Alright, we're continuing our study of the Sixth Commandment, the sins forbidden in the Sixth Commandment. The sins forbidden in the Sixth Commandment are all taking away the life of ourselves or of others, except in cases of public justice, lawful war or necessary defense, the neglecting or withdrawing the lawful and necessary means of preservation of life, sinful anger, hatred, envy, desire of revenge, excessive passion, distracting cares, and then new materials this evening. We'll look at, on page five, immoderate use of meat, drink, and labor. Our Lord warns us in Luke 21, verse 34. He says, take heed to yourselves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares." Now, that would be the ultimate self-murder is to have the day of God's judgment come upon you unawares. But what our Lord is referring to here is the types of things that distract and destroy you. What things distract and destroy? First, He talks about your hearts being overcharged. Now in our study of psychology, we looked at the nature of the heart in the Bible, and it generally refers to your thinking, your capacity to think, also to your will and the bent of your will and the choices that you make, and then finally your affections. So for something to be overcharged, sometimes we think of that as You know, you go to the store and they might overcharge you for an item that's $10, they charge you $15. That's not quite what this means. The idea of being overcharged is where you have no capacity to act because everything weighs down on you. So the heart is overcharged when it cannot act properly because things are weighing down on your heart. And so he says there are a couple of things, three things in particular, that will overcharge the heart, that will make it incapable of acting and properly functioning. And one would be surfeiting. Now surfeiting, sometimes we don't necessarily use that word, but sometimes we talk about gluttony and we'll get into that in more detail in the seventh commandment in particular because the Bible generally puts gluttony with whoremongering. Those two tend to go together. But in any case, surfeiting just means that you don't eat necessary food, you eat to glut yourself, to load up on food, in other words, that you don't really need. It's not useful or necessary for you. It doesn't cause you to have proper functioning in your body. In fact, it can destroy the proper function of the body. Drunkenness we tend to understand because we still use that term and it has reference to being overtaken with alcohol. The effect of alcohol to reduce a man to an infantile or almost animalistic state the Bible describes in the book of Proverbs for example. A man with drunkenness is like an uncontrolled person at the top of a mast or a sail and they're up there tottering around and they get hit and they don't know they got hit. That's the idea. So drunkenness and surfeiting are the misuse of good things, meat and drink. Surfeiting with meat, drunkenness with drink. He also talks about cares of this life, which we looked at last time. But notice how these deadly and distracting things tend to come in companions. Too much food, too much drink, cares of this life. These are dangers that will overcharge your thinking, your willing, and your affections, so that when Christ returns, you won't be ready. you'll be taken unawares, you'll be cast out with the hypocrites. This is why he's warning against this, because it's the road to damnation and destruction of yourself. Romans 13, 13, the apostle says, let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying now notice here first is honesty that means that your conduct your walk the way you live cannot be blamed as deceitful or deceiving or deceived and then he lists some dishonest ways of living life one is rioting this is where people run after their fleshly desires. And this includes feed, what they eat. And then of course drunkenness is when people run after their desire for alcohol. And then chambering and wantonness is their pleasure in other parts of their body. And strife and envying is where the passions rule you and lead to bickering and hatred of others, not wishing them well, and fighting together. These are all works of the flesh, and the contrary to this is to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the context for Romans 13, 13, and 14. But notice here, writing and drunkenness. Ecclesiastes 10, 16 and 17, Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning. Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season for strength, and not for drunkenness. Now, this is very important to understand that a couple of things here. One is, when it says thy princes eat in the morning, it's not saying you can't have breakfast. That's not the point. The point is that when a person wakes up and their first desire is to eat, then that person is behaving not like a human, but more like a hog, actually. Because hogs, what do they think about? Eat, eat, eat. First thing, middle thing, last thing for a pig, what shall I eat? That's what hogs are focused on. So gluttony, we can think of in terms of the actual behavior of overtaxing or overcharging your heart with food. But gluttony is also in the desires and the priorities and even in the timing of the food that's eaten. So