Concerning the Ten Commandments

HANGING TWO INSTEAD OF TEN

An Argument Against Arbitrarily Posting The Ten Commandments

By Mark E. McLeroy

Part 2 of 4

For those of you who insist on holding on to the Ten Commandments, let me ask you another question: What did God say about the “when”, “where”, and “who” of teaching these laws? Does God suggest that the Commandments be hung in our schools? Does He suggest that they be hung in our public buildings or statehouses? May I suggest for the answers to these questions that we take a look in the Word at Deut 6:6-9: “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” Let me ask you this: Do you have the Ten Commandments posted on the walls in your house? If not, then why are you clammoring to have them hung in the schools? Wouldn’t you agree that God pretty much gave the reponsibility for teaching children about the Commandments to the parents, and possibly family, in the previous scripture?

Now, go back over there to Matthew and take a look at the standard that Jesus explained is required to obey the Commandments. He made it pretty obvious that God expected not only the letter of the Law to be kept, but also the spirit of the Law. What does that mean? Well, take a look at what Jesus had to say about the sixth and seventh Commandments (Before we go on, did you remember which ones they are?) In Matt 5:21-22, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry (emphasis mine) with with his brother will be subject to judgment.” So if we assume breaking a commandment is a sin, and the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23), then what is your punishment for being angry with that guy that cut you off in traffic yesterday, or that woman who ran in front of you and grabbed the last sale item this morning? You say, “But that’s too hard!”. Well, take it up with Jesus. I didn’t say it; He did!

And what about that zinger in Matt 5:27-28: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks (emphasis mine) at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.” (I won’t depress you by quoting the rest of that paragraph; you can read it yourself.) Once again, I did’t say that looking at someone with lust in your heart is the same as commiting adultery with that person; He did! By the way, do you recall what the physical punishment for adultery was? That’s right: stoning, until dead! Ouch! In fact, other than a quick divorce, when was the last time you heard of anyone being either physically or verbally punished for commiting adultery?

Speaking of punishment, that brings up another interesting dilemma for hanging the Commandments up on the wall in schools and public buildings. You see, the Bible says that the “the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.”(1Cor 15:45). Remember also Rom 6:23, “...the wages of sin is death”? Put simply, the Commandments make us aware of what is sin, and that the punishment for sin is death. Yes, I know, since we don’t physically die every time we break the law, “death” must mean spiritual death. But hold on! Take a look back there in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy again. Did you notice that along with a list of the Laws or Commandments is a corresponding list of physical punishments required for breaking the laws? And, as far as I can tell, a “slap on the wrist” or “timeout” are not among the list of punishments. In fact, violating most of the Ten Commandments involve either death or dismemberment. Therefore, the power of the Commandments is in the punishment for breaking them (sinning). If there is no punishment for breaking the law, then there is no power in having the law, and if there is no power in having the Commandments, what is the use in posting them? The problem is that we have taken away the power of the Commandments by minimizing the punishment for not observing them. So the question is, if we are going to post the Ten Commandments, should not we also post the corresponding list of punishments for violating the laws, and then enforce it?

If that is not enough to bury you (figuratively speaking), recall what James said in chapter 2, verses 10 and 11. He said, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.” And what is the punishment for being a lawbreaker? Your right again: Death! The Apostle Paul put it another way in Gal 3:10: “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything (emphasis mine) written in the Book of the Law’.” Even if the Book of the Law were just the Ten Commandments, that would be like a game of trying to tread water in a pool while trying to hold ten corks under water at the same time; if any one of the corks pop up, you might as well let the rest go, because you lose the game.

Finally, at the risk of sounding like Detective Columbo, may I ask you just one more question? Who, or what, decides what the standard is for whether a commandment has been broken, or kept? Think about that for a minute: At what point has a commandment been broken, and who decides that point? Do you see what I’m getting at? We get a marvelous glimpse of this dilemma in a confrontation between Jesus and the teachers of the law over the Third Commandment on at least two occasions. Recall that this Commandment says, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy”. Now, I would say that this Commandment is pretty well spelled out, wouldn’t you? (Did you know how far beyond the words “Keep holy the Sabbath” the text went in laying out this Commandment?)

The first instance, in Matthew 12:1-8 (also Mark 2:23-28 and Luke 6:1-5), Jesus and his deciples were walking through a field on the Sabbath. They were hungry, so they began eating some of the wheat kernals from the stalks of wheat. That didn’t set very well with the Pharisees who were travelling with them, because picking grain to eat was work, never mind that walking, eating and breathing air was a form of work also (you see – where do you draw the line?). Jesus is quick to remind them that the Sabbath was created for Man, not Man for the Sabbath, and that He, the Son of Man, is “Lord of the Sabbath.”

Another time, you will recall, was when the man with the shriveled hand was at the synagogue, and Jesus had compassion for him (Matthew 12:9-14, Mark 3:1-6, Luke 6:6-11). Jesus asked the man to stand up in front of everyone. Then Jesus asked the teachers of the law, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” In Mark’s account of the incident, it says that “they remained silent.” Then it says that “He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn (another translation says “hardened”) hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.” (Mark 3:5) What’s amazing to me about this particular scripture is that the Pharisees’ lack of mercy in interpreting this particular law upset Jesus so much that He looked at them in anger! This is the only place I can find in the scriptures where it says that Jesus looked at someone in anger.

