The Ten Commandments as the Foundation of Law & Rights - Jacob Reaume

Well, thank you, Pastor Quatro, for your invitation to preach today, and it is really neat to see how

God has orchestrated things so that we've been able to strike up a friendship, and I'm able to be here and minister among you, and hopefully encourage you, and I will tell you that you have been a tremendous encouragement to me over these last couple of days.

Some of you I've met already, some of you I've just met today or just seen today, but being able to spend some time with your pastor,

Pastor Quatro, and a little bit with Pastor Jacob yesterday, I'm able to see that you have pastoral leadership in this church that are very honorable men, and I'm grateful and encouraged to see that among you, and may the

Lord give you brothers many more years of fruitful ministry in Perryville, and I am grateful as I, to know that there is a faithful church and a faithful leadership team here.

Now, Pastor Quatro asked me to speak to you over this weekend about matters pertaining to church and state, and so I spoke to a number of people yesterday at the local

Baptist Association, some of you were there, spoke about church and state issues there, and then

I was here for Sunday school, and I taught on Sunday school on armed resistance, so you missed a hot

Sunday school discussion this morning if you weren't here, but I think they might put it online at some point, and I'm here, what

I'm going to do now is I'm going to talk about our rights that have been given to us by our creator, endowed to us by our creator, inalienable rights as your governing documents call them, and I think one of the reasons your pastor asked me to talk about church and state issues is because of how much church and state issues we've had to sort through in Canada over the last few years, and so every time

I've got up to speak this weekend so far, I've told a few different stories about some of our shenanigans that we've had to deal with, and I'll just tell you one little story today.

So we were in the second lockdown in Canada, it was very cold out at this time, and we'd already resisted the police and opened our church without any restrictions, no masks, social distancing, and they only wanted like five people in the church, and of course we had,

I don't know, at that point, 300 people per service maybe, 250 per service, church has grown since then, but we, you know, it was a sizable gathering that clearly was not meeting the approval of our governing authorities, and so we were now, we'd now by this point become a lightning rod in the media, and we decided to barrel through and open again, and so, you know, 24 hours if you could, talk radio, local television news, internet, everyone's talking about me, everyone's talking about our church,

I'm the talk of the town, and it's a big town, it's about 600 ,000 people, and so we were really talked about, and so we were gonna barrel through, we were gonna open the church, but our lawyer advised us, first she advised against opening the church, we spent a lot of time just not doing what lawyers tell us to do, but she advised against it, but she did advise that if we open the church, it is a likelihood that the police will come in and shut down the church before we get there on the

Lord's Day, so we'll show up to an occupied church, not allow our presence there, so she told us this on Friday or Saturday, and with about five or six other brothers, on Saturday night, we showed up at the church, and we brought some food, and we slept over, and we took, we had two main entryways at the church, one on the north side of the church, one on the south side of the church, and while we were asleep, we brought two very large, intimidating looking dogs, and put them in the entryway, so that if the policemen were to show up and seize our building, they would be met by some vicious beasts, and so this is what we did, and thankfully the police didn't show up that evening, and we had church the next morning, and we were just fine, but eventually they did show up, and eventually they did lock us out of our building, it's all back now in our hands, and these matters are behind us, but through this season, we had to hammer out some issues in the crucible, in the crucible, and these are some of the issues that I've been talking about this weekend, so I'm going to talk to you about our inalienable rights, why would

I resist to that point, I told the people yesterday,

I was, I, I don't want to say, I was convicted of contempt of court two times, I had 11 outstanding charges against me at one time, which meant, which amounted to a maximum penalty of 11 years in jail, and a 1 .1

million dollars in fines, all that's been settled now, but we have had to pay 270 thousand dollars in fines, that's been paid to our government, and so they did steal money from us, they stole the

Lord's resources from us, and they did steal our building from us for about six months,

I think, but anyway, why would we do that, why would we resist to that point, and one of the reasons we resisted to that point was that we believe that the rights that we have are not rights that are given to us by our government, they're given to us by God, and I want today to talk to you about that, and as I talk to you about the rights that are given to us by God, I'm going to invite you to the

Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, where we find those God -given rights, the

Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20. The Ten Commandments are distinct from the

Old Testament laws, like the civil laws or the ceremonial laws, the regulations, because while the ceremonial laws and the civil laws might not be binding at this point in time, the

