Exodus 20 - The 10 Commandments Part 2 (Love Your Neighbor As Yourself, Corban, Death Penalty etc)

The Ten Commandments as Two Tablets: Vertical and Horizontal Duties

Okay, so this will be part two of our study of the Ten Commandments, Exodus chapter 20, just in way of review briefly. This chapter is where the Lord delivers to Moses the two tablets of stone, the Ten Commandments were written engraved in stone, which kind of tells us that they are everlasting.

The Ten Commandments show us God's righteous standard along with his holy character. And the Ten Commandments are broken into two parts. So there's two tablets of stone. And the first table of the law was vertical, so to speak, it deals with man and his relationship and responsibility to God.

The second half, which we're going to look at this evening is more horizontal. These following commandments that we didn't get to last week deal with man and his relationships, responsibilities towards his fellow man.

So this is what we covered last week. The first four commandments, thou shall have no other gods before me. Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image. This is the prohibition against idolatry, bowing down to statues.

The third commandment, thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. And then number four, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And we talked about the Sabbath, how really that's the one that would be different in that it wasn't reaffirmed in the New Testament given to the New Testament church.

Honoring Father and Mother, and the Corban Loophole

So let's go on to commandment number five, which we see in Exodus 20, verse 12. This is the first commandment with a promise. It says, honor your father and your mother that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

So the first commandment, what's the promise? That's attached. If you obey, this was given to a nation. So if the nation of Israel obeys this commandment, what? Okay, their days will be long upon the land.

So if a nation is going to succeed, if a nation is going to prosper and be blessed by God, part of that is they have to respect the generation before them, and they have to care for the generation before them.

So if a nation does not respect the previous generation, that nation is not going to endure. Also, children have to honor and respect and obey their parents. And obviously when a child grows up and the parents get older, it is the responsibility of the children to care for and if necessary, provide for their parents who provided for them when they were younger.

So we see in the pages of the New Testament that Israel, and I hate to use this term, but Israel systemically failed to do this. Why do I say that? Because in Mark chapter seven, Jesus rebuked the Jews for their Korban rule.

How many of you know what the Korban rule was? Mark, you want to try to give a brief explanation?

Well, you're supposed to provide for your family, but if you give it to the Lord, you don't have to provide for your family.

Exactly. So let's say a child was disrespectful. They were angry at their parents. They could declare all their possessions Korban. Basically it was a vow. Everything I have, I dedicate to the Lord. And because I dedicated it to the Lord, well, I can't use it to provide and take care of my family because I already gave it to God.

So you see how this was kind of a way of getting around the commandment of God in the name of God. Now that's one thing the Lord does not appreciate. Violating his commandments, bad enough, doing it in this hypocritical way, doing it in the Lord's name.

No, so basically, yeah, all of my possessions, my money, everything, I declare it, I give it to God so I can't care for my parents. So, you know, look how holy I am as I'm breaking the commandment of God.

And that was built into the Jews system and the religious leaders upheld this. So when the religious leaders of Judaism allowed for this, they allowed that the commandment of God was nullified through their tradition.

Korban is not in the Old Testament law. It was a tradition and Jesus rebuked them for their traditions, nullifying the commandment. Okay, so this is what a legalist will do, okay? A legalist looks for loopholes to get around what the word of God says.

So they will even look to the law to find ways around the commandments. Today, ironically, people are called legalists when they want to uphold the commandments. Certainly you've seen this and heard this.

Somebody, yeah, but the 10 commandments say we need to obey the commandments of God. People will call them a legalist, but actually a legalist will try to find ways around the commandments. So if anything, it's the opposite.

Just kind of think of a defense lawyer today. A person will break the law. It's clear they've broken the law. The penalty is clear, it's written down, and yet the lawyer will come in and work their magic to get the person off the hook.

And they use case law to do it, to kind of get around the law that's written. So anyway, that's a whole other story, I suppose. But back to this issue of honoring father and mother, I think this is a big issue today where people just have a general disrespect for their parents.

And of course, this has gone way beyond that to where the younger generation just has a general disrespect, if not a full-out contempt for the generation or generations that have come before them. If you hear many college-age students, you would think that they are the first generation to kind of have everything all figured out.

