No one's parents were perfect. In fact, some may have been cruel. That said, God's word gives us a clear command in how we are to relate to our parents. As Christians, sometimes doing the hard things, like showing grace and forgiveness are what make us stand out the most to others. So the question is how does this commandment look in our culture today?

What do you say when your back is against the wall? What do you say when you have to close the deal? What do you say when you really want to impress somebody? Feeling challenged already? How about this question... How many of you have ever stolen something in your life?

The battle lines were drawn in the sand. The Philistines were on one side of the valley, the Israelites were on the other. David, a young boy came onto the battlefield to face a 9 ft, 400+ pound behemoth, Goliath.

There they were, all of those posters, those mug shots of the hardened criminals. I stared into their scary eyes and read about the different crimes they had committed. Armed robbery. Mail fraud. Assault. And the worst, murder.

The Tenth commandment is different. This last one hits on our attitude, our disposition if you will. It is easy to pinpoint nine specific behaviors but it is another thing to get our arms around our disposition. It is difficult, also, to call number ten a sin because this deal is so tethered to our times.

I don’t know about you, but I have not had the burning desire this week to melt down my wedding ring or to carve some image on my garage and bow down and worship it. So it's easy to read the second commandment and think, "this message is going to be an easy one this week."

If you think about it, life is a bunch of choices and decisions. And they come to you and to me at such a rapid fire pace that oftentimes we make decisions without even thinking about them. We need a base. We need a foundation. We need some absolutes.