Intent on Integrity in

A few years ago, in the state of Kentucky, there was a criminal trial. Four men had held up a grocery store in Louisville. In the process of the robbery, they had shot and killed two policemen. When the men were brought to trial, one of their lawyers happened to notice that, hanging on the wall of the courtroom near the jury box, was a framed copy of the Ten Commandments.

There, engraved in large letters, were the commandments “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal”. The defence lawyer petitioned the judge to have that inscription removed from the courtroom. He felt that it might be prejudicial to his client’s case. The jury might be adversely influenced against the defendant if they were to read that inscription of the Ten Commandments hanging in the courtroom.

As it turned out, the judge rejected the lawyer’s appeal, and the trial was held with the Ten Commandments in place. But that story has a lot of bearing on what I want to talk to you about over the next few weeks.

We hear a lot these days about public opinion polls. There’s a researcher named George Barna who conducts public opinion polls. But the subject he researches is not politics, it is religion. In a book entitled What Americans Believe, Barna attempts to discover what Americans living at the end of the 20th century really believe about spiritual things

One of his findings is very significant and I want to share it with you today. As he criss-crossed the country interviewing thousands of Americans from all walks of life, Barna asked them the following question: How do you feel about this statement - do you agree or disagree strongly or partially with it? And here is the statement:

“There is no such thing as absolute truth; different people can define truth in conflicting ways and still be correct.”

As he recorded the responses of a cross section of Americans to that statement, Barna found that 72% agreed with it. In other words, 3 out of 4 Americans agree that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Now you might think that the 28% of Americans who believe in absolute truth are the Christians. But listen to this:

Barna investigated the religious identity of the people he surveyed. And he found that of the people who identified themselves as born-again Christians, only 23% agreed with that statement. In other words, proportionately even fewer Christians than the population at large believe in the concept of absolute truth.

Well what does all this mean? It means that, today in 1993, less than one out of three Americans, and less than one out of four Americans who claim to be born again Christians, believe that you can know anything for sure.

It means that the prevailing opinion in our culture and in our churches is that you cannot say that anything is absolutely and always true. To the vast majority of Americans living today, whether they are Christians or not, truth is something that is relative.

Truth can change, depending upon the circumstances, and depending upon an individual’s personal beliefs. So what’s true for me may not be true for you. And I had better not try to foist my beliefs on you because there is no such thing as absolute truth for all of the people all of the time. It’s all relative.

This prevailing opinion is called relativism, and it affects everything we believe, including what we believe about morals. America has abandoned any concept of absolute truth in the area of moral behavior. We have accepted moral relativism as our guiding principle.

A perfect example of this is how our nation is addressing the AIDS crisis. Every time a celebrity talks about practicing “safe sex” to prevent the spread of the HIV virus, he or she is reflecting the moral relativism that saturates our culture. The so-called “safe sex” message is that if you use a condom when you have sex with whomever you please, you will thereby eliminate your risk of getting AIDS.

That message is wrong on two counts. It is medically wrong: condoms cannot even prevent pregnancy, let alone the transmission of AIDS. But it is also morally wrong. Since when do human beings have the right to practice sex whenever and with whomever they please? That is a practice that goes completely against God’s teaching as found in the Bible.

But if you dare to suggest that, you will be hooted and hollered at. You will be jeered out of court, because Americans are simply not prepared to accept that there may be divine absolutes that are always true for all of the people which are meant to govern our behavior. America today, in 1993, is in exactly the same position morally as Israel was during the time of the Judges. Everyone is doing that which is right in his own eyes. That is what you call moral relativism.

Moral relativism has become the “politically correct” belief of our culture. Everyone bows at the shrine of moral relativism. Let me give you an example from the world of politics. Before moving to Pennsylvania, we lived in New York State. The Governor of New York is Mario Cuomo, a man who happens to be a Roman Catholic.

As a Roman Catholic, Governor Cuomo has expressed his personal moral opposition to the practice of abortion. He believes that abortion involves the taking of human life. However, as Governor of the State of New York, Mr. Cuomo has refused to take any action against the practice of abortion. He explains that that would be imposing his personal morality on others. And he wouldn’t want to do that!

