The Decalogue: Building Life on God's Bedrock

Welcome to the Southwest Apostolic Church podcast.

This podcast is brought to you by the Southwest Apostolic Church,

located at 3161 South Rowena Street in Indianapolis, Indiana, 46241.

The podcast will feature preaching

from our pastor and from other ministers, so we hope you enjoy it.

Without further ado, let's get right into it. God bless.

Fancy word, the scholarly word is the Decalogue, they call it.

But we want to look at these tonight and talk about it.

And if the Lord helps us, we'll get something out of it. Pray for me.

I thought my Bible and stuff was here, but I must have picked it up and forgot about picking it up.

But I had some information in there that I thought I was going to use,

but the Lord knows what he's doing anyway, even if we don't. Amen.

All right. And the Lord, verse 1 of chapter 20, and God spake all these words,

saying, I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt,

out of the house of bondage.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven

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.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.

For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God,

and visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and

fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of

them, thousands of generations of them, that love me and keep my commandments.

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Let's see. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work.

But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.

In it thou shalt not do any work, thou or thy son, nor thy daughter,

thy menservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them

is, and rested the seventh day.

Wherefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which

the Lord thy God giveth thee. Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant,

nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor's.

And all the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings, and the noise of

the trumpet and the mountain smoking.

And when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off.

And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear,

but let not God speak with us, lest we die.

And Moses said unto the people, Fear not, for God is come to prove you,

that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.

Let's pray one more time. Jesus, we love you. I ask you, Lord,

to help us with your word tonight.

We give you honor and give you praise.

And we ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. You may be seated. The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments,

are found in Exodus 21, 32, 16, Exodus 34, 28,

Deuteronomy 4.13, 5.7, 10.4, and in Joshua 8 and 32.

So there's different readings of the Ten Commandments.

Now, actually, when Moses went up on the mountain and got the law,

we read about the Ten Commandments, the list of religious precepts,

that according to the various passages we brought out, were divinely revealed

to Moses on Mount Sinai and were engraved on two tablets of stone.

Like I say, it's recorded virtually identically in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.

So let's look at these tonight. Actually, there's different numberings,

different Judaism numbers them a little bit different.

The prologue, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt,

out of the house of slavery, constitutes the first element and prohibits against false gods and idols.

And then Roman tradition, accepted by Martin Luther, regards all these elements

as one and preserves the number 10 by separating the prohibitions against coveting

another's wife and coveting another's possessions.

And in the Greek Orthodox and the Protestant Reformed traditions,

the prologue and the prohibition against false gods are one commandment,

and the prohibition against the idols is the second.

So there's a little bit discrepancy in the numbering, but the idea is the same.

There are some things that God wants us to do and some things He doesn't want us to do. Amen.

We need to realize, remember we've been talking about covenants?

And this is kind of a covenant given by God.

It's kind of a, this is God telling people, giving Moses and the Israelite people,

they are epitome of prophetic teachings.

They point to the future. They point to government.

They're kind of the basis for a good life. Amen.

And God gave Moses actually about 600, I think it's, I'm getting two numbers in my mind.

I can't remember. It's either 619 or 631 laws. If you read Leviticus and you

read the Old Testament, he gives them law about if you're.

Neighbor's animal falls in the ditch, or if you hurt your neighbor's animal.

He gives them moral law, civil law, and moral law, civil law, and religious law.

Now, when Paul talks about we're not under the law, he's talking about the ceremonial

law, but we're still under the moral law of God.

And the moral law, according to the New Testament, all these commandments are

fulfilled by what is called the royal law.

And the royal law is, anybody know what it is?

It's the law of love. Remember when the man asked Jesus, they asked Jesus what

the greatest commandments were.

And he said, love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul,

mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And he said, on these two principles, on this principle of love,

hangs all the other commandments.

In other words, if you love your neighbor, you won't be stealing his car.

At least I've got one amen, but no, I'm kidding.

But if you love your neighbor, you won't be messing with his wife. Come on, somebody.

If you love somebody, so all the, see, that's the difference between the Old

Testament and the New Testament are these principles and precepts were written on stone,

when Moses received them, and they gave them to the people, and the people followed after them.

They followed them as they were

told to do, but that doesn't mean that it was in their heart to do it.

There were laws, things that if they were caught doing certain things,

they could have been stoned and all of that.

So they were, no doubt, they moved with fear.

They moved with fear of getting caught, you know, people, they're okay till they get caught, right?

The problem in our society is people aren't afraid. They're not afraid of getting

caught because ain't nothing going to happen.

You know, they get wild and get crazy and do things.