Ten Commandments still are. The Ten Commandments serve as the legal foundation for both the

Old Covenant and the New Covenant. They serve as the legal foundation for all the covenants, the

Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace. Now, they work differently within the covenants, but they are our legal foundation, they are the natural law of God, and the

Ten Commandments are a unique body of law serving as the legal constitution of all reality, and the

Ten Commandments what I'm going to do this morning is I am going to give you some reasons why the

Ten Commandments remain binding, then I'm going to give you some reasons why the

Ten Commandments are the basis for law in a free society, the only basis for law in a free society, and then

I'm going to explain how this plays out in various rights that God our

Creator has given us, inalienable rights. So, why are the

Ten Commandments still binding? Number one, so they're unique. Number two, why are they the only basis for inalienable rights?

Number three, how does this play out? Let me begin by reading the

Ten Commandments, and I'll begin with the preamble in verse two, and I'll go right down to the

Tenth Commandment in verse 17, Exodus 20. The preamble to the

Ten Commandments, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or 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 or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

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.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a

Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates, for in six days the

Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the

Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the

Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's.

Let's pray. God in heaven, we thank you for your law. Please teach us, please point us to Christ our

Savior, the only one who can rescue us from the terrible judgments that are found within this law.

And we pray, dear God, for all who are here today who are Christians, that they would be sanctified. And if there is anyone among us who is lost, that he or she would be born of the spirit of God and saved today, that you would rescue this poor, wretched sinner from the jaws of hell and bring about redemption and the forgiveness of sins.

Anoint the hearing and preaching of your word, and it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. So here's my first point.

The Ten Commandments are binding. They're unlike the ceremonial laws and the civil laws.

They're binding. And I know that they're binding because they were enforced before Sinai.

So Exodus 20 is Mount Sinai. That's where the Ten Commandments are delivered. And everything that precedes chronologically

Sinai, so Genesis 1 to Exodus 19, is before Sinai.

So if the Ten Commandments are new commandments, you would expect that you wouldn't hear about them before Sinai.

You didn't hear about the priestly garments before Sinai. You didn't hear about the tabernacle before Sinai.

You didn't hear about these civil laws about not eating, or not having two different types of fabric in your clothing before Sinai.

You didn't hear about the food laws about not eating pork before Sinai. All of these laws were after Sinai.

But the Ten Commandments are found before Sinai. But they're just summarized at Sinai. I'll give you some examples.

Commandments 1, 2, and 3. So, you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image. And you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Jacob, in Genesis 35 verse 2, called his family to put away their idols.

Stop their blasphemy against God. Only have the one true God. He called them into a right relationship with the one true

God and show reverence for his name. Commandments 1, 2, and 3. Commandment 4,

Israel in Exodus chapter 16 verse 27 through 29 was in trouble for violating the

Sabbath before Sinai. They got in trouble for violating the Sabbath. And then of course, in Genesis chapter 1, the first few verses,

God says that that's when he rested on the Sabbath. And so that was

God's perpetual rest. And then our seventh day Sabbath rest, or in the case of the new covenant, the first day

Sabbath rest, is us entering ceremonially, or at least positively for a day, seeing us rest in accordance with the schedule that was laid out in Genesis 1 and 2.

The fifth commandment, Ham's line was cursed because he dishonored his father in Genesis 9 when he beheld

Noah's nakedness. The sixth commandment, God punishes Cain for killing

Abel. The sixth commandment prohibits murder. The seventh commandment, which prohibits adultery and sexual immorality,

God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for sexual sin. And God haunted

Pharaoh when Pharaoh wanted to take Abraham's wife, Sarah, into his harem and commit adultery with her.

The eighth commandment, Adam and Eve were punished for stealing forbidden fruit.

The ninth commandment, Cain lied to God about not knowing where his brother was.

The ninth commandment is you should not bear false witness. Cain lied about not knowing where his brother was after he killed him.

God chastised Cain for that and punished him. And the tenth commandment, which is you should not covet,

Eve coveted the forbidden fruit. Eve coveted the forbidden fruit, and then before the flood, the sons of God coveted the daughters of man.

They beheld their beauty and they coveted it. And so all of that to say is that all of these ten commandments occur before they were delivered at Sinai.

