesus Christ cried from the cross “It is finished!”  So the first reason for the Sabbath was to witness to the finality of God’s work.  When God undertakes to do something, no man can add to it.  This goes for you if you’re trying to work your way to heaven by way of your good works.  You haven’t got the right to add to Jesus Christ’s work, Jesus Christ has done it all, total, and you haven’t got the right to come around and say hey, Jesus, You didn’t do enough, I’ve got to add to it.  That is blasphemy and that is adding to the works of God and denying the grace principle.

 

So the first principle of the Sabbath day is that it shows the principle of God’s finished work in its finality, both in the area of creation and the area of redemption. 

 

There’s a second reason for the Sabbath and the second reason for the Sabbath is given several times in Scripture.  To see one turn to Exodus 16:4-5, the bread of life.  I want you to see when the Sabbath was first instituted.  Notice this tremendous grace.  Here you have a group of about a million people out in the desert, no logistics, no supply system.  “Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain amount every day, that I may test them,” and notice, “whether they will walk in My law, or not.”  He wants to see, are they going to trust in His provision.  Verse 5, “And it shall come to pass that, on the sixth day, they shall prepare that which they bring in; and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily.” 

 

Then skip down to verse 22 you see what happened.  “And it came to pass that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man; and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. [23] And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath said, Tomorrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the LORD: Bake that which ye will bake today, and boil that ye will boil; and that which remains over lay up for you to be kept until the morning.”

 

The principle here is that God is that God is [can’t understand word] the Sabbath as a test and test is will you trust Me to provide for you?  This may not seem like much of a test because you live in a culture in which Sunday is a holiday; you have the concept of business closes.  This is a tremendous test because in ancient Israel every business had to close; no farming on the Sabbath, nothing done on the Sabbath, absolutely nothing, and this meant that if you were to operate and live you had to trust God to provide for you for that Sabbath day. 

 

So the second reason the Sabbath was given was to test faith to see if the people would trust the Lord, that He would provide for them.  This is further seen in Deut. 6:12, look at the language of verse 12 and we’ll compare it with the Sabbath commandment.  “Then beware les thou forget the LORD, who brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.  Now look back at 5:15, “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt,” so the test will do something to them.  The test means that every week, as they come around, every six days these people are going to be tested and their faith is going to be tested and they are going to have to say to themselves, am I going to trust the Lord to provide my food, clothes and finances for this seventh day or am I going to do it myself.  This produces an issue that makes it very personal.  So there’s the second reason for the Sabbath.

 

The third thing to know about the Sabbath is that it was a treaty signed, given to Israel alone.  Why was it given to Israel alone? Because Rom. 9:4 and Eph. 2:12 say that the Gentiles never received any covenant.  No covenant was ever given to the Gentiles, this is part of a covenant, therefore it is not part of the Gentiles and therefore no other nation on earth has ever had this Law.  No other nation on earth ever had the Sabbath; only Israel had the Sabbath.  It was given not as a part of a moral code, and this is why I said watch out when we go through the Ten Command­ments.  This is not just a simple moral code; this was given in the format of a treaty.  When I went through verse 6 I said, “I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt,” and I pointed out that verse 6 proves to you that this wasn’t just given as a moral code, it was given to establish a personal legal relationship between a nation and the Creator God. 

 

“I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt,” can that be addressed to the Church?  Absolutely not, the Church was never brought out of Egypt.  That is addressed to Israel.  How do we know these are absolutes?  You say wait a minute, if you start taking one command­ment and you say it’s not given to the Church, it’s only given to Israel, what do you do about the others?  We’ll get there, but the third thing to remember is that it was given as a treaty signed; it was a national holiday for Israel… a national holiday.  By the way, that’s where you get the word “holiday” from, “holy day.”  So here we have the Sabbath given as a national holiday to Israel; it has never, never been given to a Gentile nation.  This is not saying that the Gentiles couldn’t, if they wanted to, legislate one but it wouldn’t be meritorious in God’s sight.  It might be smart but it wouldn’t be meritorious. 

