Be My People: Sermons on the Ten Commandments (The Protestant Pulpit Exchange)
The Ten Commandments were written for Jews, not Christians! Israel had just been rescued from Egyptian slavery and was camped at the base of Mount Sinai. If we were at the foot of Mount Sinai on that awesome day, we would be shaking in your boots-like everyone else.
Why all the fireworks? Why the overwhelming manifestations of divine power? Why thunder, lightning, trumpet, smoke, and earthquake? The reason is simple. Yes, they were Israelites — not Christians — gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai; but consider these solemn facts:.
What about the New Testament? Does it present the Big Ten as still being in force today, or not? What saith the Lord? Paul was quoting the tenth commandment. Paul was quoting the fifth commandment. James was quoting the sixth and seventh commandments. Based on these plain Bible verses, this message is clear: What about all the New Testament texts about not being saved by the law? Just as I got to his gate I saw him coming out of the front door. I stepped up to him and said: I do not know if it is true, but I hear that all He gets in return is cursing and blasphemy" He said, "Come in; come in.
If any man has a fine wife I am the man, and I have a lovely family of children, and God has been good to me. But do you know, we had company here the other night, and I cursed my wife at the table and did not know it till after the company had gone.
I never felt so mean and contemptible in my life as when my wife told me of it. She said she wanted the floor to open and let her down out of her seat. If I have tried once, I have tried a hundred times to stop swearing. You preachers don't know anything about it. When he is harassed and tormented the whole time, he can't help swearing. I know something about it. I used to swear myself. You used to swear? But I came up to talk to you, so that you will never want to swear as long as you live. I have been cursing all the day, and I don't know how to pray or what to pray for.
Ask God to forgive you if you want to be forgiven. After he prayed he got up and said: After a while he promised to go, but did not know what the people would say. At the next church prayer meeting, the man was there, and I sat right in front of him. He stood up and put his hands on the settee, and he trembled so much that I could feel the settee shake. If God can save a wretch like me, I want to have you pray for my salvation. Sometime ago I was back in that town, and did not see him; but when I was in California, a man asked me to take dinner with him.
I told him that I could not do so, for I had another engagement. Then he asked if I remembered him, and told me his name. It was all taken away. He was not only converted, but became an earnest, active Christian, and all these years has been serving God. That is what will take place when a man is born of the divine nature. Is there a swearing man ready to put this commandment into the scales, and step in to be weighed?
Suppose you swear only once in six months or a year- suppose you swear only once in ten years- do you think God will hold you guiltless for the act? It shows that your heart is not clean in God's sight. What are you going to do, blasphemer? Would you not be found wanting? You would be like a feather in the balance. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: Can you say that you observe the Sabbath properly? You may be a professed Christian: Or do you neglect the house of God on the Sabbath day, and spend your time drinking and carousing in places of vice and crime, showing contempt for God and His law?
Are you ready to step into the scales? Where were you last Sabbath? How did you spend it? I honestly believe that this commandment is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated, but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place.
The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. The fourth commandment begins with the word remember , showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote this law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?
I believe that the Sabbath question today is a vital one for the whole country. It is the burning question of the present time. If you give up the Sabbath the church goes; if you give up the church the home goes; and if the home goes the nation goes. That is the direction in which we are traveling. The church of God is losing its power on account of so many people giving up the Sabbath, and using it to promote selfishness. God rested after creation, and ordained the Sabbath as a rest for man.
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He blessed it and hallowed it. Remember the rest-day to keep it holy. It is the day when the body may be refreshed and strengthened after six days of labor, and the soul drawn into closer fellowship with its Maker. True observance of the Sabbath may be considered under two general heads: A man ought to turn aside from his ordinary employment one day in seven. There are many whose occupation will not permit them to observe Sunday, but they should observe some other day as a Sabbath. Saturday is my day of rest, because I generally preach on Sunday, and I look forward to it as a boy does to a holiday.
God knows what we need. Ministers and missionaries often tell me that they take no rest-day; they do not need it because they are in the Lord's work. That is a mistake. When God was giving Moses instructions about the building of the tabernacle, He referred especially to the Sabbath, and gave injunctions for its strict observance; and later, when Moses was conveying the words of the Lord to the children of Israel, he interpreted them by saying that not even were sticks to be gathered on the sabbath to kindle fires for smelting or other purposes.