Relativism affects not only our morals, our standards of behavior; and our laws, it also affects the way we educate our children. Listen to the viewpoint of a concerned parent who describes his own encounter with relativism in the schools:

“I attended a recent parent-teacher conference at the school district where our two children attend. The purpose of this meeting was to provide parents with the opportunity to review new curricula being introduced to the district. The district staff explained the basic philosophies behind the proposed material.

The first principle shocked me. Henceforth, they said, teachers will not be responsible for giving students the right answers. “Wait a minute,” I interrupted, “Can you tell me what you mean by that?”

“The panel of experts then told me how it had come to this conclusion on the basis of years of educational research. “We have discovered that it is inappropriate for our teachers to assume they know total truth. First, we have found that what is true today may not be true tomorrow. It would be presumptuous for our instructors to force today’s reality down the throats of their pupils.

Second, we feel that what is truth to you may not be truth to me. It is all relative. Third, we now know that we can severely damage a child’s self-esteem by telling him he has the wrong answer.”

Well, you can imagine what this approach to education is going to do the SAT scores! You can imagine how well this kind of education is going to prepare our young people to live productive and successful lives!

But relativism is the sacred cow of American culture. The only absolute belief Americans have today is that there are no more absolutes.

Earlier, I mentioned the disease AIDS, which stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Did you know that nobody actually dies of AIDS? They die of the diseases that attack the body because of the AIDS virus. The AIDS virus disconnects the body’s natural defence mechanisms; it pulls the plug on the body’s immune system. It opens the door and throws out the welcome mat to whatever viruses and microbes and bacteria happen to be out there. And the body is paralyzed to prevent them coming in.

When we abandon a belief in absolute truth, you know what happens? We contract spiritual AIDS. The virus of moral relativism causes us to lose our immune defence system against ideas and practices that are fatal.

But unlike physical AIDS, there is a cure for spiritual AIDS. It is found in the Bible. God gave us standards for belief and behavior that are absolute. They’re not negotiable, not subject to change. They were true thousands of years ago, and they will be true thousands of years in the future.

God condensed these absolutes into a series of ten principles of behavior that we call the Ten Commandments. God gave these Commandments to his people Israel in the OT around the year 1400 BC. God wanted to teach them how to live properly, how to live in accord with his will. So he boiled it all down to a set of ten commands - ten urgent, important principles for human behavior. And he gave them to them in the form of commandments, not suggestions!

I want, over the next few weeks, to study them with you. I’m convinced that we need to hear them anew and afresh - we need to hear what God is saying to us through them. We need to see how the Ten Commandments apply to our daily life today in 1993. We need them to be an antidote to this moral relativism that is ruining our nation, ruining our families, and ruining our lives.

When was the last time you heard a sermon on any one of the Ten Commandments? They’re just not preached anymore, are they?

When I was looking for resource material on the Ten Commandments, I found it was very difficult to come by. Most of the good books on the Ten Commandments have long since gone out of print, and believe me, there aren’t many new ones being written!

You can go into a Christian bookstore and find dozens, if not hundreds, of books on self-help, books on counseling, books that recommend 12 steps to overcome this problem, seven steps to recover from that problem. But I challenge you to find even one recent book on the Ten Commandments.

One of the reasons that the Ten Commandments have been so under-emphasized in the church in America today is that we have seriously misunderstood the relationship between the OT and the NT. There seems to be a brand of theology today that makes the OT almost a dead letter. We say, “Oh, we’re living in the age of grace, and the Ten Commandments were part of the Law. We’re not under that dispensation any more.”

But what did Jesus say? If you study the Sermon on the Mount, you will find that in that sermon, Jesus said “I didn’t come to abolish the law; I came to fulfill it.” In other words, God didn’t change the rules of the game halfway through the Bible. What was righteous in his sight in the OT is still righteous today.

