Wallace G. Smith

[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

Why and How to Seek God

We live in stressful times. In a world of political chaos, warfare, pandemics, and civil unrest, we need a source of stability, calm, and peace that is bigger and greater than all of our concerns. That source is God.

A deep and profound relationship with the One who created you, loves you, and has a purpose for your life really IS possible. Join us today as we reveal “Five Keys to Knowing God.”

Seeking God Will Bring Peace of Mind

The world as we know it seems to be unraveling at the seams. Our streets see growing unrest. Our halls of government are alternately filled with either incompetence and gridlock or chaos and conflict. Wars and conflicts rage as our leaders seem increasingly incapable of managing the growing number of crises around the globe.

Even outside of government, the institutions at the heart of civilization seem to reveal themselves on a weekly basis as untrustworthy at best and agenda-driven at worst.

Our educational institutions often seem more devoted to indoctrinating and programming our children than they are to actually educating them. Many fields of science increasingly seem to be driven more by social agenda and political activism than a sincere desire for truth and a devotion to reality.

The chaos of our world isn’t merely abstract or academic, and it doesn’t stay within the pages of our newspapers. It impacts our lives. Our food and other staples of life seem to cost increasingly more money, even as we seem to have less money to spend. Parents look at their children and understandably wonder what sort of world they will inherit.

And while there are always ups and downs, Bible prophecy reveals that the trend is exactly as it appears: things really will get far worse before they get fundamentally better. Nations that were once sources of global stability in the world, such as the United States or Great Britain, will continue their decline, and no change in the presidency or premiership of these nations is going to completely halt the decline and solve the growing chaos. Because that decline and that growing chaos is fundamentally not due to policies or politics or economic plans or anything of the sort.

The chaos and decline is due to the sin of these nations. And unless there is fundamental national repentance on the part of the people themselves and a turning of their hearts to the laws of their Creator, then expect that chaos and decline to continue!

So, what can we do to find peace of mind and stability in a world so lacking in peace and stability?

In fact, there is only one source of such reassurance and hope: The God who created you, who loves you, and who has a remarkable plan for your life.

On today’s program, we are going to give you five keys to truly knowing God—five keys you can use to unlock a deep and profound relationship with the Eternal God who very much wants to build a relationship with you.

Far from being a God who is far away and inaccessible to us, our Creator is near and very accessible. But we must do our part to seek Him. God explains this through the prophet Jeremiah, encouraging His people,

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart (Jeremiah 29:11–13).

But every search has to start somewhere! And if you are willing to take advantage of these five keys, you will find yourself well on your way to a deeper and more invigorating walk with your Creator.

1. Know God by Spending Time in Nature

The first key you can use to know God is creation.

The entire world around us is the work of the master Creator of all things, and He tells us in His word that we can come to know Him better by spending time soaking in His Creation.

In Romans 1:20, the Apostle Paul addresses the ridiculous denial of those who look at the Creation around us and deny the reality of God:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse….

Indeed, so many of God’s invisible attributes can be clearly seen and understood by the things that are made—including his eternal power and Godhead, or His divinity and deity.

Regrettably, in our world today, most of us are increasingly separated from the natural world. We live much of our lives with concrete under our feet and fluorescent lights above our heads. But if you would like to really know God, consider spending some time with His Creation.

Take a walk at a local park, if you can—get outside, in natural surroundings. Look up on a clear night sky and let your eyes wander through the stars. Consider the astonishing variety of complex lifeforms that make their home with us on Planet Earth. The Creation is a physical, living hymn that praises its Creator with a beautiful clarity for those who are willing to listen to its song.

The consistent and dependable order of the world and the cosmos tells us that God is orderly and lawful. Its complexity and design speaks to His unimaginable intelligence. The variety we see around us speaks to a God who loves creativity and beauty. For those who long to know their Creator, the Creation, itself, is one of the best-kept secrets around.

If you want to know God, then take advantage of the key of creation, and let His craftsmanship teach you about who He is and your relationship to Him. As King David, the Warrior Poet of ancient Israel, wrote in Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.”

2. Know God by Studying the Bible

Our first key is the creation.

The second key to knowing God is the Bible—God’s sacred word.

