In the sermon titled 'The Law of the Lord is Perfect,' Scott Brown discusses the second speech of Moses in Deuteronomy 5, where the Ten Commandments are recited. This speech serves as an exposition of God's will for the Israelites as they prepare to enter the Promised Land. Brown emphasizes the timelessness and enduring relevance of the commandments, highlighting God's continuous kindness and guidance throughout history. He explores the deep connection between the law and love, explaining that love fulfills the commandments. The sermon underscores the role of the law in evangelism, as it reveals sin and points individuals to the grace of Christ. Brown also addresses common misconceptions about the law's application in the Old and New Testaments, arguing for its relevance across both. The sermon touches on various theological perspectives, such as dispensationalism, and encourages understanding of how different interpretations affect the law's application. Finally, Brown provides a summary of each commandment, urging listeners to consider their deeper meanings and the need for Christ's grace to fully live by them.

With Deuteronomy chapter 5, we now enter into the second speech that Moses gives on the east side of the Jordan River before the children of Israel would pass into the land of promise. And Moses is helping the people remember what he had said to them 40 years before. He's bringing up the Ten Commandments as an introduction to this next speech that he gives. This long speech, which is the longest of the three speeches in Deuteronomy, will really be an exposition of the will of God for the people as they move into the land. He's recalling these words that were spoken forty years before.

They're just as good today as they were forty years before. And they'll be just as good 40 years from then, and they'll be just as good 700 years later when David says, oh how I love thy law. They'll be just as good when Josiah discovers the book of Deuteronomy and the great revival a thousand years later. And they will be good for another thousand and they will be good until the end of time. And they will not pass away until all things are fulfilled.

And so we're here in the second speech of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy. And what we see here in the recitation of the Ten Commandments is another example of God's kindness toward His people. God is always blessing his people. God is always helping his people in the way that they need help. In the same way that it was true then, it's true now for us.

When in the Garden of Eden, God was a blessing to sinful mankind. He called them by name and then he made clothing for them. And then before the flood, God provided direction for Noah for how to save his family. And When his people were captives in Egypt, he delivered them and he fought for them. And now God is expressing more kindness toward his people in giving them his law, in showing them how to live.

And we see that God will continue to bless his people. He will send his prophets. He will send his Son. He will send his Spirit. And this is the character of God toward all of his people.

He will constantly be pouring out works of kindness toward them, to comfort them, to help them know how to live, to chastise them for their sins, to help them to be completely cast upon the grace of God. So in the text before us, the law is given, and he is desiring, God is, to make for himself a wise and understanding people a people who are different from the rest of the world a people who has God so near to them a people who have a way to live and who have a God who speaks to them. And so in this second speech we find God speaking to his people and he is giving his heart on practical matters of life, beginning with the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are the most significant set of laws ever given to mankind. And they've had a significant influence on Western civilization.

The Ten Commandments, I would just suggest, they mark a line between civilization and barbarism. They mark a line between the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God. They are collected in 10 statements called the decalogue. We call it the decalogue because the Greek term that's used is decalogos. And so we get our term decalogue, the 10 words or the 10 sayings.

So as we enter into this recitation of the 10 Commandments, there's an introduction that Moses gives in verses 1 through 6. And in the introduction, as you'll see there, Moses is giving the purpose of the law. Not in complete form, but he's at least giving a sense of the purpose of the law. And the first thing that we notice here is that Moses says, hear, O Israel, the statutes and the judgments. Hear, O Israel.

This is an important phrase to understand. The word Shema is the word to hear. And it means more than just to hear noise. It's more than just hearing something, but it means to understand. It means to obey.

And it reveals also a contentment in it and a love for it. This term here encompasses a whole range of thoughts for us when we think about what we do when we hear something. We love it, we embrace it, And then we actually do something about it. That's what he means when he cries out, hear, oh Israel. He's calling for more than just ear work.

He's also calling for heart work and foot work as a result of that hearing. And so perhaps one of the most wonderful phrases here is that we see here that God speaks to his people. This is perhaps the most helpful thing that we can know in this life, is that God speaks. He has something to say to His people and that we're not left on our own to invent our own lives. He says, hear oh Israel, number one, in other words, hear them with a heart to love them and obey them and then to learn them, to carefully delve into them and learn what they really mean, not just on a surface level.

And what we'll find is that we're so tempted to deal with these on the surface level. And the Lord Jesus comes and he shows us how to get way below the surface on these Ten Commandments. To understand what God meant when he said thou shalt not murder. Well he meant more than just don't stab people. To learn, to really grasp the deep meaning that is there and then to act upon them.

