E. Condition nine – “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
1. To bear false witness is to contend publicly that one had personally witnessed the illegal or sinful behavior of another while knowing that the accusation is a lie. This sin goes far beyond that of simple malicious gossip.
2. The intent of bearing false witness against another is to create, for whatever reason, a public scandal and to enforce collective action against the accused. Political rhetoric is filled with the sin of bearing false witness. This is the bread and butter of tabloid news. Dr Strawn calls the violation of this commandment the sin of the four axes because it has far reaching effects.
a. The first is the sin against the truth.
b. The second is the sin against God.
c. The third is the sin against one's neighbor.
d. The fourth is the sin against the community.
This action is deliberate in its motives. It targets not only the accused but the whole community collectively with the hopes that the lie will be believed by by the aggregate. It's purpose is to create within the minds of the hearers an evil impression of the victim. This activates fears and introduces questions and doubts about the accused. It fires up the imagination with falsehoods and the mind then begins to create its own scenario about the possibilities. It does this by assuming that the accusation is a plausible possibility. After all, we are all sinners, all of us have our weaknesses, all of us are susceptible to temptation so, it just might be true. Now, doubt of innocence is considered. This is called “poisoning the well.” This practice was certainly not the invention of Saul Alinsky but he was certainly one who learned the effectiveness of this practice. Inevitably, the lie once conceived become fact in the minds of the hearers. Its purpose is to damage trust in one another and to collapse the cohesion of the people. It is natural for people to turn to cynicism believing that everyone is motivated only by self interest.
3. The accusation throws the victim on the defensive. How does the accused prove that something that never happened, never happened? Thus, in order to preserve the integrity of one's relationship with God, the integrity of the one's neighbor and the community, and uphold the dignity of the truth, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
F. Condition ten – “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
1. This is actually one command, “You shall not covet” but, with a complex of applications herein stipulated. Covetousness is the act of wanting for yourself that which rightfully belongs to another and hating you brother because he has it and you do not with the intent of possibly trying to obtain it unlawfully. God has already commanded, “You shall not steal.” How does one begin to steal, by coveting that which belongs to another.
2. Covetousness is nothing less that an act of being ungreatful and thankless. If God has bless another with something we desire, that is none of our business. This sin changes the direction of one's focus. We are to give thanks to the Almighty for the things he has elected to give us and not on what he has chosen to give someone else.
3. Covetousness is at the very least, the beginning of a process of rationalized behavior to obtain that to which one has no right.
4. Violation of this command puts distance between pragmatics and virtue. We are not permitted to allow personal desires to breech the threshold of personal virtue.
5. This commandment reveals a way of reasoning about things that becomes a personal motive. As believers, we are held accountable for the way we reason toward things. The covetous person worships at the throne of self. Immorality, passion, impurity, evil desires and greed devise ways of obtaining what one desires. This commandment drives a wedge between purely pragmatic behavior and the virtuous mind. One's life must develop by means of the linkage of personal virtue to the Almighty himself. Personal desire and gratification must be redirected by faith in God. The virtuous mind does not covet. The ten commandments is the line of demarcation between the mind of the flesh and the mind of God.
III. The Revealed Principles at the Heart of the Ten Commandments are NOT Time Contingent.
The ten commandments run like an axis through time. This axis of revelation runs from Sinai to the present day pulpit. The ten commandments was the beginning of Israel's real understanding of God. This understanding was rooted in the words that God imparted to the people. The pulpit must also be a place where people are introduced to God through the deliverance of the words of the Lord. Possessed by the gravity of revelation, the pulpit must be unshackled from human opinion and social approval. The pulpit is to provide no compromise nor abridgment of the revealed truth.
Today, one might conclude that the pulpit has lost its thunder and comforts itself to the acceptance of socialized ideology about life and human behavior. Apostate, progressive ideologies have ruled that thunder from the pulpit is out of order. If preachers are to open their mouths, what proceeds hence MUST come from the uncompromised language manifold of scripture. There can never be “thunder from the pulpit” as long as the word of God is submerged in the rationalization of scripture.