We're the good guys, we're the righteous ones. Every generation before us, they were evil and they had problems, that's true. So do you. So that's kind of what we're seeing in our nation where there is really a contempt for the previous generations.

And a nation where that's going on at a widespread level, that's a nation that day is probably not going to be long upon the land. Any questions or comments about that?

Only comment I have about that is this generation I'm talking about doesn't even know what bathroom to use, so.

Yeah, right. Yeah. That kind of tells you something right there. Yeah. All right, verse 13, you shall not murder. Or if you have the King James Version, maybe some other translations that says what? Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not kill, okay. So some translations will render it that way, thou shall not kill. But murder is the more accurate word. Here's the thing, killing, this may sound strange, but it's not, killing is actually permitted under the law of God.

Does that surprise you? Wait a minute, that can't be true. Yes, it is. Killing is permitted in the law of God. Warfare and capital punishment are two examples of that. Person might not like it, but that's what the scripture teaches.

So killing is permitted under the law of Moses. Murder is not. Now, in our postmodern culture, everyone wants to try to blur the lines to where it suits them and their viewpoint. So generally speaking, in our culture, the people that tend to be, not in every situation, but the people that tend to be opposed to the death penalty usually are the ones that support abortion rights.

There's an inconsistency there. So to rightly understand this commandment, we need to establish the difference between killing and committing murder, because they're not the same thing. So let me illustrate it this way, give you a real life example of something that a professing Christian has taught, a world leader.

I actually heard the Pope speak against capital punishment. Pope Francis said, because he's against the death penalty, Pope Francis said, the death penalty is wrong. And what was his justification for this?

Well, he said, the death penalty is wrong because the Bible says, thou shalt not kill. What's the obvious problem with that? Well, the penalty for breaking that commandment was that the murderer is put to death.

It's like, can't even believe it sometimes. So historically, Christians have believed in capital punishment. And Christians have often been criticized for holding to this view of upholding the death penalty.

But here's the thing, and people say, well, Christians are supposed to care for life. You say you're pro-life, and yet you support the death penalty. Well, the death penalty does not violate human life.

The death penalty exists to protect human life. The death penalty exists to uphold the dignity of human life, because the death penalty, believe it or not, is a deterrent. Okay, you say, well, I don't know if I agree with this.

Write this down, Numbers 35, 16. Numbers 35, 16 says that the murderer shall be put to death. That's what the Bible says, not what Pastor Grant says, not what Morris Corner Church thinks. That's what the scripture says.

The murderer shall be put to death, Numbers 35, 16. So the death penalty is a deterrent. People say, well, no, it's not. Here's why the death penalty doesn't seem to be a deterrent today, because the problem is trials can go on seemingly forever.

A murder trial can go on for well over a year. The average death row inmate, it takes something like 20 years before they actually are put to death. And of course, sometimes they get pardoned and they never get put to death.

The inmate will spend decades in prison with heat, hot water, three square meals, free health insurance, television. You wonder why it's not a deterrent. Okay. But what's the sixth commandment? You shall not murder.

And if you did, what happened to you? The murderer shall be put to death. Again, a person might not like that. And when you are dealing with an unjust government where there is not swift justice or justice, sometimes not at all, it does complicate matters.

That's true. But at least when the 10 commandments were given to Israel, this was all very clear. It was very much understood and it was necessary. At least God thought so. And my opinion, well, it's not just my opinion.

That's all that matters. If that's what God thinks for the Christian, if that's what God says, that's the way that it is. All right, any questions on that? If you have another view and you have scripture to back it up, feel free.

Usually what you'll hear is that Jesus overturned the death penalty with a woman caught in adultery. He said, he without sin among you, let him cast the first stone. Nevermind that there are scholars who don't even think that that's scripture.

Because if you have any translation, any modern translation that says, well, this was not in the best manuscripts. So most modern scholars don't even believe that that story ever happened. I'm not even getting into that.

Let's say it did happen. Is that what Jesus is doing? Is he showing mercy to a woman? They're trying to trap him in his words is what's happening. Jesus is not teaching against the law of Moses. What happens if Jesus teaches against the law of Moses?

What does that make Jesus? A heretic. If Jesus undoes or contradicts the law of Moses, Jesus by definition is a false teacher. That cannot be what he's doing. All right, we're gonna move on from this subject.

So the biblical position is the death penalty for murderers, all right?

