Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

37 - The Joy of Contentment

It’s one thing to ask me to not make an idol, or profane the Lord’s name, or work on the sabbath, or dishonor my parents, or murder, or break my marriage covenant, or steal, or lie, but it’s quite another when you look at the hidden motives of my heart and command me to be content with my lot in life. Now you’re in an area inside of me I hardly understand myself. You’re asking me to control something that in reality seems to have control of me. Yet, the tenth commandment tells me not to covet, meaning I shouldn’t desire things that belong to others. I’m told to be totally satisfied with the gifts God has given me, and delighted when others appear to have more blessings than I do. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus explained that each commandment reaches beyond our actions to the attitudes within our hearts. But this last commandment starts there, telling us to be selfless and humble, and that’s something no human can do without a miracle. Even St. Paul tells us this was the commandment he was helpless to obey before he was born-again (Ro 7:7–12). When he tried he found compulsive attitudes in him that only got worse when he tried to bring them under control. But whenever God asks us to do something He always provides the help we need to succeed. So, let’s look in His Word today to find the provisions he’s made that will set us free from coveting.

36 - The Power of Truth

 

1. The ninth commandment: “You shall not lie about your neighbor”

 

2. Since the Ten Commandments are lessons designed to teach us to love, this commandment says simply that if I love someone I will not lie about them, nor will I lie to them. I won’t: testify against them falsely in court; destroy their reputation through slander; alienate those who love them by gossip.

 

3. In other words, I will not use my lips to destroy people.

• Our speech is the primary way we influence the world around us
• Matthew 12:34 “…the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good, and the evil man brings out of his treasure what is evil. But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.”
• James 3:2–12 the tongue is a fire

35 - The Price of Prosperity

When it comes to stealing, the human mind can be so creative it would be impossible to write enough laws to prevent it in all its forms. There are flagrant, aggressive ways to steal and subtle, passive ways. Some types are obvious while others could never be proven in a court of law because they depend on hidden attitudes of the heart. Who’s to say a misleading statement was intentional, or that a person did or didn’t work as diligently as possible on a project, or whether a neighbor really forgot to return a borrowed item. So when it comes right down to it, the only person who can make me obey the eighth commandment is me. And the biggest problem I face is convincing myself I want to obey it. In practice honesty can be a very costly path to take. It will force me to turn down certain opportunities to take something I want. It will force me to work hard and be patient. It will make me put the needs of others ahead of my own. And while those choices sound good in principle they can be very frustrating to live out in daily life. Refusing to steal may sound like a noble ideal, but unless I’m convinced God loves me and will do miracles to provide for me, I will soon find myself coming up with excuses for breaking this commandment. It forces me to choose between God and wealth… to decide who I love the most.

34 - The Marriage Covenant

Today it’s not uncommon to hear the term “sexual revolution” applied to the dramatic changes our society is undergoing in its thinking about sexual behaviors. Those who use this term assume that a new view of sex is emerging out of the uninformed bigotry of our cultural past. But that’s not what’s happening at all. The only real sexual revolution in human history has been produced by the Bible. What’s happening in America and Europe is that many are simply returning to the primitive sexual behaviors that dominated the ancient world before the Bible arrived. Infidelity and promiscuity were actually sanctioned and practiced by the official religions of the rest of ancient near east (TWOT, vol 2, pp 542–543). Sacred prostitution (male and female) (Dt 23:1), regular prostitution (Lv 19:29), homosexuality (Lv 18:22), bestiality (Ex 22:19; Dt 27:21), and transvestiture (Dt 22:5) were common in the ancient world. So as we turn to the seventh commandment we encounter a radically new way of thinking about sex. The idea that it should only be between a man and a woman and that it should only take place after a lifelong commitment has been made is so unnatural to human thinking it could only have come from God. Again, like the sixth commandment, He required only two words to say bluntly, “No adultery!” To understand this commandment we will first define the term “adultery,” then reflect on the nature of the marriage covenant and finally we’ll consider seven attitudes essential if we are to succeed in obeying it.

33 - Attitudes That Kill

The Lord needed only two words to produce the sixth commandment. He engraved into a flat plate of stone this simple statement, “Murder not!” Out of ten words which are associated with killing in the Old Testament, He chose the one which refers specifically to the killing of a human whether that person’s death is intentional (murder) or accidental (manslaughter). He did not use a word that would include hunting, lawful execution or a morally-justifiable war. He picked the word that would deny us the right to end a human life, including our own. Since human life originated with God it belongs to Him and therefore only He can decide who should live and who should die. This means that eliminating people is not an acceptable solution to our problems. Though it’s possible for a person to do something so evil that their execution is called for by God’s Word (Nu 35:29–34), yet the power to decide this is given only to duly established courts who are to be guided through the process by biblical principles. So the effect of this commandment is to force us to seek positive ways of resolving conflicts with others. If we understand the true spirit of this commandment, we realize God is forcing us to learn to love sinful people just like He does.

