How The Ten Commandments Guide Life and Family Topics

The Ten Commandments aren’t ten isolated rules—they reveal one heart problem behind countless issues. We explore the “Ten Words” as God’s guide for human life, connecting them to today’s questions about family, sexuality, medical ethics, truth, and desire. Discover how the commandments point to Christ and shape a coherent Christian worldview. 

Transcript

Sin Is Never Just One Thing

SPEAKER_04 0:00

On today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's important for us to you know to realize how all of these commands are are affected or involved in in these things. Because um it helps us realize these are not just discrete sins. Mentally we can kind of just pigeonhole something. It's like, okay, well that that's just one commandment, and and that one's not so important because I obey all of the others. No, when we're sinning, we're we're breaking all of them. Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health, and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters and more. Join us now for life challenges.

Why The Law Still Matters

SPEAKER_04 0:54

Hi, and welcome back. I'm Krista Potreds, and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samelson. And today we're gonna look at the Ten Commandments. As many of our listeners probably know, the two main teachings of the Bible are the law and gospel. The gospel is the good news of salvation by grace through faith in Christ, which makes it uh the most important. But the law is still important. And uh one of the, well, pretty much the place for the law, or what we maybe consider the law, um, are the Ten Commandments. So we wanted to talk about them today and um especially like how they relate to life and family issues, um, things that we talk about on the podcast as well. So I think the maybe the the good place to start or is the basic question of what are the Ten Commandments?

Sinai, Moses, And The Old Covenant

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah. It's uh getting technical to start with. They are are part of the law given to Israel uh through Moses at Mount Sinai. God is the one who did it. If if you remember the scene, God made tablets of stone and wrote these on those those tablets. Moses broke those original ones when he got upset at what he saw with the uh children of Israel worshiping the golden calf. And uh so the next set God had Moses uh chisel out, but then God wrote them uh uh again. We would also say that the Ten Commandments are part of the old covenant, because these were given to Israel as part of the covenant God made with them, and as such, as part of the old covenant, they were fulfilled by Christ. And in a technical sense, they are no longer binding on believers, but in the non-technical sense, they are, in that they are still a uh a concise summary of God's will for human behavior. Every one of them is uh repeated and reinforced in some way in the New Testament, and so we are still able to point to them and say, yes, this is God's will for us. We have to uh fiddle a little bit, so to speak, with uh some the details of some, such as the fourth commandment uh saying the promise that you may live long on the earth or live long in the land. Okay, that's that was specifically tied to Israel and Canaan. Remember the Sabbath day, that was very specific about the seventh day of the week and and how that was to be observed. We uh associate different things with that now, but the basics are all still there. This is a concise summary of God's will.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

What's funny about the Ten Commandments is that God it gets a lot of people in our time thinking that there's a a commandment for everything. You know, like we must find a commandment that has the word abortion in it. We should find a commandment that talks about stem cell research. And what we'll do is, you know, as we kind of wade into this, is we're going to be talking about how these commandments you know apply today in life and family issues, but they they do tend to create kind of a rules-based it makes us all legalists. There's a commandment for that.

SPEAKER_04 4:05

Another question that I think uh we should address here is which are the Ten Commandments?

The Ten Words And Numbering Differences

SPEAKER_04 4:10

Because uh, you know, you I mean you can go to the the Christian bookstore, go to uh online, and uh it'll be maybe in a different order or they'll have different commandments. Um so when we're talking about the Ten Commandments, what are we talking about?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yeah, um if you've been raised just within one church or or Christian tradition, this is a head-scratching question because it's like, well, of course, there's only one set of, you know, they're they're all numbered, you know, this is the way I learned them. And then you get really surprised when you find out that not everybody numbers them the same way. Part of the problem is the word commandments, because commandments actually isn't the best translation of the word that the Bible uses. The word that the Bible uses is word, it calls them the ten words. And for that reason, the Greek form of this is the decalogue, ten decal log word. These are the ten words. And if the Bible hadn't said there are ten of these, we could have come up with a different number. Because if you read Exodus 20, there are actually 14 imperatives there, either things to not do or things to do. So then the question is, how do you combine and how do you divide them up? Uh our Lutheran um tradition, and which follows the Roman Catholic tradition, we have them arranged one way. In the Protestant and the Eastern Orthodox traditions, they take uh what is our first commandment and they make two out of it. They would have you shall have no other gods as number one, and you shall make no graven images as number two, whereas we just see that as kind of an expansion of the first. And in order to still get ten, then they take the two commandments against coveting, our nine and ten, and they combine them into one, which means that their numbering system is always going to be one off from ours. Now there's a Jewish tradition, combines the two commandments on coveting and combines the commandments regarding other gods. And you think, well, wait, that just leaves us with nine. But their number one word is how God begins the ten when he says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. They say that's the number one thing that you have to start with. And uh sets kind of the a gospel foundation for the rest. So, I mean, you can listen to that and you can look at the difference, and you can you can say, Well, I think this one is the best, or I think that one is the best, or you may just say, This is the one I learned, it's the one I'm comfortable with. The important thing is that none of those systems of numbering leave anything out. It's not like their system leaves out the one on adultery. Yay! You know, we don't have to obey that. You know, it's like, no, they're all there. So it it's just a difference in in the way you approach the.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