Dennis. The proverb where it says that delayed justice nurtures more lawlessness or whatever. Right. I just can't think of where it is, but it's, yeah, it's like where we're living now.

Yeah, if there's not swift justice, and like what you're saying, that just creates more crime, obviously. All right, verse 14. You shall not commit adultery. Now this point needs to be made. The 10 commandments are in a sense all encompassing.

For a lack of a better way to describe it, think of each commandment like a headline. That's kind of the broad category, and then there's many other laws that fall underneath it. So here is a commandment against committing adultery, but really all sexual sins fall under this commandment, or under the umbrella of this commandment, if you will.

So the 10 commandments are like a general summary. More specific laws will be given later. And adultery, like murder, was a capital crime in the nation of Israel. If it were a capital crime in our country, there'd be a lot less people.

Population would be reduced by a third, probably. Maybe not that high, maybe more, I don't know. But it tells you the seriousness of it. It was a capital crime, just like murder. Why? Well, the long-term effects of adultery, because murder destroys a human life.

Adultery destroys families. So the ongoing long-term effects from generation to generation are just devastating to a nation, and the Lord understood that. This is why the enemy has focused in so heavily on not just attacking the faith, which he does through teachings like evolution and the Big Bang Theory.

The enemy focuses in on attacking the faith, that's true, but he also focuses in on attacking the family, because if you can break down the family and weaken people's faith in God, it's only a matter of time before everything just collapses.

This happened to Israel. In Matthew 19, verse three, it says that the Pharisees came to Jesus, testing him, and saying, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? And why did they ask that?

Because that's what many of the rabbis were teaching. So any reason you wanna get a divorce, any reason, go ahead, and then they'd get remarried, and that was considered adultery. So Jesus corrects this by making it clear that God ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman for life.

Jesus is very clear about that in Matthew chapter 19, and he says that the only exception is, so the only time remarriage would be permitted is when there was infidelity. So if there's infidelity, there can be a divorce.

That's what God permits. There's gonna be some Christians who would argue with that, but only for infidelity, you cannot divorce for just any reason. So obviously, adultery was taken very, very seriously in Israel.

Any questions or comments about that? All right. Commandment number eight, look at verse 15. You shall not steal. This command is another important foundation for human society. What does it do? There's a lot of other things that stem from the commandments.

This commandment, thou shall not steal, establishes the right to personal property. It's implied that you can actually own things. They actually belong to you, and that stealing from you or from me is what?

It's wrong. I know that's basic. I know it's basic. Well, it's not so basic. In the way of a modern application, if for no other reason, because God has ordained the right to personal property, socialism is therefore incompatible with the word of God.

Socialism and communism, Marxism in general is absolutely incompatible with God's law based on the Eighth Commandment, because the whole premise of socialism is that the state owns everything, and that there really is no right to personal property.

It's owned among the collective. So the state can come in and take anything they want from you, and that clearly happens all over the world. So that is a violation of the commandment, not just you sneaking into your neighbor's yard some night and stealing something from their garage.

Everyone knows that's wrong, but it goes far beyond this. So again, the Ten Commandments, there's kind of the headline, but there's so many things that fall underneath it. All right, any questions or comments on that?

You're a silent group tonight. See, okay, go ahead.

Just gonna say in my study today in Ephesians, Christianity is so the opposite, because it's not only that we're supposed to work for our own, but then we work so that way we can give to those who have need, and it's just so the opposite of this commandment.

Yeah, I wanna get off on a rabbit trail, but I think something that we all know, but we don't really think about, the government has no money of their own. Any money the government has, where do they get it from?

You, no, they, well. Yes. The way it's supposed to work is whatever money they have, they got from you, the taxpayer. So what are they doing? They're taking money from you and sending it to Afghanistan.

They're sending it to Guatemala, to Honduras. They're giving it to Planned Parenthood. They're taking money from you and giving it to Planned Parenthood. So in a sense, there's already this misuse, at the very least, in a socialist system, it's just outright theft from the people.

Truthfulness, Perjury, and the Right to Remain Silent

Okay, commandment number nine, verse 16. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Now this commandment covers everything from perjury, right on down to the little white lie. Now there, are there examples where we don't have to voluntarily offer up the whole truth?

