Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

“Covetousness whispers that we deserve what has been given to our neighbor. Contentment states plainly that God has given what is good.”— Jen Wilkin.

“What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.”—Anonymous

In this final command God moves from our words, to the hidden thoughts and desires of our hearts. In this sermon, we look at the positive virtue of contentment, which stands behind the prohibition against coveting.

NOTE: Once again, we are sorry to say that we had technical difficulties in recording the sermon! This recording only has the first point and half of the second point of this sermon. We hope that what we have will bless and be helpful to you! 

Q. What is the aim of the ninth command?  

Proverbs 18:21 says “death and life are in the power of the tongue”. How do we use words to build up rather than tear down? How do we use our capacity for language in ways that creates community with God and our neighbors? Which ways of speaking destroy friendships and society? In this week's message from our Large Group meeting, we look at the Ninth Command from Exodus 20:16, guarding us against any speech that erodes truth or attacks God's image bearers. 

*Note: Last week's sermon recording was unfortunately lost due to a technical error on our part! If you want to learn more about the 8th Command, check out this helpful blog post: https://rts.edu/resources/the-eighth-commandment-no-theft/

"In our post-sexual-revolution culture, there seems to be wide agreement among young adults that sex is good and the more of it we have, the better . . . In this landscape, there is only one rule: Get consent from your partner beforehand . . . But the outcome is a world in which young people are both liberated and miserable. While college scandals and the #MeToo moment may have cemented a baseline rule for how to get into bed with someone without crossing legal lines, that hasn’t made the experience of dating and finding a partner simple or satisfying. Instead, the experience is often sad, unsettling, even traumatic."-- Christine Emba, Rethinking Sex

“Jesus is saying that [a person’s] sexuality is precious and valuable, that she has a sexual integrity to her which matters and should be honored by everyone else. He is saying that this sexual integrity is so precious that it must not be violated, even in the privacy of someone else’s mind . . . Jesus is showing us that our sexuality is far more precious than we might have realized, and that his teaching is actually a form of protection for it.”- Sam Allberry, Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?

How do we steward our sexuality in a way that affirms our personhood and dignity? What voices do we listen to as we seek to navigate the different messages about sex in our world? In this week's message from our Large Group meeting, we look at the Seventh Command from Exodus 20:14, prohibiting adultery and promoting sexual holiness. In this command, God calls his people to a sexual ethic that cares for our neighbor and honors God. 

"We see, then, that the sixth commandment prohibits much more than just cold-blooded, premeditated murder. It prohibits killing or causing to be killed by direct action or inaction any legally innocent person.”- Kevin DeYoung, The Ten Commandments: What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them

In this week's message from our Large Group meeting, we look at the Sixth Command from Exodus 20:13. In this command God requires us to preserve, protect and respect the life and dignity of every human person. Jesus' expanded interpretation of the command in Matthew 5 shows us that if we truly want to experience God's life-giving forgiveness, we first have to live under the full weight of God's law.  

"The fifth commandment is bigger than just saying, “Kids, take a bath when Mom and Dad tell you to take one.” Civilizations, societies, cultures, and countries do not flourish apart from social order, trust, and mutual respect. All of that is meant to be taught and imbibed in the incubator of the family. It’s not too much to say that loving your neighbor begins with listening to Mom and Dad."- Kevin DeYoung

"The parents’ duty is, in effect, to live out the gospel to the child: that is, to assure their children that they are loved and accepted and valued for who they are, not for who they ought to be, should have been, or might (if only they would try a little harder) become."- N.T. Wright

In this week's message from our Large Group meeting, we look at the Fifth Command from Exodus 20:12. This command teaches us that love of our neighbor begins by approaching our all diverse relationships with a posture of honor and care. 

“Sabbath is that ancient idea and practice of intentional rest that has long been discarded by much of the church and our world. Sabbath is not new. Sabbath is just new to us. Historically, Christians have kept some form or another of the Sabbath for some two thousand years. But it has largely been forgotten by the church, which has uncritically mimicked the rhythms of the industrial and success-obsessed West . . . The result of our Sabbath amnesia is that we have become perhaps the most emotionally exhausted, psychologically overworked, spiritually malnourished people in history.” - A.J. Swoboda

In this week's message from our Large Group meeting, we look at the Fourth Command from Exodus 20:8-11. This command instructs us to worship and enjoy God with our  schedules, by embracing God's rhythms of Sabbath rest. (*Note: we used a new microphone so the audio is a little distorted at times. We are sorry for the poor audio quality, and hope the message is still helpful to you.)

“In ancient writings like the Bible, a name was way more than a label . . . Your name was your identity, your destiny, the truth hidden in the marrow of your bones. It was a one-word moniker for the truest thing about you—your inner essence . . . Names are revelatory of the nature of a person.”— John Mark Comer, God Has a Name

In this weeks message, we look at the third command from Exodus 20:7. This command shows us God's design for our attitude and motive in worship. God intends for His people to live before Him with an attitude of loving reverence and respect for anything God uses to make himself known. 

“The most important aspect of our faith is not how hard we believe, but in whom we believe . . . we do want to be sincere and single-minded in our devotion—but to have a sincerely misguided belief in the wrong thing or in the wrong person is not saving faith at all. It’s possible to be full of sincere worship and worship the wrong God.”- Kevin DeYoung 

In this weeks message, we look at the second command from Exodus 20:4-6. This passage teaches us that because we cannot truly love what you we not truly know, we need God to show us how to worship and serve him rightly.

All relationships have rules. But the best and most secure relationships are the ones in which the rules are clear. And in all of life, rules don’t create relationship, they flow out of and and help maintain existing relationship. God’s rule of life for his people flows of a pre-existing relationship of rescue and redemption. 

“And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.” - GK Chesterton