Inspite of their zeal and haste to erect the tabernacle, the workmen were to have their day of rest. The command applies to ministers and others managed in Christian work today as much as to those Israelite workmen of old. Exceptions are to be made for works of necessity and works of emergency. By "works of necessity" I mean those acts that Christ justified when He approved of leading one's ox or ass to water. Watchmen, police, stokers on board steamers, and many others have engagements that necessitate their working on the sabbath.
By "works of emergency" I mean those referred to by Christ when He approved of pulling an ox or an ass out of a pit on the sabbath day. In case of fire or sickness a man is often called on to do things that would not otherwise be justifiable. A Christian man was once urged by his employer to work on Sunday. No man should make another work seven days in the week.
One day is demanded for rest. A man who has to work the seven days has nothing to look forward to, and life becomes humdrum. Many Christians are guilty in this respect. I believe we are breaking God's laws by using the cars on Sunday and depriving conductors and others of their Sabbath. Remember, the fourth commandment expressly refers to the "stranger that is within thy gates. But you ask, "What are we to do? How are we to get to church?
It will be better for you. Once when I was holding meetings in London, in my ignorance I made arrangements to preach four times in different places one Sabbath. After I had made the appointments I found I had to walk sixteen miles; but I walked it, and I slept that night with a clear conscience. I have made it a rule never to use the cars, and if I have a private carriage, I insist that horse and man shall rest on Monday.
I want no hackman to rise up in judgment against me. My friends, if we want to help the Sabbath, let business men and Christians never patronize cars on the Sabbath. I would hate to own stock in those companies, to be the means of taking the Sabbath from these men, and have to answer for it at the day of judgment. Let those who are Christians at any rate endeavor to keep a conscience void of offense on this point. This is no new sin. The prophet Amos hurled his invectives against oppressors who said, "Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? We are told that many street car companies would not pay if it were not for the Sabbath traffic, and the Sabbath edition of newspapers is also counted upon as the most profitable.
The railroad men of this country are breaking down with softening of the brain, and die at the age of fifty or sixty. They think their business is so important that they must run their trains seven days in the week. Businessmen travel on the Sabbath so as to be on hand for business Monday morning. But if they do so God will not prosper them. Work is good for man and is commanded, "Six days shalt thou labor" ; but overwork and work on the Sabbath takes away the best thing he has.
It is needed to repair and restore the body after six days of work. It is proved that a man can do more in six days than in seven. I hold it to be the most valuable blessing conceded to man. It is the cornerstone of all civilization, and its removal might affect even the health of the people. Gladstone recently told a friend that the secret of his long life is that amid all the pressure of public cares he never forgot the Sabbath, with its rest for the body and the soul. The constitution of the United States protects the president in his weekly day of rest.
He has ten days, "Sundays excepted," in which to consider a bill that has been sent to him for signature. Every workingman in the republic ought to be as thoroughly protected as the president. If workingmen got up a strike against unnecessary work on the Sabbath, they would have the sympathy of a good many. No man can continuously break the Sabbath and keep his physical and mental health. Ask aged men, and they will tell you they never knew men who continuously broke the Sabbath who did not fail in mind, body, or moral principles.
God didn't forget them in this commandment, and man should not forget them either. But "rest" does not mean idleness. No man enjoys idleness for any length of time. When one goes on a vacation, one does not lie around doing nothing all that time. Hard work at tennis, hunting, and other pursuits fills the hours. A healthy mind must find something to do. Hence the Sabbath rest does not mean inactivity.
As regards these, we should avoid extremes.
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On the one hand we find a rigor in Sabbath observance that is nowhere commanded in Scripture, and that reminds one of the formalism of the Pharisees more than of the spirit of the Gospel. Such strictness does more harm than good. It repels people and makes the Sabbath a burden. On the other hand, we should jealously guard against a loose way of keeping the Sabbath. Already in many cities it is profaned openly. When I was a boy, the Sabbath lasted from sundown on Saturday to sundown on Sunday, and I remember how we boys used to shout when it was over.
It was the worst day in the week to us. I believe it can be made the brightest day in the week.