But, you know, you read these horror stories about somebody in New York or one

of the big cities where they, you know, they'll commit a murder or something

and they let them right out of jail.

That lady that was killed in, I forget what city it was, on the subway,

on the train. Where was that?

New York? Was that New York? That man had just, he'd been in and out of jail,

and they just, and he had all kind of issues and problems, and I don't think

it'd been too long since he'd been arrested for problems, and there he was out on the road again.

God doesn't operate like that. God operates with real justice.

Not man-made justice, but real justice.

I said, who was I talking to? Was I talking to you about this, Chad, the other day?

We was talking about that. You see, people do things. You could stop things

if you really want to stop them.

It's like you can get in your car. If your car is locked and you can't get in

it, you can get in it if you really need to.

There was a guy at work one time. He backed in. We had a little dock where they

back in to load their tanks or whatever they were buying.

And he got out and left his car running, and he shut the door,

and he got out and loaded his material.

And then he went to get in his car. He had a station wagon, if I remember right, what they told me.

And his keys were locked in the car.

And, oh, man, he said, I got to go. I got to get in this car.

He just picked up a rock. Remember the vent windows in your cars back in the

day? He just took a rock, busted the window out, opened the door, and went on.

You can get in if you want to get in. And things should be handled sometimes.

And sometimes the way to handle things sometimes appears drastic.

But it's really the way to handle it.

You know, God, if God says God is not a man that he should lie,

God told Adam he was going to die if they ate of that fruit.

The devil told Eve they wasn't going to die, and Eve believed him.

She was deceived, and Adam chose to eat it. I got to thinking about that afterwards.

Evidently, they didn't realize what dying meant, and Eve, the Lord told Adam,

you eat of that, you're going to die, and Adam, evidently, he saw that Eve had

eaten it, and she didn't automatically die, So he must have thought,

well, you know, maybe I got mixed up or something.

I don't know. But I will tell you, God don't get mixed up.

And when he promotes something or when he pronounces something, it is what he said it is.

I said it is what he says it is.

Now, when he pronounces something and says there's a blessing involved in it,

if you do it, you're going to be blessed.

If God says it, you're going to be blessed. and if

God says don't do that because there's judgment involved in

it believe me he's not like a lot of parents Johnny Johnny

you go out in that street again I'm gonna I'm gonna get a hold of you Johnny

you look up Johnny's out in the middle of the street again Johnny Johnny I'm

gonna get you Johnny I told you stay out of that street Johnny get out of the

street Johnny I'm gonna put you in time out, you don't get out of the street.

Johnny, get out of the street. You're going to get hurt. Come on,

Johnny, get out of the street. No, God don't operate like that.

I was visiting some friends of ours, and it was a big picnic,

and the father, the patriarch of the family, they had a house next door,

and an older lady in the family lived in that house, and some Some of the boys

had gotten one of those things that fall out of the tree.

They're green. Are they walnuts or something? I don't know.

Them old green thing. And they took those and they threw them and smashed them

all on the house. And the house had big brown spots all over the side of it.

And I don't know what they are, walnuts or something. But anyway,

everybody was sitting at this long table, and he told them, he said,

boys, he said, I want you to go over and clean that house off.

He said, now, if you do that again, I'm going to switch you till you bleed.

You know what I mean? I'm kind of goofy, and I was looking around smiling.

Wasn't nobody else smiling because they knew old dad meant what he said.

And, you know, that's the way it needs to be sometimes.

You know, if you say something, you need to mean it. If I say something, I need to mean it. Amen.

And they understood that that's exactly what he would have done,

because evidently it had been happening.

It had happened before. Praise the Lord.

But see, there's a sense of justice and righteousness in that.

The problem is God don't lie.

We make ourselves liars, don't we? We don't think about it.

If we do that, I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get

you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you and never get them.

You're making yourself a liar. But God is not a man that he should lie,

nor the son of man that he should repent.

Because if he says it, he means exactly what he says. And that's a good thing

to do. We all need to be like that. You know what?

The Bible says, let your yea be yea and your nay be nay.

Let your, you know, yes and no would suffice. You don't, sometimes people talk

too much. They say too much.

But your yea would be yes.

Yes or a no is a good answer. But you let your yes be yes, not yes and really

a no, or not no and really a yes.

It's awful quiet in here tonight. Praise the Lord. So the Lord gives us these

principles and commandments.

And to get into it, not get into it too deep.

Every one of these were fulfilled by or are fulfilled by the royal law, the law of love.

But Jesus did not. He said, I didn't come to destroy the law,

but I came to fulfill the law. Okay.

