Bible Commentaries
Exodus 20

Verses 1-6

XIV

THE DECALOGUE – THE FIRST AND SECOND COMMANDMENTS

Exodus 20:1-6; Deuteronomy 5:6-10

We are now expounding the covenant at Sinai, and particularly Part I, the Moral Law. And here I wish to commend two books to which I have already referred. First, a copy of the University Lectures on the Ten Commandments by Boardman, which is the best in the world. I have never seen anything half-way equal to it. If I were a young preacher, I would live on one meal a day to purchase it, if I had not enough money, and could not get it any other way. It is impossible for me to go into details with the exposition as Dr. Boardman does, and yet there is not a superfluous word in the book. There is one position of his, however, which I do not endorse; but it is a great book.

The last time I saw Dr. Boardman was at the Southern Baptist Convention at Asheville, North Carolina. He was helped upon the platform; he was so old and feeble that he could not walk up the steps. He was introduced to our convention by Dr. J. B. Hawthorne. He has since died. I regret to say that in his later life Dr. Boardman lapsed into radical criticism to a considerable extent; but there is none of it in this book. The other book I commend is the Presbyterian Catechism on the Ten Commandments. They beat the Baptists in instructing their children in the Word of God. I say it to our shame, that we seldom use a catechism in our families. As a rule, Presbyterian children are better instructed religiously than any other children.

1. What books are specifically commended?

Ans. – The Presbyterian Catechism on the Ten Command ments and Boardman’s University Lectures on the Ten Commandments.

2. What are the variations in the form of the Ten Commandments as they appear in Deuteronomy 5?

Ans. – The variations are very slight. In the Fourth Commandment there is this addition by Moses: "And thou shalt remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and Jehovah thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm: therefore Jehovah thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day." There is a change in the order of the words of the Tenth Commandment: "Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour’s wife." The explanation of the variations is that Exodus is the law as it was given; Deuteronomy is an orator’s public restatement of the law.

3. Which is the original form?

Ans. – The original form is in Exodus 20.

4. Which one of the Ten Commandments is not quoted in the New Testament?

Ans. – The Fourth. I will put this additional rider on the question: Why is the Fourth Commandment, "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy," not specifically quoted in the New Testament? What is your explanation of that? There is a great distinction between the sabbath and the seventh day. Sabbaton, sabbath, is a perpetual law, but the seventh day is not; the seventh day, the hebdomedal sabbath, the seventh-day sabbath of the Old Testament, is changed; the change, the transition from the seventh to the first day is significant. You will find the whole matter discussed in the first book of sermons by the author. There are three sermons on the sabbath day. If you wish to pursue that subject further, go to that book.

5. What are the characteristics of the Ten Commandments?

Ans. – I cite five:

(1) Their solidarity. It is not necessary to break all of them in order to make a breach in the covenant. "He that is guilty in one point is guilty of all." And that same solidarity you can observe in our law. If a man is indicted for murder, it is not justification that he has not stolen, that he has not committed adultery, that he has not refused to honor his father and his mother. If he is guilty of murder, he loses his life. The one point is sufficient.

(2) Every one of these commandments has the negative and positive form, whether it is expressed or not. Sometimes it is given in the negative form: "Thou shalt not kill"; and sometimes in the positive: "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy." But in each case, whether it be expressed or not, there are both forms; a negation and prescription of what is right, and a proscription of what is wrong.

(3) The third characteristic may be expressed in three ways: (a) Deep, broad, and high, one way; that is, these commandments go to the root, to the trunk, to the branches, and they go to the fruit; or they prohibit the following thought as well as the following speech or the following deed – our Saviour in interpreting these commandments said that "whosoever hateth is a murderer"; that he is a murderer in his heart; that he is a murderer in the sight of God, whether he ever killed anybody or not. That is the root of it. It goes down into the mind where the germ, the spring, the source of action lies; it goes to the intent. Then (b) the psalmist says: "Thy commandments are exceedingly broad"; they touch every correlative thing. And (c) they are exceedingly high; they touch the throne of God.

(4) The next characteristic is that these commandments are moral. Now, you know, or ought to know, the difference between a positive enactment and a moral enactments. A positive enactment has only one reason; that is, that God has commanded. A moral commandment is one which has a reason for it; to be seen by an intelligent mind and calling forth a decision. The commandment to be baptized is a positive ordinance; "thou shalt not kill," is a moral commandment. Wherever in any commandment a reason is given for the commandment, that is proof of the moral character of the commandment. Let us take the First Commandment to illustrate: "I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before [or besides] me." There a reason is given. Now take the Fourth Commandment: "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy," because in six days Jehovah created everything and rested on the seventh day and because they were in bondage in Egypt and God delivered them. A man can take hold of those reasons.

(5) The last characteristic is that though these commandments were addressed to a vast multitude of people, millions of them, every one of them is personal: "Thou" shalt not; "thou" shalt not, etc. Now we come to the exposition of the first two commandments, taking up the First Commandment under question.

6. What is the meaning of the name Jehovah?

Ans. – If you go back to Exodus 3:1-15, you will find that Jehovah himself gives to Moses an explanation of that name: "I am that I am" or "that I will be," and when you study it out you will find that word covers these thoughts:

(1) that Jehovah is the personal, self-existing, eternal, everacting One;

(2) who first reveals Elohim: "I am Jehovah, thy Elohim." He is the revealing God, that is why in Genesis I, God said "Elohim," and in the chapter 2, it is Jehovah – Elohim, who

(3) covenants with his people. "Jehovah" is the name of the covenanting God, who reveals the Father, and enters into relations with his people and delivers them. Now let me repeat; What is the meaning of the name, Jehalvah? It means (1) the personal, self-existing, eternal, the ever-acting One, who (2) reveals the Elohim, (3) covenants with his people and (4) delivers them.

7. What are the affirmations, denials, and prohibitions of the First Commandment?

Ans. – It affirms the existence and government of one God; it denies polytheism (many gods), atheism (no God), matribalism, which is another form of atheism, assuming the self existence of matter, and the bringing about of everything by a fortuitous concourse of atoms. What it prohibits: "Thou shalt have no other gods besides me." "Before me" is the same as "besides me"; that is the sense. There is but one God: "Thou shalt have no other God"; that is what it prohibits. The reader will understand that from the Semitic people came the three great religions which advocate monotheism, that is, one God – the Jewish, the Mohammedan, and the Christian.

8. What is the application of this commandment to us?

Ans. – Jesus is our Jehovah. He is Jehovah the self-existing One; "Before Abraham was I am"; "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh." He is the revealer of the Father. We would not know the Father except as Jesus makes the Father known to us. He is called "The express image of the Father"; He is the visible of the invisible God; he is the Immanuel, God with us. "Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the world." His eternity is expressed in such expressions as these: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last." His immutability is expressed in such as these: "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to day and for ever." In making the application to us, he is our Deliverer. Jehovah delivered the Jews from Pharaoh; Jesus delivers us from the devil. They were delivered from Egyptian bondage; we are delivered from spiritual bondage.

9. Cite the poem of Hildebert.

Ans. – I will give the poem quoted by Boardman as to the meaning of the name Jehovah. It is in Latin. I will give the translation by Herbert Kynaston: First and last of faith’s receiving, Source and sea of man’s believing, God, whose might is all potential, God, whose truth is truth’s essential, Good supreme in thy subsisting, Good in all thy seen existing; Over all things, all things under, Touching all, from all asunder; Centre thou, but not intruded, Compassing, and yet included; Over all, and not ascending, Under all, but not depending; Over all, the world ordaining, Under all, the world sustaining; All without, in all surrounding, All within, in grace abounding; Inmost, yet not comprehended, Outer still, and not extended; Over, yet on nothing founded, Under, but by space unbounded; Omnipresent, yet indwelling, Self-impelled, the world impelling: Force, nor fate’s predestination, Sways thee to one alternation; Ours to-day, thyself forever, Still commencing, ending never; Past with thee is time’s beginning, Present all its future winning; With thy counsels first ordaining Comes thy counsel’s last attaining; One the light’s first radiance darting And the elements departing. That is a remarkable expression of the idea of God.

10. How does it forbid polytheism, atheism & materialism?

Ans. – Study the poem for these three points and give your own answer.

We come to the Second Commandment and I will quote it from Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them." That is the commandment itself.

11. Is worship an instinct?

Ans. – Here’s a commandment not to worship any graven image; and in order to get at the fulness of the thought, I raise this question, Is worship an instinct? It surely is.

12. Cite Plutarch against Colotes the Epicurean.

Ans. – I give Boardman, who quotes Plutarch. An Epicurean is an atheist. Plutarch writes: "If you go through the world, you may find cities without walls, without letters, without rulers, without houses, without money, without theaters and games: but there was never yet seen nor shall be seen by man a single city without temples and gods, or without prayers, oaths, prophecies, and sacrifices, used to obtain blessings and benefits, or to avert curses and calamities: nay, I am of opinion that a city might be sooner built without any ground beneath it, than a commonwealth could be constituted, could be preserved." If you find in the people of North America what you do not find in the people of South America; or if you find among the people of Europe that you do not find among the people of Asia, then whatever that is, the principle beneath it is not innate, not universal. But whatever is presented in man in his personality, whether white or black, rich or poor, Barbarian, Scythian, Jew or Greek, bond or free, that is innate; and we do find in man, wherever we find him, an instinct to worship superhuman power. Plutarch makes a fine point in his argument there.

13. How may this instinct be perverted, and why?

Ans. – Paul gives the explanation in his letter to the Romans in chapter 1. I am getting at fundamental things which underlie this commandment. Paul says, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven [he is speaking of nature now] against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder [hold] the truth in unrighteousness; because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse: because that [here is the reason for perverting it], knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things" (Romans 1:18-23). Now, whenever a man knows God, either through nature or revelation, if he does not like to retain the thought of God in his mind, then he cannot escape that instinct to worship which is in him. It is ineradicable, but he may pervert it as to the object of his worship.

14. How does this Second Commandment forbid idolatry?

Ans. – Exodus 20:5 a.

15. Does this commandment forbid art, painting, and sculpture?

Ans. – Up there on the wall is a likeness of the author; is that against this commandment? How are paintings, sculpture, etc., not prohibited by this commandment? Because the commandment does not stop in saying, "Thou shalt make unto thee no graven image . . . that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth," but it goes on to say, "Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them." That portrait is not an idol; you do not bow down to worship it. Thou shalt not make a likeness of anything and call that likeness God, and bow down before it and worship it.

16. Cite Isaiah’s ridicule of idols.

Ans. – Isaiah 40:18-20; Isaiah 44:9-20. I want you to see how he turns the power of his sarcasm against idol worship.

17. Cite the remarkable statement of Paul, when in the cultivated city of Athens.

Ans. – He was brought before their supreme court in the Areopagus on the charge of setting forth strange gods. And that seemed to be a wise law that there should be no additions to the gods of Athens, for they certainly had plenty. As a writer has said, you could oftener see a god in Athens than you could see a man; there were gods in the valleys, on the hills, and high over all on the Acropolis was their marvelous temple of gods, and towering over the city was a colossal statue of Minerva. They were too religious, so far as the objects of their devotion were concerned. Now Paul standing there says, "The God that made the world and all things therein, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is he served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things" (Acts 27:24-25). His spirit was stirred within him when he observed the objects worshiped by the Athenians.

18. What are the reasons for the commandment?

Ans. – I cite three.

(1) The first is given in Deuteronomy. Commenting upon the commandment, he says, "You remember that when God appeared on Mount Sinai you saw no likeness, no similitude; you heard his voice, but you did not see him, and by that he meant to convey to you the prohibition to attempt to make a likeness when he had given you no likeness."

(2) Then Jehovah is a jealous God. The idea is that this covenant was a marriage covenant; Jehovah is the husband of this nation, and if the wife worships somebody else than her husband, that naturally excites jealousy on the part of the husband. "I, Jehovah, thy God, am a jealous God." Now, as those people by that covenant were wedded to Jehovah, so we in the new covenant are wedded to God; the church is the bride of Jesus, the Bridegroom; he performs the part of the husband. He loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify it and cleanse it with the washing through the word, and might present it to himself a glorious church, without spot or blemish. Now shall the church, the bride of Jesus Christ, turn away from her husband, Jesus Christ? He says, "I am a jealous God."

(3) The next reason assigned is that this God takes cognizance in his governments of the law of heredity in both directions, visiting the iniquity of evil men upon the third and fourth generation and visiting upon good men to the thousandth generation their good. Now, in view of that double law of heredity, if I today worship idols, and I am the father of a family; if I turn away from Jehovah to make some other being my God, the consequences of what I do pass to the children, to the third and fourth generation; but if I love Jehovah and adhere to Jehovah, the blessings pass to the thousandth generation. That reason is assigned.

19. Last of all, what is the necessity of this commandment?

Ans. – The necessity arises out of the fact that man has an ineradicable instinct to worship. He cannot escape worship. He will worship something. If man had not fallen, that instinct would have prohibited him from worshiping wrong things; and as a proof of it, take the history of the world. Go back yonder to Abraham, when God called him. At that time, nearly the whole world worshiped idols, even Abraham’s father. "Remember," says Joshua, "that your fathers in Mesopotamia worshiped idols." Suppose now you come a little further down, to this very occasion at Sinai, to see the necessity of giving this law. Just as soon as Moses was out of sight on the mountain, and passed out of the minds of the people, they said, "As to this Moses, we know not what has become of him; come here, Aaron, and make us a god." And they took their jewels and their gold, and they made a calf idol following the Egyptian fashion, the worship of the ox. They had Aaron to make an idol, and they made a breach in the covenant by that. And but for the interposition of Moses, the whole nation would have been blotted out right there for breaking the covenant. Then we are told by one of the prophets that when they broke the covenant again at Kadesh-barnea, all through the thirty-eight years of wandering they worshiped idols; they did not worship Jehovah. And when we come to the book of Judges, we see the tribe of Dan getting out of the territory assigned to him to make a god to worship. When we come to Solomon’s time, we see how he established idols in his old age on every hill. We see Ahab multiplying images of idolatry all over the land. We hear the words of Isaiah just cited, but his sarcasm did not stop the idol worship. When the kingdom was divided, Jeroboam set up a calf at Dan and at Bethel. Come still further down in the history and you see that remarkable vision of Ezekiel, where through a hole in the wall, from a secret chamber, he saw people who externally professed to worship the true God worshiping the rising sun and the stars. You see the necessity expressed in the words of Job: "If at any time I have secretly caused my hand --," etc. And coming down to the time of Christ, except the Jews, the whole world was given to idolatry, notwithstanding all of the culture of the Greeks, whether at Athens or at Ephesus, or at Corinth, or any other cities that they established in their colonies, everywhere their religion was a most debasing worship of idols. It was so at Rome, so in the German forests and amid the Druidic system of England. Now that tendency of the human heart having the instinct to worship, and not wishing to retain a knowledge of God in their minds, they pervert that instinct and worship something else. Therefore God gave this Second Commandment to those who were lovers of idol worship. The Jews all through their history, if they had a chance, would lapse into idolatry; and they would now create over again that idolatry, but for the Babylonian captivity. No Jew since then, as far as I know, has ever been an idolater. And with their return from that captivity came the synagogue, which was a safeguard against idolatry. This Torah, this law, was taught in every community. Now I am not going into great detail, but there are some things in these commandments that I want to bring out.

A question: "Was the covenant broken before the Ten Commandments were given?"

Ans. – No. Moses was coming down from the mountain. These Commandments he was bringing down on the tables of stone were uttered by a voice, and the covenant was made and ratified before that golden calf was made. So that the golden calf was not made before the Commandments were given to Israel. The people knew them, as is recorded in Exodus 20.

Verse 7

XV

THE DECALOGUE – THIRD COMMANDMENT

Exodus 20:7; Deuteronomy 5:11

1. Repeat the Third Commandment, showing its division into parts.

Ans. – "Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain; for Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." This commandment is divided into three parts: (1) The name of God; (2) In vain, taking that name in vain; (3) The warning, giving a penal sanction to the commandment: "God will not hold him guiltless."

THE NAME OF GOD
2. What is the important phrase in this commandment?

Ans. – The name of God.

3. What three historical incidents given in the Pentateuch go to show the progress of revelation as to the meaning of "the name of God"?

Ans. – (1) The passage in Genesis 32:24-29: "And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was strained, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. . . . And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask alter my name?" This incident shows an exceeding great desire upon the part of Jacob to know the name of the one who could bless him and promote him and with whom he had successfully wrestled in prayer. The next historical incident is in Exodus 3:5-6, which gives an account of Moses seeing the burning bush: "Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Exodus 3:13: "And Moses said unto God, behold when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?" (Here is the advance): "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM; tell them that I AM hath sent you." And in the following scriptures is the third instance; Exodus 33:18-23; Exodus 34:5-7: "And Moses said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And God said, I will make all my goodness to pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee." And now follows a proclamation of the name of the Lord: "And Jehovah descended in the cloud and stood with Moses there, and proclaimed the name of Jehovah. And Jehovah passed before him, and proclaimed [here we get the name], Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children’s children, upon the third and upon the fourth genera lion." These historical incidents answer the question: What is thy name? And the commandment says, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," and we have said the most important phrase in it is, "the name of God"; hence the next question:

4. What is Isaiah’s revelation of the name?

Ans. – Isaiah 9:6, says, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father) Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end."