They're all seen there. They're all embedded in the fabric of scripture. And what I'm trying to say is that they remain binding.

They're different than the other commandments that are given in the Old Testament. They're binding. They're the foundation for the legal system.

You'll notice, actually, as I went through the ten commandments, I went through them, you'll notice how often these violations actually occurred in the

Garden of Eden at the first sin, or just after the Garden of Eden.

In fact, I submit to you and I believe that Adam and Eve violated all ten commandments in the original sin when they ate the fruit.

So when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they violated all ten commandments. I can go through that and how they did, but I'm not going to.

I'm going to spare you because I have so much to say. I won't expound it, but I will quote John Bunyan on the matter who said, it is evident that the substance of the ten commandments were given to Adam in his posterity under the command, eat not of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.

So the ten commandments were given to mankind before Sinai. And because they were given to man before Sinai, we can be confident that they remain binding.

One more, or another point on this as far as the ten commandments remaining binding, which is what

I'm talking about, the ten commandments remaining binding. Another way we know that they remain binding is that the

Old Testament presents the ten commandments is unique from all other laws and ceremonies. For example, the ten commandments were written in stone.

So they're literally in stone. None of the other Old Testament laws and ceremonies were written in stone.

They're written, in fact, they weren't just written in stone. They were written by the finger of God in stone. So none of the other

Old Testament laws were written by the finger of God in stone. The ten commandments are put in the

Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies in the temple. And the ten commandments, unlike the other laws in the

Old Testament, were delivered audibly by God to the whole congregation of the people from Sinai, whereas Moses went and met with God privately to deliver the other laws and ceremonies.

But the ten commandments is the foundation of the legal system, the foundation of all law, were delivered to the whole people, unlike every other law that was given to Moses.

The prophets, in fact, this is a point that is worth noting as I explain to you why the ten commandments are unique from all the other commandments in the

Old Testament. They're a foundational body of law. The prophets, in fact, condemned the people with indignation when the people would uphold the other laws and ceremonies but not uphold the ten commandments.

But the prophets never condemned the people for upholding the ten commandments and not upholding the other laws and ceremonies.

So I'll give you an example. Jeremiah 7, 21 through 23 says, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the flesh.

For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices.

But this command I gave them, obey my voice. I will be your God and you shall be my people and walk in all the ways that I command you that it may be well with you.

And so right there God says, I didn't give you this sacrificial system immediately when you came out of Egypt.

It came after the ten commandments. But he proclaims the ten commandments is to be so foundational and so important.

Interesting is I try to explain to you that the ten commandments are unique from all other laws in scripture, the ceremonial laws, the civil laws and so on, is foreigners in the nation of Israel were allowed to eat the unclean food.

In Israel, you could eat the pork or whatever. Jews couldn't because that was forbidden in the ceremonial laws.

But the foreigners were not allowed to violate the ten commandments, including the fourth commandment of the

Sabbath day, which explicitly mentions that the sojourners within your gates must rest on the

Sabbath. So foreigners could eat unclean food, but they couldn't violate the ten commandments.

And what I'm trying to explain to you is that the ten commandments remain abiding, they're the authority of God or they're authoritative and they are binding.

And we see this in fact in Jesus in the New Testament. He upholds them as authoritative and binding.

For example, Jesus says in Matthew 15 verses 3 and 4, he says, he answered them and why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

For God commanded, honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if anyone tells his father or his mother, what you would have gained for me or what you would have gained for me is given by God.

It was given to God. He need not honor his father. So what Jesus is saying is the problem of the Pharisees is that they put their traditions above the ten commandments above the law of God.

And Jesus is saying that's a problem. And then he quotes the ten commandments authoritatively. So Jesus himself upholds the ten commandments and he quotes them authoritatively.

Another time that Jesus quotes them authoritatively is in Matthew 19 verse 17 through 19 where he's speaking with the rich one, young ruler, and he's trying to define what is good.

And Jesus said, and he said to him, why do you ask me about what is good? The only one who is good, there's only one who is good.

If you would enter life, keep the commandments. He said to him, which ones? And Jesus said, you should not murder, you should not commit adultery, you should not steal, you should not bear false witness, honor your father and your mother, and you should love your neighbors yourself.