And he fulfilled every one of these.

He didn't just get rid of these, he made them, he, he zeroed in on them more

like thou shalt not kill.

He said, if you hate your brother, you're just the same as a murderer.

He said that if thou shalt not commit adultery, right?

He said, if you look on a woman to lust after her in your heart,

he said, and desire to have her, he said, you're guilty of adultery right then.

So he didn't just dismiss them. He even tightened up on them.

You see, that's the whole thing that I was getting ready to say a minute ago.

These were written, but they weren't written in their heart.

The difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is God wants

to take his laws and write them on our heart.

Amen. not a stony heart, but a fleshly heart, a soft heart, and put these principles in our heart.

That's what people need. People don't need them.

The Ten Commandments, if they want to put them out on a lawn somewhere, that's fine with me.

But God don't want them out on a lawn, in a monument. He wants them in your heart. Come on.

He don't want them. I mean, I'm sure it's a good thing to have them out there

where everybody can read them, but he's not too interested in having them out

there where you can read them.

He wants them to be read in your life as you live your life,

when people read your book, he wants them to see that you are keeping his principles.

Amen. That's what it's all about. So let's look at them.

Of course, we know the first one, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all

thy soul, mind, and strength.

They call that the Shema, the Shema, the very, you know, our hero Israel,

the Lord our God is one Lord. There's only one God, folks.

Just by definition, it has to be one.

It has to be one. I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the

land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

You know, we have to be careful. Somebody said anything that's between you and

God is closer to God than you are.

So if you put something between you and God, that means that whatever that is,

is closer to God than you are.

I don't think we need to put anything between us and God. Do you?

I think we need to have a direct hotline relationship with the Lord.

The beauty of it is you can have your own relationship. You don't have to count on mine.

I don't want you to count on mine. I want you to count on your own.

Amen. I want you to have your own relationship. And the beauty of it is the

Lord can have a relation, a personal intimate relationship with each and every

one of us all at the same time.

He's God. That's why. Amen. You can have the relationship with God that you

want, and here's a good thing that God wants.

Now, we talked about this a couple weeks ago in Sunday school.

When God created Adam and Eve, He created them to have a relationship with them.

You were created to have a relationship with your Creator. Praise the Lord.

And men have an empty spot in their heart. There's a spot in your heart that'll

never be filled unless you let the Lord fill it. It'll never be filled.

Nothing will take its place because there's a space that God wants to inhabit in your heart.

So the he is thou shall have no other gods.

And don't you go making any images or likeness of anything that is in heaven

above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

Don't go bowing down to them or serve them.

I don't know how, of course, we're living in today's world.

We're living in today's world and our understanding. I mean,

to me, it's pretty obvious if I take a stick and whittle some little form out

of it and set it up there in front of me that it's not God. I made it.

It didn't make me. I made it. But somehow in humanity,

they got to a place where they could actually worship other things that were

graven images, something they made, a likeness.

You know, he said that's in the heaven above. He doesn't care if it's a star or the moon.

He doesn't want us worshiping the moon and the stars or in the earth beneath.

He doesn't want us worshiping a cow.

Do you know there's people that worship cows and they're starving to death they

are absolutely they absolutely starve over in India and there's cows walking

down the middle of the road I'll tell you what there wouldn't be one walking

down the middle of the road if I was hungry.

I'd be cutting me a T-bone out of that baby. Come on now.

But see, you know, men can get some different ideas. You know that?

So the Lord, when he gives us these 10 commandments here, he's giving us some principles.

He's giving us some good things to live by, and he wants them to be in our heart.

Somebody say in our heart.

Praise the Lord. All right, let's look at it here.

So we know that there's only one God. Don't worship idols. Don't bow down to them. Okay.

Don't take the name of the Lord in vain. What's that mean? I don't think Jesus

should be a cuss word. Do you?

I don't think we ought to take the name. You know, you hear people say,

oh, I'll say it, but we don't want to say it.

Jesus Christ. I don't think we ought to just throw that name out like that. Do you?

Because that name is powerful. And his name is to be respected.

Amen. I think we ought to respect his name. and his identity,

you know, because your name is who you are.

Everybody has a reputation.

You're known by your name. When somebody says your name or somebody says my

name to you, you think of something.

Or if somebody says somebody's name to me, I think I know them.

Okay. So that's telling us not only the physical name, but our reputation.

You don't just go around, don't go around blaming God for stuff he didn't do.

Amen. You know, God gets a lot of, he gets a lot of, he's involved in,

let me say his name is used a lot in things he don't have nothing to do with,

especially in today's world and so-called Christianity out there.

