"These Commandments I Could Keep!"

You know, it's so hard to obey doctors' orders. Isn't it? "I want you to quit smoking." "No more desserts." "Here, swallow this greenish-yuck medicine four times a day." "For the next three months: no golf." It's not often that a doctor gets out his little prescription pad and writes down orders for you to do something very nice.

But once in a while . . . yes. Back in the year 1960, a presidential candidate named Richard Nixon was stumping hard for office, trying to hold back the Democratic surge by a young senator named John F. Kennedy. Now, he, being the Vice President under the very popular Eisenhower, should have had the upper hand. After all, he, Nixon, had stood up to Nikita Khrushchev in the famous "Kitchen Debate" in Moscow. So now he was expected to make mincemeat of JFK, this "(quote) frightened stripling," as one historian put it. But then tragedy struck. Getting out of a campaign limo heading to Greensboro, North Carolina, he whacked his knee really hard on the side of the car, and just about collapsed in pain. The result? From August 29 to September 9, he was off the campaign trail, stuck in a bed at Walter Reed Hospital, while the infected knee got well. Ten precious days gone, while his opponent was flying all around the country on the Kennedy airplane, the Caroline, racking up votes and endorsements.

Well, then came the night that made history. September 26, 1960. The very first televised debate in a United States presidential race. Nixon vs. Kennedy, with Howard K. Smith moderating. The seasoned vice president against the kid, the junior senator from Massachusetts. And if you heard the Chicago debate on the RADIO, and heard the VP defending the eight-year record of Eisenhower-Nixon, you assumed he had won. No contest.

BUT – on TELEVISION— it was a whole 'nother story. On TV, Kennedy looked young and robust and virile and aggressive. Nixon was tired, sweaty, pale. He had dark circles under his eyes and a pasty makeup called "Lazy Shave" to cover his five-o'clock shadow. The TV lights, carefully adjusted to make Nixon look good, had been moved at the last minute by reporters who needed shots from different angles. Now with the cameras rolling, live, his shirt collar looked huge; it flapped loosely around his neck. Here's a descriptive quote from Theodore White, who later wrote the book, The Making of the President: 1960.

"Tense, almost frightened, at turns glowering and, occasionally, haggard-looking, to the point of sickness."

People watching on TV, expecting the vice president to just cream his opponent, came away saying instead: "Boy, that Kennedy looks GOOD. HE could be president, no problem."

Well, what does this all have to do with doctors' orders? After the debate, up in the Republican suites at the Pick-Congress Hotel, you can understand that heads were rolling. Why had their man looked so bad? Why did he come across so pale, so skinny and sappy? Makeup people got fired, of course. And finally, Nixon's doctor also piped up. "Mr. Vice President," he said, "you're still recovering from that knee injury. You're a good 15 pounds below your normal weight." Which was true.

And then the attending physician said to the candidate, "Mr. Vice President, I'm ORDERING you — for the next two weeks — to have a big milkshake every day. To get your weight up. Doctor's orders: a milkshake a day." And Nixon wrote in his memoirs, Six Crises, that he very cheerfully and obediently obeyed doctor's orders. The milkshakes probably had the added benefit of giving Mr. Nixon something to smile about each day, seeing as how he went on to lose the November election by an EYELASH . . . almost certainly because he had looked bad on TV and hadn't had those 14 milkshakes BEFORE the big TV event instead of after.

But friend, wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if the first of God's Ten Commandments, there in Exodus chapter 20, began like this:

"Thou shalt drink a double-fudge, extra-tall milkshake for lunch every single day of thy life. I am the Lord!"

Would you find it easy to obey then? And then the Second Commandment would have to do with cappuccino blasters for supper. The Third Commandment would tell us to watch HBO for five hours a night, every night. The Fourth and Fifth Commandments would require Christians to subscribe to the Playboy Channel and play golf or tennis each weekend instead of going to church. The Sixth Commandment would tell us that we absolutely must go to gambling casinos once a month and blow our paychecks. Drinking and smoking and drugs and extramarital sex would now be requirements, not prohibitions. And along with Richard Nixon, we would smile as we flip on the X-rated channels and say to God, "Lord, it's EASY to obey You NOW! Thanks a lot!"

There's a man in the Bible who claimed — notice, he CLAIMED — to like the original Ten Commandments of God just fine the way they were. Here's what King David wrote in his memoirs:

"Oh, how I love Your law! I meditate on it all day long."

That's Psalm 119:97 — right in a collection of 176 verses all about this dusty Old Testament list of God's ten "Don'ts." But the cynical among us might say to King David: "Yeah, you meditated on the law all day, and then BROKE it all night! What about your affair with Bathsheba? What about murdering her husband? What about all the lies you told trying to get out of it? You don't like God's law any more than the rest of us do."

And you know, friend, all the way through the Word of God, and then continuing right on past Revelation 22:21 and into our 21^st century, we find this inescapable truth: The Ten Commandments point in one direction, and our hearts in another. In fact, it's pretty much a 180-degree chasm. The law points UP; we're going DOWN. Heaven is to the north, and our sinful inclinations point due south 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And maybe you want to phone in right here and remonstrate with me a bit. "Lennie, that's not entirely true. There are sins that I DO hate. Murder is wrong — and I hate it. Stealing is wrong, and there's nothing in me that likes stealing."

True enough. Yes, good Christians do get to the point where, as they read the Ten Commandments, they DO find some beauty along the way. But really, do you know something? I think deep down we're a lot like the Apostle Paul who writes very honestly about his own love-HATE relationship with evil. He hated sin and loved it at the same time.

It was interesting to read his classic confession on this, which you'll find in Romans chapter seven . . . but from this new paraphrase called The Message, by Dr. Eugene Peterson. Notice:

"I'm full of myself," Paul writes. "After all, I've spent a long time in sin's prison. What I don't understand about myself is that I decide ONE way, but then I act ANOTHER, doing things I absolutely despise."

Have you ever felt like that? You really do hate your violent temper. You hate that out- of-control feeling, the tightening in the pit of your stomach. You hate to see the light go out of your little boy's eyes when you "lose it" and yell at him. You hate to see the hurt it causes in your marriage when you retaliate and let discussions escalate into arguments and then into full- blown rage tantrums. So you hate the sin of anger . . . and yet you love it too. You keep doing it. Paul goes on.

"If I KNOW the law but still can't KEEP it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't DO it. I decide to do good, but I don't REALLY do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway." Do you hear the love-hate theme song here? "My decisions, such as they are," he writes, "don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight."

And you know, friend, most of us are RIGHT THERE. "I can WILL it, but I can't DO it." "I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway." And even the Christian who says, and means it, "I delight in God's commands," has to then admit, along with King David, "But not ALL of me joins in that delight."

Well, friend, we want to look at solutions all this week, but the PROBLEM, at least, is right here in front of us. Paul writes in full candor: "Something has gone wrong deep within me." Every single one of us, all six billion of us, and our predecessors before us, have something wrong deep inside. We want to drink milkshakes and steal from our neighbors and lie and cheat and allow ourselves to swell up with pride. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah wrote, in chapter 17:

"The heart is deceitful above all things AND BEYOND CURE. Who can understand it?" In the Clear Word paraphrase it goes like this: "Who can understand man's heart? It is devious and deceitful above all else. Who can trust it? It's sick. Who can heal it?"

Well, the answer to "Who can trust it?" is — nobody. "Who can heal it?" Jesus. Stay tuned.

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