So Jesus commits or Jesus upholds the ten commandments. He quotes from them authoritatively and binding.

The apostle Paul does the same thing in Romans 13. He talks, he quotes the ten commandments as a reference point for what is good as he's telling governments to uphold the good.

He then goes on in Romans 13 verses eight through 10 to quote from the ten commandments. The apostle

Paul does the same thing or similar in Ephesians six where he tells children to obey their parents because this is the first commandment with a promise, making reference to the fifth commandment.

Very interestingly, the apostle James says in James chapter two verses 10 through 11, he says, for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

For he who said do not commit adultery also said do not murder. If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

So what James is saying at that point in time is the ten commandments come to us not really as ten commandments but as a unit.

So if you break one of the ten commandments, you break all of the ten commandments. This is a unit.

Paul says in Romans seven that the law is good, speaking of the ten commandments. Paul says in Romans seven that the law, the ten commandments, teaches us what sin is.

And Paul says in Romans chapter two that the law is righteousness and justice, speaking of the ten commandments.

So what I'm trying to tell you in this first point of my sermon is that the ten commandments remain authoritative and binding.

They're distinct from other laws. Unlike the ceremonial law or the civil law which are no longer binding, the ten commandments are binding.

Charles Spurgeon said our king has not come to abrogate the law but to confirm and reassert it, speaking of the ten commandments.

Martyn Lloyd -Jones said the ten commandments and the moral law, they have never been abrogated.

They stand. John Bunyan said that faith and a life becoming the ten commandments should be the chief and most solid argument with churches to receive the fellowship.

And what Bunyan was saying is, he says, do you want to receive someone in a church membership? Do you know what you look for? Do they have faith in Jesus Christ?

Do they follow the ten commandments? No. The ten commandments don't save you.

Only faith in Jesus Christ saves you. But if you have faith in Jesus Christ, you will want to follow

God's law. Obedience is the fountain that flows out of faith.

You have faith, you will obey. You won't be saved by your obedience. You're justified by faith alone.

So if you are justified, you will follow. You will want to follow God's law in your heart. God gives you a new heart, a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone.

So what I've just said to you and everything I've just said up until this point has served one purpose. And that has served the purpose of explaining to you and asserting and arguing that the ten commandments still stand.

They are the basis for law. They're different from the other Old Testament laws.

Now I move on to my second point. My first point was that the ten commandments still stand and they're the basis for law.

They're distinct from other Old Testament laws. Here's my second point. The ten commandments are the basis for law in a free society.

In a free society. So I'm moving towards inalienable rights now. Ten commandments are the basis for all law in a free society.

And here's why I believe that. We look at Exodus 20, which is where we find the ten commandments.

And the ten commandments assert that God is sovereign over nations.

And if He is sovereign over nations, He has the prerogative of law. He can define law.

So look at Exodus 20 verse 2 where it says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

And what's He saying there? He's asserting His supremacy over Egypt. God had the prerogative to bring

Israel out of Egypt. And in bringing them out of Egypt, He was asserting His supremacy over Egypt.

How do I know this? Well, Egypt at this point was an international superpower. They had international supremacy.

Pharaoh was a man among gods and a god among men. And he and the people saw him as a prophet and priest and king over Egypt.

Egypt profited from the Nile. They prospered from the Nile. They had architectural supremacy, as you see in the pyramids.

They had military supremacy and they had economic supremacy. They were the Middle Eastern powerhouse of the day.

It was a place of idolatry. It was a place of sexual perversion. It was a place of tyranny. All of this power under Pharaoh, the economic power, the military power, the architectural power, all of this power under Pharaoh was used, it was harnessed by Pharaoh to oppose

God and oppress God's people.

So what did God do? Well, He didn't like that. He said, there's no man, especially no government, that is going to use and harness its power to oppose

God and oppress God's people. So God says, I'm going to show Pharaoh who's ruler, who's boss.

And so what does God do? God sent a series of plagues that climaxed in the death of the firstborn son, which provoked

Pharaoh to send them out of Egypt. And God led Israel through the

Red Sea and demonstrated His sovereignty over Egypt by destroying the

Egyptian army. You see in, for example,

Miriam sings a song in Exodus 15, verse 21, which says, Sing to the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously.

The horse and his rider He has thrown into the sea. So she sings because God showed that He was supreme.