5. How does John in his Gospel further reveal his name?

Ans. – John 14:8-14, is the account of it. Philip says unto him, "Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us." He wanted to understand what Jesus had just said about the Father. "What do you mean by the Father?" Isaiah says that he shall be called the "Everlasting Father." And Philip wants to know and see what that means. Jesus says, "Have I been with you so long time, Philip, and you have not known me? Whenever you have seen me you have seen the Father."

6. What further revelation by our Lord after he ascended into glory?

Ans. – In Revelation 19:11: "And I saw the heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon called [note the name] Faithful and True." Revelation 19:16: "And he hath on his garment, and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS." Thus I pass through the Bible, giving a few of many instances to show you the progress made in the revelation of the meaning of God’s name.

7. Cite other New Testament passages showing the importance of this name.

Ans. – Matthew 6:9, where Jesus is teaching them to pray: "Hallowed be thy name." Matthew 18:15: "Whosoever receiveth one of these little ones in my name receiveth me." In Matthew 18:20, he says, "Where two or three come together in my name I am there." In Matthew 28:19, "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." John 14:13: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do." John 20:31: Believing on Christ secures life through his name. In Acts 4:12, Peter says, "In no other name is there salvation," and Acts 5:41, he says, "Suffer for the name." Colossians 3:17 says: "Do everything in the name of the Lord." Philippians 2:9: "The name that is above every name," and Revelation 14:1: "His name shall be written in their foreheads." This commandment says, "Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."

8. What, then, is the meaning of the name of God?

Ans. – The name of God means God himself as revealed; therefore it means all his nature, virtues, attributes, the character, authority, purpose, methods, providences, words, institutions, truth, kingdom; in a word what has been revealed, whether the revelation is concerning his nature, virtues, attributes, his word, his kingdom or his truth, or anything else.

9. What are the great hymns on the name?

Ans. – (1) Wesley’s hymn on Jacob’s question, What is Thy name? commencing: "Come, O thou Traveller unknown, Whom still I hold, but cannot see." (2) The Coronation hymn: All hail the power of Jesus’ name, Let angels prostrate fall.

10. What modern book has been written on the subject?

Ans. – A book written by E. E. Hale. The title is In His Name, and the object of the book is to show the significance of the name of God as apprehended by man in his obedience to God.

And now we come to the second part:

IN VAIN
1. What is the primary meaning of that phrase?

Ans. – "Thou shall not use the name of God to attest a falsehood," which, translated literally, means, "Thou shall not utter the name of God unto a falsehood." For example, in Leviticus 19:12: "Thou shalt not swear by my name falsely." That shows you must not use God’s name to attest a falsehood.

2. What is the secondary meaning? Illustrate.

Ans. – Thou shalt not evade, take back, repudiate, or fail to perform any pledge or vow made to God; or any oath made to him. If you do, you violate this commandment. I will cite a few points on that. Numbers 30:1-2: "And Moses spake unto the heads of the tribes of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded. If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth." Next Deuteronomy 23:21: "When thou shalt vow a vow unto the Lord thy God, thou shalt not be slack to pay it: For the Lord thy God will surely require it of thee; and it would be sin in thee." Then Ecclesiastes 5:4-6, bears on this point, and I wish I could write it on the face of the skies for the benefit of some Baptist preachers. I read thus: "When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error:" – i.e., I made a mistake in making that pledge – "wherefore should God be angry at thy voice and destroy the work of thy hands?" I say solemnly, that a lesson which needs to be burned with fire on the hearts of Christian people is the sanctity of a pledge made to God and to the cause of God. I wrote a man a letter the other day about $2.50 he wanted to go back on. I said, "I am willing to pay this $2.50 for you, but what is going to be the demoralization that will come to our people from the repudiation of their pledges? I can show you a way, if you will give me an opportunity, by which I can come to your church and raise that $2.50 for you. Not that it won’t cost me more than $2.50 to do that, but I will at least have prevented the demoralization that will result from the forfeiture of your vow made to God."

3. What is the third meaning?

Ans. – Thou shalt not use God’s name lightly, jestingly, foolishly, irreverently.

4. If these be the three meanings of this commandment, what therefore does the commandment forbid?

Ans. – (1) Perjury; "Thou shalt not lift up thy hand to the Lord thy God in falsehood." That is, you shall not hold up your hand and make oath falsely. That is perjury. (2) The nonkeeping of vows, oaths, and pledges which have been made unto Jehovah. (3) It forbids, in a religious matter (now mark that), all lying of thought, speech, deed, and appearances; such as, hypocrisy, tithing of mint, cummin and anise, and neglecting the weightier matters of the law; such as making a pretense of long prayers to be seen of men; such as the lie that Ananias told. We are not discussing truth in general, nor lying in general, but we are discussing lying in religious matters in order for it to come under the purview of this law. Peter said to Ananias, "Did you sell the land for so much?" "Yes, that is all of it." "Ananias, thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God," and he dropped dead. After awhile his wife came in. Peter said, "Did you sell the land for so much?" "Yes." "Is this all of it?" "Yes." And she dropped dead. "God will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." (4) It forbids all swearing, jesting or speaking seriously, by any other name or thing other than God himself. It forbids taking an oath at all, unless the oath is taken unto God, even though you are sincere about it. For instance, you can’t swear by the Temple; you can’t swear by the gold of the Temple; you can’t swear by the seven-branched candlestick, nor by anything that is in the skies or on the earth or under the sea; you can’t swear on a crucifix. (5) It forbids all irreverence toward things or persons that are sacred on account of their relation to God. That is why you are commanded to "honour the king," if you live in a monarchy; that is why you are not to laugh and ridicule in a church, a church that is sacred to the Lord; that is why you pay respect to the pastor; he occupies a relation Godward toward you.

5. What are the things it inculcates or sanctions?

Ans. – (1) It sanctions religious oaths and vows that are solemnly made unto God: (a) In solemnizing covenants. If a covenant is made, a sacred covenant in which God is involved, then it sanctions an oath to confirm that covenant. (b) In solemnizing introductions into office, e.g., Ezra and Nehemiah (and many others when entering the priest’s office) took oath to be faithful in discharging the duties of that office, (c) In solemnizing testimony, where you have to testify in a court. Exodus 22:10-11, is an example: "If a man deliver unto his neighbour an ox or a sheep or any beast to keep, and it die or be hurt or driven away, nobody seeing it, then shall an oath of the Lord be between them both; one of them that he hath not stolen his neighbour’s goods, and the owner shall accept thereof, and he shall not make it good." Now a question arises here: A man has deposited some of his property in trust to another, and it disappears. Nobody saw how it disappeared. This law says in such a case the man who had it in trust shall go before God and take oath that he didn’t steal the property; he doesn’t know what became of it. (d) Again, in confirming allegiance to a ruler or a king. A man comes over to the United States and says, "I want to be a citizen." The law requires him to be put on oath that he will be in allegiance to the United States. Reference to this is in Ecclesiastes 8:2. (e) In attesting official fidelity and character. In 1 Samuel 12:5, an old man laid down his office after a king had been chosen in the presence of his people, and lifted up his hands and made an oath that while he was in office he had taken nothing wrongfully from any man; that he had never been bribed. Again (f) in attesting one’s religious veracity. I cite a case, 2 Corinthians 1:23: "Moreover I call God for a witness upon my soul, that to spare you I came not as yet to Corinth." Take Galatians 1:20: "Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God I lie not." That is the strongest form of an oath. (g) In attesting vows, e.g., Jacob in Genesis 25:33; and a passage in the psalms. (2) It inculcates absolute fidelity in keeping oaths and in redeeming vows and pledges that have been made unto Jehovah. (3) It inculcates sincerity in thought, opinion, speech, deed, or appearance in all matters of religion. (4) It inculcates reverence for God’s name and for all persons and things that are sacred by reason of relation to God. 6. Cite Scripture proof that it does sanction religious oaths and vows that are made to God, under the following heads: Covenant Oaths, Judicial Oaths, Official Oaths, Allegiance Oaths, oaths to test official integrity, and to test veracity in religious matters.

Ans. – (1) Covenant Oath: Genesis 15:18; Genesis 21:22; Genesis 26:26-29; Genesis 25:33; Genesis 31:53; Genesis 47:28-31; Genesis 50:25. (2) Judicial Oaths: Matthew 26:63; Exodus 22:10 f; Numbers 5:19-24; Hebrews 6:16. (3) Official Oaths: 2 Kings 11:4; Ezra 10:5; Nehemiah 5:12. (4) Allegiance Oaths: Ecclesiastes 8:2. (5) To attest official integrity: 1 Samuel 12:5. (6) To attest veracity in religious matters: 2 Corinthians 1:23; Galatians 1:20.

7. Does our Lord in Matthew 5:33-37, countermand making all these oaths that are strictly religious and exclusively and solemnly made unto him? If not, give proof.

Ans. – The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5: "Again ye have -heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not perjure thyself, but shall keep unto the Lord thine oaths." That is, thou shalt perform all oaths made unto God. "But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. Neither shalt thou swear by thine head; because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be yea, yea; and nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." My question is: Does the Lord here absolutely forbid the making of the kind of oath sanctioned by the Third Commandment? (1) They must be religious oaths. (2) They must be made exclusively to God, such as covenant oaths, judicial oaths, etc., as enumerated. Jesus, I say, does not forbid these oaths, because when he says, "Swear not at all" he then specifies what are the things in which you shall not swear at all, and God’s name is not in it at all. He says, ’Swear not at all," i.e., neither by heaven, nor by earth, nor by Jerusalem, nor by thy head. He names the things by which you shall not swear. Further proof that that is right: Jesus himself took the judicial oath when he was on trial when the High Priest said, "I adjure thee," that is, "I put thee on oath before God, Are you the Messiah?" He says, "I am." He took an oath that he was the Messiah. Would Jesus himself commit a sin? Or did Paul commit such a sin in taking those oaths he took? Read carefully the comment in Broadus’ Commentary on Matthew.

8. What religious sects so understood Christ and practiced it?

Ans. – Anabaptists; also the Quakers; and I believe the Mormons do.

THE WARNING
1. What warning giving penal sanction to this commandments, and some examples?

Ans. – The warning is: "For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain." Ananias will do for an example; and in the letter to the Romans Paul says concerning the heathen, that turning away from God they become covenant breakers.

Verses 8-11

XVI

THE DECALOGUE – FOURTH COMMANDMENT

Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15

We now study the Fourth Commandment. I take up the questions in their order.

1. What is the relation of the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Commandment?

Ans. – In the First Commandment we are commanded to worship Jehovah and none other; in the Second Commandments we are commanded to worship directly and not through intervention of anything; in the Third we are commanded to worship Jehovah sincerely, not falsely; and in the Fourth Commandment we are directed to worship Jehovah, as to time, in the regular period set apart. The four enjoin worship, direct, sincere, and when.

2. Repeat the Fourth Commandment.

Ans. – 1 quote three accounts. In Exodus 20:8-11, it reads: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto Jehovah thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it." Deuteronomy 5:12-15, where Moses recapitulates: "Observe the sabbath day, to keep it holy, as Jehovah thy God commanded thee. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto Jehovah thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and Jehovah thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore Jehovah thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day." The other account is in Exodus 16:22-26, preceding both of these others; "And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one: and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. And he said unto them, This is that which Jehovah hath spoken, To-morrow is a solemn rest, a holy sabbath unto Jehovah: bake that which ye will bake, and boil that which ye will boil; and all that remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not become foul, neither was there any worm therein. And Moses said, Eat that to-day; for to-day is a sabbath unto Jehovah; to-day ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day is the sabbath, in it there shall be none."

In these three scriptures the sabbath is connected with the creation, with the manna and with the deliverance from Egypt.

3. Considering subsequent legislation and history, give an analysis of the Fourth Commandment, and explain and give an answer to each item of the analysis.

Ans. – This ends the questions, but this third question has twenty-four subquestions in it, and each is a big one. We will give the analysis and then discuss it: (1) Its name; (2) Its authority; (3) Its sanctity; (4) Its duties; (5) Its reasons; (6) Its commemorations; (7) Its anticipations; (8) Its time; (9) Its signification; (10) Its cycle; (II) Its festivals and offerings; (12) Its exceptions; (13) Its rewards for observance; (14) Its penalties for nonobservance; (15) Its preparation; (10) Its profanations (notable cases of weekly sabbaths) ; (17) Its remarkable judgment – case of land sabbaths; (18) Its song; (19) Its cessation in prophecy; (20) Its abrogation in fact; (21) Its Christian successor; (22) Its successor – the argument for, scriptural and historical; (23) Its enemies today; (24) Its final antitype. That is the analysis; and it takes into account subsequent sabbatic legislation and subsequent sabbatic history. We take:

4. Its name and meaning?

Ans. – "Sabbath," which is merely an English translation of the Hebrew word sabbaton and that means "rest," a period of rest.

5. Its authority?

Ans. – Jehovah appointed it, preceded both by example and by precept.

6. Its sanctity?

Ans. – Jehovah blessed and hallowed it. Its holy nature comes from God’s blessing and hallowing. Therefore in many of the scriptures the name of it is the "holy sabbath."

7. Its duties?

Ans. – These are (a) to work six days. It is impossible for me to magnify the dignity of labor. It is a great misconception to hold that work comes from sin; it preceded sin. When God made man and gave him his commission, he gave him a working commission, viz.: to subdue the earth; when he put Adam in the garden before sin he told him to dress the garden and to keep it, keep it in trust. So that labor is one of the things that comes from the other side of the fall of man; that is the first duty – work. It drives a spear through the heart of the lazy man; it drives the nonworker away from the table. Paul said, "If a man won’t work, neither shall he eat." (b) The second duty is rest on the seventh day. Labor on that day was to be suspended; it is suspended for you, your wife, your sons, your daughters, your servants, and your cattle. There is a reason for this which we will consider under the next head. The (c) third reason is for religious instruction. God commanded Moses that on each one of the cycle of sabbaths when they got over into the Promised Land, the whole nation should come together, men, women, and children, and that they should be instructed in all the teachings of God’s Word. (d) The next thing is worship, which is a different kind of rest; a cessation from physical labor gives rest to the body, worshiping God gives rest to the soul. No man has soul rest that does not worship God. Another (e) duty is that of offerings. I have not time to discuss these; you will find in Numbers and particularly in Leviticus the offerings that are to be made on the sabbath day, and on the whole cycle of sabbaths; there they are specified. So that you now see what are its duties: work, rest, instruction, worship, and offerings.

8. What are its reasons?

Ans. – It could not be a moral law unless there was a reason underlying it. (a) On account of its relation to God. Man is related to God; he is God created, and after redemption be is God’s redeemed one. Now it is essential that the man should always be sensible of that highest relation, that paramount relation. But if there be no particular time when that relation is to be considered, that man is a wreck. Whenever you find a man that has no sabbath, you find a man that has no sensibility of his relation to God. (b) In relation to the man upon whom the commandment rests. In the nature of the physical man, inherently, there is a necessity for periods of rest. That this relation is inherent is evident from the testimony of people who are not considered themselves witnesses for religion. They say of it: "If the mind just keeps right on, work, work, work, and does not stop, that man will snap, break." It is not only true of the mind, but it is true also of the body; it is not only true of the body, but it is true of the ax with which you cut down a tree. Take a steam engine and engineers will tell you that the engine which is run every day, and is not laid off, will not last. Even a steam engine calls for a sabbath day. The reason, I say, is inherent in the man, and means a different relation, which is highest of all relations, the paramount relation that man should be kept close to God. Suppose that he never gets more than six days from him, you can always call that fellow back; but where he gets a year away, or twenty years away, then it is very hard to ever get him back. Another reason is, (c) toward his fellow men is a relation; we are related to our fellow men. For instance, if I own a factory and employ my fellow men to work in that factory, I have no right to take advantage of their necessity and make them work on Sunday. The laborer must rest; the slave must rest; and God says, "Remember that you were under taskmasters in Egypt; that then you knew no sabbath, and how hard that made your bondage. Now let the thought of your fellow man come into your mind when you remember this day; that servant needs rest; that ox which you are working to the wagon, and that horse that you are ploughing with six days needs a rest." So that the reasons of the sabbath arise from relations to God, to man, and are inherent in our fellow man and in the lower creatures, (d) Included in the idea of our fellow man comes the social idea, or relation to society, since man is made a social being. Now, if society becomes so corrupt that it rots, then it becomes a stench to heaven; this is true wherever there is no sabbath. The whole body politic becomes corrupt. In his Colonial history, Bancroft describes a certain community in Vermont. It is the most remarkable historical testimony I ever read. He says that a visit to the community would impress forever any man that was susceptible to impression as to the observance of the sabbath; the godliness of the community, the respect that the children have for their parents; the absence of jails, the needlessness of sheriffs; a little paradise, (e) As I have shown, we sustain a relation to lower creatures.

9. Its commemorations?

Ans. – From the three scriptures I read, you will notice (a) God’s rest after the creation of the world, Genesis 2:2; (b) God’s giving of the manna, which was to be the food of his people, Exodus 16:25-31; (c) God’s deliverance of his people from bondage, Deuteronomy 5:15. These three stupendous thoughts of the past would rise up like mountain peaks whenever they took a retrospective glance. God wrote that "in six days he created the heavens and the earth, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day." When his people were in bondage he gave them freedom. He delivered them. When they were in the wilderness and hungry he gave them bread, bread from heaven, a miracle that lasted forty years.

10. Its anticipation?

Ans. – It not only commemorates past events, but it looks forward to a great event, viz.: Rest in the Promised Land. On their pilgrimage and in the wilderness they looked back at the creation and the deliverance, and anticipated the end of their pilgrimage, where, in the Promised Land, they should have rest and peace.