They proclaim and talk about his name, but he ain't got nothing to do with it.

He ain't got nothing to do with some of these so-called revivals where they're

talking about preaching Jesus and

they're hitting people in the stomach knocking them out or whatever and,

years ago, there was a, what was

that called? The Brownsburg Revival or something. And I saw a video of it.

And this guy, that was, that's, I didn't make that up. That's what this guy would do.

People would come up to get healed and he would, wham, hit them in the chest.

He got in trouble because somebody got him up to get healed.

If I remember correctly, and they, and he hit them and it hurt them.

You know, just because somebody says the name of God or the name of Jesus don't

mean he's around or got anything to do with some of this stuff that's going on.

You can't be a thief for Jesus.

See, what does that scripture come to my mind? The Lord knoweth them that are

his, that everyone, somebody help me out here, that nameth the name of Christ, depart from iniquity.

If you're going to live for Jesus and you're proclaiming his name,

and you need to not just talk about it. You need to be what you're talking about.

You don't use his name in vain. You don't proclaim his name in vain. You don't.

Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Lord, what he's saying is what we need to think about is, Lord,

let your name be kept holy.

His name is not—now, the name is the name proper,

and the name is also the authority that goes along with the name and the individual

and the personality of the name and the attributes of the name.

Let me say, Jesus—,

is a holy name. He was a holy man.

Do you know right now, if you can look on a map and there's a little thing on

there, oh, I think it's probably about that big, maybe a little bigger,

about that wide and about that tall.

And they used to write on there and it was said the holy land.

You know why they call it the holy land? Because the holy one walked on that land. That's why.

See, things are named for a reason.

People don't, sometimes we're slow to understand that.

Brother Earl, I've lived in Indianapolis all my life, and I knew there was Bluff Road.

But it wasn't until just a couple years ago, I'm driving down Bluff Road,

and I start, I'm driving around down 37, and I look over, and I see,

oh, that's why they call it Bluff Road.

There's a big bluff there. And I was driving home, and I thought,

oh, I'm going up, and then you come down.

And I thought, oh, that's why they, duh.

That's why they call it Bluff Road. You know why they call it Michigan Avenue?

Because it'll take you to Michigan.

You know why Pendleton Pike is Pendleton Pike? Because it'll take you to Pendleton.

Shazam. Shazam. You know why Massachusetts Avenue is Massachusetts Avenue?

If you stay that way, you'll go to Massachusetts.

So let his name be kept holy. Everything that carries his name should be holy.

If we carry his name, we should be holy.

If this church carries his name, this church carries his name,

this should be a holy place, and we want it to be.

Any church that carries his name, it shouldn't be a place of sin.

There shouldn't be sin going on in the place that's got his name on it.

So that's a lot involved in don't take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

Don't just use it. Don't just talk about it. Just don't put it on the billboard,

but make it have some substance.

Vain is empty and vanity.

Man is subject to vanity, the Bible says.

We are subject to following after things that mean absolutely nothing.

We are subject in our humanity to follow after things that don't lead us nowhere.

They don't amount to anything.

When it's all said and done, they don't add anything. They're just vain.

They're empty. It's called an empty sack. There's nothing in it.

But you see, his name is not vain.

His name is not just an empty name. Amen. His name has substance.

Praise the Lord. So his name is not to be used in vain, in empty ways,

or tied to things that don't amount to anything. Where are we at here?

Now, when he says, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Now, do we have to keep the Sabbath? That's the question. The Sabbath,

how many knows what day it was?

Saturday. You see, Sunday is the first day of the week. not the last day. Sunday is the first day.

And the Jews observed the Sabbath, the Saturday. They didn't do any work from

sunup, sundown that day. So they observed it.

Now, the Bible says there remaineth a rest for the people of God.

Personally, I think we're still in the sixth day.

We haven't got to that eternal rest yet.

So what's the principle here? Now, there are people that go to church on the Sabbath.

From what I understand, the early church, they were Jewish, and they celebrated

the Sabbath on Saturday.

And then they dedicated the first day of the week, Sunday, which we call Sunday

now, but there's, you know, I don't know what they call it then.

But the first day of the week, they gave to the Lord, okay?

So from my understanding, that's how the week, now, the weekend,

that's what we call the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, which is Sabbath.

And then if Christians observe Saturday and then observe the first day of the

week to the Lord, that would be the days that we don't. And it just evolved over time.

Now, talking to Chad, the Romans have something to do with that.

Rome and the Catholics and I believe some of that. You know,

they change the days. You know that?

Do you know August is for Augustus, Caesar?