32 - Honoring Parents

It’s interesting that the first lesson on learning to love my neighbor as myself has to do with honoring those God has placed in authority over me as a child. And then He bundled into this commandment a warning that says my life expectancy, the availability of His resources and my progress toward achieving His plan for my life are contingent upon my obedience here. This is not easy for me to hear as a typical American. I live in a culture that viciously criticizes and ridicules its leaders, that avoids the elderly and suspects that submission is a scheme invented by people who merely want to exploit me. Once again I am confronted with the fact that the way God thinks and the way my society thinks are vastly different. But if the Bible is really God’s Word and He means what He says, I could release some powerful blessings into my life by learning what it means to “honor my father and mother,” so let’s look more closely.

31 - The Sabbath Principle

So far in our study of the Ten Commandments we first learned that God will not allow other gods in our lives. He forces us to choose whether we want His blessing or the help these other spirits can give. Next, we learned that He measures our love for Him in part by the way we speak of Him. We trouble our lives when we profane His name. If, at times, we feel the need to say something emphatic we’d be wise to leave references to Him out of our statements. Instead we should always seek to glorify the name of the Lord we love.

 

Now we turn to the fourth commandment which says, “remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.” The “sabbath” is a much misunderstood concept in the church today. Certain groups have tried to reimpose a legalistic view and argue over which day of the week Christians must go to church, while others have decided the grace given to us in Jesus Christ means we have no obligation to give any day of the week to God. But clearly neither extreme takes seriously the truth Jesus revealed when He said, “The sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath” (Mk 2:27). His statement tells us God gave the sabbath as an act of kindness because He knew we would need it. He didn’t intend to set up a ritual in order to receive glory from our obedience to an arbitrary set of rules. He knew we would need a day of rest and knew it would help us learn to love Him.

30 - Using God’s Name

Our mouths expose our hearts. Sooner or later our real beliefs and attitudes pour out of our lips. As hard as we may try to hide them it’s impossible to filter everything, and in those moments when we drop our guard our hearts speak what we really believe. That’s why in these lessons on how to love God (Ex 20:3–11) He draws our attention to how we use His name. His purpose isn’t simply to get us to patrol our speech more carefully, His concern lies much deeper than that. He wants us to love and respect Him and knows that if we do our mouths will speak accordingly. Jesus said, “For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart” (Mt 12:34), and again on another occasion He said, “But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart” (Mt 15:18). So an honest evaluation of how we use God’s name will tell us a lot about our spiritual health.

 

Today we’ll listen to the warning God gives about using His name in vain, but we’ll also look at the positive side of using His name. After all, as Christians we are people deeply associated with that name: we believe in His name, we pray in His name, we gather in His name, we serve in His name and we have been baptized in His name. Amazingly, we have been given the privilege to use “the name which is above every name…” (Php 2:9).

29 - No Other Gods

We learned in our study of the “law of Moses” that the purpose of the Ten Commandments is to teach us how to love: first, to love God with all our heart, soul & might (Dt 6:5), and then to love our neighbor as ourselves (Lev 19:18). Considering these commandments as a whole, we see that the first four focus on loving God, and the final six focus on loving our neighbor. Today, we’re going to look more deeply at the first two: 1) You shall have no other gods before Me (v 3); 2) You shall not make for yourself an idol (v 4).

 

In order to understand them better, it’s helpful to paraphrase verses 1–11. God’s message in these verses is this: “I have already proved My love for you, My power, and My faithfulness by delivering you from Egypt and bringing you safely here. Now I’m asking you to ‘marry Me,’ that is, to love Me, to be loyal to Me, to treat Me respectfully, and to regularly spend time in personal fellowship with Me. I warn you, if you promise to do so and then don’t, I’ll react like a wounded spouse and I’ll punish you until you repent. But if you continue to love Me, be loyal to Me, show Me respect and fellowship with Me, I’ll pour on you the blessings I promised generation after generation until the end of time.” When we realize what God is saying in these verses, it is amazing how tender and vulnerable He was being toward Israel. Really He should never have had to say these things in the first place, because if people really love Him they would be automatic.

28 - The Law of Moses

The Law of Moses was the code of rules and regulations which Israel agreed to live by as people in covenant with God. Moses didn’t invent these laws, he just wrote them down as God dictated them to him. And the “heart” of these laws is the Ten Commandments which the Lord Himself wrote down on two flat tablets of stone (24:12; 31:18; 32:15, 16; 34:1–4, 28). He gave Israel these laws so they would know how to lead holy lives, and therefore God’s presence could dwell among them. His goal was to use their nation to evangelize all the other nations on earth (19:6). But, for the most part, things didn’t work out as He intended. People either ignored His laws, or looked for excuses to avoid obeying them, or used them to put others under a form of religious slavery, or tried to earn eternal life by practicing a superficial level of obedience. Of course none of these was the reason God gave His laws in the first place. But misunderstanding and misusing His laws didn’t necessarily end with the arrival of Christianity. Sadly some still misunderstand and misuse them. So today we’ll let the Apostle Paul explain why God gave the Law to Moses and how He wants to use that law in our lives. As we listen to him we’ll hear the good news of the gospel in a fresh way.