Yeah, if you want to mess with your reformed friends, you know, you you refer to the fourth commandment and they don't get what you're talking about. They're I mean you bounce all around because sometimes that is confusing when I listen to some of my favorite preachers all of a sudden invoke a commandment by number, and they'll say, you know, like the sixth commandment that tells us not to kill. And you're going, wait. One actually interesting observation on this one, Jeff, and that is the Decalogue, Decca 10 and Logos. I love in the Greek, in the beginning was the word the logos. And Logos is kind of like a worldview isn't quite right, but it's kind of a a way you approach life. And so when you look at the Ten Commandments as, you know, my kind of these ten ways that kind of outline how we approach life, I think that that's a valuable thing for understanding how they apply to you today. Ted Koppel, when Ted Koppel in 1987 did the commencement address at Duke University, he actually made the statement. He goes, he talks about God gave us the Ten Commandments, not the ten suggestions. That was a Ted Koppel line. And I always thought that was brilliant because this is this is more than, you know, you can take them or leave them. You know, that's what a suggestion is. This is how God says that you survive life. This is how you make it through. And it also defines it really first defines your vertical relationship with God and where he comes out in your worldview.

SPEAKER_04 8:35

I think one of the things that we tend to do um as Christians is match up maybe sins with commandments, right? And so you have something like, oh, I don't know, like ab abortion or euthanasia, and think like, okay, that's gotta be the fifth commandment is being broken here. And uh, I mean, in in our numbering system, which is the one uh that says uh you should not murder, or you know, we see something like adultery or um, you know, sex outside of marriage, or somebody having an affair, and we think, okay, that's the sixth commandment is being broken here, or you know, somebody disrespecting their parents, and all right, that's the fourth commandment that's being broken here. Um, but is that is that a good way to go about it? Or what commandment really should we start with when we're considering God's issues on things like these, or God's will on things

Start With God, Not Hot Topics

SPEAKER_04 9:34

like these?

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Yeah. Start at the very beginning. You shall have no other gods, because that really is the the foundational one. Uh if you um memorize Luther's small catechism, you you you will recognize this. How does he begin the explanation there? We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. Okay. How does he um begin his explanation to every one of the other commandments that we should fear and love God that act and you know so it it's just establishing the fact that obeying any of the others, um, either in the negative sense of not doing X or the positive sense of therefore doing Y, that all flows from seeing God as the one and only, as trusting in Him and loving Him above all other things. But more than that, all sin is placing yourself and your ideas or or desires in God's place. You're saying that's what's most important, not God. What I want uh is is what's most important. And so every sin, therefore, no matter which commandment it is more specifically uh you know uh offending, is uh is this declaration of independence or autonomy that is um you know contrary to this this very first commandment.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