Verse 1, be careful to observe them. Observe what? They are statutes and judgments and they are also covenants. This is the covenant that God makes with his people. Verse 2, the Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.

Moses is carrying forth that covenant was given 40 years earlier at the foot of Mount Sinai and bringing it forward now to the east side of the Jordan River before they enter the promised land. Those commands are just as good today. They never go stale. They never pass away. And now they are the commands for the next line of their activities in the same way it is with us.

These are for us as well. Moses is saying to hear them, learn them, to act upon them because they are covenants. Another statement that is so heartwarming to me when I read it. The Lord our God made a covenant with us. How wonderful is that?

That God Almighty would make a deal with mankind. That He would make a way for mankind. That's what a covenant is. Now you and I have trouble with our covenants, but God never has trouble with his covenants. He keeps them.

And so this covenant here is a covenant promise of God, and then in the covenant there are two aspects of it. There's the call and the command of God, and then there is the certification of its carrying out. God will see to it that the lines of this covenant will be fulfilled. And it's a very hopeful statement that God has made a covenant with us. And interestingly enough, this introduction contains the statement, I am.

I am, verse 6. This is the statement from Almighty God, the God who was, who is, and who is to come. The Lord Jesus Christ himself presents himself the same way. He is the Great I Am. And so the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking here now.

Every word of the Ten Commandments is a word of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a word of the great I AM. Don't let anybody confuse you to think that these are somehow just the words of Moses for an ancient time. These are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am that I am.

The Lord Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God, is saying these words to His people. And they don't pass away. They are fulfilled in Him, but they do not pass away. So here is the introduction where there's a call to hear and to obey and to recognize the gravity of it all, that it is a covenant. Then we begin to move into the commandments themselves, beginning in verse 7.

Now as we move into these commandments, I want to give you several issues that need to be considered whenever you talk about the Ten Commandments. Here's the first one. You cannot talk about the Ten Commandments, or you cannot talk about the law without also talking about love. Love and the law go together, which is so plain in all of this. When Augustine wrote about the Ten Commandments, he first of all wrote much about love, because as is so true of the Ten Commandments, they are a summary of love.

They show how one is to love. And the Lord Jesus Christ makes this very plain. In preparing for this, I just began to look up various phrases in scripture that speak of love. Because every phrase of scripture that speaks of love can be tied back to the Ten Commandments in some form. Because the Ten Commandments are fulfilled by the word love.

Loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself We know from Proverbs chapter 10 that hatred stirs up strife the love covers all sins in Ecclesiastes 9 9 we learn about love in marriage Live joyfully with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life, which he has given you under the sun. In Micah 6, he says, he has shown you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy. We find in Romans chapter 12, be kindly affectionate to one another in brotherly love, give preference to one another in honor. We read in Romans 13, love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. We could go on and on about the statements of love and how they would directly penetrate into each one of the commandments.

Perhaps at some point in our study in Deuteronomy we will do that. But know this, that now abide these faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love. And these are all demonstrated in these commandments that are given here. And so we find that we cannot really talk about the Ten Commandments without first talking about love, because love is the fulfillment of all of the commandments. And so the second thing that we need to recognize about the commandments is you cannot talk about the law, You cannot talk about the commandments without also talking about evangelism.

The law doesn't ever stand alone. It has a purpose. We need to recognize how important the law is for use in evangelism. We need to realize that when John G. Peyton was preaching to the cannibals and the new Hebrides, he was using the law.

We need to realize that when John Eliot and David Brainerd were preaching to the Indians here, they were using the law to convict them of their sins, to show them how despicable they were before God and how necessary the blood of Christ was. So you can't talk about the Ten Commandments without short-circuiting to evangelism and how important it is that we use the law for its right purpose, and that is to convict of sin, to show mankind that they are hopeless. And if we understand what the Lord Jesus said about the law and help those who we share the gospel with understand the true meaning of the Ten Commandments. That fulfilling the commandment for adultery is more than just being physically pure. That sinners will know how despicable sin is and they'll know how great the grace of God is.

So you cannot talk about the law without talking about evangelism. You also cannot talk about the law without talking about the gospel. The moral law is part of the gospel. We learn that, particularly in Matthew chapter five, where the Lord Jesus deals with the Pharisees and the conversation of the Sadducees. And we learn that the Lord Jesus is confronted with the question about what is the greatest commandment.

And the Lord Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind. It's the first and the greatest commandment. And the Lord Jesus is not separating the law and the gospel. He's mingling it. That they are necessary for one another.