Obviously, if you go to court and I swear to tell the truth, that's another thing Christians might not want to do is take a vow or swear to tell the truth, but you should tell the truth. If you go to court and you lie, that's perjury, right?

That's a serious crime. It should be a serious crime. When you lie and you're deceptive to someone, we all understand lying falls under this commandment too. We get that, but I was thinking, are there examples where we don't have to voluntarily offer up the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

I was just thinking about this. Remember who's giving these command, it's the Lord. The Lord through who? Moses, okay? So the man giving these commandments to Israel was once a little baby and his life was at risk and his mother hid the baby Moses to protect him from the Egyptian officials.

Presumably if an Egyptian officer came to the door and asked Moses' mother, hey, do you have any little male children here? The mother of Moses said, oh, okay, we do have one. We're hiding. Here you go.

Take them off and kill them. That would be telling the truth. Do you think she would have done that? No. She obviously didn't do that. So I was thinking about this. Could there be situations where you would not offer the full truth knowing what someone would do to it?

Here's what I can say with certainty. At the very least, we have the right to remain silent and not incriminate ourselves or put someone else in danger. Okay, the right to remain silent is biblical based on the implications here.

Does the prophet say that the wise man of Canaan should not shut his mouth? Yeah.

Yeah, that's the Carl version of that. I like that version.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yes, Mark. He has to keep one's mouth shut and be thoughtful of his own and remove all doubt. Right.

Right, which is why I don't wanna come out and say, you know, there are certain circumstances where it's okay to lie. You know, I don't feel comfortable saying that. But obviously, there are times where you don't offer the truth to people knowing what they're gonna do with it.

Yes, Robert. Smuggling Bibles, like in the China. Mm. Right. Persecuted church. Right. Yep. When missionaries go, or this is where you're going, missionaries going over to see what they tell them. I was just gonna say war.

You know, when you're at a time of war and you're, you know, the enemy and you're, you know, you're not gonna say anything, you're gonna, you'll lie to the enemy if you have to, if it's a matter of protecting your mates, you know, and whatever, so.

You give the. He's ranked an identification number. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like that. When you're in a situation, when you're in the military, as you're moving to the, you're given strict instructions that if you're captured, all you need, all you should do is give your name, rank, and serial number.

That's it. That's it. Okay. Right. And as, you know, they, and really what it means is that by doing that, you might have to endure punishment of some sort. Right. Either severe or even death.

Yeah. Yeah, and the reason I'm going through this is not to find loopholes around the commandment, right? That's not what we're trying to do. But I've heard people say, well, you know, in World War II, when some Germans were trying, you know, hiding Jews in their house, you know, you really need, you would have to tell the truth if the Nazis came.

No, you don't. No. I'm not saying it's okay to lie, but you don't have to offer it to them. Mm, mm, yes. So little common sense, I think, goes a long way with these things. All right. Just a few biblical examples of this.

I remember when Jesus was questioned by Herod. Remember? In his trial, he was questioned by King Herod. He didn't give Herod the time of day. He wouldn't say anything to Herod. When Jesus was questioned by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews?

Jesus, he's like, well, you said it. So these are some of the questions that might come up. But what does the commandment say? You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. So you don't lie.

Hey, I saw my neighbor doing this when he actually didn't. And then he gets in trouble, of course, according to the law of God. If you did that, and your neighbor would have got this penalty, and they find out you lied, you would actually get that penalty.

So if we practiced that in this country, we'd be far better off.

But yes, I saw a hand. I just wanted to go back to the story with Moses, and the mother of Moses, and a soldier, or a pharaoh's army. But if you look at verses six, it says that when she had opened it, she saw the child, and this is after her mother had taken and put the child in the basket, and floated down the river.

And behold, the baby wept, but she had compassion on him, and said, this is one of the Hebrew's children. The question never came up, who's the mother? So there was no need for saying, well, we know who she is, she's the one that did it.

You know, if you want to talk to her, this is who it is, and then it says, then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee, and what she was implicating was, she was going to get the mother.

But the question never came up. So, under the law, how would that verse apply? Not this verse, yeah, that verse, and what it said in the law about the...

Well, I don't think she didn't lie, right? There's no lie there.

The question of the mother never came up. Okay.

Okay. Because also, before the commandment was given. That's true, too.

