"The Ten Commandments" by Kathryn Kuhlman part 1 of her series on "The Ten Commandments"

After having finished a Sunday morning service, a gentleman came up to me and he said, do you want to know Miss Kuhlman, I have heard you preach literally hundreds and hundreds of sermons, and yet I have never known you to bring a series of messages on the Ten Commandments. And I would just enjoy hearing you preach on the Ten Commandments. I said, why of course, my goodness, the life, there's so much to preach about from God's precious word, come to think about it, I do not believe that I have ever brought a series of messages on the Ten Commandments, I'll do it. And so, this is my first in a series of heart-to-heart talks on the Ten Commandments, and I promise you that as you follow me in these heart-to-heart talks, that you'll find a depth of meaning, you'll find treasures, you'll find a depth of truth in these Ten Commandments that you never dreamed was there. Oh sure, we think of the Ten Commandments, the Ten Rules for Living as a portion of the Old Testament, every child who goes to Sunday school knows that God gave them to Moses, and then when you want to show off the intelligence of your youngster, perhaps five years of age, four and a half, you'll trot her into the living room before your guests and say, now honey, recite to Auntie Mame the Ten Commandments, and then your very intelligent youngster, your little boy with his high IQ, will rattle off the Ten Commandments just as he learned them in the church in the Sunday school, and then it just ends there. I'll promise you, if you'll stay with me in these heart-to-heart talks, you're going to learn a truth, you're going to see how really valuable to every man, to every woman, whether they are a Christian or not, how valuable these Ten Rules for Living really are. I probably will seldom refer to them as the Ten Commandments. I would rather think of them in the light of the Ten Rules for Living, and that's exactly what they are. First of all, let me read the first 17 verses of the 20th chapter of Exodus, and God speaks all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out to the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. For I am the Lord thy God. I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold them guiltless that take his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son nor thy daughter, thy manservant nor thy maidservant nor thy capitol, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may belong upon the land of which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's. Thus reads a portion of the twentieth chapter of Exodus, and the one who spoke was the mighty God of the universe. And before he gave those ten rules for living, he made his own acclamation. I am the Lord thy God, I am God, I am God Almighty. The one who is speaking, the one who is giving these ten rules for living, is the one who has all power in heaven and earth. The power to give life, the power to take life, the power to bless, the power to withhold the blessing. I am the Lord thy God. And then he continues to speak. We dare not take even this portion of the word of God out of its continuity, out of its setting. Therefore, let us go back and see just exactly what was happening prior to the giving of these ten rules for living. Shortly after Moses had led the children of Israel away from the bondage of Egypt on their journey to the promised land, God called Moses up on Mount Sinai. And he must have said something like this to him. Oh, I have visualized it a thousand times. This must have been in essence what God said to Moses in his heart-to-heart talk with him. Now, Moses, your people are headed toward prosperity. The land that I have promised to them is rich and productive and will supply not only their needs, but much more. Oh, Moses, even you do not understand the prosperity that is just ahead. Not even you understand the blessing with which I am going to bless you and your people is far beyond your comprehension. That's the reason, Moses, I'm bringing you up here and you and I are having this heart-to-heart talk together. This is why I'm going to have to give you these rules for living. The land that I have promised will supply more than your needs, much, much more. In fact, the land flows with milk and honey. Oh, wasn't that a description? When God says that a thing flows with milk and honey. That's something. But God continued this conversation with Moses. He said, but look here, Moses, you've got to go down there and tell your people that they cannot, it's absolutely impossible for them to be happy and successful merely by the possession of things. Oh, to me, that's wonderful. Remember, human nature hasn't changed one iota. Those people back there in Moses' day were just as human as the people in our generation. Just as human as you are, human nature has always been the same. And the first thing that God had to make Moses understand and tell Moses to make his people understand was the thing that is important to you and to me today. The fact that things, material things, things of this earth, the things we accumulate, material things will not make a man happy. If only I could get women to see that. If only I could get men to see it. I have watched human beings a number of years. I have watched them climb from one rung of the ladder to the one just above until they have reached the last rung on the ladder. They have received fame. They have received wealth. They received everything that money could buy. And yet inside of them, they were the most unhappy human beings walking the streets of any city. Why? Because just things, material things, cannot bring happiness. God knew it. Therefore, just prior to his great blessing and following their deliverance from