If you really want to know the real God, this key is absolutely crucial. Too often today, people say they “know” God, but they don’t. What they think of as “God” is a product of their imagination—it’s what they imagine God to be. But if God is real—and He is—then we want to know the real God. The One who created the universe. The One who has the power to work in our lives.

And that God has given us His word to help us do that. The Bible is like God’s mind in print. When we read it, we discover how He thinks, what matters to Him, what makes Him happy or angry, what His plans and desires are—both for the world, and for you. Reading the Bible is a key to unlocking these things for us.

But we have to read it RIGHT. In Isaiah 28, God inspires the prophet to speak about understanding the divine message:

Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little (vv. 9–10).

We have to be willing to put it all together.

Read the Whole Bible: Old Testament and New Testament

You can’t just read part of the Bible—say, only the New Testament or the Old. You have to be willing to consider the entire book, as a whole, to get an accurate understanding of the mind of God.

Consider owning a large collection of letters written by a great-grandfather who died before you were born. Reading only one or two letters wouldn’t really give you a full picture—and might even give you a wrong idea or cause you to draw a conclusion about him without enough context.

Many people do this with the Bible, being fooled into thinking they understand God by studying only the New Testament, perhaps, or throwing in the Psalms or a few other Old Testament books.

But in 2 Timothy 3:16, we’re told the following:

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness….

The Scripture—all Scripture—is “given by inspiration of God”—or, as some translations have it, is “God-breathed.”

If you find the idea of studying the entire Bible intimidating, then I’d recommend you start by visiting our website at TomorrowsWorld.org. We have a number of free resources to help you begin, including today’s free DVD.

Yet, simply reading and studying is not enough. Knowledge, by itself, does nothing but make us prideful. We must act on what we learn!

3. Know God by Keeping His Commandments

That brings us to our next key to knowing our Creator: keeping God’s commandments.

God’s word contains His Law and His commandments—the Ten Commandments.

It’s too easy (and wrong) to simply think of God’s commandments as a list of “dos and don’ts” when they are so much more. God’s laws represent a way of life that forms an integral part of the journey to eternal life. They also help us to understand the mind and character of God. But they only reveal that mind and character to those who do more than read about them—they must be obeyed and lived. As verse 10 of Psalm 111 says, “A good understanding have all those who do His commandments.”

Unknown to most of mankind is the purpose of God, which involves His reproducing His own character inside us. Paul pointed to an element of this purpose when he wrote in Philippians 2:5,

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus….

Seeking to live by the commands of God is a part of the process by which God duplicates the mind and character of Jesus Christ in us. It is how we learn how God and Jesus see right and wrong, how They want to be worshiped, and how They want us to interact with Them and with others. And obeying those commands is how we begin to make Their character our own.

But it can’t be just an academic pursuit. It isn’t just a matter of learning to know God through what we read with our eyes or hear with our ears. It’s a very personal matter of getting to know Him through what we choose to do with our hands and where we choose to go with our feet.

Keeping God’s commands is so crucial to knowing God that He inspired the Apostle John to warn us very clearly:

Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him (1 John 2:3–4).

Those are strong words, straight from your own Bible! Anyone seeking to know God must keep His commandments, and that includes you and me.

4. Know God by Praying Wholeheartedly

Let’s review our first three keys.

First, we pointed you to creation, encouraging you to truly open your eyes to all you can learn about the God who made you by taking the time to soak in the majesty and design of the world around you.

Next, we directed you to God’s word, the Bible. The Holy Scriptures represent God’s own mind in print—telling us His thoughts, plans, and purposes. Though our world is increasingly forgetting the miracle this book represents, it remains a powerful and necessary key to understanding the God who inspired it.

Third, we highlighted the necessity of keeping God’s commandments. The Bible strongly declares that those who claim to know God but who do not keep His commandments are liars—whether they know they are liars or not. God’s character and heart is taught to us by not just knowing His commandments, but by keeping them ourselves.

Our fourth key today to knowing God, personally and intimately, may seem increasingly difficult in a busy world that demands more and more of our time, from the second we wake up to the moment we collapse on our beds for a short night of sleep before we start all over again. But this key is a necessity, and we cannot come to know God without it.

The fourth key is the practice of regular prayer.