when a person gorges themselves first thing in the morning, they make their body ineffective to accomplish the tasks for the rest of the day. So there's a necessary food, which is what gives you strength for the day. Then there is the feasting type food, which makes you ineffective. This is talking about the feasting type, like the rich glutton that we were reading about in the Gospel of Luke. He fared sumptuously every day of the week. So if the sun rose, it was a feast day for him. So his strength would be nullified by his feed. So this is saying it's a curse. When you're princes, those who should be governing, principos is a first one. The principal is the first place. So prince just means someone who's in a top place in your society. And that can be in church or state. It can be in business. It can just be in friends. It can be all kinds of circumstances. Someone can be a prince. It doesn't have to be civil. So the first people in your land, when they get up in the morning, they're like pigs. They're not like men. They just think about their feed. How can I gorge my body? And then the blessing, so the curse is, your princes eat in the morning. They're gluttons because their eating is unseasonable. There is a time to eat. It's not breakfast. You're not to gorge yourself on breakfast. If you're going to do that, you do it more toward the evening after you have already used the strength from the feed you've gotten, and then you can relax in the evening. That's the idea. But in this case, first thing in the morning, your princes are eating large quantities. And then there's the blessing Both, he's not a child, your king. He's the son of nobles. So there's one blessing. And the other is that your princes eat in due season. There's a time to every purpose under heaven. The food is not out of order. It's not that I'm going to gorge myself first thing in the morning to destroy my strength for the rest of the day. That's unseasonable. And their purpose, he says, in eating is for strength. So of course, you must eat so that you may be strengthened. That's the point of your feed, is to enable you to the calling that God has given to you. And although there are occasional usage of food that is more than that, which would be more for the relaxation or for feasting, this is not their daily feed. Your prince's are eating seasonably right amounts for the right purposes and the opposite of strength is drunkenness because again surfeiting overcharges your heart and your princes need to be able to think and make good choices good judgments and have their affections properly ordered and food will throw that out so all of these things are immoderate uses of meat and drink and they destroy In this case, the whole political body. So imagine how many people die if you don't have good princes. If you have princes who are drunken with feed first thing in the morning, you think they can defend your nation? Do you think they can punish evildoers? Do you think they can properly run their businesses? Do you think they can properly run the, let's say for us, all the things that need to happen to keep humans alive? Electricity, running water, in heat time we need air conditioning, in the winter time we need heat. What happens if all of our princes are drunkards or sitting around eating all day? Do you think any of those things are ever going to get done properly? No, they won't get done. People will die. The whole society will crumble. So it's a curse on a land if your princes, your first men, are gluttonous men. It's a blessing on your land. It leads to life if they're eating with the right purpose in mind and curbing any excess. Alright, so, immoderate use of meat and drink. These are contrary to the Sixth Commandment. as also is a moderate use of labor. Ecclesiastes 12, verses 12 and 13, And further by these, my son, be admonished, of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the matter. Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. All right, so the contrast between verse 12 and verse 13 has to do with where we think the locus of control in the universe is. What is the place that controls, or what person controls my destiny, my life, the outcomes of these things? For a person who does not fear God, I am the center of control of my life. I am the center in some people's opinions. I'm the center of control for other people's lives as well. So that is not fearing God and part of the way that that demonstrates itself is the attitude toward labor. He's warning his son admonishment is where you give someone information beforehand. I'm going to warn you son. I'm going to tell you things that will save you from self-destruction. You want to write a lot of books? There'll be no end to the labor that you could put into that. There's always more that needs to be written. You want to study? You can just destroy weariness, waste away your body, and study. Neither of those is lawful. They're sinful. Which is why it's contrasted with fearing God, keeping his commandments. That's your whole duty. Reading and writing for a scholar? That's not your whole duty. That's part of your duty. You're going to waste away your life if you think the locus of control is you and your deeds and what you can accomplish. It's not. So this is why fearing God is the