When God had uh provided the Ten Commandments, there was a a premier concern at the time of preserving the nation. We're told in Scripture that he he picked the Jewish nation, not because of anything particular about them. They weren't the powerful one or the attractive one, but they ended up being a small one, a troubled one, having a lot of problems along the way. And so when God gave these rules, it was to preserve the relationship that he had established for the ultimate goal, which was through these people would come the Savior. And kind of like I was alluding to at the beginning, the problem when you when you look at the Ten Commandments and you you view it too much like a rule book, and and you can't help it, you know. I mean yet like when Krista was saying, you know, you look at you know, talking back to your parents, fourth commandment, you know, adultery, you know, sixth commandment. When you do that, then all of a sudden you get kind of hung up, you know, when you get into kind of the especially in the area of uh biotechnology and so forth, which is an area that I teach in. That's why oftentimes when I write, those of you who pay close attention to kind of the things I do, I will, when I'm making a point that I'm drawing from scripture, I try to always put a minimum two Bible references in to show you that uh so even if I talk about you don't kill, I'm gonna try to show you something from the New Testament where that command is still there because this is kind of there's something bigger here than just keeping the set of rules. It's an expression of how God wants us to live, and it's his expression for how we live for our own protection. And that's a pro that's a problem. Like a lot of times, sometimes before we come on with our podcast, we talk about raising children and um the different challenges we go through. And uh when you establish rules at home, a lot of times it's for their own protection. You look both ways before crossing. Well, why? Because for your own protection. Well, it's gonna help you in the long run. It may not get you across the street in the quickest way, but it's gonna help you in the long run. And when you begin to start applying the commandments to life and family issues, it answers really that fundamental question um when your heart belongs to God, and that is what pleases God? And I think that if we if we teach people to look at the commandments from that perspective, it doesn't take anything away from the commandments, but it does color them in a richer tone. This isn't just about making the pastor happy, it isn't just about making the church happy.

SPEAKER_04 13:41

That's why I follow the Ten Commandments to make the pastor happy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:45

Well, and it's funny because a lot of people Well, look at you know, cohabitation is probably like the hot issue that that people really wrestle with in our circles now because everybody's doing it. You know, it's it's like an automatic given. And of course, you know, families d don't want to tell the pastor because they don't want their children to come under church discipline because the church won't like it and everything. Folks, I'm gonna tell you, that's n that's not the big problem you're facing. You're you're not looking vertically, you're only thinking horizontally. And that's the problem when you begin to think of the commandments only as a set of rules to appeal people in a horizontal relationship.

SPEAKER_04 14:25

I remember too when my cousin was living with his girlfriend, maybe fiance at the time or something too, and um they came over and my aunt was there, and then my grandma was coming, you know, and it was like, oh, you can't tell grandma. Like you you know, like you can't, you know, and it's like that that's the problem, right? Like that grandma would find out. So yeah, just to kind of go along with that. But you know, um, some of the commandments maybe seem at first

Bearing God’s Name In Public

SPEAKER_04 14:56

glance to not have anything to say about our life and family issues. Does, you know, you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God tell us anything that helps us uh with with these things?

SPEAKER_00 15:10

This is one of the harder ones to connect, but um uh where I start with is as Christians, as as followers of Christ, we bear his name. We represent him. And that's the way we should think of it, uh think of ourselves. So if we sin against uh his will for sex and marriage or family or whatever, or we advocate for sin, sins against life, or his will for um sex and marriage or family, we're running his name through the dirt. Um we're you know, we're we're not representing him well, we're we're doing the opposite. Um we also notice, of course, how much deception and lying is uh involved in rationalizing and arguing for for these kinds of things. So yeah, it is it is involved, not as directly, but but certainly. Conversely, when we uphold God's will for such things, we're representing him well before others. We're presenting that that better better option uh that other people might not be appreciating. And also this commandment uh addresses the proper use of God's name, which includes prayer and thanksgiving. And both of those things are very appropriate when we're dealing with with these issues of of life and and and family and and sex and marriage.

SPEAKER_03 16:25

You know that that second commandment about not misusing God's name. Uh one of the things that's important to remember is we we have very easily in our culture have lost sight of why we exist. Because everything right now is designed for creating heaven on earth. You know, we're trying to get as much as we can, we're trying to make things as nice as they are, we're trying to there's billions of dollars expended on longevity research and those kinds of things. And yet scripture says that we were actually created to glorify him. And all of a sudden that second commandment to not misuse his name comes front and center. I mean, that's um if if you can't get the second commandment right, chances are you're never going to grasp the other ones, you know, because you're already because then you become more utilitarian with the other commandments. The second commandment really reminds you of why I'm here in the first place. And and if you find, if you think this all the way logically through, as as Bob does often when he lies awake at night in bed, you come to the conclusion a lot of us have spent an awful lot of time working on things in this world that totally miss the mark. Because it really is all about God.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:36

Well, I think um I'll continue here and going through some of the commandments and just how they tie into life and

Sabbath As Treasuring Scripture

SPEAKER_04 17:43

family issues, kind of following the order here. Uh, next would be remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. What are kind of some of the ties in for that?