Here at Tomorrow’s World studios, we know that this program is broadcast to peoples and nations all around the world. And when I say “prayer,” many of you may have different ideas about what that means. For some, it might be memorized words or a formula that you recite, perhaps in connection with something like prayer beads. It might even involve some sort of ritualistic chant. But none of these are biblical, nor are they sufficient to help you know God.

Jesus is plain about this in Matthew chapter 6:

And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him (vv. 7–8).

No, the sort of prayer the Bible is speaking of is a wholehearted conversation with God, speaking to him about what is on your mind and in your heart.

Consider how you came to know your spouse while you were dating, or how you became close to your nearest and dearest friends. Those relationships took time and included conversation—a sharing of thoughts, ideas, concerns, hopes, and dreams. If you want to know God, you need to spend that sort of time in prayer to Him, as well.

Not many do—at least not the sort of time we’re talking about. In fact, one of God’s complaints about His people in prophecy reflects such a lack of heartfelt prayer. As the Moffat translation of the Bible renders His words in Hosea 7:14, “They never put their heart into their prayers.”

But there is so much to be gained by doing so. By humbling ourselves, kneeling before God, and pouring out our heart to Him. That sort of wholehearted contact not only invites Him to lift our burdens from us, but also opens up an avenue through which we can grow to find Him and know Him. As He said to ancient Israel, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord…” (Jeremiah 29:13–14).

To some extent, this key of prayer can work with our second key today, the Bible, and act as a sort of electrical circuit.

If you remember your studies from high school science, you might recall that electricity needs a closed loop to flow through. For a light bulb to glow, the electricity needs to flow through the bulb, which isn’t possible when the circuit is broken. In a similar way, prayer can work with our study of the Bible. As God shows us more about Himself in His word and shares with us, then we, in turn, can talk to Him about what we are learning and how we see it reflected in our lives, and we can share with Him our questions, hopes, and concerns. Then He, in return, can share more with us.

So many who claim not to be able to find God have not truly sought to build a relationship with Him in this way. But if that relationship is what you seek, then you must turn the key of prayer.

5. Know God by Understanding Jesus Christ

The last key adds power to all the others, and without it, we can only go so far in truly coming to know God.

That last key is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, Himself.

The Bible tells us that long before this world, or this universe, ever existed, the Being we now call Jesus Christ lived in eternity past with the One we now call God the Father. In the very beginning of his gospel account, the Apostle John calls the pre-incarnate Christ “the Logos” or “the Word” of God, and he describes the intimate union between these two God Beings that they shared before the world was:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).

This member of the Godhead became flesh and blood, walking and teaching among us 2,000 years ago as the Son of God. Part of His purpose in doing so was to reveal the Father more intimately to us. As He says, Himself, in Matthew 11:27,

All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

If we truly want to know God, then the teachings of Jesus Christ are an indispensable key. In fact, in John 14:9, He tells His disciples, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father….”

He wasn’t saying that He was the Father! Rather, Christ is saying that everything we need to know about God the Father was revealed through Him!

Jesus Christ was the perfect revelation of God to mankind. In His love, mercy, and compassion for others; in His wisdom, insight, and remarkable teachings; and in His character, example, and obedience to the laws and ways of God; Jesus Christ is the revelation we need of God’s own love, wisdom, and goodness. And having been resurrected from the grave and glorified, and reigning over His Church from heaven until His soon coming return, Jesus is alive today, right now—able to empower all who will sincerely yield to Him and come to know their Creator.

If you truly long to have a relationship with God, then Jesus Christ is the only way to fully do so! In fact, your knowledge of and relationship with God will fall far short if you do not seek the Son of God in your life, as well. As Jesus says in John 14 and verse 6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Seek God With Your Whole Heart

These five keys—creation, the Bible, keeping God’s commandments, prayer, and Jesus Christ—can help start you on your way to a relationship with God that will not only carry you through today’s hard times, but right on through to the Kingdom of God for all eternity.

All of us here at the Tomorrow’s World studios work very hard to help you understand your world through the pages of your Bible.

If you’re interested in our free DVD “Claim God’s Promises,” you can get that DVD by going to TWTV.org/claim or just clicking on the link we have in the description.