Egyptian bondage, God had to do something because he knew that he was dealing with human beings. He was about to bless human beings. And he knew the weakness of human beings. He knew their frailties, their shortcomings. He knew the smallness of their minds, their thinking. He knew how the human mind worked. He knew the shallowness of mankind. Therefore, before he led them into the land that did flow with milk and honey, he said, Moses, we've got to do something. We've got to show your people that things, material things, will never make them happy. The possession of things will never bring real happiness. The way they live is more important than what they have. And it's true today. The way we live, the way you live in your home, your attitude toward your wife, your attitude toward your husband, your attitude in the home, your attitude toward the children, the children's attitude and respect for you, you will not be blessed with material things. And yet, even though you have to make every penny count, even though the furnishings of the home may be very mediocre, it's the spirit of the home. It's not just a house. As you enter into your home, there's a warmth. You feel the happiness because, you see, it's individuals that make a house a home. It's the spirit. No, no, beloved, it's the way you live that's more important than what you have materially. And that's one of the very first things that God told Moses to make his people see before he began to bless them. So he said, Moses, I'm going to give you ten rules for living. I want you to teach the people these rules. If they live by them, I promise they will be blessed. But I warn you, if they break these rules, there will be punishment. And it's true today. You cannot break any one of God's rules for living without suffering the consequences. You can't do it. I don't care whether it's his laws regarding the physical body. You don't have to even be able to read the Bible. I don't care whether you're a Christian or an atheist. I don't care what your mental attitude about God is. One thing I can tell you, if you break one of God's rules for the physical, you're going to suffer for it. You cannot do anything as small as overloading your stomach without suffering for it. You don't have to have the Bible. You don't have to know the Bible. Without knowing the fact that if you break rules for the physical body, you will pay the price. Many a person today is blaming God, blaming everybody that they can think of for the condition that their body is in, for their sickness, for their poor health. And yet, the blame lies with the individual, the owner of that body. They are in that condition physically because they have broken God's laws for the body. The body needs just so much rest. The body must have just the right kind of intake of vitamins. You break any one of those laws, your body suffers. And so it is with every part of man's life. God has certain laws. As truly as two and two make four, God has laws. You break them, you automatically suffer. God has nothing to do with it whatsoever. You are the one to blame. Oh, I'm telling you something. When we get deep into these ten rules for living, you're going to find it's one of the greatest portions of God's precious Word. Yes, ma'am. And Moses, listen. These are to be the rules of living people of all generations, all peoples of all times. Moses, these rules will never go out of date. They'll never be repealed. They'll never be changed. And so we have those rules that are known as the Ten Commandments recorded in the 20th chapter of Exodus. Now remember something. They are not only the basis of conduct, both moral and spiritual, but also the basis of peace and prosperity for the individual and for the world. We forget, you know, that the world is made up of individuals. We forget that a nation is made up of individuals. That's the reason you have heard me say over and over again that our own nation, the United States of America, is no stronger than her spiritual forces. It's like that. When we go abroad, we hear America spoken of as a whole. America, the land of plenty. Oh, America, the utopia of the world. And yet you think of the thousands and thousands and billions of people that make up America. It is thought of as a whole, a unit. And yet our nation is made up of individuals. And we are, as a nation, what the people make it. But you make it, what I make it. Therefore, this promise, these ten rules for living, are not only the basis of conduct for moral and spiritual living, but they're also the basis for peace and for prosperity for our nation and for the world. And the thing that's wrong with our nation today and the thing that is wrong with the world today is merely the fact that we are going contrary to God's rules for living. Absolutely. We spend billions of dollars trying to analyze the whole thing. We have our keenest minds trying to bring a solution to the whole thing. We have tried everything under God's heaven. All on earth that mankind has to do is to come back again and follow God's ten rules for living. We've gotten so far away from them that the whole world has gotten itself in a mess. That's it. God holds the answer. He said, I'll never change those rules, never. They'll never go out of date. They'll never be repealed. Those same ten rules that God gave Moses are just as sure today as they were then. And as surely as an individual breaks these rules, he will be punished. As surely as a family in their living break the rules, there's a penalty. As surely as a nation breaks these rules and lives contrary to these rules, the mighty God of the universe is there. He smiles and said, you brought it all on yourself. You are living contrary to my rules for living. I shall continue this series of messages. God bless you.