 

The fourth thing about the Sabbath and that is explicitly it is not given to the Church, for several reasons.  First, the Church is not Israel; that’s the first reason.  You can’t make this equation; the Church and Israel are two distinct entities in history.  The nation Israel was a nation made up of believers and ultimately unbelievers.  Unbelievers had to obey this as well as believers under this economy.  So if you want to say that the Church is Israel then you’re going to say that we have to have the whole Law, we have to have sacrifices.  We’d have to tear up the carpet and start bringing in some animals and start slaughtering them here in the front so you can watch the blood go all over and everything else.  If you want to be under the Law, that’s exactly what is going to have to happen.  You cannot say the Church is equal to Israel.

 

The second reason it’s not given to the Church is very interesting; that is that every one of these Ten Commandments is repeated in the New Testament except this one. Isn’t that interesting?  You can go through the whole New Testament and never find this commandment given to the Church.  Never!  In fact, you never find a commandment that says we should meet together on Sunday; that’s not a commandment in Scripture, that’s a tradition.  There’s no commandment that controls the Church’s worship, I’ll tell you a reason in a moment, but I want to make this clear, there is absolutely no commandment regarding to time ever given to the Church at any point in time. 

 

To see this turn to Eph. 6; Eph 6 deals with a parent’s problem.  Here they have some brats in the family and this is how they’re supposed to handle them.  Paul knew about this.  Isn’t it interesting how practical he was?  He quoted the commandment about honoring your father and your mother.  Notice verse 2, “Honor thy father and mother, (which is the first commandment with promise), [3] That it may be well with you [and that thou mayest live long on the earth.]”  There he’s quoting the commandment that fall right under what I’m talking about. 

 

Now look what the next subject is in Eph. 6, verse 5, “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters,” here’s labor-management problems.  The whole doctrine of Christian labor and Christian management is given in God’s Word.  But you do notice, having already introduced the Ten Commandments in verse 2 it would be only natural for him to say all right, Sabbath, now I’m going to deal with the Christian doctrine of work and here would be the most logical place to put in the Sabbath rest.  How come he doesn’t?  Every where you find the Christian doctrine of work you never find it said that Christians can’t work seven days a week.  Why is it omitted?  When every other commandment is repeated explicitly in the New Testament and this one never is.  That should catch your attention. 

 

Another reason that goes along with this; do you know that small epistle in the New Testament, Philemon, is devoted to the Christian doctrine of work and employment and management, and isn’t it interesting that in that entire epistle to Philemon when he exposits the Christian doctrine of work the Sabbath is never mentioned.  Why?  He’s talking about work, he’s talking about the very subject that leads to the Sabbath and yet this commandment never comes through.  Why? 

 

Then finally we have another evidence, turn to Acts 15:20.  This is a very significant thing in my thinking because here we have the early church in action and here was made an historical decree from the Church at Jerusalem.  The apostles got together and they came down to Jerusalem and they almost had a free-for-all.  Talk about a congregational meeting, they had a congregational in which some people almost got up and started slugging other people over the issue of legalism.  Finally they ironed out this whole thing and in verse 19 here is the sentence given to the Gentiles.  Remember this is given to Gentile believers and the background issue of this is should the Jewish believers have the same modus operandi as the Gentile believers.  The Jewish believers, you could say okay, maybe they do observe the Sabbath, but now what are you going to tell your Gentile believers, and here’s what they say:

 

Verse 19, “Wherefore, my sentence is that we trouble them not, who from among the Gentiles are turned to God.”  These are Gentile believers, people who do not have the genes of Abraham in them and who have accepted Christ as Savior.  Verse 20, “But,” this is the only thing that they told the Gentiles to do, “But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.”  Those things aren’t even part of the Ten Commandments and yet they are part of a very vital section of the Mosaic Law but where in verse 20 do you see the Sabbath day?  A very peculiar Israelite institution that is never said to apply to the Gentile believers?  Why?  The Sabbath holders have never explained these questions.  So Sabbath day was never given and is not intended for the Church. 