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Thank you so much!

[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

The Law of Love

Did you know the Bible contains love songs? Hard for some to imagine, but it’s true! Some of our more biblically savvy viewers might think of the Song of Solomon, which is, indeed, a beautiful part of the Bible. But that’s not what I’m thinking of!

Rather, I’m thinking of Psalm 119, which the songwriter, King David, filled with passion, praise, and heartfelt devotion. What was the object of such emotion? Believe it or not, the Ten Commandments!

Does this surprise you?

It shouldn’t. Because they paint a beautiful picture of the mind of God and play a key role in the transformation of the whole world that Jesus Christ will return and establish.

Join us for this episode of Tomorrow’s World, where we’ll uncover The Beauty of the Ten Commandments.

God’s Laws Bring LIBERTY

Greetings, and welcome to Tomorrow’s World, where we help you make sense of your world through the pages of the Bible.

Today we’re going to spend time talking about one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind—the Ten Commandments.

When you look closely enough, the core doctrines of common and mainstream Christianity seem to tell you these divine commands from God are done away with—as if God makes no binding obligation on us any longer, and we’ve been freed from the need to obey—freed from the Ten Commandments.

But when you come to understand the commandments and what they represent, you see that you might as well speak of being “freed” from food and water, or freed from air and light! Or, for that matter, freed from understanding, freed from righteousness, and freed from freedom and liberty, itself! In fact, in his inspired letter, James, the brother of Jesus Christ, TWICE refers to the Commandments as “the law of liberty”—even “the perfect law of liberty.”

Now, some preachers might dither and say that they would never preach against the Ten Commandments. Yet most who would say that are preaching in a pulpit on Sunday after having gone to the mall or the lake or the ballgame on Saturday, in violation of the Fourth Commandment. And in March of 2021, Christianity Today exposed modern Christianity’s opinion on the Seventh Commandment to keep sexual relations within the confines of marriage by reporting that, “Evangelicals, especially those under 40, increasingly see cohabitation as morally acceptable. Most young evangelicals have engaged in it or expect to” (“The Cohabitation Dilemma Comes for America’s Pastors,” ChristianityToday.com, March 16, 2021). And how many cathedrals are filled with statues and images that people bow before, pray before, or even weep before, filled with religious devotion—when the Second Commandment forbids such objects of worship?

Yes, a lot of lip service is paid to the Ten Commandments, but few people really take them as seriously as God the Father and Jesus Christ do. And what a shame that is! Because when they are embraced and taken seriously as merciful instructions handed down by a merciful and loving God, the Ten Commandments are a source of BEAUTY in life that is unmatched by any competing laws or philosophies of men.

At the beginning of the program, I mentioned King David’s “love song” to the Ten Commandments. Let’s read just a few of the words of praise and fondness penned by the Warrior Poet of Israel for these beautiful laws of God.

We’ll find them in Psalm 119. For instance,

Verse 35: “Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, for I delight in it.”

Verse 47: “And I will delight myself in Your commandments, which I love.”

Verse 73: “Your hands have made me and fashioned me; give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments.”

Verse 127: “Therefore I love Your commandments more than gold, yes, than fine gold!”

Verse 131: “I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for Your commandments.”

Verse 143: “Trouble and anguish have overtaken me, yet Your commandments are my delights.”

Believe me, there were more, but those should help paint the picture!

The Bible says that King David was a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22), and in his trials, he found comfort in the Commandments. In his distress, he found wisdom in them. He found them more beautiful and precious than gold and silver, and he says he longed to understand them and live them, like the thirsty deer longs for water.

No one writes such songs of heartfelt devotion and passion about speed limits or legal regulations pouring out of Congress!

The Ten Commandments are DIFFERENT—they provide guidance, aid, and understanding. They represent the core of the way of life of the very Creator of mankind, who has shared them with us in His mercy. And as we get to know them and understand them—not just in our minds, but with the sort of understanding that only comes from acting and doing—then we begin to better understand the character and mind of God, Himself.

Actually, with the help of God, it is more than that: Keeping the Ten Commandments changes us, and helps us not only to understand the mind of God but even to begin to share the mind of God and to think like Him, ourselves. As David writes in Psalm 19 and verse 7, “The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul….”