11. Its time?

Ans. – The seventh day: hebdomos. The seventh day does not necessarily mean the sabbath: sabbaton means sabbath. Hebdomos was the time, the seventh day.

12. Of what is it a sign, or what does it signify?

Ans. – In Exodus 31:13; Exodus 31:16-17, and Ezekiel 20:12; Ezekiel 20:20, the sign is brought out very clearly. "This sabbath shows the covenant between you and me, as a sign to you that you are with Jehovah under covenant relations." The seventh day sabbath was the God-appointed sign of the national covenant with Jehovah.

13. Its cycle?

Ans. – There were seventh day sabbaths, or weekly sabbaths; lunar, or monthly sabbaths; annual sabbaths, i.e., sabbaths that came only once a year, e.g., the Passover, Pentecost, and the Tabernacle sabbath; the land sabbaths, or the seventh year sabbaths. Every seventh year the land must rest. They were not to put a plow in it all during that time; if anything was produced voluntarily they took that, and they took that seventh year, which would have been devoted to business, and came up to Jerusalem and spent it there entirely, with all the men, women, and children; and if they were afraid to leave their homes from the most distant parts of the territory of the Promised Land, then they were to remember that as they left, Jehovah would be its guard, and solemnly assured them that if they in faith left that field uncultivated and went up to spend an entire year in a great big Bible study, that he would keep the enemies off and the wolf of starvation from their door. But the cycle is not complete yet. There was the fiftieth year sabbath, called the Jubilee:

Blow ye the trumpet, blow:

The Jubilee has come. When seven times seven years have passed away, and you have given God a seventh of the week, and the thirtieth of the month, and a part of the year, and the seventh year; when you come to the end of the forty-ninth year, which is a land year, the whole land must give another year, called Jubilee year; and the object of that Jubilee is to hedge against alienation of title to property, restoration of bond-servants to freedom, to prevent land monopolies. You could not sell a piece of land, you could only give a lease on it, till the end of the forty-ninth year; and if you were within six months of the Jubilee, you could not lease it for more than six months. But when the Jubilee comes, it reverts back to the original owner. What a pity the politicians could not look at this thing in avoiding the land laws! What a tremendous gang of greedy men, that according to Isaiah, sins against God, by adding land to land, house to house, until there is no room for the people. What then is the cycle? Weekly sabbaths, monthly sabbaths, annual sabbaths, the land sabbath, or every seventh year, and the Jubilee, or fiftieth year sabbath. That is the cycle.

14. What are its festivals and offerings?

Ans. – In connection with the sabbath there was a feast, the weekly festival; it means a time for a feast; there was a weekly feast, a monthly feast, three annual feasts, lasting quite a while, e.g., the Passover feast. They had the Passover day and then had the Passover feast, which lasted a week; and they had the Pentecost proper, followed by the Feast of Pentecost. All these things you learn in Leviticus, but we will come to that later.

15. What are its exceptions?

Ans. – The law says that on the seventh day thou shalt do no work, neither thyself, thy children, thy servants, nor thy beasts. Is that law absolute, or has it exceptions? Among the exceptions are certainly the following, which are referred to repeatedly by our Lord and discussed in the subsequent legislation. We take up first the sheep and the ox. It is the sabbath day. You are to do no work; and you hear a sheep bleating or an ox bellowing, and you go out and find the ox or the sheep in a ditch. There is a commandment: "Thou shalt do no work," forbidding you to take that poor suffering sheep out of the ditch. But in mercy and kindness to animals you take him out. Next you bring your old plowhorse up on Saturday night and hitch him in the stall; it is a quarter of a mile to the tank and it is Sunday. "Water my horse today? No, I must do no work on the sabbath day." Jesus says, "You go, take that horse and water it on the sabbath day." That is a necessity to him; the other was a mercy. Next, "thou shalt do no work." Shall not the priest that offers the sacrifices work in getting these sacrifices ready? Yes; that does not alter it. Jesus said, "Do you not see that the priests work on the sabbath day?" which is the hardest workday the preacher has; he is working as he ministers to God’s people. We take up another case: The law of circumcision says that on the eighth day this child shall be circumcised. So if that comes on the sabbath day, you circumcise it. Another exception is the sabbath day’s journey. The camp of Israel is afterward described as being in such a position that the farthest tribe, if you measure from the center where the tabernacle stood to the most distant corner, it amounted to as much as about one-eighth of a mile; that is a sabbath day’s journey. In other words, you may travel from your place to your appointment, your sabbath day’s journey may be 100 miles, but don’t you go on business on Sunday. So that we have found quite a number of exceptions touching mercy and necessity and the performance of duties otherwise required like circumcision and the work of the priests.

16. Its rewards for observance?

Ans. – These are scattered over the Bible. We have some beautiful accounts of these rewards in Isaiah 46:2; Isaiah 46:4-7, where it talks about the poor outlaw and the stranger; if he shall at heart enter into God’s covenant, shall keep God’s sabbaths, he goes on to tell then of the rewards that God shall give him; that if in his heart he desires to honor God by keeping that day for him; if he follows, if he shall observe that day, then God blesses him. As an old proverb has it: "A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content."

17. Its penalty for nonobservance?

Ans. – For nonobservance of the week day sabbath the penalty was death or other judgments.

18. The preparation of the sabbath?

Ans. – A man cannot keep a day holy without making preparation for it. Suppose that fellow that went out to get sticks to make a little fire had gathered his sticks the day before. Now, whatever you can do the day before, you must; just think that the sabbath is coming tomorrow; therefore the gathering today of twice as much manna as they did on the ordinary day. Prepare your work.

19. Its profanations?

Ans. – The book of Numbers tells us of a man who went out to gather sticks on the sabbath day and he was stoned to death for labor on the sabbath day. In Nehemiah 10 we have an account of those who bought and sold on the sabbath day. They were expelled from the covenant, and excommunication was inflicted upon those guilty; and so was the penalty for the cycle of sabbaths like the lunar sabbaths and the annual sabbaths: "The soul that will not come up to the Passover shall be cut off from his people," excommunicated.

20. Its judgment in case of land sabbaths?

Ans. – Now we come to consider the penalty for the nonobservance of the land sabbath, which is recorded in 2 Chronicles 36:21. Jeremiah made a prophecy because for 490 years during the period of the monarchy they had disregarded this law. He says, "You have not given the sabbaths to the land; therefore you shall go into captivity for seventy years, and the land shall have its sabbath." Amos 8 brings out a penalty on those who profane God’s sabbath, who draw a long breath and say, "Oh, when will this Sunday pass away? I want to get to business. I am tired of all this religious instruction; I want to go fishing, hunting, etc."

21. Its song?

Ans. – Psalms 92:1-15. This psalm was written expressly for the sabbath day.

22. Its cessation in prophecy?

Ans. – The cessation of the whole cycle in prophecy is found in Hosea 2:11, yea, a dozen prophecies are made that the entire sabbatic cycle shall cease. God says, "I will cause to cease," and mentions the weekly, lunar, and annual sabbaths, saying, "they shall cease."

23. Its abrogation in fact?

Ans. – You find proof of the abrogation of the Mosaic sabbaths in the letter to the Colossians (Colossians 2:14), where Paul says that all of them, and exactly those mentioned in Hosea – weekly, lunar) annual – they are all nailed to the cross of Christ, and taken out of the way. That is the abrogation.

24. Its Christian successor?

Ans. – The first day of the week, or the Lord’s Day, not the hebdomadal, seventh day of the week.

25. What is the argument for its successor?

Ans. – It is both scriptural and historical. Those of you who will read the last sermon in the author’s first volume of sermons will find my argument at length, but I will give the substance of it very rapidly. Jehovah says – Jehovah of the Old Testament – that he is Lord of the sabbath; that the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. The sabbath was made for man as man and not for the Jew alone. The sabbath given on Mount Sinai was part of the national covenant with the Israelite nation, to one people, but long before Moses was the sabbath of the creation and rest; not long before Sinai the manna fell; long before Abraham was called, the fall came. God gave man, the first man, a sabbaton; the seventh day commemorated that; the seventh day commemorated the manna; the seventh day commemorated the deliverance from Egypt. Now Jesus is Lord of the sabbath. He does not change the sabbath; but he changes the day of the sabbath, which is substantially: Jesus is the antitype. Joshua was to give them rest; Joshua did not give them rest. Jesus gives them the rest. God created the world; the seventh day sabbath commemorated that. Jesus redeemed the world; the first day of the week commemorates that. As we learn from Hebrews 4, Jesus also rested from his work, as God did from his. Therefore there remaineth a keeping of the sabbath to the child of God. Secondly, when Jesus had abrogated, nailed to his cross, the Mosaic sabbath, and rested, from that day instantly they began to observe another day. Five times we read that "on the first day of the week" he appeared to his disciples and in all of these to at least seventy people; on that day the Spirit came; on that day the disciples assembled break bread, to pray, to keep the Lord’s Supper, as you learn from Acts 2, on that day, according to the habit and custom of the churches, Paul gave commandment that collections should be taken; on that day, in banishment of the Lord’s Day, John was in the Spirit. The citations from history you will find in that volume of sermons.

26. Its enemies today?

Ans. – The enemies today are indeed very formidable; they have allied themselves with so many things that are good. It is a good thing to have a stock show, a fair, but it is bad to have an open door on Sunday and things exhibited that are indecent to the eye and to the moral life, as horse racing and gambling. Such are the oppositions. I have not time to go into the discussion of the battles with these enemies.

27. What is its final antitype?

Ans. – Let us labor to enter into that rest, not the promised land on earth with its metes and boundaries, but the Promised Land in heaven, where is no war and all is rest forever. Oh, land of rest, for thee I sigh, When will the moment come When I shall lay my armour by, And rest with Christ at home?

ADDED QUESTIONS
Is it right for a man living five miles out of town to drive to church on Sunday with a horse used all the week?

Ans. – We must consider two things: (a) Man greater than the beast; man must go to church. Can he and his family walk ten miles, or five and back, regularly? Some would have to stay at home. (b) I have never read of a horse dying while taking a family to church. They generally carry feed, tie him to a shady tree, water him, and drive him slowly back. You might have brought a question harder than this, viz.: The railroad matter. It is a law to excuse railroad employees or clerks working in the postoffice on Sunday. But I would not, as a Christian, enter any business that left me no Sunday privileges, no alternation. Employers regarding their fellow men should have done on Sunday only such work as concerns public necessity.

Verse 13

XVIII

THE DECALOGUE – THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT

Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17

1. Who was the first murderer?

Ans. – The devil. So John in John 8:44 says, "He was a murderer from the beginning."

2. Which was the first murder?

Ans. – In Genesis 4:8-15, Cain, under the promptings of Satan, killed his brother Abel.

3. Which was the first penal law against murder?

Ans. – I will quote it for you; it preceded this law we are on now: "And surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it; and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man" (Genesis 9:5-6). This is the Noachian law given to Noah when he was the second representative head of the human race, after the flood, and particularly do you need to know the reason assigned: "For in the image of God made he man." Therein is the heinousness of murder, viz.: that man was made in the image of God.

4. Now repeat this commandment.

Ans. – "Thou shalt not kill." I stated in the preceding chapter that the great covenant adopted at Sinai was set forth in the book of Exodus 19-23, and that covenant consisted of three parts: (1) This moral code which we are discussing; (2) The civil code arising from it; (3) The law of approach to God through the altar.

5. As that whole covenant from Exodus 19-24 is the constitution, what special Mosaic statutes were derived from this commandment?

Ans. – (1) We will take up the case of homicide, which means the killing of a man (from homo, man, and caedis or caedo, to kill). The first Mosaic legislation concerning homicide, which is murder, has the death penalty. I want you to look at the special legislation on that subject. You will find this law with the death penalty assessed clearly stated in the following scriptures: Exodus 21:12; Exodus 21:14; Leviticus 24:17; Numbers 35:30-33; Deuteronomy 27:24. Now, Moses developed special statutes out of this constitution, and every one of these statutes which I have recited you are to read carefully, and you will see that in any of the cases specified, this homicide is murder, with the penalty of death.

(2) The next special legislation on the subject is found in Numbers 35:16-21, and it is homicide where malice is presumed because of the deadly weapon used. Let us turn and read it, for I want you to get this Mosaic legislation clearly in your mind, for all of our laws by which we go in our courts today are derived from this law. There is not a single principle of law, as attached to murder, in the government of any civilized country that is not derivable from the Mosaic law: "But if he smote him with an instrument of iron, so that he died, he is a murderer." Now, if you were to hit a man with a straw and it were to kill him, you could not prove malice, because the thing with which you struck was not calculated to kill. Here is where the weapon comes in and helps to determine murder, and you will hear the lawyers pleading that in all the murder cases that come up. "The murderer shall surely be put to death. And if he smote him with a stone in the hand, whereby a man may die, and he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall surely be put to: death. Or if he smote him with a weapon of wood in the hand, whereby a man may die, and he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall surely be put to death." Suppose I kill one with a cane, (and I have one with which one could kill a man) it would be murder. "And if he thrust him of hatred, or buried at him, lying in wait, so that he died, or in enmity smote him with his hand, so that he died; he that smote him shall surely be put to death; he is a murderer." So you see the idea of murder there is that this man, even though he has not a weapon, lying in wait, he deliberately got his victim, having come along and anticipated it. Suppose he just leaps out and grasps him by the throat and chokes him to death? The law declares that murder on account of its malice; it was murder prompted by hatred, on account of its deliberation as he lay in wait for him.

(3) The next case is found in Deuteronomy 27:25: "Cursed be he that taketh a bribe to slay an innocent person." The first thing here is not personal animosity against the one killed, but the murderer accepting a bribe to kill him. He kills him for money; it is assassination for bribery; that is murder. It would be no defense for him to say, "I had no sort of enmity against that man; I never saw him in my life before." But inasmuch as he took money as the price of killing, it is murder.

(4) The next case is homicide that results from false testimony, Deuteronomy 19:16-19. Here’s a man accused before the courts with an offense, and the witness through whose testimony he was accused lost his life because of perjury; then that witness, though he did not actually do the killing, committed murder, and the Mosaic law says you must do to that witness, when you have proof of his perjury, what his testimony had done to the other man. If through false evidence he had a man hanged, why then you hang him, because that is murder.

(5) The next is a case of homicide resulting from criminal neglect, and the first case I take up under that charge is cited in Exodus 21:29, right after the giving of this code. Now here is a special statute that applies to that code: that if a man is gored to death by a vicious ox or bull, and there is evidence that the owner of that ox had been notified of the vicious character of that animal and did not keep him in, and through the running of it at large this man was killed, then the owner of that ox shall be put to death. That is criminal negligence, not safeguarding the life of others. If a little girl was going to school, and a man kept a bloodhound, a ferocious animal, and he should leap the fence and tear the throat of that little girl till she died, that man could be hanged under the Mosaic law; it was a criminal neglect.

The next case of criminal neglect cited is Deuteronomy 22:8. When a man built a new house (you know the houses in that country were all flat on top) if the man did not erect battlements to protect anybody that might walk on the roof, or if children playing thoughtlessly got too close to the edge, fell off, and killed themselves, that man who did not put up battlements was guilty of murder; it was a criminal neglect. The third case of criminal neglect is Exodus 22:23: If two men get to fighting in a house where people are, or on the street, and as a result of their fighting an innocent bystander is killed, they are guilty of murder, because that was not the place to fight. Whoever fights in a public place where the people have a right to be, and though he shoots at his enemy, misses him and kills somebody that he did not aim at all, he is guilty of murder. It wasn’t the place to shoot.

The next case is that of a man punishing a slave, and while the weapon he uses is not called a deadly weapon, yet if he makes that punishment so extreme that the slave dies under the punishment, he is a murderer; and he could be put to death; but in order for him to be guilty of murder, the slave must die under the punishment. He might wound him so that he did not die for a week or two, then the law would not apply. But if he dies under the punishment, it is murder.

(6) The next law is expressed in Deuteronomy 21:1. I had better quote that to you, as some of you prohibitionists, if you do as I used to do, will make a great deal of it: "If one be found slain in the land which Jehovah God giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath smitten him; then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities that are around about him that is slain; and it shall be, that the city which is nearest unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take a heifer of the herd, which hath not been wrought with, and which hath not drawn in the yoke . . . And all the elders of that city shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley; and they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Forgive, O Jehovah, thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and suffer not innocent blood to remain in the midst of thy people Israel. And the blood shall be forgiven them. So shalt thou put away the innocent blood from the midst of thee, when thou shalt do that which is right in the eyes of Jehovah." So that those elders who had washed their hands over the slain heifer and in the name of God who had Just been evoked by the sacrifice, they must swear that no neglect upon their part occasioned the death of that man. That is called municipal responsibility. Now, when the sheriff was killed in Fort Worth by that saloonkeeper, simply because the sheriff was discharging his duty, I wrote an article holding the city of Fort Worth responsible for that murder. They were tolerating the death-gendering business, also associated with murder, and through their licensing those saloons, and through their failure to enforce the law against those saloons that this murder came by, the municipality was guilty in the sight of God.