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Every child ought to be reared so that he shall be able to say that he would rather have the other six days weeded out of his memory than the Sabbath of his childhood. First of all, of course, is attendance at public worship. In many families, at ten o'clock on the Sabbath, attendance at church is still an open question. There is no open question on Monday morning- 'John, will you go to work today. Another has said that "we need to be in the drill of observance as well as in the liberty of faith. A man is not likely to worship at all unless he has regularly appointed times and means for worship.
Family and private devotions are almost certain to be omitted altogether unless one gets into the habit and has a special time set apart daily. On one occasion the preacher had to send someone into the gallery to wake me up. I thought it was hard to have to work in the field all the week and then to be obliged to go to church and hear a sermon I didn't understand. I thought I wouldn't go to church anymore when I got away from home; but I had got so in the habit of going that I couldn't stay away.
After one or two Sabbaths, back again to the house of God I went. There I first found Christ, and I have often said since, "Mother, I thank you for making me go to the house of God when I didn't want to go. Don't let them go off fishing and getting into bad company, or it won't be long before they will come home and curse you.
I know few things more beautiful than to see a father and mother coming up the aisle with their daughters and sons, and sitting down together to hear the Word of God. It is a good thing to have the children, not in some remote loft or gallery, but in a good place, well in sight. Though they cannot understand the sermon now, when they get older they won't desire to break away, they will continue attending public worship in the house of God.
But we must not mistake the means for the end. We must not think that the Sabbath is just for the sake of being able to attend meetings. There are some people who think they must spend the whole day at meetings or private devotions. The result is that at nightfall they are tired out, and the day has brought them no rest. The number of church services attended ought to be measured by the person's ability to enjoy them and get good from them, without being wearied.
Attending meetings is not the only way to observe the Sabbath. The Israelites were commanded to keep it in their dwellings as well as in holy convocation. The home, that center of so great influence over the life and character of the people, ought to be made the scene of true Sabbath observance. The boys say, "I do wish 'twas night," or, "I do hate the Sabbath," or, "I do wish the Sabbath were over. In order to this end, many suggestions might be followed. Make family prayers especially attractive by having the children learn some verse or story from the Bible.
Give more time to your children than you can give on weekdays, reading to them and perhaps taking them to walk in the afternoon or evening. Show by your conduct that the Sabbath is a delight, and they will soon catch your spirit. Set aside some time for religious instruction, without making this a task. You can make it interesting for the children by telling Bible stories and asking them to guess the names of the characters.
Have Sunday games for the younger children. Picture books, puzzle maps of Palestine, and such things can be easily obtained. Sunday albums and Sunday clocks are other devices. Set aside attractive books for the Sabbath, not letting the children have these during the week.
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By doing this, the children can be brought to look forward to the day with eagerness and pleasure. Prayer, meditation, reading, ought not to be forgotten. Think of men devoting six days a week to their body, which will soon pass away, and begrudging one day to the soul, which will live on and on forever! Is it too much for God to ask for one day to be devoted to the growth and training of the spiritual senses, when the other senses are kept busy the other six days?
If your circumstances permit, engage in some definite Christian work, such as teaching in Sunday school, or visiting the sick. Do all the good you can. Sin keeps no Sabbath, and no more should good deeds. There is plenty of opportunity in this fallen world to perform works of mercy and religion.
Make your Sabbath down here a foretaste of the eternal Sabbath that is in store for believers. You want power in your Christian life, do you? You want Holy Ghost power? You want the dew of heaven on your brow? You want to see men convicted and converted? I don't believe we shall ever have genuine conversions until we get straight on this law of God. Men seem to think they have a right to change the holy day into a holiday. The young have more temptations to break the Sabbath than we had forty years ago. There are three great temptations: Twenty years ago Christian people in Chicago would have been horrified if anyone had prophesied that all the theaters would be open every Sabbath; but that is what has come to pass.
If it had been prophesied twenty years ago that Christian men would take a wheel and go off on Sunday morning and be gone all day on an excursion, Christians would have been horrified and would have said it was impossible; but that is what is going on today all over the country. But there are two hundred thousand newsboys selling the paper on Sunday. Would you like to have your boy one of them? Men are kept running trains in order to distribute the papers.
Would you like your Sabbath taken away from you? If not, then practice the Golden Rule, and don't touch the papers. Their contents make them unfit for reading any day, not to say Sunday. Some New York dailies advertise Sunday editions of sixty pages. Many dirty pieces of scandal in this and other countries are raked up and put into them. Even when a so-called sermon is printed, it is completely buried by the fiction and news matter. It is time that ministers went into their pulpits and preached against Sunday newspapers if they haven't done it already.