contrary to an immoderate use of labor. Pouring yourself into your studies, into your books, writing or reading them or studying them, those things will destroy you. So fear God, and it'll be better for your health. That's the point that he's giving his son. That's one of the points of Ecclesiastes. If you fear God, it'll make your life better. It'll make your health better. It'll make your thoughts better. It'll make your relationships better. That's not why we fear God, but it's certainly an inducement that God gives to us. And he wants us to think of that inducement as a blessing, as a good thing. I would not have to weary my flesh and destroy myself with writing or study because I know that God has better purposes for myself than I have. Ecclesiastes 2, 22, and 23. For what hath man of all his labor and of the vexation of his heart wherein he hath labored under the sun? For all his days are sorrow. and his travail grief. Yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity." Okay, so here Solomon, in a more general sense, equates labor with vexation of heart. That's very important. Because for most people, just like we looked at on Sunday, For most people, the abuse of things is all that they know. They don't know the things in themselves. Labor in itself is not vexation. But for some people, the only way that they can conceptualize labor is vexation. Everybody's working for the weekend is a stupid old song About people who think that labor is awful and the only reason you would work is so you can party on the weekend You see they think it's vexation. They think labor is vexation So we looked at the mammon of unrighteousness from the gospel of Luke Because for most everybody all they know about mammon or riches is unrighteousness Got it in an unlawful way Keep it in an unlawful way. Use it in an unlawful way. Think about it in an unlawful way. Like everything about riches for most people in the world is the abuse of it. So here, that's what he's doing. He's showing that most people, all their labor is, is vexation of heart. And then he tells you in verse 23, why is that? What is it about labor that makes it so vexatious and so destructive of human life? All his days are sorrows, and his travail grief. Yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This also is vanity. Now labor in itself is not vanity, but when you add all the abuses of labor, all the immoderate use of labor, then it is vanity. And he says it has to do with the sorrows, the travails, the taking of no rest at night, That all makes your labor absolutely vain. It's pointless. Because your labors are intended to sustain your life. You're using your labors to destroy your life. That's an abuse of your labor. That's the exact opposite of what you should be getting out of your labors. And that's what vanity is, by the way. In the book of Ecclesiastes, the word means something that doesn't fulfill its purpose, that promises one thing and doesn't deliver it to you. Here, labor promises you life and it gives you death because it keeps you from sleeping. It keeps you from resting, keeps you from enjoying. So the Christian, in a conscience toward God freed from dead works, can labor in the Lord knowing that his labors are not in vain. that I work for the glory of God, and that if you're a slave on earth, you're the Lord's free man. And that if you're serving your master on earth, you're also serving your master in heaven. So it can take the most menial, degrading labor and give it honor and glory. But for an unbeliever, all they know is the abuse of labor. It just becomes vexation. It just becomes sorrow and travail. It takes away his sleep and that is vanity because it doesn't fulfill the purpose that it promises and that God designed for labor, which is to bless you and do good to you and to be good for you and for your neighbor. All right, page six. The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations. The immoderate use of recreations. Isaiah chapter 5 verse 11. Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink, that continue until night, till wine inflame them, and the harp And the vial, the tabret, and pipe, and wine are in their feasts. But they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands. Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge. And their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. Now this is absolutely ironic the way that Isaiah phrases this. This is also genius, the Spirit of God giving these words to him. First, they get up early, like we read about, your prince is getting up early. And they start immediately with drunkenness. So they're eating and they're drinking early. It's out of season, not for strength. they're inflaming themselves because all day they continue in this this feasting, this bacchanalian feast till they're inflamed by the end of the day. Now notice what else they have in verse 12. Harp, vial, tabret, pipe. Feasting. Are those things bad? No. Again, all that men know generally speaking in their depravity is the abuse of things. Recreations are good. Tabret, vial, pipe, wine, feast. These are all good things in their place, in their season. But, he says, they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands. So, sobriety enables you to eat with the view toward