(7) The special Mosaic legislation, under the head, "Thou shalt not kill," is all embodied in what is called lex talionis. You will not forget that: lex talionis, law of retaliation, and that lex talionis is set forth in the scripture, Exodus 21:23-25. Let us read that and see what it is: "But if any harm follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe" that is, every man under the law, "Thou shalt not kill," is to be held responsible for the amount of damage which he inflicts, whether it kills or not. If he knocks out a man’s eye, then eye for eye, and tooth for tooth, one of his must now be taken out; if he cuts off a man’s nose then off comes his; if he breaks three or four teeth, then the same number of his shall be broken; "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burning for burning." If he picks up boiling hot water and throws it over him, then he must be scalded. Let us see how that law is applied in Leviticus 24:19-21: "And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him: breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be rendered unto him. And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; and he that killeth a man shall be put to death." And now let us look at the lex talionis in Deuteronomy 19:18-21: "And the judges shall make diligent inquisition; and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and have testified falsely against his brother; then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to do unto his brother . . . And thine eyes shall not pity; life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." That is lex talionis. Now, so far as we have considered the case of homicide where it was adjudged to be murder, and the penalty was death.

We will now consider accidental homicide. Deuteronomy 19:4-6: "And this is the case of the manslayer, that shall flee thither and live: whoso killeth his neighbor unawares, and hateth him not in time past; as when a man goeth into the forest with his neighbor to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbor, so that he dieth; he shall flee unto one of these cities and live: lest the avenger of blood pursue the manslayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and smite him mortally; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past." Now, he killed him but there was no hatred toward him and no intention to kill him. It was a pure accident; that is not murder.

I take a still stronger case, however, presented in Numbers 35:22-23: "But if he thrust him suddenly without enmity, or buried upon him anything without lying in wait, or with any stone, whereby a man may die, seeing him not, and cast it upon him, so that he died, and he was not his enemy, neither sought his harm"; then that is not murder, for the congregation delivered the manslayer out of the hand of the avenger of blood and restored him to his city of refuge whither he had fled. There you come upon both suddenly, and it would be such if I were working on the top of a three-story house and pushed off the coping and it fell on somebody and killed him, I not seeing him, yet there being a sign up all around that there was danger on that building. But there was something here more than that. It says, "If a man suddenly thrust." Now that is not an accident; it is this kind of a case: if the killing is brought upon you when you are not expecting it and the whole issue of it is thrust upon you without any premeditation on your part, and in the heat of the moment, you, in defense, lay hold on anything you can get your hand on, when they are crowding you, and you thrust suddenly and kill a man, this is not murder. Why? There was no malice, and there was no deliberation. It all came upon you in a moment, and you find that principle recognized in every law court in the United States. A question comes up: "Was the lex talionis to be enforced individually or through the courts?" I will explain that directly, we will come to it again, a strange kind of court, a part of it, yet it was a court.

6. Now give the Mosaic definition of murder, the process of court procedure in determining it to be murder, and its penalty.

Ans. – Here’s my answer: (1) Homicide with deliberation and enmity is always murder. (2) The use of a deadly weapon in smiting implies malice and intent to kill and is murder. (3) Taking a bribe to kill, though without personal malice, is murder. (4) Homicide resulting from perjury, without personal malice, is murder. (5) Extreme punishment of the slave, though one did not mean to murder when he commenced punishing him, yet if he persisted until the slave dies under that punishment, it is murder. (6) Homicide resulting from criminal negligence, as in the case of an ox, or of the battlement. (7) In the case of a fight on the streets or in the house where the public have a right to be; (8) as in the case of the municipality in not safeguarding the lives of the citizens, or in not enforcing the law which does safeguard these, all are murder, criminal and otherwise at special courts; and (Deuteronomy 19:15-19) every man (a) was entitled to a trial, (b) and no man could be convicted of any offense, and especially in that of murder, by one witness; there must be two witnesses, one would not do; (c) no bail could be given, and (d) no fine allowed in a murder case, (e) and a false witness was himself to be put to death. (I will explain another feature of the court at the end of the chapter.) Now continuing the Mosaic definition: (9) Accidental (Deuteronomy 19:4-6) homicide in self-defense is not murder. (10) Sudden homicide is not murder (Num. 35). (II) When a thief in the act of burglary is killed, that is not murder. (12) But, if you wait to kill him till the next day, then it is murder. (13) War is not murder; killing in war is not murder. Now I have given you the Mosaic law for murder.

7. What was our Lord’s exposition on this Sixth Commandments?

Ans. – It is in Matthew 5:21-22, in the great Sermon on the Mount: "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgments; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca [an expression of contempt], shall be in danger of the council [the Sanhedrin]; and whosoever shall say, Thou goal [an expression of condemnation] shall be in danger of the Gehenna of fire." There you see our Lord goes down to the root of the matter, and he puts the murder not in the overt act, but in the angry passion, or hate, that prompts the act, and that passion or hate may be expressed in a word. You may kill with the word, Raca, Fool, a worthless fellow; so that our Lord does not take back the Mosaic law, but he gives the spirit of it; he goes deeper than the words of the law; fool [an expression of condemnation], shall be in danger of the Gehenna of fire." There you see our Lord goes down to the root of the matter, and he puts the murder not in the overt but in the state of the mind which prompts to kill or to call a man curse words, as Raca, Fool, or whatever you please.

8. Now give our Lord’s exposition of the lex talionis.

Ans. – In Matthew 5:38-39, we have this: "Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth [he does not take that back; he goes far beyond that] : but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil; but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." That is, the Christian man is not allowed to be executor of the lex talionis; he is not judge, or sheriff. The law says, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," and if a man has knocked your eye out, you are not to reach out your hand and knock his out; you are not the executor if he hits you on one side of the face. Rather than hit him back, you had better turn the other side and let him hit you again. God did not make you executor of the law.

9. What is John’s exposition of murder?

Ans. – 1 John 3:15: "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." He may not shoot him; he may not be guilty of assassination, but if he hates him he has the spirit of a murderer.

10. Now give our Lord’s exposition of the source of murder.

Ans. – Here he goes deeper than he went before. There he put the murder in the passions; in Matthew 15:19, he gives the source of it: "For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, etc." There you do not have to prove the murder to be of the sword or pistol, nor even by anger, whether it manifests itself or not in word or gesture, but the permanent state, the attitude of the inner self toward God; out of the heart it comes forth, and that is the source.

11. Now give our Lord’s positive side of the commandment, the negative side of it being, "Thou shalt not kill."

Ans. – In Matthew 5:43-45, we find his positive side of it: "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." As murder is hate – "Thou shalt not hate" – (that is the negative side) so, "Thou shalt love" is the positive of the commandment.

12. What is Paul’s positive side of it?

Ans. – Romans 12:19-21: "Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto the wrath of God: for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the Lord. But if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." There you begin to get at the idea that Christ is not speaking of the governmental execution of law. He is saying to the Christian people that they are not the executors of the law; and Paul says, "You have been wronged, now you give place to the wrath of God; just get out of the way and let God hit him. ’Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay,’ and so far as you are concerned, do not hit him. Love him and pray for him."

13. Does our Lord condemn all anger? If not, what is his law of anger?

Ans. – As a proof that he does not condemn all anger, three or four times in his life he was himself intensely indignant, and ought to have been, and we ought to have an anger and wrath against any and all evil things, but he says, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." Now if they are wicked things they will make you mad, and that would not be sin, but if you took vengeance it would be sin, or if you nourished that, let the sun go down on that anger, it would breed something that would be sin, i.e., if you let it hang on long.

14. Does Christ condemn killing by the state through the courts of justice?

Ans. – He certainly does not. He is not discussing that subject at all; nobody could call him out on these political questions.

15. What, then, is the sum of his teaching on killing and private resistance?

Ans. – The sum of his teaching is that as God sends his sunlight and his rain upon the evil and good alike, so we, to be the children of God, must love the good and the bad; must desire their good; must refuse to execute judgment on him by taking vengeance into our hands. That is the sum of his law.

16. What is the sum of his teaching on courts and wars?

Ans. – As I have told you, he avoided putting himself in antagonism in any way to any form of government. He says in whatsoever condition you are to be content, and you are to obey the magistrates and observe the requirements issued for the good of society. But he teaches principles that will ultimately put an end to the necessity of the human courts and to all courts whatever. One of the prophets says, "He shall be the arbiter between nations." He says to his own children, "Do not go to law brother against brother." We should either arbitrate or select any two or three good brethren in the church and let them decide; suffer wrong rather than go to law. He established the great principle of arbitration which appears in The Hague Commission and which has done a great deal of good and gives expression to the principle which he teaches, as the prophets declare: That the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and a little child shall lead them, and there shall be wars no more, and the swords shall be turned into plowshares and the spears into pruning hooks, and from one end of the earth to the other there shall be peace, and peace only. He is to bring it about, not by political legislation, but by inculcating the principles that will govern public opinion and will spread until a millennium of glory shall come in the power of his teachings.

17. What is the nature of murder?

Ans. – It has about a dozen elements: (1) Sacrilege, because you are killing somebody who was made in the image of God; that is sacrilege. (2) And again you are killing your brother; you are destroying a member of society, and the great reason for a legislation against murder is that the man is made in the image of God, etc.

18. Cite special cases of murder.

Ans. – (1) Homicide, the killing of a man; (2) suicide, the killing of self; (3) parricide, the killing of a parent; (4) infanticide, the killing of infants; and feticide, the killing of unborn children. Every one of them is murder.

19. Give the case of the Negro judge.

Ans. – In Reconstruction times some Negroes got into office, and very near the edge of Arkansas, close to Texas, a Negro became a judge, and one of the cases brought before him was that of a man who had killed another man and stolen his horse. When they brought him before the Negro, he said: ’’This court knows two kinds of justice; there is the Arkansas justice and there is the Texas justice. Well, now, which will you have?" "Well, if it is Texas justice you want, I set you free for killing the man – that is nothing in Texas, but I will hang you for stealing the horse." "Well, hold on," the culprit said, "give me Arkansas justice." "All right, I’ll set you free for stealing that horse, but I’ll hang you for killing that man."

20. What is the great reflection on our laws as they are administered?

Ans. – That the courts will not condemn a man for murder; they just simply will not do it. They condemn to death for stealing, without ever failing, and for a great many other things, but you can come nearer killing a man with impunity than stealing a paper bag of popcorn.

21. What is one of the greatest causes that lead to murder?

Ans. – The love of money; as in the case of that man who killed by taking a bribe; as in the case of that man who swore falsely for money’s sake; as in the case of that saloonkeeper, who for the love of money kept and sold the things that brought about murder. The love of money is one of the greatest causes of murder.

22. Explain the avenger of blood and the cities of refuge.

Ans. – The question was asked whether the lex talionis was vested in that individual or in the court of the cities of refuge. There were six of them, three east of the Jordan and three west; they were set there for this purpose: that when one killed a man, he could instantly flee that city nearest, and if the avenger of blood overtook him before he got there, he perished; if he got there, he had a trial. If it was proved that he had maliciously killed him, then the city of refuge could not hold him, nobody could hold him, he must be given up, says Moses. But the object of those cities of refuge was to give time for passion to cool, to give time for a fair trial. Now what was the avenger of blood? He was the closest of kin to the murdered man. That looks like putting it into the hands of the individual, but while it was in the hands of the individual, it was an individual commission of the law; the law commissioned him, as soon as his kinsman was killed, to strike right out for the murderer, and it was a hot race; if the murderer got to the city of refuge he was safe from the avenger of blood until the evidence could be brought there and the case tried, and if he had actually committed murder, then he must be publicly executed. If it was a case of accidental killing, or accidental homicide, they could not put him to death. Now we have no such thing as the avenger of blood, making the nearest of kin the avenger of blood, as the law of Moses did. But he was an officer of the law just as the sheriff is. The Mormons created a body called the Danites, a secret organization, and made them the avengers of blood, until the whole United States was stirred with the drama, The Danites repeating what they did in dramatic art. That drama, The Danites, thrilled the whole United States, and the Danites had to go out of business.

23. How about a missionary in a heathen country carrying a pistol?

Ans. – If I had been out with Theodore Roosevelt in the wilds of Africa, I would have carried both gun and pistols. Wherever my life was in jeopardy by the necessity of my situation, I would carry them, but in a school or a church, or in the streets of a peaceful city, where there are officers of the law on all sides ready to protect – that is the kind of pistol carrying that is inexcusable.

Verse 14

XIX

THE DECALOGUE – THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT

Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:18

1. What is the scriptural basis for the Seventh Commandments?

Ans. – The answer is Genesis 1:26: "God made them male and female," and Genesis 2:18-25, which describes how the woman was formed from man, and, taken with the man, expresses their unity. Genesis 2:3-8, restates the passage from the first chapter. Now the Seventh Commandment roots in this Genesis passage.

2. What are the lessons of these scriptures?

Ans. – These Old Testament passages furnish four great lessons: (1) The unity of the man and the woman: "They twain shall be one flesh," bone of bone and flesh of flesh. The Hebrew word for man is ish; the Hebrew word for woman is isshah and means ess. Just like you say peer and peeress, baron and baroness, marquis and marchioness; the feminine of man means "derived from man." Charles Wesley, the great Methodist hymn writer, has used these words in a song:

Not from his head the woman took,

And made her husband to overlook;

Not from his feet, as one designed

The footstool of the stronger kind;

But fashioned for himself a bride:

An equal taken from his side. That is the first lesson in these scriptures, teaching the unity of the man and the woman. (2) Marriage is a divine institution. Genesis 1:27; Genesis 2:22, and Matthew 19:6. God made them male and female. God made the woman out of a part of the man, and presented her to the man. Therefore "what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." (3) Marriage is the first and the highest and the most important human relation, derived from this part of Genesis: "therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife" (Genesis 2:24). Just as soon as the marriage relation is established, a new family is established; and that marriage obligation is paramount over every other human obligation, or every obligation based upon a human relation. A man is more under obligation to love and to take care of his wife than he is to stay at home and take care of his father and mother. A woman is under more obligation to love and to cherish her husband than she is to love and to cherish her own father and mother, or her own brothers and sisters. It is the first human relation, the highest human relation, the most important human relation and it antedated even the sabbath day. (4) The fourth lesson: Marriage typifies the covenant relation between God and Israel, Isaiah 54:5: "Thy Maker is thy husband"; and also the covenant relation between Christ and his church. There are a number of passages on this: Romans 5:14; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:22-23; Revelation 19:5-10. All these scriptures are devoted to that idea; all of them need special mention. In Romans 5 Paul shows that Adam the first was a type of Adam the Second; and as the woman was derived from Adam the first, so the church was derived from Adam the Second; that as the first Adam was in a deep sleep when God took the material of the woman from his side, so the Second Adam must sleep in death, in order that the church might be extracted from his side. And the other passage, the most remarkable, is the one in Ephesians 5. I think I had better quote a part of it to you, though you may be quite familiar with it. We want to get at the basis of this Seventh Commandment (Ephesians 5:22-23) "Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is also the head of the church, being himself the saviour of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, Jove your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth himself: for no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the church; because we are members of his body. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church. Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see that she fear her husband."

Now, these are the four great lessons of the Genesis passage without the details: (1) The essential unity of man and woman; (2) Marriage is a divine institution; (3) Marriage is the first and highest and most important human relation; (4) Marriage typifies the covenant relation between God and Israel, and the covenant relation between Christ and his church. I quote a closing passage on the last (Revelation 19:6) : "And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as of the voice of mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth. Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure: for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb." Now having considered the basis of the commandment, let us repeat the commandment: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." In other words, Thou shalt not be unfaithful to the marriage obligation (Exodus 22:14).

3. What is Christ’s exposition of this?

Ans. – You see that, on the face of it, it looks as though it speaks only to married people. Thou shalt not be unfaithful to the marriage vows; it does look like a limitation. Now let us see how Christ expounds that in Matthew 5:27-28, a part of his great Sermon on the Mount (that sermon is the exposition of the law) : "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery; but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Now Jesus is not supplementing the Mosaic law; he is simply fulfilling it, filling it out, showing the spirituality of it; and that it does not refer (1) simply to an overt act, and (2) that it does not refer simply to the marriage relation; but it refers to the passion, whether it ever finds expression or not.

4. What is the source of all violation of this commandments?

Ans. – In Matthew 15:19, Jesus says, "For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications," etc. There the commandment strikes at the state: "out of the heart," "whosoever looketh"; there is a reference to the passion. "Do not commit adultery" – there is an overt act. Now the law takes cognizance of the whole subject, not merely of the fruit of the tree, not of the flower from which the fruit is formed, not of the bough upon which the fruit grows, nor of the trunk from which the branch extends, but of the very root of the tree. That is the law.

5. What was Moses’ law of divorce?

Ans. – We have spoken of this relation. Now, Moses, who recorded this commandment we are studying, afterward permitted divorces, and we want to see the law under which he permitted it. Deuteronomy 24:1-4: "When a man taketh a wife, and marrieth her, then it shall be, if she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some unseemly thing in her, that he shall write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, who took her to be his wife; her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before Jehovah; and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance." So that if a man is divorced from a woman under this Mosaic law, she may marry somebody else, and that second man may divorce her, or that second man may die, but that first man must not marry her again. Now that is the Mosaic law of divorce.