It is no wonder that Jesus Christ told a young man quizzing Him about salvation, “[I]f you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17).

Clearly the Ten Commandments mattered to Jesus.

In fact, they matter so much so that the Apostle John wrote in his first letter, in 1 John 2 and verse 4, speaking of Christ, “He who says, ‘I know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

Anyone preaching that you do not need to keep the commandments to know Jesus Christ is a liar and a false preacher, whether he knows it or not, and should be avoided.

What Are the Ten Commandments?

You know, if we’re going to spend all this time talking about the Ten Commandments, maybe I should take the time to read them!

You will find them listed in Exodus chapter 20, where we find the heart of God’s law listed in only 16 verses (vv. 2–17):

1. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.

2. You shall not make for yourself a carved 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; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.

Yes, the whole of the Ten Commandments fits in these 16 verses. But the art of living by them, and the depth of truly understanding them, only really comes through practice, the light of Jesus’ teachings, and the help of God’s Holy Spirit.

Let’s take some time to appreciate their structure and organization.

In Matthew 22, we read an account of a young lawyer who asked Jesus an important question. We begin in verse 36:

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:36–40).

Notice, Jesus said that the entirety of the law and the prophets hangs on these two great commandments: To love God and to love your neighbor.

Now look again at the Ten Commandments to see how they are structured.

The first four of the Ten Commandments teach us how to fulfill the First Great Commandment to love God. And the six Commandments that follow teach us how to fulfill the Second Great Commandment to love others.

The Ten Commandments aren’t just some legalistic list of dos and don’ts. When you understand what Jesus is saying, you see them as essential instructions in love. In fact, let me ask you: What is more beautiful than the love of God? Not just receiving it, but growing in it ourselves, in compassion and outflowing concern?

Well, if we seek to know the beauty of God’s love in our lives, then we will want to keep the Ten Commandments! Don’t take my word for it—take the Apostle John’s! Often called the Apostle of Love because love was such a consistent focus of His writings in Scripture, he teaches us a very important truth of God in his first letter—in 1 John 5:3: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.”

When you understand this connection between how the Ten Commandments are central to teaching us how to love God and to love each other and the fact that, as 1 John 4:8 tells us, “God is love,” then you begin to see how the Ten Commandments represent God’s own mind and character in print. And how learning to practice them and to make them a part of your life is a vital part of the beautiful transformation God seeks to achieve in all of us

How Do You Keep God’s Commandments?

Let’s dive into some of the individual commandments, themselves. Just as the beauty of a gemstone is shaped by how its individual facets reveal its brilliance, each of the commandments contributes to the overall beauty of these laws of God.

In fact, consider the first one, given in Exodus 20, verses 2 and 3: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.”

Now compare this to, say, the beginning of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which lays a foundation based on the idea that all men are created equal—or the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states in its first article that all human beings are free and equal in dignity and rights.

In today’s free resource, The Ten Commandments, Roderick Meredith explains the stark difference between works like these and the Commandments:

In our day of human reason, agnosticism, and creeping materialism, it is important to notice that the Almighty spoke first not about the “brotherhood of man,” but about obedience and worship to God, the Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth—and the personal God of those who serve and obey Him! (p. 7).

What a difference! Unlike human philosophers or politicians who ground our obligations to each other in moral theories or passing ethical fashions, God grounds our obligations on His own eternal and unchanging status as the Creator of all things, who does not change! (Malachi 3:6).

Consequently, the Ten Commandments have a beautiful and immovable foundation that grounds them in the firmest foundation conceivable. For instance…

• The Fourth Commandment about keeping the Sabbath holy is about the day He, Himself, sanctified at Creation.

• The Sixth Commandment against murder, we’re told in Genesis 9:6, is grounded in the fact that man is made in God’s image.

• The Ninth Commandment against bearing false witness runs afoul of the fact that God is a “God of truth” (Deuteronomy 32:4) and that His word is truth (John 17:17).

This grounding in the nature and character of the Eternal God who created all life—indeed, the God who created all of REALITY!—gives these inspired commandments a richness and depth that few ever take the time to truly explore.