thinking. Because that's the thing he mentions in particular. He says they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider." So regarding and considering our mental activities, those are things that require your mind and your will and your affections, principally your mind and your will, that you must choose to set your mind on those things. You can't do that if you're drunk. It turns you into a beast, to an irrational sort of animal, instead of what you are, which is human. Solomon says it turns you into a loaf of bread. Turns you into a crumb of bread. You're just there to be devoured. You don't do anything reasonable like a man would do. So here, notice though, after they've gotten their meat and their drink, what happens to their society? What happens to themselves? What happens to their life? Well, he says a couple of different things. One, They go into captivity. Now who wants to go into captivity? Who would like to be sold as a slave, taken to another land, used and misused by who knows who for how many years, starving in chains, doing menial tasks? That's often the case of a captive. Even worse in some instances. But let's just put it at that. That's not an improvement on your life, is it? So here they are feasting first thing in the morning all the way in their recreations and enjoyments till they can no longer think. And then where are they? Captivity. Furthermore, their honorable men don't even have food. They're famished. They've destroyed their own bodies by excess, because God judges excess with deprivation. They decided to go beyond the amount of food they should take. And God said, fine, I'll take your food away from you. I'll famish you. You'll be starving. Your princes, your honorable men will be starving. And the multitude of you will be parched with thirst. See they were getting drunk with drink. Excessive drink. Now what do they have? Defective drink. They're now parched with thirst. So the misuse, the immoderate use of recreations is part of this chain of sinful behaviors that destroys their own life. They're seeking to amuse themselves. which means to turn yourself into an unthinking being. That's what amusement is. Because the muse is the higher reason and order of thinking in a man. That's what the muse is. So if you are amused, that means you're not a thinking person any longer. And amused people are non-thinking people. So these amused people Don't regard the work of the Lord, neither do they consider the operation of his hands. What has God done? What is he doing? His work, the operation of his hands, his creation, his redemption, his law, his word, his providence. Those are the operations and works of God that we should be thinking about. No, you can't do that if you're amused. You can't do that if your recreations are your entire life. And this is very sad, but many people in our society are trapped in this very thing so it doesn't seem that it's going to end well for us as a nation because our princes are amused people. We will go into captivity if we are ruled by drunkards and if we're a nation ruled by people interested in amusement eventually they and us will be famished and not have enough to drink. These are things we have to consider. We have to think about the judgments of God. Alright, so the sixth commandment forbids immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations, and it also forbids provoking words. Proverbs 15 verse 1. Letter P there in your outline. A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger. Now, of course, anger is the passion that leads to murder. Anger is the passion that leads to strife. Anger is the passion that leads to quarreling. Grievous words are when the words are designed to be harsh, to be cutting, to stir up the other person, to provoke, to add fuel to the fire. Our words are required to put the fire out, the fire of passion. We should be reasonable and we should be kind. That's a soft answer, a reasonable answer that turns away wrath, that stops the death cycle of the words because the tongue is a world of iniquity. It's set on fire by hell. It sets the whole course of nature on fire. So grievous words bring destruction and death and hell. So he's warning us here about anger and the stirring up of anger, which leads to death. It's part of the sixth commandment. Then Proverbs 12, 18. There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword, but the tongue of the wise is health. Here, notice the contrast. And when we get into the Proverbs, eventually we'll look at this. Proverbs is filled with parallels and opposites. Now, Proverbs 15.1, soft answer. The parallel is an opposite parallel. Grievous words is the opposite of a soft answer. Then, of course, turneth away and stirreth up. Those are opposites. And then wrath and anger are parallels of the same sort. And you'll find this throughout the Proverbs. Sometimes they'll have opposites. Sometimes they'll have exact parallels all the way through. This one is opposites in two parts and parallels in one part. but you see that that's one of the ways you can learn the different meanings of words in an ancient language is when they have couplets like that and you say okay well wrath and anger those are basically synonyms because look how they did it and then soft and grievous those are