Put the man in the scales that buys and reads Sunday papers. After reading them for two or three hours he might go and hear the best sermon in the world, but you couldn't preach anything into him. His mind is filled up with what he has read, and there is no room for thoughts of God. I believe that the archangel Gabriel himself could not make an impression on an audience that has its head full of such trash. If you bored a hole into a man's head, you could not inject any thoughts of God and heaven.
I don't believe that the publishers would allow their own children to read them. Why then should they give them to my children and to yours? A merchant who advertises in Sunday papers is not keeping the Sabbath. It is a master-stroke of the devil to induce Christian men to do this in order to make trade for Monday.
But if a man makes money, and yet his sons are ruined and his home broken up, what has he gained? Ladies buy the Sunday papers and read the advertisements of Monday bargains to see what they can buy cheap. Just so with their religion. They are willing to have it if it doesn't cost anything.
If Christian men and women refused to buy them, if Christian merchants refused to advertise in them, they would soon die out, because that is where they get most of their support. They tell me the Sunday paper has come to stay, and I may as well let it alone. I believe it is a great evil, and I shall fight it while I live. I never read a Sunday paper, and wouldn't have one in my house. They are often sent me, but I tear them up without reading them. I will have nothing to do with them. They do more harm to religion than any other one agency I know. Their whole influence is against keeping the Sabbath holy.
They are an unnecessary evil. Can't a man read enough news on weekdays without desecrating the Sabbath? We had no Sunday papers till the war came, and we got along very well without them. They have been increasing in size and in number ever since then, and I think they have been lowering their tone ever since.
If you believe that, help to fight them too. Stamp them out, beginning with yourself. No nation has ever prospered that has trampled the Sabbath in the dust. Show me a nation that has done this and I will show you a nation that has got in it the seeds of ruin and decay. I believe that Sabbath desecration will carry a nation down quicker than anything else. Adam brought marriage and the Sabbath with him out of Eden, and neither can be disregarded without suffering. When the children of Israel went into the Promised Land, God told them to let their land rest every seven years, and He would give them as much in six years as in seven.
For four hundred and ninety years they disregarded that law. But mark you, Nebuchadnezzar came and took them off into Babylon, and kept them seventy years in captivity, and the land had its seventy sabbaths of rest. Seven times seventy is four hundred and ninety. So they did not gain much by breaking this law. You can give God His day, or He will take it. On the other hand, honoring the fourth commandment brings blessing: If Satan can break the conscience down on one point, he can break it down on all. When I was in France in , I could not tell one day from the other.
On Sunday, stores were open and buildings were erected, the same as on other days. See how quickly that country went down. One hundred years ago France and England stood abreast in the march of nations. Where do they stand today? France undertook to wipe out the Sabbath, and has pretty nearly wiped itself out, while England belts the globe. I will not go away on Saturday evening if I have to travel on Sunday to get back. I will not do unnecessary work on the Sabbath. I will do all I can to keep it holy as God commanded. Moody, what are you going to do? I have to work seven days a week or starve.
Wouldn't it be a grand thing to have a martyr in the nineteenth century? I would give something to erect a monument to such a martyr for his fidelity to God's law. I would go around the world to attend his funeral. We want today men who will make up their minds to do what is right and stand by it if the heavens tumble on their heads.
What is to become of Christian Associations and Sunday schools, of churches and Christian Endeavor societies, if the Christian Sabbath is given up to recreation and made a holiday? Hasn't the time come to call a halt if men want power with God? Let men call you narrow and bigoted, but be man enough to stand by God's law, and you will have power and blessing. That is the kind of Christianity we want just now in this country. Any man can go with the crowd, but we want men who will go against the current. Sabbath-breaker, are you ready to step into the scales?
The author of this book was not an advocate of the tenets of Seventh Day Adventism. The Fifth Commandment Honour thy father and thy mother: It really seems as if the days the apostle Paul wrote about are upon us: For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection There are perhaps more men in this country that are breaking the hearts of their fathers and mothers and trampling on the law of God than in any other civilized country in the world.