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah. This is perhaps the hardest of the ten to relate to our our life and family issues, but it is helpful to remember that for New Testament believers, this one is not about what we do and don't do on Saturdays or or Sundays. It's rather about our attitude toward the Word. Luther puts it that we not dis do not despise preaching in his word, but regard it as holy and gladly hear and learn it. So positively, that means that we are going to listen to and treasure what the Bible says about these issues. And negatively, we don't want to rewrite or ignore or denigrate the things that God does say that that interfere with uh what we want to do or or want to advocate for.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

And I I would say that in my area of helping people navigate some difficult issues, if people respected the word, you know, Hebrews 5.12 to Hebrews 6.3, where it got to go down to milk because you can't you can't handle the meat of some of the challenges, you don't have the the breadth of knowledge. But if you were obedient to this command, this commandment, this this decalogue, particularly the third one, if you were obedient to it, you're doing the deep dives, you keep studying, you keep growing. And it isn't like it's gonna happen overnight, but all of a sudden you you begin to realize that when you think simplistically, all you are is being simple. You're not understanding the complexity and the depth and the richness of God's word. But when you start devoting time to studying God's word and you make that a priority, uh you begin to be able to navigate a lot of the issues that we face today and that we're going to face tomorrow.

Honoring Parents In A Fractured Culture

SPEAKER_04 19:28

The fourth commandment is what of um is honor your father and mother that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy a long life on the earth. So I hope all my children are listening to this.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

No, this one this one rule we want them to find.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We kind of joke about it, but this commandment has God's will for the family right there at its heart. Uh it's about fathers and mothers, mothers and children, fathers and children. So it addresses a whole range of of things that you know that that are our you know in our bailiwick. Uh abortion. Well, what's that about? That's about the relationship between a mother and and and her child. It deals with things like IVF and surrogacy. What is God's design? How is this supposed to work with children being brought into the world and their their parents? You know, the episode we did recently, you know, with the talked a lot about making choices through surrogacy or whatever that deliberately deny a child one or both of its natural parents. And what we see more and more in our society where um you know parents are defied or they're they're just cut completely out of the picture with things like transgender identifications or or treatments, or who gets to say what about sexual activity, or or you know, who gets to say what about whether a girl who's pregnant gets gets an abortion, you know, things like that. This commandment also addresses uh obedience to human authority, you know, to govern governments that you know God has charged uh with uh you know looking out for us. And so many of the first steps in advancing abortion and euthanasia and things like that come with disobey deliberate disobedience to the government. That's that's how they get their foot in the door, so to speak. And there's been mis, you know, even after it's legalized, there becomes the misuse of the law and government's authority to advance what is wrong and and uh to limit or elimin or prohibit what is right with these things. But putting it positively, there's an opportunity for Christians to set a positive example here of how it's supposed to be, which is really going to stand out in stark contrast uh to what the rest of the culture sees.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

Well, and the um the family is really the proving grounds. It's your first exposure to living out how do you honor God and how do you consider others above yourself. Uh you start practicing it in your family. Krista, when you and a couple of weeks ago when we recorded, you had talked about how sometimes your kids are with you when you're Going through some of these stories to pick out and everything. You have really great conversations with them. And I I think that that's valuable and that'll be an investment you make now that'll pay off years later.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 22:12

Yeah. Yeah. No. And I yeah, I mean, I think all of that is really true. Um, the next commandment that we have here is you shall not murder.

Protecting Life In Medical Ethics

SPEAKER_04 22:23

Uh we've talked a little bit about how abortion and euthanasia would fit in um with some of that. What what other things um might fit in with that and what should we keep in mind when we talk about that commandment?