Now, do you recall what important development occurred after Jesus healed that man in the Temple on the Sabbath? All three accounts in the Gospels note that the Pharisees began to plot on how they might kill Jesus. This is the first time the idea of destroying Jesus began to take shape. Were they serious about keeping the letter of the Law regardless of the intent of the Law, or what!

Let me give you another, more recent, example of men’s hypocracy in trying to observe the Sabbath Law. I grew up in the deep South (Alabama and Georgia) in the early 1950’s and 1960’s. At that time, and prior, they had what were called “blue laws,” which were basically laws, codes and regulations to keep businesses from operating on Sundays. Notice right off that we are not talking about the Sabbath, which is biblically on Saturday, but Sunday, which is the traditional “church going” day (I guess my first question is, who had the authority to do that?). Both Alabama and Georgia are part of the South that is still known as the “Bible Belt,” and the blue laws were an attempt to legislate compliance with the third Commandment. The idea was that if businesses were closed, then people would not be forced to work on Sunday, and that would also free them up to spend that extra free time in church (I was a Catholic, so we only had to go to church for one service, which was about an hour, but many of my friends were Protestant, and most all of them were supposed to go to two services on Sunday, one in the morning and one in the evening, which were usually a couple of hours long each. A few of them even had to spend the afternoon at church, too!)

Sounds initially like a great idea, in support of one of the few Commandments which every one knew: “Thou Shalt Not Work On Sunday.” But, boy, were there exceptions. Of course, every parent had dispensations to hand out so that household chores could be done. People had to eat, and for any one who had the means, cooking at home was work, so restaurants had to be open. People had to have medicines and ice cream sundaes (wonder where that word came from...), so the drug stores had to be open, if only in the afternoon. People who had jobs at movie theatres had to be on duty so that those who did not have to work could relax and entertained between church services, hence the “afternoon matinee” was conceived. And to get to and from the businesses that were allowed to be open, people needed transportation, so busses and cabs and gasoline stations were allowed to be open, although on reduced schedules. Of course, crimes and fires did not recognize the Sabbath, so police and firemen had to man their stations. The list went on and on, and varied from town to town. Now, since all of the exceptions were not listed in the Bible, who do you think had the right to make the decisions on what the exceptions would be to Sunday closings? That’s right, the politicians, the police and the “reverends”: The modern day Saducees, Teachers of the Law, and the Pharisees.

But God knew that hypocracy would abound in the interpretation of this Commandment, as well as the others. That is why when we read the epistles of the New Testatment, our covenant, the only reference I can find to the Sabbath is in Collosians 2:16, where Paul says, “So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths.”(NKJV) (As far as God’s idea of resting from work goes, read Hebrews chapters 3 and 4, where it explains how to enter into “God’s rest.” There we find the real meaning of why God created the sabbath) In other words, the idea of making one day of the week holier than the other six days was never brought forward to the New Testament scriptures: Every day is sacred when we have the “Lord of the Sabbath” living in and through us!

Now I ask you, who among us could even begin to live by those standards that God had in mind for keeping the Commandments? The answer is that none of us could, at least on our own; not even the most righteous acting person. But do you know something? God knew that! It was all part of the Plan. Even the Scribes and Pharisees and the human lawmakers and politicians of all the ages unwhittingly contributed to the Plan by adding and legislating thousands of laws to the original commands that God had already provided to the people.

The Plan was to bury us with frustration and desperation in our impossible attempt to be righteous and to please Him on our own, so that in the end we would give up and turn to Him for relief from our desperate condition. Paul probably said it best in Rom 7:18-20, when he lamented about trying to live under the law: “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing.” Paul wasn’t the only one having trouble trying to live by the Law. God pointed out the problem, and His solution, through the Prophet Jeremiah early on. Concerning the people of Israel, He said, “...but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you. But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward. From the time your forefathers left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again I sent you my servants the prophets. But they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their forefathers.”(Jer 7:23-26).

But then, God explained His plan for a new covenant in Jer 31:31-34, which included these words: “ ‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Do you recall when we see the words of this prophesy again? That’s right...it’s over in the New Testament in the Book of Hebrews. In chapter 8, it’s listed in verses 8 through 12 as the “new covenant” that Jesus mediates, and which replaces the one that Moses received from God at Mt. Sinai (which, by the way, contains the Ten Commandments!). Heb 8:13 says, “By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear. The writer went on in Chapter 9 to point out that this new covenant (testament) was put in effect upon the death of Jesus Christ, with the shedding of his blood. This fulfilled the covenant which contained the Book of the Law that was mediated by Moses, by neutralizing the power of the Commandments, which, as we saw earlier, is the punishment we are supposed to receive for breaking them. Then, through Christ’s resurrection, God enabled the the new covenant, including His promise - “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts”, to become an amazing reality. When Jesus returned to the Father, He sent the Holy Spirit to bring new life to the spirits of those who would receive Him, thus allowing the God who gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments and the Book of the Law, and Who fulfilled the same, to live in their hearts and influence their minds. The God who gave us those two important “love” commands (Mat 22:37-40, Mark 12:28-31), could now demonstrate His unconditional love to us and through us.