God's Top Ten and Then Some

Rules, rules, rules.  Sometimes it seems as if that is all there is to life.  You can’t do this, you must do that.  You recently went back to school where they have a lot of rules.  No running in the halls, no chewing gum. No candy.  NO CELLPHONES! You must be in class when the bell rings.  No hitting, fighting, or touching.  Homework must be turned in on time.  There is a rule for everything.


Scripture Text:  Exodus 20:3-17 (the ten commandments)

The same is true in our spiritual life.  There are toooooooo many rules.  But really is that true.  I know I just read a whole bunch of scripture that said do this, no, don’t do that.  I mean when you stop and think about it, it seems that there is no way you will ever be able to do this living for God thing right.  There is just to much to know and do, or should I say not do.  I mean really, Is that all there is to living for God, rules?  No, not at all.  There are many benefits to living for God too; however, today we are going to talk about some rules; not only the top ten commandments, but also a few others that narrow the top ten down.  So let’s take a look at some scriptures that narrow these ten down a little, maybe that will make it seem a little easier on us.

Matt. 22:36-40 (the greatest commandment).

Okay that’s a little easier there are only two things here to remember.  God is #1 and we should love our neighbor as ourselves.  That’s much better.  There is one of those two things I want to discuss today.  We all know we must love the Lord thy God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and that the bible says that the only way to show/prove that we love God is to keep his commandments.  So today I want to show you that there is virtually one commandment that we must be committed to keeping and that’s where the love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  The one rule is called The golden rule.  It’s the rule to live by.

Matt. 7:12 (the golden rule) (this is your memory verse)

So let’s discuss this golden rule and see if we can really determine what it means.  If we can get this one rule down, we will have kept the entirety of all the commandments without fault.  It’s so simple “we should do unto others as we would have them do to us” and let me just say that if we don’t follow this rule, then we are prone to Murphy’s law of “what goes around, comes around”.  Meaning that whatever we dish out, we are going to get in return.  If you lie about someone, you are going to be lied about, etc.

There are some people with the mentality of:

Do unto others before they do it to me.  Well, I’d better get a jump on the situation and get what I want before they do. Is that a right attitude to have.  Absolutely not.  That is not the Golden rule.

Do unto others as they do unto me.  Well, they did this or they did that, so I’m gonna do it to them.  I’ll show them.  I’ll get them.  Is that God’s will?  Is that a right spirit?  No, God said that vengeance is his.  If someone does his child wrong he will take care of it.

Our job is to “Do unto others as I would have them do unto me”.  Do you need forgiveness? Do you need mercy because you have done something really ugly.  Most likely! So as a rule we must be forgiving and merciful to others.  We must treat others right according to how the bible tells us to.  Do they deserve to be treated right?  Not always.

What it really boils down to is not how others treat us, but how we treat others.