You know, James says, for you brethren have been called to liberty, only do not use your liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love to serve one another. For all the laws fulfilled in this one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Here what we find is that all of the law in the Gospel is caught up in this discussion that is engaged here by Moses on the east side of the Jordan River. The fourth thing that we need to recognize is you can't talk about the law without talking about both Old and New Testaments. There is a confused thought in many of our minds that goes like this. The law equals the Old Testament.

Grace equals the New Testament. The Bible doesn't teach that at all. And certainly, if you read how the Lord Jesus dealt with the book of Deuteronomy, how he so loved the book of Deuteronomy, how he quoted it and used it to demonstrate the Gospel. We understand that this division that the Law is the Old Testament and grace is the New Testament is completely unfounded. Abraham was saved by grace through faith and so was everyone after him.

The law refers to every command of God from Genesis to Revelation and there are many of them. And the law speaks of the kind of behavior that reflects the character of God. What kind of behavior pleases him. This is what the law is. And that behavior is communicated in both New and Old Testaments.

So I think we should be careful to think that the law and the Gospel are found in both New and Old Testaments. And then number five, you cannot talk about the law without understanding the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law is to convict of sin and to drive us to our only refuge, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's to reveal the will of God. It's to reveal the character of God.

So that we would conclude with David, for in your sight no one living is righteous. That's what the law is designed to do. The law is not designed to help us check these boxes and say, no, I didn't commit adultery today. No, I didn't murder today. The law's purpose is to show us the adulterous, murderous nature of our hearts and to drive us to understand that there is none righteous, no, not one.

And there's only righteousness in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the sixth thing that I would like for us to recognize is that you cannot talk about the law without understanding how to interpret the law. We'll be spending quite a bit of time over the months giving different illustrations and examples of how you apply the law as we go through this second speech, because there are dozens and dozens of opportunities to show how it's properly applied. And the most helpful place to turn in understanding how to apply the law is to turn to the New Testament. The Apostle Paul applies the law, James applies the law, Peter applies the law, and the Lord Jesus gives the most amazing instruction about how we would apply the law.

So we should apply the law and we should know that we stand on firm ground when we apply it as we follow the patterns of the New Testament writers, if you have any confusion, go there and you can know that you're applying the law properly. I don't want to try to minimize the difficulty in applying the law because we see through glasses darkly, because we are sinners, because we're self-serving, because we've been taught different things all our lives. We will have difficulty applying the law all the days of our lives, but God has called us to be careful to observe the law. We have to understand how to interpret the law. And then seventh, you cannot talk about the law without noticing the exhortations regarding the law.

How many times we are exhorted to be careful to observe it. The law was meant to be put into action. The law was not just meant to give us something interesting to talk about regarding this category of theology. The law was given to us so that we would do it. We may not understand every point of how to apply it, but this we do know.

God has told us what we should do, and we should do it. That's what we should major on, going and doing it. You know, it's so easy to set aside great things and then just discuss all the picky things. That's a danger in the church. And then eight, you cannot talk about the law or the Ten Commandments without talking about the different views of the law.

And as we go on, we'll try to be helpful to understand how different people in different time periods and theological persuasions have interpreted the law. We'll speak about dispensational theology from time to time, I'm sure. This is a way of thinking that became popular in the 19th and the 20th centuries and has become very popular among conservative Protestants even in our day. Dispensationalism was popularized by a small number of men who began to speak of it in the 19th and 20th centuries. It's a relatively new way of looking at scripture.

And basically, dispensational theology breaks the Bible up into time periods, dispensations, in which God worked in a different way. There are different iterations of this, but classical dispensationalism would say that there was the time of innocence where God dealt with Adam prior to Adam's fall in the Garden of Eden. And God dealt with mankind one way there. Then there's the period of conscience during the time from Adam to Noah that God dealt with people a specific way and then he quit dealing with him that way and then he moved on to the patriarchal period, the patriarchal rule between Abraham and Moses And God worked for salvation for his people in a special way that way. Then when the law was given, there's the dispensation of the law.

And then there's the dispensation of grace, which was inaugurated through the Lord Jesus Christ. And then lastly, there's the dispensation of the Millennium. So there are these seven dispensations that are insulated and God dealt with his people in a way each different time. In the 19th century, this is popularized by John Darby, J.N. Darby, and then Dallas Theological Seminary.