 

Back to Deuteronomy and return to the Sabbath commandment.  The first thing we want to learn about the Sabbath that although this is true, it does not apply to the Church, there are certain principles that carry over to us in our day.  The first obvious principle is the physical aspect.  Let’s face it, the Sabbath day is a time to sack in the Old Testament, and to put it bluntly, physically that’s what it was for.  When you were tired and you were exhausted and you wanted to sack out you saved it for the Sabbath.  The Sabbath sack, and this is what the whole point of the Sabbath was, so you could rest.  It was physical, so we come to the conclusion that the principle taught here is valid, and that is one day in seven is a good ration of work to rest, and at least one out of every seven days would be good just from the physiological point of view for a change, a break. 

 

It’s very interesting that researchers have discovered this because in two cases, in the USSR and in the French Revolution these totalitarian governments tried to reorder the work days and guess what they found?  The French Revolution and the Russian Revolution both tried to have a one day in ten system, where men would work for nine days and then they would rest the tenth day.  Work for nine, rest one; work for nine and rest one, and they found out that these people became so fatigues that they couldn’t work at all.  And they went back to the one in seven principle because they found by experiment that the human body is designed to operate on this ratio.  It’s very interesting that God the Creator made this known in the Law, that there should be a physiological break in your life at least one in seven days where you do something different.  It doesn’t mean you have to have the seventh day on Saturday, the Sabbath, or any other day of the week.  This is just the principle, one out of seven, seems to be from our own medical research to be the same kind of physical rest that the human body needs.  There’s one application, the simple principle of taking a break once in a while.

 

Another application is the spiritual principle of trusting in God’s finished work. We as believers have to do this often times.  We have to trust that God has fully provided for us.  We have to trust in this rest, a faith-rest type of operation.  So we have to go into a system where we as believers are going to have to sit back and say Lord, I can’t handle this, this problem is bigger than I am, I don’t have the answers to deal with it, it’s too involved, I’ll have to sit back and trust in Your provision.  Or you may be in a situation where you may have a sick person and there’s no medical knowledge available to that person, this person is going to die.  It may be a loved one of yours and you’re going to have to sit back and trust the Lord.  Or it may be finances, or if you’re single it may be a mate, finding someone of the opposite sex, you can’t find one so you’re going to have to trust the Lord to provide one.  Whatever the problem is you are to simply trust the Lord for it. 

 

Finally we come to the problem of taking in the Word and worship.  Sabbath was never enjoined on the Church and yet we have the obvious tradition that the Church took the first day of the week to worship.  Why?  Because of the doctrine of resurrection and we find this developed but there is never a commandment given to the Church in the New Testament to worship on Sunday.  Isn’t that interesting?  Find a verse, you can’t find it; it’s not in the Bible.  It’s a tradition and we do so because of convenience, and we have to finally, before we conclude the Sabbath issue I want to tell you why. 

 

Why is it that the Church is not given these specific instructions of worship whereas Israel was?  There must be a reason and there is.  Israel was a nation and a nation has law, but the Church is not a nation, the Church does not have civil rights, the Church does not have Law so therefore if God had given the Church a commandment to worship on such and such a day and we were in Greece, in Rome, in North Africa, we would have conflict immediately with the Roman Empire.  The insight of the Holy Spirit in not giving the Church these specific commandments is so that the Church can move ahead in the will of God under tremendous systems of totalitarianism.  What about the believers in Russia?  Do you think have Sunday off?  They do not and how would they survive then if God demanded that they…. They’d be out of fellowship by not meeting together and they’d be dead if they did. 

 

So God has provided for flexibility for the Church because He realized the Church is not a nation in itself and cannot protect itself.  It’s going to have to live under hostile systems of government.  This is why the New Testament carefully omits any details on how we worship.  It even omits many details on how to organize a local church for the simple reason it wants to give you as a believer a maximum area to move in.  It gives you the principles and it wants to give you the flexibility so that you can adapt to whatever situation you find yourself in historically. 