He was sovereign. He was ruler over the greatest army that had ever lived, ever existed.

And He threw them into the sea. The Ten Commandments are the basis for law and a free society because God is supreme.

And He asserts His supremacy by destroying the Egyptian army and bringing down Pharaoh.

In fact, in Romans chapter 9, verse 17, God said that He appointed

Pharaoh for this specific reason, to show His own glory. Why did

God appoint Pharaoh? He appointed Pharaoh to show that God is supreme over the nations.

He raised up a great nation and a great ruler who hated God so that God could show that He is supreme over the nations by destroying that great ruler and that great nation.

Pharaoh and Egypt stand as a government that opposed

God. And Pharaoh and Egypt exemplify what

God does with those governments. A civil government that opposes

God, no matter how powerful the army, will have its army thrown into the bottom of the sea.

God won't take it. And for that reason, it is within the interest of the governments of the nations to obey

God's law, lest they become like Pharaoh. In the

Exodus, God asserts His supremacy over the nations. If the nations don't do what

God says, disobey His law, God will destroy them.

He will bring them down. God grants His law to the new nation that came out of Egypt.

And His law then serves as the legal framework for civil freedom in the new nation. In other words, people who live in a society where the government upholds the

Ten Commandments are a free people. Egypt was miserable for the

Hebrews. In Egypt, they were slaves. Not only did God save them from Egypt, but God liberated them from slavery.

So look at what it says in Exodus 20, verse 2. It says, I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

He is supreme over Egypt. And then what? Out of the house of slavery. So not only did

God show His supremacy over Egypt, but in showing His supremacy over Egypt, He liberated the

Hebrews. And right after liberating the

Hebrews, what does He do? He gives them the Ten Commandments. It's the legal basis for civil freedom.

Look, some people look at the law of God and they think, oh, that's slavery. I have to obey the law of God?

That's slavery. Well, it's slavery in a spiritual sense if you think that you will be saved by obeying

God's law. Yes, most definitely. But if the civil government upholds

God's law as its standard for law, that becomes the basis for civil freedom.

So, for example, in James chapter 1, verse 25, and James chapter 2, verse 12, it calls,

James calls the Ten Commandments the law of liberty. Because this was the legal system that gave to liberated slaves.

Former slaves, now free. Here's the law. Here's how you live as free men.

No, the law won't save you. God saves you. He saved them. He saved them from Egypt.

Christ is your only hope of salvation as an individual. You will never be saved by obeying the law.

You will only be saved by seeking Jesus Christ and casting yourself in his mercy.

That being said, the law undergirds civil freedoms, civil rights.

In Egypt, the slaves were under the whims of men.

Now they would be ruled by God. In his unchanging Word. Let me explain how this works.

God's law is a fixed, unchanging, understandable standard that makes sense.

So if you have a legal system that you can make sense of, and a legal system that never changes, that's an aspect of freedom.

So could you imagine you couldn't understand the laws of your nations and you had to hire a whole army of lawyers to interpret them?

Wouldn't that be terrible? I say that tongue -in -cheek because that's the way it is, isn't it?

But the Ten Commandments are so simple. It's like the Bill of Rights is so simple.

Everyone can understand it. It's easy and it's available to everyone.

Everyone gathered at Mount Sinai to hear it. And they all heard it.

But what if the government's laws were secret, and only the government knew the laws, and the government changed the laws day by day.

Every day the laws change. This day the law is one thing, this next day the law is the next thing, and you don't know.

That's an evil, tyrannical government, isn't it? So what does the Ten Commandments do? They ensure that the law is fixed, that the law is unchanging, that the law is understandable, and that the law makes sense.

They are the foundation for civil rights. John Gill said,

Baptist scholar, a pastor of the 17th century, he says, now they were made free, speaking of Israel, and were become a body politic, a kingdom of themselves under their

Lord, King, Lawgiver, and Savior, Jehovah Himself, and therefore to be governed by laws of His enacting.

Within the Ten Commandments, He created the first free people who didn't live under tyranny.

Now, I'll give you an example of how this plays out. I'm going to talk about this more later in my sermon to get to the end of it. But I'll give you an example of how this plays out.

Could you imagine you never had a week? The week didn't exist.

You get up, you go to work. You get up, you go to work. There's no seven -day week. There's no rhythm to a seven -day week.