And Julius is July. We live under what is called the Roman calendar. Did you know that?

So there's a lot of stuff involved in what I'm talking about,

and some of it's too deep for me, okay?

But the principle as far as keeping the Sabbath, do we have to keep the Sabbath?

It's good for you to have a day of rest, yes.

Don't need to work every day of the week. My pastor told me one time,

if you can get by on five days, that's good enough.

If you can get by working five days a week, there's other things in life besides

making money and working. Come on, somebody.

You're not supposed to work and neglect your family and work and neglect your church.

So that's what God's instituting. It's good for us to have a day of rest where

we don't have to worry about things.

It's good to sit on the porch and drink a cup of coffee.

Come on. It's good to sit and cook a hamburger on the grill.

Isn't that right, Brother Breeden? Praise the Lord.

So he's instituting a day of rest. Now, see, I don't know what all is involved.

I haven't really studied it out.

But see, when they used to be slaves in Egypt, and they made them serve with

rigor, the Bible says. They drove them hard.

They probably worked them like dogs every day of the week.

They made them make bricks, and they took the straw away from them,

had to gather their own straw to make the bricks, and they worked them hard.

So the Lord said, now, wait a minute.

I'm not going to work you. How many knows the Lord is not a hard taskmaster.

Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

God understands we need a day of rest, don't we?

You need a day where you're not so busy, so busy, so busy. Okay.

Now, we're just skimming across the top of this tonight because I had a little

information that, like I said, I thought I brought it was here,

but I didn't get it. But so let's look at this. So here we are.

Seventh day is the Sabbath day, not do any work that day. Don't work.

I don't want your kids working.

You know, take the six days. The Lord rested on the seventh,

so you need to rest. And then he says, honor your father and your mother.

How many believe in that? I think your father and your mother.

Do you know that is so important that if you cursed your father or mother in

the Old Testament, they could take you to the judges and they could stone.

Now, I doubt if this happened very much because I can't see too many people

taking their kids down to the

altar and say, he cussed me out knowing that they're going to get stoned.

But that lets us know God doesn't want kids cussing out their parents. Come on, somebody.

Your father and your mother are still your father and your mother.

And you should least respect that, if nothing else.

And that, the Bible says, is the first commandment with promise.

That's the first commandment we read that says, if you do this,

there's a promise that goes along with it.

I told my kids when they were growing up, I said, you can say anything you want

to me, but don't do it disrespectful.

If you don't agree with me, tell me. If you don't like something,

tell me. But you're not going to stand up and call me names.

You're not going to do it. It ain't happening.

Okay? Because what somebody said, I brought you into this world,

and I can take you out of it.

But that is something very important. And in our world today,

we understand that parents, you know, we're living the day people slap their mother.

You read these crazy stories. Somebody get, they took the cell phone away and

the kid killed the whole family because they took his cell phone away.

See, what happens is if you don't stay close to God's law and God's principles, you get way out here.

It can get pretty ugly out here away from God.

And we're seeing a society that is moving away from God. And how many sees it

getting pretty ugly on a lot of ways?

And we understand that the parents aren't given.

Now, I can't get into it too much, but there's a lot of reasons for it.

I understand that. There's a lot going on.

But you see, my responsibility is to keep these commandments for me.

Okay. I can't keep them for you. In other words, I'm not responsible for my

father being who he is or my mother, but I have to have a certain place of honor or respect.

Okay. They might be somebody that ain't, you know, all said and done,

they're not worth a nickel, but I want to be very careful.

I still want to understand that that's still my father.

He might not have been there when I was growing up, But that's still my father.

There's value in those things.

Me say this. You want to be respected if you're a father? We want everybody,

you know what Jesus say, do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.

If we want respect, we should show respect. Amen.

All right. Let's see where we at here.

Honor your father. Now the first commandment with promise that the days may

be long upon the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee. The first commandment that has a promise.

You want to live old to be an old man?

Honor your father. Honor your mother.

Thou shalt not kill. Murder. Thou shalt not murder.

It can't be just kill in general because the Lord instituted capital punishment.

If a man or a woman was caught sleeping with an animal, they were to be stoned.

If a child, going back one commandment, if a child was caught hitting or beating

on his parents, he could be taken out and stoned.

I'm not advocating stoning anybody, but I'm saying that lets me know God takes

some things very seriously.

Okay? I said God takes some things very seriously,

and just the Bible talks about one of the things that God hates is people that

shed innocent blood, just go around killing somebody for no reason, murder somebody.

Now, as far as capital punishment, that could be a whole new lesson.

Thou shalt not commit adultery. Adultery is sexual relationship between married

people that aren't married to each other.