 

Now we come to the next commandment, verse 16, “Honor thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God has commanded thee, that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee in the land which the LORD thy God gives thee.” There are several things to notice about this commandment.  The first is the word “honor,” notice along with the Sabbath day, only two of the eight commandments is positive, all the rest are negative and therefore show you that this is not a legal part of the Law.  Legal parts of the Law are always negative.  Both of these should strike your eye immediately, both keeping the Sabbath and honoring thy father and mother are not negatives, they are positive.  This also hints to you that these commandments are kind of a different type.  They are a different type in the sense that they are needed to enforce the Law. 

 

Keeping the Sabbath day was a national holiday, it gave honor to the Lord.  Verse 16, “Honor thy father and thy mother” has this strange promise to it and we’re going to examine that.  “Honor thy father and thy mother” is a positive command; it means to respect.  It does not mean to like, necessarily.  For example, in Lev. 19:3 we have a situation that parallels this.  “Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, [and keep my sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.]”  The word “fear” here is the same word used toward the Lord.  It says “the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the LORD.”  Why is the word “fear” used here with respect to parents?  Because the same principle holds, the Old Testament saint wasn’t even commandment to love God in the sentimental sense of the term.  The Old Testament saint was commanded to respect God for who and what He was. 

 

So when we come to the issue of honoring the father and the mother and the Ten Command­ments the issue is that you respect them for who and what they are.  You do not necessarily, although it’s good to have a warm personal relationship, that’s not the object of this verb.  The force of this verb is that you respect them and uphold them for who and what they are.  Therefore you may despise your parents personally, that’s too bad, but this commandment is saying that’s still not a reason for disobedience because this commandment doesn’t have anything to do with liking; it has to do with respecting.  So honoring thy father and thy mother is a verb of respect. 

 

We could trace this through David; I’ll give one quick example of this.  David honored Saul.  Do you remember what the situation was?  Saul had legally been removed from the throne.  He was a lousy stinker, and he was the kind of a guy that was going around trying to kill David, and David said I won’t touch Saul, I honor, I respect him.  What did David mean?  It didn’t mean he was going to come up and shake hands with Saul; if he did he’d get a sword plunged through his heart.  It didn’t mean that he liked Saul; he probably couldn’t stand the man.  But he honored him and he said Saul is the king of this land, I’m going to obey him.  He’s in charge, I don’t care what he is personally, he represents authority here and therefore I am going to respect that authority.  David is a marvelous example of this.  So think of David when you think of the word “honor.”

 

“Father and mother” here can refer to the literal father and mother and it can also refer to the spiritual teachers of the land. We don’t have time to look at this, but 2 Kings 2:11 is a reference that shows father and mother can refer to the prophets. [2 Kings 2:11-12, “And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and…Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. [12] And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and its horsemen.  And he saw him no more; and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces.”] 

 

And basically this means to refer to the basic authority in society, the basic authority, which is the home.  Notice in the Ten Command­ments you never find one command­ment that says thou shalt honor the civil government.  Do you know why?  Because it’s implied in this commandment; it’s implied in this commandment!  The home in Scripture takes precedence over government.  This is where we as Christians are going t run into our first head-on collision in our generation, where widespread persecution in America, if it comes at any point, it’s going to come right here because ultimately the issue is going to be who has ultimate authority over your children, the state in the education system or you? 

 

There’s where the Christians are going to have to draw the line and say the state does not have the ultimate authority over my children, I have the ultimate authority over my children, I have been given that by the Lord and I am responsible for their nurture and admonition, etc.  This is where we are going to have a collision, on this issue, and we’d better get prepared for it and better know where we stand because the time may come where we’re going to have to challenge the civil authorities on this issue.  But you have ultimate authority; the home always precedes government in the Word of God. 