There's no day off. You get up in the morning, and you have to say, what is my master telling me to do today?

And that's exactly what you do. And if you don't do it, he kicks you around. That's the way the

Egyptians or the Hebrews lived in Egypt. No rest, no relaxation, no knowledge of a seven -day week.

It just never ended. Every day was the same. And then they get out of Egypt, and what does

God do? He gives them the fourth commandment, six days you shall labor, but the seventh day you shall rest. Now they have a structured week.

Isn't that different? Isn't that freeing? And you know the emphasis in the fourth commandment, the emphasis in the fourth commandment is on those who are in control.

So the bosses and the government to grant the rest. So what's it say in the fourth commandment?

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your

God. On it you shall not do any work, nor what? Nor you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gate.

So what's he saying? He says if you're in management, you have authority over people, you have a responsibility to make sure that you give the people under your management and under your authority rest.

Which is Pharaoh didn't have any concept of that. Pharaoh just said I own you and you do what I say every day and there is no week for you.

And so the ten commandments freed them up because now they have a rhythm to their life and they have at least one day at seven where they can rest and feast and worship.

It was a wonderful thing. And then with these ten commandments God birthed this new nation.

So on a, you know in Exodus chapter one when God birthed the world, he created the world.

Exodus, Genesis chapter one it says and God said and God said and God said and God said.

You know how many times it says and God said in Genesis chapter one? Ten times. God said ten words in Genesis chapter one.

In Exodus chapter 20 there's a new creation that's starting. It's a nation of Israel and what do we have in Exodus chapter 20 is we have

God gives ten words. And with those ten words he creates a new nation.

Now I don't know if any of you have seen the movie. Have you ever seen the movie The Ten Commandments by Charlton Heston? Classic movie.

And there's a line in the movie where Charlton Heston who plays Moses in the movie there's a line in the movie where Charlton Heston says man shall be ruled by law not the will of other men.

What's he saying? He's saying in a free society you have laws that don't change.

In a slave society, which is what the Hebrews lived in in Egypt, your laws change every day.

You don't even know what they are. You just wake up and you live by the whims and the wills of a man.

But a free people live under an unchanging law. And a free people don't just live under an unchanging law.

The rulers of the free people live under an unchanging law. So that the law is above the rulers not the rulers above the law.

And so the Ten Commandments create a free society.

They're God's words to create a free society. But you remove that fixed letter written by God's finger and then what will happen is men will conflate their own whims with the rule of law.

So I'll give you an example. When we were in court we had contempt of court proceedings.

So we were convicted of contempt of court two times. And we made a constitutional appeal on the basis of our constitution saying that our constitutional rights were violated.

Well the government lawyers, the crown attorneys, the prosecutors said to the judge we must uphold the rule of law in this land.

And it says in the beginning of our constitution whereas Canada was founded on principles that believe in the supremacy of God and the rule of law.

And the judges and the prosecutors said to the judges we must uphold the rule of law. And what the prosecutor was meaning by that is that these health regulations are the rule of law.

But what they were forgetting was the first half of the introduction to our constitution which says whereas Canada was founded upon the supremacy of God and a law.

So that the rule of law is not something that some type of you know health bureaucracy gets to invent.

The rule of law is something that is fixed in stone. When you have a fixed law you have a free society.

But when the government has the authority to change laws, shift laws, redefine laws, take away and grant your civil rights, you no longer have a free society.

Remove the fixed law written by the God's finger in stone and men will conflate their own whims with the rule of law.

The Ten Commandments are the basis for all law in a free society. So what have

I done here? Well I've explained that the Ten Commandments remain binding. And then

I've tried to assert that the Ten Commandments are the fixed standard for all law in a free society.

Some evolutionary process based on you know humanism or social contract theory.

They come to us from God, our creator. Endowed to us by our creator. And I'll show you how this plays out.

So for example the Fourth Commandment, if the government must answer to God, the

Fourth Commandment, remember the Sabbath day, means that we have a right to rest and worship.

It's a free society that upholds the Sabbath. It's a slave society that forces people to work seven days a week.

But if you have a respect, I don't know about you, there used to be blue laws in a lot of states.

Up until the 80s we had Sabbath laws in Canada where you couldn't go shopping.