In the New Testament, it's translated adultery. It's translated fornication.

And fornication is any unlawful sexual activity, which is fornication,

and any sexual activity outside of marriage is fornication.

Let every man, to avoid fornication, the Bible says, let every man have his

own wife and the wife have her own husband. Somebody say amen.

God don't want people slipping and sliding, peeping and hiding.

Sliding in somebody. Whoop, Johnny's home. I got to hit the back door.

You know, that ain't the way people supposed to be living. It'd be,

you know, man messing with somebody's wife.

Next thing you know, there's gun battles going on and everything else.

Getting caught in the middle of all that mess. It's good just to obey God's

word. You know what? It'd be so much better if people would.

Thou shalt not steal.

Don't take, theft is forbidden. Don't take anything if it don't belong to you.

If it's not yours, leave. I don't care if you walk by.

I thought about this the other day. Brother Osborne was teaching.

Give me five minutes or so. Brother Osborne was teaching.

I went to Madisonville, Kentucky, and they have a camp meeting every year at this church.

And he said he was coming home one day and there was a bicycle laying there on the sidewalk.

And he looked around, he didn't see nobody and he didn't, so he picked that

bicycle up and brought it home.

And when his dad came home from work, his dad said, where'd you get that bicycle?

He said, well, he said, I was coming home and it was laying there on the sidewalk

and wasn't nobody around. He said, I didn't know whose it was, so I brought it home.

Now, listen, this is profound. He said, Dad looked at me and said,

is that how you're going to run your life?

You're going to base your life on things you don't know?

I thought, dang, that's profound. You can't live your life based on what you don't know.

Base your life on what you do know. So I thought that was a pretty good principle.

Myself, I thought, man, that's pretty good.

But don't steal it. If it ain't yours, leave it alone.

Now we all know finders keepers losers weepers right

i mean i don't

know if i'm telling you to walk if you see a hundred dollar bill laying on the

ground and don't know by around if you ain't supposed to pick it up because

i think i probably would but i'm talking about like if you're somebody's house

if i go to danny's house and i and i see something laying there that i can snatch

it up put it in my pocket that's what i'm talking about how many knows the difference,

If, you know, Brother Paul said he used to work in people's houses and he did wallpaper.

And he said he didn't want to take a hairpin if it didn't belong to him.

When he went in people's houses, he didn't take nothing out of that house that wasn't his.

I don't think you take stuff out of somebody's house that's not yours.

I don't think y'all take stuff out of somebody's garage that's not yours.

I don't think y'all take something out of somebody's car that's not yours.

Wouldn't it be nice if everybody could live like that and you wouldn't have to lock your doors?

Wouldn't have to lock your house. Wouldn't have to lock your car.

I told Chad the other day, my son come out to go to work the other day and his

wife had left her keys in her car and unlocked.

And in her car was a set of keys to his car. And he came out to go to work one

morning and both cars was gone.

They found the keys in one and took the other one. They took both of them out

for a little joyride or whatever.

But it'd be so much better if people just didn't steal. Wouldn't that be right?

And that goes a little deeper. We won't get into it, you know.

But don't be taking something if it ain't yours.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor. In other words, thou shalt not lie.

You don't stand up in court and witness against somebody that ain't true.

You don't lie on somebody.

I mean, it's good to tell the truth.

Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

I'll never forget. I'm going to quit in a minute, but I'll never forget.

I went to Wisconsin for my work, and we went to this.

You ever seen Miller welders on the back of cars and trucks,

the blue ones? Well, I went up to Miller.

Mr. Miller started Miller welding equipment, I don't know how many years ago

and had a beautiful factory.

And I went to a school up there and they had a big, on Thursday night of the

school, they had a big, nice dinner.

And I'll never forget the guy standing up.

It was at the dinner, the one of the big shots, you know, and he,

and he was talking and somewhere along the line, he said, we believe here at

Miller Electric that honesty is the best policy.

Anybody believe honesty is the best policy? I believe it is.

I believe we should tell the truth. I don't think we should lie.

I don't think we should even, you know, there's no such, the Bible says like,

there is no such thing as a white lie.

The Bible says no lie is of the truth.

Do your best to tell. Now I've said things after I said them,

I didn't say that just right, but that don't mean you're lying.

Lying has an element of deceit in it. You know it's not true when you told them.

That's a lie. Or if you, you know, well, the half-truth.

What about, well, just do your best to tell the truth. Come on,

somebody, help me out here.

Let's not be, let's be honest and having, there's a thing called integrity.

I got to quit, man, but I got integrity. You see that bottle right there?