Consider the Third Commandment against using God’s name in vain. How often is this commandment trampled in this world—often by the very ones who claim to be living a godly life! Yet, not using God’s name in vain is so much more than simply not using His name in curse words or swearing. For instance, everyone who claims to be a Christian is, in a very real way, taking on the name of Jesus Christ—yet, if we behave in an un-Christian manner and set a bad example, we’ve taken on that name in vain.

Keeping the Third Commandment means taking our lives seriously enough to bring honor to the name we bear—and in that way, the commandment becomes far more than a guide concerning the statements we make with our mouths, but a motivation to consider the statements we make with our lives.

Even the commandments that might seem obvious—such as the Sixth Commandment, “You shall not murder”—have SO much more to say than those four words might seem to reveal!

Jesus Christ, Himself, makes this plain, explaining in Matthew 5:21 and 22 that hating your brother in your heart is the spirit of murder, and that hating others violates the Sixth Commandment.

When you look at the world today and see how anger-filled it is, and then when you recognize it as the spirit of murder that you are seeing in the faces of rage that fill our streets and news feeds, suddenly you realize just how far we’ve fallen from what God seeks to make of us.

And further still, the command against murder is rooted in the fact that every single human being is created in God’s image. In contrast to the culture of death we see around us—in which abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide are considered moral progress instead of the signs of moral degradation they truly represent—a devotion to living the values of the Sixth Commandment is a devotion to respecting the beautiful image of God inherent in every human life! Not just the life of the healthy and strong, but the life of the infirm and the weak. As God told Moses in Exodus 4 and verse 11, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD?”

The Sixth Commandment declares that no life is without value and meaning in the eyes of God. And even a supposedly simple, “obvious” command like “You shall not murder” has beautiful depths that are worth exploring.

In a moment, I want to help us step back and take in the larger picture by imagining the world that Jesus Christ will establish at His return. When we do, we’ll find the Ten Commandments are the key to seeing that picture.

A World Free from Sin and Suffering

Imagine a world in which every human being in every country on earth has no other God than the God of the Bible. Every living, breathing soul understands that nothing in their devotions should come before God the Father and Jesus Christ, and everyone worships Them alone. That worship is free of any and all trappings of paganism.

There are no statues or images of so-called saints or other distractions. Every soul on earth uses God’s name with a sense of respect for everything that it represents, because they know that the words they utter matter. Consequently, no one uses foul language any longer. No one anywhere on the planet utters God’s name in a curse, and it would not even cross someone’s mind to swear or speak in a filthy manner.

Imagine a world in which everyone keeps the seventh-day Sabbath. Gone forever are the days when someone worked seven days a week, replaced by a joyful, worldwide observance of God’s ordained rest from labor—a time for families to reaffirm their affections for each other and to seek the face of their God together.

Every week, everyone on earth gathers together as God commands, in holy convocation, to sing praises to their Creator and their Savior, and to learn together from the pages of Scripture.

Imagine, too, that, in that world, families have been restored as the fundamental building blocks of civilization. Parents are honored and loved, in accordance with the fifth commandment, and grandparents and great-grandparents are held in high esteem, as children are taught to respect those who have gone before them. Those same children play safely in the streets as families spend time together in the neighborhood, because violence and hatred are no longer a part of anyone’s experience. Families remain intact for life and marriages remain strong, as men and women learn the joy and peace that comes from reserving physical intimacy for the God-ordained place for which it was designed: their marriages.

There are no locks on doors, and children leave their bicycles on the front lawns, since no one would ever think to take something that is not theirs. And relationships in the community and between people and their leaders are built on a foundation of mutual trust and respect, in which everyone speaks truthfully with each other.

Then imagine that, over all of this lies an air of contentment and gratitude—because the idea that happiness is dependent on the number of things you can buy or collect to keep up with the neighbors has long since passed from the world. Instead, everyone finds their deepest satisfaction in the profitable work of their hands, the joy they feel from the love of friends and family, and the knowledge that the God they worship is One who knows them, and loves them, and is personally working in this world, and in their lives, to bring His purpose for their lives to fruition—when they will join His own Family and step into eternity with Him, forever.

That beautiful world—which Jesus Christ WILL establish at His return—is one in which everyone keeps the Ten Commandments.

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