opposites those are antonyms you can learn that just by looking at the couplets in any case first he has speaking then he has tongue Those are exact parallels. There is that speaketh, and then, but the tongue. And then you have the piercing of a sword and health. See the difference? What does a piercing of a sword do? Well, it's pretty much immediate death, isn't it? If you poke a sword through a person, that's piercing them with a sword. What do you think's gonna happen to their life? dead they're dead probably within minutes because if you pierce through any part of the body you're going to hit a major artery if you have a sword you might hit an internal organ you're certainly going to take away their life or almost take away their life if you pierce them with the sword so now with that analogy in mind some people speak in such a way as to destroy the life of another person or of other people in general there is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword that's murder but then on the other hand there's that's what you should put off is speaking like the piercings of a sword put off the old man put on the new but the tongue of the wise is health your speech can give life to people It can lift their spirits, which lifts their life. Or you might pierce them through with your words. Be very careful with the sharp tongue, we call it sometimes. Someone might speak very sharply. They might have things that are very, perhaps powerful, but powerful unto what end? unto destruction. There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword. We must guard our tongues. We must be very careful because provoking words are murder. They're part of the class of actions that destroys your neighbor's life and therefore they are forbidden by the sixth commandment. So we must be very cautious in the use of our words. alright so sixth commandment forbiddeth the immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations it forbiddeth provoking words it prohibitteth and forbids oppression letter Q Ezekiel 18.18 as for his father because he cruelly oppressed spoiled his brother by violence, and did that which is not good among his people, lo, even he shall die in his iniquity." Now, if you remember, Ezekiel 18 is a very, very excellent passage about civil justice. And it deals with the principle of natural justice and how God never punishes someone for the crimes of another party. Because the complaint the Israelites had is, look, we're here in captivity. We didn't do anything wrong. This is our parents' sin. That's why we're in captivity, because Dad and Grandpa were wicked. We're good people. Why are we here suffering? Our fathers ate sour grapes, and our teeth are set on edge. That was the proverb they used. I didn't eat those grapes. That was my dad. My fathers ate that. Not me. But God is proving, no, no, no, no. You ate the sour grapes. You're the sinners. You're as bad or worse than your fathers. And if you weren't, you wouldn't be here in captivity. If you would have repented, I would have put you back in your land. That's what he says. So this is illustrating the father, the father of this man. What did he do that was so bad? And this is what he's saying. cruelly oppressing another person, spoiling his brother by violence. Now, by the way, some people say you can only oppress if you're in authority. That's not true. Can people under authority spoil others by violence? Yeah, well then they can oppress them, can't they? Yes, they can. Oppression is not a one-way street from the top to the bottom. Oppression can go side to side among equals. It can go upwards from the inferior to the superior. You can oppress your superiors. It's not like the Marxists say, it always goes one direction. But because people with power often are tempted to oppress, that's why the Bible generally addresses it under the superior. And here, in this case, cruel oppression. That means to force someone down under your heel. That's the idea of oppressing. Pushing them down. And he did that with cruelty by spoiling his brother. And notice, he shall die in his iniquity. So the oppressor not only destroys the life of the oppressed, he also destroys his own life. He also forfeits his life to live. He also brings himself to death. So when the sixth commandment requires that you preserve your own life and the life of your neighbor, oppression destroys both. Both the oppressed and the oppressor are destroyed by it. All right, Exodus chapter 1, 13 and 14. and the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor, and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, all their service wherein they made them serve was with rigor. Now, rigor is an inflexible hardness, There's no understanding. There's no consideration. There's no assistance. And if you'll remember, the serving with rigor was, you need to make a certain number of bricks. This is later in Exodus, but it describes the same sort of oppressive, rigorous type behavior. You need to make the same number of bricks, but we're not providing you with half of the materials you need. You need to go get that yourself. Same number of bricks. You're idle. Go get it. Go get the stubble and use that to make the bricks, whereas before they would give them straw. That's the idea of rigor. You can't. There's