6. What is Christ’s law of divorce?

Ans. – It is found in Matthew 19:3-10: "The Pharisees also came unto him, trying him, and saying, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said, Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it hath not been so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery. The disciples say unto him, If the case of the man is so with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." Now in this v. 9: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication" – What is the distinction between adultery and fornication? Fornication is a general term, and adultery is a specific term. Fornication includes adultery. See in Dr. Broadus’ commentary on this nineteenth chapter in which the distinction is made between fornication and adultery, and the proof be gives is from the Greek. Now if Christ had said, "Whosoever shall put away his wife except for adultery," then his statement would not have been comprehensive enough; he would have been using a limited term, and it would not have covered some cases, for instance, such a case as this: A man and a woman are betrothed, and under the Jewish law it is kindred to marriage, that is, it is as binding. Now the woman before marriage violates this law; then that man could put her away for that offense under the Jewish law. But if Christ had limited it to adultery, an offense committed after marriage only would have been covered by that term. So he selected the broad term, fornication, which applies not only to married people, but to unmarried people. I am very glad to bring out that distinction, and particularly as a few years ago a bishop in Waco took the position that a man could not put away his wife for adultery; that the only ground upon which he could put her away was a failure of consideration of chastity when they were married; that she was unchaste when they were married; that she only "fooled" him, which was a very erroneous interpretation.

7. What is Christ’s preventive against unchastity?

Ans. – In Matthew 5:29-30, he says, "And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell." This is also recorded in Mark 9:43-48. Now let me read the connection that you may see the preventive: "I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart" (Matthew 5:28).

8. Is this remedy to be understood literally or spiritually?

Ans. – Unquestionably, it is to be understood as spiritual. To show you that it must be so understood, let us suppose that a man uses his eye looking on a woman to lust after her, and he therefore plucks out his eye. That would not prevent the offense; it could go on with both his eyes plucked out. And if his hands were cut off, as long as the adultery came out of his heart, it could still go on. So it is perfectly foolish to talk about this excision being legal; it is spiritual. It means this: that whatever object entices you to sin, the preventive is, turn away from it; give it up; cut it off. That is the spiritual thought. Like Paul says, "I keep my body under." As the little girl in the Sunday school expressed it, "Paul kept his soul on top." "I keep my body under; keep the soul on top." The members of the body are merely instrumental, and Paul says that all sin is apart from the body. The body cannot sin. The body is used as an instrument of sin, but the sin comes from the inner man; it corner out of the heart of the man.

9. What is Paul’s law of separation between husband and wife?

Ans. – Suppose we read 1 Corinthians 7:10-16: "But unto the married I give charge, yea not I, but the Lord, That the wife depart not from her husband (but should she depart, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband); and that the husband leave not his wife. But to the rest say I, not the Lord [that is, when he said that, he was quoting the words that Christ spoke; he does not mean that what he is going to say is not from the Lord, but it means it is not recorded in the life of Christ; he says he speaks by the Spirit himself, but what he is now going to say is a part of the information that had not been verbally given during Christ’s lifetime]: If any brother hath an unbelieving wife, and she is content to dwell with him, let him not leave her. And the woman that hath an unbelieving husband, and he is content to dwell with her, let her not leave her husband. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. Yet if the unbelieving departeth, let him depart: the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us in peace. For how knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O husband, whether thou shalt save thy wife?" You see the case that Paul is discussing is this kind: Suppose a man is converted, a married man, and his wife is not converted, and is intensely opposed to his being a Christian; she may be a heathen or she may be just a worldly minded person. Now is he to put away his unbelieving wife? No. Shall this unbelieving wife remain with her husband? Yes. But suppose this unbelieving one won’t remain, just simply won’t do it? Well, "if the unbelieving depart, let him depart." You have done all you could; now let him depart. In other words, there can be, and often is, in this life a separation between husband and wife where it is on account of one of the parties (it takes two to make a thing stand) making it impossible for the two to live together. If one of them wants to go, and will go, why, let that one go.

10. In 1 Corinthians 7:15: "If the unbelieving depart, let him depart; the brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases." Does that create an exception to Matthew 19:9? Matthew says that no man can put away his wife, save for fornication. Now here is a separation that is not based on fornication. Does this language, "a brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases," create a new and additional ground for divorce?

Ans. – I will let Paul answer it himself in v. II. He had just said, "But if she [the unbelieving wife] depart, let her remain unmarried." Now, there can be separation, but there cannot be divorce in this case. Where divorce comes, you can remarry, but you cannot remarry on mere separation. Take Paul again in 1 Corinthians 7:39: "A wife is bound for so long time as her husband liveth, but if her husband be dead, she is free to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord." You see that Paul then does not present a second ground of divorce, but of separation. Now I will take a case in point. One of the oldest, most venerable and useful ministers of God that we have had in Texas was Brother Z. N. Morrell. When somewhat late in life he married, probably the second time, his first wife being dead, this later marriage was a mistake. The woman would not live with him. She would "blow him up and blow the home up, and blow any visitor up." The brethren could not now come to see Brother Morrell but that woman would fire a bombshell at them just as soon as they would come in the gate. He said, "Now this kind of thing will not do; it stands in the way of my work; and this being the case, we had better live apart. I will take care of you as long as you live, but cannot fill my duty as a Christian and a preacher with you here in the house doing as you do." So they had what is called in law a divorce, a divorce from bed and board, but not a divorce e vinculo matrimonii, a divorce from the bond of matrimony. It was a separation but not such a separation as permits remarriage.

11. What is the meaning of the saying of the disciples in Matthew 19:10, if Christ had laid down the law of divorce, and Christ’s reply?

Ans. – I will quote it: Christ had just said, "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery, and he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery." Matthew 19:10 says, "If the case of the man is so with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." What does that mean? They thought it a mighty good thing to marry under the Mosaic law of marriage; that if they did not like a woman, they could just send her off with a piece of paper and go and marry somebody else. But when Christ came in and showed them the indissoluble nature of the bond, and the sanctity of the relation, they said if this is the law of marriage it is not expedient to marry at all. That is exactly what they meant: that they had better let the marriage relation alone. Our Lord then goes on to say that some people have let marriage alone, but not for such a reason as they allege. He says a certain saying is for those who may receive it: some on account of physical disability are eunuchs from their mother’s womb, etc., but God teaches that marriage is honorable and there is a command to multiply and fill the earth up with population, and they were wrong in saying that because the marriage relation is so stringent, therefore it is expedient not to marry at all.

12. Christ’s remedy for unchastity?

Ans. – It means that when you look into your heart and at your thoughts, you find, even if there have been no overt acts, that you have violated this law. Now, what is the remedy? The atoning blood of Christ, just as you have a remedy for every other sin. Put it into the hands of the Advocate and through the blood plea you are forgiven. There is no difference in a sin of this kind and any other kind of sin, and the remedy for all of them is one remedy – the blood of Christ.

13. What is the relation of sanctification to this sin?

Ans. – Listen to this answer: Regeneration takes hold of the carnal mind, which is enmity against God and not subject to his law, and neither indeed can be. Regeneration changes that mind, that nature. It is the imparting of a holy disposition; but notwithstanding regeneration the Christian finds that even after he has been a subject of regeneration; even after he has been justified through the application of the blood of Christ, he finds a law in his members warring against the law of his mind. Now comes in Christ’s great practical remedy: there is a legal remedy, viz.: finding forgiveness through the blood of Christ. But the practical remedy is through sanctification: that is, beginning in regeneration, the Spirit continues his work to make you purer and purer in mind and thought, holier and holier, more and more like God, until, when the full work of sanctification has been accomplished at the death of the body, then you are as holy as Christ is holy. You not only have had a change of nature in regeneration; you not only are complete in Christ through justification, but you have been rendered practically as holy as God is holy in yourself. That is the relation of sanctification to this doctrine.

Oh, how many times has the cry gone up when a man finds a law in his members working against the law of his mind, causing him to do things that he would not, and to leave undone things that he would do, finding himself brought under subjection to the law of sin and death, until he cries out: "Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" Sanctification is continually carried on until body, mind, and soul are all as perfect as God. So we cannot object to this law of Christ on account of its ideal character in not making the law to be a sliding scale to fit human infirmity. The law is holy, the law is just, the law is good; and you cannot make it go down 100 miles to suit one man, 1,000 miles to suit another man, 10,000 miles to suit still another, and so on; and if its standard differs not in one part of the world from what it is in another part, it must stand as God gave it; that in your heart you must not violate this law; in your thought you must not do it; nor in the overt act. That is the law. Justification will cover all offenses; conviction and petition will cover all accruing violation; sanctification will put you in the condition that you will not want to violate it, ultimately. When Paul has just given the law, he says that the law holds till death, as the woman is under the law to her husband as long as he lives, and that there is but one offense known under heaven among men that in the sight of God will justify an absolute divorce and allow remarriage.

OTHER QUESTIONS
1. What is the law in the members?

Ans. – It is the residue or the remainder of the depravity in nature, not yet subdued by regeneration. Regeneration imparts a principle of life, but the entire nature is not yet subdued unto God, and through the body as an instrument it tempts the man and tempts him to sin. That is the law in the members.

2. Does fornication include drunkenness?

Ans. – No.

3. Does it include profligacy?

Ans. – When profligacy refers to the matter in hand. A man can be profligate in other matters. It refers to all forms of violation of purity in the sexual relation.

4. Should a church discipline one of its members who marries a man divorced for an unscriptural cause?

Ans. – That is a question to which there has never been a practical solution. I confess that I am more stalled over the discipline question, as under this law, than everything else in the world put together. I never did have anything to bother me like that matter. Now there will cases come up much more complicated than the way this question puts it. It supposes that he marries the divorced woman and is a member of the church before the offense was committed, and was under the jurisdiction of the church when the offense was committed. If I had been the preacher and I had known that he was marrying the woman divorced, and not from a scriptural standpoint, I never would have officiated at his marriage, and if he had asked me if it was lawful under Christ, I would have told him no, it was not, and if he violated that commandment, he would be disowning his allegiance to Jesus Christ. I had a most touching letter of appeal not many months ago, from one of the best young men and one of the best young ladies I ever knew. I doubt whether any church can be found with a purer, more chaste young Christian woman than she was. Now, in the man’s case he had been divorced, but not for the scriptural reason. Years had passed away; his wife still living though not married again. He fell in love with this girl, and they wrote me to know if they might, under Christ’s law, marry. I said, "Do not do it; do not do it." I said, "It is better sometimes to deny yourselves than it is to gratify yourselves. A greater accretion of moral stamina comes from renunciation than from gratification; and now do not marry." And they wrote back that they would not. Now this question: If they had married would you discipline them? That the law had been violated is unquestionable. The object of discipline is to "gain" a party. Sometimes when the law is violated there comes such a complication that to attempt to exercise discipline would do more harm than good. For instance, suppose two or three children have been born to these people. Now you go in and discipline the mother; what about the children? Who is to take care of them? Now I would say this, that my mind is perfectly clear that if one had been married in the case of the divorce not on scriptural grounds, I would say, "Do not Join the church; do the best you can outside. You cannot join the church without doing harm to the church," and I am very much inclined to the position that the discipline had better be exercised, but it takes a strong man and a strong church to be able to do it. Some preachers will lose their pastorate on it, because there are complications.

5. In case of separation where divorce is not allowed, if one party marries is the other free?

Ans. – Yes. Not per se, but he can state to the church how they were living apart for peace’s sake, and how it is a clear case of violation of marriage law. Any church would say "You are free to marry." You see that brings in the justifiable ground. The divorce cases are all over the world; and it commenced, of course, with the "big bugs" of the rich people first. They started it; they got the idea that they, because they had the money, were not amenable to anyone; and what is called the "Four Hundred," the "Upper Ten" of New York has scarcely a family without a divorce, followed by a remarriage, and you see them at their parties introducing one another: "Well, Mrs. C., I am glad to meet you; I hope you have gotten along O. K. with my former husband." "Mr. D. let me introduce you to my first husband’s second wife," until shame has come upon the nation; the sanctity of the family has been destroyed, and children are ashamed to hear the name of father and mother repeated.

Verse 15

XX

THE DECALOGUE – THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT

Exodus 20:15; Deuteronomy 5:19

This chapter is on the commandment "Thou shalt not steal."

1. What is the positive form of this commandment?

Ans. – Be honest.

2. What is the basis of the law, "Thou shalt not steal"?

Ans. – Unless there is such a thing as property, it would be impossible to have a commandment, "Thou shalt not steal." So that this commandment is based upon the right of property. We continually go back to the original declaration to man when God gave him the title to the earth, and gave him the commission to subdue the earth; the earth in usufruct, that is, in the use of its fruits is the property of man.

3. What is the derivation of the word "property"?

Ans. – It comes from the Latin word, proprius, which means "peculiar to one" or "personal to one," and therefore the idea of property is something that is yours and not another’s.

4. What are the inherent rights of property?

Ans. – (1) A right to keep in harmony with God. And you can steal that right from man as well as you can any other kind of property.

(2) The right to himself, and the greatest of all stealing, so far as man is concerned, is what, in the Bible, is called "menstealing," the stealing of men. One of the accusations against the false church, Babylon, was that she dealt in slaves and the souls of men, and one of the most inhuman, cruel kinds of theft in the world is the kidnapping of children. So that the stealing of a man is the highest order of theft that relates to man.

(3) The right to his family and domestic happiness. You can steal a man’s wife, alienate her affections; you can alienate the affections of a child. A man may feel robbed of that which makes the very sunlight and peace of his home.

(4) The right to space. Man is a finite being and he must have a place to turn around in. Hence the great woe pronounced in Isaiah: "Woe unto them that add house to house and land to land until there is no room for the people." God gave the earth to man and it is stealing from a man to rob him of his place in the earth where he can be.

(5) The right to health. Suppose a factory is built and the operators are required to work under such conditions as will necessarily undermine their health; or if forced to live in tenements of such unsanitary conditions that health is stolen from the occupant, there is no doubt on earth but that is a violation of this commandment. You could, with much more impunity and less heinousness, steal a man’s money than steal his health.

(6) The right to time. I mean some time for himself. You must not work him so many hours of the day or so many days of the week that he never has time to think for himself and for his family and concerning his God. All those rules which require undue hours of labor or labor all the week round, including Sunday, are violations of this commandment.

(7) Then he has a right to work. Because God has made labor the common heritage of man, and if you take away from a man his chance to do any work by which he can make an honorable living, you have robbed him of more than if you had taken his money. He is not only entitled to the right of labor but to fair profits on his labor. You must not grind him down so that his labor will not bring him in enough to live on, and wherever there is a right to acquire property, there is a right to hold it and a right to transmit it to children.

(8) Then comes the right of safety. If a man lives under a government and that government does not protect his life from unnecessary peril, it has robbed him of more than money. It used to be a sort of cruel thing when a person taken prisoner by the wild Indians was compelled to run a gauntlet, run between two rows of fierce warriors armed with clubs, each one to hit him as he went by. There was very little safety in that gauntlet. But if you force a school child to go to school through a gauntlet of saloons and gambling houses, that is robbing him of safety more than the Indians robbed a man of safety when they required him to run that gauntlet of clubs.

(9) He is entitled to rest. We can’t live if we don’t have time to rest, and any condition of society that so places people that there is no opportunity for rest is robbery.

(10) Man is entitled to his good name, and it is a much bigger offense to steal a man’s reputation by slander than it is to steal his money. So the above are inherent rights and inalienable rights that God endows a man with.

5. What are the acquired rights of property?

Ans. – Now his acquired rights are those that come from labor. If I go out into the forest and cut down a hickory tree and make an ax helve out of it, that is mine; that is the fruit of my labor. You may reply that that tree was in the forest. Yes, but the ax helve wasn’t there. I made that ax helve and by my labors I acquired a right of property. If you take up a piece of wild land and cut off the timber, take up the roots and break up the soil, then you acquire a right of property – through labor, and hence political economists tell us that all rights of labor come from labor.

6. How is property a token of man?

Ans. – Because none of these things apply to a brute. A brute doesn’t build a house; he doesn’t cultivate a field; a brute doesn’t utilize the winds and the waves and the waterfalls to minister unto his necessities. So that this is a token of a man and not of a brute. Brutes have no property.

7. From what does all obligations arise?

Ans. – An obligation arises primarily from relation and that relation is an expression of rights as well as of obligations. So that the essential idea in stealing is a disregard of the rights of relation. I build a house and a man gets it by fraud. He has no labor relation to that house. He disregards it. It is another man’s work. One will steal away the affections of a wife. She bore no relation to him, but she did to her husband.

8. What, then, is the essential idea of stealing?

Ans. – The essential idea of stealing, then, is the disregarding of relations.

9. What other commandment is the root of which this is the fruit?

Ans. – The Tenth Commandment says, "Thou shalt not covet." "Thou shalt not steal" is the overt act. "Thou shalt not covet my house, my money, my family, anything that is mine." There the commandment deals with the thought, with the desire. But stealing is the overt act. So that the Tenth Commandment is the root of the Eighth Commandment.

10. What is the primal source of stealing?

Ans. – The primal source of stealing is a bad heart.

11. Secondary sources?

Ans. – There are some very powerful secondary sources; I call your attention to some of them: (1) Extreme poverty, or necessity. Argur prayed, "Give me not poverty, lest I steal." (2) Another is indolence, laziness. A man steals because he is too lazy to work. (3) Another is fast living. One lives faster than he can supply, and so he must get his resources in some other way than by hard work. He steals. (4) Then comes a love of display. You want to show off; you want to assume to have more than you are able to have. The love of luxuries and display oftentimes causes stealing. (5) But more than all is the love of money. That may be a root of every kind of evil – love of money – but it is this greed of money that causes more kinds of stealing than every other cause in the world out together.

12. What names express open violation of this law?

Ans. – On the high seas, piracy; on the land, highway robbery, burglary, theft.

