I don't know how anyone else feels about this, but we had mid-week/Holy week services all week, and of course I led them, and they were great…what, what I really liked about them were that they were the stories of Jesus that actually took place between Palm Sunday and Good Friday and, of course now, Easter. And, I just love reading that sequence. In short, to summarize all of what we read during those services, Jesus proved to be such a threat to the practices of the religious authorities that they conspired to have him arrested, and tried, and killed. The story from Maundy Thursday and Good Friday is an incredibly sad tale. This year when we did it here in the sanctuary we literally killed all of the lights and...you know how on the first Sunday of Advent you light the Advent candles and you have the Christ candle we had the Christ candle from Advent here, and at the end of the service we even put that out. It was dark because it was sad, because that story tells the worst of human behavior. It speaks of jealousy, and deceit, and betrayal, and greed, and self-righteousness, and arrogance, and perhaps most of all that story tells about ignorance. Its a very dark dark story. But, that same story also tells of the very best of humanity. It speaks of incredible humility. God comes down in our very presence as one of us in order to stoop to our level and teach us this good news about God. That's incredible humility. It teaches about self-sacrifice, and trust in God, and nobility, and belief, and faith, and confidence in a truth greater than we can fully understand. So it has the worst of human behavior and it has the best of human behavior. The Easter story...

What if, like Jesus, Holy Week was your last week alive? What would be the most important things you could say?

To guard you and guide you against this sin known as adultery. Again, we've been following through the ten commandments and we come to this commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." It is one of the simplest of all the commandments to translate; in so far as the meaning of the Hebrew text is concerned. In the original Hebrew, technically speaking, "You shall not commit adultery," is pretty cut and dry. It simply means that when a man and woman are married to each other it is for life. And, neither shall have physical relationships with anyone other than their marriage partner. Easy peasy. I know it really isn't what people want to hear, but there really is no concept in the commandment that the man and the woman are in love or out of love with each other. Rather, the commandment is about 'Will you keep your commitment once you have made it?' In the Old Testament we do have examples of couples who did love each other. For example, Jacob apparently loved his wife Rachael (his second wife), far more than he loved his first wife Leah. Yet, that is exactly what the commandment is aimed at, not whether we love each other, but whether or not we honor the commitment we have made to each other. Regardless of whether or not passion remains. I know, it's an out-of-date idea for our times. The commandment does not specifically speak to divorce. The formal dissolving of a marriage between a man and a woman. And, it does not speak to fornication. Fornication is a physical relationship between people who are not married to each other. Yet, both topics are relevant because it is often only when the scriptures talk about either divorce or fornication that the topic of adultery comes up. Remember, this is very important: one of the primary goals of the ten commandments was to establish a healthy family as the basic building block for a healthy society. Specifically, the Hebrew people to form a new and healthy society moving forward after their enslavement down in Egypt...

"You shall not murder." That is how the New International version of the Bible that we've been using to read from says it...An underlying truth of the 6th commandment, you might say a better way to understand the 6th commandment, would be to instead of simply saying, "Thou shalt not kill [or shall not murder]." Would be to say that all life, human life, belongs to God. Hence, we will not kill. We will not seek vengeance because all life belongs to God, and thus human life if never ours to arbitrarily take...As a culture we get all caught up in debates, and in particular, political and legal arguments about where life begins and who has the right to dictate what a woman does with her body. You've all heard the arguments. During elections people focus on this candidate or that candidate my impact, the legality of the issue...the very nature of the conversation is radically altered, fundamentally changed, if one of our shared foundational beliefs is all human life belongs to God. How does belonging to God impact that thought process.

Well, you see, to honor the third installment in our series on the ten commandments today specifically we are looking at that commandment honor your father and your mother and the way we shortened the service today is we bumped do not kill to next Sunday. Although in my home...sometimes my parents wanted to kill me. I don't know sometimes it went together. To be honest though, of all of the commandments the one that people report to me that they have had to struggle the most with is honor your father and your mother. "How do you do that," they ask, "...when your relationship with your father or mother is fundamentally flawed or unhealthy?"

Now, first, we have to set aside the fact that there are enormous numbers of families that don't have that. They have loving parents who seek to be faithful. They seek to guide their children in positive ways. But, the ones who really struggle, are the ones who drew the short straw that landed them in family relationships that are very negative. So, how do you deal with parents who commit vile crimes...

Which brings us to the third commandment: You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. The commandment is not against profanity in general although by no means does it encourage us to use vulgar language. The third commandment is specifically against misuse of the Lord's name. In our culture that specifically means saying things like, and we've all heard it, "God damn it," or "Jesus Christ," in a profane way. The sad fact is doing so, acting that way, saying those words inappropriately has become so common-place in our culture that many people don't recognize these words as the most sacred thing, the most Holy thing, that God has given us. Instead by using the most Holy in a derogatory way. What we do is that we don't devalue those words, we devalue ourselves. WE become obscene. WE become vulgar. When we use the Holy in this way. We don't diminish or take away from the Holy, we diminish ourselves and we distance ourselves even further from the God who made us and the God who loves us. The prohibition against the misuse of the Lord's name is because whenever we take the Holy and we use it in a pedestrian, derogatory, or generic way we devalue ourselves. We were created by God, in the image of God, and we devalue ourselves and we widen the gap between God and ourselves that has been created by sin. Remember the Exodus back in Egypt. There were over one thousand...