How many sons treat their parents with contempt and make light of their entreaties? A young man will have the kindest care from parents; they will watch over him and care for all his wants, and some bad companion will come in and sweep him away from them in a few weeks. How many young ladies have married against their parents wishes and have gone off and made their own life bitter! I never knew one case that did not turn out badly. They invariably bring ruin upon themselves unless they repent. The first four commandments deal with our relations to God. They tell us how to worship and when to worship; they forbid irreverence and impiety in word and act.
Now God turns to our relations with each other, and isn't it significant that He deals first with family life? How does He begin? Not by telling us how kings ought to reign, or how soldiers ought to fight, or how merchants ought to conduct their business, but how boys and girls ought to behave at home. Parents stand in the place of God to their children in a great many ways until the children arrive at years of discretion.
If the children are true to their parents, it will be easier for them to be true to God. He used the human relationship as a symbol of our relationship to Him both by creation and by grace. God is our Father in heaven. We are His offspring. On the other hand, if they have not learned to be obedient and respectful at home, they are likely to have little respect for the law of the land.
It is all in the heart; and the heart is prepared at home for good or bad conduct outside. The tree grows the way the twig is bent. It means love and affection, gratitude, respect. We are told that in the East the words "father" and "mother" include those who are "superiors in age, wisdom and in civil or religious station," so that when the Jews were taught to honor their father and mother it included all who were placed over them in these relations, as well as their parents. Isn't there a crying need for that same feeling today?
The lawlessness of the present time is a natural consequence of the growing absence of a feeling of respect for those in authority. It has been pointed out as worthy of notice that this commandment enjoins honor for the mother , and yet in eastern countries the present-day woman is held of little account. When I was in Palestine a few years ago, the prettiest girl in Jericho was sold by her father in exchange for a donkey.
In many ancient nations, just as in certain parts of heathendom today, the parents are killed off as soon as they become old and feeble. Can't we see the hand of God here, raising the woman to her rightful position of honor out of the degradation into which she had been dragged by heathenism? You may make light of it and laugh at it, young man, but remember that God has given this commandment, and you cannot set it aside.
If we get back to this law, we shall have power and blessing. I believe it to be literally true that our temporal condition depends on the way we act upon this commandment. Experience teaches the same thing. A good, loving son generally turns out better than a refractory son. Obedience and respect at home prepare the way for obedience to the employer, and are joined with other virtues that help toward a prosperous career, crowned with a ripe, honored old age. Disobedience and disrespect for parents are often the first steps in the downward track.
Many a criminal has testified that this is the point where he first went astray. I have lived over sixty years, and I have learned one thing if I have learned nothing else- that no man or woman who dishonors father or mother ever prospers. Young man, young woman, how do you treat your parents? Tell me that, and I will tell you how you an going to get on in life.
When I hear a young man speaking contemptuously of his grey-haired father or mother, I say he has sunk very low indeed. When I see a young man as polite as any gentleman can be when he is out in society, but who snaps at his mother and speaks unkindly to his father, I would not give the snap of my finger for his religion.
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If there is any man or woman on earth that ought to be treated kindly and tenderly, it is that loving mother or that loving father. If they cannot have your regard through life, what reward are they to have for all their care and anxiety? Think how they loved you and provided for you in your early days. Let your mind go back to the time when you were ill. Did your mother neglect you?
When a neighbor came in and said, "Now, mother, you go and lie down; you have been up for a week; I will take your place for a night"-did she do it? No; and if the poor worn body forced her to it at last, she lay watching, and if she heard your voice, she was at your side directly, anticipating all your wants, wiping the perspiration away from your brow. If you wanted water, how soon you got it! She would gladly have taken the disease into her own body to save you. Her love for you would drive her to any lengths. No matter to what depths of vice and misery you have sunk, no matter how profligate you have grown, she has not turned you out of her heart.
Perhaps she loves you all the more because you are wayward. She would draw you back by the bands of a love that never dies. When I was in England, I read of a man who professed to be a Christian, who was brought before the magistrate for not supporting his aged father. He had let him go to the workhouse. My friends, I'd rather be content with a crust of bread and a drink of water than let my father or mother go to the workhouse.
The idea of a professing Christian doing such a thing! God have mercy on such a godless Christianity as that! It is a withered-up thing, and the breath of heaven will drive it away. Don't profess to love God and do a thing like that. A friend of mine told me of a poor man who had sent his son to school in the city. One day the father was hauling some wood into the city, perhaps to pay his boy's bills.