13. Cite some of the methods of covert violation.

Ans. – (1) Deuteronomy 25:13: "Thou shalt not have divers weights and measures." If you do, that is covert stealing. Sometimes in going into a little grocery store, you pick up a tray that holds the articles that they are to weigh and look under the bottom of it and you find lead or pewter put under there. That makes it already draw, before anything is put in it, several ounces. That is what is called a false weight, and it is stealing. Suppose a man steals by a quart measure that doesn’t hold a quart, or a bushel measure that doesn’t hold a bushel, or in measuring off a piece of cloth, his yardstick may be all right but he may use his two thumbs so that he steals the width of his two thumbs every time he measures off a yard. I want to read you what an old prophet of God said on that. Amos 8:4-6: "Hear this, O ye that would swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail) saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit; that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and sell the refuse of the wheat?" All those tricks of trade under the Mosaic law come under the head of stealing.

(2) Another method is expressed in Proverbs 3:28. As I want to particularly impress this thought on you I will quote this passage: "Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and to-morrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee," that is, if you delay a payment when it is due, when you put the man to the trouble to come back again or say, "I will see you tomorrow," or "Come next week," that is stealing. You are keeping him that long out of the use of his money, and Moses had a statute of this kind. "Let not the sun go down without paying the day-labourer his wages." That man is already convicted in the eyes of the world as a thief, who never pays his washerwoman. These people who toil hard for their daily living and are dependent upon what they earn for the next day’s food, if they go without their money twenty-four hours, they are really injured; the very bread has been taken out of their mouths.

(3) Here is another, Proverbs 20:14: "It is bad, it is bad, saith the buyer; But when he is gone his way, then he boasteth." You come up to sell a man a horse and he looks at him and says, "He is a little fellow, his hoofs are stove up. Looks to me as if he has the spavin, he is wind-broken, or has ringbone. He is bad, bad." Well, you feel like he ought to be paid something to take that horse, and as soon as the fellow gets the horse and gets off, he throws back his head and laughs at what a bargain he has made. That is stealing.

14. Cite several kinds of covert stealing.

Ans. – (1) Official stealing, using the office that you are in in order to fill your pockets; (2) Corporate stealing; (3) Wall Street stealing. On that I have a special question.

15. Cite and explain certain classifications of Wall Street stealing.

Ans. – (1) "Bearing" the market, the object of which is to lower the price of an article that they want to buy. They are called "the bears." Their object is to reduce stocks, to make prices sink clear out of sight, and then surreptitiously they buy.

(2) The second is "bulling" the market. The object of that is to push stocks up so high that they can sell and make fortunes. That is, the pressure that they bring to bear to make stock, say worth fifty cents, $2.50. Then they sell. Then they clear $2.00, paying fifty cents and bull the market till the stock goes away up yonder and then they sell.

(3) Freezing out, that is, a number of men, say twenty, go into a company and one or two of them manage to get a majority of stock, say they get just $1.00 over half of the stock. Now that enables them to entirely control the whole stock, and they want to make the others sell out to them for a song, and therefore by controlling the stock they see to it that these men never get any dividends or any interest on their money. And they let them know that there are no profits made; they vote on big salaries among themselves so that there are never any dividends. Finally the poor fellows see the best thing for them to do is to sell out for what they can get. That is freezing out.

(4) The next is pooling. Say one man hasn’t got enough money to make stocks go up as high as he wants them or to go down as low as he wants them; if they are up, he will want to sell, and if they are down he will want to buy; now he is not able himself to lower or raise the price of the stock. Then pooling comes in: say forty or fifty of the richest men put in each so much to be used in the stock market for bulling or bearing. That is pooling.

(5) The next is cornering the market, that is, getting control, say, of all the tobacco, or all the wheat, or all the barley, or of all the sugar, getting a corner on it. Now by getting this corner on a certain product, they can hold back from sale any part of it and hold it back until they can make the price. The world must have its sugar, or its wheat, and they will hold it back until it booms; wheat goes to $1.50, then they sell. While they are doing that, thousands of people are starving.

(6) The next is watering stock. They unite and buy a piece of property, that costs them $50,000. They instantly vote that their property is worth $100,000 and they divide that stock up into a hundred shares of $1,000 each, and go out and sell it. That is watering stock.

(7) Then there is monopoly, working so as to have complete control of a supply so that there is no competition, and just as a highwayman stands before you with a loaded pistol and says, "Stand and deliver," they can make you stand and deliver. You can’t help yourself.

16. Who wrote this passage? In vain we call old notions fudge And bend our conscience to our dealing, The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.

Ans. – That is a fine example. These old Ten Commandments will not budge, and man may, through what he calls business methods, violate them and bend his conscience to his dealings, but all the same God’s standard remains and stealing will continue stealing. This was written by James Russell Lowell.

17. How does human law classify thefts?

Ans. – Petit larceny and grand larceny, that is, little stealing and big stealing.

18. How does divine law classify thefts?

Ans. – Puts all stealing that man does from man as petit larceny and all robbery of God as grand larceny.

19. Under the divine classification cite a scriptural instance of "grand larceny."

Ans. – Malachi 3:8-9: "Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me."

20. Grade according to heinousness the different kinds of stealing.

Ans. – I would commence that grading this way: (1) robbing God; that is grand larceny; (2) next, the biggest larceny is stealing a man; (3) the next would be stealing the honor of a family; (4) the next would be official corruption; (5) next would be corporate corruption; then (6) down to stealing things, like stealing $1,000 in money, or a thousand yards of cloth, or anything of that kind.

21. Cite passage from Paul expressing this Eighth Commandment both positively and negatively.

Ans. – Romans 12:17: "Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men." Romans 13:8: Owe no man anything, but to love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." 2 Corinthians 8:21: "Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men." Ephesians 4:28: "Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth." The above passages express Paul’s idea of this commandments.

22. Cite some of the reasons for the present alarming high cost of living and the bearing of this cost on temptations to violate this commandment.

Ans. – (1) The cost of living always goes up in proportion to the number of middlemen. For instance, if I plant potatoes and bring that crop in and store it, there is no middleman to draw a profit. I have my own potatoes, raise my beeves, hogs, etc. But when, through middlemen, potatoes are bought up for wholesale and then through a number of middlemen are sold to the consumer, each middleman takes out his profit and the consumer has to pay for all the profits.

(2) But if I had to state the main reason for the present high cost of living, I would say "Cold storage inventions." There never has been anything in the history of the world that has affected the price of living like cold storages. Here is an invention by which you can take the most perishable things, a fruit that wouldn’t keep good two days, an egg that won’t keep good in your house over five days, or a piece of beef that won’t keep good without tainting twenty-four hours, and put it in that cold storage and you can keep it indefinitely. Wealth combines and builds these cold storages, therefore they can go out over the country and buy up everything on the face of the earth that is for sale, your chickens, hogs, beeves, turkeys, and everything, and they put them in these cold storages, and they tickle the people over the prices they pay for their turkeys and chickens and eggs, but wait till you want to buy a turkey for a Christmas dinner. You go down to get a turkey and the word comes back, "The only chance is to get a cold storage turkey." And the price is $4.00 apiece. You see they control the market through the cold storage. Post Toasties and Corn Flakes and nearly everything that goes on a modern table do not come to you direct, but they come to you as having passed through some process of a middleman and every man gets a price on it. You think you are getting Post Toasties cheap, but when you ask yourself how many grains of corn, how many bushels of corn went to a certain quantity of Post Toasties, you find they get about $25 a bushel for corn, selling it as Post Toasties.

23. Cite a passage from George Washington pertinent to this commandment.

Ans. – "I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles – the character of an honest man." The most enviable of all titles, an honest man. And he was that.

24. What does the great British essayist, Pope, say on this?

Ans. – He says, "An honest man is the noblest work of God."

25. Who wrote it and where do you find this passage? Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls; Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him And makes me poor indeed.

Ans. – Shakespeare, in Othello, Act III, Scene III.

26. What remarkable New Testament instances of official stealing?

Ans. – Judas and the Publicans.

27. What Old Testament and New Testament laws require honesty as a qualification for office?

Ans. – Judges appointed by Moses, Exodus 18:21; bishops and deacons.

28. Cite several notable Bible cases of official honesty.

Ans. – Moses in his farewell address; Samuel in his farewell address; Paul in his farewell address to the elders of Ephesus at Miletus.

29. Who wrote of "the itching palm" in office? adding: What, shall one of us, That struck the foremost man of all this world, But for supporting robbers; shall we now Contaminate our fingers with base bribes? And sell the mighty space of our large honours, For so much trash, as may be grasped thus? – I had rather be a dog and bay the moon, Than such a Roman – Where do you find the above?

Ans. – Shakespeare, in Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene III.

30. What Old Testament statutes safeguard the necessitous from the temptation to steal?

Ans. – The people had no fences. Roads passed right through the fields. Every man was at liberty when passing through a field or an orchard to eat what was necessary food to him. He could pluck the ears of corn and rub them in his hands and eat them, he could pull a bunch of grapes and eat them (he couldn’t take any away in a basket). The law was "When thou reapest thy fields, thou shalt not glean them." Nor glean them in the corners, but leave the gleanings for the poor; leave what the sickle passes over for the poor and let them come in and get some of it.

31. What caustic proverb exposes man’s false grading of thefts?

Ans. – "Steal a loaf and go to the penitentiary; Steal a horse and be hanged Steal a million and be a Captain of Finance."

32. What modern classic and masterpiece of fiction shows the inhumanity and severity in punishing petit larceny committed in despair of want and makes a hero of the big thief?

Ans. – hey say that it is the greatest book of fiction that has ever been written. It is Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables written in 1862.

Verse 16

XXI

THE DECALOGUE – THE NINTH COMMANDMENT

Exodus 20:16; Deuteronomy 5:20

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" (Exodus 20:16).

1. As an introduction to this commandment, what two antagonistic forms rise up before us?

Ans. – Jesus, the Son of God, and the devil.

2. Show their respective relations to this commandment.

Ans. – All obedience to this commandment is inspired by Christ; all disobedience is inspired by the devil.

3. What great titles of the Son of God bearing on this commandment?

Ans. – He is called the "Logos," the Word of God, the True Witness, The Truth, as, "I am the Truth."

4. What titles of Satan bearing on it?

Ans. – "The Devil," which is translated from the Greek diabolos, and means a calumniator, a slanderer, an accuser, a false witness; he is also called a liar, and the "Father of Lies." Jesus calls him that in John 8:44. I therefore consider it very important that we shall notice the relation of Jesus and the devil to this commandment.

5. What gift of the Creator to man which, next to his spiritual nature, most distinguishes him from the brute?

Ans. – The gift of speech, to talk, to witness.

6. What and why the two miracles of exception?

Ans. – On one occasion God endowed a dumb brute with the power of speech in order to convey the truth to a prophet who was going astray [Balaam]. Another exception: the devil conferred the power of speech upon the serpent in order to make Eve bear false witness against God and against man.

7. What is the true office of words?

Ans. – Words are (1) signs of ideas, and are intended (2) to reveal the inward nature of the speaker, just as "Jesus, the Logos," the True Witness. Thus Jesus was to reveal the inward nature of God to man; his witness concerning God was true; there was no falsehood in him, but the devil’s witness concerning God was false.

8. According to the Italian diplomat, Machiavelli, what is their true office?

Ans. – To conceal ideas and to hide what is on the inside.

9. What sins may be committed by words?

Ans. – Blasphemy, that is, to speak evil of God; sacrilege, that is, an offense against God; perjury, to bear false witness in the limited, legal sense, to tell a lie when under oath; slander, flattery, backbiting, whispering, and everyday lying, prevarication, false suggestions, using words with double meaning, words that deceive, exaggeration, depreciation by speech, suppressive speech. Those are among the sins of evil speaking.

10. What says Jesus about words?

Ans. – In Matthew 12:37: "For by thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." And "For every word (idle) that man shall speak he shall give an account in the judgment."

11. What is the New Testament law on the use of words, and what Old Testament prayer concerning words?

Ans. – The New Testament law is: (1) "Let your communications be yea, yea, and nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." (2) "Let your speech be seasoned with salt." (3) "Speak the truth with thy neighbour . . . speaking the truth in love." The Old Testament prayers are: (1) Psalm 19: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Jehovah, . . ." (2) "Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips" (Psalms 141:3).

12. Mention some biblical testimony to good words.

Ans. – Isaiah 50:4, has the expression: "The Lord Jehovah hath given me the tongue of them that are taught that I may know how to sustain with words him that is weary"; Psalms 45:1, makes the declaration: "I speak; my word is for a king; my tongue is the pen of a ready writer," and . . . "Grace is poured into thy lips"; Proverbs 10:11: "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life"; Proverbs 15:4: "A gentle tongue is a tree of life"; Proverbs 16:24: "Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones"; Proverbs 25:11: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in network of silver."

13. Define the words: "simplicity," "candour," "sincerity," as bearing on this commandment.

Ans. – The word "simplicity" is derived from "simplex," one-fold; and "duplicity" from "duplex," twofold. A man who tells the plain truth speaks with simplicity; a man speaking with a double purpose – it may be this, it may be that – uses duplicity. "Candour" comes fromcandidas, white; a candid man is a white man, transparent; you can see through him. Therefore the appropriateness of that word "candid"; some folks are white, transparent; you can see through them. "Sincerity" is derived from the Latin word, sincer, which means "in reality"; "in truth."

14. What says the psalmist about a deceitful tongue?

Ans. – Psalms 120:2: "Deliver my soul, O Jehovah, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given unto thee, and what shall be done more unto thee, thou deceitful tongue? . . . Sharp arrows of the mighty with coals of juniper."

15. What does James say about the tongue?

Ans. – James 3:2-12: "For in many things we all stumble. If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also. Now if we put the horses’ bridles into their mouths that they may obey us, we turn about their whole body also. Behold, the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by rough winds, are yet turned about by a very small rudder, whither the impulse of the steersman willeth. So the tongue also is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how much wood is kindled by how small a fire I And the tongue is a fire; the world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the wheel of nature, and is set on fire by hell. For every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed by mankind; but the tongue can no man tame; it is a restless evil, it is full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we the Lord and Father; and therewith curse we men, who are made after the likeness of God; out of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet water and bitter? can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a vine figs? neither can salt water yield sweet."

16. What says the psalmist about duplicity of speech?

Ans. – Psalms 55:21: His mouth was smooth as butter, but his heart was war: His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. And as an illustration of that, when Joab assaulted Abner he said, "How is thy health, my brother?" Then he took him by the beard as if to kiss him but smote him under the fifth rib, so that he died.

17. What says Proverbs on evil speech?

Ans. – Proverbs 6:18-25: "As a madman who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport? For lack of wood the fire goeth out; and where there is no whisperer, conten tion ceaseth. As coals are to hot embers, and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to inflame strife. The words of a whisperer are as dainty morsels, and they go down into the innermost parts. Fervent lips and a wicked heart are like an earthen vessel overlaid with silver dross. He that hateth dissembleth with his lips; but he layeth up deceit within him; when he speaketh fair, believe him not; for there are seven abominations in his heart."

18. What says Shakespeare of slander?

Ans. – In Cymbeline, Act III, Scene IV, he tells of a deceived husband, who, believing his wife to be disloyal, writes his servant, accusing her of nuptial infidelity, and commands him to kill her. The servant shows the letter to the accused wife, whom he believes to be innocent. Watching the effect of the letter on her, he says: What shall I need to draw my sword? The paper Hath cut her throat already. – No, ’tis slander; Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath Rides ou the posting winds, and doth belie All corners of the world; kings, queens, and states, Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave This viprous slander enters.

19. What says Plautus of talebearing, that kind of false witness?

Ans. – It is in Latin: Homines qui gestant, quique auscultant crimina, Si meo aribralu liceat, omnes pendeant, Gestores linguis, auditores auribus. – Those men who carry about, and those who listen to slanders, should, if I could have my way, all be hanged; the tattlers by their tongues, the listeners by their ears. I quoted that to my wife. She said: "La I If that old heathen could carry out all he wanted to, what a lot of women would be hanging up!"

20. What couplet did the great theologian, Augustine, write over his table?

Ans. – Quisquis amat dictis absentum rodere vitam Hanc mensam vetitam moverit esse sibi.

A couplet translated thus: He that is wont to slander absent men May never at this table sit again. A good thing to have hanging over your table: "With such an one no, not to eat."

21. What says Jesus of Nathanael?

Ans. – "Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile."

22. What says Shakespeare of a true man?

Ans. – Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II, Scene VII: His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles; His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate; His tears, pure messengers sent from his heart; His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.

23. How did Edgar Allan Poe represent the ultimate effect of good and evil words?

Ans. – I had a dream and there came to me a heavenly being. It took me on a long flight of observation; and after a while I saw an island. Oh I it was beautiful! covered with verdure; its trees blushed with flowers, and abounding through boughs were luscious fruits. Its skies were serene, birds and angels were singing there; and I said to my guide, "What is that island?" He said, "That, sir, is a good word which you kindly spoke once to a weary suffering heart, and that word went on acting, reacting and reacting, till it struck the shores of eternity; and God crystallized it into that island I" And then my guide took me until I saw another island, a horrible sight, a volcanic rock, a bare rock, sin-scarred, frigid, horrible I no grass, no flowers, no fruits, no birds; and above it the sky wag dark with ashes. And I said to my guide, "What is that?" "That is an evil word that you spoke once on earth; and it went on acting, reacting and reacting, until it struck eternity’s shores, and God crystallized it into this.