“Honor thy father and they mother, as the LORD thy God has commanded you,” and here’s the promise, “that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with you….”  This points to several things.  The first thing it points to is that the stable home results in a literally longer life.  There’s no way of getting around it; the stable home results in a longer life.  Until recent days this wasn’t clear until some psychologists began to investigate and discovered something very interesting, that the child that is raised in a home where there is no stability, where there is no authority actually dies, on the average, at an earlier age than a child that’s raised in a strong home.  Why?  Because the child is never given any standards so he has to go out in society and when he’s young, when he’s in high school, and he’s in college, and he’s fighting all the things that every youth has to fight, he not only has that fight but he has the fight to establish his own standards on the inside because he was never given them in the home.  This produces a tremendous strain, it leaves scars on the soul forever, and this can be statistically shown psychologically.  So there’s one natural result of honoring thy father, it’s just a simple natural promise that it produces on the whole a far more stable individual.

 

The second thing obvious about it [blank spot] do the job you’re going to be disappointed.  We have a very good Sunday school but the point is as far as God’s Word is concerned the Sunday school can’t do it.  What are you going to expect out of one hour out of the week.  Do you think in one hour your kids, just because they sit through Sunday school are going to learn something.  They aren’t.  I estimate in my class the kids pick up about 5% of the material.  Do you think that’s going to solve anybody’s problem?  It’s not going to solve anybody’s problem because it must be reinforced in the home.  Now you can begin to see what I told you before, the first confrontation is going to be over this issue of education. 

 

The average high school student, the average college student, how often during the week do they have time to study God’s Word when you compare with all the rest of the stuff they’re getting in school, which may be good by itself.  The point is the most important thing is overlooked, and then people wonder what’s happening to the new generation.  It’s easy.  Two or three generations ago the Bible was taught in public school so it didn’t become apparent; now it’s becoming apparent.  We made a mistake back there, we trusted the public school to take over the job and the public schools can’t do the job.  Don’t blame the public schools, if they’re going to be true to everybody in society they have to be true to the unbeliever as well as the believer. 

 

But the parent is the one that’s given the prime responsibility for teaching doctrine to his children and this is why all Sunday school literature at Lubbock Bible Church is available to any parent that wants it so if you feel that your children aren’t getting it, we have all the literature, no excuse around this congregation for any parent because we have the literature in my office and if you want to follow through with what your child is getting here you can get it and go through it during the week.  Some parents are doing this.  So in Deuteronomy, as we see many times it is to teach God’s Word.

 

Now the final commandment of the evening, verse 17, “Thou shalt not kill.”  This is the most misquoted verse.  I loved to debate with people when I first became a Christian on this issue.  I was in the ROTC and ooh, you’re in the ROTC, you’re going to go out and drop bombs on people, etc.  I said yes, and I’ll do it as unto the Lord.  That really got them mad; I’d just deliberately do that just to start the argument.  You should have seen the reaction, their ears would get red, their nose would get red, and they’d get incensed.  I’d get used to the pattern, this was just the way I’d set them up for the coup de grace.  The point was that they did not understand that killing here has nothing to do with military action.  Killing here is a word that is generally used in the Scriptures, the general word, ratsach, I want to show you the Hebrew word so you’ll see it.  Killing in the military sense looks like this, harag, and you don’t have to be a Hebrew scholar to see they are two different words.  This word kill is talking about the killing of people by murder, “Thou shalt do no murder.”  It doesn’t have the foggiest thing to do with military action.  “Thou shalt not kill” has to do with murder.

 

What’s the point?  As we have said again and again the Ten Commandments always start from the mind and they work outward.  Jesus gave this commandment in Matt. 5 when He said, “You have heard it said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,” etc. “But I say unto you, that whosoever shall say thou fool unto his brother shall be in danger of hellfire.”  What did Jesus mean?  He meant that if you have the mental attitude of hate in your heart you have already killed.  I want you to see this; the sin occurred in the mind regardless of whether it’s ever carried out into action.  Notice that principle in God’s Word, you’ve already committed the sin in your mind, it doesn’t matter in God’s Word as far as taking it out in an external action.  The sin has already been done; He says you’re already in danger.  Some people say that means you can never call anybody foolish, etc.  That’s nonsense, God’s Word in Psalm 14:1 says “the fool has said in his heart there is no God.”  So if you say that I’ll say to you there’s a conflict in the Bible.