The young man was walking down the street with two of his school friends, all dressed in the very height of fashion. His father saw him, and was so glad that he left his wood, and went to the sidewalk to speak to him. But the boy was ashamed of his father, who had on his old working clothes, and spurned him, and said: I remember a very promising young man whom I had in the Sunday school in Chicago. His father was a confirmed drunkard, and his mother took in washing to educate her four children. This was her eldest son, and I thought that he was going to redeem the whole family.
But one day a thing happened that made him go down in my estimation. The boy was in the high school, and was a very bright scholar. One day he stood with his mother at the cottage door- it was a poor house, but she could not pay for their schooling, and feed and clothe her children, and hire a very good house too, out of her earnings. When they were talking a young man from the high school came up the street, and this boy walked away from his mother. Next day the young man said: He will never amount to anything. I have kept my eye on him. He has gone down, down, down, and now he is just a miserable wreck.
Of course he would go down. Ashamed of his mother who loved him and toiled for him, and bore so much hardship for him! I cannot tell you the contempt I had for that one act. Let us look at Some years ago I heard of a poor woman who sent her boy to school and college. When he was to graduate, he wrote his mother to come, but she sent back word that she could not because her only skirt had already been turned once. She was so shabby that she was afraid he would be ashamed of her.
He wrote back that he didn't care how she was dressed and urged so strongly that she went. He met her at the station, and took her to a nice place to stay. The day came for his graduation, and he walked down the broad aisle with that poor mother dressed very shabbily, and put her into one of the best seats in the house. To her great surprise he was the valedictorian of the class, and he carried everything before him.
He won a prize, and when it was given to him, he stepped down before the whole audience, and kissed his mother, and said: I would not have had it if it had not been for you. The one glimpse the Bible gives us of thirty out of the thirty-three years of Christ's life on earth shows that He did not come to destroy this fifth commandment. The secret of all those silent years is embodied in that verse in Luke's Gospel- "And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them. Did He not condemn the miserable evasions of this law by the Pharisees of His own day: Howbeit in vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men Full well ye reject the Commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.
For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free.
And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; making the WORD of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered. On every New Year's morning each man and boy, from the emperor to the lowest peasant, is said to pay a visit to his mother, carrying her a present varying in value according to his station in life. He thanks her for all she has done for him and asks a continuance of her favor another year.
Abraham Lincoln used to say: I would rather have them honor me a thousand times over than have the world honor me. I would rather have their esteem and favor than the esteem of the whole world. And any man who seeks the honor and esteem of the world, and doesn't treat his parents right, is sure to be disappointed. Young man, if your parents are still living, treat them kindly. Do all you can to make their declining years sweet and happy.
Bear in mind that this is the only commandment that you may not always be able to obey. As long as you live, you will be able to serve God, to keep the sabbath, to obey all the other commandments; but the day comes to most men when father and mother die. What bitter feelings you will have when the opportunity has gone by if you fail to show them the respect and love that is their due!
How long is it since you wrote to your mother? Perhaps you have not written home for months, or it may be for years. How often I get letters from mothers urging me to try to influence their sons! Which would you rather be- a Joseph or an Absalom? Joseph wasn't satisfied until he had brought his old father down into Egypt. He was the greatest man in Egypt, next to Pharaoh; he was arrayed in the finest garments; he had Pharaoh's ring on his hand, and a gold chain about his neck, and they cried before him, "Bow the knee.
He wasn't ashamed of the old man with his shepherd's clothes. What a contrast we see in Absalom. That young man broke his father's heart by his rebellion, and the Jews are said to throw a stone at Absalom's pillar to the present day, whenever they pass it, as a token of their horror of Absalom's unnatural conduct. Come, now, are you ready to be weighed? If you have been dishonoring your father and mother, step into the scales and see how quickly you will be found wanting.
See how quickly you will strike the beam. I don't know any man who is much lighter than one who treats his parents with contempt. Do you disobey them just as much as you dare? Do you try to deceive them? Do you call them old-fashioned, and sneer at their advice? How do you treat that venerable father and praying mother? You may be a professing Christian, but I wouldn't give much for your religion unless it gets into your life and teaches you how to live.