24. What does Pope say of an indirect lie? And what example of indirect false witness is given by Edward Eggleston in The Hoosier Schoolmaster?

Ans. – Listen: Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate – dislike? Eggleston represents Dr. Small as bearing false witness against the Hoosier schoolmaster by silence, just lifting his eyebrows; for not speaking when he should have spoken, and by just lifting his eyebrows so as to make a false impression on the one to whom he was talking. He ruined the reputation of the schoolteacher. Shakespeare says that anyone is false who just "urns" and "erns," or gives a shrug of the shoulders that way; it kills, and is without true speech.

25. How does the New Testament characterize evil speakers?

Ans. – "Liars, slanderers, flatterers, backbiters, whisperers, idlers, busybodies,. boasters, who speak great swelling words of vanity; who in covetousness use feigned words," and so on.

26. What does Tennyson say of a lie which is half a truth?

Ans. – In "the Grandmother" he wrote: A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies; A lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright; But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

27. If you would be strictly truthful, what part of speech must you handle carefully?

Ans. – There are said to be nine parts of speech in the old grammars. One answers, "the personal pronoun I"; another, "the verb." The correct answer is "the adjective." Beware of the adjective, especially in the superlative degree. You can tell more lies with the adjective than with anything else, and especially if you have a very vivid imagination and are impulsive, e.g., "the greatest man in the world!" "the best man you ever saw," and "the sweetest girl in the universe; so infinitely good." Well, that will do.

28. Now in its fullness, what does this commandment forbid and inculcate?

Ans. – Of course you can see on the face of it that it forbids, when giving evidence in a case, bearing false witness against your neighbor. But it also forbids every method of bearing false witness against a neighbor, as has been explained in these numerous examples cited. You may tell a lie on your neighbor, bear false witness against him, by a sigh, or a shrug, or even just putting your tongue out, or a kind of gesture, or a mere intonation of voice; by slandering, biting him in the back, and this sub rosa, "just between you and me," and you lean over and whisper; that whisper starts out and grows bigger and bigger as it goes; it first says that this man got sick and threw up something that was as black as a crow; the next time he threw up a crow, and the next time he threw up two crows, and still later) three crows, and it goes on increasing that way. It forbids every kind of lie: blasphemy, sacrilege, perjury, flattery, deceiving words, distortion of meaning, using words with double meaning. You say a thing concerning a man that is capable of being understood in two contrary senses – duplex words, multiplex words, insincere words, uncandid words. What now does it inculcate? Everything the opposite of this. It inculcates truth when you speak of God and man; it is expected of a witness that he be found faithful, to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, not by a shadow of wavering to convey false impression.

29. What is the legal name of bearing false witness?

Ans. – Perjury, i.e., telling a lie under oath.

30. What is the triple nature of this offense?

Ans. – (1) Because it was an oath to God, it is a sin against God; then (2) it is a sin against yourself; and (3) against the one whom your testimony was calculated to injure.

31. What was the Mosaic penalty for a false witness?

Ans. – He must be made to suffer whatever his false testimony would have led the one to suffer had his testimony been accepted. That is the Mosaic penalty.

32. What is the New Testament penalty?

Ans. – "All liars shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone." A little girl once reading that passage read it: "All lawyers" instead of "all liars" – "Hold on!" said the teacher. "Well, go on; you are not very far from it."

Verse 17

XXII

THE DECALOGUE – THE TENTH COMMANDMENT

Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:31

1. Distinguish this Tenth Commandment from the preceding nine.

Ans. – It is so distinguished from all the others in the following particulars: (1) In form; they prohibit the overt act, this the very desire to act. (2) It is the root, or base, of all the second table of the law, all that part of the law that relates to our fellow man. (3) Through violation of this commandments one may violate all of the preceding ones. Thus there are three distinguishing characteristics of the Tenth Commandment.

2. Next, give an analysis of this commandment.

Ans. – (1) I ask your very particular attention to the word "covet," which means desire; whether a good thing or a bad thing, it means to desire, e.g., "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife." . . . "Covet the best gifts," Paul says in the New Testament.

(2) As man from the constitution of his being must desire and may desire good and lawful things this commandment does not forbid to covet) but only forbids to covet what is thy neighbor’s; the emphatic words are "thy neighbour’s" – that is, what belongs to somebody else.

(3) It is sweeping, however, in forbidding to covet anything that is thy neighbor’s, whether wife, home, domestic servants, or domestic animals; indeed all personal and real estate that belongs to his neighbor.

(4) As man from God’s original commission may marry and acquire property, this does not forbid marriage, but it does forbid one coveting his neighbor’s wife; nor does it forbid the individual ownership of land, houses, servants, domestic animals, and other property. On the contrary it is based upon the assertion of the neighbor’s right to own these things. This commandment could not exist at all if your neighbor did not have a right to his own wife, to his own home, his own servants, his own cattle, and his own lands. It does not forbid ownership; it assumes ownership. There must be ownership before this command could come in at all. It permits our lawful desire for marriage, home, and property but forbids to look toward our neighbor’s property in any of these things. Here you see it is a great mistake to say that this commandment forbids acquisitiveness or the accumulation of property. It does neither the one nor the other.

(5) As it forbids even to desire what is another’s, so it forbids all unrighteous methods and means of attaining our desires in these matters. Now, if I know how to analyze a proposition, that is the analysis of that proposition.

3. What are the limitations?

Ans. – These define or bound a man’s lawful desire for a wife) property, and the accumulation of property of every kind:

(1) We must not so desire property or so accumulate it as to invade God’s paramount right. Therefore, my ownership is not an absolute ownership, but it stands good against my neighbor; so far as he is concerned it is my own, but as far as God is concerned, I am only his steward.

(2) He must not so desire property or so accumulate wealth aa to harm himself. When this desire and the means of its attainment bring about harm to the man’s body, or to his soul, or hereafter, he has stepped over the bound.

(3) This relates to only one of the items in the commandments. It says, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife." So a limitation here is that he must not invade the rights of his wife. Suppose a man already has a wife, and desires another wife; it violates the rights of’ the wife he has.

(4) He must not so desire to accumulate property as to harm his neighbor; the acquisition must not be done at the expense of the neighbor. He has a right to a piece of land, but he has no right to covet his neighbor’s piece of land.

(5) He must not harm society in any of its organized forms. God made man social, and society is spoken ’of as an organism, each one of them is a member of the body, and whatever harms one will harm all.

Now, besides these five limitations there is not another limit to what a man may desire and what he may acquire. If he does not get over on to God’s property, if he does not hurt himself, if he does not invade the rights of his wife, if he does not harm his neighbor, and if he does not harm society, then God has put within him the desire for ownership, and God requires him to push that ownership to accumulate property. In other words, his desires for accumulations become unlawful when they deny God’s paramount ownership; when they harm himself in body or soul, in time or in eternity; when they lead him to have more than one wife at a time, or to despise that one wife’s rights; when he acquires his property, or uses his property rights to harm society, its health, purity, or morals. I said that this commandment is such alone that a violation of it may lead to a violation of the whole Decalogue. So my next question is,

4. What scripture proves that?

Ans. – In 1 Timothy 6:10, Paul says, "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil," not, "money is a root of all kinds of evil," but the love of it. Money is harmless in itself. But that inordinate desire for money, which is out of proportion with reference to our relations to God, ourselves, our families, our fellow men, and society, that is a root of every kind of evil that can come under the whole Ten Words of the Law.

5. Furnish an illustration of each one of the Ten Commandments, i.e., how the violation of this commandment, or how this inordinate love of property may make a person violate every one of the other nine.

Ans. – (1) Suppose you take the First Commandment. I want to read a passage on that from Job 31:24: "If I have made gold my hope, and have said to the fine gold, thou art my confidence; if I have rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because my hand had gotten much . . . [Job 31:28] this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judges; for I should have denied the God that is above." In other words, the First Commandment is: "Thou shalt have no other gods beside me." If I substitute, for the one only true God, gold and silver and say, "Thou art my confidence and my hope," that is a violation of the First Commandment, as it is twice expressed in the New Testament, Matthew 6:24, and Luke 16:13: "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Here mammon is put up as a rival deity and the express declaration is that one cannot serve both of them. Therefore the First Commandment is violated by an inordinate desire for money.

(2) We take the second. In Ephesians 5:3-5, and in Colossians 3:5, it is said that covetousness is idolatry, a worship of images. The Second Commandment says, "Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven images to bow down thyself to them, nor to worship them; for I, Jehovah, thy God, am a jealous God." This kind of covetousness is illustrated in the case of the miser, who gathers his treasure from his secret box and pours out the glittering gold. He looks at it shining, and lets it melt through his fingers. There is the image of the god he worships; mammon is his god; that coined money is the image. Therefore, covetousness is idolatry. I told you that this Tenth Commandment was distinguished from the others in that a violation of it might be a violation of every one of the ten.

(3) Let us look at the third, which says, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," that is, "Thou shalt not use God’s name in witnessing a lie." What was it that Ananias and Sapphira did? That very thing, and they did it through covetousness. They lied unto God; they invoked God’s name to witness that they paid over to the apostles all the money. That is direct and palpable violation through the love of money of the Third Commandment.

(4) The Fourth says, "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy." Let me quote a passage (you can think of thousands, but here’s one in point), "In those days saw I in Judah some men treading winepresses on the sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and lading asses therewith, as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the sabbath day, and I testified against them in the day wherein they sold victuals. There dwelt men of Tyre also therein who brought in fish, and all manner of wares, and sold on the sabbath unto the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this ye do, and profane the sabbath day?" Then he goes on to tell what measures he adopted to stop this pursuit of traffic on God’s day. Now the love of money prompts hundreds of men here and elsewhere to carry on their secular work on the Lord’s Day.

(5) We take the next commandment: "Honour thy father and thy mother." How many instances can you recall of the boy or young man who, in his desire to make money, has turned from the counsel of his father and the admonition of his mother? Dearer to him is the making of money than reverence for his parents. I doubt if in many instances any father or mother or wife was ever willing for a son to open a saloon, but the son goes on and opens it; I doubt if in many instances that fathers, motliers, or wives ever want the son or husband to make money by gambling, and yet they go into the gambling den, led on by the desire to get rich quickly, knowing that they are wading in the tears of parents, and sometimes through their blood. So the love of money leads to the violation of that commandment.

(6) "Thou shalt not kill." A pirate on the high seas kills for booty, or the highwayman shoots an inoffensive traveler for his money. I remember – I shall never forget – the impression made upon my mind by one of the accounts of John A. Murrell in which a young South Carolinian figured. He had come West to invest some money he had saved up by hard labor, in order to buy some cheap land for his family. He had $900 on his person, and while on the road John A. Murrell emerged from some woods and made him get down from his horse and divest himself of his outer clothes. He then put the pistol to his head and killed him. He disemboweled him to make him sink and then threw him into the water, and took the $900 red with the blood of the murder which he had committed. See also the picture of the apostle Judas with thirty pieces of silver in his hand, and Christ murdered through this sale; he sold Christ for $15.

(7) The Seventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." The love of money has made debauchery a trade, and filled all our cities with houses of shame.

(8) "Thou shalt not steal." Love of money led Achan, when he saw a wedge of gold and a goodly Babylonian garment, to surreptitiously hide it, and bring defeat on God’s army. It prompts the sneak thief to steal your chickens, to pick your pockets; it animates the burglar that enters your house by night; it looses your horse from the stable and leads him out. So the love of money violates that commandment.

(9) "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." They suborned men to bear false witness, to testify against Christ. Here comes a man who says, "If you will pay me enough, I will go on the stand and swear that he said so and so,"

(10) Take the Tenth Commandment itself. As Ahab looked out and saw a vineyard (Naboth’s) right close to his own property, he "coveted" it. It would "round out" his property to get the vineyard) so he bribed (or, rather, his wife did for him) a man to swear a lie, and then put Naboth to death. You see we have gone through the whole of the Decalogue and find it is true that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. There is no evil in the world of which the love of money may not become a root. Balaam, the prophet of God, for the wages of unrighteousness lent his holy office to purposes that sought to frustrate God’s kingdom. I spoke a while ago on certain limitations that define or bound our desires, one of them being that we should not so covet as to harm ourselves. Now, I want to look at that part of the subject. So the next question is:

6. How may a man harm himself through the love of money?

Ans. – (1) I read the case of the rich fool (Luke 12:15-21), a case very much in point: "He said unto them, Take heed, and keep yourselves from all covetousness; for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. And he spake a parable unto them saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully; and he reasoned with himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have not where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry. But God said unto him, Thou foolish one, this night is thy soul required of thee; and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be?" There was his hurt, even unto death, unto the death of his body, the death of his soul, unto eternal death.

(2) It harms him in this way, viz.: that’ he makes money his enemy instead of his friend. You may "make to yourself friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness"; or you may make with it enemies to yourselves. Now when that self-hurt comes in that way, every dollar one acquires becomes his enemy, when every beam in his house, every timber in the wall, every rafter in the house is a witness against himself. Then money has become one’s enemy; then it harms him in that it diverts him from the true measure. Our Lord put the two treasures side by side when he said, "Lay up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where thieves do not break through and steal and where moth and rust do not corrupt." Now by that treasure he lays aside, he divests himself of it in order to gratify his covetousness in the other direction, and it is working him harm.

(3) Again I quote a significant passage from Paul, 1 Timothy 6:9: "But they that are minded to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men [we are talking about harm that comes to himself] in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil; which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows." When I was a little fellow we had a theological dictionary which has now gone out of use; it was a very fine old one called "Buck’s Theological Dictionary." It had a picture of a man condemned to death by the Inquisition; they had blindfolded him, and behind him was a man and on each side a man, all with spears in hand so that the points of them just touched him. They would gently touch him with these spear points, and as the blindfolded man moved, one point touched him and he made toward the others; first the spear on the left and then on the right, and now the spear behind would get him, if he stopped. Thus he was forced up to the top of a hill with a sharp precipice, and right under the precipice was a chariot, a cart, a four-wheeled thing with an open body of thick wood, and every few inches was a peg with the head of a spear fastened on it, and there was a great mass of spear points standing up. They kept making him move on until he had fallen, fallen right down on that thing and pierced himself through, head, neck, lungs, heart, body, arms, hands, legs, feet, etc. Now says Paul, "They that are minded to be rich will fall into temptation and the snare and pierce themselves through with many sorrows."

(4) Again he hurts himself in that he brings on total bankruptcy (Luke 6). So this love of money is confined in its effects to his love for transitory wealth. Says Psalm 49, "It is certain he can take none of it with him," and the declaration is repeated by Paul. Now this man did not stop at death; death does not break the continuity of life, but death does stop earthly property which cannot cross the river of death; and the very minute that he leaves the treasure that he has and he touches the other shore, he is wholly bankrupt. Alexander the Great commanded his friends when they buried him to let his hands be outside of the casket, "For," he said, "I want everybody to see that I, the king of the world, cannot take a thing with me; that my hands are empty."

(5) He hurts himself, not only in that bankruptcy, but in the fearful finality which is brought upon him. Notice what James says about that, James 5:3-6: "Come now, ye rich) weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have mowed the fields, which is of you kept by fraud, crieth out; and the cries of them that reaped have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous one; he doth not resist you," but in the judgment, God I I told you what the limitations were, and one of them was that though coveting was lawful no coveting was lawful which harms a man himself. When I was a young preacher I asked the Sunday school in the First Church at Waco, this general question:

7. What New Testament scripture shows how much money a man may lawfully acquire?

Ans. – That day, visiting the Sunday school, was the famous American, Morgan L. Smith, who made an enormous fortune in Texas, and then went to Newark, New Jersey, and became a great philanthropist. The question was to be answered the next Sunday. The old man was a cripple, but a good old Baptist, and he hobbled up to me and said, "I won’t be here next Sunday; it is a great question you have put to the school, and I would like to know the answer before I go away." John said to Gaius, a rich man, "I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper [financially] even as thy soul prospers." If your soul won’t prosper while you are living in a fine house instead of a cottage, you had better get back to that cottage. If you take prosperity of your soul with you, it is no sin to live in a palace. If $10,000 will not lead your soul astray, it is lawful for you to make $10,000; $1,000,000 is lawfully made if your soul still prospers; if you still love God, and your fellow men, you may have $1,000,000,000; yea, $100,000,000,000, if you get it right, and it does not interfere with the prosperity of your soul.

8. Cite and expound Paul’s charge to the rich.

Ans. – Now the word "charge" here is used in the sense of putting a man on his oath. "Put the rich in this present world on oath before God, that they be not highminded, nor have their hopes set on the uncertainty of riches) but on God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to communicate [as well as to accumulate]; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on the life which is life indeed." Now that is a brave charge given to a rich man: "See, I out you on your oath before God; that you be ready to give." A great many to whom I go express themselves as being greatly in sympathy with the cause I represent, but they say that they have made some large investments and they have to meet some oncoming obligations; therefore, they are not ready. "That they be willing to contribute," reaches the wealthy, and asks that they do contribute and that they be sure in all of their wealth not to make it their hope. Job says that is to deny God.

9. Show how the enormous wealth of Rockefeller and Carnegie may do more harm in its distribution than in its accumulation.