You're familiar with the Schofield Reference Bible, which is really the tome of dispensationalism. Some popular books, popular in my time anyway, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay is founded upon dispensational theology. So was the Left Behind series, this enormously popular series, sold 62 million copies of these books, all really based on dispensational theology. And so you have categories of thinking to wade through when you think about how to interpret the law. You have also something relatively new in the last 25 years, new covenant theology, which is sort of a midpoint.

It's sort of a compromise point in a way between dispensationalism and reform theology. And then somewhere in there you have what's called progressive dispensationalism. So as we talk about the law, we have to understand how people have interpreted it. And hopefully, our knowledge will increase in some of these ways as we go through this teaching in Deuteronomy. So you have to understand the ways that people have interpreted the law to understand Moses here.

Okay, let's move into the Ten Commandments. What we'll do now is just summarize the Ten Commandments. And then next week we'll spend all of our time in the First Commandment, the following week and the second and so forth. So the next several weeks we're going to really slow down our pace in Deuteronomy. And we'll spend our time really zeroing in on each one of the Ten Commandments.

It'll be a very rich time. And so the first commandment is found in verse 7. You shall have no other gods before me. This is an attack against the non-existent gods that capture people's hearts. The Lord Jesus in contrast said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father but through me. That there is Almighty God and then there are all these little petty gods that we find ourselves attracted to. Our gods can be of the heart and they can actually be worshiped as well, physically in terms of created things, carved things, things of stone, things of metal. And this is an attack against these false gods. Gods of family, gods of nation, gods of superstition, ideas that you've just had, superstitious ideas that you are still gripping onto.

These are gods. Gods of business. Gods regarding money. Gods regarding entertainment and pleasure and leisure. There are many, many gods.

John Calvin said that the human heart is a factory of idols. It is so true that once you identify one idol, another one comes popping up right behind it. It may be a shinier, happier God. It may be a little bit more helpful to you and more acceptable socially, but it's a God nonetheless. And so here we find this first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me.

It could include our affections for many, many different things. For our education, the books we read, the people we admire, the experiences that we've had. There are many many things that can compose these gods. This first commandment highlights the sovereignty of God that he is the God over all gods and worship Him alone. Abandon all of your other little gods." And so this first commandment would convict us of the sin of how often our devotion to the Lord is not single-minded, but that we are so devoted to so many other propositions, so many other things that are self-serving.

But this is a call for us to examine ourselves of any breaches in our single-mindedness. We like to look at these laws in sort of a minimalist form. In other words, I don't have an idol in my house. I don't have a totem pole on my property. I'm not bowing down for it.

I'm not breaking this commandment. That is not the meaning of this commandment. This commandment would pierce our hearts and show us that we are not single-minded in our devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, that we have many diversions, we have many gods that we serve in this world. It's a call for us to quit listening to the other voices, but to listen to one voice for your life. It is a call to expose how poorly dedicated we are to the Lord.

As I was preparing for this, I was just struck with this principle of how short I have fallen in fulfilling this first commandment and how all of us stand completely bankrupt before God in this area. Remember, the purpose of the law is to expose our sin and to help us to see how much we need the blood of Christ. And so It shows us how poorly dedicated, how easily distracted we are, and yet how wonderful it is to cast ourselves on the grace of God. Then there's the second commandment, verses 8 through 10. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me, and keep my commandments." So this is a commandment that's very similar to what we read in 1 John 5. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. The jealousy of God is important to understand here, that God has represented himself not in images, but in words. He does not want himself to be misrepresented in your mind.

He wants you to think right thoughts about him. And images of him, what they do is they demean God. They show who is not God is what they do. Let me illustrate this way. Let's say I have a picture in my wallet and it's a picture of a woman and if I take that picture and I show it to people and I say this is my wife, but it's not my wife at all.

It's actually another woman. It's actually not her at all, but I say this is my wife. That's absolutely insane. And that's what we do when we have wrong images of God. We say that's my God, but that is not your God at all.

And so this exhortation, this law regarding images, would help us realize how important it is that we think rightly about God. We've all made God in our own image, and There are different ways that we've gotten there. We may have seen pictures of Jesus and made affectionate toward them. We may have a cross and we think that somehow this would light up affections and give us a visual image. The Roman Catholic Church created the seven stations of the cross to help people understand.

They felt the people were so dumb that they needed to see it. They needed to see it with their own eyes. So they gave it to them. But what they got was a disfigurement. And they were misled regarding God.

Any representation of Christ misrepresents him. What represents him? Well, his words represent him. And so he did not appear to us in form, but he gave us words so that we might know him. And he is jealous that we would know the true God.