The principles that are expressed in the Ten Commandments are not obsolete! They haven’t been replaced by the teaching of Jesus, they have been fulfilled by the teaching of Jesus. Every one of the principles expressed in the Ten Commandments is repeated and amplified in the New Testament. The Ten Commandments are every bit as relevant to us followers of Jesus as they were to the Jews to whom they were given.

There is a major misconception that many Christians have about the place of the Ten Commandments in the Bible. Many Christians assume that God’s plan of salvation in the OT was for the Jews to keep the Ten Commandments. And many people today still think that if you just keep the Ten Commandments, you’ll go to heaven.

Let me tell you that that is not true. It was not true in the OT, and it is not true today. You do not get to heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments.

Let me see if I can illustrate it for you. If you wanted to enroll in the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD., you would have to be nominated for appointment to the Academy by your Senator or Congressman. Each Senator and each Congressman can nominate a very limited number of candidates from his state or district for appointment to the Academy each year. Now let’s suppose that you are fortunate enough to be both nominated and appointed to the Naval Academy.

That gives you the privilege of getting a first class education all expenses paid. You will even be paid a small salary as well. All your uniforms, all your books, all your supplies will be paid for. On graduation, you will receive a Bachelor of Science degree, and a commission in the U.S. Navy. (Of course, you’ll belong to the Navy for the next five years!)

So let’s suppose that you have been appointed to the Academy. The first thing you will receive will be a packet of information telling you what you’ll need to get ready to start classes: a Student Handbook, a description of life as a midshipman, some of the rules and regulations of the Academy, what personal belongings you can bring along with you, etc.. The Registrar’s Office will tell you to present yourself at the front gate on September 1 ready to begin.

Now imagine what would happen if you decided that you really wanted to attend the U.S. Naval Academy, but you didn’t bother to petition your Senator or your Congressman for a nomination. You simply went ahead on the strength of your shool record and you made plans to attend the Academy.

You got all your stuff together, loaded it in your car, drove to Annapolis MD, and on September 1, presented yourself at the front gate of the Academy, with your suitcase and your books and your personal belongings, ready to enroll.

Do you think that they would let you in? Of course not! You would be lacking the most important thing - without that letter of nomination, signed by your Senator or your Congressman, there is no way you can get appointed. And without that appointment, you cannot get in! In spite of all your plans and preparations, in spite of all of your academic performance and good marks and high praise from your teachers, you cannot get into the U.S. Naval Academy.

Do you see what I’m getting at? In the same way, you cannot earn your way into heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments. God did not give them for that purpose. Admission into heaven is by appointment only. Only Jesus can appoint us to heaven. Only by his good name, written on our lives in his blood, can we get in.

If only people would realize that fact! Eternal life isn’t based on what we do. It isn’t based on our best intentions, or our hopes, or our dreams, or our moral performance. It’s based on what Jesus did for us when he died on the cross. All we can do is to receive what he did for us. All we can do is to ask him to appoint us to heaven on the strength of his good name.

But once we receive Jesus, and we receive our appointment, then he begins to prepare us for heaven. He begins to enable us to live the way that God wants us to live. He begins to build us into citizens of his kingdom. That’s where the Ten Commandments come in. The Ten Commandments form the ten chapters of our Student Handbook. We don’t follow them to gain admission; we follow them because we’ve been admitted.

I trust that over the next few weeks as we study the Ten Commandments together, you’ll begin to see just how fresh and how practical and how urgent they are for all of us. We live in a world that has abandoned God’s absolutes and is reaping the consequences in broken lives, broken families, broken homes, and broken hearts. We live in a broken world.

Life doesn’t work when you throw away the Designer’s plan. I’m praying that you will want to dedicate yourself to live according to God’s absolutes - that you will be make it your aim to put the Ten Commandments into practice in your life.

If you do, you will be a shining light in a dark world. And you will experience blessing in your home and in your family, for God says “I will show love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” I don’t know about you, but I want to leave that as a legacy for my family and my children.

So join me as together we explore the Ten Commandments. Next week, Commandment #1 - You shall have no other gods before me.