Ana. – The enormous wealth in modern times accumulated by questionable methods is wealth that cannot be counted; and yet it may well be said that the vast accumulated wealth of Rockefeller and Carnegie may do more harm in its distribution than in its accumulation. I show two points: (1) Take the twenty millions given to the Chicago University. There is a fortified arsenal of unsound doctrine of all time to come. You cannot dislodge it, for millions are behind it. They have taken millions down into Oklahoma to buy up the lands and the interest of that pours into the treasury until they do not know how to invest their money and every dollar of it is against sound doctrine, against the fundamentals of the faith that Mr. Rockefeller himself professes. (2) Carnegie has startled the world with a big donation of millions and millions and millions, which he says is to pension teachers, and not one dollar shall go to any denominational school. What is the result? There is a temptation among needy scholars to throw aside their allegiance to the denominations in order to come in and get some of the droppings of that pension money. There it stands – $20,000,000, and in the other case $30,000,000, consolidated, crystallized, perpetuating until Jesus comes, and the whole power of it working against the truth.

10. Show how society may rightly limit the use of wealth.

Ans. – A man has a right to the acquisition and accumulation of property, but he is limited by regulations of society, i.e., he has a right to put up a beef packery and & tannery, but he cannot put it up where the effluvia from that tanyard will render the sanitary conditions uncomfortable to the people who are his neighbors. Subject to social regulations, then, a man has a right to invest his money, but he cannot so invest it as to become a perpetrator of vice. Therefore many societies have risen up and said to certain traffic, "You cannot go into this community, for it is interfering with everybody; it debauches ; it makes thieves, liars, gamblers, and steals away the brains of the people."

11. Explain how the Jubilee law of Moses opposed covetousness of a neighbor’s land.

Ans. – This law reverted all land back to the original owner every fifty years, or in the Jubilee year, and at whatever point in the period of the fifty years any transfer was made, the title was limited to the Jubilee year. By reverting at this time to the original owner, it was not so valuable, as the Jubilee year was approaching and thus land was not so much desired. Now you can understand the Tenth Commandment as I have analyzed and illustrated it in all its parts.

Verses 18-26

XXIII

THE LAW OF THE ALTAR

Exodus 20:18-26

1. Repeat the three divisions of the Sinai Covenant.

Ans. – (1) The Decalogue, or God and the normal man, Exodus 20:1-17; (2) the altar, or God and the sinner, Exodus 20:18-26; (3) The judgments, or God and the state, Exodus 21-23.

2. How much of this covenant has already been absolutely considered?

Ans. – The Decalogue, or the first division.

3. In Exodus 20:18-21 we see that the people could not deal directly with God in the matter of the Decalogue, and could not keep it. Why?

Ans. – As I quote get the importance of that question fixed on your mind. Just as soon as the Ten Commandments had been spoken by the voice of God, then follows: "And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die. And Moses said unto the people, Fear not; for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before you, that ye sin not. And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was." I repeat the question: Why could not the people deal directly with God in the matter of the Decalogue, nor keep it? Ans. – (1) This Decalogue expressed the obligations of the normal man in his innocent state as originally created, having free and open communion with God, as Adam in paradise before he sinned. (2) But these people were sinners, corrupt in nature and evil in practice, like Adam in paradise after his gin, therefore fear and shame made God’s approach terrible. In his holiness he was to them a consuming fire.

4. What therefore was necessary in order to a consummation of a covenant with this holy God?

Ans. – Some provision of grace by which a sinner might approach God without shame, fear and death, and so come to an agreement of peace. There could never have been a covenant at all if the covenant involved only the Decalogue, because the people could not deal directly with God in this matter. Those Ten Commandments expressed the import of man’s obligations in his normal state as he was originally created. But now when God approached and spoke in an audible voice and the sound of the trumpet was heard, the people were filled with fear and went afar off and said to Moses, "You speak with us; don’t let God speak with us, lest we die."

5. In this connection what one word stands for all the law of the sinner’s approach to God?

Ans. – The word is "altar."

6. Why did not Adam in paradise before he sinned need an alter?

Ana. – Being in God’s image, created in knowledge, righteousness and true holiness, there was nothing in God’s holiness to cause shame or fear in coming directly into God’s presence and communing with him direct. And Adam had no sin to be expiated on an altar.

7. If these people could not enter directly into covenant with God in the matter of the Decalogue, nor were able to keep it, why then give it to them?

Ans. – (1) An absolute and fixed standard of right in all man’s relations, a standard holy and just and good in all of its parts, and with all of its penal sanctions, would discover to a sinful man his want of conformity to law, whether in nature, desire or in deed. Sin in the light of that standard would

appear to be sinful. Now that is one purpose of giving that law to them, viz.: to discover their want of conformity to it.

(2) To disclose to man his normal inability to atone for sin already committed, or to keep from future sin because of his corrupted nature. Now it was necessary that that moral inability should be brought to light with those people.

(3) It would thus prepare them to accept a plan of reconciliation by grace which would both atone for the past, recreate a new nature disposed to obey, and by a perfected holiness enable them finally to obey and ultimately bring them into perfect conformity with an absolute standard of right. The answer, you see, is threefold: To make a man see that he is a sinner; To show him his moral inability to keep the law; To prepare him for a plan of reconciliation to God, – a plan that would atone for past sin; a plan that would change his corrupt nature, giving him a disposition to obey; a plan that would perfect him in holiness so that he would obey, and thus ultimately find himself in perfect accord with that law.

When we come to the New Testament that thought is presented this way by the apostle Paul: "I had not known sin except by the law, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." "I was getting along all right [thought I was alive and all right] but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. I saw I was a dead man in the light of that law. Then I saw that while with my mind I might appreciate the goodness and holiness of that law, yet I would find a law in my members that would war against this law of my mind and would bring me into condemnation." Again he says, "The law was added because of transgression." Man had sinned; so a law was added; put there to show him he was a sinner, and then he says, "The law was our schoolmaster unto Christ," i.e., our pedagogue unto Christ.

So that it was never intended that the giving of those Ten Commandments should save a man. They were not expressed in that statutory form until man’s nature had become corrupted, so that he didn’t desire to keep them, and on account of that nature there was a moral inability to keep them. It was to be a law of right to him, but not a way of life to him. In other words, the "oughtness" would never die. Now, yesterday, and in eternity, it would remain true that a man ought to love God with all his heart and ought to love his neighbor as himself, and if he kills he does wrong; if he commits adultery he does wrong; if he steals, if he bears false witness, if he profanes the sabbath day, if he disobeys his father and his mother he does wrong, and eternally the right and wrong of that can never be changed. The "oughtness" is there, but from the standpoint of fallen man, obedience to those commandments can never become a way of life to him. So when Moses says in that Decalogue, "Do and live" it was not in hope that any of them would "do and live," but to show them that if they obtained life they must obtain it through a subsequent part of the covenant, and that is where we are now considering, viz.: the law of the altar. The very words, ipsissima verba, must be remembered by every reader, and the answer.

8. What are the essential elements of the law of a sinner’s approach to God, as represented by the altar of this section, and its subsequent developments in the Pentateuch?

Ans. – (1) A throne of grace, or a place where God may be approached. The first constituent element of the law of a sinner’s approach to God is a place where he may find God, find him without death. It can be only a throne of grace.

(2) The next element is a way of approach to that throne of grace, which is by the altar. You can’t get to God on his throne of grace if you don’t come to the altar. That is the place where the sacrifice of the propitiatory victim is offered, the blood is shed, the sacrifice is made. It is an altar of blood and of fire. Of blood to show that the life was poured out, and of fire to show that the sacrifice was consumed. There must not only be a place, which is the first element, but there must be a way of approach to that throne of grace, which is the altar.

(3) There must be a suitable offering that will be the ground of that approach, the meritorious ground of approach. It must be a suitable offering, one that is to die, that is to be consumed under the hot wrath of God, and it becomes the ground of approach to the throne of grace; for it is on the altar that the victim of propitiation is sacrificed.

(4) There must be a mediator through whom this approach is to be made. The people said to Moses, "Don’t let God speak to us; we will die. You speak to us. You go and talk to God, then come and talk to us; you be the ’go-between’ between God and us." So when an offering is to be presented upon the altar there must be a middleman. A mediator is one that stands in the middle and makes contact possible without death between the sinner and God.

(5) There must be set times to approach God.

(6) There must be a ritual telling how to approach God, prescribing everything, a ritual that will tell all about the offering; how old it must be, what kind of an animal it must be, what its character must be, when it shall be brought, who shall take charge of it when it is brought, just how the blood is to be caught, just how that blood is to be carried up to the throne of grace, who is to take it when it gets there, what he does with it, when he disposes of it what is the result of it, and when he comes out from the place of offering what he says to the people.

9. What are the specifications of the altar in this section?

Ans. – Exodus 20:24-26: (1) "An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me. . . . And if thou make me an altar of stone" – that is the first specification about the altar: it must be of earth or stone; that is the material.

(2) The second specification, Exodus 20:25: "If thou make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stones; for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it." It must be an altar not smooth nor arranged with man’s skill. It isn’t intended that this altar which is the way of approach to God shall have any excellence in it that a man can impart to it at all. A man would naturally say, "I will build it of gold and I will cover it with the most beautiful carvings." He would want to highly ornament it and he would want to glorify himself in how he had fixed up that altar. It is an altar of extreme simplicity. They could either gather up the dirt and make the altar, or they might pick up the stones just as they were lying around and pile them up, leaving space enough to put a victim on it. But they must not go to a quarry and dig up stones, and then shape and fit them together beautifully, when they were shaped. None of their skill must be in it. But why should that alter be of earth or stone? Why not of wood? A big fire was to be kindled on that altar. It must be of noncombustible material. A man once went around the world, thinking he had learned everything the world could tell him, and when he got back in sight of his home he wanted to light his pipe, and he asked a little Negro to bring him a coal of fire. The Negro first placed some ashes in his hand and put the coal of fire on top of the ashes; and the man acknowledged that he had learned something right at his home from this little Negro. The ashes intervening between the fire and the hand kept the fire from burning it. Now this altar, as a big fire is to be kindled upon it, must be noncombustible.

(3) "Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not uncovered thereon." The altar was to be of considerable size and height, and as huge victims were to be placed on it, it naturally occurred to man, "Let us make a couple of steps here; when we carry wood and the victims to lay on top of the altar, or on top of the wood, we will want to step up." God says, "You must not do it. Slope the ground up on one side." It must be a sloping approach, and not even the ankle of the man as he goes up must be exposed, as would be, if the approach was made by way of steps. The robe that he wears must go clear to the ground, and going up that slope no part of his person was to be exposed. These three specifications, then, viz.: that it must be of earth or stone; that it must not be hewn stone; that it must not be approached by steps. These are designated not merely to show that the altar was exceedingly simple, but that it was an altar in which the man as an artisan, or as one approaching it, must not appear. The altar is an appointment of God.

(4) The last specification about it is set forth in the latter part of Exodus 20:24: "In every place where I record my name I will come unto thee and bless thee." The altar must be a place where God’s presence is, and where he comes to bless. We commenced with the statement that there must be an appointed place and time where God may be found. Who establishes that place? God does. Jacob is going along, traveling away from home in exile, and in the night God comes. Next morning he says, "Surely God was in this place, and I didn’t know it. And God was here to bless me, because in my vision he said he would bless me, and he was here to show me that there was a stairway that connected earth with heaven." And Jacob built an altar there. The altar must be where God’s presence is; must be of noncombustible material, earth or unhewn stone; must not be shaped by the cunning skill of man. Its approach must not be up steps; in lifting the robe not even the tip of his toe or his ankle should be visible as the priest goes up.

10. Under this section, what two classes of offerings are to go on that altar?

Ans. – Exodus 20:24: "Thou shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and thy peace-offerings." These are the two great classifications of offerings. One is propitiatory, an offering to expiate sin. Now the other, the thank offering or eucharist (we call the Lord’s Supper the eucharist because there is a giving of thanks in it) is an offering with the giving of thanks. But you will observe that while two general classes of offerings must go on that altar there is an order in which they must go on it. Don’t you dare approach God with a thank offering first. There is no value in a thank offering that is not preceded by a blood offering, because peace is secured by the blood and the peace offering is an expression of gratitude for the expiation of sin. Take the first case of an altar that was ever erected on earth; Cain and Abel came before God in a place where God was to be present; both came by an offering, by an offering on that altar; Cain brought a thank offering, and that is all he brought; and God indignantly rejected it. Abel brought not only a peace offering, but the sin offering first, the firstling of his flock. The two classes of offerings, then, are burnt offering and peace offering; burnt offering first; the other second and consequential.

11. Now in these offerings, what kind of victims must be offered?

Ans. – Offerings of the flock and herds, clean animals. That is expressed in Exodus 20:24: "Thy sheep and thy oxen"; a sheep, a goat, or an ox, a calf, cow, or bullock. It must be one of those kinds. They could not offer a leopard; they could not offer a tiger, or a lion. Here are the characteristics of the offerings: they must chew the cud and divide the hoof. A camel could not be offered, though he chews the cud he divides not the hoof. But the goat, the sheep, and the ox all divide the hoof and chew the cud; they are clean animals.

12. Show the presence of the six essential elements cited above in the first altar that ever was erected; that will answer the question: How were the patriarchs saved? Did they have any idea of Christ’s coming as a sacrifice for sin? By their animal sacrifices did they exhibit faith in a coming Redeemer? If not, Just what was the object of those sacrifices?

Ans. – Those sacrifices were to typify the coming Redeemer. A man who could not look through the type and see the antitype didn’t have the faith. If he simply brought the type and stopped at the bullock or the goat, then Paul in Hebrews says to him, "It was impossible for the blood of sheep and bullocks and goats to take away sin. You must go beyond this ceremony, this symbol, this type. You must look to the One that it points to, by faith." By faith Abel did that; and he was saved just like you are, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the coming Messiah; only he did not see him as you see him; he had not come, but Abel looked through the type to the antitype, the Saviour. "Abraham saw my day," says Jesus, "and rejoiced."

Now my question: Show the presence of the six essential elements. While I repeat these from Genesis 4, you see if, in Genesis 4:3-5, you can locate them: (1) the throne of grace, or a place where God is to be approached; (2) the altar, or a way by which to approach him; (3) a suitable offering, or the ground on which they approach him; (4) a mediator, through whom he is to be approached; (5) a set time for approaching him; (6) a ritual telling how to approach him. Do you see those six things there? We find, first, the place, the throne of grace. When Adam sinned and was expelled from the garden, God sent cherubim, and a blazing sword, and at the east of the garden was placed an altar by which Adam might approach God; a place where God might be found on a throne of grace. Next it says, "In the process of time." There you have the appointed time. It does not say just exactly what time, but "in process of time."

Then you have the ritual, telling how to do things, as indictated certainly in these verses: When to bring the offering; they brought it to the right place. One brought the right kind of offering; the ritual told him that; he put it on the right place, the altar; the ritual told him that. Where is the mediator? We discover that this way: Who in patriarchal times before the Mosaic law was established, had the priesthood? The father, the head of the family, was the priest of the family, and if there was no head man to be the priest, then the one having the progeniture was the priest. When a man is off to himself, and acting to himself as Jacob was, he is the head of his house. Job acted as mediator in offering those sacrifices mentioned at the end of his book. To get that mediator fixed in your mind, I quote it, Job 42:7-8: "After Jehovah had spoken these words unto Job, Jehovah said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. Now therefore, take unto you seven bullocks and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up for yourselves, a burnt-offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you; for him will I accept that I deal not with you after your folly; for ye have not spoken of me that which is right, as my servant Job hath." In other words, "You can’t come before me direct; for the way you talk you must have a mediator. Job shall be your priest and shall intercede for you."

Let us look at Genesis 8:20: "And Noah builded an altar unto Jehovah, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar. And Jehovah smelled the sweet savour; and Jehovah said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake." We are looking for the six essentials: (1) The altar is there and the right kind of altar: "And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, the earth was dry and God commanded Noah to go forth from the ark, and Noah went forth, and builded an altar," – a great deliverance accomplished here. Notice all through the flood that the seventh day is recognized. It is all governed by weeks. The birds are sent out in the interval of seven days; (2) It was an appointed time; (3) You have the mediator, Noah, acting for all the family. The altar, the offering, the indication of the ritual in the selection of all these things, the plans and the kind of offering, all are there; and God is there, because that verse says that God smelled the sweet savour and said in his heart, etc. The first essential was a place where God could be found – the throne of grace.

We know that this throne of grace continues under the new covenant: "Let us come boldly before the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and help in every time of need. But there is this change of the place, it is not located at Jerusalem or Gerizirn; not in this mountain or that – but God is a Spirit under the new covenant. Any spot where you stand, any place where you lie down, where you breathe, God is there. You yourselves are your own priests; he has made you a kingdom of priests. You do not have to offer sin offerings; one sin offering has been offered for you. You offer the sacrifice of praise, prayer, and contribution, – spiritual sacrifices. Whenever you can distinguish between the Old and New Covenant you have learned a great deal of theology.

Notice about the place. One of the most gracious promises of God is that he will appoint a place and he says, speaking to Solomon when Solomon built him a house, "Mine eyes shall be there, I shall see it; mine ear shall be there, mine omnipotence, my heart shall be there; my love." One of the greatest sermons Spurgeon ever preached was on that passage of Scripture. And the New Testament says, "Where two or three of you are gathered together in my name, I will be with you." Wherever a number of God’s people covenant themselves into a congregation, each several building groweth up into a holy temple for the habitation of God through the Holy Spirit.

13. What parts of the Pentateuch are but developments of the altar division of the covenant?

Ans. – The parts of the Pentateuch are the last chapters of Exodus, the whole of Leviticus and much of Numbers. (See pp. 140, 144, question 25).