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Well, uh things downstream from the straightforward killing that's involved. Um talking about uh experimenting with human embryos. How are you respecting life there? The the fact that God is the only one who has the authority to decide who lives and who dies. Uh we talked about this a little bit with our uh current event episode with declarations of death and organ harvesting. Are you respecting the life that is there, or are you just treating it as a uh kind of a transactional thing? Uh you know, well, we there's something we want here, and so we're we're just gonna do what we think is best. And all I mean, pretty much every m issue of medical ethics really impacts with this commandment, because uh it's like, okay, it's not just the negative don't kill, uh, don't murder, it's the positive uh attitude of respect for and stewardship for life and health. Aaron Ross Powell I don't need to add anything to that.

SPEAKER_04 23:33

That's actually all true. Very true. Well then, you know, Bob, you can get the next one here on You Shall Not Commit Adultery.

Sexual Integrity And Real Commitment

SPEAKER_04 23:41

Um I feel like in some ways uh this one like almost kind of includes like the kitchen sink, like just any um sexual sin or um I mean pornography, um, just a bunch of things could could be lumped in with that.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I what I've found interesting is how many times Scripture God equates uh people's desertion of him as adulterous. You bind yourself to other gods, you uh you commit these horrendous acts. And uh and then I I always try to remember that. He does that a lot. There's a lot of that reference uh in the Old Testament, especially. But then in the New Testament you get that reference where it says, you know, uh about loving loving others, and it says, uh, you know, the the brother you do see. You know, you can't well adultery played out in the physical sense is basically you can't even hold to the oath that that you've got and the people you see. And it's it kind of plays out in a sense a complete desertion of your of your allegiance to God. And I so I think it's you know, people will say, Well, you know, I'd I feel so much better about God if he could just sit down across from me and we can talk. And he says, Uh I gave you a spouse, yeah, I gave you guidelines for a relationship with somebody you can see, touch, embrace, commit yourself to, and you can't even do that. You know, and so how are you going to deal with the most supreme of all beings? You know.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Yeah, that you mentioned, Bob, the treating the the commandments as as you know, just a rule book, and you talked about, you know, like who are we doing this for? You know, is it for the pastor? Is it for grandma? You know, whatever. And you know, there's a similar kind of thing with this commandment. Uh many pastors can tell tell the story about, oh, well, you know, that commandment just commits adult or condemns adultery, which is when married people are messing around. But since neither my girlfriend nor I are married, then what we're doing is okay, right, Pastor? No. And this is a commandment that uh this is again one of those things where it was dealing with a very specific kind of situation when it was given to Israel, but it encompasses the whole thing. Basically anything having to do with anything that is sexual or having to do with marriage, long list is uh as you said. But again, here we can talk about the positive. This gives an opportunity for for Christians to to set such a vivid example uh before others of this is the better way to to love others, to show commitment, to have a better, happier, more fulfilling life that is loving, that is romantic in all the right ways. Healthier marriages, uh it's gonna make dating safer and more comfortable when you follow what's here. It's gonna you know change your attitude towards procreation, uh all these kinds of things. I mean, we get to set the example for that. And that's something that Christians, I think, today really don't appreciate enough.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

This is sometimes, at least in our culture, the hardest of all commandments to keep.

SPEAKER_04 26:51

I mean, I think maybe even for the Israelites, though, too, Bob, right? Like I mean, because there were a lot of I mean, you what read like Leviticus or Numbers, there's a lot of rules there about, you know, things to not do with your brother's wife and you know, animals and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:10

I've I've often wondered if if God had you know, one of the commandments was thou shalt not eat limburger cheese. Oh, okay, all right, I alright, I can I can follow that. You know, instead, sometimes the i you know, there's a blessing in the difficult challenge because sometimes it proves to you your loyalty. You know, not eating Limburger cheese doesn't prove squat for me because I have zero desire to do that, and telling me I don't have to makes me feel all the much better. But when you throw commandments at me that my sinful flesh wants to engage in, whether it's you know, any of the commandments before this or the commandments after this or this commandment, uh, if one of them says, you know, I I think I told you the story Dr. Becker used to say in class. I never had the temptation to run around, never had the temptation to drink, but I always feared I had I couldn't resist the temptation to gamble, which is why God never put him in Nevada, you know. And I I mean some people, because when I heard Jeff say, you know, use his illustration of the boyfriend and girlfriend say, Well, we're not married, so it doesn't count. Usually when you start honing in on that, then they say, But it's so hard, it's so difficult and everything. But the thing is that that's also where faith becomes in. It's also where you begin to to demonstrate allegiance and your love. So there's a blessing here, even in these commandments, you know, it because when you tell a girl that you're you're pregnant and uh you're not married and she wants to abort, um all of a sudden it's hard to keep the commandment not to kill when you're thinking worldly, you know, but then you can keep the commandment, the six commandments the same way. If that's the one you're wrestling with, what a great opportunity to see where your faith is.