You couldn't open your shop on Sunday. The only people that were allowed to open shop were you know doctors basically.

But nobody went shopping on Sunday. And what was that designed to do? That was designed to protect the population from being abused by their employers so that their employers are demanding more loyalty from the employees than the

Lord Jesus Christ is by keeping them from the worship of Jesus Christ. But you take away that Sabbath law and so what happened then?

Well now you know employers can do all kinds of things. And then we have, and then the government thinks they can define holidays.

So it used to be that in the English -speaking world you would have several holidays that were that were given to us from you know they were recognizing

Christian holidays. You have Christmas, you have Easter. Good Friday was off. Christmas Day was off.

And now what do we have? I mean we got you know this holiday and that holiday recognizing this event or that event every month.

And then you get to June it's a whole month of holidays for LGBT. But if you just stick with what the

Lord's given you and what the revelation of God has given you, you ensure that this pattern and structure is unchanging and people aren't at the whims of masters but they're free.

And so that's the fourth commandment. But how about the sixth commandment? The sixth commandment is you should not murder. I talked about that during the

Sunday school lesson. But what does the sixth commandment affirm? Well the sixth commandment affirms that you have a right to life.

The government doesn't have a right to walk into your house and blow your head off. And then

I, as I talked about this morning, if you have a right to life, you don't just have a right to life, you have a responsibility to protect life.

So you just, so now you don't just have a right to life, you have a right to self -defense. And if you have a right to self -defense, what else do you have a right to?

Well that means you have a right to use means to defend yourself, so you have a right to bear arms. And that's found in the sixth commandment.

But it's not just found in the sixth commandment, it's found in the eighth commandment, which I'll talk about in a minute, but the eighth commandment asserts that you have a right to free enterprise.

Because the eighth commandment is you shall not steal. So you have a right to your own property. And if you have your right to your own property, then that means you have a right to buy property from which you can harvest iron ore.

And then you can mold that iron ore into a handgun or into a rifle. And then you can sell that handgun or rifle to somebody else.

Or you can sell apples. You can make money from apples. And then you can take that money and you can buy someone's handgun.

So the right to bear arms are then rooted in this right to defend your life and the right to use your own private property.

But look, you lose the Ten Commandments and now you have a tax on your rights, the right to life.

Why is the abortion industry so important to the left?

Well, it's demonic, for one thing. But one of the reasons that the abortion industry is so important to the left is if the abortion industry can redefine, and the left can redefine what right to life means, then they can redefine any other right.

All of this leftism is about is undermining civil rights rooted in the

Ten Commandments so then you can usher in complete control. Because the minute they say you have a right to abort somebody or your baby is the minute they say the

Sixth Commandment no longer applies is the minute they say all Ten Commandments no longer apply, which means the

Eighth Commandment no longer applies. And if the Eighth Commandment no longer applies, you no longer have the right to free enterprise, you no longer have the right to private property, and now the government has the right to bring in communism.

It's all founded in the Ten Commandments. And as James said, you remove one commandment, you remove all commandments.

Why have the communists always been atheists? They hate

God's law. It stops their agenda.

How about this one? So look, if the government has the right to take away your guns, and the government has the right to allow somebody to kill a baby in the womb, and now in my country, and there's some

United States, some states in the United States that are doing this, the government authorizes doctors to knock off the sick.

We call it medical assistance in dying in Canada. So the third largest cause of death in Canada is suicide at the hands of a physician.

The government has that right. Well, what's the Seventh Commandment?

You shall not commit adultery. Do you remember what the tyrants did when

Abraham went into Egypt, or when Isaac met Abimelech? What did Pharaoh want from Abraham when he went into Egypt?

He just saw a woman, and he said, she's mine. She's coming into my harem. What did

Abimelech want from Isaac when he came into his land? Abimelech saw

Rebecca, and he saw that she was pretty, and he says, I'm taking her. So you see, the government takes the right to life.

The government takes your right to self -defense. The government takes the right to private property. And then what they do is the government starts to take away your right to your own marriage partner.

And this has happened in the past. I talked about this yesterday. The mafia came to be when the

Sicilian kings started to demand first shot at the bride on the wedding night. Why?

Because they had no regard for the Ten Commandments. You start taking away

God's law and whittle it away chip by chip, you won't even imagine where you'll be 50 years from now.