And so how would we know him? The only way we would know him, not by thinking our own thoughts after, not by reading books about him, but by reading his word and knowing him from there with the original source. And so our greatest affection in this life ought to be the words of God so that we might keep this commandment, so that the images that we have of God are not formed by misleading propositions. So the question is, do I have an accurate understanding of God? Do you?

Well let me just say you don't and neither do I. Our hearts are sinful and because of that we don't see God as he really is. And so we fall short in many ways in our understanding of God. Have I filled my mind with a vision that is not of the true God? Have I made a God in my own image?

You might ask yourself this, what is the sin at its root level that causes you to desire images, to see images. What is that sin? There is a sin that we commit as we violate this commandment that you shall not make for yourself a carved image. We learned in the last section at the end of the first speech that Moses is specifically addressing the issue of images. And he really gives two ideas.

One, images of God are misleading and despicable. Secondly, images, All images of every kind are alluring. They cause our hearts to beat faster. We have to be very careful with images. So here he rolls up this principle in a commandment.

And then the third commandment is found in verse 11. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Now, many have taken this commandment in its minimalist form. In other words, don't swear. Don't use the name God in a sentence where profanity is used.

But this command is broader than that. It includes more than just profanity. It is to use His name and be pretending at the same time of using it. To pretend to honor God using Bible words, using Christian phrases, when there is no genuine loyalty to Christ in it at all. It's to misrepresent Christ.

You're taking His name in vain. This is a sin that is probably more common with believers than unbelievers. And particularly pastors and Christian leaders saying one thing and hooking the name God on it but not meaning it. Just attaching Him there for your own purposes. That's taking the name of the Lord your God in vain.

To bear or to carry the name, that's what this is. To take it is to bear the name. We are always bearing His name. Do we bear it in a genuine way and a truthful way? Because the name, the name represents the person being revealed if you pray in the name of Jesus it's not just a tag on the name of Jesus means something so if you're praying in his name You're praying things that are consistent with the way that He is and His will.

So praying in Jesus' name is not just saying, in Jesus' name, Amen. That's not praying in Jesus' name at all. Praying in Jesus' name is to pray things that are consistent with His name. Whether you say in Jesus' name or not is totally irrelevant. What is relevant though, is the prayer representative of His will.

That's a prayer in Jesus' name. And taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain is using His name but misrepresenting it and to falsely represent His name. And so you could say to violate this commandment is to use his name hypocritically. Have you ever used his name hypocritically? Have you ever just used God words but your heart was far from him?

This is a violation of that commandment. To appear spiritual but not to have any genuine holy respect for the Lord. To take it in vain is to make it purposeless, to take it lightly with no reverence at all. And so here we find that in this third commandment is a call for us to inspect our own hearts as to how we're involved in these religious things, but yet vainly. We're not taking them as important as they are.

And so this third commandment has to do with a genuine testimony, and it does include profanity, but it's not limited to it. And it calls us to ask ourselves of the different ways that we misrepresent God in our lives. I use God's name, but my heart is far from him. In contrast, We should pray as the Lord Jesus taught us to pray. Hallowed be thy name.

And so that's the third commandment. And then the fourth commandment is the commandment regarding the Sabbath. And here we find the most extensive treatment of the commandments here from verses 12 through 15. One thing that you'll find among theologians is that you'll find the observation that the command to obey the Sabbath is not found in the New Testament. And so they say because it's not repeated in the New Testament, it's not valid for today.

And we'll have a long discussion about this when we get to it. But I honestly don't know how people can say that when the Lord Jesus said, I am the Lord of the Sabbath. I don't know how they can say that the Sabbath is irrelevant when he teaches people how to celebrate it. And he gives the meaning of the commandment itself. I just don't honestly understand how we get to the point where we say that the Sabbath is no longer a requirement for New Testament believers.

But this commandment regarding the Sabbath has enormous implications in our lives. Here's one. It has to do with how you manage your time in your life. You know, the idea of the week is not just some idea that the calendar boys came up with. This is God's idea, that you work six and you rest one.

During the French Revolution, they tried to wipe that out because they believed if you could wipe out the Sabbath, you could wipe out Christianity. So here we find we're called to keep it, which means to guard it and to protect it and to build a fence around it so that nothing would overrun it. So that fear of lack of provision wouldn't overrun the command for the Sabbath, or greed would overrun it, or obsession on some economic endeavor would overrun the keeping, the guarding of the Sabbath or or maybe the ungodliness, lack of care for the people of God and the Word of God and the worship of God and the prayers of the gathered saints that you would so devalue it because of your ungodliness you would prefer something else. Everything can overrun the Sabbath. And so here is clarity about it here in the fourth commandment.