SPEAKER_04 28:54

Well, the seventh commandment is

Stealing, Speech, And Coveting Today

SPEAKER_04 28:56

you shall not steal. What are some of the family and life implications with that?

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Aaron Ross Powell We can talk more about attitudes when we get to the uh the commandment against coveting, but uh what is stealing? It's taking things that are not yours to have. Are you uh stealing life away from the vulnerable and the defenseless when you say, no, no, no, your life isn't important, I'm gonna do what I want instead? Are we stealing innocence from children and from the immature and the inexperienced uh with uh what we or society pushes as far as uh sexuality and and and those kinds of things? Are we uh perhaps uh expecting or demanding that others pay pay your expenses for for these things? I know perhaps even what it costs for you to sin against life or or God's design for sex and marriage. I saw some uh headline just uh yesterday or the day before about, I believe it was the City of New York's health plan. There was a married gay couple that was saying demanding that the the health plan cover uh IVF for them, which would mean, of course, that they'd, you know, surrogacy and and all of that, that their plan should pay for that because the plan pays for that for heterosexual couples. And you know, it's like you're you're just that that is a form of stealing because you're saying uh there's something I want, I don't have it, give it to me. Um and so those those are kinds of things that that also figure in here.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

You know, these top commandments, um, you know, five, six, seven, you know, maybe eight, nine, and ten too. They all uh transgressing them all represent me before you rather than you before me. And that's a fundamental problem that runs um contrary to the will of God.

SPEAKER_04 30:42

Well, uh commandment number eight is you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

This is again one of the ones that a little harder to uh r nail down in terms of our our issues here, but uh yeah, it's generally about um how we use or abuse the gift of speech. You know, our it's James talks about it in terms of the tongue. Um but you know so I think this goes a lot towards how we talk about the other side or how we characterize their arguments. You know, certainly it's easy for us as you know the Christian pro-lifer to uh really get upset about the other side. And you know, we've got to be careful that that that we correctly characterize their their what they are and aren't saying, that we're not unloving in the way that we say it. We you know, it doesn't mean we're not accurate, um, but we want to make sure we're still loving in it, that we recognize the purpose. You know, I somebody I know always talks about you know building bridges to the gospel, you know, with you know what we have to say. You know, and and so that's it's I guess this one is perhaps a bit more on the positive side than the negative side in terms of how it connects.

SPEAKER_03 31:49

Yeah. This is this ties in with the uh instruction to love your enemies. It it sounds really great in paper. It might even sound good when you have a you know good preaching pastor who does a nice job with it. It's a lot harder to practice. And it's a it's because it says, well, I'm not bearing false witness, you know, they you know, he's a he's a murdering slob, you know, he doesn't love people, he's whatever and everything. Well, the scripture also talks about the reckless way we use the truth and that it it gets in the way of building a bridge. You know, that just remember that if if you if your heart is totally given to glorifying God, then every time somebody annoys you, they annoy you because you feel they aren't glorifying God with their life. And you and I are called upon to be the messenger. So how are you gonna do it? You're gonna do it by the calling them names and so forth? Or can you build a bridge? And scripture does contain instruction how to do that. Loving your neighbor, walking the extra mile, turning the cheek, and so forth. It's just doggone hard to do it.

SPEAKER_04 32:52

Yeah. Uh well, for the interest of time here, I'm gonna lump the ninth and tenth commandments together, like the It's just the way we do it in confirmation class.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Yeah, yeah. Which is one of the things that suggests to me that maybe our numbering system is is not necessarily the buttons.

