Brian's Sermons

Exodus 20:15  You shall not steal. When I first came to Zambia for a visit, we were driven through Central Market on a Saturday. It was crowded and packed with people, cars, shoppers, vendors. Suddenly as we were stuck in traffic, a man came running through the crowds. He was being pursued by several other men, one of whom had a large club. When they reached our car, they caught the first man and began beating him. Blood was everywhere. In fact, when we reached New Hope Church, our DS remained behind to wash the blood off the car. Rev. Kilembo later explained to us that this man was a thief. He had stolen in the market, and the punishment was a terrible beating. We recognize that stealing is wrong. But here is the fact: stealing is normal in Zambia. If you take your car to a mechanic, you must watch the mechanic like a hawk or he will steal good parts from your car and replace them with poor quality parts. Our DS had most of the parts from his car stolen by a mechanic

Exodus 20:14  “You shall not commit adultery.” Some of you have been here every week of the series on the Ten Commandments, and you know what I’m going to say. You know that it was God who created us, and the same God gave us rules to live by. There are some people who want to say, “It’s my life and nobody can tell me how to live it.” I want you to imagine something. Imagine you are coming home with a brand new TV. You spent all your money on it, and it’s a big one. You bring it home and take it out of the box. There is a book of instructions, but you decide you are going to ignore it. After all, it is your TV and nobody can tell you how to use it. So you carefully place the TV on the floor, screen up, and you call the neighborhood children to come in and play. They begin jumping up and down on the TV. What will happen to the TV? Ephesians 2:10 tells us that we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.