That bottle has integrity.

There's no water escaping out of that bottle. That bottle was made to carry

that water. That has integrity.

It's doing what it was made to do. It's holding the water.

Now, you say, well, it ain't no big deal. I put a little bitty pinhole in that

bottle. It's lost its integrity.

You know what? If you put a little pinhole in the bottom, oh,

it'll sit there for a while.

But next thing you know, you start to see a puddle of water form around that bottle.

And that's what little white lies do. You're losing your integrity.

You don't want to lose your integrity. All you got is your integrity.

That's all you got is your reputation. I don't want to be known as a liar, do you?

I don't want to be known as somebody who can't tell, you can't believe a word

I say. You ever heard anybody say that?

Oh, yeah, I know him. You can't believe a word he says. That ain't the way God wants his people to be.

Jesus said what? I already quoted it. Let your yea be yea, yes be yes,

and your nay be nay. If it's yes, it's yes. If it's nay, it's nay.

Thou shalt not lie. Don't be bearing false witness against your neighbor.

All right. And hurry up. We've got to hurry up. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor. Thou shalt not covet.

That means taking, you have a desire for something.

Now this goes two sides. Covet means you, covetousness is wanting something more than what you have.

And that's kind of natural, but that can be, that can be bad.

You can covet, you can have, you could want a new car so bad that you start

missing church to work night shift. So you can get 10 more cents on the hour

because you're coveting that new car.

That is one side of covetousness, okay? And the other side is something that

belongs to somebody else.

Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife.

You don't, you know, that, and I'll never forget, I learned this as a little

boy driving down the road with my, Brother Paul was the pastor,

and I'm a little boy in the car, and I see a car, I said, oh man,

I'd like to have that car.

He said, no, you'd like to have one like it. That one belongs to him. Amen.

Never forgot that. I was 10 years old and I still remember that.

You know, if you want one, get out and get your own.

Because you see, some people covet so bad, they'll take it if it ain't theirs.

Ooh, I'd like that one. He's going to park that tonight and I'm going to snatch that dude up.

I'm going to, what's the word? I'm going to confiscate that.

So Jesus said, or the Lord said in the Old Testament. Don't covet your neighbor's

house. Don't covet his wife.

Don't covet his servants or his animals or anything. That's your neighbor's. That's his.

Respect his. You know, we need to respect each other in today's world. Respect.

Brother Matthew said this one time, and I never forgot it. He said,

you know, he wanted to have his own saw.

He didn't want to go borrow on somebody else's, and he didn't want somebody

else's. If he wanted a saw, he wanted to have his own saw.

And I think that's the way we should do, don't you?

Nothing wrong with borrowing a tool or something, but don't want somebody.

How about getting your own saw?

Getting your own hammer? Don't borrow Earl's chainsaws all the time.

Go get you one. Praise the Lord.

Brother Earl, You got a pole saw I can borrow? No, he ain't never heard that, I bet.

Oh, hallelujah. Get your own saw, man. Get your own wife.

In other words, be responsible for yourself. Make something out of your own

self. Don't be wanting everybody else's stuff.

Get your own car. Get your own job. Get your own house. Come on,

somebody. You know, that's what he's saying.

Because a lot of times if they covet what belongs to somebody else,

they're not having the incentive to get their own.

Quiet in here tonight. I'm just on the Ten Commandments, folks.

That's all. Well, let me hurry up. That's the last one.

And all the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the noise of the

trumpet and the mountain smoking.

And the people saw it and they removed and stood afar off.

And they told Moses, said, Moses, we got to have you do the talking because

what we just, what we're, you know, we're seeing this lightning, thundering on.

That scares me. God ought to scare you. And the principles, and we need to respect.

You see, this is, I wish I'd had my other information. I had fancy words and

nice words to explain it.

But this is a principle and foundational thing that comes from God.

This is divine. These principles and precepts come from that which is above

and that which is eternal.

Amen. That which the United States and any country that builds on these,

the law, the civil law, these kinds of things, you, if you build on this,

you're going to have something solid.

And if you build a life based on the 10 commandments, you're going to have a pretty solid life.

Amen. That's what it's all about.

That's what it's all about. But God doesn't want to just do it just because

you get in trouble if you don't do it.

He wants you to do it because you got it in here.

Yeah, he wants you to do it because it's in your heart.

And when you receive the Spirit of God, when you get the Holy Ghost,

he takes and he writes his law in your heart.

I don't want to disobey him to you. I don't want to do something I'm not supposed to do.

I know, you know, they had an offering for the sins of ignorance,

I'd have burnt that one up all the time, man. I'd have been offering that one all the time.