Yeah, exactly. There was no commandment against lying, so. Yeah. But God's law is written on our heart. So, even before the law was given, people knew that it was wrong to murder. People know, if you go to some remote place in the world where there's a tribe in the middle of the jungle, and they've never seen civilization, even they know it's wrong to murder, and to steal, and so.

Law of God is written on our hearts. One last thing about lying. John 8, 44, Jesus says that the devil is the father of lies. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is the father, he is a liar, and the father of it.

Coveting, the Summary of the Law, and the Law as a Tutor to Christ

All right, finally, the 10th commandment is thou shalt not covet. What does it mean to covet? This is when you crave something, or lust after something that does not belong to you. I would describe coveting as really a gateway sin.

It leads to many other things. It can lead to adultery, it can lead to theft, it can lead to just bitterness and resentment because you want some, hey, they have this nice thing, I don't have it, and you start getting upset about it.

So, covetousness works like this. The eyes look upon the object, the mind admires it, the will goes over to it, and the body then moves in to possess it. So, just because a person has not done that final step to actually take the thing for themself, it doesn't mean that they're not in the process of coveting right now.

And it starts small, right? This is the thing, it starts very small, and at first, it can seem pretty harmless. Let's say your neighbor pulls into their yard with a brand new boat, and you look over at that thing, and you say, that's a really nice boat.

I'd like to have that boat. That's innocent enough. I mean, everything you have that you went out and bought, because there is a desire, maybe a need. I don't think there's anything wrong with seeing something and thinking, hey, that's nice, or I'd like to have it.

That is innocent enough. However, one thing leads to another, right? So, you might resent them for having something nicer than you do. You might get to a point where you're just not, you have all this nice stuff, but you're not content, because it's not as good, what's the term, keeping up with the Joneses, right?

So, coveting is a very serious thing, because of what it can lead to, but it starts small. All right, turn to Matthew 22. So, these are the 10 Commandments, and while they are part of the Old Covenant, it's true, we're not under the Old Covenant.

However, as I said last time, nine out of 10 of the Commandments are reaffirmed in the New Testament. And we see Jesus really summarizing the 10 Commandments here in Matthew 22, where he is asked by a lawyer, they're always trying to trap Jesus in his words, but look at Matthew 22, starting in verse 36.

The lawyer asked Jesus, "'Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?'. And Jesus said to him, "'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. That's a summary of the first table of the law. 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, Jesus is summarizing the first table of the law and the second table of the law. So, the first table of the law is vertical between man and God. Love God with all your heart. The second half of the law, love your neighbor as yourself.

It's horizontal. So, you see what Jesus is doing there. And Jesus did not come to destroy the law, right? He did what? He came to fulfill it. Jesus kept the law of God perfectly. Also here, now turn to Galatians 3.

This is where we're gonna close. "'Love your neighbor as yourself.'". Will anyone disagree with that? I mean, there's people who don't do it, but you won't find too many people, certainly not Christians, denying that, right?

But how do you love your neighbor as yourself? Well, according to the scripture, it's not so much a warm feeling in your heart. You might have feelings for your neighbor and you might love them and you can feel that love.

That's fine, I guess. But how do you show love for your neighbor? Well, you don't covet their stuff. You don't commit adultery with their spouse. You don't harm them, right? You keep the second table of the law.

That's how you show love to your neighbor. And there's the flip side of the commandments too. Thou shalt not kill. That's true. So, but it stands to reason, if you see your neighbor in danger, that you would actually go and help them.

That's part of the law too, just kind of reversed. All right, so in conclusion, what's the purpose of the commandments? What is the ultimate purpose of God's law? New Testament tells us here in Galatians 3, look at verse 19.

What purpose then does the law serve? So Paul is teaching that salvation is not through the law. Salvation is through grace, by grace through faith. Okay, then what's the purpose of the law then? And transgressions.

Yeah, it was added because of transgressions. We've been reading about Israel in the wilderness and their lack of faith and their bad behavior and their sin. So it was added because of transgressions till the seed should come, or till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.

The seed is who? Christ. Christ is the seed. And it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God?

Certainly not. For if there had been a law given, which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. So nobody has ever been saved by keeping the commandments. Verse 22, but the scripture has confined all under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would be afterward or would afterward be revealed. Therefore, the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.