I wouldn't give a snap of my finger for a religion that doesn't begin at home and regulate your conduct- toward your parents. The Sixth Commandment Thou shalt not kill. I need not kill a person to be a murderer. If I get so angry that I wish a man dead, I am a murderer in God's sight. God looks at the heart and says he that hateth his brother is a murderer. First, let us see what this commandment does not mean. It does not forbid the killing of animals for food and for other reasons.
Millions of rams and lambs and turtledoves must have been killed every year for sacrifices under the Mosaic system. Christ Himself ate of the Passover lamb, and we are told definitely of cases where He ate fish and provided it for His disciples and the people to eat. It does not forbid the killing of burglars or attackers in self-defense. Directly after the giving of the Ten Commandments, God laid down the ordinance that if a thief be found breaking in and be smitten that he die, it was pardonable.
Did not Christ justify this idea of self-defense when He said: It does not forbid capital punishment. God Himself set the death penalty upon violations of each of the first seven commandments, as well as for other crimes. God said to Noah after the deluge, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Man is made in God's image. He is built for eternity.
He is more than a mere animal. His life ought therefore to be held sacred. Once taken, it can never be restored. In heathen lands human life is no more sacred than the life of animals; even in Christian lands there are heartless and selfish men who hold it cheap; but God has invested it with a high value.
An infidel philosopher of the eighteenth century said: Where is the crime," he asked, "of turning a few ounces of blood out of their channel? Let me give you a passage from H. You could buy a man for a musket, or if you paid money, for seven dollars, and after you had bought him you could feed him, starve him, work him, whip him, or eat him- they generally ate them, unless they were so full of tobacco they could not stomach them! But if you go there today you could not buy a man for seven million dollars.
There are no men for sale there now. What has made the difference in the price of humanity? The twelve hundred Christian chapels scattered over that island tell the story. The people have learned to read that Book which says: We talk of our American civilization. We forget the alarming increase of crime in our midst. It is said that there is no civilized country on the globe where murder is so frequently committed and so seldom punished. There is that other kind of murder that is increasing at an appalling rate among us- suicide.
There have been infidels in all ages who have advocated it's a justifiable means of release from trial and difficulty; yet thinking men, as far back as Aristotle, have generally condemned it as cowardly and unjustifiable under any conditions. No man has a right to take his own life from such motives any more than the life of another. It has been pointed out that the Jewish race, the people of God, always counted length of days as a blessing. The Bible does not mention one single instance of a good man committing suicide.
In the four thousand years of Old Testament history it records only four suicides, and only one suicide in the New Testament. Look at the references in the Bible to see what kind of men they were. But I want to speak of other classes of murderers that are very numerous in this country, although they are not classified as murderers. The man who is the cause of the death of another through criminal carelessness is guilty. The man who sells diseased meat; the saloonkeeper whose drink has maddened the brain of a criminal; those who adulterate food; the employer who jeopardizes the lives of employees and others by unsafe surroundings and conditions in harmful occupations- they are all guilty of blood where life is lost as a consequence.
When I was in England in , I met a gentleman who claimed that they were ahead of us in the respect they had for the law. A young man who comes home night after night drunk, and when his mother remonstrates, curses her grey hairs and kills her by inches, is the blackest kind of a murderer. One young man at college, an only son, whose mother wrote to him remonstrating against his gambling and drinking habits, took the letters out of the post office, and when he found that they were from her, he tore them up without reading them.
She said, "I thought I would die when I found I had lost my hold on that son. And he is as truly guilty of breaking this sixth commandment as if he drove a dagger to her heart. If all young men in this country who are killing their parents and their wives by inches, should be hung this next week, there would be a great many funerals. How are you treating your parents? Come, are you killing them? This sixth commandment follows very naturally after the fifth, "Honor thy father and dry mother.
Bear in mind that the commandment refers not only to shooting a man down in cold blood; but he is the worst murderer who goes on, month after month, year after year, until he has crowded the life out of a sainted mother and put a godly father under the sod. Let us look once again at the Sermon on the Mount, that men think so much of, and see what Christ had to say: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: Did you ever get so angry that you wished any one harm?
Then you are guilty. I may be addressing someone who is cultivating an unforgiving spirit. That is the spirit of the murderer, and needs to be rooted out of your heart. We can only read men's acts- what they have done. God looks down into the heart. That is the birthplace and home of the evil desires and intentions that lead to the transgression of all God's laws. Listen once more to the words of Jesus: Ah, if many of us were weighed now, we should find Belshazzar's doom written against us- "Tekel- wanting!