Because we're ignorant people. Humanity has a problem. They think too much of their self.

Some of these scientists and some of these industrialists and some of these

people that say there's no God

and we don't need God, we know how things work. No, no, no, no, no, no.

They're thinking too much of

themselves. The Bible says a fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

So we need to respect the things of God. We need to understand that what,

don't you understand that we have the word of God, how valuable this is?

Don't you realize how valuable what's going on right here tonight is?

Not because I'm doing it, but because of what's being taught,

what's going out. You see, you don't get this from Oprah.

Oprah ain't telling you this. You don't get this from wherever,

whatever, on the idiot box and all that stuff. You're not getting that.

You know, what you get in the world is he got me, I'm going to get him.

And you get things, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there that's not God.

It's not divine. It's not holy. It's not uplifting.

It's not something you can build your life on. How about building your life on Jesus Christ?

Build your life on his word and his principles. And in closing, Jesus said it like this.

He said, a man, a person that hears these sayings of mine and does them is like

a wise man that dug deep and found bedrock and he built his house on bedrock.

And then when the rains come and the storms come and the problems come,

he said the rains and the storms, he said the house on the rock stood still.

But he said a man that hears these sayings of mine, and let me say,

these Ten Commandments are the sayings of Jesus, because Jesus is the Lord thy God.

And Thomas said, Thomas saw the cut in his side and the pierced hands.

And Thomas, one of the disciples that didn't believe that he had risen,

when Jesus appeared, he said, Thomas, I want you to see.

Thomas said, I won't believe he's risen until I see the place in his side and

the nail prints in his hands.

Well, Jesus showed up and he said, come here, Thomas.

He said, see the nail prints and see the scar on my side. And Thomas said, my Lord and my God.

So when we talk about the sayings of Jesus, we're talking about the Word of God.

Because, let's go a little deeper, Jesus is the Word of God.

He is the Word incarnate. Every good principle, He was God manifest in the flesh.

So a man that hears these sayings of mine doesn't pay any attention to the Ten

Commandments, doesn't pay any attention to God's principles,

doesn't pay any attention to the word of God, builds his house.

Jesus said, it's like a man that builds his house on the sand.

You ever built a sandcastle on the sand and a wave comes in and you can't even tell it was ever there.

He said, the rains come, the storms come, the floods come, and the house,

the kids used to say in Sunday school, house on the sand, because it won't last.

I want to be built on something that's going to last. And you see,

ladies and gentlemen, when you build on this, you're building for eternity.

For eternity. This is going to last forever.

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words will never pass away.

And not every little comma and every little period and every little exclamation point,

every, well, we say that, but what they're talking about, every jot and every

tittle in Hebrew, they had little dots and little commas and every little thing written,

will come to pass.

It'll be just like he said it will be. And what's good, he says is good, is good.

And what's not good, he says is not good, is not good.

And let me say this in closing again, I'm going to try to close.

Everything that God gives us, he gave those commandments to Israel for their own good.

He didn't do that to put bondage on them or put a weight around their neck.

He gave them principles they could build a nation on.

Those are principles you can build a family on. You can build a neighborhood on.

You can build a city on. You can build a country on that, man.

And look at the United States.

What, 250 years ago, pilgrims and the people came from Europe because they wanted to worship in freedom.

They didn't want to have to belong to a state church. They wanted to be able

to pick the church they worshiped at. So they came over here.

And do you know, I think it's in one of the very first settlements,

Jamestown, I think is one of them.

And it might not be Jamestown. It might be another settlement before that,

but there's an old church there.

And in that old church, they've got a sign on the wall. And you know what that sign says? Acts 2, 38.

Do you know that they came and they didn't, you know, they didn't believe in

lying and they didn't believe in stealing and they didn't believe in committing

adultery, and they didn't believe in that.

You know, it used to be against the law to be a homosexual.

Did you understand that there were, you see, those laws that go way back were

because they were based on this and the teachings of Jesus Christ.

And it's no coincidence that the United States rose like it did,

the principles of freedom.

Now, I understand there's problems in the past with racism and all those things

and slavery and all that. But that all takes care of itself.

It all took care of itself. It was the people that believed this that got rid

of slavery. Come on, somebody.

What I'm saying is, hear the word of the Lord and live. Let's stand.

Thanks for being here tonight, everybody. I hope it turned out okay. I didn't have a...

Thank you for listening to our podcast Southwest Apostolic Church is a place of refuge,

if we can help you we'd be glad to do it pastor's cell number 317-469-3100 if

we can help you we'd be glad to do it God bless.