Asbury Church

The Tenth Commandment is the one about “coveting.” You can pass a law against murder and even a law against working on the sabbath, but how do you pass a law against desire? More importantly, why would the Lord include this command in the Ten?

The Tenth Commandment is there to teach me about the importance of learning to discipline my thought life, because desiring that which I have no legitimate right to have—my neighbor’s stuff, e.g.—is a sure way to both misery and destruction.

The opposite of coveting is gratitude. What if you woke up tomorrow with only that for which you thanked the Lord today?

What does it mean to honor your father and your mother?

At the very least, it means to be grateful that the Lord used them to give you life. Procreation is a partnership with the Lord; obviously, a man and a woman have to come together for there to be conception, but it’s God who makes life possible. The Lord has delegated power to fathers and mothers to make procreation possible. So, every human life is a product of what the Bible calls the “one flesh” union between a father and a mother. There are no people who do not have both a biological father and a biological mother.

Now, many people don’t know their biological parents for many reasons, and many other people had parents who were abusive or even evil. And yet, the basic fact is the same: none of us would be here were it not for our parents (and their parents, and their parents, etc.).

So, honoring your father and mother must always start with gratitude that the Lord used them to give your life. It can be more than that, but it’s not less. And gratitude is always a good place to start.

P.S. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus (Ephesians 6:2-3), this is the first commandment with a promise. Do this, and things will go well for you.

The 8th Commandment is really simple: “Don’t steal.” As everyone knows, stealing is taking what doesn't belong to you. So, what's interesting about the 8th Commandment is that it implies that some things belong to me and some things don't belong to me.

Hence my question: “Which things are mine, and which things aren't?”

If you live your life trying to have control over the things that aren’t yours, you will be miserable and make other people miserable.

Let's take ownership over the things that belong to us, and let go of everything else.