no flexibility. There's no understanding. There's no compassion. There's no humanity. There's no love your neighbor as you love yourself. There's no proper duty of a master to his slave. No, all is justice and punishment and rigor. That's the idea. Hard bondage, whether it was in mortar or brick. whatever service they did in the field you're working to build something you're working in the farm whatever you're doing it's all gonna be oppressive and bitter and rigorous that's what he's saying and this made the Egyptians primary candidates for God destroying them because this is evil even without respect to the fact that it's God's people you're doing this to you do this to anyone you deserve to be punished by God And on top of that, God says, I love those people and I chose them and their fathers. Now you've really provoked God to anger. And then God comes to you and says, let them go and stop doing that. And you say, no, why should I obey the Lord? Now that really adds to the provocation. The sin becomes aggravated by all of these aggravations and that's what led to the Egyptians dying. That's what led to the death of the firstborn of Egypt. The destruction of the armies of Pharaoh was because of this kind of oppressive wickedness on the behalf of the Egyptians. All right, so the sixth commandment forbids the immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, recreations, provoking words, oppression, and quarreling. Children, did you know you can murder your brothers and sisters with your tongue by quarreling? For all the law is fulfilled in a word, even in this. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. Now, biting and devouring is the usage of the tongue to destroy your neighbor. This is what we're talking about with the piercing of the sword, the use of the tongue to destroy the life of your neighbor. Grievous words that stir up strife. Here, biting and devouring. Rather than your mouth being used for good, Your mouth is used to tear down your neighbor. Now, of course, there are differences and degrees. There are pleasantries that people make. That's not what this is talking about. This is talking about the malicious use of the tongue. in order to drive the person down, in order to make them the object of ridicule or scorn, or to express your hatred or your envy or whatever it is that you don't like about that person. It's not necessary that they hear it. You're not doing it in a spirit of meekness. You might be pointing out their flaw just for the sake of like vindicating yourself and venting on that person. That's biting and devouring. That's quarreling. That has nothing to do with edifying or correcting or admonishing. It's not seasoned with salt. It's not for the good of him that hears. is so that you can feel good about putting that person down for the evil that they've done. Vindication of your own self-righteousness. This is what we tend to do with our tongues. We tend to bite and devour. We tend to destroy. But the opposite you'll notice in context. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Speak to your neighbor Use your tongue toward your neighbor in such a way as you would like them to use their tongue toward you. That's not biting and devouring. That's edifying. That's using your speech with salt, so as to give grace to him that heareth, so you can build that person up. And even if that means you have to say unpleasant things to them, there's a manner in which you can say unpleasant things to a person that is edifying, and there's a manner that isn't. So you should use the manner that is. So in this case, though, quarreling is contrary to the sixth commandment. Now, the tongue generally, just to give a brief wrap up on the tongue, the tongue generally either leads to life or to death. The power of life and the power of death are in the tongue, and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof, Solomon says. So we have to understand that when we're talking on a day-to-day basis to your spouse, Ladies to your husbands, husbands to your wives, children to your parents, parents to your children, siblings to one another, you to your friends. When you're talking, you have to understand it's like you have a gun. You're aiming at people if you're using the wrong sorts of words. So you want your tongue to be framed in such a way because we all know you don't muzzle people with a gun, right? You don't point your gun at anyone that you don't intend to destroy or anything you don't intend to destroy, right? We all know that. We don't know that about our tongues. Because our tongues are a deadly weapon full of deadly poison that are set on fire of hell. Unless we're very careful and we watch what we say, we can very quickly and easily destroy other people. and this is why the sixth commandment talks about this in our catechism is because our words can be provocative toward violence they can be quarrelsome and biting and devouring others or on the other hand they can be used to turn away wrath they can be used to bring health and they can be used to bring life. So our duty under God's commandments to love our neighbor as we love ourselves is to use our tongue in such a way that we bring life, we bring wisdom, we bring health rather than the opposite. Alright, so thus far our study