We have this idea that time is ours, we can do with it what we please. Not true. God says, I have time, I am going to establish a rhythmical use of time. And it includes this keeping of the Sabbath and making it a holy time. God has called us to use time for His own glory, to redeem it, and then also to use a day in a certain way.

Not your way, but His way. Do you realize that? That God is giving you your calendar, and it includes six days of work and one day of rest and worship. This is the way that God has so structured life for His people. It's so important that we consider what kind of thinking that we have in our own church about Sabbath.

What's the culture of our church regarding the Sabbath? Is it a play day? Is it a do-your-own-thing day? You know, what kind of a day is it? Well, God has given us many things to comply with regarding the keeping of the Sabbath.

And in a couple of weeks when we get to this, we'll be able to really delve into it. I think we should understand how serious this is. The Babylonian captivity was in part a punishment for the breaking of the Sabbath. How many times is Israel punished for breaking the Sabbath? 490 years they did not celebrate the Sabbath.

They skipped 70 Sabbaths. And so the punishment was 70 years of captivity. How's that? You can read all about it in 2 Chronicles 36, in Jeremiah 17, and in Isaiah 58 you have a beautiful explanation of how the Sabbath should be kept. The prophet, Isaiah first speaks about the blessings of fasting, which we should be aware of in our own families, of how helpful fasting is.

And then he speaks about the Sabbath. And in verse 13 in Isaiah 58, he says, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, a holy day to the Lord, honorable and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words." You see how detailed this is? But it's all for blessing. And this delight, this love for the Lord breaks out for us many blessings. That's the principle.

The keeping of the Sabbath is a blessing. So there's this time of cessation of labor for the making of money and the turning to God, turning away from your own words, turning away from your own ways, turning away from your own pleasures, and spending an entire day in contemplation of God. It's not leisure and it's not really a day off the way that modern industrialized nations think of it. Okay? It's different than that.

So we'll deal with that. The second line of Baptist Confession has beautiful language to help us understand all these things regarding the Sabbath. But what you do find is in evangelicalism, many people disregard this commandment because they say it wasn't repeated in the New Testament. I would object to such a categorical statement anyway. So this fourth commandment has to do with the faithful use of time.

How many Sabbaths have I broken? Now, you may have a perfect record of coming to church, but you can come to church and break the Sabbath as well, by the way. Just because you have shown up here doesn't mean that you didn't break the Sabbath that day. Have I played rather than rested? Have I worried my way through the Sabbath instead of truly resting?

Have I worked rather than rested? Well, the fourth commandment is so vividly and beautifully captured in the state of the Lord Jesus, I will give you rest. So that's the fourth commandment. So these first four commandments are called the first table of the law. All you children need to know this.

There's the first table of the law, and those are the first four commandments, and they have to do with your relationship with God. Now, we have in the fifth commandment, which in some ways is kind of a bridge between the two. But the second table focus on your relationship with mankind. And so the fifth commandment is to honor your father and your mother. Notice the positive nature of the commandment, the blessings that are promised, but it brings into view the foundation of order and love in home life.

It's the first commandment with the promise, and really this commandment is maybe a fountainhead, you might call it, of submission and authority for all other realms. If you can't learn to honor your father and mother, you will have problems all the days of your life. You will struggle with honor toward your husband or your wife. You will struggle with honor in the church. You will struggle with honoring the civil government if you do not honor your father and mother.

This is so critical. Young children, you must get this one because it will be a blessing to you or a curse to you. I'm confident that with every young person in this room, there is a struggle with honor because the devil wants to capture you there when you're young. And if you cannot get it there, it will continue to dog you all the days of your life. This is so important that you understand this.

And so there's an exposition here of the importance of authority in society. Now, here are a couple things we need to understand. When you despise the authority of your father and mother, You despise God Himself. You despise every authority that God has placed in your way. The character of God demands honor.

You know, another reason for the exile, breaking the Sabbath was one. But there is another reason that we see in Ezekiel 22. They made light of their father and their mother, and they oppressed the stranger. Making light of their father and mother was one of the sins of the children of Israel, and it was part of the reason for God's judgment upon them and they're leading into captivity. Now this is for the promotion of love in families.

It promotes successful children, it builds loving churches, and it creates orderly nations, and it's so important. Dishonor is such a plague to a person. It makes them angry, it makes them full of self-pity. The person who cannot honor their parents does this. They become incensed with the stupidities of their parents, the flaws of their parents, and they're offended.