 

What it’s talking about is not effusing a few words at people.  In fact the Lord Jesus Christ had quite a few words to say in Matt. 23 to the religious idiots of his day, and he called them just that equivalent in the Greek, idiots.  And you say oh, Jesus shouldn’t say that.  That wasn’t what He was talking about; He was using this in love.  The Lord Jesus Christ was motivated by love; He loved these people and the only way sometimes love can operate is to slap someone around a little bit.  You parents have all had that experience, I’m sure.  Sometimes love is motivated, and the only way it can express itself is to slap someone around a couple of times because you realize it’s for their good.  That’s why these words are sometimes used in Scripture.

 

But what the point is is that Jesus is getting at is that “Thou shalt not kill” is a hateful mental attitude that starts on the inside and that’s where the sin is and once it’s on the inside it’s committed, whether you happen to take a hammer and hit somebody over the head or and break their skill is irrelevant. The point is as far as God is concerned that sin has already been committed.

 

Now we inevitably get to the age old issue of capital punishment and I want to give you some points on capital punishment because this is inevitably the context in which you hear this discussed.  You’ll hear the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches come out and these clergymen with all their collars on backwards walking around and they will tell you that we should sign petitions and we should eliminate capital punishment.  Let me give you some points on capital punishment.

 

First, Genesis 4 compared with Genesis 9 are two primary references.  In Genesis 4 Cain received a mark because Cain was a murderer.  Do you remember why he received a mark?  Because nobody was to take vengeance on Cain.  There was no authorized party to take vengeance on Cain and God said I’m going to put a mark on you and no one will touch you.  In Genesis 9 you have the institution of capital punishment. There God is doing the killing. Remember this, “Thou shalt not kill” is directed toward you as an individual, but when the civil authorities kill in capital punishment or in warfare it is God that is legally doing the killing because God has ordained that institution.  That is the bypass from this commandment.  The subject of the verb “kill” on capital punishment is not man, it is God.  If it were just the man doing the killing, yes that would be sin, yes capital punishment would be wrong, if government had not received authorization directly by God in Genesis; yes it would be wrong.  But it is not wrong because Genesis 9 authorizes government to do it. 

 

Furthermore, the second point about capital punishment is in Exodus 21:12, it authorizes capital punishment, and that’s just a few verses after the Ten Commandments so it shows you how Moses thought.

 

Finally, third we come to Romans 13:4-6 where we have Paul saying you respect the sword.  That wasn’t because the Roman soldier wore it around because it looked nice on his uniform.  The sword, I dare say, the Roman soldiers used a few times.  So they said respect the sword because that soldier is a minister of God and in Rom. 13 you want to see that, it is a minister of God.  A policeman on the street, a court in the land is a minister of God; that is why capital punishment is true, not because the courts are taking it upon themselves to kill someone, but because the courts have been authorized to do the job by God. They are legally declared ministers of God in Rom. 13. 

 

The fourth point, in Acts 25:11 you have Paul saying if I have sinned against the government and done a crime worthy of death, then let me die.  Paul doesn’t say oh, you shouldn’t kill me, capital punishment is wrong.  He doesn’t say that at all.  He says capital punishment is authorized and legitimate and if I have done wrong then I allow myself to be killed.

 

But here is the fifth reason, which I think is the most powerful of all reasons.  Before I give you this reason I want to give you a little quotation by a Christian Senator, Mark Hatfield, who at the time he made this was Governor of Oregon, and out of this discussion he and I had by letter on this issue of capital punishment, he said this: “I am opposed to capital punishment but I am not opposed to capital punishment on a religious basis,” and here’s the statement, “because frankly, I have not yet been convinced that our faith is clear cut in it’s teaching one way or the other.”  I should have written back but I wasn’t going to be that impolite, I should have written “back does your Bible have Genesis 9 in it?”  It’s very clear to me.  Does your Bible have Romans 13 in it?  If it doesn’t you’d better get a new edition because you’ve been gypped.  Romans 13 and Genesis 9 are always in every Bible I’ve looked at.  It’s there. 

