Walk in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you. (Deuteronomy 5:33)

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WHY WE NEED RULES

Rev. Willard L. D. Heinrichs

Do you know what happens when people turn away from the Lord—turn away from His truth and His Commandments? When people think that their own ideas are the right way of doing things, they insist that their own opinion is the right one. They love themselves so much that they won’t listen to what the Lord says. They won’t listen to what other people say. Quarreling and fighting break out. People split up and go their way, all by themselves.

Say three or four children come together and want to play a game. What happens if each child in his or her own mind decides to play by his or her own rules? They are not going to play by the rules of the game that are set down. They are going to play their own rules, the rules that they make up. We call this cheating. They begin the game, and we all know what happens. In no time at all they are quarreling and accusing each other of cheating. They are fighting. And soon the game is broken up and everybody goes away, some to their rooms and some to do something else—all angry with one another, because they would not play according to the rules.

What if Mom and Dad and all the children in a home decide that they are going to live according to their own rules? Each person will eat when he or she pleases. They will all go to sleep when they please. They will get up when they please. They will play the radio or TV when they want and as loud as they want. Each has a different idea about these things. What does it make the home like? It makes the home like hell. Because in the home, also, there has got to be a set of rules that all of the people agree to obey. If there is a good set of rules that is just and fair, then everybody in the home will be happy. They will live at peace with one another. And that home will stay together.

The same thing is true in a country. People have to have a set of laws that are just and fair and that everybody agrees to obey. And as long as most people do this, the country has peace. People live happily together. They are able to work in peace and enjoy their work. But what happens if more and more people decide that they will make up their own laws? We call this anarchy. It leads to chaos. Fighting and quarreling and revolutions start. The country or the empire is broken up. And it is the same between nations in the world. If the world is to be a happy place to live, all people must agree to live by a certain set of rules that they will all try to obey.

But where are we going to find such a set of rules? Rules that everybody—all nations, all people in a nation, all people in a house, etc.—can live according to and find peace and happiness? We must turn to the Lord. For the Lord alone is loving enough and wise enough to know of such a set of rules. He knows how to bring happiness and peace to everybody. And where are these rules to be found? They are in the Lord’s Word. The most important rules in the Lord’s Word are the Ten Commandments. And so that there would be no mistake that these are the Lord’s rules and not human rules, the first words were: “And God spoke all these words.”

So these are the rules that all of us should obey if we wish to live together in happiness and peace. And just think for a moment what the world would be like, what our nations would be like, what our homes would be like, if everybody agreed to keep the Ten Commandments. Suppose that everybody loved the Lord Jesus Christ as the one God of heaven and earth; everybody kept the Lord’s Word, and His name, holy; everybody worshiped the Lord together; everybody honored their father and mother; nobody killed anybody; nobody committed adultery; nobody stole anything; nobody told lies; nobody coveted or envied anybody anything. What would we have if everybody tried to keep these rules? We know what we would have. We would have heaven on earth. People would be bound together in a heavenly society.

Those who keep the Commandments of the Lord have peace inside of them and in their homes. And when they come into the life after death, they have peace and happiness there, too. They find their eternal life in heaven.

Amen.

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