Here's what happens to us. We become offended that we, that we, the supreme and noble people in the family, the thoughtful beings in the home, are subjected to such stupid, thoughtless parents. That's what this is. We get into that groove, and then we live that way all of our lives. Then everyone is stupid.

The president is stupid. The governor is stupid. The pastor is stupid, just like my stupid parents. This is the great sin that is so enormously important for us to recognize. When you have this honor in your heart, you need to know that God is desiring to bring about in your life a repentance that will turn toward your blessing.

I know that there are some young teenage boys and girls in this church. Here's what I've observed is that particularly when you enter in your teen years, the devil has got his hands around your neck on this issue and he will try to destroy your life with it, but he will wait. It's a little bit easier when you're younger if your parents are faithful, but then there comes a time when rebellion rises up in your soul. This is your great time of testing. This is your wilderness experience.

Say, has not the Lord said? And destroy that devil in front of you. But I just will say, if you're in your teens, you're in a danger zone. And it's the danger zone of dishonor. And here, it's just so enormously important.

And if you don't get it now, here's what you'll find. You're going to find stupid, thoughtless people at every turn. And if you don't like your father because he is so dull you're going to meet him over and over again. He'll have a different name, he'll have a different title, but you will always meet him all the days of your life and you'll never be able to conquer the sin that comes. So, repentive dishonor here is the reason for this commandment.

Again, no one gets off free from this commandment. And so then we come to the sixth commandment, you shall not murder. This has to do with taking matters into your own hands. This has to do with destroying man made in the image of God. Crimes against the unborn are implied here.

This condemns the pro-death culture. It condemns the political machinery that legitimizes infanticide and abortion, and also the killing of the elderly, as we're seeing rising in exponential rates right before our eyes. The character of God is forgiveness. The character of God is to give life and not to take matters into our own hands. The Lord Jesus told us that if we were angry with our brothers, we were murderers.

And so one does not have to shoot or stab to become a murderer. One just has to be a human being. And they will be breaking the sixth commandment. And so this of course doesn't mean that this does not apply to self-defense. Deuteronomy 19 verse 5, Exodus 22 verse 2, make it clear that this is not in the same category as killing for self-defense, which is lawful.

But this is murder, the unlawful taking of a life. How do we deal with this sin? Far before we have a gun in our hand. We deal with it in the matters of the heart. Have I ever been angry with my brother?

My self-talk reveals my anger, my murderous heart. Do I have mercy toward all of my brothers, or do I speak evil of them in my heart? Maybe it never gets out, but it's something that happens in the heart. I have no mercy. I have no log in my own eye.

That's the murderous spirit that's spoken of here in the sixth commandment. And then the seventh commandment is found in verse 18, you shall not commit adultery. Again, we find the character of God in his unfaithfulness and purity, the protection of marriage. And we see the Lord Jesus Going to the heart of the matter, when he said, you have heard that it was said 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 find this commandment also. It's unkeepable. No one ever kept these commandments, neither can you. Your only hope is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let none of us ever read these commandments since day.

I've kept them from my youth up. That's simply not true. That has never happened with anyone. The rich young ruler said that he had kept them all from his youth up, but it was not true. And the Lord Jesus exposed that lie.

And so we find the principle of the purity of marriage and how important it is to understand what adultery is, its treason against God's design, it's a contradiction against the triune God, the unity that exists between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That is replicated in marriage. The unity of a husband and wife. Let no man tear it asunder. And so there are all these pictures, both physical and then mental and spiritual, that are implied here in this seventh commandment.

And then the eighth commandment, you shall not steal. Here we find a sin against God in this sense. It's a sin of unbelief. It's a sin of not believing in the character of God to be your provider and think that you must steal to be provided for. And it has to do with many things.

God's provision. It also has to do with ownership. Yes, the Bible does argue for the goodness of ownership of property. The heart of Marxism is a contradiction to the Eighth Commandment. Marxists believe that you should steal from one and give to another, that it's lawful to take the property and the resources from one and steal it from them and give it to someone else.

That is the despicable heart of Marxism. It's a contradiction against God. And it explains the nature of theft, taking what belongs to one and giving it to another. So whenever an individual or a government takes land or cash or anything that belongs to another man and gives it to another, you're living in a kleptocracy, as we are today. And this makes municipalities and state governments and federal governments gigantic thieves, because they have it in their fundamental operating principle that what they should do is take from one man and give it to another.

It destroys the family. It destroys nations. And we can see the examples of it when it's fully applied. Look at the Soviet Union. Go look at the gray buildings.