 

Here we have an example of what’s going on in this country.  It is not enough to have Christians in high places; it is enough to have Christians in high places who know the Word of God.  That’s what we need.  Just because a man has accepted Christ as Savior doesn’t mean a thing.  I would vote for an unbeliever before I would vote for some Christians.  Do you know why?  Because a Christian can get into public office and not know doctrine and make an ass out of himself and out of Christianity.  And I would take a skilled unbeliever to a sloppy Christian any day of the week.  But this is Hatfield, it’s not a personal attack on Hatfield, I just happened to illustrate this because this is not just Mark Hatfield, this is many men in public office.

But here’s the answer to Mark Hatfield.  This is his last conclusion.  “I am opposed to capital punishment because of the economics, i.e. the poor die and the rich get away,” and he has a good point here.  This is a good point.  The people that reach the electric chair are usually the people that can’t afford a sharp lawyer.  And this is an argument, until you reach my fifth point and that is Jesus Christ.

 

God the Father, when He instituted capital punishment, knew there would be an abortion of justice in history. He was omniscient and when He gave that commandment that by man shall man’s life be taken, God in His omniscience could look forward in history and see a time in history when his son would die on the cross through capital punishment, through an abortion of justice. When the justice machine of the Roman Empire made a mistake… the capital punishment of Christ was a mistake, and yet God knowing that the capital punishment would make a mistake with His own Son, authorized it.  To me that’s the final argument. 

 

If God in omniscience knew that His own Son would die through an error in justice and went ahead and authorized it covers all the problems of errors and poor administration carrying out capital punishment.  Sure there are going to be mistakes made.  Think of the greatest mistake that ever was made, with God’s own dear Son, and yet God knowing the value of capital punishment went ahead and authorized it anyway, knowing full well that His own Son would die because a man made a mistake in the courtroom, Pontius Pilate. That was a legal mistake and God knew it. So you cannot argue to me on Biblical grounds that there are mistakes made; God knows that.  It cuts home to Him because His own Son was involved. 

 

We conclude with just a few more points.  The arguments that you will frequently hear waged against capital punishment, I want you to give you this as a unit so we’ll take a few extra minutes.  One of the arguments you hear about capital punishment is that it does not deter. They say there are statistical reports available that capital punishment never deters.  Here’s the answer to this argument.  It wasn’t given to deter, it was given to illustrate a principle, the sanctity of human life.  Deterrence is not part of the argument.  So I don’t care whether it deters or not, that’s not the point.  The point is that capital punishment was authorized in the first place because it was to underscore the sanctity of human life.  But then I quickly add that capital punishment would deter if the following two things were carried out.

 

First, if the capital punishment were immediate and we didn’t have people spending 15 years on death row before they got there.  Secondly, if it were public; that really sounds gory, but what do we do?  We execute a criminal in some joint down in a basement somewhere where nobody knows about it.  What they ought to have is a camera look there and every little kid that thinks he’s going to be a smart aleck juvenile delinquent take a long hard look and watch that man die.  I think you’d have a little deterrence; that would be a television program you wouldn’t forget.  So I would say capital punishment would deter if it were administered properly.

 

The second argument you hear against capital punishment is that it doesn’t rehabilitate.  My question to this is what is to be rehabilitated, the individual or society?  Who are we talking about when we’re talking about rehabilitating, are we supposed to rehabilitate every slob that happens to knock someone over the head?  Or are we concerned with the rehabilitation of society as a whole?  I say that rehabilitation of society takes precedence over the individual in this case.  If we had to decide between social corruption and corruption of the individual, then I will take the corruption of the individual. 

 

Another point to remember that capital punishment does have value, capital punishment does have a rehabilitating value because it was not instituted until after the flood.  Before the flood God had tried no capital punishment and look what happened.  The whole antediluvian world never had capital punishment.  God tired it. That’s an historical experiment that’s passed and it flunked.  So you can’t say let’s try it without it, God did try it without it and that’s why He had to institute it because when He didn’t have capital punishment it failed, society became corrupt. 