The Seventh Commandment Thou shalt not commit adultery. During their talk the officer said: The chaplain knew the man and his besetting sin, and quietly looking him in the face, answered: I would to God I could pass over this commandment, but I feel that the time has come to cry aloud and spare not. Plain speaking about it is not very fashionable nowadays. These themes are left to poets and novelists to handle. In an autobiography recently published in England, the writer attributed no small share of the follies and vices of his earlier years to his never having heard a plain, outspoken sermon on this seventh commandment.
But though men are inclined to pass it by, God is not silent or indifferent in regard to it. When I hear anyone make light of adultery and licentiousness, I take the Bible and see how God has let His curse and wrath come down upon it. For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction, and would root out all mine increase" Job Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?
Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person. Let no man deceive you with vain words: Be not ye therefore partakers with them" Ephesians 5: It speaks plainly, without compromise. This commandment is God's bulwark around marriage and the home. Marriage is one of the institutions that existed in Eden; it is older than the Fall. It is the most sacred relationship that can exist between human beings, taking precedence even of the relationship of the parent and child.
Someone has pointed out that as in the beginning God created one man and one woman, this is the true order for all ages. Where family ties are disregarded and dishonored, the results are always fatal. The home existed before the church, and unless the home is kept pure and undefiled, there can be no family religion, and the church is in danger. Adultery and licentiousness have swept nation after nation out of existence.
Did it not bring fire and brimstone from heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah? What carried Rome into ruin? The obscene frescoes and statues at Pompeii and Naples tell the tale. Where there is no sacredness around the home, population dwindles; family virtues disappear; the children are corrupt from their very birth [i. In there were twenty-five thousand divorces in this country. I was on one of the fashionable streets of a prominent city some time ago, where every family except two on the whole street had either a son or a daughter that had been divorced.
Divorce and debauchery go hand in hand.
Scripture and Narrative
We are not gaining much in turning away from this old law, are we? Lust is the devil's counterfeit of love. There is nothing more beautiful on earth than a pure love, and there is nothing so blighting as lust. I do not know of a quicker, shorter way down to hell than by adultery and the kindred sins condemned by this commandment.
The Bible says that with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, but "whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart. For the sake of some vile harlot he will trample on the feelings and entreaties of a sainted mother and beautiful wife and godly sister. Young man, are you leading an impure life? Suppose God's scales should drop down before you, what would you do? Are you fit for the kingdom of heaven? You know very well that you are not. When you look upon that pure wife or mother, you say, "What a vile wretch I am!
The harlot is bringing me down to an untimely and dishonored grave. The idea of making light of it! I do not know of any sin that will make a man run down to ruin more quickly. I am appalled when I think of what is going on in the world; of so many young men living impure lives, and talking about the virtue of women as if it didn't amount to anything. This sin is coming in upon us like a flood at the present day. In every city there is an army of prostitutes. Young men by hundreds are being utterly ruined by this accursed sin.
I think that the most infernal thing that shines on in America is the way a woman is treated after she has been ruined by a man, often under fair promises of marriage. Someone said that when the prodigal son came home he had the best robe and the fatted calf, but what does the prodigal daughter get? Although she may have been more sinned against than sinning, she is cast out and ostracized by society. She is condemned to an almost hopeless life of degradation and shame, sinking step by step into a loathsome grave, unless she hurries her doom by suicide.
But the wretch who has ruined her in body and soul holds his head as high as ever, and society attaches no stain to him. If he had failed to pay his gambling debts, or was detected cheating at cards, he would promptly be dropped by society; but he may boast of his impure life, and his companions will think nothing of it. Parents who would not allow their daughters to become acquainted with a man who is rude in manners, sometimes do not hesitate to accept the society of men who are known to be impure. Talk about stealing- a man who steals the virtue of a woman is the meanest thief that ever was on the face of the earth!
One who goes into your house and steals your money is a prince compared with a vile libertine who takes the virtue of your sister, or steals the affection of your wife, and robs you of her; no sneak thief that ever walked the earth is so mean as he. How men pass laws to protect their property, but when that which is far nearer and dearer to them than money is taken, it is made light of!
If a man should push a young lady into the river and she should be drowned, the law would lay hold of him, and he would be tried for murder and hung.