Go look at the polluted waterways. Go look at the drunken people in stupor because of this principle. And so what we find in the Eighth Commandment, you shall not steal. John Calvin said this. He said, no man can be deprived of his possessions by criminal methods without an injury being done to the divine dispenser of them.

It's interesting today, really, environmentalists are telling us that the land doesn't belong to people, it belongs to animals. That animals are more important than human beings and because the land belongs to them, humans are despicable, Humans are downgrade. Take it from the humans and give it to the turtles. I mean, that's really the insanity that's upon us today in the environmental movement. And now you're going to find the environmental kleptocracy wanting to steal your money to try to fix a problem that cannot be fixed by mankind, global warming or climate change.

Now you are responsible for climate change. You will be taxed for it and the kleptocrats will come to you and say, give me your money for it. This is stealing from individuals and giving it to others it does not belong to. So we find the ninth commandment dealing with bearing false witness against your neighbor. This has to do with the sacredness of truth, and how often do we not tell the truth about our neighbor.

There are two ways that you speak of your neighbor. In your heart, that's one way, and then with your mouth, That's the other way. And this is the sin of wrongfully speaking, witnessing regarding your neighbor. It's not just lying on the witness stand. It's not just limited to putting your hand on a Bible and saying, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth is nothing but the truth.

It's not just that. It goes to the heart of the matter. No one ever kept the ninth commandment. You may be able to keep it when you put your hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth to the best of your ability, but let not anyone think that they have always kept the ninth commandment. Do we think well of our brother?

Do we judge him in our hearts? Notice the relational nature of this commandment. I don't believe that it means that you have to tell the truth to someone who wants information from you to kill someone unlawfully. Like if you're in Nazi Germany, my perspective is, yes, you can lie to the Gestapo. That's my perspective.

Well, this is about misrepresenting people before other people, And it also does include lying. So the ninth commandment is about being a faithful witness. It's about bearing false witness against your neighbor in your heart, through your thoughts, and through your mouth, saying things that are not right about them. How often has that happened in our lives? Slandering a neighbor in my heart without using words.

The Lord Jesus Christ would go to the very heart of the matter so that it doesn't rise to the level of greater destruction. And then the 10th commandment, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, you shall not despise your neighbor's house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's. And so this has to do with the restraining lawlessness in a household. The head of the household should not seek things that are unlawful. It forbids coveting another man's Wife, tools, employees, anything, whatever it might be.

Anything that is your neighbors, anything that is your neighbors is implied here. This is discontentment with what God has given you. Striving for what he has given others. This is the great danger. Covetousness can cause tremendous collapse in relationships, churches, and communities.

And so here, this 10th commandment deals with us on the level of our contentment. Are we content with what God has given? Or are we striving for what someone else has? James says, where do wars and fights come among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that wage war in your members?

You lust and do not have. And that's the heart of the matter here regarding covetousness. As we evaluate this 10th commandment, are we unsatisfied with the gifts that God has given us? Do we have an unthankful spirit for the providences of God toward us? That's the essence of the 10th commandment.

And so in all these commandments we find an exposition of God's character and the way that he desires for love to be found in this world. And they are all summed up in what the Lord Jesus said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." So how do we apply all these commandments?

Well, our natural sinful flesh would take us to the minimalist level of application. Did I stab someone today? Did I stand on the witness stand and lie? No. That's not where the Lord Jesus takes us.

He takes us to the heart of the matter. This shows us that we're always in extreme danger. This shows us that the work of the Gospel is enormously important for us because we cannot keep all the commandments. The Lord Jesus shed His blood on the cross for all of our sins, for all of the ways that we've broken all of these commandments, for how we have not cared enough for God, and we have cared for everything else and broken the first commandment, for how we have had a wrong image of God in our minds because of sinful cultivation of our thinking. For how we have taken the name of the Lord our God in vain by misrepresenting Him by being hypocritical and phony.

How We have broken the Sabbath many times, even though we might have shown up in church, how we have not honored our Father and our Mother, how we have not kept the heart of the law in all these things. Because Our hearts are in desperate need of the ministry of the grace of Jesus Christ, our only hope. There's only one refuge from the wrath of God, from the breaking of the commandments, and that is the blood shed on the cross for us. And that, brothers and sisters, is the meaning of the Ten Commandments. Let's pray.

Lord, we pray that you would use these times together to convict us of sin, to destroy all pride, to take us where you would take us as you convict us. I pray, Lord, that you would form in us a desire for holiness, a hatred of sin, and a trust in the Gospel. In Jesus' name, Amen.