SPEAKER_04 33:12

Um yeah. So um and those are the ones that talk about coveting, um, your neighbor's house, um cov and then the ones that refer to people coveting your neighbor's wife or workers, or I guess, you know, animals, anything that belongs to your neighbor.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Yeah. Um What is coveting? Coveting is having a sinful desire that that God has not given you to have. And there are all sorts of things that that we see that we want. It's possible to, you know, to look through a catalog or see something on the internet and say, oh, that'd be kind of cool to have. You know, there's nothing sinful about that. You say that's nice. If if you're a a single person and you see an attractive member of the opposite sex, you you know, you could say, Oh, you know, she's really pretty, or he's he's he's he's nice looking. You know, you you can do that without sinning. Since we have a sinful nature, though, very quickly, very easily our desires can turn that corner into being something sinful. And coveting really plays a really significant part in in all of these these life and family issues. Perhaps it is coveting others' bodies or or relationships. You know, that's what adultery is. That's what fornication is. You desire somebody somebody to give you pleasure. You're coveting that. The life you think you deserve. Well, I'm pregnant now, but I think I deserve a life without children. So you're coveting that life instead of the one that you have. You're coveting uh the death you think you deserve. I should be able to die without pain, without any suffering, or on my own terms. That's that's a form of coveting. You see somebody else has it, you want it for yourself, so you should get the decision to to off yourself whenever you decide. Um, and you know, remember, like with embryonic stem cells uh research, which is not as big a thing now, thankfully, as it as it was once in the past, but there was this idea of I don't care about the ethical implications of this. I want the possible cure that comes from this research, and that's all that matters. And again, it's it's desiring something, and it's a sinful desire that disregards God's will because you want to have something that you don't have.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

Which characterizes a lot of what goes on, you know, in terms of I always, whenever I taught at the confirmation class students, I always said coveting is the desire uh for something and you're willing to violate God's will to get it. You know, in other words, you're not you don't just want it. You know, sometimes you know I used to save up for football cards or for a record album when I was a kid and so forth. You wanted it, but the moment that I wanted to cheat somebody out of it, uh I wanted to steal it, I wanted to kill for it. You know, and that's really what we face in life and family issues is that people are willing to violate other commands in order to get it. That's that really is coveting.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:57

Yeah, yeah. I mean, just hearing you guys talk too, I think uh it's kind of one of those commandments, maybe that doesn't get a whole lot of, I don't know, like airtime or outward recognition or that type of thing. But I mean, especially in our society too, like where we we have this culture now where we think like we have a right to everything, or we are, yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of us uh are are in some ways like rich enough to buy many things that we want or think we need. Um, it's really, boy, it's a it's a big one.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

And it's it's challenging because you're not sure sometimes.

SPEAKER_04 36:35

All right. Well, we um are at time here.

Final Takeaways And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_04 36:39

So I'm gonna give each of you one minute to say any final thoughts you want, um, to leave our listeners with uh with the the Ten Commandments here.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

I would say think vertically before you think horizontally. If you start with, you know, I really like the way Jeff started off the discussion about some of those early commands, even with the way the Jewish people look at it. This is a decalogue. This is God's will for the way uh he wishes his people to live, and it's designed for our good. And you may not always realize it, but that's the intent. I'll leave it there.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Okay. Um I agree with all of that. But um I'll just add that uh you know it's it's helpful. It's important for us to you know to realize how all of these commands are are affected or involved in in these things because um it helps us realize these are not just discrete sins. Mentally we can kind of just pigeonhole something like, okay, well that that's just one commandment, and and that one's not so important because I obey all the others. No, when we're sinning, we're we're breaking all of them. And all these issues, they they can't be pigeon-holed that way. They they everything is involved. And it just reinforces that there's no such thing as an unconnected sin. It always connects to something else. And that's important for us to realize. And I think it's also going to be important for organizations and and people trying to make political progress on on these these issues as well, to just realize that you know there's more than one entry point on all this stuff because there are so many different offenses involved. And it's just helpful to keep all this in mind.

SPEAKER_04 38:17

Well, thank you both for your time and your discussion today on this topic, and we thank all of our listeners. And if you have any questions on any of the things that we have discussed, you can reach us at lifechallenges.us. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you back next time. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Thank you for joining us for the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it, and sharing it with friends. We're here to help. So if you have questions on today's topic or other life issues, you can submit them as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes at lifechallenges.us, or email us at podcast at ChristianLiferesources.com. You can find past episodes and other valuable information at lifechallenges.us, so please check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit ChristianLiferesources.com. May God give you wisdom, love, strength, and peace in Christ for every life challenge.