It is not your work by which the church stands or falls. It is not your faithfulness that gives the church her life. And it is not your efforts that keeps you firmly in Christ’s kingdom. The glory belongs solely to Christ.

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These commandments forbid the sin of coveting. The Hebrew word means, at its most basic level, desire, to take pleasure in. Now to be sure, it is good and proper to take pleasure in those gifts God has given to us . . . but we must be careful to take pleasure only in those things which God has given us. When the line is crossed and we begin to desire and take pleasure those things that are not given to us—those things that God has given to our neighbor—then we enter into coveting.

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The consequences of defiling the marriage bed—of bringing anything outside of husband and wife experiencing intimacy together—are severe: they corrupt and rot us down to our very core. And the reason for that is simple: because God does not give us marriage merely for our own pleasure, but to teach us something about His relationship with us.

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This commandment demands that we—each of us—consider any factor that concerns people, that concerns their bodies. This commandment demands that we consider the physical well-being of our neighbor.

Which means that for us, this commandment speaks to us at levels never before seen in human history. Never before in human history has it been more difficult, more complex, to consider the question, “but who is my neighbor?”

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This is the first commandment in what we call the second table of the Law: that portion of the commandments that dictate not how we live before God, but how we live with one another. It is the commandment that dictates how society should function, how society itself will reflect a Godly attitude, or not.

It is this commandment that forms the foundation of the second table. All of the remaining commandments depend upon this commandment, just as all 10 commandments depend upon the first.

And all of this begins with “Honor your father and your mother.”

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For six days we occupy ourselves with many concerns, none of which are the one thing needful. For six days we busy ourselves with the world, with its concerns, with its demands, with its stresses.

But we have one glorious day where we are renewed. When our thinking, our attitudes, our ideas, our very lives are re-oriented to God’s own life . . . the life that He gives to us.

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Martin Luther and John Calvin both have said “The human heart is an idol factory.” In our sinfulness, our hearts naturally produce any number of things to which we declare, “You are that in which I find my comfort. You are that in which I receive my security. You are my god.”

The thing about an idol is that it comes between us and God. “You shall have no other gods before me.” An idol is something between you and God. An idol that obscures God’s face from you . . . an idol that prevents you from seeing the face of God . . . an idol that you have placed between you and Him.

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Alone, we stood naked before God. Naked . . . exposed . . . and ashamed. Ashamed of what we looked like without proper clothing. Ashamed of being naked before God. Ashamed of what we were.

But having been baptized into Christ, we are now clothed . . . covered . . . all our shame, all our fear, all our sin now covered with a righteousness not our own that could tarnish and fade, but clothed with the perfect robe of Christ’s own righteousness. Indeed, having been baptized, when the Father now looks upon us, He sees no sin, He sees no shame, He sees only the image of His Beloved Son . . . and there is no wrath left for us. The love He feels for His Son now washes over us, and we all are made as Christ before Him.

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