 

The third argument, that it can’t be justly administered.  I think you’ve already seen my answer to that; it’s irrelevant.  God knew it couldn’t be justly and perfectly administered when He gave it and knew that His own Son would die by the wheels of justice gone wrong.  But that’s not an argument, that didn’t deter God from instituting it. 

 

Finally the last argument that’s probably more in foreign policy than anywhere else and that is pacifism, disarmament avoids suffering.  So even though we would like to kill our enemy, we find, for example, nuclear weapons, supposedly we’re afraid the world is going to blow up so the argument  it’s better to be red than dead.  The idea here is when it comes to the point that you have to choose, and Christians are saying this, if it comes to the point where a person has to make a choice, here’s the choice, nuclear war, he has to press the button or he has to surrender.  He would choose surrender because he wouldn’t want to annihilate the race. 

 

Here’s the answer to this argument.  The answer is, it was given very well by a Christian General, General Harrison, when he said this.  To me this is the ultimate answer to this objection:  “Where the sword is the Lord’s and the vengeance is His, and where He seeks that vengeance by the hand of those to whom He has delegated His authority, that even that sword is justifiable when use leaves God standing alone in the scene of a holocaust.”  What Harrison is point out is that God instituted capital punishment and God bears the responsibility for its execution.  If God has said to the President, I want you to take up the sword against any evil and he takes up the sword against evil and it results in the mass suicide of the human race, that responsibility is God’s, not the President’s.  So the answer in ultimate nuclear warfare is press the button because God has told you to do it.  This is not being flippant; I’m not trying to be flippant.  I’m just saying that if it ever came to this point and a President had to choose between pressing the button or surrender, I say at this point the Christian can stand with clear conscience and say God set up this institution and God bears the responsibility for it, my conscience is clean and my hands are white.

 

So even in this, the most horrible of all decisions to make in capital punishment or legitimate killing, even here God’s responsibility, if He has told you to do something you do it and let Him take care of the consequences.  It’s not for us to second guess God and say well God, you really didn’t understand, God you didn’t know what was going to happen in the 20th century, Your omniscience only extends up to 1900.  Nonsense!  God is eternal, He knew it, He knew our century and He knew our century when He instituted capital punishment. 

 

Therefore we have these reasons and I think that as we consider these we want to conclude with one thought, and that is that to me one of the crucial points about all of this with regard to capital punishment is that it’s not that we’re trying to beat up somebody, it’s not that the Christian is trying to take vengeance on somebody, it’s simply a principle.  If a man has killed, what has he done?  Take the assassination of Senator Kennedy, and I say that because of this goofy Sirhan that you see smiling on TV that you’re paying $370,000 to protect him and he’ll probably get off.  But nevertheless, here’s this goof in trial and he’s in this trial and he is gradually using all the arguments, etc.  So he went out and got mad at Kennedy, he went out and he shot Kennedy.  I want you to see something.  What did he do to Robert Kennedy?  He forcibly removed that man’s soul from his body so that he could not exercise his volition ever again. That’s what murder is. 

 

Murder is the destruction of volition against that person’s volition.  You have removed that person’s right to choose for or against God.  You have forcibly blasted him into eternity.  That’s what murder is.  And everywhere else in our criminal law we have a price.  If you steal something you pay a price.  And I ask you, what price is a man’s life?  And we let a man get off with three or four years.  Is that how you tolerate life?  No, the people who are against capital punishment are the people to devaluate human life, they want someone to get off because to them the life doesn’t demand a payment.  To them it’s all right for you to go out and blast someone into eternity because that life doesn’t count, that life is irrelevant, there’s no price to be paid. 

 

But capital punishment says yes, that life of a man is so valuable, the life of Robert Kennedy was so valuable that there’s only one way to pay for it, and that’s with another life.  No funds, no money, no term in jail could ever pay for that man’s life.  That man’s life was infinite in the sense of valuable, not infinite in the sense of divine, but that man’s life can never be paid for by anything, by a fine, by a term in jail, it can only be paid for by another life, the life of the man that took his. That’s the principle of capital punishment.