Little by little by little, you remove that foundation. Now you no longer have a foundation for law.

And guess what? You're now ruled not by law, but by the whims of men, whatever the judge interprets it to mean.

You know what the law says. It's right there in paper. But some fancy judge with a fancy degree says, nah, that's not what it means.

How on earth did they get the right to sodomite marriage out of the American Constitution?

Where is that? It's not in there. Why is that so important to them? Because it undermines the authority of law.

And if you undermine the authority of law, you will strip people of their rights because you're teaching them that they no longer have the ability to interpret the law.

And you need some fancy judge up there who can figure out the law for himself. And he'll tell you what it means.

Now you're ruled by the whims of men. The Eighth Commandment says, you shall not steal.

What's that talking about? Well, if you can't steal, neither can the government, which means the government can't confiscate your property.

So there's a few examples of where this happens. In the Old Testament, you have this king named Ahab. He wanted to steal Naboth's vineyard.

And what did Naboth? Naboth said no. And so Ahab's wife had Naboth killed and stole the vineyard.

Well, the Eighth Commandment would have protected Naboth's vineyard because that's his private property. What did the government do in COVID when they shut down businesses?

I don't know if they did in your state. They did in a lot of states. They did in our province, Ontario. They shut down businesses.

They stole private property, free enterprise. They stole it from people. Private property rights.

People think free enterprise and capitalism are rooted in greed. No, they're not rooted in greed. They're rooted in the

Eighth Commandment, which says, you have the right to develop and sell and trade your own property and labor.

You have a right to that. You own a farm, and you want to plant apple trees on your farm.

You have a right to plant apple trees and make apple juice and sell your apples and sell your apple juice. And then someone has the right to buy those apples and to make apple pies out of them.

And then someone has the right to buy those apple pies and put them on their dinner table. But now you've got government.

What are they doing? They're in everything. Why is environmentalism so important to the left?

It's not important to the left because they really care about the environment. It's important to the left because they hate God's law, and they want to violate property rights.

I said yesterday, the environmentalist movement is a watermelon movement. It's green on the outside, and it's communist red on the inside.

And it's all a violation of God's law. And when the government gets into debt, and when they start to print money to get themselves out of debt, that's theft.

It's a violation of the Eighth Commandment because what happens when they print money is now they're stealing from you by inflation, by inflating the value, depreciating the value of the currency.

So if you have $100 in your bank account, and you've got a 5 % inflation rate, now your $100 is only worth $95 at the end of the year.

So they're stealing from you by printing money. If you print money, you go to jail for counterfeiting, but they're allowed to do it because they're the government.

It's a violation of the Eighth Commandment. How about the Ninth Commandment?

You should not bear false witness. Well, the opposite of you should not bear false witness, if it prohibits bearing false witness, it also commands you shall protect your neighbor's good reputation, which means that we should have the assumption of innocence until we are proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

When you go to court, when you're charged with a crime, your job is not to prove your innocence.

It's the government or the prosecutor's job to prove your guilt, and your innocence is assumed. Why? That's built on the

Ninth Commandment. The minute you remove the Ten Commandments, you remove the basis for rights, is what

I'm trying to say to you this morning. Because the Ten Commandments remain binding.

The Ten Commandments are the foundation for a civil law and a free society, and all of our inalienable rights are derived from the

Ten Commandments. And if the government starts making up rights that aren't in the

Ten Commandments, that means they're undermining and chipping away at the authority. And every single law they make up that's not grounded in the

Ten Commandments is another attempt to whittle away at rights. And so how do these countries that are founded on these wonderful principles, how do they get themselves in trouble?

Well, they turn away from God's law. As Americans have turned away from the Ten Commandments, have they become more free or less free?

Less free. And so the only way back is to repent towards God, and that starts with me and you.

That's my responsibility to repent towards God, and your responsibility to repent towards God. Seek the forgiveness for sins that is in our

Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. And then seek as Christians who are born again out of the life that is in us to uphold the law of God in our hearts as He has written them on our hearts.

Let's have prayer. Father in heaven, we thank you for your love for us. We thank you for your law, which is wisdom.

It is a law of liberty. And we pray, Father, for your blessing upon your people. You give us great wisdom in these days ahead, which are challenging and difficult.